Dreamfever

PROLOGUE

Mac: 11:18 a.m., November 1

Death. Pestilence. Famine.

They surround me, my lovers, the terrifying Unseelie Princes.

Who’d’ve thought destruction could be so beautiful? Seductive. Consuming.

My fourth lover—War? He ministers to me tenderly. Ironic for the bringer of Chaos, creator of Calamity, maker of Madness—if that is who he is. I cannot see his face, no matter how I try. Why does he hide?

He caresses my skin with hands of fire. I char, my skin blisters, bones fuse from sexual heat no human can endure. Lust consumes me. I arch my back and beg for more with parched tongue, cracked lips. As he fills my body, he quenches my thirst with drink. Liquid spills over my tongue, drips down my throat. I convulse. He moves inside me. I catch a glimpse of skin, muscle, a flash of tattoo. Still no face. He terrifies me, this one who keeps himself concealed.

In the distance, someone barks commands. I hear many things, understand none. I know that I have fallen into enemy hands. I know also, soon, I will no longer know even that. Pri-ya, a Fae sex addict, I will believe there is no place, nothing else I would rather be.

If my thoughts were coherent enough to form sentences, I would tell you that I used to think life unfolded in a linear fashion. That people were born and went to … what’s that human word? I dressed up for it every day. There were boys. Lots of cute boys. I thought the world revolved around them.

His tongue is in my mouth, and it’s tearing apart my soul.

Helpmesomeonepleasehelpmemakehimstopmakethemgoaway.

School. That’s the word I’m looking for. After that, you get a job. Marry. Have … what are they? Fae can’t have them. Don’t understand them. Precious little lives. Babies! If you’re lucky, you live a good, full life and grow old with someone you love. Caskets then. Wood gleams. I weep. A sister? Bad! Memory hurts! Let it go!

They’re in my womb. They want my heart. Tear it open. Gorge on passion they can’t feel. Cold. How can fire be so cold?

Focus, Mac. Important. Find the words. Deep breath. Don’t think about what’s happening to you. See. Serve. Protect. Others at risk. So many died. Can’t be for nothing. Think of Dani. She’s you inside, beneath that adolescent thumbs-in-the-pockets, one hip cocked, thousand-yard stare.

I orgasm without ceasing. I become the orgasm. Pleasure-pain! Exquisite! Mind-melting, soul-shredding, the more they fill me the emptier I am. It’s slipping, all slipping, but before it goes, before it’s gone completely, I get a hateful moment of clarity and see that

Most of what I believed about myself, and life, I derived from modern media, without questioning any of it. If I wasn’t sure how to behave in a certain situation, I’d search my mind for a movie or TV show I’d seen, with a similar setup, and do whatever the actors had done. A sponge, I absorbed my environment, became a byproduct of it.

I don’t think I ever once looked up at the sky and wondered if there was sentient life in the universe besides the human race. I know I never looked down at the earth beneath my feet and contemplated my own mortality. I tunneled blithely through magnolia-drenched days, blind as a mole to everything but guys, fashion, power, sex, whatever would make me feel good right then.

But these are confessions I would make if I could speak, and I can’t. I’m ashamed. I’m so ashamed.

Who the fuck are you? Someone shouted that question at me recently—his name eludes me. Someone who frightens me. Excites me.

Life’s not linear at all.

It happens in lightning flashes. So fast you don’t see those lay-you-out-cold moments coming at you until you’re Wile E. Coyote, steamrolled flat as a pancake by the Road Runner, victim of your own elaborate schemes. A sister dead. A legacy of lies. An unwanted inheritance of ancient blood. An impossible mission. A book that is a beast that is ultimate power, and whoever gets their hands on it first decides the fate of the world. Maybe all the worlds.

Stupid sidhe-seer. So sure you had things headed in the right direction.

Here and now—not on some cartoon highway from which I can peel myself, stand up, and magically reinflate, but on the cold stone floor of a church, naked, lost, surrounded by death-by-sex Fae—I feel my most powerful weapon, the one I swore never to give up again—hope—slipping away. My spear is long gone. My will is …

Will? What’s will? Do I know the word? Did I ever?

Him. He’s here. The one who killed Alina. Please, please, please don’t let him touch me.

Is he touching me? Is he the fourth? Why conceal himself?

When the walls come tumbling, tumbling down, that’s the question that matters. Who are you?

I reek of sex and the scent of them—dark, drugging spices. I have no sense of time or place. They’re inside me and I can’t get them out, and how could I have been such a fool to believe that at the critical moment, when my world fell apart, some knight in shining armor was going to come thundering in on a white stallion, or arrive sleek and dark on an eerily silent Harley, or appear in a flash of golden salvation, summoned by a name embedded in my tongue, and rescue me? What was I raised on—fairy tales?

Not this kind. These are the fairy tales we were supposed to be teaching our daughters. A few thousand years ago, we did. But we got sloppy and complacent, and when the Old Ones seemed to go quietly, we allowed ourselves to forget the Old Ways. Enjoyed the distractions of modern technology and forgot the most important question of all.

Who the fuck are you?

Here on the floor, in my final moments—MacKayla Lane’s last grand hurrah—I see that the answer is all I’ve ever been.

I’m nobody.

CHAPTER 1

Dani: 2:58 p.m., November 1

Hey it’s me—Dani. I’m gonna be taking over for a while. Fecking good thing, too, ‘cause Mac’s in serious trouble. We all are. Last night everything changed. End-of-the-world stuff. Uh-huh, that bad. Fae and human worlds collided with the biggest bang since creation, and everything is a mess.

Fecking Shades loose in the fecking abbey. Ro through the roof with it, screaming that Mac betrayed us. Ordered us to hunt her. Bring her in dead or alive. Shut her up or shut her down, she said. Keep her away from the enemy, because she’s too powerful a weapon to be used against us. She’s the only one who can track the Sinsar Dubh. No way we can let her fall into the wrong hands, and Ro says any hands but hers are the wrong ones.

I know stuff about Mac that she’d kill me for, if she knew I knew. Good thing she doesn’t know. I never want to fight Mac.

But here I am, hunting her.

I don’t believe she spiked the Orb with Shades. Pretty much everyone else does, though. They don’t know Mac like I do. I know Mac like we’re sisters. No way she betrayed us.

Seven hundred thirteen of us alive at the abbey at five o’clock last night. Five hundred twenty-two sidhe-seers left at last count. Taking Dublin back. Hunting Mac. Kicking every bit of Fae ass we see along the way.

No sign of her yet. But we’re headed in the right direction. There’s an epicenter of power in the city, reeking stinking nasty Fae as toxic as the fallout plume from a nuclear explosion. We all feel it. Taste it. Practically see the mushroom cloud hanging in the air. We don’t even talk to one another. Don’t need to. If Mac’s still in Dublin, that’s where she is, straight ahead. No way any sidhe-seer could turn away from this kinda pull. I hope she’s nailing their butts with the spear. We’ll fight back to back like we did a couple nights ago.

But I’ve got this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach …

Bull-fecking-crikey! I don’t feel sick. I never feel sick. Sick is for wusses and wannabes.

Mac can take care of herself. She’s the strongest of us all.

“‘Cept me,” I mutter, with a swagger and a grin.

“What?” Jo says behind me.

I don’t bother answering. They already think I’m cocky enough. I have reasons to be cocky. Uh-huh, I’m that good.

Five hundred twenty-two of us closing in. We fight like banshees and can do some serious damage, but we’ve got only one weapon—the Sword of Light—that can kill a Fae.

“And it’s mine.” I grin again. I can’t help it. Fecking A, it’s the supercoolest gig in the world to be a superhero. Superfast, super-strong, with a few extra “supers” in me that Batman would trade all his toys for. What everybody else wishes they could do, I can. Behind me, Jo says “What?” again, but I’m not grinning anymore. I’m back to feeling prowly, pissed. Being fourteen—well, I almost am—blows. One minute I’m on top of the world, next I’m mad at everybody. Jo says I’m hormonal. She says it gets better. If better means I’m gonna turn into a grown-up, thanks but not. Gimme a blaze of glory any day. Who wants to get old and wrinkly?

If the Unseelie hadn’t taken the power grids down last night, turning the whole city into a Dark Zone, I’d’ve come after Mac sooner, but Kat made us hide like cowards ‘til dawn. Not enough flashlights, she said.

Duh, I’m superfast, I said.

Great, she said, so you’d have us watch you whiz superfast right through a Shade and die? Smart, Dani. Real smart.

Pissed me off, but she had a point. When I’m moving like that, it is hard to see what’s coming at me. With the power grids down, ain’t nobody gonna dispute the Shades own the night once it falls.

Who put you in charge? I said, but it was rhetorical and we both knew it, and she walked away. Ro put her in charge. Ro always puts her in charge, even though I’m better, faster, smarter. Kat’s obedient, dutiful, cautious. Gag me with a spoon.

Crashed and burned cars everywhere we turn. I thought there’d be more bodies. Shades don’t eat dead flesh. S’pose other Unseelie do. The city is spooky quiet.

“Slow down, Dani!” Kat yells at me. “You’re speeding up again. You know we can’t keep up with you!”

“Sorry,” I mutter, and slow down. With what I feel up ahead and this stupid sick feeling in my stomach—

“Not sick.” My teeth clench on the lie. Who the feck am I kidding? I feel sick, sick, sick. My palms and pits are slick with dread. I wipe my sword hand against my jeans. My body knows things before my brain can. Always been that way, even when I was a kid. Used to freak Mom out. It’s what makes me fight so good. I know what I’m gonna find up ahead is gonna be one of those things I’ll wake up in the middle of the night wishing I could scrape out from behind my eyeballs.

Whatever we’re headed for, whatever’s throwing all that fallout into the sky, is more Fae power than I’ve ever felt before, all clumped together in one place. The way we work things, the other sidhe-seers close in and pound ass while I do what I’ve been doing best since Ro took me in when Mom was murdered.

I kill.

We range out like a net. Five hundred strong. Drape ourselves, sidhe-seer by sidhe-seer, around the epicenter and close in tight. Nothing’s getting through us unless it flies. Or sifts.

Aw, crap! Or sifts. Some of the Fae can travel from place to place at the blink of a thought—just a hair faster than me, but I’m working on that. I have a theory I been testing. Haven’t worked out the kinks yet. The kinks are killer.

“Stop,” I hiss at Kat. “Tell ‘em all to stop!”

She cuts a hard look my way but bites a sharp command that rips down the line. We’re well trained. We move together and I tell her my worry: that Mac’s in there, in serious trouble, and if the big-bads throwing off all that power are sifters—which most of the big-bads are—she’ll be gone the second we’re spotted.

Which means I’m going in alone. I’m the only one who can sneak-attack fast enough to pull it off.

“No way,” Kat says.

“No choice, and you know it.”

We look at each other. She gets that look grown-ups get a lot and touches my hair. I jerk. I don’t like to be touched. Grown-ups creep me out.

“Dani.” She pauses heavily.

I know that tone like I know the back of my hand, and I know where it’s going: Lectureville on a runaway train. I roll my eyes. “Save it for somebody who cares. Newsflash: It ain’t me. I’ll go up”—I jerk my head at a nearby building—”to get the lay of things. Then I’m going in. Only. When I. Come. Back. Out.” I spit each word. “Can you guys can go in.”

We stare at each other. I know what she’s thinking. Nah, reading minds isn’t one of my specialties. Grown-ups telegraph everything. Somebody kill me before I get one of those Play-Doh faces. Kat’s thinking if she makes the call against me and loses Mac, Ro’ll have her head. But if she lets me make the call and things go bad, she can blame it on headstrong, uncontrollable Dani. I take the blame a lot. I don’t care. I do what needs to be done.

“I’ll go up,” she says.

“I need the visual snapshot myself, or I could end up grabbing the wrong thing. You want me coming out with some fe—er, effin’ fairy in my hands?” They rip me a new one when I cuss. Like I’m a kid. Like I haven’t spilled more blood than they’ve ever seen. Old enough to kill but too young to cuss. They make a pit bull poodle around. What kinda logic is that? Hypocrisy pisses me off worse than most anything.

Her face sets in stubborn lines.

I push. “I know Mac’s in there and for some reason she can’t get out. She’s in major trouble.” Was she surrounded? Wounded that badly? Had she lost her spear? I didn’t know. Only that she was in way deep shit.

“Rowena said alive or dead,” Kat says stiffly. She left “It sounds like she’ll be dead soon and our problems will be solved” hanging unspoken.

“We want the Book, remember?” I try reason. Times I think I’m the only one in the whole abbey that’s got any.

“We’ll find it without her. She betrayed us.”

Feck reason. Pisses me off when people jump to conclusions they have no proof for. “You don’t know that, so stop saying it,” I growl. Somebody’s fist is holding Kat’s coat collar, got her up on her toes. It’s mine. I don’t know who’s more surprised, her or me. I drop her back on the ground and look away. I’ve never done anything like that before. But it’s Mac in there and I have to get her out, and Kat’s wasting my time big-time with total BS.

Her mouth sets with tiny white lines around it, and her eyes take on a look I get a lot. It makes me feel mad and alone.

She’s afraid of me.

Mac isn’t. One more way we’re like sisters.

Without another word, I give my feet the wings they live for and vanish into the building.

From the rooftop, I stare.

My fists clench. I keep my nails real short; still, they gouge blood from my palms.

Two Fae are dragging Mac down the front steps of a church. She’s naked. They drop her like a piece of trash in the middle of the street. A third Fae exits the church and joins them, and they stand, imperial guards around her, heads swiveling, surveying the street.

The raw sex they’re throwing off blasts me, but it’s not like V’lane, who I’m gonna give my virginity to one day.

I’m as obsessed with sex as anybody, but those … things … down there … those incredibly—fecking A, they hurt to look at; something’s wet on my cheeks; are my eyes boiling in their sockets? — beautiful things scare even me, and I don’t scare easy. They don’t move right. Storms of color rush under their skin. Black torques slither at their necks. There’s nothing in their eyes. Nothing. Eyes of pure oblivion. Power. Sex. Death. They reek of it. They’re Unseelie. My blood knows. I want to fall on my knees at their feet and worship, and Dani Mega O’Malley don’t worship nothing but herself.

I wipe my face. My fingers come away red. My eyes are leaking blood. Freaky. Kinda cool. Vamps got nothing on Fae.

I close my eyes, and when I open them again I don’t look directly at the things guarding Mac. Instead, I take a wide-angle image of the scene. Every Fae, fire hydrant, car, pothole, streetlamp, piece of trash. I map objects and empty spaces on my mental grid, lock it down tight, calculate margin of error based on likely movement, slap it over my snapshot.

I squint. A shadow moves in the street, almost too fast to see. The Fae don’t seem to know it’s there. I watch. They don’t respond to it. No heads swivel to follow it. I can’t focus on it. Can’t make out its shape. It moves like I move … mostly. What the feck? Not a Shade. Not a Fae. A blur of shadow. Now it’s hanging over Mac. Now it’s gone. Bright side—if the Unseelie aren’t noticing it, they shouldn’t notice me when I whiz in to snatch her. Dimmer side—what if whatever it is can see me? What if we collide? What is it? I don’t like unknowns. Unknowns can kill.

I catch the glint of Mac’s spear in a red-robed man’s hand. He’s carrying it at arm’s length from his body. Only Seelie or humans can touch the Seelie Hallows. He’s one or the other. The Lord Master?

They have Mac. They have the spear. Don’t know if I can grab both so won’t try. Would chance it if it wasn’t Mac. They hurt her bad. She’s bloody everywhere. She’s my hero. I hate them! Fae took my mother and now they’ve taken Mac. I refresh my snapshot of the scene right before I let myself go nuts inside, let that ancient sidhe-seer place in my head swallow me whole.

Instantly, I’m cool and perfect and detached from everything. I’m the Shit. It’s the most massive high in the world!

I zip from one freeze-frame to the next. No in-betweens.

I’m on the roof of the building.

I’m in the street.

I’m between the guards. Lust—wantneedsexdie—incinerates me, but I’m moving too fast and they can’t touch what they can’t see and they can’t see me and all I have to do is not cave; hate, hate, hate, make armor from it. Got enough hate to Kevlar all Ireland’s Garda.

I grab Mac.

Freeze-frame.

Heart in my throat! Shadow-thing blocks my path! What is it?

I’m past it.

Hear Fae shouting behind me.

Then I’m screaming at Kat and the crew to get their asses in there, grab that spear, and kill those bastards.

Mac in my arms, I freeze frames as fast I can, heading for the abbey.

CHAPTER 2

Dani: November 4

Let me be certain I’m understanding you correctly,” Rowena says tightly.

Her back is to me; her small frame bristles with anger. Times, Ro seems ancient. Others, she’s wicked spry. It’s weird. Her spine’s ramrod-straight, her hands fisted at her sides. Her long white hair is braided, wrapped regal as a crown around her head. She wears the formal white Grand Mistress robes emblazoned with the symbol of our order—the misshapen emerald shamrock—that she’s been wearing ever since all hell started to break loose. I’m surprised she’s waited this long to rip me a new one, but she’s been busy with other things.

She took away my sword. It’s on her desk. The blade shimmers alabaster, like light stolen straight from heaven—my light—reflecting the glow of dozens of lamps arranged in the office to illuminate every corner, nook, and cranny.

When the Orb exploded on All Hallows’ Eve, freeing the Shades, we were so caught off guard that the slithery fecks managed to take out fifty-four of us before we got enough lamps and flashlights on to protect ourselves. As far as we know, they’re un-killable. My sword can’t touch them. Light’s a temporary stay of execution, just drives ‘em deeper into whatever dark crevices they can find. Our abbey’s been compromised, but we won’t give an inch. No way Shades are taking our home and turning it into a Dark Zone. One by one we’ll hunt ‘em down and force ‘em out.

Yesterday, there was one inside Sorcha’s boot. Clare saw it happen. Said Sorcha just kind of vanished down into her shoe, clothes collapsed around it. When we dumped the boot upside down on the front steps in the sunshine, a papery husk, jewelry, and two fillings spilled out, followed by a Shade that shattered into a zillion pieces. None of us is putting on our shoes now without shaking the crap out of ‘em and shining flashlights deep. I been wearing sandals a lot, even though it’s cold. What a way to go: death-by-shoe-Shade. I grin. I have a black sense of humor. You try living my life, see what color yours turns.

I stare at my sword. My fingers curl on emptiness. It kills me to be parted from it.

In a whirl of white robes, Rowena spins and skewers me with a look sharp as an ice pick. I shift uncomfortably. I might make fun of Rowena, call her “Ro,” and blather about how cool I am, but—make no mistake—this old woman is someone you wanna tread carefully around.

“You were within killing distance of the Lord Master and three Unseelie Princes and you did not even draw your sword?”

“I couldn’t,” I say defensively. “I had to get Mac. Couldn’t risk that she might be killed in the fight.”

“Which part of dead or alive did I fail to impress upon you?”

Well, obviously the “dead” part, but I don’t say that. “She can track the Book. Why’s everybody keep forgetting that?”

“No longer! You knew that the moment you laid eyes on her. Traitor, and now Pri-ya, she is of no use to us. Incapable of thought or speech, she can’t even feed herself! She’ll be dead in days, if she lasts that long. Och, and there you went, discarding the only chance we’ve ever had at slaying our enemy plus three Unseelie Princes, all for saving the life of a single worthless girl! Who do you think you are to be making such decisions for the lot of us?”

Mac might be Pri-ya, but she’s not a traitor. I won’t believe that. I say nothing.

“Get out of my sight,” she shouts. “Get out! Get out! Or I’ll throw you out!” Her voice rises and she flings an arm at the door. “Thinking you know what’s best—then go! Have a try at it, you ungrateful child! As if I haven’t done everything for you a mother would and more! Leave! See how long you survive out there without me!”

I stoically refuse to glance at my sword. No telegraphing for me. Ro catches everything. But if she’s serious, I can beat her to the sword, and will.

I look at her and ooze neediness and remorse. Cram my eyes full of it. Make my lower lip quiver. We stare at each other.

By the time all the muscles in my face are screaming from holding such a stupid, wussy look, her gaze softens. She draws a deep breath, releases it. Closes her eyes, sighs. “Dani, och, Dani,” she clucks, opening her eyes. “When will you learn? When you’re dead? I have only our best interests at heart. Do you not trust me?”

I’m massively suspicious of that word. It means to accept without question. I did that once. “I’m sorry, Rowena.” My voice catches on the words. I hang my head. I want my sword back.

“I can see you have feelings for that, that—”

“Mac,” I supply, before she calls her something that really pisses me off.

“But I swear I will never ken the why of it.” She pauses heavily, and I know it’s my cue to begin justifying my existence.

I tell her everything she wants to hear. I’m lonely, I say. Mac was nice to me. I’m sorry I was so stupid. I’m really trying to learn to be the person you want me to be, I tell her. I’ll do better next time.

Ro dismisses me but keeps my sword. I deal. For now. I know where it is, and if she doesn’t give it back soon, I’ll find an excuse for something that needs killing.

In the meantime, I got a lot to do. Because I’m superfast, they have me whizzing all over the county, collecting lamps, bulbs, batteries, a whole list of supplies. The crazy stuff we saw in Dublin hasn’t started happening out here yet. We still got power. Even if we didn’t, we got backup generators out the wazoo. Our abbey’s totally self-sufficient. Own electric, food, water. We got it all.

So far, I haven’t spotted a single Unseelie. Guess they prefer the city. More to feed on. Kat thinks they won’t go rural ‘til they’ve gorged on urban, so we should be safe for a while, ‘cept for those fecking Shades. ‘Tween times, I check on Mac. Keep trying to get her to eat. Ro has the key to her cell. Don’t know why she needs locking in, since she has all those wards around her and can’t seem to walk. If I don’t get food in her soon, I’ll be requisitioning that key. I can coax her to crawl over to the bars, but I can’t force her to eat through them.

Thing I really want to know is: Where the feck is V’lane? Why hasn’t he come for Mac? Why didn’t he stop the Unseelie Princes from raping her? I call for him as I dart around the countryside, but if he hears me yelling, he doesn’t answer to me. Guess not to Mac anymore, either.

And Barrons—what’s his deal? Doesn’t he want her alive? Why have they all abandoned her when she needs ‘em the most?

Men.

Dude, they suck.

I dump supplies in the dining hall. Superglue, lights, batteries, brackets. Nobody looks up. Sidhe-seers at every table, making more of the cool helmet Mac was wearing the night we fought together. After I snatched her from the princes, Kat and the others went in, kicked ass, snagged Mac’s spear and backpack, and found the pink helmet inside.

Now they got an assembly line going that I keep supplied, ‘cept it’s getting hard to find Click-It lights. I might have to go into Dublin, even though Ro says not to raid stores there.

Since so many of us work as bike couriers for Post Haste, Inc. — that’s the front for the international sidhe-seer coalition, with offices around the world—most of us already have our own helmets. Just need ‘em modified. With Shades in the abbey, everybody’s arguing to be first in line for the next one done. I told ‘em Mac called it a MacHalo, but Ro forbade anyone to call it that, like it pissed her off Mac thought of it or something.

I whiz into the kitchen, yank open the fridge so hard it tips over catty-corner and I have to right it, then stand there cramming my mouth full of food. Don’t know what I’m eating, don’t care. I’m shaking. I have to eat constantly. Superspeed drains me. I go for high fat, high sugar. Butter, cream, raw eggs go down fast. OJ. Ice cream. Cake. I keep my pockets stuffed with candy bars and don’t go anywhere without my fanny pack. I gulp two sodas and finally stop shaking.

I picked up a couple protein drinks for Mac at the store. I worry she might choke on solid food if she resists. She’s gonna eat this time, period.

Cassie says Ro’s making rounds. It’s time for that key.

I don’t cry. I don’t remember if I ever cried. Didn’t when Mom was killed. But if I was gonna cry, I’d do it when I look at Mac. See, her and me? We’d die for each other. Seeing her like this slays me. I drag my feet on the way to her cell, which, for me, means walking like a Joe. I munch a couple more candy bars.

She won’t keep her clothes on. Tears ‘em off like they burn her skin. Dude, I want to look like her when I grow up. When I brought her here, Ro took her and locked her downstairs in one of the old cells they used back when. Stone walls. Stone floor. Pallet. Bucket for waste. She’s not making any, ‘cause she’s not eating or drinking, but still—it’s the principle! She’s not an animal, even if she’s acting like one. She can’t help it! Prison bars for a door.

Ro said it was for Mac’s own good. Said the Unseelie Hunters would track her, and the princes would sift in and take her back to the Lord Master, if we didn’t put her below earth and surround her with wards. We spent most of the day I brought her back painting symbols all over the abbey, with the Haven looking over our shoulders, telling us what to do. They had pictures. Ro got ‘em out of a book in one of the Forbidden Libraries. It was wicked cool! We had to mix blood into the paint. I know, ‘cause Ro wanted mine. She didn’t want me to tell the other girls. I know a lot of stuff the other girls don’t. The walls of Mac’s cell are covered with wards, inside and out.

I pass Liz in the corridor on the way to the stairs. She’s wearing a MacHalo, blazing like a small sun.

“How is she?” I say.

Liz shrugs. “No idea. Not my turn to be checking on her, and you won’t find me down there ‘less it is.”

When I pass Barb and Jo, I don’t ask. Most of the sidhe-seers feel the same way as Liz. They don’t want Mac here, and nobody’s taking any chances. There’s no electricity downstairs. Like medieval times. Torches burning in wall sconces. You get the picture.

It’d make me nervous for Mac, ‘cept I tossed fifty or so click-on LED lights in her cell and been keeping an eye on the batteries.

“I don’t know why you bother,” Jo throws over her shoulder. “She spiked the Orb. She flirted with a Seelie Prince. She was asking for it. Fae and human don’t mix. That’s the whole point of our order—we keep the races apart. She got what she was asking for.”

My blood boils. I thought I was at the door, about to go down, but I’ve got Jo flattened against the wall, our noses separated only by the distance forced by the front lights of our MacHalos.

There’s that look. Scared of me.

“You should be,” I say coolly. “Scared of me. Because if anything happens to Mac, you’re gonna be the first person I come looking for.”

She shoves me away, hard. “Rowena will take away your pretty sword. Without your sword, you’re not so tough, Danielle.”

Was she kidding me? “It’s Dani.” I hate that sissy name. I shove her back against the wall.

I can’t fecking believe it, but she shoves me again. Still got that scared look but defiant, too.

“You might be faster and stronger, kid, but enough of us together could kick your ass, and we’re beginning to want to. You take care of a traitor, you start looking like one.”

I look at Barb, who shrugs as if to say, “Sorry, but I agree.”

Buncha idiots. I whiz off without a backward glance. Not wasting time or breath on them. Mac needs me.

My first clue something’s wrong is I open the door to the downstairs and it’s dark. I stand there, stupid for a second. No way all the torches burned out at once. I’m not sensing Fae, and even the weakest sidhe-seer among us has range enough to cover the whole abbey.

No Fae around means one of us put out the torches. Means we got somebody in our ranks wants Mac dead bad enough to try to outright kill her. And expects to get away with it. I punch on my Click-Its, go into superspeed mode, and bingo—I’m at her cell.

It’s worse than I thought.

When we brought buckets of paint downstairs, we never got around to carrying the unused gallons back up, and now somebody’s gone and dumped black paint all over the floor and splashed it on the walls outside her cell, obliterating the wards.

I toe it with a sandal. It’s wet, fresh.

I frown. Something’s not making sense. With the torches out—sure, the Shades could get down here. With the wards obliterated, they could even enter the cell—if there weren’t fifty lights blazing in there with her, but there are. So what’s the point? Why make a half-assed murder attempt that has no chance of working?

“Aw, crap,” I say, as it dawns on me. Because it’s not Shades someone’s expecting. It’s something bigger and badder, something not afraid of the light.

No way. No way we got that serious a traitor in our walls!

I mull the evidence. Brain says, way, Dani. Wise up.

Don’t want to leave her alone, but I can’t guard her without a weapon! Still not sensing Fae. I need forty-five seconds, tops. Gotta risk it.

Freeze-frame!

Moving like I do is cool; ‘s ‘bout as close to being invisible as you can get. People say they feel a rush of wind blasting by that practically blows off their hair. I’m still testing the limits. I like running outside best, ‘cause there’s less to crash into. Bruises are me.

Point I’m making is, people can’t even see me. So a person touching me when I’m freeze-framing? Totally out of the question.

I can sort of see what’s going on around me, hear a little, too, but it’s mostly a blur of movement and noise.

The noise that tips me off, moments before I get freaked out of my skin, is male voices. Angry. Violent. No men are allowed in the abbey.

Ever. No exceptions. The night Mac brought V’lane here, we all ‘bout died.

But here they are. Men headed toward me. Lots of them. Gunshots! Fecking A! What kinda idiot brings guns to this kinda war? What would guns kill? Oh, jeez, duh—us. Why? Right ahead, coming faster than expected—

AVOID! AVOID! AVOID!

I call on every ounce of speed and agility I got, because something major weird is happening and something’s sort of in my space with me, and I’m having a shit of a time avoiding it, and all the sudden I’m plucked from the air by my elbows and jammed into a stationary position on the floor, so hard my teeth rattle.

Plucked.

Me.

Snatched straight out of superwhiz speed. Forced to stop.

I can’t deal.

I squeak.

“Dani,” a man says.

I gape. Mac never told me what he looked like. I can’t believe Mac never told me what he looked like. I can’t stop staring. “Barrons?” I breathe. It has to be him. It can’t be anybody else. This is what she lived with every day? How did she stand it? How did she ever say “no” to him about anything? How does he know who I am? Did Mac tell him about me? I hope she told him how awesome I am! I’m so embarrassed I could die. I squeaked in front of him. Mice squeak. He takes up too much space. He yanked me from midair.

I scramble back, half-freeze-frame speed. I get the feeling he lets me. It chafes, bad.

I look past him and nearly squeak again.

Eight men fan in V formation behind him, packing weapons from head to toe, draped in ammo, toting what look like Uzis. Big men. Couple of ‘em seem more animal than human. One of ‘em looks like Death himself, with white hair, pale skin, and hot dark eyes that assess restlessly, incessantly. They fix on me. I cringe. They all move sleek and strange. Ooze arrogance like Fae, but they’re not Fae. Sidhe-seers are plastered up against the walls, trying not to draw attention to themselves. Nobody dead that I can see. I think the gunshots I heard were warnings, sprayed into the air. Hope so. The energy rolling off these dudes is fierce. Whatever Barrons has got—I can’t put my finger on it, but on a raw-power graph it’s off the fecking charts—they’ve got, too. Watching this crew stalk down the hall of the abbey makes even me feel like peeling out of the way.

One of the men has Ro banded by a forearm, knife at her throat.

I should whiz in and save her. She’s our Grand Mistress. She’s our highest priority. Thing is, I’m not sure I can make it past Barrons.

“Get out of my abbey!” she’s shouting.

“Where’s Mac?” Barrons says, soft, making my gaze dart back to him. Soft from him is a surgical knife poised above your jugular. “Has the bitch hurt her?”

If looks could kill! Someday somebody’s gonna look at somebody about me like that. I’m not about to tell him I’m pretty sure Ro was gonna let her die. “No. She’s okay.” I clarify a little. “Well, I mean, as okay as she was when she got here.”

He gives me a look and says, “Where?” again.

A cold, hard fact just got driven home for me with the doused torches and painted-over wards. I can’t keep Mac safe by myself. Even I have to sleep sometimes. With the exception of All Hallows’ Eve, Barrons has kept her safe.

Still … there’s no way anything human plucked me out of the air like that. What is he? I don’t know how much Mac trusts him. “Promise me you won’t harm Ro,” I say. “We need her.”

Something savage moves deep in his eyes. “I’ll decide that when I see Mac.”

I feel savage all the sudden, too. “Well, where the feck were you when she needed you?” I snarl. “I was there.”

Without another word, I freeze-frame out.

Only two things I trust in these walls: me, and my sword. If my instincts are spot on—as they always are—Barrons isn’t the only thing headed Mac’s way right now.

I’m gonna beat ‘em all there.

I let that old, cold sidhe-seer place in my head swallow me. I become power, strength, speed, free!

The door to Ro’s office splinters.

The sword is mine.

Then I’m in Mac’s cell, standing over her. She rolls over like she senses the heat of my body. Clings to my leg. Rubs against me. Makes noises. I pretend nothing’s weird. She can’t help herself right now. I don’t look straight at her. I haven’t since I got her out. I don’t know a lot about sex, but I do know what’s happening to her is no way to learn it. I been doing a little research. It’s got me worried. There’s not a single case of a person turned Pri-ya coming back from it. Not one. They’re mindless animals that do whatever they’re told until they die. And those were the cases of people turned by Seelie. Never been anyone turned by Unseelie, and Mac got the whammy from three of the most powerful! But Mac’s got wicked balls. She’ll claw her way back somehow. She has to. We need her.

A Fae sifts in!

Wantneedsexdie blasts me. Hesitation ain’t me! I jab my sword into its gut. It looks down. Thing is stunned, disbelieving. We stare at each other. Unbearable perfection. My cheeks get wet like last time I looked at a prince, and I don’t have to wipe them to know it’s blood. If just looking at it makes my eyes bleed, how did Mac survive three of them touching her? Doing things to her? Even mortally wounded, it’s forcing me to my knees. I want to let it do anything it wants to me. I want to obey it. I want to call it Master. Ro says they’re the equivalent of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, so who’s my sword stuck in? Death, Pestilence, Famine, or War? Dude, what a kill! I’d pat myself on the back if it wasn’t taking everything I got to keep from pulling my sword out of it and turning it on myself. It’s fecking with me. Trying to take me with it. Its iridescent eyes blaze in what I’m pretty sure is its dying attempt to incinerate me. Then we’re both falling to our knees: it ‘cause it’s dead, and me—I’m so fecking embarrassed—’cause I think I just had my first ever orgasm killing an Unseelie Prince. That’s wrong. I hate it. I hate that it made me feel that now. It wasn’t supposed to be that way.

Then Barrons is in the cell.

Then there’s another Unseelie Prince sifting in behind me. The thing is so powerful, my sidhe-seer senses pick up on it before it becomes corporeal. I spin, lunge, but I don’t get the rush of killing it, because the bastard takes one look behind me and vanishes.

I get that. I’m not stupid. It was more afraid of Barrons than of me and my sword.

I whirl to face him, to demand answers, because I’m not letting him take Mac anywhere until he explains a few things, but the look in his eyes shuts me down.

Way to go, Dani, the look says. You’re not a kid, say his eyes. You’re a warrior, and a bloody fine one at that. His look takes me in, measures me up and down, and reflects me back at myself, and in the glittering black mirror of his gaze, I am one hell of a woman. Barrons sees me. He really sees me!

When he picks up Mac and turns away, I swallow a dreamy sigh.

I’m gonna give Barrons my virginity one day.

CHAPTER 3

Mac: in the cell at the abbey

I am heat.

I am need.

I am pain.

I am more than pain. I am agony. I am the other side of death denied the mercy of it. I am life that should never have been.

Skin is all I am. Skin that is alive that hungers that aches that needs to be touched to endure. I roll and roll, but it is not enough. It makes the pain worse. My skin is on fire, flayed by a thousand red-hot blades.

I have been on the cold stone floor of this cell for as long as I can recall existing. I have never known anything but this cold stone floor. I am hollow. I am barren. I am empty. I do not know why I continue to be.

But wait! In my stasis is there something? Is this change?

I lift my head.

There is other-than-empty near!

I crawl to it, beg it to make my agony stop.

The other-than-empty tries to put things in my mouth and make me chew. I roll my head away. Resist. Not what I want. Touch me here. Touch me now!

It does not. It goes away. Sometimes it returns and tries again.

Time has no meaning.

I drift.

I am alone. Lost. I have always been alone. There has never been anything but cold and pain. I touch myself. I need. I need.

The other-than-empty comes and goes. Puts things in my mouth that smell and taste bad. I spit them out. Those are not what I need.

I drift in my stasis of pain.

Wait! What is this? Change again? Am I to know something besides agony?

Yes! I know this! He Who Made Me is here! My prince has come. I rejoice. An end to my suffering is at hand.

Wait—what is other-than-empty doing?

My prince is … no, no, no!

I scream. I hammer other-than-empty with my fists. The other-than-empty is hurting my master with a long shiny thing. He is ceasing to be! Take me with you, I beg! I cannot endure. I am pain! I am pain!

The other-than-empty kneels beside me. Touches my hair.

My prince is gone.

The other made him cease to be!

I collapse. I am grief. I am despair. I am desolation. I am the cliffs of black ice from whence my masters come.

Change again?

Another He Who Made Me has come? Am I to be saved after all? Granted mercy at my master’s hands?

No, no, no! He is gone, too. Why am I being tortured?

I am agony. I have been forsaken. I am being punished and I do not know why.

But wait …

Something looms over me. It is dark and powerful. It is electric. It is lust. It is not one of my princes, but my body arches and steams. Yes, yes, yes, you are what I need!

It touches me. I am on fire! I weep with relief. It holds me to its body, crushes me to its skin. We sizzle. It speaks, but I do not understand its language. I am in a place beyond words. There is only skin and flesh and need.

I am an animal. I hunger without conscience, without qualm.

And I have been given a gift to exceed all gifts—my masters must be pleased with me!

Its language is gibberish to my ears, but the flesh recognizes its own.

The creature that holds me now will do more than end my pain. It will fill all that is empty.

It is an animal, too.

CHAPTER 4

I am alive. I am so alive. I have never been more alive in my life. I sit, cross-legged, nude, in a tangle of silk sheets. Life is a sensual banquet and I am voracious. I glisten with sweat and satisfaction. But I need more. My lover is too far away. He is bringing me food. I do not know why he insists. I need nothing but his body, his electric touch, the primitive, intimate things he does to me. His hands on me, his teeth and tongue, and most especially what hangs heavy between his legs. Sometimes I kiss it. Lick it. Then he glistens with sweat and hunger and strains beneath my mouth. I hold down his hips and tease. It makes me feel powerful and alive. “You are the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen,” I tell him. “You are perfect.”

He makes a strangled sound and mutters something about how I might seriously reconsider that at some point. I ignore it. He says many mystifying things. I ignore them all. I admire the preternatural grace of his body. Dark, strong, he pads like a great beast, muscles rippling. Black and crimson symbols cover much of his skin. It’s exotic, exciting. He is large. The first time I almost couldn’t take him. He fills me, sates me completely. Until he is no longer inside me and I am empty again.

I push onto all fours and arch my rump invitingly. I know he cannot resist my ass. When he looks at it, he gets a funny look on his face. Savage, his mouth tightens, his eyes harden. Sometimes he looks away sharply.

But he always looks back.

Hard, fast, hungry like me.

I believe he is divided in desire. I do not understand that. Desire is. There is no judgment between animals. No right or wrong. Lust is. Pleasure is the way of beasts. “More,” I say. “Come back to bed.” It took me a while to learn this exquisite thing’s language, but when I did, I learned rapidly, although parts of it elude me. He claims I knew it all along but had forgotten it. He says it took me weeks to regain it. I do not know what “weeks” are. He says they are a way of marking the passage of time. I have no care for such matters. He often speaks nonsense. I ignore it. I shut his mouth with mine. Or with my breasts, or other parts. It works every time.

He shoots me a look, and for a moment I think I have seen that look before. But I know I have not, because I could never have forgotten such a divine creature.

“Eat,” he growls.

“Don’t want food,” I growl back. I tire of him making me eat. I reach for him. I am strong. My body is sure. But this fine beast is stronger than me. I savor his power, when he lifts me on top of him, when he holds me down and fills me, when he’s behind me, driving deep. I want him there now. He knows no limits. Though I have drowsed, I have never seen him sleep. Though I demand incessantly, he is always able to please me. He is inexhaustible. “I want more. You. Come here. Now.” There goes my rump again. Up.

He stares.

He curses. “No, Mac,” he says.

I do not know what “Mac” means.

But I know what “no” means.

And I do not like it.

I pout. But it quickly curves into a smile. I know a secret. For a beast of such power, his self-control with me is weak. I have learned this in our time together. I wet my lips, give him a look, and he makes that raw, angry-sounding noise deep in his throat that makes my blood hot, hot, hot, because every time he makes it I know he’s just about to give me what I want.

He cannot resist me. It bothers him. He is an odd animal.

Lust is, I tell him, again and again. I try to make him understand.

“There’s more to life than lust, Mac,” he says roughly, again and again.

There is that word “Mac” again. So many words I do not understand. I weary of talk. I tune him out.

He gives me what I want. Then forces me to eat—boring! I humor him. Belly full, I am sleepy. I tangle my body with his. But when I do, lust takes me again, and I cannot sleep. I roll on top of him, straddle him, breasts swaying over his face. His eyes glaze and I smile. He traps me beneath him in a smooth graceful roll, stretches my arms above my head, and stares into my eyes. I grind my hips up. He is hard and ready. He is always hard and ready.

“Be still, Mac. Bloody hell, would you just be still?”

“But you’re not in me,” I complain.

“And I’m not going to be.”

“Why not? You want me.”

“You need rest.”

“Rest later.”

He closes his eyes. A muscle works in his jaw. He opens his eyes. They glitter like arctic night. “I am trying to help you.”

I arch up against him. “And I am trying to help you help me,” I explain patiently. My beast is dense sometimes.

He growls and drops his face in my neck. But he doesn’t kiss or nip it. I grunt my displeasure.

When he lifts his head again, he wears a mask of impassivity that does not promise more of what I want. My hands are still trapped in his.

I head-butt him.

He laughs, and for a moment I think I have won, but then he stops and says, “Sleep,” in a strange voice that seems to echo with many voices. It pressures my skull. I know what it is. This beast has magic.

I have magic, too, in a place in my head. I push back at him with it, hard, because I want what he has and he will not give it to me. It angers me that he resists, so I push into him, I try to make him do what I want him to do. With my beast magic, I search for his weakness to use it against him, like he’s trying to use mine. Then something gives way, and abruptly I am no longer snug between the pleasure of silk at my back and man at my front but—

I stand in a desert. I am inside my lover’s body, staring out from his eyes. I am mighty, I am vast, I am strong. We breathe stiflingly hot night air. We are alone, so alone. A scorching wind gusts across the desert, kicking up a violent sandstorm, blinding us to all but a few feet ahead, driving thousands of tiny, needlelike grains into our unprotected face, our eyes. But we make no move to shield ourselves. We welcome the pain. We become the pain, unresisting. We breathe grains of sand. They burn our lungs.

Others flank us; still we are so alone. What have we done? What have we become? Have they gotten to her? Does she know? Will she denounce us? Turn her face away?

She is our world. Our highest star, our brightest sun, and now we are dark as night. We were always dark, feared, above and beyond any law. But she loved us anyway. Will she love us now? We who have never known uncertainty or fear now know both in what is absurdly the moment of our greatest strength. We who have killed without conscience, taken without question, conquered without hesitation, now question it all. Undone by a single act. The mighty, whose stride has never faltered—we stumble. We fall to our knees, throw back our head, and, as our lungs fill with sand, roar our outrage through cracked and burning lips to the heavens, those mocking, fucking heavens—

Someone is shaking me.

“What are you doing?” he is roaring. I am in bed again, between silk and man. I still feel the searing heat of the desert, and my skin seems gritty with sand. He stares down at me, his face white with fury. And more. This beast that does not rattle is rattled.

“Who is she?” I ask. I am no longer inside his head. It was hard to stay there. He didn’t want me there. He is very strong and cast me out.

“I don’t know how you did that, but you will never do it again,” he snarls, and shakes me again. “Do you understand?” He bares his teeth. It excites me.

“You preferred her to all others. Why? Did she mate better?”

It makes no sense.

I am a fine beast.

He should hold me above all others.

I am here. Now. She is gone. I do not know how I know it, but she has been gone for a very, very long time. Far longer than his “weeks.”

“Stay the fuck out of my head!”

Fuck. There’s a word I understand. “Yes, please.”

“Sleep,” he orders in that strange, multilayered voice. “Now.”

I resist, but he keeps saying it over and over. After a time, he sings to me. Finally, he gets inks and draws upon my skin. He has done it before. It tickles … but soothes.

I sleep.

I dream of cold places and fortresses of black ice. I dream of a white mansion. I dream of mirrors that are doorways to dreams and gateways to hell. I dream animals that cannot exist. I dream of things I cannot name. I weep in my dreams. Powerful arms band me. I shudder in them. I feel like I’m dying.

There is something in my dream that wants me to die. Or at least cease living as far as I understand it.

It makes me angry. I will not cease to exist. I will not die, no matter how much pain there is. I made a promise to someone. Someone who is my highest star, my brightest sun. Someone I want to be like. I wonder who it is.

I push on through the cold, dark dreams.

A man wearing red robes reaches for me. He is beautiful, seductive, and very angry with me. He calls to me, summons me. He has some kind of hold over me. I want to go to him. I need to go to him. I belong to him. He made me what I am. I will tell you of she for whom you grieve, he promises. I will tell you of her last days. You long to hear. Yes, yes, although I do not know of whom he speaks, I want desperately to hear about her. Did she have happy days, did she smile, was she brave at the end? Was it quick? Tell me it was quick. Tell me there was no pain. Find me the Book, he says, and I will tell you all. Give you all. Call the Beast. Unleash it with me. I do not want this book. I am terrified of it. I will give you back she for whom you grieve. I will give you back your memories of her and more.

I think I would die to have those memories back. There was a hole. Now there is a hole where the hole was.

You must live to get those memories back, another voice growls from a distance. I feel tickling on my skin and hear chanting. It drowns out the voice of the man in red robes. He is fury in crimson, melting into blood, then he recedes and I am safe from him for now.

I am a kite in a tornado, but I have a long string. There is tension in my line. Somewhere, someone is holding on to the other end, and, although it cannot spare me this storm, it will not let me be lost while I regain my strength.

It is enough.

I will survive.

He plays music for me. I like it very much.

I find something else to do with my body that gives me pleasure. He calls it dancing. He sprawls on the bed, arms folded behind his head, a mountain of dark muscle and tattoos against crimson silk sheets, watching me as I dance naked around the room. His gaze is carnal, hot, and I know my dancing pleases him greatly.

The beat is driving, intense. The lyrics apropos, for he has recently taught me that the moment of pleasure is called “orgasm” or “to come,” and the song is a cover of a Bruce Springsteen song by someone called Manfred Mann. Over and over it says, I came for you.

I laugh as I sing it to him. I play it again and again. He watches me. I lose myself in the rhythm. Head back, neck arched. When I look back at him, he is singing: Girl, give me time to cover my tracks.

I laugh. “Never,” I say. If my beast thinks to leave me, I will track him. He is mine. I tell him so.

His eyes narrow. He lunges from the bed and is on me. I exhilarate him. I see it in his face, feel it in his body. He dances with me. I am struck again by how strong and powerful and sure of himself he is. On a predator scale of one to ten, I have enticed a ten. That means I, too, am a ten. I am proud.

Our sex is fierce. We will both be bruised.

“I want it to always be like this,” I tell him.

His nostrils flare, obsidian eyes mock. “Try holding on to that thought.”

“I do not need to try. I will never feel differently.”

“Ah, Mac,” he says, and his laughter is as dark and cold as the place of which I dream, “one day you will wonder if it’s possible to hate me more.”

My beast adores music. He has a pink thing he calls an eye-pod, although it does not look to me as if it was ever a pod for eyes, and with it he makes many sounds. He plays songs over and over and watches me carefully, even when I do not dance.

Some of the songs make me angry and I do not like them. I try to make him stop playing them, but he holds the eye-pod over my head and I cannot reach it. I like hard, sexy songs, like “Pussy Liquor” and “Foxy, Foxy.” He likes to play peppy, happy songs, and I am beyond sick of “What a Wonderful World” and “Tubthumping.” He watches me, always watches me, when he plays them. They have stupid names and I hate them.

Sometimes he shows me pictures. I hate those, too. They are of others, most often a woman he calls Alina. I do not know why he needs pictures of her when he has me! Looking at her makes me feel hot and cold at the same time. Looking at her hurts me.

Sometimes he tells me stories. His favorite one is about a book that is really a monster that could destroy the world. Boring!

Once he told me a story about Alina and said she died. I screamed at him and wept, and I do not know why. Today he showed me something new. Photos of a man he calls Jack Lane. I tore them up and threw the pieces at him.

Now I have forgiven him because I have him inside me, and he’s got his big hands on my petunia—I do not know that word, or where it came from! — rump, and he’s doing that slow, erotic bump and grind so smooth and deep that makes me purr to the bottom of my toes and kissing me so hard I cannot breathe around it and I do not want to. He is in my soul and I am in his, and we are in bed but we are in a desert, and I do not know where he begins and I end, and I suppose if his peculiar madness is music and photos and stories that chafe, it is a small price to pay for such pleasure.

He comes hard, shuddering. I match him, bucking with each shudder. When he comes, he makes a noise deep in his throat that is so raw and animal and sexual that I think if he merely looked at me and made that noise, I might explode in an orgasm.

He holds me. He smells good. I drowse.

He starts with his stupid stories again.

“I do not care.” I raise my head from his chest. “Stop talking at me.” I cover his mouth with my hand. He pushes it away.

“You must care, Mac.”

“I am so sick of that word! I do not know ‘Mac.’ I do not like your pictures. I hate your stories!”

“Mac is your name. You are MacKayla Lane. Mac for short. It is who you are. You are a sidhe-seer. It is what you are. You were raised by Jack and Rainey Lane. They are your parents and love you. They need you very much. Alina was your sister. She was murdered.”

“Stop talking! I will not listen.” I clamp my hands to my ears.

He pries them away. “You love pink.”

“I despise pink! I love red and black.” The colors of blood and death. The colors of the tattoos on his beautiful body that cover his legs, his abdomen, half his chest, and twine up one side of his neck.

He rolls me over beneath him and traps my face between his hands. “Look at me. Who am I?”

There is something I have forgotten. I do not want to remember. “You are my lover.”

“I was not always, Mac. There was a time when you didn’t even like me. You have never trusted me.”

Why does he tell me lies? Why does he seek to ruin what we have? It is now. It is perfect. There is no cold, no pain, no death, no betrayal, no icy places, no terrifying monsters that can steal your will and turn you into something you cannot even recognize and make you feel ashamed, so ashamed. There is only pleasure here, endless pleasure.

“I trust you,” I say. “We are the same.”

His smile is sharp as knives. “We are not. I’ve told you that before. Never make that mistake. We meet in lust. But we are not the same. Never will be.”

“You worry about things of no importance. And you talk too much.”

“You got me a birthday cake. It was pink. I smashed it into the ceiling.”

I do not know “birthdays” or “cakes,” so I say nothing.

“You like cars. I let you drive my Viper.”

Cars! I remember those. Sleek, sexy, fast, and powerful, all the things I like. Something nags at me. “Why did you smash this ‘birthday cake’ into the ceiling?” I wait for his answer and am struck by a violent sense of déjà vu—that I have waited for many answers from my beast, and have gotten few, if any.

He stares down at me. He seems startled that I have asked such a question. I have confused myself with it. I do not ask questions. I have little interest in talk. There is only now. I met my lover the day he became my lover. What do I care of things called cakes and birthdays? Yet I seem to want his answer very much and feel oddly deflated when he does not give me one.

“I am Jericho Barrons. Say my name.”

I try to turn my face away, but his hands clamp like a vise on my skull and hold it immobile, preventing me from looking away.

I close my eyes.

He shakes me. “Say my name.”

“No.”

“Damn it, would you just cooperate?”

“I do not know that word, ‘cooperate.’ “

“Obviously,” he growls.

“I think you make up words.”

“I do not make up words.”

“Do, too.”

“Do not.”

“Too.”

“Not.”

I laugh.

“Woman, you make me crazed,” he mutters.

We do this often. Get into childish arguments. He is stubborn, my beast.

“Open your eyes and say my name.”

I squeeze them shut more tightly.

“It would make my cock hard to hear you say my name.”

My eyes pop open. “Jericho Barrons,” I say sweetly.

He makes a pained sound. “Bloody hell, woman, I think a part of me wants to keep you this way.”

I touch his face. “I like how I am. I like how you are, too. When you are … What is that word you used? Cooperating.”

“Tell me to fuck you.”

I smile and comply. We’re back in territory I understand.

“You didn’t say my name. Say my name when you tell me to fuck you.”

“Fuck me, Jericho Barrons.”

“From now on, you will call me Jericho Barrons every time you speak to me.”

He is a strange beast. But he gives me what I want. I suppose it will not kill me to do the same.

And so we begin a different way of being. I call him Jericho Barrons and he calls me Mac.

We are no longer animals. We have “names.”

I dream of his “Alina” and wake up weeping. But there is something new inside me. Something cold and explosive beneath the tears.

I do not know what to call it, but it makes me pace. I stalk the room like the animal I am, smashing and breaking things. I scream until my throat is raw.

Suddenly I have new words.

Rage.

Anger. Violence.

I am all the fury that ever was. I could scourge the earth with my grief and madness.

I want something. But I do not know what it is.

He watches me in silence.

I think it must be sex. I go to him. He sits on the edge of the bed and pulls me to stand between his legs.

My hands hurt from hitting things. He kisses them.

“Revenge,” he says softly. “They took too much. You give up and die, or learn how to take back. Revenge, Mac.”

I cock my head. I try the word on my tongue. “Revenge.” Yes. That is what I want.

He is gone when I wake, and I have a bad moment, but then he is there and has brought many boxes and some of them smell good.

I no longer resist when he offers me food. I anticipate it. Food is pleasure. Sometimes I put things on his body and lick them off, and he watches me with dark eyes and shudders as he comes.

He leaves and returns with more boxes.

I sit on the bed, eat, and watch him.

He opens boxes and begins to build something. It is strange. He plays music on his eye-pod that makes me feel uncomfortable … young, childish.

“It’s a tree, Mac. You and Alina put one up every year. I couldn’t get a live one. We’re in a Dark Zone. Do you remember Dark Zones?”

I shake my head.

“You named them.”

I shake my head.

“How about December twenty-fifth? Do you know what day that is?”

I shake my head.

“It’s today.” He hands me a book. There are pictures in it of a fat man in red clothing, of stars and cradles, of trees with shiny pretty things on the branches.

It all seems quite stupid to me.

He hands me the first of many boxes. In them are shiny, pretty things. I get the point. I roll my eyes. My stomach is full and I would rather have sex.

He refuses to comply. We have one of our spats. He wins because he has what I want and can withhold it.

We decorate the tree while happy, idiotic songs play.

When we are finished, he does something that makes a million tiny bright lights glow red and pink and green and blue, and I lose my breath like someone has kicked me in the stomach.

I drop to my knees.

I sit cross-legged on the floor and stare at the tree for a long time.

I get more new words. They come slowly, but they come.

Christmas.

Presents.

Mom.

Dad.

Home. School. Brickyard. Cell phone. Pool. Trinity. Dublin.

One word disturbs me more than all the rest of them combined.

Sister.

He makes me put on “clothes.” I hate them. They are tight and chafe my skin.

I take them off, throw them on the floor, and stomp on them. He dresses me again, in rainbow colors that are bright and hurt my eyes.

I like black. It is the color of secrets and silence.

I like red. It is the color of lust and power.

“You wear black and red.” I am angry. “You even wear it on your skin.” I do not know why he gets to make up the rules, and I tell him so.

“I’m different, Mac. And I get to make up the rules because I’m bigger and stronger.” He laughs. There is power even in such a simple sound. Everything about him is power. It thrills me. It makes me want him all the time. Even when he is dense and troublesome.

“You are not so different. Do you not wish me to be like you?” I yank the tight pink shirt over my head. My breasts pop out, bouncing. He stares hard, then looks away.

I wait for him to look back. He always looks back. He doesn’t this time.

“I have no business looking forward to pink cakes, isn’t that what you said?” I am angry. “You should be happy that I want black!”

His head whips back around. “What did you just say, Mac? When did I tell you that? Tell me about it!”

I do not know. I do not understand what I just said. I do not remember such a time. I frown. My head hurts. I hate these clothes. I strip off my skirt but leave on my heels. Nude, I can breathe. I like the heels. They make me feel tall and sexy. I walk toward him, hips swaying. My body knows how to walk in such shoes.

He grabs my shoulders, holds me away from him. He does not look at my body, only at my eyes. “Pink cakes, Mac. Tell me about pink cakes.”

“I don’t give a rat’s petunia about pink cakes!” I shout. I want him to look at my body. I am confused. I am afraid. “I don’t even know what a rat’s petunia is!”

“Your mother didn’t like you and your sister to cuss. ‘Petunia’ is the word you say instead of saying ‘ass,’ Mac.”

“I do not know that word, ‘sister,’ either!” I lie. I hate the word.

“Oh, yes, you do. She was your world. She was killed. And she needs you to fight for her. She needs you to come back. Come back and fight, Mac. Bloody hell, fight! If you’d just fight like you fuck, you’d’ve walked out of this room the day I carried you in!”

“I do not want to walk out of this room! I like this room!” I will show him fight. I launch myself at him, a volley of fists and teeth and nails.

I am ineffectual. He is as obdurate as a mountain.

He prevents me from damaging him or myself. We stumble and fall to the floor. Abruptly I am no longer angry.

I sprawl on top of him. I hurt inside my chest. I kick off my shoes.

I drop my head in the hollow where his shoulder meets his neck. We are still. His arms are around me, strong, certain, safe. “I miss her,” I say. “I do not know how to live without her. There is a hole inside me that nothing fills.” There is something else inside me, too, besides that hole. Something so awful that I will not look at it. I am weary. I do not want to feel anymore. No pain, no loss, no failure. Only the colors of black and red. Death, silence, lust, power. Those things give me peace.

“I understand.”

I draw back and look at him. His eyes are deep with shadows. I know those shadows. He does understand. “Then why do you push me?”

“Because if you don’t find something to fill that hole, Mac, someone else will. And if someone else fills it, they own you. Forever. You’ll never get yourself back.”

“You are a confusing man.”

“What’s this?” He smiles faintly. “I am a man now? I am no longer a beast?”

It is all I have called him until now. My lover, my beast.

But I have found another new word: “man.” I look at him. His face seems to shimmer and change, and for a moment he is shockingly familiar, as if I have known him somewhere before here and now. I touch him, trace his arrogant, handsome features slowly. He turns his face into my palm, kisses it. I see shapes behind him. Books and shelves and cases of trinkets.

I gasp.

His hands close tight on my waist, hurting me. “What? What did you see?”

“You. Books. Lots of them. You … I … know you. You are …” I trail off. A sign creaking on a pole in the wind. Amber sconces. A fireplace. Rain. Eternal rain. A bell rings. I like the sound. I shake my head. There was no such place or time. I shake my head harder.

He surprises me. He does not push me with words I do not like to hear. He does not shout at me or call me Mac or insist I talk more.

In fact, when I open my mouth to speak again, he kisses me, hard.

He shuts me up with his tongue, deep.

He kisses me until I cannot speak or even breathe, until I do not even care if I ever breathe again. Until I have forgotten that for a moment he was not a beast but a man. Until the images that so disturbed me are singed to ash by the heat of our lust and gone.

He carries me to the bed and tosses me on it. I feel anger in his body, although I do not know why.

I stretch my naked body on the sleek silk, luxuriating in sensation, in the sure knowledge of what is to come. Of what he is about to do. Of what he makes me feel.

He stares down at me. “See how you look at me. Fuck. I understand why they do it.”

“Who does what?”

“The Fae. Turn women Pri-ya.”

I do not like those words. They terrify me. I am lust. He is my world. I tell him so.

He laughs, and his eyes glitter like night sky pierced by a million stars. “What am I, Mac?” He pours his sleek, powerful body over mine, laces our fingers together, and stretches my hands above my head.

“You are my world.”

“And what do you want from me? Say my name.”

“I want you inside me, Jericho. Now.”

Our sex is savage, as if we are punishing each other. I feel something changing. In me. In him. In this room. I do not like it. I try to stop it with my body, drive it back. I do not look at this room in which we exist. I do not let my mind wander beyond the walls. I am here and he is, too, most of the time, and that is enough.

Later, when I am drifting like a balloon, in that happy, free place that is the twilight sky before dreams, I hear him take a deep breath as if he is about to speak.

He releases it.

Curses.

Takes another breath but says nothing again.

He grunts and punches his pillow. He is divided, this strange man, as if he both wants to speak and wants not to.

Finally, he says tightly, “What did you wear to your senior prom, Mac?”

“Pink dress,” I mumble. “Tiffany bought the same one. Totally ruined my prom. But my shoes were Betsey Johnson. Hers were Stuart Weitzman. My shoes were better.” I laugh. It is the sound of someone I do not recognize, young and without care. It is the laugh of a woman who knows no pain, never did. I wish I knew her.

He touches my face.

There is something different in his touch. It feels like he’s saying good-bye, and I know a moment of panic. But my dream sky darkens and sleep’s moon fills the horizon.

“Don’t leave me.” I thrash in the sheets.

“I’m not, Mac.”

I know I am dreaming then, because dreams are home to the absurd and what he says next is beyond absurd.

“You’re leaving me, Rainbow Girl.”

CHAPTER 5

We’re “Tubthumping” again. He makes me dance around the room, shouting: I get knocked down but I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down.

He dances with me. We shout the lyrics at each other. Something about seeing this man, this big, sexual, powerful—and, some part of me knows, highly dangerous and unpredictable—man, dancing nude, shouting that he’s never going to be kept down, completely undoes me.

I feel as if I am seeing something forbidden. I know without knowing how I know that the circumstances under which he would behave in such a fashion are incalculably few.

Suddenly I am laughing and cannot stop. I laugh so hard I cannot breathe. “Oh, God, Barrons,” I finally gasp. “I never knew you could dance. Or have fun, for that matter.”

He freezes. “Ms. Lane?” he says slowly.

“Huh? Who’s she?”

He stares at me, hard. “Who am I?”

I stare back. There is danger here, in this moment. I do not like it. I want more “Tubthumping” and tell him so, but he turns off the music.

“What happened on Halloween, Ms. Lane?” He fires the question at me, and I now have the strangest feeling he has been asking me this question over and over for a long time but I block it every time he asks it. Refuse to even hear it. And that perhaps there are dozens of questions he’s been asking me that I have been refusing to hear.

Why is he calling me that new name? I am not she. He repeats the question. Halloween. The word gives me chills. Something dark tries to bubble up in my mind, to break the surface I keep placid and still with sex, sex, sex, and suddenly I am no longer laughing but my body is trembling and my bones are so soft I fall to my knees.

I clutch my head in my hands and shake it violently.

No, no, no. I do not want to know!

Images bombard me: A mob shouting, surging out of control. Rain-slicked, shiny dark streets. Shadows moving hungrily in the darkness. A red Ferrari. Glass breaking. Fires burning. People being driven, herded into hell.

A place of books and lights that falls to the enemy. It mattered to me, that place. I’d lost so much, but at least I had that place.

A gruesome meal. A weapon I both need and fear. People rioting. Trampling one another. A city burning. A belfry. A closet. Darkness and fear. Finally, dawn.

Holy water splashing, hissing on steel.

A church.

I shut down. Walls slam in my heart, my mind. I will not go there. There is/was/will never be a church in my existence.

I look up at him.

I know him. I do not trust him. Or is it me I do not trust?

“You are my lover,” I say.

He sighs and rubs his jaw. “Mac, we have to leave this room. It’s bad out there. It’s been months. I need you back.”

“I am right here.”

“What happened at the”—he breaks off, his nostrils flare, and a muscle works in his jaw—”church?”

It seems he does not want to hear about what happened at this church any more than I want to know about it. If we are in agreement on this, why does he push?

“I do not know that word,” I say coolly.

“Church, Mac. Unseelie Princes. Remember?”

“I do not know those words.”

“They raped you.”

“I do not know that word!” My hands are fists; my nails hurt me.

“They took your will. They took your power. They made you feel helpless. Lost. Alone. Dead inside.”

“You should have been there!” I snarl, but I have no idea why. I was never at a church. I am shaking violently. I feel like I might explode.

He drops to the floor on his knees in front of me and grabs my shoulders. “I know I should have!” he snarls back. “How the fuck many times do you think I’ve relived that night?”

I beat at him with my fists, hard. I punch him and punch him. “Then why weren’t you?” I shout.

He does not resist my blows. “It is complicated.”

“‘Complicated’ is just another word for ‘I screwed up and am making excuses!’” I yell.

“Fine. I screwed up!” he yells back. “But I only ended up stuck in Scotland because you asked me to go help the bloody damned MacKeltars!”

“And there you go making excuses!” I stare at him, furious, betrayed, and I do not know why.

“How was I supposed to know? Do I look omniscient?”

“Yes!”

“Well, I’m not! You were supposed to be at the abbey. Or back in Ashford. I tried to send you home. I tried to get you to go to Scotland. You never do what I tell you to do. Where the fuck was your fairy little prince? Why didn’t he save you?”

“I do not know those words—fairy, prince.” They burn my tongue. I hate them.

“You do, too! V’lane. Remember V’lane? Was he there, Mac? Was he at the church? Was he?” He shakes me. “Answer me!”

When I say nothing, he repeats in that strange multilayered voice he sometimes uses, “Was V’lane there when you were raped?”

V’lane failed me, too. I needed him and he did not come. I shake my head.

His grip on my shoulders relaxes. “You can do this, Mac. I’m here. You’re safe now. It’s okay to remember. They can never hurt you again.”

Oh, yes, they could. I will not remember, and I will never leave this room.

Here there are things that keep the monsters away.

I need those things. Right now.

His body. His lust. Erases it all.

I push him back on the floor, frantic with need. He responds savagely. We explode at each other, grabbing fistfuls of hair, kissing, grinding our bodies together. Rolling across the floor. I want to be on top, but he flips me over and pushes me forward, spreading me. Licks and tastes me until I come and come, then carries me to the bed and covers me with his body. When he pushes himself inside me, in my anger I push, push, push back at him with that magic place inside my head, because I am sick of him stirring up things inside me. It is my turn to stir things up inside him, and

— we are in his body, both of us, and we are killing violently, and our cock is hard while we do it. It never felt good to kill before. It never felt bad, either, but now it exhilarates. Now it is power, it is lust, it is being alive. The children are dead, the woman cold, the man dying. Bones crunch, blood sprays—

He knows I am there. He shoves me out with such violence that it flattens my magic completely. I am awed by his strength. It excites me.

Our sex is primitive.

It exhausts me. I sleep. I do not know who I am anymore.

I thought I was an animal.

I am no longer so sure.

It’s hard to say what makes the mind piece things together in a sudden lightning flash.

I’ve come to hold the human spirit in the highest regard. Like the body, it struggles to repair itself. As cells fight off infection and conquer illness, the spirit, too, has remarkable resilience. It knows when it is harmed, and it knows when the harm is too much to bear. If it deems the injury too great, the spirit cocoons the wound, in the same fashion that the body forms a cyst around infection, until the time comes that it can deal with it. For some people, that time never comes. Some stay fractured, forever broken. You see them on the street, pushing carts. You see them in the faces of the regulars at a bar.

My cocoon was that room.

After Barrons left—I later realized he often left while I slept—I dreamed.

Some say dreaming is another place we go. That we don’t know it as such because it’s not a physical realm we recognize. It exists in another dimension, which mankind has not yet discovered and to which it attributes no credence.

I dreamed my life back.

Alina and I playing, laughing, running hand in hand, chasing butterflies with nets, but we don’t catch them, because who wants to trap a butterfly in a net? Too fragile, too delicate. You don’t want to break their wings. Like sisters and love. You have to be vigilant with precious things. I fell asleep on my watch. I wasn’t vigilant. I didn’t hear the undercurrents in her voice. I was lazy and ignorant in my happy pink world. A cell phone dropped into a pool. Ripples spreading on the surface. Everything changed forever.

I am grief.

I dream my parents, but they’re not. Alina and I were born to others, but I have no memory of them, and I wonder for the first time if someone took those memories from me.

I am betrayed.

I dream Dublin and the first Fae I ever saw and that nasty old woman, Rowena, who told me to go die somewhere else if I couldn’t protect my bloodline, then left me alone without offering me the smallest bit of help.

I am anger. I didn’t deserve that.

I dream Barrons and V’lane, and I am lust wed to suspicion, and those two emotions together are poison.

I dream the Lord Master, my sister’s murderer, and I am vengeance. But no longer hot. I am cold vengeance, the lethal kind.

I dream the Book that is a beast, and it speaks my name and calls me kindred.

I am not.

I dream Mallucé’s lair. I eat the flesh of immortal beings and I am changed.

I dream Christian and Dani and the abbey of sidhe-seers. O’Duffy, Jayne, Fiona, and O’Bannion, the Hunters, and the monsters invading my streets. Then the dreams come darker and faster, blows from a world-class boxer bruising my brain, pulping my heart.

Dublin goes dark! The Wild Hunt! The smell of spice and sex!

I am in the narthex of the church, and there are Unseelie Princes all around me, and they slice me open and rip out my insides and scatter them all over the street, leaving a shell of a woman, a bag of skin and bones, and the horror of it, God, the horror of watching yourself from the outside as everything you know about yourself gets stripped away and demolished, not just the loss of power over your body but power over your mind, rape in the deepest, most hellish sense of the word, but wait—

There’s a spark.

Inside that hollowed-out woman, there’s a place they can’t touch. There’s more to me than I thought there was. Something that no one and nothing can take away from me.

They can’t break me. I won’t cease. I’m strong. And I am never going to go away until I’ve gotten what I came for.

I might have been lost for a while, but I was never gone.

Who the fuck are you?

With an explosive inhalation, I snap upright in bed, and my eyes fly open—like coming alive after being dead and interred in a coffin.

I am Mac.

And I’m back.