Page 51 of The Devil's Ice

“I’ll tell you, Vix,” he said slowly. “Justyou, andjustthis once. Then we never talk about it again.”

“You don’t have to –”

“I want to.”

The tone of finality in his voice was so total, that Vixen shut right up. She knew that Ice was doing this for himself as much as for her, and she braced herself for the story. Whatever it was, it had frozen Ice’s core to ice, frozen it solid. He might be able to be gentle with her, take care of her, but there was a part of him that was always going to be hard, cold, menacing, dark. She didn’t think that he’d ever let it loose on her… but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t there.

It didn’t take long for him to tell her about that Christmas Day. He spoke as if he was reading a police report: brief, to the point, emotionless. Just the facts, ma’am, and keep how you feel out of it, if you don’t mind, but the rote recitation didn’t diminish the horror even one little bit. No matter how matter-of-fact Ice kept it, the fact was that a six-year-old boy saw his mother dead and faceless at his drunk father’s feet, saw his father point a gun at him, saw his father blow his brains out. Then that little boy sat in that trailer with two dead bodies for almost five days, playing with a Matchbox car, before his father’s loser buddy came over to go for a drink.

What that five days must have been like, Vixen couldn’t imagine, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to ask. Instead, she said:

“Where did you go after? Family?”

“No. Into the system. Foster care.”

“Oh, no,” she breathed, dismayed. She’d never heard one single good story from any survivor of foster care, and she didn’t think that Ice would be the first. “It was bad?”

“Bad enough that I ran away when I was twelve. Took my chances on the streets.”

“Oh, no,” she repeated. “What did you do to survive?”

He shrugged. “Ran drugs, then sold ‘em. Robbed empty houses when people were on vacation. I was so cold and business-like about everything and everyone, I got the name ‘Ice’ then, and it’s stuck ever since. Nobody in my life right now knows my birth name, and I’ll never tell.” He stopped, and stared at her hard. “But you need to know something: I never mugged anyone in the street, beat anyone up for money, killed anyone for their wallet or TV. I know I hurt people with the drugs, but I didn’t care about that, seeing as they wanted them so bad and they were chasing me, waving money at me. I broke into houses and took whatever I could carry and fence, but nobody was ever there when I did that. I don’t have much of a moral compass, Vix, and what I have doesn’t point north most of the time, but even at my most desperate and hungry, I never took down an innocent.”

“OK.”

“The first time I killed someone, it was when I was in Iraq. It wasn’t even technically murder, because I was wearing a uniform with the American flag on my chest, and I was trained and under orders. That was my first time taking a life, and here’s the truth, baby: I was totally fine with it.”

“You were?”

“I was. I found out in that moment that as long as I believe in the kill, I can live with it. More than that, I wasgoodat it. So many guys in my unit had crises of conscience after killing a man, they twisted and turned and went to the chaplain and the therapist. But not me. I was at peace with it, because I believed that it was me or them, kill or be killed. I didn’tlovedoing it, you understand, and I didn’t go looking for it, never got a taste for it, but I perfected it.” He took a breath. “I was so efficient that I got tapped for some special training, and ended up a SEAL in Afghanistan for six years.Thatwas when the killing got hard, though. Messy.”

“Why?”

“Because by then, I couldn’t tell anymore who the enemy actually was. It was a clusterfuck over there, with us killing kids, and kids killing us, and us paying off bombers and terrorists for safe passage to get someplace to take down a village becausemaybesome guy was there who we wanted dead, but I thought that wealsowanted all the fucking bombers and terrorists dead, but instead we were workingwiththem. Giving them hard US currency so they could go out and finance a new attack on American soil. You get me? It wasn’t black and white anymore. Wasn’t clear.”

“Yeah.”

“So then I started having nightmares,” Ice said slowly. “About – about Christmas. About the last time that I was so completely helpless and out of control in a situation. Hell, even living on the street as a kid, I felt more on top of shit than as a fully-trained-up grown man in Afghanistan, having to shoot kids in the face, and watch known terrorists walk off with bags of cash.”

“I can only imagine.”

“Thatwas when the drinking got bad,” he said. “I mean, I took my first drink when I was ten and I liked it just fine, and I drank too much and way too often well into my twenties – but it was when I finally came back state-side that it spun out of control completely. When I joined The Road Devils.”

“Why then?”

“Because under Wheels Jordan, the Prez before Wolf, a bit before your time, I started being glorified for the killing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Wheels started celebrating me for it. He’d send me out on a job, I’d hurt or kill someone, and come back to a huge party at Satan’s, with women and music and drugs and booze. It was a good time at the parties, lots of laughs and bragging. I never touched the drugs – but I sure asfuckoverdid the women and the alcohol. Did that for years and years.”

“So…” She briefly touched his hand. “Why did you actually stop drinking like that?”

“You were right, what you said.” He sighed. “About looking in the mirror and seeing my old man staring back at me. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened – it was just another fucking Wednesday in my life – but something about my face, the way I was standing there. My eyes.Somethingscared the living shit out of me that day, and all I saw washim. Then all I saw washer. And that was when I realized that Iwashim – I was a drunk piece of shit who went around killing people and laughing about it after. I suddenly understood that I’d gone from hurting people to protect myself and others, or to obey orders, or to save my family, to hurting them for a story to tell over whisky and tequila shots.”

“But you kept doing what Wheels wanted?”

“I did. But I never went to another party, and if I absolutelyhadto go, I’d stick to Coke, maybe two sips of beer. Pretty much stopped hanging out with the guys socially at all, actually. Did what I was told, then either hit the gym or just went home. After a while, the boys came to see me as a damn good Enforcer, a fucking superb club protector – but nobody to have a drink with, or spend time with. And that was all fine by me. It was better than what I’d had before.”

---