Fever 5 - Shadowfever (14 page)

“Have I ever asked you where my parents are?” I counter with a question that it hurts my heart to ask, hurts my soul to even think, but I’m in an all-or-nothing mood. If I can get what I want tonight, I’m out of here. My pain and suffering will end. I can stop hating myself. By morning, I could be talking to Alina again, touching Barrons.
His gaze sharpens. “When you first saw that I was holding them captive, I thought you weak, ruled by maudlin attachment. Why have you not asked?”
I understand now why Barrons was always insisting I stop asking him questions and judge him by his actions alone. It’s so easy to lie. What’s even worse is how we cling to those lies. We beg for the illusion so we don’t have to face the truth, don’t have to feel alone.
I remember being seventeen, thinking I was head over heels in love, asking my date at the senior prom—tight-end hot-Rod McQueen—
Katie didn’t
really
see you kissing Brandi in the hall outside the bathroom, did she, Rod?
And when he said,
No
, I believed him—despite the smudge of lipstick on his chin that was too red to be mine and the way Brandi kept looking at us over her date’s shoulder. Two weeks into summer, no one was surprised when he was her boyfriend, not mine.
I stare into Darroc’s face and I see something in his eyes that elates me. He’s not kidding about making me his queen. He
does
want me. I don’t know why, perhaps because he imprinted on Alina and I’m the closest thing that remains. Perhaps because he and my sister discovered who they were together, and what they were capable of, and conjoined self-discovery is a powerful bond. Perhaps because of my strange dark glassy lake or whatever it is that makes the
Sinsar Dubh
like to play with me.
Perhaps it’s because part of him is human, and he hungers for the same illusions the rest of us do.
Barrons was a purist. I get him now. Words are
so
dangerous.
I say, “Things change. I adapt. I cut away what is unnecessary as my circumstances change.” I reach up and caress his face, brush my index finger to his perfect lips, trace his scar. “And often I find my circumstances have not worsened, as I initially thought, but improved. I don’t know why I refused you so many times. I understand why my sister wanted you.” I say it all so simply that it rings of truth. Even I am startled by how sincere I sound. “I think you
should
be king, Darroc, and if you want me, I would be honored to be your queen.”
He sucks in a sharp breath, his copper eyes glittering. He cups my head and buries his hands in my hair, playing the silky curls through his fingers. “Prove that you mean those words, MacKayla, and I will deny you nothing. Ever.”
He angles my head and lowers his mouth to mine.
I close my eyes. I open my lips.
That’s when it kills him.

I’ve had a few paradigm shifts since the day my plane landed in Ireland and I began hunting Alina’s killer—big ones, or so I thought—but this one takes the cake.
There I stand, eyes closed, lips parted, waiting for the kiss of my sister’s lover, when suddenly something wet and warm slaps my face, drips from my chin, drenches my neck, and runs into my bra. More splatters my coat.
When I open my eyes, I scream.
Darroc is no longer about to kiss me, because his head is gone—just gone—and you’re never ready for that, no matter how cold and hard and dead you think you are inside. Being sprayed by the blood of a headless corpse—especially someone you know, whether you like him or not—gets you on a visceral level. Doubly so when you were about to kiss that person.
But even more upsetting is that I don’t know how to merge with the Book.
All I can think is:
His head is gone and I don’t know how to merge with the Book
. He eats Unseelie. Can I put his head back on? If I do, can he talk? Maybe I can patch him up and torture it out of him.
I fist my hands, furious at this turn of events.
I was a kiss away—okay, maybe a few nights of sleeping with the enemy and despising myself more than I ever thought possible—from getting what I wanted. But it was going to happen. I was gaining his trust. I’d seen it in his eyes. He was going to confide in me. He was going to tell me all his secrets and I was going to kill him and fix the world.
And now his head is no longer on his body, and I don’t know what I needed to know, and I can’t
live
in this hellish reality for the months it could take me to get the four, the five, and the prophecy.
My entire mission was distilled to one goal—and now that goal is tottering, decapitated, in front of me!
It’s a total bust.
I let him touch me for nothing.
I stare at the bloody stump of his neck as his body staggers in a small circle without a head. I’m astounded he’s still moving. It must be the Unseelie in his veins.
He stumbles and collapses to the ground. Somewhere nearby, I hear garbled sounds. Oh, God, his head is still talking.
Good! Can he form sentences? I’m in a strong bargaining position.
Tell me what I want, and I’ll put your head back on
.
I frown. Where are the princes? Why didn’t they protect him? Wait a minute!
Who
did this to him?
Am I next?
I glance wildly around.
“Whuh,” I manage. I can’t process it.
Sidhe
seer
, the Hunter purrs in my mind.
I stare blankly. The Hunter that Darroc summoned for us to ride is crouched a dozen paces away, dangling Darroc’s head by the hair, swinging it from a taloned claw.
If Hunters smile, this one is. Leathery lips crack on saber teeth, and it
oozes
amusement.
Its … hand, for lack of a better word, is the size of a small car. How did it so tidily rip off Darroc’s head?
Did it pinch it off with its talons? It happened absurdly fast.
Why
would it kill him?
Darroc was allied with the Hunters. It was the Hunters that taught him to eat Unseelie. Did they—as I once warned him they would—tire of him and turn on him?
I reach for my spear. It’s back. Great, the princes are definitely gone. But before I can pull it out, the Hunter laughs, dry and dusty, in my mind, and I am assaulted by a sense of age that defies time, of sanity that was forged down a long path of madness. It
was
muting itself before. This one is very different from the other Hunters.
I wouldn’t be surprised to discover it was the granddaddy of them all.
It calls itself K’Vruck. Humans have no word for it. It means a state beyond death. Death is small compared to K’Vruck
.
“Huh?” I stammer. The voice was in my mind.
K’Vruck is so much more complete than death. It is the reduction of matter to a state of utter inertness, from which nothing can ever rise again. It is less than nothing. Nothing is something. K’Vruck is absolute. Your species would postulate the loss of soul to try to wrap their puny brains around it
.
I stiffen. I know this voice. This mockery. My spear will be no use against it. If I kill the Hunter, it would probably just hop a ride on me.
I will tell you a secret
, it says silkily.
You
do
go on. Humans. Unless you are
—it laughs softly—
K’Vrucked
.
I suck in a ragged breath.
MacKayla, I permit none to control me. Darroc will never use his shortcut, and you will never learn it
.
The Hunter pops Darroc’s head like a grape. Hair and bone slap to the pavement. And now that I’m no longer transfixed by the gory sight, I see what the Hunter holds in its
other
hand. Had been holding all along.
I back away faster.
There was never any chance that Darroc and I would soar up into the night, and hunt the
Sinsar Dubh
.
It beat us to the punch.
It hitched a ride on our Hunter and came to us.
And here I am, helpless. I have no stones, my spear is useless—
The amulet! When the Hunter ripped Darroc’s head off, it stayed on his body! I feint a wild glance around, trying hard to look at nothing in particular and everything, to keep from telegraphing my intentions.
Where the hell are the princes? They could sift me out of here! What did they do—vanish the moment Darroc was killed? Cowards!
It’s there! When Darroc’s body collapsed to the ground, the amulet slid off the stump of his neck. Silver and gold, it’s lying in a pool of blood, a dozen feet from me! I have power in my glassy lake. With the amulet to reinforce me, is it enough to hold my own?
I turn inward to step onto my black-pebbled beach, but that damned wall springs up before I can get there. The
Sinsar Dubh
laughs. I fractured this wall last night. I’ll do it tonight or die trying.
Power is earned, and you have not
.
I don’t need to look to know it’s rising, separating from the Hunter, soaring up, becoming the towering Beast form of the Book, getting ready to crush me with pain.
Or, who knows this time? Maybe worse. Maybe it’s going to K’Vruck me.
I lunge forward and grab. My fingers brush the chain. I’ve got it! I’m pulling it toward me!
Then suddenly something slams into my side, and the amulet is knocked from my grasp and gone. My arm is caught at a bad angle, extended mid-reach, and I hear it snap as I’m pushed into a long, helpless slide on my side, scraping pavement. My head hits the ground and my forehead drags. I feel skin ripping away.
Then I’m being picked up and tossed into the air. I glance wildly around but don’t see the amulet anywhere. As I come down, someone flings me over their shoulder. My hair is in my face, my arm dangles limply, and my forehead is bleeding into my eyes. I nearly scalped myself on the pavement.
Everything is moving so fast it’s a blur.
Superstrength. Superspeed. I feel motion sickness coming on.
“Dani?” I gasp. Did she come to save me, even though I was such a bitch and drove her away?
“Dani, no! I need the amulet!”
I hang upside down, watching pavement whiz by.
“Dani, stop!”
But she doesn’t. I hear snarling receding rapidly behind us.
The Hunter roars.
Bloodcurdling howls shatter the night.
I jerk. I know those sounds. I’ve heard them before.
“Take me back, take me back!” I scream, but for an entirely different reason now. Who are they—these beasts that sound like Barrons? I need to know!
“Dani, you have to take me
back
!”
But she doesn’t. She keeps running. Doesn’t listen to a word I say. She runs me straight to the one place I never want to see again.
Barrons Books and Baubles.

My first suspicion that it wasn’t Dani carrying me reared its head when we blasted through the front door of the bookstore.
Or, rather, that suspicion
turned
its head and licked blood from the back of my thigh.
Unless Dani had some serious issues I didn’t know about, this wasn’t her shoulder I was over.
It licked me again, dragging its tongue across my leg, just beneath the curve of my ass. My dress was hitched up, trapped between my stomach and its shoulder. It bit me. Hard.
“Ow!”
With fangs. Not deep enough to draw blood but enough to sting. I wiped my sleeve across my face, scrubbing blood from my eyes with the fur cuff.
I was dazed by Darroc’s abrupt murder and my shock over K’Vruck being the Book. If I’d been thinking clearly, I’d have known from the first that I was much too high from the ground for it to have been Dani. Several feet too high.
The shoulder I was over was massive, as was the rest of it, but it was too dark to see clearly. Rooftop spotlights no longer illuminated the exterior of the bookstore, nor did the customary amber glow bathe the interior. There was only the light of a three-quarter moon, spilling in through tall windows.
What had me? An Unseelie? Why had it brought me here? I never wanted to see this place again! I hated BB&B. It was dark and empty and ghosts were everywhere. They perched with sad eyes on my cash register, drooped along my book aisles, and draped, paper-thin and defeated, on my sofas, shivering before fireplaces that would never be lit again.
I wasn’t prepared to be flung from its shoulder. I went flying backward through the air, slammed into the chesterfield in the rear seating cozy, bounced off it, crashed into a chair, got tangled in one of Barrons’ expensive rugs, and skidded across the polished floor. My head smacked into the enameled fireplace.
For a moment, all I could do was lie there. Every bone in my body was bruised. Blood was crusted on my face and in the corners of my eyes.
With a moan of pain, I rolled over and propped myself up on an elbow to assess the damage. At least my arm wasn’t broken, as I’d thought it was.
I pushed my hair from my face.
And froze. Standing in the dim light of the bookstore was a shape that was devastatingly familiar. “Come out of the shadows,” I said.
A low growl was the only reply.
“Please, can you understand me? Come out.”
It hulked near a bookcase, panting. It was enormous, at least nine feet tall. Silhouetted against the moonlight filtering through a window behind it, it had three sets of sharp, curved horns spaced at even intervals along two bony ridges that spanned the sides of its head.
I’d seen horns like that before. My pouch of stones had been tied to similar ones. Horns I’d watched melt away when the beast wearing them resumed its human form.
In the Silvers, Barrons had been slate gray with yellow eyes during the day and black-skinned with crimson eyes at night. This one was in full night mode, velvety black in the darkness but for the glint of feral eyes. I’d heard more of these beasts back in the street, before this one had carried me off. Where had they come from?
My hands began to tremble. I pushed gingerly into a sitting position, acutely aware of every stretched tendon and strained muscle. I leaned back against the fireplace, drew my knees up and hugged them. I didn’t trust myself to stand. This creature was the same kind of beast Barrons had been and was a connection to the man I’d lost.
What was it doing here? Was he still somehow protecting me, even in death? Had he assigned others of his kind to guard me if the worst happened and he was killed?
The thing in the shadows suddenly turned and smashed a taloned fist into the bookcase. Tall shelves rocked on floor bolts. With a metallic
screeeech
, the ornate case ripped from the floor and began to fall. It crashed into the one next to it, and the one next to that, taking them down like dominoes, making a complete wreck of my bookstore.
“Stop it!” I cried.
But if it could understand, or even hear me over the noise, it didn’t care. It turned on the magazine rack and shattered it next. Dailies and monthlies flew in a storm of pages and splinters of shelving. Chairs slammed into the walls. My TV was stomped. My fridge crushed. My cash register exploded in a tinkle of bells.
It raged through the store, trashing the entire first floor, decimating everything I loved, reducing my cherished sanctuary to ruins.
All I could do was huddle and stare.
When there was nothing left to smash or break, it whirled on me.
Moonlight silvered its ebony skin and glinted off crimson eyes. Veins and tendons stood out on its arms and neck, and its chest pumped like a bellows. Bits of debris were stuck to its horns. It shook its head violently, and bits of plaster and wood sprayed the air.
It stared at me from a prehistoric face, through long hanks of matted black hair, with hate-filled eyes.
I stared back, afraid to breathe. Had it saved me to kill me? It was no more than I deserved, really.
It was a walking reminder of what I’d had—and lost. What I’d never seen clearly—and killed. It was so much like my creature in the Silvers, yet so different. Barrons had been uncontrollably homicidal, unable—or unwilling—to prevent himself from slaughtering everything in sight, no matter how small or helpless. Back on that cliff’s edge, in Barrons’ eyes, I’d glimpsed madness.
This beast was a killing machine, too, but not a mindless one. There was no insanity in its eyes, only fury and bloodlust.
It was Barrons … but it wasn’t.
I closed my eyes. Looking at it hurt my soul.
It growled deep in its chest, much closer than it had been a moment ago.
My eyes snapped open.
It stood a half dozen feet away, towering over me, brimming with unspent rage. Feral eyes were fixed on my neck, taloned hands opened and closed as if it wanted nothing more than to wrap them around it and squeeze.
I rubbed the base of my skull, grateful for Barrons’ mark. Apparently it was still protecting me, because the creature hadn’t harmed me, although it wanted to. I wondered if his mark protected me from the entire “pack” of Barrons-like creatures. He’d said he’d never let me die. It seemed he’d taken measures to continue his protection if something happened to him. Like Ryodan and me and a spear.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
My words seemed to enrage it. It lunged for me, grabbed me by the collar of my coat, raised me in the air, and shook me like a rag doll. My teeth clacked together and my bones rattled.
Perhaps the mark wasn’t protecting me after all.
I wasn’t dying here tonight. The itinerary of my mission might have changed, but my goal had not. As I dangled, toes skimming the floor, I let my gaze go unfocused, sought my lake, and summoned my crimson runes. They’d kept the Unseelie Princes at a standoff, and the Fae princes were far more deadly and powerful than this beast.
Other things floated on the surface of my lake, but I ignored them. There would be plenty of time—more time than I wanted, I was sure—in my future to explore all that was concealed beneath those dark, still waters. I cupped my hands, scooped up what I’d come for, and snapped out of it, fast.
The beast was still shaking me. Staring into its narrowed eyes, I realized I might need to revise my earlier assessment that it wasn’t as insane as Barrons had been.
I raised my fists, dripping blood. The ebon-skinned beast shook its horned head and roared.
“Put me down,” I commanded.
It moved so fast that it had my entire hand in its mouth before I could even gasp. The word “down” hadn’t even left my lips when my hand was gone and sharp black fangs were locked around my wrist.
But it didn’t rip my hand off, as I expected. It
sucked
. Its tongue was wet and warm on my fingers, working delicately between them.
As suddenly as it had swallowed my hand, it dropped it. My fist was empty.
I stared blankly at it. Runes that the most deadly of the Fae feared, this thing
ate
? Like a succulent appetizer? It licked its lips. Was I the main course? In a blur of motion, my other fist disappeared.
Wet pressure on my skin, the silky precision of a tongue, a scrape of fangs against my wrist and that fist, too, was empty.
It dropped me. I landed unevenly on my feet, bumped into the wreck of the chesterfield, and steadied myself.
Still licking its lips, it began to back away.
When it stopped in a milky pool of moonlight, my eyes narrowed. Something was … wrong. It didn’t look right. In fact, it looked … pained.
I had a terrible thought. What if it was a simpleminded beast and I’d just fed it something deadly and it hadn’t known better than to eat anything it saw that was bloody—like a dog that couldn’t walk away from poisoned hamburger?
I didn’t want to kill another of these creatures! Like Barrons, it had saved me!
I stared at it in horror, hoping it would survive whatever I’d done to it. I’d just wanted to get away from it, to find someplace to regroup and summon my strength to forge on. I had a finite number of weapons at my disposal. I had to make good use of them.
It staggered.
Damn
it! When would I learn?
It stumbled and dropped heavily to its haunches with a deep, shuddering groan. Muscles began to twitch beneath its skin. It flung its head back and bayed.
I clamped my hands to my ears but, even muffled, it was deafening. I heard answering cries in the distance, joining in mournful concert.
I hoped they weren’t loping straight for the bookstore to join their dying brother and tear me to pieces. I doubted I could trick them all into eating poison runes.
The beast was on all fours now, tossing its massive head from side to side, clearly in its death throes—jaws wide, lips peeled back, fangs bared.
It bayed and bayed, a cry of such desolation and despair that it drove a spike through my heart.
“I didn’t mean to kill you!” I cried.
Crouching on the floor, it began to change.
Oh, yes, I’d killed it. This was exactly what had happened when I’d killed Barrons.
Apparently dying forced them to transform.
I was transfixed, unable to look away. I would own this sin like I owned all my others. I would wait until he changed and would commit his face to memory so, in the new world I created with the
Sinsar Dubh
, I could do something special for him.
Perhaps I could save him from becoming what he was. What man breathed inside this beast’s skin? One of the other eight Barrons had brought to the abbey the day he’d broken me out? Would I recognize him from Chester’s?
Its horns melted and began to run down the sides of its face. Its head became grossly misshapen, expanded and contracted, pulsed and shrank before expanding again—as if too much mass was being compacted into too small a form and the beast was resisting. Massive shoulders collapsed inward, straightened, then collapsed again. It gouged deep splinters of wood from the floor as it bowed upon itself, shuddering.
Talons splayed on the floor, became fingers. Haunches lifted, slammed down, and became legs. But they weren’t right. The limbs were contorted, the bones didn’t bend where they were supposed to—rubbery in some places, knobbed in others.
Still it bayed, but the sound was changing. I removed my hands from my ears. The humanity in its howl chilled my blood.
Its misshapen head whipped from side to side. I caught a glimpse through matted hair of wild eyes glittering with moonlight, of black fangs and spittle as it snarled. Then the tangled locks abruptly melted, the sleek black fur began to lighten. It dropped to the floor, spasming.
Suddenly it shot up on all fours, head down. Bones crunched and cracked, settling into a new shape. Shoulders formed—strong, smooth, bunched with muscle. Hands braced wide. One leg stretched back, the other bent as it tensed in a low lunge.
A naked man crouched in the moonlight.
I held my breath, waiting for him to lift his head. Who had I killed with my careless idiocy?
For a moment there was only the sound of his harsh breathing, and mine.
Then he cleared his throat. At least I think he did. It sounded more like a rattlesnake shaking its tail somewhere deep in the back of his mouth. After another moment, he laughed, but it wasn’t really a laugh. It was the sound the devil might make the day he came to call your contract due.
When he raised his head, raked the hair from his face, and sneered at me with absolute contempt, I melted silently, bonelessly, to the floor.
“Ah, but my dear, dear Ms. Lane, that’s precisely the point. You
did
,” Jericho Barrons said.