The alternative was insisting you move into Chester’s.
“You tried that. On multiple occasions. You’d have had to keep me chained up forever. I’d have snuck out at every opportunity and torched Chester’s the second your back was turned.” And no doubt planted explosives beforehand to make sure it turned into a spectacular fireworks display. “I defined myself by defying you.”
Didn’t know you’d figured that out.
“I figured a lot of stuff out. I just don’t waste everyone’s time droning on and on about it like some people.”
We’ll help you rebuild the abbey.
She stiffened. She’d been enjoying their banter. She wasn’t now. “I didn’t ask for your help. I don’t need it.”
Regardless, we’ll do it. You need to be running it.
Some part of her backed away, withdrew from him, and she bade it good riddance. She’d been an octopus with tentacles outstretched, now she was a shark. Tentacles could be hacked off. No one messed with sharks. “You don’t know a damn thing about what I need.”
He spoke staccato fast and fiercely: I’ve always known what you need. Someone to rage at who’s strong enough to take all the pain and fury you have to dish out until you’ve burned it out of your system and nothing is left but a pile of ashes from which the Phoenix rises. Kid, woman, whatever the hell you are—I want to see you rise. Even if you have to hate me.
She kicked up into the slipstream and swung her sword as fast as she could, with flawless precision and all her strength. When his head separated from his body and bounced away, crashing into the wall from the force of her blow, she doubled over, puking.
Finally she straightened, wiped her mouth with her hand, and backed away, eyes closed.
It was done. It was the right thing to do, the smart thing. And doing it at that precise moment without warning had prevented unnecessary suffering. Sometimes waiting for a bad thing to happen could be just as unpleasant as the bad thing happening.
It had, also, conferred the added boon of shutting him the fuck up.
It felt like shit.
I want to see you rise.
She shook the echo of his words out of her head, backed into the frame of the door and leaned against it, waiting to stop feeling so sick. After fiddling a moment with the door handle and finding no simple push-button lock, she pulled out the cellphone Ryodan programmed, not about to use magic she’d learned Silverside to spell the door shut. Spelling anything that belonged to Jericho Barrons wasn’t something she was in a hurry to do. Knowing him, it had some subtle magic etched into it already and anything she tried would backfire or morph into something else. However, she couldn’t just leave Ryodan’s decapitated corpse behind a mere closed door for someone to stumble on. She might not know all his secrets but she’d protect the ones she did.
She sent Barrons a text. Or tried to. Her hands were trembling. She inhaled deep, held it, exhaled slow. Steady fingers danced over the keypad.
RYODAN ASKED ME TO KILL HIM SO HE COULD HEAL FASTER. SECURE YOUR STUDY.
Her screen flashed with a reply almost instantly.
All caps make it look like you’re shouting at me. Don’t. It pisses me off.
Scowling, she pulled a protein bar from her pocket and ate it in two bites. She couldn’t afford to vomit energy. Everything pissed Barrons off. He lived on the razor’s edge of eternal irritation. No doubt because he had to put up with mere mortals who thought too much when a good massacre would not only be more effective but much more fun. Leave it to Barrons to respond to such an abnormal text with a critique of her texting etiquette. She’d texted, like never before in her life. A text reached a single person. Her Dani Daily had reached the entire city.
Her fingers flew over the letters again. She omitted the puke factor. Damned if she was sticking around to clean it up. She had no clue how to turn off the caps lock. She had no clue how she’d turned it on, and mastering social etiquette didn’t compute.
HE’S DEAD AND IT’S MESSY. SECURE IT.
He replied instantly:
I’M BUSY. YOU SECURE IT. OR DON’T. IT WON’T MATTER FOR LONG ANYWAY. I HAVE THE STONES AND CHRISTIAN. GET YOUR ASS TO CHESTER’S.
She snorted as she stepped from the room and closed the door. He was right.
It did feel like being shouted at.
MAC
Rage gets me nowhere. I spin in circles of nothing, full of wild energy with no target to aim it at.
After a time—although that word means nothing to me here—I go still (another word that technically means nothing to me yet somehow does) and turn my thoughts to my captor.
Barrons said recently, You think of the Sinsar Dubh as being an actual book inside you. I doubt it’s either open or closed. Stop thinking of it so concretely.
I’d felt a glimmer of understanding at his words. You mean it’s embedded in me, inseparably, and my ethical structure is the proverbial cover? I’d replied.
The previous time the Sinsar Dubh had taken control of my body, I’d been furious at my clipped wings, my inability to do something, anything, to positively impact my world. I’d let that anger and frustration rip through me and explode out in a burst of violence.
I’d felt badass.
But maybe there’d been no “ass” in that moment at all; just a mother lode of “bad.”
Here, in this silent dark place, without distraction, I apprehend my actions on that day more clearly. I’d broken my chains of doubt and fear with an act of savagery, telling myself since the Gray Woman was one of the bad guys, destroying her made me good.
Evil, Ryodan once told me, is bad that believes it’s good.
Killing her hadn’t been the wrong thing.
It was why I’d killed her that had been wrong. While I’d told myself I was killing her to protect Dublin, the truth was, I’d done it to make myself feel better, to assuage my feelings of impotence. That it would save potential victims had only been the icing on my selfish cake.
I’ve been in Dublin for a year. Although I met Jericho Barrons shortly after I arrived, more of those twelve months were lost in Faery, or spent in the Silvers, or passed mindlessly as a woman turned Pri-ya, than had ever been spent getting to know Barrons. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten to know him. I’ve just gotten to know that I always want him around. And maybe one day I will get to know him.
Still, in those few months I spent with him on a mostly daily basis, I came to admire his system of ethics, unwavering focus, and commitment to those few people and causes he’s selected as his own.
And while part of me wants to wail—why didn’t he save me from this somehow?—another part of me, that clearer part, finally understands that this is what he was trying to get me to see all along; he couldn’t save me and he knew it. He’d told me once that fear was more than a wasted emotion, it was the ultimate set of blinders; that if I couldn’t face the truth of my reality, I could never control it, and would be subject to the wishes of anyone whose will was stronger than mine. He knew too well, from battling his own inner monster, what I’ve come to fathom only here and now.
The most critical, defining battles we wage in life, we wage alone.
Against ourselves.
It might be getting past an abusive childhood, struggling every day to regain belief in your own worth. Or being overweight and accepting that you don’t have to look like whatever the ideal woman currently is to be loved. Maybe it’s quitting drugs or giving up cigarettes. No one can do any of those things for you.
I’ve been divided all my life.
It’s time for that to stop.
The Sweeper was right in wanting to fix my brain; there can’t be two of us in here.
I didn’t ask to be a sidhe-seer. I didn’t ask to be in the wrong place at the wrong time as a fetus, and I certainly didn’t ask to be dicked with by the Seelie Queen and Unseelie King all my life.
Yet this is the war my life has been shoving me toward since my mother carried me in her womb.
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I can either be a victim—or a winner. Fuck victimhood. I don’t wear it well; it clashes with my wardrobe.
I’m ready.
Only one of us is getting out alive.
It’s going to be me.
Ten minutes south of Dublin, I park in front of my chosen lair; formerly Mallucé’s gothic playground of death, sex, and fear.
The night MacKayla first laid eyes on the enormous four-story Victorian mansion, with its acre of haphazard, perspective-defying additions, oriel windows and transoms, turrets and porticos and wrought-iron balustrades, I’d known it would one day be mine.
John Johnstone Jr., murderer of his parents, feaster upon lessers of his kind, fueled, like me, by lust, greed, desire, and supremacy; his memory serves only to remind me that my body is as weak as his was and can be destroyed in the same fashion.
I drag myself from the car, clutching the door for support, taking care to position my feet properly. The soothing darkness of night has finally descended.
I’d have arrived much sooner if the unthinkable hadn’t happened—the sun exploded in Dublin—assaulting my newborn eyes with cruel javelins of light. Not even the sunglasses I’d found in the car made it possible for me to stare into the burning glare and drive. Rather than continuing to pursue my goals, I’d been forced to pull into a thicket, cover my head with my jacket and bide time until dusk. I’d occupied those hours going over my plan, envisioning each step in exacting detail. Richly detailed thought shapes reality. I excel at thought.
My body, however, is a bitter joke. I’ve discovered MacKayla’s nerve endings are as flawed as her mind; they cause enormous discomfort, overreacting to every sensation like a flock of hysterical doves.
I was certain when I merged with her body, evicting MacKayla’s guilt-riddled consciousness from the limbs and organs, that firmly embedding my enormous, focused will in her tissue and bone would strengthen her flesh.
The opposite is true. In the same fashion Jada burns through energy and must eat constantly, I quickly exhaust the physicality I’ve appropriated. The body that houses me is unequal to my will. I’m a flame-thrower inside a Chinese lantern.
Before I became embodied, my path to supremacy was clear. It had, in fact, seemed childishly simple. Kill the three contenders for the power of the Fae race, summon and kill the Fae queen, absorb the True Magic, drink the Elixir of Life—presto, I’m immortal and unstoppable.
The theft of the spear changed everything.
It was the linchpin, the thing without which all else collapsed. For want of a motherfucking nail. My single priority is recovering the weapon. Or the sword. I don’t care which.
I close the door and lean against the car, drop my head back, stretch my mouth wide and summon my flagging energy to call my army, rouse my children. I chime in the First Language, releasing their True Names in a brittle, beautiful song of tubular bells, ice, and velvety darkness. My words are lifted by a wind eager to do my bidding and go soaring into the night sky where they fan out then streak off into a million different directions.
Come to me, I command. I am Creator/Ruler/King of yore, feel my power. Your will is mine. Come to me. We will feast and conquer.
I repeat the summons, layering my haunting dark melody into the breeze until, with the prickling of my Fae essence, I feel the amassing throng of my children rising from shallow beds in the earth or sex-and-death-perfumed bowers in abandoned houses where they hold humans captive. I feel them turning away inside Chester’s, separating from the Seelie and making for the door. Slipping from catacombs in cemeteries where they claimed lairs. They will stand guard at my lair, watchdogs from Hell while I determine what this vessel requires to function properly.
Come to me, I sing to the night, obey your king.
When I am assured my hordes are rising like the Wild Hunt, I begin the seemingly eternal walk to what will be my lair until I leave this world.
One foot.
The next.
Left foot.
Right.
Cocksucking body.
I’ve eaten as much Unseelie as my stomach will hold without bursting. Still, I weaken. I fortify my resolve with my mantra: WE ARE DESIRE, LUST, GREED, AND THE PATH WE CHOOSE TO SUPREMACY.
The towering double doors are ajar but my children will soon seal and guard them. I grab the fabric of my pants, slippery with blood and guts and brains, by the front of my thigh and hoist up one foot after the next, navigating a wide flight of stairs, stumble and crash into the doorjamb, holding it for support while I gather my energy.
The rambling house MacKayla found monstrous is lovely. She had plebeian taste. Fucking pink everywhere, until she discovered the absolution of black, hiding stains, concealing predators. Each room I pass through is a delight to my senses, fecund with the residue of worship, submission, and death. Here, humans willingly sacrificed themselves on the altars of need and loneliness for a brief glimpse of their god, bestowed only as they gasped their final breaths.
I abhor the word “need.” There are things I require, as I have decided they will benefit me. Need is a disease endemic to the human race—a bit you put into your own mouth, pass off the reins to someone else then act surprised when they ride you hard. Wake the fuck up. Broken horses get ridden. And when they’re past their prime, they don’t get put out to pasture in a serene, happy meadow, but slaughtered and sent to the glue factory. The broken have a responsibility to die and make way for the living.
When MacKayla asked Barrons why so many Unseelie gathered at Mallucé’s mansion, he’d replied, Morbidity is their oxygen, they breathe richly here. That night, I’d thought Barrons similar to me, possessing acute clarity of mind, formidable will, and unapologetic lust.
He is an embarrassment to his form, weakened by the illusions of love and self-sacrifice and no doubt countless others. One can never sell oneself a single illusion. More lies are always necessary to support the original lie.
Wasted eyes follow me as I pass: shocked, dimly curious, lustful, too drugged to approach. Mallucé’s followers linger in the house, heroin-thin and pale, nested on pallets in dark corners or sprawled in a tangle of naked limbs on low-backed velveteen divans, burning incense, playing music, shooting up, snorting back, fading out.
Stoned passive prey.
My children will have food when they arrive.
Pity I lack the energy to partake of it myself.
I seek the basement. By the time I reach the subbasement that houses the suite of rooms where J. J. Jr.—human of surprisingly refined intellect—once lived, I am crawling.
I drag myself down the dimly lit corridor on my belly for a small eternity until I reach the immense square black door belted with bands of steel. I lie on my back and shove it open with both legs.
After a time I creep inside.
After another small eternity I rotate my body and push it closed with my feet.
After still more time I push myself to my hands and knees to slide the dead bolt, then collapse hard to the floor.
I lay curled against the door.
Something is wrong, very wrong.
I summon one of my crimson runes to seal the doors.
No rune appears.
Shivering, I try again and again, but each time I endeavor to sing a rune into existence I have only an empty, slack hand, fingers curled on nothing.
My magic springs from my will, not my body. The ever-increasing weakness of my form should not affect my power.
I cease my efforts, turning inward, examining myself.
My mind, disembodied, has been eternally cognizant. Not an instant of my existence has passed without my awareness of it. I am ever vigilant, ever alert, ever plotting and planning. At all times, since the moment of my birth, I have been a superior, incessant, voracious thinking entity.
Now it feels as if my very essence is being tampered with. My apprehension of myself is growing…dim, difficult to see clearly and focus upon. Focus is power.
Has the interfering
little bitch found some way to attack me from within?
I sink inside and examine the box in which I placed her. It’s a seamless construct without void; sleek, black, cold.
I willed it into existence and believe in it—therefore it is.
My belief is driven by intellect. Hers by emotion. I place my faith in no one but myself. She places hers in everyone but herself, and that makes her susceptible to anyone with a will more focused than her own.
I posit and push. She fears and doubts.
I WIN.
She’s in a box that doesn’t really exist and believes it inescapable.
Belief is reality.
Belief is so delightfully malleable.
I giggle but nothing comes out.
I think SOMETHING IS HAPPENING TO ME! WHAT IS IT?
My eyelids are heavy and remain closed although I would prefer them open.
I think I WILL NOT LOSE CONTROL OF THIS VESSEL AGAIN!
My limbs tremble, flaccid upon the floor, then go still.
I lie, immobilized. What is befalling me? Who is interfering with my plans? Have I been…wounded in some manner…of which I’m not…aware?
Is this
Dying?
Did I do
Something wrong
To my
Body? Did.
Someone.
Poison—
JADA
When she descended into the dissonant musical battleground of Chester’s many subclubs, Jada wasn’t surprised to find the nightclub packed. The worse things got out in the streets of Dublin, the harder the party rocked inside the slick chrome and glass walls at 939 Rêvemal, where the darkest fantasy could be indulged for a price.
Pushing her way through the crowded dance floors she realized that, although it was business as usual, there was a disturbing difference in today’s clientele. There were only humans and Seelie in the many clubs. She hadn’t spotted a single Unseelie and was already halfway to the guarded stairs that granted access to the private upper levels.