Dreamfever

by Karen Marie Moning

  I headed off into the gray drizzly day for Barrons Books and Baubles.

  I detoured past Chester’s on the way there, hoping the Gray Woman might be in the vicinity. I was going to spend a lot of time loitering in the streets outside Ryodan’s club. “Inside his club” might be under his protection, but that didn’t mean the surrounding area wasn’t free range.

  I walked quietly, tensed for battle, prepared to slam my palms into the hag: Null and stab her and do a victory dance on her gruesome body. But the only Unseelie I encountered on the way to the bookstore were Rhino-boys. Half a dozen of them. And what they were doing confounded me so thoroughly that I ended up walking down the cobbled street, spear sheathed, hands in my pockets, staring at them while they stared at me. I think we all had big what-the-fucks plastered all over our faces. It’s kind of hard to tell with those beady eyes and tusks, but I know I did.

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  They were rewiring the streetlamps and carefully resetting them in the sidewalks. They were sweeping up debris. They were replacing bulbs. They had brooms and jackhammers, wiring materials, wheelbarrows, and concrete.

  I was supposed to kill them. That was what I did, what I was made for.

  But they were putting Dublin back to rights.

  I wanted Dublin back to rights. Did this mean they were working to restore the power, too?

  “Are you doing it to keep the Shades out?” I shook my head at the oddity of having just initiated a conversation with a Rhino-boy I would have wondered if my day could get any stranger, but my days always get stranger.

  “Pigs,” one of them grunted, and the rest of them agreed, snorting. “Eat everything. Leave nothing for the rest of us. ”

  “I see. ” I decided I would let them finish cleaning up the block first and kill them on my way back. Hands in my pockets, I resumed walking.

  “Pretty girlie-girl, want to live forever?” one of them grunted at my back. They all snorted and snuffled as if at some inside joke. Like, duh, maybe eating them in exchange for sex really didn’t give you immortality, just some new, never-before-heard-of Fae STD. “Got something you can suck on, girlie-girl. ”

  Ew. “Not a chance,” I said coolly.

  They should have let me go. I would have let them go. But Rhino-boys aren’t the brightest bulbs in the box. I heard hoofed feet shuffling, moving toward me. Their bribe hadn’t worked, so they were switching tactics to brute force. They’d picked the wrong woman to mess with. I hate Unseelie.

  “Think twice,” I warned.

  I suspect Rhino-boys have a hard enough time thinking once.

  A few moments later, the six of them were dead and I was walking toward BB&B, thoroughly pissed that I’d had to kill them before they finished wiring the lamps.

  The last look I’d gotten at the bookstore was late in the afternoon on that hellish Halloween that would forever be burned into my memory as the second-worst night of my life. All the exterior lights had been broken out. I wasn’t sure what to expect as I turned down the street I’d once considered my “way home. ”

  I stopped, stared, and smiled faintly. Of course.

  On a street of heavily damaged and looted buildings, BB&B alone stood untouched. The elegantly restored façade of the Old World four-story brick building was immaculate. The spotlights mounted on the front, rear, and sides, which had been broken out last I saw it, were now replaced. The brightly painted shingle proclaiming BARRONS BOOKS AND BAUBLES had been rehung perpendicular to the building, suspended over the sidewalk on an elaborate brass pole, and it creaked as it swung in the drizzly breeze. The sign in the old-fashioned green-tinted windows glowed soft neon: CLOSED. Amber torches in brass sconces illuminated the deep limestone archway of the bookstore’s grand alcoved entrance. Ornate cherry diamond-paned doors, nestled between limestone columns, gleamed in the light.

  I wondered if the bookstore meant something to him, that he’d gone to such lengths. Did it hold sentimental value? Or was it merely his possession, his statement to the world in general that nothing and no one would ever take what was his?

  I stepped into the alcove, tried the door. It was unlocked. I pushed it open.

  I never tire of my first glimpse of my shop. Once you get past the immediate sense of spatial distortion—as if you’ve opened the door of an old-fashioned phone booth only to find the Library of Congress inside—you notice that luxury and comfort have never gone so effortlessly hand in hand.

  The main room is about eighty feet long by sixty feet wide and vaults five stories to a muraled ceiling. On the second, third, fourth, and fifth floors, bookcases line each wall from base to cove molding. Behind elegant banisters, catwalks permit access, while ladders slide on oiled rollers from one section to the next.

  But it’s the first floor I spend so much time on, with its freestanding bookcases crammed with all the latest, greatest reads standing tall on polished wood floors scattered with plush rugs. Two seating cozies, fore and aft, boast opulent yet comfy chesterfield sofas and brocaded chairs topped by soft throws, centered around my beloved respite from the Dublin rain and cold—fancy enameled gas fireplaces.

  I glanced at my well-stocked magazine rack (sadly out of date) and my cashier’s counter. I smiled at the old-fashioned register with the tiny silver bell that tinkled whenever the drawer popped open.

  I moved to the counter.

  A note was propped on the register.

  Welcome home, Ms. Lane.

  “Arrogant, overconfident jackass. ” Keys lay on the counter beside it.

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  I wondered what car he’d left me this time. I was reaching for the keys when, out of the blue, emotions bombarded me, intense and confusing. They were accompanied by a barrage of memories: the day I’d stumbled into this place, my anxiety at being lost, meeting Barrons for the first time, my naïve conviction that he was exactly the kind of man I would never date.

  “And we haven’t dated. ” I crushed the note in my fist. Just had completely uninhibited raw sex. Months of it.

  I closed my eyes, more memories of this place crashing over me: the night I’d seen the Gray Man devour a woman’s beauty and had rushed here for answers, with no idea what was wrong with me but already suspecting it was permanent; the night I’d accepted his offer of a fourth-floor bedroom overlooking the back alley and moved in; the day my daddy had come looking for me and I’d realized I could never go home to Ashford until the madness in Dublin was over and I’d either succeeded or didn’t care because I’d be going home the same way as Alina, in a box; the night I’d given Barrons a birthday cake, then eaten it alone, after it had splatted from the ceiling.

  I inhaled his scent. He was near, a few feet away. Lust nearly buckled my knees. He was a tireless lover. There was nothing off-limits with him.

  “Ms. Lane. ”

  I fisted my hands in my pockets and opened my eyes. He stood across the counter, eyes dark, features impassive.

  “Barrons. ”

  “It’s a Hummer. ”

  “Alpha?” I said hopefully.

  His obsidian gaze mocked. Would I waste my time with anything less?

  “Dani’s moving in,” I told him.

  “Dani’s going back to the abbey. ”

  “Then I am, too. ”

  “I hear you’re not welcome there. ”

  “I will be soon. I have plans. And I need her. ”

  “You need me,” he said flatly. “I thought you’d have figured that out by now. ”

  I had. I kept getting knocked down. And I kept getting back up again, a little stronger each time. But I still wasn’t strong enough. One day I would be. Until then, Barrons was the only one that scared all my enemies away. If IYD really would have worked on Halloween, he definitely guaranteed me the highest odds of survival. I was done hopping from swell to swell, trying to avoid the tidals. Right or wrong, good or bad, I’d chose
n: Barrons was my wave. But there was no way I was living alone with him. I needed a buffer, and my buffer needed a place to live, too.

  “What’s wrong with Dani staying here?”

  “She’s in more danger at your side. ”

  “I don’t think she’ll go. She has a mind of her own. ”

  “Then figure out how to convince her it’s best for both of you. ”

  “It might take a few days. ” According to the LM, I had only three, anyway. “Give me that much, at least. ” Once she was here, I’d work on keeping her here. And put her to work with her super -hearing and other senses at figuring out what was under his garage and how to get us down there. He might be my wave, but he wasn’t my surfboard. Knowledge and usefulness were all that stood between me and the riptide.

  He studied me for a moment, then nodded tightly. “Forty-eight hours. Keep the kid under control and out of my way. And there are new rules. One: Stay away from Chester’s. That means a ten-block radius. Two: You share all pertinent information with me without my having to ask. Three: Keep the kid away from my garage. Four: If you try to force yourself into my head, I will force myself into your pants. ”

  “Oh! That’s total bullshit!”

  “Tit for tat. ” His gaze dropped to my breasts, and I had a sudden, much-too-detailed memory of yanking my shirt up while he’d watched them pop out, jiggling. “Or would that be tit for tit?”

  “There’s no need to be rude. ”

  “I can think of endless needs to be rude. ”

  “Keep them to yourself. ”

  “Such a different tune you whistle now. ”

  “You sound angry, Barrons. Frustrated. What’s wrong? You get a little addicted to me?”

  His lips drew back, baring his teeth. I’d felt them on my nipples. I could almost feel them there now.

  “We fucked, Ms. Lane. Even cockroaches fuck. They eat each other, too. ”

  “Same page, Barrons. ”

  “Same bloody word,” he agreed.

  Oh, yes, here we were, working together again. All was well—or at least back to normal—at Barrons Books and Baubles.

  “I really get to live at Barrons’? With, like, Barrons?” Dani exclaimed, bounding from foot to foot backward as we walked through Temple Bar. We were on our way to intercept the sidhe-seers. Dani had learned that a group of several dozen, led by Kat, was coming into the city tonight, to scout it out.

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  “No,” I said dryly, “with, like, the LM and his minions. ” “I’m living with Barrons! Holy fecking shit! Way cool!”

  “Doesn’t it bother you that we have no idea what he is or whether he’s good or bad?”

  “Nope. Not a bit. ” Her eyes sparkled.

  I snorted. She was completely serious. I wished I could be so uncomplicated. But I couldn’t. Right and wrong, good and bad mattered to me. Blame it on my parents. They endowed me with a massively inconvenient sense of ethics.

  “We’re almost there, Mac. I hear ‘em dead ahead. ” She cocked her head, then her eyes widened. “Aw, Ro’s gonna be wicked pissed! She told ‘em not to fight, no matter what! Just to suss out what’s goin’ down and how many are where. We gotta hurry, Mac. It don’t sound like it’s goin’ good!”

  I didn’t have time to brace myself for the rough ride. Her hand was on my arm, and we were gone.

  Dani slammed us to a stop, directly in the middle of the fight. It was huge, messy, and filled the street from one end of the block to the next. Dani loves the action. Unfortunately, she forgets that the rest of us aren’t as fast as she is. She arrived with her sword drawn, perfectly at ease moving in hyperspeed mode, but it took me a moment to fumble my spear from my shoulder holster. In that moment, I got slammed in the back of my head so hard that I saw stars, and brackets from my MacHalo went flying in three different directions. Snarling, I spun around and drove my spear into an Unseelie’s … head, I think. It had three roundish things on its shoulders with dozens of slits that spewed icy, stinging liquid as it fell.

  Then the fight became a blur of motion, of spinning, kicking, Nulling, and stabbing. I glimpsed Kat’s wide eyes, her terrified face. I had no doubt this was her first fight and it had come out of the blue.

  Between Unseelie, I caught glimpses of other sidhe-seers. They were trying desperately to hold their own. Most of the time, the gifts inside us are dormant, but the presence of Fae and especially of engaging in battle slams them awake. I could see they were in that special sidhe-seer state—stronger, faster, tougher, more resilient—but it wasn’t enough. There was too much fear in their eyes.

  Fear translates to hesitation, and hesitation kills.

  If you’ve ever been behind someone on an on-ramp who’s trying to merge onto a highway but is scared to do it, going too slow, stopping and starting, and growing more uncertain by the minute, you know what I mean. There you are, hemmed in by traffic, trapped behind rampant indecision, and you know that if they don’t get their act together and merge, you’re going to end up getting hit.

  That’s how the sidhe-seers were fighting. I cursed Rowena for not training them better, for sheltering them so completely that their gifts were a hazard to their own health and mine. Dani and I moved together, back to back, slicing and stabbing our way through the mob of Unseelie.

  “Help me!” I heard Kat scream. I glanced wildly toward the sound. She was trapped between two large winged things with sharp talons and teeth that looked horrifyingly like raptors.

  I assessed, I acted.

  Later, I would puzzle over my decision. Wonder what temporary insanity had possessed me. But I knew they couldn’t touch it and she could, and I knew she was dead otherwise, and nobody was dying on my watch if I had anything to say about it.

  “Kat!” I yelled. When she looked, I drew back my arm, tossed my spear at her, and watched it go flying, end over end.

  Her eyes widened in astonishment. She lunged into the air, snagged the spear, landed lightly on the balls of her feet, and took them both out in one smooth ricochet of motion, left to right.

  It was beautiful. If I’d had a remote, I’d have hit replay a dozen times.

  And there I stood, without a weapon.

  Then I had a leathery appendage in my face that probably should have broken my nose but didn’t, and I was under attack and lost sight of Kat and my spear. I slammed my palms into my attacker, Nulling it. While it stood, frozen, I retreated into my mind, into that special sidhe-seer place. Without my spear, I was in deep shit and I needed more power.

  Abruptly, the street faded and I was inside my own head, staring down into a huge black pool. Was this the source of what made a sidhe-seer, this vast obsidian lake? I’d never seen it before when I’d gone poking around. Was I so much stronger now that I could see more clearly, probe more deeply?

  Power radiated from its dark depths, crackled in the air of the cave in which I stood. I could feel something in the water, waiting in the darkness.

  What lay concealed beneath the surface knew everything, could do everything, feared nothing. It was waiting for me. To call it forth. To use it as my birthright.

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  But doubt as vast as the thing’s watery habitat immobilized me.

  What if whatever I summoned from those ancient depths wasn’t a part of me at all but something else entirely?

  If it was me, I could use it.

  But if by some bizarre twist of events—and no events were too bizarre to consider in my day-to-day existence—there was something down there that wasn’t me, it could use me.

  I didn’t trust myself. No, I didn’t trust that sidhe-seer place.

  Why would I? I hadn’t even known it existed until a few months ago. Until I knew more about what it was and wasn’t, I wasn’t calling forth any unknowns. My current skills would have to suffice.

  I shook my head sharply and I was in the street
again, with a raptor thing about to take a bite out of me.

  I ducked.

  Its head flew to the side and its body slid to the cobbled stone, leaving Dani standing where it had been, grinning at me. “Pull your head outta your arse, Mac. ”

  We moved into pattern: I Nulled, she killed.

  I don’t know how long I fought without my spear. But it was long enough to give me a taste of what I was asking of my sisters-in-arms. I cursed Rowena for sending them into Dublin without guns, without iron bullets. I would never let them be such walking targets.

  I kept looking for Kat but couldn’t find her in the mess. Without my spear, I felt naked, exposed. I felt wrong.

  I slammed my palms into a tall, beetle-bodied Unseelie with a thick, many-plated carapace. It didn’t freeze. I drew back my fist, and suddenly there was another hand around mine, and when I drove it forward, Kat and I sunk the spear in its armorlike hide together.

  As it crashed to the pavement, I glanced over my shoulder.

  Kat smiled, nodded, and let go of the spear, leaving it in my hand. Then she turned her back to mine and moved into pattern with me, as I had with Dani.

  Although she wasn’t a Null, she had a wicked uppercut, and we made a great team. Dani paired off with another sidhe-seer, and the battle raged on.

  Later, we sat on curbs, leaned against buildings, and sprawled on the sidewalks, dirty, splattered with disgusting variations of Unseelie blood, exhilarated, and exhausted.

  “What happened?” I asked Kat. “How did you get stuck in the middle of so many of them?”

  She flushed. “We’ve grown accustomed to having Dani with us, we have. She hears what we can’t. I think they must have begun following us the moment we entered the city, drawn by our hats”—she tapped her MacHalo—“or perhaps the noise of the bus. They gathered more as we went, biding time, looking for a tight spot to close in. If you hadn’t happened along … well. It’s glad we are that you did. ”

  I assessed the carnage. There were several hundred Unseelie dead in the street. “We did good. With guns and a plan, we could do better. ”

  Kat nodded. “May we speak plainly?”

  I inclined my head.