Dreamfever

CHAPTER 30

Good of you to come,” mocked the Lord Master. “Nice hat.” Entering the Silver was like pressing forward into a gluey membrane. The surface rippled thickly when I touched it. When I tried to step into it, it resisted. I pushed harder, and it took considerable effort to force my boot to puncture the silvery skin. I thrust in up to my hip.

Still the mirror pressed back at me with a buoyant elasticity.

For a moment I stood half in each world, my face through the mirror, the back of my head in the house, one leg in the Silver, one leg out. Just when I thought it would expel me with the snap of a giant rubber band, it yielded—sucked me in, warm and unpleasantly wet—and squirted me out on the other side, stumbling.

I’d expected to find myself standing in the living room, but I was in a tunnel of sorts, of moist pink membrane. My living room was farther away than it had looked from outside the mirror. There were forty or so feet between me and my parents. Barrons had been wrong. The LM was more adept with Silvers than he’d thought. Not only was he capable of stacking Silvers, the tunnel hadn’t been at all visible from beyond the glass. In tennis-speak, this set went to the LM. But there was no way he was winning the match.

“As if I had a choice.” I wiped my face with a sleeve, scrubbing at a thin layer of smelly, slippery afterbirth. It was dripping off my MacHalo. I’d thought about removing it before I’d entered the mirror (it’s a little hard for people to take you seriously when you’re wearing one), but now I was glad I hadn’t. It was no wonder people avoided the Silvers.

You had every choice, my dad’s eyes said furiously. You chose the wrong one.

My mother’s eyes were saying way more than that. She began with the mess that was my tousled black hair sticking out from under my “hat,” went nearly ballistic over the tight leather pants I was wearing, made short, scathing work of my butchered nails, and by the time she got around to the automatic weapon that kept slipping around my shoulder, banging into my hip, I had to tune her out.

I took a step forward.

“Not so fast,” said the Lord Master. “Show me the stones.”

I swung my gun forward into my other hand, slipped the pack off my shoulder, opened it, fished out the black pouch, and held it up.

“Get them out. Show them to me.”

“Barrons didn’t think that was a good idea.”

“I told you not to involve Barrons, and I don’t give a fuck what he thinks.”

“You told me not to bring him. I had to involve him. He’s the one who had the stones. Have you ever tried to steal anything from Barrons?”

The look on his face said he had. “If he interferes, they die.”

“I got your message loud and clear the first time. He won’t interfere.” I needed to get closer. I needed to be between the LM and his guards and my parents when Barrons and his men arrived. I needed to be in stabbing distance. Barrons planned to reconfigure his Silver to connect to whatever destination the Lord Master was at, but he’d said it would take time, depending on the location. Stall, he’d ordered. Once I get the photo, I’ll work on connecting to the other end. My men will come in behind you as soon as I have a lock on the location.

“Put down the spear, your gun, the pistol in the back of your pants, the switchblade in your sleeve, and the knives in your boots. Kick them all away.”

How did he know where all my weapons were?

My mother couldn’t have looked more shocked if she’d found out I was sleeping with half the Ashford High football team and smoking crack between touchdowns.

I gave her my most reassuring look. She flinched. Apparently what I considered reassuring lately came off a little … savage, I guess. “It’s been a rough few months, Mom,” I said defensively. “I’ll explain it all later. Let my parents go,” I told the LM. “I’ll cooperate fully. You have my word.”

“I do not require your word. I have your last living relatives. Being of such finite duration, humans care deeply about such things. Alina told me her parents died in a car wreck when she was fifteen. Yet another lie. Makes one wonder, does it not? I would never have thought to look for them had you not led me here.”

How had I led him here? How had he followed me to Ashford? Could he track V’lane? Was V’lane duplicitous? Working with the Lord Master? “They’re not my relatives,” I said coolly. “My relatives are dead. When you killed Alina, you wiped out the last of my line, except for me.” I was hoping to make my parents’ value seem a little less than it really was. It always worked in the movies. “We were adopted.”

I snatched a quick look at my mom, even though I knew I shouldn’t. Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears. Great. She disapproved of everything about me, and now I’d hurt her feelings. I was batting a thousand.

The Lord Master didn’t say a word. Just walked over to my dad and slammed him in the face with his fist. My daddy’s head snapped back and blood spurted from his nose. He gave a dazed shake, and his eyes said, Get out of here, baby.

“All right!” I shouted. “I lied! Leave him alone!”

The Lord Master turned back to me. “Mortality is the consummate weakness. It shapes your entire existence. Your every breath. Is it any wonder the Fae have always been gods to your kind?”

“Never to me.”

“Drop your weapons.”

I let my automatic slip to the ground, yanked the pistol from the back of my pants, dropped the switchblade from the cuff of my jacket, and extracted a knife from each boot.

“The spear.”

I stared. If I tried to throw the spear the forty feet that separated us, what good would it do? Even if I hit him dead in the heart, he was part human and wouldn’t die right away. I had no doubt at least one of my parents would be dead seconds after I’d thrown it, if not both.

Stall, Barrons had said.

I pulled the spear from my holster and slid it from beneath my coat. The moment I uncovered it, it crackled and sparked, shooting jagged white charges into the air. Alabaster, it blazed with almost blinding luminosity, as if drawing power from the Fae realm around it.

I couldn’t make my hand let go of it. My fingers wouldn’t unclench.

“Drop it now.” He turned toward my mother and drew back his fist.

I snarled as I flung the spear away from me. It lodged in the wall of the sleek pink tunnel. The fleshy canal shuddered, as if with pain. “Leave. Her. Alone,” I gritted.

“Kick away the weapons and show me the stones.”

“Seriously, Barrons said not to.”

“Now.”

Sighing, I withdrew the stones from the pouch and peeled back the velvet cloth they were wrapped in.

The reaction was instantaneous and violent: The tunnel spasmed, moaning deep in its wet walls, and the floor shuddered beneath me. The stones blazed with blue-black light. The walls contracted and expanded, as if laboring to expel me, and suddenly I was blinded by baleful light, deaf to all but the rushing of wind and water. I squeezed my eyes shut against the glare. There was nothing to hold on to. I clutched the stones, trying to cover them, and nearly lost the velvet cloth to the gale. My backpack banged against my shins and was torn from my grasp.

I howled into the wind, calling for my parents, for Barrons—hell, even for the Lord Master! I felt like I was being ripped in ten different directions. My coat was being torn from my shoulders, rippling in the hard breeze. I struggled to shove the stones back into the pouch.

Abruptly, all was still.

“I told you,” I growled, keeping my eyes closed, waiting for the retinal burn to fade, “Barrons advised against it. But did you listen? No.” There was no answer. “Hello?” I said warily. Still no answer.

I opened my eyes.

Gone was the pink membranous canal.

I stood in a hall of purest gold.

Gold walls, gold floors—I tipped my head back—gold that stretched up as far as I could see. If there was a ceiling, it was beyond my vision. Soaring, towering golden walls to nowhere.

I was alone.

No Lord Master. No guards. No parents.

I looked down, hoping to find my gun, knives, and backpack.

There was nothing but smooth, endless gold floor.

I glanced at the walls, searching frantically for my spear.

There was no glint of alabaster to be found.

In fact, I realized, as I turned in a slow circle, there was nothing on those gold walls at all except hundreds, no, thousands, no—I stared; they went all the way up, vanishing beyond my vision—billions of mirrors.

Trying to absorb it, I tasted infinity. I was a minuscule dot on a linear depiction of time that stretched endlessly in both directions, rendering me of utter and absolute inconsequence.

“Oh, shit, shit, shit.”

I knew where I was.

The Hall of All Days.

CHAPTER 31

I have no idea how long I sat.

Time, in this place, would become an impossible thing for me to gauge.

I sat in the middle of the Hall of All Days—knees tucked up, staring down at the golden floor because looking around made me feel small and vertiginous—trying to take stock of my situation.

Problem: Somewhere out there in the real world, in my living room, in Ashford, Georgia, the Lord Master still had my parents.

I imagined he was seriously pissed off.

It wasn’t my fault. He was the one who’d insisted I show him the stones. I’d cautioned against it. But fault was as irrelevant as my presence in this vast, indifferent place of all days.

He still had my parents. That was relevant.

Hopefully, Barrons was even now speeding his way to them through the reconfigured Silver in his study, and hopefully his comrades were storming in through the mirror at 1247 LaRuhe, and hopefully that slippery pink tunnel that had too closely resembled a portion of the female anatomy for my comfort was still intact and I had merely been expelled by its labor pains, and hopefully within moments my parents would be safe.

That was four too many “hopefullys” for my taste.

It didn’t matter. I’d been effectively neutralized. Plucked from the number set and tossed into the quantum hall of variables, none of which computed into the only equation I understood and cared about.

There were billions of mirrors around me. Billions of portals. And I had a tough time choosing between fifteen shades of pink.

After a while, I checked my watch. It was stuck at 1:14 P.M.

I slipped off my coat and began to strip, tucking the pouch containing the stones in my waistband. The Hall was too warm for the layers I was wearing. I removed my sweater and long-sleeved knit jersey, and tied them around my waist, then put my coat back on.

I performed an inventory of items on my person.

One knife—an antique Scottish dirk—that the LM hadn’t known about, pilfered from the Baubles portion of Barrons Books and strapped to my left forearm.

One baby-food jar full of wriggling Unseelie flesh in my left coat pocket.

Two protein bars tucked into an inner coat pocket, squished.

One MacHalo, still strapped beneath my chin.

One cell phone.

I took inventory of what I didn’t have.

No batteries or flashlights.

No water.

No spear.

I stopped there. That was bad enough.

I pulled my cell phone from my back pocket and punched up Barrons’ number. I’ve become so accustomed to his invincibility that I expected it to ring, and when it didn’t, I was flabbergasted. Apparently even his cell service had dead spots, and if it wasn’t going to work somewhere, I could understand it not working here. Even if I’d had V’lane’s name, I doubted it would have worked in this place.

My own mind nearly didn’t work here. The longer I sat, the odder I began to feel.

The Hall wasn’t merely the confluence of infinite doorways to alternate places and times. The many portals made the Hall live and breathe, ebb and flow. The Hall was time. It was ancient and young, past and present and future, all in one.

BB&B exuded a sense of spatial distortion from harboring a single Silver in Barrons’ study.

These billions of mirrors opening onto the same hall created an exponentially compounded effect, both spatially and temporally. Time here wasn’t linear, it was … My mind couldn’t focus on it, but I was part of it, and I didn’t get that at all. I didn’t matter. I was essential. I was a child. I was a withered old woman. I was death. I was the source of all creation. I was the Hall and the Hall was me. A tiny bit of me seemed to bleed into every doorway.

Duality didn’t begin to describe it. Like this place itself, I was all possibles. It was the most terrifying feeling I’d ever felt.

I tried IYCGM.

No service.

I stared at IYD for a long time.

Ryodan had said he’d kill me if I used it when I didn’t need it.

My first thought was, I’d like to see him get here and try. My second thought was that I wouldn’t, because then he’d be here, too, and he really might kill me.

I couldn’t begin to present a convincing argument that I was dying. I might not like my current situation, but there was no arguing that I was in perfect health, with no apparent threat to my life in the immediate vicinity. Although I seemed to be growing more … confused by the moment.

Memories from my childhood had begun to stir in my mind, seeming too vivid and tantalizing for mere memories.

I skipped lightly over them, found one I liked.

My tenth birthday: Mom and Dad had thrown a surprise party for me.

The moment I chose to focus on it, it swelled with dramatic appeal, and there were my friends, laughing and holding presents, real, so real, waiting for me to join them in the dining room, where they were having cake and ice cream. I saw it all happening, right there in the molten gold of the floor I was staring down at. I traced my fingers over the vision. The gold rippled in the wake of my fingertips, and I was touching our dining room table, about to sink into it, slip inside my ten-year-old body in the chair, laughing at something Alina said.

Alina was dead. This was not now. This was not real.

I jerked my gaze away.

In the air in front of me, a new memory took shape: my first shopping trip to Atlanta with my aunts. It had left a serious impression on me. We were in Bloomingdale’s. I was eleven. I wandered, staring up at all the pretty things, no longer seeing the gold walls and mirrors.

I closed my eyes, stood, and shoved the cell phone into my back pocket.

I had to get out of this place. It was messing with my mind.

But where?

I opened my eyes and began moving. The moment I did, the memories vanished from the air around me and my mind was clear again.

A thought occurred to me. Frowning, I walked a few yards and stopped.

The memories resumed.

My daddy was cheering at my first ever—and last—softball game. He’d bought me a pink mitt with magenta stitching. My mom had embroidered my name and flowers on it. The boys were laughing at me and my mitt. I ran to catch a ground ball to prove to them how tough I was. It popped up and slammed me in the face, bloodying my nose and chipping a tooth.

I winced.

They laughed harder, pointing.

I manipulated the memory, fast-rewound, caught the ball perfectly threw out the runner at home plate, and got it there in plenty of time for the catcher to take out the runner at third.

The boys were awed by my ball-playing prowess.

My daddy puffed with pride.

It was a lie, but an oh-so-sweet one.

I began walking again.

The memory exploded into pink-mitt dust and sprinkled the floor.

Stopping in the Hall was dangerous, perhaps even deadly.

My suspicion was confirmed a short time later when I passed a skeleton sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning back against the gold wall between mirrors. Its posture evidenced no signs of struggle, gave no hint of agony in death. The face of the skull had—inasmuch as a skull could—a peaceful look to its bones. Had it starved to death? Or had it lived a hundred years, lost in dreams? I felt no hunger pangs, and should have, considering all I’d had since yesterday afternoon was coffee, hours ago. Did one even need to eat here, where time wasn’t what one expected at all?

I began glancing into the mirrors as I passed.

Some of the things in the mirrors glanced back, looking startled and confused. It seemed some of them could see me as clearly as I could see them.

I was going to have to make a choice, and sooner was probably wiser than later. I was beginning to think gold was the most peaceful, right, perfect color I’d ever seen. And the floor—so inviting! Warm, smooth, I could stretch out and rest my eyes a bit … gather my strength for what was certain to be an arduous journey.

First danger of the Hall of All Days: When you can live any day over again in your mind—and live it right—why leave at all? I could save my sister here. Save the world. Never know the difference after a while.

Second danger of the Hall of All Days: When anything is possible, how do you choose?

There were tropical vistas of white beaches that stretched for miles, with aqua waves so clear that coral reefs of rainbow hues shimmered through, glinting in the sun, and tiny silver fish leaped and played in the swells.

There were streets of fabulous mansions. Deserts and vast plains. There were ancient reptilian beasts in verdant valleys and postapocalyptic cities. There were underwater worlds and Silvers that opened directly onto open space, black and deep, glittering with stars. There were doorways to nebulae and even one that led straight to the event horizon of a black hole. I tried to fathom the mind that would want to go there. An immortal that had done everything else? A Fae that could never die and wanted to know what it felt like to be sucked up by one? The more I saw in the Hall of All Days, the more I understood that I understood nothing about the immortal race that had created this place.

There were mirrors that opened onto images so terrible I looked away the instant I caught a glimpse of what was going on. We’ve done some of those things. Apparently other beings on other worlds have, too. In one, a man performing a horrific experiment saw me, grinned, and lunged for me. I took off in a mad dash, heart pounding, and ran without stopping for a long, long time. Finally, I glanced behind me. I was alone. I concluded that Silver must have been one-way. Thankfully! I wondered if all the mirrors in the Hall were, or if some of them still worked both ways. If I stepped through one, could I immediately return if I didn’t like the world? From what Barrons had told me, unpredictability was the name of the game in here.

How had I gotten to the Hall? What had the stones done to rip me from the tunnel of a set of Silvers and dump me into the vortex of the entire network? Did they work as a homing beacon, and would uncovering them always bring me here?

I walked. I looked. I looked away.

Pain, pleasure, delight, torture, love, hate, laughter, despair, beauty, horror, hope, grief—all of it was available here in the Hall of All Days.

There were the surreal mirrors with Dalí-esque landscapes, so similar to his paintings that I wondered if they hadn’t been hung here and animated. There were doorways to dreamscapes so alien I couldn’t even give name to what I was seeing.

I looked into mirror after mirror, growing more uncertain by the moment. I had no idea if any of the portals actually opened into my world at all. Were they different planets? Different dimensions? Once I entered one, would I be committing to a perilous journey through an unbeatable maze?

Billions. There were billions of choices. How was I ever going to find my way home?

I walked for what felt like days. Who knows? It might have been. Time has no meaning in the Hall. Nothing does. Tiny me. Huge corridor. An occasional skeleton—the rare human one. Silence except for the sound of my boots on gold. I began to sing. I went through every song I knew, staring into Silvers. Running from some.

Then one stopped me cold in my tracks.

I stared. “Christian?” I exploded disbelievingly. His back was to me as he walked through a dark forest, but the moon in his mirror was bright, and there was no mistaking his build and walk. Those long legs in faded jeans. The dark hair pulled back in a queue. The broad shoulders and confident gait.

His head whipped around. There was a line of crimson and black tattoos down the side of his neck that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen him.

Mac? His lips moved, but I couldn’t hear him. I stepped closer.

“Is it really you?”

Apparently he could hear me. Elation and relief battled with anxiety in the gorgeous Scotsman’s eyes. He stared at me, leaned closer, looked confused, then shook his head. No, Mac. Stay wherever you are. Don’t come here. Go back.

“I don’t know how to go back.”

Where are you?

“Can’t you see?”

He shook his head. You seem to be inside a large cactus. For a moment, I thought you were here with me. How are you seeing me?

I had to make him repeat it several times. I’m not the best lip-reader. The word “cactus” threw me. I couldn’t see a single cactus in the forest. “I’m in the Hall of All Days.”

Tiger eyes flared. Don’t stay long! It messes with you.

“I kind of figured that out.” A moment ago, my pink mitt had reappeared in my hand, and I could hear the sounds of the ballpark around me. I began to jog in place. The Hall was not fooled. The mitt remained on my hand. I jogged a tight circle in front of the mirror. Glove and memory vanished.

It’s a dangerous place. I was there for a time. I had to choose a Silver. I chose badly. They are not what they seem. What they show you is not where they lead.

“Are you kidding me?” I nearly went ballistic. If I entered a tropical beach, would I end up in Nazi Germany with my highly inconvenient black hair?

The one I chose didn’t. I’ve been jumping dimensions ever since, trying to get to better places. Some of the Silvers are true, some are not. There’s no way to tell which.

“But you’re a lie detector!”

It doesn’t work in the Hall, lass. It only works out of it, and not always. I doubt any of your sidhe-seer talents work there, either.

Still jogging a tight circle, I shut my eyes and sought that place in the center of my mind. Show me what is true, I commanded. I opened my eyes and looked back at Christian. He still stood in a dark forest.

“Where are you?”

In a desert. He gave me a bitter smile. With four suns and no night. I’m badly burned. I’ve had nothing to eat or drink in too long. If I don’t find a dimensional shift soon, I’m … in trouble.

“A dimensional shift?” I asked if he meant an IFP and explained what they were.

He nodded. They abound. But they have no’ been abounding here. “Abooondin’,” he’d said. Although the mirror was showing me a perfectly clean, well-rested man, now that I knew what to look for, I could see his exhaustion and strain. More than that, I was picking up a certain … grim acceptance? From Christian MacKeltar? No way.

“How bad off are you, Christian?” I said. “And don’t lie to me.”

He smiled. I seem to recall saying the same to you once. Have you slept with him?

“Long story. Answer my question.”

That’s a yes. Ah, lass. Tiger eyes held mine for a tense, probing moment. Bad, he said finally.

“Are you actually even standing there? I mean, up on your own feet?” Was anything I was seeing remotely true?

No, lass.

“Could you stand if you wanted to?” I said sharply.

Not sure.

I didn’t waste another moment.

I stepped into the mirror.

CHAPTER 32

Some Silvers feel like quicksand. They don’t like to let you go.

I expected this one to behave like the one hanging in the LM’s house: hard to push into, certain to expel me with a rubbery snap.

It was hard to push into, more resistant than the first one, but it proved even more difficult to get out of. Without Christian, I might not have made it.

I found myself trapped inside silvery glue that held my limbs nearly immobile. I kicked and punched and ended up getting so turned around that I had no idea which way was out. Apparently there was only one direction that would work.

Then Christian’s hand was on my arm (he could stand), and I shoved toward him with all my strength.

The college back home where I take classes part-time has a wind tunnel created by the unique placement of the math building breezeway and the science buildings around it. On especially windy days, it’s almost impossible to cut through it. You have to lean forward at a precarious angle as you pass the math building, head ducked, forging ahead with all your might.

I learned the hard way about break points, where either a design flaw or a joke by some pissed-off engineer leaves an “eye” in the breezeway, where the wind abruptly stops. If you’re unaware of it and still forging ahead, you fall flat on your face in front of all the math and science geeks—who know about it and loiter in the general vicinity on windy days but don’t tell freshmen because that would deprive them of the endless amounts of amusement they get from watching us wipe out, preferably in a short skirt that ends up around our waist.

That was this Silver.

I shoved toward the hand, fighting, pressing with all my might, and abruptly the resistance gave way—and I went flying out of the glass, into Christian, at such velocity that we went rolling and tumbling across sand.

I tried to gasp, but it didn’t work. I was in a blast furnace. It was so bright that I couldn’t open my eyes; the air was so hot and dry that I couldn’t breathe.

I struggled to acclimate and finally sucked down a breath that seared my lungs. I slitted my eyes, got a good look at Christian, and rolled off him.

He was worse than “bad off.” He was in serious danger. With his dark complexion, he’d tanned, but there was a cruel redness to it, his lips were cracked, and I could tell by his eyes and skin that he was severely dehydrated. Blisters covered his face.

I whirled around, hoping to find a mirror hanging in the air behind me through which I could drag us to safety.

There wasn’t one.

There were, however, hundreds of man-size cactuses, any one of which might have been the one he said I’d appeared to be standing in. Was there a mirror camouflaged inside one of them? It stood to reason that on worlds the Fae wanted to visit unobserved, they’d have had to conceal the Silver in something if there was no place it didn’t appear utterly incongruous with the terrain. Or had Cruce’s mysterious curse screwed things up?

I wondered if I should try flinging myself into a few of the nearest cactuses, employing the same method Dani had used to try to break through wards, hoping for a two-way portal. The thought held little appeal. She’d gotten nothing but badly bruised for her efforts. The cactuses sported a protective armor of needle-sharp spines.

Squinting, I glanced around.

We were in an ocean of desert.

It had to be a hundred fifteen degrees. No shade anywhere to be seen. Nothing but sand.

I looked up and instantly regretted it. The sky was painfully bright, with four blazing suns. It was whiter than white. It was radioactive white.

“You bloody damned fool,” Christian managed through split lips. “Now we’ll both be dying here.”

“No, we won’t. Which … uh, cactus did I come through?”

“I’ve no bloody idea, and those spines are poisonous, so good luck poking around at them.”

Damn. Onto plan B, which was basically a wing and a prayer.

I began to remove the black pouch from my waistband, preparing to uncover the stones. Would they return us to the Hall, where we could choose the next portal together? Who knew? Who cared? Anything was better than this. He would die here and so would I.

I rolled close to Christian and pressed against him.

“Och, and now you flirt me up, lass,” he said weakly, with a shadow of that killer smile. “When I canna do a thing about it.”

“Wrap your arms and legs around me, Christian. Don’t let go. No matter what happens, don’t let go.” Sweat was pouring down my face, dripping from beneath my MacHalo, into my eyes, pooling between my breasts. I was wearing too many clothes, a bike helmet, and a leather coat in a desert.

He didn’t question me. Just wrapped his legs around my hips and locked his hands in the small of my back. I prayed he had enough strength to keep his grip. I had no idea what was going to happen, but I didn’t expect it to be gentle.

I slid the pouch from between us, loosened the drawstring, and uncovered the tips of the stones. They flared to life, pulsing with blue-black fire.

The terrain responded instantly and violently, just as the pink tunnel did.

The desert began to undulate, and the air was filled with a high-pitched whine that quickly turned into a metallic-sounding scream. Sand whipped up, stinging my hands and face.

“Are you crazy? What the—” The rest of Christian’s words were lost in the howling wind.

The atomic-white sky darkened to blue-black, in dramatic, quick increments. I looked up. The suns were being eclipsed, one by one.

The sand shuddered beneath us. Swells rose, dips formed. Christian and I rolled, down, down, deep into a sandy valley that was still forming as we tumbled. I felt brackets snapping off my MacHalo. I was suddenly afraid the desert would swallow us alive, but the desert didn’t want us. That was the whole point, although I didn’t know it then.

I struggled to keep my grip on the pouch, clutched it tightly to my chest. Christian’s legs were steel around my hips, his hands locked. The temperature dropped sharply.

The desert began to tremble. The tremble became a rumble. The rumble became an earthquake, and, just when I thought we might be shaken to pieces, the ground beneath us sank abruptly, then gave a single gigantic heave and flung us straight up into the air.

As we went soaring into the dark sky, I muttered an apology to Christian. He sort of laughed and muttered back in my ear that he preferred a quick death by falling, with crushed bones and all, to a slow death by dehydration, and at least it was nice and cool finally but maybe, since it seemed the stones had triggered the cataclysmic reaction, I might try covering them back up and see what happened?

I shoved them in the pouch and crammed it down the waistband of my pants.

We fell.

I braced for impact.

CHAPTER 33

We splashed down into icy water.

I plunged deep. Kicking hard, I surfaced and inhaled greedily. I blinked water from my eyes and saw that we’d fallen into a stone quarry. How lucky. That must mean a terrifying monster with razor-sharp teeth was in the water beneath me, about to snap my legs off, because the gods didn’t smile on me—at least not lately or that I was aware of.

And Christian wasn’t as bad off as I’d thought, because he was swimming toward shore.

I narrowed my eyes. Toward shore, leaving me to my own devices that, as far as he knew, might involve drowning.

I checked to make sure the pouch was still in my waistband and kicked into a breaststroke. I’m a strong swimmer, and I pulled myself out of the quarry just a few seconds after he did. He collapsed hard on the grass-covered bank and closed his eyes.

“Thanks for sticking around to make sure I wasn’t drowning.” Then I murmured, “Oh, Christian.” I touched his blistered face, made sure he was breathing, took his pulse. He was unconscious. It had taken the last ounce of energy he possessed to get himself out of the quarry.

First things first: Were we safe here?

I scanned our surroundings. The quarry was large and deep, overflowing here and there into smaller ponds and pools. It occupied a small corner of a huge valley. Miles and miles of grassy plain were surrounded by moderate mountains with ice-capped crowns. The valley was peaceful and calm. At the opposite edge, animals grazed serenely.

It looked like we were safe, at least for now. I heaved a sigh of relief and struggled out of my wet leather coat. I slipped the pouch containing the stones from my waistband and set it aside. There was no doubt about it: Removing the stones from the spelled pouch made dimensions shift for some reason, but while uncovered, they seem to wreak total havoc on the world around them. The next time we used them, I’d flash them quickly, and maybe we’d get to skip the whole violent expulsion motif and glide at a gentle tempo into the next world.

After a brief hesitation, I stripped down to bra and panties, grateful for the moderate climate. Wet leather sucks. I draped my clothing on nearby rocks to dry in the sun, hoping the leather wouldn’t shrink to ridiculous sizes.

Next concern: what to do for Christian. He was breathing shallowly and his pulse was erratic. He’d passed out in the sun, where his burn would deepen. The blisters on his face were crusted and seeping blood. How long had he been in that hellish desert? When had he last eaten? There was no way I could move him. I couldn’t even get him out of his wet clothes. I could cut them off, but he’d need them again. Who knew what we might have to face next? He was more heavily muscled than last I’d seen him and, unconscious, he was deadweight. Had he been fighting his way through dimension after dimension since Halloween? Did time pass the same way where he’d been?

Unless it had fallen out, I had a baby-food jar of Unseelie flesh in my coat. I tripped over my own feet in my haste to get to it and unbuttoned pocket after pocket, searching.

“Ow!” I’d found it wriggling wetly in shards of broken bottle, buttoned in an inner pocket. I extracted the flesh carefully from the jar, which must have shattered in my tumble across the sand. Of the seven strips I’d crammed into the tiny container, there were four left. Three of them had wriggled off somewhere. I held the noxious pieces of gray Rhino-boy flesh, picked out slivers of glass, and considered the rapidly healing cuts on my fingers.

Was I healing so well because of the Unseelie I’d eaten in the past? Did it cause permanent changes, as Rowena claimed? Would it do something terrible to Christian? I had no idea what else to do for him. I had only two protein bars, and I didn’t know if the water around us was drinkable or contaminated by some deadly-to-humans parasite. I’d never been a Girl Scout, couldn’t start a fire with sticks, had no container to boil water in even if I could, and was disgusted to realize I was still, in many ways, remarkably useless.

I hurried back to his side, lay one of the strips on a flat stone, and cut it up into pieces as small as early peas. I pried open his teeth, stuffed the pieces in, and held his mouth and nose closed, hoping the flesh would, in dim-witted Rhino-boy fashion, wriggle toward his stomach, seeking escape.

It did. I wasn’t so useless after all!

He gagged, I released my hold on his nose, and his throat muscles convulsed. He gagged again and swallowed involuntarily. He coughed and made a retching sound. Even when you’re unconscious, Unseelie meat is revolting.

With a groan, he rolled over onto his side.

I diced another strip, stuffed it into his mouth, and held it closed again. This time he resisted, but his body was still too weak to put up much of a fight.

By the time I got the third strip sliced up and in his mouth, he’d rolled over onto his back again, opened his eyes, and was looking at me. I think he was trying to ask what I was doing, but I clamped his teeth together with one hand on the top of his head and the other beneath his chin. He gagged instead and swallowed again.

The effects of Unseelie flesh on an injured human body are instantaneous and miraculous. As I watched, his blisters disappeared and his color returned to normal, leaving him lightly tanned. The gauntness in his face vanished, and the epidermis on his body plumped everywhere, erasing the damage of dehydration, rebuilding him from the inside out.

Unseelie flesh is potent, and addictive. Even though I was cured of my little obsession with it (did he really need that last strip?) I envied what I knew was happening to him: the heady rush of power surging hot through his veins, heightening his hearing, smell, and vision, increasing his strength to Barrons’ levels, filling him with a euphoric sense of invincibility and an exquisitely elevated awareness of his own body in relation to its surroundings.

Yes, he was certainly getting better.

Tiger eyes were not only open but moving with unabashed appreciation over the skin bared by my bra and underwear. He pushed my hand off his mouth.

Quickly—and possibly in large part because I was tempted to eat it myself—I knelt over him and shoved the last strip between his lips.

He sat up so fast our heads banged, hard.

I yelped and he spat.

Unseelie flesh went flying from his mouth and flopped on the ground between us.

He looked at the animated piece of meat, then he looked at me, and I’m not sure what he found more disgusting: the smelly gray flesh with oozing pustules, or me, for putting it in his mouth in the first place. It pissed me off, because, even on my worst day, I was preferable to Unseelie flesh. The absence of heat in those amber eyes was downright chilling.

“You might try thanking me,” I said stiffly.

He gagged again, cleared his throat, turned, and spat over his shoulder. “What,” he said, turning back to me and pointing, “the bloody hell is that?”

“Unseelie flesh,” I said coolly.

“That’s Unseelie? You fed me the flesh of a dark Fae?”

“How do you feel, Christian?” I demanded. “Pretty good?” He certainly looked good, sitting there in faded jeans, wet T-shirt straining over his wide shoulders, muscles rippling in his arms as he slicked wet hair back from his face. “No burns, no blisters, no hunger or thirst? Has it occurred to you that I saved your ass?”

“At what cost? What does eating it do to you? Nothing Fae is without price!”

“It heals you. Would you rather I hadn’t?”

“Big, huge lie in there. There are drawbacks. What are they?” he pushed furiously.

“There are drawbacks to everything,” I snapped.

We glared at each other.

“Would you rather I’d let you die?”

“Did you even try anything else first? Or are you all about magic, instant gratification?”

I leapt to my feet and began pacing. “What would you have had me try? Dragging your big body into the shade all by myself so you wouldn’t get burned worse? How about figuring out how to start a fire with twigs? No, I have it!” I whirled around and shot him a look. “I should have gone looking for a convenience store for sunblock and aloe gel and then when I found that, set off for a vet so I could find you subcutaneous fluids like my neighbors gives their sick cat!”

His mouth twitched. “Nice outfit, Mac.”

I bristled. I’d been stomping around in my bra and panties and he found me amusing in my underwear? “My clothes are soaked,” I growled.

“I was speaking of your—” His gaze shot upward. “Would you be calling that a hat, lass?”

I closed my eyes and groaned. I’d gotten so used to the weight of it on my head that I’d forgotten I was wearing my MacHalo. I unstrapped it, snatched it from my head, scraped off strands of dripping moss, and inspected it for damage. Two of the brackets were broken at the base, and several of the lights had been turned on in our roll down sand dunes, wasting precious batteries. I clicked them off and put the helmet on the rocks near my clothes.

I nodded at the piece of Unseelie lying on the ground between us. “Are you going to eat that?”

“Not for love or money,” he said vehemently.

“Well, pick it up and put it in your pocket. You might need it again. Like it or not, it saved your life.” No matter how badly I wanted it, I didn’t dare impair my sidhe-seer abilities. If we encountered anything Fae, my Nulling talents were all I had. We’d have to freeze them and run. Or use the stones again.

“It did something to me. Something … wrong.” He studied it with distaste, picked it up, drew back his arm, and flung it into the quarry. I heard a splash, a second much larger splash, and a snapping sound, followed by a third splash. Since my back was to the water, I had to interpret what happened from the look on his face. “Something awful-looking ate it?”

Looking mildly shocked, he nodded. “Tell me everything you know about what you just fed me and the effects it has. And as for the loch, lass, I wouldn’t recommend swimming in it.”

Christian’s clothes were soaked, and after a scan of the snow-covered peaks around us, he concluded there was a high probability of a sharp evening drop to frigid temperatures, which meant we needed our clothes dry, fast. As there was no convenient dryer nearby, toasting them in the sun was our only option, so a short time later we were both stretched out, me mostly naked, him completely. He was unself-conscious nude. I had to admit, he had reason to be.

After a quick glance, I’d sought privacy on the other side of the tumble of rocks our clothes were drying on and savored the warmth on my skin. All that was missing was my iPod.

And my parents. And my sister. And any feeling of normalcy or safety. In a nutshell, everything was missing.

I was terrified for Mom and Dad. Since the Silver I’d entered didn’t show the tunnel from the outside, what assurance did I have that the destination it did show wasn’t also an illusion? What if the LM wasn’t holding my parents captive in my own living room but someplace else and I’d sent Barrons on a wild-goose chase with the photo I’d texted?

A wave of frantic helplessness was building inside me, threatening to turn tidal. I didn’t dare give in to panic. I had to stay calm and focused and work on moving forward however I could, even if it meant taking baby steps. Right now that meant getting my clothes dry and resting while I had the chance. Who knew what dangers the night—or even the next few hours—might hold?

Christian and I talked while we sunned, our voices carrying easily over the rocks between us. I told him about the effects of eating Unseelie. He questioned me extensively, wanting to know who else had eaten it, exactly what it had done to them, and how long it had lasted. He seemed especially interested in the increased “skill in the dark arts.”

“Speaking of dark arts,” I said, “what did you guys do the night of the ritual? What happened? What went wrong?”

He groaned. “I take it that means the walls came down anyway. I’ve been trying to convince myself that my uncles managed a miracle. Tell me everything, Mac. What’s happened in the world while I’ve been stuck here?”

I told him that the walls had crashed completely at midnight, that I’d watched the Unseelie come through, and that the Lord Master and his princes had captured me at dawn. I omitted the rape, being turned Pri-ya, and my subsequent … er, recovery (no way I was talking to the lie detector about those events), and told him merely that I was rescued by Dani and the sidhe-seers. I brought him up to speed on Jayne’s efforts, filled him in on what we’d learned about iron, and told him that his family was okay and searching for him. I told him the Book was still loose but withheld the gruesome details of my recent encounter with it.

“How did you come to be in the Hall of All Days?”

I told him about the Lord Master abducting my parents, luring me into the Silver, and insisting that I show him the stones.

“Bloody idiot! Even we know better than to do that, and he was once Fae. It’s no wonder the queen appointed us Keltar keepers of the lore. We know more about their history than they do.”

“Because they keep drinking from the cauldron and forgetting?”

“Aye.”

“Well, at least we have them. Even though the ride’s rocky, they help in a pinch.”

“Are you daft, Mac?” he said sharply.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you know what’s happening every time you take them out of that pouch?”

“Duh, that’s what I was saying. It makes us shift worlds … or dimensions, or whatever they are.”

“Because the realm we’re in is trying to spit us out,” he said flatly. “The stones are anathema to the Silvers. Once you remove them from your pouch, the realm detects them and, like an infected splinter, endeavors to expel them. The only reason you go with them is because you’re holding on to them.”

“Why are they anathema to the Silvers?”

“Because of Cruce’s curse.”

“You know what Cruce’s curse was?” Finally, someone who could tell me!

“I’ve been wandering worlds in this place for what feels like bloody forever, and I’ve learned a thing or two. Cruce hated the Unseelie King, for many reasons, and coveted his concubine. He cursed the Silvers to prevent the king from ever entering them again. He planned to take all the worlds inside the Silvers and the concubine for himself. Be king of all the realms. But a curse is an immensely powerful thing, and Cruce cast it into a vortex of unfathomable power. Like most things Fae, it took on a life of its own, transmuted. Some say you can still hear the words of it, sung softly on a dark wind, ever changing.”

“Did he succeed in keeping the king from his concubine?”

“Aye. And because those stones you carry were carved from the king’s fortress and bear the taint of him, the Silvers reject them, as well. A short time after that, the king was betrayed, he and the queen battled, and he killed the Seelie Queen.”

“Was that when the concubine killed herself?”

“Aye.”

“Well, if the Silvers are trying to spit us out, then won’t they eventually send us back to our world?”

He snorted. “They aren’t trying to spit us out back to where we came from, Mac. They’re trying to restore the natural order of things and spit the stones back to where they came from.”

I inhaled sharply. “You mean every time we use them, whatever realm we’re in is trying to send us to the Unseelie prison? What happens? Do they miss?”

“I suspect none of the realms has enough power on its own, so we’re being swept toward it, like a broom across a vast floor, through as many dimensions as possible.”

“Each time we get pushed a little closer?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, maybe,” I tried hard to be optimistic, “we’re a million realms away.” Somehow, I didn’t think so.

“And maybe,” he said darkly, “we’re one. And the next time you ‘shift’ us, we’ll end up face-to-face with the Unseelie King. Don’t know about you, but I’d rather not meet the million-year-old creator of the worst of the Fae. Some say merely gazing on him in his true form will destroy your mind.”

Some time later, Christian announced our clothes were dry. I listened to his clothing rustle as he dressed. When he was done, I got up and moved toward my clothes, then stopped dead in my tracks, staring at him.

He gave me a bitter smile. “I know. It started happening shortly after you fed it to me.”

I’d seen him nude. I knew he had crimson and black tattoos on his chest, part of his abdomen, and up the side of his neck, but the rest of his body had been unmarked.

It was no longer. Now his arms were covered with black lines and symbols, moving just beneath his skin.

“It’s spreading down my legs and moving up my chest,” he said.

I opened my mouth but didn’t have the faintest idea what to say. I’m sorry I fed it to you to save your life? Do you wish I hadn’t? Isn’t it better to live to fight another day, no matter what?

“It’s something to do with the dark-arts part of it. I feel it surging in me like a storm.” He sighed heavily. “I suspect it’s because of what Barrons and I tried to do on Hallow’s Eve.”

“And what was that?” I fished.

“Called on something ancient that we should have let slumber. Invited it. I keep hoping I’ll find him, but once we were sucked into the vortex, we got separated.”

I stared. “Barrons got sucked into the Silvers with you on Halloween?”

Christian nodded. “We were both in the stone circle, then it vanished, and so did we. We flashed from one landscape to the next like someone was flipping channels, then suddenly I was in the Hall of All Days, and he wasn’t. I may not care for the man, but he knows his dark magic. I’ve been hoping we can find a way out, if we put both our minds to it.”

“Uh, I hate to break it to you, but he already has.”

Christian’s eyes flared, then narrowed. “Barrons is out? Since when?”

“Since four days after Halloween. And he never said a word about it. He told me you were the only one who vanished that night.”

“How the bloody hell did he make it out?”

I gave him a look of helpless exasperation. “How would I know? He never even admitted he’d been here. He lied.”

Christian’s eyes narrowed further. “When did you have sex with him?”

Uh-oh. The lie detector was staring out at me from those tiger eyes. “It wasn’t like I was willing,” I prevaricated.

“Lie,” he said flatly.

“I wouldn’t have done it under any other circumstances.” That was the truth, and he could choke on it!

“Lie.”

Really? “He made me do it!”

“Major, huge lie,” he said dryly.

“You don’t understand the situation I was in.”

“Try me.”

“I hardly think it’s relevant to any of our problems.” I turned my back on him and began dressing.

“Do you have feelings for him, Mac?”

I dressed in silence.

“Are you afraid to answer me?”

I finished dressing and turned around. Christian was getting a little scary-looking. His eyes were growing inhumanly brilliant, golden. I kept my face a smooth mask. “I’m starved,” I told him. “I’ve got two protein bars. You can have one. And I’m thirsty, but I’d rather not drink from that quarry. And I think we have much bigger problems than my feelings about Jericho Barrons. Or lack thereof. And those animals,” I pointed to the far edge of the valley, “look edible to me.”

I began to walk.

Unfortunately, we weren’t the only ones that thought the sleek, graceful gazellelike creatures looked edible, as we soon discovered in the middle of the valley.

A stampeding herd of thousands of shaggy-furred horned bulls with whiplike tails and wolfish snouts was bearing down on us, hard.

“Do you think maybe they’ll just part around us?” I’d seen it happen in the movies.

“I’m not sure it’s not us they’re after, Mac. Run!”

I ran, even though I was pretty sure it was pointless. They were too fast, and we were too far from any kind of shelter.

“Can’t you do something Druidy?” I shouted over the nearly deafening pounding of hooves.

He gave me a look. “Druidry,” he shouted, “requires preparation, or it can have disastrous results!”

“Well, you’re looking all formidable! Surely you can do something with whatever’s happening to you!” The black symbols had begun to move up his throat now.

The ground was shaking so hard it was getting difficult to run. It felt like an earthquake creeping up on us.

When I stumbled, Christian moved so quickly that the next thing I knew I was over his shoulder and he was running ten times faster than a normal man. Of course, he was pumped on Unseelie. I raised my head. The herd was too close. We still weren’t moving fast enough. The creatures were gaining, snouts snapping, saliva flying. I could practically feel their breath blasting us.

“Use the stones,” Christian shouted.

“You said it was too dangerous!”

“Anything’s better than dead, Mac!”

I dug into my waistband, pulled out the pouch, and flashed the stones.

Comparatively speaking, it was one of the smoother transitions.

Unfortunately, it deposited us on a fire world.

I flashed the stones again, and the flames on my boots died instantly, because the next world didn’t support carbon-based life and there was no oxygen.

I flashed the stones again, and we were underwater.

The fourth time I flashed them, we ended up on the narrow top of a jagged cliff that fell sharply to a bottomless chasm on both sides.

“Put me down,” I shouted over the wild gale whipping around us. I was crushed over Christian’s shoulder, dripping wet and gasping for breath.

“Here?”

“Yes, here!”

Snorting, he lowered me to my feet but kept his grip tight on my waist. I stared at him. His amber irises were rimmed with black. It was staining inward, like ink clouding water. The strange symbols were licking up over his jaw.

“Just what did you do on Halloween?” Why was Unseelie flesh having such a strange effect on him?

He gave me that killer smile, but it wasn’t killer charming, it was killer cold. “I chickened out at the last minute, or we wouldn’t have failed. We tried to raise the only other power we knew of that had once stood against the Tuatha Dé and held its own. An ancient sect called the Draghar raised it once, long ago. Barrons didn’t hesitate. I did. Care to get us off this cliff, Mac?” he snarled.

“What if the next place is even worse?”

“Keep shifting and I’ll keep holding on.”

A gust of air blasted us. We went stumbling off the edge, into yawning darkness. I opened the pouch as we fell.

A massive vortex exploded around us, black, swirling, tearing at my hair and clothes. I struggled to shove the stones back into the rune-covered bag. I could feel Christian’s grip slipping, then his hands were gone and I was alone.

I slammed down onto grassy tundra, on my hands and knees.

I hit so hard, the pouch went flying from my hands. My forehead smacked into the earth and I bit my tongue viciously. I couldn’t feel Christian’s hands on me anywhere.

Ears ringing from the impact, I lifted my head, dazed.

I stared straight into the eyes of an enormous wild boar with razor-sharp tusks.

CHAPTER 34

When you’re staring death in the face, time has a funny way of slowing down.

Or maybe, in this realm, it really did move slower, who knows?

All I knew, as I stared into the boar’s beady, cunning, hungry eyes—tiny in its cow-size body—was that ever since I’d dropped my cell phone into our swimming pool, I’d begun losing things. One after another.

First my sister. Then my parents and any hope of going home.

I’d tried to roll with the punches, be a good sport. I’d made a new home for myself in a bookstore in Dublin. I’d attempted to make new friends and forge alliances. I’d said good-bye to pretty clothes, my blond hair, and my love of fashion. I’d accepted shades of gray instead of rainbows and finally embraced black.

Then I’d lost Dublin and my bookstore.

Finally I’d lost myself, even my own mind.

I’d learned to use new weapons, found new ways to survive.

And lost those, too.

My spear was gone. I had no Unseelie flesh. No name in my tongue.

I’d found Christian. I’d lost Christian. I was pretty sure he’d ended up being dragged off one way in the vortex, while I’d been sent another.

And now I’d lost the stones, too. The pouch was on the ground, far beyond the boar, drawstring tight. I couldn’t even hope for an accidental shift.

The dirk strapped to my forearm wouldn’t begin to pierce the animal’s scale-plated hide.

And I had to wonder: Was this the whole point? Was it about taking everything from me there was to take? Was that what life did? Made you lose everything you cared about and believed in, then killed you?

Yes, I was feeling sorry for myself.

Fecking A, as Dani would say—who wouldn’t at this point?

Fire worlds? Water worlds? Cliffs? What crappy cosmic power was in charge of deciding where the stones sent me next? Were the blue-black slivers of whatever they were so despised by the Silvers that if a realm couldn’t spit them all the way back to the Unseelie hell, it would settle for trying to destroy them—therefore, oops, me, too? Was I being deliberately flung into the jaws of danger?

Or, as I’d begun to wonder lately, had the destruction of me begun a long time ago? Hidden in obscured dreams and forgotten memories.

What did I have left?

Nothing.

I crouched, staring furiously across a space of grassy field at a beady-eyed boar that I swore wore an evil smile on its tusked face.

It snorted and pawed the ground.

For lack of anything else to do, I snorted back and pawed the ground myself. Bristled and shot it a look of death.

Beady eyes narrowed. It lifted its heavy-jowled head and sniffed the air.

Was it trying to scent fear? Too bad. There wasn’t any rolling off me. I was too angry to be afraid.

Where the hell was everyone when I needed—oh! Once before I’d thought myself without options, while I’d still had one left.

As the boar assessed my victim potential, I scowled at it, baring my teeth while easing a hand beneath my coat and into my back pocket.

I slipped out my cell phone. Water poured off it. Would it even work? I snorted inwardly. I was still expecting things to function according to understandable laws, as I crouched here in the seventh alternate dimension I’d been in recently. How silly of me.

I flipped it open and laid it on the ground.

The boar ducked its head, readying for the charge.

I didn’t dare raise the phone to my ear. I punched buttons as it lay there. First, Barrons, then IYCGM, and finally the forbidden IYD. This definitely qualified as dying.

I waited. I don’t know what for. Some miracle.

I guess I’d been hoping that using IYD would do something like magically transport me to safety at the bookstore. Or Barrons would instantly materialize and rescue me.

I waited.

Nothing happened. Not a damned thing.

I was on my own.

Figured.

The boar dropped its head menacingly. I gazed longingly at the pouch dozens of feet behind it.

It pawed the ground, shifted its haunches. I knew what that meant. Cats do it before they pounce.

I pawed at the ground and gave a deeply enraged snarl. I felt deeply enraged. I shifted my haunches, too.

It blinked beady eyes and grunted thickly.

I grunted back and pawed the ground again.

Standoff.

I had a sudden vision of myself from above.

This was what I’d been reduced to: MacKayla Lane-O’Connor, descended from one of the most powerful sidhe-seers lines, OOP detector, Null, once Pri-ya, now immune to pretty much all Fae glamour, not to mention possessing interesting healing abilities, on the ground on my hands and knees, dirty, wet, wearing a badly battered MacHalo and singed boots, facing off a deadly wild boar without a single weapon except fury, hope for a better tomorrow, and determination to survive. Wiggling my butt. Pawing the ground.

I felt a laugh building inside me like a sneeze and tried desperately to suppress it. My lips twitched. My eyes crinkled. My nose itched and my gut ached with the need to laugh.

I lost it. It was just all too much. I sat back on my heels and laughed.

The boar shifted uneasily.

I stood up, stared the boar down, and laughed even harder. Somehow, nothing’s quite as scary when you’re not on your knees.

“Fuck you,” I told it. “You want some of me?”

The boar regarded me warily, and I realized it wasn’t a mystical creature. It was just a wild animal. I’d heard lots of stories about people in the mountains of North Georgia who’d gotten away from wild animals through sheer bluff and bluster. I had a lot of that to offer.

I took a furious step toward it and shook my fist. “Get out of here! Shoo. Go away. I’m not dying today, you jackass! GET OUT OF HERE NOW!” I roared.

It turned and began to slink—inasmuch as a thousand-pound wild boar can—away across the meadow.

I stared, but not because it was retreating.

My last command had come out in layers that were still resonating in the air around me.

I’d just used Voice!

I had no idea whether the boar had been driven away by my lack of fear and threatening bluster or by the power of my words—I mean, really, can you Voice something that doesn’t understand English? — but I didn’t much care. The point was, I’d used it! And it had come out sounding pretty darned huge!

How had I done it? What had I found inside myself? I tried to recall exactly what I’d been feeling and thinking when I shouted at it.

Alone.

I’d been feeling completely and utterly alone, that there was nothing but me and my impending death.

The key to Voice, Barrons had said, is finding that place inside you no one else can touch.

You mean the sidhe-seer place? I’d asked.

No, a different place. All people have it. Not just sidhe-seers. We’re born alone and we die alone.

“I get it,” I said now.

Regardless of how many people I surrounded myself with, no matter how many friends and family I loved and was loved by in return, I was alone at the moment of being born and at the moment of dying. Nobody came with you and nobody went with you. It was a journey of one.

But not really. Because, in that place, there was something. I’d just felt it, when I’d never been able to feel it before. Maybe in the moment of being born and the moment of dying, we’re nearer to pure. Maybe it’s the only time we’re ever still enough to feel that there’s something bigger than us; something that defeats entropy; that has always been and will always be. A thing that can’t be flipped. Call it what you will. I only know it’s divine. And it cares. It was no longer my “comfort zone.” It was my truth.

I watched the boar slink off across the field. In a few moments, it would be clear of the pouch of stones, and I would retrieve them. Not that I trusted them much. But they were better than nothing, and I needed them to secure the Book when I got out of here.

I’d just begun to step forward to pick up my cell, then go for the stones, when an enormous gray beast suddenly exploded in a blur of horns and fangs and talons from nowhere.

I stumbled back.

It slammed into the boar’s side, sank fangs into its throat, grabbed its neck, and ripped off its head, spraying blood, taking its kill down between me and the pouch.

Growling, it hunkered over the boar’s body and began to eat.

I stared, hardly daring to breathe. If the thing had been standing upright—and it looked as if it could—it would come close to nine feet. It had three sets of sharp, curved horns spaced at even intervals on two bony ridges that ran down each side of its head. The first set was at its ears, the second midway back on its skull, and the final pair sprouted from the rear of its head and curved downward toward its back. Hanks of long black hair tangled around a prehistoric face, with a crested forehead, prominent bones, and deadly fangs. Its hands and feet were lightly webbed with long talons. Its skin was slate gray, smooth as leather. It was massively muscled and obviously male.

I hadn’t seen or heard it coming.

I wasn’t about to try out-growling it or attempt to use my newfound skill in Voice, which might or might not work on animals. If I was very lucky, I’d get to slink away quietly, without it ever noticing me. Bluffing a boar was one thing. The boar had been a simple animal, one that might have sprung from earth’s genetic codes. I didn’t need a DNA test to tell me this one hadn’t.

I began easing back slowly, barely lifting my feet from the ground. I’d have to come back later for my cell phone and the stones.

Its head snapped up and it looked straight at me, blood all over its face. So much for my hope of slinking off unnoticed.

I held perfectly still, one foot in the air. Bunnies freeze to outwit enemies. Supposedly, bears are deceived by it.

It wasn’t fooled. It sat back on its haunches and considered me with cunning, narrowed eyes, as if trying to decide what I might taste like. Rage burned in its gaze, as if it were a lion with thorns permanently embedded in all four paws.

I held my breath. Eat the boar, I willed. I’m lean muscle, not plump pork belly.

It shifted its body away from the boar toward me, completely dismissing its kill. Shit, shit, shit.

I was its target now.

With no warning whatsoever, it was suddenly on all fours, running straight at me. The thing was preternaturally fast.

I fumbled my dirk from my sheath and dropped into a crouch, heart slamming in my chest.

“STOP RIGHT THERE!” Voice swelled out of me, saturating the air, echoing in a thousand voices. It was formidable, phenomenal, daunting as hell. I couldn’t believe I’d made such a noise. Barrons would have been so proud. “LEAVE ME ALONE!” I roared. “YOU WILL NOT HARM ME!”

Unaffected, the monster kept coming.

I braced myself for impact. There was no way I was going down without a fight. If it stayed on all fours, I’d feint and twist, go for its eyes with my dirk and what was left of my nails. Maybe its male parts. Whatever I had to do to survive.

Half a dozen feet away, the horrific thing stopped so abruptly that it clawed open the earth with its talons. Chunks of sod went flying, narrowly missing my head. Its yellow eyes narrowed to slits, and it snarled.

It was so close to me that I could feel the gust of its hot breath, smell the fresh warm blood on it. I stared at it wildly. It had vertical pupils, expanding and contracting in alien yellow eyes. It bristled with fury, chest heaving in short, rapid pants, as it snarled incessantly.

Shifting its weight forward, it shook its head and snapped its jaws. Saliva and blood sprayed me.

I cringed but didn’t dare wipe it away.

Suddenly it rippled into motion, with such smoothly muscled grace that for a bizarre moment I found it … beautiful. The thing was a natural-born executioner. It was at the top of its game. Powerful, uncomplicated animal. It had few purposes in life. It had been born and bred to kill, conquer, reproduce, survive. For the duration of that strange moment, I nearly envied it.

It began circling me, taloned hands and feet ripping up tufts of grass and dirt, tossing its head from side to side, yellow eyes burning with bloodlust.

I turned with it, never taking my eyes from its face. I stared into that killing gaze, as if I could hold it at bay with a mere refusal to be cowed. Was this some kind of preslaughter ritual? It hadn’t done it to the boar.

It stopped, cocked its horned head, tipped its monstrous face, and … sniffed in my direction.

What the hell was it doing? I held my breath, hoping I smelled inedible. The fangs—God, those fangs were as long as my fingers!

It didn’t seem to like whatever it had smelled. The smell seemed to make it even angrier. It growled long and low, then, without warning, it lunged!

Dirk clenched in my fist, I held my ground. Our actions define us. I would either live or die fighting.

But I didn’t get the chance to fight.

At the last second, the monster howled and twisted in midair.

All I saw was a blur of motion. One moment it was launching straight for me, the next it was tearing through the grass, racing back to the boar. As I watched, it sank its fangs into the boar’s flesh and, with a violent shake of its head, flayed it open and began to eat, bones crunching, gristle popping.

For a moment, I couldn’t move. I was so shaky I wasn’t sure my legs would support me. I was too freaked out to process thought.

Mobility returned on the wings of adrenaline.

I darted forward, snatched my cell phone from the ground, and ran like hell.

CHAPTER 35

Some time later, I sat in a glade of tall grass and white-barked trees, leaning back against a trunk, trying to get a grasp on my situation. It had taken nearly half an hour for me to stop shaking. I’d wanted to run as far away from the terrifying monster as I could, but I needed those damned stones.

This day had not unfolded remotely as I’d planned. I was having a hard time accepting where I was and what was happening to me.

I’d begun this afternoon with a clear agenda: I’d stepped into a Silver with the perfectly reasonable expectation (oh, God, did that sum up how warped my world had gotten or what?) of stepping out on the other side in my own living room, in my own world, where I would either rescue my parents from the LM’s evil clutches, with Barrons’ help, or die trying.

Now here I was on some foreign world inside the network of the Silvers, which were—according to Barrons—a place that was virtually impossible to navigate and where one could stay lost forever, being attacked by one predator after another.

I’d been absurdly, dangerously sidetracked. Things had taken such an unprecedented twist that I felt as if I’d slipped down one of Alice’s rabbit holes.

It was one thing to watch Fae invade Dublin and try to take over my world, to fight them on my turf. It was entirely another to find myself world-hopping via mirrors and mystical stones, forced to do battle on foreign ground. At least back home, I knew where to get the things I needed, and I had allies to help me. Here, I was screwed.

Events were going on without me back in my world, and I needed to be part of them. I had to get out of here! I had to save my parents, question Nana O’Reilly, get into the Forbidden Libraries, figure out where V’lane was, uncover the prophecy … The list was endless.

But I was stuck on one of the worlds in the network of the Silvers, with a terrifying monster between me and stones that I didn’t dare leave behind. Not only were they of use here (though risky), but I had to take them back to my world so I could use them there.

If I needed any proof of how difficult the Silvers were to get out of—and survive in—I only had to think of Christian, who’d been wandering lost for two months, and been on the verge of death when I’d found him.

How would I survive two months? How would I survive two weeks?

What was happening to my parents?

I punched IYD on my cell phone for the hundredth time and, for the hundredth time, nothing happened.

I closed my eyes and rubbed my face. Barrons had gotten out of here.

How? Why hadn’t he told me he’d been sucked in with Christian? Why so many lies? Or, as he would call them, “omissions.”

I opened my eyes and checked my watch. It was still 1:14. Duh. I took it off and stuffed it into a pocket. The thing was obviously useless here. I was waiting for the monster to finish devouring the boar so I could go get my stones. I thought it had been at least an hour or two, but the sun hadn’t moved in the sky at all since I’d sat down, which meant either my sense of time was badly skewed or the days were much longer here than I was used to.

While I killed time, I sorted through my options. The way I saw it, I had three. Once I had the stones back, I could A: start hunting for IFPs, risk entering one, and hope it wouldn’t trap me in a desert like the one Christian had gotten stuck in; or B: use the stones and hope that I was really far away from the Unseelie prison and they’d send me back to the Hall of All Days or some other place with mirrors to choose from; or C: stay right where I was and hope that, even though IYD didn’t work here, Barrons would still be able to track me by my brand. And that the monster would move on and find something else to terrorize and kill. Otherwise, remaining in this area wouldn’t even be an option.

Barrons was obviously familiar with the worlds inside the network of Silvers, considering how quickly he’d gotten out. Which seemed to indicate he’d been in here at least once prior to having been sucked in with Christian.

Of all my options, staying put and giving Barrons the chance to track me seemed the most sensible. Once before I’d discounted his ability to save me, and I didn’t want to make the same mistake again.

It had taken him four days to get out.

I’d give him five to find me. But five was the max I would allow, because I was afraid I might start thinking, Yeah, but what if today is the day he comes? Then I’d be afraid to ever leave. It was imperative I make firm decisions and stick to them.

That resolved, I stoked my courage, stood up, and moved stealthily to the edge of the glade, to see if I could reclaim my stones.

The monster was still eating. It stopped, raised its head, and sniffed. Was it looking at me through the trees?

I dropped to all fours and retreated inch by inch. After I’d put some distance between us, I got up and ran back to my tree.

Why hadn’t it killed me? Why had it stopped? Was I inedible? I knew sometimes animals were rabid and killed simply to kill. I’d never seen such fury in an animal’s eyes before. One of my friends had been bitten by a rabid dog, and I’d seen it kenneled before it was put down. It had looked more frightened than angry. The gray monster didn’t possess one ounce of fear. It was nothing but savagery.

Two more times I slipped through the glade to check. Both times it was still eating and showed no signs of stopping.

I returned to my tree, where I watched the sun crawl across the sky. The day heated up and I stripped off my coat, sweater, and jersey. I made a sling from the jersey, knotted the MacHalo in it, and tied it to a stick, hobo style.

I spent my time alternately worrying about Mom and Dad, trying to convince myself that Barrons had rescued them; Dani being at the abbey and what rash decisions she might make without me there to keep an eye on her; Christian and where he’d gotten off to and hoping he’d found food because I’d never gotten the chance to give him one of my protein bars; and even V’lane, for disappearing and never popping up again.

I couldn’t think of a single thing to worry about for Barrons.

I pondered life, trying to make sense of it, wondering how I could ever have grown up believing the world a sane, safe, orderly place.

I was about to push myself up to go check on my stones for the fourth time when I heard a twig snap.

My head whipped around.

The monster was crouched on all fours, no more than twenty feet away from me.

It stared though the tall grass, head hunkered low, yellow eyes glittering.

Was it done with the boar and hungry for me now?

I grabbed my hobo stick and coat and shot up the tree so fast I think I gouged sod from the earth. Heart in my throat, I flew from limb to limb.

I hate heights as much as I hate confined spaces, but halfway up I forced myself to stop and look down. Could the monster climb? It didn’t look as if it should be able to, with what I estimated had to be four hundred pounds of muscle plus all those talons, but in this world who knew? Especially with the weirdly fluid way it could move.

It was on the ground beneath the tree, on all fours, tearing at the grass where moments ago I’d been sitting.

As I watched, it found my sweater. It pierced it on long talons and raised it to its face.

I gasped. The sweater wasn’t the only thing of mine it had. Tied to its rear horns by a leather drawstring was my rune-covered bag.

The monster had my stones!

When it finally wandered off—with my sweater knotted around one of its hind legs—I descended the tree. After a long, internal debate with myself, I shrugged and began to follow it.

I was furious at the latest turn of events.

Why had the damned thing picked up my stones, and how—with those lethal talons—had it managed to tie the bag to its horns? Wasn’t knot-tying pretty damned evolved for a prehistoric-looking beast? And what was the deal with my sweater?

It realized I was following it, stopped, turned around, and looked at me.

My instincts screamed for me to tuck tail and run again, but there was something strange going on here. Although it bristled with fury, it hadn’t taken a single step my way.

“Those are my stones and I need them,” I tried.

Feral yellow eyes narrowed, unblinking.

I pointed to its horns. “The pouch. It’s mine. Give it back.”

Nothing. There wasn’t a flicker of understanding or anything remotely resembling intelligence in its gaze.

I pointed to my own head and mimed removing a bag and tossing it away. I mimed untying my sweater from its leg to drive my point home. I indulged in a small fit of charades, with many variations on the theme. Nothing. My efforts yielded no more fruit than an interrogation of Barrons would have.

Finally, out of sheer exasperation, I did a little dance, just to see if it would have any reaction at all.

It stood up on its rear legs and began to howl, revealing an alarming number of teeth, then dropped to all fours and lunged at me, over and over again, drawing up short each time, like a dog on a leash.

I went perfectly still.

It was almost as if it wanted to attack me, but for some reason it couldn’t.

It stilled, too, growling, watching me carefully with narrowed eyes.

After a moment, it turned and glided away, muscle and madness.

Sighing, I followed it. I had to get my stones.

It stopped, turned around, and snarled at me. It clearly didn’t like me following it. Too bad. When it began moving again, I waited where I was for a few seconds, then followed at a more discreet distance. I hoped it had a lair that it would take the stones to, and when it left again to hunt, maybe I could steal them back.

I followed it for hours, through meadows and finally into a forest near a wide, rapidly flowing river, where I lost it among the trees.

Daylight ended with disconcerting abruptness on this world.

The sun had been inching across the sky most of the day, but at roughly five o’clock—or so I assumed by its angle to the planet—the blazing ball plummeted faster than the one in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. If I hadn’t been squinting up through the trees at that precise moment, trying to decide how much time I had left to find a place to hole up for the night, I’d neither have seen nor believed it.

In the blink of an eye, day was over and it was full, pitch night. The temperature dropped ten sudden degrees, making me grateful I still had my coat.

I hate the dark. Always have, always will.

I fished out my MacHalo, dropped it in my haste, picked it up again, clapped it on my head, and began squeezing on the lights. Since the brackets had snapped off, I moved some of the lights around, wishing I’d made Barrons’ version of my creation, without brackets. I’d never admit it to him, but his was more efficient, lighter, and brighter. But, in my defense, it was far easier to improve upon an invention than to actually sit down and invent it. I’d made something from nothing. He’d merely tweaked my “something.”

I don’t know if I heard it or just sensed its presence, but suddenly I knew something was behind me, no more than a dozen feet to my right.

I whipped around and caught it in the harsh white glare of lights on the front of my helmet.

Squinting, it shielded its eyes with an arm.

For a moment, I wasn’t sure it was “my” monster. It had darkened like a chameleon from slate gray to coal black, and its eyes were now crimson. I might have mistaken it for something else, a distant cousin to the monster I’d been tracking, except for the pouch of stones tied to its black horns.

It snarled at the lights. Its fangs glistened ebony, long.

I shivered. It looked even more deadly than it had before.

I squeezed off the front light, and it lowered its arm.

What now? Why had it come back? It hadn’t seemed to want me to follow it, yet when I’d lost it, it circled back for me. Nothing about it made sense. Might it eventually weary of the pouch banging into the back of its head with every step it took and toss it away? Why did it still have my sweater? How was I going to survive the night? Would it kill me in my sleep? Assuming I ever managed to relax enough to sleep!

If it didn’t kill me, would something else? What was nocturnal here? What did I have to fear? Where would I dare try to sleep? Up a tree?

I was starved. I was exhausted and completely out of ideas.

The monster growled and loped from the shadows, passing within a few feet of me, and headed toward the river.

Chilled by such a near brush, I froze and watched my stones go bouncing by.

In another day or two, would I be so despairing and tired and fed up that I might just try to grab the thing’s head and wrestle them off it? If enough days passed without it trying to kill me, I could see myself getting desperate enough to risk it.

The monster paused on a mossy bank near the river and looked back at me. It looked at the bank and back at me. It repeated it, over and over.

It might not understand me, but I understood it. It wanted me on that bank for some reason.

I mulled my options. It took all of one second. If I didn’t go, what would it do to me? Was there anyplace else I could think of to go? I walked downstream to the bank. Once I was there, it lunged at me and herded me with snapping jaws into the center of the bank.

Then, as I watched in shock and astonishment, it urinated a circle all the way around me.

When it was finished, it rippled sleekly into the night and disappeared.

I stood in the center of the circle of urine still steaming on the ground, and comprehension slowly dawned.

It had marked the earth around me with its scent to repel lesser threats, and I was willing to bet most threats on this world were lesser.

Numb from the day’s events, exhausted from fear and physical exertion, I sat down, pulled out the remainder of my protein bar, made a pillow of my coat, then stretched out on the bank, set my MacHalo beside me, and left it blazing.

I chewed slowly, making the most of my meager meal, listening to the soft roar of the river’s rapids.

It looked like I was holed up for the night.

I had few expectations that sleep would come. I’d lost everything. I was stranded in the Silvers. My stones were gone. There was a deadly monster collecting my things and pissing circles around me, and I had no idea what to do next. But apparently my body was done for the day, because I passed out with no awareness of having finished my meal.

I woke in the dark heart of the night, pulse pounding, unable to pinpoint what had awakened me. I stared up through the black treetops at two brilliant moons, full in a blue-black sky, and sorted through dream fragments.

I’d been walking the corridors of a mansion that housed infinite rooms. Unlike my cold-place dreams, I’d been warm there. I’d loved the mansion, with its endless terraces overlooking gardens filled with gentle creatures.

I felt it drawing me. Was it somewhere in this realm? Was it the White Mansion the Unseelie King had built for his concubine?

Far in the distance, I heard the howling of wolves as they saluted the moons.

I rolled over, pulled my coat over my head, and tried to go back to sleep. I was going to need all my energy to deal with tomorrow and survive in this place.

Something much closer howled an answer back to those distant wolves.

I shot straight up on my bed of moss, grabbed my dirk, and lunged to my feet.

It was a frightful sound. A sound I’d heard before, back in my own world—beneath the garage of Barrons Books and Baubles!

It was the tortured baying of a thing damned, a thing beyond redemption, a thing so lost to the far side of despair that I longed to puncture my own eardrums so I could never hear such a sound again.

The wolves howled.

The beast bayed back. Not so close this time. It was moving away.

The wolves howled. The beast bayed back. Farther still.

Was there something worse than my monster out there? Something like the thing beneath Barrons’ garage?

I frowned. That would just be entirely too coincidental.

Was it possible “my” monster was the thing from beneath Barrons’ garage? “Oh, God,” I whispered. Had IYD actually worked?

For time uncounted, I listened to the mournful concert, eyes wide, blood chilled. Such desolation, isolation, loss in the thing’s cry. Whatever it was, I grieved for it. No living thing should have to exist in such agony.

The next time the wolves howled, the beast didn’t bay back.

A short time later I heard terrifying yipping and the sounds of wolves being slaughtered, one after the next.

Shivering, I lay back down, curled into a tight ball, and covered my ears.

I woke again near dawn, surrounded by dozens of hungry eyes staring at me from beyond the circle of urine.

I had no idea what they were. I could see only powerful shadows moving, stalking, pacing hungrily in the darkness beyond the light from my MacHalo.

They didn’t like the scent of the urine, but they could smell me over it, and I obviously smelled like food to them. As I watched, one of the dark shapes pawed a spray of leaves and dirt over the urine.

The others began to do the same.

The black monster with crimson eyes exploded from the forest.

I couldn’t make out the details of the fight. My MacHalo was throwing off too much glare. All I saw was a whirl of fangs and talons. I heard snarls of rage, answered by frightened snarls and hisses and screams of pain. I heard some of them go splashing into the river. The thing moved impossibly fast, ripping and slicing through the darkness with deadly accuracy. Chunks of fur and flesh flew.

Some of them tried to run. The monster didn’t let them. I could feel its rage. It rejoiced in the kill. It reveled in it, soaked itself in blood, crushed bones beneath its taloned feet.

Eventually I closed my eyes and quit trying to see.

When at last it was silent, I opened my eyes.

Feral crimson eyes watched me from beyond a pile of savaged bodies.

When it began to urinate again, I rolled over and hid my head under my coat.

CHAPTER 36

I got up as soon as it was light, gathered my stuff, and picked my way past the remains of mutilated bodies to wash up in the river. Everything, including me, was splattered with blood.

I waded into the shallows, cupped my hands, and drank deeply before washing. I needed water, it was running rapid and crystal-clear, I couldn’t build a fire to boil it, and I had to believe that, after all I’d lived through, I was surely slated for a more meaningful death than by waterborne parasite.

After I washed up, I moved into the forest. Finding food was at the top of my to-do list today. Although there was plenty of raw meat lying around, I’d rather not.

I passed corpse after corpse. A lot were small, delicate creatures that couldn’t possibly have presented a threat to me. They hadn’t been eaten. They’d been killed for the kill.

After about twenty minutes, I realized I was being followed.

I turned. The monster was back, and once again it was slate gray with yellow eyes. My pouch was still tied to its horns. Tatters of my sweater were knotted around its leg.

“You’re IYD, aren’t you? It did work. You’re what Barrons kept beneath his garage, and he sent you to protect me. But you’re not the brightest bulb in the box. All you know how to do is kill. Everything but me, right? You keep me alive.”

The monster, of course, said nothing.

I was nearly certain of it. After the second mass slaughter, I’d lain awake, waiting for the sun to rise high enough in the sky to go foraging, pondering possibilities. It was the only one that explained why the monster wasn’t killing me. When it had first tried to attack me yesterday, it must have smelled Barrons on me. And it was the scent of him that was keeping it at bay. I made a mental note to not wash very well, no matter how dirty I got.

“So, what’s the plan? Do you keep me alive until he finds me?”

Was this killing machine what would have shown up on Halloween if I’d dialed IYD then? I couldn’t see it being any use against the LM and the Fae Princes, but if I’d summoned it during the riots, or even shortly after instead of holing up in the church, it certainly could have cleared my path and led me somewhere safe, where the LM might never have found me.

I examined it. It stared back through matted, bloodied hair. Rage blazed in its gaze, and something wilder, more frightening. It took me a moment to realize it was madness. The thing was one link in a chain away from total insanity.

It had to be IYD. There was no other explanation for it. How had Barrons captured the thing? How did he make it obey him? How had he kept it from killing him? By mystical means? As usual where Barrons was concerned, I had nothing but questions and no answers. When I was finally back in my own world, he wasn’t getting out of answering some. I knew what he kept beneath his garage now, and I wanted to know more.

As I studied its savage face, the eyes deep with psychotic rage, its powerful body built for killing, I realized I was no longer afraid of it. I knew in my bones the thing was not going to kill me. It was going to slaughter and decimate every living thing around me, and piss, and probably collect anything of mine I was careless enough to let get away from me. It might even want to kill me, but it wouldn’t, because it was IYD and its sole purpose was to make sure I didn’t die.

I felt like half the weight of the world had just slid from my shoulders. I could do this. I had a weapon I hadn’t known about: a guardian demon. It occurred to me that I didn’t even need to retrieve my stones. Barrons could get them when he showed up. There went another quarter of the world off my back.

I got on with my search for food. The monster trailed me most of the time. Occasionally something rustled in the distance, and it would tear off through the trees. I began to hold my ears when that happened. I love animals and hated that it was killing everything. I wished Barrons could have taught it to discriminate.

I found berries in the undergrowth and nuts on low-hanging branches in a grove of slender silvery-barked trees. After I gorged, I gathered them, tying as many of the sweet nuts into my hobo pouch as I could. In a gentle brook, I found fish eggs. A big yuck, but protein nonetheless.

Mid-morning, the monster herded me back toward the river, then began snarling and snapping at me, driving me upstream. I figured it had some Barrons-esque agenda.

It “herded” me for several hours. The terrain changed drastically. The forest thickened, the riverbank fell away, and by the time the monster finally let me stop, I was high on top of a sheer rocky cliff that dropped sharply, well over a hundred feet, to white-capped rapids below. The river no longer tumbled; it roared and crashed, filling the gorge with soft thunder.

I stretched out in a sunny patch on the bank and ate half of my last protein bar. I considered getting up and trying to explore, but I wasn’t sure the monster would permit it.

It sniffed the ground around me for a moment, then stalked downstream and sprawled sleek and deadly on the ground. I guessed it was tired from so much killing.

Feeling a little desperate for the sound of a voice, I talked to it. I told it stories about growing up in the South. I told it about all the fine plans I’d had for my life.

I told it how everything had gone so damned wrong and I’d begun losing one thing after another. I told it about the hell of losing my mind and will to the Unseelie Princes and about Barrons bringing me back. I even told it about my recent trip home to Ashford with V’lane, and what I’d learned there, and that I’d begun to fear there might actually be something wrong with me. I told it things I would never have told a sentient being, baring my deepest feelings and worries. It was cathartic to get it all off my chest, even to a dumb beast.

I dozed, too, and woke about a half hour before the sun plummeted to the horizon, cloaking the forest in night.

The monster rose on all fours, stalked over, urinated around me, and melted into the blackness, black on black, with crimson eyes.

I’d been “tucked in” for the night.

I woke several times, startled by one sound or another. Once I ascertained that nothing was lurking beyond my circle, I fell back asleep again.

Near dawn, I was awakened by a storm in the distance, moving closer.

A hundred feet below me, the river swelled to a deafening crescendo of rapids crashing against the sheer walls of the rocky gorge.

The sky crackled with lightning. Thunder rolled, and I braced myself for a drenching, but the storm stayed on the opposite side of the river and passed me by.

It was a violent squall. Thunder cracked and crashed continuously, punctuated by a weird popping, like automatic gunfire. Trees bent low. Rain fell in sheets, soaking the far side of the river. I was grateful I’d been spared.

Finally the storm blew itself out, and I slept.

I wakened to a hand clamped tightly over my mouth and the crushing weight of a body on top of mine.

I fought like a wild thing, punching, kicking, trying to bite.

“Easy, Mac,” a voice whispered roughly against my ear. “Be still.”

My eyes flared. I knew that voice. It was Ryodan. But I’d been expecting Barrons!

“I’ve come to get you out of here, but you must do exactly as I say.”

I was nodding before he’d even finished speaking.

“It’s imperative you make no noise. Whisper when you speak.”

I nodded again.

He drew back and looked at me. “Where’s … the creature?”

“The IYD one?”

He gave me a look but nodded.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen it since last night.”

“Get your things and hurry. We don’t have much time. Darroc’s here, too.”

“Are you kidding me? How the hell does everyone find me?” What was I, a big red X?

“Shh.” He pressed a finger to my lips. “Speak softly.” He raised the weight of his body from mine, flipped me onto my stomach, and began searching through my hair. “Hold still. Ah, fuck.”

“What?” It came out as a low growl.

“Darroc marked you. He must have done it while the princes had you.”

“He tattooed me?”

“Right next to Barrons’ mark. I can’t remove it here. Come.”

I rolled over, scrubbing angrily at my scalp. “Where are we going?”

“Not far from here is a—what did Barrons say you call them? — IFP. It will take us to another world, where there’s a dolmen to Ireland.”

“I thought Cruce’s curse corrupted everything.”

“The Silvers change. IFPs don’t. They’re static microcosms.”

He grabbed me beneath my armpits, stood up, taking me with him, and set me on my feet.

I clutched his arm. “My parents?”

“I don’t know. I came in after you at LaRuhe.”

“Barrons?”

“He was trying to get to Ashford, to go after Darroc. I was the only one able to get in before the tunnel collapsed on our end. It took me a while to find you. I found this, too.” He tossed my backpack at me. “Your spear’s inside.”

I could have kissed him! I grabbed my pack and swiftly consolidated possessions, then yanked out my spear and caressed it. Holding it in my hand made me feel like a Travis Tritt song—ten feet tall and bulletproof.

“The creature will attack anything in your vicinity. At the moment, that’s me. I can get you out. It can’t. It only kills. Remember that.”

Ryodan took my hand and led me close to the river, much nearer the sheer drop of the gorge than I was comfortable with, but I understood why he did it. The crushed-shale edge was soft as sand and made no noise beneath our feet. I looked up at him.

“How did you track me? Do you have a mark on me, too?” I whispered.

“I can follow Barrons’ mark. Another word and you’re going over the edge.”

I said no more. If it came down to my survival or his, I was pretty sure he’d choose his. I wondered why Barrons hadn’t done anything to keep Ryodan safe from the monster. Given him a Barrons-scented shirt to wear or something.

As if he’d read my mind, he murmured, “It’s the tattoo he put on you that keeps you safe from it. No fucking way he’s branding me. I came in armed. I hunted it all night through the rain. It ran me out of ammo. It’s one clever fuck.”

I had heard automatic gunfire! “You were trying to kill it?” I breathed, aghast. What a weird paradigm shift. It had been protecting me. Ferociously. Now it was my enemy?

Ryodan gave me a sharp look. “Do you want out of here or not?”

I nodded fervently.

“Then keep your spear handy, shut the fuck up, and hope it doesn’t kill me. I’m your way out.”

When the monster attacked—and I guess there never really was any doubt in my mind that it would—it did so with the same explosive suddenness with which it had hit the wild boar, blasting out of nowhere, crashing Ryodan to the ground, a fury of fangs and talons.

I watched helplessly as they twisted and rolled, watching for an opportunity to do something. Anything.

The monster was much larger than Ryodan, but Barrons’ mysterious brother-in-arms was pretty savage himself. His wristbands sprouted knives and spikes.

As I watched them battle, it speeded up into something very close to Dani’s freeze-framing and blurred beyond my vision’s ability to follow. I could no longer separate their forms. Ryodan seemed to be every bit as preternaturally agile as the monster.

I was able to snatch only brief glimpses as one or the other flashed into view, momentarily slowed by a wound.

Snarls filled the air as they rolled and fought, battling to the gorge’s edge—so near I held my breath and prayed they wouldn’t both go over—then back again.

I caught a glimpse of Ryodan, bleeding from dozens of wounds.

Then a flash of my monster, flesh torn, jaws bloody and snapping.

They rolled into a blur again at the river’s edge.

I watched, wide-eyed, leaping this way and that, trying to find a moment, an angle, an opportunity to help. I felt strangely torn.

The monster had saved my life repeatedly. It was my savage guardian demon. It had protected me.

But, as Ryodan had pointed out, it could do only that.

It couldn’t help me get back home. And it was going to kill my “way home,” if it could. Leaving me protected but stranded. I couldn’t allow that. I had to get out of here.

I caught another glimpse of Ryodan. The monster was tearing him to pieces!

Then Ryodan must have injured the monster, because it flashed into view and stayed a moment. Before I could blow what might be the only chance I got, I steeled myself, lunged for it, and jammed my spear into its back, right where I figured its heart was, if its internal anatomy was anything like a human’s.

It jerked, whipped its head around, and roared at me.

Ryodan seized the opportunity, plunged a knife into its chest, and ripped upward, slicing the monster open from gut to throat.

Its head whipped back around and it shoved Ryodan so hard it drove him to the cliff’s edge. As I watched, horrified, he stumbled on the soft shale lip and slipped over the side!

I think I screamed, or maybe I’d been screaming for a while, I don’t know; things that day got a little blurred for me.

Ryodan’s hands locked around a rock that protruded from the bank. I prayed it was embedded deeply enough in the shale to hold him.

The monster rose to its full height, baying with rage and pain, my spear stuck in its back.

I held my breath as Ryodan inched back up onto the bank. There was so much blood on his face that I could barely make out his eyes. How was he still moving? His cheek was sliced open so deep I could see bone! His chest was a mass of bloody crisscrossed slashes.

The monster staggered then, and I think I must have made a noise. Relief that it was going down? Sorrow? Maybe shame for my part in it? I had a whole mess of emotions going on.

It turned its head and looked straight at me, and there was something in its feral yellow gaze that made me gasp.

For an awful suspended moment, I could have sworn I saw an accusation of betrayal in its gaze, of disbelief at my foul duplicity, as if we’d had some kind of agreement, some unspoken pact between us. It stared at me with reproach; its yellow eyes burned with hatred for my treason. It flung back its head and bayed with desolation and despair, an anguished cry of grief and madness.

I clamped my hands to my ears.

It took a step toward me. I couldn’t believe it was still standing, flayed as it was.

When it took a second step, Ryodan managed to stagger to his feet, launch himself onto its back, wrap an arm around its neck—and slit its throat. “Get the bloody fuck out of here, Mac,” he snarled.

Gushing blood, the beast reached back, dug its talons into Ryodan, ripped him off its back, and flung him straight into the gorge.

“No!” I exploded.

But Ryodan was already gone, falling down, down into the river, a hundred feet below.

CHAPTER 37

I stood, staring stupidly at the monster with the flayed body and slit throat.

It was still standing.

I was hot and cold, shaking. I felt like I was in some fevered dream, a nightmare from which I couldn’t escape. I could feel myself detaching from the world around me, turning to stone inside, shutting down all emotion.

The monster staggered toward me. Went down on one knee and stared up at me. It shuddered, then collapsed to the earth, facedown.

My spear stuck out of its back.

The forest was silent and still.

As I watched the monster’s blood run into the soil, I took distant, unemotional stock of my situation.

Ryodan was dead.

Nothing could have survived that fall—assuming he’d been able to recover from his wounds, which was a pretty far stretch.

The monster was also dead, or very near it and would be soon, lying in a rapidly growing pool of blood.

I’d lost my way out.

I’d lost my protector, too.

Somewhere in this realm, the Lord Master was hunting me, tracking me by a mystical brand he’d etched on my skull.

Somewhere in this realm was an IFP that contained a dolmen that would take me back to Ireland. Unfortunately, I had no idea which one it was, or in which direction, or how many there were to choose from on this world.

My pouch of stones was still attached to the monster’s horns, and the tatters of my sweater were still tied by its sleeves to a leg. When it was dead, I would reclaim the stones. That was a plus of sorts in the ledger of my life, assuming I overlooked that they were really nothing more than a slow boat to hell.

The monster gurgled wetly and seemed to deflate.

I waited a few moments, picked up a stick, took a cautious step forward, and poked it.

There was no reaction. I poked harder, then nudged it with my foot.

I tested the spear in its back, jostling its wound. Again, there was no reaction.

It was definitely dead.

I crouched beside it and had begun to untie my pouch when suddenly its horns softened and melted into a river that flowed past its head, puddling like an oil slick on blood.

I snatched my pouch from its matted hair.

The shape of its head began to change.

Webs and talons vanished.

Matted locks became hair.

I stumbled backward, shaking my head. “No,” I said.

It continued to change. Slate-gray skin lightened.

“No,” I insisted.

My denial had no effect. It continued to transform. Height diminished. Mass decreased. It became what it was.

What it had been all along.

I began to hyperventilate. Squatting, I rocked back and forth in a posture of grief as old as time.

“No!” I screamed.

I’d thought I’d lost everything.

I hadn’t.

I stared at the person who lay dead on the floor of the forest.

The person I’d helped kill.

Now I’d lost everything.