Born In Water

by Sarah Hegger

  For what? But Bronwyn didn’t voice the question. She had the distinct sense Rhiannon wouldn’t answer her anyway.

  Rhiannon pressed the bed like people did to establish if it was as comfortable as it looked. She beamed at Bronwyn. “It’s almost romantic.”

  “If you consider abduction romantic.” Bronwyn couldn’t stop herself. “Personally, I don’t. But that’s just me.”

  Rhiannon eyed her speculatively. “You have spirit. Unfortunately for you, I’m not an admirer.”

  Alexander moved to stand between them and stared down at her. “You need to eat.”

  “And I will. When I’m hungry.” Bronwyn tried to read the strange dynamic in the room.

  Alexander stood and stared at her like he was planted on the pretty Aubusson rug.

  Glancing between them, Rhiannon cocked her head and tapped her forefinger on her chin. “If you have any notions of leaving here, forget them now,” she said and walked up to Alexander and smirked. She looked over her shoulder at Bronwyn. “You’re mine now, and I’ve spent more years than you can imagine waiting for you, preparing for you.”

  Alexander cleared his throat. “You know where the kitchen is if you change your mind.”

  “Be quiet, Alexander.” Rhiannon placed her hand on his chest, over this heart, but she spoke to Bronwyn. “You have no idea what has gone into having you here, mine to command.”

  “I’m not yours to command.” Bronwyn would die before she let that happen. She very well may die, but not before someone paid for what they’d taken from her.

  “You have so much to learn, little healer.” Rhiannon’s eye whites went pink and then red. The rot and copper scent of blood magic punched Bronwyn in the solar plexus. “Perhaps a lesson would make my point so much clearer.”

  Alexander flinched.

  “Nobody will save you here.” The stench grew, and her eyes went glassy. “And having come this far, I intend to make sure nothing stops me now.”

  With a grunt of pain, Alexander crumpled to his knees. Blood seeped from his nose and ears.

  “What are you doing to him?” Bronwyn dropped to the carpet beside him.

  He jerked like a live wire and his back bowed. A low keen of agony seeped through his clenched teeth.

  “He is my creature, and I can do whatever I want with him,” Rhiannon said, calmly as if she was explaining the weather. “I created him, and I can destroy him. He thought to save you, poor deluded boy, and I had to show him how that would never happen.”

  Rhiannon pulled more magic. Like metal filings, it scraped along Bronwyn’s nerves. The magic seemed to drain Rhiannon from within, but she didn’t stop.

  “For reasons that will soon become clear, I may have to make sure you stay healthy.” Rhiannon smiled. “But know this, he will pay, and pay dearly, for each one of your transgressions.”

  Alexander fell to his side and jacked his legs to his chest. He coughed and blood and saliva dribbled down his chin.

  “Stop it!” Bronwyn didn’t know what to do. She wanted to touch him, comfort him, stop his pain, but she didn’t know how.

  Alexander opened his mouth and roared, a sound of pure animal pain and impotence.

  “You see.” Rhiannon took her hand from his chest and stepped back. “He is mine to do with as I want. Remember that. I can and will kill him when he ceases to be of use to me.” She leaned down and got in Bronwyn’s face. She was paler, and her eyes bloodshot, but she was even more frightening like this. “This is the only warning you’ll get.”

  The door slammed behind her, and Alexander whimpered and went still.

  Bronwyn turned his head to her and tapped his cheek. “Alexander! Can you speak to me?” She pressed her ear to his mouth and with relief caught the jagged inhale and exhale of his breathing.

  She tried to move to check the rest of him, but his hand fastened on her nape and held her ear close to his mouth. His breath hissed in her ear. “Little witch.”

  It was so soft Bronwyn didn’t know if she’d heard him properly.

  His eyes were open again and he was looking at her, staring into her as if trying to tell her something. He was a mess with blood in his hair and streaked over his face and chest, but his eyes were like the Alexander she knew. In there somewhere, was the man she’d been so drawn to, the man who had kissed her and made her world stop.

  Confusion clouded her brain. Everything she’d heard of him, and now knew of him, warned her not to trust him. He was Rhiannon’s son, and he did her bidding. But her heart didn’t give a shit. His pain was her pain.

  “Let’s get you cleaned up.” She crouched behind him and hooked her arms beneath his armpits. There was water in the bathroom, and it called to her.

  He tried to help her, but his legs kept giving way beneath him. Weaving like Saturday night bar crawlers, they staggered and stumbled into the attached bathroom.

  Bronwyn turned on the shower, and without waiting for it to heat, she hauled them both inside and sat on the shower floor.

  His body limp, Alexander pressed his face into her neck. His arms slid around her waist and he clung to her.

  Water fell like a benediction on her head and down her back. It covered them in a bubble and Bronwyn reached into it for power.

  “Careful,” Alexander whispered. “She’s weakened herself by showing off for you, but she can sense you using magic.”

  His voice sounded stronger and like the man she knew.

  Bronwyn put her arms around him and called up her healing power. Amplified by the water, it slid into him.

  Alexander whispered, “She has placed a magic tether to my heart. She can crush it with one thought.”

  “No.” Bronwyn wanted to weep for him, for both of them. She had known something was wrong. “Why am I here?”

  “Shhh!” He tucked her closer to him. Vitality crept back into his body as she kept her healing hands on his bare skin. “Need to get to Baile.”

  “We will.”

  “Not me.” He coughed and winced. “You.”

  “Both of us.” No fucking way she was leaving him with his bitch mother. She grabbed his cheeks and made him look at her. “We get out of this together. Hear me?”

  Alexander’s smile was sad and sweet, but he laid his head back against her shoulder. Exhausted, he slumped against her, but she welcomed the solid, strength of him. He was still with her, breathing and alive. There was still hope.

  Water rained down on them, growing warmer, and she took as much strength as she dared from it.

  Movement drew her eyes, and a rat poked its head out from under the vanity.

  “See me.” She willed the small creature to hear her mental shout. “See me and tell Niamh.”

  The rat’s whiskers quivered, and it disappeared beneath the vanity again.

  God, she’d lost her mind. She was trying to communicate with a rat, sitting on the floor of a shower with a man whose mother wanted both of them dead. Despair rose and threatened to engulf her. She tried to beat it back, but the tears came anyway.

  “My little witch.” Alexander’s arms tightened around her. “I will get you out of here.”

  With a huge indrawn breath, she got her tears under control, but her voice wobbled as she said, “We’ll both get out of here.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Maeve took a deep breath before she entered the barracks with something Mags called ibuprofen. In the five days it had taken him to heal, they’d all agreed—behind his back instead of risking poking the bear—that Roderick was not a good patient. He wasn’t even a halfway decent patient. He was a bloody nightmare to care for.

  He was chafing at how long his bullet wounds were taking to heal. They all understood his impatience. Out there, fates alone knew where, Rhiannon had Bronwyn. As the only living corporeal coimhdeacht, Roderick had taken it as a personal affront and was desperate to find her.

  Mags appeared in the corridor ahead of her, brow furrowed. “We’re in fighting fettle this morning.”

/>   “Oh, marvelous.” Despite Roderick’s attempts to shield her from a full assault of his pain and guilt through their bond, it nagged at her like a toothache. He had taken it as a failure that he hadn’t reached Bronwyn in time to stop Fiona. “Is he still abed?”

  “Ah, no.” Mags looked disconsolate. “He insisted on trying his sword arm this morning. Nothing I said could stop him.”

  “Bloody hell.” Maeve hurried along. If she had been by his side last night, this would never have happened. She’d been sharing his bedchamber since they’d dragged him back to Baile pouring blood from five bullet wounds. In those early hours, she’d stayed with him and then through the next three nights. Last night, Mags had finally persuaded her to sleep in her own chamber and let somebody else stay with Roderick.

  Unfortunately, the other witches were still partially in awe of him—except Sinead, who’d been busy with Alannah—and let him bully and bluster them into seeing matters his way. She found Roderick in the practice hall, blood already seeping through his shirt. He raised his sword, grimaced and cursed.

  “Roderick.” Maeve needed to put a stop to his nonsense, and she was the only one who could.

  He turned and scowled at her. Then he picked up his sword and went through a careful range of motions. “I don’t have time for this now.”

  “Then make time.” She stepped close enough to him that if he swung that sword, he would hit her.

  With a curse, he stopped his sword arc short. “Bugger it, Maeve. She’s out there, and I’m the only one who can get her.”

  “I know that.” Through their bond, his impotent fury pulsed, and she put a hand on his chest, trying to settle him with the contact. “But you need to heal before you go after her.”

  “Has Mags found her?”

  Mags stepped into the practice chamber. “I’m trying, Roderick, really I am.” She shrugged. “But I can’t…my gifts have never worked that way. I can’t will my seeing.”

  Mags should be able to see through time whenever she wanted, and also to scry someone who needed finding. For the hundredth time, Maeve wished for a seer from her old coven. Even an apprentice seer would be able to do what Mags could not. She tamped down on her impatience. Mags was hardly to blame for her stunted abilities. Without becoming a conduit to Goddess power, their gifts were like sparks to the powerful conflagration of a true cré-witch. Their two pitiful attempts to bond Goddess to the new witches had fizzled and died without elemental magic to draw on. And without waking the cardinal points, there was only a flutter of elemental magic available to them.

  “We will find her.” Maeve patted his chest. “And then you can kill that bitch once and for all.”

  Fierce determination flared in Roderick’s eyes. “I’m going to end her, Maeve. For all that she’s done to all of us.”

  “And I’ll help you do it.” She slid an arm around his waist and turned him toward his bedchamber. “But you need to get strong first. We need you to be strong.”

  He grunted but let her lead him off the sand and into his bedchamber. “I need to learn about guns.”

  “What about them?” Such deadly weapons, these modern guns, that the thought of them made Maeve shudder.

  Roderick’s arm tightened about her shoulder. “I need to know my enemy, Maeve. I am useless if I cannot fight them with their weapons.”

  “You will learn.” She eased him to sit on the side of his bed and gently tugged his shirt over his head. “We are both adapting to this time.”

  “Like your jeans?” He managed a ghost of a smile.

  Maeve laughed. “You have taken to them as well.”

  “Rhiannon is already so far ahead of us in this time. We need to catch up, and we have no time to do so.”

  “We will do it. She didn’t beat us before, and we won’t let her win now either.” She handed him the ibuprofen and a glass of water. “Take these.”

  “What are they?”

  “I don’t know, but Mags says to take them.”

  Roderick shrugged, popped the pills into his mouth and took a swallow of water. “We were right, Maeve. Bronwyn must be the daughter of life. Rhiannon went to a lot of trouble to take her alive. It would have been much simpler to just kill her.”

  Rhiannon’s soul was stained scarlet with all the witch blood she had shed. “Then they’ll keep her alive until she can bear this child.”

  “Yes.” Roderick looked grim. “But she needs to be impregnated before that can happen.”

  Neither of them could bear to utter the word that would entail. “Do you think Alexander will do it?”

  “Before we found ourselves in this time I would have said without a doubt.” Roderick shrugged. “But this new version of Alexander…I am uncertain.”

  Uncertain was still too near to Alexander obeying his mother for Maeve’s taste. They were all anxious about Bronwyn.

  Mags came in with a basin of water and some cloths. “Let’s see how much damage you did.”

  Grumbling, Roderick allowed her to examine his wounds. Fortunately his stitches were holding, and already the wounds were closing.

  Mags wiped away the blood seeping from his wounds. “You really do heal super fast.”

  Which was fortunate for them all because his wounds would have killed a normal man.

  “Mags!” Niamh’s bellow preceded her. Of all of them, Niamh was the most desperate to find Bronwyn. She’d been trying to connect with animals and find out if they’d seen anything. “Where are you?”

  “Here!” Mags yelled back,

  Roderick winced and shot Maeve an amused glance. No, these new witches were nothing like the old ones, and that wasn’t always a bad thing.

  “Anything?” Niamh and her pack streamed through the door. Today a rabbit, three foxes, two dogs and a weasel made up her menagerie. As she tried to connect with animals, her existing furry friends surrounded her more than usual. “Did you scry?”

  “I tried.” Mags smeared ointment on Roderick’s wounds. “Nothing.”

  “Bugger it.” Niamh peered over her shoulder and grimaced. “Ouch!” She patted Roderick’s shoulder. “You’re one tough motherfucker, Hot Rod.”

  Roderick looked confused, frowned, and then slid Maeve a sideways glance. He mouthed Hot Rod and she nearly giggled. Nagging worry about Bronwyn cast a pall over Baile, but it felt good to laugh.

  Niamh plopped on the bed beside Roderick. “What we need is more like you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Living in a coven with ninety witches from childhood, Maeve had seen more than her share of strange behaviors and people. Witches ran the gamut from buttoned down to eccentric, and their gifts could create even more havoc. She had not, however, experienced anything like Roz.

  Coming to the kitchen for breakfast the following morning, Maeve was greeted by Roz, the oddest of the lot, squatting on the kitchen table, doing that sickening head turning thing and shrieking loud enough to wake the dead.

  “What the bloody hell is she doing?” Sinead stood behind Maeve, as if this was something she should handle. “It is too bloody early for this.”

  Whipping her head around, Roz fixed her with a strangely lucid light in her green eyes as if trying to convey something.

  “I don’t understand.” Maeve threw up her hands.

  Roz screeched, sharp enough to curl her toenails.

  “Holy fuck!” Sinead clapped her hands over her ears. “Whatever she wants, can someone please give it to her. Now.”

  Alannah stood beside the stove with a pot of oatmeal forgotten in one hand. “We should get Niamh.”

  “Niamh is already here,” Niamh said as she streamed into the kitchen amidst a stoat, two cats and a small raptor perched on her shoulder. The raptor bobbed taller and flapped its wings.

  Roz stared at the raptor, puffed up her chest, flapped her arms and screeched.

  Sinead yelled, “Get that falcon out of here.”

  “Kestrel,” Niamh said and stroked the bird’s cream and black dappled
chest. The kestrel calmed down and tucked her wings into her body. “And Roz is trying to tell us something.”

  “Whatever it is, can you make her do it without that godawful noise?” Sinead stomped over to the range and snatched up the large copper kettle. “We’re all going to need tea if this carries on.”

  Niamh approached Roz slowly. “I’m not sure how to understand her.”

  Bobbing her head up and down, Roz seemed to be encouraging Niamh to come closer.

  The kestrel chirped and fluted as if offering encouragement.

  Niamh looked to Maeve. “Any ideas?”

  “Um…” She ventured closer, ever cautious of upsetting Roz and punishing all their ears. “Thomas!” The idea popped into her head. “He bonded Lavina, and she was a guardian. He might be able to tell us how she did it.”

  “Let’s get him here.” Sinead filled the kettle and plunked it back on the range. She looked at Maeve. “How does one summon a ghost?”

  “You ask.” Alannah smiled sweetly, and without raising her voice, simply said, “Thomas?”

  “Sweetheart.” Thomas strolled into the kitchen like he was a living, breathing man. “You called?” He glanced at Roz, and then snapped his gaze back again. “Why is someone sitting on the kitchen table?”

  “That’s Roz,” Niamh said. “And she believes she’s an owl.”

  “Indeed?” Thomas looked at Maeve and raised an eyebrow.

  Maeve was hard pressed not to giggle. “She’s a guardian, and as best I can understand has her awareness trapped in an owl’s.”

  Thomas raised his brow. “She did not take her pact with Goddess?”

  “What does that have to do with it?” Niamh turned to stare at him.

  Thomas approached Roz, and she cocked her head and watched him. “It’s something Lavina used to warn all acolytes and apprentices about when they used their gifts before their pact. It’s a danger guardians face when Goddess is not present in their magic, tethering it to her.”

  “That could happen to Niamh?” Alannah paled.

  “It does not always happen.” Thomas ducked his head until he was eye to eye with Roz. “Some witches are more susceptible than others.”