Shadowfever

Used to ride me, it chuffed with reproach. Old friend.

I stared at it, nonplussed.

My eyes narrowed. It was clearly part of some conspiracy to make me think I was the Unseelie King. That was one load of crap I wasn’t buying. “Go away.” I swatted at it like a fly. “Shoo. Get out of here.” I was shooing finality more final than death.

I was dimly aware of Barrons shouting on my radio.

It turned its leathery smile forward and sailed serenely along, barely moving its enormous wings, surfing a breeze. It was five times the size of my Hunter, several houses of leathery wings and hooves and enormous oven eyes and whatever held all that icy blackness together. As it passed through the dark sky, the breeze that sloughed off its titanic body steamed like dry ice.

“Go!” I snarled.

“Mac, where the hell is the Book?” Ryodan’s voice sounded tinny on the radio. We were higher than I’d meant to be. “Where are you? I can’t see you up there. I see a couple of Hunters flying together, but I don’t see you. Fuck, is that one enormous or what?”

Great, just what I needed. Somebody to look up and catch me flying side by side with the Unseelie King’s favorite Lamborghini. I thumbed my volume back on. “I’m here. In a cloud. Hang on. You’ll see me in a few minutes,” I lied.

“There aren’t any clouds up there, Mac,” Lor said.

Christian snapped, “Lie, MacKayla. Try again. Who are you flying with?”

“Where’s the Book?” V’lane demanded.

“It’s—Oh, there it is! Damn! Now it’s four blocks to the west, down by the docks. I’m going down for a closer look.”

When I nudged my Hunter into a dive, K’Vruck dove with us.

“Ms. Lane,” Barrons demanded, “what are you doing flying with the Hunter that killed Darroc?”

39

They refused to let me land.

I couldn’t exactly blame them.

It wasn’t so much that I had my own Satanic wing man—there wasn’t anybody on the ground that night who hadn’t dipped a toe into something dark at one point or another—as that they worried the Book would grab K’Vruck somehow and then we’d all be, well … K’Vrucked.

I couldn’t shake him. The Hunter who called himself something more final than death simply would not leave my side. And a secret part of me was a little thrilled by it.

I flew over Dublin with Death.

Heady stuff for a bartender from small-town Georgia.

I had to watch from the air as the debacle unfolded. And it was a debacle.

They cornered it, hemmed it in with stones, whittled in and down until they finally had it penned on the steps of the church where I’d been raped. I had to wonder if it somehow knew that and was trying to mess with my head.

I kept waiting for it to speak in my mind, but it didn’t. Not once. Not a word. It was the first time I’d ever been in its vicinity that it hadn’t tried to mess with me somehow. I figured the stones and the Druids had a dampening effect.

As I watched, they moved the four stones—east, west, north, and south—in closer and closer until they formed the corners of a box, ten feet by ten feet around it.

A soft blue light began to emanate between the stones, as if forming a cage.

Everyone backed away.

“What now?” I whispered, circling over the steeple.

“Now it’s mine,” Drustan said calmly. The Keltar Druids begin to chant, and the silver-eyed Highlander moved forward.

I had a sudden vision of him, broken and dead on the church steps. The Book morphing into the Beast, towering over them all, laughing. Taking out one after the next.

“No,” I cried.

“No, what?” Barrons said instantly.

“Stop, Drustan!”

The Highlander looked up at me and stopped.

I studied the tableau below. Something wasn’t right. The Sinsar Dubh was lying on the steps, an innocuous hardcover. No towering Beast, no chain-saw-toothed O’Bannion, no skinned Fiona.

“When did it get out of the car?” I demanded.

Nobody answered me.

“Who was driving it? Did anyone see the Book get out of the car?”

“Ryodan, Lor, speak up!” Barrons snapped.

“Don’t know, Barrons. Didn’t see it. Thought you did.”

“How did it end up on the steps?”

V’lane hissed. “It is an illusion!”

I groaned. “It’s not really there. I must have lost track of it. I wondered why it wasn’t messing with me. It was. Just not the way it usually does. I screwed up. Oh, shit—V’lane—look out!”