High Voltage (Fever #10)(115)

Christian bristled but said nothing. The bastard had struck a nerve. Barrons didn’t know he’d begun hating himself long before he turned Unseelie, when he’d been but a lad, for hearing all those truths no one else could hear, for making those he loved uneasy, for inciting suspicion and fear. But even more shaming to his character—he’d come to revile those around him, to feel contempt for their lies and evasions, their inability to face what they felt. Between despising himself and looking down on others as liars and cowards, he’d grown to adulthood with a serious chip on his shoulder. He’d donned the mask of a carefree, good looking young Scotsman, but there’d always been a streak of darkness in him, perhaps even repressed sadism, seething anger at his fellow man. Was that why he’d been one of the first to turn Unseelie prince? Had the evicted magic of the dead prince somehow sniffed it out in him and deemed him a fine fit? Had Fae power targeted him long before that night at Ban Drochaid, even before Mac fed him Unseelie?



He shifted his wings uneasily. Fuck, he had wings. He could fly. He considered that for a moment, looking for the first time past the Unseelie element of it to the simple beauty and power of having wings. The freedom. The strength.

But since the day they began to grow, he’d done nothing but bitch about the itch and the pain, the need to clean them, how he could no longer sleep flat on his back. No position was comfortable, and he’d begun to fear, like a bat, that he might need to hang upside down to get any rest at all. And sure enough, the bloody things hurt most of the time, felt wrong on his body, kept him on constant edge.

He canted his shoulders back, expanding his druid essence into the Fae appendages, as he accepted—nay, welcomed—them for the first time. When the world was safe again, he might fly a velvety night sky in the Highlands, watch wolves tussle in the moonlight with their cubs, soar beside a grand eagle for a few hours, glide across a silvery loch, tumble to a soft landing in a bed of heather.



Bloody hell, he had wings!

For the first time since he’d begun to transform into something otherworldly, he felt…elation.

His wings responded, lifting slightly, fluttering as if with a sigh of pleasure, as if, with the aloofness of a cat, they’d been waiting to be noticed, stroked, appreciated. Heat raced through his body into the strong, sure sails that spread and fanned without conscious thought, the powerful muscles in his shoulders rippling smoothly as they arced high before crossing down again to tuck behind his shoulders in a position he’d never before been able to achieve. Perfectly tucked precisely where they were made to be.

Effortless.

Neither dragging nor aching.



He shook his head with a wry smile. His wings had always known instinctively how to arrange themselves but his brain had been in the way. He’d been in the way of himself. They’d been a burden because he’d thought them a burden, and now that he thought them a gift, they behaved like a gift.

He stole a glance at his companion. If he could learn to like himself and the world around him, Barrons could learn to have friends. Thanks to Dageus, the Keltar and the Nine were practically bloody married now. They’d become clan in every meaningful sense of the word. Like the Nine, the Keltar had long been insular, secretive, staying intentionally isolated. But the world had changed and neither band could afford insularity anymore. There were too many risks to them all to shun shared knowledge and power.

Christian wanted friends. He’d missed having them as a lad. God damn it, at least he could have peers.



Barrons cut him an irritated look.

“What? Don’t tell me you can actually hear what I’m thinking,” Christian snapped. He wouldn’t be surprised. Barrons and his men were bizarrely attuned to people’s slightest nuances.

“I endeavor not to,” Barrons muttered. “Sometimes you infernal creatures seem to be holding a bloody megaphone to your brains.”

“What is the god’s name?” Christian changed the subject swiftly. It would be easier to be courteous if he knew something of whom he was to address.

“Culsans. They are the keeper of doorways, of gates and passages, of the underworld itself, standing bastion at all that is liminal. When they can be stirred to bother themselves. Culsu may be with him. If so, beware her blades.”

“What blades?”

“The ones I just mentioned.”

“Why is Culsans a they?”

“You’ll see.”

“Are they hideous?” Christian braced himself for the worst.

Barrons cut him a mocking look. “No more so than they may find you.”

“Well, where are they from? How do you find these old gods?”

“For fuck’s sake, shut up.”

“What the bloody hell is wrong with trying to understand my situation? Were you this much of a pain when Mac was trying to figure things out? How did she stand you?”

“She prefers me lying down. On top of her. Frequently, behind her. You want to keep talking, Highlander?”

They made their way down the long white corridor in silence.



DELETED CHRISTIAN MACKELTAR SCENE FROM FEVERSONG

I stole a bit of Mac’s hair a while back and carry it in my wallet. Yes, Death carries a wallet. Funny the things you do to try to normalize yourself. It’s not as if anything in that wallet is worth a damn the way the world is now, but when I slip it into my jeans, I get a vague sensation of being Christian MacKeltar of the clan Keltar, who has a driver’s license and credit cards and a picture of my mother and one of me and my childhood sweetheart, Tara, building a fort down by the loch. I don’t carry Mac’s hair from sentimentality or interest in her but because with it I can sift to her location whenever, wherever, I feel like it, and keeping an eye on that woman is on my list of priorities.