"Deal with it, Ms. Lane."
"Deal with it?" I say incredulously. "Ms. Lane, my b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.s. You called me Mac that very night, that first night we met and screwed our brains out, and what do I get ever since? I"ll tell you what I-"
"During. You changed. You became the woman after. A stiff blindered horse that spooked on new terrain. I expected better-"
"Oh, and because your expectations weren"t met-"
"They were b.l.o.o.d.y well exceeded, which is why the after-"
"You think you have the right to just strip the entire experience from one party to the-"
"-was such a grand disappointment, and if-"
"-event as if they-"
"It wasn"t an "event." It was a motherf.u.c.king revelation."
"-don"t even have the right to remember whatever the h.e.l.l mistake they-"
"Which is precisely why I did it. You thought it was a mistake, then you-"
"-chose to make, just like they might choose to keep the memory, because after all, they were there and it was theirs and possession is nine-tenths of-"
"-started getting all tight-lipped and p.i.s.sy and I knew if-"
"-law."
"I am the law."
"Apparently. Heil." I click my heels together and salute.
"Can"t you two find a better f.u.c.king moment for this," Ryodan says tightly.
"Really," Green Camo agrees.
"Stay the h.e.l.l out of my business," I snap at both of them.
"Don"t decorate the G.o.dd.a.m.n room with it," Ryodan fires back.
"As if you"re not doing some decorating of your own. You"re just p.i.s.sed that my argument with Barrons derailed your argument with Dani."
"Mac can decorate anything she b.l.o.o.d.y well pleases. With anything she pleases," Barrons says tightly. "Her business, your blood, half your f.u.c.king face, who gives a f.u.c.k."
"Nice defense, Jericho. Not. He can"t push me around, but you can?" Frosted sugar coats my words.
"Merely trying to keep us on point," Ryodan clips.
I say, "I"m dead on point. The point is-"
"That I am not Dani," Jada interrupts coolly. "The point is the three of you are dysfunctional, volatile, inefficient, and in my way. Not to mention-" She pierces me with that emerald ice stare."-a grave threat to our world."
"Oh, I"m dysfunctional, Ms. Alter Ego? Really? Pot meet kettle." The second I say it, I wish I hadn"t. If Jada really is Dani, her current state is my fault.
Someone enters the foyer behind me, boots tapping smartly on the floor, and Jada stares past me at the new arrival.
"I couldn"t find Clare and Sorcha," the woman behind me says.
"No matter. You will place them as I instructed you. Quickly."
The look on Jada"s face chills me. It tells me she believes she"s won.
Place them? What "them"? I frenziedly sort and discard possibilities, racing to a terrifying conclusion: if Jada actually is Dani, she knows how to immobilize the Sinsar Dubh-with the four stones we placed on the slab in the cavern. The same stones Kat retrieved from the cavern and tucked away for safekeeping. Once the Sinsar Dubh was no longer on the slab, they were unnecessary and we worried about leaving coveted objects of power lying around the cavern since we couldn"t close the doors. Jada"s been in residence long enough to have found them.
I"m always blocking lately, with the exception of my constant antenna for the Unseelie Princess. Now, I cautiously open my sidhe-seer senses.
And gasp.
I feel them! The pulsing blue-black binding presence of the stones is here in the room with me!
Lock you up, lock you down, make you sleep beneath the ground, the Sinsar Dubh coos.
Make you sleep, too, I retort silently.
"She brought the stones," I say to Barrons. "Stop her!"
He"s on it before I finish speaking. There"s a blur of motion as he lunges for the woman Jada called Brigitte, but Jada blocks him and they collide with such force that they both go flying backward to opposite sides of the room and crash against the walls.
Then Barrons and Ryodan are rushing Brigitte, who"s already placed one of the stones in the far corner, but they slam into Jada, who manages to get there a split second before them. She grabs Brigitte and freeze-frames her to place the next stone but collides with Barrons and one of the stones goes flying, smashes into a painting on the wall and drops to the floor. The painting crashes down on top of it. I lunge for it, determined to get at least one of the d.a.m.n things so they can"t box me in, but the others beat me to it by a mile.
I leap for it again and get slammed into a wall by a blur. I pursue the stone obsessively for a good thirty seconds but all I get for my effort is a b.l.o.o.d.y nose and three broken fingers.
I finally back off and watch the three blurs whiz around the room as they fight a battle I can"t even track, much less get in on, feeling bizarrely invisible.
Jada"s women are doing the same thing, with the exception of Brigitte, who"s being used as a hockey puck by three players who aim for and block goals at the speed of light. She"s bloodier every time she surfaces for a split second before vanishing again.
I sidle toward the door. If I"m not in the room, they can"t trap me.
Every sidhe-seer in the room moves to stop me. Their expressions are icy, easy to decipher.
I am the target.
I am the enemy.
Green Camo gives me a condemning look that makes me want to throttle the b.i.t.c.h. I"ve subdued the Book this long, and done a bang-up job with one small exception. I"d like to see how well she would handle being possessed by the Unseelie King"s darkest demons.
Draw your spear, the Sinsar Dubh purrs. Destroy them. You know you can.
And let you take over and kill them all? Not a chance.
I quit moving, lean back against the wall and sigh, thinking it"s funny how things change so quickly. Last season I was Dublin"s MVP, the hunter, and everybody wanted me on their team. This season I"m the hunted, a liability that kills innocent people, and now the world wants to neutralize me.
The sidhe-seers know my secret. They"re going to stalk me as relentlessly as I stalked the Sinsar Dubh.
End goal: put Mac down.
If Jada really is Dani, she"ll publish a cool, accusatory Jada Journal and post it all over the city long before the sun is up, outing me to the world. There"ll be no place I can hide unless I pack up and leave this planet for good with Barrons- I"m not even talking to Barrons at the moment.
My mom and dad will know what I"ve been concealing from them for months. One daughter dead, the other d.a.m.ned.
The snarling blurs accelerate, darting this way and that. Brigitte goes slamming into a wall and I wince in sympathy. My bones have already begun to heal. She doesn"t have the same gift.
Gift? Longevity could be used against me just like it was against Barrons"s son. For Cruce to be influencing the environment, he must be cognizant in his icy prison in the cold stone chamber deep below the earth, aware his body is frozen, that he"s trapped. Do the minutes creep like hours? Immortal, does he tally the seconds as they tick by, stretching to h.e.l.lish infinity?
You will soon know, the Sinsar Dubh reminds silkily.
As will you.
Fight, you f.u.c.king fool.
You. I dig in my mental heels, determined to outwait it, wagering my humanity against its psychopathy, betting its survival instincts will kick before mine, if only by a split second.
Make me do it, sweet thing, you won"t like it.
I"ll like it better than I"ll like killing all these people. They already think I"m the enemy. If I release the Sinsar Dubh and slaughter these women to free myself, I"ll have proved myself the enemy to anyone left alive. Including me. The rest of the abbey will come after me in force, for good reason. But I won"t even know that. I"ll be a straitjacketed bookworm burrowed into the binding of an insane, homicidal book, staring helplessly out from the pages of my own life, as they"re writ by someone else, and I"d commit atrocities that would d.a.m.n a saint"s soul.
Suddenly Brigitte appears and collapses in a battered heap. I study the blurs, concluding Jada now has the stones and is trying to place them.
As they whiz around the room like small tornadoes, furniture flies, lamps topple, and bulbs shatter. Rowena"s stately study has become a shambles of trashed furniture and demolished decor.
A jolt of energy suddenly hits me and I flinch. The sensation is familiar. The night we interred the Sinsar Dubh, I had to reach both of my hands into the field generated by the stones to remove the crimson runes from the cover and felt instantly lethargic, nauseated. I"d a.s.sumed it was just another facet of my sidhe-seer senses. Now I realize how lucky I was that we"d warded the Book on top of an altar. If I"d had to actually step inside the energy field that night, I would have ended up as trapped as the Sinsar Dubh.
On the east end of the study, flush to the wall, a line of blue-black flickers and solidifies. Two of the stones have connected. They flare and begin to emit a chilling chime.
a.s.suming Barrons and Ryodan defeat Jada and the next two stones don"t get positioned, a.s.suming I don"t feel the third stone flare to life and suddenly develop psychopathic tendencies of my own-where do I go from here?
Do I leave with Barrons and trust him to protect me? I can"t protect myself. I can"t use the spear with any certainty that I won"t kill again. I can"t outrun Jada. My ineffectualness chafes. G.o.d, does it chafe.
Last season"s MVP vanishing into obscurity.
Oh, yeah, I feel invisible.
I jerk again.
The third stone just connected with the other two, and I watch a second line form at the perimeter of the north wall of the study.
If the last stone is placed, two more blue-black lines will appear on the south and west ends, squaring me in, and I"ll be trapped in Cruce"s h.e.l.lish, conscious stasis. They"ll collect the stones, gather them close around me as we did with the Book, then carry me down, deep into the earth where I really hate being. No crimson runes are necessary to seal the cover of my Book; my body is lock enough. It"s not like anyone can pry open my skin and read it. The brilliant wards and runes on the towering walls of the cavern will connect to the field of the stones, and intensify it.
I"ll lie upon a slab, staring up at the ceiling far above (unless adding insult to injury, they put me facedown, G.o.d, that would suck), trapped in waking paralysis, a spelled Sleeping Beauty longing for the kiss of a prince (just not Cruce!).
Am I really going to stand here and let them imprison me? Become the Disney heroine that can"t save herself?
Accept that you"re outgunned? the Sinsar Dubh mocks. Stay on the floor and don"t even try to fight? What kind of life is that? It"s now or never, sweet thing.
For the first time since the moment I withstood the temptation to take the spell and free Barrons"s son, I seriously consider opening the G.o.dforsaken book and doing whatever I must to walk out of here alive. This time, however, Barrons isn"t in my head to offer counsel and strength.
This time it"s only me facing the greatest test in my twenty-three years. What am I willing to do to survive? What price am I willing to pay?
Evil isn"t a state of being, Barrons once said to me. It"s a choice.
My life flashes before my eyes: who I was, who I am now, what I might become. Whether I can live with myself a.s.suming I one day claw my way back to control. The casualties on my conscience, the ashes I might find myself standing in. I remember the Book killing in the streets of Dublin, remember the Beast it became as it exploded upward, terrifyingly powerful even in amorphous form.
My body would give it corporeality. Nearly immortal corporeality.
I know what the Book did the last time it walked Dublin"s streets. Killed with unadulterated psychotic glee.
The stakes are simple: me or the world.
Can Barrons save me if I let the sidhe-seers trap me? Will Barrons save me?
A strange calm settles over me as I realize it"s irrelevant.
The bottom line is we choose our epitaphs.
Every moment of every day we decide upon the actions that define us-or so a wise man that wasn"t wise enough not to steal my memory once told me-it"s all about what we can live with and what we can"t live without.
I can"t live with being the woman who freed the Sinsar Dubh to save her own a.s.s, butchering who knows how many people in the process, and who knows how many more before I"m stopped. That"s not going to be chiseled on my Urn. No grave, I"m not getting stuck beneath the ground for freaking perpetuity. And if I have to have a b.l.o.o.d.y Urn, at least I"m going to choose the inscription.
Heroes fight, the Book derides my decision. Victims give up. Barrons is right, you"re a walking victim, a lamb in a city of wolves. You deserve to die.
I don"t reply. Sometimes the most heroic action you can take looks a lot like inaction to the rest of the world. Sometimes the hardest, longest walk is the one the white-hat takes offstage.
They"ll think they outsmarted you, trapped you. They"ll never believe you chose it. Your "n.o.ble" sacrifice will be for nothing because they won"t see it that way, the Book goads.
Totally sucks. And is perfectly probable. Whether or not they understand what I did has no impact on the value of my action. Either I decimate this place and stalk out, probably to destroy the entire world-but hey, I"ll be alive-or I let them put me on ice and trust that those who love me will find a way to rescue me.
While accepting that I may never be rescued.
It may not be the best way for me.
But it"s the right way.
Sadness fills me. I don"t want to be done yet.
I hope Mom and Dad figure it out. I want them to be proud of me. And I hope Barrons-G.o.d, I"m so p.i.s.sed at him right now I can"t even complete the thought! Tears press at the back of my eyes but I refuse to let them flow.
The fourth stone explodes from the blur of motion, skitters across the floor, sliding toward that fourth corner, sliding ...
I brace myself for what"s about to happen.