by KB Anne
Alaric smiles at Maddie. It’s a small one, but a smile nonetheless. A flash of warmth melts another of my icy veins.
“I’d have it no other way.”
Maddie opens the door. “Gigi, you need anything, you just let me know,” he says and winks at me.
I will, I place into his head.
He smiles at me, nods at Alaric, then closes the door behind him. I can feel his energy signature right outside the door.
“I don’t know how you won him over, but he is a formidable ally.”
A spark of anger runs through me. “I didn’t win him. We earned each other’s trust when we were searching for you.”
A pained look crosses his face. “May I?” he asks, gesturing to the bed.
“Since you’ve already tried to kill me—or did kill me—and I’m still here, I suppose it’s okay.”
He sits down next to me. His weight pulls my body toward him. Common sense tells me it’s the Earth’s gravity, but my heart tells me it’s cosmic pull.
“About that . . .” he says.
But suddenly I don’t care if he tried to kill me or did kill me. He’s here. He’s finally here, and that’s all that matters.
“I saw Lizzie torturing you,” I blurt out.
His eyes cloud over. “You saw?”
“I saw flashes of your torture. Every time you cried out for me, she hurt you.”
He clenches his jaw. “I tried to fight it. For so long, I tried to fight it, but she broke me.” He bends over with his head in his hands. His exhibition of weakness pulls my body from my pillow and causes me to wrap my arms around him. Initially he stiffens, and a part of my newfound hope dies, but then he reaches for me and draws me into his chest.
“What changed?” I whisper into the warm cocoon of his arms.
He breathes in my scent. “You.”
Since the first time we met (well, officially anyway), he always inhaled. I didn’t realize until I found out he was the son of Clayone, and therefore a werewolf, that he was smelling me. Now it’s obvious. I’d been blind for so long.
“You still gutted me though.”
He draws me in closer, careful not to hurt my stomach.
“When I swiped at your neck and your blood trickled down your throat, something triggered me, making me want to kill you and protect you. It was confusing, especially after the torture Lizzie put me through. The darkness in me fought against wanting to save you, but when I slashed your stomach, and your blood poured out mingling with your scent, something magical happened. I remembered everything. Every life we lived together. Every hurt, every death, but also every . . .” he pulls away from me and his gaze drops to my lips, “kiss.”
I lick my lips. My inner Scott yells at me to stop, to not do it, but my oh my . . . I’ve longed for this man.
We fall into each other, and the world, or at least my world, sings.
15
Love in a Secret Room
Everything in my body screams at me to trust Alaric—that he is back on my side. Everything, that is, except for that pessimistic nature born from years of bullying and lies. That blemish, that freaking hairy mole, keeps needling at my brain to distrust him. That he’s the son of Clayone. That he was tortured by Lizzie, his own flesh and blood, to hate me. How could I ever be able to trust him?
I take a shaky breath and break the kiss.
“What is it?” he murmurs, his eyes shining bright.
For once I embrace complete honesty.
“I don’t know how to trust you. Your father spent fifteen hundred years plotting my death. You were raised by Carman who also spent fifteen hundred years plotting my death. You were tortured by my best friend, who’s also your sister, until you hated me and wanted to kill me.”
He stiffens. “She’s my sister?”
“Clayone is her father too.”
He shakes his head, gripping my hands to his chest. “It doesn’t matter who my father is or who my sister is or who raised me, it’s always been you, Gigi. In every life we’ve found each other. I saw that cottage along the shoreline. The tears shed as I swam away from you in the middle of the night to avoid killing you because I didn’t know why I craved your blood almost more than my love for you. I saw the other lives we shared—all of them cut too short. We keep finding each other for a reason.”
“What reason is that?”
He dips his head so we’re a breath’s width apart. “Love. It’s always been about love.”
I try to pull away. “Love? It seems like such a frivolous concept given all the torture and death you experienced in each lifetime.”
He drops to the floor, kneeling in front of me. “Think about it. Why would I choose to reincarnate again and again after tragically dying each time?”
“Because you’re a glutton for punishment?”
He smiles, his wolf eyes flashing. “I am a glutton for you.”
I laugh. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Doesn’t it?” He raises an eyebrow. “Why does Brigit keep reincarnating in human form?”
This conversation is getting nowhere. “To feel the emotions of humans. To remember what it’s like to be human so she can protect them in the Otherworld.”
He shakes his head. “No, that’s the scripted answer. The textbook explanation. You keep coming back in order to find me. To find a way to keep me alive.”
I snort. “Easier said than done, evidently. And if it really is the reason I keep reincarnating, why did I come back as a nun? A celibate nun.” I raise my eyebrows for emphasis.
His eyes take on a mischievous, dangerous glint. “Because you tried to rewrite the story.”
I roll my eyes and try to pull away. “That’s ridiculous.”
He won’t let me free. Not without a fight. “You thought, if you didn’t fall in love, you couldn’t be hurt, but you were alone.”
“I wasn’t alone. I had nineteen Sisters of the Gallicenial. You met Clarissa—she’s a barrel of laughs.”
“She might be loads of fun, but you didn’t have me in that life. For some reason, we didn’t find each other, or I wasn’t there.”
This line of thinking is dangerous. I might be many things as human Gigi Brennan and the reincarnated Goddess Brigit, but I wouldn’t come back again and again for something so fragile, so fleeting as love.
“Listen, Alaric, maybe my visions were wrong. Maybe you’re lying right now and only telling me what you want me to believe and not the truth—that you want to kill me because in each prior reincarnation you failed to do so.”
“Gigi,” he whispers, holding my face firmly in his hands, “Gi, you know it’s the truth. You came here for love. You came here for me.”
“Everything all right in here?” Maddie peeks in from the door. “Hey, get your hands off her.” He rips Alaric away from me and tosses him across the room.
Alaric dives back in front of me, dropping to his knees. “Gigi, you know it’s true.”
Maddie pulls him away again and throws him in a headlock.
Tears fall from my eyes. I am a freaking hotbed of disaster.
Love. I came here for love? Brigit wouldn’t be so foolish, so weakhearted as to risk her eternal life for something so fickle as love.
Love shreds you into pieces.
Loves messes with your head.
Love is the greatest emotion of all.
“Love,” I whisper.
“What’s that?” Maddie says, struggling to get Alaric out of the room.
Alaric spins out of his grasp and drops back to his knees in front of me. “Love.”
“Love,” I whisper, wrapping my hands around him.
“I’ll give you two a few more minutes,” Maddie says, his voice getting farther away.
“What is going on in here?” Granda says before shouting a separation spell that tosses Alaric against the wall. His arms and legs splay out wide, and he’s pinned in place.
“Granda, it’s fine. Alaric wasn’t hurting me. He was just remin
ding me why I’m here.”
Granda’s eyes mist over. “Why are you here?”
“Love.”
Granda clutches his chest and collapses. Alaric manages to catch him before he crashes to the floor and guides him over to a chair.
I stare in disbelief at the speed of a werewolf before coming to my senses and rushing over to Granda. His hands are ice cold.
“What’s wrong? Is it your heart? Are you having a heart attack? Maddie call 911. Wait, do they even have 911 in Ireland? What’s the number for emergency? It doesn’t matter, just call it.”
Panic much, Gi?
“Wait . . .” Granda pants. “Wait . . . I,” he tries to catch his breath, “I’m not having a heart attack. Something is wrong with Clarissa.”
“Clarissa? How do you know?”
He grips his chest again, wincing. “Our coven linked to each other after we discovered Carman was back.”
Alaric stiffens. “Nan?” He glances at me. “Lizzie told me she was dead.”
I hadn’t had time to explain all the finer nuances of what transpired on Samhain before Alaric was kidnapped by Lizzie. And after what happened in the cavern, I’m not even sure what Carman’s goals are anymore. Does she want me dead, or did she just want to use me to release Clayone? And what is the agreement between them that she’d mentioned? So many freaking questions, but with Clarissa in danger, there definitely isn’t time now.
“I’ll explain everything later, but first, Granda,” I say, kneeling in front of him, “is Clarissa dying? And if you are linked and she dies, do you die?” Tears well up unbidden. With Scott in the Shadow Realm, Granda was the last link to family I had left.
“No,” he pants. “It’s not attached to our lifelines but our heartstrings.”
Guess, I’m not the only family member who is a sucker for love.
His eyes widen. “Go to her immediately. The rest of the coven will be there shortly.”
I shake my head. “I’m not going to leave you here by yourself.”
“Maddie will assist me. You and Alaric must go now. There’s not a moment to spare. Alaric,” he says barely above a whisper.
Alaric shifts his attention back to him.
“I am entrusting you with my most precious gift. Take care of her.”
Alaric’s eyes flash to mine. “I will give my life to protect her.”
“Carry her.”
Alaric approaches me.
I back away from him. “I can walk.”
“No,” he says, lifting me and cradling me to his chest. “I’m faster.”
Before I can argue, he dashes outside with me in his arms. Fear races through me. Will he turn into a werewolf? And if he does, will he forget about me?”
No, he answers in my head. “I will never forget about you again. I am just as fast as a man as I am as a wolf.”
“How is that possible?”
“Gi, as much as I love you and want to relish having you in my arms, I need to get you to Clarissa’s, and it’s hard to concentrate with you asking so many questions.”
“Do you know where she lives?”
He stops and inhales deeply. “Aye,” he says and takes off into the night.
In the darkness of a moonless Irish countryside, I can’t see a thing. I can only assume that Alaric’s wolf senses also include night vision. Soon, he’s rushing me up Clarissa’s path, only setting me down when he gets to her front porch.
The door’s slightly ajar.
“Wait,” he says, ducking his head inside as he breathes in and out. “It’s all clear.”
Wolf senses certainly do come in handy.
I rush over to Clarissa’s body sprawled out on the floor.
“Clarissa, what’s wrong?”
She opens her eyes. Her pupils are dilated and rimmed with red. “Oh, child, something terrible has happened in the Shadow Realm.”
My heart seizes. “What? How do you know?”
She clutches her chest. “I can feel it.”
“Are your heartstrings connected with Gallean’s as well?”
Her eyes water. “No. My lifeline. And something terrible has happened.”
Panic grips me. Sure, I care about Gallean, the great wizard, but my brother is there too. “Is Scott okay?”
“I don’t know,” she says weakly. Her life-force is slipping out of her.
Clarissa has feared that bad things were happening in the Shadow Realm for a while, especially since Caer could create a portal in Gallean’s keep, but I only thought the magical protective barriers were weakening, not that their lives were at stake. I would have gone when I first worried about Scott, but Clarissa and Granda talked me into staying. I shouldn’t have listened to them.
“I’ll make a portal right now and find out what’s happening.”
“No,” she grabs my arm with surprising force. “It’s too dangerous. If Balor is already there, he will kill you and everyone else he sets his gaze on.”
“I’m not leaving them there to die. I’ll open a portal now.”
“No,” she cries, refusing to relinquish my arm.
“What then? How else can I find out what’s happening there?”
“A seomra de rúin.”
“You are in no condition to conduct one on your own.”
“She’s not alone,” Granda says, walking in with Maddie trailing behind him. Several more coven members appear behind him.
“Together we can combine forces for you to go and check.”
Alaric whips his head around, taking in the scent of the new arrivals. Must be a wolf thing.
“What is a seomra de rúin?”
“It’s an Irish room of secrets. Basically, I enter a deep meditative state where I can visit other realms.”
“You’re not going alone.”
“No one can hurt me.”
“Actually,” Granda says, setting candles around the space we used last time, “you can’t die, but you might wish for death if the pain is severe enough and you can’t find the key. It’s possible to get stuck in a limbo space, especially if there is chaos in the seomra de rúin. Your only escape would be if the world collapses in on itself. But remember, time works much differently there. A minute here could be several hours there.”
“No,” I said. “No way. I’ll find the key after I find out what’s going on.”
Alaric stops in front of me. “I’m going with you.”
“No.”
“I just got you back. I am not losing you.”
“Possessive much?”
He clenches his jaw. He’s in no mood for jokes. “Yes, I am.”
I didn’t know whether to find Alaric’s need to not leave my side endearing or tiresome. Don’t get me wrong, I missed him with all my heart, but I’ve always been something of a lone wolf myself (no pun intended), so to have him refuse to leave my side is a lot to take. The last time I went into a seomra de rúin, Scott was with me. We were making jokes about provolone and tomato sandwiches because we thought Clarissa was using salt to enclose us in the circle. Without my brother here, I don’t want to rely on someone else, even if it is Alaric, but he strides into the circle and lays down beside me anyway. I hate admitting it, but I immediately feel calmer.
Clarissa, unable to gather the strength to create the circle, has allowed Anna, an understudy of hers, to spread the chalk and begin sealing us in with sage.
“Their energy signatures are very powerful,” Anna says quietly to Clarissa.
“Don’t worry. You have mastered the spell many times before. Do not overthink their origins.”
I’m sure by “origins” she is referring to my reincarnated goddess-ness and Alaric’s werewolf nature. Way to be subtle about it. Guess Anna doesn’t have a lot of experience with supernatural freaks like us. At least she can cross it off her witchy bucket list.
Sam, another coven member, follows Granda’s instructions to set up the four corners of the circle before Anna seals it. In the West, he places the bowl of crystals r
epresenting the Earth element; in the East, a sage bundle to represent Air; to the South, candles representing Fire; and in the North, a chalice filled with water representing Water.
I turn to Alaric. “You and I will serve as the fifth element, Spirit. And the gods know we’ve got a lot of spirit between us.”
I’m still not sure if we’re the type of spirits Clarissa and Granda had in mind, but I suppose we’ll have to do.
The seomra de rúin takes a tremendous amount of magic. With Anna, Sam, and the rest of the coven members, along with Maddie, we should have all the magic we need without draining Clarissa and Granda completely.
I glance over at Maddie. He’s kneeling at the edge of the chalk as if ready to leap across and save us—well, me—if anything goes awry.
“It’s okay, Maddie. We’ll be fine.”
I know he can’t hear me at this point, but he’s studying me so closely he can read my lips. He nods, his eyes never leaving me.
Anna lifts her own athame and lays it across another sage bundle. She traces the bundle with the blade before placing it back down. She lights her sage bundle from one of the white candles strategically placed around the room. She holds it upright and Sam leans over with his own bundle and lights it, before dipping it into the cup Granda used the last time. Thin wisps of smoke begin to spiral in the air above them.
As the air fills with sage, candles, and some other incense, the coven begins to chant. Alaric reaches his hand over and grasps mine.
“Together?”
“Together.”
16
The Devil
Caer’s brain felt thick and fuzzy. Slowly she grew aware of her surroundings. Her head lay upon someone’s lap. The hard bulging muscles hinted it wasn’t a female who held her. She suspected she knew whose lap she was resting in and tried not to overthink it.
So she hadn’t died or turned to stone. That was reassuring.
She tried to come to, but she felt so tired, so empty.
“Sleep,” he murmured, stroking her cheek. “Sleep.”
