18

“Ruler of the frozen lands…”

I lied to Mac.

Fortunately she isn’t capable of detecting lies as well as the Highlander/Fae prince/druid/lie detector that I am.

Besides, she’d been so obsessed with digging up her sister’s empty grave that she’d scarcely paid any attention to my small theft. She’d shrugged off the momentary tug she felt at her scalp, embracing my glib excuse and forgetting it.

I know precisely how to sift to a human’s location.

I need part of their physical person in my hand to track them, parting space like so many vines hanging from trees obscuring my vision as I isolate the hunted.

Such as the strands of paint-stained blond hair in the pocket of my jeans.

I know where her loyalties lie.

With Barrons.

With all of the Nine. Far more so than with me and my clan.

I don’t judge her for that. I understand clan and she’s chosen hers. Clan is necessary in times like these.

And so I played performing pony to get close enough to yank out a few long strands of her hair, then sat at the bar and sipped my whiskey, patiently waiting for a sign that something was going on in the bowels of Chester’s, wagering she was indeed in the innermost part of their circle.

Easier than trying to get some of that bastard’s hair, which, frankly, I’m not sure would even work. Although I can truth-detect with the Nine, if I try to apprehend any one of them as a singular entity, they simply aren’t there.

I know death intimately. I know life as well. The Nine register as neither. An hour ago, when Mac had risen, with Barrons and Ryodan flanking her, a severe expression on her face, I’d known something was afoot.

I’d sifted to follow her at a distance, wanting access but desiring not to be seen. I’d cloaked myself in glamour, spreading like moss along the walls, moss she’d touched, causing me to shiver. Moss that had peeled from the walls and coalesced once they entered the room at the far end of the corridor, re-forming as the Unseelie prince/Highlander that I am.

I’d stalked every inch of the dungeon, endless and sprawling. Empty. Utterly empty but for one corridor.

A false corridor.

A wall where in truth there was none. I could feel the invalidity of that stone barricade in every atom of my body.

Still, I couldn’t penetrate it. The bastard had powerful wards, designed to repel both human and Fae, and I was both, therefore blocked.

I’d planned to storm the room into which they vanished, thinking perhaps my uncle’s body was in that small cell and they were trying to perform some bizarre ritual with his potent druid remains.

It, too, was warded against Fae and human.

I stood outside, waiting for them to emerge with the long patience of an immortal.

Finally, the narrow door swung open.

“Where the fuck is my uncle?” I demanded.

Ryodan said coolly, “I already answered your questions, Highlander. As I’m sure you’ve seen, there’s nothing down here.”

I sifted his answer into grains: truth or lie. It told me nothing and made me wonder if somehow the prick had known I’d come hunting and deliberately left parts of the dungeon unguarded, wagering I wouldn’t be able to detect the illusionary wall in the north corridor. “Your false wall. Tear it down. Then I’ll believe you,” I said.

Ryodan’s eyes briefly flickered, and I knew I was right. For some reason, my uncle’s body was behind that wall.

“Tear it down,” I told him, “or I’ll destroy every inch of this bloody nightclub, killing everyone within.” I summoned the elements, drew them to me, beckoned like a lover, exhaled long and slow, and ice crackled down the walls, erupted on the floor, glazing the stone with thick, slippery black. “Then I’ll bring thunder and fire from the sky and burn this place to ash.”

Ryodan vanished.

I’d expected no less.

I sifted out, reappearing down the hall. Keeping a careful distance between us. The Nine can kill the Fae. No idea how. No plans to ever let one of them close enough to find out.

Ryodan vanished again.

I sifted and reappeared standing near Mac, with one arm around her throat. She twisted and kicked and growled. She was strong but I’m stronger. She smelled like me, and I knew she’d been eating my race again. I might have squeezed her neck a bit harder than I should have, but bloody hell, her cannibalism needs to stop.

“Let go of me!” she cried.

Barrons vanished.

I sifted out with a struggling Mac, reappeared in the air above them, wings open. “We can do this all bloody night,” I said. One more sift and I’d vacate the club for a while. Let them stew in the juice of knowing I had Mac with me, beyond their reach.

Barrons snarled.

“You won’t hurt Mac,” Ryodan said.

“But I will destroy your club.”

I dropped lightly to my feet and re-created what I’d watched Cruce do down in the cavern the night we’d interred the Sinsar Dubh. I’d felt his spell, absorbed the taste and texture of it, his methods. Gone seeking information in the king’s old library. I’d only recently embraced my power. Now, I used it to erect an impenetrable wall around Mac and me. One I’d seen them fail repeatedly to breach, standing in the cavern below the abbey.

“Aye, you could kill me, if you could catch me,” I acknowledged the unspoken threat blazing in both their dark gazes. “But you’ll never touch me.” I smiled faintly and without mirth.

Nor, likely, would anyone else. I hadn’t risked fucking since the cliffs, fucking I needed like I needed to breathe. But I had no taste for killing another woman. Such things threatened my Highlander’s heart, blackened it.

“Barrons,” Mac said urgently, “forge an alliance. We don’t want a war with Christian. You’ve pushed his back to the wall. The two of you would do no less than he’s doing, under the same circumstances.”

“Alliance, my ass,” Ryodan clipped.

“She’s right,” I said. “We can be enemies or allies. Choose carefully.”

Barrons looked at Ryodan. “He could be useful.”

I snorted. “There will be many conditions if I agree to be allies. The first is that you return my uncle’s remains.”

In my arms, Mac sighed and went supple. “I told you that you should tell him,” she said to Ryodan.

I angled my head to look at her. “Tell me what?”