And it lived.
I have no words to describe it, because nothing exists in our world to compare it to. I’m glad nothing exists in our world to compare it to, because if something did exist in our world to compare it to, I’m not sure our world would exist.
I can only call it the Beast, and leave it there.
My soul shivered, as if perceiving on some visceral level that my body was not nearly enough protection for it. Not from this.
The gunman looked at it, and it looked at the gunman, and he turned his weapon on himself. I jerked at the sound of more shots. The shooter crumpled to the pavement and his weapon clattered away.
Another icy wind gusted down the street, and there was movement in my periphery.
A woman appeared from around the corner as if answering a summons, gazed blankly at the scene for several moments, then walked as if drugged straight to the fallen book (crouching beast with impossible limbs and bloodied muzzle!) that abruptly sported neither ancient locks or bestial form but was once again masquerading as an innocent hardcover.
“Don’t touch it!” I cried, goose bumps needling my flesh at the thought.
She stooped, picked it up, tucked it beneath her arm, and turned away.
I’d like to say she walked off without a backward glance, but she didn’t. She glanced over her shoulder, straight at me, and her expression choked off what little breath inflated my lungs.
Pure evil stared out of her eyes, a cunning, bottomless malevolence that knew me, that understood things about me I didn’t, and never wanted to know. Evil that celebrated its existence every chance it got through chaos, demolition, and psychotic rage.
She smiled, an awful smile, baring hundreds of small, pointy teeth.
And I had one of those sudden epiphanies.
I remembered the last time I’d gotten close to the Sinsar Dubh and passed out, and reading the next day about the man who’d killed his entire family, then driven himself into an embankment, mere blocks from where I’d lost consciousness. Everyone interviewed had said the same thing—the man couldn’t have done it, it wasn’t him, he’d been behaving like someone possessed for the past few days. I recalled the rash of gruesome news articles lately that echoed the same sentiment, whatever the brutal crime—it wasn’t him/her; he/she would never do it. I stared at the woman who was no longer who or what she’d been when she’d turned the corner and entered this street. A woman possessed. And I understood.
It wasn’t those people committing the terrible crimes.
The Beast was inside her now, in control. And it would retain control of her until it was done using her, when it would dispose of her and move on to its next victim.
We’d been so wrong, Barrons and I!
We’d believed the Sinsar Dubh was in the possession of someone with a cogent plan who was transporting it from place to place with a purpose, someone who was either using it to accomplish certain goals or guarding it, trying to keep it from falling into the wrong hands.
But it wasn’t in the possession of anyone with a plan, cogent or otherwise, and it wasn’t being moved.
It was moving.
Passing from one set of hands to the next, transforming each of its victims into a weapon of violence and destruction. Barrons had told me that Fae relics had a tendency to take on a life and purpose of their own in time. The Dark Book was a million years old. That was a lot of time. It had certainly taken on some kind of life.
The woman disappeared around the corner, and I dropped to the pavement like a stone. Eyes closed, I gasped for shallow breaths. As she/it moved farther away, vanishing into the night where God only knew what she/it would do next, my pain began to ease.
It was the most dangerous Hallow ever created—and it was loose in our world.
Creepy thing was, until tonight, it hadn’t been aware of me.
It was now.
It had looked at me, seen me. I couldn’t explain it, but I felt it had somehow marked me, tagged me like a pigeon. I’d gazed into the abyss and the abyss had gazed back, just like Daddy always said it would: You want to know about life, Mac? It’s simple. Keep watching rainbows, baby. Keep looking at the sky. You find what you look for. If you go hunting good in the world, you’ll find it. If you go hunting evil. well, don’t.
What idiot, I brooded, as I dragged myself up onto the sidewalk, had decided to give me special powers? What fool thought I could do something about problems of such enormity? How could I not hunt evil when I was one of the few people who could see it?
Tourists were flooding back into the street. Pub doors opened. Darkness peeled back. Music began playing, and the world started up again. Laughter bounced off brick. I wondered what world they were living in. It sure wasn’t mine.
Oblivious to them all, I threw up until I dry-heaved. Then I dry-heaved until not even bile remained.
I pushed to my feet, dragged the back of my hand across my mouth, and stared at my reflection in a pub window. I was stained, I was soaked, and I smelled. My hair was a soppy mess of beer and. oh! I couldn’t bear to think about what else. You never know what you’ll find in a gutter in Dublin’s party district. I plucked the clip from my hair, scraped it back, and secured it at my nape where it couldn’t touch much of my face.
My dress was torn, I was missing two buttons down the front of it, I’d broken the heel off my right shoe, and my knees were scraped and bleeding.
“There’s a lass that gives a whole new meaning to falling-down drunk, eh?” A man sniggered as he passed by. His buddies laughed. There were a dozen of them, wearing red cummerbunds and bow ties over jeans and sweaters. A bachelor party, off to celebrate the joy of testosterone. They gave me wide berth.
They were so clueless.
Was it really only twenty minutes ago I’d been smiling at passersby? Walking through Temple Bar, feeling alive and attractive, and ready for whatever the world might decide to throw at me next? Twenty minutes ago, they’d have circled around me, flirted me up.
I took a few lopsided steps, trying to walk as if I weren’t missing three and a half inches of spike beneath my right heel. It wasn’t easy. I ached everywhere. Although the pain of the Book’s proximity continued to recede, I felt bruised from head to toe, from being held in the crushing vise of it. If tonight turned out anything like the last time I’d encountered it, my head would pound for hours and ache dully for days. My visit to Christian MacKeltar, the young Scot who’d known my sister, was going to have to wait. I looked around for my missing heel. It was nowhere to be seen. I’d loved those shoes, darn it! I’d saved for months to buy them.
I sighed inwardly and told myself to get over it. At the moment, I had bigger problems on my mind.
I hadn’t passed out.
I’d been within fifty yards of the Sinsar Dubh, and I’d stayed conscious the entire time.
Barrons was going to be so pleased. Delighted, even, although delight is a difficult expression to read on that dark, arresting face. Chiseled from savagery by a sculptor-savant, Barrons is a throwback to a lawless time, and looks as stoically primitive as he behaves.
It appeared recent events had “diluted” me, and I was now more like the Book.
Evil.
On my way back to the bookstore, it began to rain. I limped miserably through it. I hate the rain. For many reasons.
One, it’s wet, cold, and nasty, and I was already wet and cold enough. Two, the sun doesn’t shine when it’s raining and I’m an unapologetic sun-worshipper. Three, it makes Dublin at night even darker than usual, and that means the monsters get bolder. Four, it makes me need an umbrella and when people carry umbrellas they have a tendency to pull them down really low and hunch behind them, especially if the rain is being blown into their faces. I’m no different. And that means you can’t see what’s coming toward you, which in a busy street usually results in people careening off one another with muttered apologies, or bit-off curses, and in Dublin means I could run smack into a Fae (their glamour doesn’t physically repel me like it does normal people) and betray myself, all of which adds up to: When it rains here, I don’t dare carry an umbrella.