“Mac,” he says roughly, and I know what he sees: his precious little Mac, all blond and bouncy, defiled and vile—it doesn’t escape me that VILE becomes EVIL becomes LIVE, more proof my supremacy was destined—drenched in blood, hair matted with it, face crimson, black feathers stuck to the congealed mass, bits of Jo’s brains on his pretty girl’s hands, under her nails.
He sweeps the remains with a dark gaze, trying to identify them; impossible, as her head is a glistening, bloody omelet, garnished with the broken eggshells of her skull.
“Jo,” I tell him, enjoying the moment. “I ate her. Savage enough for you yet, Barrons?”
“Mac was savage enough for me as she was.”
“She was weak.” Is. Hate the bitch. Stupid, guilt-riddled cunt.
“Young,” he corrects. “Sometimes the young surprise you.”
“Young is boring. She never understood you. I do.” Were he to doff his circumscribing ethics, we might raze galaxies together. I would fuck him. Discover what my body has to offer me in the way of pleasure. Lust speaks its hungry native tongue when I look at him, demanding satiety. There will be time for that. Later.
“Bullshit. She knows me. You don’t.”
“I know you far better than MacKayla did, steeped in all that grand insecurity. She couldn’t make up her mind about shit. That’s why it was so easy for me to make it up for her.”
“She’s getting there. I’m a patient man.”
“Your love for her is your greatest weakness. Pity. You could have been so much more.” He could have been like me. His monster demands he be like me. He muzzles the finest part of himself. MacKayla may pretend she doesn’t know what he eats, but we do. We know what he is. We just don’t talk about it.
“What do you want?” he demands.
“I have what I want. You have nothing to offer me.”
“Try me. Bargain. Let me find you another body.”
“Do you have one in mind?” I say, interested. I never underestimate my prey. Perhaps he knows something MacKayla and I don’t.
“Mine,” he says flatly.
I’m silenced by the unexpected offer. I assess his splendid body from head to toe, pondering how delicious his black-skinned beast would be to ride. Possessing him, I would gain access to all his secrets, his enviable powers. I’d be able to kill Fae without needing spear or sword. I’d acquire millennia of druidry and skills in the black arts. He would go so far to save her—yield his exquisite existence for an illusion called love? The fool is more deluded than I believed. Desire, greed, lust to possess his powerful, changeable, impervious skin saturate my every cell. If I were able to complete transference to his body, and my enormity burned him up like all the others, I’d come back again and again, forever. I’d only have to maintain my hold on my form through the dying and rebirth, and I’ve held my form against far more formidable foes. The Unseelie King himself tried to strip me out of the corporeal Book he’d made once he realized what he’d done.
And failed.
Perhaps, at the moment of his dying, I might evict the tatters of his sentience. He doesn’t deserve the vessel he inhabits. My will is supreme. No other has my focus, my hunger.
He is up to some trick or he would never offer. Barrons is no sacrificial lamb. Besides, there is another, more certain way. I will fuck him. Then kill him. Once my goals are attained. “You think you stand a better chance against me than she does, because you have a beast within. You think you’re stronger and would take on her battle for her, like you always do because she’s such a pathetic victim. Your beast,” I say silkily, “would be a mere mouse in my house. You chain it. Hobble it with your fucking morality; even those few shreds you possess.”
“Try me,” he says just as silkily. “If you’re so certain of that. Take my body. Let hers go. Hers is fragile. It can die. You know mine can’t. Logic dictates you take mine. If you can,” he taunts. “Ah, but you’re not sure you can, are you?”
Rage floods me. He’s the bird in the bush. I crave his skin but am uncertain I could seize it. “MacKayla’s body is all I desire. I’ve such fun and games planned for it.” He deserves to be tortured. He impedes my desires. I make my face go slack, rearrange my features into a soundless shriek. Black eyes pale to green, then black then green again.
I pretend to be his Rainbow Girl beneath the gore, frothy, fragile, and fatally flawed. I fall to my knees, clutching my head. “Barrons,” I scream, “help me! Oh, God, help me! I’m in here. Get it out of me! Please, Barrons, help me!” I infuse my cry with desperation, knowing he’ll hear it in nightmares.
I shake myself violently, flood my eyes black again, toss my head back and snarl. “She is beyond your help.”
“Mac, I’m here. I’m not losing you,” he says roughly. “You’ve got to fight it. You can do it! Fight!”
Rah-rah fucking cheerleader. All he’s missing are fluffy pink pom-poms. It’s all I can do not to shake my head in disgust.
I make my eyes go green/black/green/black, body shuddering as if I’m weak and fighting for control.
“Barrons,” I scream. “It hurts! It’s killing me! Please, you’ve got to save me! I don’t have much time!”
He lunges forward, checks himself and stops.
His pain is my pleasure. “You can’t defeat me.” I let my eyes go full black again. “She’s mine and I will never release her.” I push myself up and saunter toward him, swaying my hips, jiggling my breasts, a blatant reminder of the potent bond they share. And perhaps can again—my walk suggests. I wet my lips and smile. My body is hot, parts of it ache in a way that’s sinfully delicious. It’s an ache I understand. LUST. GREED. Dominate him. Chain him. Use and abuse him. I have plans for this one.
He mutters beneath his breath and a silvery wall appears in the air between us.
I saunter closer, stopping inches from his hastily erected and not nearly fortified enough to keep the likes of me out druid wall.
“The Fae taught the druids,” I purr. “And not very well. We always withhold information.” I reach for the three lesser amulets I took from Cruce that hang around my neck, enclose them in a fist and murmur softly, weaving a spell of illusion that will convince Barrons to drop his druid wall and become lamb to my slaughter.
The druid wall remains.
I chant louder and my amulets glow with blue-black fire.
The corners of his mouth lift in a smile and he says smugly, “The lesser three don’t work on me. Only the king’s does and I have that one. Mac doesn’t know what I’m capable of. You don’t either. You’ll learn my limits. By discovering their lack.”
It offends me that he possesses an amulet that should be mine, offends me more that yet another thing that should unfold in my favor doesn’t. I go motionless, banking the embers of my rage with images of his destruction. I will torture him to the brink of death over and over. I will take him with me, my prisoner when I leave this world. I will make him beg for death until the black holes I plan to feed so they will grow rapidly out of control devour the earth and trap him as I was.
In nothing.
Forever.
I return his smug smile, thinking about it.
His eyes narrow to dark burning slits. “I’ll kill her rather than let you have her. Take my body or come up with another deal you’re willing to make. I’ll hunt you across the motherfucking galaxies. I’ll shred you limb from limb, dice and exorcise you. I won’t let her live in hell. You have three days. Get out of Mac’s body. Or die.”
Long before three days have passed, I will be all I was meant to be and gone. And he won’t hunt me long. Once I feed the black holes, he’ll either die or be trapped in nothing forever. I consider attacking his druid wall by a different method but I am as uncertain of the current strength of my body as I am of whether I could seize his.
I whirl and dash away from him.
I race into the woods behind the abbey where I sequestered my car, as rapidly as my weakening body is capable of moving.
He lets me.
As I knew he would. He won’t harm MacKayla’s body.
Not so long as he believes his precious Rainbow Girl is within reach.
Everyone has something they value more than anything else. That’s what we see when we look at you, scribbled on your flat, one-dimensional faces.
That thing that means everything to you—and without it you are so easily broken.
Fucking keys to your kingdom.
JADA
After seeing the sidhe-seers safely to Chester’s, Jada left them settling into the upper-level rooms and hurried back to Barrons Books & Baubles to address something she should have dealt with earlier. Every minute now, each hour, was vital.
They’d wasted the better part of a day sifting women, one by one, to Ryodan’s club, sending others ahead by what few cars were at the abbey, and tending to the needs of the injured. Before she’d left the club, she’d lost four more sidhe-seers to wounds too severe to heal. Crushed skulls and lacerated organs were beyond their limited medical abilities, and although Cruce possessed at least some power to heal, he’d claimed to be too taxed by his time in the cocoon to use the ability at the moment. Whether or not that was true was anyone’s guess. The ancient prince would resent employing any of his precious power for a mere human unless there was something significant in it for him.
They needed all hands on deck, and Ryodan, with his ruthlessness, Machiavellian mind, and knowledge of arcane magic, was crucial. Had he been uninjured today, she suspected he, too, might have healed some of the women. She had no such ability, and would sacrifice a great deal to learn it.
She stood near the mattress, staring down, watching the virtually nonexistent rise and fall of his chest through narrowed eyes, hands fisted, accepting that she had a profound aversion to seeing him in pain. Irritated by the matter that had brought her here for the second time in a day, she snapped, “Are you awake?”
His head moved slightly beneath the fabric.
“You’re being illogical, you know. How long will it take you to heal this way? Days? Weeks? I watched you die. You came back as good as new. If you can die and come back whole, why don’t you? Are there limits to how many times you can do it, like a cat with nine lives? Or maybe you can only do it during a full moon? What are you anyway? Whatever it is, you’re useless in your current condition,” she said crossly.
He made a strangled sound that might have been laughter and puffed at the fabric. After a moment she knelt on the floor and lifted it from his face, bending near.
“Could. You. Not,” he said on a labored exhale.
She unraveled his comments. “You could die and come back but because of me you won’t?”
He moved his head in a minuscule nod.
“Well, that’s just insulting. I’m fine. I pulled it together. Won’t happen again.” She’d slipped. She’d recovered. Shit happened. Life went on. He’d burned himself to a crisp for her, and now was refusing to leave because he was worried about her. “Sorry you had to burn yourself for me.” She paused a moment then grumbled, “Thanks.” She absorbed his expression; though he had no eyebrows and his face was badly burned, he was somehow still managing to look at her like she’d just sprouted three heads. She clarified coolly, “I thank people when they deserve it. You just don’t usually deserve it. Don’t hang around on my account. It’s not like you could do anything for me in your current state anyway.”
He made a choked sound of laughter, terminated it abruptly then said, “Tattoo. Cell…don’t…use it.”
“Why not?” He’d completed the tramp stamp at her spine and told her if she called IISS he could locate her anywhere. But according to what she’d learned from Barrons today, the tattoo he’d inked into her skin enabled him to locate her even without her calling him. So, why was the phone necessary? “Because you’re injured?”
“Take…too many of us…out of…the game. Too…dangerous…now.”
She studied him in the low light, wondering again exactly what calling the contact labeled I’M IN SERIOUS SHIT on her phone would do and how many of the Nine her using it would impair. Wishing irritably he’d tell her. Obviously it did something more than merely locate her. But confidences weren’t his strong suit any more than they were hers. “I have two missions: Mac, and saving the world from the black holes, and I’d like to do them in that order as I suspect saving Mac could help us save the world. I have no intention of doing anything with your cellphone in the meantime. When you die, how quickly can you return?” It had been a while before she’d seen him again the last time.
“Varies.”
“But sooner than you’ll heal this way.”
“Yes.”
“So, die. I’ll be here when you get back.”
Bloodshot silver eyes locked with hers.
“I’ll stay in the vicinity. You have my word. You know it’s solid.” They might not get along, but she respected him and knew he returned the courtesy.
His eyes were a dozen shimmering, inscrutable shades of cool silver.
She shifted position, impatience making her restless. “What are you waiting for?”
“Not…that…simple.”
“Why?”
“Can’t…move. How…die?”
She got a sinking feeling in her gut. “Do you always come back? This isn’t something that doesn’t work sometimes? It’s a sure thing, right?”
He gave another of those nearly imperceptible nods.
She exhaled explosively. As a teen she used to brag about one day taking down the mighty Ryodan. But the day she thought she’d killed him by freeing the Crimson Hag had been one of the more miserable days of her life. “Figures you’d make me do the dirty work,” she said irritably.
His eyes crinkled and his lips pulled into a grimace of a smile.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Thought you’d…get kicks…killing me. Old…insults. Could…get Barrons. Hate…that fuck…doing it. Enjoys it…too much.”
“How do you suggest I do it?” she said tightly.
“Sword. Gut. Like Hag.”
She glanced around the room, as if a more acceptable alternative might pop out of a corner or from behind the desk, or manifest in the mirror; one less brutal, bloody, and personal. “Can’t I just give you an overdose of something?”
“Poisons…don’t…work. Chop…head?”
“Oh, you really suck,” she hissed.
“Techni…calities. You’re…right. Logical…I die.”
She dropped her head in her hands and rubbed her eyes. Killing came naturally to her. She could be ruthless, lethal, and without mercy, and considered it a strength. But Ryodan mattered to her. She’d made peace with that Silverside. She liked knowing he was out there in the world, alive, doing Ryodan-things no matter how much some of those Ryodan-things aggravated her. For the first year, she’d told herself stories while wandering worlds about the many interesting/irritating things he was probably doing in her absence, top on that list—hunting for her, having all kinds of adventures along the way. Those stories had always ended with him finding her; they’d swap tall tales and kick ass together all the way back to Dublin. She found the idea of killing him, even though his death would be temporary, abhorrent.
She raised her head, eyes blazing with emotion.
She didn’t think he could go any more still, but he managed to, eyes narrowed, searching her face.
She hated that anything mattered to her. Yet last night all the grief and loss she’d been repressing had escaped. Once triggered, everything that had ever triggered her had a tendency to explode up from the floor of an ocean of unaddressed injury. Now her emotions were floating on the surface, and everything hurt.
It won’t always, she suddenly heard his voice clearly inside her head. Kill me fast. The dying never gets easier. But, Jada, the living does.
With a grimace of determination, she pushed to her feet. “You’d better come back because if I have to carry your sorry-ass death, too
—” She didn’t finish the thought.
I’ll be back. I’ll always be back. He was silent a moment then added with a faintly sour note in his voice, In the future, if you need help with something, ask me.
She aired an old grievance just as sourly. “Why would I? You didn’t help me when Jayne took my sword.”
Kid, I had no fucking clue what to do with you. You were a Negasonic Teenage Warhead.
She’d had no fucking clue what to do with herself. She’d been a Mega-powered explosion of pure defiance to anyone who’d tried to impose limits on her. She’d not once considered whether there might be a good reason for those boundaries. Any and all limits—bad—had been her entire philosophy in a nutshell. Wondering when Ryodan had started actually reading the comic books he’d only pretended to know about, she said loftily, “I was nothing like that twit.” She had no intention of saying one word more but couldn’t resist adding, “I was enormously cooler.”
I meant the movie.
Her shoulders slid back and she stood straighter. Even Deadpool had been impressed with the film incarnation of Negasonic. Preening only inwardly, she disparaged, “You’ve seen everything. How could you not know what to do with one teenage girl?”
Fucking superhero on steroids. I’d never seen anything like you.
The inward preen turned into a radioactive flare, lighting up her face. Sometimes she missed those days; how she used to feel when she woke up, like life was electric and she was electric and each day was just another awesome fecking run at riding all the glorious, rainbow-colored currents on the kaleidoscopic electric-life-slide. “Not even in all your…how many years did you say it was?” she fished.
Thought letting Jayne keep the sword would keep you off the streets.
“It didn’t.” Nothing would have. She’d have gone swaggering out into the streets naked and completely defenseless just to prove herself free. Anything less than absolute freedom had offended her as deeply as the cage she often felt she’d never escaped. The price of her exit strategy had been too high. Exit strategies usually were. “So, how old are you again?” she pressed.
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