Frostburn (Ultrahumans Book 4) Read online

  Frostburn

  An Ultrahumans Novel

  By Niall Teasdale

  Copyright 2016 Niall Teasdale

  Amazon Kindle Edition

  Contents

  Part One: Happy Days

  Interlude: Seven Princes

  Part Two: Frozen Death

  Part Three: Trial and Fire

  Part Four: Devil’s Due

  Part Five: Promises

  Part Six: The Prince of Lust

  Epilogue

  Part One: Happy Days

  New Millennium City, MD, 4th November, 2014.

  ‘They really made a mess up here, didn’t they?’ Rosanne Mellor raised her camera and snapped off several frames of the destruction below.

  Cygnus, whose arms Rosanne was cradled in as they flew over the northern end of Churchton, looked down and nodded. ‘Yes, but it could have been a lot worse. This end is badly damaged, but further south we managed to save a lot.’

  ‘Thanks to you and Dom.’

  ‘Thanks to me and Dom, and Fire Bug, and a lot of dedicated normals who kept going through a really tough night.’

  ‘Yeah… Though the way Dom tells it, half the firemen were just in it to see you in a soaking-wet camisole.’

  There was humour in the photographer’s voice and Cygnus laughed. ‘That may have bolstered spirits a little, but I was willing to put up with it under the circumstances.’

  ‘Huh. And you patrol out here every night?’

  ‘We don’t come out every night. And Churchton is more Twilight’s domain.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Rosanne said, nodding. ‘I hope the weather stays good. I want to come out and do some moonlit costume shots of Twilight here. Thursday would be best.’

  ‘Full moon, yeah. You think this is good? It’s freezing. You’re in so many thermal layers, I’m amazed you can move.’

  Rosanne just giggled. ‘So what’s your secret? You’re carrying me and you’re just about naked. I refuse to believe that plastic has any thermal value.’

  ‘It doesn’t. My secret? Incredible cosmic power.’ Cygnus frowned, though Rosanne could not see it. ‘Oh, hold on. That doesn’t look good…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ll see.’ Cygnus banked left and swept down toward some of the more intact buildings. ‘Just promise you’ll stay out of the way. I know you won’t listen to me if I ask you to stay hidden.’

  ‘Dom told you about what I get up to with a camera?’

  ‘Dom told me a number of things about your antics with a camera. Many of them I did not need to know, but the Mexican drug cartel stuff leads me to believe you won’t be persuaded.’

  As they dropped lower, Rosanne began to see what was concerning the transcendently beautiful guardian of New Millennium City, and she had to agree: she was not going to be persuaded to stay out of sight. Down on the ground, a group of people dressed all in black wielding various makeshift weapons were doing battle with what looked like a street gang. Well, it was the early stages of battle: the facing off and slinging insults stage, most likely. It was a moonlit war: no street lights functioned in this part of town. Maybe ten people to each side, though the ninja-wannabes were slightly outnumbered: eight against twelve, perhaps.

  Cygnus dropped Rosanne off behind the wreck of an old town car and then took off again, heading straight up so that she could drop into the middle of the conflict from above. Dramatic entries were the stock-in-trade of the major Ultrahumans, but Cygnus had an additional feature which made it even more impressive. By the time her heeled boots hit the cracked tarmac, she seemed to be glowing: an angel with white hair, clad in a silver bodysuit. Even Rosanne, who had not flinched in the face of an Ultrahuman drug lord, found herself standing there briefly with her mouth hanging open. About half of the combatants fell to their knees, beatific smiles on their faces, while a couple fainted on the spot. Only three, including the two leaders, managed to remain unfazed.

  ‘What the Hell do you lot think you’re doing?’ Cygnus snapped. ‘Didn’t we have enough of this kind of thing in August?’

  The ninja leader brandished his hockey stick. ‘We’re standing up for our rights as citizens!’ The effect was rather diminished by the muffling effect of the black, woolly scarf he was wearing over his nose and mouth, but he was trying for outraged and empowered. ‘These… assholes have been terrorising the streets for the last two weeks.’

  Cygnus turned her head to stare at him with blue eyes that seemed to be glowing with inner fire. ‘And you are?’

  ‘I’m… We are the Churchton Vigilance Committee. Sworn to uphold the law in–’

  ‘So you’ve registered under the Special Policing Act?’

  ‘What? No, we’re not Ultras, so–’

  ‘That’s what N-class is for. So you’re upholding the law by breaking it?’ Citizen Ninja did not seem to have an answer for that one, so Cygnus turned to the gang leader. ‘And you? What’s your excuse?’

  Rosanne decided that this young man, resplendent in purple hair and a number of facial piercings, had the survival instincts of a depressed lemming. He leered at Cygnus. ‘Don’t need an excuse. Churchton belongs to us. We’re the Churchton Choirboys.’

  Cygnus almost lost it at that point. ‘That’s the best you could come up with? Did you fall out of a time hole from the seventies or something?’

  ‘No, he didn’t.’ The voice came from somewhere behind the gang, out of the darkness which seemed to be spreading from an alley, out into the street, swallowing teenage thugs as it went. ‘His name is Dicky Frenton and he either has a very short memory or a very selective one.’

  Frenton’s eyes were widening. He said, ‘Oh shit!’ and then he was swallowed by the darkness. There were two horrified wails from inside the shadows, and then the darkness slid away and Twilight walked nonchalantly out of it to stand beside Cygnus.

  Rosanne’s camera clicked away on auto. They were night and day, light and darkness, the two women who watched over the city. Where Cygnus brought awe, Twilight brought terror. Frenton was still wide-eyed after the shadows relinquished him, but the only other gang member who had survived unscathed from Cygnus’s aura was now huddled on the ground whimpering.

  ‘I told him I’d run him in if I caught him fucking about out here again,’ Twilight said. ‘Actually, I told him I’d put the fear of Twilight into him, and then run him in.’ She waved an absent hand at the ninja. ‘This lot are new.’

  ‘W-what gives you two the right to do something and n-not us?’ Citizen Ninja stammered. Apparently, Twilight was quite scary enough even without her shadows.

  Twilight regarded him with her jet-black eyes for a second and then looked at her partner. ‘Do you want to do this? You’re better at speeches.’

  Cygnus shrugged. ‘Okay, well… My powers were forged by an ancient, alien race to act as the guardians of law and justice. Twilight is the embodiment of forces which have existed since man first gathered about campfires on the African plains. She’s invulnerable in darkness and can scare the shit out of you before disembowelling you with her flaming sword. I’m bulletproof and I can punch you hard enough to put you in orbit. And you… You are wearing track pants and a sweatshirt, and waving a hockey stick around. It doesn’t give us any rights, though see my earlier comments about registration, but it does mean that we won’t have to spend six weeks in traction after we get into a fight.’

  ‘Oh,’ the ninja said.

  ‘I was more or less normal when I started this,’ Twilight said, ‘but I trained. I knew what I was doing, and I wore a bullet-resistant suit. Even the cops have training and body armour. If you want to do something for this place, then you need training and a plan.’

  ‘You n
eed to organise,’ Cygnus went on. ‘Leave the crime fighting to the professionals, but come up with a way of reporting problems quickly to us. Hell, maybe we could even support something like that. This… stupidity is just going to lead to another riot. It’s almost one in the morning. Go home. Go to bed.’

  ‘Uh… right,’ Citizen Ninja said. ‘I guess… Let’s leave these thugs to the Ultras, men.’

  As the vigilance committee ninjas wandered away, Twilight walked over to Frenton, who was still a little wide-eyed. ‘That’s actually kind of creepy,’ Andrea commented from the back of Twilight’s mind.

  ‘He looks like an adoring puppy who’s just puddled on the kitchen floor,’ Twilight replied silently. Aloud she said, ‘Dicky, Dicky, Dicky… What am I going to do with you?’

  Frenton just whimpered.

  ‘Hit him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper,’ Andrea suggested.

  ‘As my partner pointed out,’ Twilight went on, ‘it’s almost one a.m. and if I do take you in, I won’t get to bed before three, and I have work in the morning… So here’s what we’ll do. You get one more chance. However, since I can’t just let this go without my reputation taking a hit, we’ll have to up the stakes. If I see you boys on the streets causing trouble again, I’ll feed the lot of you to my demons. Understood?’ Frenton just nodded. ‘Good. Start a chess club or something. Now get lost.’

  When Twilight turned around, Rosanne had joined Cygnus. ‘That was kind of anticlimactic,’ the photographer commented. ‘Also sort of cool, but…’

  ‘You photograph a lot of combat zones,’ Twilight said. ‘I get it. This way’s better.’

  ‘Not actually arguing. You, um, wouldn’t really feed them to demons, would you? I mean… you have demons?’

  ‘I have demons. You don’t want to see them. As to feeding the Choirboys to them… Well, they don’t actually eat, so I can’t really feed them people.’

  ‘But they’ll probably wish they had been eaten after meeting one,’ Cygnus said.

  ‘Sounds awesome,’ Rosanne said, beaming. ‘Are you sure I can’t meet one?’

  Cygnus and Twilight looked at each other. ‘At least she probably won’t be afraid of Ever’s alligators,’ Twilight said.

  ~~~

  Radium Comics was not the busiest of establishments. That suited those who worked there just fine. Things tended to get a little busier in the late afternoon when the kids got out of school and turned up for the latest issues, but the ones who came to Radium tended to be the more serious fans and were not too much trouble. Roger Peters, who owned the place, kept talking about opening on a Saturday morning, or having a late-evening opening, but had never quite managed to get around to it. Except for special occasions anyway…

  ‘June and Dom are suggesting the nineteenth of December,’ Andrea said. ‘June’s ready to put out a release if it works for you. It’s a Friday.’

  ‘And we’d open late,’ Roger said, ‘and run on into the evening. That’s the plan.’

  Andrea nodded. ‘Two until eight. You’ll have me and Cygnus, but we’ve also got Red Huntress and Skadi coming, and Dom will be here, and June is going to make sure she’s free for the day. June’s not an Ultra, but–’

  ‘But she’s going to be in the calendar and she’s charismatic.’

  ‘Is that code for “has big boobs?”’ Zoe asked. Zoe was the other shop assistant, and since she would be spending a day on crowd control for the big calendar-signing day, she had some say in things.

  ‘No,’ Roger replied, ‘but, as it happens, she does. Any objections to the date, Zoe?’

  ‘Any day’s as good as another for me,’ Zoe replied. ‘I’m going to get to meet more Ultras in one day than most people do in a lifetime!’

  Andrea frowned. ‘That’s actually a good point. We should consider security. I’ll talk to the Union about it. They might have someone they can lend us to keep an eye out for threats.’

  ‘I’d have thought the biggest threat would come from fainting geeks,’ Zoe countered. ‘We should have paramedics on standby.’

  ‘I’ll get June on it. So… The nineteenth is a go?’

  Roger nodded. ‘I’ll put a notice up to say the opening hours will be different that day. Uh, one thing I thought of… If you could get a few copies of the calendar signed by all the models, we could give one away in a lottery of some sort, auction some of the others. A complete set in limited numbers could sell for thousands.’

  ‘That’ll take some organising… But Cygnus can fly really fast when she wants to.’

  ‘Really fast?’ Zoe asked.

  ‘She was clocked at Mach nine point five, though I think she’s got a bit faster since then.’

  ‘That is really fast…’

  ‘Yeah… And I’ll talk to June about it tonight.’

  ‘You’re not here tomorrow, right?’

  Andrea sagged visibly. ‘Yeah. Through the afternoon anyway. They’re doing Twilight’s studio session.’

  Zoe smirked and Roger managed to keep most of the smile off his face. ‘I’m quite sure it’ll be fine,’ Roger said. ‘I certainly can’t wait to see the results.’

  ~~~

  ‘It’s all going pretty well so far,’ June said as Andrea got herself ready to head out for her evening patrol. ‘We got some really good shots of Red, and Skadi, and Red and Skadi. I think we’ll use one of the couple shots. There’s a really awesome one that we maybe can’t use with them back to back, each holding their bows drawn… We’ll see.’

  ‘Why can’t you use it?’ Andrea asked.

  ‘It was the last setup Rosanne did so she had them basically naked, oiled, and lit with spots so their faces are in shadow. It’s really dramatic and it hides Skadi’s face well, but… maybe a little too risqué for the market.’

  ‘Collector’s edition. What do you think of Roger’s auction idea?’

  June pursed her lips, though the thoughtful expression did not seem to be about Andrea’s question, because she said, ‘Well, that one’s going to be up to our courier. What do you think, love? Feel like doing some coast-to-coast runs to get signatures?’

  Cygnus, also getting ready to go out, shrugged. ‘I’ll have, um, four days? Between the production release date and the event at Radium. So… fly down to the Everglades to get Ever’s signature, then it’ll be across to San Francisco and L.A.’

  ‘You’d need to do Boston too. One of the normal models is from Boston.’

  ‘It’s doable. Might stay over in San Francisco one night. Bianca would probably put me up.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll discuss it with Dom tomorrow. She’ll be there to see Twilight’s set and she’s shooting in the morning.’

  ‘I still don’t know how you talked me into doing this,’ Andrea said morosely.

  ‘We didn’t. We talked Twilight into it, and it didn’t take much effort. She’ll do fine and you can just hide in the back of her head until it’s over. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Easy for you to say. This is what you do for a living.’

  ‘Exactly, so I have more right to stress over it. You can go back to facing off against killers with megablasts right after.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Andrea said. ‘Give me a megablast over a camera any day of the week.’

  5th November.

  ‘We’re still getting a little too much crotch.’

  Trying to keep the smirk off her face, Twilight looked down her body and thickened the shadows around her legs. Then she looked back at Rosanne, crouched a few yards away with her camera. ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Beautiful.’ The camera emitted artificial shutter sounds. ‘This is a new experience for me. I’ve never directed shadows before.’

  ‘I’ve never been so embarrassed before,’ Andrea said.

  ‘Hush,’ Twilight replied silently, ‘I’m trying to keep a straight face.’ They were having to pull a balancing act, in several ways, for the shot Rosanne wanted. The physical one was easy enough, though Twilight was thankful she was flexible since R
osanne had her balanced on one hip with her upper body held up on outstretched arms and fingertips. The light was another matter: there was just one spot side-lighting Twilight from the right and a dim filler giving some visibility on the other side. Too much light and the shadows would fade, too little and the subject would be invisible. Then the shadows themselves had to be carefully controlled since Twilight was stripped down to her boots and mask. The only thing preserving any modesty was the insubstantial darkness.

  Andrea was starting to wonder whether her alter ego actually had any modesty to preserve.

  ‘This looks incredible,’ Dominika Zuyev, Svetilo, said from behind Rosanne. ‘If this one comes out well, it will sell the calendar on its own.’

  ‘I think some of the “action” poses we did earlier are pretty good,’ Rosanne replied, ‘but… yeah. Can you hold that pose another minute or two, Twilight?’

  ‘Sure,’ Twilight said. ‘Take your time.’

  Rosanne got up to walk over to a laptop she had set up nearby. She would transfer the images to that and check them on the larger screen. ‘I have to admit,’ Andrea said, ‘the process is sort of interesting.’

  ‘Yeah…’ Twilight said. ‘I have enough of our geek in me to think it’s kind of cool. And we’re finally going to have some pictures to sign for fans. I hope that one we did with the sword burning comes out well. That would be perfect.’

  ‘Okay, those are good,’ Rosanne said.

  ‘Those are excellent!’ Dom corrected.

  Rosanne grinned. ‘You can put your suit back on.’

  ‘No, you can’t!’

  ‘Dom…’

  ‘Oh, all right, da, you can put your suit back on, Twilight. Cygnus will be here soon so we can get the couple shots.’

  Twilight let the shadows fall away from her and got to her feet, stretching to get the kinks out from holding the twisted position. Dom did not make any secret of watching her, and continued watching as Twilight walked over to look at the laptop screen. ‘It does look pretty good,’ Twilight said. ‘Will it print out as well for the calendar?’

  ‘This monitor may be a little off,’ Rosanne said, ‘but I’ll go over the images to make sure the colours are matched properly. Um… you should really put your suit on before Dom starts drooling.’