Darkfever

“What do you know about Alina Lane?” the Lord Master said softly, in that melodious voice. It was the voice of something larger than life, an archangel, perhaps—the one that fell.

“She was my sister,” I snarled, whirling around. “And I’m going to kill the bastard that killed her. What do you know about her?”

The crimson cowl shook with laughter. I fisted my hands at my sides to keep from whipping out my spear and lunging for the red-robed figure. Stealth, I told myself. Caution. I doubted I’d get more than one chance.

“I told you she would come, Mallucé,” said the Lord Master. “We will use her to finish what her sister began.” He raised his hands as if to encompass the group and addressed all the Unseelie gathered there. “When everything is in place, I will open the portal and unleash the entire Unseelie prison on this world, as I promised you. Restrain her. She comes with us.”

“Now, that was just stupid, Ms. Lane,” Barrons said, shaking his head, as he dropped onto the floor next to me, his long black coat fluttering. “Did you have to go and tell them who you were? They would have figured it out soon enough.”

I blinked, stupefied.

I guess the Lord Master, Mallucé, and all the rest of them were just as stunned by the unexpected entrance as I was, because we all gaped at him, and then we all looked up. I just wanted to see where in the world he’d come from. I think they were checking to see if there were any others up there. He had to have been on the ceiling girders. They were thirty feet high. I didn’t see a convenient rope dangling anywhere.

When I looked back down, the Unseelie ruler had pushed back his crimson cowl and was looking at Barrons, hard. He didn’t seem to like what he saw.

I gasped, stunned.

I stared in disbelief and confusion at Alina’s boyfriend, the Lord Master. The leader of the Unseelie wasn’t even Fae! Even Barrons looked a little thrown.

The Lord Master barked a command, then he turned in a whirl of red robes. Dozens of Unseelie closed in on us instantly.

Things got kind of crazy then, and I still have a hard time sorting them out. As his minions cut off any chance of pursuit, the prick who’d used and killed my sister and had been planning to do the same to me ordered them to take me alive, or else, and kill the other one.

Then I was surrounded by Unseelie and I couldn’t see Barrons anymore. Somewhere in the distance, I heard chanting, and the runes in the concrete beneath my feet began to glow again.

I closed my mind to everything but battle. I fought.

I fought for my sister, who’d died alone in an alley. I fought for the woman the Gray Man had fed on while I’d eaten french fries, and the one he’d consumed two days ago, while I’d watched in helpless horror. I fought for the people the Many-Mouthed-Thing had killed. I fought for the dehydrated human husks blowing down the forgotten streets between Collins Street and Larkspur Lane. I might have even fought for a few of O’Bannion’s henchmen. And I fought for the twenty-two-year-old young woman who’d arrived in Dublin pretty darned sure of herself, who no longer had any idea where she’d come from or where she was going, and who’d just broken her third Iceberry Pink nail.

The alabaster spearhead seemed to blaze with holy light in my hand as I ducked and twisted, slammed and stabbed. I could feel myself turning into something else and it felt good. At one point I caught sight of Barrons’ startled face, and I knew that if he was looking at me like that, I was truly something to see. I felt like something to see. I felt like a well-built, well-oiled machine with one purpose in life: to kill Fae. Good or bad. Take ’em all.

And I did, one after another. Duck, slam, stab. Whirl, slam, stab. They went down fast and hard. The spear was pure poison to them, and I was getting a weird kind of high off watching them die. I have no idea how long I could have kept it up, if they’d all been Fae, but they weren’t and I screwed up.

I’d forgotten about Mallucé.

When he crept up behind me, I sensed him there just like a Fae—apparently my radar picked up on anything otherworldly within a certain perimeter—and I spun and stabbed him in the gut.

I realized my error instantly, although I had no idea how to correct it. The vampire was a more serious threat to me than any of the Unseelie, even the Shades—at least I knew how to drive those life-suckers back: light. I didn’t have any idea what this life-sucker’s weakness was, or even if he had one. Barrons had talked like killing a vampire was pretty much impossible.

For a moment, I just stood there, my weapon buried in his stomach, hoping it would do something. If it had any effect on him at all, I sure couldn’t tell. I stared stupidly into those feral yellow eyes, glowing in that white, white face. Then my wits returned and I tried to pull the spear out for another stab at him, this time in the chest—maybe Barrons was wrong, I had to try something—but the razor-sharp tip had gotten lodged in a knot of gristle or bone or something and wouldn’t yield.

He closed his hand on my arm. It felt cold and dead. “You little bitch! Where is my stone?” the vampire hissed.

I got it then—why he’d not brought it up before, when he’d first seen me. He was two-timing the Lord Master and couldn’t risk the Rhino-boys knowing.

“Oh God, he doesn’t even know you had it, does he?” I exclaimed. The moment I said it, I realized my mistake. Mallucé had more to lose if the Lord Master discovered he was betraying him, than by owning up to inadvertently killing the sidhe-seer in the heat of battle. I’d just signed my own death warrant.

I yanked frantically on the spearhead. Mallucé bared his fangs as the weapon gave and I stumbled back. Off balance, I lashed out again—but a millisecond too late. The vampire backhanded me across the face and I flew backward through the air, arms and legs folded forward like a rag doll, just as I’d seen his bodyguard do that night at the House of Goth.

I slammed into the side of a stack of pallets that gave about as much as a brick wall. My head snapped back and pain ricocheted through my skull. I heard things in me crack.

“Mac!” I heard Barrons shout.

I slumped down the plastic-shrouded wall, thinking how weird it sounded, him calling me Mac. He’d only ever called me Ms. Lane. I couldn’t breathe. My chest was locked tight, and I wondered if my ribs had broken and punctured my lungs. The spear was slipping from my fingers. That arctic wind was back, chilling me body and soul, and I understood dimly that the gate was open again.