Blood Magick

When he shook his head, she brought his hands up, pressed them to her own heart. “It matters to me, Fin, more than I can tell you. It matters.” She lowered to press her lips to his lips, to press her lips to his heart.

She’d broken his heart, as he’d broken hers. She didn’t know what fate would grant them, even if those hearts could be truly mended. But tonight she wanted him to know she knew his heart, and valued it.

To change the mood she danced her fingers along his left ribs. Fin jumped like a rabbit.

“Bloody hell.”

“Ah, still a weakness there, I see. That one small spot.” She reached for it again, and he caught her wrist.

“Mind yourself, as I recall a weakness or two of yours.”

“None that make me squeal like a girl, Finbar Burke.” She shifted again as he reared up, wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck. “Still would rather a fist in the face than a tickle along the ribs.”

“The one’s less humiliating.”

She shook back her hair, laughed up at the ceiling.

“Do you remember—”

She looked back at him, met his eyes. It was all there, in that instant, looking out at her. His craving for her, and the love wrapped around it. Past and present collided, rushed through her like a hot wind, sparking her own terrible, burning need.

“Oh God, Fin.”

No more patience, no more careful explorations. They came together in a fury, all wild need and desperation. Rough hands rushed over her, took greedily while her own yanked and pulled to free him of the rest of his clothes.

Nothing between them, she thought now. She couldn’t bear even air between them. Their mouths came together in heat and hunger as they rolled over the bed to find more of each other.

She closed her teeth over his shoulder, dug her fingers into his hips.

“Come inside me. I want you inside me.”

When he drove into her, the world stopped. No breath, no sound, no movement. Then came thunder, a hoarse roar of it, charging like a beast from the hills. And lightning, a flash that lit the room like noon.

With her eyes locked on his, she gripped his hands.

“It’s for us to say tonight,” she said. “It’s for us tonight.” She arched toward him. “Love me.”

“Only you. Always you.”

He gave himself over to the need, to her demand, to his own heart.

When they came together, they were the thunder, they were the lightning. And over their heads her stars shone the brighter.

• • •

WHEN HE WOKE, THE SUN WAS UP AND STREAMING. A BRIGHT day for the start of a new year. And Branna lay sleeping beside him.

He wanted to wake her, to make love with her in that streaming sunlight as they had in the dark and through to the soft kiss of dawn.

But shadows haunted her eyes. She needed sleep, and quiet, and peace. So he only touched her hair, and smiled, reminding himself she could be annoyed at best, ferocious at worst, on waking.

So he got out of bed, pulled on his pants, and slipped out of the room.

He’d work. He wanted work, wanted to find the way to end all of it, to resolve it once and for all. And to find the way to break the curse a dying witch had laid on him, so long before.

If he could break the curse, remove the mark, he and Branna could be together, not for a night, but a lifetime.

He’d given up believing that could be. Until this New Year, until the hours spent with her. Now that hope, that faith was back inside him, burning bright.

He would find a way, he told himself as he went to his workshop. A way to end Cabhan and protect the three, and all that came from them. A way to erase the mark from his body, and purge his blood of any trace of Cabhan.

Today, the first day of the New Year, he’d renew that quest.

He considered the poison they’d created for the last battle. Strong and potent, and they’d come close. The injuries to Cabhan—or what inhabited him—had been great. But not mortal. Because what empowered Cabhan wasn’t mortal.

A demon, Fin thought, paging through his own books. One freed by blood sacrifice to merge with a willing host. A host with power as well.

Blood from the sire.

He sat to make notes of his own.

Blood from the dam.

Shed by the son.

He wrote it all down, the steps, the words, what he’d seen, and what he’d felt.

The red stone created by blood magicks of the darkest sort, of the most evil of acts. The source of power, healing, immortality.

“And a portal,” Fin murmured. “A portal for the demon to pass through, and into the host.”

They could burn Cabhan to ash as Sorcha had, but wouldn’t end him without destroying the stone, and the demon.

A second potion, he considered, and rose to pace. One conjured to close this portal. Trap the demon inside, then destroy it. Cabhan couldn’t exist without the demon, the demon couldn’t exist without Cabhan.

He pulled down another book, one of the journals he kept when he traveled. With his hands braced on the work counter, he leaned over, reading, refreshing himself. Considering what might be done.

“Fin.”

Engrossed, his mind on magicks dark and bright, he glanced over. She wore one of his oldest shirts, a faded chambray he sometimes tossed on to work in the stables. Bare feet, bare legs, tumbled hair, and a look in her eyes of astonished sorrow.

His heart skipped—just the sight of her—even before he followed her gaze to the window, to the stained-glass image of her.

He straightened, hooked his thumbs in his front pockets. “It seemed right somehow, to have the Dark Witch looking over my shoulder when I worked here. Reminding me why I did.”

“It’s a constant grief to love like this.”

“It is.”

“How do we go on, as that may never change?”

“We take what we have, and do whatever we can to change it. Haven’t we lived without each other long enough?”

“We are what we are, Fin, and some of that is through no choice of our own. There can’t be promises between us, not for tomorrows.”

“Then we take today.”

“Only today. I’ll see to breakfast.” She turned to go, glanced back. “You’ve a fine workshop here. Like the rest of the house, it suits you.”

She went down. Coffee first, she told herself. Of a morning, coffee always made things clearer.

She’d begun the New Year with him, something she’d sworn would never happen. But she’d made that oath in a storm of emotion, in turmoil. And had kept it, she admitted, as much for self-preservation as duty.

And now, for love, she’d broken it.

The world hadn’t ended, she told herself as she worked Fin’s very canny machine. Fire hadn’t rained from the sky. They’d had sex, a great deal of lovely sex, and the fates appeared to accept it.

She’d woken light and bright and loose and . . . happy, she admitted. And she’d slept deeper and easier than she had since Samhain.

Sex was energy, she considered, gratefully taking those first sips of coffee. It was positive—when done willingly—a bright blessing and a meeting of basic needs. So sex was permitted, and she could thank the goddesses for that, and would.

But futures were a different matter. She wouldn’t make plans again, let herself become starry-eyed and dreaming. Today only, she reminded herself.

It would be more than they’d had before, and would have to be enough.

She hunted in his massive fridge—oh, she’d love having one so big as this—and found three eggs, a stingy bit of bacon, and a single hothouse tomato.

Like today only and sex, it would have to be enough.

She heard him come in as she finished cobbling together what she thought of as a poor man’s omelette.

“Your larder is a pitiful thing, Fin Burke. A sad disgrace, so you’ll make do with what I could manage here, and be grateful.”

“I’m very grateful indeed.”

She glanced around. He’d put on a black long-sleeved tee, but his feet remained as bare as hers. And he had a smile on his face.

“You seem very happy for a miserly bit of bacon and tomato scrambled up with a trio of eggs.”

“You’re wearing only my old shirt and cooking at my stove. I’d be a fool not to smile.”

“And a fool you’ve never been.” She stuck a second mug on his coffee machine, pressed the proper buttons. “This one here is far better than mine. I should have one. And your jam was old as Medusa, and just as ugly. You’ll make do with butter for your toast. I’ve started you a list for the market. You’ll need to—”

He whirled her around, lifted her to the tips of her toes, and ravished her mouth. When she could think, she thought it fortunate she’d taken the eggs off the heat, or they’d have been scorched and ruined.

But since she had, she gave as good as she got in the kiss.

“Come back to bed.”

“That I won’t as I’ve taken the time and trouble to make a breakfast out of your pitiful stores.” She pulled back. “Take your coffee. I’m plating this up before it goes cold. How do you manage breakfast on your own?”

“Now that Boyle’s rarely available for me to talk into frying one up, I get whatever’s handy. There’s the oatmeal packs you make up in the microwave.”

“A sad state of affairs.” She put a plate in front of him, sat with her own. “And with such a lovely spot here to have your breakfast. I think, once Boyle and Iona are in their house, you’d be able to see their lights through the trees from here. It meant something to them, you selling them the land.”

“He’s a brother to me, and he’s lucky for all that, as otherwise I might have snatched Iona up for my own. Though she can’t cook for trying.”

“She’s better than she was. But then she had nowhere to go but up in that department. She’s stronger every day. Her power’s still young and fresh, but it has a fierceness to it. It may be why fire’s hers.”

This was good, she thought, and this was sweet. Sitting and talking easy over coffee and eggs.

“Will her grandmother take your cottage to rent?” she asked him.

“I think she will.”

Branna toyed with her eggs. “There’s connections everywhere between you and me, and us. I put it all out of my mind for a very long time, but I’ve had to ask myself in these last months, why so many of them? Beyond you and me, Fin. There’s always been you and Boyle and Connor, and Meara as well.”

“Our circle,” he agreed, “less one till Iona came.”

“That she would come as fated as the rest. And didn’t you have that cottage when Meara’s mother needed it, and now for Iona’s Nan? You and Boyle and the stables, you and Connor with the falconry school. Land you owned where Boyle and Iona will live their life. You’ve spent more time away than here these past years, and still you’re so tightly linked. Some may say it’s just the way of things, but I don’t believe that. Not anymore.”

“What do you believe?”

“I can’t know for certain.” Poking at the eggs on her plate, she stared off out the window. “I know there are connections again, the three now, the three then. And each of us more closely linked to one of them. And didn’t Eamon mistake our Meara for a gypsy he knew—name of Aine as you named the white filly you brought back to breed with Alastar? I feel Boyle has some connection there as well, some piece of it, and if we needed we’d find that connection to Teagan of the first three.”

“It’s no mystery.” He rubbed his shoulder. “It’s Cabhan for me.”

“I think it’s more, somewhere. You’re from him, of his blood, but not connected in the way I am with Sorcha’s Brannaugh, or Connor with Eamon and so on. If you were, I can’t see how you’d have known to bring Alastar back for Iona, and Aine back for Alastar.”

“I didn’t bring Aine back for Alastar, not altogether, or not only. I brought her back for you.”

The mug she’d lifted stilled in midair. “I . . . I don’t understand you.”

“When I saw her, I saw you. You used to love to ride, to fly astride a horse. I saw you on her, flying through the night with the moon bursting full in the sky. And you, lit like a candle with . . .”

“What?”

“As you are in the window upstairs, just as I saw you years before when I had it done. A wand in one hand, fire in the other. It came and went like a fingersnap, but was clear as day. So I brought her back for you, when you’re ready for her.”

She said nothing, could say nothing for a moment. Then she rose, went to the door, and let in the little dog she’d sensed waiting.

Bugs wagged around her feet, then dashed to Fin.

“Don’t feed him from the table,” she said absently as she sat again. “It’s poor manners for both of you.”

Fin, who’d been about to do just that, looked down at the hopeful dog.

You know where the food is, little man. Let’s not ruffle the lady’s feathers.

Happy enough, Bugs raced off to the laundry, and his bowls.

“I’ll ride her when we next face Cabhan, and be the stronger for it. You brought us weapons, for both Alastar and Aine are weapons against him. You’ve bled with us, conjured with us, plotted with us, to end him. If your connection was with him, strongest with him, how could you do these things?”

“Hate for him, and all he is.”

Branna shook her head. Hate didn’t make courage or loyalty. And what Fin had done took both.

“I was wrong to try to block you out in the beginning of this, and it was selfishly done. I wanted to believe that connection, you to Cabhan, but it’s not there. Not in the way he’d want, not in the way he needs. Your connection is with us. I don’t understand the why of it, but it’s truth.”

“I love you.”

Oh, her heart warmed and ached at the words. She could only touch his hand. “Love is powerful, but it doesn’t explain, in a logical way, why your feelings for me link you so tight with the others.”

She leaned forward now, her breakfast forgotten. “Between the first three and us, I’ve found no others who’ve been so tightly woven together. No others who’ve gone back dreaming to them, or had them come. Others have tried and failed, but none have come so close as we to ending him. I’ve read no tales in the books of one of the three riding on Alastar into battle, with Kathel and Roibeard with them. And none that speak of a fourth, of one who bears the mark, joining them. It’s our destiny, Fin, but you’re the change in it. I believe that now. It’s you who make our best chance to finish it, you who bear his mark and come from his blood. And still, I can’t see the why of it.”

“There are choices, you know well, to be made with power, and with blood.”

“I feel there’s more, but that alone may be enough.”

“It won’t be enough to destroy Cabhan. Or I mean to say we won’t succeed in destroying him, no more than Sorcha could, without destroying what he took into him.”

She nodded, having come to the same conclusion. “The demon he bargained with.”

“The demon who used him to gain freedom. Blood from his sire, from his mother, shed by him, drunk by him, used by him with the demon’s demands and promises, to create the stone.”

“And the power source.”

“Not just a power source, I think. A portal, Branna, the entry into Cabhan.”

“A portal.” She sat back. “There’s a thought. Through the stone conjured with the blackest of blood magicks, into the sorcerer who made the bargain. There sits the power, and the way into the world. If a portal can be opened . . .”

“It can be closed,” Fin finished.

“Yes, there’s a thought indeed. So it becomes steps and stages. Weaken and trap Cabhan so he can’t slip away and heal again. And as he—the host—is weak and trapped, close the portal, trapping the demon, who is the source. Destroy it, destroy Cabhan for good and all.”

She picked up her fork again, and though the eggs had gone cold, ate. “Well then, all that’s left is figuring out how it’s to be done, and when it can be done, and doing it.”

“I’ve a few thoughts, and may have more when I finish reading up. I spent some time with a Shaolin priest some years ago.”

“A . . . You worked with a Shaolin priest? In China?”

“I wanted to see the wall,” he said with a shrug. “He had some thoughts on demons, as a kind of energy. And I’ve spent some time here and there with shamans, other witches, a wise man, an Aborigine. I kept journals, so I’ll be reading through.”

“It seems you’ve had quite the education in your travels.”

“There are places in the world of such strong energy, such old power. They call to people like us. Only today,” he said, reaching over for her hands. “But if there are ever tomorrows, I’d show you.”

Since she couldn’t answer, she only squeezed his hands, then rose to clear the plates. “It’s today that needs us. I’ve never given a thought to destroying demons, and in truth never believed they existed in our world. Which is, I see now, as shortsighted as those who can’t believe in magicks.”

“I’ll see to the clearing up here. It’s the rule in your own house, and a fair one.”

“All right then. I should get home, and start reading up on demons myself.”

“It’s the first day of the New Year,” he said as he walked to her. “And a kind of holiday.”

“Not for the likes of us, with what’s coming. And I’ve work besides to earn my living. You may have staff and all that to see to most, but I’d think you’ve a living to earn as well.”

“We’ve no lessons today, and the guided rides and hawk walks are a handful only between them both. And I’ve a couple hours yet before I’m to meet with Boyle, then Connor.”

She angled her face up to his. “It’s a fortunate man you are to have such leisure time.”

“Today it is. I’m thinking you may have an hour yet to spare.”

“Well, your thinking isn’t—” She broke off, narrowed her eyes as the shirt she’d worn winked away, leaving her naked. “That was rude and inhospitable.”

“I’ll show you great hospitality, aghra.” Closing his arms around her, he flew them both back into bed.





12




SHE DIDN’T LEAVE UNTIL MIDDAY, AND FOUND KATHEL outside playing run and tumble with Bugs. She ignored the fact that those who worked in the stables would have seen her car still parked when they’d arrived that morning.

The juice would begin to flow from the grapevine, but it couldn’t be helped. She gave Bugs a quick rub, told him he was welcome to come with Fin anytime at all and play with Kathel.

Then she whistled her own dog into the car, and drove home.

She went straight upstairs to change out of her party dress and into warm leggings, a cozy sweater, and soft half boots. After bundling her hair up, she considered herself ready to work.

In her workshop, she put the kettle on, lit the fire. And feeling a shift in the air, whirled around.

Sorcha’s Brannaugh stood, a quiver on her back, her own Kathel at her heel.

“Something changed,” she said. “A storm came and blew through the night. Thunder raged, lightning flamed even through a fall of snow. Cabhan rode the storm until the stones of the castle shook.”

“Are you harmed? Any of you?”