Burned

by Karen Marie Moning

  “Milk? Does it taste like ours?”

  “Sure does. A little creamier. ”

  “I’d love a glass!” she says, and we both laugh because the things we used to take for granted are now luxuries. That’s the way it goes when the world falls apart.

  You never appreciate what you’ve got till it’s gone.

  Barrons Books & Baubles has spatial issues. I suspect the Silver connecting the store to hidden levels beneath the garage where Barrons has his lair is partially responsible, but I doubt it’s the only thing affecting this particular point of longitude and latitude. I sometimes dream an ancient god or demon coils slumbering in the foundation.

  BB&B is four stories most days but other days five, and on rare occasions lately, seven. On Tuesday the mural on the ceiling was roughly seventy feet above my head, today it seems a quarter mile, minuscule in the distance. The harder I try to focus on it, the more difficult it is to see. I don’t understand why anyone would paint such a blurry scene on the ceiling. I used to ask Barrons about it but never got an answer. One day I’ll hunt down construction scaffolds so I can lie on my back beneath it and figure out what the darn thing is.

  During my first months in Dublin, I stayed in the residential half of the bookstore and grew accustomed to my borrowed bedroom shifting floors. It even got to the point where hunting for it was kind of fun.

  I expect nothing to be easy in these walls. And here is where I’ve known the finest hours of my life.

  I stand with Kat at the balustrade that overlooks the bookstore, facing the front entrance. The main room is about a hundred feet long by sixty feet wide. The upper floors are half the depth of the store, accessed by an intricate, curving, red-carpeted double staircase that reminds me of the Lello bookstore in Portugal. On the upper levels are a fabulous array of antiquities and treasures in glass cases or mounted on a wall. Here a plaque of the Green Man sees all, there an ancient sword shines above a war-battered, tarnished shield. I sometimes wonder if all these “baubles” are really Barrons’s possessions collected during various centuries of his life.

  Gleaming bookshelves line the perimeter walls from base to cove molding. Behind elegant banisters, narrow passages permit access, and polished ladders slide on oiled rollers from one section to the next.

  As I gaze down, to the right is the magazine rack, fully stocked with last October’s editions near more freestanding bookcases. To the left, the old-fashioned cash register sits waiting to ring up a sale, silver bell tinkling, and there’s my pink iPod on a Bose SoundDock ready to play “Bad Moon Rising” or “Tubthumping” or “It’s a Wonderful World. ”

  Page 29

  Or maybe “Good Girl Gone Bad. ”

  When the Unseelie Princes enter, flanked by Barrons and Ryodan, I inhale sharply and go rigid.

  CRUSH THEM DESTROY THEM IMPALE THEM ON POLES, my inner Sinsar Dubh trumpets.

  I close my eyes and dredge up one of the tricks I’ve learned. Occupy my head so thoroughly with something else that the Book can’t get through.

  When I was young Daddy used to read poems to me. The more lyrical and musical, the more I’d enjoyed them, and I guess I always had a morbid bent, and he must have, too, because he’d indulged me, on soft summer evenings in the kitchen while Mom did dishes and listened, shaking her head at our choices. I’d understood little of the meaning, just liked the way the words flowed. “The Cremation of Sam McGee” had charmed me. I’d found “A Dream Within a Dream” hypnotic, “The Bells” mesmerizing, I’d obsessed over T. S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday” and in seventh grade recited “The Raven” for a school project, briefly earning for myself the label of nerd until I’d taken extreme fashion measures to change that. Now, looking back, I can see it was a grim choice, but at the time, grief and brutality had possessed the cartoonish proportions of childhood. It had taken weeks to commit the many complex stanzas to my brain.

  Remember what the princes did to you, sweet thing, how they ripped you apart and turned you into a mindless animal. As if I could ever forget, the Sinsar Dubh slams me with images so graphic they give me an instant headache.

  I block them, focusing instead on how Daddy taught me to break down the poem to memorize it: eighteen stanzas of six lines each, most comprised of eight syllables with a hypnotic placement of stressed syllables followed by unstressed. Trochaic octameter was what he’d called it. I only knew it was fun to say and he was proud of me for learning it, and I’d have done pretty much anything to make Jack Lane proud.

  Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

  Break them, the Book demands, force them to their knees before you, make them call you Queen.

  While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

  The rhythm of the poem captivates me as it always did, and I feel like a child again, whole and good and loved.

  “ ’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—only this and nothing more. ”

  Unlike Poe, I don’t have to open the door. I can slide the dead bolt.

  I keep reciting until at last there’s blessed silence. Only then do I open my eyes.

  “What on earth?” Kat murmurs beside me, staring down.

  Gone are the wild, naked, primitive princes, with kaleidoscope tattoos rushing beneath their skin and mad, iridescent eyes.

  They’ve civilized themselves.

  In their place stand two black-haired, dark-eyed males that exude power, lust, and otherworldly magic. Torques of the royal Unseelie House glitter like diamond-crusted obsidian at their necks. I know how icy those torques are to the touch, how they vibrate with a hypnotic guttural cacophony, while the torques of the Seelie House croon an irresistible, complex symphony.

  No longer do their heads swivel in an eerie, inhuman fashion; they have adopted human mannerisms and movements right down to the smallest nuance. The black wings I felt closing around my naked body as I died a thousand deaths beneath them are gone, concealed by glamour.

  “I thought they were at war with each other,” I say.

  Kat says, “I thought they were insane, terrifying and revolting. We were both wrong. They recently joined forces. I hear the Crimson Hag has them worried. ”

  “Christian,” I murmur, and try hard not to think of what he must be enduring.

  “He saved us, you know. Possibly the world. Dani was hesitating, trying to decide between her sidhe-seer sisters and the Hoar Frost King. It would have destroyed her to carry the deaths of our entire abbey on her conscience. His sacrifice spared her that horror. We owe him a tremendous debt. ”

  “Any word on Christian’s whereabouts?”

  “His uncles are searching. All of us at the abbey are eager to help mount a rescue, if they find him. ”

  Although it horrified me that he’d given himself up to the Hag, it also relieved me because it meant the man I knew was still in there, despite the madness. Deep down, he still cared about the world around him. I made a mental note to ask Barrons to aid in the search. He could lean on Ryodan to enlist some of the Nine to go scouting. We couldn’t just leave Christian out there, being tortured and killed over and over. We owed him rescue for the sacrifice he’d made. What he was suffering in the Hag’s sadistic hands would only drive him deeper into Unseelie madness. We needed to save him before he lost all trace of his fundamental humanity.

  Page 30

  The princes ascend the stairs, identical but for a few inches’ height difference. I realize I’m looking directly at them without weeping blood. I glance at Kat to see if it’s just me or if she, too, can regard them directly. She can. And is—with fascination.

  “They’ve fed enough to gain control of themselves,” I say softly. When they first arrived in Dublin they were like rabid animals from long confinement and starvation, and flat-out terrifying.
“They’re studying us, learning from us. ” I get it: pacify the sheep before the slaughter. A panicked kill makes for a soured stew. These two, the worst of the Unseelie, are now the ultimate bad boys. Women will flock to them, lemmings on a suicide march over a cliff.

  These are my rapists, the ones that turned me inside out, ripped my mind from my body and shredded it. They are also, unfortunately, hot as hell.

  I want them dead.

  Yes, yes, yes, KILL, the Book surges to life again.

  Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December; and each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

  The rhythm takes over. I roll the many internal rhymes and dazzling alliteration over my tongue silently while I assess the princes, building the syllables, brick by brick, into a mental wall.

  My rapists are dressed like Barrons. Sleek. Masculine. Sexy. It pisses me off.

  “Son of a bitch,” Kat says softly. Kat doesn’t curse. “Do you know how my girls will react to them? Cruce is bad enough. ”

  “Son of a bitch,” I agree.

  Behind the balustrade, four long cherry tables make a square.

  The Unseelie Princes take one side.

  Barrons, Kat, and I take the opposite.

  It’s all I can do to not lunge across the space separating us and attack them. Two things stay my hand: Barrons wants them alive, and I’m afraid I’ll black out again. Kat is vulnerably human.

  After a few moments, Ryodan drops into a chair beside us, sandwiching Kat and me between a gentle hum of power. He pushes a hand through thick, dark hair, cut close at the sides, and assesses me with that clear, analytical gaze of his. I meet it impassively. His chiseled features are untouched by lines, and I’d guess him frozen in time, however he stopped aging, at about thirty, plus however many thousands of years he’s actually lived.

  Like all of Barrons’s men, he’s powerfully muscled and sports multiple scars, the most prominent running from his jaw down his neck and over his chest. He appreciates the finer things in life and pursues them without scruple. I want to know the history these men will never tell me. Although an animal exists beneath each of their skins, Ryodan hides his the best. He’s the businessman of the Nine of whatever-they-are, managing financial concerns, maintaining their vast empire.

  Barrons is the taciturn, primal leader of their small immortal army, the one to whom they all answer. He usually lets Ryodan do his talking. Probably because Barrons knows he would lose patience the moment one of his orders isn’t instantly obeyed and butcher everyone in sight. Ryodan excels at chess, crushes his opposition in five or fewer moves. Barrons eats the board, with blood for ketchup.

  “Got a lot of Unseelie outside the bookstore, Mac,” Ryodan says.

  “Got a lot inside Chester’s,” I rejoin coolly.

  “He understands our needs,” one of the Unseelie Princes says.

  “They don’t trail me everywhere I go,” Ryodan says.

  “Then again you understand them, too, from personal experience,” the prince reminds me silkily.

  I ignore it. “Guess you don’t smell as sweet,” I tell Ryodan.

  “Or as rotten,” he returns.

  “I’ve been testing wards on them. ” Barrons puts the issue to swift rest.

  Ryodan laughs but lets it go.

  The six of us sit eyeing one another in silence. There is no air in the room, only hostility and rage. I breathe shallowly of it and slide my hand to the comforting hilt of my spear. And snatch it away, assaulted by horrific images again.

  “You will remove the ward that prohibits our sifting, or you will take away her spear. ” The taller of the princes speaks to Barrons, but his gaze is moving, hot, sexual, devouring, over my body.

  Barrons goes so motionless next to me that for a moment I’m not sure he didn’t just vanish in that stealthy way of his. I inhale shallowly, wondering if this meeting is going to end before it even begins.

  Then Barrons says softly, carefully, “Ms. Lane. ” I feel the tension in his body, mirroring the same tightly coiled rage in mine.

  “I’m not giving you my spear,” I say just as softly. “It can deal with it. ” Time was, they could weave the illusion that they’d taken it from me, but I got wise to their trick and it doesn’t work on me anymore.

  Page 31

  “I am not an ‘it. ’ I am Prince Rath of the second royal Unseelie House created,” the tall Unseelie says coldly. “My brother is Kiall, from the third. Once, you whimpered our names. As you begged us for more. Without the spear you are nothing. Human. Weak. ”

  Neither Barrons nor I speak for a moment. Then he says, tonelessly, “I’m not removing the wards. ”

  “Fine, they can leave,” I say just as tonelessly. I am nothing, my ass. They don’t know about my inner psycho.

  Barrons shoots me a look. I feel it on my ear, needling me to turn my head.

  “Look at me,” he commands.

  I scowl but look.

  You said you trusted me to protect you. If I drop the ward, others can sift in. Unacceptable risk. Do not push me. My beast wants them dead.

  Well, at least our beasts are in agreement, I retort saccharine-sweet. Seething, I slip the spear from my sheath and slap it into his palm before I get any more reminders of this afternoon.

  Rath and Kiall rustle and chime in the bone-chilling, inhuman fashion that had been their only mode of communication when they first arrived in Dublin, crazed with hunger. I’d felt that chiming deep in my bones, as my mind slipped away. When Barrons hands the spear to Ryodan, who tucks it beneath his jacket, they resume their polished facade.

  “Right, he can have it but I can’t,” I grouse.

  “He does not consider past minor insult bar to future gain. Women are weak that way. Valuing things that mean nothing at all. Lamenting events they clearly enjoyed,” Kiall says, raking me with a knowing, intimate sneer. “What was lost that night? Nothing. What was gained? An experience beyond compare. Your human women kill each other for our amusement, to eliminate the competition for the privilege of such a night with us. ”

  I don’t know who goes more rigid beside me, Kat or Barrons. The room is a volcano waiting to blow.

  I inhale, count to ten, exhale. At some point, when I’ve mastered my inner demon, I’ll pay a visit to the gothic monstrous mess of a mansion on the outskirts of Dublin where the princes have surrounded themselves with worshippers. With my spear. And those women that chirp bright, vapid nonsense like “See you in Faery” will stop killing each other to lose their sanity in a monster’s bed.

  When R’jan, the Seelie Prince who claims to be the new king, enters, the Unseelie snarl like feral beasts.

  R’jan reminds me of V’lane, before he dropped the mask, revealing his true Unseelie self, Prince Cruce. Gold-dusted skin pours like velvet over a powerful body; he has the face of a stunning, imperious Archangel. Long blond hair falls past his waist, unbound. He, too, has modified himself into something elegantly human, with fawn leather pants and dark boots, a creamy cashmere sweater, a gold torque at his throat. R’jan laughs and dismisses his dark brothers with a regal, condescending wave as if shooing a bothersome fly from a banquet surely called in honor of him.

  The Unseelie leap from their chairs, Barrons rises, Ryodan joins him, and for a moment all the males in the room posture, assessing, debating the pleasure to be gained from turning this room into a slaughterhouse against whatever it is they’re after that made them agree to this meeting. Just when I’m certain they’re going to succumb to savagery, Kat and I are going to be sprayed with blood and bone fragments, and I’m going to end up taking back my spear and using it after all, Barrons growls, “You will all sit. Now. ”

  No one moves. I laugh softly. That’s a mistake.

  Ryodan is abruptly gone.

  When he reappears, he’s holding R’jan from behind, a scarred forearm around the Fae’s throat. He pres
ses his mouth to the prince’s ear and says softly, “Need I remind you what I did to Velvet. ”

  R’jan hisses.

  “He said sit. He doesn’t repeat himself. Nor do I. ”

  When Ryodan shoves him away, R’jan drops down on the third side of our square, eyes blazing with challenge and hatred. Kiall and Rath slowly take their seats with elaborate indolence, as if they do so because they wish to and for no other reason.

  I eye the fourth side, wondering who else we could possibly be waiting for. When our final guest walks up the stairs and sits at our table, it’s my turn to bristle.

  I know the face of an O’Bannion mobster when I see one. I helped kill two of them. Our final guest is black Irish with a light complexion, thick, dark hair and eyes, and the blood of a distant Saudi ancestor in his veins. Broad-shouldered and handsome in a rugged, outdoors way, he moves with long-limbed grace.

  Kat half rises, looking ashen. “Sean?” she says. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  Page 32

  I glance between the two. I don’t need a sidhe-seer gift to know there’s deep emotion between them.

  “Yes, what is an O’Bannion doing here?” I say.

  “The name is Sean Fergus Jameson,” the man says in a thick Irish brogue.

  “First cousin to Rocky O,” Ryodan says. “He tends to omit his surname in certain quarters. ”

  “Why is he here?” Kat says again, resettling slowly.

  Ryodan says, “You’re looking at the three primary suppliers of goods in this city: myself, the princes, and the black market—like his fathers before him, also known as Sean O’Bannion. Seems your boy learned a trick or two working in my club, little cat. Bribed my suppliers. Got himself into the game. ”

  “Only because you were charging half an arm and most of a leg for a simple meal,” Sean says hotly. “We’ve women and children in our streets who’ve no way of paying such high prices. They were dying for want of milk and bread. ”