SEVENTEEN
“These girls fall like dominoes”
We’re not so different, you and I, Cruce says as he moves inside me. Both born to lead.
I try desperately to wake myself. I’m in the Dreaming and he has me in his wings. The moment I fell asleep, he was there, waiting for me at the end of a white marble path in a garden of exquisite blood roses. He lays me on them, with a crush of velvet petals. I brace for the thorns.
You must not rue it, Kat. The sun does not rue that it rises.
He goes deep, filling me completely, making every nerve ending in my body vibrate with erotic ecstasy. I arch my back and hiss with pleasure.
We will rule the world and they will love us. We will save them.
“Dreaming of me, are you now, my sweet Kat?”
Like a dropped snow globe, my dream world shatters and I remember why I asked Sean to stay the night with me at the abbey. Why I slipped him around back and into my suite of rooms. To save me from Cruce. To ground me to the world I know and love.
I roll into Sean’s arms and press against him, shuddering with fear that I pretend is desire. We make love quick and hard and fast. He never knows I’m trying to erase someone else.
Someone that makes me come harder. Better. More.
Sean, my love, my childhood friend, teenage sweetheart, mate to my soul. I’ve never known life without him. We shared a playpen and went to our first day of school together. We got the measles the same week, swapped our first flu snuggled in blankets in front of the TV. We got pimples and got rid of them. He was there the night I started my period, and I was there the day his voice began to change. We know everything about each other. Our history is rich and long. I love his dark eyes, his black hair and fair Irish skin. I love the way he wears a fisherman’s sweater with faded jeans and always has a quick smile. I love how strong his arms are from years of pulling fishing nets, and the way his long-limbed body moves, how he looks when he’s lost in a good book, the way he feels moving inside me.
“Are you all right, love?” He brushes a tangle of hair from my face.
I lay my head on his chest and listen to his heart beating, solid and sure. Sometimes I think he has a touch of my sidhe-seer gift, he reads me so well. He’s known about my emotional empathy since we were children. Nothing about me disturbs him, a rare gift from those who fully understand what I do. Few can lie to me. I sense their inner conflict, unless they suffer no guilt or scruple about anything, and I’ve been blessed to encounter only a handful of those in my life—all of them in or near Chester’s, recently. I don’t know the truth, only that there is a lie. It takes a scrupulously honest man to love me. That’s my Sean. We learned to trust each other completely before we were old enough to have learned suspicion.
“What if I can’t do it?” I say. I don’t elaborate. With Sean few words are necessary. We’ve been finishing each other’s sentences since we were young. We were virgins when we made love the first time. There’s never been anyone else for either of us.
Now I have an invisible lover violating everything I hold dear. Making me want him and not my Sean.
He laughs. “Kat, sweetheart, you can do anything.”
My heart feels like a rock in my chest. I burn with shame, and deceit. I’ve made love in my dreams in exquisite detail with another man, and have done so every night for over a week. I’ve taken him in my mouth, felt him at the entrance of my womb, places that are Sean’s alone. “But what if I can’t? What if I make mistakes that cost lives?”
He rolls onto his side and pulls me back into him, spooning. I press in. We fit together perfectly. Like we were carved from the same piece of wood, from the same tree.
“Hush, sweet Kat. I’m here. I’ll always be here. Together we can do anything. You know that. Remember our vows.”
I pull his arms tighter around me. We were young, so young. Everything was simple then. We were fifteen, deliriously and passionately in love, delighted by our developing bodies, growing up together into one. We stole off to Paradise Point out by the lighthouse, dressed up like it was our wedding day, and took vows with each other. We came from broken families, temperamental fighting families, and we learned from watching them. Too much passion burns. Tenderness fuses. We knew what it took to stay together. It was nothing fancy. Common sense, really.
If you weaken, I’ll be strong. If you get lost, I’ll be your way home. If you despair, I’ll bring you joy. I will love you until the end of time.
“I love you, Sean O’Bannion. Never leave me.”
“Wild horses, Kat. Couldn’t drag me an inch. You’re the only one for me. Always.” There’s a smile in his voice.
We make love again, and this time, when dark wings try to shadow me, they fail. There’s no one else in bed with me but my Sean.
I watch him dress while dawn paints pale white rectangles around the heavy drapes. I have young charges at the abbey and we are not wed. We’d begun making plans to marry before the walls fell but our families interfered. The O’Bannions tried to stop it. When they realized Sean was having none of it, they tried to take over and turn it into the spectacle of the decade.
An O’Bannion marries a McLaughlin!
It would have been a grand step up for my family. We were small-time criminals. His family controlled nearly all Dublin’s mob underbelly. I grew up with Sean because my mother was his nanny.
We’d been fighting bitterly with our parents for months before the walls fell and billions died.
Including our families. Where else would they have been than out in the riots, watching the chaos, trying to profit from the lawlessness?
I can’t pretend that I’m sorry for their deaths, and I won’t feel ashamed that I’m not. The only deaths I rue are those of my two half brothers that survived the fall, only to be killed by Shades. Rowena didn’t teach us about eating Unseelie in time for me to save them. My parents and other siblings were corrupt to the core. Sometimes people are born into the wrong family. Sean and I turned our backs on them years ago. But our families never stopped pressuring us and never accepted letting us go. I used to worry so much about what they would do to Sean, how they might try to force him into the family ways, but now such worries are a thing of the past.
It’s today and we’re free!
As soon as we get a quiet moment, and a priest, we plan to wed. Some of the girls are hoping we’ll decide to make a lovely ceremony of it here at the abbey. A wedding in times like these can be an uplifting thing, but I’ll not make my wedding into something for another. It’s between Sean and God and me.
When he holds my face in his hands and kisses me, I feel his heart, both against my chest and with my gift. He’s happy. It’s all I need.
He asks if I’ll have him again tonight and I smile and kiss him.
“Aye, and every night thereafter and well you know it. If you’re fishing for a compliment, my bonny Sean, I’ve thousands for you.”
But as he slips out, my laughter dies and I stare at the bed.
I should tell him what’s happening. I would wish it from him. I would fight for him at night against my invisible foe. We would stand together as one. I would know all the secrets of his tormenting succubus, the better to defeat her.
But I can’t. I just can’t. It happened before I could stop it the first time. I’ve had intimate carnal knowledge of another man. I’ve felt things with Cruce I’ve never felt with Sean. And I hate myself and I can’t tell him. I just can’t.
So I’m walking home slow-mo Joe style, pissed off but having a hard time focusing on being pissed off because my body feels so good. My mind’s grumpy, but my body’s saying, “Hey, dude, let’s play!”
I kick a can down the alley and send it flying into a wall, and I do mean into it. It flattens and gets impacted in the brick, and I crack up. Someday somebody is going to see it and be like, dude, what happened here? I leave clues about me all over the city, bending sculptures and broken streetlamps into twisty D’s for Dani and Dude and Dangerous, leaving my calling card for folks to see. It’s my Bat Signal, letting the world know somebody is out there, watching, caring.
I got a whole day stretching ahead of me and almost can’t believe it! It feels like old times. I think about what to do with myself. Stupid as it is, I resent working on the ice mystery during the day because Ryodan’s taking such a big chunk of my time every night. But I don’t have the luxury of being stupid when folks’ lives are at stake. It sure would be nice if I could get Dancer’s superbrain in on it!
Trouble is, I should also head out to the abbey for a checkup. It’s been a while since I was out there and sidhe-sheep can get in trouble faster than I can waggle my ass and say baa. I got a worried feeling about them I ain’t been able to shake.
Then there’s Inspector Jayne. I’m pretty sure I’m due for a cage-cleaning session.
I mosey through Temple Bar, taking my time, drinking my city in, trying to decide how to prioritize my day. Kind of reveling in the simple fact that the choice is mine for a change! I used to love this part of town before the walls fell, so much cool stuff happening every night with tourists and pubs and new Fae to spy on and kill. I found out what it was like to live in these streets after mom died. No collar, no cage. Just a crazy old witch I learned to keep a little afraid of me all the time.
Then Mac came and the streets got even cooler. There’s nothing like having a sidekick superhero to pal around with. Especially one that was part sister, part mom, and all best friend.
Now, like the rest of my city, Temple Bar is a mess. Abandoned cars, wrecked and stripped, are shoved up on the sidewalks, opening a tight lane down the middle of the street for traffic. There’s broken glass everywhere from shattered windows and streetlamps; you can hardly take a step that doesn’t crunch. Newspapers and trash and husks of what used to be people blow down the streets. On a gray, rainy day it can look real grim, if you don’t superimpose a bright future over it. Mac’s mom is heading up some kind of Green-up Program, and I hear her dad is working on a Cleanup Program, as well as hearing disputes and stuff, and one day Dublin’s going to be rocking and full of craic again.
I saunter past the bright red facade of the Temple Bar of the district and feel it before I even turn the corner. I stop instantly.
It’s like a breeze blowing down on me from a glacier.
I consider not turning the corner. I haven’t investigated one of these scenes alone. I could nudge Ryodan this way tonight and pretend we just found it. It’s not like they change too much between “recently iced” and “iced for a few days.” Besides, if I turn the corner and find kids dead, it’ll totally ruin my day.
Almost dying is fresh in my mind. If I’d been alone at the church last night … That’s a weird thought. I can’t imagine me dead. I look around, and up. As far as I can tell, I’m by myself. Christian can’t be spying on me all the time. So, like, if I leave, nobody will know I’m not always a superhero. If I stay and something bad happens to me, well, my heart could stop, and there’d be nobody around to save me.
“Wussy girl! Get your cool back!” I just disgusted myself. I don’t walk away and I don’t need backup. Never have. A superhero isn’t something you play at sometimes—it’s something you are. Full-time, all the time, every day.
I flip back my long coat, liking the crisp leathery sound it makes, draw my sword and turn the corner, ready for action. My sword frosts white and my fingers get stiff with an instant chill.
In the middle of the street is one of those fancy cars Mac likes so much, totally iced, glittering diamond-crusted in the sunlight. An iced arm is sticking out the open window on the driver’s side. A dude is hanging half out the passenger side, like he tried to climb out or something, mouth open on a scream, eyes closed, fist up in the air like he was trying to fight something off. No kids. That’s a relief. Looks like only two casualties this time. That’s another relief.
I study it, absorbing the details.
This scene’s not so cold. Brutal, but nothing like the church or the subclub at Chester’s. More like the laundry scene. I figure being outside, the frosted vignettes warm up faster. Piece of cake!
I take a couple of deep breaths, locking everything down on my mental grid, psyching myself up to freeze-frame in.
Just as I’ve nearly got it perfect, right exactly when I’ve almost got everything snapped into precise place and I’m preparing to shift gears smooth and easy, folks start shouting behind me and guns start going off.
Bullets can hurt me. I’m not that superhero. It spooks me and I startle into freeze-frame before I mean to. That’s even more dangerous than leading with your head!
I blast off wild, and try to get control of myself, but it’s hard to do once I’m moving so fast. I whirl dizzyingly like a drunken Tasmanian devil and smash into the side of the iced car.
It knocks me out of freeze-frame but either doesn’t catch me so much by surprise this time or the cold isn’t as deadly as it was in the church or a little of both, because I manage to shove myself right back up into freeze-frame almost as fast as I dropped down. I can’t get my feet under control, though, because I didn’t get off on the right foot to begin with, and I slam into the car again and this time the people inside it blow like supercharged grenades into a gazillion shards of ice and I get sprayed by icy pink shrapnel.
Diamond-hard splinters of frozen flesh pierce every inch of my exposed skin. A thick dagger of ice as big around as a hot dog punctures my jeans and sinks into my thigh, and another impales my shoulder.
I get knocked out of freeze-frame again and push myself back up, and when I do, the ice splinters shove deeper into my body from the pressure of how fast I’m moving and it hurts so fecking bad that I drop back down instantly without thinking. Reflexive, just trying to stop the pain.
I start to freeze to death.
I push back up.
Ow! Shit, shit, shit, it hurts!
Down, I’ll die.
Up, I’ll only wish I would.
I stay in freeze-frame, stumble into the stupid car again, bounce back, careen off another car, and give it everything I’ve got in a violent effort to get out of the cold zone. I can’t feel my hands. I can’t feel my feet. Feck, I can’t believe I did this! Who was yelling and why were they shooting?
I push, push, push with all my might!
I collapse facedown in the street. Ice daggers bite deep. But I don’t care. I’m out. I’m back around the corner where it’s warm enough to live. I made it. At least the hundreds of splinters in me will melt now. Either they’re already starting to or I’m bleeding a lot, because something warm and wet is trickling all over my skin.
I’m out of immediate mortal danger. I won’t freeze to death. Now I just have to worry about bleeding to death.
It takes me three tries to manage to roll over on my back, and by the time I get there I’m panting worse than I do when I’ve freeze-framed for an hour, and shaking like a leaf. There’s blood in my eyes. I try to blink it away. Dude, that was a grand debacle! How embarrassing! Glad nobody saw it!
I assess my situation without moving. I’m severely cut up. My skin burns where I can feel myself. The biggest threats to my survival are the holes in my thigh and shoulder, or what will be holes when the ice finishes melting. I’ll need to get them bandaged fast. The problem is, I can’t feel my hands. I close my eyes, trying to focus on moving my fingers. Nothing happens.
“Ah, Dani.”
I look up to see Inspector Jayne bending over me. I’ve never been gladder to see him in my whole life.
“You’ve certainly done it now, haven’t you?”
“C-C-Candy b-b-bar,” I manage.
He smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes.
“In m-m-m-my p-puh …” I trail off. I don’t even have the energy to say pocket. I give him a longing, starving look and I know he gets the picture.
He looks across me. I realize I’m surrounded by Guardians. Good, they can carry me to Chester’s and help me get patched up!
“Have you got it?” Jayne says.
“Got it, Captain.”
I go ice cold in a way that has nothing to do with cars or frozen people. I try to lunge to my feet but succeed only in flopping on the pavement like a beached fish. “D-D-Don’t you d-d-d-d-dare—”
“It’s been six days, Dani.”
Six days? How long did I sleep at Chester’s?
“You should have come. If you’d kept your word, I might have continued trying to put up with it. But I won’t allow the fate of our city to rest in whimsical hands. The sword is ours now, for the good of Dublin. We take far more of them off the streets than you do. In time you’ll understand it always should have been this way.”
“Y-Y-You—”
“Don’t try to take it back. Your first warning is your final one. I won’t treat you like a child if you do.”
“K-K-Kill y-you!” I explode. I still can’t feel my hands or feet but I feel my head. It’s about to explode. He has no right. It’s my sword!
“Don’t make it war, Dani. You won’t win.”
I try to tell him he better kill me right here and now because there’s no way they can keep my sword from me. I’ll take it back the second I’m on my feet again. There’s no place on Earth, feck, there’s no place in all of heaven or hell that they’ll ever be safe from me again! But I’m too light-headed to talk. Dizzy. My vision’s getting weird.
“She’s awful bloody, Captain. She gonna live?”
“She’s tough,” Jayne says.
“Maybe we should do something.”
“We can’t help her, not even a little, or she’ll be able to take it back.”
I flop on the pavement, unable to do a thing to stop them. I’m vulnerable, completely at his mercy.
And he’s not having any.
I won’t have any for him when the time comes.
He’s leaving me here, to live or die on my own. I’ll never forgive. I’ll never forget.
They walk away. Just like that they leave me in the middle of a dirty street like a dog that got hit by a car, bleeding and helpless and alone. Dead if another car comes along. I’ll remember that, too, when I see him again. Dude, they could have at least moved me to the sidewalk, balled up a shirt or something for a pillow beneath my head.
Something really bad happens to me then. Worse even than everything that’s already happened to me in the past few days.
I feel woozy and strange and all the sudden it’s like I’m outside of my body, watching me. But the me lying in the street has long blond hair and is looking up at the redheaded me with tears in her eyes and telling me she can’t die yet because she’s got people to protect. She’s got a sister named Mac back home in Georgia and she just left her a message, and if she dies, Mac will come over to hunt her killer because she’s stubborn and idealistic, and she’ll die, too. But I don’t seem to be able to feel anything about what’s happening, and none of it seems real, so I walk away just like Jayne did.
My stomach heaves and I puke my guts out right there in the middle of the street. I can’t even get on my hands and knees to do it. Lying on my back, I get sick all over myself. Not the blond-haired me that’s the ghost of Alina, but the real, red-haired Dani that’s really lying in the street wondering if she’s going to bite it this time. And if there’s something wet on my face that isn’t blood or vomit … Nah. Ain’t.
Eventually I get the feeling back in my hands and feet. I guess they thaw. I fumble for a candy bar. I curl in a ball in the street and eat every candy bar I’ve got and plot revenge.
Don’t make it war, he said, and I won’t.
I don’t have to.
He already did.