Three rat-looking boys charged him at once, two forward and one behind. He grabbed one by the shoulder of his shabby shirt while striking another in the chest, and ended up with a deep bite in his forearm. Yowling in angry pain, Thor used the rodent-faced faerie as a club to beat down his remaining compatriot. Then he bludgeoned them both with his hammer.
Gummy snakes and marshmallow crowns erupted with every blow, just as each faerie struck turned to smoking ash. Newly sprouted shamrock leaves and flowers sprang up in tangled clumps beneath Thor’s feet.
“This isn’t so bad!” Thor shouted over his shoulder to Heimdall. He punched another clurichaun in the face and knocked him back a couple of yards, then smacked the foolish smile off a dirty-faced amadán with the flat of his hammer. A spray of blueberry licorice and Guinness-flavored gummy pints burst into the air.
“Still not a fan of all these pixies trinkets.” Thor brushed a few gold harps from his beard. “But it’s not an unpleasant way to spend an afternoon.”
“I think the aim is to wear us down,” Heimdall replied. There was a sharp crack as his shillelagh connected with the chest of a particularly feisty faerie. “Taken singly, these aren’t the most ferocious adversaries.”
“But when there’s a mob . . .” Thor replied as more faeries crowded around them, taking the places of the Vanir who had just fallen.
“And there are a lot more of them than us,” Heimdall grunted.
Thor felt the air move over his left ear as Heimdall pulled his shillelagh back to swing wide at a trio of buachailleens.
“Watch that you don’t clip me with that thing, eh?” Thor called over his shoulder.
“I’ll see what I can do.” Heimdall’s voice was strained as he struggled with the cold-eyed herding faeries. He knocked the first one down, but his blow did little more than upset the red cap of the second one who grabbed the shillelagh and tried to wrestle it away from Heimdall.
“You need help?” Thor called.
“I think I’ve about got it.” Heimdall let go of the weapon with his right hand to punch the faerie in the face. He felt a burning sting in his left leg. A snake slithered away and shook itself to transform back into the third buachailleen.
“Shapeshifters!” Heimdall yelped and collapsed forward, barely managing to keep the faeries at bay.
Thor turned and dispatched the buachailleens and then stomped on their smoldering ash. He bent over his fallen brother and picked the candies and shamrock seeds out of his hair. He didn’t like the sickly blue pallor of Heimdall’s face.
“How bad is it?” Thor asked, just before a rat boy rushed forward and cracked Thor’s cranium with a skull-topped shillelagh.
Badbh touched down atop the Oweynagat ogham stone and nodded at her sisters. She pulled on their strength, but this was her battle.
“You still wish to negotiate with me?” Badbh cackled at Odin as he stood before her, a pair of shillelaghs stolen from the fir darrigs in his hands. He held the weapons out to his sides and shook them in frustration.
“We can end this conflict now!” Odin threw the shillelaghs to the ground. “This battle does not have to become a global war. Only you can stop this.”
Badbh laughed in honest surprise. “Why in the Nine Realms would I want to stop?”
She looked past Odin to see his Æsir sons struggling on the ground beyond. Heimdall already wore the mask of death, and Thor fell under the pummeling he was taking from Vanir soldiers rushing in for the kill.
Badbh looked back at Odin and tipped her head toward the scene unfolding behind him.
A howl of despair escaped the god’s lips as he turned and saw his sons lying motionless in the grass. “What have you done?!” he screamed at Badbh. “Why do you lust for Æsir blood?”
Badbh flashed a pointed-toothed smile. “It’s not just Æsir. Any blood will do.”
Odin bent forward to pick up the shillelaghs he’d laid down. Before he could stand upright, Nemain leapt off the ogham stone, transforming into a massive black wolf in mid-air before she tackled Odin to the ground.
Nemain pinned his arms with her forepaws and ripped out his throat before he could so much as draw a breath.
“Tuatha de Danann! Vanir!” Badbh laughed as the old god’s blood soaked into the green grass of Éireann.
Thor blinked his eyes open as the faeries broke off their attack and retreated. Dazed and bloody, he propped himself up on his elbows and found Heimdall lying still beside him.
Thor shook his brother hard.
“Heimdall!” he shouted. He slapped his brother across the face.
There was no response. Heimdall’s body was already losing its heat to the damp grass, now more red than green.
Thor grabbed the leprechaun hammer in one hand and Heimdall’s shillelagh in the other. He stumbled to his feet and tried to find his balance. His vision was spotty after so many blows to the head and face.
Blood mixed with sweat and ran down into his eyes as he sought some nearby faerie he could slaughter. But they all backed slowly away from him, laughing. They jeered and taunted in a language he didn’t understand. Thor responded with his own curses.
“Fight me, you cowards!” He swung the shillelagh at the empty air before him. “You’re no better than rancid rats wallowing in a vat of sow snot!”
Forming a loose ring around him, the faeries continued their taunts. A few of them picked up twigs and pebbles and tossed them at him. Thor kept moving forward, and finally understood that he was being herded.
He didn’t care. The Vanir bastards would pay for what they’d done to Heimdall. He hoped Freya would understand.
He swung his weapons in front of him again, barely catching the elbow of a skinny faerie with sharp ears and huge eyes. She burst into flame at the touch of the hammer, and a mound of white flowers and a pile of candy appeared in her place.
“Fight me!” Thor roared.
The circle opened before him, and Thor stumbled forward. There was someone on the ground. He wiped his eyes clear and saw the desecrated corpse of his father. Odin’s chest had been torn open, and dark blood oozed from his wounds and soaked into the grass.
“NO!” Thor gripped his weapons tight, so that the wood cut into his flesh and his fingers bled. Heart pounding, he stepped closer to his father’s body. Odin wasn’t breathing. His one eye was open and staring up at the sky.
“Ragnarok,” Thor hissed.
“If that is what you wish to call it,” Badbh announced from above.
Thor looked up at the three sisters of The Morrigan standing together atop the cave entrance. The black one wiped dark blood away from her mouth with the back of her hand.
Thor was surprised to be squinting at such bright sunlight. Wasn’t the moon supposed to swallow the sun on the day of Ragnarok? Day turning to eternal darkness as the world ripped itself open from the inside out?
“Finish him,” Badbh commanded. The Tuatha de Danann who had been standing in a jeering circle around Thor crept forward. They picked up speed with each step and leapt onto him in a writhing, violent mass, tearing the very life out of the Æsir god of thunder. Thor went down with a strangled shout and a geyser of bright red blood that shot upward toward the sun. He was swallowed by the slaughtering scrum and the wet sounds of tearing flesh.
That business concluded, Badbh blinked her eyes at the clear sun overhead and stretched her arms toward it.
“The day has come!” she sang with tears in her voice. She gazed out across the field where so many of her kind lay slain, but she did not mourn. Theirs was a worthy and necessary sacrifice.
There were still the two humans to dispose of. She saw them crouched together in the grass. The boy’s lips were moving, no doubt in some fervent, frail prayer he hoped would change the course of Éireann’s destiny.
She recognized the girl with the red-blond hair—the little witch from the Black Pool. Badbh laughed.
“Lunantisidhe!” she screeched. A pair of spindly, wizened creatures looked up
from the pile still tearing at the lifeless body of Thor. Badbh nodded toward the humans. The long teeth of the dark soldiers sharpened into points as they smiled.
Sally opened her eyes to find a pair of wrinkled, gangling creatures loping toward her.
“Niall!” She shook him hard. “We’ve got trouble!”
In a single motion, Niall leapt up from the grass and swung out with Sally’s shillelagh.
“Sally! Run!” he shouted as the sharp-toothed faeries dodged his advances.
“Where?” Sally scanned the field for any avenue of escape, but all she saw was blood. Blood and the bludgeoned bodies of her friends.
Niall took another swing at the faeries, and again he missed. “Just get out of here! Go to the cave!” He lunged forward and jabbed one of the creatures in the belly. The other laughed and shot past Niall to close in on Sally.
Sally’s body was in motion before she realized her brain had issued the command to run. She dashed toward the cave opening and tried to ignore the fact that she was racing into the arms of The Morrigan.
“Keep going!” Niall shouted behind her.
Sally heard a sharp CRACK and hoped beyond hope that it was the sound of Niall’s shillelagh splitting the faerie’s skull.
But after that, Niall was silent.
Sally felt a tug at the back of her jacket. The creature was nearly on top of her. It was reaching for her as it chased her, and it kept snagging her clothing before losing its grip.
“I have no quarrel with you!” Sally shouted, hoping the faerie understood English. “Not with you personally.”
She ran around the bodies of Heimdall and Thor, swallowing her tears as she sped past. She kept her eyes on the cave.
Wherever are you going, little one? Badbh’s voice sounded inside Sally’s head.
“Leave me alone!” Sally cried. She looked away from Odin’s corpse and kept moving. Another few strides and she would be safe inside the cave—though she wasn’t sure what “safe” entailed at this point.
Suddenly, the long-limbed faerie appeared before her, landing on its feet as it completed its leap over her head.
“Now, now, pretty thing,” it sang to her in the creepiest voice Sally had ever heard. “Won’t you stay to play with me?”
“I don’t want to!” Sally shouted back. She grimaced at her childish whine.
“What shall we do with this one, then?” the creature lilted again. It looked up at Badbh, standing atop the cave entrance.
Badbh waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Whatever you wish. I have no use for her.”
The creature turned its eyes back on Sally. Its grin widened into a display of razor-sharp teeth that made Sally’s skin crawl.
“What game shall we play?” The creature strode toward Sally.
She backed up and inched sideways, trying to maneuver her way closer to the cave entrance. The faerie guessed her strategy and laughed.
“Try it, if you fancy a game of prey.” The faerie’s long face grew suddenly sad. “But I’m afraid that game would be over and done with much too quickly. No, I much prefer something that will linger.”
The creature started to close on her again. “Something full of tears and screaming.”
“GET AWAY FROM ME!” Sally yelled at the top of her lungs.
The creature’s grin widened.
“Leave her alone!” cried a familiar voice from the shelter of the cave.
Sally squinted into the darkness. “Freyr?”
She saw Freyr move forward, a shade in the shadows, still standing out of direct sunlight.
The faerie halted its advance and eyed Freyr curiously. “My lord?”
“You heard me!” Freyr bellowed. “Step back from the girl, now!”
The creature dipped its head and moved away a few paces, but it kept its slanted eyes trained on Sally.
“Freyr?” Sally gasped. “You’re here! What happened? I thought you were dead?”
“You know me?” he asked, moving forward another half-step.
“Freyr!” Sally nearly laughed. “Of course I know you. What are you talking about?”
“I said, stay back!” Freyr shouted. Sally looked over her shoulder to find the faerie creeping toward her.
The faerie smirked at him. “But she is not yours to claim.”
“Freyr?” Sally dashed forward but fell suddenly to her knees. She looked to her friend in confusion as she the faerie’s long, spindly fingers closed over her shoulders. Then there was a sharp pain in her neck as it bit into her flesh. “Freyr!” she screamed.
“No!” Freyr rushed out from the shadows and into the sunlight.
Sally marveled at the dark green of Frey’s skin and the strange iridescence of his eyes, but her vision was growing dim and she felt so very cold. She blinked as she watched his body sizzle and then burst into smoke and flame. In the space of Sally’s last breath, Freyr was reduced to nothing but smoldering embers. The wind lifted his ashes and scattered them across the blood-soaked field.
“FREYR!” Badbh screamed from atop the ogham stone as the shade of her grandson—the heir to the throne of Éireann and all of Vanaheim—was vaporized by the sunlight.
“It wasn’t yet time for you. Why did you not wait?” she sobbed. She felt strong hands gripping her arms and knew her sisters surrounded her.
“All is not yet lost,” Macha whispered.
“There is one other,” Neiman added.
Badbh pushed her sisters away. “Freya!” Her voice echoed across the grassy field. She had lost sight of her granddaughter as the battle raged, but she had neither seen nor felt her death. If Freyr was truly lost, his sister could rule in his stead.
“Freya!” she cried again, the edge of panic in her voice.
“I am here, grandmother.”
Badbh whirled around to find Freya climbing to her feet as she finished her ascent of the Oweynagat earthworks. She was dirty from her climb, and her blond hair dripped red from the blood she had spilled to reach the ogham stone. She clasped her hands behind her back in obedience.
Badbh felt a flood of relief. She was surprised to feel the sting of tears. “We have suffered a terrible loss, you and I. But this isn’t the end.”
Freya laughed. “No, I’m sorry. I’m afraid it is.”
Freya pulled her shillelagh from behind her back and gripped it with both hands as she swung it over her head and aimed for Badbh’s skull. “My life and my magick!”
Before Badbh could utter a single syllable, Freya’s midsection exploded in a spray of blood and bile. Macha stood behind Freya, her hand sharpened into the point of a spear as she severed Freya’s spine and punctured her belly.
“Freya?” Badbh asked in disbelief.
“It’s too bad,” Freya gurgled as blood trickled over her lips, “that it had to be like this.”
Nemain sprang forward to hold Freya in place so Macha could gouge her further.
“What are you doing?!” Badbh screamed at her sisters. She grabbed Nemain’s arms and tried to pull her away. “She is our flesh and blood!”
“She attempted to destroy you!” Nemain hissed.
With a pained smile, Freya reached clutched at Nemain. “This is how it had to be.”
With her last ounce of strength, Freya yanked Nemain forward onto Macha’s sharpened fingers, impaling the dark sister with her.
“Only Vanir can touch Vanir.” Freya smiled weakly.
With a shriek, Macha drew back her arm, dripping with blood. Freya and Nemain slumped toward each other, dead.
Badbh blinked dumbly at Macha.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Macha said softly. “You know that.”
Badbh did know. The Morrigan was three, the goddess with three faces and one soul. Badbh stumbled backward. She tried to feel the stone beneath her feet, but her body was numb. The lifeless forms of her sister and her grandchild lay before her.
Badbh slapped Macha hard across the face, then stared down at her hand as if it had acted o
n its own will. She turned away from her remaining sister and raised her face to the clear sky. The god of chaos still stood on the rise beyond, a dark figure against the green grass and red pools of blood. Even at this distance, she could see his cold smile. Badbh ignored him.
A deep, mournful wail rose in her throat. She opened her jaw wide and howled at the sun. Her cry carried over the field, and the bodies of the fallen began to vibrate with her grief.
Wind swirled up around her. Badbh could no longer feel Macha’s presence behind her, and she no longer cared. She held her eyes and mouth open to the sky as the cyclone rose up from the ground to encircle her. Black feathers sprouted again from her arms, her hands and toes curling into sharp talons as she became the raven-winged Fury.
The whirlwind lifted her into the air and expanded outward into the field, lifting the bodies from the ground. The corpses of so many Vanir, of Odin and his kin, even of Freya and Nemain swirled around Badbh as the cyclone picked up speed and began to rip up the vegetation.
Only Loki remained anchored to the Earth. As his dark hair blew wildly around his face, he crossed his arms and looked on with keen interest and a hint of satisfaction.
Grass and moss whipped into the air, followed by dirt and rocks as the ground was stripped. The bones of the dead lifted from ancient graves and were caught up in the cyclone, still fed by Badbh’s dark wailing. The storm blotted out the sun as she continued to scream, and her dark funnel of death and destruction expanded farther, picking up the vehicles from the parking area and the living, shrieking tourists who had so recently arrived on the scene.
Badbh closed her eyes and gave herself over to her grief. There was a flash of brilliant light against the inside of her eyelids, followed by the deepest darkness.
And then, nothing.
18
Freya collapsed to her knees in the wet grass. Her grandmother’s mournful scream still echoed inside her skull, though the world outside was still—as it had been all along.
Black Pool Magic Page 21
