Crystal answers “Sooooo what the eff is Jericho Barrons?!...”

Stephanie asked this question about Shadowfever (Fever #5):

Sooooo what the eff is Jericho Barrons?! This book was spectacular, but dang. Still SO MANY unanswered questions! I know, I know, WHAT he is isn't that important (as he says), but who damned him and the others, who is the mother of his son, what the heck is his STORY?

Crystal

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)[I feel the same way too. We basically got no real answers to what Barrons is.

What we know is:
1. He was sent to this world as part of the nine by a female leader (a queen? a goddess? their mother?)
2. He eats meat raw, always eats raw hearts (and when he does his heart starts pumping again)
3. He eats animals but can probably eat humans too (he licked Mac's blood multiple times, he fed his son that dead woman)
4. He is able to eat parasitic bloody fae runes
5. He is able to kill anything, even fae without the weapons
6. Shades can't kill him
7. He is "cursed" to live forever and get reborn in the exact same spot each time (which is probably somewhere on earth, I'm guessing in a desert in the middle of the middle east)
8. He can shift into a horned beast with fangs - shifting into the beast is easier and less painful than shifting back into a man
9. When he dies as a beast his body will shift back into a man (seems to imply the man is his true form and he was originally a man before he got cursed to become a beast - maybe similar to the lore from Beauty and the Beast?)

My personal theory is the nine were the personal guard of a magical Queen from another world. One day the Queen was very displeased with them, not too sure why but maybe she thought they were too ruthless, heartless and immoral. So she cursed them to need to eat hearts to live, and to roam the world forever (preventing them from dying) to atone for their sins. Also, she gave them the ability to destroy bad things - they are basically cleaners to cleanse the world. That's why they are able to eat parasitic runes.

I feel like Karen Marie Moning was fairly inspired by Beauty and the Beast when she wrote the Fever series. I mean think about it - the library = the bookstore. The Beauty = Mac. The Beast = Barrons. I'm guessing Barrons' origin story is similar to the Beast's origin story where he was judged by a Fairy who saw his heart and realised he was a selfish man. So he got punished to take the form of a beast till he finds a girl and is able to make her see his true heart or something

Also the mother of his son is probably one of the unfortunate women that Barrons raped during his evil mercenary era. (hide spoiler)]

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