Rowena’s shouts had roused the entire abbey. We’d fled into the night, followed by cries of “Traitors, traitors!”
“We can never go back to the abbey, Mac.” Dani looked simultaneously exhilarated and as young and lost as I’d ever seen her. I remembered being a teenager and didn’t envy her a bit. Emotions ran so high and changed so quickly, it was hard to know which end was up.
I laughed. “Oh, we’re going back, Dani. I need things there.” Answers. Lots of them. Tomorrow I would begin working on how to get into the Forbidden Libraries and putting together my own troops of sidhe-seers.
“They’ll never take us back, Mac. We ganged up and defied Rowena. We’re outcasts. Forever.” She sounded as miserable as she did proud.
“Trust me, Dani. I’ve got a plan.” I’d been fleshing it out while I was tracking Shades and driving them outside. “They’ll take us back. I promise.” More important, I planned to take them with me. But I needed to make a big statement first. I needed to show them how it could be. I knew what the other sidhe-seers wanted the most and I could give it to them, and that was the key to motivating any pack to follow a leader. Standing in the hall while they voted, I’d felt it in my blood. They were sick to death of menial tasks, of being corralled and ordered about, tired of seeing the world fall apart on their watch while they did the only thing Rowena would let them do: gather what survivors they could find and teach them to do what the pathetic and defeated did—hide.
What they wanted most of all was to hunt and kill Fae. And why wouldn’t they? They’d been born to do it!
During her time as Grand Mistress, Rowena had tried to civilize them, circumscribe them, organize them, but she’d only been polishing their surfaces, changing nothing where it counted, because deep inside every sidhe-seer was a hunter, bred to kill Fae, stalking, snarling, waiting with bated breath for the opportunity to do it. Beneath the skin of even the most timid sidhe-seer was a different creature entirely. Case in point? See pink Mac go black.
I was going to invite them out to play.
I was going to give them the opportunity they’d been jonesing for, show them what we could do together. Having only two weapons wasn’t the most desirable situation, but there were ways to work with it. If I could motivate five hundred sidhe-seers to fight and capture as many non-sifting Fae as possible, Dani and I could focus solely on killing them, instead of having to waste time hunting them ourselves. On our own, Dani and I might be able to take out a hundred a night, but if the Fae had already been captured and rounded up, we could kill a thousand in a few hours! Maybe more. And that was if every sidhe-seer at the abbey managed to find and capture only two apiece!
There was no doubt that Dani and I would be better than the other sidhe-seers at capturing the Fae and that pretty much any sidhe-seer could stab them, but I was never letting my spear go again. I would tell the other sidhe-seers the same thing I’d told Dani: We needed to keep the weapons because we were the only two who could protect them if the Seelie came for them. I would never let any of them know what I knew: that V’lane could take both weapons away from us at any time if he felt like it.
I shoved that thought away and turned to another I was still mulling over. If we began feeding Unseelie flesh to normal humans, we could turn every man, woman, and child into a fighter and arm them with the ability to defend themselves. It sickened me to think of billions out there that couldn’t even see the Shades.
“Are the Unseelie projecting glamour?” I asked Dani. “I mean, are they making themselves invisible to the average human?”
She shook her head. “V’lane says concealment is the Seelie way of things. He says Unseelie get off on human fear. They ain’t hiding nothing. The Shades are still invisible to normal folks ‘cause that’s their natural state, but people can see all the other castes, far as we know.”
So, other humans could see their death coming, unless it was by Shade. They just couldn’t do anything about it. But if they were fed Unseelie, they would gain superstrength, like Mallucé, Derek O’Bannion, Fiona, and Jayne, and be able to fight back. We could capture far greater numbers, and wouldn’t it be worth it, even if it changed those who ate it on some fundamental level? I wasn’t sure exactly what changes it caused or how long-term they might be, but I didn’t feel worse for it. Fear of my own spear had been the greatest drawback. Wasn’t the survival of our race and our world the most important thing, no matter the means by which it was accomplished? In a “Your Pure Human Genes” or “Your Life” contest, I’d come down firmly every time on the side of life.
“IFP, Mac!” Dani exclaimed. “Dead ahead!”
I veered sharply, skidding around it. It was a small one, the circumference of a carnival calliope. We’d seen three so far. She’d laughed when I told her what I’d christened them. They were easier to see at night. When headlights hit them, they shimmered with thousands of what looked like tiny dust motes dancing on the air. The first—the swamp I’d driven through earlier today—had shimmered pale green; the last two had been silvery. I wondered if their color had anything to do with the landscape inside and what dangers they held, if perhaps similar colors came from similar parts of Fae realms. I made a mental note to begin recording as much as I could about them in my journal. I thought I might organize scouts. Pick half a dozen and send them out to learn everything they could about the Interdimensional Fairy Potholes. Were they gates to Faery? Was there some way to use them to our advantage?