When I’d come back down, he herded me into the garage without touching me. I’d felt tension ebbing and flowing like a violent surf beneath his skin, the same way the colors had crashed ceaselessly beneath the skin of the Unseelie Princes.
He’d chosen the Viper from his collection and slid into the driver’s seat. I knew he’d done it to provoke me. To remind me that nothing was mine. Everything was his.
“This is bullshit, and you know it,” I snapped. I couldn’t fight about what was really pissing me off, so I’d work with the material at hand. “Mom and Dad are out, I’m alive, and Darroc is dead. You never specified who had to do what or how it had to happen. You only demanded an end result. Your terms were met.”
The Viper rumbled down the street, and I felt a flash of envy. I knew the thrill of the exhaust pipe’s heat in the driver’s compartment, the sleek pleasure of the gear stick in my hand, the rush of massive muscle idling hungrily, waiting for my next command. I sighed and looked out the window, watching the darkness slide by.
I didn’t have to give Barrons directions. He knew exactly where I’d stayed two nights ago. He turned right, then left, twelve blocks to the east, and seven to the south.
The city was as silent as he was. Although I sensed a great number of Fae, they weren’t out in the streets. I wondered if they were having a Fae summit somewhere, planning their next moves. I wondered if the Unseelie nation had been unsettled by the loss of their liberator and leader and if they were meeting to choose a new one. I wondered who would step up to take over. One of the Unseelie Princes?
In a way, Darroc hadn’t been a bad choice to have leading the Dark Court. He’d wanted our world intact, because he’d wanted to rule it alongside the Fae realm. He’d liked his human pleasures and had intended to continue them. His years among us had increased his appetite for mortal women and mortal luxuries; ergo, he’d have preserved them.
But there was no guarantee that whoever stepped up to the plate next would feel the same. In fact, there was little likelihood that the new Unseelie leader would feel anything even remotely human.
If one of the dark princes took over—say, Death or Pestilence—they’d have no long-term goals, no restraint. They’d indulge until there was nothing left to devour. We’d actually been lucky to have an ex-Seelie leading the Unseelie. I knew what the princes were made of: emptiness darker and vaster than the night sky. Their appetites were boundless, insatiable.
I’d seen what had happened in the street between the Seelie and Unseelie when they’d faced off. The ground had begun to split. If the two courts clashed on a grand scale, if they went at each other en masse, they would destroy our world.
While they could move on to a new planet, we couldn’t.
The human race would die out.
I’d thought I had no pressing obligations, no express deadlines. But I did. The longer the Book was loose and the Fae battled each other, the greater the danger of total human annihilation.
I wondered if Barrons realized any of this. I wondered if he even cared. Whatever he was could probably survive any fallout, nuclear or Fae. Would he simply hook up with the other immortals on our planet and move on with them? I needed to know where he stood. “We’ve got serious problems, Barrons.”
He slammed the brakes so hard I got whiplash. If I hadn’t had my seat belt on, I’d have gone through the windshield. I’d been so lost in thought that I hadn’t realized we’d arrived.
“Mortal over here!” I said irritably, rubbing my neck. “You might try remembering tha—ack, what the—Barrons!” I was yanked out of the car by my arm so hard, it nearly popped out of socket.
I hadn’t even seen him get out and come around to my side. Then I was over the curb, up on the sidewalk, and flattened against the brick wall of a building.
He leaned into me, trapping my legs with his, completing the cage with his arms.
I braced my palms against his chest to hold him at bay. His rib cage rose and fell beneath my hands, pumping like bellows. He was rock hard against my thigh, much bigger than I’d ever felt him. Too big. I heard the sound of ripping fabric.
I looked up at his face and did a double take. His skin was the color of mahogany, darkening by the second. He was taller than he should be, and sparks of crimson glittered in his eyes. When he snarled, I caught the flash of long black fangs in the moonlight.
He was changing. His hair was getting longer, thicker, matting around his face. He dropped his head close and sharp fangs grazed my ear.
“Never. Use sex. As a weapon. Against me. Again.” The words were guttural, misshapen by teeth too large for a human mouth, but I understood them perfectly.
I shrugged.
“Don’t give me a fucking shrug!” he snarled. His cheek was against mine and I could feel the planes of it sharpening, broadening. Again, I heard cloth ripping.
“I was angry.” I’d had every right to be.
“So am I. You don’t see me playing head games.”
“You manipulate me all the time.”
“Am I ruthless? Yes. Do I keep my own counsel? Sure. Do I push you sometimes to get you to say something you want to say anyway? Certainly. But I never mind-fuck you.”
“Look, Barrons, what do you want from me? It was …” I searched for the right word and didn’t like what I found. “Immature. Okay? But you aren’t blameless. You were talking about killing me.”
The rattlesnake moved in his throat.
“You owe me an apology, too,” I snapped.
“For what?” Something grazed my ear, tore the tender skin, and I felt a warm rush of blood, then his tongue touched my skin.
“For not telling me you couldn’t die. Do you have any idea what watching you die did to me?”
“Ah. Let’s see. Yes. Made you fuck Darroc within hours.”
“Jealous, Barrons? Sounds like it.” There was no way I was explaining myself. He hadn’t given me any explanations. Because he hadn’t, I’d assumed all kinds of things and very nearly made a grand ass of myself in front of him last night.
Air hissed between his fangs as he shoved away from the wall. I hadn’t realized how cold the night was until the heat of his body was gone. He stood in the middle of the street with his back to me, hands fisted at his sides, long talons sliding through monstrous fingers, shuddering, snarling.
I leaned against the wall, watching him. He was fighting for control over which form was going to achieve dominance and, although I was pissed off at both of them at the moment, I preferred the man. The beast was more … emotional, if that word could be applied to Barrons in any form. It made me feel confused, conflicted. I would never get the image of stabbing it out of my head.
When I’d been provoking him, it hadn’t occurred to me that this might be the outcome. Barrons was always so controlled, disciplined. I’d thought his transformation into the beast had been a conscious one. That, like everything else in his world, it happened if he willed it to, or it didn’t happen at all.
I remembered the first time I’d ever heard the strange rattle in his chest, the night he and I had gone after the Book with the three stones and failed. He’d carried me back to the bookstore and I’d wakened on the sofa to find him staring at the fire. I remembered thinking that Barrons’ skin might be a slipcover for a chair I never wanted to see. I’d been right. Beneath his human form was an utterly inhuman one. But why? How? What was he?
Not once had he lost control like this around me. Was his ability to contain his animal nature getting weaker?
Or was I more deeply rooted beneath that changeable skin?
I smiled, but it held no mirth. I liked that thought. I wasn’t sure who that made more screwed up: him or me.
I stayed against the wall, and he stayed in the street with his back to me, for a good three or four minutes.
Slowly, with what looked like a great deal of pain, he changed back, shuddering, snarling all the while. I understood why I’d thought I killed him with my runes last night. The
transformation from beast to man appeared to be intensely painful.
When he finally turned around, there was no trace of crimson in his dark gaze. No stump of horns erupting from his skull. He grimaced as he stepped up on the curb, as if his limbs hurt, teeth flashing white and even in the moonlight.
He was once again a powerfully built man of thirty or so, wearing a long coat that was ripped at the shoulders and split down the back.
“You mind-fuck me again, I’ll fuck you back. But it won’t be with my mind.”
“Don’t threaten me.” I was tempted to do it right then and there and see if he’d really follow through. I was furious at him. I wanted him. I was a mess where Barrons was concerned.
“I didn’t. I warned you.”
A sharp retort was on the tip of my tongue.
He shamed it into silence with “I expect better from you, Ms. Lane.” Then he turned for the door and entered the building.
I half-expected there to be Unseelie guards on the top floor, but either Darroc had been too arrogant to bother leaving any or, since he’d been killed, his army saw no point in protecting his hideouts anymore.
Once inside, Barrons went straight for the bedroom suite Darroc had occupied. I followed him, because it was the one place I’d not gotten the chance to search. I stood in the doorway, watching him ransack the opulently furnished room, pushing chairs and ottomans out of his way, overturning the dresser and kicking through the contents, before he turned to the bed. He ripped the blankets and sheets from it, flung the mattress from the frame, pulled out a knife, and gutted it, searching for anything hidden inside, then stopped and breathed deeply. After a moment, he cocked his head and inhaled again.
I got it instantly. Barrons has extremely heightened senses. Being in touch with your inner animal has its advantages. He knows my scent, and he couldn’t smell me on Darroc’s bed.
I knew the second he decided we’d probably done it on the kitchen table, or in the shower, or bent over the couch, or on the balcony, or maybe just had an orgy with all the Rhino-boys and guards watching.
I rolled my eyes and left him to finish searching Darroc’s bedroom by himself. He could believe whatever he wanted to believe. I hoped he drowned in images of me having sex with Darroc. He might not feel emotions about me, but he certainly had the territorial instincts of an animal. I hoped the idea of somebody else playing on his turf drove him nuts.
I hurried to the suite I’d slept in. My runes were still throbbing crimson at the threshold and in the walls. They were larger, pulsating more brightly. I didn’t linger. I’d searched the place thoroughly the other night. I grabbed my pack, hurried out into the living room, and began stuffing the photo albums of Alina into my pack. They were mine now, and when this was all over, I was going to sit down and lose myself in them for days, maybe weeks, and tell myself the happy part of her story.
I heard Barrons in the den, knocking over lamps and chairs and tossing things around. I walked in and watched books fly, papers explode into the air. He had his beast under control, but he wasn’t bothering to try to control the man. He’d swapped his torn coat for one of Darroc’s. It was too small for him, but at least it covered the rest of his shredded clothes.
“What are you looking for?”
“Allegedly, he knew a shortcut, or I’d have killed him long ago.”
“Who told you about the shortcut?” Was there anything Barrons didn’t know?
He shot me a look. “I didn’t need anyone to. Prima facie, Ms. Lane. Facts speak. Didn’t you wonder why he kept tracking it, even though he had none of the stones and would have been corrupted the moment he picked it up?”
I shook my head, disgusted with myself. It had taken me months to get around to wondering that. What a great sleuth I was.
“You think he left notes?”
“I know he did. The limits of his mortal brain posed problems for him. He was accustomed to the memory capabilities of a Fae.”
So, Barrons knew there was a shortcut, too, and had been seeking it for some time.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“They’re called shortcuts for a reason. The shorter they are, the more they usually cut. Nothing is without price, Ms. Lane.”
Didn’t I know it. I knelt and began scanning sheets of paper on the floor. Darroc hadn’t written in notebooks; he’d used thick, expensive vellum sheets and written on them in fancy calligraphy, as if he’d expected his work to one day be memorialized: documents from Darroc, liberator of the Fae, displayed like we showcase the Constitution, in a museum somewhere. I looked back up at Barrons. He was no longer throwing things; he was sorting through papers and notebooks. There was no trace of temperamental beast or angry man. He was icy, impervious Barrons again.
“Didn’t anybody ever tell him about laptops?” I muttered.
“Fae can’t use them. They fry them.”
Maybe there was something to my energy theory. As more sheets rained down, I gathered them up and examined them. Under the watchful eyes of Darroc’s guards, I hadn’t been able to snoop through his personal documents. It was fascinating stuff. This particular cache of notes was about the different Unseelie castes—their strengths, weaknesses, and unique tastes. It was jarring to realize he’d had to learn about the Unseelie, just like we had. I folded the pages and began stuffing them in my backpack. This was useful information. Sidhe-seers need to be passing it down, one generation to the next. We could put together a set of Fae encyclopedias from his notes.
When I ran out of room in my pack, I began stacking the pages up to return for them later.
Then I saw a page that was different from the rest, filled with scribbled bits of thoughts, bulleted lists, circled comments, and arrows pointing from one note to another.
Alina’s name was on it, along with Rowena’s and dozens of others. Scribbled next to their names were their special “talents.” There were lists of countries, addresses, and names of companies I assumed were the foreign branches of Poste Haste, Inc., the courier service that was our front. One bulleted list contained the six Irish bloodlines of our sect, plus another I’d never heard of: O’Callaghan. Was it possible there were more bloodlines than we knew about? What if another Fae got their hands on this information? They could wipe us all out!
I continued scanning and gasped. Rowena had a touch of mental coercion? Kat had the gift of emotional telepathy? How the hell had Darroc figured these things out? According to him, Jo was in the now-secret Haven! Dani’s name was also on the page, heavily underlined and punctuated with a question mark. I wasn’t on the list, which meant he’d written it before he’d become aware of me, last fall.
At the bottom of the page was a short bulleted list:
Sidhe-seers—sense Fae.
Alina—senses Sinsar Dubh, Fae Hallows, and relics.
Abbey—Sinsar Dubh
Unseelie King—sidhe-seers?
I blinked at it, trying to make sense of it. Was Darroc saying that it hadn’t been the Seelie Queen, as Nana O’Reilly had claimed, who’d delivered the Dark Book to the abbey so long ago? Had the Unseelie King himself brought it to us, because we could sense Fae, and Fae Hallows, and that made us the perfect guardians for it?
Suddenly Barrons was behind me, looking over my shoulder. “Makes you think about yourself a little differently, doesn’t it?”
“Not really. I mean, who cares who brought it to the abbey? Point is, we’re the guardians.”
“Is that what you get from his notes, Ms. Lane?” he purred.
I glanced up at him. “What do you get from them?” I said defensively. I didn’t like his tone any more than I liked the amused glitter in his dark gaze.
“It’s said the king was horrified when he realized that his act of atonement had resulted in the birth of his most powerful abomination yet. He chased it from one world to the next, for eons, determined to destroy it. When he finally caught up with it, their battle lasted centuries and reduced dozens of worlds to ruins. But it
was too late. The Sinsar Dubh had become fully sentient, a dark force of its own. When the king first created the Sinsar Dubh, he was greater, and the Book was lesser. It was a repository for the king’s evil, but without drive and intent. Yet while it roamed, it evolved, until it became all the king was, and more. The creation—abandoned by its creator—learned to hate. The Sinsar Dubh began to pursue the king.” He paused and gave me one of his wolf smiles. “So what else might the dark king have created? Perhaps an entire caste that could track his greatest enemy, contain it, and keep it from destroying him? Are you going to tell me you never once considered that?”
I stared. We were the good guys. Human to the core.
“Sidhe-seers: watchdogs for the U.K.,” he mocked.
I was chilled by his words. It had been bad enough to discover I was adopted and the parents who’d raised me weren’t my biological parents. Now what was he implying? That I’d had no parents?
“That’s the biggest pile of BS I’ve ever heard.” First Darroc had suggested I was a stone. Now Barrons was proposing that the sidhe-seers were a secret caste of Unseelie.
“If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.”
“I am not a duck.”
“Why does it offend you so much? Power is power.”
“The Unseelie King didn’t make me!”
“The idea frightens you. Fear is more than a wasted emotion. It’s the penultimate set of blinders. If you can’t face the truth of your reality, you can’t be a part of it, can’t control it. You may as well throw in the towel and yield to the whims of anyone with a stronger will. Do you like being helpless? Is that what you get off on? Is that why the moment I was gone you turned to the bastard that had you raped?”
“So, what are you and your men?” I countered coldly. “Another of the Unseelie King’s secret castes? Is that what you are, Barrons? Is that why you know so much about them?”
“None of your fucking business.”
He turned away and resumed his search.
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