Silver Skin (A Cold Iron Novel)

by D. L. McDermott

  “I’m not Beth Carter. I’ve had satisfying relationships.”

  “But not satisfying enough to last beyond a few months.”

  “Maybe I just enjoy dating.”

  “No one enjoys dating,” said Miach.

  “I thought the Fae enjoyed the thrill of the chase.”

  “Dating is not the chase.”

  “What is it, then?” she asked.

  “Dating is a stale ritual. It has expected forms. Rules. Conventions. It doesn’t make your pulse race and your heart pound. It doesn’t veer off in an unexpected direction and reveal new vistas. It proceeds like a cart down an old, worn track, to a familiar, predictable destination. That’s why it bores you. And that’s why you never stay on course to see the end of the journey. Because you don’t like where it’s going.”

  “And the chase?” she asked.

  Her voice was cool but he could hear the breathless hitch in it.

  “This chase,” he said, “ends with you under me, screaming.”

  • • •

  His words sent a physical rush of longing through her body.

  The men Helene dated didn’t say things like that. The men Helene dated talked about their academic pursuits or their investment portfolios. They took her out to dinner, to the symphony, to the theater. They were everything cultivated and civilized.

  Miach MacCecht was not. Never. For one thing, he was as much a mob boss as he was a “businessman.” He would take and protect what he felt was his by all means, fair or foul. Coercion and the threat of violence were part of his basic vocabulary.

  Beyond that, there was something forbidden and alluring about being the focus of Miach’s intense pursuit and passion. It was easy to see how Beth had succumbed to her Fae lover. Conn had fixed on Beth as his own, determined that he would have her.

  And Miach had marked Helene. The place high on her inner thigh where his symbol had long since faded burned with warmth, and that warmth traveled.

  “Stop it,” she said.

  “I’m not doing anything.”

  “You’re making me feel things.”

  “Perhaps I’m just focusing your attention on things you already feel, and expend far too much energy denying.”

  “But you’re doing it with magic. You’re focusing my attention with your magic.”

  “My voice has power,” he admitted. “A sort of resonance. I can’t just mute its power of suggestion. All Fae are born with that gift, and it is especially strong in those who practice sorcery.”

  “I wish you could mute it,” she said honestly. “I can’t trust myself with you. I can’t tell the difference between what I feel and what you want me to feel.”

  “There is a way,” he said. “For you to see me, hear me, without feeling Fae compulsion. If you were touching cold iron.”

  His admission surprised her. The Fae did not give up their secrets or advantages lightly. And the image it conjured amused her. “So I should probably carry a fireplace poker, or maybe a Dutch oven around with me?”

  Miach laughed. “The fireplace poker wouldn’t be a bad idea with some of my kind, but you don’t need quite that much iron to clear your vision and your hearing. Something small, a token, or a piece of jewelry. Preferably worn someplace I’m unlikely to touch.”

  “Why? Are you allergic?”

  A wry smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “Black iron is poison to the Fae. Contact with it pains and weakens us. Iron blades are the only kind that can permanently scar our skin. We use it for some things, but we can’t work it. The Druids did it for us, forged the knives we used for ritual scars, and sheathed them with silver handles. They were master iron workers, the Druids.”

  “How did they do it?” she asked. “Beth never told me. How did the Druids banish you when you can do the things that you can do?”

  “Patience,” said Miach. “Patience and meticulous planning. They plotted for years. They hoarded cold iron, and made weapons from it. Iron filings were their most effective technique. They poured iron dust into our drinking water, filled catapult missiles with fine iron shavings. The ritual magic to fling us from this world into the next, and raise the wall between them, was something they had been working on for years. In our arrogance, we didn’t pay a great deal of attention to what they did in their temple mounds, so long as they made us the trinkets we asked for and carried out our commands. We didn’t know what else they were making in their forges. Their shackles and chains and cages.”

  Helene remembered the small black hoops Beth wore all the time now. She had admired them when she first noticed them, never realized that iron could be worked so delicately. They must have been a gift from Conn—a gift of power. More meaningful than any glittering jewel, from such a creature.

  She filed this arresting knowledge away for the future and directed Miach to the employee parking lot behind the museum. The classical granite facade in front was rather grand, but Helene rarely entered that way. Her offices were around the back in a wing of practical yellow brick. Together they entered through the loading dock, where the traveling shows departed and visiting works of art arrived in their custom-built crates.

  Helene hadn’t considered what excuse she could give the watchman on duty for bringing Miach to view the security footage, but in the end, she didn’t need to supply one. Miach simply asked the security supervisor, in that resonant, irresistible voice, to queue up the footage for the days Helene specified. The guard smilingly complied, with the air of a man pouring a cup of coffee for a friend.

  The room where the security monitors and computers were kept was really a glorified closet with a desk crammed in beneath a rack of spare uniforms. There was only one chair, and Miach insisted that Helene take it. Then he stood behind her and bent over her shoulder every time he shuffled through the footage.

  “Your assailant,” he said after they had spent an hour in that tiny room, watching the comings and goings of thousands of visitors, “took pains to not be seen.”

  “There must be a way to find him,” she said, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. It was horrible to see herself again on the tape, walking toward a rendezvous with whoever was summoning, controlling her. Who was he? What did he want; what did he do with her? What might he do the next time? The whole thing chilled her to the bone.

  Still standing behind her, Miach turned her swiveling chair to face him and crouched in front of her. “I will not let this Fae take you again. Even if that means doing things to keep you safe that you will hate me for. If we cannot find a clue here today, I will search you for the geis. I’ll put you out, if you prefer that—”

  “No.”

  “Or ask Nieve to be there so you feel more comfortable, but if we can find no trace of this Fae here, then it must be done. Or you must consent to stay in my home, or accept Elada into yours. But first, I want to see the key-card records for the hours that you can’t remember.”

  “Why?”

  “When this Fae summoned you, from what we have seen on the tapes, you didn’t leave the museum. But you went somewhere inside the building where the cameras didn’t see you. It’s possible we can discover where based on your key-card entries.”

  He was very good at this. He had manipulated the security footage with surprising ease as well. “How do you know so much about this kind of thing?” she asked. “About security cameras and key-card records?”

  “Simple. I’m a criminal, Helene. And while people can be glamoured, computers and cameras can’t.”

  She requested the key-card log from the watchman. While they were waiting for it to print out, an unsettling thought occurred to her.

  “The gifts you sent me—” she began.

  “Not stolen,” he said quickly. “I wouldn’t endanger you that way.”

  “I’m not talking about the fur coat. Or the dishwasher your men installed before Beth made you promise to stop stalking me.”

  “That,” he conceded, “might have fallen off the back of a truck, as su
ch things do. But I didn’t realize that dishwasher installation counted as stalking,” he added, amusement plain on his angular face.

  “It does when you break into my apartment to do it.”

  “Your locks were in good working order when my men left.”

  “It wasn’t just the locks,” she said. “There was that trustee, the one who the museum’s director, Marty, was always encouraging to call me. The one who thought that writing a check to the museum entitled him to fringe benefits. The one who kept showing up at my apartment, waiting for me at my car.” She felt a little anxioius again just thinking about the man. “I didn’t know what to do about him. If I had gotten a restraining order, it would have cost me my job. But he was mugged just off campus one night. It was in the police blotter. And it happened on one of those nights when he was waiting for me at my car. I had to threaten to call security to get him to leave. After that, he never bothered me again. For a long time I thought he left me alone because I’d threatened him with calling security, but that wasn’t it, was it? That was your doing.”

  Miach shrugged, but he didn’t deny it. “The square is dangerous at night,” he said. “And an incident like armed robbery will cause a man to rethink a lot of his own behavior. He never bothered you again. And he didn’t withdraw his support from the museum.”

  “That isn’t the point,” she said. “And you didn’t stop, did you? The new windows couldn’t have come from my condo association, no matter what the trustees said, because no one else in the building got them. And a parking space in the museum lot opened up, even though no one left the staff. Now that I think of it, my raise was suspicious, too. Everyone knows Dave Monroe is tightfisted with salaries. That was your doing, wasn’t it?”

  “Does it matter?” asked Miach. “You needed new windows, and you have them. You work too late to be parking on the street. You deserved a raise, and you got one.”

  “Beth made you promise to leave me alone.”

  “And so I did. I never visited your home or your place of work myself. Never directly violated her prohibition. And I’m not doing so now, because it is you who came to me.”

  Fae oaths, she was coming to realize, were even trickier than she had thought. She had to remain on her guard with this man.

  They scrutinized the key-card printout together.

  “What is Storage Three?” Miach asked.

  “It’s one of the vaults in the basement. A bit of a hodgepodge in there. Greek, Roman, and Celtic antiquities.”

  “You appear to have visited it during every one of your blackouts, except the initial one immediately after the gala.”

  “That’s impossible. I never go down there.”

  “Someone used your key card to gain access, whether you were with them or not. Whatever your assailant wants, it’s probably down there. Let’s go.”

  “I can’t.”

  Miach’s brows knit. “Why not?”

  “It’s too . . . close down there.” She couldn’t stand confined spaces. Couldn’t breathe in them.

  “Surely you must have to go into the vaults sometimes? For your work?”

  She shook her head. “I can almost always find a reason not to,” she said.

  Miach hesitated. “Helene, this is our best chance to discover what this Fae has been doing—and to free you from him.”

  “I don’t do well underground. Here”—she handed him her key card—“you go. I’ll stay up here.”

  “And if he summons you? He may already have felt the destruction of the geis on your shoulder. Could be planning to kill you to cover his tracks. I can’t just leave you alone.”

  “I can’t go down there.”

  Miach reached for his cell phone. “That doesn’t leave a lot of options. Elada has to guard you.”

  The thought sent her into a further panic. Her mind flooded with the images and sensations of her last encounter with the brawny Fae warrior, when he’d been on Beth Carter’s trail, trying to kill her. He’d compelled Helene into his car, left her there for hours, unable to move or call out.

  “No. No Elada.”

  “Our best shot here is to investigate that storage, but I can’t leave you alone up here. If you won’t accept Elada’s protection for an hour or so, then the only choice left is for us to return to South Boston and search your body for spells.” Something in Miach’s eyes suggested that he didn’t much mind reverting to the hands-on approach, now that it was on the table again.

  She had to make a choice. She reasoned that at least the basement couldn’t control her mind, wouldn’t tempt her to do things she’d regret later. “Storage,” she said.

  Miach’s soft sigh seemed to validate her suspicions. “Probably for the best.”

  Helene turned toward the back of the museum where the stairs led down to the vault below. There was an elevator, but it was an old-fashioned cage-style affair, and the last time she’d gotten in it, she and Beth had been fleeing for their lives from Elada.

  Miach placed a hand on her arm to stop her. “I could make it easier for you, the fear of enclosed spaces.”

  He’d made a similar offer once before, after rescuing her from the attic where Brian had held her. He’d said he could take the memory away. In the months since the incident she’d been tempted by the idea, but she knew what that was like now, to have a blank space in your head.

  “No thank you,” she said.

  “I’m not offering to remove the fear. Just to use to my voice to suggest that you’ll feel safe, downstairs, with me.”

  “But it would be a lie,” she said. “And, Miach, I really wish that bothered you as much as it does me.”

  She led him to the stairs, forcing herself to go first, even though the dim halogen lights were still warming up and it was a descent into gloomy darkness with a man at her back she did not entirely trust.

  • • •

  Miach didn’t like dragging Helene into the basement, but it was a fact that their options were narrowing. If they couldn’t find some clue to this Fae’s identity, they would be left with no choices that didn’t involve violating Helene’s will in some unforgiveable fashion. If it came to it, and her life hung in the balance, he knew he would do it—and destroy all chance of getting her into his bed. Not just because she was Beth Carter’s friend, and he needed Beth Carter’s help to shore up the wall between worlds. But because he liked Helene Whitney.

  He liked her for the very reasons that kept them apart. He liked her because she was loyal to her friends, because she was smart enough to understand the danger he represented, because she was strong willed enough to resist a Fae. If he were as self-delusional as many of his race, he would tell himself that this was all the more reason to pursue her for the thrill of a difficult chase. And to take her, for the hunter eats what he kills.

  But he had lived among men long enough to know that a victory over Helene’s will would be an empty one. He would not be winning Helene Whitney, the flamboyant assured woman he wanted, but a broken creature.

  She had to choose him, and choose him she would, for herself.

  The storage vaults, he was unsurprised to find, were indeed dungeon-like, tucked in the basement of a gothic revival building that took its gloominess seriously. Miach rather enjoyed the atmosphere, but he could see why Helene, with her fear of enclosed spaces, would refuse to enter.

  She had forged ahead boldly at first, but now that they were in the narrow brick tunnel with the low arched ceiling that led to the actual vaults, her breathing had become ragged. Miach disliked seeing such a brave creature brought low by incapacitating fear, but he would not call it irrational.

  He had been tortured by the Druids for months, shackled to a cold stone wall, and could not stand to be bound now for any reason. He understood how deeply imprinted such aversions could be. He resisted the impulse to touch her mind, to blunt her fear, and even the stronger impulse to touch her physically, to offer the most direct kind of comfort.

  Instead, he asked, “Are you a
ll right?”

  She nodded, mute.

  “You look pale,” he said. “Well, paler gold, at least.” He hoped the gentle humor reached her.

  “I’ll be fine when we’re in the open part of the vault.”

  They reached a set of double doors, much newer than the walls surrounding them, and Helene let them in with her key card. Once they were inside, floor to ceiling shelves confronted them, row upon row. The museum’s curators used some arcane catalog system to keep track of their treasures. The aisles were marked with strings of letters and numbers that probably meant something to Beth Carter and her colleagues.

  Miach didn’t need them. The pull of Fae magic, coming from the shadowy depths of the vault, was strong enough to guide him.

  It drew him to the mouth of the widest aisle, flanked on either side by warehouse-size palates containing large sculptures. The far end was shrouded in darkness.

  “What’s down there?” he asked.

  “That’s the staging area for exhibits.” She took a deep breath. “The space is a little more open, more comfortable for me down there.”

  They followed the aisle to the darkened end of the bay. Miach found a light switch along the wall.

  The fluorescents flickered on and revealed a heap of ancient stones, pale granite, carved with swirling patterns of whorls and dots. A casual observer would take them for a random collection of Celtic monuments, but Miach knew they were not. Anything but.

  The stones were weathered and chipped now, but they had once fit together seamlessly to form that most powerful of all Druid constructs: a solstice gate.

  The kind of gate that could open a doorway in the wall between worlds. The kind of gate that could free the captive Fae.

  Chapter 4

  Miach walked around the solstice gate, examining the monoliths. The structure was incomplete at the moment, but the base stones had been laid out correctly. The measurements and angles were exact. He could tell that much because, to one with his sensibilities, the construct already hummed with power.