“And tonight it can’t get to yours, so leave it alone and do as I say. ”
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I narrowed my eyes. “You can’t control a Hunter! Nobody can!”
His dark gaze mocked. “You’re afraid. ”
“I am not,” I snapped. Of course I was. The thing might be suspiciously dampened and seemingly oblivious to my presence, but fear of it was in my blood. I’d been born with a deep-seated subconscious alarm. “What if it shakes us off as soon as it gets us up there?” I might not bleed like I used to, but I was pretty sure my bones were as easily broken as the next person’s.
Barrons walked around to the front of the Hunter. Flames leapt in its eyes when it saw him. It sniffed at Barrons, and some of the heat seemed to die. When Barrons withdrew the pouch containing the stones from his coat, the Hunter pressed its nostrils to it and seemed to like the scent. “It knows it would be dead before it could,” he said softly.
“It’s never going to let me on it with my spear, and I’m not giving it up,” I prevaricated.
“Your spear is the least of its concerns. ”
“Just how am I supposed to hold on?” I demanded.
“They have loose skin between the wings. Grab it like a horse’s mane. But put these on first. ” He tossed a pair of gloves at me. “And keep them on. ” They were of strange fabric, thick yet supple. “You don’t want to touch it with bare skin. ” He assessed me. “The rest of you should be fine. ”
“Why don’t I want to touch it with bare skin?” I asked warily.
“On, Ms. Lane. Now. Or I’ll strap you onto the damned thing. ”
It took me a few tries, but a few minutes later I was on the back of an Unseelie Hunter.
I understood why he’d given me the gloves. It radiated such intense cold that if I’d touched it with my bare hands and there’d been any moisture on them at all, they would have frozen to its leathery hide. I shivered, grateful for my layers of leather clothing. Barrons mounted behind me, too close and electric for my comfort.
“Why does it like the smell of the stones?”
“They were chiseled from the walls of the Unseelie King’s fortress. It’s the equivalent of your pecan pie, fried chicken, and fingernail polish,” he said dryly. “Smells like home. ”
The Hunter gave a blast of smoky air, filling the alley with the acrid stench of brimstone. Then it unfurled its wings and, with one massive pump of those leathery sails, lifted off and flapped darkly into the night, showering crystals of black ice onto the streets below.
I caught my breath and stared down, watching as the bookstore grew smaller.
We rose higher and higher into the cold, dark night sky.
There was Trinity College and Temple Bar!
There was the Garda station and the park. There was the Guinness Storehouse, with the platform where I’d stood looking down the night I realized I’d fallen in love with this city.
There were the docks, the bay, stretching to the ocean’s horizon.
There was the hated church where my world had fallen apart. I tipped my head back and looked up at the stars, rejecting both vision and memory. The moon was brilliantly white, brighter than it should have been, rimmed with that same strange bloody aura I’d seen a few nights ago.
“What’s with the moon?” I asked Barrons.
“The Fae world is bleeding into yours. Look at those streets north of the river. ”
I looked away from the crimson-edged moon to where he was pointing. Wet cobblestones glistened a delicate lavender hue of neon intensity, traced by silvery cobwebs of light. It was beautiful.
But it was wrong and deeply disturbing, as if there was more than mere color to those stones. As if some microscopic, lichenlike Unseelie life-form was growing on our world, staining it, transforming it as surely as Cruce’s curse had mutated the Silvers.
“We have to stop things from changing,” I said urgently. At what point would the changes become permanent? Were they already?
“Which is why one would think you wouldn’t waste time arguing when I procure the most efficient mode of travel. ” Barrons sounded downright pissy.
I glanced down at my “mode of travel,” at the inky, leathery skin fisted in my gloved hands.
I was riding an Unseelie Hunter! Had any sidhe-seer in the history of humankind ever done such a thing? Dani was never going to believe it. I watched wisps of fog pass its satyrlike head, crowned with lethally pointed ebony horns. I felt the play of tension in its hide as it flapped its massive wings. I studied the city beyond them.
It was a long way down.
“You do know Inspector Jayne shoots at these things,” I said, worried.
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“Jayne is otherwise occupied at the moment. ”
“You can’t know everything. ” Now I was the one who sounded pissy.
He gave the Hunter’s hide a little pat, like one might give a horse.
It reared into an attack pose, craned its neck around, shot a flaming look of banked hatred over its shoulder, and snorted a thin tendril of fire from one nostril in unmistakable rebuke.
Barrons laughed.
I have to admit, aside from the cold and Barrons being much too close, I enjoyed the ride. It was an experience I would never forget. It’s funny how, when things seem the darkest, moments of beauty present themselves in the most unexpected places.
Dublin was still without power, but it had been so for months, and wind and time had carried all smog and pollution out to sea. No smokestacks puffed, no cars emitted fumes. There was no halo of city lights competing with the brilliant moonlight. The city had been swept clean. It was the world the way it used to be, hundreds of years ago. The stars twinkled as sparklingly visible in the Dublin night sky as they did in rural Georgia.
The river Liffey split the city down the middle, its many bridges dissecting the long silvery path, all the way to the bay.
To the north, Jayne’s men were otherwise occupied indeed, battling a horde of Unseelie I’d never seen before, just a few blocks from the alley where my sister had died. Grief welled, but I slammed it down so hard and fast into my padlocked box that I barely felt it.
On the south side, we passed silently above my sister sidhe-seers over and over. MacHalos blazing, led by Kat and Dani, they scouted the streets, doing what damage they could.
Dani had hated my going off without her tonight and had argued fervently that her superstrengths might well be necessary in a pinch. She’d been far more piqued than mollified by my reminder that Barrons was faster than she was.
We flew for hours, circling, circling. It was nearly four in the morning by the time I finally sensed the Sinsar Dubh.
The second I did, there went my head—a killer pounding at my temples, spreading to encompass my skull in an ever-tightening vise.
“Got it,” I said tightly, pointing in the general direction.
The Hunter took us down. We skimmed rooftops as I tried to target its precise location. Tops of church spires and smokestacks passed a dozen feet beneath us. The lower we got, the more intense my pain grew and the colder I felt. Teeth chattering, shivering with misery, I guided him: Left; no, right; no, turn here, yes, there. Hurry, it’s getting away. Wait, I can’t feel it. There it is again.
Abruptly, the Sinsar Dubh stopped. We overshot it by five city blocks and had to circle back around. Hunters don’t corner like Porsches.
“What’s it doing?” Barrons demanded.
“Besides killing me? Don’t know. ” Didn’t really care at the moment. “Are you sure we need to do this?”
“It’s merely pain, Ms. Lane, and of finite duration. ”
“You try functioning with your head split open and someone stirring your brains. Isn’t there some Druid spell you could do that would help?”
“I lack both tattoo implements and the time. Besides, I’m n
ot certain it would work, and although you recently demanded I dress you in crimson and black, I have no desire to see you wearing it permanently. ”
“And the reminders just keep coming,” I muttered, and rolled my eyes. The motion, coupled with my nausea, nearly made me throw up.
“Only because you seem to keep forgetting who saved your ass. ”
Unfortunately, not the many things he’d done to it.
The Hunter drew in its wings and dropped to the ground in silence. I slid off its leathery back and hit the pavement, puking.
“Where is it?” Barrons was demanding before I’d even finished.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Dead ahead. Three blocks?” I guessed.
“Can you walk?”
I nodded and gagged from the movement but didn’t throw up again. I hadn’t eaten since lunch, so there was nothing left to throw up. I took perverse comfort in the pain. Obviously I wasn’t the one who was going to doom the world. If I was so bad, the Book would have liked me, wanted me to come closer, not repelled me. Ryodan was wrong. The Sinsar Dubh didn’t want anything to do with me.
We closed in, Barrons stalking, me stumbling. Behind us, the Hunter lifted off, vanishing in a sudden snowstorm of black ice.
“And there went our ride,” I said sourly. As awful as the Sinsar Dubh inevitably left me feeling, there was no way I’d be able to make the long trek back to the bookstore. I hoped the stones would succeed in corralling it—even without the fourth—and maybe diminish the pain it was causing me.
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“It’ll be back when the Book is gone. It insisted on maintaining a certain distance. ”
I didn’t blame it one bit. I just wished I could do the same.
Two blocks away, with the Book firmly fixed on my radar, my pain vanished abruptly, for no apparent reason. The Sinsar Dubh was still dead ahead.
I stood up straight for the first time since we’d landed and took a deep, grateful breath.
Barrons stopped walking. “What is it?”
“I don’t hurt anymore. ” I turned to face him in the middle of the deserted street.
“Why not?”
“Got me. ”
“Postulate. ”
I gave him a look that said, Postulate this.
“I don’t like it,” he growled.
I didn’t, either. But at the same time, I did. I hate pain. I’ve always known I would make a terrible torture victim. If someone pulled one of my fingernails off, I’d spew the beans like a geyser.
“But you still sense it?”
I nodded.
“Did you eat Unseelie?” he accused.
“Duh, OOP detector here. Can’t track if I eat it. ”
“Yet you feel no pain at all?”
“Not an ounce. ” In fact, I felt great. Energized, charged, ready for anything. “So?” I prompted. “Are we going to stand here all night or do something?” Free from agony, I was ready to tackle it head-on.
He assessed me, his expression tight. After a moment, he said, “We abort. We’re pulling out. ” He turned and began walking away.
“Are you kidding me?” I snapped at his back. “We’re here. We found it. Let’s see what those stones can do!”
“No. Move it. Now. ”
“Barrons, I’m fine—”
“And you shouldn’t be. ” He stopped and turned to glare at me.
“Maybe I’ve gotten stronger. I’m immune to a lot of Fae glamour now, and I can walk through wards. Maybe it just caught me off guard, and my body adjusted after a few minutes. ”
“And maybe it’s playing with us. ”
“Maybe this is a prime opportunity to learn something about it. ”
“Maybe it’s got you in its thrall, and you don’t even know it. ”
“Maybe we could stand here all night debating the maybes, or we could put your plan into action and see what happens! You’re the one who thought it up to begin with. Don’t wuss out on me now. ” I turned my back and began marching in the opposite direction, toward the Sinsar Dubh.
“Stop this instant, Ms. Lane!”
“What happened to fear-nothing-take-no-prisoners Barrons? Should we go cower somewhere?” I flung over my shoulder.
A moment later, we were shoulder to shoulder, marching for it together.
“You’re impossible,” he growled.
“Pot, meet kettle,” I said sweetly.
“Take this. ” He handed me one of the stones, wrapped in velvet. Even inside the thick black covering, it glowed blue-black as soon as I touched it. He looked at me, hard, his gaze unfathomable.
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
“We’re coming up on O’Connell. I’ll circle around to the opposite side of the intersection and close in behind it. I want to triangulate it precisely with the stones. The moment you have both the Book and me in your sight, place your stone on the east corner of the intersection. I’ll position the other two where they need to be. ”
“What do you expect to happen?”
“Best-case scenario? We contain it. Worst case? We run like hell. ”
I headed down the street after Barrons left, certain we were on the right track. It occurred to me that maybe the stones we were carrying were the reason I was no longer feeling any pain. Maybe, as we’d gotten closer, they had erected some kind of protective barrier. They’d been created to harness and contain the Book. Why wouldn’t they shield whoever was carrying them from its harmful effects?
I hurried to the intersection and stood on my appointed corner, waiting.
And waiting.
The Book was moving very slowly, as if out for a leisurely stroll.
“Come on. Move, damn you. ” Was a Fae or a human carrying it? The city hummed with Fae static, making it impossible to get a lock on any channel.
As if it had heard me, the Book began moving more quickly, heading right where we wanted it.
Then, suddenly, it was just … gone.
“What the—” I spun in a circle, my radar on high, searching, testing the night. I couldn’t pick up a thing. Not even a faint tingle.
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I glanced back down the street. Barrons was nowhere to be seen.
I didn’t like this one bit. We shouldn’t have split up. That was always when bad things happened in the movies, and that was exactly what I felt like at the moment: the ingénue, standing on a horror set. No lights, alone in a city of monsters, with an ancient, sentient receptacle of pure evil somewhere in my immediate vicinity but no longer detectable by me, and with no clue what to do next.
I turned in a circle, stone in one hand, spear in the other.
“Barrons?” I hissed urgently. There was no reply.
Just as suddenly as it had disappeared, the Book was back on my radar. But it was behind me now!
I called for Barrons again. When there was still no answer, I tucked my spear under my arm, whipped out my cell phone, and punched up his number.
When he answered, I told him it had moved and where.
“Wait for me. I’ll be right there. ”
“But it’s moving. We’re going to lose it. Head east. ” I thumbed End and took off after the Book.
I was rushing toward it, trying to catch up, when the Book suddenly stopped, and I could feel that I was closer to it than I’d initially thought. Way closer. All my readings on the thing were wonky tonight.
I froze.
It was just around the corner, maybe twenty feet away from me.
If I walked to the edge of the building and poked my head around it, I would see it.
I could feel it there, perfectly still, pulsing with dark energy. What was it doing? Was this its idea of cat and mouse? Was it … amused?
It began moving again. Toward me.
Where the hell was Barrons?
It
stopped.
Was it trying to spook me? If so, it was working.
What if Ryodan was wrong? What if the Beast did have substance and could shred me? What if whatever was carrying it had a gun and could blow my head off? I was afraid if I retreated, the Book might take it as a sign of weakness, in the way a lion can smell fear, and come after me for all it was worth.
I put on my best bluster and took a step forward.
It moved, too.
I flinched. It was all the way to the corner now.
What was carrying it? What was it doing? What was it planning? Not knowing was killing me.
I was a sidhe-seer. I was an OOP detector. This was what I was made for.
I set my jaw, squared my shoulders, marched to the corner, and came face-to-face with a pure psychopath.
He smiled at me, and I really wished he hadn’t, because his teeth were chain-saw blades that whirred endlessly behind thin lips. He gnashed them at me and laughed. His eyes were black-on-black, bottomless pools. Tall and emaciated, he smelled of dead things, of coffins with rotting lining, of blood and insane asylums. His hands were white and fluttered like dying moths. His palms had mouths, whirring with silvery blades.
Beneath one arm was tucked an utterly innocuous-looking hardcover.
But it wasn’t the Sinsar Dubh that held me riveted.
I stared at the psychopath’s face.
It had once been Derek O’Bannion.
I had the spear and O’Bannion had been eating Unseelie, so stabbing him would maybe kill him. But if I killed him, what would the Sinsar Dubh turn its full attention to next?
Me.
Abruptly, he stopped laughing and yanked the Book out from beneath his arm. He held it with both hands at the farthest possible distance from his body, and for a moment I thought he was offering it to me.
We were so close that, if I’d wanted to, I could have reached out and taken it. I wouldn’t have reached out and taken it for anything in the world.
Then he jerked and spun the volume around, as if the text—if there was anything inside it that remotely resembled text—was upside down and unreadable.
From his mouth came the whine of metal grating on metal, and he opened and closed his lips as if trying to form words, but nothing came out.
For an instant, I glimpsed whites around his pupils. Was that horror in his eyes? Had he just ground out “Help” with those metal teeth? I wanted to run. I couldn’t stop looking.
Then his eyes were pure black again, and his body was jerking convulsively, as if he was being ordered to perform and resisting every step of the way.