Silver Skin (A Cold Iron Novel) (17 page)

She buttered her toast and watched Garrett work his toddler energies off running laps around the table and saluting the marble cherubs of the fireplace mantle every time he passed.

“He’s overexcited from his visit to Finn’s,” explained Nieve.

“You should take him to the beach,” said Helene. “Let him run around and enjoy the weather. I’ll be fine here.”

“Nonsense,” Nieve replied. “The Old Man doesn’t have prisoners often. It would be poor manners to leave you on your own with these two.”

“And you’re not supposed to go out alone, Nieve. I’ll take Garrett to the park,” said Liam. He swept the boy up onto his shoulders. Nieve thrust a bag of toys into Liam’s arms, and he left with the excited toddler.

Helene’s phone rang a few minutes later. Beth’s request surprised her, but it took only a few minutes sitting at Miach’s computer in the library to log in to her account at the museum and access the institution’s funding database. It was the latest development software on the market. If you used it well—and Helene did—you could have every fact you needed about your donors at your fingertips with the click of a button. The program indexed donors to their annual gift amounts, kept track of which museum events they attended, kept tabs on their other institutional affiliations, and flagged the ones who were also alumni and couldn’t be cultivated for direct gifts to the museum without the permission of the university.

Cross-referencing the list wasn’t difficult. She found what she was looking for quickly: a name from Beth that matched one in the museum’s database. A relatively new donor. Helene tried to picture the man in her head, but his image was blurred. He’d made his first gift six months ago. Fifty thousand dollars and a few good but not distinguished sculptures. Enough money to warrant invitations to high-level events, but no sign that more would be forthcoming.

He had been at the gala.

Helene picked up the phone, but instead of dialing Beth, she called Miach.

“Ransom Chandler,” she said. “He’s on Beth’s list and he’s a supporter of the museum. He was at the gala.”

“Where does he live?” asked Miach.

Helene pulled up the address. “That’s odd. Winthrop. Out past the airport. Not exactly the kind of place you expect a wealthy man to live.”

“Nor,” said Miach drily, “is South Boston. But I suspect in this case that the money he donated to your museum wasn’t his. It came from the Prince Consort, or whoever has been managing the Prince’s affairs. The man is a Druid, like Beth. Or at least he has the potential to be one.”

“So Deirdre was right after all. It is Druids.”

“Of a sort,” said Miach. “We think the Prince sought out Druid descendants in an attempt to open the solstice gate and free the Fae Court. But Druid training takes years and ideally begins in childhood. And it is less about power—all Druids tap into the shared hereditary source of knowledge—than the ability to control and channel power. To study and harness it. The Prince himself never worked closely with Druids and has only a limited understanding of their nature. He may have had time to teach this Ransom Chandler a few
gaesa
and some basic casting, but once we find him, a single novice Druid will be no match for three Fae. We’ll be back in a few hours,” Miach assured her. “And then we will go to Winthrop and deal with him.”

Relief coursed through her. No more blackouts, no more terror, no more Fae magic.

Unless she chose to continue this affair with Miach. In which case she must take the good with the bad. He had not tried to hide the danger threatening his world from her. And Deirdre had told her: the Wild Hunt was coming back. The wall would come down eventually. Miach would fight to preserve it, but there was a chance he would lose.

It wouldn’t be an easy decision, but it was impossible to know how she would feel until she was free of the summoning spell.

Miach hung up and Helene decided to explore Miach’s library. He had an exhaustive collection of books on most of the painters he collected. She was engrossed in one of them when she heard the roar of an engine and the screech of tires. She looked out Miach’s picture window and saw a cargo van tearing up the road that ran parallel to the beach. The windows were blacked out and it didn’t have plates.

Which wasn’t all that unusual in Southie. There were some decidedly sketchy vehicles parked in between the yuppie Bimmers and hybrid cars. No, it was the way this particular van was roaring straight up a road that went nowhere but Miach’s house, and heading for the closed gates of the drive.

It passed out of sight below the window and crashed with a loud crack into the gates. Helene could hear tires skid, the van doors open, glass break.

Everything had happened so quickly that she didn’t know what to do. Before she could react, she heard a door crash open below and then shots rang out. Four in quick succession, and then two in answer.

Then she heard Nieve screaming. It rose in pitch, then was cut off abruptly.

Male voices, terse, issuing commands. Then feet on the stairs. Helene looked for an exit, but there was no way out of the library except for the door—and it was right at the head of the stairs.

Miach had a small bronze figure on his desk. She grabbed it and looked for a place to hide, but the room had no closets and the furniture was all pushed to the walls.

The doorknob turned.

Helene darted behind the door. It swung open. Her heart hammered.

A man entered. He was dressed for a day at the country club. His polo shirt was tucked into red chinos cinched with a needlepoint belt. His back was to Helene, but there was something familiar about the close-cropped sandy hair.

He turned. His features were regular, his face, though too round to be handsome, was affable. His eyes locked on Helene, and he smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. His smug expression triggered Helene’s memory. He was the man she had been talking to the night of the gala, at the bar in the square.

She whacked him in the side of the head with the bronze sculpture. He staggered back and fell to his knees howling. She scrambled around him and lunged for the door.

And came face-to-face with her worst nightmare. The man who had held a knife to her throat in Beth’s apartment, who had abducted her to an island in Boston Harbor and forced her into a tiny attic and whispered from the other side of the door all the things he was going to do to her, just because his father had marked her as his own—and because he could: Miach’s banished half-blood son, Brian MacCecht.

Chapter 13

H
elene screamed.

Brian laughed and pushed her back into the room.

She brandished the bronze sculpture.

Ransom Chandler climbed to his feet and cursed. “Watch out,” he said. “She’s dangerous with that thing.”

“Stay away from me,” Helene said.

“Put it down, Helene,” said Brian. “And I won’t hurt you.”

He was using compulsion, as he had in Beth’s apartment when he’d held a knife to her throat and thrust a hand down her shirt and his thoughts into her mind. But this time she was wearing cold iron and she could hear his effort to control her—and the lie in his voice.

“Go to hell,” she said.

He cocked his head and looked her up and down, his eyes settling on the iron torc wrapped around her ankle. His lip curled. “Who gave you that?”

“Your father.”

Brian looked at her with pure fury in his eyes. “Just for that, I’m going to make him watch when I kill you.”

He lunged for her. She sidestepped but didn’t see the device in his hand until too late. A Taser. She felt it connect with her rib cage, and then every muscle in her body spasmed. She dropped to the carpet, twitching, unable to move.

Brian turned her over, pushed her hair out of her face, and touched the weapon to her shoulder. She convulsed, and his eyes lit up with pleasure.

“Where’s the arm?” said Chandler. Helene could hear him moving about the room, knocking books off shelves, pulling drawers out of the desk.

“It will be in the safe behind the painting,” said Brian, without looking over his shoulder. “If you wanted to be with a Fae,” he said to Helene. “You should have chosen me. Or even Finn. But not my father. He’s hardly Fae at all anymore. He’s weak, gone native from living among your kind.”

Helene heard something heavy crash to the floor, then a curse. “The box is sealed,” said Chandler.

“Open it,” said Brian.

“I can’t. The magic is too complicated.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Brian, yanking down Helene’s camisole and turning her roughly on her side. “My father will open it for us, to get his property back.” Brian traced the
geis
on her shoulder. Then he thrust her back on the floor and ripped the torc off her ankle.

He held it up in front of her face. “Do you think this makes you special?” he asked. “Do you think you’re better than the other women he takes to his bed? You’re not. He’ll use you and toss you aside like all the others.”

“It doesn’t sound particularly Fae,” she said, “to be so hung up on how Miach treated your human mother.”

Brian snarled and backhanded her across the face. She tasted blood.

“You know nothing about the Fae,” he said. “We hold grudges for a long time.”

He ripped the strap of her camisole and pulled down her bra. Then he held up the Taser. “These can be used to stun, or they can be used to inflict pain. Torture is a Fae specialty. When the Court comes back, they’ll like toys like this. Maybe I’ll keep you alive for them. They’d delight in playing with the whore of Miach MacCecht, the Fae who could have opened the gates and set them all free, but left them to rot in the void.”

He touched the Taser to her nipple. She shrieked from the pain.

“Keep her quiet,” said Chandler. “We don’t want the neighbors to call the police.”

Brian laughed. “You don’t know the first thing about South Boston, Druid. No one in this neighborhood is going to call the police on Miach MacCecht’s house.”

“Yes,” said Chandler, looking at Brian with obvious distaste. “I forgot you were raised in a ghetto.”

Brian glanced at him slantwise and Helene knew the Druid’s days were numbered. “Take the box,” said Miach MacCecht’s son. He stood over Helene. “Get up.”

With the torc gone, his voice reached deep inside her. Not as powerful as Miach’s, but powerful enough for a mortal without the skills to resist. Helene tried to recall the tricks Beth had told her about: counting backward, reciting a sonnet, anything to focus the mind and shut out the Fae influence. It was impossible. Helene couldn’t concentrate. She was too frightened.

“Follow us,” said Brian.

She followed them. Hating every step. Wishing Miach would come back.

In her pocket, her phone began to ring.

“Don’t answer it,” said Brian pleasantly.

They reached the bottom of the stairs. Nial was sprawled facedown in a puddle of blood. Helene couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead. She reached down to touch him but Brian said, “Leave him.” And she did.

Nieve sat huddled in a corner of the kitchen, surrounded by broken glass from the back door, two gunmen training their weapons on her.

“Where is the brat?” said Brian.

“My son is at Finn’s,” lied Nieve.

“Pity,” said Brian. “He’s almost true Fae. Take her as well,” said Brian.

“No,” said Nieve.

“She’s your own flesh and blood, Brian,” said Helene.

“She’s a thin-blood,” said Brian. “And no use to me. But the Druids need practice with their knives. They can gut her before they gut my father.”

The gunmen reached for Nieve. She moved too fast for them and grabbed a sliver of glass. But she didn’t turn it on her assailants. She slashed her own palm, squeezed it, and spoke as the blood fell from her hand. “I release you, Garrett, now and for all time.”

Brian laughed. “How touching. And stupid. I expect that if Garrett was really tied to you, the Fianna would have come looking for you. But not now, Nieve. Not now.”

“The old man should have put you down like the dog you are,” spat Nieve. She lunged at him with the shard of glass, and he struck her with the stun gun. She went down in a heap on the floor. Helene watched, helpless, as the gunmen grabbed her arms and dragged her through the broken glass and out the door, bleeding from dozens of cuts.

Brian ordered Helene into the van. “I’m afraid we don’t have a trunk to offer you,” he said, “but there’s a basement at the house and so many tiny rooms.”

“Miach will come for me,” she said.

Brian smirked. “That’s what I’m counting on.”

• • •

M
iach was impatient to return
home to Helene, but there were three other buildings to search. Conn broke down the door to the next structure, which was a disturbing combination of gymnasiums and laboratories.

“What is this place?” Beth asked, standing in the largest of the chambers, big enough to be a basketball court, with complicated patterns drawn on the concrete floor. “I can feel something in the patterns.”

Miach nodded. “That’s because they are Druid training patterns. You’re past needing crutches like this, but the very young and the very inexperienced find them helpful.”

They continued on through the maze of rooms. Miach didn’t like the small windowless chambers at all, with their examination tables and medical instruments.

Neither did Beth. “What were they doing here?” she asked, a tremor in her voice.

“Dissections. A Druid practice. One of their forms of study.”

“On animals,” she said. “Please say they only did it to animals.”

Miach said nothing. He could smell the human blood in the air. If Beth opened herself to it, she would be able to smell it as well. And if she was as far along in her training as he expected, had been doing the exercises he had shown her—

She picked up a scalpel, went rigid, and swooned.

Conn caught her.

“What the hell just happened?” asked the blond warrior, holding his Druid in his arms.

“She just got a glimpse of what her distant relations have been doing here,” Miach replied.

“You should have told her not to touch anything,” chided Conn.

“She needed to know. She needs to be on our side. This”—he gestured to the tables, the instruments, the basins that had been used to catch blood—“cannot begin again.”

Elada broke down the locked door at the end of the building. Beyond it were eight makeshift padded cells, with mattresses and pillows and scraps of foam nailed to the walls. There was food splattered on the walls, and blood and hair as well.

“Prisoners?” asked Elada.

“Mad Druids,” said Miach. Druid training took decades, and even then some acolytes went mad when they were admitted to the final rites, when the whole of the Druid network of knowledge poured into them in a clean, pure stream. It could burn out minds that had prepared, tirelessly, for years. Miach did not care to think what it might do to a mind that had never been trained, what it must have done to many of the sideshow Druids. He expected that if they looked, they would find some of them buried in the fields outside.

Four of the cells had gaping holes in the padding revealing broken windows.

“Some of them escaped,” said Elada, unsheathing his sword. It was a wise precaution. Mad Druids were like rabid animals.

The next building was a barracks. There was no lock on this door, because there was nothing of value inside, just Spartan cell-like bedrooms with basic furnishings. It felt like a cheap conference hotel or retreat dormitory. The signs of recent habitation were unmistakable. The beds were rumpled and unmade, the trash bins in the bathrooms were full, and there was food rotting in the refrigerators.

“I don’t like this,” said Elada. “They should have left someone to guard this place.”

It happened in the next building, which was another administrative center. This one wasn’t dedicated to research, though. It had been the nexus of the operation. One long open space, wall to wall with bulletin boards and conference tables covered with maps and diagrams.

At the center of the room were two bulletin boards side by side with maps and lists, detailing two very different operations. The first map depicted a diaspora. Someone—the Prince Consort or one of his hirelings, had directed the sideshow Druids to spread out over the globe and make contact with the Druids from the more promising, scholarly list.

A dozen seekers had been sent out on such missions, but the barracks had housed four times that number. That left thirty-six would-be Druids unaccounted for.

Until they examined the next bulletin board. Under it was a table with travel portfolios for three dozen of the sideshow Druids.

Elada leafed through the folders. “There are flight reservations, rental cars, false passports, credit cards, and bank accounts in here. This took planning and organization. A guiding force. And the Prince Consort is on the other side of the wall.”

Miach had known from the moment they found the first offices that someone had continued the Prince Consort’s work in his absence. A loyal follower, with the zeal of a believer. Not one of his court flunkeys. They were too indolent. With the Prince gone, his hangers-on would lapse into decadence. Industry was a rare Fae virtue.

There was only one possibility. He had resisted speaking of it until now, but Elada was his oldest friend, and he owed him his honesty and trust. “It is Brian,” said Miach. “It is my own son. Where did these thirty-six weak Druids go?”

“Boston.”

Helene.
Miach pulled out his phone. “Check the office down at the end of the building. I’m going to call Helene.”

He dialed her number. The phone rang. And rang. And rang. He felt a premonition of danger and dialed the house.

Then the office that Beth and Conn had just entered exploded in ball of fire and a shower of glass.

• • •

B
rian ordered Nieve tied up
in the back of the van. He didn’t bother with Helene. He enjoyed using his power over her too much. “Sit,” he told her, “like a good bitch. And don’t move.”

It was just like the day Miach had sent Elada to kill Beth, and Helene had waylaid the sorcerer’s right hand. She’d told Beth to leave her at the rest stop where Miach had ordered them to pull over and wait for Elada. He’d promised to spare Helene’s life if Beth gave herself up. The two women had agreed, but then they’d set a trap for Elada. Helene had asked Beth to punch her and give her a black eye, a real shiner. Then Beth had taken off in Helene’s car.

When Elada had arrived at the rest stop, Helene had been waiting for him docilely, head down, face hidden. Until he got close to her and she’d created a scene, telling all the vacationing families shepherding their children back and forth to the rest rooms and vending machines that he was her boyfriend and he’d clocked her.

It had slowed him down, given Beth precious minutes to escape, and thrown him off her trail. Elada had been furious. He’d used his voice on her. It wasn’t smooth and seductive like Miach’s or sinister like Brian’s, but it had carried brute force. He’d ordered her to sit in the Range Rover until he returned, which had not been for ten hours.

Helene was frozen like that now, but this time it was Elada and Miach she was relying on for rescue.

Nieve was sobbing quietly. “I’ll never see my baby boy again,” she said.

“What did you do when you cut yourself, Nieve?” Helene asked. She suspected she knew, and the thought broke her heart.

Nieve looked at her quizzically. “You don’t know, do you? The old man never explained it to you, did he?”

“I know that you and Garrett made promises to each other, and that when a Fae binds himself to a mortal, then he’s bound to a mortal life span.”