Feverborn (3 page)

“You’re absolutely certain it’s no’ him, lad?” Drustan said.

“Unequivocally.” The owner of Chester’s had packed them off with another man’s remains, intending for them to bury it and never know that somewhere out there a Keltar body rotted and a high druid soul was lost, denied proper burial, never to be reborn.

Knowing Ryodan, he’d simply considered it a waste of his precious time to make the hard hike down into the gorge and search the darkness for remains when there were so many more easily available in any city he’d driven through on the way back to Dublin. Coming by Keltar plaid wouldn’t have been difficult. The entire clan had been living for a time at the fuck’s nightclub.

“You can’t bury that man here,” Christian said. “He must be returned to Ireland. He wants to go home.” He had no idea how he knew that the corpse didn’t want to stay here. It wanted to be in a place not far from Dublin, a short distance
to the south where a small cottage overlooked a pond smattered with lily pads, tall reeds grew, and in the summer the rich baritone of frogs filled the night. He could see it clearly in his mind. He resented seeing it. He wanted nothing to do with the last wishes of the dead. He was not their keeper. Nor their bloody damned wish granter.

Drustan cursed. “If this isn’t him, then where the blethering hell is my brother’s body?”

“Where, indeed,” Christian said.

T
he cavernous chamber was well-sealed against human and Fae with magic not even he understood.

Fortuitously, he didn’t need to.

He was neither human nor Fae but one of the old ones from the dawn of time. Even now, his true name forgotten, the world still regarded him as powerful, indestructible.

Nothing will survive nuclear holocausts save the cockroaches
.

They were right. He’d survived it before. The acute burst had been an irritant, little more. The lingering radiation had mutated him into more than he’d ever been.

He partitioned himself, separated and deposited a tiny segment of his being on the floor near the door. He despised being the insect beneath man’s feet. He coveted the life of the bastards that reviled and crushed him at every opportunity. He’d believed for a long time the one he served would eventually
grant him what he sought. Make him what he’d observed with crippling envy, a tall, unkillable, unsegmented beast. The glory of it—to walk as man, indestructible as a cockroach!

He’d lived with the threat of the one weapon that could destroy him for too long. If he could not be one of them, at the very least he wanted that weapon back, buried, lost, forgotten.

But stealing from the one who’d stolen it from its ancient hiding place had proved impossible. He’d been trying for a small eternity. The beast that would be king made no mistakes.

Now there was one he believed just might be more powerful than the one he served.

As he slithered flat as paper and pushed his shiny brown body into a crack too small for humans to see, he knew something had changed before he even passed beneath the door and crossed the threshold.

He despised the way his mind instantly went into information-gathering mode, trained—he, once a god himself—
trained
to spy on fools and heathens.

They were the bugs. Not he.

This was
his
mission. No one else’s. Yet he’d been conditioned to collect bits of knowledge for so long, he now did so by instinct. Engulfed in sudden rage, he forgot about his body for a moment and inadvertently wedged his hindquarters beneath a too-narrow rough-hewn edge. Seething, he forced himself forward, sacrificing his legs at the femur, and half scuttled, half dragged himself into the room silently, unseen.

The one they called “Papa Roach” in their papers sat, rubbing his antennae together, thinking. Preparing for his new venture.

He’d been duplicitous in the past, playing both sides against the middle, but this was his greatest deceit—informing Ryodan the chamber beneath the abbey was impenetrable.

He wanted it—and its occupant—off Ryodan’s radar.

This potential ally, this opportunity was his alone.

He hissed softly, rustled forward on his front legs, dragging his cerci uncomfortably, until he stopped at the edge of the cage.

It was empty, two bars missing.

“Behind you,” a deep voice echoed from the shadows.

He startled and turned awkwardly, hissing, pivoting on his thorax. Few saw him. Fewer still ever saw him as more than a nuisance.

“You have been here before.” The dark prince was sprawled on the floor, leaning back against a wall, wings spread wide. “And I have seen you in Chester’s, in Ryodan’s company more than once. Don’t look so surprised, small one,” he said with a soft laugh. “There’s a decided dearth of events in here. A bit of stone dust crumbles. Occasionally a spider passes through. Of course I notice. You are not Fae. Yet you are sentient. Make that sound again if I am correct.”

The cockroach hissed.

“Do you serve Ryodan?”

He hissed again, this time with eons of hatred and anger, his entire small body trembling with the passion of it. Antennae vibrating, he spat a chirp of fury so hard he lost his balance and floundered wildly on his belly.

The winged prince laughed. “Yes, yes, I share the sentiment.”

The cockroach pushed up on his front legs and shook himself, then tapped the floor with one of his remaining appendages, rhythmically, in summons.

Roaches poured beneath the door, rushing to join him, piling on top of one another until at last they formed the stumpy-legged shape of a human.

The Unseelie prince watched in silence, waiting until he’d carefully positioned the many small bodies to form ears and a mouth.

“He dispatches you to check on me,” Cruce murmured.

“He believes I can no longer enter this chamber,” the glistening pile of cockroaches grated.

“Ah.” The prince pondered his words. “You seek an alliance.”

“I offer it. For a price.”

“I’m listening.”

“The one who controls me has a blade. I want it.”

“Free me and it is yours,” Cruce said swiftly.

“Not even I can open the doors that hold you.”

“There was a time I believed nothing could weaken the bars of my prison save the bastard king. Then one came, removed my cuff and disturbed the spell. All is temporary.” Cruce was silent a moment, then, “Continue taking information to Ryodan. But bring it to me as well. All of it. Omit nothing. I want to know every detail that transpires beyond those doors. When the chamber was sealed, I lost my ability to project. I can no longer see or affect matter above. I escaped my cage yet am blinder than I was in it. I must know
what is happening in the world if I am to escape. You will be my eyes and ears. My mouthpiece when I wish. See me freed and in turn I will free you.”

“If I agree to help you, I do so of my own accord. You neither own nor order me. But respect me,” the heap of cockroaches ground out. “I am as ancient and venerable as you.”

“Doubtful.” Cruce inclined his head. “But agreed.”

“I want the blade the moment you are free. It will be your first action.”

Cruce cocked his head and studied him. “To use or destroy?”

“It is not possible to destroy it.”

The dark winged prince smiled. “Ah, my friend, anything is possible.”

I
buzzed the foggy, rainy streets of Temple Bar like a drunken bumblebee, darting between passersby who couldn’t see me, trying not to bash them with my undetectable yet substantial umbrella. Navigating a crowded street while invisible takes a great deal of energy and focus. You can’t stare someone down and make them move out of your way; a trick I learned from watching Barrons and had nearly perfected prior to my vanishing act.

Between ducks and dodges, I was startled to realize how much the post-ice/apocalypse city resembled the Dublin I’d fallen in love with shortly after I arrived.

Same neon-lit rain-slicked streets, same fair to middling fifty-five degrees, people out for a beer with friends, listening to music in local pubs, flowers spilling from planters and strings of lights draping brightly painted facades. The big difference was the lesser Fae castes mixed into the crowds—many walking without glamour despite the recent killing
rampage Jada had been on—being treated like demigods. The commingling of races had spilled over from Chester’s into the streets. Ryodan permitted only the higher castes and their henchmen into his club. The lowers stalked their dark desires in Temple Bar.

I recognized few faces in the pub windows and on the sidewalks, mostly Unseelie I’d glimpsed at some point. I hadn’t made friends in this city; I’d enticed allies and incited enemies. Dublin was once again a hot spot for tourists, immigrating from all over¸ drawn by word there was food, magic, and a wealth of Fae royalty to be found here. Possessing power to grant wishes to a starving populace and slake a burgeoning addiction to Unseelie flesh, Fae were the latest smart phone, and everyone wanted one.

It was disconcerting to walk invisible through my favorite district. I felt like a ghost of who I’d once been: vibrant, angry, determined—naïve, God, so naïve!—storming into Dublin to hunt Alina’s murderer, only to learn I was a powerful
sidhe
-seer and null, exiled shortly after birth and possessed by enormous evil. I’d been weak, grown strong, grown weak again. Like the city I loved, I kept changing and it wasn’t always pretty.

There was a time I’d have given anything to be invisible. Like the night I sat in a pub with Christian MacKeltar, on the verge of discovering how he’d known my sister, back in those innocent days he was still a sexy young druid with a killer smile. Barrons had interrupted us, phoning to tell me the skies were filled with Hunters and I needed to get my ass back to the bookstore fast. As I’d left Christian with a promise to meet again soon, I felt like (and was!) a giant walking
neon sign of an X. I’d gotten cornered in a dead-end alley by a giant Hunter and the superhumanly strong, decaying citron-eyed vampire Mallucé.

If I’d been invisible then, I would never have been abducted, tortured, beaten so near death I had to eat Unseelie to claw my way back.

Halloween. That was another night being invisible would have been a blessing. After watching the ancient Wild Hunt stain Dublin’s sky from horizon to horizon with nightmarish Unseelie, I might have descended the belfry, stolen from the church and avoided the rape of four Unseelie princes and the subsequent Pri-ya-induced madness that possessed me. Would never have been forced to drink a Fae elixir that had altered my mortal life span in ways yet unknown.

On both those horrifying, transformative nights it was Jericho Barrons who saved me, first by a brand he’d tattooed on the back of my skull that allowed him to locate me hidden in a subterranean grotto deep beneath the desolate Burren, then by dragging me back to reality with constant reminders of my life before All Hallow’s Eve and providing the incessant sex to which the princes had left me mindlessly addicted.

If either of those events hadn’t transpired, I wouldn’t be who and what I was now.

If I liked who and what I was now, it would make both those hellish times worth it.

Too bad I didn’t.

A faint, dry chittering above me penetrated my brooding. I glanced up and shivered. I’d never seen my ghoulish stalkers fly en masse and it wasn’t a pretty sight. It was straight out of a horror flick, black-cloaked cadaverous wraiths streaking
beneath rain clouds, cobwebs trailing from their gaunt forms, the silvery metallic bits of their deeply hooded faces glinting as they peered down into the streets. There were hundreds of them, fanning out over Dublin, flying slowly, obviously hunting for something.

Or someone.

I had no doubt who they were looking for.

I ducked into the shallow alcoved doorway of a closed pub, barely breathing, praying they couldn’t suddenly somehow sense me. I didn’t move until the last of them had vanished into the stormy sky.

Inhaling deeply, I stepped out of the niche and pushed into a dense throng of people gathered at a street vendor’s stand, holding my umbrella as high as I could. I took two elbows in the ribs, got both my feet stepped on and an umbrella poked into my tush. I broke free of the crowd with a growl that turned quickly to a choked inhale.

Alina
.

I sprouted roots and stood, staring. She was ten feet away, wearing jeans, a clingy yellow shirt, a Burberry raincoat, and high-heeled boots. Her hair was longer, her body leaner. Alone, she spun in a circle, as if looking for someone or something. I held my breath and didn’t move then realized how stupid that was. Whatever this illusion was, it couldn’t see me anyway. And if it could see me, presto—proof it wasn’t real. Not that I needed any.

I knew better than to think it was actually my sister. I’d identified her body. I’d made her funeral arrangements when my parents had been immobilized by grief. I’d slid the coffin
lid shut myself before her closed-casket funeral. It was indisputably my sister I’d left six feet under in Ashford, Georgia.

“Not funny,” I muttered to the
Sinsar Dubh
. Assuming Cruce, with his proclivity to weave this particular illusion for me, was still secured beneath the abbey, it could only be the Book torturing me now.

A pedestrian crashed into my motionless back and I stumbled from the sidewalk out into the street. I flailed for balance and barely refrained from plunging headfirst into the gutter. Standing still in a crowd while invisible was idiotic. I composed myself, or tried to, given the image of my sister was now only half a dozen feet from me. There was no reply from my inner demon but that didn’t surprise me. The Book hadn’t uttered a word since the night it played genie, granting my muttered wish.

I glanced over my shoulder to watch for impending human missiles. “Make it go away,” I demanded.

There was only silence within.

The thing that looked like Alina stopped turning and stood, cocking a tan umbrella with bold black stripes at a better angle to survey the street. Confusion and worry puckered her brows, creating a deep furrow between them. She bit her lower lip and frowned, the way my sister did when she was thinking hard. Then she winced and brushed her stomach with her hand as if something hurt or she was feeling nauseous.

I caught myself wondering who she was looking for, why she was worried, then realized I was getting sucked in and focused instead on the details of the illusion, seeking mistakes,
while jogging from side to side and stealing quick glances around me.

There was the small mole to the left of her upper lip that she’d never considered having removed. (I zigged to the left to make way for a pair of Rhino-boys marching down the sidewalk.) The long sooty lashes that, unlike mine, hadn’t needed mascara, the dent of a scar on the bridge of her nose from crashing into a trash can when we’d leapt off swings as little girls, which crinkled when she laughed and drove her crazy. (I zagged to the right to avoid a stumbling drunk who was singing off-key, loudly and badly, that someone had
wreh-ehcked
him.) The Book had her down pat, re-created no doubt from memories it sifted through and studied while I slept or was otherwise occupied. I’d often pictured her this way, out for a night on the town. In fact, pretty much every time I walked through the Temple Bar district thoughts of her took foggy shape in the back of my mind. But I always pictured her with friends, not alone. Happy, not worried. And she’d never worn a sparkling diamond ring on her left ring finger, glinting as she adjusted her umbrella. She’d never been engaged. Never would be.

As usual the Book couldn’t get all the details right. Squaring my shoulders, I stepped forward, drew to a stop with a mere foot of space between us and risked standing still, wagering people would give the image at least that much personal space—assuming they could see it and it wasn’t simply my own private haunt, or hey, who knew? Maybe the vision had its own secret force field. I was instantly enveloped in her favorite perfume and a hint of the lavender-scented Snuggle she used in the dryer to make her jeans soft.

We stood like that for several long moments, face-to-face, the illusion of my sister looking through me as it searched the streets for who knew what, me staring at every inch of its face, okay, reveling in staring at every inch of its face because even though it was an illusion, it was a perfect replica and—God, how I missed her!

Still.

Thirteen months and the deep wound of grief remained open, salted, and burning inside me. Some people—who haven’t lost someone they love unconditionally and more than themselves—think a year is plenty of time to get over the trauma of their death and you should have fully moved on.

Fuck you, it’s not.

A year barely makes a dent. It didn’t help that I’d passed large chunks of that year during a few hours in Faery or a sex-crazed stupor, lacking the mental faculties to deal with my grief. It takes time to condition your brain to shut down rather than remember them. You can hold on to them in memories that slice like cherished razors. You can fall in love again; most people do—but you can never replace a sister. You can never rectify the many regrets. Apologize for your failings, for not figuring out something was wrong before it was too late.

I wanted to take her in my arms, hug this illusion. I wanted to hear her laugh, say my name, tell me she was okay wherever it was the dead go. That she knew joy. She wasn’t trapped in some purgatory. Or worse.

One look at this facsimile of Alina reawakened every bit of pain and rage and hunger for revenge in my heart. Unfortunately, my thirst for revenge could be directed at no one but
an old woman I’d already killed, and was sadly tangled around a girl I loved.

Was that why the Book was doing it? Because it had weakened me with invisibility and feelings of irrelevance and now it sought to twist the knife, showing me what I might have back if I would only cooperate? Too bad I’d be evil and not at all myself once I had her back.

“Screw you,” I growled at the Book.

I lunged forward to push through the illusion and slammed into a body so hard I rebounded off it, crashed into a planter that caught me squarely behind my knees and sent me flailing backward over it. I rolled and twisted in midair and managed to splash to my hands and knees in a puddle, umbrella sailing from my grasp.

I jerked a glance over my shoulder. I’d forgotten how good the Book’s illusions were. It really felt like I’d collided with a body. A warm, breathing, huggable body. Once, I’d played volleyball and drank Coronas on a beach with an illusion of my sister who’d seemed just as real. I wasn’t falling for that again.

It was standing up from the sidewalk, brushing its jeans off, eyes narrowed, rubbing its temple as if struck by a sudden headache, looking startled and confused, searching the space around it as if trying to decipher what weird thing had just happened. An invisible Fae had collided with it, perhaps?

Right. Now I was reading illusionary thoughts into the illusionary mind of my illusionary sister.

Only one thing to do: get out of here before I got sucked in further while yet another of my weaknesses was exploited by the Book’s sadistic sleight of hand.

Clenching my teeth, I dragged myself from the puddle and pushed to my feet. My umbrella had vanished beneath the feet of passersby. With a snarl, I yanked my gaze away from the thing that I knew full well was not my sister and marched without a backward glance out of Temple Bar, into the fog and rain.

At the end of the block, Barrons Books & Baubles loomed from the Fae-kissed fog four—no, five—stories tonight, a brilliantly lit bastion of gleaming cherry, limestone, antique glass, and Old World elegance. Floodlights sliced beacons into the darkness from the entire perimeter of the roof, and gas lamps glowed at twenty-foot intervals down both sides of the cobbled street, although beyond it the enormous Dark Zone remained shadowy, abandoned, and unlit.

In the limestone and cherry alcove, an ornate lamp swayed in the wind to the tempo of the shingle that swung from a polished brass pole proclaiming the name I’d restored in lieu of changing it to my own. Barrons Books & Baubles was what it was in my heart and all I would ever call it.

The moment I turned the corner and saw the bookstore, towering, strong and timeless as the man, I nearly burst into tears. Happy to see it. Afraid one day I might turn the corner and not see it. Hating that I loved something so much because things you loved could be taken away.

I would never forget staring down from the belfry on Halloween to find all the floodlights had been shot out. Then the power grid went down, the city blinked out like a dying man closing his eyes, and I’d watched my cherished home
become part of the Dark Zone, felt as if part of my soul was being amputated. Each time the bookstore had been demolished by Barrons—first when I vanished with V’lane for a month, then after I killed Barrons and he thought I was fucking Darroc—I’d not been able to rest until I restored order. I couldn’t bear seeing my home wrecked.

God, I was moody tonight. Invisible, lonely, being hunted by my ghouls (at least there were none perched on BB&B!), I couldn’t go kill anything, the
Sinsar Dubh
wasn’t needling me, and purposeless downtime has always been my Achilles’ heel.