Shadowfever

by Moning, Karen Marie

  I got out of the shower, thoroughly disgruntled, and picked through my clothes, dissatisfied with them all.

  Yesterday I would have known exactly what to wear. Today I had no idea. Pink or black? Maybe it was time for a new favorite color. Or maybe no favorite color at all.

  Rain pattered against the window while I dithered. Dublin was once again gray.

  I pulled on a pair of gray capri sweats with JUICY stamped across my ass, a zip-up sweatshirt, and flip-flops. If Barrons still wasn’t around, I would start cleaning up downstairs a little.

  After all, I’d done what he’d asked.

  My parents were free, I was alive, Darroc was dead, and I had the stones tucked securely away in the heavily runed bedroom of a penthouse.

  According to my understanding of the law, that made it my bookstore now.

  That meant it was also my Lamborghini. My Viper, too.

  “It wasn’t my fucking idea, either,” I heard Barrons growl as I descended the rear stairs.

  The door to his study was open a few inches, and I could hear him moving around in there, picking things up and putting them back down.

  I stopped on the last step and smiled, reveling in the simple pleasure of hearing his voice again. Until he’d been gone, I hadn’t understood how empty the world was without him.

  My smile faded. I shifted from foot to foot on the stairs.

  My mood might be sunshine glinting off water, but there was a dark undertow beneath the placid surface.

  I’d gone further off the deep end than I liked to think about, with the whole decimate-the-universe kick I’d been on. I’d been one hundred percent committed to wresting whatever dark knowledge I’d needed from the Book, no matter the cost to myself or anyone else. I’d been willing to do anything it could teach me in order to replace this world with a new one. All because I’d believed Jericho Barrons was dead.

  I hadn’t even had a concrete plan, except to get the Book and wing it, believing I could master whatever spells of making and unmaking it had to offer. Looking back on my behavior, I was stymied by it. Rabid ambition, insane focus.

  Alina’s death hadn’t done that to me.

  I pushed my hands into my hair and tugged as if the gentle pain might clarify my thoughts. Shed light on my recent temporary insanity.

  It must have been the betrayal aspect of it all that had made me so crazy. If only it hadn’t been me who’d stabbed him, I never would have cracked like I had. Sure, my grief at losing Barrons had been intense, but it was the guilt that had crushed me. I’d turned on my protector, and my protector had turned out to be Barrons.

  Shame, not grief, had fueled my need for revenge. That was it. Guilt had turned me into a woman obsessed, willing to consider erasing one world to create a new one. If I’d been the one who’d stabbed Alina, if I’d participated in killing her, I would have felt exactly the same way and considered doing the same thing. It wouldn’t have even been love motivating me as much as a desperate need to erase my own complicity.

  Now that grief wasn’t a fist around my heart, I knew I would never have gone through with it.

  Re-create the world just for Jericho Barrons? The thought was ridiculous.

  I’d lost Alina and hadn’t turned into a world-destroying banshee, and I’d loved her all my life.

  I’d known Barrons only a few months. If I was going to re-create the world for anyone, it would have been my sister.

  Okay, that was resolved. I hadn’t betrayed Alina by not going all Mad Max over her.

  So why did I still feel something dark, twisting and turning inside me, trying to get to the surface? What was eating at me?

  “Bloody hell, Ryodan, we’ve been over this a thousand times!” Barrons exploded. “The whole bloody way back we talked about it. We had a plan, you deviated. You were supposed to get her to safety. She was never supposed to know it was me. It’s your fault she knows we can’t die.”

  I froze. Ryodan was alive, too? I watched him get ripped to shreds and be flung down a hundred-foot ravine. I frowned. He’d said “can’t die.” What did that mean? As in never? No matter what?

  He was quiet for a moment and I realized he was on the phone.

  “You knew I’d fight. You knew I’d win. I always win. That’s why you were supposed to separate us and shoot me, so she wouldn’t know I was dead. Bring more ammo next time. Try a rocket launcher. Think maybe you could manage to hit me with that?” he said sarcastically.

  A rocket launcher? Barrons would survive that?

  “You’re the one that fucked up. She watched us die.”

  Indeed, I did. So why weren’t they dead? There was another pause. I held my breath, listening.

  “I don’t give a shit what they think. And don’t give me this vote crap. Nobody voted. Lor doesn’t even know what century it is, and Kasteo hasn’t said a word in a thousand years. You’re not killing her and neither are they. If anyone is going to kill her, it’s me. And that’s not happening right now. I need the Book.”

  I stiffened. He’d said “right now,” strongly implying that there might be another time it was happening. And the only reason he wasn’t killing me was because he needed the Book.

  This was the jackass I’d been grieving? Whose return I’d been celebrating? I didn’t ponder the “thousand years” comment. I’d work on that later.

  “If you think I’ve hunted it this long to kill the best chance I’ve got, you don’t know shit about me.”

  There it was again, the phrase Fiona had used the night he’d stabbed her to shut her up. I was his “best chance.” At what?

  “Bring it on. You. Lor. Kasteo, Fade. Whoever wants to get in my way. But if I were you, I’d back the fuck off. Don’t give me a reason to make you live to regret it. Is that what you want? A pointless, eternal war? You want us at each other’s throats?”

  Silence.

  “I never forget my loyalties. You’ve forgotten your faith. Keep her parents alive. Follow my orders. It’ll be over soon.”

  I fisted my hands. What exactly was going to be over?

  “That’s where you’re wrong. One world isn’t just as good as any other. Some worlds are better. We’ve known she’s a wild card since the beginning. After what I learned about her the other night, I have to let this hand play out. Have you located Tellie yet? I need to question the woman. Assuming she’s still alive. No? Get more people on it.”

  What did he mean by after what he’d learned about me? That I’d teamed up with Darroc? That according to him I’d been willing to betray him? Or was there something else? Who was Tellie and what did he need to question her about?

  “Darroc is dead. She’ll tell V’lane she made it up. No one will believe the kid.” Another long pause. “Of course she’ll do what I say. I’ll take V’lane out myself if I have to.” He paused. “The fuck you could.”

  The silence stretched so long that I realized he must have terminated the call.

  Hand on the door frame, I stood, eyeing the stairs.

  “Get your ass in here, Ms. Lane. Now.”

  “I heard—” I began.

  “I let you hear,” he cut me off.

  I shut my mouth, closed the door, and leaned back against it. The corners of his lips turned up as if at some private amusement, and for a moment I thought we were having one of those silent conversations.

  You think it’s safe to close yourself in with the Beast?

  If you think I’m afraid of you, you’re wrong.

  You should be afraid.

  Maybe you should be afraid of me. Go ahead, piss me off, Barrons. See what happens.

  Little girl thinks she’s all grown up now.

  His mouth moved into a smile that I’ve grown familiar with over the past few months, shaped of competing tensions: part mockery, part pissed off, and part turned on. Men are so complicated.

  “Now you know what they think of you. I’m all that stands between you and my men,” he said.

  That and a very deep glassy lake
. I’d dive to the bottom if I had to. Even though he was alive again, even though I now understood I never would have destroyed this world to resurrect him, I was no longer the woman I’d been before I’d helped kill him and never would be again.

  The transformation I’d undergone had done permanent damage. The emotions I’d felt, believing he was dead, had cut deep, leaving my heart battle-scarred, my soul changed. The grief might be over, but the memory of those days, the choices I’d made, the things I’d almost done, would be a part of me forever. I suspected some part of me was still slightly numb and might be for a long time.

  My gaze strayed to his neck. It was as if his throat had never been cut. There was no wound, no scar. He was completely healed. I’d seen him naked last night and knew there were no scars on his torso, either. His body bore no evidence of the violent death he’d endured.

  I glanced back at his face. He was staring at my newly dyed hair. I pushed it back, tucked it behind my ears. From the hostility in his gaze, I knew if I opened my mouth again, he’d just cut me off, so I waited, enjoying the view.

  One of the things I realized when I’d been grieving him was how attractive I find him. Barrons is … addictive. He grows on you until you can’t begin to imagine anyone you’d like to look at more. He wears his dark hair slicked back from his face, sometimes cut, sometimes long, as if he can’t be bothered to regularly get it trimmed. I now know why, at well over six feet of long, hard muscle, he moves with such animal grace.

  He’s an animal.

  His forehead, nose, mouth, and jaw bear the stamp of a gene pool that died out long ago, blended with whatever it is that makes him the beast. Though symmetrical, with strong planes and angles, his face is too primitive to be handsome. Barrons might have evolved enough to walk upright, but he never relinquished the purity and unapologetic drives of a born predator. The aggressive ruthlessness and bloodlust of my demon guardian is his inherent nature.

  When I first arrived in Dublin, he terrified me.

  I inhale deeply, inflating my lungs with a long, slow breath. Though ten feet and a wide desk separate us, I can smell him. The scent of his skin is one I will never forget, no matter how long I live. I know the taste of him in my mouth. I know the smell we make together. Sex is a perfumery that creates its own fragrance, takes two people and makes them smell like a third. It’s a scent neither person can make alone. I wonder if that third smell can become a drug of blended pheromones that can be generated only by the mixture of those two people’s sweat, saliva, and semen. I’d like to shove him back on the desk. Straddle him. Dump a storm of emotion across his body with mine.

  I realize he’s staring at me, hard, and that my thoughts might have been a bit transparent. Desire’s a hard thing not to telegraph. It changes the way we breathe and subtly rearranges our limbs. If you’re attuned to someone, it’s impossible not to notice.

  “Is there something you want from me, Ms. Lane?” he says very softly. Lust stirs in his ancient eyes. I remember the first time I glimpsed it there. I’d wanted to run, screaming. Savage Mac had wanted to play.

  The answer to his question was a resounding yes. I wanted to launch myself across his desk and expel something violent from my system. I wanted to beat him, punish him for the pain I’d suffered. I wanted to kiss him, slam myself down on him, reassure myself that he was alive in the most elemental way I could.

  If anyone is going to kill her, he’d said moments ago, it’s me.

  God, how I’d grieved him!

  He speaks of killing me so casually. Still not trusting me. Never trusting me. Those dark currents gurgle, begin to gush. I am furious. With him. He deserves a dose of grief himself. I wet my lips. “As a matter of fact there is.”

  He inclines his head imperiously, waiting.

  “And only you can give it to me,” I purr, arching my back.

  His gaze drops to my breasts. “I’m listening.”

  “It’s long overdue. I haven’t been able to think about anything else. It nearly drove me crazy today, waiting for you to get here so I could ask for it.”

  He stands up and rakes me with a scathing look.

  Sloppy seconds, his eyes say.

  You had it first, I counter silently. I think that means he got the leftovers.

  I push away from the door, circle the desk, trailing my fingertips lightly over his Silver as I pass it. He watches my hand and I know he’s remembering how I once touched him.

  I stop a few inches from him. I’m humming with energy. He is, too. I can feel it.

  “I’ve become obsessed with getting it, and if you say no, I’ll just have to take it.”

  He inhales sharply. “You think you can?” Challenge stirs in his dark gaze.

  I have a sudden vision of the two of us having an all-out fight from end to end of the bookstore, culminating in fierce, no-holds-barred sex, and my mouth goes so dry I can’t swallow for a moment.

  “It might take me a while to … get my hands on exactly what I want, but I have no doubt I could.”

  His eyes say: Bring it on. But you’ve got a lot to pay for.

  He hates me for teaming up with Darroc. He believes we were lovers.

  And he’d have sex with me in a heartbeat. Against his better judgment, with no tenderness at all, but he’d do it. I don’t get men. If I thought he’d betrayed me with … say, Fiona, a day after he’d helped kill me, I’d make him suffer for a good long time before I slept with him again.

  He believes that I had sex with my sister’s lover the day after I stabbed him, that I forgot all about him and moved on. Men are wired different. I think for them, it’s about stamping out all trace, all memory, of their competitor as quickly and completely as possible. And they feel that the only way they can do it is with their body, their sweat, their semen. As if they can re-mark us. I think sex is so intense for them, they can be so easily ruled by it, that they think we can, too.

  I look up at him, into those dark, bottomless eyes. “Can you die—ever?”

  For a long moment he doesn’t speak. Then he moves his head once, in silent negation.

  “As in: never? No matter what happens to you?”

  I get that silent slice to the left and back to the middle again.

  The bastard. Now I understand the anger I’ve been feeling beneath the elation. Some part of my brain had already put this together:

  He’d let me grieve.

  He never told me he was a beast that couldn’t be killed. He could have spared me all the pain I’d endured with one tiny little truth, one small confession, and I’d never have felt so violent and dark and broken. If he’d only just said: Ms. Lane, I can’t be killed. So if you ever see me die, don’t sweat it. I’ll be back.

  I’d lost myself. Because of him. Because of his idiotic need to keep everything about himself secret. There was no excuse for it.

  But even worse was this: I’d thought he’d given his life to save me, when all he’d really done was the equivalent of take a little nap. What did “dying” for someone mean when you knew you couldn’t die? Not a damn thing. An inconvenience. IYD hadn’t been a big deal after all.

  I’d wept, I’d mourned. I’d built a massive and utterly undeserved Monument to Barrons, The Man Who’d Died So I Could Live, in my head. I’d thought he’d made the ultimate sacrifice for me, and it had milked my emotions brutally. I’d let it consume me, take me over, turn me into someone I couldn’t believe I’d been capable of becoming.

  And he’d never been willing to die so I could live. It had been business as usual—Barrons keeping his OOP detector alive and functioning, coolly impersonal, focused on his goals. So what if he was the one who would never let me die? It didn’t cost him anything. He wanted the Book. I was the way to get it. He had nothing to lose. I finally understood why he was always so fearless.

  I’d thought he’d cared about me so much he’d been willing to give up his life. I’d romanticized it and gotten swept away in a misguided fantasy. And if he’d stayed here la
st night, I’d have made a complete fool of myself. I’d have confessed feelings to him that I’d felt only because I’d thought he’d given his life for mine.

  Nothing had changed.

  There was no deeper level of understanding or emotion between us.

  He was Jericho Barrons, OOP director, pissed off at me because he thought I’d taken up with the enemy, irked that he’d had to endure an inconvenient death, but still not telling me a thing, using me to achieve his mysterious ends.

  He bristles with impatience. I feel the lust rolling off him, the violence beneath it.

  “You said you wanted something. What is it, Ms. Lane?”

  I smile coolly. “The deed to my bookstore, Barrons. What else?”

  The Dani Daily

  106 Days AWC

  DING-DONG THE DICK IS DEAD!

  Read all about it!

  THE LORD MASTER WAS MURDERED!!!

  Dude, like it was my 14th birthday or something already, ’stead of next week on the 20th, I got the über-coolest present: Darroc, the fecker that brought the walls down between our worlds, is DEAD! These eyeballs saw it happen up close and personal last night! And get this—one o’ his own Hunters killed him! Took off his head!

  Time to fight is NOW, while we got ’em on the run with nobody in charge! Jayne and his men got a method; join the madness at Dublin Castle!

  Annie, I got the nest of Creepers in the back of your place last night.

  Anonymous847, I cleared the warehouse, but—dude—you didn’t need me. There was only two. ’Member, you can build your own Shade-Busters. I told you all about it coupla rags ago. If you need supplies, check out Dex’s on Main. I tacked the recipe to the wall by the bar.