Karen Moning - Darkfever

I found a back door, let myself out, and headed straight for the half-raised corrugated steel dock door of a warehouse that sat back off the alley about fifty feet behind 1247 LaRuhe. Whatever was pulling me was in there.

I must have been crazy that day is all I can figure. Though I moved with stealth and kept to the side of the entrance, I walked straight in. The temperature plummeted the moment I crossed the threshold and entered the shadowy interior. The building could easily have housed several football fields. It was an old distribution center, with racking systems a good thirty feet high to my left and right, and a central aisle between them, wide enough to drive two delivery trucks down, side by side. The long aisle was littered with plastic-wrapped pallets stacked ten to fifteen feet high that had not yet been unloaded and transferred to the racking. The chipped and scarred concrete was strewn with haphazard piles of wooden crates and forklifts that looked as though they'd been abandoned midlift. Far down the long aisle, I could see a stark, heavy light, and hear voices.

I crept toward the light, slipping from stack to forklift to crate, working my way stealthily along, drawn by an instinct I could neither understand nor refuse. The nearer I got, the colder it grew. By the time I reached the third-to-last row of racking between me and whatever was ahead, I was shivering and watching my breath puff tiny ice crystals into the air.

By the second-to-last row of racking, the metal of the fork-lift I crouched behind was painfully icy to the touch.

By the last row, I was so nauseated I had to sit down and stay put awhile. All that remained between me and whatever was ahead were stacks and stacks of pallets in a disorganized row that looked as if they'd been shoved back to clear a large area of floor space. Beyond those stacks, I could see the top parts of what looked like massive stones. The dense light that pressed into the gloom where I crouched wasn't natural. It was a heavy, somehow dark light, and not one of the objects it was shining on threw a shadow.

I have no idea how long it took me to get my queasy stomach under control. It might have been five minutes, it might have been half an hour, but eventually I was able to stand up again and forge on. It occurred to me that perhaps I shouldn't forge on; I should just "run like hell" as Barrons had once counseled me and not look back, but there was that whole 'pull' part of the push-pull thing going on. I had to see what was up there. I had to know. I'd come too far to turn back now.

I peered around the corner of a stack of pallets—and erked back violently.

I eased myself to the floor on legs that were shaky again, a hand pressed to my pounding heart, wishing fervently that I'd never gotten out of bed this morning.

After a few deep, careful breaths, I leaned forward and looked again. I think I was hoping I'd just imagined it.

I hadn't.

Though I'd seen pictures in guidebooks and on postcards, I would have expected to find this kind of thing in the middle of a farmer's pasture, not in the rear of an industrial warehouse in the heart of a commercial district, midcity. I'd also gotten the impression they were more moderately sized. This one was huge. I tried to imagine how it had gotten here, then remembered I wasn't dealing with human methods of locomotion. With the Fae, anything was possible.

Looming behind about a hundred Rhino-boys and other assorted Unseelie—who threw no shadows in the oppressive, strange light spilling from it—was a dolmen. Two towering stones stood upright about twenty-five feet apart, and a single long slab of rock lay across the top, making a doorway of the ancient megaliths.

All around the doorway, symbols and runes were chiseled into the concrete floor. Some glowed crimson, others pulsed that eerie blue-black of the stone we'd stolen from Mallucé. A red-robed figure stood facing the dolmen, a deep cowl concealing its face.

An arctic wind so cold it made my lungs hurt blasted through the stones, chilling more than my flesh; the dark wind bit into my soul with sharp, icy teeth, and I suddenly knew if I had to withstand it for very long I would slowly begin to forget every hope and dream that had ever warmed my heart.

But it wasn't the soul-searing wind or the Rhino-boys or even the red-robed figure the Fae watchdogs were addressing as "my Lord Master" that had me cowering in shadows.

It was that the immense stone doorway was open. And through it was pouring a horde of Unseelie.

I won't bore you with the details of the monsters that came through the doorway that day. Barrens and I would discuss them later and try to identify their castes, and you'll meet most of them soon enough, anyway.

Suffice to say, there were hundreds of them, tall and short, winged and hoofed, obese and gaunt, all of them pretty much horrific, and as they stepped through, they grouped off, ten or so to each Rhino-boy. From the bits I gathered, the Unseelie watchdogs had been assigned the task of acclimating their new charges to the world.

My world.

I cringed behind the stack of pallets, watching, too terrified to move. Finally, the last one came through. With more chanting and the sharp rapping of a gold-and-black scepter upon some of the glowing symbols, the red-robed Lord Master closed the doorway. The symbols went dark and the bitter wind ceased. The light in the warehouse brightened, became lighter somehow, and the Unseelie began casting shadows again. Feeling returned to my chilled face and fingers, and dreams to my heart.

"You have your instructions," the Lord Master said, and I wondered how such an evil thing could have such a beautiful voice.

Genuflecting as if to a god, the Rhino-boys began herding their newly arrived brethren toward the aisle. A group of about thirty assorted monsters remained behind with the Lord Master.

I plastered myself against the stack of pallets as every single one of the new arrivals passed within a dozen feet of me, accompanied by its "trainer." They were some of the most harrowing few minutes of my life. I got an up close and personal look at things we've never even come close to creating in our scariest horror flicks.

After the last of them had marched, slithered, flapped, or crawled down the long aisle and exited the building, I slumped back against the pallets, closed my eyes, and kept them closed.

So this was what Alina had wanted me to know: That behind 1247 LaRuhe was a gate to hell, and here the Lord Master was bringing his dark servants through from their previously inescapable Unseelie prison and turning them loose on our world.

Okay, now I knew.

Just what was I supposed to do about it? Alina had seriously overestimated me if she thought I could, or would, do anything about this problem. It wasn't my problem. My problem was finding the bastard who'd betrayed her and bringing him to whatever justice I could. If he was human, I might let the courts have him. If he was an Unseelie masquerading as human, he'd die at the end of my spear. That was all I cared about.

We've got to find the Sinsar Dubh, Alina had said. Everything depends on it .

What depended on it? I had a sinking feeling the answer to that question was one of those Fate-of-the-World things. I didn't do Fate-of-the-World things. That wasn't in my job description. I poured drafts and mixed drinks, wiped counters and washed glasses. After work I swept up.

Had Alina wanted me to find the Dark Book because somewhere within its dangerous, encrypted pages was the way to defeat the Lord Master and destroy his Unseelie portal? Why should I care? It was in Dublin, not Georgia! It was Ireland's problem. They could handle their own troubles. Besides, even if I managed to accomplish the impossible and find the stupid Dark Book, how was I supposed to translate it? Barrons had two of the stones necessary, but I had no clue which team he was playing for. Nor did I have any idea where the other two stones were, how to find them, or how to use them—assuming I ever actually managed to get my hands on them.