Fever 4 - DreamFever (29 page)

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

  Dani shrugged. "She left."

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

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

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

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

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

  They all made it, I was proud to see.

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

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

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

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

  Dani snickered.

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

  "Dude. Happens to me all the time."

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

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

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

  "Try blood," Dani suggested.

  I looked at her. "Why?"

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

  "What do I do with it?"

  "Dunno. Drip some on the wards."

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

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

  Blood welled.

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

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

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

  "What'cha doin', Mac?"

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

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

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

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

  "Come on, Dani." We weren't through the storm yet. I could feel things up ahead.

  Worse things.

  There was no reply.

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

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

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

  "Who are you?" I demanded.

  Leave now or suffer our wrath.

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

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

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

  Leave now or suffer our wrath.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  He actually hissed at me like an animal.

  And vanished.

  I gaped.

  I looked back at the woman.

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

   There was no way forward that I could see at the moment. I didn't have any Unseelie
flesh on me to try eating, to see if it would make me immune enough to the pain to

continue on. Then again, after what I'd just seen happen to V'lane, I wasn't sure if
having temporary Fae running through my veins would help or hinder.

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

  Still, forcing my way through it hurt like hell.
 

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

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

  Ah, the simple life.

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

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

  "I forget nothing, Ms. Lane. I omit."

  "And evade."

  "Lie, cheat, and steal," he agreed.

  "If the shoe fits."

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

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

  He had more tattoos now than he'd had a few days ago. When I'd last seen him
wearing nothing but a sheen of sweat, his arms were unmarked. They were now sleeved

in intricate crimson and black designs, from bicep to hand. A silver cuff gleamed on his
wrist. There were silver chains on his boots.

    "Slumming, huh?" I said.

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

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

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

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

  "I wouldn't so blithely offer up my eyeteeth. You never know when you might need
them. For a woman who was gang-raped recently, you certainly seem blas�."

    "Oh, please, Barrons, how much more can I lose?"

    "Never wonder that."

    "Why did you teach him? Do you realize that inadvertently, perhaps even vertently--
"

    "Not a word, Ms. Lane."

    "--you might have helped him kill my sister?"

    "You're stretching."

    "Am I? What else did you teach him?"

    "A few minor Druid arts."

    "In exchange for what?"

    "What did Darroc say? Did he promise you your sister back again?"

    "Of course."

    "And did you tell your rapist you'd think about it?"

    "He said he was coming back for me in three days. And that I'd better be willing."

  "But you," Barrons said softly, stepping closer, "ah, my dear Ms. Lane, you think you
have nothing more to lose. When do these three days expire?"

  "That's what really pisses me off. I don't know. He was annoyingly vague."

  Barrons looked at me, then a faint smile curved his lips, and for a moment I thought
he might laugh. "The nerve. Threatening you and not being precise about it."

  "My sentiments exactly."

  The faint smile was gone. His face was cold. "You will not leave my side again."

  I sighed. "I was pretty sure you'd say that."

  "Do you want him to take you again?"

  "No."

   "Then you won't be stupid. You won't go dashing off into danger at precisely the
most inopportune moment for some seemingly noble cause, only to get abducted by the
villain, through no fault of your own, because you had to do the honorable thing; after
all, aren't some things worth dying for?" he said dryly.

  I cocked my head. "I didn't know you read romances."

  "I know humans."

  "Ha. You finally admit you aren't one."

  "I admit nothing. You want truths from me? See me when you look at me."

  "Why did you smash the birthday cake I got you into the ceiling?"

   "You were trying to celebrate the day I was born. Come, Ms. Lane. I have something
to show you."

   He turned and moved into the rear of the store without looking back to see if I was
following.

  I followed. Major OOPs, dead ahead.

"Who'd you have to kill to get the third one?" I stared. Three of the stones necessary to
"reveal the true nature" of the Sinsar Dubh glowed an eerie bluish-black on the desk in
his study.

  He looked at me. Do you really want to know? his dark gaze mocked.

   "Scratch that question," I said hurriedly. "V'lane has the fourth, right?" On that note,
I wondered where V'lane had gone and why. What had happened to him in that warded
corridor? Why had he hissed at me, and what had caused him pain? I'd expected him to
sift in shortly after it had happened and either explain or be seriously ticked off at me.

  I believe so.

  "But we don't know where."

  Not at the moment.

   "Quit talking without talking. You have a mouth; use it." I resented the implied
intimacy of our wordless dialogues.

  "I was using my mouth a few days ago. So were you."

  "Quit reminding me," I growled.

  "I thought we were past unnecessary pretenses. I stand corrected."

   I moved toward the desk, both drawn and repelled by the power the rune-covered
stones were throwing off. I recognized the one I'd stolen from Malluc�'s lair. It was the
smallest of the three. The second was twice its size, the third even larger. They had
sharply hewn edges, as if they'd been chiseled with great force from some substance
with vastly different chemical composites and universal laws than anything on our
world. Arranged in close proximity to one another, each of the three emitted a delicate
crystalline chiming sound of different duration and pitch. The sound was hauntingly
beautiful. And intensely disturbing. Like wind chimes from hell.

  "You said that if all four were brought together, they would sing a Song of Making.
The Song? Or a lesser one? Are there lesser songs?"