8. Aurora
Aurora
I reached into my bag and retrieved the map Aunt Amara had given me. I can’t believe I’m going to trust this guy.
Mac tilted his head. “What’s that?”
“A very, very old map,” I answered flatly.
“Why didn’t you just get a modern map?” He shifted uncomfortably on the ground.
I looked into his blue eyes, feeling again that I could get lost in their depths. How did he pull me in and make me trust him? I tried to shake the feeling without success. My voice softened. “This map was supposed to help lead me to something special.”
“Your treasure map, then?” He chuckled. I smiled back at him.
I closed my eyes and pulled the warm air into my lungs. The flame's heat danced across my face as I searched my heart for answers. Did I have a choice but to trust him? I was stuck in this room with him until we found a way out. So far, he had been nothing but a gentleman. Without him, I wasn’t getting far, and the nagging doubt in the pit of my stomach confirmed that.
“Do you believe in vampires?” I asked, my eyes snapping open. “Not the cute and shiny kind. The kind that feeds on humans and kills without thinking about it.” My mother’s warning about the evils of the O’Cillian family hung in my chest.
Mac’s eyes darkened, yet he looked like he struggled not to laugh. “I absolutely believe in vampires,” he said with such conviction that I wondered.
“Have you ever seen one?” I asked, reaching for the most practical cause of his statement.
“That’s a story for another day,” he replied, his eyes gazing into the fire.
I could feel my eyebrow rise as I pressed. “You won’t tell me?” If he shook his head, it was so fast it only registered in my subconscious.
He pointed at the guide in my hands. “Why don’t we look at this map? Is it something like X marks the spot?”
I flattened it out before me, the paper brown and fragile from age. The lines denoting the cave system didn’t contain any detail, and the miles upon miles of documented tunnels took most of the page. Keeping it away from the flames, I located the room we sat in and noticed, for the first time, a small symbol near the room that had faded with time, making it illegible. Did it have something to do with the O’Cillians?
The ancient map didn’t have enough detail to guide me closer to what I needed. “I need to find a pen,” I said.
“For what?” asked Mac.
I dug through my bag, knowing I had a pen and paper, but they must have fallen to the bottom. “I need to draw a diagram of the room I can work with.”
“Why not use that one?”
“There isn’t nearly enough detail. It won’t allow me to dowse.” Pulling my head out of my bag with a smile, I held a pen and paper up for him to see.
“How is that going to help?”
I bit the inside of my cheek and gazed at him. “I’m looking for something that I think is hidden in this room. This will give me a way to find it. But I’m only looking for it if I can trust you?” I pulled my good knee toward my chest to create a table while I kept the injured leg in front of me. I looked around the room, sketching the details—and avoiding Mac’s eyes.
“If you can trust me?” His voice rose like my potential distrust was the most ludicrous idea he had ever heard.
I gestured over my shoulder to the upper ledge. “It’s not like we’re able to get out of here, which means you’re stuck with me, whoever I am. David said the O’Cillians used this room. You said they were vampires. So I need to know if I can trust you.”
“You can.” Mac picked up a stone and twirled it in his hands. “What are you looking for?”
I smiled at him. “Would you believe me if I told you I didn’t know?”
He chuckled, fidgeting with the stone. “You came into a cave, intent on breaking multiple laws to search a cavern you didn’t know for an object that you don’t know what you’re looking for? How will you know when you find it?”
“I just will,” I said, glancing up from my work to catch the top of his dark hair as he stared at the stone he twirled. “What do you think?” I turned my map toward him, as much of the chamber as I could see detailed on the drawing.
His lips parted in a grin. “Pretty good likeness, but I don’t see how that will help.”
“Magic,” I said with a smile as I slipped my obsidian necklace from around my neck and removed the ruby ring, needing to tap into the power of my coven. I slid the chain of the necklace through the ring.
Mac’s eyes narrowed, and his face darkened, his eyes no longer conveying a serene ocean but a dark storm. What had I just said that was making him so upset?
The flames of the fire reflected in the facets of the blacker-than-night volcanic glass. I took a deep breath and concentrated on finding the lost object that my coven sought to recover, the one that would end my quest. The pendulum swung over the map.
I could feel Mac’s eyes on me as I waited to sense the familiar pull that occurred when the magic succeeded. He seemed to take everything in stride. Almost too much so, like he had seen it before, like he knew. The seconds felt like hours before the pendulum slid through my fingers to the paper. I looked under the tip of the stone. “Well,” I said with a laugh, “this isn’t good because right now, it’s telling me that what I’m trying to find is you.”
Mac smiled. “Are you sure you aren’t?” He creased his brow, his question filled with suggestion.
I glanced over at him, taking in the visage of his body, his broad chest and shoulders, stoic and calm. “Somehow, I don’t think that’s the case.”
I smiled at him, trying to forget the feel of his hands as he tried to wake me, his touch unlike any I had experienced. I broke my gaze away from him, took another breath, and tried again. It didn’t take long before I felt the tug on the obsidian, and the pendulum landed with a clunk.
“I think what I need is over there,” I said, pointing at the columns. “It looks like it is between the far column and the one to the right, closer to the center table than the columns. Want to help me?”
Mac tilted his head. “And what exactly am I helping you with?”
I pulled a small gardening trowel from my bag. “You need to dig.” I held the tool out in front of me.
His laughter floated to my ears. “First, you plan on spending the night in a cave where you’re not supposed to be, and now, I’m going to deface it by digging.”
I nodded. “Either you’re going to help me or I’m crawling over there and doing it myself.”
He rolled his eyes as he stood and walked to me to take the tool. “I’m only doing this because you asked.”
He kneeled between the two columns and dug the trowel into the ground with slow, methodical strokes. My eyes widened as I saw how little effort he used to sink the tool into the hard ground. Excitement rose as he formed a small hole. I couldn’t tell how deep the hole went before I heard a slight clang of metal on metal. After a few more shovels of dirt, Mac pulled a metal box from the ground.
Was that recognition that flashed through his eyes? He brought the box to me, placing it in my hands as he stood above me. I ran my fingers across the rusted lid, where there appeared to have once been a decoration that was now a sea of orange, crumbling metal. “Does that look like a heart to you?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
His blank face was unreadable as he sat beside me. The heat of his body radiated through my arm, causing a shiver to run through me. I wanted to forget about the box I was holding and instead melt into the man sitting next to me. I lifted the lid, hoping the contents had fared better than their container. Inside lay a leather-bound portfolio emblazoned with a lynx that matched my pendant. How did something from the coven end up here?
I eased the cover open and gasped. In the top right corner was an ailm. A heading read: Descendants of Rauri O’Cillian, Ceann cine, 1856.
“This is impossible. The O’Cillians are a myth,” I breathed.
“But are they?” asked my mother’s voice. I blinked it away as I focused on the pages in my lap.
Mac shook his head. “It doesn’t look like they are.”
“What is ceann cine?” I asked.
“The ceann cine was the elected chieftain of an Irish clan,” replied Mac as he read over my shoulder.
How did he know that? I was immediately distracted from my thoughts as his chest brushed against my arm, causing lightning bolts of desire to shoot through my core.
My breath hitched and I returned to our conversation. “Rauri had six sons and three daughters.” I traced the lines on the document. “The first son, Kieran O’Cillian, married Aine Ni’Mhara on Beltaine 1175. They had four sons. Cormac. Winter 1176. Lorcan. Spring 1178. Aiden. Summer 1180. Conall. Autumn 1182.” I recognized the names of the vampires my coven long regarded as a fanciful myth—monsters who had walked our world for too long. Monsters who in the history of this area were warlocks.
“This is odd,” I said as my eyes returned to the names of the remaining children of Rauri O’Cillian.
“What is that?”
“His daughters: Niamh, Aoife, and Róisín. Those are the names of the three witches who founded the Coven of the Blood. And four of his sons: Tadhg, Eoin, Cathal, and Fergus. Those are the names of the four original hunters. But there is no information for them, only his youngest son, Finn. This doesn’t seem to be concerned with the firstborn,” I said, turning the page. “This lineage is following the last-born sons.” I started to count.
“Don’t bother,” said Mac.
My eyes snapped up to him. “Why not? This is what I need. I need to understand!”
“Kieran had an older brother, so you are looking at the seventh son of the seventh son. In 1850, that was Donovan O’Cillian.”
I closed the portfolio on my lap, narrowed my eyes, and turned my head to look at him. “Would you like to tell me how you know all that?”
He pressed his sensual lips into a thin line. “It is an old Irish tradition. The seventh son of the seventh son, known as the Cure, always holds the answer to alleviating an ailment.”