Burned Read online

  I savor the lack of constriction and expand my shoulders from the drawn-forward hunch I assume when they press close. With the exception of the night I saw Dani, it’s been months since I’ve been able to stand in the street alone.

  Now I’m face-to-face with an Unseelie enemy—one-on-one, with nothing in my way. It’s exhilarating, like old times.

  A good nine to ten feet tall, covered with open, oozing sores, the Gray Woman is hideous. I get briefly fixated on the long thin hands covered with suckers that nearly killed Dani that night, remember how I’d forced the vile Unseelie to give the teen back her life in exchange for a dirty bargain I should never have made, and would make all over again to keep Dani alive.

  I stare up into her rotting face and think about the lisping Fae that killed my sister and the many times this bitch has fed, the countless lives ruined and lost.

  I’ve seen none of Ryodan’s men on the streets.

  My flock isn’t hemming me in.

  The moment is perfection. I’m a sidhe-seer and a powerful Null. I have a weapon that kills the Fae. I don’t need anything from my inner psychopath. My spear is enough. There’s no taint of the Sinsar Dubh in this. I’ve sometimes wondered if the Book is responsible for the wraiths that stalk me, if it summoned them to torment me, believing if it prevents me from fighting the good fight long enough, I’ll flip and succumb to its endless goading.

  Not a chance.

  I’m going to walk home today with a bounce in my step and a good feeling in my heart, knowing I got rid of one of our many enemies. I’m going to feel like the old me again, out there batting for the team, saving who knows how many thousands of lives by ending this foul, malevolent one.

  “You will leave this place. It is mine. You swore free passage and a favor owed,” the Gray Woman hisses.

  This is what I’ve needed for months: a golden opportunity to kick self-doubt squarely in the teeth, remind myself that although the Book might needle me, I’m in control. I make the decisions, not the Sinsar Dubh. It can talk all it wants, it can intrude into my thoughts and tempt me endlessly, but at the end of the day it’s me that’s walking my body around and calling the shots.

  The Unseelie are vermin; they’ve killed billions of people and would happily gorge on our world until there was nothing left. I despise them and I despise myself for not killing more of them.

  My spear glows white when I battle. I’m the good guy.

  Page 21

  “Guess what, bitch. ” I lunge for the Gray Woman. “I lied. ”

  Yes, the Sinsar Dubh whispers.

  And everything goes dark.

  I claw my way back to consciousness, gasping for breath. I’m on my knees, in a gutter—no real surprise there—I’m intimately acquainted with Dublin’s gutters, having puked in more than a few of them.

  I hurt everywhere. I’ve wrenched my lower back, my arms burn, my knees are bruised, and I’m drenched.

  I peer up, wondering if it’s raining again. It does that a lot here.

  Nope, sun is still out, well, sort of. It’s kissing the horizon beyond the—I frown. What just happened? Where am I? Not in the Dark Zone anymore, I’m halfway across the city.

  A soft chuckle rolls in my head. Land of the Free, MacKayla. Home of the Brave, Beautiful, and Homicidal. You can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy that, the Sinsar Dubh says silkily.

  Something splatters on my head, drips down my face.

  I touch my cheek and pull my hand away to look at it. It’s covered with green goo.

  And red blood.

  My fingernails are stained. There’s stuff beneath them I refuse to examine.

  Not looking up, not looking up.

  Keep acting like this, Princess, and I’ll kill you myself. Don’t think I can’t.

  I squeeze my eyes shut.

  Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, the Book says in a singsong voice and pastes an image of me, holding a gun to my own head, kneeling on the floor in Barrons Books & Baubles, on the inside of my lids. Just kidding. Never let you do it. I got you, babe, it twangs in a cheesy, over-the-top Sonny and Cher impersonation.

  Grimacing, I open my eyes and peer warily up.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Impaled on the streetlamp beneath which I crouch, the Gray Woman has been tortured, flayed, and dismembered.

  And left alive.

  Bits of her wriggle in agony. Suckers open and close convulsively and she’s somehow still making noise: moans and whimpers of horrendous pain.

  I drop my head, and nearly vomit into the gutter.

  Onto a human hand. Torn off at the wrist.

  He got in the way.

  “No,” I whisper. I recognize the tatter of uniform attached to the wrist. It’s one of Inspector Jayne’s Guardians. I would never kill a human. Never harm an innocent. I may not like Jayne’s methods—he took Dani’s sword from her and would cheerfully relieve me of my spear if he thought he could—but he and his men perform a dangerous and much needed job for this city.

  You did. And loved every minute of it. You are every bit as much a beast as you accuse me of being.

  I shake my head violently, as if I might manage to expel the Book from my skull.

  I’m in control, the Sinsar Dubh mocks in falsetto. I make the decisions. Lovely MacKayla, when will you learn? You’re the car. I’m the driver. But I can only drive you because deep down you want to be driven.

  I shiver, chilled to my soul. I do not.

  I watched the Book “drive” other cars. I count myself lucky there are only two dismembered human hands in the street with me. I crouch on my hands and knees, head hanging down, eyes closed, trembling from the exertion of the awful things I just did and from self-loathing. Part of me wants to lie down right here and quit. I was so sure of myself, so certain I was in control.

  And so unforgivably wrong.

  There are only two ways an enemy can defeat you, Ms. Lane, Barrons said to me the other night, more lessons at the bookstore like old times. You die. Or you quit trying. Then you die. Is that what you want? To die?

  I want to live. I have so much to live for.

  I’m sure the man I killed did, too. My chest is hot and tight, my muscles locked down. I can’t get a breath. I crouch in the gutter, trying to suck air, heaving soundlessly.

  Get up, Mac, I can almost hear him growl. Get the fuck up.

  The man orders me around even when he’s not present. I hang my head and try willing my rigid muscles to relax. It doesn’t work. I’m growing dizzy from lack of oxygen. Can’t breathe can’t breathe can’t breathe! I’m starting to panic.

  Sometimes if you get too focused on a goal, Ms. Lane, you make an unwanted element of it sticky.

  Not getting it, I’d said.

  Fear of the power you believe someone or something has over you is nothing but a jail cell you choose to walk into. By obsessing over freeing yourself from the Book, you become more certainly its prisoner.

  I force myself to do the counterintuitive, the opposite of what I want: exhale instead of inhale.

  Air screeches back into my lungs so fast I choke. I crouch in the gutter, sputtering, panting.

  Page 22

  After a few moments I push myself shakily to my feet.

  How did this happen? How did the Book gain control of me without me even realizing it?

  I look around slowly. Commit my crimes to memory.

  Bits of Unseelie and human flesh are scattered everywhere.

  There is no piece larger than a tea saucer.

  I sort through them and, after a time, gather the hand of the man I murdered, cradle it to my chest, and weep.

  4

  “Pain without love, pain can’t get enough”

  CHRISTIAN

  It’s summer in the Highlands, white and purple heather has taken over the countryside, carpeting the meadows and bens. Lavender thistles explode fr
om fat prickly pods and pale pink wild roses tumble over rocky outcroppings.

  The devil is in the details.

  So, sometimes, is salvation.

  I focus on the soft crush of grass beneath my bare feet, the wind in my hair as I run.

  We race down the hill, my sister Colleen and I, to swim in the icy early-summer slate water of the loch. It’s one of those perfect days, the sky a cloudless blue above a scooped-out grassy bowl that sprawls for miles between the majestic mountains of our home.

  Nothing compares to my Highlands, nothing ever will. The land brings me peace and joy.

  Although I hear truth in lies, although I’m sometimes feared and the villagers cede me a certain aloof respect, this is where I fit. The Keltar name is known and it’s a proud one. We’re integral to our village, our people, feeding the economy when it wanes with work on our land and castles. We understand that when those in our care prosper, we’re ten times stronger than we are alone. It’s the meaning of the word “clan”—so much more than family.

  Scotland is the passion in my blood. She is where I was born and will die, my bones planted in the cemetery behind the ruined tower ivy claimed, past the slab etched with Pict runes, but not quite to the tomb of the Green Lady, where the roots from the tree at the head of her grave twisted themselves to form a lovely nude moss-covered body with a fine-featured face.

  Family is everything. I’ll wed and raise my bairn behind the strong walls of Castle Keltar near the circle of standing stones known as Ban Drochaid, or White Bridge, whose purpose is known only to us and where magic beats like a living heart in the soil. I’ll teach my sons to be druids like their da and granda before him, and my daughters to be like the Valkyries of old. I feel a keen sense of belonging. I know exactly who I am: Christian MacKeltar, descended from thousands of years of an ancient, revered bloodline.

  The first of my clan walked the Hill of Tara before Tara was named. Before names were, we tilled the soil of Skara Brae, gathering stones to build enclaves for our women and children. Before even that we stood on the shores of Ireland in the churning surf as the clouds exploded with light and watched the fiery descent of the Old Ones from the stars. Bidden by these new gods, we removed to the Highlands to uphold the Compact between our races.

  My ancestors’ ghosts walk the castle corridors on the blessed evenings of the feast days of Beltane and Samhain when time is thin and reality liminal—my ancestors who embody duty, loyalty, and honor.

  We are the Keltar.

  We fight for what’s right.

  We protect and honor.

  We do not fall.

  When the Crimson Hag rips out my guts again and pain burns through me until I am nothing but torment, my flesh on fire with agony, every nerve screaming as my entrails are torn again from my ragged abdomen, I struggle to remain alive though this body of mine keeps trying to die because every time I die and consciousness slips away—I lose my Highlands.

  Staked to the side of a rocky cliff a thousand feet above a hellish grotto, I breathe deep to smell the heather of my homeland, I run faster to feel the dense spring of grass and moss beneath my feet. I gather roses as I pass between bushes, and bloody hell—there was a thistle in that bunch!

  I plunge into the icy waters of the loch, break surface and shake water from my hair. I throw back my head and laugh as Colleen dives in beside me, missing me by inches, drenching me all over again.

  Below me, inside me, there’s a pit that’s dark and comforting and quite completely insane. If I sink into it, I can be free of all torture.

  But I am Keltar.

  I will not fall.

  5

  “We’re building it up to tear it all down”

  MAC

  “You told them what?” Incredulous, I pace the rug in front of the gas fireplace in the rear sitting area of Barrons Books & Baubles, which is really Mac’s B&B, but my name on the hand-painted shingle doesn’t carry the same cachet. I turn and pace the other way. After what happened this afternoon, my nerves are raw. I can’t deal with this. Not now.

  Page 23

  He gives me a look. I feel it stabbing between my shoulder blades; the stress of that man’s regard is palpable, even with my back to him.

  “Your heels are damaging my rug. It’s an eighty-thousand-dollar rug. ”

  I say, “You like me in heels. Money doesn’t signify anymore. And at least I’m not burning holes in it. ”

  Does he smell the blood on my hands? Barrons’s sense of smell is atavistically acute. I showered for an hour after I got home. I cleaned beneath my nails with a scrub brush until they bled. Yet I feel dirty, stained.

  Still, I see the Guardian’s hand, the silver wedding band on his third finger, etched with Celtic infinity knots; a pledge of forever.

  I found his wallet. I know his name.

  I’ll scream it in nightmares, whisper it in prayers. Mick O’Leary had a wife, a young daughter, and a newborn son.

  “A wiser woman wouldn’t remind me of that time. I’m still pissed about it. ”

  The night Fiona tried to kill me by letting Shades into the bookstore and turning off all the lights seems so long ago. I was reduced to lighting and dropping matches all over one of his sixteenth-century Persian rugs in my desperate bid to survive. The way I feel right now he’s lucky I’m not burning holes in the entire bookstore. The news he just gave me is unacceptable, and I’ve got fifteen minutes to vacate the premises before the event begins. He pretty much just said, I’ve decided to put you under a microscope in front of all the people who might be able to figure out what’s wrong with you, plus two of the Unseelie princes that turned you Pri-ya. So buck up, little buckaroo. “Well, I’m not staying here for it,” I say. “You’re on your own with this one, bud. ”

  Bud. He looks at me and I remember calling him that the night he showed up at the Clarin House, dwarfing my tiny room with its tiny bed, communal, impossible-to-get-your-turn-in bathroom down the hall, and four crooked hangers in the closet. My suitcase, so carefully packed with pretty outfits and accessories, had found a home in neither closet nor city. I wonder where all those clothes went. I haven’t seen them for a while.

  He’d reacted much the same then to my scornful appellation. Few call Barrons anything but “master” and live to tell of it.

  Mockery gleams in his dark eyes. Tread lightly, Ms. Lane. The floor upon which you walk is only as solid as the respect you cede it.

  The floor. I get a sudden strange vision that has nothing to do with the Sinsar Dubh: me falling forward onto the hardwood planks of my room that night, catching myself with my hands, rolling over and striking the back of my head, hard, and not caring. I was doing something … something that was utterly consuming. I frown. What? Looking at a picture of Alina? Reading a book about Irish history? Folding my clothes? It’s not like I had a lot of fascinating choices in that tiny, cramped room.

  How did I fall? Why? And why do I keep thinking about that day?

  I have a fragment of a feeling, emotions sprung from an occasion for which I can locate no originating event. Exhilaration. Freedom. Excitement. Shame. Regret.

  Normally that would bother me so much I’d go rooting around in my memory, but at the moment I have more pressing issues to deal with.

  I shake it off and drop down on the chesterfield, glowering across the room at him. “You seem to have forgotten the small problem I have, Barrons. I’m hiding from all the people you invited here. I have been for months. ” The princes I can’t even address. That he’s permitting them in my bookstore offends me beyond expressing. “Why do you want this blasted meeting anyway? And why here?”

  He cuts me a hard look. See Mac cower. See Mac die.

  “Are you trying to piss me off?” I growl.

  He gives me the ocular equivalent of a yawn. Only Barrons can pull off such a thing and still look menacing. It’s not as if there are any repercussions to consider. You
wouldn’t kill a scorpion if it was stinging your ass.

  I study my nails. There’s a speck of blood beneath one. I don’t know if it’s Mick O’Leary’s or mine from scrubbing so hard. He’s wrong about that. I look up at him. “You have no idea what I’m dealing with. ”

  Ah, such as a beast within? he mocks.

  “Your beast is different. ” I continue talking aloud, refusing to accept the intimacy of a wordless conversation. We’ve had this argument. We’ll continue having it until the day the king frees me. Neither of us will capitulate. I’m not sure either of us can even spell that word.

  Perhaps not so very.

  “Yes, but mine is more powerful,” I say irritably. Powerful enough to fool even me—someone intimately acquainted with its seductive, evil ways.

  Page 24

  His dark eyes glitter with challenge. Care to test that, woman?

  The look he gives me sends shivers down my spine, and I feel it slip it into a gentler curve that achieves down-and-dirty doggie-style with sure, supple grace. There is no battlefield I prefer to the one I’ve found in this man’s bed. We fight. It’s what we do. I feel so much more intensely alive around him than I’ve ever felt with anyone else.

  I’m obsessed and addicted and ripped-down-raw in love with Jericho Barrons.

  Of course, I don’t tell him that. Barrons isn’t a pillow talk man. Sleeping with him, acknowledging our feelings for each other, has changed everything.

  And nothing.

  In bed, we’re one couple.

  Out of bed, we’re another.

  In bed, I steal moments of tenderness when sex has finally exhausted me to the point where I’m too bone weary to fret anymore about the enormous capacity for evil that’s taken up squatter’s rights inside me. I touch him, put all those things I don’t say into my hands as I trace the red and black tattoos on his skin, the sharp planes and hollows of his face, bury my hands in his dark hair. He watches me in silence when I do, eyes dark, unfathomable.

  I sometimes wake up to find he’s pulled me close to him and is holding me, spooned into my back with his face in my hair, and those hands that don’t speak like mine don’t speak move over my skin and tell me I’m cherished, honored, seen.