Darkfever f-1

by Karen Marie Moning

  "You don't think he's a vampire," I said in a hushed voice, as we picked our way through room after room of stoned-looking people draped across low-backed velveteen divans, passed out on brocade chaises, and sprawled in various stages of undress on the floor. We were searching for an entrance to the sub-basement, where a dazedly compliant sloe-eyed Goth-girl had told us "the Master" would be. I tried not to notice the rhythmic thrusts, grunts, and moans as I stepped carefully over half-naked tangles.

  He laughed briefly, a hollow, humorless sound. "If he is, the one that made him should be drowned in holy water, defanged, gelded, skinned, staked, and left to blister agonizingly in the sun." He was silent a moment, then, "Feeling anything, Ms. Lane?"

  I didn't think he meant embarrassment about what I'd just stepped over, so I shook my head.

  We passed half a dozen more Unseelie by the time we found the sub-basement. Mingled in with the white-skinned, pierced and chained, black-nailed, black-lipped Goth-youth, casting similar noir glamours, the Dark Fae were doing things to their unwitting victims I refused to see. Though I saw none as horrific as the Gray Man or the Many-Mouthed-Thing, I was beginning to realize that there was no such thing as an attractive Unseelie.

  "Not true," Barrons said when I remarked upon it. "Unseelie royalty, the princes and princesses of the four houses, are every bit as inhumanly beautiful as Seelie royalty. In fact, it is virtually impossible to tell them apart."

  "Why are there so many Unseelie here?"

  "Morbidity is their oxygen, Ms. Lane. They breathe richly in places like this."

  We'd been navigating a maze of subterranean corridors for some time. Now we turned down a long dim hallway that ended in an immense, square black door belted by bands of steel. A dozen men stood guard between Mallucé and any of his too-fervent faithful, shoulders slung with ammunition, toting automatic weapons.

  A large bull of a man with a shaved head stepped into our path, blocking our way. The safety pins in his ears didn't bother me. The ones in his eyelids did.

  "Where do you think you're going?" he growled, fixing his rifle on Barrons with one hand, resting the heel of the other on the butt of a gun tucked into the waistband of his black leather pants.

  "Inform Mallucé that Jericho Barrons is here."

  "Why would the Master give a fuck?"

  "I have something he wants."

  "Oh yeah? Like what?"

  Barrons smiled and for the first time I saw a glint of genuine humor in his dark eyes. "Tell him to try to access any of his bank accounts."

  Ten minutes later the door to Mallucé's inner sanctum burst open. The shaven-headed messenger stumbled out, his face ashen, his shirt covered with blood.

  He was followed by two Unseelie Rhino-boys who jammed guns into our sides and marched us through the doorway and into the vampire's lair. Nausea flooded my stomach and I gripped my purse tightly with both hands so I wouldn't inadvertently touch either of our ugly escorts.

  The chamber beyond the steel-belted door was so sumptuously decorated in velveteens, satins, gauzes, and brocades, and so busily furnished in Neo-Victorian that it was difficult at first to locate our host in the clutter. It didn't help that his attire matched his surroundings, the very height of Romantic Goth.

  I spotted him at last. Motionless on a low-backed, richly embellished chaise scattered with gilt pillows and tasseled throws, Mallucé was wearing stiff, textured brown-and-black-striped trousers and fine-tooled Italian slippers. His eggshell linen shirt dripped lace at his wrists and throat, and blood at his jabot. He wore a brocade-and-velvet vest of amber, russet, crimson, and gold, and as I watched, he withdrew a snowy handkerchief from a pocket in the inner lining and gently dabbed blood from his chin, then licked a few remaining drops from his lips. Muscular and graceful as a cat, he was pale and smooth as a marble bust. Dead yellow eyes lent a feral cast to his sharply chiseled, too-white face. Long blond hair pulled back in an old-fashioned, amber-beaded queue emphasized his abnormally rigid pallor.

  The vampire separated sinuously from the settee and rose, holding an incongruously modern laptop. With a graceful flick of his fingers, he snapped the chrome case shut, tossed it carelessly on a velvet-draped table, then glided to a halt in front of us.

  As he stood there in all his undead stillness, face-to-face with the carnal maleness and disturbing vitality of Jericho Barrens, I was startled to realize that, although I was deep in the belly of a vampire's lair, surrounded by his worshipers and monster minions—if pressed to decide which of the men before me was more dangerous—it wouldn't have been Mallucé. Eyes narrowed, I looked back and forth between them. Something nagged at me, something I couldn't quite put my finger on. It was a thing that I would stupidly fail to put my finger on until it was too late. Before long, I would understand that nothing had been what it seemed that night, and the reason Barrens had faced-off so coolly with the bloodsucking Master was because he'd gone in with the quiet assurance that, no matter what happened, he would walk out alive, and not because he had Mallucé by the proverbial fiscal balls.

  "What did you do with my money?" the vampire inquired, his silken voice unmatched by the steel in his strange citron eyes.

  Barrons laughed, teeth flashing white in his dark face. "Think of it as an insurance policy. I'll return it when we're through, Johnstone."

  The vampire's lips drew back, revealing long, sharp, pointed fangs. There was still blood on them. An expression of utter, mindless rage flashed over his icy face. "The name's Mallucé, asshole," he hissed.

  Score one for Barrons, I thought. J. J. Jr. still hated his name. Losing control of an immense fortune didn't seem to bother him nearly as much as merely being addressed by the name with which he'd been christened.

  Barrons flicked a contemptuous gaze over the vampire, from frothy, bloody jabot to pointy-toed, silk-trimmed leather slippers. "Mallucé asshole," he repeated. "And here I thought your last name was 'fashion nightmare."

  Mallucé's inhuman yellow eyes narrowed. "Do you have a death wish, human?" He'd recovered quickly, his face was blank again, his voice once more controlled, so light and melodic it was nearly a verbal caress.

  Barrons laughed again. "Might. Doubt you'll be helping me with it, though. What do you know about the Sinsar Dubh, Jr.?"

  Mallucé flinched, almost imperceptibly, but it was there. If I hadn't been watching him so closely, I wouldn't have caught it. Twice now he'd betrayed an emotion, a thing I was willing to bet he rarely did. With a glance at his guards, then to the door, he said, "Out. Except you." He pointed at Barrons.

  Barrons wrapped an arm around my shoulder and I instantly shivered, just as I had last night when he'd touched me. The man packed a seriously weird physical punch.

  "She stays with me," Barrons said.

  Mallucé gave me a deprecating once-over. Slowly, very slowly, his lips curved. The smile didn't work with those chilling, dead, animal-eyes of his. "Someone certainly took that passe Rolling Stones song to heart, didn't they?" he murmured.

  Everyone's a fashion critic. I knew which song he meant: "She's a Rainbow." Whenever I listened to it on my iPod, I would close my eyes and spin around, pretending I was in a sun-dappled clearing, with my arms spread wide and my head thrown back, while colors of every hue sprayed from my fingertips like brilliant little airbrush guns, painting trees, birds, bees, and flowers, even the sun in the sky, glorious shades. I loved that song. When I didn't answer him—Barrons and I might have reached an agreement about how he would and wouldn't refer to me, but I was still under orders to keep my mouth shut—Mallucé turned to his bodyguards, who hadn't moved an inch, and hissed, "I said out."

  The two Unseelie looked at each other, then one spoke in a gravelly voice, "But O Great Undead One—"

  "You've got to be kidding me, Jr.," Barrons muttered, shaking his head. "Couldn't you come up with something a little more original?"

  "Now." When Mallucé bared his fangs at them, the Rhino-boy bodyguards left. But they didn't look at all hap
py about it.

  CHAPTER 13

  "Well, that was a pure waste of time," Barrons growled as we picked our way back through the antique furnishings and all-too-modern morals of Mallucé's house.

  I didn't say anything. The Unseelie Rhino-boys were right behind us, making sure we left. "The Master" was not at all happy with us.

  Once he'd dismissed his guards, Mallucé had simply pretended not to know what Barrons was talking about, acting as if he'd never heard of the Sinsar Dubh before, even though a blind man could see that not only had he, but he knew something about it that disturbed him deeply. He and Barrons had gotten into a pissing match, trading barbs and insults, and within moments, they'd completely forgotten about me.

  Ten minutes or so into their little testosterone war, one of Mallucé's guards—one of the human ones—had been stupid enough to interrupt and I'd seen something that had convinced me J. J. Jr. was the genuine article, or at least something supernatural. The vampire had picked up the nearly seven-foot bruiser with one pale hand around his throat, raised him in the air, and flung him backward across the chamber so hard he'd slammed into a wall, slumped to the floor, and lay there, his head lolling at an impossible angle on his chest, blood leaking from his nose and ears. Then he stood there, his yellow eyes blazing unnaturally, and for a moment, I'd been afraid he was going to fall slathering on the bloody bundle and feast.

  Time to go, I'd thought, on the verge of hysteria. But Barrons had said something nasty and he and Mallucé had gotten right back into it, so I'd stood there hugging myself against the awfulest chill, tapping a foot nervously, and trying not to throw up.

  The Rhino-boys didn't leave us at the door but escorted us all the way to the Porsche, and waited while we got inside. They were still standing there with their valet-buddy as we sped away. I watched them in my side-view mirror until they disappeared from sight, then heaved a huge sigh of relief. That had been singularly the most nerve-wracking experience of my life, surpassing even my encounter with the hideous Many-Mouthed-Thing. "Tell me we never have to go back there again," I said to Barrons, blotting clammy palms on my skirt.

  "But we do, Ms. Lane. We didn't get the chance to cover the grounds. We'll have to return in a day or two for a thorough look around."

  "There's nothing on the grounds," I told him.

  He glanced at me. "You can't know that. Mallucé's estate covers hundreds of acres."

  I sighed. I had no doubt, if Barrons had his way, he'd run me over every dratted inch of it, back and forth, his own indefatigable psychic lint brush. "There's nothing on the grounds, Barrons," I repeated.

  "Again, Ms. Lane, you can't know that. You didn't start sensing the photocopies of the Sinsar Dubh until I'd removed them from the vault three floors beneath the garage and brought them into the bookstore."

  I blinked. "There are three floors beneath the garage? Why on earth?"

  Barrons locked his jaw, as if he regretted the admission. I could see I was going to get nothing further from him on the subject so I pressed my point instead. I was not going back to the vampire's den; not tomorrow, not the day after tomorrow, not even next week. If they caught me, they'd kill me, of that I was certain. I'd not exactly been discreet.

  "I don't agree," I said. "I think Mallucé would keep anything he valued nearby. He would want it close at hand, to pull it out and gloat over it, if nothing else."

  Barrons slanted me a sideways look. "Now you're an expert on Mallucé?"

  "Not an expert, but I think I know a thing or two," I said defensively.

  "And why is that, Ms. Rainbow?"

  He was such a jackass sometimes. I shrugged it off because it was only going to make this next part even sweeter. It had almost been worth leaving my on-the-go cosmetics pack Mom had given me, my brush, my favorite pink fingernail polish, and two candy bars on a table in the vampire's den just to see the look on Barrons' face when I unzipped my purse, withdrew an enameled black box, held it up and waggled it at him. "Because that was where this used to be," I said smugly. "Close at hand."

  Barrons shifted down and slammed on the brakes so hard the tires squealed and the pads smoked.

  "I did good. Go ahead and say it, Barrons," I encouraged. "I did good, didn't I?" Not only could I sense the Sinsar Dubh, apparently I could sense all Fae Objects of Power—or OOPs for short, as I would soon be calling them—and I was darned proud of myself for how neatly I'd purloined my first.

  We'd returned to the bookstore at just slightly under the speed of light, and were now seated in the rear conversation area where he was examining the spoils of my novice kill.

  "Short of leaving your calling card on the table for all to see, Ms. Lane," he said, turning the elaborate box in his hands, "which was beyond idiotic, I suppose one could say at least you didn't get yourself killed. Yet."

  I snorted. But I suspected damned by faint praise was probably the best anyone ever got from Jericho Barrons. When we'd smoked to a stop in the middle of the road—not nearly far enough from Mallucé's lair—and I'd confessed to having left a few personal items behind, he'd jammed the Porsche into gear again and we'd raced the moon back to the city.

  "I didn't have a choice," I said for the umpteenth time. "I told you, I couldn't fit it in my purse otherwise." I glared at him but he had eyes only for the OOP, which he was trying to figure out how to open. "Next time I'll know better and just leave it," I said crossly. "Would that make you happier?"

  He glanced up, his dark gaze dripping icy Old World hauteur. "That's not what I meant, Ms. Lane, and you know it."

  I imitated his expression and shot it back at him. "Then don't berate me for doing something the only way it could be done, Barrons. I couldn't figure out a way to smuggle it out beneath my skirt, and I could hardly stuff it down my bra."

  His gaze flicked to my chest and stayed there a moment.

  When he returned his attention to the box, I caught my breath and stared blankly at the top of his dark head. Barrons had just given me the most carnal, sexually charged, hungry look I'd ever seen in my life, and I was pretty sure he didn't even know he'd done it. My breasts felt hot and flushed and my mouth was suddenly uncomfortably dry. Jericho Barrons might be only seven or eight years older than me, and he might be what most women would consider extremely attractive in a dark, forbidding way, but he and I came from different worlds; we didn't see life the same way. Gazelles didn't lie down with lions, at least not unbloodied and alive. After a long, puzzled moment, I shook my head, thrust the inexplicable look from my mind—there was simply no room for it in my reality—and employed a swift change of subject.

  "So, what is it? Any idea?" The feeling I got from it wasn't the same as the one I'd gotten from the photocopies of the Sinsar Dubh. Though I'd begun feeling nauseated the instant I'd stepped into the chamber, it hadn't approached incapacitating, not even when I'd located and stood right next to the thing. I'd taken advantage of Barrons' and Mallucé's ridiculous posturing and made my stealthy swap. Handling the box hadn't been pleasant, but I'd been able to contend with my queasy stomach.

  "If it's what I think it is," Barrons replied, "it's nearly as important as the Dark Book itself, indispensable to us. Ah," he said with satisfaction, "there you are." With tiny steely dicks, the box popped open.

  I leaned forward and peered inside. There, on a bed of black velvet, lay a translucent blue-black stone that looked as if it had been cleaved in sharp, clean strokes from a much larger one. Both the smooth outer surfaces and rough inner faces were covered with raised runelike lettering. The stone emitted an eerie blue glow that deepened to coal at its outer edges. I got an icy chill just from looking at it.

  "Ah yes, Ms. Lane," Barrens murmured, "you are indeed to be commended. Maladroit methods aside, we now have two of the four sacred stones necessary to unravel the secrets of the Sinsar Dubh."

  "I see only one," I said.

  "I have its mate inside my vault." He traced his fingers lightly over the raised surface of the faintly humming sto
ne.

  "Why is it making that noise?" I was beginning to feel a great deal of curiosity about just what else might be tucked away beneath Barrens' garage.

  "It must sense the proximity of its counterpart. It is said if the four are brought together again they will sing a Song of Making."

  "You mean, they'll create something?" I asked.

  Barrens shrugged. "There are no words in the Fae language equivalent to 'create' or 'destroy. There is only Making, which also includes the unmaking of a thing."

  "That's odd," I said. "They must have a very limited language."

  "What they have, Ms. Lane, is a very precise language. If you think about it a moment, you'll see it makes sense; case in point, if you're making sense, you've just unmade confusion."

  "Huh?" My confusion hadn't been unmade. In fact, I could feel it deepening.

  "In order to make something, Ms. Lane, you must first unmake what is in the process. Should you begin with nothing, even nothing is unmade when it is replaced with something. To the Tuatha Dé there is no difference between creating and destroying. There is only stasis and change."

  I'm a bottom-line girl. I barely managed Cs in my college philosophy courses. When I tried to read Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness, I developed an unshakable case of narcolepsy that attacked every two to three paragraphs, resulting in deep, coma-like fits of sleep. The only thing I remember about Kafka's Metamorphosis is the awful apple that got impacted in the bug's back, and Borges' stupid story about the avatar and the tortoise didn't teach me a thing, except how much better I like Little Bunny Foo Foo; it rhymes and you can jump rope to it.