Stone Song

by D. L. McDermott

  So he had always remained at the back of the bar, near the door, in as unthreatening a manner as he could manage. It was better that way for a whole host of reasons, the most important being that he was attracted to her, and he was living with another woman at the time.

  It was over with Maire now, but there were other reasons he could not act on his attraction to Sorcha Kavanaugh. Unfortunately, they were difficult to remember when he looked at her. She was pale as any Fae, and possessed the night-black hair so prized by his kind, falling in soft waves around her shoulders. Her eyes were a deep, almost black-brown. She wore dark lipstick that made him think of raspberry wine, lush and intoxicating.

  And if he frightened her away now with a clumsy come-on, he and Miach might lose a powerful ally in the fight to keep the wall between worlds standing.

  He tossed off his whiskey to blunt his desire and called for another even as Sorcha Kavanaugh opened her luscious mouth and began to sing. He discovered that he was jealous of the microphone, just inches from her lips, and he shifted in his chair. His task tonight was to convert her to their cause, not get her in his bed.

  Fortunately she was singing a maudlin and sentimental ballad that helped to dampen his ardor. “Danny Boy” wasn’t exactly her style, though it sounded well enough coming from her. She and the fiddler followed this with another musical travesty that somehow inspired the whole house to sing along with them.

  The effect was curious. He could still hear her under hundreds of ragged, drink-soaked voices. Even when she stepped away from the microphone.

  Suspicion woke in him, unnerving and unwelcome.

  Elada wanted Sorcha Kavanaugh the way a man wanted a woman, but Miach MacCecht, the sorcerer to whom he had bound himself two thousand years ago, with whom he had weathered the betrayal of the Druids and shared the last two millennia, wanted her for an acolyte. Miach wanted to train her as a Druid and channel her formidable power toward preserving the wall between worlds, the barrier that kept the corrupt Fae Court on another plane, in well-deserved exile.

  Miach thought Sorcha Kavanaugh was a latent Druid. Tame. With no access to her power. Much as Beth Carter had been a year ago when they’d discovered her.

  Miach had fixed on her, among all the possible Druids identified by the Prince Consort’s search, because she possessed that most Druidic characteristic: a passion for study. After her formal schooling she had traveled the world seeking out further instruction, different modes of thought about music. It was the hallmark of her bloodline, this thirst for knowledge.

  Miach had deduced that Sorcha was a likely Druid because she studied music with single-minded focus, but he had not guessed that perhaps she had been drawn to music because she had it in her. Druid music. The kind that could fracture physical as well as magical foundations, like those that supported the wall between worlds.

  Elada could hear her, one small girl, above all the other voices in the teaming room.

  Sorcha Kavanaugh, Elada suspected, was not tame. There was a resonance in her beguiling voice, one that he knew—and feared. If Miach heard it, if Miach believed she could not be converted to their cause, he would kill her. And Elada was the only being on earth who could stop that from happening.

  • • •

  The Fae in the front row was not amused. Sorcha could tell that by the way he tossed off his whiskey and scowled. Good. Maybe if he didn’t like the music, he would leave.

  But he didn’t leave. Not after the first set, and not after the second, even when they sang an encore of “Danny Boy” and Tommy joined in with his ragged tenor.

  That’s when she started to get nervous.

  Then she saw the Fae signal the waitress. He caught her attention with a nod of his head and held it with a spectacular smile. Sorcha was wearing cold iron, and still that expression kindled something deep inside her. Jealousy. Even though she knew that nothing good could come of being the focus of such a creature’s attention, she still wanted that attention for herself. Such was the power of the Fae.

  The waitress—Becky—didn’t know what he was. She wasn’t a Druid like Sorcha. And she wasn’t a local. The Boston Irish knew well what the Fae were. But Becky was human and unawake to the danger the Fae presented. She perked up and made a beeline through the crowd, ignoring the other patrons who tried to signal her.

  Sorcha watched, her stomach churning at the thought of such abject obedience. The Fae who had tried to enslave her in Manhattan had beckoned her with similar ease.

  And she had come. She had followed him blindly that night, caught in the web of his seductive beauty, beguiled by a voice as musical as her own.

  Sorcha felt sick watching Becky bend over the Fae’s shoulder, vibrating with pleasure as he spoke in her ear. Becky nodded at something he said, then turned and headed back toward the bar with single-minded purpose. She ignored the other patrons who put their hands in the air and waved, trying once more to attract her attention. At the bar she ordered and picked up a single drink.

  Careful what you wish for.

  It was a half pint of bitter. Her favorite. A local from north of Boston. The color was rich and red, and Sorcha knew even before the waitress began threading her way back through the crowd where it was headed.

  “From tall, dark, and gorgeous over there,” Becky said, placing a coaster on the little table beside Sorcha and following it with the half pint.

  She shouldn’t be so gratified. “Don’t talk to him again,” warned Sorcha. She knew how to handle the Fae. Becky didn’t.

  “Jealous, are we?” Becky said with a twinkle in her eye.

  “No.” Yes. It was disturbing to be both so powerfully repelled by and so irresistibly attracted to the Fae.

  “Relax,” said Becky. “He isn’t buying me beers. Or asking me to have a drink with him after the set.” She winked and scampered back toward the bar.

  “I’ll have a chat with him after this number, shall I?” asked Tommy.

  It would be tempting to let Tommy be her champion, to avoid a confrontation with this Fae, but she couldn’t. Tommy had never looked one in the eye, never had to face one down, and he wasn’t armed with cold iron.

  Sorcha was. “I’ll deal with him,” Sorcha said.

  • • •

  Elada watched her turn off her microphone at the end of the set. She had left the beer untouched. She picked up her harp. The strings glittered in the spotlights. Her instrument was small and appeared to have been built to suit her petite frame. She tucked it under her arm and approached his table.

  It struck him—not for the first time—that this was a bad idea. He’d told Miach as much when the sorcerer had first handed him Sorcha Kavanaugh’s file.

  “If you want to train her, then why don’t you approach her?” Elada had asked, sitting in Miach’s book-filled study looking out over Boston Harbor.

  “I want to train as many of these potential Druids as I can, and I want to get to them before the Prince Consort and his followers do,” Miach had said. “I can’t contact them all.”

  “No, but you’ve given me an unusually pretty one.”

  Miach had laughed. “Fine. Do you want me to admit it? Helene wouldn’t like it. She won’t like me training Sorcha Kavanaugh in any case. I won’t add fuel to the fire by trying to convert the girl to our cause. The idea smacks too much of seduction.”

  So Elada had agreed to do it. Miach was right: trying to recruit the girl was a form of seduction. Unfortunately it wasn’t the kind of seduction Elada had intended for Sorcha Kavanaugh. Put plainly, he would be asking her to side with the race that had tried to exterminate her own, in a war between diametrically opposed factions of the Fae, that would most likely result in her death and possibly those of her loved ones.

  Sorcha Kavanaugh stopped short of his table and stood there with her harp perched against her hip. “Thank you for the beer,” she said. “But
I don’t accept gifts from your kind.”

  She knew what he was. That was unusual but not unheard of, especially among those with ties to the Boston Irish. And she was intelligent enough to be wary of him. He could tell by the way she clutched the harp, knuckles white against the pale wood. But she had come to speak with him anyway, which meant she had nerve and a measure of confidence. He supposed that was necessary in a performer.

  “How do you know what I am?” he asked. It seemed like as good an opening as any.

  “Your kind come for the music. And you tip well,” she added shrugging, as though the existence of the Fae was no matter to her. The way she gripped her harp said otherwise.

  “And sometimes, perhaps, we get out of hand,” he suggested.

  “College boys with a varsity letter and a sense of entitlement ‘get out of hand,’” she replied sardonically. “Your kind is in another league entirely.”

  “The Fae are not always the gentlest patrons of the arts,” said Elada. “But we’re sensitive to music, and your voice moves even the dullest mortals.”

  She bristled at that, and he wasn’t sure which part had so upset her. Just that she was upset, and done with him.

  “Thank you for your offer, but I don’t drink with patrons of any kind.”

  He reached across the table and pushed out a chair for her. “If you won’t accept a drink, then maybe you’ll accept a warning. The Fae know what you are, and they’re coming for you, Sorcha.”

  Chapter 2

  The words were spoken by the handsome Fae, but it was Gran’s voice that Sorcha heard in her head, and Gran’s warnings, and all the warnings she’d received since then, from the kindly old men who’d taught her to sing, and their concerned wives, who’d worried about what would happen to a pretty young girl with the voice if she was unlucky enough to run afoul of them.

  And now she knew better than to ignore such warnings.

  The Fae kicked the chair he’d offered a little farther from the table. She sat carefully, her harp in her lap, her fingers caressing the bass strings. Their touch comforted her, but she hoped she wouldn’t need them.

  “I’m wearing cold iron,” she said. “I’m sitting down because I want to, not because a Fae lord told me to.”

  “What makes you think I’m a lord among my kind?” he asked, a genuine note of curiosity in his voice. And something else. Amusement, maybe.

  She considered. “You don’t look much like a courtier,” she said. That was what Keiran had been, and she wanted this Fae to be different. Wanted the inconvenient attraction she felt for him to be justified. And she didn’t know that many different kinds of Fae. But this one didn’t look like an idle dilettante. “And you don’t have the hands of an artist,” she said.

  “I’m not a courtier,” he agreed. “And I don’t paint.”

  “So what do you do?” she asked.

  “I kill.”

  Stupid, stupid, stupid to forget what he was.

  “All of your kind do,” she said, as much to remind herself as to hurt him. That had been one of the things she had learned from her brush with the Fae in Manhattan.

  Gran had been gone, dead a year, her house in Jamaica Plain shuttered. Sorcha hadn’t been able to bring herself to go back there, even for the funeral. But after the incident, as she thought of it, after the creature had made a pet of her, after she’d finally escaped, and all of Gran’s warnings had come back to haunt her, Sorcha had gone home, in search of answers. She’d returned to discover that she had inherited Gran’s house in Jamaica Plain, and having nowhere else to live, she’d moved in.

  “You’re right,” he said. “All of my kind are killers. Or at least we are all unfeeling when it comes to human life, and our actions often lead mortals down the path to destruction, but I do the more direct, straightforward kind of killing. With a sword. No glamour or subterfuge. How much do you know about the Tuatha Dé Danann?”

  “Enough.” More than she wanted to.

  “Do you know what a right hand is?”

  She knew they had artists among them, and sorcerers, and musicians, but she had never heard of a right hand. She said as much.

  “It means I am—or was—allied to a sorcerer. Bound to him. To fight in tandem. And that sorcerer has taken an interest in you.”

  A shiver ran through her. “A music lover, is he?”

  A smile tugged at the handsome Fae’s mouth. It humanized him, but she shouldn’t let her guard down.

  “No,” he replied. “I wouldn’t call Miach a music lover. Paintings and architecture are his passions. He has reason to believe that you have Druid heritage. The fact that you know of the Aes Sídhe suggests that he may be right.”

  She felt the blood drain from her face. The Fae killed Druids. She didn’t know nearly enough about her heritage, but she knew that much. “Tell him he’s wrong,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “There are no Druids in my family.” No living ones, anyway. And what she suspected about her parents was none of his business.

  She got up to leave. He reached across the table and grasped her wrist. His hand on her skin was warm and the contact felt surprisingly intimate. His hold was light, but she doubted she would be able to pull free of him easily.

  “Sorcha,” he said. “You have nothing to fear from Miach. He bears you no ill will. He will train you, help you come into your full power, if you wish it. But if you refuse, then you need to understand the danger you are in.”

  “Let me go,” she said. If she could get her hand free, she could reach those iron strings and teach this Fae bastard never to touch her again.

  He released her. She felt for the bass strings.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Her hand froze on the iron filaments.

  The Fae never apologized, but there was no mockery in his tone. She hesitated.

  “Please,” he said. Another anomaly. The Fae never asked. They just took.

  “Sit down,” he said, “and let me tell you what is happening. If you still don’t want my help,”—there was another wonder, because the Fae never helped anyone beside themselves and even then only when there was an advantage in it—“then I’ll leave you to fend for yourself.”

  She didn’t believe him, but she didn’t have to, because she had the harp and both hands free. She sat.

  He looked relieved.

  “If you’ve encountered us before, then you know we aren’t numerous,” he said.

  “You don’t have to be. A single one of you can control a roomful of people,” she said. And every mortal in it would feel grateful to be under the creature’s sway.

  “You speak as though from experience,” he said. “And not just of Fae who wander into the Black Rose to listen to your lovely voice.”

  She blushed at the compliment, then tried to remember the source. “Like I said, I’ve met your kind before.”

  He looked like he wanted to press her for details, but didn’t. “Then consider what it would be like to have thousands more of us at large. Not the assimilated Fae you may have encountered before, the ones who curb their wildest appetites and move among men. I’m talking about the true Fae. The Wild Hunt. The Queen and her corrupt Court. They have been imprisoned behind a wall—a Druid-built wall—for two thousand years. Imagine what it would be like if they got out.”

  Hell on earth. A single Fae had nearly destroyed her, obliterated her free will and personhood. Stolen a year of her life. Her face must have betrayed her fear, because he went on more softly now. “I’m not threatening you, Sorcha. I’m warning you. There are Fae abroad who want to free the Court. One Fae in particular, the Prince Consort, the Queen’s lover, has been working to bring down the wall. There is no Fae on this side who is powerful enough and willing enough to do it for him, so he has been searching for latent Druids, like you.”

  The hair on the back of her
neck prickled once more, as it had earlier that evening in the green room. She turned around, scanning the crowded room for another preternaturally beautiful face, but she could find none. The only face she spied that caught her eye was Tommy’s, smiling at her over the head of a young coed. He didn’t seem to think she was in any immediate danger from the Fae before her. Still, the feeling of being watched didn’t fade.

  “What makes you think I’m a latent Druid?” she asked.

  “The Prince Consort had a team of investigators and enough computers for a space shuttle mission searching the globe for the descendants of your people. He was looking in the wrong places at first, because he was just looking for magic. Fortune-tellers and ghost hunters. Sideshow acts. But he only found a few weak talents, and almost none of them survived their training.

  “His second effort was better designed. He searched for scholars, academics, musicians, artists, who were drawn to the Fae and Celtic studies. Those who excelled in their fields, especially those who did so without the advantage of coming from scholarly backgrounds. There was an archaeologist we met last year who was such a latent Druid, but fortunately Miach ran into her before the Prince Consort did.”

  “Let’s say you’re right,” she said. “Let’s say I do have some kind of latent power. I’m not interested in developing it.” Because I’ve seen what it can do. “So I’m no use to this Prince. Problem solved,” she said.

  “The Prince had dozens of Druids in training at a compound in Ireland. Maybe most or all of them were willing recruits at first, but tapping into that kind of power isn’t pleasant. And it can unhinge weak minds. The Prince didn’t care. He wanted results, fast, and some of his subjects broke. We found the cells where he kept them. They had been left behind to starve, and escaped. Later, we were attacked by them. They were mad creatures, wild beasts, by that time. He didn’t give them a choice, Sorcha, and if he finds you, he won’t give you one either.”