Silver Skin (A Cold Iron Novel)

by D. L. McDermott

  Now, though, he grieved, and not for himself.

  The gate would balance itself. There was nothing he could do. It was bigger than him or the assembled Druids or any power that existed on either plane.

  “Brian,” he said, looking up. He pitched his voice loud enough to be heard over the chanting and the groaning of the worlds.

  The face he had seen come into the world and grow from boy into man was fixed avidly on the gate. He looked down at the sound of Miach’s voice.

  “No matter what happens,” said Miach, “I want you to know that you are my son, and that I loved you.”

  “It’s a little late for that, old man.”

  Light burst from the gate. Miach felt its pull, but the iron chains were anchoring him to the ground.

  The force that was now unstoppable tugged Brian toward the opening.

  Miach gripped his son’s arm and said, “I’ll save you if I can.”

  Brian tried to shake him off, his face a mask of horror. “What are you doing? What’s happening?”

  “I’m not doing anything, Brian. It’s the arm, and its enchantment, and your Druids. And the gate. It’s going to rebalance itself. It’s used to having almost one more whole Fae on the other side, and you are almost a whole Fae.”

  “No.” It came out a gasp, and was swallowed by the shrieking wind. Miach held fast to his son’s arm, but the cold iron prevented him from casting and weakened his grip.

  Brian was ripped out of his grasp. There was a flash of light. Then a sound like a crack of thunder, and then total silence.

  And standing in the gate was the Prince Consort.

  Chapter 18

  The Prince’s body, face, hands, clothing, hair, was all made of silver and glowed faintly in the light. But it was liquid metal, animated argent, and he walked and breathed like a living being when he could be nothing of the sort save through magic.

  He stalked into the circle of awed Druids, his hair sweeping the ground as it went, the little silver leaves he normally wore woven into it the same color as all the rest of him, the lace at his cuffs and the velvet of his frock coat and the stitching on his long lean blue jeans all silver.

  He fitted the arm to its socket. His face contorted. Then he threw back his shoulders and stretched his arm, now attached to his body as though it had never been severed, out in front of him. He opened his fingers, palm up, to the ceiling, then closed them, and his hand turned to flesh. The effect rippled up his arm, over his face, through his hair, down his whole body until he stood in the circle restored, and laughed.

  Then he noticed Miach kneeling on the ground beneath his iron net.

  “Miach MacCecht,” said the Prince Consort. “I see you’ve met my Druids.”

  The Druids crept closer, fascinated by the Prince’s transformation.

  The Queen’s lover eyed the iron shackles and the chain-link net. “I take it,” he said in the musical voice that was more beautiful than that of any Fae save the Queen, “that you objected to freeing me from the void.”

  “I would fling you back through,” said Miach, “if I thought the wall could stand it.”

  “Brave words, for a Fae shackled in cold iron. And ironic. You scorn the cruelty of the Court, but you have flung your own son into their midst. They know of your treachery, Miach MacCecht, that you alone beside the Betrayer have had the power to free them, all these years. And you have not. What will they make, I wonder, of your son?”

  “Better my son than the whole of humanity,” said Miach.

  The Prince sighed. “How tiresomely noble,” he said. Then he beckoned his Druids closer and pointed at Miach and said, “Kill him.”

  • • •

  Helene had asked Finn for a weapon before they’d left his house. He’d asked her if she knew how to fire a gun, and when she’d said yes, he’d given her a small pistol, made entirely of silver. Then he’d traced his finger along the half-finished tattoo on her upper arm.

  Charlestown was on the same side of the river as Cambridge, so they were able to drive there directly. The museum looked strange to Helene, and when they got close, she realized why. Usually there were tiny lights in the bushes in front, trained on the facade and the exhibit banners, and a security light at the back door on the loading dock, illuminating the parking lot. Tonight the building was entirely dark.

  The back door was unlocked. Finn checked the security guard, who was slumped at his desk, and then shook his head. Helene had known the man for six years. He was a veteran and retired firefighter and grandfather. She choked back tears. Brian and his Druids had to be stopped.

  She showed Finn the cage elevator and the stairs, and he divided his forces, which numbered nearly fifty half-breeds, humans, and his Fae son. Garrett took ten men in the elevator, and Helene, Finn, and the rest of the company took the stairs.

  They were on the stairs when the earthquake—or whatever it was—struck, and Helene almost tumbled down. But Finn grasped her tight and steadied her until it passed, offering a faint, wry smile and saying, “There’s no point in all this if I don’t get my prize at the end.”

  But she couldn’t shake the feeling that his interest in her was impersonal and calculating.

  When they reached Storage Three, Finn’s captain, a brawny strong-blood armed to the teeth with silver knives, slipped inside the door and disappeared for the space of several minutes. He put his head back out and said, “Ten Druids, at the end of the vault. Chanting. Something’s happening, too. Magic. Not sure what kind. There’s seven aisles. They all bottom-out down there.”

  Finn directed his men to fan out and creep up all seven of the aisles so they would flank the solstice gate and cut off any possible retreat. He took Helene with him up the wide center aisle, moving in the shadows until they were within sight of the gate.

  The lintel stone was back up. The slovenly Druids were chanting. Finn motioned for her to stay hidden in the aisle, but then a bright light flashed and where Brian had been standing at the center of the Druid circle was only Miach, chained in cold iron.

  Her heart was in her throat. It was like seeing a noble beast—a lion—caged. They were going to kill him. That much was plain. And Helene discovered that the future stretched empty before her without him in it.

  In the solstice gate stood the Prince Consort.

  “Kill him,” said the Prince.

  “No,” screamed Helene.

  She ran forward and fired high. Miach was kneeling. The Druids were not. She shot three of them and pushed past two more. Then she was through the circle and her body was between Miach’s and the remaining Druids.

  Finn’s men descended on the unkempt figures while Helene trained her weapon on Miach’s shackles.

  “Hands first,” said Miach.

  She shot through the shackles on his wrists, then on his ankles.

  Behind Miach’s back, the Prince Consort unsheathed his sword.

  At the opposite end of the circle, Finn did the same.

  Miach stood, blasted the remaining Druids to smoking corpses with one hand, and pulled Helene close with another.

  Then they passed. It was only a little distance, but it brought them outside the circle of dead Druids and out from between Finn and the Prince Consort.

  “Are you all right?” Miach asked her.

  “Yes. What happened to Brian?” she asked.

  Miach’s face was unreadable. “Brian is gone. He has his wish. He will finally see the glory of the Fae Court.”

  He pushed Helene behind him suddenly and she saw why.

  Finn and the Prince Consort had their swords raised and were circling each other warily.

  “I have no quarrel with you, Finn,” said the Prince Consort.

  Finn nodded. “True, but I’ve made a bargain to save the sorcerer, in exchange for something I want.”

  Miach stiffened and turned to her. “Helene?”

  “It was the only way. Elada and Conn are trapped in Clonmel. Your family are in the hospital. Deirdre wou
ldn’t come and she took Kevin’s cold iron away and ordered him to stay in the house. Finn was the only one who would help me.”

  She saw the Prince Consort smirk. “Then after I kill Finn, the girl is mine.”

  “You may have difficulty killing all of us,” said Elada, who had appeared beside Miach, sword in hand.

  The Prince considered. “Today, perhaps,” he conceded, and without warning, he disappeared.

  “Where did he go?” asked Helene.

  “He passed,” said Elada with evident disust. “Likely to another continent.”

  Helene could see the veins in his hands black against his pale skin.

  “You’re still iron poisoned,” said Miach to his right hand.

  “What about Beth and Conn?” asked Helene.

  “Safe,” said Elada. “We killed all the Druids in Clonmel and Beth and Conn are traveling home now.”

  And suddenly Helene wanted to cry. Miach would live. Beth was safe.

  Finn held up his hand and beckoned her to his side.

  She belonged to him now.

  “No,” said Miach.

  “No?” said Finn. “She bargained with me for your life. And you have it.”

  “Let Helene go, Finn,” said Miach. “You can have any woman in Boston.”

  “Yes,” said Finn in the pleasant voice that drew so many to his manner. “But I want yours.”

  “No,” replied Miach. “You want to punish me. Choose another way.”

  “Make it worth my while,” said Finn. “Or offer me something that I need.”

  • • •

  Miach knew what Finn wanted. It would gall him to give it. He would have to humble himself, to swallow his pride.

  Helene Whitney was worth it. Even if she walked out of here tonight and never spoke to him again.

  “I will take Garrett back,” said Miach. “I will train him.”

  “Whether he binds himself to a right hand or not,” stipulated Finn.

  “No.” The boy himself had come up behind his father. “I don’t need Miach. I can teach myself.”

  “You couldn’t even cast a simple silence tonight,” said Finn. “Do you agree, Miach MacCecht? The boy trains under you and will be tested and forged whether or not he takes a right hand.”

  “If the boy has no right hand to watch his back, he will get himself killed. And bound to Nieve, he cannot make vows to a warrior. He’s your son. Don’t you want care what happens to him?”

  “Yes,” replied Finn. “I do. Enough to allow him to make his own decisions, and his own mistakes.”

  Finn was right and he was wrong. He had known so for some time. Known that he must allow his children the freedom to find their own happiness—or their own destruction. That did not make it any easier to admit in public, but for Helene, he would do it.

  “I will train the boy,” said Miach, “under the conditions you demand, if you release Helene.”

  “Agreed,” said Finn.

  Miach did not turn immediately to Helene because he feared his relief would be visible to everyone if he locked eyes with her. So instead, he dickered with Finn about how to dispose of the bodies and what to steal to make it look like an art heist gone bad.

  “Something from the modern paintings gallery,” suggested Helene.

  At Miach’s raised brows she said, “It’s the director’s favorite collection.”

  The ass who hadn’t thought Helene was worth a raise in six years. That was good enough for Miach, even though he had no interest in contemporary paintings. He could find a fence to sell it to someone who did.

  In the end Finn took the bodies of the Druids, Miach selected the paintings to be stolen, and the leader of the Fianna offered Elada the keys to one of his vehicles to drive Helene home. There was nothing they could do for the dead watchman, and there would only have been countless deaths in the future if Brian’s Druids had not been stopped.

  Miach walked Helene out to the car Finn had lent Elada, held the door open for her, and then closed it when she was settled inside. He gestured for Helene to roll down the window, and she did, which was a positive sign.

  “I won’t ask you to come home with me tonight,” he said. “But when you’re ready to have this”—he touched the freshly inked tattoo on her arm—“removed, I’ll be happy to take care of it for you.”

  She smiled and nodded and Elada pulled away from the curb.

  Miach MacCecht had watched Helene Whitney walk out of his life once before. He had been patient, and she had come back. He must be patient now again, but this time, when she returned, he was determined that he would give her a reason to stay.

  • • •

  Elada didn’t return to Miach’s after dropping Helene Whitney off at her Back Bay apartment. He was tired and hungry, and after two thousand years, he was no longer bound to the sorcerer. That did not mean that he meant to leave South Boston, or ally himself with another Fae, flock to Finn’s banner, or find some other occupation.

  It meant he had an obligation to repay.

  Also, he wanted a decent meal and didn’t think he was likely to get one at this hour at Miach’s house with Nieve away at Finn’s.

  So he drove to Maire’s. The South Boston widow who had been his consort for fifteen years now was a light sleeper and used to his irregular hours. She opened the door of the narrow two-story row house he had bought her—paid the mortgage after her marine husband had been killed in action leaving her with only a government pension and two small boys to raise—in a fine silk wrapper from Italy that had fallen off a truck Elada had hijacked.

  She looked happy to see him. She always looked happy to see him. She had been feeding him and sleeping with him and bandaging his minor wounds, the ones he didn’t think worth curing with magic, for fifteen years now, and she had never once greeted him with anything but welcome.

  In return he had taken care of her financially, though she insisted on working at the elementary school as a lunch aide to keep an eye on the boys when they were young and then later for the routine. And he had taken a firm hand with the boys, made sure, at her request, that they learned trades instead of crime.

  She had been good to him, and she deserved better than life had given her. She brought him a beer as he sat in the tiny living room and ten minutes later a plate loaded with steaming bacon and hot eggs and buttery toast.

  He ate his eggs, his bacon, and his toast, then took her upstairs and made her sigh and sob and then snuggle up next to him, with her dead husband’s photograph on the nightstand, watching them.

  When he’d asked her about it years ago, she’d said she didn’t want to hide anything from him and that she thought he’d be all right with her taking up with one of the Fair Folk, one of the Gentry, because that way she wasn’t replacing him with another man.

  She was lying with her head on his chest, and he was stroking her hair when he said, “Miach has released me.”

  He felt her breathing change. He went on. “We could marry,” he said. “We could go to your priest this week, or say the words privately. You’d live to see your great-great-grandchildren, at the very least. And we could move. Out to Quincy or someplace like that. Get a big house.”

  She sat up and looked at him. She was no longer young, but she was still pretty, with her sandy-blond hair and green eyes. She touched his face and smiled and said, “No, but I appreciate the offer. One husband was enough for me.”

  Maire had grown up in Southie with a superstitious granny one step removed from a witch. She knew what the Fae were, knew what she was turning down.

  No one had ever loved him the way she loved her dead husband.

  He made love to her again and slept the night through in her bed.

  In the morning he got up before six and showered and changed into the clothes that he kept at her house and walked to Miach’s house.

  The sorcerer was already up and at work in his office.

  “The files we transferred from the Prince’s compound at Clonmel are tro
ubling,” said Miach. “His project identified hundreds of promising Druids, scholars and librarians like Beth. Artists as well.”

  Miach had not mentioned their broken bonds. If the sorcerer harbored some hope of a connection with Helene Whitney, then he might not want to renew them at all.

  “What do you intend to do?” asked Elada.

  “That will depend on what you plan to do. By now the Prince’s agents will have made contact with some of these potential Druids. If we’re to head off the Prince creating an army of mad mages who can bring the wall between worlds down, then we must get to the most powerful ones first, and convert them to our cause.”

  “How?” asked Elada.

  “By any means necessary,” said Miach.

  “I’ll go wherever you send me,” said Elada. It had ever been so.

  Miach looked relieved. “I won’t ask you to go far. At least not today.” He passed a file across the desk. “This is the most promising potential Druid, to my mind, in Boston.”

  Elada opened the file. The photograph on top was an eight-by-ten headshot. The beauty in it was shown to best advantage in black and white. She was petite, black haired, and all attitude, with her fiddle balanced against her hip.

  He had the same reaction to the photo that he always had to the woman: fascination. “That’s Sorcha Kavanaugh,” he said. “She sings at the Black Rose Friday nights.”

  “Really?” asked Miach, as though he had no idea where Elada spent his evenings.

  “She’s not a librarian or a scholar.”

  “No, but she has studied music—the old music—for twenty years. Since she was a child, in fact. Her biography says she was drawn to it, that she took up the fiddle and taught herself to play at the age of six. Training and discipline. Music is all patterns. She is a Druid, as sure as Beth Carter is a Druid, and she could be as powerful one day. And we must recruit that power to our cause.”

  “How?” asked Elada.

  “That,” said Miach, “I leave up to you.”

  • • •

  For a week Helene applied antibacterial ointment to her tattoo, as the online advice she’d read had instructed. Fortunately, during that time she didn’t have to go into work, because the museum was closed for the police investigation. Dave Monroe fumed at the police for barring him from his office and complained to the mayor about the news coverage of the incident, fearing murder would be bad for fundraising, but Helene stayed aloof from the fray.