Barrons doesn’t sleep. He drifts and was in what I’d learned to recognize as a deep meditative state. It wouldn’t be long before he disappeared into the night to do whatever he does that makes his body electric and his heart pound again.
I raked a hand through my hair, trying to push the wild mess out of my face, and succeeded only in getting my fingers tangled in knots matted with spray paint. I gave up and shoved it to one side. We were both smeared with oil-based lacquer and if I wasn’t…enhanced, and he wasn’t…whatever he was, I’d worry about all those nasty chemicals on our skin. We’d slipped and slid all over the store, thrown each other around in the wreckage, painted our skin crimson, not all of it paint, some of it blood.
We were currently wedged between half a shot-up broken chesterfield and a shattered bookcase, I had hard-cornered books digging into my ass, was using a crushed lamp shade as a pillow, and one of the many baubles in the store was gouging the small of my back.
I felt incredible. Released. Open. I made a mental note to jump on him the next time I found myself feeling uncertain or shutting down. Barrons is antitoxin for the venom poisoning me.
I tipped my head back and looked around the room.
If the bookstore hadn’t been completely decimated before, it certainly was now. Something bizarre had happened to us while we were fighting and fucking, taking out everything we felt on each other’s bodies because words don’t work for either of us anymore. As if possessed by a unified prime directive, we’d abruptly stopped having sex and devoted our focus to finishing what the men had started. We smashed, slashed, and crushed.
Those few things the Guardians had left unbroken we’d destroyed ourselves. My iPod had actually still been working in the sound dock. It wasn’t now, ground to smithereens beneath a heel. The rugs shredded by Barrons’s talons. Bookcases that had been standing were now on the floor, contents dumped across the garishly stained floors.
I understood on an intuitive level. Someone else had desecrated our home. By participating in its destruction, we’d said goodbye to its current incarnation. We’d given the bookstore a proper burial. We’d grieved in fury. We’d torn down the Phoenix to ash so it could rise again.
We would start over. Barrons and I would always start over. Longevity requires it.
As I lay there, considering how I would redecorate—and yes, I still love decorating, as a brilliant, half-mad king likes to say more often than I like to hear it: can’t eviscerate essential self—my eye was caught by the piece of paper I’d been stooping to collect outside the bookstore when I’d been shot. It had traipsed in stuck to someone’s boot, evidenced by a large red heel print and was stuck by yet more paint to the broken arm of the chesterfield.
I reached over Barrons to snag it. Smoothed it out and turned it over.
Between splatters of paint, my name screamed from the page.
I began to read. Stopped. Cursed. Read and cursed some more.
The Dublin Daily
August 2 AWC
EMERGENCY ALERT!
BREAKING NEWS GOOD PEOPLE OF NEW DUBLIN!
MACKAYLA LANE
is under control of the deadly Book of black magic known as the Sinsar Dubh and is on a rampage in New Dublin! She’s been committing HORRIFIC MURDERS of INNOCENTS and will DESTROY OUR CITY if she isn’t KILLED immediately! Her latest victim was a good man who worked for the New Guardians in a tireless effort to PROTECT us! Mick O’Leary was ripped to pieces by the SAVAGE ANIMAL MACKAYLA LANE.
See photo of Lane below! She usually has blond hair but may color it, don’t be deceived by one of her SLEAZY disguises!
If you see her, DO NOT approach! She’s a KILLER, PSYCHOTIC, and EXTREMELY DANGEROUS!!!
Notify WeCare with any news of her location!
She used to reside at BARRONS BOOKS & BAUBLES but hasn’t been spotted there for some time.
It’s rumored the Book can make her INVISIBLE, exponentially increasing the DANGER she presents!
Help us PROTECT New Dublin!
Join WeCare today!
Sleazy. I scowled, offended. There was nothing sleazy about me. Well, recent activity aside and that wasn’t sleazy. That was freedom.
I smiled grimly. “Jada” hadn’t needed to raise a finger against me. All she’d had to do was rat out my Sinsar Dubh–compromised state, my invisibility, and location to WeCare to place me squarely in the crosshairs of every vigilante, Fae, and nut job in Dublin. Thanks to Dani’s past papers, in which she’d kept the city informed of every detail of the threats she deemed important, including the Sinsar Dubh, the world was fully aware of the astronomical power it contained. Some would hunt me to kill me, others with the futile hope of controlling the iconic, deadly Book. Rather than telling WeCare I was the Book, she’d made them think I had a copy, which made hunting me all the more desirable for those who wanted to possess its power.
I wasn’t psychotic and she knew it. I was holding my own pretty damned well. I’d only killed a single person. By accident. And I regretted the hell out of it. Would give a great deal to be able to undo it.
I was fuming again, all that lovely hostility I’d managed to vent on Barrons’s body flooding right back into my veins like someone had turned on the mother lode of spigots inside me.
This was bullshit. I’d been betrayed to the entire city and I was visible. There would be no more sneaking through the streets to get where I wanted to go. No more evading the searching ghouls in tonight’s sky. It struck me as incalculably odd they’d been hunting for me on the precise night I’d become visible again. Could they sense me so easily?
Not that I wanted to be invisible again, I appended mentally, hastily. If the Sinsar Dubh was listening, and I was sure it was, I was not making wishes. No wishes. Not a single one. “You hear that?” I muttered. “This is me, Mac. Not wishing.”
There was no answer but apparently we were on the outs, the Book and I. Or it was merely intensely occupied doing something nefarious, underhanded, and evil that was requiring all its attention, the results of which would soon bite me in the ass with vicious little teeth. I may as well enjoy the silence and lack of teeth in my ass. Occupy my time with something much nicer in it.
I glanced hungrily at Barrons. Sex on an Unseelie-flesh high was every bit as phenomenal as I’d thought it would be. Eating Fae makes a normal human existence seem a shadow of what life really should be. It enhances all your senses, taste, touch, sound, smell. Sex had been even more mind-blowing than usual with Barrons, each nerve exquisitely sensitive. My orgasms had gone on and on, one barely sputtering out before the next had set me on fire. Oh, yeah, eating Unseelie twice in eight days was probably a really bad idea.
I resolved to think about that in a few days when my high wore off.
Barrons’s eyes opened slowly, heavy-lidded. Lust in those ancient eyes always sparks mine, goads my inner savage. I trailed my fingers up his body, from his stomach to his jaw, savoring each ripple, each hollow. I get off on touching this barbarian, seeing him gentled before he retreats into his hard, controlled, distant shell.
He cupped my chin and brushed his thumb across my lower lip. “Jayne shot at you,” he said, executioner-soft, and I knew he could smell the inspector in the ruined store and that Jayne would be a dead man before dawn.
“Jayne stopped the men who were shooting at me,” I corrected. “A Guardian named Brody instigated it. Red hair. Probably around thirty-five, a little over six foot.” I gave him ample description to find him, should he choose to. He would choose to. “The others were following his lead. He’s the only one I consider a liability among them. He wanted to burn my store,” I said. “The rest will obey Jayne once Brody is gone.”
He smiled faintly at how calmly I spoke of a human’s pending demise. “Good to see you back.” In more ways than one, his eyes added.
I handed him the Dublin Daily. “ ‘Jada’ outed me.”
He scanned it then rose and stalked naked to the shattered counter upon which my lovely anti
que register used to sit, silver bell tinkling as I rang up orders. Whatever he was looking for wasn’t where he’d left it. He rummaged beneath wreckage then returned with another piece of stained, crumpled paper.
I smoothed it out.
The Dublin Daily
August 3 AWC
EMERGENCY ALERT!
NEW DUBLINERS BE ON GUARD!
We’ve just received confirmation that there are TWO deadly copies of the PSYCHOPATHIC, EVIL Sinsar Dubh in Ireland!
One has possessed MACKAYLA LANE. The other has possessed
DANI O’MALLEY
who now calls herself JADA. See photos below.
MACKAYLA LANE and JADA are under full, terrifying MIND CONTROL of the deadliest books of black magic that have ever existed! They CANNOT be saved.
They’re PSYCHOTIC AND DANGEROUS!
They must be KILLED to be stopped!
Contact WeCare if you have information on their whereabouts. DO NOT APPROACH THEM YOURSELF!
Help us PROTECT New Dublin!
Join WeCare today!
I frowned. “Wait, what? This doesn’t make any sense. She’s not, right?” Surely in the past few days she hadn’t released Cruce and fallen under his control.
“Not that I’m aware. Ryodan’s been keeping close tabs on her.”
“Who would print this and why?”
He cocked his head, studying me intently.
“You thought she posted the first one and I printed this in retaliation.”
He shrugged. “If someone throws you to the sharks, drag them in with you. Makes two of you against the sharks. With few exceptions, humans will unite to defeat a common predator before resuming their personal vendettas, creating multiple opportunities for escape.”
I loved his logic, clean, simple, and effective. “I probably would have just protested my innocence. Printed a Daily of my own denying it all.” Rather than turn on Dani, even if she had turned on me. I would never admit to anyone that I’d killed a Guardian. I hated myself for it, hated the idea someone may have watched me do it. I wanted a name. It’s creepy to think someone knows something terrible about you and you have no idea who they are.
“Reason never works. There’s an inherent bias in the system. The attacker has the offense, which makes the defense appear defensive, therefore guilty. If neither you nor Dani printed these, someone wants both of you targeted, on the run or dead. And with two simple pieces of paper, achieved their aim. These are posted all over the city. I saw a small mob forming outside Dublin Castle, demanding the Guardians take action.”
Which is why he’d thought it was Jayne who came after me. The castle had been commandeered after the walls fell to house Guardian garrisons and what passed as the city’s only hospital. “But why would anyone believe this? WeCare didn’t offer a shred of proof. Besides,” I groused, “their writing is positively juvenile.”
“Fear, boredom, and a sense of helplessness have bred many a witch hunt. He who controls the presses…”
“Controls the populace,” I finished. “Don’t they realize we have far bigger problems? Like the fabric of our planet being destroyed?”
“They’re blaming the black holes on you and Dani. The mob was ranting that the magic you’re using is so destructive it’s tearing the world apart.”
“And you don’t worry they might be on the way here right now?” I said tartly. To further damage my home. My hands fisted.
“I might have sidled into that mob and let it drop that I saw two young women dancing naked around a glowing book in a cemetery on the edge of town.”
I snorted. “And it worked?”
“The promise of naked women and violence has always been irresistible bait for frightened men. Still, it’s only a matter of time before they come.”
He pushed up like a graceful dark panther, muscles rippling. He didn’t look as forbidding when his body wasn’t covered with black and crimson tattoos. I rarely saw him with his skin unblemished. Beautiful naked man. My skin smelled of him. I didn’t want to shower it off but the paint had to go.
He offered his hand, pulled me to my feet. At the last moment his head fell forward and he inhaled. I smiled. We smell good to each other when we fuck. People should always smell good to each other when they fuck or they’re fucking the wrong person.
“I have work to do,” he said, and I caught the hint of regret that we couldn’t just forget the world, stay devolved. Life was so much simpler when we ignored everything but each other.
“We have work to do,” I corrected. I wasn’t sitting on the sidelines anymore.
“I. Get cleaned up. We leave within the hour.”
Before I could even open my mouth to argue, he was gone, vanishing in that fluid way of his, either too fast for me to see or blending into objects like a chameleon as he moved from one to the next.
A disembodied voice said, “I’ll ward the store against humans. You’ll be safe here until I return. Ms. Lane.”
I bristled. I’d been “Mac” to him for the past hour, deep inside his skin, taken him deep inside mine.
With two tiny words he’d erected that formal wall between us again.
“Ms. Lane, my ass,” I muttered. But he was gone.
—
Precisely one hour later we left by the back door, stepping into the alley between BB&B and Barrons’s garage. I loathed leaving the store with all the windows shot out but Barrons assured me no harm would come to it.
While showering I’d realized something I’d overlooked when reading the Dublin Daily earlier: Today was August third—exactly one year to the day I’d first set foot on Irish soil. So much had happened. So much had changed. It was still hard to process the existence-altering vagaries of my life. Now that I was visible again I wanted to talk to Mom about some of my problems, get swallowed in one of my daddy’s big bear hugs, but our family reunion would have to wait.
I shivered in the chilly damp air. My hair was still wet, blond streaked with crimson. The lemon oil I’d used to break down the spray paint had softened and separated the matted areas but hadn’t eradicated the scarlet stain. Just another bad hair day in Dublin.
My wet hair wasn’t the only reason I was shivering. An icy Hunter crouched in the back alley, restrained by symbols Barrons had etched on its wings and the back of its head. It was the same Hunter I’d ridden the day we tried to track the Sinsar Dubh and were deceived by the Book, scattered like frightened mice. The day the ancient Hunter, K’Vruck, had sailed alongside me, admonishing me for not flying on him and warming me with his “old friend” greeting.
I have an enormous sappy-sweet spot for the largest, most ancient Hunter whose name is synonymous with death and kiss so final it eradicates the very essence of the soul. No poodle girl here. Not even a pit bull. My chosen beast is the happy odd finality that is K’Vruck. I wondered where he was and if he might join us again in the sky tonight.
I shuddered at the thought. If so, I’d drive him away. I didn’t want him near Barrons. Ever.
He wasn’t my only problem in the skies. Now that I was visible, I wondered how long I had before I was smothered in noxious ghouls. It seemed like all I ever did was swap one complication for another.
This evening’s conveyance was a fifth the size of its gargantuan brother. I wondered why we weren’t taking one of Barrons’s cars; they’d certainly outrun anything else on the road. The Hunter’s leathery skin was the absence of all color, inkier than midnight in a dark grotto, swallowing what light hit it as if it had ducked into a cosmic bathroom and powdered itself with black-hole dust. Wings at rest by whatever charm Barrons used that could control such creatures, its body steamed like dry ice in the drizzly night.
I shivered again. Riding one of these great beasts was like stretching yourself across a glacier. And if you’re damp anywhere and touch it with bare skin, you stick like a tongue to a metal post on an icy morning. I’d gotten conned into accepting such a dare on a rare wintry morning in Georgia, waiting for the school
bus with friends. “I need to grab more—”
Barrons silenced me by tossing me a bundle of clothing: gloves, a scarf, and a thick, lined bomber jacket. The man is always prepared.
The Hunter chuffed irritably in my mind, Remove his marks. They chafe.
I was startled to hear its voice in my head. Eating Unseelie flesh deadens all my sidhe-seer senses until the high wears off. I’d assumed I’d be unable to mentally communicate with it.
Not you that possesses power to hear. I possess power to be heard, it rumbled. Wipe off.
I’ll consider it, I lied, tucking my gloves into my sleeves and wrapping my scarf securely around my neck.
Its amusement tickled the inside of my head, and I suddenly knew two things: it knew I was lying and the Hunter was not restrained in any way. It was pretending.
Were you ever?
Unrestrainable. All is choice. Stop your kind from shooting at us in the skies. We are benign. The marks chafe. Remove them.
It shifted its enormous hind flanks ponderously, impatience evident.
If they do nothing, why do they chafe? I asked.
Do you like those red streaks in your hair?
A snort of laughter escaped me, and Barrons gave me a look.
Vain much?
Interfere with my vision. Do not trinket us. We will trinket you and you will not like it.
I had no desire to know how a Hunter might trinket a human.
“One must mount in order to ride, Ms. Lane,” Barrons said dryly.
“I think I just demonstrated my understanding of that sequence of events back in the bookstore,” I said just as dryly. “It’s talking to me. Don’t you hear it?”
Not even I communicate with that one, the Hunter murmured in my mind. There are doors. He has none.
What do you mean?
I said.
Huh?