“You said you’d make them take us back at the abbey. Is this part of it?”
“You bet.” I eyed her speculatively. “Just how super is your superhearing? If there was somebody really stealthy nearby, could you hear him before we stumbled on him?”
Her eyes narrowed. “How stealthy?”
“Very.”
She gave me a suspicious look. “We talking Jericho Barrons stealthy?”
I frowned. “How do you know how stealthy he is?”
“I saw him the day he busted you out. The nine of ‘em were all the same. Oozing whatever it is he oozes.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Tried to wrap my brain around what she’d just said. Then, “Nine?” I said. “Eight other men like Barrons? As in exactly like him?”
“Well, they weren’t ninetuplets or nothing, but yeah. He had eight other … whatever they are with him. Big men. Bad-asses. Major show of force, breaking you out. Ro never woulda let you go.” She was bouncing from foot to foot so rapidly, she was becoming difficult to focus on.
“I don’t remember that! How come I didn’t see them? I mean, I know I was … out of it, but—”
“He didn’t let any of ‘em near you. It was like he didn’t even want ‘em to see you. None of ‘em was human, that’s a fact.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “You know that? How?”
Her face was too blurred to see, but I heard the scowl in her voice. “He grabbed me out of superspeed. Like it was no effort at all. Nothing human could do that.”
“Barrons was able to stop you?” I said incredulously.
“Snatched me right outta the air.”
“How could he even move fast enough to get to you in the first place?” I exclaimed. Was there anything the man couldn’t do? Most of my plans relied heavily on Dani’s superspeed.
“‘Zactly what I thought.”
I tried to focus on her but couldn’t. It was giving me a headache. “Would you slow down?” I said, exasperated. “You’re impossible to see.”
“Sorry,” said the smudge of long black leather coat, MacHalo lights, and luminous sword. “Happens when I get excited or upset. Pissed me off that he could do it. Hang on.” She was visible again, tearing open another candy bar.
“So, there are eight others like Barrons.” I tried to wrap my mind around the fact. Where had they been all this time? What were they? What was he? Another caste of Unseelie no one knew about? “You’re absolutely certain? It’s not possible they were normal men?”
“No way. They moved weird. Way weirder even than Barrons, like he’s the civilized one of the lot. It was creepy. I didn’t pick up Fae, but I sure didn’t get no human read off ‘em, either. And some of their eyes were way fecked up. Nobody wanted to get near ‘em. Sidhe-seers plastered against the walls, trying to stay as far outta their way as possible. One of ‘em had a blade to Ro’s neck. All toting Uzis, storming in there, not taking shit from nobody. You could tell they were Death walking if anybody even blinked wrong. The girls couldn’t stop talking about it. They were pissed, but … well, they were kinda fascinated, too. Shoulda seen the way those dudes looked. The way Barrons looked. Dude,” she said reverently, then glanced at me, alarmed. “I mean, man, you shoulda seen it. Don’t call me Danielle, I hate that name.”
There were eight other … beings … like Barrons out there. I could barely deal with one. Who and what were they? Of all the things I’d learned today, this one rattled me the most. I’d considered him an anomaly. One of a kind. He wasn’t. I should have expected the unexpected.
Eight others like him. At least eight others, I amended. Who knew? Maybe he’d only brought a limited number with him. Maybe there were dozens more. And he’d never told me about them. Not one word.
Any reservations I might have entertained about the plan I’d been working on since encountering Jayne vanished.
“You’re right, Dani,” I said. “You need a gun. In fact, we need a lot of guns. And I know just where to find them.”
It was nearly dawn by the time I parked the school bus in front of the abbey.
I hated giving up the Range Rover, but I needed larger transport. I’d found the bright blue bus, with its dented sides, peeling paint, and lethargic transmission, outside a youth hostel. Dani and I had packed it with crates of guns and Unseelie corpses.
I was bone-tired. I’d been up for twenty-four hours straight, and they’d been crammed full. I didn’t expect to get much sleep before moving on with my plans, but I hoped to snatch an hour—at least—of silence and the opportunity to clear my mind, so I could sort through all that had happened, all I’d learned.