I gestured to my mouth and nudged Alina, who told them, “She can’t talk. If she opens her mouth, the song will come out. Cruce gave it to her on the condition she didn’t use it for four hours. We’ve got two minutes to go.”
It was a testament to what a bizarre bunch of people we were that no one even asked any questions. They all just nodded and waited, resolute soldiers, for whatever happened next.
I absorbed our small group, looking from cherished face to face.
Alina. She met my gaze levelly and smiled faintly. “Good to go, little Mac.”
Clenching my jaw so I wouldn’t blurt a reply or burst into tears, I turned my gaze to Dani and Dancer, who were standing off to the side, holding hands, and although Dancer looked tired, his eyes were brilliant with excitement. Dani’s face was marble, chiseled and hard as stone, her gaze cold, but I knew my girl well, and when she felt the most—at this moment hoping with every cell in her body the song would work miracles on his heart—was when she tried the hardest to hide it. She stole a quick glance at Ryodan, and the hand that wasn’t holding Dancer’s fisted and her face solidified even more. For a moment her eyes flickered and emotion nearly broke through, but she got control of herself again.
Ryodan stood as far from the pair as he could while still being in the group, near enough to the black hole that his shirt was fluttering in the wind, his stance rigid. I thought of the brand Dani wore and suspected last night had been difficult for him. I wondered just how much he’d felt of her passion, her pleasure, and love for Dancer. Ryodan glanced at Dani and his gaze went from her face to their joined hands. He smiled faintly but it didn’t reach his eyes. They remained ancient, cold, eminently self-contained.
He whipped that silvery gaze to me then and spoke inside my mind. If I don’t make it, help her rescue Shazam. ASAP. And that means as-soon-as-the-fuck-possible-nothing-else-has-priority. Swear it.
I nodded.
Take care of her.
Always.
And tell her not to vibrate on the kid. His heart can’t handle it. It generates a subtle electrical charge.
I blinked. Well, I had my answer. The brand broadcast pretty much everything. I nodded again and he looked swiftly away.
Christian. I met his gaze and he smiled faintly and shrugged as if to say, I never thought it was going to get better anyway. Then he threw back his dark head and laughed.
Dani shot him a look. “Dude,” she said admiringly.
How Christian had changed. How we’d all changed. Keeping the best parts, letting the worst drop away.
I looked at Barrons.
It was entirely possible in a very short time only Dani, Dancer, and I would still be standing here.
Barrons glided toward me in that eerie, fluid fashion, stopped and laced our hands together.
We would hold on to each other until the last.
Sun, moon, and stars, I told him.
He inclined his head. Of all the years, this one with you has been my finest. Fire to my ice, Mac.
Frost to my flame, Jericho.
Forever, we said, and it was a vow far more powerful and binding than any ring or piece of paper.
There was nothing more to say. If we hadn’t said it already, we’d fucked up and no reparations could be made at this late hour.
But his eyes said he was proud of the woman I’d become. And my eyes said that I was proud he was my man. And we smiled at each other, then he said something I never thought I’d hear Jericho Barrons say. He said—
“Fuck!” Alina exploded. “Mac, the Sinsar Dubh is here!”
For a moment I simply couldn’t process what Alina had said. We’d left the Sinsar Dubh trapped in the boudoir. It could only be here if (a) it had broken free of the stones, (b) found a body to carry it, and (c) escaped mere minutes after we’d left.
I couldn’t feel it at all. My sidhe-seer senses were completely muted by the presence of the song inside me. I spun wildly, trying to locate it, then shot a frantic look at Alina and she pointed behind me.
I whirled to find myself ten paces from the Unseelie princess we’d left cocooned in the boudoir.
Her mouth stretched impossibly wide, reminding me of Derek O’Bannion when he’d been possessed by the first Book, revealing rows and rows of whirling, sharp metal teeth. For a moment I thought she was going to eat me, bite off my head and swallow it, but she convulsed as if retching then abruptly a dark storm exploded from her jaws.
It darted straight for me.
I couldn’t sift. I had little True Magic, but I had the song, and I needed to sing it, now, to destroy the Sinsar Dubh once and for all. I opened my mouth but the inky cloud the Unseelie princess had retched narrowed to a thin funnel of toxic dust and shot straight for it. I clamped my teeth shut again so hard it hurt my entire skull. Then Barrons was lunging, trying to intercept the dark storm in his own impossibly wide jaws, transforming into the beast as he moved.
The cloud retracted into the Unseelie princess and, as I watched, stunned, Barrons twisted in midair, slapped a crimson rune on her I’d not even known he’d been carrying and had no idea where he’d gotten it from, then grabbed her by the shoulders and ground his mouth to hers in a savage kiss.
He sucked the Sinsar Dubh right out of the princess’s body in one long lip-locked inhale.
The Unseelie princess collapsed, dead, to the ground.
And all I could think was, Barrons could kill with a kiss? I thought I’d known what he was. I narrowed my eyes. I’d kissed that lethal mouth many times.
He whirled and bore down on me, eyes obsidian, full black, no crimson sparks, nothing left of my Jericho at all, and he roared, “Fucking sing, Mac, I can’t hold it long!”
The shadow exploded out of his mouth as he spoke. He shuddered violently and clawed at the air, and forcibly sucked the Sinsar Dubh back in.
I shot Alina a frantic goodbye, locked eyes with Barrons, and I opened my mouth and released the Song of Making.
I will never be able to put into words what it is. Frequency that elevates to a level of being we don’t yet understand while rendering insignificant the many daily burdens we think we carry. The song was made in Heaven, if such a place exists, by angels, spun of the divine.
For a time I was nowhere and everywhere listening to—no, being—music of such exquisite perfection that I was whole and right and I knew absolutely everything and understood it all. Each detail of existence was revealed, without enigma or confusion. I apprehended myself, the world, others, with exquisite clarity. Our entire existence was fluid and living and, as a race, a planet, a universe, it was all connected and we were all part of one another. And when we hurt one another, we hurt ourselves. And when we warred, we hurt the universe, and that was ourselves. And we were so stupid sometimes I couldn’t believe the song even hung around and let us use it.
As humans, so much is mysterious to us. As the woman that sang the ancient melody, everything was clear and it all fit. The universe was precisely as it was meant to be. No Fate. Checks and balances. The universe listed toward life and beauty, always had, always would. We were the universe: each and every one of us, light or dark, right or wrong, we were tiny, essential cogs in the grand and mighty wheel. Somehow, even the Sinsar Dubh.
As the song poured out of me, I began to glow and turn translucent, and I thought, Well, shit, maybe I’m going to die after all. But I didn’t care because I’d done what was needed. I’d been the cog it was most desirable for me to be.
A brilliant blaze of light exploded from my body, and the air was filled with countless tiny, fluid arrows of light.
Events unfolded in slow motion to me then, though later they would tell me it all happened in a split second. I suspect I was somehow out of time by that point, insubstantial, changed by the melody flowing through me.
A thousand of the golden dazzling things darted into the black hole, which began to shiver and shake, then shrink.
The destructive black sphere grew smaller and smaller until
, with an audible pop, it imploded and was simply gone, leaving nothing but the deep trench dug beneath it, and ropes cordoning off normal, healthy reality.
Countless more arrows exploded forth, darting out into the world, like the Enterprise entering warp speed, seeking out the rest of the black holes.
We’d done it. The Song of Making was free and healing our world!
I turned to watch each of my companions pierced in turn with arrows shot by me. Mea culpa. Please let them live, I begged whatever god had created the melody.
The brilliant lances of light passed straight through Dani and Dancer, and Ryodan, too, coming out on the other side.
Then one vanished inside Christian but didn’t pass through. He began to shudder and snarl, and just when I thought we were definitely losing him, it abruptly shot out and moved on. Christian shook his head hard, looking dazed.
Barrons took a dozen of those arrows into his half-man, half-beast body and every one stayed inside.
His face contorted with agony and his eyes locked with mine.
I stared into his dark face, anguished, wanting desperately to stop singing. But I never would. I knew my role. I accepted it.
Jerking violently, he doubled over and vomited the dark storm of the Sinsar Dubh from his body. It gushed out of him, a black, viscous, oily river, oozing onto the pavement, and the damned thing actually shaped itself into the words FUCK YOU, MACKAYLA, YOU WILL DIEDIEDIEDIE.
If my mouth hadn’t been busy singing, I would have snorted. Pompous superiority complex to the end.
Hundreds of glowing arrows twisted and turned midair, knifed into the inky stain of the Sinsar Dubh like evil-seeking missiles. The words collapsed and the blackness shuddered and rippled, then surged into the air where it whipped around and twisted violently.
Then it was gone.
Arrows erupted from Barrons’s body. On the ground, on all fours, he threw his head back and looked up at me.
I’m still here, Rainbow Girl, he said fiercely inside my head.
My heart soared. He hadn’t died. I hadn’t killed him.
I looked at Alina and my heart sank. A hundred golden arrows pierced her everywhere and did not come out again.
Love you, Junior.
My sister was gone.
DANI
We had a blowout Beginning of the World party that night.
Best. Party. Ever.
It was like something I saw on TV. There hasn’t been time or opportunity in my life for parties, you know the kind where everyone’s just in a really good mood and nobody has a private, nefarious agenda and there’s music and all the food you could possibly want and the night seems to go on forever. And people play cards and liar’s dice and laugh their asses off and do shots.
And you’re with a man who thinks you’re beautiful and hot and can’t take his eyes off you and loves you.
Yeah, that kind of night.
Golden.
We hung out at BB&B, and even though Mac had lost Alina again, she had some kind of serenity about it that Jack and Rainey Lane shared. I think at the end of the day, they’d grieved her death once, and they just felt immensely grateful for the extra time they’d gotten with her.
That, and the world had been saved. It was impossible to not feel ebullient. We’d come so close to losing it all. And hadn’t. We’d gotten reports in from every country that had been contaminated by the destructive spheres. The black holes were gone and our planet was healed.
The Sinsar Dubh had been destroyed. For good this time. The Unseelie had all been unmade. Mac said she could feel a complete void where the Dark Court had once existed. The Seelie were alive and well, and she said they’d already begun clamoring for her immediate appearance at court. I was curious how that was going to go. Mac was the Fae queen, for good now. Strange.
We’d sent word through to each of the new worlds, and in short order folks would be returning to Earth, although I suspected some of the more adventurous types would opt to stay and colonize. It’s a great big universe out there now, and everything has changed.
As far as Dancer could tell, the song didn’t heal his heart. He said he felt the same, and if he was disappointed, in true Dancer fashion he didn’t show it. I was crestfallen but refused to brood. Things were no better—but they were no worse either. And each day, I learned new ways to deal with our situation. He’d been having problems for eleven years. I could easily get eleven more, and who knew what tomorrow might bring, or what miraculous cure Shazam might have to offer? Or maybe there was something Mac, with her Fae power, or Dancer himself, with his huge brain, could figure out to do, in time. The possibilities were limitless.
Apparently the song hadn’t considered Christian or Sean O’Bannion made of imperfect song, as I’d suspected.
Christian was still an Unseelie prince.
“I don’t bloody fucking get it,” he said to me for the third time, tossing back a swallow of scotch. “I’m Unseelie. It should have either killed me or stripped the Unseelie out of me, leaving me a normal man,” he said irritably. It may not have changed him but something about him was different. Possibly just that he was getting more comfortable being what he was.
Dancer said, “The song only destroyed what was created from imperfect song. You weren’t. You were born a human.”
“My bloody wings were created from imperfect song.”
“No, they weren’t,” Dancer said. “You’re a man who acquired Fae parts but your essence is human. I seriously doubt the song makes mistakes. It decided you weren’t imperfect. For fuck’s sake, did you want to die?”
“No. I just wanted to be myself again.”
“I think the point is you are. You heard the music. It sent its arrows into you. And it left you alone. That means what you’ve become can’t be that bad. Maybe you should try to—”
“Don’t bloody tell me I should try to bloody embrace what I’ve become. That bastard Cruce told me often enough.”
“That bastard Cruce,” Mac said, passing by with a drink in her hand, “saved us and our planet, and he didn’t have to. Nothing’s black and white, Christian. If I were you, I’d start playing with my power, figuring out what I could do with it. At least you’re not queen of the Fae. If anyone gets to bitch about the position they got stuck with, it’s me, and I’m not. So buck up, little buckaroo. I’m queen of the Fairies, you’re Death, life goes on.”
Then she was off to join Barrons and Ryodan, who were playing poker with the Lanes and Inspector Jayne.
“Yeah, well, she’s not the one that can’t have sex,” Christian muttered darkly. “They’re bloody having sex constantly.”
“I told you I’m perfectly happy to help with that,” Enyo said, dropping over the back of the couch next to him.
Christian shot up and stalked away.
I arched a brow at Enyo, who shrugged. “War’s over. I need a new challenge.” Then she was off the couch, too, stalking after him.
Then Dancer and I were slow dancing while everyone carried on around us, as if we were the only two people in the world. Then the music was fast and fun and some of the sidhe-seers who hadn’t gone off world showed up and we filled the bookstore with dancing and laughter and even Mac and Barrons joined in when “Tubthumping” came on.
Hours later Dancer finally said, “Want to get out of here, Mega?” His eyes were tired but brilliant as ever, the color of tropical surf.
Did I ever. I wanted this night to go on forever. But I also wanted it to end. “Yes. Tomorrow we get to—”
“Rescue Shazam,” Dancer exclaimed, eyes sparkling. “Bloody hell, I can’t wait to meet him!”
I kissed him. And kissed him. Then I had him leaning back against a bookcase, I was his second skin, and we got lost in a long dreamy kiss that told me exactly how the night was going to go.
I looked for Ryodan to say goodbye before we left but he was nowhere to be found.
“Freeze-frame me, Dani,” Dancer said eagerly as we stepped outside, and I coul
dn’t resist. We were on top of the world, young and in perfect sync with each other’s hearts. He loved being in the slipstream, said it helped blow his mind open to new ideas.
As I kicked us up into that other dimension and the starry tunnel unfolded around us, he kissed me, which totally broke my concentration, and we stumbled down, cartwheeling along the alley, laughing. Then he had me turned around against the brick wall and my jeans were down and so were his and my sword was shoved aside and he was kissing the back of my neck and pushing inside me from behind and I knew later tomorrow I’d gouge D&D into the wall in this very spot and I laughed thinking that if I did it everywhere we had sex, the whole city would be graffitied with D’s in no time.
“I love you, Dani Mega O’Malley,” Dancer said against my ear as he moved inside me. “More than the world is big. Deeper than the sky is blue. Truer than the universe is vast. I love you more eternal than pi.”
A fierce elation exploded in my heart and I gasped, “I love you the same way, Dancer.”
Then the only sounds in the street were the ones a man and woman make when they live out loud and in every color of the rainbow.
I woke up a little after noon the next day to sun slanting across our bed and lay curled on my side, wondering if Queen Mac had anything to do with the sultry clime drifting in the open window.
I trusted she knew she couldn’t turn Dublin permanently into southern Georgia without seriously screwing up our rainy, verdant isle. But I’d happily take a few days of this weather, knowing how much Dancer loved it. He needed some long lazy hours in the sunshine to recuperate from the pace of recent events.
“It’s the day, Shazam,” I whispered, glowing inside. That one. The one I’d been waiting for forever. Today, Ryodan and Barrons were going to start stacking Silvers to rescue my beloved friend. And life would be perfect. Me, Shazam, and Dancer. What more could I ask? My heart was so full of happiness it felt like it might explode.
We’d had sex three times last night. I’d bowed out the fourth, pretending I was sore (like that could even happen), achingly aware of how exhausted he’d been. “We have all the time in the world,” I’d told him, hoping it was true. Pacing ourselves was the key to getting a long life with him.
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