Burned (17 page)

She glances over her shoulder with that telltale inhuman head swivel, assesses and disregards me.

She should take a deeper look.

“Mac, get her the fuck off me,” Lor snarls. Then he groans again, in spite of himself.

“You will not speak,” the princess commands Lor, and just like that he loses control of his vocal cords. Nice talent. I wouldn’t mind having it myself.

“I said, What do you want?” I repeat coldly.

“Nor will
you
speak,” she hisses over her shoulder at me.

My vocal cords don’t feel any different. I test them by clearing my throat. It works.

Her head swivels again and she rakes an imperious, frosty glance from my boots to my hair. Her hips never stop moving. “What are you?”

“The one not killing you,” I say, working hard to ignore the graphic sex happening right in front of me. “For the moment. What. Do. You. Want.” I push my hair back, not surprised to realize it’s damp, I’m actually sweating from watching them have sex. I’m overdue for some of my own.

“You are not human.”

“I am, too,” I say flatly. I may not be sure of much, but I was born. I was carried in a womb. And infected there.

“My power works on everything but Fae of the royal castes.”

“You didn’t come here to have sex,” I evade. “You could do
that anywhere. You came specifically to this club and chose specifically him. Why?” It’s a ballsy move, stalking so openly into Chester’s, alone, targeting one of the Nine and turning him Pri-ya in the owner’s office. Why haven’t we seen any of the princesses before? Cruce claimed all the Seelie were dead. He’d also claimed no Unseelie Princesses were made. Was anything he told me true? Where has she been? Is she newly arrived, jockeying for position by abducting one of the most powerful males in the city?

She wets blue lips and tilts her head to the side. Her eyes darken to inky pools that are suddenly neon cobalt. Beyond long, thick lashes, vertical slitted pupils dilate and shrink, dilate again as if she’s taking my measure with vision humans don’t possess. For a moment I think I glimpse stars in those pupils. She’s different from the princes. There’s a … vastness to her that exceeds theirs.

He made us last. We are his best. Enhanced
.

Without thinking, I seek confirmation of that from the only place I could possibly get it.

Yes, open me, read me
, it agrees instantly.

I sigh, resuming my chant, imagining Poe would enjoy that although his narrator was unable to silence the bird, his poem silences my book.

But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door …

The princess’s eyes narrow, as if she hears my inner dialogue but can make no sense of it.

“Cruce said
he
was the king’s last,” I say. “And best.”

“There are things Cruce does not know. Where is our brother?”

“Dead,” I lie.

“Did you kill him?”

“Yes,” I say.

There go the pupils again, dilating, narrowing. “It seems you would offer aid. I am unconvinced you possess anything that may interest us.”

“Perhaps we share common desires.” Where did this cold place inside me come from? Is it because I sat with my rapists tonight and made pacts? Or because I know how much I have to lose if I don’t stay cold? “I have a great deal to offer. If the price is right. It’s you who may not have enough to barter with.”

She gathers a fall of blood-black hair from her face, twists it into a long tail then knots it at her nape before disengaging and sliding gracefully from the desk.

I can’t help but stare at what she left behind. What hot-blooded woman wouldn’t? Lor is chained naked to a desk, legs spread, affording me a gloriously intimate view. He’s magnificent. A tall, massively muscled Viking with thick blond hair and not one spec of it on his body. Though his abdomen and thighs are crisscrossed with scars, the rest of his skin is sleek and velvety as the head of his
—Stop staring!

I drag my gaze away, force it to the princess.

“I do not barter with humans. I command. But you have … Hmmm, you have something … What
is
it you have?”

I say nothing. Reveal nothing. I’ve learned from the best. I meet and hold her gaze, expressionless.

Time spins out. Finally she says, “The Unseelie Princes, fools that they are, think to rule this world.” She spits on the
floor. “We came to enslave this male and use it as our weapon because the dark princes are immune to our ways. Word reached us it can kill things that are difficult to kill, even our brothers. Fae magic is matriarchal. The light princesses are dead. This world is ours.”

I realize if she came for Lor to eliminate her competition, rather than Dani or me, she must not know about the spear and sword. “This world belongs to us,” I say. “If you try to take it from us, it will be war.”

“A war you will lose.”

“Try me.”

Nude, she begins to pad a slow, predatory circle around me. I turn with her and she laughs.

“No, you most certainly do not wish one such as we unseen behind your back.”

“Nor do you wish me unseen behind yours,” I purr.

She laughs again and it’s a caress to my ears. She’s amped up her death-by-sex Fae heat. I feel it expanding around her, yet it doesn’t touch me.

When I don’t respond, her eyes widen, her mouth shapes a perfect, lush O of surprise. The sexual energy she’s channeling pulses hotter. On the desk, Lor bucks and strains against the chains.

I wonder if I could somehow accept the energy she’s so generously (foolishly?) throwing off, while rejecting the sexual component. As I consider it, she pads to a stop in front of me. We’re the same height. She leans in as if to kiss me.

“Oh, what
are
you, you delicious
thing
,” she says, and wets her lips. “Not like them, not like us yet like us. You smell of …” She trails off and stops in front of me, sniffing deeply, leaning into my neck. I don’t move. I feel her snuffling at my
throat. “Oh, yes, I like that smell very much but there is … something … it is most …”

She’s definitely unaware I have the spear. I wonder if she even knows such weapons exist. She seems oddly out of the loop.

She recoils like a cobra, drawing up to her full height, back arched away, eyes narrowing, and hisses, “Oh! You smell of
them
. We will not go back. It finished with us. It said so. We will
never
go back.”

She vanishes.

“About fucking time you got rid of her.” Lor recovers his voice with a snarl. He sounds hoarse, from hours of yelling.

I stand, blinking at her sudden, unexpected disappearance.

She shouldn’t have been able to sift out of the club. Then again, she shouldn’t have been able to get inside in the first place. Either Ryodan’s wards aren’t working or she’s beyond their compulsion.

I frown, trying to decide what she thinks I smell like that drove her away so completely. There are multiple possibilities. The stain of her brothers’ rape lingering on my soul? The green goo of the Gray Woman I butchered? Perhaps she detects the sworn enemy of the Fae, my
sidhe
-seer sisters on my skin, in my blood. Or maybe the oily residue of the Unseelie that stalk me who—as if summoned by that last thought—swiftly begin popping, one after another, into the room with me, crushing close, giving Lor wide berth. Apparently it was the princess they were avoiding. I wish I knew why. I’d make Eau d’Unseelie Princess perfume of her flesh and spray myself with it if I thought it might work.

She said “them,” so obviously it wasn’t the singularity of the Book she sensed inside me, and that she would not go back. Go back where? And who’d put her there to begin with?

On the desk, Lor makes a sound of such raw sexual need that I shiver. “Mac,” he growls. “I need. Get your ass over here.”

Pri-ya is a hellish thing to be. It reduces you to a whimpering, broken, pathetic sex addict that will do anything for anyone at any time. I have memories I’ve interred deep. Places in my mind I’ll never visit again.

Whimpering
and
broken
are the key words there.

“What do you need, Lor?” I say dryly.

“What the fuck do you think I need? Sex. Constantly. I’ll die if I don’t have it all the time. I’m Pri-ya.”

“Hm. Pri-ya.”

“Sure as shit, the bitch made me Pri-ya. You saw her. I had an Unseelie Princess on top of me. My dick hurts so bad it’s gonna explode. I need sex. I can’t live without it. This is torture. So either get on it, or find me a hot blond babe that will. Which is any hot blond babe in the club,” he adds cheerfully.

I like Lor. He’s aggressive, domineering, and part caveman, but he doesn’t have a cruel bone in his body, and he flat-out adores women and children. I sometimes think if the other eight weren’t around, Lor would be a very different man.

Leave it to him to try to capitalize on the princess’s visit, use it as an excuse to spend the next few months in bed, receiving a steady stream of women whose sole purpose is to have sex with him 24/7.

I know what Pri-ya looks like—and he’s not it. Though part of her magic somehow worked on him, the Nine are apparently impossible to turn Pri-ya. I wonder if they’re too basely sexual to begin with. Perhaps the charge they throw off cancels out her sexuality, or at least dampens the full effect of it. I decide I’ll stick close to Barrons until I figure out how to get
rid of her and if there are others out there. She might not have turned Lor into a permanent slave, but a temporary one is bad enough. Deep in my
sidhe
-seer center, I activate an antenna of sorts to listen at all times for the gothic, dark march of the princess.

I move toward the door. Ryodan can unchain Lor. I’m not getting close to the man while he’s naked. He told me once he prefers a club over a woman’s head because charm wastes energy better spent fucking, and I believe him. Although I see no club in the office, there are other heavy objects.

“Aw, c’mon, Mac,” he says, sounding aggrieved, “would it really kill you to let them think I’m Pri-ya? What have I ever done to you? Tonight was traumatic. Bitch actually made me call her ‘mistress.’ I need some good old-fashioned fucking to ease my pain. Maybe a sexy ‘Yes, master’ or two. Or two hundred. What’s wrong with that?”

I raise my palm and prepare to press it to the wall.

“Seriously, honey, I promise I’ll only take a few weeks to get better. I won’t drag it out. I’m sitting on the jackpot right now. I’ll do something for you. Anything. Name it. Well, not anything. But there’s gotta be something you want.”

I smile and retract my hand before it touches the panel.

Five minutes later I open the door and shake my head, tears welling in my eyes.

“We didn’t get to him in time,” I tell Ryodan. “She’s gone but I was too late. She’d already turned him Pri-ya. Send all the blondes you can spare to take him somewhere private. Hurry. And I wouldn’t go near him if I were you. It’s not pretty. You won’t want to remember him this way.”

“She can turn us Pri-ya.” Ryodan says.

“Afraid so.”

There’s a bounce in my step as I rejoin Barrons. I got what I wanted tonight, after all. A favor owed from one of the Nine is worth its weight in pure Faery dust. And now I finally get to go have sex with Barrons, and from the way he’s looking at me, it’s going to be one seriously long, hot night.

“You’re going the wrong way,” Ryodan says behind us.

I glance over my shoulder. “What do you mean? We’re going back to the bookstore. I did what you asked. I got rid of her.”

“You just told me she can turn us Pri-ya, and our wards don’t prevent her from sifting while within the walls of my club. You will remain in residence, guarding against all princesses until we resolve the situation. You’ll find ample quarters in that direction.” He points the other way. “Perhaps you’ll do what you should have done this time, and kill her next time.”

My bounce vanishes “You didn’t
tell
me to kill her.”

“It was self-evident.”

“No, it wasn’t,” I say pissily. “I took a page from your negotiating-with-the-princes book. And you sent all the others into Faery. They’re not even here to protect.”

“I’m still here.”

I look up at Barrons, who stopped walking and is regarding me intently, eyes narrowed. He looks as if he’s about to speak, debates, folds his arms and says nothing.

“You could stand up for me,” I grouse. “Tell him we’re going back to the store, period.”

He smiles faintly. “It would hardly be fair if you ‘protected’ only me.”

His light emphasis on the word “protected” gives him away.
No idea how, but he knows I lied. And he’s amused. And he’s going to sit back and watch it play out, see how stuck I get in the sticky spiderweb I’ve begun to spin.

Guess he really is sick of my “idiotic passivity.”

So am I.

But as I learned today, it’s way the hell better than idiotic activity.

Confined to Chester’s with no escape from my carrion stalkers, forced to contend with Ryodan on a daily basis, surrounded by monsters, inhabited by a monster, I’m afraid there’s more of it coming.

      13      

“I was ducking down to reload”

JADA

She needs to kill.

Purpose is strength and hers was impeded tonight.

No matter, when one avenue is blocked, another is revealed.

There are two on her list in the direction she’s headed. They will be dispatched differently than her prior intended target, swiftly, with more mercy than they deserve. Though their crimes are many, unlike the Unseelie she seeks, they are human. She eliminates humans quickly.

She takes no pleasure in the kill. There is satisfaction in seeing debts collected, ledgers balanced. There are those she will protect at any cost.

As she turns a corner and enters a dimly lit street, her gaze lifts to the shattered streetlamp, then down to lightly misted cobblestones and back up again.