by Nora Roberts
“It’s so dark. It’s so cold. And he’s alone.”
“He’s not.” Boyle took her hand, held it firmly. “We’re right here. We’re with him.”
But he was alone in the cold and the dark. The power here hung so thick and dank he felt nothing beyond it. Black blood stained the ground where Cabhan had shackled and killed his mother.
He scanned the horror of jars, filled with the pieces of the woman who’d birthed him, which Cabhan had preserved for his dark magicks.
The world Fin knew, his world, seemed not just centuries away, but as if it didn’t exist. Freeing the demon, giving it form and movement had drawn the cave into its own kind of hell where all the damned burned cold.
He smelled brimstone and blood—old blood and new. It took all his will to resist the sudden, fierce need to go to the altar, take up the cup that stood below a cross of yellowing bones, and drink.
Drink.
Sweat coated his skin though his breath turned to clouds in the frigid air that seemed to undulate like a sea with the fetid drops sliding down the walls and striking the floor in a tidal rhythm.
Something in its beat stirred his blood.
His hand trembled as he forced himself to reach into the bag, open the pouch, take out the crystal.
For a moment Branna was there—warm and strong, so full of light he could slow his pulse again, steady his hands. He rose up within the fog, up the damp wall of the cave. He saw symbols carved in the stone, recognized them from Ogham, though he couldn’t read them.
He laid the crystal in a chink, along a fingertip of ledge, and wondered if Branna’s charm could be strong enough to hide it from so much dark.
Such deep, fascinating dark, where voices chanted, and those to be sacrificed screamed and wept for a mercy that would never be given.
Why should mercy be given to the less? Their cries and screams of torment were true music, a call to dance, a call to feed.
The dark must be fed. Embraced. Worshipped.
The dark would reward. Eternally.
Fin turned to the altar, took a step toward it. Then another.
• • •
“IT’S TAKING TOO LONG.” BRANNA RUBBED HER ARMS TO fight a cold that dug into her bones and came from fear. “It’s nightfall. He’s been more than half an hour now, and far too long.”
“Connor?” Iona asked. “He’s—”
“I know, I know. He and Meara can’t hold Cabhan much longer. Go to Connor, you and Boyle go to Connor and Meara, help them. I’ll go through for Fin. Something’s wrong, something’s happened. I haven’t been able to feel or sense him since he went through.”
“You’ll not go in. Branna, you’ll not.” Boyle took her shoulders, gave her a little shake. “We have to trust Fin to get back, and we can’t risk you. Without you, it ends here, and not for Cabhan.”
“His blood could betray him, however much he fights it. I can pull him out. I have to try before. Ah, God, Cabhan, he’s coming back. Fin—”
“Can we pull him back, the two of us?” Iona gripped Branna’s hand. “We have to try.”
“With all of us, we might . . . Oh, thank the gods.”
When Fin, his fog thin and faded, fell to his knees on the ground at her feet, Branna dived for him.
“He’s coming,” Fin managed. “It’s done, but he’s coming. We have to go, and quickly. I could use some help.”
“We’ve got you.” Branna wrapped her arms around him, looked at Iona, at Boyle, nodded. “We’ve got you,” she repeated, and held on to him as they flew.
His skin was ice, and she couldn’t warm it as she pulled him over treetops, over the lake, and the castle aglow with lights.
She brought him straight to the cottage, set the fire to roaring before she knelt in front of him. “Look at me. Fin, I have to see your eyes.”
They glowed against the ice white of his face, but they were Fin’s, and only his.
“I brought nothing back with me,” he told her. “Left nothing of me. Only your crystal.”
“Whiskey.” But even as she snapped it out, Boyle sat beside Fin, cupped Fin’s hands around the glass.
“I feel I’ve walked a hundred kilometers in the Arctic without a single rest.” He gulped down whiskey, let his head fall back as Connor and Meara came in.
“Is he hurt?” Connor demanded.
“No, only half frozen and exhausted. Are you?”
“A few singes, and I’ll see to them.”
“He’s already seen to mine.” Meara moved straight to Fin. “Clucking like a mother hen over me. What can we do for you, Fin?”
“I’m well enough.”
“You don’t look it. Should I get one of your potions, Branna?”
“I don’t need a potion. The whiskey’s fine. And you’re doing some clucking yourself, Mother.”
Meara dropped into a chair. “The way you are makes a ghost look like it’s had ten days in the tropics.”
Warming bit by painful bit, Fin smiled at her. “You’re not looking rosy yourself.”
“He kept going at her,” Connor said, and surprised Meara by lifting her up—strapping girl that she was—taking her place, then cuddling her on his lap. “He’d go for me, but that was for show. He wanted our Meara, to hurt her, so kept hammering against her protection, looking for the slightest chink. At first we tried to draw it all out, give the rest of you time, but it went on longer than we thought, and it was get serious about it, or fall back.”
“Connor made a tornado.” Meara spun a finger in the air. “A small one you could say, but impressive. Then turned it to fire. And that sent Cabhan on his way.”
“We couldn’t hold him longer,” Connor finished.
“It was long enough. We’ll all have some whiskey,” Branna decided. “Let me see where you’re burned, Connor, and I’ll tend to it.”
“I’ll do it.” Iona nudged Branna back down. “Stay with Fin.”
“I’m well enough,” Fin insisted. “It was the cold, that was the most of it. It’s so sharp, so bitter it carves the life out of you. Enervates. It’s more than it was,” he said to Branna. “More than we saw and felt.”
She sat on the floor, took one of the glasses Boyle passed around. “Tell us.”
“It was darker, darker than it was when we went in the dreamwalk. Colder, and the air thick. So thick you couldn’t get a full breath. There was a cauldron on the fire, and it smelled of sulphur and brimstone. And there were voices chanting. I couldn’t make out the words, not enough of them, but it was in Latin, and some in old Irish. As were the screams, the pleading that rose up with them. Those being sacrificed. All of that, a kind of echo, in the distance. Still, I could smell the blood.”
He took a drink, gathered himself again. “There was a pull to it, from in me. A wanting of it, stronger than before, this pull and tug in two directions. I put the crystal up, a little notch in the stones, high on the wall across from the altar.”
Now he turned the glass in his hands, staring down into the amber of the whiskey as if seeing it all again.
“And when I no longer had it with me, the need was more. Bigger. The pull more alluring, you could say. There was a cup on the altar, and in it blood. I wanted it. Coveted it. Innocent blood, that I could smell. The blood of an innocent, and if I only took it, drank it, I would become what I was meant to become. Why was I resisting that? Didn’t I want that—my own destiny, my own glory? So I stepped toward the altar, and went closer yet. All the chanting filled the cave, and those screams were almost like music to me. I reached for the cup. I held my hand out to take it. Finally just take it.”
He paused, knocked back the rest of the whiskey. “And through all the screaming, the chanting, the pulsing of that thick air, I heard you.” He looked down at Branna. “I heard you. ‘Come back to me,’ you’d said, and what was in me wanted that more than all the rest. Needed that more than the blood I could already taste in the back of my throat.
“So I backed away, and the air,
it got colder yet, and was so thick now it was like wet rags in my lungs. I was dizzy and sick and shaky. I think I fell, but I said the words, and I was out, I was back.”
He set the glass aside. “You need to know the whole of it, the full of it. How close I came. No more than a fingerbrush away from turning, and once turned, I would have turned again on all of you.”
“But you didn’t take it,” Iona said. “You came back.”
“I wanted it. Something in me was near to desperate for it.”
“And still you didn’t take it,” Connor pointed out. “And here you sit, drinking whiskey by the fire.”
“I would’ve broken trust with you—”
“Bollocks,” Branna interrupted and surged to her feet. “Bollocks to that, Finbar. And don’t sit there saying you came back for me, for you didn’t come back for me alone, or for any of us alone. You came back as much for yourself. For the respect you have for who you are, for your gift, and for your abhorrence of all Cabhan is. So bollocks. I didn’t let myself trust you in the beginning of this, and you proved me wrong time and time again. I won’t have it, I’m telling you, I won’t have you sit here after all that and not trust yourself.
“I’m going to heat up the stew. We all need to eat after this.”
When she sailed out, Meara nodded, rose. “That says it all and plainly enough. Iona, let’s give Branna a hand in the kitchen.”
When they left, Boyle went for the whiskey, poured more in Fin’s glass. “If you’re going to feel sorry for yourself, you’d do better doing it a bit drunk.”
“I’m not feeling sorry for myself, for fuck’s sake. Did you hear what I said to you?”
“I heard it, we all heard it.” Connor stretched out his legs, slouched down in the chair with his own whiskey. “We heard you fought a battle, inward and outward, and won it. So cheers to you. And I’ll tell you something I know as easy as I know my own name. You’d slit your own throat before you’d do harm to Branna, or to any one of us. So drink up, brother, and stop acting the gom.”
“Acting the gom,” Fin muttered, and because it was there, drank the whiskey.
And because they knew him, his friends let him brood.
He waited until they were all in the kitchen, until everyone had taken a seat but himself.
“I’m grateful,” he began.
“Shut the feck up and sit down to eat,” Boyle suggested.
“You shut the feck up. I’m grateful and have a right to say as much.”
“So noted and acknowledged.” Branna ladled stew in his bowl. “Now shut the feck up and eat.”
He sampled some of the hearty beef and barley stew, felt it slide down to the cold still holding in his belly, and spread warmth again.
“What’s in it besides the beef and barley and potatoes?”
Branna shrugged. “There’s none of us here couldn’t do with a little tonic after this day.”
“It’s good.” Connor spooned some up. “More than good, so here’s another, Fin, advising you to shut the feck up.”
“Fine and well.” Fin reached for the bread on the dish. “Then I won’t tell you the rest of it, since you’re not interested.”
“What rest?” Iona demanded.
It was Fin’s turn to shrug. “I’ve shut the feck up, as advised.”
“I didn’t tell you to or so advise you.” Meara smiled sweetly. “I’m interested enough so you can talk to me.”
“All right then, to your interest, Meara, there were carvings on the walls in the cave. Old ones. Ogham script.”
“Ogham?” Connor frowned. “Are you sure of it?”
As it made him feel himself again, Fin ate more stew. “I’m speaking with Meara here.”
“Oh, give it over.” But Boyle laughed as he helped himself to the bread. “Ogham then? What did it say?”
Fin spared him a long, dry look. “My talents are many but don’t stretch far enough to read Ogham. But it tells us the cave’s been used, and as the script was high on the walls, and with magickal symbols here and there as well, very likely for dark purposes long before Cabhan’s time.”
“Some places are inherent for the dark, or for the light,” Branna speculated.
“What I felt there was all of the dark, like . . . a rooting place for it. The shadows moved like living things. And on the altar, as I was close enough to see, there were bones in a dish along with the cup of blood. Three black candles, and a book with a hide cover. Carved on it is the mark.” He touched his shoulder. “This mark.”
“So it goes back, the mark, before Teagan threw the stone and scarred Cabhan. Before Sorcha cursed him.” Iona angled her head. “A symbol of the demon in him? Or of his own dark places? I’m sorry,” she said quickly.
“No need.” Fin picked up his spoon again. “Near the book was a bell, again silver, with a wolf standing on its hind legs as a handle.”
“Bell, book, and candle, bones and blood. The symbol of Cabhan’s mark, the symbol of the wolf.” Branna considered. “So he had these things, symbols of what he became. Old things?”
“Very old, all but the candles. And they . . . made from human tallow mixed with blood.”
“Can it get more disgusting?” Meara wondered.
Connor gave her a pat. “I expect it can.”
“His tools,” Branna speculated, “perhaps passed down from father to son, or mother to son or daughter. Passed down to him, and then used for the dark. Though we can’t say if his sire didn’t dabble in such, or why he would’ve chosen the cave for his own.”
“He might’ve been a guardian,” Meara suggested. “Someone with power who guarded the demon or whatever it is, and kept it imprisoned.”
“True enough,” Branna agreed. “Whether or not Cabhan came from light or dark, or something between them, he made his choice.”
“There’s more,” Fin told her. “A wax figure of a woman, bound hand and foot with black cloth, kneeling as in supplication.”
“Sorcha.” Branna shook her head. “His obsession with her started long ago. But he could never bind her or bring her to her knees.”
“Nearly eight hundred years is a long time to hold an obsession or a grudge,” Iona pointed out. “I’d say it’s been madness that started long ago.”
“I’d agree.”
“And more,” Fin said again. “The figure had blood smeared on its belly, between its legs.”
Carefully, Branna set her spoon down. “She lost a child, early that winter. She miscarried, and was never fully well again. She had some terrible illness she couldn’t heal. Tearing pains in the belly.”
“He killed her child?” Even with centuries of distance, Iona’s eyes filled. “Inside her? Could he do that?”
“I don’t know.” Shaken, Branna rose, got wine for herself and brought the bottle to the table. “If she didn’t guard against it, in just the right way? If he found some way to . . . She had three children to tend to, and her husband off with the men of their clan. Cabhan hounding her. She may have given him some vulnerable spot to use, had a moment when she wasn’t fully vigilant.”
“We will be.” Fin touched a hand to hers. “We’ll give him nothing, and we’ll take all. This is yet more he must answer for.”
“She was grieving. You can hear her tears in her book when she wrote of the loss. Yes,” Branna said quietly. “He must answer for this, and for all.”
17
SHE INCREASED HER EFFORTS. IT COULDN’T BE RUSHED—no, working with a lethal mix couldn’t be hurried. But Branna spent every minute she could on concocting the poison.
Whoever from her circle spent time in her workshop took on a task—magickal or otherwise. She herself rarely went out, beyond a walk through her winter gardens to clear her head of formulas and spells and poisons.
Even on those brief walks, Branna obsessed whether five drops of tincture from the angel’s trumpet were too much or four too little. Should the crushed berries be freshly used, or allowed to steep in their juices?
“You said the four drops didn’t work yesterday, so do the five,” Connor suggested.
“And if it should be six?” Frustrated, she stared at the jars as if she could will them to tell her the secret. “Or is the other recipe I found the true one, the one that calls for five death cap mushrooms, taken from under an oak?”
“The more poison the better, if you’re asking me.”
“It can’t be more or less. It’s not like cooking up a kitchen-sink soup.” Though she heard the testiness in her own voice, she simply couldn’t smooth it out. “It must be right, Connor, and I feel this may be our only chance. If we fail, at best we have to wait another year before trying again. At worst, the demon finds a way to shield himself when he finds we’ve a way to attack it.”
“You’re fretting far too much, Branna. It’s not your way to fret and second-guess.”
He was right, of course, and fretting, she admitted as she pressed her fingers to her eyes, tended to block more than open.
“I feel an urgency, more than I have. A knowing, Connor, this must be the time, or our time is done. And the thought we might only go on slapping at Cabhan as we have, for our lifetime, only hold him off until we pass this duty to the next three? It’s not bearable. You’ll have children with Meara. Would you want to weigh one or more of them with this?”
“I wouldn’t, no. Of course, I wouldn’t. We won’t fail.”
He put his hands on her shoulders, rubbed them. “Ease your mind a bit. You’ll block your own instincts—and they’re a strength—if you pour in all this doubt.”
“This will be the third time I’ve tried creating the brew. The doubt’s there for a reason.”
“Then put it aside. This recipe, that recipe, put that aside as well. What do you think—how does it feel to you? Maybe it’s not like throwing together a soup, but you’ve been mixing potions since you were four.”
Deliberately, he closed the books, knowing full well by now she could recite it all by rote in any case. “What do you say—not just from the head this time, but from the belly?”
“I say . . .” She shoved impatiently at her hair. “Where the devil is Fin? I need his blood for this, and I want it fresh.”
“He said he’d be here before noon, so he will. Why don’t I work on the order with you, and the words? Then when he comes, you’ll bleed him, and begin.”
“All right, all right.”
Time to stop fussing and fiddling and do, she ordered herself.
“The blessed water would be first. I’ve got ‘First we pour the water blest to form the pool for all the rest. Belladonna berries crushed and steeped, stirring juices slow and deep. Hair from a pregnant yak mixed with manchineel tree sap to dissolve the wing of bat. Angel’s trumpet, wolfsbane petals, add them in and wait to settle. Then . . .”
“What do you think, Branna?” Connor prompted.
“Well, I think I rushed it last time. I think this stage needs to work, to boil a bit.”
“So . . . Stir and boil and bubble and stir . . .”
“Until the rise of smoke occurs—yes, I rushed it. It should boil and steam a bit. All right.” With a firm nod, she wrote more notes. “The mushrooms, we’ll try the mushrooms as—what the bloody hell, it feels right.”
“There we are now.” Connor gave her an elbow poke of encouragement.
“Caps of death soft and white, bring about eternal night. No, no, not for a demon.” She crossed it out, started again. “Caps of death three plus two, spread your poison through this brew.”
“Better,” Connor agreed.
“And the conium petals. Ah, pretty petals sprinkled in, let this lethal magick begin.”
