Silver Skin (A Cold Iron Novel) Read online

  He stopped. He wanted to explain himself, and that was distinctly un-Fae, too. But he wanted her to understand not just the what, but the why.

  “The memory geis on your skin is killing you. The longer I keep you away from your Fae persecutor, and keep you safe from his murderous designs, the hungrier the damned geis grows. It has been fed on rich stuff this last month, nearly every day, from what you tell me, for many hours. The memories of your abduction would have been heady with fear, no doubt tinged by humiliation, anger, loneliness. It has had only thin gruel today, two short episodes, and neither was likely to be as satisfying for it, because you wouldn’t have been as frightened since finding an ally . . . a friend. By morning the parasite will turn on you and begin devouring your past, then your present, and by nightfall it will have stolen your future. Unless Finn can be persuaded to help us.”

  “Because you need his son’s power to remove the geis tonight.”

  “Yes,” said Miach. “If he refuses, you will die, Helene. And make no mistake, he has every reason to refuse. I extracted an oath from him. A terrible geis. And I placed it upon his whole family, his followers, all the Fianna.”

  “For Nieve,” said Helene. “You forbade them from seeing her or Garrett. Elada told me what happened. And I saw firsthand how different your physiology became when you were first poisoned by the iron. You did it because you love her and you were terrified for her. I understand that.”

  Miach listened, more impressed than ever by Helene’s perceptiveness. She seemed to understand him better than he did himself at times.

  “The night we met,” she said, “you were trying to save Beth from a similar fate. I understand that, too, now.”

  “I should have explained myself then.”

  “I’m not sure I would have understood,” she admitted. “Not then. Or believed you. And by the time I would have understood and believed, your son had already kidnapped me.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, Brian has tried to kill me twice since I banished him.”

  Her brows knit. “You banished your own son?”

  “His actions were unforgivable, Helene. I will admit that I raised my children to be criminals. To extort money from the businesses we protect, to steal goods from the docks. It is much the same racket that we Fae practiced for thousands of years. Give us your milk and your honey, the bounty of your crops, the finest work of your hands, your comeliest maids, and we won’t torment, torture, and kill you. And when the invaders come, as they did every few years, we will protect your hearths and homes, will kill them instead. But I did not raise my children to be truly Fae. I did not raise them to toy with living beings like so many playthings. And yet, no one is to blame for Brian but me. He is not just my descendant, but my own son.”

  “I don’t blame you for what Brian did. And I can understand why you thought you had to kill Beth. I met the Prince Consort that night. He was . . . evil,” she said. “You couldn’t have allowed Beth to free others like him. Not if they would have targeted your family.”

  He liked her so damned much. Wanted her as a friend and a lover. Had to be honest with her. “What you have seen so far is only a small glimpse of the Fae. There is beauty in our world. So much beauty. Music and painting and a kind of pure sensuality, uninhibited, that I want to show you. But there is a fight coming. A battle against the ugliest side of our nature. The Fae Court, the Wild Hunt, the Queen and her minions, they’re truly terrible, evil. They delight in cruelty. It is more than decadence. There is a rot in them that goes all the way through to the core.”

  He looked at Helene, driving home his point even though it pained him. “The Fae who cast that memory geis on you knew exactly what it would do to you when he was finished with you. That wasn’t a cost or a tradeoff to him, in accomplishing his purposes. To him, and those of his kind, it would simply be a little bonus.”

  Helene bit her lip. She held up the silver box with the cold iron torc in it. He hoped she was not going to ask him where he had gotten it. His collection of Druid iron had not been acquired through barter or trade. The torcs and earrings, rings and pendants were all trophies. Taken from the corpses of dead Druids. The killing had gone on for a long time. At first, when he and Finn were still freeing captive Fae—finding them broken and bloody, used and abused like Deirdre, chained to the temple walls—killing was easy. Necessary. War.

  Then it had become pleasure, and Miach had stopped.

  “I want to accept this,” Helene said. “But I need to know what it means. I saw something today.” She looked away, took a deep breath, then met his eyes. “I saw Kevin and Deirdre together in the studio.”

  “Ah.” He tried to sound casual, knowing. But knowing Deirdre, the possibilities were endless.

  “They invited me to join them.”

  That particular possibility had occurred to him, but the image it suggested when spoken aloud was deeply Fae and deeply appealing. If only on a wholly theoretical level. A tangle of beautiful writhing bodies. A symphony of moans and sighs. But when he pictured it, he did not focus on Deirdre’s pneumatic breasts or ample buttocks, or the sensual music of her Fae cries, although he knew them exceedingly well from past experience. It was Helene he fixed on, and he realized that the idea only excited him if the mise-en-scène was centered on her, on exploring new pleasure with her. And the fantasy didn’t end in a Fae orgy but in Miach entering the room. In Miach extending his hand and Helene taking it, with her leaving to be alone with him.

  “Did you?” he asked. “Did you join them?” If she had, he would be jealous, but he could not be angry, because he had sent her here, into a Fae household. He had done it to protect her life. He had not thought much about her sensibilities. Or how she might be tempted or confused by the things found there. He had been invited to participate in such trysts before, without the choice of refusal. He knew what conflicted emotions such idylls roused.

  Helene laughed. “No.” She paused. “Or not intentionally. The way she—the way they—looked. And Deirdre’s voice was so . . . I was inside the room and practically on top of them before I even knew what I was doing. And then I ran. Because I knew that wasn’t something I wanted to do. Not really. There are all kinds of things that are exciting to imagine, to talk about, but that I don’t want to do in practice, and I think that may be one of them. But right now I need to know if that’s something you would expect from me. If that’s a Fae thing. If you do that.”

  He considered his answer. “It is not something I would expect from you, Helene. It is, in a sense, a Fae thing. We live thousands of years. Boredom, the desperate quest for feeling, for sensation, can lead to an adventurous bent, or it can lead—often leads—to decadence. And decadence in itself, if it harms no one, if everyone participates by choice, is one of the least of Fae vices. But there are those who pass through decadence and come out the other side. Amoral, unfeeling, impossible to rouse without blood and cruelty.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” said Helene. “They were . . . they are so focused on each other. That’s why I don’t understand how they could ask someone else to take part.”

  “You’re right: Deirdre is many things, but she’s not like that. She and Kevin have been lovers for eighty years. The guests in their bed are just that, guests. And always willing”

  “Kevin is barely thirty,” said Helene. “I’ve seen his photos in magazines.”

  “Kevin came through Ellis Island in his teens. He didn’t inherit a fortune, he made one, and has remade himself as his own descendant every couple of decades. As Beth will have to, if she wishes to avoid notice in the human world, now that she is bound to a Fae. But you will observe that she and Conn do not invite others into their bed. Or I’m sure they’d have invited you, Helene. They choose not to share each other. And neither would we.”

  The relief on her face was obvious.

  “Unless, of course, you insisted,” he added mischievously.

  “No.” She crossed the room. “The only Fae I want in m
y bed, provided I live through the night to share it with anyone, is you.”

  • • •

  Helene set the silver box on her nightstand. Miach MacCecht was going to bargain with his worst enemy for her life. She climbed onto the bed beside the sorcerer and kissed him. He responded, eagerly, running his fingers through her hair and cupping her face in his hands.

  “We don’t have the time now, Helene,” he said. “But we will later.”

  She expected that to be it. She expected him to get up and leave her alone in her bedroom, because she had accepted that he was Fae and not human. But he did something naturally and of his own will that her human boyfriends only did on sufferance. He pulled her into his arms and rolled them onto the bed together. Their legs were tangled. Her head came to rest on his chest. His fingers started to stroke her hair.

  Affection. It was the thing that had been missing, the thing she had been looking for when dating, though she hadn’t realized it until that moment. Growing up a tomboy, patterning her behavior after her older brothers, she hadn’t been the hugging kind. Girls who air-kissed and hung on one another had seemed . . . girly. In a way that Helene was not. It was the part of being feminine she had never quite mastered, and her own awkwardness in this, in the giving and receiving of affection, coupled with the emotional distance of the men she dated meant she had experienced almost none of it since childhood.

  “This is nice,” she said, listening to Miach’s heartbeat.

  “After we get back from Finn’s, I’ll show you something nicer,” he said.

  “Will I be able to go home then?” she asked. She missed her apartment, wanted desperately to sleep in her own bed.

  “If we discover who has been summoning you, yes. If not, you’ll have to stay at my house.”

  “I miss my bed,” she said.

  “I’ll teach you to like mine,” he said. “You’ll soon form quite an attachment to it.”

  “Promises, promises,” she sighed.

  He laughed. “After we’ve removed the memory eater, if we’re unable to determine who your magical persecutor is, then I can go to your apartment and ward it so you can spend some time there. With Elada or myself standing guard, of course.”

  “I suppose that’s better than living out of an overnight bag.”

  “I’m not seeing the need for a large number of wardrobe changes in my bedroom,” said Miach, with amusement.

  “Not even the fur boots? I seem to remember you said you liked those.”

  Despite the iron poisoning, his body told her that he definitely liked those, but he didn’t act on his desires, and Helene managed to doze for a quarter of an hour in his arms, until he nudged her and told her it was time to go.

  It was fully dark by the time they left the house and climbed into the Range Rover, which now idled in Deirdre’s cobbled drive with Elada at the wheel and Conn in the passenger seat.

  “Liam and Nial are on their way,” said Elada. “And Angus and Kermit and the boys.”

  Miach nodded.

  “Where are we meeting him?” asked Helene.

  “Sully’s,” said Miach.

  “I don’t like it,” said Elada.

  “We aren’t supposed to like it,” Miach replied.

  “What’s Sully’s?” asked Helene.

  “It’s a bar in Charlestown. It’s Finn’s,” said Elada. “And we should have summoned the whole family. Because Finn will be sure to gather his.”

  “We won’t get what we’re after in a fight,” Miach said.

  “A show of strength wouldn’t hurt,” said Elada.

  “Real strength doesn’t need to put on a show,” Miach said. “I’m not interested in impressing the Fianna. I’m interested in striking a bargain with their patriarch.”

  Helene hoped he was right.

  Miach must have sensed her misgivings, because he turned to her and said, “Conn walked into my bar with nothing but the sword on his back, and we still struck a deal to save Beth Carter, because such a bargain was in my interest also.”

  “Beth was a Druid,” said Helene. “Conn had something to bargain with.”

  “And you are our only link to the Fae who plots to free the Court. There is always something to bargain with . . . ”

  • • •

  Charlestown, like South Boston, had been an Irish enclave for nearly two hundred years, but its gentrification had been swifter and more complete. Charlestown had historic sites, such as the Bunker Hill Monument and the USS Constitution docked in the old navy yard, to attract tourists and add tone. Luxury condominiums and expensive marinas now dominated the waterfront, while the steep slopes of Bunker Hill were crowded with renovated town houses.

  But old Charlestown, with her housing projects, tenements, and gangs, was still there, tucked into side streets rife with asbestos shingle and chain-link fence. Sully’s was on one of these, with a view of the tangled concrete arteries that guarded the north approaches to Boston.

  Elada parked the Range Rover in front of the bar, disregarding the posted No Parking signs, and he and Conn preceded Helene and Miach into the bar. A few seconds later Elada appeared in the door and signaled, and Miach guided Helene inside.

  Her first impression was that Sully’s was the relic of another era. The faux wood paneling, plastic chairs, and laminate surfaces made Helene think of the 1950s. Elada had told her that the bar was even older than that, a speakeasy from the twenties, but it lacked the charm of age and the mystique of the forbidden. It was, in short, a dive with a distinctly underworld atmosphere, the kind of place that only the true locals—and the occasional daring hipster—frequented; the kind of place where petty plots were hatched and dreams died and where deals were struck for things that fell off the backs of trucks. At the moment, though, it was completely empty.

  “Is your bar like this?” she asked Miach.

  “My bar is nothing like this.”

  Elada smirked. “Sully’s is nicer,” he said.

  Two unsmiling young men emerged from a back room, armed to the teeth with guns, knives, and saps. They had Fae blood. Helene could tell by their soaring cheekbones and luminous eyes. But they lacked the painful beauty of the true Fae. And they could handle cold iron. One held a pair of shackles in his hands.

  Both were chestnut haired and hazel eyed, alike enough to be brothers.

  “Where is Finn?” asked Elada.

  “Not here,” said the older of the two boys, who was clearly in charge. “We’ll take you to the meeting place.”

  Elada placed a hand on his sword. “No. They mean to separate us from Liam and Nial, and Angus and Kermit and the boys.”

  Miach sighed. “It doesn’t matter. This is not an affair for half-bloods anyway. This is between Finn and myself. Lead us to him.”

  The elder boy shook his head. “The true Fae”—he nodded to indicate Elada and Conn—“must leave their weapons,” he said. “And Miach comes with us, bound in iron,” he dropped a pair of shackles on the bar, “or not at all.”

  Elada made no response. Conn raised one white-blond eyebrow. But it was Miach who spoke. “Are these Finn’s conditions?”

  The half-blood nodded. “They are.”

  And they were unacceptable. Helene could sense as much. Which meant they would not meet with Finn. And Garrett would not heal her. And her memories would be eaten, consumed by the vile thing inscribed above her knee.

  Miach shook his head. “No. Finn made no such conditions. Tell whatever craven thin-blood gave you those orders to fuck himself. And tell Finn he needs to keep a stronger hand on his whelps.”

  Miach turned to go. Helene felt light-headed. It was over. The memory parasite was going to eat everything that made her her. She was going to die.

  Chapter 10

  “Wait!” the one who’d spoken before called out. Miach turned back. Finn’s offspring looked panicked and suddenly, very, very young. “Let me speak with my uncle.”

  “Your uncle?” Miach scoffed. “Another half-breed? One
too cowardly to come himself? Make a decision, boy. Do the Fianna, in their strength, fear three men? True Fae or not? We come armed and without chains, or we don’t come at all. And it is you Finn will hold accountable if we do not come, not your damned uncle.”

  The boy swallowed. “It was only a precaution,” he stuttered. “They say you can kill with a thought.”

  “Only when I’m in a killing mood. But he”—Miach cocked his head at Conn—“is always in a killing mood. And his blade can kill with a scratch. But you are many, and your patriarch agreed to this meeting. Now take us to Finn.”

  The boy nodded. Helene wondered if Miach was using compulsion on these half-Fae. She was wearing the iron torc around her ankle and could not tell if his voice carried power, but she doubted it. One was carrying iron in any case, and the way Miach had described what they must do tonight, the skill he must bring to bear to channel Garrett’s power and remove her geis, she didn’t think he would use any of his strength unnecessarily.

  They followed Finn’s cowed envoys through the bar and out a back door. The gas-lit streets of Charlestown were quiet at this hour, and the party made their way first up, then down the sloping streets of the hill, past the scrubby Training Field Park, under an overpass, and then through a wide hole in a chain-link fence.

  They came out inside the navy yard, near the old marine barracks with its Torii Gate outside. The two young Fianna led them to a structure Beth recognized: the Commandant’s House. It was a redbrick Federal mansion, once the residence of the yard’s commanding officer and now a function space administered by the National Park Service as part of Boston National Historic Park. She had been there for a fundraiser once, an elegant affair put on for the Constitution’s museum. The interior, she recalled, was Greek Revival, grand but in a state of sad decay.

  The two Fianna entered by a glass-porch door and led Miach’s party through the darkened conservatory and into an enormous pillared reception hall. It was filled with half-bloods. Close to a hundred of them. They stood against the walls, leaned against the pillars, and crowded into the corners. It was impossible to miss the shared Fae heritage of many of them. The greater part of the Fianna had chestnut hair and hazel eyes and pointed, almost feral chins. These had all been cast, Helene thought, from the same mold.