There were fur-lined handcuffs on the bedposts. I got knotted up in that memory for a minute before I managed to extricate myself.
My breathing was shallow and my hands were fists. “Oh, yes, I’m going to have to kill you, Barrons,” I said coolly. Partly because, for the most minuscule sliver of an instant, while looking at those handcuffs, I’d imagined myself climbing back into bed and pretending I wasn’t cured yet.
And I’d thought interacting with Barrons had been difficult before. Since the day we’d met, we’d maintained a careful wall of non-intimacy between us and rarely slipped. I was Ms. Lane. He was Barrons. That wall had been blasted to dust, and I hadn’t had anything to say about it. We’d fast-forwarded from formal and testy most of the time to See Mac Bare All/Body & Soul, without a single ounce of relationship progression along the way. He’d seen me at my absolute worst, my most vulnerable, while he’d been in complete control, and I still didn’t really know a damned thing about him.
We’d gotten as close as two human beings—well, overlooking the fact that he wasn’t one—possibly could. Now, in addition to wondering whether he’d spiked the Orb of D’Jai with deadly Shades before he’d given it to me to give to the sidhe-seers and whether he’d sabotaged the ritual at the MacKeltars’ on Halloween because he wanted the walls down between Fae and human realms, I knew that killing aroused him. Turned him on. I hadn’t forgotten that enlightening little detail I’d found poking around inside his skull. It cast a harsh new light on the moment I’d watched him walk out of an Unseelie mirror carrying the savaged, very dead body of a young woman.
Had he killed her just for fun?
My intuition wasn’t buying it.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure what my intuition was worth where he was concerned. If there was one thing I’d learned about Barrons, it was that speculating about him was as pointless as tap-dancing on quicksand, with no solid ground in sight.
Speaking of solid ground …
I glanced around. I was below it. I can feel belowground in my bones. I hate being there. I hate confined, windowless spaces. Yet, for a time, this space belowground had been my harbor in a brutal storm.
What had happened to Dublin while I’d been Pri-ya, clawing my way back to sanity? What had happened to the world?
How was Ashford? Were Mom and Dad okay? Had anyone gotten the Book? What was happening out there with all the Unseelie free? Was Aoibheal, Queen of the Seelie, okay, or had the Unseelie gotten to her, too, on Halloween? She was the only one with any hope of ever reimprisoning them. I needed her to be alive. Where was V’lane? Why hadn’t he come for me? Was he dead? I felt a moment of pure panic. Maybe he’d tried to rescue me after all and that was one of those confused imprints, and the LM had taken my spear and—
My fingers clenched on emptiness. Oh, God, where was my spear? The ancient Spear of Destiny was one of only two weapons known to man that was capable of killing an immortal Fae. I remembered throwing it away. I remembered it hissing and steaming at the foot of a basin of holy water.
Where had it gone from there?
Was it possible it was still lying there, in the church? Could I be so lucky?
I needed it back.
Once I had it, I could get to work on other things. Like figuring out how the Unseelie Princes had managed to turn it against me at the critical moment. True to Fae lore—which held that the Unseelie couldn’t touch any of the Seelie Hallows, and vice versa—they hadn’t been able to physically take it from me, but they’d managed to coerce me into turning it on myself, forcing me to choose between stabbing myself with it or tossing it, putting me completely at their mercy.
I not only needed my spear back—I needed to learn how to control it.
Then I was going to kill every Unseelie I could get my Nullifying hands on, slaughtering my way straight up the chain of command, not stopping until I’d taken out all the Unseelie Princes, the LM, and maybe even the Unseelie King himself. And the Seelie, too, with the exception of those I needed to restore order to our world. I was sick of the terrifying, inhumanly beautiful, homicidal interlopers. It had been our planet first and, although V’lane didn’t seem to think that should count for much, it was all that mattered to me. They were scavengers who’d damaged their own world so badly that they’d had to go find another one—and now they were doing the same thing to ours. They were arrogant immortals who’d created an immortal abomination—the Unseelie court, the dark mirror of their race—and they’d lost control of them on our planet. And who was paying the highest price for all their mistakes?
Me. That’s who.
I was going to get tougher, smarter, faster, stronger, and spend the rest of my life killing Fae, if that was what it took to put my world back the way it used to be.
I might not have a spear at the moment, but I was alive and I was … different. Something irrevocable had changed inside me. I could feel it.
I wasn’t entirely certain what it was.
But I liked it.
I ransacked the room before I left it, looking for weapons. There were none.
Apart from what looked like a hastily plumbed shower in a corner of the room, the rest of it was filled with my belongings that I’d kept at the bookstore.
Wherever we were now, in his efforts to restore my memory, Barrons had gone to some lengths to re-create pretty-in-pink Mac’s world. He’d plastered the walls with blown-up pictures of my parents, of Alina, of us playing volleyball with our friends on the beach back home. My driver’s license was stuck to a lamp shade, next to a photo of Mom. My clothes were draped all over the place, arranged in outfits, complete with matching purses and shoes. Every shade of pink fingernail polish ever made by OPI was lined up on a shelf. Fashion magazines covered the floor, along with some other ones I really hoped he and I hadn’t looked at together. There were peaches-and-cream candles—Alina’s favorite—scattered on every surface. There were dozens of lamps in the room and a blazing Christmas tree.
My backpack was nowhere to be found, but Barrons had obviously been counting on me regaining my sanity, because there was a new leather one, crammed with batteries, LED lights, and a MacHalo. He’d used a black helmet to build it. All the lights were black, except two. Guess he figured I’d’ve graduated from pink if I survived. I still liked pink. I would always like pink. But there wasn’t anything pink inside me anymore. I might be back, but I was black Mac now.
There was nothing useful here. I took a quick shower—I smelled like Jericho Barrons from head to toe—got dressed, strapped the MacHalo on my head, clicked it on, and headed for the door.
I was locked in.
It took me less than a minute to kick the door down. I not only had muscle now, I had another useful tool in my new black toolbox: rage.
Barrons seems to plan for everything. I want to be like him.
I was in a basement.
I found the guns in the crates, stacked next to the deafeningly loud generators that were powering the room I’d been living in, next to what looked like a year’s supply of gasoline.
There were dozens of crates of guns and twice as many crates of ammo. It seemed a little risky to me to keep so much ammunition next to so much gasoline, but who was I to judge? I was just glad it was all there. I sat on a crate and examined the different guns, finally settling for a semiautomatic with a shorter barrel than the rest. It resembled an Uzi, with a few minor differences.
Before all hell had broken loose on Halloween, I’d been researching guns on the Internet and had been angling to get Barrons, with his unlimited connections, to buy me one. The gun I chose now was a PDW: a personal defense weapon. Perfect for a woman of my size and stature. Highly manageable, highly effective, highly illegal. Able to fire even from a prone position. I intended to practice firing from every position possible. Gunfire might not kill Fae, but I was willing to bet it might slow down the non-sifting kind.
I crammed clips of ammunition into my pack everywhere they’d fit, then filled my boots and the
pockets of the new black leather coat I’d found draped over a chair in just my size. It irked me that Barrons had been making fashion choices for me, but not enough to be stupid about it: I needed that coat. I was pretty sure it was winter in Dublin, and it had been cold already in late October.
I wasted a lot of time searching the basement for my spear, because I knew Barrons well enough to know that he’d have requisitioned it, if it’d been possible. When I didn’t find it, I ruled out the possibility of it still being at the church. He’d have checked there. Which meant someone else had picked up my spear and backpack. I needed to know who.
I discovered crates of protein bars and loaded up on those, too. Like I said, Barrons plans for everything.
I’m not so sure he planned for one thing, though.
His OOP detector—the one he’d worked so hard to restore to sanity so he could use me some more, tracking down his precious Objects of Power—wasn’t hanging around.
“Thanks,” I told the empty house, “but I’ll take it from here.”
Besides, knowing him, he’d probably amped up his brand on the back of my skull, while I’d slumbered nearly unconscious from one of our marathon sex sessions, or put a new, improved one on me somewhere else. I had no doubt Barrons could find me one way or another. He wasn’t the kind of—whatever he was—that a woman could lose, if he didn’t feel like being lost.
I walked through the silent house, which was crammed with furniture covered with dusty sheets, and stepped out onto the front steps. The house had been built on an elevation with a good view of the neighborhood. I’d spent so much time driving in Dublin, hunting the Sinsar Dubh, that I’d gotten pretty familiar with it. I was on the northern outskirts of the city. Dawn smudged the horizon, and the first rays of sun slanted across a sea of gray roofs.
I smiled.
It was the start of a brand-new day.
CHAPTER 7
The wards knocked me on my ass the moment I tried to leave the property.
“Ow!” I rebounded like a rubber ball off a brick wall and landed on the lawn. Or, rather, what was left of the lawn, which was dirt. I was in a Dark Zone. It wasn’t winter but Shades that had stripped the yard of life. Mother Nature left grass, even in her harshest moments. Shades left nothing. Barrons must have brought me here after they’d already claimed the neighborhood. What better place to hide a weapon from the enemy than deep in their own territory? Especially since he and they seemed to have a tacit agreement to leave each other alone.
I took off my MacHalo—it was light enough that I wouldn’t need it again until nightfall, and I suspected the Shades that had devastated this area had moved on to more-fertile ground, anyway—hooked it onto a strap on my pack, and rubbed my head. The wards had nearly split my skull. My molars hurt, even my scalp felt bruised. I hadn’t seen that coming. I narrowed my eyes. Faint silver runes glistened on the sidewalk I’d just tried to cross. Wards were sneaky things, often hard to see, made doubly so this morning by a thin coating of frost. But now that I knew they were there, I could discern the telltale shimmer of Barrons’ subtle work, vanishing east and west around both sides of the house. Although I knew he was meticulous, I still walked the perimeter, looking for a gap.
There wasn’t one.
I decided it must have been an aberration that the wards had repelled me so violently. Barrons warded things out. He never warded me in. I stepped onto the lightly iced sidewalk in a different place.
I went flying backward again, teeth vibrating, ears ringing.
I sat up, growling. The nerve. If I hadn’t been determined to leave before, I was now.
“He has warded me out, as well, MacKayla. Or I would have come for you long ago.”
V’lane’s voice preceded his appearance. One moment I was glowering at the air, the next at V’lane’s knees. For a moment, I kept my gaze fixed there. A woman might feel a little terrified after what I’d been through—not that I did, just that some other woman might.
V’lane is Seelie, one of the alleged “good” guys, if any of the Fae can be called that, but he’s still a death-by-sex Fae, same as those masters of killing lust that had so recently devolved me into the lowest common denominator. All Fae royalty, whether light court or dark, can turn humans Pri-ya with sex. And like his darker, deadly Unseelie brethren—when in his natural high glamour—V’lane is too beautiful for a human to look at directly. I’m no exception. The dark princes had made my eyes bleed. V’lane could, too, if he felt like it.
Since the day I met him, he’d been using his death-by-sex magnetism on me to varying degrees, although I now knew just how “gentle” his coercion had really been compared to what he could have done in his efforts to make me help him track the Sinsar Dubh. We’d had an ongoing battle about what form he would assume in my presence, with him always turning on too much sexual charisma and me always insisting he “mute” it.
I raised my gaze to the inevitable perfection of the Seelie Prince’s face, bracing myself for the impact.
There was none.
He stood before me with every bit of his death-by-sex Faeness dampened. For the first time since I’d met him, I was able to look directly at him, absorbing his inhuman, incredible perfection without being affected by it. V’lane looked as close to a human male as he could get, in jeans, boots, and a loose linen shirt half unbuttoned. He was apparently unaffected by the frigid weather—or perhaps the cause of it. Fae can affect the weather with their moods. His beautifully muscled golden body was no more perfect than that of any airbrushed model; his long golden hair no longer shimmered with a dozen seductive, otherworldly shades; his flawlessly symmetrical features might have graced any magazine cover. The only aspect of his Fae nature he’d retained were those bottomless, ancient, iridescent eyes. He was still something to see: tawny, sexy man with alien, glowing eyes, but I was not assaulted by a frantic desire to tear off my clothes, I didn’t feel a tingle of lust, not the faintest sensation of being weak at the knees.
And he’d done it without my even having to ask.
I wasn’t about to thank him. It was the least he could do after what his race had done to me.
He studied me while I studied him. His eyes contracted slightly, then widened infinitesimally, which on a human face meant very little but on a Fae’s was an expression of astonishment. I wondered why. Because I’d survived? Had my odds really been so low?
“I have been monitoring these wards and sensed the disturbance. I am pleased to see you, MacKayla.”
“Thanks for the rescue,” I said coldly. “Nice of you to show up when I needed you. Oh, wait,” I barked a sharp little laugh, “I remember now. You didn’t. In fact, your name crashed and burned when I tried to use it.” If he’d never given me his name on my tongue, I wouldn’t have been so fearless that night. I’d been lulled into complacency, believing I had a Seelie Prince available at the snap of my fingers to sift in and sift me out to instant safety. It had made me feel invincible when I shouldn’t have. And when I’d needed him the most, it had failed. Better never to have depended on it at all. I should have kept Dani by my side that night. She could have whisked me to safety.
He spread his hands, palms up, and bowed his head in a gesture of subservience.
I snorted. The holier-than-thou Seelie Prince was bowing his head to me?
“A thousand apologies could not atone for the harm my brethren were permitted to inflict upon you. It sickens me that you were—” He broke off, bowing his head even more deeply, as if he couldn’t bring himself to go on.
It was a completely human gesture.
I didn’t trust it one bit.
“So.” I picked myself up off the ground and dusted off my new leather coat. “What’s your excuse for failing me on Halloween? Barrons said he was stuck in Scotland. Actually, he said it was ‘complicated.’ Was it complicated, V’lane?” I asked sweetly, as I slung my gun around the back side of my shoulder. It banged into my backpack. I liked the solid, reassuring weight of my weapo
ns and ammo.
He winced at the tone of my voice, not missing the arsenic in the sugar. While I’d been busy being Pri-ya, V’lane had obviously been busy expanding his repertoire of human expressions. Still, these expressions were different than that first one. They were too large for a Fae, overblown. Iridescent eyes met mine. “Exceedingly.”
I hooked my thumbs in my jeans pockets. “Go on.” I smiled. There was nothing he could say that would ever make me trust again in something so mystical and fundamentally flawed as a Fae name embedded in my tongue, but I wanted to see how far he might go to get back into my good graces.
“Aoibheal was my first priority, MacKayla. You know that. Without her, all else is insignificant. Without her, the walls can never be rebuilt. She alone is our hope of reclaiming the Song of Making.”
The Fae were matriarchal, and only the Seelie Queen could wield the Song of Making. I knew very little about the Song, just that it was the stuff from which the walls of the Unseelie prison had been forged, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Roughly six thousand years ago, when the Compact had been negotiated between our races, apportioning shares of the planet, Aoibheal had jury-rigged an extension of those ancient walls to separate Fae and human realms. Unfortunately, her tampering had weakened the prison walls, enabling Darroc the Lord Master to bring them all crashing down on Halloween.
So why didn’t Aoibheal just sing them back into existence?
Because in typical Fae infighting fashion, the Unseelie King had killed the long-ago Seelie Queen before she’d been able to pass on her knowledge to the next one. Aoibheal, latest in a long succession of queens to rule with diminished power, had no idea how to sing the Song of Making. They needed me—OOP detector extraordinaire—to find the one remaining clue to re-creating the Song: the Sinsar Dubh, a deadly book that contained all the dark magic of the Unseelie King. The king had been close to discovering it when his mortal concubine killed herself, and he’d abandoned his experiments that had created the dark half of the Fae race.
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