Shadowfever

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.

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.

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. Nobody 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.