I had a really bad feeling about this. But I’d had really bad feelings before that had amounted to nothing more than a case of nerves and, after everything I’d been through, I could understand how I might feel dread merely being in the Book’s presence.
I looked at V’lane. He nodded encouragingly.
I looked at Barrons. He was so inhumanly still that I almost missed him. For a moment, he looked like someone else’s shadow in the bright cavern. It was a neat trick. I knew what that kind of stillness meant. He didn’t like it, either, but had come to the same conclusions as me. Ours was a volatile group. It had voted. If I went against that vote, all hell would break lose. We’d turn on one another, and who knew how ugly things might get?
My parents were here. Did I remove the runes and potentially expose them to risk? Or refuse and potentially expose them to risk?
There were no good choices.
I reached into the blue-black light and began to peel the first rune from the spine. As I pried it away, it pulsed like a small angry heartbeat and left a lesion that pooled with black blood before vanishing.
“What am I supposed to do with them?” I held it in the air.
“Velvet will sift them away as you remove them,” V’lane said.
One by one, I tugged them away and they popped out of existence.
When there was only one left, I stopped and pressed both my hands to the cover. It felt inert. Were the runes on the inside of these walls really enough to hold it? I was about to find out.
I tugged the final one from the binding of the book. It came away reluctantly, squirming like a hungry leech, and tried to attach to me once I’d broken the bond.
Velvet sifted it out.
I held my breath as the crimson rune vanished. After about twenty seconds, I heard a small explosion of gusty exhales. I think we all expected it to morph into the Beast and rain down the end of days on us.
“Well?” V’lane said.
I opened my sidhe-seer senses, trying to feel it.
“Is it contained?” Barrons demanded.
I reached with everything I had, stretching, pushing that part of me that could sense OOPs as far as it could go, and for a brief moment I felt the entire interior of the cavern and understood the purposes of the runes.
Each had been meticulously chiseled into the stone interior so that if lines were drawn connecting them, from floor to ceiling and wall to wall, they would reveal an intricate tight grid. Once the Book had been positioned on the slab and the stones arranged around it, the runes had begun to activate. They now crisscrossed the room with a gigantic invisible spiderweb. I could almost see the tensile silvery strands shooting past my head, feel them slicing through me.
Even if the Book somehow got off the slab, it would be instantly stuck in the first of countless sticky compartments. The harder it fought, the more the web would twist around it, eventually cocooning it.
It was over. It was really over. There was no other shoe that was going to drop.
There was a time I’d thought this day would never come. The mission had seemed too difficult, the odds too strongly stacked against us.
But we’d done it.
The Sinsar Dubh was shut down. Locked up. Caged. Imprisoned. Put to rest. Neutralized. Inert.
So long as nobody ever came down here and set it free again.
We were going to need better locks on the door. And I was going to make a motion that no one in the Haven got to have a key this time around. I wasn’t sure why they’d been able to get in to begin with. There was no reason anyone should enter this cavern. Ever.
Relief flooded me. I was having a hard time processing that it was really, truly over and comprehending all that meant.
Life could begin again. It would never be as normal as it used to be, but it would be a lot more normal than it had been for a long time. With the biggest, most immediate threat out of the way, we could focus our efforts on reclaiming and rebuilding our world. I could get some pots and dirt and start a rooftop garden at the bookstore.
I’d never have to walk down a dark street and be afraid the Book might be waiting for me, ready to crush me with a bone-deep migraine, set my spine on fire, or tempt me with illusion. It would never again possess one of us, never slaughter its way through our midst or threaten the people I loved.
I didn’t have to strip when I went to Chester’s anymore! Skintight clothing was a fad whose time had passed.
I turned around. Everyone was looking at me expectantly. They looked so wired and anxious, I suspected they’d jump out of their skins if I said, Boo. And for a moment I was tempted.
But I didn’t want anything to detract from the joy of the moment. I spread my hands and shrugged, smiling. “It’s over. It worked. The Sinsar Dubh is just a book. Nothing more.”
The cheers were deafening.
50
Well, okay, so maybe the cheers weren’t deafening, but they felt deafening to me, because I was cheering, too, and louder than most. The reality of the situation was that the sidhe-seers cheered, Mom and Dad hooted, Drustan whooped, Dageus and Cian grunted, Christopher looked worried, Christian turned and began to walk away in silence, Barrons scowled as did the rest of his men, and the Seelie glared.
Then the fighting broke out. Again.
I sighed gustily. They really needed to get with the program and learn to celebrate the good times a little longer before dwelling on the problems. I’d been walking around under the sentence of a prophecy that I would doom or save the world and I’d … well, technically, I hadn’t done either. I hadn’t doomed it. But I couldn’t see any way I’d saved it. Unless I’d saved it simply by not dooming it. But, still, I knew the importance of celebrating every now and then to alleviate the stress.
“We cannot restore the walls without the Song,” V’lane was saying.
“Who says we need the walls back up?” Barrons demanded. “You’re roaches, we’re Raid. We’ll get rid of you eventually.”
“We. Are. Not. Insects,” Velvet said tightly.
“I was talking about the Unseelie. I figured you prancing fairy bastards would get off our world voluntarily after helping eradicate your skulking half.”
“I do not prance.” Dree’lia was insulted. “You would do well to recall the delights found in our arms.”
I glanced at Barrons disbelievingly. “You had sex with her?”
He rolled his eyes. “It was a long time ago and only because she pretended to know something about the Book.”
“Lies, ancient one. You panted around behind me—”
“Barrons has never panted around behind anyone,” I said.
His dark gaze shimmered with amusement. Unexpected, but thanks for the defense.
Well, you haven’t. Not even me.
Debatable. Ryodan would disagree with you.
Sleep with another fairy and I’ll turn into V’lane’s personal Pri-ya.
His eyes were murderous, but he kept his tone light. Jealous much?
What’s mine is mine.
He went very still. Is that how you think of me?
Time seemed to stand still while we looked at each other. The arguing receded. The cavern emptied and it was just him and me. The moment stretched between us, pregnant with possibility. I hate moments like this. They always demand you lay something on the line.
He wanted an answer. And he wasn’t moving until he got one. I could see it in his eyes.
I was terrified. What if I said yes and he came back with a mocking retort? What if I got dewy and emotional and he left me hanging all exposed? Worse yet, what was going to happen when he found out I hadn’t gotten the spell to free his son? Would he take down my sign, batten up my beloved store, steal off with his child in the dark of night, burning off like mist in the morning sun, and I would never see him again?
I’d learned a thing or two.
Hope strengthens. Fear kills.
Bet your ass you’re mine, bud, I shot at him. I was staking my claim and
I’d fight for it—lie, cheat, and steal. So I hadn’t gotten the spell. Yet. Tomorrow was another day. And if that was all he’d wanted me for, he didn’t deserve me.
Barrons tossed his head back and laughed, teeth flashing in his dark face.
Only once before had I ever heard him laugh like that: the night he caught me dancing to “Bad Moon Rising,” wearing the MacHalo, leaping small couches in a single bound, slaying pillows and slashing air. I caught my breath. Like Alina’s laugh, which used to make my world brighter than the hot afternoon sun, it held joy.
The rest of the occupants faded back in. They’d all gone silent and were staring at Barrons and me.
He stopped laughing instantly and cleared his throat. Then his eyes narrowed. “What the fuck is he doing? We haven’t made a decision.”
“I was trying to tell you,” Jack said. “But you didn’t hear a thing I said. You were looking at my daughter like—”
“Get away from the Book, V’lane,” Barrons growled. “If anyone’s going to be looking at it, it’ll be Mac.”
“Mac’s not touching it,” Rainey said instantly. “That terrible thing should be destroyed.”
“Can’t be, Mom. It doesn’t work that way.”
While everyone was fighting and Barrons and I were absorbed in a wordless conversation, V’lane had taken the bundled queen/concubine from my daddy and was now standing near the slab, looking down at the Sinsar Dubh.
“Don’t open it,” Kat warned him. “We need to talk. Make plans.”
“She’s right,” Dageus said. “ ’Tis no’ a thing to be undertaken lightly, V’lane.”
“There are precautions that must be observed,” Drustan added.
“There has been enough talk,” V’lane said. “My duties to my race are clear. They always have been.”
Barrons didn’t waste any breath. He moved like the beast, too fast to see. One moment he was a few feet from me, the next he was—
—slamming up against a wall and bouncing off it, snarling.
Clear crystal walls erupted around V’lane. Lined with blue-black bars, they extended all the way up to the ceiling.
He didn’t even turn. It was as if he’d tuned us out. He placed the unconscious body of the queen on the ground next to the slab and reached for the Sinsar Dubh.
“V’lane, don’t open it!” I cried. “I think it’s inert, but we don’t have any idea what will happen if you—”
It was too late. He’d opened the Book.
Arms spread, hands splayed on either side of it, head down, V’lane began to read, his lips moving.
Barrons flung himself at the wall. He bounced off.
V’lane had shut us out.
Ryodan, Lor, and Fade joined him, and moments later all five Keltar and my dad were at it, too, pounding on the walls, blasting into it with their shoulders and fists.
Me, I just stood, staring, trying to make sense of it, thinking back to the day I’d met V’lane. He’d told me he served his queen, that she needed the Book in order to have any chance at re-creating the lost Song. At the time, the only thing I’d been worried about was finding Alina’s murderer and keeping the walls up. I’d very much wanted the queen to find that Song and reinforce them.
However, he’d also told me it was legend that if there were no contenders for the queen’s magic at the time of her death, all the matriarchal magic of the True Race would go to the most powerful male.
Surely he wouldn’t have told me that if he’d planned all along to be the one. Would he? Was he that stupid?
Or so arrogant that he’d given me all the clues, laughing the entire time, as the “puny human” failed to put them together?
If he read the entire Sinsar Dubh, would that make him—unquestionably—the most powerful male, stronger even than the Unseelie King?
I hadn’t seen a single Unseelie Princess. Not one. All the Seelie Princesses were—according to V’lane—missing or dead.
What if he finished reading the Book and killed the queen?
He would have all the dark knowledge of the Unseelie King and all the magic of the queen. He would be unstoppable.
Was he the player who’d been manipulating events, biding time, waiting for the perfect moment?
I felt for my spear in the holster. It wasn’t there. I inhaled, nostrils flaring. How long ago had it disappeared? Had he taken it to kill the queen? Would he even need it? Once he’d absorbed the Book, could he simply unmake her?
Was I being totally paranoid?
This was V’lane, after all. He was probably just looking for the fragments of the Song for his queen and once he’d found them he would close the deadly tome.
I sidled in for a better view.
The men were blasting the walls with everything they had. Christopher and Christian were doing some sort of chant, while the others hammered at it. Nothing they did was having the slightest effect.
Peering between them, I suddenly got a clear look at V’lane. Unruffled by the assault on the walls he’d erected, he stood, head thrown back, eyes closed. His hands weren’t spread on each side of the Book as I’d thought.
They were on it, a palm pressed to each page.
How was he touching an Unseelie Hallow? The pages were entrancingly beautiful, each made of hammered gold, embellished with gems, covered with a strikingly bold, dynamic script that rushed across the pages like ceaseless waves. The First Language was as fluid as the original queen had been static.
V’lane wasn’t reading the Sinsar Dubh.
The spells scribed upon the gold pages were vanishing from the Book, passing up his arms, into his body, leaving the pages empty. He was draining it. Absorbing it. Becoming it.
“Barrons,” I shouted to be heard over the roars and grunts as bodies imploded with an unyielding barrier, “we’ve got a serious problem!”
“Same page, Mac. Same bloody word.”
51
When I was fifteen, Dad taught me how to drive. Mom was terrified to let me behind the wheel. I hadn’t been that bad. I remember swerving wide around a bend, narrowly missing a mailbox, and asking Daddy, But how do you stay on the road? What keeps people from just running off it? It’s not like we’re on rails.
He’d laughed. Ruts in the road, baby. They aren’t really there, but if you keep doing it over and over, eventually you begin to feel them, and a sort of autopilot kicks in.
Life is like that. Ruts in the road. My rut was that V’lane was one of the good guys.
But be careful, Jack had added, because autopilot can be dangerous. Drunk driver might come at you head on. The most important thing to know about ruts is how and when to get out of them.
I was immobilized by indecision. Was V’lane really one of the bad guys? Was he really trying to usurp all Fae power and rule? Was I supposed to intervene? What could I do?
As my mom and I watched, Kat, Jo, and the other sidhe-seers joined the assault on the walls. I was about to step in myself when my mom said, “Who’s that handsome young man? He wasn’t here be—” She froze, mid-word.
So did everyone in the cavern.
The Keltar stopped chanting. Barrons and my daddy were frozen mid-lunge. Even V’lane was affected, but not completely. The spells moving up his arms slowed from a fast-moving river to a stream.
I looked where my mother had been pointing and lost my breath.
He was by the door. No, he was behind me. No, he was right in front of me! When he smiled at me, I got lost in his eyes. They expanded until they were enormous and I was swallowed up in darkness, drifting between supernovas in space.
“Hey, beautiful girl,” the dreamy-eyed guy said.
“Butterfly fingers,” I managed finally. “You.”
“Finest surgeon,” he agreed.
“You helped.”
“Told you not to talk to it. You did.”
“I survived.”
“So far.”
“There’s more?”
“Always.”
I couldn
’t stop staring. I knew who he was. And now that I knew, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before.
“Never let you, small thing.”
“Let me now.”
“Why?”
“Curiosity.”
“Dead cats.”
“Nine lives,” I countered.
He smiled and his head swiveled in a distinctly Unseelie manner. I was also seeing, superimposed on a space of air that couldn’t exist—at least not in this realm—an enormous darkness regarding me. Its head didn’t swivel: It grated like stone on stone. It was as if the king was so vast that no single realm could contain him, around him dimensions splintered, overlapped, shifted. His eyes locked with mine, opening wider and wider until they swallowed the entire abbey, and I went spinning, head over heels, into them, with the abbey tumbling beside me.
I was wrapped in enormous black velvet wings, taken into the heart of darkness that was the Unseelie King.
He was so far beyond my comprehension that I couldn’t begin to absorb it. “Ancient” didn’t come close, because he was newborn in each moment, as well. Time didn’t define him. He defined time. He wasn’t death or life, or creation or destruction. He was all possibles and none, everything and nothing, a bottomless abyss that would look back at you if you gazed into it. He was a truth of existence: Once you’d been exposed to him, you’d never be the same. Like a contagion that infected the blood and brain, he forced new neural pathways to develop merely to handle the brief contact. That or you went nuts.
For a split second, drifting in his vast, ancient embrace, I understood everything. It all made sense. The universes, the galaxies—existence was unfolding precisely as it should, and there was a symmetry, a pattern, a stunning beauty to the structure of it.
I was tiny and naked, lost in black velvet wings so lush, rich, and sensual that I never wanted to leave. His darkness wasn’t frightening. It was verdant, teeming with life on the verge of becoming. There were shiny pearls of worlds tucked into his feathers. I rolled between them, laughing with delight. I think he rolled with me, watching my reaction to him, learning me, tasting. I tumbled among planets, constellations, stars. They hung from his quills, suspended, trembling with growing pains. Waiting for the day he would unfasten them, bat them off into the ballpark, and see what they might do. A home run—hey, batter, batter! Fly ball, watch out! That ball sucks, didn’t stitch it tight enough … coming apart at the seams …
Shadowfever f-5 Page 53