Cold Iron

by D. L. McDermott

  “Miach,” said Beth.

  Brian screamed.

  “It’s no good, Brian,” Liam said. “The old man’s claimed her.”

  “What does that mean?” Beth prayed it meant Helene was safe.

  “It’s a warding. Any man that touches her will find his cock withered,” Liam explained.

  “Careful, Brian,” advised Nial. “That shit can be permanent. Remember what happened to the Fianna who touched our sister.”

  “You might already be fucked,” Liam said. “You’ve smacked her around a good bit. That might count.”

  “Shut up, Liam.” Brian licked his thumb, rubbed the mark on Helene’s thigh, and laughed. “It isn’t a tatt. It’s Magic Marker. It’ll wear off.” He yanked Helene off the sofa. “And I’ve got just the place to keep you in until it does. Cozy. Tight. Snug. You like that, don’t you, enclosed spaces? Narrow walls. Low ceilings, pressing down on you.”

  Helene was hyperventilating.

  “Stop it!” Beth shouted.

  “It stops when I get the sword,” he said. He turned to Nial. “Get rid of him,” Brian pointed to the musician. “And don’t let the Fianna know the prince has gone.”

  Nial hesitated. “Some of them have already left.”

  So there were other half-breeds on the island. Nial wrested the oboe away from the wild-eyed musician and led him from the room. In the sudden silence, Beth heard voices. The discontent Fianna, somewhere else in the house.

  Liam licked his lips nervously. “Maybe we should let the women go, Brian. If the old man figures it out and tells Conn, we aren’t a match for him. Not without the prince.”

  “He’s one Fae,” Brian said, dragging Helene to the door.

  “They say he’s never been defeated,” Liam replied.

  “They say a lot of things. Watch the Druid. If she wants to see her friend again, she’ll think of a way to get her ex-husband here with the sword.”

  And then he was gone, Helene’s quiet sobs drowned out by the creaking of the stairs.

  Beth didn’t want to look at her hand, but the voice in her head told her she must.

  She’d broken bones before. Her arm, climbing rocks one summer at camp. A small bone in her foot on a dig. Those were simple breaks. This was a compound fracture. Broken skin, blood, her fingers pointing the wrong way. It was her left hand, and that at least was good, because she’d broken her left arm and learned then that it was always better to break the arm or hand that wasn’t dominant. Because after a really bad break, you were unlikely to get total function back.

  Keep going, said the voice in her head. Fit this into patterns you already know. What else did she know about broken bones? They’d made her keep her arm elevated in the emergency room, to reduce the swelling. And for the first several days after they’d applied the plaster cast. Her shoulder had ached from holding up her arm, but she knew it was important.

  She tried to raise her mangled hand, but the pain traveled down her arm, made her dizzy, and she crumpled again. Then she braced her right hand on the floor, felt the strength in the old oak floorboards, the patterns in the grain of the wood. She needed that strength, and she took it.

  Her fingers tingled. She looked down at her good hand on the floor and saw the seasoned wood pale, dry, and shrink in an expanding circle, its life force—she could find no other words for it—sucked out of the oak and into her body.

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” Liam said.

  The wood beneath her hand crumbled to dust, and she almost pitched forward into the hole that opened in the floor. She rolled and caught herself, squeezed the vitality she could feel in her good hand, compressed it, and sent it hurtling across her body to the injured one.

  Bones straightened.

  It hurt like hell. Like having her arm pulled back into place in the emergency room.

  Bones were patterns. She knew the patterns. But she didn’t have enough of that sweet energy to knit them back together. The wood in here was old, feeble, hewn down long ago, its life force only a whispered memory.

  “Liam, I can heal myself.” Or at least she was pretty sure she could. “I think I just need to go outside. Tap into something really alive.”

  The young man looked at the hole in the floor, then back in the direction Brian had gone. She could see him weighing his choices: loyalty or compassion. He looked at her mangled hand again, made his decision. “Come on.”

  Liam checked to see that the entrance hall was empty, then slipped her out the front door.

  The ground right outside the house was covered in gravel that glowed white in the moonlight. That was no good. She wanted green grass and growing things the way she wanted cool water on a hot day. She could feel her body thirst for it, an herbal taste, like wheatgrass and juniper. The slope was grassy, and she stumbled down it until she found a wide verdant patch. Then she sank to her knees and placed her shattered hand on the ground.

  And took. She was taking life away from one thing and giving it to another, and there were words she was supposed to say. Something tumbled out of her mouth but she didn’t recognize the language. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was the energy flowing into her, rekniting her bones, blood vessels, arteries, until she knelt in a wide brown circle of dead dry grass and a tree at the edge of the clearing groaned and sagged.

  She stood up, held her hand in front of her face, flexed her fingers, and bent her wrist. It looked mostly right. Her ring finger seemed a bit crooked, but perhaps it had always been that way.

  Her hand was healed, but she still felt thirsty, and now she wanted stronger drink. Stronger, more complex magic. Stronger, more complex life. “Liam,” she said.

  “I’m here.”

  He was standing a few yards away, wary of her now.

  “Run.”

  Miach drove the Porsche straight onto the jetty.

  “Why can’t we pass to the island?” Conn asked. Miach insisted his grandsons wouldn’t allow Brian to harm the women, but Conn wasn’t so certain. He wanted to get to Beth, now.

  “Iron chains. The British used them to seal off the harbor when the Americans rebelled. There’s thousands of feet of them sunk in the water. It’s the boat, or nothing,” he explained.

  The boat was sleek, wooden, and beautiful, and there in the bow waiting for them was a face he remembered from another lifetime.

  “Elada,” Conn acknowledged. The sinewy, golden-haired Fae was as close-shorn as Miach. And far more heavily armed. “I should have known your strong right hand would not be far away.” Because Fae sorcerers were not masters of arms and dead sorcerers were useless to the Fae, most had warrior companions to defend them.

  Elada acknowledged Conn with a curt nod of his head and tossed him a silvery short sword. “I hear you misplaced yours.”

  Conn was relieved when Miach didn’t unfurl the sails and, instead, a massive engine roared to life. For the second time in as many days, Conn was grateful for human technology.

  Normally he liked the smell of the salt sea and the feel of the wind in his hair, but tonight he liked nothing that stood between himself and Beth. As they drew near the little island, forested and hilly, Miach spoke. “Brian is my son.”

  And Beth was Conn’s . . . she was his woman. If that meant living a mortal span, so be it. The knowledge rocked him, standing in the boat, beside a Fae as ancient as himself. He had known her a few short days, not even a blink in the span in which he had lived. But he was certain he would never tire of knowing her.

  And Miach had saved her life, against his better judgment. “Your son is yours to deal with.”

  Then they were at the dock. Miach tied off the boat and was ready to jump down when Elada put out a hand to stay him. Conn drew his sword. If Elada sensed danger, then there was danger.

  The sorcerer’s bodyguard vaulted over the rail and landed softly on the dock. He
listened for a moment, then knelt. When he stood, he held a finely chased silver bead resembling a heart-shaped leaf in the open palm of his hand.

  Miach swore.

  “The Prince Consort,” Conn said, recognizing the ornament. A dangerous Fae.

  Elada walked to the end of dock and back again.

  “He’s been and gone,” Elada said, “with two others.” He examined the planks more closely. “Neither of them a woman.”

  Conn did not realize until that point that he had been holding his breath. Miach put a steadying hand on his shoulder. “Come. We will deal with my son, and find you your woman.”

  Beth didn’t need a map or a picture to find the Fae on the island. Brian had the most Fae blood, the most magic, of any being there, and she could have found him in the dark, had she been deaf and blind.

  His magic called to her. It wasn’t strong. Not as strong as Conn’s or Miach’s anyway, and definitely not as strong as the elegant Fae prince who had broken her hand. But stronger than anyone else on the island, and she was hungry, deep inside, for the spark he had in him. She turned to the house like an animal scenting water.

  She was dimly aware of Liam following her. She’d told him to run. There had been a moment outside when she’d wanted more, and he’d been temptingly close, but as soon as she felt Brian’s stronger Fae presence, she’d known Liam wouldn’t be enough. No reason to sip from a puddle when she could slake her thirst from a stream.

  Liam was trailing behind, frightened. He’d seen what she’d done to the wood and the grass. Come to think of it, she was frightened, too. Frightened of what she would do. But he didn’t need to worry. “I don’t want you,” she said. “You’re not enough.” She meant it to sound reassuring, but her voice sounded strange. Deep, cold, imperious.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Into the house.” Duh.

  “There’s half a dozen of them in there. Look, I’ll call the old man, tell him you’re here. But for the love of God, don’t go in there. There’s no telling what Brian will do.”

  “Brian,” she said with a prickle of fear, recognizing the Druid voice coming out of her mouth, “I want Brian.”

  She felt every stone under her feet, the vibration of every creaking floorboard as she entered the house, passed the room where the Fae had broken her hand, and continued on toward the sound of laughter and music and the too-bright light of electricity.

  A generator. Modern, rational Beth recognized the dense smell of diesel fuel and the chug-hum of its engine. Ancient Druid Beth said, Some Fae these are, that want such a thing here, in a wild and beautiful place.

  The room had once been a kitchen. The yawning fireplace and giant black kettles told her that much. There was food on the table, but it hadn’t been cooked in that cold hearth. It was papered and poisoned and part of the modern world and her inner Druid did not like to see it in this place, but her inner Beth’s stomach growled.

  Six men. Brian and Nial and four others she did not know, all honey-blonds in sports jerseys and jeans. They married the physique of half-Fae with the demeanor of petty thugs. The Fianna. One of them saw her and whistled, and all talk stopped, only the tinny sound of the radio, blaring Irish heavy metal, continued on.

  And the catcalls.

  “Who’s your girlfriend, Brian?”

  “Come over here, sweetheart.”

  Worthless, the voice in her head told her. More human than Fae. Dilute blood. Dilute magic. She ignored them and the outstretched hands that tried to snatch her up, and made straight for Brian, sitting with his back to the hearth.

  He got up, the disgust visible on his face. He raised his fist to strike her. Nial restrained him a moment. “Look at her hand.”

  She held it up, healed and whole, and offered it to Brian.

  Foolish boy. He took it.

  Conn should have liked the island. It was a wild and untamed place, an antidote to the choking confines of the city. No ax had fallen here for hundreds of years. There was only the wind and the tide to rough hew these acres.

  It was beautiful. And he hated it.

  He hated the winding path from the beach that disappeared into the trees, because a woman at the mercy of unscrupulous men, a woman like Beth, could disappear in such a place with no one the wiser. He climbed, hemmed in by the muffling foliage, wondering if Beth had known he would come for her or if she had preceded him hours before in hopeless terror. On this subject, the forest was mute.

  They reached the clearing and a high-pitched scream broke out, coming from the dimly lit house. He passed then, not caring if Miach or Elada followed, and arrived in the room whence the sound came.

  Relief washed over him when he saw Beth standing unharmed in front of the hearth.

  Then sick fear replaced it. Her eyes were bright, her lips moist and parted, her hair wild down her back. She was the picture of Druid abandon, and she was draining Miach’s son.

  Miach and Elada arrived a second after Conn and stopped dead. “If you’re Finn’s get,” Miach said quietly to the room at large, “leave now.” Nothing was more terrifying than a sorcerer in a state of purposeful quiescence, because it was, so often, the calm before the storm.

  The Fianna, wisely, bolted. Conn felt the charge in the air as Miach gathered power into himself, readying to strike. He would unleash the magical equivalent of a bucket of cold water over two fighting dogs. The problem with that, of course, was that the dogs might tear each other’s throats out as they separated. He placed his hand on the sorcerer’s arm. “Let me try first. Safer for your son, and safer for Beth, if she lets him go.”

  “Druids don’t let go,” Miach rasped back.

  “No. Druids don’t. But Beth might.”

  Conn approached the hearth. Beth’s grip on Brian’s hand was tight, the tendons in hers stark, the knuckles white. This was how they defeated his people, of course. They’d learned not only how to draw power out of the trees and soil, they’d learned how to draw it out of the Fae so that each and every one of the Aes Sídhe found his own magic turned against him.

  Her cheeks had roses in them. She was flush with life. And Brian, clearly, was fading. His skin was pale and his lips blue.

  “Don’t let her touch you,” warned Miach.

  “She won’t hurt me,” said Conn, although he knew nothing of the kind. He only hoped.

  “Beth,” he said gently. “Let him go.”

  She turned to him, wild-eyed and unseeing. A tempest behind her dark irises, raging to get out. The Druid in her. She wasn’t ready for this. Not yet.

  “Beth,” he tried again. “It’s all right. You can release him now.”

  Her right hand hung at her side. He wove his fingers through hers and braced himself. “If you must have life, then have mine.”

  He felt her draw on him, an instinctive reaction, an involuntary sip. Then she dropped the boy’s hand as though stung and turned to him.

  Conn. Warmth, affection, desire, love. All the emotions the Fae prince had prodded in her mind. Hunger was all her Druid mind knew when it saw him, and greed. The Druid inside her wanted to devour him, and be free.

  And he was going to let her. He offered no defenses.

  And his trust gave Beth the strength to stop.

  Miach saw the whirling stars in Beth’s eyes recede and knew the danger was past. She took a tentative step into Conn’s arms, and the Betrayer, fool that he was, folded her into his embrace. Miach supposed it was like nuzzling a viper. Exciting, if you fancied that sort of thing. He didn’t.

  Brian slid down the wall to crouch against the hearth, white and drained. “Elada,” Miach said. “Make arrangements for my son to be comfortable here. He’ll be staying a while.

  “No,” Brian croaked.

  “You have defied me, and shamed me,” Miach said. “My son, as close to me in blood as any creature living. The
re is no place for you at my table. And there is no place for rogue half-breeds in my city. You stay here, until I say you may return.”

  “Father.”

  “Don’t try to play me, Brian. I’m not some simpering Southie wench. I’m only ‘father’ to you when you want something, and I’m the ‘old man’ when you don’t get it. Here you stay.”

  Miach hardened his heart and turned his back on his son. “Where is the woman called Helene?” he asked Liam and Nial.

  They looked at each other and paled.

  Then Nial said, “Brian locked her in one of the attics.” After a pause. “A small one.”

  “She’s afraid of tight spaces,” Liam said.

  “Wait in the boat,” Miach said.

  He took the stairs two at a time and started to panic when they ended beneath the dormers with no sight of an attic. The rooms up here were already claustrophobically small to begin with. He couldn’t imagine what an attic would be like.

  Then he saw the door at the end of the room. Low, perhaps two feet high, and narrow, it must lead out into one of the eaves. And it was padlocked.

  He touched the lock. Brass, thankfully. The tumblers fell into place at his touch, and the lock sprang free.

  He pulled the door open and was assailed by a gust of cold air, smelling of damp and rot. The crawl space was dark, filthy, and only two feet deep. Helene was huddled against the wall, her face pressed to the plaster, her knees tight against her chest, her booted feet only inches from the door.

  She looked at him, and he knew she was seeing Brian. “It’s all right, Helene. No one is going to hurt you.”

  A moment of doubt assailed him. His mark, the scribble on her inner thigh, would have protected her against a half-breed or even a lesser Fae, but the Prince Consort had been here. The bastard played on another level entirely.

  She remained huddled against the wall.

  “Did anyone hurt you?” he asked.

  If they had, he would take the memory away.