Feverborn (16 page)

“It’s not the dress, Mega,” Dancer said quietly. “It’s the woman in it.”

He smiled at her and she felt herself smiling faintly back. Mega. She should correct him. How young, how naïve, she’d been all those years ago.

She’d had a crush on Dancer. The older, brilliant boygenius she’d idolized. She hadn’t known what to do with it. Hadn’t been ready for that kind of thing. She’d had so little childhood that she’d been determined to preserve what remained as long as possible. Sex was an irretrievable step into adulthood. She’d missed him in the Silvers. Had longed for his inventive, brilliant mind and way of making it seem it was the two of them against the world and that was more than enough, because they would win every battle.

She narrowed her eyes, studying him. He looked older now, especially without his glasses. He had beautiful eyes, flecked with every shade of green and blue, like a tropical sea, with thick, long dark lashes. And he was dressing differently than he used to. She was startled to realize he had a man’s body beneath his jeans and leather jacket, a man’s eyes. Perhaps he’d been dressing younger when she was young, matching her style. Perhaps her fourteen-year-old eyes simply hadn’t been able to see the parts of him she’d not been ready to deal with.

She saw them now.

Ryodan dropped the phone back into the drawer and slid it shut. “I want the two of you to gather every bit of information
you have on the anomalies and bring it by tomorrow evening.”

“Already got it,” Dancer said, waving a packet of papers. “Right here.”

“I have other things to do tonight.”

Jada looked at Ryodan but his gaze was shuttered, distant, as if they’d never spoken before Dancer had arrived.

“You said you had a current map of all the black holes,” Jada said. “I want it.”

“I’ll have copies for you tomorrow night.”

“Time is of the essence,” she said coolly. Why didn’t he want to give her the map? Because he didn’t trust she’d come back once she had it?

Dancer said, “The first hole appeared more than two months ago, Jada. They’re growing slowly. I can’t see that another day will make much of a difference. Besides, the map isn’t the most important thing. Knowing their location doesn’t tell us how to fix them. I’ve been working on some other ideas about that.”

“Out. Now,” Ryodan said flatly.

Once, she would have insisted, argued, perhaps blasted up into the slipstream and raised a ruckus to get what she wanted. Or at least put on one hell of a show trying.

Now, she simply turned for the door, refusing to glance over her shoulder, although she could feel his gaze resting heavily on her.

Still, she heard Ryodan’s voice inside her head as clearly as if he’d spoken aloud.

Change your mind, Jada. Don’t be a fool. It won’t cost
you anything. Let me be your anchor. I’ll never let you be lost again
.

She’d always hated the doors in Chester’s.

They couldn’t be kicked open and they couldn’t be slammed shut.

I
lied to Mac.

Fortunately she isn’t capable of detecting lies as well as the Highlander/Fae prince/druid/lie detector that I am.

Besides, she’d been so obsessed with digging up her sister’s empty grave that she’d scarcely paid any attention to my small theft. She’d shrugged off the momentary tug she felt at her scalp, embracing my glib excuse and forgetting it.

I know precisely how to sift to a human’s location.

I need part of their physical person in my hand to track them, parting space like so many vines hanging from trees obscuring my vision as I isolate the hunted.

Such as the strands of paint-stained blond hair in the pocket of my jeans.

I know where her loyalties lie.

With Barrons.

With all of the Nine. Far more so than with me and my clan.

I don’t judge her for that. I understand clan and she’s chosen hers. Clan is necessary in times like these.

And so I played performing pony to get close enough to yank out a few long strands of her hair, then sat at the bar and sipped my whiskey, patiently waiting for a sign that something was going on in the bowels of Chester’s, wagering she was indeed in the innermost part of their circle.

Easier than trying to get some of
that
bastard’s hair, which, frankly, I’m not sure would even work. Although I can truth-detect with the Nine, if I try to apprehend any one of them as a singular entity, they simply aren’t there.

I know death intimately. I know life as well. The Nine register as neither. An hour ago, when Mac had risen, with Barrons and Ryodan flanking her, a severe expression on her face, I’d known something was afoot.

I’d sifted to follow her at a distance, wanting access but desiring not to be seen. I’d cloaked myself in glamour, spreading like moss along the walls, moss she’d touched, causing me to shiver. Moss that had peeled from the walls and coalesced once they entered the room at the far end of the corridor, re-forming as the Unseelie prince/Highlander that I am.

I’d stalked every inch of the dungeon, endless and sprawling. Empty. Utterly empty but for one corridor.

A false corridor.

A wall where in truth there was none. I could feel the invalidity of that stone barricade in every atom of my body.

Still, I couldn’t penetrate it. The bastard had powerful wards, designed to repel both human and Fae, and I was both, therefore blocked.

I’d planned to storm the room into which they vanished,
thinking perhaps my uncle’s body was in that small cell and they were trying to perform some bizarre ritual with his potent druid remains.

It, too, was warded against Fae and human.

I stood outside, waiting for them to emerge with the long patience of an immortal.

Finally, the narrow door swung open.

“Where the fuck is my uncle?” I demanded.

Ryodan said coolly, “I already answered your questions, Highlander. As I’m sure you’ve seen, there’s nothing down here.”

I sifted his answer into grains: truth or lie. It told me nothing and made me wonder if somehow the prick had known I’d come hunting and deliberately left parts of the dungeon unguarded, wagering I wouldn’t be able to detect the illusionary wall in the north corridor. “Your false wall. Tear it down. Then I’ll believe you,” I said.

Ryodan’s eyes briefly flickered, and I knew I was right. For some reason, my uncle’s body was behind that wall.

“Tear it down,” I told him, “or I’ll destroy every inch of this bloody nightclub, killing everyone within.” I summoned the elements, drew them to me, beckoned like a lover, exhaled long and slow, and ice crackled down the walls, erupted on the floor, glazing the stone with thick, slippery black. “Then I’ll bring thunder and fire from the sky and burn this place to ash.”

Ryodan vanished.

I’d expected no less.

I sifted out, reappearing down the hall. Keeping a careful
distance between us. The Nine can kill the Fae. No idea how. No plans to ever let one of them close enough to find out.

Ryodan vanished again.

I sifted and reappeared standing near Mac, with one arm around her throat. She twisted and kicked and growled. She was strong but I’m stronger. She smelled like me, and I knew she’d been eating my race again. I might have squeezed her neck a bit harder than I should have, but bloody hell, her cannibalism needs to stop.

“Let go of me!” she cried.

Barrons vanished.

I sifted out with a struggling Mac, reappeared in the air above them, wings open. “We can do this all bloody night,” I said. One more sift and I’d vacate the club for a while. Let them stew in the juice of knowing I had Mac with me, beyond their reach.

Barrons snarled.

“You won’t hurt Mac,” Ryodan said.

“But I
will
destroy your club.”

I dropped lightly to my feet and re-created what I’d watched Cruce do down in the cavern the night we’d interred the
Sinsar Dubh
. I’d felt his spell, absorbed the taste and texture of it, his methods. Gone seeking information in the king’s old library. I’d only recently embraced my power. Now, I used it to erect an impenetrable wall around Mac and me. One I’d seen them fail repeatedly to breach, standing in the cavern below the abbey.

“Aye, you could kill me, if you could catch me,” I acknowledged the unspoken threat blazing in both their dark
gazes. “But you’ll never touch me.” I smiled faintly and without mirth.

Nor, likely, would anyone else. I hadn’t risked fucking since the cliffs, fucking I needed like I needed to breathe. But I had no taste for killing another woman. Such things threatened my Highlander’s heart, blackened it.

“Barrons,” Mac said urgently, “forge an alliance. We don’t want a war with Christian. You’ve pushed his back to the wall. The two of you would do no less than he’s doing, under the same circumstances.”

“Alliance, my ass,” Ryodan clipped.

“She’s right,” I said. “We can be enemies or allies. Choose carefully.”

Barrons looked at Ryodan. “He could be useful.”

I snorted. “There will be many conditions if I agree to be allies. The first is that you return my uncle’s remains.”

In my arms, Mac sighed and went supple. “I told you that you should
tell
him,” she said to Ryodan.

I angled my head to look at her. “Tell me what?”

“I told them they should trust you. That you had a right to know.”

Truth. I relaxed my grip on her and she straightened in my arms but didn’t try to break free.

“You wouldn’t have done what you did,” Mac said to Ryodan pointedly, “if you hadn’t been willing to live with the essential makeup of the one you did it to for a very long time. That, more than anything, is a testament to what you think of the Keltar clan. Trust Christian. Make him an ally, not an enemy. We have more than enough enemies out there already.”

Ryodan looked at Mac for a long moment then smiled faintly. “Ah, Mac, sometimes you do surprise me.”

“I take that as one hell of a compliment,” she said dryly. “My point is, yes, you can keep trying to kick Christian’s ass. Yes, you could hunt him and, if one day you catch him, kill him. You could all stalk around for a small eternity being the testosterone-laden brutes you all sometimes are.”

Barrons and Ryodan shot her a nearly identical look of disgruntlement, and I laughed softly.

She ignored them. “But consider the power he has. Do you really want that turned against us? You, Ryodan, more than most, have the ability to clear a logical path through dense emotions. Think about the potential if you become allies. Think about the grand waste if you become enemies. Three incredibly powerful men stand in this corridor. If you want to brawl, make an alliance,
then
beat the shit out of each other. With limits. No killing. Ever.”

Ryodan growled, “You fucking Highlanders. I knew the moment I laid eyes on you that you’d be trouble.”

“Friend or foe?” I said.

Ryodan stared at me, unmoving for a long moment. Finally, “There are times I could use a sifter,” he allowed.

“You think I would let you that close to me?” I snorted.

“For you to take someone like Dancer or Jada to inspect various places.”

I inclined my head. That was easy enough. “There are times I may need assistance as well.”

“Such as the cliff we just dragged your ass off of,” Ryodan said flatly.

“See how well you’ve been working together already?” Mac said brightly.

“You will never speak of what you learn tonight,” Barrons said.

“I won’t agree to that,” I said.

“Then destroy my club,” Ryodan said coldly. “And I, and all my men, will hunt you until the end of time. Enemy or ally, Highlander. We’d make stupendous ones, either way.”

“Pledge your alliance to me. Tell me you will never try to kill me. Say it,” I demanded. So I could take fair measure of it. These were men of honor, in the same way I was. Corrupted as we are, there must be a solid core or we become the villains. If Ryodan spoke and it rang true, he would adhere to the letter of the law he’d chosen. As would I.

“I can’t guarantee I can make that claim sound like truth,” Ryodan warned. “There’s a part of me that obeys no one and nothing. And if you focus on that part, no words of mine will ever sound like truth to you.”

“Then we’ll be enemies. I suggest you convince me.”

Ryodan glanced at Barrons and they exchanged a long look. Then Ryodan glanced away as if consummately chafed. “We are allies,” he said.

“And we will protect each other and fight together against common foes. Say it.”

He repeated it coolly.

I waited.

He looked at me, I at him. I wasn’t asking. He knew what I wanted.

“And we will never turn on each other.” His words dripped ice. It didn’t matter. He’d said them.

I looked at Barrons, who then repeated the same. Both of their voices held the knell of a sacred pledge. Smacked of truth.

Sauntering close to the walls I’d thrown up, locking gazes with me, Ryodan said with silky menace, “And we will guard each other’s secrets as our own.”

Fucker, I thought. But I knew he’d not seal the alliance without it. And I knew we’d be at an impasse forever if I didn’t. Truth was, I preferred them as allies, not enemies. The Unseelie sure as hell didn’t have my back.

Barrons echoed it.

“Now you, Mac,” I said.

She looked at me, startled, but repeated the entire oath.

I said it with her. All the way through. Right down to guarding each other’s secrets as our own. Then I withdrew a blade and cut my wrist.

Barrons and Ryodan exchanged another of those inscrutable glances.

“Blood,” I demanded. “Yours with mine. It’s a pact ancient and binding, made to an Unseelie prince.”

“He’s one demanding fuck,” Ryodan murmured to Barrons.

Barrons said to me, “Magic doesn’t bind us.”

“I’ve heard some does,” I said. I’d caught wind of Lor getting chained up by the Unseelie princess in Ryodan’s office.

Barrons gave me a dark-edged smile that disturbed me more than a little. “Have you any bloody idea what you’re doing, Highlander?”

“I’ve no doubt sharing blood with the two of you will
screw with me in ways unimaginable and uncounted. Nevertheless, we’re doing it.” I dropped my walls and released Mac. Moved forward slowly.

The four of us came together in the middle of the corridor, meeting warily.

Only when each of us had smears of all of our blood mixed together on our arms, above an open vein, Mac, too—and she was a bit of a challenge, as quickly as she kept healing—did I relax.

I could see the magic of our sworn oath shimmering on the air around us. Performed properly, by a high druid, oaths have enormous power. It wasn’t just the Unseelie blood in me they should worry about.

Barrons was at Mac’s side, shooting me a killing look that said clearly,
Never threaten my woman again
.

Those two. Christ.

“Come.” Ryodan turned and walked away.

I followed him to the north corridor, my wings canted up behind me, so not to have my feathers serve as a bloody broom and attract every bit of dust and slosh of ice on the floor.

At the wall that wasn’t a wall but had been as impenetrable as those of the Unseelie prison, Ryodan stopped and pressed his hands to the air, as if there were indeed a surface there. He murmured softly, touching various places, then traced runes in the air.

A corridor was revealed before us.

From the far end, terrible sounds echoed.

I stiffened. What the bloody hell was down there? But I held my tongue and trod in silence, boots echoing on the stone floors, barely audible above the din.

Ryodan stopped outside a cell, one with a small window and bars in the door. The baying became deafening then abruptly ceased.

I moved forward to join him, wondering what the bloody hell they were doing with my uncle’s body. Had they fed it to some creature, thinking it might assuage torture beyond imagining? In olden days, the blood and flesh of a druid was considered sacred, reputed to have enormous healing properties, especially the heart.

“Think before you react,” Ryodan warned, stepping aside so I could look in.

I looked.

I blinked and stared.

I shivered and drew thunder from the sky without even thinking. Far above me, it rolled and lightning crashed, followed by screams and something enormous falling, exploding into rubble. I knew it to be a concrete chunk of Chester’s ceiling far above, in one of the many subclubs.

“I said bloody
think
before you react! If you intend to be allies, get a goddamn grip on yourself,” Ryodan snarled. “And you
will
fix that later.”

I turned slowly from the door. Feeling carved of marble, as I once had in the icy prison. Feeling a storm brewing in me, a storm that could rip and crack and tear asunder.

But Ryodan was right. I had to think before I reacted.
With my power, I always have to think first. I won’t become wanton destruction like my brothers, my dead brothers who will no doubt rise again, inside some other tortured human male. I made that choice on the cliff, dying over and over, carved it into the flesh of my Highlander-druid heart. The heart that I’d refused to let freeze and decay to blackened Unseelie flesh. A heart I’d kept beating with force of will and memory of love. In large part because of the one who lay shuddering beyond the bars of that small window.