Fever [08] Feverborn

by Karen Marie Moning

  “If I agree to help you, I do so of my own accord. You neither own nor order me. But respect me,” the heap of cockroaches ground out. “I am as ancient and venerable as you.”

  “Doubtful.” Cruce inclined his head. “But agreed.”

  “I want the blade the moment you are free. It will be your first action.”

  Cruce cocked his head and studied him. “To use or destroy?”

  “It is not possible to destroy it.”

  The dark winged prince smiled. “Ah, my friend, anything is possible.”

  4

  “But I never got between you and the ghost in your mind…”

  I buzzed the foggy, rainy streets of Temple Bar like a drunken bumblebee, darting between passersby who couldn’t see me, trying not to bash them with my undetectable yet substantial umbrella. Navigating a crowded street while invisible takes a great deal of energy and focus. You can’t stare someone down and make them move out of your way; a trick I learned from watching Barrons and had nearly perfected prior to my vanishing act.

  Between ducks and dodges, I was startled to realize how much the post-ice/apocalypse city resembled the Dublin I’d fallen in love with shortly after I arrived.

  Same neon-lit rain-slicked streets, same fair to middling fifty-five degrees, people out for a beer with friends, listening to music in local pubs, flowers spilling from planters and strings of lights draping brightly painted facades. The big difference was the lesser Fae castes mixed into the crowds—many walking without glamour despite the recent killing rampage Jada had been on—being treated like demigods. The commingling of races had spilled over from Chester’s into the streets. Ryodan permitted only the higher castes and their henchmen into his club. The lowers stalked their dark desires in Temple Bar.

  I recognized few faces in the pub windows and on the sidewalks, mostly Unseelie I’d glimpsed at some point. I hadn’t made friends in this city; I’d enticed allies and incited enemies. Dublin was once again a hot spot for tourists, immigrating from all over¸ drawn by word there was food, magic, and a wealth of Fae royalty to be found here. Possessing power to grant wishes to a starving populace and slake a burgeoning addiction to Unseelie flesh, Fae were the latest smart phone, and everyone wanted one.

  It was disconcerting to walk invisible through my favorite district. I felt like a ghost of who I’d once been: vibrant, angry, determined—naïve, God, so naïve!—storming into Dublin to hunt Alina’s murderer, only to learn I was a powerful sidhe-seer and null, exiled shortly after birth and possessed by enormous evil. I’d been weak, grown strong, grown weak again. Like the city I loved, I kept changing and it wasn’t always pretty.

  There was a time I’d have given anything to be invisible. Like the night I sat in a pub with Christian MacKeltar, on the verge of discovering how he’d known my sister, back in those innocent days he was still a sexy young druid with a killer smile. Barrons had interrupted us, phoning to tell me the skies were filled with Hunters and I needed to get my ass back to the bookstore fast. As I’d left Christian with a promise to meet again soon, I felt like (and was!) a giant walking neon sign of an X. I’d gotten cornered in a dead-end alley by a giant Hunter and the superhumanly strong, decaying citron-eyed vampire Mallucé.

  If I’d been invisible then, I would never have been abducted, tortured, beaten so near death I had to eat Unseelie to claw my way back.

  Halloween. That was another night being invisible would have been a blessing. After watching the ancient Wild Hunt stain Dublin’s sky from horizon to horizon with nightmarish Unseelie, I might have descended the belfry, stolen from the church and avoided the rape of four Unseelie princes and the subsequent Pri-ya-induced madness that possessed me. Would never have been forced to drink a Fae elixir that had altered my mortal life span in ways yet unknown.

  On both those horrifying, transformative nights it was Jericho Barrons who saved me, first by a brand he’d tattooed on the back of my skull that allowed him to locate me hidden in a subterranean grotto deep beneath the desolate Burren, then by dragging me back to reality with constant reminders of my life before All Hallow’s Eve and providing the incessant sex to which the princes had left me mindlessly addicted.

  If either of those events hadn’t transpired, I wouldn’t be who and what I was now.

  If I liked who and what I was now, it would make both those hellish times worth it.

  Too bad I didn’t.

  A faint, dry chittering above me penetrated my brooding. I glanced up and shivered. I’d never seen my ghoulish stalkers fly en masse and it wasn’t a pretty sight. It was straight out of a horror flick, black-cloaked cadaverous wraiths streaking beneath rain clouds, cobwebs trailing from their gaunt forms, the silvery metallic bits of their deeply hooded faces glinting as they peered down into the streets. There were hundreds of them, fanning out over Dublin, flying slowly, obviously hunting for something.

  Or someone.

  I had no doubt who they were looking for.

  I ducked into the shallow alcoved doorway of a closed pub, barely breathing, praying they couldn’t suddenly somehow sense me. I didn’t move until the last of them had vanished into the stormy sky.

  Inhaling deeply, I stepped out of the niche and pushed into a dense throng of people gathered at a street vendor’s stand, holding my umbrella as high as I could. I took two elbows in the ribs, got both my feet stepped on and an umbrella poked into my tush. I broke free of the crowd with a growl that turned quickly to a choked inhale.

  Alina.

  I sprouted roots and stood, staring. She was ten feet away, wearing jeans, a clingy yellow shirt, a Burberry raincoat, and high-heeled boots. Her hair was longer, her body leaner. Alone, she spun in a circle, as if looking for someone or something. I held my breath and didn’t move then realized how stupid that was. Whatever this illusion was, it couldn’t see me anyway. And if it could see me, presto—proof it wasn’t real. Not that I needed any.

  I knew better than to think it was actually my sister. I’d identified her body. I’d made her funeral arrangements when my parents had been immobilized by grief. I’d slid the coffin lid shut myself before her closed-casket funeral. It was indisputably my sister I’d left six feet under in Ashford, Georgia.

  “Not funny,” I muttered to the Sinsar Dubh. Assuming Cruce, with his proclivity to weave this particular illusion for me, was still secured beneath the abbey, it could only be the Book torturing me now.

  A pedestrian crashed into my motionless back and I stumbled from the sidewalk out into the street. I flailed for balance and barely refrained from plunging headfirst into the gutter. Standing still in a crowd while invisible was idiotic. I composed myself, or tried to, given the image of my sister was now only half a dozen feet from me. There was no reply from my inner demon but that didn’t surprise me. The Book hadn’t uttered a word since the night it played genie, granting my muttered wish.

  I glanced over my shoulder to watch for impending human missiles. “Make it go away,” I demanded.

  There was only silence within.

  The thing that looked like Alina stopped turning and stood, cocking a tan umbrella with bold black stripes at a better angle to survey the street. Confusion and worry puckered her brows, creating a deep furrow between them. She bit her lower lip and frowned, the way my sister did when she was thinking hard. Then she winced and brushed her stomach with her hand as if something hurt or she was feeling nauseous.

  I caught myself wondering who she was looking for, why she was worried, then realized I was getting sucked in and focused instead on the details of the illusion, seeking mistakes, while jogging from side to side and stealing quick glances around me.

  There was the small mole to the left of her upper lip that she’d never considered having removed. (I zigged to the left to make way for a pair of Rhino-boys marching down the sidewalk.) The long sooty lashes that, unlike mine, hadn’t needed mascara, the dent of a scar on the bridge of her nose from crashing into a trash can when we’d leapt off swin
gs as little girls, which crinkled when she laughed and drove her crazy. (I zagged to the right to avoid a stumbling drunk who was singing off-key, loudly and badly, that someone had wreh-ehcked him.) The Book had her down pat, re-created no doubt from memories it sifted through and studied while I slept or was otherwise occupied. I’d often pictured her this way, out for a night on the town. In fact, pretty much every time I walked through the Temple Bar district thoughts of her took foggy shape in the back of my mind. But I always pictured her with friends, not alone. Happy, not worried. And she’d never worn a sparkling diamond ring on her left ring finger, glinting as she adjusted her umbrella. She’d never been engaged. Never would be.

  As usual the Book couldn’t get all the details right. Squaring my shoulders, I stepped forward, drew to a stop with a mere foot of space between us and risked standing still, wagering people would give the image at least that much personal space—assuming they could see it and it wasn’t simply my own private haunt, or hey, who knew? Maybe the vision had its own secret force field. I was instantly enveloped in her favorite perfume and a hint of the lavender-scented Snuggle she used in the dryer to make her jeans soft.

  We stood like that for several long moments, face-to-face, the illusion of my sister looking through me as it searched the streets for who knew what, me staring at every inch of its face, okay, reveling in staring at every inch of its face because even though it was an illusion, it was a perfect replica and—God, how I missed her!

  Still.

  Thirteen months and the deep wound of grief remained open, salted, and burning inside me. Some people—who haven’t lost someone they love unconditionally and more than themselves—think a year is plenty of time to get over the trauma of their death and you should have fully moved on.

  Fuck you, it’s not.

  A year barely makes a dent. It didn’t help that I’d passed large chunks of that year during a few hours in Faery or a sex-crazed stupor, lacking the mental faculties to deal with my grief. It takes time to condition your brain to shut down rather than remember them. You can hold on to them in memories that slice like cherished razors. You can fall in love again; most people do—but you can never replace a sister. You can never rectify the many regrets. Apologize for your failings, for not figuring out something was wrong before it was too late.

  I wanted to take her in my arms, hug this illusion. I wanted to hear her laugh, say my name, tell me she was okay wherever it was the dead go. That she knew joy. She wasn’t trapped in some purgatory. Or worse.

  One look at this facsimile of Alina reawakened every bit of pain and rage and hunger for revenge in my heart. Unfortunately, my thirst for revenge could be directed at no one but an old woman I’d already killed, and was sadly tangled around a girl I loved.

  Was that why the Book was doing it? Because it had weakened me with invisibility and feelings of irrelevance and now it sought to twist the knife, showing me what I might have back if I would only cooperate? Too bad I’d be evil and not at all myself once I had her back.

  “Screw you,” I growled at the Book.

  I lunged forward to push through the illusion and slammed into a body so hard I rebounded off it, crashed into a planter that caught me squarely behind my knees and sent me flailing backward over it. I rolled and twisted in midair and managed to splash to my hands and knees in a puddle, umbrella sailing from my grasp.

  I jerked a glance over my shoulder. I’d forgotten how good the Book’s illusions were. It really felt like I’d collided with a body. A warm, breathing, huggable body. Once, I’d played volleyball and drank Coronas on a beach with an illusion of my sister who’d seemed just as real. I wasn’t falling for that again.

  It was standing up from the sidewalk, brushing its jeans off, eyes narrowed, rubbing its temple as if struck by a sudden headache, looking startled and confused, searching the space around it as if trying to decipher what weird thing had just happened. An invisible Fae had collided with it, perhaps?

  Right. Now I was reading illusionary thoughts into the illusionary mind of my illusionary sister.

  Only one thing to do: get out of here before I got sucked in further while yet another of my weaknesses was exploited by the Book’s sadistic sleight of hand.

  Clenching my teeth, I dragged myself from the puddle and pushed to my feet. My umbrella had vanished beneath the feet of passersby. With a snarl, I yanked my gaze away from the thing that I knew full well was not my sister and marched without a backward glance out of Temple Bar, into the fog and rain.

  —

  At the end of the block, Barrons Books & Baubles loomed from the Fae-kissed fog four—no, five—stories tonight, a brilliantly lit bastion of gleaming cherry, limestone, antique glass, and Old World elegance. Floodlights sliced beacons into the darkness from the entire perimeter of the roof, and gas lamps glowed at twenty-foot intervals down both sides of the cobbled street, although beyond it the enormous Dark Zone remained shadowy, abandoned, and unlit.

  In the limestone and cherry alcove, an ornate lamp swayed in the wind to the tempo of the shingle that swung from a polished brass pole proclaiming the name I’d restored in lieu of changing it to my own. Barrons Books & Baubles was what it was in my heart and all I would ever call it.

  The moment I turned the corner and saw the bookstore, towering, strong and timeless as the man, I nearly burst into tears. Happy to see it. Afraid one day I might turn the corner and not see it. Hating that I loved something so much because things you loved could be taken away.

  I would never forget staring down from the belfry on Halloween to find all the floodlights had been shot out. Then the power grid went down, the city blinked out like a dying man closing his eyes, and I’d watched my cherished home become part of the Dark Zone, felt as if part of my soul was being amputated. Each time the bookstore had been demolished by Barrons—first when I vanished with V’lane for a month, then after I killed Barrons and he thought I was fucking Darroc—I’d not been able to rest until I restored order. I couldn’t bear seeing my home wrecked.

  God, I was moody tonight. Invisible, lonely, being hunted by my ghouls (at least there were none perched on BB&B!), I couldn’t go kill anything, the Sinsar Dubh wasn’t needling me, and purposeless downtime has always been my Achilles’ heel.

  Ice that unpalatable cake with a vision of my dead sister and I wanted nothing more than to smash it into a ceiling and storm off. Unfortunately I’d be right there wherever I stormed off to. With the same vile cake dripping on my head. The thing I wanted to escape was myself.

  Seeing the Alina-illusion had rattled me to my core. I had a secret I’d told no one, that I kept so deeply buried I refused to even acknowledge it unless it slammed me in the face unexpectedly like tonight. The vision had cut far too close to it, uncovered it in all its unholy horror, dicked with my head in a way that could completely unravel me. Be seen as proof of my problem. Or not. Or maybe. The jury was still out. Which was precisely the crux of the problem: my jury—the part of me that judged and decided rulings—had been on long hiatus. Far longer than I’d been invisible. Since the night we’d taken the Sinsar Dubh to the abbey to inter it. I hadn’t been myself since that night. Wasn’t sure I ever would be again.

  I caught myself sighing, terminated it halfway through and forced myself to smile instead. Attitude was everything. There was always a bright side or two somewhere: I could light the gas fires, dry off, prop a book on a pillow, sprawl out on the chesterfield with my favorite throw and lose myself in a story, knowing Barrons was back, would return at some point, and my mind would soon be fully occupied figuring out how to keep them from trying to make me open the Sinsar Dubh while coming up with some other way to get rid of the black holes.

  A breath of contentment feathered the knot of anxiety in my stomach, easing it a bit. Home. Books. Barrons soon. It was enough to work with. All I could do was take one moment at a time. Do my best in that moment. Pretend I was fully invested when I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to invest in anythi
ng again.

  I was just unlocking the store, about to step inside, when I glimpsed a sodden Dublin Daily plastered up against the door. Propping the door open with a boot, I ducked to fetch the rag.

  That was when the first bullet hit me.

  5

  “And walked upon the edge of no escape, and laughed ‘I’ve lost control’…”

  To be fair, I didn’t actually know a bullet had hit me.

  All I knew was my arm stung like hell and I thought I’d heard a gunshot.

  It’s funny how your mind doesn’t quite put those two things together as fast as you’d think it would. There’s a kind of numbing of disbelief that accompanies unexpected assault, resulting in a moment of immobility. I vacillated in it long enough to get shot a second time, but at least I was rising from my crouch, slipping sideways through the door, so it grazed my shoulder blade rather than puncturing one of my lungs or my heart.

  A third bullet slammed into the front of my thigh before I got the door closed. I heard the rat-a-tat-tat of automatic fire hitting the inside of the alcove before a spray of ammo blasted the glass in the door and both sidelights. Above my head the lovely leaded glass transom exploded. The antique panes in the tall windows shattered, spraying me with slivers and shards.

  I threw myself into a somersault, tucking my head, extending my wounded arm to guide me through with each rotation, and rolled across the hardwood floor, wincing with pain.

  Who was shooting at me?

  No. Wait. How was anyone shooting at me? I was invisible!

  Wasn’t I?

  No time to check.

  Men were yelling, footsteps pounding, more bullets.

  I scrambled behind a bookcase, frantically trying to decide what to do next.

  Run out the back?

  Trash that idea. More footsteps and voices coming from that direction, too.