I envisioned my brain, rummaging around in it, seeking an anomaly. I don’t know if other people see their brains like I do. Perhaps years of confinement tortured me into forging pathways I’d never have developed otherwise. Perhaps whatever Rowena did to me made me different. Regardless, I have an acute, detailed awareness of what’s inside my skull, and the ability to experience it with multiple senses. I have files and vaults and I’m constantly moving things around, optimizing functionality. You have to take care of your brain. It’s your greatest weapon.
Aha, there! A shimmer of silver, a bead of possession, nestled close to the pain center in my head. I’ve spent a lot of time working on that spot. When I used to hurt so bad from hunger, I’d mentally stuff soft cushy pillows in my stomach to absorb the acid, and cocoon the pain center in my brain with cozy, warm comforters. It passed the time more tolerably.
“Not too close to his fucking door,” Callum snapped.
“Why? He never comes through. He ain’t gonna leave.”
“Hang onto her while I set things up. Gonna be at her awhile.”
Callum left Alfie supporting me crookedly while he rummaged audibly about in a part of the arcade beyond my ability to see, preparing a place to rape me.
My eyes were unseeing anyway, turned inward as I teased at the small silvery knot spiking tendrils of control into the complex membranes inside my skull, whispering commands to my body.
It was powerful magic. Old magic. Old earth god, I was willing to bet. Perhaps whipped up with a bit of sap from a sacred tree that no longer grew, blended with minerals found deep in the soil, ground with mortar and pestle to a thin, vile poison, enhanced by arcane arts.
I had magic, too. I envisioned a single black vein of the Hunter residue beneath my skin expanding across my collarbone, encouraged it to creep up my neck, where it glided effortlessly, almost eagerly, into my brain, meeting the silvery knot, seeping into it and nullifying—
Holy hell, my head jerked!
“Jaysus, Cal, she bloody jerked!” Alfie exploded, flinching.
“No, she didn’t,” Callum scoffed. “Nothing moves after a hit from one of those darts. Not until he says so.”
“She did, too,” Alfie insisted.
I don’t know what else was said then because for a time I simply wasn’t there.
I was drifting in space, sailing between stars, tumbling head-over-heels through nebula-stained wormholes, gliding along the edges of gaseous rings encircling planets. A deep, hauntingly beautiful gonging resonated in the enormous vacuum of space around me—a technical impossibility—vibrating into my soul, expanding outward to the stars, and the stars answered. Space was a living ocean, lapping gently at the stars, planets, suns, moons, and asteroids. The sound, the vision, was so exquisite a part of me wept. It was…heaven. It was…peace. Nothing hurt, nothing was wrong, everything fit and made sense and I could stay there forever and nothing could ever touch me again.
But. I thought.
My. What was it that mattered to me?
World.
No peace for me.
I thrust away the lovely vision and returned my attention to the silvery knot, cramming it full of Eau d’Hunter.
The spell holding me motionless shattered.
I blessed the day I’d stabbed the Hunter through the heart. It had somehow gifted me a stunning, gargantuan power that I looked forward to exploring further. And learning to control. No more accidents.
“I’m telling you, she moved,” Alfie was still arguing.
I was lying on my back, on a wood pallet that bit into my spine. They’d relocated me while I drifted inside my head. Made us a “bed” of lumber and old magazines; I could smell the musty pages, old ink.
Callum and Alfie towered over me.
I slammed my hands to the floor behind my head, pushed off and vaulted to my feet in a sleek movement, startling them so badly they stumbled backward, gaping at me, slack-jawed.
“Wanna play, boys?” I purred with acid sweetness. “Because you definitely got me in a mood.”
And you are not me, the lengths that I will go to
“WHAT THE—” CALLUM BEGAN.
He never finished.
Right hand around his throat, I crushed his windpipe and watched him die. Quick, a far more merciful death than he deserved; the kindness that separated me from him.
I whirled and caught Alfie, the shorter of the two, by the back of his shirt, flung him across the room, slamming him into a wall so hard it shuddered. Then I lunged for him as he leapt for the narrow black opening a few feet to his right. This Silver leading to that hot, unknown realm was smaller, wider than the last, but the same acrid breeze gusted from it, smelling of wood smoke and blood. Like the last, this had no ornate frame, or wide black border found on Fae Silvers. The mirrors they used for travel were something different.
I snatched Alfie as he was about to plunge into the dark abyss and hurled him back into the room. He crashed into a silent, dark Pac Man upright, shattered the frame, went skidding into a pinball machine, bounced off and hit the floor. He pushed up and tried to scramble away but I kicked him in the side and dropped him back to the floor.
“On your knees, hands behind your head,” I commanded. “Don’t run again or you’re dead.”
“Y-Y-You’re gonna k-kill me anyway!” Alfie cried, clutching his ribs.
“On your knees,” I snarled.
“You killed my brother, you cunt!”
“Last chance,” I said softly, cramming more menace into a whisper than a shout.
“There’s somethin’ wrong with you, bitch!”
“You have no idea,” I agreed.
“Fuckin’ eyes of a psycho!”
“You should talk. Knees. Now.”
Trembling, casting furtive, wild-eyed glances at me, he clambered awkwardly, groaning loudly, to his hands and knees then sat back on his heels, gasping as he placed his hands behind his head. I’d kicked him a little harder than I’d realized. His glasses were broken, askew on his nose, beanie drooping. The glasses were thick with heavy black frames. Thin silver wires were exposed by one broken flange.
As he knelt, trembling with rage and fear, I caught a flash of something metallic in the dark folds of his cap and smiled faintly. Dancer might have created a similar gadget for me.
“Camera on your head, your glasses tie into it. Gives you one eighty vision.”
“Infrared,” he said sullenly.
“You saw my heat behind you.”
“He don’t send us out without tools.”
“Who?”
Alfie’s thin lips clamped together, his jaw jutted defiantly.
“Who do you work for and what is he doing? Answer me or die.”
Still, he said nothing.
“Answer me or I’ll shove your ass through that mirror with a message carved into it that says you spilled everything and I’m coming for him.”
“Fuck you will! You got no clue what you’re messing with! You can’t touch him! Nobody can! And you don’t wanna touch him! You don’t want him to even look at you!”
“Who? I won’t ask again.”
“What’cha gonna do?” he sneered. “You ain’t gonna torture me. I know your kind. Stuck up, tight-ass vigilante, saving worthless kids. Think you’re above the rest of us. Think you’re on the right side, but sweetheart, the right side is the winning side—and you ain’t on it.”
That he was right about part of what he’d said chafed. I needed information. Torture would get it. But I’ve always avoided crossing that murky line. I needed a sidekick that had no such problem. Still, a little pain wasn’t torture.
My switchblade flicked out with a small snick. “Carve. Message. Choose.”
He glanced at his brother, dead on the floor, then behind me at the dark aperture in the br
ick wall.
“You won’t make it,” I said with an icy smile. “You won’t get past me.”
Brown eyes met mine. Fury burned in them but was diluted by fear, tainted with a grim resignation. He was more afraid of his master than me.
Alfie smiled coldly back. “Then I’ll die trying.”
He did.
* * *
π
The mirror vanished the moment Alfie’s heart stopped, neat trick, that. Whatever master they served, he had formidable power. I felt the temperature in the room drop and spun instantly but I was too late. The wall was brick, the portal closed.
I kicked through faded popcorn sleeves and empty beer cans, scattering roaches, as I retrieved my sword and collected my guns, acknowledging I’d probably not have gone through it anyway.
If their “him” was the same “him” AOZ had referenced, delivering myself straight to his lair, without a plan or backup, without anyone knowing where I was going, bordered on suicidal and that’s something I’ve never been.
Still, I’d have liked time to inspect the glass.
I searched both bodies, patting them down, stripping the cameras from their beanies, hooking the unbroken pair of glasses over the neckline of my shirt for later inspection. I tucked two thin metal cases the size of wallets that contained a few dozen of their lethal quills into my jacket. In an inner pocket of their coats, I found hideous Halloween masks and rubber skeleton gloves. Of course, children thought they were Unseelie. In the dark of night, after the horrors the human race had witnessed, it was a fair assumption.
My search yielded no other particularly useful information but the evening had. I had much to mull over, cull for clues, posit theories. Theories are a fluid road map for solving a mystery and, if broached with an open mind and scrupulous attention to detail, they grant the answers you seek.
At the moment, however, I had a cruelly starved member of the Nine in my bed that might already have some of those answers.
And the blood in the corpses was cooling.
* * *
π
Once, a few weeks back, on a warm, starlit evening, I’d walked the Temple Bar District, doing nothing but enjoying myself. I need to do that every now and then. Keeps me connected to my world.
Within the confines of those protected streets, patrolled by the New Guardians and, I suspected, warded by the queen of the Fae herself, affording humans a safe haven where they might do more than merely survive, they could live, I forgot about my many responsibilities for a few hours.
I tapped a foot along with street musicians. I stopped in pubs and danced with patrons. I threw darts with a hen party, intentionally missing a lot and gushing over the bride’s picture of her dress, acutely aware my future would afford few occasions for beautiful dresses and never a wedding gown. I sipped a Guinness and grabbed a bite to eat at my favorite fish house.
Before leaving the seemingly spelled haven I stared across the street, between passing, boisterous partiers, through the glass pane of a restaurant, watching a family celebrate their daughter’s birthday with a chocolate layer cake, my mouth watering. Chocolate is one of very few foods I have an emotional reaction to.
I wondered what it would be like to have that kind of life. I couldn’t fathom it. I’m wired differently. I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it. I’d be incessantly scanning my environment, knowing someone was out there, in need, and I was eating cake. Situational awareness is instinctive for me. I can’t override it.
Back in my apartment I leaned against the wall in the foyer, stretched my legs long and crossed them at the ankles, watching the beast eat the bodies I’d hauled up four flights of stairs because the elevator in my building was on the blink again and, since no one actually lived here, I’d have to figure out how to fix it myself. I’d dragged the deeply exhausted creature out into the foyer on my comforter to feed him there. No blood, no gristle, no guts in my bed is an unbreakable rule.
The beast roused the moment he smelled the bodies, making quick work of one before moving to the next.
I stopped watching and stared out the bank of tall windows, mulling the day’s events.
When at last the beast rolled back onto the comforter, which was now bloody and meant I would have to do my version of shopping again, since no amount of bleach ever gets all the bloodstains out, I tugged him back to my bed and cleaned up the mess that remained on the foyer floor, then sanitized the kitchen of the remains of Shazam’s feast, thinking about chocolate cake the entire time.
* * *
π
Later, I stood in my bedroom with the slumbering beast and stripped, inspecting my clothes. The back of my jacket was destroyed and the butt of my jeans worn so thin I’d split them if I wore them again, so I tossed both in the trash.
I don’t shower multiple times a day unless I’m covered with blood that doesn’t come off with my clothing, but sometimes I feel the need to rinse a more intangible filth from my body.
After I dried my hair, I inspected myself in the mirror. The blackness of my skin was static with a small exception: a single obsidian vein trellised the left side of my neck and disappeared beneath my curls.
“Well, damn,” I muttered as I pulled a long-sleeved, close-fitting black shirt over my head. I tugged on the same nylon glove that had served as protection from my lethal touch earlier while pondering what to do about my neck. I couldn’t think of any reason someone might touch that six-inch expanse of my skin and I despise turtlenecks, they make me feel like I’m choking. Still, I had no guarantee that—Bloody hell, Rae always flung her arms around my neck.
I considered the thinness of the fabric of my glove, a silky, nearly transparent nylon, then rummaged in the vanity drawer, retrieved a roll of Duck Tape—don’t ask why I have it in my bathroom, my life is strange—and taped the side of my neck, deciding as thick as my hair was, it would protect anyone who touched my head.
I tugged on a pair of faded sweatpants and draped a well-worn quilt over the enormous sleeping beast. After a moment’s deliberation, I shrugged and curled up on the small amount of available mattress to catch a few hours of sleep, sword at my side.
* * *
π
I dreamed of being helpless, in a cage, and knew, even in the dreaming, the sensation of being paralyzed, about to be raped by those despicable trolls had triggered a difficult memory I keep locked in one of my highest security vaults.
I dreamed I really did pick up Rae at the abbey, and the lovely child exploded in my arms. Little girls are meant to be cherished, protected, and raised into powerful young women. Something inside me died with her, and my heart turned to a dark, ugly bit of useless stone.
I dreamed I stood at Bridget’s grave, weeping blood while black shadows rose from the earth. Then something was behind me and it was going to starve me worse than I’d ever starved in my cage, and whatever the thing was, it wanted me to say its name over and over. But I didn’t know its name.
I dreamed of the night, years ago, when Mac came to the abbey, insisting she hadn’t meant to stab the sidhe-seer who’d attacked her but the spear was in her hand, and the woman lunged and they’d met in lethal fashion. When she moved through the cluster of women and hugged me, I could feel her, smell the scent of shampoo on her hair. Life is an unavoidable accumulation of transgressions. None of us are exempt. Let them go and work harder to make miracles, she whispered against my ear, kissed my hair and vanished.
I dreamed my left forearm sprouted darkly beautiful obsidian thorns, so many it became a black-studded opera glove, lethal to the touch. Then it spread, consuming me, and I became lethal to touch. Isolated by my own skin, never again to be held or hugged or permitted any physical contact at all.
I dreamed the beast in my bed licked my shoulder, the nape of my neck. That might have been real. I didn’t feel teeth so I didn’t worry about it.
I dreamed Ryodan was bending over me, etching symbols on my forehead, my cheeks, my chest, murmuring, Ground zero, woman. Let it go, let it go. See only beauty. Know only joy.
Then I dreamed the infinite, dazzling nightscape I’d traveled when I embraced the power inside me.
Nebula-stained, nova-kissed, I drifted, eyes wide with awe and wonder, among the stars.
A dark divine intervention, you are a shining light
KAT SIPPED HER TEA as she waited for the others to join her in the parlor.
The Pheasant Room was one of her favorites at the abbey, furnished with lovely century-old black and cream velvet sofas, white ottomans embroidered with black Celtic knot patterns, gleaming black side tables, and curio cabinets of zebra ebony. Faded gray and ivory Persian rugs covered the floors. Burgundy pillows and throws dotted the chairs.
But it was the south wall of floor-to-ceiling windows opening onto the meditation garden that made the expansive room one of her favorites.
The room had drawn its name from the silk wall covering of tan and gray pheasants on an ivory background that stretched from wainscoting to acanthus-embellished crown molding. In Rowena’s day the heavy, dark, dusty drapes had been eternally drawn, protecting (or hiding as she’d hidden everything of value) their cherished heritage from the sun and prying eyes.
No more. Both the sun and the lovely, illuminating rays of the moon would, by God, shine in this abbey, if Kat herself had to shred every bloody drape in the place. There would be no darkness, no secrets within these walls.
Well, perhaps a few.
Sean had found a man who could do a paternity test once the child was born. How he’d located him, she had no idea. Those with medical training of any kind were in high demand and short supply.