Fever 5 - Shadowfever (10 page)

He staggers for a moment, draws back, and stares down at me.
My eyes are wild. I feel something inside me that terrifies me, and I just hope I can hang on to the edge of this cliff I’m on. I make a sound of impatience, wet my lips, and shove at him. “More,” I demand.
When he kisses me again, the last part of me that could stand myself dies.

It took me a bloody fucking month to get back.
I died three times.
It was worse than the 1800s when I had to book passage on a steamer to cross the bloody

ocean.
Fragments of Fae reality everywhere, took down every plane I took up. I consider the possibility that, by the time I return, he will have caught her, cut my brand

off her skull, and made her impossible to track.
Then I begin to feel her.
She is alive. She still wears my mark.
But what I sense is incongruent with her situation. I expect grief. The woman killed me

and, in humans, familiarity breeds a certain emotional bond.
But lust? On the heels of murdering me, who does she lust for?
I entertain myself with thoughts of searing my brand from her skull.
When I finally arrive at the bookstore, what do I see in the alley behind it? The woman that summoned me to save her, then stabbed me in the back at the first

No, let us be perfectly precise: She’s grinding herself against him and shoving her tongue halfway down his throat.
My monster rattles its cage.
Violently.

No right, no wrong. Just distraction. “Ignore her,” Darroc growls against my mouth. “Mac, it’s me! Dani. Hey, who the feck you kissing?”
I feel her zinging from side to side behind me, stirring my hair with the breeze she

She’s seen him twice before and would recognize him. The last thing I need is her carrying news back to the abbey:
Mac’s teamed up with the Lord Master, just like her sister! Just like Ro said! Feckin’ traitor—must run in the feckin’ blood!

Rowena would exploit it ruthlessly, send every
sidhe
-seer she has to get in my way and try to take me down. The narrow-minded bitch would put more effort into hunting me than she’d ever spent hunting Fae.

A sudden gust ruffles my shirt, and my hair flies straight up in the air.
“That ain’t Barrons!” Dani snaps indignantly.
The name goes through me like a knife. No, it
ain’t
Barrons and, unless I’m convincing,

it never will be again.
“It ain’t V’lane, neither!” Anger mixes with bafflement in her voice. “Mac, what’cha
doing? Where the feck you been? I been looking all over for you. Been a month. Ma
aac
!” she
wails the last part plaintively. “I got scoop! Pay attention to me!”
“Shall I get rid of her?” Darroc murmurs.
“She’s a little tough to shake,” I murmur back. “Give me a minute.”
I step back, smiling up at him. No one can accuse the Fae of lacking in the lust
department. It blazes in his not-quite-human eyes. Banked in that heat, I see surprise he tries but
fails to mask. I suspect my sister was a little more … refined than I am.
“I’ll be right back,” I promise, and turn slowly, buying time to brace myself for dealing
with Dani. I’m going to have to hurt her to get rid of her.
Her face is bright, eager. Her unruly mass of auburn curls is tamed beneath a black bike
helmet, lights ablaze. She has on a long black leather coat and high-top black sneakers.
Somewhere under that coat is the Sword of Light, unless Darroc sensed it and took it, too. If it’s
still there, I wonder if I could draw it swiftly enough to impale myself before she managed to
stop me.
I have goals. I focus on them. No time to indulge my guilty conscience and even less
point. When I’m done with what I plan to do, everything that happens in this alley tonight will never have taken place, so it doesn’t matter that I hurt
this
Dani, because she won’t have to live
through it in the future I create.
The enormity of freedom that grants me makes me suddenly breathless. Nothing I do
from this moment forth will ever come back to bite me in the ass. I’m in a penalty-free zone. I
have been since the moment I decided to remake it all.
I study Dani with strange detachment, wondering how much I should change for her. I
could keep her mother from being killed. Give her a life that would never harden her, that would
let her be open, soft. Let her have fun like Alina and me, play on a beach, not be out in the streets
hunting and killing monsters by the tender age of … however old she was when Rowena turned
her into a weapon. Eight? Ten?
Now that she has my attention, she beams, and when Dani beams her whole face lights
up. She bounces from foot to foot, burning off excited energy. “Where you been, Mac? I missed
you!
Dude
—I mean,
man
,” she corrects hastily, with a gamine grin, before I can make good on a
threat I made in what feels like another lifetime that I would call her by her full name if she ever
“duded” me again. “You ain’t never gonna believe what’s been going on! I invented
Shade-Busters, and the whole abbey’s been using ’em—even though they ain’t saying nothing
about how brilliant I am, like I musta accidentally stumbled onto it or something, when those
stupid
sidhe
-sheep never woulda in a gazillion years,” she mutters sourly. But then she brightens
again. “And you’re never gonna believe it—even I can’t hardly—but I kicked a Hunter’s ass and
killed the fecker!” She frowns and looks a little irritated. “Well, maybe Jayne helped some, but
I’m
the one that killed it. And, feckin’ A, you ain’t never gonna guess this one
—dude!
” She
begins bouncing from foot to foot so quickly and agitatedly that she becomes a black leather
smudge in the night. “The feckin’
Sinsar Dubh
came to the abbey and it—”
Abruptly, she’s no longer bouncing but standing still, looking at me, mouth hanging
open, but nothing’s coming out.
She stares past me,
at
me, then past me again. Her lips tighten and her eyes narrow. Her
hand flashes inside her coat.
I can tell by the look on her face that it encounters emptiness where her sword should be.
But she doesn’t back up, not Dani. She stands her ground. If I had anything left inside me, I’d
smile. Thirteen and she’s got the heart of a lion.
“Something going on here I ain’t getting, Mac?” she says tightly. “I’m standing here, see,
trying to think of a reason, any ol’ reason at all, you might be kissing that fecker, but I ain’t
finding none.” She glares at me. “Thinking this is a little worse than me watching porn. Dude.” Oh, yes, she’s upset. She just unapologetically “duded” me. I steel myself. “Lot going on
here you ain’t getting,” I say coolly.
She searches my face, wondering if I’m playing double agent or something, undercover
with the enemy. I need to convince her, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I’m not. I need her to
go away and stay away. I can’t afford a superspeedy supersleuth interfering with my plans. I also don’t want her around long enough for Darroc to realize she could cause serious
problems for us if she felt like it. Penalty-free zone or not, there’s no reality in which I could kill
Dani or watch her be killed by anyone else. Family isn’t always born; sometimes it’s found. She said the Book was at the abbey. I need to know when. Until I discover how Darroc
plans to merge with the
Sinsar Dubh
and am certain I can do it myself, I’m not getting him
anywhere near it. I’m going to play the same game with Darroc that I played with V’lane and
Barrons—only now for a very different reason—called “Dodge the Dark Book.” “Like what, Mac?” She props her fists at her waist. She’s so upset she’s vibrating, shivering so fast that her edges are getting blurry. “Prick tore down the walls, killed billions, wiped out Dublin, had you gang-raped
—I’m
the one that saved you, ’member? And now you’re sucking on”—she grimaces and shudders—“the feckin’ tongue of an Unseelie-eater! What the
feck?”
I ignore all of it. “When was the Book at the abbey?” I don’t ask if people were hurt. The
woman who is willing to ally herself with Darroc doesn’t care. Besides, I won’t let it happen in
my new and improved version of the future.
“Gonna try this again, Mac. What the feck?” she fires.
I fire back, “Gonna try this again, Dani. When?”
She stares a long moment, then her jaw pokes out stubbornly and she crosses her skinny
arms over her chest. She glares at Darroc, then back at me. “You
Pri-ya
or something again,
Mac? Only without the being-naked-and-horny-all-the-time part? What’d he do to you?” “Answer the question, Dani.”
She bristles. “Barrons know what’s going on? Think he needs to. Where’s Barrons?” “Dead,” I say flatly.
Her slender body jerks and she stops vibrating. She had a major crush on Barrons. “No,
he ain’t,” she protests. “Whatever he is ain’t killable. Least not easy.”
“Wasn’t easy,” I say. It took two of the people he trusted most in the world, a spear in the
back, a gutting, and a slit throat. I wouldn’t call that easy.
She stares at me hard, searching my gaze.
I focus on dripping scorn.
She gets it and stiffens. “What happened?”
Darroc moves in behind me and slips his arms around my waist. I lean back into him. “MacKayla killed him,” he says bluntly. “Now answer her question. When was the Book
at the abbey? Is it still there?”
Dani sucks in a breath. She’s vibrating again. She won’t look at Darroc, only me. “This
ain’t funny, Mac.”
I agree. It’s not. It’s hell. But it’s necessary. “He had it coming,” I lie coldly. “He
betrayed me.”
She puffs up, fists at her waist. “Barrons ain’t the betraying kind. He never betrayed you!
He wouldn’t do that!”
“Oh, grow up and pull your head out! You didn’t know shit about Barrons! You’re not
old enough to know shit about
anything
!”
She goes still, brilliant green eyes narrowing. “I left the abbey, Mac,” she says finally.
She gives a hollow laugh. “Think I kinda burned my bridges, ya know?” She searches my face.
And I feel another blade in my heart. She burned them because of me. Because she believed that
I was out there somewhere and we had each other.
I console myself with the thought that at least she won’t be rushing back to Rowena to
tell her I’m sleeping with the enemy and I won’t have a pack of rabid
sidhe
-seers on my tail. “Thought we were friends, Mac.”
I see in her eyes that all I have to do is say, “We are,” and she’ll find some way to deal
with what she’s looking at right now. How dare she put so much faith in me? I never asked for it,
never deserved it.
“You thought wrong. Now answer the question.” I’m the only one who never treated her
like a child. She hates being called “kid” more than anything. “
Kid,” I
say. “Then get the hell out
of here. Take your toys and go play somewhere else.”
Her brows climb her forehead and her mouth pulls down. “
What
did you just say?” “I said,
kid
, answer my question and go away! We’re a little busy here, can’t you see?” She’s bouncing from foot to foot again, a smudge of darkness in the dark. “Feckin’
grown-ups,” she bites out through clenched teeth. “All the feckin’ same. Feckin’ glad I feckin’
left the feckin’ abbey.
You can just go to hell!
” She shouts the last words, but they catch a little
as they come out, like they get tangled up on a sob she’s forcing back down.
I don’t even see the blur of black move away. There’s a burst of light from her MacHalo
as she flashes into motion like the
Enterprise
entering warp speed, then an empty alley. I’m startled to realize that I think she’s just the tiniest bit faster. Is she eating Unseelie?
I’m going to kick her ass all over Dublin if she’s eating Unseelie.
“Why didn’t you stop her, MacKayla? You could have exploited her trust in you to get
information about the Book.”
I shrug. “Kid always got on my nerves. Let’s go hunt ourselves a
sidhe
-seer. If we can’t
find one, Jayne’s men are bound to know what’s going on.”
I turn away from Barrons Books and Baubles toward what used to be the biggest Dark
Zone in Dublin. It’s a wasteland now, not a single Shade left. When Darroc brought the walls
crashing down on Halloween and Dublin went dark, the amorphous vampires escaped their
prison of light and slithered on to greener pastures.
Hurting Dani took all my energy. I’m in no mood to walk past BB&B. I’d have to
confront the obvious—that, like the man, the store is big, silent, and dead.
If I walk past it, I’ll have to force myself not to stare hungrily at it. Have to ignore that, in
this reality, I’ll never enter those doors again.
He’s gone. He’s really, truly gone.
My bookstore has been lost to me as completely and irrevocably as if the Dark Zone had
finally swallowed it up.
I’ll never own it. I’ll never open those diamond-paned cherry doors for business again. I’ll never hear my cash register’s tiny bell ring or curl up with a cup of cocoa and a book,
warmed by a cozy gas fire and the promise of Jericho Barrons’ eventual return. I’ll never banter
with him, practice Voice, or be tested against pages of the
Sinsar Dubh
. I’ll never steal hungry
glances when I think he’s not looking at me, or hear him laugh, or climb the back stairs to my
bedroom that’s sometimes on the fourth floor and other times on the fifth, where I might lie
awake and practice things to say to him, only to end up discarding them all because Barrons
doesn’t care about words.
Only actions.
I’ll never drive his cars. I’ll never know his secrets.
Darroc takes my arm. “This way.” He turns me around. “Temple Bar.” I feel his eyes on me as he guides me back toward the bookstore.
I stop and look up at him. “I thought there might be things you needed from the house on
LaRuhe,” I say casually. I
really
don’t want to walk past BB&B. “I thought we should rally your
troops. We’ve been gone a long time.”
“There are many places I keep supplies, and my army is always near.” He makes a slicing
gesture in the air and murmurs a few words in a language I don’t understand.
The night is suddenly twenty degrees cooler. I don’t have to look behind me to know the
Unseelie Princes are there, in addition to countless other Unseelie. The night is suddenly thick
with dark Fae. Even with my “volume” muted, there are so many, so close to me, that I feel them
in the pit of my stomach. Does he keep a contingent of them a mere sift away at all times? Have the princes been hovering all this time, listening for his call, a half dimension beyond my
awareness?
I’ll need to remember that.
“I am
not
walking around Dublin with the princes at my back.”
“I said I will not let them harm you, MacKayla, and I meant it.”
“I want my spear back. Give it to me now.”
“I cannot permit that. I saw what you did to Mallucé with it.”
“I said I won’t harm you, Darroc, and I meant it,” I mock. “See how that feels? Little
hard to swallow, isn’t it? You insist that I trust you, but you won’t trust me.”
“I cannot take the risk.”
“Wrong answer.” Should I force the issue and try to take the spear? If I succeed, will he
trust me less? Or respect me more?
When I seek the bottomless lake in my head, I don’t bother closing my eyes to do it. I just
let them go a little out of focus. I need power, strength, and I know where to find both. With
almost no effort at all, I’m standing on a black-pebbled beach. It has always been there for me. It
always will be.
Distantly, I hear Darroc speaking to the princes. I shiver. I can’t bear the thought of them
behind me.
Deep in its cavernous depths, the black water churns and begins to bubble. Silvery runes like the ones I encircled myself with on the cliff’s edge break the surface,
but the water keeps boiling, and I know it’s not yet done. There’s something more … if I want it.
I do. After a few moments, it pushes up a handful of crimson runes that pulse on the inky water
like slender deformed hearts. The bubbling stops. The surface is once again as smooth as black
glass.
I bend and scoop them up. Dripping blood, they flutter in my fists.
Distantly, I hear the Unseelie Princes begin to chime, but not softly. It’s the sound of
broken, jagged crystal scraping against metal.
I don’t turn to look at them. I know all I need to know: Whatever gift I’ve been given,
they don’t like it.
My gaze refocuses.
Darroc looks at me, then down at my hands, and goes still. “What are you doing with
those? What were you doing in the Silvers before I found you? Did you enter the White Mansion