Still, it didn’t keep me from picking up a few things.
An open switchblade caught the cold morning light, and my attention. I suspected its owner had been trying to stab the unstabbable when the Shade devoured him. “I’ll put it to good use,” I told the pile of black leather topped by a necklace of metal skulls. “I promise.” I retracted the blade and slid it into my boot.
My next scavenged prize was a chunk of living Unseelie flesh I found flopping in the street. I had no idea where it had come from, how or why, but it sure might come in handy. Ingesting Fae flesh not only made the average human able to see the Fae—including the innately invisible Shades—as well as any sidhe-seer, it also bestowed superstrength and heightened senses, the ability to dabble in the black arts, and miraculous healing powers.
I used my new switchblade to dice it, then stopped in a ransacked drugstore, where I pilfered baby-food jars, washed them out, and presto—I had a new stash of Unseelie sushi, if I needed it. Assuming, of course, I got into a situation dire enough that I would A: be willing to sacrifice my sidhe-seer talents, which seemed to be growing by leaps and bounds; B: let myself be vulnerable to my own spear again, which I fully intended to have back by the end of the day, come hell or high water; and C: ever be willing to put any part of anything Unseelie in my mouth again. I’d had more than my unwilling fill.
I shuddered. Interestingly, I seemed to have been cured of my burgeoning addiction to eating Unseelie flesh. I eyed the baby-food jars and their squirming contents with revulsion.
Still, weapons are weapons, and all weapons are good weapons.
A short time later, I was in a slightly dented Range Rover Sport. I’d swept the husks from it, trying not to look too hard at the tiniest husk as I’d unbelted and gently placed the car seat, along with a fluffy pink teddy bear and a shirt that said I ♥ Daddy, beneath a leafless oak tree.
I headed for the abbey, mostly alongside the road because so much of it was clogged with abandoned cars. I munched a couple of protein bars as I drove and paused periodically at petrol stations and convenience stores, stocking the back of the Rover with water, food, batteries, and, at one of my stops, plastic containers of gas I’d discovered already pumped, much to my mixed emotions. I needed it and was grateful for it. But there’d been no way to miss the pile of rugged work pants, hip implant, Irish fisherman’s sweater, and boots next to the three containers. Had a father come out, too close to dusk, for gas to keep his family’s generator running? Did they still wait somewhere, cowering in the darkness?
About an hour after I’d left the city, I saw the strangest thing. Initially, from a distance, I mistook it for a very large, very low-flying bizarre plane. But as I drew closer, I could see that it was an Unseelie Hunter and some other kind of Fae that I’d never seen before locked in battle, beating air with their massive wings, tearing at each other with teeth and talons.
Were Unseelie fighting themselves, or was this a Seelie fighting an Unseelie? Were the Hunters once again keepers of Fae law, as they’d been an eternity past?
I didn’t know, I didn’t care. I just wanted to pass unnoticed beneath their radar. Hunters hunt sidhe-seers. Was I giving off a betraying scent? It was too late to go back and I needed to go forward, so I held my breath and muttered prayers to every deity I could think of that the Fae were too engrossed in their fight to look down.
One of the pagan gods must have heard me, because I passed beneath them without incident, holding my breath and watching as the battle vanished to a pinpoint in my rearview mirror. I sucked down air greedily and pretended my hands weren’t shaking. “My kingdom for a spear,” I muttered.
About thirty minutes from the abbey, I got another surprise: Dirt gave way to wintered grass.
For whatever reason, the Shades had stopped here.
Perhaps it was the farthest they’d gotten and they were hunkered in a dark culvert or had slithered beneath a fallen tree for the day, where they impatiently awaited the night to resume eating their way toward the abbey. Perhaps the soil in this part of the country didn’t taste good, salted with so many centuries of sidhe-seers living on it. Perhaps Rowena and her merry band had done something to halt their progress. Who knew? I was just glad to see something besides dirt.
The next surprise came so quickly, I had no chance to react.
One moment I was driving parallel to a road so narrow that only a whopping-good sport would call it two-lane, on a wintry Irish day, and the next I was—
Beneath the triple canopy of a lush tropical rain forest, driving on the surface of a dark, glassy swamp, throwing up a splash of foam in my wake, and I had no idea how it had happened or, more important, why I wasn’t sinking. I know cars. All kinds. They’re my passion. The Range Rover Sport has a curb weight of roughly 5,700 pounds. I should have sunk like a stone. I looked out my window. Nothing but more water beneath the eerily colored surface.
I blinked. What had just happened? Giant trees surrounded me, sprouting things from their trunks that looked like brilliant orchids mated to octopuses. Birds the size of my Rover paddled around the trees, leathery wings folded on their backs. Periodically they stabbed the water with their beaks, tossed back their heads, and swallowed. They had very large, very sharp beaks.
“V’lane?” I said incredulously. But this didn’t stink of V’lane. V’lane did “seductive” when he sifted me. Not “disturbing” and “potentially lethal,” although those two phrases certainly did spring to mind when he was around.
Still, being sifted seemed to be the only possible explanation for how abruptly my surroundings had shifted.
A hummingbird glided by. It was the size of a small elephant. Its long, pointed beak was proportionate. In my world—not that many people know it: They mistakenly “ooh” and “ah” over the sweet, delicate little sugar-water drinkers—hummingbirds are carnivores. They accept the sugar water we offer them only in order to fuel their hunt for meat.
I was meat.
I jammed my foot down on the gas, skidding on the water, dodging trees, birds, and vines. I didn’t look behind me to see if anything was giving chase. I just drove.
Abruptly, I was back in Ireland, a dozen feet from slamming into a tree.
I pumped the brakes, skidded on dead grass, and stopped much too close to bark. I sat for a moment, gasping.
After seeing that freaky Fae sky battle, I’d thought I was ready for anything. I was wrong.