High Voltage Read online

  I rolled my eyes as he vanished. I’d been trained to kill at the age of nine. Before then I’d killed without training. Shortly after I rescued Shazam from Planet X, he asked how my killing was different from the killing I’d forbidden him to do, aside from me wasting food by not eating my prey. I told him that when I killed, it wasn’t with the hatred that once blazed in my heart, but with love for the world I was trying to protect. I did it only when necessary, as quickly and mercifully as possible. Killing with violence in your heart, or worse, a complete dearth of emotion, made you a killer, plain and simple. Killing because it had to be done, because there was no other way and it was the right thing to do, made you a necessary weapon.

  Do what you came here for. I wasn’t sure what that was. Nothing of Dancer remained in this macabre memorial to the dead behind Arlington Abbey. I found that a terrible thought—that his essence might be trapped in a box buried beneath the dirt. When I die, cremate me and cast me to the stars.

  Still, I pushed to my feet, skirted a bank of low hedges and wide planters, and moved to stand at the foot of his grave.

  Time slid away; it was four months ago and I was kissing Dancer’s cold lips and closing the lid of his casket.

  God, I missed him.

  We’d played with the innocence and impunity of kids who believed themselves immortal (at least I had), conquering video games, watching movies, dreaming together about what our futures might hold, gorging on ice cream and candy and sodas, racing out into the night in search of adventure.

  I smiled faintly. We’d found plenty. We’d plunged into life with similar enthusiasm and devil-may-care bravado. Caring, thoughtful, and brilliant, he’d been one of only two people I’ve ever met that I thought was as smart, possibly smarter, than me.

  We’d grown up, become lovers.

  Dancer Elias Garrick, never the sidekick, always the hero.

  I shoved my hands into my pockets and stared down. I’m not a woman who often looks back. I measure actions by results, and peering into the past rarely yields any. Reflecting on something that hurts you only prolongs your pain, and when death is involved, the pain is often compounded by a relentless sense of guilt that attacks the moment you start to heal, as if duration of grief somehow proves the depth of your love for the person you lost.

  If that were true, I’d have to grieve Dancer forever.

  Born with a flawed heart, he’d lived fearlessly. The unfairly penalized muscle in his chest had given out on him before he’d turned eighteen, while I was sleeping next to him in bed. I’d woken after a night of lovemaking to find him forever gone.

  I’d melted down. It got ugly. My friends got me through it.

  Guilt had definitely led me here, but not spawned by lack of grief. A sheer abundance of it made me do something stupid last night.

  I tried to erase my pain in another man’s bed. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

  It hadn’t worked. The first man I’d had sex with taught me how beautiful it was.

  The second man had shown me how ugly it could be.

  “I miss you,” I whispered to his grave, and waited.

  Shortly after he died, he spoke to me twice. I’d felt his presence, as if he was standing right there behind me, sunshine on my shoulders, reaching through the slipstream to comfort and counsel me.

  A few weeks ago, however, I’d become aware that intangible warmth was gone—vanished while I slept—and I knew in my gut he’d moved on. Somehow he’d managed to linger in the ether to make sure I was all right and when he was satisfied, he’d raced off for the next grand adventure.

  As he should have.

  As we all should when it’s our time.

  That thought didn’t make me feel any better. Thoughts rarely do. The heart has its own mind, measures its own time, and if it consults with the brain, doesn’t always heed the advice. My brain was screaming—stop hurting already. To a deaf audience.

  I’d never fully grasped the meaning of the word “forever” before. I’d lost my mom long before she died. It wasn’t the same. I’d grieved her while she’d still been living.

  But the idea that I would never see Dancer again was more than I could stand. All I had left of him were memories and we’d not had time to make nearly enough.

  My gaze drifted to the headstone east of his marker. JO BRENNAN. We’d laid another of my friends to rest beside him. I smiled faintly, remembering her breaking into my dungeon cell to save me. We hadn’t always gotten along but she’d been a genuine, good constant in my life and didn’t deserve to die the way she did.

  ALINA MCKENNA LANE. Mac’s sister was buried beside her. There’d been so much death in my life.

  “All the more reason to live,” came the deep, exotically accented growl from behind me. I could hear traces of many languages in it, a consensus of none.

  I bristled. Not many people can sneak up on me without my preternatural senses kicking into high alert. Ryodan defies the odds in countless, irritating ways. “Stay out of my head.”

  “I wasn’t in it. Didn’t need to be. When humans stand at graves, they brood.” He was beside me then, in that sudden, silent, eerie way of his.

  Humans, he’d said. Whatever Ryodan was, he wasn’t one of those and he’d stopped making any effort to conceal it from me. Whether urbane, sophisticated man or black-skinned, fanged beast, he was all the supers I was, plus an awe-inspiring, aggravating assortment of others. When I was young, I’d felt like Sarah from the movie Labyrinth, dashing around Dublin having grand adventures. Ryodan was Jareth, my Goblin King. I’d defied him at every turn, defining myself in opposition to him. I’d studied him, incorporating his ideologies and tactics into my own. Silverside I’d functioned by the code: WWRD? I’d never tell him that.

  I turned and scowled up at him. Beautiful, cool, aloof man. Two things always happen to me whenever he shows up. I get an instant jolt of happiness, as if every cell in my body wakes up and is glad to see him. It pisses me off because my brain rarely agrees. Ryodan and I are enthusiastic foes, wary friends. I tell him things I don’t tell anyone else, and that offends me, too.

  The second thing baffles me. I often feel like crying. I’ve wept on his flawless, crisp shirts more times than I care to remember.

  “Because I understand,” he murmured, staring down at me with those glittering silver eyes. “And I can take it. I wasn’t sure about the happiness, though. Nice of you to clear that up.”

  “What part of ‘stay out of my head’ didn’t you understand?”

  “Your face, Dani. Everything you feel is on it. I rarely need to delve deeper.”

  He’d glimpsed such raw emotion in me recently that I’d been avoiding him. As Jada, I was respected, feared. As Dani, I sometimes felt like I vied with Shazam for Hot Mess Poster Child of the Month.

  I could only hope what happened last night was nowhere to be seen on my face. I’d never before experienced what an average woman with average strength contended with on a daily basis: physical vulnerability to the opposite sex. It had been humbling and horrifying and awakened a fierce compassion in me, making me even more protective of my city, especially women and children.

  In bed with a stranger, my heart felt like it was going to explode. I’d tried to leave the man and that empty thing I was doing but the intensity of my emotions shorted out my sidhe-seer strength, leaving me a frighteningly normal five-foot-ten woman who weighed in at 142, in a locked room with a six-foot-four, 240-pound man.

  Who’d called me a cock tease and turned violent.

  I hadn’t killed him. I’d wanted to. If he’d succeeded in raping me, I’m not sure what I would have done. “No” is “no,” no matter when it’s said. As it was, I’d be watching him from a distance to make sure he never crossed that line again. And if he did, well: violate other’s liberties, lose your own.

  “Ah, Dani.�
� Ryodan touched my cheek, brushing a stray curl back and tucking it behind my ear. “Men can be bloody bastards. But not all of them. Don’t let it shut you down. Be fearless. Don’t be afraid to fall. Taste it all.”

  My eyes flashed mutinously. Not because of what he’d said but rather what he hadn’t said. It was there in his voice. Mac and Barrons left two weeks ago to deal with the revolt happening in Faery. She’d reminded me time moved differently there; a week for her might be as much as a year for me. He was leaving, too. “That sounds suspiciously like goodbye.”

  He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. There’s a palpable coolness, a distance in Ryodan’s gaze most of the time, a thousand-yard stare that’s seen and done things that change you forever; a big picture view. I understand it. I see the same look in my own eyes sometimes.

  “There’s something I have to do.”

  I knew it. I said coolly, “Great. Me and Shazam will come with you.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Sure, we can. They’ve elected a council for the abbey, gone back to popular vote like old times. I’m merely a consultant.” I wanted it that way. Freedom to come and go as I pleased.

  “Not this time.”

  “You just told me to taste it all. I’m merely taking your—”

  “Nothing. You’re taking nothing,” he cut me off harshly. “I can’t take you with me now. You don’t belong with me now.”

  Gone was the polished, sophisticated man. The black-skinned beast he sometimes became stared out at me through cold, incalculably ancient eyes, flecks of crimson glittering in their depths. The beast’s atavistic presence reshaped the planes and angles of his face, changing and elongating his jaws to accommodate the sudden appearance of fangs.

  Once, I’d kissed him, felt those fangs graze my teeth as pure high voltage had arced between us. Once, I’d offered him my virginity. He’d rejected me and I’d vowed he’d never get another chance.

  His gaze shuttered and he was Ryodan again, a man with even white teeth and the clearest gaze I’d ever seen. A man who played the long game and suffered no conflicts being what he was. Ruthless. A prick. My friend.

  “Remember the cellphone and the tattoo,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if the cell towers are up or not. IISS will always work. Use it only if you must.”

  IISS, code for I’m in Serious Shit, was a number programmed into my phone that would activate the spelled tattoo Ryodan had inked at the base of my spine at my request. According to him, he could find me anywhere, virtually instantly. “I know the rules. Only if I’m dying.”

  He was leaving. This was really goodbye. My hodgepodge family pieced together of extraordinary friends was falling apart. I took comfort in knowing he was near, in my city, and I could see him anytime I chose. Not that I had lately but I liked knowing the imperious king was holding court eternal in his glass kingdom high above the rest of us, that Chester’s nightclub was open and it was business as usual. I may not have gone inside over the past few months but I’d certainly made a point of passing it frequently. I keep an eye on the things that matter to me.

  My heart chilled and I let it. Dancer, Jo, Mac, Barrons. Now Ryodan.

  “Don’t do that,” he growled.

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” I growled back. “You’re leaving. You don’t have a say anymore.”

  “I always have a say. I don’t need your permission.”

  I clipped, “Clearly.” He was leaving Dublin without it. Did he think I would beg him to stay? Never. People had to want to stay, choose to be with you, or it meant nothing. There were physical cages and there were emotional ones. Holding onto someone too tightly made it hard for them to breathe, and eventually, inevitably, they’d do one of two things: suffocate or run, leaving you feeling like hell either way. I waved a dismissive hand. “What are you waiting for then? Go.”

  His nostrils flared and a muscle twitched in his cheek. Moonlight silvered a face I’d once thought uncaring and remote. I’d traced the sharpness of those cheekbones with my fingers, the shadow beard of his jaw, the scar that bisected the thick column of his neck. I’d experienced the rare emotional ferocity of the man. He made me uneasy in ways I didn’t understand. I sighed and said, in spite of myself, “When are you coming back?”

  “It’ll be a while.”

  “Be precise. Weeks? A month or two?” When he didn’t answer me, I gaped, incredulous. “Years? Are you kidding me?”

  His eyes narrowed and he spat in a savage rush, “Listen to me and carve everything I’m about to say into that giant complicated brain of yours. You’re right about killing with love. Keep the light shining in your heart; death is a hungry darkness. It wants to swallow us. You’re different and will always be misunderstood—never let that touch you. You’re a terribly real thing in a terribly false world. The world is fucked up, not you. Stay close to Shazam; you need each other. Don’t return to Dancer’s grave again; he’s not here and you know it. If he could see you now, standing at his grave, he’d kick your ass right out of this cemetery and ask if you’d lost your bloody mind. You don’t grieve love; you celebrate that you had it. Choose the men you take to your bed by these criteria: they see the finest in you, enhance and defend it. When you fuck a man you are giving him A. Motherfucking. Gift. Be certain he deserves it. And bloody hell, don’t have one-night stands. Commit to the action. Make it matter. Feel it and ride it all the way through.”

  I fixated on his final words with aggrieved incredulity. “Says the king of the infamous nod and one-night stands?” I’d had no intention of having sex last night. I hadn’t even vaguely entertained the notion. But my heart hurt so damned much, and the man standing next to me in the pub was good-looking and flirtatious, and I’d needed desperately to dump some of my emotion. I thought it might make me feel better, perhaps even refueled, like hugging. I thought I might pour out some of my pain through my hands, dump it on another man’s body, get up, walk away clearer, more grounded.

  “Never dump emotion, Dani. Channel it. Find an equal that can handle it. But don’t waste that precious commodity.”

  “Is Lor going, too?” I demanded. “What about the others?”

  He made no reply but I didn’t need one. I could see it in his eyes. They were all leaving—or had already gone. I had no idea where or why. But one thing was clear: I wasn’t invited. “Who’s going to run Chester’s?” I said, as if that alone might make him stay. Constructed of chrome and glass and a mysterious alloy Dancer and I had never been able to identify, Chester’s-above was the hottest nightclub in Dublin, offering dozens of subclubs that catered to all types of clientele, while below was the Nine’s kingdom, containing their private residences and clubs. Level after level stretched for miles beneath the ground, powered by a vast geothermal array that, knowing Ryodan, probably tapped the magma itself. Suspended above the club was Ryodan’s see-through glass office, equipped with the latest electronic surveillance devices, serving as the lofty throne from which he surveyed his world. I had no idea how long they’d lived there but I suspected it was a very, very long time.

  “It’s been closed. Stay out of it.”

  Chester’s was dark? I’d only ever seen it that way a few times, and I’d hated it, like a carnival packed up to quit town, leaving behind only a muddy field of tattered flyers and tarnished dreams. “I’ll bloody well go wherever I want. Once you’re gone, it’s not yours anymore. Maybe I’ll take it over, re-create it as my own club.” But I wouldn’t. I’d have to kill half his patrons; Ryodan was an equal opportunity host, catering to the best and worst of men and monsters. However, I certainly wasn’t averse to poking around after he’d gone to see if he’d left anything interesting lying around.

  “I said ‘stay out.’ And don’t worry, you’ll be protected. I’ve taken precautions.”

  Protected my ass. I didn’t need protecting. Nor did I want it. I wanted my family
. I wanted him to stay in Chester’s where he belonged so he’d be there in case I decided I wanted to see him. I resisted the urge to fist my hands. He’d notice. He’d draw conclusions. The man didn’t miss a thing. “When have I ever needed protecting?”

  He snorted. “As if keeping you alive hasn’t been a bloody full-time job.”

  Once Ryodan made up his mind, nothing changed it. There was only one thing to do: tell him goodbye and wish him well while making it clear I didn’t need him and wouldn’t miss him. I opened my mouth and said, “I hate you.”

  He threw his head back and laughed, stymying me. Who laughs when you tell them you hate them?

  Then his hands were in my hair and his lips were against mine. Soft, easy, neither provocation nor invitation but instant, electrifying current arced between us, the same as it had the last time we’d kissed, as well as the first time, when I’d meant it mostly to mess with him. It had messed with us both. I leaned into him. It would have been wiser to go to him to dump emotion last night. Safer. At least in body.

  His hands tightened on my scalp and he said with sudden fury, “I wouldn’t have let you. Don’t come to me like that, Dani. Never fucking come to me like that.”

  That was the last straw, the final blade-sharp words I would let him cut me with. Our kisses had taken on a grim pattern: we shared one, we insulted each other, we stalked away. “Fuck you, too, Ryodan.”

  But he was gone, already halfway across the cemetery, slipping between gravestones and trees.

  He was leaving.

  For years. And I didn’t even know how many.

  It hurt me in places I didn’t know I could hurt. If he’d been trying to get my mind off Dancer, he’d succeeded. There was nothing like a fresh, unexpected wound to make the pain of the older one feel slightly less crippling.

  I narrowed my eyes, trying to separate him from the night, determined to watch him until the very last second, until he was finally, fully beyond my vision, beyond my reach. It wasn’t easy. Ryodan in his natural state is a shadow among shadows, a subtlety of darkness, a whisper of power, a ripple of grace. Immortal. So damned strong.