Icebound

Mortals & Myths Book One

CORINNA ROGERS

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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2014

Copyright © Corinna Rogers 2014

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Corinna Rogers asserts the moral right

to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

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Ebook Edition © September 2014

ISBN: 9780007568772

Version 2014-08-29

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To the 10,000 miles between us that made this book necessary.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

First Interlude

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Second Interlude

Chapter Five

Third Interlude

Chapter Six

Fourth Interlude

Chapter Seven

Fifth Interlude

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Sixth Interlude

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Coming Soon From Corinna Rogers…

Corinna Rogers

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Ice creeps up the window, spider-webbing out to cover the glass pane completely. Shane watches it, amused, because it’s better than watching the ceiling, waiting for the knock on his door. The TV is on, some shitty program about parenthood and people who shouldn’t be allowed within five hundred yards of it, and for a second it’s a struggle to remember why he shouldn’t just throw it out the window.

The knock is tentative at first, soft, and that pisses him off. “Get in here.”

The man who enters is tall, just over six feet, and broadly muscled, enough that he’d be able to toss the TV out the window with one hand and little effort. He’s got an open, honest face, smooth and darker-skinned than Shane, whether from his mother’s Portuguese heritage or his own tendency to forget about sunscreen whenever he leaves the house. His hair falls in dark-brown waves to the top of his back, accenting the strength in his chin, his straight nose, his rough, capable hands. There’s a hint of beauty about him, for all that he looks like he could be hit by a truck and apologize for denting the fender, accenting his cheekbones, his eyelashes, the little dip below his collarbone that Shane knows so well.

It doesn’t matter how many times the man comes here. It never stops making Shane’s heart ache. “I like those jeans. They make your ass look fantastic.”

“I was hoping you’d like them.”

That voice – god. It sends ripples up his spine, and Shane lets his legs spread a bit, leaning back against the headboard. He almost slips up, almost says, I miss you, but that’s too much. “Want your mouth,” he says instead, and the other man nods, shutting the door behind him as he kneels on the bed between Shane’s legs, hands sliding up his thighs.

Want to kiss you. It hurts, how much Shane wants to kiss him, but that’s not part of the rules. Instead, he flicks open his own jeans one-handed, pulling himself out, already hard. “For such a big guy, you’ve got such a pretty mouth,” he croons, twisting a hand in the man’s hair. “Put it to good use. Don’t flinch, you’ve been wanting this all day, haven’t you?”

The man licks his lips, swallows hard, but nods. “Yeah. All day. Can I?”

Shane’s hips twitch up at that question. It’s so genuine, so wanting, for all that he knows it isn’t. “Go on. See if you can take it all this time.”

No matter how many times they’ve done this, it always feels like fucking heaven, the first swipe of that hot wet tongue over his cock. “Fuck, Drake. Such a good cocksucker. Good boy.”

The praise spurs the man on, sliding his lips over the head of Shane’s cock, moaning softly as he stretches his lips wide to take it all, inch by thick, hard inch.

It’s the little details that make this so good. It’s the drag of his tongue over the head of his cock, sure, but it’s also the way Drake’s eyelashes flutter, the way his hands splay out on Shane’s thighs, the little noises he makes when Shane bucks up into the soft wet heat, making him gag.

“Go on, baby, take it. That’s what you’re here for, right? You didn’t come here just to see my pretty face.”

He loves the way it looks, his pale, flushed cock sliding into Drake’s mouth, seeing the contrast of his skin against the tanned fingers of Drake’s hands as they come up to try to steady himself, try to hold Shane down, but Shane’s having none of it. He tightens his fingers in Drake’s hair, and unless the other man wants a fight he has little choice but to swallow everything he’s being given, the whole length of Shane down his throat.

He shouldn’t love the tears in his eyes so much.

Shane guides him up and down, arm tense and strong on Drake’s head, eventually just holding him in place while he fucks up into his mouth, relishing the choked wet sounds he forces from the other man’s throat. It feels good, damned good to be using him like this, watching Drake gag on his cock without pulling away; if anything trying to take more of him in his mouth.

“Swallow for me,” Shane breathes, and Drake just has time to nod once, quickly, before Shane fills his mouth, spilling over his tongue and watching eagerly as Drake’s throat bobs, doing as he’s told.

“Good boy,” Shane murmurs, stroking the familiar brown hair, down the side of those smooth cheeks, suddenly finding it difficult not to let tears prick his own eyes. “God, baby, so good.”

“I can stay. If you want me to.”

The cold creeps back in. The window is entirely frosted over now, brittle enough that one hard blow would shatter the whole thing. “Stop it. You wouldn’t say that.”

Drake scowls at him, pushing off the bed, straightening his clothes. “Wouldn’t be in your bed either, so maybe you should just get that stick out of your ass, boss.”

“Take it off.”

The man rolls his eyes, ripples, and instead of the familiar hard planes of Drake’s body, a lithe young black man stands in Shane’s room, hip insolently cocked. “You want anything else? I’ve got a hunt tonight.”

“Give me his shirt back. I know it’s his, it smells like him.”

Slowly, Roy strips off the shirt, leaving him in just a pair of jeans that had been tight on Drake, now hanging baggy off his slender form. “You should check this one out, boss. Big prize.”

“Not interested.” Shane grabs the proffered item of clothing, not bothering to hide the way he buries his nose in it. Forest earth, clean cotton, the musk of a healthy human male all mix on the fabric, more familiar than the place he’s in now. He’ll probably have to punish Roy later for stealing from Drake—all his men know Drake is off-limits—but for now, he’s glad.

“Soul-Thief. Eighty points on the rankings.”

“Enjoy them.”

“If I get it, I’m gonna be your boss before the week’s out.”

“Have fun. Leave me alone.”

Roy shrugs, picking his way barefoot to the door, holding the baggy jeans up by one beltloop. He pauses with his hand on the doorknob. “Oh, and the King says to let you know that whoever bags the thing gets something back. Something of theirs.”

The window cracks.

“What?”

“You heard me. You get it back if you bag the Soul-Thief.”

A tremor of hungry need shoots through Shane, piercing the ice somehow, and he growls, “Get out.”

The door slamming is too much for the frame, and the glass shatters. Cold wind blows in, fierce and shocking, but it does little to affect Shane. He doesn’t even bother to do up his pants, staring instead at the closed door, hearing the words reverberating through his skull.

You get it back.

Those might be the words, but the meaning…

Oh, the meaning is a bit different.

You get him back.

Shane flicks on the TV and with a surge of power it changes from a teenage girl crying about her boyfriend not wanting to be a father to the inside of a martial arts studio. A dozen kids slowly punch and kick their way through beginner karate, calling out phrases in a language they don’t speak as their pudgy little bodies struggle not to topple over.

The instructor, obviously, doesn’t see it that way. “Good! Nice improvement. Keep your leg up, Jenny. Remember, keep that power in your core! Nice flexibility, wow, Jason, you’ve been practicing!”

Shane vaguely remembers watching Drake and not feeling pain. Now, pain is all he really feels.

His hair is short, which is always a startling reminder of how much time has passed, along with the short-cropped beard on his face, and the slight lines around his eyes, across his forehead. That’s right, he’s different now. It doesn’t matter that it’s only been a week since the last time he saw Drake in person. In Shane’s mind, Drake always looks like he did back then, when everything was good.

The image zooms in on Drake’s face, heartbreakingly familiar, and his eyes flicker suddenly, looking at the spell Shane’s using in place of a camera. Very quietly, out of the corner of his mouth, he mutters, “Stop it. I can feel you watching me.”

Shane doesn’t stop. He doesn’t bother to respond, by whispering into his ear or sending a chill breeze to hit him in the face. His continued presence is enough of a message.

It’s not like he can stop anyway. All right, he probably could, but he has no desire to. It doesn’t matter if Drake is angry with him, after all. He’s always angry.

You get it back.

The hunts have been boring lately. It’s always difficult to remind himself why he should bother climbing up the rankings when he’s already at the top, has been for five years, and nothing’s even a challenge anymore. But eighty points…

That’s got to be challenging, at least a bit. Fae creatures are only fifteen, and they’re the only big game the city sees on a semi-regular basis. It’s been nearly a decade since there’s been a bill posted for something over twenty, and Shane knows damned well that that hundred-point creature has never been caught.

Well, not in the traditional sense, with his head in a bag.

For a minute, Shane contemplates ignoring even this chance, just flopping onto his bed and letting the chill wind lull him to sleep, maybe not even getting up. It’s better than false hope. It’s better than being stupid enough to believe that something could change for the better after all this time.

On the TV, Drake turns to give some fat kid some praise, and his smile is the most genuine thing Shane’s ever seen. That spark of pain in his chest flares, and he chokes with how much it hurts.

“Fuck it,” he mutters, grabbing a coat he doesn’t need and a pistol he doesn’t need and a sword he does. “Gotta be better than staying here.”

Then again, anything would be.

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.

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 you’re dying, I’ll kill you myself, baby, just shut up and let me fix you.”

Even as he says the words, the tears start falling because it’s not working. Nothing he does is helping, nothing is fixing him, and Shane’s never felt so helpless in his life, watching Drake bleed to death under his hands. “I’m sorry, baby, I—don’t, please, I’m gonna figure it out, just don’t—”

Drake’s lips twitch into a smile. “Worth it. It was worth it.”

His eyes slide shut.

Before Shane can do something—the tattered thoughts in his mind run to blasting apart the whole countryside, or killing himself, or trying to pick himself up and continue when the last thing he loved in the world is gone—Drake freezes in his hands. He turns to ice in an instant, clear and cold as a white figure steps out of a sudden cyclone of ice.

Shane’s blood goes cold, and not just because he’s holding Drake’s frozen body. He knows exactly who’s come to see him in this godforsaken wasteland. “The Ice King, isn’t it? I’ve killed a few of your men.”

“And more of my creatures. You are a powerful mage, Shane Conell.”

“Why are you here?”

Frozen lips thin, into what could generously be called a smile. “Because this is the greatest opportunity I am ever likely to get. Do you want to save him?”

Shane’s heart constricts. Never in his life has he wanted so badly to unmake something that’s happened, not even after the death of his family. “I can’t. I tried. I lost him.”

“He’s not dead yet. Not quite. I can heal him, and give you power even far beyond what you have now.”

Shane hesitates. A part of him wants to scream at himself for hesitating when Drake’s about to die, could die at any second, but they haven’t lived this long without learning to be suspicious of anyone who wants to help them. “Would he be truly healed? Not dependent continually on you for life, or trapped in a strange limbo, or suffering forever?”

“He would be exactly as he was in the instant before the blade cleft him,” the Ice King clarifies. “No bindings, no bonds. He would be free, just as he was.”

“And me?”

The creature’s eyes narrow slightly. “I think you have some idea already.”

They’ve fought the Ice King’s vassals before, Shane and Drake. The men and women of the Frozen Court are powerful, but cold, long since devoid of humanity in exchange for whatever cheap trinkets the Ice King tossed their way.

Every part of Shane rebels, screaming in horror at the very idea, the thought of having body and soul enslaved to a cold, remorseless creature like this. “No pacts,” Drake’s voice echoes in his mind. “No deals. Nothing that binds us to anyone except each other.”

But I can’t be bound to you if you’re dead.

I can’t be anything if you’re dead.

Drake’s lifeless face looks peaceful, as if he’s sleeping, and Shane is absolutely sick of being helpless. Most powerful mage in the world, and what does it get him? Couldn’t save his family. Couldn’t save his boyfriend. Can’t save himself.

How long will he even last, without Drake to keep him grounded, keep him sane? He remembers the time before moving in next door to the Young household. He remembers the hate, the shame, the anger and sadness that had been his constant companions, knowing he was different, that he was probably responsible for his parents’ deaths just by being himself.

Was it going to be like that from now on, without him?

Drake was wrong. It isn’t worth it, not without Drake there. Wiping his face on one bloody hand, Shane nods. “Yes. Okay. You can have my soul if you fix him.”

With the last feelings he’s ever going to have, Shane looks down at Drake’s sleeping face, then watches the ice melt, the wound close. Drake opens his eyes and grins, sitting up. “That was a close one, huh?”

Shane gives him a smile, the last one he’ll ever feel. “Baby, you have no idea.”

Then the Ice King rips away his soul.

Chapter Three

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

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