The wards knocked me on my ass the moment I tried to leave the property.
―Ow!‖ I rebounded like a rubber ball off a brick wall and landed on the lawn. Or, rather, what was left of the lawn, which was dirt. I was in a Dark Zone. It wasn‘t winter but Shades that had stripped the yard of life. Mother Nature left grass, even in her harshest moments. Shades left nothing. Barrons must have brought me here after they‘d already claimed the neighborhood. What better place to hide a weapon from the enemy than deep in their own territory? Especially since he and they seemed to have a tacit agreement to leave each other alone. I took off my MacHalo—it was light enough that I wouldn‘t need it again until nightfall, and I suspected the Shades that had devastated this area had moved on to more-fertile ground, anyway—hooked it onto a strap on my pack, and rubbed my head. The wards had nearly split my skull. My molars hurt, even my scalp felt bruised. I hadn‘t seen that coming. I narrowed my eyes. Faint silver runes glistened on the sidewalk I‘d just tried to cross. Wards were sneaky things, often hard to see, made doubly so this morning by a thin coating of frost. But now that I knew they were there, I could discern the telltale shimmer of Barrons‘ subtle work, vanishing east and west around both sides of the house. Although I knew he was meticulous, I still walked the perimeter, looking for a gap.
There wasn‘t one.
I decided it must have been an aberration that the wards had repelled me so violently. Barrons warded things out. He never warded me in. I stepped onto the lightly iced sidewalk in a different place.
I went flying backward again, teeth vibrating, ears ringing.
I sat up, growling. The nerve. If I hadn‘t been determined to leave before, I was now.
―He has warded me out, as well, MacKayla. Or I would have come for you long ago.‖
V‘lane‘s voice preceded his appearance. One moment I was glowering at the air, the next at V‘lane‘s knees. For a moment, I kept my gaze fixed there. A woman might feel a little terrified after what I‘d been through—not that I did, just that some other woman might. V‘lane is Seelie, one of the alleged ―good‖ guys, if any of the Fae can be called that, but he‘s still a death-by-sex Fae, same as those masters of killing lust that had so recently devolved me into the lowest common denominator. All Fae royalty, whether light court or dark, can turn humans Pri-ya with sex. And like his darker, deadly Unseelie brethren—when in his natural high glamour—V‘lane is too beautiful for a human to look at directly. I‘m no exception. The dark princes had made my eyes bleed. V‘lane could, too, if he felt like it. Since the day I met him, he‘d been using his death-by-sex magnetism on me to varying degrees, although I now knew just how ―gentle‖ his coercion had really been compared to what he could have done in his efforts to make me help him track the Sinsar Dubh. We‘d had an ongoing battle about what form he would assume in my presence, with him always turning on too much sexual charisma and me always insisting he ―mute‖ it.
I raised my gaze to the inevitable perfection of the Seelie Prince‘s face, bracing myself for the impact.
There was none.
He stood before me with every bit of his death-by-sex Faeness dampened. For the first time since I‘d met him, I was able to look directly at him, absorbing his inhuman, incredible perfection without being affected by it. V‘lane looked as close to a human male as he could get, in jeans, boots, and a loose linen shirt half unbuttoned. He was apparently unaffected by the frigid weather—or perhaps the cause of it. Fae can affect the weather with their moods. His beautifully muscled golden body was no more perfect than that of any airbrushed model; his long golden hair no longer shimmered with a dozen seductive, otherworldly shades; his flawlessly symmetrical features might have graced any magazine cover. The only aspect of his Fae nature he‘d retained were those bottomless, ancient, iridescent eyes. He was still something to see: tawny, sexy man with alien, glowing eyes, but I was not assaulted by a frantic desire to tear off my clothes, I didn‘t feel a tingle of lust, not the faintest sensation of being weak at the knees. And he‘d done it without my even having to ask.
I wasn‘t about to thank him. It was the least he could do after what his race had done to me. He studied me while I studied him. His eyes contracted slightly, then widened infinitesimally, which on a human face meant very little but on a Fae‘s was an expression of astonishment. I wondered why. Because I‘d survived? Had my odds really been so low?
―I have been monitoring these wards and sensed the disturbance. I am pleased to see you, MacKayla.‖
―Thanks for the rescue,‖ I said coldly. ―Nice of you to show up when I needed you. Oh, wait,‖ I barked a sharp little laugh, ―I remember now. You didn‘t. In fact, your name crashed and burned when I tried to use it.‖ If he‘d never given me his name on my tongue, I wouldn‘t have been so fearless that night. I‘d been lulled into complacency, believing I had a Seelie Prince available at the snap of my fingers to sift in and sift me out to instant safety. It had made me feel invincible when I shouldn‘t have. And when I‘d needed him the most, it had failed. Better never to have depended on it at all. I should have kept Dani by my side that night. She could have whisked me to safety.
He spread his hands, palms up, and bowed his head in a gesture of subservience. I snorted. The holier-than-thou Seelie Prince was bowing his head to me?
“A thousand apologies could not atone for the harm my brethren were permitted to inflict upon you. It sickens me that you were—‖ He broke off, bowing his head even more deeply, as if he couldn‘t bring himself to go on.
It was a completely human gesture.
I didn‘t trust it one bit.
―So.‖ I picked myself up off the ground and dusted off my new leather coat. ―What‘s your excuse for failing me on Halloween? Barrons said he was stuck in Scotland. Actually, he said it was ?complicated.‘ Was it complicated, V‘lane?‖ I asked sweetly, as I slung my gun around the back side of my shoulder. It banged into my backpack. I liked the solid, reassuring weight of my weapons and ammo.
He winced at the tone of my voice, not missing the arsenic in the sugar. While I‘d been busy being Pri-ya, V‘lane had obviously been busy expanding his repertoire of human expressions. Still, these expressions were different than that first one. They were too large for a Fae, overblown. Iridescent eyes met mine. ―Exceedingly.‖
I hooked my thumbs in my jeans pockets. ―Go on.‖ I smiled. There was nothing he could say that would ever make me trust again in something so mystical and fundamentally flawed as a Fae name embedded in my tongue, but I wanted to see how far he might go to get back into my good graces.
―Aoibheal was my first priority, MacKayla. You know that. Without her, all else is insignificant. Without her, the walls can never be rebuilt. She alone is our hope of reclaiming the Song of Making.‖
The Fae were matriarchal, and only the Seelie Queen could wield the Song of Making. I knew very little about the Song, just that it was the stuff from which the walls of the Unseelie prison had been forged, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Roughly six thousand years ago, when the Compact had been negotiated between our races, apportioning shares of the planet, Aoibheal had jury-rigged an extension of those ancient walls to separate Fae and human realms. Unfortunately, her tampering had weakened the prison walls, enabling Darroc the Lord Master to bring them all crashing down on Halloween.
So why didn‘t Aoibheal just sing them back into existence?
Because in typical Fae infighting fashion, the Unseelie King had killed the long-ago Seelie Queen before she‘d been able to pass on her knowledge to the next one. Aoibheal, latest in a long succession of queens to rule with diminished power, had no idea how to sing the Song of Making. They needed me—OOP detector extraordinaire—to find the one remaining clue to recreating the Song: the Sinsar Dubh, a deadly book that contained all the dark magic of the Unseelie King. The king had been close to discovering it when his mortal concubine killed herself, and he‘d abandoned his experiments that had created the dark half of the Fae race.
―And only I can find the Book she needs to do it,‖ I said coolly. ―So who‘s expendable?‖
His eyes narrowed minutely and he glanced sideways. Pink Mac wouldn‘t have even noticed it. I wasn‘t her anymore. My spine snapped straight, and I went nose to nose at the ward line with him. If I could have reached through it and grabbed him by the throat, I would have. ―Oh, God, you actually thought that through and decided it was me! You knew I was in trouble and didn‘t help me!‖ I snarled. ―You believed I would survive it! Or was it that you figured I‘d be even easier to use if I was Pri-ya?”
His iridescent eyes blazed. ―I could not be in two places at once! I was forced to choose. The queen would not have survived the night. It was imperative she survive.‖
―You son of a bitch. You knew they were coming for me.”
―I did not!‖
―Liar!‖
―By the time I learned what they‘d planned, it was too late, MacKayla! Despite my powers, I failed to foresee how dangerous Darroc had become. None of us foresaw it. We believed the walls would weaken further on Samhain, we even believed more of the Unseelie would escape, but we did not believe Darroc could succeed in bringing the walls down completely. Not only did he accomplish the unthinkable, he managed to block all Fae magic as thoroughly as he demolished your human grids. For a time that night, not one of us could sift. Not one of us could change form. Not one of us could draw upon the birthright of our magic. I was forced to carry my queen to a new hiding place on human” —he sneered the word—―feet.‖
―While I lay on my human ass and your fairy” —I sneered the word—‖brethren fucked my brains out and nearly killed me.‖
―But failed, MacKayla. But failed. Remember that. You are queenly in your own right.‖
―So the end justifies the means? Is that what you think?‖
―Do they not?‖
―I suffered,‖ I gritted. ―Horrible, unspeakable things.‖
―Yet you stand here now. Toe to toe with a Seelie Prince. Impressive for a human. Perhaps you are becoming what you need to be.‖
―What doesn‘t kill me makes me stronger? That‘s what you think I should take away from this?‖
―Yes! And be glad for it.‖
―Let me tell you something.‖ I fisted my hand in the collar of his shirt. ―What I will be glad for is the day the last one of you is dead.”
He went oddly, completely still.
I shook him. He didn‘t budge.