Fever 4 - DreamFever (23 page)

   "Nobody'll even know I'm there," she promised, grabbing her sword and coat and
slinging her backpack over a shoulder. "When do you want me back?"

  "Just make sure it's before dark."

   After she left, I contemplated the fireplace morosely. The house we were squatting in,
like the rest of Dublin--except for Chester's, which I assumed was powered by an
entire room of underground generators--had no electricity or gas. Not only was it dark,
it was freezing. And--of course--it was raining outside. I tugged the comforter that I'd
pilfered from the bedroom more snugly around my shoulders and sat, teeth chattering.
I'd have given my eyeteeth for a cup of coffee. Where was V'lane when I needed him? I
considered the pile of logs and tried to decide where the prior owner might have stashed
matches.

  I heard the kitchen door open. "What did you forget, Dani?" I called.

  A silhouette stepped into the doorway between the kitchen and living room. "I had
begun to think the child would never leave," said a deep, musical voice.

  I don't have Dani's hyperspeed--but I achieved something close to it. One moment I
was sitting on the couch feeling sorry for myself, the next I was plastered back against
the far wall, spear drawn.

   In that moment, I faced a harsh truth: I might have a serious hate on, I might even be
stronger than I'd ever been before, but I still wasn't strong enough.

  I still needed allies.

  I still needed Barrons' tattoo, and I still needed V'lane's name on my tongue, even
though neither could be completely relied upon. I needed Jayne and his men, and I
needed the sidhe-seers. And I hated needing anyone.

  "Brought you coffee, MacKayla," said the Lord Master, stepping into the room. "I
hear you like it strong and sweet, with a lot of cream."

  "Where'd you hear that?" I was shaking. I bit my tongue hard enough to draw blood,
focused on the pain, and stopped shaking.

  "Alina. She talked about you a great deal. But she pretended you were her friend, not
her sister. She hid you from me. Think about that when you remember her. Why did she
conceal your existence unless she sensed, from the very beginning, something about me
was not to be trusted? But she chose me anyway. Loved me anyway."

   "She didn't love you. And you're lying. You must have found her journal and read
it."

 "And she wrote in her journal how you took your coffee? Pitiful rationale,
MacKayla."

   "You took a lucky guess. Get out of my house." I eyed my gun, which was lying on
the floor next to the couch. I should have grabbed it, too, but his voice had sent me
flying off the sofa, all instinct and no intellect. The only reason I had the spear was
because it had been on my lap when he walked in. Although the Lord Master had once
been Fae, the Seelie Queen had punished him by turning him mortal. He was now
merely human, pumped up on Unseelie. Could I kill him with a gun? I was more than
willing to try. I doubted he'd let me get close enough with the spear. I was surprised
he'd come this close without a sifting Fae standing next to him.

   "Sit down and drink your coffee. And put that spear away." He glanced at the
fireplace, murmured a few words, and flames leapt from the cold logs.

  "How did you do that? You're not Fae."

  "Fae isn't the only game in town. Your illustrious benefactor taught me well."

  "V'lane?" I said.

  "No."

  Something inside me went very still. "Barrons?"

  "He taught me many things. Including Voice. Kneel."

  "Kiss my ass."

  "I said kneel before me now."

   I sucked in a sharp breath. Layered voices resonated around the room, pushing at me,
trying to invade my mind, make his will mine. It was Voice as strong as Barrons had
once used on me.

  I smiled. It was an annoyance, nothing more. It looked like I'd found that place inside
me that Barrons had sent me hunting for, where I had the strength to resist Voice. Too
bad I still didn't understand what it was. I had no idea how to use Voice, but it no longer
worked on me. I was free. It was another of the things that had changed in me. One
more power. "No," I said. I took a step toward the couch and my gun.

  "Look out the window." It was a warning. "Touch that gun, they sift."

  I looked, and jerked. "Dani."

  "She's almost as impressive as you. If she could sense the Book, I wouldn't need
you. But she can't and I do, so you and I are going to come to terms, one way or
another. Sit, sheathe the spear, forget anything so stupid as shooting me, and listen."

                                          ***

I would never have obeyed, but beyond the window, out in that cold, rainy day, two
Unseelie Princes were holding Dani between them.

  Her cheeks were running with blood, and she was shivering violently. She wasn't
cold. She wasn't even getting rained on. I guessed the UPs didn't like being wet. She
was shivering with heat. Lust. The destroying kind.

   Her sword gleamed alabaster, forgotten in a muddy puddle on the dirt lawn. I knew
they couldn't possibly have touched it. Somehow they'd made her throw it away, same
as the LM had done to me.

  I was seriously beginning to think I'd gotten the short end of the stick. That all sidhe-
seers had. What good were we, with all our limitations? We just kept getting shoved
around.

   I pushed a chair in front of the window so I could keep a constant eye on her. I had no
idea what I'd do if the princes did anything other than restrain her as they were now, but
I'd do something. They were in static form, clothed. They'd better stay that way. I was
looking at two of the princes who'd turned me inside out. Who'd very nearly taken my
soul from me. One day I would kill them, if it was the last thing I did. I was wise
enough to know today was not that day. "Talk," I said tightly.

   He did. I sipped my coffee--irritatingly, it was good--while the Lord Master told me
a story about being thrown out of Faery for defying the queen, for attempting to return
their race to the Old Ways when the Fae had been worshipped as the gods they were,
instead of living like sheep alongside puny mortals.

   He told me how she'd stripped him of his Fae essence and turned him mortal, about
finding himself alone in our world, human and fragile. He'd been cast naked, unarmed,
and without human currency into the middle of Manhattan, in a subway station. He'd
barely survived those first few minutes, had been attacked by a group of mocking, cruel
humans wearing leather and chains, sporting shaved heads and hammering fists.

   He told me how for a time he'd been out of his mind, horrified by a body that felt
pain, that needed to eat, drink, and make waste, how he'd discovered germs and been
terrified of death after so many hundreds of thousands of years of not even being able to
comprehend it. He'd wandered with no place to rest, no money or understanding of how
to care for his finite, weak shape that required so many things and caused so much
misery. He--a god--was reduced to scavenging through human trash for sustenance to
keep his body alive. He'd had to kill to seize clothing, had to scrounge like an animal.
He'd studied his new environment, determined to find a better way to survive so he
could then do better than merely survive.

  He wanted revenge.

  "You see," he said, "you and I aren't so different, are we? Both after the same thing.
You, however, are misguided."

  "And you aren't?" I snorted. "Give me a break."

   He laughed. "Perspective, MacKayla. Yours is skewed." Bit by bit, he told me, he'd
clawed his way from the bottom.

   When he'd finally learned to satisfy his base requirements, he made a startling
discovery: His new form felt more than mere need. The ennui and dispassion of
immortality began to melt away. The fear of death awakened unexpected facets of his
nature. Emotion stirred in him sensations that being Fae never had and never could.
Madness was replaced for a time by sheer lust, but finally his head had cleared. His
existence under control, he began to seek power on the human plane, pursuing his
agenda.

   Fae knowledge and hundreds of thousands of years of existing had given him a
distinct advantage. He knew where to look for the things he wanted and how to use
them when he found them.

   He'd discovered two of the Silvers at an auction house in London, risked Cruce's
terrible curse, and found his way into Unseelie, where he'd made a pact with the
mercenary Hunters to help him regain what was rightfully his and had been wrongfully
taken from him: his essential Fae nature.

   He trained with a warlock in London, from whom he stole precious copies of pages
torn from the Sinsar Dubh, which he'd then traded to Barrons in exchange for a crash
course in the Druid arts at which Darroc had excelled, gifted as he was with Fae
intellect and understanding of the cosmos.

  "Why didn't Barrons just take the pages from you?"

  "We pursued a common agenda for a time. He doesn't kill anyone he thinks might
prove useful in the future."

  Mercenary to the core. Sounded like the man I knew. "What is he?"

  "Consider instead what he is not. He is not the one that hunted me down for what I
did to you. Doesn't that tell you enough, MacKayla? You are a tool to him. His tool
works again. He is satisfied."

  "How did pages get torn from the Sinsar Dubh?" I changed the subject swiftly. If I
ignored the knife he'd just driven through my heart, maybe it would go away.

   He shrugged. He had no idea. They'd served their purpose. Now he needed the real
thing. He'd continued collecting power wherever it could be found. The Hunters taught
him to eat lesser Unseelie, to protect his fragile mortal existence.

  "Why would they help you?"

  "I promised them freedom. And I gave it to them." He was an Unseelie hero, he told
me, and soon the Seelie would recognize him as such, too. Yes, he had disobeyed his
queen. So had many others, who'd never been punished so harshly. Had the crime he'd
committed merited a death sentence? There were other Seelie who felt as he did, who
wanted a return to the Old Ways. His only crime had been trying to bring about what

many of them secretly longed for. He should have been rewarded for standing up for his
brethren. Even humans resisted doling out such a horrific punishment, and their blink-
of-an-eye lives were so comically short they were worthless. He'd lost eternity, for a
single broken rule. He wanted it back. Was that so wrong?

  I made a hand gesture when he paused.

  "I have not seen that one before," he said.

  "Miniature record player, playing `My Heart Bleeds for You.' I should care about this
why? You made me Pri-ya." I narrowed my eyes, studying him. Had he been the
fourth? Had this monster touched me?

  "You made you Pri-ya. I gave you other options. You refused them."

  "Do you really think the Unseelie will continue to obey you now that they're no
longer imprisoned?"

  "I freed them. I am their king now."

  "So, what's keeping one of them from killing you and going after the Book,
himself?"

  "They're too drunk on freedom to see beyond the moment. They feast. They fuck.
They don't think."

  "You never know. One of them might snap out of it. Rulers get toppled all the time.
Look at what you were trying to do to your queen."

  "I have Cruce's amulet. They fear it."

  "How long do you expect that to last? You're not even Fae."

  "I will be again, as soon as I get the Book."

  "Assuming one of them doesn't kill you first."

  He waved a dismissive hand. "The Unseelie do not wish to rule. After an eternity in
hell they wish only to be free to indulge their hungers." His face went hard and cold as
marble. "But I will not explain my race to a mere human."

   At that moment, I could clearly see the icy, imperious Fae he'd once been and would
be again, given half a chance. He claimed to have been changed by his experience with
mortality. If, indeed he had--and there was plenty of doubt in my mind on that score--I
could too easily see him changing back, in a heartbeat. "You're pretty `mere' yourself
right now, bud. Cannibalizing your own race. I've heard the Seelie court has a special,
horrific punishment for that."

  "Then you'd better hope they don't find out about you, Mac -Kayla," he said coolly.

  We stared at each other a long moment, then he tossed his long hair and flashed me a
smile meant to charm. In another time and place, had I not known who and what he
was, it probably would have worked. He was a beautiful, cultured, powerful man, and
the jagged scar on his face made him all the more intriguing. I imagined Alina must
have found him utterly fascinating when they'd first met. There wasn't anything
remotely like him in Ashford, Georgia.

  As if he'd somehow picked up on my thoughts of her, he said, "I came to Dublin
because I learned the Sinsar Dubh had been sighted in the city. That was when I met
your sister."

   I went still inside. I wanted to hear about Alina, even if it came from him. I was
starved to know about my sister's last days.

  "How did you meet?"

   He'd walked into a pub where she was sitting with friends. She looked up, and he felt
as if everyone else in the bar had melted away, just vanished into the background,
leaving only him and her. She'd later told him she felt the same thing.

   They'd spent the afternoon together. And the night. And the next and the next.
They'd been inseparable. He discovered she wasn't like other humans, that she, too, was
struggling with a new state of being she didn't understand and had no idea how to
handle. They learned together. He'd found an ally in his quest for the Book, in his quest
to restore his Fae nature. They'd been fated for each other.

  "You lied to her. You pretended you were a sidhe-seer," I accused. "She'd never have
helped you otherwise."