Silver Skin (A Cold Iron Novel)

by D. L. McDermott

  Miach lay curled in a fetal position beneath the iron blanket, his breathing torturous. Brian strode to his father and kicked him in the stomach.

  “That is for killing seven of my Druids, old man.”

  Helene saw Miach convulse beneath the iron net and she cried out, but it was laughter, not pain, that came from his lips. “Those aren’t Druids, Brian. You can’t make Druids in a day, or a month, or a year. Those are rabid dogs, and they needed putting down.”

  “Just because they’re not your precious Garrett doesn’t mean they can’t cast,” spat Brian.

  Miach snorted. “Their gaesa are childish scrawl with no power. The magic they used on Helene was crude and unstable. They don’t have the strength or the focus to open a solstice gate, and Beth Carter will never do it for you, Brian.”

  “No,” said Brian. He gripped Helene’s jaw and turned her face to profile. “But you will, or I’ll have my Druids gut her in front you.”

  “Don’t do it,” said Helene. “Don’t open the gate for him. I’d rather die than live in a world with more of his kind.”

  “If you hurt her, Brian,” said Miach from the floor, “I will show you at last what the true Fae are made of.”

  Brian didn’t seem troubled. “Lock her back up,” he ordered.

  Helene fought them but two Druids dragged her back to the brick coffin and thrust her inside. The door closed. Their footsteps died away.

  She still had her phone. The battery was nearly gone; there was only a single bar of signal. She listened to make sure no Druids were outside the door, then dialed Beth.

  It rang. A long time. It was an international call, and Helene was used to that, but it seemed to go on forever. Then finally Beth answered.

  Helene didn’t know how long the signal would last so she started speaking right away. “We’re trapped. In a house. In Winthrop. On the beach. It’s full of Druids. They have Miach. Brian does. You have to come. Elada has to come.”

  “Helene,” said Beth. “Elada is iron poisoned. He can’t pass. And Conn and I are trapped inside our hotel. There are Druids outside. They’re casting stuff at us that I’ve never heard of. Miach never taught me defensive magic.”

  She could hear other voices in the background. Then Beth said, “Call Miach’s grandsons.”

  “Nial has been shot,” said Helene. “Angus and Kermit are in the hospital.”

  A long pause.

  “You could try the police,” said Beth, without much conviction.

  Helene thought of Brian’s voice. Even if the Boston PD came, Brian could send them away with his voice.

  It was her only option. She dialed.

  The door opened without warning. Ransom Chandler yanked her out of the closet and wrenched her phone from her hand. She tried to run, but he said, “Look at me, Helene,” and laughed when she turned to him, unable to control her own body.

  “I wish you remembered our time together,” he said. “We had such fun after the gala.” He flicked her hair off her shoulders, examined the shoulder where Miach’s wards had burned his mouth-sealing symbol off.

  She felt sick when he touched her and hoped she vomited on him. “I expect that even without the spell, it was more memorable for you than it would have been for me,” she said, not bothering to disguise her disgust.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re going to make new memories together now.”

  Chapter 16

  Helene shrank back into the confines of her brick coffin, but she knew it was no good. Ransom Chandler could summon her out. He stood looking at her now with disturbing avidity.

  “I’ve been practicing my penmanship,” he said. “There are all sorts of gaesa I want to try out on your skin. Follow me.”

  She was powerless to resist.

  He led her through the house. Along the way, she tested the limits of his compulsion. She couldn’t stop, couldn’t turn away. Her body followed in his wake as if drawn by an invisible tether.

  But she had control of her hands. She knew better than to reach in her pocket, to telegraph her intention, but she pushed her hair out of her face and felt confident that while she couldn’t run away from him, she would have free action—until he cast something else on her—and she wasn’t going to wait for that to happen.

  The rooms on the ground floor were mostly empty. There was an old plaid couch in the grand parlor they passed that looked like it had been upholstered in the seventies. And folding chairs in a circle. Empty food containers littered the floors. The Druids had been living like squatters, and the sour smell of unwashed bodies and laundry pervaded the house.

  Chandler led her up a wide staircase, all gloomy Victorian paneling and rotting animal heads on the wall. At the top of the stairs he turned and she followed.

  The room he chose was bare save for a table with a small tattoo machine on top.

  He beckoned her into the room, then closed the door.

  Good.

  He checked the machine, turned it on, and said, “Come here.”

  She wasn’t going to get a second chance. It had to be now. She remembered what Miach had said, but she didn’t reach for her pocket. Not yet. She paced, maneuvering until she stood in front of Chandler. And then she took another step of her own will. She had freedom as long as she was advancing toward him. And that was exactly what she wanted.

  She took one more step, until they were toe to toe, then she thrust her hand into her pocket, brought out the knife, and stabbed up under Chandler’s rib cage and straight into his heart.

  The tattoo pen fell from his hand and swung over the side of the table, still buzzing. The blood drained from his face and he turned ashen. She twisted the Fae blade, which had sliced into his body like a hot knife through butter. Warm blood rushed over her hand and trickled down her arm.

  He hadn’t made a sound.

  She pulled the knife out and stepped back.

  His body collapsed like a marionette.

  There was blood on her tank top and her skirt and even her legs. Her arm was red with it. She forced herself to touch him, to feel in his pockets for her cell phone and then draw it out. Then she set the knife on the table, wiped her hand on the dead Druid’s shirt, cleaned the knife with it as well, and surveyed her surroundings.

  She peeled a square of newspaper off one of the windows and looked out. From up here she could see out over the wall and into Winthrop. Dear, normal, suburban Winthrop, where there were swing sets in backyards and big cars in driveways and children playing in the street.

  The roof of a small screened-in porch was just below the window. She could go out the window and climb down to the ground from the porch. From there it would be only a short run to the wall and then into the center of town. Ransom Chandler was dead. They couldn’t summon her back. And Brian had what he wanted: his father at his mercy and whatever was in that box.

  She wasn’t Beth. She didn’t have any magic. She wasn’t Fae. She had no special skills, no weapon but the razor-sharp gleaming dagger in her hand. No one would blame her if she ran for it, if she saved herself. If she ran into the center of town, covered in blood, and begged the police to protect her. They might even be convinced to raid the house, but never in time save Miach from his son.

  And she wasn’t leaving without the Fae sorcerer.

  She cautiously opened the door to the hall and listened. There were voices coming from the other end of the second floor as well as music. Then laughter. Television. Druids watching television.

  Helene stepped cautiously into the hall, knife at the ready, and padded to the head of the stairs. There was no one in sight, but the staircase was wide. If she was caught on it, there would be no way to hide.

  Behind her a door opened. The television grew louder. There was no time to retreat into the room where she had left Chandler’s corpse. She plunged down the stairs and then darted under them, where an old-fashioned telephone table and chair sat collecting dust.

  The floorboards and then stairs above her creak
ed, feet pounding down. She crouched and folded herself up tight in the narrowest corner under the stairs, shrinking back as far as she could manage into the shadows.

  She heard the swish of denim against denim and the thud of feet over carpet, and then a pair of legs and white-socked feet ran by, skidded to a halt outside the kitchen where Helene had seen the Druids take Nieve, and disappeared inside.

  Helene heard the distinctive sound of a refrigerator being opened, then the pop and hiss of an aluminum can. More swishing. The jeans reappeared, and the feet hurried along the hall and pounded back up the stairs.

  It was so damned ordinary. So normal. Watching television, running for a soda, hurrying back before you missed anything. But these people laughed about cutting open a helpless girl, would have sentenced Helene to death by the memory-eating geis on her thigh, wanted to bring down the wall between worlds.

  Miach had told her that they were mad, cracked, broken Druids. She unfolded herself from her hiding place, peered cautiously out, and headed for the kitchen, where she discovered just how wrong and broken they really were.

  One of them had just come in here and gotten a soda. Opened it, maybe even taken a sip, with no regard for the bodies heaped in the center of the room around the bloodstained table. The stench was almost overwhelming, and she recoiled when it hit her. But she had come in here for a purpose, and she was going to follow through.

  She closed and locked the door so she could work. Fortunately the stove was gas, otherwise she didn’t know how she would have been able to light a fire. The kitchen was bare, but there were curtains, and the cabinets were wood, so she hunted through them until she found enough cereal and snack boxes and ripped them open and heaped them on the counter.

  She made a torch out of a box of spaghetti and some newspaper and lit the curtains, then set fire to the boxes. There was a door in one wall that she suspected led to a dining room, and she listened before pushing it cautiously open.

  The room was empty. There were drapes here, too, and she lit them on fire as well.

  She knew from her training at the museum, where everyone had to learn how to use a fire extinguisher and that the halogen suppression systems could be deadly if you didn’t evacuate quickly, that fires doubled in size every ten seconds. Once she had these rooms alight, she would have to move quickly. There was a carpet on the floor, but it wouldn’t catch so she abandoned it and returned to the kitchen.

  The fire was hot. The smoke wasn’t thick enough yet to be noticed. She opened the door to the hall, giving the flames fresh oxygen, feeling a sense of satisfaction as she watched them leap higher.

  She knew they would be keeping Miach in the basement, out of sight, where memories of his torture and imprisonment in the mounds would plague him. She hated basements, and after today she was never going to go into another one.

  She held her knife out in front of her and plunged down the stairs.

  It was dark, but she dared not turn the lights on and reveal her presence.

  Distantly she heard shouting up above. Someone must have noticed the fire at last. Good.

  Ahead in the gloom she heard something rustle. She darted into one of the small empty rooms she had passed and waited until they went by, until she heard feet on the risers. Then she forged ahead into the gloom.

  She checked all the rooms off the corridor, then found herself in the maze Miach had negotiated for them earlier. It branched and branched again, and she ended up going around in a circle. She could smell smoke now and began to worry that she hadn’t left herself enough time, that she’d allowed the fire to grow too large before beginning her search.

  And then she found him. The path she was traveling ended in the open space where they had been caught, with the hatch doors to the outside. They were closed now, but they offered easy escape. She saw Miach’s legs sprawled inside the open door just ahead of her and she rushed inside.

  It was pitch-black but she felt for him in the darkness.

  “Miach,” she said.

  “Helene?”

  “I’ve come to get you out.”

  “You can’t,” he said.

  Something metallic rattled in the dark.

  He was chained to the wall.

  “No,” she said.

  “Helene,” he said gently, “you must get out now. Run. Get out of Boston and call Conn and Elada and don’t come back until they tell you it is safe.”

  “No,” she said. “Conn and Elada are trapped in Clonmel by crazy Druids. I’m not leaving you here to die.”

  “Brian has no intention of killing me until he gets what he wants, and as long as he doesn’t have you to bargain with, he won’t get it.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “I set the house on fire.”

  “That took great presence of mind, particularly considering how much time you spent in that closet. I know it couldn’t have been easy for you to stay calm through that.”

  “I tried Beth’s methods,” Helene explained, searching for a weak link in the chains, a softness in the stone where they were driven into the wall. “I tried counting backward and reciting poetry, but none of them worked, so I appropriated your paintings,” she said. The chains were solid, the masonry firm. She wanted to scream, but that wouldn’t help Miach, so she said, “I exhibited your paintings at the museum a dozen different ways, all in my head. It helped keep me sane.”

  “And was this imaginary show successful?” he asked.

  “A blockbuster.” There was no way to get him free.

  “I’m glad to hear it. I take it that’s Chandler’s blood I smell on you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good girl,” he said. “Now run and get out of here. Brian won’t let me burn to death. At least not until I’ve opened the gate for him.”

  “He’ll torture you.”

  “My son is an amateur. But if he has you in his power, Helene, I’m afraid of what I will do to appease him. If you’ve come to care for me, and I think you have, then you’ll go.”

  She kissed him on the lips. She knew better than to say, “I love you,” under such circumstances, because it would ring of despair, so she said, “I’ll be back for you.”

  And she ran.

  Helene knew better than to return to Miach’s house. Brian had raided it once, when the whole of Miach’s family had been available to protect it.

  She had always been a strong swimmer, so she exited the house through the basement hatch and ran for the water. When she looked over her shoulder, she saw smoke pouring from the house and heard vehicles starting.

  The Druids were evacuating.

  She had to trust that Miach was right. That Brian would not leave him to die. That his son needed him to open the solstice gate.

  She reached the beach and ran for the chain link fence. She waded out until it was low enough to jump and vaulted over, then began running for the center of town.

  Helene heard engines roar out of the compound, saw, from afar, five vehicles go tearing up the street leading toward the center of town and Boston. She hid behind a picket fence and watched them pass. Brian was at the wheel of a cargo van. Which meant that Miach was out as well.

  She ran up a parallel street toward the center of town.

  By the time she reached the main drag, the Druids’ vehicles were gone, and fire engines were barreling into town toward the burning compound.

  She looked like hell, but she approached the first cab she saw, and promised to double the fare if he would take her to Beacon Hill. He would have refused if she’d said Dorchester or even Quincy, but in Boston, Beacon Hill meant money, and its denizens were known for their eccentricity.

  Helene choked down the knot in her throat when she reached Deirdre’s. She hadn’t believed she would get away, had thought, the entire ride, that Brian’s cargo van would appear out of nowhere and run them off the road.

  She rang the buzzer while the cab waited. Kevin came out of the house, took one look at Helene, and shouted for Deirdre.<
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  “Please,” she said, “give the cabbie real money. Don’t glamour him. He saved my life.” And she owed the universe something.

  “Don’t worry,” said Kevin. She watched leaning against the driveway gates as he paid the cabbie. When the cab pulled away, Kevin turned to her. She said, “Thank you,” and tried to walk up the drive, but her knees buckled.

  “Christ,” said Kevin.

  He caught her and carried her into the house.

  Deirdre met them in the hall. “In here,” she said, directing Kevin to put Helene down on the white silk sofa.

  She was covered in blood and soot, but Deirdre didn’t bat an eye. “What has happened?” she asked.

  “They have Miach,” Helene said. “Nial has been shot. And Liam beaten. And Angus and Kermit are in the hospital and Conn and Elada and Beth are trapped in Clonmel.”

  “Who has Miach?” asked Deirdre patiently.

  “Druids,” said Helene.

  Deirdre’s lovely face lost all color. “No,” she said.

  Helene tried to sit up. “You have to help me. There are dozens of them. They have him in cold iron.”

  “No,” Deirdre shook her head and backed away.

  “Wait here,” said Kevin.

  Helene watched him follow his lover into the hall. He could hear low voices, a terrified sob, then Deirdre running up the stairs, Kevin after her.

  Helene got stiffly to her feet. She walked into the hall and looked into the dining room where just a few nights ago she had sat at the same table with Miach, Nieve, Beth, Conn, and Elada and wondered if she wanted to be part of their world, if she was willing to take the bad with the good.

  On the floor in the corner of the room, beneath the mahogany sideboard, was little Garrett’s ball. She picked it up and made her decision.

  Helene climbed the stairs. She heard Deirdre talking in a high, excited voice, and Kevin in a calm, low one, in the studio.

  Helene stood in the doorway until they noticed her. “Miach cast the wards on your house, every year, even when there were no Druids. Please, help him.”

  Deirdre looked stricken. “You don’t understand,” said Deirdre.