Feverborn (18 page)

It wasn’t long before the thing lumbered into view.

I narrowed my eyes, trying to understand what I was seeing through the gloom.

An awkwardly ambulating trash heap?

I glanced at my newly mounded pile. It didn’t appear as if anything had arisen from it.

I glanced back at the bizarre thing.

It whirred and clanked and shuddered its way toward me, made of gears and cogs, wheels and gray hoses and shiny steel boxes and blades. And other things—wet mucosal things that looked like external intestines, looping around it and through it. No discernible face. No mouth or eyes. Fifteen maybe twenty feet tall, it seemed haphazardly slapped together from bits of gristle and guts and odds and ends from a dump.

With a deafening grinding of cogs and wheels, it rolled and clattered my way.

When it passed directly in front of me, within a mere fifteen feet, I froze. I didn’t back up, I didn’t shut the door. I just went motionless. It wasn’t a choice. My body simply stopped
obeying all commands issued by my brain. Once before, I’d felt raw, stupefying terror as I cowered before the beast form of the
Sinsar Dubh
, enduring the most excruciating pain of my life, pain I’d not believed it possible to survive. The mere presence of this pile of refuse incited similar terror, and like a deer shocked by blinding headlights, I was incapable of fighting or fleeing.

Run, hide, draw your spear
. But I was able to do none of those things. Gripped by panic, I prayed the walking refuse/guts pile never noticed me, and I didn’t even know why.

Only that I wanted to pass beyond this thing’s regard
forever
.

I stood, not breathing, not sure I could breathe again if it chose to remain in close proximity, while it clattered past my own junk heap, which I’d created that afternoon, rattling like an ancient, badly made machine.

I had no idea if it was alive or fabricated, sentient or programmed. Only that if it had purpose—it was one I never wanted to know.

I gasped softly, finally managing a breath.

Still, I stood motionless in the doorway, trying to shake off the body-numbing terror, until at last it disappeared and my Hunter arrived.

 

THE JADA JOURNAL

 

August 5 AWC

NEW DUBLINERS BEWARE!

The Hoar Frost King—the Unseelie that recently iced Dublin and froze people to death—left areas of great danger in our city. These spots appear to be round black spheres, suspended in the air, anywhere from five to twenty feet above the ground.

THEY ARE LETHAL!

Do NOT TOUCH the spheres or disturb them in any way.

The Guardians have been cordoning them off to keep you safe. If you see one of these black spheres that hasn’t been cordoned off please

REPORT IT to the Guardians at DUBLIN CASTLE.

These spheres will GROW if you toss anything in,

and pose a GRAVE THREAT to our world if they get bigger.

PROTECT YOURSELVES. PROTECT OUR WORLD.

If you see one near

STEER CLEAR OF THE SPHERE!

 

Dancer grinned. “I especially like the last part. Nice rhyme.”

Jada was far from pleased with the paper. “They ‘appear to be round black spheres’? How much more redundant could that be? A sphere is round.”

“Some folks don’t think like that, Jada. You know you have to spoon-feed when conveying information to the masses. Keep it simple, stupid.”

She shot him a cool look.

“I’m not saying you’re stupid. Christ, Mega. We both know your brain weighs more than your whole head.”

“A logistical impossibility.”

“Not with you. Your brain probably exists in a higher dimension than your body. I think the paper’s perfect. It communicates exactly what we want to get across in the simplest possible terms. Now freeze-frame me around like you used to
so we can slap these things up. It’ll be like old times.” He arched a brow. “A month ago for me.”

Old times. It was difficult for her to wrap her brain around the fact that she’d lived so much life while he’d lived so little.

“I’ll put them up and be back soon.”

“Don’t do that to me,” Dancer said coolly. “Once, you deposited me on the sidelines at the abbey, the night we battled the HFK. Then you got deposited. You know how it feels. We’re a team. Even if I’m only fucking human, I’ve proved useful many times.”

She looked at him sharply. There was someone much older than a seventeen-year-old in his eyes. “You’re…less indestructible than I am. We need your mind on the black hole problem.”

“So, you want to park me somewhere to guarantee free access to my brain? Get a clue: ‘only fucking humans’ have been going to war for this world since the dawn of time. You’re not the only one that can make a difference. Your attitude invalidates the efforts of every military man and woman on this planet.”

“You could die. Exposing you to risk is illogical.”

“We all can. Any time, Mega. Shit happens.” He looked at her levelly, with those brilliant aqua eyes. “Bugger it, my whole family’s gone and we both know it. You think you’re the only one left with something to prove, something worth putting your life on the line for? If we don’t work together, I work alone. But I
work
.” He gave her a faintly bitter smile. “With or without you. Look at it this way, if you keep me
close, you have a better chance of keeping me alive. If you don’t, who knows what danger I could get myself into?”

“That’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t.”

“You sound just like him.”

“Not necessarily a bad thing all the time,” Dancer said, intuiting exactly who she meant: Ryodan.

“Trying to rope me—”

“Bloody hell, Jada, I’m not trying to rope you. I’m trying to work with you. Leave it to you to decide someone helping is a hindrance or a cage.”

She went still. This wasn’t Dancer. Not the Dancer she knew, the one who always went along with her decisions. Never gave her guff. Well, except for once. “You never used to talk to me like this before,” she said coolly.

He snorted. “I was never willing to risk it. You ran at the drop of a hat. My every move was designed to keep the magnificent Mega from dashing off. One wrong phrase, one hint of emotion or expectation, and she vanished into the night. I watched every bloody word. I lived with the constant awareness that if I cared about you and you figured it out, you’d leave. Then you left. Again. For another month. Didn’t even tell me you were back. Then I heard you told Ryodan’s men you weren’t even willing to work with me. Was I dead to you? You shut me out completely and now only spend time with me because you have a mission you need me for. I’m sorry if you don’t like what I have to say but I’m not walking on eggshells around you anymore. If you want to avail yourself of my many splendid qualities—and they
are
pretty stupendous,” he flashed her a smile, “accord me the courtesy I
give you. Take me as I am. A real person, with desires and boundaries of my own.”

Jada spun on her heel and began to walk away.

“Great. And there you go. Fine. I’ll be fine alone. I’m always fine alone,” he shouted after her. “It’s just that you’re the only person I ever feel completely alive with. You’re the only girl that ever gets half of what I say. Do I really have to come up with some fucking superpower just to hang out with you?”

She stopped. Completely alive. She remembered feeling that once. Running the streets of her town with him, laughing and planning and fighting, amazed and thrilled that she got to be alive in such an exciting time. She remembered, too, the unique feeling of being so easily understood by him. They’d had an effortless rapport.

“Run away,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s what you do best.”

Killing was what she did best. She didn’t run anymore. She never ran. She knew the price. She never reacted. Merely divined the logical, efficient action most likely to yield intended results and pursued it.

Was she running?

She went still, sought that cold clear place inside herself, tacked the emotions and elements of their interaction on a truth table of sorts, analyzing her responses. She pinned his words here, overlaid the subtext, her words there, interpreting the subtext. Then in the middle of the whole thing she taped up the question:
What harm if I let Dancer help me hang the papers?

Absolutely none.

In fact, there was more potential for something to go wrong if she left him behind.

There was an unacceptable amount of “reaction” evident in her actions. She knew better. She who controlled herself, survived.

She turned around. “You may come with me.”

“Why do I feel like I just won the battle but lost the war?” he said softly.

The slipstream was beautiful, trailing past them like a starry tunnel. It took thirty minutes to plaster papers around Dublin proper. Hours to return for more at the old Bartlett Building, then dash around the outlying districts, distributing them far and wide, knocking on doors, hanging them on houses with lights on inside when no one answered.

It felt good to be back out, taking care of her city again. Along the way they tore down every
Dublin Daily
they saw, as they’d been written in a way that imparted no useful news and incited fear. For the dozenth time she wondered who was crafting the slanted things. All they’d done was turn the entire city on her and Mac.

“Holy human surfboards, you caught a perfect wave every time!” Dancer exploded when they paused, back in town, near the River Liffey. “Not one rough start or stop. We didn’t hit a bloody thing!” His beautiful eyes were brilliant with excitement. “That was incredible! You’ve gotten massively better at freeze-framing.”

“I learned a few things Silverside.” She winced inwardly
at his Batman quip. She’d given them up long ago. Shortly after she’d accepted that Ryodan had never read a single comic and had no idea the lengths to which Batman and his fearless sidekick would go for each other.

“No kidding. It felt different. Instead of trying to force yourself into something that didn’t want us there, you were in sync with it. One with the force.”

She had Shazam to thank. She would never have survived without her cranky, mopey wizard/bear/cat manic-depressive binge-eater.

He was watching her. “Did you meet anyone in there? Did you have friends?”

“A few. I don’t want to talk about it.” Some things were private. She’d lost too much. She wasn’t losing anything else. Feeling suddenly drained, she grabbed a couple of power bars from her pack, ripped them open, dropped down on a nearby bench, and shoved one after another into her mouth. She missed the glistening silvery pods Shazam had encouraged her to eat on the planet with the dancing vines, the ones that had kept her fueled for days. She’d filled her pack with them before she left that world and had been rationing them for herself since. Back on this world, food didn’t pack nearly the energy punch as it had on many in the Silvers. Too much processing, not enough purity. Or maybe Earth just didn’t have any raw elemental magic in the soil anymore.

They sat in silence for a time, watching the river roll by.

When Dancer touched her hand, she moved it quickly. Nearly stiffened but caught herself.

“Easy, wild thing.”

She looked at him. “Is that what you think I am?” Others thought her rigid, passionless.

“I see it in your eyes. Deep. You bank it. Wilder than you were before. And, I have to say I like it. But you’re something else, too. Softer in some places.”

He was clearly deranged. There was nothing soft about her.

He put his hand on the bench between them, palm up, fingers relaxed, and gave her a look. It was an invitation. His hand would stay or go, as she wished.

How long had it been since she’d twined her fingers with someone’s, felt that click as they locked into place, the heat of someone’s palm against hers? The feeling that she wasn’t alone, that someone was in life with her. Young, they’d raced through the streets, holding hands and carrying bombs and laughing their asses off.

“When we’re kids,” Dancer said, “we’re made of steel. And we think we’re invincible but stuff happens and that steel gets stretched and pulled and twisted into impossible shapes. Most people are torn apart by the time they’re married and have kids of their own. But some people, the few, figure out how to let that steel heat and bend. And in all the places other people break, they get stronger.”

Eyes narrowed, curious, she moved her hand to his, placed it on top, palm to palm. He didn’t try to lace their fingers together. Just sat there, her hand resting lightly on his. She suspended the moment, absorbed it, tried to wrap her brain around it. But brains didn’t wrap well around hands.

“How did you get wise?” she said. “Nothing ever happened to you. Until the walls fell, your life was charmed.”
She didn’t mean to sound cutting. It was simply the truth. It had fascinated and bewildered the teen she’d been. They’d been so much alike, sprung from opposite sides of a wide track. She’d had a nightmarish childhood, and his had been storybook perfect. Yet they’d understood everything about each other without ever having to say much of anything.

“I’ve got a bloody IQ through the bloody roof,” he said dryly. “Besides, you don’t have to suffer what other people have in order to understand. Not if you have half a brain and a willing heart. And where you’re concerned, Mega, my heart’s always been willing. I hate that you got lost in the Silvers and I didn’t even know it. I hate that you suffered. But I can’t say I’m sorry you grew up.”

She stared out over the water, saying nothing. She had no idea what to say. He wanted to be more than friends. He’d made that clear today. She wasn’t there. One day, maybe she could be. In the meantime this was oddly…well, odd. And a little…nice. She’d known the closest thing to safe she’d ever felt, years ago with Dancer.

But there was something in her that was—as others believed—rigid and unyielding, something that couldn’t bear the thought of bending even one inch. And touching and caring meant bending. There was a place inside her where she simply couldn’t let go. She’d let go of the wrong things.

They thought she was fearless. She wished that were true. There were things she feared.

She’d thought the day she got back to Dublin would be the best day of her life.

It had been one of the worst. The cost had been too high.

She drew her hand back to her lap.

Dancer stood up. “What do you say we work on our own map of the anomalies? Screw Ryodan and his monopoly on information.”

And just like that her sorrow ebbed and she stood like the young, strong woman she was, not the woman handicapped by tears locked in a box deep inside her. Fully aware, as Ryodan had said, that it was impossible to seal away a single emotion. Fully aware the price of no pain was no joy.

Because if those tears ever started to flow, she’d drown.

Jada hurried through the abbey, books tucked beneath her arm. She had two hours before she would head to Chester’s. She’d spent the day putting up her papers and mapping black holes around Dublin. On the way back to the abbey, she’d stood outside the funnel cloud that surrounded BB&B, staring up at it, forcing herself to remain cold, logical, an arrow toward the goal. Nothing more.

They had their agenda on Earth. She had her own elsewhere.

She wanted to go back into the Unseelie king’s library but wasn’t willing to lose more time Earthside. One never knew the price of stepping through a Silver. Besides, until she spoke with Barrons, she had no way of deciding which Silver would take her into the White Mansion. Five and a half years Silverside and she’d never managed to learn a bloody thing about the mirrors that could so dispassionately give or take life.

Penetrating the funnel cloud wouldn’t be a problem. She’d mastered that magic year two, Silverside. A few well-placed
wards could degrade almost any self-contained Fae storm, allowing passage.

For a month now, ever since she’d arrived back in Dublin, she’d been looking for a ward, a spell, a totem, some way to mark a Silver, embed something on its shimmering surface, something visible from both sides.

Her efforts had yielded no fruit.