“I know, right?”
“Dude,” he says again.
We look at each other commiserating, because grown-ups are so fecked up and we’re never going to turn out like them.
Then he grins. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go take it back.”
Since the walls fell, Dublin feels a lot like a movie set to me.
It’s the quiet. The city is a ghost town with squatters hiding in the wreckage, rifles cocked. Sometimes I see whites of eyes gleaming at me through boarded-up windows. If they’re human, I try to talk to them. Not all of them are receptive. There are some real nuts out there, as creepy as some of the Unseelie.
Before the walls crashed, back when I used to pedal around the districts on my courier bike, back when the sidhe-seers were masquerading as an international messenger service run by Ro, the city was filled with a constant white noise. It was hard, even with my superhearing, to distinguish between the congestion of cars and buses, folks’ heels on pavers and cement, planes landing and taking off, boats docking in the bay. Cell phones drove me crazy. There were days when all I heard was a blur of text message alerts, e-mail alerts, rings, songs, games.
Still, as annoying as it could be, it was music to my ears, the complex chords of the city I love. Now there are only the flat notes of soldiers marching, monsters hunting, and the occasional plaintive trill of something dying.
Dancer and I race through the streets, telling each other jokes, laughing our heads off. Hanging with him is the only time I can totally forget myself.
We round a corner and belly up to a contingent of Rhino-boys.
When they see us, one of them grunts into a radio, “Got her, boss, she’s at Dame and Trinity.”
I glance over my shoulder, lock everything down on my grid, grab Dancer, slide sideways and freeze-frame us out of there.
A short time later we’re skulking around outside Dublin Castle, quiet as two mice sneaking around the kitchen looking for cheese.
Dancer’s eyes are bright with excitement. I’d never freeze-framed him before. He said it was the coolest thing he’d ever done and wants to do it again. It used to make Mac almost puke when I did it to her.
After I hit a department store and changed into a cooler outfit of jeans, tennis shoes, and a new leather coat, we stopped in one of his digs I didn’t even know he had and got some explosives. Some of the best plans are the simplest, less room for error. He’s going to make me a distraction by blowing something up while I go in after my sword. I’ll grab it, grab him, and we’re gone. Then I’ll swagger into Chester’s tonight at eight and everybody will see you don’t mess with the Mega. Ryodan’ll see I don’t need him for nothing.
“You were right,” Dancer says, “the cages are crammed full of Unseelie waiting to be killed.”
I snicker. “Jayne didn’t know what he was getting into when he took my sword. I knew he didn’t have enough time to kill six days’ worth. Only way I can is I do it in hyperspeed.”
Covered trucks are parked near the training green. We circle behind them. Fresh Unseelie bodies are piled in the back of one, still dripping. That means somebody is currently using my sword, and it’s nearby. My fingers curl, aching for it. I don’t know where Jayne disposes of the bodies. He has them trucked somewhere. I know his routine. I’ve been a part of it for a long time. His men patrol the streets, capture every Unseelie they can get their hands on and imprison them in iron holding cells in buildings behind Dublin Castle. The facilities are guarded, because several times in the past one Fae faction or another has hired humans to try to break somebody—or all of them—out.
Whenever the cages started getting full and I had free time I zoomed in, sliced and diced Unseelie, then loaded the bodies and trucked them out. It ran fast and efficient.
But only because I kill in superspeed. No slow-mo Joe can walk into a cage filled with Unseelie armed only with a single weapon, whether it’s the Sword of Light or not. He’d be torn to pieces while he was still stabbing his first Fae.
Now, Jayne is being forced to separate out each Unseelie, take it out of the cage, kill it, separate the next, kill it, and so on for days. He’ll need a full-time contingent to run it. It will take dozens of his men to replace me. And he was already short-handed.
“Mega, I know where the sword is,” Dancer says.
“Me, too.”
When I slay Unseelie, I do it so fast that there’s not much time for the Unseelie standing nearby to react. They die quickly. Most of them before they even know what’s happening.
But the way Jayne’s doing it, they have to be standing around, watching the others get slaughtered for hours, watching Death inch closer.
I hate Fae. But there’s something about knowing that they’re just standing there, locked up, watching their buddies die a few feet away, waiting to be killed, that makes me feel … queasy. It’s not like we owe them mercy—they don’t show us any—but I figure if you’re going to kill something you should do it quick and painless or you’re just as sick as whatever you’re killing.
I don’t need my sword back just for me. I need it back because I’m the best person to do this job. Jayne needs to pull his head out and see that. This is fecked up, this drawn-out protracted slaughter.
Dancer’s eyes aren’t shining anymore. He looks as somber as I feel. I decide I’ll make a show of good faith when I get my sword back.
I’ll stay and slay, and put everything out of its misery fast and clean.
Then me and Jayne are going to sit ourselves down and have a serious talk.
I look at Dancer and he nods.
We head for the screaming.
The corrugated steel dock doors are wide-open on the warehouse, making room enough for two semis to back in and unload if they wanted to. Seeing into the building where Jayne is killing all the Unseelie isn’t the hard part.
It’s not being seen if someone looks out that’s tricky.
The concrete dock is five feet high, and I’ve crept along it until I’m standing real close to the entrance, with just my eyes and hair sticking up above the side while I assess the scene and start building my mental grid. Even that small slice of me showing makes me feel too exposed. Having red hair is like wearing a neon sign sometimes. Dirty blond would blend with the background, mouse brown would merge nicely with the murky dawn, but my hair never fades into obscurity unless I’m backdropped by a crimson sky.