Fever 4 - DreamFever (44 page)

  Finally the storm blew itself out, and I slept.

I wakened to a hand clamped tightly over my mouth and the crushing weight of a body
on top of mine.

  I fought like a wild thing, punching, kicking, trying to bite.

  "Easy, Mac," a voice whispered roughly against my ear. "Be still."

  My eyes flared. I knew that voice. It was Ryodan. But I'd been expecting Barrons!

  "I've come to get you out of here, but you must do exactly as I say."

  I was nodding before he'd even finished speaking.

  "It's imperative you make no noise. Whisper when you speak."

  I nodded again.

  He drew back and looked at me. "Where's ... the creature?"

  "The IYD one?"

  He gave me a look but nodded.

  "I don't know. I haven't seen it since last night."

  "Get your things and hurry. We don't have much time. Darroc's here, too."

  "Are you kidding me? How the hell does everyone find me?" What was I, a big red
X?

  "Shh." He pressed a finger to my lips. "Speak softly." He raised the weight of his
body from mine, flipped me onto my stomach, and began searching through my hair.
"Hold still. Ah, fuck."

  "What?" It came out as a low growl.

  "Darroc marked you. He must have done it while the princes had you."

  "He tattooed me?"

  "Right next to Barrons' mark. I can't remove it here. Come."

  I rolled over, scrubbing angrily at my scalp. "Where are we going?"

  "Not far from here is a--what did Barrons say you call them?--IFP. It will take us to
another world, where there's a dolmen to Ireland."

  "I thought Cruce's curse corrupted everything."

  "The Silvers change. IFPs don't. They're static microcosms."

   He grabbed me beneath my armpits, stood up, taking me with him, and set me on my
feet.

  I clutched his arm. "My parents?"

  "I don't know. I came in after you at LaRuhe."

  "Barrons?"

  "He was trying to get to Ashford, to go after Darroc. I was the only one able to get in
before the tunnel collapsed on our end. It took me a while to find you. I found this, too."
He tossed my backpack at me. "Your spear's inside."

  I could have kissed him! I grabbed my pack and swiftly consolidated possessions,
then yanked out my spear and caressed it. Holding it in my hand made me feel like a
Travis Tritt song--ten feet tall and bulletproof.

  "The creature will attack anything in your vicinity. At the moment, that's me. I can
get you out. It can't. It only kills. Remember that."

  Ryodan took my hand and led me close to the river, much nearer the sheer drop of the
gorge than I was comfortable with, but I understood why he did it. The crushed-shale
edge was soft as sand and made no noise beneath our feet. I looked up at him.

  "How did you track me? Do you have a mark on me, too?" I whispered.

  "I can follow Barrons' mark. Another word and you're going over the edge."

   I said no more. If it came down to my survival or his, I was pretty sure he'd choose
his. I wondered why Barrons hadn't done anything to keep Ryodan safe from the
monster. Given him a Barrons-scented shirt to wear or something.

   As if he'd read my mind, he murmured, "It's the tattoo he put on you that keeps you
safe from it. No fucking way he's branding me. I came in armed. I hunted it all night
through the rain. It ran me out of ammo. It's one clever fuck."

  I had heard automatic gunfire! "You were trying to kill it?" I breathed, aghast. What
a weird paradigm shift. It had been protecting me. Ferociously. Now it was my enemy?

  Ryodan gave me a sharp look. "Do you want out of here or not?"

  I nodded fervently.

  "Then keep your spear handy, shut the fuck up, and hope it doesn't kill me. I'm your
way out."

When the monster attacked--and I guess there never really was any doubt in my mind
that it would--it did so with the same explosive suddenness with which it had hit the
wild boar, blasting out of nowhere, crashing Ryodan to the ground, a fury of fangs and
talons.

  I watched helplessly as they twisted and rolled, watching for an opportunity to do
something. Anything.

  The monster was much larger than Ryodan, but Barrons' mysterious brother-in-arms
was pretty savage himself. His wristbands sprouted knives and spikes.

   As I watched them battle, it speeded up into something very close to Dani's freeze-
framing and blurred beyond my vision's ability to follow. I could no longer separate
their forms. Ryodan seemed to be every bit as preternaturally agile as the monster.

 I was able to snatch only brief glimpses as one or the other flashed into view,
momentarily slowed by a wound.

  Snarls filled the air as they rolled and fought, battling to the gorge's edge--so near I
held my breath and prayed they wouldn't both go over--then back again.

  I caught a glimpse of Ryodan, bleeding from dozens of wounds.

  Then a flash of my monster, flesh torn, jaws bloody and snapping.

  They rolled into a blur again at the river's edge.

  I watched, wide-eyed, leaping this way and that, trying to find a moment, an angle, an
opportunity to help. I felt strangely torn.

  The monster had saved my life repeatedly. It was my savage guardian demon. It had
protected me.

  But, as Ryodan had pointed out, it could do only that.

  It couldn't help me get back home. And it was going to kill my "way home," if it
could. Leaving me protected but stranded. I couldn't allow that. I had to get out of here.

  I caught another glimpse of Ryodan. The monster was tearing him to pieces!

   Then Ryodan must have injured the monster, because it flashed into view and stayed
a moment. Before I could blow what might be the only chance I got, I steeled myself,
lunged for it, and jammed my spear into its back, right where I figured its heart was, if
its internal anatomy was anything like a human's.

  It jerked, whipped its head around, and roared at me.

   Ryodan seized the opportunity, plunged a knife into its chest, and ripped upward,
slicing the monster open from gut to throat.

   Its head whipped back around and it shoved Ryodan so hard it drove him to the cliff's
edge. As I watched, horrified, he stumbled on the soft shale lip and slipped over the
side!

  I think I screamed, or maybe I'd been screaming for a while, I don't know; things that
day got a little blurred for me.

  Ryodan's hands locked around a rock that protruded from the bank. I prayed it was
embedded deeply enough in the shale to hold him.

  The monster rose to its full height, baying with rage and pain, my spear stuck in its
back.

   I held my breath as Ryodan inched back up onto the bank. There was so much blood
on his face that I could barely make out his eyes. How was he still moving? His cheek
was sliced open so deep I could see bone! His chest was a mass of bloody crisscrossed
slashes.

  The monster staggered then, and I think I must have made a noise. Relief that it was
going down? Sorrow? Maybe shame for my part in it? I had a whole mess of emotions
going on.

  It turned its head and looked straight at me, and there was something in its feral
yellow gaze that made me gasp.

   For an awful suspended moment, I could have sworn I saw an accusation of betrayal
in its gaze, of disbelief at my foul duplicity, as if we'd had some kind of agreement,
some unspoken pact between us. It stared at me with reproach; its yellow eyes burned
with hatred for my treason. It flung back its head and bayed with desolation and despair,
an anguished cry of grief and madness.

    I clamped my hands to my ears.

    It took a step toward me. I couldn't believe it was still standing, flayed as it was.

   When it took a second step, Ryodan managed to stagger to his feet, launch himself
onto its back, wrap an arm around its neck--and slit its throat. "Get the bloody fuck out
of here, Mac," he snarled.

  Gushing blood, the beast reached back, dug its talons into Ryodan, ripped him off its
back, and flung him straight into the gorge.

    "No!" I exploded.

  But Ryodan was already gone, falling down, down into the river, a hundred feet
below.
 

I   stood, staring stupidly at the monster with the flayed body and slit throat.

    It was still standing.

   I was hot and cold, shaking. I felt like I was in some fevered dream, a nightmare from
which I couldn't escape. I could feel myself detaching from the world around me,
turning to stone inside, shutting down all emotion.

  The monster staggered toward me. Went down on one knee and stared up at me. It
shuddered, then collapsed to the earth, facedown.

    My spear stuck out of its back.

    The forest was silent and still.

   As I watched the monster's blood run into the soil, I took distant, unemotional stock
of my situation.

    Ryodan was dead.

  Nothing could have survived that fall--assuming he'd been able to recover from his
wounds, which was a pretty far stretch.

  The monster was also dead, or very near it and would be soon, lying in a rapidly
growing pool of blood.

    I'd lost my way out.

    I'd lost my protector, too.

  Somewhere in this realm, the Lord Master was hunting me, tracking me by a mystical
brand he'd etched on my skull.

  Somewhere in this realm was an IFP that contained a dolmen that would take me
back to Ireland. Unfortunately, I had no idea which one it was, or in which direction, or
how many there were to choose from on this world.

   My pouch of stones was still attached to the monster's horns, and the tatters of my
sweater were still tied by its sleeves to a leg. When it was dead, I would reclaim the
stones. That was a plus of sorts in the ledger of my life, assuming I overlooked that they
were really nothing more than a slow boat to hell.

  The monster gurgled wetly and seemed to deflate.

  I waited a few moments, picked up a stick, took a cautious step forward, and poked it.

  There was no reaction. I poked harder, then nudged it with my foot.

  I tested the spear in its back, jostling its wound. Again, there was no reaction.

  It was definitely dead.

  I crouched beside it and had begun to untie my pouch when suddenly its horns
softened and melted into a river that flowed past its head, puddling like an oil slick on
blood.

  I snatched my pouch from its matted hair.

  The shape of its head began to change.

  Webs and talons vanished.

  Matted locks became hair.

  I stumbled backward, shaking my head. "No," I said.

  It continued to change. Slate-gray skin lightened.

  "No," I insisted.

  My denial had no effect. It continued to transform. Height diminished. Mass
decreased. It became what it was.

  What it had been all along.

  I began to hyperventilate. Squatting, I rocked back and forth in a posture of grief as
old as time.

  "No!" I screamed.

  I'd thought I'd lost everything.

  I hadn't.

  I stared at the person who lay dead on the floor of the forest.

  The person I'd helped kill.

  Now I'd lost everything.

Dear Reader:

   I know it's been a wild ride, but it's almost over. Shadowfever is the fifth and final
installment in the trials and triumphs of MacKayla Lane-O'Connor. And there will be
triumphs. I've promised that from the beginning.

   As I've said on my website and in many interviews, the Fever series came to me,
fully formed, as I've written it, demanding that I be true to the plot and characters, no
matter how difficult parts of it have been to write. Switching from writing third person
omniscient point of view that you'll find in my earlier novels to the first person limited
point of view in the Fever novels was a challenge but one that I've found immensely
rewarding. I couldn't have told Mac's story any other way.

  The devil is in the details--as is the delight. It's the nuances that make a story rich,
compelling, fascinating, that draw us in and make us love, and hate, and hate to love,
and love to hate the characters. It's what they choose to quest for; how they mark time;
the decisions they make, small and large; the awkwardness of forging bonds; the
obvious-to-us-yet-blurred-to-them emotions, doubts, convictions, uncertainties, truths,
joys; the beauty of watching them try, fail, try again, fail again, and finally get it right
that makes a story--and any life, really--worthwhile. Thanks for joining me on Mac's
quest.

    Still want more Fever? Drop by www.karenmoning.com, where you'll find a
message-board forum full of fun, brilliant folks who I sometimes think know the details
of my series as well as I do. (Okay, on a tough day, when I can't find my notes, maybe a
little better, LOL.) You'll also find a link to the Fever Fan Merchandise Store, where
you can buy all kinds of stuff like Barrons' Babe or V'lane's Vixen tees, Unseelie Sushi
Juice mugs, MacHalo stamps, BB&B memorabilia, even your own Sidhe-Seers, Inc
badge.

   There's also a link to BLOODRUSH, the official Fever sound track, a collection of
songs written and performed by Neil Dover. It's an awesome CD with "Little Lamb," "I
Am Not Afraid," plus five new songs and an acoustic reprise. Check out "Sweet Dublin
Rain," with Mac's cool rap. For "Taking Back the Night,"--the sidhe-seers anthem--a
hundred and fifty fans came in from all over the world to join us in the recording studio
in Atlanta, and sing the ending. It was a total blast! The insert contains photos from the
studio, a lot of extras, and deleted scenes that aren't available anywhere else.

  Mac's hot-pink MacHalo and Barrons' black version--the Z-Lo--have been touring
for the past six months, and the pictures are a hoot. You can see where in the world