Burned

by Karen Marie Moning

  “It’d be better than walking around with these … these … these bloody flipping odiferous gnats!”

  “Have yet to find one that works. ”

  “Well, whatever’s keeping them out of the bookstore should keep them away from me, right? Can’t you just do to me what you did to it?” Inside those walls and beneath his garage are the only places I have any privacy.

  “I’ve not isolated the precise element responsible. And no, I can’t do all of that to you. You’re animate. You might not be when I was done. I prefer you animate. Most of the time. ”

  Most? I bristle but refuse to be distracted. “Just how many elements are involved in protecting a bookstore? Five? Ten? A hundred?” When he betrays nothing of his secret protection spell—not that I expected him to, Butt-the-fuck-out-of-my-business is his middle name—I press, “Have you considered asking the Keltar if they can help? They’ve been druids to the Fae for thousands of years and maybe—”

  This time the look he cuts me holds a glitter of crimson and I shut up. I’ve seen that flash when he’s on top of me, hands bracketing my head, eyes dark with lust. I’ve seen it when he’s killing. I know what it promises: primal passion or primal destruction. Hard as it is to believe, I’m in the mood for neither at the moment. My problems have bred entire subsets of problems, which are no doubt having birth pains to spawn yet more problems, even as I pause to brood about them. Mentioning the clan of sexy Highlanders to Barrons is never a good idea, which I would have remembered if I’d not been distracted by the sudden realization that I’m wearing the last clean outfit I own and will have to do laundry tonight. Again.

  I’m sick of hiding. Tired of washing clothes. Fed up with sitting back and doing nothing to help my city, my people, myself. Arguably the most powerful person in Dublin, possibly on the planet—with the exception of one currently frozen prince—I lay low so no one discovers the psychopathic, homicidal embryo I carry inside me—a complete copy of the Sinsar Dubh, the most dangerous, twisted, evil book of black magic ever created.

  Page 17

  I know where to find the spell to be rid of the Unseelie that stalk me. I even know where to find the magic to hunt and destroy whatever has been freezing people and icing our city. In the pages of a book I don’t dare ever open, not even for one tiny peek inside. The dark book possesses anyone that reads it, takes them over and corrupts them completely. I’m carrying a lethal bomb around inside me. As long as I don’t touch it, I won’t blow up into the greatest evil mankind has ever known.

  For the first week after I refused to take the spell to lay Barrons’s son to rest, the Sinsar Dubh was silent. For eight and a half blissful days I believed I’d gotten my happily-ever-after, and could settle down to a peaceful life of killing Unseelie, rebuilding Dublin, gardening with Mom, driving supercars with my dad, fortifying the abbey, bonding with my sister sidhe-seers, and having phenomenal fights and even better sex with Barrons. All I had to do was ignore the Sinsar Dubh. Never open it. Never use the limitless power at my disposal. Easy, right?

  Not.

  Temptation isn’t a vice you triumph over once, completely, and then you’re free. Temptation slips into bed with you each night and helps you say prayers. It wakes you in the morning with a friendly cup of coffee, and knows just the way you take it, heavy on the sin.

  Every blasted day it’s that afternoon outside the bookstore all over again, only instead of refusing the spell to save one man’s son, I’m refusing to save an entire city.

  It took me all of five minutes suffering the Sinsar Dubh’s goading to devise a plan of action.

  Get rid of it.

  Before someone finds out or I lose control and rain down death and destruction on everyone I care about. I’m not living this battle every day for the rest of my Fae-elixir-enhanced life. And hopefully the stalkers that impede my ability to move at every turn will vanish along with it.

  While our city has been fighting the ice monster, Barrons and I, trailed by my ghouls, have been wasting weeks at a time making trips into the ever-changing White Mansion, sorting through endless libraries, scouring old manuscripts and scrolls, hunting for a ghost of a whisper of a legend: an infamous spell to summon the Unseelie King back to Dublin, so he can strip his damned book out of me.

  Barrons thinks it’s wasted effort and is getting impatient. He spent countless millennia searching ancient books for spells—and now I have him searching ancient books for a spell again. He says even if we manage to get his attention, the half-mad king will simply laugh, vanish as quickly as summoned.

  I refuse to believe that. The king is my only hope. Besides, he has a soft spot for me. Sort of. I think. That’s about as conclusive as one can be with the entity that calls himself Unseelie King.

  “You will obey me, Ms. Lane. You will not follow her. That is all. ”

  Jericho Barrons turns in a ripple of muscle and beautifully tailored Armani and stalks through the portal, leaving me alone with too many questions, two few choices, and a hundred-odd Unseelie.

  That is all, my ass. I’m my own woman. I’m Death walking. I’m the possibility for Complete and Total World Destruction. I can sure as hell make my own decisions.

  I ponder the Silver, eyes narrowed.

  I know Barrons.

  If I follow Dani, he’ll follow me, as will my confederacy of Unseelie. I imagine the parade we make: pretty blonde with the scary eyes followed by big, dark, tattooed man with the really scary eyes, trailed by a hundred eerily gliding, cobweb-dusted, black-cloaked, stinking wraiths. Hell, I’d take one look at us and run, even if I didn’t know we had good reason to be pissed at me.

  Barrons is right. Dani will only keep fleeing, anywhere, any way, possible.

  And it’s not our bizarre cavalcade causing it.

  It’s me.

  You’re not ready yet, he said.

  It’s my fault she went through the Silver. I’m getting better at recognizing pivotal moments, and there was one back in the alley where I might have been able to reach her, stop her from running. Or at least not drive her into Faery.

  It didn’t escape my notice that Dani hadn’t attempted to use one ounce of superstrength in our absurdly normal mean-girl scuffle, nor had she freeze-framed out, which made it clear how desperately she hoped I would forgive her.

  I’d pulled my punches, too, wishing desperately to forgive her. Turn back time to half-past innocence. But that clock’s lying on its side, hour hand spinning wildly, in a dirty Dublin alley near a gold makeup pouch half concealed by trash, and an address carved in stone by a dying woman.

  Broken.

  You can’t count on Dani remaining in normal-speed for long—there’s no telling what might startle her up—so when she stumbled and the opportunity presented itself, I’d swung my spear to slice the straps on her pack, take her food, and eliminate the possibility.

  Page 18

  I swear that was all I was after. Her food. Nothing more.

  But the moment I raised my spear, I flashed back over all the evil I’ve been fighting and I saw my sister dead in that alley, and Mallucé torturing me to death, and the Unseelie Princes raping me, and Rowena slitting my throat in the cell beneath the abbey, and the Sinsar Dubh’s endless games, and for a moment I despised the world because I used to know who I was, and I used to be good, with no bad in me, or at least that’s what I thought and there really is a degree of bliss and charmed innocence in ignorance. But when you fight evil every day, stare it in the face, engage it, learn to think like it, you face a choice: Be defeated by the limits of your own morality, or summon a beast in yourself that obeys none.

  That I have such a beast, plus my psychotic hitchhiker, keeps me as frozen as my compatriot prince, but while Cruce was imprisoned against his will, I’ve chosen my useless stasis.

  Either way, we’re both iced.

  I do nothing. And my self-contempt grows.

  Lines are thin. So ea
sy to cross.

  Impossible to uncross.

  It had taken every ounce of willpower I possessed to pull my swing just enough to slice only nylon not flesh and bone, and if I had to do it all over again, I’m not sure I could.

  I love my sister. I loved Dani.

  Some things the gut distills to their essence no matter how hard you try to factor in compassion and mercy and understanding.

  One of them killed the other.

  And there is violence in my heart.

  I couldn’t blame this one on the Sinsar Dubh’s seductive whispering. This one was all me. I’d failed to convince Dani that I didn’t want revenge.

  I hadn’t convinced myself.

  3

  “Got an angel on my shoulder and Mephistopheles”

  The Dublin Daily

  July 17, 1 AWC

  YOUR ONLY SOURCE FOR CREDIBLE NEWS IN AND AROUND NEW DUBLIN

  BROUGHT TO YOU BY WECARE

  Summer is here!

  There’s no better time than now to take the WHITE!

  Step up to help rebuild a stronger greener New Dublin!

  YOU can make A DIFFERENCE!

  Now is the time to show YouCARE

  Join

  WeCARE

  Today!

  MAC

  I crumple the paper without bothering to read past the propaganda for more of their slanted journalism. I despise that this flyer is where I get my news about the city. Once I was the news about the city because I was out there, fighting and making a difference, calling the shots … or at least having a clue what the shots were.

  I want to see a Dani Daily flapping on a pole in the breeze. I want to read her bragging about her most recent kill. I want to know what the latest Unseelie threat is, in all the entertaining, flamboyant detail she liked to tell it. I’m still in no frame of mind to actually see her, but I sure would like to know she’s okay.

  That it was from WeCare’s button-pushing rag I discovered what happened at the abbey the night the Hoar Frost King was destroyed offends me endlessly. I toss the wadded paper into a battered trash can.

  I should have been at the abbey but we’d been in the Silvers again, had gotten back that very night, about an hour after the big showdown took place. We hadn’t even known it was happening. If I’d gone, maybe no one would have died. I might have been able to save Christian from the Crimson Hag. I miss the sexy young Scotsman with the killer smile that I met during my early days in Dublin. I refuse to believe he’s lost to us now. They say he’s turned full Unseelie Prince. I hear his uncles have been hunting him but no luck so far.

  They say.

  I hear.

  The voice of my news is as passive as I’ve become.

  Hunting for Christian is yet another mission I should be on. He holds me responsible for the fix he’s in from feeding him Unseelie to save his life. That, combined with whatever went wrong with the Keltar ritual Barrons attended at the circle of stones in the Highlands on Samhain, seemed to have sealed his fate. He blames Barrons and me equally for his transformation. Which is total bullshit. I stood in the Hall of All Days and chose to go through to the desert world with four radioactive suns on which he was stranded, risking my own life to save his. Little thanks I’ve gotten for it.

  I shove my hair back with both hands, prelude to tearing it out in frustration.

  It’s been twenty-one days since Dani dove through the Silver into the Hall of All Days, and I have no idea if she’s dead or alive. I’ve been searching the city, entourage in tow, risking exposure, seeking any sign of her return. Standing in the alley, eyeing that damn spot of brick with increasing frequency, questioning everything I believe about myself.

  Page 19

  I’ve discovered that, like the Fae, Ryodan and his men aren’t as active on the streets between the afternoon hours of one and five, which gives me another hour to continue searching for a flamboyant new D carved into the cobblestone at the site of one of her more impressive kills, a note in the General Post Office that she’s answered, or maybe I’ll run into her friend Dancer. It’s not as if she’s going to let me know when she gets back.

  I step up my pace. Behind me, beside me, my chittering troop doesn’t miss a beat. I nudge them away with my elbows. It works for a few seconds, then I’m smothered in dusty, smelly Unseelie again. I brush cobwebs off my sleeves. Dani was right, they are gruesome.

  They shall be your priests, MacKayla. Command them.

  I had no desire to know that.

  I do something Barrons taught me, mentally envision a shining gold and obsidian book, slam it shut and lock it, adding cartoonish touches for levity: dust exploding from its cover, an eye on the gilded face of the book closing as if euthanized. I finish by flushing it down a giant toilet.

  It’s right. I could conduct my search far more efficiently if I dispatched a hundred Unseelie to look for her. I could send them into the hall.

  Not.

  Despite the fruitlessness of my endeavor, it’s been good to get out of the bookstore. Dublin is coming back to life, thanks to my mom and her New Dublin Green-Up group. Once the Hoar Frost King was destroyed, the ice melted dangerously quickly, the city flooded, and most people holed up indoors to wait it out.

  But not Rainey Lane. She attacked on multiple fronts, organizing teams to sandbag and protect while dispatching others to truck fertilizer, agriculture, and rare livestock from outlying areas not decimated by the vampiric Shades. The moment it was dry enough, she mobilized yet more teams to remove abandoned cars that have blocked the streets since last Halloween, when the walls fell and riots ripped through Dublin.

  When the streets were cleared of the largest debris, Mom got down to work in earnest, overseeing the fertilizing and sowing of grass, bushes, and trees. The new bloom on Dublin restored hope, motivating others to join up and begin repairs. The famed flags on the Oliver St. John Gogarty were rehung, the boxes above Quay’s are overflowing with flowers, and it looks as if someone’s planning to reopen Temple Bar.

  My daddy, Jack Lane, settles what civil disputes don’t end in brutality first (which doesn’t leave him many cases to hear) and supervises one of the teams restoring power and getting street sweepers out again. The streetlamps now wink on at dusk and blink out at dawn, the civic centers are offering shelter to the homeless. What few doctors remain have set up a makeshift hospital at Dublin Castle, with Inspector Jayne and the ex-Garda that are now the NDG: New Dublin Guardians. Dad says soon we’ll be fully up and running and generators will no longer be necessary. Seems Ireland had its fair share of engineers and hackers and they weathered the fall of our city better than most.

  Food and medicine are the hottest commodities. Dublin’s grocery and convenience stores are empty, the hospital and pharmacies ransacked, and we’ve lost so much farm-rich land to the Shades that rebuilding is going to take time. One of the few positive things about having half the human race erased from the planet is that many supplies are out there, if you can survive the long, dangerous trek, filled with Fae and human predators alike, to find them. WeCare was trying to get a corner on the supply market but failed, squeezed out by ruthless competitors.

  There are currently three places to obtain food in Dublin, where the prices vary according to whim: Chester’s, the Fae, and the black market. If you ask me, they’re all black. Of course nobody does ask me because nobody sees me because I lay low all the time and I’ve got a boyfriend who isn’t much for talking.

  I snort. I just thought of Jericho Barrons as my “boyfriend. ” I doubt that cataclysm was ever a boy and he certainly can’t be called friendly.

  It’s official. I’m losing it.

  Solitude and inaction are unraveling me right down to the core.

  Forty-five minutes later I’m on my way back to the bookstore, another wasted day beneath my belt, headed for another thrilling evening reading dusty, crumbling manuscripts. I used to love to read.
But I used to read hot romances and great murder mysteries and autobiographies. Now I read one thing: dry, archaic Fae history and legend.

  I decide to cut through the Dark Zone adjacent to BB&B, see what’s happening, and make sure it’s still empty. That’ll make me feel better. I may not be able to actively fight, but at least I can keep tabs on one of my enemy’s favorite campsites, ascertain they haven’t come back.

  Page 20

  My Unseelie swarm turns with me as I head down a narrow cobbled lane.

  Nearly a year ago, my second day in this city, I’d gotten lost in these forgotten, trash-strewn blocks filled with dilapidated industrial warehouses and docks, crumbling smokestacks, abandoned cars, and thick, porous husks scattered all over the place, oblivious to the amorphous danger lurking in the shadows.

  When I’d finally stumbled out of danger, or rather into danger of another sort in Barrons Books & Baubles that afternoon, it had been love at first sight—with the bookstore. The owner was another matter. That was war at first sight. I’m not sure much has changed, except that we both really enjoy the war.

  Later that night Barrons had come to my rented room at the Clarin Hotel and tried to bully me into leaving. It hadn’t worked. I might have been pink and pretty and terrified, but I’d stood my ground.

  I frown and rub my forehead then pinch the bridge of my nose. Something’s itchy in my skull. Something weird just happened while I was thinking about that night. As if there’s a neatly wrapped bundle tucked away in my head and something disturbed it, kicking up dust, drawing my attention somewhere I might never have looked. Thanks to the Sinsar Dubh eternally infiltrating and attempting to usurp my thoughts, I’ve become a pro at navigating the dimly lit corridors inside my skull, sidestepping certain things, packing others deep into the shadows, picking up still more and carrying them into the light.

  But this … I’m not even sure what it is.

  It doesn’t feel like part of the Book and it doesn’t feel like me. As if someone else tucked a parcel away, taped it up in thick packing blankets, and left it in a small cave where I might never—

  “You made oath, pledged détente,” a voice hisses. “This is my territory now. ”

  My gaze snaps outward and I’m surprised to find myself seven or eight blocks into the Dark Zone. My body is instantly battle ready, my hand on my spear. My wraiths chitter and flock upward to the roofs above, apparently liking the leprous, beauty-stealing Gray Woman no more than I. I really wish I could figure out what makes them decide to vacate my space at odd moments.