Burned

by Karen Marie Moning

  There’s no way Mac’s behind me. I’d have heard her. I have superhearing. I’d have seen the lights of her MacHalo, brightening the glow cast by mine.

  “Yeah, right, like I’m actually falling for this,” I mutter. Sometimes I have an overactive imagination.

  The tip digs harder into my back. I go still and draw a slow inhale. I know Mac’s scent and that’s it. A dry chittering starts on the rooftops, swelling into thousands of rattlesnake tails shaking, making me even more nauseated. I don’t need to look to know what’s up there. Oh, yeah, Mac is really behind me, bizarre entourage in tow. The few times I’ve seen her lately, she’s had a flock of Unseelie ZEWs—Zombie Eating Wraiths is what I christened the gaunt, black-robed caste that glides on air and likes roosting on top of the bookstore—following her around like enormous, carrion crow waiting for a juicy corpse to pick clean.

  Ain’t gonna be mine.

  I dig out a protein bar, rip it open, and cram it in my mouth for an instant rush of energy. I never avoid battle. Tuck tail and run isn’t in my blood. Problem is, I only know two ways to fight: kill clean or kill messy—both of which involve killing unless I’m up against that feck Ryodan who can pluck me from hyperspeed and kick my ass ten ways to Tuesday.

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  There’s no way I’m killing Mac. I’ll take Door Number Two, a thing I never do, and run. Only for her.

  I slap up a hasty mental map of the street and get my grid locked down as perfect as I can with all this snow and ice. I slit my eyes half closed in intense concentration and freeze-frame.

  Nothing happens. My feet are rooted in the exact same spot, and I’m still feeling the tip of Mac’s spear in my back.

  My superpowers just disappeared in a moment of need for the third time. Un-fecking-real! What’s the commonality? Why does it keep happening?

  “I said drop your fucking sword. ”

  I exhale gustily. Not because I feel sorry for myself. Self-pity is wasted emotion. It merely prolongs whatever trauma you suffered by keeping it alive in your head. Dude, you survived it. Move on.

  But there are some things I wish had been different like, say, Ro had never taken me to the abbey after Mom died, made me her personal assassin and taught me to kill before I got around to figuring out what I thought was right and wrong, because when you do figure out what you think is right and wrong—if it’s foursquare against the things you been doing—you got some tricky minefields in your head to dodge. Guilt, regret—things I almost don’t even know how to spell they’re so alien to me—I about drown in them every time I look at Mac.

  Fortunately she’s behind me at the moment, so I don’t have to think about how she looks so much like her sister, don’t get smashed upside the head by visuals of the last night I saw Alina, on her hands and knees in an alley, begging me not to let her die.

  “Seriously, kid, drop it. I won’t say it again. ”

  “Not a kid. Dude. ”

  “Danielle. ”

  Gah! She knows I hate that wussy girl name! I test my freeze-framing abilities. They’re still absent. There’s no telling how long it’ll be until they come back. Five seconds. Five minutes. Maybe five hours. I got no clue why it’s happening and it’s beginning to worry the crap out of me. I turn to face her, coat back, hand on the hilt of my sword, steeling myself for a whole-body flinch, and still I jerk.

  She’s different from the Mac I met a year ago. Glam girl turned sleek warrior woman. She was pretty when she came to Dublin; now she’s lean, strong, and beautiful. Once, she said I was pretty and that I’d grow up to be beautiful, too, one day. As if I give a rat’s arse about that kind of thing.

  What is she thinking, pulling her spear on me, ordering me around? There’s no way she knows I’m stuck in slow-mo. No one knows it happens to me. Cripes, if word of that got out!

  She stares at me, green eyes narrowed with fury. She has every right to try to kill me. A better person might even cooperate a little out of guilt and remorse. I’m not a better person. I wake up every day with a single imperative: live. By any means necessary. The only way Death will ever get his slimy bastard hands on me is over my dead body.

  I wonder if she has some new sidhe-seer skill I haven’t heard about that makes her willing to hit me up like this, so cool and confident. My superspeed guarantees my victory in any battle against another sidhe-seer unless I make a mistake, and I don’t. She isn’t wearing a MacHalo, which perplexes the feck out of me. Nobody walks Dublin, dark. Not even me. Maybe the ZEWs on the rooftops are her private army now, defending her against the Shades and assorted nasties.

  I frown when another thought occurs to me. Did she set me up for quid pro quo down to the dirty details?

  Dark alley nearby—check.

  Me—check.

  Hungry Unseelie—check.

  I get a mental snapshot of me dying just like Alina. It’s practically glowing on Mac’s pupils.

  I want to tell her revenge is a devil you don’t want to worship. In destroying your enemy you become it.

  You will take the girl to an alley on the south side of the River Liffey. Unseelie will meet you there. Sometimes I still hear Ro’s voice in my head even though we burned her body and dumped the ashes in the sea. Not like a true haunt, just ghosts of memories still swimming down deep in my subconscious where I keep most of what I did for her when I lived at the abbey.

  Why? I want to ask her, but she touches my forehead with something that’s wet and smells bad, and mutters words I don’t know, then I can’t talk.

  I know you’re in there, I hear Ro saying, as if from a great distance. Remember the hell you endured. You’re the one I want.

  I don’t know what she’s talking about. I’m right there. Looking at her. Even though it feels like from a million miles away.

  Och, child, she says, I couldn’t have raised you better myself to fragment you into usable pieces. When I found you when you were five I knew God had forged the beginning of a very special weapon. Just for me.

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  Old bat couldn’t even keep track of my age. I was eight when she found me almost dead in a cage. Only time in my life I ever waited to die. Counting my breaths. Wondering which would be the last. There was a whole week back there I couldn’t remember, just gone. From the day Ro took me in, I began losing hours and then I’d be somewhere else and wouldn’t know how I’d gotten there. And there was usually something I didn’t like seeing. Other times I was seeing it all happen except not in control, stuck in the sidecar of the motorcycle, where I couldn’t steer or hit the gas. There was never a brake when things got weird like that. I was always just along for the ride, glued to the seat. Like the night I killed Mac’s sister. Second worst thing I ever did and I relive it in nightmares, down to the last excruciating detail. Sometimes I wondered if the crazy old bat had been able to choose to let me see the things she sent me to do, or shield me from them.

  If I dwelled on that thought I’d go nuts. Hate eats the hater. Ro messed with me enough while she was alive. She’s dead now, and if I let her keep fecking with me, it’ll be my own fault and she’ll win. Even from her watery grave, she could steal hours, days, weeks of my life. Sometimes when really bad things happen, you put them in a box and never look at them again because they’ll cost you the rest of your life. Some wounds never heal. You excise the savaged flesh and become the next thing.

  “Drop your sword and I’ll put down my spear,” Mac says.

  “Yeah, right. Then what? You order your creepy little army of Unseelie to drag me down that alley and eat me? No, let me guess: We head back to BB&B, make hot chocolate, hang out and talk?”

  “That’s the general idea. Minus the bookstore and hot chocolate. And they’re not my creepy little army. ”

  “Like, talk about what? Me killing your sister? And they sure look like your creepy little army to me. Go everywhere you do. ” Feck, it’s good to see her. I missed seeing her. I was
always scanning every room, every street, hoping to see her. Dreading it.

  She flinches. “Maybe you could try not to say it that way. And I said they’re not. ”

  “Why shouldn’t I? It’s what happened,” I say defiantly. Fecking pointless. She’s never going to see it any other way. My fingers tighten on my sword. “I killed your sister. There it is. Fact. Dude. Never gonna change. I. Killed. Alina. You came to Dublin hunting her murderer. Here I am. ” I raise a hand and wave it around just in case she’s missing the point, overlooking me somehow.

  “Dani, I know you’re—”

  “You don’t know nothing about me!” I cut her off hard and fast. I hate sentences that begin with my name followed by the claim—indubitably erroneous—that the speaker knows something about me. Those kinds of sentences rank right up there with the ones that begin with You know what your problem is? That’s always a doozy. Talk about a trick question. Nothing worth hearing ever follows that preface. I snarl, “You hear me? I said you don’t know nothing! Now get the feck out of my way and take your creepy little groupies with you!”

  “No. This ends. Here. Tonight. And I said. They’re. Not. Mine. ” She cuts a look up and mutters, “They stalk me. I haven’t figured out how to get rid of them. Yet. ”

  Instantly I want to be on the Dublin News-Channel-X investigative team, ask probing questions, get immersed in solving a thrilling mystery with Mac, but those days are gone and about as likely to come back as dinosaurs. I look at her, and she’s giving me this totally fake I’m-not-going-to-kill-you look that’s supposed to lure me close enough to get killed. But her fingers sure are tight on the hilt of her spear. And she’s balanced real light on the balls of her feet like I am. I know that stance. It’s preattack. Face says one thing. Body says another. I listen to the body. Keeps me alive.

  She’s wearing boots with low heels, fashionable, stupid shoes for ice. It doesn’t matter how new and improved MacKayla Lane is, part of her will always be as pink and girly as the nails on the hilt of her spear.

  I’m wearing sneakers.

  Even slow-mo I’m faster than she’ll ever be in those boots. There’s no way Mac’ll throw her spear at me. No more than she would put it down in a show of good faith. She’s like me with my sword. We don’t let them out of our hands. Not willingly. Well, I did it tonight for a Highlander who’s mostly Unseelie Prince but I got no fecking clue why. The only unknown are those ghastly Unseelie on the rooftops—are they or aren’t they here to kill me?

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  One way to find out.

  I try to freeze-frame but don’t even get a chug-a-chug of the engine, my battery’s deader than dead. Feels like it’s not even in the car anymore. Got cables leading nowhere.

  I lunge for her and shove her off balance.

  She grabs at me but I duck under her arm and push past her. When she snatches a handful of my coat from behind, I turn my head and bite her hand. Not swing my sword or blow something up. Bite. Like a child that doesn’t have any other weapons.

  “Ow! You bit me!”

  “Wow, gee. See Mac’s brilliant skills of observation,” I say irritably. What am I going to do next—pull her hair? Then she might slap me and break a nail and we’ll call each other names. The sheer humiliating wussiness of this might goad me into drawing my sword and killing her. I can’t fathom how normal folks stand this. Above us, the wraithlike ZEWs chitter louder but stay put. “Get off me, stupid,” I hiss. I try to yank free, but she’s stronger than I remember.

  The second I tug my coat from her fingers she grabs a fistful of my hair and pulls.

  “Ow! You pulled my hair!” It hurt. Give me swords and spears and guns any day of the week.

  “Wow, gee. See Dani’s brilliant skills—”

  “Stow it! Think up your own insults, unless it’s too much work for your—”

  “—of observation. And I did not pull your hair. I’m just trying to hold you. You’re trying to get away. You’re the one pulling your hair. ”

  “—puny little brain! And of course I’m trying to get away, you fecking twit! And I’m not biting you now so let go of my hair!” I reach up, grab my hair, and we do this idiotic tug of war, then she lets go so abruptly, I crash forward onto my hands and knees.

  I surge up instantly but duck again and roll fast out of the way twice, three times, when I hear the whine of her spear behind me. The ZEWs explode upward, rustling and shrieking like a flock of startled buzzards. Guess the spear slicing air freaks them out, too.

  For a stupid, vulnerable instant I crouch near the ground and can’t even move, trying to process that Mac really just swung her spear at me, made an undeniable attempt to kill me, as in remove me from this planet, as in end me forever. Seems I was holding on to a crippling hope of absolution, secret even from me. The air feels colder behind me, as if a murderous rage looms there. If you think emotions don’t throw off energy, you’re wrong.

  I shoot to my feet, scrubbing at my cheeks with the balls of my fists. Ice chips must’ve flown up into my eyes when I rolled, making them sting and tear.

  I break into a run.

  My backpack drops like a stone from my shoulders. Bugger, she missed me but she caught the straps of my bag as I ducked, and all my food is in my pack! I don’t know a single store in a fifty-mile radius with stock on the shelves. My superspeed will come back, and when it does I’ll need food ASAP. I skid to a slippery stop on ice and turn to grab it.

  Mac is standing, one boot planted on my backpack, spear raised, shining alabaster. The edges are razor sharp. I can see my name written all over them.

  Message is clear.

  “You can’t go anywhere without food, Dani. Stop running. I just want to talk to you. ”

  “You’re not tricking me!” I hate it that she keeps pretending. Full frontal attack I can deal with. This sneaky crap is lower than low.

  “I’m not trying to. ”

  She sure as feck is. She just tried to slice off my head, for cripes sake.

  The ZEWs resettle on the rooftops and resume that nerve-wracking racket again.

  “So, what? I’m supposed to believe you came looking for me to tell me you, like, forgive me? Just how stupid do you think I am?”

  Her eyes fill with shadows and she looks sad. “Life is complicated, Dani. ”

  “What the feck does that mean?” I could just pop out of my skin like an overpressured grape from sheer frustration. I hate it when people throw big sweeping generalizations at you that you can’t even begin to interpret. Life is complicated so I’m going to kill you quick? Life is complicated so I’m going to torture you to death slow and talk the whole time, driving you batshit crazy in the process? Life is complicated ergo I might forgive you if you perform Herculean tasks of redemption? The options are endless. Who doesn’t know life is complicated? What I want to know is how to apply that to the nuts and bolts of my existence. Folks never tell you that part.

  “Sometimes the things we think will set us free … only make more chains. You either wear them or break them, and I … well, I don’t want to wear them. ”

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  “Dude, ain’t no chains here. I don’t see nothing but you and me and weapons and death, if you don’t get off my pack and walk away. Besides, even if you did say you forgive me, I’d never believe you! I’ll always be waiting for the second you decide to try to kill me. You want me dead. Admit it. Just say it. Be honest, for feck’s sake! You know you want me dead! I see it in your eyes!”

  She doesn’t say anything for a couple seconds, like she’s thinking hard about what she’s going to say next, and I don’t even know I’m holding my breath waiting until she begins talking and it kind of explodes from my lungs.

  “I don’t want you dead, Dani. That’s not why I came looking for you. ”

  “Well, why the fuck not?” I yell. “I deserve to die!”

  My hand goes to my mouth like maybe I can cover
up what I just said or scrape the words back inside somehow. I’m horrified. I don’t even know where those words came from. There aren’t many sins in my bible. Giving up is the greatest one of all. I just broke my own cardinal rule. Life is a gift. You fight to keep it. You never quit. Never.

  Nobody wants you. Your own mother locks you in a cage, leaves and forgets you. Just die. It’ll end everyone’s misery, including your own. Maybe then she can have a life. One of you should.

  I can’t believe I just said I deserve to die. Maybe I’m possessed. Maybe I got one of those sneaky, diaphanous Unseelie Grippers inside me but it’s only fecking with me sometimes (’cause I’m so super it can’t possess me all the time!), making me say things I don’t really feel and shorting out my powers. And maybe that Gripper has some kind of bizarre obsession with Ryodan. Weirder things have been happening in Dublin lately.

  Mac shakes her head, giving me a totally fake compassionate look. “Oh, Dani—”

  “I’m not falling for this so just shut up! Leave me alone or I’ll kill you like I killed your sister. I swear I will. I’ll kill you and then I’ll kill everybody you care about. That’s what I do. I kill people. I kill and kill and kill. That’s who I am. That’s who she made me. ” I used to daydream Barrons found me in the cage that day, instead of Ro, and imagine what I’d have turned out to be then, but he didn’t. She did. It is what it is.

  I run.

  She follows faster than I would have thought possible. I wonder if Barrons did something to her, maybe that thing Ryodan said he would do for me. Is she as unkillable as them now? Is that where her balls are coming from? If so, I’m seriously pissed and even more jealous.

  I leap snowbanks, dash down alleys, double back around, leading her on a merry chase through Temple Bar, and still she manages to stay hot on my arse. I keep testing every couple of seconds to see if I can freeze-frame but my superpowers have taken the same vacation my conscience went on years ago.

  She’s yelling stuff but I don’t listen. I hum my favorite playlist to tune out her and the racket of her creepy army.

  I don’t realize my feet have taken me to Barrons Books & Baubles until it looms up in front of me, only holy place I’ve ever known: amber lights and polished wood and diamond-paned windows and endless possibilities. Deep in a limestone arch, fancy columns and sidelights and brass sconces and a stained-glass transom frame the door I used to go banging through a million miles a minute, and just above it on a shiny brass pole hangs that colorful hand-painted shingle that might as well have once said Welcome Home but never would again for me.