I leaned against the wall, watching him. He was fighting for control over which form was going to achieve dominance and, although I was pissed off at both of them at the moment, I preferred the man. The beast was more … emotional, if that word could be applied to Barrons in any form. It made me feel confused, conflicted. I would never get the image of stabbing it out of my head.
When I’d been provoking him, it hadn’t occurred to me that this might be the outcome. Barrons was always so controlled, disciplined. I’d thought his transformation into the beast had been a conscious one. That, like everything else in his world, it happened if he willed it to, or it didn’t happen at all.
I remembered the first time I’d ever heard the strange rattle in his chest, the night he and I had gone after the Book with the three stones and failed. He’d carried me back to the bookstore and I’d wakened on the sofa to find him staring at the fire. I remembered thinking that Barrons’ skin might be a slipcover for a chair I never wanted to see. I’d been right. Beneath his human form was an utterly inhuman one. But why? How? What was he?
Not once had he lost control like this around me. Was his ability to contain his animal nature getting weaker?
Or was I more deeply rooted beneath that changeable skin?
I smiled, but it held no mirth. I liked that thought. I wasn’t sure who that made more screwed up: him or me.
I stayed against the wall, and he stayed in the street with his back to me, for a good three or four minutes.
Slowly, with what looked like a great deal of pain, he changed back, shuddering, snarling all the while. I understood why I’d thought I killed him with my runes last night. The transformation from beast to man appeared to be intensely painful.
When he finally turned around, there was no trace of crimson in his dark gaze. No stump of horns erupting from his skull. He grimaced as he stepped up on the curb, as if his limbs hurt, teeth flashing white and even in the moonlight.
He was once again a powerfully built man of thirty or so, wearing a long coat that was ripped at the shoulders and split down the back.
“You mind-fuck me again, I’ll fuck you back. But it won’t be with my mind.”
“Don’t threaten me.” I was tempted to do it right then and there and see if he’d really follow through. I was furious at him. I wanted him. I was a mess where Barrons was concerned.
“I didn’t. I warned you.”
A sharp retort was on the tip of my tongue.
He shamed it into silence with “I expect better from you, Ms. Lane.” Then he turned for the door and entered the building.
I half-expected there to be Unseelie guards on the top floor, but either Darroc had been too arrogant to bother leaving any or, since he’d been killed, his army saw no point in protecting his hideouts anymore.
Once inside, Barrons went straight for the bedroom suite Darroc had occupied. I followed him, because it was the one place I’d not gotten the chance to search. I stood in the doorway, watching him ransack the opulently furnished room, pushing chairs and ottomans out of his way, overturning the dresser and kicking through the contents, before he turned to the bed. He ripped the blankets and sheets from it, flung the mattress from the frame, pulled out a knife, and gutted it, searching for anything hidden inside, then stopped and breathed deeply. After a moment, he cocked his head and inhaled again.
I got it instantly. Barrons has extremely heightened senses. Being in touch with your inner animal has its advantages. He knows my scent, and he couldn’t smell me on Darroc’s bed.
I knew the second he decided we’d probably done it on the kitchen table, or in the shower, or bent over the couch, or on the balcony, or maybe just had an orgy with all the Rhino-boys and guards watching.
I rolled my eyes and left him to finish searching Darroc’s bedroom by himself. He could believe whatever he wanted to believe. I hoped he drowned in images of me having sex with Darroc. He might not feel emotions about me, but he certainly had the territorial instincts of an animal. I hoped the idea of somebody else playing on his turf drove him nuts.
I hurried to the suite I’d slept in. My runes were still throbbing crimson at the threshold and in the walls. They were larger, pulsating more brightly. I didn’t linger. I’d searched the place thoroughly the other night. I grabbed my pack, hurried out into the living room, and began stuffing the photo albums of Alina into my pack. They were mine now, and when this was all over, I was going to sit down and lose myself in them for days, maybe weeks, and tell myself the happy part of her story.
I heard Barrons in the den, knocking over lamps and chairs and tossing things around. I walked in and watched books fly, papers explode into the air. He had his beast under control, but he wasn’t bothering to try to control the man. He’d swapped his torn coat for one of Darroc’s. It was too small for him, but at least it covered the rest of his shredded clothes.
“What are you looking for?”
“Allegedly, he knew a shortcut, or I’d have killed him long ago.”
“Who told you about the shortcut?” Was there anything Barrons didn’t know?
He shot me a look. “I didn’t need anyone to. Prima facie, Ms. Lane. Facts speak. Didn’t you wonder why he kept tracking it, even though he had none of the stones and would have been corrupted the moment he picked it up?”
I shook my head, disgusted with myself. It had taken me months to get around to wondering that. What a great sleuth I was.
“You think he left notes?”
“I know he did. The limits of his mortal brain posed problems for him. He was accustomed to the memory capabilities of a Fae.”
So, Barrons knew there was a shortcut, too, and had been seeking it for some time.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“They’re called shortcuts for a reason. The shorter they are, the more they usually cut. Nothing is without price, Ms. Lane.”
Didn’t I know it. I knelt and began scanning sheets of paper on the floor. Darroc hadn’t written in notebooks; he’d used thick, expensive vellum sheets and written on them in fancy calligraphy, as if he’d expected his work to one day be memorialized: documents from Darroc, liberator of the Fae, displayed like we showcase the Constitution, in a museum somewhere. I looked back up at Barrons. He was no longer throwing things; he was sorting through papers and notebooks. There was no trace of temperamental beast or angry man. He was icy, impervious Barrons again.
“Didn’t anybody ever tell him about laptops?” I muttered.
“Fae can’t use them. They fry them.”
Maybe there was something to my energy theory. As more sheets rained down, I gathered them up and examined them. Under the watchful eyes of Darroc’s guards, I hadn’t been able to snoop through his personal documents. It was fascinating stuff. This particular cache of notes was about the different Unseelie castes—their strengths, weaknesses, and unique tastes. It was jarring to realize he’d had to learn about the Unseelie, just like we had. I folded the pages and began stuffing them in my backpack. This was useful information. Sidhe-seers need to be passing it down, one generation to the next. We could put together a set of Fae encyclopedias from his notes.
When I ran out of room in my pack, I began stacking the pages up to return for them later.
Then I saw a page that was different from the rest, filled with scribbled bits of thoughts, bulleted lists, circled comments, and arrows pointing from one note to another.
Alina’s name was on it, along with Rowena’s and dozens of others. Scribbled next to their names were their special “talents.” There were lists of countries, addresses, and names of companies I assumed were the foreign branches of Poste Haste, Inc., the courier service that was our front. One bulleted list contained the six Irish bloodlines of our sect, plus another I’d never heard of: O’Callaghan. Was it possible there were more bloodlines than we knew about? What if another Fae got their hands on this information? They could wipe us all out!
I continued scanning and gasped. Ro
wena had a touch of mental coercion? Kat had the gift of emotional telepathy? How the hell had Darroc figured these things out? According to him, Jo was in the now-secret Haven! Dani’s name was also on the page, heavily underlined and punctuated with a question mark. I wasn’t on the list, which meant he’d written it before he’d become aware of me, last fall.
At the bottom of the page was a short bulleted list:
Sidhe-seers—sense Fae.
Alina—senses Sinsar Dubh, Fae Hallows, and relics.
Abbey—Sinsar Dubh
Unseelie King—sidhe-seers?
I blinked at it, trying to make sense of it. Was Darroc saying that it hadn’t been the Seelie Queen, as Nana O’Reilly had claimed, who’d delivered the Dark Book to the abbey so long ago? Had the Unseelie King himself brought it to us, because we could sense Fae, and Fae Hallows, and that made us the perfect guardians for it?
Suddenly Barrons was behind me, looking over my shoulder. “Makes you think about yourself a little differently, doesn’t it?”
“Not really. I mean, who cares who brought it to the abbey? Point is, we’re the guardians.”
“Is that what you get from his notes, Ms. Lane?” he purred.
I glanced up at him. “What do you get from them?” I said defensively. I didn’t like his tone any more than I liked the amused glitter in his dark gaze.
“It’s said the king was horrified when he realized that his act of atonement had resulted in the birth of his most powerful abomination yet. He chased it from one world to the next, for eons, determined to destroy it. When he finally caught up with it, their battle lasted centuries and reduced dozens of worlds to ruins. But it was too late. The Sinsar Dubh had become fully sentient, a dark force of its own. When the king first created the Sinsar Dubh, he was greater, and the Book was lesser. It was a repository for the king’s evil, but without drive and intent. Yet while it roamed, it evolved, until it became all the king was, and more. The creation—abandoned by its creator—learned to hate. The Sinsar Dubh began to pursue the king.” He paused and gave me one of his wolf smiles. “So what else might the dark king have created? Perhaps an entire caste that could track his greatest enemy, contain it, and keep it from destroying him? Are you going to tell me you never once considered that?”
I stared. We were the good guys. Human to the core.
“Sidhe-seers: watchdogs for the U.K.,” he mocked.
I was chilled by his words. It had been bad enough to discover I was adopted and the parents who’d raised me weren’t my biological parents. Now what was he implying? That I’d had no parents?
“That’s the biggest pile of BS I’ve ever heard.” First Darroc had suggested I was a stone. Now Barrons was proposing that the sidhe-seers were a secret caste of Unseelie.
“If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.”
“I am not a duck.”
“Why does it offend you so much? Power is power.”
“The Unseelie King didn’t make me!”
“The idea frightens you. Fear is more than a wasted emotion. It’s the penultimate set of blinders. If you can’t face the truth of your reality, you can’t be a part of it, can’t control it. You may as well throw in the towel and yield to the whims of anyone with a stronger will. Do you like being helpless? Is that what you get off on? Is that why the moment I was gone you turned to the bastard that had you raped?”
“So, what are you and your men?” I countered coldly. “Another of the Unseelie King’s secret castes? Is that what you are, Barrons? Is that why you know so much about them?”
“None of your fucking business.”
He turned away and resumed his search.
I was trembling, and there was a sour taste in my mouth. I pushed the papers away, got up, and walked to the balcony, where I stood staring out at the night.
Barrons had shaken me deeply with his suggestion that the sidhe-seers were a caste of Unseelie. I had to admit that Darroc’s notes could certainly be construed that way.
And just the other night, I’d stood between two Fae armies, thinking how glad I was to be like the Unseelie, strengthened by pain, less frivolous and breakable.
Then there was that dark glassy lake in my head, that had so many inexplicable “gifts” to offer, like runes that an ex-Fae had recognized, that had given him pause, runes that the Unseelie princes had disliked intensely.
I shivered. I had a new question to be obsessed with besides what was Jericho Barrons?
What was I?
18
When we left, I snatched a Dani Daily from the lamppost outside the building, slid into the passenger’s seat of the Viper, and began to read it. Her birthday was coming up. I smiled faintly. Figured she’d tell the whole world. She’d make it a national holiday if she could.
I wasn’t surprised to learn she’d been in the street last night and had seen the Hunter kill Darroc. Dani didn’t take orders from anyone, not even me. Had she been there to try to kill Darroc herself? I wouldn’t put it past her.
As I fastened my seat belt, I wondered whether she hadn’t stuck around long enough to see that the Hunter had been possessed by the Sinsar Dubh, or if she’d decided to omit that bit of news. If she had stuck around, what did she make of the beast that blasted into me and carried me off? Probably figured it was some other kind of Unseelie she hadn’t seen before.
Although I was shocked to realize so much time had passed while I was in the Silvers and it was the middle of February, I should have known today was Valentine’s Day.
I glanced sourly over at Barrons.
I’d never had a happy one. They’d been various shades of sucky since kindergarten, when Chip Johnson ate too many iced cookies and threw up all over my new dress. I’d been drinking fruit punch, and when his puke hit me, I had an involuntary sympathetic response and spewed punch everywhere. It had set off a chain reaction of five-year-olds vomiting that I still couldn’t think about without getting queasy.
Even back in second and third grade, Valentine’s Day had been a stressful experience for me. I’d wake up dreading school. Mom always got Alina and me cards for everyone in our class, but a lot of moms weren’t as sensitive. I’d sit at my desk and hold my breath, praying someone besides Tubby Thompson or Blinky Brewer would remember me.
Then, in middle school, we had the Sadie Hawkins dance, where the girls had to ask the guys to go, putting on even more pressure. Adding insult to injury on what was supposed to be the most romantic day of the year, I was forced to risk rejection by asking out the guy of my dreams and praying that, by the time I got my nerve up, there’d be someone left besides Tubby and Blinky. In eighth grade, I waited too long and nobody popular was left, so I’d blow-dried my forehead on the high-heat setting, spritzed my sheets with water, and faked the flu that morning. Mom made me go anyway. The scorch mark on my forehead gave me away. I’d hastily cut bangs to try to cover it and had ended up at the dance dateless, miserable, with a painful burn and a bad haircut.
High school brought along a whole new set of problems. I shook my head, in no mood to relive teenage horrors. Bright side was, this Valentine’s Day could have been a whole lot worse. At least I’d get to sleep tonight with the comforting knowledge that Barrons was alive.
“Where to now?” I asked.
He stared straight ahead. The rattlesnake moved in his chest.
We pulled up at 939 Rêvemal Street, in front of the demolished entrance to Chester’s, the club that had once been Dublin’s number-one hotspot for the jaded rich and beautiful bored, until it was destroyed on Halloween. I stared at him disbelievingly.
He parked and turned off the engine.
“I’m not going in Chester’s. They want me dead in there.”
“And if they smell fear on you, they’ll try to kill you.” He opened the door and got out.
“Your point?”
“If I were you, I’d try to smell like something else.”
“Why do I have to go in?” I groused. “Can’t you
visit your buddies by yourself?”
“Do you want to see your parents or not?”
I leapt out, slammed the door, and ran after him, skirting rubble. I had no idea why he was offering—certainly not because he was trying to be nice—but I wasn’t about to miss the opportunity. As unpredictable as my life was, I wasn’t going to miss a single chance to spend time with the people I loved.
As if he’d read my thoughts, he tossed over his shoulder, “I said see them. Not visit with them.”
I hated the thought of my parents being held in the belly of the seedy Unseelie hangout, but I had to concede that underground, in the middle of Barrons’ men, was probably the safest place for them. They couldn’t go back to Ashford. The Unseelie Princes knew where we lived.
The only other possibilities were the abbey, the bookstore, or with V’lane. Not only were there Shades in the abbey still, the Sinsar Dubh had paid a deadly visit, and I didn’t trust Rowena with a butter knife. I certainly didn’t want them hanging around me, seeing what a mess I’d become. And V’lane—with his dim understanding of humans—might decide to tuck them away on a beach with an illusion of Alina, which my dad could handle, but it would definitely push my mom over the edge. We might never get her out of there.
Chester’s it was.
The club had once been the most popular place in the city, accessible by invitation only, with marble pillars that framed an ornate entrance into the three-story club, but lavish French-style gas lamps had been ripped from the concrete and used as battering rams against the façade. Fallen roof supports had crushed a world-renowned hand-carved bar and shattered elegant stained-glass windows. The club sign dangled in pieces above the entrance, chunks of concrete blocked the door, and the building was heavily covered with graffiti.
The new entrance to the club was around back, secreted beneath an inconspicuous, battered metal door in the ground, close to the crumbling foundation. If you didn’t know about the club, you wouldn’t give a second thought to what appeared to be a forgotten cellar door. The dance floors were so far underground and so well soundproofed that, unless you had Dani’s superhearing, you’d never know there was a party going on.
Karen Marie Moning’s Fever Series 5-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever Page 137
