I fumbled for it, flipped it open, and pressed send. Barrons sounded pissed. “Where the fuck are you?” he demanded.
“None of your business,” I said coolly.
“I saw two Hunters in the city tonight, Ms. Lane. Word is more are on the way. A great deal more. Get your ass home.”
I sat there frozen with a dead line. He’d said what he had to say and hung up.
I can’t explain what the word “Hunters” does to me, but it gets me where I live. It gets me in my most sacred place, the one where I used to feel safe but never will again so long as there are Fae in my world. It’s as if certain things are programmed into a sidhe-seer’s DNA and we have gut reactions that can’t be diminished, controlled, or overcome.
“You’ve gone white as a sheet, lass. What’s wrong?”
I considered my options. There were none. The pub I was in closed early on weeknights. It was either make a run for the bookstore now, or wait a few hours, and if more Hunters were on the way, in a few hours it would only be more dangerous.
“Nothing.” I slapped down a few bills and some change. Why hadn’t Barrons come after me? My phone rang again. I dug it out.
“I would only make us a bigger target, and I’ve got my hands a bit full at the moment,” he said. “Stay close to the buildings, under overhangs when possible. Lose yourself in throngs of other people when you can.”
What was he—a mind reader? “I could catch a cab.”
“Have you seen what’s driving them lately?”
No, but I sure was going to be looking now that he’d said that.
“Where are you?”
I told him.
“You’re not far. You’ll be fine, Ms. Lane. Just get here fast, before more arrive.” He hung up again.
I stuffed my journal and phone in my purse and stood up.
“Where are you going?” Christian said.
“I have to leave. Something’s come up.” Whatever crimes I might lay at Barrons’ feet, I believed he could protect me. If there were Hunters in the city tonight, I wanted the most dangerous man I knew at my side, not a twenty-something Scottish guy who’d known my sister—who was, grim case in point, dead—so obviously he’d been of no help to her. “I want to know everything. Can I come see you at Trinity?”
He stood. “Whatever’s going on, Mac, let me help you with it.”
“You’ll only slow me down.”
“You don’t know that. I might be useful.”
“Don’t push me,” I said coldly. “I’m sick of being pushed.”
He assessed me a moment, then nodded. “Come see me at Trinity. We’ll talk.”
“Soon,” I promised. As I left the pub, I marveled at my ignorance. I’d been sitting there, believing Rowena the final, critical piece. While I’d been busy analyzing my board, making judgments and decisions, feeling pretty smart about myself, a player I’d known nothing about had strolled up and sat down, and like everyone else, he knew a great deal more about me than I knew about him.
I was back to feeling dumb.
Just where on the game board was I supposed to place Christian MacKeltar?
I took a mental swipe at it, toppled all the pieces, and stepped into the night. The heck with it. Right now I needed to get back to the bookstore, undetected by my mortal enemy, monsters whose sole purpose was to hunt and destroy people like me.
My dad had this thing he used to say to me when I’d try to convince him that a D on my report card was really close to a C. He’d say, Mac, baby, close only counts in hand-grenades and horseshoes.
I was really close; in fact, I was almost home when the Hunter found me.
Chapter 15
It was as if a new Dublin had been born while I was inside the pub, and I realized, with the exception of our brief drive through Temple Bar the other evening, I’d not walked through the district in over a month. It had been that long since I’d taken a good look at my world.
Night was their time and they came out in droves.
Rhino-boys were driving the cabs.
A caste of Unseelie new to me, ghastly white and painfully thin with enormous hungry, wet eyes and no mouths, was running the street vendor stands.
Where had the original owners gone? I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know.
There was one Unseelie for every ten humans on the street. Many of them wore glamours of attractive people and were paired off with real people, and I knew they were going into bars wearing the guise of sexy tourists and picking up the real tourists.
And doing what with them?
I didn’t want to know that, either. I couldn’t kill them all. In these numbers, I was useless against them. I forced myself to look straight ahead. There were too many Unseelie around me and I’d had too much to drink. My stomach was a roiling, queasy mess. I had to get out of here. Somewhere I could breathe. Maybe throw up.
The sidhe-seer coalition was starting to look better to me. We would need hundreds of us to fight what was happening in this city. And we only had two weapons. It was crazy; we had to find more ways to kill them.
I kept my head down and hurried through the streets, mixing in with other tourists, keeping tight beneath the eaves whenever possible, wondering what Barrons had his hands full of tonight.
The night was buzzing with Fae and I felt like a tuning fork, vibrating from their sheer numbers and nearness. I had an overwhelming desire to start screaming at everyone to run, to leave, to do…something…I couldn’t remember…something that lurked somewhere in my genetic memory…a thing we’d learned to do…long ago…a ritual, dark thing…we’d paid a terrible price…it had been our greatest shame…we’d made ourselves forget.
Footsteps sounded behind me in the darkness as I turned down Dreary Lane and onto Butterfield, solid, intentioned footsteps like rank and file soldiers. I didn’t dare look back. If I did and whatever was back there startled me, I was just buzzed enough that my face would betray me, and whatever it was couldn’t possibly know I was a sidhe-seer, unless I gave myself away, so all I had to do was keep walking, as if nothing was wrong.
Right?
“Human,” growled something behind me, “run. Run like the mangy cur you are. Run now. We like to chase.”
The voice was straight out of a nightmare. And surely it was not talking to me.
“You. Sidhe-seer. Run.”
It had called me sidhe-seer.
It knew I was one by sight.
The only Unseelie who knew my face were the Lord Master’s minions, which meant he was back from wherever he’d been—and looking for me.
I’d believed any Hunters in the city tonight were there by coincidence, not design. I’d been wrong. They were there to capture me. I could fight, I had the spear tucked securely in my holster, but with the numbers of dark Fae I’d been seeing and no backup, I needed no encouragement to be a coward. I glanced over my shoulder. The street was packed with Rhino-boys, two abreast, stretching back farther than I could see.
There are times when brave is just stupid: I ran.
Down one street. Up the next. Through an alley. Across a park. I vaulted benches and splashed through fountains. I ran until my lungs burned and my legs were weak. I got turned around by the old brewery and tacked on an extra six blocks to my journey.
I ran.
I ran as if my feet had Dani’s wings, and finally, blessedly the footsteps behind me faded and there was silence but for the pounding of my shoes on cement.
I spared a glance over my shoulder.
I’d lost them. I’d really, truly done it. Rhino-boys might be strong, but with their stumpy arms and legs, they were neither swift nor lithe of limb.
I turned a corner and drew up just short of plowing into a brick wall. Dead-end alleys spring up as unexpectedly as one-way streets in this city. I had to get out, before the soldiers tracked me down again. There was no way I could scale the wall. It was twelve feet of sheer brick and there were no convenient Dumpsters piled in front of it.