A Hollow in the Hills

  She had his power, all his power.

  Pain lanced through Izzy’s body, her muscles convulsing as the fiery blade returned to her, the backlash sending her stumbling, and she saw the look on Holly’s face, the triumph. Jinx stepped up beside her. Blood and bruises covered him and his eyes glowed with that unearthly golden light. Osprey limped behind him, grinning like a maniac.

  She’d done it. She’d given them everything. God, she’d hoped it would take time but she’d been wrong. Her chest crushed in on top of her heart, smothered her breath. She’d been so terribly wrong.

  Around them, the world slowed to a crawl. The fire leaped and danced in stop motion around the edge of the cairn, every other image making it through, the rest lost to the darkness. Through the distortion, she could see her dad, trying to reach her. The sound, muffled, only reached her as if from far away. But Holly’s voice, within the circle of power, was crystal clear.

  ‘At last,’ the matriarch said.

  ‘What have you done?’ Izzy gasped.

  ‘Me? Nothing at all. This is all you, my dear girl. You’ve opened a moment, created a rather special Sídheway all your own. Well, the start of one anyway. You just have to complete it now. Jinx?’

  He moved like an automaton. Not unwillingly though. She could see no struggle in his face. It was as if he didn’t know what he was doing. As if Jinx, her Jinx, wasn’t there at all.

  He glinted in the firelight, all those piercings, all those excruciating points of control on him. All the things Holly had bound him with over all those years. And more. So much more. Light sparked across his skin, like lines of current, a walking plasma ball in human form. The two lines of tattoos at his throat glowed brightest of all.

  ‘Jinx, please,’ she whispered. ‘You have to fight her. You have to beat her.’

  Jinx moved irrevocably forward. Izzy could see the same glittering darkness in his eyes, the glow that welled up inside him. He didn’t even look like Jinx, not anymore. The cold, implacable face, the arrogance of the highest of angels, the hatred of a lower life form… all those things she had seen in Zadkiel and his kind were amplified a hundredfold.

  ‘Don’t you like him anymore?’ asked Holly, laughing beneath the words. ‘What a shame. He’s quite taken with you. All that fire and spirit. You shine, Isabel Gregory. Not in the same way as Dylan here perhaps.’ She tightened her grip on Dylan who was lost in pain and misery. ‘And Shining Ones do so love things that shine. They need your energy, your fire. It’s barely holding on to him now, only here with my power, but one taste of you and the spell will be forever.’

  ‘What do you mean taste?’

  ‘Just look at him, Isabel, and you won’t care. The Sídhe blood, the fire in you … you want to serve him. Just give in.’

  Her eyes caught on the light that encircled him, that flickered over him. Bright and golden, so beautiful to behold. She stared at him in wonder, captivated by the vision. Fire walking on the hilltop. More than fire. Pure light. Everything in her wanted to please him, to serve him. All the fire in her surged wildly and she couldn’t help herself. She would have dropped to her knees but it would mean moving. And she couldn’t move and risk losing sight of him. The Shining One, the seraph, the most wondrous thing she’d ever seen.

  Jinx stopped in the centre of the ruined cairn, towering over her so that she had to tilt her head back to keep looking at him. And she had to keep looking at him. He smiled, a slow, lazy, knowing smile that reached inside her and made her helpless. He was beautiful, more beautiful than anyone or anything she’d ever seen, more beautiful than he’d ever been before. And at the same time, when she looked into his eyes, she knew he was terrible as well. Beautiful and terrible, all rolled together. He seized her hand and the bone handle of the knife, bringing them together with a determined slowness. The iron sliced into her skin and blood welled up in the wound, covering the metal where Eochaid’s blood still stained it.

  The spell on Izzy shattered. Far too late. She sobbed out his name, recoiled from him in horror.

  Jinx – or the creature that had been Jinx – raised the knife to his mouth and licked it clean. In front of her eyes, a third line blossomed in the skin of his neck, binding the other two together like a barbed vine.

  ‘Now!’ Holly screamed in delight. Power detonated around them, power in the ground, power in the sky. Dylan screamed as it raced through him and coupled with the power in him. The strange barrier wobbled and distorted, breaking apart and where it fell, flames roared across the ground, a white hot inferno on the edge of the circle of stones. Izzy threw herself at Jinx, bringing him to the ground in a tangle of limbs.

  The moment broke and noise fell over them in a wave like physical pain. She grabbed him, shook him.

  ‘Jinx, please. Listen to me. Don’t … don’t go. Don’t change. Please fight it. Please. Please!’

  The flames closed behind them, a wall of fire cutting them off completely. At the last second a figure burst through the last gap, leaping over them before they could rise high enough to catch her. She landed deftly and put herself between Izzy and Holly.

  ‘Stay behind me,’ ordered Silver. ‘This might be the only chance we have.’

  The voice in Dylan’s mind demanded more and more, everything. He couldn’t fight. Not now. Holly reached inside him and took it all. He understood now how gentle Silver had tried to be by comparison, even if he hadn’t appreciated it at the time. There was no consideration for him now, no sense of him as a person, as an individual. He was a thing to be used, a source of power and nothing more.

  And, God, it hurt. He’d never known pain and humiliation like it.

  Into the blur of light, of agony and misery, came another voice.

  ‘Dylan? Dylan, love, listen to me …’

  Silver. It was Silver. But how could it be? And Silver had never called him ‘love’, not even as a general endearment, not even by accident. It had to be a trick, a hallucination. It couldn’t be real.

  ‘Dylan, you are the only one who can stop this. Please, listen to me. You have to take control back from her. She’s using the magic inside you to cast this spell, to raise Crom and kill Jinx. To bind them as one. I can’t stop her, but you can. Listen to the magic, to the music it makes. Please, listen.’

  Music. He knew music. He could understand music and there was music all around him. In him. Running through his veins, whirling through his mind, making his heart race and his skin shiver.

  ‘Silver?’ he whispered.

  Holly’s fist in his hair tightened painfully. ‘She should have gone back to a tree or picked out a pretty, shiny rock. What was she thinking, picking you?’

  But she hadn’t been thinking, he remembered. He could picture, in vivid detail the cell in Holly’s Market and Silver dying, raving, lost. Silver hadn’t been thinking. And she hadn’t chosen him.

  Dylan’s eyes snapped open and his gaze fixed on her, trying to protect Izzy and Jinx from Holly’s spell, trying to stand in the way of her own magic wielded against her. Trying to reach him.

  Silver hadn’t chosen him as her touchstone. She wouldn’t have been able. She was dying. She’d told him to go. She had said no.

  He’d chosen her.

  Mind and body, Dylan seized hold of the magic pouring out of him and pulled it back. Holly’s spell snapped like old elastic, the backlash sending her stumbling across the grass where Osprey caught her.

  Someone grabbed him, pulling him up and then they were running, half stumbling, but always moving. Clodagh, it was Clodagh, dragging him across the open ground while his mind pinwheeled and exploded like the fireworks over the city.

  He collapsed as he reached Silver, who cried out in a language he couldn’t hope to understand, lyrical and beautiful, but torn in pain.

  The earth shook underneath them. The fires dropped.

  ‘Leave him alone!’ Izzy screamed at all around her, holding Jinx as if to shield him from the world. ‘You just leave him alone!’

  Ang
els, demons and fae all around them surged forward, without Holly’s spell to hold them back. Dylan didn’t hesitate, even though he was acting on instinct alone. He reached for Silver’s hand.

  ‘Have to stop them.’ He pushed the words through his numb lips. ‘They’ll kill him. Now they know for sure.’

  She nodded and closed her eyes, concentrating. A shimmering wall arose around the five of them. Ice, he realised. It was a wall of ice, cutting them off.

  And then Silver looked at him. There were tears on her face. ‘Dylan, I thought you were gone.’

  ‘Well, you were swanning around with the angels,’ Clodagh snapped. ‘With your voice back and all. What did you need with any of us?’

  ‘My voice?’ She stared incredulously at the girl, too shocked to be angry at her tone. ‘I would never do a deal with that pompous, stuck-up ass.’

  ‘He thought—’

  Silver sucked in a tight breath and stared at him. Guilt made the heat drain from his face. He’d doubted her. He’d thought she’d give anything to have her voice back, and that included Jinx. And him. They had all misjudged her and to see that knowledge on her face cut him to the core. ‘You didn’t. Oh love, tell me you didn’t. Don’t you know me yet?’

  ‘Hardly,’ he whispered and let her pull him close, to hold him because there was no more fight left in him. ‘You never let me get to know you.’

  ‘That’ll change. I promise, that will change.’

  Jinx curled against Izzy. She shook so hard, her whole body trembling, but she wouldn’t let him go. Her blood was on his hands again. He could smell it, warm and strangely sweet. He could taste it.

  Oh God, he could taste her blood. What had he done?

  And deep inside him that dreaded glow of sentience stirred up again, responding to it. Much as he might struggle, he could feel it now. Crom Cruach, first of the Shining Ones, planted as a seed inside him, fed and watered by the deaths of angels and demons and now by the very beings that had contained it long ago. His blood, surging in his veins transformed to light, to a blinding, terrifying light. He was changing, and when it happened, he would be gone.

  Púca were meant to change. His father had been trying to tell him that. Holly was counting on it. And with the process having begun, what could be done to stop it?

  The last noose tightened around his neck. He felt it, closing in, moment by moment.

  Wild magic. He was a thing of wild magic, of chaos. So were the Shining Ones. They were kin.

  Sorath and Lucifer had been nothing to this. Buried in the land, constrained for millenia, the rage of the Shining Ones knew no bounds. And in him, they had an escape. The spark of an angel, the heart of a demon, and the combined blood of two sworn enemies – the Grigori and the Fear.

  ‘Izzy,’ he said. ‘Izzy, help.’

  ‘I’m here. It’s going to be okay. I’ll find a way. I’ll use the Blade.’

  ‘You used it. It’s gone.’ That didn’t stop her trying. He could see her frown, that knot of frustration making lines between her eyebrows. ‘Izzy, it’s too late.’

  ‘No. It isn’t over. It can’t be. I have to try.’

  She studied him, her eyes so blue, flecked now with those strange touches of gold the blade imbued in her. She was changing too. He could feel it. She needed to return the blade to Donn before it consumed her and wiped out all that made her human. She’d used it to kill. Donn had warned her what that could do to her. They were both slipping away and he could think of only one way to stop it.

  ‘Jinx, Dad will negotiate with them. We’ll find a way to stop this, to undo her spells. Please. I only did what I had to do. I had to stop Eochaid.’

  ‘You haven’t done what they asked.’ No, she hadn’t give him up. She still refused to do that.

  She glared at him, angry, ready to fight. God, he loved that about her. Always ready to fight. Even if the fight was impossible.

  But this fight she couldn’t win. Not this time.

  He took out the iron knife with the bone handle. Izzy stared at him as if he was crazy and perhaps he was. But he could feel the creature inside him, could feel it rising up like a shark from the depths. He could sense what it wanted to do. The world really would burn and Izzy would be first.

  He couldn’t let that happen.

  ‘You did this once,’ he told her.

  ‘And to myself, but that’s not the way. Not this time.’

  ‘What’ll the angels do to me, Izzy? What’ll the demons do? If they even have time and a chance. I can’t let them take me. You can’t let me go. What’ll I become? He’s coming and I can’t stop him.’

  ‘Jinx, this is insane!’ Silver interrupted. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying. Holly can’t be trusted—’

  ‘But I can. No one believes it, Silver, except perhaps you. Look at me. Look inside me. Tell me what I’m becoming?’

  Silver frowned, but she bent to study his eyes. He saw her blanch, her gaze turn wide with fear and dismay. ‘Oh… Jinx …’ she whispered. She sank back beside the others, holding Dylan tight. ‘He’s right, Izzy.’

  ‘No!’ Izzy protested, even as he pushed the knife handle into her grip. Her fingers closed around it compulsively. She looked appalled. ‘There has to be another way.’

  Jinx shook his head and pressed the point against his chest, just under the ribs, angled up.

  Professional, clear minded intent, that was what they needed here. He locked his emotions away and thought about the logistics, how to make it easiest. He knew how to kill. Holly had made sure he knew how to kill. In oh so many ways. ‘Quick and clean, Izzy. You’ll get my heart. Straight in. Give it a slight twist to get the air in. It’ll be over almost at once.’

  ‘Jinx, I can’t.’

  ‘Look at me. Just at me.’

  And then she did. She really did. She looked deep into his eyes and he knew she saw the coming horror, so bright and terrible it would scourge the earth. She saw the terrible revenge it would inflict on her, on her family as Grigori, on everything she knew and loved. What he knew she would see.

  It broke his heart to see the hope die in her. Worst still knowing he was the one to kill it. He had to do something to comfort her. He had to try. ‘It’s like Donn said. You’ll send me to him. I’ll wait for you, remember? Just like always.’ Even that didn’t bring a smile. Perhaps she knew it was a wish rather than a promise. But what could he promise her now? Jinx pressed his free hand against her cheek, cupping her face gently. ‘Izzy, you couldn’t let Sorath destroy the world. You couldn’t let Eochaid and the Fear do it. You can’t let me do it either.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t do it. It won’t be you.’

  He smiled. ‘No. It won’t be me. Very soon now. It’s almost … He’s almost … Please, Izzy.’ He felt the strength draining from him, or rather perhaps his ability to control his own strength. The fingers of his hands flexed against her skin, ready to rend and tear, to hurt and he could barely stop them. ‘Please, Izzy. Please.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered and kissed him, leaning in, pressing close. Her lips were so soft, so gentle. The knife between them made him stiffen. He felt it bite, felt the acidic touch of the iron against and then inside his fae skin. This knife had cut into him so many times that now it almost felt like part of him.

  The beast inside him howled, not the death howl of the Cú Sídhe, because the Cú Sídhe wanted this death, but a cry of rage and frustration that ripped through the fabric of reality. Holly’s scream married with it, as if somewhere out there she felt it too as she fled from Silver and Dylan, from the world of pain the rest of the races had in store for her after this. He hoped it hurt. He hoped it seared through her flesh and into her shrivelled heart. He hoped—

  Izzy sobbed, her lips still pressed to his, and Jinx’s last thought was that he should have told her he loved her.

  One last time.

  Everything turned to snapshots. She felt so cold. So cold and the lights kept bursting around her and fading away, like
camera flashes. Brighter than fireworks. The bonfire crackled and roared but Jinx was turning cold and so was she. The stones beneath her sucked out every last drop of heat. The shadow of the Hellfire Club trapped her in darkness. Everything was cold.

  She’d seen it in him, the monster she’d only glimpsed before, that thing that had lurked inside him since Holly first killed the angel and bound him with its spark. That creature that had been eating away at the Jinx she knew, the Jinx she loved.

  She couldn’t breathe. Her chest was caught in a vice and her heart hammered at it from the inside. It would break apart one way or the other and there was nothing she could do to hold it all together. Everything was pain.

  Strong arms closed around her, crushing her until she fought against them. They tried to pull her away from Jinx but she ripped herself free and threw herself back on his unresponsive body. His corpse. He was a corpse.

  ‘Izzy,’ said Dad. ‘Isabel.’

  Voices like far off screams battered at her but they were drowned out by the fireworks and the bonfire. By the constant shriek of pain in her head.

  Holly and her kith were gone. Silver barked out orders, arguing fearlessly with Zadkiel and Azazel as if she had done it all her life. But suddenly she arrived beside Izzy, kneeling by Dad.

  ‘Grigori,’ she said. ‘Please. We need your help.’

  Of course they did. They needed her Dad as peacemaker. That was his role. The balance in between all the worlds, like he’d shown her on the Celtic Cross so long ago, keeping it all together, no matter what.

  Mum gathered her in a familiar embrace. Bruises coloured her porcelain skin and there were livid scratches on her bare arms. But that didn’t stop her taking one of Izzy’s hands and pulling it oh so gently away from Jinx.

  ‘You have to breathe, love,’ she said. ‘Look at me. Look at me and breathe. In and out. Ignore them. Ignore all of them. Just breathe.’

  Mum was okay. That should have mattered. Dad had rescued her, or the demons had let her go when they didn’t need a bargaining chip anymore. She didn’t know and it didn’t matter. It should have made her heart sing with relief. Mum was safe. But Jinx wasn’t. She couldn’t focus on anything but that. Jinx was gone.