Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  Mulvaney was trying to get his attention again. First lesson a young officer learned was, pay attention to your senior NCOs. They could save your ass, no matter what the chain of command might say.

  Draw on your Blood. Draw on your Power. Force the pain down. Remember what that bitch Deirdre used to say in training: pain is optional. Injury may be mandatory in a given situation, but pain is optional. And then she'd stub out a cigarette on the back of her hand.

  Pain was optional. Easy for her to say. It was what she did to prove it, was a problem. About a dozen of the scars patterning his body had her name signed to them.

  Mulvaney shook his head, sighing over the pig-headed nature of young subalterns. Show you learned what she taught. Not just remembered, but learned. Worry about healing later.

  Brian looked up from the churned slush. Good. That little distraction had moved him about two blocks. Sweat trickled down his nose in spite of the winter air. He tried to wipe it off and found he couldn't lift either hand that far. He couldn't even turn his head far enough to reach his upper arm.

  Forget about the sweat. He needed to concentrate on more important fluids. Those hot drips on his fingers--they were blood. He had a choice: take a chance on losing too much of it, or slow the circulation and risk frostbite of the fingers.

  Try the middle way: moderation in all things, including moderation. Slow the loss but keep feeling in his fingers.

  Meanwhile, he had to keep his feet moving.

  Speaking of feet. Hey feet, where you taking us?

  The answer seemed to be "Maureen's."

  The girl with the gun and the attitude. She'd called him a rapist. What made his feet think she wouldn't let him past the door and fill his ass with lead? She could do that in this country. Self-defense. Just like she tried in that alley.

  But Maureen was closer. He'd never make it to the hotel. He'd collapse and freeze, if Fiona didn't get there first.

  Brian grabbed his thoughts by the scruff of the neck and hauled them back. A wandering brain was one of the fastest ways to die. Where was he?

  Fifth and Congress. Well, the thoughts had moved him three blocks further. Apparently, his feet had decided on Maureen's. The hotel was in the other direction. He was committed now, no choice.

  Four more blocks. Uphill. And then the stairs. Maureen had that buggering third-floor flat. Stiff leg. Working leg. Stiff leg. Working leg. A journey of ten thousand Li begins with a single step. What the hell is a Li, anyway?

  Rough bone-edges grated against each other with each step, each gasping breath, shooting fire deep into his side from the broken ribs. Warmth oozed down his arm and dripped into the snow, onto his shoes, his pants. Each slip on the icy sidewalk drove ice-picks into his leg and shoulder.

  Ten steps of each leg and he leaned on a streetlight. Headlights glinted down the road. He assumed it was the local constable keeping the world safe for democracy, so he straightened up and forced a semblance of a taxpayer out on his lawful business.

  Stiff leg. Working leg. Stiff leg. Working leg. A Li was a unit of measurement in the ancient Chinese system, length unknown to the current correspondent but probably less than a mile. Irrelevant. Call it a bloody long distance, anyway.

  How far had he come?

  Not bleeding far enough. A block of flats loomed ahead, it looked right but no parking lot. One beyond, instead. Rusty-bummed green Toyota.

  Stiff leg. Working leg. What would he do if she wasn't home? What if she looked through that damned security peephole and told him to bugger off? She didn't love him. She'd made it bloody clear she didn't even bleeding like him.

  Stairs. He'd thought those buggering Yanks had buggering handicap accessibility laws. Wheelchair access, ramps or lifts, all that sort of bloody socialist muggery. One sodding step at a time leaning on the railing hoping it didn't break under his weight.

  Stiff leg. Working leg. Stiff leg. Working leg.

  Third floor. He flopped against the wall, right side, no blood-smear on paint. He tried to keep it clean, maintain decorum. Gather breath. Focus. Prayer optional.

  Buzzer. He couldn't reach the bloody button. Neither hand.

  Elbow. Right elbow. He mushed around with his jacket sleeve until the point of the elbow brushed the button.

  He heard a distant ringing.

  Nothing happened. He tried again, three tries before contact.

  Nothing.

  It seemed easiest just to lean against the button, continuous noise, barely holding his body up against the doorframe.

  He heard a muttered voice, inside, with the tone of swearing but no words. The door opened.

  "Maureen . . ."

  It was more of a groan than a word.

  She just stood there with that damned gun in a firm two-handed grip, centered on his chest. He couldn't tell if her expression was shock or hatred.

  "Don't . . . call . . . police."

  The barrel expanded into a tunnel and swallowed him.

  Chapter Nine

  They met by the peace-fire in the Great Hall of Tara: Dougal, Sean, Fiona. Afternoon sun shone through the smoke-hole in the thatch high overhead, burning a single shaft down through the blue smoke and glancing off the massive roof-trusses. It barely lit the gloom: the dark stone walls, the smoke-blackened wooden beams and purlins, the dusty banners. A twin line of polished shadows marched from one end of the hall to the other, oak-trunk columns like sentries rooted in the flagstone floor.

  No torches were lit for only three, no tables set out on their trestles groaning with roast boar and bread and cheese and wine--no bards, no Druids, no hopeful dogs underfoot. Peace and darkness ruled. Dark for dark deeds, thought Fiona, with her usual touch of inner mockery.

  Red firelight washed their faces. They sat close to the central fire-pit where the flames just balanced the cool darkness, no more than the few logs needed to hold coals through the day. The peace-fire burned from one Beltane to the next, to die with the old year's night and rekindle from the sun's first rays through a burning lens. The laws of the Summer Country said matches would not work. Butane lighters would, simply flint and steel and flammable gas, but the sun made a more impressive ritual.

  Well, Fiona thought, this is what the Great Hall of Tara ought to have looked like, anyway. It's our vision of a regal barn huge enough to feast a thousand warriors of the Fianna at one time.

  A dozen fire-pits stretched from one end to the other, all but one dark now and waiting for the great blazes that would magically drive the damp and chill from stone masonry without devilling her eyes and nose with smoke along the way. Instead, a wholesome smell of fresh rushes rose from underfoot, untainted by the dog-turds, sour beer, and rancid table-scraps historical accuracy would demand. It was a much grander, cleaner space than the cramped slum that human archaeologists had dug up in Ireland.

  A neutral space to meet, that's what it really was. A DMZ, to use dear Brian's idiom. Few in the Summer Country felt the trust necessary to either give or accept an invitation to another's keep. If three Old Ones came to Tara and only two were seen to leave, the rest of the Summer Country would move against those two. Because of this, what went on inside the Great Hall remained safe and secret.

  Dougal poked at the coals with his knife, probably some esoteric kindjal or hand-seax or hamidashi she ought to recognize and praise. Dougal played at being an Authority on arms and armor, just as he played at being a Huntsman of all kinds of beast. The rising glow of the coals lit the hawk he carried, hooded, on his other arm.

  When he looked up at her, the shadows hooded his eyes like the falcon's. "You seem to have failed again. What is this obsession you have with the Pendragon?"

  "We each have our games. He's mine."

  He showed his teeth in a parody of a smile. "I think I'd rather train spitting cobras. You should kill him."

  She glanced across at Sean, noticing the red glitter reflecting in his eyes. Yes, she thought, you'd like that, wouldn't you.

  "Oh, such a waste it woul
d be," she added, aloud. "Would you kill that hawk, love, just because it's dangerous?"

  Dougal sheathed his dagger and smoothed the feathers of his bird, then adjusted the jesses to clear a twist.

  "Falcon, my dear. Peregrine falcon. Never call a falcon a hawk. We'll think you ignorant."

  "Different interests, that's all, love. Do you know anything of genetics?"

  "Enough to breed hounds. That's all I need. We don't need those human games in the Summer Country. Life is good enough as it is. Life was good enough a thousand years ago, for us."

  She smiled, a thin, slow smile she had practiced in a mirror for years until it spoke volumes about quiet scorn. "Good enough? Is life good enough for Sean, denied children by the dice of chromosomes? How many of the Blood live here, live in the Summer Country and know themselves for what they are?"

  He paused for a moment, still caressing his hawk. "A thousand, more or less?"

  She deepened her smile a calculated hair's-breadth. "And how many of those are fertile, male and female?"

  "Less than a hundred." He grimaced, and the hawk stirred under his hand, sensing tension. "You know the averages: fewer than one in ten."

  "One in twelve would be more accurate. Such is the price of hybrid vigor. You think that this is good?"

  "But there are the half-bloods in the human world, ten times, twenty times as many. This one Liam hunted for me, her sister, others. We've held our numbers for centuries by picking and choosing just this way."

  Sean stirred, across the fire. "Liam was a breeder. Lose one, gain one, where has the average been improved? You don't even have this Maureen woman yet, do you? She may end up mating with dear brother Brian. The walls between the worlds get thicker every year. Snatching strangers from the streets gets harder. Switching babies in the crib is not as easy when the crib's in a hospital, you know."

  Dougal growled, and the bird roused on his fist, fluffing her feathers and loosening her wings for flight.

  Naughty, naughty, thought Fiona. Don't disturb the pretty murderess. For an instant, she saw herself in the bird, saw herself in Maureen, and hated the sight. Dougal lived for domination. He really was a shit.

  But sometimes a useful shit.

  "You don't yet have Maureen. I don't yet have little Brian. Our two problems seem to have come together. Perhaps we can work a temporary alliance?"

  Dougal rose to his feet, cocked his head like the falcon on his fist, and took two steps that carried him into a ripple of air like a desert mirage. He didn't come out the other side. Fiona yawned. Two steps to the human world, two steps back to the Summer Country--such travel was a gift the Old Blood gave them.

  She guessed he was just checking on the questions at hand. All she really knew was that her agents had failed, that Brian had escaped them and they were unable to follow. Where and how he'd left, and in what condition, remained mysteries to her.

  She preferred a more distant style of management. Getting directly involved, either at the strip club or in the alleys, could be painful. She rubbed the back of her wrist in memory, the spot she'd burned to the bone by forcing Brian's trap.

  Magical healing might erase the charred flesh and the scars, but it didn't cut the price he was going to pay.

  * * *

  Two steps carried Dougal from Tara to Naskeag Falls. He grimaced at the icy wind, the peregrine uneasy on his wrist.

  That's the price of an image, he thought. Damned awkward bird to carry on a night like this. And she's more than a nuisance here, if some nosy law-man asks to see my federal permit. That little eunuch was right about the walls between the worlds. Most of them are made of paper, or of laminated plastic.

  Time was such a strange thing, between the worlds. They knew of her agents' failure, Fiona and Sean and Dougal, days past in the golden afternoon of the Summer Country. And yet here was the Pendragon limping along under the streetlights, spreading the smell of fresh blood on the wind.

  Dougal shook his head. He knew he could take Brian now, wounded as he was, but it would be ugly and dangerous--like following a wounded tiger into the elephant grass. He could take Brian now, but the only safe way would be to kill him. Little Fiona wouldn't like that. Oh, no, she wouldn't. Sean had made that abundantly clear. So revenge was out, for now.

  He's your tiger, Fiona dear. I track my own mistakes. I don't track yours. Not even for the blood of my own clan cousin.

  He watched from the shadows as Brian hauled his wounds up the steps of a rundown apartment building. Dougal sensed Maureen inside, sensed the power that had set Liam on her trail. So the wounded tiger considered this his lair? If the wind sat in that corner, Fiona's suggestion of an alliance made more sense.

  Two steps took him back. Dougal drew the scene of Tara in his head--the fire and the shadows, the line of the sunbeam and Fiona's beautiful dark face glimmering in the firelight. The world bent around him and reshaped itself, through the half-world of gibbering spirits and uncanny lights and a musty, boggy smell to the clean resinous tang of birch-wood burning on an autumn afternoon. Sean had added two logs to the pile of coals while they waited.

  The falcon settled again on his wrist, her bells tinkling quietly. She really was working out well. Such a beautiful bird. The woman would be next.

  "Your children hurt him. He's gone home to mother to kiss it and make it all better. Your toy appears to be playing with my toy."

  Fiona wrinkled her nose. Such a lovely nose it was, on such an interesting face. It was too bad she had this fixation on her younger brother. It wasn't so much the brother thing. Dougal didn't care if people mated with their dogs in the middle of the street. But there were others she could choose . . . .

  "Why this Pendragon? What's so important about him?"

  She smiled her malicious smile, the one that made her look for an instant like the peregrine. "He's pretty, love. I've wanted him ever since he was a baby, you know. Not like you, with your nose like the hawk upon your wrist and your eyes set too close together and your neck stolen from a scrawny rooster. Sometimes I pity this Maureen: you're nothing much to look at, Dougal, as a man. No muscles to speak of, except those between your ears."

  Sean stirred, reacting to a glare from Dougal. "She's just having fun with you. Our Fiona has a nasty streak. There's more to Brian than a pretty face. How many fathers of the Blood have two fertile children, even with the aid of different mothers?"

  Dougal had to think. "Damned few."

  The dark pools of Fiona's eyes grew remote. "Precisely. It's one of the joys of our hybrid ancestry. The ability to use Power is a complex of recessive genes. You have to get them all from both parents in order for them to show. The problem is, the Old Blood has both Power and fertility linked with a lot of lethal genes."

  Sean snickered. "Not exactly a survival trait."

  "So far, love, those genes have paid us back more than they cost. But that's one reason why you can recognize the Old Blood at sight. We tend to look alike because we don't have that many viable gene combinations."

  Dougal's head buzzed with Fiona's human words. "Why do I need to know this?"

  "Sean and I have done a little research, love. That's why we were poking around on the coast of Maine. You've heard of the Jackson Labs? Genetics research, mutant mice, tracing the genealogy of inherited disease? Sean's a wonder, you know, in the half-world of the humans. He can even chase down grants."

  Dougal grimaced at Sean. "Can you get her to stick to the point?"

  Fiona dimpled, as if he'd just paid her a compliment. "Oh, we've done a little discrete gene-sequencing, love. Nothing that would allow another researcher to discover exactly what species we were studying. I'm afraid our notes are quite hopeless from a scientific point of view.

  Sean shook his head. "What she's leading up to, in her nasty little way, is a mutation. She carries it, Brian carries it, I carry it but with a broken sequence and that stupid extra chromosome. Our father apparently was a most unusual man. Too bad he's dead."

  Dougal
sneered. "Too bad he got besotted with a woman of the Kamarei, you mean. It's hard to regenerate your way out of a stew-pot. What's that got to do with us?"

  Fiona smiled, showing teeth that were nearly fangs. "So, love, you earlier mentioned breeding dogs. If one of your wolfhounds has a trait you want preserved, what do you do?"

  "Breed to the same trait in another."

  Her smile deepened. He really disliked being the target of her smiles, the way they added barbs to her venomed tongue. He knew his mind wasn't as quick as hers--but then, few were. That was a human trait. The Old Blood had other tools.

  "So, love," she went on, "isn't the same tail or nose or set of good sharp teeth often found in the same litter? Don't you often breed brother to sister for the purity of the line? Inbreed and then cull?"

  "Yes."

  Dougal nodded to himself, beginning to understand where she was leading him. So. Little Fiona looked to start her own selective breeding program? Given what he knew of her and of Brian, there probably wouldn't be that many culls to drown.

  "Besides," she said, "he's awfully cute, love. Those beautiful blue eyes, that curly blonde hair all across his arms and legs and chest. Those muscles. And he has some lovely scars. You should see him on a beach sometime."

  Dougal thought Sean was going to pick up a hearthstone and chew on it, the way his jaw was working. Sooner or later he's going to slide a knife between his twin sister's pretty ribs. Maybe, Dougal thought, just maybe I'll supply it.

  * * *

  Sean swallowed bitter rage. Brian, Brian, Brian. It's always Brian with Fiona, he thought. She could get what she wanted elsewhere. All of it: the genes, the sex, the worshiping. No, she wanted Brian. Maybe it was because she couldn't get him.

  Thou shalt have no other Goddesses before me.

  At least she still played with her twin, kept him close. Every once in a while, when her other toys lost their appeal, she even invited him into her bed. Hope held him in a cage.