Fever 5 - Shadowfever (33 page)

Barrons and I turned as one.
“Velvet told me you required my presence, MacKayla,” V’lane continued, “but he said your news was of the Book, not of our liege.” He searched my face with a coolness I hadn’t seen since I’d first met him. I supposed my method of summoning him had offended. Fae are so prickly. “Have you truly found her? Is she alive? In every spare moment, I have searched for her. It has prevented me from attending you as I wished.”
“Velvet is a Fae name?”
“His true name is unpronounceable in your tongue. Is she here?”
I nodded.
“I must see her. How does she fare?”
Barrons’ hand shot out and closed around V’lane’s throat. “You lying fuck.”
V’lane grabbed Barron’s arm with one hand, his throat with the other.
I stared, fascinated. I was so discombobulated by recent developments that I hadn’t even realized Barrons and V’lane were standing face-to-face on a crowded dance floor for what was probably the first time in all eternity—close enough to kill each other. Well, close enough for Barrons to kill V’lane. Barrons was staring at the Fae prince as if he’d finally caught a fire ant that had been torturing him for centuries while he’d lay spread-eagled on the desert, coated in honey. V’lane was glaring at Barrons as if he couldn’t believe he’d be so stupid.
“We have larger concerns than your personal grievances,” V’lane said with icy disdain. “If you cannot remove your head from your ass and see that, you deserve what will happen to your world.”
“Maybe I don’t care what happens to the world.”
V’lane’s head swiveled my way, cool appraisal in his gaze. “I have permitted you to retain your spear, MacKayla. You will not let him harm me. Kill him—”
Barrons squeezed. “I said shut up.”
“He has the fourth stone,” I reminded Barrons. “We need him.”
“Keltars!” V’lane said, staring up at the foyer. He hissed through his teeth.
“I know. Big fucking party tonight,” said Barrons.
“Where? Is that who just came in?” I said.
Barrons leaned closer to V’lane and sniffed him. His nostrils flared, as if he found the scent both repulsive and perfect for a fine, bloody filet.
“Where is she?” a man roared. The accent was Scottish, like Christian’s but thicker.
V’lane ordered, “Shut him up before his next question is, ‘Where is the queen,’ and every Unseelie in this place discovers she is here.”
Barrons moved too fast for me to see. One second, V’lane was his usual gorgeous self, then his nose was crushed and gushing blood. Barrons said, “Next time, fairy,” and was gone.
“I said, where the bloody hell is the—”
I heard a grunt, then the sound of fists and more grunts, and all hell broke loose at Chester’s.
“I doona give a bloody damn what you think. She’s our responsibility—”
“And a hell of a job you’ve done with her—”
“She’s my queen and she’s not going anywhere with—”
“—so far, losing her to the fucking Unseelie.”
“—and we’ll be taking her back to Scotland with us, where she can be watched o’er properly.”
“—a pair of inept humans, she belongs in Faery.”
“I’ll send you back to Faery, fairy, in a fucking—”
“Remember the missing stone, mongrel.”
I looked from the Scotsman, to Barrons, to V’lane, watching the three of them argue. They’d been covering the same ground with no new developments for the past five minutes. V’lane kept demanding she be turned over to him, the Scot kept insisting he was taking her back to Scotland, but I knew Barrons. He wasn’t going to let either of them have her. Not only did he trust no one, the queen of the Fae was a powerful trump card.
“How the fuck did you even know she was here?” Barrons demanded.
V’lane, whose nose was once again perfect, said, “MacKayla summoned me. As I walked up behind you, I heard you, as anyone else might have. You jeopardize her life with your carelessness.”
“Not
you
,” Barrons growled. “The Highlander.”
The Scot said, “Nearly five years past, she visited Cian in the Dreaming, telling him she would be here this eve. The queen herself ordered us to collect her, from this address on this night. We have irrefutable claim. We are the Keltar and wear the mantle of protection for the Fae. You will turn her over to us now.”
I almost laughed, but something about the two Scots made me think twice about it. They looked like they’d been traveling hard through rough terrain and hadn’t showered or shaved in days. Words like “patience” and “diplomacy” were not in their vocabulary. They thought in terms of objectives and results—and the fewer things between the two, the better. They were like Barrons: driven, focused, ruthless.
Both were shirtless and heavily tattooed—Lor and another of Barrons’ men I hadn’t seen before had made all of us strip down to clothing that couldn’t conceal a book, before permitting us access to the upper level of the club. Now the five of us stood, partially dressed, in an unfurnished glass cubicle.
The one arguing, Dageus, was all long, smooth muscle, with the fast, graceful movements of a big cat and cheetah-gold eyes. His black hair was so long it brushed his belt—not that he needed one, in hip-slimming black leather pants. He sported a cut lip and a shiner on his right cheek from the skirmish that had begun at the door and spread like a contagion through several sub-clubs. It had taken five of Barrons’ men to get things back under control. Being able to move like the wind gave them a tremendous advantage. They didn’t warn the patrons to stop fighting—they simply appeared and killed them. Once humans and Fae figured out what was happening, the outbreak of violence ended as quickly as it had begun.
The other Scot, Cian, had yet to speak a word and had escaped the brawl without a mark, but with all the red and black ink on his torso, I’m not sure I would have noticed blood. He was massive, with bunched short muscles, the kind a man gets from weight training in a gym or working off a long prison sentence. His shoulders were enormous, his stomach flat; he had piercings, one of his tattoos said JESSI. I wondered what kind of woman could make a man like him want to tattoo her name on his chest.
These were the uncles Christian had talked about, the men who’d broken into the Welshman’s castle the night Barrons and I had tried to steal the amulet, the ones who’d performed the ritual with Barrons on Halloween. They were nothing like any uncles I’d ever seen. I’d expected time-softened relatives in their late thirties or forties, but these were time-hardened men of barely thirty, with a dangerous, sexy edge. Both had an unfocused distance in their eyes, as if they’d seen things so disturbing that only by refocusing with everything slightly
out
of focus could they gaze on the world and bear it.
I wondered if my own eyes were beginning to look like that.
“One thing’s for certain: She doesna belong with you,” Dageus said to Barrons.
“How do you figure, Highlander?”
“We protect the Fae and he
is
Fae, which gives both of us greater claim than you.”
I felt someone staring at me, hard, and looked around. V’lane was watching me, eyes narrowed. So far everyone had been so busy arguing about what to do with the queen that no one had bothered asking how I’d found her or how I’d gotten her out of the prison. I suspected that was what V’lane was wondering now.
He knew the legend of the king’s Silver. He knew only two could pass through it—unless I’d serendipitously stumbled on a truth with my lie and whoever was the current queen
was
immune to the king’s magic, which I doubted. The one person the king would have wanted to protect the concubine from the most would have been the Seelie Queen. He’d barred his castle against the original, vindictive queen the day she’d come to his fortress and they’d argued. He’d forbidden any Seelie from ever entering it. I had no doubt he’d used the same spells or worse on the Silver that connected his boudoir to the concubine’s. V’lane had to be wondering if he had any idea who their queen really was, who
I
really was, or if maybe their entire history was as suspect and inaccurate as ours. Regardless, V’lane knew
something
about me wasn’t what it seemed.
Besides myself, only Christian knew the queen was really the concubine. And only I knew of this duality inside me that could be neatly explained away if I was the other half of their royal equation.
After a long, measuring moment, he gave me a tight nod.
What the hell did that mean? That for now he would keep his silence and not raise any questions that might further muddy already-muddied waters? I nodded back as if I had some clue what we were nodding about.
“You couldn’t even perform the bloody ritual to keep the walls up and you want me to trust you with the queen? And you,” Barrons turned on V’lane, who was maintaining a careful distance, “will never get her from me. As far as I’m concerned, you put her in the coffin she was found in.”
“Why don’t you ask the queen yourself?” V’lane suggested coolly. “It was not I, as she will tell you.”
“Conveniently for you, she’s not talking.”
“Is she injured?”
“How would I know? I don’t even know what you fucks are made of.” “Why would anyone put her in the Unseelie prison?” I said.
“ ’Tis a slow but certain way to kill her, lass,” Dageus said. “The Unseelie prison is the opposite of all she is and, as such, leaches her very life essence.”
“If someone wanted her dead, there are quicker ways,” I protested.
“Maybe whoever took her couldn’t get the spear or sword.”
That ruled out V’lane. He took it from me regularly, like now. Darroc did, too. Whoever had taken the queen captive had to have been powerful enough to take her but not powerful enough to get the spear or sword, two conditions that seemed mutually exclusive. Was it possible her kidnapper had a reason to want to kill her slowly?
“V’lane told me all the Seelie Princesses are dead,” I said. “There’s a Fae legend that says if all successors to the queen’s power are dead, the True Magic of their race would be forced to pass to their most powerful male. What if someone was trying to time taking possession of the
Sinsar Dubh
with killing all the female royalty, ending with Aoibheal herself, so when the queen died, he would end up with not only the power of the Unseelie King but the True Magic of the queen, making him the first patriarchal ruler of their race? Who is the most powerful male?”
All heads swiveled toward V’lane.
“What do you humans say? I have it: Oh, please,” he said drily. The look he gave me was equal parts anger and reproach. As if to say,
I’m sitting on your secrets, don’t turn on me
. “It is a legend, nothing more. I have served Aoibheal for my entire existence and I serve her now.”
“Why did you lie about her location?” Dageus demanded.
“I have been masking her absence for many human years to prevent a Fae civil war. With the princesses dead, there is no clear successor.”
Many human years? It was the second time he’d said as much, but the ramifications only now penetrated. I stared at him. He’d told me far more than just one lie. On Halloween, he’d told me he had been otherwise occupied, carrying his queen to safety. Where had he really been that night when I’d so desperately needed him? I wanted to know right now, demand answers, but there was already too much going on here, and when I interrogated him, it would be on my terms, my turf.
“And just how did they die?” Barrons said.
V’lane sighed. “They vanished when she did.” He looked at me again.
I blinked. His gaze held sorrow—and a promise that we would talk soon.
“Convenient for you, fairy.”
V’lane cut Barrons a look of disdain. “Look beyond the tip of your mortal nose. The Unseelie Princes are easily as powerful—if not more so—than I. And the Unseelie King himself is far stronger than us all. The magic would most certainly go to him, wherever he is. I have nothing to gain by harming my queen and everything to lose. You must let me have her. If she was in the Unseelie prison the entire time that she has been missing, she may be very close to death. You must permit me to take her to Faery, to regain her strength!”
“Never going to happen.”
“Then
you
will be responsible for killing our queen,” V’lane said bitterly.
“And how do I know that’s not what you’ve been after all along?”
“You despise us all. You would allow the queen to die to satisfy your own petty vengeances.”
I wanted to know what Barrons’ petty vengeances were. But I was feeling that damned duality again. What was unfolding here wasn’t remotely what anyone thought. Only I knew the truth.
This was not the queen they were fighting over. It was the concubine from hundreds of thousands of years ago, who’d somehow ended up becoming the Seelie Queen. Had the king finally gotten what he’d hoped for? Had protracted time in Faery made his beloved Fae? Had the balance that the world “listed” toward, as the dreamy-eyed guy proposed, turned a mortal into a replacement queen, as it would ultimately turn Christian into a replacement prince?
If I was the king, why didn’t that elate me? The concubine was finally Fae! I shook my head. I couldn’t think that way. It just didn’t work for me. “Mac,” I muttered. “Just be Mac.”
Barrons cut me a hard look that said,
Shelve it for later, Ms. Concubine
.
“Look, boys,” I said. Four ancient sets of eyes skewered me, and I blinked at the two Scotsmen. “Oh, you two aren’t at all what you seem to be, are you?”
“Is anyone in this room?” Barrons said irritably. “What’s your point?”
“She’s safest here,” I said succinctly.
“That’s what I’ve been saying all along,” Barrons growled. “This level is warded the same way the bookstore is. Nothing can sift in—”
V’lane hissed.
“—or out. Nothing Seelie or Unseelie can get to her. We don’t let anyone enter the room clothed. Rainey is nursing—”
“You put her in with my parents?” I said incredulously. “People are visiting naked?”
“Where else would I put her?”
“The queen of the Faery is in that glass room with my mom and dad?” My voice was rising. I didn’t care.
He shrugged. His eyes said,
Not really, and we both know that. You aren’t even from this world
.
Mine said,
I don’t give a shit who I might have been in another lifetime. I know who I am now
.
“It takes time and resources to ward a place as well as the room where Jack and Rainey are. We’re not duplicating our efforts,” he said.
“Castle Keltar was warded by the queen herself,” Dageus said. “Far from Dublin, where the
Sinsar Dubh
seems inclined to prowl, ’tis the better choice.”