Shadowfever f-5

by Karen Marie Moning

  Logical, pragmatic Jack Lane believed the brain was like a vast computer, and dreams were the conscious mind’s way of backing up and storing the day’s events in the subconscious, filing away memories and organizing lessons. But he’d also believed that if a dream kept recurring, it suggested the mind or heart was having a problem dealing with something.

  He’d proposed that my dream reflected a child’s natural fear of losing her mother, but even at ten, that hadn’t quite rung true for me. Now I wondered if Daddy had secretly worried that the recurring dream had something to do with the biological mother I’d lost, that perhaps I’d been trapped somewhere cold, forced to watch her die.

  That was what I’d been thinking, too, until my recent experience in the White Mansion with the concubine and king, when I’d realized she was the woman from my dreams, coupled with my latest dream, where watching her die felt like I had perished. Now I was troubled by an entirely different possibility.

  Regardless, when I’d attempted to write down my Cold Place dream, it had come out looking a lot like this prophecy: vague, dreamy, and confusing as hell.

  “Besides, we think we have it sorted out,” Jo said. “The word ‘Keltar’ means magic mantle. The clan of the Keltar, or MacKeltar, served as Druids to the Tuatha Dé Danann thousands of years ago, when the Fae still lived among us. When the Compact was negotiated and the Fae retired from our world, they left the Keltar in charge of honoring the Compact and protecting the old lore.”

  “And we’ve learned there are five male Druids living,” said Mary.

  “Dageus, Drustan, Cian, Christian, and Christopher,” Jo said. “We’ve already dispatched a message to them, asking them to join us here.”

  Unfortunately, Christian was going to be a problem.

  “You said you knew where the four stones are,” Kat said.

  I nodded.

  “So all we need is you to tell us where the Book is, one of the Keltar to pick it up and bring it here, the four stones laid around it, and the five of them to re-inter it with whatever binding song or chant they know. It sounds like one of them will know whatever needs to be done at the end. I spoke to one of their wives, and she seemed to understand what was meant by ‘the inhabited or possessed.’ ”

  “Re-inter it where?” I demanded, watching Rowena closely. It looked as if my only role in the entire matter was to track it. This entire time I’d been feeling as if I had to do it all, but my part in the prophecy was really very small. There was nothing in the prophecy about me that was bad. Just that Alina might die and I would long for death—been there, done that. I felt a huge weight slip from my shoulders. There were five other people responsible for the bulk of it. It was all I could do not to punch the air with a fist and shout, Yes!

  “Where it was before,” she said coolly.

  “And where’s that?”

  “Down the corridor Dani said you couldn’t pass,” Jo said.

  The Grand Mistress shot her a quelling look.

  “Can you get past the woman who guards it?” I asked Rowena.

  “Don’t fash yourself with my business, girl. I’ll do my part. You do yours.”

  “V’lane couldn’t get past it, either,” I fished, wondering why.

  “No Fae can.” Smugness dripped from her words, and I knew she’d had something to do with that.

  “Who is the woman that guards the hall?”

  Jo answered, “The last known leader of the Haven.”

  Rowena’s current Haven was cloaked in secrecy. “You mean my mother?”

  “Isla was not your mother! She had only one child,” Rowena snapped.

  “Then who am I?”

  “Precisely.” She managed to try, convict, and execute me with the single word.

  “The prophecy said there were two of us. One dies young, the other longs for death.” Had she and I been alone, I wasn’t sure how far I would have gone to force answers from her, but I knew this much: I wouldn’t have liked myself when it was over.

  “Like as not, a washerwoman ate a bad bit of fish, had dreams on an uneasy stomach, and declared herself a prophet. The word is bloodlines. Plural.”

  “Her spelling was appalling. There are extra letters in many words,” Jo said.

  “You’ll need to neutralize those particular wards,” I said coolly.

  “There will be no Fae present when we seal the abomination away!”

  “V’lane won’t give me the stone,” I told her. “There’s no way he’ll just hand it over.”

  “Spread your legs for another Fae and whore it out of him,” she said flatly. “Then you will turn them all over to us. There is no need for you to be present when the ritual is performed.”

  My cheeks pinked, and it infuriated me. This old woman got under my skin like nobody else could. I wondered if my mother—Isla, I corrected hastily—had felt the same. I’d been so elated to discover the identity of my biological mother, and now, with everyone telling me she’d had only one child, I felt as if not only my mother had been stolen away from me but maybe even my sister as well. I’d never felt so alone in all my life.

  “Feck you, old woman,” I said.

  “Don’t waste it on me,” she retorted. “I’m not the one with the stone.”

  “What was it you said to me once? Wait—I remember.” I used Voice at the full extent of my power when I said, “Haud yer whist, Rowena.”

  “Mac,” Kat warned.

  “She’s allowed to call me names but I can’t tell her to shut up?”

  “Sure, and you can, on equal ground, without compulsion. You rely on such powers in times of no need, you run the risk of losing what makes you human. You’ve a hot temper and a hotter heart. You need to cool them both.”

  “You may speak, Rowena.” Voice had never sounded so pissy when Barrons used it.

  “Your loyalty must be first to us, the sidhe-seers,” she said instantly.

  “Do you want the walls back up, Rowena?” I demanded.

  “Och, and of course I do!”

  “Then the Seelie will have to be involved. Once the Book is re-interred, the queen will need to come search it for the Song of Making—”

  “The Song of Making is in the Sinsar Dubh?” she exclaimed.

  “The queen believes fragments of it are, and from them she can re-create the entire Song.”

  “And so certain you are you wish that to happen?”

  “You don’t want the Unseelie locked away again?”

  “Aye, I do. But they’ve been without the Song of Making since long before we encountered them. If the Fae regain that ancient melody, their power will once again be limitless. Have you any idea what those times might have been like? Are you so certain the human race would survive it?”

  I blinked at her in startled silence. I’d been so focused on getting the Unseelie reimprisoned and sending the Seelie back to their court that I’d not deeply examined the possible repercussions of restoring the Song of Making to the Fae. It must have shown on my face, because Rowena’s tone softened when she said, “Och, so you’re not a complete fool.”

  I gave her a look. “I’ve had a lot on my plate. And I sure learned Voice fast, didn’t I? But we have other, more-immediate problems: I know Christian MacKeltar, and he’s missing. He’s been trapped inside the Silvers since Halloween. We can’t do a thing until we find him.”

  “In the Silvers?” Kat exclaimed. “We can’t go in the Silvers! None can!”

  “I was there myself recently. It can be done.”

  Rowena appraised me. “You’ve been in the Silvers?”

  “I stood in the Hall of All Days,” I said, and was surprised to hear a touch of pride in my voice. I finally allowed myself to ask the question that had been gnawing at me ever since I’d heard there were two prophecies and, in one of them, I supposedly doomed the world. Was it really about me? Or was it as vague as this one? “I heard there were two prophecies. Where’s the other one?”

  Kat and Jo exchanged uneasy glances.
>
  “The washerwoman rambled ’til the end of the page about how many stones there were to throw into a loch at any given moment and that some were more possible than others,” Jo said. “She claimed she dreamed of dozens such stones, but only two seemed likely. The first could save us. The second was far more likely to doom us.”

  I nodded impatiently. “I know. So what’s the second prophecy?”

  Kat handed me the slim volume. “Turn the page.”

  “I can’t read Old Irish Gaelic.”

  “Just turn it.”

  I did. Because the ink she’d used had stained through the sheets of vellum bound into the thin journal, Mad Morry had written on only one side of the page. The next page was missing. Small pieces of parchment and torn threads protruded from the binding. “Someone tore it out?” I said disbelievingly.

  “A good while ago. This is one of the first volumes we cataloged once you removed the wards protecting the library. We found it open, on a table, with this page and several others missing. We suspect it was whoever destroyed the wards outside your cell when you were Pri-ya,” Kat said.

  “There’s a traitor in the abbey,” Jo said. “And whoever it is either translates as well as me or took random pages.”

  “To have bypassed my wards and gained access to this library,” Rowena added grimly, “it could only have been one of my trusted Haven.”

  23

  I parked the Viper behind the bookstore and sat staring down into what was once the city’s biggest Dark Zone—crammed full of Shades, with one giant amorphous life-sucker in particular that had seemed to enjoy threatening me as much as I’d enjoyed threatening it.

  I wondered where it was now. I hoped I would get the chance to hunt it and try out some of my newfound runes, destroy it once and for all, because as large as it had been before it escaped on the night the lights went out in Dublin, I imagined it could devour small towns in a single swallow now.

  I glanced at the garage. I looked at the bookstore. I sighed.

  I missed him. Ironically, now that I’d become obsessed with wondering who and what I was, I was less worried about who and what he was. I was beginning to understand why he’d always insisted I judge him by his actions. What if the sidhe-seers really were Unseelie? Did that make us innately bad? Or did that just mean we—like the rest of the human race—had to choose whether to be good or evil?

  I got out of the car, locked it, and turned for the bookstore.

  “Barrons say you can drive his Viper?” Lor said behind me.

  Hand on the doorknob, I turned, dangling the key ring from my finger. “Possession. Nine-tenths of the law.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched. “You been around him too much.”

  “Where’s Fade? Did you catch him?”

  “Book left him dead.”

  “And just when do you expect him back?” I said sweetly.

  “Report. What did you learn at the abbey?”

  “You think I’m reporting to you now?”

  “Until Barrons gets back and takes control of you again.”

  “Is that what you think? He takes control of me?” My temper flared.

  “You’d better hope so, because if he doesn’t, we kill you.” The threat was delivered tonelessly, with utter disinterest. It was chilling. “We don’t exist. That’s the way it always has been. That’s the way it always will be. If people find out about us, we kill them. It’s not personal.”

  “Well, excuse the hell out of me if you try to kill me and I decide to take it pretty damned personally.”

  “We’re not trying to. At the moment. Report.”

  I snorted and turned to enter the store.

  He was behind me, his hand on my hand on the doorknob, his face in my hair, lips close to my ear. He inhaled. “You don’t smell like other people, Mac. I wonder why. I’m not like Barrons. Ryodan is downright civilized. I don’t suffer Kasteo’s problems, and Fade is still having fun. Death is my morning coffee. I like blood and the sound of bones breaking. It turns me on. Tell me what you learned about the prophecy and, next time, bring me the seer’s book. If you want your parents to remain … intact, you will cooperate only with us. You will lie to everyone else. We own you. Don’t make me give you a lesson. There are things that can break you. You wouldn’t believe the madness certain kinds of pain can induce.”

  I turned to face him. For a moment he didn’t let me, made me push against his body and struggle to move. His body was every bit as electric as Barron’s and Ryodan’s. And I knew he was enjoying it, quite possibly on a level of primitive carnality I didn’t understand.

  There are things that can break you, he’d said. I almost laughed. He had no idea the thing that had broken me most completely was my belief that Barrons was dead.

  One look at Lor’s eyes and I decided I would wait until Barrons was back before pressing any issues with him. “You think Barrons has a weakness for me,” I said. “That’s what worries you.”

  “It is forbidden.”

  “He despises me. He thinks I slept with Darroc, remember?”

  “He cares that you slept with Darroc.”

  “He cared that I burned his rug, too. He gets a little pissy about those things he likes to think of as his property.”

  “You two drive me bug-fuck. Prophecy. Talk.”

  He interrogated me for nearly half an hour before he was satisfied. I let myself into my fourth-floor bedroom, weary to the bone. My room was a mess—protein-bar wrappers, empty water bottles, and clothes everywhere. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, slipped into pajamas, and was about to crawl into bed, when I remembered the tarot card from last night that the dreamy-eyed guy had given me.

  I dug in the pocket of my coat and pulled it out. The back of it was black, covered with silver symbols and runes that looked a lot like the silver etchings I’d glimpsed on one of the three forms of the Sinsar Dubh—the one of an ancient black tome with heavy locks.

  I turned it over. THE WORLD was inscribed at the top.

  It was a beautiful card, framed in crimson and black. A woman stood in profile on a white landscape tinged with blue that looked icy, forbidding. Against the backdrop of a starry sky, a planet revolved in front of her face, but she was looking away—not at the world at all but staring off into the distance. Or was she looking at someone who wasn’t on the card? I had no idea what THE WORLD card was supposed to mean in a tarot reading. I’d never had my cards read. Mac 1.0 had considered having your future divined through tarot cards as ridiculous as trying to dial up a dead relative on a Ouija board. Mac 5.0 would happily take any help she could get from any source. I studied it. Why had the dreamy-eyed guy left it for me? What was I supposed to learn from it? That I needed to look at the world? That I was distracted by other things and people and not seeing clearly? That I really was the person holding the fate of the world in my hands?

  No matter how I looked at it, the card implied way too much responsibility. The prophecy had made it clear that my involvement wasn’t much at all. I tucked it between the pages of the book on my bed stand, got into bed, and pulled the covers over my head.

  Once again, I dreamed of the sad, beautiful woman and, once again, I had the oddest sense of duality, seeing from her eyes and mine, feeling her sorrow and my confusion. Come, you must hurry, you must know.

  Urgency gripped me.

  Only you can. No other way in … Her words echoed off the cliffs, growing fainter with each rebound. Trying to … for so long … so hard …

  Then an Unseelie Prince was there beside her (us).

  But he was not one of the three I knew, one of the three that had raped me. It was the fourth. The one I’d never seen.

  In that strange way of knowing things in dreams, I knew it was War.

  Run, hide! she screamed.

  I couldn’t. My feet were rooted to the ground, my eyes locked on him. He was far more beautiful than the other Unseelie Princes and far more terrifying. Like the others, he looked into me, not at me,
and his gaze felt like razors slicing through my most private hopes and fears. I knew that War’s specialty was not merely to turn opposing factions, races, or populations upon one another but to find sides within a person and turn them upon themselves.

  Here was the ultimate trickster, the destroyer.

  And I understood that Death wasn’t the one to be feared. War was the one that laid waste to lives. Death was just the cleanup guy, the janitor, the final act.

  Though the same black torque writhed around War’s neck, it was threaded with silver. Though kaleidoscopic colors rushed beneath his skin, a nimbus of gold surrounded him, and, at his back, I glimpsed the flash of black feathers. War was winged.

  You are too late, he said.

  24

  I was jarred awake the next morning by an unaccustomed noise and sat up, looking around. Twice more I heard the sound before I figured out what it was. Someone was throwing a rock against my window.

  I rubbed my eyes and stretched. “Coming,” I groused, and tossed back the covers. I figured it was Dani. Since cell phone service still wasn’t back up and the store had no doorbell, it was the only way she could get my attention, short of breaking in.

  I pushed aside the drape and glanced out into the alley.

  V’lane reclined on the hood of Barrons’ Viper, leaning back against the windshield. Though supposedly the car wasn’t mine (we’d see about that), I instantly assessed V’lane for rivets or any other abrasive elements that might mar the paint job. I love sports cars. All that muscle just does it for me. I decided it was a safe bet the soft white towel knotted loosely at his waist wasn’t going to scratch anything. His perfect body was dusted gold, and his eyes were sunshine sparkling on diamonds.

  I pushed the window up. Chilly air wafted in. The temperature had dropped, low-hanging clouds had moved in. It was once again cold and gloomy in Dublin.

  He lifted a cup of Starbucks. “Good morning, MacKayla. I brought you coffee.”