Fever 4 - DreamFever (40 page)

  "That's Unseelie? You fed me the flesh of a dark Fae?"

   "How do you feel, Christian?" I demanded. "Pretty good?" He certainly looked good,
sitting there in faded jeans, wet T-shirt straining over his wide shoulders, muscles
rippling in his arms as he slicked wet hair back from his face. "No burns, no blisters, no
hunger or thirst? Has it occurred to you that I saved your ass?"

  "At what cost? What does eating it do to you? Nothing Fae is without price!"

  "It heals you. Would you rather I hadn't?"

  "Big, huge lie in there. There are drawbacks. What are they?" he pushed furiously.

  "There are drawbacks to everything," I snapped.

  We glared at each other.

  "Would you rather I'd let you die?"

  "Did you even try anything else first? Or are you all about magic, instant
gratification?"

   I leapt to my feet and began pacing. "What would you have had me try? Dragging
your big body into the shade all by myself so you wouldn't get burned worse? How
about figuring out how to start a fire with twigs? No, I have it!" I whirled around and
shot him a look. "I should have gone looking for a convenience store for sunblock and
aloe gel and then when I found that, set off for a vet so I could find you subcutaneous
fluids like my neighbors gives their sick cat!"

  His mouth twitched. "Nice outfit, Mac."

   I bristled. I'd been stomping around in my bra and panties and he found me amusing
in my underwear? "My clothes are soaked," I growled.

   "I was speaking of your--" His gaze shot upward. "Would you be calling that a hat,
lass?"

   I closed my eyes and groaned. I'd gotten so used to the weight of it on my head that
I'd forgotten I was wearing my MacHalo. I unstrapped it, snatched it from my head,
scraped off strands of dripping moss, and inspected it for damage. Two of the brackets
were broken at the base, and several of the lights had been turned on in our roll down
sand dunes, wasting precious batteries. I clicked them off and put the helmet on the
rocks near my clothes.

  I nodded at the piece of Unseelie lying on the ground between us. "Are you going to
eat that?"

  "Not for love or money," he said vehemently.

   "Well, pick it up and put it in your pocket. You might need it again. Like it or not, it
saved your life." No matter how badly I wanted it, I didn't dare impair my sidhe-seer
abilities. If we encountered anything Fae, my Nulling talents were all I had. We'd have
to freeze them and run. Or use the stones again.

   "It did something to me. Something ... wrong." He studied it with distaste, picked it
up, drew back his arm, and flung it into the quarry. I heard a splash, a second much
larger splash, and a snapping sound, followed by a third splash. Since my back was to
the water, I had to interpret what happened from the look on his face. "Something
awful-looking ate it?"

   Looking mildly shocked, he nodded. "Tell me everything you know about what you
just fed me and the effects it has. And as for the loch, lass, I wouldn't recommend
swimming in it."

Christian's clothes were soaked, and after a scan of the snow-covered peaks around us,
he concluded there was a high probability of a sharp evening drop to frigid
temperatures, which meant we needed our clothes dry, fast. As there was no convenient
dryer nearby, toasting them in the sun was our only option, so a short time later we were
both stretched out, me mostly naked, him completely. He was unself-conscious nude. I
had to admit, he had reason to be.

   After a quick glance, I'd sought privacy on the other side of the tumble of rocks our
clothes were drying on and savored the warmth on my skin. All that was missing was
my iPod.

  And my parents. And my sister. And any feeling of normalcy or safety. In a nutshell,
everything was missing.

   I was terrified for Mom and Dad. Since the Silver I'd entered didn't show the tunnel
from the outside, what assurance did I have that the destination it did show wasn't also
an illusion? What if the LM wasn't holding my parents captive in my own living room
but someplace else and I'd sent Barrons on a wild-goose chase with the photo I'd
texted?

  A wave of frantic helplessness was building inside me, threatening to turn tidal. I
didn't dare give in to panic. I had to stay calm and focused and work on moving
forward however I could, even if it meant taking baby steps. Right now that meant
getting my clothes dry and resting while I had the chance. Who knew what dangers the
night--or even the next few hours--might hold?

  Christian and I talked while we sunned, our voices carrying easily over the rocks
between us. I told him about the effects of eating Unseelie. He questioned me
extensively, wanting to know who else had eaten it, exactly what it had done to them,

and how long it had lasted. He seemed especially interested in the increased "skill in the
dark arts."

  "Speaking of dark arts," I said, "what did you guys do the night of the ritual? What
happened? What went wrong?"

  He groaned. "I take it that means the walls came down anyway. I've been trying to
convince myself that my uncles managed a miracle. Tell me everything, Mac. What's
happened in the world while I've been stuck here?"

   I told him that the walls had crashed completely at midnight, that I'd watched the
Unseelie come through, and that the Lord Master and his princes had captured me at
dawn. I omitted the rape, being turned Pri-ya, and my subsequent ... er, recovery (no
way I was talking to the lie detector about those events), and told him merely that I was
rescued by Dani and the sidhe-seers. I brought him up to speed on Jayne's efforts, filled
him in on what we'd learned about iron, and told him that his family was okay and
searching for him. I told him the Book was still loose but withheld the gruesome details
of my recent encounter with it.

  "How did you come to be in the Hall of All Days?"

   I told him about the Lord Master abducting my parents, luring me into the Silver, and
insisting that I show him the stones.

   "Bloody idiot! Even we know better than to do that, and he was once Fae. It's no
wonder the queen appointed us Keltar keepers of the lore. We know more about their
history than they do."

  "Because they keep drinking from the cauldron and forgetting?"

  "Aye."

  "Well, at least we have them. Even though the ride's rocky, they help in a pinch."

  "Are you daft, Mac?" he said sharply.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Don't you know what's happening every time you take them out of that pouch?"

  "Duh, that's what I was saying. It makes us shift worlds ... or dimensions, or
whatever they are."

  "Because the realm we're in is trying to spit us out," he said flatly. "The stones are
anathema to the Silvers. Once you remove them from your pouch, the realm detects
them and, like an infected splinter, endeavors to expel them. The only reason you go
with them is because you're holding on to them."

  "Why are they anathema to the Silvers?"

  "Because of Cruce's curse."

  "You know what Cruce's curse was?" Finally, someone who could tell me!

   "I've been wandering worlds in this place for what feels like bloody forever, and I've
learned a thing or two. Cruce hated the Unseelie King, for many reasons, and coveted
his concubine. He cursed the Silvers to prevent the king from ever entering them again.
He planned to take all the worlds inside the Silvers and the concubine for himself. Be
king of all the realms. But a curse is an immensely powerful thing, and Cruce cast it into
a vortex of unfathomable power. Like most things Fae, it took on a life of its own,
transmuted. Some say you can still hear the words of it, sung softly on a dark wind, ever
changing."

  "Did he succeed in keeping the king from his concubine?"

  "Aye. And because those stones you carry were carved from the king's fortress and
bear the taint of him, the Silvers reject them, as well. A short time after that, the king
was betrayed, he and the queen battled, and he killed the Seelie Queen."

  "Was that when the concubine killed herself?"

  "Aye."

   "Well, if the Silvers are trying to spit us out, then won't they eventually send us back
to our world?"

  He snorted. "They aren't trying to spit us out back to where we came from, Mac.
They're trying to restore the natural order of things and spit the stones back to where
they came from."

   I inhaled sharply. "You mean every time we use them, whatever realm we're in is
trying to send us to the Unseelie prison? What happens? Do they miss?"

  "I suspect none of the realms has enough power on its own, so we're being swept
toward it, like a broom across a vast floor, through as many dimensions as possible."

  "Each time we get pushed a little closer?"

  "Exactly."

  "Well, maybe," I tried hard to be optimistic, "we're a million realms away."
Somehow, I didn't think so.

   "And maybe," he said darkly, "we're one. And the next time you `shift' us, we'll end
up face-to-face with the Unseelie King. Don't know about you, but I'd rather not meet
the million-year-old creator of the worst of the Fae. Some say merely gazing on him in
his true form will destroy your mind."

Some time later, Christian announced our clothes were dry. I listened to his clothing
rustle as he dressed. When he was done, I got up and moved toward my clothes, then
stopped dead in my tracks, staring at him.

  He gave me a bitter smile. "I know. It started happening shortly after you fed it to
me."

  I'd seen him nude. I knew he had crimson and black tattoos on his chest, part of his
abdomen, and up the side of his neck, but the rest of his body had been unmarked.

   It was no longer. Now his arms were covered with black lines and symbols, moving
just beneath his skin.

  "It's spreading down my legs and moving up my chest," he said.

  I opened my mouth but didn't have the faintest idea what to say. I'm sorry I fed it to
you to save your life? Do you wish I hadn't? Isn't it better to live to fight another day,
no matter what?

  "It's something to do with the dark-arts part of it. I feel it surging in me like a storm."
He sighed heavily. "I suspect it's because of what Barrons and I tried to do on Hallow's
Eve."

  "And what was that?" I fished.

  "Called on something ancient that we should have let slumber. Invited it. I keep
hoping I'll find him, but once we were sucked into the vortex, we got separated."

  I stared. "Barrons got sucked into the Silvers with you on Halloween?"

  Christian nodded. "We were both in the stone circle, then it vanished, and so did we.
We flashed from one landscape to the next like someone was flipping channels, then
suddenly I was in the Hall of All Days, and he wasn't. I may not care for the man, but
he knows his dark magic. I've been hoping we can find a way out, if we put both our
minds to it."

  "Uh, I hate to break it to you, but he already has."

  Christian's eyes flared, then narrowed. "Barrons is out? Since when?"

  "Since four days after Halloween. And he never said a word about it. He told me you
were the only one who vanished that night."

  "How the bloody hell did he make it out?"

  I gave him a look of helpless exasperation. "How would I know? He never even
admitted he'd been here. He lied."

  Christian's eyes narrowed further. "When did you have sex with him?"

  Uh-oh. The lie detector was staring out at me from those tiger eyes. "It wasn't like I
was willing," I prevaricated.

  "Lie," he said flatly.

  "I wouldn't have done it under any other circumstances." That was the truth, and he
could choke on it!

  "Lie."

  Really? "He made me do it!"

  "Major, huge lie," he said dryly.

  "You don't understand the situation I was in."

  "Try me."

  "I hardly think it's relevant to any of our problems." I turned my back on him and
began dressing.

  "Do you have feelings for him, Mac?"

  I dressed in silence.

  "Are you afraid to answer me?"

   I finished dressing and turned around. Christian was getting a little scary-looking. His
eyes were growing inhumanly brilliant, golden. I kept my face a smooth mask. "I'm
starved," I told him. "I've got two protein bars. You can have one. And I'm thirsty, but
I'd rather not drink from that quarry. And I think we have much bigger problems than
my feelings about Jericho Barrons. Or lack thereof. And those animals," I pointed to the
far edge of the valley, "look edible to me."

  I began to walk.

Unfortunately, we weren't the only ones that thought the sleek, graceful gazellelike
creatures looked edible, as we soon discovered in the middle of the valley.

  A stampeding herd of thousands of shaggy-furred horned bulls with whiplike tails
and wolfish snouts was bearing down on us, hard.

  "Do you think maybe they'll just part around us?" I'd seen it happen in the movies.

  "I'm not sure it's not us they're after, Mac. Run!"

  I ran, even though I was pretty sure it was pointless. They were too fast, and we were
too far from any kind of shelter.

  "Can't you do something Druidy?" I shouted over the nearly deafening pounding of
hooves.

   He gave me a look. "Druidry," he shouted, "requires preparation, or it can have
disastrous results!"

  "Well, you're looking all formidable! Surely you can do something with whatever's
happening to you!" The black symbols had begun to move up his throat now.

  The ground was shaking so hard it was getting difficult to run. It felt like an
earthquake creeping up on us.

   When I stumbled, Christian moved so quickly that the next thing I knew I was over
his shoulder and he was running ten times faster than a normal man. Of course, he was
pumped on Unseelie. I raised my head. The herd was too close. We still weren't moving
fast enough. The creatures were gaining, snouts snapping, saliva flying. I could
practically feel their breath blasting us.