Fever 4 - DreamFever (36 page)

   I heated a cup of water in the microwave behind the counter and added three heaping
teaspoons of instant coffee. I opened the utensil drawer. "Damn." I was out of sugar,
and there was no cream in the fridge. It's the simple pleasures that have come to mean
the most to me.

  Sighing, I leaned back against the counter and began sipping bitter coffee.

  "Tell that arrogant fuck I said so, that's why," said Barrons. "I need all of you. I don't
care what Lor thinks about it."

  It seemed he was rallying the troops. I wondered if I would meet the others like
Barrons, besides Ryodan. He was determined to have it out with Darroc, get it over with
and out of his way. I was perfectly willing to go along with that plan, so long as I was
the one who got to bury my spear in the gut of the bastard who'd begun this whole
mess, either killed my sister or gotten her killed, and had me raped. I needed one of the
dangers in my life gone. The danger I was living with was keeping my hands full
enough.

   I hoped it happened today. I hoped the LM marched on the bookstore and filled the
streets with his Unseelie. I hoped Barrons would line up his ... whatever they were. I
would call on Jayne and his men and the sidhe-seers. We would have a battle to end all
battles and we would walk away the victors, I had no doubt about it. It wasn't only the
dream that had iced me. My resolve was a solid block of it. I was restless as a caged
animal. I was sick of worrying about things that might happen. I wanted them to happen
already.

  "No, it's not more important than this. Nothing is, and you know that," Barrons
growled. "Who the fuck does he think is in charge?" A pause. "Then he can get the fuck
out of my city."

  My city. I pondered that phrase, wondered why Barrons felt that way. He never said
"our world." He always said "your world." But he called Dublin his city. Merely
because he'd been in it so long? Or had Barrons, like me, been beguiled by her tawdry
grace, fallen for her charm and colorful dualities?

  I looked around "my" bookstore. That was what I called it. Did we call the things of
our heart our own, whether they were or not? And if Dublin was his city, did that mean
he had a heart, contrary to Fiona's beliefs?

  "Nah," I scoffed, and sipped my coffee.

  I have no idea how long it flapped on the door before I noticed it.

  I would later wonder if someone had walked by and stuck it there while I sipped
ignorantly away, eavesdropping on Barrons. Maybe peered in through the tinted glass
and looked at me. Smirked or smothered a villainous laugh. I would wonder if it had
been Fiona who'd put it there. Would hate her, knowing she would have stood there
watching me, relishing my pain.

  "Darroc will come," Barrons was saying, as I squinted at the door. "I told Fiona that I
have three of the stones, and I know where the fourth is."

   He had? When? Had he gone to see her last night while I'd slept? The idea made me
feel ... betrayed.

   I skirted the counter and walked slowly toward the front of the store, where the thing
flapped in a gentle breeze on the diamond-paned glass of the door. It was the motion
that had caught my attention. Who knew how long it might have taken me to find it
otherwise.

  Barrons said, "It's possible she might make all of it unnecessary. But it's still too
soon to tell."

 A dozen feet from the door, I recognized it. I looked away, as if, like an ostrich with
my head in the sand, I would be safe.

  But I wasn't safe.

  "It can't be," I said.

   I looked back, marched to the door, opened it, and gently removed the tape holding it
to the glass.

  It was.

  I stared at it for a long moment, then closed my eyes.

"The LM's not coming," I told Barrons, stepping into his study. As always, my gaze
slid uneasily to the huge mirror that was part of the vast network of Unseelie Silvers:
doorway into a hellish no-man's-land of ice and monsters. But my fascination/fear of it
held new poignancy today, and new relevance.

  "You can't know that," Barrons dismissed.

   Seated behind the massive desk, he appeared sculpted from material of the same
tension and density, hard with anger.

  I gave him a smile. It was that or burst into tears, and there was no way that was
happening. "Trouble at home? Boys aren't behaving?" I said sweetly.

  "Get to the point, Ms. Lane."

   I began to hand him what I'd removed from the front door. My hand trembled. I
steeled myself, and when I extended it again, my hand was perfectly steady.

  He glanced at the photo. "It's your sister. So?"

   Indeed it was. She was laughing, on an openmouthed smile, standing at the entrance
to Trinity College.

  "Turn it over," I said tightly.

  He flipped it.

  "Read it."

   "She was happy," he read. "I love you, Mom and Dad. I'll be home as soon as I can.
Mac." He paused before continuing. A muscle jerked in his jaw. "1247 LaRuhe. Fifth
Silver on the right. Bring the stones. If you bring Barrons, they both die." He looked up
at me. "He's got your parents. Fuck."

  That pretty much summed it up.

"This is a terrible plan," Barrons said for the tenth time.

  "You're the one who came up with it," I reminded. "And I agreed. We're not going
back now." I continued stuffing things in my backpack.

   There was no other way. I'd wanted a confrontation and I was going to get it. Just not
the way I'd hoped. "Look, Barrons, you've filled my head with more knowledge about
life than anyone else ever has, except my dad. Between the two of you, if I can't
survive, I should be shot. I should be put out of everyone's misery."

  "Was that a thank-you, Ms. Lane?"

  I thought about it and shrugged. "Yes."

  Behind me, he made a strange noise. "That's it. You're not going."

  "Because I thanked you? What kind of logic is that?"

  "The kind of person that thanks another person never survives. Have you learned
nothing?"

  "He has my parents."

  "If he gets you, he could get the whole world."

  "He's not going to get me. I'm going to do exactly what you told me to do. No
deviations. No independent decisions. I'll go into the house, snap a photo of whatever
destination the Silver shows, and text it to you. Between that and my brand, you'll track
me. You'll bring your ... whatever they are in behind me or get there some other way,
and you'll rescue us." And I would kill the LM. Bury my spear to the hilt in his chest.
Maybe his eyeball. Stand there and watch him begin to rot. I hoped he died slowly.

  "The Silvers are too unpredictable. Something could go wrong even in the brief time
you pass from one to the next."

  "You wondered if I had the balls. Now you know. Besides, he needs me, remember?
He's not going to take any chances."

 "Anytime you use the Silvers, you're taking a chance. Especially if you're carrying
OOPs. Power provokes change in places of unpredictable power."

   "I know. You've told me five times now. I'm to keep my spear hidden and the stones
in the pouch."

  "With the holes in the prison walls, and Cruce's curse ... there's no bloody telling
what could go wrong. No, Ms. Lane, this just won't work."

  "I'm going in, Barrons, with or without your help."

  "I could stop you," he said, so softly that I knew he was not only seriously
considering it but a breath away from chaining me up somewhere.

  I inhaled sharply. "Remember the child dying in your arms?"

  His nostrils flared. The thing rattled in his chest.

  "Don't make me live it, Barrons. Don't choose my grief for me. You have no right."

  "They aren't your biological parents."

  "Do you think the heart only follows blood?"

  A few minutes later I was preparing to walk out the door, turn right, and head into
what had once been the city's biggest Dark Zone.

   I knew that by the time I walked the fourteen blocks to 1247 LaRuhe, I'd be dripping
sweat, but I was taking no chances. In case the Silver was icy, I'd layered my clothing
deep. In case it was dark, I was wearing my MacHalo. In case I had to be there awhile
before Barrons broke us out, and in case my parents needed food, I had my pack on my
back, stuffed with protein bars, water, Unseelie flesh, and a miscellany of other items
Barrons and I had taken turns cramming in. In case the LM insisted on seeing them, I
had the three stones in a black pouch covered with delicately shimmering wards. My
gun was over my shoulder and my spear under it. I had no intention of needing any of
the items I was bringing, but I also had no intention of ever going anywhere without a
fully equipped pack again until the last Fae had been wiped from our world. For the
tenth time in the past two days, I wished I had V'lane's name in my tongue and
wondered again where he was and what had happened to him.

  My cell phone was in my palm, ready to snap a photo and transmit it, so Barrons
could see the LM's destination in the glass. I glanced down at it. There was something
nagging at me and had been ever since he'd told me his plan. There was an
inconsistency lurking at the edge of my awareness. A fact that didn't rest comfortably
with the others.

  "If I understand the Silvers, they all show destinations. And you expect the LM's to
show a destination, too. So why does your Silver show a pathway winding through what
looks like a graveyard haunted by demons? That's not a destination."

  He said nothing.

  "You've linked more than two Silvers together, haven't you?" I frowned. "What if
the LM has done the same thing? What if his doesn't show a destination, either?"

  "He's not adept enough to stack Silvers."

   When I get epiphanies, they come hard and fast. "Oh, God, I get it!" I exclaimed. It
was no wonder he hadn't wanted to explain the Silvers to me! "The mirror in your study
connects to what's beneath your garage! You `stacked' mirrors to form a passageway
filled with demon watchdogs so if anyone found their way into your mirror, they'd
never survive the gauntlet you make them run." Instead of one mirror instantly
connecting to another, he'd arranged a multitude of mirrors to form a long, deadly
corridor. "That's how you get to the three floors beneath the garage. That's why I
couldn't find the entrance. It's been right under my nose in my bookstore all along!"

  "Your bookstore?" He snorted. Then he laughed. "Walk out of this with your parents,
the stones, and Darroc dead, Ms. Lane, and I'll give you the bloody thing."

  I felt suddenly breathless. "Are we talking figurative or literal?"

  "Literal. Lock, stock, and barrel."

  "Deed and all?" My heart hammered. I loved BB&B.

  "To the store. Not my garage or car collection."

  "In other words, you'll always be out back, breathing down my neck," I said dryly.

  "Never doubt it." He gave me a wolf smile.

  "Throw in the Viper?"

  "And the Lamborghini."
 

1247            LaRuhe looked exactly the same as it did the first time I saw it, last
August.

  Six months ago, when I arrived in Dublin, I didn't believe in anything remotely
paranormal, had never seen a Fae in my life, and wouldn't have believed one existed for
anything in the world.

   Then, a mere two weeks later, I'd been standing right where I was now, in the middle
of a Dark Zone, watching as the Lord Master released a flood of Unseelie into our world
through a gate fashioned from a stone dolmen that had been hidden in a warehouse
behind this house.

  How quickly my world had changed. Two lousy weeks!

  The tall, fancy brick house at 1247 LaRuhe, with its ornate limestone fa�ade, was as
out of place in the dilapidated industrial neighborhood as I was in the middle of this
whole mess.

  Delicate wrought iron fenced in a dirt lawn with three skeletal dying trees. The
house's many-mullioned windows were painted black. There was an enormous dirt
crater behind the residence. V'lane had not just "squashed" the LM's dolmen--as I'd
asked on the day he gifted me with the illusion of playing volleyball with Alina at the
beach--he'd blasted it right out of existence, leaving a gaping hole. I regretted not being
more specific and asking him to demolish the house, too. Then I wouldn't be standing
here, about to enter it again and to step into one of those mirrors I'd found so terrifying
the first time I'd seen them. Then again, the LM would merely have sent me to some
other awful place, I was sure.

  I climbed the stairs, pushed open the door, and stepped into the elegant foyer, my
boots rapping smartly on obsidian-and-ivory marble floors. I passed beneath a glittering
chandelier, beyond ornate dual staircases and plush furnishings.

  I knew that upstairs was the Lord Master's bedroom, with its grand high Louis XIV
bed, velvet drapes, sumptuous bathroom, and a fabulous walk-in closet. I knew he wore
the finest clothing, the most expensive shoes. I knew he had a taste for the best of
everything. Including my sister.

  There was no point in delaying the inevitable. Besides, I wanted to get in and get this
over with so I could lay claim to my bookstore. Barrons had flabbergasted me with his
offer. I didn't know what to make of it. Right now he was waiting, back at the
bookstore, for my photo. His ... associates were supposedly closing in behind me. I
entered the long, formal parlor, where a dozen large gilt-edged mirrors hung on the
walls, and walked through the room, past furnishings Sotheby's and Christie's would
have dueled to the death over.

  The first mirror on the right was completely black. I wondered if it was shut. It
looked dead. I peered at it. The dense blackness suddenly swelled and expanded, and for
a moment I was afraid it would explode from its gilt frame, grow like the Blob, and
swallow me up. But at the peak of its crest, it thumped loudly, made a squishing sound,
and deflated. After a moment it swelled again. Squished. Deflated. I shuddered. It was a
giant black heart hanging on the wall, pumping away.