Echoes from the Veil (Aisling Chronicles)

by Colleen Halverson

  He glanced at the box and then back at me. “Give it here.”

  Eamonn opened his palm, his fingers trembling slightly.

  Grainne lunged forward, her green eyes bright with panic. Before she could intercede, I passed the sparkly to Eamonn. He whirled around, biting his bottom lip in concentration and peering down at the strange circuitry with an intense gaze. Minutes ticked by, the sun shining brighter and hotter overhead, the air so still, not even a leaf stirred in the trees. Finally, after what felt like hours, Eamonn let out a long exhale.

  “I don’t think this is going to explode anytime soon,” he declared.

  Malachy clapped his hands. “See! I told you it was fine.”

  “But,” Eamonn interjected, “the magic inside the device is complex. I don’t recognize it at all.”

  “How much time do we have?” Finn pressed.

  “The Fir Bolgs will need to make another detonator to set off whatever power is inside here,” Eamonn replied. “I can place a protective spell around it, but those always come with a risk.”

  Grainne shook her head. “You can’t risk blowing yourself up.”

  “It wouldn’t just blow up the Druid,” Malachy snorted. “I’m pretty sure all of Tír na nÓg will turn into a parking lot if he starts fiddling with that thing.”

  Grainne cursed. “Those devilish Fir Bolgs. What were they thinking unleashing such a weapon loose on the world?”

  “They don’t care,” I whispered, shaking my head. “All they want is power. Power and isolation.”

  Top-secret folks inside the American government wanted to tear Tír na nÓg apart from the mortal realm, to help the Fir Bolgs create their own dimension, cut off from everything. Those people armed them, helped them create their sparkly weapons, the ones that pierced through immortality. The exploding device was just one more iteration of their plan, or perhaps the final stage of an ongoing mission that had begun before I was even born.

  “I will do my best,” Eamonn said slowly. “A containment spell will help guard it against any stray magic that might set it off.”

  I nodded. “Let’s get back to the cave and regroup. It’s worth a try.”

  We made a grim party as we marched back to the cave we had called home for the past six months. Hidden deep in the enchanted Seven Woods, our stronghold had become a vast camp of all sorts of Fae seeking refuge from the Fir Bolgs. We kept a strong watch, but the chaos and cacophony of so many different magical races had reached a fever pitch I could barely control. My dad was in the Army, and he said the worst thing about battle is waiting. Waiting—and boredom.

  As we passed through the last checkpoint, I glanced at the púcas, now transformed, their confiscated weapons carelessly slung against their shoulders. They straightened as they caught my eye, clearing their throats, their jaws hardening. Finn had all but begged me to meet the Fir Bolgs on the battlefield, but were we ready? Did we have the arsenal we needed? One more raid. One more mission. We would only have one chance to take Teamhair, and we had to do it right.

  We veered right and climbed down a tunnel leading us to Eamonn’s chambers and his secret “laboratory”, as we called it. I motioned to Malachy, Grainne, and Eamonn to go ahead before turning to Finn.

  “Are you okay?” I asked in a soft voice.

  “I don’t like any of this. The bomb. Thornton. None of it bodes well.” His eyes darkened, and he frowned, staring at my pocket where I had slipped the strange device.

  I shook my head. “I guess what I meant was, are we okay?”

  He took hold of my hands, closed his eyes, and pressed my fingers to his lips. “I don’t know,” he said, his mouth brushing against my thumb. “I don’t know if we’ll be okay until this is over.”

  “Even when this is over, I won’t stop being a princess.” I tried to pull my hands away with a long sigh.

  Finn gripped them tighter and directed them to his heart. “Princesses can come and go. But you will always be my Elizabeth to me.”

  The tension in my shoulders melted away, and I leaned into his chest, wishing I could close my eyes and sleep for a hundred years. “There’s so much death. So much death and uncertainty.”

  He clutched me close, taking a long breath and exhaling into my hair. “I know.”

  “After all we’ve been through, I don’t know if we can go back now. The war is changing us.” I stared up at him, losing myself in his gray eyes, soft and light in his face full of hard lines, dark shadow.

  Finn nodded, his lips turning in a deep frown. “Let’s go see if Eamonn can keep that thing from blasting a crater into the Seven Woods.”

  We found Eamonn unraveling a large scroll, Grainne hovering at his side. Malachy sat in the corner, rifling through one of the many tomes I had perhaps “borrowed” from various obscure libraries—both mortal and magical. The former scholar in me screamed with guilt, but I swore to return them as soon as all this was over.

  “What do we got?” I called out.

  Eamonn didn’t look up, but Grainne flashed me a weary glance, shaking her head. Malachy arched an eyebrow and sighed as his long finger trailed down a page.

  “All right. There’s something here about the Morrígan,” the dearg-dubh muttered.

  Eamonn’s head popped up. “What does it say?”

  My heart skipped, and my throat tightened. “What about the Morrígan?”

  The Morrígan was an ancient Celtic goddess, the goddess of war and violence. The Fianna worshipped her, and once, to save me from certain death, Finn had made a false vow to the old goddess. He swore it had no bearing at all, but I wasn’t so sure. Vows had weight.

  Grainne tugged at her braid, playing with the ends. “Eamonn has a theory.”

  Eamonn searched through a pile of papers, his shoulders shaking with excitement or nerves. I couldn’t quite tell which as he hummed a bit to himself, his fingers rifling through various dusty manuscripts.

  “I was waiting before I was sure to tell you all, but…” He motioned for us to come closer, and we circled his makeshift table. “Do you have the device?”

  I dug into my pockets, the slight hum of the explosive sending a shot of nausea through my abdomen. I wanted to be rid of the thing. Cast it away. But I could only hand it over, slipping it into the soft palm of the Druid.

  He pointed to the shimmering wires on the sparkly, his eyes lighting up from the silver energy it radiated.

  “The Fir Bolgs somehow got a hold of the manna from Bel’s cauldron. It’s the only explanation,” he said.

  “Manna?” I asked. “Bel’s cauldron?”

  I knew Bel was the god the Druids worshipped, but I hadn’t heard of anything about manna or a cauldron.

  “Ah, sorry,” Eamonn said. “Centuries ago, Bel gave the Druids a gift of a cauldron filled with manna. It’s what we use to coat the Fianna weapons to pierce Fae immortality, and we include it in various other rituals. It’s very powerful.”

  Eamonn picked up a vial radiating golden light. “I’ve isolated the substance the Fir Bolgs use in their weapons. I couldn’t figure out how they could make this kind of weaponry work in Tír na nÓg, but then I discovered it contained something else. Here, look closely.”

  Finn and I leaned in, our noses almost touching the vial.

  “What do you see?” Eamonn whispered.

  The glittery manna danced and swirled in miniscule curlicues of golden light. And then I saw it—a tiny fleck of red.

  “Is that…?” I whispered.

  “Blood?” Finn said.

  Eamonn set down the vial and clapped his hands. “Yes! Precisely! But whose blood?” He looked at us expectantly, biting down on his lip. “Come now. Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Eamonn…” Grainne warned, her gaze darting to me and back to the Druid. “There’s no time for—”

  “Sorry, sorry.” He nodded, hi
s hand grazing over the circuits intertwining on the surface of the bomb in a circular pattern. “The manna is from the god Bel. We know that, but I wracked my brain for months trying to figure out whose blood the Fir Bolgs used. Then it hit me. The Morrígan. Goddess of war and bloodshed. Who else could bless such weapons to make them work in this realm?”

  I studied the almost microscopic flakes of red floating through the tubes. “You’re saying Morrígan’s blood is in there? How did the Fir Bolgs get a hold of that?” I turned to Finn and Grainne. “Do the Fianna have a secret stash somewhere?”

  Grainne gave me a blank stare, and Finn shrugged. “If such a thing exists,” he said, “I haven’t heard of it.”

  I paced the room, hugging my elbows and shaking my head. If they had somehow gotten a hold of her blood, that meant— She was real. She was flesh and bone, and she could be coming for Finn.

  “How do we destroy it?” Finn demanded, interrupting my thoughts. “Protective spell or not, we are all in danger.”

  Malachy hopped to his feet, gesturing to the book he balanced in his palm. “It says here the ancients of Tír na nÓg used the Morrígan blood for weaponry…” His eyes scanned the page, and he mumbled to himself, “and here it mentions the blood was a part of the magic they used for creating the Veil itself.”

  “Wow. Okay, so it’s powerful stuff,” I said, leaning over Malachy’s shoulder. “But how do we control it?”

  Malachy glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “I’m getting to that.” He sighed, his finger drifting down the page. My professor, Dr. Forrester, would have screamed at him for touching the book unnecessarily, and I resisted the urge to grab his wrist.

  “Here it talks about… Oh, that’s weird.” Malachy’s forehead wrinkled.

  “What?” Finn growled, his face clouding with impatience.

  “It uses a term I haven’t seen in a long time.” Malachy looked up. “A warrior. No, a champion. There’s no real equivalent in English.”

  “Finn’s a warrior,” I piped up. “Maybe he can control the substance.”

  Malachy shook his head. “No, it’s more complicated than that. The warrior needs to overcome… Oh, damn, the writing is blurred there. Overcome…and then there’s something about Morrígan’s ghost. A ghost? That can’t be right.”

  “It’s getting late,” Grainne interjected, running her hand through her bright hair. “And we’re no closer to getting answers.”

  Malachy leaned his nose closer to the book, a deathly glare contorting his smooth features. “Feel free to chime in with your ideas anytime…” he said beneath his breath.

  “Grainne’s right.” Eamonn set his papers down on the table, and they scattered, their ends curling up from being handled too much. His fingers traced the edge of a book, his shaggy hair falling into his eyes. “This is beyond the scope of my knowledge.”

  Her eyes widened, and she spluttered, reaching for him. “That’s not what I meant.”

  He flashed her a loving smile, patting her hand. “No, it’s not that. We don’t have time. We need to find someone who understands this magic.”

  “Who?” Finn asked.

  “We need a Red Druid,” Eamonn replied, peering into his microscope.

  “Morven?” I interjected.

  Eamonn nodded.

  Morven was a Druid who lived underground for reasons I didn’t quite understand. He had been a part of the Fae Resistance when my mother was alive, but the leaders of Trinity had tagged him as an outlaw long before that. The last time we met, he insinuated his knowledge about the Veil between Tír na nÓg and the mortal realm made him dangerous, but I was starting to wonder if Morven had deeper secrets than any of us could have imagined.

  “We’ll travel to see him.” I massaged the tense muscles in my neck, my mind whirring with plans. “We leave in an hour.”

  Finn shook his head. “You need to rest. We all do.”

  I gestured to the sparkly sitting on the table. “But you said yourself that thing could blow up any minute.”

  Eamonn tapped a pencil on the table, sounding out a halting tattoo in the tense silence hanging over the room. “Probably not without the detonator,” he said. “And that will take time for them to rebuild. The protective spell can hopefully stabilize the magic for now. That is, if it works…”

  I arched an eyebrow. “If it works? I thought—”

  The Druid frowned. “There are no guarantees in magic.”

  “Very well.” My tense shoulders sagged, and an overwhelming weariness overtook my limbs. “Eamonn, Finn, and I will leave for London first thing tomorrow in search of Morven. If we’re not incinerated by this protective spell first.”

  Grainne winked. “Have a little faith there, Elizabeth.”

  I had all the faith in the world in Eamonn, but this weapon was so beyond anything I had ever seen. My stomach twisted in knots, and my palms sweated thinking about the tremendous damage it could do.

  “How does the protective spell work?” I asked, smoothing my grimy hair away from my face.

  Eamonn held the sparkly in his hand, the wires and tubes shimmering. “It will work best if we have the Trinity—Fae, Fianna, and Druid. Our blood will layer complex magic upon the device.”

  “Our blood?”

  “Does anyone have a knife?” Eamonn asked.

  Grainne fiddled in one of the many pockets on her leather vest, pulling out a small blade. “Will this work?”

  The Druid nodded, taking the weapon from her. “I can be the Druid and Finn can supply the Fianna blood.”

  “I can do it,” Grainne chimed in with a frown.

  Eamonn shook his head. “The spell will bind you to the device.”

  “And?” Grainne snapped.

  Finn waved her off. “Grainne, if something happens to me, to Eamonn, we’ll need you.”

  It took me a moment to understand what Finn insinuated. “Hey, I don’t need Grainne’s protection.”

  I snatched the device from Eamonn’s hand. “We do this together. You and me, Finn.”

  His face darkened. “We can find another Fae, Elizabeth.”

  Cold fingers grazed my arm. “I can do it,” Malachy said softly.

  I wrenched away and tilted up my chin, locking eyes with everyone in the room. “No. It should be bound to us. I won’t sacrifice anyone else.”

  Time stilled for a moment, and then suddenly with one quick strike, Eamonn pulled the knife across his palm. He let out a small gasp and blood welled up, dripping to the cave floor. He bit his lip and passed the blade to Finn.

  “Let’s get this over with,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Finn grabbed the knife and did the same. I shielded my eyes for a moment, wincing at his grunt of pain.

  With a deep breath, I took hold of the tiny blade. Sharp pain blasted in my palm and through my arm as I slashed my flesh. “This better work,” I muttered.

  “We all need to hold hands,” Eamonn said. “I’ll use your blood magic to fuel the protective spell.”

  Finn gave me a weary glance and gently intertwined his fingers with mine. His blood seared my palm, and I sighed, the pain pulsing and aching. Finally, he took hold of Eamonn’s hand. “Make it good, Druid.”

  Grainne leaned against the wall, her shoulders trembling and lips slightly parted. Malachy ran his hands through his hair. “This is reckless,” he said beneath his breath.

  Eamonn began to chant in a low voice as he clutched the device close to his chest. Even though we stood deep inside the cave, a sharp wind kicked up and the sound of hushed whispers filled my ears.

  “What the fuck…?” I turned, my fingers clutching Finn’s tighter. Grainne edged closer to me, her green eyes wide.

  Finn stared at the Druid, who appeared lost in a trance, his eyes closed and fluttering, his shoulders rocking back and forth. A loud hum emanated
from the sparkly, and I screamed as Eamonn’s hands started to sizzle from the heat of the explosive. He shouted the chant through gritted teeth, his face contorted with pain.

  “Stop!” I cried. “Stop this now!”

  I rushed the Druid, but a bright white light blinded me, stopping me in my tracks.

  When I opened my eyes, a blank gray sky stretched above, and roaring men and the clash of steel deafened me. I sat almost a foot deep in mud, my fists sinking into the muck as I tried to lift myself up to escape. Bodies lay piled in bloody towers, oceans of blood swirling in the black earth as rain pelted down. I glanced to my side and cried out in horror. Finn’s body lay still, his face a mask of blood and grime. A raven hopped on his chest and cocked its head to the side, peering at me with a pair of black, beady eyes.

  It opened its beak and said in a flat voice, “His blood is mine.”

  My mind shattered, and a great high-pitched scream surged from my lungs.

  Chapter Three

  I opened my eyes, and Finn’s face hovered over mine. My head lay in his lap, and he flashed me a relieved glance.

  “What happened?” My voice came out a croak. “Are you okay?”

  Grainne shifted into view, taking hold of my hand. “You disappeared for a moment, but you’re back now.”

  I sat up, my mouth gaping. “I disappeared?”

  My mind raced with what I just saw. I didn’t know if that was a vision or what, but I knew it didn’t bode well for Finn. He placed his firm arm around my waist, pulling me closer to him. His five o’clock shadow brushed against my neck, and I shivered, grasping his loose tunic, bunching the coarse black fabric in my fist.

  “Where did you go?” he whispered in my ear.

  “I…” I swallowed hard, shaking my head. “I don’t know.” I had done this before. Traveled out without realizing. Sometimes it happened when I was upset or angry. This was different. Very different. Taking a deep breath, I glanced back at Eamonn, hoping to deflect attention from myself. “Is the device…stable…?”

  He nodded. “I think so. That is, for now.” He set it down on the table, a red mark on his hand. “I want to study it a bit more before we leave in the morning.”