Page 15 of Icy Reception (SOS HOTEL #9)
CHAPTER 15
Although the sign said the elevator was out of order, when we summoned it, the clattering cage trundled its way up from the basement.
“Yeah... Imma take the stairs,” Zee said, eyeing the ancient elevator with foreboding.
“You can’t. They don’t go down to the basement. This is the only way.”
Zee fell quiet, which meant he was not happy about our method of travel. We stepped inside the metal car. I heaved the grated door closed, and jabbed the down button. With a jolt we started downward, and slowly the lobby disappeared.
“This is fine,” Zee muttered. “I just fuckin’ love being in tiny metal cages.”
“How’s your juice?”
“Still juicy.” Easing off the reins to his power, his purple glow returned.
“Nice. But you know, I guess we should be careful in future... in the bedroom I mean. We don’t want to overdo it.” Powering him up too often could hurt him in the long term. We still didn’t really know how this all worked .
“And I don’t like leaving Spicy Fangs out of our trio.”
I definitely did not want Victor feeling neglected. “Do you think he’d get a power-up too?”
“Have you and he fucked without me lately?”
“We were going to, back before my brother arrived at the SOS Hotel, but then the roadtrip happened, and no... I guess we haven’t really been together.”
“Then maybe he’d get a boost too. What if his superpower is building furniture faster?”
I chuckled. “If anything, it’s more likely to be his voice.” A thrilling shiver spilled down my spine. Victor’s voice talent was both hot and morally questionable. Like him.
The elevator groaned, clanged, and jolted to a final stop. Through the grated metal door, rows and stacks of storage boxes created a maze into the dark. I heaved open the door. Zee’s glow was all the light we needed.
We ambled through the hotel’s crates and boxes until we found a roughly six-foot-high something with a sheet draped over it and a pool of water running off into a nearby drain.
Zee grabbed the sheet and tugged it off. Clouds of dust puffed into the air, then settled on a huge, rough-cut block of ice. The photo hadn’t been clear, but it wouldn’t have mattered. I’d expected some kind of romantic trapped-in-ice statue, but the reality was breathtakingly horrible.
The man’s face had shrunk and contorted around his bones. His body, too, was bent and buckled, perhaps broken by the ice?
“Ick. That’s cold.”
Leaning closer, I studied the man’s face. His final moments had been frozen for centuries. “I think he trapped her here. The picture said, ‘My beloved. My traitor.’ He knew what she was, and he stopped her as best he could. Maybe she keeps him here as punishment.”
“True love is truly fucked up. ”
The man, her lover, was probably the one originally responsible for the clues, as a way to get to her should her prison begin to fail. Those clues had likely been altered and updated over time, but he’d been the first to try and stop her... and only half succeeded. He’d maybe still loved her to the end. Sometimes loving people meant you had to do what was right to keep them safe, and that wasn’t always what they wanted too.
Sometimes love meant doing bad things.
“You grab the top bit and I’ll take his legs,” Zee said. “Let’s make the ice bitch face her past.”
I stepped behind the ice sculpture, and tried to get my arms around the slippery, melting block of ice. All we had to do was get it into the elevator and up to the foyer where there was more room to maneuver. While we were doing this, the guests were hopefully evacuating the hotel, but we needed to hurry. Stephanie could find us at any moment.
“He’s a slippery one.” My grip slipped. “Hold up, I haven’t got?—”
“Wait, Kitten, I just?—”
“Back a bit!”
“I haven’t got?—”
The weight slid forward, tilting all of the block into Zee’s arms. He yelped, his wings popped out, and he poofed backward to avoid getting crushed.
The ice sculpture with its frosted occupant hit the floor and shattered into a million pieces. All of it—the ice, the man—exploded. Stephanie’s beloved was now ice cubes.
“Oh dear.”
Zee tucked his tail around his right leg. “I said I didn’t have it.”
“Okay, uhm...” I straightened and propped my hands on my hips. “Well, it’s done now. You know what, it doesn’t matter. We just have to get her in one place?— ”
“Adam Vex!” her voice boomed, rattling through the hotel walls. Ice darted across the floor, up the boxes, jerking and snapping, coming right for us.
“To the elevator!”
We bolted, dashed into the elevator cage, and rammed the rattling door home. Jagged bits of ice cracked and snapped, breaking and remaking itself as it climbed over everything to reach us. The ancient elevator stuttered and finally shuddered into motion, carrying us higher.
“This is good.” Ice lunged for my leg. I kicked it back. “We can work with this.”
Ice grabbed Zee’s tail. He yelped, spun, and jerked his tail free, then kicked the reaching ice back. “This is the fuckin’ worst vacation ever. I want a refund.”
“I know. I’m sorry. We’ll go to the beach next.” A huge icy tentacle sprang for my face. I ducked, and Zee punched it to dust.
“Really?”
“Yeah, somewhere hot and fun. With cocktails and sunsets.”
“Fuck yes. Fuck this ice and snow. Minnesota is not nice.”
We finally reached the foyer and stumbled from the elevator. Ice encrusted the chandelier above our heads and formed enormous, sparkling, sinewing arches, turning the foyer into one of those Icelandic hotels with icy blue walls and blocks of ice for beds. Who pays to sleep on ice?
By the front desk, and Larimer’s frosty remains, a vast vapor cloud came together to form Stephanie Frostweaver.
“Look, lady.” Zee stepped forward, tail flicking. “Before you get your icicles in a twist, your beloved was already dead, and I get the whole grieving thing, but it’s been what, a few hundred years? You really need to move the fuck on.”
She screamed, and flew at Zee.
His purple aura instantly bloomed around him, his wings exploded open... then he stopped. “Wait, Kitten. If I make her come, is that cheating on you, because I don’t wanna ever?—”
“Do it, Zee!”
He clicked his fingers, igniting a few sparks, and Stephanie’s charge pulled up short. Her scream cut off and she frowned.
“Was that it?” I hissed.
Zee clicked his fingers again. His spark fizzled and died.
Stephanie shook her head, her frown deepening.
Zee cleared his throat. “This has never happened to me before. I always satisfy my lovers, okay?”
“You’re out of juice,” I said.
“Fuck, I’m out of juice!” He winced and stumbled backward. “Ugh, all that talking when we should have been doing !”
“You insolent, pathetic little creatures!” Stephanie bellowed.
“Zee! Look out!”
Stephanie lunged.
Zee poofed to the other side of the foyer.
“Catch!” Wesley called, appearing at the bottom of the stairs. He tossed the bell at me. By some miracle, I caught it and?—
Ding!
Stephanie screamed, grabbing her head and hunching over.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
“No, no!” she wailed, crouching lower with every press of the bell.
“Wesley,” I called. “Is everyone out?”
Ding! Ding!
He nodded and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Just those left in the cellar! ”
Good. That was good. I caught Zee’s gaze and held it.
Ding! Ding!
This was it . . . the moment of truth.
Zee nodded, poofed onto the stairs, and grabbing Wesley’s arm, dragged him around the wailing, crippled Stephanie and out the front doors.
Now it was just me and her.
Dragon and fae.
Fire and ice.
She was down, kneeling, panting, but it wouldn’t last.
Exhaling hard, I teetered on the edge of control... and then dropped all the reins, shifting out of my human skin. Power sizzled. Ice steamed. The foyer shrank around me, closing in, crushing tight like the ducts I’d crawled through. Wood and brick snapped. The chandelier shattered over my scales, and its glass rained off my neck.
Stephanie got smaller and smaller as I grew taller and larger, filling every available inch.
“How dare you, dragon! How dare you come into my home. You are just like the others, just like all of your kind. Selfish, vicious bullies?—”
I’d heard enough.
Snorting through my nose, I summoned heat inside my chest, stoking it, holding it back under pressure. Hotter and hotter it burned as she raged and accused me of all the things my kind were known for. And she wasn’t wrong. But I’d stopped caring when I’d learned she’d tricked us. I’d stopped caring when I’d realized the truth of her, and how she’d been imprisoning people for centuries. She’d even wronged her beloved. True love wasn’t trapping someone in ice, it was letting them go when it was time.
Her kind gave Lost Ones a bad name.
And her hotel didn’t deserve a single star.
“Do it,” Tom Collins said from somewhere nearby. I couldn’t see him, but he’d be in the wires somewhere. He’d be fine during what came next.
The fire churned and boiled and Stephanie flung her fist into the air, shaking it at me, cursing me, even as her ice wilted around her.
She might have been the Frostweaver, but I was Mydros, the last of my kind... sort of, and Hero of San Francisco. I would not walk away from anyone needing help.
I opened my jaws and unleashed a blast of flame.