My dad would say that makes me this season’s MVP.
Everybody wants me. So I stay alive in a world where death darkens my doorstep daily.
I’ve seen things that would make your skin crawl. I’ve done things that make my skin crawl.
But that’s not important now. What’s important is starting at the right place—let’s see. where was that?
I peel the pages of my memory backward, one at a time, squinting so I don’t have to see them too clearly. I turn back, past that whiteout where all memories vanish for a time, past that hellish Halloween, and the things Barrons did. Past the woman I killed. Past a part of V’lane piercing the meat of my tongue. Past what I did to Jayne.
There.
I zoom down into a dark, damp, shiny street.
It’s me. Pretty in pink and gold.
I’m in Dublin. It’s nighttime. I’m walking the cobbled pavement of Temple Bar. I’m alive, vibrantly so. There’s nothing like a recent brush with death to make you feel larger than life.
There’s a sparkle in my eyes and a spring in my step. I’m wearing a killer pink dress with my favorite heels, and I’m accessorized to the hilt, in gold and rose amethyst. I’ve taken extra care with my hair and makeup. I’m on my way to meet Christian MacKeltar, a sexy, mysterious young Scotsman who knew my sister. I feel good for a change.
Well, at least for a short time I do.
Fast-forward a few moments.
Now I’m clutching my head and stumbling from the sidewalk, into the gutter. Falling to all fours. I’ve just gotten closer to the Sinsar Dubh than I’ve ever been before, and it’s having its usual effect on me. Pain. Debilitating.
I no longer look so pretty. In fact, I look positively wretched.
On my hands and knees in a puddle that smells of beer and urine, I’m iced to the bone. My hair is in a tangle, my amethyst hair clip bobs against my nose, and I’m crying. I push the hair from my face with a filthy hand and watch the tableau playing out in front of me with wide, horrified eyes.
I remember that moment. Who I was. What I wasn’t. I capture it in freeze-frame. There are so many things I would say to her.
Head up, Mac. Brace yourself. A storm is coming. Don’t you hear the thunderclap of sharp hooves on the wind? Can’t you feel the soul-numbing frost? Don’t you smell spice and blood on the breeze?
Run, I would tell her. Hide.
But I wouldn’t listen to me.
On my knees, watching that. thing. do what it’s doing, I’m in the stranglehold of a killing undertow.
Reluctantly, I merge with the memory, slip into her skin.
Chapter 1
The pain, God, the pain! It’s going to splinter my skull!
I clutch my head with wet, stinking hands, determined to hold it together until the inevitable occurs—I pass out.
Nothing compares to the agony the Sinsar Dubh causes me. Each time I get close to it, the same thing happens. I’m immobilized by pain that escalates until I lose consciousness.
Barrons says it’s because the Dark Book and I are point and counterpoint. That it’s so evil, and I’m so good, that it repels me violently. His theory is to “dilute” me somehow, make me a little evil so I can get close to it. I don’t see how making me evil so I can get close enough to pick up an evil book is a good thing. I think I’d probably do evil things with it.
“No,” I whimper, sloshing on my knees in the puddle. “Please. no!” Not here, not now! In the past, each time I’d gotten close to the Book, Barrons had been with me, and I’d had the comfort of knowing he wouldn’t let anything too awful happen to my unconscious body. He might tote me around like a divining rod, but I could live with that. Tonight, however, I was alone. The thought of being vulnerable to anyone and anything in Dublin’s streets for even a few moments terrified me. What if I passed out for an hour? What if I fell facedown into the vile puddle I was in, and drowned in mere inches of. ugh.
I had to get out of the puddle. I would not die so pathetically.
A wintry wind howled down the street, whipping between buildings, chilling me to the bone. Old newspapers cart-wheeled like dirty, sodden tumbleweeds over broken bottles and discarded wrappers and glasses. I flailed in the sewage, scraped at the pavement with my fingernails, left the tips of them broken in gaps between the cobbled stones.
Inch by inch, I clawed my way to drier ground.
It was there—straight ahead of me: the Dark Book. I could feel it, fifty yards from where I scrabbled for purchase. Maybe less. And it wasn’t just a book. Oh, no. It was nothing that simple. It pulsated darkly, charring the edges of my mind.
Why wasn’t I passing out?
Why wouldn’t this pain end?
I felt like I was dying. Saliva flooded my mouth, frothing into foam at my lips. I wanted desperately to throw up but I couldn’t. Even my stomach was locked down by pain.
Moaning, I tried to raise my head. I had to see it. I’d been close to it before, but I’d never seen it. I’d always passed out first. If I wasn’t going to lose consciousness, I had questions I wanted answered. I didn’t even know what it looked like. Who had it? What were they doing with it? Why did I keep having near brushes with it?
Shuddering, I pushed back onto my knees, shoved a hank of sour-smelling hair from my face, and looked.
The street that only moments ago had bustled with tourists, making their merry way from one open pub door to the next, was now scourged clean by the dark, arctic wind. Doors had been slammed, music silenced.
Leaving only me.
And them.
The vision before me was not at all what I’d expected.
A gunman had a huddle of people backed against the wall of a building, a family of tourists, cameras swinging around their necks. The barrel of a semiautomatic weapon gleamed in the moonlight. The father was yelling, the mother was screaming, trying to gather three small children into her arms.
“No!” I shouted. At least I think I did. I’m not sure I actually made a sound. My lungs were compressed with pain.
The gunman let loose a spray of bullets, silencing their cries. He killed the youngest last—a delicate blond girl of four or five, with wide, pleading eyes that would haunt me till the day I died. A girl I couldn’t save because I couldn’t fecking move. Paralyzed by pain-deadened limbs, I could only kneel there, screaming inside my head.
Why was this happening? Where was the Sinsar Dubh? Why couldn’t I see it?
The man turned, and I inhaled sharply.
A book was tucked beneath his arm.
A perfectly innocuous hardcover, about three hundred and fifty pages thick, no dust jacket, pale gray with red binding. The kind of well-read hardcover you might find in any used bookstore, in any city.
I gaped. Was I supposed to believe that was the million-year-old book of the blackest magic imaginable, scribed by the Unseelie King? Was this supposed to be funny? How anticlimactic. How absurd.
The gunman glanced at his weapon with a bemused expression. Then his head swiveled back toward the fallen bodies, the blood and bits of flesh and bone spattered across the brick wall.
The book dropped from beneath his arm. It seemed to fall in slow motion, changing, transforming, as it tumbled, end over end, to the damp, shiny brick. By the time it hit the cobbled pavement with a heavy whump, it was no longer a simple hardcover but a massive black tome, nearly a foot thick, engraved with runes, bound by bands of steel and intricate locks. Exactly the kind of book I’d expected: ancient and evil-looking.
I sucked in another breath.
Now the thick dark volume was changing again, becoming something new. It swirled and spun, drawing substance from wind and darkness.
In its place rose a. thing. of such. terrible essence and pitch. A darkly animate. again, I can only say thing. that existed beyond shape or name: a malformed creature sprung from some no-man’s-land of shattered sanity and broken gibberings.