Awakenings

Midwinter eve dawned bright and cold, though the cold sunshine quickly gave way to black clouds that swept in from the west.  A storm was coming, metaphorical and physical.

“We’re not ready for this,” Thom whispered to himself as he perched in the watchtower, settled on a stool with a whetstone in hand, a sword braced against his knee.  They had enough to arm everyone, but he wasn’t confident in everyone’s skill at using them.  He watched the clouds on the horizon, shivering as the wind picked up.

We’re not ready, but the storm’s coming and so is Cariocecus, whether we’re ready or not.  A shiver worked its way down his spine.  The first time he’d dared to go toe-to-toe with the minor war god, it hadn’t ended well—as J.T. had put it, he’d undone weeks of healing in a span of five minutes.

Thom closed his eyes and exhaled.  It’ll be different this time.  We know he’s coming.  The wardings are strong.  He doesn’t have anyone on the inside anymore.

But we can’t stay bottled up behind the wards forever.  He knows it.  He can wait us out.

            “Unless he’s got something else up his sleeve,” Thom muttered.

“You talking to yourself again, Thom?”

He glanced toward the sound of Davon’s voice as the other man came to relieve him of his watch post.  “Yeah.  Must be going crazy.”

“Must be,” Davon agreed.  “You been up here for long?”

“I had the four am watch,” Thom said as he stood slowly, wincing at a twinge of stiffness in his back, a faint trace of pain in his ribs.  Suck it up.  You’ve got to be able to fight tomorrow.  Who knows when the attack will start?  He slid the almost-sharpened sword into its hand-stitched scabbard and tucked the whetstone into the pocket of his coat.  “Did you get a good night’s sleep?”

“Slept like a log,” Davon said.  “Almost didn’t make it up here in time.”  He appropriated the stool Thom had been sitting on.  “Do you really think that the attack’ll begin tonight?”

“As soon as midnight comes,” Thom said. “We’ve got to be ready if it starts then, Davon.  I don’t know that it’ll start then, but it’s better to be safe than sorry at this point.”

Davon shook his head.  “I still don’t get it, Thom.  Why does he care?”

“I’m still not sure,” Thom admitted.  “But I’m getting closer and closer to finding out.  Unfortunately, we’re out of time.”

“Yeah,” Davon said.  “I guess we are.”  He stretched and shook his head again. “Well, here’s to a peaceful watch.  They’ve got coffee going down by the fire.  Better hurry if you want some while it’s still available—or not boiled down to sludge.”

Thom laughed weakly.  “Yeah.  Give a shout if you need something.”

Davon tossed him a thumbs-up before Thom climbed down the ladder to the snow-covered ground.  His boots crunched in the snow as he headed around the corner of their makeshift dormitory and around toward the tents.  He could smell breakfast and wood-smoke well before he reached the tent itself.

“Bacon, Tala?”  He smiled as he came within earshot of the woman who’d become their chef de cuisine since the end of the world.  “I didn’t know we had any.”

“We have it because I’m a fucking wizard when it comes to food preservation, Thom,” Tala said with a faint smile.  She reached for one of the plates stacked to one side of the cookfire.  “Do you want toast, too?”

“Just coffee to start,” he said as he snagged a mug.  “Was a cold watch.”

“I believe it,” she said as she started making him a plate anyway.  “Is it my imagination, or is there a storm coming, too?”

“Black clouds in the west,” Thom said.

“And a neon pink sky this morning,” Tala said.  “Sounds like a storm to me.  Hell of a day for it.”  She handed him the plate, her brows knitting.  “Please tell me that everything for the defenses is in place.”

“Seems to be,” Thom said, then shook his head slightly.  “If it’s not, it’s too late to fix it now.”

Tala hugged her arms across her distended belly.  “I’m worried, Thom.”

“Everyone is,” he said, then smiled at her.  “Don’t worry.  You and Angie and the wounded down in those steam tunnels?  You’ll be the safest out of everyone.”

“You still think it’s safe to move them?” she asked softly.

“I don’t think it’s safe not to,” Thom said.  “We’ll move them tonight, just in case the attack starts at midnight.  I’m worried it will, though Phelan and Marin don’t think it’s going to.  That’s not a chance I’m willing to take, though.”

“I don’t blame you,” Tala said.  She relieved him of his mug and reached for the coffee pot.  “Go sit.  I’ll bring this.”

“Right.”  Thom gave her another weak smile and settled down in his usual spot near the fire.  “Have you seen my wife this morning?”

“I think she’s with Jacqueline, checking on the others,” Tala said as she waddled over to hand him his coffee.  “How does it feel not to be the wounded one this time?”

Thom snorted.  “A little weird to be honest, but not in a bad way.  Hopefully I can keep this up.”

“Here’s to hoping,” Tala said softly, staring at the dark clouds beyond the tent’s flap.  “Hope’s all we’ve got.”

“Have some faith, too,” Thom said.  “We can do this.”

“Yeah,” she said, sounding like she didn’t quite believe it.

Thom sighed and let it go.  At least she wanted to believe.

Maybe if they wanted it badly enough, they’d make it happen.

Inside the forge was warm and close, though my nose closed up at the smell of heated metal and Matt’s makeshift quenching trough that was starting to look less and less makeshift every day.  He was covered in soot from his forehead down to the cuffs of his jeans, his hands sheathed in heavy leather gloves and the leather apron Brandon had whipped together for him was spattered with tiny burns from molten metal and embers.  He didn’t glance up from pounding a sword into shape, though Thom looked up from the hilt he was wrapping and smiled faintly.

The smile faded as he caught the looks on both of our faces.  “What happened?” he asked over the sound of Matt’s hammering.

Phelan waved a hand as he turned to survey the swords lined up against the wall, about half with their hilts wrapped and the other half waiting for Thom’s attention.  “Slowing down,” he observed.

“Yeah, well, with Jay down, I’ve got to wrap the hilts and hone the edges,” Thom said, expression clouding.  His gaze flicked toward me.  “Do we know how he’s doing?”

I shook my head a little.  “There hasn’t been a change.  I wouldn’t count on him to be able to help us with what’s coming.”

“Is that what’s wrong?”  Thom asked as he turned back to his work.

“Yes,” I lied even as Phelan said, “No.”

Thom looked between us, eyes narrowing.  I sighed and threw up my hands.  “We had  close encounter with one of our more powerful friends,” I muttered.

“Which one?”  Thom asked, tone flat.

“Morrigan,” Phelan said as he picked up one of the swords and a whetstone, settling down on an overturned milk crate.  “Playing mind games and offering warnings.”

Thom looked at me, apparently not quite believing Phelan’s dismissive attitude.  I shook my head slightly.

“She told us that the other one’s going to show up hard on Cariocecus’s heels,” I said.  “We might not have a lot of time to recover.”

He snorted humorlessly.  “She should tell us things we don’t already know.”

“Exactly,” Phelan said, starting to work on sharpening the first blade.

I took a pair of deep breaths and closed my eyes.  God forgive me.  “She did tell us one thing,” I said quietly.  I saw Phelan wince out of the corner of my eye, but I kept talking.  “The Hecate—the thing leading those hags the other night—has been after Phelan for centuries.  Since before he was the Taliesin.”  I frowned, turning my attention fully to Phelan.  “What the hell does that mean, anyway?  The way she said it and the way you reacted, it sounds like some kind of title.”

“It is,” he murmured softly.  “A title.  An office.”  I could barely hear him over the sound of Matt’s hammering, which had slowed.  He was listening, even if he wasn’t talking.  “It’s an honor that’s been passed down through our maternal line since the beginning of time.  Seamus was the Taliesin before me, our grandfather before him.”  He cursed softly as the whetstone slipped and he nearly slashed open his palm.

“What does it all mean, though?  What are you supposed to do?”

“There are prophecies,” Phelan said.  It sounded like it hurt him to admit it, to talk about it.  “Prophecies that were old even when I was born, when my grandfather was born.  The Taliesin is the keeper of those prophecies, the custodian.  The one who…who watches for the signs that they’re about to come to pass.”

Matt’s hammer fell with a strange kathunk against the anvil, as if he’d missed the blade he was working on, or struck it strangely.  His voice came out strangled.  “You came here because we’re the objects of a prophecy?”

“No,” Phelan snapped.  He squeezed his eyes shut, took a deep breath, and clearly fought an internal battle to find some scrap of calm.  “No,” he repeated after a moment.  “I came because Teague asked me to and because I knew that you would need help one way or another.  You’re blood of my blood.  I wasn’t going to abandon you to all the dangers that are running amok in the world right now.”  His voice dropped to a whisper and he started at his hands.  “But maybe it was a mistake.  I’ve brought more trouble than I’ve ever intended.”

“Considering what the Morrigan said, I’m thinking we’d have run into one or two of these things with or without you being here,” I whispered, moving over to put a hand on his shoulder.  He flinched a little.

“How do you figure?”

“I don’t think Cameron and your cousin came here because you were here, Phelan,” I said quietly.  “And she said something about him being Seamus’s blood, and the Hecate was hunting for that.”

“There’s more going on here than I can see,” Phelan said quietly.

“The feeling sucks, doesn’t it?”  Thom asked from behind me.

Phelan snorted humorlessly.  “Hardcore.”

“Nothing we can do,” Thom said with a slight shrug.  His fingers were deft as he returned to wrapping the hilt of the finished but unsharpened sword.  “We roll with the punches and try to anticipate what we can.  Everything else, we’ll just have to face as it comes.  Right?”

“Right,” I agreed softly, glancing between Matt and Phelan.  Matt sighed and shook his head, lifting his hammer again.

“Right,” he said.

“Phelan?”

He just kept staring at his hands for a few long moments.

“Aye,” Phelan said at last and returned to sharpening the sword.

That was where we left it.  There was nothing more to say on the matter—not then.

Maybe not ever.

Not at first, anyway, not until I began to see the way the light filtered through the trees, reflecting off the snow.

We came out of the Morrigan’s shadow warp at the center of the bridge over the ravine, standing in snow that was up to the middle of our calves.  Carolyn gave a little yelp of surprise and I’ll admit that I jumped a little when I realized where we were.

“Why did you—”

The Morrigan interrupted me.  “The line below us is one reason he wants this place, child,” she said softly.  “Why he comes, why he will not stop unless you defeat him soundly and sue for peace at the coming battle.”

“They know about the lines here, cousin,” Phelan snapped, clearly more than a shade annoyed with his so-called relative.  “They know how important they are.”

Her glare turned artic-cold.  “Do they understand what’s at stake, Taliesin?” she hissed.  “Do they understand the magnitude of what they may face, of what they must do?”

Phelan fell back a step.  I reached out a hand to steady him, one he didn’t shake off the way I expected him to.  His muscles bunched under my hand as he swallowed hard.  His voice was hoarse as he spoke.  “Why do you think I’m still here, cousin?  I didn’t have to come just because Teague asked me to.  I didn’t have to stay.”

“You stay because you love them,” the Morrigan said, her voice halfway to a snarl.  “Do not act like it is because of everything they will face.”

“I stay because I love them and because I won’t let them face it without me,” Phelan whispered.  He drew himself up straight, then took Carolyn and I each by the hand.  “Thank you for your warning, cousin.  We know the threat we face is dire but we’re not going to fail—and we’re not going to turn into monsters in the doing.  What good are bloody heroes if we turn into the very things we fight?”

The Morrigan stared at him for a long moment, expression hard and stern before it softened into something close to understanding—possibly even affection.  “I know where you’ve heard that before.”

“She was right,” Phelan whispered, then closed his eyes for a moment.  His fingers tightened around mine and Carolyn’s.  “We’re going now.  Thank you.”

The Morrigan inclined her head to the three of us before she turned and walked away.  I watched for a moment as something erased all trace of her passage—an errant wind, something magic.  I shivered.

“Come on,” Phelan muttered.  “Let’s get back behind the wards before something tries to take advantage of an unforeseen opportunity.”

“What was that all about?”  Carolyn asked, her voice hushed.  I looked past Phelan toward her.  Her face was pale, fear lighting her pale eyes.

I shook my head slightly.  “A warning, I guess.”

“And an object lesson—and more.”  Phelan’s voice was frighteningly grim.  “She was trying to make a point to me and she was trying to see what the two of you are made of for whatever reason.”  His expression darkened.  “She’s interested in J.T.  I don’t like that.”

“She’s interested in J.T. because he can see dead people,” I said, eyes narrowing.  “She’s a fucking death goddess, Phelan.”

“More than that,” he said, tone still grim.  “And don’t let her hear you say that’s all she is, either.”

“Perish the thought,” I said, trying not to snap.  I took a pair of breaths and tried to settle down.  “Why now?”

“If she waited any longer, I’m guessing that Cariocecus would have known she was here and thrown even more crap at us,” Phelan muttered.  “Not that she’d help us, but he’s the type that prepares for every contingency.”

“And he won’t notice right now because he’s too busy frying other fish?” I guessed.

“Frying other fish?”  Carolyn asked.  “What other fish is he frying?”

“The Hecate,” I growled quietly as we crossed the line of wards.  Power shivered through my bones as we crossed that boundary and not for the first time, I was impressed by the work we’d done on them.

“The who?”

“Greek bitch,” Phelan said.  “Nasty type who’s gunning for me and a half dozen others, including Cameron and probably both of your men.”

Carolyn just stared at him for a moment before she snorted.  “You know, I never really thought of them that way.  Our men.  But they are, aren’t they?”

Phelan shook his head. “Without the two of you, I think they’d both end up spiraling into madness.  They’re lucky.”

Carolyn sighed.  “Speaking of, I should get back to Jay.  Maybe he’s lucid now.”

I reached over and squeezed her shoulder.  “You want me to come with you?”

“No, it’s okay.”  She smiled.  “But thanks, Mar.  You should probably get up to the forge and see if Thom and Matt need help.  They might.”  She tilted her head toward the faint flicker of blue and green light that lit on her shoulder before it vanished from my view.  “A little fairy godnephew of mine told me so.”

I managed to laugh and nod.  “Will-do.  Let me know if you need anything, okay?”

She sobered and nodded.  “Don’t worry, I will.”

She broke off from Phelan and I.  He stood for a moment and watched her go before he sighed softly.

“This is going to get harder for them before it gets better,” he murmured.

“Story of our lives, Phelan.”  I squeezed his hand.  “Come on.  We’ve got work to do, too.”

He grunted and followed me up to the forge.

We stood above a battlefield in some long-ago yesterday.  The world was washed-out, dim except for a few of the figures—one here, one there—scattered throughout the armies massing on the field.  I thought I recognized some—a certain red-haired man in leathers, a tall woman with a spear, a pair of dark-haired men with her.

Beside me, Phelan sucked in a pained breath.  “Why are you showing us this?” he asked the Morrigan in a strained voice.  “This is long ago and far away.”

She looked at him sidelong, one brow arching delicately.  “There are lessons to be learned here,” she said.  Her voice was gentle, less frightening than it had been every other time I’d heard her speak.  She didn’t want us to be afraid—not of her, anyway.  “Lessons that you, cousin, have stubbornly refused to pass on to later generations.”

“Brutality on this scale isn’t meant to be passed on to future generations,” he said quietly, moving around me to face her head-on.  “We don’t have to be monstrous to win.  Brighid and Finn wouldn’t want that.  I don’t want that.  They wanted better for tomorrow, for their children’s children.”  His voice dropped to a bare whisper. “For their own immortal souls.”

The Morrigan regarded him with a long, silent look.

I swallowed hard, easing past the both of them to get nearer to the edge of the rise we stood on, the one that overlooked the battlefield.  “I’ve seen this,” I said quietly, trying to quell a queasy feeling in my stomach.  I had seen it—whether in a dream, a vision, or some kind of memory from a past life I didn’t fully remember, I couldn’t be sure.  “I remember this.”

The Morrigan titled her head slightly, studying me as she took two steps forward, drawing abreast of me.  “Have you, Seer?  How do you remember?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered.  “I just do.  It…it was a bloodbath.  A thousand died, but the Imbolg and the Fianna won.  Dirty tricks.  Solid tactics…my brother…he said that we’d face some kind of reckoning for what we did that day.”

“Ciar said it,” Phelan said quietly.  “He was right.  Brighid and Finn faced assassins for a decade and more after that.  They kidnapped him twice before Brighid stopped letting him out of her sight.”  His gaze slid toward the Morrigan.  “I realize that Cariocecus and the Hecate don’t necessarily have entire clans at their backs to send after us like that, but forgive me, cousin, if that’s a risk I’ve no desire to take.”

Carolyn’s fingers tangled in my sleeve as Phelan and the Morrigan attempted to stare each other down.  “Marin?  Where are we?” she asked in a bare whisper, her voice very small.

“Ireland,” I whispered back.  “A thousand generations ago.  Do you see that woman there, the one with the spear?”

She frowned for a moment, the nodded. “She seems…brighter than the others.”

“Her name was Brighid iníon Dúbhshláine,” I told her.  “She was chieftain of the Imbolg, and she was Phelan’s friend.”  My lips thinned.  “And in this time, I was her.”

Carolyn looked at me sharply, blinking for a moment.  I met her gaze steadily, taking a deep breath.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” I said, letting my gaze drift back to the battlefield.  “This was a war against an invasion—the invasion.  The one that Phelan talks about sometimes.”

“The one where he faced Vammatar?” she whispered.

“And others,” the Morrigan said, turning to us.  “Many, many others.  There were so many,” she said softly, those cold eyes focusing on something very distant and far away.  “But we survived somehow.  Moved on to another day.”

“And we’ll live through this war, too,” Phelan growled from behind her.  “Take us back, Morrigan, or tell us what your warning is and let us be.  We’ve got too much to do to dally here.”

The goddess tsked softly, smirking as she turned to Phelan.  “So demanding, cousin.  It’s unbecoming.  All in due time.”  She nodded to the battlefield.  “Watch.”

He grasped her arm.  “No.  Take us back.”

“Hush,” she said, her voice firm.  “There is something you never saw here, Wanderer.  Something you must see.”

I saw it before he did—the shadow that crossed over the field.  My throat tightened.

“The Hecate,” I breathed.

“Yes,” the Morrigan said.  “Even then.  Even then she was seeking this blood, seeking the Wandering One—before he was who he became.”  Her gaze slid to Phelan.  “She will come for you, daor chroí.  She will come for you and she’ll come for Seamus’s get.  Do not ever say I did not warn you.”

Phelan’s voice was tight but quiet.  “Take us back, cousin.  Take us back now.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she said softly, “Very well.”

Shadows wrapped around us.  When the faded, light almost left me blind.

If we were home, I certainly couldn’t see it.

“You’re his lady,” a voice said from behind us.  I stiffened at the sound, swallowing bile that rose abruptly in my throat.  I knew the voice.

What is she doing here?  What does she want now?

But there she stood, clad in steel gray with a black owl perching on her shoulder, peering at us from the shadows of a pine tree.  Her eyes gleamed in her pale face, her lips bright and red as the holly berries that still studded the bushes not fifty yards from where we stood.  Momentarily, her sharp-eyed gaze flicked from Carolyn to me.

“Do not worry yourself overmuch, Seer,” she said, her voice a low, soft purr that I felt straight down to my bones more than heard.  “I have not come to exact my price from any of you this day, nor will I.  Not yet.”

I swallowed again, throat dry.  I wish that somehow made me feel better, but I know better than to bank on something one deity says when we’re about to face down another—maybe two.

“Who are you?”  Carolyn whispered, taking half a step forward, then another.  She was beyond my reach before I had the presence of mine to grab her arm and stop her.

Dammit.

“A friend,” the Morrigan said softly, a smile touching her lips.  “Someone with a vested interest in your survival.”  Her gaze flicked to me for a brief moment.  “All of you.”

That made my heart give a strange, painful double-beat.  I don’t like the sound of that at all.

I eased up behind Carolyn and put my hand on her shoulder.  “If you’re not here to claim your price, then why are you here?”  I asked softly.  “A warning?  Something else?”

“A warning,” she agreed softly.  “You are ill-prepared for his coming and even more ill-prepared for what she plans.  She will be here well before your wounds have closed once you’ve faced him, and the wounds that he will inflict upon you are grave indeed.”

My throat tightened.  Carolyn shook her head slowly.  “I don’t believe that.  I can’t.  We’ll defeat him the way we did before.”  Carolyn glanced at me, then back at the Morrigan.  “Marin’s seen us in her visions.  Everything will be fine.”

A shudder ran through me.  What did I do to deserve this much faith?

“Carolyn?  Marin? Who are you talk—”  Phelan stopped dead in his tracks, following our gaze.  His eyes widened and he went chalk-white.  “Bloody hell,” he breathed.

“Hello, cousin,” the Morrigan said softly.  “You’ve been missed.”

“I’ve been exiled,” Phelan said, his voice equally quiet.  “And I am perfectly fine with the arrangement.”  He swallowed hard.  “What do you want with us?  Who have you come for?”

“No one,” she said softly.  “Simply to warn.  You’re ill prepared, cousin, even with Seamus’s get among you, it may not be enough to sway Cariocecus from his goal of seizing this place from beneath your feet.”

Phelan shivered.  I took his hand and squeezed as tightly as I could.

“We’ll find a way,” he said, hoarsely echoing what was in my heart.  “There is no other choice.”

“So says the Taliesin,” the Morrigan said with a faint, wry smile.  “You’ve faced far more and suffered far more deeply than any other to bear that mantle, cousin.”  She stepped out of the tree’s shadow.  The winter sunshine was blinding against her pale skin, turned her coal-dark hair to ink.  She cupped Phelan’s face between long-fingered hands.  He squeezed his eyes shut.

“It’s neither the place nor the time,” Phelan whispered.  I could feel him shivering at her touch, trembling.

Phelan.

“There will never be another place, a better place, a better time,” the Morrigan whispered.  Her gaze took in Carolyn and I.  “And there will never be better witnesses than a guardian and a Seer.”

Cold and shadows wrapped around the four of us and for a moment, I could see nothing at all.

I began walking the wards every day after the day I collapsed while working them.  There was nothing else I could do and feel useful.  I couldn’t fix anything that was going wrong—except for  making sure our wards were as strong as we could make them, all the while counting the days and bracing for Midwinter Eve to come.  Midwinter Eve, when Cariocecus—the Shadow Man—had promised us he’d return.

We started working on a gate the very next morning.  No one was willing to risk the giant gap anymore, not after the firbolg and then the Dirae.

Walls that you can’t see, only feel, don’t always make people feel safe.

I was watching them work on that gate when Carolyn found me one afternoon, a few days after the night our little band had turned back the Dirae.  She didn’t say anything, just came and stood next to me, watching in silence as Drew, Jack, and Greg fit two-by-fours together to build the heavy gate.  Up at the forge, Matt, Phelan, and Thom were working on iron bands for those gates, to reinforce then, make them heavier, more dangerous to some of the monstrous things we might have to face.

“How’s Jay?”  I asked her after a moment of silence.  I felt something settle on my shoulder, something I couldn’t see.  Longfellow, probably.

Carolyn drew a ragged breath and sighed quietly.  “I don’t even know anymore,” she whispered.  “I can’t tell if there’s a change or not.  He sleeps.  He hallucinates.  Sometimes he talks to me, tells me things that I don’t know that I can or should repeat.  But mostly, he sleeps.  I can’t tell if the fever’s better or worse.  It’s so hard.”

I put my arm around her and squeezed her close.  “Are you okay?”

“No,” she said, tears welling up along the rims of her eyes.  She took a deep breath, seeming to steady for a moment.  “But showing it isn’t going to do anyone any good, so I’ve got to pretend that I’m fine—that everything’s going to be fine.”

“Everything will be fine,” I told her quietly.  “We’ve all come too far for someone to die of a little scratch.”

“It’s hot to the touch,” she said quietly.  “And it’s oozing this…this gross stuff.”

I frowned a little.  I hadn’t been privy to the details of what the Dirae’s claws could do, but it certainly sounded unpleasant.  “Did it just get to be too much?”

“Jacqueline’s looking in on him,” Carolyn said.  “She told me I should go out and try to get some air.  She said I looked like I could use it.  She was right.”

I nodded and squeezed her again.  “You want to take a walk?”

“I could probably use that, too,” she breathed, then shivered.  “Are we going to stay in camp?  Just in case?”

“I don’t go much beyond the borders anymore,” I admitted.  With the depth of snow in the area, it was getting harder and harder to move around even inside of camp, let alone beyond it where we rarely tread.  There was a path down to the greenhouse nestled a few hundred yards from the ward-lines, tucked up against the crumbling sciences building, but beyond that, there really weren’t any paths away from camp.  Even the sheep and horses stuck close to home these days, munching quietly on the fodder we’d gathered before the weather fouled it all.

Carolyn nodded slightly.  “You know, Jay wanted to go out to the barrows,” she said softly as we walked away from the gateway, along the wall and southward toward the ravine.  “After the we did…whatever the hell we’re going to do to make Cariocecus go away.  He wanted to go out to the barrow and honor the dead we’d buried there.”

“Again?”  I asked before I could stop myself.  She laughed a short, quiet, bitter little laugh.

“Yeah, that’s what I said.  I told him it was too cold.  He said that he knew it, but it’s the dying time of the year, and we should always find time to honor the dead whenever we’re celebrating being alive.”  Her lips thinned.  “He’s starting to scare me a little, Mar.  But I just love him so much…”

“I know, Care,” I said.  “Thom scares me sometimes, too.”  Not quite like that, though.  Wow.  Maybe the whole seeing dead people thing is affecting him more than I thought it might.

“I don’t know what I’ll do if he dies, Mar.”

“Jay isn’t going to die, Care.”

“How do you know?” she asked, almost demanding.

I pointed to myself.  “Has visions.  He’s in them.”

She exhaled a shaky breath.  “They’re not always right, though.”

“He’s in too many for me to be wrong, Care,” I said, injecting as much confidence as I could into my voice.  In the back of my head a tiny voice was screaming that she’d never forgive me if I was wrong.

I’d better not be wrong.  Don’t you dare make a liar out of me, Jameson Thaddeus MacKenzie.  Don’t you dare.

“He’ll be fine,” I said firmly.  “You’ll see.”  He’ll be fine.  So with Cameron.  Everyone will be fine.

And we’ll beat Cariocecus’s ass into the dust and go on with life.  Because that’s what we do.  Kick ass, take names, lick our wounds, and go on with life.

Life.

He’ll make it.  We all will.

The queasy feeling in my stomach reminded me that there was the distinct possibility that I could be wrong.  I didn’t want to notice it, but I did.

For some reason, I always did.

Please.  This time, don’t be wrong.  I can’t afford to be wrong.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Phelan took him by the arms and gave him a little shake.  “Tell me your wife isn’t pregnant.  For the love of powers above, below, and sideways, tell me that Marin isn’t pregnant yet.”

Thom blinked at him. “If she is, she hasn’t said anything to me yet, and if she hasn’t said anything to me yet, that’s because she doesn’t know.”  His gaze turned wary.  “What brought this conversation on?  Do you know something I should know?”

“Déithe agus arrachtaigh, I hope not,” Phelan said with a faint shudder, glaring at his cousin.  “The tides of time and prophecy are shifting rather seriously right now and I’m not sure how many more surprises I can handle.”

“If Seamus handled us when we were young, you can handle whatever’s coming at you now,” Neve muttered, her glare shifting from him to the fire instead.  “It’s not like this baby is going to spell the world’s doom.”

Thom glanced between the two of them, his brows knitting.  Phelan heaved a sigh.

We can hope it’s not—pray it’s not.  “What did you need, Thom?”

“I just went looking for Jay and Carolyn told me he’s sick.  What the hell is going on?”

Phelan winced.  Of course no one told him.  But wait, wasn’t he bleeding last night, too?  “You’re not sick.”

Thom’s brows knit.  “Why would I be sick?”

“Didn’t one of the hags get a piece of you last night?”  Phelan’s heart started to beat a little faster.  If they had and Thom wasn’t feeling the effects, that was either a very good thing or a very bad thing.

He’s got as much of our blood as anyone.

“You mean that gash on my arm?”  The Seer flushed and shook his head.  “No, that wasn’t from them.  I snagged myself on some scrap I was helping Matt with before the fight started.  Didn’t realize I was bleeding until after we were done with the fight.  Marin disinfected it for me.”

“Let me see it,” Phelan said, his heart in his throat.  It wasn’t that he didn’t believe the other man, but he needed to see it for himself, to prove to himself that what Thom was saying was true.

“The gash?”  Thom frowned but shrugged out of his jacket.  “You sure you’re okay, Phelan?”

“Fine,” he muttered.  “Just show me.  Didn’t need a stitch or anything?”

“It wasn’t that deep,” Thom said as he yanked off his shirt so Phelan could get a good look at the four-inch cut on his upper arm.  “Just stung like hell, that’s all.”

Phelan studied the cut, ran his finger bare millimeters from its edge, then breathed a quiet sigh of relief. It looked normal, as if it was just what Thom said it was—an accidental cut he’d gotten while helping his brother-in-law.  “Sorry,” he muttered.  “Just a little paranoid.  With Cariocecus coming so soon, we—”

“Believe me, you don’t have to tell me that we’re in the shit,” Thom said.  “I know we’re in the shit.”

“What the hell does he want with all of you anyway?”  Neve asked suddenly.  “What did you do to piss him off, Phelan?”

“Point of fact, it’s not Phelan’s fault,” Thom said, turning to Neve.  “Vammatar and a possible attack by Swedish werewolves might be, but Cariocecus isn’t his fault.”  A shadow passed over his expression, settled across his eyes.  “That bastard’s after Marin and I.  I couldn’t even begin to tell you why, though.”

Neve’s eyes flicked toward her cousin, who winced and turned away.

“Put your shirt back on, Thom,” he muttered.  He was momentarily worried and at the same time thankful as he belatedly noticed that Thom was still taping his ribs.  Better to be safe with those than sorry, I guess.  Maybe Marin’s got a little more control of that situation than I ever thought she did.

But with what happened to her yesterday…

Phelan swallowed bile and tried not to think about what Marin’s collapse could mean.  It wasn’t because she’d overdone it, no matter how many times it was said.  In the pit of his stomach, he knew that it was more than that, worse than that.

Worse yet, he suspected she knew it, too.

If she knows it, odds are she doesn’t want Thom to know it, either.  Did he ever tell her why he was so afraid?

Did he ever tell her that he tried to run away from his own abilities because his visions were showing him her death?

“Phelan, what the hell is he talking about?”  Neve asked, her tone growing more insistent.  “Vammatar came after you?  And now Cariocecus is knocking at your door?”

“Their door, not mine,” Phelan mumbled, unable to quell the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.  Thom didn’t need to step up like that.  Cariocecus is my problem, too.

“And Vammatar?  I suppose they pissed her off somehow?”

“No.  That was all me.”  He glanced at Thom.  “And they’re just Scandinavian, not Swedish.”

“Sorry,” Thom said, gaze narrowing for a moment.  “It’s all Greek to me.”

Phelan snorted humorlessly.  “Clever, Thomas.”

“Stop changing the subject, Phelan,” Neve said.  “I have a right to know.  Something pulled Cameron here and he could be dying because of it.”

“So could Jameson,” Phelan snapped.  “And we both know that the Dirae and the Hecate didn’t show up here to tangle with me.  They were after him.”

“But she knows where you are now and she’s always had a hard-on for you.”  Neve started to struggle upright.  Thom bent down to help her, wincing slightly as he did.

“Careful,” he murmured quietly.  “I know what it’s like to have busted ribs and a busted leg.  Easier to stay put even if you don’t want to.”

She shook him off once she got the crutches under her.  “I don’t need to be careful right now.  I need answers.  Bloody hell, Phelan!  I thought we’d be safe when I realized you were here.  That we were here because there was something you needed to teach Cameron, or to tell him, or something.  But no, apparently we’re here and there’s some kind of war about to break out and now Cameron might be dying and there’s not a goddamned thing I can do about it so just tell me what the hell happened with Vammatar and why Cariocecus is coming here soon to pick another fight!”

“Vammatar’s dead and I killed her,” Phelan said flatly.  “That’s all there is to that.”

Neve sucked in a breath through her teeth.  “Now her sisters are going to come after you, aren’t they?”

“Of course they are, but they’ve got to find me first.”  He glanced sidelong at Thom.  “And it seems that there’s a group of friendly skinwalkers trying to put their hounds off my scent.  They showed up to warn us that they’d be coming, but something’s kept them from finding us thus far.”  And I’m continually thanking my lucky stars that they haven’t shown up here yet.

“And the fucking war god?”

“Was here before I was.”  Phelan glanced sidelong at Thom, who winced slightly.

“It’s true.  He had his minions chasing Jay and Care and Drew weeks before Phelan got here.  He almost killed Marin and I.”

Neve’s expression softened for a moment.  “So he really is after you, not Phelan.”

“Apparently so,” Thom said.  He shook his head slightly.  “We’re still trying to figure out why, but that seems to be the case.  On my wedding day, he gave us until Midwinter’s Eve and promised he’d be back then.  For some kind of reckoning, I guess.”

Her lips thinned.  “Cameron isn’t going to be better by then.”  She looked at Phelan. “Neither is Jameson, is he?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Phelan murmured, expression darkening.  “We’ll just have to find a way to fend the bastard off without them.”

“Can you do that?” she asked.

Thom was the one who answered with a grim, wry smile.  “We’re going to have to.”

Phelan just nodded, staring at the sun as it reflected off the fresh snow beyond the tent’s walls.

If the world’s going to survive with something close to a soul, we certainly will.

The sun was bright and high in the sky on a cold morning by the time he’d collapsed on a blanket near the fire, oblivious to the activity around him.  Someone had taken mercy on him and covered him with a blanket sometime between the time he fell over sideways and the time someone toed him awake around midday.  Phelan flailed weakly, muttering curse words in every language he knew, each more heartfelt than the last.

His hand struck the metal shaft of a crutch and his eyes snapped open.  Then he blinked blearily at what he saw, not quite believing his eyes.

“You’re supposed to be horizontal,” he said, his voice a little slurred with the last vestiges of sleep.  He sat up slowly, gaze sharp and never leaving his cousin’s face.  “What are you doing up?”

“Jacqueline said that if I was bound and determined to get up and be about, she’d let me as long as I used the crutches and stayed off my leg.”  She looked doubtfully at the ground.  “Unfortunately, I haven’t quite figured out how to gracefully sit down while using these things, and falling hurts.”

Phelan made a face and stood up to help her sit.  “You look like hell, cousin.”

“Have you looked in a mirror lately?”  Neve winced as he helped her lower herself to the ground.  Her whole leg was splinted from ankle to thigh and bound tightly.  Phelan barely suppressed the urge to shake his head.

“I what’s wrong with me is nothing a few nights of sleep won’t fix.  I suspect that you’re in worse shape.”

“Unfortunately, that’s what happens when a firbolg throws you into a tree,” she said with a slight wince as she shifted, trying to get comfortable on the hard ground.  Phelan wrapped his blanket around her and felt her forehead.  Still warm, but the fever seemed lower now.  “Stop fussing, Phelan,” she muttered.  “I’m going to live.  Whatever was in that syringe that I got stabbed with seems like it’s doing the trick.”

“It’s a course of antibiotics and you’re lucky you’re not allergic to them,” Phelan said, brows knitting.  “I’m willing to lay pretty good odds that you’ve been running that fever for weeks and lying and saying that you were absolutely fine to travel.”

“Cameron knew I was lying,” she said softly.  “But he wasn’t going to gainsay me.  That’s the way he is.  He realizes when I’m going to be stubborn about something and lets me do it.”

But at what cost?  Your life?  That’s too high a price.  Phelan turned away, stared at the fire for a moment.  If Cameron pulled through the infection that was already raging in him, he and Phelan were going to need to have a nice, long talk about how to stop Neve from doing stupidly dangerous things.  “He should know when to stop you,” Phelan muttered, half under his breath.

“That’s not your place to decide,” Neve said firmly, jaw setting.  All that did was emphasize how thin and frail she looked, especially with the deep, bruise-colored shadows beneath her eyes.  “That’s between him and I.”

“When it endangers both of your lives, it becomes my business,” Phelan said, standing up and clearing the sleep from his eyes.  He looked around, trying to get his bearings—trying to figure out what time of day it was, which fire he’d collapsed near.

Secondary cookfire, apparently.  Tala was waving from across the way.  He lifted his hand in vague greeting and stretched, looking back at Neve.  The younger woman was glaring daggers at him.

“Who died and made you the fucking Taliesin?”

He skewered his cousin with a baleful look.  “Don’t go there, Neve.  Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to.”

Never in a thousand generations would he have ever thought that his cousin could go paler than she already was.  Her flesh was already the color of fine parchment but now it was positively white, the color of the snow beyond the tent’s boundaries.

“Seamus,” she breathed.  “Seamus was the Taliesin?”

“Like your grandfather before him,” Phelan said bitterly, though it was a bitterness he didn’t quite feel. He checked his tone and sighed.  “He passed the mantle to me a very, very long time ago.”  It certainly gave me a good excuse to disobey Uncle’s edicts, though I could never tell anyone that.

“And you’ve been—”

“Chasing the prophecies ever since, yes,” Phelan said, his voice quiet and eyes distant.  “And I will tell you truthfully that prophecies are damned unhelpful sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” Neve murmured.

“Most of the time,” he amended, nose wrinkling slightly.  “And upsetting most of the rest of the time.  They certainly don’t make life easy.”

“Phelan, are there—”

“I told you not to ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to,” he said, scrubbing both hands over his face.

Neve flinched.  “That means there are.”

“Of course there are.  There always are.  There’s prophecies about you, there’s shit about Marin and Thom and Teague and my baby sister, too.  There’s prophecies all over the damned place and it’s a bitch to keep them straight—especially when the interpretations change with each passing second when I realize I was wrong about how something was supposed to go, or that I’d read something wrong or that what I’d been told was only part of the full utterance.  No wonder Seamus always looked like he was trying to pass some kind of stone.”

“Does Teague know?”

“Yes,” Phelan said, looking away.  “I had to tell someone, Neve.”  As Brighid said once, it’s too heavy a burden for one to shoulder alone.  He’d told her and Finn, once upon a time, and her brother as well.  They had carried his secret to their graves.

Possibly beyond, he realized as his thoughts turned to Matt and Marin and their uncanny—almost inexplicable—attachment to him.

“What do they—”

“Don’t ask,” he said quietly, staring at the fire.  He absently reached for another log and settled it amidst the flames.  “None of it matters until there’s children.”

“Phelan,” Neve said, her voice weak.  “There’s going to be.”

“Not yet,” he said, not quite catching her meaning.  “We still have time.  Years, I hope.”  Years are what we’ll need, if I can keep everyone alive that long.

“We don’t have years,” she said.  “Phelan, I’m pregnant.”

He swore and didn’t stop until a very surprised Thom joined them a few minutes later.

            “Phelan, what the hell was all of that?”

            He winced slightly, not turning as he kept on scrubbing the blood from his hands near the fire.  The sky was slowly growing light in the east and his eyelids were heavy.  It’d been a long, agonizing night.  He’d count them all lucky if Rory, J.T., and Thom didn’t end up with raging infections like the one that was currently ravaging Cameron.

            “Now really isn’t a good time, Marin,” he murmured, still scrubbing—scrubbing so hard that his hands were turning red from the force of it.  Head in the game.  Focus.  Bigger problems.

            What the hell was that with Cariocecus?

            And what the hell was the Hecate on about—Seamus’s bloodline?  A muscle in his jaw twitched. If he ever got his hands on his purportedly late cousin…

            Get off the crazy train.  Now’s not the time for that.

            “If we always waited for a ‘good time’ around here, Phelan, we’d never get anything accomplished and no one would know anything.  Now talk to me.  What the hell happened tonight?”  She came around the edge of the bucket he was using to scrub his hands and stared at him in the half-light of breaking dawn and the nearby fire.  The flames flickered and danced, catching on red and blonde strands amidst her dark mane.  For a moment, she looked so much like his long-dead friend, Brigid, it made his throat swell with emotion.

            I’ve lived too damned long.  “Déithe agus arrachtaigh, Marin,” he murmured.  “You know you’re one of the few women who’s ever dared to speak to me like that?”

            “What are you talking about?”  Her brows knit and she tilted her head to one side.  “Are you feeling all right?”

            He wasn’t, in fact, but he wasn’t about to share that fact at the moment.  There wasn’t anything wrong with him that a few hours’ sleep wouldn’t fix—or so he was hoping.  Phelan just shook his head and looked down into the dark basin of water, slowly turning red as he washed blood from his hands.  “The same as always, just tired.  What do you want to know?”

            “Just what I asked.  What the hell happened out there?  I can understand why you asked for the antibiotics short courses on everyone, since that’s pretty much what we did the last time someone got shredded by something supernatural with claws, but that doesn’t explain what I witnessed out there, now does it?”

            “How much did you hear?” he asked, frowning as he scrubbed his hands.  Why didn’t they seem to want to come clean?

            Too many years.  Too much blood.

            Marin frowned.  “Enough that I know that there’s a lot of backstory going on that I haven’t been privy to.  Are you sure you’re okay?”  She held the lantern in her hand a little closer and winced.  “Phelan, you’re scrubbing them raw.  Stop.”

            “There’s still blood on them,” he muttered.

            She took hold of one of his wrists and squeezed.  “They’re clean, Phelan,” she whispered. “Come on.  Let’s get something hot into you, okay?”

            He’d admired how quickly she could go from hard and demanding to tender and caring in a second flat.  That was another thing that reminded him of her long-ago predecessor.  He shook his head slightly as he let her draw him away from the basin.  “You remind me so much of her tonight.  Brighid.”

            She slid her arm around his shoulders and gently steered him toward the cookfire.  “Yeah.  You’ve said that before.”

            “I know,” Phelan said softly, “but tonight especially.”

            “Don’t try to distract me, Phelan,” she said, her tone firm even if her voice was tired.  “I still want to know what the hell happened and you’re the only one who can tell me right now.  I tried to get it out of Thordin and he just looked at me like I was crazy for asking.”

            He probably thinks you’re crazy for wanting to know, but I think he’s a little scared of you, too.  He saw you with that bow.  He sees in you what I’ve seen.  Phelan closed his eyes and shook his head slightly, his wet fingers knitting together.  “Is there a towel around here?”

            “Here.”  She dropped one over his clasped hands then started worrying about putting some water on.  He opened his eyes and began to scrub the water from his hands, wincing as he realized she was right.  He’d scrubbed them almost raw in his zeal—or the post-traumatic stress, whichever might be the case.  “Now will you just talk to me?”

            “Yeah,” he said with a quiet sigh.  “So…about what happened out there…”

            “Who was she and why did Cariocecus show up to get her out of our hair, Phelan?  He doesn’t like us.  He promised on my wedding day to come back and deal with us because he wants this patch and we’re on it.”

            Phelan set his jaw, looking Marin dead in the eye.  “Are you going to ask questions, or are you going to let me talk, leannán?”

            She went quiet, lips thinning.  “I’ll let you talk,” she murmured, turning away again to get him a mug for his coffee or tea—whatever she decided to pour him.  He decided he didn’t care which he got, so long as it was hot.  The cold seemed to be settling into his bones in ways it never had before.  Maybe it was his time in the river that did it.  Maybe it was something else.  He couldn’t be sure.

            “That was the Hecate,” Phelan said softly, spreading the towel over the edge of a nearby carton to dry.  “She’s had a beef with Teague and his family for near as long as I can remember—back before I had an issue with Vammatar, his family was having issues with that bitch.”

            “The Hecate,” Marin echoed quietly.  “The crossroads and magic goddess from Greek mythology?  That one?”

            “For better or worse,” Phelan said, shoulders slumping.  “I don’t know what one of his ancestors did to her or failed to do, but she’s had a hard-on for taking them out ever since whatever happened…happened.”

            “You don’t even know what happened?”  She pressed a mug of something steaming into his hands.  He sniffed it.  Mint tea.

            Good, because I’m feeling pretty damned ragged.  “No.  His father didn’t like to speak of it, so I imagine it was something that he might have done that sparked this little feud that’s lasted a hundred generations and more.”

            “And because he’s dead—”

            “Because he’s dead and she hates Teague, she’s taken it out on him ever since,” Phelan snapped, biting down hard on his tongue.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to—”

            “It upsets you,” Marin said softly as she sat down with him, wrapping her arms around her knees.  “Whatever badgering of him she’s doing.  It bothers you a lot.”

            Phelan nodded, staring into the fire.  “I didn’t have brothers, Marin,” he murmured, “but I had Teague and Seamus.”

            “So their fights became your fights?”

            He closed his eyes, nodding again.  “Aye.  And this one…this was one of the worst.  That bitch can bear a grudge weighing twice as much as any load Atlas ever shrugged off his shoulders.”

            “Strange to hear someone call a freaking goddess a bitch.”

            He had to laugh.  “If the shoe fits, leannán, they get to wear it.”  He sobered after a moment and stared into his mug.  “I never told you why I was late getting here, did I?  Hell, why Teague and Kira sent me in the first place instead of coming themselves.  I never told you, did I?”

            “No,” she said softly.  “You never did, but I don’t think any of us asked, either.”

            “Not in so many words,” he agreed.  He took a long swallow of his tea, gathering his thoughts before he began to explain.  “I had to find a way to make sure she wouldn’t find him or find you,” he said at last, settling on the full truth and full disclosure. “I stuck closer to the city, planting false trails and false leads until it was almost too late.  Then it was all I could do to start making my way here.  As it was, I was too late to help the first time you went toe-to-toe with Cariocecus and his band of merry were-bat things.”

            “Camazotzi,” she said with a faint, wry smile.

            “Yeah, those ugly bastards.”  Phelan knuckled his eyes and sighed.  “The Hecate is the last—and I do mean the last—thing I’d want to pit any of you against.  On a good day, she could take any one of us out.”

            “We’ve got three of you,” Marin said softly.  “And then you’ve got all of us plus Excalibur.  Does that even the odds a little?”

            “Only if Cameron’s recovered and Neve’s able to fight when she comes back,” Phelan murmured.  “And it’s not an if—it’s a when. She’ll be back.  I don’t know what Cariocecus did with her, but it probably wasn’t pleasant and she’ll be even more pissed when she finally comes back here.”

            Marin shook her head slightly.  “Is it possible that she’s weakened him enough to give us an edge in a couple weeks?”

            “I don’t know,” Phelan said honestly.  “But she did cut down our strength if the wounded here don’t recover quickly.  I wouldn’t count on Cameron’s help and I sure as hell wouldn’t count on Neve’s.”

            “Were they badly hurt?”

            Phelan’s nose wrinkled. “It’s not so much that Cameron’s wound was bad, it’s what the Dirae claws apparently do to him.”  He sighed.  “It’s like he’s one of us, but he’s not.  There’s a lot of Otherworld blood in him.”

            “That sounds like the rest of us,” Marin said, resting her chin on her knee.

            “Seems almost like he’s got more,” Phelan said.  “Like he’s half-blood or very nearly full-blooded.  It’s a bit of a concern for me, but…”  His voice trailed off and he sighed. “We’ve got a lot of other problems to sort out before I can waste my time with that mystery.”

            One corner of her mouth twitched.  “We must be rubbing off on you.  That sounds like something that’d have come out of Thom’s mouth, or Matt’s, or mine.”

            Phelan had to smile.  “Yeah, well, I guess it’s only payback for rubbing off on you.”  He reached over and tousled her hair lightly, smile softening.  “Thank you, leannán,” he said softly.

            “For what?”

            “Everything.”