Bloodfever

While I’d been gone, Dublin had suffered an unprecedented hike in crime, and the media was crucifying the Garda over it. (On a personal note, I hoped that meant Inspector Jayne would be too busy with other cases to continue harassing me.) The incidence of unsolved muggings and rapes was up by sixty-four percent, and homicides by nearly one hundred and forty-two percent year-to-date—but that was only half the story the papers were telling: The brutality of the crimes had intensified as well.

I read paper after paper, digested one alarming news story after the next. These were no straightforward murders. They were vicious, sadistic killings, as if the darkest, most disturbed part of people was boiling to the surface and spilling over. Every few days, the headlines announced some new, shockingly more violent multiple-homicide-cum-suicide.

Was it possible that Unseelie walking among humans—even unseen—was changing people? Unlocking their ids? Unleashing the most depraved in us all?

What else had happened while I’d been gone? I glanced uneasily to my right, as if I could somehow see through the wall to know if the cancerous Dark Zone had metastasized in my absence. If I went searching through maps, would I find more parts of the city missing?

“This is awful,” I told Barrons, later that night, as we got into the only nondescript vehicle he owned, the dark sedan we’d used the night we’d robbed Rocky O’Bannion. “Have you seen the news lately?”

He nodded.

“And?”

“A great deal happened while you were gone, Ms. Lane. Perhaps it will make you think twice about spending time with V’lane.”

I ignored the jibe. “I called my dad today. He acted like we’d just talked a few days ago.”

“I sent him a few e-mails from your laptop. He called once. I covered for you.”

“You hacked into my laptop? That’s personal!” I was outraged. I was also glad he’d kept my dad from worrying in my absence, and curious how he’d gotten past my security measures. “How?”

He gave me a dry look. “Your general password, Ms. Lane, was ‘Alina.’ Your e-mail password was ‘rainbow.’”

I huffed into the passenger seat. It was stiff and cold. There were no seat heaters. I preferred the Viper, or the Porsche or the Lamborghini or pretty much anything else, but it seemed anonymity was the name of the game tonight. “Where are we going, Barrons?” I asked irritably. For a change, he hadn’t specified my clothing, and left to my own devices I’d chosen jeans, a sweater, and boots, with a jacket.

“An old abbey, Ms. Lane. A simple drive-by. No need to walk it. It won’t take long, but it’s a few hours’ drive from the city.”

“What do you think might be there? Are we looking for something specific?”

“Just looking.”

“Was the abbey built on an ancient sidhe-seer site like the graveyard?” Barrons did nothing without good reason. Something about the abbey made him think there might be an OOP there. I wanted to know what it was.

He shrugged.

“Well, why aren’t we going to walk it?”

“It’s occupied, Ms. Lane. I doubt they would welcome us.”

“Monks?” I knew monasteries often had strict rules about permitting women on the grounds. “Or nuns?” They’d take one look at Barrons and decide the devil himself had come knocking. He not only looked dangerous, he emanated something that made even me feel like crossing myself sometimes, and I’m not religious. I see God in a sunrise, not in repetitious ritual. I went to a Catholic church once—sit, stand, kneel, kneel, stand, sit—and got so stressed out trying to anticipate how next to position myself that I’d missed most of what was being said.

He grunted noncommittally in that way that meant he was done answering my questions, so I might as well save my breath. I wondered what he thought we were going to accomplish with a mere drive-by at this mysterious abbey, considering how close I had to be to sense an OOP. That thought raised another very belated one—and I smacked myself in the forehead. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten until now. “Who came through the basement door that night in Wales, Barrons?” He hadn’t mentioned a thing about it.

From the immediate tension in his body I knew the memory was not a pleasant one. “More bloody thieves.”

“Are you kidding me? You mean besides us and whoever got the amulet? There were three of us after it that night?”

“Bloody damned convention.”

“Well, who were they? Someone else from the auction?”

“I have no bloody idea, Ms. Lane. Never seen them before. Never heard of them. As far as I knew, there weren’t any bloody Scots in the game. It’s as if they dropped from the bloody damned sky.” He paused then added darkly, “And they knew too bloody much for my liking.”

All those “bloodys” was a veritable cornucopia of emotion for Barrons. Whoever the thieves had been, whatever had transpired after V’lane had sifted me off to Faery, it had disturbed him profoundly. “Are you sure they aren’t the ones who stole it?”

“If they’d been responsible for the killings, it wouldn’t have been a massacre.”

“What do you mean?”

“Although one of the men was versed in the black arts, both were Druid-trained. Unless blood is required for a specific purpose, a Druid kills cleanly. Whoever, whatever killed the guards and staff that night did it with either the detached sadism of a pure sociopath, or immense rage.”

I stuck to the subject of the thieves to avoid the memory of those mutilated bodies. “There are Druids around today? I thought they died out a long time ago.”

“That’s what the world thinks about sidhe-seers, too,” he said dryly. “You need to lose your preconceptions.”

“How do you know one of them was into black magic?”

He shot me a sideways glance and I knew he was about to stop answering my questions. I was surprised he’d answered this many. “He was heavily tattooed. Black magic calls a price, Ms. Lane, that can be…diminished by working protection runes into the skin.”

I thought about that a moment and followed it to its logical conclusion. “Don’t you eventually run out of skin?”

“Precisely. Some payments can only be deferred, not denied. I warrant most tell themselves they’ll only do ‘one more small spell.’ It’s a drug, like any other.”