Darkfever_The Fever Series Read online

  “There are only two themes worth writing or reading about” writer F. Gonzalez-Crussi says, “love and death, Eros and Thanatos.”

  When I was thirteen I had two reading experiences that changed my life and shaped the writer I would become. I picked up Harlan Ellison’s Deathbird Stories from the library of the Catholic Academy I was attending–the irony is apparent if you’ve read the book–and one of my aunts gave my mother a box of romance novels.

  Eros and Thanatos. Love and Death.

  Both came in the Fever box left on my doorstep, in a more fascinating blend then anything I’d tried to write before.

  As my imperfect protagonist walked me through the craic-filled, historic Temple Bar District of Dublin and introduced me to her world, I was riveted by the tale of an ordinary, flawed young woman thrust into an extraordinary, terrifying dark world where the heroes and villains looked startlingly alike.

  I followed her into the Dark Zones–parts of our cities taken over by deadly Shades that no longer appear on any of our maps, although you might stumble into one around the next corner if you’re not careful; deep into underground labyrinthine caverns where monsters of the worst sort dwell–the kind that lie within us all; and eventually into the most treacherous place known to Man–Faery, with its irresistible illusions, lethal seductions and killing lies.

  I couldn’t close the box. Which was probably a good thing–there was no return address on the package, and I haven’t seen the Fed-Ex Story Guy since. I don’t think he’ll be coming around again until I’m done.

  Sometimes you don’t get a choice. A story shows up on your doorstep and stalks you until you tell it. You do your best and hope the passion you feel for it brings it to life in your reader’s mind as vividly and thrillingly as it exists in your own.

  Welcome to Mac’s World–and Stay to the Lights!

  Karen

  STILL want more FEVER?

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  If you loved DARKFEVER and can’t wait for more,

  read on for a preview of the

  next sizzling book in the series:

  BLOODFEVER

  BY

  KAREN MARIE MONING

  Available now

  from Dell

  ONE

  You’re a difficult woman to find, Ms. Lane,” Inspector O’Duffy said as I opened the diamond-paned front door of Barrons Books and Baubles.

  The stately Old World bookstore was my home away from home, whether I liked it or not and, despite the sumptuous furnishings, priceless rugs, and endless selection of top-rate reading material, I didn’t. The comfiest cage is still a cage.

  He glanced sharply at me when I stepped around the door, into full view, noting my splinted arm and fingers, the stitches in my lip, and the fading purple and yellow bruises that began around my right eye and extended to the base of my jaw. Though he raised a brow, he made no comment.

  The weather outside was awful, and so long as the door was open, I was too close to it. It had been raining for days, a relentless, depressing torrent that needled me with sharp wind-driven droplets even where I stood, tucked beneath the shelter of the column-flanked archway of the bookstore’s grand entry. At eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, it was so overcast and dark that the streetlamps were still on. Despite their sullen yellow glares, I could barely see the outlines of the shops across the street through the thick, soupy fog.

  I backed up to let the inspector enter. Gusts of chilly air stepped in with him.

  I closed the door and returned to the conversation area near the fire where I’d been wrapped in an afghan on the sofa, reading.

  “Dreadful weather,” he observed, stepping to the hearth and warming his hands before the softly hissing gas flames.

  I agreed with perhaps more enthusiasm than the fact warranted; the endless deluge outside was getting to me. A few more days of this and I was going to start building an ark. I’d heard it rained a lot in Ireland but “constantly” was a smidge more than a lot, in my book.

  “How did you find me?” I asked the inspector. When I’d last spoken to the Garda a week ago, he’d pressed for a way to reach me. I’d given him my old address at The Clarin House, where I boarded for a short time when I first arrived. I don’t know why. I guess I just don’t trust anyone. Not even the police.

  “I’m a detective, Ms. Lane,” O’Duffy told me with a dry smile, and I realized he had no intention of telling me. The smile vanished and his eyes narrowed with a subtle warning. Don’t lie to me; I’ll know.

  I wasn’t worried. Barrons had once said the same thing to me, and he has seriously preternatural senses. If Barrons didn’t see through me, O’Duffy wasn’t going to. I waited, wondering what had brought him here. He’d made it clear he considered my sister’s case unsolvable and closed. Permanently.

  He moved away from the fire and dropped the satchel slung over his shoulder onto the table between us.

  Maps spilled across the gleaming wood.

  Though I betrayed nothing, the cold blade of a chill caressed my spine. I could no longer see maps as I once had: innocuous travel guides for the disoriented traveler or bemused tourist. Now when I unfold one I half expect to find charred holes in it where the Dark Zones are—those chunks of our cities that have fallen off our maps, lost to the deadly Shades. It’s no longer what maps show but what they fail to show that worries me.

  A week ago I’d demanded O’Duffy tell me everything he knew about the clue my sister had left at the scene of her murder, words she’d scratched into the cobbled stone of the alley as she lay dying: 1247 LaRuhe.

  He’d told me they’d never been able to find any such address.

  I had.

  It had taken a bit of thinking outside the box, but that’s something I’m getting better at every day—although I really can’t take much credit for the improvement. It’s easy to think outside the box when life has dropped a two-ton elephant on yours. What is that box anyway but the beliefs we choose to hold about the world that make us feel safe? My box was as flat, and about as useful, as a tissue-paper umbrella in all this rain.

  O’Duffy sat down on the sofa next to me, gently for such an overweight man. “I know what you think of me,” he said.

  When I would have protested politely—good southern manners die hard, if at all—he gave me what my mother calls the “shush wave.”

  “I’ve been doing this job for twenty-two years, Ms. Lane. I know what the families of closed murder cases feel when they look at me. Pain. Anger.” He gave a dry laugh. “The conviction that I must be a chuffing idiot who spends too much time in the pubs and not enough time on the job, or their loved one would be resting in vindicated peace while the perp rotted in jail.”

  Rotting in jail was far too kind a fate for my sister’s murderer. Besides, I wasn’t sure any jail cell could hold him. He might draw symbols on the floor, stamp his staff, and disappear through a convenient portal. Though Barrons had cautioned against assumptions, I saw no reason to doubt the Lord Master was responsible for my sister’s death.

  O’Duffy paused, perhaps giving me a chance to deny his words. I didn’t.
He was right. I’d felt all that and more, but weighing the jelly stains on his tie and the girth overhanging his belt as circumstantial evidence, I’d convicted him of loitering o ver long in bakeries and cafés, not pubs.

  He selected two maps of Dublin from the table and handed them to me.

  I gave him a quizzical look.

  “The one on top is from last year. The one beneath it was published seven years ago.”

  I shrugged. “And?” A few weeks ago I would have been delighted for any help from the Garda I could get. Now that I knew what I knew about the Dark Zone neighboring Barrons Books and Baubles—that terrible wasteland where I’d found 1247 LaRuhe and nearly been killed—I wanted the police to stay as far out of my life as I could keep them. I didn’t want any more deaths on my conscience. There was nothing the Garda could do to help me anyway. Only a sidhe-seer could see the monsters that had taken over the abandoned neighborhood and turned it into a death trap. The average human wouldn’t know they were in danger until they were knee-deep in dead.

  “I found your 1247 LaRuhe, Ms. Lane. It’s on the map published seven years ago. Oddly enough, it’s not on the one published last year. Grand Avenue, one block down from this bookstore, isn’t on the new map, either. Neither is Connelly Street, a block beyond that. I know. I went down there before I came to see you.”

  Oh God, he’d walked into the Dark Zone this morning? The day was barely bright enough to keep the Shades hunkered down, wherever it was the nasty things hid! If the storm had blown in even one more dense, sky-obliterating cloud, the boldest of those life-suckers might just have dared the day for a human Happy Meal. O’Duffy had been waltzing cheek-to-cheek with Death, and didn’t even know it.

  The unsuspecting inspector waved a hand at the pile of maps. They looked well examined. One of them appeared to have been balled up in shock or perhaps angry disbelief, then resmoothed. I was no stranger to those emotions. “In fact, Ms. Lane,” O’Duffy continued, “none of the streets I just mentioned are on any recently published map.”

  I gave him my best blank look. “What are you saying, Inspector? Has the city renamed the streets in this part of the city? Is that why they’re not on the new maps?”

  His face tightened and his gaze cut away. “Nobody renamed the streets,” he growled. “Unless they did it without notifying a single person in authority.” He looked back at me, hard. “I thought there might be something else you wanted to tell me, Ms. Lane. Something that might sound, er, a bit … unusual?”

  This one’s for Neil, for holding my hand

  and walking into the Dark Zone with me.

  Dell Books by Karen Marie Moning

  BEYOND THE HIGHLAND MIST

  TO TAME A HIGHLAND WARRIOR

  THE HIGHLANDER’S TOUCH

  KISS OF THE HIGHLANDER

  THE DARK HIGHLANDER

  THE IMMORTAL HIGHLANDER

  SPELL OF THE HIGHLANDER

  Don’t miss the rest of the Mackayla Lane series!

  Darkfever

  Bloodfever

  Faefever

  Dreamfever

  Shadowfever (coming January 2011)

  About the Author

  KAREN MARIE MONING graduated from Purdue University with a bachelor’s degree in Society & Law. Her novels have appeared on the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly best-seller lists and have won numerous awards, including the prestigious RITA Award. She can be reached at www.karenmoning.com.