Complicated.

Ancient.

Sentient.

I try to get a read on its … well, mind for lack of a better word, and all I get is a weird flash of … calculation?

Something missing. Something being searched for.

I look at Lor and see an expression on his face I’ve never seen before and never thought I’d see.

Fear.

It worries me. A lot.

He looks at Fade and Kasteo and they nod. He tightens his grip on my arm.

The slit widens and it comes.

Holy fecking crikey, it comes!

TWENTY-FOUR

“And the beat goes on”

Cruce came tonight as he always does, stealing my sleep, parting my lips and thighs, leaving me near dawn in tangled bed linens, soaking with sweat from sex and shame.

In the few moments of rest I snatch before rising, I have a terrifying dream.

I walk to the hidden entry of the catacombs with the shuffling, mindless gait of a woman dead and risen from the grave.

Margery blocks the door of stones that looks like any other wall unless you are privy to its secret. She is voluptuously nude, hair and eyes wild, smelling of him—a scent I know too well. A banshee, she shows sharp teeth in a cackle and tells me he is gone. I am too late.

With violence of which I did not believe myself capable, I shove her aside, and when she slams into the wall, she slumps down it and is still. Blood blossoms behind her head, staining red daisy petals on the wall.

Bemused by the hostility in my heart, I pass through the door and shuffle on.

The tunnels are pitch, forcing me to feel sightless passage along damp stone walls. This is not the Underneath I know: dry and well lit, with everything in its place. In this dark, moist maze, moss grows thickly on walls and bones crunch beneath my feet. The odor of decay couples with some fecund scent on the breeze. There is nothing down here to generate wind unless a thing stirs that cannot possibly be stirring.

I pull my wrapper closer and thrust myself forward on hobbled feet with stunted, stumbling steps, blind in eye but not purpose. I pray, and with the whimsy of dreams the gold cross I wear upon my neck begins to glow. I do not deserve such comfort in this dark night of my soul!

I shuffle for time uncounted through darkness, until finally I reach the chamber wherein the erotic, deadly prince is iced.

There, no darkness preys, no moss grows, no water trickles. There are no bones in this forbidden place. Only flesh. Extraordinary, exquisite flesh.

The walls have been gold-leafed in my absence. The chamber is radiant with brilliant light.

Cruce is still caged!

Nude, towering, wings unfurled, he snarls with animalistic rage.

Iced solid.

I weep with joy. My fears were for naught!

Upon trembling legs I hurry to his cage, celebrating that it holds.

One of the bars is missing.

“Stop. Vibrating.” Ryodan plucks a paper out of the air and slaps it back down on his desk.

I wonder if he cleans it. How many tushes have been on that thing? I’m never touching it again. “Can’t help it,” I say around a mouthful of candy bar. I know what I look like: a smudge of black leather and hair. “It happens when I get really excited. The more excited I get, the more I vibrate.”

“Now there’s a thought,” Lor says.

“If you mean what I think you mean, you want to shut the fuck up and never think it again,” Ryodan says.

“Just saying, boss,” Lor says. “You can’t tell me you didn’t think it, too.”

Five of Ryodan’s dudes are in his office and it’s like standing in the middle of heat lightning, closed in with them. Jayne is here, too, but I’m totally ignoring him because, like, if I didn’t, I’d have to kill him with my bare hands and that would get messy, then Ryodan would probably make me mop his fecking office.

I never understand half of what these dudes are talking about and don’t care. “You can touch me if you want to,” I say to Lor magnanimously. I’m so pumped on adrenaline and excitement that I’m feeling downright sociable. I poke one of my shoulders toward him. “Check me out. It feels really cool.”

All heads swivel my way, then they look back at Ryodan.

“He doesn’t own my fecking shoulder. Why you looking at him?”

Lor guffaws but doesn’t reach for my shoulder.

I don’t know why. I like touching myself when I’m vibrating like this. It vibrates me twice. If I was really cold and started to shiver, I’d be vibrating three times! “So, what the feck are we going to do to stop this thing?” I beam. We got plans to make and implement. I thrive on times like these! They bring out my best! I’m a riser-to-the-occasion kind of girl. I’m feeling so excited and generous about having such a wicked cool adventure to live that I’m finding it hard to be mad at folks right now. We got an enemy that’s bigger and badder than anything I’ve seen. Fecking-A, it’s good to be alive! ’Cause, like, for a sec there by the dock, I wasn’t sure I was going to be. I wasn’t sure any of us were!