Chapter 8 Toolie
Toolie
The countryside rolled away from Dublin Castle in a patchwork of hedgerows, churned fields, and stone walls, all of it ghost-lit by a half-shrouded moon.
I didn’t run, exactly. I moved fast, keeping low, boots squelching through peat and the slime of centuries.
My jeans and leather jacket made me a fucking beacon, every step louder than the last. I kept waiting for someone to yell “freeze,” or “hands where I can see them,” but this wasn’t Kentucky, and the only sirens here were the crows.
I stuck to the shadows, putting old fences and dead trees between me and the road.
Once or twice, a torch bobbed in the middle distance, but the men carrying them were too busy chasing their own ghosts to see mine.
After a mile, the castle was just another lump in the darkness behind me, and my lungs felt like they’d been scrubbed with a wire brush.
I stopped on a ridge, caught my breath. The moon was lower now, but bright enough to show the valley below—a shingle of river, a line of huts, smears of smoke twisting up where the wind hadn’t finished the job.
The air was raw, full of ozone and dung and the copper stink of open wounds.
Somewhere out there, Catherine was alive.
Just a few days from my original death, if Celeste’s math was good.
I let that thought bounce around in my head. I let it cut me.
At the bottom of the slope, an old stone bridge spanned a black creek.
There was movement on it—three shapes, bunched together, long rifles cradled across their chests.
English, by the red and the white of their sashes.
I crouched behind a gorse bush, watching, counting their steps.
They were younger than me, probably, but the war and the whiskey had aged them into nothing but gristle and teeth.
One was missing part of an ear, the stump shining wet in the moonlight.
They were too close to the cottage I needed to reach. Too close to Catherine. I waited, hoping they'd pass, but then one stopped, peered into the dark, and muttered something. The others laughed. I caught the word “witch”—not directed at me, but at whatever spooked them about the night.
I edged sideways, keeping to the ditch, and almost made it past when my boot snapped a twig. The nearest soldier whipped his head around and aimed, but his musket wavered, heavy in his hands.
“Halt!” he called. The other two fanned out, boots squashing in the mud.
I considered running. But I’d learned, back home, that running just got you shot in the back. Better to close the distance. Better to get your hands in the mix.
The first came up the bank, breath huffing like a bellows. I let him get close, saw the whites of his eyes, and the surprise when he realized he was looking at a man in a Harley t-shirt under a cut. For a second, he hesitated. Maybe he thought I was a demon. Maybe he was right.
I punched him in the throat, hard. Cartilage crumpled under my knuckles.
He dropped his musket and clutched his neck, making a sound like a sink gurgling down the last of the water.
I caught him by the collar and headbutted him, felt the spray of blood from his nose hit my face.
The world stuttered, just for a second, and I saw Catherine—barefoot in the grass, skirt blowing, mouth open in a wild laugh. I almost lost my grip.
The second soldier was on me before I could finish the first. He swung his musket like a club, but I ducked and slammed my shoulder into his ribs.
Bone gave. He screamed, high and childlike, and I wrenched the musket free.
For a second, we struggled over it. He bared his teeth, eyes rolling up, and I bit down hard on the urge to let go and just let him beat me.
Instead, I used the butt end and jammed it into his jaw. He toppled, arms windmilling.
The third, smarter than the others, held back. He leveled his gun and pulled the trigger. The powder flash lit up his face—pockmarked, ugly with hate—and the ball sang past my ear, close enough to pop the cartilage. I tasted blood in my mouth.
I ran at him, closing the gap before he could reload. He drew a knife, blade catching the moon. He was fast. But I’d trained with men who fought dirty, and time in the ring or a back alley teaches you the first rule: end it quick, or don’t end it at all.
We grappled. He slashed, caught my sleeve, split it open from wrist to elbow.
The pain was sharp, but not as sharp as the rush that followed.
I trapped his wrist, twisted, and felt the bones shift under the pressure.
His face went slack, then he tried to bite me.
I laughed because it was so fucking primitive.
I slammed his head into the bridge rail, once, twice, until his body sagged.
I stood over the three of them, breathing hard. Their blood steamed on the stone. The one I’d punched first was dead, neck at the wrong angle. The other two twitched, then stilled.
I hated how good it felt. How natural. Like this was what I was always built for: wet work in the mud, violence measured in seconds and inches.
I wiped my hands on the grass, but the blood wouldn’t come off.
It just smeared, darker each time. I thought of Catherine again, the way her hands always smelled of soap and flour, the way she’d scold me for tracking shit into the house.
A memory bubbled up—her pinning me against the door, hands in my hair, kiss so hard it left bruises.
She called me “fool” in a way that felt like “beloved.”
I wondered what she’d say, seeing me like this.
I wondered if I’d ever get close enough to tell her.
I dragged the bodies off the bridge and hid them in the bracken. Not out of respect, but because I didn’t want the next patrol to put the whole county on alert. I took one of the knives. Tucked it into my waistband. Checked my sleeve—still bleeding, but I’d had worse.
I crossed the bridge, boots leaving prints in the cold dew. On the other side, the world went quiet. Only the noise in my own head, the drum of my pulse, broke the silence.
I followed the river. The path was familiar, not from dreams but from old muscle memory, the kind that lived in my bones.
I skirted a dead cow, bloated and picked over by birds.
I stepped through a gap in the wall, boots silent on the moss.
The hill rose, and at the top, a field opened out—fresh plowed, rimmed with thistle, and at the far edge, a squat stone cottage with smoke rising from the chimney.
My heart jerked. I kept moving.
As I got closer, every step brought up more memories—her singing to herself, her hands on my back as I fixed the roof, her face buried in my neck, breathing me in after the world had tried to take me away.
I crouched in the hedgerow. The window glowed yellow from firelight inside. I could just make out movement—a woman, bent over the hearth, stirring a pot. Her hair was dark, loose. She straightened, wiped her hands, and for a moment looked straight at the window. I froze.
She was older than I remembered. More tired around the eyes. But it was her.
Catherine.
She ladled something into a bowl, then sat at the table and put her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook. She didn’t eat.
I wanted to run to the door, pound it open, but I knew how I must look: a monster in black jeans and a dead man’s jacket, spattered in blood, face set for violence.
I stayed outside, head pressed to the cold stone, fighting the urge to collapse. I’d killed three men tonight, and it wasn’t enough. I’d kill a hundred more if it meant getting inside that house. Getting to her.
I slid down and sat in the dirt. My fingers shook. The blood on my hands started to clot, tacky and dark.
I wondered how much of the old me was left. I wondered if she’d see it in my eyes.
I watched her until the fire burned low. Until she went to the door, looked out at the empty night, and shut it behind her. Even after, I stayed put, watching the smoke until it curled away to nothing.
***
I woke after an hour and skirted the cottage, finding the old back door. The latch was the same, a bent nail hammered into the frame, the handle polished by a hundred years of nervous hands. I touched it, felt the tremor in my own fingers.
I waited, listening.
Inside, Catherine hummed, low and rough. A song I’d never heard before. Maybe one she made up, or maybe something from her mother. It was beautiful, and it broke me all over again.
I counted to ten, then opened the door.
The kitchen was smaller than I remembered, walls sweating with heat from the hearth. Catherine stood at the table, back to the door, shoulders stiff. She heard the creak, spun, and her face went white.
I froze in the doorway.
She looked me up and down, eyes wide. Took in the jacket, the jeans, the boots caked in blood and dirt. She looked at my face last, like she couldn’t bear it, and when she did, she stumbled back a step, hand to her chest.
We stared at each other, neither of us breathing.
She spoke first, voice barely above a whisper. “What are you?”
I tried to answer, but my mouth was full of ash. “Catherine,” I managed.
She shook her head. “You’re dead.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
She let the silence eat at us. Her hands dropped to her sides. “Are you a ghost?”
I laughed, and it came out all wrong. “Maybe.”
She closed her eyes, then opened them again, angry now. “If you’re here to torment me, go on and do it. I’ve got nothing left.”
I took a step inside. The floor creaked. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
She stared at me, searching for the lie. “Why do you look like this?”
I glanced at my clothes, remembered how monstrous I must seem. “It’s a long story.”
She looked away, jaw tight. “I buried you myself. Dug the hole with my own hands. Said the prayers, even though I hate them. You’re not supposed to be here.”
I almost said I was sorry. Almost.