Shadowfever (Fever #5)

by Karen Marie Moning

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...