“No chance.”
Bran laughed. “So the two of you now. You sure move fast, sweetheart.”
“Let him go.”
Bran shook his head. “This only ends one of two ways. I kill him or you kill me. And I don’t think you have it in you, sweetheart.”
“But I do.”
A body flashed past Gwen, knocking Rhein aside as whoever it was attacked Bran. There was a scream that was more anger than pain. Rhein was almost immediately at Gwen side, his throat sliced open, but already healing. He dragged her out of the church, allowing her to gain her feet the moment they were on the street, leading the way back down to the busiest part of town, the area around the big hotels. They ducked into one of the hotels, sliding into a restaurant that was overflowing with late risers awaiting their breakfasts.
“Who the hell was that?” Gwen whispered.
Rhein shook his head. “We need a better plan than this.”
“We should go to the gate.”
Rhein looked down at her, his hands touching her face as though she’d been the one to have a dagger pressed to her throat. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
She wasn’t, really, but it seemed like the most logical move. They were just sitting ducks here, in this town. Waiting for Bran and Cei, waiting for failure to come and stop them. She had to stop listening to her head and start listening to her instincts. And those were pulling her to the gate.
She touched Rhein’s throat, her fingers tracing the thin line that was his injury but was now a quickly mending stitch. Her hands were shaking now that it was over, the image of him lying dead on the ground that had played in her mind the whole time too vivid. Of all the ways this could play out…that was the last one she wanted to see.
“We have to go to the gate. I don’t think we have any other choice.”
Rhein brushed loose strands of her hair from her face and pressed his forehead to hers. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Here we go.”
“Here we go.”
He kissed her lightly, then a little deeper, unaware of the people around them who were either watching in fascination or trying not to look in embarrassment. She could feel their emotions roiling around her, but she didn’t care.
If this was the last time, the last kiss, she wanted it to count.
Chapter 22
They drove as far as they could, stopping in almost the same place they had stopped earlier. From there, they had to walk up a path that had likely not been traveled by car or beast ever. It was a beautiful place, filled with this creeping vine that covered everything with bright green foliage. She could see an image of it when it bloomed in the spring, bright red flowers that choked out everything else around it. Breathtaking. But it was a deadly vine, choking out all the indigenous fauna…the new taking over the old. It seemed almost evolutionary.
There were many oaks in this part of the country. Gwen could feel their power vibrating around her. She wanted to stop and touch each and every one of them, but the pull of the gate was becoming harder and harder to ignore. She led the way, barely aware of Rhein behind her. But he kept up like a faithful companion, never complaining or asking her to slow down. Of all the people who could have gone on this last trek with her, Rhein seemed to understand the best.
Maybe that was the Druid priest in him.
She wasn’t sure quite what it was she had expected. She had seen the gate in visions shown to her by the trees, but a part of her had thought that it was more symbolic, the word gate, than actuality. As they came around a final corner, Gwen found it almost impossible to take a breath. And then it was there, this copper beauty that glistened in the noonday sun. It was stuck in the side of a sheer rock wall, three thick, perfectly straight posts stuck in a frame that was rounded at the top and square at the bottom.
An actual gate.
“I’ll be damned,” Rhein whispered under his breath.
“Didn’t think it existed either?” Gwen mumbled.
Rhein was immediately beside her, which was good because her knees gave out just as his arms slipped around her waist. He lifted her, carrying her to a low rock that sat just a few feet in front of the gate, almost as though someone had intentionally placed it there to allow someone to commune with the thing. She tried to breathe, but it was like trying to breathe underwater. It wasn’t happening.
“Gwen? You have to relax. You need to breathe.”
She wanted to tell him she was aware of that, but she didn’t have enough air left to force the words out of her mouth. She leaned forward, pressed her head between her knees. Rhein rubbed her back, whispered words of affection in her ear until the heaviness that stole her breath slowly began to recede. It felt like forever, but it was probably only minutes. Finally, she could breathe again, she could sit up and not feel like she was about to collapse into the dirt.
“You can do this,” Rhein said. “You’re stronger than you think you are.”
She touched his face, wishing that they had gotten that hotel room after all.
“Promise me,” she said, her voice still a little breathless, “that if I don’t survive this—”
“No, Gwen, I won’t have that discussion.”
“You will because this is my story, not yours.” She ran her fingers over his jaw, loving the feel of him more than she had thought possible. She could sit there all day, just running her fingertips over the various parts of his body until she had ever angle, every curve, memorized. “Promise me that you will find some kind of happiness in your life with Amaethon. Promise me that you won’t just retreat back into a world of knowledge and cold, hard facts.”
“Gwen…”
“Promise me, even if it’s a lie.”
He kissed her, his lips lingering for a long moment against hers. “I love you,” he whispered. “Nothing will change that.”
“Promise me.”
He groaned, but he nodded, the movement only big enough to press his forehead to hers. “I promise.”
“And tell Blodeuwedd that I’m sorry for some of the things I said to her the last few times we were together. Tell her I understand what she did, and I hope Gwydion gives her what she wants.”
“I will.”
She looked at the gate, her thoughts drifting to that man in the cave laboratory. Again she saw the grief in his eyes, and she found herself wondering if that would disappear when he was welcomed back into this world.
“Take care of Paul, if you can. He’ll be kind of lost without anyone to take care of.”
“This is going to work out the way it’s supposed to, with everyone walking away better off than they were before. Nothing is going to happen to you.”
“I want you to know, I never really thought about what it would be like to fall in love. I was never really into knights on shining horses and all that stuff. But if I was—” she touched his face once more, smiling as tears began to roll down her cheeks—“you are what I would have dreamed of.”
He groaned, a groan that was as filled with pain as it was with need. He pulled her close to him, and they shared one last kiss. If it had to be a last kiss, this was one she knew she would never forget. Just like every moment with Rhein, these last few days had been…there was nothing like facing your own fairly certain death to make everything more intense than it might have been otherwise.
But she couldn’t let herself get carried away. It was time to get this show on the road. And first things first…she couldn’t let Bran turn Rhein into a weapon again.
She withdrew the baton from her pocket and touched it lightly to Rhein’s shoulder. The look of confusion in his eyes was overwhelming as his body began to swirl the same way Branwen’s had done. It physically hurt to watch him go, to see him blown to the four winds like he was nothing more than a grain of sand. But it was for his own good.
Even the immortal had a weakness.
She brushed tears from her cheeks and turned her attention to the gate.
; “Okay,” she said as she slowly climbed to her feet, “what now?”
Silence. It wasn’t like she was expecting an answer. But it would have been helpful.
She approached the gate and…she hesitated as she stood there. This thing was the most elusive thing she had ever heard or read about. Cei was convinced that it would disappear in week—six days now—and move to another location. Tony thought it was the only existence of a gate to Annwn that existed on this realm. And Bran…Bran knew that this was the only place where the curse he placed on the sons of Don could be broken.
Gwen still wasn’t sure what she believed about all of this. But she knew she had to finish this if she had any hope of living something that resembled a normal life.
She wasn’t doing it for Cei—she couldn’t care less anymore what it was he would gain from this.
She wasn’t doing it for her mother—as much as she wanted to get to know Blodeuwedd, it didn’t matter to her if Blodeuwedd was an owl, a human, or something in between.
She certainly wasn’t doing this for Rhein. The last thing she wanted was to see him return to a life of servitude.
She wasn’t doing it for Morgan or Theresa or Tony, or even her history teacher, Ms. Dru.
She was doing this because she was tired of the secrets, the lies, the fighting, and the running. She was doing this because it was the right thing to do. She was doing it because it would mean a better world for future generations, and, goodness knew, the world could use a break.
But most of all, she was doing it because she knew in her heart it was what she was meant to do.
Gwen touched the bars of the gate and immediately felt an overwhelming jolt of electricity course through her body.
Chapter 23
Gwen was floating, but she wasn’t moving through the lovely garden where she had met Mother Earth. This was different…an inverse of that other place. It was dark, filled with despair and hatred, a place that was the complete opposite of everything that was bright and happy and precious about the real world.
This was the Underworld.
It was like swimming in a viscous fluid, so heavy that it was impossible to maneuver. Tears flowed like rivers down Gwen’s face, the pain so intense that she couldn’t imagine ever feeling anything worse. It was like her body was being torn apart over and over again, her blood spilling over the faces of men and women who writhed in agony on the ground below her.
“Please,” she moaned, the strength quickly flowing out of her body as she found herself praying for relief.
Fight it.
“I can’t,” Gwen whispered.
You must. You must stay strong.
“I can’t,” she repeated, but even as she did she felt the warmth of her baton burning against her hip. She reached for it, felt the healing balm of it move through her body.
She could fight this.
She rolled, sitting up as she floated through the air. “Gwydion!” she called. “Gwydion, I’m here to break the curse.”
Screams called back to her, the screams of others who wanted to be rescued, too. Gwen closed her eyes, forcing herself to ignore those pitiful souls as she focused on the task at hand.
“Gwydion!”
“Here, child,” a weak voice called.
She opened her eyes and found herself in a cavern, a lot like Gwydion’s underground lab except for the fact that the natural light that flooded this place was the color of blood. It washed over the walls as though someone had painted it with the coppery smelling fluid. Bile rose in Gwen’s throat as she recognized human body parts scattered all over the floor, the tables, and the shelves. She even knew a few of the faces—the familiar faces of people who had passed through her life. The foster father who raped her when she was seven. The woman who refused to answer to anything but Mistress. The little girl who had gone missing after an unsupervised visit with her biological mother.
They were all there, these people who impacted Gwen’s life in some way in her childhood.
Was it possible to lose your breakfast in a vision?
Her hands were shaking even as they remained wrapped around her baton. She could feel the tiny carvings, and she began to repeat their meanings over and over in her head to keep her mind off of the familiar faces around her, the dismembered limbs, and the occasional beating heart just lying out in the middle of a table.
Love. Labor. Birth. Renewal.
“Gwydion? Amaethon? Goffanan? Eufydd?”
“You call my name?” a man asked, stepping out from the shadows of one of the long tables. “I am Amaethon.”
Gwen studied his face, so familiar and yet so alien to her. He looked like his brother, his dark hair and green eyes almost haunting in their beauty. But there was a hardness to them that made Gwen’s stomach clench again, as she imagined Rhein under this man’s thumb for the rest of eternity.
“You’re Amaethon?”
“I am. What do you want, child?”
“I’ve come to break the curse.”
The man stared at her for a long second, and then he threw his head back and laughed. The sound was long and hearty, the kind of laugh someone might indulge in while drinking a whole bottle of vodka all by himself.
“Please,” she said. “There isn’t much time. Others are coming to stop me.”
“There is no breaking the curse, Gwen. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
One second he was standing yards away, laughing at her. The next he was on top of her, clawing at her flesh with nails that were better suited to a grizzly bear than to a man. Gwen cried out, trying to grab his wrists to keep him from touching her, but without much success. He was too quick, too agile for her. Even floating in the air as she was, there was no where she could go, no way to escape his attack.
Her baton slipped out of her hands, falling into the pile of bodies beneath her. Amaethon somehow got purchase and thrust forward, slamming her so hard against the same low bench where Gwen saw Gwydion in the real lab that her lungs once again found themselves absent of air. She wanted to scream, wanted to spit and to slash at this beast, but she couldn’t put a full thought together let alone fight off his enormous weight.
She could feel his nails slashing into her flesh, ripping open her belly and her throat. She knew this was the end. She could feel her life flowing out of her as blood pumped by a severed artery in her neck took away her last chance at fighting this. It was over. But she couldn’t stop. She pushed against him with all the strength she had left, finding the breath to release once last grunt.
And then he was gone.
Gwen lay on the bench, breathing, but barely. She could feel her heart slowing, could feel the blood washing over her chest and onto the table. Her vision began to grow dark. And then hands were on, a familiar voice telling her to stop lying around.
“There’s work to be done. Get up.”
She opened her eyes and found Morgan leaning over her, tugging at her shoulders.
“What are you…?”
“I came the moment I got Rhein’s text.”
“Text?”
“He told me where you were, that you’d found the gate. He thought you might need help, but I never thought that you would require this kind of help.”
Gwen shook her head, unable to comprehend what was happening.
“What is this place, anyway?” Morgan asked, looking around at the carnage that decorated the room.
“Gwydion’s lab.”
“His lab? What was he, Frankenstein?”
It seemed like an absurd question, but one Gwen wanted to answer. Maybe it was then that she realized her wounds had begun to heal. She could actually feel them knitting together, the sensation the worst itch she had ever felt. She looked down at her chest and saw the overwhelming amount of blood drenching her shirt, but it was no longer flowing. Her shirt was in ruins, but her flesh was healed.
She sat up, touching her throat to make sure it had healed, too. She would never get used to this odd way of healing. It wa
s almost as though she were immortal, too. She would have to ask Rhein about that…if she ever got out of here.
“You have to go, Morgan,” she said, jumping off the bench and searching for the baton in the mess of body parts.
“And leave you here alone? No way.”
“Morgan,” she glanced back at him, “you don’t understand what you’re getting yourself into here. I don’t know if you can heal the way I sometimes do—”
“I don’t care. I’m staying.”
She shook her head as she turned and studied the room, trying to decide what her next move should be. It was then that she noticed a new door on the far wall, a red door that seemed to almost disappear in the blood that continued to flow over the walls.
“Did you come alone?” she asked.
“In here? Yeah.”
“No, out in the real world.”
“Oh. No. Tony’s out there.”
Gwen grunted. If Tony was there, Cei wouldn’t be far behind. He would have known that Rhein or Gwen would contact Morgan. He would have been watching him. Or relying on Tony to keep him informed. Either way, Gwen was pretty sure Cei would be joining them very soon in one way or another.
“This way,” she said, gesturing toward the door.
“This is…disgusting.”
Gwen didn’t respond. She moved slowly, keeping her ears open for the return of Amaethon. When she reached the door, she tested the knob and was pleased to feel it turn, but she didn’t push it open right away. She’d seen enough cop shows to know that you had to be careful before walking through an open doorway. She shoved it open and stepped back, waiting for some sort of attack from the other side. But nothing happened.
“Want me to go first?” Morgan asked.
“No, I’ve got it.”
Gwen stepped through the door cautiously, trying to see everything all at once. There was nothing there, at least as far as she could see.
Literally, nothing.
The floor dropped away just inside the threshold, falling into an unknown abyss. There didn’t appear to be any walls, no ceiling. Just a huge, open space where no light managed to get through.
SONS of DON Page 47
