Karen Marie Moning

“Figure out another way to explain me. I don’t care what you come up with. But if you call me your latest piece of petunia again or make uncalled-for references to my mouth and oral sex with you, you and I are through.”He raised a brow. “Petunia, Ms. Lane?”I scowled. “Ass, Barrons.”He crossed his arms and his gaze dropped to my glossy Lip-Venom red lips. “Am I to understand there are called-for references to your mouth and oral sex with me, Ms. Lane? I’d like to hear them.”

“He slowed a little so I could hear him better. “No, they’re night people, Ms. Lane. They’ll be up and just as willing to see me, as I am to see them. We like to keep tabs on one another. They, however, don’t have you.” A slow smile curved his lips. He was hugely pleased with the new secret weapon he had in me. I had a sudden dismal view of my future, of being led around and asked incessantly, like one of those Verizon commercials, Do you feel sick now?”

“I’ll give you until nine P.M. tomorrow to get the bloody hell out of this country and out of my way. The nerve. I’d had to bite my tongue on the juvenile impulse to snap, Or what?—you’re not the boss of me, second only to an even more juvenile impulse to call my mom and wail, Nobody likes me here and I don’t even know why!”

“I realized I would rather have a single night with you, even if it meant I was doomed to be bound to you, aching for you forever than not know such love.”

“I'd teach them to read and to dream and to look at the stars and wonder. I'd teach them the value of imagination. I'd teach them to play every bit as hard as they worked. And I'd teach them that all the brains in the world can't compensate for love.”

“I'm sorry, Silvan. I didn't mean to wake you.""I wouldn't have missed seeing my son getting barricaded in the privy by a wee lass for anything. Bonny fortune with your plan, m'dear.”

“You are so stubborn.""I am? I? Woman who insists everything be her way? You must wear hard white shoes. You must remove your weapons. You must travel in a car. You must not kiss me even though I wrap my legs around you when you do. Must must must. I weary of that word.”

“Lies are horny little buggers, they breed like rabbits and bound around just as insanely and then you have to try to keep track of them.”

“It's hard to say what makes the mind piece things together in a sudden lightning flash. I've come to hold the human spirit in the highest regard. Like the body, it struggles to repair itself. As cells fight off infection and conquer illness, the spirit, too, has remarkable resilience. It knows when it is harmed, and it knows she the harm is too much to bear. If it deems the injury too great, the spirit cocoons the wound, in the same fashion that the body forms a cyst around infection, until the time comes that it can deal with it.”

“Most folks got Id and Ego living on different floors in their head’s house, in different rooms, and they’ve locked all the doors between them, and nailed sheets of plywood over that, because they think they’re, like, sworn enemies that can’t hang together.Ro thought the whole subconscious/conscious issue had something to do with why I am the way I am. She said I have the neurological condition synesthesia out the ass, with all kinds of cross regions of my brain talking to each other. Old witch was always psychoanalyzing me (as in she was the psycho and I was being analyzed). She said my Id and Ego are best buds, they don’t just live on the same floor, they share a bed.I’m cool with that. Frees up space for other stuff.I take off, tune out, and do what I do best.Kill.”

“The single greatest advantage anyone can take into any battle is hope.”

“Sometimes my dreams feel so real it's hard to believe they're just the subconscious's stroll across a whimsical map that has no true north.”

“He gives me a look. I'm not even looking at him and I can feel it.”

“Barrons fucks you up. Ryodan makes you fuck yourself up.”

“A fecking flamethrower! Why didn't I think of that? Best I came up with was a measly hair dryer.”

“If you can't fuck it, eat it or use it for a weapon--kill it.”

“I understood that Death wasn’t the one to be feared. War was the one that laid waste to lives. Death was just the cleanup guy, the janitor, the final act.”

“He is so beautiful that he makes a part of my soul weep. I don't understand those tears. They aren't like the ones I cry for Alina. They aren't made of water and salt. I think they're made of blood.”

“It's why I laugh so much. If my face is going to stick, I'm going to like looking at it.”

“I have studied humans for a small eternity. Intent infuses their every movement. Road maps to their inner navigation, plastered all over their skin. Born to be slaves.”

“Lust is a thing of the blood. Doesn't need head or heart.”

“We Irish know how to make the most of the times of plenty, for sure enough they'll be famine again.”

“Yes, I have loved, Ms. Lane, and although it's none of your business, I have lost. Many things.”

“-No es nada que yo haga, sidhe vidente -me dijo la criatura mágica-. Es lo que soy. Soy cada sueño erótico que hayas tenido nunca y mil más que nunca se te han llegado a pasar por la cabeza. Soy sexo en estado puro que te volverá del revés y te consumirá hasta dejarte reducida a cenizas. -Sonrió-. Y si quiero, luego puedo volver a hacer que estés entera.”

“Alina era tan poco aficionada a todas esas fruslerías sobrenaturales como yo. A ambas nos encantaba leer y ver una película de vez en cuando, pero siempre nos decantábamos por los misterios corrientes, las historias de suspense o las comedias románticas, nunca por las extravagancias de lo paranormal.¿Vampiros? ¡Puaj! Muertos, y con eso ya está dicho todo. ¿Viajar en el tiempo? Ja, yo prefiero las comodidades domésticas a tener que andar por ahí con un highlander que parece un armario ropero y tiene los modales de un cavernícola. ¿Hombres lobo? Oh, por favor, ¡que memez! ¿Qué mujer va a querer enrollarse con un hombre que está regido por su perro interior? Como si todos los hombres no lo estuvieran de todas formas, incluso sin el gen licantrópico.”

“I go inside my head and become that other me, the one I don't tell anybody about.The observer...I live in terror that one day I won't get to be Dani again.”

“But then we so rarely understand the value of what we possess until it's gone.”

“Please tell me we don't grow up and turn into the adults that drive us crazy.”

“Her absence in my life was so painful that it was a presence.”

“Dude, got eyes? I'm collecting evidence." [...] "In Ziploc bags.""I think they're Glad.""They look impartial to me.”

“people were just out of control! . . . They've all got cell phones stuck to their ears and yet I've never seen such distance between people trying so hard to be close.”

“All I need is a badly mangled, irate sentence stalking me.”

“He is my vulnerability”

“Hell would be waking up and wanting nothing”

“The White Mansion isn't boring, lass. Never boring. It's the grand demesne the Unseelie King built for his concubine. It's a living, breathing love story, testament to the brightest passion that ever burned between our races. You can follow the scenes through if you've time enough and are willing to risk getting lost for a few centuries.”

“When Christian pushes into the brick wall of the building catty-corner to the rear of BB&B—first left on the Dark Zone side—and disappears, I melt down in a fit of the giggles. I toss a rock at the spot where he vanished. It bounces off the brick and clatters to the cobblestone. I'm feeling twenty shades of Harry Potter's train station, especially when he pokes his head out of the wall and says impatiently, "Come on, lass. This is hardly my favorite place to be.”

“Holy borrowing bibliophile, let's book!”

“What does somebody like you want? More power? More toys? More sex?""All of the above. All the time.""Greedy bugger.""Kid, let me tell you something. Most people spend their short time in this world less than half alive. They wander through their days in a haze of responsibility and resentment. Something happens to them not long after they're born. They get conflicted about what they want and start worshipping the wrong gods. Should. Mercy. Equality. Altruism. There's nothing you should do. Do what you want. Mercy isn't Nature's way. She's an equal opportunity killer. We aren't born the same. Some are stronger, smarter, faster. Never apologize for it. Altruism is an impossible concept. There's no action you can make that doesn't spring from how you want to feel about yourself. Not greedy, Dani. Alive. And happy about it every single fucking day.”

“Turn it off," Ryodan says without even looking at me. "You're distressing Dani. No one distresses Dani but me.”

“You choose what you can live with and what you can't live without.”

“The sun's nearly level with the horizon, right behind his head, making this weird halo effect around his face—as if! I'm surprised he doesn't smell like brimstone. He probably has a red pitchfork and hides horns under his hair.”

“Stop. Vibrating." Ryodan plucks a paper out of the air and slaps it back down on his desk.I wonder if he cleans it. How many tushes have been on that thing? I'm never touching it again. "Can't help it," I say around a mouthful of candy bar. I know what I look like: a smudge of black leather and hair. "It happens when I get really excited. The more excited I get, the more I vibrate.""Now there's a thought," Lor says."If you mean what I think you mean, you want to shut the fuck up and never think it again," Ryodan says."Just saying, boss," Lor says. "You can't tell me you didn't think it, too.”

“Och, Dani my darling, you're not giving me a single reason to wait for you to grow up. You're giving me a thousand reasons not to."It's Christian! I'm so glad it's him, not one of the other princes! I turn around in his arms and tip my head back. "Hi, Christian!" I beam at him. He's hotter than the other princes. I'm glad I got him. I'll take the others, too, but I want him first. "I want to grow up. Now. Hurry.”

“Lor blows in like he was plastered to the other side of the door."Escort the kid to clean the fuck up and get that stench off her.""Sure thing, boss." He scowls at me.I scowl right back.Lor points through the glass floor. "See that blonde down there with the big tits? I was about to get laid.""One, I'm too young to hear that kind of stuff, and two, I don't see you carrying a club to knock her over the head with, so how were you going to accomplish that?"Behind me, Ryodan laughs."You're ruining my night, kid.""Ditto. Ain't life at Chester's grand.”

“I make a new discovery that totally blows; dying is the easy part. It's coming back to life that sucks.”

“In my experience, anybody besides your mom that feeds you is going to want something in exchange for it.”

“There are a few absolute no-brainer rules in my world. Real close to the top of this list is: if an Unseelie prince runs from it, I'm going to run from it, too. [said Dani]”

“I look at Ryodan and he looks at me and for a second I think we might both kill the kid. Ryodan's more stone-faced than usual, if that's possible without turning to concrete, and his fangs are out. I look down. Ryodan's sick is as big as mine. "Why the bloody hell don't you wear underwear?" To an Unseelie Prince an exposed male dick is a call to battle."They chafe. Too small and confining.""Fuck you," I say."Dudes. Get over yourselves," the kid says.”

“He sees her like I do: at seventeen, twenty, thirty. Superimposed over the fourteen-year-old, he sees the woman she'll become.And he's staking claim.Over. my. Dead. Fucking. Body.And I can't die.”

“Barrons breaks heads. Ryodan turns them inside out. Barrons fucks you up. Ryodan makes you fuck yourself up. He pushes buttons and rearranges things according to his own private, coolly sociopathic plan.”