Burned
Page 102

“What are you saying?”
“Only humans kill with hate. When you kill, you must kill like an animal.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What happens when a sheepdog gets bit by a wolf?”
“Duh. It becomes a wolf.”
“No. It becomes a sheepdog that fights with the savagery and lawlessness of a wolf.”
“Debatable.” I feel like a wolf inside and I don’t know what to do with it. I think my soul was turned. It worries me.
Two of the princes who raped me are dead, their heads lying at my feet. The third one, Dani killed months ago. The fourth one—about whom Barrons knows nothing—is imprisoned behind bars of ice.
I have a bad feeling if he ever gets out, I might grow those fangs I don’t want.
“The princess is waiting for their heads,” Barrons says. “She will not give us Christian’s precise location until she receives them.”
I sigh and say something I never thought I’d hear myself say to a completely, beautifully, naked Barrons. “Get dressed. I’m ready.”
As he leaves the room, I glance at the severed heads, the tortured expressions, and I feel a festering, messy wound inside me finally begin to grow a thin covering of healing skin.
It’s over. With the deaths of those who so deeply cut me, I can finally put the horror to rest.
I add softly, “And thank you.”
Walking invisible behind Barrons through Chester’s many subclubs is annoying as hell. When I rode his wake before, between being aggravated with him and intoxicated by my new super-sleuthing state, I hadn’t spared a glance beyond his wide shoulders.
Tonight I’m looking. Tonight I see the dozens and dozens of heads rotating to follow him as he passes, the blatantly sexual looks the women give him (and more than a few men!), and I growl with irritation.
“Problem, Ms. Lane?”
“Nope,” I mutter, then voice something I can’t quite wrap my brain around. “Why are you and Ryodan willing to help rescue Christian?”
“Beats looking for a bloody spell all the time,” he says dryly.
“Aha, I knew I forgot to tell you something! I saw the Dreamy-Eyed Guy in Chester’s and again on the street. We don’t need to keep looking. The king is hanging around Dublin again.”
“You continue to cling to the absurd hope he’ll free you from your burden, no harm, no foul. Doesn’t look like much of a burden at the moment, Ms. Lane. Rather seems you’re enjoying it.”
Criminy, that woman is flashing him her boobs! Slanting him a come-hither look, gyrating seductively to the music, pulling up her shirt (no, there’s not a damn thing but skin and perky nipples underneath), gaze moving hungrily from his face to his crotch as she prowls closer.
I veer to the right and jostle her before she gets to him, knocking her off balance. She has no idea what hits her. She stumbles into a chair then crashes into a table, drinks go flying, and she lands in a tangled heap on the floor. A bottle of beer mysteriously tips itself over and pours all over her head.
Now she looks like a drowned rat. “It does have perks,” I agree.
“Little testy tonight?”
“That woman’s boobs do not belong in your face.”
“It’s not as if I can see yours at the moment.”
“Well, you’re damn well going to feel them. Soon.”
“One hopes,” he murmurs.
“So, why is Ryodan willing to get involved in all this again?” I circle back to my earlier question. “I thought he couldn’t stand Christian.”
“Jada will go after the Highlander herself if she discovers where he is. Ryodan won’t let that happen.”
“He cares about her. A great deal.”
Barrons says nothing, but I didn’t expect him to.
When we step into Ryodan’s office, Barrons removes the princes’ heads from a duffel bag and tosses them onto the desk next to R’jan’s.
I never knew I could be happy to see three gruesome, severed heads. More princes will no doubt be made, transformed from whatever raw material the Fae realm likes to pick up and use. But at the moment the only two princes that remain are Christian and Cruce.
“Risky as fuck,” Ryodan says, staring down at the heads.
“What?” I ask.
“Killing them now,” Barrons replies. “Their continued use as linchpins was debatable. Their absence problematic.”
“Well, at least now we can get the women out of their mansion, help the ones they turned Pri-ya,” I say.
Ryodan says, “More princes will be made.”
“Yeah, but they’ll have to do something like eat Unseelie flesh. And participate in a botched ritual.”
“Any here that haven’t eaten Unseelie flesh, raise your hand,” Barrons says dryly. He glances down through the glass floor. “Ask the same question down there.”
“Humans are eternally performing botched rituals,” Ryodan says. “Every fucking time they use a Ouija board. Among other things.”
“Really, a Ouija board?” I knew it! The macabre board game played with unseen participants always made me uneasy. Someone tells you, Here, I’m giving you a door to death, and you play with it? Not me. No clue what’s on the other side but I’d bet it sure as hell isn’t going to be my dead sister. No matter how much I’d like to think so.
By such criteria, half this city could start turning Fae. “Barrons could become Rath. I could become Kiall,” Ryodan says.