Silver Skin (A Cold Iron Novel) (14 page)

Helene’s eardrums popped.

The light went out, and the room was blanketed in deep darkness.

The chandelier flickered back to life.

Miach, still standing under it, shook his head. “Nothing. You were right, Finn. This was not cast by any of the Fianna.”

Finn helped Helene to her feet. Her legs felt shaky. The
geis
throbbed and burned, and now she could see it there, angry and red. Miach knelt in front her once more. “I woke it when I cast its reflection. It’s burrowing deeper. It has to come off,
now
.”

“It hurts,” said Helene. She wasn’t, as a rule, a whiner or a winger. She had grown up with brothers. Skinned knees, broken bones, skiing, skating, and sailing injuries were the norm in the Whitney household. High school had been like a tour of the emergency rooms of New England.

This didn’t hurt like a burn or a puncture or a broken bone. It wasn’t isolated to her knee, but radiated up into her abdomen. She doubled over with cramps.

“Helene,” said Miach. She could hear the suppressed panic in his voice. Her own voice was stuck. She couldn’t speak. If she could, she would tell him to take the iron bracelet off and lie to her, use his voice to tell her everything was going to be okay. Because she could hear the fear behind his words.

“It is attacking her,” he said. Miach swept her, boneless and weak from pain, into his arms and laid her on the marble table. It should have felt cold beneath her skin, but the outside of her body was still and numb to the touch, even while her insides were roaring with pain.

“How long,” said Finn, his voice sounding distant even though he was standing over her, “has she survived with that thing on her?”

“A month,” said Miach.

Finn cursed.

She could feel Garrett’s hand above her knee, tracing the raised flesh there. “Are you sure you want to do this without anything to dull the pain?” he asked Miach. “It’s going to hurt like hell. It will be a struggle just to keep her still.”

Garrett’s eyes fell on the iron torc around her ankle. He wrapped a handkerchief around his hand and reached for it. “I’ll take this off, and you can compel her to be still.”

“No,” Helene bit out. She couldn’t stand the idea of being surrounded by so many Fae without some defense against them—even if it meant suffering through the removal of the
geis
.

Garrett ignored her and reached for the torc. Miach’s hand shot out and grasped the boy’s wrist.

“She said no,” said Miach.

For that alone she thought she might be able to fall in love with him.

Garrett nodded. “Fine, then. As long as she understands. There’s no gentle way to do this.”

“I understand,” Helene said. The look Miach favored her with, the intensity of his respect and regard, reaffirmed her decision, reassured her she could get through it.

“Whiskey,” called Finn.

A bottle of Jameson appeared, along with a glass. Finn poured and passed it to Miach, who placed it against Helene’s lips. She took the welcome drink from his hands and tossed it off in one swallow. It burned like bliss going down and suddenly the
geis
didn’t seem quite so terrifying. Dutch courage, or Irish courage, she supposed. She would take any kind she could get at the moment.

She handed the glass back to Finn. “Another,” she said.

Finn looked surprised, but he poured. Helene drank off the second and a third. And lay back on the table.

“I like your girlfriend,” said Finn.

She saw Garret place his right hand in Miach’s left and close his eyes. Then Garrett’s father was pinning her shoulders to the table with strong hands and Miach was touching the
geis
with his right hand. Tentatively at first, as though searching for something.

“Focus, Garrett,” said Miach through gritted teeth.

Helene felt a pinch, as though Miach had pricked her with a needle. Then a pulling sensation. Then blistering pain, as though someone were stitching her skin with a sharp awl, sewing hemp rope through her flesh and cinching it into tight gathers.

Something—something squirming—pulled free of her skin with a slurping sound. The pain fled, as swiftly as it had come. Helene felt weak with relief.

Miach reared back from the table and swore. He hurled something—something like a black rope—to the ground . . . and it slithered across the floor, heading for the door.

The Fianna in its path scattered. Garrett followed the creature and blasted it with a half dozen bolts of green light from his hands until it was nothing more than a smoking streak on the marble tiles.

Helene sat up. Her thigh felt wet and sticky. She looked down. Blood ran from the
geis
, which was now a ring of puncture wounds. A pool of crimson started to form on the table beneath her knee.

“It needs to be cleaned out,” said Finn. But he sounded relieved.

Helene was still trying to process the fact that Nieve’s husband could shoot light from his fingers when his father sloshed whiskey over her bloody thigh. And it was finally her turn to curse, with all the foulness she had learned from two older brothers.

Finn smiled appreciatively. “Give me the girl, Miach,” said Garrett’s father, “and I’ll help you find this renegade Fae who has been summoning her.”

“Your family has a pronounced weakness for
my
women,” said Miach. “You can’t have Helene. But you’ll help us anyway, because you know you can’t afford not to.”

Miach looked pointedly at Garrett, then said to Finn, “We both have too much to lose. The Wild Hunt would slay Garrett outright for formally allying himself to a half-blood. We must find the Fae who is trying to open the gate, and his followers, and put an end to them.”

“I will do what I can,” said Finn. “It is not one of the Fianna, and it is not one of your accepted clan. Deirdre would never involve herself in something like this. There must be another Fae in the city. I will make inquiries in my territories. I suggest you do the same.”

Miach moved to pick Helene up but she waved him off. “I’m getting out of here on my own two feet,” she said.

“If you change your mind about the woman,” said Finn, “send her to me.”

“I’m not a gift basket,” muttered Helene.

“When you are tired of the sorcerer, then,” said Finn, whose hearing no doubt was Fae-acute, “come to me. Miach’s house has grand water views, to be sure, and he’s the man you want when you’re clearing an orchard or a pasture, but from my house you can see the whole of Boston.”

“Ah,” whispered Miach in her ear, “but will he give you a new dishwasher?”

She giggled. The sound was probably tinged with hysteria, and it caused Finn to frown, but she couldn’t help it.

Helene made it out of the grand hall of the Commandant’s house under her own steam, but at the chain-link fence she staggered. Miach caught her.

“Go get the car,” he said to Elada. “I’ll be fine here. Finn isn’t likely to assassinate me. He doesn’t want the wall coming down any more than I do.”

“I’ll stand guard,” said Conn.

Elada was gone ten minutes. Then the Range Rover pulled up, the Porsche behind it with Liam and Nial. And behind that, what could only be the armored minivan.

Miach lifted Helene into the backseat of the Rover and settled her head in his lap. Elada brought her a blanket and pillow from the trunk. The whiskey had buoyed her temporarily but now she was exhausted. She closed her eyes and started to drift to sleep. She felt the car stop and start, navigating the short streets of Charlestown, but then the road smoothed out and she knew they must be on one of the highways or big roads that circled Boston.

Elada’s voice came quietly from the front seat. “This unknown Fae can still summon her,” he said. “And there can be no doubt he is planning something. Something to do with the solstice gate.”

“She is safe so long as she is with one of us or in my house,” said Miach. “Where she belongs.”

She probably should have made some objection to that, but the sorcerer’s hands were warm, stroking her cheek. The whiskey and her ordeal had exhausted her, and sleep beckoned.

Just before she lost consciousness she heard Elada say, this time even more quietly, “It isn’t one of the Fianna. They were all there tonight.”

“I know,” replied Miach tightly. The tension in his voice echoed through his body. “Say what you are thinking, old friend.”

Elada didn’t respond all at once. Then he said, “It cannot be one of the Fianna, but it could still be one of us.”

It made no sense to Helene at first, but on the edge of sleep, when the mind can make leaps of association it could not bridge during the day, the answer came to her: there was only one member of Miach’s family that Elada could mean, only one half-blood son of Miach MacCecht who would dare to touch the woman his father had marked for himself.

The same man who had kidnapped Helene and Beth, who had given them to the tender mercies of the Prince Consort: Miach’s own son, Brian.

Chapter 11

H
elene woke up in a strange room. She was not at Deirdre’s. The proportions of the chamber were too grand, the domed ceiling too high, the windows too large for that classical Beacon Hill dwelling. The walls were round like a turret, papered in a pink and green stripe with garlands of flowers at the top, and her bed had a tester with a green silk canopy. The hangings, the color scheme, and the shape of the room made her feel like a princess in a castle with a view of the sea.

Which meant she was at Miach’s, in the tower above the library. The whole room, including a frilly dressing table, was decorated in shades of white, pink, and green, so she was fairly certain that it was not his chamber, which made her feel both relieved and disappointed at the same time.

When she stretched her body beneath the cool cotton sheets, she decided that she was more relieved than disappointed. Someone had bandaged her thigh and put her to bed in her T-shirt and panties, but her mouth felt like sandpaper, and her hair was even more of a tangled mess than usual. Not sexy.

Her wound, when she peeled the bandage away, looked better than she expected, but she was definitely going to have a scar. It would be easily explained, a bicycle accident or hiking injury, just another one of the dents and scratches on her body to add to those left from her tomboy youth. She refused to be upset by this one, ugly as it was. It was a battle fought and won. Her memories were safe, and the next time that Fae bastard summoned her, there would be no forgetting him.

Fortunately the room had its own bath, also pink and green, and a basket of delicious smelling soaps and shampoos and lotions. And a razor. The bag Nieve had brought her at Deirdre’s turned up in the wardrobe, along with an assortment of silk and cotton robes and lounging pajamas, the kind Helene had always promised herself she would buy as soon as she had an apartment with more than one room and could reasonably be expected to lounge.

By the time the knock came at the door, she was showered, shampooed, shaved, and dressed in a pair of Indian block printed pants and a matching quilted jacket that fell to around her knees.

Helene opened the door to find a very relieved Beth on the threshold. Beth threw her arms around Helene and hugged her. And the petite archaeologist cum Druid was not herself the hugging type.

“You slept a day and a night. Miach said you were fine but I couldn’t help worrying,” said Beth. “How bad was it?” she asked. “The
geis
I mean.”

Helene rolled up her trouser leg. “Ta-da! No more memory eating snake that can turn into fireworks and also, I think, an actual snake.” Unless that had been the pain and the whiskey playing tricks on her . . . but she didn’t think it had been.

“It’s going to scar,” said Beth, shaking her head. “Miach explained that the
geis
had a physical manifestation. More like an eel, he said, than a snake.”

Helene thought about the thing that had slithered across the floor after Miach pulled the
geis
out. She shuddered. “I’m not sure I like eel any better than snake.”

“I can heal the punctures,” said Beth, “but there’s no good way to avoid leaving a mark. That would take an enchantment, the kind I don’t know how to cast well. And Miach says it’s always a bad idea to use magic on humans unnecessarily. He says it can have a corrupting effect. I suppose my Druid ancestors are proof of that. What will you tell people at work?”

“Cycling accident,” said Helene. “That is, when I can go to work. Miach still hasn’t discovered who’s summoning me, I presume?”

“He hasn’t,” said Beth. “Conn and I went to the museum yesterday, but we didn’t turn up any new clues. We’re leaving for Ireland this afternoon. The house where the Prince Consort held me was full of his followers. Other Fae who want the old Court back. Our best working theory is that your attacker is one of them. We’re hoping we can find out more about the Prince’s circle at his house.”

“I think Miach suspects that it may be Brian, but he can’t bring himself to come out and say it,” replied Helene.

“Conn shares the same suspicion,” admitted Beth. “If so, we may find out more in Ireland. There’s no trace of Brian in Boston these past three months. If I could only
pass
like Conn, we could be back in a matter of hours, but it’s a long trip, there and back. We’ll be gone two days at least. Are you going to be all right here?”

Helene nodded. “I’m reconciled to life as a princess in a tower for a few days.”

She let Beth channel her power into the wounds above her knee, removing the tenderness and the minor inflammation that had plagued her since waking, knitting the skin back together until all that remained were pale pink gouges in her flesh. The hated pattern was no longer discernable as a snake eating its tail, which was a relief.

“Not so bad. And you could always cover it with a tattoo,” suggested Beth brightly as she was leaving.

“Do I seem like the tattoo type?” asked Helene.

“Not really. But neither did I, and I’ve acquired quite a few since meeting Conn.
Most
of them are magical and serve a purpose. And one of them was just for him,” she added with a secret smile.

Helene wasn’t alone long after Beth left. Nieve appeared soon after with a tray of food that looked like it could feed a whole family. There was a pot of steaming hot chocolate, a pitcher of iced tea, a plate of buttered toast, rashers of bacon, a covered dish of scrambled eggs, and a grilled kipper decorated with a sprig of parsley.

“The kipper is for the old man,” said Nieve. “In case he joins you for tea.”

“This is too much food, even for two people,” said Helene, although she had to admit she was very hungry. The fact that Miach might join her at some point kindled a sense of anticipation and excitement in Helene. It made her wonder exactly when she had stopped dreading encountering him again and started to look forward to it. She’d been happy to see him at Deirdre’s, but she wondered now if her aversion had ever really been to the sorcerer, to him. She’d met Miach under terrifying circumstances and associated him with horrible events that had not been of his making. At least, not entirely of his making.

“It’s the last hot meal you’ll get in this house until tomorrow,” Nieve was saying. “Fiona can’t cook, and I’m going to Finn’s tonight. Garrett is finally going to meet his father.”

“I’m very happy for you, Nieve,” Helene said.

Nieve laughed. “You may not be if you’re stuck here with the old man tonight. He’s going to be a monster. He thinks that the earth is going to swallow me up if I leave this house. And he’s used to being waited on.”

“I can handle Miach MacCecht,” said Helene, with a confidence that she realized she had earned. She admitted to herself that she had been attracted to him since the night they’d met, but a rogue’s gallery of villains including Brian and the Prince Consort had kept them apart. And Helene’s loyalty to Beth had made it a betrayal to explore that attraction. Finally there had been her fear of losing herself to a Fae.

But now the obstacles between them were gone. She understood why he had done the things he had done when they met. Knew his attraction to her was as strong as hers to him.

Miach had shown himself capable of providing affection and comfort as well as passion. It was unlikely they would ever share the kind of connection that Beth and Conn had forged, or exchange the vows that bound Nieve and Garrett. Perhaps their affair would only last as long as it took to track down her Fae stalker. Some degree of heartbreak was almost inevitable, but that was a price Helene was willing to pay. Just now, Miach MacCecht was the man for her.

She left her door open after Nieve departed, and raised the curved turret windows to let in the salt sea air. It smelled a lot like the kipper. She settled in to read one of the books Beth had left her, a tome about the Druids and the Celts. She found reading it to be a little like a game of telephone. History held echoes of the Fae, but their true story, their war with the Druids, the real function of the “burial” mounds, the rules that governed their
gaesa
, were lost in the mists of time and legend.

She read for most of the afternoon, nibbling on the cakes Nieve had left and dozing when she was tired. It was late afternoon when she looked up to find Miach standing in the doorway, quietly watching her. He looked fully restored, his black hair freshly cut, his blue button-down open over a steel gray T-shirt, narrow chinos flattering his long muscular legs.

The iron torc was still wrapped around her ankle, had been since the hour before they set out for Finn’s. She still felt an instant rush of attraction on seeing Miach that had nothing to do with Fae glamour or compulsion. If she really looked at him now with the clear sight that was the gift of the cold iron, she acknowledged that the Fae’s beauty held the terror of the sublime in it, a cruelty and a subtle
wrongness
. They hid it from mortals with good reason. No matter how alluring Miach’s face and form might be, it triggered some human survival instinct that told her she should run.

But the chase, she had already decided, ended here.

• • •

M
iach MacCecht was anxious. This
was not an emotion that the Fae experienced often. He tried to remember the last time he had felt apprehensive about anything. He had been terrified when Nieve was sick, but that was different. He had walked into Finn’s last night knowing he might die, but he had not feared death. If he searched his memory for a similar event, he had to go back three thousand years.

There had been a feast in his father’s hall that night. The Wild Hunt was making its progress through the countryside, and the Queen had called upon Dian Cecht’s household and demanded his hospitality. Demanded, because she was angry with Dian for withdrawing from the court, for raising his son at home, away from the politics and intrigue of the Queen’s circle.

Miach had not fully understood the tensions bubbling just beneath the surface of that meal, but had been able to sense the currents of hostility, lust, envy, and power that crisscrossed that long table. His father had warned him out of the hearing of the Court to be on his guard, to be ready. Miach had not known for what.

It was his first encounter with the Queen, the first time he’d looked upon her chill beauty, terrible in its perfection and almost incandescent. Like a cold flame.

And it was the first time he had heard the dulcet sounds of her voice. It was hard, even for a boy with a natural gift of sorcery being trained up in the magical arts, to discern the words in it. A weaker Fae would be entirely caught in the music, understanding nothing yet dancing willy-nilly to her tune.

He was summoned to the head of the table at the end of the meal and asked to perform a conjuring. A simple spell for a MacCecht. He took a flower from the bowl on the table, a single thorny rose, and channeled his power into it until it grew, in the space of a second, roots and branches and three blood-red blooms. They asked him for a display of lights next, and he cast constellations on the ceiling such that the hammered beams seemed to disappear and the night sky to take its place over their heads. He enchanted a bell to ring with the sound of a babbling brook.

The Queen thanked him and dismissed him. His father nodded reassuringly. And he thought they were done with him. He’d felt relief. The Queen was capricious. The court was cruel. If he had failed to amuse her, if he had done worse, and somehow insulted her, his father, his whole family, would suffer for it.

He had not understood that the performance at the end of the meal was only a prelude. The Wild Hunt had surged out into the night, replete with wine and food, to slake other appetites. His father had already sent warnings to their tenants to lock their doors and remain inside, but the Wild Hunt had long since abandoned its own rules. They kicked down doors and ravaged where they chose.

The house was quiet and Miach was sleeping when the Queen summoned him. He had not been anxious standing by her chair at the head of the table, but he was anxious—
nervous
—there in her bedchamber.
Because
he understood the consequences of disappointing her.

Miach had pleased the Queen. Repeatedly. And he had never felt anxious with a woman again until now.

Until Helene Whitney. She was seated in a chair by the window, wearing gauze trousers printed in blue and gold and a matching jacket that set off her blond hair.

She was the first woman he had courted in hundreds of years who had not known immediately what he was, had not been initially attracted to him because he was Fae. Who had not been beguiled by glamour, or dazzled by expensive gifts. She had seen the worst of his kind—in some ways, the worst of him—and she still wanted him.

He was going to get this right.

Which meant not rushing her to his bedroom. Which meant taking this slow.

“I thought we could go for that walk on the beach I promised, Helene,” he said.

She put the book down. “I’d like that. Let me change my clothes.”