"Dreamfever" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moning Karen Marie)

CHAPTER 6

I was mad as hell.

I had so many grievances that I didn’t even know where to begin listing them.

I was pissed-off walking. Or rather pissed-off sitting, tangled in crimson silk sheets that smelled like somebody’d been having a sexathon.

That would be me.

And that made me even madder.

Just when you think your life has gotten as crappy as it can get, it goes and gets crappier. Gee, Mac doesn’t get to have a choice about having sex with someone. Good-bye: dating, flirting, and building up to that special romantic moment. Hello: I’m getting screwed senseless, and then, when I’ve gotten about as low as I can get, I’m getting screwed back to my senses—although I wouldn’t in a million years admit any such thing to the man who was no doubt feeling impossibly smug that, by the power of his sexuality alone, he’d rescued me from the mindless state it had taken multiple Unseelie death-by-sex Fae to drag me to, kicking and screaming.

If I knew Jericho Barrons, he was walking around feeling like his dick was the most huge, magnificent, perfect, important creation under the sun.

Which—I winced—I vaguely recalled telling him a time or two.

Well … maybe several times.

I yanked the sheets up over my breasts with a snarl. The animal I’d been recently hadn’t left me. She was still in me and would be forever. I was glad. I welcomed her feral nature. Pink Mac had needed a good dose of savagery. It was a savage world out there.

I was coldly glad to be alive, glad that I lived another day, no matter the methods by which it had been accomplished. I was also seething, furious at everyone I’d met and everything that had happened to me since the moment I’d left Ashford, Georgia.

Nothing had gone as planned. Not one thing. My sister’s murderer was supposed to be a human monster that I was going to bring to justice, either via Ireland’s Garda or by my own methods. I wasn’t supposed to get caught up in a deadly war between the human race and a supernatural, supersexed, immortal, and mostly invisible race, little more than a weapon to be used by whoever could figure out how to manipulate me most effectively. And that was only the beginning of the many, many things that had gone wrong.

Speaking of manipulative bastards …

What was the point of Barrons’ stamping a tattoo on the back of my skull if he hadn’t been able to use it to find me when I needed help the most? What was the point of V’lane embedding his name in my tongue if, at the crucial moment, it wouldn’t work? Weren’t Barrons and V’lane supposed to be the most powerful, dangerous, brilliant players of all? That was why I’d allied myself with them!

But both had failed me when I’d needed them the most. I’d counted on them. I’d believed Barrons could find me. I’d believed V’lane would instantly appear when summoned. I’d believed Inspector Jayne could help me with certain problems. Those three had been the extent of my diversification.

And who’d saved me?

Dani. A thirteen-year-old kid. A girl.

She’d blasted in, plucked me right out of the LM’s grasp, and whisked me to safety.

No, not safety. Not quite.

She’d taken me to Rowena, who locked me in a cell and left me alone, hellishly alone.

To die?

There were memories from the time of my capture by the LM and my early incarceration at the abbey that weren’t accessible. They were in me. I could feel them, deep, dark, secreted away in a mind that had been impressionable but uncomprehending. They weren’t exactly memories, because memory is stored by a brain that functions and mine hadn’t during those traumatic hours. More like imprints. Photographs snapped but not understood. Conversations overheard. Things seen. It would take work to dredge them from the muck at the bottom of my psyche.

But I would.

The LM hadn’t expected me to ever escape.

Rowena hadn’t expected me to live.

“Surprise,” I purred. “I did.”

I tossed back the sheet and pushed up from the bed. My body felt good. It was sleeker, stronger than I remembered it being. I stretched and glanced down, then blinked, admiring myself.

Gone was all softness, save my breasts and butt. My calves, thighs, arms, stomach—all were toned, shaped by smooth, sleek muscle. I flexed a bicep. I had one. Long fingernails dug into my palms. I studied them. On Samhain, they’d been cut to the quick.

Just how long had I been having sex with Jericho Barrons? How long did it take to resculpt a body like mine had been into—Savage Me was pleased to note—this much more useful new shape? What had we been doing? Constant sexual gymnastics?

I shut down that thought. I had a few too many memories that weren’t remotely blurry, and they gave rise to impossibly conflicting emotions.

Like: Thanks for saving me, Barrons—too bad I’m going to have to kill you for doing those things to me and seeing me like that.

I’d had sex with Jericho Barrons.

Not just sex. Incredibly raw, intensely intimate, completely uninhibited sex.

I’d done everything a woman could do with a man. I’d pretty much worshipped every inch of him. And he’d let me.

Oh, no, much more than that—he’d enthusiastically participated. He’d egged me on. He’d plunged right into my animalistic frenzy with me, met me move for move in that dark lust-crazed cave where I’d been living.

I turned to stare at the big silk-sheeted bed. It was exactly the kind of bed I’d expect Barrons to sleep in. Sun King ornate, four-postered, draped in silk and velvet; a sensual masculine lair.

There were fur-lined handcuffs on the bedposts. I got knotted up in that memory for a minute before I managed to extricate myself.

My breathing was shallow and my hands were fists. “Oh, yes, I’m going to have to kill you, Barrons,” I said coolly. Partly because, for the most minuscule sliver of an instant, while looking at those handcuffs, I’d imagined myself climbing back into bed and pretending I wasn’t cured yet.

And I’d thought interacting with Barrons had been difficult before. Since the day we’d met, we’d maintained a careful wall of non-intimacy between us and rarely slipped. I was Ms. Lane. He was Barrons. That wall had been blasted to dust, and I hadn’t had anything to say about it. We’d fast-forwarded from formal and testy most of the time to See Mac Bare All/Body amp; Soul, without a single ounce of relationship progression along the way. He’d seen me at my absolute worst, my most vulnerable, while he’d been in complete control, and I still didn’t really know a damned thing about him.

We’d gotten as close as two human beings—well, overlooking the fact that he wasn’t one—possibly could. Now, in addition to wondering whether he’d spiked the Orb of D’Jai with deadly Shades before he’d given it to me to give to the sidhe-seers and whether he’d sabotaged the ritual at the MacKeltars’ on Halloween because he wanted the walls down between Fae and human realms, I knew that killing aroused him. Turned him on. I hadn’t forgotten that enlightening little detail I’d found poking around inside his skull. It cast a harsh new light on the moment I’d watched him walk out of an Unseelie mirror carrying the savaged, very dead body of a young woman.

Had he killed her just for fun?

My intuition wasn’t buying it.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure what my intuition was worth where he was concerned. If there was one thing I’d learned about Barrons, it was that speculating about him was as pointless as tap-dancing on quicksand, with no solid ground in sight.

Speaking of solid ground …

I glanced around. I was below it. I can feel belowground in my bones. I hate being there. I hate confined, windowless spaces. Yet, for a time, this space belowground had been my harbor in a brutal storm.

What had happened to Dublin while I’d been Pri-ya, clawing my way back to sanity? What had happened to the world?

How was Ashford? Were Mom and Dad okay? Had anyone gotten the Book? What was happening out there with all the Unseelie free? Was Aoibheal, Queen of the Seelie, okay, or had the Unseelie gotten to her, too, on Halloween? She was the only one with any hope of ever reimprisoning them. I needed her to be alive. Where was V’lane? Why hadn’t he come for me? Was he dead? I felt a moment of pure panic. Maybe he’d tried to rescue me after all and that was one of those confused imprints, and the LM had taken my spear and—

My fingers clenched on emptiness. Oh, God, where was my spear? The ancient Spear of Destiny was one of only two weapons known to man that was capable of killing an immortal Fae. I remembered throwing it away. I remembered it hissing and steaming at the foot of a basin of holy water.

Where had it gone from there?

Was it possible it was still lying there, in the church? Could I be so lucky?

I needed it back.

Once I had it, I could get to work on other things. Like figuring out how the Unseelie Princes had managed to turn it against me at the critical moment. True to Fae lore—which held that the Unseelie couldn’t touch any of the Seelie Hallows, and vice versa—they hadn’t been able to physically take it from me, but they’d managed to coerce me into turning it on myself, forcing me to choose between stabbing myself with it or tossing it, putting me completely at their mercy.

I not only needed my spear back—I needed to learn how to control it.

Then I was going to kill every Unseelie I could get my Nullifying hands on, slaughtering my way straight up the chain of command, not stopping until I’d taken out all the Unseelie Princes, the LM, and maybe even the Unseelie King himself. And the Seelie, too, with the exception of those I needed to restore order to our world. I was sick of the terrifying, inhumanly beautiful, homicidal interlopers. It had been our planet first and, although V’lane didn’t seem to think that should count for much, it was all that mattered to me. They were scavengers who’d damaged their own world so badly that they’d had to go find another one—and now they were doing the same thing to ours. They were arrogant immortals who’d created an immortal abomination—the Unseelie court, the dark mirror of their race—and they’d lost control of them on our planet. And who was paying the highest price for all their mistakes?

Me. That’s who.

I was going to get tougher, smarter, faster, stronger, and spend the rest of my life killing Fae, if that was what it took to put my world back the way it used to be.

I might not have a spear at the moment, but I was alive and I was … different. Something irrevocable had changed inside me. I could feel it.

I wasn’t entirely certain what it was.

But I liked it.

I ransacked the room before I left it, looking for weapons. There were none.

Apart from what looked like a hastily plumbed shower in a corner of the room, the rest of it was filled with my belongings that I’d kept at the bookstore.

Wherever we were now, in his efforts to restore my memory, Barrons had gone to some lengths to re-create pretty-in-pink Mac’s world. He’d plastered the walls with blown-up pictures of my parents, of Alina, of us playing volleyball with our friends on the beach back home. My driver’s license was stuck to a lamp shade, next to a photo of Mom. My clothes were draped all over the place, arranged in outfits, complete with matching purses and shoes. Every shade of pink fingernail polish ever made by OPI was lined up on a shelf. Fashion magazines covered the floor, along with some other ones I really hoped he and I hadn’t looked at together. There were peaches-and-cream candles—Alina’s favorite—scattered on every surface. There were dozens of lamps in the room and a blazing Christmas tree.

My backpack was nowhere to be found, but Barrons had obviously been counting on me regaining my sanity, because there was a new leather one, crammed with batteries, LED lights, and a MacHalo. He’d used a black helmet to build it. All the lights were black, except two. Guess he figured I’d’ve graduated from pink if I survived. I still liked pink. I would always like pink. But there wasn’t anything pink inside me anymore. I might be back, but I was black Mac now.

There was nothing useful here. I took a quick shower—I smelled like Jericho Barrons from head to toe—got dressed, strapped the MacHalo on my head, clicked it on, and headed for the door.

I was locked in.

It took me less than a minute to kick the door down. I not only had muscle now, I had another useful tool in my new black toolbox: rage.

Barrons seems to plan for everything. I want to be like him.

I was in a basement.

I found the guns in the crates, stacked next to the deafeningly loud generators that were powering the room I’d been living in, next to what looked like a year’s supply of gasoline.

There were dozens of crates of guns and twice as many crates of ammo. It seemed a little risky to me to keep so much ammunition next to so much gasoline, but who was I to judge? I was just glad it was all there. I sat on a crate and examined the different guns, finally settling for a semiautomatic with a shorter barrel than the rest. It resembled an Uzi, with a few minor differences.

Before all hell had broken loose on Halloween, I’d been researching guns on the Internet and had been angling to get Barrons, with his unlimited connections, to buy me one. The gun I chose now was a PDW: a personal defense weapon. Perfect for a woman of my size and stature. Highly manageable, highly effective, highly illegal. Able to fire even from a prone position. I intended to practice firing from every position possible. Gunfire might not kill Fae, but I was willing to bet it might slow down the non-sifting kind.

I crammed clips of ammunition into my pack everywhere they’d fit, then filled my boots and the pockets of the new black leather coat I’d found draped over a chair in just my size. It irked me that Barrons had been making fashion choices for me, but not enough to be stupid about it: I needed that coat. I was pretty sure it was winter in Dublin, and it had been cold already in late October.

I wasted a lot of time searching the basement for my spear, because I knew Barrons well enough to know that he’d have requisitioned it, if it’d been possible. When I didn’t find it, I ruled out the possibility of it still being at the church. He’d have checked there. Which meant someone else had picked up my spear and backpack. I needed to know who.

I discovered crates of protein bars and loaded up on those, too. Like I said, Barrons plans for everything.

I’m not so sure he planned for one thing, though.

His OOP detector—the one he’d worked so hard to restore to sanity so he could use me some more, tracking down his precious Objects of Power—wasn’t hanging around.

“Thanks,” I told the empty house, “but I’ll take it from here.”

Besides, knowing him, he’d probably amped up his brand on the back of my skull, while I’d slumbered nearly unconscious from one of our marathon sex sessions, or put a new, improved one on me somewhere else. I had no doubt Barrons could find me one way or another. He wasn’t the kind of—whatever he was—that a woman could lose, if he didn’t feel like being lost.

I walked through the silent house, which was crammed with furniture covered with dusty sheets, and stepped out onto the front steps. The house had been built on an elevation with a good view of the neighborhood. I’d spent so much time driving in Dublin, hunting the Sinsar Dubh, that I’d gotten pretty familiar with it. I was on the northern outskirts of the city. Dawn smudged the horizon, and the first rays of sun slanted across a sea of gray roofs.

I smiled.

It was the start of a brand-new day.