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Bored, bored, bored. The borders were warded, no new incursions of Summer’s minions. Mab, Maeve felt her lip curl slightly, was holed up in Arctis Tor doubtless torturing what remained of Lloyd Slate or torturing the Leanasidhe or torturing … someone. Boring.
Not torture, torture wasn’t boring – or at least it didn’t have to be. But when the Winter Queen rode the crests of madness, her inventiveness suffered and torture became a question of quantity rather than quality. Maeve disapproved, quietly and from a considerable distance.
All of Winter itself barely provided a considerable enough distance, which was why Maeve and a half-dozen of her closest … sycophants … had Earthside plans for the night. She pursed her lips at her mirror, considered, and added a coat of glitter over the bright red. Where they would be going, there was no such thing as too much.
~
Humanity, Maeve reflected as she twisted strands of her hair together, had some definite perks. Fashion was high on the list. Denim rode low on her hips; a scarlet belt through the loops matched the tube top glowing against her white skin. Red stilettos peeked out beneath the hem of her jeans, and the indigo twists in her hair matched her carefully painted toenails. Clothing among the Fae was more a question of imagination than practicality, and human fabrics had a weight and texture many of the Sidhe found satisfying. But – she opened the velvet-lined box on her dressing table – none could match the Fae for crafting jewelry. Maeve strung a short silver chain around her neck and settled its snowflake charm just below the hollow of her throat. The ruby in its center gleamed. A handful of silver studs soon climbed the edge of her ear, peeking through her hair.
The door behind her opened, and a young woman whose vividly green hair stood out against her yellow sundress slipped inside. “My lady, are you ready? Everyone’s here.”
Maeve gave her reflection a last critical glance and turned on her heel. “Let’s go.”
~
Walking up the block to Zero was a slowly building, immersive experience. First, the pavement began to quiver, a bass vibration so deep it trembled up through your feet and calves, a pressure against your bones. Next, the sound became audible, a pulsing drumbeat undergoing a dozen or so variations between the time you first heard it and the time you got to the door. There was never a line at Zero, but you’d start to see people outside who were clearly patrons. There was no particular style, not even a general air of expense, but you could always pick out people going to Zero from people who just happened to be near Zero. (The Sidhe know what it is mortals sense, but it is a secret they whisper behind their hands and which curls in the edges of their laughter, a secret articulated only in a language that would drive mortals mad to comprehend.) The neon red sign, only the digit 0, burned against the plain door like a beacon.
Maeve led Jenny and the others down the block, past the door, and around the corner of the building. Halfway to the next corner stood a service door, shut flush to the wall. She brushed her fingers over the rough concrete where the handle should be, humming a few disjointed notes. With a faint pop, the door slid a few inches open. Maeve smiled, and a tracery of frost rimed the doorframe and wall where she stood. “We’re in. Remember your manners.”
~
The bass boomed through the walls and floor and bodies, shaking everyone inside the reconditioned warehouse in a wild unison. Maeve led her cohorts unerringly through the service corridors, heels clicking against the stone floor, walking quickly while still giving the impression of gliding. Beside her, Jenny sauntered, all rolling hips and inviting curves, twirling some of her green hair around one long finger. Fionn, Geil, Arunde, and Darrick followed, spread out enough to occupy the entire hallway, each in his or her own space. Faint lights flickered along the walls, a subtle glamour urging everyone in that part of the building to be somewhere other than this corridor. None of the mortals stood a chance of threatening the Winter Lady and her chosen companions, but in a service hallway, a confrontation with one of the White Court that involved words like “trespassing” could easily turn to words like “invasion,” and that would lead rapidly to a complete lack of proper entertainment this night. A final turn through the murky haze of various smokes and general poor lighting brought them out into the club proper. A hundred fabrics and a dozen shades of bare skin writhed and twisted on the dance floor, the catwalks, and practically every flat piece of furniture.
For a moment, Maeve simply watched. Her followers spread out around her, a loose cluster of inhumanly appealing bodies, standing out even among Zero’s clientele. Eyes turned toward them. Maeve’s eyes lost their hazy distance and focused on the DJ against the opposite wall. Her pupils reflected the pulsing lights – and then the pulsing lights reflected her pupils, shifting subtly from the garish primary colors of raves everywhere to the deep jewel tones that had overtaken Maeve’s nails. She noticed her toenails shifting from indigo to cerulean to jungle green and rolled her eyes. Nail polish couldn’t stand up long against the magic of her very being, but she tried anyway. Why walk around with nails that screamed “Monarch of the Winter Court” when she could have “Ultraviolet” instead? But nature, it seemed, had other ideas.
“Leashes off, darlings,” she murmured quietly; each of her companions heard her clearly no matter how loudly she spoke. “Have fun. Be good guests. Play nicely.” With each admonishment, her smile grew wider and more wicked, until manic dancers were slowing to stare at her scarlet cupid’s-bow lips. She slid effortlessly into the crowd, appearing to create space where there was none moments before. Behind her, Jenny wrapped an arm around a redheaded man’s waist and pulled him close, nuzzling against his neck. His arms locked tight around her waist.
~
Maeve moved effortlessly through the crowd, shifting vaguely in time to the music. What began as walking had transformed into predatory slinking before she was halfway to the booth. The DJ’s eyes were fixed on her, and she raked her gaze up and down him, letting her shoulders slouch a little more. Rolling her head sent her hair rippling down her back in a snowy cascade, picking up glacial highlights from the pulsing colored lights. On her right, a woman stared, her mouth literally hanging open. Maeve ignored her, stalking toward the DJ. She leaned on the edge of his table, propping her chin on her linked hands and smiling at him. He swallowed noticeably, and she hummed a little to herself, pleased. The snowflake charm around her neck dropped a few degrees in temperature, steaming slightly in the sticky building.
“I want you,” she crooned, “to play a song. For me.”
He nodded, then stopped, bracing his shoulders and struggling to produce a confident smile, clearly propping himself up with the assurance of his job. “And what song would you like, sweetheart?”
Maeve’s ruby lips parted in delight at the endearment, and she met his eyes directly. He watched the strobe lights reflect in her eyes, feeling queasily as if he were falling forward but unable to look away. She blinked and released him. He staggered back a step before catching himself; he felt foolish but wouldn’t meet her eyes again. “Blow,” she purred at him, leaning further across the table, the swell of her breasts clear beneath her tube top. “It’s by that new artist, the blonde one.”
“K- Kesha,” the DJ stammered, fighting not to stare at her eyes or cleavage.
She nodded. “That’s the one. Put it on next.” Without waiting for a response, she pivoted and slid back into the dancing, writhing crowd. Hands reached toward her, but she drifted just beyond each touch, until she turned her head and saw a tall man with dark hair wearing a trenchcoat. Her pulse jumped even as she saw his profile and told herself no, not him, not at all the right nose. The resemblance was close enough, though, that when he bit his lip and moved toward her, she let his fingers graze her hips.
~
A brief commotion, a wholly different spectrum of energy from the lust-hunger-need of the rest of the building, spiked upstairs and drew Maeve out of the dark-haired man’s lap. She patted him absently on the cheek and turned a slow circle, peering up into the smoky niches along the wall. Three figures were leaving down a narrow flight of stairs, but one white shape fluttered and jerked in the niche itself. Pain, Maeve felt, and bitter anger fueled by humiliation. Her eyes and nails, and the lights pulsing in the building, shifted toward violets and deep reds. She picked a staircase and headed up.
Madeline Raith twisted on the table, yanking at her wrists, which were pinned to the steel surface with what looked like decorative hairpins. The table itself was warping under her efforts as her strength returned, but as yet she was still trapped. Maeve considered the tableau, considered who must have been one of the exiting figures, and laughed softly. Madeline’s head snapped toward her, focusing on the sound; her eyes shone pale silver in the dimness of the club.
“What are you looking at, bitch?” she spat, wrenching herself sideways in a move that would have dislocated a mortal’s shoulder.
Maeve rolled her eyes. “Apparently a very stupid member of the White Court, one who, if I had to guess, picked a fight with a certain member of the White Council. One who is now pinned like a particularly unattractive butterfly.”
With a screech of agonized metal, the vampire’s left wrist came free, dragging the pin out of the table and leaving a ragged wound in her wrist. Madeline picked up the pin and considered it, turning it over in her hands. Without looking up, she snapped her arm to the side and sent the pin flying toward Maeve’s throat. Maeve batted it away with a casual flip of her wrist.
“Please,” she scoffed. “You’re just now getting yourself together, and you think you can catch me with something like that?” She prowled closer, all slinking curves, and tsked. “Oh, Maddie, your face is an absolute wreck.” A lip-print stood out in wrinkled scar tissue against her otherwise pristine forehead, while other thin scars trailed down her face, throat, and shoulders as if someone had brushed red-hot wires down her skin.
Madeline snarled. “Not for long, and the next time I see my benighted brother, what I’ll do to him will make this look like a gentle massage.” As she stopped speaking, the skin on her right cheek flexed unnaturally and smoothed out. Maeve shuddered; Madeline saw and narrowed her eyes. “And what the hell do you think you’re doing in my club?”
“Your club?” Maeve raised both eyebrows, shifting to lean against the cable railings separating this niche from the open air above the dance floor. “I was under the impression this club was owned directly by the monarch of the White Court, one Lord Raith, and indirectly by whoever is really running House Raith these days.”
“My family, my club.” Madeline levered herself up from the table, rubbing her wrists and the much-diminished wounds on them. Her eyes were fading to a misty silver like brushed metal, not so different from the table from which she had recently extricated herself. “You have no right to be here, fairy.”
All traces of laughter left Maeve’s face. On the dance floor below her, five pale faces turned sharply upward, feeling in their veins the coolness of their mistress’s displeasure. “I don’t recall seeing any No admittance to any of the Sidhe signs outside,” she hissed, pupils going cat-slitted. “I don’t recall there being any declaration of hostilities between your family and my mother the Winter Queen.” Madeline braced her hands on her hips, chin jutting forward. Her eyes paled further, and Maeve let out a bell-like laugh that had no effect at all on her eyes. “Trying your pathetic wave of lust on me, leech? That works on mortals, and I am not mortal.” On her final words, she thrust a hand forward, fingers shaped into a particular sign, and a blast of arctic air drove Madeline backwards across the booth to slam against the far wall.
Frost clung to her face and broke off of her hair with soft cracks. She swiped the back of a hand across her forehead, grimacing at the touch of frostbite. By now her entire body glowed softly from drawing on her demon, but even with its power filling her, she was breathing hard. Maeve was not.
“Go away, little vampire slut, and annoy someone else. I’m here to have a good time, but if you get in my way I’ll make adjustments to my schedule.”
Madeline responded by launching herself at Maeve, fingers arched like talons. With her supernatural speed, she was a white blur of force, but Maeve stepped out of the way smoothly enough that it looked casual. The vampire smacked into the cable railings, and Maeve clamped a hand around her ankle, spun backwards, and hurled her into the wall again. A twist of her left hand left her holding a thin blade as translucent as crystal. Without pause, she thrust it into Madeline’s shoulder, skewering her in place. The dark-haired woman cried out, her demon-fueled strength and endurance nearing its end. A small smile forming on her lips, Maeve twisted the blade.
“I am the youngest monarch of the Winter Court of the Sidhe, and I suggest you remember it. When I come here to dance and unwind, I expect you to leave me and mine alone, little leech. Next time, I’ll tell your daddy on you – or your cousin Lara.” Maeve turned on her heel and walked away, alert to any sound from behind her, but all she heard was Madeline’s stifled whimpers. She knew the pain wouldn’t have a lasting effect and that once the vampire was free, she’d feed ravenously and turn the memory of pain into fuel for anger. Still, by then we’ll all be back in Arctis Tor.
At the foot of the stairs, her band was waiting already. Maeve favored them with a smile and a half-shrug. “Turns out our night has to end a little early.” They nodded without protest, Maeve noted with satisfaction, and bestowed goodbye embraces or kisses or smoldering glances on their erstwhile human companions, falling into line as Maeve made for the door. Not quite the night of dancing and seduction I had planned, but a fight is as good a diversion as any. And there’s always next week, anyway. The door closed behind them with a dull clank, and the neon sign flickered briefly before returning to its stalwart crimson glow.