Dreamfever

  “Place is huge and deadly weird, Mac,” she told me. “There’s parts of the abbey don’t make sense. Wasted space where you think something should be but ain’t. ”

  I wanted to see all those places, but right now I needed to focus on the libraries. I’d barely slept last night. The conversation I overheard between my parents had played like a stuck record in my head. Baby, I’m sorry to tell you this, but according to some ancient prophecy, there’s something wrong with you and you’re going to doom the whole world. …

  I’d been anxious to get my hands on the prophecy before. Now that it was supposedly about me, I was desperate. I wouldn’t believe it was about me until I saw it with my own eyes, and even then I probably still wouldn’t, unless it spelled out my entire name and said something as indubitably incriminating as: Beware of that evil MacKayla Lane; she’s a piece of work. Gonna doom the whole world, that wench.

  I snorted. Absurd. Had Alina learned any of this? Was that why she’d kept me so far away? Not just for my own good but because she’d learned something about me that made her afraid to get me involved, for the world’s sake?

  “Nah,” I said derisively.

  “Is, too,” Dani defended. “I can show you ‘em. ”

  I snapped back to the present. “Sorry, I was thinking out loud. I believe you, and I want to see those places. But first the libraries. ”

  We wound down one corridor after the next. They all looked the same to me. The abbey was huge. Without Dani, I might have wandered for days, trying to find my way around. Before I came to the abbey the first time, I’d researched it and learned that the enormous stone fortress had been constructed on consecrated ground in the seventh century, when a church originally built by St. Patrick in 441 A. D. had burned down. That church had been built to replace a crumbling stone circle some claimed had, long ago, been sacred to an ancient pagan sisterhood. The stone circle had been predated by a shian, or fairy mound, that had allegedly concealed within it an entrance to the Otherworld.

  Translation: This specific spot of earth, this precise longitude and latitude, had been a place of great importance, sacred and protected, as far back as records went and—I had no doubt—even further. Why? Because a book of unspeakable power had been trapped beneath it for thousands and thousands of years?

  The abbey was plundered in 913, rebuilt in 1022, burned in 1123, rebuilt in 1218, burned in 1393, and rebuilt in 1414. It was expanded and fortified each time.

  It was added on to in the sixteenth century and again extensively in the seventeenth, sponsored by an anonymous wealthy donor who completed the rectangle of stone buildings, enclosing the inner courtyard and adding housing—much to the astonishment of the locals—for up to a thousand residents.

  This same unknown donor bought the land around the abbey and turned the enclave into the self-sustaining operation it was today. If I ever had the time to act instead of always being so busy reacting, I wanted to find out who that unknown donor was.

  I glanced at my watch. It was three P. M. , and my schedule was tight. I was supposed to meet the sidhe-seers in Dublin at seven, then Barrons at ten, for who knew what purpose. Further hampering my appointment calendar was the LM’s threat to return for me in three days, which put an uncomfortable squeeze on, because I couldn’t decide what day that was going to be. Was he counting all day yesterday, which meant he would return on Saturday morning? Or had he meant to begin counting on Friday, which meant he would return Sunday? Maybe he’d meant to allow me three full days and planned to come back on the fourth. It was all irritatingly vague. Not only had he threatened me, but he’d not even given me a specific date and time for my impending … whatever.

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  I planned to discuss it with Barrons tonight. He was my wave. I was counting on him to keep the LM from making good on any threats.

  Back to my time crunch. “Take me to the corridors you’re barred from, Dani. What’s keeping you out?” I envisioned thick stone walls blocking them off, maybe vault doors with combinations as long as pi.

  I couldn’t have hoped for a better answer.

  She gave me a sour look. “Stupid fecking wards. ”

  Dani knew where eighteen of the libraries were. There were three places in the abbey she’d never been able to get near. The first spot she took me to, wards were etched in the stone floor at ten-foot intervals along the length of the hall, vanishing around a corner.

  I sauntered down the warded corridor, barely even flinching, while Dani hooted triumphantly behind me. I turned the corner, passed through another few wards, and came to a tall, ornately carved door.

  The door wasn’t as easy to get through. It was loaded with wards and strange-looking runes. I tried the handle. It wasn’t locked, but the moment I touched it I suffered the horrifying sensation of falling from a great height and instantly felt I was being watched/vulnerable/targeted in someone’s crosshairs, an instant away from a bullet in the back of my head.

  I snatched my hand away, and the feelings vanished.

  I took a deep breath and tried the knob again. I immediately felt as if I’d been stuffed into a small dark box underground and had only moments before I suffocated!

  I snatched it back.

  I was breathing shallowly and shaking but standing in the hall, perfectly fine.

  I peered at the runes on the door and suddenly realized what they were. Since I’d come to Dublin, I’d become a voracious reader of books on the paranormal, devouring articles on topics ranging from Druids to vampires to witches, looking for facts in the fiction and answers in the myths. These were repelling runes! They worked by amplifying the innate fears of whoever tried to cross them.

  The third time I grasped the knob, my body was covered with fire ants, biting viciously, and I remembered how, at seven years old, I thought the silky red dirt of the hill would be fun to play in. I’d been terrified of them ever since.

  It’s not real.

  I braced myself and forced the knob to turn, while the ants shredded the flesh of my fingers away.

  The door opened and I stumbled through, choking down a scream, on the verge of clawing my skin off.

  All sensation stopped the instant I crossed the threshold.

  I looked back. The wood of the threshold was also engraved with repelling runes.

  I was through! I was in one of the Forbidden Libraries!

  I glanced around eagerly. It wasn’t particularly impressive. Not compared to BB&B. The room was small, windowless, and, despite a number of dehumidifiers, musty. Between shelves and tables filled with books, scrolls, and collectibles, dozens of lamps blazed. Rowena was taking no chances with Shades getting into her precious libraries.

  I moved into the room and began searching the tables first, while Dani stood watch far down the corridor. As I’d feared, there were no card catalogs in the Forbidden Libraries. Even though the room was small, a thorough search could take days.

  Ten minutes later, Dani yelled, and I hurried out into the hall, jerking as I crossed the spelled threshold, to find a mob of sidhe-seers pushing and shoving at the ward line.

  Kat stood in the front of the mob. “Rowena said you managed to pass through some of her wards and were in forbidden archives. She sent us to stop you. ”

  Well, that answered one of my questions. I’d wondered—now that I could move through wards at will—if I still tripped them when I did. I was surprised Rowena hadn’t come herself.

  “To stop me, you’d have to be able to cross the ward line, and”—I glanced down at her toes, on the edge of the line of nearly invisible symbols—”it doesn’t look to me like you can. ”

  “I can get past most,” Barb said, shoving past her. “You’re not so hot. Jo can, too. ” She turned around. “Where’d Jo go?” She looked at Dani. “Wasn’t she just here?”

  Dani shrugged. “She left. ”

  “We’re not after stopping you, Mac.
” Kat’s usually solemn gray gaze danced with excitement. “We’re after helping you search. ”

  I broke the ward lines with chewing gum—yes, chewing gum. Wards are delicate things, easy to deface if you can touch them.

  In order to touch them, you have to be able to pass them, which usually makes touching them a moot point, but in this case I needed to scrub the ward’s power away to let my sisters-in-arms through.

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  In most cases, all that’s required to undermine a ward is to break its continuity, to interrupt the design and short-circuit the flow of energy it generates. Sometimes, if you break one badly, you turn it into something else, but I didn’t know that then and my luck held that day.

  Although I could deface the wards on the door, I could do nothing about the repelling runes carved into it and into the wood of the threshold. Each sidhe-seer that stepped across it had to face her personal demons.

  They all made it, I was proud to see.

  I left them in the library, dozens of sets of willing hands carefully turning ancient pages, delicately unwinding thick scrolls, picking up statues and opening boxes and looking for anything we could use.

  Dani and I moved on to the next library. Gaining access wasn’t as easy this time. Again there were multiple ward barriers, but each was of increasing density and intensity. I passed through the first ward with relative ease, the second with a grunt. The third generated a small shock and made my hair crackle. I marked each one with a lipstick from my pocket as I passed through, so Dani could follow me.

  The fourth had me gritting my teeth, cursing whoever had placed these ancient designs. Rowena? I wanted to learn.

  I made the mistake of trying to barge through the fifth to get the discomfort over with quickly and slammed into it like a brick wall. I bounced off and went sprawling.

  Dani snickered.

  I tossed my hair from my eyes and glared up at her.

  “Dude. Happens to me all the time. ”

  I stood and warily approached the ward line. It wasn’t a simple ward line. There were layers of wards, shimmering, one on top of another. To date, the only wards I’d seen were silvery delicate-looking things.

  These wards had a bluish tint, sharper lines, and more-complex shapes. Now that I was paying careful attention, I could feel the slight chill they threw off. The pages in the Book of Kells had nothing on the intricacy of these designs. Knots became fantastical creatures, morphed into incomprehensible mathematical equations and then back into knots again. I knew nothing of wards. Where was Barrons when I needed him?

  I spent ten minutes trying to get through it. If I ran at it, it bounced me off. If I tried to press slowly forward, it simply didn’t yield, as if there genuinely was a wall there that I just couldn’t see.

  “Try blood,” Dani suggested.

  I looked at her. “Why?”

  She shrugged. “Sometimes when Ro needs fierce wicked mojo, she uses blood. Some of the wards we placed around your cell had my blood in ‘em. I figure since you can cross most of ‘em, your blood might do something. If not, you can try mine. ”

  “What do I do with it?”

  “Dunno. Drip some on the wards. ”

  After a moment’s consideration, I decided it couldn’t hurt. (The day would come when I would discover I was wrong about that. Adding blood to some wards is even more stupid than throwing gas on a fire and, in some cases, actually transmutes them into living guardians. Take it from me, never indiscriminately drip your blood on wards of unknown origin!) I reached into my boot for my switchblade. “Stay back, in case something goes wrong,” I told her.

  I held out my hand, palm up, as close to the ward barrier as I could get without being repelled, and made a shallow slice. Ow.

  Blood welled.

  I turned my hand over to drip it on the floor.

  Nothing dripped. I turned my hand back over. There was no wound.

  I sliced my palm again, this time more deeply. “Ow!” Blood welled. I turned it over. Nothing dripped. I frowned. Shook it. Squeezed my hand into a fist.

  “What’cha doin’, Mac?”

  “Hang on a sec. ” I turned my hand back over. There was no cut.

  Setting my jaw, I turned my palm to the floor, kept it down, and sliced fast, hard, and deep. Blood dripped. Good for me. It stopped. I sliced again, deeper. It dripped again, and a thin rivulet ran into the edge of the symbols.

  The designs hissed, shivered on the stone floor, and steamed, before eroding where my blood had touched them.

  I was able to step across the barrier, although not without difficulty.

  “Come on, Dani. ” We weren’t through the storm yet. I could feel things up ahead.

  Worse things.

  There was no reply.

  I turned around. There was a stone wall behind me. “Dani?” I called. “Dani, can you hear me?”

  You are not permitted here. You are not one of us.

  I whirled back around. A woman stood in the corridor, blocking my way. She was blond, beautiful, with icy eyes.

  “Who are you?” I demanded.

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  Leave now or suffer our wrath.

  I took a step forward and instantly felt excruciating pain. I staggered back. “I need to get into the library. I’m just looking for answers. ”

  You are not permitted here. You are not one of us.

  “I heard you the first time. I just want to look around. ”

  Leave now or suffer our wrath.

  I tried reasoning with her, only to realize that, despite the crushing pain that slammed me every time I tried to take a step forward, the woman was nothing more than the mystical equivalent of a recorded message.

  No matter what I said, she repeated the same two things, over and over. No matter how many times I tried to push forward, pain drove me back.

  There was no doubt in my mind that these impenetrable wards protected invaluable secrets. I had to get through.

  I had other tools at my disposal. I opened my mouth and released V’lane’s name.

  He was there before I’d even finished speaking, smiling—for a split second.

  Then he doubled over in pain. His golden head snapped back.

  He actually hissed at me like an animal.

  And vanished.

  I gaped.

  I looked back at the woman.

  You are not permitted here. You are not one of us.

  There was no way forward that I could see at the moment. I didn’t have any Unseelie flesh on me to try eating, to see if it would make me immune enough to the pain to continue on. Then again, after what I’d just seen happen to V’lane, I wasn’t sure if having temporary Fae running through my veins would help or hinder.

  I wasn’t completely surprised to discover the stone wall behind me was an illusion.

  Still, forcing my way through it hurt like hell.

  The LM came to see me yesterday,” I said, as I stepped through the front door of Barrons Books and Baubles. The exterior lights of the handsomely restored building were set to low, bathing the street and alcoved entrance in a soft amber glow. The interior lights were equally low. It appeared Barrons no longer considered the Shades much of a threat.

  I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was here. I’m attuned to even the faintest whiff of Jericho Barrons now. I wish I wasn’t. It makes me remember a time when we danced, and he laughed, and I had no cares in the world but to be … a fine beast. To eat, sleep, and have sex.

  Ah, the simple life.

  I tensed. There was an Object of Power, or several, somewhere in the bookstore. It was one kick-ass powerful one, or an assortment of lessers. I could feel it in my stomach. I could sense it, a cold fire in the dark pit of my brain. OOPs no longer make me feel sick. They make me feel … alive.

  “He said you’re the jackass who taught him Voice,” I continued. ??
?Funny how you forgot to mention that when you were trying to teach me. ”

  “I forget nothing, Ms. Lane. I omit. ”

  “And evade. ”

  “Lie, cheat, and steal,” he agreed.

  “If the shoe fits. ”

  “You have absurd priorities. ” He stepped from the shadows between bookcases.

  I looked him up and down. Once before I’d seen Jericho Barrons wearing jeans and a T-shirt. It’s like sheet-metaling a W16 Bugatti Veyron engine—all 1,001 horsepower of it—with the body of a ‘65 Shelby. The height of sophisticated power sporting in-your-face, fuck-you muscle. The effect is disturbing.

  He had more tattoos now than he’d had a few days ago. When I’d last seen him wearing nothing but a sheen of sweat, his arms were unmarked. They were now sleeved in intricate crimson and black designs, from bicep to hand. A silver cuff gleamed on his wrist. There were silver chains on his boots.

  “Slumming, huh?” I said.

  You should talk, said those dark eyes, as they swept my black leather ensemble.

  “What’s absurd about my priorities?” I evaded. None of my concern what he thought of my outfit. “You hated my rainbows, now you don’t like my leather. Is there anything you like on me?”

  “The LM, as you call him, sent his princes to rape you and may possibly have raped you himself, and you only now mention that he … what? Came calling? Did he bring you flowers? And the answer is skin, Ms. Lane. ”

  I wasn’t about to acknowledge his last words. “No flowers. Just coffee. Wasn’t Starbucks, though. I’d give my eyeteeth for a grande latte from Starbucks. ”

  “I wouldn’t so blithely offer up my eyeteeth. You never know when you might need them. For a woman who was gang-raped recently, you certainly seem blasé. ”

  “Oh, please, Barrons, how much more can I lose?”

  “Never wonder that. ”

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  “Why did you teach him? Do you realize that inadvertently, perhaps even vertently—”

  “Not a word, Ms. Lane. ”

  “—you might have helped him kill my sister?”