"In five seconds anyone that's still in bed with Lor is fired."

In two seconds my bed is empty. None of these women are willing to lose such a highly valued commodity as a place to work, food, and shelter, not in times like these. Not even for the glory of my d.i.c.k.

I sigh then turn it into another weird-a.s.s moan. I don't moan. I f.u.c.king roar. This Pri-ya business is taxing.

I roll onto my side and give Jo my a.s.s, hoping she'll just say whatever she has to say and go away, send back my babes.

I try to summon a pathetic whimper but it comes out sounding too much like me: a p.i.s.sed off, s.e.xually frustrated grunt. My d.i.c.k was ready, almost home sweet home, and now it's been relegated to a cardboard box beneath a bridge, cold and alone. It's swollen and painfully compressed between the bed and my thigh.

I'm supposed to be a s.e.x slave, so I can hardly roll over and ask her what the f.u.c.k she's doing here.

I hear a rustling sound then feel her weight settle on the bed next to me.

Then there's the sound of a washcloth drizzling water as she wrings it out into the basin, and I think, what the h.e.l.l, Jo's gonna finish the bath the blondes were giving me?

When she settles a hand on my back, I jerk. This is Jo. This is Ryodan's territory. I don't mess with the boss's stuff. n.o.body does. It'd be nearly as stupid as p.i.s.sing off Barrons.

"Mac told me you're Pri-ya," Jo says. "She says she doesn't remember anything from that time. That it's all just a blur of s.e.x."

I'm instantly defensive: she looking to cheat on the boss? Women don't cheat on Ryodan. f.u.c.k, they don't cheat on any of us. You don't give up the best.

She runs her hand over my back, down my a.s.s. I tense but stay perfectly still, thinking.

"G.o.d, you're beautiful," she says softly.

Wait, I'm supposed to moan. I try but get another frustrated grunt. s.h.i.t.

"I need a blur of s.e.x," she continues, talking and touching.

Who doesn't? My d.i.c.k gets harder. She's not even my type. She's pet.i.te and brunette with huge eyes and a delicate face. She's exactly what I steer clear of.

But I'm supposedly Pri-ya.

I sigh. Looks like my game is ending sooner than I planned. I grunt with sheer frustration and roll over, look up at her to tell her to get her a.s.s back to the boss and we'll just forget all about this. My d.i.c.k snaps straight up pointing to heaven, expressing firm opposition.

I clamp my open mouth shut again, thinking, Aw, no, no, no, no, don't do that, honey, anything but that. She's staring down at me with big, beautiful eyes filled with tears.

"You're not really there, right?" She searches my face and I instantly make my eyes go gla.s.sy. I been doing it for days, it's second nature now. She looks down at my d.i.c.k and I try to will it limp but it doesn't work for s.h.i.t. It's a simple beast. A woman is an occasion. My d.i.c.k rises to it.

"I couldn't stand it if I thought you'd remember this. It's just that I broke up with Ryodan-"

Aw, s.h.i.t.

"-not that you can really even call it a breakup because I knew from the beginning we weren't really together-"

Sometimes the boss really p.i.s.ses me off. We never keep a woman more than a few weeks. Human women fall in love. It's just what they do, so you gotta be real clear from the get-go that things aren't permanent, and Ryodan did stupid things like sometimes putting his arm around her, and the fact is, I knew all along he was just doing it to keep better tabs on Dani, 'cause we'd pretty much all do anything to watch over that kid. We been watching her for years, keeping her alive, giving her the chance to grow up. It ain't been easy; the kid's a handful and we all kind of wonder what kind of woman she's gonna be one day. Can't help it. When you live as long as we do, you find yourself in bed with women you watched get born. It's weird and not at the same time. I know we gotta protect our own, by any means necessary, but when you're as addictive as we are, you gotta be careful who you let in the candy store and how far. And there's some candy you just don't put on the shelves. Not with humans.

"I knew all along he was just keeping an eye on Dani and the abbey," she surprises me by saying. "At first I was doing the same. Watching your back, trying to divine your secrets, decide if you were friend or foe. At least that's what I told myself. Kat wanted someone on the inside at Chester's and it made me feel special that she'd asked me. That he wanted me in his bed. I thought about it for all of one minute. There was no way I was going to pa.s.s up that kind of chance. Great s.e.x on top of spying? I felt like a female James Bond."

She gives a soft, sad laugh that ends on a sob. "I didn't get a sidhe-seer talent like the others. I don't have a superpower. Just this d.a.m.n sticky memory that doesn't even work because I imprint everything I see and end up with so much useless detritus in my head that I can never find anything useful. I have the meaning of every word stored up there but I don't know the filing system. Who am I? Jo, the busy researcher. Want a fact? I can't remember where to find it in my mind, but I can recall where I saw it well enough to know where to look."

She flicks herself lightly in the forehead with a finger. "I don't understand the point of my gift. It's useless. Everyone else is out saving the world while I hole up with books and hunt for answers. I wanted to feel extraordinary. Like I was doing something for a change. I didn't realize how hard it would be to go back to ordinary. Nothing changed at all. I just got hurt."

She starts crying harder and I'm f.u.c.king horrified. I can't stand tears. Not from a woman. I only know one thing to do. Kiss them away.

She's not my type.

She places her small hands on my face and bends over me, her mouth a few inches away. "Erase him for me, Lor. Make me forget him. Take the taste of him out of my mouth. Fill it up with you. You'll never remember that you helped me forget. Please, Lor, make love to me."

Ahhhh! I f.u.c.king hate that phrase. I don't make love. I f.u.c.k. That's it. Plain and simple. f.u.c.k. Clearly defined. No strings attached. As in rut and grunt and get my rocks off. I'm the caveman. I'm the s.e.xual barbarian. I open my mouth to tell her that but all the sudden she pulls back from me and yanks her shirt off over her head and these positively f.u.c.king perfect small b.r.e.a.s.t.s pop out.

Don't know the last time I saw little t.i.ts. I forgot what they looked like. I stare and feel my eyes going gla.s.sy all on their own. Tiny waist, creamy skin flushed with embarra.s.sment and desire, and pretty pink nipples that-Aw, s.h.i.t, here I go.

d.a.m.n nipples. They get me every time.

"Lor, please," she says, hot tears falling like rain on my skin. "Make love to me, make me forget."

Slow and sweet, she bends over me and traces my lips with her tongue, breath warm, smelling faintly of peppermint.

I don't do this kind of woman.

Never this kind of woman.

And sure as f.u.c.k not the way she wants it.

Next thing I know I'm hiking that sweet, short skirt up over her sweet round a.s.s, breaking my own rules, gonna screw a brunette, on the highway to h.e.l.l.

20.

"Mama, I'm coming home"

MAC.

Situated on one thousand acres of prime farmland about two hours from Dublin, Arlington Abbey is a self-sustaining fortress with multiple artesian wells, a dairy, beef cattle, orchard, and acres of vegetable gardens.

Whether Rowena performed powerful spells to protect it or the Shades simply chose to go in another direction when they decamped the city en ma.s.se a few months ago, about thirty minutes from the ancient mother house, the countryside was left untouched by their voracious appet.i.tes.

It's difficult to believe I haven't been out this way since mid-May, the night we sealed the Sinsar Dubh in the vast, heavily runed underground chamber beneath the fortress.

Time flies.

Especially when you keep losing it inside the Silvers.

After we defeated the Sinsar Dubh, Barrons and I retreated to his lair beneath the garage, leaving bed only when near-starvation forced us out.

A few days later we laid his son to rest, finally freeing the father from a small eternity of torment, and began discussing plans to return to the mother house and take further measures to protect the world from the great-winged prince beneath the abbey that has stood as a prison, in one form or another, in the middle of a gra.s.sy Irish field since the unlucky day the king selected our planet for that purpose.

I'd proposed pumping the chamber full of concrete the very night the king iced Cruce. Barrons later argued for removing the prince, intact in his prison of ice, and transporting the chamber into the Hall of All Days, to dump on some other unsuspecting world.

We did neither.

Obsessed with my quest to rid the world of the other book, the next thing I knew, we were stepping from the Silver behind the bookstore into a city so heavily iced it was nearly impa.s.sable. Our new enemy wasn't one that could be physically battled, not that I was currently effective in that department anyway. Getting involved would have turned too many eyes my way, raised questions about my stalkers, and put me in closer proximity to Dani than I was ready for. It was the hardest thing I've ever done to trust that others would handle the problem while I attempted to handle my own.

I stare out the window, watching the scenery whiz by. What the Shades didn't devour, the h.o.a.r Frost King decimated. But spring has begun transforming the ice-ravaged landscape, pushing buds from skeletal limbs, and a thin carpet of gra.s.s shimmers in the moonlight. After the violent, killing frost, it may be years before the emerald isle regains its legendary green.

I sprawl in the pa.s.senger seat in the Humvee, one booted foot on the dash-Ryodan refused to let me drive, no surprise there, we're both control freaks-bracing myself for the upcoming battle. My dark flock is. .h.i.tching a ride on the roof.

I ponder the upcoming confrontation like a poker game I'm about to enter, and the various ways the cards might play out.

The metaphor is appropriate, given bluffing appears to be my strongest suit.

I love a good battle, especially on the right side, and we are. The abbey belongs to us. a.s.suming I go inside, what cards can I safely allow myself to play?

My spear is useless. I've been mulling over the two times my flock ascended to the rooftops and I drew my spear: the first against Dani, the second against the Gray Woman, trying to decide what pushed me over the edge the second time and gave the Book the leverage it needed. Until I can isolate the precise moment I lost control, the how and why, I'm not using my spear again.

I left my guns at the bookstore but have a switchblade in each boot. I won't use those either. Violence is the door the Book kicks through, sticks in a foot, and wedges open.

Barrons keeps the amulet locked in a vault beneath the garage. I wouldn't touch it anyway. We decided months ago that it was too risky to attempt to fool it twice the same way. Besides, I've thought of it so many times, I'm not certain it's not an idea the Book keeps planting. Nearly all my mental terrain is suspect to me. On days when it hasn't stirred much, I get worried.

You can't seek a weapon to use against it. You must become that weapon, Barrons has said over and over.

I know Voice. I'm good at it, too. There's a useful tool. If we get into a heated battle, I can keep a circle clear around me merely by barking orders. I get a mental picture of myself, standing, unarmed and pa.s.sive in the middle of a raging battle, shouting: Stay away from me! Don't touch me! Drop your weapon!

I blow out a frustrated breath.

I can Null, but that's only effective on Fae. Present ghoulish company excluded.

I'm good in hand-to-hand combat. a.s.suming I don't black out.

My cards in this poker game suck. I need a redeal. Or at least a few wild cards.

I'm itching to meet the supposedly legendary sidhe-seer leader, stand in front of her and take her measure. I wonder about the women she commands, what their talents are, whether one of them might be like me, able to sense the Sinsar Dubh. I try to a.s.sure myself the likelihood is slim.

But if the Unseelie King really did make us to serve as prison guards for his dark disaster, it seems logical he'd also have made more like me, in case it ever got out.

I heave a conflicted sigh and decide I'm being paranoid. The sidhe-seers told me no one in their entire history at the abbey was ever able to sense the Book like Alina and me, none of them are Nulls, and considering we come from the mother house in the originating homeland where it was interred by the king himself, I sincerely doubt the "away teams" were likewise gifted. In fact, they're probably diluted from millennia of living in far-off lands, divorced from their heritage. Good military fighters but little more.

"Christ, stop sighing, you'll blow us off the f.u.c.king road. Something you want to talk about, Mac."

I look over at Ryodan, inscrutable as ever in the dim light from the dashboard.

I doubt my threat to quit "protecting" him was motivation. Ryodan pursues his own agenda. "Why did you agree to help free the abbey? You never do anything unless there's something in it for you."

"I want their new leader off the streets. She and her followers are killing Fae. Bad for business."

"What are you going to do with her? Kill her?" I don't like that thought. Though I, too, intend to see her deposed, I want her neutralized, not dead. There's been too much death in Dublin.

"Perhaps she can be recalibrated into a useful weapon. If not, then yes."

"What happened when you and Dageus met with R'jan?" Dageus had insisted on privacy for the meeting in Ryodan's office. I'd loitered outside, wishing I still had his cell phone with the handy eavesdropping Skull & Crossbones app. "Did he agree to send an army to hunt the Hag?"

"In exchange for an additional seat at our table."

"Who? There are no other princes." I wonder about that. Where are the replacements? Are they trapped somewhere, like Christian was in the Unseelie prison, becoming? Did eating Unseelie really hasten his transformation?

"An advisor whose vote will tie his with those of the Unseelie."

"And you allowed it?"

He says nothing, but I don't need him to. Of course he did. "The Unseelie and Seelie will always vote against each other out of sheer, stupid principle, canceling each other out, giving you the permanent upper hand."

When he still says nothing, I resume staring out at the scenery. And jerk. "What the h.e.l.l?" I exclaim.

Ryodan looks over at me, then out the window beyond me. He slams the brakes so hard my ghouls catapult from the roof and explode in a tangle of chittering black robes on the road in front of us. "f.u.c.k, I didn't even notice."

The scenery has changed. Drastically. Here, just ten minutes from the abbey, spring has been at work, not with gentle brushes, but wild splashes from the vats of a painter gone mad.

"Back up," I demand, but he's already doing it.

We find the line of demarcation, similar to the one the Shades left outside Dublin, an eighth of a mile back.

I leap from the Hummer and straddle the line, one booted foot on each side. My ghouls pack in beside me, behind me. I tune them out, a thing I'm getting better at the more smelly, dusty time we spend together.

To my left is a thin covering of gra.s.s and weeds. To my right is a carpet of gra.s.s too tall and dense to be cut by anything but perhaps a strong man with a scythe. Fat poppies bob, black and velvety in the moonlight, and atop willowy stands of tall reeds, shadowy lilies sway.

On my left are newly budded trees with young, tender leaves.

On my right enormous, ancient live oaks, ma.s.sive branches stretching skyward, others reaching low to sweep the earth, explode with greenery, draped with lush vines.

Here, a weak cricket chirps, wakened from the unexpected and brutal winter to a paltry meal.

There, birds trill an exotic aria, tree frogs sing, and the heavily draped limbs rustle as small creatures leap from one vine-fringed branch to the next.

Foreboding fills me.

If you'll just come to the abbey, Kat had said, you'll see what I mean. This thaw ... I thought when the fire-world threatening our home was gone ... och, but then it didn't and it turns out it wasn't ...

She was trying to tell me. She was asking for my help. Engrossed in my own problems, I'd heard none of it.

There's another thing I'd like to be discussing with you, if you've the time. About Cruce. Seeing how you know more about Fae princes than any of us ...