Blade Dance (A Cold Iron Novel Book 4) (4 page)

The experience had left him terrified of
passing
, but he’d conquered his fear with his then-friend Miach’s help and decided in that moment that he was never going to be the object of anyone’s jest again.

“If I let go of you, you would be buried alive. I would never do such a thing, but there are those of my kind who might, if you give them cause, or even for sport. This is the
second
time you’ve come to me intent on involving yourself in Fae business, but you don’t have the least notion what you’re meddling with. Before you tell me why you’re here, you need to understand the danger.”

“You mean there’s more than this
passing
thing?”

She looked wary, as well she ought.

“The Fae are varied in their talents,” he explained. “We have mages who cultivate the sorcerous arts. My son is one. There are others who paint living canvases. And warriors with unparalleled skills with blade and bow.”

“And what is it you do?” she asked. “Besides extortion?”

“I am but a humble leader of a fighting band.”

She snorted. “There is nothing humble about you, Finn MacUmhaill.”

He laughed. “You’re right. Humility is not one of the gifts given the Fae. Once we were so cruel and arrogant, we brought about our own destruction. Not all of us have learned from the experience, but as a race, we
have
been humbled. That is what you need to understand. If you meddle in Fae business, you are walking into the middle of a war.”

“You mean like some kind of gang war.”

“If it were only that. This is secret,
centuried
. The Fae fighting the Fae are dangerous enough for the humans caught in the middle, but the Fae fighting their ancient enemy, the Druids, is far, far worse. You see, Druids aren’t the nature worshippers your modern historians paint them. They’re closer to the bloodthirsty practitioners of human sacrifice that the Romans described. They began as our acolytes, vassals, ordinary men and women of extraordinary intelligence. We invested them with magic—just a little, because we were not fools—so they could run our domains. We entrusted to them the tilling of fields and the collecting of rents and all the mundane activities we did not deign to do for ourselves—and we set them to herd the human population like sheep.”

“That sounds like hell on earth for ordinary people,” said Ann.

“For the Fae, it was paradise. For the Druids it was . . . unsatisfactory. They began as mortal men, but Fae magic and their own experimentation turned them into something else. They studied our power, learned how to harness it for their own purposes. They discovered our weaknesses, and when the moment was right, they overthrew us. They hurled our Queen and her Court into the Otherworld, a plane that exists alongside and askew from this one, and they built a wall to keep them there. Other Fae remained in this world, imprisoned by the Druids in their mounds to experiment on.”

“Including you?”

“Including me. And every Fae you will encounter in the world today. We have all been prisoners, all been tortured. It went on for years, until one Fae managed to escape, and free others. Then we made common cause with new mortal allies—an alliance with the Romans, who were intent on conquering our part of the world—to wipe the Druids out. But some eluded us, and their descendants are fast rediscovering their powers. Worse still, the Queen’s former lover, the Prince Consort, has been seeking out latent Druids and training them to help him bring down the wall between worlds.”

He watched the emotions play across her face, the horror, the unlooked-for sympathy, and, finally, the understanding. Another woman would have walked away from him then, but not Ann Phillips, and that was when he knew he could not, even for her own good, let this woman go.

Chapter 4

A
nn knew that the chill she felt wasn’t the breeze coming off the water or the temperature dropping with the onset of night. It was pure fear. Her body accepted the truth of what Finn was saying even if her rational mind wanted to reject it as a fairy story. There was no denying what she had just experienced, their terrifying passage from the house to the Training Ground.

And Finn had no reason to lie. He was not luring her into an elaborate fantasy world. On the contrary: he was warning her off.

But she couldn’t walk away.

“I knew you were dangerous before I came here,” she said. “I thought you were just a criminal. Now I know that you’re a criminal and a . . . ” It struck her then that she didn’t really know what to call him.

“We have always thought of ourselves as the
Tuatha Dé Danann
. The people beloved of the goddess Dana. After we conquered the Druids, we were often called the
Aes Sídhe,
the people of the mounds, the Fae.”

“Okay. You’re a criminal and a Fae. That doesn’t change anything. I still need to talk to you about Davin McTeer.”

He swore. He did it in a language she didn’t recognize, but the tone made its meaning clear. “What the hell do you know about Davin McTeer?” he asked.

“He’s one of my second graders,” she said, looking him in the eye. She found it slightly unnerving, knowing he wasn’t human, but she persevered. “His father has had the child’s arms tattooed out of some mad belief that it will toughen him up. Davin’s skin is bloody and scabbed from shoulder to elbow.”

“All Fae have some ink,” Finn snapped back. She heard evasion in his voice.

“He’s a seven-year-old boy,” she said. “He loves to run and jump and shout on the playground, and both his arms are so swollen and inflamed he can barely move them.”

“I know about the tattoos,” he said.

“What?”

“His mother came to me.”

“You knew about this, and you did nothing?”

“Dial back the righteous indignation a hair. I didn’t
know
about the ink until earlier this evening. I will put a stop to it as soon as I can, Ann, but understand that Davin is half-Fae. He will heal. And until then he can probably take whatever his father dishes out. In a few years he’ll be able to give almost as good as he gets.”

“Just because someone is strong, doesn’t mean they should be allowed to be abused.”

“No, it doesn’t, but I’m not allowing the boy to suffer without a purpose. The tattoos were inscribed by a Druid. I can’t catch this Druid if I remove the boy from danger. He’s Fae. Or half-Fae. He was born into a dangerous race. His mother, on the other hand, is human. I saw her earlier tonight, Ann. And I saw the bruises on her face. I would prefer not to see them on yours.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“No. I’m warning you. Sean is dangerous. He won’t tolerate your interference with the boy, and I don’t want him to know that I’ve found out about the Druid. We need to catch this treacherous mage and discover what he is up to.”

Ann shook her head. “I can’t allow that. I’m going to call Child Services as soon as I get home.”

“Do you honestly believe, given what I’ve shown you tonight, that some gormless social worker can protect this boy, if his father and the Druid mean him harm?”

The real import of it hit her then. In the face of that kind of power—her mind still shied from the idea of magic—she and the teachers at her school and the social workers at Family Services were powerless. Terrifyingly, infuriatingly, powerless to help this child. It made her angry, the way she’d been angry as a child, and it made her wish that she could harness that long-ago rage and use it to help Davin, but she’d silenced that part of herself long ago.

A
part of him had
hoped that she would run away. A part of him wanted Ann Phillips to go back to her classroom and pretend she didn’t know anything about the Fae or Druids or the child who was now a pawn in an increasingly dangerous game. A part of him wanted her safe from his kind—even safe from him.

Her fierce determination could get her killed in his world. It also made him want her more than he’d wanted any woman in recent memory.

“Family Services could take him into protective custody,” she said.

“And Sean would take the child back,” said Finn, “and disappear with him, where no one would be able to gainsay his authority, not even me.”

“If I can’t help, and the school can’t help, and the police can’t help, then it’s up to you,” she said, looking him in the eye, as even few Fae dared to do.

“I have matters in hand,” he said. “I am aware of the situation. The boy will be as safe as any child of the Fianna.”

She narrowed her eyes and looked at him as though he was one of her second graders. “That sounds a smidge too carefully worded for the plain truth.”

“Fae undertakings are binding, so we parse our oaths carefully. Simple as that.”

“Not good enough,” she said. “I don’t want Davin as safe as any child in fairy gangland. I want him safe from the man who struck his mother and the weirdo who tattooed his arms. That means taking him away from his father.”

“I can’t do that, Ann. If I were to take the boy away from Sean, I would never be able to catch this Druid, and he will do to others what he has done to Davin. Worse, perhaps. Much worse. Druids can’t be trusted. I doubt very much that the marks are the simple
geis
that Davin’s father wanted.”

“Geis?”
she asked.

“A sort of spell contained in the ink, usually defining a prohibition or an obligation. These, apparently, were intended to shape the child into the kind of Fae his father wants him to be.”

“A fighter,” said Ann sadly. “Like his father.
Like you
.”

“It is not such a terrible thing to be—for a Fae to be,” replied Finn drily. “But I gather it is not Davin’s natural inclination.”

She shook her head. Her red hair, already disarranged by their passage and the breeze, settled like a mantle over her shoulders. “He’s a talker, not a fighter,” she said. “A natural-born storyteller. Devoted to books and television and comics and able to take a story he has heard once and recount it, with improvements, perfectly.”

As once the boy’s father had been able to spin enchanting tales, Finn well remembered,
before
the Druids had chained him beneath the earth and tortured him. As Sean might have been again, had he been given the opportunity or encouraged to rediscover his gifts. But Finn had seen the thirst for vengeance in him and had recruited him into the Fianna. What Sean was, he was in great part because of Finn. An unwelcome thought.

“The boy will be safe,” said Finn. He put all of the persuasion he could summon into his voice, enough to sway most humans.

“He can’t be safe under the roof of a man who hits women and scars children,” she said.

His voice, it seemed, did not work on her at all. He’d noticed that the last time they had met, but he’d put it down to the circumstances that day. He had been distracted. Not so tonight.

“He is under my protection, Ann,” Finn said, trying again, focusing charisma and will.

“Maybe Child Services can’t protect him from Fae magic, but at least they’ll get him out of that house,” she replied, entirely undeterred.

Some humans, he knew, were more resistant to Fae persuasion than others, of course, especially those with trained minds, such as scholars, musicians, and artists. Ann Phillips was none of these, which made her all the more intriguing, but her ability wasn’t a mystery he was likely to solve in the next few hours.

Which meant he had to use other tactics. He had to ask nicely. Unfortunately, he was woefully out of practice. “What Sean is doing to his son is wrong,” said Finn. “I know that. If you give me a chance, I can put it right. I will set another Fae to watch over him, to keep a lookout for the Druid.” Patrick wouldn’t be happy, but he would do it.

“I will give this Fae orders to spirit the boy away as soon as the Druid appears. I will keep the boy safe, if only you will put your trust in me for a few short days.
Please
.”

Her expression softened a little. Where Fae glamour had not swayed her, one word had the power to make her hesitate. “Why should I trust you?” she asked.

“Because I saved your life, the day of the blast. Nothing could stand in the path of that stone singer’s voice and live. I may be, as you say, a criminal, an extortionist, a racketeer, but I am not entirely without feeling.”

“Or,”
she countered, “perhaps you saved me for your own selfish reasons. You’ve made it clear that you . . . have an interest in me.” The thought seemed to make her uncomfortable. She shifted her weight from one foot to another. She was too old, surely, to be a shy virgin, but she was clearly not at ease with their mutual attraction. Another delicious mystery to unravel as soon as this Druid was caught.

“If that’s the case, then you can be assured that I’ll do everything in my power to keep Davin safe, since you clearly set so much store by the boy. My Fae voice, which most humans and many Fae find irresistibly persuasive, has little or no effect on you, so if Davin were to be harmed, I wouldn’t have a ghost of a chance at all to bed you.”

Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t like being outmaneuvered. He wondered what kinds of things she did like. He wanted to find out.

“In fairy tales, the Beautiful People are always bound by their promises,” she said.

“As I said, Fae oaths are binding,” he agreed. “But it is dangerous to bargain with the
Aes Sídhe
,” he warned her.

“I’ll take the risk,” she replied sourly. “Promise me, with no hidden conditions, that Davin will be safe.”

“I’ll do better. As a token of my . . .
esteem
for you, I’ll make the promise you
really
want from me. I’ll allow neither his Fae father nor this unnamed Druid to harm the boy, and I will prevent them both from completing the
geis
they have worked upon the child. If I can, I’ll find a mage to reverse whatever burden of spells the child already bears. I’ll make it a generous bargain, too, by the standards of my people. I want only one thing in return.”

“What?”

“You, Ann. You, in my bed for a night.”

I
t was an outrageous demand,
one she couldn’t possibly agree to.

“
Yes
,” she said, feeling the word leaving her lips. Hearing it hang, clear and telling, in the still air between them.

If he had demanded payment, in advance,
tonight
, she would have gone with him. Every time she came into this man’s orbit, her traitorous body responded. Her heart beat faster, and a weight settled low in her belly and traveled into the sweet place between her legs, making her slick with wanting.

Which was ludicrous, because she wasn’t exactly experienced. She quelled her impulse to laugh. If anyone had gotten the bad half of the bargain, it was Finn. Her high school boyfriend’s pronouncement echoed in her head even now.
Like kissing a cow. Like trying to fuck a bull.
It no longer had the power to wound or humiliate. Love, romance, and sex—until she had encountered Finn, at any rate—had faded to inconsequentials in her life.