I blinked. His gaze held sorrow—and a promise that we would talk soon.
“Convenient for you, fairy.”
V’lane cut Barrons a look of disdain. “Look beyond the tip of your mortal nose. The Unseelie Princes are easily as powerful—if not more so—than I. And the Unseelie King himself is far stronger than us all. The magic would most certainly go to him, wherever he is. I have nothing to gain by harming my queen and everything to lose. You must let me have her. If she was in the Unseelie prison the entire time that she has been missing, she may be very close to death. You must permit me to take her to Faery, to regain her strength!”
“Never going to happen.”
“Then you will be responsible for killing our queen,” V’lane said bitterly.
“And how do I know that’s not what you’ve been after all along?”
“You despise us all. You would allow the queen to die to satisfy your own petty vengeances.”
I wanted to know what Barrons’ petty vengeances were. But I was feeling that damned duality again. What was unfolding here wasn’t remotely what anyone thought. Only I knew the truth.
This was not the queen they were fighting over. It was the concubine from hundreds of thousands of years ago, who’d somehow ended up becoming the Seelie Queen. Had the king finally gotten what he’d hoped for? Had protracted time in Faery made his beloved Fae? Had the balance that the world “listed” toward, as the dreamy-eyed guy proposed, turned a mortal into a replacement queen, as it would ultimately turn Christian into a replacement prince?
If I was the king, why didn’t that elate me? The concubine was finally Fae! I shook my head. I couldn’t think that way. It just didn’t work for me. “Mac,” I muttered. “Just be Mac.”
Barrons cut me a hard look that said, Shelve it for later, Ms. Concubine.
“Look, boys,” I said. Four ancient sets of eyes skewered me, and I blinked at the two Scotsmen. “Oh, you two aren’t at all what you seem to be, are you?”
“Is anyone in this room?” Barrons said irritably. “What’s your point?”
“She’s safest here,” I said succinctly.
“That’s what I’ve been saying all along,” Barrons growled. “This level is warded the same way the bookstore is. Nothing can sift in—”
V’lane hissed.
“—or out. Nothing Seelie or Unseelie can get to her. We don’t let anyone enter the room clothed. Rainey is nursing—”
“You put her in with my parents?” I said incredulously. “People are visiting naked?”
“Where else would I put her?”
“The queen of the Faery is in that glass room with my mom and dad?” My voice was rising. I didn’t care.
He shrugged. His eyes said, Not really, and we both know that. You aren’t even from this world.
Mine said, I don’t give a shit who I might have been in another lifetime. I know who I am now.
“It takes time and resources to ward a place as well as the room where Jack and Rainey are. We’re not duplicating our efforts,” he said.
“Castle Keltar was warded by the queen herself,” Dageus said. “Far from Dublin, where the Sinsar Dubh seems inclined to prowl, ’tis the better choice.”
“She stays. Not open to discussion. You don’t like that, try to take her,” Barrons said flatly, and in his dark eyes I saw anticipation. He hoped they would. He was in the mood for a fight. Everyone in the room was. Even me, I was startled to realize. I had a sudden, unwanted appreciation of men. I had a problem I couldn’t fix. But if I could create a manageable problem, like a fistfight, and kick the shit out of it, it sure would make me feel better for a while.
“If she stays, we stay,” Dageus said flatly. “We guard her here or we guard her there. But we guard her.”
“And if they stay, I stay, too.” V’lane’s voice dripped ice. “No human will protect my queen so long as I exist.”
“Simple solution to that, fairy. I make you stop existing.”
“The Seelie are not our enemy. You touch him, you take us all on.”
“You think I couldn’t, Highlander?”
For a moment the tension in the room was unbearable, and in my mind’s eye I saw us all going for one another’s throats.
Barrons was the only one of us that couldn’t be killed. I needed the Scotsmen to perform the re-interment ritual and V’lane and his stone to help corner the Book. A fight right now was a very bad idea.
“And that’s settled,” I chirped brightly. “Everyone’s staying. Welcome to the Chester’s Hilton! Let’s get some beds made up.”
Barrons looked at me as if I’d gone mad.
“Then let’s go out and find some things to kill,” I added.
Dageus and Cian growled assent, and even V’lane looked relieved.
32
I stepped out of the shower and looked at myself in the mirror. Since dragging my aching body up the back stairs of BB&B to my bedroom twenty minutes ago, my bruises had faded by forty percent. I traced my fingers across a particularly bad one on my collarbone. I’d thought I heard a crack and was worried something had broken, but it was only a hot, swollen contusion and was healing remarkably fast.
What was with me? I might have suspected it was something to do with my being … well, Not the Concubine, but I’d never healed like this when I was a kid. I’d run around with skinned knees constantly.
Was McCabe one of my parts? Was that why he hadn’t frozen, too? Could the dreamy-eyed guy be a part? Who else? How many parts did Not the Concubine have?
“I am not the king,” I said out loud. “There’s some other explanation.” There had to be. I simply wouldn’t accept it.
Tonight had been a rush. We’d run into Jayne, his guardians, and Dani near Fourteenth and cut a wide swath through the city. Dageus, Cian, and V’lane had pummeled; Dani and I had sliced and diced. Barrons had done whatever it was he did, but he’d done it too fast for me to see. After a time I’d stopped trying, too lost in my own bloodlust.
When I’d finally quit counting, the death toll had been in the hundreds.
How could it feel so good to kill Unseelie if I was their creator?
“See? More proof I’m not,” I told myself in the mirror with a nod. My reflection nodded sagely back. I selected the medium heat setting on my dryer and began to blow-dry my hair.
The Unseelie had retreated. Word of us had spread through the streets and they’d withdrawn from combat, flapped, sifted, and slithered away. I guess after being locked up for their entire existence, they were in no hurry to die now that they were free. I’d left Barrons, the two Keltar, and V’lane looking remarkably unsatisfied and about to fall at one another’s throats. I’d been tired, sore, and beyond caring. If they were stupid enough to kill each other, they deserved the resultant problems it would create.
As I slipped into pajamas, a pebble rattled against my bedroom window.
I was so not in the mood for V’lane right now. Yes, I had questions, but tonight was not the night to ask them. I needed rest and a clear head. I kicked away the backpack, crawled in bed and pulled the covers over my head to block out the blazing light from five lamps. The Shades were supposedly gone. “Supposedly” isn’t a word I live with well.
Another pebble.
I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for it to stop.
Five minutes of incessant pebbles later, a stone crashed through my window, spraying glass and scaring the hell out of me.
I shot up in bed and glared at the mess on the floor. I couldn’t even march over and snap his head off. I had to dig around for shoes first.
A chilly breeze flapped the curtains.
I tugged on boots and crunched to the window. “I’m not talking to you until you fix the damned glass, V’lane,” I snapped. Then, “Oh!”
A cloaked, hooded figure stood in the alley below, and for a moment it reminded me of Mallucé. Dark robes swirled in a gossamer cloud as the figure moved jerkily forward, as if every step was agony. The exte
rior spotlights gleamed across the cloak, and I saw it was fashioned of frothy light chiffon.
My first thought was of the Sinsar Dubh, hiding somewhere beneath those many secretive folds.
“Drop the cloak. I want to see hands, everything.”
I heard a sharp inhalation, a wheeze of agony. Arms moved with arthritic carefulness, loosening a brooch at the throat. The hood fell and the cloak rustled to the ground.
I nearly vomited. I bit back a scream. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It was Fiona, in the badly mutilated flesh.
“Merssseee.” Skinned lips parted on a sibilant hiss.
I turned away from the window and leaned back against the sill, hand over my mouth. My eyes were closed, but there was no escape. I could see her on the backs of my lids.
She’d tried to kill me, in what seemed another lifetime. She’d taken up with Derek O’Bannion, then Darroc.
All because she loved Jericho Barrons.
The night the Book had brought her to my balcony, skinned alive, I’d wondered if all the Unseelie she’d eaten would keep her from dying. Eating Unseelie has remarkable healing properties. But apparently growing a new human skin—or maybe healing from any magical injury the Sinsar Dubh had inflicted—was beyond its ability.
“I thought the Book killed everyone it possessed,” I said finally. My words rang out in the hushed night.
“It has … different appetites for … us … who eat Unseelie.” Her pained voice floated up.
“It killed Darroc. He ate Unseelie.”
“Silencing … him. For what … he knew.”
“Which was?”
“If only … I knew. I would …” She made a garbled sound, and I assumed from the wheezes and moans that she was stooping to retrieve her cloak. I tried to imagine what would hurt worse on flayed flesh—the cold night breeze or clothes. Both would be a walking hell. I couldn’t imagine how she stood the pain.
I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say.
“Try it … myself,” she finally continued, “pray it … killed me … too.”
“Why are you here?” I turned and stared down at her. Although she’d put her cloak back on, she’d left the hood down.
“Can’t heal.” Gray eyes shimmered with constant pain in bloody sockets. Even her lids were gone. “Can’t die. Tried … everything.”
“Still eating Unseelie?”
“Dulls … pain.”
“It’s probably what’s keeping you alive.”
“Too … late.”
“You mean you think you’ve been eating it so long that even if you stopped now you might not die?”
“Yesss.”
I considered that. Depending on how much she’d eaten, it was possible. Mallucé had been marbled with Fae like a steak with fat. Maybe even if she stopped entirely, she would never be fully human again. I’d eaten it only twice in my life and hoped it had passed from my body forever.
“Can’t find …” Her gaze drifted to the abandoned Dark Zone, and I understood that she’d hunted for a Shade to kill her. But they’d moved on long ago to greener pastures, literally, and she didn’t look capable of walking very far. I couldn’t imagine her driving a car, sitting on that flayed flesh. I shuddered. “Only spear … sword … will—”
“—make the Fae parts quit keeping you alive,” I finished. I looked away, stared out over the roof of Barrons’ garage at the hundreds of dark roofs beyond. “You want me to kill you.” There was a terribly irony here.
“Yesss.”
“Why not try Dani? Don’t you think you might have better luck there?”
“Said no.”
I blinked. She’d actually known about Dani, found her, and Dani had refused?
“Said … you had to …”
“And you think I have mercy?”
“Can’t … look … at me.”
I jerked my gaze back to her skinned face. “I can ignore you for the rest of my life.” But it wasn’t true. And she knew it.
“Merssseee,” she hissed again.
I punched the ledge of the window.
There were no easy choices anymore. I didn’t want to go down there and look at her. I didn’t want to stab her. I couldn’t possibly let her go on suffering if I could do something about it, and I could.
I gazed longingly at my bed. I wanted nothing more than to crawl back in.
My window was broken. The room would be freezing in no time.
I reached for my holster, strapped it on over my pajama top, slid the spear beneath my arm, grabbed a coat from the chair, and headed for the stairs.
I had a small epiphany on the way down.
My spear would kill the Fae parts of Fiona, granting her the ultimate demise she wished, but very slowly. It had taken months for Mallucé to die. When I stabbed a Fae, it was entirely Fae and died swiftly. But when a human eats Unseelie, it laces the human’s body with pockets and threads of immortal flesh, and there’s no way to stab each and every thread or pocket, so the wound works instead like a slow poison. I wonder if whoever created the immortal-slaying weapons deliberately designed them that way, to carry out a horrific punishment for a horrific crime.
However, there was another potential method of execution that would either kill her instantly—or answer a question I badly wanted answered.
The entire time I’d been fighting tonight, I’d been thinking about it.
I wanted to test the Silver in the White Mansion.
Maybe lots of people and Fae could go through it.
I’d been considering taking an Unseelie captive and forcing it into the Silver.
Now I didn’t have to. I had a volunteer.
And, even better, she was mostly human.
If Fiona could pass through the king’s Silver without dying, that would mean the legend was a bluff.
It killed Barrons.
I shrugged. That might have been an anomaly. Barrons defied the laws of physics. Maybe humans could pass through it just fine. Maybe the Unseelie King hadn’t warded it as well as he thought he had. Maybe humans from our planet were different from his mortal concubine, and how could you ward against something you didn’t even know existed? All I knew was I wasn’t the king, and here was my chance to prove it. I hated losing more time, but my peace of mind was worth losing time for.
I stepped into the alley and moved slowly toward her. “Hood up.”
She made a sound that was almost laughter but made no move to lift it.
“Do you want to die? If so, hood up.”
Eyes hot with hate, moving stiffly and with painstaking care, she adjusted the fabric to shadow her face.
As she put her arms back down, a gust of wind blew the stench of her straight into my nostrils. I gagged. She smelled of blood and decaying flesh with a strong medicinal odor, as if she was eating painkillers by the handful.
“Follow me.”
“Where?”
“The spear will kill you, but it will do so slowly. I might have a way to kill you instantly.”
The hood turned toward me as if she was searching my face to divine my motives.
Daddy told me once that we believe others are capable of the worst we ourselves are capable of. Fiona was wondering if I might be as cruel to her as she’d have been to me in the same position.
“It will be hell for you to have to walk there. But I think you’d rather spend twenty minutes getting there to die than the weeks or even months it could take to die from the spear wound. Because of the Unseelie you’ve been eating, you’ll die slowly.”
“Spear … not instant?” There was shock in her voice.
“No.”
I knew the moment she accepted it. When I turned and headed for the Silver in the brick wall, she followed. I heard the soft swish of her cloak behind me.
“There’s a price, though. If you really want to die, you’re going to have to tell me everything you know about—”
“I can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I?” Barrons
said. “Where the hell do you think you’re going this time, Ms. Lane? And who is that with you?”
The three of us went in together.
It was one of the most awkward, uncomfortable walks I’ve taken.
I had one of those outside-my-skin-watching-from-above moments. Eight months ago, when I’d first ducked into BB&B, seeking sanctuary from my first encounter with a Dark Zone, I’d never have imagined this moment: pushing into a brick wall behind the bookstore—I mean, really, a brick wall!—with the badly skinned and heavily narcotized woman who’d run BB&B with Barrons, who was waiting for me to put him in a good mood again with sex and who turned into a nine-foot-tall beast on occasion, all so I could find out if I was the king and creator of the monsters that had overtaken my world. If I’d thought my life would come to this, I’d have marched straight for the airport that day and flown back home.
Fiona hadn’t uttered a syllable since Barrons had appeared in the alley. She’d drawn her hood tightly around her face. I couldn’t imagine what she had to be feeling as she marched to her suicide between the man she’d loved to her own destruction and the woman she believed had taken him from her.
At first, Barrons had disagreed with my plan vehemently.
He’d wanted to use the spear and kill her without going back into the Silvers and wasting weeks, possibly months, doing it. But after I pulled him aside and explained that she was the perfect test, he’d reluctantly agreed, and I realized that he, too, hoped the legend was an erroneous myth.
Why? He thought I was the concubine. Considering what I was afraid I was, the concubine didn’t seem like such a bad thing to be.
Unless he’d concluded that, if I was the concubine, the king himself was destined to come for me at some point, and that was one foe he might not be able to take on, even in beast form. Perhaps he worried that the king would take his OOP detector, and then where would he be?
But if you ask her one thing about me, Ms. Lane, he’d murmured against my ear, I’ll kill her where we stand, and you won’t get your little test.
I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. Could he? In the same way he killed Fae, whatever it was? Yet he didn’t offer it as mercy. I wondered what he was feeling as we moved down a rosy corridor. Did he mourn her, this woman who’d run his store for years, this woman he’d trusted with more of his secrets than he’d ever entrusted to me? He hadn’t offered to kill her swiftly, to end her suffering. He’d used it only as a threat to keep me from prying into his business.
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