The Glass Man

by Jocelyn Adams

  Static crackled in the air. Wind swirled as if it came from within my body, and my Light pulsed into the room like molten strips of fire.

  Parthalan mirrored my actions, spread his arms to his sides. My energy siphoned away until it mingled with his. The hue of his skin glowed brighter as mine grew dimmer, and I fell weaker.

  When my knees could no longer hold me, he caught me and held me up. “So the mountain can be moved with the right motivation.” His hand found the bare skin of my arms. With a moan, he tilted his head back and rolled his eyes up. His scent engulfed me—fresh night air and evergreen. I buried my face in the hollow beneath his jaw as he shoved his Light into me—a terrible force of the sort I’d never imagined, hungry for destruction, intoxicating to the point of addiction.

  So good.

  “Liam can’t give you what I can,” Parthalan whispered against my ear. “Feel what we can be together, the pleasure we can share. Sever the bond, and my power will become yours forever. Join with me, and we’ll rule them all.”

  The urge to rip the leather from his body and throw him to the ground overwhelmed me. I slid my hands along his chest, watched the shadow of desire engulf his face as I did. He shuddered and sighed beneath my touch.

  I laughed a throaty, frantic sound.

  “Fight it, Lila!” A voice shouted from far away. “Remember who you are.”

  Donovan. Father. His voice came to me with such urgency it broke through my trance. What little energy I had left flared enough to break Parthalan’s hold on me. I pushed him away and scrubbed at my skin. His power tickled me, coaxed me back for another taste. I wanted to. Goddess help me, but I did.

  No!

  “I’m a fae who gets what he wants, and I want your Light,” Parthalan growled. “Break the bond, or Sebastian will finish your half-breed trash. You have five seconds to decide. Either way, I will have you and all that you are, tonight and every night after if I choose.”

  “My King!” Rourke blurted. “You—”

  “Silence. My anger made me foolish. Be a good boy, and share with your king.”

  Rourke flexed his jaw and glared at the floor as he nodded. I considered egging him on to start a fight, but stirring up the lunatics would be too unpredictable.

  “Five,” Parthalan said.

  I turned to Liam, clutching my throat to contain the scream. “I have no choice.”

  “Don’t.” His deep blue sapphires pleaded with me. “I’d rather die feeling your spirit inside me than die alone. You know he’ll kill me anyway.”

  My focus shifted to Parthalan. “If I do this, do you promise all three of them will be set free without any more harm? They can return to Dun Bray.”

  “Four.”

  “Please!”

  “Three.”

  I swallowed a sob. “What should I do, Donovan?”

  He shook his head. “There is no good choice.”

  “Two.”

  Sebastian thrust the barrel of his pistol into Liam’s forehead. His finger trembled over the trigger. The curl of his lip and shine in his eyes said he’d do it and enjoy it.

  “I’m sorry.” I turned my back on Liam, on the one I’d begun to imagine a life with. Tears flowed down my cheeks in an endless parade. I couldn’t bear to see the look on his face, so I stared at the devil in leather, instead. “Tell me how to break the bond.”

  Snickering, Parthalan brushed the tears from my face and kissed me. “Search your mind for the place where his spirit attached to yours. Force him out. Make room for your one true king.”

  I closed my eyes. It took several minutes before I found the bright spot in my head where our connection had formed. I didn’t know how I hadn’t noticed it before then—so warm, so bright. Maybe I did, but it had become a part of me as if it were always meant to be there. The instant my Light touched it, the link between us opened. “Forgive me,” I thought at him. “I’m so sorry for doubting you, for everything. I—I love you.”

  I centered my Force of Will on the task and tore the connection apart. Both Liam and I cried out in unison. Pain swept through my mind, gripped my soul and threatened to shatter it.

  Great racking sobs burst from Liam’s lips as he strained against his chains, shouting “No!”

  A moment later, a cool hand touched my forehead. Calm overtook me. Parthalan stared at me with something I took as regret before I remembered who the look belonged to.

  “Take Donovan and the boy to the gateway and release them,” he said. “Allow them to return to Dun Bray. It makes little difference. The city will fall soon enough.”

  Not as long as I lived, it wouldn’t. I gripped Parthalan’s wrist, both to keep his attention and to prevent myself from falling to my knees. “What about Liam?”

  “He has grown powerful since tasting of your Light. I need him where I can see him until we’ve been mated by the ancestors.” He leaned in closer and whispered in my ear. “And when my guidance makes you more … reasonable, you can choose his fate.”

  I shook my head, sickness spreading through my body like cancer. “Please, take me somewhere else. I don’t want him to see.”

  Parthalan’s malevolent grin emerged. “Oh, but I do, princess. I want to see his face when you ravage me the way you did the first time. We will create a force and spectacle none have seen before.”

  He kissed me hard and fast. My Light responded to him, bursting into the room with the flare of fireworks. Time crawled—or maybe stopped—while I basked in his power. When he released me, I found my legs wrapped around his hips. I jumped down, swallowing a scream. My energy overflowed.

  “You are such a tease.” He pulled me back into his arms.

  I drowned in his scent, melted against his smooth flesh. Warning voices screamed at me, but I could no longer understand what they said.

  “Kill the peasant,” a voice hissed in my mind. The language wasn’t English, but I understood it just as well.

  I opened my eyes wide.

  “What’s the matter?” Parthalan stroked my hair, but I shook him off and backed up.

  “Take the father and child to the bone yard. Take all that fall this night.”

  As in the Sluagh’s bone yard? Several thoughts poured into my head at once, none of them my own. They had different tones of voice and varying cadences. Did they have a collective mind? If so, why could I hear it?

  “You said they’d go free!” I rubbed my temples, the voices so loud it took most of my concentration to think past them.

  Parthalan cocked his head. “Whatever are you talking about?”

  Hell’s fucking bells, just blab it out loud, why don’t you. I didn’t want him to know I could hear the Sluagh—not until I figured out how to use them.

  Before I could think of a good lie, the door crashed inward. The Sluagh launched into the air, screeching, and the fae jumped to attention. Their energy saturated the room with varying brightness and colors, terrible and wonderful at the same time. I wobbled on my feet as if I was drowning in high proof whiskey.

  I put my hands to my ears.

  “Selkie trash. Kill them. More in the corridor. Drive them out.”

  A woman screamed, then stopped. I thought the sound came from the group at the door, but the racket from the Sluagh made it hard to tell. The silence frightened me worse than the screaming. I didn’t know who had fallen, and the ward rendered me helpless to do anything about it.

  “I suppose this is your doing?” Parthalan glared at the boiling mass of bodies by the door. “I tire of your games, Lila. Do not cross me.” He strode out of the circle.

  The Sluagh parted far enough to reveal Willa and Quinn standing in the corner, crouched in defensive postures.

  “Why, Willa,” Parthalan said in his singsong voice. “How nice of you to return. Your skin will make a lovely rug for the front of the fireplace.”

  The crowd shifted again. Althea lay sprawled on the floor, her neck bent at a disturbing angle.

  “No! You bastards!” Huffing, I threw
a fist at the invisible barrier because I needed to do something with the rage. The pain in my knuckles did little to draw my attention away from the sight before me.

  “I will not waste my precious energy on these trifles.” Parthalan grabbed Bain by his cloak. “Kill them both.”

  The Sluagh advanced on them all at once. Their excitement filled me with bloodlust that wasn’t my own, a vile craving that demanded to be sated.

  “Stop!” I shouted.

  They all froze mid-step and cast glances at one another.

  Huh? I didn’t really expect them to listen to me.

  Parthalan grabbed one of the Sluagh by the throat. “I said kill them!”

  “I forbid it.” A rogue idea hit. I had asked for the Goddess’s help. Maybe instead of granting me an animal to command, she gave me the Sluagh. I could work with that. “Remove all Sidhe from this building except Liam, Donovan and Garret.” I thought for a moment, then added Cas’s name to the list. I got the sense he was no happier about the evening’s festivities than I was.

  Parthalan rushed at me, but the Sluagh blocked his path as they attacked the Sidhe around him. I allowed myself a tiny spark of hope. I didn’t understand why they had to obey me, but I wasn’t about to question it.

  A few of the Sluagh squealed and flew up. Blood dripped from their mouths. Parthalan waded through the rest, his face contorted with confusion.

  I backed to the far side of the bed.

  “Kill the selkies and then Liam,” he said. “Do it, Bain, or I will take all your lands and force you out of the City.” His muscles writhed beneath his skin, and his teeth clenched as he neared the circle.

  Banshees poured in through the door and flowed across the ceiling, their empty eye sockets staring blindly forward. Their black wispy bodies trailed out behind them. The room erupted into chaos as the Sluagh attacked in a solid black mass of feathers. Bain leapt off the floor. His wings exploded around him. He hovered for a moment, those orange eyes narrowing as they glared at me.

  The banshees descended, shrill whining cries preceding them. They carried off screaming fae toward the ceiling, down the hallways and out the door.

  Liam shouted my name from somewhere on the far side of the room, but I couldn’t see him through the horde.

  Parthalan re-entered the circle and grabbed me.

  “Get off me!” I beat at him with my fists, but he held me with an iron grip. The more energy I expelled, the more he could drain from me. “Liam!”

  Parthalan kissed me as he forced me back against the bed. “No time to do this the fun way.” He tipped his face up to the ceiling. “Ancestors, hear my call.”

  A frigid purple mist descended around us. Voices dwindled to a few shouts as the room emptied. Over top of it all came the screeching of an owl.

  I descended into Parthalan’s darkness until our hearts beat in unison. Voices filled the shadows growing darker around us—dark, malevolent whispers that sent raw fear treading along my spine. My body no longer obeyed me.

  Our skin flared with deep blue light. Wind pushed us closer together, carried our hair up in its angry exhale. The room faded from my sight. I drowned in power so fierce I waited for it to tear my soul in two. Our skin didn’t just touch, it melted together.

  The world trembled.

  I wandered in darkness. So cold. “Help me!” Lost. So lost.

  Only laughter answered.

  Wailing, I searched for relief from the black nothing. I tried to remember how I’d arrived there. Faces passed through my thoughts, but I had no names for them.

  A presence smashed into my spirit.

  I cried out and thrust my hands up to keep it away, but it had no physical form inside my soul. Energy filled my body to capacity before it burst free of my skin. A moment later, another consciousness surrounded me.

  His madness and lust for power clung to him like a leech, waiting to devour my sanity along with his. He invaded my mind, stole my breath.

  My spirit shifted from me into him—a cold, empty place where nothing but ambition and greed existed. Numbness swept my body. A terrible loneliness settled down on me, sucking at my Light and will. I had nothing left to fight with, so I let it have me.

  Time held no meaning as I wandered in his wilderness. Had it been hours? Days?

  Distant sounds startled me where I lay alone in the cold. Screaming. Gurgling breaths of a dying fae. Shouting. The unmistakable scent of death settled into my nostrils.

  My vision returned. Purple mist rose toward the ceiling until it retreated behind the glass. A warm body stirred beside me. His wavy black hair hung in a tangled mess around his smiling face. He looked so peaceful I smiled back, coaxing his hair behind his ear with my finger.

  I held my hand up and marveled at the sight of it. “Do I know you?” The being didn’t appear to have any flesh, only pure white energy.

  “Lila!” A voice shouted from my left.

  I sat up and gazed around. I knew that voice. Didn’t I?

  A man stood a few yards away. Dried blood covered his body from head to toe. Two others stood behind him, wearing brown cloaks and furs. Two men hovered by the door, shouting at someone down the hall outside the room. Tears streaked all of their faces.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked the one covered in blood.

  “I killed Sebastian, but the ward didn’t break,” the handsome man said. “Tell me what to do.”

  “Who’s Sebastian?” I gazed around the room until I found a body lying on the floor near the door. Deep gashes scarred his back as if giant talons had sliced him into pieces. “You did that?”

  He nodded.

  I slid off the bed. Bright light shone through my jeans and T-shirt as if they weren’t there. The man from the bed stood and put his arms around me.

  I smiled up at him. “Do you know what a ward is?”

  “No, my darling. Why don’t you ask your friends, the Sluagh, to rid us of these trespassers?”

  “I’m so tired. Can’t we sleep?”

  The dark beauty before me gathered me closer to him. “Give the order, and we’ll sleep as long as you like.”

  I turned to the five strangers. The woman’s chin quivered. The man beside her looked about the room, searching for what, I couldn’t imagine. The bloodied one paced, his fingers jammed into his short hair.

  Fluttering sounds drew my eyes to the ceiling. Hundreds of winged creatures clung to the cross beams or sailed across the void. Some landed along the walls and skittered down the surface. A plethora of glowing eyes fixed on me.

  “Are those my friends?” I marveled at their dark grace.

  “He’s deceiving you!” The bloodied man shouted. “Remember me. Remember that I love you, Lila Gray.”

  I shook my head, my brow furrowed. My head throbbed. “You—love me?”

  “Kill them,” my mate growled. “They’ll hurt you. They want to take you away from me forever. Order the Sluagh to kill them.”

  They didn’t look dangerous, but doubt sprouted to life in my thoughts. “Don’t let them hurt me.” I clung to my mate, staring into the endless dance of colors in his crystal eyes.

  The one who loved me stopped pacing. He wailed as he fell to the ground. His body twisted, hands pressed against his ears. All eyes turned to him. The woman dropped to her knees beside him, held her hands above his body as if she couldn’t find him. The color of his skin and hair faded. In a blink, he disappeared.

  My mate threw me back against the bed and stepped forward. “You’ve been holding out on me, Liam. Even Keepers who interfere will die.” He looked up to the sky. “You heard your queen. Find him. Kill him!”

  The room filled with sounds of beating wings darting from the ceiling.

  A flash of light blinded me for a few breaths. I scrambled across the floor until I came to a wall I couldn’t see. Terror squeezed my throat.

  The woman wearing the fur crouched down outside the barrier in front of me. “I’m Willa. Do yeh remember me?”

  I shook my
head, clutched my chest above frantic lungs.

  “Parthalan killed yer family. He’s about to kill us. Yeh have ta stop them.”

  “Is that his name?” The pounding in my head worsened. “No. He wouldn’t do that. The spirits have mated us. He’s mine.” The words didn’t sound right. A tiny voice shouted at me, but I couldn’t understand what it said.

  Giant white wings filled the circle. I gasped and huddled closer to the invisible wall. In desperation, I looked back for the one Willa had called Parthalan. Talons and beak tore at him. The terrible screeches from the owl stabbed at my ears.

  “Yeh helped me outta this place once,” the woman insisted. “Listen ta me now. Yeh’re Lila Gray, daughter of Arianne, Queen of the Seelie. Yeh have ta remember. Those are the Sluagh. You have ta stop them.”

  One of the Sluagh swooped above the woman. She rolled onto her back and kicked hard. The Sluagh squealed and circled, readying for another dive. The two by the door, along with the other man, also fought with attackers. Someone with plum hair came in from the hallway, wielding a sword and holding a wooden box in his hand.

  “But, I’m Parthalan’s. He promised to keep me safe.”

  “Feel the Goddess’s gifts flowin’ through yeh’re flesh.”

  My palms pressed hard on my ears. “No. Lies. He said you’d take me away from him forever.”

  The man with the sword tossed the box to Willa. She opened it, and a haunting melody flowed out. “Remember the song yer Mam used ta sing ta yeh. Remember yer promise.”

  I shook my head, confused by the faces and sounds flashing through my mind: a fae looking down at me, her smile, the look on her face as she closed the floor above me the day she left me in the world alone. My mother. Liam’s touch, the depth of emotion in his eyes when he stared at me, the joy as his spirit flowed through me. My brother. My father.

  I drew in a deep breath that couldn’t find a way back out. Everything flooded back with tremendous speed, drowning me in sights, sounds and thoughts. Tears trickled down my face and dripped off my chin.

  A Sluagh dove at Willa again.