Awakenings

            “Jameson.”
            He jerked awake out of a sound sleep and then stayed very still, breathing hard but shallow, body tense.
            Constance.  It was her voice again.
            He hadn’t heard any of them since the Morrigan…
            Stupid to think they’d gone away, right?  Of course not.  I’m the goddamned Spiritweaver, if I’m supposed to believe all the supernatural women we’ve run into in the past three months.
            J.T. shuddered slightly and swallowed hard.  Next to him, Carolyn stirred and pressed closer.  He chewed the inside of his lip as his arms closed around her, drawing her more tightly against him.  She was warm, real, alive.  The voices…weren’t.
            That didn’t stop the ghostly voice from saying his name again.
            “Jameson, trouble’s coming.  Be vigilant, my friend, please.  We cannot help you more than warning you this time.”
            His throat convulsed.  Damn it anyway, Constance.  Damn it anyway.  We did that ritual so you could go on to your rest.  Why didn’t you go?  Can’t you just leave well enough alone?
            If they had, though—she and the other ghosts—he and his friends would have joined them in death at least twice over by now.  Three times, in some cases.  In any case, she clearly hadn’t moved on after the rites they’d performed the night the shifters came, so the least he could do was acknowledge her warning.
            He took a shuddering breath and opened his eyes, looking toward the sound of her voice.
            It was as if she was built of silver light and smoke, dimly lit and misty, though her features were clear as daylight to him, right down to the polo and Bermuda shorts she’d been wearing when she died.  “Constance,” he whispered, “this had better be a pretty dire threat for you to wake me up out of a de—hard sleep to tell me about it.”
            “Someone is coming,” Constance said, her eyes like chips of polished flint in the darkness.  It was pitch black inside their shed but he could see her clear as day.  “We can’t save you, J.T.  Not this time.”
            All right, who?  He suppressed a groan.  “Something like Vammatar or the Shadow Man?”
            “No,” the ghost whispered, her spectral lips thinning.  “Something worse.  People.”
            It shouldn’t have been enough to make his heart and stomach sink in unison, but it did.  Supernatural threats had been easy to face compared to the idea that they might have to duke it out with some kind of band of marauders.
            That’s what we have the walls for, though, right?  He winced.  What if they’ve got guns—a lot of them?  And cars that somehow still work?  None of the ones left on campus did.  It was as if the asteroid had shorted out all of their vital systems, fried everything.  They’d been able to start a few of them in the days after the world ended, but within weeks even the oldest and least complex of them had just stopped working.  The flatbed had been last, sputtering and dying within the first weeks.
            He didn’t have any explanation for it.  No one had.  It just was.  Just like the generators.  Sort of like the radio that had blown up in Matt’s face.
            Of course, I don’t think Kellin and Drew think it actually exploded on accident, either.  J.T. closed his eyes for a moment, took two breaths and exhaled slowly before he opened his eyes and looked at the ghost standing over him again.  “How many? How long do we have?”
            “I don’t know,” she said.  “We just know that they’re coming.  Look to the south.  They’ll come from there.  Good luck.”  Her lips brushed his forehead in a phantom kiss that shot shivers through him, then she vanished into nothing.
            His arms tightened around Carolyn again as he kept right on shivering, as if the blankets suddenly weren’t enough to keep him warm.  Carolyn murmured in her sleep and pressed closer to him.  He swallowed hard.
            Raiders of some kind, coming here.  We don’t know how many or when they’ll come, but they’re coming.  How’s that going to sound to everyone else?  Like I’ve lost my bloody marbles.  He squeezed his eyes shut.  It wouldn’t be as bad as all that, would it?  No, it couldn’t be.  If everyone could believe that Thom and Marin saw things in visions, they could handle him getting warnings from ghosts.
            Couldn’t they?
            “Bloody hell,” he sighed, then buried his face in Carolyn’s hair, waiting for the shakes to stop.
            It took a long time, but eventually they did and he dropped off to sleep again.
            It didn’t last.

            “I want to know where you get off thinking you can lie to me after we’ve been honest with each other for so long so far, Phelan.”
            The muscles of his shoulders bunched as my words caught up with him that afternoon, long after our early morning conversation with Thom and Daniel.  Phelan was heading toward the forge, where my brother and Davon were working on a roof.  His back ramrod-straight, he turned slowly back toward me, brows knitting.
            “You can’t tell me that we’ve been entirely honest, Marin.”  His tone was neither accusing nor angry; it was sad.  “There are always secrets.”
            “I haven’t kept any from you,” I said.  “And secrets aren’t flat-out lies anyway.  Why did you lie to us?”
            “What did I lie to you about?”  He asked.
            I rolled my eyes.  Really?  “Dragon.  You know something about him, something you don’t want to tell us.  Why?”
            A muscle in his jaw twitched and he stared at the gray sky, at the clouds that raced, promising more snow later this morning.  “Remember what I told you once about fear, Marin?”
            He’s afraid?  Why is he afraid?  I rocked back against my heels.  Now I really want to know whatever he knows.  This doesn’t make any sense.  “Phelan—“
            He held up his hand and sighed, shaking his head.  “Never mind it.  I’m sorry.  You’re right.  At some point, I’m going to have to stop trying to protect all of you from everything I know and fear.”  His lips compressed into a line until he blew out a breath.  With that breath, he seemed to exhale some of the tension that had gripped him.  “Dragon.”
            “Yes,” I said, stepping closer and lowering my voice.  “Dragon.”
            His gaze returned to the sky, his lips barely moving as he spoke and his words almost torn away by the light wind slowly kicking up.  “Teague saw a man by that name rising here after…after the asteroid.  He would struggle, would try to bring hope in the darkness—like all of you here—but the true leader and hero would be his son, long after the father had vanished.”  Phelan’s hands curled into fists.  “He saw that much, but wouldn’t say more.  Every time I asked to talk about it, he’d refuse.  He just…I don’t know, Marin.  He never wanted to talk about it.  Acted like it was dangerous to talk about it.”
            Why the hell would it be dangerous to talk about something like that?  Even as I asked myself the question, I began to realize the possibilities.  “I imagine if Teague ever met the man, he wouldn’t warn him about this supposed destiny of his, would he?”
            Phelan’s brows knit again for a moment, then he sighed.  “No, I suppose he wouldn’t.  I’d be surprised if he did.”  Momentarily, Phelan looked like he wanted to punch something, then the moment passed and he just seemed tired again.  “That’s Teague, though.  I’m not my cousin.”
            “No,” I agreed quietly as I took his hand.  “You’re not.”  I squeezed his knuckles and smiled weakly.  “I’m sorry I came after you like this, but…”
            “It’s all right.”  He shook his head.  “I needed it, in a strange way.  Every time I try to protect all of you, you guys just keep finding ways to remind me that you’re capable of taking care of yourselves—with a little help.”  A wry smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.  “Speaking of a little help, I promised your brother I’d help with that roof over there.  Jameson said I should be all right as long as I don’t fall off the roof.”
            I squeezed his hand again and let go.  “I won’t keep you from it.  Go on.”
            He smiled at me as he turned away and continued up the hill.  I shoved my hands into the pockets of my sweatshirt and headed back down toward the main tent, where Thom would undoubtedly be with his maps and sketches.  I waved to Tala as I passed the meat smokers and she waved back.  She glanced sidelong at one of them before she half walked, half jogged away, toward me.  I stopped and waited for her to catch up, wincing.  It was still early in her pregnancy and she was already huge.
            She poked me in the ribs as she joined me.  “I saw that wince.  What was that for?”
            I shook my head.  “Running can not be comfortable for you right now.”
            “Eh.”  Tala shrugged.  “It’s not, but sometimes it has to be done.  Thanks for waiting for me.  Are you headed back to the main tent?”
            “Yeah, to see what everyone else is up to.  Why, do you need something?”
            “Just some water.  Mind if I walk with you?”
            “Not at all.”
            We fell into step together as we headed back toward the main tent, her steps a little shorter than mine.  Despite how round her belly was, she still moved pretty well.  I glanced at her sidelong.
            “Did we ever figure out when it happened?”
            “This?”  She pointed to her belly.  “No, not precisely.  We think maybe June or July, but it’s hard to know.  Without ultrasound or anything like that, the techniques we’ve got to work with are positively medieval.  I’m not sure what we’d be doing if Jac hadn’t taken that one class, you know?”
            I wasn’t sure what class Tala was talking about, but I decided it was probably safer not to ask.  I had little doubt that it was probably a midwifery class or something in the school of nursing.
            “Should you really be…well…”
            “This huge at four or five months in?  No, probably not.  Jac’s a little worried, but I decided what’s the point in getting terrified?  We won’t know anything for a little while still.  Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe it happened sooner and that’s why I’m already as big as a flipping house.”  She blushed a little.  “Not that I’m not pretty big to start out with.  That probably has something to do with it.”
            I snorted.  “Somehow, I don’t think that’s entirely the case.”  Our shoes crunched against gravel and fallen leaves, snow that had melted down and refrozen again into ice.  “What if it’s more than one?”
            “You mean like twins?  Fuck if I know, Mar.  I’m still not sure how I’m going to handle one, let alone more than one at the same time.”  Her eyes focused distantly for a moment before she shook herself.  “At least I’ll have all of you guys to lean on.  And help with the walking and the bathing and the changing.  The feeding not so much, but something tells me that won’t be a problem.”
            How does she know that?  My nose wrinkled, but I didn’t ask the question, changing the subject instead.  “How do our food supplies look?”
            “We should have enough,” she said.  “It’s looking okay.  If we can bag some more game, we’ll be in even better shape.  The cereals and everything seem like they’ll keep, and we actually got a surprising amount of produce that we’ve managed to find ways to preserve for the winter.  I’m not sure how those little greenhouses are going to end up working out, but they seem like they’re doing okay so far.”  She canted her head to one side.  “Come to think of it, I should check with Professor Doyle on that.  Get an update on how they’re doing.”
            “That might be a good idea,” I said.  “Never know when we’re going to need them—or how bad this winter’s going to be.”  The memory of an earlier vision came to mind, of figures clustered around a fire, the sound of someone laying bricks in the background.  A shiver shot down my spine.  Had we already changed that future?  To a degree, I suspected we had, but it would still be a long, cold winter.
            Unless that vision wasn’t of this first winter, but some later winter after something really, really terrible has happened.
            “You okay?”
            “Yeah,” I said, chafing my hands over my arms.  “I’m fine.  Just a little chill, that’s all.”
            “You sure?”
            “Positive.”  My thoughts returned to Thom’s suggestion that we start writing down our visions.  I was still wondering what actual purpose it would serve, but even as I wondered, it started to sound more and more like a good idea.
            Just in case.
            In case of what, I wasn’t quite sure.  Then again, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be.

            “What?”
            Phelan smiled a bleak, weary smile as he came into the glow of the fire’s warmth and light.  “Someone got it into his head far too long ago for me to remember properly to spin a tale about me.  I count myself lucky in some ways that I didn’t land in very many eddas and sagas—at least not by name.  But Wanderer…that one stuck.”  His eyes focused on some faraway point that I couldn’t see.  “Often the solitary one / finds grace for himself / the mercy of the gods, / Although he, sorry-hearted, / must for a long time / row alone / along the waterways, the ice-cold sea, / tread the paths of exile.”  His eyes fluttered closed and he sighed.
            Thom squeezed my knee and cleared his throat.  “You always made it sound like your exile was self-imposed.”
            “It was, to a degree,” Phelan said quietly.  “My uncle might have exiled me had he the chance, but he was dead before he could take any action.  The hunting accident that wasn’t.”  He knuckled his eyes and sighed.  “His son and I buried him.  Teague and I.  My lord buried deep, and I left.  I wandered alone, often too late to save anything important to me.
            “The woman in J.T.’s dream,” I said.
            Phelan winced.  “Aye.”
            I winced with him.  Another thing he views as a failure.  I shouldn’t have said anything.
            Daniel cocked his head to one side, studying Phelan.  “She spoke so well of you.  I think she cared a lot.”
            “She did, though it was never love,” he said.  “I sometimes wish it was.  Perhaps things would be different if it had been.”
            My hands tightened around my mug.  He’d talked about love before, though not often.  He envied his cousin, his best friend—that much was clear.  I leaned against Thom and let him slide his arm around my shoulders.  Poor Phelan.
            “If you could have gone back, why didn’t you?”  Thom asked.  “Why stay out in the world and be alone?”
            “Someone had to,” Phelan said simply, shrugging slightly.  “How could we abandon our isle, the people we knew, that had been our allies?  That was part of why my uncle and I went rounds.  I didn’t see how we could just walk away and leave them to their own devices.”  His eyes roamed, falling on the kettle.  He heaved himself upright and got himself a mug.  “I was the logical choice to wander.  Teague had to do…what he had to do…and we were always protective of our sisters.”
            Something about the words struck me and I saw a flash of the girl and the man from my dream, leaving my head ringing like a bell in its wake.
            “That’s it,” I said.  “That’s who it was.”  I looked at Phelan.  “Dragon.  Have you ever heard of someone called Dragon?”
            He froze in the middle of reaching for the teapot.  “What?”
            “Dragon,” I repeated.  Now everyone was looking at me strangely.  I didn’t care.  That’s who I saw.  Dragon is his name, even if I don’t know who she was—but I’m willing to bet if it wasn’t Phelan’s sister, then it was Teague’s.  One of them.  That must be it.  I was going on gut instinct and intuition, but often those were all I had when it came to these visions.  “Do you know someone called Dragon?”
            “Not in two hundred generations and more,” Phelan said, nerves betrayed by the slight tremor in his hand as he wrapped it around the teapot’s handle.  “Why?”
            I looked at Thom.  He frowned.
            “The dream from this morning?”
            I nodded.  “I realized why the man was familiar.  I saw him in another vision.  You and I were talking about someone named Dragon in that one, but I’ve seen him in others.  He’ll come here, and we’ll welcome him, ask him to share our fire.  He’s an ally—or will be, someday.”  Someday, though I can’t tell how far in the future that’ll be.  My hand drifted unconsciously toward my belly.  It would be sometime after we conceived our first child—but when would that be?
            Thom gave me a strange look even as he squeezed me tighter against his side.
            “Dragon,” Phelan said, then shook his head slowly.  “I don’t know,” he said softly, then shuddered.
            I bit my lip.  Why is he lying about it?  What does he know about this Dragon person?  “I think he was with one of you.”
            Phelan just stared at me and I blew out a breath.
            “If it wasn’t your sister or your cousin…”
            He swallowed hard.  “I can’t be sure which it would be,” he said after a few long moments of silence.  “I suppose we’ll be finding out, won’t we?”
            “Then you have heard of someone by that name,” Thom said, his tone faintly accusing.
            Phelan winced again.  “Just in the way that Teague talked about someone by that name joining us someday.  Nothing solid.  He…I…”  He blew out a frustrated breath and shook his head.  “He didn’t anyone everything.  Not Kira.  Not his sister or Aoife.  Not even me.  Always with secrets.
            “I just have to keep hoping that those secrets aren’t going to get us killed someday.  Whatever he knew, whatever he saw…I just have to hope that whatever you two can see will give us enough warning to act in the years to come.”
            That sent shivers up and down my spine.  I felt Thom swallow.
            That’s not comforting.  Not at all.
            “Yeah,” I said.  “I guess we’ll just have to hope.”

            I shook my head.  It didn’t always feel like a blessing.  Thom squeezed me gently.
            “You didn’t ask if she was a druid,” Thom said, his tone careful and curious all at once.  “Why not?”
            “She doesn’t have the look of one,” Daniel said.  “There’s a look they’ve got, and a feel.”  He offered me a smile.  “Not that I don’t have the utmost respect for you anyhow.”
            I choked back a laugh as I got up to rescue the steaming kettle from the fire.  “No offense taken, I promise.”  Not on my end, anyway.  I filled a small teapot with the hot water and let the tea steep before I started to pour it.  Both men stared off into the darkness, leaving me to my brief bout of domesticity.
            “You know,” I said as I finally began to pour the tea, their silence a little more than I could bear.  “You never did tell us who Kit O’Shea was and how she knew Phelan.”
            The corner of his mouth twitched.  “I was wondering how long it would be before someone asked about her.”  Daniel stretched languidly as he accepted the mug I offered him.  “She was one of my professors at university.  A cultural anthropologist trying to unravel the mysteries of Celtic civilizations across time.  She always used to talk about this chap that she knew in old days, red hair, quick wit, given to occasional brooding, said he knew more about the lost history of the Celtic peoples than anyone she’d ever met.  I think she half believed that the tales he told her were real.  She passed them on to me over a pint or twelve.
            “Called him Wanderer, said his real name was Fallon or some rot like that.  I think they might’ve had a fling once upon a time back in the seventies, but I could never be sure since she’d never talk about it—only about his stories.  Of course, I got the idea in my head to start doing research on the chap.”  Daniel took a long swallow tea.  “Have you ever heard the legend of the Wanderer?”
            “Can’t say that I have.”  I glanced at Thom and he shook his head, shrugging with one shoulder.
            “What about it?”
            “It’s an old English piece,” Daniel said, stretching again.  “Most folk only know the part about the horse and the rider.”
            Thom’s brow arched and he looked at Daniel askance.  The shifter grinned.
            Then he began to sing.
            His voice came soft, lilting, his accent making the words seem more otherworldly.  

Where is the horse gone? Where the rider?
Where the giver of treasure?
Where are the seats at the feast?
Where are the revels in the hall?
Alas for the bright cup!
Alas for the mailed warrior!
Alas for the splendour of the prince!
How that time has passed away,
dark under the cover of night,
as if it had never been!
Now there stands in the trace
of the beloved troop
a wall, wondrously high,
wound round with serpents.
The warriors taken off
by the glory of spears,
the weapons greedy for slaughter,
the famous fate (turn of events),
and storms beat
these rocky cliffs,
falling frost
fetters the earth,
the harbinger of winter;
Then dark comes,
nightshadows deepen,
from the north there comes
a rough hailstorm
in malice against men.
All is troublesome
in this earthly kingdom,
the turn of events changes
the world under the heavens.
Here money is fleeting,
here friend is fleeting,
here man is fleeting,
here kinsman is fleeting,
all the foundation of this world
turns to waste!

             The words struck me with their familiarity, though I couldn’t quite place their origin.  I knew I’d never heard of the poem he’d referenced, but the words felt like ones I’d heard—or read—before.
            Thom just stared at him.  “That’s from Lord of the Rings, isn’t it?  Aragorn, Rohan, something like that.”
            Daniel smiled. “It’s from an Old English poem about the Wanderer.”
            “So, wait,” I said, shaking my head hard.  “You’re saying that your professor thought that Phelan was connected to this poem somehow?”
            “Not quite,” Phelan’s voice said heavily from the darkness behind me.  “Kit knew it was connected.
            “Leannán, the poem is about me.”

Translation of “The Wanderer” is from Anglo-Saxons.net.

            There was snow on the ground, the paths between the rows of sheds dusted with wet, fluffy white.  A warm snow, but snow just the same.  It was still falling as we stepped out into the darkness before dawn, our breath steaming in the air as the snow hit our sweatshirts and jeans, our gloved hands and our hair, melting quickly against the warmth of our bodies.
            Thom shook his head, dusting some of the damp white from his hair as we headed for the tent that still held our cookfire and piles of extra dorm furniture.  “Snow.  Barely November, and snow every night.”
            “It’s not going to get any better,” I said as I leaned against him.  He slid an arm around my waist.  “At least not until March or April.  It’ll just get worse.  Michigan winter to the Nth degree.”
            He sighed and shook his head again.  “I was holding out some hope, you know?  That maybe the snow and everything in October was just some kind of cold snap.”
            “I’ve got news for you—it wasn’t.”  I kissed his jaw lightly as we crossed into the tent.  Rory glanced up from his spot near the fire, brows knitting.
            “What the hell are you two doing up?  Did someone forget to relieve me from the graveyard?”
            “Apparently so,” I said.  “How long has it been snowing?”
            He shrugged.  “Maybe an hour.  You lose track of time, sitting here at night.”  He stretched and stood up, smothering a yawn.  “Must be around three-thirty or four.  Someone’s usually relieving me by now, but I haven’t seen anyone.  Mind if I go to bed?”
            I shook my head as I started to fill a kettle with water.  “I don’t see a reason to make you stay up.  Do you, Thom?”
            “Sack out, Rory,” Thom said, hefting a log and adding it to the smoldering cookfire.  “Has it been quiet tonight?”
            “Like the grave,” Rory answered around a yawn.  “Haven’t seen or heard anything.  Things have been quiet since the pack of puppies showed up.”
            I winced at the terminology and shook my head.  “Don’t let them hear you call them that again.  The little one about took your head off the first time.”
            Rory shot me a cheeky, if tired, grin and wandered off toward his bed.  I just sighed and shook my head again.
            “He’s going to insult the wrong thing someday and get himself killed.”
            Thom chuckled, taking the kettle from me.  “More than likely.  Let’s hope that day is a long, long time in coming, though.  We need all the hands we can get, and his ability to bitchslap the Greys is useful.”
            I couldn’t argue that point.  Hopefully he’ll learn not to do it in a way that isn’t a hard way.  I barely stopped myself from shaking my head a third time as I got two heavy mugs from the shelves of clean dishes nearby.  Thom settled by the fire, letting me continue my preparations for two mugs of strong black tea to get us through our early morning watch.
            The vision tugged at me, something niggling in the back of my brain.  There was something familiar about both of the figures—the man more than the woman—but I couldn’t quite sort out what it was.  I don’t understand why either of them would be that familiar.  I’ve never seen either of them before in my—
            Of course.
            “That’s it,” I murmured, feeling like I should smack myself upside the head.  I saw one—or both of them—in a vision at some point.  The question is, is it a vision I can remember, or is one I’ve forgotten?
            “What’s it?”  Thom asked as I turned and came back to the fire and settled in next to him.
            “The dream,” I said.  “The two people I saw.  They were familiar, but I know that I’ve never actually met them.  Then I figured it out.”
            Thom studied me for a long moment, then said, “You’ve seen them.  You’ve seen them before—in a dream, in something.”
            “Exactly,” I said.  I stared off beyond the fire, into the darkness of the night.
            “A seer, or a shaman?”
            I jumped two feet in the air at the sound of the barely-familiar voice, my heart starting to race at twice normal speed.  Thom jerked around and cursed, glaring at the shadows.
            “Goddamn it, Daniel.”
            The shifter melted out of the shadows behind us, looking only vaguely abashed for having startled us.  “Sorry.  I thought you’d heard me coming.”
            “For a werewolf, you move like a cat,” Thom said, waving for him to join us by the fire.  I got up to get another mug.
            Daniel winced slightly.  “Well, a hunter’s only as good as his ability to remain undetected, isn’t he?”  He seated himself near the fire, his back to the interior of the tent.  “Sorry to have startled you both.  That wasn’t my intention.  I’m not intruding, am I?”
            “No,” I said as I returned with the third mug.  “Neither of us could sleep.  You, too?”
            “At the risk of heightening my resemblance to a cat?  No, I couldn’t.  I’m one for short bursts of sleeping.  Catnaps, if you will.”  He offered us a brief, rueful smile.  “After an hour of staring at the ceiling, I decided it would be best to at least come where it’s warmer—not that your hospitality is not heartily appreciated.”
            He and the rest of his pack were sharing two of the spare sheds near the end of one of the rows.  There were a few that were unoccupied that we’d been planning on using for supplies until the need for them arose.  The fact that we hadn’t moved supplies into them yet turned out to be an unexpected boon.
            “You’re welcome to it,” Thom said.  He hadn’t warmed much to the five shifters in the week they’d been here, but they hadn’t crossed him, either.  Only Phelan seemed to regard them with more trepidation—though I had a feeling that had something to do with them calling him Wanderer upon their arrival.
            I still wondered who Cara O’Shea was, but I hadn’t had a chance to ask.
            “My thanks,” Daniel said, resting his hands on his knees as he sat cross-legged.  “So which is it, if you don’t mind my prying?”
            “Seer,” I said.  There wasn’t harm in telling him, I’d decided.  He was Drew’s half brother, after all—another story that hadn’t quite been relayed to us.  Sometimes I wonder exactly how much I really know about all of these people around me.  Even Thom and I have secrets—less now than we used to, but still.  What other surprises are going to come out of the woodwork?  “Been seeing things for a long time and it’s gotten worse since the world ended.”
            Thom winced slightly and put his arm around my shoulders.  He kept his mouth shut.
            If he wants to keep his own ability a secret, that’s fine by me.  “Why do you ask?”
            “Curious, largely because of what I overheard.”  Daniel smiled faintly and shook his head.  “From what I understand, it’s a rare gift—the gift of true visions, of true prophecy.  They come unaided?”
            “Unaided and unrequested,” I said with a rueful smile.
            “Remarkable,” the Welshman said, smiling faintly.  “A Cassandra.”
            “Cassandra?”  Thom asked.
            I don’t like the sound of this.
            “Cassandra,” Daniel said.  “From the Illiad.  Daughter of Priam of Troy.”
            What is he implying?  “Gift of prophecy.”  I stared at Daniel.  “But no one believed her.  I’m not her.  People believe me.”
            “Then you are truly blessed,” he said quietly, inclining his head.  “Truly blessed indeed.”

            The pair lay together inside a tent, the first rays of dawn lighting its pale walls.  The man held the woman protectively, not sleeping.  She pretended to sleep, her dark hair tickling his cheek.  They held their silence until the sun crept a little higher.  He shifted his weight.  She winced, catching her lip between her teeth.
            “We can’t stay here much longer,” she said quietly, turning her head to look at him.
            He gave her a squeeze and then eased away from her, starting to sit up.  He groped for a discarded shirt.  “We’re only staying until I think you’re fit to try and ride, Neve.”
            “We can’t be stuck here when the snow starts.”
            “We won’t be.”  He tugged the shirt down over his bare torso.  His shoulder and arm were marked by nasty, fresh scars from something, but they seemed to bother him little.
            “Cameron.”  The woman—barely more than a girl—pushed herself up on an elbow.  “The snow is coming soon.  We don’t have much time.  I will find a way to sit in the saddle, but we can’t stay here more than another day or two.  We have to keep moving.”
            He stared at her for a long moment, brows knitting.  “How do you know?”
            “Because I can feel the pressure changing in every part of me that’s broken.  The snows are coming.  We have to keep moving if we want to make it to some kind of settlement.  If it’s just you and I out here against the—”
            “Okay.  Okay, stop, I get it.”  He leaned in and kissed her gently, rested his forehead against hers.  “Just one more day, though, okay?  Let’s get one more good meal into us before we ride off into the unknown.  We’ll both need every ounce of strength a meal like that can give us, I think.”
            She kissed his cheek and stroked his jaw, nodding slightly.  “All right,” she whispered.
            A keening shriek split the air.  The man jerked.  The woman gasped.

 
            I pitched upright, sucking in breath as if I’d been drowning.  Thom fumbled for my arm in the darkness.
            “Marin?”  His voice was thick with sleep but equally weighted by concern.  “What’s wrong?”
            “A dream,” I whispered.  “It was just a dream.”  Just a dream.  It must have been.  I squeezed my eyes shut and saw the sudden terror etched on the woman’s face.  No.  Not just a dream.  A vision.  It was the first one in weeks.  I took another few deep, ragged breaths and forced myself to relax.
            Thom’s arms closed around me and he pressed a kiss to the nape of my neck.  “Are you okay?”
            “I don’t know,” I said quietly, shivering a little as I pressed back against him.  “I just saw something and I’m not sure if it was a vision or a dream.”
            He went rigid for a bare moment, then shuddered.  “Sorry,” he said.
            “It’s okay.”  I kissed his cheek gently and got out of bed, shivering again as the cold air kissed my body.  The radiant heat was working—the floor was certainly warm—but the lack of insulation thus far was showing.
            Thom had promised that they were working on that, but making sure the walls were as strong and secure as possible had taken precedence.  Every time a new threat reared its head, our defenses always seemed lacking.  I was beginning to wonder if we’d ever feel safe.
            “It’s still early, isn’t it?”  Thom stretched out on his side, hauling the blankets back up as I lit the lamp and started to get dressed.
            “Probably,” I said as I swapped my nightshirt for a tee and a sweatshirt.  “But after that, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be able to get back to sleep, so I might as well get up and go help get breakfast started.”
            Thom grunted and got out of bed.  “Guess I’ll check the walls, then, if you’re getting up.”  Our breath steamed in the chilly morning air, even inside, even with the heat rising from beneath our feet.  It never seemed to make it much further up than our waists.  As we each pulled on a pair of jeans, his gaze met mine.
            “What did you see, Mar?”
            I took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly.  “Two people in a tent, talking about how they couldn’t stay where they were, how they had to keep moving.  Snow was coming and they couldn’t afford to be stuck out in the open when that happened.”  I closed my eyes for a moment and shrugged.  “Sound logic.  It might have been a dream.”
            “What made you wake up the way you did, though?  You jerked up like someone had stabbed you something sharp.”
            “Something screamed,” I said, shaking my head.  “I woke up.  I didn’t see what it was.  I’m not even sure it was real.”
            He stared at me, expression serous and hard.  He shook his head slowly.  “Don’t lie to yourself, Mar,” he said, his tone soft, gentle.  “We both know it wasn’t just a dream.  It was something real.”
            “Something real I can’t do anything about.”
            He inclined his head.  “True.  But it was still something real.”  He pulled on his shirt and came to me, sliding his arms around my waist and drawing me tight against him.  “We should start writing them down.”
            “Writing what down?  What we see?”  My stomach twisted.  Why?
            Thom nodded slightly, resting his forehead against mine.  “Never know when someone else might need a record of all we’ve seen.”
            That makes sense.  But I don’t want to write down some of what I see.  “I don’t want to write all of it down,” I whispered.  Writing it down would make the nightmares real.
            “Neither do I,” he said.  “But that’s why we have to do it.”
            What brought this on?  I swallowed hard.  “Why all of a sudden…?”
            “Why do you think?”
            “Did Phelan say something?”  I asked.
            Thom shook his head.  “No.  I saw something, too, last night.  I think it’s time we stopped all the secrets and start being honest with ourselves and everyone else about what we see when the visions come.”
            “Are you sure it’s a good idea?”
            A wry smile touched his lips.  “No.  But I think it’s a necessary idea.”  He kissed my forehead again before letting go.  “Think about it, at least, before you tell me it’s a terrible idea.”
            I watched him as he sat down on the edge of the bed to pull on his socks and shoes.  “Okay.”
            “Okay you’ll think about it?”
            I nodded.  “I’ll think about it.”  I don’t like it, but I’ll think about it.  He could be right.
            But what the hell did he see that made him think that it was something we had to do?

            “Help me brace this door,” Gray growled, glaring at Wat.  The other man scrambled over and threw his weight against the doors alongside his friend.  Gray’s gaze flicked to Kes.  “Get the shotguns and get them fast.  I don’t care if they’ll do us any good or not, they’ll at least make me feel better.”
            Kes nodded and ducked into one of the side rooms.
            Aoife met Gray’s eyes, her breathing still shallow, still kneeling on the hard wooden floor.
            “We have until they break down the door,” he said, his tone even, voice not betraying even the slightest hint of fear.  “Tell us everything you can about what you’re afraid these are—and why you’re hoping it’s not them.”
            “It’s a long story,” she said.  With a lot of dirty laundry attached.
            “Hopefully we’ll have the time, but give us the short version first.  Highlights.”
            “R-right.”  Highlights.  That involves who and why and what.  She swallowed the bile rising in her throat, her stomach already trying to rebel against her.  “Déithe agus arrachtaigh,” she murmured to herself, then began to get her feet under her again.  Terézia offered her a hand up, which she gratefully accepted, reflecting maybe she could like the other woman after all.
                Once she was on her feet again, she wrapped her arms around herself tightly and sucked in a deep breath, finding her center and grounding points.  The air, even inside, buzzed with the evening’s power, the strength of Samhain and the thinning of the veil.  That’s to your advantage if you have to defend them.  Remember that.  “If they’re what I fear, they’re old enemies of my family.  Four sisters, the maidens of Tuonela—peddlers in pain and suffering, dealers of death and decay.  They’re northrons like us and would have taken the Tír for their own if we’d let them.  That’s where it started.  I suppose you can only take so much doom and gloom.”  Aoife gulped in air again, fighting down her nausea.  “I’m still not sure who crossed them first, who gave them the first insult, but I fear it was either Teague or my brother.”
                Kes returned with the shotguns, handed one of the three to Terézia.  She kept the other two for herself.  Aoife kept talking.
                “We had never been allies, not ever since before I was even born, but relations were at least neutral when I was a child.  That changed as I grew older.  There was an attack upon us in Eíre, during the days of old, before the first true kingdoms there.  My uncle and his armies turned them back, but not without a cost.  Hundreds died on their spears, when they came in their dragon ships and on the backs of worgs.”  A shudder shot through her and she caught her lip between her teeth.  “I was a child that first time.  The second time, I was older, and the fighting was more fierce.  We almost lost when they attacked with their allies.”  She shook her head slightly.  “It was the days of mythology—the days that are just barely remembered now as legend.”
                “And our furry friends out there?”  Gray prompted.
                “They’ve used them before– Kivutar, Loviatar, Kipu-Tyito, and Vammatar.  They’ve called upon the changers to aid them in the past, used them as hounds.  I’ve heard it whispered that it happened in the days of Bréanainn.”  She knuckled her eyes.  “They’re skinwalkers—more like shamans from the west than like the werewolves you’ve probably read about in books.  Not like the loup garou or anything like that.  They’ve taken on the form of the wolf in order to gain their strength and wildness, but they often lose themselves in the doing.  They’re warriors who chose this calling.  Not quite a berserker, but not quite a real man anymore, either.  They’re bloody well dangerous and I hope that they’re not what I think they are because they won’t stop until they’ve found their quarry.”  I hope it’s not us.  It’s terrible of me to hope that it’s not me, because it means that it’s someone else of my blood, but we’re not equipped to deal with that here.  We’re too few.  We didn’t have any warning.  Gods and monsters, I hope the others will.
                Terézia frowned slightly.  “…do you guys hear anything outside?”
                Wat shook his head.  “Not anymore, anyway.  Doesn’t sound like anything’s fighting out there anymore.”
                Then a voice echoed from beyond the doors.  “Aoife O’Credne!  I know you’re within; come out and have words with me.”
                Her blood ran cold and her jaw tightened.
                Met by silence, the voice outside continued.  “Come out, Lady of Sighs, you have my word of honor on the blood of my ancestors and on the blood of heroes I will not harm you this night.”
                “Who the hell is that?”  Gray asked, staring at her.
                “Cariocecus.”

                Elton and Wat were five steps away from the door as Aoife burst through it.  She ran right into the doctor’s chest and he caught her, held her fast.
                “Let go,” Aoife said, half breathless, half whimpering.  “There’s something outside.”
                Wat’s mouth snapped shut and he glanced from her to Gray, Terézia, and Kes.  “Is that what all the screaming was about?”
                “Something just changed from a man into a wolf,” Kes said.  “It was trying to look through the window at us and when we saw it, it ran away.”
                “A wolf was trying to watch you through the window?”  Elton said.
                “No, it was a man,” Kes said.  “He turned into a wolf when he ran away.”
                Wat looked at Kes, then at Terézia, then back at Kes.  “You know, I’d expect that from Teca, but you?”
                “No lie, Wat,” Gray said.  “We all saw it.”
                “Great, the crazy is catching.”
                “Fuck this shit,” Aoife said.  She stomped on Elton’s foot hard enough that the doctor yelped and let go of her.  She darted for the lodge’s doors.  “Gray, did you ever get to do more than sprinkle herbs around the place?”
                Gray glanced at Terézia quickly.  She shook her head.  “No, nothing else,” he said.
                Aoife cursed and threw the doors open, stepping out into the night. 
                “Damn it all,” Gray swore, pushing past Elton and Wat, going after her.
                Terézia darted after him.  “Wat, grab some shotguns.”
                “And load them with what?  Silver fucking bullets?”
                Kes squeezed his arm.  “We’ll just have to hope that they’re not here to hurt us—or that they’ll die when you shoot them just like anything else.”  She glanced at Elton.  “You better make sure the kids stay where you put them.”
                The doctor gave her a long, hard look and shook his head.  “You guys be careful.”
                “We will be.”  Kes squeezed Wat’s arm again before she turned to follow the others.

•          •          •

                Her heart thudded wildly against her chest as she scanned the pathway up to the lodge, the trees that lined it—anything and everything, searching for any sign of what they’d seen through the window.  She breathed through her mouth, trying not to gag on her fear.
                It doesn’t have to be those.  It could be another type of shifter.  It could be.  There’s no reason to assume it’s one of those.
                Except for the fact that her brother had been involved in some kind of altercation in Michigan, and it wouldn’t have surprised her in the slightest if their long-ago enemies had show up once again to trouble them.
                Our allies were always too few and far between.
                Someone’s hand closed on her shoulder and she went tense, poised to strike until she heard Gray’s voice.
                “I’ve got your back.”
                Those words were more comforting than they had any right to be.  She swallowed hard and nodded.
                Something growled ahead of them, to the left.  She broke out in a sweat, fighting to hold her shaking in check.  I’m not strong enough for this.
                The brush rustled.  Something leapt, a thing with sable fur and bright amber eyes that glowed from the inside out.
                A shriek echoed from above them and a shadow dropped from the sky, red-eyed and screaming, like a giant bat.  Aoife cried out, backing into Gray.  His arms wrapped around her and he spun her away, shielding her with his body.
                There was a wet crunching sound and a howl.  Both things tumbled off into the brush.  Gray shoved Aoife back toward the open lodge doors.
                “Get back inside!”
                Terézia caught her as she stumbled toward the doors.  Gray came on her heels, shoving both women back inside and slamming the doors behind them.  He leaned against them, breathing hard.
                “Wat, Kes—grab that bench and bring it over here.  We need to bar the doors.”
                “What the hell was that flying thing?”  Terézia asked, still holding onto Aoife.
                She couldn’t stop shaking, her heart hammering a thousand miles a minute.  “I’m not sure,” Aoife said, gulping in air, gobbling it greedily, as if it would help her steady herself.  “But I think we’re suddenly in the middle of some kind of twisted turf war.  It didn’t feel right—neither of them did.”
                Wood scraped on wood as Kes and Wat hauled the bench toward the main doors.  Gray helped them wrestle it into place and sank down on it, still breathing hard.  His gaze fell on Aoife.
                “But you know what those wolf-things are, don’t you?”
                “Hamrammr,” Aoife said, meeting his gaze.  The shakes wouldn’t stop.  Gods and monsters, pull yourself together!  “Scandinavian werewolves.  I think that’s what they are, anyway.”
                “Wait, what?”  Wat stared at her, then at his friends, then back to Aoife again.  “That’s awfully specific.”
                “It’s an awfully specific breed.  I hope that I don’t know who sent them.”
                Kes frowned.  “That doesn’t make any sense.”
                “It does when you know who’s used them in the past,” Aoife said grimly.  “And if they’ve been sent by the ones who’ve used them in the past, my brother has opened old wounds and sucked us into a war that I don’t think we can win.”
                “That’s terribly comforting,” Gray muttered.
                “I know,” Aoife said, finally stepping away from Terézia as she brought the shakes under control.  All she wanted was for Gray to put his arms around her and tell her everything was going to be all right—for anyone to do it, but for him most of all.  “That’s why I hope I’m wrong.”
                “And if you’re not?”
                She exhaled.  “Then we hope that they’re only hunting for Phelan and that they’ll lose interest when they figure out that I’m not him.  We have to hope.”  She squeezed her eyes shut.  Gods and monsters.  Please.  Please.  Please let me be wrong about this.  Please let me be wrong.
                Something slammed against the doors, rattling them.  Terézia gave a startled little cry and Aoife flinched, sinking to her knees.
                “Gods and monsters,” she whispered.  “Please.”