There are some lines you just can’t let another person cross. They don’t always make sense, they might not always seem like the most important things, but only you can know what they are, and when you butt up against one, you have to defend it. Besides, who knew what else the tattoo might do?
We stared at each other in silence.
This time, if we had one of those wordless conversations of ours I couldn’t hear a thing he said because I was too busy broadcasting a single, deafening word: No. As an afterthought, I felt for that strange place inside my skull, stoked it up into a furnace of flames, and tried to channel everything it would give me into the implacable refusal I was throwing his way. Tried to magic-up my “no,” in a manner of speaking, to amplify it.
I was astonished when Barrons suddenly smiled.
Even more so when he began to laugh, softly at first, but the rumble grew. I felt it deep in his chest, expanding. His hands moved from my throat to my shoulders, his teeth flashed in his dark face. He was electric, a live current up against my body, humming with vitality, burning with energy.
“Well done, Ms. Lane. Just when I think you’re all useless fluff and nails, you show me some teeth.”
I didn’t know if he was talking about my vocal refusal, or if my freshman effort to use that sidhe-seer place in my head to shove at him had worked, but he reached around me and worked at the chains binding me to the post. After a few moments, they dropped to the concrete with a clatter of steel.
“You win. This time. I won’t tattoo you. Not today. But in lieu of that, you will do something for me. Refuse and I tattoo you. And, Ms. Lane, if I chain you up one more time tonight, there’ll be no more talking. I’ll gag you.”
He unbuttoned his shirtsleeve, rolled it back, removed a wide silver cuff from his wrist, and handed it to me. I had a déjà vu moment, flashback to V’lane and the Cuff of Cruce, although this cuff was very different. I’d seen it on him many times. I accepted it and turned it in my hand. It was hot from his skin. Forged of thick silver, ornately embossed with Celtic knotwork, runes, and symbols, and lightly blackened, it looked ancient, like something out of a museum. “Put it on. Never take it off.”
I glanced up. He was too close. I needed distance. I stepped out from between him and the beam, skirting the pile of chains. “What does it do?” I asked.
“It will allow me to locate you if you disappear again.”
“Could you really have found me in Faery if I’d been tattooed?”
He looked away and said nothing. Then, “I would have at least known you were alive. I didn’t even know that.”
“Why didn’t you offer me the cuff first, instead of trying to tattoo me?”
“Because, Ms. Lane, a cuff can be removed or forgotten. A tattoo can’t. I still prefer the tattoo. The cuff is a concession, and one I’m making only because you’ve finally pulled your head out and begun exploring your … talents.” He smiled faintly.
Aha, so what I’d tried to do with that strange place in my skull had had some effect on him! That was something. It wasn’t exactly bending spoons with a thought, but it was a start. “Couldn’t somebody cut a tattoo off me?” Didn’t the ink go only so many layers of skin deep?
“It would be risky and immensely painful. I intended to hide it.”
I looked down at myself. “Just where were you planning to hide a”—I veered sharply away from that cliff—“I don’t want to know.” I examined the cuff. “Does it do anything else?”
“Nothing you need to worry about. Put it on. Now.”
I saw all kinds of nonnegotiable in his eyes and I knew he would tattoo me, and I would have to leave, and despite my bravado, I wasn’t ready to be on my own in this dark world.
I slipped it on my wrist. It was huge. I pushed it up my arm but it just slid back down, and fell off over my hand. He caught it before it hit the floor, and forced the ends apart. He placed it above my biceps and squeezed it until the ends met. I had just enough muscle to keep it where it was.
“What did you and V’lane do in Faery?” he asked casually.
I shrugged, in no mood to talk about Alina, and I suspected telling him I’d had the most intense orgasm of my life on a beach beneath a Fae sun probably wouldn’t go over real well. I glanced at the floor. It occurred to me the garage had been silent tonight. I wondered if his monster slept. Barrons had watched me break into the place on his video cameras. He knew I knew. “What do you keep under your garage, Barrons?” I countered. I was so certain of his answer that I mouthed it along with him.
“Nothing you need to worry about.” He gave me a cold look. “If you already know the answer, Ms. Lane, don’t waste my time. You just wasted a month of it.”
“Fine, Barrons, keep your secrets but know this: I’ll only confide in you to the extent that you confide in me. You keep me in the dark, I’ll keep you in the dark, and you know what that does? Leaves us both bumbling around in the dark. Seems pretty stupid to me.”
“My night vision’s just fine. Burn the bikini, Ms. Lane. Trust nothing he gives you.”
I snorted and shrugged my cuff-bound arm at him. “But I can trust what you give me? Give me a break.”
“If you think to stand between V’lane and me, and play both ends against the middle, you’ll get ripped to pieces. If I were you, Ms. Lane, I’d choose a side, and fast.”
I began restoring order to the store the next morning: sweeping, dusting, tossing broken baubles in the trash, and restocking books. Barrons had suggested I leave the shop closed, but I needed the store. Illusion was one salve, purpose and routine were another.
He hadn’t broken my iPod and sound dock; thankfully I’d had them safely tucked away in a cabinet beneath the register, so I listened to old Beach Boys music while I cleaned. I sang along to “Sloop John B.” at the top of my lungs: I want to go home. This is the worst trip I’ve ever been on.
Every now and then, I’d glance out the window at the blustery fall sky, and try to deal with the fact that while I’d sunned with my pseudosister, summer had turned to fall overnight—literally; it was now October. I consoled myself with the thought that six hours of good sun was probably all I’d have gotten in a month in Dublin anyway.
The store was nearly presentable by lunchtime, after which I turned my attention to the month of newspapers that had piled up in my absence, delivered but not sold. I gathered a couple of packing boxes and began tossing the dailies in to drag out to the trash later. After a few moments, I stopped pitching them, riveted by the headlines.
While I’d been gone, Dublin had suffered an unprecedented hike in crime, and the media was crucifying the Garda over it. (On a personal note, I hoped that meant Inspector Jayne would be too busy with other cases to continue harassing me.) The incidence of unsolved muggings and rapes was up by sixty-four percent, and homicides by nearly one hundred and forty-two percent year-to-date—but that was only half the story the papers were telling: The brutality of the crimes had intensified as well.
I read paper after paper, digested one alarming news story after the next. These were no straightforward murders. They were vicious, sadistic killings, as if the darkest, most disturbed part of people was boiling to the surface and spilling over. Every few days, the headlines announced some new, shockingly more violent multiple-homicide-cum-suicide.
Was it possible that Unseelie walking among humans—even unseen—was changing people? Unlocking their ids? Unleashing the most depraved in us all?
What else had happened while I’d been gone? I glanced uneasily to my right, as if I could somehow see through the wall to know if the cancerous Dark Zone had metastasized in my absence. If I went searching through maps, would I find more parts of the city missing?
“This is awful,” I told Barrons, later that night, as we got into the only nondescript vehicle he owned, the dark sedan we’d used the night we’d robbed Rocky O’Bannion. “Have you seen the news lately?”
He nodded.
“And?”
&
nbsp; “A great deal happened while you were gone, Ms. Lane. Perhaps it will make you think twice about spending time with V’lane.”
I ignored the jibe. “I called my dad today. He acted like we’d just talked a few days ago.”
“I sent him a few e-mails from your laptop. He called once. I covered for you.”
“You hacked into my laptop? That’s personal!” I was outraged. I was also glad he’d kept my dad from worrying in my absence, and curious how he’d gotten past my security measures. “How?”
He gave me a dry look. “Your general password, Ms. Lane, was ‘Alina.’ Your e-mail password was ‘rainbow.’ ”
I huffed into the passenger seat. It was stiff and cold. There were no seat heaters. I preferred the Viper, or the Porsche or the Lamborghini or pretty much anything else, but it seemed anonymity was the name of the game tonight. “Where are we going, Barrons?” I asked irritably. For a change, he hadn’t specified my clothing, and left to my own devices I’d chosen jeans, a sweater, and boots, with a jacket.
“An old abbey, Ms. Lane. A simple drive-by. No need to walk it. It won’t take long, but it’s a few hours’ drive from the city.”
“What do you think might be there? Are we looking for something specific?”
“Just looking.”
“Was the abbey built on an ancient sidhe-seer site like the graveyard?” Barrons did nothing without good reason. Something about the abbey made him think there might be an OOP there. I wanted to know what it was.
He shrugged.
“Well, why aren’t we going to walk it?”
“It’s occupied, Ms. Lane. I doubt they would welcome us.”
“Monks?” I knew monasteries often had strict rules about permitting women on the grounds. “Or nuns?” They’d take one look at Barrons and decide the devil himself had come knocking. He not only looked dangerous, he emanated something that made even me feel like crossing myself sometimes, and I’m not religious. I see God in a sunrise, not in repetitious ritual. I went to a Catholic church once—sit, stand, kneel, kneel, stand, sit—and got so stressed out trying to anticipate how next to position myself that I’d missed most of what was being said.
He grunted noncommittally in that way that meant he was done answering my questions, so I might as well save my breath. I wondered what he thought we were going to accomplish with a mere drive-by at this mysterious abbey, considering how close I had to be to sense an OOP. That thought raised another very belated one—and I smacked myself in the forehead. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten until now. “Who came through the basement door that night in Wales, Barrons?” He hadn’t mentioned a thing about it.
From the immediate tension in his body I knew the memory was not a pleasant one. “More bloody thieves.”
“Are you kidding me? You mean besides us and whoever got the amulet? There were three of us after it that night?”
“Bloody damned convention.”
“Well, who were they? Someone else from the auction?”
“I have no bloody idea, Ms. Lane. Never seen them before. Never heard of them. As far as I knew, there weren’t any bloody Scots in the game. It’s as if they dropped from the bloody damned sky.” He paused then added darkly, “And they knew too bloody much for my liking.”
All those “bloodys” was a veritable cornucopia of emotion for Barrons. Whoever the thieves had been, whatever had transpired after V’lane had sifted me off to Faery, it had disturbed him profoundly. “Are you sure they aren’t the ones who stole it?”
“If they’d been responsible for the killings, it wouldn’t have been a massacre.”
“What do you mean?”
“Although one of the men was versed in the black arts, both were Druid-trained. Unless blood is required for a specific purpose, a Druid kills cleanly. Whoever, whatever killed the guards and staff that night did it with either the detached sadism of a pure sociopath, or immense rage.”
I stuck to the subject of the thieves to avoid the memory of those mutilated bodies. “There are Druids around today? I thought they died out a long time ago.”
“That’s what the world thinks about sidhe-seers, too,” he said dryly. “You need to lose your preconceptions.”
“How do you know one of them was into black magic?”
He shot me a sideways glance and I knew he was about to stop answering my questions. I was surprised he’d answered this many. “He was heavily tattooed. Black magic calls a price, Ms. Lane, that can be … diminished by working protection runes into the skin.”
I thought about that a moment and followed it to its logical conclusion. “Don’t you eventually run out of skin?”
“Precisely. Some payments can only be deferred, not denied. I warrant most tell themselves they’ll only do ‘one more small spell.’ It’s a drug, like any other.”
I eyed him, wondering what his elegant Italian suit and crisp white shirt might conceal. He had all the tattooing implements. What did Barrons look like without his clothes on? “Well, if these thieves weren’t at the auction,” I hurriedly dispelled that image, “how did they learn about it?”
“You think we stood around and chatted, Ms. Lane? You’d just vanished and I had no idea where you’d gone. We made short work of each other and moved on.”
Wondering what constituted “short work” in Barrons’ book, I glanced out the window. We were passing through the Temple Bar District. The increase in crime had yet to impact the craic-filled party zone. It was bustling as usual.
And teeming with Unseelie.
There was at least one for every twenty or so people. I hoped that meant they favored the tourist zone, not that all of Dublin was infested to a similar ratio. This was significantly more Unseelie than I’d seen a few days, no—a month ago—when I’d last walked these boisterous cobbled streets. “Oh, God, the Lord Master brought more of them through while I was gone, didn’t he? A lot more.”
Barrons nodded. “Somehow. Not at LaRuhe. He must have constructed a new portal somewhere. I’ve been meaning to tell you the dolmen and the warehouse were destroyed. It looked as if someone dropped a bomb on them.”
I narrowed my eyes. I’d just spotted the dainty, diaphanous Fae I’d seen sunning itself on the fountain the day I’d encountered Dani. It was standing outside a bar, in the middle of a group of young people. As I watched, it grew even more transparent and took a sort of flickering step toward a curvaceous, smiling brunette, turned—and settled straight into her skin—like slipping into a coat.
The brunette’s eyes widened for a split second and she shook her head, as if trying to dislodge something from her ear. The Fae did not exit her body. I turned as we passed, watching through the rear window. Nothing came out. I flexed my sidhe-seer sense, tried to peer past the human shell and see the Fae within.
I couldn’t. Couldn’t see it and couldn’t sense it. I might be able to penetrate their glamour, but I couldn’t detect a Fae inside a human skin. Until this moment, I’d not known it was possible for a Fae to do such a thing.
I watched until the brunette disappeared from view. She was no longer smiling. I wondered what awful thing I’d just witnessed, wondered if I even wanted to know. I could hardly hop out of the car, race back down the blocks, and attempt to exorcise the girl. The whole street would think I was nuts and the Fae inside her would know I knew. “I know. V’lane did it for me,” I told Barrons absently.
There was a moment of silence. I glanced over and I swear I saw steam coming out of his ears. “Too bad he wasn’t there to save you the day you nearly died, Ms. Lane,” he said coolly.
“He was there to get rid of the Shades. Where were you?”
“He demanded a price. I don’t ask a price of you. Nor do I try to fuck you every time I see you.”
“Yes, you do. Ask a price, I mean. You make me OOP detect. You both dress me in sleazy clothing, boss me around, and tell me as little as you have to in order to get what you want. You both tried to put a cuff on me. You succeeded. You’re n
o different than he is. You’re both using me. The way I see it, you’ve both saved my life once. That makes you even in my book.”
He slammed on the brakes so abruptly that my seat belt cut into my breasts. If it had been a late-model car, I’d have been eating airbag. He reached across me and flung open my door. “If you really believe that, Ms. Lane, get out.”
I glanced out at the night. We were well past Temple Bar now, and into a mixed neighborhood of commercial and residential that was tightly buttoned up for the night. Even armed with my spear and flashlights, I had no desire to be walking around those dark, deserted streets by myself.
“Oh, don’t be so melodra—AHHHH!” I clutched my head with both hands as my skull was perforated by a thousand red hot ice picks.
The abbey was going to have to wait.
Bile exploded in the back of my throat. The alien part inside my head became a crematorium for my brain, the inferno spread to every cell in my body like someone was squirting me with gasoline, inside and out.
I could feel the skin on my body blistering, charring. I could smell myself burning.
Blessedly, blissfully, I passed out.
“It was the Sinsar Dubh again, wasn’t it?” Barrons demanded, the moment I opened my eyes.
I would have nodded but my head ached too much to risk it. “Y-Yes,” I whispered. Gingerly, I raised a hand to my face, felt my lips, my cheek, my hair. Contrary to what I’d expected, my skin was not covered with scabby blisters, and although my hair was short and the wrong color, at least it was still there. “Wh-Where are we?” It didn’t feel like a car seat beneath me.
Karen Marie Moning’s Fever Series 5-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever Page 42
