Faefever (Fever, #3)

by Karen Marie Moning

I’d die for him. No, wait a minute … that’s not where this is supposed to begin. I know that. But left to my own devices, I’d prefer to skim over the events of the next few weeks, and whisk you through those days with glossed-over details that cast me in a more flattering light.

Nobody looks good in their darkest hour. But it’s those hours that make us what we are. We stand strong, or we cower. We emerge victorious, tempered by our trials, or fractured by a permanent, damning fault line.

Don’t settle into your chair and relax. It’s not just my world that’s in trouble; it’s your world, too. It’s happening, right now, while you’re sitting there, munching a snack, getting ready to immerse yourself in a fictional escape. Guess what? It’s not fiction, and there’s no escape. The walls between the human world and Faery are coming down—and I hate to break it to you, but these fairies are so not Tinkerbells.

On my hands and knees in a puddle that smells of beer and urine, I’m iced to the bone. My hair is in a tangle, my amethyst hair clip bobs against my nose, and I’m crying. I push the hair from my face with a filthy hand and watch the tableau playing out in front of me with wide, horrified eyes. I remember that moment. Who I was. What I wasn’t. I capture it in freeze-frame. There are so many things I would say to her. Head up, Mac. Brace yourself. A storm is coming. Don’t you hear the thunderclap of sharp hooves on the wind? Can’t you feel the soul-numbing frost? Don’t you smell spice and blood on the breeze? Run, I would tell her. Hide. But I wouldn’t listen to me. On my knees, watching that … thing … do what it’s doing, I’m in the stranglehold of a killing undertow. Reluctantly, I merge with the memory, slip into her skin …

The man turned, and I inhaled sharply. A book was tucked beneath his arm. A perfectly innocuous hardcover, about three hundred and fifty pages thick, no dust jacket, pale gray with red binding. The kind of well-read hardcover you might find in any used bookstore, in any city.

the brick wall. The book dropped from beneath his arm. It seemed to fall in slow motion, changing, transforming, as it tumbled, end over end, to the damp, shiny brick. By the time it hit the cobbled pavement with a heavy whump, it was no longer a simple hardcover but a massive black tome, nearly a foot thick, engraved with runes, bound by bands of steel and intricate locks. Exactly the kind of book I’d expected: ancient and evil-looking. I sucked in another breath. Now the thick dark volume was changing again, becoming something new. It swirled and spun, drawing substance from wind and darkness.

And it lived. I have no words to describe it, because nothing exists in our world to compare it to. I’m glad nothing exists in our world to compare it to, because if something did exist in our world to compare it to, I’m not sure our world would exist. I can only call it the Beast, and leave it there. My soul shivered, as if perceiving on some visceral level that my body was not nearly enough protection for it. Not from this. The gunman looked at it, and it looked at the gunman, and he turned his weapon on himself. I jerked at the sound of more shots. The shooter crumpled to the pavement and his weapon clattered away.

It wasn’t those people committing the terrible crimes. The Beast was inside her now, in control. And it would retain control of her until it was done using her, when it would dispose of her and move on to its next victim. We’d been so wrong, Barrons and I!

Creepy thing was, until tonight, it hadn’t been aware of me. It was now. It had looked at me, seen me. I couldn’t explain it, but I felt it had somehow marked me, tagged me like a pigeon.

But every cloud really does have some kind of silver lining and, after a good, hard drenching, at least I no longer smelled quite so bad.

“Okay, you explain it. What do you think happened?” “I don’t know.” “Can you think of anything that might explain what you found?” A muscle worked in his jaw. “No.” “Then what do you expect me to tell you? That evil creatures of the night have taken over Dublin? That they’re right down there”—I flung my arm out to the right—“and they’re eating people and leaving the parts they don’t like behind? That they’ve claimed certain territories as their own, and if you’re stupid enough to walk or drive into one after dark, you’ll die?” There, that was as close to warning him as I could get. “Don’t be a fool, Ms. Lane.”

It was closer now, the thing that was coming. I stared into the mirror, down the narrow, silvery lane fading into blackness at the edges, lined with skeletal trees, cloaked in wisps of jaundiced fog, littered with monstrous creatures forming and re-forming in the mist. It reeked of wasteland worse than a Dark Zone, and I somehow knew the air inside the mirror was a chilling, killing cold, physically and psychically. Only a hellish, inhuman half-life could endure in such a place. As the dark shape glided down the nightmarish path, the shadow-demons reared back with soundless screams. More smoky runes materialized on the shivering glass. I couldn’t tell if what was coming walked upright, or stalked on all fours. Perhaps it scuttled on dozens of claws. I strained my eyes trying to identify the shape of it, but the sickly fog concealed its attributes. I knew only that it was huge, dark, dangerous … and almost here. I exited the room on tiptoe, and pulled the door shut, leaving the smallest of slivers through which to peer, braced to yank it shut and run like hell. The mirror belched an icy gust of air. It was here! Long black coat fluttering, Jericho Barrons stepped out of the glass.

I’d die for him. There’s nothing else to say. I’d give the last breath in my body and the last hope in my heart to keep him alive. When I thought I was crazy, he came to me and made sense of it all. He helped me understand what I was, showed me how to hunt and hide. He taught me that there are necessary lies. I’ve been learning a lot about those lately. Every time Mac calls I get more practice. I’d die for her, too.

Here, in Dublin with him, I can be anyone I want to be. I’m no longer trapped in a small town in the Deep South, forced to be the good girl. I’m free! He calls me his Queen of the Night. He shows me the wonders in this incredible city. He encourages me to find my own way, and to choose

It’s punishing and purifying, velvet and violent, and it makes everything else melt away, until nothing matters but getting him inside me and I wouldn’t just die for him—I’d kill for him, too. Like I did tonight. And when I see her tomorrow.

“My uncles believe something has happened to the queen,” he said, “and as her power diminishes, another’s grows. The walls continue to weaken, and if we don’t figure out something by the time the next ritual must be performed, they’ll come down.”

“And if the walls come down completely?” I reiterated my earlier question. I wanted to know just how bad things might get. “When the Fae walked among us before, only the Seelie did. The Unseelie have been imprisoned for so long that mere whispers of myths remain. If the walls come down completely, all the Unseelie will be freed, not just the lower castes that are currently managing to get through somehow. The most powerful of the Unseelie Royal Houses will escape.” He paused and when he spoke again, his voice was low, urgent. “Myth equates the heads of those four houses, the dark princes, with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

“Like it?” I said brightly. “You are powerless to defy me, yet stand before me dripping defiance. Why?”

“I suffered horribly, that’s the problem!” He caught my hand before I could poke him again, turned it up, and grazed his lips across the underside of my wrist, then bit it, sharply. I snatched it away, skin stinging. “Such a naked, defenseless wrist,” he said. “How many times have I offered you the Cuff of Cruce? Not only would it prevent lesser Unseelie from harming you, with it, you could have summoned me and I would have saved you. I told you this at our first encounter. I have offered you my protection repeatedly. You have refused me at every turn.” “A cuff can be removed.” I sounded bitter because I was. I’d learned that lesson the hard way. “Not this—” He closed his mouth but it was too late. He’d slipped. All-powerful Prince V’lane of the Supercilious Fae had slipped. “Really?” I said dryly. “So once it’s on me, I’m stuck with it forever. That’s the tiny little inconvenient catch you’ve never happened to mention to me before?” “It is for your own safety.

“A kiss? Oh, please! I’m not that—” “My name on your tongue. I cannot teach you to say it. Humans do not possess the ability to form such sounds. But I can give it to you. With my mouth, I can place it on your tongue. Then you have but to release my name to the wind, and I will appear.”

“How about a cell phone?” “No towers in Faery.” I narrowed my eyes. “Did you just make a joke?” “You walk among the worst of my kind, yet tremble at the prospect of a simple kiss.” “I’m not trembling. See any trembling here?” I thrust my trembling hands in my coat pockets, and gave him a dead-level, cocky stare.

Speaking of which … V’lane’s knuckles grazed the base of my skull where Barrons had branded me; his eyes narrowed, and he inhaled sharply. For a moment, he seemed to shimmer, as if he was struggling to hold form and not revert to another. “You think to allow his mark upon your body but refuse mine?” he hissed. He closed his mouth over mine.

“Give it a moment. It will settle in.” It settled with all the subtlety of multiple orgasms on the cusp of a steel thorn; pleasure inseparable from pain. Aftershocks quaked through me. I glared at him, more shaken by his touch than I cared to acknowledge. He shrugged. “I dampened myself greatly. It could have been much more … what is your word? Traumatic. Humans were not meant to carry a Fae’s name on their tongue. How does it feel, MacKayla? You have a piece of me in your mouth. Would you like another?” He smiled, and I knew he didn’t mean a word, or whatever it was that lay there coiled, slumbering but barely, in a porcelain cage.

“There’s nothing to tell.” “Why did you call after him?” “I haven’t seen him since the last time we saw the Book. I keep V’lane informed. You’re not the only shark in the sea.” He raked me with a contemptuous glance. “It’s a Fae prince’s fundamental nature to enslave a woman with sex, Ms. Lane. It’s a woman’s fundamental nature to be enslaved. Try to rise above it.”

Barrons sure did seem to have a knack for keeping all the monsters at bay. Because he was the biggest, baddest monster of all?

You want to know somebody? I mean, really know somebody? Take away their comfort zone and see what happens.

Need me, open your mouth, and I will be there, he’d said. I’d never have believed I’d be using it less than twenty-four hours later, but there was something I had to do tonight, and I needed backup. Serious backup. I needed something that would rock Rowena’s world, and Barrons just didn’t fit the bill the way a Seelie prince did.

“Why did you leave when Barrons showed up?” I asked. “I despise him.” “Why?” “It is not your concern. Are you such a fool that you think to summon me to interrogate me?” I shivered in my light sweater and jacket. The temperature had just dropped sharply. Fae royalty are so powerful that their pleasure or displeasure affects the weather, if they allow it.

“Will you promise me that you won’t hurt any of the sidhe-seers?” Grimacing mentally, I added, “Please?” He smiled, and a nearby tree pushed out velvety-looking, fragrant white blossoms that drenched the night air with pungent spices. They overgrew rapidly, plummeted to the ground in a lush fall of alabaster petals, and swiftly decomposed. Life to death in a matter of seconds. Was that how he saw me? “I will grant you this. I like it when you say ‘please.’ You will say it again.” “No. Once was enough.”

“What will you do for me in exchange?” “I’m doing it. Helping you find the Book.” “Not enough. You wish to command a Fae Prince as a lapdog? It costs, MacKayla. You will let me fuck you.”

“Get me the Book, and I’ll get you your sister back.” My heart skipped a beat. I held the phone away from my ear and stared at the receiver, as if seeking some kind of inspiration, or answer, or maybe just the courage to hang up the phone. Your sister back. The words hung in the air. Whatever I was looking for, I didn’t find it. I returned the phone to my ear. “The Book could bring Alina back from the dead?” I was chock-full of superstitions inspired by childhood fables; resurrecting the dead was always accompanied by gruesome caveats, and even more gruesome results. Surely something so evil couldn’t restore something so good. “Yes.” I wasn’t going to ask. I wasn’t. “Would she be the same as she was before? Not some scary zombie?” I asked. “Yes.” “Why would you do that, when you’re the one who killed her in the first place?” “I didn’t kill her.” “Maybe you didn’t do it yourself, but you sent them after her!” “I wasn’t done with her.” There was the barest hesitation. “And I had no plans to kill her when I was.”

“And somehow you managed to coerce Jayne into feeding you information. How you accomplished that, frankly, confounds me.” “Gee, maybe I’m not as inept as you think I am.” I popped another Tums in my mouth and made a mental note to start carrying aspirin, too. After a pause, he said tightly, “Maybe you’re not,” which was very nearly an apology from Barrons. “I fed him Unseelie.” “Are you fucking nuts?” Barrons exploded. “It worked.” His eyes narrowed. “One might think you’re developing situational ethics.”

Barrons draped an arm over my shoulder and I moved into the shelter of it. The thing on my tongue burned. My brand itched. At that moment, I despised them both. “Stay away from her,” Barrons growled. “She comes to me of her own will. She calls me, chooses me.” V’lane was in high glamour, gold and bronze and iridescent ice. He raked me with an imperious gaze. “I will attend to you later. You broke our bargain. There is a price for that.” He smiled, but Fae don’t really smile. They paste a humanlike expression on and it chills to the bone because it looks so unnatural on their unnaturally perfect faces. “Do not fear, MacKayla, I will—how do you say?—kiss it and make it better when I am through.”

Barrons smiled. Clever man. Until that moment, he’d suspected but not been certain. “Maybe I learned enough from your princess that I don’t need all four,” Barrons sneered, and there was a world of insinuation in his words. Even I, who had no idea what he was insinuating, heard the insult in them, and knew it cut deep. There was history between V’lane and Barrons. They didn’t despise each other just because of me. There was more than that going on here.

I thought I was hunting the Book, and that would be the end of it. But now I know we’ve got to re-create what once was. We’ve got to find the five foretold by the Haven’s prophecy. The Sinsar Dubh alone isn’t enough. We need the stones and the book and the five.

V’lane was the sidhe-seer equivalent of Lucifer; and even if his motives in Mankind’s current predicament mirrored ours, he was to be feared, shunned, and, a deep part of me insisted, destroyed. Seelie and Unseelie alike, the Fae were our enemies. They always had been, and always would be. Why, oh why, do we find the most dangerous, forbidden men the most irresistible? “Fae princes kill sidhe-seers, Dani.” “He hasn’t killed you.” She shot me an admiring look. “It looked like you had him eating out of your hand.” “No woman could have that Fae eating out of her hand,” I said sharply, “so don’t be daydreaming about it.”

“But I don’t sense full Fae from him. What’s the deal?” “He is no longer. He who calls himself the Lord Master was formerly a Seelie known as Darroc, a trusted member of the queen’s High Council.” I blinked. He was Seelie? Then what was he doing leading the Unseelie? “What happened?” “He betrayed our queen. She discovered he was working secretly with the Royal Hunters to overthrow her, and return to the old ways, and old days in which no Fae bowed to an insult of a Compact, or had any use for humans other than passing diversion.” Alien, ancient eyes studied me a moment. “Darroc’s special diversion was playing with human women for a long, cruel time, before destroying them.”

“Stop fighting me, Ms. Lane, and it’ll go easier. Unless you enjoy the pain.” In my mind I spewed a geyser of curses, but not a word came out. I had no breath to fuel it. He’d topped the level he’d used on me last night—the level of proficiency he’d said the Lord Master had achieved—and he’d done it with a voice of silk. Like the difference between other men’s motorcycles and his, Barrons walks softly—but he carries the biggest stick I’ve ever seen. “Nice tan, Ms. Lane. How’s V’lane? Did you have a good time today? I take you to graveyards, but he takes you to the beach—is that what our problem is? Our little dates aren’t good enough for you? Does he romance you? Feed you all those pretty lies you’re so hungry for? I’ve been neglecting you lately. I’ll be remedying that. Sit. Over there.” He pointed to a chair near the fire.

Savage Mac wants to invite it to come out and play. I think she’s nuts. Nuts, I tell you.

Okay, so that sounded like the Seelie hated the Unseelie and vice versa. But not quite. There was something more here. I puzzled over it several moments. Did it mean the Seelie couldn’t actually touch the Unseelie, and vice versa? I read on.

When the Fae were no longer amused with their pets they cast them from Faery to die. In this manner, the letter of the Compact wasn’t violated. They didn’t actually kill the humans they captured. They just didn’t save them. I wondered how many had died in madhouses, or been used for exactly what they wanted, and killed by their own kind.

“We used to guard the Book, Mac. It was ours to protect. We lost it.” “What?” I exclaimed. “You lost it?” I’d been blaming the Fae for the mess we were in, for making Darroc human, but the sidhe-seers were complicit, too? “How did you lose it?” Then again, knowing what I knew of it, how had they contained it to begin with? How had any sidhe-seer gotten close to it? Weren’t they all repelled by it, like me? “We don’t know,” Kat said. “It happened twenty-some years ago, before any of us came to the abbey. Those who lived through those dark days share little detail about them. One day it was there, hidden beneath the abbey, then it was gone.”

“Have you heard of the D’Jai Orb?” When I nodded, she leaned forward and said urgently, “Do you know where it is?” I shrugged. I’d been holding it in my hands a little over two weeks ago, but I had no idea where it was right now, only that it was in Barrons’ possession. “Why?” “It’s important, Mac. We need it.” “Why? What is it?” “A relic from one of the Seelie Royal Houses that contains some kind of Fae energy that Rowena believes can be used to reinforce the walls. We need it fast, before Samhain.” “Sowen. What’s sowen?” “If you can get the Orb and bring it to us, we’ll tell you everything we know, Mac. Even Rowena will have to believe in you then.”

Technically, Samhain refers to November 1, christened All Saints’ Day by the Vatican, but it’s Samhain night—Oiche Shamhna, October 31st, that has long been the focus of ritual and superstition.

Christian nudged the spear from his throat. “Easy, Mac. I was just trying to wake you. You looked so sweet and pretty asleep.” His smile was fleeting. “I’ll not be making that mistake again.” We separated awkwardly. As I’ve said before, Christian is a man, and there’s no mistaking it. I’d been straddling him much the way I’d straddled Barrons recently. Either my spear hadn’t intimidated him or he’d managed to … well, rise above it.

“What’s your terrible idea?” I said finally, in an effort to get things back on track. He inhaled and released it slowly. “My uncles want Barrons to help them hold the walls on Samhain. They say he’s Druid trained, and not afraid of the dark side.”

“Are you having sex with him, Mac?” I gaped. “Barrons?” He nodded. “No!” Christian sighed and folded his arms over his chest. “What?” I snapped. “I’ve never slept with Barrons. Subject that to your little lie detector test. Not that I see how it’s any of your concern.” “My uncles want to know exactly where you stand, Mac. A woman who’s having sex with a man is a compromised source of information, at best. At worst, she’s a traitor. That’s how it’s my concern.”

I didn’t hear him behind me. I felt him. Electric. Wild. One foot in the swamp. Never going to crawl all the way out. And I wanted to have sex with whatever he was. Where was I supposed to put that in my head? I wadded the thought up, stuffed it in my padlocked box, and tested the chains. I was going to need a few more. I turned and we had one of those wordless conversations that were our specialty. Nice apology, I said, but not enough. It’s not an apology. I don’t owe you one. Our wordless conversation ended there. We’re getting worse at them. Distrust clouds my eyes, and I can’t see past it.

There wasn’t a flicker of a lash, not the smallest shift of a muscle. Nothing. If anything, he looked bored. He offered it back. “Satisfied?” I refused to take it. Maybe if he kept holding it, something would happen. He waited. I waited. Eventually I started to feel stupid and took the spear back. He thrust his hands in his pockets and regarded me coolly.

“I’ll help them and not harm them. Take a note, Ms. Lane: You undermine yourself as a negotiator when you permit your opponent to see emotion. Never betray emotion to an enemy.” “Is that what you are?” “It’s how you treat me. Be consistent and follow through on the finer nuances.” He turned away and moved toward the fire. “Who am I to assist and protect? The old witch herself?” “It’s not the sidhe-seers.” He stopped and went very still. “Who is it?” “The MacKeltars.” He was silent a long moment. Then he began to laugh, softly. “Well played, Ms. Lane.” “I had a good teacher.”