I shrugged. “Long story. Tell you later. ”
“Need-to-know basis. Don’t. ” She made a retching sound.
“You get used to it,” Jayne told her. To me, he said, “I’ve been eating it since the day I asked you to feed it to me. ”
“You never came back for more. ”
“And be dependent on you? What if you weren’t around when I needed it?” He snorted. “I never let it wear off, because if I did, I wouldn’t have been able to see them to kill them to get more. Vicious cycle. Had the wife prepare it for breakfast every day. Now with the lot of them showing themselves, it’s not the problem it once was. My men eat it. Wife feeds it to our kids in sandwiches. Fire!”
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The men resumed shooting. Screams of fury filled the night sky.
The noise was deafening. When it finally stopped, I snapped, “What are you doing? You can’t kill them! You’re just pissing them off!” I could feel their anger—dark, deep, ancient. I could feel more than that, too: a cunning patience born of eternity, the unflappable certainty that they would outlive this nuisance in the streets below that dared offend. We were nothing. We were dust already, death waiting to happen. They were outraged that we had the audacity to even gaze upon them without being on our knees, worshipping, praying to them, begging for their permission to breathe.
I learned a few months ago that telepathy with Hunters goes both ways, at least for me. They can get in my head, but I can get in theirs, too. And they don’t like that one bit. Even now I could feel them both pressing at me, trying to decide what I was that made me … different. Guess I wasn’t as notoriously well known among Unseelie as I’d expected after my abduction by the LM and his Unseelie Princes.
“Good!” Jayne said. “Because they’re pissing me off. They’re in my city, and I’ll not be tolerating it. They think I’ll be making it easy for them to hover over my streets? Spy on us? Track down our survivors? We’re showing them otherwise, aren’t we, now? They’re not taking one fecking more of mine!”
He turned back to his group of fifty or so crisply uniformed and helmeted men and issued a quiet command. Four of them broke off, moved down the street, and began setting a massive gun on a tripod. Most of his men were armed with dated-looking semiautomatics, a few with tommy guns—the only ones that seemed to be having any impact on the Hunters. When Jayne shouted “Fire” again, they raised their guns in tight unison and sprayed bullets at two of the Unseelie’s most fearsome.
A smile tugged at my lips.
Jayne was deliberately provoking the Hunters.
Pissing them off because they’d pissed him off.
My smile grew. When I’d reluctantly fed this man Unseelie, I’d never have foreseen this moment. How perfect. How right. We needed him, here in the streets, seeing that those who survived continued to do so. This man would never stop serving his city and his people, even though his pay had been terminated months ago. He was police/protector to the core.
Delighted by the serendipity of it all, I laughed.
Jayne glanced at me sharply, and for a moment his grim expression was tinged by a smile. The admiration must have shown in my eyes, because he said, “It’s what we do, Ms. Lane. We’re the Garda. ”
“Feck the Garda,” one of his men shouted. “We’re the Guardians! A new force for a new world!”
“Hear, hear!” the men cried.
I nodded appreciatively. The Guardians. I liked that. “It’s good to see you, too, Jayne,” I murmured. “Especially like this. ” What an unexpected boon. The Hunters were pushing at me more insistently now. I sent the only message necessary upward and didn’t need to use one ounce of telepathy to do it.
I raised my spear, shook it threateningly. It shimmered alabaster in the light from my MacHalo. Following suit, Dani thrust her sword into the air.
The Hunters hissed and reared back with such sudden violence that the vortex caused by the flapping of their great dark wings sucked the litter on the streets into the air and lifted the lids off trash cans. Bits of debris stung my face and hands. Lids clanged into the brick buildings, bouncing from wall to wall.
We will hunt you until the end of time, sidhe-seer. We will eradicate your line.
I was pretty sure it already had been, except for me, but couldn’t have replied if I’d wanted to. I was on my knees, clutching my head. It was an awkward feat, wearing a MacHalo and holding a spear.
They’d surprised me.
These Hunters weren’t just bigger. They were something else, too. Weren’t all of them the same? When the Unseelie King had done his experiments and created his dark race, had he made variations on his themes? Were some of the same castes more deadly and powerful than others? The bastards had nearly split my skull with their threat. I hadn’t been prepared for it. I was going to have to regard every Fae I encountered, from this moment on, as a wide-open possibility, unpredictable in any but the most basic ways. It pissed me off. A knife should be a knife. How was I supposed to live in a world where a knife could be a grenade? I was going to have to make no assumptions. Ever. Expect the unexpected.
I might be on my knees outside, but I wasn’t inside. I sought that dark cave where I’d so recently been an animal. Try, you fuckers, I blasted them.
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They screamed again. I heard the pain in it, and smiled.
Trash-can lids clattered to the pavement. Debris battered my head and shoulders. The night stilled.
The Hunters were gone.
I lifted my head and watched two winged silhouettes fly past the moon. It was an eerie sight. Even more eerie, the moon had a crimson tint around the edges, like a halo of blood.
Was the juxtaposition of Fae and human realms changing them? Were the dimensions bleeding together, altering each other? What would our world be like in a few more months? A few more years?
I pushed up from my knees to find Jayne staring at my spear.
“Those are the weapons you spoke of at our tea,” he said. “The ones that can kill the Fae. ”
I inclined my head. I didn’t like the way he was staring.
“We’ve never tried to bring down one of those devil-dragons. ”
“Hunters,” I told him. Ironic and fitting that he’d singled out his Fae equivalent to harass. “They’re enforcers of Fae law. Although they’re Unseelie, they work for both courts, depending on who pays best. ”
I saw a flash of amusement in his dark eyes, then it was gone, and he was staring fixedly at my spear.
My fingers tightened around it.
“We know we can’t cage them like the others we capture. They’re too big. But with that spear, we could kill them where they fell. ”
“Cage them? You’re caging Unseelie? How?”
“Took us some time to sort it out. When you opened my eyes to what was happening, I opened my mind to the old legends. We Irish are steeped in them. I kept stumbling across lore that said the Old Ones couldn’t abide iron. I decided that if werewolves hated silver and vampires hated holy water and garlic, and those things could harm them, perhaps iron could harm a Fae. ”
“Does it?” I asked.
“To some degree. It seems to interfere with their power. Enough of it can trap and hold some of them where they are. The more pure the iron, the better. Steel doesn’t work so well. ” He slipped his closefitting helmet from his head and showed me the inside. “We coat them with iron. We lost a few good men before we learned what your so-called Hunters could do. ”
“Iron keeps the Hunters from being able to project into your head?” I’d be altering my MacHalo the moment I could get my hands on some!
“Not entirely. It dampens it, makes it survivable. We all heard what you heard. Just not as painful. But we’ve gotten pretty used to them trying to feck with us. We’re wearing iron everywhere. Around our necks, in our pockets. It’s what we make our bullets fro
m. ”
“Feckin’ brilliant!” Dani exclaimed. “Mac, we need iron!”
Jayne glanced at my spear, then at Dani’s sword. “Do you know how much good we could do with one of your weapons?” He searched my face. “It’s not like we’re looking to leave you unarmed. The two of you could share the sword. ”
“No,” Dani and I snapped at exactly the same moment. I tensed. I didn’t need to look at Dani to know she hovered on the verge of superspeed, a heartbeat from whizzing us out of there.
“Ms. Lane, we’re all in this together. ”
“Not that together. ”
“Look at us. We’re capturing hundreds of Fae a week. Locking up the ones that can’t pull that vanishing-into-thin-air trick. Now, there’s a lethal move for you,” he said bitterly.
“They call it sifting,” Dani told him.
He cursed. “Well, those sifters come back and kill my men. They either sneak in behind us or track us, like they’re playing with us. They’d think twice if they knew we had a way to kill them. You have two weapons that can. You can’t tell me that’s fair. ”
“What the feck is fair, Jayne? Is it fair that I got dragged into this to begin with?”
“We all got dragged into this,” he growled.
Touché, I thought. “We can work something out,” I offered. “We’ll kill them for you. ” The more Fae dead, the happier I’d be.
“Some of them will still get away. Unless you’re saying you’ll hunt beside us. Be there to bag the buggers the moment we take them down. ”
“I can’t. I’m hunting something else, and without it none of this will ever end. ”
His eyes narrowed. “Would that be the Book I was helping you track?”
“If I don’t find it, Jayne, we’ll never be able to drive them from our world, and I’m afraid the longer the walls are down, the more screwed up things are going to get. Maybe irrevocably. ”
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He measured me coldly. Finally he said, “I should barter with you. Demand favor for favor. But it’s not my way. I care more that people survive than I care for vengeance. You might take a lesson from that. Your Book is still in Dublin. ”
“It’s not my Book,” I hissed. When he’d called it that, my spine had iced with violent chills. As if somehow it was. Or wanted to be. Or I was having some hint of a premonition of things to come. I shook it off. So, the Sinsar Dubh was still being spotted in Dublin. That explained why so many Fae were here. We were all hunting it. I wouldn’t have thought it would be so difficult to find. It had been months since the walls had come down. Didn’t it want to be found by Unseelie? Weren’t they kin? What did it want in this city? It was a huge world out there, with countless countries and opportunities for chaos and destruction. Yet it remained in Dublin. Why?
“It took one of my men a few weeks ago on his way home to his family. Would you like to know what it did then, Ms. Lane? After it hitched a ride home to his wife, kids, and his mother?”
I kept my head perfectly still and said nothing. I wasn’t about to ask. I knew what happened when the Book took over a human. I’d seen so much carnage in the last few months that I was running out of room in my head for more gory images. “I’m sorry,” I said, knowing it wasn’t enough. I understood him wanting one of the Hallows. I could even have made a really good case for it myself, in his shoes. A kinder, gentler Mac would care. A nicer me would share.
I wasn’t, and I wouldn’t.
“It’s unfortunate there aren’t more weapons to go around,” I told him with complete sincerity, but it didn’t change a thing. I had enough to worry about, and I had plans in the works that were every bit as good or better than Jayne’s. I’d meant it when I said we could work something out. We could stop by once a week, wherever he and his men were keeping the Fae caged, and kill them all for him.
“I’d prefer it not end this way,” he said softly, and sliced air with a hand gesture. His men closed in around us.
Dani moved to stand next to me, shoulder to shoulder. I imagined that to them we looked like two young girls, huddling close, daunted by such a show of armed manpower.
“So would I,” I said just as softly. “Never try to take from me, Jayne. Never make that mistake. What’s mine is mine. You really don’t know what you’re messing with. ”
“I don’t want to ‘mess’ with you at all, Ms. Lane. I’m merely looking for a little teamwork. ”
“I’ve already got my team, Jayne. ” I looked at Dani and nodded.
Her face lit up and she grinned. “Tuck in your elbows, Mac. ”
I poked them out, the better to bruise a few ribs along the way. I got a gratifying chorus of grunts, heard guns clatter to the pavement.
They didn’t even see us go.
“We need iron, Mac,” Dani said as we moved down the street, back at normal speed again. We’d put a huge chunk of the city behind us in a matter of seconds. Her mode of transportation, nauseous as it made me, was worth its weight in gold.
I nodded absently, still mulling over the Jayne encounter. I regretted that it had ended on a note of animosity. I wanted every front in the battle for our planet united, with no cracks any Fae could slip through.
“We need more than iron. ” I was busy making a mental list to scribble in my journal later. Between high school and college, my dad had made me take a Franklin Planner course. He said it would help me get control of my life. I told him I had control of my life: sun, friends, fashion, marriage one day. That’s not enough for you, baby, he said.
I argued; he bribed. I took the course, let Daddy spend a fortune on pink flower-covered calendar pages, doodled on them until I got bored, and shelved it.
What a brat I’d been.
One of the primary tenets of the course was that highly successful leaders kept journals, morning and night, in order to stay tightly focused on their goals. I was going to be a highly successful leader.
“I don’t have a gun, Mac. I need a gun. ” Dani had turned to face me and was walking backward, bounding from foot to foot, a thousand watts of hyper energy, gobbling a candy bar. I was surprised her auburn hair wasn’t crackling with static electricity from frantic friction with the pavement.
I laughed. “All weapons are good weapons, is that it?”
“Aren’t they?”
Watching her was like watching a Ping-Pong ball bounce back and forth: zing-zing, zing-zing. I liked the way she thought. “I’ve got a plan. ”
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“You said you’d make them take us back at the abbey. Is this part of it?”
“You bet. ” I eyed her speculatively. “Just how super is your superhearing? If there was somebody really stealthy nearby, could you hear him before we stumbled on him?”
Her eyes narrowed. “How stealthy?”
“Very. ”
She gave me a suspicious look. “We talking Jericho Barrons stealthy?”
I frowned. “How do you know how stealthy he is?”
“I saw him the day he busted you out. The nine of ‘em were all the same. Oozing whatever it is he oozes. ”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Tried to wrap my brain around what she’d just said. Then, “Nine?” I said. “Eight other men like Barrons? As in exactly like him?”
“Well, they weren’t ninetuplets or nothing, but yeah. He had eight other … whatever they are with him. Big men. Bad-asses. Major show of force, breaking you out. Ro never woulda let you go. ” She was bouncing from foot to foot so rapidly, she was becoming difficult to focus on.
“I don’t remember that! How come I didn’t see them? I mean, I know I was … out of it, but—”
“He didn’t let any of ‘em near you. It was like he didn’t even want ‘em to see you. None of ‘em was human, that’s a fact. ”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “You know that? How?”
Her face was too blurred to see, but
I heard the scowl in her voice. “He grabbed me out of superspeed. Like it was no effort at all. Nothing human could do that. ”
“Barrons was able to stop you?” I said incredulously.
“Snatched me right outta the air. ”
“How could he even move fast enough to get to you in the first place?” I exclaimed. Was there anything the man couldn’t do? Most of my plans relied heavily on Dani’s superspeed.
“‘Zactly what I thought. ”
I tried to focus on her but couldn’t. It was giving me a headache. “Would you slow down?” I said, exasperated. “You’re impossible to see. ”
“Sorry,” said the smudge of long black leather coat, MacHalo lights, and luminous sword. “Happens when I get excited or upset. Pissed me off that he could do it. Hang on. ” She was visible again, tearing open another candy bar.
“So, there are eight others like Barrons. ” I tried to wrap my mind around the fact. Where had they been all this time? What were they? What was he? Another caste of Unseelie no one knew about? “You’re absolutely certain? It’s not possible they were normal men?”
“No way. They moved weird. Way weirder even than Barrons, like he’s the civilized one of the lot. It was creepy. I didn’t pick up Fae, but I sure didn’t get no human read off ‘em, either. And some of their eyes were way fecked up. Nobody wanted to get near ‘em. Sidhe-seers plastered against the walls, trying to stay as far outta their way as possible. One of ‘em had a blade to Ro’s neck. All toting Uzis, storming in there, not taking shit from nobody. You could tell they were Death walking if anybody even blinked wrong. The girls couldn’t stop talking about it. They were pissed, but … well, they were kinda fascinated, too. Shoulda seen the way those dudes looked. The way Barrons looked. Dude,” she said reverently, then glanced at me, alarmed. “I mean, man, you shoulda seen it. Don’t call me Danielle, I hate that name. ”
There were eight other … beings … like Barrons out there. I could barely deal with one. Who and what were they? Of all the things I’d learned today, this one rattled me the most. I’d considered him an anomaly. One of a kind. He wasn’t. I should have expected the unexpected.