wears off. I’d assumed I’d be unable to mentally communicate with it.
Not you that possesses power to hear. I possess power to be heard, it rumbled. Wipe off.
I’ll consider it, I lied, tucking my gloves into my sleeves and wrapping my scarf securely around my neck.
Its amusement tickled the inside of my head, and I suddenly knew two things: it knew I was lying and the Hunter was not restrained in any way. It was pretending.
Were you ever?
Unrestrainable. All is choice. Stop your kind from shooting at us in the skies. We are benign. The marks chafe. Remove them.
It shifted its enormous hind flanks ponderously, impatience evident.
If they do nothing, why do they chafe? I asked.
Do you like those red streaks in your hair?
A snort of laughter escaped me, and Barrons gave me a look.
Vain much?
Interfere with my vision. Do not trinket us. We will trinket you and you will not like it.
I had no desire to know how a Hunter might trinket a human.
“One must mount in order to ride, Ms. Lane,” Barrons said dryly.
“I think I just demonstrated my understanding of that sequence of events back in the bookstore,” I said just as dryly. “It’s talking to me. Don’t you hear it?”
Not even I communicate with that one, the Hunter murmured in my mind. There are doors. He has none.
What do you mean?
I said.
Huh?
I do not clarify, expound, or elaborate. Open your puny mind. If you cannot see, you do not deserve to.
I rolled my eyes thinking it was no wonder the Unseelie king had a special fondness for these creatures. They communicated in a similar fashion.
Barrons sliced his head once to the left, dark eyes glittering, brilliant. He’d fed while out and his big body was thrumming with electric energy. I was looking forward to leaning back into him, astride the Hunter’s back.
Since I couldn’t use my sidhe-seer senses to determine if the Hunter was speaking truth, I listened to my gut instead, stepped forward and smudged my gloved hand against its icy hide, wiping the shimmering symbol from its skin.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Barrons snarled.
“It chooses to be here. It won’t harm us.”
“You know that because it told you? And you believed it?”
I knew more than that. I knew if I wiped off its symbols, it would cooperate far more fully than if I didn’t. Perhaps even tantalize me with an ancient secret of the universe or two, and I’m insatiably curious about what might be out there in the great beyond. Ever since I wandered the White Mansion, that infinite abode of endless wonders, I’ve suspected I have a bit of Gypsy in my blood. If—no, when—our problems are finally over, I plan to go exploring with Jericho Barrons. Everywhere.
This Hunter was proud, aloof, and accustomed to being utterly without authority. It didn’t comprehend the meaning of the word, had to break things down in its mind like the Unseelie king had to split himself into many skins to walk among humans. I wasn’t sure it was even alive in the sense we think of things being alive, unless blazing icy meteors or stars are alive. The symbols didn’t constrain it. They were pesky flies on its hide and offended it to its core.
“Trust me.”
He stared at me, not moving at all except for a tiny muscle in his jaw, which is a full-blown hissy fit for that man.
After a long moment of silence he ground out, “Your call, Ms. Lane.”
I circled the Hunter and wiped the other one off its wing. Barrons boosted me when it crouched and I clambered up its icy back, crawled forward onto its enormous head and smudged away the final mark.
As Barrons leapt up behind me and we settled behind its wings, it purred, Ahhhhh, now we fly.
The Hunter lunged forward, and when it reached the wide intersection of streets at the edge of the Dark Zone, flapped its leathery sails, churning black ice into a small storm around us. We rose up and up.
I hated leaving the bookstore behind for who knew how long to God knew what fate. I glanced down to watch it grow tiny beneath us and assure myself attackers weren’t at this very moment raiding my home, and realized why Barrons wasn’t worried.
Black and turbulent, whirling with debris, a tornado encompassed eight full blocks, with BB&B nestled snugly in its eye. We soared straight up from the epicenter. A small mob was stalking a good distance from the perimeter but