Fever 3 - Faefever (31 page)

Rape was horrific enough. There was no way I was going to die like Mallucé afterwards.

When the tip was a mere quarter inch from my skin, I tried to fling the spear away, hoping I could, and they’d just forget about it. My release mechanism worked as my override had not—a thing that would make sense to me one day—and the spear clattered across the floor, through the door into the chapel. It crashed into the base of the pedestal of holy water with such impact that water sloshed over the side, and hissed and steamed when it hit the spear.

The princes adopted static form, became males so unutterably beautiful that looking at them was a moment of such exquisite perfection that it hurt my soul, and I gibbered wordlessly. They were naked except for glistening black torques that writhed like liquid darkness around their necks. Their supple, golden-skinned bodies were tattooed in brilliant, complicated patterns that rushed over their skin, kaleidoscopic storm clouds across a gilded sky. Lightning flashed in their glittering eyes.

Deep within me, I felt answering thunder.

I couldn’t look at them. They were too much. I turned away but they were there again, forcing me to gaze upon their frightening, fantastic faces. My eyes widened, widened still.

I wept tears of blood that scaled my cheeks. I scrubbed at them with my fingers, and they came away seared, crimson.

Then the princes’ mouths were on my fingertips, with tongues of soothing coolness, and fangs of licking ice, and a beast far more primitive than Savage Mac, and far beyond my control, yawned and stretched her arms above her head, and awakened with a delicious sense of anticipation.

This was what she’d been born for. What she’d been waiting for all this time. Here. Now. Them.

Sex that was worth dying for.

I kicked off my boots. They peeled away my jeans and underwear, and turned me between them, kissing, tasting, licking, taking, feeding from the passion they fed in me, slamming it back at me, taking it, returning it again, and with each transfer between us it grew into something bigger than me, bigger than them, into a beast of its own.

With some distant part of my mind I recognized the horror of what was happening to me. I tasted on their perfect lips the emptiness within them, and understood that beneath the flawless, velvety, golden skin, far beneath the waves of Eros I was drowning in . . . there was nothing but . . . an ocean of . . . me.

I glimpsed, even as I surrendered to it, the true nature of the Unseelie princes. They are voids of what they are not, and crave most: passion, desire, the fire of life, the capacity to feel.

Some essential component in them had been lost long ago, or perhaps frozen out of them by seven hundred thousand years of icy incarceration, or perhaps they’d come into being via the king’s imperfect Song, equally imperfect and empty. Whatever the cause, the most intensely they could feel was through sex. They were maestros of lust, eternally denied music in their realm, surrounded by others also void, without a human’s body to play the melody upon.

But with a human, so long as
she
felt, so did they, and they would gorge on her song, until the concert hall fell silent, the passion turned to ash, and she died, her body gone as cold as that place inside them where life could never be fully realized.

Empty, they would find another woman to play, and gorge again, giving her sex at its most elemental, at its purest, and most potent, channeling all that it was to be alive out of her, back into her, and out again. My orgasms were not petit mal but repeated births, a re-creation of myself every time I came. It was sex that was life that was blood that was God that filled every empty orifice I had, inside and out.

And it was killing me.

And I knew it.

And I had to have more.

We rolled and slid across the cool marble floor of the anteroom, my three dark princes and I, seeking purchase on the carpeted stairs, one beneath me, one behind, one inside my mouth.

They moved deep in me, filling me with sensations as kaleidoscopic as their tattooed bodies. I narrowed to a tiny blossom, exploded outward, and fragmented again and again into bits of shattered woman. They tasted of nectar, smelled of dark, drugging spices; their bodies were hard and sculpted and perfect, and if every now and then the ice of their black torques and pink tongues and white teeth were sharp nips of frostbite at my skin, it was a small price to pay for what they did inside me.

I felt my mind slipping; moments of my life flashed before my eyes, before dropping away to some forsaken place. I cried out, begging to be freed, but my mouth shaped only words of instruction, and demand: more, harder, faster,
there.

My last month in Dublin, with all its hopes and worries and fears, flashed through my mind—and was forgotten. There went the day I’d spent in Faery with Alina, followed by all memory of Mallucé and Christian and the O’Bannions and Fiona and Barrons, and meeting Rowena in the bar, that first night in Ireland. My summer was flying backward past my eyes, falling away. Was there a fourth male kissing me now? Tasting me? Why couldn’t I see him? Who was he?

I pricked myself on the day of Alina’s death, then it was gone, too, and that day hadn’t happened, and my life continued to unfurl backward.

I lost my college years to Pestilence’s kisses. I bade farewell to high school with Famine spurting sweetly in my mouth. I lost my childhood in three Fae Princes’ arms. If there was a fourth, I never saw his face. Only felt the strangeness of another, who wasn’t quite the same.

And then I’d never been born.

I was only now.

This moment. This orgasm. This hunger. This endless emptiness. This mindless need.

I was aware that others had entered the anteroom but I could not see beyond my dark princes. Didn’t care. More was good.

When my princes drew away from me, my body grew so cold I thought I would die. I writhed on the floor, begging for more.

Someone reached for me.

I grasped with both hands for the succor of touch, tossed a tangle of hair from my eyes, and looked up, straight into the face of the Lord Master.

“I think she’ll obey me now,” he murmured.

Obey him?

I’d die for him.

A Note to the Reader

I foreshadowed this moment. And I’ve foreshadowed what’s yet to come, but for those of you with flashlights running low on batteries, who feel the Shades closing in, and fear there’s no hope in sight, consider this:

In
Bloodfever
Mac says, “Although it may not seem like it, this isn’t a story about darkness. It’s about light. Khalil Gibran says
Your joy can fill you only as deeply as your sorrow has carved you
. If you’ve never tasted bitterness, sweet is just another pleasant flavor on your tongue. One day I’m going to hold a lot of joy.”

And she will. That was my promise in her words.

For the latest news on Mac, future release dates, and the like, drop by
www.karenmoning.com
or
www.sidhe-seersinc.com
.

The latter is an interactive Web site, with hidden links, so you might have to do a little searching but it’s well worth it. My Web designers are wonderfully talented, with a great sense of fun. You’ll find a game to play,
Mac vs. the Shades,
Fever-world music downloads, Mac’s complete (until the next
Fever
installment) glossary, the Wall, the Map Room, and much, much more.

At
www.karenmoning.com
you’ll find a fantastic message board community where I sometimes drop in.

Stay to the lights, Karen

Glossary from Mac’s Journal

*AMULET, THE
: Unseelie or Dark Hallow created by the Unseelie King for his concubine. Fashioned of gold, silver, sapphires, and onyx, the gilt “cage” of the amulet houses an enormous clear stone of unknown composition. A person of epic will can use it to impact and reshape reality. The list of past owners is legendary, including Merlin, Boudica, Joan of Arc, Charlemagne, Napoleon. Last purchased by a Welshman for eight figures at an illegal auction, it was all too briefly in my hands and is currently in the possession of the Lord Master. It requires some kind of tithe or binding to use it. I had the will; I couldn’t figure out the way.

BARRONS, JERICHO
: I haven’t the faintest fecking clue. He keeps saving my life. I suppose that’s something.

Addendum to original entry:
He keeps a Sifting Silver in his study at the bookstore and when he walks through it, the monsters retreat from him just like the Shades. I saw him carry the body of a woman out of it. She’d been killed, brutally. By him? Or by the things in the mirror? He is at least several hundred years old, and possibly,
probably,
way older than that. I made him hold the spear to see if he was Unseelie, and he did, but I found out later from V’lane that the Unseelie King can touch
all
the Hallows (as can the Seelie Queen) and, although I can’t fathom why the Unseelie King wouldn’t be able to touch his own Book, maybe that’s exactly why Barrons thought he
would
be able to touch it. Maybe it evolved into something more powerful than it began as. Also, I can’t rule out that he might be some kind of Seelie/Unseelie hybrid. Do the Fae have sex and reproduce? Sometimes . . . I think he’s human . . . gone
very
wrong. Other times I think he’s nothing this world has ever seen. He’s definitely not a
sidhe
-seer but he sees the Fae as plain as day, just like me. He knows Druidry, sorcery, black arts, is superstrong and fast, and has heightened senses. What did Ryodan mean by his comment about the Alpha & Omega? I’ve
got
to track that man down!

*CAULDRON, THE
: Seelie or Light Hallow from which all Seelie eventually drink, to divest memory that has become burdensome. According to Barrons, immortality has a price: eventual madness. When the Fae feel it approaching, they drink from the cauldron and are “reborn” with no memory of a prior existence. The Fae have a record-keeper that documents each Fae’s many incarnations, but the exact location of this scribe is known to a select few and the whereabouts of the records to none but him. Is that what’s wrong with the Unseelie—they don’t have a cauldron to drink from?

CRUCE
: A Fae. Unknown if Seelie or Unseelie. Many of his relics are floating around out there. He cursed the Sifting Silvers. Before they were cursed, the Fae used them freely to travel through dimensions. The curse somehow corrupted the interdimensional channels and now not even the Fae will enter them. Unknown what the curse was. Unknown what damage it caused or what the risk in the Silvers is. Whatever it is, Barrons apparently doesn’t fear it. I tried to get into the Silver in his study. I can’t figure out how to open it.

CUFF OF CRUCE
: A gold and silver arm cuff set with blood-red stones; an ancient Fae relic that supposedly permits the human wearing it “a shield of sorts against many Unseelie and other . . . unsavory things” (this according to a death-by-sex Fae—like you can actually trust one).

DANI
: A young
sidhe
-seer in her early teens whose talent is superhuman speed. She has to her credit—as she will proudly crow from the rooftops given the slightest opportunity—forty-seven Fae kills at the time of this writing. I’m sure she’ll have more by tomorrow. Her mother was killed by a Fae. We are sisters in vengeance. She works for Rowena and is employed at Post Haste, Inc.

Addendum to original entry:
Her kills now number nearly two hundred! The kid has no fear.

DARK ZONE
: An area that has been taken over by the Shades. During the day it looks like your everyday abandoned, run-down neighborhood. Once night falls, it’s a death trap.

DEATH-BY-SEX FAE
: (e.g., V’lane) A Fae that is so sexually “potent” a human dies from intercourse with it unless the Fae protects the human from the full impact of its deadly eroticism.

Addendum to original entry:
V’lane made himself feel like nothing more than an incredibly sexy man when he touched me. They
can
mute their lethality if they so choose.

Addendum to original entry:
This caste of Fae springs only from royal lines. They can do three things: protect the human completely and give them the most incredible sex of their life, protect them from dying and turn them
Pri-ya,
or kill them with sex.

They can sift space.

DOLMEN
: A single-chamber megalithic tomb constructed of three or more upright stones supporting a large, flat horizontal capstone. Dolmens are common in Ireland, especially around the Burren and Connemara. The Lord Master used a dolmen in a ritual of dark magic to open a doorway between realms and bring Unseelie through.

DRUID
: In pre-Christian Celtic society, a Druid presided over divine worship, legislative and judicial matters, philosophy, and education of elite youth to their order. Druids were believed to be privy to the secrets of the gods, including issues pertaining to the manipulation of physical matter, space, and even time. The old Irish “Drui” means magician, wizard, diviner.
(Irish Myths and Legends)

Addendum to original entry:
I saw both Jericho Barrons and the Lord Master use the Druid power of Voice, a way of speaking with many voices that cannot be disobeyed. Significance?

Addendum:
Christian MacKeltar descends from a long, ancient bloodline of Druids.

FAE
: (fay) See also Tuatha Dé Danaan. Divided into two courts, the Seelie or Light Court, and the Unseelie or Dark Court. Both courts have different castes of Fae, with the four Royal Houses occupying the highest caste of each. The Seelie Queen and her chosen consort rule the Light Court. The Unseelie King and his current concubine govern the Dark.

FIONA
: The woman who ran Barrons Books and Baubles before I took over. She was wildly in love with Barrons and tried to kill me by turning out all the lights one night and propping a window open to let the Shades in. Barrons fired her for it—gee, now that I think about it, getting fired for trying to kill me sure feels like underkill. She’s hooked up with Derek O’Bannion, and he’s got her eating Unseelie. I have a bad feeling that she and I aren’t done with each other.

FOUR STONES, THE
: Translucent blue-black stones covered with raised runelike lettering. The key to deciphering the ancient language and breaking the code of the
Sinsar Dubh
is hidden in these four mystical stones. An individual stone can be used to shed light on a small portion of the text, but only if the four are reassembled into one will the true text in its entirety be revealed.
(Irish Myths and Legends)

Addendum:
Other texts say it is the “true nature” of the
Sinsar Dubh
that will be revealed.

GLAMOUR
: Illusion cast by the Fae to camouflage their true appearance. The more powerful the Fae, the more difficult it is to penetrate its disguise. Average humans see only what the Fae want them to see, and are subtly repelled from bumping into or brushing against it by a small perimeter of spatial distortion that is part of the Fae glamour.

GRAY MAN
,
THE
: Monstrously ugly, leprous Unseelie that feeds by stealing beauty from human women. Threat assessment: can kill, but prefers to leave its victim hideously disfigured, and alive to suffer.

Addendum to original entry:
Allegedly the only one of its kind, Barrons and I killed it.

Addendum to original entry:
It could sift space.

GRIPPER
: Dainty, diaphanous Unseelie that is surprisingly beautiful. Grippers look like the modern media’s representation of fairies—delicate, shimmering, nude beauties, with a cloud of gossamer hair, and lovely features, only they’re nearly the size of a human. I named them Grippers because they “grip” us. They can step inside a human’s skin and take them over. Once they’ve slipped inside a person, I can no longer sense them. I could be standing right next to a Gripper inside a person, and not even know it. For a while, I was afraid Barrons might be one. But I made him hold the spear.

HALLOWS, THE
: Eight ancient relics of immense power fashioned by the Fae: four light and four dark. The Light or Seelie Hallows are the stone, the spear, the sword, and the cauldron. The Dark or Unseelie Hallows are the amulet, the box, the mirror, and the book (
Sinsar Dubh,
or Dark Book).
(A Definitive Guide to Artifacts, Authentic and Legendary)

Addendum to original entry:
I still don’t know anything about the stone or the box. Do they confer powers that could help me? Where are they? Correction to above definition, the mirror is actually the Silvers.
See
Sifting Silvers or Silvers. The Unseelie King made all the Dark Hallows. Who made the Light ones?

Addendum to original entry: See
the story of the Unseelie King and his mortal concubine, as V’lane told it to me. (p. 77 this journal.) The king created the Silvers for her to keep her ageless and give her realms to explore. He created the amulet so she could reshape reality. He gave her the box for her loneliness. What does it do? The
Sinsar Dubh
was an accident.

HAVEN, THE
: High council of
sidhe
-seers.

Addendum to original entry:
Once selected by popular vote, now chosen by the Grand Mistress for their loyalty to her and the cause. They were the only ones besides Rowena who knew what was being kept beneath the abbey. Some of them died and/or disappeared when the Book escaped twenty-some years ago. How did it happen? I’m twenty-two.
Is it possible my mother was one of them?!!!

IYCGM:
Barrons gave me a cell phone with this number programmed in. It stands for If You Can’t Get Me. The mysterious Ryodan answers when I call.

IYD
: Another of Barrons’ preprogrammed numbers; stands for If You’re Dying.

LORD MASTER
: My sister’s betrayer and murderer! Fae but not Fae, leader of the Unseelie army, after the
Sinsar Dubh
. He was using Alina to hunt it like Barrons is using me to hunt OOPs.

Addendum to original entry:
He offered me a trade: Alina back for the Book. I think he really could do it.

MACKELTAR, CHRISTIAN
: Employed in the ancient languages department of Trinity. He knows what I am and knew my sister! Have no idea what his place in all this is, nor do I know his motives. Will find out more soon.

Addendum to original entry:
Christian comes from a clan that once served as high Druids to the Fae and have been upholding the human part of the Fae/Man Compact for thousands of years, performing rituals and paying tithes. He knew Alina only in passing. She’d come to ask him to translate a piece of text from the
Sinsar Dubh
.

MALLUCÉ
: Born John Johnstone, Jr
.
On the heels of his parents’ mysterious death, he inherited hundreds of millions of dollars, disappeared for a time, and resurfaced as the newly undead vampire Mallucé. Over the next decade, he amassed a worldwide cult following, and was recruited by the Lord Master for his money and connections. Pale, blond, citron-eyed, the vampire favors steampunk and Victorian Goth.

MANY- MOUTHED THING, THE
: Repulsive Unseelie with myriad leechlike mouths, dozens of eyes, and overdeveloped sex organs. Caste of Unseelie: unknown at this time. Threat assessment: unknown at this time but suspect kills in a manner I’d rather not think about.

Addendum to original entry:
Is still out there. I want this one dead.

Addendum to original entry:
Dani bagged the bastard!

Could he sift space? Which ones can and can’t?

NULL
: A
sidhe
-seer with the power to freeze a Fae with the touch of his or her hands (e.g., me). While frozen, it is completely powerless. The higher and more powerful the caste of Fae, the shorter the length of time it stays frozen.

O’BANNION, DEREK
: Rocky’s brother and the Lord Master’s new recruit. He wants his brother’s spear back and he wants to kill me for killing his brother. I should have let him walk into the Dark Zone that day.

Addendum to original entry:
He’s eating Unseelie and has hooked up with Fiona, who’s also eating it!

O’BANNION, ROCKY
: Ex-boxer turned Irish mobster, and religious fanatic. He had the Spear of Destiny
*
in a collection hidden deep underground. Barrons and I broke in one night and stole it. His death was the first human blood on my hands. The night we robbed him, Barrons turned out all the exterior lights around the bookstore. When O’Bannion came after me with fifteen of his henchmen, the Shades devoured them right outside my bedroom window. I knew Barrons was going to do something. And if he’d asked me to choose between them or me, I’d have
helped
him turn the lights out. You never know what you’ll be willing to do to survive until you get backed into a corner and see what explodes out of you.

OOP
: Acronym for Object of Power, a Fae relic imbued with mystical properties. Some are Hallows, some aren’t.

OOP DETECTOR
: Me. A
sidhe
-seer with the special ability to sense OOPs. Alina was one, too, which is why the Lord Master used her.

Addendum to original entry:
Very rare. Certain bloodlines were bred for this trait. Rowena’s
sidhe
-seers say they’ve all died out.

ORB OF D’JAI
: No clue, but Barrons has it. He says it’s an OOP. I couldn’t sense it when I held it, but I couldn’t sense anything at that particular moment. Where did he get it and where did he put it? Is it in his mysterious vault? What does it do? How does he get into his vault, anyway? Where is the access to the three floors beneath his garage? Is there a tunnel that connects buildings? Must search.