Two hours later I’d rehung my door on its frame, fortifying it with drill, screws, and the addition of two leafs from the dining table that had never been used, and the beast was unconscious in my bed, a limp puddle of black skin and bones against a white fitted sheet.

I’d gotten three bowls of blood into him and was going to have to head out to raid my other flats. The butcher wasn’t open on Tuesdays, and breaking in would shatter the fragile trust we’d attained. He makes no effort to hide how disturbing he finds my frequent purchases and I don’t explain.

I couldn’t bear to leave the beast passed out in the foyer with his ribs jutting into the floor so I’d hefted the unconscious creature onto a comforter and lugged him to my bedroom. Though starved, his hide was glossy black velvet, his body warm, and I felt a solid though infrequent pulse in his leg.

I can lift a staggering amount of weight, but not even I can haul nine feet of limp beast in an upward direction with a single hand (two hands would have been a breeze), so I dragged my mattress down to the floor and rolled the beast onto it. Then I tucked the comforter around his body, burning with questions. What was going on? What villain was powerful enough to capture one of the Nine and contain him, and why starve him to death? How had he escaped?

I stared at him a long moment, releasing a pent breath I felt like I’d been holding for two long years. Then I inhaled a deep, enormous breath that felt like the first to fully expand my lungs for an equal amount of time. Sheep are social by nature. Deprived of sheep companionship they’ll flock with dogs, goats, cows, whatever’s available.

As will I.

But this was my kind of company. And I was bloody well keeping it.

There was no way he was dying on me. Sure, he’d come back—but where would he go? I highly doubted he’d return to me. The Nine are irritating like that, master of their own sea, they chart their course and don’t consult.

I sleeved, gloved, and weaponed up, then glided out into the night, hoping to kill two birds with one stone before returning to Sanctuary.

Chronic town, posters torn, reaping wheel

NIGHT IN DUBLIN BEYOND the TBD, or Temple Bar District, is a graveyard: solitary, eerie, and silent.

No people walk these sidewalks, there’s no blat of angry horns, no screech of tires in the streets. Few in Dublin have a car. Fewer still live on this side of the river, which lends the empty alleys and lanes the disturbingly surreal ambience of an abandoned movie set. Most of the population clusters on the south side of the river, clinging to the normalcy of rebuilding the city and reporting to various jobs as if they don’t live in the midst of invaders with astronomical power that would delight in erasing us from the face of our own planet.

Without Ryodan and the rest of the Nine who are feared even by the Fae, only I stand between the imperious, immortal Court of Seasons and what they want. Their desires are as bottomless as they are ancient, and I’ve been neutered by Mac.

The Fae are blatantly contemptuous of mankind. They see us as puny and inconsequential, marching from birth to death in the blink of an eye. They slake their twisted desires in our world, with no one to fear.

Not. Even. Me.

For Mac, I’ve turned my back on them, forced myself to pretend they don’t exist. I’ve never been inside Elyreum—not once. I watched it being built, hands fisted, jaw clenched, and did nothing. When queues of sheep spool around the blocks waiting to get in, I detour around them, don’t spare them a glance.

If I did, I’d be in trouble. I’d see their pending deaths and my wires would get crossed and sparks would fly because that’s what happens when my wires get crossed, and I’d end up starting a war all by myself. Knowing my luck, Mac would have just negotiated peace and I’d be the one who blew it all.

So, like a good little soldier (who doesn’t have a single ounce of meaningful backup) I fist my hands and Kevlar my heart and give it a wide berth. I focus my efforts on the differences I can make in this world, while staying alive. Dead, I’m no good to anyone.

I figured out a long time ago that if enough sifting Fae came after me, I could lose. If they’ve figured that out, too, they’ve accepted my truce. Perhaps they also realize that if they killed me, Mac, and many of the Nine, would rain down hell on their race. We exist in a chilly, volatile détente.

I choke on it some days. It takes me to a dark place. At night I hunt with that darkness. But I know this fact: if Mac fails to gain the Light Court’s loyalty, they will come for my sword. It’s likely only a few weeks have passed in Faery. Likely they’re still playing nice with each other, feeling her out, trying to decide how much of the power the ancient queen passed her that she’s figured out how to use, and how far she’s willing to take it.

I know another fact, and holy hell I’d like to talk to Mac about it.

To govern a cruel race, one must be cruel.

I hope Barrons’s Rainbow Girl can be cruel. It comes easier to me, but we weren’t raised the same. Mac grew up drenched in love and approval, waltzing through rainbow-colored days.

Objectively, I entertain the possibility that if the Fae killed me, she’d learn to be cruel instantly. You have to consider all the cards you have to play when the fate of your world is at stake.

I spotted two of my three arsonists lurking in an alley on the north bank of the River Liffey as I headed for another of my northside flats to get more blood for the beast.

My body an adrenaline-infused weapon, I glided silently near, a shadow on their heels, swiftly revising my plan into one that would take out three birds, not two, with a single stone tonight: find out what they were up to; test my theory about my arm on one of them and, if it still blew him up through my clothing, take the other as food for the beast. If their deeds were as villainous as I suspected, I’d kill them anyway. No point in wasting blood.

I pegged the men as brothers, one a few inches taller than the other, moving with the same shambling gait, cut from identical genetic cloth with brown hair, the saggy, bloated skin of lifelong drinkers, mirror-image blunt features, and shifty, cunning eyes behind glasses. I know those eyes. They’re the eyes of frightened, small men who serve a dark master to stay alive, taking delight in the torment of others because each obscene task they perform is a way of convincing themselves they’re exempt: they chose to be predator not prey.

Was their master on the other side of that slim dark mirror? Might he be the “him” AOZ had threatened me with?

I’m not a predator. Nor am I prey. I’m the thing that crouches in the shadowy places between the two, native to no land but my own.

“We can’t go back empty-handed.” The shorter one sounded worried as he adjusted a slouchy, rolled beanie on his head.

I was an invisible wind on the salt-kissed breeze behind them, half into freeze-frame, but not in the slipstream. I’d spent a lot of time analyzing how Ryodan moved and had achieved a degree of his ability to melt into his surroundings. It took intense mental effort. I had to keep myself partially in an alternate way of moving, and partially not. It was like compressing myself to fit in a doorway, making myself no wider than a few inches, but occasionally part of me popped on one side or the other if I was startled by something or lost focus. I’d been getting better at it, though, working with Fallon, our young chameleon, determined to learn from her.

“Not tonight,” the other agreed with a curse. “He wants an even dozen. Told all of us to come back with no less. How the fuck are we supposed to manage that? We’re not bloody miracle workers! He’s got so many of us in this city, we’re stepping all over each other’s turf!”

I assessed them but discerned no sign of weapons. Perhaps they had a knife concealed somewhere, but most people didn’t walk these streets without a gun. I had a Glock tucked in my waistband, my PPQ in an inside hip holster on my right.

“Yah, it’s bullshit. My back still hurts from last night, and I swear I sprained my shoulder,” his companion complained. “Fuckin’ fat-ass people. Where do they even find enough food to be fat?”

His brother laughed, a thin, cruel sound, as he tipped a flask back and swigged. “No shit, right? Well, they don’t stay that way long.” He guffawed again but it died swiftly and he shuddered, shoving the flask and his hands deep into the pockets of his coat.

I narrowed my eyes, pondering that comment. They didn’t stay fat. Was it possible whoever they worked for had been holding the beast in my flat? But what was the point in starving people and/or animals to death?

“He needs to cut us some slack for it being so hard! They’re afraid now and not going out at night. We took too many. He’s gotta let us move again,” the shorter of the two complained.

“Never gonna happen, Alfie. Some bloody reason, he wants us here.”

“Fuckin’ bastard! How’s a man supposed to do his job with his hands tied?”