"Faefever" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moning Karen Marie)

Chapter 9

At quarter to ten, I was waiting for Barrons to arrive, and my Voice lessons to begin. We’d set a standing engagement, and although I knew he was probably still angry with me, I expected him to show.

I didn’t mind hopping. He could make me squawk like a chicken, for all I cared. If he made me feel stupid enough, I’d figure out how to resist him.

Christian had been right. If the walls came down, all the Unseelie would be freed. And I’d been right, too: the Seelie couldn’t reimprison them without the Sinsar Dubh. Despite the grimness of our situation, I was once again focused, determined Mac. I’d stolen some sun—real human sun, not Faery stuff like last time with V’lane—and stashed it away, solar energy for my cells. A junkie, I’d gotten my fix.

Thumbing my nose at the chilly weather outside, which I had no intention of venturing into, I was wearing my favorite short white skirt, pretty sandals, and a lime-gold sleeveless top that tinted the green of my eyes a lighter, more intense shade. My skin was burnished gold from my hours in the sun. I looked and felt great. After showering, and doing my makeup and hair, I’d talked to Dad for a while. In Ashford, it was suppertime, and it had been 88 degrees today. In Dublin it was 38, but knowing Canc#250;n was a mere “sift” away made it a lot easier to handle.

In my refreshed state of mind, I’d decided to divulge some information to Barrons. Try fishing with a baited hook instead of demanding answers, do things his way. I was going to show him the page from my sister’s journal that I’d received today. V’lane had slipped. Surely every now and then Barrons did, too. Maybe his face would betray something. Maybe he knew what the five were. Maybe he’d have some idea who had Alina’s journal. I didn’t believe he did. I couldn’t see any reason he would choose those specific entries to send to me. Then again, I couldn’t see any reason anyone would choose them, but someone had.

If I shared something with him, maybe he’d return the favor. Perhaps he felt the answers were innocuous enough that they didn’t matter. Sunny Mac felt it was worth a try.

The bell above the door tinkled.

Barrons stepped in. He swept a gaze from my head to my feet, slowly. His face tightened, then he worked his way back up, just as slowly. I guess he didn’t like my clothes. He rarely does. Left to my own devices, I dress too happy to suit his tastes. Ms. Rainbow and Mr. Night. That’s what we look like walking around together.

To defuse any tension left over from last night, I offered him a smile, and a friendly, “Hey,” letting him know I was willing to start this night off fresh, and hoped he was, too.

I sensed his violence a split second before he attacked me, and then it was too late. He slammed the door behind him. Dead bolts ratcheted into place.

“Tell me every detail of the last time you saw the Sinsar Dubh.”

Voice compacted my body in a head-to-toe vise, and squeezed brutally. Shit, shit, shit.

I doubled over, the breath slammed out of me. A legion of voices rebounded in the room, careening off the walls, intensifying as they zoomed left and right, up and down, then through me, burrowing into my skin, rearranging things in my head, making my mind his. Dominating. Seducing. Selling me the lie that his will was mine, and I lived to obey it.

Sweat beaded on my brow and upper lip, and slicked my palms. The harder I tried to fight the compulsion, the less possible it was to inflate my lungs, to move any part of my body at all. A paper doll, I hung, folded, limp, spineless. And like a paper doll, he could tear me in half, if he wanted to.

“Stop fighting me, Ms. Lane, and it’ll go easier. Unless you enjoy the pain.”

In my mind I spewed a geyser of curses, but not a word came out. I had no breath to fuel it. He’d topped the level he’d used on me last night—the level of proficiency he’d said the Lord Master had achieved—and he’d done it with a voice of silk. Like the difference between other men’s motorcycles and his, Barrons walks softly—but he carries the biggest stick I’ve ever seen.

“Nice tan, Ms. Lane. How’s V’lane? Did you have a good time today? I take you to graveyards, but he takes you to the beach—is that what our problem is? Our little dates aren’t good enough for you? Does he romance you? Feed you all those pretty lies you’re so hungry for? I’ve been neglecting you lately. I’ll be remedying that. Sit. Over there.” He pointed to a chair near the fire.

I jerked upright and tiptoed tightly toward the indicated seat, not because I felt dainty, but because that’s what happens when you try to lock down your leg muscles to prevent your feet from rising and falling, but your body moves anyway. One resistant step after the next, I minced toward the chair. I reached it and collapsed into it like a rag doll. My throat muscles convulsed and I tried to force out words. “D-don’t. d-do—”

“You will not speak unless it is in direct answer to one of my questions.”

My lips sealed. I couldn’t believe he was doing this to me.

How ironic that V’lane had asked me to trust him today, I had, and he hadn’t betrayed me. I’d been ready to open up a little to Barrons tonight, tell him a few things, and he’d betrayed me. V’lane had muted his sexuality to preserve my will. Barrons had just stripped it away with a single command, no different from the Lord Master.

“Tell me what you saw the night you encountered the Sinsar Dubh,” he repeated.

Straining in my skin, nearly suffocating myself with my attempts to resist, I spilled every detail, every last thought, every perception. From the humiliation of lying in that vile puddle in my pretty clothes, to the various forms the Book had taken, to the look it had given me, to my decision about how to track it. Then, to make things worse, I volunteered my entire “intervention” with Inspector Jayne.

“Don’t move,” he said, and I sat ramrod-straight in my chair, unable to even scratch my nose while he pondered his thoughts. There was violence in the room with us, a killing violence. I didn’t get it. What had I done to piss him off so much? He hadn’t been half this angry last night, and he’d had every opportunity to grill me forcibly then. He hadn’t. He’d just driven off.

“Where did you go today?”

Sweat dripping down my face, I told him that, too. I wanted to speak of my own free will, to call him every name in the book, to tell him we were through, he and I, and that I was the one who deserved answers, not him. But he’d sealed my lips with a command, and I could only answer what he asked.

“Did V’lane tell you anything?”

“Yes,” I said flatly, biting it off there. I’d obeyed the compulsion to the letter. I didn’t have to offer more.

“What did he tell you?”

“That the Lord Master was once a Fae, named Darroc.”

He snorted. “Old news. Did he tell you anything about me?”

Old news? He’d been sitting on information about the Lord Master that he hadn’t shared with me? And he got pissed at me for not telling him everything I knew? If he didn’t kill me when he was done with me, he was dead. He was a walking encyclopedia with a cover I couldn’t crack. Useless.

Dangerous. “No.”

“Did you fuck him?”

“No,” I gritted.

“Have you ever fucked him?”

“No,” I ground out. I’d never had two men more obsessed with what was happening in my sex life, or rather, not happening.

Some of the violence in the air abated.

My eyes narrowed. Was this it? The source of his rage? Was Barrons jealous? Not because he cared, but because he thought of me as a possession, his personal and private sidhe-seer, and there would be no other men’s erections interfering with her OOP detections?

He gave me a cold look. “I needed to know if you were Pri-ya. That’s why I asked.”

“Do I look Pri-ya?” I snapped. I had no idea what a Fae addict looked like, but I somehow doubted I was the Poster Girl for it. I figured them for something more like the Goth girls I’d seen hanging out at Malluc#233;’s vampire lair: pierced, tattooed, and heavily made-up, dressed in vintage clothing, mostly black.

He started, measured me a moment, then laughed. “Good for you, Ms. Lane! You’re learning.”

I started, myself, realized what I’d just done. I’d said something that hadn’t been an answer to a direct question! I tried to do it again, mentally forming the words, but I couldn’t force them out. I didn’t know how I’d done it in the first place.

“Who were you going to see the night you saw the Sinsar Dubh?”

Oh, no. This wasn’t fair. He didn’t get to know everything. “A guy that knew Alina,” I said between clenched teeth.

“Tell me his name.”

No, no, no. “Christian MacKeltar.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” He exploded from his chair and glared down at me.

Since he’d used Voice, I was obligated to say, “No,” although I knew the question had been rhetorical. The killing violence was back, over a simple name. Why? What significance did Christian’s name have to him? Did he know him? Closing my eyes, I sought the sidhe-seer place in my head. It was no help. I still couldn’t speak. How could I feel so much power in that hot, alien part of my mind, yet find nothing there of use to me in this situation?

“How did you meet Christian MacKeltar?”

“He works at the ALD at Trinity. I met him when you sent me to pick up the invitation to the auction from his boss, but she wasn’t there.”

His nostrils flared. “He must be a recent hire. They’ve been spying on me.”

He hadn’t used Voice, nor had he asked a question, so I said nothing.

“Have the MacKeltars been spying on me?”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I said, “Yes.”

“Have you been spying on me, Ms. Lane?”

“As much as I can.”

“What have you learned about me?”

I went poking around in my head again but whatever place I was supposed to discover remained a mystery to me. Aware that I was digging my own grave, one spadeful of information at a time, I told him. That I knew he wasn’t human. That I knew he was impossibly old. That I’d watched him step out of the Unseelie Sifting Silver he kept in his study, carrying the savagely brutalized corpse of a woman. That, like the Shades, the demons in there had fled his path.

He laughed. As if it was some kind of joke that I knew all his dark secrets. He didn’t try to explain or justify one bit of it. “And I didn’t think you could keep your own counsel. You knew these things and never said a word. You’re becoming interesting. Are you working with the MacKeltars against me?”

“No.”

“Are you working with V’lane against me?”

“No.”

“Are you working with the sidhe-seers against me?”

“No.”

“Are you working with anyone against me?”

“No.”

“Where do your loyalties lie, Ms. Lane?”

“With myself,” I shouted. “With my sister! With my family, and screw all of you!”

The violence in the room abated.

After a moment, Barrons resumed his seat in the chair across from me, absorbed my painfully stiff posture, and smiled without humor. “Very well, Mac. Relax.”

Mac? He’d called me Mac? I fought for breath. “Am I about to die?” I wheezed. “Are you going to kill me?”

He looked startled. I’d done it again. Spoken of my own will. He’d released my body, but not his hold on my mind and mouth. I could still feel it, compelling me, hurting me.

Then he snorted. “I tell you to relax and you think I’m going to kill you? You’re crippled by a woman’s illogic.” He added as a seeming afterthought, “You may speak freely now.”

The stranglehold on my throat was gone, and for a few moments I simply enjoyed the sensation of breath moving in and out of my lungs, of knowing my tongue was once again my own. I could feel V’lane’s name, piercing the meat of it, and realized that from the moment Barrons had used Voice to bind my will, it had somehow faded, receded beyond my reach. “I am not. The only two times you ever called me Mac is when I was near death. Since there’s no other threat around right now, you must be about to kill me. It’s perfectly logical.”

“I didn’t call you Mac.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I called you Ms. Lane.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did.”

I clenched my jaw. Sometimes, despite Barrons’ eternal old-world sophistication, and my glamour-girl cool, he and I very nearly devolve into childish fights. Frankly, I didn’t give a rat’s petunia what he’d called me, and wasn’t about to sit here and argue about it. I was free, and furious. I exploded from my chair, launched myself at him, and slammed both palms against his chest. I put every ounce of determination to Null into my hands that I could summon. My sidhe-seer core blazed like a small fiery sun in my head. Was he or wasn’t he Unseelie?

I hit him so hard that his chair toppled backward and we went skidding across the floor toward the fireplace, stopping inches from the grate. If he froze at all, it was for so brief a moment that I couldn’t decide if I’d nulled him, or merely startled him into a brief second of immobility.

Figured. More non-answers where Barrons was concerned.

I reared back, straddling him, and punched him in the jaw as hard as I could. He started to speak and I punched him again. I wished I’d eaten Unseelie. I was going to go eat ten of them tonight then come back here and finish him off, the hell with answers.

“How dare you saunter in here and force me to give you answers when you’ve never given me a single one?” I hissed. I punched him in the stomach, hard. He didn’t even wince. I punched him again. Nothing.

“You stand there all tan and glowing and wonder why I use Voice on you?” he bellowed. “Where the hell do you get off? You’ve been with V’lane again. How many slaps in the face do you think I’m going to take, Ms. Lane?” He grabbed my fist and held it when I tried to punch him again. I swung at him with the other. He caught that, too. “I warned you not to play us against each other.”

“I’m not playing you! I’m trying to survive. And I don’t slap you when I go off with V’lane!” I tried to yank my fists from his hands. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you. I’m trying to get answers, and since you won’t give me any, you can’t blame me for going somewhere else.”

“So, the man who doesn’t get laid at home has the right to go off and cheat?”

“Huh?”

“Which word didn’t you understand?” he sneered.

“You’re the one who’s crippled by illogic. This isn’t home, it never will be, and nobody’s getting laid!” I practically shouted.

“You think I don’t know that?” He shifted his body beneath me, making me painfully aware of something. Two somethings, in fact, one of which was how far up my short skirt was. The other wasn’t my problem. I wriggled, to shimmy my hem down, but his expression perished the thought. When Barrons looks at me like that, it rattles me. Lust, in those ancient, obsidian eyes, offers no trace of humanity. Doesn’t even bother trying.

Savage Mac wants to invite it to come out and play. I think she’s nuts. Nuts, I tell you.

“Let go of my hands.”

“Make me,” he taunted. “Voice me, Ms. Lane. Come on, little girl, show me some power.”

Little girl, my ass. “You know I can’t. And that makes what you did to me tonight even more unforgivable. You might as well have raped me. In fact, that’s exactly what you did!”

He rolled hard and fast, and I was on my back beneath him, with my hands pinned above my head, the weight of his body crushing me to the floor, his face inches from mine. He was breathing harder than the exertion merited.

“Make no mistake, Ms. Lane, I didn’t rape you. You can lie there on your pretty little P.C. ass and claim with your idealistic little P.C. arguments that any violation of your will is rape and that I’m a big, bad bastard, and I’ll tell you that you’re full of shit, and you’ve obviously never been raped. Rape is much, much worse. Rape isn’t something you walk away from. You crawl.”

He was off me and on his feet, stalking out the door before I’d even managed to catch enough breath to reply.