Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2016 05:37:11 -0500 From: Kody Boye <boyekody@gmail.com> Subject: His Touch of Ice - Part 26 DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction, and contains scenes of graphic violence and explicit male/male sex. If you are not of the legal age to read this, or are uncomfortable with this sort of content, please turn back now. HIS TOUCH OF ICE (The Ice Men, Book 1) is copyright © Kody Boye. All Rights are reserved. ______________________________________________________________________________ That night, a knock came at the door just as we were about to get ready for bed. There was no immediate sound that followed—no declaration of intent, no mistaken request for room service, no drunk man or woman trying to find their disgruntled partner behind a door number which they couldn't remember. The complete and utter silence struck within me a primordial sense of fear I imagined hadn't been experienced since the Stone Age. I glanced at Guy, masked by the shadow near the far side of the room. The knock came again. "Excuse me," a voice which was not that of the clerk manager whom we'd frequently heard over the past few days. "Mr. Johnson? May we have a word with you?" The shuffle of Guy's footsteps whispered across the carpet as he disappeared from view. I didn't bother to keep track. I merely stared at the door. A third time. "Mr. Johnson?" the voice asked. "We're sorry to disturb you, but my name is Detective Daniel Morgan. I'm with the Fredericksburg Police Department. I'd like to ask you a few questions about your whereabouts over the past few days." "Shit," I whispered. Guy's hand slid around my mouth from behind, making me jump back into him. "Quiet," he whispered. "Start backing around the bed." "Mr. Johnson," the detective said, his voice pure authority as I snatched the backpack from the foot of the bed. "I won't ask you again. Open the door and I won't be forced to break entry." The sound of footsteps coming up the stairs signaled a second presence. Guy pulled his hand away from my mouth before reaching back and cracking the sliding-glass door. Outside, a cold gust tore around the building and into the room. My foot landed on cold stone the moment the door clicked into place. "Break it down," the detective said. The crunch of thick wood splintering beneath a battering ram entered my ears. I turned to look over my shoulder. Two stories below stood a courtyard looking out into beautiful west Texas, a tiered water foundation its main centerpiece. "Jason," Guy said, locking both arms around my waist. "You're going to have to trust me on this." "What're you—" I couldn't finish. He flung us over the railing. We fell. Even though it wasn't an incredible distance from the second-floor balcony, it felt like we were falling forever. Lost, together in embrace, where death would do us part as by the laws of physics we would collide—the poetry of such a situation couldn't have been done better by Shakespeare himself, even if he were still alive. The world around us moved into a blur. Distant headlights stopped moving. Water drops whispered by our heads like fairies making their way back to the Fairyworld. And the fountain—oh, how it wished to greet us, with its stone façade and its striking, two-tiered semblance. It didn't matter if it was filled with water—it was shallow. We'd die before we even struck. Trust me, Guy had said, when he had taken hold of my head and pressed his lips to mine. Trust me, he'd said, when he pressed his hand into the small of my back and sent me to a completely different place. Trust me, he'd said, the moment before he flung us over the railing. Trust me. Trust me. "Trust me," I whispered. The world took on a sudden chill. I opened my eyes. The crystallization taking place around us was like something you would only see in a chemistry lab. Spiderwebbing across the globules of water within the air, cocooning us in a fine thread of hot-white thread, expanding, then contracting as what looked like crystals bloomed and then began to thicken—the giant peaks of mountains and the great gorges of rivers formed within the crystalline surface and continued to build upon itself until they stopped no more than a few sheer inches away. I turned to look at Guy's face. His eyes glowed like an aurora borealis on the coldest night of the year. The crystals closest to our bodies chipped away, fell just above Guy's head to collect upon the bottom of the structure, then swirled around us, smoothing the ice like snow. The whole sight was almost too much to behold. Sadly, I had not the time to revel in such great magic. We hit. The jarring impact was nothing compared to what we would've experience had we not been encapsulated inside the crystal. Contoured around our bodies and angled just perfectly, we hit the second level of the fountain and then slammed into the bottom before the crystal flipped and finally struck the ground below, the sound of streaming water and rolling concrete deafening in the enclosed space. "Keep your head down," Guy said. I bowed my face to his chest just in time for the crystal to explode, depositing Guy on the dirt ground with a grunt and me with a near-senseless breath of relief. "Come on. We can't stay here." Upstairs, the door cracked open. I took Guy's hand as he dragged me to my feet and kept a tight hold on the backpack filled with our lifesaving supplies that thrashed behind me. The trees on the opposite side of the fence seemed too far away. We'd never make it. Never— Guy slammed the brunt of his weight into the flimsy wooden gate and snapped it free of its hinges. I jumped over it and ducked just in time to avoid a lingering branch before we darted into the copse of trees before us. Gasping, I took a deep breath. Where the hell were we? "We can't stop," Guy said, dragging me by the wrist. "We have to keep going." "How far?" He lifted his eyes, which had still not lost their shimmering translucent hue. "A mile or two," he said. "Then more hill country." "Can we avoid them?" "We better hope." ____________________________________________________________________________ If you enjoyed this installment of HIS TOUCH OF ICE, consider emailing the author with your thoughts or donating to him via Paypal at boyekody@gmail.com. You can also download the novel for free on Smashwords, Amazon Kindle, or any other major eBook retailer, or buy the Audible version online via Amazon.com. You can visit the author online at www.kodyboye.com.