Cold Iron

by D. L. McDermott

  It had taken an act of will to come here. The night she had met Miach she hadn’t known what he was. She’d felt an instant attraction to him, the effect, she now understood, of his Fae glamour. And perhaps, to be fair, of her unconscious desires.

  She was tired of dating men who were intimidated by her. Helene wasn’t petite and curvy like Beth. She was tall for a woman, but she didn’t fit the willowy feminine ideal. Helene was . . . athletic. Tanned. She worked out to stay strong, not slim. She had more than a few freckles across her nose. Her hair was long and blond but it wasn’t the iron-straight curtain of perfection found in glossy magazines, more the windblown sort that hung in irregular waves.

  The scholars she met at the university, with the exception of a fling with a marine biologist who had turned out to be married, tended to be urban creatures, more at home on asphalt than on a forest trail. And few of them were comfortable dating a woman over five foot eight who might be able to bench press more than they could.

  Helene wanted to meet a man who was comfortable in his own skin, who wouldn’t feel emasculated by her height, her strength, or her focus on her career.

  Miach had introduced himself as a doctor. A confident professional with achievements, a breed apart from the introverted scholars and wealthy dilettantes she met at the museum. Their attraction had seemed promising.

  Then he had refused to take Beth, in the middle of a malaria attack, to a hospital. Helene had thought he was killing her best friend. She’d threatened to call the police. He’d tried to use his glamour then, to bend Helene to his will, and when that wasn’t expedient enough, he’d used his magic to close her windpipe and cut off her air until she blacked out.

  While she was unconscious, he’d inked a geis, a magical tattoo, on her inner thigh. It had allowed him to track her movements. While she admitted that the geis had probably saved her life, allowing Miach and Conn to find her when Miach’s renegade son kidnapped her, the Fae sorcerer had not put it there for her sake.

  He’d put it there to mark his territory. To make it clear that Helene Whitney was his. Later, Beth had made Miach swear to leave Helene alone, but now that she was entering his domain of her own free will, all bets, she feared, were off.

  The girl who answered the door was young and pretty and welcoming, and she beckoned Helene inside with a warm smile. Helene crossed the threshold and felt something almost like an electric current pass through her, like receiving a massive static shock. At the same time the whole house shook, as though a truck had passed in the street.

  A look of surprise and curiosity passed over the girl’s face. “You’re the lady the old man sent the curly lamb coat to, aren’t you?” she asked.

  The Persian lamb coat. Helene still had it in her closet. Longed to wear it. Possibly the most glamorous thing she had ever owned. Miach had sent it by way of an apology—after his son and grandsons had kidnapped her, locked her in a tiny attic, and threatened to abuse her.

  She’d hidden the coat away.

  “Yes,” she said carefully.

  The girl looked her up and down, then wrinkled her nose and said, “He’ll be able to smell it on you. Another Fae’s magic.”

  It was the thing Helene had feared the most. That one of these cruel, soulless creatures was climbing inside her mind. Had done it over and over again. Would continue to do so if she could not find help.

  So she asked the question that had kept her from coming here for so long. “How can you tell it isn’t Miach’s magic on me?”

  The girl looked at her like she was stupid. “Because you tripped the wards on the house.”

  Helene wished Beth was here to explain this strange and hidden world to her, but she wasn’t, so Helene was forced to ask: “What does that mean, exactly?”

  “The old man’s got the house warded—protected—I mean, with boundary spells. They’re only triggered by magic that isn’t his. Otherwise we’d lose a set of crockery and have to replace all the mirrors every time he came back from a stroll.”

  The relief on Helene’s face must have been obvious, because the girl looked at her and said, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m better. Fine, I mean,” Helene said.

  That was at least one of her fears alleviated. Miach was not the one doing this to her. The mosquito bite on her shoulder, nearly a month old, itched suddenly but she ignored it and followed the girl—Nieve she said her name was—into the house.

  Nieve ushered Helene past a dining room where a boisterous afternoon meal was taking place with piles of cakes and toast and pots of tea. There were half a dozen small children seated at the table, a sprinkling of adults who shared Miach’s black hair and blue eyes, and, looking sheepish at the far end of the room, Miach’s grandsons Liam and Niall.

  Helene almost turned tail and ran then. Liam and Niall had been two of her kidnappers. But then Nieve was leading her up the stairs, drawing her on with a steady stream of chatter. Nieve was not Fae—or at least not full-blooded Fae. She was pretty but not achingly so. She was charming, but used no chilling glamour to coax Helene to talk about herself. Nieve simply exuded warmth and interest and Helene found herself describing her job at the museum and her apartment in Back Bay and then before she knew it she was inside a huge chamber that looked out over the harbor.

  It was a library. It could easily have been one of the university’s specialized collection rooms, with its polished paneling and embossed red leather walls. The furnishings were nicer, though, than a college would have in a space used by students—empire sofas covered in silk damask and overstuffed lolling chairs.

  Helene took all this in before noting the room’s principal feature, Miach MacCecht. He stood behind a large mahogany desk, and he wore a human glamour, like the night they had met, but she would never be fooled by that again.

  He was dressed much as he had been that night, in a dark gray T-shirt that clung to his sculpted chest and hung loose over the cotton duck trousers that hugged his narrow hips. His hair was coal black and close-cropped, his jaw chiseled, his cheekbones set wide and high. Like all of his race he was tall, graceful, fine-boned, but beautifully muscled, biceps and forearms lean but strong. His black brows crowned golden brown, almond-shaped eyes. Even with his human glamour he had the exotic appeal of the Celtic peoples, familiar and at the same time fey.

  Although she knew how dangerous he was, knew that she should not be attracted to him, she was. She spent her whole day surrounded by beauty, by great works of art. Miach had more than physical appeal. He radiated power. When she had seen him without his human glamour, his features—sharper and more predatory and his eyes an unearthly blue—had possessed an uncanny quality that set her teeth on edge. And still, she had wanted him.

  He stayed behind the desk.

  “Where is Elada?” she asked. Beth had told her that the sorcerer was never without his “right hand.” Another reason that even if Helene could forgive Miach for knocking her out cold, there was no way for them to be together. Miach had tried to kill Beth. And Elada had been the one to carry out his orders. He’d tried to run their car off the road, and later on taken Helene’s mind over and forced her to sit inside his vehicle while he chased after her best friend.

  “I thought you would rather not see Elada,” Miach replied. “Why are you here, Helene?”

  The moment of truth. She opened her mouth to speak. The bite on her shoulder itched so badly it burned for a second, then the words tumbled out. “I’m here because a Fae has been abducting me for hours, almost every day, and I can’t remember what happens.”

  Miach’s entire body, every lean inch of his six-two frame tensed. “What Fae?” The threat of violence laced his words.

  “I don’t know,” she said. Her voice broke. It was such a relief just to be able to speak the words, to talk to someone who believed her. Humiliating tears prickled her eyes. She blinked them back and looked away. Her sho
ulder tingled. Not an itch this time, more of a stretched feeling, like sunburned skin about to peel. She couldn’t resist scratching it.

  Miach crossed the room faster than she thought possible and arrested her hand. He spun her around and yanked the strap of her tank top down, exposing her shoulder and the top of her breast.

  “Who did this to you?” he asked.

  “It’s a bug bite,” she said, puzzled. The skin looked red and raised now—even though the bite hadn’t been visible before. And it was peeling like a sunburn, spiraling out in a pattern several inches in diameter, larger than a mosquito bite, more symmetrical than a rash. It looked almost like someone had branded her shoulder with a hot iron.

  “It’s not an insect bite,” he said. It was a geis. A spell.

  It hurt now, a delayed reaction. She’d touched a hot pan once, recoiling at the sting, but not feeling the real pain until several seconds later when it hit her in a searing wave. This was much the same, but Miach’s fingertips traced a soothing pattern over her branded skin, like aloe being smoothed over a wound.

  “The wards on the house burned most of it off,” he said. “And your words just now did the rest. You must have been fighting it hard, for some time, because it looks likely to scar.”

  “I tried to tell Beth what was happening to me, but the words wouldn’t come out.”

  His fingers were still tracing, still soothing. It felt good. Too good.

  “Stop,” she said.

  His fingers stilled but remained in contact with her skin. “The ink,” he said, “was tinted the shade of your skin. That’s why you didn’t see it. But you fought it, over and over again, forcing it to rewrite itself. It will almost certainly scar now if you don’t let me heal it.”

  Letting him touch her was a bad idea. She liked it too much. But a giant scar on her shoulder didn’t appeal.

  “Go ahead,” she said. She wanted the thing gone. “Someone did that to me, while I was in their power, under their glamour, didn’t they?”

  “Yes,” he said, his fingertips exploring the inflamed skin. He touched the other side of her shoulder as well, a look of concern flitting across his handsome face, then quickly hidden.

  “But it’s gone now. Neutralized, right?”

  He hesitated before replying. “Yes,” he said. But there was something tentative in his response.

  “So why can’t I remember who it was?”

  “This geis,” he said, leading her to a sofa and sitting down behind her, “was only meant to seal your mouth, to prevent you voicing any fears or suspicions. To prevent you seeking help.” He pushed the strap off her other shoulder, so both were no bare, and began tracing soothing patterns over her skin. “That’s why you weren’t able to confide in Beth. Controlling a living being with spells is rather like programming a computer. One line of code at a time. One spell for each action you want performed or prevented.”

  “Are they all so binary?” she asked. “Spells? Are they all yes or no?”

  “The ones worked with gaesa, yes. There are more complicated magics, but they can’t be contained in a simple symbol like that. Gaesa, though, can be combined and layered to create more complicated enchantments. You bore one that was meant to keep you silent. You might wear another to take away your memories, still another to compel you to do something else. Now tell me exactly what has been happening.”

  While his hands spread warmth through her shoulders, she told him. About waking up the night after the gala, about finding herself suddenly in her office with no recollection of the last few hours.

  “After the party,” he said, “all of the incidents took place at the museum?”

  “Yes.” It came out almost a moan. His hands felt good. Too good. Beth had said it was good with a Fae, so good that you forgot everything else in life, became a husk, a shell, pined and starved when they left you. Unless they tied themselves to you permanently.

  And the Fae almost never did that. Helene knew of Beth and Conn. But Conn was . . . unusual. She suspected almost unique.

  “Are there any security cameras at the museum?” Miach asked. His hands ceased to draw patterns and now began to massage the tight muscles in her neck, and the invitation was clear. She could release all her tensions in his bed, under his magnificent body. If she was willing to lose what little control over her mind she had left.

  “I already checked the cameras,” she said, trying to focus on what was important. “We don’t have them in the storage areas or the offices—those are accessed with key cards—but there’s twenty-four-hour surveillance on the entrances and exits and in the large galleries. I looked at all the footage, and I wasn’t recorded leaving the building. I spotted myself walking through the rotunda, twice, but I don’t remember doing it.”

  His hands stopped. “Were you by yourself in the footage?”

  “Yes. I was walking from the main gallery, where we have cameras, toward the offices, where we don’t. But there was no one with me.”

  Miach cursed. The oath wasn’t in English, but the tone of it was unmistakable. His hands began kneading her shoulders. “Helene,” he said, “if this Fae was taking control of your mind from a distance, summoning you to meet him, then he’s using dangerous magic on you.”

  “But you can remove, it right? Like the geis on my shoulder.”

  “The geis on your shoulder was light magic, a simple spell, temporary, requiring little time and less energy to cast. It would have faded away eventually. A summoning spell is a different matter entirely. A geis is only one of several different ways to work one, but none of them are easy to remove. Summoning spells have to be woven into the body and mind. And if this Fae has used the most tenacious—and dangerous—means of calling and controlling you, then nothing will sever that connection except death. His, or yours.”

  Miach watched the blood leave Helene’s face. He had enjoyed touching her, had gone on rubbing her shoulders long after the skin there had healed.

  And she had let him. A promising sign.

  But this was not how he had imagined meeting her again. The first time he’d seen her, the leggy blonde had been wearing the most absurd costume—shorts, fur boots, and a fuzzy sweater—and she’d been trying to wrest her cell phone back from Conn of the Hundred Battles. Which was like watching a puppy attack a statue.

  Miach had wanted her instantly.

  Her looks, naturally, had appealed to him. She had the stature of Amazon. Her tanned skin spoke of time outdoors, of the warmth of the sun, of long wooded trails, of rocky wild beaches: the natural world of the Fae, before they had fallen. He pictured how she would look flushed and naked in his bed, her muscled calves wrapped around his waist, her golden skin contrasting with his pale Fae complexion.

  She kept her hair long, as all the Fae once had, but as Miach and Finn and those who dwelt in human cities no longer could. It attracted too much attention, and the Tuatha Dé Danann were no longer numerous or strong enough to lord it over the race of men. Their only choice, if they wished to live like civilized beings, was to pass unnoticed in the world of men or hide like Miach’s family in Celtic enclaves where memories were long and the locals were willing to pay their tithe to the Good Neighbors, the Fair Folk, the Aes Sídhe, in exchange for protection.

  Helene’s flamboyant dress had excited his Fae love of ornament. The scallop of lace thong peaking out from her shorts, the beaded flowers on her soft fur boots. Today she wore a knitted cotton tank top in cornflower blue that clung to her gentle curves over a slim pencil skirt in chocolate brown. It was a subdued costume for Helene, if you missed the all-grown-up Mary Jane shoes in matching shades of blue and brown that added two inches to her already unusual height.

  But his desire for her had been kindled by more than just her appearance.

  The fierceness with which she had defended her friend from the stoic Conn had hinted at an equal ferocity in bed.
And when Miach had sent Elada after the two women with orders to kill Beth Carter, Helene had cleverly waylaid Elada and thrown him off the Druid’s trail, at great personal risk to herself.

  She had been attracted to Miach as well, he sensed—until he knocked her unconscious. He had done it to prevent her taking Beth Carter to the hospital where conventional medical treatment would have killed the little Druid. But there had been no way to explain that to Helene at the time and so he’d chosen the most expedient route to saving Beth Carter’s life.

  It might still have been possible to win Helene if that had been his only transgression, but Helene also blamed him—quite wrongly in fact—in her kidnapping. That had been Miach’s renegade son Brian’s doing, and none of his.

  And to all this add that he had promised Beth Carter, whose help he would need to keep the wall between worlds intact, that he would not pursue Helene. Such had been the geis he’d accepted.

  But Beth had never considered that Helene might come to him.

  With good reason. After the kidnapping, Helene had wanted nothing to do with Miach.

  Now her life depended on placing her trust in him. And because Helene had come to Miach, it might be possible to circumvent some of the intention of Beth’s geis. It would be a tricky thing, because if he violated the Druid’s prohibition against seducing Helene Whitney, he would be weakened by it, made vulnerable to attack by his enemies.

  But if Helene came to him—not just to his house but to his bed—willingly, it might not violate the geis. And a geis was only as strong as the Fae or Druid who worked it. Beth was still learning to harness her power, might not have been able to channel her full intention—which no doubt had been sweepingly broad—into the prohibition. If so, Miach might be able to enjoy Helene without untoward consequences.

  “You must let me search your body for another geis,” he said.

  “No.” Her refusal was absolute.

  “Then this Fae will be able to summon you again. The wards on my house will protect you, but set foot outside its doors without me or Elada, and we can do nothing to stop him.”