The commissioner stepped toward me. “Where do you think you’re going with this? I will cut you off at the knees, you miserable piece of shit.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.
He grabbed the lapel of my jacket. “I am going to ask you one more time: What little plan did the two of you come up with?”
Eagan struggled to his feet. “Unhand him now, Commissioner.”
Moira pushed herself in front of me, forcing the commissioner back. He didn’t let go. I reached up to pry his hand away. Moira shoved him back. “Knock it off, Scott. He didn’t know,” she said. Only she used Amy’s voice.
The commissioner backhanded her across the face. “Don’t you dare use her voice,” he said.
The door opened behind me as Moira fell back into my arms. In the blink of an eye, Tibbet was in the center of the room. Her eyes were huge, and her fingers elongated and tipped with claws. She didn’t speak, but I felt sendings fluttering in the air. Tibbet went to Eagan’s side and gently forced him back into his chair.
“What the hell is going on here?” Eagan said.
The commissioner faced Eagan. “She’s betraying you, Eagan. Setting you up to take a fall and using me to do it.”
Moira moved toward the commissioner, her body shield flickering around her as a bitter, angry glint sparked in her eye. “He’s lying, Manus. Scott Murdock has been blackmailing the Guild to force his political agenda down in the Weird. He’s been taking money to let Guild agents operate in the Weird without human oversight. I’ve been trying to convince Ryan macGoren it’s a trap. He’s going to let you take the fall when things get out of control. This man hates us, Manus. He hates all the fey. It amuses him to get paid to watch them kill each other down in the Weird, all because once upon a time, his pride and ego were damaged by a woman.”
“Stop using her voice,” the commissioner said through gritted teeth.
Moira’s face shifted, a ripple of light and color cascading over her. Amy’s face resolved into focus. “It’s my voice, Scott, and I will use it. You’re not going to silence me ever again.”
“You are not her,” the commissioner said.
Moira laughed, an unattractive sneer on her face. “Oh, but I am, Scott. I would have been satisfied to watch you lose your precious reputation, and no one had to know why except you. But you had to make a scene. So finish it, little man. Tell them what I did to you and what you did to me.”
Blood drained from the commissioner’s face as he began to tremble. “Shut your mouth.”
Moira shook her head. “Never again, Scott.” She tilted her head toward Eagan. “This man put a gun to my head and threatened to shoot me and my children if I didn’t leave, Manus. He was so horrified that he had married a fey that he was willing to commit murder to hide it from the humans.”
The floor felt as if it shifted under me, as the reality of what she said sank in. “Holy shit,” I whispered.
“You bitch,” the commissioner said. A gun appeared in his hand before anyone registered his movement. Tibbet came forward as I yanked Moira back. Eagan shouted.
The gun went off.
The flash blinded me. The crackle of essence-fire burned in the air. Something slammed into my face, a searing hot blow beneath my right eye. Pain lanced through my head, then a wash of cold ran down my body. My knees collapsed. Fluid filled my throat as I fell. I coughed a spray of blood into the air. I tried to inhale but choked as more blood entered my lungs. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t breathe. My vision blurred. The room spun in a smear of color and
everything
went
white
29
White.
Sound stopped. The music. The shouting. Gone.
Whiteness filled my vision with nothing to break the relentlessness of it. I coughed, feeling blood in my throat, hot blood welling out of my mouth and down my face. Blood ran into my ears, across my chin, down my neck.
Above me, the white simply was, as if the air itself was color. Or no color. As if nothing else existed except the white. I lay on the ground, if there was ground, on something. The firmness of it pressed against the back of my head, but nowhere else. My head rolled to one side of its own accord, blood pouring out of my mouth. I wanted to sit up, to stand, to reach up and touch my face, but my body did not respond. Numb. I was numb. Paralyzed. Gods, I can’t move myself.
Everything was white. I have been here before. This is where it started. Or ended. I don’t remember which.
Everything around me is white. I lie on my back, staring into a nothingness of white. I am here again. This place. Above me, I see two vast shadow shapes. Powerful shapes speaking with words I do not understand. They move closer.
Bursts of color flare in my vision, fireworks against the white, fading to darkness. More, then more, the darkness closing on me, like the slow closing of my eyes. My mind, like my eyes, closing, like my eyes blinking. Like my mind blinking.
My mind blinked.
I jerked my head up, feeling like I had passed out. People surrounded me, staring at me. Some I recognized, and some I didn’t. Their faces held a multitude of expressions—fear and horror and sadness. Then the screams began.
My mind blinked.
Dylan swims up into my sight again. My head hurts with a ringing as loud as a clock tower. I hold my hands to either side of the knife, not touching it. Blood blossoms on his shirt, deep red blood against a deep red shirt. He doesn’t move. He stares at me and stares at me and stares at me. Terror in . . .
My mind blinked.
They move closer and resolve into people. A man, yes, a man and woman. Their vast shadow shapes are a wash of gray against the white. Huge and tall, he’s taller, but she . . . she is . . .
My mind blinked.
Briallen looks at me in surprise, glowing in the white, a golden Briallen in a sea of white. She lifts her hands, something in her hands is moving, swaying with essence in a rainbow of color.
My mind blinked.
Briallen looks at me in surprise and rushes toward me as I lean over Dylan.
“Tell me what to do.” I hear myself. I hear myself and I hear fear.
My mind blinked.
I stand on a plain, white grass waving against a white sky. It’s not winter, pray, what is this new madness? Where have I come? I turn in place, searching, searching across the plain, searching about the standing stones, but Maeve is not there. Was she? What is this place?
My mind blinked.
. . . the one who leads. He follows, reluctant in his step. The blood fills my mouth, burns in my chest, and I cannot breathe anymore. I try not to breathe. I do not want any more blood in my lungs. Try not to.
They stand over me, huge figures, white on white, then faint wisps of essence coursing over them in pale, pale color. He looks at me with a storm in his eyes, and she . . . she is beautiful. She leans down, leans a long way down, her hand outstretched, reaching down. She touches my chest and the pain . . . stops.
“What are you doing, Mother?” he asks.
She straightens up, so far up and away, her face a light of glory. She stops. Everything stops. I stop. Everything . . .
My mind blinked.
Vize is running. Everything is white. I am running. Everything is white. He looks over his shoulder at me. He looks determined . . . or crazed . . . I can’t tell. Everything is white. One minute we were facing each other, and now everything is white. He stops. He looks surprised. There is someone lying on the ground. Something about him is familiar. Everything is white and there is no ground. There is someone lying in the white. Everything . . .
My mind blinked.
“I can’t do this, Briallen,” I shout.
Briallen kneels by me. Something is not right. Or different. She doesn’t look right. She reaches out but stops.
“You must. I can’t,” she says.