Ryodan’s eyes briefly flickered, and I knew I was right. For some reason, my uncle’s body was behind that wall.

“Tear it down,” I told him, “or I’ll destroy every inch of this bloody nightclub, killing everyone within.” I summoned the elements, drew them to me, beckoned like a lover, exhaled long and slow, and ice crackled down the walls, erupted on the floor, glazing the stone with thick, slippery black. “Then I’ll bring thunder and fire from the sky and burn this place to ash.”

Ryodan vanished.

I’d expected no less.

I sifted out, reappearing down the hall. Keeping a careful distance between us. The Nine can kill the Fae. No idea how. No plans to ever let one of them close enough to find out.

Ryodan vanished again.

I sifted and reappeared standing near Mac, with one arm around her throat. She twisted and kicked and growled. She was strong but I’m stronger. She smelled like me, and I knew she’d been eating my race again. I might have squeezed her neck a bit harder than I should have, but bloody hell, her cannibalism needs to stop.

“Let go of me!” she cried.

Barrons vanished.

I sifted out with a struggling Mac, reappeared in the air above them, wings open. “We can do this all bloody night,” I said. One more sift and I’d vacate the club for a while. Let them stew in the juice of knowing I had Mac with me, beyond their reach.

Barrons snarled.

“You won’t hurt Mac,” Ryodan said.

“But I will destroy your club.”

I dropped lightly to my feet and re-created what I’d watched Cruce do down in the cavern the night we’d interred the Sinsar Dubh. I’d felt his spell, absorbed the taste and texture of it, his methods. Gone seeking information in the king’s old library. I’d only recently embraced my power. Now, I used it to erect an impenetrable wall around Mac and me. One I’d seen them fail repeatedly to breach, standing in the cavern below the abbey.

“Aye, you could kill me, if you could catch me,” I acknowledged the unspoken threat blazing in both their dark gazes. “But you’ll never touch me.” I smiled faintly and without mirth.

Nor, likely, would anyone else. I hadn’t risked fucking since the cliffs, fucking I needed like I needed to breathe. But I had no taste for killing another woman. Such things threatened my Highlander’s heart, blackened it.

“Barrons,” Mac said urgently, “forge an alliance. We don’t want a war with Christian. You’ve pushed his back to the wall. The two of you would do no less than he’s doing, under the same circumstances.”

“Alliance, my ass,” Ryodan clipped.

“She’s right,” I said. “We can be enemies or allies. Choose carefully.”

Barrons looked at Ryodan. “He could be useful.”

I snorted. “There will be many conditions if I agree to be allies. The first is that you return my uncle’s remains.”

In my arms, Mac sighed and went supple. “I told you that you should tell him,” she said to Ryodan.

I angled my head to look at her. “Tell me what?”

“I told them they should trust you. That you had a right to know.”

Truth. I relaxed my grip on her and she straightened in my arms but didn’t try to break free.

“You wouldn’t have done what you did,” Mac said to Ryodan pointedly, “if you hadn’t been willing to live with the essential makeup of the one you did it to for a very long time. That, more than anything, is a testament to what you think of the Keltar clan. Trust Christian. Make him an ally, not an enemy. We have more than enough enemies out there already.”

Ryodan looked at Mac for a long moment then smiled faintly. “Ah, Mac, sometimes you do surprise me.”

“I take that as one hell of a compliment,” she said dryly. “My point is, yes, you can keep trying to kick Christian’s ass. Yes, you could hunt him and, if one day you catch him, kill him. You could all stalk around for a small eternity being the testosterone-laden brutes you all sometimes are.”

Barrons and Ryodan shot her a nearly identical look of disgruntlement, and I laughed softly.

She ignored them. “But consider the power he has. Do you really want that turned against us? You, Ryodan, more than most, have the ability to clear a logical path through dense emotions. Think about the potential if you become allies. Think about the grand waste if you become enemies. Three incredibly powerful men stand in this corridor. If you want to brawl, make an alliance, then beat the shit out of each other. With limits. No killing. Ever.”

Ryodan growled, “You fucking Highlanders. I knew the moment I laid eyes on you that you’d be trouble.”

“Friend or foe?” I said.

Ryodan stared at me, unmoving for a long moment. Finally, “There are times I could use a sifter,” he allowed.

“You think I would let you that close to me?” I snorted.

“For you to take someone like Dancer or Jada to inspect various places.”

I inclined my head. That was easy enough. “There are times I may need assistance as well.”

“Such as the cliff we just dragged your ass off of,” Ryodan said flatly.

“See how well you’ve been working together already?” Mac said brightly.

“You will never speak of what you learn tonight,” Barrons said.

“I won’t agree to that,” I said.

“Then destroy my club,” Ryodan said coldly. “And I, and all my men, will hunt you until the end of time. Enemy or ally, Highlander. We’d make stupendous ones, either way.”