Silver Skin (A Cold Iron Novel)

by D. L. McDermott

  “Nieve came back from Helene’s and took young Garrett out to the park or the beach. We’re not sure exactly where. Liam and Nial are out looking for her.”

  “Fine,” said Miach. “Take Helene to Deirdre’s now. Anything she needs, Deirdre’s Kevin can go buy for her.” He flipped a thick stack of bills onto the desk. Twenties. She didn’t think she’d ever seen so much cash. A reminder, in case she had forgotten, that he was a criminal.

  Elada pocketed the money without comment. He beckoned Helene with a decisive, measured movement of his head. “Let’s go.”

  She stood up on shaky legs. Miach looked as though he wanted to say something more, but didn’t. She picked her bag up from the floor and followed Elada out of the room.

  Downstairs the house was hushed and empty.

  “Where is everyone?” she asked, realizing that earlier the ground floor had hummed with constant activity, the sounds of boisterous family life. It had reminded her of home, of growing up in a house full of siblings and cousins, augmented by an ever-changed roster of their friends and romantic attachments. She had been the youngest, a late and unexpected child. Her mother had raised two boys, both already in high school by the time Helene had come along.

  And Helene had been a teenager by the time her mother had realized that the world expected her to raise a girl differently. The crash course on femininity, on grooming and fashion, had come somewhat late for Helene and had left her with little taste for elaborate rituals involving hair and an abiding love of over-the-top couture. If you were going to wear girl stuff, Helene had soon decided, it ought to be fabulous girl stuff; otherwise it just wasn’t worth the effort.

  Her mother’s attempts to refine Helene’s taste in entertainment had been something of a failure. She’d imbibed too many science fiction novels and horror movies with her brothers. Merchant and Ivory would evidently never hold much appeal.

  But unorthodox as her childhood may have been, it had been a happy one, and the sound of Miach’s house had echoed it.

  “Everyone is out looking for Nieve and Garrett,” said Elada.

  The Range Rover, fortunately, wasn’t as ominous as she remembered. In fact, it was just a car, like any other. More comfortable than most. And, sitting in the front seat, she didn’t feel like a prisoner. Or if she was a prisoner, she was a prisoner with climate control and radio privileges, which gave her at least an illusory feeling of control over her fate.

  As Elada guided the luxury vehicle through the streets of South Boston, she turned the tuner in search of the local public radio station. It was playing Brahms when she found it, the sonata just coming to an end and the host sliding into his regular patter. Helene found the familiar words and cultured, bass-baritone voice comforting.

  Elada raised an eyebrow at her choice. “No pop music?”

  “Sometimes,” she said. “But not today. We buy ads on the station,” she said. “For the museum.” And there was something normal about work and advertising and public radio. She wanted to know that even though she was being driven from the home of an organized crime boss who happened to be a millennia-old sorcerer in what was very likely a stolen car, operated by a man who carried, discreetly, a silver sword on his back, that the real world still existed. That it remained there waiting for her.

  “I listen to that one sometimes,” said Elada. “When they play the old music.”

  It took her a minute to realize he meant the folk and Celtic hour. Remembered that classical music wasn’t “old” to a being who had lived thousands of years. That the idea of an orchestra or a piano would be rather modern to someone as old as Elada. Or as old as she assumed he was.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Humans don’t like to field that question, but they never hesitate to ask it,” replied Elada.

  “I didn’t realize it was rude,” she said. “I would have thought that once you pass the century mark, you stop worrying about the number.”

  “I’m not as old as Miach,” he said. “I’m only twenty-two.”

  She knew that wasn’t right.

  “Hundred,” he added.

  “How old were you when it happened?” she asked.

  “I was less than two hundred when the Druids turned on the Fae. I have lived far more of my life after the fall than before it,” he said.

  “But Miach was already more than a thousand years old when it happened,” she said.

  “Yes. What did you do to him?” asked Elada, changing the subject.

  He meant Miach’s sudden bleeding. She blushed at what Miach had done to her.

  “He violated his geis,” said Helene.

  “I am his right hand,” said Elada. “Do you understand what that means?”

  “Not entirely. You protect him, I think.”

  “I do protect him,” Elada agreed. “From all danger. We go into battle together. If I am cut, he’ll drain the world to heal my wounds. If danger threatens him while he is casting, I deal with it, without a thought to honor, or mercy. You are a danger to him.”

  The hair on the back of her neck rose.

  “If I were only his right hand,” he said flatly, “I would kill you.”

  Chapter 7

  They were still inside the precincts of South Boston. The doors were unlocked. The Range Rover was only going about twenty miles per hour. She could jump. She would probably live.

  He locked the doors.

  “Don’t try it,” he said. “You wouldn’t get far. I can pass faster than you can run. And this is Miach’s domain. No one would dare shelter you. But I am not going to kill you. Because I am not just his right hand. I am Miach’s friend. And he cares for you.”

  “He wants me. I’m not sure that is the same thing as caring, to your kind.”

  Elada laughed. “Miach MacCecht is thirty-five hundred years old. He is the most powerful Fae at liberty, aboveground. He was the most dangerous sorcerer in the Court even when the Wild Hunt was free. He can have any woman he wants. He doesn’t need to chase one who is forbidden to him. And he has survived more gaesa than any of our kind. He is clever, he is ruthless, and he is iron-willed. And he broke his vow with you like the greenest warrior.

  “Oh, he cares for you, all right. And if he doesn’t get the Druid to lift his geis, it’s going to get him killed.”

  “But if I’m at Deirdre’s, then he’s in no danger. He can’t break his vow if I’m not even in the same zip code with him.”

  “He has already broken it,” said Elada. “The geis has already diminished him. And it will go on weakening him until he falls in battle or the Druid lifts her prohibition. It has nothing at all to do with you now.”

  “Oh.”

  “Will your friend Beth lift it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Helene.

  “Ask her to. You have no cause to wish his death, I think. And he can’t protect you, or Nieve, if he is weak.”

  That was something she still didn’t understand. “Why is Nieve in danger?” she asked.

  “Nieve is almost human,” said Elada.

  “That isn’t an answer. And that isn’t why she’s so . . . sad,” said Helene, remembering the girl’s exchange with Miach in the library.

  Elada gave her a sidelong glance. “You don’t miss much,” he said.

  “I don’t understand your world,” Helene admitted. “But I do know families, and I can tell that Nieve isn’t happy, no matter how cheerful she sometimes appears. I’ve already harmed Miach once with my ignorance. I didn’t really understand what would happen if we . . . that is, I could have stopped him and I didn’t.”

  “You couldn’t have stopped him,” said Elada. “Not without cold iron.”

  She knew that she could have, because Miach’s voice hadn’t had any compulsion in it. But his right hand was already upset with her for tempting Miach. She didn’t think it was wise to tell him just how badly hurt Miach had gotten rescuing her. So she just nodded.

  “And Nieve,” Elada went on, “couldn�
��t have stopped Finn’s son Garrett. That’s why Miach doesn’t care whether she loves him or not. Because she was too human and too young to know her own mind.”

  “Finn’s son is the father of her child?”

  Elada nodded. “Finn controls Charlestown. He and Miach were allies, after the Druids banished the court. Long centuries ago, they worked together with the Romans to free other captive Fae, and hunt down and exterminate the Druids.”

  “Beth’s people,” said Helene. “But her family must have survived.”

  Elada’s face took on a haunted look. “It was a brutal campaign. The Romans wanted Britain. We wanted vengeance. They helped us free many imprisoned Fae from the mounds and slaughter all the Druids we could find. Some fled into the wilderness. Others set out in ships. No doubt a few escaped, but all of the most powerful Druid ones—the Archdruids and leaders—were killed. And the survivors were forced to go underground. They could not practice their magic, and so they lost it.”

  “Until Beth.”

  “Until Beth,” agreed Elada. “Our accidental Druid.” He said this last with an amused little smile.

  “You don’t hate her, do you?” asked Helene.

  “No,” said Elada. “Our war with the Druids was a long time ago. I was young when it started. Beth Carter never knew another Druid, was never steeped in their worldview, their cruelty. She has certainly never chained anyone in cold iron or tortured my friends. And she makes good coffee.”

  “If Miach and Finn hunted Druids together, why aren’t they friends now?” she asked.

  “Finn was remorseless. He wanted to go on hunting the Druids after their power was well and truly broken. Miach had seen enough violence. They have been at odds for two thousand years. It nearly came to war over Nieve.”

  “Because she fell in love with Finn’s son?” It seemed like an extreme response, even for a Fae sorcerer.

  “Because he got her with child. Finn’s son Garrett is a full-blooded Fae. One of the only to be born in the twentieth century. The boy had a talent for magic. Miach saw it early, and offered to foster and train him under his own roof. Garrett was nine when he came to live with us, nineteen when he seduced Nieve. She was sixteen.”

  “That’s not such a huge age difference.” Especially considering how long-lived the Fae were. Beth was barely thirty. Conn was well over two thousand years old. And Miach had no reservations about a relationship with Helene, when he had more than three millennia on her.

  “It wasn’t their age difference,” said Elada. “Nieve was too young. Not fully grown. And Fae pregnancies . . .” He trailed off. “They’re difficult. Even for Fae women. And far worse for human. Miach didn’t want her to have the baby.”

  Helene began to understand Nieve’s sadness. She might be unhappy in her grandfather’s house, but the girl’s face lit up every time she set eyes on her toddler. And she delighted in the other children in the family, too. “So what happened?”

  “They ran away,” said Elada. “Garrett and Nieve. Two stupid kids who thought they had everything figured out. They should have come home when Nieve started to have trouble with the pregnancy, but they were afraid that Miach would make them give the baby up. When she went into labor, things went badly. Garrett took her to a human hospital, where they only made things worse. Nieve nearly died.”

  “But the doctors saved her,” said Helene.

  “Miach saved her. The doctors filled her with drugs that shut down her ability to channel what little Fae power she had. Made it impossible for her to deliver a Fae child on her own. She was dying, and the baby with her.”

  Helene remembered Miach’s ruthlessness the night they had met, when Beth had nearly died from malaria—and Fae magic. Helene had wanted to take Beth to a hospital. Miach had knocked her unconscious to stop her. She hadn’t known about his granddaughter.

  Elada drove, his eyes fixed on the road, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. He must have been there, Helene, realized. Witnessed this horror.

  “Garrett called his father,” said Elada. “And Finn called Miach, and Miach made them promise, all of the Fianna, never to have anything to do with Nieve again.”

  “That was cruel,” said Helene. “Not just to Nieve, but to her little boy.”

  “You weren’t there,” said Elada. “You didn’t see the blood. She was dying. From what Garrett and then the humans did to her. Miach was covered in her blood. He had to channel every ounce of power he had just to stabilize her. And then drain every blade of grass, every tree, up and down Commonwealth Avenue.”

  “There was a blight,” said Helene. “Two years ago.” The trees outside her window had lost all their leaves in a day.

  “It was no blight,” said Elada. “And still it was touch and go for weeks.”

  “Poor Nieve.”

  “He wept,” said Elada. “The Fae can lose their ability to feel over the millennia. It’s why we enjoy human emotion so much, joy and suffering. But Miach wept.”

  “But Miach is going to bargain with Finn now,” said Helene. “Perhaps he is ready to forgive him and Garrett.”

  Elada laughed. “The Fae don’t forgive. And we don’t forget. He’s willing to bargain with Finn because he doesn’t want the Wild Hunt back. You have legends, stories, even popular entertainment about supernatural scourges, about ancient evils. The Fae Court is a thousand times worse than anything you could imagine.”

  “But you were part of it,” she said. “They were your people, your world.”

  “That doesn’t mean they were any damned good.”

  The rest of the short trip passed in silence.

  Helene was surprised when Elada turned off Charles Street and began climbing the redbrick slope of Beacon Hill. It was the most excusive neighborhood in Boston, about one square mile, home to ten thousand people and some of the most expensive real estate, per square foot, in the world.

  The front of the hill, the south side that got the best light, faced Boston Common. It was capped at its highest point by the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House, and bounded at the foot of its steep incline by Charles Street, with its tony antique stores and restaurants, running parallel to the esplanade and the Charles River.

  That was the side that Helene knew best. She had donors who lived on the fashionable south slope, but the north side of the hill was almost as expensive. Originally laid out as rope walks and later filled in with housing for servants and then tenements, it was now mostly luxury condo conversions with the occasional straggling town house.

  Pinckney Street represented the halfway point on the hill. It was a mix of lavish single-family homes and condominiums. Elada dialed a number on his cell phone, and the automatic gates on one of the precious few driveways on the hill opened silently to receive them. The Range Rover nipped inside a private courtyard, bounded on all sides by the walls of other houses and green with climbing vines and hanging plants, a garden oasis in the middle of the city.

  Deirdre’s was only the second Fae home Helene had visited, and it was as different from Miach’s sprawling Victorian as a house could be. This was a neat little Federal-style structure, green-painted clapboard with rusticated masonry corners, completely hidden from the street, all classical simplicity and symmetry, five bays wide with a pillared portico raised on granite steps and flanked by gilded sidelights.

  The front door opened even before Helene could alight from the Range Rover. She had steeled herself to meet Deirdre—to meet another Fae, who was also Miach’s once and future lover—but the man who stood on the doorstep was entirely human. As handsome as a model and as cut as an athlete, but human. Helene had begun to be able to tell the subtle differences that marked the Fae apart, even when they wore their human glamour.

  For one thing, this man was tanned, and the Fae were porcelain pale, no matter how much time they spent in the sun. For another, his features were chiseled, masculine, compelling, but they lacked the almost severe angularity of the Aes Sídhe. His eyes were pale blue and pier
cing, but not the otherworldly hue of the Fae. His hair was too long for a professional and too sun streaked for a man who worked indoors. And he came down the stairs two at a time, barefoot in his T-shirt and jeans, wearing an affable smile that no Fae would be caught dead in. When the Fae smiled, they weren’t affable. They were cunning.

  “I’m Kevin,” he said offering his hand to Helene and picking up her bag. It was her handbag, and she didn’t need help carrying it, but Kevin beamed at her with so much simple masculine welcome in his eyes that she just smiled and thanked him.

  She turned back to look at Elada and saw him roll his eyes. It had never occurred to her how the male Fae might regard human men who approached their level of appeal. In this case she saw a hint of mockery, and it humanized Elada.

  She scowled back at him, and that finally raised a wry smile from the Fae.

  Kevin bounded up the stairs with her bag. She couldn’t resist a look at his very fine, very toned ass and muscular calves.

  Helene looked over her shoulder at Miach’s right hand. “Why does he look so familiar?” she whispered.

  “He’s an athlete.”

  Helene tried to place Kevin’s handsome features.

  “Like a ball player?” she asked. She didn’t think she would recognize even the most famous baseball personality. It just wasn’t her sport.

  Elada shook his head. “Skiing.”

  Olympic skiing, she realized. Kevin Phelan, gold medalist and the spokesman for a chic line of sports glasses. She’s seen his face in fashion magazines. Not just in the glossy advertisements for eyewear, but in the society pages as well, looking movie star handsome, dressed in bespoke suits, usually with a model or actress on his arm. But not, she realized, for several years now. Helene tried not to stare.

  “You’ll be safe here,” said Elada,. “Miach recasts the wards on Deidre’s house every year, whether they need it or not. I’ll be back, with Nieve and Garrett. Or Liam and Nial will bring her.”

  “No problem,” said Kevin. “Plenty of room. Deirdre’s upstairs painting at the moment, but there’s a guest room ready. Come on in, Helene.”