Speaking of the spear…Jada shouted across the lawn to Enyo Luna, the tough young half-French, half-Lebanese woman she’d found wandering Dublin, leading a cocky band of hardened, militaristic sidhe-seers. When the walls had fallen, Enyo and her women undertook the long dangerous journey to Ireland, adding to their numbers along the way, seeking their birthright and a place to call home. The natural born warrior had fought her way into the world, inside a military tank—the only safe haven her mother had been able to find—in a town in Syria under heavy fire. Enyo had drawn her first breath in the midst of war and maintained that was where she would also draw her last. Draped in rounds of ammo, face bruised and blood-spattered, dark eyes gleaming, she loped like a graceful dark panther across the battlefield toward them. In war, she was one hundred percent focused and committed, the best of the best, but in everything else she was unpredictable. War kept Enyo’s restlessness and wildness under control, yet Jada was uncertain what she would be like in a time of peace. It took one adrenaline junkie to know another.
When Jada tossed her the spear, Barrons watched it fly end over end through the air, measured Jada a long moment and nodded.
“So it’s ours again,” Enyo said, catching and sheathing it in her waistband in a fluid movement. “Does that mean we’ve lost Mac?”
“No,” Barrons said, dangerously soft. “I’ve lost many things. Mac will never be one of them.”
“In a manner of speaking, for now,” Jada told Enyo. “Has there been any sign of Cruce? Do we know if the prison holds?”
“We’ve no cause to believe he’s escaped but haven’t looked. I’ll send Shauna below to check.”
“If you see any Fae alive…” Jada didn’t finish the sentence. Enyo was already moving away, dark gaze shifting across the battlefield, watching for movement, spear at the ready.
Jada moved closer to the blob, ceding the beasts a respectful distance, and stared down at the thing that was being released from its crimson shroud. Now that part of the fleshy cocoon had been torn away, she could make out the individual runes from which it had been knitted, and realized she had seen them before. Mac once used a few to prevent the Gray Woman from sifting that night nearly six years ago when she’d saved Dani from a gruesome death at the Gray Woman’s hands. The night Jada’s world had bottomed out and she’d been exposed as Alina’s killer.
“It’s Fae. Has to be a prince. Looks like something hacked off its wings. Brutally,” Fade said.
“Pure rage,” Barrons murmured.
“You think it was Mac?” Jada clenched her fists, forced them to unclench, worrying that the prince lying facedown on the ground was Christian MacKeltar. He didn’t deserve this. He’d had enough misery already; first being turned Unseelie then getting captured by the Crimson Hag and killed over and over again, and finally losing his uncle to the Hag’s cruel javelin. Once he’d spared her from having to make a hellish decision by sacrificing himself. It was a debt she didn’t feel she’d fully repaid.
“I’ve seen her use these runes before. They’re from the Sinsar Dubh. She’s eliminating the princes. If you hadn’t taken the spear, this one would be dead.”
Jada glanced quickly at Fade. “Where’s Christian? Have you seen him lately?”
He shook his head. “Not for the past hour or so.”
Barrons spoke to Fade again, in the same unintelligible language.
Jada said tightly, “If you don’t trust me enough to speak English around me, I don’t trust you enough to work with you. Are we a country or are we islands? I make one hell of an island. Your call.”
“I told him to turn the thing over.”
“And you couldn’t say that in English?”
“I just did.”
Fade issued another series of guttural commands. The beasts rolled the Unseelie over on his back and resumed tearing off the runes.
When the face was cleared, Jada released a soft sigh of relief. She’d last seen this prince in a prison of ice, below the abbey. It was Cruce, not Christian. Then she stiffened. “We’ve got to lock him up again!”
“I’m not so sure of that,” Barrons disagreed.
“But he’s the Sinsar Dubh, too,” she said.
“I’m not so sure of that either. I think he absorbed the knowledge of the Book, whereas Mac may have been absorbed by it. Cruce read it in the First Language, the spells passed up his arms. From what you described, that’s not at all what happened to Mac.”
Jada saw nothing to be gained by assuring him Mac had definitely been absorbed. She hadn’t been in the cavern the night the corporeal Sinsar Dubh was interred and didn’t know the details. But Cruce wasn’t throwing off anything like what had been palpably emanating from Mac, the dark whirlwind energy of a pure psychopath. “We have to find Christian. If he wasn’t first, he’ll be next.”
Barrons sliced his head in curt negation. “Without the spear or sword, the Book can’t kill Christian and these beasts can release him. We must determine the significance of Cruce appearing in the Hummer.”
On the ground, the Unseelie prince stirred, groaning.
Barrons prodded him with the toe of his boot. “Wake the fuck up, Tink, and tell us what happened.”
Cruce opened his eyes, blinked up at Barrons.
And vanished.
Jada shot him an incredulous look. “You just set him free. I thought you left a few runes on him.”
“Why would I do that?”
“They prevent the Fae from sifting.”
“And you’re just now telling me this?” he said with equal incredulity.
“I thought you knew everything. You always know everything. You recognized them.”
“That doesn’t mean I know every blasted detail of what they bloody do,” he snapped.
“Well, I suggest you grab a few before the beasts finish them off. If we don’t get the chance to use them on him, they might be of use holding Mac.”
While Barrons dispatched Fade to fetch a container, Jada closed her eyes and pinned Cruce’s sudden appearance in the Humvee on her mental bulletin board. Around that inexplicable event, she tacked up every fact she knew about him, stepped back and studied the big picture, seeking logic. The world around her vanished, leaving what she loved best: a mystery, an unexplained event, and her fierce, consuming desire to riddle it out. Everything in the universe made sense, if one gathered enough information and examined it properly.
Up went the impaired state of Cruce’s prison, the closed doors of the cavern, the cuff she’d worn for months without it ever closing, the apparent release of Cruce by the Sinsar Dubh (or had it caught him wandering the grounds, already free?), the cuff abruptly closing—as if responding to a signal it had previously been unable to receive—the legend that in addition to affording a protective shield, the cuff of Cruce had served as the concubine’s way of summoning the Unseelie King. For that reason alone, Jada had deemed it worth stealing from Cruce’s arm, but it never worked.
Suspicion took the cohesive form of a valid premise. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she murmured.
“What?” Barrons demanded.
She opened her eyes. “We were talking about him right before he appeared. When I took the cuff from his arm, he was still imprisoned, his power contained. A short time ago, before he was turned into a blob, he must have been free for at least a brief time.”
Long enough that the cuff might have responded to its creator and established a bond between them?
Trusting that Barrons was correct and she wasn’t summoning another version of what Mac had become, Jada tested it. “Cruce.”
The prince was back again, standing in the middle of them, swaying slightly, his hand at his throat, looking shocked and startled before his expression turned thunderous.
He vanished.
“Cruce,” she said again.
He was back again, coldly furious. “You will stop doing that, human, and you will give it back to me. It was never meant for you.” He stalked toward her, hand o
utstretched, but froze when she slid the sword from behind her back.
She scrutinized him closely but detected none of the enormous malevolence she expected from the Sinsar Dubh. “Your deceit doesn’t work on me anymore.” She’d felt the intense pressure of the illusion he’d just tried to force on her, to convince her that he’d taken her sword and she was defenseless against him. “I’ll only bring you back, each time. We can do this all day.”
“Give me my cuff or die, human.”
“Explain,” Barrons fired at Jada.
She smirked. “It seems I’ve got the all-powerful Cruce on a leash.”
“That same leash tethers you, human,” Cruce purred, and vanished.
“Bloody he—” was all Jada managed to get out before she, too, was gone.
Jo offers me a smile when she sees me approaching. “That’d be great, Mac,” she says, accepting my offer of aid. “We’re trying to collect what supplies remain and move them below.”
“Isn’t that water over there?” I say, nodding toward the half-collapsed pantry. “Looks like a dozen or more jugs.”
Her smile brightens. “We need to get that out to the women. Most of them haven’t had anything to eat or drink since last night.” She moves to the collapsed structure and begins removing the jugs.
She doesn’t know she’s handling poison, death. Idiot. She doesn’t understand that nothing can be taken for granted in this world, would undoubtedly refuse to believe we even exist—those of us that see through others as if they’re cardboard cutouts with their simplistic needs scribbled in Sharpie on their flat, one-dimensional faces.
I need nothing. I am desire. Lust. Greed.
“How are things with Lor?” I toy with her as I move near. She begins to hand me water jugs, one after the next. I sweep a dusting of ice from a long flat stone, place it there, then three more in quick succession beside it. I open one and while her back is turned pretend to take a drink. “Oh, that’s good. Here, have some.” I offer her the jug and watch as she takes a long, deep swallow.
“Ew, that’s weird,” she says, wiping her mouth. “It tasted sweet.”
“Probably some of the jugs Jada put sweetener in,” I lie. “She told me sugar-water fuels her freeze-frame better than plain. So what’s up with Lor?” I prod. I want to see her happy, excited about the life she’s never going to have when I take it from her.
She laughs. “Oh, God, Mac, I never would have guessed that man was so…complicated. He’s smart. Like super freaky smart. Who’d have thought? He’s trying to help me create a filing system for my memory.”
“Do you care about him?”
She takes another drink, grimaces, and hands me the jug back. “I haven’t had time to think about it,” she demurs. “We’re all too busy just trying to survive.”
But she does. It’s there in the soft glow in her eyes. She’s thinking that she has someone she can count on, someone strong who makes her feel good and alive, as if life holds endless opportunity for adventure and—what a stupid fucking delusion humans erect and cling to—romance. She’s happy. She put on makeup this morning, took care with her hair. She’s hoping to see him today.
She will never see him again.
I am the last thing she’ll see, the face of her god as I punish her for the unforgivable sin of failing to protect her kingdom.
But this time I’ll take it slow. Savor every succulent nuance of killing, destroying, breaking, defiling. Lust blazes white-hot in my body, between my legs, and I nearly stagger from the intensity of it. Destroying makes me want to fuck. But this woman lacks the parts I desire.
I stare at her through the dim light, assessing, fixing my gaze on her neck. It looks tender and full of blood. Perhaps blood will strengthen me. “Come,” I suggest softly, “let’s secure these below, then we’ll take a few jugs to the sidhe-seers.”
I collect two of them and she follows me like a fucking idiotic puppy who thinks the world is a good, safe place to explore, full of happy people with hands outstretched in kindness, bearing gifts of food and toys to the demolished entry to the underground city. As I mount the rubble at the top of the stairs, I freeze.
Cruce’s body is gone. How could Cruce’s body be gone? I’m momentarily blank, unable to divine a possibility that encompasses this anomaly. No one else has been here. I would have heard someone creep up the stairs and drag him back down. I would have picked up some small sound if he’d somehow managed to escape the runes (IMPOSSIBLE!) and slipped off.
I can’t explain this. Something has transpired for which I am unable to account. That means I have an enemy. A clever, clever one. Someone tampers with my work. WHO IS INTERFERING WITH MY PLANS AND HOW? I consider attempting to employ the same temporal spell MacKayla used, see if it would work on me to shuttle me back a few minutes in time, where I might warn my other self as I top the stairs to watch for an enemy and identify it, but it’s possible duplicate versions of myself could split my power, and if one version of me was destroyed in the temporal conflict, so too would be whatever power it possessed. I remember too well what happened when I amputated myself from the corporeal version of the Book. I’d had to leave parts of myself behind. Important parts. They’d served as a distraction, kept all eyes on the Book, not Isla, but I’d never stopped ruing the loss. Some of my more powerful spells had been sacrificed that day. LIMITS. LIMITS EVERYWHERE! Fury floods my veins. My body trembles with it, weak thing that it is. Not only don’t I have the spear, now one of my cocoons is missing. My meticulously crafted swift surgical strike is being undermined at every turn!
Incensed, I whirl on Jo, all subtlety and plans for leisure gone, and grab her by the shoulders. I need an outlet. Now.
“What’s wrong, Mac?” she gasps, startled, staring at me wide-eyed. Doe eyes. Dumb, trusting eyes.
I grip her tightly with one hand, digging my fingers into her back, my thumb into the soft flesh beneath her collarbone, and slam her in the face with a fist, using every ounce of my Unseelie-flesh-enhanced strength.
With the first blow, Jo’s nose explodes, her right jaw fractures, and her eyes roll back into her head.
She staggers for footing. “My God, Mac, what—”
With the second blow, I unhinge both jaws completely and she doesn’t speak again. Choking on blood, strangled screams gurgle from her throat.
I punch her again and again and again, shattering the bones of her eye sockets, her brow, blinding her, splintering her skull, incensed that I have an enemy I know nothing about.
A clever, clever enemy who has stolen something that is mine. Two things now have been unfairly thieved from me!
Terrified, broken mewling sounds leak from the broken, bloodied hole of Jo’s face. She was too wounded by my first blow to mount a defense. I release my hold on her and she melts to the ground, trying with the vestiges of her dying will to curl into a protective ball, but there’s no protection from me.
I am ceaseless, relentless, hungry as a tsunami.
My will is stronger, my aim unencumbered, my desires greater.
I always win.
I kick her hard, again and again, splintering ribs, exploding organs.
I fall on her and punch her head until brains glisten wetly in her bloodied hair then I tear into the side of her neck with my teeth and begin to eat.
JADA
She raised a hand to shield her eyes against the glare of sunlight reflected off a mirror of white sand. She stood on a wide sunny beach beneath a cloudless, dazzlingly blue sky. Palm trees rustled in a tropical breeze and azure waves lapped at a sandy shore. Brightly colored hammocks swayed between trees. Paradise.
Not.
She squinted at the Unseelie prince standing a dozen paces away. He’d transformed himself with glamour and was now the Seelie prince V’lane. She suspected he’d donned a familiar form to conceal the mutilation of his wings, unwilling to let others see him in a weakened condition. His current incarnation was that of an exquisitely beautiful, deadly, erotic Fae of t
he royal line, capable of reducing a woman to a state of mindless, sexual need.
She focused her sidhe-seer gifts and peeled back the glamour revealing his darker form. V’lane was tall, but Cruce was a giant, well over seven feet tall, more densely muscled, his face less classic, the lines sharper, more savage, chiseled by an angry, defiant god. Kaleidoscopic tattoos slithered beneath his dusky skin. In both forms he wore a flowing iridescent robe that shimmered in the brilliant sun, more blinding than the reflective sand. His face was drawn with pain, his eyes half closed. He was far more taxed by the Sinsar Dubh’s assault than he wanted her to know. In either incarnation, weak or strong, he was still a Death-by-Sex Fae. Yet she wasn’t feeling that will-destroying desire she’d felt too many times in the past. Nor was she sensing the twisted, psychopathic presence of the Sinsar Dubh. She let his true form recede from her sidhe-seer vision and refocused on the golden illusion.
“Give me the cuff, sidhe-seer,” Cruce snarled, “or the next world I take you to will not be so hospitable. You will die there.”
She rested the hand on the hilt of her sword. “As will you.”
“You will never get that close to me.”
“Try me.” Jada accessed the slipstream and reappeared directly in front of him, the tip of her blade beneath his chin.
He vanished.
“Cruce,” she said, and he reappeared a half a dozen feet away, scowling. He backed up and they stood measuring each other across three meters of powdery sand. She assessed the situation quickly: here before her stood the most ancient of the Unseelie princes, who possessed enormous knowledge and power and had proven himself a brilliant strategist, patient, cunning, controlled. The Sinsar Dubh was their primary enemy. They were each other’s secondary enemy.
The enemy of her primary enemy was her friend. “I’d call this an impasse. Are you ready to negotiate?”
“I do not negotiate with humans.”
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