“All’s quiet in the world,” Bibe finally said.
Toren glanced over at her from his place near Nuada’s bedside. He had lost track of how much time he had been spending near his benefactor, watching the silver god breath rhythmically beneath the thin blanket, still lost in his unconsciousness.
“Is it?” he replied after a few moments.
“My raven did tell me that some had returned to Earth from the Chamber, but not the Protectors.” She opened her eyes.
“What do you think that means, Bibe?” Toren said, turning to face her.
“I think the Protectors and their friends are in Otherworld, although I don’t know where or why.”
Toren thought it over and remembered back to when he was a child and he had seen a being so magical and beautiful that if he had died in that moment his life would have still been complete. “The Morrigan?”
“Ah! Yes, of course. She has always had a soft spot in her heart for the Protectors and the Earth. Let’s just hope that her help has not come too late.”
…
Brendan blinked once and he was there with Dorian following a river, he blinked again and he was standing in the thriving city of Sarvaloo. He wasn’t surprised, just tired. He was tired of the visions. He was tired of the journey. All he wanted was rest, but he couldn’t have it.
A pair of voices caused him to turn around, although the male’s voice was one he recognized instantly so he knew that he was about to see Nuada. Once again the silver god’s face was hidden from Brendan’s view, and that really irked the Protector. What’s so special about your face?
Brendan held his head and tried to suppress the mounting anger he was feeling. The rage coursed through his veins and tormented him. He knew he needed to control his anger, but he didn’t know how.
Nuada was walking with a sweet-faced young goddess who was listening to him raptly.
“…and that’s why it is imperative that Earth not be without it’s defenses,” Nuada was saying.
“Why would that be, again? Aren’t you going to continue to go there? And what of Arawn?” Airmid asked.
“The people of the realms know so little about Earth and her creatures, including humans.” Nuada sighed and glanced down towards Airmid’s bag. “Like most processes on Tir na nOg, Earth is also at the mercy of the cyclical nature of things. The time has come to leave Earth to its own devices, but there’s a problem.”
“Oh?”
“Some creatures from Otherworld may end up trapped on Earth and that, as I have learned from this venture, can be very dangerous. Some of these creatures are poisonous and that’s where your flask may come in handy.”
Airmid’s hand moved over the top of her bag protectively. “My flask? What do you mean?”
Brendan noticed Nuada’s body language shift. He looked annoyed with the question, as if it was Airmid’s obligation to give him whatever he wanted. That, in turn, peeved Brendan.
“Look, Airmid, humans will not have a remedy for the likes of poisons that these beasts spew. That gives them no chance at survival,” Nuada stressed.
“That’s their issue, Nuada. This flask is of my own crafting. There is none like it anywhere in Otherworld.”
Nuada sighed. “I know. Then you leave me no choice.”
Nuada held his hand out and caused Airmid’s body to be encompassed in a silver glow. Her eyes closed, like she had fallen asleep on her feet. Her bag opened up on its own accord and floated into Nuada’s palm. “You will believe that you simply lost your flask, Airmid. You will be sad for a short time, but you will move on.”
Nuada replaced Airmid’s bag on her shoulder and then stepped around the goddess and whispered to the air, “I hope you’re right about this, Morrigan.”
Brendan balled up his right fist and punched his left palm. He knew that if he wasn’t so angry that the impact would have really hurt. The city shrank out of sight around him and left him briefly in the dark.
If I ever get hold of Nuada, I’m going to give him a big piece of my mind.
…
“Ahhhhhh!” Brendan screamed as the river, Dorian, and the forest returned to his conscious mind. Birds scattered from the treetops, hooved creatures scuttled away, and the world around him fell silent.
“Brendan? What happened in the vision?” Dorian asked gently from a healthy distance away.
“I’m sick of it, all of it,” he grumbled as he held his head, thoughts of rage and violence swirling through his mind.
“I can help you,” said a sweet voice from the banks of the river.
Dorian turned, her hands already glowing red. “Who are you?”
“I am Airmid, goddess of healing, and I want to help your friend.”
…
“Where do you think we are?” Frank asked. “Is this still Tech Duinn?”
Garnash smelled the air and then sneezed. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and chuckled. “I don’t think so. There was a definite aroma in Tech Duinn. I don’t smell that here.”
“I agree,” Rohl said, stepping forward out of a set of five megaliths. “I can smell the sea from here.”
Lizzie looked around and didn’t see much in the way of an ocean, only lush hills and jagged rocks that jutted from the ground. The trees were different species than what grew in Tech Duinn, although there was nothing out of the ordinary.
“Let’s walk,” Frank suggested. “We’re sort of trapped in a gulley here and having the low ground hasn’t proven too profitable in anything I’ve ever heard about.”
“But we’re not under attack,” Rohl replied.
“Not yet, but this is Otherworld. Let’s take this path here. It’s pretty well worn.”
Frank took the lead and Garnash hopped onto his shoulder. Lizzie walked a step or two behind, her eyes canvasing the trees and countryside for trouble. Rohl transformed his body into a horse and took up the rear of the line.
They walked up an incline on the hillside that had several stone steps, some planted intentionally while others were seemingly left there by nature. The long climb ended at the precipice of the hill that left a small open space which allowed the group to look out at a massive ocean dotted with small islands.
“Okay, I think I know where we are,” Garnash said. “We’re in Mag Mell.”
“Shhh! Listen,” Lizzie said.
“I hear it, too,” Frank said. “Sounds like crying.”
Rohl’s horse ears swiveled around and perked when they honed in on the direction of the source. “To the right, down that slim pathway.”
Lizzie didn’t wait for a debate on whether or not they should investigate the crying. Her instincts told her that they needed to follow. This was going to be important, so she stepped around Frank and began to clear drooping branches that impeded their path with her staff.
“Who’s there?” a female voice called from beyond a curtain of branches encroaching Lizzie’s view. “Identify yourself or face death!”
Lizzie swiped her staff down and chopped the last few obstructive branches just in time to see a woman morphing from the form of a diminutive woman into a beast fit for nightmares. “Ah, man. A werewolf? Really?”
The werewolf bared her fangs and clanked her claws off one another to display their deadliness. “Are you associated with the Banshee?”
“The who? Uh, no, definitely not a Banshee,” Lizzie replied, allowing her friends to walk up beside her.
“Identify yourselves before I tear your heads from your necks,” the werewolf threatened.
“I’m Lizzie O’Neal, a Protector from Earth, and we are here trying to find my brother,” Lizzie explained.
“We both seek a loved one, human,” the werewolf said remorsefully, hanging her head as she sat back down on a stone bench.
Lizzie then noticed that the werewolf was sitting in a floral garden with a half dozen paths leading from different directions. All of them contained overgrowth leaving the garden isolated and romantic.
“Uh, hey, Rohl he
re,” he said, moving his body back into its Púca form. “Who are you talking about, love?”
Tears began to well in the wolf’s large eyes. “My Faolan. The Banshee took my Faolan.” She looked up at Lizzie’s group, changing back into her human form. “You’re a Protector, can you help me?”
“Lizzie,” Frank said softly. “We are kind of in a hurry.”
Lizzie glanced up at Frank. “This is important. We were led to her and I think it has everything to do with what we’re doing.”
She turned and walked closer to the young woman and knelt down and took her by the hand. “What’s your name?”
“Aine.”
“We will help you, Aine. You have my word.”
…
Simmons stepped out of his car and took in the suburban street where the Gillespie’s house sat. The property was bordered by a quaint little fence tracing around a small gradient of a yard, which butted up against the base of the house. Two windows on the lowest wall indicated a basement, standard for the neighborhood, and a few steps that led to a front porch stoop.
Simmons moved past the gate and hurried up the steps. He smacked the knocker against the door in three rapid successions.
“Yes? May I help you?” answered a man in his sixties, his glasses perched on the end of his bulbous nose.
Simmons pulled out his badge and identification. “Sir, my name is Detective Simmons and I was told that a woman named Jodie Gillespie came by the station with some information about an incident at Syracuse University.”
“Yes, she did,” the man said, stepping out onto the porch while closing the door behind him. “Simmons, was it?”
Simmons nodded. “Is Ms. Gillespie here? May I speak with her?”
“She is, but I’m not sure she will be of any help, Detective.”
“Why’s that?” Simmons asked skeptically.
The man’s shoulders involuntarily moved into a shrug, as if he were at a loss for words. “What she has to say has her mother and I worried, frankly.”
“You’re her father?”
“Yes, I’m Bob Gillespie and Jodie is my daughter. She’s a graduate student pursuing her master’s in hospital administration and jumped at a chance to hear a world famous heart surgeon speak at neighboring Syracuse.”
“So, Jodie’s not a student there?”
Bob shook his head. “No, but her boyfriend was and that’s how she heard of the symposium.”
“Boyfriend have a name?” Simmons asked.
“Adam Waters, but she hasn’t heard from him since she’s been back.”
Simmons made a note but recalled the name on the list of missing persons. He didn’t say anything.
“Mr. Gillespie, can you go and get Jodie? I need to speak to her.”
“Okay, but keep in mind she’s been through an ordeal. She’s probably not going to make much sense,” Bob said before going back inside the house.
A few minutes later a frail looking, mousey young woman came outside wearing a cardigan sweater that was left unbuttoned over her sundress. Her glasses sat low on the end of her nose, like her father’s, as she looked up at the detective.
“Ms. Gillespie?” Simmons asked.
“Yes.”
Simmons introduced himself. “You stopped by the station the other day, perhaps having some information for me about what happened in Syracuse.”
She nodded and then moved past him to sit on the porch swing. Jodie sat in silence for a moment on her left leg as her right was used to slowly rock the swing.
“Ms. Gillespie?”
“I really don’t remember much as far as what happened that night and the weeks that followed. I couldn’t tell you what I was doing or where I went, but I can tell you that I was trapped.” Jodie stared straight ahead looking out at the pleasant day on the quiet little street.
“Who had you trapped, Jodie?” Simmons leaned back on the porch railing observing the girl’s expressionless face.
“A shadowman is how I would describe him. Faceless, featureless, just a presence in my mind.” She looked up into Simmons’s eyes. “The nightmares are worse than when I was trapped, Detective. At least then I was numb, but now my mind has to come to grips with the images that are etched into my memory.”
Simmons vaguely remembered O’Neal talking about a shadowman of some sort, but then he dismissed it as part of his hallucination. Things like that can’t happen except in the movies.
“My parents think I should stop talking about the grotesque things that my thoughts linger on, Detective. What do you think?”
Simmons pursed his lips and felt a deep sympathy for the girl. She had been an innocent bystander in a madman’s scheme that had nothing to do with her. I’m sure O’Neal was in on it.
“I think if you get to talk to some trained professionals, then you will be able to get past this, Jodie. Truth is truth, no matter what angle you look at it.”
Simmons and Jodie spoke for an hour about what she saw. She opened up about feeling like her body was transformed into a monstrous thing and about her out-of- body experience. She was pretty sure that people died around her. She told him about when she woke up from the nightmare in the middle of the woods south of Akron, Ohio, alone and afraid that it was both the best and worst moment of her life.
“Why do you describe it as the best and the worst?” Simmons asked softly.
Jodie’s eyes were tearful as she looked at him. “It was the best since I was no longer that thing,” she said and then paused to take a breath. “And the worst because now I have to live with it for the rest of my life.”
Simmons nodded, closed his small notebook, and thanked her for her time. He began to walk down the steps when a large raven sitting on the hood of his car caught his attention. It stayed put for a moment and stared at him with big black eyes before it took to the sky apparently after having its fill of watching Simmons question a poor, traumatized girl.
“I think it’s time to pay Ken a little visit,” Simmons whispered to the raven as it took flight.
…
Angie sat crying on a chair-sized boulder with her face in her hands. How long had it been since she had last seen Oscar or Lizzie? She knew the answer had to have been years seeing as how Lizzie had grown so much, but to Angie it felt more like a blink of an eye. Only recently had she awakened from what she could only describe as a fog.
“Why do you cry, woman?” Bodach asked. “Soon you and the Protector will join the ranks of the dead in Tech Duinn; you shall be united once more and then I shall be avenged. So your crying is futile.”
The truth was Angie really didn’t know why she was crying. She felt overwhelmed. She knew her husband and daughter were alive and in the Realm of the Dead. She knew that he still loved her after all of the time apart. She knew that the world that she had left behind was waiting on her to return. It was too much to absorb.
Bodach walked over and forced her to look at him. He studied her features and thought back to when they had last met. “You haven’t changed much.”
Angie jerked her head away from his hand. “You mean from the time Oscar blew your arm off?”
Bodach almost grinned. “How did you get to Tech Duinn, and how did you remain hidden for so long?”
Angie shrugged. There really was no point in hiding the truth. Oscar was coming for her, and one way or another it would all be over.
“Oscar sent me here.”
His red eyes widened at the thought. “Interesting choice.”
“He had to.” Angie looked away from the Bogle’s face not able to stomach the blood red eyes, which were offset by Bodach’s porcelain white skin and gaunt facial structure. “It was to protect me.”
“Protect you? I don’t think so. He wanted you out of his way so that he was free to do Conchar’s bidding.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. We know no one by that name,” Angie said.
“Oh, but you do. Think of those years after our last encounter. What do you
remember?”
Angie reluctantly closed her eyes and began to think back. The memories were sketchy but growing clearer by the moment. There were graduations, birthday parties, the first day of school, her mother’s funeral, and the very mundane but oh-so-special moments with her family. But always there, always lurking in the darkest corner of all of her memories was a shadow. A living, breathing shadow that she had accepted as part of her existence.
“Conchar was the shadow,” she said as she made the connection.
“Ah, but notice that the shadow is no longer there.” Bodach waited for her to nod. “Conchar is dead and no longer influences your life. Oscar, on the other hand, is forever tainted. He is a Protector, Angie O’Neal, and once evil has had its tentacles entwined around a Protector’s mind, body, or soul, then they are as good as gone.”
“You’re lying.”
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
…
Brendan was on his knees holding his head as his forehead pressed into the moist dirt of the riverbank. He was trying hard to keep his mind quiet and that meant ignoring everything around him. He had taken a yoga and meditation class back in high school—a new program instituted in his school to provide fresh alternatives to the traditional physical education class, and one that was recommended to him by his varsity soccer coach—and now he employed every bit of what he could remember to keep his thoughts out of the path of darkness.
“Is he going to be okay?” Dorian asked Airmid as the two stepped several dozen yards up river along the bank.
“I don’t know,” the goddess of wellness said finally.
Airmid held her hand out with her palm pointed at Brendan. Her eyes started to glow as she softly muttered words to herself. Brendan was still sitting on his knees with his face pressed into the dirt seemingly unaware of Airmid and Dorian.
Airmid pulled her eyes away from Brendan and looked back at Dorian. She motioned for her to follow her a little further away. The pair stopped walking when they reached the very edge of the flowing river.
The Bloodline Inheritance Page 11
