“Say it again,” she says, but now she’s all icy, imperious princess. “Who am I?”
No way I’m saying it again.
Ever.
My mouth opens and it says, “Mistress,” offending every goddamn fiber of my being. I think my balls actually shrivel.
She slaps me. Hard across the face.
“I’m going to kill you, you crazy motherfucking bitch,” I say tenderly. My kind doesn’t get loud when we’re about to annihilate. We go soft and gentle. See us like that: worry. She doesn’t know I’m one of the few in existence that can actually make good on that promise. She doesn’t know who or what I am.
She’ll be calling me master before she dies.
“Who am I?” she says.
I clamp my mouth shut and strain against the Fae compulsion, and still my vocal cords grit, “Mistress. ”
Oh, yeah, definitely killing her. Ten different ways, and slow.
“That’s a good boy, Lor. ”
What the hell, she knows my name?
“Now we’re really going to play,” she purrs.
8
“This town ain’t yours and this town ain’t mine”
MAC
An hour into our meeting, we’ve got more problems on the table than I knew we had. Despite the bloom on New Dublin, our city has deeper shadows in which to die than ever before.
It’s been an enormous test of self-restraint, negotiating concessions with the two Unseelie Princes that raped me; a Seelie Prince that’s been shooting me looks like he wants to; Ryodan, whom I’ve never been able to get along with for more than a few sentences of conversation—oh, wait, I can’t even do that; and the first cousin of the mobsters that put a price on my head. The Sinsar Dubh has been attempting to make its voice heard at every turn, but I pump up the volume on my seventh-grade recitation and drown it out.
A part of me wishes they’d all just stand up and battle to the death. Make it simple. Take control through bloodshed and war. I have no doubt Barrons would be the last one standing.
But humans would die, and in the Fae way of things, more princes would be born, or get transformed like Christian, and we would end up slaughtering one another all over again¸ losing more humans every time.
I’m beginning to understand why Barrons wanted this meeting. Before the walls between worlds crashed, there was a system in place to run the city, the country, the world. But when that system collapsed, it was only a matter of time before someone or something stepped in and tried to become the new system. Though Barrons and his men prefer to wield power from the shadows, they’ll step into the light long enough to reestablish the social order that best affords the existence they enjoy.
When Ryodan imparted the latest rough count of Fae and humans in Dublin, I was staggered. I had no idea how drastically our population was exploding. According to his sources, thousands more Seelie and Unseelie arrive in Dublin every day, intrigued by the news that the princes have settled here and the feeding ground is rich with humans willing to be enslaved.
The more Fae in Dublin, the more humans will follow, drawn by their power, sex, and ability to provide comfort and luxury—or at least the illusion of it—in a time of such hardship and food shortages. Our city is growing too quickly to be controlled by any one of the males at this table.
A shattered, rapidly growing world requires multiple fiefdoms to rebuild it into a unified territory before a single king or democracy can hope to take it over.
During the transition period, clever enemies work together, or there’ll be no kingdom to govern. As each male in this room believes he’s the one who will ultimately be in charge, they’re willing to play nice until one of them decides the moment is ripe for a swift and bloody coup.
At which point everything will go straight to Hell again.
It seems a rather futile and endless cycle, either way. Yet a truce offers the benefit of a period, however brief, of peace and—more importantly—the possibility that something might change during it, perhaps making it possible to tip the balance of things in human favor and get rid of all the Fae for good.
Even the one inside me.
For the moment, we concede that none of us can hold the population in check, so we’ve agreed to divide Dublin into territories and permit certain atrocities in exchange for a modicum of civility for the masses. Kat looks as miserable as I feel but there’s no other way. Not yet. We justify our heartless calls by our commitment to one day defeat all our enemies so the people can live the remainder of their days in peace and prosperity.
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We’ve become politicians.
Kat demanded the abbey be off limits to all Fae, and that Barrons and Ryodan immediately secure the perimeter with stronger wards, to which the majority agreed, five to three—then, of course, the Unseelie argued again for more Unseelie at the table so they could gain the upper hand, which, of course, the majority overruled, six to two, with R’jan on our side. The Unseelie seem unaware of what lies beneath the abbey walls. It appears the Seelie who were with us that night aren’t talking. I pray it stays that way.
Rath and Kiall insisted their lairs be off limits to us, governed by their laws and none other. Any who enter belong to them. And all may enter if they choose.
R’jan demanded we recognize him as king of the Fae, but the Unseelie Princes instantly declared war against him and he recanted. For now. The three princes are a war waiting to happen. It’s just a matter of time. Each will work tirelessly in coming weeks to pack the most Fae possible behind their claim for the throne.
The Song of Making could restore the walls between our worlds, shut them all out, and preclude possibility of war further ravaging our planet. I think I have a pretty good idea where it is. But my problem with doing anything to pursue it is twofold: the only one capable of using it is the concubine/Seelie Queen who’s missing along with the king, and I don’t dare go anywhere near the all-powerful song with the Sinsar Dubh inside me. I won’t put that final, fantastical magic in its hands.
Deep down I feel the Book stir, sniffing around the edges of my brain, trying to skim my mind.
I swiftly bury all thought of the song in one of the many padlocked boxes in my brain and resume reciting silent poetry, vowing to never think about it again until the king has removed his parasite from my body.
And the silken, sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain thrilled me, filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before …
Ryodan lobbied successfully to restore the euro as the only acceptable currency, which baffled me at first. It couldn’t be more worthless … unless every supplier of goods in the city agrees to provide for nothing but the euro. Then it becomes the only thing worth having all over again.
He argued that a unilaterally enforced currency was essential to achieving sustainable order, a point that wasn’t easy to make with the three princes, as currency is an alien concept in their society. I agree it will restore a much-needed sense of normalcy to our city’s inhabitants. I’m surprised the men are willing to give up the barter system with its immediate benefits for the chance to be king, but these are wild days and this summit attended by primal males that thrive in times of chaos.
Barrons says little. His presence says enough.
For the past twenty minutes we’ve been debating the finer nuances of how to get the money out there and reestablish it as the norm. I wasn’t surprised to learn Ryodan cleared out the city’s bank vaults in the early days right after the fall. He’s always miles ahead of everyone in matters of business.
“What of the new sidhe-seers?” Kiall suddenly demands.
New? “Nothing about the sidhe-seers,” I say instantly. “They are mine. ”
Beside me, Kat gently clears her throat.
“ ‘Ours,’ ” I amend. “We already discussed that. You stay off their land. ”
He sneers. “It is not her group that concerns us
. They are no threat compared to the other. I am surprised they have no representative at this table. ”
I glance at Kat, who looks as shocked as me. Chester’s nightclub is the pulsing heartbeat of Dublin, and if there are new sidhe-seers in town, he knows about it. “Ryodan?”
Ryodan affirms it with a silent nod.
“There’s another group of sidhe-seers in town?” Kat exclaims. “Why didn’t they come to the abbey? We’d be happy to have them. ”
“They would not be so happy to have you,” Rath mocks. “You are nothing alike. You are weak and pliable. They are steel. ”
Barrons says, “All sidhe-seers are off limits to you. ”
“Fuck you,” Kiall says. “One of them infiltrated our compound and took out thirty of my finest before we were able to stop her. I keep her in a cage, happily mindless. ” He slants a look at me. “She sucks my dick at my command with the zeal of one I knew before. ”
Barrons’s chest expands and I don’t have to look at him to know his eyes are glittering bloodred. I see the change in the princes’ faces across the table. Fury explodes in my blood so hot and hard, it hits my heart like a sledgehammer. Some days I’m made of nothing but triggers. Rape scars deep.
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Destroy them now. You know you can, my dark companion purrs. They humiliated and used you, made you feel powerless—you who possess more raw power than they could ever hope to achieve. Remind these pigs that the Fae have always been ruled by a woman.
Sure, toss me a few crimson runes, I mutter at it. I’d kill to get my hands on those again, the strange binding runes it shared with me at critical moments, believing I would never figure out that I could also use them to seal the physical Sinsar Dubh’s cover closed. Until Cruce tricked me into removing them. I knew I shouldn’t have pulled the damned things off down there in the cavern the night we sealed it on the stone slab. Or at least held onto a few for future use, rather than let Velvet sift them away.
I’d love to see if they’d also work on my inner copy somehow, but although the Sinsar Dubh goads endlessly, even saddled and rode me today, it offers me no runes or spells to use without price as it did before. A once-robbed John, it won’t remove its wallet from its trousers again until it gets the action it paid for.
Nice try, sweet thing. NOT.
I pick up with my mental chant where I left off last time, muttering the fourth, fifth, and sixth stanzas of “The Raven. ” Beneath the table, I feel Barrons’s hand move to my thigh, and in the strength of his fingers is his commitment to destroy them with me, the reminder to be patient. It cools my blood enough that I retain my impassive stare.
The Unseelie Princes hold a sidhe-seer Pri-ya. I wonder what her talent is, if they exploit it. I worry about her soul. She has no Barrons to rescue her. Inside me, the Sinsar Dubh falls silent. “Tell me about these sidhe-seers,” I say to Ryodan.
“They’re black-ops trained and militarily focused, led by a woman they seem willing to follow to death. Word is they connected after the walls fell. Some were soldiers, stationed in Iraq, others hail from Asia, skilled in martial arts. ”
“We want them all dead,” Rath growls.
Before I can say it, Kat asks, “Have you met their leader?”
Ryodan says, “We’ve been tracking her but no luck so far. They speak her name like she’s some bloody damned mystical warrior, protected by the elements. Their home was destroyed; they want a new one and intend to make it here. ”
I feel Kat’s tension. I say, “You are in charge at the abbey. She won’t take it from you. If we must enforce it, we will. ”
“I’m not so sure I’d be entirely sorry to see it go,” she murmurs.
I look at her, startled, wondering if I heard her right. She’s looking at Sean, her expression bleak. I ponder the irony that she denounced her mafia parents years ago to escape this very fate, yet now sits with us making barbarous laws in a barbarous time, enforcing them without mercy.
Black-ops trained. Mystical warrior. Lovely. Probably sporting egos the size of K’Vruck. Who knows what gifts they possess? It’s possible that one of them, like me, can sense the Sinsar Dubh and she’ll follow its siren song straight to my front door.
Distantly, I hear Ryodan and Barrons agreeing the princes may do whatever they want with any sidhe-seers who invade their walls, but those who steer clear are to be left alone.
I don’t think this city is big enough for us all.
9
“Oh, Death, you come to sting with your poison and your misery”
JADA
When she enters Chester’s, both men and women pause in conversation to turn and watch her pass. It might be the body. It might be the walk.
It’s definitely the attitude.
An enormous palace of chrome and glass, the underground club is a hot mess of humans and Fae, reeking of sex, spices, and cigarette smoke, divided into countless subclubs where anything can be obtained for the right price.
Music breaks over her in waves as she transitions from one club to the next.
She could find her own personal Jesus on the matte black cement floors where hundreds of meaty, tusked Unseelie that resemble rhinoceroses stamp the floor with hooves and indulge their taste for voluptuous women and Marilyn Manson; or do it her way, which is all she does anyway, where Sinatra croons from speakers mounted on the polished wood of a stately, old-fashioned bar presided over by three enormously fat Unseelie females with multiple breasts; or acknowledge that she is, in fact, Titanium, as Sia belts out above a mirrored dance floor that pulses with flashing neon lights, crammed with young, mostly naked men and women, attended in air and on foot by golden, sparkling Seelie.
She scans bodies and faces, seeking the one she desires: the more beautiful, the better.
She would select one of the mysterious Nine that work behind the scenes of this club, but the monster she hunts may find them too barbaric or perhaps too dangerous to take the bait. Their formidable reputation precedes them into distant lands.
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She has found mention of the Nine in millennia-old annals, tracked them into present times through paintings and photographs. She has identified six of them by name, knows a seventh only by his long silver hair and dark burning eyes. She found a very old portrait of him in Romania that astounds. She knows two of them are half brothers, with different fathers, although the world would never guess it by looking. She knows the sorrow the one she will permit to live may feel, but her ledgers must be balanced. She has been unable to cement either face or name for the remaining two into the meticulous compartments of her memory. The single time she saw all nine of them in one place, one was hooded, the other’s face too heavily painted to see.
Knowledge is power.
Kasteo, Barrons, Fade, Ryodan, Lor, Daku.
She nearly smiles at the last name. He was once a gladiator for sheer love of the game, and in another century and land, an epic samurai. She anticipates their battle second most.
Their ways are as vile as the Fae, yet two of the six names she knows are not on her list. Two of them she will permit to live.
She hears and dismisses snatches of conversation as she passes.
“Who is she?”
“Never seen her before. ”
“Fuck, the bitch is hot!”
“You don’t stand a chance, Bruegger. She’d tear you up. ”
“And I’d die a happy man. ”
“Think she’s Fae?”
“Dunno. She sure as hell moves like one. ”
The Fae she has studied, as well, dissected and assimilated what she found useful. There are many of them on her list.
But she’s not Fae. She’s human.
She moves silently through the subclubs. In her wake, a man who was foolish enough to try to grab her ass as she passed clutches a broken and bloodied hand, and howls with drunken pain and fury.
This time she does smil
e.
No one touches her except in the clash of a battle she has chosen.
High above, behind the glass balustrade that shapes a perimeter walkway into an inner courtyard for the private upper levels, she spies the perfect worm for her hook and contemplates the anomaly: humans are not permitted up there. Only the Nine and their few chosen. Yet he is both human and up there. Unattended. Stripping and tossing his clothing over a chrome railing to a delighted crowd of women below.
He is nude then and she assesses him clinically. Yes, perfect.
As she approaches the glass staircase that provides access to the levels where the Nine are rumored to maintain their residences, in addition to the owner’s office, the electronic heart of the enormous club, she processes the second anomaly: the stairs are not guarded at the bottom by two of the Nine, a minor challenge for which she was prepared. Inconceivable, were it not fact.
She would escalate to high alert, but she lives there.
Silently, without questioning her luck—luck always favors the arrow that knows its goal—she ascends the stairs.
10
“There’s a she-wolf in disguise coming out, coming out”
MAC
It’s midnight, our meeting ended hours ago, and I’m alone in the bookstore. After Kat left with Sean, Ryodan said something to Barrons about cleaning up after the Hoar Frost King, which made no sense to me since the last of the ice melted weeks ago.
Barrons left to do whatever he does when he comes back with his heart beating, eyes brilliant, fury cooled. He won’t have sex with me if he’s hungry. I have my theories about why.
I once asked him what he ate and he said gently, None of your fucking business. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t signify. He is what he is. You take it or leave it, and I’m not leaving. The man isn’t vegan. He has a toothbrush. Life goes on.
After wasting hours poring over yet another tattered, disintegrating volume we brought out of the Silvers with a title that translates roughly as The Fae Obscene, I busy myself dusting and polishing shelves and counters, then check on the weapons I’ve hidden around the store. Anything to keep from thinking about this afternoon, and the terrible thing I’ve done. The terrible things I might continue to do unless I silence the Book forever. I consider going to see Inspector Jayne, learn the location of the O’Leary family, see what their needs are and fill them, but every time I begin to ponder it, I double over with guilt and grief, too sick to my stomach to move.