Frost (3 page)

He was a mere ten feet from the escalator, and now he could see the last of the people downstairs bursting, screaming, into the streets. Mr Schneider stood at the base of the escalator, his eyes wild and his body frozen in mid-flight. Their eyes met.

“Come on, Jack!” he cried. He tensed as though to scale the steps, then hesitated again, and turned on his heels.

Double fucker
.

Jack was on the verge of getting to his feet when he caught movement in his peripheral vision. Half the shelves were gone, blown to splinters by the force of the explosion. The carpet of ice had thrust up in a halo around the epicentre in a fringe of spiky stalagmites, two-feet-high and throbbing that same ethereal blue.

Striding from the chaos was a man dressed in oxblood leather, rivulets of that self-same mist trailing from his shoulders.

Jack gasped as a blast of cold unlike any he’d ever felt stole into his bones—something no Arctic blizzard could muster.

The cold of somewhere else
, whispered a distant part of his mind.

Where did that come from? He didn’t know, but somehow he knew the inner voice spoke the truth.

Half paralysed and in spasm from shock and pain, he rolled behind the nearest shard of ice. Too late. Before he could come to a stop, the man stood over him.

His eyes twinkled a fiery crimson—actually seemed to undulate with conflagrations alight behind his pupils.

“Ahoy hoy!” he said, a gargling, thick lilt, the accent almost Scottish, yet also not.

Jack could only blink in reply. “Hi,” he said at last.

The newcomer tongued the inside of his lip, scanning the room, and drew a deep sigh. “Listen, this is going to get crazy real fast, but I need a hand. You feel like going for a bowl of crazy?”

Jack swallowed. A dull throbbing in his fingers bubbled up as the intense cold ebbed. He had gripped the icicle hard enough to cut into his palms.

The man glanced at the bloodied ice. “Yello!” He clicked his fingers in front of Jack’s eyes. “Stay with me. What is this place? Has it started yet? Speak!”

“I…” Jack swallowed.

The man rolled his eyes. “A dribbler. Typical. Never mind, laddie, you can tell me on the way.” Without hesitation he gripped Jack’s collar and tore him up from the ground with inhuman strength, and proceeded to drag him toward the emergency escape. “Honestly, you people are so
fragile
. First sign of the real world and you roll over like bloody punch-drunk donkeys.”

Jack could only utter a wordless squawk, his heels thudding over the threshold, leaving the frozen shattered book-store amidst a hail of settling snowflakes and shredded paper.

It had all happened in under a minute.

Jack’s mind roiled and his hands bled, but everything around him seemed fuzzy, unreal. It was beyond reckoning, beyond madness.

The back of Jack’s mind spat feebly,
I only had an hour left on my shift
.

The crimson traveller laughed. “I know, mate, it’s bloody loony. Don’t worry, you get used to it… eventually,” he said, hurtling along the emergency escape passage.

It took Jack a moment to realise he hadn’t spoken aloud, careening along in the man’s wake, bouncing off concrete and scraping his cheek.

This can’t happen. I have plans! It’s Mexican night
, he thought miserably.

“Stop your whining.”

Jack sobbed.

The man in crimson kicked the steel service door at the end of the passage and it buckled around his booted foot like tissue paper, flying off the hinges and clattering into the street.

Jack flapped like a rag-doll as they raced along the street, passing white-faced bystanders running or pointing, stupefied, crying out at the wreckage of the store. Amidst the dozens of blurred faces he found himself looking for
Earthsea
girl.

Kidnapped by an inter-dimensional maniac, and I’m still on the prowl. That’s desperate.

“What the hell do you want from me?” he yelled, a moment before slamming his arm into a newspaper dispenser. Howling, his vision blurred by tears, he wondered when he would wake up.

Any moment, now. No more cheese before bed.

But that wasn’t right. The calloused hand wrapped around his collar was no conjuration of his subconscious. He knew it, just like he had known about the cold. That same strange inner voice, one that hadn’t spoken for a very long time.

They left the bystanders behind on Forty-Sixth and moved into calmer crowds. Jack’s rear-view perspective provided him with an endless procession of frowning men and women, looking over their shoulders at him as he bounced along helplessly.

They were moving fast, faster than any man could move with another in tow. Jack’s stomach quivered as they rounded a corner and fled down an alley, heading out from view of the crowds and into the murk and stench behind some restaurant’s garbage.

Skittering to a stop with a metallic clang, hyperventilating and snivelling, Jack flung his arms up over his head and ducked, waiting for the end.

A sharp twinge in his scalp drew a piggy squeal from his lips. Fresh tears touched his cheeks. He looked up into the newcomer’s face and screamed, “
What?
”

His kidnapper smiled. “Spunk. Good. You’ll need it, Jacky Boy.” He stood up straight and surveyed Jack a moment.

Jack cowered.
How does he know my name?

The man was barrel-chested and bearded, looked around forty, wrapped in a knee-length torn duster over a simple, ancient tunic, boots that looked as though they had seen many a desert, and oiled leather chaps. All of it the same shade of rich, marbled oxblood.

He looks like the world’s freakiest cowboy cum circus performer
.
What the hell’s he going to do with me? Eat me? Rape me?

A look of disgust crossed the man’s face. “Rape you? What messed up kind of city is this?”

Jack screamed internally,
He’s reading my freaking mind!

“Well, stop thinking so loud, then!” the man said.

“W-what’s going on?”

“Like I said, this is going to get crazy, fast. Sorry, m’boy, but the rules of this merry land don’t apply today. Sorry to rock the boat and all, but some pretty big gears under the universe’s hood are about to go
properly
cockeyed.”

“What are you?”

The man grunted. “A long way from home.”

Jack found himself staring up without a mote of emotion left in him. Now the adrenaline drained out of his system, all that was left was his stunned, lucid mind, too shell-shocked to produce anything other than resigned acceptance. “You messed up my section,” he said. “I just finished restocking the shelves this morning.”

“Not my fault you put them over an Exit.”

“They were nowhere near the exit! They were at the back of the damn store!”

“Not that kind of exit, you idiot.”

Jack resisted the urge to scream. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re a bookworm, working in a place like that, so you’ve read enough rosy crap about
doors to other places
. Why don’t we skip the little chinwag on the hidden reality behind the world, yada yada? I don’t have time, today.” He picked at a piece of loose skin on his hand as he muttered. He glanced at Jack and heaved a long sigh. “I can feel a heap of stupid back-and-forth welling up, anyway, so I’ll take care of it.” He counted off on his fingers, “There’s a door to elseplace in All Where on the second floor of your bookshop. About a thousand people saw somebody come through it. No, I’m not here to probe your ass. Yes, I’m here to help. Who sent me? None of your damn business. All you need to know is that I’m not the only one, and that all that hoo-hah back there was
nothing
compared to what’s coming.”

He swooped down until he was a mere inch from Jack’s face, exhaling hot sweet breath from between teeth inscribed with Delphic runes. “You people are about to have a very bad day,” he muttered slowly.

Jack mouthed openly for a few moments, looking down the alley. It was getting dark already, but in New York nothing ever slowed. Crowds milled to and fro up there, normal people going to dinner or to some club or café, unthinking in the embrace of routine.

They don’t have to deal with this shit
, he thought.

For a moment he thought about crying out for help. Somebody would call the police, and this lunatic would get locked up like he deserved.

But if they did that, then what the hell did he see back there? He would be just as loony. They’d lock him up in a moment.

What about door number 2: this is all legit. God, please don’t let that be true.

“Sorry, champ, it’s true,” the Scot-but-not said, swooping back up and stepping out from behind the garbage dump, pulling Jack with him. “Now stop your yammering and get your head on straight, because I need you.”

“What?” Jack squeaked. “
What?
Me? When the hell did I start figuring in your… your… freaky… shit!”

“First person I saw out of the Exit, friend. You’re important, all right.”

“Why me? I’m a damn bookseller. I collect
Firefly
figurines!”

A spark of panic arced in his chest. His Wash bobblehead was in the mail. He couldn’t die now, not with that to live for.

“You’re a creature of destiny, laddie. I’m no Brother of Solstice, but I know one when I see one.”

Jack made to speak, found he had no words, and collapsed back against the dumpster. “I see.” He shrugged helplessly. “Suppose you’re wrong.”

“Not possible. The rules are the rules.”

Jack cursed under his breath, realising he was about to go along with whatever this mad fool wanted. He squeezed the bridge of his nose.

No way left to go but forward now, Jack. Go along with it until you see a chance to run. Just pray you don’t lose the last of your marbles before it’s over. Or get your guts ripped out.

Is he hearing this? He read my mind before.

He waited a beat, but the man merely waited.

A selective mind reader. Who is this freak?

“Who you calling a freak?” the man growled.

Jack scowled.

“Why are you here?” he groaned.

The man slapped him on the back, with such force that all the wind was pounded right out of him. “The first good question you’ve asked, because now I get to sound like a real badass.” He grinned, revealing his tattooed teeth in all their otherworldly glory, set against tangled masses of beard and glowing crimson eyes. “I’m here to save the bloody world.”

He held the pose for a moment, and Jack nodded slowly, grinning a smile he felt obliged to pull, lest the head-case get upset.

“What’s your name?” Jack said.

The man’s eyelids fluttered, and his dramatic pose disintegrated. An irked twitch in the corner of his mouth. “Barry.”

“… Barry?”

His face twitched more violently. “What, you think that because I’m from another world, I’ve got to have some stupid nonsense name? I hate that crap. Go ahead and call me
Jaeverick
or something, if you want. Whatever. But Mum had a wicked sense of humour, so it’s Barry.”

I touched a nerve.

“Sorry,” Jack said lamely.

Barry shrugged, turning to survey the alley. “We done with the frickin’ introductions and exposition, now?” he said, eyeing the people at the end of the street with frank curiosity. Arms akimbo, he cocked his head. “You people… blind to the world around you. None of you have a clue in all hell what’s coming. Now, you tell me, anything weird happened today around these parts? Freaky stuff?”

Jack resisted the urge to laugh hysterically in his face. “I might have seen a thing or two, yeah.”

Barry grinned and Jack’s will broke. They laughed together for a single, insane moment, two men from two worlds.

Then the moment was over, and Barry’s fist connected with the side of Jack’s head in a hail of stars and singing pain.

Jack’s vision blurred and melded like melted ice cream. Threads of crimson light mixed with bleak concrete-grey. A demented groaning blared somewhere amidst a high-pitched ringing. As his vision settled and the ringing died down, he realised the groaning came from between his own lips.

The bastard nearly killed me
, he thought wildly. A bolt of fear tugged him back to reality, and he scrabbled back against the dumpster.
He’s strong, too strong. No man could do that. He could have taken my head clean off.

Another voice answered from deeper down in his mind:
He dragged you through the streets like a tote bag full of marshmallow, after appearing in a cloud of ice and blue glowing light from another dimension, sweetie. He’s probably not a man.

Jack fought a bought of nausea, checked his head for blood, and gasped. “What the hell did you—”

“We ain’t got time for you to be a smartass. You’ve been sent to give me a hand, and by god you’re going to play your part, or I’ll have you hanging upside down from your danglies before you can say ‘
Oopsie daisy
’. The Weaver might have sent you, but that don’t mean I have to leave you in one piece. So let me ask you again.
Did you see anything freaky, Jacky Boy
?”

“No! I was busy being a pathetic loser, like always, before you showed up. Happy?”

“There we go, some progress. Nothing at all? No news on your TV, your internet, your gossipy old ladies at the salon? Whatever? Nothing strange at all?”

Jack gritted his teeth. “No!”

Barry’s brow twitched again, more violently than last time, a full half-inch, such that obscured his eye. “Every time, they send some blubbering idiot who doesn’t know a damn thing. Why can’t I get a bonafide hero, for once? I like a bit of Hollywood.” He huffed, blowing a stray strand of twisted beard from between his lips. “Why do you people always have to be so
normal
?”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Jack muttered. He decided he didn’t want to know how the other-worlder knew about Hollywood. He thought of running for it again. “So I’m not any good to you, why don’t you just let me go, and get on with… whatever it is you’re doing.”

“I’m on a mission,” Barry said distractedly. “Saving the world and all. Y’know.”

“So I can go?”

“Nope. You couldn’t even if I wanted to let you. You’re awake now.”