“Thank you,” I whispered.
My words seemed to enrage it. It lunged for me, grabbed me by the collar of my coat, raised me in the air, and shook me like a rag doll. My teeth clacked together and my bones rattled.
Perhaps the mark wasn’t protecting me after all.
I wasn’t dying here tonight. The itinerary of my mission might have changed, but my goal had not. As I dangled, toes skimming the floor, I let my gaze go unfocused, sought my lake, and summoned my crimson runes. They’d kept the Unseelie Princes at a standoff, and the Fae princes were far more deadly and powerful than this beast.
Other things floated on the surface of my lake, but I ignored them. There would be plenty of time—more time than I wanted, I was sure—in my future to explore all that was concealed beneath those dark, still waters. I cupped my hands, scooped up what I’d come for, and snapped out of it, fast.
The beast was still shaking me. Staring into its narrowed eyes, I realized I might need to revise my earlier assessment that it wasn’t as insane as Barrons had been.
I raised my fists, dripping blood. The ebon-skinned beast shook its horned head and roared.
“Put me down,” I commanded.
It moved so fast that it had my entire hand in its mouth before I could even gasp. The word “down” hadn’t even left my lips when my hand was gone and sharp black fangs were locked around my wrist.
But it didn’t rip my hand off, as I expected. It sucked. Its tongue was wet and warm on my fingers, working delicately between them.
As suddenly as it had swallowed my hand, it dropped it. My fist was empty.
I stared blankly at it. Runes that the most deadly of the Fae feared, this thing ate? Like a succulent appetizer? It licked its lips. Was I the main course? In a blur of motion, my other fist disappeared.
Wet pressure on my skin, the silky precision of a tongue, a scrape of fangs against my wrist and that fist, too, was empty.
It dropped me. I landed unevenly on my feet, bumped into the wreck of the chesterfield, and steadied myself.
Still licking its lips, it began to back away.
When it stopped in a milky pool of moonlight, my eyes narrowed. Something was … wrong. It didn’t look right. In fact, it looked … pained.
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I had a terrible thought. What if it was a simpleminded beast and I’d just fed it something deadly and it hadn’t known better than to eat anything it saw that was bloody—like a dog that couldn’t walk away from poisoned hamburger?
I didn’t want to kill another of these creatures! Like Barrons, it had saved me!
I stared at it in horror, hoping it would survive whatever I’d done to it. I’d just wanted to get away from it, to find someplace to regroup and summon my strength to forge on. I had a finite number of weapons at my disposal. I had to make good use of them.
It staggered.
Damn it! When would I learn?
It stumbled and dropped heavily to its haunches with a deep, shuddering groan. Muscles began to twitch beneath its skin. It flung its head back and bayed.
I clamped my hands to my ears but, even muffled, it was deafening. I heard answering cries in the distance, joining in mournful concert.
I hoped they weren’t loping straight for the bookstore to join their dying brother and tear me to pieces. I doubted I could trick them all into eating poison runes.
The beast was on all fours now, tossing its massive head from side to side, clearly in its death throes—jaws wide, lips peeled back, fangs bared.
It bayed and bayed, a cry of such desolation and despair that it drove a spike through my heart.
“I didn’t mean to kill you!” I cried.
Crouching on the floor, it began to change.
Oh, yes, I’d killed it. This was exactly what had happened when I’d killed Barrons.
Apparently dying forced them to transform.
I was transfixed, unable to look away. I would own this sin like I owned all my others. I would wait until he changed and would commit his face to memory so, in the new world I created with the Sinsar Dubh, I could do something special for him.
Perhaps I could save him from becoming what he was. What man breathed inside this beast’s skin? One of the other eight Barrons had brought to the abbey the day he’d broken me out? Would I recognize him from Chester’s?
Its horns melted and began to run down the sides of its face. Its head became grossly misshapen, expanded and contracted, pulsed and shrank before expanding again—as if too much mass was being compacted into too small a form and the beast was resisting. Massive shoulders collapsed inward, straightened, then collapsed again. It gouged deep splinters of wood from the floor as it bowed upon itself, shuddering.
Talons splayed on the floor, became fingers. Haunches lifted, slammed down, and became legs. But they weren’t right. The limbs were contorted, the bones didn’t bend where they were supposed to—rubbery in some places, knobbed in others.
Still it bayed, but the sound was changing. I removed my hands from my ears. The humanity in its howl chilled my blood.
Its misshapen head whipped from side to side. I caught a glimpse through matted hair of wild eyes glittering with moonlight, of black fangs and spittle as it snarled. Then the tangled locks abruptly melted, the sleek black fur began to lighten. It dropped to the floor, spasming.
Suddenly it shot up on all fours, head down. Bones crunched and cracked, settling into a new shape. Shoulders formed—strong, smooth, bunched with muscle. Hands braced wide. One leg stretched back, the other bent as it tensed in a low lunge.
A naked man crouched in the moonlight.
I held my breath, waiting for him to lift his head. Who had I killed with my careless idiocy?
For a moment there was only the sound of his harsh breathing, and mine.
Then he cleared his throat. At least I think he did. It sounded more like a rattlesnake shaking its tail somewhere deep in the back of his mouth. After another moment, he laughed, but it wasn’t really a laugh. It was the sound the devil might make the day he came to call your contract due.
When he raised his head, raked the hair from his face, and sneered at me with absolute contempt, I melted silently, bonelessly, to the floor.
“Ah, but my dear, dear Ms. Lane, that’s precisely the point. You did,” Jericho Barrons said.
Why do you hurt me?
I LOVE YOU.
You’re incapable of love.
NOTHING EXCEEDS MY ABILITIES. I AM ALL.
You’re a book. Pages with binding. You weren’t born. You don’t live. You’re no more than the dumping ground for everything that was wrong with a selfish king.
I AM EVERYTHING THAT WAS RIGHT WITH A WEAK KING. HE FEARED POWER. I KNOW NO FEAR.
What do you want from me?
OPEN YOUR EYES. SEE ME. SEE YOURSELF.
My eyes are open. I’m good. You’re evil.
—CONVERSATIONS WITH THE SINSAR DUBH
15
I never told anyone, but when I first arrived in Dublin, I had a secret fantasy that kept me from buckling during the worst times.
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I’d pretend that we’d all been fooled, that the body sent home to Ashford wasn’t really Alina’s but some other blond coed that looked amazingly like her. I staunchly refused to acknowledge the dental records Daddy had insisted on comparing, a perfect match.
As I’d walked the streets of Temple Bar, hunting her killer, I’d pretended that any minute I was going to turn a corner and there she’d be.
She’d look at me, startled and thrilled, and say, Junior, what’s up? Are Mom and Dad okay? What are you doing here? And we’d hug each other and laugh, and I’d know that it had all been a nightmare but it was over. We’d have a beer, go shopping, find a beach somewhere on Ireland’s rocky coast.
I wasn’t prepared for death. N
obody is. You lose someone you love more than you love yourself, and you get a crash course in mortality. You lie awake night after night, wondering if you really believe in heaven and hell and finding all kinds of reasons to cling to faith, because you can’t bear to believe they aren’t out there somewhere, a few whispered words of a prayer away.
Deep down, I knew it was just a fantasy. But I needed it. It helped for a while.
I didn’t permit myself a fantasy with Barrons. I let rage take me because, as Ryodan astutely observed, it’s gasoline and makes great fuel. My fury was plutonium. In time, I would have mutated from radiation poisoning.
The worst part about losing someone you love—besides the agony of never getting to see them again—are the things you never said. The unsaid stalks you, mocks you for thinking you had all the time in the world. None of us do.
Here and now, face-to-face with Barrons, my tongue wouldn’t move. I couldn’t form a single word. The unsaid was ash in my mouth, too dry to swallow, choking me.
But worse than that was the realization that I was being played, again. No matter how real this moment seemed, I knew it was nothing but more illusion.
The Sinsar Dubh still had me.
I’d never really left the street where it had killed Darroc.
I was still standing, or probably lying in a heap, in front of K’Vruck, being distracted with fantasy while the Book was doing whatever it liked to do to me.
This was no different than the night Barrons and I tried to corner it with the stones and it had made me believe I was crouched on the pavement reading it, when all the while it had been crouching at my shoulder, reading me.
I should fight it. I should dive deep into my lake and do what I did best—blunder ahead in a generally forward direction, no matter how bad things got. But as I stared at the perfect replica of him, I couldn’t dredge up enough energy to drive the mirage away. Not yet.
There were worse ways to be tortured than with a vision of Jericho Barrons naked.
I would seek my sidhe-seer center and shatter it in a minute. Or ten. I leaned back against the fireplace with a faint smile, thinking: Bring it on.
The Barrons illusion rose from his half lunge and stood in a ripple of muscle.
God, he was beautiful. I looked up and down. The Book had done an amazingly accurate job, right down to his more generous attributes.
But it had gotten his tattoos wrong. I knew every inch of that body. The last time I saw Jericho Barrons naked, he’d been covered with red and black protection tattoos, and later his arms had been sheathed in them from biceps to wrist. Now the only tattoos he had were on his abdomen.
“You screwed up,” I told the Book. “But nice try. ”
The fake Barrons tensed, knees bending slightly, weight shifting forward, and for a moment I thought he was going to launch himself at me and attack.
“I screwed up?” the Barrons figment snarled. He began to stalk toward me. It was difficult to look at his face when there was so much bouncing around at eye level.
“Which word didn’t you understand?” I said sweetly.
“Stop staring at my dick,” he growled.
Oh, yes, it was definitely an illusion. “Barrons loved me staring at his dick,” I informed it. “He would have been happy if I’d stared at his dick all day long, composing odes to its perfection. ”
In one fluid motion, he had me by my collar and was yanking me to my feet. “That was before you killed me, you fucking imbecile!”
I was unfazed. Standing toe-to-toe with him was a drug. I needed it. I craved it. I couldn’t end this charade for anything. “See, you admit you’re dead,” I parried smoothly. “And I’m not an imbecile. An imbecile would be fooled by you. ”
“I am not dead. ” He slammed me back against the wall, pinning me with his body.
I was so delighted at being touched by Barrons-esque hands, so thrilled to be staring into the illusion of his dark eyes, that I hardly even felt my head smack into the wall. This was far more realistic than my brief moments with the memory of him in the black wing of the White Mansion. “Are, too. ”
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“Am not. ”
His mouth was so close. Who cared if it wasn’t really him? It had his lips. His parts. Was one fake kiss too much to ask? I wet my lips. “Prove it. ”
“You expect me to prove I’m not dead?” he said disbelievingly.
“I don’t think it’s so much to ask. After all, I did stab you. ”
He braced his palms against the wall on either side of my head. “A wiser woman would stop reminding me of that. ”
I inhaled his scent, spicy, exotic, a cherished memory that made me feel alive. The electric current that always charged the air between us sizzled on my skin. He was naked and I was up against a wall, and even though I knew I was being played by the Book, I could barely focus on his words. It felt so real. Except for those missing tattoos. The Book knew how big his dick was but couldn’t get the tattoos right. A small oversight.
“I’m impressed,” I murmured. “I really am. ”
“I don’t give a bloody fucking hell if you’re impressed, Ms. Lane. I care about one thing and one thing only. Do you know where the Sinsar Dubh is? Did you find it for that bloody fucking half-breed bastard?”
“Oh, that’s just rich. ” I snorted with laughter. The Sinsar Dubh had created an illusion of a person, and that extension of the Sinsar Dubh was asking me where the Sinsar Dubh was. “Infinite-regress much?”
“Answer me or I’m going to rip your head off. ”
Barrons would never do that. The Sinsar Dubh had just made another mistake. Barrons had vowed to keep me alive, and he’d stayed true to that vow until the very end. He’d died to save me. He would never hurt me and certainly wouldn’t kill me. “You don’t know a thing about him,” I sneered.
“I know everything about him. ” He cursed. “About me. ”
“Do not. ”
“Do, too. ”
“Bull!”
“Not!”
“Too,” I spat.
“Not!” he fired back, then exhaled explosively. “Bloody hell. Ms. Lane, you drive me bloody fucking crazy. ”
“Right back at you, Barrons. And you can lose all the ‘bloodys’ and ‘fuckings’ anytime now. You’re overdoing it. The real Barrons never cursed that much. ”
“I bloody fucking know exactly how many bloody fuckings Barrons would use. You don’t know him as well as you think you do. ”
“Stop pretending to be him!” I shoved at his chest. “You’re not and you never will be!”
“Besides, that was before you killed me and decided to replace me with Darroc in less than a month! Grieve much, Ms. Lane?”
Oh, how dare he? Grief was all I was. Grief and revenge, walking. “For the record, you’ve been dead for three days. And I am so not doing this. Get out of here. Go. Away. ” I knocked his hands away from my head and stormed past him. “I’m not defending my reasons for doing what I did to you, when you aren’t even really here. That’s too psychotic, even for me. ”
He grabbed me and swung me back around. “You’d better believe I’m here, Ms. Lane, and you’d better believe I’ll kill you. You could not have proved your loyalties—or lack thereof—any more completely. You jumped on me the second Ryodan said I was a threat and took me out without an instant’s hesitation—”
“I hesitated! I hated killing my guardian beast! Ryodan told me I had to! I didn’t know it was you!” Great. Now I was arguing with the Sinsar Dubh’s fake Barrons about killing him. Why would it want to do this to me? What could the Book possibly gain from making me live this fight?
“You should have known!” he exploded.
I knew I should end it, stop the illusion now, but I couldn’t.
Being around Barrons has always made me fire on all pistons, and it didn’t seem to matter a bit that I knew this Barrons
was a mirage. Some people bring out the worst in you, others bring out the best, and then there are those remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything.
They make you feel so alive that you’d follow them straight into hell, just to keep getting your fix.
“How should I have known? Because you’ve always been so honest with me? Because sharing information is what Jericho Barrons does best, where he really shines? No, because you’d bothered to warn me what might happen if I pressed IYD. Wait, I have it: I should have known because you’d confided in me—in the same trusting and open way we’ve shared so many confidences—that sometimes you turn into a nine-foot-tall, horned, insane monster!”
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“I am not insane. I was sane enough to piss circles around you. I killed food for you. I picked up your things. Who else do you know that would have done that? V’lane doesn’t have dick enough to piss with. Your little MacKeltar doesn’t have the balls to own his actions. He certainly isn’t capable of doing what it takes to own a woman!”
“Own? You think women can be owned?”
He gave me a look that said, Oh, honey, of course they can. Have you forgotten so quickly?
“I was Pri-ya!”
“And I liked you much better then!” His eyes narrowed as if he’d only finally processed something I’d said earlier. “I’ve been dead for you for only three bloody days? And you already had Darroc up against my wall out back two nights ago? You waited one fucking day to line up my replacement? I spent weeks worrying about whether he would scrape my brand off your skull and I wouldn’t be able to track you in the Silvers. The entire time I was trying to get back to save your ass from him, you were giving him a piece of it!”
“I didn’t give Darroc a piece of anything!” Get back from what, where? Being dead?
“A woman doesn’t rub herself up against a man like that unless she’s fucking him. ”
“You don’t know the first thing about what I was and wasn’t doing. Ever heard of going undercover? Sleeping with the enemy?”
“ ‘I think you should be king, Darroc,’ ” he mocked in falsetto, “ ‘and if you want me, I would be honored to be your queen. ’ ”
I gaped.
“Isn’t that what you said?”
“What were you doing—spying on me? And if you’re Barrons, you know better than to believe words. ”
“Because your actions speak so well of you, do they? Where did you sleep last night, Ms. Lane? It wasn’t here. My bookstore was wide open. Your bedroom was upstairs waiting. So was your fucking honor. ”