by Nora Roberts
3
Autumn 2013
WHEN CONNOR WOKE EARLIER THAN HE LIKED, HE hadn’t expected to meet an ancestor, or the greatest enemy of his blood. He certainly hadn’t anticipated starting his day with an explosion of magicks that had all but knocked him off his feet.
But, in the main, he liked the unexpected.
With the dawn barely broken, there’d been no hope his sister might be busy in the kitchen. And his skin meant too much to him to risk waking her and suggesting she might like to cook up breakfast.
More, there hadn’t been a hunger, and he always woke ready to break the night’s fast. Instead there’d been an odd energy, and a deep need to get out, get about.
So he’d whistled up his hawk and, with Roibeard for his companion, had taken himself into the mists and trees.
And quiet.
He wasn’t a man who required a great deal of quiet. He preferred, most of the time, the noise and conversations and heat of company. But this soft morning, the call of his hawk, the scrabble of rabbit in the brush, and the sigh of the morning breeze had been enough for him.
He thought he might walk over to Ashford Castle, let Roibeard soar in the open, over the greens there—and that would give any early-rising guests at the hotel a thrill.
Thrills often drummed up business, and he had one to run with the falconry school.
He’d aimed for that exactly, until he’d felt it—the stir of power, within and without. His own rising without his asking it, the dark stain of what was Cabhan, smudging the sweetness of the dewy pines.
And something more, something more.
He should have called his circle—his sister, his cousin, his friends, but something pushed him on, down the path, through the trees, near the wall of vines and uprooted tree where beyond lay the ruins of the cabin that had been Sorcha’s. Beyond where he and his circle had battled Cabhan on the night of the summer solstice.
There the fog spread, the power thrummed, dark against white. He saw the boy, thought first and only to protect. He would not, could not, allow harm to an innocent.
But the boy, while innocent enough, had more. The something more.
Now, the fog gone and Cabhan with it, the boy gone back to his own time, his own place, Connor stayed as he was—on his knees on the damp ground, fighting to get his breath fully back into his lungs.
His ears still rang from what had sounded like worlds exploding. His eyes still burned from a light brighter than a dozen suns.
And the power merged with joined hands sang through him.
He got slowly to his feet, a tall, lean man with a thick mop of curling brown hair, his face pale yet, and his eyes deep and green as the moss with what still stirred inside him.
Best to get home, he thought. To get back. For what had come through the solstice, and hidden away till the equinox lurked still.
A bit wobbly in the legs yet, he realized, unsure if he should be amused or embarrassed. His hawk swooped by, landed with a flutter of wings on a branch. Sat, watched, waited.
“We’ll go,” he said. “I think we’ve done what we were meant to do this morning. And now, Jesus, I’m starving.”
The power, he thought as he began to walk. The sheer force of it had hulled him out. Turning toward home, he sensed his sister’s hound seconds before Kathel ran toward him.
“You felt it as well, did you now?” He gave Kathel’s great black head a stroke, continued on. “I’d be surprised if all of Mayo didn’t feel a jolt from it. My skin’s still buzzing like my bones are covered with bees.”
Steadier yet with hound and hawk, he walked out of the shadows of the woods into the pearly morning. Roibeard circled overhead as he walked the road with Kathel to the cottage. A second hawk cried, and Connor spotted his friend Fin’s Merlin.
Then the thunder of hoofbeats broke through the quiet, so he paused, waited—felt a fresh stirring as he saw his cousin Iona, his friend Boyle astride the big gray Alastar. And Fin as well, racing with them on his gleaming black Baru.
“We’ll need more eggs,” he called out, smiling now. “And another rasher or two of bacon.”
“What happened?” Iona, her short cap of hair tousled from sleep, leaned down to touch his cheek. “I knew you were safe, or we’d have come even faster.”
“You all but flew as it is—and not a saddle between the three of you. I’ll tell you inside. I could eat three pigs and top it off with a cow.”
“Cabhan.” Fin, his hair dark as his mount’s, his eyes the dark green of Connor’s when the power had taken him, turned to stare into the trees.
“Him and more. But Iona has the right of it. I’m fine and well, just starving half to death while we stand here on the road. You felt it,” he added when he began to walk again.
“Felt it?” Boyle stared down at Connor. “It woke me from a sound sleep, and I don’t have what the three of you do. I’ve no magick in me, and still whatever it was shot through me like an arrow.” He nodded toward the cottage. “And it seems the same for Meara.”
Connor looked over, saw Meara Quinn, lifelong friend, his sister’s best mate, striding along toward them—tall and lush as a goddess in her flannel sleep pants and old jacket, he thought, and her long brown hair a tangle.
She made a picture, he mused, but then she ever did.
“She stayed the night,” he told the others. “Took Iona’s room as you stayed over at Boyle’s, cousin. Good morning to you, Meara.”
“Good morning be damned. What the bloody hell happened?”
“I’m after telling you all.” He slipped an arm around her waist. “But I need food.”
“Branna said you would, and she’s already seeing to it. She’s shaken, and pretending not to be. It was like a bleeding earthquake—but inside me. That’s the devil of a way to wake.”
“I’ll see to the horses.” Boyle slid off Alastar. “Go on in, stuff something in your belly.”
“Thanks for that.” Smiling again, Connor lifted his arms so Iona could drop into them from Alastar’s back. Then she wrapped around him.
“Scared me,” she murmured.
“You’re not alone in that.” He kissed the top of her head, his pretty cousin from America, the last of the three, and keeping her hand in his, went into the cottage.
The scent of bacon, of coffee, of warm bread hit his belly like a fist. In that moment he wanted to eat more than he wanted to live—and needed to eat if he wanted to live.
Kathel led the way back to the kitchen, and there Branna worked at the stove. She’d tied her dark hair back, still wore the flowered flannel pants and baggy shirt she’d slept in. That alone showed her love, he mused, as she’d have taken the time to change, to fuss with herself a little knowing there’d be company—and Finbar Burke most especially.
Saying nothing, she turned from the stove, handed him a plate holding a fried egg on toast.
“Bless you, darling.”
“It’ll fill the worst of the hole. There’s more coming. You’re cold,” she said quietly.
“I hadn’t noticed, but I am, yes. A bit cold.”
Before she could flick a hand toward the kitchen hearth, Fin did so, and the little fire flashed.
“You’re quivering some. Sit, for God’s sake, and eat like a human.” Voice brisk, Meara all but shoved him into a chair at the table.
“I’m not a one to brush away some fussing, and truth be told, I’d kill for coffee.”
“I’ll get it.” Iona hurried over to the pot.
“Ah, what man can complain with three beautiful women pampering him. Thanks, mo chroi,” he added when Iona gave him the coffee.
“You’ll not be pampered long, I can promise. Sit down, the lot of you,” Branna ordered. “I’ve nearly got this fried up. When his belly’s full enough to settle him, he’ll damn well explain why he didn’t call for me.”
“It was fast and done. I would’ve called for you, for all of you. It wasn’t me in harm’s way, I’m thinking. He didn’t come for m
e this morning.”
“And who then, when the rest of us were asleep in our beds?” When Branna would have lifted an enormous platter of food to bring to the table, Fin simply took it from her.
“Sit then, and listen. Sit,” he repeated before she could snap at him. “You’re as shaken as he is.”
The minute the tray hit the table, Connor began to scoop eggs, sausage, bacon, toasted bread, potatoes onto his plate and into a small mountain.
“I woke early, and with an edge on,” he began, and took them all through it between enthusiastic bites.
“Eamon?” Branna demanded. “The son of Sorcha? Here and now? You’re sure of it?”
“As sure as I know my sister. I only thought him a boy at first, and in Cabhan’s path, but when I took his hand . . . I’ve never felt the like, never. Not even with you, Branna, or you and Iona together. Even on the solstice when the power was a scream, it wasn’t so big, so bright, so full. I couldn’t hold it, couldn’t control it. It just blew through me like a comet. Through the boy as well, but he held on to me, on to it. He’s a rare one.”
“What about Cabhan?” Iona demanded.
“It ripped through him,” Fin said. “I felt it.” Absently, he lifted a hand to his shoulder, where the mark of his blood, of Cabhan’s blood scarred his flesh. His heart. “It stunned him, left him, I promise you, as shaken as you were.”
“So he slithered away?” Boyle dug into eggs. “Like the snake he is.”
“That he did,” Connor confirmed. “He was gone, and with him the fog, and there was only myself and the boy. Then only myself. But . . . He was me, and I was he—parts of one. That I knew when we joined hands. More than blood. Not the same, but . . . more than blood. For a moment, I could see into him—like a mirror.”
“What did you see?” Meara asked.
“Love and grief and courage. The fear, but the heart to face it, for his sisters, for his parents. For us, come to that. Just a lad, no more than ten, I’d venture. But in that moment, shining with a power he hasn’t yet learned to ride smooth.”
“Is it like me going to visit Nan?” Iona wondered, thinking of her grandmother in America. “A kind of astral projection? But it’s not exactly, is it? It’s like that, but with the time shift, much more than that. The time shift that can happen by Sorcha’s cabin. You weren’t by Sorcha’s cabin, were you, Connor?”
“No, still outside the clearing. Near though.” Connor considered. “Maybe near enough. All this is new. But I know for certain it wasn’t what Cabhan expected.”
“It may be he brought the boy, brought Eamon,” Meara suggested. “Pulled him from his own time into ours, trying to separate him from his sisters, to take on a boy rather than a man like the sodding coward he is. The way you said it happened, Connor, if you hadn’t come along, he might have killed the boy, or certainly harmed him.”
“True enough. Eamon was game, by God, he was game—wouldn’t run when I told him to run, but still confused, afraid, not yet able to draw up enough to fight on his own.”
“So you woke and went out,” Branna said, “you who never step a foot out of a morning without something in your belly, and called up your hawk. Barely dawn?” She shook her head. “Something called you there. The connection between you and Eamon, or Sorcha herself. A mother still protecting her child.”
“I dreamed of Teagan,” Iona reminded them. “Of her riding Alastar to the cabin, to her mother’s grave, and facing Cabhan there—drawing his blood. She’s mine, the way Eamon is Connor’s.”
Branna nodded as Iona looked at her. “Brannaugh to Branna, yes. I dream of her often. But nothing like this. It’s useful, it must be useful. We’ll find a way to use what happened here, what we know. He hid away since the solstice.”
“We hurt him,” Boyle said, scanning the others with tawny eyes. “That night he bled and burned as we did. More, I’m thinking.”
“He took the rest of the summer to heal, to gather. And this morning tried for the boy, to take that power, and—”
“To end you,” Fin interrupted Branna. “Kill the boy, Connor never exists? Or it’s very possible that’s the case. Change what was, change what is.”
“Well now, he failed brilliantly.” Connor polished off his bacon, sighed. “And I feel not only human again, but fit and fine. It’s a pity we can’t take the bastard on again now.”
“You need more than a full fry in your belly to take him on.” Rising, Meara gathered dishes. “All of us do. We hurt him on the solstice, and that’s a satisfying thing, but we didn’t finish him. What did we miss? Isn’t that the thing we need? What did we not do that we need to do?”
“Ah, the practical mind.”
“Someone needs to think practical,” Meara tossed back at him.
“She’s right. I’ve poured over Sorcha’s book.” Branna shook her head. “What we did, what we had, how we planned it, it should’ve worked.”
“He changed the ground,” Boyle reminded her. “Took the fighting ground back in time.”
“And still, I can’t find what we might add to it.” Branna tossed a glance toward Fin, just a beat. He only gave her the most subtle shake of head. “So we’ll keep looking.”
“No, you sit.” Iona took more dishes before Connor could do so. “Considering your dawn adventure, you get a pass at kitchen duty. Maybe I wasn’t strong or skilled enough last summer.”
“Do you need reminding of a whirlwind called?” Boyle asked her.
“That was more instinct than skill, but I’m learning.” She glanced back at Branna.
“You are, yes, and very well indeed. You’re no weak link if that’s what you’re thinking, nor have you ever been. He knows more than us, and that’s a problem. He’s lived, in his way, hundreds of years.”
“That makes him older,” Meara put in, “not smarter.”
“We have books and legends and what was passed down generation to generation. But he lived it all, so—smarter or not—he knows more. And what he has is deep and dark. His power has no rules as ours does. He harms who he wants, no matter to it. That we can never do and be what we are.”
“His power source—the stone he wears around his neck, wolf or man. Destroy it, destroy him. I know it,” Fin stated, clenched a fist on the table. “I know it as truth, but don’t know how it can be done. Yet.”
“We’ll find the way. We must,” Connor said, “so we will.”
Fin rose when Connor reached over the table to lay his hand on Branna’s, and joined the others across the room with the clatter of dishes, the whoosh of water in the sink.
“Worrying for me won’t help, and isn’t needed. I don’t have to look,” he added, “to see.”
“And if he’d harmed you and the boy, where would we be?”
“Well, he didn’t, did he? And between us we gave him a solid boot in the balls. I’m here, Branna, as ever. We’re meant for this, so I’m here.”
“You’re a thorn in my side half the time.” Her hand turned under his until their fingers curled together and gripped. “But I’m used to you. You’ll have a care, Connor.”
“I will, of course. And the same for you.”
“The same for us all.”
* * *
IT AMUSED HIM, AND TOUCHED HIM WHEN MEARA FELL INTO step beside him as he left the house for the falconry school.
“Are you leaving your lorry then?”
“I am. I want to walk off that breakfast.”
“You’re guarding my body.” He slung an arm around her shoulders, pulled her in so their hips bumped.
She’d dressed for work at the stables, rough pants and jacket, sturdy boots, and with all that hair braided back to hang through the loop of her battered cap.
And still she made a picture, he thought, the dark-eyed Meara with the gypsy in her blood.
“Your body can guard itself.” She glanced up, watched the hawks circle in the heavy sky. “And you’ve got them keeping an eye out.”
“I’m glad for your compan
y all the same. And this gives you time to tell me what’s troubling you.”
“I think a mad sorcerer bent on our destruction’s enough to go around.”
“Something else brought you to Branna last night and had you staying through it. Is it a man giving you grief? Do you want me to lay him low for you?”
He flexed one arm, made a fist, shook it fiercely to make her laugh.
Then she sniffed. “As if I couldn’t lay any I wanted low—or otherwise—myself.”
He laughed in turn, sheer delight, and gave her hip another bump. “I’ve no doubt on that one. What is it then, darling? I can hear the buzzing in your head like a hive of angry wasps.”
“You could stop listening.” But she relented enough to lean against him a moment, so he caught the scent of his own soap on her skin. An oddly pleasant sort of thing.
“It’s just my mother driving me half mad, which is a normal enough day in the life. Donal’s got himself a girl.”
“So I’ve heard,” he said, thinking of her younger brother. “Sharon, isn’t it, moved to Cong this past spring? A nice girl, from what I’ve seen. A pretty face, an easy smile. Don’t you like her then?”
“I like her fine and well, and more to the point Donal’s mad for her. It’s lovely, really, to see him so taken, and happy with it, and her very much the same.”
“Well then?”
“He’s after moving out of the house, and in with his Sharon.”
Connor considered that as they walked through the pretty morning toward work they both loved. “He’s, what, twenty and four?”
“And five. And, yes, past time he moved out of his mother’s house. But now my mother and my sister Maureen have their heads together and have come to the horrible conclusion I should move back in with Ma.”
“Well now, that won’t do, not for a minute.”
“It won’t.” Now her sigh held relief, as he understood the simple and bare truth. “But they’re laying it on like courses of brick. The guilt, the pressure, the bloody logic as they see it. Oh, Maureen’s after saying our mother can’t be left on her own, and me being the only one unhampered, so to speak, it stands I should be the one to right the ship. And Ma’s right behind her with she’ll have the room for me, and it would save me the rent, and how lonely she’ll be without a chick or child around.”
She shoved both hands in her pockets. “Bugger it.”
“Do you want my opinion or only my condolences?”
She slanted a look at him, bold brown eyes both suspicious and speculative. “I’ll take the opinion, though I may hurl it back in your face.”
“Then here it is for you. Stay where you are, darling. You were never happy, not really, until you moved out to begin with.”
“That’s what I want, and what I know I should do for myself and my sanity, but—”
“If your mother’s fretting about being lonely, and Maureen’s fretting about your mother—who’s her mother as well I’ll add—being on her own, why wouldn’t it be a fine idea for your mother to move in with Maureen and her family? Wouldn’t it be a great help to Maureen to have her mother with her, with the children and all that?”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Meara pulled away long enough to punch Connor’s shoulder, do a little dance. “Why didn’t I think of that my own self?”
“You hadn’t got through the courses of guilt.” In an old habit, he gave her long, thick braid a tug. “Maureen’s no right to push you to give up your flat, change your life just because your brother’s changing his.”
“I know it, but I know as well, Ma’s next to helpless. She has been since my
