Читать книгу Icebound - Corinna Rogers - Страница 9

One of Shane’s boots hits the ground before his car’s wheels have entirely stopped spinning, crunching satisfyingly against the gravel. He shrugs on his coat, a thick leather jacket that has just about no effect on how much cold he feels, and buckles on his swordbelt, then checks his hair in the mirror. Huh. Black today. Maybe he was looking forward to this.

It does feel good, he supposes, to stretch his legs. It’s been a week since the last time he left the Ice King’s fortress, concealed under a wholesale illusion covering an obscure government-sounding office. Even then, he’d only left to get drunk and pass out at Drake’s doorstep—or was that the time he’d crashed service? It’s hard to remember the things that don’t matter. Mostly it just feels cold.

He unclips the GPS from his windshield, palming the little device. He taps it with a finger, flicking it to life. “Hey. Where is he?”

“Turn left. In four hundred feet, turn right onto Seventeenth Street.”

“Who the hell measures in feet anyway?” he grumbles, stuffing it into his pocket along with his hands, strolling off down the street.

“Turn left.”

Shane pauses, then pulls the GPS out to scowl at it. It’s a new model, and should be able to handle the spell he’d put on it for a year, at least. “You said turn right.”

“Turn left,” it repeats, stubbornly.

“Look, this isn’t complicated. Find Roy. How many feet?”

“Your destination is on the left. Right. Left.”

“Fucking piece of shit.” Shane jabs at the buttons, succeeding in changing her voice to Arabic, then Japanese, then Dark Fae, which he’s pretty sure wasn’t included with the regular package at Radio World.

“Snearthen Asghar.”

He’s so preoccupied with snarling every Dark Fae curse he knows at the thing that he doesn’t notice the men creeping up on him until the cold barrel of a gun presses against his temple.

“Your wallet and your keys. Don’t turn around. Don’t fucking look at me.”

Oh, this man wants to be menacing. Shane tries, with limited success, not to smirk. “My keys?”

“You got a sweet ride.” One of the men sneers, pressing closer to him. “Maybe you’d be a sweet ride too, huh, faggot?”

“Well, if you’re offering.”

The wandering hand freezes, then pulls back in obvious confusion. “What the fuck did you just say to me, shithead? You wanna eat lead?”

“Probably tastes better than your dick.”

That does the trick. A thought from Shane freezes the hammer on the gun a split-second before it clicks, leaving one thug cursing at the damn thing as Shane moves, slamming the heel of his hand up into the second man’s nose, hard enough to drive bone splinters into his brain.

“Cheap trick,” he says with a shrug as the dying man collapses to the ground, twitching and bleeding from the nose and ears. “Effective, though. How about you, big man? You wanna bleed?”

The second thug tosses his useless gun to the ground, hands in the air. “N-no, man, I didn’t—”

He doesn’t bleed. Shane freezes him where he stands, an unguarded touch of his finger lowering the man’s temperature to somewhere that he vaguely remembers from high school only registers on the Kelvin scale. “It’s a cute conceit, that you can unfreeze someone,” he remarks casually, shaking off the ice clinging to his finger. “They come back to life a hundred years later and wake up and say, ‘hey, what did I miss?’ Just like that, their heart starts beating again, and their flesh hasn’t atrophied at all. Why don’t you tell me how that works out for you?”

On second thought, there’s no reason to leave that kind of evidence behind, and there’s enough of his power in the death to make a certain mortician of his acquaintance ask awkward questions. He stoops down, picks up the “broken” gun, and unfreezes the hammer. “This is cleaner. Well. Not for you.”

The shot is loud, as is the sound of the man shattering into a hundred thousand pieces, landing in frozen bits around the alley. Shane flicks a piece off his jacket, then pulls out his GPS, shaking it. “Gonna work now?”

“Snearthen Asghar.”

“If you say so.”

He sets off at a trot, jogging left around a corner, only to see his target lying unconscious on top of a dumpster. “Dumbass. Wake up, Roy.” He accompanies his words with a flick of cold wind, and Roy yelps as he wakes, patting himself down.

“Boss? What are you doing?”

“Tracked you. Shit, how long did it take to wipe the floor with you?”

Roy groans, sitting up and squirming around, grabbing at his own back. “I don’t know, boss. Ten seconds? It’s, uh, bigger than I thought. Tried to suck out my soul.”

Shane laughs. “I hope that’s the only trick it has. Turn over.”

“I—”

“Turn the fuck over, I’m gonna track its signature.”

It’s the work of a few annoying moments to feed the sensory magic he gets from the impression in Roy’s back into the GPS, and the thing stutters hesitantly to life. “Get that?” he asks the spell, pressing a few buttons for the hell of it.

“Snearthen Heirge.”

“Cool.” He tosses Roy his keys, already following the directions. “Get the fuck out of here. This is obviously too big for you.”

Roy glares at him, but it’s more wounded pride than anger. “I could have caught you in the rankings.”

“Sure. Out you get, I’ve got to Sneathen Heirge. Tell the King he’ll have its head by tonight.”

“You’re a fucking bastard, boss.”

And you wouldn’t have been anywhere near me in the rankings if I’d bothered hunting a single thing in the last two years. There’s something to fucking brag about.

Sure, it’s nice being on top in the rankings, like it’s nice having the penthouse room, the bank account with nine figures, the cars and the amulets and the place of honor at all the feasts and orgies. Like everything else, it gets boring after a while.

Doesn’t mean he wants to give all that to Roy, though.

“Sneathen Vrache.”

“Watch your language.” He turns obediently right (well, north-east, the Dark Fae have an oddly precise sense of direction-giving) and stops in his tracks.

“Imschalle Trezimon.”

“No shit,” Shane mutters, staring up at the creature. It looms over him, a towering thing of spindly legs (two injured, he files away) and shiny black body, wreathed in eerie silence, and all five of its eyes swivel down to stare at him.

Unbidden, a smirk steals over his lips, because damned if this isn’t the first interesting thing he’s seen in years. Oh, this is gonna be fun.

He starts to run, uncloaking his power as he does, the constant sensation of being tamped down vanishing at last from the back of his mind. It races through him, the magic making his veins sing, his hands tingle, his eyes flicker. He runs towards the creature and then up one of the alley walls, hardly noticing the way gravity warps itself for the turn, and unsheathes his sword as he goes.

One of the Soul-Thief’s arms lashes out at him, and he dodges midair, a gust of icy wind catching him before he falls, bearing him up swiftly enough to wrap a hand around one of the Soul-Thief’s legs.

That’s a mistake.

The thing’s arms are coated in some kind of acid, some gelatinous gloop that starts burning as soon as he touches it, and he doesn’t even retain the presence of mind to swear in an interesting language as he drops it, collapsing to the ground. “Motherfucker, I’m going to kill you for that!”

The acid isn’t just painful. Even as he watches his fingers burn, melt away, corroded by the sticky stuff. His hand withers as the flesh burns away in searing pain, skin falling to the ground, muscles and blood withering to bone.

Wow. That actually hurts.

For a second, it almost feels good, a flare of pain when he’s been cold, unfeeling for so long, but shit, he can’t let this go on, no matter how interesting the sensation.

His eyes blaze, briefly lighting up the alley with blue-white light, and his hand covers itself in ice, hardening, dulling the pain to the point of the usual frozen ache he feels, well, everywhere. He flexes his hand, hearing the ice chip and crack, little pieces of acid-riddled ice flaking off to land on the alley floor. It’ll require a healing—fuck, with how much his hand hurts, it might require a re-making—but for now, he can make do with the ice hand, the decay halted by the quick freeze.

Shane bares his teeth and lets loose with a blast of raw power that knocks the Soul-Thief off its many legs, bowling it over to land against a fire escape. It scrabbles madly at the iron to haul itself upright. “Sorry,” Shane snaps, patience waning drastically after the pain, “bet that stings like a bitch. Hell, if you’re not more polite, I’ll get a can of Raid.”

The Soul-Thief flips over with speed that really isn’t fair, feet clawing at the asphalt with a screech that burns the ear.

With the hand that’s mostly ice Shane draws his sword, transferring it to the still-living flesh of his right hand. “Should’ve stuck to wherever the fuck you came from. Can you even talk?”

The thing screams at him, but it’s wordless, at least as far as he can tell. “Guess not. Maybe if you’d been less of a bitch I’d have just squashed you with a giant shoe, but you’re just asking for pain.”

One of the arms flails at him, something that looks like a needle-sharp stinger extended, and Shane moves so fast the world blurs in front of him, spinning around and striking out with his sword arm, shaving a long slab of armor from the arm, enjoying the way the thing writhes and thrashes as the sword turns every part it touches to ice. “Yeah, well, I don’t like what you did to my arm either. Live with it, bitch. Or bastard.”

Probably not a line of questioning he wants to pursue, really.

Putting far, far to the side the question of whether the Soul-Thief has a dick or not, Shane twists his sword, wrenching it free, and the suddenly brittle arm of the thing shatters into two pieces. Not as effective as it is on humans, then, where a single nick is enough to turn the entire body to ice. That’s all right. It’s no fun without a challenge, and the Soul-Thief is down to three arms.

“Still one up on me,” Shane grunts, narrowly avoiding another swat of the stinger. If it hadn’t been for the way it knocked Roy unconscious, he’d have been tempted to let it try and zap him, just to hear it freak out in surprise. Then again, the noises it’s making are overwhelming enough as it is.

He flexes his newly constructed ice hand, wiggling it around until it more or less settles into the shape of his actual hand, or what his hand would be if it weren’t currently so much damaged bone and sinew.

As a test, Shane tries to freeze the Soul-Thief with a sheer act of will. It’s more difficult than touching something, than letting the cold inside him spill out for a change, but it’s not exactly hard either.

He takes a deep breath, easier said than done while he dodges three acidic limbs whipping around at the speed of sound. Mentally, he forms the power into a lance, a spreading, infectious thing impregnated with all the ice he can muster, and hurls it at the broad center of the great teetering thing.

It has about the same effect as throwing a ping-pong ball at a meteorite.

“Okay.” Shane’s voice wavers a little, his eyes blazing again, hand gripping the hilt of his sword more tightly than ever. “You want to fucking play? Let’s see you dance.”

He drops the tip of his sword to the asphalt, and ice spills out, slicking the ground for a good three hundred yards in every direction. The Soul-Thief slips, legs skittering madly, and fails to catch itself, toppling over to hit the ice with a crack of shattering…body? Ice? Hard to tell.

Shane dashes forward, feeling the wind rip past him even for such a short distance, feet never slipping as he runs forward, sword outstretched, to deal the final blow to the downed, doomed creature.

His sword meets something hard with a blaze of light, so bright it sends him flying back, one arm thrown over his eyes. “Bastard!” he chokes out, blinking furiously as he twirls the sword one-handed. “Playing possum, huh? I’ll—”

His vision clears, and the next words die in his throat as he sees exactly what’s interspersed itself between him and his prey. His mouth goes abruptly dry, and he stammers, “D-Drake, what—”

If he had to put a name to the emotion on Drake’s face, he’d be hard put to think of anything besides weary disappointment. Drake winces, but nods. “Shane.”

I was doing something. Probably something important. “You look good. I like that shirt. Want to rip it off you.”

“For the love of God, can’t you think of anything except—”

“You?” Pain flares behind the smile spreading across Shane’s face, and he welcomes it, embraces it as the best thing he’s felt in years. “Probably not. I don’t try. Say, can we get back to this in like twenty seconds? I’ve got a mark to bag.”

Drake shifts, and just like that, Shane knows, just knows that there’s trouble. “I can’t let you kill it.”

The smile curves, turns less nice, and Shane’s eyebrows raise. “Let me? You think you can stop me?”

“Don’t do this.”

Shane saunters forward, a wicked glint in his eye. He leans forward, enough so his breath will be chill against Drake’s ear as he hisses, “So stop me.”

Drake telegraphs his moves by a mile, always has. He’s fast, sure, but not in the same league as Shane, making it laughably easy for him to dance out of the broadsword’s range. “That’s the problem with being a big man swinging a big sword,” he taunts, as Drake pulls back his arms for another swing. “All your momentum is—”

Just as he slides smoothly away from the next swing, Drake kicks out, a powerful sweep of his leg that takes Shane square in the hip, slamming him back into the half-broken fire escape the Soul-Thief had scrabbled down earlier. The iron bars drive into his ribs, his stomach, and had he been a lesser man, would have broken a lot that he can’t afford to break right now.

It’s a little hard to stay focused on why he needs to capture the Soul-Thief, why he needs to bring it down when the very thing that he wants is standing right in front of him, kicking him in the chest for good measure. For a second, Shane just grins, tasting blood. “Missed you too.”

Drake brings his sword up again, and this time Shane sees it for the decoy that it is, sees the muscles bunch in his side and thigh. He throws out his hand, and the surge of power smacks into Drake’s weight-bearing leg, sending him spinning off over a patch of still-frozen ground.

Shane wipes his mouth on the back of his hand—cut lip from the fall, no problem—and gets to his feet, unable to keep the grin off his face. “If you’re a good boy and hold still, this can end without—”

The sword blazes, that damn sword, he always forgets to account for it, and Shane throws up a hand over his eyes, following instinctively with a shield of power with his other hand, just in time to feel Drake smash against it. He lowers his hand, still blinking away the stars, and sheathes his sword. “You want to fight, big man? I can go all fucking night. Which city block should we tear up first, huh?”

“There are people living in those buildings.”

Shane laughs. “Yeah, but you’re the one who gives a shit about that. Come on. I’ll let you have the first shot.” He nods towards the sword in Drake’s hands, lifting his eyebrows in challenge. “Think that thing would work on me?”

“Of course not. It only works on—”

“Shit that isn’t human,” Shane finishes, smirking. He walks forward, eyes locked on Drake, slowly extending his hand. “Want to see if I still bleed?”

“Shane.”

“You wonder, don’t you? Or maybe you don’t think about me at all. Not like I think about you.” He keeps advancing, feet crunching over the ice, power crackling around his hands.

“Shane, don’t. We don’t have to fight.”

“You gonna stop me from killing my mark?”

Drake swallows hard, but nods. “I have to.”

Within a few feet, then inches, Shane manages to look down at Drake even though he’s got an inch of height on him. “Then stop me,” he murmurs, drawing his hand back for a blast that will probably level the whole block.

Drake kisses him.

The power flares in Shane’s hand, then arcs back into his body, setting his nerves alight with electricity, contorting his spine into an arch of gasping shock as Drake’s mouth closes over his, hard and wet and wanting. That thing in his chest, that spark of pain in the middle of the ever-present cold, flares white-hot, a searing agony that brings actual tears to Shane’s eyes, and god, if anything’s ever felt so good he doesn’t remember it.

For a moment, the pain overwhelms him until he feels a little like himself again, like the words, Nice try, baby, you think I’m that easy? are on the tip of his tongue, an easy teasing smile, a hand twined gently with his. With the taste of Drake so strong on his tongue, the hard planes of his body pressed against him, it’s easy to pretend that they’re not in a filthy alley but in their old apartment, practice blades tossed to the ground during a sparring session where they just couldn’t keep their hands off each other, panting and sweaty and hungry.

Maybe he’s not the only one who feels it.

Shane’s back hits the brick wall again as Drake shoves him, pressing him there with all his weight, and no matter how strong and lithe Shane is Drake’s always been a huge guy, would be intimidating if not for the open honest kindness of his features. The weight of him feels good, something immediate and searingly hot when everything’s been ice for so long. Then they’re both grabbing, yanking and tearing at clothing, totally absorbed in the fervent need for each other that’s never gone away, not really.

Drake’s hand comes up to fist in Shane’s hair, his eyes intensely blue as he yanks his head back. “You hard?”

Shane lets out a strangled noise, hips rutting forward involuntarily against Drake’s thigh, showing him just how much. “Yes. For you. Please.”

He sees it, that wavering, desperate look in Drake’s eyes that he knows better than anyone in the world, and it makes him tremble. His legs spread, his mouth goes dry, and he nods quickly, muttering, “Do it, it’s okay, I want it, it’s me.”

Dear, sweet, honest, kind, saintly Drake. He’s always been the sort of man to make the simpering ladies at his church swear that it’s possible to have a man without a mean side, it’s possible to be human without having an ounce of darkness in the soul.

In his less sober moments, Shane’s always wanted to dare those women to try fucking Drake and see if they still believe that afterwards.

Big hands close around his hips, pulling him close just to slam him back into the wall again, the impact driving the breath from his lungs. Drake’s mouth is hungry on his, biting sharply into his lip, down his neck, hoisting him up careless of the brick scraping Shane’s back. “You like to talk so much,” Drake growls, hands tight enough to leave bruises on even Shane’s hips. “Open your mouth. Beg me. Like a whore.”

There’s nothing fake, nothing artificial about the way Shane whimpers, hands splayed over Drake’s chest as he moans, “Please. Fuck me. Need you, please, baby.”

Drake’s hands catch Shane’s wrists, forcing them over his head and holding them there with one big hand. “Want you to suck me off first,” Drake breathes, every muscle in his body quivering with suppressed emotion, “but I can’t wait. Spread your legs.”

He yanks Shane around, grabbing him and arranging him the way he wants him, like a compliant rag doll, until his legs are wrapped around Drake’s waist, his hands pinned above his head. Drake shifts forward, rubbing his cock up against Shane’s hole, teasing, pressing just a little, and Shane’s mouth falls open. A surge of need shoots through him—need it want it more than anything missed this missed you need it oh GOD put it in me—and he’s not even sure how much he says out loud, every fiber of his body squirming around to try and slam himself down, to have it again after so long. “Please!”

“Do that thing or it’ll hurt. Me,” Drake adds, coppery eyes gone dark. “We both know you like it when it hurts.”

It’s the work of a bare thought to slick Drake’s cock, the only spell he can ever think of when he’s like this, horny and desperate and needing, twisting against the hold on his hands, trying to fuck himself down on that perfect thick cock, something he knows better than his own hand, even after all these years apart.

Drake’s not gentle when he thrusts in, and he doesn’t go slow, rough and brutal as he fucks Shane into the brick wall, spreading and stretching him with every snap of his hips. Shane lets out stupid, embarrassing sounds, little breathy shrieks because it’s too much, no matter how many times they’ve done this it’s always too big, always too much, always too hard.

And he always loves it.

Drake’s free hand wrenches his hair back, then slides down to close around his throat, feeling his blood pulse in time with every pounding thrust.

It’s good, a different kind of pain than he’s used to, and with every crash of Drake’s hard body against his he feels, he remembers the things that usually slip away from him, carried off by the apathy. He remembers what it was like to be thrown over their old sturdy table, fucked until he came over the glass panel, then held down by his hair until he licked it all up. He remembers the night they broke the bed, when he hadn’t been able to sit down for three days because he’d refused to heal himself. He remembers getting fucked in the bedroom, the shower, the kitchen, the living room, over the couch, against every wall, on the floor like a dog.

Shane writhes under Drake’s big hands and the punishing thrusts of his cock, slamming himself down no matter how much it hurts, his own cock hard and leaking between them. “F-fuck, I—”

“Don’t talk.”

Shane shuts up.

He’s so full he aches, that he’s reduced to a trembling, twitching thing, clenching down on the demanding length filling him, pressing inside him so right, stealing his breath and making him see stars.

“Gonna come for me?”

Shane nods frantically, hands twisting to try and slip Drake’s hold, to wrap around himself, but if anything the fingers only close tighter around his wrists. “Slut. You’re really aching for my cock.”

That’s all it takes, filthy words falling from such a gentle-looking mouth. Shane cries out, every muscle gone tight, his legs clenching hard, writhing so much he scrapes his own back against the wall and doesn’t care. Every little pain adds to the wave that crashes over him, making him spill hot and wet between them.

Just like that, just at the look in Drake’s eyes, predatory and focused, he knows he’s going to come inside. With a curse and a groan, Drake slams forward, burying himself to the hilt and it’s too much, too much