Читать книгу: «Icebound»

Chapter Two

Finally, the sense of Shane’s presence around his face vanishes. Drake Young breathes a sigh of not-quite-relief, turning his full attention back to the kids. “You’re a little weak on your left side,” he says with a poke to the child in question, illustrating the blind spot. “Make sure to keep your guard up.”

They’ve all got such adoration in their eyes. Maybe he craves that a little too much, he admits to himself. It’s nice to be liked. “All right. That’s enough for the day. Practice the warm-up drill tomorrow, and I’ll see you Thursday night.”

They bow, uneven and exhausted, but with grins on their faces. A couple of them run up after class for a high-five, which he readily obliges. He checks his watch, but there’s time, barely. He hops in the shower for a few minutes, always feeling that prickle of hesitation like he does every time he strips off, never sure if Shane’s going to be watching.

What the hell, let him. Not like it’s anything he hasn’t seen before.

It isn’t Shane, but his downstairs neighbor Deborah waiting for him when he gets to the door, a smile hovering uncertainly on her face. “Oh, good. I wasn’t sure you’d still be here.”

“Still here. Leaving now.”

“Mind if I catch a ride home?”

He does, but nods anyway, mentally forgoing his plan to get groceries on the way home. “No problem. If you want, I’ll go warm up the car.”

“I don’t mind a little cold.” Deborah looks at him with naked hope in her eyes, trotting after his long legs into the cold night air. “I thought you only had classes until six.”

“Most days. Monday nights I teach self-defense, and Tuesday I just added an extra karate class for beginners.”

He wishes he could banish the admiration she shows him. He doesn’t deserve it, he knows that better than anyone. “You work so hard. How do you still have time to volunteer for the church every day?”

“You make time, for the things you love.” At least it isn’t a long drive to the apartment complex they share. On the down side, the heater doesn’t really start kicking in until they’re halfway home, tires crunching steadily over fresh snow.

“Ploughs haven’t come through yet. I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have bothered you, but it’s hell getting a taxi when it’s this cold out.”

“I don’t mind. How’s your younger sister? Still in the hospital?”

“I can’t believe you remember that.”

Stop looking at me like that. I’m not what you want. “I just wish the best for all you and yours. You’re both in my prayers.”

It’s probably because he’s preoccupied with wondering if he’s going to find a drunken Shane on his doorstep, or trying to navigate the powdery white roads, or trying to figure out how to subtly hint to Deborah that there’s no tree farther than him from the one she wants to be barking up, that he doesn’t hear the sound until too late.

For a split second, Drake thinks he’s lost control of the car, and it’s gone slamming into a brick wall. Deborah screams, and he has just enough time to realize that if they’d hit something they’d have slowed down, or stopped moving, when whatever’s grabbed them yanks the car sideways, sending them into a roll.

Then they hit a wall, with an absolute, final crunch. It’s difficult to orient himself, but Drake thinks he’s upside down, and not too badly damaged to keep living. He tastes blood, but that’s probably just the inside of his mouth, bitten during the crash, and he blinks bleary eyes, focusing on the slender form of the woman in the passenger seat. “Deborah? You okay?”

“I—” She coughs, but nods. “I th-think so. What did we hit?”

Drake starts to answer, but at the surge of movement outside his shattered windows, his voice dries up into one word. “That.”

The creature is massive, swelling to the size of a house, its shining black chitin the only thing he can see at this hour, in this light. More frightening than anything, it moves in total silence, its legs not even making noise as they touch the ground, and it rips the passenger-side door off its hinges with a single wrench of one arm.

Deborah doesn’t scream. Her eyes are wide as dinner plates, and her breath is trembling in her lungs, but she seems to be beyond screaming. She’s shuddering, and Drake doesn’t wait for those arms—how many does it have?—to come down again. He yanks at the catch on his seat, collapsing it backward with a wrench of his back, and fumbles in the backseat for the long cloth-covered bundle he knows is back there, strapped in securely, never more than an arm’s reach away.

For, you know, situations exactly like this.

His hand closes around the hilt, and he shuts his eyes on reflex at the usual blinding flash. Instantly, the minor cuts and bruises seem like nothing at all, the shaking he hadn’t even noticed banished, and strength surges through him as he cleaves through the warped metal of the door, hacking himself an escape hole.

The damn thing moves silently, and that’s not only creepy as all hell, it’s dangerous too. It doesn’t telegraph its moves, doesn’t let him know where it’s going, give any of the usual indicators that he sort of needs to be able to fight it.

“Drake!” Deborah screams, seeing one of the arms coming down towards her, eyes fixed on it rather than on him.

He vaults over the overturned car with a massive leap, arms swinging down with sword in tow, hammering down at the outstretched appendage. It looks more like a tentacle than an arm with the way it moves, but the hard slippery shell shouldn’t be that flexible, that’s not fair.

“Dra—” Deborah starts to yell again, then stops, stunned, seeing him land on the other side of the car, shining broadsword in his hands. He aims for the outstretched arm, but the damn thing is fast, dodging to the side. At least he’s bought Deborah a couple seconds. “Deborah! Get out of here, fast as you can!”

Usually, running away is the right choice for humans. For all the big talk of bravery in popular fiction through the ages, Drake knows very well that there are things in the world—most of them, really—that it’s just better to run away from.

Whatever the hell this thing is, he’s ninety nine percent sure it’s one of them. “Hey!” he shouts, running around to the thing’s other side, spreading his arms to present a bigger target, no matter how it strains his muscles to hold the broadsword one-handed. “You come here for me? I’m right here.”

From this angle, he has a better view of the thing, and vehemently wishes he didn’t. It’s tall enough that the hunch of its back brushes against the streetlights, with a perfectly round, un-segmented body. The curve of its chitinous shell makes for a totally spherical body, shimmering sleek black in the streetlights, reflecting the red and green of the flashing stoplights in the intersection. The legs are another thing entirely, shooting up to hold that oddly round body ten or so yards above the ground, moving fluidly around as though only vaguely connected to the body proper.

Drake swallows hard. Whatever this thing is, it’s nothing he’s faced before. For a moment, he can’t help the thought that it would be really nice to have a certain man at his back, guarding his weak side, or even just encouraging him while they pelt headlong into danger together, but he squashes that thought. He’s been fine on his own for years now. And he’s got the scars to prove it, he thinks sourly, and dodges just in time to avoid a swipe of those eerily silent legs.

Too late, Drake realizes that he’s more hampered by the lack of sound than he’d thought. No matter how fast he avoids one arm, the thing has another coming at him, not even whistling through the air as it strikes him in the back. It fastens on to him, even through his clothes, and something sharp stabs him in the spine, slender as a needle’s prick and infinitely more painful.

Far more disturbing, he feels another attack, more subtle, more dangerous, the kind of thing he hasn’t felt in years, seeping into his body from that tiny stab wound. For a moment, everything is silence, and he can see his body from behind, a pathetic human thing, facing something a hundred times larger than himself, slowly going limp. The silence steals over everything, quieting the ever-present pain, the guilt, the anger that’s so much a part of him it just feels like background noise.

Then, the sword in his hand blazes. The light shocks him, intensely, offensively bright, hurting him even in his spirit form, worse still to the spherical creature. It shrieks, a horrible soundless cry that reverberates through everything nearby, rattling his bones. He snaps back into his body with a shock, hand tingling where it grips his sword, and he spares a quick moment to send up a prayer of thanks.

It’s the only polite response, after all.

Feeling oddly energized Drake leaps forward, launching himself with a fierce bellow as he swings, and has the satisfaction of hearing that arm break, shattered and torn by the sword’s sharp edge.

He starts to grin, but stops. There’s no one to grin at.

The creature shrieks again, yanking its severed arm back towards itself in obvious pain, scuttling awkwardly on its five remaining legs off to the side.

“I see now,” Drake mutters, loud enough for the thing’s benefit. “You’re not some new import from Fae. You’re not an escaped pet of some stupid mage. You’re just a big ugly bug.”

He can almost hear the jokes his own stupid mage would make—would have made, he reminds himself, and even having the thought makes him angry enough to leap at the bug again, scoring a long line down another thick arm, snarling savagely as oddly pink blood gushes forth.

It runs, dashing down the streets faster than a creature of that size should be able to, and Drake thinks for a second that it’s all flailing limbs in pain, before he hears a breathy, high-pitched shriek.

The arm wrenches away from Deborah’s back, something ephemeral and oddly blurry in a way real objects aren’t, and Drake’s heart clenches. He sees her drop, lifeless and uncaring, to the ground.

Drake sheathes the sword on his back, taking the time to at least prop Deborah’s body up in the remains of the car, checking to see that yes, she still has a pulse.

“Don’t worry,” he promises, “I’ll get it back. I’ll make sure you don’t have to live like this.”

No matter who she is, what his personal feelings, she doesn’t deserve this. No one does.

He straightens up, mutters, “Please, guide my feet,” and takes off at a dead run, long legs carrying him through the unnaturally dark streets, courtesy of the broken streetlights.

Damned if he’s going to let someone else lose a soul because of him.