Shadowfever

by Karen Marie Moning

  But she got weird a few months back. Started hanging all the time with Barb and Liz and never had time for me anymore. Used to be she was the only one didn’t treat me like a baby. Used to be they all treated me like a kid. Now they hardly treat me at all. Nobody sits at my table.

  Good feckin’ thing, too! Ain’t no room for sheep at my table.

  Jo’s sittin’ real quiet, watching Liz. Watching her hard.

  I wonder if she turned lezbo or somethin’ and that explains why she changed. Came out of her closet and moved on, maybe got herself a ménage twat with Liz and Barb. I snicker at my joke. Dude, if ya can’t crack yourself up, ain’t never gonna crack anybody else up.

  At first, the gunshots are so faint that even my superhearing don’t register what they are. Then, when I do, I sorta figure Barrons’ dudes musta come back for some reason and, like last time, they’re firing warning shots. Even though we got a shitload of Uzis and other guns, we got no use for ’em here. Only in Dublin. They don’t work on Shades. We don’t bring our guns into the abbey. We leave ’em on the bus.

  Page 24

 

  Dawning on me quick now how stupid that is.

  Later, I find out it started at the west end of the abbey. Started where Mac slept when she stayed here, where I been sleeping lately, in the Dragon Lady’s Library.

  When the screaming begins, I freeze-frame into motion but with caution: Automatic gunfire is something I gotta factor in to my superspeed equation.

  I’m fast, but, dude, the rat-a-tat-tat of that kinda spray is feckin’ fast, too. Tough to dodge. And what I’m hearing is constant.

  I’m in one of the corridors, heading for the screams, but suddenly everything is as dark as it must be where Rowena’s head is—straight up her ass. I snicker again. I’m cracking myself up tonight.

  I stop, plaster against the wall, and start moving like a Joe. Watching, straining to see down the dark corridor. I ain’t got my ’Halo, but I got a couple flashlights in my pockets. I pull one out, click it on.

  We ain’t never got all the Shades outta the abbey. Nobody puts on their boots without shining flashlights in ’em and shaking ’em out real good first. And then only in broad daylight.

  Nobody—but nobody—walks down dark halls here.

  So why’s it dark and who the feck is doing all that shooting?

  Lots of moaning. Lots of wounded. Ain’t warning shots. This is the real deal.

  I take a Joe step forward, quiet as I can. Glass crunches beneath my high-tops, and I know why it’s dark. Shooter took out the lights.

  I hear a soft, awful laugh that makes my blood run cold. I shine my flashlight down the dark hall, and the darkness kinda absorbs it.

  I hear somebody breathing fast.

  I hear more glass crunching and it ain’t me.

  Pretty sure the shooter’s headed straight for me!

  I flex my fingers, curl ’em tight around my sword. Ro tried to take it away. Told her I’d be her own personal guard if she let me keep it. I stand watch while she sleeps. I’m learning about tradeoffs.

  What the feck is moving down the hall at me?

  Later, when I tell the story, I don’t tell the whole truth.

  Truth is, the unthinkable happened. I got scared in that dark hall. I felt something coming and it freaked me.

  I say I never got to the corridor.

  Never admit I backed out with my tail tucked between my legs, retreated to the light, and then freeze-framed back to the dining hall.

  The shooting starts again and so does the screaming and we all run, but there’s only one way out and that’s the way in, so we’re knocking over tables and scrambling behind ’em.

  Jo and me, we end up behind the same table. Long as she doesn’t try any funky lezbo stuff on me, I don’t mind sharing my spot. I tap the table. It’s thick, made of solid wood. Might hold up, depending on bullets and distance.

  More screams. I wanna hold my ears.

  I’m cowering. I disgust myself.

  I gotta look. I gotta know what the feck is doing this to us!

  Jo and I move for opposite ends of the table at the same time and crack heads. She glares at me.

  “Like it’s my fault,” I hiss defensively. “You moved, too. ”

  “Where’s Liz?” she hisses back.

  I shrug. On my hands and knees, I waggle my ass. Whole abbey’s falling apart and she’s worried about her little girlfriend. “Baaaaa,” I say.

  She looks at me like I’m nuts. Then we’re both poking our heads around the table.

  Bullets are ripping across the room, ricocheting off walls and wood. Blood’s spraying everywhere, gory as feck, and the screams keep coming. The shooter is framed in the door of the dining hall.

  Jo gasps and I just about fall over choking.

  It’s Barb!

  What the feck’s this all about?

  She’s draped in rounds, toting the biggest Uzi I ever seen. White-faced, she’s screaming curses at us, taking us down like sitting ducks. I gape. “Barb?” I mutter. Don’t make no sense.

  Weird thing is, Jo looks stunned and bursts out, “I thought it was Liz!”

  I stare down the table at her. All I can see is her head, but she kinda shrugs it. “Long story. ”

  I assess the room, the scene. We’re at the back of the hall. We’ll be last to die. What the feck do I do? Why is Barb shooting us?

  I look at Jo. She’s no help. Looks blank as the page I was writing The Dani Daily on.

  Dude, I wish Mac was here! What would she do? Should I freeze-frame in while Barb’s shooting everybody and try to take her gun? Am I fast enough? I don’t wanna die today. Tomorrow’s gonna be my day. And I just know it’s gonna be a good one, too! ’Sides, I got too much to do. Somebody’s gotta keep an eye on Ro.

  Page 25

 

  But we’re dropping like flies! Holy feckin’ crikey, Barb’s wiping us out!

  I cram a candy bar in my mouth whole, chew it just enough to get it in my gut. I’m gonna need every ounce of energy I got to pull this off. I gotta do something. Barb ain’t gonna run outta bullets for a long time. The Mega can’t cower behind a table and do nothing.

  I poke my head out from behind the table, take a snapshot of the scene, and lock it down hard in my head. I map where every person, table, chair, and obstacle is.

  Problem is Barb. She’s the unknown. She’s moving and spraying fire so erratically, I can’t slam a grid of possibles down over my mental map.

  Feck!

  I stare, trying to pick up some kinda pattern.

  I duck back behind the table as a shot zings by. Poke my head out again. Ain’t no pattern.

  I pump breaths superfast, puffing my cheeks in and out, kicking my adrenaline up. I ease my head out, lock the grid down best I can, and am about to give my feet wings, when Barb goes kinda fuzzy around the edges and the room gets so fecking cold my breath comes out white.

  Jo makes a strangled sound.

  We both see it at the same time.

  What’s shooting at us ain’t Barb at all.

  Well … it is, and she’s screaming, but not like the psycho-rage-bitch-from-hell I thought she was.

  She’s screaming in horror.

  She’s fighting for control of the gun and failing. She forces it down and sprays the floor, but it comes up again. She tries to swing it left, toward the wall. It yanks back to the right. Her finger’s tight on the trigger the whole time.

  She blurs again.

  She’s just Barb.

  No, she ain’t! She’s—dude—what the feck is that? She’s got too many heads, too many teeth! She’s some kinda monster! And it ain’t no Shade!

  It’s Barb again.

  Being forced to kill us.

  Behind her, a shadow climbs the wall. It’s huge! It towers, it expands, and when it laughs, my blood clots up in my veins and
can’t get to my brain, ’cause it’s got so many ice chunks in it.

  “Where is the Grand Bitch?” it roars. “I want her fucking heeeeeeead!”

  Jo and I look at each other.

  We get it.

  We both know what’s got her, what’s really firing those rounds, and it gets driven home like a spike through my skull that I ain’t nearly The Shit Mac thinks I am.

  Me and Jo ooze real slow back behind the table.

  Just two brave little sheep.

  Hiding from a book.

  The Book.

  The one we been hoping to find. Talking real big about locking it down again. Yeah, right, just what the feck did we think we were gonna do with it?

  The nerve of it. It came here. Here, where it was trapped for so long. It must feel pretty feckin’ invincible. Pisses me off so bad I’m shaking. It came here. Gah—that’s so feckin’ wrong!

  I read Mac’s journal. I know how it works. Makes folks pick it up. Me and Barb and Jo and about fifteen others went into Dublin this morning for supplies. We didn’t stick together the whole time. Split up and went off after different things.

  It musta got Barb alone and made her pick it up.

  I get a creepy chill that goes all the way up my spine so fast I get brain freeze when it hits my head.

  Feckin’ A! The Sinsar Dubh rode back to the abbey with us this morning! Right there on our bus!

  I was sitting on the same bus with the Unseelie King’s Book and didn’t even know it!

  I sort through my options. I ain’t impervious to bullets. Dying today ain’t gonna do nobody no good, ’specially not me. Don’t know how to stop it. Ain’t beating myself up for that. Nobody knows how to stop it.

  Don’t dare get close enough to let it take me.

  Riding me, it could wipe out the entire abbey in record time.

  I swallow. I’d been starting to wonder if it was looking for me. Guess it was looking to get any sidhe-seer alone, so it could take us down from the inside and gain revenge for its captivity.

  They’re dying. They’re all dying out there, beyond my table. It’s killing me that they’re dying.

  And I can’t come up with one feckin’ thing to do about it.

  Got one chance, and it ain’t to stop it. I grab Jo and freeze-frame outta there.

  Ro’s face is pale, bloodless. I ain’t never seen her like this. She looks like she’s aged twenty years in a single day. One hundred eighteen sidhe-seers were killed before Barb shot her way out of the abbey, took our bus with all our weapons, and disappeared.

  A hundred more were wounded.

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  The Sinsar Dubh paid us a visit, gave us a little look-see, thumbed its beast nose at us, flipped us the motherfeckin’ bird of all birds.

  Jo and me, we sit across the desk from Ro.

  “You didn’t even try to stop it,” she finally says. She’s been letting us stew. She likes to do that. Potatoes and carrots, they turn to mush if they stew long enough. Time was, I did, too. But I don’t cook down so fast anymore.

  I didn’t need to hear Ro say it. I been staring at the accusation blazing in her fierce blue eyes for the past five minutes. I don’t answer. I’m done answering her. She shoulda told us. She shoulda warned us. I never ever imagined the Sinsar Dubh could pull a stunt like that. She ain’t training us. She’s keeping us small. Afraid. Just like Mac said. What—I shoulda died so she could say, Dani tried? Feck that noise. Ain’t dying just so she can feel better ’bout things.

  Jo says, “Grand Mistress, it looked like Barb was fighting it. From the information Jayne and his men gathered about the Book, we were pretty sure what that meant. ”

  “Och, and now you’re trusting Jayne? I teach you! I train you!”

  Jo turns her face away a moment, and I remember that Barb was one of her best friends. But Jo, she surprises me with a little steel. When she turns back and starts talking again, her voice is steady. “She was going to kill herself soon, Rowena. Our first goal was to keep the Book from getting a new body. If Dani had gone near it, it could have taken a virtually unstoppable body. ”

  Ro cuts me a scathing glance. “Ever the liability, are you not, Danielle?”

  I make a face, can’t help it. She’s always blaming me for something. Done trying to blow smoke up her ass. Sick of pretending to be things I’m not. “D’pends on how you look at it, Ro,” I say coolly. “And you’re always looking at it wrong. ”

  Jo sucks in a sharp breath.

  I’ve gone too far, and I’m about to go farther. I don’t care. Ever since Mac disappeared, Ro’s made it plain she’d take me back into her good graces if I’d cooperate the tiniest bit. I been skirting around the subject, flirting with appeasing her just enough to keep her guessing, thinking I’ll come to heel.

  But that ain’t never gonna happen.

  I just watched a hundred of my sisters—so what if they’re sheep? They’re still my sisters—get butchered. And this old woman stands and glares at me? At least I own up to my sins. I go to sleep with ’em every night. Wake up with ’em every morning. See ’em in the mirror, staring right back at me. And I say, dude, get over yourself already.

  “How’d the Book get loose, Ro?” I’m on my feet, sword in my hand. “Why’n’tcha ever tell us that? Cause maybe you fell asleep on the job? ’S that it?”

  Her voice is tight and she’s even paler when she looks at Jo and snaps, “You will escort that child to her room now! And lock her in!”

  As if that’s gonna happen. Nobody here can control me. Ever since I killed that Hunter, I been feeling like the dude that shot a giant with his slingshot. Ro can’t feck with my head like she used to.

  “All I did is say what everybody’s been thinking but been too afraid to say. I ain’t afraid of you no more, Ro. I saw the Sinsar Dubh tonight. I know what I’m afraid of. ” I back-kick my chair so hard it slams into the wall behind me. “I’m leaving. I’m done here. ” I mean it. I really am. Used to think I was at least a little safe in the abbey, but we got Shades in the shadows, and now the Book snuck in, and fact o’ the matter is, I can make myself a safer place than this in a feckin’ Dark Zone!

  ’Sides, nobody here’ll even notice if I’m gone. Maybe I’ll check out Jayne, hang with the Guardians for a while.

  “You will go to your room this very instant, Danielle Megan!”

  Gah, I hate that name! Sissy name. Sissy girl.

  “What would your mother think of you?” she snaps.

  “What would my mother think of what you made me?” I snap back.

  “I made you a proud and true weapon for the right. ”

  “Guess that’s why I feel like my sword most of the time. Cold. Hard. Bloody. ”

  “Ever the melodrama with you, isn’t it? Grow up, Danielle O’Malley! And sit down. ”

  “Feck you, Ro. ”

  I freeze-frame out.

  The chilly Irish air blasts me, and if a couple places on my cheeks are especially cold, I ignore ’em. I ain’t crying. I never cry.

  I miss my mom sometimes, though.

  Page 27

 

  The world’s big.

  So am I.

  Dude—I’m homeless!

  I swagger into the night.

  Free at last.

  7

  Why did you hang a Silver to Dublin in one of the white wings, when you know the House rearranges itself? Why didn’t you put it somewhere more stable and easily accessible?” I resume my questions as we walk.

  That bipolar feeling from my high school days is back with a vengeance. He’s everything I despise. I want to kill him so badly that I have to keep my hands in my pockets, balled into fists.

  He’s also the person who was intimate with my sister during the final months of her life, the only one who can answer all those questions no one else can—and who can seriously shorten the amo
unt of time I have to spend in this wasteland of a reality.

  Did you take her journal? Did she know Rowena or any of the sidhe-seers? Did she tell you about the prophecy? Why did you kill her? Was she happy? Please tell me she was happy before she died.

  “No rooms in the White Mansion ever get completely dark, not even where night falls. I erred the first time I opened a Silver. I hung it in a place that did. A creature I believed securely imprisoned—one I did not ever intend to free from the Unseelie prison—escaped. ”

  “What creature?” I demand. This man who looks like a Versace ad, who walks and talks like a human, isn’t. He’s worse than someone possessed by a Gripper—one of those dainty, beautiful Unseelie that can slip inside a person’s skin and take over. He is one hundred percent Fae in a body that should never have been his. He’s a cold-blooded killer, responsible for butchering billions of humans, hundreds of thousands of them in Dublin on a single night, without a second thought. If there was a creature in the icy Unseelie hell that he never intended to set loose, I want to know why, exactly what it is, and how to kill it. If it worries him, it terrifies me.

  “Watch the floors, MacKayla. ”

  I look at him. He’s not going to answer me. Pressing would only make me appear weak.

  We’ve resumed the search together. He’s unwilling to leave me on my own. I’m in no hurry to be on my own again. I’m still raw from what happened to me in the black wing. I’d gotten cemented in memories, and if Darroc hadn’t busted me out, I might never have escaped.

  Chasing Barrons, I might not have wanted to escape. I remember the bones in the Hall of All Days. I think of the beach in Faery with Alina. If I’d chosen to stay with her then, would I have eventually died from eating food with no substance, drinking water that was no more real than my sister?

  Damn Faery with its killing illusions!

  I push memories of sex with the king, with Barrons, away. I distract myself with hatred for the man who killed my sister.

  Was Alina happy? It’s on the tip of my tongue again.

  “Very,” he fires back at me, and I realize I’ve not only said it aloud but it seems he’s just been waiting for me to ask.

  I’m appalled that I’ve been so weak. Offering my enemy the opportunity to lie to me! “Bullshit!”

  “You are impossible. ” Disdain etches his handsome face. “She was nothing like you. She was open. Her heart was not sealed away behind walls. ”

  “Look what that got her. Dead. ”