Feverborn (24 page)

I’d once loved having that inner lake. Now I despised it.

A flood of water exploded inside me, gushing up, icy and black. I choked and sputtered and my eyes shot open.

“What is it,” Ryodan demanded.

I swallowed surprisingly dryly, for all the water inside me. “Indigestion,” I said. “I don’t think this is going to work.”

Ryodan said, “We’ve got all night.”

And I had no doubt he would sit here all night with me, and make sure I sat here, too.

I closed my eyes again and sat very still, not reaching, merely feeling tentatively. What was going on? My lake had never exploded up to meet me like that, nearly drowning me.

Waters rippled and stirred. Deep down, carving chasms in my soul, there was a rapid, rushing current. I didn’t like it. I’d never felt it before. My lake had always been still, serene, glassy, disturbed only when things of enormous power floated to its surface.

Yet now I felt as if there was something in there that contained a vicious undertow. And I might get swept away by it if I wasn’t careful.

I opened my eyes. “Just exactly how do you think the Book could possibly be of any use to us?”

“We’ve been through this.”

“I can’t read it. I won’t open it.”

“Fear of a thing,” Barrons said, “is often bigger than the thing.”

“And if the damn ‘thing’ is even a tenth the size of my fear of it, that’s bad enough,” I retorted. “You stood in the street with me and watched what it did to Derek O’Bannion. It came after you, too. You sensed its power. And you’re the one that told me if I took even one spell from it, I wouldn’t ever be the same.”

“I said if you ‘took’ a spell. It’s possible there’s a way to
access information without taking one. It’s conceivable you could read it without utilizing an ounce of magic. Like Cruce. You know the First Language.”

Was it possible? His contention didn’t sound entirely implausible. I did know the First Language, there inside me in the tatters of the king’s memory. But those memories were part of the Book itself. If I reached for my knowledge of the First Language without it being offered, did that mean I was opening the Book? “I’ve always felt that simply opening it of my own will would doom me.”

“It’s already been open. You closed it.”

I hadn’t thought about any of this in months. I’d shoved every memory of the
Sinsar Dubh
into a far, dark corner of my mind. He was right. The Book had been open inside me that afternoon when he found me staring sightlessly outside BB&B, lost in my own head, debating whether I dare risk taking a spell from the
Sinsar Dubh
to free his son.

But
I
hadn’t opened it. It had
been
open, the Book offering. Big difference.

Might I have read the spell to save his son, scanning only the words without disturbing the magic, without getting turned into a soulless, evil psychopath? Books could be read. Spells had to be
worked
. Was information one thing and magic entirely another? I wasn’t sure I could split hairs that finely. I wasn’t sure the Book would either.

Still, Barrons had a point. Fear of a thing was often worse than the thing itself. I’d been afraid of him once. Now, I couldn’t even conceive of such a reaction to this man.

I wanted desperately to believe the Book wasn’t the great, all-knowing, all-spying evil I’d been assuming it was.

Unfortunately, I’d have to face it to find out.

Maybe it was silent because it was gone. Maybe my lake had swallowed and neutralized
it
. I was inundated with maybes lately. Limp noodley things you could do nothing with.

I sighed and closed my eyes, no longer pretending. I wanted to know. What was at the bottom now? What was going on in the vacuum of dread I carried in my gut every blasted day?

I dove deep, kicked in hard, rejecting fear. I had Barrons and Ryodan in the room with me. What more could I ask as I faced my inner demon?

I swam, holding my breath at first, diving into one towering wave after the next, getting drenched by violently churning water capped by thick foamy brine. I ran out of breath and started struggling against the sensation of suffocation. I forced myself to relax like I had the day I stepped through the Unseelie king’s great mirror in their boudoir and my lungs froze, knowing I had to breathe differently there. Now, I drew the water into my lungs, became one with it.

The waves fought me, buffeted me, as if trying to expel me, but it only strengthened my resolve. Was this why I’d nearly drowned when I first sought it? Because the Book no longer had all that much power—perhaps never had—and didn’t want me to figure that out? And it was throwing up some huge, watery smoke screen to keep me from discovering the truth? Maybe my adamant rejection of it the night it turned me invisible had weakened it somehow. That was, after all, the night it had ceased speaking. And maybe I’d turned visible again because the single spell it offered had been a temporary one, with a finite, albeit damned convenient end date.

I dove deeper, inhaling my icy lake, felt it rushing through my body, filling me with
sidhe
-seer power. I kicked and thrust and swam, following a gold beacon, forced my way through the chilling undertow and finally drifted lightly down into a dark, shadowy cavern.

Last time I’d been here, the
Sinsar Dubh
had been crooning to me like a lover, welcoming me, inviting me in.

A towering wall exploded in front of me.

I shattered it with a fist.

Another!

I kicked through it, swinging and cursing.

Wall after wall sprung up and I blasted through them as if my life depended on it.

Whatever the Book didn’t want me to see, I was going to see.

This was ending.

Here, tonight.

I wasn’t leaving this cavern until I knew what I was dealing with.

Wall after wall tumbled, no match for my fury, until there it was: an elaborately carved ebony pedestal upon which lay a shining golden Book.

Open. Just like in the nightmare I’d recently had.

I stood motionless in the cavern.

So—it could open itself. I knew that. No big.

I’d closed it before.

I would close it again.

But first I’d see if it really was possible for me to look at it, understand the words, without using the spell.

Still…if it wasn’t—and I turned into a homicidal maniac?

I almost wavered then. Stood, dripping water for a time, having a hard time persuading myself to move forward.

I could walk away right now. Say I couldn’t find it. Storm back out of my head and let sleeping dogs lie.

I sighed.

And live forever with this eternal instability? Be undermined day after day by fear of the unknown? It was past time for me to face my demons.

Clenching my jaw, I stalked to the pedestal and forced myself to look down. Half expecting I wouldn’t understand a single word. That perhaps there wouldn’t even
be
any words there. That perhaps my churning
sidhe
-seer waters had stripped it clean of all forbidden magic.

The blood in my veins turned to ice.

“No,” I breathed.

I would be evil if I’d used it.

I would be crazy.

I would be a psychopath.

I wasn’t any of those things.

At least I didn’t think I was.

“No, damn it, no!” I said again, backing away.

Not a murmur from the
Sinsar Dubh
, not a chuckle, not a jibe.

Just me alone with the hollow echo of my footfalls.

And my failure.

I’d had no problem reading and understanding the words carved into the Book’s ornate golden pages. The First Language
had flowed as easily as English across my mental tongue.

And those words had seemed as familiar as a beloved and often repeated nursery rhyme.

The
Sinsar Dubh
was open to a spell to resurrect the dead.

J
ada moved through the crisp cool dawn in perfect sync with her environment, eyes closed, feeling her way through the slipstream.

Shazam had taught her that all things emitted frequency, that living beings were essentially receivers that could pick up the vibrations if they could only achieve clarity of mind. Meaning no ego, no past or future, no thoughts at all. Unadulterated sensation. He contended humans lacked the ability to empty themselves, that they were too superficial, and that shallowness was marbled with identity, time/ego obsessed, and given the complexity of her brain, he’d doubted that she would ever get there.

Given the complexity of her brain, she’d been quite certain she would.

And had.

Becoming nothing and no one was something she knew how to do.

Now, she heard with some indefinable sense the dense, simplistic grumble of bricks ahead, the complex whir of moving life, the sleek song of the River Liffey, the soft susurrus of the breeze, and turned minutely to avoid obstacles, melding with the razor edge of buildings.

She was being hunted.

She’d passed small clusters of angry, armed humans, clutching papers with her picture. Mostly men, determined to gain power and ensure a degree of stability in this brutally unstable city by capturing the legendary
Sinsar Dubh
.

Fools. They felt nothing more than a brisk wind as she passed, on her way to her sacred place. Her bird’s-eye view. The water tower where she’d once crouched in a long black leather coat, sword in her hand, and belly-laughed, drunk on the many wonders of life.

As she pulled herself up the final rung and vaulted onto the platform, the smell of coffee and doughnuts slammed into her, and although her face betrayed nothing, inside she scowled.

She dropped down from the slipstream to tell Ryodan to get the hell off her water tower. They weren’t supposed to meet for another few hours and this was her turf.

But it was Mac she saw, sprawled out on the ledge as if she was perfectly at home, slung low in the old bucket car seat Jada had dragged up there herself, ball cap angled over her badly highlighted hair to shadow her face. She was dressed nearly identical to Jada, in jeans, combat boots, and a leather jacket.

“What are you doing on my water tower?” Jada demanded.

Mac looked up at her. “I don’t see your name on it anywhere.”

“You know it’s my water tower. I used to talk about it.”

“Sorry, dude,” Mac said mildly.

“Don’t fecking ‘dude’ me,” Jada said sharply, then inhaled long and slow. “There are plenty of other places for you to be. Find your own. Have an original thought.”

“I watched the Unseelie princess kill one of the Nine about an hour ago,” Mac said, as if she hadn’t even heard her. “She’s carrying human weapons now. Marching with a small army. They shot the shit out of Fade. Started to rip his body apart.”

“And?” Jada said, forgetting her irritation that Mac was here. She’d tried to strike an alliance with the Unseelie princess but the powerful Fae had chosen Ryodan instead, striking a deal for three of the princes’ heads. Apparently that alliance was over, if she was now killing the Nine.

“He disappeared. The princess saw it happen.”

Jada went still. She knew the Nine returned. Somehow. She didn’t know the nuts and bolts of it but she certainly wanted to. “Why are you telling me this? Your loyalties are with them, not me.”

“They’re not mutually exclusive. My loyalties are to you as well. Coffee?” Mac nudged a thermos toward her.

Jada ignored it.

“Got doughnuts, too. They’re soggy, but hey, it’s sugar. It’s all good.”

Jada turned to leave.

“I saw Alina the other night.”

Her feet rooted. “Impossible,” she said.

“I know. But I did.”

Jada relaxed each muscle by section of her body, starting with her head and working down. Opponents tended to focus at eye level, so she always eradicated signs of obvious tension there first. She didn’t want to talk about this. She didn’t think about this anymore. “I watched her die,” she said finally.

“Did you? Or did you leave before it was over?” Mac held out a doughnut.

Jada ate it in two bites, wondering if this was some kind of twisted joke Mac was playing on her. Then, in a single swallow, she tossed back the little plastic cup of coffee Mac had offered.

“Fuck,” she exploded. “That was hot.”

“Duh. It’s coffee,” Mac said, arching a brow.

“Give me another doughnut. Where did you find them?”

“Little vendor a few blocks from BB&B. And I didn’t.” She frowned. “I had to ask Barrons to go get breakfast, and believe me, every time I ask for anything, I get this freaking lecture on how he’s not my fetch-it boy. I have to slink through the damn streets to go anywhere, hiding from everyone. They’re hunting me.”

“Despite my paper retracting the accusation, they’re hunting me, too,” Jada admitted. “We had a small mob at the abbey yesterday.”

“What did you do?”

“I wasn’t there. My women told them none of the accusations were true. Although they didn’t believe it, my
sidhe-
seers are formidable and the mob’s numbers were small. They’ll be back in greater force at some point,” she said, not certain why she was even having a conversation.

But sliding through dawn over Dublin this morning, for the first time since she’d returned, she’d felt…something…something to do with being here, home, back, and that maybe, just maybe, everything would work out all right. She’d find a place for herself and Shazam here.

She took the second doughnut Mac was holding out. “They’re not bad,” she admitted, eating slowly enough to taste it this time.

“Better than protein bars. I hear music coming from the black holes. Do you hear it?”

Jada looked at her. “What kind of music?”

“Not good. It’s pretty awful, frankly. I couldn’t hear anything for the past few days, but once the Unseelie-flesh high wore off, it was there. Not all of them. The small ones give off a kind of innocuous hum, but the larger ones give me a serious migraine. Did you see Alina gouge something into the pavement?”

Jada said nothing.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Mac said.

“I did it,” Jada said coldly. “My action.”

“I’m not saying you didn’t. I’m saying there were extenuating circumstances. Just trying to unskew your self-perception.”

“My perception is not skewed.”

“You have responsibility dysmorphia syndrome.”

“You should talk.”

“You were a child. And that old bitch was an adult. And she abused you. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I don’t need absolution.”

“My point exactly.”

“Why are you on my water tower again?” she said icily.

“Best view in the city.”

There was that. Jada crouched on the edge and looked down. “I didn’t see her gouge anything into the pavement.”

“Then she may have lived,” Mac said slowly.

“No. Absolutely not. Rowena never would have let me leave until she was dead. She always made me stay until the last.” She looked at Mac. “Alina’s not alive. Don’t let someone play you.”

Then she stood and turned for the ladder.

“If you see someone who looks like her in the streets, do me a favor and leave her alone,” Mac said. “Until I sort this out.”

Jada stood motionless a moment, not liking anything about what Mac had just told her. Alina was dead. And if there was something out there masquerading as her, it would only bring trouble. “Do me a favor,” she said coolly.

“Anything.”

“Stay the fuck off my water tower in the future.”

As she slid up into the slipstream, she heard Mac say, “When I look at you, Jada, I don’t see a woman who killed my sister. I see a woman who got hurt that night in the alley every bit as badly as Alina did.”

Jada shoved herself up into the beauty of the slipstream and vanished into the morning.

“Breakfast?” Ryodan said when Jada entered his office.

“Why is everyone trying to feed me this morning?”

“Who else tried to feed you?”

“We’re not friends,” Jada said. “Don’t pretend we are.”

“Who shit in your coffee this morning?”

“And you don’t say things like that. You’re Ryodan.”

“I know who I am.”

“What is
with
everyone this morning?” she said, exasperated.

“How would I know. You haven’t told me who everyone is.”

“Don’t talk to me. Just finish the tattoo.”

“After you eat.” He took a silver lid off a tray and shoved a platter toward her.

She stared at it. “Eggs,” she murmured. She hadn’t seen them in such a long time.

And bacon and sausage and potatoes. Oh, my.

“Try the yogurt. It has something extra in it,” he said.

“Poison?”

“A protein mix.”

She gave him a cool look and shook her head.

“Food is energy. Energy is a weapon. It would be illogical to refuse it.”

Jada dropped into a chair across the desk from him and picked up the fork. He had a valid point. Besides, eggs. Bacon. Yogurt. There was even an orange. The aroma of it all was incredible.

She ate quickly, efficiently, shoveling it down in silence, barely chewing. He was finishing her tattoo today. She was vibrating with energy, afraid he might change his mind for some reason. When she’d polished off the last crumb, she shoved the platter out of the way, yanked her shirt over her head, unbuttoned the top two buttons of her jeans and looked at him expectantly.

He didn’t move.

“What?” she demanded.

“Turn around,” he said. “I’m working on your back, not your front.” His silver eyes were ice.

She turned around backward in the chair, hooking her ankles around the rear legs, resting her arms on the slatted back.

“Relax,” he murmured as he settled into a chair behind her.

“I’m not tense,” she said coolly.

He ran his fingers along the two tight ridges of muscle along her spine. “This is your idea of supple. It’s a bloody rock. It’ll hurt more if you don’t relax.”

Closing her eyes, she willed herself smooth, long, lithe. “Pain doesn’t compute.”

“It should. It’s a warning your body needs to recognize.”

After a few minutes of his hands at the base of her spine, she felt that peculiar languor spreading through her body and snapped, “Stop doing that.”

“You keep tensing.”

“I do not.”

He traced his fingers along her spine again, delineating the hard ridges. “You want to have this argument.”

“You’re tattooing my skin, not my muscles.” She breathed easy and slow, relaxed again. It was merely her eagerness to see the ink done, nothing more.

“You’re wrong about that.”

She wasn’t sure if he was skimming her mind or not, if he meant her muscles or her eagerness. “I can relax my own muscles.”

“Keep bitching, I stop working.”

“You like that, don’t you—having the power to push people around?”

“That’s why I’m giving it away.”

She closed her eyes and said nothing. Was that how he thought of the tattoo he was etching into her skin? That he was giving his power to her? She wondered again what would happen when she called IISS. Precisely how much of a leash she would have him on, exactly how smart and powerful the great Ryodan really was.

She hoped enormously.

“Did you ever see anything like the black holes while you were in the Silvers?” he said after a time.

She shook her head.

“Talk, don’t move. This must be precise.”

“I saw many things. Nothing like those holes.”

“How many worlds?”

“We’re not friends.”

“What are we?”

“You asked me that before. I don’t repeat myself.”

He laughed softly. Then, “Stretch long. There’s a hollow at the base of your spine. I need it flattened.”

She did, then one of his hands was on her hip, stretching her out even more.

Then she felt the tip of a knife at her back, followed by a deep burn of a slice, and a sudden warm gush of blood.

“Nearly there,” he murmured.

Prick after prick of needles in a rapid dance across her skin.

Time spun out in a strange, dreamy way, and she relaxed
more deeply than even she was capable of achieving on her own lately. It wasn’t entirely bad, she decided. What he did to her was nearly as good as sleep. Rebooted her engines, took her down to ground zero and fueled her up again.

Then she felt his tongue at the base of her spine and shot out of the chair so fast she knocked it over and stumbled into the wall. She spun and shot him a furious look, rubbing an elbow that would undoubtedly be bruised. “What the bloody hell are you doing?” she snarled.

“Finishing the tattoo.”

“With your tongue?”

“There’s an enzyme in my saliva that closes wounds.”

“You didn’t lick me last time.”

“I didn’t cut as deeply last time.” He gestured at a mirror above a small cabinet in an alcove. “Look.”

Warily, she turned her back to the mirror and peered over her shoulder. Blood was running down her spine, dripping on her jeans, on the floor.

“Put a Band-Aid on it.”

“Don’t be a fool.”

“You’re not licking me.”

“You’re being absurd. It’s a method. Nothing more. The wound must heal before I set the final mark. Sit the fuck down. Unless you have a good reason you don’t want my saliva closing the wound.”

He’d removed them both from the equation with his words. Saliva. Closing a wound. Not Ryodan’s tongue on her back. Which was exactly what she should have done—seen it analytically. Many animals had unusual enzymes in their spit.
She was bleeding profusely, and hadn’t even known he’d cut so deep.

She picked the chair up, repositioned it and slid back into the seat. “Go on,” she said tonelessly. “You startled me. You should have told me what you were doing.”

“I’m going to close the wound with my saliva,” he said slowly and pointedly.

Then she felt his tongue at the base of her spine, the stubble of his shadow-beard against her skin. His hands were on her hips, his hair brushing her back. She closed her eyes and sank deep into nothing inside her. Moments later he was done. He traced a final emblem with his needles and told her she was free to go.