Hey, it’s me—Dani. I’m
gonna be taking over for a while. Fecking good thing,
too,
’cause Mac’s in serious trouble. We all are. Last night
everything changed. End-of-the-world stuff. Uh-huh, that
bad. Fae and human worlds collided with the biggest bang
since creation, and everything is a mess.
Fecking
Shades loose in the fecking abbey. Ro through the roof
with
it, screaming that Mac betrayed us. Ordered us to hunt
her.
Bring her in dead or alive. Shut her up or shut her down,
she said. Keep her away from the enemy, because she’s too
powerful a weapon to be used against us. She’s the only
one
who can track the Sinsar Dubh. No way we can let her fall
into the wrong hands, and Ro says any hands but hers are
the
wrong ones.
I know stuff about Mac that she’d kill
me
for, if she knew I knew. Good thing she doesn’t know. I
never want to fight Mac.
But here I am, hunting
her.
I don’t believe she spiked the Orb with
Shades.
Pretty much everyone else does, though. They don’t know
Mac
like I do. I know Mac like we’re sisters. No way she
betrayed us.
Seven hundred thirteen of us alive at
the abbey at five o’clock last night. Five hundred
twenty-two sidhe-seers left at last count. Taking Dublin
back. Hunting Mac. Kicking every bit of Fae ass we see
along
the way.
No sign of her yet. But we’re headed in
the
right direction. There’s an epicenter of power in the
city,
reeking stinking nasty Fae as toxic as the fallout plume
from a nuclear explosion. We all feel it. Taste it.
Practically see the mushroom cloud hanging in the air. We
don’t even talk to one another. Don’t need to. If Mac’s
still in Dublin, that’s where she is, straight ahead. No
way
any sidhe-seer could turn away from this kinda pull. I
hope
she’s nailing their butts with the spear. We’ll fight
back
to back like we did a couple nights ago.
But I’ve
got
this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. . .
.
Bull-fecking-crikey! I don’t feel sick. I never
feel sick. Sick is for wusses and wannabes.
Mac
can
take care of herself. She’s the strongest of us
all.
“?’Cept me,” I mutter, with a swagger and a
grin.
“What?” Jo says behind me.
I don’t
bother answering. They already think I’m cocky enough. I
have reasons to be cocky. Uh-huh, I’m that good.
Five
hundred twenty-two of us closing in. We fight like
banshees
and can do some serious damage, but we’ve got only one
weapon—the Sword of Light—that can kill a Fae.
“And
it’s mine.” I grin again. I can’t help it. Fecking A,
it’s
the supercoolest gig in the world to be a superhero.
Superfast, superstrong, with a few extra “supers” in me
that
Batman would trade all his toys for. What everybody else
wishes they could do, I can. Behind me, Jo says “What?”
again, but I’m not grinning anymore. I’m back to feeling
prowly, pissed. Being fourteen—well, I almost am—blows.
One
minute I’m on top of the world, next I’m mad at
everybody.
Jo says I’m hormonal. She says it gets better. If better
means I’m gonna turn into a grown-up, thanks but not.
Gimme
a blaze of glory any day. Who wants to get old and
wrinkly?
If the Unseelie hadn’t taken the power
grids
down last night, turning the whole city into a Dark Zone,
I’d’ve come after Mac sooner, but Kat made us hide like
cowards ’til dawn. Not enough flashlights, she
said.
Duh, I’m superfast, I said.
Great,
she
said, so you’d have us watch you whiz superfast right
through a Shade and die? Smart, Dani. Real
smart.
Pissed me off, but she had a point. When
I’m
moving like that, it is hard to see what’s coming at me.
With the power grids down, ain’t nobody gonna dispute the
Shades own the night once it falls.
Who put you in
charge? I said, but it was rhetorical and we both knew
it,
and she walked away. Ro put her in charge. Ro always puts
her in charge, even though I’m better, faster, smarter.
Kat’s obedient, dutiful, cautious. Gag me with a
spoon.
Crashed and burned cars everywhere we turn.
I
thought there’d be more bodies. Shades don’t eat dead
flesh.
S’pose other Unseelie do. The city is spooky
quiet.
“Slow down, Dani!” Kat yells at me. “You’re
speeding up again. You know we can’t keep up with
you!”
“Sorry,” I mutter, and slow down. With what
I
feel up ahead and this stupid sick feeling in my
stomach—
“Not sick.” My teeth clench on the lie.
Who
the feck am I kidding? I feel sick, sick, sick. My palms
and
pits are slick with dread. I wipe my sword hand against
my
jeans. My body knows things before my brain can. Always
been
that way, even when I was a kid. Used to freak Mom out.
It’s
what makes me fight so good. I know what I’m gonna find
up
ahead is gonna be one of those things I’ll wake up in the
middle of the night wishing I could scrape out from
behind
my eyeballs.
Whatever we’re headed for, whatever’s
throwing all that fallout into the sky, is more Fae power
than I’ve ever felt before, all clumped together in one
place. The way we work things, the other sidhe-seers
close
in and pound ass while I do what I’ve been doing best
since
Ro took me in when Mom was murdered.
I
kill.
***
We range out like a net.
Five hundred strong. Drape ourselves, sidhe-seer by
sidhe-seer, around the epicenter and close in tight.
Nothing’s getting through us unless it flies. Or
sifts.
Aw, crap! Or sifts. Some of the Fae can
travel
from place to place at the blink of a thought—just a hair
faster than me, but I’m working on that. I have a theory
I
been testing. Haven’t worked out the kinks yet. The kinks
are killer.
“Stop,” I hiss at Kat. “Tell ’em all
to
stop!”
She cuts a hard look my way but bites a
sharp
command that rips down the line. We’re well trained. We
move
together and I tell her my worry: that Mac’s in there, in
serious trouble, and if the big-bads throwing off all
that
power are sifters—which most of the big-bads are—she’ll
be
gone the second we’re spotted.
Which means I’m
going
in alone. I’m the only one who can sneak-attack fast
enough
to pull it off.
“No way,” Kat says.
“No
choice, and you know it.”
We look at each other.
She
gets that look grown-ups get a lot and touches my hair. I
jerk. I don’t like to be touched. Grown-ups creep me
out.
“Dani.” She pauses heavily.
I know
that
tone like I know the back of my hand, and I know where
it’s
going: Lectureville on a runaway train. I roll my eyes.
“Save it for somebody who cares. Newsflash: It ain’t me.
I’ll go up”—I jerk my head at a nearby building—“to get
the
lay of things. Then I’m going in. Only. When I. Come.
Back.
Out.” I spit each word. “Can you guys can go in.”
We
stare at each other. I know what she’s thinking. Nah,
reading minds isn’t one of my specialties. Grown-ups
telegraph everything. Somebody kill me before I get one
of
those Play-Doh faces. Kat’s thinking if she makes the
call
against me and loses Mac, Ro’ll have her head. But if she
lets me make the call and things go bad, she can blame it
on
headstrong, uncontrollable Dani. I take the blame a lot.
I
don’t care. I do what needs to be done.
“I’ll go
up,”
she says.
“I need the visual snapshot myself, or I
could end up grabbing the wrong thing. You want me coming
out with some fe—er, effin’ fairy in my hands?” They rip
me
a new one when I cuss. Like I’m a kid. Like I haven’t
spilled more blood than they’ve ever seen. Old enough to
kill but too young to cuss. They make a pit bull poodle
around. What kinda logic is that? Hypocrisy pisses me off
worse than most anything.
Her face sets in
stubborn
lines.
I push. “I know Mac’s in there and for some
reason she can’t get out. She’s in major trouble.” Was
she
surrounded? Wounded that badly? Had she lost her spear? I
didn’t know. Only that she was in way deep
shit.
“Rowena said alive or dead,” Kat says
stiffly.
She left “It sounds like she’ll be dead soon and our
problems will be solved” hanging unspoken.
“We
want
the Book, remember?” I try reason. Times I think I’m the
only one in the whole abbey that’s got any.
“We’ll
find it without her. She betrayed us.”
Feck
reason.
Pisses me off when people jump to conclusions they have
no
proof for. “You don’t know that, so stop saying it,” I
growl. Somebody’s fist is holding Kat’s coat collar, got
her
up on her toes. It’s mine. I don’t know who’s more
surprised, her or me. I drop her back on the ground and
look
away. I’ve never done anything like that before. But it’s
Mac in there and I have to get her out, and Kat’s wasting
my
time big-time with total BS.
Her mouth sets with
tiny
white lines around it, and her eyes take on a look I get
a
lot. It makes me feel mad and alone.
She’s afraid
of
me.
Mac isn’t. One more way we’re like
sisters.
Without another word, I give my feet the
wings they live for and vanish into the
building.
***
From the rooftop, I
stare.
My fists clench. I keep my nails real
short;
still, they gouge blood from my palms.
Two Fae are
dragging Mac down the front steps of a church. She’s
naked.
They drop her like a piece of trash in the middle of the
street. A third Fae exits the church and joins them, and
they stand, imperial guards around her, heads swiveling,
surveying the street.
The raw sex they’re throwing
off blasts me, but it’s not like V’lane, who I’m gonna
give
my virginity to one day.
I’m as obsessed with sex
as
anybody, but those . . . things . . . down there . . .
those
incredibly—fecking A, they hurt to look at; something’s
wet
on my cheeks; are my eyes boiling in their
sockets?—beautiful things scare even me, and I don’t
scare
easy. They don’t move right. Storms of color rush under
their skin. Black torques slither at their necks. There’s
nothing in their eyes. Nothing. Eyes of pure oblivion.
Power. Sex. Death. They reek of it. They’re Unseelie. My
blood knows. I want to fall on my knees at their feet and
worship, and Dani Mega O’Malley don’t worship nothing but
herself.
I wipe my face. My fingers come away red.
My
eyes are leaking blood. Freaky. Kinda cool. Vamps got
nothing on Fae.
I close my eyes, and when I open
them
again I don’t look directly at the things guarding Mac.
Instead, I take a wide-angle image of the scene. Every
Fae,
fire hydrant, car, pothole, streetlamp, piece of trash. I
map objects and empty spaces on my mental grid, lock it
down
tight, calculate margin of error based on likely
movement,
slap it over my snapshot.
I squint. A shadow moves
in
the street, almost too fast to see. The Fae don’t seem to
know it’s there. I watch. They don’t respond to it. No
heads
swivel to follow it. I can’t focus on it. Can’t make out
its
shape. It moves like I move . . . mostly. What the feck?
Not
a Shade. Not a Fae. A blur of shadow. Now it’s hanging
over
Mac. Now it’s gone. Bright side—if the Unseelie aren’t
noticing it, they shouldn’t notice me when I whiz in to
snatch her. Dimmer side—what if whatever it is can see
me?
What if we collide? What is it? I don’t like unknowns.
Unknowns can kill.
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