Karen Moning: Shadowfever

The wriggling, chopped-up Rhino-boy flesh is still neatly trapped in baby-food jars. I force it between his swollen, bloodied lips and hold his mouth shut. When it crawls out the jagged gash in his neck, my trapped scream nearly deafens me.

I’m not thinking clearly. Panic and grief ride me. Barrons would say: Useless emotions, Ms. Lane. Rise above them. Stop reacting and act. There he is, talking to me again.

What wouldn’t I do for him? Nothing is too disgusting, too barbaric. This is Barrons. I want him whole again.

Ryodan had flayed him from gut to chest, before he slit his throat. I carefully peel back the meat of his tattooed abdomen and stuff Unseelie into his exposed, sliced stomach. It crawls out. I consider trying to sew the stomach up, so his body would be forced to digest the flesh of the dark Fae, and wonder if it would work, but I lack needle, thread, or any other means of repairing his torn flesh.

I attempt to put his entrails back into his body, arrange them in some semblance of order, dimly aware that this is perhaps not a normal, sane thing to do.

Once he said: Get inside me, see how deep you can go . With my hands on his spleen, I think, Here I am. Too little, too late .

I use my newfound proficiency in Voice and command him to rise. He told me once that student and teacher develop immunity to each other. I’m almost relieved. I was afraid Voice might raise a zombie, reanimated but not truly revived.

I prop his mouth open with a stick, slit my wrist, and drip blood into it. I have to slice deep to get a few drops and keep slicing because I keep healing. It only makes him bloodier.

I search my sidhe -seer place for magic to heal him. I have nothing of such consequence inside me.

I am suddenly furious.

How could he be mortal? How dare he be mortal? He never told me he was mortal! If I’d known, I might have treated him differently!

“Get up, get up, get up!” I shout.

His eyes are still open. I hate that they’re open and so empty and blank, but closing them would be an admission, an acceptance I don’t have in me.

I will never close Jericho Barrons’ eyes.

They were wide open in life. He would want them open in death. Rituals would be wasted on him. Wherever Barrons is, he would laugh if I tried something as mundane as a funeral. Too small for such a large man.

Put him in a box? Never.

Bury him? No way.

Burn him?

That, too, would be acceptance. Admission that he was dead. Never going to happen.

Even in death he looks indomitable, his big black-and-crimson-tattooed body an epic giant, felled in battle.

I settle on the ground, gently lift his head, maneuver my legs beneath it, and cradle his face in my arms. With my shirt and hot tears that won’t stop falling, I bathe away dirt and blood and clean him tenderly.

Harsh, forbidding, beautiful face.

I touch it. Trace it with my fingers, over and over, until I know the subtlest nuances of every plane and angle, until I could carve it out of stone even if I were blind.

I kiss him.

I lie down and stretch out next to him. I press my body to his and hold on.

I hold him like I never permitted myself to hold him when he was alive. I tell him all the things I never said.

For a time, I have no idea where he ends and I begin.

GET YOUR SHADE-BUSTERS!!!

READ ALL ABOUT IT!!!

Yep, you heard me right! The feckers CAN be killed! Brought to you by The Dani Daily , your ONLY source for all the news AWC (After the Wall Crash, morons. I ain’t gonna keep spelling things out for you).

The Dani “Mega” O’Malley SHADE-BUSTER

• 1 chunk Unseelie flesh.

• Fuse.

• Flash powder. Use only pyrotechnic industry-standard mix. Do NOT use chlorate or sulfur. HIGHLY unstable. Take it from me, I know what I’m talkin’ about!

Make cherry bomb. Pack in center of flesh. Run fuse. Mold Unseelie flesh into round shape for easier rolling. Corner Shade, roll in SHADE-BUSTER, and cover your ears! The feckers are cannibals!!! Watch Shade devour snack and disintegrate when the bomb explodes inside it. If it eats LIGHT, it dies!

CAVEATS!

*Kids under 14: Do NOT do this without help. Ain’t gonna do nobody no good if you blow your hands off. We need you in this fight. Be cool. Smart is the new cool.

*You gotta be fast! If you find a ’specially bad nest, write down the address of it on The Dani Daily , stick it on the wall inside the G.P.O., O’Connell Street, Dublin 1, and I’ll take care of it for you. (They don’t call me MEGA for nothing!)

*Do NOT use SULFUR! It makes the mix WAY unstable. I’m still growing back my eyebrows and nose hair.

*’Times the cherry bomb blows before the Shade eats it. Some of ’em are stupid enough to eat the next one you throw in.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER!

The Dani Daily (TDD, LLC) and affiliates are NOT responsible for collateral blast damage or injury!

It’s funny the things people say when someone dies.

He’s in a better place .

How do you know that?

Life goes on .

That’s supposed to comfort me? I’m excruciatingly aware that life goes on. It hurts every damned second. How lovely to know it’s going to continue like this. Thank you for reminding me.

Time heals .

No, it doesn’t. At best, time is the great leveler, sweeping us all into coffins. We find ways to distract ourselves from the pain. Time is neither scalpel nor bandage. It is indifferent. Scar tissue isn’t a good thing. It’s merely the wound’s other face.

I live with the specter of Alina every day. Now I will live with Barrons’ ghost, too. Walk between them: one on my right, one on my left. They will talk to me incessantly. I’ll never escape, bridged between my greatest failures.

The day is cooling by the time I’m able to force myself to move. I know what that means. It means night is about to come slamming down on me with the finality of steel shutters on the glass façade of an upscale shop in a rundown neighborhood. I try to disentangle myself from him. I don’t want to. It takes half a dozen attempts to make myself sit up. My head aches from crying; my throat burns from screaming. When I sit up, only the shell of my body moves. My heart is still lying on the ground next to Jericho Barrons. It beats one more time, then stops.

Peace at last.

I cross my legs beneath me and stiffly push myself up. I stand like I’m a hundred years old, creaking in every bone.

If the Lord Master is hunting me, I’ve sat on this cliff’s edge for a dangerously long time.

The Lord Master, Darroc, leader of the dark Fae, bastard that tore down the walls on Halloween and turned the Unseelie hordes loose on my world .

The son of a bitch that started it all: seduced and either killed Alina or got her killed; had me raped by the Unseelie Princes, lobotomized, and turned into a helpless slave; abducted my parents and forced me into the Silvers; and drove me to this cliff’s edge, where I murdered Barrons.

If not for one ex-Fae hell-bent on regaining his lost grace and exacting retribution, none of this would have happened.

Revenge will never be enough. Revenge would be over too quickly. It wouldn’t satisfy the complexity of the needs of the creature I became while I was lying here, holding him.

I want it all back.

Everything that was taken from me.

A geyser of rage explodes in me, seeping into all the nooks and crannies my grief occupies. I welcome it, encourage it, genuflect to my new god. I baptize myself in its steaming, hissing fury. I give myself over. Claim me, take me, own me, I am yours .