We're covered in fingerprints from thumbing the pages, looking for some escape.
But all the bold letters they just say the same thing: There's no way out of this...
(Chris Pureka, "Damage Control")
iii. (The Unseelie Princes)
Dani fecking told them, didn't she? Told Lor (forgot to tell Ryodan, oh well, too damn late for that now) they needed to watch out; if the UPs managed to turn her Pri-ya, they were one step closer to the next apocalypse. That Dani would be turned against them.
Dani hadn't really worried about it, same way she never really worried about anything. Hard to worry when you're a super hero! Got a whole world to save. Worryings for old regular slow mo Joes, not the mega.
(She should have worried about it. Really, should have.)
When they catch her, she's just moseying down the street one afternoon. Seriously, moseying. Not freeze framing or popping up Dani Dailies or anything. The sun was nice and it was warm and she had just left Chester's and Ryodan these days was weirding her out with all those extra looks she was getting from him. Not to mention that things had gotten ugly that day; Dani wanted to go after the Crimson Hag, rescue Christian, take her down once and for all.
"It's my fault she got out, boss. And it's been three months. Who knows what's left of Christian's sanity."
"Exactly. Your fault. Not mine. Why should it concern me what she does from this point forward."
"You just gonna leave her Christian for an eternity?"
"Her having your little Highlander boyfriend solves all sorts of problems for me."
"Yea? Like what?"
Ryodan refuses to answer. Lor, having struck out, blonde bimbo wise - he seemed to be doing that more and more these days when Dani was around, hadn't dragged some girl off by her hair in a long time, Dani was noticing - walked her out. The two had a whole new way of doing things: They'd bump hips and see who could shove the other off their feet farther.
Lor was fun. Awesome. Slowly but surely becoming the shit. One day when Ryodan was too "busy to babysit" Dani, Lor came wandering into Ryodan's office, wheeling a DVD player and pile of old movies.
"You need some real education, not whatever horse shit they consider action movies," he told her. And they settled down to it. Once they made their way through the Kung Fus, they started up on Tarantino. Dani liked Kill Bill 2 the best. Lor told her that was sacrilege.
"No one loves anything more than Pulp Fiction. Ever."
Tonight, Lor seemed, well... concerned about something. He kept sniffing the air where Dani was, and giving her weird looks. As he walked her out, he said something super, super fecked up.
"You gonna button that shirt up, or not? Showing too much skin these days, honey." He stopped, grabbed her chin, looked at her. "You gotta be careful about the... vibes you throw off. Don't want to end up in the wrong hands."
Dani blushed purple. Pretended she hadn't heard him, but as soon as she got out of Chester's, she buttoned her clothes up to the neck.
Fat lot of good it had done her. Because now she's surrounded on both sides by two Unseelie Princes, and she's got no magic cellphone, no annoying Lor or Ryodan's men three steps behind her, trying to be all stealth, no Ryodan himself. Not even Christian to defend her, since he's off playing pincushion to the Crimson Hag.
Dani is, in a word, fucked.
And then, terrifyingly, she is fucked. When Dani said she wanted to lose her virginity in an epic way, this is not what she meant. She meant epic good, not epic bad.
Her last conscious thought is that she doesn't want to die; doesn't want to lose track of who she is.
Her last conscious thought is something so stupid, a normal, non death-by-sex-faed Dani would have scoffed.
Her last conscious thought is, this isn't fair.
The next night, Dani is back at Chester's. If people were paying attention, they'd notice something is off.
Ryodan always, always pays attention.
Dani is moving differently, for one thing. Not stomping around or hopping from foot to foot like a kid. No she slithers in, hip to hip, breasts pushed out, shoulders arched back. It's a walk that says - I've been down that dirty road, and I'm going to take you with.
She's dressed different, too: Tight and leather and heels. Dani right now is 16, almost 17, but way she's dressed she could be early 20s.
Way she's dressed, she's making Ryodan reconsider all those rules he made to himself, years ago back when Dani was a 13 year old Tasmanian devil, whirring about his club, teeth bared, and he watched her with what had been the beginnings of what felt like hope. And now here he is, and here she is, and he's reconsidering those rules he made about what's an appropriate age to make his claim, and what isn't.
Dani, basically, is not walking like Dani.
Ryodan decides to wait it out, to see what's happening. He's become quite the king at waiting, these aeons he's been alive. And if the past few years have made the waiting harder. He's a patient man.
He's more concerned with holding off the beast inside of him, the one who can scent, even from floors away, that something, someone that belonged to HIM, that belonged to him and him alone and should have, would have been marked exclusively by him - inside and out - when the time was right, smells like something else.
Smells fae.
He only realizes this as he feels the sword being shoved, slow and hard, into his stomach.
As he falls to his knees, he looks around and sees the rest of his men are bleeding out as well. Sees that behind the teen girl, with his blood on her hands, flank two Unseelie Princes. Pestilence and Famine. If Ryodan were a different man, he'd appreciate the poetry of that. Instead, he sees that the princes look better sated, better sexually satisfied, just better than they have ever looked. And Ryodan knows why. And Ryodan, dying Ryodan, doesn't even have to look at Lor to know how much they fucked up.
Doesn't have to look at Dani in the eye. Almost doesn't want to, because what looks back is wild and terrified and so, so, so hungry. What looks back in her eyes is what looks at him in the mirror some nights. Ryodan has no issues with his inner monster, never will. But right now the thing looking back in Dani's eyes is not just wild and hungry. It's screaming HELP ME, HELP ME, PLEASE PLEASE HELP ME.
So while Ryodan lays there, bleeding out below the sword of the no-longer-virginal Dani, for once he doesn't yell. Or accuse, or blame, or hold a grudge.
Instead, he carefully, gently, palms the trembling girl's cheek, and says to her,
"I'm sorry. This is my fault, Dani. I'll make this right, I swear."
With that, he dies, and Dani is too cold, too hot, too everything to realize that the tears she's weeping right now actually aren't blood.
And later, days later, when Ryodan comes back, and goes hunting her - finds her moments before she's about to stab herself with her own sword to end the anguish and pain - not even from the sex, but from being used, being a slave to someone else - he doesn't even let her apologize.
Just grabs her in his arms and tosses her sword to Lor. He doesn't even wait for Lor to kill them. Ryodan doesn't do vengeance. Doesn't really care to. He's not an animal, he's a machine. Instead, he freeze frames her to a room in Chester's Dani has never seen before. A room with nothing but candles and a bed.
And then. Then. Then, Ryodan does ... things. Lots of things, things like the UPs did and had been doing, and would never have stopped had Ryodan not put an end to it. (Because amidst the chiming and the fucking, a small part of Dani realized that for whatever reason, her nature meant that she was more satisfying to the UPs than any other woman they had ever had. Sidn't die easily, either, and that meant that she was going to be subjected to this, nonstop, forever.) But the freezing burn Dani had felt now becomes warm flames, insatiable but quenching. All the things the UPs had done to her, Ryodan now does. He and Dani now do together. And as Dani comes back to herself, she realizes two things:
1) That she now understands why Mac would never tell her about her time with Barrons when she was Pri-Ya
2) That she's not sure, will never be sure, who she hates more, Ryodan, or herself.
They're in that room for a very, very long time. And when Dani finally comes out? Well, she doesn't recognize herself anymore, not one bit.
