Cold Days

Except that everyone was spread out in the blackness now, and at least one person, Andi, was already disoriented from the blow to her head. It was possible others had been hurt in the fall, or would get hurt as they struggled to get out. There seemed to be very little chance that I could find the door, then find all of them in the dark, then get them pointed at the door and out. It seemed just as unlikely that everyone would stop to think and come to the same conclusion I had. There was a very real chance that one or more of my friends might be left behind.

But what other options did I have? It wasn't as though I could lift the entire thing out of the water-

No. I couldn't.

But Winter could.

I opened my eyes into the darkness, made a best guess for down, and swam that way. I found mud within a few feet. I thrust my right hand into the mud, thrashing rather awkwardly to get it done. Then I went limp again, floating a bit weirdly, tethered by my hand in the mud, and focused my mind.

I wasn't going to try to lift the freaking building. That was just insane. I'd known things that might have been able to pull it off, but I was certain I wasn't one of them, not even with the power of the Winter Knight's mantle.

Besides, why do it the stupid way?

I felt myself smiling, maybe smiling a little too widely, in the dark water, and unleashed the cold of winter directly into the ground beneath me, through my right hand. I poured it on, holding nothing back, reaching deep into me, to the source of cold power inside me, and sending it out into the muck of the lake bottom.

Lake Michigan is a deep lake, and only its upper layers ever really warm up. Beyond a few feet of the surface, the cold is a constant, an absolute, and the mud at the bottom of what I was guessing to be fifteen or twenty feet of water, at the most, was clammy. As the power poured out of me, the water did what it always did with magic-it began to diffuse it, to spread it out.

Which was exactly what I was going for.

Ice formed around my hand and spread into a circle several feet wide in the first instant, conducted more easily through the mud than through the water. I poured more effort in, and the circle widened, more ice forming, spreading out. I kept up the cold, and the water touching the bottom began to freeze as well.

My heart began to beat harder, and there was a roaring sound in my ears. I didn't give up, sending more and more cold into the lake around me, building up layer after layer of ice across the entire bottom of the lake beneath the collapsed warehouse. At sixty seconds, the ice was three feet deep, and forming around my arm and shoulder. At ninety seconds, it had engulfed my head and upper body, and had to have been five or six feet deep. And when my internal count reached a hundred and ten, the entire mass of ice tore loose from the lake's bottom with a groan and began to rise.

I never let up on it, building it into a miniature iceberg, and the steel beams and walls of the warehouse moaned and squealed as the ice began to lift them free. I felt it when my feet came out of the water, though most of the rest of me was still stuck in the ice. I tore and twisted and seemed to know exactly where to apply pressure and torque without being told. The ice crackled away and I slipped out of it with a minimum of fuss. When I pulled my head out (go ahead; make a joke), I was sitting in dim light atop a sheet of ice floating several inches out of the waters of the lake.

I was still in the rear section of the warehouse. The back door was open, straight above my head, and was letting in most of the light. The broken ends of the room, the floor, and the two walls had been embedded in ice, but crookedly. The ragged edge of the ceiling was a couple of feet out of the water.

Several very startled-looking people and one fur-plastered dog were shivering on the ice. I took a quick head count. Everyone was there.

I sagged down onto the ice in relief, fatigue making my body feel like it weighed an extra ton, and just lay there for a moment as the wreckage bobbed gently in the water. After a few seconds, I became aware of eyes on me, and I looked up.

My friends were all sitting or kneeling on the ice, damp and shivering, and staring at me with wide eyes. Molly's eyes were bright and intense, the expression on her face unreadable. Justine's mouth hung slightly open, and her big dark eyes looked afraid. Butters stared first at me and then down at the ice, his eyes flicking around, the wheels clearly churning in his head as he calculated how much ice there was and how much energy it would have taken to freeze it. Mac regarded me impassively, still supporting the dazed Andi.

Sweetly curved Andi was the most vulnerable. If I could isolate her from the herd, things could get interesting. I'd just saved her life, after all. She owed me. I could think of a few ways that she could express her gratitude.

I pushed the predator thought out of my head and took a deep breath. When I exhaled, it condensed into a thick, foggy vapor, more so than it ever would have naturally, even on the coldest days. I looked down at my hands and they were covered in frost, and my fingertips and nails were turning blue. I put a hand to my face and had to brush away a thin layer of frost.

Hell's bells. What did I look like, to make my friends stare at me like that?

Time for mirrors later.

I stood up, my feet sure even on the wet ice, and found the nearest point of the shoreline. I extended a hand, murmured, "Infriga," and froze a ten-foot-long bridge from my improvised iceberg to land.

"Come on," I said, as I started walking toward the shore. My voice sounded strange, rough. "We don't have much time."

* * *

The sun had slipped below the cloud cover, and the sky was a bank of hot coals, slowly burning down toward ember and ash when we got back to Molly's apartment.

Thomas and Karrin were waiting outside. The two of them were leaning against the wall near the security checkpoint. Thomas had a tall coffee cup in one hand and a bagel in the other. Karrin was staring down at a smartphone, her thumbs flicking over its surface.

Thomas took note of the car as it pulled up, and nudged Karrin. She looked up, then did a double take at the Munstermobile. She rolled her eyes, then apparently turned the phone off and slipped it into a case on her belt.

I stopped the car and rolled down the window.

"You've got to be kidding me," Karrin said, eyeing the car. "This?"

"I think it's a company car," I said.

Karrin leaned down and looked at everyone in the back. "What happened?"

"Inside-I'll explain."

We got parked and everyone made their way to Molly's place, some of them more slowly than others.

"You're limping," Thomas noted, walking beside me. "And bleeding."

"No, I'm . . ." I began. Then I sighed. "Yeah. Redcap shot me with some kind of dinky dart. Maybe poisoned. Or something."