Page 37 of Chaos and Crowns

Antony cocked his head to the side, considering.

“Waffles,” he declared. “I’ve never had them, but Adam has told me I would like them.”

“Then waffles you shall have!”

Odelle waited outside Antony’s room for him to put on street clothes, before leading them out of the Sanctuary and grabbing a cab to her favorite breakfast diner. Most of the awkwardness she had felt had been washed away by their wilderness adventure and the following week of his recovery. And as much as a small voice in the back of her head begged her to ask him why he had rebuffed her advances—to admit that she itched to grab him by his sweater and kiss him thoroughly—she couldn’t bring herself to disturb the camaraderie that now bloomed between them.

It turned out that Adam had been right. Antony did love waffles. He inhaled three orders of them as the waitress looked on in horror. He managed to ask a few questions about the operation of waffle makers between mouthfuls, but mostly he was too busy eating his breakfast doused in an unholy amount of syrup to talk, and Odelle was happy to fill the silence by chattering about everything that had happened while he was indisposed. She mopped up runny golden egg yolks with crusty bread. It was hard to feel negative about the future when eating brunch, and having Antony awake again made her hopeful that the situation with the Shadow wasn’t as bad as they had imagined.

* * *

After leaving the diner, they walked leisurely down the sidewalk, giving Antony the chance to stare up at the skyscrapers in wonder. Odelle was happy to revel in the winter sunlight, despite the fact that it offered no real warmth.

“I thought you built weapons, not buildings,” Odelle pointed out as Antony said something about the properties of materials needed to make such tall structures. She knew now that he could make jewelry and dresses, but skyscrapers seemed like a different thing entirely.

“I do,” Antony admitted. “But mostly out of necessity. I just like building things in general, and the Light made my abilities to create more versatile, especially before the Defeat.”

He paused, looking over the side of the moveable bridge they were crossing at the Wrigley building. Odelle stopped with him, stepping towards the side to let the other pedestrians walk around them.

“It seems white stone never goes out of style,” Antony commented as he admired the ivory clock tower.

Odelle opened her mouth to tell him about the Chicago World’s Fair when a piece of ice shimmering on the river’s edge below caught her eye. She brushed the distraction away.

“Actually, this was one of many buildings—”

Another jagged piece of ice below moved strangely, and Odelle squinted. She gasped. The ice formed into humanoid shapes, twisted and gnarled with serrated edges decorating every joint.

Before she could scream, a tug wrenched her leg. She looked down to see an icy claw wrapped around her ankle, but it was too late. She lost her footing on the slick surface of the bridge. Her back hit the ground with a bang, knocking the wind from her and keeping her from getting a grip on anything. It took just one more strong tug for her to slide over the edge of the bridge through one of the large triangular gaps in the metal. Just as she tumbled over the precipice, a hand grabbed fruitlessly at her coat and a panicked voice shouted, “Odelle!”

Then she was airborne.

The icy water hit her like a punch in the gut. All her brain could process was the bitter cold. It pummeled the breath from her chest, overwhelming all her senses. If the piercing winds of the wilderness had been intense, this was torture. As the water closed over her head, she flailed. Her limbs seemed too preoccupied with the change in temperature to follow her commands. It was a few seconds before she could gain enough control over her muscles to get her head above the surface, made all the more difficult by the weight of her water-logged winter coat.

She had to get out of the water. The cold had already penetrated Odelle’s bones, and she knew she wasn’t going to be able to swim much longer at this rate. She lunged towards the bank of the river, relieved to see that this was one of the places with a walkway.

A yank on Odelle’s leg pulled her back so violently that she swallowed a mouthful of river water as she tried to scream. She flipped onto her back to see what was impeding her progress, only to immediately forget the rancid taste of polluted water in her mouth. Latched onto her ankle was one of the horrible ice creatures. It looked the same as the Shadow creature that had chased her and Antony a week ago but made of shattered ice instead of swirling darkness. This one was smaller too, but more terrifying for its proximity and the fact that it was trying to force her back under the icy water.

“Odelle!”

Antony’s voice came from behind her, in the direction of the riverbank walkway. She thrashed, trying to swim towards him, but she was quickly losing the battle against the ice in her veins and the weight of the Shadow insistently yanking her to her doom.

Just before her head went under again, a bright object whizzed past her ear. It didn’t hit the Shadow, but its horrifying face turned towards it as it splashed into the water a few feet away. The distraction gave Odelle just enough of an opening to pull her leg from its gnarled hand. The suction keeping her prosthetic on threatened to give, but it managed to stay attached as it slid from the creature’s grasp.

Odelle kicked out, propelling herself away from the Shadow and toward the bank behind her, but the Shadow was in hot pursuit. She wasn’t going to be able to keep it at bay long enough to get to shore.

Another bright object sped over Odelle’s head. This one struck true. A bronze dagger buried itself in the Shadow’s shoulder joint. It gave a screech like the cracking of a thousand sheets of ice and sunk under the surface of the water. She couldn’t tell if it was dead or simply retreating, but she continued flailing away from the spot where it had sunk.

Her shoulders hit the stone wall of the riverbank. Immediately, hands grabbed under her armpits, hauling her out of the water. Multiple other sets of hands helped lift the rest of her onto the bank. Odelle slumped against them, no longer capable of helping as her body failed her altogether.

It was odd, she thought distantly as she laid back on the ground and Antony’s face appeared above her. She didn’t feel cold anymore. It was a nice change. Although, she thought she remembered somebody saying once that it was a bad sign.

“Call 911,” an unfamiliar voice said from her side. “She needs to go to a hospital.”

Nobody commented on the Shadow monster, seeming to think she had merely slipped and fell. People must only see what they wanted to, just as they always seemed to look away as she slipped through the mirrored surface of the Bean.

Antony didn’t seem to care what the voice wanted. He pulled at her arms, and Odelle managed to contribute enough effort to sit up. Antony looped one of her arms around his shoulder and heaved.

He let out a low grunt at the effort, and Odelle thought her arm might pop out of its socket, but he got her to some semblance of standing. To say he helped her walk to the curb would have been a vast understatement. Her feet scraped against the ground as he mostly dragged her, somehow hailing a cab in the process. It probably had something to do with the fact that he had a soaking wet woman draped across his shoulders.