TWENTY-SIX
“It’s the hard-knock life”
“You did me a favor. Velvet was an annoyance,” R’jan says. “He spoke too often and too much, saying little of consequence.”
Ryodan looks at the King’s remaining courtiers and says, “I’ll do you three more ‘favors.’ Just say the word. Wrong one or right one. Doesn’t matter to me.”
The courtiers sneer at him. Uneasily. We might have postured for hours and never gotten to the position of strength Ryodan established with a single action. I’m learning from him. I’d never tell him that, though.
R’jan opens his mouth then closes it, not entirely sure Ryodan didn’t just say that he was going to kill the other three courtiers if he said even one more word. Smart dude. I’m not sure Ryodan didn’t mean that, too. How the feck did he kill Velvet? I study the Fae corpse but see no obvious wounds. No cuts or … wait a minute, is that a few drops of blood on his shirt? I sidle left for a better view but Ryodan moves like there’s a tether between us, conveniently blocking it. I got no doubts he left so I wouldn’t know. He’s so fecking secretive!
Does he have my sword somewhere? Did Mac loan him the spear? Never! Obviously he’s got some other weapon that kills Fae, and I want it. The prick. He’s been holding out on me big-time. When I lost my sword he could have given me whatever he just used. I’m so pissed I could spit. He knows how to kill Fae. No wonder he’s so fearless. He’s faster than me, stronger, and has a Fae-killing weapon. I pine for the days I was the biggest, baddest superhero in town!
Abruptly, I got graphic sex images in my brain! I’m hot and uncomfortable in my jeans. Bugger it all! R’jan is a prince, a death-by-sex Fae. He’s the one I sensed muting himself so as not to draw attention to his little entourage, but now that the crap’s hitting the fan, he’s going to use any weapon at his disposal. I guess he figures to mess me up to get to Ryodan.
But R’jan is staring at Ryodan like he expects it to be working on him. Huh? I thought they were hetero and their killer eroticism only worked on the opposite sex. I realize that was a stupid assumption. It’s just that I never saw the Unseelie princes around men and V’lane always kept it muted around humans. There’s no reason, whatever the mechanism, that it wouldn’t work on both genders.
“On your knees, human.” R’jan tosses his golden mane imperiously. “You will crawl before your king.”
Ryodan laughs. “Is that all you’ve got.”
I hang back, listening, not about to get closer. It’s all I can do to not start stripping. Aw, bugger, I am! My coat’s on the ground and I’m pulling up my shirt! I make a sound of protest but it doesn’t come out like that at all.
“Turn it off,” Ryodan says without even looking at me. “You’re distressing Dani. No one distresses Dani but me.”
“I said ‘kneel,’ ” R’jan says, like he can’t believe Ryodan is still standing there.
“And I said ‘f*ck you.’ Turn it off or die.”
R’jan cuts it off so suddenly I’m shivering, cold and miserable, like I was just sunning by a pool then got an iceberg dropped on me.
“Why are you here,” Ryodan says.
R’jan says tightly, “What the f*ck are you?”
Darn good question. I wonder it myself.
“If you answer me wrong one more time, your death.” He kicks Velvet’s lifeless body.
R’jan grimaces. Unlike Unseelie, Seelie expressions make sense to me. They’re similar to ours, I guess because they’ve spent so much time preying on us. “Something is killing our people.”
“I didn’t know you counted the Unseelie as yours.”
“It has visited … places other than Dublin. It has killed Seelie, too.”
“It’s been in Faery.”
“Twice. How dare an abomination enter our realm? Never has an Unseelie been suffered in Faery!”
The temperature drops and I tense, searching for a shimmer in the air. It was already colder near the church than in the rest of Dublin, but now the pages of the hymnals scattered around the street glisten with a thin sheen of ice. I see Ryodan looking around, too. Snow starts to fall. I realize R’jan’s temper is doing it at the same time Ryodan does. I brush snow off my bare shoulders, then I jerk, embarrassed. I was so riveted by stuff happening that I didn’t realize I’m only wearing my bra. I scoop up my clothes and yank my shirt over my head. I hate Fae.
To R’jan, I say, “Cruce lived in Faery for hundreds of thousands of years and you guys never figured it out. There’s an Unseelie in Faery for you, sitting right next to your queen. Wait!” I snicker. “I forgot. She wasn’t your queen either. She was human. Dudes, stupid much?”
“I will speak with you,” R’jan says to Ryodan, “when you make the runt be silent.”
I puff myself up, waiting for Ryodan’s defense.
“Be quiet, kid.”
I deflate.
“You’re certain it’s Unseelie,” Ryodan says to R’jan.
“I said it was,” I say indignantly.
“Unequivocally.”
“Like, I even used that exact word!”
“What is this ‘abomination?’ ” Ryodan says.
“We do not know. We have never needed to know about our foul brethren.”
“Yet you’re worried enough about it that you’re here. In a dark Dublin street. The new king of the Seelie himself.”
It seems to mollify R’jan to hear himself called the new king of the Seelie. He looks away and doesn’t say anything for a second. Then he shivers. “It brings final death to our kind.”
“Like the spear and the sword,” I say.
“I told you to shut her up.”
“Answer her.”
“She cannot understand what it is to be Fae.”
Ryodan doesn’t say a word. He takes one step forward and R’jan immediately takes one step back all smooth, like they’re doing a choreographed dance.
“One day, human—”
“You might want to rethink what you’re calling me.”
“—I will crush you beneath my heel and—”
“Until that fictitious day, you will answer me when I speak.” He steps over Velvet’s body, closing the distance between them.
R’jan steps back.
“How does ‘final death’ differ from what the sword does,” Ryodan says.
“Your puny brains were not fashioned to grasp the greatness of being D’Anu.”
Ryodan crosses his arms, waiting. Dude’s got some serious presence. I want to be like him when I grow up. “You’ll have no brain at all in three seconds. Two.”
R’jan says tightly, “The spear and sword end immortal life. They sever the connection that binds our matter together and scatter it to the wind.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Even if we die, that of which we are fashioned is still out there, blowing. We feel all our kindred through all time, impressions in the fabric of the universe. We are individual yet a skein, vast and glorious. You cannot know what it is to belong to such an enormous, divine entity. This … this … thing … whatever it is, is pruning our tree. It does more than merely unbind our matter. It scatters nothing to the wind. Nothing. It is as if those it takes have never been. Its victims are … erased. You cannot begin to perceive how painful that is for us. Death, even by the sword and spear, leaves us connected. This abomination is amputating our race, limb by limb!”
The Ice Monster is stripping away Fae existence on the deepest level. There’s something to my “life force” theory!
“You have strong incentive to see it stopped.”
I interpret R’jan’s expression as a royal “Duh.”
“Which makes it worth a lot to you.”
R’jan gives him an incredulous look. “You could not hope to terminate it nor do I barter with pigs and fools.”
“I will terminate it. You will pay me handsomely for services rendered when and how I choose to invoice you. And, one day, you will kneel before me and swear your fealty. At Chester’s. Before an audience of Fae.”
“We could do fireworks,” I say excitedly.
“Never,” R’jan says.
“I’m a patient man,” Ryodan says.
I think about that later, as we dig through the rubble, fill my ziplock and tuck it into my backpack. I munch a candy bar to make more room in my bag. “You’re not patient. You zero in on something and lock on like a missile. You’re the most pushy, manipulative person I know. And I knew Rowena.”
“Patience and persistence aren’t mutually exclusive. You have no idea how patient I am. When I want something.”
“What does somebody like you want? More power? More toys? More sex?”
“All of the above. All the time.”
“Greedy bugger.”
“Kid, let me tell you something. Most people spend their short time in this world less than half alive. They wander through their days in a haze of responsibility and resentment. Something happens to them not long after they’re born. They get conflicted about what they want and start worshipping the wrong gods. Should. Mercy. Equality. Altruism. There’s nothing you should do. Do what you want. Mercy isn’t Nature’s way. She’s an equal opportunity killer. We aren’t born the same. Some are stronger, smarter, faster. Never apologize for it. Altruism is an impossible concept. There’s no action you can make that doesn’t spring from how you want to feel about yourself. Not greedy, Dani. Alive. And happy about it every single f*cking day.”
“Are we done here yet? I got a paper to get out.” I roll my eyes when I say it so he doesn’t see how much what he just said got to me. I think it might be the smartest thing I ever heard anyone say. “Hey, you think my sword’s—”
“For f*ck’s sake no.”
“Geez, dude. Just asking.”
We stop by two more scenes in Dublin that got iced, first the fitness center, then one of the small underground pubs. It’s a gaping hole in the pavement, with chunks of concrete listing in at dangerous angles. There’s nobody around to cordon it off and make sure wandering kids don’t fall in. Fortunately there aren’t as many wandering kids as there were right after Halloween. We’ve gotten most of them off the streets. Some of them refused to come in, chose to go underground instead. Got to respect that. It sucks being taken pity on by someone else’s family, knowing you’re not really part of it. I wonder how wild they’ll be in a few years. I can’t wait to see what they become. I think in a few years they’ll make a heck of an army. Growing up alone makes you tough.
Until the walls fell, I never knew there were so many places beneath Dublin. I used to think there were only a few underground rivers, a couple of crypts like the ones at Christ Church and St. Patrick’s, and maybe the occasional cellar. Dublin keeps a lot of secrets. Since the walls came down, I’ve discovered all kinds of places down under. We Irish are a canny lot, we like multiple ways out of a tight spot. And why shouldn’t we? Look at how many folks have tried to be the boss of us, and for how long!
I peer into the rubble-filled hole. “Dude, how am I going to get my ziplock?”
“Boss, we got a problem.”
I glance over my shoulder. One of Ryodan’s men is standing there, looking pissed. It’s a dude I don’t often see. I’ve never heard anyone say his name. I think of him as Shadow because he glides into rooms barely disturbing the air. You almost overlook him, which is a feat considering he’s a foot and a half taller than me and got to be three hundred pounds. Watches everything like me. Doesn’t speak much, unlike me. Tall and muscled like the rest of them, scarred like the rest of them, hair like night and eyes like whiskey in a glass.
“Listening.”
“F*cking half-breed Highlander took the sword.”
“What?” I explode. “Christian took my sword? I told you and told you it was probably unfrozen! I kept saying that we needed to go check! What the feck is wrong with you dudes? Can’t you guard a measly little sword from a measly little half-human?”
Shadow gives me a look. “He’s damn-near full Unseelie prince and he had a flamethrower, kid.” To Ryodan, he adds, “Lor and Kasteo are badly burned.”
A fecking flamethrower! Why didn’t I think of that? Best I came up with was a measly hair dryer. I need to start thinking on grander scales! I return the look. I’m so pissed off my head is mean with pure pissed-offedness. “You don’t understand, when I was in his bed, I found a dead woman stuffed between it and the wall! Now he wants me dead and you let him get my sword! What am I supposed to do now? Ryodan won’t share whatever the feck weapon he has! How am I supposed to protect myself? Can’t you guys do anything right? One little sword! That’s all you had to watch over! And why didn’t we think of a flamethrower? Anybody got a brain among you dudes? Flamethrower! Brilliant! Did it hurt my sword?”
“When were you in Christian’s bed,” Ryodan says softly.
I gape. “Dude, you got a serious case of selective hearing, the kind that bleeps out all the important stuff! Who cares when I was in his stupid bed? How the feck did you kill Velvet? You been holding out on me! You need to learn to share your weapons!”
“When.”
There’s something in the way he utters that single word that makes me shiver, and I’m hard to rattle. “So, I didn’t change in a convenience store! So, shoot me! I need my sword. What are you going to do to get it back?”
I’ve never seen Ryodan’s face go so smooth. It’s like it got iced blank of all expression. I’ve never heard him talk so soft and silky either. “Take her back to Chester’s and lock her down. I’ll get the sword.”
Shadow looks grim. Like my own personal grim reaper. Not.
I slip a hand in my pocket. Pull the pin on a grenade. Start counting because I got to time it just right. I’m not getting locked down anywhere. No more cages for Dani Mega O’Malley. A split second before it goes off, I lob the bomb to the pavement in front of them. It detonates with the brilliant, Shade-killing flash of light Dancer rigged up for me. “My ass, you will.”
I freeze-frame out of there with everything I’ve got.