Fever 4 - DreamFever (10 page)

  What few newspapers were left on the stands were dated October 31, the last day
Dublin had functioned. The city had fallen that night and never gotten back up.

  Storefronts were bashed in, windows broken out. There was glass everywhere, cars
abandoned, some on their sides, others burned.

  The worst part of it was the dried husks--I quit counting after a while--blowing
down the streets, tumbleweeds of human remains, that part of us that Shades find
indigestible.

  I would have wept, but I didn't seem to have tears left in my body. I gave the
bookstore wide berth. I couldn't bear to see if it had been destroyed. I preferred to keep
my second-to-last image of it in mind, the way it had looked the afternoon of
Halloween: Everything in its place, waiting for me to return, push open the door, pick
up the mail, straighten the magazines people were always riffling through, start a fire,
curl up on the chesterfield with a good book, and wait for that first customer of the day.

  Every streetlamp I passed had been smashed, many ripped right out of their concrete
bases, twisted and flung, as if by raging giants. Shades have no physical form, so I
assumed some other caste of Unseelie must have done this to ensure that, if we
somehow managed to get our grids back up and running, there'd be no lamps to route
the power to.

  Almost as bad as the husks--I cringed every time I stepped on one and it crunched
beneath my feet--were the piles of clothing, cell phones, jewelry, dental devices,
implants, and wallets. Each was a sacred burial mound in my mind.

  Still, it didn't keep me from picking up a few things.

   An open switchblade caught the cold morning light, and my attention. I suspected its
owner had been trying to stab the unstabbable when the Shade devoured him. "I'll put it
to good use," I told the pile of black leather topped by a necklace of metal skulls. "I
promise." I retracted the blade and slid it into my boot.

   My next scavenged prize was a chunk of living Unseelie flesh I found flopping in the
street. I had no idea where it had come from, how or why, but it sure might come in
handy. Ingesting Fae flesh not only made the average human able to see the Fae--
including the innately invisible Shades--as well as any sidhe-seer, it also bestowed
superstrength and heightened senses, the ability to dabble in the black arts, and
miraculous healing powers.

   I used my new switchblade to dice it, then stopped in a ransacked drugstore, where I
pilfered baby-food jars, washed them out, and presto--I had a new stash of Unseelie
sushi, if I needed it. Assuming, of course, I got into a situation dire enough that I would
A: be willing to sacrifice my sidhe-seer talents, which seemed to be growing by leaps
and bounds; B: let myself be vulnerable to my own spear again, which I fully intended
to have back by the end of the day, come hell or high water; and C: ever be willing to
put any part of anything Unseelie in my mouth again. I'd had more than my unwilling
fill.

   I shuddered. Interestingly, I seemed to have been cured of my burgeoning addiction
to eating Unseelie flesh. I eyed the baby-food jars and their squirming contents with
revulsion.

  Still, weapons are weapons, and all weapons are good weapons.

   A short time later, I was in a slightly dented Range Rover Sport. I'd swept the husks
from it, trying not to look too hard at the tiniest husk as I'd unbelted and gently placed
the car seat, along with a fluffy pink teddy bear and a shirt that said I  Daddy, beneath
a leafless oak tree.

   I headed for the abbey, mostly alongside the road because so much of it was clogged
with abandoned cars. I munched a couple of protein bars as I drove and paused
periodically at petrol stations and convenience stores, stocking the back of the Rover
with water, food, batteries, and, at one of my stops, plastic containers of gas I'd
discovered already pumped, much to my mixed emotions. I needed it and was grateful
for it. But there'd been no way to miss the pile of rugged work pants, hip implant, Irish
fisherman's sweater, and boots next to the three containers. Had a father come out, too
close to dusk, for gas to keep his family's generator running? Did they still wait
somewhere, cowering in the darkness?

   About an hour after I'd left the city, I saw the strangest thing. Initially, from a
distance, I mistook it for a very large, very low-flying bizarre plane. But as I drew

closer, I could see that it was an Unseelie Hunter and some other kind of Fae that I'd
never seen before locked in battle, beating air with their massive wings, tearing at each
other with teeth and talons.

  Were Unseelie fighting themselves, or was this a Seelie fighting an Unseelie? Were
the Hunters once again keepers of Fae law, as they'd been an eternity past?

  I didn't know, I didn't care. I just wanted to pass unnoticed beneath their radar.
Hunters hunt sidhe-seers. Was I giving off a betraying scent? It was too late to go back
and I needed to go forward, so I held my breath and muttered prayers to every deity I
could think of that the Fae were too engrossed in their fight to look down.

   One of the pagan gods must have heard me, because I passed beneath them without
incident, holding my breath and watching as the battle vanished to a pinpoint in my
rearview mirror. I sucked down air greedily and pretended my hands weren't shaking.
"My kingdom for a spear," I muttered.

  About thirty minutes from the abbey, I got another surprise: Dirt gave way to
wintered grass.

  For whatever reason, the Shades had stopped here.

   Perhaps it was the farthest they'd gotten and they were hunkered in a dark culvert or
had slithered beneath a fallen tree for the day, where they impatiently awaited the night
to resume eating their way toward the abbey. Perhaps the soil in this part of the country
didn't taste good, salted with so many centuries of sidhe-seers living on it. Perhaps
Rowena and her merry band had done something to halt their progress. Who knew? I
was just glad to see something besides dirt.

  The next surprise came so quickly, I had no chance to react.

  One moment I was driving parallel to a road so narrow that only a whopping-good
sport would call it two-lane, on a wintry Irish day, and the next I was--

  Beneath the triple canopy of a lush tropical rain forest, driving on the surface of a
dark, glassy swamp, throwing up a splash of foam in my wake, and I had no idea how it
had happened or, more important, why I wasn't sinking. I know cars. All kinds. They're
my passion. The Range Rover Sport has a curb weight of roughly 5,700 pounds. I
should have sunk like a stone. I looked out my window. Nothing but more water
beneath the eerily colored surface.

   I blinked. What had just happened? Giant trees surrounded me, sprouting things from
their trunks that looked like brilliant orchids mated to octopuses. Birds the size of my
Rover paddled around the trees, leathery wings folded on their backs. Periodically they
stabbed the water with their beaks, tossed back their heads, and swallowed. They had
very large, very sharp beaks.

  "V'lane?" I said incredulously. But this didn't stink of V'lane. V'lane did "seductive"
when he sifted me. Not "disturbing" and "potentially lethal," although those two
phrases certainly did spring to mind when he was around.

  Still, being sifted seemed to be the only possible explanation for how abruptly my
surroundings had shifted.

  A hummingbird glided by. It was the size of a small elephant. Its long, pointed beak
was proportionate. In my world--not that many people know it: They mistakenly "ooh"
and "ah" over the sweet, delicate little sugar-water drinkers--hummingbirds are
carnivores. They accept the sugar water we offer them only in order to fuel their hunt
for meat.

  I was meat.

  I jammed my foot down on the gas, skidding on the water, dodging trees, birds, and
vines. I didn't look behind me to see if anything was giving chase. I just drove.

  Abruptly, I was back in Ireland, a dozen feet from slamming into a tree.

  I pumped the brakes, skidded on dead grass, and stopped much too close to bark. I sat
for a moment, gasping.

  After seeing that freaky Fae sky battle, I'd thought I was ready for anything. I was
wrong.

  I got out, walked around to the back of the Range Rover, and stared at where I'd just
been.

  It took me about twenty seconds to figure out how to see it.

  If I narrowed my eyes and slanted a look very casually sideways, like I was peeking, I
could see the sliver of Fae reality--almost as if it were trying to hide, the better to
ambush me--spiking through our own.

   If human air was clear glass, Fae air was slightly thicker, slightly wavy, and slightly
off-color.

  I remembered Samhain night, watching from the belfry as Fae and human realms had
competed for space in a world with no walls.

  Apparently we'd lost a few of those battles.

   It infuriated me. It was one more danger I had to watch out for. Dark Zones were bad
enough. Now I had IFPs: Interdimensional Fairy Potholes screwing up my roads,
lurking around, looking all innocuous and benign, waiting to blow out the tire or break
the axle of the unwary traveler, stranding them in a no-man's-land with alternate laws of
physics, hostile life-forms, and no discernible rules of the road.

  I got back into my Rover and slammed the door. I resumed driving, this time
watching the terrain ahead much more closely.

  What other surprises might this day bring?

   I considered the shocks I'd already faced: Barrons doing ... well, that thing he'd done
in order to drag me back to reality; the discovery that I was immune to wards and the
deadly sexual allure of Fae Princes; Shades taking over half of Ireland; Fae sky battles;
and now IFPs.

    I'd never have believed the most disconcerting shock of my day was yet to come.
 

I   made one last stop about twenty miles from the abbey, where I got out and played
with my new gun, taught myself to load and fire it.

 It took me less time to get over my initial gee-what-if-I-drop-this-thing-and-blow-
my-own-head-off? than I expected.

  The gun felt good in my hands, solid and comforting, just like every weapon I've
ever picked up. I think it's somehow coded into my sidhe-seer DNA. We were born to
protect, to fight. The blood knows. I suspect our bloodlines have been manipulated for a
long time. Centuries, perhaps millennia.

   I resumed driving toward the abbey, passing through dozens of wards. Rowena
certainly was keeping her little flock busy, gadding about, etching protective runes and
whatnot. I wondered what else she was keeping them so busy with that they didn't have
time to consider mutinying, which, in my opinion, they should have done years ago.
Like, say, before they lost the Dark Book that this whole stupid war was about, because
somebody sure must have fallen asleep on her watch to let that happen.

    Oh, yes, I had a few bones to pick with the not-so-Grand Mistress.

   I parked my Rover in front of the stone fortress of the abbey, got out, locked it--they
were my supplies, and nobody was taking them--and marched to the door. I left my
pack and MacHalo in the car but brought my gun. I was rather surprised the old woman
wasn't waiting out front, arms crossed, glasses perched on her nose, magnifying the
intellect and ferocity in those sharp blue eyes, with a band of sidhe-seers gathered
behind her, denying me entrance. We've never been on the best of terms, and I had no
doubt that our relationship, if you could call it that, was worse now than it had been
before.

    Frankly, I didn't give a damn.

  The door was locked. I fired a quick burst of bullets at the handle with my favorite
new toy and kicked it open.

   The entry hall was empty. Could it be that no one was expecting me? I'd passed
through all those wards, setting them off. I frowned. Or had I set them off?

  If I could pass through wards now, was it possible I did it without tripping them?
That certainly could come in handy. Still, I'd just let loose a round of automatic gunfire.
Surely that had alerted someone.

  When the attack came, it blasted me from nowhere, hit me like a brick wall, and I
went sprawling on my ass for the third time that day. It was getting old. Something
yanked at my gun and pummeled me like a speed boxer.

  Then a face blurred into view and I gasped, and she gasped, then she stopped hitting
me and grabbed me and hugged me so tight I thought my spine was going to snap.

  "Mac!" Dani cried. "You're back!"

  I laughed and relaxed. I loved this kid. "Have I told you you're the Shit, Dani?"

  She rolled off me and bounded to her feet. "Nope. Never. I woulda remembered it.
But you can say it again, if you want. And you can tell everybody else, too. I wouldn't
mind a bit." Cat eyes gleamed in her gamine face.

  "You're the Shit, Dani." I got up and slung my gun back over my shoulder. We stood
and smiled for a moment, absorbed in being happy to see each other.

  Then we spoke at the same time:

  "You okay, Mac?"

  "What happened to you, Dani?"

  "You first." She looked me up and down admiringly. "Dude, you look awesome.
Love the coat. What you been doing? Weight training or something?"

  I blushed. Then I rolled my eyes at myself. Toting automatic weapons and still
blushing? I needed to get over that fast.

  "Dude!" she said reverently. "With Barrons? You been having sex this whole time?
S'that how he got you back from Nympho-land? I was so worried when you didn't
come back. Guess I shouldn't a been. I couldn't find you anywhere. Where'd he take
you? I been hunting all over Dublin for you every chance I could duck under Ro's radar.
Which wasn't often," she said sourly, then immediately brightened. "You gotta tell me
everything! Everything!"