Each time Dani and I have fought back-to-back is a golden memory I’ve tucked away in the scrapbook of my mind.
I can’t help but think it’s what things would have been like if Alina had trusted me and we’d gotten to fight together. Knowing that you’ve got somebody watching your back, you’re a team, you’d never leave each other behind, you’d break each other out of enemy camps, is one of the greatest feelings in the world. Knowing that no matter how bad the trouble is you’ve gotten yourself into, that person will come for you and go on with you—that’s love. I wonder if Alina and I were weak because we let ourselves get divided, separated by an ocean. I wonder whether she’d still be alive if we’d stayed together.
I may never know where I came from, but I can choose my family from here on out, and Dani’s a non-negotiable part of it. Jack and Rainey are going to love her when they finally meet her.
We blasted through the rain-slicked streets, killing Unseelie with a vengeance. With each one I stabbed, I grew more convinced I wasn’t the king. I would have felt something if I had been: remorse, guilt, something. The king had been unwilling to give up his shadow children. I felt no pride of creation, no misguided love. I felt nothing but satisfaction at ending their immortal, parasitic existences and saving human lives.
We ran into Jayne and the Guardians and helped them out of a tight spot with a couple of sifters. We saw Lor and Fade on the prowl. I thought I glimpsed a Keltar on a rooftop, but he vanished so quickly I was left only with the impression of sleek tattooed muscle in the darkness.
Near dawn, we ended up a little too close to Chester’s and I decided we should probably call it quits for the day. I was finally tired enough to sleep and I wanted to be at my best to track the Sinsar Dubh.
Tonight, it would finally end. Tonight we would seal the Book away forever. Then I would pick up the pieces of my life and begin rebuilding it, starting with my mom and dad. I would continue with my missions to find out who’d killed Alina and who I was, but once the Book was locked down again, I’d finally be able to breathe a little easier. Take more time like tonight for myself, time to live … and love.
“Let’s head back to the bookstore, Dani.”
A strangled sound was the only reply.
I spun and sucked in a screech of breath. I didn’t think. I just lunged and slammed my palms into her to Null the bitch.
The Gray Woman froze, but I was too late.
I stared in horror. While I’d been lost in my own thoughts, the lesion-covered, beauty-sucking Gray Woman had sifted in, grabbed Dani unaware, and begun devouring her. Right behind me, and I hadn’t even noticed!
All I could think was, But this isn’t her MO—the Gray Woman devours men!
Dani tried to shake her off but couldn’t. “Dude, how bad’m I?”
I looked directly at her and nearly lost it. Bad. I gaped. This was not happening. This was unacceptable. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t lose Dani. I felt something wild and dark stir inside me.
“Aw, man, get her off me!” she cried.
I tried. I couldn’t. Dani tried, too, but the Gray Woman’s hands created an unbreakable suction, fusing her victim to her until she chose to release it. I kept hitting her with my palms to keep her frozen, running a constant Null effect on her, trying to clear my head and figure out what to do. I kept stealing sideways glances at Dani. What was left of her hair was no longer auburn. Big bald patches showed, and lesions had formed on her scalp. Her eyes were sunken holes in a bloodless face. She was covered with sores and looked like she’d lost fifty pounds, and she couldn’t have weighed more than twice that soaking wet.
“Shoulda known,” Dani said miserably. “She hangs here. Likes Chester’s. I been hunting her. Guess she knew it. Ow!” She touched her mouth.
Her lips were cracked, oozing. It looked as if her teeth were about to start falling out.
Tears stung my eyes. I slammed my palms into the frozen Gray Woman. “Get off her, get off her!” I shouted.
“Too late, Mac. Ain’t it? That’s what I’m seeing in your eyes.”
“Never too late.” I pulled my spear out and pressed it to the Gray Woman’s throat. “Do what I say, Dani. Don’t move. Just let me handle this. I’m going to let her unfreeze.”
“She’ll finish me!”
“No, she won’t. Trust me. Hang on.” I closed my eyes and opened my mind. I stood on the black beach and stared at the dark waters. Deep down, something stirred, whispered welcome, greeted me with affection. Missed you, it said. Take these, they are all you need. But come back soon, there is so much more. I knew that. I could feel it. The lake was like the padlocked box in which I kept thoughts I couldn’t face. There were chains to break, a lid to lift. The runes I gathered seeped out cracks. But one day I was going to have to open that dark place of power and look deep. I scooped crimson runes from the black waters. I opened my eyes and pressed one into the Gray Woman’s oozing cheek, another into her leprous chest.
I waited.
The instant she unfroze, she tried to sift, but as my dark lake had promised, the runes prevented her. The more she resisted, the brighter they pulsed. I realized this was the Song of Making ingredient Barrons had told me about, the one that had added the punch to of the prison walls. The more powerful the Fae that tried to push through, the more resistant the walls became.
She exploded away from Dani and began trying to tear the runes from her skin, shrieking. They seemed to burn. Good.
Dani whooshed to the ground like a sheet of paper, thin, white, and badly crumpled.
I kicked the Gray Woman. Hard. Again and again. “Fix her.”
She rolled over and hissed up at me.
I raised a fist, dripping blood and runes, flung a third one at her.
She screamed and curled in on herself.
“I said fix her!”
“It is impossible.”
“I don’t believe you. You sucked it out. You can give it back. And if you can’t, I will trap you in your own leprous skin and torture you for eternity. You think you’re hungry now? You have no idea what hunger is. I’ll show you pain. I’ll keep you in a box and make it my personal mission in life to—”
With a snarl of rage and pain, she rolled over and clamped her oozing hands to Dani’s face. “Free passage!” Bloody spittle flew from her lips.
“What?”
“You will not kill me if I do this. You and I will have—how do they say?—détente. We will be comrades. You will owe me.”
“I will give you your life. That’s all you get.”
“I can take hers before you can take mine.”
“Feck that noise,” Dani cried. “Kill the bitch. You ain’t owing her nothing, Mac.”
There was something bothering me. This had the feel of a personal attack. “You don’t kill females. Why did you come after Dani?”
“You killed my mate!” she snarled.
“The Gray Man?”
“He was the only other. Now I hurt you. Get them out of me!”
“Give her back what you took. Make her like she was before and I’ll remove them. Otherwise, I’ll skin you in them.”
She writhed on the pavement.
“By the count of three, bitch. One, two …”
She held up a thin, sucker-covered, oozing hand. “Make oath with me. Free passage or she dies.” She laughed bitterly. “We were separated when we escaped. We were going to hunt together, feed together. Who knows? In this world, perhaps we might have had young. I never saw him alive again.” Her lips peeled back. “Choose. I weary of you.”
“Feck her,” Dani seethed.
“I want more than her life. You will never harm any of mine. I won’t waste my breath explaining to you who is mine. If you think there’s even a minuscule possibility that I might know the person you’re thinking about feeding on, don’t, or our truce ends. Understand?”
“Neither you nor any you consider yours will ever hunt me. Understand?”
“You will leave no trace of your foul touch on her.”
“You will grant me a favor one day.”
“Agreed.”
“No, Mac!” Dani cried.
I pressed my palm to the Gray Woman’s. I felt the sting of a single sucker mouth as it bled me and we made the oath.
“Fix her,” I said. “Now.”
“Can’t fecking believe you did that,” Dani muttered for the tenth time.
Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes sparkling, her curly auburn hair more lustrous than ever. She even looked a little plumper, as if she had an extra layer or two of collagen beneath her skin.
“Think she gave you a little extra back, Dani,” I teased. But I wasn’t entirely certain the Gray Woman hadn’t. Dani glowed, her skin shimmered translucent, her eyes were so green they were mesmerizing. Ruby lips pursed in a pretty moue.
“Think my boobs are bigger,” she said with a smirk. Then she sobered. “Shoulda let her kill me, and you know it.”
“Never gonna happen,” I said.
“ ’Stead you went and made some kinda devil deal with the creepy feck.”
“And I’d do it again in a heartbeat. We’ll figure it out when it becomes a problem. You’re alive. That’s all that matters.”
Dani keeps it cool, all the time. On the rare occasions she lets you see a feeling, it’s one she’s chosen to paste on her face and let you see. She has a vast arsenal of scowls and disgruntled sneers, she’s nailed every nuance of saucy grins and cocky swaggers known to man, and I suspect she perfected the Look of Death by five.
Her face is naked now, wide open. Unadulterated adoration blazes in her eyes. “This is the best birthday ever! Ain’t never had nobody do something like that for me,” she said wonderingly. “Not even Mom—” She broke off, clamping her lips in a thin line.
“Peas in the Mega pod,” I said, tousling her curls, as we headed down the alley behind the bookstore. “Love you, kid.”
She jerked but quickly slapped an insouciant grin over her shock. “Dude, I’m even gonna let you get away with calling me kid. Really think I’m prettier? Not that I care or nothing, just wanna know what kinda pain in the ass it’s gonna be when I’m even hotter than I was before, and Dancer gets a good—”
“Brought ussh tasshty to drink, fassht one? Lassht one wassh sshweeeeet.”
I whirled, spear up. They’d either sifted in or been hiding in the shadows, motionless, and we’d been so caught up in relief at our near escape that we’d been oblivious.
A pair of Unseelie I’d never seen before stood by the trash dumpster by the rear door of BB&B. They were identical, each with four arms and four slender, tubular legs, three heads apiece, and dozens of mouths on their flat, horrific faces, with tiny, needle-sharp teeth. At the corners of the many mouths were pairs of much longer thin teeth, and I knew, without knowing how I knew, that they used them as straws.
My sister had been missing the marrow in her bones, her endocrine glands had been drained, her eyeballs were collapsed, and she’d had no spinal fluid. The coroner had been at a complete loss.
I wasn’t. Not anymore.
I knew what caste had killed Alina. What had gnawed and ripped and torn at her flesh to slowly and carefully remove all her inner fluids as if they were gourmet delights.