Beyond the gate the abbey is lit as if by a thousand interior lights. An acre of fountain that also didn’t previously exist shoots water into the sky before spilling into a rippling pool of silver and gold. The gardens are surreal, vast bed after bed of spicy, jewel-toned blossoms I’ve seen only one other place. There’s no longer any question in my mind what egotistical Picasso painted this voluptuous summer atop the canvas of Dublin’s anorexic spring.
Beyond the gate a new sidhe-seer holds the prison that contains—or appears to be rather spectacularly failing to contain—the greatest evil the world has ever known (well, besides me) in the body of the most powerful prince the Unseelie King created. I should have known it wouldn’t work. Cruce probably had a contingency plan all along; the equivalent of a paper clip tucked in his pocket to work his handcuffs loose, or a shoulder that conveniently pops out of its socket.
“Has it broken free, lass?” Dageus asks, looking at me.
Cautiously, I reach out for the Book entombed, hoping the one inside me doesn’t explode into violent life.
KILL THE PRINCE CRUSH HIM DEVOUR HIM DESTROY HIM MAKE HIM BURN!!!!!
I grit my teeth to keep from clutching my head and groaning out loud. Yes, it’s still beneath the abbey, and apparently, much as the king despises his book, my book despises the king’s book. Whatever happened to the good old days when books just got along, cozied up together on bookshelves, hanging out, waiting to be read?
“It’s still beneath the abbey where we left it.”
“Has anything changed?” Christopher demands.
“I can’t tell that from here. We’ll have to see it.” And I won’t. I’ll find a way to refuse. The last time I stood in that cavernous chamber, I didn’t know I had a copy of the Book inside me. I’d still believed it was a lie the Sinsar Dubh had told me to make me doubt myself. Since that night, I’ve had far too many nightmares about getting imprisoned next to Cruce.
March willingly into the abbey, down into the prison, beside the very sidhe-seers and Keltar druids that possess enough power between them to imprison me?
Never.
I feel Barrons behind me before he speaks. My cloak of wraiths retreat, and like a supercar that’s sat too long in the garage and is in desperate need of a hot, hard run to blow out its engine, my body fires on all pistons.
“Ah, fuck.” He moves in, standing close without touching. He doesn’t need to. I sometimes think our atoms are so glad to see each other that they send little messengers back and forth, ferrying desire, strength, and love between the islands we are. “I knew we should have moved it,” he growls.
“At least pumped it full of concrete,” I agree.
“The others,” Ryodan says to him.
“Fade was the only one with me when I got your call.”
While I’m trying to decide just how Ryodan managed to reach Barrons in Faery, Fade glides from the shadows, tall, packed with muscle and scarred like the rest. He’s prowling in that half-invisible way Barrons moves only in private. If you’ve not seen it before, it’s eerie and impossible to mistake for human.
The Highlanders close ranks on themselves.
Fade laughs, fangs gleaming white in the moonlight.
Two of the Highlanders move their hands to ancient, odd knives in sheaths at their waist. I wonder if they have mythic properties like my spear.
Ryodan shoots Fade a look he rebounds with a snarl, but he settles into moving like the rest of us.
Our army is small yet impressive. In two groups we stand, Barrons, Fade, Ryodan, and I, near Dageus, Drustan, Cian, and Christopher, preparing to meet our unknown foe.
And a known one that’s somehow stirring, despite the ice and bars.
Provided war doesn’t break out between us—which could easily happen with this much testosterone in such close quarters—I put our odds of reclaiming the abbey from at least one of our enemies tonight at reasonably good.
The new sidhe-seers didn’t just take an abbey—they took a radioactive one.
I’m no longer certain what worries me more: the danger beneath Chester’s, the one beneath the abbey, or the one inside me. I’d like them all to go away. Reverse order would be just swell. “Do you think things will ever get back to normal?”
Barrons gives me a look. “They were normal? Did I miss that century?”
Ryodan says, “Fuck normal. Give me a good war any day.”
“No shit, boss,” Fade agrees.
Drustan snorts. “You’re daft, the lot of you. I’d give my left nut for a century of peace.”
The rest of the Keltar heartily agree, adding various body parts to the mix.
Surrounded by alpha males that know more magic than all the teachers at Hogwarts, I’m about to ask who’s going to do what to get us through the gate, when it becomes a moot point.
Powered by an unseen hand, it begins to move slowly open.
21
“This house doesn’t burn down slowly to ashes”
MAC
I used to know precisely where I was headed and how I’d handle things when I got there.
Before any event, I’d ponder the possible variables and decide what I’d say or do, if X or Y happened, or maybe Z. Although something as exotic as Z almost never happened in small-town Georgia. We closed schools and held parades when it did.
It’s how I used to prepare for dates in high school: when Billy James asks me out will I say yes the first time or make him wait; will I wear the low-cut top or something flirty and sweet; when he tries to kiss me, will I let him; if he takes me to the less popular party at Amy Tanhauser’s house instead of the party of the year at Heather Jackson’s, will I dump him; if he wants to have sex, am I ready?