Page 64 of Burning Ice
A bottle flew. It shattered near Vandor’s boots. The stench of sour drink cut through the cold. He shifted his stance, weapon low. “Enough.”
The air cracked.
Mirel’s pulse lurched. The crowd saw it shimmer and screamed. Some ran, others lunged. Vandor fired once into the air. The shot thundered through fog, but fury drowned the warning.
A pipe swung. Vandor caught the wrist, twisted, dropped the man. Another came fast. He moved like a hinge, precise and unbroken, but numbers swallowed precision. A stone glanced off his temple. Blood traced his cheek as he moved again. He looked efficient, trained, and already tiring.
Mirel ducked as glass shattered beside him. A woman lunged, slipping in the mud. Vandor shoved her back and firedonce more. The hospital beacon blinked slower through the haze, its glow pulsing like a heartbeat gone wrong. Somewhere a child screamed and was swallowed by the noise.
Mirel’s blood hissed in his ears, a pressure more than a sound. He felt Vandor shift beside him, shoulders squared, his coat brushing Mirel’s arm, warm, oil-scented, metallic. Blood ran from his chin and temple, bright against bronze skin. He didn’t wipe it. He watched through it, calm and set.
“They’re not going to stop,” Vandor said, voice flat with certainty. “Stay tight.”
Two men came at once. Vandor blocked one, kicked the other, took another blow to his side. He steadied again, breathing hard.
Boots scraped. Wire loops gleamed. Masks caught the beacon’s glow and turned faces into halves, one side gold, one side gray. Every breath came out white in the cold.
Mirel wanted to run. His body wouldn’t move. The fence behind was too high. The car behind the workshop took a hit. Metal clanged. Alarms blinked red through the fog. The sound became permission. The mob roared and surged again.
Vandor’s multislate blinked once. He glanced down. “What the fuck?”
Mirel turned, breath ragged. “What is it?”
“It’s Cyprian—” Vandor started, but the crowd’s roar swallowed the rest.
Bodies crashed into them. Wood, wire, heat, stench. He caught flashes of the woman’s eyes, the knife in the boy’s hand, the scarred man with the loops, all moving at once. Vandor lifted an arm to guard his head and reached back until his fingers brushed Mirel’s sleeve, a check, not a pull. One step back, pressing them both to the wall. His exhale came white and sharp.
No door. No space. Only hunger and noise and the smell of metal. Mirel’s ribs creaked.
Vandor fired again. The shot cracked the air and vanished under the noise. Someone screamed. Another bottle burst against the wall, heat licking up the stone.
“Stay behind me,” Vandor said, voice rough but steady. He braced to shoot again, but the chamber clicked dry. The sound was louder than the crowd.
The mob surged. Hands grabbed, pulling at sleeves and hair. A pipe swung. Mirel ducked, heart hammering. The air was a furnace of breath and rage.
Frost climbed his wrists before he could think, cold crawling over his skin like panic given shape. Vandor’s shoulder hit the wall beside him. “No way out,” he ground out.
Mirel’s lungs burned. The faces in the fog blurred, half living, half starved. Fear and fury smelled the same. His throat tore open on a single sound.
“K—Kylix?—”
The name ripped through him and into the cold.
Light burst outward, blue and white, swallowing the world in a single breath. Screams broke, then froze, trapped inside the shimmer. Vandor turned toward him, eyes wide, as frost raced over stone and grass and grief, and the graveyard vanished in a storm of light.
The cold didn’t hurt. It sang.
It knew him by name.
18
Sirens tore the night apart.
Red light strobed across the graveyard gates, washing the frost in pulse and blood. The Luminary convoy slid through the mist, engines growling low, doors hissing open before the brakes had cooled. Heat and static filled the air, the atmosphere already breaking before they had seen a thing.
Kylix stepped out first. Smoke curled through the iron arch as he adjusted his comms, Moargan’s voice still echoing in his skull.
“Cyprian called in the alert himself,” Moargan had said. “He’s been drawing again. Says the graveyard keeps showing up in his work, same frost, same graves, same light. He swears Mirel’s in danger. The images won’t stop. I’ve already dispatched the Luminary, but you’re closer. Go there now. Find him before it’s too late.”
