Stone Cold

by Rory Ni Coileain

  Almost exactly the way Maelduin had been standing on the subway. As if he expected the whole world to go insane, around and under him.

  Nothing went any crazier than it had been a few seconds ago, though, so it was time for the next step. Terry made himself look, one more time, trying to figure out where to make his attempt; he knew there was a light clipped to a drywall stud not far from the flooring sample, but every time he thought one spot of the wavering translucence was brighter than another, the brightness moved. Same for the faint shadows that might be Maelduin—except that no matter how those moved around, there always seemed to be two of them.

  What. The. Fuck. Terry reached out a hand.

  Something pushed it back. Hard. And it was numb, dead like a novocained jaw at the dentist.

  He took a couple of quick steps back from the barrier. Too far. His back hit something, and the something hit back. He fell to his knees, hard.

  Not going anywhere. Not yet.

  “Maelduin, damn it, where the fuck are you?”

  Yelling didn’t change anything. The sound fell completely flat. And besides, whatever the wall was made of, it was completely soundproof. It had to be. Either that or Maelduin had been able to hear Terry from the start, shouting his name, screaming, and just wasn’t answering. Wasn’t coming in after him.

  Had, maybe, intended this all along. Had brought him here so this could happen, whatever this was.

  That particular thought grabbed Terry by the throat. And the balls. And was a whole lot worse than the world going away. He didn’t believe it, didn’t want to be thinking it, but that didn’t stop the idea from making a horrible sort of sense.

  “Tell me you didn’t do this on purpose. Maelduin, please.”

  Terry was appalled at the way his voice shook, even when he was just talking to himself. He clenched his jaw tightly, as if to guarantee he wouldn’t sound that pathetic again. Ever.

  He wouldn’t do this on purpose. He wouldn’t.

  There was no reason for that to be true, of course. People did shit to one another all the time. He’d dumped Josh for a fast talker with a practiced smile, a platinum AmEx, and the social skills of a Tasmanian devil with mange. And Bryce had, in turn, put him out on the street with nothing but a suitcase. The last seven or eight years of Terry’s life had been a case study in the care and feeding of bad decisions.

  No reason to believe in a man he’d just met, just brought home with him. Except… he could still see Maelduin’s smile, feel the gentle touch on the back of his hand. And he’d just been about to entertain the possibility that there was something more than a one-night stand going on between the two of them. Had just been about to tell Maelduin that he wanted to try, wanted to believe him.

  Fucking lousy timing. And fucking stupidity. The thought felt like having a wound ripped open.

  He’d deal with that later, though. Dancers were good at ignoring injuries until a more convenient time. He’d danced on a broken foot, more than once. This was worse, but he’d cope.

  Slowly, he eased himself out of a kneeling position and sat cross-legged on the floor, in a pool of light that maybe was there and maybe wasn’t. He could feel his ass tingling. Right. Sure it is. The sensation was all in his head. Probably.

  Merde.

  The all-purpose ballet dancer’s curse made him feel a little better. So did sitting. At least, sitting helped him feel more stable, which was good. But it also meant that unless he wanted to spend all his time staring at the floor, he had to look up in order to see the chaos around him. Which wasn’t good. It made him feel like a kid again, a feeling he subconsciously associated with getting knocked down and stomped on.

  I should be getting out of here. Making plans, at least. Figuring this shit out. But how do you make plans when nothing makes sense? Resting his elbows on his knees, Terry closed his eyes and ground the heels of his hands into them. Nothing outside him made sense, nothing inside him made sense.

  Wind. He heard wind. Leaves rustling, branches creaking. There was light against his closed eyelids, the unmistakable hue of moonlight.

  Impossible.

  The wind became more insistent. Except there wasn’t any wind. There couldn’t be any wind, not closed off inside the dance studio, where the only window was boarded over with half-inch plywood. And definitely not walled off the way he was.

  Terry opened his eyes. He was staring at the floor in front of him. And at two bare, dark-skinned feet.

  The wind slacked off, and Terry looked up. The feet belonged to a tall, lean, long-haired, naked… well, ’man’ would have been his first guess, until he saw gorgeous deep brown eyes scattered with flecks of a green so bright it seemed to cast its own light, peering out from the thatch of black hair. So, not a man.

  “Are you a Fae?”

  The wind that wasn’t a wind whipped into a gale, and brown-green eyes narrowed in a fury needing no words to be perfectly obvious. The clenched fists were another good sign Terry had said something very wrong.

  “Okay. Not a Fae.”

  The being glared down at Terry for another few seconds, before his attention was caught by something else, and rage yielded to something that might have been satisfaction. Terry turned to see what the handsome male was looking at—Maelduin’s blood, staining the ash wood floor.

  This isn’t going to end well.

  The male knelt beside the bloodstain, covering it with the palm of his hand. And when he raised his hand, the blood was gone.

  The wind rose again, with an edge, a bite. And there were words in it, or nearly so.

  … understand me?

  Terry blinked. Did I really hear that?

  … not… habit… talking… myself…

  “You heard me?”

  The male winced. Think… please…

  You can hear me that way? Because I can barely hear you.

  One dark, delicate brow arched. But then the handsome not-a-Fae frowned. Blood… not yours?

  No. Terry was determined to say nothing more; if the being despised Fae as much as it seemed he did, he wasn’t likely to react well should Terry tell him he’d just consumed Fae blood.

  … slaidar!

  Terry heard the strange word, and ‘thief,’ at the same time, somehow. And damn, this time the wind was actually strong enough for him to feel against his skin. Apparently he needed to learn how to keep his thoughts to himself. In a hurry. Like, right now.

  If you aren’t a Fae… who are you? He’d almost thought ‘what,’ but that seemed a rude way to address a male as gorgeous as the one who had just magically appeared in front of him. Even if he had just managed to piss said gorgeous male off. Again.

  … Gille Dubh… Coinneach… The male shook his head. Your blood… not slaidar’s… conversation…

  You need my blood so we can talk? Being able to talk clearly with a being who had managed to magically materialize inside his prison struck Terry as, just maybe, a very good thing. But anyone who had ever read a fairy tale—and that sure as hell seemed to be what he’d landed in the middle of—knew that giving your blood to a fairy creature was almost never a wise choice.

  Honestly, though, could things get any worse for him right now?

  Terry was very careful to put up every mental fence he could imagine around that thought. Tall fences built from stone and topped with barbed wire. No sense giving Gille Dubh, or Coinneach, whichever his name was, ideas.

  The dark male nodded.

  How are we talking now?

  The warning frown started to come back—then vanished so utterly Terry wasn’t sure he’d seen it to begin with… slaidar has… Wind and moonlight, in Terry’s mind, beautiful and dangerous… yours… connection…

  Terry shook his head. I don’t understand.

  … you must… The being held out his hand. And as Terry watched, one of his fingers changed, became a slender dark wooden blade… help you…

  Terry swallowed hard. Given everything he’d seen lately, a being that looked lik
e a man turning to wood wasn’t all that startling. But he had other things to worry about. Other people’s blood mostly didn’t bother him—there had been a time when it had, but years of working as a tattoo and piercing artist had helped him get over it. His own blood, on the other hand, had a way of causing him problems.

  But there was no way he was going to look away from this. He extended his hand to the mesmerizing being and held his breath.

  The cut was swift, and not too deep; Terry snatched back his hand and stuck his finger in his mouth, sucking away the sting as his blood was absorbed into the wood, and the wooden finger became flesh once again.

  Better. The being’s smile was very white in his dark face. I am Coinneach. And a slaidar’s blood was a path to your mind because you share a soul with a slaidar.

  A magick-thief. Terry fully understood the word now.

  You may be in danger. And I would save you, if I can.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “You want Terry?” The expression on the dark-haired human’s face was unreadable, as was the look he directed at the slender Fae mage.

  This puzzled Maelduin. He would surely have recognized hostility. And while the human—Josh—was obviously protective of Terry, he seemed as curious as he was angry.

  “He’s a Fae, dar’cion.” Maelduin was at a loss as to why anyone would call the human ‘brightly-colored,’ but Fae were known for their inventiveness with pillow-names. Conall was smiling, but his faceted peridot eyes were cool, intense, and noticing. “Most of us are very good at wanting. And very bad at not getting.”

  Maelduin felt himself reddening, stinging as if slapped. The implications of the other Fae’s words were all too clear. “Terry is neither selbh nor bragan.” Neither possession nor plaything. Maelduin was certain of that much, at least.

  Human and Fae turned to him, heads cocked to one side at an almost identical angle. “I’d ask you what exactly he is to you, but I think we have a problem that needs to be dealt with first.” Josh’s voice was soft, the kind of softness that in Maelduin’s experience generally overlaid tempered steel, and betokened someone not to be taken lightly. “Namely, finding out what happened to him.”

  “And whether you had anything to do with his disappearance,” the mage added with a false brightness that probably wasn’t intended to fool anyone. Certainly not another Fae, for no Fae would take anything another Fae said at face value. “I’m not a great believer in coincidence, not where the Pattern’s concerned.”

  “The curse of an accursed line be on the Pattern,” Maelduin snarled. The flaw in the Pattern had maimed him—the note tucked in his boot was a constant reminder of something he was in no danger of forgetting. The Pattern had snatched away the vengeance for which he had lived since his earliest memories, and now, if Conall was right, it had played a part in taking from him the male who might yet make him forget that his race and his line were incapable of love. “If I could get him back—”

  The mage and his human stared at Maelduin, but it was not their stares that cut off his reply. It was a memory, where none had been a moment earlier. A memory of Terry, screaming his name.

  “Maelduin! Maelduin, make it fucking stop!”

  Conall, suddenly pale, was the first to find his voice. “Tell me you didn’t just curse the—”

  He had heard the screams just before Josh had burst in, he remembered. But that was impossible, he had heard nothing, because he himself had been reacting to the appearance of the translucent wall, shouting Terry’s name at the top of his own lungs. And it was even more impossible that he had heard those screams and done nothing.

  Yet he had heard them, because he remembered them.

  “I heard him.” Was that movement, behind the wall? Surely a Fae’s keen senses should be able to pierce such an insubstantial barrier… yet he could see nothing. Or too much. Shadows moved, but were they part of the wall, or hints at what lay behind it?

  I heard him. I must have heard him. And I did nothing.

  “You heard Terry?” Josh took a few steps closer to the magickal wall, then stopped, squinting into the light, a hand shading his eyes. Maelduin glimpsed a gleaming silver chain around the human’s wrist, where he would have sworn there was nothing a few seconds ago. “Just now?”

  “No. Yes. I’m not sure.” Maelduin’s hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at his sides. “I just remembered hearing him. But what I remember is that I heard him before you came in here.”

  “Maelduin, damn it, where the fuck are you?”

  Terry had shouted this just as Josh and Conall had burst through the door. Maelduin had not heard the cry then. Yet he now remembered hearing it, as clearly as he remembered the sound of the door crashing open.

  “That makes no sense—”

  “It might.” The mage held up a hand, cutting the human off, and moving to put himself between the much larger male and the wall of magick. Protecting him? Conall’s brilliant green eyes seemed to glow in the reflected light from the barrier. “It makes perfect sense if this is what I think it is.”

  “What is it?” Maelduin had no time, and less patience, for cryptic mages. “And how do you know?”

  The unsettling gaze turned to him. “Why don’t you convince me I owe you any kind of explanation of anything? Especially given that little bombshell you dropped a few minutes ago.”

  Maelduin closed his eyes and drew in a long, slow, deep breath, centering himself. No Fae has the right to deny me what I want. Not justice for my father… and especially not my human.

  Yet… I need.

  I will show them as little as possible. But I will show them what I must.

  He opened his eyes. The mage looked no less suspicious, but Maelduin no longer cared. “My name is Maelduin Guaire. I came through the Pattern seeking my father’s murderer. And I have reason to believe that Terry holds half of my soul.”

  Total silence fell.

  “Oh, shit,” Josh whispered.

  “Tell me you didn’t do this on purpose. Maelduin, please.”

  * * *

  Fae were naturally immune to human diseases, but it hadn’t taken Conall long, after his arrival in the human world, to learn that he was as prone as any human to tension headaches. And he could feel a dandy coming on. Yet another wellspring had emerged within shouting distance of the great nexus. His partner’s ex-boyfriend was trapped in it, and Conall would eat someone else’s shorts, since he never wore any himself, if the trap had been laid by anyone other than the incredibly touchy daragin and Gille Dubh. Whose magick he, Conall, supposedly the greatest Fae mage since the Sundering, could do precisely nothing about. And then there was the problem of Tiernan Guaire’s newly-arrived long-lost nephew, who claimed a SoulShare bond with said ex, not to mention the right to blood vengeance for the crime that had originally gotten Tiernan thrown out of the Realm. All of which was sorely tempting Conall to use the kind of language it was an extremely bad idea for a Fae to use anywhere within earshot of a wellspring, where a darag or a Gille Dubh might overhear. Assuming it was still possible to hear through whatever it was the tree folk had done to the wellspring.

  At least there’s nothing left to go wrong.

  Maelduin went pale as birch-bark. “He thinks I did this to him.”

  Fuck. Me.

  “And did you?” Josh’s voice was smooth, smoother than Conall thought he could have managed on his own. Hopefully whatever happened next wasn’t going to require him to Fadewalk into Josh’s body to channel magick in order to avoid a shit-storm — staying incorporeal long enough to share bodies with his scair-anam required a level of calm and focus he wasn’t capable of at the moment, not to mention the fact that Fadewalking — or Fading, or any use of living magick whatsoever, was no longer a good idea anywhere near a wellspring.

  The pain that flashed across Maelduin’s perfect features was brief, and quickly gave way to a cold, considered anger. “If I were not crippled, and my blade bloodsworn, I would teach you—”

  �
�Conall?”

  Rhoann’s voice interrupted Conall’s instinctive channeling; Rhoann’s form appeared in the corner opposite the trap holding Terry, its colors and textures and solidness filling in. Maelduin Guaire, you are the luckiest Fae since the lightning missed the Sea Queen’s lover. “Rhoann. Over here. Stay away from the light, it’s caught Terry.”

  “Have no fear of that.” The half-Royal shapeshifter edged around the column of magickal light, hardly sparing a glance for Maelduin as he passed. Maelduin, for his part, did a decent job of not losing his composure at the sudden appearance of 6’5” of blond-crested naked dripping wet Fae. But, then, Maelduin was still preoccupied, looking cool murder at Josh. Which he, Conall, was going to have to put a stop to right fucking now.

  The gift of the Demesne of Stone, House Guaire’s Demesne, was invulnerability to harm from magick, and not even a mage of Conall’s power could prevail against that gift. But power channeled, a whispered “tátha,” and a flickering gesture wrapped an unbreakable cord around the Fae swordsman, binding his arms to his sides; “dalle” brought sudden darkness to the clear blue eyes.

  “Magairl snáthith ar’srang!” Maelduin took a step forward, shaking his head violently, lurched, tried to catch himself, tripped over a concrete rake, and toppled like a felled tree. The sound his head made when it hit the concrete floor made Conall wince despite himself. He made himself watch, as blood pooled under the fallen Fae, until the gash in the pale forehead started to close.

  Once he had proof he hadn’t just inadvertently killed Tiernan’s nephew, Conall checked him off his list of immediate concerns and turned back to Rhoann. The half-Royal was probably the least social of the Fae of Purgatory—which was quite an accomplishment, all things considered—which meant he undoubtedly had a very good reason for leaving his husbands behind and Fading to the neighborhood of the great nexus. “What’s happened?”