Cursing whoever had done this to him, I scooped up a handful of the bloody meat and leaned in. My hand was inches from his face when I realized I was using my dominant, dangerous left hand and yanked it back in horror. I dropped the food into the bowl, scraped meat off my palm, scrubbed the blood from my hand on my jeans, stuck my killing hand in my back pocket then scooped again with my right.
“Don’t bite my hand off,” I said sternly as I drizzled more blood on his muzzle. I’d seen what those deadly fangs could do in the heat of battle. I needed at least one good hand.
He still didn’t move. I’d just begun to contemplate how I might force apart his mandibles and feed him with only one hand when he twitched weakly and licked the blood with a long black tongue.
I dropped the beef back into the bowl and scooped up only blood. He could barely lick; he certainly couldn’t chew. I couldn’t imagine the formidable strength of will he possessed to manage to shatter my door in his condition.
I scooped and repeated again and again as he lapped weakly.
By the tenth cupped handful of blood he was licking with a whisper of animation and a murmur of life flickered in his crimson eyes. By the twentieth fistful the bowl was empty, but the beast was deeply exhausted from his meager effort.
Still, when he dropped his head to the floor this time, it met the tile more gently.
“I’ll be back with more,” I promised as I hurried back to the kitchen.
* * *
π
Two hours later I’d rehung my door on its frame, fortifying it with drill, screws, and the addition of two leafs from the dining table that had never been used, and the beast was unconscious in my bed, a limp puddle of black skin and bones against a white fitted sheet.
I’d gotten three bowls of blood into him and was going to have to head out to raid my other flats. The butcher wasn’t open on Tuesdays, and breaking in would shatter the fragile trust we’d attained. He makes no effort to hide how disturbing he finds my frequent purchases and I don’t explain.
I couldn’t bear to leave the beast passed out in the foyer with his ribs jutting into the floor so I’d hefted the unconscious creature onto a comforter and lugged him to my bedroom. Though starved, his hide was glossy black velvet, his body warm, and I felt a solid though infrequent pulse in his leg.
I can lift a staggering amount of weight, but not even I can haul nine feet of limp beast in an upward direction with a single hand (two hands would have been a breeze), so I dragged my mattress down to the floor and rolled the beast onto it. Then I tucked the comforter around his body, burning with questions. What was going on? What villain was powerful enough to capture one of the Nine and contain him, and why starve him to death? How had he escaped?
I stared at him a long moment, releasing a pent breath I felt like I’d been holding for two long years. Then I inhaled a deep, enormous breath that felt like the first to fully expand my lungs for an equal amount of time. Sheep are social by nature. Deprived of sheep companionship they’ll flock with dogs, goats, cows, whatever’s available.
As will I.
But this was my kind of company. And I was bloody well keeping it.
There was no way he was dying on me. Sure, he’d come back—but where would he go? I highly doubted he’d return to me. The Nine are irritating like that, master of their own sea, they chart their course and don’t consult.
I sleeved, gloved, and weaponed up, then glided out into the night, hoping to kill two birds with one stone before returning to Sanctuary.
Chronic town, posters torn, reaping wheel
NIGHT IN DUBLIN BEYOND the TBD, or Temple Bar District, is a graveyard: solitary, eerie, and silent.
No people walk these sidewalks, there’s no blat of angry horns, no screech of tires in the streets. Few in Dublin have a car. Fewer still live on this side of the river, which lends the empty alleys and lanes the disturbingly surreal ambience of an abandoned movie set. Most of the population clusters on the south side of the river, clinging to the normalcy of rebuilding the city and reporting to various jobs as if they don’t live in the midst of invaders with astronomical power that would delight in erasing us from the face of our own planet.
Without Ryodan and the rest of the Nine who are feared even by the Fae, only I stand between the imperious, immortal Court of Seasons and what they want. Their desires are as bottomless as they are ancient, and I’ve been neutered by Mac.
The Fae are blatantly contemptuous of mankind. They see us as puny and inconsequential, marching from birth to death in the blink of an eye. They slake their twisted desires in our world, with no one to fear.
Not. Even. Me.
For Mac, I’ve turned my back on them, forced myself to pretend they don’t exist. I’ve never been inside Elyreum—not once. I watched it being built, hands fisted, jaw clenched, and did nothing. When queues of sheep spool around the blocks waiting to get in, I detour around them, don’t spare them a glance.
If I did, I’d be in trouble. I’d see their pending deaths and my wires would get crossed and sparks would fly because that’s what happens when my wires get crossed, and I’d end up starting a war all by myself. Knowing my luck, Mac would have just negotiated peace and I’d be the one who blew it all.
So, like a good little soldier (who doesn’t have a single ounce of meaningful backup) I fist my hands and Kevlar my heart and give it a wide berth. I focus my efforts on the differences I can make in this world, while staying alive. Dead, I’m no good to anyone.
I figured out a long time ago that if enough sifting Fae came after me, I could lose. If they’ve figured that out, too, they’ve accepted my truce. Perhaps they also realize that if they killed me, Mac, and many of the Nine, would rain down hell on their race. We exist in a chilly, volatile détente.
I choke on it some days. It takes me to a dark place. At night I hunt with that darkness. But I know this fact: if Mac fails to gain the Light Court’s loyalty, they will come for my sword. It’s likely only a few weeks have passed in Faery. Likely they’re still playing nice with each other, feeling her out, trying to decide how much of the power the ancient queen passed her that she’s figured out how to use, and how far she’s willing to take it.
I know another fact, and holy hell I’d like to talk to Mac about it.
To govern a cruel race, one must be cruel.
I hope Barrons’s Rainbow Girl can be cruel. It comes easier to me, but we weren’t raised the same. Mac grew up drenched in love and approval, waltzing through rainbow-colored days.
Objectively, I entertain the possibility that if the Fae killed me, she’d learn to be cruel instantly. You have to consider all the cards you have to play when the fate of your world is at stake.
I spotted two of my three arsonists lurking in an alley on the north bank of the River Liffey as I headed for another of my northside flats to get more blood for the beast.
My body an adrenaline-infused weapon, I glided silently near, a shadow on their heels, swiftly revising my plan into one that would take out three birds, not two, with a single stone tonight: find out what they were up to; test my theory about my arm on one of them and, if it still blew him up through my clothing, take the other as food for the beast. If their deeds were as villainous as I suspected, I’d kill them anyway. No point in wasting blood.
I pegged the men as brothers, one a few inches taller than the other, moving with the same shambling gait, cut from identical genetic cloth with brown hair, the saggy, bloated skin of lifelong drinkers, mirror-image blunt features, and shifty, cunning eyes behind glasses. I know those eyes. They’re the eyes of frightened, small men who serve a dark master to stay alive, taking delight in the torment of others because each obscene task they perform is a way of convincing themselves they’re exempt: they chose to be predator not prey.
Was their master on the other side of that slim dark mirr
or? Might he be the “him” AOZ had threatened me with?
I’m not a predator. Nor am I prey. I’m the thing that crouches in the shadowy places between the two, native to no land but my own.
“We can’t go back empty-handed.” The shorter one sounded worried as he adjusted a slouchy, rolled beanie on his head.
I was an invisible wind on the salt-kissed breeze behind them, half into freeze-frame, but not in the slipstream. I’d spent a lot of time analyzing how Ryodan moved and had achieved a degree of his ability to melt into his surroundings. It took intense mental effort. I had to keep myself partially in an alternate way of moving, and partially not. It was like compressing myself to fit in a doorway, making myself no wider than a few inches, but occasionally part of me popped on one side or the other if I was startled by something or lost focus. I’d been getting better at it, though, working with Fallon, our young chameleon, determined to learn from her.
“Not tonight,” the other agreed with a curse. “He wants an even dozen. Told all of us to come back with no less. How the fuck are we supposed to manage that? We’re not bloody miracle workers! He’s got so many of us in this city, we’re stepping all over each other’s turf!”
I assessed them but discerned no sign of weapons. Perhaps they had a knife concealed somewhere, but most people didn’t walk these streets without a gun. I had a Glock tucked in my waistband, my PPQ in an inside hip holster on my right.
“Yah, it’s bullshit. My back still hurts from last night, and I swear I sprained my shoulder,” his companion complained. “Fuckin’ fat-ass people. Where do they even find enough food to be fat?”
His brother laughed, a thin, cruel sound, as he tipped a flask back and swigged. “No shit, right? Well, they don’t stay that way long.” He guffawed again but it died swiftly and he shuddered, shoving the flask and his hands deep into the pockets of his coat.
I narrowed my eyes, pondering that comment. They didn’t stay fat. Was it possible whoever they worked for had been holding the beast in my flat? But what was the point in starving people and/or animals to death?
“He needs to cut us some slack for it being so hard! They’re afraid now and not going out at night. We took too many. He’s gotta let us move again,” the shorter of the two complained.
“Never gonna happen, Alfie. Some bloody reason, he wants us here.”
“Fuckin’ bastard! How’s a man supposed to do his job with his hands tied?”
“Fuckin’ just like the world was before. Average guys like us is the ones doing all the hard work!”
It went on like that for a while, as I tailed them. Bitching about the world as if they were the good guys, badly abused by everyone, and how terrible it was they were being taken for granted and inconvenienced.
I swallowed the bile of irritation so many times I was about to vomit it when suddenly one of them whirled and I felt a tiny piercing pain in my left breast, just above my nipple.
I stiffened.
The poison hit my blood instantly.
Honey, I’ll rise up from the dead, I do it all the time
AT LEAST NOW I knew why they weren’t carrying.
Expectations. They trip you up every time. I’d scanned them for the usual, human weapons, not some kind of…tiny dart? I stared dazedly down at the dark, two-inch quill protruding from my left breast as I kicked up into the slipstream.
I went down instead, crashing to the pavement on my knees, foaming at the mouth.
My body was going numb. I couldn’t even persuade my hand to reach for a gun. Bloody hell, they’d complained about weight—was that because they were paralyzing and dragging people off somewhere? Were these men the reason so many adults had gone missing lately, the cause of the orphans in our city? Then they came back and bullied the children for the sheer, nasty fun of it? But why did kids end up thinking Fae took their parents? These were average, human men.
My mouth worked but nothing came out. I couldn’t feel my breasts or my stomach. My hips were tingling, fading.
“Stupid cunt didn’t think we knew you were back there.” The taller of the two tapped his beanie. “Fooled you,” he smirked and leered down at me as the drug took effect. “Damn,” he raked a gaze over me, “Alfie, get a load of that sword.” Thick, grimy fingers clenched in anticipation.
Alfie moved to join him. “What kind of woman carries—aw, shit, Callum, you know who we got ourselves here?” He laughed. “We caught us a bona fide vigilante. Bitch that keeps taking those kids, stealing our fun.”
Callum’s eyes narrowed, sharpening. “Well, we ain’t taking her to him.”
Lust has many faces. Some of them are ugly. I tried to push up from the pavement but my arms were noodles, my legs beyond central nervous system control.
“Nah, we’ll take her to him after,” Alfie said. “We can’t be wasting bodies like that. We don’t want to end up on one of his other crews, like the excavators.” He paled.
“If there’s enough of the bitch left to take,” Callum conceded. “But I get the sword. I hear it’s got some kinda special powers.” He bent and tugged my sword from the sheath across my back, tucked it beneath his arm then kicked me viciously in the ribs, shoving me from my fetal side-curl onto my back. Then he patted me down and stripped both guns from my body, tucking them in his own waistband. “Goddamn,” he breathed, eyes narrowing further. He reached down and plucked the quill from my chest then closed his hand on my breast and squeezed, hard.
I was screaming inside. Frozen, unable to stop him or spew a single of the many threats on my tongue. The toxin they’d used had magical properties—it was taking me way too fast; my insane metabolism burns off normal toxins—and I’d bet it was given to them by whomever they worked for. But how had they seen me following them? He’d touched his beanie when he said he’d fooled me.
Callum relinquished my breast with a sneer. “You want some of this, bitch?” He grabbed his crotch and laughed. “Don’t worry, bitch, you’re gonna get plenty. More than you know what to do with.” He turned and walked away, ordering over his shoulder, “Bring it. But don’t damage the goods. Much. Let’s get it off the street, enjoy it somewhere nice and private-like.”
Alfie whined, “Why do I always have to do all the work?”
Grab my left hand, grab my left hand, I willed silently.
“ ’Cause you’re younger and stupider, that’s why.”
Grunting, Alfie turned, bent, and grabbed my right hand with his left and began dragging me down the sidewalk on my back. I employed one of Shazam’s tricks—made myself heavier. I used to do it when I was a kid. I have no idea how it works, I just know it does. Kat’s daughter, Rae, often does it to me, especially if I’m trying to pick her up to put her down for a nap. I needed him to grab my left hand, too, see if my killing touch worked through fabric.
He made it a dozen paces before snapping, “Bugger, the bitch is heavy!” He stopped, reached behind him and grabbed my left hand with his right and resumed trudging.
My theory had been tested: only bare skin to bare skin was deadly. One goal down.
“Hey, Cal,” Alfie called excitedly to Callum, “maybe she makes up for not getting more. We could say it took us all night to capture her ’cause she’s some kinda superhero. That’d give us plenty of time to have fun with her first.”
Callum was silent a moment. “Dunno. Maybe if we add in the sword. But I ain’t sure the bitch’s worth giving it up.”
“The fuck she ain’t, look at the tits on her. We don’t get many like this. Bet she’s red all over, got the fire down below, you know? Jaysus, you can see it in her eyes. Give him the sword and tell ’im it’s got some kinda magic, thought he’d want it more. You know he thinks we’re stupid and eager to please. C’mon, let’s take her back to the arcade.”
Another silence, then Callum said, “But we bust ass and bag his dozen tomo
rrow. I don’t want to get on his bad side.”
“All he’s got is bad sides.”
“Hustle it. ’Spect I might take all night with this one.”
“I get my turn,” Alfie protested. “You ain’t the only one got needs.”
“Your turn’ll last about as long as your dick, while I blink once.”
As they devolved into juvenile bickering about the size of their genitalia, and speculative attributes of mine, all I could think was they’d done this before. How many of the people they’d abducted were women? How many paralyzed, helpless women had they raped?
Callum and Alfie were going to die tonight.
* * *
π
They dragged me four city blocks before Callum finally came back to help Alfie haul my boneless body up a steep flight of stairs, into an abandoned office building that housed several businesses on the first floor.
The back of my biker jacket was no doubt shredded but I didn’t think my back was. Yet. I had enough scars and was proud of each one, but scars from getting stupidly ambushed and being dragged were not something I wanted to sport. I’d been off my game, brooding in a corner of my mind about Bridget, worried about Shazam and the beast in my flat. I’d been as stupid as my prey.
I’d pondered two things while being dragged, staring up at the clear, starlit skies, unable to close my eyes: Where exactly was the paralysis spell inside me, and how would events unfold? Would they undress me, or only the necessary parts? How far down my chest had the blackness beneath my skin spread? Would I blow them up if they touched my bare breast without my consent? I liked that thought. Problem was, it would only take care of one of them. The other might take my sword and vanish, leaving me lying there paralyzed.
As they half walked, half dragged me through a door into a retro-eighties-style arcade, I searched deeper for the magic that had given my central nervous system orders to stop functioning properly. Spells that entered the bloodstream invariably latched onto some part of the brain, pressuring and reshaping it. But where was the bloody thing and how did I neutralize it?