Cold Days

across one of its cheeks and splashed over its right shoulder, setting a large mass of sackcloth strips aflame.

It screamed in pain, a sound that raked at my ears, and began to lower its arms to retaliate.

The second it did, I drove my right fist into its stupid, creepy face.

Man, the yahoos I scrap with never seem to anticipate that tactic. They all assume that what with me being a wizard and all, I’m going to stand back and chuck Magic Missiles at them or something, then scream and run away the second they get close enough to let me see the whites of their eyes.

Okay, granted, that is how a lot of wizards operate. But all the same, you’d think they would remember that there’s no particular reason why a wizard can’t be as comfortable with physical mayhem as the next guy.

Two things happened.

First, as my fist sailed forward, there was a sudden thrill that flowed up my arm from my hand, something delicious and startling. I had barely processed that when I heard a crackling noise, and then saw glacial blue and green ice abruptly coating my fist.

Second, I hit Sharkface like a freaking truck, starting right on the tip of its chin and driving straight toward South America. The ice coating my fist shattered into tiny shards that laced and sliced, but I barely felt it. Sharkface flew back as if I’d slugged it with a sledgehammer, and hit the wall with enough violence to crack and splinter the heavy oak paneling. Sharkface’s cloak fluttered hard as it went backward—the freaking thing was cushioning his impact, just as it had managed to stop shotgun pellets at short range.

Sharkface bounced off the wall, staggering, and I gave it a left and another right, and then kicked its legs out from underneath it as brutally as I knew how. It went to the floor hard.

Once Sharkface was down I stomped for its head with my hiking boots, going for a quick kill, which was exactly what this asshole had coming to it for messing with my favorite joint—but that stupid cloak got in the way. Strips flew out to gain purchase and hauled him out from beneath my boot. Even as I reacted, moving to follow him up, more of the sackcloth tendrils seized a dozen bottles of liquor from behind the bar—and flung them harshly onto the puddles of vicious blue-white fire still burning upon the floor where Sharkface had deflected them.

I slashed at the tumbling bottles with an effort of will, but I hadn’t had a soft-touch spell in mind during the previous seconds. My clumsy grab accomplished nothing but to shatter one of the bottles early, and flames roared up from where the spilled liquor fell.

Alcohol fires are a nasty business. Booze burns a good deal hotter and faster than, for example, gasoline. In seconds it can take the temperature from below freezing to seven hundred degrees, hot enough to turn flesh into briquettes. Mac and Thomas were both down. There was no way I could get them both out of the fire in time— which meant my only option was to stop it from happening.

Sharkface let out an eerie, defiant shriek and suddenly vanished into the writhing mass of his coat again, becoming nothing but flailing cloth and dust and stench. The creature bounded into the air and streaked like a sackcloth comet out the front door—and there was diddly I could do to stop it.

Instead, I turned to the fires just as bottles began to shatter on the floor, just as white-hot flames began to leap. I hurled my will through my body, drawing forth the frigid purity of Winter, calling, “Infriga!”

Howling wind and cold engulfed the nascent fires. And the floor around where the fires had been. And the walls. And, um, the ceiling.

I mean, pretty much every nonliving surface in the place was completely covered in a layer of frost half an inch thick.

Mac and Thomas started groaning. I gave them a minute to pull themselves together and watched the door. Sharkface didn’t show up for a rematch. Maybe he was busy changing into fresh undies because I’d scared him so bad. Right. More likely he was off doing a Right Stuff walk and gathering his gang.

The fog lightened and burned off within five minutes or so, and the sounds of the city returned.

The attack was over. Mac stared woozily around the pub, shaking his head. Covered in glittering frost and ice, it looked like the place Santa’s elves must go when they finish their shift at the toy shop.

Mac gave me a look and then gestured at the pub, clearly wanting an explanation.

“Hey,” I said crossly. “At least it didn’t get burned to the ground. Count your blessings, man. That’s better than most buildings get around me.”

Thomas sat up a moment later, and I helped him to his feet.

“What happened?” he asked blearily.

“Psychic assault,” I told him. “A bad one. How you feeling?”

“Confused,” Thomas said. He looked around the place, shaking his head. The pub looked like it had just been raided by Super Bowl–berserk Bears fans. “What was that thing?”

I rubbed at my forehead with the heel of my hand. “An Outsider.”

Thomas’s eyes went wide and round. “What?”

“An Outsider,” I repeated quietly. “We’re fighting Outsiders.”

Chapter Twenty-three

“Outsiders,” Thomas said. “Are you sure?”

“You felt it,” I said. “That mental whammy. It was exactly like that night in the Raith Deeps.”

Thomas frowned but nodded. “Yeah, it was, wasn’t it?”

Mac walked silently past us to the ruined door. He bent down and picked something up out of the general wreckage there. It was the Accorded Neutral Territory sign. It was scorched on one corner, but he hung it back up on the wall. Then he leaned his hands against it and bowed his head.

I knew how he felt. Violent encounters tend to be scary and exhausting, even if they last for only seconds. My nerves were still jangling, my legs were trembling a little, and I wanted very badly to just plop down onto the floor and breathe for a while. I didn’t. Wizards are stoic about this kind of thing. And my brother would make fun of me.

Thomas exhaled slowly through his nose, his eyes narrowed. “I don’t know much about them,” he said.

“That’s not surprising,” I said. “There’s not a lot of information on Outsiders. We think that’s because most people who run into them don’t get a chance to tell anyone about it.”

“Lot of things like that in the world,” Thomas said. “Sounds like these things are just a little creepier than your average demonic nasty.”

“It’s more than that,” I said. “Creatures out of the Nevernever are a part of our reality, our universe. They can get pretty bizarre, but they have a membership card. Outsiders come from someplace else.”

Thomas shrugged. “What’s the difference?”

“They’re smarter. Tougher. Harder to kill.”

“You handled that one pretty well. Didn’t look so tough.”

I snorted. “You missed out on the end. I hit that thing with my best shot, and I barely made it uncomfortable. It didn’t leave because I hurt it. It left because it didn’t expect me to fight clear of its whammy, and it didn’t want to take any chances that I might get lucky and prevent it from reporting to its superiors.”

“Still ran,” Thomas said. “Yeah, that mind-meld thing was awful, but the bastard wasn’t all that bad.”

I sighed. “That little creep Peabody dropped one Outsider on a meeting of the Council. The best wizards in the world were all in that one room and took it on together, and the thing still managed to murder a bunch of them. It’s hard to make magic stick to Outsiders. It’s hard to make them leave. It’s hard to hurt them. It’s hard to make them die. They’re insanely violent, insanely powerful, and just plain insane. But that isn’t what makes them dangerous.”

“Uh,” Thomas said. “It isn’t? Then what is?”

“They work together,” I said quietly. “Near as we can tell, they all work together.”

Thomas was silent for a moment as he considered the implications of that. “Work together,” he said. “To do what?”