“Right. Yeah.”
“Look at me.” Riley gripped both his hands. “I’ve got a question. Iron Man versus Hulk. Who wins?”
“Iron Man.”
Riley shook her head. “Hulk smash.”
“Yeah, sure. Stronger, but no strategy. Iron Man’s got the smarts, the intellect.”
“Hulk’s got the instincts. Primal.”
“That doesn’t— B’lyad. Holy fuck. Fuck!”
“Hold on.” Bran spoke between his teeth as he used the treated knife to drain poisoned blood into the bowl.
On a sob, Annika broke away from Sasha, threw herself down beside Sawyer.
His hands clamped so fierce on hers Riley imagined bones crushing, but she kept talking. “Intellect versus instinct. It’s a hard call.”
“So says the—fuck me, fuck me—the werewolf.”
“Yeah, so I ought to know. Think about it. You put Mr. Spock against the Hulk.”
Breath labored, body shaking, Sawyer set his teeth. “You’re crossing the streams. Motherfucker!”
“Nearly done,” Bran promised. “It’s washing clean now.”
“Okay. Okay.”
Riley watched Sawyer’s color come back, felt his crushing grip ease.
“Just the balm now.”
As Bran applied it, Sawyer closed his eyes, breathed out. “Oh, yeah, that works. Don’t cry, Anni.” He drew a hand from Riley, stroked it over Annika’s hair. “I’m okay. You let Sasha finish fixing you up now.”
“It’s all right.” Annika raised her head, lifted drenched eyes to Bran.
“It is, I promise you. You’ll use the balm on the wounds every two or three hours for now, and I’ll check again before bed. But it’s clean and already healing. I can tell you it would have been worse, a great deal worse, if that bastard, buggering thing had gone any deeper or dug in any longer.”
“Thanks.”
Doyle jerked a shoulder at Sawyer. “No problem. Beer?”
Sawyer just gave a thumbs-up.
“You’re my heart.” Annika stood, bent down to kiss Sawyer softly. “And you are all my heroes. I have only little hurts now, Sasha. Riley has more.”
“Shit. She’s got a bad one on her shoulder.” Sawyer got, a little shakily, to his feet. “Switch it, pal.”
Resigned, Riley took his seat, yanked off another sweatshirt that would never be the same, and sat in her black tank and jeans while Bran studied the wound.
“I’m happy to tell you it’s not nearly so serious as Sawyer’s, and I won’t need to use the knife to drain it.”
“Yay.”
“Beer?” Sawyer asked her.
“Tequila. Double shot.”
“You got it.”
It hurt, and hurt enough that once she’d knocked back the first shot, she held up the glass. “And again.”
As it eased, she downed the second, sat while Bran treated her lesser cuts and gashes.
“All right now, your turn.” Sasha pointed at Bran. “Now you sit. Anni, let’s heal the healer.”
“Wouldn’t mind a beer myself.”
Doyle pulled out one for Bran. His curse healed him, he thought. The others? They healed each other. He stood there, as separate as he’d been during that horror in the cave. Turning, he headed for the door.
“Nobody leaves,” Riley snapped.
“I want some air.”
“It’ll have to wait.”
“You don’t give me orders, Gwin.”
“Then I will.” Her voice cool as she treated Bran’s wounds, Sasha glanced toward Doyle. “Nobody leaves until we talk about what happened.”
“What happened?” He wanted to peel it off as he peeled off the bloody cloth around his hand. “We walked into a fight, not unexpected, and we walked out again.”
“That’s hardly all. She blocked you from us,” Bran continued. “She used that place, and your memories of it against you.”
“Mind-fucked you, dude. Or tried,” Sawyer qualified. “And we couldn’t get through. Like a wall, or a freaking force field. Us on one side, you on the other with . . .”
“You saw him?”
Riley decided on one more shot. “A man—boy really. Young, bleeding. We couldn’t hear, but you were talking. It’s like you were in a trance. The minions, they swarmed, but they left you alone. You were . . .”
“Trapped,” Sasha said. “I think the whole reason we were drawn there was to separate you, to pull you away from the rest of us. To take you back to before.”
“If you could go back, I asked you, and save him, would you?”
Doyle shook his head at Bran. “It wasn’t him.” Doyle gave up, sat. “It looked like him, sounded like him. And at first . . . It was being back, it was having another chance. I couldn’t hear you, and even when I saw you fighting, it seemed vague and unimportant. To save my brother, to take him home, it’s what mattered.”
“Then why didn’t you?” Riley demanded.
“He said to save him I needed to strike you down. Your blood for his, and he’d be spared. I’d failed him before, but I could save him now. Just do this one thing. I’ve killed more than my share. What’s five more for the life of a brother I’d sworn to protect?”
“He asked you to do an evil thing,” Annika stated.
“That’s right. And I knew what I already knew. It wasn’t Feilim. He’d never have asked it. Never. He was full of heart and sweetness. His name, it means ever good, and he was. He . . . He was like you,” Doyle realized. “So I did what I had to do.”
“What?” Riley slapped down the shot glass. “One minute you were standing there in a trance, the next you were wading into the fight like a madman.”
“I put my sword through his heart.”
“Its heart,” Sasha said gently. “Its heart, Doyle.”
“Yes. Its. And its heart had my brother’s face.” He shoved up. “And I need some goddamn air.”
Sasha set the balm aside, kissed the top of Bran’s head. “If you don’t go after him, Riley, you’ll disappoint me.”
“He wants to be alone.”
“What he wants and needs are different things.”
“I don’t know what to—”
“Then figure it out, but go after him.”
“Hell.” Riley grabbed her ruined shirt, dragged it on as she went out.
“You’re wise and kind, fáidh.” Bran drew her hand to his lips.
“I know what it is to feel apart. And I know what it is to love when love seemed impossible.”
Riley didn’t feel particularly loving. In Doyle’s place, she’d have kicked and punched at anyone who got in the way. She reminded herself she could take a punch, shoved her hands in her pockets, and crossed the lawn to where he stood at the cliff wall.
“I’ve said all I have to say. I don’t want to talk to you, or anyone.”
Fair enough, she thought, and said nothing.
“Go the hell away.”
Going the hell away would be the easy route, and preferable, she admitted. She took the hard one, sat on the wall, looked at him in silence.
“I’ve nothing to say to you.” His fury lashed out, stung him more than her. “I don’t have to justify anything to you, to anyone.”
When she said nothing, her silence only enraged him. He gripped her by the shirt, dragged her off the wall. “I did what I had to do. That’s all there is to it. I don’t need anything from you.”
He’d yet to wash off the blood—but then neither had she. His face was rough and shadowed beneath a couple days’ growth of scruff. And his eyes were shattered.
Instinct, she considered, versus intellect. She went with instinct. He shoved at her when she wrapped her arms around him, so she just held on. When it jarred her healing shoulder, she set her teeth, gripped tighter.
And instinct proved the right course when he went still, then dropped his head on the top of hers.
“I don’t want your sympathy.”
“You’re going to have to take it. And the respect that goes with it.”
“Respect, my ass.” He broke her hold, stepped back.
“I’ve got something to say, and you’re going to have to listen.”
“Not if I gag you.”
She planted her feet, lifted her chin. “Try it and you’ll bleed. She exploited your grief, she pulled you back to the moment when that grief was the sharpest, and she offered you a lie. The lie was changing what was, and it came from the image of someone you loved, you lost. She hooked you, Doyle, the way she did me in the woods, the way she went at Sasha in that first cave on Corfu, but not with violence, not for you. With cruelty.”
“I know what she did. I was there.”
“Don’t be a dick. Especially when I’m going to point out something essential you seem to be too pissed off to latch on to. You were stronger than she was. You did what you had to do, yeah, but you did it because you were stronger.”
“It wasn’t my brother,” he began, and she moved in, short-jabbed a fist to his chest.
“Bullshit. It looked like him, sounded like him, bleeding and dying in the same cave where you lost him. You had a choice, and don’t tell me, don’t fucking tell me, that for one fraction of an instant you didn’t wonder if you’d done what she wanted, you’d have had him back. You’d have broken the curse. Don’t tell me that in all the years you’ve lived the choice you made today wasn’t the hardest.”
“To save him, I’d have cut my own throat when cutting it would’ve mattered. Today? Even if it had been a real choice, even if it had been my brother, I wouldn’t have sacrificed you, or anyone in that house.”
“I know it.”
It mattered that she did, more than he could say.
“She separated me, and made me feel that distance so I could stand back, watch you fight, and think, what’s the point of it all? They’ll live, they’ll die, and I’ll just go on. That’s the difference.”
“Three nights a month I’m pretty different myself.”
“Not the same.”
“Oh, boo-hoo. I’ve got to live forever, feel my pain.” Deliberately dramatic, Riley clutched at her heart. “I’ve got to live forever, young and hot and strong, feel my torment. Get over yourself, old man.”
“You have no idea what—”
“Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Why don’t you take a rest from the I’m cursed for a century or so. You’ve got the time.”
“Christ, you’re a pain in the ass.”
“Want some there-theres, some cheek pats? Let me go get Sasha or Annika.”
She started to turn, smiled to herself when he grabbed her arm, swung her around. She met his furious look with a sneer, and enjoyed—very much—how he wiped the sneer off her face.
The way his mouth crushed down on hers, hard and hot. The way his hands pressed, molded, possessed.
Just as it shook something inside her when that mouth, those hands gentled. When for one trembling moment there was real tenderness.
She squeezed her eyes tight when he held her, when his hands glided light and easy over her back.
“I loved him more than I can tell you.”
“I know that. Anyone could see that.”
“When he’d barely learned to walk, he’d follow me around like a puppy. So full of light, and . . . delight. If I shook him off, I’d feel like a bully. He was like Annika. It occurs to me that’s why she struck a chord with me right off.”
“It wouldn’t have anything to do with being blow-your-pants-off gorgeous?”
“Bonus. I couldn’t hear you, and in that fog, through that wall, you seemed very far away. But I knew you.” He eased back, studied her face. “She couldn’t reach that.”
“She doesn’t get that. That’s how we’ll win. Plus, we’re just smarter. Or I am anyway. A lot smarter.”
“Now who’s being a dick?”
“Truth’s truth. Had enough air?”
“I could use another beer.”
“I could use food. It’s my round for lunch, so it’s sandwiches. You can help me with that.”
“I’m on dinner tonight.”
“So I’ll help you get the pizza.”
He looked back at the house, down at her, and felt something just let go. “Deal.”
• • •
In her chamber beneath the earth, Nerezza raged. The creatures she’d created skittered and scattered. Only Malmon stood, prepared—even happy—to take her abuse.
“He should have slayed them like pigs. He should have done as I bid! Where is this human love? Where is this human grief? It’s weak, weak and false.”
She tore the head off a bat, hurled its still fluttering body against the wall.
“You’ll tire yourself, my queen.”
She flew at him, fingers curled into claws to gouge. An inch before his sickly yellow eyes, she stopped. Her hand gentled, stroked the cold, rough cheek.
“I’m strong again. You tended me well.”
“You are my queen. You are my love.”
“Yes, yes.” She flicked that aside, paced the chamber. In the faceted mirrors of the walls she could see herself reflected, again and again.
Her hair was more black than white now, and nearly as silky as before. Yes, Malmon had tended her well. She’d skimmed the glass so the lines in her face softened, even vanished to her eye.
She’d have her full youth and beauty back, and more. She would have all.
“Wine,” she ordered Malmon. “Just wine. For soothing rather than strengthening.”
Sitting on her jeweled throne, she toyed with changing her skirts from black to red, to black again. A child’s trick, but after her fall, she’d been unable to do even that.
Now, she thought as she sipped the wine. She was strong enough.
“I’ve allowed my thirst for revenge to cloud purpose. I will kill them, of course. Kill them all and feast on them. The immortal? Nothing but a toy to torment for eternity. But first, the stars. I lost sight of the stars.”
“You were so ill.”
“But no more. I will reward you one day, my pet. We will go to them. I am stronger, but it costs too much to send power over distance. We need to be closer to be on them when they find the Ice Star.”
“Travel will tire you.”
“Their deaths, when the stars are in my hands, will rejuvenate me. I have plans, my pet. Such lovely plans. Soon, soon now, the worlds will scream in the dark. Soon, the stars will shine only for me. And I will return to the Island of Glass, drink the blood of the gods, the false sisters who banished me. I will rule all from there.”
She picked up the Globe of All, smiled into it.
“See how the mists clear for me, how the dark swirls in? We’ll dig our fortress deep, and we’ll strike with a force of power that will rend the ground and crack the sky.”
She turned that fierce smile on Malmon. “Prepare.”
“My queen? Will I go with you to the Island of Glass, and sit beside you?”
“Of course, my pet.” She waved him away.
Until I have no need for you, she thought, or worse, until you bore me. But on that day she would reward his loyalty by giving him a quick, clean death.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A couple days of drenching rain boosted color and bloom in the gardens, and made for wet, muddy training. It didn’t stop six determined guardians from exploring caves and historical sites. In the plethora of books, Riley found references to stones, a name—never specified—carved into them that “marked the bed of the star.” Following that lead, they scoured ruins, cemeteries, cave walls while the incessant rain pelted them and turned the hills to shining emerald.
With rain dripping off the brim of her hat, Riley stood on the bumpy grass of a graveyard, boot-deep in ground mist. Behind her, the ruins of an old abbey stood stark gray above a winding curve of the river, tea colored under sulky clouds.
Atmosphere-wise, in her opinion, it hit every glorious gothic note. She hoped, as she’d hoped on every rain-washed stop of the last two days, that atmosphere would nudge Sasha into a vision.
“Early twelfth century,” Riley said. “Fertile ground for crops and animals, fish in the river. Not a bad spot. So, naturally, the Cromwellians had to sack it.”
“Nice, spooky feel. And could it get any wetter?” Sawyer looked up at the sky.
“I like the rain.” Annika gestured toward the purple spears arching out of crevices. “It makes the flowers grow in the stone.”
“It keeps up you’ll be able to swim on land. In or out,” Sawyer added. “Though in, in this case, is out.”
“Name in the stone,” Riley reminded him. “I’d say headstones first.”
“It might help if we knew the name we’re looking for,” Doyle pointed out.
“Blame the cryptic gods and their messengers.” Since complaining about the weather wouldn’t get them anywhere, Riley began to walk, to read headstones, to wonder.
It didn’t seem egocentric at this point to wonder if the name they searched for would be one of theirs. An ancestor’s. That connection. Certainly on a headstone or grave marker that made the most logical sense.
Barring that, she wondered if they would—at some point—find the names of the three goddesses, or the young queen—on some carving.
Or . . .
“Maybe it’s the name of the star.” Crouching, she ran her fingers over the faded name in a lichen-covered stone. “Most likely in Irish—réalta de orghor—since it’s from Arianrhod. But possibly in Greek or Latin.”
“It seems unlikely we’re going to find it somewhere so open,” Doyle began. “And as wet as it is, we might as well have dived.”
“Stones, names, water—this place has all three. It’s worth a look. And it’s not what I’d call overrun by tourists.”
“Any self-respecting tourist would be spending a day like this in a pub.”
Hard to argue, Riley thought, and wound her way toward the ruin.
She understood the old, had always been drawn to it and the foundation it laid for the next to come. She could imagine the life here, inside the stone walls. One of prayer and intellect, of husbandry and service.
And superstition.