Stone Song

by D. L. McDermott

  He couldn’t do it. Even if he still had the knife, even if he had his hands free. He’d take out as many of them as he could, which would be few, to give her a chance to run. Maybe with Nieve, whom they might be reluctant to hurt, Sorcha would make it.

  “Hold them out in front of you and turn your head,” said Sorcha of the shackles.

  “My lady Druid, they are about to burst in. Forget the shackles; it’s time for you to run.”

  “I’m not frightened of them,” said his love, his bard, his Sorcha. “And I can take them. All I need is time to cast my notes.”

  His sword lay nearby on the workbench. “Then you shall have it,” he said. It was what he had trained his whole life to do, fight in tandem beside a magic user.

  The next sound that came out of her mouth atomized the shackles. Nieve blasted him with the hose, but he still ended up with iron filings in his ears, in his nose, clinging to his hair.

  He grabbed his sword and pushed Nieve behind him, then took up a position beside Sorcha.

  “How long do you need?” he asked.

  “A minute. Try not to kill any of them,” she said.

  Then the brackets holding the bar across the garage door failed. They groaned and ripped loose from the wood and fell to the ground, and the doors burst open.

  Elada angled his body to protect Sorcha, because she was already lost in the vortex of her magic, in the music rising up out of her. He took out Cermait, who had been asking for it for years, and another Fae he didn’t recognize who didn’t move fast enough.

  Then Sorcha began to sing.

  • • •

  Sorcha knew she couldn’t craft individual notes and fire them at these Fae. There were too many. With the doors open wide, they flooded in. She had almost no experience modulating her voice to incapacitate this many warriors, and if she underestimated what was required now, she, Elada, and most likely Nieve were going to die.

  She felt the Druid voices bubbling inside her, clamoring to get out. She knew better than to unleash them. They’d do her killing for her, but they might not stop with the Fae attacking.

  The air around her crackled with magic as she reached inside for the music. Her hair lifted on an unfelt breeze, her mouth opened, and just as the doors were dragged wide, an eerie keening emerged from deep in her diaphragm.

  We stole it from the bean sídhe, said a voice inside her, and we made it our own.

  This was stone song, pure and unadulterated, with the power to shatter the foundations of the wall between worlds, and just now, to knock a dozen Fae to the ground and out cold.

  It did more than that. The glass in the windows trembled, then shattered. The bricks of the garage cracked. A small building in the yard collapsed. A giant fissure opened in the granite foundation of Finn’s brownstone house and great slabs of the material sheared off.

  The note decayed. She did not sing another one. Its echo still flew around the corners of the house and yard, breaking glass and cracking bricks, but after a few seconds, silence descended.

  A bird chirped. Then a dog barked. Somewhere a baby cried. Normal sounds made their way back into the world.

  Nieve stepped over the unconscious Fae and into the yard. She looked back at Sorcha, but spoke to Elada. “I have to go find Garrett. He’s coming with me to the old man’s, for good. Are you okay to take care of her?”

  By “her,” Nieve meant Sorcha. And Sorcha was just fine. Never better.

  Elada, shirtless and dripping, came up beside Sorcha and touched her neck gently. His fingers stung, and the feeling cut through her euphoria.

  “Your husband and I,” he said to Nieve, “will be having words.”

  • • •

  Finn passed to the grassy slopes of the Bunker Hill monument across the street from his town house. His home was the most impressive structure on the square, five stories, clad in sparkling stone, pierced by large windows and ornamented by exuberant carvings. He’d had the iron railings removed years ago.

  Well, it had been the most impressive. At the moment it looked like a war zone. There was broken glass everywhere and great fissures in the stone cladding.

  He didn’t care. It was a house. He owned others. This one could be fixed. His son and his grandson, who were standing on the sidewalk below, unhurt, could not, and he thanked Dana the boy had gotten the child out.

  He ought to say that. He ought to tell the boy that nothing mattered but that.

  He couldn’t do it.

  “I presume our Druid broke your enchantment,” Finn said drily, getting to his feet. He’d passed with the strawberry-haired Ann Phillips in his arms, and she lay at his feet now, breathing hard and staring at the house.

  Like the tourists above at the monument, no doubt. This would be difficult to glamour away. Impossible, actually.

  “We’re leaving,” said his son. “Garrett and me and Nieve. We’re not coming back.”

  “You think Miach MacCecht will take you back now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because he is weak,” said Finn.

  “Because he loves his children,” said Finn’s only living son.

  There was a chance here and he could feel it slipping from him. He knew he had made mistakes with his son, but when it came to their feud, he could not think straight, and Garrett had put himself smack in the center of that fight.

  “Don’t go,” said Finn. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

  “I can’t do this right now, Dad. I have to go with her, or I’ll lose her.”

  A van pulled up on the street below. Finn recognized it as the vehicle Miach had bought for driving Nieve and little Garrett around. Nieve was at the wheel now. Garrett got inside without another glance at Finn. Nieve, though, looked up at him with pity in her eyes, and for some reason that didn’t make him angry. It just made him feel tired.

  He watched the van drive away.

  He offered Ann Phillips his hand to help her up, but she cast him a baleful look and got up on her own. She was shaking slightly, but she did her best to hide it. He had to admire her for that. Humans often went mad when they passed with a Fae. Ann Phillips didn’t look crazy. She looked angry.

  “I don’t know what you are,” she said, dusting grass off her jeans and brushing leaves off her woolly sweater. “And I don’t care. I’m not frightened of you. And I will be back.”

  • • •

  “You’re not looking so good,” Sorcha said, eyeing her Fae lover. He was dripping wet from Nieve’s work with the hose and bruises purpled his torso.

  “I’ll mend,” said Elada. “You look beautiful.”

  “I do?” She touched her neck gingerly. “I have a feeling this isn’t so beautiful.”

  “It may scar,” he admitted. “What was it?”

  “A geis, I think. I undid it.”

  “Very impressive.”

  “I’m not sure I could undo a more complicated one, or one drawn by Miach, but I didn’t have any choice. And it’s just a welt, whereas I’m not so sure about your injuries. I think you need a hospital.”

  He shook his head. “I’m iron poisoned and bruised, that’s all. There’s no cure for the first but time, and the second will heal on its own.”

  “Those look like more than bruises to me.” One of the marks on his ribs looked suspiciously like it had been made by a wrench she’d seen lying in the corner of the garage. “If you won’t go to a hospital, I should take you to Miach.”

  “I wouldn’t assume we will be welcomed at Miach’s just now. We talked his granddaughter into plotting against him and went against his direct orders. He may forgive us eventually, but probably not today.”

  “Where, then?”

  “Home.”

  “Where is home?”

  “Wherever you are,” he said.

  “Gran’s, then.”
>
  They looked in the driveway for the minivan, which Sorcha had seen earlier, but it was gone. “Nieve must have taken it,” said Elada.

  “Do you have a cell phone?” she asked.

  “No, but Finn’s car,” he said, pointing to an antique coupe, “no doubt has one. We’ll call her from there.”

  “Keys?” she asked.

  “I don’t need keys.”

  Of course he didn’t.

  It took him a few minutes to hotwire the car. By that time the Fae in the garage were stirring but didn’t look eager to stop them. Then they were puttering in the ancient little car out of Finn’s narrow cobbled drive and onto Monument Square.

  It was the first time she’d seen the front of Finn’s house. She’d been unconscious when she’d arrived. The damage was impressive. The granite facade was cracked, the windows were blown out, and velvet draperies blew in the breeze.

  “I didn’t mean to do that,” she said.

  “If anyone was hurt,” said Elada, “they got what they deserved for serving Finn as they did. No one has questioned his decisions for decades. He doesn’t allow dissent in his family the way Miach does, and he’s been corrupted by it. He was going to torture you, Sorcha, for decades, to avenge a woman who was born three thousand years ago and who has been dead for more than two thousand. You have nothing to reproach yourself for.”

  “I know that. What I meant was that I didn’t intend that kind of destruction. I still don’t know all I need to know about my power. I still don’t have complete control over it. And there’s no one who can teach me but Miach.”

  “Then we will find a way back into his good graces,” said Elada.

  They called Nieve from the road. She was with Garrett and little Garrett and they were heading for Miach’s.

  “Let me talk to the old man first,” Nieve said.

  “What about Tommy?” Sorcha asked. “Where is he now?”

  “Deirdre and Kevin took him to your house in Jamaica Plain.”

  Elada rolled his eyes and hung up.

  “I’m going to ask him to move out,” said Sorcha.

  “Yes,” said Elada. “You are. And you’re going to buy coffee.”

  They stopped for coffee on the way home because Elada insisted that it would help with the iron poisoning.

  “I suppose they’ve done studies?” she asked.

  “Coffee makes most things better,” he replied.

  “I don’t suppose you have a wallet on you? Because I didn’t bring my purse to my kidnapping.”

  “No. But I’m not so iron poisoned that I can’t glamour some coffee out of a barista.”

  “Not if you’re with me. I love you and I want to be with you but I don’t want a life where we take things from people like that.”

  “It’s only a cup of coffee.”

  “It’s their free will.”

  He was silent a moment. “You’re right. I’ll stop. After today. But I think I deserve this one cup of coffee right now.”

  “We don’t have to steal this one,” she said.

  There was a café at Forest Hills where she sometimes played gigs and they paid her largely in free drinks and pastry. She was a tea drinker herself, so they raised an eyebrow when she ordered the requested double mochachino with an espresso brownie, but she just smiled and said it was for her boyfriend, which felt very, very good.

  Elada drank his coffee in the car and, to Sorcha’s surprise, his color improved afterward.

  “Nieve got most of the iron off me,” said Elada. “I’ve just got some contact weakening from the shackles. I should be better by the time we’re home.”

  She liked the way he said that, even if she didn’t like Gran’s house very much. “I’m going to buy a coffee pot,” she said.

  “And a bed,” he added.

  “I’m not sure I can afford a new bed. I’m a musician. I can barely pay the taxes on the house with Tommy’s rent.”

  “Don’t worry about the taxes.”

  “Remember what we agreed about glamouring people?”

  “I don’t need to glamour your taxes away. I’ve got money.”

  “How much?” she asked. “Because I don’t think you know what taxes are like on a house.”

  “I used to pay Maire’s taxes. I can pay ours.”

  Ours.

  “If Miach will not take me back, there are other things I can do.”

  “You mean other criminals you can work for?”

  “No. I have investments. They could use more oversight. In any case, my sword is no longer Miach’s to command, even if he were free of commitments and could take a right hand.”

  “Then whose is it?” she asked.

  “Yours, my lady bard, yours.”

  • • •

  It took more than an hour to fight free of the Boston traffic and reach the house in Jamaica Plain, and Elada was reminded once more of how much he disliked the place. The ironbound windows and doors were more than an irritant for him. They were a symbol of the life of fear Sorcha had led. No more.

  “We’re moving,” he said as Sorcha held the door open for him.

  “I could buy you your own set of oven mitts,” she offered.

  “Do you really like this house so much?”

  “No. I hate it, but after what happened with Keiran, I was afraid to live anywhere else.”

  “You don’t need iron bars anymore, Sorcha. You cracked the foundation on Finn’s house. No Fae will cross you now.”

  “Then I’ll sell it. But first I want to show you something else I can do with my voice.”

  “Will it lower the value of the house?”

  “That depends on how you react.”

  She led him upstairs. Tommy called out a greeting as they passed. “Nieve called and said you were okay,” he added.

  “Stay in your room, Tommy,” Sorcha called back. “And start looking for an apartment.”

  “Will do.”

  Elada surveyed the iron bedstead in Sorcha’s room. “That is not coming with us.”

  “No,” she agreed, and pushed him onto the mattress.

  “What is it you wanted to show me, my black-haired bard?”

  “This.”

  She straddled him and pressed her lips to his throat and . . . hummed. Her soft lips vibrated, feeling amazing against his skin. Then she kissed down his torso and belly and navel. “My god, Sorcha, what you can do with your mouth,” he said. “I hope Miach didn’t teach you that.”

  She popped the buttons on his fly. “Miach didn’t teach me to sing. Real musicians did that. And one of the first things you learn is to sing with your whole body.”

  • • •

  Sorcha almost couldn’t believe they were home. Well, home for now. She would move. She would get rid of Gran’s house. She would love this man, who happened to be Fae, and who loved her.

  She straddled him now and began to unbutton her blouse.

  “Have I told you how much I love your clothes?” said Elada. “The textures and the colors and age of them? They’re like you. Layered.”

  “This,” she said pushing the sleeves off her shoulders, “looked better before I spent a night in Finn’s basement.” The pale yellow silk had been patterned with navy-blue and pink umbrellas and had probably been made in the 1930s. She had loved it, but she doubted she would wear it again. “I have others, though.”

  “Hmm,” said Elada, reaching up to unfasten her bra and bare her to her waist. “I don’t want to see any of them for hours.”

  He started suckling her nipples then and almost derailed her plans entirely. His tongue worried the little silver nipple ring he had given her and she decided that she didn’t miss the iron at all.

  Distractions, all of them. What she wanted to show him was her ability to . . . sing. She got rid of
his jeans, which would probably end up on the rag pile, they were so ripped and torn, and straddled him and impaled herself.

  Then she started to hum just a little in her throat. The sound traveled into her belly and below and Elada arched his back beneath her and groaned.

  “Sorcha,” he gasped. “Careful. Too much. I’m going to—”

  And he did, as quickly as he had made her on their first night together, and she took some pride in that.

  “Ugh, Sorcha,” he said. “That’s a dangerous skill.”

  “It would be with an ordinary man,” she agreed. “But I’m counting on that extraordinarily short Fae refractory period to make up for it.”

  • • •

  Beth Carter came to visit them the next day.

  “We’re off to a conference in Zurich tomorrow, but I thought you might have questions you’d want to ask before I left.”

  They were sitting in Gran’s parlor in the old frayed chairs with their musty throws covering the holes in the upholstery. Beth Carter had taken in all the iron with wide, surprised eyes, and been downright disturbed by Gran’s still room, but she’d come, and that was what mattered. Sorcha wished now more than ever to be done with the house, to put her childhood behind her.

  “At least someone in your family knew what you were,” said Beth Carter, “and understood your gift, even if they tried to suppress it. Mine forgot their heritage entirely. All they had was a memory of danger and a fear of learning. I had to fight them to go to college, to get an education. And they don’t value anything I’ve done with my life now.”

  “Gran was the way she was”—Sorcha now understood—“because the Fae killed my parents. I didn’t understand it growing up, but I began to after my year at Keiran’s.”

  “There are others like us,” Beth said. “More out there. The Prince Consort had a facility in Ireland where he’d hired investigators and analysts to identify and find them. He tried training some, but most of them didn’t survive. The power that comes when you unleash your gift—”

  “It’s cruel and seductive, like the Fae,” said Sorcha, who had experienced it for herself.