Blade Dance

Ann watched how Finn handled the car with ease. There was something sexy about it, this mastery over speed and metal. Then a remembered piece of fairy lore surfaced in her mind. “How come you can drive? I mean, aren’t cars full of metal? And aren’t fairies allergic to it or something?”

“We can’t handle cold iron. There’s precious little iron in modern cars, and all of it is dilute, smelted into alloys that are mostly in the frame and under the hood. No direct contact with the driver in any case.” He turned to her and smiled as they shot out onto the main road leading back into Charlestown. “Any other questions?”

“Yes, actually. How can Garrett be your son?”

“That isn’t really a question about the Fae.”

“Isn’t it? He’s at least twenty. You’re barely thirty. Those numbers don’t add up.”

“You won’t like the real ones much better.”

“Try me,” she said.

“Garrett is my son. He is twenty-six. And I am older than I look.”

“How old?”

“About twenty-five hundred years, give or take.”

She tried to process that. “The first time we met, you told me that Garrett was your nephew. But he’s your son. The child I taught in my second-grade class last year is your grandson. Why did you lie to me?”

“I wasn’t sure how you felt about dating older men.”

She laughed. It felt good. It was an amazing relief. She laughed so hard it brought tears to her eyes, and then she cried a little because it had been a very, very long day.

Finn pulled up in front of her house and killed the motor. He surprised her by leaning across the console and kissing her. He held her face in his hands while he did it and she could feel her heart pounding, the excitement as vivid as if they were kids in high school and she was being kissed, really kissed, open mouths and wet tongues, for the first time.

“I’m beginning to believe you really do like me,” she said, quite stupidly.

“I like you a lot, Ann Phillips,” he said. Then he was out of the car and opening her door and offering her his hand.

“You can’t park here,” she said. “It’s permit only, and the neighbors will report a skateboard if it doesn’t have the right stickers on it. I’m astonished there was even a space here at this time of night.”

“There wasn’t,” said Finn, “until ten minutes ago. I gave Patrick your address and instructions to make sure there would be a space. And the police here won’t tow my car.”

She ought to have found that disturbing, but at the moment it was a relief. One less thing to worry about. “You don’t have to walk me to the door.”

“There’s dinner coming, remember?” he said.

“Oh. I can pay for it when it comes,” she said.

“No,” he said, taking the keys from her hands. “You can’t.”

He let them in the apartment. A few minutes later the doorbell rang, and Ann understood that Finn wasn’t just being chivalrous, unless Sal’s Pizza now employed silver-haired Irish housekeepers and delivered meals plated on bone china complete with wine and crystal glasses.

“Most people just order pizza when they don’t feel like cooking,” said Ann once the housekeeper had gone, leaving the table set with double damask linens and a feast for two.

“Most people aren’t retaining a cook, a housekeeper, and a wine steward on salary with nothing for them to do until the foundation is repaired,” said Finn, lifting the cover on the platter at the center of the table. “Chateaubriand for two, carrots, potatoes, and I expect there is crème brûlée for dessert. Mrs. Friary is a creature of habit.”

He seated himself at one end of Ann’s tiny table and poured the wine. With the table set with bright white linen, delicate china, sparkling silver, and faceted crystal, the meal felt somehow more intimate than what had transpired between them at the warehouse.

“This is not a date,” she said. Dates didn’t start with a kidnapping, feature oral sex, and end with fine dining, not even in Charlestown.

“Would you prefer pizza in front of the television, served on paper plates, by yourself?” he asked, carving into the roast. The aroma made her mouth water. And she didn’t particularly want to be alone right now.

“No.”

“Then sit and eat,” he said. “And you can ask me the questions that are burning in your sharp brain.”

“And you’ll answer? Anything?”

“And I’ll answer,” he confirmed. “Anything.”

She accepted a thick slice of meat, red at the center and crusty brown with spices at the edges, a dollop of béarnaise sauce, creamy yellow and flecked with tarragon, and a little mound of glazed carrots and roasted potatoes that tasted better than vegetables had any right to taste. Between bites she said, “Tell me about your wife.”

An unguarded look of surprise and grief crossed his face. “That isn’t the kind of question I was expecting.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize she had died recently,” said Ann.

“You have nothing to apologize for. Brigid died two thousand years ago, at the hands of the Druids.”

“Oh.”

“Who told you about her?”

“Nancy McTeer.”

Finn sighed. “She tried to come to me at the gathering of the Fianna this week, but it isn’t permitted for anyone but members of the band to attend. Humans are only admitted when they are attached to a Fae, and she was there without Sean.”

“That sounds medieval,” said Ann. “And stupid. Like a tradition that exists for its own sake.”

“The Fianna are a fighting band. Traditions instill a sense of esprit de corps in such groups. They bind men together. We may not always share a common cause, but we will always fight for one another. Since my last battle with Miach, the Fianna have been defecting to his banner. It was a delicate time to break with tradition, and Nancy has always been a troublemaker, so I didn’t admit her. But she was waiting outside my house later that night when I came home, and I saw the bruises on her face. I tried to get her to leave Charlestown. Sean isn’t good for her.”

“Sean isn’t good for any woman,” said Ann.

“The Druids tortured him,” said Finn. “He was a poet, if you can believe it, before the Court fell. After his captivity, though, he was never the same.”

“That’s no excuse for hitting a woman,” said Ann. “And Nancy might be a handful, but don’t go blaming her for not leaving him. This isn’t a neighborhood where children, especially girls, grow up with a lot of opportunities.”

“I don’t blame Nancy for her circumstances, but I do question why she was talking to you about my wife.”

“I don’t. I grew up in a place that wasn’t very different from Charlestown. When women have limited opportunities, when they don’t have access to education and can’t envision a life for themselves different from their mothers’, they see other women as competition instead of allies. Nancy didn’t see me as an educator, a partner in her son’s well-being. She saw me as a rival.”

“For what?”

“Power. The only kind she’s ever had access to. The kind she derives from being Sean’s lover. He’s important in the Fianna, isn’t he?”

“He is,” agreed Finn.

“Nancy derives her rank among the women she knows from him. And you don’t have a lover at the moment, which puts her at the top of the heap. Unless you meet someone.”

“I have met someone,” said Finn.

Ann wasn’t going to touch that yet. Not yet. “Nancy thought I was using her son to get close to you. She wanted me to know that you were emotionally unavailable.”

“This is beginning to feel an awful lot like a date,” said Finn. “Let’s talk about something else. You must be curious about your abilities and . . . needs.”

Now it was Ann’s turn to feel uncomfortable. She blushed. “I’ve never done anything like that before. I’m not a nymphomaniac or an exhibitionist.”

“I never thought you were.”

“And I’m not . . . aggressive.”

“You’re a berserker, Ann. You’re made of aggression. And for the record, I like that. I like a woman who can take what she wants. Even from me.”

Her face heated. “I don’t do things like that, normally. I don’t know what came over me.”

“I do,” he said. “Pent-up desire. Unnaturally pent-up. When was the last time you had a good, long, slow fuck, one that really satisfied you?”

Never. But she wasn’t going to say that. She didn’t like vulgar talk. It wasn’t sexy. It didn’t turn her on. Not that she had that much experience being turned on. Except that she was turned on now, nipples tight and an insistent pulse throbbing between her legs, and all he was doing at the moment was holding her hand, swirling his thumb around in her palm, drawing circles that mimicked the way she touched herself when she was alone.

“That doesn’t excuse what I did,” she said, withdrawing her hand. “I didn’t even ask you if you wanted that.”

“I think you know that I did. Or at least I hope that my performance was suitably enthusiastic.” He licked his lips. “You seemed to enjoy it.”

She flushed once more.

“I intend to do it again later. With some variations I hope will please you.”

She almost dropped her fork. “You can’t mean that.”

“Then you weren’t pleased?” he asked, smiling slyly.

“You know I was. But that was . . . this would be . . . ”

“That was fast and hard because you needed it. This will be slow and leisurely because you need that, too. And next time you go into a berserk state, you won’t have to make do with whatever man crosses your path.”

“I thought you said you enjoyed it.”

“I did enjoy it. But the next man might not. Or, you may not particularly care for the next man but you’ll take him all the same because sex and violence go hand in hand with your gift.”

“So you’re going to sleep with me as a public service?”

“I’m going to sleep with you because I’ve wanted you from the day I met you and I know berserkers. My tongue will have barely taken the edge off your desire.”

He was right. Despite everything she had been through that night, she was almost painfully aroused just thinking about going to bed with him. She found she didn’t much care if he was emotionally unavailable. He was physically available, and she had never had that before. But she didn’t want to replay the humiliation she had experienced as a young woman.

“Did you really mean what you said? About liking a woman who takes what she wants?”

“Have I given you any reason to doubt my word?”

“You lied to me about having a son.”

“A man who appears thirty but has an adult son is not an easy thing to explain. And my relationship with my son isn’t exactly uncomplicated. In this case I gain nothing by lying, except perhaps a sexual experience not entirely to my taste. I have enough stature in the world of the Fae that I don’t have to settle for such a thing.”

“But you might do it for the novelty, to laugh about tomorrow with your friends,” she said, unable to hold back the experience that had shaped so much of her sexuality.

“What an utterly pathetic specimen your first lover must have been. Any man who is afraid of a strong woman is afraid because he doubts his own masculinity, his own prowess.”

“It wasn’t just the first,” she said. One she could have laughed off and dismissed. One she could have gotten over.

“Ann,” he said gently. “You’re no ordinary woman. That’s why you couldn’t find a man strong enough for you. But you don’t have to hold back with me.”

It was so tempting. And dangerous. “What about our bargain? You promised to protect Davin. If we go to bed together now, will you still help him?”

“I was always going to save the boy. I made that bargain with Ann Phillips, schoolteacher, so she would be able to give herself permission to enjoy bedding a man she desired. But you aren’t just Ann Phillips, prim, repressed schoolteacher. You’re a berserker. You don’t need excuses to enjoy yourself with a man.”

“It feels wrong to think about myself while Davin is missing.”

“Iobáth is tracking the boy. He is second only to the Prince Consort in his ability to track. He will find him. But until he does, there is nothing you or I can do.”

“And Davin’s tattoos? Will you let them shape his future? Make him into something he isn’t?”

“If possible, my son will remove the tattoos. Or find some way to counter their influence.”

“You and your son don’t seem to be on the best of terms,” she observed. “He was expecting you to thank him tonight. Why didn’t you?”

“Because he shouldn’t need to be thanked for fulfilling his obligations to the Fianna.”

“It wasn’t the Fianna who were in trouble tonight,” said Ann. “It was me.”

“And you’re going to be mine, Ann Phillips, and I am the leader of the Fianna.”

“Leadership isn’t that simple, even on the playground, but parent and child relationships are the same, no matter how old you are. Your son wanted something from you tonight, and it wasn’t just a thank-you. It was approval. Why do you withhold it?”

“Because he has disappointed me.”

“He’s a doctor, or at least he’s the Fae equivalent. How can he be a disappointment?”

“He married a woman who isn’t good enough for him.”

“You’re forgetting, I’ve met his wife. Nieve is little Garrett’s mother. She’s smart and resourceful.”

“And she sent you to my door,” said Finn.

“Well, troublemaking does seem to be epidemic in Charlestown, but that doesn’t make her a bad choice for your son.”

“She’s a bad choice because sorcerers shouldn’t marry at all. They are supposed to be married to their craft and bound only to their right hands, the swordsmen who defend them while they cast.”

“Is being a sorcerer that important to him?” asked Ann.

“Would you be able to give up teaching so easily?”

“No. It’s part of who I am.”

“It is the same with Garrett. He’s a sorcerer. I wish he wasn’t, but it was obvious even when he was a child. All Fae have a little magic, but his was instinctual and potent, even on the playground. And there was no better teacher this side of the wall than Miach. He fostered Garrett, taught him all his secrets, treated him as a son, and then that son seduced Miach’s beloved granddaughter when she was practically a child herself and got her pregnant. She nearly died delivering little Garrett. Miach banished my son from his house for a time. We nearly went to war over it. And then I did something stupid, and Garrett took his wife and his child and left.”

“Why don’t you just ask him to come home?”

“Because it’s not that simple. I don’t want him to just come home. I want him to leave Nieve and take a right hand.”

“That’s selfish of you,” she said.

“Probably,” he admitted. “But tonight isn’t about Davin or my son. It’s about you.”

He stood up and held out his hand. She wanted to take it and everything he was offering, but she still felt nervous.

“What about the crème brûlée?” she asked.

“We’ll eat it for breakfast.”

“What if I go too far? I can’t always remember what happens when I’m in that state. This was the first time, actually, that I could remember. I’ve hurt people in the past.”

“You can’t hurt me. I’m as strong as you are and a good bit more experienced in fending off an attacker. And you won’t black out as long as you don’t fight your gifts. It’s trying to suppress the berserk that causes the blackouts.”

“So you mean I’ll never be able to control them?”

“Control, yes. Suppress entirely, for the rest of your life, as you’ve been trying to do, no. But tonight isn’t about control. It’s about slaking yourself completely for the first time. With me.”

She took his hand.

Her apartment had been carved out of the top of a boxy little federal house, with the living room, dining area, and kitchen consuming what had once been the second floor and her bedroom tucked into the eaves at the top. Her bed was positioned beneath the peak of the roof, and skylights on both slopes were open to the cool night air.

The room seemed smaller than usual, and she realized that this was because no one had ever shared it with her. Ann became acutely aware of Finn’s size and strength. She didn’t find it intimidating. She found it reassuring.

“I just need to . . . ” she pointed toward the bathroom. She had so little experience with this that she didn’t know how to say it.

He caught her hand as she passed and tugged her close. “No, you don’t,” he said.

“I’m not on the pill,” she explained. She had a box of ancient condoms in the bathroom. Hopefully they were still good.

“I’m over two thousand years old. I went decades during this century in which I wasn’t remotely celibate and fathered only a single child, and that with another Fae. We don’t breed easily, even with our own kind.”

“Oh.” That was a relief. In one sense. In another, it only made things more awkward. “What about . . . other things?”

“The Fae are immune to disease. You and I can do anything we want together, Ann.” He took her hand and pressed it to his chest, then slid it down. “Skin to skin. Free of consequence.”

It sounded too good to be true. His chest was hard as marble, his stomach taut with muscle. The waistband of his jeans hung loose about his lean hips, and when her fingers slid beneath it, he drew in a sharp breath.

“I want to see you,” she said.

She held her breath, but he didn’t laugh or sneer, and that made her bold. She grasped the hem of his shirt and lifted. He obliged, raising his hands over his head and leaning forward so she could draw it off his arms.

All of her previous sexual experiences had been carried out in the darkness with eyes closed. This was different. Her eyes drank in his body. His skin was pale and nearly hairless and had been lavishly inked. Tattoos covered the cords of muscle that formed his shoulders, and circled his wrists like a pair of bracers. Beneath the elaborate designs—the knots, the stags, deer, dragons, and serpents—were scars, thick raised swirls cut into his flesh with a knife.

“Did those hurt?” she asked.

“Yes. Fae ink always hurts.”

“But you weren’t seven years old when this was done, were you?”

He hadn’t been seven years old. He’d been fifteen. Finn could recall vividly the experience of being inked for the first time. Miach’s father had drawn the geis over his shoulders first, then the two ornate bracers of sinuous silver knots circling his forearms. The marks were still as bright as the day they had been made, more than two thousand years ago.

Finn had felt each and every jab of the needle. Pain upon pain. He’d stopped counting at some point. It had hurt so badly, his mouth had watered and his gorge had risen, and even with his Fae constitution it had been days before he’d been able to bear the touch of even the finest cloth against his skin.

“I was old enough to choose these marks.”

“What do they mean?”

“These,” he said, taking her hand and guiding it to his shoulder, “are the mantle of responsibility, the weight of leadership. I had a talent, even at Davin’s age, for convincing others to follow me. So when I was old enough, I took a geis.” He traced her fingers over the swirling tattoo. “I made a vow that any crusade I led, or cause I championed, would be worthy of the trust my followers put in me.”

“And what happens if you fail to honor your vow?”

“The geis will weaken me. Calamity will dog my steps.” My son will turn against me and the very foundation of my house will be shaken.

“Like this Druid taking little Davin?”

“That, among other things.” Would he have seen it, if she had not come into his life? His failures had been shown to him in painful detail these past two days. Watching her walk home at night, observing the dangers she and women like her faced from the Fianna in Charlestown, seeing her at Sean’s mercy firsthand had opened his eyes. He had violated his vows, led his followers to an unworthy place where they preyed on the people they had once vowed to protect.

Ann Phillips was good for him. He’d thought that winning his son back was the key to restoring the glory of the Fianna, but it wasn’t. He was losing his band because he had violated his geis. Ann Phillips made him want to restore the integrity of his vows.

“What are the scars from?”

An even more painful memory than his first ink. “When the Druids overthrew the Fae, they banished the Queen and most of her Court to the Otherworld. But they kept some of us chained inside their mounds to experiment on. The Druids pursued knowledge at any price, including vivisection. They carved marks of obedience into our flesh, making us subservient to their Druid voices.”

“Can’t the marks be removed, or altered?”

“The marks cannot be removed. Without a sorcerer to cast a silence over a Druid, we Fae are helpless against them.”

“Miach tried but failed. They are Druid magic. A secretive and now lost art.”

Her fingers were tracing his scars. Even all these centuries later they still hurt sometimes, but her touch was warm and soothing. “And these?” she asked, stroking the bracers around his wrist. “What do these mean?”

“They’re a simple enhancement. Speed and accuracy. Blade and bow.”

Her lips curled into a playful smile, one that promised delights. “Do you have any others?” she asked, reaching for the buttons on his jeans.

“No.” Her deft fingers popped the first button. “Too many gaesa can be dangerous.” There went the second button. “They might come into conflict, like Cú Chulainn’s.” The third. “He was forbidden to eat dog meat, but he was also forbidden to refuse a woman’s hospitality, and so when a woman offered him dog meat, he ate it.”

She paused in her work. “What happened to him?”

“He was weakened, and fell in battle.” Finn opened the fourth button himself. “You must choose your first marks carefully.”

“Me? I’m not going to be getting any tattoos.”

“You,” he said, pulling her close, drinking in the scent of her, “are a berserker. A creature of instinct. The nature of your gift is chaos. If you had been trained from youth to control your talent, the most you could attain would be the ability to summon its power when needed. If you want to harness your gift quickly, if you want to retain free will in the grip of that violent madness, you can do that with Fae magic, worked in ink.”

Ann had experienced Fae magic when Finn had passed with her from his house to the training ground. She didn’t want anything to do with it. That was a step too far into his world. “I’m not ruled by instinct. I’m a schoolteacher.”

“But you’re angry now,” he said. In the moonlight streaming through the window, she could see him smile. That made her even angrier.

“Because you’re wrong.”

“No, I’m not. I can see it there. The rage simmering just below the surface. Any time the strong take advantage of the weak, your rage grows. It’s always with you. That’s in your nature. How long has it been since you let it go, before tonight, that is?”

“Not long enough,” she said, pushing him away.

“Too long,” he replied. “Too long denying all of your urges.”

He pulled her close again and then he said, “There’s nothing wrong with what you want or how you want it.”

He tugged her toward the bed and then surprised her by grasping her arm and turning her around. “Don’t think,” he said. “Just feel.” He bent her over the foot of the bed, his grip firm and insistent. She felt the cool velvet of the quilt beneath her cheek and closed her eyes. He pushed her skirt up to bunch around her hips and nudged her legs open with his knees.

Her heart raced. She felt that same excitement stealing over her. The kind that never ended well. She pushed herself up off the quilt, but Finn placed a hand on her back and said, “Don’t fight what you feel.”

His fingers pushed her panties aside and found her, swollen and slick. She groaned, arched her back, and spread her legs wider. Something powerful rose up in her. In the past she had been terrified of it, but Finn made her feel safe. She allowed herself to let go.

She shifted her weight, hooked her ankle around his, rolled her body forward, and threw him onto the bed. Before he could roll away she was on him, straddling his hips and clawing at the last button on his jeans. It tore free and shot across the room to land with a clank on the floor.

“That’s right,” said Finn, encouragingly. “You don’t need to suppress anything with me, Ann. You don’t have to be meek and soft-spoken. You don’t have to hide your strength.”

She didn’t. She yanked at his jeans and then shoved the denim down to his knees. His member was long and straight and resting heavily against his belly. She hesitated before touching it. He took her hand in his and wrapped her fingers around the length, guided her exploration. The feel of him, thick and hot in her palm, was intoxicating.

It gratified her when he groaned—the thought that he liked this, too—and she flicked the head of his member with her thumb to make him do it again. She wanted that inside her. She wanted to ride him. She wanted to move freely on top of him, to moan and cry and scream without inhibition.

Something beside her knee buzzed and clanked. Then did it again. She didn’t care.

But Finn did. He groaned, and this time it wasn’t a sexy groan. “My cell,” he said. “I left it on in case Iobáth called.”

Her first instinct was to dash the damned thing out of his hands. To make it stop ringing. To finish what they’d started. But Iobáth was the one searching for Davin.

And this, sadly, was the part she was good at: denying herself. She climbed off him. Without the warmth of his body, Ann could feel the chill of the room. She pulled the quilt up around her shoulders and burrowed into its softness.

Finn sat up, planted a kiss on her forehead, and answered his phone.

In the quiet she could hear her heart, still beating fast from Finn’s touch, and the other Fae’s voice through the phone.

“There is no trace of the boy. I tracked him from his home to the end of the block and then he disappeared.”

“Not possible,” said Finn. “Druids can’t pass.”

“Nevertheless, the trail ends abruptly.”

Ann could see the frustration plain on Finn’s face. “There has to be a way to find him. Garrett may be able to scry the Druid, if we can find something of his. Ask Sean if the Druid made any sketches of the tattoos for him.”

“I photographed them,” said Ann. “With my phone, after the nurse refused to do anything. For the report I never sent to social services.”

Finn smiled and looked at her. “Clever woman.” The praise warmed her more than the quilt. “Ann has photos,” he said into the phone. “Call Garrett and tell him to meet us at the house. Then call Patrick and tell him to assemble the Fianna.”