Icebound. Corinna Rogers

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.

       First Interlude

       Nine Years Earlier

      Shane can’t help but laugh as he tosses power around, swelling with the heady exhilaration of it, of feeling so unstoppable. “Finally,” he calls, giddy under the thunderstorm that rages all around them, “you’re putting up something like a fight!”

      Drake grabs his shoulder, sheltered with him in the eye of the storm artificially created by Shane’s shields. “Don’t get cocky,” he warns before slicing down one of Kaliga’s minions, putting a sword through his chest and a bullet through his head when he reanimates in a flash of white. “He still might have another trick up his sleeve. Remember to kill him twice.”

      There’s a big part of Shane that just wants to ask who cares, when no one can stop them, when no one’s been able to even dent them for years.

      Then, up on the hill, in the light of a flash of lightning, a figure tumbles to the ground. “Kaliga!”

      “Go!” Drake shouts, shoving him hard in the back. “I’ll hold them off here. Get him while he’s summoning the next wave!”

      “We’re not getting paid nearly enough for this,” Shane calls over his shoulder, winking.

      “We’re not getting paid at all for this! I took it pro bono!”

      “You bastard, I’ll give you pro bono!”

      Drake just blows him a kiss.

      After that it’s all running and dodging, weaving past the obvious traps and the lurking armies, until Shane reaches the bedraggled figure of an emaciated yellow-and-red skinned figure on the hill, some creature of the underworld that’s clawed itself up with an army and a name and a plan. “You know,” Shane remarks, drawing back his hand for a final strike, “you take-over-the-world types never pay as well as people who kidnap a single child. What do you think that says about the world?”

      Kaliga sneers at him, eyes at least twenty-five percent of his face, and screeches, “I will rain blood down upon—”

      Shane swallows his distaste and lets fly, blasting the creature’s head from its body to land in several tiny pieces. He hates it, killing with magic, killing at all, but there’s no reasoning with Kaliga’s people, whatever they are. They haven’t existed in the world for long enough to name, only long enough to murder several town’s worth of people in the Midwest.

      He watches the corpse for long minutes, but Kaliga doesn’t reanimate like the rest of his army. Wearily, Shane turns back to the valley, trudging down the hill to find Drake giving him a tired thumbs-up. “Good day’s work.”

      “Yeah. Too bad we didn’t make anything on it.”

      “Just think of it like we saved the lives of many future employers.” Drake grins, flashing white teeth, and Shane can’t help but smile along with him.

      White flashes behind Drake, and Shane doesn’t even have time to scream before Kaliga plays his last trick, a long blade reaching red through Drake’s chest before Shane pumps him so full of destructive magic that he explodes.

      Shane runs faster than humanly possible, hitting the ground without realizing he’d been airborne, managing to catch Drake before he falls. “Baby, baby, stop it, are you okay?”

      Drake’s hand twitches weakly toward his chest, an expression of startled shock on his face. “It’s cold.”

      Shane tries to heal him, tries to summon the energy but he can’t think, and he’s drained after fighting all day, and this isn’t supposed to happen. “Gonna fix you,” he mutters, ignoring the fact that it’s not working, that goddamn Kaliga must have used some cursed dagger he doesn’t have time to figure out, because his spell isn’t taking. He barely manages to slow the pulse of blood from the wound, seeping out and staining his fingers red and that’s not helping when he’s trying to concentrate.

      Drake’s eyes flutter a few times. “Shane.”

      “Shut up, don’t you dare talk to me like