Karen Moning - Dreamfever

Mac: 11:18 a.m., November 1

Death. Pestilence. Famine.

They surround me, my lovers, the terrifying Unseelie Princes.

Whodve thought destruction could be so beautiful? Seductive. Consuming.

My fourth loverWar? He ministers to me tenderly. Ironic for the bringer of Chaos, creator of Calamity, maker of Madnessif that is who he is. I cannot see his face, no matter how I try. Why does he hide?

He caresses my skin with hands of fire. I char, my skin blisters, bones fuse from sexual heat no human can endure. Lust consumes me. I arch my back and beg for more with parched tongue, cracked lips. As he fills my body, he quenches my thirst with drink. Liquid spills over my tongue, drips down my throat. I convulse. He moves inside me. I catch a glimpse of skin, muscle, a flash of tattoo. Still no face. He terrifies me, this one who keeps himself concealed.

In the distance, someone barks commands. I hear many things, understand none. I know that I have fallen into enemy hands. I know also, soon, I will no longer know even that. Pri-ya, a Fae sex addict, I will believe there is no place, nothing else I would rather be.

If my thoughts were coherent enough to form sentences, I would tell you that I used to think life unfolded in a linear fashion. That people were born and went to whats that human word? I dressed up for it every day. There were boys. Lots of cute boys. I thought the world revolved around them.

His tongue is in my mouth, and its tearing apart my soul.

Helpmesomeonepleasehelpmemakehimstopmakethemgoaway.

School. Thats the word Im looking for. After that, you get a job. Marry. Have what are they? Fae cant have them. Dont understand them. Precious little lives. Babies! If youre lucky, you live a good, full life and grow old with someone you love. Caskets then. Wood gleams. I weep. A sister? Bad! Memory hurts! Let it go!

Theyre in my womb. They want my heart. Tear it open. Gorge on passion they cant feel. Cold. How can fire be so cold?

Focus, Mac. Important. Find the words. Deep breath. Dont think about whats happening to you. See. Serve. Protect. Others at risk. So many died. Cant be for nothing. Think of Dani. Shes you inside, beneath that adolescent thumbs-in-the-pockets, one hip cocked, thousand-yard stare.

I orgasm without ceasing. I become the orgasm. Pleasure-pain! Exquisite! Mind-melting, soul-shredding, the more they fill me the emptier I am. Its slipping, all slipping, but before it goes, before its gone completely, I get a hateful moment of clarity and see that

Most of what I believed about myself, and life, I derived from modern media, without questioning any of it. If I wasnt sure how to behave in a certain situation, Id search my mind for a movie or TV show Id seen, with a similar setup, and do whatever the actors had done. A sponge, I absorbed my environment, became a byproduct of it.

I dont think I ever once looked up at the sky and wondered if there was sentient life in the universe besides the human race. I know I never looked down at the earth beneath my feet and contemplated my own mortality. I tunneled blithely through magnolia-drenched days, blind as a mole to everything but guys, fashion, power, sex, whatever would make me feel good right then.

But these are confessions I would make if I could speak, and I cant. Im ashamed. Im so ashamed.

Who the fuck are you? Someone shouted that question at me recentlyhis name eludes me. Someone who frightens me. Excites me.

Lifes not linear at all.

It happens in lightning flashes. So fast you dont see those lay-you-out-cold moments coming at you until youre Wile E. Coyote, steamrolled flat as a pancake by the Road Runner, victim of your own elaborate schemes. A sister dead. A legacy of lies. An unwanted inheritance of ancient blood. An impossible mission. A book that is a beast that is ultimate power, and whoever gets their hands on it first decides the fate of the world. Maybe all the worlds.

Stupid sidhe-seer. So sure you had things headed in the right direction.

Here and nownot on some cartoon highway from which I can peel myself, stand up, and magically reinflate, but on the cold stone floor of a church, naked, lost, surrounded by death-by-sex FaeI feel my most powerful weapon, the one I swore never to give up againhopeslipping away. My spear is long gone. My will is

Will? Whats will? Do I know the word? Did I ever?

Him. Hes here. The one who killed Alina. Please, please, please dont let him touch me.

Is he touching me? Is he the fourth? Why conceal himself?

When the walls come tumbling, tumbling down, thats the question that matters. Who are you?

I reek of sex and the scent of themdark, drugging spices. I have no sense of time or place. Theyre inside me and I cant get them out, and how could I have been such a fool to believe that at the critical moment, when my world fell apart, some knight in shining armor was going to come thundering in on a white stallion, or arrive sleek and dark on an eerily silent Harley, or appear in a flash of golden salvation, summoned by a name embedded in my tongue, and rescue me? What was I raised onfairy tales?

Not this kind. These are the fairy tales we were supposed to be teaching our daughters. A few thousand years ago, we did. But we got sloppy and complacent, and when the Old Ones seemed to go quietly, we allowed ourselves to forget the Old Ways. Enjoyed the distractions of modern technology and forgot the most important question of all.

Who the fuck are you?

Here on the floor, in my final momentsMacKayla Lanes last grand hurrahI see that the answer is all Ive ever been.

Im nobody.

Dani: 2:58 p.m., November 1

Hey its meDani. Im gonna be taking over for a while. Fecking good thing, too, cause Macs 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 shes too powerful a weapon to be used against us. Shes 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 shed kill me for, if she knew I knew. Good thing she doesnt know. I never want to fight Mac.

But here I am, hunting her.

I dont believe she spiked the Orb with Shades. Pretty much everyone else does, though. They dont know Mac like I do. I know Mac like were sisters. No way she betrayed us.

Seven hundred thirteen of us alive at the abbey at five oclock last night. Five hundred twenty-two