Fever 4 - DreamFever (20 page)

  She looked up. "Wicked-cool outfit, Mac!" Then she scowled. "I hunt and kill things.
What does it matter what I watch? These eyeballs seen it all, dude." She somehow
managed to swagger while cross-legged on the floor.

  "I don't care how tough you think you are. You're thirteen and there are limits.
You're not watching this stuff. And if you are, you'd better hide it from me, because if I
catch you, there's going to be hell to pay."

   She shoved the computer from her lap and bounded to her feet. "That's ridiculous,"
she spat, green eyes sparking. "I watch things die every day but I can't watch people
feck? You're not the boss of me." She grabbed her pack and began walking away.

  "Those aren't just people fecking, Dani. Those are hard-core."

  "So?" she sneered over her shoulder. "What were you a few days ago?"

  "It wasn't like that."

  "So you gonna tell me what it was like? Being Pri-ya was all poetry and roses?"

  There had been moments that had felt startlingly like that. Not with the Unseelie
Princes. But later with Barrons. I crammed that thought into the padlocked box in my
head where I keep all those things I can't deal with. Soon I was going to have to sink
the thing in concrete to keep it shut. "I'm not telling you not to watch people having
sex, although I wish you'd wait a few years. I'm telling you to make better choices.
Watch the soft-core stuff, the ones that show sex as something good."

  "Mac," she said flatly, "get a grip. The world sucks. Ain't no good left in it."

   "There's good everywhere. You just have to look for it." I nearly choked on my
words. I sounded just like my daddy and was surprised I still believed what I'd said,
after all I'd been through. Looked like the rainbow wasn't entirely black.

   She whirled on me, cheeks flushed, eyes furious. "Really? What? Name some of
those good things for me, will you? Why don't you tell me about `em? I got a great
idea. Let's make a list. Let's write down all the wonderful things in the world. `Cause I
been looking really hard lately, and I ain't been seeing a fecking one!" Her hands were
fisted and she was shaking.

  It had taken me until I was twenty-two to be carved by tragedy. How old was Dani
when its razor-sharp teeth drew first blood? She'd told me her mother was killed by the
Fae six years ago, which would have made her seven at the time. Had she watched it
happen? Was that how long she'd been with Rowena? What had the ruthless old woman
been doing to her all that time? "What happened to you, Dani?" I said softly.

   "You think you have the right to just ask me that? Like I'm gonna peel myself open
and let you poke around inside me? Like you can pour me out like some little teapot,
`cause you're dangling me by my handle?"

  "I'm not dangling you by any handle, Dani."

  "You're trying to! Trying to force me to spill my secrets! Dump `em all over the
place so once you know `em you can throw me away like a piece of trash, same as the

Unseelie Princes did to you! Like some stupid fecking stupid fecker that shouldn't have
even been fecking born!"

   I was stunned by the intensity of her reaction, baffled by the direction our
conversation had taken. "I'm not trying to pry into you, and I would never throw you
away. I care about you, you prickly little pain-in-the-butt porcupine. So buck up and
deal with it. I worry about what you'll become. Enough to fight with you about it. And
I'm telling you, choose better movies, eat your vegetables, floss, and treat yourself with
respect, because if you don't, nobody else will. I care!"

  "You wouldn't if you knew me!"

  "I do know you."

  "Leave me alone!"

  "Can't," I said flatly. "You and me. We're like sisters. Now get a grip on the teen
angst and let's get moving. I need you tonight, and we've got a lot to do." It had always
worked whenever Daddy did it to me: made me do something, to keep my mind off
wallowing in whatever emotion I felt like I was going to die from at the moment.

   She stared at me, eyes narrowed, lips drawn in a snarl, and I got the impression she
was on the verge of freeze-framing out. I wondered how my parents had survived me. I
wondered what she was really so upset about. I wasn't stupid. There was subtext here. I
just couldn't figure out what it was. I was about to begin tapping a foot when she finally
turned around and began walking.

  I followed her in silence, giving her the chance to cool off.

   The fabric of her long black leather coat eventually relaxed and creased between her
shoulder blades. She took a few deep breaths, then said, "Sisters forgive each other a
lot, don't they, Mac? I mean, more than most people?"

   I thought of Alina and how she'd fallen for the worst villain in this epic mess, even
inadvertently helped him gain power. Of how she'd waited until it was too late to call
me. Recently I'd begun to realize my sister had made some hedgy decisions. Like not
telling me what was going on as soon as she learned about it and trying to handle it all
herself without asking for help. Strength wasn't about being able to do everything alone.
Strength was knowing when to ask for help and not being too proud to do it. Alina
hadn't called in all the reinforcements she could, and she should have. I wouldn't make
the same mistake. Still, regardless of anything she'd done or failed to do, it didn't
change how much I loved her, and it never would. Nothing could.

  "Like fighting over what movies to watch," Dani clarified, when I didn't answer
immediately.

  I was about to reply when she muttered, "I thought you'd think I was cool for
watching `em."

  I rolled my eyes. "I already think you're cool. And, honey, sisters forgive each other
everything."

  "Really, truly everything?"

  "Everything."

  As we walked out of the electronics store, I caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror
above the door.

  It was bleak.

My Dublin no longer existed.

   Smashed, broken were the brilliant neon signs that had illuminated the buildings with
a kaleidoscope of colors. Long gone were the colorful, diverse people that had filled the
streets with boisterous camaraderie and endless craic. Wrecked were the fa�ades of the
hundreds of pubs of Temple Bar. The quaint streetlamps were twisted pretzels of metal,
and no music spilled from open windows or doors. It was silent. Too silent. All animal
life was gone, down to the crickets in the soil. Not one motor hummed. There were no
heat pumps kicking on and off. You don't realize how much white noise the world
makes until it suddenly stops, making it sound like prehistoric times.

   This new Dublin was dark and creepy and ... still not dead. The once-bustling Irish
city was now undead. You could feel the life in her, lurking in the dark wreckage, but it
was the kind of life you wanted to drive a stake through.

  Given the number of Fae I could sense in the city--so many that it was impossible to
separate them out until we were almost on top of them--we encountered surprisingly
few Unseelie on the streets. I wondered if they were holding the equivalent of a
convention or political rally somewhere for the great LM--freer and leader of the
bastard half of the Fae race. Nor did we see Jayne, so I supposed he was off terrorizing
Hunters in another part of the city.

  Over the course of the twenty or so blocks that we walked--"like a Joe," as Dani
called it, because I wasn't about to come face-to-face with Ryodan for the first time
feeling like I wanted to puke on his shoes--we encountered four Rhino-boys (why did
they always travel in pairs?) and an awful slithering thing that was nearly as fast as
Dani. I took the RBs, she got the snake.

  We were at the cross streets of R�vemal and Grandin when I saw her. If my senses
hadn't been so fuzzed with Unseelie static from too many on one channel, I might have
picked up one of the sifting caste ahead and reacted better.

   At first, I couldn't believe my eyes. In my defense, from behind I thought it was
him--they looked so similar--but I knew it couldn't be, because Barrons and I had
killed him. Then I thought he must not have been a singularity. Some of the Unseelie
castes have countless numbers, like the Rhino-boys, while others are the only of their
kind given dark birth by the Unseelie King, perhaps because even he considered them

abominations. I had a bad moment, contemplating the horror of hundreds or even
thousands of this type of Unseelie loose on the world, and in that moment I forfeited the
element of surprise. I must have made some small sound, because she suddenly turned,
nine feet of leprous body topped by a long, squished face that was all ravenous mouth.
In a blink of an eye, she assessed and dismissed me.

  I was the wrong gender.

  Dani got kudos for trying. She freeze-framed, but I could have told her not to bother.
This one sifted. I knew because its male counterpart had once sifted down a street at me
and, if not for Barrons, would have killed me.

   The Unseelie vanished into thin air, leaving Dani standing a block down the street
from me, sword drawn back, seething at having lost her kill. "What the feck was that,
Mac?" she said. "I never seen one before. You?"

   "Barrons called it the Gray Man. We killed it. I thought it was one of a kind, but we
just saw the Gray Woman."

  "What's her specialty?" Dani looked morbidly fascinated. I'd been that way once.
Obsessed with all the terrible ways I might die at an Unseelie's hands. Or claws. Or
hundreds of sharp-toothed mouths, like Alina.

   "They have a taste for human beauty. Barrons says they destroy what they can never
have, devour it like a delicacy. They cast a glamour of physical perfection and choose
the most attractive humans to seduce. They feed off them through touch, leeching their
beauty through the open sores in their hands until they've stolen all there is to steal,
leaving their prey as hideous as they are."

   They didn't kill their victims but left them alive to suffer, and sometimes returned to
visit them, drawing some sick sustenance from their horror and misery. I'd watched the
Gray Man feed twice. He'd been especially terrifying to me because, for years, I'd
shamelessly used my looks to my advantage, flirting for better tips, batting my
eyelashes at a traffic cop, feigning sultry-blond stupidity to get my way. Before I'd
come to Dublin, I thought my looks were pretty much the only power I had, and losing
them would have made me feel worthless.

  "Barrons says the victims inevitably commit suicide," I told her, "because they can't
face living, looking like they do."

  "We'll bag the bitch," Dani said coolly.

   I smiled, but it faded quickly. We'd arrived at our destination, and I stared, spirits
sinking. I wanted answers and I'd been counting heavily on getting some here, but 939
R�vemal was a complete disappointment.

  A few months ago, Chester's elegant granite, marble, and polished-wood fa�ade
would have drawn the upper crust of the city's bored rich and jaded beautiful, but, like
the rest of Dublin, it had been brought to its knees on Halloween, and the once-
sophisticated three-story building was a wreck. Stained-glass windows crunched

beneath our boots as we skirted riot debris. Marble entry pillars were deeply scored by
gash marks that looked as if they'd been made by something with talons of steel. Lavish
French-style gas lamps had been ripped from the sidewalk and tossed in a twisted pile,
blocking the club's entrance, as if whatever Unseelie was responsible had held some
special hatred for the place.

   The club sign dangled by cables in front of the pile. It had been smashed to bits. The
front and sides of the building were heavily covered with graffiti. Between the lamps
and the club sign, there was no getting into the building through the front door.

  And no reason to.

  Chester's was as deserted as the rest of the city.

  I punched my palm with a gloved fist. I was sick of dead ends and nonanswers.
"Let's go hunt the Gray Woman. She's got to be around here somewhere," I growled.

  "Why?" Dani looked at me blankly.

  "Because I'm frustrated and pissed off, that's why."

  "But I ain't ever been in a club," she protested. "I even dressed for it."

  "That isn't a club, Dani. It's a destroyed building."

  "There's all kinds of stuff happening here!"

  "Like what? Shades having a party inside all that rubble?"

  She laughed. "Aw, man, I forget you're deaf! You can't hear the music. It's got a
cool beat, different from most I've heard. I been listening to it for blocks now. Down,
Mac. We gotta go down."

                                           ***

Dani was right: The music was different. But as I would soon find out, it wasn't the
only thing different about Chester's. In fact, nothing was normal. The club would shift
all my paradigms and slam home the many changes the world had gone through while
I'd been otherwise ... occupied.

   The entrance to the club was now around back: an inconspicuous battered metal door
in the ground that looked like a forgotten cellar entry. If Dani hadn't been able to hear
the music, I would have walked right past the place and never suspected a thing.

   The door creaked as it opened on a narrow black maw. I sighed. I hate being
underground, but somehow I keep ending up there. I unhooked the MacHalo from my
pack, punched on all the lights, and strapped it on my head. Dani did the same, and we
descended the ladder in a blaze of light, opened a second trapdoor, and descended a
second ladder. We found ourselves in the middle of an industrial foyer of sorts--
tastefully decorated in the height of urban chic--facing tall double doors.

   I still couldn't hear any music. The doors had to be seriously thick. I flexed the sidhe-
seer place in my head, wishing I had some idea what to expect, but the channel was still
full of static, just louder.