Burned, стр. 27

But repeated exposure to anything desensitizes — repeated exposure to Barrons excluded, of course, which seems to have the opposite effect — and lately on the rare occasions I’ve removed my carefully constructed blockade against the incessant din and reached out to sense Fae, in the absence of crippling nausea, I’ve discovered each caste emits a different frequency.

In the acres of chrome and glass known as Chester’s, beyond what the average human ear can hear, there’s a secret symphony going on. It’s the music of the Fae: the guttural, militant hum of the Rhino-boys; the piercing chime of the tiny, flying, puckish death-by-laughter fairies that look deceitfully like exuberant Tinker Bells; the ominous knell of the red and black uniformed guard that once served Darroc; the siren-song of Dree-lia and her new consort, who looks so much like the deceased Velvet he must be his brother.

I eliminate the diversity of each subclub until only one song remains: Seelie and Unseelie combined.

It’s jarring, cacophonous. It gets on my last nerve. I wonder if they hear it, and if that’s why the dark and light courts tried to eliminate each other all those eons ago — they literally couldn’t stand each other’s music. Humans kill for less.

If I could hear only the Seelie, it would be lovely. The Unseelie alone would be beautiful, too, in an eerie way. But together they chafe, antagonize, instilling and intensifying tension. I wonder how long we have until the light and dark courts war again, ripping apart our world in the process. For the moment, they’re drugged on the endless availability of pleasure to be had. I know better than to think it will last.

I identify various castes and swiftly discard. There’s at least one Unseelie Princess in here, and if I isolate her frequency, I can scan for more.

You’d think it would be so powerful, so unique, it would be easy to find.

It’s not.

I stand there for five solid minutes grasping and coming up empty-handed. I begin to worry she can conceal herself even from me.

Behind me Ryodan and my Unseelie troop grow restless.

“Mac, time’s wasting. What are you doing.”

“I’m working on it. Shush.” I just got a flicker of an anomalous frequency somewhere upstairs. The anomaly fades. Then it seems to be nearing.

“Do you feel something,” Ryodan says suddenly.

Abruptly it vanishes.

“Mac, I feel — ah, fuck, where’d it go.”

I think: What, Ryodan has sidhe-seer senses, too? Impossible. I sink deeper into my center, shed layers of muscle and skin, detach from everything and everyone, block out the world, block out myself. I become primal, ancient sidhe-seer without self, constraint, or definition.

Then there’s something beyond the top of those stairs again, dark, chaotic and pounding, potently seductive, energizing, inflammatory: a version of Wagner’s March of the Valkyries. From Hell. On steroids.

Once I’ve got it burned into my brain, ears attuned for only it, I let the physical world back in, become me again, resettling into flesh and bone.

And I realize why I had such a hard time pinpointing the princess.

I wasn’t tuning myself out.

The same dark march is coming from me.

I open my eyes to find Ryodan watching me intently. “There is only one,” I say, and begin pushing through the crowd.

There’s a simple explanation, I decide as we ascend the stairs, then turn down a long glass corridor. A complete copy of the Sinsar Dubh is inside me. I possess all the Unseelie King’s dark magic and spells from which he created his many castes. I probably sound like each and every one of them at varying times. I just never noticed it before because I had no reason to listen to myself.

Still, as I prepare to place my palm to the right of the door leading into Ryodan’s office, I’m assaulted by a sudden image of whatever’s inside swiveling her head and saying, “Hey, sis, what’s up?” Since the day I arrived in Dublin, I’ve never been entirely certain who and what I am. I understand why Barrons rejects labels. You only know who you are in opposition to something, what you choose to fight for and against. The rest doesn’t matter.

“Wait a minute.” I turn back and am darkly amused to see that even my Unseelie “priests” have abandoned me. They huddle, facing one another, chittering with what almost seems nervous dissension ten feet behind Ryodan, who’s standing half the length of the corridor away from me, allowing no opportunity for the princess to turn him into a mindless sexual slave. I forget what I’m saying, momentarily distracted by that thought. I’m a monogamous woman. I don’t like to share. Yet the idea of this man as a mindless sexual slave is … I shake my head. This is Ryodan, I remind myself.

Then Barrons joins him and eclipses the notion. His eyes are brilliant, his body emanating heat and power. If I pressed my ear to his chest, his heart would be thudding, slow and strong.

“How do you know what’s happening in there if you can’t see inside?” I ask Ryodan. The two-way glass is dark from the outside, transparent only from within.

Ryodan places his cell phone on the floor and slides it across the slick glass floor. It stops at my feet. “Tap the Skull and Crossbones app.”

Of course, he has an app for everything. Figures he’d be able to watch the central hub of his universe from the phone that shouldn’t work, via an otherworldly Wi-Fi network that doesn’t exist.

I open the app, blink once then forget how to. “Oh, my gosh, he’s … that can’t be … holy cow.” My face gets hot.

“Give me a break,” Ryodan says irritably. “And give me my phone back.”

I want to keep it. See what else is on there. I’ve heard rumors there’s a level in this club reserved only for the Nine.

Barrons snorts. Barrons has reason to snort. I got the best one. I glance up and give him a charged look.

Yes, you did.

“Quit procrastinating,” Ryodan says. “And get rid of the bitch. My phone.” He extends his hand.

Not a chance. Not when I’m not sure how the princess will react to me.

I place my palm on the wall and the door whisks aside with a faint hydraulic hiss. Sex slams me in the face, scorching, drugging, volatile.

“I said, my phone.”

I stand at the threshold and look in. The princess has her back to me, and Lor is beyond noticing anything. Ryodan and Barrons are another matter. They’re too observant by far. There is also the small matter of the enormous possessiveness I feel where Barrons is concerned.

I step inside and place my palm on the interior panel.

Two males roar in unison.

“Ms. Lane, you will not close—”

“Mac, you will give me my fucking—”

The door hisses closed behind me.

12

Once I would have thought what was taking place in Ryodan’s office was no more than what it appeared to be: an Unseelie of the royal caste subjugating a human, getting drunk on the pleasure they siphon from our souls. Immortal, jaded, void of anything that passes as passion, Fae royalty is incapable of emotion, but they can experience it through a human vessel. Especially during sex. Or torture. Preferably both at the same time. They either use the human up completely and kill it or leave a shell of a sex-starved slave. Death is the better option there.

But the Unseelie Princes just shocked the hell out of me, proved themselves to be ambitious and goal-oriented, willing to adopt a mien of civility to achieve their aims, and channel what used to be a maelstrom of uncontrolled hunger into deliberated action.

Considering the Fae have always been matriarchal, I have reason to assume the princesses are no less driven or capable of evolving than their dark counterparts. I wonder where they’ve been all this time. Feeding in private? Learning self-discipline and — control? Plotting to take over our world?