Fever Moon: the Fear Dorcha by Karen Marie Moning Read Online Free
Into the Dreaming is a piece of work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Whatsoever resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Into the Dreaming by Karen Marie Moning copyright © 2002, 2006 by
Karen Marie Moning
Extract from Fever Moon by Karen Marie Moning, Pencils by Al Rio, Inks by Julia Pinto, Colors by Mae Hao copyright © 2012 by Karen Marie Moning, LLC Proposal for A Ghost of a Run a risk by Karen Marie Moning copyright © 2012
by Karen Marie Moning
Deleted scenes from Kiss of the Highlander past Karen Marie Moning copyright © 2012
past Karen Marie Moning
The Dark Highlander Lite past Karen Marie Moning copyright © 2012
by Karen Marie Moning
Excerpt from Darkfever past Karen Marie Moning copyright © 2006
past Karen Marie Moning
All rights reserved.
Published in the Us by Delacorte Printing, an imprint of The Random Firm Publishing Group, a division of Random Firm, Inc., New York.
DELACORTE Press is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random Firm, Inc.
Into the Dreaming was originally published in different form equally office of Tapestry (New York: Jove Publications, 2002) and separately every bit a mass market paperback (New York: Jove Publications, 2006).
This work contains an excerpt from the forthcoming graphic novel Fever Moon by Karen Marie Moning, pencils by Al Rio, inks by Julia Pinto, colors by Mae Hao. This excerpt has been fix for this edition only and may non reflect the last content of the forthcoming edition.
eISBN: 978-0-345-53523-8
www.bantamdell.com
Jacket design: © Eileen Carey
Jacket image: © Aleksandr Doodko/Shutterstock
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FOREWORD
IF Y'all'VE PICKED UP THIS Volume THAT MEANS YOU'RE ONE OF four things: a fan of my Highlander series, a fan of my Fever books, neither, or both.
If you're 1 of my Highlander fans, this volume is for you. Written between Osculation of the Highlander and The Night Highlander, Into the Dreaming is pure romance, with the first, faint strains of a darker music: a glimpse into the world of the icy, inhuman Seelie and Unseelie courts that I somewhen adult into my Fever series.
If you're a Fever fan and haven't read my Highlander books, this is where it all began, when I first knew there was another, much darker story waiting to be told. Many of you have written to ask me how the Faery World in Into the Dreaming fits chronologically into the Fever serial and the answer is: not at all. What happens in Into the Dreaming didn't happen in the Fever world. It's completely separate, although evidently the outline of the Fae characters/court and the themes are the same. Remember of this novella equally the seeds of an thought I couldn't write nonetheless, so I fabricated sketchy notes then went back to my twenty-four hours job, writing romance novels until the time was correct. Or rather until I woke up i morning from a long and very detailed dream to find the story equally unavoidable as a ten-car pileup in heavy fog on a one-lane road in a dark tunnel.
If you're a fan of both serial, practiced to see you again! There are extras from both worlds included in this compilation. You'll find a volume proposal for an unwritten story, Ghost of a Chance, deleted scenes from Kiss of the Highlander, and a good clamper of The Night Highlander Lite, the version that didn't become published, plus a bit about what was going on in my earth at the fourth dimension.
You'll as well find a sneak peek at my new graphic novel Fever Moon: The Fearfulness Dorcha, a 150-plus-page, total-color hardcover, which features Mac & Barrons in an all-new original adventure that takes place during Shadowfever. For those of you who are new to my Fever series, we've included a preview of those books besides.
If y'all've never read either series and picked up this volume solely on the cover and blurb, welcome! This collection will requite you a look at the worlds I write nearly, and is a great way to dip your toe in and see if y'all like the water.
Special thanks to Random House for getting Into the Dreaming back out at that place in a wonderful packet. It had gone out of print and many readers either couldn't observe information technology or told me they'd paid ridiculous amounts for a dog-eared paperback re-create.
A tongue-in-cheek, sexy romp, Into the Dreaming was inspired by my sisters: Laura with her fabulous cooking, and Elizabeth with her infamous Silly Jane jokes. Jane Sillee (could I exist more obvious?) thinks if you toss stellar sex into that mix, you lot've got all you demand for a wonderful life. I'k inclined to concord.
Drop by my Facebook page or website bulletin board after you lot've finished. I dear to hear from readers!
Stay to the lights,
Karen
CONTENTS
Embrace
Title Folio
Copyright
Foreword
Into the Dreaming
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter 2
Chapter Three
Chapter Iv
Affiliate 5
Chapter Six
Affiliate Seven
Chapter 8
Chapter Nine
Chapter X
Affiliate Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Affiliate 13
Affiliate Fourteen
Chapter 15
Epilogue
Author'south Note
Afterword
Proposal for Ghost of a Chance
Deleted Scenes from Kiss of the Highlander
The Dark Highlander Lite
Prologue
Chapter one
Affiliate two
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Affiliate v
Affiliate half-dozen
Affiliate 7
Excerpt from Darkfever
Dedication
Other Books past This Writer
Nearly the Author
Photo Extract from Fever Moon
His hard, moisture body glistened in the moonlight as he emerged from the ocean. Brilliant eyes of stormy aquamarine met hers, and her eye raced.
He stood naked earlier her, the look in his optics offering everything, promising eternity.
When he cupped one strong hand at the nape of her neck and drew her closer to receive his kiss, her lips parted on a sigh of dreamy anticipation.
His kiss was at first gentle, and so equally stormy as the human being himself, for he was a man of deep secrets, a human of deeper passion, her Highlander.
I manus became two buried in her hair, one kiss became a second of trigger-happy and fiery desire, then he swept her into his artillery, raced up the castle steps, and carried her to his sleeping room …
—From the unpublished manuscript
Highland Fire by Jane Sillee
1
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NOT QUITE SCOTLAND
IT WAS A LAND OF SHADOWS AND Ice.
Of grey. And grayer. And blackness.
Deep in the shadows lurked inhuman creatures, twisted of limb and hideous of countenance. Things 1 did well to avert seeing.
Should the creatures enter the pale confined of what passed for light in the terrible place, they would dice, painfully and slowly. As would he—the mortal Highlander imprisoned inside columns of sickly light—should he succeed in breaking the chains that held him and seek escape through those terrifying shadows.
Jagged cliffs of ice towered to a higher place him. A frigid air current shrieked through dark labyrinthine canyons, bearing a susurrus of desolate voices and faint, hellish screams. No sunday, no fair cakewalk of Scotland, no aroma of heather penetrated his frozen, bleak hell.
He hated it. His very soul cringed at the horror of the place.
He ached for the warmth of the sun on his face and hunge
blood-red for the sweet crush of grass beneath his boots. He would have given years of his life for the surety of his stallion betwixt his thighs and the solid weight of his claymore in his grip.
He dreamed—when he managed to escape the agony of his environment past retreating deep into his mind—of the blaze of a peat burn down, scattered with sheaves of heather. Of a woman's warm, loving caresses. Of buttery, golden-crusted bread hot from the hearth. Simple things. Impossible things.
For the son of a Highland chieftain, who'd passed a score and x in resplendent mountains and vales, five years was an intolerable sentence; an incarceration that would be withstood only by force of will, by careful nurturing of the light of hope within his heart.
Only he was a strong man, with the regal blood of Scottish kings running hot and true in his veins. He would survive. He would return and reclaim his rightful identify, woo and win a bonny lass with a tender heart and a tempestuous spirit like his mother, and make full the halls of Dun Haakon with the music of wee ones.
With such dreams, he withstood 5 years in the hellish wasteland.
Simply to observe the dark rex had deceived him.
His sentence had never been five years at all, just five faery years: five hundred years in the state of shadow and water ice.
On that day when his eye turned to water ice inside his chest, on that day when a single tear froze upon his cheek, on that solar day when he was denied even the simple solace of dreaming, he came to find his prison a place of beauty.
"My queen, the Unseelie king holds a mortal captive."
The Seelie queen's face remained impassive, lest her court run across how deeply agonizing she found the messenger's news. Long had the Seelie Courtroom of Light and the Unseelie Courtroom of Dark battled. Long had the Unseelie rex provoked her. "Who is this mortal?" she asked coolly.
"Aedan MacKinnon, son and heir of the Norse princess Saucy Mary and Findanus MacKinnon, from Dun Haakon on the Isle of Skye."
"Descendent of the Scottish king, Kenneth McAlpin," the queen mused aloud. "The Unseelie king grows greedy, his aim lofty, if he seeks to turn the seed of the McAlpin to his dark ways. What deal did he strike with this mortal?"
"He sent his current Hand of Vengeance into the globe to bring death to the mortal'due south clansmen nonetheless bartered that if the mortal willingly consented to spend five years in his kingdom, he would spare his kin."
"And the MacKinnon agreed?"
"The king curtained from him that five years in Faery is v centuries. Still, as grandseed of the McAlpin, I doubtable the MacKinnon would accept accepted the total term to protect his clan."
"What concession does the king make?" the queen asked shrewdly. Whatever deal between faery and mortal must concord the possibility for the homo to regain his freedom. However, no mortal had ever bested a faery in such a bargain.
"At the end of his sentence, he will exist granted one full cycle of the moon in the mortal world, at his home at Dun Haakon. If, past the stop of that time, he is loved and loves in return, he volition be gratis. If not, he serves every bit the king'south new Paw of Vengeance until the king chooses to replace him, at which time he dies."
The queen made a sound curiously like a sigh. By such brutal methods had the Unseelie king long fashioned his deadly, prized assassinator—his beloved Vengeance—by capturing a mortal, driving him past human limits into madness, indurating him to all emotion, then endowing him with special powers and arts.
Since the Unseelie king was barred archway to the man world, he trained his Vengeance to behave out his orders, to agree no act too heinous. Mortals dared non even whisper the icy assassinator's name, lest they inadvertently describe his merciless attention. If a man angered the Unseelie king, Vengeance punished the mortal's clan, sparing no innocents. If grumblings nearly the faery were heard, Vengeance silenced them in cruelly imaginative ways. If the royal house was not amenable to the faery earth, Vengeance toppled kings equally carelessly as one might sweep a chessboard.
Until now, it had been the Unseelie rex'southward wont to abduct an insignificant mortal, one without clan who would not be missed, to railroad train as his Vengeance. He went too far this time, the Seelie queen brooded, abducting a blood grandson of one of fair Scotia's greatest kings—a human being of groovy honor, noble and truthful of centre.
She would win this mortal dorsum.
The queen was silent for a time. And then, "Ah, what five hundred years in that place will do to him," she breathed in a chilling voice. The Unseelie king had named the terms of his deal well. Aedan MacKinnon would still be mortal at the end of his captivity but no longer remotely human when released. In one case, long ago and never forgotten, she'd traversed that forbidden country herself, danced upon a elevation of black ice, slept inside the dark male monarch's velvet encompass …
"Perhaps an enchanted tapestry," she mused, "to bring the MacKinnon the one true mate to his heart." She could non fight the Unseelie king straight, lest the clash of their magic also gravely damage the land. Simply she could and would do all in her ability to ensure Aedan MacKinnon found dear at the stop of his imprisonment.
"My queen," the messenger offered hesitantly, "they shall take simply one bridge of the moon in the sky. Maybe they should meet in the Dreaming."
The queen pondered a moment. The Dreaming: that elusive, much-sought, everforgotten realm where mortals occasionally brushed pale shoulder to irised wing with the fairy. That place where mortals would be astonished to know battles were won and lost, universes built-in, and truthful beloved preordained, from Cleopatra and Mark Antony to Abelard and Heloise. The lovers could meet in the Dreaming and share a lifetime of loving before they always met in the mortal realm. It would lay a yard foundation for success of her program.
"Wisely spoken," the queen agreed. Rising from her floral bower with fluid grace, she raised her arms and began to sing.
From her melody a tapestry was woven, of faery lore, of bits of blood and bone, of silken pilus from the smashing, great-grandson of the McAlpin, of ancient rites known only to the True Race. As she sang, her courtroom chanted:
Into the Dreaming lure them deep
where they shall love whilst they doth slumber
then in the waking both shall dwell
'til beloved's fire doth melt his ice-borne hell.
And when the tapestry was complete, the queen marveled.
"Is this truly the likeness of Aedan MacKinnon?" she asked, eyeing the tapestry with unmistakable erotic interest.
"I have seen him, and it is so," the messenger replied, wetting his lips, his gaze stock-still upon the tapestry.
"Fortunate woman," the queen said silkily.
The faery queen went to him in the Dreaming, well into his judgement, when he was quite mad. Tracing a curved boom confronting his icy jaw, she whispered in his ear, "Hold fast, MacKinnon, for I accept found y'all the mate to your soul. She will warm you. She will love you lot in a higher place all others."
The monster chained to the ice threw back his night head and laughed.
It was non a human being sound at all.
Two
PRESENT Day OLDENBURG, INDIANA
JANE SILLEE HAD AN INTENSELY PASSIONATE Relationship with her postman.
It was classic honey-hate.
The moment she heard him whistling his way downward her walk, her eye kicked into overtime, a sappy smile curved her lips, and her breathing quickened.
But the moment he failed to deliver the acceptance letter extolling the wonders of her manuscript, or worse, handed her a rejection alphabetic character, she hated him. Hated him. Knew it was his error somehow. That possibly, but maybe, a publisher had written glowing things virtually her, he'd dropped the alphabetic character because he was careless, the current of air had picked information technology upward and carried it off, and even now her bright and shining future lay sodden and decomposing in a mud puddle somewhere.
Simply how much could a federal employee be trusted, anyway? she brooded suspiciously. He could be part of some covert written report designed to determine how much one tortured writer could endure before snapping and turning into a pen-wielding felon.
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"Purple prose, my ass," she muttered, balling up the latest rejection letter of the alphabet. "I just used black ink. I can't beget a colour ink cartridge." She kicked the door of her tiny apartment close and slumped into her secondhand Naugahyde recliner.
Massaging her temples, she scowled. She only had to get this story published. She'd become convinced it was the only fashion she was ever going to get him out of her mind.
Him. Her sexy, dark-haired Highlander. The ane who came to her in dreams.
She was hopelessly and utterly in love with him.
And at twenty-four, she was really start to worry about herself.
Sighing, she unballed and smoothed the rejection letter. This one was the worst of the lot and got pretty darned personal, detailing numerous reasons why her piece of work was incompetent, unacceptable, and downright idiotic. "But I practise hear celestial music when he kisses me," Jane protested. "At least in my dreams I do," she muttered.
Crumpling information technology again, she flung information technology across the room and closed her eyes.
Last nighttime she'd danced with him, her perfect lover.
They'd waltzed in a woodland clearing, caressed by a fragrant forest breeze, beneath a black velvet canopy of glittering stars. She'd worn a gown of shimmering lemon-colored silk. He'd worn a plaid of crimson and black atop a soft, laced, linen shirt. His gaze had been so tender, so passionate, his hands so strong and masterful, his tongue then hot and hungry and—
Jane opened her eyes, sighing gustily. How was she supposed to have a normal life when she'd been dreaming nearly the man since she was old plenty to retrieve dreaming? As a child, she'd thought him her guardian angel. But as she'd ripened into a young adult female, he'd become so much more.
In her dreams, they'd skipped the trip the light fantastic toe of the swords betwixt twin fires at Beltane atop a majestic mountain while sipping honeyed mead from pewter tankards. How could a cheesy high-schoolhouse prom replete with silver disco ball suspended from the ceiling accompanied by plastic cups of Hawaiian Punch compare to that?
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