Had one of my deepest fears manifested while I’d slept, and the power had gone out? As soon as I had that thought, I realized that not only was the clock still blinking the time, 4:01 A. M. , cheery and orange as ever, but, duh, my overhead was on, same as it was every night when I went to sleep.
Juggling two flashlights into one hand, I fumbled the phone from the receiver. I tried to think of someone to call but drew a complete blank. I didn’t have any friends in Dublin, and although Barrons seems to keep a residence in the store, he’s rarely around and I have no idea how to reach him. There was no way I was calling the police.
I was on my own. I replaced the receiver and listened hard. The silence in the store was deafening, fraught with terrible possibilities—monsters lurking with homicidal glee, right outside my bedroom door.
I wriggled into my jeans, swapped a flashlight for my spear, stuffed three more flashlights in the back of my waistband, and crept to the door.
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I could feel that there was something Fae beyond it, but that was all I knew. Not what, how many, or even how close, just a deep malaise in my stomach accompanied by a foul itchiness in my brain that made me feel like a cat with its back up, claws out, fur spiked. Barrons assures me sidhe-seer senses improve with experience. Mine had better start improving fast or I won’t live to see next week. I stared at the door. I must have stood there for five minutes trying to talk myself into opening it. The unknown is a vast paralyzing limbo. I’d like to tell you that the monster under the bed is rarely as bad as your fear of it, but in my experience it’s almost always worse.
I slid the dead bolt, parted door from jamb in the narrowest of slivers, and knifed the sharp white beam of my flashlight through it.
A dozen Shades shrank back, retreating with oily swiftness to the edge of the light and not one inch further. Adrenaline kicked me in the teeth. I slammed the door shut and drove the dead bolt home.
There were Shades inside Barrons Books and Baubles!
How in the world had that happened? I’d checked the lights before I’d gone to bed—they’d all been on!
I pressed myself against the door, shaking, wondering if I’d really woken up or if I was still dreaming. I’ve had some bad dreams lately and this was certainly the stuff of nightmares. I might be a sidhe-seer and a mythic Null, I might have one of the Fae’s deadliest weapons in my possession, but even I’m defenseless against the lowest caste of Unseelie. Ironic, I know.
“Barrons!” I shouted. For reasons my taciturn host refuses to divulge, the Shades leave him alone. That the deadly bottom-feeders of the dark Fae give Jericho Barrons a wide berth perturbs me immensely but I’d promise to never ask him another question about it again, if only he’d cut a swath through them right now and save me.
I shouted his name until my throat hurt, but no knight-errant rushed to my rescue.
Under normal circumstances, if the Shades had been outside the store in the streets, dawn would have driven the amorphous vampires back to wherever it is they hide during the day, but it was so stormy I doubted enough light could filter through the bookstore’s alcoved windows to affect them in here. Even if the dense cloud cover passed and the sun came out, strong sunlight wouldn’t enter the main floor of the bookstore before early afternoon.
I groaned. But Fiona would, long before that. This past week she’d begun working extended hours at the bookstore. Increased customer demand, she’d said. Lots of early morning clients. She’d been arriving at the shop at precisely eight-forty-five A. M. to open the bookstore at nine o’clock sharp.
I had to warn her off, before she walked into a waiting Shade ambush!
And now that I thought about it, I was pretty sure she knew how to reach Barrons, too. I snatched up the phone and rang the operator.
“County?” he inquired.
“All of Dublin,” I said briskly. Surely Fiona lived nearby. If not, I’d try the outlying counties.
“Name?”
“Fiona…uh…Fiona…” With a sound of disgust, I dropped the phone back in the cradle. I was so panicked I hadn’t realized I didn’t know Fiona’s last name until I’d needed it.
Back to square one.
I had two choices: I could stay up here, safe with my flashlights while, in a few hours, the Shades devoured Fiona and any number of innocent, hapless patrons who might subsequently stroll through the door she unlocked, or get my panicked act together and stop that from happening.
But how?
Light was my only weapon against the Shades. Though I suspected Barrons might get positively hostile if I set his store on fire, I had matches, and it would certainly drive them out. However, I didn’t want to be inside the building when it went up in flames, and since I could hardly jump from the fourth floor, and there was no fire escape or convenient stash of bed linens to knot into a rope, I filed that option away in the category “Last Resort. ” Unfortunately I could see only one other resort, and it wasn’t a sunny spot in the Bahamas. I stared dismally at the door.
I was going to have to run the gauntlet.
How had the Shades gotten inside to begin with? Was the power out in part of the store and they’d slithered in through a crack? Could they do that? Or had the lights somehow gotten turned off? If so, I could creep from switch to switch, armed with flashlights, and turn them back on.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with the child’s game Don’t Touch the Alligator, but Alina and I used to play it when Mom was too busy with something else to notice that we were hopping from the Sunday parlor sofa, to her favorite lace-covered pillows, to that awful chair Gram brocaded to match the curtains, and so on. The idea is that the floor is full of alligators and if you step on one of them, you’re dead. You have to get from one room to the next, without ever touching the floor.
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I needed to get from the top floor of the bookstore to the bottom without ever touching the dark, and I wasn’t sure how completely I couldn’t touch it. Barrons says they can only get you in full darkness, but did that mean a Shade could eat me, or part of me, if for one second, a single foot, or something so small as a toe protruded into shadow? The stakes in this game were significantly higher than a carpet-burned knee, or a scolding from Mom if I slipped up. I’d seen the piles of clothing and human rinds the Shades left behind after a meal.
Shivering, I pulled on my boots, zipped a jacket over my pajama top, and tucked two of my six flashlights into the waistband of my jeans, front and back, pointed up. I tucked two more into the snug elastic waistband of my jacket, pointed down to shine on my vulnerable toes. Those were iffy. If I moved too quickly they’d fall out, but I only had so many hands. I carried the other two. I slipped a pack of matches into my pocket and tucked the spear into my boot. I’d have no use for it against this particular enemy, but there might be others. It was possible the Shades were merely the vanguard, and there was worse to come.
I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and opened the door. When the overhead light arced into the hallway, the Shades repeated their oily retreat.
Shades come in all different shapes and sizes. Some are small and thin, others tall and wide. They have no real substance. They’re hard to pick out from the darkness, but once you know what to look for you can spot them, if you’re a sidhe-seer. They’re areas that are darker and denser, and ooze malevolence. They move around a lot, as if they’re hungry and restless. They make no noise. Barrons says they’re barely sentient, but once I shook my fist at one of them and it bristled back at me. That’s sentient enough to worry me. They eat anything that lives: people, animals, birds, right down to the worms in the soil. When they take over a neighborhood, they turn it into a wasteland. I’d christened those barren landscapes Dark Zones.
“I can do this. Piece of cake. ” Embracing the lie, I aimed my flashlights and stepped into the hall.
It was a piece of cake.
Turned out the power wasn’t off; the switches had been thrown. Initially, I worked my way cautiously from wall switch to lamp, but when I realized the Shades were consistently staying beyond the reach of direct light, I gained confidence. Even in a windowless hallway of utter blackness, the flashlights bathed my body in white radiance that protected me. With each switch I threw, more Shades bunched up, until I had fifty or more of them crammed into the darkness I was forcing to retreat, light by light.
By the time I reached the landing of the first-floor stairwell, I was feeling downright cocky about my ability to clear the store of the Unseelie infestation.
I stepped briskly into the back parlor, heading for the light switch on the opposite wall. Three steps into the room, a damp breeze ruffled my hair. I swung my flashlight in that direction. A window was open onto the alley behind Barrons Books and Baubles! The truth was inescapable—interior and exterior lights off, a window propped open? Someone was trying to kill me!
I stomped toward the window and sprawled headlong over an ottoman that shouldn’t have been there. My flashlights went flying in all directions, casting a dizzying strobe light effect as they spun out of control across the floor. Shades erupted like panicked pigeons, flocking through the open window to the sanctuary of night.
Ha. Good riddance. Now I just needed to slam the window on them.
I scrambled up onto my hands and knees and froze right where I was—face-to…er…blackness-where-a-face-wasn’t—with a Shade that hadn’t fled. It wasn’t one of the smaller ones, either. It had contorted itself to occupy the darkness between the flashlights, coiling snakelike over, under, and around the beams. I didn’t want to think about the frighteningly quick reflexes it must have to have managed the trick. It was as high as the ceiling in several places, at least twenty feet long, and pulsated like a dark cancer, pressing at the edges of the light.
I sucked in a breath. I’d seen one do this before—test the light. I’d not stuck around long enough to learn the outcome of its test. I muttered a fervent prayer it had gotten an F. My flashlights were scattered across the floor. Two were shining on me, flanking me, left and right. I was far enough between them that the combined pool of light narrowly bathed my entire body, but if I were to crawl toward either one, the beam would dwindle the closer I got, leaving large parts of me in darkness. It was a risk I couldn’t take with this abnormally aggressive, gigantic Shade crouching over me.
As I huddled there, it snaked inky tendrils of itself forward, one toward my hair haloed weakly in light, the other at my fingers splayed in a pale pool on the floor.
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I yanked my hand back, fumbled the matches from my pocket, and struck one. The pungent smell of sulfur soaked the damp air.
The tendrils retreated.
Though it’s tough to tell with something that has no face, I swear it studied me, seeking my weaknesses. The match was burning down between us. I dropped it to the floor and lit another. There was no way I could strip off my jacket to set it on fire without my arms and part of my torso protruding into the dangerous darkness. Likewise, the ottoman over which I’d fallen was too far behind me to be of use.
But…the priceless Persian rug beneath me was starting to smolder. I exhaled a gentle puff on the glowing embers of the dropped match. It went out.
If Shades snicker, this one did. It expanded and contracted, and I swear I felt its mockery. I really hope I’m wrong. I really hope they aren’t capable of complex thought.
“It would seem you are in need of assistance, sidhe-seer. ” A musical baritone drifted through the window, otherworldly, sensuous, and punctuated by a forbidding growl of thunder.
THREE
S till no knight errant.
It was V’lane. And here I’d been thinking things couldn’t get any worse.
Not a knight, but a Prince. Of the Seelie or Light Court, if anything he says can be believed. And hardly errant, V’lane is a death-by-sex-Fae. They don’t wander in search of adventure and romance, they incite killing ardor.
I glanced down at myself to see if I still had my clothes on. I was relieved to find I did. Fae royalty exude such intense sexuality that they override every survival instinct we have, clouding a woman’s mind, provoking her erotic senses beyond anything she was meant to experience, turning her into an inhumanly aroused animal, begging for sexual release. The first thing a woman does when one shows up is start stripping.
In a romance novelist’s hands, that might come off as hot, campy, even sexy. In reality, it’s icy, terrifying, and most often ends in death. If the woman is left alive, she’s Pri-ya, barely able to function, a Fae sex-addict.
I glanced back at the Shade and hastily lit another match. If anything, it was watching me even more intently now.
“So, assist me already,” I snapped.
“Does that mean you accept my gift?”
During our first encounter several weeks ago, V’lane had offered me a mystical relic known as the Cuff of Cruce, a gesture of goodwill, he’d claimed, in exchange for my help finding the Sinsar Dubh for his ruler, Aoibheal, High Queen of the Seelie Court. According to him, the cuff protects the wearer from assorted nasties, including the Shades.
According to my intractable host and mentor, with a Fae, Light or Dark, there’s always a catch, and they don’t believe in full disclosure. In fact, they don’t believe in disclosure at all. Would we disclose our intentions to a horse before we rode it, or a cow before we ate it?
Perhaps the cuff would save me. Perhaps it would enslave me.
Perhaps it would kill me.
During our last encounter, V’lane tried to rape me in the middle of a public place—not that being raped in a private place would have been any better, just that, adding insult to injury, I’d regained control of myself only to discover I was nearly naked in the middle of a crowd of voyeuristic jerks. It was a hurtful, hateful memory. I’d been racking up a lot of them lately.
Mom raised me better, I want that noted for posterity’s sake: Rainey Lane is a fine, upstanding woman.
I told V’lane exuberantly and in vivid detail what I was going to do to him at the earliest opportunity, and exactly where I was going to shove my Fae-killing spear—razor-sharp tip first—when I was done. I sprinkled the expletives with colorful adjectives. I might not be much of a cusser, but a bartender gets an education whether she wants one or not.
I had fourteen matches left. I struck another.
Framed in the window beyond the Shade, V’lane rose, skin of shimmering gold, eyes of liquid amber, inhumanly beautiful against the backdrop of velvety night. I think he was floating in the air. He tossed his hair, a gilded waterfall glinting with metallic sparks, cascading over a male body of such sensual perfection, such hedonistic temptation that I had no doubt Satan had laughed on the day of his creation—and sounded pretty much like V’lane did now. When his laughter subsided he murmured, “And you were such a sweet thing when you got here. ”
“How do you know what I was like when I got here?” I demanded. “How long have you been watching me?”
The Fae prince raised a brow but said nothing.
I raised a brow back. He was Pan, Bacchus, and Lucifer, painted a thousand shades of to-die-for. Literally. “Why don’t you come in?” I asked sweetly. I had a suspicion I wanted to test.
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V’lane’s mouth tightened and it was my turn to laugh.
Barrons was amazing. “You can’t get past the wards, can you? Is that why I’m not naked?” I dropped the match just as it began to burn my fingers and lit another one. “Do the wards somehow diminish your pow—”
I didn’t even get to finish my sentence. A forest fire of debilitating sexual need blasted me—i’mhungrystarvingdyingwithoutyoupleasewon’tyoupleasewon’tyougivemewhatineed—scorching the air in my lungs, flash-frying my brain, and charring my backbone.
I
collapsed to the floor, human ashes.
As suddenly and unexpectedly as the sexual inferno had razed every cell in my body, it was gone, leaving me cold and, for brief moments, in agonizing pain, ravenous for delights that could only be sampled by eating from a banquet table at which humans were never meant to sit. Forbidden fruit. Poisonous fruit. Fruit a woman might sell her soul for. Perhaps even betray mankind.
“Careful, sidhe-seer. I have chosen to spare you. Do not press your luck. ”
I locked my jaw, pushed myself up, and lit another match, studying my enemies in the flickering light. Both would devour me. Just in different ways. If forced to choose, I’d take death-by-Shade.
“Why have you chosen to spare me?”
“I want us to be…what is your word? Friends. ”
“Psychotic rapists don’t have friends. ”
“I was unaware you were a psychotic rapist or I would not have offered. ”
“Ha. ” I’d set myself up for that one.
He smiled, and I recognized the urge I suddenly felt to believe everything was wonderful with my world for the illusion it was. Royal Fae pack a psychic punch. Barrons says their entire being is designed to seduce on every level. Glamour piled upon illusion heaped upon deceit. You can’t believe a word they say.
“I am unaccustomed to interacting with humans, and have been known to underestimate my impact upon them. I did not understand how deeply the Sidhba-jai would disturb you. I wish to start again,” he said.
I dropped my match and lit another. “Start by getting rid of the Shade. ”
“With the cuff, you would be able to saunter among them freely, without fear. You would never be so vulnerable again. Why would you refuse such power?”