God, that look!
I cover my face with my hands, but the image won’t go away: beast and Barrons, his dark skin and exotic face, its slate hide and primal features. Those ancient eyes that saw so much and asked only to be seen in return burn with scorn: Couldn’t you have trusted me just once? Couldn’t you have hoped for the best, just once? Why did you choose Ryodan over me? I was keeping you alive. I had a plan. Did I ever let you down?
“I didn’t know it was you!” I gouge my palms with my nails. They bleed for a brief moment, then heal.
But the beast/Barrons in my mind isn’t done torturing me. You should have. I took your sweater. I smelled you and granted you passage. I killed fresh, tender meat for you. I pissed around you. I showed you in this form, as in any other, that you are mine—and I take care of what is mine.
Tears blind me. I double over. It hurts so bad I can’t breathe, can’t move. I hunch over, curl in on myself, and rock.
Beyond the pain, if there is such a place, I know things.
Things like: According to Ryodan (if he’s not a traitor, and if he is and somehow still alive, I’ll kill him as dead as we killed Barrons), I have a brand on the back of my skull placed there by the Lord Master, who probably still has my parents, because Barrons is here, so obviously he never got through to Ashford.
Unless … time passes differently in the Silvers and he did have time to get to Ashford before I punched IYD, summoning him here to the seventh dimension I’ve been in since entering the Lord Master’s slippery pink corridor back in Dublin.
I have no idea how long I was in the Hall of All Days or how much time passed in the real world while I sunned with Christian by the lake.
Once, courtesy of V’lane, I spent a single afternoon on a beach in Faery, with an illusion of my sister, and it cost me an entire month in the human world. When I returned, Barrons was furious. He’d chained me to a beam in his garage. I’d been wearing a hot-pink string bikini.
We fought.
I close my eyes and embrace the memory.
He stands there, furious, surrounded by needles and dyes, about to tattoo me—or, more accurately, pretend to tattoo me where he’s already tattooed me but I haven’t discovered it yet—so he can track me if I ever decide to do something as stupid as agree to stay in Faery for any period of time again.
I tell him if he tattoos me, we’re through. I accuse him of never feeling anything more than greed and mockery, being incapable of love. I call him a mercenary, blame him for losing his temper when he couldn’t find me and trashing the store, and, while I scathingly concede that he might get an occasional hard-on, it’s undoubtedly for something like money, an artifact, or a book—never a woman.
I remember every word of his reply: Yes, I have loved, Ms. Lane, and although it’s none of your business, I have lost. Many things. And, no, I am not like any other player in this game and I will never be like V’lane, and I get a hard-on a great deal more often than occasionally. Sometimes it’s over a spoiled little girl, not a woman at all. And, yes, I trashed the bookstore when I couldn’t find you. You’ll have to choose a new bedroom, too. And I’m sorry your pretty little world got all screwed up, but everybody’s does, and you go on. It’s how you go on that defines you.
In retrospect, I see through myself with pathetic ease.
There I am, chained to a beam, nearly naked, alone with Jericho Barrons, a man who is so far beyond my comprehension, but, God, he excites me! He plans to work slowly and carefully on my naked skin for hours. His hard, tattooed body is an unspoken promise of initiation into a secret world where I could feel things I can’t begin to imagine, and I want him to work on me for hours. Desperately. But not to tattoo me. I goad him to the best of my na?ve, sheltered abilities. I want him to take from me what I lack the courage to offer.
What a complicated, ridiculous, self-destructive feeling! Afraid to ask for what I want. Afraid to own up to my own desires. Driven by circumscription of nurture, not nature. I’d come to Dublin wearing shackles on my bonds. I’d been all nurture.
He was all nature—trying to teach me to change.
Like I said: degrees of denial.
He’d leaned into me, in that garage, sex and barely leashed violence, and when I’d felt his hard-on, it made me feel so alive and wild inside that later I’d had to peel off my bikini and take care of myself in the shower again and again, fantasizing a very different outcome in his garage. One that had taken all night.
I’d told myself it was because I’d spent the day in close proximity to a death-by-sex Fae. Another lie.
He’d unchained me and let me go.
If I were chained to that beam now, I’d have no problem telling him exactly what I wanted. And it wouldn’t involve unchaining me. At least not at first.
I focus through my tears.
Grass. Trees. Him.
He lies facedown. I need to go to him.
The earth is wet, muddy from last night’s rain, from his blood.
I need to clean him. He shouldn’t be messy. Barrons doesn’t like to be messy. He’s meticulous; a sophisticated, exquisite dresser. Although I’ve straightened his lapel a few times, it was only for the excuse of touching him. Stepping into his personal space. Exercising familiarity to underscore that I had the right. Unpredictable as a hungry lion, he might be feared by everyone else, but he never ripped out my throat, only licked me, and, if his tongue was a little rough sometimes, it was worth it to walk beside the king of the jungle.
My heart is going to explode.
I can’t do this. I just went through this with my sister. Regret upon regret. Missed opportunities. Bad decisions. Grief.
How many more people will have to die before I learn how to live? He was right. I’m a walking catastrophe.
I fumble in my pocket for my phone. First thing I do is dial Barrons’ cell. The call doesn’t go through. I press IYCGM. Call doesn’t go through. I hit IYD and hold my breath, watching Barrons intently. The call doesn’t go through.
Like the man himself, all lines are down.
I begin to shake. I don’t know why, but the fact that the cell phones don’t work convinces me more than anything else that he’s beyond my reach.
I flip my head down, scrape my hair forward, and, although it takes me a few tries to get the angle right, I take a shot of my nape. Sure enough, two tattoos. Barrons’ brand is a dragon with a Z in the center that shimmers with faint iridescence.
To the left of his tattoo is a black circle crammed with strange symbols I don’t recognize. It seems Ryodan was telling the truth. If the tattoo was put there by the LM, it explains a lot: Why Barrons so heavily warded the basement where he dragged me back from being Pri-ya, how the LM found me at the abbey once the wards had been painted over, how he found me again at the house Dani and I squatted in, and how he’d tracked me to my parents’ in Ashford.
I pull out the small dirk I lifted from BB&B.
My hand trembles.
I could end my pain. I could curl up and bleed out next to him. It’d be over so quickly. Maybe I’d get another chance some other time, some other place. Maybe he and I would be reincarnated like in that movie, What Dreams May Come, that Alina and I hated so much because the kids and husband died, then the wife committed suicide.
I love that movie now. I get it, the whole idea of willingly going to hell for someone. Living there, insane if you have to, because you’d rather be insane with them than endure life without them.
I stare at the blade.
He died so I would live.
“Damn you! I don’t want to live without you!”
It’s how you go on that defines you.
“Oh, shut up, would you? You’re dead, shut up, shut up!”
But a terrible truth is shredding my heart.
I’m the girl that cried “wolf.”
I’m the one that pressed IYD. I’m the one that didn’t think I could survive the boar on my own. And guess what?
I did.