doesn't slip

“Company,” I hissed to Carlos. I dropped down quietly from the window. My feet did not slip on the ice, because, hey, Queen of Winter over here. I moved quickly and crouched over him, putting my hands lightly on his chest. “Stay flat and stay still. I’ll keep you covered.”
He looked down at my hands and gave me a quick glance; then his expression went focused and stoic and he lay back on the sleet-covered ground.
I did everything I could to shore up the veil covering us both. The captain stepped out of the Elbow Room and looked around, and I got a close look at the man for the first time.
There was visibly something wrong with him. At a casual glance, it might have looked like he’d simply been exposed to a little too much cold and ultraviolet radiation and freezing salt water. But the cracks in his skin were a little too sharp edged, the reddened portions a little too brightly colored for that. I got the slow and horrible impression that his skin was trying to contain too much mass, like an overstuffed sausage. There were what looked like the beginnings of cataracts in his eyes—only their edges quivered and wobbled, like living things.
That was pretty weird, even by my standards.
It got absolutely hentai-level weird when the man opened his mouth and then opened it a little wider, and then opened it until his jaw visibly unhinged and a writhing tangle of purplish red tentacles emerged and thrashed wildly at the air, as if grasping for scents.
I felt my mouth stretch into a widening grin. A sleet storm was a terrible place for scent hunting. I couldn’t tell you how I knew that, but I knew it as certainly as I knew that he hadn’t noticed the flaws in my veil. This was not the territory of this creature, whatever it was. It was mine.


Brief Cases, Cold Case, Page 296