“Your grandfather, Patrick Flynn, made plans to send his eldest daughter and her new husband far away to the American West, teaching them first how to hide their true identities and keep Ciaran from finding them. Sadly, Ciaran got to Paddy before they left, but the rest of the family helped them flee Boston in secret. You see, knowing that your father was of the O’Sullivan bloodline, and that your mother was the eldest descendent in the direct Flynn or O’Flynn line, even back then your relatives guessed that you, her offspring would be the ones. The Flynn’s lost two more members when Ciaran tried to find your mother. We still do not believe he is aware your father was of his bloodline. We are hoping that is still an O’Flynn and Decker secret. We’ve kept it highly guarded all these years.”
Aunt Neave sighed and continued, “But I have strayed off the topic, forgive me, dears. Because Ciaran started plaguing the Flynn family in Boston, direct contact with your mother’s and father’s immediate families was severed. Your parents communicated by letter with their parents through family friends, not of Flynn blood, who passed the information from those letters to your grandparents in person, and vice versa.”
She looked to Decker. “I don’t suppose you are aware that you’ve a grandfather and grandmother Decker alive as well as a Grandmother Flynn. There are some aunts, uncles, and cousins also.”
“No. I had no idea.” The knowledge that somewhere out there they had more family blindsided Decker.
Decker added, “When we asked about grandparents and any other family, our parents just told us they were gone. Since I thought they meant they were dead, I never pried any further.”
“God-willing, when this is over, you can meet them all. I know they desperately want to see you. It’s been hard on your grandparents.”
“Did Ciaran kill our parents?” Liam asked.
“We are fairly certain that he did, yes,” Neave provided.
“Your mother, Mary Kate, as you know, exchanged letters, phone calls, and email with my father over the years,” Niall began. “Their last communication exchange was him warning her, her response to that, and one other sent to my father that told him Ciaran had found them in Sedona. He wanted to know where their children were. They were fleeing, to return to you, to warn you. She planned to call you early the next morning to explain everything to you, Michael and Brody. She said she had wanted to wait until Liam returned at year-end. She realized her error then and regretted not telling you sooner, for if Ciaran got to them, you three would be at a horrible disadvantage. She said she hadn’t finished your training in the old ways. She wanted to wait as long as she possibly could. She wanted all of you to have some semblance of a normal life before this responsibility was placed upon your shoulders.”
“Okay, so, why didn’t we hear from any of you after they passed?” Liam asked in a quiet voice.
“We wanted to contact you. We didn’t know exactly where you were or how to reach you,” Aunt Neave said softly.
Niall took over. “The only location we knew of was in Sedona, but we never had an address. Your mother used a Sedona post office box for mail. We tried calling the only phone number we had, which we knew was for the house in Sedona, but no one answered and a month or so later, it said the number was out of service,” he explained. “We combed the newspaper articles in the libraries and online and found one about the accident in the Prescott paper, then a small mention in the Sedona paper about the accident, using your mother’s and father’s altered names, John and Mary Decker. Aunt Neave, my father, and my sister and I worried that he found you too. As a security precaution, your mother and father never passed along your full birth names. The only thing your grandparents, and we the guardians, knew was there were three sons, the eldest called Michael and the middle called Liam. We knew that only from Aunt Neave’s visit before you were born, Brody.”
“Aunt Neave passed the historical records on to her late one night in Sedona. They met in a hotel room. So we had no idea where your house was,” Niall explained.
Fianna interjected, “As a rule, and for your safety, your mother never mentioned your names or your true location, or even Sedona, for that matter, in her emails. We tried to look up Deckers near Sedona, in surrounding areas, even in Phoenix. There are a lot of them. And not knowing for certain if the names she had given Aunt Neave and my father were the ones you used, we had to look at all Deckers in the whole of Arizona. We couldn’t find you. The obituaries mentioned your parents lived in the East Valley, which we later learned was probably in the Phoenix area, but we didn’t know where in the East Valley they lived.”
“Our parents drilled into us the importance of using unlisted numbers and being careful with addresses and personal information. We still do that out of habit,” Brody commented.
“If we were so carefully hidden, how did he find us before you did?” Decker asked.
“Well…” Neave looked to Niall.
Niall fidgeted uncomfortably.
“Out with it, Niall. They will understand, go on,” Fianna urged her brother.
“There were two reasons, actually. The first being that when you went to identify the bodies of your parents, you told them they were from Chandler. Several newspaper articles appeared about the accident still only mentioning they lived in the East Valley or the Phoenix area. However, the Chandler paper mentioned they were from Chandler, Arizona. If we found the article, we were certain Ciaran found it too. We were relieved the obituary you placed in the paper did not mention your names, however, it mentioned your parents were survived by their three sons, and I’m afraid that’s all Ciaran needed to begin the hunt. He could not have known there were three sons before that.” Niall paused and rubbed his forehead.
Neave patted his hand. “I’ll do it dear.” She turned her attention to her captive audience. “Only four people knew two of your names, Sean, Fianna, Niall and me. I must say, we were terribly worried about you. We found so many Deckers, dozens in the Phoenix area alone. How could we even know where each one of you lived? We chose not to take the chance of contacting all of the names we found, for we knew Ciaran was more than likely keeping a close eye on us because he was looking for you, as he knew we would be. He had hacked Sean’s email once already.”
She continued. “He returned to Ireland for a time. Not Cork, we knew he first went to Mayo then on to Galway and finally ended in Antrim. We do have people who watch him when they are able. Meanwhile, over the years, we were still trying to piece together the lost threads of the Murphy, McCarthy, and O’Driscoll lines. We knew that in order for this to be the gathering time, there had to be three women of the proper lines out there somewhere. We felt we might be able to find you that way. If we found your one, Michael, we hoped to find you also. We did find a connection to Murphys in New Mexico. We contacted your father, dear, and thinking we were quite nuts, he would not talk to, or meet with us.” Neave looked to Jade.
“Oops. My father is very practical. He doesn’t understand or actually believe in what I do, though he does not condemn me for my beliefs.”
“Our lucky break came through genealogy that your mother had done online, and posted publicly. We knew you existed and what your age was. With your name, we traced you to Chandler, though you were no longer living at that address,” Fianna added. “I’ll do it Niall,” she offered as she rubbed her brother’s arm.
Niall gave her a nod.
“Our father had a stroke the year after your parents passed,” Fianna began. “He didn’t lose all his capacities, but some, and it altered his personality a bit. Then, two years ago, after months of him not seeming quite right, we found out he had Alzheimer’s disease. He and my mother lived in the castle. As time went on, he worsened. Knowing we couldn’t have him wandering about the hotel after my mother passed last spring, we put him in a cottage on the castle grounds with twenty-four hour care.”
She continued, “Near as we can tell, Ciaran seduced Papa’s day nurse six months ago, and managed to get to Papa. He found out your nam
es, at least Michael and Liam’s. Papa was gloating to him that his days were numbered and the time had come, that there were three women, a Murphy, a McCarthy, and an O’Driscoll, who would pair up with the three O’Flynn male descendants and send him back to hell where he belonged.”
“Did your father know who the women were for sure?” Liam asked.
“Not to our knowledge,” Niall provided. “I believe as the senior Guardian, he kept some information to himself, and I don’t know if he passed on everything he had before the onset of Alzheimer’s.”
“When we arrived, Papa was out of his wheelchair on the floor, bleeding and bruised. His nurse was unconscious. Papa told us bits of what had happened. He told us we must warn the boys, Michael and the boys, he told us. That was after he told us all he’d said to Ciaran. He either believed or knew you lived in Chandler. We didn’t really know, because at the time he was not in his right mind. It appears he had a stroke that day. He’s mostly bedridden and has not been well since then,” Niall finished the story with a deep sigh. “I can assure you, in his right mind, my father would never have sold you out.” He looked to Decker.
“You don’t need to apologize, Niall. We knew nothing about any of this, and your father did his job as guardian. Your father can’t help it that his health and mind failed. None of us were harmed. Moving forward, we need to focus on learning everything we need to know and do what we need to do to stop Ciaran,” Decker assured him. He added, “I am very sorry about your father’s health.”
Looking a little relieved, Niall nodded. “Thank you. You are correct, cousin. Looking forward is the answer.”
“It is what you’re always telling me, brother,” Fianna said as she gave him a look.
“True enough, darling. I suppose I should listen to my own advice, eh?” Niall grinned at her.
“Or to mine?” Fianna posed with a knowing smile.
Smiling, Neave spoke, “I’ll begin by reading more from your mother’s book. We’ll start with what has worked and what hasn’t worked when your kin fought Ciaran over the centuries.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” Liam said as he winced and rubbed his leg.
Decker and Brody agreed.
“So, bullets, swords, knives, no known weapon works on him.” Liam shook his head.
“No, unfortunately not. He does appear to be truly immortal in that respect,” Niall provided.
“But holy water burned his skin, and seemed to cause him pain and weaken him some,” Jade spoke up. “Over the centuries, several people tried that and wrote that it did slow him down.”
“I wanted to ask what it meant when you mentioned that salt from the Dead Sea removes his black energy from people and spaces. If that is the case, I wondered if Dead Sea salt might harm him somehow.” Erin asked Neave.
“That reference was from the late nineteenth century, and given by Rosie O’Flynn. She said that normal sea salt might work, but she used salt from the Dead Sea. She felt that because of its importance in the Holy Land, salt from that particular location would draw out the black energy faster. From her notes, she sent me, I gathered she was apparently touched or tainted by him and felt immediately ill. She made a bath with salt from the Dead Sea. She told me at the time that her uncle, who was a merchant, had traveled to Israel for a physical complaint and brought some home. She wrote in her journal that she could feel the poison being drawn out. After her soak in a hot tub of Dead Sea salt water, she felt like her old self once again.”
Neave tapped her pen upon the notebook. “It could harm him, I suppose. It might definitely keep him from harming one of you. We’ll have to prepare something and try that. He’ll eventually show himself again.”
“Priests didn’t work, so exorcism is out,” Brody added.
“Yes. I’m afraid you are correct. He killed Father Desmond in the spring of seventeen hundred and three. I was nearby that day and heard the news first hand. Molly Murphy sent for the Father because Ciaran was tormenting her. Molly told me that Father began to say a prayer that he assured her would drive demons away. ‘Tis a pity he hadn’t tried to sprinkle holy water on him first. Father had barely begun his prayer, and according to Molly, Ciaran appeared then lifted his arms and brought lightning bolts down from the sky, one of which struck Father Desmond dead. Molly was sent to London the following week to keep her safe. She had been intended for Declan O’Flynn. They had fallen in love, but she never returned to Cork. Ciaran had threatened to kill Declan if she married him. She never married. She lived out her life as a recluse and a spinster,” Neave told them.
“Why did Ciaran not want her to marry an O’Flynn if there were not six, like now? Just two could not harm him, could they? What became of Declan O’Flynn?” Jade asked in a whisper.
“He did torment certain O’Flynns, Murphys, McCarthys, and O’Driscolls over the centuries, even though there were not the required six. It is believed Ciaran has killed two dozen or so. There are more who died of unexplained causes that we suspect could have been his doing. We are not certain why he does these things, actually. Perhaps two had enough power in their own right to harm him. It could be they were just strong-minded and he didn’t like their defiance. We can’t know, and we find that as frustrating as you do,” Niall offered.
Aunt Neave looked to Jade. “Declan O’Flynn was the heir, so he did his duty to his family. He married a woman he did not love. He did sire children, four in all, two boys and two girls. The children made him happy. They grew up and found their own lives. He was married to a woman he was not well matched to, nor did he ever come to love her. He died unhappy and alone, for his wife wished to return to Dublin and he granted her that wish.”
“That’s not encouraging at all,” Harper groaned.
“Where all this leads is to you, my dears. There is something the six of you can do together to defeat him, and we must find out what that is, and quickly. I fear now that we are all together, the six, along with your guardians, and me, that he will accelerate his attempts. He doesn’t want you to find out how to defeat him.”
“Does he know how we can defeat him?” Liam asked.
“I wish I knew, my boy, but I have no idea.” Neave reached out to pat his hand.
Decker took Jade’s hand beneath the table. Her eyes met his, brilliant blue and filled with strength and assurance.
She sighed and gave him a weak smile when he squeezed her fingers. “We will find a way.”
“We will.” He believed that. It was the only way he and Jade, along with the others, could look forward to having a normal future.
Everyone else agreed.
“What does the rest of Mom’s notebook contain?” Brody asked.
“The book contains many things including the story of Ciaran O’Sullivan and the story of the Flynns and O’Flynns, and that of your ancestors. Your mother spent a great deal of time researching and included some of her own theories on how to defeat Ciaran in the back. She had researched the banishing of demons quite thoroughly. We’ll go through a little of the information every day. I think it is important we do it together, so we can discuss our perceptions as we are doing now. We might find some answers from your mother’s suggestions. She also spent a great deal of time researching the actual written and documented history of the O’Flynns over the years, and I can see she added a great deal of information to what I had originally given her. Perhaps history might provide a clue as well.”
“Let’s hope so,” Decker said.
Chapter Eighteen
They watched a romantic comedy before they turned in. Fianna would share John and Mary Decker’s former room with Aunt Neave, and Niall would take the remaining bedroom. They were to meet in the workout room at seven the next morning.
Though Decker was tempted to practice their flying and discover those sexual advantages Aunt Neave had hinted at, he decided it was late, and they had a full day ahead of them next day. He set the scarf on the nightstand. That could wait for another time.
When Jade jo
ined him in bed, she snuggled into his embrace. He was debating on whether or not to seduce her until she yawned. He decided she needed the rest. So did he. Six would come early and it was midnight already. They fell asleep wrapped in a lover’s embrace.
Jade groaned when the beeping of the alarm woke her from deep slumber.
“What time is it?” she croaked.
“Six,” Decker whispered in her ear as his big muscled body moved to spoon with hers.
“Six? We don’t have to be down until seven.”
“True.” His hand caressed her belly then slid to her hip. He pulled her closer against him.
Feeling the nudge of his erection against her thigh, Jade smiled. “Ah, so we have a little extra time before we need to shower.”
“We do.” Decker’s lips moved to the curve of her neck while his hand left her belly to glide lower. She was wet already. He was as hard as a rock. He slid her pajama pants down over her hips.
“Umm, what should we do about this, I wonder?” Jade purred as she spread her legs to give Decker better access.”
“Well,” he groaned as he slid into her from behind, filling her with one deep thrust. “I’m sure we can think of something.”
She smiled as his breath tickled her ear. “Mmm, this is nice,” she said in a husky whisper as she thrust her bottom back to take him deeper.
“Oh yeah. This is incredible, babe.” His warm breath tickled her ear. He removed her tee and threw it behind him. His fingers slid downward again to tease her as the rhythm of his thrusts increased.
Decker's Fate (The Decker Brothers Trilogy Book 1) Page 32
