Resentment stirred, closing his throat. It was childish of him, he knew, but he did not want to follow the lead of this goddess, who had nothing to her, yet dared call him a coward. What burned the most was that none of the others in the room had objected to her statement.
And he couldn’t either, for she had been correct.
Ailis and Shar were seated in stools next to him at the bar. Bat and Dub were across from them, cleaning up behind the bar. Mell slid in beside them and started on drying the glasses as Bat rinsed. Finn barely held his sneer. A goddess who did dishes. Grainne would never have—
He cut off the thought. Already it started. He hadn’t even seen her, and Grainne pulled him into old ways of thinking. She was a fae, nothing more, and yet he’d just compared her to a true goddess, and found the deity lacking. When in reality, Bat was more than Grainne had ever been in so many ways.
Was it possible to both love and hate someone at the same time?
Bat handed a dish to Mell and then half turned, her gaze, both dark and shining with millions of lights, trained on him as though she heard his thoughts. Was that also a power of hers? …there are many kinds of beauty in this world, just as there are many forms of darkness…
“The banshees said there’s some talk of the bomen in the trees around Benbulben being frightened of something,” he started, leading with the piece of information that may please Bat. “Not much frightens the bomen. Then again, it could simply be a stray cat. Bomen are not much fond of felines.”
She inclined her head and turned back to the dishes. What was she thinking?
“And the pixies were saying the tracks around Derryfad had traces of glamour,” Mell added.
That was only a few minutes north of Carney. Finn glanced at this phone, double-checking the message that had come in about an hour ago. “Oisin reported an incident with the selkies, but I doubt Grainne would have gone all the way out there.”
“Con called earlier.” Ailis leaned forward. “Ya remember him, he was with me the night we met?” she asked Bat, who nodded. “He was talking about a group of hikers in the Gortarowey who got lost and ended up in hospital. Faint. Doctors said it was dehydration.”
“Coulda been the baobhan sith,” Mell said, and Finn nodded. The Gortarowey also wasn’t far from Benbulben. Was he foolish in ignoring Bat’s words of Benbulben? She had not insisted too strongly and had not offered any additional insights through her visions. The rest had also followed his lead. Or had they followed her lead when she relented?
He shook off the doubts. He had done this before and very successfully. He would keep Bat with him, as it seemed her senses pierced the glamour Grainne could pull around herself, even if it was at a very short range. Besides, if they went to Benbulben, at most he may gain a trace unless Grainne was there at the very moment they arrived.
“Anyone else?” Finn asked. When no one spoke up, he said, “Then we stick with the original plan for now and go to Drumcliffe.” The guardi pinned a look on Bat when her lips thinned. “I know you think we need to go to Benbulben, but I have tracked many, many things in my existence. I do trust your visions, goddess, but without a confirmation of the when of what you have seen, it would be a waste to go there unless we are sure of her presence at that time.”
Bat tilted her head, those eyes of her stripping away the layers of justification and doubt and reasoning and, yes, fear, that crowded around him. Then she nodded and returned to her dishes once more.
Dub shifted, pressing his arm to Bat’s in a deliberate movement.
Finn wondered what the goddess would do once she realized she’d been claimed. Despite what they may be telling her, or themselves, they were not going to let her go so easily when the lease ran out on that apartment.
MELL
It took much for him not to lean down and kiss his goddess goodnight at her door. But Ailis and his brothers stood right there.
Plus, there was a reluctance there, a… doubt, when she looked at him or his brothers. There was also doubt of Finn, but it was different. She didn’t trust the guardi to do what was needed with Grainne when it came time.
It wasn’t anything they had discussed yet, but there was only one sentence the Tribunal offered for the crime of using a lann de anam against an innocent, and that was to die by the same fate you had bestowed upon others. It was a bit “eye for an eye” for his tastes, but as Dub once said, sometimes evil had to be stopped.
The doubt Bat held for Mell and his brothers was similar. She didn’t trust them, but not in regards Grainne. No, this doubt was subtler, and he wasn’t sure if she or anyone else was even aware of it.
She didn’t trust them to stay. She didn’t trust anyone to stay.
He wanted to reach into her, to heal the old wounds left by the other deities of her land. He wanted to find the holes of her soul and patch them, just as she had with Shar. For as surely as the blade had ripped his brother’s spirit, and would have eventually bled his vitality away, the wounds in his goddess’s being were just as deadly in other ways.
Even if, as she said, she couldn’t die.
“Mell.” Dub stood at the end of the hall outside the door to their office, warning frown pulling his lips down.
Mell realized he still stared at Bat’s door. He drew in a breath and let it out, slowly, carefully. He didn’t want to set off the grumpy Fomoiri. Dub was on the verge of going off, and there was no Egyptian goddess in the hallway to kiss and diffuse the situation.
And hadn’t that little incident been telling? Mell knew why his brother had been so angry. But Dub had misinterpreted the pain, and yes disgust, that had crowded in on Mell. It had been for his goddess, not because of her. When she had, once again, stated she was a goddess, it had hit him just how far she had fallen. She felt so close to human. Even the least of the deities in Eire weren’t so low as that. And he knew that immortals and gods alike would take one look at her and assume the worst, that she was low.
But she was not. All she needed was… a little care. He—no, they—could be the ones to give it to her.
Because it had also not been lost on him that she felt an attraction to all of them. Probably one of the worst things they could do for her would be to pursue her and then force her to make a decision she was not ready to make. It would backfire, and they’d lose her altogether.
“Mell.” Dub’s voice, though quiet, ripped through his thoughts.
“Right. What, brother?”
“We have some things we need to discuss. Tonight.”
Shar, who had rounded the stairs and crossed to his side of the hall, drew to a halt. His gaze darted from Dub to Mell to Bat’s door then back to Dub. He nodded.
Mell sighed. Yes, there were things they needed to speak of, but he wasn’t sure his brothers were thinking of the same things he was.
They’d turned one of the larger bedrooms into their office. It wasn’t much, but there was space for three desks, shelves, cabinets, and three very large bodies. They’d also splurged on the fancy chairs from the store, the ones covered in leather and that a body could take a nap in if they weren’t careful. Mell had definitely had a few of those naps.
Mell plopped into his and spun around, facing his brothers. Family meeting time. They’d been having more and more of these over the decades, as though Dub was afraid he and Shar would run screaming into the fields, stripped naked and flailing arms and swords and spears, oh my.
None of them spoke. That was strange. Dub usually got right to the point.
“We can’t pursue the goddess.”
“I asked her to stay.”
“Scath was here tonight.”
They all spoke at once, but Dub won. Mell jerked and Shar stilled.
“Da’s heard about the brooch,” Shar guessed.
“Yes. This was not how we planned to approach this—”
Shar stood, looming over his two brothers. Mell half expected him to grab the backs of his and Dub’s heads and knock them together. “And how did you
plan to approach this? What possible outcome could you be seeking by taunting Da with the O’Loinsigh brooch?”
Dub tilted his head back. “Our freedom to begin our own clan.”
That shut Shar up and quickly. “Oh.”
“Scath saw Bat tonight. No doubt he’ll be telling Da about her as well. I told him to set up a meeting for three months from now. That should keep the goddess out of any of Da’s machinations. She’ll be home by then.” Dub rubbed a hand over his face, and Mell could sense the struggle in him. His brother didn’t want the goddess gone, but he did want her away from their father and the rest of the Fomoiri.
A rush of adrenaline caught Mell in its grip as his anger surged forward. He didn’t try to keep it from his brothers, and they both flinched. “Well, ya’ve both fucked us. Ya’ve fucked the goddess as well. Shar asks her to stay, Dub sets up meetings with immortals who’d tear her apart given a chance, and neither one of ya even thinking of what this will do to her. Do ya even comprehend what she’s been through? How much courage it took for her to come here? And what will happen if we go to her and ask her to leave after Shar asked her to stay?” Mell rose, his fists clenched. He wanted to strike out, hit them, make them bleed. “Ya’r idjits, both of ya. I’m ashamed, I am, to call ya family.”
Dub’s lips tightened, and a wave of fury came from him. Mell braced for the attack.
“What did they do to her?” His brother’s voice was low, barely contained.
Mell’s attention sharpened. “No’ what ye’re thinking.” He swallowed, struggling to bring his own emotions under control. “But imagine being ignored and dismissed, and left, for millennia. Not just the humans, but the other gods themselves. There such a sense of… isolation around her. I mean, did ya see the way she reacted to a pair of boots? A bowl of strawberries? And when,” he said, pointing at Dub. “Ya so casually threw out ‘what ya care to give’ at her, she damn near fell into love with ya. She keeps saying she can’t be killed, but under that, I wonder if she doesn’t wish for it.”
Shar stared with wide eyes at the wall. Remorse and something close to grief radiated from his brother. “I didn’t know.”
Mell threw up his hands. “How did ya think she got as she is? And of course, you didn’t know. Ya see a girl who walks into a pub like she owns the place, picks up the damn harp, and sits there like a regal queen before her subjects. She doesn’t even know, or she doesn’t acknowledge it. She sits there thinking of home and comfort and hope and… she doesn’t believe in it. She wants it, but she doesn’t believe.”
Shar’s hands curled into fists and straightened out, curled and straightened. “It’s easier to fight for others than it is for yourself,” he whispered. “She’s so fierce about Dano and finding Grainne and the blade.”
“We can’t send her away.” Dub straightened and stood. Pacing three feet in one direction he spun and paced back.
“Sit back down,” Mell said from his chair. “This office isn’t big enough for that.” He shot a look at Shar, who slowly sank into his own seat once more.
Dub glared, but also dropped into his chair. “Can’t send her away, but I don’t want her involved in this business with Da.”
“It’s got to be her decision,” Shar grumbled. “If she decides to go, we can’t keep her.”
“The hell we can’t,” Dub ground out.
Mell nearly laughed. His earlier anger had evaporated in the face of his brothers’ reactions to his words, and Dub’s very quick about-face was mirth worthy. And more than ironic.
“Agreed.” Both brothers glared at him. “We will not send her away, nor will we make her stay. But we can do all in our power to convince her to stay.” He drew in a breath and braced himself. He really had no idea how his next statement would go over. “I want her. And so do you.” He pointed first at Shar, then at Dub. “That will be a problem.”
Shar nodded. “She has already said she worries of upsetting the balance between us.”
“So, what, we compete for her? The brehons still recognize a willing kidnapping…” Dub’s lips quirked, and his anger leached away.
Interesting.
Both brothers looked to Mell, the one who could see into the emotions of their guest. “She is attracted to us all,” he admitted. “My fear is that she will hold off on taking any action for fear of our reactions and losing us all. We need to build her trust in us, show her that we are not going anywhere, no matter what she chooses.” He put on his stern face. “Which means we need to be sure of our reactions, whether she chooses one of us, none of us, someone else…” Or all of us. But he didn’t say the last out loud.
Dub wore his contemplative frown, and Shar rocked in his seat.
“She has said she would think about things after Grainne has been apprehended and the blade recovered,” Shar said. “I suggest we do the same thing.” He rolled his shoulders. “I want her near, no matter the form it takes. But I will not lie and say I do not want more, all of her. If she chooses another…” his fists clenched and pressed into his knees. “I do not know how I will truly react. I will need to think on this.”
“No going outside unaccompanied,” Dub cut in.
Mell knew his younger brother would have headed directly for the garden usually. He himself would need to find a quiet and abandoned corner of some field to sort through what were his own emotions and what was bleeding through from his brothers. And Dub… well, his oldest brother would head for the old forge he kept hidden a few miles to the south.
Until it was safe to do those things, they’d just have to wait and deal with it.
“Hah,” Mell said, realizing something. “I just acted as a proper middle brother, didn’t I? Getting you two out of the trouble you’d set for yourselves and mediating the meeting.” He sent them proper middle-brother-smirks. “But for now, we are agreed. We do want her to stay, in some form.” He waited as they nodded again, confirming. “The rest we will decide upon and sort out later.”
Chapter 22
Dearest Bastet,
Men are annoying. They always have been, and they always will be. I think it is inherent.
- Bat, the frustrated goddess
BAT
Bat breathed out in one long breath and relaxed her shoulders. The time was coming.
Finn was here, in the pub, debating with the brothers on whether they should search for traces to the east or the west of Drumcliffe first.
She’d had another flash last night, just before Ailis turned out the lights.
Flash. Her and Ailis in a small bubble of a car, speeding toward Benbulben.
It came again. And the very real and urgent sense of now accompanied that flash. Though Bat had never been able to pinpoint the exact times her visions would take place, she knew the final confrontation with Grainne was drawing near. If they could get there at the proper moment.
She glanced to where the men had gathered at the bar, three dark heads and one of light red bent together. Hushed and harsh voices resounded through the room. The brothers were in a mood this morning, and Finn was as stubborn as ever.
Ailis moved next to her and crossed her arms, her gaze also on the men. After a moment she snorted. “Do you want to just take my car out to Benbulben?”
The question was so casual, so smoothly uttered, that Bat didn’t react right away. Could Ailis read more than emotions? “Leave them here?”
Ailis nodded. “They’ll just end up getting in the way.”
Bat thought about it, she really did. Across the room Dub stiffened and shook his head while Shar crossed his arms and frowned. Finn, his back to her, gestured widely. Mell, usually the most expressive, was locked down. She couldn’t get anything from him, which meant whatever they were discussing, he didn’t like.
“I think we’re going to need them, unfortunately. Some of my visions... If we’re going to make it through this, all of us will need to be there.” Raised voices interrupted her, though she couldn’t understand the words. They must have slipped into
one of the old dialects. “Can you tell what they are saying?”
Tilting her head, Ailis concentrated. “It is muffled, but I think they are arguing about whether or not to leave you out, like bait. Maybe draw her out. And... whether to go after the sith first.”
“We are back to that? Is the sith really a problem?”
“During the day? No. Honestly, they don’t leave their territory often these days. If Grainne is eliminated, the sith will probably return home on her own. Unless she’s truly been adopted by them, in which case there may be retaliation.” Ailis grinned and bounced on her feet.
Bat twisted her head around to watch her. “So, you like a little retribution?”
“Oh, always. It’s been way too boring around here.”
Turning back to the men, who were still going strong, the corner of her mouth curled into a grin. “When this is done, I have a goddess to introduce you to. I think the two of you would get along like...”
“Two cats in a sack?”
Bat couldn’t hold back her crack of laughter. “Something like that.” She crossed her own arms, matching Ailis. “They will never agree, will they?”
“Probably not.”
“I think we should take your car.”
Ailis straightened up. “Perfect. I’ll go get it. Maybe ten minutes? I’ll bring it ‘round the back.” She shot a quick look at the men. “Just you get away.”
Oh, she would, she would. For things to progress, they had to leave the damned pub. Bat nodded and Ailis strolled to the front door, unlocked it, and strolled out. By the time the others knew what she was doing, she was gone.
“Dammit, Ailis, you can’t just walk around alone.” Finn stood in the door calling out after her.
Whatever the green haired woman did next had Finn’s fingers going white against the doorknob. He stepped back and slammed the door closed then spun to face Bat. “What are you two up to?” He advanced on her, face tight with anger. “What ridiculous plan have you concocted?”
The Forgotten Trilogy Page 18
