Iced - Moning Karen Marie. Страница 64

And I cannot help but wonder …

Could I reach them? Could I somehow gather them into a single place and shape them for a purpose? I feel light-headed at the thought. They are not sidhe-seers … but they are young and strong, and impressionable.

A woman dances, her head back in mock ecstasy, smiling, surrounded by men and Unseelie. I get a flash of her heart as we pass and know that she believes a man will never love her unless she always makes him feel good. She has relinquished her right to be a person with needs and desires, and become a receptacle for filling the needs of a lover. If she is bright as a butterfly and sexual as a lioness in mating season, she will be cherished.

“That is not love,” I say as we pass. “That is a bargain. You should charge for it. You should get something in return.”

When I was young, I began ranking people by a number system: one to ten — how broken are they? She is a seven. Her heart could be healed but it would take an intensely committed man and much time. Few are so lucky. Fewer still are soul mates like me and my Sean.

As we ascend to the second floor, I look out over the subclubs and see Jo, dressed as a Catholic, school-age child. I dislike the mockery of my faith and am still uneasy with her decision to work here, but she argued passionately for it, strongly committed to her mission to gather intelligence at the richest source. She has yet to tell me anything that makes me feel subjecting her to this cesspool is worthwhile. I know a thing about people: who and what we surround ourselves with is who and what we become. In the midst of good people, it is easy to be good. In the midst of bad people, it is easy to be bad.

As we top the stairs, I find my eyes drawn back to the subclub where the waiters wear only tight black leather pants and a bow tie, revealing vast expanses of tanned, muscled skin, or in other cases generous bare bosoms. Only the stunning are employed there. I catch my breath. One of the male waiters has a beautiful back, a lovely long-limbed way of moving. I could watch him walk away for hours. I am a woman and I appreciate a fine-backed man. I am relieved because it is not Cruce. He has not so thoroughly perverted me that I no longer find human men attractive.

My escort guides me down a hallway of smooth glass walls to my left and my right, unbroken but by nearly nonexistent seams. The rooms up here are all made of two-way glass. Depending on how the lighting is adjusted in each room, you can either see into it from the outside but not out or out from the inside but not in. I had heard from Dani a description of the upper levels of Chester’s so I knew to expect a see-through glass floor, but expecting it and walking on it are two very different things. People do not like to see what lies beneath. Yet here at Chester’s the owner forces you to view it with every step you take in his demesne. He is a calculating man, and a dangerous one. And so I have come here tonight to determine my debt, pay it, and get it over with.

My escort stops before a seemingly seamless glass wall and places his palm against it. A glass panel whisks aside with a hydraulic hiss. The weight of his palm on my neck guides me into the darkened room.

“Boss’ll be with you in a minute.”

I can see out on all sides, up and down. From Ryodan’s glass aerie, he studies his world by naked eye and camera. The perimeter of the room, at the ceiling, is lined with hundreds of small monitors, three rows deep. I scan them. There are cameras focused on every room, from nearly every angle. There are rooms that are sordid beyond my awareness of such activities. This is the world I must learn if I am to lead my girls.

The door hisses open behind me and I say nothing, wait for him to speak. When he does not, I expand my empath gift to get a feel for him. There is no one in the room with me. I realize someone must have opened the door, seen me, not him, and walked on. I continue with my observations of the screens, turning slowly as I absorb the faces, the actions, the offerings. I must learn people as I have never learned them before.

The hand on my shoulder draws from me a small, involuntary scream.

I whirl, frightened, and I’m against Ryodan’s chest, with his arms gently around me. I would speak but I know I would only stammer. There was no one in this room with me. I did not hear the door open again. How, then, is he in the room?

“Easy, Katarina. I did not save you from harm last night to harm you tonight.”

I look into a face that is unreadable. It is said of this man that he wears three expressions and three alone: amused mockery, urbane aloofness, or anger. It is said if you see anger, you are dead.

I open my empath gift.

I am in this room alone.

I can find no words to say. I decide to use the ones I have. “I am in this room alone.”

“Not quite.”

“You don’t exist.”

“Touch me, Katarina. Tell me I don’t exist.” He brushes my cheek with a kiss and I shiver. “Turn your head for me and I’ll kiss you as a woman should be kissed.” He waits, his mouth brushing my cheek, for me to turn ever-so-slightly, part my lips and take his tongue. I shiver again. This man would not kiss me as I like to be kissed but as he does. His way is too hard, demanding, dangerous. His way is not love. It is passion and it burns. Incinerates. It leaves only embers as surely as the IFP his men tethered at my abbey last eve.

When I pull back, he laughs and drops his loose embrace. I give him a level look. “Thank you for sending your men to tether the fragment of Faery. They spoke of payment. We do not have much. What can our abbey offer in return for such generous aid?”

He smiles faintly. “Ah, so that is how we are to be. You speak eloquently for one who spoke no words at all until she was nearly five.”

I will not be rattled. So, he knows I was without voice for years after I was born. Many know the story. The pain of the world’s emotions overwhelmed me upon birth. I was a terrible baby, an awful infant. I cried incessantly. I never spoke. I curled in a ball and tried to escape the pain of the world. They called me autistic. “Thank you.”

“Until Rowena came and offered your family a deal.”

“I did not come to speak of myself, but of how I may repay you.”

“She would draw you from your autistic shell, but at eighteen years of age you were hers. You would come live at the abbey. Your parents leapt at the opportunity. They despaired of ever silencing your weeping.”

Sometimes, even then, Sean had been there. Sometimes in the delirium of my pain he had curled beside me and said, “Girl, why do you cry?” I remember moments of silence then. He would put his chubby arms around me, and for a short time the pain would go away.

“How would they make a grand alliance with larger and nastier criminals if their only marriageable daughter was defective?” I say dryly.

He laughs. “There you are, behind that eternal serenity. The woman that feels. Funny thing is, I, too, thought I was in this room alone. Until you said that. The dearth of emotion here is not mine alone.” His smile fades and he looks straight into my eyes with a stare so penetrating, direct, and uncomfortable that I feel I am an insect pinned to a board, prepared for dissection. “You owe me nothing further.”

I blink. “But I haven’t paid you yet.”

“You have.”

“No, I haven’t. I’ve given nothing.”

“The price was not required of you.”

I get a chill and almost can’t get my breath. This man is dangerous. Clever. Terrifying to me. “Of whom was it required? I am the one responsible. I am the one who failed. I am the one who should have led them to safety, therefore it should be me and me alone who pays a price!”

“Funny thing about payment is that it isn’t the buyer of the goods or services that gets to set it. It’s the seller. That’s me.” His face is hard and cold now.