I slept. I dreamed again of the cold place. I repeated the scalding shower to thaw myself. I glanced at the clock. It was Monday, nine A.M. I could stay in bed all day and hide or I could lose myself in the solace of routine.
I opted for routine. Sometimes it’s dangerous to stop and think. Sometimes you just have to keep going.
I forced myself to groom. Exfoliated, masked, and shaved. I nicked my knee in the shower and smeared it with toothpaste when I got out, a trick Alina had taught me when I’d first begun shaving and butchered my ankles more than a few times. As the blood welled in the pale blue gel, tears threatened. At that moment, if I’d had the ability to slip into Faery and spend time with her again, I might have been too weak.
Blood welled in the pale blue gel.
I stared at it.
I was bleeding. I wasn’t healing. Why? I scraped the toothpaste off my wound. It bled freely, pooling in the trickles of water on my still-wet leg.
Frowning, I made a fist and punched the doorjamb. “Ow!”
Stunned, disbelieving, I punched it again. It hurt again, and my abraded knuckles began to bleed, too.
My superhuman strength was gone! And I was not regenerating!
My thoughts whirled. Mallucé had talked as if he’d eaten Unseelie constantly, even before I’d stabbed him. I’d assumed it was because it was somehow addictive.
Now I knew how: If you didn’t keep eating it, you reverted to your natural human state. Of course, Mallucé hadn’t been willing to let that happen.
I stared in the mirror, watching myself bleed. It made me think of another time I’d stood in front of this mirror, examining myself. Of crimson I’d glimpsed on myself once before.
It’s hard to say what causes things to come together in a startling flash of clarity but images suddenly bombarded me—
Splint dropping from my arm, smudges of crimson and black ink on my skin; tattoos on Barrons’ torso, Mallucé screaming that he’d left the cuff in the alley, demanding to know how Barrons had tracked us; me chained to a beam in the garage, tattooing implements nearby—
— and I had a small epiphany.
“You bastard,” I breathed. “It was all a ruse, wasn’t it? Because you were afraid I’d find out that you’d already done it.” Games within games, true Barrons form.
I began examining every inch of my skin in the mirror. I’d planned to hide it, he’d said.
I poked, I prodded. I looked beneath my breasts. I checked between the cheeks of my behind with a hand mirror and heaved a huge sigh of relief. I looked in my ears. I checked behind my ears.
I found it on the nape of my neck, high up in the slight indentation of my skull, nearly invisible beneath my hair.
It was an intricate pattern of black and red ink with a faintly luminescent Z in the middle, a mystical bar code, a sorcerous brand.
He must have done it the night he brought me out of the Dark Zone, the night he’d splinted and healed me. The night he’d told me to sleep and kissed me. I’d been unconscious for a long time.
Then something must have made him begin to worry that I’d find it. Worry that if I did, it might push me too far. He was right, it would have. So when I’d returned from Faery, he’d seized the perfect opportunity to insist on tattooing me for my own good. No doubt he would have just touched up the old one, perhaps added something nefarious to it.
When I’d made it plain that if he trespassed against my boundaries so egregiously I’d leave, he must have been in a double bind. Unwilling to push, because I’d leave—knowing if I found out what he’d already done, I’d leave.
He’d branded me without my knowledge and consent, like a piece of property. His property. There was a fecking Z on the back of my skull.
I traced the pads of my fingers over the tattoo. It was warmer than the skin around it. I remembered lying in the hellish grotto, regretting with every ounce of my being that I hadn’t let him tattoo me.
If he hadn’t tattooed me, I’d be dead now.
Ironically, the very thing I’d been determined to leave him over if he’d done it to me was the only thing that had kept me alive.
I stared at myself in the mirror, wishing that anything in my life were one-tenth as clear as my reflection.
Rowena was wrong. She was so wrong. There are only shades of gray. Black and white are nothing more than lofty ideals in our minds, the standards by which we try to judge things, and map out our place in the world in relevance to them. Good and evil, in their purest form, are as intangible and forever beyond our ability to hold in our hand as any Fae illusion. We can only aim at them, aspire to them, and hope not to get so lost in the shadows that we can no longer aim for the light.
Power is. If you don’t use it, someone else will. You can either create with it or destroy. Creation is good. Destruction is evil. That’s my bottom line.
I could sense the spear behind me, quietly chafing my sidhe-seer senses.
I could sense OOPs again. I had only normal human strength and healing abilities again. I was me. One hundred percent MacKayla Lane, for better or for worse.
I was back—and I was glad. I hoped the dark flesh had passed through me and left no mark.
Life is not black and white. The closest we ever get to either of those colors is wearing them.
I got dressed, went downstairs, and opened my store for business.
It was a busy day. A little rainy but not too bad.
I found the cell phone Mallucé had dumped in the alley when he’d abducted me lying on the counter next to the cash register, beside my boots, jacket, and purse; Barrons must have gone searching for me and found them. It had two bars so I plugged it in to recharge it; I don’t take my cell phone responsibilities lightly anymore. I will forever be haunted by the reminder of one floating in a sky blue swimming pool, and the spoiled young woman I used to be.
I threw the boots and jacket in the Dumpster out back, along with everything else I’d been wearing during my interment beneath the Burren. Mallucé had touched them; they stank of him and I would never wear them again.
The cuff was not on the counter.
I smiled faintly. Barrons knew I’d figured out from Mallucé’s little slip that he’d had some other way to find me. Good. He didn’t underestimate me. He shouldn’t.
I’d had nearly sixty customers by four o’clock.
I was about to flip the sign for a bathroom break when I sensed someone, or something, outside my front door.
Fae—but not Fae!
I stiffened.
The cherry-framed, diamond-paned door moved, the bell above it tinkled.
Derek O’Bannion stepped in, dripping aggression and arrogance. I wondered how I’d ever found him attractive. He wasn’t darkly handsome; he was swarthy. His movements weren’t macho; they were saurian. He gave me that sharp-bladed smile and I saw my death waiting on those ivory knives.
I knew what he was feeling. I’d been there recently myself. He was pumped up on Unseelie.
I was getting better at putting things together; my deductive reasoning skills had improved a hundredfold since I’d stepped off that plane from the States.
Facts: Derek O’Bannion is not a sidhe-seer. He can’t see the Unseelie. If you can’t see the Unseelie, you can’t eat the Unseelie. Which means that if a human who is not a sidhe-seer shows up, pumped up on Unseelie, someone who can see the Unseelie must have fed it to that person, deliberately opening their eyes to a whole new dark realm, like the Lord Master did with Mallucé. A normal human can’t choose to be turned into a hybrid; he or she must be made into it, initiated into the dark rite by someone in the see and know.
“Get out of my store,” I said coldly.
“Got a lot o’ balls for a walking dead woman.”
“Who fed it to you? Red robe? Pretty boy? Did he tell you about Mallucé?”
“Mallucé was a fool. I’m not.”
“Did he tell you Mallucé rotted from the inside out?”
“He told me you k
illed my brother and that you have something that belongs to me. He sent me for it.”
“He sent you to die, then. The thing he sent you for is the one thing capable of killing Unseelie—which parts of you are now—which is how and why Mallucé rotted from the inside out. I stabbed him with it.” I smiled. “Did your new friend tell you that? You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.” Had I just sounded exactly like Barrons? Had I just said something to the mobster’s brother Barrons had said to me when I’d first begun pushing my way into the realm of the Fae? Please tell me my mentor wasn’t rubbing off on me. Please tell me we don’t grow up and turn into the adults that drive us crazy.
I slipped the spear from my shoulder holster and slammed it, point first, into the counter. It quivered in the wood, shimmering with alabaster light, nearly white. “Go ahead, O’Bannion, come and get it. I’m fed up with jack-petunias like you and would like nothing more than to watch you rot, slowly and painfully. I know you’re all juiced up on your new powers right now, but you should know that I’m way more than just a pretty face. I’m a sidhe-seer and I have a few kick-ass powers of my own. There’s no way you can stop me from stabbing you with this if you get within a dozen feet of me. So, if you don’t mind rotting from the inside out—did I mention that his dick went before his mind did? — step one inch further inside my store.”
Indecision flickered in those cold reptilian eyes.
“Your brother didn’t see me as a threat. Your brother’s dead. So are fifteen of his henchmen. Think about that. Think hard.”
He stared at the spear, glowing with its soft, unnatural luminescence. Rocky hadn’t known anything about the dark forces around him. Derek had been recently awakened to it, and wouldn’t make the same mistakes. I could see it in his face. This O’Bannion wouldn’t rush blindly to his death. He would retreat now. His withdrawal would only be temporary. He would regroup and return, even more dangerous than before.
“This isn’t over,” he said. “It won’t be over until you’re dead.”
“Until one of us is,” I agreed. “Get out.” I pulled the spear from the counter, fisted my hand around the hilt.
I should have let him walk into the Dark Zone that day. Instead, out of guilt for past sins, I’d saved his life. What an idiot I’d been.
I stared at the door after he was gone. My heart rate hadn’t even accelerated. I flipped the sign, went to the bathroom, then reopened for business.
Barrons didn’t show up Monday night or Tuesday. Wednesday came and went with no sign of him. By Thursday evening it had been five days since I’d seen him, longer than he’d ever stayed away before.
I was growing impatient. I had questions. I had accusations. I had memories of a fight that had ended in disturbing lust. I’d been sitting in the rear conversation area of the bookstore, every evening for hours, before a softly hissing gas fire, pretending to read, waiting for him.
The bookstore was huge and silent and I felt alone and a million miles from home.
After five days, I broke down and dialed JB on the cell phone he’d given me. There was no answer.
I stared at the display, thumbed through my short contact list: JB; IYCGM; IYD.
I didn’t quite have the balls to try the last one.
I punched up IYCGM instead.
“Ryodan,” a voice barked.
I hung up instantly, feeling embarrassed and guilty.
The phone blared with the thunder of a hundred celestial trumpets in my hands, and although part of me had fully expected it, it still scared me out of my skin.
The display blinked: IYCGM.
I sighed and pressed send.
“Mac? Are you all right? Talk to me,” a deep voice growled.
Ryodan: the mysterious man who talked about Barrons to people he shouldn’t talk to, the man Barrons had been fighting the day I’d gone to Alina’s apartment.
I hesitated.
“Mac!” the voice roared.
“I’m here. I’m fine. I’m sorry,” I said.
“Why did you call?”
“I wondered where Barrons was.”
There was a soft laugh, a deep, rumbling purr. “Is that what he’s calling himself these days? Barrons?”
“Isn’t that his name? Jericho Barrons?”
More laughter. “Is he using a middle name?”
“The initial Z.” I’d seen it on his license.
“Ah, the Omega. Ever the melodramatic one.”
“And the Alpha?” I said drolly.
“He’d probably try to make a great case for it.”
“What’s his real name?”
“Ask him yourself.”
“He wouldn’t answer me. He never does. Who are you?”
“I’m the one you call when you can’t get Barrons.”
“Duh. Thanks. Who’s Barrons?”
“The one who keeps saving your life.”
I wouldn’t have believed two men could sound so much alike, both masters of circuitous answers that went nowhere. “Are you brothers?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
I didn’t have to press further to understand that, like Barrons, Ryodan would only tell me what he intended to tell me and all the questions in the world would fall on deaf ears unless he wanted me to know something. “I’m leaving, Ryodan. He lies to me, he bullies me. He never tells me anything. He betrayed me.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“What? The lying, bullying, or betraying?”
“Betraying. The rest of it is classic…what did you call him? Barrons. But he doesn’t betray.”
“You don’t know him as well as you think you do.”
“Open your eyes, Mac.”
“What do you mean?”
“Words can be twisted into any shape. Promises can be made to lull the heart and seduce the soul. In the final analysis words mean nothing. They are labels we give things in an effort to wrap our puny little brains around their underlying natures, when ninety-nine percent of the time the totality of the reality is an entirely different beast. The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them. He thinks you have the heart of a warrior. He believes in you. Believe in him.”
“In what? A mercenary? He wants the book to sell it to the highest bidder! The Hunters are mercenaries, too!”
“If I were in your shoes, I’d never call him that. Who are you to talk? You think your motives are so pure? You have such a noble calling? Bullshit. What’s good about you? You want blood. You want revenge. You don’t care about the fate of the world. You just want your happy little place in it back. People who live in glass houses…” He trailed off as if I should know what came next. I didn’t.
“What? People who live in glass houses what?”
“Fuck, you are young, aren’t you?” He laughed. “Shouldn’t throw rocks, Mac. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw rocks.”
The line went dead.
The bell jingled. Barrons walked in.
“Barrons.” I hastily shoved the phone between the cushions.
“Ms. Lane.” He inclined his dark head.
“You tattooed me, you bastard.” I got right to the point.
“So?”
“You had no right!”
“Would you rather I hadn’t?”
“That doesn’t make it okay!”
“But it does, doesn’t it? And that’s what rankles you. I overruled your wishes. I took care of you in the way a man used to take care of a woman before the world was a place where children could sue to divorce their parents, and if I hadn’t, you’d be dead. Are you going to pretend to wish you were dead? I know you. You’re crammed full of life and selfishly glad you’re alive, and you always will be. If you need a stage and an audience to play the maiden nun who would sacrifice her life to preserve her virginity to appease your conscience, find it somewhere else, I’m not going to applaud. Will you hang your life on values that have none in the final analysis? When you were too
young and naïve to see the risks, I incurred your wrath to protect you. Scream at me for it if you must. Thank me for it when you finally grow up.”
I changed the subject. He hits me with so much sometimes that it’s easier to veer on to some other topic, one that would put me on the offensive, and him on the defensive instead of vice versa. “Why did the Lord Master take one look at you and leave? What are you, Barrons?”
“The one who will never let you die, and that’s more, Ms. Lane, than anyone in your life has ever been able to say to you. More than anyone else can do.”
“V’lane—”
“V’lane sure as fuck didn’t come get you in the grotto, did he? Where was your golden prince then?”
“I’m sick of your evasions! What are you?” I stalked over to him, punched him in the shoulder. “Answer me!”
He knocked my hand away. “I just did. That’s all you’re getting. Take me or leave me. Stay or go.”
We glared at each other. It seemed like all we did anymore. But there was no real fight in me, and he sensed it.
When I went to the sofa and sat down, he turned away.
“I assume you are yourself again,” he said, staring into the fire.
“How did you know that?”
“I spent the past few days researching the ramifications of what you’d done, to find out if it was reversible. I learned the effects of eating Unseelie are temporary.”
“If you’d bothered showing up on Monday, I could have told you that myself.”
He turned. “It wore off that quickly?”
I nodded.
“Are you entirely restored? Can you sense the spear again?”
“Never fear, your OOP detector is back,” I said bitterly. “Oh, and it looks like O’Bannion replaced Mallucé for the Lord Master.” I filled him in on the younger brother’s visit, that he’d eaten Unseelie.
Barrons took a seat on the opposite end of the sofa. Even with all that space between us, we were too close. I remembered the feel of his wild, electric body on top of mine. I remembered lying beneath him with my shirt ripped to my neck, the look on his face. I looked away.
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