Iced - Moning Karen Marie (бесплатные книги онлайн без регистрации .txt) 📗

Whenever the cages started getting full and I had free time I zoomed in, sliced and diced Unseelie, then loaded the bodies and trucked them out. It ran fast and efficient.

But only because I kill in superspeed. No slow-mo Joe can walk into a cage filled with Unseelie armed only with a single weapon, whether it’s the Sword of Light or not. He’d be torn to pieces while he was still stabbing his first Fae.

Now, Jayne is being forced to separate out each Unseelie, take it out of the cage, kill it, separate the next, kill it, and so on for days. He’ll need a full-time contingent to run it. It will take dozens of his men to replace me. And he was already short-handed.

“Mega, I know where the sword is,” Dancer says.

“Me, too.”

When I slay Unseelie, I do it so fast that there’s not much time for the Unseelie standing nearby to react. They die quickly. Most of them before they even know what’s happening.

But the way Jayne’s doing it, they have to be standing around, watching the others get slaughtered for hours, watching Death inch closer.

I hate Fae. But there’s something about knowing that they’re just standing there, locked up, watching their buddies die a few feet away, waiting to be killed, that makes me feel … queasy. It’s not like we owe them mercy — they don’t show us any — but I figure if you’re going to kill something you should do it quick and painless or you’re just as sick as whatever you’re killing.

I don’t need my sword back just for me. I need it back because I’m the best person to do this job. Jayne needs to pull his head out and see that. This is fecked up, this drawn-out protracted slaughter.

Dancer’s eyes aren’t shining anymore. He looks as somber as I feel. I decide I’ll make a show of good faith when I get my sword back.

I’ll stay and slay, and put everything out of its misery fast and clean.

Then me and Jayne are going to sit ourselves down and have a serious talk.

I look at Dancer and he nods.

We head for the screaming.

The corrugated steel dock doors are wide-open on the warehouse, making room enough for two semis to back in and unload if they wanted to. Seeing into the building where Jayne is killing all the Unseelie isn’t the hard part.

It’s not being seen if someone looks out that’s tricky.

The concrete dock is five feet high, and I’ve crept along it until I’m standing real close to the entrance, with just my eyes and hair sticking up above the side while I assess the scene and start building my mental grid. Even that small slice of me showing makes me feel too exposed. Having red hair is like wearing a neon sign sometimes. Dirty blond would blend with the background, mouse brown would merge nicely with the murky dawn, but my hair never fades into obscurity unless I’m backdropped by a crimson sky.

Dancer’s off somewhere up high, laying explosives. Times like these I wish I had a clone so I could do the cool stuff I’m doing plus hang with him. I love blowing up things. But my part of the job is to whiz in, grab my sword and blast us out of here.

I was right about it taking a contingent to handle the slaying, although Jayne would probably keep that many around the sword at all times just to protect it from me.

As if that’s enough to protect it from me!

Jayne’s got two dozen men with him, toting automatic weapons, draped in ammo. They’re standing inside the entrance at full alert, watching every move being made. I hate guns. Automatic weapons can dump a spray of bullets that’s nearly impossible for me to avoid.

That’s why I need the distraction. I need most of them gone before I’m willing to freeze-frame in, smash into Jayne and weave a zigzag path out of there, making it as hard as possible for anyone to shoot me.

I look up, scanning the rooftops around me. No snipers up there. If I were Jayne, I would have had at least six men up on the rooftops, watching for me. But that’s why I’m the Mega and he’s not.

I glance back inside and see my sword. Used to be, Ro took it from me sometimes, when I was younger. But when all the shit started hitting the fan with Mac, I took it back and never let anyone touch it again. Once, in battle, I saw Mac toss her spear to Kat to use. Dude, she’s a bigger man than me. Ain’t never sharing my weapon. It’s my second skin. I can’t stand seeing someone else touching it, holding it, using it. It’s mine and he took it and he had no right to. I won’t feel like me again until I have it back.

The screaming isn’t so bad right now because Jayne isn’t currently killing a Fae. But as I watch, his men bring a Rhino-boy up to the front of the warehouse near the dock and shove it to its stumpy knees on the floor in front of him.

Jayne draws back his arm, swings my sword and neatly decapitates it.

Not. I snicker.

Like maybe in his dreams. I see what’s going to go wrong before it even does. “Holy webbed feet, it’s going to duck,” I mutter.

The Rhino-boy twists and ducks at the last second and my sword gets lodged in one of its yellow tusks.

I sigh. What does Jayne think their tusks are for besides blocking blows to their heads? Well, they use them for impaling, too, but mostly to protect their skulls and necks.

The Rhino-boy is enraged. Squealing and grunting, it nearly breaks free. Somebody shoots it, then Jayne’s men wrestle it back down to the floor.

He yanks the sword from its tusk and when it comes out he stumbles. Somewhere an Unseelie guffaws.

Jayne regains his balance, raises his arm and swings again.

I wince.

Jayne is strong. But Unseelie are made of sinew and gristle and weird bony structure where you least expect to find it, and cutting their head off isn’t as easy as it looks like it should be.

Now the sword is halfway through its thick neck and the Rhino-boy is gushing green goo, squealing like a stuck pig, flopping stumpy arms and legs, and hundreds of caged Unseelie start screaming again.

Jayne saws at the thing’s head with the sword and I almost puke. His men don’t look any happier. The noise is deafening. Rhino-boys are emitting one continuous high-pitched squeal, tiny winged Fae (the ones that make you laugh yourself to death!) are chiming with fury and making dazzling light displays as they try to escape their iron pens, slithering multilegged Unseeliepedes writhe between their pen-mates, and the sound they make is like several tons of gravel dumped onto metal sheets, getting dragged across it. Gaunt, slender wraiths flicker in and out of solidity, emitting a high-pitched whine. The sound is so huge I feel the vibration of it in the concrete dock beneath my palms.

Jayne finally manages to kill the Rhino-boy he’s hacking away at, and turns to one of his men for a towel to wipe away the goo and blood. He looks back at the cages, his expression bleak. I snicker mirthlessly. No doubt he’s got a new appreciation for the speedy services of moi! It isn’t easy walking into a warehouse full of condemned monsters and killing them all. But each one that gets back out on the streets will ultimately kill dozens, maybe hundreds or thousands of humans, in its immortal existence. It’s what they do. It’s us or them.

I check my cell phone. My timer’s counting down. I got seven minutes before Dancer sets off the charges. I would have gone for a single explosion but Dancer wanted multiple sites, the better to divide Jayne’s men and increase our odds of getting in and out smooth and easy.

I stare at my sword. I’m fixated. I know it. I don’t care. There are worse things to be fixated with. Like, say, Jo with Ryodan. Duh. How fecked up is that?

Jayne’s men have emptied a cage of all but the tiny, death-by-laughter Fae. Now they net the brilliant little harpies and toss the nets on the floor in front of Jayne. Dainty, pretty Fae scream and shake their fists as Jayne swings again and again. Making the scene even more macabre, the men in the immediate area, including the good inspector, laugh helplessly, many of them doubled over with mirth, until the last one is dead.