Burned (5 page)

The second I tug my coat from her fingers she grabs a fistful of my hair and pulls.

“Ow! You pulled my hair!” It
hurt
. Give me swords and spears and guns any day of the week.

“Wow, gee. See Dani’s brilliant skills—”

“Stow it! Think up your own insults, unless it’s too much work for your—”

“—of observation. And I did
not
pull your hair. I’m just trying to hold you. You’re trying to get away.
You’re
the one pulling your hair.”

“—puny little brain! And of course I’m trying to get away, you fecking twit! And I’m not biting you now so let go of my hair!” I reach up, grab my hair, and we do this idiotic tug of war, then she lets go so abruptly, I crash forward onto my hands and knees.

I surge up instantly but duck again and roll fast out of the way twice, three times, when I hear the whine of her spear behind me. The ZEWs explode upward, rustling and shrieking like a flock of startled buzzards. Guess the spear slicing air freaks them out, too.

For a stupid, vulnerable instant I crouch near the ground and can’t even move, trying to process that Mac
really
just swung her spear at me, made an undeniable attempt to kill me, as in remove me from this planet, as in end me
forever
. Seems I was holding on to a crippling hope of absolution, secret even from me. The air feels colder behind me, as if a murderous rage looms there. If you think emotions don’t throw off energy, you’re wrong.

I shoot to my feet, scrubbing at my cheeks with the balls of my fists. Ice chips must’ve flown up into my eyes when I rolled, making them sting and tear.

I break into a run.

My backpack drops like a stone from my shoulders. Bugger, she missed
me
but she caught the straps of my bag as I ducked, and all my food is in my pack! I don’t know a single store in a fifty-mile radius with stock on the shelves. My superspeed will
come back, and when it does I’ll need food ASAP. I skid to a slippery stop on ice and turn to grab it.

Mac is standing, one boot planted on my backpack, spear raised, shining alabaster. The edges are razor sharp. I can see my name written all over them.

Message is clear.

“You can’t go anywhere without food, Dani. Stop running. I just want to talk to you.”

“You’re not tricking me!” I hate it that she keeps pretending. Full frontal attack I can deal with. This sneaky crap is lower than low.

“I’m not trying to.”

She sure as feck is. She just tried to slice off my head, for cripes sake.

The ZEWs resettle on the rooftops and resume that nerve-wracking racket again.

“So, what? I’m supposed to believe you came looking for me to tell me you, like, forgive me? Just how stupid do you think I am?”

Her eyes fill with shadows and she looks sad. “Life is complicated, Dani.”

“What the feck does that
mean
?” I could just pop out of my skin like an overpressured grape from sheer frustration. I hate it when people throw big sweeping generalizations at you that you can’t even begin to interpret. Life is complicated so I’m going to kill you quick? Life is complicated so I’m going to torture you to death slow and talk the whole time, driving you batshit crazy in the process? Life is complicated ergo I might forgive you if you perform Herculean tasks of redemption? The options are endless. Who doesn’t know life is complicated? What I want to know is how to apply that to the nuts and bolts of my existence. Folks never tell you
that
part.

“Sometimes the things we think will set us free … only make more chains. You either wear them or break them, and I … well, I don’t want to wear them.”

“Dude, ain’t no chains here. I don’t see nothing but you and me and weapons and death, if you don’t get off my pack and walk away. Besides, even if you did say you forgive me, I’d never believe you! I’ll always be waiting for the second you decide to try to kill me. You want me dead. Admit it. Just say it. Be honest, for feck’s sake! You know you want me dead! I see it in your eyes!”

She doesn’t say anything for a couple seconds, like she’s thinking hard about what she’s going to say next, and I don’t even know I’m holding my breath waiting until she begins talking and it kind of explodes from my lungs.

“I don’t want you dead, Dani. That’s not why I came looking for you.”

“Well, why the fuck not?” I yell. “I
deserve
to die!”

My hand goes to my mouth like maybe I can cover up what I just said or scrape the words back inside somehow. I’m horrified. I don’t even know where those words came from. There aren’t many sins in my bible. Giving up is the greatest one of all. I just broke my own cardinal rule. Life is a gift. You fight to keep it. You never quit. Never.

Nobody wants you. Your own mother locks you in a cage, leaves and forgets you. Just die. It’ll end everyone’s misery, including your own. Maybe then she can have a life. One of you should
.

I can’t believe I just said I deserve to die. Maybe I’m possessed. Maybe I got one of those sneaky, diaphanous Unseelie Grippers inside me but it’s only fecking with me sometimes (’cause I’m so super it can’t possess me all the time!), making me say things I don’t really feel and shorting out my powers.
And maybe that Gripper has some kind of bizarre obsession with Ryodan. Weirder things have been happening in Dublin lately.

Mac shakes her head, giving me a totally fake compassionate look. “Oh, Dani—”

“I’m not falling for this so just shut up! Leave me alone or I’ll kill you like I killed your sister. I swear I will. I’ll kill you and then I’ll kill everybody you care about. That’s what I do. I kill people. I kill and kill and kill. That’s who I am. That’s who she made me.” I used to daydream Barrons found me in the cage that day, instead of Ro, and imagine what I’d have turned out to be then, but he didn’t. She did. It is what it is.

I run.

She follows faster than I would have thought possible. I wonder if Barrons did something to her, maybe that thing Ryodan said he would do for me. Is she as unkillable as them now? Is that where her balls are coming from? If so, I’m seriously pissed and even more jealous.

I leap snowbanks, dash down alleys, double back around, leading her on a merry chase through Temple Bar, and still she manages to stay hot on my arse. I keep testing every couple of seconds to see if I can freeze-frame but my superpowers have taken the same vacation my conscience went on years ago.

She’s yelling stuff but I don’t listen. I hum my favorite playlist to tune out her and the racket of her creepy army.

I don’t realize my feet have taken me to Barrons Books & Baubles until it looms up in front of me, only holy place I’ve ever known: amber lights and polished wood and diamond-paned windows and endless possibilities. Deep in a limestone arch, fancy columns and sidelights and brass sconces and a stained-glass transom frame the door I used to go banging through a million miles a minute, and just above it on a shiny
brass pole hangs that colorful hand-painted shingle that might as well have once said Welcome Home but never would again for me.

I love this place more than any other. Gas fireplaces and big comfy couches you can really stretch out on and magazines and books you can read and dream about all the places in the world you’re gonna see one day, and wicked-cool antique weapons and kick-ass modern ones, and killer muscle cars and cakes and presents and friends you thought you had. The hours I spent there are filed away in my storage vaults in superhigh-gloss Technicolor, brighter than any other memories. Sometimes I pull one out and relive it real slow, savoring it down to the last morsel. I love Mac. I miss her so bad. I wish—

Wishes aren’t horses and I don’t get to ride. ’Scool. I got feet that are usually superhero grade.

The bell on the door tinkles.

A man steps out.

Strong. Brilliant. Controlled.

Predator.

Unbreakable. Feck, to be so unbreakable!

He’s everything I admire plus things I can’t even begin to put into words.

I crush on Jericho Barrons violently.

My brain almost shuts down every time I see him and that’s a lot of gray matter to stupefy.

Used to be, if I couldn’t fall asleep I’d fantasize all kinds of ways I’d impress Barrons by killing monsters or saying something really smart or saving the world, and he’d see me as a grown-up woman and I’d glow just from the expression on his face, like that time I killed the Unseelie Prince in Mac’s cell and he looked at me like he really saw who I was. Most
folks don’t. They fence me in with teenage rules that don’t hold me for shit, seeing how I grew up.
You can kill but don’t cuss. Break any rule necessary to save the world but don’t watch porn or even
think
about having sex
. How do they come up with this stuff—hold parental powwows for brainstorming diametrically opposed ethics? Then Ryodan began popping into my Barrons fantasies like he had some kind of business being there, and he’d look all, well … like … Ryodan, and he’d laugh and do that husky groan thing he did on level four, so I terminated that happy little exercise in somnolence.

Now, I count sheep.

Lately even
those
buggers look like Ryodan, with clear, cold eyes and some weird kind of hypnotic hold on me.

Fecker.

I’m beginning to think I’m going to have to figure a way to kill him, permanent-like, just to get him out of my head.

“Dani.”

I shiver. He has that effect on folks, throws off some kind of charge, supersaturates the space in his vicinity. All his dudes do, but Jericho Barrons has it in spades. I play it real cool. Shove a hand in my pocket, thumb out. Cock my hip at a jaunty angle. “Barrons.”

Time was, I planned on growing up and giving him my virginity. Or V’lane. It’s a big deal to me, the divesting of it. One of the few things I got left that’s gonna be my choice: the who, the how, the when. It’s gonna be Epic with a capital E!

But the Seelie Prince V’lane turned out to be the Unseelie Prince Cruce. And Barrons is Mac’s as much as something like him is ever anyone’s, a fact that’s never going to change, and I don’t want it to.

A piece of paper flaps on the column behind his head. I get a bad feeling and take a sec to scan it.

“Gah! Are you fecking
kidding
me?” How the heck did they get something printed already? Even in hyperspeed, I couldn’t have gotten a rag out this fast! But there it is, waving in the air like a great big slap in my face.

The Dublin Daily

June 26, 1 AWC

YOUR ONLY SOURCE FOR CREDIBLE NEWS IN AND AROUND NEW DUBLIN
BROUGHT TO YOU BY WECARE

GOOD PEOPLE OF NEW DUBLIN, THE ICE MONSTER THAT WAS FREEZING OUR CITY IS DEAD!

WeCARE was at the scene, fighting the good fight!

WeCARE will always have your back

UNLIKE

I can’t read any more. I know they’re getting ready to dis me. But my traitorous eyeballs sneak another peek and sure enough there it is!

… a certain bragging teenager that JEOPARDIZED the mission and was single-handedly responsible for getting many good, innocent people KILLED and taken CAPTIVE!

“Buh! Who is
writing
this drivel?” I was the hero tonight! I saved the fecking day with my winning combination of brains and skills. They even made the font size bigger on the slander about me! I know the tricks of the trade. Talk about your biased press! I feel my face getting hot and red. It pisses me off so much I’d rupture a gonad if I had one. WeCare sure as feck has them out the wazoo!

“Stop her!” Mac shouts.

I don’t stand a chance against both of them. Heck, I don’t stand a chance against Barrons by himself. He’s like Ryodan. I can’t compete on my best day.

Yet.

I fist my hands and take rapid deep breaths, clearing my head of the Wemightcarebutsureasfeckdon’ttellthetruth bull-crap. It takes me a sec to analyze possibilities and figure out how I’m getting myself out of this one. The answer is so simple it takes my breath away. I’m wired to survive on a gut level. My subconscious brought me exactly where I needed to be.

I duck past him and totally catch him off guard—or more likely he decides not to chase me for some mysterious reason, because there’s no way I can outrun Barrons, not even in freeze-frame—then can’t help myself and dart back and snatch the slanted scrap o’ crap from the column and wad it up ’cause I sure as heck ain’t letting it hang there, then I’m back behind the bookstore, hurrying to the first building on the left side of the Dark Zone.

Last time I was here was the night me and Christian searched the Unseelie King’s library, the night the words in the Boora Boora books crawled off the pages and stung me like fire ants, and I accidentally set the Crimson Hag free.