High Voltage (Fever #10)(68)

I felt a great breeze then and turned whatever head I had into the wind. An enormous black Hunter sailed along beside me, head rocking gently as it buffeted the waves, lips pulled back as it chuffed softly and turned its gargantuan head to fix me with a single glowing orange eye. Ready?

I frowned. For what?

I fly.

I see that.

You fly, too.

What was it saying? That I might remain here with it, flying through the greatest unexplored territory of all? Discover the secrets of the Cosmos, behold its ancient mysteries?

All of that and more.

But my people. This wasn’t my world. Mine was in danger once more, and probably always would be. My world needed me. I had a job to do.

I closed my eyes, willing it all to go away.

When I opened them again, I stood blinking repeatedly, blinded by the sudden, harsh light, the jarring transition.

I was in the club but things had changed while I’d drifted in the cosmic vision. The surviving Fae had vanished; sifted, flown or run away, leaving behind only the dead, the Nine and me.

“Dani.” Ryodan’s voice seemed to come from a great distance.



I blinked again, staring dazedly at the destruction around me.

Walls were splintered and crumbling. The floor was cleft by a fifty-foot-wide crevice with jagged edges that dropped to a bottomless abyss. The LED panels had been shattered, spraying bits of glass and wiring everywhere, and those people trapped beneath the floor were gone. I shivered. Fallen to their deaths down the gorge I’d carved. A small part of my brain said, A better death than the one they were facing. A bigger part said, Yet more people you failed to save.

The structure of Elyreum groaned, as timbers contorted in a hopeless effort to accommodate the compromised foundation.

“Dani,” Ryodan said again.

“Honey,” I heard Lor say. “Can you hear us?”

I nodded tightly.

“Put your hand down, Dani,” Ryodan said softly, carefully.

I hadn’t realized it was still raised. I stared at it, turning it this way and that, trying to process it. My left forearm had sprouted darkly beautiful obsidian thorns. It looked like a black velvet, studded opera glove.

I forced it to drop to my side.

“Look at me, Dani,” said Ryodan in a low, intense voice.

I turned slowly and met his gaze. His eyes flickered strangely, swirling with shadows and I saw, as clearly as if he’d spoken the words: Goddamn, I was right. She isn’t human. I knew it. Then, Shit, this wasn’t at all what I expected. Fuck!

The words hadn’t come to me in the usual manner of his silent communications—deliberately telegraphed. I’d gotten an entire memory attached to his first thought, nothing with the second.

He hadn’t believed I was human since he saw me outside Temple Bar as I’d stood watching street mimes, laughing my ass off, one hand shoved in my pocket, the other cramming a cheeseburger in my mouth. I’d had two black eyes and was badly bruised, still drunk on being able to freeze-frame all over the city before I learned to lock my mental grid down.



But that wasn’t when we’d met. We hadn’t met for some time after that.

Still, he had a flawlessly detailed memory of walking up behind me, stopping a matter of mere inches from my back, pausing for a moment, inhaling deeply, before vanishing in that eerie, instant way of his. If I’d sensed an electrifying presence behind me, I’d written it off as my own excitement at finally being free in the world.

He’d known about me long before he came to find me on that water tower, to rope me into working for him.

I tried to ponder that thought but my brain was sluggish and uncooperative. I couldn’t access any of my mental vaults. Was this how normal people felt? How terrible that must be! How did they even stand it? I had sludge in my head.

My legs went out from under me then.

As I slumped to the floor, I cried out to Ryodan, “Don’t catch me! Don’t touch me! I’m dangerous!”

Ryodan smiled faintly but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I think we’ve figured that out.”





FALLING



Belong, etymology: Old English, “gelang,” “at hand,” “together with.”

Definition: To be suitable, advantageous, appropriate.

To have the proper qualifications, especially social, to be a member of a group, to fit.

To be attached, bound by birth, allegiance or dependency.

To be a son, daughter, mother, father, lover.

Families belong to each other.

I have no idea what the word means.

My mom said I “belonged” in a cage.

But I know better.

I’ve never belonged anywhere.

—DANI O’MALLEY





What have I become, my sweetest friend

“HEY, SHAZ-MA-TAZ,” I GREETED him with weary cheer, as I trudged into my bedroom and flipped on the overhead light.

He raised his great shaggy head from the mattress on the floor and peered at me, scanning me intently from head to toe. It was a look we’d often given each other after battle, ascertaining whether the other was okay.

His violet eyes widened. “You’re thorny!” he exclaimed. “That’ll be a tryllium scratch!”



One of my old passwords used to be thornybitch314159, a combination of how I sometimes felt plus the first six digits of pi. I considered choosing more wisely in the future. “That I am. I assume tryllium’s good?”