Feverborn

by Karen Marie Moning

  I nudged a sliding ladder to the left with my foot, bounded up it, kicked it away and vaulted four feet through the air to land on top of a tall, wide bookcase.

  I flattened myself on my stomach and snatched a glance at my hand.

  Still invisible.

  Then how were they shooting at me? And why? Who knew I was invisible? Who could possibly have any reason to shoot at me? What had they done—hidden outside and waited for the door to open by an unseen hand then started firing blindly?

  Grimacing with pain, I reared back like a cobra on its belly and stared down.

  The Guardians.

  Were shooting at me.

  Spilling into my bookstore by the dozens.

  It didn’t make any sense.

  Two officers burst into the room from the rear. An auburn-haired man near the front door barked, “She’s in here somewhere! Find her.” He began shouting orders; dispatching men to sweep the main room, others upstairs, and more to my private quarters in the rear.

  They didn’t just search, they wrecked my home. Needlessly. Swiping magazines from the racks, toppling my cash register from the counter, smashing my iPod and sound dock to the floor.

  I was growing angrier with each passing moment. And worried.

  I was a sitting duck.

  I tallied my tactical advantages primarily by their dearth: no spear, no gun, the only weapon on my body was a single switchblade. I wasn’t carrying because I was invisible and had the cuff of Cruce on my wrist. I didn’t fear humans. Jada’s sidhe-seers had been leaving me alone. I only worried about Fae, and with the cuff I was supposedly untouchable.

  I couldn’t achieve my normal agility at the moment because, damn it, bullets hurt! I might be hard to kill, healing even as I lay there, but it was still painful as hell. The store wasn’t warded against humans, only monsters. How else would I sell books?

  I searched the cluster of angry men for Inspector Jayne. There were about thirty Guardians in the store, all wearing the recently adopted uniform of durable khaki jeans and black tee-shirts, draped in guns and ammo, many toting military backpacks.

  Where was Jayne? Had he sent them here, and if so, why? Had he finally decided to come after my spear in force? Was he prepared to kill me for it? I’d heard he’d taken Dani’s sword when she was down, so I guessed I couldn’t put it past him.

  Too bad I didn’t have the spear. Jada did. And how did he know I was—Oh God, had Jada told him? Would she betray me like that? Send someone else to eliminate me because she wasn’t feeling up to it, or didn’t want the blood of both Lane sisters on her hands? Maybe she just didn’t feel like wasting her or her sidhe-seer’s time on such a pesky detail.

  “Find the bitch,” the auburn-haired man growled. “She killed our Mickey. Left him in a fucking pile of scraps. Find her now!”

  I frowned. How did they know I’d killed one of their own? Had someone been watching me the day I’d slain the Gray Woman and inadvertently taken the life of a human in the process? Then why wait so long to come after me?

  “Brody,” another man called, and the red-haired man’s head whipped in his direction. “There’s blood here. We hit her. I knew we did.”

  I froze, staring down at the floor where the man was pointing. I’d left a trail of blood along with a long smear of water as I rolled across the hardwood floor. The trail ended where I’d leapt to my feet about ten feet from the bookcase upon which I was perched. I eased my hand to my thigh to see if I was still bleeding. It came away dry, thanks to whatever elixir Cruce had given me that made me regenerate. Shit. I had a bullet in my thigh. How was I going to get it out? Had I bled down the side of the bookcase before the wound closed? I inched my hand across the top of the bookcase. It was wet. I eased my fingers over the side.

  Dry.

  I felt my hair, wet from the rain but not dripping. Same with my clothes.

  I bit back a sigh of relief and assessed the room. There were Guardians between me and both front and rear exits. Even if I managed to somehow silently descend the bookcase—which seem highly improbable, given that I’d shoved the ladder away—I’d still have to dodge a cluster of rampaging men. The odds of crashing into one of them or being struck by a flying piece of furniture were high.

  “She couldn’t have gone far. She’s still in the room. There’d be a trail of blood if she’d left,” Brody said.

  Apparently they didn’t know about my Fae-bequeathed healing ability. That was an advantage. A little Unseelie flesh might make me capable of kicking their asses, or at least outrunning them.

  Too bad they ate it, too, and all my stock was spilling out of the overturned fridge one of them had ripped out of the wall. Again, not carrying. Not afraid of Fae.

  That was the dangerous thing about thinking you understood your parameters. The “impossible” was nothing more than all those nasty things at the outer limit of your imagination, and unfortunately the universe has a much more creative imagination than I do.

  At least my invisibility was still working, casting that same mysterious cloak over me that had prevented even Barrons and Ryodan with their atavistic senses from being able to sniff me out. The moment I thought that, I wondered if the Sinsar Dubh would seize this golden opportunity to uncloak me, try to force me to open it or die.

  I extended my hand in front of me, watching it anxiously. Still invisible. What was my inner demon doing? This protracted silence between us was frazzling my nerves. At least when it was talking, I felt like I was keeping some kind of tabs on it. Probably not true but that’s how it felt.

  I narrowed my eyes. Right. And now the Guardians were just being mean, kicking and slashing things.

  Not the chesterfield!

  The bastard, Brody turned his automatic on my cozy sitting area. Tufts of leather and down flew, books imploded, and my favorite teacup shattered.

  I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming. Demanding they stop, leave. With absolutely nothing to back it up.

  One of the men abruptly shouldered off his backpack, ripped it open and began tossing cans to the men. A second and third man ripped open their packs and soon all were holding multiple identical cans.

  Of what? What were they up to? Were they going to gas me? I didn’t see any gas masks being yanked from packs. Would gas work on me?

  “Fall in!” Brody roared, and the Garda moved into sleek formation, shoulder-to-shoulder, in a line that spanned the room from side to side. Then he barked, “Don’t leave a thing untouched. I want that bitch visible!”

  I watched in horror as they began storming my beloved bookstore.

  Methodically spraying everything in sight with garish red spray paint.

  —

  Twenty minutes later there wasn’t a square inch of the first-floor, patron-accessible part of BB&B that wasn’t dripping red.

  My counter was a slippery crimson mess.

  Every chair and sofa drenched. Barrons’s rugs—his exquisite treasured rugs—had been soaked with red paint that could never be removed without destroying the fragile weave.

  My bookcases, books, and magazines were all graffitied. My lovely lamps were broken and bleeding. My pillows and throws were a soggy mess. They’d even spray-painted my enamel fireplaces, the mantels, and gas logs.

  My inner Sinsar Dubh had remained silent throughout the assault. It hadn’t taunted me once with the temptation to stop them. I wouldn’t have used it anyway. I hadn’t used it to save myself. I certainly wouldn’t use it to save my store, no matter how much I loved it.

  The massive bookcase on which I sprawled was fourteen feet tall. Once they’d begun spraying, I retreated to the center of the large flat top, squeezing in on myself as small as I could be, praying their spray wouldn’t reach that high. I peered down at my side.

  Shit! There was a fine mist of red paint all down my right leg! Had my head gotten glossed, too? Did I dare poke it up to sneak a look below?

  I lay motionless. Maybe they would just leave now. Stranger things had happe
ned.

  “Second floor, Brody?” one of the Garda asked eagerly. Pricks. They were getting off on the destruction, just like so many people had on Halloween, before they’d become prey. Rioting begets violence begets rioting. I sometimes think the entire human race is comprised of barely restrained animals, avid for any excuse to tear off their masks of civility. And here I am, always trying desperately to keep mine on.

  If they went upstairs, one of them would certainly glance over the balustrade and spy the vaguely outlined red-misted form of my body stretched on top of the bookcase.

  But wait—this was an opportunity to escape!

  I tensed, preparing to take a bone-jarring leap from the bookcase and make a mad dash for the door the moment they topped the stairs. I’d strip as I went so they couldn’t follow my spray-paint-misted clothes and hope the rain would take care of whatever was anywhere else.

  Brody jerked his head toward the front. “Three of you block that door. Three more at the back. Nothing gets in or out.”

  Fuck.

  “Then start climbing the ladders. I want every inch of this place covered. She’s got to be here. Check everywhere, she may be hanging off a railing, hiding beneath something. There’s no way she got out.”

  Double fuck.

  As the Guardians moved toward both exits, a voice bellowed from the alcove, “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?”

  I knew that voice. I dared a peek over the edge.

  Inspector Jayne exploded into the room, shaking off rain. A big, burly Liam Neeson look-alike, the ex-Garda dripped no-nonsense authority and command. I’d never been so glad to see him in my life. If he hadn’t authorized this maybe he’d stop it.

  He took a long look around and snarled, “Fall in!”

  No one moved.

  “I said fall the fuck in! Or are you answering to Brody now?”

  “The bitch killed our Mickey,” Brody growled.

  “You aren’t in charge of our force. I am,” Jayne said flatly.

  “Maybe some of us don’t like the shots you’ve been calling.”

  “Maybe some of you are just bored and looking for a little action. Felt like letting off steam. Tired of Fae you can’t kill so you turn on a human. A human woman. Who taught us to eat Unseelie? Who showed us what was going on in our city? She’s been out there killing Fae.”

  “She slaughtered Mick!”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Everyone’s saying it.”

  “And since everyone’s saying it, it must be true,” Jayne mocked. “Without concrete proof we don’t move against anyone. And never without my explicit orders.”

  “They say she’s possessed by the Book—”

  Who says? I wondered.

  “The Book was destroyed,” Jayne snapped.

  “They say there’s another one!”

  “They say,” Jayne echoed. “Are you so easily persuaded? If there was a second copy of the Sinsar Dubh and she was possessed by it and actually here, do you really think you wouldn’t be dead right now? It kills. Brutally. Without hesitation. You’ve seen what it does. We all have. It wouldn’t cower and hide while you destroyed its home.”

  Faulty logic but I wasn’t about to argue. Too busy cowering and hiding.

  “You wanted an excuse to raise hell and you dragged good men into it with you. Brody O’Roark, I said fall the fuck in!” Jayne roared.

  This time, ten men moved toward the good inspector, forming up.

  Brody stood unmoving, legs wide, hands fisted. “She has the spear. We should have the spear and you bloody well know it.”

  “We don’t kill humans to steal their weapons.”

  “You took the sword from the kid.”

  “At an opportune moment, without hurting her.”

  I wasn’t sure Dani saw it that way.

  “We don’t cry sentence on any human until we’ve examined the evidence,” Jayne continued. “And we sure as fuck don’t slaughter people—any people—on the unproven word of an unvetted source.”

  Two more men moved toward their barrel-chested commander.

  I like Jayne. He’s a good man. Flawed like the rest of us but his heart is in the right place.

  I’d give my bullet-pierced right arm to know who their unvetted source was.

  “They were right about her being invisible,” Brody growled.

  “That doesn’t mean they’re right about everything. And until we’ve investigated, we take no action,” Jayne said. “Besides, do you know whose store this is? Who she belongs to? Are you bloody daft? You want to bring his vengeance crashing down on us? Who the fuck do you think you are to make that decision and jeopardize every man on our force?”

  “It’s war, Jayne. He’s not on our side. He’s on no one’s side but his own.”

  “In war, a wise man makes alliances.”

  “Ballocks. You blow up bridges so the enemy can’t come across.”

  “You didn’t blow up a bridge. You invaded his home. Wrecked it. Hunted his woman. Now he’ll hunt us for it.”

  Eight more men joined the inspector’s ranks.

  “Clean this place up,” Jayne ordered.

  Everyone just stared at him, including me.

  “It’s oil-based, Inspector,” one of the younger Guardians protested. “There’s no cleaning it up unless we slosh the place with—”

  “Petrol,” Brody said with a savage smile. “We’ll burn it down. Then he’ll never know.”

  I jerked.

  “The fuck you will,” Jayne exploded. “You’ll haul your bloody arses out of here now and hope to hell she’s not here to tell him who the fools were that did this. Move it, men! Fall in!”

  I didn’t breathe properly until the last man had marched out the front door, with hostile, battle-ready, pyrodickhead Brody at the rear, glaring back at the room over his shoulder as he left.

  I lay there another ten minutes, shaking off the trauma. I’d read in one of my books that most of the time animals didn’t get the human equivalent of PTSD. They shook violently after a horrifying incident, their body’s way of processing and eliminating the tension and terror. I embraced the involuntary trembling until at last my body was still.

  If not for Jayne, they’d have found me. They’d wanted to burn my cherished bookstore. Gut it. Leave it a smoking ruin.

  Screw patrons. There hadn’t been more than a paltry handful for a long time anyway. I wanted this place warded against humans. I wanted steel shutters on the windows so no one could throw a flaming projectile through. I wanted the entrances changed to bank vault doors. BB&B was more than my store, it was my home.

  I dragged myself off the bookcase, dropped over the edge and hit the floor hard, wincing with pain. I smeared wet red paint everywhere as I slipped and slid across the floor to the bathroom.

  —

  A half hour later I was sitting naked on a towel in the bathroom, a bottle of rubbing alcohol in one hand, switchblade in the other.

  I might have healed, but two bullets were still inside me in highly inconvenient places. One would think, I mused sourly, that regeneration might include a tidy little ejection-of-foreign-objects-in-the-process caveat. Really, if you’re going to get some kind of magic fix-it, it should be comprehensive.

  The bullet lodged in my arm was either on or partly in a tendon and excruciatingly painful each time I flexed my arm. The one in my leg was in the middle of my quadriceps and burned with each step. Muscles weren’t meant to host foreign metallic objects. Especially not hollow points that expanded on impact. Besides, if they weren’t iron, they were lead, and lead was toxic. I could end up walking around with a mild case of heavy metal poisoning for the rest of my Fae-extended life. This rapid healing/immortality thing with which I was afflicted with came with a whole new set of challenges. I guess if someone stabbed me and I couldn’t pull the knife out for some reason—like I was tied up or something—I’d just grow back together around it.

  Cripes. Really sick thing
s could be done to me. The more invulnerable I got, the more vulnerable I felt.

  Ergo the switchblade and alcohol. I was naked because my clothes were covered with wet paint that was getting on everything I touched, and I refused to go upstairs for clean ones until I had these bullets out. They hadn’t gotten that far with their spray paint and I wasn’t about to mess up any more of my home.

  The problem was, I couldn’t see my leg. I splayed my hand over my thigh trying to feel the precise location of the bullet. It was no use. The muscle was too dense. But from the pain deep in my quad, I had a fair idea where to make the incision.

  I’d have to be quick.

  Slice, dig, wrestle it out, retract blade.

  I cocked my head, thinking. I could always smear paint on myself before I cut, but then I still wouldn’t be able to see inside my leg, and I really didn’t want to use one of the spray paint cans they’d dropped to highlight the inside of the wound. Not only would it probably sting like hell, I wasn’t sure I’d have enough time to cut, paint, slice, dig, paint some more before my stupid body started healing. My right arm wasn’t working well at the moment. Besides, I might end up getting tattooed by the paint as I healed around it. Never in the mood for a sloppy, random tattoo.

  What if I passed out when I sliced myself? Or while digging? I’d probably heal before I regained consciousness.

  Surely I was tougher than that.

  Clenching my teeth, I sliced.

  Moaning with pain, I dug.

  I passed out.

  The last thing I did before losing consciousness was hastily retract the blade with my thumb.

  I woke up to a healed leg.

  Bugger.

  I could always get Barrons to dig it out. I could spray paint while he cut. Or use flour or something my body would absorb. Well, until I passed out. No telling when he’d be back. Or how many necessary tendons, muscles, or veins he might slice. Besides, I was sick of not taking care of things myself. This was my problem. I was going to fix it. I was tired of being saved by others or, as in this latest case, by divine Jayne intervention. It chafed.