Chapter 9 #2
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.”