Silver Skin (A Cold Iron Novel) (13 page)

“This is nice,” she said, listening to Miach’s heartbeat.

“After we get back from Finn’s, I’ll show you something nicer,” he said.

“Will I be able to go home then?” she asked. She missed her apartment, wanted desperately to sleep in her own bed.

“If we discover who has been summoning you, yes. If not, you’ll have to stay at my house.”

“I miss my bed,” she said.

“I’ll teach you to like mine,” he said. “You’ll soon form quite an attachment to it.”

“Promises, promises,” she sighed.

He laughed. “After we’ve removed the memory eater, if we’re unable to determine who your magical persecutor is, then I can go to your apartment and ward it so you can spend some time there. With Elada or myself standing guard, of course.”

“I suppose that’s better than living out of an overnight bag.”

“I’m not seeing the need for a large number of wardrobe changes in my bedroom,” said Miach, with amusement.

“Not even the fur boots? I seem to remember you said you liked those.”

Despite the iron poisoning, his body told her that he definitely liked those, but he didn’t act on his desires, and Helene managed to doze for a quarter of an hour in his arms, until he nudged her and told her it was time to go.

It was fully dark by the time they left the house and climbed into the Range Rover, which now idled in Deirdre’s cobbled drive with Elada at the wheel and Conn in the passenger seat.

“Liam and Nial are on their way,” said Elada. “And Angus and Kermit and the boys.”

Miach nodded.

“Where are we meeting him?” asked Helene.

“Sully’s,” said Miach.

“I don’t like it,” said Elada.

“We aren’t supposed to like it,” Miach replied.

“What’s Sully’s?” asked Helene.

“It’s a bar in Charlestown. It’s Finn’s,” said Elada. “And we should have summoned the whole family. Because Finn will be sure to gather his.”

“We won’t get what we’re after in a fight,” Miach said.

“A show of strength wouldn’t hurt,” said Elada.

“Real strength doesn’t need to put on a show,” Miach said. “I’m not interested in impressing the Fianna. I’m interested in striking a bargain with their patriarch.”

Helene hoped he was right.

Miach must have sensed her misgivings, because he turned to her and said, “Conn walked into my bar with nothing but the sword on his back, and we still struck a deal to save Beth Carter, because such a bargain was in my interest also.”

“Beth was a Druid,” said Helene. “Conn had something to bargain with.”

“And you are our only link to the Fae who plots to free the Court. There is
always
something to bargain with . . . ”

• • •

C
harlestown, like South Boston, had
been an Irish enclave for nearly two hundred years, but its gentrification had been swifter and more complete. Charlestown had historic sites, such as the Bunker Hill Monument and the USS
Constitution
docked in the old navy yard, to attract tourists and add tone. Luxury condominiums and expensive marinas now dominated the waterfront, while the steep slopes of Bunker Hill were crowded with renovated town houses.

But old Charlestown, with her housing projects, tenements, and gangs, was still there, tucked into side streets rife with asbestos shingle and chain-link fence. Sully’s was on one of these, with a view of the tangled concrete arteries that guarded the north approaches to Boston.

Elada parked the Range Rover in front of the bar, disregarding the posted No Parking signs, and he and Conn preceded Helene and Miach into the bar. A few seconds later Elada appeared in the door and signaled, and Miach guided Helene inside.

Her first impression was that Sully’s was the relic of another era. The faux wood paneling, plastic chairs, and laminate surfaces made Helene think of the 1950s. Elada had told her that the bar was even older than that, a speakeasy from the twenties, but it lacked the charm of age and the mystique of the forbidden. It was, in short, a dive with a distinctly underworld atmosphere, the kind of place that only the true locals—and the occasional daring hipster—frequented; the kind of place where petty plots were hatched and dreams died and where deals were struck for things that fell off the backs of trucks. At the moment, though, it was completely empty.

“Is your bar like this?” she asked Miach.

“My bar is nothing like this.”

Elada smirked. “Sully’s is nicer,” he said.

Two unsmiling young men emerged from a back room, armed to the teeth with guns, knives, and saps. They had Fae blood. Helene could tell by their soaring cheekbones and luminous eyes. But they lacked the painful beauty of the true Fae. And they could handle cold iron. One held a pair of shackles in his hands.

Both were chestnut haired and hazel eyed, alike enough to be brothers.

“Where is Finn?” asked Elada.

“Not here,” said the older of the two boys, who was clearly in charge. “We’ll take you to the meeting place.”

Elada placed a hand on his sword. “No. They mean to separate us from Liam and Nial, and Angus and Kermit and the boys.”

Miach sighed. “It doesn’t matter. This is not an affair for half-bloods anyway. This is between Finn and myself. Lead us to him.”

The elder boy shook his head. “The true Fae”—he nodded to indicate Elada and Conn—“must leave their weapons,” he said. “And Miach comes with us, bound in iron,” he dropped a pair of shackles on the bar, “or not at all.”

Elada made no response. Conn raised one white-blond eyebrow. But it was Miach who spoke. “Are these
Finn’s
conditions?”

The half-blood nodded. “They are.”

And they were unacceptable. Helene could sense as much. Which meant they would not meet with Finn. And Garrett would not heal her. And her memories would be eaten, consumed by the vile thing inscribed above her knee.

Miach shook his head. “No. Finn made no such conditions. Tell whatever craven thin-blood gave you those orders to fuck himself. And tell Finn he needs to keep a stronger hand on his whelps.”

Miach turned to go. Helene felt light-headed. It was over. The memory parasite was going to eat everything that made her
her
. She was going to die.

Chapter 10

“W
ait!” the one who’d spoken before called out. Miach turned back. Finn’s offspring looked panicked and suddenly, very, very young. “Let me speak with my uncle.”

“Your uncle?” Miach scoffed. “Another half-breed? One too cowardly to come himself? Make a decision, boy. Do the Fianna, in their strength, fear
three
men? True Fae or not? We come armed and
without
chains, or we don’t come at all. And it is
you
Finn will hold accountable if we do not come, not your damned uncle.”

The boy swallowed. “It was only a precaution,” he stuttered. “They say you can kill with a thought.”

“Only when I’m in a killing mood. But he”—Miach cocked his head at Conn—“is always in a killing mood. And his blade can kill with a scratch. But you are
many
, and your patriarch agreed to this meeting. Now take us to Finn.”

The boy nodded. Helene wondered if Miach was using compulsion on these half-Fae. She was wearing the iron torc around her ankle and could not tell if his voice carried power, but she doubted it. One was carrying iron in any case, and the way Miach had described what they must do tonight, the skill he must bring to bear to channel Garrett’s power and remove her
geis
, she didn’t think he would use any of his strength unnecessarily.

They followed Finn’s cowed envoys through the bar and out a back door. The gas-lit streets of Charlestown were quiet at this hour, and the party made their way first up, then down the sloping streets of the hill, past the scrubby Training Field Park, under an overpass, and then through a wide hole in a chain-link fence.

They came out inside the navy yard, near the old marine barracks with its Torii Gate outside. The two young Fianna led them to a structure Beth recognized: the Commandant’s House. It was a redbrick Federal mansion, once the residence of the yard’s commanding officer and now a function space administered by the National Park Service as part of Boston National Historic Park. She had been there for a fundraiser once, an elegant affair put on for the
Constitution
’s museum. The interior, she recalled, was Greek Revival, grand but in a state of sad decay.

The two Fianna entered by a glass-porch door and led Miach’s party through the darkened conservatory and into an enormous pillared reception hall. It was filled with half-bloods. Close to a hundred of them. They stood against the walls, leaned against the pillars, and crowded into the corners. It was impossible to miss the shared Fae heritage of many of them. The greater part of the Fianna had chestnut hair and hazel eyes and pointed, almost feral chins. These had all been cast, Helene thought, from the same mold.

But here and there in the crowd were humans and half-bloods with different coloring, different features. Followers, Helene realized, not just descendants. Men and women and Fae who had been drawn by Finn’s charismatic leadership.

At the center of the room, beneath a dazzling brass chandelier, which was the only light in the chamber, lounged a Fae who could only be Finn. He was built like Conn and Elada, brawny, a warrior’s body: a measure of stature and strength endowed by blood perhaps, but developed and perfected through hard work and training. His hair was a rich chestnut brown, and it fell in soft waves over his collar. His eyes were hazel, his lips full, his chin a chiseled blade.

If he had been human, Helene would have put his age as just past thirty. He was perched atop a marble specimen table, one leg folded beneath him and the other on the tiled floor, entirely at ease. Here was a creature completely confident of both his physical power and his influence over the assembled body. Behind him stood a man who must be his son: a younger, slighter doppelganger. Garrett.

“Miach MacCecht,” said Finn, springing from the table with a dancer’s grace to sketch a mocking bow. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

There was spite and vitriol in this Fae’s voice. Helene could hear it. She had known they could put music and seduction into their tones, but she had not realized that they could also infuse their speech with bitterness and hatred, an almost contagious current of emotion. It seemed to run through the room, rousing and nettling the Fianna with a life of its own. If she had not been wearing the torc, she felt sure would have been caught up in it, would have resented the role Miach had played in bringing her here, hated him for introducing her to his treacherous world.

But the iron circling her ankle allowed her to hear all this in Finn’s voice without feeling it, to understand the intention and remain aloof from it. The torc had been a gift of power indeed.

“I come to ask a favor,” said Miach.

She had been right. Miach hadn’t been using his voice earlier. But he was using it now. There was conciliation in his tones. And a warning. He would only be pushed so far.

Helene experienced an epiphany. Hearing the Fae with cold iron against her skin was like suddenly being able to see in color. She had always thought their voices musical, and known music to be a conduit for emotion, but had never been able to hear the individual notes before, only the full orchestra.

“Then beg,” said Finn. Flat, unconditional. Full of scorn.

Miach closed his eyes a moment. “This is not the time,” he said opening them, “to refight old battles. The wall between the worlds is weakening. A Fae or a half-Fae, someone possibly from your own family, has been taking this woman”—he turned to indicate Helene—“and abducting her for hours each and every day. They have used her access to the museum at the university to find and restore a solstice gate.”

Finn shrugged. “Let them build away. There are hundreds of such gates in the world. If someone puts this one in order—well, neither you nor Conn the Betrayer will open it. And I hear he has his little Druid trained. Her pretty mouth is too occupied sucking his cock to intone a rite of opening.”

The Fianna laughed. Helene was glad now that Beth had not come. She could see Conn’s shoulders rise and fall. Miach put a hand on the brawny warrior’s sword arm, but it was not necessary. Conn loved Beth, Helene was Beth’s friend, and Helene’s life was at stake. The insult irked him, but would not move him from his purpose.

“We need the Druid,” said Miach patiently, “to keep the wall intact. It was never meant to last two thousand years. It was not meant to withstand repeated attack from our Fae kindred on the other side, or from deluded half-breeds on this one. You are all”—he pitched his voice to the crowd, putting fatherly concern into it—“in danger. If the Wild Hunt returns, they will be worse than any stories you have heard. They will be half-mad from two millennia of captivity, like rabid wolves. They will hate Finn and Conn and Elada and I, and all other Fae aboveground, for the freedom we have enjoyed. And they will be starved for pretty toys, the kind that walk and talk and breathe and think and feel . . . the kind that suffer.”

Finn didn’t blink. “What do you
want
, Miach?” he asked in a weary voice.

“Help me find the Fae who has been abducting Helene Whitney. He has inscribed a memory
geis
on her flesh. Remove it, and we will be able to discover his identity.”

“You are said to be the greatest sorcerer the Fae have ever known. No one here contests that. Why don’t you remove it yourself?” It was a challenge from Miach’s former pupil, Garrett. Helene had not observed him closely before, but the younger Fae’s eyes burned with passion, with anger held barely in check.

“I am iron sick,” said Miach. He shot his cuffs, held out his wrists, and turned them over. The veins stood black against his forearms.

The room became pin-drop silent. Finn took a step forward, his eyes drawn irresistibly to the black veins in Miach’s wrists. Garrett leaned forward to look as well.

“This is the kind of enemy we are dealing with,” said Miach. “One who would poison his own kind. One who does not hesitate to stoop to Druid tricks and Druid methods.”

Garrett smiled. “It makes my heart glad to see you suffer as you have made others suffer.”

Finn held up his hand to silence his son and advanced to within a foot of Miach. He considered the sorcerer’s black-veined wrists. Then he looked into Miach’s eyes and spoke quietly enough for only Miach and Helene to hear. “Do you truly think this was done by one of my own?”

“I don’t know,” said Miach. “But it is an easy enough thing to determine. I can cast a reflection of the
geis
. If its maker is present, it will fly to him.”

Finn appeared to mull this over, then retreated to his perch on the marble table. He pitched his voice once more to the assembly. “There is only one thing you have that I want, Miach MacCecht. And that is my grandson.”

“I am prepared to allow you to visit him,” replied Miach. “Under my supervision.”

Miach, Helene realized, must have known it would come to this.

“Is that all?” Garrett shouted. “I’m the boy’s father, for fuck’s sake. Am
I
never to see my own son?”

“I placed my trust in you, Garrett. Unreservedly. I opened my home to you. And you seduced my granddaughter. Under my own roof. And she nearly died, because of you.”

“I didn’t know what would happen,” spat Garrett. “And we couldn’t stay. You made it impossible for us to stay. You would have forced Nieve to give up the baby.”

“That is all past,” said Finn, cutting his son off. “We demand the boy. Two days a week. In Charlestown. With his father.”

“And Nieve, too,” said Garrett.

“The boy, but not Nieve,” Miach said. “Never Nieve. You gave up all right to her when you failed to protect her.”

“You cannot keep me from her,” Garrett said, snarling. “She is my
wife
.”

Surprise rippled through the crowd, a tide of whispered conjecture.

Finn closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he turned them on his son. Now Helene detected something in this Fae’s voice she had never heard from one of their kind before: fear.

“Is this true, Garrett? Did you wed Nieve? Pledge yourself to her?” asked Finn.

“Yes.”

“For the love of Dana, why?” asked Finn. If he had been human, Helene thought, he might have rent his hair and torn his clothes.

“Because I would trade millennia without Nieve for a mortal’s span with her. And now I cannot have even that. Because of
him
.”

Helene could feel the grief coming off of Finn, but she didn’t understand it. “What has Garrett done?” she whispered to Miach.

“Garrett is a true Fae,” said Miach softly. “He might have lived thousands, tens of thousands of years. And he is the only pure-blood to be born in this century. But he has given up his immortality by binding himself to Nieve. Like Conn and Beth. They will share a few hundred years at best. More than mortals, but the life of a dayfly in Fae terms. Finn has lost his son.”

The patriarch of the Fianna took a deep breath and turned to Miach MacCecht.

“That must be my price,” he said. “The boy will have nothing if he does not have his family. If he does not have Nieve
and
his son. Permit them to live as they pledged themselves, and we will remove your woman’s memory
geis
.”

“It must be in Charlestown,” added Garrett. “I won’t live in that man’s house.”

Finn sighed.

“I will allow them to split their time between my house and yours,” Miach said. “But that is my best offer.”

“Agreed,” snapped Finn. “Show Garrett the girl’s mark.”

Miach held up his hand. “First, we determine whether your following had a hand in this.”

“Fine,” said Finn. “Do it. The Fianna have nothing to hide.”

“They were involved the last time,” Miach said.

“And they have been chastised. Work your spell, sorceror. It will not point to any of
my
band.”

Miach turned to Helene. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It will hurt for a moment.”

He knelt in front of her and placed his palm over the invisible
geis
above her knee. It felt warm at first, then it burned like hot metal and she cried out. For a second she felt light-headed and the room spun. Strong hands were there to catch her and someone—Finn, she realized—was lowering her to the floor, supporting her head in his lap.

Miach paced forward to stand under the chandelier. He was holding something that glowed and coruscated the way the
geis
on her skin had when he’d shown it to her in his library. The bulbs of the chandelier flickered, then winked out. For a moment Miach’s hand was the only illumination in the room. Then he threw the light he held high into the air and it expanded as it ascended, until it spread out over the ceiling in a writhing pattern, a circular knot. No, not a knot. A snake with a rat’s head. A grotesque beast that was eating its own tail.

That
was a reflection of the thing on her thigh, the thing that wanted to devour her memories and take her life. An involuntary cry of horror and disgust escaped her lips.

Finn swore. “Don’t look,” he said.

But she couldn’t turn away.

The house shook. The beast of light on the ceiling roared, a stomach-turning gurgle of hissing anger. Pain flared in the
geis
on her knee. Plaster fell from the ceiling. And then there was a sucking sound, like a vacuum.