Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(45)

Ronan wondered if this was the cost of hosting the Fairy Market. Perhaps every location was burned to the ground the day after. Perhaps this was yet another thing Declan had known and Ronan hadn’t known to ask. Helluva one-night stand.

Well, there went that lead.

He tasted the inky nightwash as it dripped over his lip. It was acrid. The sort of flavor you smelled as well as tasted, the sort of flavor you recoiled from, instantly understanding its toxicity. Impatiently, he fumbled in his glove box for some napkins. He didn’t have any; he had gas receipts. He used them to wipe his face and spat nightwash out the window until his mouth no longer puckered. When he straightened up again, he saw two figures picking their way from the wreckage to the white sedan parked in the lot.

As they got in, he just had time to see that one of them had familiar, glinting golden hair.

Uncle had been right.

Already Ronan was negotiating with himself, telling himself all the reasons he was allowed to chase instead of finding a safe place to dream and banish the nightwash again. He didn’t have to make it all the way back to the Barns. He could stop somewhere around Warrenton and find a quiet field. It would be good enough.

Happy hunting.

The white sedan would have to come right by the BMW in order to leave the lot. Ronan fumbled to get the car in gear. The gearshift knob was slick with black inkiness. He scuffed his palm against his jeans and got a better grip. He could feel himself bracing for the shock of seeing his mother’s face again, tensing in the way one does on a roller coaster so that the stomach doesn’t sail up unpleasantly. It didn’t entirely work. His guts snarled up again when he saw her face behind the wheel of the sedan.

And that wasn’t even the most astonishing part.

When the car pulled out of the lot beside the BMW, for the first time, Ronan got a good look at the passenger seat’s occupant.

He sat in the passenger seat. Ronan Lynch.

He was looking at his own face. An uncanny mirror. Not elevator doors opening to reveal a woman who looked eerily like his mother, but Ronan looking at Ronan.

You’re awake, he told himself. You’re awake.

After the first picosecond of shock, he realized that it wasn’t a perfect likeness. The hair was wrong. Ronan’s was buzzed, and this other Ronan had curled hair down to his shoulders. This Ronan was smooth shaven, and that Ronan had darkened scruff across his chin. This Ronan was shocked. That other Ronan was not.

The two of them looked at each other.

Then the little white sedan tore off with a howl of its tires.

It was just an unassuming little import, not a sports car, but it nonetheless got the jump on Ronan. It had the advantage of going balls-out from the get.

Ronan had not realized he was going to chase until they ran.

And run they did. Flat-out for a few quiet blocks, straight through stop signs, barely pausing as the intersections got busier.

Ronan didn’t realize the stakes until the sedan cut in front of an oncoming car to leap the curb. It rambled up the sidewalk for a few yards before shooting through the corner lot of a gas station to avoid a light.

Horns wailed.

Ronan hadn’t thought there was someone less cautious in a car than he, but it turned out there was. He couldn’t bring himself to throw the BMW directly in front of an oncoming delivery truck. He sat at the light, agonizingly, counting down the seconds until he was freed, and then shot after them again. They hadn’t made enough progress to get out of his sight, so when they pitched off into a neighborhood, he was able to follow a few seconds later.

His mouth tasted like garbage, like rot. He knew if he looked in the mirror and opened his mouth, his tongue would be coated black.

Fuck.

He negotiated with himself again. He could go back to the town house after this. Declan had forbidden him to dream there, but he could dream something small. He could be in control. Declan would never know. He could keep going.

The white sedan rocketed across a four-lane highway, shooting the gap between oncoming cars in a way that, again, Ronan didn’t feel he should replicate. Not with all the creatures and brothers who would fall asleep if something happened to him. He made up for it by throttling the BMW as high as he could once he’d crossed; their car had less caution, but his father’s dreamt Beemer had more horsepower.

The chase battled through more neighborhoods. With each mile, Ronan crept a little closer to the sedan, and with each mile, he bled a little more black. It was dripping down his neck from his ears and splattering the steering wheel. His body begged him to dream. It was a feeling like no other, a feeling that he didn’t have to be taught. When he was tired, he knew he had to sleep. When he was hungry, he knew he had to eat. This feeling—the feeling of being unmade, undone, unstitched in ways that other bodies had never been sewn in the first place—had no name, but he knew it meant he had to dream.

Up ahead, the sedan faltered; it had unknowingly entered a cul-de-sac. The only way out was past Ronan. He’d won.

But Ronan couldn’t breathe.

The nightwash was choking him, drowning his heartbeat, filling his lungs with black.

The best geasa in Niall and Aurora’s stories were the ones that collaborated to agonizingly trap the heroes at the end. Even the most invincible heroes could be trapped by conflicting geasa. The mighty Hound of Ulster, one of the boys’ favorite heroes, had a geis to never eat dog (“Shame,” Niall said, “it’s very tasty.”) and a geis to never refuse hospitality, and so when he was offered dog meat by a host, what other choice had he but to spiral into tragedy?