“It seems we have an impasse,” AOZ said with silky menace. “Two of us don’t require sleep. You do.” He folded his arms over his chest. “It’s only a matter of time and we’ve an infinity of it. Once you’ve wearied, one of us will take the sword. Or you may choose your successor.”
I glanced at Jayne and knew instantly he wasn’t willing to wait that long. He was already changing, no longer concealing his power, but allowing the facade he’d adopted in order to shield me drop away infinitesimal bit by bit, permitting me time to cave before he turned the full, mind-numbing beauty and horror of a Prince of the Court of Seasons on me.
I shivered. Fae princes are sexual beyond human tolerance. They can instill desire in us, amplify it, feed off it, and throw it back at us a thousand times more potent than it began. It’s too much for us. It chars a woman down to ash inside her own mind, leaving nothing but a willing slave.
I might have run Jayne through with the sword—if he hadn’t already begun letting his glamour fall. Now, if I were to lunge for him, he’d simply blast me with the full strength of it, and I’d be on the floor with no thought left of killing him in my smashed mind.
“You wouldn’t,” I said icily.
“I’m sorry, Dani, but I don’t dare let it fall into their hands. This isn’t personal.”
He’d said the same thing to me years ago when he left me lying in that trash-filled street. “Spell check,” I growled, “when you do something to a person, it’s personal. That’s the funny thing about us persons.” I laid down my mental grid and kicked up into the slipstream.
Nothing happened.
I sighed. Extreme emotion and extreme arousal can short out my sidhe-seer powers, and it always happens at the worst possible times. I’d been working on the extreme emotion flaw and had made progress with it. It wasn’t quite as easy to master the other fault: I had to get aroused to work on it and…well, that hadn’t happened in a while. I cast rapidly about for another option, finding only one. It was a long shot.
“Give it to me now,” AOZ commanded, “and I’ll kill him with it. The Faerie permit only slaves to live and demand worship. We aren’t and don’t.”
As Jayne’s glamour continued to fall by slow degrees—still allowing me time to hand it over willingly—I glanced down to where both of my hands were wrapped tightly around the hilt of my sword. I shuddered as his inhuman sexuality began nudging the edges of my mind, looking for a sweet spot, an easy way in. He was trying to do as little damage as possible. For the moment.
Shivering violently, teeth chattering, I ground out, “Y-You’re w-w-willing to sh-shatter my m-mind for it?” What do you think your queen will do to you? my eyes blazed. I felt tears slip from them as I met his gaze, and didn’t need a mirror to know I was weeping blood.
He said sadly, “Ah, Dani, she will most certainly kill me. But she will have the sword. I’m willing to die to protect our race and yours from these vermin.”
He’d said “our race,” and “yours.” There it was. I knew it. His allegiance was to the Fae, not us. I closed my eyes, grinding my teeth together against the cruel teeth of power now tearing aggressively into the edges of my mind. When I was younger, I experienced a Fae prince’s compulsion twice. And survived. I was older and wiser now.
I took my long shot, focused on the ice in my hand. I welcomed it, beckoned it to spread throughout my body, course through my veins with absolutely no idea what I was embracing. In a battle for your life, your sanity, your race, the weapon you have is the one you use.
I felt a sudden prick of pins and needles through my entire body, a buzzing deep in my flesh as if my limbs were waking up from a long time of being numb. My skin cooled and shivered on my bones, feeling strangely elastic and supple. Blood thunder crashed in my head, slamming against the confines of my skull, as whatever the Hunter had left beneath my skin responded.
And flexed.
And grew.
A wave of dizziness took me and I nearly stumbled as sudden stars exploded behind my eyes and I had a fleeting glimpse of a vast, nebula-drenched nightscape superimposed in the air in front of me. Then it was gone and the inside of my head felt calm and cool and silent as the deepest reaches of space.
I didn’t have time to analyze it. Didn’t think. Just opened my eyes and flung my left hand at Inspector Jayne.
The prince sifted out a mere fraction of a second before the bolt of pale blue lightning exploded in the precise spot he’d been standing. The crackling energy struck the south wall of the room, blowing it apart from floor to ceiling. Plaster exploded, wood splintered, and bricks tumbled away, leaving a gaping hole where the wall had been.
My dresser listed dangerously on the edge then plunged four floors to the street below.
Snarling, I whipped my gaze to AOZ.
He dematerialized instantly into a cloud of murky green fog that compacted, narrowed down to a tight stream, and shot out through the opening blasted in the room.
I stood there a moment, leveling my breath, waiting, while the energy surging through my arm ebbed, until at last it was gone. My legs felt like noodles and my hands were trembling.
So much for my warding abilities. They’d failed to keep out both old god and Fae. Push come to shove, I might end up having to sleep on the heavily warded private residence levels of Chester’s, and I so didn’t want to do that. Then again, I had no idea if they were warded against gods.
I pushed the sleeve of my tee up and inspected myself. My arm was black all the way up to my shoulder, with thin tentacles of dark veins spreading across my left collarbone.
I let the sleeve drop and looked out over my bed into the pale morning beyond where a sea of rooftops stretched, and farther out, the whitecaps of a slate gray ocean. A heavy drizzle had begun to fall, and a sudden breeze gusted rain in, soaking my fluffy white comforter.
I rolled my eyes. My bedroom had been through hell in the past few hours.
But every rain cloud really did have a silver lining.
At least it didn’t smell so bad anymore.
When I was nine years old, Rowena told me a dangerous caste of Fae had infiltrated our city. Slender, diaphanous, beautiful, with a cloud of gossamer hair and dainty features, they were capable of slipping inside a human, and taking over their limbs and lives completely.
Once they assumed a human “skin,” they were no longer detectable to sidhe-seers and, thus camouflaged, vanished forever beyond our reach to prey endlessly upon our race.
This made them a most deadly threat to our order, she told me in a hushed voice, who could possess her charges at the abbey at any time; in fact, she confided, they had.
But—and there was always a but with the old bitch—she had a special charm that she, and she alone as Grand Mistress of sidhe-seers, could employ to see inside a person to the despicable, life-stealing Fae within.
At nine, nothing seemed far-fetched to me. I’d fully expected to find the world beyond my cage as densely populated by superheroes and villains as my world on the telly.
For nearly a year Rowena steered me down the corridors of our abbey as she inspected her girls, guided me out into the streets and alleys and businesses, where we hunted the dastardly villains, a secret team of two tasked with a great, secret mission that made me feel important and good.
And when she’d identify a Gripper with the charm that never worked for me, we’d return to her office at the abbey where, with great gravity and ceremony, she’d place the luminous Sword of Light across my upturned palms and command me to save our order, perhaps even our world.
She taught me to be quick and stealthy about it. She told me how and where to stab and slice and kill. No one suspects a child, not even when they carry a sword. Most thought it a toy. I rarely needed to employ extreme velocity to complete my mission. It was easy to get close. Adults fret over lost, crying children.
Do whatever you must to save our world: no deceit or ploy unjust, she’d taught me. The end justifies the means.
I’ve come to understand the means define you.
Although they are exceedingly rare, Grippers exist.
That wasn’t a lie.
There is, however, no charm that allows anyone to see them.
I took twenty-three lives that year and I don’t know why. Mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, I carved holes in their families, shattering their hearts and their worlds. Perhaps they crossed her in business dealings. Perhaps they looked at her wrong at the post office. Regardless, none of them had been possessed. In one of her journals that I didn’t find until I was older, chronicling her own greatness with chilling narcissism, Rowena had penned: “The child was sent to Me to address my grievances and right those wrongs done Me, controlled by a penurious toy I purchased from a street vendor.”
I don’t know why she stopped either. Perhaps there were only twenty-three names on her most-hated list. Perhaps so many murders by sword garnered too much attention from the Garda and she’d not wanted me caught and placed behind bars. Though she’d instructed me to hide the corpses, many were eventually found. The universe has a way of betraying those secrets we endeavor to hold near.
The day I learned what I’d done, I decided there were only three courses of action open to me.
Kill myself because I was a monster, too.
Live the rest of my life hating myself, unable to ever atone, consumed by a heart of darkness that would cast no light into a world that badly needed some.
Or lock the past up in a box with those other murders and carry a heart—as pure as it had once been—into the present, determined to do better, inscribing the Latin motto on the tatters of my soul: Actus me invito factus non est meus actus. Acts done by my body against my will are not my acts.
I knew each of my victim’s names and was able to locate most of their families.
I protect them still.
High voltage, the unforgettable sound
I PARKED MY MOTORCYCLE IN front of the abbey, grabbed the backpack that held a change of clothing for later, and loped into the front entrance of the ancient fortress wearing ripped jeans, boots, and a white tank top that did nothing to conceal what was wrong with my arm. I wasn’t going to hide whatever was happening to me; isolated soldiers are a sniper’s favorite target. My sword was slung over my back, knives in my boots, but in deference to the children on the estate, I carry no guns inside those walls. I can’t bear the thought of an innocent coming to harm as a result of my carelessness.
I love Arlington Abbey.
With accommodations for a thousand sidhe-seers, the fortress is riddled with secret passages behind bookcases and fireplaces, has dozens of concealed nooks and cubbies, and has always held an air of irresistible mystery to me.
From the meditation pavilion hemmed by shaped topiary that legend claims once lived and breathed, protecting the abbey, to the elaborate maze that spans seven acres near the lake, it was once a badly run motherhouse for women trained to be reclusive, cowed, and uncertain.
Things have changed. We train, we fight, we get dirty and bloody and push each other harder all the time. The abbey’s filled to capacity, with a waiting list a mile long to get in.
Entry-level sidhe-seers, Initiates can spend anywhere from two to ten years in training as they learn to use their gifts. Those gifts we’ve been seeing, since the Song of Making restored magic to our world, are unlike anything we’ve encountered before.
Apprentices, who’ve achieved a level of proficiency sufficient to pass a series of difficult tests, will spend another few years in additional training. Some might never graduate to the final level: the Adepts, those of us who’ve harnessed our gifts and serve as trainers for the Initiates and Apprentices.
Then there’s the Shedon, the council of popularly elected sidhe-seers that govern the abbey.
The motherhouse is no longer a tyrannical prison of coercion and tightly controlled, skewed press. In my youth I’d blasted through those corridors at full throttle, feared and distrusted by everyone around me. I used to hate that, seeing the fear. It made me feel alone. But I’ve galvanized my truths. Life is funny, it makes you choose sides all the time. Fearless people are outsiders. The fearful have many places to belong. They’re the fluffy white sheep that stick close to shepherds, let others feed, fatten, and shear them, and spiral in a tight, panicked knot if a wolf draws near.
When I’m surrounded by that herd, I can’t understand the conversation that usually goes something like this: I’m scared, what do you think we should do? I dunno, what do you think we should do? I dunno, let’s ask somebody else.
Panic ensues. Baaaaa.
I’m the dingy gray sheep, the one no one wants to shear and everyone forgets to feed, the one that gets pissed off and, with plumes of steam shooting from my ears, rather than lazing in the sun under the care of a master I have no guarantee knows how to survive any better than me, goes trotting off alone to hunt for wolf-slaying weapons.
I’d rather be fearless and criticized than fearful and approved of.
That’s the bloody choice sometimes.
Still, I’ve learned in recent years to bleach my coat, the better to blend. And when they aren’t looking, I’m as gray as I need to be. It’s easier on all of us that way. I think that’s what Ryodan does, too, concealing his inner beast with casual elegance, behind cool gray eyes. I miss him. When I let myself think about him. Which is never.
Today I stalked down vaulted stone corridors to the library, offering greetings and returning smiles. Though many of the women stared at my arm, it was without censure, only a lifting of brows and curious meeting of my eyes.
When Shazam hadn’t returned by the time I awakened from a quick nap on the sofa, I’d packed up and headed out to start my day. He has a way of finding me wherever I go and I suspect he’s often perched above me in a higher dimension, manifesting when he feels like it. I understand the need for time alone and don’t normally pressure him but after last night’s escapade, once he appeared again, I planned to do everything in my power to keep him engaged and by my side.
“Hey, Kat,” I said as I entered the library.
The tall, athletic brunette glanced up from a computer screen and swept me with a level gray gaze. “Och, and it’s grown.”
Kat was part of the Shedon, her sidhe-seer gift a dangerously sensitive empathy. Possessing the ability to read the emotions of those around her at their truest level, I’ve found her incapable of lying.
“What do you feel? Read me.” I dropped over the back of a chair and sat down across the table from her.
She stared at me a long moment, eyes drifting out of focus, then said lightly, “You feel like you always do.”
“And how’s that?”
“Like Dani. Light and energy, a bubbling sense of humor, an exacting sense of personal responsibility and justice, and a heart the size of Ireland.” She was silent a moment then added, “And many, many private vaults that never open to see the light of day.”
My eyes narrowed. “Can you get in them?”
“No.”
“That means you’ve tried.”
“I have.”
An unwilling smile tugged at my lips as I thought both “How dare you?” and “Good for you!” She’d changed, toughened, moved beyond courtesy to necessity. We live in hard times. You can’t keep your blades sharp by polishing them with a chamois, you have to sharpen them on stone.
“The day I get in, I’ll tell you. And the moment I do, I’ll back out without looking around. I’ve no desire to know secrets you’ve no desire to tell me, Dani. But the vaults of your mind are the greatest challenge I’ve found.”
And would forever remain that challenge. She wouldn’t get in. I restructure my brain regularly and meticu
lously, planting decoys everywhere. Not even Ryodan got very far past the surface. I changed the subject. “I had a visitor last night. Actually two.” Nine if you counted the Pallas cats, which I didn’t and hoped never to smell again. As I filled her in on what happened, she listened intently.
“The old gods,” she finally murmured, “at war with the Fae? Bloody hell. Does it never end?”
“Mommy said a bad word,” came a breathless, little-girl voice from behind Kat. Her daughter Rae peeked around her shoulder and I crinkled my nose at her and smiled. Usually, when I first see the dazzling-ray-of-sunshine child, I catch her up in my arms, kick us both up into the slipstream, and twirl her around in a dizzying starry explosion of light because I live to hear her unfettered belly laugh, but from the way she was peeping at me, I could tell she was in a hide-and-seek mood today. I’d chase her later, up and down halls, perhaps into the maze behind the abbey.
“Shazzy?” she asked hopefully, luminous dark eyes rounding with excitement.
“On a walkabout,” I said, and her face fell. Rae adored Shazam and the feeling was mutual. When, a few years back, Kat suddenly had a baby, seemingly out of nowhere, we’d all been shocked. We had no idea who the father was, although many believed it was her childhood love, Sean O’Bannion, who, like Christian and Inspector Jayne, had begun transforming into a Fae prince when the original princes were killed.
One of the many unpredictable things about the Fae race was, on the rare occasion the princes or princesses were killed, the nearest raw matter, mortal or Fae, that met some mysterious requirement was selected to begin a painful transformation. Mac told me the Unseelie King said the Fae were like starfish and would always regrow essential parts. Lesser Fae weren’t considered essential. The High Court was.