Burned (36 page)

Ryodan stands up and walks around the desk, a signal even I can read for Lor to get up and leave. I’m surprised he’s letting him. Lor’s got hell to pay, and Ryodan is the devil that collects.

Taking his cue, Lor rises. “Sure, boss.” His brow furrows like he’s hunting for words. After a moment he adds, “Like I said earlier, I didn’t go looking for Jo.”

“But you plan to fuck her again.”

Lor rubs his jaw, sighs but doesn’t answer.

Ryodan changes into the beast faster than I believed possible. One instant he’s a man—the next his clothing is in tatters on the floor.

A nine-foot-tall, horned, black-skinned slathering monster with feral crimson eyes slams his fist through the wall of Lor’s chest and rips out his heart.

The beast holds the bloody thing up—God, it’s still beating!—narrows its eyes then licks it, forked black tongue unfurling with grace around the delicacy.

Then he looks at Lor, who’s jerking convulsively, gushing blood from a huge jagged-edged hole in his chest, framed by an explosion of bone fragments, taps him lightly on the shoulder and pushes him over.

Despite enormous fangs distorting his words, I have no problem understanding them.

“Never. Fucking. Lie. To. Me. Again.”

Lor crashes to the floor, dead.

The beast drops Lor’s heart on the floor where it lands with a wet splat, turns and swipes the wall panel with a prehensile, taloned claw, and stalks out.

I stand staring dumbly, then realize my chance to leave without risking exposure is leaving. As I race through the door after him he changes back into a man as quickly as he became the beast.

A naked man.

I close my eyes.

Well, most of the way.

      29      

“It’s who we are, doesn’t matter if we’ve gone too far”

MAC

We’re halfway down the hall and I’m hot on his heels, wondering how Ryodan manages to change so swiftly from beast to man, when it takes Barrons a full minute or two to complete the transformation. Then I move on to wondering exactly where Ryodan plans to go naked, thinking maybe I’m about to see the man’s private quarters, which I’m admittedly anticipating, when my hair suddenly shoots straight up in the air, blasted by a brisk wind.

I know that gust of wind.

It’s Dani, passing me in freeze-frame.

Ryodan recognizes it, too. She’s got balls exploding in here when she knows he’s around.

We spin instantly to follow her (me much more slowly, I’m beginning to despise my lack of speed compared to theirs) and I barely get out of the way in time to keep from being flattened by a very large, very naked man.

I skid back into the office a split second before the door hisses closed.

The room appears to be under siege by an army of poltergeists. Drawers are flying open, papers exploding everywhere.

I’m stunned to see Lor’s body is already gone. I knew they vanished when they died, I just didn’t know how quickly it happened. It’s as tidy as the way vampires “poof” on
Buffy
, which I never watched before in my life until a few months ago when I got obsessed with paranormal TV shows, as if I might glean useful clues from them. I frown. But Barrons’s corpse didn’t vanish that quickly in Faery the day Ryodan and I killed him. Then again, that shouldn’t surprise me, nothing works the way you expect it to in Faery.

“If you’re looking for the contract,” Ryodan says, “I put it away where you won’t find it. Give me Dani back and I’ll tear it up.”

Jada materializes in the middle of the study, cool and remote as ever. She has a long curved knife strapped in a sheath to one of her thighs, a Glock tucked in the front of her waistband, an automatic machine gun slung over a shoulder, pushed behind her back, and rounds of ammo draped across her chest. She looks fierce, savage, stunning.

Dani used to sport bruises from freeze-framing. Looks like Jada got that under control. The way she moves that sleek, long-legged body, grace could be her middle name. In black leather pants, combat boots, and a black tee, long auburn hair swept up high in a sleek ponytail, she reminds me of Angelina Jolie in
Lara Croft, Tomb Raider
, her face chiseled-porcelain beautiful, strong and icy. Besides a thin silver chain belt, her only other adornment is a silver and gold cuff. I stare fixedly at it, trying to remember where I’ve seen it before. Or one very similar to it.

Her gaze sweeps down over Ryodan’s nude body, a muscle flexes in her jaw. She yanks her gaze back up and trains it on his face.

I press back against a wall, studying her, grateful she’s no longer freeze-framing. It’d be far too easy to get smashed if they both start doing that Tasmanian devil thing again.

My heart sinks.

Jada
is
Dani.

There’s no question in my mind. I can see the teenager in the woman’s face now. It’s there in her bone structure, in the way she carries herself, in the fiery hair she must flat-iron every time she washes it or gets rained on (which means she must be flat-ironing constantly, considering how much it rains in this city).

I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.

Actually, yes I can. Not only did I have no reason to expect Dani to abruptly age four or five years in a few weeks, the years from fourteen to nineteen or twenty are enormously transformative. Ugly ducklings become swans, sometimes swans lose their youthful beauty and become ducks. Fourteen to twenty is the most transfiguring rite of passage a man or woman completes, mentally, emotionally, and physically.

I press a hand to my chest, as if it might somehow ease the pain in my heart.

I did this.

I chased her through the portal and she lost years in there, where whatever she had to do to survive forced what was once a temporary split to become permanent, burying Dani pretty much the same way the Book would like to bury me.

I have to get her back. Unfortunately the only thing Jada wants to do to me is lock me up next to Cruce.

“The one that signed that contract is no longer here to honor it.” Jada’s gaze takes an involuntary dip over Ryodan’s body again and her face tightens. I get that. His body is surreal, powerful, perfect. I see his kinship to Barrons now. Criminy. He’s not hard—yes, I’m frigging looking, and I’m not about to feel bad about it because you try not looking at a hot, naked man standing in front of you when you’re twenty-three, perfectly healthy, and full of a lot of aggression you’d like to vent. I think men don’t realize women think dicks are beautiful. Not all dicks. But some men get the mother lode, just the right length and thickness covered with beautiful olive-toned, velvety skin that has a luscious pink undertone and makes the head of their dick look like a succulent lollipop, and since Ryodan is totally waxed or lasered or trimmed recently—

I catch myself about to audibly clear my throat. I glue my eyes to his face, where they will remain until I leave this room, so help me God. I’m staring at Barrons’s brother naked. It makes me feel vaguely unfaithful somehow.

Ryodan stalks across the room, stops a few feet from her, close enough to unnerve, not so close that she won’t—if there’s as much red-blooded woman in her as I think there is—have as hard a time keeping her eyes locked on his face as I am.

Great, now I have to not look at his ass. With a distant part of my brain I admire that Jada/Dani doesn’t comment on Ryodan’s nudity, ask where his clothes are or demand he put some on. Ignoring it makes it irrelevant. No man wants his nudity to be irrelevant.

“One would think you wouldn’t bother to come looking for it, then.”

“It offends in letter only, not verse.”

“You know it has power. Over even you. Should I choose to exercise it.”

“Should you choose to exercise it, you’ll die more quickly than I currently plan.”

“You admit you’re Dani, then.”

“It would be inefficient for me to continue to deny that which we both know was once true. ‘Was once’ are the key words there. Dani is dead.”

“You’ve got that wrong. You’re the one who’s dead.”

“I’m alive. She was never as alive as me. She was in constant pain. I terminated it.”

“By terminating all emotion.”

“I feel.”

“Bullshit. The currency of life is passion, and as with any coin, it has two sides: pleasure, pain, joy, sorrow. Impossible to slip a single side of that coin into your pocket. You take all or nothing.”

She cocks her head and says coolly, “Perhaps we are alike, you and I, and I prefer my pockets empty.”

“My pockets are far from empty.”

“Says the man whose face is etched by neither laugh nor frown lines. Feeling nothing is called traveling light. It’s called freedom.”

“It’s called being dead inside. You will return her to me.”

“I won’t. She was too stupid to live.”

“Is,” he corrects. “And she’s not. She’s the one who’s smart enough to live. You merely survive.”

“One of us must. You were no help. You lost her the instant she stepped through the portal and entered Faery. You didn’t save her. She waited, thinking you were different from those who used and betrayed her. She believed you would find her,
come charging to her rescue. That belief was as misplaced as the monsters we faced were deadly. The day came she finally lost her faith in you, and I was there as I’ve always been there when she needed me, and she was grateful. I saved her. Not you. You failed her. Failed as in: did not accomplish the specified, desired objective; performing inadequately or ineffectively; neglecting to honor promises, implied or contractual—”

A muscle in his jaw twitches. “Like I need a fucking dictionary.”

“It would seem you do. You broke her finger that night in Chester’s. I’ve not forgotten. I forget no wrong done to her.”

“It was unintentional.
Sidhe
-seer or not, I’m unaccustomed to young humans. Their bones are different.”

“I’m no longer young.”

“I’m bloody fucking aware of that.”

“ ‘I’m aware’ would have sufficed. ‘Bloody fucking’ is superfluous and contributes nothing to the sentence in either connotation or denotation.”

“I’ll bloody fucking decide what’s bloody fucking superfluous.”

“You’re so … human. It’s inefficient.”

“Wrong on that score. And efficiency is no guarantee of survival. Nor is intellect. What it takes to be the last one standing is an unquenchable hunger to live. He who wants it the most wins. It takes fire, willingness to burn down to your motherfucking core.”

“You’re ice. Yet you live.”

“Not as cold as you think.”

“Omission or commission. You said you would break more bones that night.”

“A necessary threat, one I knew she wouldn’t test. I’ve rescued
her in Dublin’s streets more often than you. Saved her times uncounted without her knowing. She’s not as unbreakable as she likes to believe. The day Jayne took her sword, I was there before Christian. It was I who nudged Christian in her direction.”

“You do nothing without motive.”

“She needed to see what he was becoming. Not hear it from me. She has never been unprotected, from the day I learned of her existence. First my men, then I, watched over her. But you know that. The night the gang of drunken men attacked her near Trinity, it wasn’t you who got her out of that one.”

“Only because she fought me instead of them. She should have killed them. I would have.”

“Unlike you, she prefers not to kill humans.”

“You make it sound like a virtue. Protecting those sheep. Rather you should knit sweaters from their skin and roast mutton of their flesh. Three nights ago I finished what you failed to complete those many years ago. They’re dead now.”

“There are lines. You’ve dragged her across enough. I’ll do whatever it takes to preserve what humanity she retains, and guarantee she lives long enough to master her staggering power and intellect—”

“My staggering power and intellect.”

“—while keeping you out of the driver’s seat—”

“I belong in the driver’s seat.”

“—and giving her a chance to fly.”

“They’re my wings.”

“It’s her sky. You were made, not born. It’s Dani’s life.”

“Was. She was a fool. She wept like a helpless child that night at Chester’s while the entire club watched. Not because you broke her finger or threatened her but because you were
alive and she was that happy to see you. She was always happy to see you. She lit up inside. You lost her. You let her be lost.”

“I ripped this city apart for a month looking for her.”

“That month was five and a half years for me.”

Ryodan flinches almost imperceptibly.

“Five and a half years in Hell. Don’t berate me for being. Thank me. She was weak. She needed me. I became.”

“She was never weak. She was a child. Treated abominably. Yet she shined.”

“I was never a child. I couldn’t afford that luxury. She made mistakes. She is dull. It is I who shine. You of all people should see that.”

“That’s why you’ve come today. To show me you’re all grown up and display your dazzling new persona.”

“As if I care what you think. I came for the contract, nothing more.”

“Because you believe it’s the only hold I have on you. You’ve been back for weeks and haven’t tried to kill me. I’d imagine, considering how hard I was on Dani, I must rank high on your list of scores to settle. Yet you’ve avoided me. You fear me.”

“I fear nothing.”

“Or perhaps you can’t quite bring yourself to kill me and have begun to wonder if my contract somehow mystically prevents you from harming me.”

Jada tenses slightly, and I realize Ryodan’s nailed it. Barrons told me a few months ago that Ryodan had coerced Dani into working for him, that he was being tough on her, trying to make her see that she wasn’t indestructible, curb some of the recklessness that would one day get her killed. Jada would surely despise Ryodan for controlling Dani. So why has she been back in Dublin for weeks and not once tried to get even
with him? That’s not Dani’s way at all, and since Jada appears to be Dani on steroids, well … I hold my breath, waiting for her to answer.

“Let me make it simple for you.” Ryodan reaches beneath his desk, presses something, and a hidden panel slides soundlessly out.