Mom sat up and her eyes fastened on Deg. "Weren't you--Didn't the Morrígan…didn't she exert her influence and make your father give Freddy back?"
Deg stared at Mom in blank bewilderment.
Freddy caught her mom's hand and spoke slowly, "Morrígan hates me. She wants to kill me."
"I know that. But Colin…" Mom trailed off and looked at Deg again. "You did it on your own? No one forced this?"
He shook his head. "I saw my bro--I realized Freddy would never be happy again if she were made to marry my brother." Freddy nodded to him in silent relief. Mom never needed to know about her near-rape. Deg drew in a breath. "Freddy's misery was not something I could live with for the rest of eternity."
Mom jumped to her feet with such violence she knocked the coffee table over. "That nasty, lying bitch."
"Mom?" Freddy blinked at her.
She grabbed Freddy's hands. "Colin--" She swallowed and blinked her tears back. "The Morrígan came to us day before yesterday and said she'd help if your dad would give himself to her. He didn't hesitate, j--just stepped forward and…" She gulped and blew her nose.
Freddy exchanged a confused glance with Deg. He shrugged, frowning thoughtfully.
Mom continued, "Colin said he would. He left with her last night."
"No. Why would he do that?" Freddy's head swam, trying to understand what Dad had to do with this. "He can't, what could the Morrígan want--" Then it hit her. The tapestry…Kore's story…
Cúchulainn…the bottom dropped out of Freddy's stomach. "Oh my--I am such an idiot. Dad is Cúchulainn, isn't he? Dad is Cúchulainn." She collapsed onto the couch and sank her head between her hands. "That's why Morrígan gave me the food. If I was stuck in the Underworld, she would have no hold over Dad." Despair clung to Freddy now like tree sap, ready to fossilize her life in all its sudden fucked up glory. She dug her nails into her scalp to keep her brain from flying out of her head. "Shit. What are we going to do?"
Deg didn't help. "What can we do? If he has traded himself to the Morrígan, the Hound is lost."
Freddy jumped up and pushed Deg's shoulder. "No. If he did it on the condition she rescue me then that's not fair."
He cleared his throat, his face uncomfortable. "She saw us."
"What?"
"Last night, as I led you from the villa, the Morrígan saw us and let me pass anyway."
Freddy kept a rein on her patience with difficulty. "So…?"
He shrugged. "She did help."
"Bullshit."
He held his hands out, palms up. "She could have given us away. We would never have escaped if she had."
"Getting out of the way is not the same as helping. She didn't lift a finger to get me out of the Underworld. She didn't help, she hasn't held up her end, so Dad doesn't have to hold up his."
"Do you wish to explain that to the Morrígan?" Deg cocked an ironic eyebrow.
"Sure. If I have to." She wanted to sock him. He looked so haughty, superior. Like she'd become the unreasonable one.
Throwing his hands up, he turned away from her. "This is insane. You would do better to flee while the Morrígan is distracted with him."
"Distracted with torturing my dad?" She put her fisted hands on her hips so she wouldn't swing them at his stupid fat head. "You think I should let that bitch do whatever she wants to Dad so I can get away clean? Um, no, Deg. Hell no."
He walked to the mantelpiece and kept his back to her, his shoulders bunched with tension beneath his borrowed shirt.
She wished he'd fight with her some more. This abrupt surrender smacked of apathy. After everything we've been through, he's going to wash his hands of me and…I can't blame him for it. Her heart thundered in her chest. "Does this mean you won't help me?"
He whirled on her at last, his eyes wide with shock. "Help with what? How could we even begin to go about reclaiming the Hound?"
Mom stepped between them, looking more composed, calm. "I still remember the incantations to enter the Otherworld. Cernunnos taught them to me. It was a long time ago, but they don't change. Lakes, large bodies of water, rivers…they're sacred, and they can be made to serve as portals. Get me to a large body of water, and I can get us to the Otherworld."
Freddy stared at her. To hear her mom coolly mention the name of the stag-god was beyond weird. A new layer of reality settled in. Yes, Mom had had an affair with the psycho and yes, that was, in fact, where Little Freddy had come from. She gritted her teeth, holding tight to the anger these thoughts produced. "Okay, teach me the incantations before I go."
Mom put her hands on her hips, mirroring Freddy's posture. "Frederica Kalonice Fitzgerald. If one more person tells me to stay behind and shut up like a good girl, I am going to scream. I lived in the Otherworld for three years. I know the ins and outs of that place better than anyone, and if you think you're leaving my sight again for the foreseeable future then you are out of your ever-loving mind."
Freddy sighed in frustration but didn't argue. She turned to Deg, hope and fear tugging her heart to pieces between them. "Deg?"
He hunched his shoulder and stared out the window. "Do not do this, Freddy."
Freddy crossed her arms over her chest, defensive and disappointed. "Try and stop me, Deg."
His tone sounded flat, empty of emotion. "After all I have done, all I have risked to see you safe, you would still do this? Throw your life away on some fool hope?" Anger leaked into his voice, frustration too. "You've run from Clymenus only to fall into the Morrígan's talons. She has engineered this. She wants you to come." He turned and stared at Freddy in horrified fascination, as if she were some mysterious new phenomena.
"I know." She pressed her lips together to keep her face from crumpling with her grief and fear, her disappointment that Deg was abandoning her. "But, Deg, he's my dad."
He watched her for another minute. The air in the room seemed to have congealed, and she found breathing rather difficult for those few moments as Deg stared at her.
He blew out his breath in a gusty sigh. "We'll take my Mustang."
Freddy started toward him, but Mom cut between them. "Fine." Mom pulled her coat back on over her paint splattered jeans and ratty old shirt. She hadn't even bothered to wash the paint off past her wrists, and her forearms were dotted with an eclectic array of color. "We'll plan this thing on the way there. Sante Fe Dam in Irwindale is the closest big body of water I can think of." Mom held out her hand for his keys. After a brief hesitation, he tossed them at her as he pulled his sandals on. Mom stomped out the door.
Deg started after Mom, but Freddy caught his hand and pulled him back. "Thank you for doing this." She threw her arms around his midsection. He hesitated then dropped a kiss on the top of her head. After, he pillowed his cheek there and held her as if she'd become a part of him.
She gave herself a mental shake. Later. Explore this later. Remember Dad? Icy guilt poured through her to dampen the warmth of Deg's nearness. "Right." She stepped away, but still rushed out of the house hand in hand with Deg.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Freddy claimed shotgun in the Mustang, and Deg got demoted to the back of his own car. He set his father's helmet on the seat next to him and leaned forward to squeeze her hand. She smiled at him over her shoulder.
Mom peeled out of the driveway and rocketed around the curves on the winding hill. Freddy squirmed in the seat as Mom zoomed down residential and surface streets with a careless disregard for red lights and stop signs, flooring it to the freeway.
Freddy didn't look up until Mom turned onto the 210 freeway and promptly slammed on the brakes. The car barreled headlong toward a bumper-to-bumper line of traffic and stopped bare inches shy of another car. Freddy let her breath out in a relieved hiss.
"Rush hour." Mom punched the steering wheel. "There's nothing to do but sit and work our way through this."
Deg leaned around her to examine to line of cars stretched off toward the horizon. "Could we not go back and take some other way?"
&n
bsp; Any other time, Freddy would have chuckled at Deg's immense naïveté about the realities of California's traffic. Crazy stressed, though, all she said was, "Surface streets could take just as long." She cast Deg a hopeful look. "Can you do something…godly?"
He shrank back into his seat sheepishly. "The manipulation of cars is not my specialty. I might try something, but it would drain my powers. I would not be able to assist you afterward."
Freddy grimaced in disappointment and sat forward again. She couldn't do anything about the traffic, and it frayed her nerves beyond bearing. The atmosphere in the car was stuffy, reeking to high heaven of diesel fuel and human sweat. Freddy spent the whole ride with her muscles braced, tense with paralyzing worry for her dad as the Mustang inched forward in the apparently never-ending stream of traffic.
Mom pounded the back of her head against the seat in frustration. "This is all my fault. Everything. Every last little thing."
Freddy clenched her jaw and scowled out the car window. A hard knot of resentment curled inside her. She bit her tongue to keep the words back but found, after all, she couldn't. "Well, yeah, Mom. It kind of is, isn't it?"
"Frederica--" Deg started.
She flashed a glower his way and looked back at Mom. "Why didn't you tell me? Not just about Cernunnos, but about all of it? Any of it. Did you honestly think that it would never come up? That you could lie to me for my whole life?"
"I'm sorry, baby." Mom fidgeted a hand through her hair. Lines of concern, of pain, etched themselves into her face, but Freddy was too upset to care. "Colin and I, we thought it would be better to let you have a normal life. As far as we knew, we would never have to see any of them again so why try to make you understand the truth if it would never matter? If you never needed to know?"
Anger fired off in Freddy's gut, hot and urgent and strong. She leaned over the console and yelled at Mom, all her frustration pouring out. "Because I went all my life not knowing who my father is, because even if you don't think it's relevant, a kid has a right to know these things, and because it's beyond screwed up you never told me."
"I did what I thought was best, what I thought would make you happy. I'm sorry if you can't understand why I thought it was necessary." She sighed. "I understand you're angry."
Freddy snorted at that massive understatement.
Mom rolled her eyes. "But I'm still your mom, kiddo, so you don't get to talk to me like that. Okay?"
Freddy gave a curt nod. She slumped back in her seat, sympathizing now with all of her other friends who loathed their parents.
Deg leaned forward between the front seats and looked from one to the other. "Ladies, I know this discussion needs to happen between you two, but hadn't we better spend this time devising a plan to liberate the Hound?"
Icy fear poured through Freddy's veins straight to her heart. She sat upright in her chair, trying to pull out of Sullen Teenager mode. She glanced at Mom and back at Deg. "Right. Anyone have any bright ideas?"
~~~
As soon as they passed the congestion on the 210, Mom gunned the Mustang's motor. The car roared to life with a vibration so strong it hit Freddy in her solar plexus.
"Let's hope there aren't any cops on this stretch." Mom exited the freeway for the dam and tore through Irwindale. She rounded all the various turns so hard and fast Freddy had to hold onto her seat or else be thrown against the car door. Mom jerked the wheel over and around at the Santa Fe Dam Recreational Park sign.
The fear grew in Freddy's stomach, a greedy tapeworm, consuming her from the inside out. She stared at the tall hill that bordered the park's lot. Starkly white, the hill was made of loose stones piled high to tower over her. The wall of rock loomed like an ominous promise of danger--danger waiting to crash down on Freddy's head.
She swallowed and looked out the other window to watch the greenery of the park rush by. Anything was better than staring at that white knife of stone stabbing into the sunset. The waters of the dam sloshed in the wind beyond the stretch of lawn and trees.
Mom parked and jerked the e-brake so hard it clicked twice. She threw aside her seat belt and slammed out of the car, Freddy and Deg hard on her heels. He ducked back to the car then ran to catch them. His father's helmet dangled from his fingers on his return.
Most of the patrons of the park were leaving, packing up picnics and soccer games to pile into their mini-vans or SUVs and head home for dinner. Mom bulldozed her way across the park's lawn on a straight shot to the dam. Freddy and Deg ran to keep up.
Mom scuttled over the chain link fence to reach the water. She scattered an irate troop of geese and stepped to the very edge of the lake's steep shore, wetting her feet to the ankles. She collapsed to her knees so unexpectedly Freddy thought she had fallen. But Mom closed her eyes the next second, murmuring in some weird language Freddy didn't recognize.
Exchanging a wary look with Deg, his responding smile carried reassurance, and his hand as it reached for hers was warm. She knit her fingers with his, glad she was going into this crazy rescue with him on her team.
"Done." Mom stood and reached out to Freddy. She came forward and grabbed Mom's hand without releasing her other from Deg's. Her mom stepped toward the water, towing Freddy and Deg along with her. "Deep breath."
Freddy gulped in as much as her lungs could hold without bursting, and dove headfirst with the other two into the dark waters of the lake.
~~~
As long as Freddy lived, she never wanted to return to the Otherworld of Cernunnos and his buddies.
This desire of hers meant less than nothing, however, when the Otherworld was the one place she needed to be. And, you know, I'm already here anyway.
She huddled among the rocks on the lakeshore with her mom and shivered in her damp clothes, worrying over what was happening in the camp.
Deg had put on his father's helmet and snuck into the camp almost as soon as he was out of the water. I hope Deg's all right. I hope Dad's all right…
Mom pressed Freddy's hand in reassurance. "Deg said wait, baby doll. If we can do this whole thing quietly, it will be for the best."
Deg was right. Mom was right. Dad would say the same thing and be right, too.
Big bangs and epic battles are okay for Hollywood, but they are very bad things in real life when there are only four people on your side and one of them can't fight and one of them is still a prisoner.
Yet the idea seemed so wrong to Freddy--to cower in the dirt when her dad was in trouble and Deg was going-to-the-rescue all by his lonesome.
She forced herself to relax, but inside her, deep down, a wild animal paced and fumed with frantic terror. She caged it in her outward show of courage, but still the beast threw itself against the weak parts of her resolve, wearing her out and tearing her bravery to bits from moment to moment. She swallowed. "How long has Deg been in there?"
"Dunno. Ten, fifteen minutes."
The beast inside Freddy howled and hammered against its bars, rattled its cage, picked at the lock. She looked into Mom's eyes and tried not to let her see the gibbering, sobbing weakling Freddy hid behind her courage. "He gets five more, then I'm going after him and Dad myself."
Before I go insane.
~~~
Infiltrating the camp of his enemy became ridiculously easy when Polydegmon was invisible. No wonder Father beat the Titans. He tiptoed through the bustle and press of bodies in the settlement and kept his eyes keen.
He spotted what must be the prisoner's hut. The hut seemed smaller than the rest of the buildings, dingier, with two guards of immense proportions and vaguely humanoid shapes out front. Airy as an idle breeze, Polydegmon ducked through the hut's entrance. Neither of the guards stirred when he passed.
He staggered back and pin-wheeled his arms to keep himself from running into the Morrígan as she bent toward Colin. The Phantom Queen had tied Freddy's guardian to a sturdy wooden platform braced at a vertical angle to the floor. The Morrígan had wasted no time once the Hound had agreed to her b
argain, and she'd clearly taken her full enjoyment of the poor man ever since. The Morrígan's enjoyment came from suffering, and she was an expert at inflicting it. And the Hound had been in her clutches for hours.
The right half of Colin's face was a swollen, bloody pulp. His lips were cracked and raw, wet only with his own blood. There were whip marks, cuts, bruises, and burns spread all over the Hound's naked body. On his ribs, on his back, across his feet, even between his toes.
Polydegmon forced himself to stop inventorying all the hurts the Morrígan had inflicted in so few hours. He had to get the Hound out. Get him home. The Hound's condition made Polydegmon ill, his gut twisting with nausea, but he could do nothing for Colin. Yet.
The Morrígan cut a long gash across Colin's ribs. Polydegmon forced himself to remember there were guards outside and a whole camp of fey folk ready to leap to the Phantom Queen's side should she scream.
Polydegmon could wait, though the delay hurt him every minute it continued. He had to watch as she toyed with the Hound, he had to let it happen and wait her out.
Gods, all of them, have notoriously short attention spans. She had already worked on the Hound for some time yet today, it seemed. She would tire of her sick games soon enough.
And if the Morrígan did not, Polydegmon would break her neck and sort the rest of a plan out from there.
It seemed, as he waited, that the Morrígan had rather more than the common godly attention span. Polydegmon gave her until the count of 100 in his head--in Greek--then he would meddle with her, violently.
He got to 92 when Cernunnos ducked his head into the tent.
Other gods rarely overawed Polydegmon. He came from one of the most powerful pantheons on the planet, after all. But, Son of Olympians that he was, even Polydegmon had to admit the stag-god had pure physical presence to spare.
Cernunnos' eyes were hard. "What did you do to him, you sick bitch?"
The Morrígan tittered like a fluttery schoolgirl. "Cernunnos, you'll turn a girl's head with sweet talk like that."
Heir to the Underworld Page 27
