Fever 4 - DreamFever (33 page)

  I was relieved to realize I was experiencing no current pain--it was all residual. My
head was one massive bruise. My bones felt as if they'd been crushed, splinted, and had
barely begun to heal.

  Internal check completed, I turned my attention to my surroundings.

   I was in the bookstore, propped on my favorite chesterfield sofa before the fire in the
rear conversation area. I was iced to the bone, wrapped in blankets.

  Barrons stood in front of the fire, a tall, powerful shape surrounded by flame, his
back to me.

  I exhaled with relief, a tiny noise in the large room, but Barrons whirled instantly, a
sound rattling deep in his chest, guttural, animal. It made my blood run cold.

  It was one of the most inhuman sounds I'd ever heard. Adrenaline erased my pain. I
rose up on all fours on the sofa, like some wild thing myself, and stared.

   "What the fuck are you?" he snarled. His dark eyes burned ancient and cold in his
face. There was blood on his cheeks. Blood on his hands. I wondered if it had come
from me. I wondered why he hadn't bothered trying to wash it off. I wondered how long
I'd been out. How had I gotten back here? What time was it, anyway? What had the
Book done to me?

  Then his question penetrated. I pushed the hair from my eyes and began to laugh.
"What am I? What am I?"

  I laughed and laughed. I couldn't help it. I held my sides. There might have been an
edge of hysteria in it, but after all I'd been through, I figured I was entitled to a little
lunacy. I laughed so hard I couldn't breathe.

  Jericho Barrons was asking me what I was!

   He made that sound again, like a rattlesnake--a giant one--was shaking a warning
tail in his chest. I stopped laughing and looked at him. The sound chilled me the same
way the Sinsar Dubh did. It made me think that Jericho Barrons' skin might be a
slipcover for a chair I never wanted to see.

  "Kneel, Ms. Lane!"

  Shit. He'd Voiced me!

  And it was working!

   I crashed off the sofa in a tangle of blankets and landed on my knees, gritting my
teeth. I thought I was immune to Voice! The LM's hadn't worked on me! But then,
Barrons is better at everything.

  "What are you?" he roared.

  "I don't know!" I shouted. I didn't. But I was sure beginning to wonder. V'lane's
comment that night at the abbey had been haunting me with increasing frequency: They
should be afraid of you, he'd said. You have only begun to discover what you are.

  "What does the Book want from you?"

  "I don't know!"

  "What was it doing to you while it kept you there in the street?"

  "I don't know! How long did it keep me there?"

  "Over an hour! It turned into the Beast and eclipsed you. I couldn't fucking get to
you! I couldn't even fucking see you! What was it doing?"

  "Learning me. Tasting me. Knowing me," I gritted. "That's what it said. Stop
Voicing me, Barrons!"

  "I'll stop Voicing you when you can make me stop Voicing you, Ms. Lane. Stand
up."

  I pushed to my feet on trembling legs, residual pain in every ounce of my body. I
hated him at that moment. There was no need to kick me when I was already down.

  "Fight me, Ms. Lane," he growled, without the aid of Voice. "Pick up the knife and
cut your hand."

  I glanced down at the coffee table. An ivory-handled knife with a wicked, jagged
blade shimmered in the firelight. I was horrified to find myself reaching for it. I'd been
here before. This was exactly how he'd tried to train me in the past.

  "Fight!"

  And just like in the past, I kept reaching.

  "Bloody hell, look inside yourself! Hate me! Fight! Fight any way you can!"

  My hand stopped. Pulled back. Moved forward again.

  "Cut yourself deep," he hissed in Voice. "Make it hurt like hell."

  My fingers closed around the hilt of the knife.

   "You're a natural victim, Ms. Lane. A walking, talking Barbie doll," he sneered. "See
Mac's sister get killed. See Mac get raped. See Mac get fucked. See Mac get crushed in
the street by the Book. See Mac dead on top of the trash heap out back."

  I sucked in a sharp, pained breath.

  "Pick up the knife!"

  I raised it jerkily in my hand.

   "I've been in your skin," he taunted. "I know you inside and out. There's nothing
there. Do us all a favor and die so we can start working on another plan and quit
thinking maybe you'll grow the fuck up and be capable of something."

  Okay, enough! "You don't know me inside and out," I snarled. "You may have
gotten in my skin, but you have never gotten inside my heart. Go ahead, Barrons, make
me slice and dice myself. Go ahead, play games with me. Push me around. Lie to me.

Bully me. Be your usual constant jackass self. Stalk around all broody and pissy and
secretive, but you're wrong about me. There's something inside me you'd better be
afraid of. And you can't touch my soul. You will never touch my soul!"

   I raised my hand, drew back the knife, and let it fly. It sliced through the air, straight
for his head.

  He avoided it with preternatural grace, a mere whisper of a movement, precisely and
only as much as was required to not get hit.

  The hilt vibrated in the wood of the ornate mantel next to his head.

  "So, fuck you, Jericho Barrons, and not the way you like it. Fuck you--as in, you
can't touch me. Nobody can."

   I kicked the table at him. It crashed into his shins. I picked up a lamp from the end
table. Flung it straight at his head. He ducked again. I grabbed a book. It thumped off
his chest.

  He laughed, dark eyes glittering with exhilaration.

   I launched myself at him, slammed a fist into his face. I heard a satisfying crunch and
felt something in his nose give.

  He didn't try to hit me back or push me away. Merely wrapped his arms around me
and crushed me tight to his body, trapping my arms against his chest.

  Then, when I thought he might just squeeze me to death, he dropped his head
forward, into the hollow where my shoulder met my neck.

 "Do you miss fucking me, Ms. Lane?" he purred against my ear. Voice resonated in
my skull, pressuring a reply.

  I was tall and strong and proud inside myself. Nobody owned me. I didn't have to
answer any questions I didn't want to, ever again.

   "Wouldn't you just love to know?" I purred back. "You want more of me, don't you,
Barrons? I got under your skin deep. I hope you got addicted to me. I was a wild one,
wasn't I? I bet you never had sex like that in your entire existence, huh, O Ancient One?
I bet I rocked your perfectly disciplined little world. I hope wanting me hurts like hell!"

  His hands were suddenly cruelly tight on my waist.

   "There's only one question that matters, Ms. Lane, and it's the one you never get
around to asking. People are capable of varying degrees of truth. The majority spend
their entire lives fabricating an elaborate skein of lies, immersing themselves in the faith
of bad faith, doing whatever it takes to feel safe. The person who truly lives has
precious few moments of safety, learns to thrive in any kind of storm. It's the truth you
can stare down stone-cold that makes you what you are. Weak or strong. Live or die.
Prove yourself. How much truth can you take, Ms. Lane?"

  I could feel his mind rubbing up against mine. It was a shockingly sensuous feeling.
He was reaching for my thoughts the way I'd hammered at him for his, only he was
seducing me into opening my mind, making me blossom like a flower for his sun,
beckoning me into one of his memories.

   Then I was no longer in the bookstore, a breath away from wanting to kill or--who
the hell knew?--kiss Jericho Barrons, I was--

  In a tent.

  Sawing open a man's chest with a bloody blade.

  Drawing back my arm and punching my fist into the bones that protected his heart.

  Closing my hand around it.

  Ripping it out.

  I'd already raped his woman--she was still alive, watching her husband die. As she
had watched her children die.

  I raised his heart above my face, squeezed it in my fist, let the blood drip--

  He was trying to drown me in the scene of slaughter. Force it on me, graphic detail by
detail. But there was more. There was something behind it.

  That was what I wanted to see.

  I gathered my will, drew back, and launched myself into the scene he was forcing on
me. It ripped down the center like a movie screen, revealing another screen behind it.

  More slaughter. Him laughing.

   I sought that dark glassy lake in my sidhe-seer center. I didn't summon what lay in its
depths. I merely coaxed a little strength from it. Whatever lay beneath that lake offered
it willingly, inflating my mental muscles.

   I knifed through screen after screen, until finally there were no more and I went
crashing to my knees in a puff of sand in--

  A desert.

  It is dusk.

  I hold a child in my arms.

  I stare into the night.

  I won't look down.

  Can't face what's in his eyes.

  Can't not look.

  My gaze goes unwillingly, hungrily down.

  The child stares up at me with utter trust.

  His eyes say, I know you won't let me die.

  His eyes say, I know you will make the pain stop.

  His      eyes     said,             Trust/love/adore/youareperfect/youwillalwayskeepme
safe/youaremyworld.

  But I didn't keep him safe.

  And I can't make his pain stop.

  Bitterness fills my mouth with bile. I turn my head and vomit. I never understood
anything about life until this moment.

  I always sought only my own gain. Mercenary to the core.

  If the child dies, nothing will ever matter again, because a piece of me will go with
him. Until now I was not aware of that piece. Didn't know it existed. Didn't know it
mattered.

  Ironic to find it, in the moment of losing it.

  I hold him.

  I rock him.

  He weeps.

  His tears fall on my arms and burn my skin.

  I stare into those trusting eyes.

  I see him there. His yesterdays. His today. The tomorrows that will never be.

  I see his pain and it shreds me.

  I see his absolute love and it shames me.

  I see the light--that beautiful perfect light that is life.

  He smiles at me. He gives me all his love in his eyes.

  It begins to fade.

  No! I roar. You will not die! You will not leave me!

  I stare into his eyes for what seems a thousand days.

  I see him. I hold him. He is there.

  He is gone.

  There's a moment, in the dying, of transition. Life to death. Full to empty. There, then
gone. Too fast. Come back, come back, you want to scream. I need just one more
minute. Just one more smile. Just one more chance to do things right. But he's gone.
He's gone. Where did he go? What happens to life when it leaves? Does it go
somewhere or is it just fucking gone?

  I try to weep, but nothing comes.

  Something rattles deep in my chest.

  I do not recognize it.

  I am no longer what I was.

  I look at the others.

  None of us are.

   The images stopped. I was back in the bookstore. I was shaking. Grief was an open
wound in my chest. I was bleeding for the child I'd just lost, bleeding for Alina, for all
the people dying out there in this war we'd been unable to prevent.

  I jerked, looked up at him. If he thought he was going to get tit for tat, he was wrong.

  I was raw. I was badly off balance. If he touched me right now, I might be nice. If he
was nice right now, I might touch him.

  His face was impassive, his eyes flat black, his hands fisted at his sides.

  "Barrons, I--"

  "Good night, Ms. Lane."
 

C    ouldn't we have taken something faster?" I complained, as we skirted abandoned
cars and dodged IFPs at what felt like a snail's pace.

  Barrons gave me a look. "All the Hunters were busy tonight."

  "Well, can you at least step on it?" I groused.

  "And end up in another IFP? They're moving, in case you hadn't noticed."

   I had, and it seemed highly unfair. Static, they were predictable, but the last two we'd
encountered on our way deep into Irish country had been unattached, floating several
feet off the ground, drifting wherever the wind carried them. Dodging a stationary IFP
was hard enough. Dodging one that was blowing erratically felt like one of those dances
you do when you run into someone on the street and both of you keep stepping to the
same side, trying to get out of each other's way. Only, in this case, it seemed the
floating IFPs wanted to dance. Take you in their arms. Swallow you up.

  "The last one took us forty minutes to get out of."

  Problem was, you couldn't back out of them easily. Once you were inside one, it
seemed to shift cunningly, concealing the entry point. You had to fumble around for an
exit. "Point," I conceded.

  I was bored, restless, and impatient to get to the old woman's cottage. And here we
were, lumbering along, taking forever, in the Alpha.

  I glanced around the interior of the Hummer and saw a CD case on the backseat. I
wondered what Barrons listened to when he was alone. I punched on the audio. Rob
Zombie blared:

  Hell doesn't love them. The devil's rejects, the devil's rejects ...

  He punched off the audio.

  I raised a brow. "Could you be any more trite, Barrons?"

   "`Trite' is merely another word for overdone by the media to the point where the
common masses--that would be you, Ms. Lane: common--are desensitized by it, most
often to their own detriment because they have become incapable of recognizing the
danger staring at them from the eyes of a feral animal or down the barrel of a loaded
gun."