Shadowfever (Fever #5)

by Karen Marie Moning

1 Hope strengthens. Fear kills. Someone really smart told me that once. Every time I think I’m getting wiser, more in control of my actions, I go slamming into a situation that makes me excruciatingly aware that all I’ve succeeded in doing is swapping one set of delusions for a more elaborate, attractive set of delusions—that’s me, the Queen of Self-Deception. I hate myself right now. More than I’d ever have thought possible. I squat on the cliff’s edge, screaming, cursing the day I was born, wishing my biological mother had drowned me at birth. Life is too hard, too much to handle. Nobody told me there’d be days like these. How could nobody tell me there’d be days like these? How could they let me grow up like that—happy and pink and stupid? The pain I feel is worse than anything the Sinsar Dubh has ever done to me. At least when the Book is crushing me, I know it’s not my own fault. This moment? Mea culpa. Beginning to end, all the way, I own this one, and there will never be any hiding from that fact. I thought I’d lost everything. How ignorant I was. He warned me. I had so much more to lose! I want to die. It’s the only way to stop the pain. Months ago, on a hellishly long night, in a grotto beneath the Burren, I wanted to die, too, but it wasn’t the same. Mallucé was going to torture me to death, and dying was the only chance I had of denying him that twisted pleasure. My death had been inevitable. I saw little point in drawing it out. I’d been wrong. I’d given up hop...

Hope strengthens … Not once did I permit myself to feel any hope about the person lying facedown in a pool of blood. Not once did I use it to strengthen our bond. I let the onus of our relationship rest on broader shoulders. Fear. Suspicion. Mistrust drove my every action. And now it’s too late to take any of it back. I stop screaming and begin to laugh. I hear the madness in it. I don’t care. My spear sticks up, a cruel javelin, mocking me. I remember stealing it. For a moment, I’m back in the dark, rain-slicked Dublin streets, descending into the sewer systems with Barrons, breaking into Rocky O’Bannion’s private cache of religious artifacts. Barrons is wearing jeans and a black T-shirt. Muscles ripple in his body as he casts aside the sewer lid with the ease of a man tossing a Frisbee in the park. He’s disturbingly sexual, to men and women alike, in a way that sets your teeth on edge. With Barrons, you aren’t sure if you’re going to get fucked or turned inside out and left a new, unrecognizable person, adrift with no moorings, on a sea with no bottom and no rules. I was never immune to him. There were merely degrees of denial. My respite is too brief. The memory vanishes and I am again confronted with the reality that threatens to shatter my hold on sanity. Fear kills … Literally. I can’t say it. I can’t think it. I can’t begin to absorb it. I hug my knees and rock. Jericho Barrons is dead. He lies on his stomach, motionless. He hasn’t moved or breathed in the small ete...

through the Vatican hammering upside-down crosses on the walls. I squat ten paces from his body. I stay back, because if I get close I’ll have to roll him over and look in his eyes, and what if they’re empty like Alina’s were? Then I’ll know he’s gone, like I knew she was gone, too far beyond my reach to ever hear my voice again, to hear me say, I’m sorry, Alina, I wish I’d called more often; I wish I’d heard the truth beneath our vapid sister talk; I wish I’d come to Dublin and fought beside you, or raged at you, because you were acting from fear, too, Alina, not hope at all, or you would have trusted me to help you. Or maybe just apologize, Barrons, for being too young to have my priorities refined, like you, because I haven’t suffered whatever the hell it is you suffered, and then shove you up against a wall and kiss you until you can’t breathe, do what I wanted to do the first day I saw you there in your bloody damned bookstore. Disturb you like you disturbed me, make you see me, make you want me—pink me!—shatter your self-control, bring you crashing to your knees in front of me, even though I told myself I’d never want a man like you, that you were too old, too carnal, more...

Ryodan to drag his broken, bloody body up over the edge. Maybe he’s not really dead, either. After all, we’re in Faery, maybe, or at least within the Silvers—who knows what realm this is? Might the water here have rejuvenating powers? Should I try to get Barrons to it? Maybe we’re in the Dreaming and this terrible thing that has happened is a nightmare, and I’ll wake up on a couch in Barrons Books and Baubles and the illustrious, infuriating owner will raise a brow and give me that look; I’ll say something pithy, and life will be lovely, chock-full of monsters and rain again, just the way I like it. I squat. No scrabbling in the stones and shale. The man with the spear in his back doesn’t move. My heart is full of holes. He gave his life for me. Barrons gave his life for me. My self-serving, arrogant, constant jackass was the constant rock beneath my feet, willing to die so I could live. Why the hell would he do that? How do I live wi...

The accusation of betrayal in the beast’s gaze hadn’t been an illusion. It had been Jericho Barrons in there, staring at me from behind that prehistoric brow, baring his fangs, reproach and hatred blazing in his feral yellow eyes. I’d broken our unspoken pact. He’d been my guardian demon and I’d killed him. Had he despised me for not seeing through the hide of the beast he’d worn to the man within?

See me. How many times had he said that to me? See me when you look at me! When it mattered most, I’d been blind. He’d been dogging my every step, treating me with that characteristic Barrons’ combination of aggression and animal possessiveness, and I’d never once recognized him. I’d failed him. He’d come to me in a barbaric, inhuman form, to keep me alive. He’d set himself up as IYD regardless of what it might cost him, knowing he would be turned into a mindless, raging beast capable only of slaughtering everything in his immediate vicinity but for one thing. Me. God, that look! I cover my face with my hands, but the image won’t go away: beast and Barrons, his dark skin and exotic face, its slate hide and primal features. Those ancient eyes that saw so much and asked only to be seen in return burn with scorn: Couldn’t you have trusted me just once? Couldn’t you have hoped for the best, just once? Why did you choose Ryodan over me? I was keeping you alive. I had a plan. Did I ever let you down? “I didn’t know it was you!” I gouge my palms with my nails. They bleed for a brief moment, then heal.

But the beast/Barrons in my mind isn’t done torturing me. You should have. I took your sweater. I smelled you and granted you passage. I killed fresh, tender meat for you. I pissed around you. I showed you in this form, as in any other, that you are mine—and I take care of what is mine. Tears blind me. I double over. It...

Beyond the pain, if there is such a place, I know things. Things like: According to Ryodan (if he’s not a traitor, and if he is and somehow still alive, I...

He stands there, furious, surrounded by needles and dyes, about to tattoo me—or, more accurately, pretend to tattoo me where he’s already tattooed me but I haven’t discovered it yet—so he can track me if I ever decide to do something as stupid as agree to stay in Faery for any period of time again. I tell him if he tattoos me, we’re through. I accuse him of never feeling anything more than greed and mockery, being incapable of love. I call him a mercenary, blame him for losing his temper when he couldn’t find me and trashing the store, and, while I scathingly concede that he might get an occasional hard-on, it’s undoubtedly for something like money, an artifact, or a book—never a woman. I remember every word of his reply: Yes, I have loved, Ms. Lane, and although it’s none of your business, I have lost. Many things. And, no, I am not like any other player in this game and I will never be like V’lane, and I get a hard-on a great deal more often than occasionally. Sometimes it’s over a spoiled little girl, not a woman at all. And, yes, I trashed the bookstore when I couldn’t find you. You’ll have to choose a new bedroom, too. And I’m sorry your pretty little world got all screwed up, but everybody’s does, and you go on. It’s how you go on that defines you. In retrospect, I see through myself with pathetic ease. There I am, chained to a beam, nearly naked, alone with Jericho Barrons, a man who is so far beyond my comprehension, but, God, he excites me! He plans to work slowly...

wearing shackles on my bonds. I’d been all nurture. He was all nature—trying to teach me to change. Like I said: degrees of denial. He’d leaned into me, in that garage, sex and barely leashed violence, and when I’d felt his hard-on, it made me feel so alive and wild inside that later I’d had to peel off my bikini and take care of myself in the shower again and again, fantasizing a very different outcome in his garage. One that had taken all night. I’d told myself it was because I’d spent the day in close proximity to a death-by-sex Fae. Another lie. He’d unchained me and let me go. If I were chained to that beam now, I’d have no problem telling him exactly what I wanted. And it wouldn’t involve unchaining me. At least not at first. I focus through my tears. Grass. Trees. Him. He lies facedown. I need to go to him. The earth is wet, muddy from last night’s rain, from his blood. I need to clean him. He shouldn’t be messy. Barrons doesn’t like to be messy. He’s meticulous; a sophisticated, exquisite dresser. Although I’ve straightened his lapel a few times, it was only for the excuse of touching him. Stepping into his

space. Exercising familiarity to underscore that I had the right. Unpredictable as a hungry lion, he might be feared by everyone else, but he never ripped out my throat, only licked me, and, if his tongue was a little rough sometimes, it was worth it to walk beside the king of the jungle. My heart is going to explode. I can’t do this. I just went through this with my sister. Regret upon regret. Missed opportunities. Bad decisions. Grief. How many more people will have to die before I learn how to live? He was right. I’m a walking catastrophe. I fumble in my pocket for my phone. First thing I do is dial Barrons’ cell. The call doesn’t go through. I press IYCGM. Call doesn’t go through. I hit IYD and hold my breath, watching Barrons intently. The call doesn’t go through. Like the man himself, all lines are down. I begin to shake. I don’t know why, but the fact that the cell phones don’t work convinces me more than anything else that he’s beyond my reach. ...

He died so I would live. “Damn you! I don’t want to live without you!” It’s how you go on that defines you. “Oh, shut up, would you? You’re dead, shut up, shut up!” But a terrible truth is shredding my heart. I’m the girl that cried “wolf.” I’m the

What would that make of me? That I got him killed, then killed myself? A coward. But it’s not what it would make of me that bothers me. It’s what it would make of him—a wasted death. The death of a man like him deserves more than that.

back another scream. It’s trapped inside me now, stuffed down into my belly, burning the back of my throat, making it painful to swallow. I hear it in my ears even though my mouth makes no sound. It’s a silent scream. The worst kind. I lived with this once before, to keep Mom and Dad from knowing that Alina’s death was killing me, too. I know what comes next, and I know it’s going to be worse than last time. That I’m going to be worse. Much, much worse. I remember the scenes of slaughter Barrons showed me in his mind. I understand them now. Understand what might drive a person to it. I kneel beside his naked, bloody body. The transformation from man to beast must have shredded his clothing, exploded the silver cuff from his wrist. Nearly two thirds of his body is inked with black and crimson protection runes. “Jericho,” I say. “Jericho, Jericho, Jericho.” Why did I ever begrudge him his name? “Barrons” was a stone wall I erected between us, and if a hairline fracture appeared, I hastily mortared it with fear. I close my eyes and steel myself. When I open them, I wrap both hands around the spear and try to pull it from his back. It doesn’t come out. It’s lodged in bone. I have to fight for it. I stop. I start again. I weep. He doesn’t move. I can do this. I can. I work the spear free. After a long moment, I roll him over. If there was any doubt in my mind that he was dead, it vanishes. His eyes are open. They are empty. Jericho Barrons is no longer there. I open my senses t...

will never close Jericho Barrons’ eyes. They were wide open in life. He would want them open in death. Rituals would be wasted on him. Wherever Barrons is, he would laugh if I tried something as mundane as a funeral. Too small for such a large man. Put him in a box? Never. Bury him? No way. Burn him? That, too, would be acceptance. Admission that he was dead. Never going to happen.

Even in death he looks indomitable, his big black-and-crimson-tattooed body an epic giant, felled in battle. I settle on the ground, gently lift his head, maneuver my legs beneath it, and cradle his face in my arms. With my shirt and hot tears that won’t stop falling, I bathe away dirt and blood and clean him tenderly. Harsh, forbidding, beautiful face. I touch it. Trace it with my fingers, over and over, until I know the subtlest nuances of every plane and angle, until I could carve it out of stone even if I were blind. I kiss him. I lie down and stretch out next to him. I press my body to his and hold on. I hold him like I never permitted myself to hold him when he was alive. I tell him all the things I never said. For a time, I have no idea where he ends and I begin.

2 It’s funny the things people say when someone dies. He’s in a better place. How do you know that? Life goes on. That’s supposed to comfort me? I’m excruciatingly aware that life goes on. It hurts every damned second. How lovely to know it’s going to continue like this. Thank you for reminding me. Time heals. No, it doesn’t. At best, time is the great leveler, sweeping us all into coffins. We find ways to distract ourselves from the pain. Time is neither scalpel nor bandage. It is indifferent. Scar tissue isn’t a good thing. It’s merely the wound’s other face. I live with the specter of Alina every day. Now I will live with Barrons’ ghost, too. Walk between them: one on my right, one on my left. They will talk to me incessantly. I’ll never escape, bridged between my greatest failures. The day is cooling by the time I’m able to force myself to move. I know what that means. It means night is about to come slamming down on me with the finality of steel shutters on the glass façade of an upscale shop in a rundown neighborhood. I try to disentangle myself from him. I don’t want to. It takes half a dozen attempts to make myself sit up. My head aches from crying; my throat burns from screaming. When I sit up, only the shell of my body moves. My heart is still lying on the ground next to Jericho Barrons. It beats one more time, then stops.

call them IFPs but I do not tell him this. It made Barrons smile. Little made Barrons smile. I think I’m under control, that I’ve stripped away all weaknesses. That committing to my mission has made me impervious. I’m wrong. The thought of Barrons smiling brings other thoughts. Barrons naked. Dancing. Dark head thrown back. Laughing. The image doesn’t “gently swim up in my mind” in a dreamy sort of way, like I’ve seen in movies. No, this one slams into my head like a nuclear

exploding in my brain in graphic detail. I suffocate in a mushroom cloud of pain. I can’t breathe. I squeeze my eyes shut. White teeth flashing in his dark face: I get knocked down but I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down. I stagger. But he didn’t get up, the bastard. He stayed down. With my spear in his back. How am I supposed to find my way each day without him here to help me? I don’t know what to do, how to make decisions. I can’t survive this grief! I stumble and go down on one knee. I clutch my head. Darroc is at my side, helping me stand. His arms are around me.

Neither image nor pain is gone from my brain. I cannot function in this state. In moments, I will be on my knees, screaming with grief and fury, and my mission will go straight to hell. Darroc will see my weakness and kill me, or worse.

branded you at the base of your skull. Press your fingers to the mark and call for me.” He has already turned away and begun walking down his hall. I hiss at his back. The day will come, and soon, when I remove his brand, if I have to scrape my skull down to bare bone. I’d do it now, except I don’t want to run the risk of damaging Barrons’. It’s all I have left of him. His hands were on me there, gentle, possessive. There is a smile in Darroc’s voice when he warns, “If you find the Silver and return to Dublin without me, I will hunt you.”

Ry-O and his men are in there—least I think they are. Ain’t seen none in a while but keep hoping. See, ’cause they piss me off. They threatened me.

Think Ry-O and his dudes maybe got nothing on me, and I’d like to test it. Like to show Mac, but it’s been more than three whole weeks since I saw her last. Since we broke into the libraries. Barrons ain’t ’round neither.

matter what else he is—he is hers. What is between them is without blame. Love knows no right or wrong. Love is. Only is. She (I) rushes down the dark, warm, inviting hall, hurrying to his (my) bed. We need our lover. It has been too long.

coming. He is near. I am naked, wild, ready. I need. I need. This is why I live. She and I stand, staring at the bed. Then he is there and he gathers her up—but I can’t see him. I feel enormous wings closing around us. I know he’s there, she’s enveloped in energy, in darkness, wet and warm like sex is wet and warm, and I’m breathing lust. I am lust and I strain to see him, strain to feel him, when suddenly— I am a simple beast, on crimson sheets with Barrons inside me. I cry out, because even here in this boudoir of duality and illusion, I know it is not real. I know I have lost him. He is gone, forever gone. I’m not back there in that basement with him, still Pri-ya but beginning to surface enough to know that he just asked me what I wore to my prom, and shutting it all down, racing from reality back into my madness, so I don’t have to face what happened to me or deal with what I’m beginning to suspect I might have to do. I’m not standing there a few days later, looking back at his bed with those fur-lined handcuffs, contemplating climbing back in and pretending I hadn’t recovered so I could keep doing it—every raw, animal thing we’d done in my sexually insatiable state—fully aware of what I was doing and who I was doing it with. Dead. Dead. I’ve lost so much. If only I’d known then what I know now … The king lifts the concubine. I see her sliding down a body I cannot discern in the darkness, and (I straddle Barrons and slam him home inside me; God, it feels so good!) the...

need Mac. Been nearly a month and I’m starting to worry that she’s … Nah, ain’t going there. But where the feck is she? Ain’t seen her since we broke into the Forbidden Libraries together.

Weird thing is, I keep stopping by BB&B and it looks like Barrons is gone, too!

Tried to get in to Chester’s last night to ask about him, but the stupid feckin’ feckers bounced me at the door.

It took six of ’em! Six of Barrons’ freaky fecks had to work their arses off to keep me out, and we went at it for over an hour.

One of ’em followed me to Dublin’s edge, like he thought he was throwing me outta the city—as if! I’ll try again soon.

pretend again that he is Barrons and suddenly he feels like Barrons, and I’m fighting to keep my head clear. Images flash through my mind, those long, incredible hours spent in a sex-drenched bed. I smell Barrons on my skin, taste him on my lips. I remember. I will never forget. The memories are so vivid. I swear I could reach out and touch those crimson silk sheets. He sprawls on the bed, a dark tattooed mountain of man, arms folded behind his head, watching me as I dance naked. Manfred Mann plays an old Bruce Springsteen cover on my iPod: I came for you, for you, I came for you …

did. And I killed him.

would give my right arm to be back there, for just one day. Live it again. Touch him again. Hear those sounds he makes. Smile at him. Be tender. Not be afraid to be tender. Life is so fragile, exquisite, and short. Why do I keep realizing that too late? The brand on the back of my skull burns, but I can’t tell if it’s Darroc’...

took me a bloody fucking month to get back. I died three times. It was worse than the 1800s when I had to book passage on a steamer to cross the bloody ocean.

Fragments of Fae reality everywhere, took down every plane I took up. I consider the possibility that, by the time I return, he will have caught her, cut my brand off her skull, and made her impossible to track. Then I begin to feel her. She is alive. She still wears my mark. But what I sense is incongruent with her situation. I expect grief. The woman killed me and, in humans, familiarity breeds a certain emotional bond. But lust? On the heels of murdering me, who does she lust for? I entertain myself with thoughts of searing my brand from her skull. When I finally arrive at the bookstore, what do I see in the alley behind it? The woman that summoned me to save her, then stabbed me in the back at the first opportunity, isn’t lost in the Silvers, in need of saving. She’s standing in my alley, kissing the bastard that had her raped and turned her Pri-ya

No, let us be perfectly precise: She’s grinding herself against him and shoving her tongue halfway down his throat. My mo...

sudden gust ruffles my shirt, and my hair flies straight up in the air. “That ain’t Barrons!” Dani snaps indignantly. The name goes through me like a knife. No, it ain’t Barrons and, unless I’m convincing, it never will be again.

“Barrons know what’s going on? Think he needs to. Where’s Barrons?” “Dead,” I say flatly. Her slender body jerks and she stops vibrating. She had a major crush on Barrons. “No, he ain’t,” she protests. “Whatever he is ain’t killable. Least not easy.” “Wasn’t easy,” I say. It took two of the people he trusted most in the world, a spear in the back, a gutting, and a slit throat. I wouldn’t call that easy. She stares at me hard, searching my gaze. I focus on dripping scorn. She gets it and stiffens. “What happened?” Darroc moves in behind me and slips his arms around my waist. I lean back into him. “MacKayla killed him,” he says bluntly. “Now answer her question. When was the Book at the abbey? Is it still there?”

sucks in a breath. She’s vibrating again. She won’t look at Darroc, only me. “This ain’t funny, Mac.” I agree. It’s not. It’s hell. But it’s necessary. “He had it coming,” I lie coldly. “He betrayed me.” She puffs up, fists at her waist. “Barrons ain’t the betraying kind. He never betrayed you! He wouldn’t do that!” “Oh, grow up and pull your head out! You didn’t know shit about Barrons! You’re not old enough to know shit about anything!”

walk past it, I’ll have to force myself not to stare hungrily at it. Have to ignore that, in this reality, I’ll never enter those doors again. He’s gone. He’s really, truly gone. My bookstore has been lost to me as completely and irrevocably as if the Dark Zone had finally swallowed it up. I’ll never own it. I’ll never open those diamond-paned cherry doors for business again. I’ll never hear my cash register’s tiny bell ring or curl up with a cup of cocoa and a book, warmed by a cozy gas fire and the promise of Jericho Barrons’ eventual return. I’ll never banter with him, practice Voice, or be tested against pages of the Sinsar Dubh. I’ll never steal hungry glances when I think he’s not looking at me, or hear him laugh, or climb the back stairs to my bedroom that’s

Barrons doesn’t care about words. Only actions. I’ll never drive his cars. I’ll never know his secrets.

When Darroc takes my hand and leads me down the alley between Barrons Books and Baubles and Barrons’ garage, which houses the car collection I used to covet, I don’t look to either side. I keep my gaze trained straight ahead.

Barrons, who once spent a great deal of time there, sleeping with a princess, before killing her and pissing off V’lane for all eternity.

“Consorting with Barrons has changed you. I think he will approve.” The name is poison in my veins, from which I will die a slow death every minute I have to spend in this world without him. I’ll never be on the receiving end of one of those looks again. Never see that infamous mocking smile. Never have one of those wordless conversations in which we said so much more with our eyes than either of us ever was willing to say with our mouths. Jericho, Jericho, Jericho. How many times did I actually ever speak his name? Three? “Barrons is dead,” I say coolly. The Seelie rustle, murmur disbelievingly. V’lane’s eyes narrow. “He is not.”

“He claims you killed Barrons, sidhe-seer. Why?” It hasn’t escaped me that V’lane won’t use my name. I suspect that, if he did, those of his race would think him weak. “Who cares? He’s dead. Gone. Out of both of our ways. It’s not like you didn’t want him dead, too.” I wonder if they really burned his body. I will never ask.

Barrons isn’t going to save me.

isn’t going to carry me back to the bookstore when it’s over, make me cocoa and wrap me in blankets. He isn’t going to make me laugh by demanding to know what I am or later cause me to weep when I steal a memory from his head and see him shattered by grief, holding a dying child.

see me. Been at Chester’s again.

Took seven of the slithery fecks to keep me out this time. Kept telling ’em I needed to talk to Ry-O, ’cause I think he’s their leader when Barrons ain’t around.

And Barrons ain’t around. Hunted high and low for him last night after my eyeballs got grossed out by Mac swapping nasties with the Lord Monster. Dude—what’s with that? She could have V’lane or Barrons! Who’d wanna swap spit with an Unseelie-eater? ’Specially the one that caused this whole fecking mess! Where’d she go for so long? What happened to her? They wouldn’t let me into Chester’s. A-fecking-gain! Get...