Fever 4 - DreamFever (22 page)

  He stared at me blankly. "I didn't say anything."

  "Now," the man behind me growled impatiently. "Move."

                                          ***

They escorted me up a wide chrome staircase, to the top floor of Chester's. Behind a
chrome balustrade, dark-glass walls lined the entire circumference of the upper floor,
smooth, without doors or handles.

   I glanced from one of my escorts to the other. They hadn't spoken a word since
they'd closed their hands around my upper arms and begun steering me through the
crowd. Nor had I. I could feel what they were made of: leashed violence. Both looked to
be in their early thirties, heavily muscled. The man on my left had hands that were
badly scarred. They were massive men. There was something about their eyes that made
me decide keeping my mouth shut until I had a better understanding of my situation was
the wisest course of action.

  I glanced down as we topped the open-tread stairs. The waiter was on the floor, dead.
The Gray Woman was already looking around for a new toy. My hands fisted. We
walked along the wall of darkened glass until an indefinable characteristic in the
featureless surface must have indicated a door, because the man on my right placed his
palm to the glass. A panel slid aside, revealing a large room constructed entirely of two-
way glass, cornered by metal girders. You could see everything going on outside it. The
perimeter of the ceiling was lined with small screens fed by countless security cameras.
Here were the guts of the club. Nothing happened anywhere in Chester's that wasn't
seen here.

  "Brought her like you said, Ry."

   They pushed me inside. The panel slid closed behind me with a soft hiss. The room
was dark but for the glow of LCD panels. I took a step to catch my balance. For a
moment I thought I was falling, but it was an illusion created by the floor, which was
also made of two-way glass. It was so dim in the room that all I could see were outlines:
a desk, a few chairs, a table, and a man standing across the room, his back to me.
Everything beneath the room, however, was clearly visible. It made each step feel like a
leap of faith.

   "Glass houses, huh, Ryodan?" The first time I'd ever called IYCGM on my cell
phone, Ryodan had berated me, told me people who lived in glass houses shouldn't
throw stones, implying my goals were no loftier than Barrons'. Now here he stood,
surveying his world from inside one. Did he consider his own goals so pristine? I
narrowed my eyes. There was another room beyond the one in which we stood, even
darker. Whatever lurked in its shadows, he was watching it intently.

  After a moment he said, without turning, "Why did you come, Mac?"

  "Why are you feeding humans to the Unseelie?"

  "There is no force at my club. Only desire. Mutual."

  "They don't understand what they're doing."

  "Not my problem."

  "They're dying. Somebody needs to wake them up to reality."

  "They're in love with dying."

  "They're misguided, confused."

  "Not my problem."

  "You could do something about it!"

   "So I should?" he said. "Does that seem a friendly crowd down there to you? It
trembles on the verge of another riot, yet you would have me play moral adviser. Men
have been crucified for less. I've seen enough train wrecks to know when the rails are
locked and the brakes have failed. It's all train wrecks down there, Mac. Only one thing
holds my interest now. Potential. Barrons thinks you have it."

  His tone made it plain. "But you don't," I said flatly.

  "You worry me."

  "You worry me, too." I took a few more steps into the room. I wanted a better look at
him. I wanted to know what he was watching. Like Barrons and my escorts, Ryodan
was tall, well built. I wondered if it was a requirement to be whatever they were: no
wimps allowed. He wore dark pants and a crisp white shirt, sleeves rolled up on thickly
muscled forearms. A silver cuff, identical to Barrons', glinted at his wrist.

  "Everyone seems to think you're the solution, don't they?" he said.

  I shrugged. "Not everybody." Rowena didn't.

  "Has it occurred to you that you might be the problem?"

  "What do you mean?"

   "Why do you think you keep having so many brushes with the Book, when everyone
else who's searching for it never gets a glimpse of it? Even Darroc, your illustrious
master, can't get close to it. Word is it's been taking its own--Unseelie--chewing them
up and spitting them out. But nobody who really wants it can find it. Except you."

  "I'm an OOP detector," I reminded him. "I'm the only one who can sense it. There's
potential for you."

   "Indeed. Potential for what? Has it occurred to you that perhaps you don't keep
finding the Book--it keeps finding you?"

  "What are you saying?"

  "What do you think the Book wants, Mac?"

  "How should I know? Death. Destruction. Chaos. Same as the rest of the Unseelie."

  "What would you want if you were a book?"

  "I'm different, and that's easy. I'd want to not be a book."

  "Maybe you're not so different. Maybe it wants also to not be a book."

  "It has other forms. It's the Beast, too."

   "Has the Beast ever harmed anyone? Don't you think it would if it could? Isn't that
its nature?"

  I studied his back, pondered his words. "You're saying the Beast is only glamour.
That like any Fae, it creates illusion."

  "What if its only true form is a book? One that can't walk, or talk, or move, or do
anything on its own?"

  "Are you saying you think it takes people over just to have a body?"

  He glanced up at the LCD screens above his head. "I don't know what I think. I
consider everything. You watch them long enough, you see what they want. Unseelie
hunger, like starved prisoners, for whatever it is the Unseelie King brought them into
existence lacking. What if the Book is after corporeality? A movable form it can use
with autonomy? A body it can keep and control? A life of its own?"

  "Then why would it kill the people it takes?"

  "Maybe it doesn't. Maybe, like dolls, they break. Or maybe some part of them
manages to regain control for a few moments and stop what the Book is doing to them
the only way they can. Or maybe it's biding time, waiting for just the right moment.
Maybe it has the Fae ability of prognosticating possibles, delicately shaping events to
achieve certain ends. Has the Book ever spoken to you?"

  "Yes."

  "Barrons said it called you by name."

  I'd never told him that. He must have heard it speak to me that night. I'd thought it
spoke only in my head. "So? I don't know how it knew my name." He liked the
"maybe" game. I could play it, too. "Maybe it knows everybody's. I don't know what

you're getting at, but the Book repels me. I can barely get close to it. I'm too good and
it's too evil."

  "Really." He could not have said it more dryly.

  "What do you mean, `really'?" I said defensively.

   "Good and evil are merely opposite sides of a coin, Mac. Get tossed in the air
enough, it's easy to come down on the wrong side. Maybe the Book knows something
about you that makes you different. Makes it want you. Makes it think if you flipped
sides, you'd be worth more to it than any of the rest of us."

   What he was saying didn't make sense. And it was creeping me out. "Like what? And
if that was the case, then why wouldn't it have taken me already? It's had plenty of
chances."

   "Darroc bided his time, waiting for the perfect moment. Maybe you're not primed to
flip yet. Eternal life breeds eternal patience. If you lived long enough, you might feel
that if today amuses, today is good. All sense of right or wrong, all morality, all value,
might cease to exist."

   With the exception of two compartments to hold everything: stasis and change--the
classic Fae attitude. Of course, immortality would do that. "So you think the Book is
amusing itself, waiting for the right moment to pounce? Wake up. There's never going
to be a right moment for it to pounce on me."

  "Arrogance, like anger, is often a fatal flaw."

   "Darroc lost me. He didn't get what he wanted. I'm still standing. And I'm still
fighting. And I will never flip sides," I said coldly.

   "You're still standing because of that one, Mac." He nodded at the room he was
staring into. "Don't forget it. Never seen anything like her, and I've seen a lot."

  I moved to stand beside him, peered into the room. Up close, I could discern shapes.
Dani was in the middle of four men, spinning ceaselessly, sword up, snarling.

  "You hurt her, I'll kill you," I told him. No matter that he was a foot taller than me
and twice my mass.

  "She said the same about you."

  Suddenly Dani went into hyperspeed, then they all disappeared, and then there was
Dani again, surrounded by four men.

  "She hasn't stopped trying to get out since I put her in there. I wonder how long she
could survive."

  Not very long without food, but I wasn't about to tell him that. I looked up at him.

   He turned his face to mine, looked down. Handsome, chilling man. His eyes were the
clearest I'd ever seen. This was a man that suffered no conflicts with himself. He had no
problems being what he was.

  We stared at each other. "Black looks good on you," he murmured. "Has Barrons
seen you like this?"

   "Eternal patience," I murmured back. His tie was loosened, and in the open collar of
his white shirt his neck was a skein of scars, with a long, wicked-looking one stretching
up the left side from shoulder to ear. I didn't need a nurse to tell me he'd healed from a
wound, long ago, that would have killed most men. How long ago? "Does today amuse,
Ryodan?"

  His lips curved. He looked back at Dani and, after a moment, nodded. "It does. More
than it has in recent ... years."

  "She's thirteen."

  "Time will remedy that."

  "You worry me, Ryodan."

  "Back at you. Bit of advice, Mac. Life's an ocean, full of waves. All are dangerous.
All can drown you. Under the right circumstances, even the gentlest swell can turn tidal.
Hopping waves is for the weekend warrior. Choose one, ride it out. It increases your
odds of survival." He watched Dani for a moment, then said, "There are rules in my
house."

  "Your buddies already told me the first two. Neutral ground. Break a rule you die."

  "No killing Fae inside my club. In my walls means under my protection."

  "I just watched one of your protected Fae kill a human."

  "If they're stupid enough to be here, they're stupid enough to die."

   "Does that mean I can kill humans, too?" I said sweetly. There were two in particular
who had just caught my eye. Derek O'Bannion, the younger brother of the Irish mobster
I'd killed after I stole the Spear of Destiny from him, and current right-hand man to the
Lord Master, was crossing the dance floor beneath my feet. Accompanying him was
Fiona, the woman who used to run Barrons Books and Baubles, until she'd tried to kill
me; then Barrons had fired her.

   Now I just needed the LM himself and a few Unseelie Princes to have all my enemies
in the same place.

  "Special rules for you, Mac. You don't get to kill anything in my club, Fae or human.
Your fight is outside these walls. And if Barrons' belief in you is unfounded, there
won't be anyplace you can hide. Every last one of us will come after you."

    I didn't dignify his threat with a response.

   He knocked on the glass and made a gesture with his left hand. Three of the men
disappeared. Dani blinked out. Then suddenly there she was again, and one of his men
had her sword pointed at her throat.

  "If you ever come into my club carrying again, we'll take your weapons and never
give them back. Clear?"

    "As the floor beneath my feet."
 

I   felt like the Queen of Standoffs, hostility and tension everywhere I turned. Always
venturing, never gaining.

  Last night I'd realized I wasn't the only one with trust issues. None of the players on
Dublin's board trusted anyone else. I'd made the mistake of assuming--since Barrons
had chosen Ryodan to be my backup support--that when I went to see him he would be,
well, supportive.

  Not only wasn't he, he'd impugned my motives at the deepest level, questioning my
fundamental character. He'd made it out like the Book might be after me, drawn by
something kindred. I was about as far from evil as the North Pole was from the South.
"Throwing stones, my ass," I muttered. There he'd stood in his glass house, letting
Unseelie prey on humans, and he accused me of having moral issues.

  I was in a horrible mood. Dani and I had pretty much slunk back to "our" house after
getting tossed out of Chester's by four of Ryodan's "men."

  Dani's eyes had been feverishly bright and she'd been spitting fury, but, beneath the
pale-faced bravado, I'd glimpsed fear. I understood. Just when I thought I'd finally
become a halfway decent power on the board, traded my pawn in for a rook or a knight,
some king or queen came along to remind me how ineffectual I was.

    I was getting damned sick of it.

  I'd lie awake on the couch--sleeping in a stranger's bed had seemed weird--stewing,
until nearly dawn. Then I slept like the dead for a few hours and woke to feel the wind
ruffling my hair as Dani paced: zing-zing, zing-zing.

   I swung my legs over the edge of the couch and sat up, eyeing the blur. Although
being at the abbey had been bad for Dani in many ways, Rowena and the girls had kept
the gifted teen occupied constantly. She had too much energy, intelligence, and angst to
leave to her own devices for long.

  When I asked her to go spy at the abbey, to find out when Rowena planned to send
the girls in to scout Dublin, she looked relieved at the prospect of something to do.