by Stina Leicht
“Thanks,” Liam said, but when he turned he found the wolfhound was gone.
Chapter 4
Long Kesh Internment Camp
Lisburn, County Down, Northern Ireland
3 January 1972
The wolfhound didn’t reappear, but Sanders did, and Liam returned to his former dread. The nightmares came back and several times he woke up screaming in the middle of the night, which didn’t endear him to the rest of the barracks. So, he stopped sleeping as much as he could, starting in fear at furtive movements in the dark. The others began to avoid him outright—Hugh having told them of the wolfhound and of being bespelled. Liam was cast from his food clique which meant he couldn’t share food parcels and was once more left to eat whatever the guards served. Rumors were whispered just out of his hearing and sometimes within it. His eyes glowed red when angered, and he growled in his sleep, the others said—proof he was possessed by a demon. That was why he didn’t go to Mass when it was offered or look in mirrors. They said he’d grown the beard only to hide the devil’s sign. In addition, a ghost was said to haunt Cage Five at night, and its howls could be heard in the wind on the other side of the hut’s tin walls. Several men moved out and into whatever accommodations could be arranged in the other huts. Hugh and Tom remained. Soon, Hugh stopped eating, fell sick with a fever and then died in the infirmary. Shortly after that, Tom was mauled by an Alsatian during a barracks inspection. The wounds quickly became infected, and he lost an eye and three fingers. About the only positive effect was that word got around that bad things happened to people who crossed Liam. When two guards were reported missing, those outside blamed the ’Ra, but those inside Cage Five suspected otherwise. A rumor surfaced that a shredded uniform sleeve was all that had been found of either man. Both were said to have beaten Liam, and soon the suspicions spread to the guards. A few prisoners knew the rumors for rubbish, Kevin being one of them, but even those who didn’t believe began to keep their distance after the story of the uniform sleeve. It didn’t help that as the guards grew more and more nervous, they increased the frequency of their late night raids, and thus, the entire hut was short on sleep as well as temper.
In the end, Liam was left with no company but Mary Kate’s letters. He was painfully slow at the reading, but after a few weeks he’d made it through the first and was rewarded with the knowledge that she missed him and would be waiting for him when he got out. She wrote about her family and his, filling him in on various small events and reassuring him that he’d not been forgotten. With newfound motivation, Liam got through the second letter within a few days. He wanted to answer her and made several attempts to do so but couldn’t bring himself to send them. His little sister Moira had better handwriting, and she was five.
When he wasn’t reading and re-reading Mary Kate’s letters he spent his time hiding from Sanders, but being ostracized made it difficult. The time would come, much as he dreaded it. He could see it in Sanders’s eye. So, Liam prayed for the strength to fight, muttering every prayer he knew in the hope that God hadn’t abandoned him as well. The day finally came when his name was called in the yard. Two different guards waited for him, and it gave him a moment’s hope that the inevitable hadn’t arrived, but once again he was led out of the cage, through the wire tunnels and gates to the infirmary, and once again the surgeon’s office was empty of anyone but Sanders.
“Strip.”
When Liam didn’t obey, the guards beat him down and yanked the clothes off him. Again, he was shoved against the cell door at that awkward angle. Again came the burst of cold against his naked skin as the other guards left. He shut his eyes and tried to breathe using bruised ribs. A hand circled his wrist. He listened to the metallic click of handcuffs being opened. Sanders’s hot breath tickled his ear, and Liam couldn’t keep himself from trembling. Fight, damn you! Move! But he was frozen. The tingling sensation—the one he had come to associate with intense emotion—had gathered enough force now that his skin itched with it. Terror spiked his heart at the feel of a rough hand on his bare back.
“Not a sound, or they’ll—”
know you for a fairy.
“Our little secret. There’s my sweet—”
Quick fire rage cramped his jaw. Never fucking touch me again, he thought. I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking— He struggled against the sluggish weight of time to shove an elbow backward and into Sanders’s face before the cuff locked into place. —kill you. I’ll— The prickling grew worse, far worse than it had ever been. A swarm of electric insects crowded underneath Liam’s skin. The sensation engulfed him and then devolved into agony and the horrible feeling of bones and muscles stretching into foreign shapes. The cuffs dropped to the concrete floor with a clatter. An overwhelming hatred wrenched control from him. —kill you. Kill YOU. KILL— His vision blurred, and a snarl escaped his clenched teeth. Sanders stumbled, his face lengthening into a soundless shriek. Liam pulled air into his lungs, and an inhuman howl filled the infirmary from floor to ceiling. Sanders clawed at his holster. —YOU. FUCKING KILL YOU. Liam swung. The hand that connected with Sanders’s jaw was coated in black fur and tipped with long obsidian nails. Four long lines of blood appeared just before the wounds gaped, revealing the stark white of bones and teeth. Watching from a numb and distant place behind the rage, Liam felt queasy.
Sanders stumbled in a panicked retreat, his left cheek in tatters and his eyes bulging. He collided into the desk, tripped over a chair and upended it. Landing with a crash, he scrabbled on the floor from the broken chair like a crab, the ruin of his face soaking his shirt in gore, his jaw moving in odd jerks as if the scream born in his throat was too gigantic, too tangled to get out.
The scene faded into black and white, and then Liam was watching an old horror film through holes in a mask with a long black nose. The room was smaller somehow, and he wasn’t himself anymore. Someone or something was acting for him—a great black beast whose rage propelled him across the room to Sanders—the guard who had raped and tortured him. The guard who had to be taught that some things, some people, were best left alone. A cloud reeking of ammonia, terror and sour sweat blurred Sanders’s features, blunting its humanity. Two steps. Liam watched the beast shred Sanders’s shirt and then kneel—no squat—one furry knee in Sanders’s solar plexus.
Trembling and weeping, Sanders finally found his voice. “No. Don’t. Please stop.”
A savage pant—almost a laugh—puffed foul breath that blew hair from Sanders’s forehead. Sanders raised a fist, but the beast caught his arm with ease and slammed it on the concrete floor. Liam felt bones give way with a sickening snap and was pinned between satisfaction and revulsion. Sanders howled. A talon plunged into the flesh beneath the man’s nipple, the screams changing timbre as flesh blossomed gory gashes. Hurried blows thundered against the other side of the locked infirmary door, announcing the arrival of the other guards. Shouts.
Sanders let out a high-pitched shriek. “Get it off me! Get it off me! It’s a monster! Get it off! Oh, God! I didn’t know! I’m sorry!” His eyes were no longer focused but round with madness.
The black beast straightened, standing on its—paws, haunches—the crawling electric pain returned, intensified and then vanished. Liam looked down in shock, reading against his will the crooked letters that had been etched into bleeding flesh. They spelled one word: F—A—I—R—Y.
I didn’t do that, he thought, backing away from the terrorized guard. I didn’t. It was a—
“Monster!”
Wishing he could shut up Sanders, Liam wiped a hand slick with blood against the outside of his bare thigh. Gobs of skin compressed into hard lumps were jammed under his fingernails. Adrenaline jolted through his veins in violent tremors.
The door slammed open, and the guards swarmed in. Naked, Liam slipped to the floor and cowered against the far wall. A group clustered around the now gibbering, pointing Sanders.
“Kill it! Mah-mah-monster!”
Three of the men turned to see where
Sanders pointed. Upon spotting Liam covered in gore, they descended upon him.
And the kicking began.
Chapter 5
Londonderry/Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland
4 January 1972
“Kathleen.” Bran’s whisper rode upon a breeze that sent trash dancing in circles on the crowded street. Broken bottles tinkled, and people held up their hands to keep the grit from their eyes. Then both Bran’s voice and the wind were gone.
Scanning the area, Kathleen hefted her shopping bags. The folk of Derry went about their business—not having heard the voice or noticed anything strange. Stopped as she was in the middle of the walk, she thought surely someone must’ve noticed something. The flow of humanity merely made its way around the obstruction. One man bumped her and then apologized. Not far away, a group of young people clustered around the front of a business. They held signs that read “End Internment,” “British Troops Out” and “Special Powers Out.” An Army checkpoint at the end of the block bunched traffic on either side of the barricade as soldiers patted down young men and checked papers. She didn’t see Bran anywhere, but as crowded as the street was it didn’t surprise her. On the other hand, the voice could’ve been the result of wishful thinking. It’d happened before. She shrugged to herself and continued on.
“Kathleen, please.” His voice was more urgent.
She stopped again and looked around more carefully this time. It was then she spied the abandoned shop across the street. A shadow flitted behind the boarded up windows and broken glass. She waited for a cluster of British soldiers to pass the store front before she made her way across the street between idling cars and military vehicles. It had been a sunny morning in spite of the cold, and the pavement was dry, although it wouldn’t be long before a mist would coat all in icy damp. Grey clouds ruled the afternoon sky. It’d be dark soon.
She reached the store front and peered between the boards nailed across it. “Where are you?” she asked in a whisper.
“I’m right here, love.”
She couldn’t prevent herself from starting at the sound of his voice. Turning, she saw him leaning against the edge of the doorway. “I really wish you wouldn’t do that,” she said.
“Can’t help it. To see the look on your face.”
“I don’t know why I bother talking to you at all.”
“Because you love me. You know you do.”
“Ah, go on.”
“Have you been well?”
“I have.”
Although his outward display of good humor hadn’t changed, the tension in his jaw relaxed somewhat. “It is good, then,” he said.
She joined him in the shadows and breathed in the scent of him—earth and leather. There was something about that smell that never failed to make her tremble with need. Why couldn’t she feel the same about Patrick? He was her husband, was he not? “Why have you come? Have you found our Liam? He’s in the Kesh, you know.”
Bran nodded, his face growing serious. “I saw him. He’s yours and mine, true enough. A fine lad, he is, and brave. You can be proud of him, Kathleen. But it’s a terrible place. The stench of it stretches for a mile into the Other Side. I couldn’t reach him. Too much iron. But I did what I could, not that it matters. He’ll be out soon, I’m thinking.”
“And what did you do?”
“I merely reminded a few mortals that there are consequences for crossing certain people.” He gave her one of his cagey smiles—the one that all but said, Do you really want to know more? Because it’s sure I am that you don’t. “Anyway, it isn’t as much what I’ve done.”
She swallowed her anxiety, sure he was right that she didn’t want to know more. “All right then. Tell me of Liam. Is he well? He doesn’t write.” She didn’t want to mention Liam couldn’t write very well and therefore, wouldn’t. It was too comforting to see the swell of pride as Bran spoke of their son, and she didn’t want to risk bruising that connection, tenuous as it was.
“He’ll be fine enough, whatever happens. He can protect himself. He’s not mortal. He has the Glamour. I saw him use it.”
She frowned. “What is it you’re going on about?”
“No real harm will come to him from mortal folk. Any who does him a bad turn will not have a good end. And those that do him good, will profit by it. It’s in his blood. I’ve seen it.”
The sins of the father, she thought and shuddered. “I don’t want to hear any more.”
Bran raised an eyebrow. “Did I say something wrong?”
Once again old questions surfaced in Kathleen’s mind. Is Bran the reason Patrick’s business ventures have never flourished? Has Bran broken his promise? Does Patrick suffer because I chose him? She sighed, knowing she couldn’t go on thinking like that, or she’d go mad. Her lips pressed together. “I have to get the dinner on the table.”
“There’s something I must ask of you.”
“What is it?”
Reaching inside the pocket of his pegged jeans, he produced a small silver coin. “Have you a way to discover what this is?”
Two heads graced the front—a bearded king and a queen. A crown was depicted above and between them both. She couldn’t make out the words stamped into the edge in the dim light. She set down her shopping and leaned closer. “I think it’s English, but it could be Spanish or French or Italian for all I know.”
“Anything more?”
“It’s very old,” she said. “I’ve never seen the like. May I hold it?”
He gave it to her, shuffled his feet and gazed down at the street. He was wearing boots this time, she thought perhaps because of the pavement. She knew him enough to know he was uncomfortable in this place of broken glass and steel. It suddenly occurred to her that it was a powerful sign that he’d risked venturing this far into the city.
Tilting the coin into the light, she thought she could make out “Philip et Mari,” however, the edges were too worn, and she couldn’t read the rest. The stamp on the back was impossible to make out—all but the cross that bisected the entire piece. “I don’t know anything about old coins,” Kathleen said, “but it feels real enough.”
“Of course it’s real,” he said. “That isn’t the question. Where did it come from? There’s no date upon it that I can find. I must know more.”
“Why is it so important?”
He sighed. “The Redcap left it, and I must know the answer to its question.”
“Why?”
“I’m to guess his name. If I don’t, everyone—my men, you and Liam—will pay the price.”
She stared at him. “This is a game?”
“Not one of my devising, I assure you.” He sighed. “I’m a warrior, Kathleen. Give me a sword and an enemy to fight. A ford to guard. A hunt. I can track boar or stag across anything. Tactics, yes. Give me a battle. It is what I’m made for. Not this. It’s useless, I am.”
Studying his features, she could see the pent-up frustration in the set of his jaw. He looked poised to hit something. She understood his helplessness and anger. Had she not felt it herself for most of her life? Looking at the coin in her hand, she began to see she had some small power again. At last. “Is this everything—the whole clue?”
“Yes,” Bran said.
“May I keep it? I must show it to someone.”
He nodded. “You’re clever in these things where I am not. Do you think you might discover something?”
She opened her handbag and fished for her handkerchief. When she found it she tied the coin inside the cloth and dropped it into her bag. “I’ll do my best.”
“We must find the answer soon.”
“If I do find something, how do I reach you?”
“Go to the churchyard. Call out my name. I’ll hear you and come if I can.”
It was the first time he’d given her a means of reaching him in all the years she’d known him. A ball of gratitude and anger lodged in her throat. She didn’t want to think about what it might mean. “Thank you.�
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He reached out and touched her cheek. “Have you been safe?”
“I have.”
“You’ve your bitty cross?”
“With the red linen thread.” She nodded. “I’ve done the same for the children. I’ve asked Father Murray if he could get a crucifix to Liam, but we’re having trouble arranging a visit.”
Bran moved closer. His warm breath caressed the side of her face. “Come with me, Kathleen. As the Fallen gain more power this place will only become more dangerous. Let me take you away.”
“I must get home,” she said, fearful that a neighbor might spy her. “I’ll see you in the churchyard.” She fled the doorway before he could stop her.
“This is very old,” Father Murray said. “How did you come by it?”
Kathleen bit her lip. It wouldn’t do to lie. He needed to know all there was to know if he were to help her. She’d confided in Father Murray before, and not only had he treated her as if she were perfectly sane as she’d spoken to him of spooks and fairies, he’d been a great help with her Liam. He’d been understanding of her Liam’s circumstances—more so than she’d ever expected or hoped. If there was someone who could help, Father Murray was the one. It was safe enough. There wasn’t a chance in the world of Patrick overhearing anything she said in the parochial house kitchen. She breathed in the scents of comfort and spiritual home but restricted her gaze to the inside of her teacup. “I got it from him, Father.”
Father Murray reacted as if the coin were red hot, dropping it onto the table and spilling his tea. He hopped up from his chair. “What is it?”
“Only a wee coin, Father,” she said, attempting to hide her amusement.
He looked down at the shilling. “Oh. Yes. I see.”
She went to the sink for a towel in order to clean up the mess. “I must know where it came from. You went to University. I thought maybe you’d know.”
“Didn’t you say that he brought it to you? Doesn’t he know?”
