by Cat Marsters
In her hand was a bent iron crowbar.
“Uh,” Ruarc’s eyes fixed on the corroded metal, “can we talk about this later?”
“No.” Grabbing the goblin as it attempted to sidle away, she smashed it back against the wall with a wet smacking sound. Gone was the terrified woman who’d been held back with a crucifix last night -- here was a vampire hepped up on faery blood and fury.
“Won’t hurrrt youu,” the goblin pleaded, obsidian eyes huge. “Onllly waaant Unssseelie.”
Her eyes narrowed and she shoved the iron bar across the goblin’s throat. Ruarc winced, gaining his feet and standing well back. He really didn’t want to give Maria any reason to use that iron bar on him.
“Then you tell me,” Maria snarled -- and a vampire with her fangs out could really snarl -- “who came here last night and attacked us?”
The goblin’s eyes darted around helplessly.
“Move the bar,” Ruarc said. “It can’t speak.”
Grudgingly, she did so.
“Won’t tellll youuu,” the goblin hissed, and she snarled and stepped back, planting a foot against its chest and ripping off one of its arms as if it was a paper doll.
Ruarc stared. You ripped its arm off.
Yes, and I’ll do the same to you if you don’t shut the fuck up and stay out of my goddamned head.
“Now,” Maria held the stunned goblin back with its own severed limb, her nose wrinkling at the stench of blood pouring from its arm socket, “another one of you slimy little bastards was here last night and he had a friend. A Seelie faery. What did they want?”
The goblin looked wretched. “Kiiill the Unsssseelie,” it whimpered.
“This Unseelie?” Maria indicated Ruarc. “Yeah. Well, maybe I’ll help you with that.”
“Who sent you?” Ruarc asked, before she killed it and he lost his chance.
The goblin shook his head. He sighed, pulled off his shirt and wrapped it around his hand to pick up the crowbar Maria had dropped.
“Tell me, or I’ll shove this where your arm used to be.”
The goblin squealed. “Unsssseelie High Court! Hire Gresshk to kill mind-speaker faery after Skalar failed!”
“Skalar was yesterday’s goblin?” Maria said, and Greshk nodded. She glanced at Ruarc. “So your High Court wants you dead. Whose brains did you pick there?”
“No one’s,” Ruarc said, frowning. “That is, no one in the High Court. The Queen asked me to…”
He trailed off. He’d read those humans for her, just like she asked. Only then he went and advised them afterwards. Advised them against the Queen’s wishes.
“Did the Queen hire you?” he demanded. “Did she get someone to hire you?”
“What is this, Twenty Questions?” Maria grumbled. “I didn’t come down here to get myself all slimy so you could interrogate this disgusting creature.”
“Maria, please,” he said. “I have to know who’s trying to kill me.”
“If you don’t shut up, it’ll be me,” she said.
“Wasss not the Queeen,” Greshk hissed. “Ssshe don’t talk to goblinsss. Wasss herrr boy toy.”
Ruarc blinked. The muscular fae who’d been pleasuring the Queen while she made her demands of Ruarc?
“On her order?” he asked.
For fuck’s sake, he said it wasn’t her, Maria snapped in his head.
Yes, but she could have ordered him to do it. Plausible deniability. Remember we can’t lie, Ruarc told her bitterly. If he was found out, she wouldn’t miss him. There’s plenty to take his place.
But none to take yours, Maria said shrewdly.
The Queen wouldn’t have me killed, he said, a little uncertainly. She saved my life after we escaped from Starne’s. Why would she do that, then kill me over something so trivial?
Saved your life? Maria scoffed. Yes, but she left you in there for five years, flyboy. Sounds like she really loves you.
The goblin was watching them, shaking and whimpering. “Pleassse,” it hissed, “I go now?”
Maria relented a little. “Not yet,” she said. “You’re my bitch now. You go back to whatever disgusting slimy hell dimension you came from, and you go find out who really wants this faery dead. Then you come back and you tell me. And if you do it right,” she waved his severed arm at him, “I’ll let you have this back.”
Greshk’s huge eyes widened a little more, then he nodded and abruptly vanished.
Maria turned, and Ruarc was about to thank her for sending the goblin to find out who wanted him dead when he caught the look in her eyes.
“Don’t you dare think I’m doing this for your benefit, maricón,” she snapped, grabbing the iron bar from him. He didn’t let go.
“Then why are you doing it?”
“Because, baboso, whoever hired him also hired the Seelie maricón who tried to rape me last night. And when I find out who that asshole was, I’m gonna tear his arms off and stuff them down his throat.” She tugged on the crowbar.
“He probably didn’t hire the Seelie, and if he did it was just for a distraction,” Ruarc said, and immediately realized it was the wrong thing to say.
“Oh, sure, to you it’s a distraction. Well, I happen to take that kind of thing pretty seriously. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t exactly enjoy my time in Breslin’s zoo, and --”
Ruarc yanked on the crowbar. “Breslin? The guy who owned it was called Starne.”
She scoffed. “Yeah, sure, he was when you got there. How old do you think he was? He was just the latest buyer.”
Rage boiled through him. A man who bought people. Who stole them. Who’d snared Ruarc in the middle of sex with two friends and stuck him in a cell for five years, rented him out to rich customers who liked the idea of sex with a bona fide faery.
His fingers clenched around the iron bar, its power sizzling through the fabric wrapped around his hand.
“You think I’m lying!” Maria looked furious.
“No, I don’t.” Remembering her dream, the way she’d been turned -- no. She hadn’t been lying. “Who was he? The vampire who bit you?”
New anger flashed in her eyes. “Some cabrón who turned me to save his own skin. Breslin had him but he made a bargain.” Her lips twisted, baring her fangs. “His own freedom in return for a virgin fledgling.”
Horror stabbed at Ruarc. “You were a virgin when they put you in there?” Christ in a miniskirt, no wonder she’d reacted so badly to him.
Maria gave a mirthless smile. “Not for long. You see, faery, I didn’t have the luxury of playmates like you did. I had no one to fuck around with for fun. I had chains, and holy water, and guards standing over me, and fat men laughing while they fucked me. I had pain, and humiliation.”
“It wasn’t a picnic for any of us,” Ruarc murmured, thinking of the iron cage he’d been kept in. Remembering the bite of the iron shards as Chloe had destroyed the zoo with her voice.
“Oh, sure. I saw you happily fucking all day. And for some variety, they put you with the elf, or with the siren. I wasn’t allowed out with anyone but a client.”
Ruarc tilted his head. “Why was that? They didn’t want you drinking supernatural blood?”
Her lip curled back. “Hah, I doubt they knew.” She advanced on him, tugging him closer by the iron bar. “You want to know why I wasn’t allowed out with any of the other exhibits? Because I killed one of them, that’s why.”
“You killed one? Who?”
She bared her fangs at him. “Before your time, flyboy. He was a faerie. And he thought he was better than me. That’s all you need to know.”
The hell it is.
He knew she’d heard him by the fury in her eyes. She shoved the crowbar at him and he tensed away from it, missing by a hairsbreadth.
“You killed him because he was a faery?”
She visibly prickled. “He would have killed me for being a vampire.”
“You don’t know that --”
“I do know that!” Her voice rose
to a shout. “You’re the one who likes to dick around in people’s memories, maricón. You tell me if it’s the truth or not.”
Ruarc’s jaw tightened. “I don’t dick around in people’s memories. Coming into your dream was an accident.”
“You are so full of shit --”
“I’m a faery,” he gritted. “We can’t lie.”
“Yeah, you keep telling me that, but you know what? I don’t believe you. What were you doing in my dream?”
“I drifted there by accident. I’m -- I’m --” sorry, he wanted to say, but he couldn’t, because he wasn’t. How could he be sorry he’d experienced that?
Her eyes glinted. She feinted with the iron bar and barely missed his bare stomach. “What?” she demanded. “A liar? A cheat? A low-down, no-good cabrón who thinks he’s better than a stupid vampire?”
“I don’t think you’re stupid.”
“See, you’re lying ag --”
“I don’t think you’re stupid,” Ruarc yelled. “I think you’re insecure and crazy and desperate and proud and so angry you’re vibrating with it --”
“You think I’m crazy?”
Sure, that was the one to pick on.
“Yes. I think you’re a bloody nutcase, and you know what? I must be even more of a bloody nutcase, because I actually like you for it.”
“Oh, now I know you’re talking shit --”
Exasperated, Ruarc grabbed her by the jaw and kissed her, catching her off-guard until she jabbed him with the iron bar and the sudden, burning pain sent him leaping back, yelping.
“Jesus Christ, woman, do you have any idea --” Breathless, he cupped the wound, felt it sizzle and blister deep into his flesh. Tears burned his eyes. Nothing in the world hurt worse than iron, nothing. Stumbling, he fell back against a pile of pallets, smashing through them. Shards of wood dug into his skin but he barely noticed. The pain of the iron bar, the deep jagged wound in his stomach, obliterated all other sensations.
“Don’t you dare ever do that to me,” Maria snapped, but she had the grace to look a little concerned.
“Duly noted,” Ruarc gasped, trying to brace himself against the pain enough to gain his feet. Blood churned between his fingers.
“You don’t get to treat me like that,” she said. “No one does.”
He nodded, his head swimming. “Next time I’ll ask.”
“Next time?” she snarled, but she tucked the crowbar under her arm and came over to help him up. “What makes you think you get a next time with me, maricón?”
Her grip was powerful, and when she hauled him to his feet he stumbled against her, narrowly missing the crowbar again.
“I meant --” he was having trouble breathing “ -- next time I want… want to kiss y…”
She shot him a suspicious look. Pain so strong it made him nauseous washed through Ruarc, steeling his last breath.
Maria…
She stiffened. “I told you, stay out of my head.”
He couldn’t stand any more. She was entirely holding him up. I need to…I’m going… I have to…
go --
Maria would have screamed, if she hadn’t been too terrified.
In the space between breaths, she went from the alley behind the club to an endlessly huge marble hall, cloaked in freezing mist and numbing silence. Ruarc, still in her arms, faltered and fell, taking her down with him, thudding heavily on the achingly cold marble floor.
The mist rolled over them. The silence pressed down. Maria didn’t want to break it.
What the hell, faery?
His eyes fluttered. His skin was translucent. Ruarc, he said into her mind. My name is Ruarc.
His voice was weak. He was dying.
Hastily, Maria checked for the crowbar -- was it touching him? No. Well, at least she wasn’t making it worse. But how the hell did she make it better?
Where are we?
Faery. Need… help…
The faery realm. Oh, Jesus and all his saints.
What do I do? she asked him, her heart pounding, scrambling back so her weight wasn’t on him.
I… the Queen. Call… she can heal…
The Faery Queen? Maria shook her head, appalled. She’d heard stories. Who hadn’t? You didn’t mess with the Faery Queen. I’m a vampire. She’ll kill me!
Ruarc gave her a faint smile. Well, then, he said, and closed his eyes.
What? Maria shook him. Well, then, what? Ruarc, what?
Nothing. His chest rose and fell. And then it didn’t rise again.
Panicked now, Maria tried calling out with her mind. Faery Queen! I -- we need help!
Nothing. Ruarc lay still. Angry -- because one reflex she’d learned over the last seventy years was to turn fear into anger -- Maria clutched at Ruarc’s cool shoulders, shook his heavy body. A dead weight.
No.
Gripping the iron bar in both hands, she took in a deep, deep breath, then opened her lungs and bellowed, “Oi! Faery Queen!”
For a second, nothing happened. Maria clutched Ruarc’s hand and felt tears rise behind her eyes. He was dead. She’d killed him.
“Do not,” came an icy voice from behind her, “call me in such a manner.”
Almost afraid of what she’d see, Maria looked up.
The woman standing there was so beautiful it hurt to look at her. Her hair was like frost, her skin blue-white. In her eyes were depths of cold so chilling Maria shivered. She was carrying a bundle of cloth that Maria realized in horror was a human baby. Against all the odds, it seemed perfectly warm and healthy.
“Vampire,” the Queen added contemptuously, and all of a sudden several dozen terrifyingly huge faeries surrounded her.
The crowbar didn’t feel like such a fantastic weapon any more.
She was surrounded by tall, ethereal people, all incredibly beautiful but all somehow looking like they ought to be wearing toe-tags. Ruarc didn’t usually look like that. Sure, he was a gringo supreme with skin that seemed to have never seen the sun, but he didn’t look this… dead.
Usually.
“He needs help,” she said, gesturing to Ruarc’s still body, hoping she’d been wrong and he wasn’t actually dead yet. It was so damned cold here anyone’d feel like a corpse.
The Queen glanced at Ruarc with disinterest. “He is low-court,” she said dismissively, “and he has displeased me.” Her eyes narrowed. “As have you. How dare you enter our realm!”
“I didn’t do it on purpose, okay? He brought me here. He’s hurt and he needs help. He said you could heal him.”
A muscular young man wearing little more than a loincloth -- yet somehow displaying no signs of feeling the cold -- turned to the Queen.
“My lady,” he said, and there was a whine in his voice. “We cannot believe her! She is a vampire.”
“A vampire who can hear you,” Maria muttered.
The Queen looked bored. “Kill her.”
Maria’s hands tightened around the crowbar and her body automatically curled over Ruarc’s. “I’ll bargain,” she said quickly, and felt a brush against her mind as she did.
No, Ruarc said. Don’t… bargain…
Relief flooded through her. He was alive! Dammit, he was alive and she was about to get killed.
Would you rather I died? I’m trying to save your life here, maricón. A little gratitude would be nice.
She thought she felt him smile, which was incredibly weird.
“What could you possibly have,” the Queen said in tones that could have given an entire continent hypothermia, “that I could ever want?”
A faint smile rippled through the assembled fae.
Smug bastards, Maria thought.
Especially… boy toy…
Yes, well, probably. Her gaze went to the especially handsome young man standing very close to the Queen, wearing a self-satisfied expression that made Maria want to swing her crowbar at his groin.
Boy toy…
“No! Wait!” She pointed with the crowbar, and was gratif
ied when they all stepped back. “He’s the one who sent assassins after Ruarc! He sent two goblins and a Seelie.”
They all froze, quite a feat for such a chilly group. The young fae gave a nervous laugh.
The Queen didn’t look amused.
“We caught one of them about fifteen minutes ago. He was called… Greshk. And he only has three arms,” Maria added.
“My lady,” the young fae spluttered. “We can’t believe a vampire! They lie!”
Not… this… one…
From the way every single faery turned to stare at Ruarc, Maria guessed that thought had been intended for more than just her.
“Mind-speaker?” The Queen handed the baby to an attendant fae and fell gracefully to her knees, careful not to touch Maria. “What do you know of this?”
Truth, came Ruarc’s voice, very faint and weak.
“He’s dying,” Maria said urgently, grasping Ruarc’s cold hand in her own, remembering the cool, rich drops of blood he’d given her when she’d needed it.
The Queen was silent for a moment, radiating a coldness so intense Maria felt her fangs start to chatter. Then she said, without looking up, “Restrain him,” and two of the largest fae grabbed the struggling boy toy.
The Queen laid her hands on Ruarc’s chest, moved one down to cover the horrible wound on his stomach. Deep, blistered, it looked as if the iron had started eating through his flesh the second Maria stuck it in him.
She cringed. Ruarc, I’m so sorry.
Again, that faint smile in her mind.
The Queen closed her eyes, and Maria waited. Waited for a glow, or a pulse of energy, or… something. But nothing happened. The Queen removed her hands, and rose bonelessly to her feet.
The wound was healed.
“Mind-speaker,” she said imperiously, and Ruarc’s eyes snapped open.
“My Queen,” he said. In a movement so fast Maria could hardly see it, he was on one knee, bowing his head to the Queen.
“Do not displease me further,” she told him dispassionately.
“It doesn’t please me at all, my lady, believe me,” he said, looking up at her. “But the goblin Greshk told us he’d been hired by your… consort to kill me.”
