Part 21 (2/2)
I'd proposed pumping the chamber full of concrete the very night the king iced Cruce. Barrons later argued for removing the prince, intact in his prison of ice, and transporting the chamber into the Hall of All Days, to dump on some other unsuspecting world.
We did neither.
Obsessed with my quest to rid the world of the other book, the next thing I knew, we were stepping from the Silver behind the bookstore into a city so heavily iced it was nearly impa.s.sable. Our new enemy wasn't one that could be physically battled, not that I was currently effective in that department anyway. Getting involved would have turned too many eyes my way, raised questions about my stalkers, and put me in closer proximity to Dani than I was ready for. It was the hardest thing I've ever done to trust that others would handle the problem while I attempted to handle my own.
I stare out the window, watching the scenery whiz by. What the Shades didn't devour, the h.o.a.r Frost King decimated. But spring has begun transforming the ice-ravaged landscape, pus.h.i.+ng buds from skeletal limbs, and a thin carpet of gra.s.s s.h.i.+mmers in the moonlight. After the violent, killing frost, it may be years before the emerald isle regains its legendary green.
I sprawl in the pa.s.senger seat in the Humvee, one booted foot on the dash-Ryodan refused to let me drive, no surprise there, we're both control freaks-bracing myself for the upcoming battle. My dark flock is. .h.i.tching a ride on the roof.
I ponder the upcoming confrontation like a poker game I'm about to enter, and the various ways the cards might play out.
The metaphor is appropriate, given bluffing appears to be my strongest suit.
I love a good battle, especially on the right side, and we are. The abbey belongs to us. a.s.suming I go inside, what cards can I safely allow myself to play?
My spear is useless. I've been mulling over the two times my flock ascended to the rooftops and I drew my spear: the first against Dani, the second against the Gray Woman, trying to decide what pushed me over the edge the second time and gave the Book the leverage it needed. Until I can isolate the precise moment I lost control, the how and why, I'm not using my spear again.
I left my guns at the bookstore but have a switchblade in each boot. I won't use those either. Violence is the door the Book kicks through, sticks in a foot, and wedges open.
Barrons keeps the amulet locked in a vault beneath the garage. I wouldn't touch it anyway. We decided months ago that it was too risky to attempt to fool it twice the same way. Besides, I've thought of it so many times, I'm not certain it's not an idea the Book keeps planting. Nearly all my mental terrain is suspect to me. On days when it hasn't stirred much, I get worried.
You can't seek a weapon to use against it. You must become that weapon, Barrons has said over and over.
I know Voice. I'm good at it, too. There's a useful tool. If we get into a heated battle, I can keep a circle clear around me merely by barking orders. I get a mental picture of myself, standing, unarmed and pa.s.sive in the middle of a raging battle, shouting: Stay away from me! Don't touch me! Drop your weapon!
I blow out a frustrated breath.
I can Null, but that's only effective on Fae. Present ghoulish company excluded.
I'm good in hand-to-hand combat. a.s.suming I don't black out.
My cards in this poker game suck. I need a redeal. Or at least a few wild cards.
I'm itching to meet the supposedly legendary sidhe-seer leader, stand in front of her and take her measure. I wonder about the women she commands, what their talents are, whether one of them might be like me, able to sense the Sinsar Dubh. I try to a.s.sure myself the likelihood is slim.
But if the Unseelie King really did make us to serve as prison guards for his dark disaster, it seems logical he'd also have made more like me, in case it ever got out.
I heave a conflicted sigh and decide I'm being paranoid. The sidhe-seers told me no one in their entire history at the abbey was ever able to sense the Book like Alina and me, none of them are Nulls, and considering we come from the mother house in the originating homeland where it was interred by the king himself, I sincerely doubt the ”away teams” were likewise gifted. In fact, they're probably diluted from millennia of living in far-off lands, divorced from their heritage. Good military fighters but little more.
”Christ, stop sighing, you'll blow us off the f.u.c.king road. Something you want to talk about, Mac.”
I look over at Ryodan, inscrutable as ever in the dim light from the dashboard.
I doubt my threat to quit ”protecting” him was motivation. Ryodan pursues his own agenda. ”Why did you agree to help free the abbey? You never do anything unless there's something in it for you.”
”I want their new leader off the streets. She and her followers are killing Fae. Bad for business.”
”What are you going to do with her? Kill her?” I don't like that thought. Though I, too, intend to see her deposed, I want her neutralized, not dead. There's been too much death in Dublin.
”Perhaps she can be recalibrated into a useful weapon. If not, then yes.”
”What happened when you and Dageus met with R'jan?” Dageus had insisted on privacy for the meeting in Ryodan's office. I'd loitered outside, wis.h.i.+ng I still had his cell phone with the handy eavesdropping Skull & Crossbones app. ”Did he agree to send an army to hunt the Hag?”
”In exchange for an additional seat at our table.”
”Who? There are no other princes.” I wonder about that. Where are the replacements? Are they trapped somewhere, like Christian was in the Unseelie prison, becoming? Did eating Unseelie really hasten his transformation?
”An advisor whose vote will tie his with those of the Unseelie.”
”And you allowed it?”
He says nothing, but I don't need him to. Of course he did. ”The Unseelie and Seelie will always vote against each other out of sheer, stupid principle, canceling each other out, giving you the permanent upper hand.”
When he still says nothing, I resume staring out at the scenery. And jerk. ”What the h.e.l.l?” I exclaim.
Ryodan looks over at me, then out the window beyond me. He slams the brakes so hard my ghouls catapult from the roof and explode in a tangle of chittering black robes on the road in front of us. ”f.u.c.k, I didn't even notice.”
The scenery has changed. Drastically. Here, just ten minutes from the abbey, spring has been at work, not with gentle brushes, but wild splashes from the vats of a painter gone mad.
”Back up,” I demand, but he's already doing it.
We find the line of demarcation, similar to the one the Shades left outside Dublin, an eighth of a mile back.
I leap from the Hummer and straddle the line, one booted foot on each side. My ghouls pack in beside me, behind me. I tune them out, a thing I'm getting better at the more smelly, dusty time we spend together.
To my left is a thin covering of gra.s.s and weeds. To my right is a carpet of gra.s.s too tall and dense to be cut by anything but perhaps a strong man with a scythe. Fat poppies bob, black and velvety in the moonlight, and atop willowy stands of tall reeds, shadowy lilies sway.
On my left are newly budded trees with young, tender leaves.
On my right enormous, ancient live oaks, ma.s.sive branches stretching skyward, others reaching low to sweep the earth, explode with greenery, draped with lush vines.
Here, a weak cricket chirps, wakened from the unexpected and brutal winter to a paltry meal.
There, birds trill an exotic aria, tree frogs sing, and the heavily draped limbs rustle as small creatures leap from one vine-fringed branch to the next.
Foreboding fills me.
If you'll just come to the abbey, Kat had said, you'll see what I mean. This thaw ... I thought when the fire-world threatening our home was gone ... och, but then it didn't and it turns out it wasn't ...
She was trying to tell me. She was asking for my help. Engrossed in my own problems, I'd heard none of it.
There's another thing I'd like to be discussing with you, if you've the time. About Cruce. Seeing how you know more about Fae princes than any of us ...
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