Shadowfever_Fever

by Karen Marie Moning

  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 without me, MacKayla?”

  Behind me, the princes chime louder. It’s a cacophony that slices into the soul like a razor, severs tendon, and chips bone. I wonder if that’s what comes of being fashioned from an imperfect Song of Making, a melody that can unmake, unsing, uncreate at a molecular level.

  They hate my crimson runes, and I hate their dark music.

  I won’t be the one to yield.

  “Why?” I ask Darroc. Is that where the runes I’ve scooped up came from? What does he know about them? I can’t ask him without betraying that, while I have power, I have no idea what it is or how to use it. I raise my fists and open them, palms up. My hands drip thick red liquid. Slender tubular runes twist on my palms.

  Behind me, the princes’ jagged chiming becomes a hellish shriek that even Darroc looks rattled by.

  I have no idea what to do with the runes. I was thinking of the Unseelie Princes, that I needed a weapon against them, and they appeared in my mind. I have no idea how I translated them from that dark glassy lake into existence. I understand no more about these crimson symbols than I did about the silvery ones.

  “Where did you learn to do that, MacKayla?” Darroc demands.

  I can barely hear him over the princes. “How do you plan to merge with the Book?” I counter. I have to raise my voice to a near yell to make myself heard.

  “Do you have any idea what those things are capable of?” he demands. I read his lips. I can’t hear him.

  The shrieking behind me rises to an inhuman pitch that pierces my eardrums like ice picks. “Give me my spear and I’ll put them away,” I shout.

  Darroc moves closer, trying to hear me. “Impossible!” he explodes. “My princes will not remain and protect us if you have the spear.” His gaze slides with distaste over the runes in my hands. “Nor with those present.”

  “I think we can take care of ourselves!”

  “What?” he shouts.

  “We don’t need them!” The ice picks in my ears have begun drilling into my brain. I’m on the verge of a massive migraine.

  “I do! I am not yet Fae again. My army follows me only because Fae princes lead at my back!”

  “Who needs an army?” We’re inches apart, shouting at each other, and still the words are nearly lost in the din.

  He rubs his temples. His nose has started to bleed. “We do! The Seelie are amassing, MacKayla. They, too, have begun hunting the Sinsar Dubh. Much has changed since you were last here!”

  “How do you know?” I hadn’t seen any handy newsstands in the Silvers while I was in there.

  He grabs my head, pulls it to his. “I stay informed!” he snarls against my ear.

  The chiming has become an unbearable orchestra of sounds that the human ear was never meant to hear. My neck is wet. I realize my ears are bleeding. I’m mildly surprised. I don’t bleed easily anymore. Haven’t ever since I ate Unseelie.

  “You must obey me in this, MacKayla!” he shouts. “If you wish to remain at my side, dispose of them. Or is it war you wish between us? I thought it was an alliance you sought!” He wipes blood from his lips and cuts a sharp look at the princes.

  Blissfully, blessedly, the chiming stops. The ice picks through my eardrums vanish.

  I inhale deeply, gulping clean, fresh air greedily, as if it might wash my cells clean of the stain from the princes’ horrific symphony.

  My relief is short-lived, however. As abruptly as the hellish music stopped, my shoulders and arms are freezing, and I think sheets of ice might crack and drop away
if I move.

  I don’t need to turn my head to know that the princes have sifted into position, one on my left, one on my right. I feel them there. I know their inhumanly beautiful faces are inches from mine. If I turn my head, they will look into me with those piercing, mesmerizing, ancient eyes that can see beyond where the human soul is, that can see into the very matter that comprises it—and can take it apart piece by piece. Regardless of how much they despise my runes, they’re still ready to take me on.

  I look at Darroc. I’d wondered what his reaction would be if I tried to take the spear. I see a look in his eyes now that was not there a short time ago. I am both a greater liability than he knew and a greater asset—and he likes it. He likes power: both having it and having a woman who has it.

  I despise walking with Unseelie Princes at my back. But his comment about the Seelie amassing armies, my ignorance about the runes I hold in my hands, and the icy dark Fae sandwiching me make compelling arguments.

  I tilt my head, toss my dark curls from my eyes, and look up at him. He likes it when I use his name. I think it makes him feel like he’s with Alina again. Alina was soft and Southern to the core. We Southern women know a thing or two about men. We know to use their name often, to make them feel strong, needed, as if they have the final say even when they don’t, and to always, always keep them believing they won the best prize in the only competition that will ever matter on the day we said, “I do.”

  “If we get into a battle, Darroc, will you promise to return my spear so I can use it to help defend us? Will you permit that?”

  He likes those words: “help defend us” and “permit.” I see it in his eyes. A smile breaks across his face. He touches my cheek and nods. “Of course, MacKayla.”

  He looks at the princes and they are no longer beside me.

  I’m uncertain how to return the runes. I’m not sure they can be returned.

  When I toss them over my shoulders at the princes, they make sounds like exploding crystal goblets, as they sift hastily to avoid them. I hear the runes steam and hiss as they hit pavement.