High Voltage (Fever #10)(67)

The Nine moved stealthily nearer, melting through the sea of Fae in that nearly invisible way of theirs, seeming to morph from one Fae to the next and, although inhuman heads were swiveling, alien eyes scanning, they remained just beyond Fae vision, causing a stir with no concrete point of focus. “Where’s your queen?”

“She is not our queen and will never be. The pretender is worse than dead,” she said, with a hard rime smile.

“In other words,” I said, smiling icily back, “you have no bloody idea where she is. And it’s chafing your fairy ass, isn’t it, honey?”

Ryodan made a sound of choked amusement beside me.

Amusement vanished and she spun in a whirl of ermine-trimmed cloak, snarling, “Take the sword from her. Shave the bastard to pieces no larger than a newt and bring her to me. Mostly intact.”

As she stalked away, she left a thick layer of ice in her wake and all I could think was, That’s going to be a bitch to fight on, envisioning us slipping and sliding around, trying to kill each other.

    We were too closely surrounded for me to kick up into the slipstream but I didn’t need to. Ryodan grabbed my arm and yanked me up into his.

Straight up.

Bloody hell, I have never once managed to achieve a perfectly vertical ascent. Yet another challenge to work on. As we went, I kicked off my heels, in anticipation of battle.

A vast black tunnel stained with crimson blossomed around me. Then we were slamming down hard on the opposite side of the dance floor.

Winter-born spun, snarling from the far side of the club. “I said bring her to me!” she screamed. “What is wrong with you imbeciles? Must I do everything myself?” She reared back and flung two long, slender, icy white hands at us, releasing dozens of glittering, deadly ice picks.

“Slipstream. Now,” Ryodan snarled.

“I don’t think so,” I snarled back.

He shoved me up so hard and fast, I went tumbling head over heels down his black and blood tunnel, where I wasted precious seconds trying to figure out how to shift out of his mode of travel and into my own. I finally regained my balance and kicked into my long starry passageway then shifted abruptly down into freeze-frame, stripping off my left glove and yanking my sword from my back with my right as I went.

I thrust my sword into the first Fae I saw, with a long-overdue roar of satisfaction.

One down, a thousand to go, I thought fiercely.

I plunged into the carnage. The bastards thought to kill Mac, thought to take our world, had been torturing and killing our people for two long years unchecked.

    In the periphery of my vision I could see The Nine slashing their way toward Winter-born, leaving slaughtered Fae in their wake. She was precisely who we needed to kill, to buy time before another princess would be born, and I knew what Ryodan was thinking: kill her before she became lethal to me. The Sidhbha-jai is my kryptonite. If turned on me at full force, it shorts me out, renders me helpless. We’d had no idea new royalty were being born. Not a bloody clue. We’d been cut off for too long.

I spun, I stabbed, I whirled, I battled. I came back to life in Elyreum, being what I needed to be, doing what I was born to do.

Fae after Fae fell beneath my blade. Then Ryodan was behind me and we moved into flawless formation, fighting back to back.

“I told you to get the fuck out of here,” he growled over his shoulder.

“Tell the sun to leave the sky,” I growled back.

“It does when night moves in. I’m night.”

“Scientifically untrue. The sun remains, you just don’t see it.”

“We’ve accomplished our objectives. Retreat.”

“Not the boss of me.”

“Bloody hell, don’t I know that. Something’s wrong. The bitch is losing Fae left and right and doesn’t care. She’s waiting for something. I’m pulling the plug. Now.”

But it was too late. I’d argued too long.

The debilitating, soul-searing burn of the Sidhbha-jai slammed into me and charred my insides to useless ash. “J-Jayne,” I stuttered. “He m-must be h-here s-s-somewhere. F-Find him. K-Kill him!” That bastard! He wasn’t in hiding with his family. He’d been working for the Winter Court, likely offered amnesty, if he brought them my sword!

    “I will. Get out!” Ryodan roared.

But I couldn’t. Nothing was working right. I thudded down into slow-mo and crashed to my knees. Then Ryodan had me and was flinging me over his shoulder.

“Don’t touch my left hand!” I screamed, rearing up on his back like a cobra, desperate to keep the ungloved, lethal appendage away from him.

A prince sifted in directly behind us, blasting me with staggering sexuality and, as he reached for me (I ached to go to him, burned to be his slave, hungered to worship my master!) I managed to retain a grip on a single shred of my mind, smiled sweetly at him with utter adoration and offered him my left hand, silently begging him to seize me from Ryodan’s shoulder and take me to Paradise.

Dark, unholy promise burned in his gaze. Blood pooled in mine as I proffered my deadly hand. Take me, take me, I willed.

He accepted my submission as his royal due and reached.

As our fingertips met, an explosion of high voltage stabbed up into my head, shot down into my body, and as it flared to lethal life, the Fae prince exploded into a thousand fragments of pale white flesh and paler, sharp bone.