I push forward.
I ice solid.
I crack it and pull back.
Fuck!
She’s trying to kick off her jeans the rest of the way and he’s fighting her, trying to keep them on. He needs to get her out of there. Why is he wasting time trying to keep her clothes on?
“Bring her to me!” I demand.
“Don’t freeze-frame with her!” the kid on the steps bellows. He’s got some lungs. “If you move fast, you’ll kill her!”
“What the fuck do you know,” Ryodan says.
“Everything there is to know about hypothermia! And I’m willing to bet neither of you can warm her. Bring her to me if you want her to live! Stop trying to put her clothes back on. It’s not going to help!”
“Fuck you, kid,” Ryodan says, but he quits trying to dress her and scoops her up. Her jeans fall to the floor. She’s mostly naked in his arms. I can’t see past the red rage in my eyes.
“Don’t move her any more than you have to! It’ll force cold blood to her heart and she’ll have afterdrop!” the kid yells.
Ryodan walks with her real slow and easy.
She’s stopped flailing.
She’s not making any noise now either. She’s gone limp. Her arms and legs flop like a rag doll with each step he takes. If he killed her I’m going to beat him bloody and eat him piece by piece, slowly, with steak sauce.
It’s all I can do to keep my feet rooted where I am and not attack him as he passes. Glorious, beautiful scenes of death and destruction, battlefields and torture chambers, crowd my mind, enticing, sexual, egging me on to smash and crash and raze everything in my path with no care for the consequences because there are no consequences for what I’m becoming.
When he walks past me, my fists drip blood. But I don’t fight for her. If I fight for her, I could kill her. That would turn me into something worse than an Unseelie prince.
“You!” The kid stabs a finger at me. “I need sleeping bags, an aluminum blanket, and hot packs. Outdoor store on Ninth and Central. Get me sugar, Jell-O, and water if you can find it. Don’t waste time if you can’t. Same goes for a generator. Now!”
“I don’t fetch for humans!”
But I’d cut the fucking moon out of the sky for her.
When I return with blankets and hot packs, she’s on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street from the church.
The kid with glasses is in his underwear. Apparently dickhead doesn’t wear any.
Rage chokes me. I fight for control. The human part of my brain knows exactly why they took their clothes off. So they could bundle her in them. She needed everything they had. She’s curled in a fetal ball, packed in their pants and shirts and jackets. The Unseelie part of my brain comprehends nothing but that two male dicks are way too close to something that’s mine.
The kid is on top of her, on his hands and knees, with his face brushing hers like he’s kissing her.
Ryodan looks like he’s about to rip his head off. As I get closer, I see the kid is breathing just over her nose and mouth, letting his breath drift up her nostrils. I’m shaking with rage. My hands are fists again, bleeding from clenching them so tight.
“She keeps curling up,” Ryodan says.
“Burrowing instinct. Freezing people do it when they’re about to die.”
“You let her die,” I say to the kid, “I’ll kill you every way a human can get killed, bring you back and do it all over again.”
“Did you get what I need?” The kid thrusts a hand behind him, ignoring my threat. “Aluminum blanket. Now. And easy when you move her,” he says over his shoulder, like he doesn’t even know two homicidal maniacs are watching his every move and want him dead just for being so close to her. “Nothing sudden.”
“Why aluminum?” I want to know exactly what he’s doing so I can do it myself when there’s a next time. I’d say that there’s not going to be one, but since the walls fell there’s always a next time.
“Superinsulation. Traps in heat. Keeps out everything else.”
Ryodan and I place her gently on the blanket, then the kid stretches over her again. She’s motionless. I can’t even see her chest rising and falling. She’s pale and still as death. It’s a disturbing turn-on. I’ve never seen an Unseelie princess but I suspect they’re like this: white and cold and beautiful. “Is she breathing?”
“Barely. Her body is using everything it’s got just to keep her brain and organs functioning. She needs to urinate.”
“You can’t fucking know that,” Ryodan says.
The kid doesn’t turn his head or look at him, just talks straight up her nose. “She eats and drinks constantly. Her bladder is always at least partially full. Her body is wasting precious energy trying to keep the urine in her bladder from freezing. We need that energy directed at her heart. Ergo, she needs to piss. The sooner the better. We need her conscious to do that, unless you have a handy catheter.”
“Get her conscious,” Ryodan snarls.
“You’re not putting a catheter in her,” I growl.
“I’ll do whatever I need to do to save her life. You. Bloody. Idiots,” the kid says.
He pops open heat packs and shoves them in her armpits and groin. Then he stretches out next to her. “Roll us up in sleeping bags.”
I look at Ryodan and he looks at me and for a second I think we might both kill the kid. Ryodan’s more stone-faced than usual, if that’s possible without turning to concrete, and his fangs are out. I look down. Ryodan’s dick is as big as mine. “Why the bloody hell don’t you wear underwear?” To an Unseelie prince, an exposed male dick is a call to battle.
“They chafe. Too small and confining.”
“Fuck you,” I say.
“Dudes. Get over yourselves,” the kid says. “Roll us up. Do you want her to die?”
“You should never have taken her in there. I’m going to kill you for that,” I say to Ryodan as I help roll up a nearly naked kid with my girl.
“I told her not to touch anything,” Ryodan says. “I knew it would drop her out of fast-motion. I reminded her at every scene we went to. And bring it on, Highlander. Any time you think you’re ready.”
“And we all know how well she listens,” the kid says dryly.