Dreamfever

  Rowena was looking at me again.

  I suspected she wanted to address the crowd, but I wasn’t about to help her silence them. I would blow the horn in a few minutes and give my closing, rousing mutiny speech.

  What happened next happened so quickly that I couldn’t stop it.

  Rowena slipped a whistle from the pocket of her robes and blew on it sharply, three shrill bursts. The crowd instantly fell silent, obviously trained to the sound. Then she was speaking, and it was too late for me to stop her without seeming argumentative and petty. I would have to let her have her say, then turn it against her when she was done.

  “I’ve known most of you since birth,” she said. “I’ve visited your homes, watched you grow, and brought you here when it was time. I know your families. I have been a part of your everyday struggles and triumphs. Each of you is as my own child. ”

  She favored them with a gentle smile, the very portrait of a loving parent. I didn’t trust it one bit. I wondered if I was the only one who saw the disturbing image of a cobra, smiling with human teeth.

  “If I have erred, it is not that I have not loved you enough but that I have loved you too much. I have wanted, as any mother would, to keep her children safe. But my love has prevented my daughters from becoming the women they could and should be. It has prevented me from leading you as I must. I have erred but will no longer. We are sidhe-seers. We are humanity’s defenders. We were born and bred to battle the Fae, and from this day forward, that is what we will do. ” All softness in her demeanor abruptly melted away. She snapped straight, suddenly seemed a foot taller, and began firing orders.

  “Kat,” she barked, “I want you to handpick a group and put them to work determining how we can use iron as a weapon. Catch a few Unseelie. Test it on them. Devote a second group to locating the most common sources of it and collect it, with all haste. ” She waved a hand at the bus behind her. “We have guns enough for all of us!” she shouted triumphantly, making it sound as if the triumph were hers. “I want iron bullets to go around!”

  I gritted my teeth.

  “Learn how to make them,” she ordered. “Set up a smithy in the old ways if we must. Select a third group to scout Dublin, and, Katrina—you have proved yourself again and again a worthy and valuable leader—I want you in charge of this group yourself. ”

  Kat glowed.

  I seethed.

  At this point, I knew the wisest thing for me to do was stay silent. But it wasn’t easy. There were a dozen biting comments I wanted to make. Reminders that I’d brought the guns, I’d found out about iron, I’d been the one advocating battle when their precious GM had been blindly and insistently against it. But I could read the mood of this crowd, and at the very root of it was an adage as old as time: Better the devil you know than the one you don’t know. Especially if the devil you do know is about to give you what you wanted anyway.

  I couldn’t compete with that. I was the devil they’d known for only a few short months. And my press hadn’t exactly been good. Not with Rowena in charge of the media.

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  The Grand Mistress’s voice soared in volume. “I want to know the numbers of Fae in the city, so we can begin planning how and when to attack. ” She raised her small hand into the air and made a fist. “Today is the dawn of a new order! No longer will I allow my love for you to blind me as it has in the past. I will lead my daughters proudly into battle, and we will do what we were born to do. We will remind the Fae that we drove them from our world and forced them to hide for six thousand years. We will remind them why they feared us, and we will drive them from it again! Sidhe-seers, to war!”

  The crowd exploded into cheers.

  Beside me, Dani said, “What the feck? How’d she do that, Mac?”

  I looked at Rowena and she looked at me and we had an entire conversation in a glance.

  Child, did you really believe you could take them from me? her fierce blue glare mocked.

  Touché. Watch your back, old woman.

  She’d won, for now.

  But it wasn’t a complete loss. Although Rowena was taking the credit for it, at least the sidhe-seers were getting to do everything I’d wanted them to do, short of exploring IFPs, and that could wait. I might have lost the war, but I’d won a few of the battles. My first attempted coup had failed. My next one wouldn’t.

  “Politics, Dani,” I muttered. “We’ve got a lot to learn. ” Nothing had been easy for me in Dublin. I no longer expected it to be, nor would I waste time complaining when it could be put to better use moving forward.

  “Uh-huh,” she agreed glumly. “But I still ain’t giving her back my sword. ”

  Rowena turned her cobra smile our way. “Kat, it’s long past time I bestowed this honor upon you,” she said. “You will lead us to victory carrying the Sword of Light. Dani, give it to Katrina. The sword is now hers. ”

  Five seconds later, I was on my hands and knees in the middle of a rocky field, vomiting the remains of the protein bar I’d eaten an hour ago. I’d never been on such a bumpy, horrible ride in my life. “What was that?” I groaned, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “Hyperspeed?”

  “I said,” Dani snapped, “I ain’t giving her back my sword!”

  I looked up at her standing over me—skinny elbows poking out, fists at her waist, fiery red hair flaming in the sunlight—and nearly laughed. The kid was a total wild card. But our disappearing act was going to have consequences. Left to my own devices, I would have stood my ground longer. I would have offered cooperation, protection, and tried to sell them on it, same way I’d tried with Jayne. If that had failed, I’d have had Dani whiz us out of there. But I would have tried first, and the trying would have spoken volumes to some of the girls. It was too late now. I had no doubt Rowena was exploiting the situation for all it was worth. Making us out to be complete traitors. Turning our backs on the entire order.

  I rubbed my eyes. I was too tired to think. I needed rest. Then I would figure out how to salvage the things I needed salvaged. It wasn’t that I minded being an outcast. I’d been feeling that way ever since I’d arrived in Dublin and had gotten downright comfortable with it. Alone, I had a lot less to worry about. But to accomplish my goals, I needed at least some of the sidhe-seers on my side.

  “Did ya see her face?”

  “How could I? All I saw was a big blue blur of bus as we whizzed past it, then nothing. ”

  “Was she ever wicked pissed! She really didn’t think I’d do it,” Dani said wonderingly, and I could tell she herself hadn’t been entirely sure she’d do it. Until she did, there was a chance Rowena might forgive her. Blame it all on me and take her back into the fold. There wasn’t anymore. Dani was persona non grata. There was no going back from this one.

  “It was goin’ good, wasn’t it, Mac? I mean, I wasn’t just imagining it? The girls were listening to us and liking us?”

  I nodded.

  “Man, it went bad really fast. ”

  I nodded again.

  We looked at each other for a long moment.

  “Dude,” she said finally, “I think we’re outcasts. ”

  “Dude,” I agreed, with a sigh.

  At ten-thirty that night, I was back in Dublin and headed for 939 Rêvemal Street.

  I was pretty sure I’d found Chester’s.

  There were three listings in the phone book under that name: a barbershop, a men’s clothing store, and a nightclub.

  I’d opted for the nightclub because the advertisement had suited the voice of the man I’d spoken to on the phone. Upscale, classy, with a touch of the risqué, as if anything one might want was available for purchase there, if one had the right currency, walked the walk, and talked the talk.

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  I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a passing window and smiled. I was walking the walk. My hair was jet and a little wild. I??
?d moussed it and let it do what it wanted. My lipstick was red and glossy and matched my nails. I was wearing black leather from head to toe, not for the statement it made but for the practicality of it. With the right kind of leather, you can sponge off just about anything. Fabric isn’t blood-repellent.

  There was energy in my step and fire in my eyes. I’d finally gotten some much needed sleep. Dani and I had holed up in a deserted house on the outskirts of Dublin until late afternoon, then headed out for food and supplies. It had felt strangely intimate and uncomfortable, occupying the residence of someone who’d either died in the riots on Halloween or fled Dublin, but we needed somewhere to stay and it seemed pointless not to take advantage of one of the tens of thousands of unoccupied homes.

  Since both my MacHalos were back at the abbey, our first stop had been a sporting-goods store, where we built two new ones and stuffed backpacks with flashlights and batteries. Although the Shades seemed to have left Dublin, I wasn’t taking any chances.

  Then we’d gone to the mall, where I dyed my hair in a public restroom, washed up, and changed. Dani had headed off for an electronics store, where I later found her sprawled in front of a computer, next to a small mountain of battery packs and a pile of DVDs. I toed a few of the DVDs out. My eyes widened. I glanced quickly at the computer screen. Fortunately for her, it wasn’t one of them. “Watch any of that porn,” I growled, “and I’m going to kick your petunia. ”

  She looked up. “Wicked-cool outfit, Mac!” Then she scowled. “I hunt and kill things. What does it matter what I watch? These eyeballs seen it all, dude. ” She somehow managed to swagger while cross-legged on the floor.

  “I don’t care how tough you think you are. You’re thirteen and there are limits. You’re not watching this stuff. And if you are, you’d better hide it from me, because if I catch you, there’s going to be hell to pay. ”

  She shoved the computer from her lap and bounded to her feet. “That’s ridiculous,” she spat, green eyes sparking. “I watch things die every day but I can’t watch people feck? You’re not the boss of me. ” She grabbed her pack and began walking away.

  “Those aren’t just people fecking, Dani. Those are hard-core. ”

  “So?” she sneered over her shoulder. “What were you a few days ago?”

  “It wasn’t like that. ”

  “So you gonna tell me what it was like? Being Pri-ya was all poetry and roses?”

  There had been moments that had felt startlingly like that. Not with the Unseelie Princes. But later with Barrons. I crammed that thought into the padlocked box in my head where I keep all those things I can’t deal with. Soon I was going to have to sink the thing in concrete to keep it shut. “I’m not telling you not to watch people having sex, although I wish you’d wait a few years. I’m telling you to make better choices. Watch the soft-core stuff, the ones that show sex as something good. ”

  “Mac,” she said flatly, “get a grip. The world sucks. Ain’t no good left in it. ”

  “There’s good everywhere. You just have to look for it. ” I nearly choked on my words. I sounded just like my daddy and was surprised I still believed what I’d said, after all I’d been through. Looked like the rainbow wasn’t entirely black.

  She whirled on me, cheeks flushed, eyes furious. “Really? What? Name some of those good things for me, will you? Why don’t you tell me about ‘em? I got a great idea. Let’s make a list. Let’s write down all the wonderful things in the world. ‘Cause I been looking really hard lately, and I ain’t been seeing a fecking one!” Her hands were fisted and she was shaking.

  It had taken me until I was twenty-two to be carved by tragedy. How old was Dani when its razor-sharp teeth drew first blood? She’d told me her mother was killed by the Fae six years ago, which would have made her seven at the time. Had she watched it happen? Was that how long she’d been with Rowena? What had the ruthless old woman been doing to her all that time? “What happened to you, Dani?” I said softly.

  “You think you have the right to just ask me that? Like I’m gonna peel myself open and let you poke around inside me? Like you can pour me out like some little teapot, ‘cause you’re dangling me by my handle?”

  “I’m not dangling you by any handle, Dani. ”

  “You’re trying to! Trying to force me to spill my secrets! Dump ‘em all over the place so once you know ‘em you can throw me away like a piece of trash, same as the Unseelie Princes did to you! Like some stupid fecking stupid fecker that shouldn’t have even been fecking born!”

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  I was stunned by the intensity of her reaction, baffled by the direction our conversation had taken. “I’m not trying to pry into you, and I would never throw you away. I care about you, you prickly little pain-in-the-butt porcupine. So buck up and deal with it. I worry about what you’ll become. Enough to fight with you about it. And I’m telling you, choose better movies, eat your vegetables, floss, and treat yourself with respect, because if you don’t, nobody else will. I care!”

  “You wouldn’t if you knew me!”

  “I do know you. ”

  “Leave me alone!”

  “Can’t,” I said flatly. “You and me. We’re like sisters. Now get a grip on the teen angst and let’s get moving. I need you tonight, and we’ve got a lot to do. ” It had always worked whenever Daddy did it to me: made me do something, to keep my mind off wallowing in whatever emotion I felt like I was going to die from at the moment.

  She stared at me, eyes narrowed, lips drawn in a snarl, and I got the impression she was on the verge of freeze-framing out. I wondered how my parents had survived me. I wondered what she was really so upset about. I wasn’t stupid. There was subtext here. I just couldn’t figure out what it was. I was about to begin tapping a foot when she finally turned around and began walking.

  I followed her in silence, giving her the chance to cool off.

  The fabric of her long black leather coat eventually relaxed and creased between her shoulder blades. She took a few deep breaths, then said, “Sisters forgive each other a lot, don’t they, Mac? I mean, more than most people?”

  I thought of Alina and how she’d fallen for the worst villain in this epic mess, even inadvertently helped him gain power. Of how she’d waited until it was too late to call me. Recently I’d begun to realize my sister had made some hedgy decisions. Like not telling me what was going on as soon as she learned about it and trying to handle it all herself without asking for help. Strength wasn’t about being able to do everything alone. Strength was knowing when to ask for help and not being too proud to do it. Alina hadn’t called in all the reinforcements she could, and she should have. I wouldn’t make the same mistake. Still, regardless of anything she’d done or failed to do, it didn’t change how much I loved her, and it never would. Nothing could.

  “Like fighting over what movies to watch,” Dani clarified, when I didn’t answer immediately.

  I was about to reply when she muttered, “I thought you’d think I was cool for watching ‘em. ”

  I rolled my eyes. “I already think you’re cool. And, honey, sisters forgive each other everything. ”

  “Really, truly everything?”

  “Everything. ”

  As we walked out of the electronics store, I caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror above the door.

  It was bleak.

  My Dublin no longer existed.

  Smashed, broken were the brilliant neon signs that had illuminated the buildings with a kaleidoscope of colors. Long gone were the colorful, diverse people that had filled the streets with boisterous camaraderie and endless craic. Wrecked were the façades of the hundreds of pubs of Temple Bar. The quaint streetlamps were twisted pretzels of metal, and no music spilled from open windows or doors. It was silent. Too silent. All animal life was gone, down to the crickets in the soil. Not one motor hummed. There were no heat pumps kicking on and off. You don’t realize how
much white noise the world makes until it suddenly stops, making it sound like prehistoric times.

  This new Dublin was dark and creepy and … still not dead. The once-bustling Irish city was now undead. You could feel the life in her, lurking in the dark wreckage, but it was the kind of life you wanted to drive a stake through.

  Given the number of Fae I could sense in the city—so many that it was impossible to separate them out until we were almost on top of them—we encountered surprisingly few Unseelie on the streets. I wondered if they were holding the equivalent of a convention or political rally somewhere for the great LM—freer and leader of the bastard half of the Fae race. Nor did we see Jayne, so I supposed he was off terrorizing Hunters in another part of the city.

  Over the course of the twenty or so blocks that we walked—”like a Joe,” as Dani called it, because I wasn’t about to come face-to-face with Ryodan for the first time feeling like I wanted to puke on his shoes—we encountered four Rhino-boys (why did they always travel in pairs?) and an awful slithering thing that was nearly as fast as Dani. I took the RBs, she got the snake.

  We were at the cross streets of Rêvemal and Grandin when I saw her. If my senses hadn’t been so fuzzed with Unseelie static from too many on one channel, I might have picked up one of the sifting caste ahead and reacted better.

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  At first, I couldn’t believe my eyes. In my defense, from behind I thought it was him—they looked so similar—but I knew it couldn’t be, because Barrons and I had killed him. Then I thought he must not have been a singularity. Some of the Unseelie castes have countless numbers, like the Rhino-boys, while others are the only of their kind given dark birth by the Unseelie King, perhaps because even he considered them abominations. I had a bad moment, contemplating the horror of hundreds or even thousands of this type of Unseelie loose on the world, and in that moment I forfeited the element of surprise. I must have made some small sound, because she suddenly turned, nine feet of leprous body topped by a long, squished face that was all ravenous mouth. In a blink of an eye, she assessed and dismissed me.

  I was the wrong gender.