A Compact was negotiated to permit both races to exist on the same planet but keep the realms separate, and the Keltar were given the duty of performing certain rituals to maintain the walls between them. Over the millennia, they performed them faithfully with few exceptions, and if they failed in some small way, they always managed to make up for it in the nick of time.
But in recent years, the rituals stopped going as expected. On those preappointed nights of the year when the Keltar were to perform their magic, some other dark magic had risen up and prevented the pledge from being reinforced, and the tithe from being fully paid. Although this other magic hadn’t been able to collapse the walls between our worlds, it had seriously weakened them. Christian’s uncles believed the walls would not hold through another incomplete ritual. The queen of the Seelie, Aoibheal, who in the past had always appeared in times of crisis, had yet to be seen, although they’d invoked her by every spell they had at their disposal.
I was riveted by the story. The thought that, for thousands of years, a clan in the Highlands of Scotland had been protecting Mankind from the Fae fascinated me. Especially if they were all like Christian: gorgeous, sexy, self-possessed. It was comforting to know there were other bloodlines out there in the world with special, unusual powers. I wasn’t alone in my awareness of what was happening to our world. I’d found someone besides Barrons who had more information than me, and he was willing to share it!
“My uncles believe something has happened to the queen,” he said, “and as her power diminishes, another’s grows. The walls continue to weaken, and if we don’t figure out something by the time the next ritual must be performed, they’ll come down. ”
“What’ll happen then?” I asked in a hushed voice. “Will the Compact be broken?”
“My uncles believe the Compact already is broken, that the walls are holding only because of the increasing tithes they keep paying. Fae magic is strange stuff. ” He paused then said tightly, “At the last rites, we had to use blood, Keltar blood, in a pagan ritual. It’s unheard of. We’ve never used blood before. Uncle Cian knew how to do it. It was dirty magic. I could feel it. What we did was wrong but it was the only thing we could do. ”
I understood that feeling. What I’d done to Jayne would never sit entirely well with me, but I’d been unable to think of an alternative. It hadn’t been dirty magic, just dirty tea. Manipulative. Ruthless. But I’ve begun to understand that you can only afford to play nice when there’s not much at stake. “And if the walls come down completely?” I reiterated my earlier question. I wanted to know just how bad things might get.
“When the Fae walked among us before, only the Seelie did. The Unseelie have been imprisoned for so long that mere whispers of myths remain. If the walls come down completely, all the Unseelie will be freed, not just the lower castes that are currently managing to get through somehow. The most powerful of the Unseelie Royal Houses will escape. ” He paused and when he spoke again, his voice was low, urgent. “Myth equates the heads of those four houses, the dark princes, with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. ”
I knew who they were: Death, Pestilence, War, and Famine. The Unseelie I’d seen so far were bad enough. I had no desire to ever encounter a royal dark Fae.
“It’ll get bad, Mac. They’ll turn our world into a living nightmare. My uncles believe the Seelie may not be able to reimprison the Unseelie if they escape. ”
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Was this why everyone was after the Sinsar Dubh? Did it contain the spells necessary to imprison the Unseelie, maybe even keep the walls from coming down in the first place? It would certainly explain why V’lane and the Queen wanted it, why Alina had wanted me to find it before the Lord Master did. No doubt if he got his hands on it, he’d hurry up and destroy it to make sure no one could ever imprison his army again. I wondered where Barrons fit in. Would he really sell it to the highest bidder?
I couldn’t dwell on the possibility of Unseelie overrunning our world. Keeping my thoughts tightly focused on my goals was the key to keeping my fears in check. “Tell me more about Alina. ” At my swift change of subject, he looked relieved, and I realized I wasn’t the only one who felt like I was charged with an impossible task. It was no wonder Christian seemed mature beyond his years. He was. He had his own fate-of-the-world issues to deal with.
“I’m sorry, Mac, but I don’t have much more to say. I tried to make friends with her. Although my uncles couldn’t translate the text, they knew where it had come from, and we needed to know how she’d gotten it. It was a photocopy of a page from an ancient book—”
“—called the Sinsar Dubh. ” The Beast, I thought, and my soul shivered.
“I wondered if you knew about it. What do you know? Do you know where it is?”
I didn’t know exactly where it was at the moment, and brandished that thought like a shield when I answered, “No,” in case he really was a walking, breathing lie detector. Because he was searching my gaze far too intently for my comfort, I added quickly, “What happened when you tried to make friends with my sister?”
“She rebuffed my efforts. She was deeply involved with someone and I got the impression he was very possessive. Didn’t like her talking to anyone. ”
“Did you ever meet him?”
“No. I caught a glimpse of him once. Fleeting. Don’t remember much, which makes me believe he was Fae. They mess with your head if they don’t want you to see them. ”
“Did you tell my sister the stuff you just told me?”
“I didn’t get the chance. ”
“If you never became friends, how did you find out she was a sidhe-seer? How did you find out about me?”
“I followed her a few times,” he said. “She was always watching things that weren’t there, studying empty spaces. I was raised on stories of sidhe-seers. My family is . . . into old myths and lore. I put two and two together. ”
“And me?”
He shrugged. “You were poking around Trinity asking about her. Besides, family’s a matter of public record, if you know where to look. ”
With all my enemies, those were records I’d like destroyed. I was grateful my parents were four thousand miles away.
“Which Dark Hallow did you have a close call with last night?” he asked casually.
“The amulet. ”
“Lie. ”
I tested him. “The scepter. ”
“Lie again. And there is no such thing. ”
“You’re right. It was the box,” I said heavily.
“I’m waiting for the truth, Mac. ”
I shrugged. “The Sinsar Dubh?” I offered, like I didn’t really mean it.
He exploded out of his chair. “What the—are you kidding me? No, no need to answer that, I know you’re not. You said you didn’t know where it was!”
“I don’t know. I saw it in passing. ”
“Here? In Dublin?”
I nodded. “It’s gone. I have no idea where it was . . . taken. ”
“Who—” Christian began.
“Hi, guys. What’s up?”
Christian’s gaze slid past me, to the door. He stiffened. “Hey, man, I didn’t hear you come in. ”
I hadn’t, either.
“How long’ve you been standing there?”
“I just opened the door. I thought I heard you in here. ”
I turned in my chair. The second time he’d spoken, I’d recognized the voice. The dreamy-eyed guy I’d seen in the museum and then run into later on the street the day I’d been interrogated by Inspector Jayne was filling the doorway with his dark, dreamy good looks. He’d told me he worked at the ALD, but I’d put him out of my mind. Like Christian, in another life, I’d have dated him in a heartbeat. Why, then, had it been Barrons I’d ended up kissing?
“Hey, beautiful girl. Fancy seeing you here. Small world, isn’t it?”
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“Hey. ” I b
lushed a little. I do that when a good-looking guy calls me beautiful. Especially now that every time I look in a mirror, I hardly recognize myself. Ironically, when your world comes completely unglued, it’s the paste of the everyday, meaningless little things that suddenly seem like real gems.
“You two know each other?” Christian looked baffled.
“We’ve run into each other a time or two,” I replied.
“They’re looking for you back at the office, Chris,” said the dreamy-eyed guy. “Elle wants to talk to you. ”
“Can’t it wait?” said Christian impatiently.
He shrugged. “She didn’t seem to think so. Something about misappropriated funds or something. I told her I’m sure it’s just a bookkeeping error, but she’s on one. ”
Christian rolled his eyes. “That woman is impossible. Will you tell her I’ll be there in five?”
“Sure, man. ” His gaze cut to me. “Is this the boyfriend you meant?”
I shook my head.
“But you have one?”
“Dozens, remember?”
He laughed. “See you around, beautiful girl. Five minutes, Chris. You know how Elle gets about you. ” Dragging a finger across his throat, he grinned and left.
Christian hurried to the door and shut it. “Okay, we’ve got to talk fast because I need this job for the time being and lately Elle seems to be looking for any reason to fire me. There’s something you need to see. ” He opened his backpack and pulled out a leather notebook, tied with knotted cord. “My uncles sent me to Dublin for a reason, Mac. Well, several, but only one immediately concerns you. I’ve been watching your employer. ”
“Barrons? Why?” What had he learned? Something that might help me sort through my own worries about who and what he was?
“My uncles are collectors. Everything they’ve been trying to collect for the past few years your employer has been going after, too. Some of it he’s gotten, some of it my uncles have gotten, and still other items have gone to a third party. ” He withdrew a file from his notebook and handed me a magazine folded open to a page. “Is that Jericho Barrons?”
A brief glance was enough. “Yes. ” He was nearly lost in the shadows, standing behind a group of men, but the flash had caught his face at just the right angle to bathe it starkly in light. Though the photo was grainy, there was no mistaking him. Barrons is unusual. He says his ancestry is Basque and Pict.
Criminals and barbarians, I’d mocked when he’d told me. He certainly looks the part.
“How old would you say he is?”
“In this picture?”
“No, now. ”
“He’s thirty. I saw it on his driver’s license. ” His birthday was coming up; on Halloween he’d be thirty-one.
“Look at the date on the magazine. ”
I flipped to the cover. The photo had been taken seventeen years ago, which meant he’d been thirteen at the time of the photograph, if the date on his driver’s license was to be believed. Obviously, it wasn’t. No thirteen-year old boy in the world looked that mature.
Christian handed me another magazine, this one featuring a gathering of wealthy socialites at a gala at a British museum. Again, Barrons was unmistakable in it, even half turned as he was from the camera. Same hair and faultlessly tailored clothing, same expression on the haughty old-world face: a mixture of boredom and predatory amusement.
I flipped to the cover. This photo had been taken forty-one years ago. I flipped back to the photo and studied it carefully, looking for anomalies. There were none. It was either Barrons, or he had a grandfather who’d been his identical twin, and if this was Barrons in the photo, he was currently seventy-one years old.
Next, Christian passed me a photocopy of a newspaper article with a faded black-and-white photo of a group of uniformed men. Barrons was the only one not wearing a uniform. As was the case in the last two photos, he was angled slightly away, as if trying to slip off before the shot could be snapped. And, as was the case in the last two photos, he didn’t look a day older or younger than he did today.
“Do you know who that is?” Christian pointed to the big, rawboned, thirtyish man in the center of the photograph.
I shook my head.
“Michael Collins. He was a famous Irish revolutionary leader. ”
“So?”
“He was killed in 1922. This picture was taken two months before he died. ”
I did some rapid math. That would mean Barrons wasn’t seventy-one, he was an extremely well preserved one hundred and fifteen. “Maybe he had a relative,” I offered, “with a strong genetic resemblance. ”
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“You don’t believe that,” he said flatly. “Why do people do that? Say things out loud they don’t even remotely believe?”
He was right. I didn’t believe it. The pictures were too identical. I’d spent enough time with Jericho Barrons that I knew the way his limbs moved, the way he stood, the expressions he wore. It was him, in all those pictures. Inside, a part of me went very still.
Barrons was old. Impossibly old. Being kept alive by Gripper possession? Was that possible? “Are there more of these?” I wondered how far back Christian’s uncles had traced him. I wanted to take these photographs with me, slap them against Barrons’ chest and demand answers, even though I knew I’d never get any.
He glanced at his watch. “Yes, but I have to go. ”
“Let me hold on to these a few days. ”
“No way. My uncles would kill me if Barrons got his hands on them. ”
I relinquished them reluctantly. I could begin research of my own, now that I knew what to look for. I wasn’t sure I needed to. What difference if Barrons were a hundred, a thousand, or several thousand? The point was: He was inhuman. The question was: How bad was whatever he really was?
“I’m leaving for Inverness tomorrow and won’t be back for a week. There are . . . things at home I need to take care of. Come and see me next Thursday. I believe you and I can help each other. ” He paused then said, “I believe we may need to help each other, Mac. I think our purposes may be tied together. ”
I nodded as we walked out, although I had my doubts. I’d been turning into a real bottom-liner lately and, regardless of how much Christian might know, or his involvement in maintaining the walls between realms, or how much I might enjoy his company, the bottom line was he was a man who couldn’t see the Fae, and that meant, in a fight, he’d be a liability, one more person I’d have to worry about keeping alive, and lately, I was having a hard enough time keeping myself alive.
I shouldered past tourists, wound my way between Rhino-boys and assorted Unseelie, and was a few blocks from the bookstore, passing one of the countless pubs that characterize Temple Bar, when I glanced in the window, and there she was.
Alina.
Sitting with a group of friends in a low-backed corner snug, tipping back a bottle of beer. Lowering it and laughing at something the guy next to her had just said.
I closed my eyes. I knew what this was, and he needed to get some new tricks. I opened them and glanced down at myself. At least I wasn’t naked. “V’lane,” I said. Did I ever have a bone to pick with him!
“MacKayla. ”
Ignoring the reflection of the tall, erotic golden creature behind my shoulder, I focused that ancient, alien, sidhe-seer place inside my brain on the illusion: Show me what is true, I demanded. The vision of Alina ruptured with the suddenness of a bubble bursting, revealing a group of boisterous rugby players toasting their latest victory.
I turned and was slammed upside the head with death-by-sex Fae.
My knees got soft, my nipples got hard, and I wanted sex on the sidewalk, sex bent over that nearby car, sex up against the wall of the pub, and who cared if my naked petunia got smashed up against the window for all to see in the process?
V’lane is a prince from one of the four Seelie Royal Houses, and
it’s difficult to look at him directly when he’s in high glamour. He’s gold and bronze, velvet and steel, and his eyes blaze with the stellar grandeur of a wintry night sky. He is so unearthly beautiful that it makes a part of my soul weep. When I look at him, I hunger for things I don’t understand. I ache to be touched by him. I’m terrified of his touch. I think sex with him might undo my essential cellular cohesion, and shatter me into fragments of a woman that could never be pieced back together again.
If V’lane were a signpost, it would read Abandon All Personal Will, Ye Who Tread Here, and while I never thought much about will back home in Ashford, here I’ve begun to think it’s all I really have to call my own.
I tried regarding him with slightly peripheral vision. It didn’t help. My clothing was painfully constricting, and I battled the overwhelming urge to remove it.
Fae princes drip such raw eroticism that it provokes a woman’s senses beyond anything she was meant to experience, turning her into an aroused animal, willing to do anything for sex. While that might sound like it promises the kinkiest escapades and most incredible orgasms of your life, Fae don’t grasp basic human concepts like death. Time has no meaning to them, they don’t need to eat or sleep, and their sexual appetite for human women is enormous, all of which leads to one inevitable outcome: A woman caught in a Fae prince’s spell usually gets fucked to death. If she survives it, she’s Pri-ya: an addict, a void of insatiable sexual need that exists for one purpose, to serve her Master—and that’s determined by whoever is currently giving her sex.
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The first few times I encountered V’lane I’d begun stripping where I stood. I was getting better at resisting, because I was catching my hand every time it moved to the hem of my sweater, before I began pulling it off over my head. Still, I wasn’t sure how long I could keep it up.
“Mute it,” I demanded.
A slow smile curved his lips. “I am muted. Whatever you feel is not coming from me. ”
“You’re lying. ” I briefly visited Christian’s charge that I was thinking of having sex with someone. V’lane was not a someone. He was a something.
“I am not. You have made it clear you will not abide my . . . sexing you up. Perhaps you are . . . how do you humans say it . . . in heat?”