38
You okay, Mac?” Kat sounded worried. “You don’t look so good.”
I forced myself to smile. “I’m fine. Little nervous, I guess. I just want everything to go right and get this over with. You?”
She smiled but it didn’t reach her eyes, and too late I remembered her touch of emotional telepathy. She could feel how badly off balance I was.
I felt doubly betrayed, first by Dani, then by Barrons for telling me he wouldn’t wait forever. And ashamed for things I didn’t understand. But it went all the way back to believing he was dead, then finding out he was alive, and it had something to do with my sister. No, it went back farther than that, to the end of my being Pri-ya. I sighed. I couldn’t pin it down.
“Last night I found the Unseelie that killed Alina,” I told Kat, figuring that would get her off my back.
The sharp focus of her gaze softened. “Did you have your revenge, then?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“But it failed to ease your pain as you expected it would.” She was silent a moment. “When the walls came down, Rowena didn’t tell us about eating Unseelie. I lost both my brothers to Shades. I’ve killed dozens of them since. It never makes me feel better. If only revenge would bring them back, but it doesn’t. It adds to the body count.”
“Wise as ever, Kat.” I smiled. But inwardly I seethed.
I didn’t want wise. I wanted blood. Crushed bones. Destruction. My dark lake had rippled into crashing waves last night, with a dark wind blowing hard across it.
I am here, it was saying. Use me. What are you waiting for?
I had no answer for it.
I continued to march toward O’Connell and Beacon, checking my watch. It was ten to nine. Kat had fallen into step with me a few blocks back.
“Where’s Jo?”
“Food poisoning. Bad can of beans. Thought about bringing Dani but couldn’t find her. Brought Sophie instead.”
Hearing Dani’s name impacted me hard. Kat looked at me sharply. I squared my shoulders and marched on. At the intersection, V’lane and his Seelie waited, on the opposite side of the street from Rowena and her sidhe-seers.
My dark lake boiled at the sight of her, hissed and steamed: Think she doesn’t know Dani did it? She knows everything. Did she order it? I locked my jaw down and fisted my hands.
I would take care of my personal vendettas later. First things first. If I was the Unseelie King, I needed the Book locked away, the sooner the better. If I wasn’t the Unseelie King, I still needed it locked away, because, for whatever reason, it kept coming for me and those I loved. My parents and I would never be safe, as long as it was loose.
All I had to do was play my small part. I would fly the Hunter over the city—supplied courtesy of Barrons, dampened and controlled—and help them corner it. Once it was contained, I would join them on the ground.
Just to be on the safe side, I planned to keep my distance. I didn’t want any more surprises in my life.
My body tensed with sexual awareness.
“Mac,” Ryodan said coolly as he pushed past me.
The sexual tension heightened to a painful state, and I knew Barrons was behind me. I waited for him to pass.
Kat walked by, Lor passed, and then they were all at the intersection. Still I stood, waiting for Barrons to get out from behind me.
Then his hand was on the nape of my neck and I felt the hardness of him against my ass. I inhaled sharply and leaned back against him, pushing for him with my hips.
He was gone.
I swallowed. I hadn’t seen him all afternoon, since he’d told me I could lose him.
“Ms. Lane,” he said coolly.
“Barrons.”
“The Hunter is landing in …” He looked up. “Three … two … now.”
It flapped down into the center of the intersection, wings churning black ice crystals in the air. It settled with a soft whuff of breath, swung its head low, and glared at me with fiery eyes. It was subdued—and pissed as hell about it. I felt for it with my mind. It was seething, rattling the bars of whatever cage Barrons was capable of creating with his mysterious runes and spells.
“Good hunting,” he said.
“Barrons, I—”
“You’ve got rotten timing.”
“You two gonna stand there fucking each other with your eyes all night, or can we get on with it?” Christian demanded.
The Keltar had arrived. Christopher, Drustan, Dageus, and Cian stalked from a nearby alley.
“Get on your demon horse, girl, and fly. But remember,” Rowena shook a warning finger at me, “we’re watching you.”
And although I knew now why she was so convinced I was a threat—since Dani had told me about the real prophecy—I still consoled myself with the thought of deposing and killing her.
This Hunter was larger than the last one Barrons had “charmed.” It took Barrons, Lor, and Ryodan to help me get up on its back. I was glad I’d remembered to bring gloves and to dress warmly. It was like sitting on an iceberg with sulfur breath.
Once I was settled between its icy wings, I looked around.
This was it.
The night we were going to take down the Sinsar Dubh.
At the meeting yesterday, no one had even raised the question: What then?
Rowena hadn’t said: The Seelie won’t be permitted anywhere near it! It will be ours to guard, and we will keep it under lock and key forever!
As if anybody’d believe that. It had gotten out once.
And V’lane hadn’t said: Then I will take my queen to Faery, with the Book, where she will recover and search it for fragments of the Song of Making, so she can reimprison the Unseelie and re-create the walls between our worlds.
I wouldn’t have believed that, either. What made them so certain fragments of the Song were in the Book? Or that the queen could even read it? The concubine might have once known the First Language, but she’d obviously drunk from the cauldron too many times to remember it now.
And Barrons hadn’t said: Then I will sit down and read it, because somehow I know the First Language, and once I get the spell I’m after, you all can do whatever the fuck you want. Fix the world or destroy it, I don’t care.
And Ryodan hadn’t said: Then we’re killing you, Mac, because we don’t trust you and you’ll no longer be necessary.
Unfortunately, I believed the last two.
The tension I felt was unbearable. I hadn’t realized how much I took Barrons for granted until he’d made it plain earlier today that his time with me had an expiration date.
I could lose him.
Maybe I didn’t know what I wanted from him, but at least I knew I wanted him around. That had always seemed to be enough for him.
Unfair as hell and you know it, a small voice inside me said.
At my hip, my radio squawked. “Check, Mac.”
I pressed a button. “Check, Ryodan.”
We tested the radios all around.
“What are you waiting for, girl?” Rowena barked. “Get up there and find it!”
I nudged the Hunter with muscles and mind and watched her dwindle beneath me, as great black wings powerfully churned the night air. I wanted to squash her with my thumb like the infuriating speck she was.
Then I forgot her in the pleasure of the moment.
This was a rush.
This felt … good.
Familiar.
Free.
We rose higher and higher into the sky. Rooftops receded beneath us.
In front of me was the silvery coastline. Behind me, open country.
The air was crisp with a tang of salt. Lights beneath us were few and far between. I laughed out loud. This was amazing. I was flying.
I’d done it before, with Barrons, but this was different. It was just me and my Hunter and the night. I felt wide open with possibilities. The world was my oyster. No, the worlds were my oysters.
Damn, it was good to be me!
I suddenly knew something about Hunters—maybe it fed it to me with its mind. Not only were the massive icy dragons sifters, they made the Silvers obsolete. They weren’t Fae. They never had been. They were amused by us. Aloofly entertained. They hung out with the Unseelie because they found it … interesting to pass time in such a fashion. They’d never been imprisoned.
No one owned them.
No one ever could.
In fact, we didn’t even begin to understand what they really were. (Not alive the way we thought. Was I flying on a huge breathing meteor through the sky? Carved from that of which the universe had begun?) I reached out for the Hunter’s mind. You can sift worlds!
It turned its head and fixed me with a fiery orange eye, as if to say, How stupid are you? You knew that.
No, I didn’t.
It snorted a tendril of smoky fire back at me, scorching my jeans.
“Ow!” I clapped a hand over my knee.
Don’t need blinders. Wipe off his marks. Interfere with my vision. That one should be terminated. He plays with the instruments of gods.
“Barrons? What marks?”