by J. P. Rice
He scratched the back of my neck. “You seem to know the answer to that one.”
I mused, “If I’m trying to test myself on being a better person, this would provide the ultimate testing ground.”
“That is true. It’s easy to be virtuous when one eliminates temptation. But when that blackbird keeps pecking away, can one stand strong?” he questioned, raising his right eyebrow.
“The overall goal would benefit the whole, and maybe the Morrigan’s methods could be sloppy, but the act would keep the balance,” I told him, but I was really trying to rationalize the situation for myself.
“It seems I’ve made up your mind.” He laughed, and it spurred on a coughing fit.
I got up from his lap, and he finally stopped hacking, pulling a handkerchief from his robes. He looked up at me red faced and out of breath. He said, “I’m certain you’ll make the right decision and you will make me proud once more.”
I knew my father stayed abreast of the supernatural situation in Pittsburgh. He’d probably heard the story of me rescuing the spear from Arawn from fifty sources by now. And I thought that each time, he’d probably been smiling like a butcher’s dog. I gazed at my father’s face and something strange happened.
As if a flash of lightning had struck me and transported me to a murderous battlefield, I suddenly saw my father, the young warrior King of Ireland. His long red hair, stained with mud and sweat, was held in place by his crown and rippled in the stiff wind. The dried blood of his fallen enemies freckled his face. His intense blue eyes searched the battlefield making sure his men were safe. Sweat dripped from his cleanshaven chin as he raised his sword above his head, the silver blade catching the last remaining gleam of the setting sun. With a baritone howl of, “Charge,” he was off, and his men followed him into the fray, confident their leader would fight to the death right alongside them.
The only thing missing was his armor. He was wearing layers of boiled leather, but his armor overlay was noticeably absent. A clanking sound caught my attention, and I turned to see what it was. A bearded man in a hooded cloak turned away from me before I could get a good look. He pulled a ring mail jacket out of the stream and washed it with a rag that dripped red. On closer inspection, it was my father’s gold jacket.
Legend had it that if a warrior saw a vision of the Morrigan washing his armor, it meant he would die in battle. But who was this man? Why did he have my father’s armor?
I couldn’t identify him with his back turned and the hood covering his head. Instinctively, I walked toward him, my brain demanding to know who this gentleman was. As I neared the rushing stream, a scream of pain invaded my ears and rattled my soul. I’d heard painful screams for most of my life. But I’d never heard the desperate pleas coming from my father.
The man turned to me, his hood covering his entire face. He began to pull back his hood. Slowly. He revealed a healthy black beard.
Just when I was about to identify the mysterious man, my father stole my concentration back, as he said, “Might I make one suggestion?”
“Of course,” I replied, shaking my head to snap out of that vision.
“If you do succeed in finding the producer of these false death cards, and there is a celebration afterward, stay away from your mother. Please.” He pinched my upper arm playfully.
“I think I can do that,” I said with a smirk. “I just saw her hugging someone else. And the fact that she’s never so much as touched me, made me lose it.”
“As I said earlier, I cannot blame you on this matter. Centuries of pent up anger have a strange way of surfacing. Although, had you done this in private...” he let the words linger.
“That’s just it. I’ve tried to get her alone, and she runs away, back to the crowd so they will drown out my desperate pleas for her to simply admit that she’s my mother. She knows it, you know it, and I know it. I just want to hear the words from her mouth.”
“Sufficeth to say, I wouldn’t wake every day with high hopes of that wish being fulfilled. Still cold outside?” he asked and turned toward the window.
He knew the answer. He just wanted to change the subject because he knew talking about my mother only upset me. “Yep. And I think we both know why it’s happening. Because I failed to get it out of the Red Cavern.”
“Yes, well, had you not been drowned in lava, I have full confidence you would have returned with the Dagda’s Harp.” His big arm pulled me in tight for a firm hug. I felt our hearts beating together and it brought tears to my eyes.
I sat back and swept some of his hair behind his ear. Gazing into his sapphire eyes, I said, “But I didn’t. I failed. And now all the citizens of Pittsburgh are suffering. I’ve been thinking about going back in there.”
He used his thumb to chase the tears from my cheek, brushing gently against my skin. He gave me a tightlipped smile and a nod. It gave me instant strength.
He said, “I’ve always bragged to anyone who would listen of your bravery. Dare I say, you’re the only one who may be stronger than I?” He pursed his lips and turned to the ceiling. “Those words have never escaped my mouth before. A high honor indeed.”
The fire cracked, and I looked over to make sure no coals made it through the screen. I faced my father and smiled. “Thank you. It means a lot.”
He tapped me playfully on the tip of my nose. “You are quite welcome. Now if you are to move on and become a better person, sometimes you must slay the demons of your past. Retrieving the Dagda’s Harp would require that necessity. It could be the soul cleansing you need. But again, you must choose.”
I wasn’t ready to face those ghosts just yet. Perhaps I could help the Morrigan solve the death card fiasco, then invade the Red Cavern and bring back the Dagda’s Harp to stop this endless winter. Oh, how simple everything always sounded in my head. If only the plans went accordingly.
“Now that you are staying in Pittsburgh, I expect more frequent visits,” he said with a gentle grin.
I’d never really told him about the jousting I had to do with his new family just to see him. He had enough to worry about. “You got it. Hopefully, I can make the weather break soon and we can get some archery targets set up in the yard.”
He rubbed his right shoulder with his thumb, and with a grimace, he said, “I’m afraid I’m not sure I can draw back a bow string anymore.”
I told him, “That’s what crossbows are for. I’ll bet you can still pull a trigger.”
Too bad my father didn’t like guns. He viewed them as a cheap way to do battle and wasn’t even very fond of the crossbow or any long-range weapon for that matter. He always said that a man should look another man in the eye if he was going to kill him.
He flexed his index finger in front of his chest. “That appears to be a full go.”
I enjoyed the lighthearted moments that came few and far between with my lifestyle. If I could figure out his new family’s shopping schedule, I’d stop by a lot more often. “Take care of that digit so we can have some fun,” I joked.
“I’ll try my best,” he promised and tucked his hand under the blanket.
“That’s all I can ask. Is there anything else going on around Pittsburgh that you need to tell me about?”
My father started coughing, and I waited patiently for him to stop. After his face turned purple, I sprinted across the room and screamed at the door, “Help. We need a doctor. Fast.”
I sprinted back over to the recliner and pried open my father’s mouth since it appeared he was choking. I couldn’t see any obstruction and stared into my father’s desperate eyes, which were bulging from their orbits.
A cold sweat glazed over my panicked body as tears rushed to my eyes. What was happening? With his left hand, my father clutched his chest and his labored breathing got louder, but slower. My father looked at me. I expected to see a portrait of panic. But in true form, if this was death knocking at his door, death was in for a fight. My father appeared as calm as could be.
In a raspy tone, he
uttered, “I love you. I always have.” He fell forward off the recliner and rolled onto his back. He pointed to his mouth as his heavy breathing went silent.
As my father’s lungs betrayed him and stopped functioning, I used the heel of my hand to hit him in the chest. I hit him again, desperately attempting to save the only person who loved me. Tears covered my face and blurred the vision of my hero, tarnishing the image that had given me so much strength over the years.
My father gargled and rolled onto his side, curling his body into a heap on the dais. I hovered over my father, unsure of what I could do to save him. Tears ran off my face and collected on my father’s wrinkled white robes. I held his hand and tried to inject some of my strength into him.
Then he stopped moving completely, and I knew it was over. My body went numb and a buzzing sound filled my ears. I was kneeling right next to him holding his hand when the door flew open. It was my worst nightmare.
My father’s family marched through the door, all dressed in long black fur gowns and matching hats.
“What have you done?” Ella asked in an accusatory tone.
“I didn’t do anything. He just stopped breathing. Go get his doctor. Now,” I screamed.
“Oh, my word. What is happening?” Lisa shrieked.
A grainy image of my father sat up and separated from his body. His soul stood up and floated around the room before escaping through a tiny crack in the window.
“You did this,” Patty yelled, pointing at me. “You killed him to try to get his money.”
I defended myself, “I did nothing of the sort. I’m just as upset about this as the rest of you.”
“I knew I should have forbidden you from seeing him,” said Ella. “Viola. Go alert the guards we have a killer on our hands.”
Viola’s heels clicked against the stone floor as she shuffled out the door. I debated killing these bitches out of spite. It only took a few seconds to realize how guilty that would make me look concerning my father. Before Viola could return with help, I ran over to the window and jammed my thumb into the tiny opening.
Shoving up, a blast of frosty chill hit me in the face along with a few flakes of snow. I opened the window enough to get out. As I went to hoist myself up, someone grabbed me from behind. Peering over my shoulder, I saw Ella’s flabby her arms around my legs.
I crouched and dropped an elbow that connected to the bridge of Ella’s nose. Blood poured from her nostrils and dripped onto the back of my pant leg. She hissed in pain, let go of my legs and grabbed for her big nose. With my legs free, I lifted my foot and booted her in the chest, jolting her backward and giving me the room I needed.
I heard heavy footsteps approaching and jumped up on the windowsill. I swung my feet out and dropped about three feet, landing on the stone balcony outside my father’s room. Without a better option to get to the yard thirty feet below, I thought about shifting into a dragon. But then I would lose my clothes when I shifted back.
I could fly all the way back to my house, but that would use a lot of magic and cause me to age greatly. Angry voices echoed around my father’s room and out the open window. With the henchmen closing in, I went with a different plan. Someone’s head popped out the window, and I knew I had to get moving.
I conjured a giant foamy mattress on the ground in front of me. I made it about twenty feet by twenty feet and got up on the ledge. As the guard’s feet hit the concrete balcony, I swan dived off the side.
I landed face first on the soft surface and rolled off into the snowy muck. The guard tried to follow my lead and hopped up on the ledge. I dissolved the mattress, but the guard had already committed to the jump. His hands raced around in blurry little circles as he tried to stop his momentum.
Unable to stop the forces of nature, he launched into the air. He flailed his arms and screamed, “Shite.” His big body fell like a meteor, crashing into the frozen earth.
I walked away, dusting myself off casually, as he rolled around in pain.
Great. As if I didn’t have enough people coming after me, this would add a whole new layer. Word would eventually make it back to Clara Spiritus. The Celtic Gods would hear that I’d killed Nuada. My father had basically roasted each God and Goddess before he’d left the pantheon, so there wasn’t much love lost, but it certainly wouldn’t bolster my reputation.
I jumped in my Jeep, started the ignition and turned the heat up to full blast. A few seconds later, I felt the seats warming up. Mindlessly, I drove down my father’s driveway, out onto the main road and parked in a church’s parking lot down the street.
I left the vehicle running for the heat. I sat there and bawled my eyes out for over an hour, mentally paralyzed by the loss of my father. When I was younger, I’d thought my father would never die. Actually, I’d maintained those feelings until recently when he’d stopped drinking from Goibniu’s chalice of youth.
He was my rock. Whenever my life was falling apart, which was often, he was the one I went to. He was always there for me, and not just that, he supported me in every endeavor of my life. No matter how silly everyone else thought it was. And finally, he never judged me as an awful person like so many others had done. He was the ultimate gentleman. A true God.
And now he was gone, leaving me as the prime suspect. As the violent cocktail of rage and sadness bubbled inside me, I made a promise to my father. I promised that I would find the person who’d done this. I was going to kill the individuals involved to avenge his honor. The cherry on top would be clearing my name of any wrongdoing.
That meant I needed to contact the Morrigan and bury the hatchet, so to speak. We’d gotten into verbal spats before, but the last one had gotten pretty personal. Two alpha females were bound to get into it at some point.
I hadn’t really taken it personally and could put the argument aside. Was the Morrigan on that same wavelength? I’d seen an up-close view of her vindictiveness in action and hoped she wasn’t plotting something awful with me in mind.
One thing was certain, I wouldn’t apologize. If she demanded that, I could find myself working with Mike Merlino on this one. Actually, the do-gooder was probably better for my soul reparation.
I wiped away the tears, put the Jeep in drive and pulled out of the church. I flicked on the windshield wipers to swipe away the fat flakes of snow falling from the sky. Frozen tears of the Gods mourning my father’s demise.
Chapter 6
DRESSED IN A LONG BLACK dress and a dark overcoat, I waited in line at my father’s burial, where the funeral ceremony was being held. Hundreds of guests braved the extreme conditions for the event, which made me proud. With my identifying red hair tucked away, I hoped my black veil would hide my identity enough for me to sneak in.
The Morrigan and I got over our little spat. She had come to see me after she’d found out about my father. She had also informed me that she had convinced everyone I hadn’t killed my father. Regardless, I didn’t care if the Celtic Gods thought I’d murdered him. I wouldn’t miss his going away.
The suited man with a clipboard at the front of the line didn’t look familiar. I planned to use my mother’s name to gain entry since no one from the pantheon had arrived yet. The man barely lifted his head from the paper for each guest, so this could be an easy in. Then I just needed to avoid my father’s new family.
The man glanced up at me and said, “Name?”
Before I could answer, Viola’s cackling voice cut through the winter air. “Do not let her in.” She appeared from behind the large man with her finger pointing at me.
The guests behind me pushed me aside and went in. I said, “I just came to pay my respects. I didn’t hurt him.”
The squat Viola played with her blond hair. “No, you killed him. You’d better leave right this instant before I call the authorities.”
That was only a threat if she wanted to see cops die. “I loved him as much as you did. I...”
I stopped as somebody rammed his or her hip into me, jolting me aside. I tu
rned to the left and noticed a sparkling purple coat and long red hair. “Excuse us,” my mother said, smirking at me. As she walked by, she muttered, “Murderer.”
A short man with a five o’clock shadow dressed in a gray trench coat and a Kangol hat as dark as a raven’s feather put his hand on her back and guided her into the funeral service. A tightlipped smile developed on his face and he nodded to me apologetically for his wife’s rude behavior, as he passed. I didn’t know much about her newest husband, Warren. Other than the fact that he was crazy for shacking up with my mother.
The dark blood inside me begged for me to lay waste to the attendees. No. I even fought off the urge to grab Viola by her fake blond hair and use her as a club to beat her sisters and mother to death. I’d come a long way in controlling my wrath.
Instead, I turned around and left the service, hanging my head in shame. Not even allowed to attend my father’s burial. I followed a concrete jogging path that went up a steep incline before leveling off. Up at the top, I noticed a park bench hiding underneath a thin layer of snow. I dusted it off and sat down. Alone. Forever alone.
Since I didn’t have many friends and my father was my only family, this was my first burial. I couldn’t believe they were going to put him in the ground. I would have taken the King’s remains back to Ireland, where he belonged.
I dug into my purse and plucked out the bottle of Jameson, one of my father’s favorite whiskeys. I unscrewed the cap and knocked it back, filling my mouth. The lively spirits made my tongue tingle, and I swallowed the liquid in two big gulps.
Thinking of my father, I leaned forward and tilted the bottle for him. I watched it drizzle onto the white landscape. The shot of liquor changed the snow from the look of whole milk to a bubbly, golden champagne.
It was a message from my father. Champagne signaled a celebration. He wouldn’t want anyone crying their eyes out over his death. He’d want them to celebrate his life. And what a life it was.
