Silver Skin (A Cold Iron Novel)

by D. L. McDermott

  He had hoped to find some Druid iron, something he might give to Helene, but he discovered only a handful of their crude stone implements, and these, which he found misshapen and distasteful, he left.

  His search took less than an hour. He returned to Helene’s office, using her key card to enter.

  She was gone.

  There was no sign of a struggle. The gleaming chrome and glass desk was untouched, not even a fingerprint to mar its pristine surface, the pencil can and small objets d’art all neatly in place.

  She might have gone down the hall to the ladies’ room. She might have been called away by a colleague. She might be doing any number of safe, mundane things, except that it was the first time since his wards had burned her geis that she had been out of his presence. Unprotected. Vulnerable.

  He didn’t like it. Precognition was not one of his Fae gifts, but an instinct for danger was.

  Miach reached out to Helene through the geis. He had not abused her trust, had not inscribed anything but a simple locator spell on her shoulder. Now he wished he had done more. Helene could hardly be expected to admire his honesty if it got her injured or killed. . . .

  She was somewhere to the east, above him, and because he could not feel her emotions or touch her thoughts through the geis, he had no idea whether she was simply visiting a gallery in the museum or being controlled by her Fae assailant.

  Too much of the building’s fabric contained iron for him to pass to her, so he was forced to take the wide marble stairs, up and up, through airy white galleries filled with abstract modern art, until the steps ended and he was on the top floor and he could still feel her above him.

  That’s when he knew something was wrong. No security guards patrolled this level, which appeared to be devoted to student shows. The white lights above an emergency door were flashing. Someone had tripped a silent alarm.

  Miach ran. Through the door. Up a flight of concrete stairs.

  Then he recoiled. At the landing the concrete steps ended, and an iron staircase began.

  Black, wrought iron. Two flights. Scaling them would cripple him, but there was no good reason for Helene to be on the roof. And no time to summon help from Liam or Nial or any of his half-blood family, who were not vulnerable, as the true Fae were, to the power of cold iron.

  He forged up the stairs. Pain shot through his body as soon as his foot struck the first riser, but he ground his teeth and kept going, taking the stairs two or three at a time. They shook with his passage. Halfway up the first flight he was already slowing. He sucked in a breath, and his lungs burned.

  Iron filings. Iron dust. Sifting up through the air. More than possible to be formed from disuse and decay. Someone had scattered pounds of the stuff on the stairs.

  Enough to kill most Fae. Not cleanly, either, but slowly, agonizingly, blighting and poisoning every cell in the body. He held his breath and kept going. Up another step, and another. He reached the landing, turned, could not go on without taking another deadly breath. The iron dust seared his lungs, his chest convulsed. He forced himself up the next flight, to the door to the roof, and then out.

  More iron filings dusted the ground in a circle radiating out from the door. He staggered through it, to the cleaner ground beyond, then crumpled to his knees on the gravel. The pain was nearly blinding, but he could see Helene at the other end of the roof.

  Her back was to Miach. She was walking, purposefully, toward the parapet. He called out to her, his voice a hollow rasp, no power left in it. “Helene, turn around, come back.”

  It would have been an irresistible command, if he wasn’t dying, if all of his power wasn’t locked in his body trying to hold back the inevitable.

  She didn’t even pause. It was as though she couldn’t hear him at all. Because she was obeying a deeper summons from the Fae who had ensorcelled her. Who had commanded her to climb the stairs to the roof, to walk to the edge, and who, in a moment, would tell her to jump.

  He must stop her, physically, and he would never make it to her in time. He could barely stand, and she was already climbing onto the rampart over the asphalt parking lot. Six stories up. And he was on his knees, trying desperately to summon his magic. If the building had been hewn stone or wood he could have borrowed its strength, but the steel and glass gave him nothing.

  Miach watched, helpless, as Helene Whitney prepared to jump to her death.

  Chapter 5

  There was only one way to save her, and he did it. It was crude, it was invasive, but it might work.

  Miach struck at her mind with the little strength he had, focusing his power, overloading and co-opting her motor skills, and turning her back, like a marionette dangling from his strings, the way she had come. The connection, the intimacy of the spell, was almost indescribable. Not quite the intimacy he’d planned for them. . . .

  He dared not touch any higher functions, had no idea what kind of compulsion she was under. And because he did not know if he could do it again so soon after contact with so much iron, he sent her into a deep and dreamless sleep, using the last of his failing strength to cross the roof and catch her as she fell.

  She was a tumble of tangled blond hair and long tanned limbs, her skirt riding high up above her knees. He lifted one eyelid. Her pupils were normal.

  Helene was no longer under the direct control of her unknown Fae antagonist. And he—he finally had her, soft and yielding, in his arms. But she was unconscious, and he was fit for nothing.

  The door opened a moment later and an elderly security guard put his head out. Fortunately the watchman was a relatively simple-minded man, and Miach was able to find just enough power in his voice to beguile him. He told the guard that everything was fine now, that the flashing lights had been a false alarm, that Miss Whitney was showing a few donors the view from the roof.

  Miach suggested the man leave the alarm disabled so as to allow the rest of Helene’s party up when they arrived. Then Miach dismissed him.

  Next he took off his jacket, rolled it, and placed it under Helene’s head. Then he called Elada. He told his right hand in a few terse sentences exactly what had happened.

  “Send Liam and Nial,” he said. “She’s out cold, and it’s better if she wakes naturally. There are iron stairs. And iron dust. They can carry her down.”

  “And you?” asked Elada, his resonant voice betraying some concern.

  “I’ll make it down on my own,” said Miach.

  “I can carry you,” said Elada.

  Miach had no doubt that Elada would. His loyalty was absolute. If Miach had ever doubted it, all his reservations had fled the day Elada had rescued him from the mound. The first Fae to escape their earthly prisons had not been great sorcerers like Miach but right hands like Elada, warriors without magic of their own who were used to fighting in tandem. The Druids had bound them with strictly physical means, and being physical Fae, they had broken free.

  But the strength of the Druids did not lay in arms. It lay in magic, especially in the power of voice that the Druids had studied from the Fae—studied, and surpassed all but the greatest of Sídhe sorcerers.

  Without a sorcerer to aid him, in order to free Miach, Elada had braved a temple mound teeming with Druid magicians and faced terrors of mind and magic almost beyond imagining.

  Elada would climb the iron stairs for Miach today, if Miach ordered him to do it. And then they would both be poisoned.

  “Just send the boys, my friend,” said Miach.

  He needed to draw power—life—from living things. Trees, grass, flowers, anything to halt the degenerative process going on in his body, the death, cell by cell, of his vital organs. Even then he would be weak and vulnerable for hours, possibly days, after contact with that much iron. There was no avoiding it.

  And he was damned if his grandsons were carrying him down. It wouldn’t help much anyway—there were two flights of pure iron. They would have an effect on him just being that close to his body. And there would be no avoiding the dus
t, which was poisoning the whole stairwell by now. More than enough to finish him, he expected.

  As his Fae opponent must have known. Miach had no doubt now that this unseen enemy had learned that Helene was under the protection of another Fae and that he had cased the building thoroughly and made particular note of the iron stairs.

  Miach knew something else now as well: this Fae had human followers—or mixed-breed offspring—who could handle cold iron. But if this unnamed Fae had thought that iron alone would stop Miach MacCecht, he had miscalculated. Miach was going to be iron sick, there was no doubt. For longer than he would like, probably.

  And then he was going to find this Fae. Find him, and kill him.

  • • •

  Helene woke up on silk sheets.

  No, not sheets. Silk upholstery. Smooth and cool. Stuffed with down and horsehair. Molded to her body. Angels flew overhead.

  She closed her eyes. When she opened them, the angels were still there.

  Helene sat up. She was in Miach’s library. She recognized the embossed red-leather walls, the dark wooden bookshelves, and the rich neoclassical furnishings, all silk damask and carved mahogany. When she swung her bare feet off the sofa, her toes touched a soft Persian carpet. It felt delightful.

  “Don’t get up too quickly,” someone said. It sounded like Miach.

  She ignored him and stood. The room started to spin, and she reached for the sofa arm to steady herself. Helene tried to remember how she had gotten there. She recalled being in her office, Miach drawing the symbol on her shoulder, sitting at her desk checking the new exhibits calendar, and then . . . nothing.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Your Fae persecutor summoned you to the parking lot. By way of the roof.”

  Miach’s voice was coming from behind her. Helene turned to discover him sitting in a chair in front of the window with a blanket over his shoulders, looking out at the water. She couldn’t see his face, but his voice sounded different, slightly raspy, less resonant.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Your attacker compelled you to leave your office, ascend through the galleries to the top floor of the museum, then climb to the roof and throw yourself off. You had reached the parapet by the time I caught up with you. I was forced to knock you out to stop you. I knew you wouldn’t like it, but there was no other way. Our enemy means to kill you, Helene. If you try to leave my house now, Elada will prevent it, by any means necessary.”

  His voice was definitely different. Ragged, almost. The music in it, the timber that always caused her, until she caught herself, to lean toward him when he spoke, was absent. It was what she said she wanted, to be able to hear him without that hypnotic resonance, but it disturbed her now and made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

  She approached his chair and thought she saw him shiver, but that couldn’t be right, because the Fae didn’t get sick. Did they? She stepped between the sorcerer and the window.

  The Sídhe were always pale, their skin a porcelain, otherworldly hue, but Miach’s complexion was ashen. There were dark circles beneath his deep brown eyes, and his lips were blue.

  “What happened to you?” she asked.

  “Iron poisoning. The stairs to your roof. Solid iron. And they were blanketed in iron filings.”

  Miach had described what iron could do to a Fae. Helene hadn’t imagined it would look like this. “You need a doctor,” she said. “A real one,” she added, remembering how he had first introduced himself.

  “A human doctor won’t be able to help me.”

  “A Fae doctor, then,” she said.

  “I am the only Fae on this side of the wall between worlds with any skill in the healing arts.”

  “Beth has some healing abilities,” Helene said. She didn’t understand exactly how they worked. “Could she help you?”

  “Druids are more talented at vivisection than healing,” he said. The bitterness was plain in his voice.

  If he weren’t an ancient immortal being, she would say he was cranky. He might be suffering from an entirely Fae weakness, but it was the most human she had seen him.

  “There must be something we can do,” Helene said.

  “I’ve done what I can.”

  “He’s gone and killed all my tomato plants is what he’s done,” said a woman’s voice from the door.

  Helene turned to find Nieve carrying a tea tray loaded with delicate bone china painted with pale-pink roses and rimmed with gold. Poppy-seed cakes fragrant with lemon were heaped on one of the plates, and Helene could smell the pot of warm honey, musky sweet. A sticky-fingered toddler followed in Nieve’s wake.

  “The oak’s lost every single leaf,” Nieve went on. “And he didn’t spare my rosebushes, either.” She set the tea tray down on the desk with an audible clink, then began offloading cups and plates, placing each one on the polished surface with a thunk. Evidently Miach was not the only cranky MacCecht in the house.

  “We’ll have to replant the whole garden now. He should have gone and pulled from the trees in the park, but I suppose he’s afraid Finn would hear of it.”

  “The Fae from Charlestown?” asked Helene, as the toddler climbed into her lap and ran his honey-coated fingers through her hair. He smelled like baby powder and green grass, and Helene found the warm burden comforting, a hint of normalcy in an otherwise disturbingly strange day. “Why would Finn care about the trees in the park?”

  “Because,” said Miach, “if he hears that I’ve drained the trees in my own garden and the ones in the park, he’ll know I’m weak, vulnerable. We can’t afford for him to know that, particularly if he’s mixed up in this business with the solstice gate at the museum, and your blackouts.”

  “He isn’t,” Nieve said darkly. “Listening to you tell it, a person might imagine Finn was responsible for everything bad in this world. But he wasn’t mixed up in the Beth Carter affair, was he?”

  “No,” Miach said pointedly, “but his sons were.”

  Helene had the impression she had stumbled into the middle of a family argument.

  “So were some of yours. And anyways, not Garrett,” said Nieve gravely.

  “You can’t be sure of that,” replied Miach. “Just because I didn’t catch Garrett on the island doesn’t mean he wasn’t part of it.”

  Nieve collected little Garrett from Helene’s lap and said, “Just for that, the Grand Old Man can get up and pour his own tea. There’s cake under the dome. But let him get it himself. If you want a real meal, Helene, you can come downstairs at six. There’ll be a place set for you. Liam is taking me to your apartment to get some clothes. Is there anything you’d particularly like while the old man holds you prisoner?”

  “I can hear you rolling your eyes, Nieve,” Miach said from his chair.

  “Good,” said the woman whom Helene found difficult to believe could be Miach’s granddaughter. Difficult to believe that he was thousands of years old when he looked only a few years past thirty. Difficult to believe when he acted just like any other man when he was sick, which was to say, like a ten-year-old boy.

  “Helene’s life is in danger,” said Miach. “After today’s events, I think she’ll agree to stay here.”

  He was right. She wouldn’t feel safe in her apartment, even with Elada guarding the door. She lived on the fourth floor, and all her windows opened. . . .

  “I’ll make a list,” Helene said to Nieve.

  “And anything you want her to buy,” said Miach, “just tell her.”

  “You can’t buy people, Granddad,” Nieve said softly. There was a sadness in the girl’s voice that shocked Helene, and she realized that for all Nieve’s warmth and cheer, she was unhappy in Miach’s house. Nevertheless, she crossed the room and bent to peck Miach on the cheek, and he reached a pale hand up to stroke his granddaughter’s hair, saying in a voice Helene could just barely hear, “He almost killed you, Nieve, and I won’t forgive him that. I can’t.”

  It was
none of Helene’s business, so she turned away and busied herself pouring tea, adding honey, and buttering a piece of toast, but it was impossible to deny that Miach was more human than she had thought. He’d saved her life today, plainly at grave cost to himself. And no matter what disagreement lay between him and his granddaughter, he obviously loved her and his family.

  When Nieve was gone, Helene turned to the Fae who had saved her life and, pretending she had not just witnessed such a private scene, said, “How do you take your tea?”

  “With milk and honey.”

  She poured him a cup, added a generous dollop of honey and then the warm milk, and brought him the delicate bone-china cup. When he reached out to take it, she could see the veins in his wrists. They were black. He might act like a man with a head cold—cranky and intractable—but he was more than sick. That much was obvious from his appearance. He was poisoned, and an ordinary man would probably be in the hospital, on life support.

  He sipped the tea, and she watched a little color return to his face. Beth had told her that milk and honey were the traditional offerings for the Fae, still left outside at night by superstitious villagers in some parts of the world. Helene wondered if the practice was more than superstition, if those substances gave special nourishment to the Fae.

  “Thank you for saving my life,” she said. “I guess I owe you one.”

  A smile kissed the corners of his mouth. “A Fae debt, Helene, is a dangerous thing. How will you pay me?”

  Something in the tea, evidently, was restorative, because Miach the patriarch had vanished. She was dealing with Miach the seducer once more. “You’re in no condition to receive payment of any kind.”