Fever 1 - Darkfever (17 page)

"Now."

I glared at him. I hated it when he cut me off with one of those one-word commands of his. I had news for him: I wasn't like Fiona, pining away for crumbs of his affection, willing to yield to any demand he might make to get them. "You can't order me around like I'm F—" This time I was glad he cut me off before I betrayed that I'd eavesdropped.

"Do you have somewhere else to go,Ms. Lane ?" he asked coolly. "Is that it?" His smile chilled me, shaped as it was by the satisfaction of a man who knows he has a woman exactly where he wants her.

"Will you go back to The Clarin House and hope Mallucé isn't out looking for you? I have news for you,Ms. Lane , you could be swimming in a lake of holy water, dressed in a gown of garlic, denying an invitation at the top of your lungs, and it wouldn't stop a vampire who's fed richly and recently enough. Or will you try for a new hotel, and hope O'Bannion doesn't have anyone there on his payroll? No, I have it; you'll go back home toGeorgia . Is that it? I hate to break it to you,Ms. Lane , but I think it's a little too late for that."

I didn't want to know why it was too late for that: whether he meant O'Bannion would come after me, dazed-eyed Goth slaves would cross water to return me to their Master, or Barrons himself would hunt me down.

"You bastard," I whispered. Before he'd dragged me from one bizarre "player's" house to the next, before he'd gotten me to rip off both a vampire and a mobster, I'd still had a chance. It might have been a slim one, but it had been a chance. Now it was a whole different ball game and I was playing in the dark and somehow, everyone but me had night-vision goggles and understood the rules of play. And I suspected this had been part of Barrons' plan all along: to shave down my options, to whittle away my choices until he'd left me only one—to need him to survive.

I was furious with him, with myself. I'd been such a fool. And I couldn't see any way out. Still, I wasn't entirely helpless. I needed him? I could swallow that if I had to, because he needed me, too, and I was
never
going to let him forget it. "Fine, Barrons," I said, "but I'm keeping this. And that's non-negotiable." I raised the spear I was gripping. Maybe I couldn't fight off vampires and mobsters, but at least I could give the Fae a decent battle.

He looked at the spear for several moments, his dark gaze unfathomable. Then he said, "It was for you all along,Ms. Lane . I suggest you remove the shaft and make it portable. It's not the original and only the head itself matters."

I blinked. It was for me? Not only did the relic have to be worth an absolute fortune on the black market, but Barrons was also a
sidhe-seer
and could use it to protect himself, too, yet he was going to let
me
hang on to it? "Really?"

He nodded. "Obey me,Ms. Lane ," he said, "and I will keep you alive."

"I wouldn't need to be kept alive in the first place," I snapped, "if you hadn't dragged me into this mess."

"You came looking for this mess,Ms. Lane . You sauntered in here all innocence and stupidity asking for the
Sinsar Dubh
, remember? I told you to go home."

"Yeah, well, that was before you knew I could find things for you. Now you'd probably tie me up and drug me to keep me here," I accused.

"Probably," he agreed. "Though I suspect I'd have no problem at all finding more effective means." I looked at him sharply. He wasn't joking. And I never wanted to know what those "more effective means" might be.

"But considering everything that's after you, I don't need to, do I,Ms. Lane ? Which puts us right back where we started: Go to your room and do not come out again
for any reason
until I come for you. Do you understand me?"

Mom says humility isn't one of my strengths, and she's right. To reply would have reeked of capitulation, or at the least, acquiescence, and although he might have won this particular battle, I sure didn't have to admit it, so I stared down at the spear in stony silence. The spearhead shimmered like silvery alabaster in the brightly lit anteroom. If I broke it off to a short shaft, it would be only about a foot long. The tip was razor-sharp, the base about four inches wide. It would no doubt fit nicely in my largest purse, if I could figure out a way to keep the lethal point from puncturing the side.

When I looked back up, I was alone.

Barrons was gone.

My folks have some funny sayings. They were born in a different time, to a different generation. Theirs was the "hard work is its own reward" generation. Admittedly it had its problems, but mine is the

"entitlement generation" and it has its fair share, too.

The EG is made up of kids who believe they deserve the best of everything by mere virtue of having been born, and if parents don't arm them with every possible advantage, they are condemning their own children to a life of ostracism and failure. Raised by computer games, satellite TV, the Internet, and the latest greatest electronic device—while their parents are off slaving away to afford them all—most of the EG believe if there's something wrong with them, it's not their fault; their parents screwed them up, probably by being away too much. It's a vicious little catch-22 for the parents any way you look at it. My parents didn't screw me up. Any screwing up that might have been done, I did to myself. All of which is my roundabout way of saying that I'm beginning to understand what Dad always meant when he said, "Don't tell me you didn't
mean
to do it, Mac. Omission or commission—the end result is the same." I understand now. It's the difference between involuntary manslaughter and homicide: the dead person is still dead, and I highly doubt the corpse appreciates any legal distinctions we make over it. By omission or commission, one orange, two candy bars, a bag of pretzels, and twenty-six hours later, I had blood on my hands.

****

I'd never been so happy to see the first rays of dawn in my life as I was that next morning. I'd ended up doing exactly what I'd sworn I wouldn't do: I'd cowered in my brilliantly lit, borrowed bedroom from one daybreak to the next, trying to make my meager snacks last, and wondering what plan Barrons could possibly have devised that might guarantee our safety from Rocky O'Bannion, quite pessimistically certain there was none. Even if he managed to scare off a few of O'Bannion's men, there would only be more. I mean, really, how could one man hope to stand up to a ruthless mobster and his loyal pack of ex-fighters and thugs who'd once taken out twenty-seven people in a single night?

When the first rays of a rosy sunrise pressed at the edges of the drapes, I hurried to the window and pulled back the curtain. I'd lived through yet another Dublin night and that, in and of itself, was swift becoming cause for celebration in my badly warped little world. I stared dumbly down into the alley for a long moment, as the sight that greeted me slowly sunk in.

Or didn't, I guess, because before I knew it, I'd raced from my fourth-floor retreat and was pounding bare-heeled down the back stairs for a closer look. I burst out into the early, chilly Irish morning. The concrete steps were damp with cold dew beneath my bare feet as I hurried down them, into the rear alley.

A dozen or so feet away, in the early morning light, a black Maybach gleamed, with all four of its doors ajar. It was making that annoying
bing-bing
sound that told me the keys were still in the ignition and the battery hadn't yet run down. Behind it, hood to trunk, stretching down into the beginnings of the abandoned neighborhood, were three more black vehicles, all with their doors wide open, emitting a chorus of
bings
. Outside each car were piles of clothing, not far from the doors. I had a sudden flashback to the day I'd gotten lost in the abandoned neighborhood, to the derelict car with the pile of clothing outside the driver's door. Comprehension slammed into my brain and I flinched from the horror of it.

Any fool could see what had happened here.

Well, at least any
sidhe-seer
fool who knew what kind of things that went bump in the night around these parts could.

The cop who'd seen us yesterday morning had apparently reported to O'Bannion, and at some unknown hour after dark, the mobster had come looking for us with a full complement of his men, and as evidenced by their stealthy backdoor approach, they'd not been coming to pay us a social call. The simplicity of Barrens' plan both astounded and chilled me: He'd merely turned off the outside lights, front and rear, allowing darkness to swallow the entire perimeter of the building. O'Bannion and his men had stepped out of their cars, directly into an Unseelie massacre.

Barrons had
known
they would come. I was even willing to bet he'd known they would come in force. He'd also known they would never make it farther than the direct vicinity of their own cars. Of course, I'd been safe in the store. With the interior lights ablaze and the exterior lights extinguished, neither man nor monster could have reached me last night.

Barrons had baited a death trap—one that my theft had made necessary. When I'd reached up and blithely removed that weapon from the wall, I'd signed death warrants for sixteen men. I turned and stared up at the bookstore, now seeing it in an entirely different light: It wasn't a building—it was a
weapon
. Only last week I'd stood out front, thinking it seemed to stand bastion between the good part of the city and the bad. Now I understood it
was
a bastion—this was the line of demarcation, the last defense—and Barrons held the encroachment of the abandoned neighborhood at bay with his many and carefully placed floodlights, and all he had to do to protect his property from threat at night was turn them off and let the Shades move in, hungry guard dogs from Hell.

Drawn by grim fascination, or perhaps some long-dormant genetic need to understand all I could about the Fae, I approached the Maybach. The pile of clothing outside the driver's door was topped by a finely made black leather jacket that looked just like the one I'd seen on Rocky O'Bannion the night before last.

Barely repressing a shudder, I reached down and picked it up. As I lifted the supple Italian leather, a thick husk of what looked like badly yellowed, porous parchment fell out of it. I jerked violently and dropped the coat. I'd seen that kind of "parchment" before. I'd seen dozens of them, blowing down the deserted streets of the abandoned neighborhood that day I'd gotten lost in the fog, all different shapes and sizes. I remembered thinking that there must be a defunct paper factory somewhere nearby with broken windows.

But it hadn't been paper blowing past me—it had been
people
. Or what had been left of them, anyway. And that day, if I'd not made it out before nightfall, I would have become one of these… these…

dehydrated rinds of human matter, too.

I backed away. I didn't need to peer beneath any more coats to know those husks were all that was left of Rocky O'Bannion and fifteen of his men, but I did anyway. I lifted three more, and that was all I could take. The men hadn't even been able to see what was killing them. I wondered if the Shades had attacked simultaneously, waiting for all of them to get out of their cars, or if only the front two men had stepped out of each car and then, when the two in the rear had seen them go down, sucked into little scraps of whatever it was the Shade palate found indigestible in humans, they too had lunged out, guns blazing, only to fall victim to the same unseen foe. I wondered if the Shades were clever enough to wait, or merely driven by mindless, insatiable hunger.

If they'd gotten me that first night I'd been lost,
I'd
have been able to see what was coming—great big oily darknesses—but I'd not have known I was a Null, or even a
sidhe-seer
, and although I probably would have raised my hands to try to fend it off, I wasn't sure the Shades had a tangible form that I could touch to freeze.

I made a mental note to ask Barrons.

I stared at the four cars, at the piles that were all that remained of sixteen men: clothing, shoes, jewelry, guns; there were lots of guns. They must have been packing at least two each; blue steel littered the pavement around the cars. Apparently Shades killed quickly or all the guns had silencers, because I hadn't heard a single shot last night.

No matter that these men had been criminals and killers, no matter that once before they'd wiped out two entire families, I could not absolve myself of their deaths. By omission or commission, my hand was in it, and I would carry it inside me for the rest of my life in a place that I would eventually learn to live with, but never learn to like.

****

Fiona arrived at eleven-fifty to open the bookstore. By mid-afternoon, the day had turned overcast, drizzly, and cold, so I flipped on the gas logs in the fireplace in the rear conversation area, curled up with some fashion magazines, and watched the customers come and go, wondering what kind of lives they had and why I couldn't have one like that, too.

Fiona chatted brightly with everyone but me and rang up orders until eight o'clock on the dot, when she locked up the store and left.

Mere hours after its urbane owner had killed sixteen men, all was business as usual at Barrons Books and Baubles again, which begged the question: Who was the
stone-colder
killer—the overzealous ex-boxer turned mobster, or the car-collecting bookstore owner?

The mobster was dead. The very-much-alive bookstore owner stepped in from the rain, a little later than usual but no worse for the wear, at half past nine that night. After relocking the front door, he stopped at the cash register to check on notes Fiona had left him about two special orders placed that day, then joined me, taking an armchair opposite my perch on the sofa. His blood-red silk shirt was splattered with rain and molded to his hard body like a damp second skin. Black trousers clung to his long muscular legs, and he was wearing black boots that had wicked-looking silver toes and heels. He had on that heavy silver Celtic wrist cuff again that made me think of arcane chants and ancient stone circles, complemented by a black-and-silver torque at his throat. He radiated his usual absurd amount of energy and dark, carnal heat.

I looked him straight in the eye, and he gazed straight back at me, and neither of us said a word. He didn't say,
I'm sure you saw the cars out back,Ms. Lane
and I didn't say,
You cold-blooded bastard,
how could you
? And he didn't counter with,
You're alive, aren't you
? So I didn't remind him that he'd been the one to jeopardize my life to begin with. I have no idea how long we sat there like that, but we had a complete conversation with our eyes. There was knowledge in Jericho Barrons' gaze, a bottomless pit of it. In fact, for a moment, I imagined I saw The Tree Itself in there, smothered with delicious, shiny red apples just begging to be eaten, but it was only a reflection of flames and crimson silk on irises so dark they served as a black mirror.

There was one thing we hadn't covered in our wordless communique that I just had to know. "Did you even think twice, Barrons? Did you feel any hesitation at all?" When he didn't answer, I pressed, "For just a few moments, did you wonder about their families? Or worry that maybe one of them was a last-minute substitute who'd never done anything worse in his life than steal some kid's lunch in fourth grade?" If eyes were daggers, mine would have killed. These were all things I'd been thinking about throughout the long day; that somewhere out there were wives and children whose husbands and fathers were never coming home again, who would never know what had happened to them. Should I gather their personal effects—minus their ghastly remains—and ship them anonymously to the police department? I understood the grim comfort of knowing for a fact that Alina was dead, of having seen her body and laid her in the ground. If she'd simply disappeared, I'd have gone through every day of the rest of my life driven by an unquenchable, desperate hope, searching every face in every crowd, wondering if she was alive out there somewhere. Praying she wasn't in the hands of some psycho.

"Tomorrow," said Barrens, "you'll go to The National Museum." I hadn't realized I was holding my breath, hoping for an answer that might assuage some of the guilt I'd been stewing in, until it came out in a derisive snort. Typical Barrons. Ask for an answer—get an order.

"What happened to 'You will remain here until I return,Ms. Lane ?' " I mocked. "What about Mallucé

and his men? Have you forgotten about that little problem?" O'Bannion might be gone, and I might have a way of protecting myself from the Fae, but there was still one very pissed-off vampire on the loose out there.

"Mallucé was summoned away last night by someone whose orders he apparently could not, or would not, refuse. His followers expect him to be gone for several days, perhaps as long as a week," said Barrons.

My battered spirits lifted a little. That meant, for a few days at least, I could venture out into the city and move about almost like a normal person again, with only the Fae to worry about. I wanted to go back to Alina's apartment and decide just how much damage I was willing to inflict on it to further my search for her journal, I wanted to buy more snacks for my room in case I got stuck up there again, and I'd been itching to pick up a cheap SoundDock for my iPod. Earbuds were fast becoming a thing of my past; I was turning into too paranoid a person to stand not being able to hear the approach of whatever might jeopardize my life next. But at least I could listen to music in my room if I had a SoundDock, and since I was saving money by not paying for a room anymore, I'd neatly justified the purchase. "Why am I going to the museum?"

"I want you to scour it for OOPs, as you call them. I've long wondered if there are Fae artifacts being hidden in plain view, catalogued as something else. Now that I have you, I can test that theory."

"Don't you know what all the OOPs are, and what they look like?" I asked. He shook his head. "If only it were that simple. But not even the Fae themselves recall all their own relics." He gave a short, dark laugh. "I suspect it comes from living too long. Why bother to remember or keep track of things? Why care? You live today. You'll live tomorrow. Humans die. The world changes. You don't. Details,Ms. Lane ," he said, "go the way of emotions in time." I blinked. "Huh?"

"The Fae, Ms. Lane," he said. "They aren't like humans. Extraordinary longevity has made them something else. You must never forget that."