I scowled as we stepped into our fourteenth pub of the night. "Don't any of them just poof?" Wasn't that what monsters were supposed to do when you killed them? Disintegrate instantly into dust that promptly scattered on an opportune wind?
"Poof, Ms. Lane?"
The bar we'd just entered featured a live band tonight, and was jam-packed with people. I pushed into the crowd, following Barrens' broad back. "You know, vanish. Remove all need to waste time cleaning up, or explain away inexplicable corpses littering the world," I clarified.
He glanced back at me, one dark brow raised. "Where do you get your ideas?"
I shrugged. "Books and movies. You stake a vampire, it goes poof and disappears."
"Really?" He snorted. "Life is rarely so convenient. The real world is considerably messier." As he moved toward the bar in the center of the pub, he tossed over his shoulder, "And don't trust a stake to work on a vampire, Ms. Lane. You'll be sorely disappointed. Not to mention dead."
"Well, then, how does a person kill a vampire?" I asked his back.
"Good question."
Typical Barrons answer—no answer at all. One of these days I was going to corner him with questions and not let him off the hook, one of these days when I didn't have so many other things on my mind. I shook my head and turned my attention to the people around me, searching faces, looking for the one that would waver and run like melting candle wax, and betray the monster within.
This time, I wasn't disappointed. Barrons saw it at the same time I did. "Over by the hearth," he said quietly.
My eyes narrowed and my hands curled into fists. Oh yes, I'd like to kill this one. It would put an end to some of my nightmares. "I see it," I said. "What do I do?"
"Wait until it leaves. We don't fight our battles in public. Dead, its glamour fails. The whole bar would see its true form."
"Well, maybe the whole bar should see its true form," I said. "Maybe they should know what's going on and what's out there."
Barrens gave me a look. "Why? So they can fear things they can't do anything to defend themselves against? So they can have nightmares about monsters they can't see coming? Humans are of no use in this battle."
I pressed a hand to my mouth and concentrated on keeping my supper of microwave popcorn down. It felt like it was popping again in my stomach and the bag was about to blow. "I can't stand here and watch this," I said. I didn't know if my sudden nausea was in reaction to the Unseelie, or to the sight of its victim.
"It's almost over, Ms. Lane. He's nearly done. In case you couldn't tell."
Oh, I could tell. The moment I'd spotted the Gray Man and his companion I'd known he was nearly done. The woman the gaunt, nine-foot-tall monster was feeding off had good bones. Model-worthy bones: the kind that make all the difference between a pretty face and an agency-quality one. Me, I have a pretty face. This woman had once been exquisitely beautiful.
Now those great bones were all that was left of her, beneath a veneer of thin, pallid, sagging flesh. And still the ravaged woman was staring up at the leprous Unseelie with worship in her eyes. Even from here I could see the bloodshot jaundice of her whites, from dozens of tiny exploded capillaries. I had no doubt that her teeth had once been pearly, but they were now gray and had a brittle, crumbling appearance. A small, vicious-looking, pus-filled sore had blossomed in the corner of her mouth, and there was another budding on her forehead. As she tossed her head, smiling flirtatiously up at her destruction—in her eyes, a gorgeous blond man—two clumps of her hair fell out, one onto the floor, the other onto the shoe of a man standing behind her. The man glanced down, saw the tuft of scalp and hair on his shoe, and kicked it off his foot with a shudder. He took one look at the Gray Man's victim, grabbed his date's hand, and dragged her off through the crowd like he was fleeing the black plague.
I looked away. I couldn't watch. "I thought it just made them ugly. I thought it didn't feed on them until they died."
"It usually doesn't."
"It's killing her, Barrens! We have to stop it!" Even I heard the edge of hysteria in my voice.
He spun me by my shoulders and shook me. His touch crackled through me like heat lightning. "Get a grip, Ms. Lane! It's too late. We can't do anything for her now. That woman has no hope of recovering from what it has done to her. She's going to die. It's only a question of when. Tonight by the Gray Man, tomorrow by her own hand, or in a few weeks from a severe wasting disease doctors won't be able to identify or arrest by any means known to man."
I stared up at him. "Are you kidding me? You mean, even if the victim tries to go on with her life to whatever degree she can, she dies in time anyway?"
"If the Gray Man takes it this far, yes. It usually doesn't. It usually leaves its victims alive because it likes to revisit them, to savor their pain for a long time. Occasionally, however, it finds one so beautiful it doesn't seem able to bear that she exists, so it kills her on the spot. At least she'll never have to look at herself in a mirror, Ms. Lane. At least her sojourn in hell will be brief."
"That's supposed to be a comfort?" I cried. "That it will be brief?"
"You underestimate the pricelessness of brevity, Ms. Lane."
His eyes were ice, his smile colder. "What are you, all of twenty-one, twenty-two?"
There was a tinkle of breaking glass, a dull thud like that of a body hitting the floor, and a collective gasp behind me. Barrons looked over my shoulder. His arctic smile faded.
"Oh God, is she dead?" a woman cried.
"It looks like her face is rotting!" a man exclaimed, aghast.
"Now, Ms. Lane," Barrons ordered. "It's on the move. Headed for the door. Go after it. I've got your back."
I tried to glance over my shoulder. I don't know if I wanted to make sure the woman was really no longer suffering, or if there's just some innate human instinct to look at dead people—it would certainly explain our funeral practices, not to mention all those rubberneckers clogging up the roads around Atlanta at the scenes of traffic accidents. But Barrons caught my chin in his hand and forced me to look straight into his eyes. "Don't," he barked. "The dead ones stick in your memory. Just go kill the fuck that did it."
Sounded like good advice to me. We left the pub.
I followed the Gray Man and Barrons followed me, a dozen paces behind. The last time I'd seen this Unseelie, I'd had long blonde hair. I doubted it would recognize me with my new look. It didn't know I was a sidhe-seer or a Null, or that I had the spear, so I figured my odds of killing were high, if I could get close enough.
Getting close enough, however, was going to be the problem. Inhumanly tall, it was also inhumanly fast. I was already sprinting to keep pace with it. In order to catch it, I was going to have to break into a run. It's a little hard to sneak up on an enemy at a full gallop, especially in heels.
"It's getting away, Ms. Lane," Barrons growled behind me.
"Do you think I don't know that?" I snapped. It was nearly halfway down the block and seemed to have suddenly amped up its glamour-repellent; pedestrians were scattering in its wake, detouring wide, out into the street. Abruptly, I had a clear view of it down the sidewalk, which was not good. I could hardly shadow something without any camouflage between us. I was going to have to make a dash for it.
It stopped, turned around, and looked straight at me.
I froze. I had no idea how it knew, but it knew I knew, and I knew it, and there was no point in faking.
"Bloody hell!" I heard Barrons curse softly, followed by the scrape of steel on stone, the rustle of fabric, then silence behind me.
We stared at each other, the Gray Man and I. Then it smiled with that awful mouth that used up half its tall, thin face. "I see you, sidhe-seer," it said. Its laugh was the sound of cockroaches scuttling over dried leaves. "I saw you in the bar. How do you want to die?" It laughed again. "Slow or slower?"
I wished I'd thought to ask Barrons earlier if my suspicion about the strange word the old woman had used today was correct. I was pretty sur
e from the context she'd used it in that I'd gotten the gist of it, but there was only one way to find out. I wet my lips, batted my eyes, and praying I was right, said breathlessly, "Whatever you wish, Master. I am Pri-ya."
The Gray Man sucked in a long, hissing breath that showed shark teeth in its lipless mouth. Its mocking amusement faded and its black eyes gleamed with sudden interest that married sexual excitement to homicidal sadism in a way that chilled me to the bone.
I bit my tongue to keep from betraying my revulsion. I was right. Pri-ya meant something along the lines of Fae-addict or Fae-whore. I would ask Barrons for an exact definition when this was over. Right now, I had to get closer to it. The Gray Man might have somehow clued into me watching it, but it didn't know I was a Null, or that I had a weapon capable of killing it.
There was no mistaking that it wanted what it thought I was offering, wanted it enough to believe I was the real deal. This was its weakness, I realized, its Achilles' heel. It could steal beauty, it could cast a glamour to make even the most beautiful human woman desire it, but it would never be desired in its true form and it knew it.
Except… maybe… by one who was Pri-ya. A woman that was Fae-struck, Fae-blind, a whore for anything Seelie or Unseelie. Such sick devotion would be the closest thing to true attraction this monster could ever know.
It rubbed its leprous hands together and leered. At least, unlike the Many-Mouthed-Thing, it only had one mouth to leer with. "On your knees, Pri-ya," it said.
I wondered what the deal was with Fae liking women on their knees. Did they all have worship fetishes? I pasted a smile on my lips like the one I'd seen on the blankly compliant face of the Goth-girl at Mallucé's, and sank to the sidewalk, bare knees to cold stone. I could no longer hear Barrons or anyone else on the street behind me. I had no idea where everyone had gone. It looked like the Gray Man's glamour-repellent was on a par with Vlane's.
My purse was unzipped, my hands ready. If it would just stay frozen half as long as the Many-Mouthed-Thing, I'd have more than enough time to kill it. Once it approached, it was dead.
It could have worked that way, it should have worked that way, but I made a critical error. What can I say? It was my first time. My expectations weren't in line with reality. It had walked down the street and I expected it to walk back.
It didn't.
It sifted back.
It had me, one yellow-taloned hand in my hair, before I even knew what was happening. Inhumanly strong, it jerked me up off the ground, its gray fist tight to my scalp.
Fortunately, my sidhe-seer instincts kicked in and I slammed both hands into its chest as it lifted me into the air.
Unfortunately, it froze exactly like that, with its hand in my hair, and me dangling. Fact of some significance: I have arms of normal human length. My spear was in my purse. My purse was on the sidewalk, a foot below my feet.
"Barrons," I hissed desperately. "Where are you?"
"Unbelievable," a dry voice said above me. "Of all the potential scenarios I'd envisioned, this was not one of them."
I tried to look up but aborted the painful effort and clamped both my hands to my head instead. What was he doing on the roof? For that matter, how had he gotten on the roof? I didn't recall passing any convenient ladders. And wasn't that building two stories high? "Hurry, it hurts!" I cried. I knew how lucky I was that he was there. If I'd gotten into this predicament by myself, I would have had to tear the hair out of my skull to escape, and frankly, I wasn't sure that could even be done. I have really strong hair and it was holding a huge handful of it. "Come on, hurry! Get my purse! I don't know how long it'll stay frozen."
Barrons dropped to the sidewalk in front of me with a soft thud of boots hitting stone, his long black coat billowing out around him. "You probably should have thought about that before you froze it, Ms. Lane," he said coolly.
Hanging as I was put me eye-to-eye with him. I transferred my grip from my scalp to the Gray Man's immobilized arm and used all my strength to take some of the weight off my hair. "Can we talk about this after you've gotten me down?" I gritted.
He crossed his arms over his chest. "You wouldn't be having an after if I weren't here to save you. Let's talk about where you went wrong, shall we?"
It wasn't a question, but I tried to answer it anyway. "I'd rather not just now."
"One: It was obvious you didn't expect it to sift in on you and you weren't prepared for it. Your spear was down at your side. Your purse should have been up and you should have been ready to stab the Gray Man through it."
"Okay, I messed up. Can I have my purse now?"
"Two: You let go of your weapon. Never let go of your weapon. I don't care if you have to wear fat-clothes and strap it to your body beneath them. Never let go of your weapon."
I nodded, but not really. I couldn't move my head that much. "Got it. Had it the first time you said it. Now can I have my purse?"
"Three: You didn't think before you acted. Your greatest advantage in any one-on-one battle with a Fae is that it doesn't know you're a Null. Unfortunately, this one does now."
He retrieved my purse—finally—and I reached for it with both hands but he held it beyond my grasp. I clamped my hands back on the Gray Man's arm. I was getting a headache the size of Texas. I tried to kick him but he sidestepped it easily. Jericho Barrens had those kind of flawless reflexes that I've only ever seen before in professional athletes. Or animals.
"Never freeze a Fae, Ms. Lane, unless you are absolutely, one-hundred-percent sure you can kill it before it unfreezes again. Because this one" — he tapped the rigid Unseelie coat hanger upon which I was draped—"is perfectly conscious even though it's frozen, and the very instant it unfreezes it's going to sift out with you. You'll be gone before your brain even manages to process that it has unfrozen. Depending on where it takes you—you might materialize surrounded by dozens of its kind—you will be there, your spear will be here, and I won't have any idea where to begin looking—"
"Oh, for God's sake, Barrens," I exploded, kicking wildly in midair, "enough already! Will you just shut up and give me my purse?"
Barrons glanced down at the spear, which was half-poking out of my purse, and plucked the ball of foil from the lethal tip. Then he leaned forward and got right in my face. Up close I could see how truly furious he was with me. The corners of his mouth and rims of his nostrils were white, and his dark eyes burned with anger. "Never get separated from this thing again. Do you understand me, Ms. Lane? You will eat with it, shower with it, sleep with it, fuck with it."
I opened my mouth to tell him not only didn't I have anyone I was currently doing that last thing with, I never called it that, and didn't appreciate him calling it that, when my perspective changed abruptly. I'm not sure if the Gray Man began moving before Barrons stabbed it in the gut, or after, but something wet suddenly sprayed me, and it let go of my hair. I fell to my knees and got a face full of sidewalk.
The Gray Man slumped next to me. I instantly backed away on my hands and knees. A deep wound in its abdomen oozed the same grayish-green stuff that I was revolted to discover was also on my shirt, my skirt, and my bare legs. The Unseelie looked from Barrons to the spearhead—half-wrapped in what used to be my favorite purse, and might still have been if not for the slime dripping all over it—its eyes blazing with disbelief, hatred, and rage.
Though its wrath was for Barrens, it swung its head around and the last words it uttered were for me. "The Lord Master is back, you stupid bitch, and he's going to do the same thing to you he did to the last pretty little sidhe-seer. You'll wish you'd died at my hands. You'll beg for death the same way she did."
A few moments later, when Barrons gave me my purse back, even though I knew it was already dead, I pulled out the spear and stabbed it again anyway.
CHAPTER 20
In the year since the day I got on a plane to fly to Dublin, determined to find my sister's killer and bring him to justice, I've learned that you can discover just as much from what
people don't say to you, as what they do.
It's not enough to listen to their words. You have to mine their silences for buried ore. It's often only in the lies we refuse to speak that any truth can be heard at all.
Barrons disposed of the Gray Man's body that night—I didn't ask how. I just went back to the bookstore, took the longest, hottest shower of my life, and scrubbed my hair three times. Yes, I took the spear into the shower with me. I'd learned my lesson.
The next day, I finished up at the museum without incident. No V'lane, no old woman, and not a single OOP in the entire place.
For the first time since I'd been staying at the bookstore, Barrons didn't make an appearance that night. I guessed he must have slipped out while I was upstairs, answering e-mails on my laptop. It was a Saturday, so I thought he might have a date and wondered where a man like him went on one. I couldn't see him doing the movie-and-dinner routine. I wondered what kind of woman he went out with, then remembered the one from Casa Blanc. Out of sheer boredom, I imagined them having sex, but when the woman began looking more and more like me, I decided there were wiser ways to kill time.
I spent the evening watching old movies by myself on a small TV that Fiona kept behind the counter in the bookstore, trying not to stare at the phone, or think too much.
By Sunday morning, I was a wreck. Alone with too many questions and no one to talk to, I did what I'd sworn I wouldn't do.
I called home.
Dad answered, as he had every time I'd called from Ireland. "Hi," I said brightly, crossing my legs and twirling the phone cord around my finger. I was sitting on the comfy couch in the rear conversation area of the bookstore. "How's it going?"
We chatted halfheartedly for several minutes about the weather in Georgia and the weather in Dublin, before moving on to comparing and contrasting the food in Georgia to the food in Dublin, then he launched into a rambling diatribe that supposedly linked climates with high per-annum rainfall to dour personalities and, just when I was thinking he'd surely exhausted his run of banality and we could begin a real conversation, he started in on one of his favorite filler topics about which he'd been known to pontificate for hours: the ever-fluctuating price of gas in America and the role the president was playing in our current economic woes.
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