Fever 5 - Shadowfever (11 page)

without me, MacKayla?”
Behind me, the princes chime louder. It’s a cacophony that slices into the soul like a
razor, severs tendon, and chips bone. I wonder if that’s what comes of being fashioned from an
imperfect Song of Making, a melody that can unmake, unsing, uncreate at a molecular level. They hate my crimson runes, and I hate their dark music.
I won’t be the one to yield.
“Why?” I ask Darroc. Is that where the runes I’ve scooped up came from? What does he
know about them? I can’t ask him without betraying that, while I have power, I have no idea
what it is or how to use it. I raise my fists and open them, palms up. My hands drip thick red
liquid. Slender tubular runes twist on my palms.
Behind me, the princes’ jagged chiming becomes a hellish shriek that even Darroc looks
rattled by.
I have no idea what to do with the runes. I was thinking of the Unseelie Princes, that I
needed a weapon against them, and they appeared in my mind. I have no idea how I translated them from that dark glassy lake into existence. I understand no more about these crimson
symbols than I did about the silvery ones.
“Where did you learn to do that, MacKayla?” Darroc demands.
I can barely hear him over the princes. “How do you plan to merge with the Book?” I
counter. I have to raise my voice to a near yell to make myself heard.
“Do you have any idea what those things are capable of?” he demands. I read his lips. I
can’t hear him.
The shrieking behind me rises to an inhuman pitch that pierces my eardrums like ice
picks. “Give me my spear and I’ll put them away,” I shout.
Darroc moves closer, trying to hear me. “Impossible!” he explodes. “My princes will not
remain and protect us if you have the spear.” His gaze slides with distaste over the runes in my
hands. “Nor with
those
present.”
“I think we can take care of ourselves!”
“What?” he shouts.
“We don’t need them!” The ice picks in my ears have begun drilling into my brain. I’m
on the verge of a massive migraine.
“I do! I am not yet Fae again. My army follows me only because Fae princes lead at my
back!”
“Who needs an army?” We’re inches apart, shouting at each other, and still the words are
nearly lost in the din.
He rubs his temples. His nose has started to bleed. “
We
do! The Seelie are amassing,
MacKayla. They, too, have begun hunting the
Sinsar Dubh
. Much has changed since you were
last here!”
“How do you know?” I hadn’t seen any handy newsstands in the Silvers while
I
was in
there.
He grabs my head, pulls it to his. “I stay informed!” he snarls against my ear. The chiming has become an unbearable orchestra of sounds that the human ear was never
meant to hear. My neck is wet. I realize my ears are bleeding. I’m mildly surprised. I don’t bleed
easily anymore. Haven’t ever since I ate Unseelie.
“You must obey me in this, MacKayla!” he shouts. “If you wish to remain at my side,
dispose of them. Or is it war you wish between us? I thought it was an alliance you sought!” He
wipes blood from his lips and cuts a sharp look at the princes.
Blissfully, blessedly, the chiming stops. The ice picks through my eardrums vanish. I inhale deeply, gulping clean, fresh air greedily, as if it might wash my cells clean of the
stain from the princes’ horrific symphony.
My relief is short-lived, however. As abruptly as the hellish music stopped, my shoulders
and arms are freezing, and I think sheets of ice might crack and drop away if I move. I don’t need to turn my head to know that the princes have sifted into position, one on my
left, one on my right. I feel them there. I know their inhumanly beautiful faces are inches from
mine. If I turn my head, they will look
into
me with those piercing, mesmerizing, ancient eyes
that can see beyond where the human soul is, that can see into the very matter that comprises
it—and can take it apart piece by piece. Regardless of how much they despise my runes, they’re
still ready to take me on.
I look at Darroc. I’d wondered what his reaction would be if I tried to take the spear. I see
a look in his eyes now that was not there a short time ago. I am both a greater liability than he
knew and a greater asset—and he likes it. He likes power: both having it and having a woman
who has it.
I despise walking with Unseelie Princes at my back. But his comment about the Seelie
amassing armies, my ignorance about the runes I hold in my hands, and the icy dark Fae
sandwiching me make compelling arguments.
I tilt my head, toss my dark curls from my eyes, and look up at him. He likes it when I
use his name. I think it makes him feel like he’s with Alina again. Alina was soft and Southern to
the core. We Southern women know a thing or two about men. We know to use their name often,
to make them feel strong, needed, as if they have the final say even when they don’t, and to
always,
always
keep them believing they won the best prize in the only competition that will
ever matter on the day we said, “I do.”
“If we get into a battle, Darroc, will you promise to return my spear so I can use it to help
defend us? Will you permit that?”
He likes those words: “help defend
us
” and “permit.” I see it in his eyes. A smile breaks
across his face. He touches my cheek and nods. “Of course, MacKayla.”
He looks at the princes and they are no longer beside me.
I’m uncertain how to return the runes. I’m not sure they
can
be returned. When I toss them over my shoulders at the princes, they make sounds like exploding
crystal goblets, as they sift hastily to avoid them. I hear the runes steam and hiss as they hit
pavement.
I laugh.
Darroc gives me a look.
“I
am
behaving,” I reply sweetly. “You can’t tell me they didn’t have that coming.” I’m getting better at reading him. He finds me amusing. I wipe my palms on my leather
pants, trying to get rid of the bloody residue from the runes. I try my shirt. But it’s no use; the red
discoloration has set.
When Darroc takes my hand and leads me down the alley between Barrons Books and
Baubles and Barrons’ garage, which houses the car collection I used to covet, I don’t look to
either side. I keep my gaze trained straight ahead.
I’ve lost Alina, failed to save Christian, killed Barrons, am becoming intimate with my
sister’s lover. I hurt Dani to drive her away, and now I’ve teamed up with the Unseelie army. Eyes on the prize, there’s no turning back.

Snow begins to fall, carpeting the night in a soft white hush. We march across it, a stain of Unseelie, stomping, crawling, slithering toward Temple Bar.
There are castes behind me that I’ve seen only once before—the night Darroc brought them through the dolmen. I have no desire to inspect them any more closely than I did that night. Some of the Unseelie aren’t so bad to look at. The Rhino-boys are disgusting, but they don’t make you feel … dirty. Others … well, even the way they move makes your skin crawl, makes you feel slimy where their eyes linger.
As we pass a streetlamp, I glance at a flyer, drooping limply on it:
The Dani Daily, 97 days AWC
.
The headline brags that she killed a Hunter. I put myself in Dani’s head, to figure out the date. It takes me a minute, but I get it—after the walls crashed. I perform a rapid calculation. The last day I was in Dublin was January 12.
Ninety-seven days from Halloween—the night the walls crashed—is February 5.
Which means I’ve been gone at least twenty-four days, probably longer. The flyer was faded, worn by the elements. Much more snow and I’d never have seen it.
However long I’ve been gone, Dublin hasn’t changed much.
Although many of the streetlamps that were ripped from the concrete and destroyed have been replaced and the broken lights repaired, the power grids are still down. Here and there, generators hum, dead giveaways of life barricaded in buildings or holed up underground.
We pass the red façade of
the
Temple Bar, of the bar district. I glance in. I can’t help myself. I loved the place BWC—before the walls crashed.
Now it’s a dark shell, with shattered windows, overturned tables and chairs, and papery husks of human remains. From the way they’re piled, I know the patrons were crammed inside, huddled together when the end came.
I remember the way the Temple Bar looked the first time I saw it, brightly lit, with people and music spilling from open doors into the cobbled streets of the corner beyond. Guys had whistled at me. I’d forgotten my grief over Alina for a blessed second or two. Then, of course, hated myself for forgetting.
I can almost hear the laughter, the lilt of Irish voices. They’re all dead now, like Alina and Barrons.
I remember spending the long week before Halloween walking the streets of Dublin for hours on end, from dawn ’til dusk, feeling helpless, worthless, for all my supposed
sidhe
-seer skills. I wasn’t sure any of us would survive Halloween, so I’d tried to cram as much living into those last days as possible.
I’d chatted up street vendors and played backgammon with toothless old men who spoke a version of English so heavily distorted by dialect and gums that I’d understood only every fifth word, but it hadn’t mattered. They’d been delighted by a pretty girl’s attention, and I’d hungered for paternal comfort.
I’d visited the famous tourist hot spots. I’d eaten in dives and slammed back shots of whiskey with anyone who’d do them with me.
I’d fallen in love with the city I couldn’t protect.
After the Unseelie had escaped their prison and savaged her—dark, burned, and broken—I’d been determined to see her rebuilt.
Now I longed only to replace her.
“Do you sense it, MacKayla?” Darroc asks.
I’ve been keeping my
sidhe
-seer senses as closed as possible. I’m tired and have no desire to find the
Sinsar Dubh
. Not until I know everything he knows.
I open my senses warily and turn the “volume” up to a two on a scale of one to ten. My
sidhe
-seer senses are picking up the essence of countless things Fae, but none of them is the
SinsarDubh
. “No.”
“Are there many Fae?”
“The city is crawling with them.”
“Light or Dark Court?”
“It doesn’t work like that. I can only pick up Fae, not their allegiance or caste.” “How many?”
I adjust the volume to three and a half. A tenth this much Fae in close proximity used to have me holding my stomach and trying not to puke. Now I feel charged by it. More alive than I want to be. “They’re on all sides of us, in twos and threes. They’re above us, on the rooftops and in the skies. I don’t get the feeling that they’re watching us, more that they’re watching
everything.
” Are they, too, hunting my Book? I’ll kill them all. It’s mine.
“Hundreds?” he presses.
“Thousands,” I correct.
“Organized?”
“There is one group to the east that is considerably larger than the others, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Then east we go,” he says. He turns to the princes and barks a command. They vanish.
I voice a growing suspicion. “They’re not really gone, are they? They never are when you send them away.”
“They remain close, watching but unseen. A sift away, with more of my army.”
“And when we find this group of Fae?” I press.
“If they are Unseelie, they are mine.”
“And if they’re Seelie?”
“Then we will drive them from Dublin.”
Good. The less Fae in my way, the better.
Few have ever seen the Seelie, save the rare mortal stolen away and kept at the Fae court and, of course, Barrons, who once spent a great deal of time there, sleeping with a princess, before killing her and pissing off V’lane for all eternity.
I’ve seen thousands of Unseelie, but until now even I
—sidhe
seer extraordinaire—have seen only a single Seelie.
I’d begun to wonder why.
In the dark hours of the night, I’d wondered if maybe he was the only one left, if he was hiding something, if perhaps he wasn’t Seelie at all, despite evidence supporting his claim.
Seeing him as he is now, all my doubts evaporate.
Here
are the Seelie.
They’ve finally gotten off their asses and started paying attention to the mess they’ve made of my world. I guess they couldn’t be bothered before now.
Even filled as I am with hatred for all Fae, I can’t deny that V’lane looks like an avenging angel, charging down from heaven to set my world back on its axis and clean this whole mess up. Radiant, golden, and mesmerizing, he leads an army of angels.
Tall, gracefully muscled, they stand shoulder to shoulder with him, filling the street. Stunning, velvety-skinned, dusted with gold, they are so chillingly exquisite that I have a hard time looking at them—and I’m immune from having been
Pri-ya
, a Fae sex addict. They are otherworldly, divine.
There are dozens of V’lane’s caste, male and female. They possess a terrifying eroticism that makes them deadly to humans. If a scientist managed to get his hands on one to study, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn their skin exudes a pheromone we crave.
The perpetual promise of a smile hovers on irresistible lips, below ancient, iridescent, alien eyes. Despite all I’ve suffered at their hands, I want to rush forward and fall to my knees before them. I want to slide my palms over their flawless skin, discover if they taste as amazing as they smell. I want to be gathered into a Fae embrace, yield my memories, my mind, my will, and be carried off to a Faery court where I could stay forever young, cocooned by illusion.
Flanking V’lane’s caste—which I assume is the highest ranking by how the other castes seem to protect it—are the stuff of fairy tales. There are rainbow-colored, delicate Fae that dart like hummingbirds on gossamer wings; silvery nymphs that dance on dainty feet; and others that I can’t even see, except for blinding trailers of light they leave behind as they move. They’re so brilliant and fiery, they could only be earthbound stars.
I scoff at the delicacy of his army. It’s ethereal, born to wisp about, seduce, and be served.
Mine is earthy, solid. Born to gorge, kill, and rule.
We stalk toward one another, down a snow-filled street.
Where Seelie feet touch the earth, the snow melts with a hiss. Steam rises and flowers push up through cracks, blooming brilliantly, anointing the air with the scents of jasmine and sandalwood. The Seelie end of the street is bathed in golden light.
Where my army’s hooves and scaled bellies pass over the stones, a crust of black ice forms. The night embraces us; stealthy shadows, we ooze forward from the blackness.
Only once before have Seelie and Unseelie met like this—and on that day the Seelie Queen died. This is the stuff of legends, never seen by humans, except perhaps in our dreams.
Deformed monsters and hideous demons stare with baleful, hate-filled eyes at their perfect golden counterparts.
Angels glare with disdain at abominations that should never have been born, who blemish the perfection of the Fae race, tarnish their existence simply by being.
I wonder what Darroc is thinking, bringing them together like this.
We stop a dozen paces apart.
Ice and heat slam together in the street.
My breath frosts the air, then turns to steam as it passes an invisible demarcation. Eddies swirl on the pavement between us, gathering the indigestible rinds of people the Shades left behind, and tiny tornadoes begin to form.
I realize that whoever began the fairy tale that Fae don’t feel was selling pure bullshit. They feel the entire range of human emotion. They just handle it differently: with patience born of eternity. Schooled in courtly manners, they don masks of impassivity because they have forever to play out their games.
As we study each other through the rapidly growing tornadoes, I remember V’lane telling me that they destroyed their own world by fighting. It cracked from end to end. Was this why? Will the weather disturbance that’s being generated by the clash of these two mighty courts continue to grow if they fight and tear this world apart, too? Not that I’d particularly mind, since I intend to re-create it with the Book, but I need the Book
before
this world is destroyed.
Which means this stormy posturing really needs to stop.
“Enough with the melodrama, V’lane,” I say coolly.
His eyes are those of a stranger. He regards me with the same expression he turns on the monsters at my back. I’m a little irritated to realize he doesn’t look at Darroc. His gaze slides over him as if he’s not even there.
He’s
the fallen Fae, traitor to their race, the one responsible for tearing the walls down. I’m just a
sidhe
-seer trying to survive.
The gold-dusted Greek god standing on V’lane’s right sneers, “That …
thing
… is the human you said we need to protect? She consorts with abominations!”
The gilt-skinned goddess to his left growls, “Destroy her now!”
Hundreds of Seelie, walking, dancing, and flying, begin to clamor for my death.
Without taking my eyes off them, I snap at Darroc, “I could really use my spear right now.” I assume he still has it, that V’lane hasn’t somehow plucked it from him the same way he takes it from me.
As the tiny, dainty Fae begin proposing methods for my execution, each one slower and more painful than the last, the god and goddess bracketing V’lane hammer him.
“She is human and has chosen the dark ones! Look at her! She wears their colors!”
“You said she worshipped us!”
“And she would obey us in all things!”
“They have
touched
her! I smell it on her skin!” The god looks revolted—and aroused. Iridescent eyes glitter with gold sparks.
“They have used her!” the goddess snarls. “She is soiled. I will not suffer her at court!”
“Silence!” V’lane thunders. “I lead the True Race for our queen.
I
speak for Aoibheal!”
“This is unacceptable!”
“Outrageous!”
“Beyond bearing, V’lane!”
“You will do as I say, Dree’lia! I decide her fate. And only I will carry it out.”
I mutter at Darroc, “You need to make a decision, and fast.”
“They always overreact,” Darroc murmurs. “It is one of the many things I despised at court. A session in High Council could go on like this for several human years. Give them time. V’lane will bring them to heel.”
One of the tiny, winged Seelie breaks formation and darts straight for my head. I duck, but it whizzes around me.
I’m startled to hear myself burst out laughing.
Two more of them break rank and begin to zip tight circles around my head.
As they buzz past me, my laughter takes on a hysterical edge. There’s nothing funny about what’s happening—still, I hoot and snort. I can’t help it. I’ve never been so amused in my entire life. I hold my sides and double over, chortling, guffawing, choking on sobs of forced gaiety, as they weave closer and closer around me. I’m appalled by the sounds coming out of my mouth. I’m horrified at the uncontrollable nature of it. I hate the Fae and their way of stripping away my will.
“Stop laughing,” Darroc growls.
Hilarity has me on the edge of hysterics and it
hurts
. I manage to raise my head from my knees just enough to shoot him a dirty look. I’d love to stop laughing. But I can’t.
I want to tell him to make the damned things go away, except I can’t breathe, I can’t even close my lips long enough to grit consonants. Whatever these lovely little Seelie monsters are, their specialty is death-by-laughter. What a hellish way to go. After only a few minutes, my sides ache from heaving, my gut burns, and I’m so breathless I’m light-headed. I wonder how long it takes to die of forced mirth. Hours? Days?
A fourth tiny Fae takes up the game, and I brace myself to dive inward, to find a weapon in my dark, lake-filled cave, when suddenly a long tongue, dripping venom, whizzes past my ear and plucks the dainty Seelie straight from the air.
I hear crunching noises behind me.
I snicker helplessly.
“V’lane!” the golden goddess shrieks. “That thing, that awful
thing
, it ate
M’ree
!”
I hear another snap, followed by more crunching noises, and a second one is gone. I cackle madly.
The remaining two retreat, shaking tiny fists and screaming in a language I don’t understand. Even angry, the sound they make is more beautiful than an aria.
My laughter loses its forced edge.
After a long moment, I’m able to relax and I stop making crazed sounds of amusement. Peals fade to moans to silence. I release my sides and gulp cool, soothing air.
I stand, suddenly furious, and this emotion is all mine. I’m sick of being vulnerable. If I’d had my spear, those nasty little death-by-laughter fairies would never have dared approach me. I’d have skewered them midair and made Fae kebabs out of them.
“Friends,” I hiss at Darroc, “trust each other.”
But he doesn’t. I see it in his face.
“You said you would give it to me so I could defend us.”
He smiles faintly, and I know he’s remembering how Mallucé died: slowly, gruesomely, rotting from the inside out. The spear kills all things Fae, and because Darroc has been eating so much Unseelie, he’s laced with veins of Fae. One tiny little prick of the tip of my spear would be a death sentence. “As yet,