Barrons spoke and I shivered. I love that man’s voice. Deep, with an untraceable accent, it’s sexy as hell. When he speaks, all the fine muscles in my body shift into a lower, tighter, more aggressive gear. I want him all the time. Even when I’m mad at him. Perversely, maybe even more so then.
“You violated our code. You created an untenable liability,” Barrons growled.
Ryodan gave him a look but said nothing.
“His loyalties will always be first and foremost to his clan. Not us.”
“Debatable.”
“Our secrets. Now his. He’ll talk.”
“Debatable.”
“He’s a Keltar. They’re nice. They champion the underdog. Fight for the common good. As if there is such a bloody thing.”
Ryodan smiled faintly. “Nice is no longer one of his shortcomings.”
“You know what the tribunal will do.”
“There will be no tribunal. We’ll keep him hidden.”
“You can’t hide him forever. He won’t agree to stay hidden forever. He has a wife, a child.”
“He’ll get past it.”
“He’s a Highlander. Clan is everything. He won’t ever get past it.”
“He’ll get past it.”
Barrons mocked, “Repetition of erroneous facts—”
“Fuck you.”
“And because he won’t get past it, you know what they’ll do to him. What we’ve done to others.”
How many others? I wondered. What had they done?
“Yet you have Mac,” Ryodan said.
“I didn’t turn Mac.”
“Only because you didn’t have to. Someone else extended her life. Giving you the easy way out. Maybe our code is wrong.”
“There are reasons for our code.”
“That’s a fucking joke, coming from you. You said yourself, ‘Things are different now. We evolve. So does our code.’ Either there are laws or there aren’t. And if there are laws, like everything in the universe, they exist to be tested.”
“That’s what you’re after? Establishing new case precedence? Never going to happen. Not on this point. You want to turn Dani. Assuming she’s ever Dani again.”
“Nobody’s turning my fucking honey,” Lor muttered darkly.
“You took the Highlander, as your test case,” Barrons said.
Ryodan said nothing.
“Kas doesn’t speak. X is half mad on a good day, bugfuck crazy on a bad one. You’re tired of it. You want your family back. You want a full house, like the old days.”
Ryodan growled, “You’re so fucking shortsighted, you can’t see past the end of your own dick.”
“Hardly short.”
“You don’t see what’s coming.”
Barrons inclined his head, waiting.
“Have you considered what will happen if we don’t find a way to stop the holes the Hoar Frost King made from growing.”
“Chester’s gets swallowed. Parts of the world disappear.”
“Or all.”
“We’ll stop it.”
“If we can’t.”
“We move on.”
“The kid,” Ryodan said with such contempt that I knew he was talking about Dancer, not Dani, “says they’re virtually identical to black holes. At worst, consuming all objects within to oblivion. At best, from which there is no escape. When we die,” he carefully enunciated each word, “we come back on this world. If this world doesn’t exist, or is inside a black hole…” He didn’t bother finishing. He didn’t need to.
Lor stared at the monitor. “Shit, boss.”
“I’m the one who’s always planning,” Ryodan said. “Doing whatever’s necessary to protect us, ensure our continued existence while you fucks live like tomorrow will always come.”
“Ah,” Barrons mocked, “the king wearies of the crown.”
“Never the crown. Only the subjects.”
“What does this have to do with the Highlander?” Barrons said impatiently.
Exactly what I was wondering.
“He’s a sixteenth-century druid that was possessed by the first thirteen druids trained by the Fae—the Draghar.”
“I heard he was cured of that little problem,” Barrons said.
“I heard otherwise from a certain walking lie detector who told Mac his uncle never managed to exorcise them completely.”
I scowled, pressing my fingers to my forehead, rubbing it as if to agitate my memory and recall exactly where I’d been when Christian told me that—and if there had been any damned roaches around. That was the problem with roaches: they were small and could wedge themselves into virtually any crack to eavesdrop unseen.
“You know what Christian told Mac when you weren’t present?” Barrons said softly.
Ryodan said nothing.
“If I ever see roaches in my bookstore…” Barrons didn’t bother finishing the threat.
“Roaches?” Lor muttered. “What the fuck’s he talking about?”
“The Seelie queen is missing,” Ryodan said. “The Unseelie don’t give a shit if this world is destroyed. They aren’t bound to this planet like we are. Fae magic is destroying the world. It may be the only thing that saves it. The Highlander wasn’t supposed to die on that mountain. It wasn’t part of my plan. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my fucking vagina to be inside a black hole.”
That was certainly a visual.
“Me neither,” Lor muttered. “I like my vaginas pink and smaller. Much smaller,” he added. “Like way the fuck tight.”
I rolled my eyes.
Ryodan said, “This could be the end of us.”
The end of the Nine? I’d always kept in the back of my mind that if things got really bad on this world, I’d just grab everyone I love, along with everyone else we could round up, and travel through the Silvers to another planet. Colonize, start fresh. Unfortunately, erroneously, I’d only been thinking if things on this world got “really bad,” assuming there would still be a dangerous planet the Nine would certainly be able to battle their way off of again. I’d never considered that there might be a time this planet didn’t even exist. I knew the black holes were a serious problem but I hadn’t fully absorbed what the small tears in the fabric of our universe really signified and what they might do long term. I’d overlooked the ramifications of the Nine being reborn on Earth.
And if Earth was no longer…
“We’ve got to fix those fucking holes,” Lor growled.
I nodded vehement agreement.
“Your plan?” Barrons said.
“We conceal his existence,” Ryodan said. “We push him through the change. Get the best minds on the problem and fix it. Once it’s resolved, the tribunal can do whatever the bloody hell they want. Like give me a fucking medal and the free rein I deserve.”
“Jada,” Barrons said.
“And the kid because he gets physics, which, while no longer accurate, may help us understand what we’re dealing with. Mac. She’s got the bloody Book. Between her and the Highlander, we may just have more Fae lore than the Fae.”
But I can’t read it, I wanted to protest. What the hell good was it?
I shivered again, this time with a much deeper chill. I knew something with sudden, absolute certainty.
They were going to want me to.
“Fuck.” Lor was back to his one-word assessment of life, the universe, and everything.
Fuck, I agreed silently.
2
“Seasons don’t fear the Reaper…”
Inverness, Scotland, high above Loch Ness.
Christian had once believed he’d never set foot there again except in half-mad dreams.
Tonight was madness of another kind.
Tonight, beneath a slate and crimson sky, he would bury the man who’d died to save him.
The entire Keltar clan was gathered in the sprawling cemetery behind the ruined tower, near the tomb of the Green Lady, to return the remains of Dageus MacKeltar to the earth in a sacred druid ritual so his soul would be released to live again. Reincarnation was the foundation of their faith.
The air was heavy and humid from a nearby storm. A few miles to the west, lightning cracked, briefly illuminating the rocky cliffs and grassy vales of his motherland. The Highlands were even more beautiful than he’d painstakingly re-created them in his mind, staked to the side of a cliff, dying over and over. While he’d hung there, the long killing season of ice had passed. Heather bloomed and leaves rustled on trees. Moss crushed softly beneath his boots as he shifted his weight to ease the pain in his groin. Parts of him were not yet healed. He’d been flayed too many times to regenerate properly; the bitch had scarcely let him grow new guts before taking them again.