Fever 4 - DreamFever (31 page)

  "I'm a sidhe-seer, Barrons. It's a Hunter. Guess what Hunters hunt? Sidhe-seers. I am
not getting on it."

  "Time is short, Ms. Lane. Move your ass."

   I poked mentally at the Hunter to glean its intentions, expecting to encounter a roiling
pit of homicidal sidhe-seer thoughts.

  There was nothing but a wall of black ice. "I can't get to its mind." I didn't like that
one bit.

  "And tonight it can't get to yours, so leave it alone and do as I say."

  I narrowed my eyes. "You can't control a Hunter! Nobody can!"

  His dark gaze mocked. "You're afraid."

  "I am not," I snapped. Of course I was. The thing might be suspiciously dampened
and seemingly oblivious to my presence, but fear of it was in my blood. I'd been born
with a deep-seated subconscious alarm. "What if it shakes us off as soon as it gets us up
there?" I might not bleed like I used to, but I was pretty sure my bones were as easily
broken as the next person's.

   Barrons walked around to the front of the Hunter. Flames leapt in its eyes when it
saw him. It sniffed at Barrons, and some of the heat seemed to die. When Barrons
withdrew the pouch containing the stones from his coat, the Hunter pressed its nostrils
to it and seemed to like the scent. "It knows it would be dead before it could," he said
softly.

  "It's never going to let me on it with my spear, and I'm not giving it up," I
prevaricated.

  "Your spear is the least of its concerns."

  "Just how am I supposed to hold on?" I demanded.

  "They have loose skin between the wings. Grab it like a horse's mane. But put these
on first." He tossed a pair of gloves at me. "And keep them on." They were of strange
fabric, thick yet supple. "You don't want to touch it with bare skin." He assessed me.
"The rest of you should be fine."

  "Why don't I want to touch it with bare skin?" I asked warily.

  "On, Ms. Lane. Now. Or I'll strap you onto the damned thing."

  It took me a few tries, but a few minutes later I was on the back of an Unseelie
Hunter.

  I understood why he'd given me the gloves. It radiated such intense cold that if I'd
touched it with my bare hands and there'd been any moisture on them at all, they would
have frozen to its leathery hide. I shivered, grateful for my layers of leather clothing.
Barrons mounted behind me, too close and electric for my comfort.

  "Why does it like the smell of the stones?"

  "They were chiseled from the walls of the Unseelie King's fortress. It's the
equivalent of your pecan pie, fried chicken, and fingernail polish," he said dryly.
"Smells like home."

   The Hunter gave a blast of smoky air, filling the alley with the acrid stench of
brimstone. Then it unfurled its wings and, with one massive pump of those leathery
sails, lifted off and flapped darkly into the night, showering crystals of black ice onto
the streets below.

  I caught my breath and stared down, watching as the bookstore grew smaller.

  We rose higher and higher into the cold, dark night sky.

  There was Trinity College and Temple Bar!

   There was the Garda station and the park. There was the Guinness Storehouse, with
the platform where I'd stood looking down the night I realized I'd fallen in love with
this city.

  There were the docks, the bay, stretching to the ocean's horizon.

  There was the hated church where my world had fallen apart. I tipped my head back
and looked up at the stars, rejecting both vision and memory. The moon was brilliantly
white, brighter than it should have been, rimmed with that same strange bloody aura I'd
seen a few nights ago.

  "What's with the moon?" I asked Barrons.

  "The Fae world is bleeding into yours. Look at those streets north of the river."

  I looked away from the crimson-edged moon to where he was pointing. Wet
cobblestones glistened a delicate lavender hue of neon intensity, traced by silvery
cobwebs of light. It was beautiful.

   But it was wrong and deeply disturbing, as if there was more than mere color to those
stones. As if some microscopic, lichenlike Unseelie life-form was growing on our
world, staining it, transforming it as surely as Cruce's curse had mutated the Silvers.

  "We have to stop things from changing," I said urgently. At what point would the
changes become permanent? Were they already?

 "Which is why one would think you wouldn't waste time arguing when I procure the
most efficient mode of travel." Barrons sounded downright pissy.

  I glanced down at my "mode of travel," at the inky, leathery skin fisted in my gloved
hands.

   I was riding an Unseelie Hunter! Had any sidhe-seer in the history of humankind ever
done such a thing? Dani was never going to believe it. I watched wisps of fog pass its
satyrlike head, crowned with lethally pointed ebony horns. I felt the play of tension in
its hide as it flapped its massive wings. I studied the city beyond them.

  It was a long way down.

  "You do know Inspector Jayne shoots at these things," I said, worried.

  "Jayne is otherwise occupied at the moment."

  "You can't know everything." Now I was the one who sounded pissy.

  He gave the Hunter's hide a little pat, like one might give a horse.

  It reared into an attack pose, craned its neck around, shot a flaming look of banked
hatred over its shoulder, and snorted a thin tendril of fire from one nostril in
unmistakable rebuke.

  Barrons laughed.

I have to admit, aside from the cold and Barrons being much too close, I enjoyed the
ride. It was an experience I would never forget. It's funny how, when things seem the
darkest, moments of beauty present themselves in the most unexpected places.

   Dublin was still without power, but it had been so for months, and wind and time had
carried all smog and pollution out to sea. No smokestacks puffed, no cars emitted
fumes. There was no halo of city lights competing with the brilliant moonlight. The city
had been swept clean. It was the world the way it used to be, hundreds of years ago. The
stars twinkled as sparklingly visible in the Dublin night sky as they did in rural Georgia.

   The river Liffey split the city down the middle, its many bridges dissecting the long
silvery path, all the way to the bay.

  To the north, Jayne's men were otherwise occupied indeed, battling a horde of
Unseelie I'd never seen before, just a few blocks from the alley where my sister had
died. Grief welled, but I slammed it down so hard and fast into my padlocked box that I
barely felt it.

  On the south side, we passed silently above my sister sidhe-seers over and over.
MacHalos blazing, led by Kat and Dani, they scouted the streets, doing what damage
they could.

  Dani had hated my going off without her tonight and had argued fervently that her
superstrengths might well be necessary in a pinch. She'd been far more piqued than
mollified by my reminder that Barrons was faster than she was.

   We flew for hours, circling, circling. It was nearly four in the morning by the time I
finally sensed the Sinsar Dubh.

  The second I did, there went my head--a killer pounding at my temples, spreading to
encompass my skull in an ever-tightening vise.

  "Got it," I said tightly, pointing in the general direction.

  The Hunter took us down. We skimmed rooftops as I tried to target its precise
location. Tops of church spires and smokestacks passed a dozen feet beneath us. The
lower we got, the more intense my pain grew and the colder I felt. Teeth chattering,
shivering with misery, I guided him: Left; no, right; no, turn here, yes, there. Hurry, it's
getting away. Wait, I can't feel it. There it is again.

   Abruptly, the Sinsar Dubh stopped. We overshot it by five city blocks and had to
circle back around. Hunters don't corner like Porsches.

  "What's it doing?" Barrons demanded.

  "Besides killing me? Don't know." Didn't really care at the moment. "Are you sure
we need to do this?"

  "It's merely pain, Ms. Lane, and of finite duration."

   "You try functioning with your head split open and someone stirring your brains.
Isn't there some Druid spell you could do that would help?"

   "I lack both tattoo implements and the time. Besides, I'm not certain it would work,
and although you recently demanded I dress you in crimson and black, I have no desire
to see you wearing it permanently."

  "And the reminders just keep coming," I muttered, and rolled my eyes. The motion,
coupled with my nausea, nearly made me throw up.

  "Only because you seem to keep forgetting who saved your ass."

  Unfortunately, not the many things he'd done to it.

   The Hunter drew in its wings and dropped to the ground in silence. I slid off its
leathery back and hit the pavement, puking.

  "Where is it?" Barrons was demanding before I'd even finished.

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. "Dead ahead. Three blocks?" I guessed.

  "Can you walk?"

   I nodded and gagged from the movement but didn't throw up again. I hadn't eaten
since lunch, so there was nothing left to throw up. I took perverse comfort in the pain.
Obviously I wasn't the one who was going to doom the world. If I was so bad, the Book
would have liked me, wanted me to come closer, not repelled me. Ryodan was wrong.
The Sinsar Dubh didn't want anything to do with me.

  We closed in, Barrons stalking, me stumbling. Behind us, the Hunter lifted off,
vanishing in a sudden snowstorm of black ice.

  "And there went our ride," I said sourly. As awful as the Sinsar Dubh inevitably left
me feeling, there was no way I'd be able to make the long trek back to the bookstore. I
hoped the stones would succeed in corralling it--even without the fourth--and maybe
diminish the pain it was causing me.

  "It'll be back when the Book is gone. It insisted on maintaining a certain distance."

  I didn't blame it one bit. I just wished I could do the same.

Two blocks away, with the Book firmly fixed on my radar, my pain vanished abruptly,
for no apparent reason. The Sinsar Dubh was still dead ahead.

  I stood up straight for the first time since we'd landed and took a deep, grateful
breath.

  Barrons stopped walking. "What is it?"

  "I don't hurt anymore." I turned to face him in the middle of the deserted street.

  "Why not?"

  "Got me."

  "Postulate."

  I gave him a look that said, Postulate this.

  "I don't like it," he growled.

  I didn't, either. But at the same time, I did. I hate pain. I've always known I would
make a terrible torture victim. If someone pulled one of my fingernails off, I'd spew the
beans like a geyser.

  "But you still sense it?"

  I nodded.

  "Did you eat Unseelie?" he accused.

  "Duh, OOP detector here. Can't track if I eat it."

  "Yet you feel no pain at all?"

  "Not an ounce." In fact, I felt great. Energized, charged, ready for anything. "So?" I
prompted. "Are we going to stand here all night or do something?" Free from agony, I
was ready to tackle it head-on.

  He assessed me, his expression tight. After a moment, he said, "We abort. We're
pulling out." He turned and began walking away.

  "Are you kidding me?" I snapped at his back. "We're here. We found it. Let's see
what those stones can do!"

  "No. Move it. Now."

  "Barrons, I'm fine--"

  "And you shouldn't be." He stopped and turned to glare at me.

  "Maybe I've gotten stronger. I'm immune to a lot of Fae glamour now, and I can
walk through wards. Maybe it just caught me off guard, and my body adjusted after a
few minutes."

  "And maybe it's playing with us."

  "Maybe this is a prime opportunity to learn something about it."

  "Maybe it's got you in its thrall, and you don't even know it."

   "Maybe we could stand here all night debating the maybes, or we could put your plan
into action and see what happens! You're the one who thought it up to begin with.
Don't wuss out on me now." I turned my back and began marching in the opposite
direction, toward the Sinsar Dubh.

  "Stop this instant, Ms. Lane!"

  "What happened to fear-nothing-take-no-prisoners Barrons? Should we go cower
somewhere?" I flung over my shoulder.

    A moment later, we were shoulder to shoulder, marching for it together.

    "You're impossible," he growled.

    "Pot, meet kettle," I said sweetly.

   "Take this." He handed me one of the stones, wrapped in velvet. Even inside the
thick black covering, it glowed blue-black as soon as I touched it. He looked at me,
hard, his gaze unfathomable.

    "What am I supposed to do with it?"

   "We're coming up on O'Connell. I'll circle around to the opposite side of the
intersection and close in behind it. I want to triangulate it precisely with the stones. The
moment you have both the Book and me in your sight, place your stone on the east
corner of the intersection. I'll position the other two where they need to be."

    "What do you expect to happen?"

    "Best-case scenario? We contain it. Worst case? We run like hell."
 

I    headed down the street after Barrons left, certain we were on the right track. It
occurred to me that maybe the stones we were carrying were the reason I was no longer
feeling any pain. Maybe, as we'd gotten closer, they had erected some kind of
protective barrier. They'd been created to harness and contain the Book. Why wouldn't
they shield whoever was carrying them from its harmful effects?

    I hurried to the intersection and stood on my appointed corner, waiting.

    And waiting.

    The Book was moving very slowly, as if out for a leisurely stroll.

  "Come on. Move, damn you." Was a Fae or a human carrying it? The city hummed
with Fae static, making it impossible to get a lock on any channel.