Shadowfever f-5

by Karen Marie Moning

  A love letter from him? From her?

  I withdrew a piece of old parchment, unfolded it, and gently smoothed it open. There was writing on both sides. I turned it over. One side was covered from upper margin to lower. The other side had only a few lines on it.

  I recognized the paper and script on the full side instantly. I’d seen Mad Morry’s writings before, although I didn’t read Old Irish Gaelic.

  I turned it over, holding my breath. Yes, he’d translated it!

  IF THE BEAST OF THREE FACES IS NOT CONTAINED BY THE TIME THE FIRST DARK PRINCE DIES THE FIRST PROPHECY SHALL FAIL FOR THE BEAST SHALL HAVE GORGED ON POWER AND CHANGED. ONLY BY ITS OWN DESIGN WILL IT FALL. HE WHO IS NOT WHAT HE WAS SHALL TAKE UP THE TALISMAN AND WHEN THE MONSTER WITHIN IS DEFEATED SO SHALL BE THE MONSTER WITHOUT.

  I read it again. “What talisman?” How accurate was his translation? He’d written, He who is not what he was. Had Darroc really been the only one who could merge with the Book? Dageus wasn’t what he was. I was willing to bet Barrons wasn’t, either. Really, who of us was? What a nebulous statement. I’d hardly call that definitive criteria. Daddy would have a heyday in court with such a vague phrase.

  By the time the first dark prince dies … It was already too late, if that was true. The first dark prince was Cruce, who couldn’t possibly be alive. At least once in the past seven hundred thousand years, he would have shown his face. Someone would have seen him. But even if he was alive, the moment Dani had killed the dark prince who came to my cell at the abbey, it had been too late for the first prophecy to work.

  The shortcut was a talisman. And Darroc had had it.

  Something nagged at my subconscious. I grabbed my backpack and began to rummage through it, hunting for the tarot card. I dumped out the contents, picked up the card, and studied it. A woman stared off into the distance while the world spun in front of her.

  What was the point? Why had the DEG—or the fear dorcha, as he’d claimed—given me this particular card?

  I took painstaking note of the details of her clothing and hair, the continents on the planet. It was definitely Earth.

  I examined the border of the card, looking for concealed runes or symbols. Nothing. But wait! What was around her wrist? It looked like a fold in her skin until I looked closer.

  I couldn’t believe I’d missed it.

  It had been worked into the border, cleverly concealed as a sort of pentacle, but I knew the shape of the cage that housed the stone. Around the woman’s wrist was the chain of the amulet Darroc had stolen from Mallucé.

  The dreamy-eyed guy had been trying to help me.

  The talisman from the prophecy was the amulet. The amulet was Darroc’s shortcut!

  It had been within my reach the night the Sinsar Dubh popped Darroc’s head like a grape. I’d touched it. It had been so close. Then the next thing I knew I was over a shoulder and it was gone.

  I smiled. I knew where to find it.

  As a man, Barrons collected antiquities, rugs, manuscripts, and ancient weapons. As a beast, he’d collected everything I touched. The pouch of stones, my sweater.

  No matter his form, Barrons was a ferret after shiny baubles that smelled good to him.

  There was no way he’d walked away from it that night. I’d touched it.

  I slipped the parchment, translation, and tarot card in my pocket and stood up.

  It was long past time to find out where Jericho Barrons went when he left the bookstore.

  He didn’t go far.

  In all the time I’d known him, I was willing to bet he never had.

  When I reached the bottom step, I smelled him. The faint hint of spice hung in the air outside his study. The study where he kept his Silver.

  The entire time I was Pri-ya, I’d never seen him sleep. I would drift off, but each time I’d wake, he’d be there, lids heavy on glittering dark eyes, watching me as if he’d been laying there just waiting for me to roll over and ask him to fuck me again. Always ready. As if he lived for it. I remembered the look on his face when he’d stretch himself over me.

  I remembered how my body had responded.

  I’d never done Ecstasy or any of the drugs some of my friends had tried. But if it was like being Pri-ya, I couldn’t imagine wanting to do it willingly.

  A part of my brain had still been aware, in a dim sort of way, while my body was out of my control.

  If he’d brush a hand over my skin, I’d nearly scream from needing him inside me. I would have done anything to get him there.

  Being Pri-ya was worse than being raped by the princes.

  It had been hundreds of rapes over and over again. My body had wanted. My mind had been vacant. Yet some part of the essential me had still been there, fully aware that my body was completely out of my control. That I wasn’t choosing. All my choices had been made for me. Sex should be a choice.

  Only one had been left to me: more.

  When he’d push inside me and I’d feel him begin to penetrate, it had turned me into a wild thing—hot, wet, and desperate for more of him. With every kiss, every caress, every thrust, I’d just needed more. He’d touched me, I went nuts. The world dwindled down to one thing: him. He really had been my world in that basement. It was too much power for one person to have over another. It could put you on your knees, begging.

  I had a secret.

  A terrible secret that had been eating me alive.

  What did you wear to your senior prom, Mac?

  That had been the last thing I’d heard, Pri-ya.

  Everything from that moment on had really happened.

  I’d faked.

  I’d lied to him and myself.

  I stayed.

  And it hadn’t felt any different.

  I’d been just as insatiable, just as greedy, just as vulnerable. I’d known exactly who I was, what had happened at the church, and what I’d been doing for the past few months.

  And every time he’d touched me, my world had dwindled down to one thing: him.

  He was never vulnerable.

  I’d hated him for that.

  I shook my head, scattered the broody thoughts.

  Where would Barrons go to be alone, relax, maybe sleep? Beyond the reach of anyone. Inside a heavily warded Silver.

  With the scent of him still hanging in the air, I ransacked his study.

  I was feeling ruthless and tired of playing by rules. I didn’t know why there should be any rules between us, anyway. It seemed absurd. He’d been in my space since the moment I’d met him, larger than life, electrifyingly present, shaking me up and waking me up and making me just this side of insane.

  I grabbed one of his many antique weapons and pried open the locked drawers of his desk.

  Yes, he’d see that I broke into it. No, I didn’t care. He could just try to take his anger out on me. I had a fair share of my own.

  He had files on me, on my parents, on McCabe, on O’Bannion, people I’d never heard of, even his own men.

  There were bills for dozens of different addresses in many different countries.

  In the bottom drawer, I found pictures of me. Stacks and stacks of them.

  At the Clarin House, stepping out into the dewy Dublin morning, tan legs gleaming beneath the short hem of my favorite white skirt, long blond hair swinging in a high ponytail.

  Walking across the green at Trinity College, meeting Dani for the first time, by the fountain.

  Coming down the back steps of Alina’s apartment, exiting into the alley.

  Slinking down the back alley, looking at O’Bannion’s abandoned cars, the morning I’d realized that Barrons had turned out all the lights and let the Shades take the perimeter, devouring sixteen men to kill a single one who was a threat to me. There was shock, horror, and something unmistakably relieved in my eyes.

  Fighting back-to-back with Dani, sword and spear blazing alabaster in the darkness. There was a whole series of those shots, taken from a rooftop angle. I was on fire, face shining, eyes na
rrowed, body made for what I was doing.

  Through the front window of the bookstore, hugging Daddy.

  Curled on the sofa in the rear conversation area of BB&B, sleeping, hands tucked against my chest. No makeup. I looked seventeen, a little lost, completely unguarded.

  Marching into the Garda station with Jayne. Heading back to the bookstore, without flashlights. I’d never been in danger that night. He’d been there, making sure I survived whatever came my way.

  No one had ever taken so many pictures of me before. Not even Alina. He’d caught my subtlest emotions in each shot. He’d been watching me, always watching me.

  Through the window of a crofter’s cottage, I was touching Nana’s face, trying to push into her thoughts and see my mother. My eyes were half closed, my features drawn with concentration.

  Another rooftop shot. I had my palm on the Gray Woman’s chest, demanding she restore Dani.

  Was there anything he didn’t know?

  I let the photos fall back into the drawer. I was feeling light-headed. He’d seen it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly. He never asked me any questions, unless he thought I needed to figure out the answers. He never decked me out in convenient labels and tried to stuff me in a box. Even when there were plenty of labels to stick to me. I was what I was at that moment and he liked it, and that was all that mattered to him.

  I turned and stared into the mirror.

  The reflection of a stranger stared back.

  I touched my face in the reflection. No, she wasn’t a stranger. She was a woman who’d stepped out of her comfort zone in order to survive, who’d become a fighter. I liked the woman I saw in the looking glass.

  The surface of the mirror was icy beneath my fingers.

  I knew this Silver. I knew all the Silvers. They had something of … K’Vruck in them. Had the king selected an ingredient of their creation from the Hunter’s home world?

  As I gazed into it, I sought that dark, glassy lake and told it I wanted in.

  Missed you, it steamed. Come swim.

  Soon, I promised.

  Alabaster runes popped up from the black depths, shimmering on the surface.

  It was that easy. I asked, it gave. Always there, always ready.

  I scooped them up and pressed them, one after another, to the surface of the Silver.

  When the final one was in place, the surface began to ripple like silvery water. I trailed my fingers through it and the waters peeled back, receded to the black edges of the mirror, leaving me staring down a fog-filled path through a cemetery. Behind tombstones and crypts, dark creatures slithered and crept.

  The Silver belched a gust of icy air.

  I stepped up, into the mirror.

  As I suspected, he’d stacked Silvers to form a gauntlet no intruder would make it through alive, protecting his underground abode.

  Nine months ago, if I’d been able to figure out how to get in, I’d have gotten killed within the first few feet. I was attacked the instant I stepped inside. I didn’t have time to draw my spear. When the first volley of teeth and claws came at me, my lake instantly offered and I accepted without hesitation.

  A single purple rune glowed in my palm.

  My attackers fell back. They hated it, whatever it was.

  I swirled through fog to my waist, absorbing the barren landscape. Skeletal trees glowed like yellow bones in the sickly moonlight. Crumbling headstones listed at acute angles. Mausoleums hulked behind wrought iron gates. It was brutally cold here, almost as frigid as the Unseelie prison. My hair iced, my brows and nose hairs frosted. My fingers began to numb.

  The transition from this Silver to the next was seamless. All of them were. Barrons was far more adept at stacking Silvers than Darroc had been and even more skilled, it seemed, than the Unseelie King.

  I didn’t even see the change in my environment coming. I suddenly had one foot in an icy cemetery and the other in a stifling desert of black sand, sun beating down on me. I glided forward into the searing heat and was instantly parched. Nothing attacked me on this scorched terrain. I wondered if the sun alone would keep certain trespassers out. The next mirror gave me fits. Abruptly, I was underwater. I couldn’t breathe. I panicked and tried to back out.

  But I hadn’t been able to breathe in the Unseelie prison, either.

  I stopped fighting it and half-swam, half-walked on the ocean floor of some planet—not ours, because we didn’t have fish that looked like small underwater steamboats with whirling wheels of teeth.

  My glassy lake offered a bubble of sorts, sealed it around me, and everything that came at me bounced off.

  I was beginning to feel downright indestructible. Cocky. I put a little swagger in my rolling steps.

  By the time I passed through half a dozen more “zones,” I was beyond cocky. Every threat that came at me, my dark lake had an answer for. I was getting drunk on my own power.

  From a landscape that would have been called “Midnight on a Far Star” if it had been a painting, I burst into a dimly lit room and blinked.

  It was Spartan, Old World, and smelled good. Deep, drugging spices. Barrons. My knees felt soft. I smell him, I think of sex. I’m a hopeless case.

  I knew instantly where I was.

  Beneath the garage behind Barrons Books and Baubles.

  41

  I wanted to explore. I would have explored, except for the child crying.

  Of all the things I expected Barrons to have secreted away from the world and protected so well, a child wasn’t on my list.

  Clues to his identity? Surely.

  A luxurious home? Definitely.

  A kid? Never.

  Bemused, I followed the sound. It was faint, coming from below. The child was sobbing as if its world was ending. I couldn’t tell if it was a girl or a boy, but the pain and sorrow it felt was soul-shredding. I wanted to make it stop. I had to make it stop. It was breaking my heart.

  I moved through room after room, barely noticing my surroundings, opening and closing doors, looking for a way down. I was distantly aware that the true jewels of Barrons’ collection were here, in his underground lair. I passed things that I’d seen in museums and now knew had been copies. Barrons didn’t mess with copies. He loved his antiquities. The place hummed with OOPs somewhere. I would find them eventually.

  But, first, the child.

  The sound of it crying was killing me.

  Did Jericho Barrons have children? Maybe he’d had one with Fiona?

  I hissed, then realized how Fae I’d sounded and pretended I hadn’t just done that. I stopped and cocked my head. As if he’d heard my tight-lipped exhalation, the crying got louder. Saying, I’m here, I’m near, please find me, I’m so scared and alone.

  There had to be stairs.

  I stalked through the place, yanking open door after door. The crying was getting on my last maternal-instinct nerve. I finally found the right door and stepped inside.

  He’d taken serious precautions.

  I was in a fun-house room of mirrors. I could see stairs in a dozen different places, but I had no way of distinguishing between reflection and reality.

  And knowing Barrons as well as I did, if I went for the reflection, something very nasty would happen to me. He obviously cared a great deal about the protection of the child.

  My dark lake offered, but I didn’t need it.

  “Show me what is true,” I murmured, and the mirrors fell dark, one after the next, until a chrome staircase gleamed in the low light.

  I moved silently down it, drawn by the siren lure of the child’s sobs.

  Once again, my expectations were shot.

  The crying was coming from behind tall doors that were chained, padlocked, and engraved with runes. I shouldn’t have been able to hear it at all. I was astonished I’d ever been able to hear Barrons roaring this far underground.

  It took me twenty minutes to break the chains, wards, and runes. He obviously wanted this child protected to the hilt. Why? What was so im
portant? What was going on?

  When I pushed open the doors, the crying stopped abruptly.

  I stepped into the room and looked around. Whatever I’d expected, it wasn’t this. There was no opulence here, no treasure or collectibles. This was little better than Mallucé’s grotto beneath the Burren.

  The room was hewn from stone, a cave cleared out in the bedrock of the earth. A small stream ran through, appearing in the east wall, disappearing beyond the west. There were cameras mounted everywhere. He would know I’d been here, even if I walked back out right now.

  In the center of the room was a cage that was twenty by twenty, made of massive iron bars, closely spaced. Like the doors, it was heavily runed. It was also empty.

  I moved toward it.

  And stopped, stunned.

  It wasn’t empty as I’d thought. A child lay in the cage, curled on its side, naked. He looked about ten or eleven.

  I hurried to him. “Honey, are you all right? What’s wrong? Why are you in there?”

  The child looked up. I staggered and went to my knees on the stone floor, stupefied.

  I was looking at the child from the vision I’d shared with Barrons.

  Every detail of it was crystal clear in my head, as if I’d lived it yesterday—a rare glimpse into Barrons’ heart. I could close my eyes and be back there again with him, that easily. We were in a desert.

  It’s dusk. We hold a child in our arms.

  I stare into the night.

  I won’t look down.

  Can’t face what’s in his eyes.

  Can’t not look.

  My gaze goes unwillingly, hungrily down.

  The child stares up at me with utter trust.

  “But you died!” I protested, staring at him.

  The boy moved toward me, came to stand at the edge of the cage and wrapped his small hands around the bars. Beautiful boy. Dark hair, gold skin, dark eyes. His father’s son. His eyes are soft, warm.

  And I’m Barrons, staring down at him …

  His eyes say, I know you won’t let me die.

  His eyes say, I know you will make the pain stop.

  His eyes said, Trust/love/adore/youareperfect/ you willalwayskeepmesafe/youaremyworld.