Silver Skin (A Cold Iron Novel)

by D. L. McDermott

  “Where is the brat?” said Brian.

  “My son is at Finn’s,” lied Nieve.

  “Pity,” said Brian. “He’s almost true Fae. Take her as well,” said Brian.

  “No,” said Nieve.

  “She’s your own flesh and blood, Brian,” said Helene.

  “She’s a thin-blood,” said Brian. “And no use to me. But the Druids need practice with their knives. They can gut her before they gut my father.”

  The gunmen reached for Nieve. She moved too fast for them and grabbed a sliver of glass. But she didn’t turn it on her assailants. She slashed her own palm, squeezed it, and spoke as the blood fell from her hand. “I release you, Garrett, now and for all time.”

  Brian laughed. “How touching. And stupid. I expect that if Garrett was really tied to you, the Fianna would have come looking for you. But not now, Nieve. Not now.”

  “The old man should have put you down like the dog you are,” spat Nieve. She lunged at him with the shard of glass, and he struck her with the stun gun. She went down in a heap on the floor. Helene watched, helpless, as the gunmen grabbed her arms and dragged her through the broken glass and out the door, bleeding from dozens of cuts.

  Brian ordered Helene into the van. “I’m afraid we don’t have a trunk to offer you,” he said, “but there’s a basement at the house and so many tiny rooms.”

  “Miach will come for me,” she said.

  Brian smirked. “That’s what I’m counting on.”

  • • •

  Miach was impatient to return home to Helene, but there were three other buildings to search. Conn broke down the door to the next structure, which was a disturbing combination of gymnasiums and laboratories.

  “What is this place?” Beth asked, standing in the largest of the chambers, big enough to be a basketball court, with complicated patterns drawn on the concrete floor. “I can feel something in the patterns.”

  Miach nodded. “That’s because they are Druid training patterns. You’re past needing crutches like this, but the very young and the very inexperienced find them helpful.”

  They continued on through the maze of rooms. Miach didn’t like the small windowless chambers at all, with their examination tables and medical instruments.

  Neither did Beth. “What were they doing here?” she asked, a tremor in her voice.

  “Dissections. A Druid practice. One of their forms of study.”

  “On animals,” she said. “Please say they only did it to animals.”

  Miach said nothing. He could smell the human blood in the air. If Beth opened herself to it, she would be able to smell it as well. And if she was as far along in her training as he expected, had been doing the exercises he had shown her—

  She picked up a scalpel, went rigid, and swooned.

  Conn caught her.

  “What the hell just happened?” asked the blond warrior, holding his Druid in his arms.

  “She just got a glimpse of what her distant relations have been doing here,” Miach replied.

  “You should have told her not to touch anything,” chided Conn.

  “She needed to know. She needs to be on our side. This”—he gestured to the tables, the instruments, the basins that had been used to catch blood—“cannot begin again.”

  Elada broke down the locked door at the end of the building. Beyond it were eight makeshift padded cells, with mattresses and pillows and scraps of foam nailed to the walls. There was food splattered on the walls, and blood and hair as well.

  “Prisoners?” asked Elada.

  “Mad Druids,” said Miach. Druid training took decades, and even then some acolytes went mad when they were admitted to the final rites, when the whole of the Druid network of knowledge poured into them in a clean, pure stream. It could burn out minds that had prepared, tirelessly, for years. Miach did not care to think what it might do to a mind that had never been trained, what it must have done to many of the sideshow Druids. He expected that if they looked, they would find some of them buried in the fields outside.

  Four of the cells had gaping holes in the padding revealing broken windows.

  “Some of them escaped,” said Elada, unsheathing his sword. It was a wise precaution. Mad Druids were like rabid animals.

  The next building was a barracks. There was no lock on this door, because there was nothing of value inside, just Spartan cell-like bedrooms with basic furnishings. It felt like a cheap conference hotel or retreat dormitory. The signs of recent habitation were unmistakable. The beds were rumpled and unmade, the trash bins in the bathrooms were full, and there was food rotting in the refrigerators.

  “I don’t like this,” said Elada. “They should have left someone to guard this place.”

  It happened in the next building, which was another administrative center. This one wasn’t dedicated to research, though. It had been the nexus of the operation. One long open space, wall to wall with bulletin boards and conference tables covered with maps and diagrams.

  At the center of the room were two bulletin boards side by side with maps and lists, detailing two very different operations. The first map depicted a diaspora. Someone—the Prince Consort or one of his hirelings, had directed the sideshow Druids to spread out over the globe and make contact with the Druids from the more promising, scholarly list.

  A dozen seekers had been sent out on such missions, but the barracks had housed four times that number. That left thirty-six would-be Druids unaccounted for.

  Until they examined the next bulletin board. Under it was a table with travel portfolios for three dozen of the sideshow Druids.

  Elada leafed through the folders. “There are flight reservations, rental cars, false passports, credit cards, and bank accounts in here. This took planning and organization. A guiding force. And the Prince Consort is on the other side of the wall.”

  Miach had known from the moment they found the first offices that someone had continued the Prince Consort’s work in his absence. A loyal follower, with the zeal of a believer. Not one of his court flunkeys. They were too indolent. With the Prince gone, his hangers-on would lapse into decadence. Industry was a rare Fae virtue.

  There was only one possibility. He had resisted speaking of it until now, but Elada was his oldest friend, and he owed him his honesty and trust. “It is Brian,” said Miach. “It is my own son. Where did these thirty-six weak Druids go?”

  “Boston.”

  Helene. Miach pulled out his phone. “Check the office down at the end of the building. I’m going to call Helene.”

  He dialed her number. The phone rang. And rang. And rang. He felt a premonition of danger and dialed the house.

  Then the office that Beth and Conn had just entered exploded in ball of fire and a shower of glass.

  • • •

  Brian ordered Nieve tied up in the back of the van. He didn’t bother with Helene. He enjoyed using his power over her too much. “Sit,” he told her, “like a good bitch. And don’t move.”

  It was just like the day Miach had sent Elada to kill Beth, and Helene had waylaid the sorcerer’s right hand. She’d told Beth to leave her at the rest stop where Miach had ordered them to pull over and wait for Elada. He’d promised to spare Helene’s life if Beth gave herself up. The two women had agreed, but then they’d set a trap for Elada. Helene had asked Beth to punch her and give her a black eye, a real shiner. Then Beth had taken off in Helene’s car.

  When Elada had arrived at the rest stop, Helene had been waiting for him docilely, head down, face hidden. Until he got close to her and she’d created a scene, telling all the vacationing families shepherding their children back and forth to the rest rooms and vending machines that he was her boyfriend and he’d clocked her.

  It had slowed him down, given Beth precious minutes to escape, and thrown him off her trail. Elada had been furious. He’d used his voice on her. It wasn’t smooth and seductive like Miach’s or sinister like Brian’s, but it had carried brute force. He’d ordered her to
sit in the Range Rover until he returned, which had not been for ten hours.

  Helene was frozen like that now, but this time it was Elada and Miach she was relying on for rescue.

  Nieve was sobbing quietly. “I’ll never see my baby boy again,” she said.

  “What did you do when you cut yourself, Nieve?” Helene asked. She suspected she knew, and the thought broke her heart.

  Nieve looked at her quizzically. “You don’t know, do you? The old man never explained it to you, did he?”

  “I know that you and Garrett made promises to each other, and that when a Fae binds himself to a mortal, then he’s bound to a mortal life span.”

  Nieve shook her head. “Not a mortal span. That mortal’s span. They’re going to kill us, Helene. And when I die, Garrett will die.”

  “I don’t understand how that can be.”

  “Brian’s right. I’m a thin-blood. Almost human. But Garrett is a true Fae. The vows the Fae make aren’t just binding; they’re words made flesh. When a Fae promises to share his life with you, he means it literally. He’s sharing part of the magic that gives him life. And when you die, a part of him dies with you. He sickens and follows you to the grave. That’s why I released him. At least now he can use his talent and become a sorcerer like the old man.”

  “Why couldn’t he before?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Nieve. “I thought you understood. Garrett can’t be a sorcerer without a right hand. And sorcerers are bound to their right hands, just like man and wife. Their lives are tied. When one dies, the other follows. A sorcerer can’t marry, and neither can a right hand. Fae or mortal—makes no difference. The connection would mean that if any one of them died, they all would die. That’s why Garrett and I did it, married in secret, because Granddad told him it was time to choose.”

  Helene hadn’t known. Miach hadn’t told her. She doubted Beth knew either. But she didn’t feel betrayed by the revelation. She felt sorry for Miach and sorry for Elada, who had been denied the chance to love fully and freely.

  “I wish I could have seen him one more time,” said Nieve. The tears were pouring down her face.

  “Brian is wrong,” said Helene. “Garrett will come for you. I saw the look on his face when he was bargaining with Miach at the Commandant’s House. It won’t make a difference that you’ve freed him. You mean everything to him.”

  “I don’t want him to come,” said Nieve. “They’re Druids, Helene. They’ve got cold iron. You saw what it did to the old man. If Garrett comes, they’ll poison him and then they’ll cut him. My family thinks I don’t know the stories, what it was like for the old man, but I’ve overheard them whispering. I know what they went through. I don’t want Garrett. My little boy needs a father.”

  Helene didn’t want anyone to die. Not Garrett or Miach or Nieve and certainly not herself. Her phone was still in her pocket—Brian had seemingly forgotten that—and he hadn’t blindfolded her or put her in a trunk. Once Miach saw the carnage in his house, he would probably guess they’d been taken to the address in Winthrop she’d given him on the phone. They were already through the tunnel and passing the airport, the water visible in the distance.

  She was going to observe and remember everything. How many gates, doors, men, weapons there were. And then, when she was alone, even if Brian locked her in a four-foot-square closet in a basement, she was going to keep her wits about her and call Miach to warn him what he was up against.

  They crossed a narrow body of water, and then they were in Winthrop proper, the neat little nineteenth-century clapboard houses all on small lots, more spacious than the crowded dwellings of Southie and Charlestown, but still urban. Then they turned again and they were heading south toward the water.

  At the end of the street was a stone wall with a set of wrought-iron gates. Helene hadn’t known there was an estate this size in Winthrop. The internal road wound around scrubby parkland to a circular drive in front of a sprawling Tudor Revival.

  The house was completely hidden from the road by the stone walls, and it had an unobstructed view of the sea. It was desolate and cut off from the family bustle of Winthrop, which itself was isolated from the rest of Boston by the water that surrounded the tiny peninsula. There was no good way of getting in or out of Winthrop.

  And the place had a sinister, disused air to it. Like the compound of a cult. Cars were parked haphazardly on the lawn. The grass needed mowing; the hedges needed clipping. Sheets and newspapers hung in the windows as though the inhabitants were just squatting there.

  The Druids who streamed out of the house, two dozen at least, were as unkempt as the compound. They wore sweatshirts and pajamas and sported unwashed hair and beards. There were few women, and Helene doubted any of them would be sympathetic to her plight. They looked strung out and disturbingly eager. Helene didn’t want to think for what.

  Brian yanked Nieve out of the van and threw her to the waiting Druids. “You can cut that one open,” he told them. Then he pulled Helene out of the van. He didn’t need to, but he enjoyed the revulsion she showed when he touched her.

  The Druids started to drag Nieve toward the house.

  “She’s Finn’s daughter-in-law!” shouted Helene. “Do you want the Fianna here?”

  One of the women gave her a demented smile. “We’re ready for the Fae,” she said. “They can’t stand cold iron.”

  “You think the Wild Hunt is going to like this?” she asked Brian, incredulous. “Druids with cold iron torturing Fae?”

  “The Court won’t care about Finn and Miach MacCecht, who left them to rot in the void. They won’t care how we released them, just that they’re free.”

  “They won’t care who released them, either,” said Helene with sad certainty. “They’ll turn on you, Brian. The way you turned on your father. Because you’re right. You are more Fae than he is. You don’t have an ounce of his humanity. Or Nieve’s. You’d let these things”—she couldn’t think of these wild-eyed lunatics as people—“kill a young mother who was your own flesh and blood, whose son is as much Fae—more than you are.”

  Ransom Chandler looked surprised. “That one bred with a Fae?” he asked, taking new interest in Nieve.

  Helene felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. Chandler’s interest turned her stomach.

  Brian shook his head. “Once. She bred one half-blood. And she can’t breed another. She’s too torn up inside.”

  “I’d like to see that,” said Chandler, with an unwholesome light in his eyes. “Take her to the lab.”

  Nieve fought them until Brian used the Taser on her. Then the Druids picked the helpless girl up and carried her into the house.

  Helene and Brian followed them down a long hall. The Druids turned off into what had once been a kitchen, all art-deco white tile and green counters. There was something disturbingly institutional about it. A family had never cooked in this place nor gathered here for meals. This had been the domain of servants.

  Then Helene saw the table at the center of the room. It had leather straps fixed to the sides, and the floor around it was stained with dried blood. The Druids tossed Nieve on top and Helene reeled, sick to her stomach.

  Brian thrust his hands into Helene’s hair and dragged her down the hall to a low door. He opened it, and the damp and mildew met her in a wave. The stairs were steep, wooden, with no rail, and as he pulled her downstairs, she fell twice, bruising her shins.

  There were, as Brian had promised, many tiny closets in the basement, and he took care to find the smallest one, even as she hyperventilated and shook, and then locked her inside a brick enclosure too narrow for her to even sit down.

  It took her precious minutes, she didn’t know how many, to master her breathing. She knew that if she reached for her phone while her hands were shaking, she might drop it. And the space was narrow, so confining, with her shoulders touching the walls on both sides, her back and breasts scraping the brick, that if she dropped the phone, she wouldn’t be able to pick it up aga
in. There was barely room to bend her knees a few inches. She was standing in an upright coffin.

  No. She couldn’t think like that, or she wouldn’t be able to get the phone. She closed her eyes and thought of the beach near Miach’s house, of trails she liked to hike in the woods west of Boston, or bicycle rides and fresh sweet air. Then she slid her hand in her pocket, found the phone, and brought it up to her face.

  The light when she turned it on blinded her, and that was good, because she didn’t want to see her surroundings, didn’t want to see how close the walls were, touching her back, her elbows, her wrists.

  She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she focused on the phone and shut out her surroundings. And then she sobbed, and began shaking, and put it back into her pocket and let the tears come.

  She had no signal.

  Chapter 14

  Liam MacCecht was glad for the opportunity to get out of the house. He escaped before Nieve could press another bag of toddler supplies on him. He didn’t understand the giant bags mothers carried nowadays. His mother hadn’t hauled around that stuff for him, and he’d turned out just fine. And on the occasions when he had taken Garrett’s bag with him, he’d never opened it.

  The beach was nearly empty today and Garrett had all the space he needed to run free. And Liam had time to think.

  He’d been planning on moving out before the business with Conn of the Hundred Battles and Beth Carter, but then the mess with Brian had happened. No one wanted to say it, but everyone in the MacCecht clan knew: Miach had been badly shaken by the betrayal of his son. So much so that no one commented on his fixation with Helene Whitney. No one challenged Miach for breaking his own laws, for courting—or to Liam’s mind, stalking—a woman outside the tiny world of South Boston where the Fae were known and accepted.

  Liam had expected Miach to tighten his hold on his family, to forbid Liam from seeing his girlfriend in Cambridge, accepting the place at Harvard Law that he had earned. Instead, Miach had told Liam to bring Amy to the house so he could get a look at her.