Silver Skin (A Cold Iron Novel)

by D. L. McDermott

  “No,” he conceded. “I suppose I’m not. But I’m well enough to search for the geis. We can wait until Nieve comes back, if you’d prefer, but then we should try to find it. And at least now, iron poisoned, I’m no threat to you.” Then he looked her up and down. “Or a good deal less of one, anyway.”

  She considered her situation. From the moment she had first learned what he was, what the Fae were, she’d feared falling prey to one. Beth had told her what happened to Fae-besotted women who pined and died when their Fae lovers abandoned them.

  True, she had said that not every woman who went to bed with a Fae shared that fate. And Miach had said the same. The Sídhe could take steps to protect their human lovers, muting their glamour, and now she knew, giving them gifts of cold iron. But Helene still feared losing herself. Not to the Fae in general—but to this Fae in particular.

  Today in her office she had bared herself to him and he had not taken advantage of her. He’d written a simple spell on her shoulder, and unless she was under its delusion now, it was exactly as he had said: a tracking symbol. And he’d used it to find her and save her life, at a grave cost to himself. A thought occurred to her then.

  “Can iron kill you?” she asked.

  “Are you asking about the present dose, or for future reference?”

  The playfulness, she hoped, was a good sign that he would recover. “I’m asking about now.”

  “The iron filings would have incapacitated most Fae and killed the weakest among us. My ability to channel energy from living and once-living things—which can be used to heal—is greater than that of almost all of my kind, because I’m a sorcerer. The Tuatha Dé Danann are a race imbued with a certain amount of magic, but we tend toward indolence, and few learn to channel their power effectively. Sorcerers, though, make a study of it. Druids are particularly good at it, too. It is a cultivated skill, not a natural one, but that is what the Druids were best at: cultivating skills. It’s how they kept so many of us alive under torture for so long. We’re not truly immortal, just very difficult to kill. But I’ve drawn enough from the trees in Nieve’s garden to begin healing myself. Perhaps after tea I’ll nip downstairs and finish off the wisteria.”

  He made light of his condition, but he had risked his life to save her. For an immortal being, that was no small matter. As things stood, he’d taken great harm because of her, and she was relieved to know that he would recover. Too relieved. She should not feel this way about him. It was only because he was hurt, vulnerable.

  When he was well again, he would return to being a predator, one she found more attractive than she would like. She needed to keep her guard up against him. It would be all too easy, after he’d saved her life, to succumb to him. But this was the best time to do what had to be done.

  “I want you to look for the geis now,” she said.

  He set the tea down and looked up at her, all playfulness forgotten. “We can wait for Nieve,” he repeated.

  It was a rare show of sensitivity for a Fae and she appreciated it, but she shook her head. “No, I’d rather get it over with. I’m ready.” And she wasn’t sure her courage would last.

  He hesitated. “If you become frightened, or uncomfortable, I want you to tell me to stop.”

  “Thank you. How do we do this?”

  “Draw the curtains.”

  “Don’t you need the light?”

  “The geis won’t be visible, but I’ll be able to feel it. And I presume you don’t want to disrobe in full sight of the Pleasure Bay beachgoers.”

  It dawned on her that this meant he was going to touch her. Everywhere.

  She drew the curtains. They were filmy lace, but they shut out prying eyes and softened the light in the room, burnished the mahogany and gilt empire chairs and sofas and the peach silk with a rosy glow. So much for the cover of darkness. . . .

  Miach shed his blanket, rose slowly from his chair, and prowled after her to the center of the room. He suddenly didn’t look quite as helpless, and for a moment she worried that she’d made a mistake. He’d changed his clothes since the morning—the iron filings had probably dusted his shirt and pants. Now he wore a deceptively simple white button-down. Deceptive, because the cloth was a subtly striped cotton damask, and the collar was needle tailored. Off the rack shirts didn’t fit men like Miach MacCecht, with his broad shoulders and narrow, lean waist. He wore his sleeves rolled. His trousers were rich brown moleskin, flat in front, cut straight, with narrow cuffs.

  She had time to notice all of this while he stood in front of her and lifted first her right hand and then her left, trailed his fingers up her arms, and felt every inch of exposed skin up to her shoulders.

  It was impossible for the sensation to be anything but erotic. Impossible to deny how strongly attracted she was to him. Somewhere along the way she’d closed her eyes. She opened them now to find Miach’s golden irises staring into hers, heavy lidded with passion held barely in check.

  “Turn around,” he said thickly.

  She did. She kept her eyes open and tried to think of things that weren’t sexy. Like filing pledge cards and invoices. And updating databases.

  Like Miach’s warm hands on her shoulders. Like his raspy voice saying, “Lift up your hair.” Like his cool breath on her neck as she did so. This wasn’t working. . . .

  He started to lift the hem of her tank top, rolling the soft fabric slowly up, baring an inch of skin at a time. Self-preservation kicked in when the cotton caught momentarily beneath the shelf of her breasts, and she covered herself with her hands.

  He was being slow, she reasoned, because he was being thorough, making sure not to miss an inch of her skin. If he was careless, he’d probably only have to start again.

  Finally Miach unclasped her bra and traced the lines it had left indented in her tanned flesh. Followed them from the center of her back, up over her shoulders, then back down and around, under her arms.

  He stopped and hesitated. She lowered her hands. His replaced them with his own, cupped and lifted her breasts.

  She looked down. He was cradling her mounds, one in each palm. Her nipples were hard, visibly engorged. He could not possibly miss that. His breath was hot and quick against her neck. They stood frozen, uncertainty gripping them both, until his thumbs brushed her nipples and circled them, then covered the tips.

  She moaned. It felt too good. She wanted it again and again and again.

  “Please,” she cried out.

  “Lean back,” he said.

  She did. Her bare skin met the cool cotton of his shirt and where it was open at the collar, a flash of heat, flesh to flesh. Her head fell back against his shoulder. She didn’t dare open her eyes in case she saw triumph in his.

  A tentative brush of his lips against hers startled her. So unexpected, such intimacy. She opened her eyes. His were intensely focused on her. He was as caught up in the moment as she was.

  “Tell me to stop,” he said.

  “No.”

  He groaned, and his fingers joined his thumbs, circling her nipples, raising them into hard distended nubs. Her back arched, her hips rose, silently but eloquently imploring him to touch her down there.

  Miach didn’t. He nuzzled her neck and licked her ear and went on exploring her breasts. She groaned, her body climbing toward a peak. His lips covered her open mouth, and his tongue darted inside.

  Miach tasted like tea and honey and sex. She whimpered into his mouth.

  He broke away and whispered in her ear. “I was resolved not to touch you like this. To search you chastely—or at least as chastely as someone like me could manage—for this bastard’s mark. But it’s impossible for me to touch you and not want you.”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “It’s okay. I want this, too.” Deserved it, in fact, after what they’d been through this morning.

  She wanted to feel alive with him. And there was no disguising how he affected her. How much she wanted him. But she had already known that for quite some time. Wh
at shocked her was how much Miach wanted her. She had always seen him as cold, calculating, reasoning, but he was none of those things right now.

  “After,” he whispered in her ear. “After we find the mark.” He stepped away from her.

  She felt cold and bereft, and she wanted his hands back on her, had to bite her tongue to hold the words in. She looked over her shoulder to find him standing back, reining in his desire with visible effort.

  “Here,” he said thickly, holding out her tank top. “We’re halfway done.”

  The easy half, she thought, pulling the tank top over her shoulders and turning toward him. “What now?”

  He swallowed. “Sit on the sofa,” he said.

  She sank back into the down-filled upholstery. Miach knelt in front of her and lifted one foot. He ran his hands over her arch, cupped her heel in his palm, traced the instep and bones in her ankle with his long fingers.

  “You have gorgeous legs,” he said. “I thought that the first time I saw you, when you were trying to assault Conn of the Hundred Battles. Long, tanned legs and the silliest fur boots. I couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to feel them dig into my back.”

  “You’re doing it again,” she said, trying to control her rising passion.

  “Doing what?”

  “Using your voice to put pictures in my head.” She again saw the two of them conjoined, in her mind’s eye, her body beneath his, her bare heels digging into his muscular buttocks. She murmured a poignant curse.

  His hand moved up her calf. “Do you like what you see?” he asked.

  “Yes, but how do I know that’s what I really feel? How do I know it’s not Fae compulsion?”

  “Because all my power is fighting the blight of the iron now. My voice has no resonance, no suggestive force, no compulsion at all in it. At this moment I’m as human as I will ever be.”

  She wanted him, but she feared his voice, his Fae ability to influence her thoughts and emotions. This might be her one chance to act on her desires free of fear, free of the risk of falling under his spell. And considering the danger she was in from her unknown Fae attacker, the chance that this unseen enemy might summon her to her doom at any time, falling for Miach MacCecht seemed like a trifling sort of peril.

  She made her decision then, to take the pleasure he could give her.

  He parted her knees with both hands, slid his palms up her inner thighs.

  Then he stopped. He closed his eyes, and his hands moved back down. He traced a circle just above her left knee, over the head of her quadriceps. Once, twice, a third time.

  His body language changed subtly, but she had spent enough time with him now to see it, to note the tensing of the muscles in his sculpted arms, his broad shoulders.

  “What is it?” she asked, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.

  He looked away a moment, and that’s when she knew it was bad. Then he looked straight into her eyes and said, “I have found the geis.”

  Chapter 6

  She knew by his tone, his manner, that the news wasn’t good.

  “I can’t see it,” she said, hoping that meant something, that it couldn’t be deadly if it was totally invisible. “And it doesn’t itch like the one on my shoulder did.” That had to be a good sign.

  “The ink is tinted to match your skin. In that sense, it is like the one on your shoulder. That’s why you can’t see it. I’m going to make it visible for a second, so I know exactly what we are dealing with. I am sorry. This will sting.”

  She hoped that the Fae had similar concepts of pain, and “sting” didn’t mean hurt like hell.

  He lifted his hand, spread his fingers wide over the spot above her knee, and she felt a sudden warmth, followed by a sensation like having rubber bands snapped against her skin. Not painful exactly, but hardly pleasant.

  Then she saw it. A knotlike pattern, pink and raised, about three inches in diameter. It seemed to writhe like a snake. There was something ugly about it, something malicious and twisted in the sluggish, swirling design.

  It faded slowly, pulsing and throbbing as it disappeared back into her skin.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  He sat back on his heels, still ensconced between her parted thighs.

  “A very nasty piece of magic,” said Miach. “But not the summoning spell. It’s a memory eater. A parasite. It’s why you can’t remember who this Fae is or what happens when he summons you. Because it has been drawn to eat those memories.” Miach hesitated. “A memory geis is very difficult to remove.”

  “Difficult how?”

  “They require strength, which I lack at the moment, to unbind and pull free. Once they are inscribed on the skin, they take on a life of their own. At the first touch of outside magic, it will turn like a beast at bay and burrow deeper into your body, where it may become impossible to find and extract. And if it isn’t fed the memories it was intended to consume, it will eat deeper into your recollections and take other things from you. Until there’s nothing left.”

  She felt cold terror in the pit of her stomach. “My grandfather died from Alzheimer’s. He didn’t remember any of us at the end. Is it like that?” she asked, sick at the thought.

  Miach nodded. “It can be very much like that.”

  Then his features took on a hard, angry look. “But I won’t let that happen, Helene. This is vile, perverted magic. If your attacker did not remove it when he was done with you, when he was creating no new memories for it to consume, it would have begun to look elsewhere for sustenance, it would begin eating whatever it could find. Short-term memory first, the stuff floating on the surface of your mind that is easy to harvest: what you had for lunch yesterday, where you parked your car. Then it would eat older memories like your first boyfriend or first pet’s name. It prefers emotional memory—fear, love, longing, joy—but will consume specialized, crystalline knowledge as a last resort.”

  “And it would have killed me eventually,” she said. “Like a disease.”

  “Like a very fast-acting one. Within a day. Two at the most.”

  “Take it off,” she said. “Please.”

  Miach shook his head. “I can’t, Helene. Not until most of the iron is out of my blood. I’m too weak now, and if I make the slightest mistake removing it, the beast will surely escape my control, and it will kill you.”

  “Can’t someone else get it off?” She didn’t like the rising note of panic in her voice, but she desperately wanted the thing gone. She remembered its sluggish, snakelike writhing, even uglier now that she better knew its nature.

  Miach looked away. “No one I would trust,” he said.

  “What about the summoning spell?” she asked.

  “I haven’t found it yet. Spells are like lines of computer code, remember? One for each action you want performed or prevented.”

  “So there’s another one. Like that.”

  “Possibly. Or it might not be a geis at all. But if it is, I’ll find it.”

  She blinked back tears. She was going to die of something that her family and friends couldn’t possibly understand. That no doctor could help her fight.

  The Fae kneeling at her feet looked into her eyes. “Helene, I realize you are frightened, that all of this is strange and new to you. I can’t tell you not to be afraid. But I can promise you I will not let you die. When the Druids took me, they shackled me in iron. They dragged me away, poisoned far worse than I am now, and chained me to a wall in one of their temple mounds.”

  He unbuttoned his collar. Then the button below that. The mother-of-pearl discs shimmered in the soft light, winking as he unfastened each one. Then he pulled open his shirt like a curtain.

  She had expected more of the pale porcelain skin of his wrists. Or perhaps one of the intricate tattoos that Conn and now Beth wore. But not this.

  A jagged pink scar, thick and raised, ran from the top of his chest to his navel. It was like a river with many tributaries, jagged knife cuts that darted left and rig
ht. As though someone had split his sternum open.

  No ordinary man could have survived what had been done to Miach MacCecht.

  She looked away, just for a moment. And her distress and sympathy must have been plain on her face.

  “Don’t pity me, Helene. I am the product of a wicked and cruel race. The Fae, on the whole, as a collective, deserved everything the Druids did to us, even if I personally did not. But if I could keep myself alive through months of torture, knit my own flayed flesh back together after Elada rescued me, iron poisoned as I was then, then I can save you from the Fae who stalks you. And I vow that I will.”

  And Fae oaths were binding.

  “I believe you,” she said. He would achieve his end—or die trying.

  “Then lean back and let me finish my search.”

  She sank into the cushions, looking at the angels on the painted ceiling overhead. The back of the sofa cradled her head. Miach put his hands under her knees and pulled her forward until she perched at the very edge of the cushion.

  He was careful not to touch that spot above her knee again, sensing how uncomfortable it made her. He performed a thorough inspection of the backs of her knees and her outer thighs. “Nothing,” he said.

  She didn’t know whether to be relieved or worried. She was afraid of what he would find, afraid that the summoning spell would turn out to be as nasty, or worse if such a thing were possible, than the memory-eating spell. And she was afraid that if he didn’t find the summoning spell on her skin, it might be some even more dangerous form of magic, something even harder to remove.

  His hands slid to the insides of her thighs and abandoned the sweeping motion he had been using up to then. He began to massage the muscles there, starting just above her knees and moving slowly up. Tendrils of sensation traveled ahead of his touch, threading up and ever closer to her center.

  “Is that . . . technique . . . necessary?” she said. Her voice sounded breathy.

  “Do you want me to stop?” he asked, his fingers coming to rest just short of where she needed them.

  She shook her head. She didn’t want him to stop. She was tired of feeling scared and out of control of her life. She wanted to feel, even if only for a short time, in control.