He searches my face. “Do you really believe that?”
The street cools and my coat is abruptly dusted with tiny shimmering crystals of black ice. I know what that means. A Royal Hunter has materialized above us, black leathery wings churning the night air. My hair stirs in an icy breeze. I glance up at the scaled underbelly of the caste specially designated to hunt and kill sidhe-seers.
A great Satanic dragon, it tucks its massive wings close to its body and drops heavily to the street, narrowly missing the buildings on either side.
It’s enormous.
Unlike the smaller Hunter that Barrons managed to bend to his will and “dampen” the night we flew across Dublin, this one is one hundred percent undiluted Royal Hunter. I get a sense of immense ancientness. It feels older than anything I’ve seen or sensed flying the night sky. The hellish cold it exudes, the sense of despair and emptiness it radiates, is intact. But it doesn’t depress me or make me feel futile. This one make me feel … free.
It takes a delicate mental jab at me. I sense restraint. It doesn’t have power, it is power.
I jab back with my glassy lake’s help.
It chuffs a soft noise of surprise.
I return my attention to Darroc.
Sidhe-seer? the Hunter says.
I ignore it.
SIDHE-SEER? The Hunter blasts into my mind so hard it gives me an instant headache.
I whip my head around. “What?” I snarl.
A great black shape, it crouches in the shadows. Head low, the underside of its chin brushes the pavement. It shifts its weight from taloned foot to foot, as its massive tail sweeps the street clean of long-unused trash cans and husks of human remains. Fiery eyes blaze into mine.
I feel it pressing at me mentally, carefully. Fae legend says that the Hunters either aren’t Fae or aren’t entirely Fae. I have no idea what they are, but I don’t like them inside my head.
After a moment it says, Ahhhh, and settles onto its haunches. There you are.
I don’t know what that means. I shrug. It’s out of my head, and that’s all I care about, I turn back to Darroc, who resumes our conversation where it left off. “Do you really believe what you said about being born to rule?”
“Have I ever asked you where my parents are?” I counter with a question that it hurts my heart to ask, hurts my soul to even think, but I’m in an all-or-nothing mood. If I can get what I want tonight, I’m out of here. My pain and suffering will end. I can stop hating myself. By morning, I could be talking to Alina again, touching Barrons.
His gaze sharpens. “When you first saw that I was holding them captive, I thought you weak, ruled by maudlin attachment. Why have you not asked?”
I understand now why Barrons was always insisting I stop asking him questions and judge him by his actions alone. It’s so easy to lie. What’s even worse is how we cling to those lies. We beg for the illusion so we don’t have to face the truth, don’t have to feel alone.
I remember being seventeen, thinking I was head over heels in love, asking my date at the senior prom—tight-end hot-Rod McQueen—Katie didn’t really see you kissing Brandi in the hall outside the bathroom, did she, Rod? And when he said, No, I believed him—despite the smudge of lipstick on his chin that was too red to be mine and the way Brandi kept looking at us over her date’s shoulder. Two weeks into summer, no one was surprised when he was her boyfriend, not mine.
I stare into Darroc’s face and I see something in his eyes that elates me. He’s not kidding about making me his queen. He does want me. I don’t know why, perhaps because he imprinted on Alina and I’m the closest thing that remains. Perhaps because he and my sister discovered who they were together, and what they were capable of, and conjoined self-discovery is a powerful bond. Perhaps because of my strange dark glassy lake or whatever it is that makes the Sinsar Dubh like to play with me.
Perhaps it’s because part of him is human, and he hungers for the same illusions the rest of us do.
Barrons was a purist. I get him now. Words are so dangerous.
I say, “Things change. I adapt. I cut away what is unnecessary as my circumstances change.” I reach up and caress his face, brush my index finger to his perfect lips, trace his scar. “And often I find my circumstances have not worsened, as I initially thought, but improved. I don’t know why I refused you so many times. I understand why my sister wanted you.” I say it all so simply that it rings of truth. Even I am startled by how sincere I sound. “I think you should be king, Darroc, and if you want me, I would be honored to be your queen.”
He sucks in a sharp breath, his copper eyes glittering. He cups my head and buries his hands in my hair, playing the silky curls through his fingers. “Prove that you mean those words, MacKayla, and I will deny you nothing. Ever.”
He angles my head and lowers his mouth to mine.
I close my eyes. I open my lips.
That’s when it kills him.
13
I’ve had a few paradigm shifts since the day my plane landed in Ireland and I began hunting Alina’s killer—big ones, or so I thought—but this one takes the cake.
There I stand, eyes closed, lips parted, waiting for the kiss of my sister’s lover, when suddenly something wet and warm slaps my face, drips from my chin, drenches my neck, and runs into my bra. More splatters my coat.
When I open my eyes, I scream.
Darroc is no longer about to kiss me, because his head is gone—just gone—and you’re never ready for that, no matter how cold and hard and dead you think you are inside. Being sprayed by the blood of a headless corpse—especially someone you know, whether you like him or not—gets you on a visceral level. Doubly so when you were about to kiss that person.
But even more upsetting is that I don’t know how to merge with the Book.
All I can think is: His head is gone and I don’t know how to merge with the Book. He eats Unseelie. Can I put his head back on? If I do, can he talk? Maybe I can patch him up and torture it out of him.
I fist my hands, furious at this turn of events.
I was a kiss away—okay, maybe a few nights of sleeping with the enemy and despising myself more than I ever thought possible—from getting what I wanted. But it was going to happen. I was gaining his trust. I’d seen it in his eyes. He was going to confide in me. He was going to tell me all his secrets and I was going to kill him and fix the world.
And now his head is no longer on his body, and I don’t know what I needed to know, and I can’t live in this hellish reality for the months it could take me to get the four, the five, and the prophecy.
My entire mission was distilled to one goal—and now that goal is tottering, decapitated, in front of me!
It’s a total bust.
I let him touch me for nothing.
I stare at the bloody stump of his neck as his body staggers in a small circle without a head. I’m astounded he’s still moving. It must be the Unseelie in his veins.
He stumbles and collapses to the ground. Somewhere nearby, I hear garbled sounds. Oh, God, his head is still talking.
Good! Can he form sentences? I’m in a strong bargaining position. Tell me what I want, and I’ll put your head back on.
I frown. Where are the princes? Why didn’t they protect him? Wait a minute! Who did this to him?
Am I next?
I glance wildly around.
“Whuh,” I manage. I can’t process it.
Sidhe-seer, the Hunter purrs in my mind.
I stare blankly. The Hunter that Darroc summoned for us to ride is crouched a dozen paces away, dangling Darroc’s head by the hair, swinging it from a taloned claw.
If Hunters smile, this one is. Leathery lips crack on saber teeth, and it oozes amusement.
Its … hand, for lack of a better word, is the size of a small car. How did it so tidily rip off Darroc’s head?
Did it pinch it off with its talons? It happened absurdly fast.
Why would it kill him?
Darro
c was allied with the Hunters. It was the Hunters that taught him to eat Unseelie. Did they—as I once warned him they would—tire of him and turn on him?
I reach for my spear. It’s back. Great, the princes are definitely gone. But before I can pull it out, the Hunter laughs, dry and dusty, in my mind, and I am assaulted by a sense of age that defies time, of sanity that was forged down a long path of madness. It was muting itself before. This one is very different from the other Hunters.
I wouldn’t be surprised to discover it was the granddaddy of them all.
It calls itself K’Vruck. Humans have no word for it. It means a state beyond death. Death is small compared to K’Vruck.
“Huh?” I stammer. The voice was in my mind.
K’Vruck is so much more complete than death. It is the reduction of matter to a state of utter inertness, from which nothing can ever rise again. It is less than nothing. Nothing is something. K’Vruck is absolute. Your species would postulate the loss of soul to try to wrap their puny brains around it.
I stiffen. I know this voice. This mockery. My spear will be no use against it. If I kill the Hunter, it would probably just hop a ride on me.
I will tell you a secret, it says silkily. You do go on. Humans. Unless you are—it laughs softly—K’Vrucked.
I suck in a ragged breath.
MacKayla, I permit none to control me. Darroc will never use his shortcut, and you will never learn it.
The Hunter pops Darroc’s head like a grape. Hair and bone slap to the pavement. And now that I’m no longer transfixed by the gory sight, I see what the Hunter holds in its other hand. Had been holding all along.
I back away faster.
There was never any chance that Darroc and I would soar up into the night, and hunt the Sinsar Dubh.
It beat us to the punch.
It hitched a ride on our Hunter and came to us.
And here I am, helpless. I have no stones, my spear is useless—
The amulet! When the Hunter ripped Darroc’s head off, it stayed on his body! I feint a wild glance around, trying hard to look at nothing in particular and everything, to keep from telegraphing my intentions.
Where the hell are the princes? They could sift me out of here! What did they do—vanish the moment Darroc was killed? Cowards!
It’s there! When Darroc’s body collapsed to the ground, the amulet slid off the stump of his neck. Silver and gold, it’s lying in a pool of blood, a dozen feet from me! I have power in my glassy lake. With the amulet to reinforce me, is it enough to hold my own?
I turn inward to step onto my black-pebbled beach, but that damned wall springs up before I can get there. The Sinsar Dubh laughs. I fractured this wall last night. I’ll do it tonight or die trying.
Power is earned, and you have not.
I don’t need to look to know it’s rising, separating from the Hunter, soaring up, becoming the towering Beast form of the Book, getting ready to crush me with pain.
Or, who knows this time? Maybe worse. Maybe it’s going to K’Vruck me.
I lunge forward and grab. My fingers brush the chain. I’ve got it! I’m pulling it toward me!
Then suddenly something slams into my side, and the amulet is knocked from my grasp and gone. My arm is caught at a bad angle, extended mid-reach, and I hear it snap as I’m pushed into a long, helpless slide on my side, scraping pavement. My head hits the ground and my forehead drags. I feel skin ripping away.
Then I’m being picked up and tossed into the air. I glance wildly around but don’t see the amulet anywhere. As I come down, someone flings me over their shoulder. My hair is in my face, my arm dangles limply, and my forehead is bleeding into my eyes. I nearly scalped myself on the pavement.
Everything is moving so fast it’s a blur.
Superstrength. Superspeed. I feel motion sickness coming on.
“Dani?” I gasp. Did she come to save me, even though I was such a bitch and drove her away?
“Dani, no! I need the amulet!”
I hang upside down, watching pavement whiz by.
“Dani, stop!”
But she doesn’t. I hear snarling receding rapidly behind us.
The Hunter roars.
Bloodcurdling howls shatter the night.
I jerk. I know those sounds. I’ve heard them before.
“Take me back, take me back!” I scream, but for an entirely different reason now. Who are they—these beasts that sound like Barrons? I need to know!
“Dani, you have to take me back!”
But she doesn’t. She keeps running. Doesn’t listen to a word I say. She runs me straight to the one place I never want to see again.
Barrons Books and Baubles.
14
My first suspicion that it wasn’t Dani carrying me reared its head when we blasted through the front door of the bookstore.
Or, rather, that suspicion turned its head and licked blood from the back of my thigh.
Unless Dani had some serious issues I didn’t know about, this wasn’t her shoulder I was over.
It licked me again, dragging its tongue across my leg, just beneath the curve of my ass. My dress was hitched up, trapped between my stomach and its shoulder. It bit me. Hard.
“Ow!”
With fangs. Not deep enough to draw blood but enough to sting. I wiped my sleeve across my face, scrubbing blood from my eyes with the fur cuff.
I was dazed by Darroc’s abrupt murder and my shock over K’Vruck being the Book. If I’d been thinking clearly, I’d have known from the first that I was much too high from the ground for it to have been Dani. Several feet too high.
The shoulder I was over was massive, as was the rest of it, but it was too dark to see clearly. Rooftop spotlights no longer illuminated the exterior of the bookstore, nor did the customary amber glow bathe the interior. There was only the light of a three-quarter moon, spilling in through tall windows.
What had me? An Unseelie? Why had it brought me here? I never wanted to see this place again! I hated BB&B. It was dark and empty and ghosts were everywhere. They perched with sad eyes on my cash register, drooped along my book aisles, and draped, paper-thin and defeated, on my sofas, shivering before fireplaces that would never be lit again.
I wasn’t prepared to be flung from its shoulder. I went flying backward through the air, slammed into the chesterfield in the rear seating cozy, bounced off it, crashed into a chair, got tangled in one of Barrons’ expensive rugs, and skidded across the polished floor. My head smacked into the enameled fireplace.
For a moment, all I could do was lie there. Every bone in my body was bruised. Blood was crusted on my face and in the corners of my eyes.
With a moan of pain, I rolled over and propped myself up on an elbow to assess the damage. At least my arm wasn’t broken, as I’d thought it was.
I pushed my hair from my face.
And froze. Standing in the dim light of the bookstore was a shape that was devastatingly familiar. “Come out of the shadows,” I said.
A low growl was the only reply.
“Please, can you understand me? Come out.”
It hulked near a bookcase, panting. It was enormous, at least nine feet tall. Silhouetted against the moonlight filtering through a window behind it, it had three sets of sharp, curved horns spaced at even intervals along two bony ridges that spanned the sides of its head.
I’d seen horns like that before. My pouch of stones had been tied to similar ones. Horns I’d watched melt away when the beast wearing them resumed its human form.
In the Silvers, Barrons had been slate gray with yellow eyes during the day and black-skinned with crimson eyes at night. This one was in full night mode, velvety black in the darkness but for the glint of feral eyes. I’d heard more of these beasts back in the street, before this one had carried me off. Where had they come from?
My hands began to tremble. I pushed gingerly into a sitting position, acutely aware of every stretched tendon and strained muscle. I leaned back against the
fireplace, drew my knees up and hugged them. I didn’t trust myself to stand. This creature was the same kind of beast Barrons had been and was a connection to the man I’d lost.
What was it doing here? Was he still somehow protecting me, even in death? Had he assigned others of his kind to guard me if the worst happened and he was killed?
The thing in the shadows suddenly turned and smashed a taloned fist into the bookcase. Tall shelves rocked on floor bolts. With a metallic screeeech, the ornate case ripped from the floor and began to fall. It crashed into the one next to it, and the one next to that, taking them down like dominoes, making a complete wreck of my bookstore.
“Stop it!” I cried.
But if it could understand, or even hear me over the noise, it didn’t care. It turned on the magazine rack and shattered it next. Dailies and monthlies flew in a storm of pages and splinters of shelving. Chairs slammed into the walls. My TV was stomped. My fridge crushed. My cash register exploded in a tinkle of bells.
It raged through the store, trashing the entire first floor, decimating everything I loved, reducing my cherished sanctuary to ruins.
All I could do was huddle and stare.
When there was nothing left to smash or break, it whirled on me.
Moonlight silvered its ebony skin and glinted off crimson eyes. Veins and tendons stood out on its arms and neck, and its chest pumped like a bellows. Bits of debris were stuck to its horns. It shook its head violently, and bits of plaster and wood sprayed the air.
It stared at me from a prehistoric face, through long hanks of matted black hair, with hate-filled eyes.
I stared back, afraid to breathe. Had it saved me to kill me? It was no more than I deserved, really.
It was a walking reminder of what I’d had—and lost. What I’d never seen clearly—and killed. It was so much like my creature in the Silvers, yet so different. Barrons had been uncontrollably homicidal, unable—or unwilling—to prevent himself from slaughtering everything in sight, no matter how small or helpless. Back on that cliff’s edge, in Barrons’ eyes, I’d glimpsed madness.
This beast was a killing machine, too, but not a mindless one. There was no insanity in its eyes, only fury and bloodlust.
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