Feversong (Fever #9)(18)
He vanished.
“Cruce,” she said again.
He was back again, coldly furious. “You will stop doing that, human, and you will give it back to me. It was never meant for you.” He stalked toward her, hand outstretched, but froze when she slid the sword from behind her back.
She scrutinized him closely but detected none of the enormous malevolence she expected from the Sinsar Dubh. “Your deceit doesn’t work on me anymore.” She’d felt the intense pressure of the illusion he’d just tried to force on her, to convince her that he’d taken her sword and she was defenseless against him. “I’ll only bring you back, each time. We can do this all day.”
“Give me my cuff or die, human.”
“Explain,” Barrons fired at Jada.
She smirked. “It seems I’ve got the all-powerful Cruce on a leash.”
“That same leash tethers you, human,” Cruce purred, and vanished.
“Bloody he—” was all Jada managed to get out before she, too, was gone.
Jo offers me a smile when she sees me approaching. “That’d be great, Mac,” she says, accepting my offer of aid. “We’re trying to collect what supplies remain and move them below.”
“Isn’t that water over there?” I say, nodding toward the half-collapsed pantry. “Looks like a dozen or more jugs.”
Her smile brightens. “We need to get that out to the women. Most of them haven’t had anything to eat or drink since last night.” She moves to the collapsed structure and begins removing the jugs.
She doesn’t know she’s handling poison, death. Idiot. She doesn’t understand that nothing can be taken for granted in this world, would undoubtedly refuse to believe we even exist—those of us that see through others as if they’re cardboard cutouts with their simplistic needs scribbled in Sharpie on their flat, one-dimensional faces.
I need nothing. I am desire. Lust. Greed.
“How are things with Lor?” I toy with her as I move near. She begins to hand me water jugs, one after the next. I sweep a dusting of ice from a long flat stone, place it there, then three more in quick succession beside it. I open one and while her back is turned pretend to take a drink. “Oh, that’s good. Here, have some.” I offer her the jug and watch as she takes a long, deep swallow.
“Ew, that’s weird,” she says, wiping her mouth. “It tasted sweet.”
“Probably some of the jugs Jada put sweetener in,” I lie. “She told me sugar-water fuels her freeze-frame better than plain. So what’s up with Lor?” I prod. I want to see her happy, excited about the life she’s never going to have when I take it from her.
She laughs. “Oh, God, Mac, I never would have guessed that man was so…complicated. He’s smart. Like super freaky smart. Who’d have thought? He’s trying to help me create a filing system for my memory.”
“Do you care about him?”
She takes another drink, grimaces, and hands me the jug back. “I haven’t had time to think about it,” she demurs. “We’re all too busy just trying to survive.”
But she does. It’s there in the soft glow in her eyes. She’s thinking that she has someone she can count on, someone strong who makes her feel good and alive, as if life holds endless opportunity for adventure and—what a stupid fucking delusion humans erect and cling to—romance. She’s happy. She put on makeup this morning, took care with her hair. She’s hoping to see him today.
She will never see him again.
I am the last thing she’ll see, the face of her god as I punish her for the unforgivable sin of failing to protect her kingdom.
But this time I’ll take it slow. Savor every succulent nuance of killing, destroying, breaking, defiling. Lust blazes white-hot in my body, between my legs, and I nearly stagger from the intensity of it. Destroying makes me want to fuck. But this woman lacks the parts I desire.
I stare at her through the dim light, assessing, fixing my gaze on her neck. It looks tender and full of blood. Perhaps blood will strengthen me. “Come,” I suggest softly, “let’s secure these below, then we’ll take a few jugs to the sidhe-seers.”
I collect two of them and she follows me like a fucking idiotic puppy who thinks the world is a good, safe place to explore, full of happy people with hands outstretched in kindness, bearing gifts of food and toys to the demolished entry to the underground city. As I mount the rubble at the top of the stairs, I freeze.
Cruce’s body is gone. How could Cruce’s body be gone? I’m momentarily blank, unable to divine a possibility that encompasses this anomaly. No one else has been here. I would have heard someone creep up the stairs and drag him back down. I would have picked up some small sound if he’d somehow managed to escape the runes (IMPOSSIBLE!) and slipped off.
I can’t explain this. Something has transpired for which I am unable to account. That means I have an enemy. A clever, clever one. Someone tampers with my work. WHO IS INTERFERING WITH MY PLANS AND HOW? I consider attempting to employ the same temporal spell MacKayla used, see if it would work on me to shuttle me back a few minutes in time, where I might warn my other self as I top the stairs to watch for an enemy and identify it, but it’s possible duplicate versions of myself could split my power, and if one version of me was destroyed in the temporal conflict, so too would be whatever power it possessed. I remember too well what happened when I amputated myself from the corporeal version of the Book. I’d had to leave parts of myself behind. Important parts. They’d served as a distraction, kept all eyes on the Book, not Isla, but I’d never stopped ruing the loss. Some of my more powerful spells had been sacrificed that day. LIMITS. LIMITS EVERYWHERE! Fury floods my veins. My body trembles with it, weak thing that it is. Not only don’t I have the spear, now one of my cocoons is missing. My meticulously crafted swift surgical strike is being undermined at every turn!