Silver Skin (A Cold Iron Novel)

by D. L. McDermott

  But here and there in the crowd were humans and half-bloods with different coloring, different features. Followers, Helene realized, not just descendants. Men and women and Fae who had been drawn by Finn’s charismatic leadership.

  At the center of the room, beneath a dazzling brass chandelier, which was the only light in the chamber, lounged a Fae who could only be Finn. He was built like Conn and Elada, brawny, a warrior’s body: a measure of stature and strength endowed by blood perhaps, but developed and perfected through hard work and training. His hair was a rich chestnut brown, and it fell in soft waves over his collar. His eyes were hazel, his lips full, his chin a chiseled blade.

  If he had been human, Helene would have put his age as just past thirty. He was perched atop a marble specimen table, one leg folded beneath him and the other on the tiled floor, entirely at ease. Here was a creature completely confident of both his physical power and his influence over the assembled body. Behind him stood a man who must be his son: a younger, slighter doppelganger. Garrett.

  “Miach MacCecht,” said Finn, springing from the table with a dancer’s grace to sketch a mocking bow. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

  There was spite and vitriol in this Fae’s voice. Helene could hear it. She had known they could put music and seduction into their tones, but she had not realized that they could also infuse their speech with bitterness and hatred, an almost contagious current of emotion. It seemed to run through the room, rousing and nettling the Fianna with a life of its own. If she had not been wearing the torc, she felt sure would have been caught up in it, would have resented the role Miach had played in bringing her here, hated him for introducing her to his treacherous world.

  But the iron circling her ankle allowed her to hear all this in Finn’s voice without feeling it, to understand the intention and remain aloof from it. The torc had been a gift of power indeed.

  “I come to ask a favor,” said Miach.

  She had been right. Miach hadn’t been using his voice earlier. But he was using it now. There was conciliation in his tones. And a warning. He would only be pushed so far.

  Helene experienced an epiphany. Hearing the Fae with cold iron against her skin was like suddenly being able to see in color. She had always thought their voices musical, and known music to be a conduit for emotion, but had never been able to hear the individual notes before, only the full orchestra.

  “Then beg,” said Finn. Flat, unconditional. Full of scorn.

  Miach closed his eyes a moment. “This is not the time,” he said opening them, “to refight old battles. The wall between the worlds is weakening. A Fae or a half-Fae, someone possibly from your own family, has been taking this woman”—he turned to indicate Helene—“and abducting her for hours each and every day. They have used her access to the museum at the university to find and restore a solstice gate.”

  Finn shrugged. “Let them build away. There are hundreds of such gates in the world. If someone puts this one in order—well, neither you nor Conn the Betrayer will open it. And I hear he has his little Druid trained. Her pretty mouth is too occupied sucking his cock to intone a rite of opening.”

  The Fianna laughed. Helene was glad now that Beth had not come. She could see Conn’s shoulders rise and fall. Miach put a hand on the brawny warrior’s sword arm, but it was not necessary. Conn loved Beth, Helene was Beth’s friend, and Helene’s life was at stake. The insult irked him, but would not move him from his purpose.

  “We need the Druid,” said Miach patiently, “to keep the wall intact. It was never meant to last two thousand years. It was not meant to withstand repeated attack from our Fae kindred on the other side, or from deluded half-breeds on this one. You are all”—he pitched his voice to the crowd, putting fatherly concern into it—“in danger. If the Wild Hunt returns, they will be worse than any stories you have heard. They will be half-mad from two millennia of captivity, like rabid wolves. They will hate Finn and Conn and Elada and I, and all other Fae aboveground, for the freedom we have enjoyed. And they will be starved for pretty toys, the kind that walk and talk and breathe and think and feel . . . the kind that suffer.”

  Finn didn’t blink. “What do you want, Miach?” he asked in a weary voice.

  “Help me find the Fae who has been abducting Helene Whitney. He has inscribed a memory geis on her flesh. Remove it, and we will be able to discover his identity.”

  “You are said to be the greatest sorcerer the Fae have ever known. No one here contests that. Why don’t you remove it yourself?” It was a challenge from Miach’s former pupil, Garrett. Helene had not observed him closely before, but the younger Fae’s eyes burned with passion, with anger held barely in check.

  “I am iron sick,” said Miach. He shot his cuffs, held out his wrists, and turned them over. The veins stood black against his forearms.

  The room became pin-drop silent. Finn took a step forward, his eyes drawn irresistibly to the black veins in Miach’s wrists. Garrett leaned forward to look as well.

  “This is the kind of enemy we are dealing with,” said Miach. “One who would poison his own kind. One who does not hesitate to stoop to Druid tricks and Druid methods.”

  Garrett smiled. “It makes my heart glad to see you suffer as you have made others suffer.”

  Finn held up his hand to silence his son and advanced to within a foot of Miach. He considered the sorcerer’s black-veined wrists. Then he looked into Miach’s eyes and spoke quietly enough for only Miach and Helene to hear. “Do you truly think this was done by one of my own?”

  “I don’t know,” said Miach. “But it is an easy enough thing to determine. I can cast a reflection of the geis. If its maker is present, it will fly to him.”

  Finn appeared to mull this over, then retreated to his perch on the marble table. He pitched his voice once more to the assembly. “There is only one thing you have that I want, Miach MacCecht. And that is my grandson.”

  “I am prepared to allow you to visit him,” replied Miach. “Under my supervision.”

  Miach, Helene realized, must have known it would come to this.

  “Is that all?” Garrett shouted. “I’m the boy’s father, for fuck’s sake. Am I never to see my own son?”

  “I placed my trust in you, Garrett. Unreservedly. I opened my home to you. And you seduced my granddaughter. Under my own roof. And she nearly died, because of you.”

  “I didn’t know what would happen,” spat Garrett. “And we couldn’t stay. You made it impossible for us to stay. You would have forced Nieve to give up the baby.”

  “That is all past,” said Finn, cutting his son off. “We demand the boy. Two days a week. In Charlestown. With his father.”

  “And Nieve, too,” said Garrett.

  “The boy, but not Nieve,” Miach said. “Never Nieve. You gave up all right to her when you failed to protect her.”

  “You cannot keep me from her,” Garrett said, snarling. “She is my wife.”

  Surprise rippled through the crowd, a tide of whispered conjecture.

  Finn closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he turned them on his son. Now Helene detected something in this Fae’s voice she had never heard from one of their kind before: fear.

  “Is this true, Garrett? Did you wed Nieve? Pledge yourself to her?” asked Finn.

  “Yes.”

  “For the love of Dana, why?” asked Finn. If he had been human, Helene thought, he might have rent his hair and torn his clothes.

  “Because I would trade millennia without Nieve for a mortal’s span with her. And now I cannot have even that. Because of him.”

  Helene could feel the grief coming off of Finn, but she didn’t understand it. “What has Garrett done?” she whispered to Miach.

  “Garrett is a true Fae,” said Miach softly. “He might have lived thousands, tens of thousands of years. And he is the only pure-blood to be born in this century. But he has given up his immortality by binding himself to Nieve. Like Conn and Beth. They will share
a few hundred years at best. More than mortals, but the life of a dayfly in Fae terms. Finn has lost his son.”

  The patriarch of the Fianna took a deep breath and turned to Miach MacCecht.

  “That must be my price,” he said. “The boy will have nothing if he does not have his family. If he does not have Nieve and his son. Permit them to live as they pledged themselves, and we will remove your woman’s memory geis.”

  “It must be in Charlestown,” added Garrett. “I won’t live in that man’s house.”

  Finn sighed.

  “I will allow them to split their time between my house and yours,” Miach said. “But that is my best offer.”

  “Agreed,” snapped Finn. “Show Garrett the girl’s mark.”

  Miach held up his hand. “First, we determine whether your following had a hand in this.”

  “Fine,” said Finn. “Do it. The Fianna have nothing to hide.”

  “They were involved the last time,” Miach said.

  “And they have been chastised. Work your spell, sorceror. It will not point to any of my band.”

  Miach turned to Helene. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It will hurt for a moment.”

  He knelt in front of her and placed his palm over the invisible geis above her knee. It felt warm at first, then it burned like hot metal and she cried out. For a second she felt light-headed and the room spun. Strong hands were there to catch her and someone—Finn, she realized—was lowering her to the floor, supporting her head in his lap.

  Miach paced forward to stand under the chandelier. He was holding something that glowed and coruscated the way the geis on her skin had when he’d shown it to her in his library. The bulbs of the chandelier flickered, then winked out. For a moment Miach’s hand was the only illumination in the room. Then he threw the light he held high into the air and it expanded as it ascended, until it spread out over the ceiling in a writhing pattern, a circular knot. No, not a knot. A snake with a rat’s head. A grotesque beast that was eating its own tail.

  That was a reflection of the thing on her thigh, the thing that wanted to devour her memories and take her life. An involuntary cry of horror and disgust escaped her lips.

  Finn swore. “Don’t look,” he said.

  But she couldn’t turn away.

  The house shook. The beast of light on the ceiling roared, a stomach-turning gurgle of hissing anger. Pain flared in the geis on her knee. Plaster fell from the ceiling. And then there was a sucking sound, like a vacuum.

  Helene’s eardrums popped.

  The light went out, and the room was blanketed in deep darkness.

  The chandelier flickered back to life.

  Miach, still standing under it, shook his head. “Nothing. You were right, Finn. This was not cast by any of the Fianna.”

  Finn helped Helene to her feet. Her legs felt shaky. The geis throbbed and burned, and now she could see it there, angry and red. Miach knelt in front her once more. “I woke it when I cast its reflection. It’s burrowing deeper. It has to come off, now.”

  “It hurts,” said Helene. She wasn’t, as a rule, a whiner or a winger. She had grown up with brothers. Skinned knees, broken bones, skiing, skating, and sailing injuries were the norm in the Whitney household. High school had been like a tour of the emergency rooms of New England.

  This didn’t hurt like a burn or a puncture or a broken bone. It wasn’t isolated to her knee, but radiated up into her abdomen. She doubled over with cramps.

  “Helene,” said Miach. She could hear the suppressed panic in his voice. Her own voice was stuck. She couldn’t speak. If she could, she would tell him to take the iron bracelet off and lie to her, use his voice to tell her everything was going to be okay. Because she could hear the fear behind his words.

  “It is attacking her,” he said. Miach swept her, boneless and weak from pain, into his arms and laid her on the marble table. It should have felt cold beneath her skin, but the outside of her body was still and numb to the touch, even while her insides were roaring with pain.

  “How long,” said Finn, his voice sounding distant even though he was standing over her, “has she survived with that thing on her?”

  “A month,” said Miach.

  Finn cursed.

  She could feel Garrett’s hand above her knee, tracing the raised flesh there. “Are you sure you want to do this without anything to dull the pain?” he asked Miach. “It’s going to hurt like hell. It will be a struggle just to keep her still.”

  Garrett’s eyes fell on the iron torc around her ankle. He wrapped a handkerchief around his hand and reached for it. “I’ll take this off, and you can compel her to be still.”

  “No,” Helene bit out. She couldn’t stand the idea of being surrounded by so many Fae without some defense against them—even if it meant suffering through the removal of the geis.

  Garrett ignored her and reached for the torc. Miach’s hand shot out and grasped the boy’s wrist.

  “She said no,” said Miach.

  For that alone she thought she might be able to fall in love with him.

  Garrett nodded. “Fine, then. As long as she understands. There’s no gentle way to do this.”

  “I understand,” Helene said. The look Miach favored her with, the intensity of his respect and regard, reaffirmed her decision, reassured her she could get through it.

  “Whiskey,” called Finn.

  A bottle of Jameson appeared, along with a glass. Finn poured and passed it to Miach, who placed it against Helene’s lips. She took the welcome drink from his hands and tossed it off in one swallow. It burned like bliss going down and suddenly the geis didn’t seem quite so terrifying. Dutch courage, or Irish courage, she supposed. She would take any kind she could get at the moment.

  She handed the glass back to Finn. “Another,” she said.

  Finn looked surprised, but he poured. Helene drank off the second and a third. And lay back on the table.

  “I like your girlfriend,” said Finn.

  She saw Garret place his right hand in Miach’s left and close his eyes. Then Garrett’s father was pinning her shoulders to the table with strong hands and Miach was touching the geis with his right hand. Tentatively at first, as though searching for something.

  “Focus, Garrett,” said Miach through gritted teeth.

  Helene felt a pinch, as though Miach had pricked her with a needle. Then a pulling sensation. Then blistering pain, as though someone were stitching her skin with a sharp awl, sewing hemp rope through her flesh and cinching it into tight gathers.

  Something—something squirming—pulled free of her skin with a slurping sound. The pain fled, as swiftly as it had come. Helene felt weak with relief.

  Miach reared back from the table and swore. He hurled something—something like a black rope—to the ground . . . and it slithered across the floor, heading for the door.

  The Fianna in its path scattered. Garrett followed the creature and blasted it with a half dozen bolts of green light from his hands until it was nothing more than a smoking streak on the marble tiles.

  Helene sat up. Her thigh felt wet and sticky. She looked down. Blood ran from the geis, which was now a ring of puncture wounds. A pool of crimson started to form on the table beneath her knee.

  “It needs to be cleaned out,” said Finn. But he sounded relieved.

  Helene was still trying to process the fact that Nieve’s husband could shoot light from his fingers when his father sloshed whiskey over her bloody thigh. And it was finally her turn to curse, with all the foulness she had learned from two older brothers.

  Finn smiled appreciatively. “Give me the girl, Miach,” said Garrett’s father, “and I’ll help you find this renegade Fae who has been summoning her.”

  “Your family has a pronounced weakness for my women,” said Miach. “You can’t have Helene. But you’ll help us anyway, because you know you can’t afford not to.”

  Miach looked pointedly at Garrett, then said to Finn, “We both have too much to los
e. The Wild Hunt would slay Garrett outright for formally allying himself to a half-blood. We must find the Fae who is trying to open the gate, and his followers, and put an end to them.”

  “I will do what I can,” said Finn. “It is not one of the Fianna, and it is not one of your accepted clan. Deirdre would never involve herself in something like this. There must be another Fae in the city. I will make inquiries in my territories. I suggest you do the same.”

  Miach moved to pick Helene up but she waved him off. “I’m getting out of here on my own two feet,” she said.

  “If you change your mind about the woman,” said Finn, “send her to me.”

  “I’m not a gift basket,” muttered Helene.

  “When you are tired of the sorcerer, then,” said Finn, whose hearing no doubt was Fae-acute, “come to me. Miach’s house has grand water views, to be sure, and he’s the man you want when you’re clearing an orchard or a pasture, but from my house you can see the whole of Boston.”

  “Ah,” whispered Miach in her ear, “but will he give you a new dishwasher?”

  She giggled. The sound was probably tinged with hysteria, and it caused Finn to frown, but she couldn’t help it.

  Helene made it out of the grand hall of the Commandant’s house under her own steam, but at the chain-link fence she staggered. Miach caught her.

  “Go get the car,” he said to Elada. “I’ll be fine here. Finn isn’t likely to assassinate me. He doesn’t want the wall coming down any more than I do.”

  “I’ll stand guard,” said Conn.

  Elada was gone ten minutes. Then the Range Rover pulled up, the Porsche behind it with Liam and Nial. And behind that, what could only be the armored minivan.

  Miach lifted Helene into the backseat of the Rover and settled her head in his lap. Elada brought her a blanket and pillow from the trunk. The whiskey had buoyed her temporarily but now she was exhausted. She closed her eyes and started to drift to sleep. She felt the car stop and start, navigating the short streets of Charlestown, but then the road smoothed out and she knew they must be on one of the highways or big roads that circled Boston.