Blood Magick

She felt about the same herself.

“There’s no point in sarcasm, as you had as much to do with the formula as I.” Branna shook her hair out of her eyes. “And it got us here, for that’s the cave.”

In the cold, starry dark, the mouth of the cave pulsed with red light. She heard a low hum, like a distant storm at sea from within. But without, nothing moved, nothing stirred.

“He’s in there,” Fin told her. “I can feel it.”

“He’s not alone. I can feel that. Something wicked, that brings more than a pricking of thumbs.”

“I should go in alone, assess things.”

“Don’t insult me, Finbar. Side by side or not at all.”

To settle it, she started forward. Fin kept a firm grip on her hand, laid the other on the hilt of his sword. “If it turns on us, we break the spell. Without hesitation, Branna. We don’t end here.”

She might have swayed toward him, such were the needs the dream spell stirred. But she steadied herself, stood her ground. “I’ve no intention of ending here. We’ve work to do in our own time and place.”

They stepped into the mouth of the cave, the pulsing light. The hum grew louder, deeper. Not like a storm at sea, Branna realized. But like something large, something alive, waiting at rest.

The cave widened, opened into tunnels formed with walls damp enough to drip so the steady plop of water on stone became a kind of backbeat to the hum. Fin bore left, and as Branna’s instincts said the same, they moved quietly into the tunnel.

His hand, she thought, was the only link to the warm and the real, and knew he felt the same.

“We can’t be sure when we are,” Branna whispered.

“After the last time we dreamed.” He shook his head at her look. “I don’t know how I know, but I know. It’s after that, but not long after.”

Trust, she reminded herself. Faith. They continued on with the humming growing deeper yet. She could all but feel it inside her now, like a pulse, as if she’d swallowed the living dark.

“It pulls him,” Fin murmured. “It wants to feed. It pulls me through him, blood to blood.” He turned to her, took her firmly by the shoulders. “If it—or he—draws me in, you’re to break the spell, get out, get back.”

“Would you leave me, or any of us, to this?”

“You, nor any of the others come from him. You’ll swear it, Branna, or I’ll break it now and end it before it’s begun.”

“I’ll end it, I swear it.” But she would drag him back with her. “I’ll swear it because they won’t draw you in. You won’t allow it. And if we stand here arguing over it, we won’t have to break the spell, it’ll end on its own time without us learning a bloody thing.”

Now she took his hand. A spark shot between their palms before they moved forward.

The tunnel narrowed again, and turned into what she recognized as a chamber—a workshop of sorts for dark magicks.

The bodies of bats, wings stretched, were nailed to the stone walls like horrific art. On shelves skeletal bird legs, heads, the internal organs of animals, others she feared were human, bodies of rats, all floated in jars filled with viscous liquid.

A fire burned, and over it a cauldron bubbled and smoked in sickly green.

To the left of it stood a stone altar lit by black tallows, stained by the blood of the goat that lay on it, its throat slit.

Cabhan gathered the stream of blood in a bowl.

He looked younger, she realized. Though his back was to them as he worked, he struck her as younger than the Cabhan she knew.

He stepped back, knelt, lifted the bowl high.

“Here is blood, a sacrifice to your glory. Through me you feed, through you I feed. And so my power grows.”

He drank from the bowl.

The hum throbbed like a beating heart.

“It’s not enough,” Fin murmured. “It’s pale and weak.”

Alarmed, Branna tightened her grip on his hand. “Stay with me.”

“I’m with you, and with him. Goats and sheep and mongrels. If power is a thirst, quench it. If it’s hunger, eat it. If it’s lust, sate it. Take what you will.”

“More,” Cabhan said, raising the bowl again. “You promised more. I am your servant, I am your soldier. I am your vessel. You promised more.”

“More requires more,” Fin said quietly, his eyes eerily green. “Blood from your blood, as before. Take it, spill it, taste it, and you will have more. You will be me, I will be thee. And no end. Life eternal, power great. And the Dark Witch you covet, yours to take. Body and power to our will she must bend.”

“When? When will I have more? When will I have Sorcha?”

“Spill it, take it, taste it. Blood from your blood. Into the cup, through your lips. Into the cauldron. Prove you are worthy!”

All warmth had drained from Fin’s hand. Branna pressed it between hers, gave him what she could.

“I am worthy.” Cabhan set the bowl down, rose to take up a cup. He turned.

For the first time Branna saw the woman in the shadows. An old woman, shackled and shivering in the bitter cold.

He walked to her, taking the cup.

“Have mercy. On me, on yourself. You damn yourself. He lies. He lies to you, lies to all. He has chained you with lies as you have chained me with iron. Release me, Cabhan. Save me, save yourself.”

“You are only a woman, now old, your puny powers leaking. And of no value but this.”

“I am your mother.”

“I am already born,” he said, and slit her throat.

Branna cried out in shock and horror, but the sound drowned in the rising roar. Power swam in the air now, black as pitch, heavy as death.

He filled the cup, drank, filled it again. This he carried to the cauldron, poured through the smoke. And the smoke turned red as the blood.

“Now the sire’s with it,” Fin said, and Cabhan went to a bottle, poured its contents into the cauldron.

“Say the words.” Fin’s fingers, icy in Branna’s, flexed, unflexed. “Say the words, make the binding.”

“Blood unto blood I take so the hunger I will slake and the power here we make. From the dam and from the ram mix and smoke and call dark forces to invoke my name, my power, my destiny. Grant to me life eternal and sanctuary through this portal. I am become both god and demon and reign hereby over woman and man. Through my blood and by my power, I will take the Dark Witch unto me. I am Cabhan, mortal no more, and by these words my humanity I abjure.”

He reached through the smoke, into the cauldron, and with his bare hand, pulled out the amulet and its bloodred stone.

“In this hour by dark power I am sworn.”

He lifted the amulet over his head, laid the glowing stone on his chest.

The wind whirled into a roar as Cabhan, his eyes glowing as red as the stone, lifted his arms high. “And I am born!”

From the altar leaped the wolf, black and fierce. It sprang toward Cabhan, sprang into him with a deafening scream of thunder.

Something howled in triumph, and even the stones trembled.

He turned his head. Through the dark, through the shadows, his eyes, still glowing, met Branna’s.

She lifted a hand when his arms shot out toward her, prepared to block whatever magicks he hurled. But Fin spun her around, wrapped around her. Something crashed, something burned.

And he broke the spell.

Too fast, too unsteady. Branna clung to Fin as much to warm him—his body burned so cold—as to keep herself from spinning away.

She heard the voices first—Connor’s steady as a rock and calm as a summer lake—guiding her. Then Iona’s joining his.

Don’t be letting go now, Connor said inside her head. We’ve got you. We’ve got both of you. Nearly home now. Nearly there.

Then she was, dizzy and weak-limbed, but home in the warmth and the light.

Even as she drew a breath, Fin slipped out of her grip, went down to his knees.

“He’s hurt.” Branna went down on her own. “Let me see. Let me see you.” She took his face, pushed back his hair.

“Just knocked the wind out of me.”

“The back of his sweater’s smoking,” Boyle said, moving in and quickly. “Like Connor’s shirt that time.”

Before Branna could do so herself, Boyle pulled the sweater up and off. “He’s burned. Not so deep as Connor’s, but near the whole of his back.”

“Get him down, face-first,” Branna began.

“I’m not after sprawling down on the floor like a—”

“Have a nap.” With that snapped order, Branna laid a hand on his head, put him under. “Face-first,” she repeated, and had Connor and Boyle laying him out on the workshop floor.

She passed her hands over the scorching burns covering his back. “Not deep, no, and the poison can’t mix with his blood. Just the cold, the heat, the pain. I’ll need—”

“This?” Mary Kate offered her a jar of salve. “Healing was my strongest art.”

“That’s it exactly, thanks. We’ll be quick. It hasn’t had time to dig into him. Iona, would you take some? I’ve a bit of a burn on my left arm. It’s nothing, but we’ll want to keep it nothing. You know what to do.”

“Yes.” Iona shoved up Branna’s sleeve. “It’s small, but it looks angry.”

But it cooled the moment Iona soothed on the salve. The faint dizziness passed as well as her cousin added her own healing arts. Steadier, she could focus fully on Fin.

“That’s better, isn’t it? Sure that’s better. We could do with a whiskey, if you don’t mind. We went a little faster than I’d calculated, and coming back was like tumbling off a building.”

“I’ve already got it,” Meara told her. “He looks all clear again.”

“We’ll just be making sure.” With her hands on him, Branna searched for any deeper injury, any pocket of dark. “He’ll do.” Relief stung the back of her throat, rasped through her voice. “He’s fine.” She laid her hand on his head again, lingered just a moment. “Wake up, Fin.”

His eyes opened, looked straight into hers. “Fuck it,” he said as he pushed up to sit.

“I’m sorry for it, as it’s rude to give sleep without permission, but I wasn’t in the mood to argue.”

“She was burned, too,” Iona said, knowing it would shift Fin’s temper. “On her left arm.”

“What? Where?” He’d already grabbed Branna’s arm, shoved her sleeve up.

“Iona saw to it. It was barely there at all, as you shoved me behind you, covered over me as if I wasn’t capable of blocking an attack.”

“You couldn’t have, not that one. Not with the new power so full and young, and him flying on it like an addict on too much of a hard drug. He had more in that moment than he has now, or I think ever since. And he hungers for that wild high again.”

Connor crouched down. “I’ll say this. Thank you for looking after my sister.”

“Now I’m ungracious.” Branna sighed. “I’m sorry for that as well. I’m still turned around. I do thank you, Fin, for sparing me.”

She took the whiskeys from Meara, handed him one.

“He took you for Sorcha. In the dark, near to hallucinating, he felt you—when the power came full, he felt you, but took you for Sorcha. He meant to . . .”

“Drink some of that.”

“So I will.” Fin tapped his glass to hers, drank. “He meant to disfigure you if he could, so no one would see your beauty, so your husband, he thought, would turn from you. I saw his mind in that moment, and the madness in it.”

“A man would have to be mad to slit his own mother’s throat, then drink her blood.”

“That’s purely disgusting,” Meara decided. “And still if we’re going to hear about it, I’d rather hear all at once, and when we’re all sitting down.”

“That’s the way. Fin, put on your sweater now so you can sit at the table like a civilized man.” Mary Kate handed him the sweater. “I’ll just look around the kitchen, Branna, see what you might have I can put together, as I’ll bet everyone could do with a bit of food.”

While Mary Kate put together a wealth of leftovers from the Christmas feast, Branna sat—relieved not to be doing the fixing—so she and Fin could tell the story.

“His own mother.” Shaking his head, Boyle picked up one of the pretty sandwiches Mary Kate put together.

“Just a woman, and old, so he said. He had no feelings for her. There was nothing in him for her. There was nothing in him,” Fin continued, “but the black.”

“You heard what spoke to him.”

Frowning, Fin turned to Branna. “You didn’t?”

“Only a humming, as we heard when we got there, when we went into the cave. A kind of . . . thrumming.”

“I heard it.” Absently, Fin rubbed at his shoulder, at the mark. “The promises for more power, for eternal life, for all Cabhan could want. But to gain it, he had to give more. Sacrifice what was human in him. It started with the father.”

“Do you know it or think it?” Connor asked him.

“I know it. I could see inside his head, and I could feel the demon trapped in the stone, and its needs, its avarice. Its . . . glee at knowing it would soon be free again.”

“Demon?” Meara picked up the wine she’d opted for. “Well now, that’s new—and terrifying.”

“Old,” Fin corrected. “Older than time, and it waited until it found a vessel.”

“Cabhan?”

“It’s still him,” Fin told Boyle. “It’s Cabhan right enough, but with the other a part of him, and hungry always for power and for blood.”

“The stone’s the source, as we thought,” Branna continued. “It came from the blood of the father and the mother Cabhan sacrificed for power. Conjuring it, pledging to it, he took in this . . . well, if Fin says demon, it’s a demon right enough.”

“Why Sorcha?” Iona wondered. “Why was he so obsessed with her?”

“For her beauty, and her power, and . . . the purity, you could say, of her love for her family. He wanted, craved the first two, and wanted to destroy the last.”

Fin rubbed his fingers on his temple, attempting to ease the pounding still trapped inside his head.

“She rejected him, time and again,” he continued, though the pounding refused to be abated. “Scorned him and his advances. So he . . .”

Surprised when Mary Kate stepped behind him, stroked her hands along temples, along the back of his neck where he hadn’t realized more pain lodged, he lost his thread.

And the headache drifted away.

“Thank you.”

“You’re more than welcome.”

She gave him a grandmotherly kiss on the top of the head before she sat again. It flustered him, and showed him just where Iona got her kind and open heart.

“Ah. His lust for her, woman and witch, became obsession. He would turn her, take what she had, and he believes no spell, no magicks can stop him, can touch him. Her power could cause him harm, threaten his existence, and her rejection burned his pride.”

“Then there were three,” Branna calculated. “And with the three the power, and the threat, increases. We can end him.”

“In that moment, in the cave, when he took in the demon, and the black of it, he believed nothing could or ever would. But what’s in him knows better. It lies to him, as his mother warned him. It lies.”

“We can hurt him, bloody him, burn him to ash, but . . .” Connor shrugged. “Unless we destroy the amulet as well, unless we can destroy the demon joined with him, he’ll heal, he’ll come back.”

“It’s good to know.” Iona spread some cheese on a cracker. “So how do we destroy the stone, the demon?”

“Blood magick against blood magick,” Branna decided. “White against dark. As we have been, but perhaps with a different focus. We have to find the right time, and be sure of it. I’m thinking it must be Sorcha’s cabin, as before, to draw what she had into it, but we need to find a way to trap him, to keep him from escaping again so it can be finished. And if we can do that, it would be Fin who needs to destroy the stone, the source.”

“I felt the pull, of the demon, of the witch. And the far stronger one when they united. I felt the . . . appeal, the lust for what they’d give me.”

“And feeling that, risked yourself to shield me. It’s for you to do when the time comes,” Branna said briskly. “We’ve only to figure out the hows and the whens. Mary Kate, are you certain you have to go back to America, for it’s a joy to me to have someone else fixing a meal around here.”

Understanding the need to shift the conversation, Mary Kate smiled. “I do, I’m afraid, but I’ll be back for Iona’s wedding, and before it enough to help with some of the doings. And it might be, I’m thinking, I’ll stay.”

“Stay?” Iona reached around the table, grabbed her hands. “Nan, do you mean you’d stay in Ireland?”

“I’m doing some thinking about it. I stayed in America after your grandda died for your mother, then for you. And I love my house there, my gardens, the views out my window. I have good friends there. But . . . I can have a house here, and gardens, and pretty views out my windows. I have good friends here. And I have you. I have all of you, and more family besides.”

“You could live with us. I showed you where we’re putting on the room for you to have when you visit. You could just live there, with us.” Iona looked at Boyle.

“Of course, and we’d love that.”

“You’ve a sweet heart,” Mary Kate said to Iona, “and you’ve a generous one, Boyle. But if I come to stay, to live, I’ll take my own place. Close by, be sure of that. In the village most like, where I can walk to the shops and see my good friends, and visit with you in your fine new home as often as you please.”

“I’ve a cottage and no tenant,” Fin commented, and had Mary Kate lifting her eyebrows.

“I’ve heard as much, but it’s some months till April.”

“It’s easy to rent it to tourists for short spells who want something in the village, something self-catering. You might have a look at it before you go back to America.”

“I’ll do just that, and should confess I’ve already had a peek in the windows.” She grinned. “It’s cozy as a kitten, and so nicely updated.”

“I’ll see you get a key, and you can go in, look around whenever you like.”

“I’ll do that. I should go. Margaret will start worrying if I’m much later.”

“I’ll drive you in.” Boyle started to rise.

“I’ll do it.” Fin stood instead. “I’ll give you the key, and drop you round your friend’s. I need to be home myself.”

“I’ll get my coat. No, the lot of you stay where you are,” Mary Kate insisted. “I don’t mind being escorted from the house by a handsome young man.”

When they’d left, Iona got to her feet. “I’m going to draw you a bath.”

Branna’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you?”

“A bath with some of your own relaxation salts, and Meara’s going to make you a cup of tea. I’d like to send Connor and Boyle to Fin’s to do the same for him—”

“I’m not drawing a bath for Fin Burke,” Boyle said, definitely.

“But the two of them are going to clean up in here, just the way you like it. So you can get some rest, good rest, and put all this out of your mind for the rest of the night.”

“I wouldn’t argue with her once she gets the steam up,” Boyle advised.

“I wouldn’t mind a bath, or the tea.”

“That’s settled then.” Iona walked out.