Four hours later I’m getting a headache.
Six hours later I am a headache, my butt hurts, and I’m low on candy bars.
Eight hours later I’m sick of Nicki Minaj.
Nine hours later I’d give darn near anything for five fecking minutes of silence.
Me, Christian, and Dancer been passing around a bottle of aspirin and it’s empty. I got earplugs in my pack but we can’t use them because we might miss something and screw up.
Across the drive, way down at the other end of the abbey, the sidhe-seers are wrapped in blankets. Dozing. Because, like, the music down there isn’t rattling the bone plates in their skull! I’m so jealous I could spit. Dejected, I eat another fecking candy bar. I hate candy bars.
“You said you were sure this would work,” Jo says testily.
I’m beat. I haven’t slept in days. I rub my eyes and say irritably, “We may have to stick with it for a while.”
“Like, how long?” Christian says, and his voice is weirdly guttural. I look at him. He’s staring down past the abbey at the sidhe-seers and the look on his face is pure, sex-starved Unseelie prince. Kaleidoscopic tattoos rush under his skin. His jeans are … wow. Okay. Don’t look there.
I realize nine hours is probably the longest he’s gone without sex in months. “Don’t you be looking at my friends like that,” I say. “They’re off-limits to Unseelie princes, dude!”
He looks at me and I have to shift my gaze away fast. He’s throwing off power like a volcano about to blow. I feel the wetness of blood on my cheeks from a bare glimpse at his eyes.
“How long?” he says hoarsely.
“Well, it only ever iced one of the clubs in Chester’s. That must mean most music doesn’t make whatever sound it’s after. If you need to leave and find somebody to … you know, go. But try not to kill anybody, okay?”
He gives me a look. I’m not even looking at him and I can feel it.
“How is that even possible? We’ve been listening to some of the weirdest shit I’ve ever heard,” Lor says pissily. “How can this thing not want to kill it? It should have been here hours ago! My head hurts. I don’t get headaches.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you’re safe,” Christian says to me, real quiet.
“Isn’t that quaint. The chivalrous Unseelie prince with the dick of death,” Ryodan mocks.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Christian says.
“I’m getting fecking sick of everybody picking on my music!” I say.
“Fine, then I’ll just change it,” Lor says.
“You touch my iPod, I’ll break every one of your fingers!”
“Knock yourself out trying, honey.” He scrolls to a new song.
I stick my fingers in my ears. “Gah, I hate Hendrix!”
“Then why do you have it on here?”
“I don’t know! I just thought ‘Purple Haze’ was a cool title, then I listened to it and ain’t had time to delete it. Who writes such stupid lyrics? ‘ ’Scuse me while I kiss this guy’?”
“Sky,” Jo corrects.
“Huh? That don’t make no sense either. What the feck is purple haze anyway?”
“She’s going to delete Jimi,” Lor says disbelievingly. “Sacrilege.”
Dancer nudges the volume. Up.
“Traitor!”
“Sorry, Mega, but I have to agree with him on this one.”
I look at Ryodan like I’m expecting him to help me out or something but he’s just sitting there and I see that Jo’s sort of snuggled into him under one of his big shoulders and his cuff is gleaming silver at her throat ’cause his arm is around her neck and it almost makes my head pop off and I don’t even know why. Like he’s a real person or something, with a girlfriend, instead of some savage beast that would pick his teeth with her bones if he felt like it, and she’s falling for it and … Oh! I just can’t even stand looking at them no more! “This ain’t no fecking campfire and cuddle!” I say.
Ryodan gives me his vintage permanently amused look.
I’m so mad I stand up and turn away.
“Don’t worry, Mega,” Dancer says. “We baited the trap right. The monster will come.”
He’s right.
Just then it does.
Too bad it’s not the one we wanted.
Forty
The Crimson Hag explodes from the night, slicing through lavender lights on a cloud of putrefaction, tattered hem of her gut-gown snaking out behind her, to the bizarre accompaniment of “Purple Haze.” She swoops us then shoots straight up to the highest dormer on the abbey roof and perches there.
We’re all on our feet. “How did she find us?” I say. “You think noise draws her, too?”
She sways from side to side, moving only from the waist, creepily reptilian, surveying us with black empty holes where eyes should be.
“I think the bitch is after me,” Christian says. “I’m the weakest Unseelie prince with immortal guts. At least for a while yet.”
“She’s like a bat, isn’t she? It’s not like we weren’t making enough noise. She can’t see so she uses echolocation!” I exclaim.
“Don’t know, don’t care. Let’s bag the bitch,” Christian says.
“How the fuck do we get past her legs,” Ryodan says, and I look at him. I can see he’s got a personal itch on to kill her.
I look at Jo when I say, “What? You don’t feel like dying again today?”
Then Ryodan isn’t standing next to Jo anymore. He’s got me and he freeze-framed me twenty feet away before I could even blink. “If the Highlander says something to Jo about that, she’ll think he’s lying. She might believe you. My men will kill her if she knows. And I won’t be able to stop them.”
I look at him hard and realize for maybe the first time ever he’s telling me a simple truth. “She’s not allowed to know you can’t be killed?”
“Never.”
“Why am I?”
He’s gone. Back to Jo. Got his arm around her, protecting her.
The Hag swoops!
It’s like some weird rock-opera battle that gets even weirder when the next song Lor cued up comes on and Black Sabbath starts playing “Black Sabbath” at about a gazillion decibels. As if the Crimson Hag ain’t disturbing enough, we need that freaky song in the background. Don’t get me wrong, I put it on my playlist because sometimes I like to listen to it. But I got to be in a real mood, because, dude, the song makes me feel unsettled and disturbed and pretty much everybody I ever talked to feels the same way about it.
First thing on my mind is Dancer! I grab him and yell at him to hold on to me no matter what. When the Hag swoops us, we duck like we’re one big wave then freeze-frame in different directions.
She veers at the last second toward Christian and I see he was right. It’s him she wants. But when she just about nabs Lor with one of her bony lances, I realize she’ll take anyone she can get those terrible knitting needles on.
We’re all freeze-framing or sifting, ducking, and dodging. I’m trying to hold on to Dancer and keep an eye on Ryodan, who’s got Jo, and it’s making me nuts that she’s even here, in the middle of this fight. She ain’t got nothing special to protect her except Ryodan and that ain’t enough for me.
I can’t move fast enough, watch out for her, and hold on to Dancer, so I freeze-frame him to the far side of the abbey and dump him with the sidhe-seers.
“Mega, what are you doing?”
“You got no chance against her. I hardly do. Don’t get me killed because I get stupid worrying about you!”
He snaps real cool, “Didn’t mean to be a liability.”
“Well you are, so don’t be,” I snap back. I’d die if something happened to him.
He shakes his head, disgusted, like he can’t believe I’m such a traitor when I’m just trying to keep him safe.