“Good.”
Finn turned to leave, and a rush of anxiety twisted in my stomach. I had seen him fight before, but this was the first time I peered into his world as a member of the Fianna, and the risks felt very real. He was halfway out of the driver’s seat when I grabbed his hand.
“Hey,” I said.
His grey eyes gleamed clear in the streetlight, and I forgot how to speak for a moment, swallowing the lump in my throat.
“Be careful.”
He nodded and closed the car door gently behind him. He and Seamus prowled through the shadows, a momentary rush of light signaling they had manifested their weapons. They took a position behind a large garbage container, and with lightning quickness, the Fianna soldier sent an arrow sailing through the night. It smacked into the púca patrolling the roof, and he tumbled to the ground with a sickening thud.
Two men burst through the doors, guns at the ready. Two arrows, one after another, took down each man with shots square in the chest, and they both dropped into the snow.
Finn, who had been hiding out by the door, peeked inside the warehouse and made a signal to Seamus. The Fianna soldier hurried up behind him. Taisha, Regina, and Máirtín filed out of the other SUV. Taisha and Regina separated, going around each side of the building, presumably to take out the patrols. Máirtín covered the front door, clutching his staff, alert and ready.
I sighed, leaning back in the passenger seat and pulling out the copy of Yeats poems. I’m glad I had it to distract me, because my mind raced with thoughts of Finn in that creepy warehouse.
My fingers traced his handwriting as if I could will myself to see him, make sure he was okay. I glanced back where Máirtín stood guard, and saw with a start he had disappeared.
Panic clenched my chest. Something had gone wrong.
A flurry of movement caught the corner of my eye. Three large wolves bolted around the corner, away from the building. One of them I recognized as the giant blond wolf, Phelan.
“Oh, shit,” I said under my breath.
I snapped into action, placing the book back into my coat, unbuckling my seat belt, and jumping out of the SUV at a dead run. Gathering my energy, I prepared to blast the wolves with my mind and knock them unconscious. Turning the corner, I found the two wolves running down the street, but Phelan was nowhere in sight.
“Hey!” I cried.
The wolves whirled around, growling and gnashing their teeth. With a flash of my hand, I sent them hurling against a brick storefront. They crumpled to the ground with ear-piercing howls.
I scanned the streets for Phelan, shivering in the frigid air, but nothing stirred amidst the overturned trashcans and boarded-up storefronts tagged with swirling black graffiti. A light snow fell, the silence in the air sending a trickle of fear down my spine.
Large arms closed in from behind me, locking across my chest.
“Gotcha!” a rough voice breathed in my ear.
“Get off me!”
Power bubbled up through me, and I struggled in his grip. Twisting one hand against his chest, I sent the power through my palm, blasting him backwards. He gripped my jacket, pulling me with him against the wall, crumbling red brick raining down on us. My body crushed against his, and the impact stole my breath.
Phelan’s grip loosened, and I stumbled to the ground, my jeans soaked with icy snow. I stretched my hands out for another attack, but a wolf leaped out of the shadows, its teeth tearing through my coat and sinking into my skin. The wolf shook me savagely and threw me against the pavement. My head cracked against it, and sharp pain coursed through my brain. Another pair of teeth clamped around my neck, and I couldn’t move.
The world drifted in and out of focus, and I willed myself to stay present, gathering my energy to aisling the hell out of there. Someone tugged at my wrists, and Phelan’s face swam into view, glowing gemel ropes in hand. Balling my fists, I struggled, thrusting his hands away. Teeth punctured my skin in a warning, and hot blood trickled down my chest.
Phelan grabbed my flailing arms, twisting the gemel around my wrists in a tight, painful knot before dragging me to standing.
“Help!” I screamed.
Someone cuffed me roughly on the ear, and black spots clouded my vision.
“There’s no point in shouting.” Phelan tugged at the ropes. “We planted a nice trap for your Fianna friends in that warehouse. A nest of bastes should keep them busy for a very long time.”
“No!” I shouted, struggling in Phelan’s grasp.
The púcas changed into human form, and instead of wolves, a man with lank brown hair and a tall woman with dark curls falling over her shoulders stood in front of me.
A large SUV pulled up, and Phelan dragged me into it. I screamed at the top of my lungs. The female púca slapped me across the face, and my lip split open, coppery blood flooding my mouth.
“You bitch!” I cried.
The woman grabbed me by the hair and stuffed me into the backseat between two púcas.
“Shut up!” Phelan cried over his shoulders, gripping the wheel.
“Where are you taking me?” I demanded.
“Gag her and blindfold her,” Phelan ordered the púcas as we drove off.
“No! Stop! Where are you taking me?”
A dirty, sweaty bandana muffled my screams and another blocked my sight. With all my aisling strength, I tried again to travel, but it was no use with my hands locked in gemel. A cold sweat beaded on my forehead, panic clutching my insides. Hot tears of rage soaked into the fabric tied around my eyes, and I kicked the back of the passenger seat in futile protest.
A púca elbowed me in the gut and I doubled over heaving. Someone grabbed my hair and brought something sharp and cold to my ear.
A knife.
“Settle down,” he growled. “Or we’re going to start taking you apart piece by piece.”
I wrenched my shoulder away and seethed, listening to the engine roar and feeling the highway rushing fast beneath my feet.
We drove for hours, my heart racing the entire time, my sweat-plastered shirt clinging to my skin beneath my winter coat. Finally the car slowed down, bouncing over a long gravel road. Someone grasped me by the shoulder and dragged me from the SUV, out into the icy air. Knife still at my throat, the púca half lifted me up a flight of wooden steps. The door slammed behind us and hollow footsteps echoed across a creaking floor.
Phelan’s voice boomed through the house. “Put her down in the basement.”
I kneed my assailant in the groin, and his grip loosened enough for me to run. My feet pounded across the floor, and I blindly sought an exit. A way out. Anything.
Two bodies tackled me, and I landed face-first, my forehead cracking against hard wooden slats. Stars swirled in the darkness beneath my blindfold.
A rough hand grabbed onto the collar of my coat. Placing me in a sleeper hold, Phelan hissed in my ear, “Nothing personal, Princess.”
My eyelids fluttered open, and a dimly lit basement came into focus. I sat on a cold concrete floor, my butt numb through my jeans. Someone had taken off my blindfold and gag, but my hands remained bound in gemel. They had tied me to a pipe, and I braced my boots against the stone wall and heaved. The pipe gyrated a bit with a metallic clang, but it refused to break. I was officially fucked.
A door creaked open upstairs.
The female púca sauntered down the steps, her long black curly hair like a curtain across one side of her face. She held a glass of water in her hand.
I eyed her warily.
“Are you thirsty?” she asked.
“I have to use the bathroom.”
The girl nodded to a bucket beside me.
“Are you fucking serious?”
“Can’t have you trying to escape,” she huffed, extending the glass of water to me. “You want some water or not?”
I nodded, swallowing hard. My throat felt like someone had stuffed it with a cactus.
Crouching down, the woman held the glass of water to my mouth. I gulped it
down, my eyes never leaving her face.
I came up for air, licking my lips. “You don’t have to do this, you know. I mean, I know people who will pay you a ransom.”
The girl stood up and folded her arms. “That’s funny. So do we.”
My stomach bottomed out, and I ran through all the people who might want me dead. It was quite a lengthy list—Amergin, Thornton, the Fir Bolgs, some exiled Fomorians…
“Who is it?” I said through gritted teeth.
The púca woman turned on her heel and pounded up the steps.
“Tell me! Tell me who it is!”
The basement door closed, leaving an echo that felt like a hammer to my heart.
With a cry of frustration, I lodged my feet against the wall again, tugging furiously on the ropes until my wrists bled.
“Fuck!” I screamed.
A small window let in a shaft of moonlight through a veil of spider webs. Resting my head against the rusty pipe, Finn’s face flashed in my mind. What had I told him the last time I saw him?
Be careful.
What a stupid thing to say. I should have told him that I love him, that I didn’t care about Trinity laws. We could have gone underground together, disappeared to Belize or some mountaintop in Tibet, anywhere we could be alone and safe. My imagination ballooned with a horrific image of Finn buried beneath a writhing pile of bastes, and my insides twisted into knots of guilt at putting him in harm’s way again. Now I sat alone and cold in some creepy basement, waiting to die.
No way. Fuck that.
I studied the shimmering ropes binding me to the pipes. What was gemel anyway but some stupid Druid enchantment on a yard of drugstore jute rope? I had busted through wards, somehow collected the massive energy of the cosmos to blow up a Dark Faerie Lord. The flames had tried to consume me, but I stormed through to the other side, my powers drawn from the ashes of so much pain. I was the last aisling, the one Fae creature who could bend time and the universe to my will, not some simpering damsel in distress. I had to figure this out, and I had to do it now.
With a deep breath, I sank into the quiet of my mind and entered the spirit world, seeking out the Druid spell placed on the gemel. The first trick was locating the threads of the spell, but only shadows surrounded me, the ropes blinding me to my own abilities, like I was trying to see to the other side of tinted glass. The hum of magic felt close, but they were ghostly echoes and reverberations, leading me stumbling in the dark on a game of blind man’s bluff. So this was how the spell worked. Like a firewall, keeping hackers out. But one thing I knew about magic? Nothing was permanent. I had to keep searching for the fault lines, the tiny fissures in the spell.
Someone nudged my leg, and I startled back into my body. Blinking hard, I shook my head, morning light streaming through the windows. I must have been working all night.
Phelan towered over me. “Come on,” he said gruffly, “They’ll be here soon.”
“Who’ll be here?” My voice came out hoarse.
“Never you mind.” Phelan gestured to one of the púcas to untie me.
Shit. I was out of time.
I scrambled to my feet. “Phelan, I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
He ignored me, and the male púca with the lank brown hair dragged me across the basement.
“Tell me about the Children of Lir!” I screamed.
Everyone stood still and stared.
Phelan took three hulking steps toward me, grabbed the collar of my jacket, and pulled me close to him. “How do you know about The Children of Lir?”
“Your tattoo, the swan on your hand,” I spluttered. “I saw it… I saw the same tattoo on a dearg-dubh… And my Mom, you…you knew her! And Malachy Moray? You knew him, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”
Phelan studied me, golden flecks glimmering in his amber irises. He threw me back into the arms of the brown-haired púca.
“Bring her upstairs,” Phelan growled.
The púcas dragged me from the basement, and I found myself standing in an old run-down farmhouse. Cold light streamed through the dirty windows, and beyond the glass, cornfields stretched into the distance, their shriveled stalks blanketed in snow.
“Take a seat.” Phelan gestured to a filthy couch upholstered with bright orange plaid fabric.
He stood in front of the window, staring out at the expanse of white outside. For a moment I wondered if we would just remain like that, mired in awkward silence, but then he began to speak.
“You look just like her, you know that?” He laughed under his breath. “Niamh O’Neill, Our Lady of the Sorrows.” Phelan crossed his giant arms across his broad chest. “Came to us after she fled her parents. Begged us to take her in. How could we say no? A princess from the direct royal line of the Tuatha Dé Danann, joining up with the most dangerous underground Fae rebellion in an age? The irony alone was just too delicious.”
Lighting a cigarette, the púca paused as he took a deep inhale and then let out a long stream of blue smoke.
“The Children of Lir…that was Malachy’s idea.”
“Malachy Moray?”
“Aye, he was such a sucker for those Tuatha Dé Danann tales. He’s the one who snuck us over to the other side, found the underground tunnels for us to hide out in. We could hunt, live, breathe free for the first time in centuries.”
Phelan stared back at me. “You don’t know what life is like for those of us not lucky to be born into the right families. Most of the Fae have barely enough to survive, and it’s getting worse…” He paused, drifting off, shaking his head. “I’m surprised you know anything about The Children of Lir at all.”
“I saw a photograph, with my mom, Malachy, and some other Fae in it.” I swallowed hard. “But you’re not.”
Phelan took another deep drag of his cigarette. “I’m not in it because I was the one who took it.”
A long pause stretched out between us. A clock ticked lazily in the kitchen, and the wind whistled against the thin glass in the window panes.
“Are there any records left? Anything you can tell me?”
Phelan sneered. “No, it’s all destroyed. Like we never existed. All the other members of the Children are either dead or detained indefinitely.”
My ears perked up. “Detained indefinitely? What does that mean? Who’s keeping them?”
His face darkened, and he took another long drag from his cigarette and stalked over to the couch. “Who else can make information disappear, detain individuals without a trial, make them vanish without a trace?”
I shook my head, shrinking from the giant púca towering over me.
“Oh, I think you know, Elizabeth Tanner.” Phelan smirked. “I think the answer is closer to you than you think.”
The crunch of tires over snow pierced the tension in the room.
“They’re here.” Phelan flashed me one last glance before putting out his cigarette.
“Phelan, please, you knew my mother,” I pleaded. “Whoever these people are, please don’t give me to them. I could help you. I could join your movement. I might be Queen one day, I could…”
“Shut up!” Phelan roared and grabbed me by the lapels of my jacket, shaking me. “I would never trust you! I trusted your mother, and now everyone I loved is dead!”
I gasped for breath, my mouth gaping, trying to form words. A horrible wound festered just beyond the gold flecks in Phelan’s eyes, and somehow my mother was responsible. My mom, with her frail form and weepy stare. She had done something irrevocable to this Fae, and now I would pay the price.
A car door slammed and footsteps echoed from the front porch. Panic rose in my throat, but I pushed it down, closing my eyes. Searching my mind, I sank deep within the abyss of my subconscious, the seconds stretching into endless darkness. The gemel firewall pressed in on me, resisting my seeking energy, but I pressed forward with all the weight of my power.
There!
Just beyond my grasp I spotted a wh
ite flickering light, and beyond that, the frayed ends of the gemel.
Come on…come on…
“Hello, Elizabeth.”
The familiar voice whipped me back to reality, and I opened my eyes with a sharp gasp, staring in disbelief at the small, elfin person standing before me.
“Candace?” I asked.
Chapter Nine
The leather-clad woman with a gun strapped to her thigh bore almost no resemblance to the Abercrombie and Fitch model from the Celtic Studies Institute at St. Brendan’s University. Always small and pixie-like, Candace’s blue eyes now shone beetle black, her ears pointed slightly.
“What…what are you doing here?” I stammered.
“Trying to fix what Kent screwed up.” Her fingers intuitively brushed against her weapon.
“Kent?” I shook my head, recalling the blue-haired Fir Bolg who’d tried to kill me at the club before Finn showed up. The words he had shouted echoed in my ear.
First Men Forever.
A rush of panic bolted down my spine. Candace was here to kill me.
“I don’t know what you want, but—”
The withering stare she flashed made me snap my jaw shut, and I shrank next to Phelan, a cold sweat beading on my forehead. Her dark eyes held no mercy, the set of her shoulders square and resolute. For the first time since Phelan’s gang had kidnapped me, I knew for sure I was going to die. My hands shook, and I twisted my wrists, trying desperately to find a way out of the gemel.
Four other Fir Bolgs entered the room, one of them holding a duffel bag filled to bursting with hundred-dollar bills.
“Here’s your money, Phelan.” Candace raised her chin, taking the measure of the púca. “Now give us Elizabeth.”
Phelan thrust me toward her, and two of the Fir Bolgs latched onto my arms, their spindly fingers digging into my flesh.
“What do you want with the girl, anyway?” A flicker of regret passed over Phelan’s features for a moment before he suppressed them with his cold, Sons of Anarchy stare.
“Don’t you mind that, púca,” Candace snapped. “You have your money. Just stay out of the Fir Bolgs’ way.”
“Just as long as you stay out of ours.” Phelan’s eyes flashed bright across the room.
Children of the Veil (Aisling Chronicles) Page 8
