Awakenings

I literally tripped over it—the object of our search, our temporary holy grail.

It was a jar a little larger than my hand made of enameled silver. It was decorated in Celtic knotwork, the irony of which I suspected Phelan might have appreciated if he hadn’t been stuck inside of it like a genie trapped in its bottle. I found it tucked into a hollow between slabs of concrete near the center of the building, settled on the cracked and dirty gray and white linoleum titles, barely visible in the dim.

The world was quiet—too quiet—in the slowly growing light of impending dawn, a cold, still winter morning without even a breeze. Even years later, thinking about it is enough to make me shiver and there have been a lot of winter mornings between then and now.

For a moment, it was like someone had punched in me in the chest—my heart refused to beat, my lungs refused to function. I must have made some kind of sound because Thom and Seamus were there a few seconds later, Leinth trailing not too far behind.

To this day, I don’t know what I said. I just pointed.

“Is that it?” Thom asked.

Seamus, grim-faced, nodded slowly.  “If I’m any judge. Leinth?”

“Without a doubt.” She knelt down next to it, tentatively reaching to touch it.

Lightning crackled from its surface into her hand and she jerked back with a yelp.

“Hell,” I whispered. “What was that?”

“A trap,” Lienth said, rubbing at her singed fingers. “Either it will do that to everyone, or she’s keyed it.”

“You can do that?” Thom murmured.

“Just like setting your wards,” she said, straightening. “Now what do we do?”

“Maybe she’s only keyed it to you or your bloodline,” Thom said slowly. He crouched down and reached for it.

I opened my mouth to tell him not to, but it was too late. His hands closed around the urn and the world exploded in a flash of bright silver-white light.

The silence of the morning shattered with the sound of our screams.

Something screamed in the distance. I jerked, twisting toward the sound, heart pounding painful tattoo against my breast.  Who was it?  What was it? I swallowed bile and shuddered. Thom touched my shoulder and I leaned against his hand, abruptly out of breath and lightheaded.

“That sounded like it was near camp,” I whispered, barely able to hear my own voice over the sound of my thundering heart.

“I think it was,” he said quietly, fingers tightening. “They’ll be fine, Mar. We have to trust them.”

“They have help,” Seamus growled. “The Hunt will be guarding the perimeter once they’ve dealt with the gremlins. I imagine most of them have already returned to the border, which means that scream was more likely to be my daughter than one of your friends.”

The way he said ‘my daughter’ tore at my heart. The words were laced with equal measures of bitterness and agony. Something told me he was wondering what it might have been like if he’d been there when she was young, during her formative years—however long ago that might have been.

Something tells me that she’s had more than a few centuries for the crazy to set in.

I shuddered and forced myself back on task, swallowing hard and pulling away from Thom with no small measure of effort. He watched me, pain flickering through his gaze before he turned back to the search.

Not enough time. There’s just not enough time.

“Has this ever happened before?” I asked abruptly, glancing toward Seamus in the dim.

He flinched slightly. “Once,” he admitted. “I’ve seen it once. It was what happened to the Ridden Druid.”

I straightened, eyes widening. “I thought he was just possessed.”

“It was more complicated than simply that,” Seamus said, his eyes on the rubble, as if he didn’t dare meet my gaze. “His soul was sundered and his consciousness was split—part subsumed beneath the Stag King that ruled his physical form, part trapped in a silver vessel that was carefully hidden. While Brighid sought his physical form, Finn and my brother sought the vessel. I helped as I could—it was probably the last bit of good that I did before Albina gave me to the Hunt.”

“Not the last,” Leinth said quietly from the other side of him. “You did have a son.”

Seamus winced. “Aye,” he whispered. “That I did.” He took a deep breath and exhaled it in a rush, shaking his head hard. “In any case, they found the vessel and provided it to Brighid so she could regain her brother. The stories say he wasn’t the same after that.”

“He wasn’t,” I said quietly, heart in my throat. “He was blind and strange, but was still Ciar, still her brother.”

Seamus shuddered. “You have her soul.”

“And some of her memories.” I hopped down into a hollow where I could still see the tile floor of the building that had once stood in that spot. “There are things I remember sometimes, things that I see. To be honest, it’s a little disconcerting—worse because her daughter’s ghost is here watching over Neve and I.” I pressed a hand against my stomach and shivered, biting down hard on my lower lip for a moment. “It’s all very strange.”

“Well, once we find the vessel, we’ll just need to return Phelan’s anima to him and all should be well,” Seamus said.

“Assuming we’re able to find it,” Thom growled.

“Yes,” Seamus agreed quietly. “Assuming we find it.”

“We will,” I said. “One way or another, we will.”

“What I wouldn’t give to have Kel along right now,” I muttered under my breath as I clambered through the rubble in Leinth’s wake.

“What help would she be?” Leinth asked as she peered beneath the edge of a fallen slab of concrete.

“She can dowse for things,” I said with a weak smile, trying to hide the fact that my heart was breaking.  My brother was in danger and I’d made the choice to stay out here and search for something that may or may not be out here, something I didn’t know how to find—I didn’t even know what to look for. I was already starting to question my choice.

Too late now.

“I see,” Leinth said. She glanced back at me, then toward Thom and Seamus, who had started in on the rubble themselves. “Well, I suppose that would be useful. A pity we left her behind.”

“Mm.” I might have said more, but Thom asked the question that was tugging at me.

“What would this vessel even look like? How are we going to know it when we find it?” He picked his way through the rubble to my left, closer to the ravine than I was. “Will it look like a bottle, a crystal, a shard of glass, what?”

“A jar or a bottle,” Seamus said. “Those are the most likely. It’s possible for it to be in any of those other things, but my instincts are screaming a jar or a bottle, the more sacred-looking, the better.”

I startled, stumbling a step and twisting toward him. “Sacred-looking? What the hell?”

He shook his head. “Context clues, Marin. Perhaps I have a few more pieces to the puzzle. Leinth?”

“No,” she said softly. “I agree with you. If there’s an urn anywhere about, that’s where she’ll have trapped him. Delicious irony in some ways.”

I didn’t ask. In the end, I was pretty sure that I just didn’t want to know.

I couldn’t breathe. Going after Matt? “Why?” I asked, my voice strangled. “Why does she care?”

“Gods only know,” Seamus said with a slight shudder. “Was he the Ridden Druid?”

“Phelan seemed to think so,” Thordin said quietly.

“Enough.” My throat was tight, heart starting to beat too fast. “There are more than enough people to take care of Matt if she can even get past the wards to get to him.” Oh shit, what the hell did I just bring down on my brother’s head? Me and my—her?—big mouth.

Thom’s arm tightened around me. I tried to shrug free of the embrace and straighten. We had to find Phelan—no one else could—and we couldn’t trust Thesan to hold to any bargain she made.

The woman was nuttier than a jar of peanut butter.

I sucked in a breath, feeling strangled. “You and Sif go back,” I told Thordin. “Make sure Matt and Cameron and everyone else is safe. Something tells me that the only thing that would be worse than her getting her hands on Matt would be finding out about Cam.”

Leinth made a pained sound. “She can’t,” she whispered. “We can’t let that happen.”

Seamus stared at her for a moment and she shook her head. “Never mind. Don’t ask.” Leinth swallowed hard and headed for the rubble, her step firm and her stride purposeful. “Marin’s right. We need to find the vessel she’s keeping Phelan’s spirit in—and pray she’s not carrying it right now instead.”

I swallowed hard and nodded to Thordin and Sif. “Go. Please, just go and make sure they’re safe.”

Thordin hesitated a moment before he nodded. “Right. Neve wouldn’t forgive me anyway if something happened to Cam.” He glanced at Sif, whose lips thinned even as her eyes narrowed.

“I don’t like it,” she said softly. “There’s too much going on here, too much strangeness. It doesn’t feel right.”

Welcome to our world. “It never does.”

I turned and followed Leinth into the rubble.

It took every ounce of my strength and control not to put an arrow in her eye. If not for Thom’s restraining hand on my arm, I might have done it.

Revenge. Revenge on who, you crazy bitch? I swallowed bile and tried to tamp down my rage. Seamus had wanted us here to back him up, but at some point, this was all going to become too much and I was going to take matters into my own hands.

I was sure of that.

Seamus spread his arms. “If you want to take your vengeance, Thesan, then do it. Have your pound of flesh from me and have done with it. You don’t need to involve poor Phelan in this. He’s been through more than enough trying to shoulder the burdens I foisted onto him when I was called to wed your mother. Leave off and return him to himself.”

“You mistake me,” Thesan said.  “I don’t want revenge on you. I want revenge on everyone else. I want revenge on all the ones who wronged you—Mother, Grandfather, your brother, your father, all of them. I want vengeance on those who kept me from being happy.”

His brother. Teague. What the hell does Teague have to do with—oh shit. Shit.

Seamus’s voice hitched. “My father is beyond revenge now, Thesan, and you have no quarrel with my brother unless he’s wronged you in a way I’m not aware of. They left the shores of this world long ago and have only recently returned.”

“He was meant for the Wild Hunt,” Thesan snapped. “Don’t you see? Don’t you know that? Had she had him to hand over, all would have been well.”

My fingers ached from gripping the shaft of my bow too tightly. “Idiot,” I snapped, my tongue no longer my own. “Your mother was a lying bitch, that much you know well. Teague or Seamus, it made no difference to her which went to the Hunt. She thought to break the Hunt, to bend it to no will but her own. She failed in that and cost you a father in the doing. The only vengeance you should seek is on her. Now return to us the Taliesin and have done with this foolishness!”

Thom’s hand was like iron around my arm. My fingers itched to feel an arrow’s fletching between them. There was a strange haze at the edges of my vision, silver and green haloing my sight.

“Mar,” he whispered, “get a hold of yourself. You’re speaking in tongues.”

I looked at him and tried to jerk free of his grasp. The eyes I saw weren’t his and yet at the same time they were.

He’s not my husband and yet he is.

The words echoed like a hammer’s blow inside my skull.

Thesan was laughing at me.

“Oh dear,” she cackled. “Seems I’ve stumbled upon even better prey than I could have hoped! I see the Archer’s soul. Does that mean the Ridden Druid is near, too?”

In an eyeblink she was gone and I was sagging into Thom’s arms, heart hammering at three times its speed.

“What happened?” I asked in a weak whisper. My head pounded like there was a small fairy inside my skull hammering away at an oak log.

“You said something in old Erse to her,” Thom said. “I don’t know what.”

“You told her that she’s an idiot,” Seamus said, his face gray as he stared at me. “You’ve shown too many cards, child. You’re Brighid of the Imbolg come again, aren’t you?”

“What does that matter?” I asked, squeezing my eyes shut. My eyes stung. Something wasn’t right—nothing was right. “We’re wasting time. We need to figure out where she’s holding Phelan’s anima and what it’s in while she’s distracted.”

“Marin, you don’t understand,” Thordin said hoarsely. “She’s going after your brother. Right now.”

“Thesan,” Seamus suddenly barked. “I know you’re about, girl. Show yourself and be braver than your mother ever dared to be.”

Mocking laughter rang out from all sides as the group paused, slowly backing into a cluster, backs together. Marin slowly drew an arrow from her quiver and readied her bow. Thom’s sword rasped quietly from its scabbard and he touched his wife’s arm briefly.

“Braver than her?” a woman’s voice asked. Try as they might, it was impossible for them to tell where the sound was actually coming from. “She was hardly a coward, Father. The only thing she feared was my grandfather—and my temper. Rightfully so, I should think, for a woman who consistently deprived her only child of anyone who might have loved her.”

Seamus stiffened. Leinth grasped his free hand and squeezed hard.

“Don’t let her bait you,” Leinth whispered. “Her being the way she is isn’t your fault.”

“I beg to differ, Auntie.” A slender, blonde figure melted out of the rubble. A dark gown garbed her, the hem of her velvet cloak pooled around her feet as she slowly approached them. Her eyes were bright and blue even in the dim of predawn. “Maybe if he’d had the godsdamned balls to stand up to her, I wouldn’t be the way I am.”

“Give him back, Thesan,” Seamus said softly. “You have no quarrel with my cousin.”

“On the contrary, if you don’t agree to my terms, he’s my only hope of winning you over. Either way, he’s a means to an end.” She smiled and it shot shivers down Thom’s spine even though the expression wasn’t directed at him.

“You see,” she continued, “the Hecate wants him. She wants him bad enough that she’ll give just about anything to claim him. If you refuse me, all I have to do is give him to her and I get her help in getting what I want.”

“And what is it you want?” Seamus asked in a whisper.

“I should think it’s obvious, Father. I want my revenge.

“I want my revenge.”

“I saw Jay taking Phelan back…what happened?”  Marin’s brows knit as she headed for the warding lines.  “I go to wake people up and all of a sudden everything’s taken care of except for Phelan apparently wearing himself out.”

“The Taliesin didn’t wear himself out,” Sif said, crossing her arms.  “Someone’s done him harm.”

“Huh?”  Marin’s gaze flicked to Thom and he winced.  Her eyes narrowed.  “Thom?”

God help me.  “Someone’s taken his–what the hell did you call it, Seamus?”

“His anima,” Seamus said, glancing toward the bridge, his hand, still clutched in Leinth’s, drifted toward his hip and the horn again.  His lover held him fast, keeping him from his first instinct.  “We can’t waste time.  Every moment we wait, she–”

“What?”  Thom asked, feeling his chest tighten.  “She could what, Seamus?”

“Best to leave it unsaid,” the former Taliesin murmured, his eyes fluttering shut.  He tried to tug free of Leinth’s grip and failed.  She turned with him as he oriented toward the bridge.  “Come on.  We need to move quickly.”

Thom turned to follow him.  Marin grabbed the sleeve of his jacket, making him pause.  He hesitated to meet her gaze but eventually lifted his eyes to hers when it became clear that she wasn’t letting go.

“What happened to Phelan?” she asked softly.

“Seamus’s daughter is an evil crone,” Thom whispered.  “She’s using Phelan’s soul as some kind of bargaining chip.”

All the color drained from Marin’s face and for a moment, Thom thought she might fall.  She wavered for a moment and he caught her by the shoulders to steady her.  His wife stared at him, taking a deep, rasping breath.

“How the hell is that possible?” she asked, her voice barely audible.

“Damned if I know,” Thom said.  He wanted to gather her into his arms and hold her tight against his chest.  “Doesn’t matter.  We’ll get him back.”

We take care of our own.  We always have and we always will.

He took her by the hand and followed Seamus to the bridge.