“I don’t like explaining myself,” he began.
“Then don’t.” She started to walk away; he gripped her arm.
“I wanted to talk to a brother, and a witch, because I’d be talking about going back where I lost a brother, and killed the witch who cursed me.”
“Okay.”
“That’s it?”
“Jesus, Doyle, buy a clue. We all know it sucks, we all know it’s brutal. So you needed to lay it out to Bran first. Fine. I— We’re with you.”
“I’d have spoken to Sawyer before you.”
“Now you’re pissing me off again.”
“Why did you come out here with the other women?”
“I wanted some practice. Sasha needs the practice.” Then she mumbled a curse. “And okay, I wanted the female for a while. I get it.”
He hesitated, then gentled his hold on her arm. “If I had a life to lose, I’d put it in your hands. That’s trust and respect.”
“I could be an asshole, claim that’s easy for you to say. But I’m not an asshole, and I know it’s not. We’re cool.” She held out a hand to shake on it.
He gripped her elbows, hauled her up, kissed her. “You’re not a sister to me.”
“Good thing.”
“But you are . . . essential. Going where we’re going tomorrow, I want you with me.”
Struck, touched, she laid a hand on his cheek. “I will be.”
He dropped her to her feet, considered a moment, then took her hand. Rather than shake it, he held it as they walked back to the house.
• • •
Well armed, they set out early in the morning. Riley rode with Doyle on his bike as they traveled away from the coast, wound through land where the hills rolled green and serene into a sky that held in a sweet summer blue.
She imagined Doyle taking a similar route on that very hard day, on horseback. Hooves striking the ground, Doyle’s cloak flying as he pressed for speed. A faster trip now, she thought as they whizzed around curves where wild lilies sprang yellow as the sunlight they danced in. But a harder one for him. Before he’d believed he’d save his brother, bring him home to family.
Now he knew he never would.
But if they found the star . . .
Did that place that had once held such evil now serve as the resting place for the Ice Star?
Either way, they rode toward a fight. And she was more than ready for one.
Essential. He’d said that to her. She tried not to think too much of it, just as she tried not to probe too deeply into her own feelings. Far from the priority right now, she reminded herself. Whatever she felt, whatever he felt, didn’t rise up to the fate of worlds.
He slowed, veered off onto a narrow, bumpy track.
“We walk from here,” he told her. “Bran’s car can’t handle this.”
She swung off. “How far?”
“A little more than a kilometer.”
He paused, looked left over a stone wall to a small farm where a spotted dog napped in the sun and cows grazed in a field beyond.
As he stood, the farmhouse with its blue trim, the outbuildings, an old tractor, even the spotted dog faded away.
There on the field and up the rising hill sheep cropped. A shepherd boy sat dozing, propped against a rock. He opened his eyes, pale blue, and looked back at Doyle.
“Do you see him there?”
“The dog?”
“The boy. He watched me that day. He watches me now.”
“There’s no boy.” Riley kept a hand on his arm, looked back as Bran walked up with the others.
“His hair’s almost white under his cap. He’s half asleep, with his crook over his lap.”
“There’s a smear over the air.” Bran lifted a hand, pushed. Narrowed his eyes against the resistance, pushed again.
The pretty farm sat quiet, and the dog slept on.
“She’s working on you, man.”
Doyle nodded at Sawyer’s words. “Up this track, about a kilometer. The cave’s in a hillock of rock and sod. There’s a small pond outside it. It swam black that day.”
And what lived in it, he remembered as they began to walk, had slithered under the oily surface like snakes.
Now along the narrow track were the yellow lilies and overgrown hedgerows dripping with fuchsia. A magpie winged by.
One is for sorrow.
As they neared he saw the signs and talismans—carved in wood or stone, fashioned from stick and straws. Warnings and protections against evil.
As the others said nothing, he knew they saw only the rambling stone wall, the wildflowers, the scatter of cows in the field.
A raven swooped down, perched on the wall. As Riley reached for her gun, Doyle stayed her hand. “You see that, at least.” He pulled his sword, cleaved the bird in two.
Trees sprang up, and birds called from them. The cheerful, country birds that did no harm. Through the trees, he caught the glint of water from the pond. He angled right, strode through the sheltering grove.
Dark blue water amid wild grasses and choked with lily pads.
Then black and oily, rippling with what lived beneath.
“What do you see?” he asked Riley.
“A lily pond that needs some clearing out.”
“Another smear.” Once again Bran held up a hand. “And through it, the water’s thick and black.”
“The cave.” Sasha gestured to the high, dark mouth. “Blood and bones. A cauldron bubbling with both. It’s not clean, not clean. She lies, and everything inside is a lie.” Sasha let out a breath, steadied herself. “She’s waiting.”
“I should go in alone. Alone,” Doyle repeated before anyone could protest. “There’s nothing she can do to me.”
“What bullshit.”
“I’m with Riley on that,” Sawyer said. “All or nothing. I vote all.”
Riley drew her gun. “Maybe you could hit the lights, Bran. It’d be nice to see where we’re going.”
The mouth of the cave flooded with it, bright and white. Together they moved toward it, into it.
High and wide as he remembered. Leaves, pine needles had blown in to litter the floor. Animals who’d used it for shelter left droppings behind. Bumpy skins of moss, bony fingers of weeds grew over the rock walls.
“I guess we spread out,” Riley said. “Look around.”
“Stay close,” Sasha warned. “It’s not . . . right.”
“Two by two for now, we’ll say. As Sasha’s on the mark.” Bran peered through his own light. “It’s not right.”
They searched. Riley crouched down to study the cave walls inch by meticulous inch. No more than two feet away, Doyle ran his hands over it, crumbling moss.
Tension gripped the back of his neck like clawed fingers. The muscles of his belly coiled as they might before a leap into battle.
He could hear Annika talking quietly to Sawyer, hear Riley’s boots scraping the ground as she moved along the wall.
The light changed, going to a dirty gray, and the air chilled with it. He turned.
Bones littered the floor, and he smelled the blood that seeped into the dirt. In the cave center, a black cauldron smoked over a fire red as a fresh wound.
The witch he’d killed stood stirring with a ladle fashioned from a human arm. Her hair was mad coils of black, her face blinding beauty as she smiled.
“You can save him. Take back the time here and now. He calls for you.”
She gestured.
There, sprawled on the floor of the cave, pale as ice, bleeding from a dozen wounds, was his brother.
He held out a hand that trembled. “Doyle. Save me, brother.”
With sword in hand, Doyle swung back to strike the witch, but she vanished in laughter. He ran to his brother, dropped down beside him as he had so long before. Felt the blood run on his hands.
“I’m dying.”
“No. I’m here. Feilim, I’m here.”
“You can save me. She said only you could save me. Take me home.” As a trickle of blood slid between his lips, Feilim shivered. “I’m so cold.”
“I need to stop the bleeding.”
“There’s only one way to stop it, to save me. Strike them down. It must be their blood for mine. Strike them down, and I live. We go home together.” His brother’s hand clutched at his. “Don’t fail me again, deartháir. Don’t let me die here. Kill them. Kill them all. For my life.”
Holding his brother in his arms, Doyle looked back.
The others battled, gun and bow, light and cuff, knife and fist as winged death flew through the smoky air of the cave.
He couldn’t hear them. But he heard his brother’s pleas.
“I’m your brother, one you swore to protect. I’m your blood. Take the witch first. The rest will be easy.”
Gently, Doyle laid a hand on his brother’s cheek. And rising, lifted his sword.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In him the rage held cold, an iced fury as the hot licks of blood and madness swirled around him. His brother. Young, innocent, suffering. The life draining out of him, out of a body wracked with pain.
The war screaming around him.
Always another war.
Through the fetid air he saw Riley slash through an attacker with her knife, then another as she shouted something at him that he couldn’t hear.
Didn’t she know, couldn’t she see he wasn’t part of them now? He was removed, for that moment removed and separate. Away.
Bran’s lightning couldn’t penetrate the distance, nor Sasha’s bolts.
His brother, he thought. His blood. His failure.
“Save me.”
Once again Doyle looked down at the face that had haunted him through the centuries. So young, so innocent. So full of pain and fear.
Images flashed through his mind, etched in joy and grief. Feilim toddling on unsteady legs on a seaswept beach. Struggling not to cry when Doyle sucked a splinter out of his thumb. How he’d laughed when he’d ridden a chubby brown pony. How he’d grown so slim and straight, and still would sit with avid eyes around the fire when their grandfather told one of his tales.
And now this image overlaying all, Feilim, face bone white, eyes mad with pain, bleeding at his feet.
And the boy lifted a trembling hand to the man. “This one thing, only this one thing, and I live. Only you can save me.”
“I would have given my life to save my brother. You’re not my brother.”
And cased in that ice, Doyle rammed the keen point of his sword into the heart of the lie. It screamed, piercing, inhuman. Its blood boiled black, went to ash.
Now the sword was vengeance, cold and slashing as Doyle cleaved all and any that came. If they clawed or bit, he felt nothing. Inside him was another scream, a war cry, ringing in his ears, pumping in his heart.
A thousand battles whirled in his head as his sword slashed and thrust. A thousand battlefields. Ten thousand enemies as faceless as the mad creatures created by a vengeful god.
No retreat. Kill them all.
He saw one of the black, murderous beasts hook claws into Sawyer’s back. With one bare hand, he tore it away, stomped its vicious head to dust with his boot.
He spun away to destroy more and saw nothing was left of them but blood and gore and ash. He saw Sasha lower to her knees, waving a hand when Bran rushed to her side. Annika embracing Sawyer as much to hold him up as hold on.
And Riley, her gun lowered, her bloody knife still gripped, watching him.
His breath was short, Doyle realized, and his head filled with tribal drums. And he who’d fought those countless wars wanted to tremble at victory.
He made himself turn to Bran. “Purify it.”
“Sawyer is hurt.”
“I’m okay.” Sawyer closed a hand over Annika’s arm, squeezed as he studied Doyle. “I’m okay.”
“Purify it,” Doyle repeated. “It’s not enough to strike them down.”
“Yes.” Bran helped Sasha to her feet. “Your hand, fáidh. And yours. And all. Flesh to flesh, blood to blood.”
He cupped the blood from their wounds in his palm, reached up with another. Pure white salt filled it.
“With bloodshed we rebuke the dark.” He walked a circle around the others, spilling their joined blood on the ground. “With salt now blessed we make our mark,” he said as he retraced his steps, letting it sift through his fingers. “With light to spark.” He held his hands over the ground. “Now fire burns the unholy lie, rise up the flames to purify.”
The fire snapped, sparked, spread around the circle he’d created. It burned hot red, cold white, then at last, pure, calming blue.
“So evil is banished from this place, defeated by valor and light and grace. We six stand witness willingly. As I will, so mote it be.”
The circle of fire flamed up, turned the air a soft blue, then shimmered away.
“It’s done.”
Doyle nodded, sheathed his sword. “If the star’s here, it’ll wait. We have wounded to tend.”
“Just like that?” Riley asked as he stalked out. Bran stayed her when she would have stalked out after him.
“That’s for later. We’re all more than a bit battered. I’ve a small kit in the car, but . . . Sawyer, are you able to shift us there? I’d rather not even attempt that short walk.”
“He’s hurt. His back, his arm.”
“Not that bad,” he assured Annika. “I can handle the shift.”
Sasha limped out with Bran’s help. Riley ignored her own wounds, though the back of her shoulder burned like a bitch, and stepped out.
Doyle stood, his face a mask under spatters of blood.
“We’re shifting to where we left the car, the bike,” Bran told him. “We do have wounds to tend.”
“Move in,” Sawyer requested. “Easier that way.”
With a hand not altogether steady, he took out his compass. Breathed in and out a moment, nodded.
Riley felt a quick bump, then found herself standing beside Doyle’s bike. She noted Sawyer didn’t object when both Annika and Sasha helped him into the car.
“I’m driving,” she told Doyle.
“Nobody drives my bike.”
“Today I do. Look at your goddamn hands.” She pulled a faded bandanna out of her back pocket, shoved it at him. “Wrap that around the worst one, and don’t be a complete fuckhead.”
She got on the bike, kicked it into a roar.
“It’ll be healed before we’re back.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass. Get on or walk.”
Because he knew he wasn’t as calm as he wanted to be—needed to be—he swung on behind her.
She drove the bike as she drove everything else. Recklessly fast. But he was in the mood for reckless. She knew how to handle it, which didn’t surprise him, and took them snaking around curves and turns, sweeping by stone walls, skimming by hedgerows.
The blur was fine with him, as was the sting and burn of his healing wounds. It masked, for now, his own ugly and intimate nightmare.
By the time she roared up to the house, cut the engine, he judged himself healed and calm. It took seconds to understand she was neither.
“Did you forget there were five other people in that cave?” she demanded. “Or did you just decide you were the only one capable of getting the job done?”
“I did what needed doing.” He walked away from her as his own words brought back his brother’s face, the killing edge of the sword on his back.
“Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.” When she would have torn after him, Sasha called her name.
“Riley. He’s in pain.”
“He stopped bleeding before we were halfway here.”
“Not that kind of pain.”
“Help with Sawyer, will you?” Bran scooped Sasha off her feet. “Let’s heal the flesh, then deal with the spirit.”
“I’m okay. Just a little . . .” Sawyer swayed in Annika’s hold. “Rocky.”
Since he was pasty white, and his pupils wide as saucers, Riley realized he was far from all right. “Gotcha, dude.”
Grateful for the support, he swung an arm around her shoulders, felt the wet. “That’s not my blood, Doc. It’s yours.”
“I took some hits. Anni?”
“I have some hurts, but it would be worse. Sawyer blocked them from me, and one dug into his back. Then Doyle . . .”
“Yeah, saw that part.”
They dragged themselves in, and back to the kitchen where Bran already tended wounds on Sasha’s leg, her arms with Doyle’s help.
“Want a beer,” Sawyer managed as he slid onto a chair.
“Who doesn’t? Get his shirt off, Anni. I bet you know how.”
Annika sent Riley a wan smile as she gently drew off Sawyer’s torn and bloody T-shirt. “Will you help me . . . Oh! Oh, Bran, it’s very deep.”
Riley took a look, hissed. “Looks like a raging infection already.”
“One moment. Drink this, a ghrá.”
“It’s already easing.” She drank. “Honestly, it’s better. Deal with Sawyer.”
“Annika, work with Doyle—and, Doyle, help Annika treat herself as well. She just needs the balm now, Anni,” Bran told her. “Even the small cuts. There’s poison.”
He stepped to Sawyer, sent Riley a grim look over his head. From his kit he took a knife, a vial, three candles. He lit the candles with a thought, then reached for a small bowl.
“I have to drain the poison first.”
“He’s shocky,” Riley said as Sawyer’s teeth began to chatter.
“Hold on to him, as this is going to hurt like a thousand hells. You brace yourself, Sawyer.”