My body stiffens as it hits me like a thunderbolt.

Energy, sexuality, vitality, and strength burn in my veins. No wonder so many people are so addicted to it. I feel strong. I feel alive. I feel invincible. I remember eating it once before and taunting Barrons to hit me, punch me, fight with me.

I ease down a few more inches. So far no malevolent commentary from the Book and no apparent negative side effects. If you exclude a ferocious desire to eat it again once it wears off.

“Christian, can you hear me?” I whisper.

“I … hear you,” he says weakly. “Mac … I smell … Unseelie flesh. You … eating it? Ken you what … vile stuff … does … to you.”

Despite the agony in his voice, I swear I hear a faint note of teasing.

“Are you strong enough to hold yourself up for a little while if I free one of your hands?”

“Aye,” he whispers. “Give me … the bloody spear … kill the … bloody bitch. Can’t see … you. Naught but … black and moonlight. Am I … blind?”

“I’m invisible.”

“Och, and … why wouldn’t you … be.” He sort of laughs but it turns into a blood-chilling moan of pain.

“How long do you think you can hold yourself if I get your hand on an outcropping of rock?”

He’s silent and I get the sense he’s resisting the urge to snarl Forever, trying to gauge what he believes he can actually do. Finally he says faintly, “A few minutes … no more. I’m gutted … nigh dead. Keep … blacking out.”

“Shit,” I mutter. From this angle I can’t see past his head.

I feel another sharp pull on the cable, twice, three times, and my blood runs cold with dread. Three times means she’s taken flight.

It’s now or never. I have to hurry. And I’m going to be sitting mere feet away when it happens.

“I’m going for your left hand, Christian.”

“She’s … on her way.”

“I hear her.” She has no wings, who knows how the hell she flies? But she makes a sharp whining sound as she displaces air. She’ll be on us in ten seconds if she comes straight for him. I kick out—why not, she’s already coming?—and drop to rest below his left hand. I pull the spear out, wedge the tip beneath the pylon and get ready to pry it free. “Grab my arm with your fingers. You must hold on when I pry it out.”

“I’ll … pull you … down.”

“You won’t. I ate Unseelie.”

“You … never … learn.” His fingers close around my wrist.

I establish the most secure toeholds available, which is virtually nothing, as sheer as the rock is where she hung him, and pry with one swift, hard jerk.

The rivet shoots out, goes flying off into the air behind me, and begins the long plunge to the canyon below. Christian’s grip on me tightens, and my feet slip off the nearly nonexistent ledges.

I plummet like a stone, in full free fall.

I grab the cable with both hands and squeeze as tight as I can, jerk it too hard, bounce upward and crash into the rocky bluff.

Wiping blood from my face, I glance up. Christian is a good thirty feet above me, hanging by a single arm at a telltale slant.

I look down. The Hag is gone, apparently chasing the sound of the rivet hitting stone.

It’s a darn good thing I ate Unseelie flesh. Without it I’m not sure I would have been able to stop myself from plunging down to join the rivet. Dark energy pounds in my head, my heart, giving me many times my normal strength and energy.

I hang there a second, looking up, studying the cliff, picking out my toeholds, plotting my climb back up before beginning the steep ascent.

When I’m even with Christian, I see his body for the first time and gasp. He’s sliced from breastbone to groin, skin flapping, parts of flesh hanging out, regrowing.

How the hell has he even been talking?

“She sees me … hanging by one arm, she’ll lance … me from a … distance.”

“I’m going to ease your hand onto a piece of rock. Hold like your life depends on it.”

He groans. “Mere minutes, lass … no more … pain immense.”

I hear the familiar, dreaded whine of the Hag’s flight and scramble to get his fingers fastened onto a rocky ledge. “You got it?”

“Aye. Need … spear.”

If she sees it, she’ll never come near him. “I’m crouching on the wall, just above your hand. When she gets here, I’ll wrap your fingers around it. It won’t become visible until I let go of it.”