Текст книги "Shadowfever"

Автор книги: Karen Marie Moning

Соавторы: Karen Marie Moning,Karen Marie Moning
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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 37 страниц)

“You mean what you all are,” I corrected. “All nine of you.”

“Careful, Mac. Some things don’t get talked about. Ever.”

I reached for my spear. He could have told me the truth on the cliff, but, like Barrons, he’d let me suffer. The more I thought about how both of them had withheld a truth from me that would have spared me so much agony, the angrier I got. “I was just making sure that when I stab and kill you, you’ll come back so I can do it again.”

The spear was in my hand, but suddenly my hand was in a huge fist, and the tip was pointed at my own throat.

Ryodan could move like Dani, Barrons, and the others. So fast I couldn’t defend myself. He stood behind me, arm snaked around my waist.

“Never make that threat. Put it away, Mac. Or I’ll take it for good.” He jabbed me with the tip of the spear in warning. “Barrons wouldn’t let you do that.”

“You might be surprised what Barrons would let me do.”

“Because he thinks I’m a traitor.”

“I saw you with Darroc myself. I heard you in the alley last night. When deeds and words align, the truth is plain.”

“I believed both of you were dead. What did you expect? The same survival instinct you admire in each other offends you in me. I think it worries you. Makes me more unpredictable than you’d like.”

He guided my hand to the holster and tucked the spear back in. “ ‘Unpredictable’ is the key word there. Did you flip, Mac?”

“Do I look like I flipped?”

He brushed hair from my face, tucked it gently behind an ear. I shivered. He bristled with the same kind of energy Barrons did—heat, muscle, and danger. When Barrons touches me, it turns me on. But when Ryodan stands behind me, locking me in place with an arm of steel, touching me tenderly—it scares the hell out of me.

“Let me tell you something about flipping, Mac,” he said softly against my ear. “Most people are good and occasionally do something they know is bad. Some people are bad and struggle every day to keep it under control. Others are corrupt to the core and don’t give a damn, as long as they don’t get caught. But evil is a completely different creature, Mac. Evil is bad that believes it’s good.”

“What are you saying, Ryodan? That I flipped and I’m too stupid to know it?”

“If the shoe fits.”

“It doesn’t. Point of curiosity: Which camp are you and Barrons in? Corrupt to the core and don’t give a damn?”

“Why do you think the Book killed Darroc?”

I knew where this was going. Ryodan’s theory was that I wasn’t tracking the Sinsar Dubh; it kept finding me. He was about to tell me that it had killed Darroc to further its goal of getting closer to me. He was wrong. “It killed Darroc to stop him. It told me no one was going to control it. It must have learned from me that Darroc knew a shortcut to containing and using it, and it killed him to prevent me or anyone else from discovering it.”

“How did it learn that from you? A cozy chat over tea?”

“It found me the night I stayed at Darroc’s penthouse. It … skims my mind. Tasting me, knowing me, it says.”

His arm tightened painfully around my waist.

“You’re hurting me!”

His arm relaxed minutely. “Did you tell Barrons this?”

“Barrons hasn’t exactly been in a talkative mood.”

Ryodan was no longer standing behind me. He was at his desk again. I rubbed my stomach, relieved he was no longer touching me. He was so much like Barrons that his body against mine was disturbing on multiple levels. I couldn’t make out much of his face in the shadows, but I didn’t need to. He was so furious that he didn’t trust himself not to harm me if he remained close.

“The Sinsar Dubh can pick thoughts out of your mind? Have you considered the potential ramifications of that?”

I shrugged. It wasn’t as if I had much time to consider anything. I’d been so busy jumping from the frying pan into the fire and back into the frying pan again that reflection upon the various possibles wasn’t top on my list of priorities. Who could worry about potential ramifications when the real ones kept kicking you in the teeth?

“It means that it knows about us,” he said tightly.

“First of all, why would it care? Second, I hardly know anything about you at all, so it couldn’t have gotten much.”

“I’ve killed for less.”

Of that I had no doubt. Ryodan was stone cold and suffered no conflicts about it. “If it even bothered skimming for information about you, the only thing it knows is that I thought the two of you were dead and you’re not.”

“Not true. You know a great deal more than that, and that the Book might know about us at all should have been the first thing you told Barrons the moment he changed back and you knew he was alive.”

“Well, forgive the fuck out of me for being shocked senseless when I realized he wasn’t dead. Why didn’t you tell me he was the beast, Ryodan? Why did we have to kill him? I know it’s not because he can’t control himself when he’s the beast. He controlled himself last night when he rescued me from the Book. He can change at will, can’t he? What happened in the Silvers? Does the place have some kind of effect on you, make you uncontrollable?”

I almost slapped myself in the forehead. Barrons had told me that the reason he tattooed himself with black and red protection runes was because using dark magic called a price due, unless you took measures to protect yourself against the backlash. Did using IYD require the blackest kind of magic to make it work? Would it grant his demand to magically transport him to me no matter where I was but devolve him into the darkest, most savage version of himself as the price?

“It was because of how he got there, wasn’t it?” I said. “The spell you two worked sent him to me like it was supposed to, but the cost was that it turned him into the lowest common denominator of himself. An insane killing machine. Which he figured was all right, because if I was dying, I’d probably need a killing machine around. A champion to show up and decimate all my enemies. That was it, wasn’t it?”

Ryodan had gone completely still. Not a muscle twitched. I wasn’t sure he was breathing.

“He knew what would happen if I pressed IYD, and he made plans with you to handle it.” That was Barrons, always thinking, always managing risks where I was concerned. “He tattooed me so he would sense his mark on me and not kill me. And you were supposed to track him—that’s why you both wear those cuffs, so you can find each other—and kill him so he’d come back as the man form of himself, and I’d never be any wiser. I’d get rescued and have no clue it was Barrons who’d done it or that he sometimes turns into a beast. But you screwed up. And that’s what he was mad at you about this morning on the phone. It was your failure to kill him that let the cat out of the bag.”

A tiny muscle twitched in his jaw. He was pissed. I was definitely right.

“He can always circumvent the price of black magic,” I marveled. “When you kill him, he comes back exactly the same as he was before, doesn’t he? He could tattoo his whole body with protection runes and, when he ran out of skin, kill himself so he could come back with a clean slate, to start all over.” That was why his tattoos weren’t always the same. “Talk about your ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card! And if you hadn’t botched the plan, I would never have known. It’s your fault I know, Ryodan. I think that means it’s not me you should kill, it’s yourself. Oh, gee, wait,” I said sarcastically, “that wouldn’t work, would it?”

“Did you know that when you were in the Silvers, the Book paid a visit to the abbey?”

I winced. “Dani told me. How many of the sidhe-seers were killed?”

“Irrelevant. Why do you think it went to the abbey?”

Irrelevant, my ass. Being unable to die—I was still having a hard time wrapping my brain around that and was certain I could come up with some creative ways to test it—had given him a Fae share of arrogance and disdain for mortals. “Let me guess,” I said tartly. “This is somehow my fault, too?”

Ryodan pressed a button on his desk and spoke into an intercom. “Tell Barrons to leave them where they are. They’re safer there. I’ll bring her to them. We’ve got a problem. A big one.” He released the button. “Yes,” he said to me, “it is. I think that when it couldn’t find you, it went to the abbey, hunting for you, trying to get a lead on you.”

“Do the others believe this, too, or is it your personal delusion? Perspective, Ryodan. Get some.”

“I’m not the one that needs it.”

“Why do you hate me?”

“I have no emotion about you at all, Mac. I take care of my own. You are not my own.” He moved past me, pressed his palm to the door, and stood waiting for me to exit. “Barrons wants you to see your parents so as you go about your business you will remember they are here. With me.”

“Lovely,” I muttered.

“I suffer them to live, against my better judgment, as a favor to Barrons. He’s running out of favors. Remember that, too.”

19

“You put them in a glass room? Can’t you give them a little privacy?” I stared at my parents through the wall. Although comfortably furnished with rugs, a bed, a sofa, a small table, and two chairs, the room was made of the same kind of glass as Ryodan’s office, only in reverse. Mom and Dad couldn’t see out, but everyone else could see in.

I glanced to the left. The shower had an enclosure of sorts; the toilet didn’t. “Do they know people can see in?”

“I spare their lives and you ask for privacy. This isn’t for you. Or them. It’s insurance for me,” Ryodan said.

Barrons joined us. “I told Fade to bring up sheets and duct tape.”

“For what?” I was horrified. Were they going to roll my parents up in sheets and duct-tape them?

“They can tape sheets to the walls.”

“Oh,” I said. “Thanks,” I muttered. I was silent a moment, watching them through the glass. Dad was sitting on the sofa, facing my mom, holding her hands, talking softly. He was robust and handsome as ever, and the extra silver in his hair only made him look more distinguished. Mom had that glazed look she got whenever she couldn’t deal, and I knew he was probably talking about normal, everyday things to ground her in a reality she could face. I had no doubt he was assuring her everything was going to be okay, because that was what Jack Lane did: exuded safety and security, made you believe he could deliver on anything he promised. It was what made him such a great lawyer, such a wonderful father. No obstacle had ever seemed too large, no threat too scary with Daddy around. “I need to talk to them.”

“No,” Ryodan said.

“Why?” Barrons demanded.

I hesitated. I’d never told Barrons that I’d gone to Ashford with V’lane, or admitted that I’d overheard a conversation between my parents in which they’d been discussing the circumstances of our adoption, or that Daddy had mentioned a prophecy about me—one in which I supposedly ended up dooming the whole world.

Nana O’Reilly—the ninety-seven-year-old woman whom Kat and I visited in her house by the sea—had mentioned two prophecies: one that promised hope, the other warning of a blight upon the earth. If I genuinely was part of either one, I was determined to fulfill the former. I wanted to know more about the latter so I could avoid it.

I wanted the names of the people Daddy had spoken to all those years ago when he’d gone to Ireland to dig into Alina’s medical history when she was sick. I wanted to know exactly what they’d told him.

But there was no way I could ask him about any of it in front of Barrons and Ryodan. If they got the smallest whiff of some prophecy in which I supposedly doomed the world, they might just lock me up and throw away the key.

“I miss them. They need to know I’m alive.”

“They know. I videoed you walking in, and Barrons showed them the clip.” Ryodan paused, then added, “Jack insisted on it.”

I glanced sharply at Ryodan. Was that a faint smile on his face? He liked my father. I’d heard it in his voice when he called him Jack. He respected him. I glowed inside. I’m always proud of my daddy, but when somebody like Ryodan likes him … Even though I couldn’t stand the owner of Chester’s, I took it as a compliment.

“Too bad you’re not really his daughter. He comes from strong blood.”

I gave him a look I learned from Barrons.

“But nobody’s sure exactly where you came from, are they, Mac?”

“My biological mother was Isla O’Connor, leader of the Haven for the sidhe-seers,” I informed him coolly.

“Really? Because I did some digging when Barrons told me what the O’Reilly woman said, and it turns out Isla had only one child, not two. Her name was Alina. And she’s dead.”

“Obviously you didn’t dig deep enough,” I retorted. But I suddenly felt uneasy. So that was why Nana had called me Alina. “She must have had me later. Nana just didn’t know about it.”

“Isla was the only member of the Haven who survived the night the Sinsar Dubh was set free from its prison.”

“Where are you getting your information?” I demanded.

“And there was no ‘later’ for her.”

“How do you know that? What do you know about my mother, Ryodan?”

Ryodan glanced at Barrons. The look they exchanged spoke volumes, but unfortunately I had no idea what language they were speaking.

I glared at Barrons. “And you wonder why I don’t confide in you? You don’t tell me anything.”

“Leave it alone. I’m handling this,” Barrons told Ryodan.

“I suggest you do a better job.”

“And I suggest you go fuck yourself.”

“She didn’t tell you that the Book visited her the other night at Darroc’s. It skims her mind, picks up her thoughts.”

“I think it only picks up the surface ones,” I said hastily. “Not everything.”

“It killed Darroc because it learned from her that he knew a shortcut. Wonder what else it learned.”

Barrons’ head whipped around and he stared at me. You said nothing of this to me?

You said nothing to me about my mother? What do you know about her? About me?

His dark gaze promised retribution for my oversight.

So did mine.

I hated this. Barrons and I were enemies. It confused my head and hurt my heart. I’d grieved him as if I’d lost the only person who mattered to me, and now here we were, adversaries again. Were we destined to be eternal enemies?

One of us is going to have to trust the other, I told him.

You first, Ms. Lane.

That was the whole problem. Neither of us would take the risk. I had a lengthy list of reasons why I shouldn’t, and they were sound. My daddy could take the case all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing my side. Barrons didn’t inspire trust. He didn’t even bother trying.

When hell freezes over, Barrons.

Same bloody page, Ms. Lane. Same bloody—

I turned my gaze away in the middle of his sentence, the ocular equivalent of flipping him the bird.

Ryodan was watching us, hard.

“Butt out,” I warned. “This is between him and me. All you need to do is keep my parents safe and—”

“Little hard to do when you’re such a fucking loose cannon.”

The door burst open, and Lor and two others stalked in. Tension rolled off them, so thick it seemed to suck the oxygen right out of the room.

Fade followed behind them, carrying a pile of sheets and a roll of duct tape.

“You’re never going to believe what just walked into the club,” Lor told Ryodan. “Tell me to change. Say the word.”

My eyes narrowed. Did Lor need Ryodan’s permission? Or was it a courtesy in his club?

“The Sinsar Dubh, right?” Ryodan gave Barrons a pointed look. “Because it skimmed Mac’s mind and now it knows where to find us.”

“You are so frigging paranoid, Ryodan. Why would it even want to find you?” I said.

“Maybe,” one of the other men said, “we’d make a damned good ride for it, and we don’t like being used.”

“Have you taught her nothing of strategy?” Ryodan fired at Barrons.

“I haven’t had all that much time,” Barrons said.

“A Seelie. A fucking prince,” Lor said. “He’s got a couple hundred more Seelie from a dozen different castes waiting outside. Threatening war. Demanding you shut the place down, stop feeding the Unseelie.”

I gasped. “V’lane?”

“You told him to come!” Ryodan accused.

“She knows him?” Lor exploded.

“It’s her other boyfriend,” Ryodan said.

“Besides Darroc?” one of the other men demanded.

Lor glared at Barrons. “When are you going to wise up and shut this bitch down for good?”

The testosterone level was rising to a dangerous high. I suddenly worried they might all transform into beasts. I’d be stuck in the middle of a pack of snarling monsters with talons and fangs and horns, and I didn’t think for one minute Barrons’ brand would protect me from the other five. I wasn’t even sure it would work on him.

“You think it’s the Seelie you need to be worrying about?” said Fade.

“What the fuck do you think we should be worrying about?” Barrons said impatiently.

Fade swung his gun up and pumped a half dozen rounds into Barrons before anyone even managed to move. “Me.”

20

The only reason it worked was because Fade caught him off guard. Barrons can move so fast that shooting him isn’t the easiest way to kill him.

But he didn’t expect Fade to shoot him, and Fade is as fast as Barrons.

I don’t know what Barrons and the others are, but until someone tells me otherwise, I’m going to assume they’re all the same. They have heightened senses: smell, vision, and hearing. Barrons has the strength of ten men, and his bones are extremely resilient. I imagine they have to be, so he can transform the way he does. I’ve watched Barrons drop thirty feet and land on his feet, as light as a cat.

Fade surprised them all. He managed to gun down Ryodan, too, before the others attacked him and took his gun away.

Fade stumbled back against the wall, and I thought how strange it was that he’d lost his weapon but was still hanging on to the sheets.

“What the fuck, Fade?” Lor snarled. “Forget your meds again?”

Fade looked at me. “Your parents are next,” he purred. “I will destroy everything you love, MacKayla.”

I sucked in a horrified breath. Ryodan wasn’t paranoid. He’d been right. The Sinsar Dubh had skimmed me, lifted information about them from my mind, and acted on it swiftly.

It was right here—in the room with me!

It had learned about Chester’s and had come to take a look around, see what it might see.

I’d been out of the Silvers for three days—and this was the third day in a row it had found me!

Was it really my fault that it had gone to the abbey because it hadn’t been able to find me in Dublin? Was I indirectly responsible for all the sidhe-seers who’d died that night? How long had it been here, moving from person to person, working its way closer to me all the while?

Long enough to have discovered my parents—

“It’s in the sheets,” I cried. “Get the sheets!” I regretted the words the instant I said them. Whoever touched it would also be possessed, and the other men still had guns. “No, don’t touch the sheets!” I screamed.

Fade flashed into motion and was gone.

The others followed, leaving me alone.

I dashed for the door, but it slid shut before I could get there, and I had no clue how to open it. I pressed my palm frantically to half a dozen places, with no success.

I whirled, staring into the other room. If the Sinsar Dubh got to my parents … if Fade carried it in there … if it killed them …

I couldn’t bear to think about it.

My parents were standing up, looking at me, but I knew they couldn’t see me. They were merely staring in the direction from which the gunfire had come.

The door hissed open and closed behind me.

“I have to get you out of here,” Lor growled.

I spun around, spear in my fist. “How do I know you’re not the Book?”

“Look at me. Where could I hide it?”

His pants and shirt clung to his muscular body like a second skin. I checked his shoes. Boots. “Take them off.”

He kicked them off. “Now you. Lose the coat.”

I slipped out of it.

“Skirt, too.”

“We don’t have time for this,” I snapped. “My parents—”

“Fade left the club. They’re safe for now.”

“That’s not good enough!”

“We’ll take precautions. We’re on guard now. Someone has to carry it in. No one will enter the upper levels of the club or your parents’ cell with clothes on.”

My brows shot up. That was going to be a real shocker for my mom.

“I said lose the skirt.”

“How could Fade have passed it to me?”

“Minuscule possibility. I take no chances.”

Sighing, I unzipped and dropped it. My sweater was snug. I had on a black thong. My boots clung to the shape of my legs. No place to hide a book. “Happy?”

“Hardly.”

As I zipped my skirt back up, I took a last longing glance at my parents and turned away. My gaze hitched as it passed over Barrons’ crumpled body, and I flinched violently.

Here I was with Barrons dead. Again.

I knew he wasn’t really dead, or at least he wouldn’t be for long, but my grief was too fresh and my emotions too complicated.

“How long until he—” I broke off, horrified to hear the catch of a sob in my voice.

“Why do you give a fuck?”

“I don’t, I mean, I just—shit!” I turned and beat at the wall with my fists. I didn’t care that my parents could hear the dull thud or that the wall shuddered beneath my blows. I didn’t care what Lor thought of me. I hated Barrons being dead. Hated it. Beyond reason. Beyond my understanding.

I punched until Lor caught my bloody fists and pulled me away.

“How long?” I demanded. “I want to know! Answer me or else!”

He grinned faintly. “What, you gonna feed me bloody runes?”

I scowled. “Do you guys tell each other everything?”

“Not everything. Pri-ya sounded pretty fucking fascinating to me. Never did get all the details.”

“How long? Answer me.” I used Voice to force him.

“Not sure this time. But it won’t be as long as last time. And if you ever try to Voice me again, woman, I’ll kill your parents myself.”