Shadowfever

  “I did as the angel instructed. ’Twas your mother who let it out!”

  “What happened the night the Book escaped? Tell me everything!”

  “You are an abomination. The doom of us all. ” The light in her eyes was matched by a craftier smile. “I’ll die here, well I ken it, but I’ll not be giving the likes of you any peace. Isla was a traitor and a whore, and you’re more of the same. ” She grabbed my hand and thrust her small frame forward on the spear, twisting it as she went. “Ahhhh!” she cried. Blood gushed from her mouth.

  She died sudden, mouth open, eyes wide.

  Disgusted, I dropped her and stepped back, watched her fall to the floor. The Sinsar Dubh whumped to the floor. I stepped back hastily.

  Behind me, Barrons was roaring. I glanced over my shoulder. He was hammering at an invisible barrier, his eyes wild, shouting.

  “It’s okay,” I told him. “I have it under control. I saw through it. ” I was trembling, cold and hot and nauseated. It had all been so real. It felt as if I’d killed my mother, even though my brain knew I hadn’t. For a short time, I’d believed the lies. And my heart hurt as if I’d lost a family I’d never had.

  I looked back at Rowena. She stared up at the ceiling, eyes empty, mouth slack.

  The Sinsar Dubh lay between us, closed, seemingly inert, a massive black tome with many locks.

  I had no doubt it had chosen Rowena for her knowledge of wards so she could carry it past Barrons’ protective spells, straight into the heart of our heavily warded world.

  I thought back, isolating the moment the illusion had begun. From the instant I’d stepped out of the Silver tonight, nothing had been real.

  Rowena and the Sinsar Dubh had been waiting to ambush me in the bookstore the moment I’d appeared. It had skimmed my mind, picking out the details I would find most convincing.

  I’d never left the study, never followed Barrons into the rear conversation area, or sat on the couch, or met my mother. It had “tasted me” on many occasions. It knew me. And it had played me like a virtuoso, sawing away at one heartstring after the next.

  Creating a “father” for me had been a masterstroke. It had married memories to longings and given me what I wanted most: family, safety, freedom from crushing choices.

  All to get me to hand over the amulet, to con me into placing the one thing capable of deceiving both of us into Rowena’s hands.

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  And if I had—oh, God, if I had! I would never have known from that moment forward what was real and what wasn’t.

  I’d been so close to doing it, but the Book had made two mistakes. I’d fed it a thought about Barrons and it had immediately altered him to bring him in line with my expectations. Then I’d fed it a false memory, amplified it with the amulet, and it had played it right back at me.

  I had no doubt the real Barrons had been walled off from me the entire time. The Barrons who had stood beside me in the bookstore had been an illusion the Book had constantly tweaked, according to the feedback it had been getting from me.

  Almost had you … it purred.

  “Almost only counts in hand grenades and horseshoes. ” I stared down at the Sinsar Dubh, with its black cover and many complicated locks. But something wasn’t right. It had never looked right to me.

  I consulted my memories. I remembered the day the Unseelie King had created it. This was not what he’d made. “Show me what is true,” I murmured.

  When the Sinsar Dubh’s true form was revealed, I gasped. Sung into existence from slabs of purest gold and shards of obsidian, it was exquisite. I’d summoned crimson stones from one of the galaxies the Hunters liked to fly that housed tiny dancing flames. And although I’d put locks on my Book, top and bottom, they were decorative, never meant to secure it. My encryption was protection enough.

  Or so I’d thought.

  I’d made it lovely. I’d hoped the beauty of its binding might temper the horror of its contents.

  I smiled sadly. For a brief time I’d believed I was Isla’s daughter. No such luck. I was the Unseelie King. And it was long past time for my battle with my darker half to end. According to the prophecy as I understood it, I’d triumphed over my “monster within. ” It had been my hunger for illusion, to lose myself in a life I’d never had.

  I fisted my hand around the amulet. It blazed with blue-black light. I was epic. I was strong. I had created this horror and I would destroy it. I would not be defeated.

  Not defeat, MacKayla. I want you to come home.

  “I am home. My bookstore. ”

  Is nothing. I will show you wonders beyond your imagining. Your body is strong. You will hold me and we will live. Dance. Fuck. Feast. It will be grand. We will K’Vruck the world.

  “I’m not holding you. Ever. ”

  You were made for me. I for you. Two for tea and t-t-t-tea for two.

  “I’ll kill myself first. ” If I thought it might come to that, I would.

  And let me win? You would die and let me rule? Allow me to encourage you.

  “That’s not what you want, and you know it. ”

  What do you think I want, sweet MacKayla?

  “You want me to forgive you. ”

  I have no need of absolution.

  “You want me to take you back. ”

  In, sweet thing, take me in. Warm and wet like sex is warm and wet.

  “You want to be the king. You want to turn us evil again. ”

  Evil, good, create, destroy. Puny minds. Puny caves. Time, MacKayla. Time absolves.

  “Time does not define the act. Time is impartial; it neither condemns nor absolves. The action contains intent, and intent is where the definition lies. ”

  Bore me with human law.

  “Enlighten you with universal law. ”

  You convict me of evil intent?

  “Unequivocally. ”

  In your eyes I am a monster?

  “Absolutely. ”

  I should be—how do you say?—put down?

  “That’s what I’m here for. ”

  What, then, does that make you, MacKayla?

  “A repentant king. I eviscerated my evil, imprisoned you once before, and I will again. ”

  How you amuse.

  “Laugh all you want. ”

  You believe you are my maker.

  “I know I am. ”

  My sweet MacKayla, you are such a fool. You did not make me. I made you.

  A chill slid down my spine. Its voice oozed satisfaction and mockery, as if it were watching me head straight toward a train wreck and enjoying every minute of it. My eyes narrowed. “Not falling for the chicken/egg discussion. Your evil didn’t make me the king. I was the king, and I turned evil. I wised up and dumped my evil into a book. You were never supposed to live. And I plan to rectify that. ”

  Not chickens and eggs. A human woman. And you—a tiny little embryo.

  My mouth opened on a retort, but I hesitated.

  Of all the lies it had woven so far, this one held a startling ring of truth. Why?

  What I told you before was true. I took Isla to escape the abbey. And she was pregnant. I did not expect to find you in her. I did not know how humans replicated. As I used her to kill the other humans who had dared to restrain me—ME, locked in a cold stone vacuum for an eternity of nothingness, have you any idea the HELL?—there you were. The wonder. Unformed life in her body. Mine for the taking. I marveled at the beauty of you. Unshaped, unfettered by scruple, unhampered by human weaknesses. Your race and its obsession with sin! You chain yourselves to the whipping post because you fear the sky. It is those chains, those limits, that make the bodies I take so fragile, tear them apart so soon after I possess them.

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  But you were different. You hungered, you slept, you dreamed, but you were pure. You knew no right or wrong; you were empty. You did no
t resist me. You were open. I filled you. I nestled down inside you, replicated myself and left it there. You are my child. You suckled at my breast, MacKayla. I was your mother’s milk; I gave you your defenses against the world. On that day, before your body could sustain itself separately, before you ever had the chance to do something so stupid and small as become human, I claimed you. I gave birth to you. Not Isla.

  “You’re lying. I’m the king,” I said flatly.

  You seek truth? Can you face it?

  I said nothing.

  The truth is within you. It always has been. It is there in the one place you refuse to go.

  I narrowed my eyes. Perhaps I’d been congratulating myself on subduing my inner monster too soon. Don’t talk to it, beautiful girl, the dreamy-eyed guy had said, long ago in Chester’s, long before I’d met the fear dorcha. Never talk to it. I wondered if he’d meant the Sinsar Dubh then. Too late. I was waist-deep in quicksand. Struggling would only hasten my descent.

  You have only ever taken what I offered, what I floated to the surface. Dive in, MacKayla. Graze the bottom of your lake. You will find me down there, shining in all my glory. Lift my lid. Know the truth of your existence. If I am evil, we are evil. If I should be “put down,” so must you. There is no sentence you can cry upon me that you must not carry out upon yourself. There is no point in fighting me. You are me. Not a king. Me. Always have been. Always will be. You can’t eviscerate me. I am your soul.

  “Those runes I found are my sidhe-seer gifts. ”

  From the walls of the Unseelie prison? The universe abhors a boring liar. Flamboyance, MacKayla. Get some if you wish to spend an eternity with me.

  “It’s because I’m the king. The good part of him. I have his memories to prove it. ”

  We possess memories from a portion of his existence. It was impossible for him to dump his knowledge without imbuing my pages with the essence of the being that created them. I was sentient from the moment he finished scribing my pages. Do you recall anything that happened before the day the queen denied the king his concubine’s immortality?

  I turned inward, searching.

  There was nothing. A white expanse of emptiness. It was as if life began that day.

  It did. It was the day he wrote his first spell of creation, performed the first of his experiments. We know his life from that day on. We know nothing of his existence before then. And we know little of his life since—only when I tracked and glimpsed him. You are not the king. You are my child, MacKayla. I am mother, father, lover, all. It is time to come home.

  Was it possible that it was telling me the truth? I wasn’t the concubine, wasn’t the king? I was just a human who’d been touched by evil before birth?

  More than touched. As the king poured himself into me, I am in you. Your body grew around me like a tree absorbs a nail and now waits to be reunited. You miss me. You are hollow without me. Haven’t you always known it? Felt empty, hungry for more? If I am evil, so are you. That, my sweet MacKayla, is your monster within. Or not.

  “If you made me, where have you been for the past twenty-three years?”

  Waiting for the mewling infant to grow strong before we reunited.

  “You needed me to flip. That’s why you tried to kill the people I loved. ”

  Pain distills. The clarifying emotion.

  “You screwed up. You came too soon. I can deal with pain, and I haven’t flipped. ”

  Lift my cover and embrace your dreams. You want Alina back? Snap of a finger. Isla and your father? They are yours. Dani as a young, innocent child with a bright future? One word can make it so. The walls back up? We will do it immediately. Walls are no hindrance to us. We pass through them.

  “It would all be a lie. ”

  Not a lie, a different path, equally real. Embrace me and you will understand. Do you want the spell to unmake his child? Is that what you want? The key to releasing Jericho Barrons from the eternal hell of watching his son suffer? He has been tortured for so long. Has it not been long enough?

  I caught my breath. Of all the things it might say, this was the one thing that tempted me.

  I am not without mercy, MacKayla, the Sinsar Dubh said gently. Compassion is not beyond me. I see it in you. I learn. I evolve. Perhaps you do have the good parts of the king in you after all. Perhaps your humanity will temper me. You will make me kinder, more forgiving. I will make you stronger, less breakable.

  Memories swarmed through my mind. I knew the Book was sifting through them, manipulating me. It had found the images Barrons showed me in the desert of the child dying in our arms. It embellished upon what Barrons had told me about his enemies, nearly drowned me in images of barbaric men torturing and killing the child again and again.

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  Behind those images, a father stalked through eternity, hunting for a way to release his son and grant him peace.

  And gain it himself.

  He gave you everything and has never asked you for a thing in return. Until this. He will die for you over and over. And all he wants you to do is free his son.

  There was nothing it had just said that I could argue with.

  Open me, MacKayla. Embrace me. Use me for good, out of love. How could a thing given from love be bad? You said it yourself—it is the intention that defines the action.

  And there it was in a nutshell, the ultimate temptation: to pick up the Book, crack it open, and read it, looking for the spell so Barrons could unmake his child, because I would be doing it for all the right reasons. Even Barrons had said evil wasn’t a state of being, it was a choice.

  The Unseelie King had not trusted himself to retain the power contained within the pages of the Sinsar Dubh. How could I?

  I stared at it, debating.

  Irony, perfect definition: Barrons had said, that for which I want to possess it, I would no longer want once I possessed it.

  If I picked it up—even with the most merciful of reasons in my heart—would I still care about releasing the child once I raised the cover? Would I care about Jack and Rainey, about the world, about Barrons himself?

  Foolish fears, my sweet MacKayla. You have free will. I am only a chisel. You are the sculptor. Use me. Shape your world. Be a saint if you wish: Plant flowers, save children, champion small animals.

  Was it that easy? Could it be true?

  I could make the world perfect.

  It’s an imperfect world, Mac, I could almost hear Barrons roaring.

  It was. Royally screwed up. Packed with injustices that needed to be righted, bad people and hard times. I could make everyone happy.

  You have the amulet. With it you will always have control over me. You will always be stronger than I. I am merely a book. You are alive.

  It was just a book.

  Take me, use me. It is as Barrons has always told you—it is how you go on that defines you. You make the choices. His child suffers. There is so much suffering in this world. You can make it all go away.

  I stared at it, hands flexing. That was the hard thing. The pain. He and his son suffered endlessly and would continue to do so every day, eternally. Unless I could get the spell of unmaking I’d promised him.

  I have such a spell. We will lay the child to rest together. You will be his savior. We will free him now, this very night. Open me, MacKayla. Open yourself. I have been unguided. You will teach me.

  I bit my lip, frowning. Could I guide the Sinsar Dubh? Would my humanity give me the edge I needed? I turned inward, searching my heart, my soul. What I found there straightened my spine and squared my shoulders.

  “I can,” I said. “I can change you. I can make you better. ”

  Yes, yes, do it now. Take me, hold me, open me, it whispered. Love you, MacKayla. Love me.

  I couldn’t wait another moment. I reached for the Sinsar Dubh.

  48

  The Book was icy beneath my hands, but the
flames in the rubies warmed my soul.

  I was touching the Sinsar Dubh.

  The contact took my breath away. We were twins separated at birth, rejoined. I’d been waiting for it all my life. With it in my hands, I was complete. I hugged it to my chest, shivering, trembling with emotion. A dark song began to build inside me. The Book was a finger and I was the wine-damp rim of a fine crystal goblet. It slid round and round, playing a melody that came from deep within my compromised soul.

  I ran my hands lovingly over the jeweled cover.

  I felt the immense power it contained. It inflated me, swelled inside me, made me drunk on it, giddy. The baby I’d once been, who’d known no right or wrong, was still in there. Unborn, we have yet to develop morality. I suspect there’s some part of us that remains that way until death.

  We choose. That’s what it’s all about.

  When I stopped embracing it, held it away to admire it, the crimson rune that had been hidden in one of my palms pulsed wetly, expanded, and latched tiny suckers onto it, binding the covers closed.

  WHAT ARE YOU DOING! the Sinsar Dubh screamed.

  “Making you better. ” I began to cry as I scooped another bloody rune from the glassy black surface of my lake. I wanted the Book like I wanted to breathe. Now I knew why it had hunted me. I was its perfect host. We were made for each other. With it, I would never fear anything. Rejecting it was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. More bitter still was the knowledge that with each rune I pressed into the boards and binding, I was condemning Jericho and his son to continue living in an eternal hell.

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  HOW DARE YOU DECEIVE ME?

  “The nerve of me. ” I wanted to tear the runes off, crack open the Book, take my spell of unmaking. I didn’t dare. If I opened the gold, black, and crimson cover the tiniest sliver, its dark song would rush out and consume me.

  She would doom the world, they’d said.

  I’d been tempted, so tempted. I wanted Alina back. I wanted the walls up. I wanted Dani to be innocent and young and not my sister’s killer. I wanted to be Jericho Barrons’ hero. I wanted to release him from endless pain. See him walk into the future with hope and maybe even smile every now and then.

  YOU SAID THE WORLD WAS IMPERFECT!

  “It is. ” I pressed another dripping rune into the cover.

  But it was my world, filled with good people, like my father and mother, patient Kat, and Inspector Jayne, who were always doing their parts to make it a better place. Unseelie might be overrunning our planet, but we’d been long overdue for a threat to unify us as a race and turn our petty angers away from one another.