by S. M. Reine
“This isn’t an ending,” Lincoln said, backing into the hallway. “This is just getting started. I guarantee it.”
Oberon didn’t bother trying to follow him. He called down the hall, “You’re welcome!”
The king looked up at Cèsar, his eyes pinched at the corners.
Oberon looked weird. More like an animated Ken doll than like a human. Cèsar couldn’t guess if the guy was a teenager or in his sixties with lots of plastic surgery. Even his facial expressions created minimal lines, as if his mouth could simply be redrawn into a beautiful frown without needing to crease the skin.
Was that how Cèsar would look as a man now? Glittery and artificial, filled to the brim with his own magic so that he shined from the inside? He’d never be able to pass for human like that. Even if Cèsar changed back, he’d never be able to go back to Earth.
“You know,” Oberon said, “shapeshifting sidhe sometimes have a hard time getting from human shape to animal shape, but the human shape’s still default. You don’t get stuck as an animal.”
Cat Cèsar snarled disagreement.
The king hooked his thumbs in his belt loops. “You can understand me. I know you can. Just like I know you could turn yourself back at any moment, if you wanted. Those chains won’t contain you if you shrink down to a human shape. You’re welcome to walk out and join us whenever you want, Cèsar. We’ll be having dinner on the patio. The wine’s good tonight.”
He turned to walk out, leaving the door open.
Cèsar strained against the chains. They sizzled against the broad feline breast, wrapped around his neck under the jaw.
It burned.
His body didn’t change.
The door remained mere inches away—the first step on a pathway to return to Fritz—unlocked and yet completely inaccessible to Cèsar.
Fritz Friederling spent barely an hour on the treadmill before his leg became too painful to continue. The skin was rubbed raw within the socket of his prosthesis even though he’d layered multiple socks over it. He turned off the treadmill, slid off the end, and sat heavily on the waiting chair with a grimace. His vision grew foggy from the change in posture.
“One hundred eighty beats per minute,” Agent Trotsky said disapprovingly, looking through the records produced by the heart-rate monitor. “Edie said you shouldn’t let yourself go above a hundred thirty.”
Fritz ripped the monitor off. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. Your heart is struggling.”
“I’m not missing a workout because one sidhe nearly killed me.” But it was going to be an unimpressive workout. An hour of cardio left him too wasted to even consider tackling the punching bag, lifting weights, or doing anything except sinking into his wheelchair.
Had Cèsar been there, he’d have found a way to keep Fritz going. He’d have said something taunting and Fritz would have found a second wind to defy him.
Fritz could imagine Cèsar’s voice now, as clearly as though the man was with him. “You’ve been a gimp for years, but Genesis turned you into a lazy gimp.” Or something like that.
“You’re not a kopis anymore,” Trotsky admonished, kneeling in front of him. She undid the strap on his prosthetic and removed it to inspect the appendage. “You can’t push yourself like this.”
“Or in any other way.” This came from Agent Idañez, who was standing in the doorway of the gym at Esther Winery.
“Did the reports about Dullahan Daith come in?” Fritz asked.
“Yes,” Idañez said. “We couldn’t track this entity throughout Reno. He left no power signature.”
“How is that possible?”
“I don’t know, sir. You should turn this investigation over to an assistant capable of more thorough analysis,” Idañez said.
“My undersecretary is busy,” Fritz said. God only knew what Cèsar was doing at that moment. Nobody had reported from the redoubt since he crossed over. He was Schrödinger’s Cèsar at the moment—probably alive, possibly dead, definitely imperiled.
Idañez looked uncomfortable. “You’ll be in recovery for months. Sir, I think it’s time that you consider appointing an assistant, and possibly an interim secretary, to ensure that you—”
“You’re dismissed,” Fritz said.
Idañez blinked. “But—”
“Dismissed.” He gestured. “Take Idañez to the office.”
A pair of OPA agents escorted him out. Idañez waited to begin muttering mutinously until he was halfway to the next building, and only the bass rumble of his voice projected over California’s damp summer afternoon.
He grabbed his cane and shoved the door shut, leaving him alone with the agent doing time as physical therapist.
Fritz extended his leg. “Trotsky?” She scowled, fussed with the joint on the prosthesis, and put it back on Fritz’s leg. Even reattaching it made his blisters sting. “So we couldn’t track Dullahan Daith. Is there any further data on him?”
“No sir,” she said. “I haven’t had an opportunity to talk to the research staff in the last hour, but when we checked in—”
“Check in again.”
“Fine, but I’ll be back soon.” Trotsky waggled her finger at him. “If I catch you exercising when I return, I’ll tell Edie Ashe on you.”
“I quiver with fear.”
Trotsky left.
Fritz braced himself on the arms of the chair and pushed himself standing again. His head swam as before. His heart pounded. He was drenched in sweat.
Your body is failing, Edie Ashe had said during her initial diagnosis. Fritz had sent the car back for her before Cèsar had woken from stasis, and she’d only needed a cursory examination before delivering the bad news. Luckily we’re used to people dying these days. We never stop running the crematorium. Or do you prefer to be buried?
The door opened behind him. Trotsky was back already.
“What’s the news on Dullahan Daith?” Fritz asked as he turned.
But it wasn’t Trotsky entering.
It was a man wearing a baggy hooded sweater. He carried a dripping duffel bag under one arm.
Fritz had seen incomplete footage of this creature. He had studied it, analyzed it, passed it on to his staff in the hopes of finding a way to defeat him. He’d found nothing.
But now he had the entity itself.
It was Dullahan Daith.
“I have to say, I’m impressed.” Fritz set a dumbbell on his thigh and rolled back to give Dullahan his full attention.
Dullahan was silent. The sun through the window no longer felt warm against Fritz’s shoulder.
“What do you want?” Fritz asked.
“Inanna,” Dullahan said. “I want Inanna. She owes Dullahan an explanation.”
“Very well. We might be able to get you what you want. I’m a reasonable man; I’m happy to discuss a deal.”
Signaling a willingness to be bribed did not trigger any sort of reaction in Dullahan.
He rippled, he shrank, he swelled. He was not dark in the manner of shadows; Dullahan was a tunnel through reality. There would be something under that sweater, but it would not be a body in the traditional sense, and Fritz had no desire to see it.
“You’ve been near Inanna, but you’re not carrying Inanna. She’s only left a mark in her passing.” Dullahan grew in size as he spoke. Fritz realized that the growing pushed Dullahan closer to him.
Fritz’s fist tightened on the dumbbell in his lap. “I’ve been near a lot of women lately. I’ve been ordered to ensure that fifty percent of new hires are woman-identified, lest the OPA become ‘as much of a sexist shithole’ as it was before Genesis.” This had come from Cèsar’s girlfriend Suzy, of course, who’d had multiple incredibly vocal opinions about how Fritz “should” reform the OPA, and delivered them while they both knocked back tequila shots.
His words fell on dispassionate ears, assuming that Dullahan had any such appendages.
The creature was still growing.
He was almost on to
p of Fritz.
“Give Dullahan what you know,” Dullahan said. “Tell Dullahan the names of all who have touched you.”
“I don’t think so,” Fritz said.
He came to his feet and swung the dumbbell.
The weight crashed into Dullahan’s chest. There was something solid underneath that sweater. Something that cracked loudly when iron was hurled against it with adequate momentum. The impact made Dullahan draw back, though how far, Fritz simply could not tell.
Fritz grabbed a weighted bar and slammed its end through Dullahan’s hood.
Dullahan jerked. He retracted as small as though he’d suddenly walked to the opposite end of the lawn. He couldn’t be that far away inside the gym, but he was far away, somehow. He was trying to pry the bar out of his hood.
Fritz used the opportunity to bolt.
Bolting in Fritz’s current condition was not, admittedly, much of a bolt at all. He was graceful swinging himself out the open window, but he collapsed when he hit the grass. Stars crowded his vision. His thundering heart made everything feel as distant as Dullahan.
Momentum and gravity carried him down the hill, away from the gym. Fritz shored up against a cluster of decorative rocks. He had tunnel vision, dark at the edges and blurry in the distance, but he could see well enough to know that Dullahan was following through the window.
Fritz lurched to his feet. There was a barn nearby with armored Jeeps parked inside. He slammed through the towering red doors, falling to his knees again on concrete. Fritz’s whole body was heavy with weakness.
We haven’t even stopped running the crematorium. Or do you prefer to be buried?
“Cèsar couldn’t have been the kind of sidhe that only triggers spontaneous orgasms?” Fritz muttered, crawling deeper into the barn.
Dullahan was growing in size again.
Fritz kicked the door shut, obstructing his view of the approaching creature.
He grabbed leather straps hanging from a saddle to pull himself upright. His leg stump burned. A few of the blisters must have popped. Bringing his line of eyesight above the stables allowed him to spot the keys hung beside the tack.
The door blew open.
Dullahan’s hood had fallen off, exposing the jagged, asymmetric stump of his neck. Blood dribbled out of the thick vessels. The spine-whip thrashed within his fist.
Fritz could only take a few steps away from the stall before falling, his hands planting onto the dirt, shame twisting the muscles of his back into agonizing knots.
But then he heard a voice.
“Wait! I know Inanna!”
A group of agents had approached from behind Dullahan and now had their weapons aimed. But the foremost of the agents had empty hands. It was Idañez, the man who had come from the Reno office.
“Tell Dullahan where to find Inanna,” Dullahan said. Even when he was waiting attentively, he never stopped moving. He was in constant flux.
“Inanna’s some big bear-sized guy, right? Kinda light skin, hair like mine?” Idañez gestured to his face, his scalp. “That’s who you’re talking about. That’s who you came for at Wooster.”
“Don’t,” Fritz wheezed.
“We sent this thing—Inanna?—we sent it to the Middle Worlds. First to Alfheimr, then to Niflheimr,” Idañez said in a big rush, as if afraid that Dullahan would kill him before he got the words out.
He was right to be afraid, but not of Dullahan now.
“Alfheimr,” said Dullahan. “Niflheimr. The fae cities have risen again.”
He turned.
“He’s lying!” Fritz said, but the entity had already warped the world into a bubble, and disappeared.
Fritz took three staggering steps toward Idañez and fell, catching himself on the agent’s lapels. They slammed into the wall together. “Are you okay, sir?” Idañez asked.
He had just sent Dullahan after Cèsar.
Fritz couldn’t kill Dullahan, but he could kill Idañez for it. Theoretically.
But even anger was fading into a swirling, sunken mass that felt miles under Fritz’s feet. “You’re fired, Idañez,” Fritz said, just before he swooned into oblivion. His legs went out from under him. He blacked out.
CHAPTER 15
Sunset overtook the Summer Court. Music began to play on the wind, and all bodies in Alfheimr flowed in the same direction. Even Lincoln’s. He stormed through the hallways, shoving past the gentry in search of the queen. He was surprised how cooperative the guards were. When he asked for the queen, they pointed him in the direction of the music.
Lincoln burst through a curtained doorway and emerged into a whirling display of colorful dresses, naked bodies, and wine fountains.
As the sun had fallen, the patio had bloomed with nighttime flowers heavy from nectar. The wind smelled of grapes as much as the musk of sex and the rot of kelp on sand.
“Jesus,” Lincoln muttered, stepping back quick when a couple of female sidhe tumbled past him, their limbs tangled and tongues in each other’s mouths. They didn’t notice they’d nearly run him over. They spilled onto pillows spread over the floor, where another couple was already resting.
He tried not to stare as he backed away, but couldn’t stop.
The women were as gorgeous as any models—weren’t they? Sometimes they looked like they’d been cut out of his fantasies. Like someone had hired young Cindy Crawford and Pamela Anderson to get tangled in tribadistic ecstasy. But sometimes they looked dark-skinned and gross, sort of lumpy, like boulders covered in puckered sea life. His erection didn’t know what to do with itself.
Lincoln shut one eye and edged away from them along the patio railing.
Silken fingers tickled his neck. He slapped his nape as he leaped out of the way, only to realize he’d been brushed by leaves, not one of the sidhe. He tripped over the extended legs of a woman reclining on a chaise, a man’s head bowed between her knees as he lapped at her swollen clitoris.
“Sorry,” he said reflexively.
They didn’t seem to hear him. Nobody was in much of a place to listen at this dinner. If they weren’t suckling on goblets of wine, then they were suckling on each other’s skin.
Lincoln just wanted to talk to the goddamn queen. Was that so much to ask?
Oberon brushed past him. The man cast a glance over his shoulder at Lincoln, and that expression could have meant anything. Anger. Annoyance. Boredom. He strode to the edge of the patio and mounted the twisted roots that formed the throne, where his wife waited.
“My king,” Titania murmured. Her voice carried through the world.
Titania’s head rolled back on her shoulders as Oberon took a nipple into his mouth. He drew the peach nubbin long with his lips and let it pop out, slick and shiny and moist. She stroked his mohawk gently as she focused on Lincoln with lidded eyes.
She pulled Oberon nearer, her hand sliding between their bodies to massage him. Lincoln wondered if the looks Titania shot in his direction were supposed to be sexy. He also had to wonder if Titania realized how young she looked, how silly this all was—so wretchedly unnecessary.
“Hey!” Lincoln called to the queen, but the surging crowd pushed him back. Every damn sidhe in Falias was on that stupid patio.
A waitress stopped Lincoln. “Would you like a drink?” she asked, smiling up at him with rosy cheeks that matched rosebuds tangled in the brambles of her bright-green hair.
“I don’t want anything,” Lincoln said.
“Please,” she said. “It would be rude not to accept hospitality.”
He gritted his teeth and closed a fist around the goblet. “Happy?”
“I’ll be happy when you are.” Her gaze swept down his body before returning to his face. “Find me if you want to be even happier.”
She sashayed away, and only then did Lincoln realize she was naked. What he’d taken for a skirt was hair falling to her hips. When she moved, it parted to expose her bare ass. The smell of the wine overwhelmed him, like he was smelling the waitress’s sweat rat
her than crushed grapes.
This wasn’t what he wanted. It was a distraction meant to keep him out of trouble until they kicked him out at sunrise.
Lincoln wasn’t going anywhere.
“Titania!” he shouted, trying to shove through the crowd again.
A female voice called to him, barely audible over the stringed instruments and moaning. “Mr. Marshall! Mr. Marshall, over here!”
“Damn it, what now?” He spun to see Sophie Keyes picking her way delicately through the dinner rush.
Sophie was no longer wearing the plain shirt she’d borrowed. Instead, she wore a white sheath that covered her from collar to ankles. Her skin glittered with gold-flecked oils. She could have blended into society easily. Not Lincoln’s society, but some distant kingdom where Sophie would be queen instead of outcast.
“Hello again, Mr. Marshall. You seem to be in distress. Is there a problem?” she asked.
She was accompanied by a tall Black sidhe dressed richly in copper silks, a sword lashed to his hip. Lincoln wouldn’t tell Sophie a damn thing with one of the queen’s men hovering over them.
“Who’s this?” Lincoln asked.
“This is Herne,” Sophie said. “He’s been assigned to me as a personal guard by Titania.” Probably to make sure that Sophie couldn’t wander off. She was too naive to have any idea she was being managed.
“Pleasure to meet you,” Lincoln said, though he didn’t find anything about this environment pleasurable. “Where’d the get-up come from?” He pointed at Sophie’s dress.
She smoothed her hands down her stomach and thighs. A slit ran all the way up to her hip. “When I learned that there was to be a party tonight, I requested modest but appropriate clothing. I believe a seamstress magicked this for me from scratch. I’m sure it’s not too late to see about getting you something a little more comfortable too.”
He was perfectly comfortable in his bulky jacket, his boots, his pants. More comfortable than he’d be cosseted like some pretty princeling faerie.