Reunion

by Jennifer Fallon

  "Ah ... there you are," Pete said, glancing around the room. He fixed his gaze on Darragh for a moment and then seemed to notice what they were wearing, and the remains of their meal that was still on the table. "Glad we're able to save you two from the terrible time you must be having at the hands of the Matrarchaí."

  "Rónán? Who are these people?

  "Are you Darragh? I'm Logan Doherty. This is my brother -"

  "Pete Doherty," Darragh said, staring at them in confusion. "I remember you. You arrested me."

  "Sorry about that," Pete said with a shrug. "Are you two ready to go? I don't know how long before the glamour wears off and Stella turns on us. I suggest we move before the Matrarchaí realize they have company."

  "Shotguns?" Darragh asked, shaking his head. "Really? Are you planning to blast your way out of here?"

  "We didn't know what we'd find," Pete explained. "We stumbled across the weapons searching for you two. Turns out skeet shooting is one of the many activities you can enjoy at Cambria Castle if you're holidaying here."

  "Of course," Ren said. He glanced at the young woman who'd probably been on guard outside. She was a pretty young thing, about twenty with long blonde hair, but filthy and her face was streaked with tears. She was crying, but making no attempt to escape or even raise the alarm. "What about her."

  The girl looked at him imploringly, tears running down her face. Ren couldn't be certain, but it seemed she was covered in blood. "Take me with you, Renkavana."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Don't you recognize me?" the girl sobbed. "It's me! Teagan!"

  Ren stared at her, stunned. Of all the things he hadn't expected, top of the list was to run into Teagan now. Even Pete and Logan bursting in here with shotguns made more sense than that. "What the hell are you doing here?"

  "I ... It doesn't matter. Please ... I just want to go home."

  "Where's Isleen?"

  "Isn't she with you?"

  "Jesus, is that blood on your clothes?" Logan asked.

  Teagan looked down at her jeans and then nodded. She was covered in gore, Ren realized. It was on her clothes and matted in her hair and all over her tear-streaked face. "Mother told me to take a shower, but I ... please. Just take me with you. I want to get out of this place. I want to go home."

  "Whose blood is it?"

  "It's Brydie's blood. She ... she just ... exploded."

  "Brydie?" Darragh exclaimed. "What the hell?"

  "Who is Brydie?" Pete asked. "And more to the point, why are we standing here chatting about her? Come on ... let's go."

  Toyoda chose that moment to reappear on the dining room table, knocking over the floral centrepiece as he landed on it. "There be babies, here," he announced, "but they not be like any babies I be seeing before."

  "Arrgh!" Darragh cried out, clutching at his head. "God ... they won't leave me alone!"

  "What's wrong with your brother?" Logan asked, looking at Darragh with concern.

  "The babies are in his head," Teagan said. "They get in your head. They make you do things."

  In two strides Ren was across the room. He grabbed Teagan by the arms and shook her. "What happened to Brydie?" Ren couldn't believe she was dead. It wasn't possible. Even though he'd never met her, he had his brother's memories of her and she'd been his silent confidante for years now. She wasn't dead. She couldn't be dead.

  "I don't know," Teagan sobbed. "She said she wanted to see them, but she took a pillow into the nursery and tried to smother them, and then they were in my head too, and they made me try to stop her, but before I could she just ... I swear, Renkavana, it was them. They're evil. Brydie knew it and tried to stop them and they just ... disintegrated her."

  Ren stared at her, feeling his world unravel. He glanced at the mantel, at the airgead sídhe blade, sitting there in its glass case, silently taunting him.

  "Let's get out of here," he said, letting Teagan go. "Right now."

  "I can't," Darragh groaned, still holding his head between his hands. "God knows I want to, but I ... I'm sorry ... I have to go ..."

  Before anyone could stop him, Darragh ran from the room, pushing Pete and Logan out of the way in his haste to be gone.

  "He's going to them," Teagan sobbed. "They want him, too."

  "Who wants him, for fuck's sake?" Logan asked, looking thoroughly confused.

  "The babies," she told him.

  "What frigging babies?"

  Pete shouldered his shotgun and stared at Ren. "You going after him?"

  No, Ren wanted to say, I'm going to leave to him here. I'm not going near those children. I'm not going to let this happen. But he didn't say it.

  The Hag had warned him this moment would come.

  Dear God, Brydie had tried to put a pillow over them.

  What was it about these children that made their own mother want to smother them?

  It shouldn't be so easy to take a life. The thought had haunted Ren since the dreams began when he was a boy. The idea that he could kill so carelessly. He realized now that he wasn't condemning himself. Nor was the thought complete in his dreams.

  It shouldn't be so easy for newborn babies to take a life. That's what the full thought was. Nobody should have that much power. Not so young. Not without any sort of self-restraint. Theirs was a visceral need with no compassion or empathy.

  The Matrarchaí were fools for thinking they could ever control such power.

  It shouldn't be so easy to take a life.

  Ren wished he'd realized sooner what was meant by that thought. Perhaps it would have made the nightmares easier to live with.

  He stared at the mantel. At the ceremonial knife the Matrarchaí used to test the psychic link between twins. If they cut one with airgead sídhe the other would bleed. They would have performed the same test on him and Darragh when they were born. Probably with the same knife.

  "I have to go after him. I don't think I have a choice."

  With a sense of spine-tingling rightness, Ren walked to the case on the mantel, picked it up and threw it down onto the marble hearth, ignoring the cries of surprise and the demands from Pete and Logan for some sort of explanation as it shattered into a million shards of broken glass. The blade tumbled onto the rug. Ren bent down and picked it up. He studied it for a moment, closing his eyes. He savoured the feel of it, astonished at how exactly he had seen it in his dreams. How familiar it felt.

  And how, now that he was holding it, the decision seemed so much clearer.

  "Take this," Pete offered, holding out the shotgun. "That letter opener isn't going to do diddly-squat if you run into the one of the Matrarchaí's henchmen."

  "This will be enough," Ren assured him and then he turned to Teagan. "Get out of this place. Go with Logan and Pete. They'll see you get back to your own realm somehow."

  Ren didn't wait for her to answer, or Logan or Pete to dissuade him. He strode from the dining room, the airgead sídhe knife clasped in his hand like a long-lost friend, his footsteps heavy with the realization that Destiny had one hand on his shoulder and the other clenched firmly around his heart.

  Chapter 57

  The castle was oddly deserted. As Ren walked the wide, silent halls in pursuit of his brother, he didn't know if the lack of people was because the Matrarchaí had arranged it that way, or if this place never operated as a hotel because it was just a front for their organization in this realm, or if the babies had driven everyone away.

  The storm continued to lash at the windows outside, the lightning splintering the darkness periodically. The lights in the castle dimmed every now and then, but Ren suspected it wasn't the storm making the lights flicker. There was another power in the air here and he could feel tingling along his forearms and felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

  It wasn't magic he could feel. Magic was a joyous, giddy feeling. It was something much darker. It felt heavy. Dense. Evil.

  He walked past a woman standing at the reception desk who said nothing – still under t
he effects of the glamour. He climbed the wide stone stairs slowly, not sure how he knew where he had to go. The massive foyer with its faux-medieval decor was deserted. There was nobody behind the large wooden reception desk, no sign of any staff, no sign of anyone at all. It was both a relief and of concern. Ren didn't know how many people normally occupied this place, but Pete had said it was a hotel. Between staff and guests he would have expected a dozen or so people at least.

  But there was no-one.

  He gripped the airgead sídhe blade a little tighter, as if to remind himself he was holding it. He could have left it behind. Perhaps he should have.

  Maybe I won't use it. Maybe I won't have to.

  With every breath he took he felt the air thickening and Ren knew he was lying to himself, but it was easier to believe the lie than acknowledge the truth.

  Another flight of stairs and through a heavy oak door on the landing, marked Private. This was not part of the hotel. This was near the room where he and Darragh had been held when they first arrived here, while they slept off the effects of the Brionglóid Gorm. He heard the door snick shut behind him and stared down the wide corridor. There was nobody around. He thought he could hear something in the distance. It sounded like sobbing, but a crack of thunder drowned out any chance he had of figuring exactly where the sound was coming from. The lights flickered again and then they died completely, leaving the hall in darkness, to be lit only by the storm's sporadic lightning and the faint illumination coming from the security lights outside, which must be on a separate grid or perhaps had some sort of battery backup to keep them going.

  Maybe they're solar powered, Ren thought, concentrating on the lights because it blocked out any other thoughts, any other doubts. Perhaps there's a generator. Maybe it'll kick in soon and restore the lights.

  He reached the end of the hall, which branched off in opposite directions. To his right was the hall down which he and Darragh had been led several hours ago to join Marie-Claire for dinner. On his left was another door, marked Authorized Personnel Only.

  Ren turned left.

  He pushed the door open, stepped into the hallway and realized why the rest of the place was deserted. Everybody was here. There must have been thirty people standing in the hall. They weren't all women. Ren had learned long ago that the Matrarchaí was a surprisingly equal opportunity organization. The hotel staff were here, he guessed, looking at the uniforms - domestics, front desk and bellboys, as well as a number of men and women dressed in nurse's uniforms. They were all standing silently in the hall, staring at him with blank, glazed expressions, blocking his way forward.

  From what Ren could make out in the darkness, every one of them had the glassy-eyed expression of the enchanted.

  Ren didn't know how that could be. They were not in the Enchanted Sphere here. There was barely enough magic this close to the ground to sustain a Leipreachán. How could this many people have fallen under a spell?

  What happens if I try to move forward, Ren wondered, bending his left hand up behind his back to conceal the knife. He didn't know if these people were enchanted, or whether the babies were watching him through their eyes, but he didn't want to chance it.

  He took a step. The glassy-eyed people closed ranks.

  "I need to see my nieces," he announced. In his nightmare, he remembered, he was trusted; nobody had considered him a danger.

  He had to hope that part of the dream was real.

  Not much else was the same.

  His nightmare always started when he was in the room with the cradle. There was nothing in his nightmare about navigating his way through a hallway packed with zombified hotel employees.

  Do you love us? Are you one of us? Mama tried to hurt us ... papa is here now ... he'll protect us.

  Ren felt rather than heard the voices and he began to understand. They were seductive. They were vulnerable. They made him want to kill anybody who dared threaten his precious nieces.

  As he felt himself giving in to the voices, overwhelmed with the urge to devote his entire existence to their service, a voice called out, "Let him through."

  The crowd parted to reveal a woman walking toward him. She wore a white coat and a stethoscope around her neck, with her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail.

  "He said you'd come."

  Ren studied her for a moment, wondering if the doctor was Matrarchaí or under the same spell as the others. The same spell he could feel himself being sucked into. "Who said I'd come?"

  "Papa," the woman replied. She stared at him unblinkingly.

  "And here I am," he told her, not sure how much of what he was saying would make an impression on someone as so thoroughly glamoured as she was.

  "Are you here to protect us?" the woman asked. "Or to hurt us?"

  That was the burning question. Destiny or defiance.

  Maybe I can fight this, he realized. Maybe I can turn the tables on Destiny. I just need to embrace this. We're family, after all.

  And in the end, if Destiny can't be fought, Ren decided, whatever I say, whatever I do, will be the right thing.

  "You can go." He turned and raised his voice a little and addressed the others staring at him with blank, soulless eyes. "You can all go."

  "We have to protect them," the woman said.

  "I'm here now," he said. "I will take care of them. With their papa."

  As he spoke, he felt the presence in his mind fading. It was as if they knew he was theirs now, and no longer needed to force their will on him.

  The woman closed her eyes for a moment, as if she was listening to someone Ren couldn't hear, and then she opened her eyes and nodded. "You are family."

  "Yes. I am family."

  "We are so tired."

  Ren wondered if he was talking to the woman or if she was voicing the words of the babies who had taken over her mind and the minds of everyone else in the hall.

  "Go," Ren said. "They will be best protected if you leave this place."

  "But who will watch over us?" The doctor spoke the words, but he realized he wasn't speaking to her. He was talking to them.

  And they were exhausted. It must be taking a lot out of them to control this many people at once. No wonder, the moment they believed he was committed to them, they withdrew from his mind.

  "I will."

  It seemed to satisfy the woman, if not the babies. With no obvious signal that Ren could see, the crowd began to move toward the door, staring off into space, their minds still dulled by whatever enchantment the babies had managed to work on them. He stood back against the wall, the knife behind his back, and waited for the hotel staff to leave. There was still no sign of Marie-Claire. Nor of Darragh.

  He waited for the last of the shuffling mob to leave, expecting the voices to return, but they stayed silent. A soft thud as something landed on the carpet at his feet caught his attention. Ren looked down, wondering what had caused the sound, and then he picked it up. It was the knife from the glass case downstairs, he realized, unsure of why it was here. The last time he recalled seeing the knife was when Marie-Claire told him it was the blade they used to test the psychic link between the twins they bred.

  He studied it curiously, turning the airgead sídhe blade this way and that to examine the intricate carvings etched into its surface. With his thumb he felt the tip, wondering how sharp it was.

  "Ow!" The blade pierced his flesh. It was just a tiny pinprick, really, but the airgead sídhe burned his flesh ...

  And cleared the fog from his mind.

  Ren looked around and realized he was standing in a dark, empty hall and, until a moment ago, had been prepared to devote his life to protecting two babies he'd never laid eyes on ... two babies he was destined to kill.

  They'd taken him over as easily as the doctor and the rest of the people here. Probably as easily as Marie-Claire. And Darragh.

  Mama tried to hurt us ... papa is here now ... he'll protect us ...

  There was nothing in Ren's dream about fighting
Darragh off.

  Nothing else is going according to the dream. Why should that be any different?

  Clutching the airgead sídhe blade once more, Ren pushed off the wall and began walking down the long corridor until he reached the nursery. The room was lit by a security light outside that filled the room with shadows. Rain lashed at the windows and in the center of the room sat the mara-warra cradle he'd seen so often in his dreams.

  If my Destiny is so set, Ren wondered, why do I feel like I have a choice here? Why do I feel like I could just open my mind and let them make me their slave?

  It came to Ren, then, what the Hag had meant when she said she wouldn't have to make him kill the babies.

  And that's what really frightens you, Rónán of the Undivided ... Even in your vision, you are doing what is right of your own free will.

  Ren closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and concentrated on the kuji-in. The skill he'd mastered, when he was searching for a way home. The skill he'd used more times than he cared to count to block his thoughts and his presence from the Matrarchaí and the powerful Empress and Emperor twins he'd killed trying to save as many sídhe as he could.

  Rin for strength of mind and body. Hei to focus psychic power in order to mask one's presence. Toh to balance the solid and liquid states of the body. Sha to heal oneself or another. Kai for complete control over the body's functions. Jin to focus the mind's telepathic powers. Retsu to harness one's telekinetic powers. Zai to bring harmony by merging with the universe.

  And Zen. Enlightenment and understanding.

  He'd finally worked that last one out. Ren opened his eyes and stepped into the room, armored now against anything they could throw at him.

  Destiny had chosen well, he realized, because there was probably no other living soul in this realm, or any other, so uniquely equipped to do what must be done.

  It shouldn't be so easy to take a life.

  Chapter 58

  Rónán approached the cradle that rocked gently in the center of the room. Darragh watched him from the shadows, overcome by a sense of having been here before.