“Sit down and drink your coffee. And put that spear away.” He glanced at the fireplace, murmured a few words, and flames leapt from the cold logs.
“How did you do that? You’re not Fae.”
“Fae isn’t the only game in town. Your illustrious benefactor taught me well.”
“V’lane?” I said.
“No.”
Something inside me went very still. “Barrons?”
“He taught me many things. Including Voice. Kneel.”
“Kiss my ass.”
“I said kneel before me now.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. Layered voices resonated around the room, pushing at me, trying to invade my mind, make his will mine. It was Voice as strong as Barrons had once used on me.
I smiled. It was an annoyance, nothing more. It looked like I’d found that place inside me that Barrons had sent me hunting for, where I had the strength to resist Voice. Too bad I still didn’t understand what it was. I had no idea how to use Voice, but it no longer worked on me. I was free. It was another of the things that had changed in me. One more power. “No,” I said. I took a step toward the couch and my gun.
“Look out the window.” It was a warning. “Touch that gun, they sift.”
I looked, and jerked. “Dani.”
“She’s almost as impressive as you. If she could sense the Book, I wouldn’t need you. But she can’t and I do, so you and I are going to come to terms, one way or another. Sit, sheathe the spear, forget anything so stupid as shooting me, and listen.”
* * *
I would never have obeyed, but beyond the window, out in that cold, rainy day, two Unseelie Princes were holding Dani between them.
Her cheeks were running with blood, and she was shivering violently. She wasn’t cold. She wasn’t even getting rained on. I guessed the UPs didn’t like being wet. She was shivering with heat. Lust. The destroying kind.
Her sword gleamed alabaster, forgotten in a muddy puddle on the dirt lawn. I knew they couldn’t possibly have touched it. Somehow they’d made her throw it away, same as the LM had done to me.
I was seriously beginning to think I’d gotten the short end of the stick. That all sidhe-seers had. What good were we, with all our limitations? We just kept getting shoved around.
I pushed a chair in front of the window so I could keep a constant eye on her. I had no idea what I’d do if the princes did anything other than restrain her as they were now, but I’d do something. They were in static form, clothed. They’d better stay that way. I was looking at two of the princes who’d turned me inside out. Who’d very nearly taken my soul from me. One day I would kill them, if it was the last thing I did. I was wise enough to know today was not that day. “Talk,” I said tightly.
He did. I sipped my coffee—irritatingly, it was good—while the Lord Master told me a story about being thrown out of Faery for defying the queen, for attempting to return their race to the Old Ways when the Fae had been worshipped as the gods they were, instead of living like sheep alongside puny mortals.
He told me how she’d stripped him of his Fae essence and turned him mortal, about finding himself alone in our world, human and fragile. He’d been cast naked, unarmed, and without human currency into the middle of Manhattan, in a subway station. He’d barely survived those first few minutes, had been attacked by a group of mocking, cruel humans wearing leather and chains, sporting shaved heads and hammering fists.
He told me how for a time he’d been out of his mind, horrified by a body that felt pain, that needed to eat, drink, and make waste, how he’d discovered germs and been terrified of death after so many hundreds of thousands of years of not even being able to comprehend it. He’d wandered with no place to rest, no money or understanding of how to care for his finite, weak shape that required so many things and caused so much misery. He—a god—was reduced to scavenging through human trash for sustenance to keep his body alive. He’d had to kill to seize clothing, had to scrounge like an animal. He’d studied his new environment, determined to find a better way to survive so he could then do better than merely survive.
He wanted revenge.
“You see,” he said, “you and I aren’t so different, are we? Both after the same thing. You, however, are misguided.”
“And you aren’t?” I snorted. “Give me a break.”
He laughed. “Perspective, MacKayla. Yours is skewed.” Bit by bit, he told me, he’d clawed his way from the bottom.
When he’d finally learned to satisfy his base requirements, he made a startling discovery: His new form felt more than mere need. The ennui and dispassion of immortality began to melt away. The fear of death awakened unexpected facets of his nature. Emotion stirred in him sensations that being Fae never had and never could. Madness was replaced for a time by sheer lust, but finally his head had cleared. His existence under control, he began to seek power on the human plane, pursuing his agenda.