Chapter Nine
Iona
“Remember me, cunt?” the troll demanded, orange eyes narrow with vile anticipation over his tusks. “I’ve been looking forward to getting my hands on you for decades.”
I stared at him, frozen like a rabbit in the jaws of a wolf. My sword dropped from nerveless fingers. This is a trick. It can’t be real. It cannot be him. Helena swore she killed him! “You died!” The words emerged, strangled and rough as I fought my locked muscles.
My mother laughed in delight. “I see you like my gift,” she purred. “All these years Maeve bragged you were a hero, I knew you were still the little coward I remembered. I knew the mere sight of my Olwydd would make you piss yourself in panic.”
“Iona!” Dearg roared. “That’s not Olywdd! Helena killed him!”
But I knew that face, that nasty orange stare, the gloating viciousness. There was no mistaking it. My gaze dropped to the scar that twisted his wide, thin-lipped mouth --
The scar was gone.
Realization struck, jolting me. A troll would no more erase a scar than a centaur would. Dearg was right -- this wasn’t Olywdd. It was another of my mother’s vicious tricks. Using my trauma, playing me the way she always had.
Bitch. That fucking bitch!
The troll shoved his face an inch from mine as I hung in his grip. He started describing in nauseating detail how he’d rape me and murder me.
Wait, I knew who this asshole is. The memory poured out of some dark corner of my mind. Olwydd had a brother he’d spoken of constantly -- Malak, whom I’d never met.
As I fought to break the paralysis, I could see Dearg beyond the troll’s shoulder, fighting Respen like a rabid wolf, trying to get to me, his fangs clenched, a vicious snarl rippling his muzzle.
Respen refused to let him pass, though Dearg alternated magical blast with huge swings of Dragon’s Breath.
As I stared at the troll who shook me in a big fist, I realized Malak wasn’t as big as his brother either. Olwydd had towered over me by a good three feet…
…When I’d been a child. Of course, he’d looked like a giant to me. Hell, my mother had towered over me, and now we were the same height…
Malak reached for the fly of his britches and snapped the lacings in his impatience to free his cock, his smile gloating.
“Dream on, Malak, you bastard.” I slammed both feet into his balls with every ounce of strength I had, then blasted a fireball into his face.
He howled in agony, losing his grip on me. I hit the floor in a crouch, grabbing my sword.
My mother called, “I was hoping you wouldn’t realize that. I was planning to break the news as you lay dying.”
“Fuck you too,” I snarled as Malak fought to pull out of his ball-busted curl. Before he could regain his feet, I swung my sword with all my demigoddess strength. The crackling blade hacked off the hand he lifted to block my weapon…
Along with his head.
Both body parts went flying with twin wet thuds as blood sprayed in arcs from the stumps.
My lips twisted in fury, I whirled toward Siobhan’s throne. She sat with her legs crossed, reclining in her throne as if watching a somewhat boring stage play.
I grabbed for power and willed it to blast her right in her smirking face.
Nothing happened.
She lifted one green brow at me. “Did you forget the geas, girl? You can’t hurt me any more than I can hurt you. The spell sees to that.”
That demon-cursed geas. I swore -- and broke off at a sudden flash of memory: Maeve’s hand wrapped around my wrist as she held a knife in the other. “Hold still, darling. This needs blood, but I’ll make the cut as quick as I can.”
That blade had been engraved with the same glowing runes as the one she’d given me hours ago -- because it was the same knife.
Blood Drinker.
I grabbed the canister of pepper spray off my belt.
Siobhan straightened as if cued by my expression. “What’s that?”
“Blood Drinker,” I told her, as the canister became a dagger.
She opened her mouth to yell, but I’d already slashed the weapon across my palm, feeding it my blood and magic.
The sigils on the blade blazed up like an arc-welder’s light.
My ears popped as the geas snapped, a pressure I hadn’t even known was there suddenly collapsing.
“Oh, look,” I purred at my mother. “I seem to have broken my geas.” My grin widened. “Too bad about yours.” I started toward her, my steps deliberate.
I was going to do it. Finally, I was going to do it.
Siobhan’s eyes flew wide. To my delight, there was actually fear in them. “No! No, you little cunt! You can’t do this!” She scrambled to her feet, conjuring a spell shield. “You won’t do this!”
“Why the hell not? I was your child and you tortured me. You owed me protection if not love. Instead, you fed me to perverted freaks like that.” I gestured at the dead troll.
“And what about you?” Siobhan demanded. “You owed me love, and you gave me nothing.”
“What the fuck did you expect? You abused me, you beat me, you terrorized me, you psychotic bitch. Over and over and over again. There isn’t a child on either Earth who would have loved you!”
“It was a test!” She half ran down the steps of her throne as if afraid I’d trap her in it.
When I lunged at her, she actually backed away.
“A test to see if you loved me the way I deserved. The way my bitch of a mother never loved me. And you failed. You deserved everything I did.” She spun toward my brother, who stood several feet from Dearg.
They faced each other. Though both men still had their swords drawn, they watched the two of us.
Siobhan pointed a shaking finger at Respen. “Like that one!” she spat, her face twisted with malice. “He was an utter failure. He never once did any of the simple things I asked him to do!”
“Like sending me to murder King Nightwind when I was seventeen?” Respen asked in a silken tone. “He and his warriors nearly killed me. If I hadn’t been able to gate away, they’d have trampled me to paste.”
“Because you failed!” Siobhan screeched. “I made sure you had the power to replace Nightwind and take over his kingdom, but you failed me the way you always fail.”
“And you failed me,” Respen said, throwing her words back in her face. “You never loved me as I deserved.”
“I decide what you deserve!” Siobhan shrilled. “And you didn’t deserve my love. Never did. And now what are you? A small, vicious man who kills for money when you should have killed for love of me.”
Respen laughed, the sound almost as chilling as the wild glitter in his eyes.
I hid a shudder. That is not a sane man.
“I’m not such a failure as all that,” he told her, his tone mocking. “I’ve been killing and killing and killing. For centuries. Building my power, knowing one day I’d get my chance.” He whipped his hands up and blasted her with such force I was momentarily blinded. I heard her scream.
I dared hope she was dead, but when I could see again, she’d shielded.
He hit her again and again in deafening waves of roaring magic that heated the room and pounded my senses as if I were in the middle of a tornado.
I hit the ground conjuring a shield, vaguely aware Dearg had done the same.
Shit! Why hadn’t Respen used that power earlier?
He’d have seared us both into charcoal briquettes!
Respen stalked Siobhan, his green hair whipping in the maelstrom of his power.
“When I heard the rumors about her, I knew you’d have to kill her because you never managed to break her, never drove her mad.
” He shot another salvo of blasts. “But the geas meant you wouldn’t be able to kill her yourself -- you’d need an assassin.
You could have hired anyone, but I know how you think -- you’d want me. ”
“Betrayer!” She fired three blasts at Respen, one right after the other.
He deflected them with a series of shields, each flashing in long enough to block a blast, then disappearing.
“Especially if I paid one of your informants to tell you I lived. I played with these two, biding my time, knowing you’d eventually bring us here so you could watch her die in person.
I knew you’d be so focused on her, I could finally end you. Wipe your madness from my nightmares.”
Siobhan screamed under the barrage, her voice spiraling into a wail as she staggered backward within her shield. “Stop!”
“No!” Respen roared back. “I’m not done.” He stalked her and blasted her again. I’d be deaf before this was over.
“Iona, I’m here,” Dearg shouted, his deep Dire Wolf voice barely audible over the screams and blasts.
He’d bellied over while Siobhan and my brother fought.
I dropped my shield as he dropped his. He slid next to me and I shielded us again.
Looping a strong, furry arm around my waist, Dearg covered my body with his, bracing his weight on his elbows.
He doubled my shield with one of his own.
“We need to get the hell out of here now while the bastard’s distracted,” Dearg yelled over the roaring blasts. His power flared as he tried to conjure a gate.
Nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing.
My heart sank as a fragment of childhood memory rose. “Oh, sweet Maeve! When Siobhan captures someone, she sets the wards to keep them from leaving!”
Dearg swore.
Peering through the smoke and glare of Respen’s attacks, I saw Siobhan’s shield had disappeared. Now she floated four feet off the ground, writhing in the grip of a blaze of combat magic. It abruptly cut off, dumping her to the floor on her face.
Respen swaggered toward Siobhan. “I bided my time for years, waiting for this moment. I have so much power I don’t have to sink a blade into my targets anymore.
” He smirked. “Though I still do it anyway. There’s something about the feeling of steel sliding into flesh, feeling their life force dimming and going out. ”
“I should have killed… killed you when I… I had the chance!” Siobhan gasped.
“Yes, you should have,” he agreed pleasantly. “Or been a little less fucking predictable.”
“You think…” she panted, face twisted in a sneer, “…think you’re so smart.”