“You can’t stop me.” No one can. And there’s the rub. A kiss would lead to a fuck and it would be her last because I can’t control myself. I drain a woman of life in bed. It’s odd to stare into eyes that never meet yours. It’s enough to give a man a God-complex. Her pupils dilate, widen then narrow again, with a shimmer of banked fire. Not deterred—intrigued. This one likes dancing on a high wire.

She wets her lips, tastes the dried blood and scrubs it away with the back of her hand. It doesn’t work, just smears more blood on her face. “A single kiss. Then walk away. Discipline begins. You think I have nothing to teach you. You think no one does. I thought that once, too. Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe you’re a coward. Try the kiss.”

Dark eyes meet mine in level challenge. The message is clear. She’ll stare at me until she bleeds again.

“You want to measure your power by the power of those with whom you play. It turns you on.” I sneer.

“Am I supposed to be turned on by mediocrity?”

“You’re supposed to be turned on by a human. Get your bloody kicks somewhere else.” Twin drops of crimson appear in the corners of her eyes. I pivot and turn away.

“Right. Go on then,” she flings at my back. “Sure, you’ll never fail—if you never try. Hell of a life, that. When you’re ready to put on your big-boy pants, you know where to find me.”

“My pants and what’s in them are already too big for you,” I say coolly. She wants to tempt me, lead me down a dark path that will end with me carrying the sin of yet another woman’s death on my conscience, all because she wants to play with the big, powerful, dangerous man. It’s not about me. It’s about her. She needs to pull her head out of her ass.

She laughs and walks off, confident, sexy, sure-footed on the slippery ice, like she expects me to turn and look. I know, because I turn and look, unwillingly appreciating the fluid, aggressive grace of her spine, the lean muscle of her legs, the curve of her ass.

Then I lope across the frost-covered grass to find Mac, in a foul mood. Once I’m turned on, I stay that way for a long time. Though pumped by a human heart, my blood runs Unseelie prince, twisted and unquenchable.

I slam a fist to my chest directly above that chambered beast and remind myself it was born Highlander and Highlander it will remain.

“Christian!” Mac’s voice is an urgent whisper.

I hurry to join her. We will face whatever our next battle is together.

MAC

It’s dark. I can’t breathe. I can’t see.

Blind, I exist in a void, a tightly compressed Mac-in-the-box, waiting for someone to crank my handle.

The body I don’t have tries frantically to gulp air.

Though I no longer have a mouth, somehow I scream and scream.

MacKayla’s memory is mine. Not all, but enough; those ways in which she interacted with the physical world.

I know where Barrons keeps his car keys and that the mirror in the study on the first floor of the bookstore is the booby-trapped passage to his underground lair. I know how to navigate it; I once helped her gain entry. I know exactly how she takes her coffee, applies her makeup, does her hair, the way she greets and speaks with her adopted mother, her false father. I understand every nuance of what to say and do to pass myself off as Barrons’s Rainbow Girl.

Her body memory is also mine. Driving a car presented no challenge. Navigating the icy terrain is different but not difficult. The cold, however, is unpleasant and makes me shiver. I share her distaste for inclement weather and snow.

I glide across the wintry, windy abbey grounds, moving more surely inside my flawed bag of muscle and bone with each step. I’d like to sink within, pry open Mac’s box and murder her after a splendid afternoon of tea and torture for taking this vessel so for granted that she abused, neglected, and risked it at every turn. The vessel that was meant to be mine from the moment I inhabited it. It’s not strong enough. She should have done better. Because of her frailties, I embark on life handicapped.

The first of my victims hurries toward me through the gloom, another broody conflicted fool that reviles the gift of power he was given. The power I would strip from him if I could.

“Christian.” I infuse my whisper with urgency.

When he appears from behind the rubble of charred, ice-dusted stone, I’m struck by the keen desire to possess his body. The undeserving prick’s vessel is superior to mine. Might I, like my former incarnation—the corporeal copy of the Sinsar Dubh that has since crumbled to dust on a slab—possess another’s skin via physical contact? Might I dump myself within and hold it? Might Christian be capable of containing the enormity that I am without rapidly deteriorating to the point of uselessness?

The body I have is certain yet flawed.

Christian’s is not flawed yet not certain.

MacKayla would call it the old bird-in-the-hand or bird-in-the-bush adage.

I giggle at the thought of MacKayla. She has neither birds nor bushes. She’s in Hell and I put her there. Through desire, lust, greed, and supremacy.

Christian looks at me strangely, wings rustling in the cold breeze. “Mac?”

“Nervous laugh. I always think I’ll get used to how you look.” He accepts the excuse, too consumed by self-loathing to be focused on the world. And why wouldn’t he die tonight? He believes the world populated by obvious monsters. The most dangerous of us are the least obvious. He relies on his skill as a lie detector, reading and judging the conflicting emotions of others.