He canted his shoulders back, expanding his druid essence into the Fae appendages, as he accepted—nay, welcomed—them for the first time. When the world was safe again, he might fly a velvety night sky in the Highlands, watch wolves tussle in the moonlight with their cubs, soar beside a grand eagle for a few hours, glide across a silvery loch, tumble to a soft landing in a bed of heather.
Bloody hell, he had wings!
For the first time since he’d begun to transform into something otherworldly, he felt…elation.
His wings responded, lifting slightly, fluttering as if with a sigh of pleasure, as if, with the aloofness of a cat, they’d been waiting to be noticed, stroked, appreciated. Heat raced through his body into the strong, sure sails that spread and fanned without conscious thought, the powerful muscles in his shoulders rippling smoothly as they arced high before crossing down again to tuck behind his shoulders in a position he’d never before been able to achieve. Perfectly tucked precisely where they were made to be.
Effortless.
Neither dragging nor aching.
He shook his head with a wry smile. His wings had always known instinctively how to arrange themselves but his brain had been in the way. He’d been in the way of himself. They’d been a burden because he’d thought them a burden, and now that he thought them a gift, they behaved like a gift.
He stole a glance at his companion. If he could learn to like himself and the world around him, Barrons could learn to have friends. Thanks to Dageus, the Keltar and the Nine were practically bloody married now. They’d become clan in every meaningful sense of the word. Like the Nine, the Keltar had long been insular, secretive, staying intentionally isolated. But the world had changed and neither band could afford insularity anymore. There were too many risks to them all to shun shared knowledge and power.
Christian wanted friends. He’d missed having them as a lad. God damn it, at least he could have peers.
Barrons cut him an irritated look.
“What? Don’t tell me you can actually hear what I’m thinking,” Christian snapped. He wouldn’t be surprised. Barrons and his men were bizarrely attuned to people’s slightest nuances.
“I endeavor not to,” Barrons muttered. “Sometimes you infernal creatures seem to be holding a bloody megaphone to your brains.”
“What is the god’s name?” Christian changed the subject swiftly. It would be easier to be courteous if he knew something of whom he was to address.
“Culsans. They are the keeper of doorways, of gates and passages, of the underworld itself, standing bastion at all that is liminal. When they can be stirred to bother themselves. Culsu may be with him. If so, beware her blades.”
“What blades?”
“The ones I just mentioned.”
“Why is Culsans a they?”
“You’ll see.”
“Are they hideous?” Christian braced himself for the worst.
Barrons cut him a mocking look. “No more so than they may find you.”
“Well, where are they from? How do you find these old gods?”
“For fuck’s sake, shut up.”
“What the bloody hell is wrong with trying to understand my situation? Were you this much of a pain when Mac was trying to figure things out? How did she stand you?”
“She prefers me lying down. On top of her. Frequently, behind her. You want to keep talking, Highlander?”
They made their way down the long white corridor in silence.
DELETED CHRISTIAN MACKELTAR SCENE FROM FEVERSONG
I stole a bit of Mac’s hair a while back and carry it in my wallet. Yes, Death carries a wallet. Funny the things you do to try to normalize yourself. It’s not as if anything in that wallet is worth a damn the way the world is now, but when I slip it into my jeans, I get a vague sensation of being Christian MacKeltar of the clan Keltar, who has a driver’s license and credit cards and a picture of my mother and one of me and my childhood sweetheart, Tara, building a fort down by the loch. I don’t carry Mac’s hair from sentimentality or interest in her but because with it I can sift to her location whenever, wherever, I feel like it, and keeping an eye on that woman is on my list of priorities.
I didn’t mention this to Barrons. He’s not the kind of man you tell you carry a lock of his woman’s hair, and there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that’s what she is.
Sifting to her location inside Malluce’s is simple. I touch her hair and let my mind go to that strange, cool place I now have that seems to connect to something deeper within the earth than I ever reached with my druid arts, draws upon it, becomes one with it, and I can suddenly step…sideways, in a way, because space and time no longer function the same for me once I’ve tapped into whatever it is I’m connected to now. One of these days I really want to be able to sit down and talk to a born-not-made Fae and pick its brain about what I can and can’t do. Maybe when this is all over and we get a sliver of peace.
She’s a fright, standing in the middle of an overblown, gothic nightmare of a room. Not because of what she looks like, but because I can feel some kind of dark wind inside her, and for a moment I wonder if Barrons lied to me. There’s Mac, then there’s a shadow within, crouching, so damned hungry, dark, velvety, and utterly seductive. I get a vague impression of enormous charm and charisma. Whatever lurks within her can be beguiling if it wishes. I expand my senses, trying to assess the emotional content of whatever it is, and get nothing.
Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. The thing that abides inside Barrons’s Rainbow Girl does not feel. At all. Not one ounce, not one flicker. I can’t penetrate past that. If I’d known earlier, when she approached me at the abbey, that she was inhabited by the Sinsar Dubh, I might have picked this up. But my expectations colored what I’d perceived. When you don’t expect a monster, it’s hard to see one. When you know it’s there, it becomes so visible you wonder how the bloody hell you ever missed it.
“Christian!” she exclaims, then explodes in a staccato-fast rush: “What are you doing here? Where is Barrons? Is he okay? Did I hurt anyone? What about my parents? Is Jada wearing the cuff? She has to wear the cuff! The ZEWs will get her again otherwise. She’s okay, right? I didn’t hurt her? Did I kill anyone? Who did I kill?”
I narrow my eyes, assaulted by a veritable barrage of emotion. Genuine, unless the Sinsar Dubh can fake it to perfection. I relax only slightly, unwilling to make mistakes. I proceed with extreme caution. Not getting one inch closer yet.
“Jada is fine, she’s wearing the cuff, and no, Mac, you didn’t hurt anyone. You just bloody cocooned us all.”
“But I had blood and black feathers and—”
“Tell me you’re not currently the Sinsar Dubh,” I cut her off impatiently. This is the only other test I can perform. And it may or may not be valid, depending on the power of the malevolent Book.
She stops abruptly, blinks then says, “I’m not currently the Sinsar Dubh. I think it fell asleep but you have to contain me with the stones. Now, Christian, while it’s not aware. Sift me to wherever the stones are and lock my ass down. Do it!”
It’s my turn to blink. Okay, either the Sinsar Dubh is playing a deep game because it wants the stones or it’s really Mac and she’s finally wised up.
She locks eyes with me. Tiny little dots of crimson appear in the corners then vanish. “I know I killed,” she says in a low voice. “And I get that you don’t want to tell me. I scrubbed before you came. I know what I must have done to end up that way. Please, Christian, you have to neutralize me.”
“It’s what I came for, lass.” I extend my hand. When she rushes toward me, I flinch, because I also feel a dark wind rushing at me, a chilling, icy, voracious dark wind that then slices into me even more savagely than the biting wind in the Unseelie prison, chilling my already too cool heart. But she takes my hand and hers is war
m, and she doesn’t slap any runes on me so I focus on Chester’s and blink us off into that strangely malleable liminal place the Fae can access and we’re gone.
* * *
π
When we reappear in Ryodan’s office, she says nothing at first, just stands and spins, her face lighting up as she observes Barrons, Jada, and Fade. She exhales gustily and seems to relax, like she’s taking her first deep breath in a long time.
Then she locks gazes with Barrons and says nothing for several long moments, and I somehow know they’re having an entire conversation without speaking.
Christ. The emotion I see, hell, can almost feel in the molecules of air between them—it convinces me like nothing else could that this is really Mac. I observe Barrons curiously. Does he feel? Is he capable of it? I can’t get a solid read on him but the abyss that I felt within him previously is abruptly no longer empty.
She fills it somehow. And in the filling, redefines it. And him.
Her face changes then, and she scowls. “I said, who did I kill, Barrons? Don’t lie to me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says.
“Every life matters.”
“You killed only Unseelie and a single sidhe-seer.”
“Who?” she snaps.
Barrons shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Describe her,” Jada demands.
When he does, Jada murmurs, “Margery,” to Mac.
Mac drops her head and deflates.
Barrons moves toward her and she stiffens and draws back. “Don’t touch me. You have to contain me with the stones. I think it’s asleep but I suspect it won’t be long and I have no idea what will happen then.”
“Mac,” he says softly, “I need to touch you so I can get inside—”
“No!” she snaps. “Lock me down first, then touch me if you want to.”
“I might not be able to reach you then,” he snaps back.
“You’re going to have to risk it. I know what the thing is capable of. I feel it inside me. Not right now, but I felt it when it took me. It’s…amused by suffering. It feeds on it, thrives on it, draws energy from it. It’s beyond sadistic and sick but it’s floundering right now. It’s not at its strongest. But it will be soon.” Her head whipped to Jada. “The cuff is what was keeping the ZEWs from being able to find you. Never take it off. I don’t know what the Book did to the Sweeper. It could be out there still.”
“It sent it back in time,” Jada says quickly.
“Fuck! So that part of the legend was true, it can manipulate time.” Mac explodes: “Lock me down now!”
Barrons is on her. He simply vanishes then reappears with his hands on her shoulders, as if he, too, can sift. What the fuck are the Nine? Rather, ten, now. Great, Dageus was a handful before. Now he’s out there somewhere and able to move like the Nine. If he hunts, nothing will see him coming.
They both freeze for a long moment, Mac looking up, Barrons looking down. Then she says softly, “You’ll figure something out. This won’t be permanent. Or maybe I’ll figure something out. But you have to do it. I can’t guarantee that if I kill myself, it won’t simply jump to another body. Please, Jericho, don’t let me kill anyone else. I don’t want to live with the death of people I love on my conscience. I don’t want to live with the fate of the world on it. I can’t. This is the only way and you know it.”
“Hush,” he says softly and closes his eyes.
“Jericho, don’t,” she says. “I don’t know what it might do to you. Don’t go inside me after it.”
“Fucking trust me to be able to survive.”
“I can’t carry your death,” Mac says. “It would turn me into the same kind of monster that inhabits me. Once before I was willing to destroy the world just to get you back!”
He opens his eyes and a faint smile curves his lips. “I know,” he says, dark eyes glittering.
“That is not a good thing,” she hisses.
“In my book it is.”
“Well it’s bloody well not in mine,” I growl. “You heard her. Barrons, give us the stones.” If he doesn’t, I’ll be on him in seconds, take them from him.
They ignore me. Jada stands, watching them with apparent fascination.
“Fucking try to relax, Mac,” Barrons growls. “Let go. You’ve got walls up. Drop them,” he demands. He opens his eyes, his dark gaze boring down into hers.
She locks her jaw and stares stubbornly up.
“Mac,” he says softly. Then his eyes say something to her I can’t read, but whatever it was, her lips curve with a slow smile of delight. “I thought you didn’t believe in words,” she says with a husky laugh.
“I believe in you. And sometimes you’re so obtuse I’m forced to resort to them. Let me in.”
With a soft sigh, she closes her eyes and goes limp against him, melding their bodies together.
And that’s when all hell breaks loose.
DELETED MAC/RYODAN SCENE FROM FEVERSONG:
“She kissed me. She wanted…” He trailed off.
I shot him a venomous look. “Tell me you did not have sex with Dani.”
“Of course I didn’t,” he growled.
I said indignantly, “Well, why not? What’s wrong with Dani? You sleep with everyone else.”
He gave me a blank look that turned instantly to annoyance. “You don’t get to have it both ways, Mac. You can’t be pissed at me because you think I did it then get pissed at me because I didn’t. What the fuck’s with that?”
“It’s the principle of the thing,” I said, scowling. “Dani shouldn’t be sleeping with you, at least not now. But how dare you reject my girl? She’s the best thing you could ever hope to get.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Then he said softly, “She’s a virgin.”
“Oh!” Thank God. A knot I hadn’t even been aware of in my stomach loosened. I’d been so afraid she’d had it taken from her as a child, or taken from her Silverside, or given it away as coolly and impersonally as a porn star. “Wait,” I said, scowling again, “so that’s the only reason you didn’t?”
“I had a lot of fucking reasons. I told you she was a virgin because I thought you’d want to know. Figured I wasn’t the only one worried about what might have happened Silverside. The meltdown at the abbey about Shazam made me think she might have had a child.”
I softened. “Oh. So, how did it end up between you two?” My darling Dani. She’d gotten rejected first time out of the gate. I hated that. I didn’t want her to ever be rejected. Why on earth did she have to pick Ryodan? When she’d first come back as Jada, I could have seen it. But she wasn’t that icy woman anymore, and the more she thawed, the younger she appeared. I groaned, understanding her motive. “She always said she wanted her first time to be epic. That’s why she wanted you. None of her other options were available. Barrons was out of the running and V’lane turned out to be Cruce.”
He snapped, “None of her other—wait, she wanted to give her virginity to Barrons? She said that?”
I shrugged. “She was a teenager.”
“Barrons and Dani would never work,” he said tightly.
“Nobody said they would. That would be as wrong as me and you. Ew.”
He bristled. “What the bloody hell is wrong with me?”
“And there you are,” I said. “See? You don’t want to have sex with me but it sure burns when I reject you.”
He shot me an icy look. “You didn’t reject me. I wasn’t offering. But if I felt like it, I could change your mind.”
Oh, God, men. Sometimes there was nothing else you could say.
Barrons growled low in his throat.
“Not that I want to,” Ryodan said hastily. “Or would ever want to.”
Barrons growled ag
ain.
“Christ, let’s just end this conversation,” Ryodan said tightly. “It’s going nowhere.”
“Let’s,” Barrons agreed.
“Let’s not,” I said. “How did it end with you and Dani?” I pressed, worried for her.
“I left, that’s how the fuck it ended. I got out of there as fast as I could.”
“So, you don’t know where she went?” I needed to find her. Talk to her. See if I could help with her bruised…pride or feelings or whatever she was going through now. I said to Barrons, “I’m going to sift to her and see how she is.”
Ryodan stiffened, sucking in a harsh breath. “Ah, fuck! Don’t,” he growled, turning his back to me, hands fisting at his sides.
“Don’t tell me what to—”
“Don’t sift to her. Your timing would be terrible.”
I stared at him. His back was ramrod straight and he shuddered. He turned and shot Barrons an unreadable look crammed so full of an unfathomable conversation and I desperately wanted an interpretation.
Barrons went still, closed his eyes and rubbed them.
“What’s going on?” I said softly.
Without opening his eyes, Barrons murmured, “Dani is having sex.”
My gaze whipped back to Ryodan. “You can feel that because of the brand on her neck?”
Ryodan said nothing, just stood there like he’d been turned to stone, nostrils flaring, eyes sparking crimson. His fangs extended, protruding from his mouth.
My gaze shot back to Barrons, and I was just about to speak when he said to Ryodan, “You knew when you tattooed her what it would do to you. You knew the price.”
“What price?” I demanded.
“She went straight from me to him,” Ryodan said nearly inaudibly.