Fever 4 - DreamFever (41 page)

  "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 D� 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.
 

W      hen 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.