Chapter Eighty #2
‘No, your wife is dead and gone, but her secrets live on. In Nicole.’ Aífe smiled thinly at her. ‘The girl who studies myth, and the myth that has been hidden from almost all art.’
Because the gods wanted to remain hidden, Nicole realised.
That was why there were practically no paintings of these Fomóiri or the Irish gods.
Even in the height of the Celtic Revival, of Old Masters and mythological subjects, there was nothing reliable.
Why had people looked away and abroad for divinity, to the hills and waters of Greece, or the ruins of Rome, when it was slumbering all this time on the Emerald Isle?
Because, despite this world being rife with different creatures, gods were a realm apart. They had always been something else, something more.
So the Fomóiri let people forget the Irish divinities in favour of the Greek ones. Let them forget their immortal enemies the Túatha Dé.
In Ireland, those legends seemed to live on in place names and stories. But outside it? The Irish diaspora had been forced to forget them like they had their language.
The truth only slivered into the minds of the masses through scraps of folklore, as the unacknowledged inspiration to fantasy novels, or in the minds of mythological specialists and the songs of folk musicians …
‘I knew Freya had a piece of the puzzle,’ Aífe continued, ‘and that she’d squirrel it away like she did with all the other items and gifts the gods had given her.
That she’d probably use code after code.
Her mind was just so exhausting. I thought, who could figure it out instead?
’ She grinned. ‘Her daughter. You picked up the pieces for us, and then Alexander was able to bring you in.
Finally, we could all be together and this ridiculous epic mess could be fixed.
‘So tell me, Nicole. What’s the secret behind this painting?’
Nicole looked over to the expressionless hunter who stood behind her father.
‘Will that make you let us go?’ she asked.
She kept her expression earnest, even if she planned to give Aífe the smallest truth she could.
If she played this right, it would work.
‘Nicole,’ her father warned.
‘Shut up,’ Aífe ordered. ‘Your children are more useful than you’ll ever be. Your powers were stripped; this is all you can offer.’ She had the nerve to flatten her lips, as if she was disgusted. As if she was more than a god, even one whose powers were so drained.
‘Let’s hear it then,’ Aífe said. ‘What did dear Mummy tell you? Hm?’
Nicole glanced to her family, allowing a hint of concern through. This had to look real. From the feel of Aífe’s displeasure burning into Nicole’s cheek, it was working.
‘I—’
‘Spit it out.’
‘She told us who the Wake are. What they are.’
A flicker of strange displeasure went through Aífe’s eyes and a primal alarm began in the back of Nicole’s brain.
‘And what might that be?’
‘They—’ Nicole swallowed. ‘They’re gods. Demon Gods.’
The woman waited a beat. ‘That’s it?’
‘… Yes. Isn’t that enough?’
Aífe’s eyes slid to Nicole’s father, as if assessing whether Nicole had known there was a god in her life the whole time. If that really was the information they had learned.
‘And what did you plan to do with that information?’ Aífe purred.
‘I—we didn’t know.’ That was the truth. The knowledge alone wouldn’t help them defeat the Wake unless they shared it and perhaps could turn supernatural society against them. Otherwise, they needed goddessblood to fight the Wake, and win.
‘I don’t believe you,’ Aífe said.
Nicole’s stomach pitched. ‘What?’
Aífe pressed her knife to the canvas beside her, right at Freya’s collarbone. ‘What other information do you have? What was her plan?’
‘That’s it,’ Nicole said, shifting, her eyes darting between the woman and the canvas.
Aífe pressed harder into the painting. ‘See, that’s not the way Freya worked. There’s always more.’
The knife punctured the canvas with a pop and Aífe dragged it through her mother’s face with a razored slice.
‘No!’ Nicole gasped.
That was their only picture of her.
A shock of tears burned hotly at the back of eyes.
‘What more do you know?’ Aífe shouted as her mother’s painted face folded in on itself.
‘What more do you want?’ Nicole demanded with just as much venom. ‘The world has no idea the gods exist! I had no idea! It would rewrite history!’
‘History?’ Aífe rasped, laughing.
‘Let me speak with Elatha,’ her father interrupted. ‘He’ll want to know I’m alive. I can craft something new for him. New ideas, new ways to keep the supernatural world under his thumb. Whatever he wants. I helped him once, I can do it again. Let him have me, just let them go.’
‘Dad, no,’ Nicole cried.
‘It’s all right, love.’ But he didn’t look at her, he kept his damning eyes on Aífe.
‘You think you’re that much of a prize?’ Aífe laughed.
‘I am and you know it,’ he said.
He had been their mastermind.
But if he became it again for their sakes, who knew what would happen?
Aífe’s eyes narrowed back on Nicole.
She scrambled to think.
Perhaps she could just mention a ‘goddess-blessed item’, but not what it was?
Claim that’s what they’d been blindly searching for?
Perhaps say her mother had hidden more clues in paintings but make up the clues.
She could offer to search for them and lead the Wake on a chase that could buy Remi and the Druid and Callum, time.
But even then: the Wake might take over the search and realise the torc was one of the items. She prayed Callum had hidden it well.
Because if the Wake acquired more goddessblood, what would they do with it? No Empyreal would ever be able to defeat them, and more would be turned into mindless killers like Alexander.
Her eyes slid to the ruined goddessblood portrait.
To her mother’s slashed and shadowed face.
‘Perhaps you need more incentive,’ Aífe said, nodding to the Empyreal behind Nicole as Alexander forcibly lifted up her father and began to drag him to the opposite end of the pool.
‘Dad!’ she shouted, as Bells was taken by Aífe in the same direction.
‘Elatha won’t be happy,’ Nicole’s father said. ‘He thought he’d condemned me to death once; if anything, he’ll want to do it properly this time.’
They were forced to their knees on the other side of the pool, Aífe standing before them.
‘Wait,’ Nicole shouted, trying to rise, but the Empyreal behind her clamped a hand on her shoulder, pressing her so her knees dug harder into the stone.
A sudden biting sting in the right side of her neck had her flinching.
She reached up as the Empyreal removed a syringe, a familiar-looking coloured tonic inside.
Her father’s tonics?
‘What is that?’ Nicole slurred.
‘Just something to stop a nasty little transformation,’ Aífe answered from across the steaming water. ‘We found one of the vials left over from your little holiday in Verin’s house and had a play around to make them more effective. How does it feel?’
Like molten fire through her veins. Hot enough she nearly couldn’t stand it, strong enough that it blurred the world as it threw a cloak over her Empyrean power.
No.
No.
She willed her body to fight it, but she was suddenly so heavy. They must have given her a recklessly high dose, far more than her father had ever risked for fear of toxicity.
The Wake, of course, wouldn’t care what happened to her or her abilities.
‘I’m tired of waiting, Nicole,’ Aífe said, coming to stand before her father, the glint of her blade catching the light.
Then she brought the knife down, straight towards Nicole’s father’s chest.