by A. S. Green
“An hour?” Declan growled. “Did it occur to ye to call? There are daoine in there,” he jerked his chin toward the cabin, “hopefully still alive.”
Rowan made an involuntary whimper. She didn’t like sounding weak, but she liked it when Meghan pulled her in close, like a sister.
“We don’t owe the daoine anything,” Maeve said, “or you either, cú sídhe.”
“Then why are ye here?” Cormac asked, and his tone sent a shiver down Rowan’s arms. His hound was clearly still close to the surface.
All of the leannán glanced meaningfully at Meghan. “We assumed you’d bring your mate. We’re here in case one of our own needs our help.”
There was a loud noise from the cabin, perhaps a door slamming. Rowan and Meghan jumped and looked while the MacConalls continued to argue with the leannán.
While it was clear the lights were on inside, all the windows were fogged over. Rowan wished she could get a glimpse of her father. She wished they could end this now, rather than hide in the woods.
“Why don’t they just run in there and finish this?” she asked Meghan.
“Because they burst onto the scene the last time when I was in trouble, and it was a complete shit show,” Meghan explained. “Aiden’s going to insist that they have a plan and stick to it this time.”
“Look,” Rowan said. “One of the windows is open. Maybe we should get closer and listen.”
“Why would they have a window open this time of year?” Meghan asked, more to herself than to Rowan, and she gave a little shiver.
“Probably so they can hear us coming,” Rowan mused. “Or maybe because there’s so many of them in there, it’s getting too hot? See the condensation on the other windows?”
Meghan took Rowan’s hand and they crept forward, staying low and close to the trees, until they were only twenty feet from the window. Neither Cormac nor Declan seemed to notice them go.
Inside the cabin, a woman was talking. “You should have taken the female. They would have been here by now.”
Meghan groaned and squeezed Rowan’s hand. “That’s my Aunt Darlene,” she whispered. “That bitch.”
“Is she talking about me?” Rowan asked. “Am I ‘the female?’”
“I suspect so.”
“Patience,” said a man. His voice was nearly liquid it was so smooth, and it made Rowan shudder. “They’ve heard what’s happened. They’ll find us.”
“We should have left clues,” said another male voice. “It’ll take all night for those dogs to track us.”
“No,” Meghan’s aunt said again. “Brother Peadar’s right. The cú sídhe will come, and this time we’ll be ready.”
“Oh, sweet Danu. They’re expecting Declan,” Rowan whispered to Meghan, her chest feeling hollow. “And Cormac and Aiden. More than expecting. This is for them. They’re only using my father and Niall as bait.”
“Shit,” Meghan muttered. “Don’t move. I’m going to go tell them.”
“Bait,” Rowan said again, like she couldn’t believe it.
“Rowan?” Meghan asked, turning around.
“Declan didn’t even want to come, but he did it for me.” Rage shot through her as she realized her hissy fit on her front doorstep had lain the groundwork for Declan possibly getting injured, maybe even worse.
“Rowan, sweetheart. Relax. The guys will take care of this. That’s what they do.”
“I can’t let them hurt Declan,” Rowan said, and before Meghan could stop her, she was moving for the cabin.
“No, wait!”
Rowan didn’t wait. She focused on a face—a face in her memories; a face she’d seen in a clearing in the woods. She thought of the pádraig’s eyes, the shape of his narrow skull, the thickness of his throat. She thought of his sandy brown hair, and the red dimpled scar over his eyebrow. Then something strange began to happen.
It was intentional—the change that came over her—but she’d never been able to do it before. She felt the glamour humming over the surface of her skin, and she wished she had a mirror to make sure the effect was complete.
From somewhere behind her, she could hear Meghan’s panicked whisper. “Rowan! Have you lost your fucking mind?” Then she heard, “Rowan? Holy shit, what’s happening to you?”
But by then, Rowan’s palm was flat against the cabin door, pushing it open. And Rowan wasn’t Rowan anymore.
“Brother Jerry?” a woman asked, getting up from a chair as a burst of cold air rushed into the cabin.
Rowan saw in a heart-stopping scan of the room that her father and Niall were on the floor, propped up against the wall and bound in iron chains. Niall was bleeding from a deep cut on his scalp. She took a quick step in their direction, then remembered who she was. Or rather, who she wasn’t.
“Jerry, what on earth are you doing here?” the woman asked again. She was in her late fifties and wearing a down vest over a flannel shirt, dark blue jeans, and sensible shoes. Her hair was steely gray and cut short.
“You left Ely,” Rowan said, and a tremble of relief ran through her as she realized the glamour that affected her appearance applied to her voice as well, lowering it an octave.
“Well, now I’m back,” Darlene said, sounding so arrogant that Rowan wanted to scream.
“You put me in charge of eradicating the vermin from this area, Sister Darlene.”
“And what do you have to show for yourself?” she asked before adding a sarcastic, “Hmmm?”
Rowan moved closer to her father and Niall. Somehow she had to convince this monster to let her take them with her. “You said it was my reward to collect, and I don’t appreciate you backing out of our agreement. Now hand those vile creatures over to me. I had plans of my own for them, you see.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
DECLAN
By the time Meghan had dragged the MacConalls closer to the cabin, the condensation on the windows had lightened. The four of them crouched behind some thicket, just outside the open window. The leannán remained hidden in the trees.
“See,” Meghan said, pointing. “There’s my aunt.”
From inside, a man was talking and he sounded pissed. “I don’t appreciate you backing out of our agreement. Now hand those vile creatures over to me. I had plans of my own for them, you see.”
Cormac whispered, “What the hell? That’s, that’s…”
“Isn’t that one of the guys who broke our window?” Aiden asked.
“I killed that guy less than twenty-four hours ago,” Cormac said. “I know I did.”
“That’s not Jerry,” Declan said. “That’s Rowan.”
“She can glamour?” Cormac asked.
“A little.”
“That’s more than a little,” Aiden said. “That’s a full-grown man.”
“I think...something this big...is a first for her.” Shit, what was she thinking? “We need to get her out of there; she won’t be able to keep it up forever.”
From inside the cabin, Meghan’s aunt crossed the floor so that she and Rowan were both framed by the same window. “No one was trying to back out of any agreement, Jerry,” Darlene said nastily. “We got no report from you all weekend, so we stepped in.”
“We had some…problems,” Rowan explained.
There was no immediate response from Darlene, but then she asked, “Where’s Quincy? Why isn’t he with you?”
Rowan winced. “He had some even greater problems.”
“Dead?” someone else asked.
Rowan gave her head a jerk. “One of the dogs took him out. So you see, my incentive for ending this on my terms is more than just the reward.” Rowan took another step toward the corner of the room. “Now hand over the bounty. They’re coming with me.”
Darlene sighed and bowed her head. Declan couldn’t see or hear what was happening next. It seemed Darlene had frozen solid while still staring down at the floor.
Then she lifted her head and said something that turned Declan’s blood to ice water. “Nice shoes.”
&nb
sp; Rowan looked down, then slowly lifted her head, and her eyes were wide.
“They know,” Declan said, just as he saw a man through the other window flick his wrist, snapping the action of his shotgun closed.
* * *
ROWAN
Rowan had felt the cold steel of a shotgun muzzle pressed against her temple—ironically by the man whose body she now assumed—but this time she was looking straight down the barrel. The Jerry-glamour had never reached her feet, and her ankle boots had given her away. Now the fear that ran through her body shrugged the rest of the glamour right off of her shoulders, as if it were nothing more than an old coat.
Her father cried out at the sight of her, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the gun.
The man who held it jerked it to the side, gesturing for her to join her father and Niall on the floor. When she moved, she saw that their eyes were wide, as if they couldn’t believe what she’d done. That made three of them. Why had she acted so impulsively? Did she really think she was capable of protecting anyone from these crazy people?
She sat on the floor and the woman, Darlene, dropped into a squat in front of her. “Where are your pets?”
“I don’t know who you mean,” Rowan said, her voice flat.
Darlene backhanded Rowan across her face, and her head jerked back. Her father thrashed in his chains. Darlene gave him a cool glance, then returned her attention to Rowan. “The dogs. Where are they?”
“I don’t know. Probably at their home.”
“They’re close,” Darlene said, turning her face up to address the three other members of the Black Castle. “Time to draw them out.”
One of the other men who didn’t already have his shotgun trained on Rowan, took aim and fired. Niall howled in pain as a bullet ripped through his thigh.
Before Rowan could even cry out, the door to the cabin flew open and a russet-haired cú sídhe stalked in, its head low, its lips pulled back over terrifying teeth. It was followed by two black cú sídhe with their ears laid flat against their heads.
The stench of urine filled the room, and Rowan realized one of the Black Castle had pissed himself.
“Shoot!” Darlene cried. “Goddamn it, shoot!”
Rowan closed her eyes. This was all her fault. The cabin was big, but not that big. It would be like shooting ducks in a barrel. That is, unless…
Rowan pulled on all her latent daoine skills for one last effort. If three cú sídhe had them scared, what would they do with a dozen more? She’d never glamoured anything out of thin air without a base. If only her father and Niall could assist her, but the iron chains that bound them cut off any help they could give.
Focusing as hard as she could under the circumstances, Rowan forced the pádraigs to see what she wanted them to see. Or close to it anyway. She wasn’t able to glamour a dozen cú sídhe, but she did manage five. The Black Castle were now outnumbered two to one. It was like a cabin full of funhouse mirrors; there were cú sídhe coming from all directions.
“Shoot!” Darlene cried and there was a shotgun blast so loud that it nearly broke Rowan’s concentration.
A cú sídhe was “hit,” but it wasn’t one of the MacConalls—only one of her own illusions so the bullet sailed straight through. The imaginary hound flickered for a second, but she firmed it up. Then she made it charge at one of the men. He ran backwards, straight into Declan, who finished him off so gruesomely that Rowan’s father groaned and Niall retched.
Another blast, then a blood curdling scream as Cormac sunk his razor sharp teeth into the neck of another man who’d come out of a back room.
The Black Castle who remained in play were shooting wildly, their bullets sailing through the cú sídhe hallucinations and boring into the wood paneling.
The man who’d had his shotgun trained on Rowan now aimed at Aiden, but he wasn’t quick enough to pull the trigger. Aiden lunged, knocking him flat on the floor and holding him down with his big paws.
More men ran out of the back room. Rowan sucked in a breath. So many? She turned her creations toward the attackers, but there was no need.
Declan was glorious in his violence, so glorious her heart swelled with pride as he tore through them all with powerful swipes of his paw, lunging left, dodging right in a flash of teeth and spray of blood.
Another gun went off, but Rowan couldn’t tell who’d fired. She couldn’t look. She needed to concentrate, to keep her hallucination intact for as long as she could. She was growing tired.
Aiden also seemed to be tiring, but not in the same way. He’d simply grown bored with the pleas from the man on the floor, so he sunk his teeth into his neck. Then, with that final gush of blood, the only pádriag left breathing was Darlene.
Rowan’s additional cú sídhe walked stiffly for the exit; they weren’t needed anymore. And as they moved out, Meghan walked in with five leannán on her heels.
“Leave her,” Meghan said. “Darlene is ours.”
Meghan’s aunt took one look at them and backed up slowly. She must have known exactly what they had in store for her. The leannán would torture her slowly, then suck her dry. Rowan had never seen it for herself, but she heard it was a fate worse than death.
Which was likely why, when Darlene’s backside hit against the end table beside the couch, she pulled open the drawer and drew out a pistol. No one moved. Not because they were afraid for themselves but because they knew what was coming.
Then Darlene raised her hand and put a bullet through her head.
Chapter Twenty-Four
DECLAN
Declan pressed his hand to his side and surveyed the carnage: three mutilated pádraigs and one with the back of her head missing. All around them, the cabin floor was a quarter-inch thick in red sticky gore. But Rowan… Oh, sweet Danu, Rowan was whole. Beautiful. Unharmed. Perfect.
She was crawling through the blood and fumbling with the key she’d pulled from the belt loop of one of the Black Castle’s detached limbs. Once she released her father and Niall Buckley from their chains, she threw her arms around both men and squeezed them tight, sobbing into her father’s shirt.
Even covered in gore, she looked good with them. She looked right. And as she knelt there, holding them in a three-person embrace, Declan felt something stir deep inside his chest. As much as he wanted Rowan to be in his arms, he could see her future with this Niall Buckley.
By Danu, his name tasted sour, but Declan could imagine Buckley reading the newspaper while Rowan cooked dinner, their table filled with pure daoine children. He bet she’d read to them at bedtime just like Declan’s mother used to do. Football games on Sundays… Society Galas on Friday nights… Maybe Buckley’d even let Rowan continue to work at the clinic.
Declan could see her there during his appointments.
She’d check him over, walk her fingertips over his neck, feel his lymph nodes, measure his pulse. Her scent would fill his senses and her very presence would fill his ears with the loud rushing sound that told him she was his and his alone.
Then she’d go home and Buckley would put his prick in her at night.
Declan clenched his teeth and took some sick pleasure in knowing that, whatever Buckley shared with Rowan, it could never be the same as what he’d shared with Rowan. Declan knew that, and it wasn’t his pride talking. Daoine did not have anamcharas. Whatever the intensity of emotion Buckley could ever have with her, it would never match the passion Declan had for her in his little finger. Not ever. No matter how many babies he put in her.
But some things were more important. Safety, for one. Predictability, for another. Declan’s future was as uncertain now as it ever was. Rowan deserved better than that.
“It’s time we go,” Declan said, turning to leave.
Aiden grabbed him roughly by the shoulder, but Declan shook him off.
“Not so fast,” McNeely said.
Declan sighed, then turned to receive McNeely’s grateful apology. Except…McNeely’s expression was not nearly as shamefac
ed as Declan thought it should be. In fact, he looked as angry as he’d been at the council meeting.
“You should know,” McNeely said, taking on that arrogant air that always got Declan’s hackles up, “I will be pressing charges with the council.”
“Charges?” Aiden asked.
“Daddy!” Rowan exclaimed, sounding simultaneously horrified and humiliated.
“For what?” Cormac asked. “Warning ye this could happen? Not preventing ye from demonstrating your own stupidity?”
“You provoked this disaster,” McNeely snarled. “You put the entire sídhe at risk.”
“Sir,” Niall said warningly, as he mopped at his head with his sleeve.
“And once again,” McNeely said, his words now practically venomous, “you brought my daughter into danger.”
“He did not bring me!” Rowan exclaimed. “He wanted me to stay behind, but I wouldn’t listen.”
“Rowan, hold your tongue.”
Declan’s hound growled so loud that Declan felt his shirt move with the vibration.
“No, Daddy. You hold yours!”
Rowan’s insubordination made the MacConalls lean back, though Declan noticed Meghan grinning like a loon.
Rowan lifted her finger and pointed it in a jabbing motion toward her father’s chest. “The MacConalls put their fine asses on the line for you tonight. And they didn’t do it because they think you’re such a prince. Declan’s been wounded and…” She cut herself off and slowly turned toward him. Declan watched as all the color washed from her face.
“Oh, sweet Danu,” she whispered. “You’ve been hurt.”
“I’m okay. Don’t worry over me.” Declan covered the wound on his side with his hand.
Rowan glanced down at his blood-soaked shirt, and she swayed a little before her medical training took over and she steadied herself. “You need to sit down, Declan.”
The corners of his mouth turned up. He’d rather she got back to her daddy dress-down than waste time worrying about him. “I’ll be fine, love.”
