Feversong (Fever #9)(137)
The cloud retracted into the Unseelie princess and, as I watched, stunned, Barrons twisted in midair, slapped a crimson rune on her I’d not even known he’d been carrying and had no idea where he’d gotten it from, then grabbed her by the shoulders and ground his mouth to hers in a savage kiss.
He sucked the Sinsar Dubh right out of the princess’s body in one long lip-locked inhale.
The Unseelie princess collapsed, dead, to the ground.
And all I could think was, Barrons could kill with a kiss? I thought I’d known what he was. I narrowed my eyes. I’d kissed that lethal mouth many times.
He whirled and bore down on me, eyes obsidian, full black, no crimson sparks, nothing left of my Jericho at all, and he roared, “Fucking sing, Mac, I can’t hold it long!”
The shadow exploded out of his mouth as he spoke. He shuddered violently and clawed at the air, and forcibly sucked the Sinsar Dubh back in.
I shot Alina a frantic goodbye, locked eyes with Barrons, and I opened my mouth and released the Song of Making.
I will never be able to put into words what it is. Frequency that elevates to a level of being we don’t yet understand while rendering insignificant the many daily burdens we think we carry. The song was made in Heaven, if such a place exists, by angels, spun of the divine.
For a time I was nowhere and everywhere listening to—no, being—music of such exquisite perfection that I was whole and right and I knew absolutely everything and understood it all. Each detail of existence was revealed, without enigma or confusion. I apprehended myself, the world, others, with exquisite clarity. Our entire existence was fluid and living and, as a race, a planet, a universe, it was all connected and we were all part of one another. And when we hurt one another, we hurt ourselves. And when we warred, we hurt the universe, and that was ourselves. And we were so stupid sometimes I couldn’t believe the song even hung around and let us use it.
As humans, so much is mysterious to us. As the woman that sang the ancient melody, everything was clear and it all fit. The universe was precisely as it was meant to be. No Fate. Checks and balances. The universe listed toward life and beauty, always had, always would. We were the universe: each and every one of us, light or dark, right or wrong, we were tiny, essential cogs in the grand and mighty wheel. Somehow, even the Sinsar Dubh.
As the song poured out of me, I began to glow and turn translucent, and I thought, Well, shit, maybe I’m going to die after all. But I didn’t care because I’d done what was needed. I’d been the cog it was most desirable for me to be.
A brilliant blaze of light exploded from my body, and the air was filled with countless tiny, fluid arrows of light.
Events unfolded in slow motion to me then, though later they would tell me it all happened in a split second. I suspect I was somehow out of time by that point, insubstantial, changed by the melody flowing through me.
A thousand of the golden dazzling things darted into the black hole, which began to shiver and shake, then shrink.
The destructive black sphere grew smaller and smaller until, with an audible pop, it imploded and was simply gone, leaving nothing but the deep trench dug beneath it, and ropes cordoning off normal, healthy reality.
Countless more arrows exploded forth, darting out into the world, like the Enterprise entering warp speed, seeking out the rest of the black holes.
We’d done it. The Song of Making was free and healing our world!
I turned to watch each of my companions pierced in turn with arrows shot by me. Mea culpa. Please let them live, I begged whatever god had created the melody.
The brilliant lances of light passed straight through Dani and Dancer, and Ryodan, too, coming out on the other side.
Then one vanished inside Christian but didn’t pass through. He began to shudder and snarl, and just when I thought we were definitely losing him, it abruptly shot out and moved on. Christian shook his head hard, looking dazed.
Barrons took a dozen of those arrows into his half-man, half-beast body and every one stayed inside.
His face contorted with agony and his eyes locked with mine.
I stared into his dark face, anguished, wanting desperately to stop singing. But I never would. I knew my role. I accepted it.
Jerking violently, he doubled over and vomited the dark storm of the Sinsar Dubh from his body. It gushed out of him, a black, viscous, oily river, oozing onto the pavement, and the damned thing actually shaped itself into the words FUCK YOU, MACKAYLA, YOU WILL DIEDIEDIEDIE.
If my mouth hadn’t been busy singing, I would have snorted. Pompous superiority complex to the end.
Hundreds of glowing arrows twisted and turned midair, knifed into the inky stain of the Sinsar Dubh like evil-seeking missiles. The words collapsed and the blackness shuddered and rippled, then surged into the air where it whipped around and twisted violently.
Then it was gone.
Arrows erupted from Barrons’s body. On the ground, on all fours, he threw his head back and looked up at me.
I’m still here, Rainbow Girl, he said fiercely inside my head.
My heart soared. He hadn’t died. I hadn’t killed him.
I looked at Alina and my heart sank. A hundred golden arrows pierced her everywhere and did not come out again.
Love you, Junior.
My sister was gone.
DANI
We had a blowout Beginning of the World party that night.
Best. Party. Ever.