Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
The young man pointed the pistol at Cole.
His face had gone blotchy red with rage and fear. “I don’t know what the fuck you are, but you fucking die.”
He pulled the trigger, and the explosion startled Peabody. He gripped the meter to his chest as if he’d been the one shot at.
Cole was already moving. The speed of her spinning blade felt like it created a kind of vacuum.
Or that obtaining her speed required an energy pull so strong it created negative pressure in the room.
He heard a metallic clank and the ricochet buzz of a bullet before a thunk as it hit a plastic case next to him.
Cole’s blade slowed down to a single twist. She gave the blade a decisive flick as if she were removing blood from its tip before moving in on the younger man.
“What the fuck?” the blond-haired young man asked no one in particular before doubling down on his attack.
Peabody shouted at him to stop. But it was too late. He pulled the trigger again and again.
The room siphoned. The pull made his knees weak, and the stones next to him creaked as if they were being ripped out of their mortar. Peabody felt his fillings ache as Cole’s blade whistled.
Peabody flinched when her blade struck the bullets, then ducked as they ricocheted past him.
The next moment, Cole was in front of the man. Her blade came down with a decisive swipe. The pistol flew from his weakened grip, and Cole put the tip of the Ulfberht to the base of his throat and walked him back against a display table.
“No one hits my friends.”
In the artifacts room, I stared down the twenty-year-old turd who looked like he’d sell his dignity to Lord Voldemort for a buck.
I felt the need to make a point—specifically, with the tip of the Ulfberht.
I desired a nice long trip down his frontside, yawning his clothing open before gently tucking the blade in next to his genitals.
I shoved that desire down; though my temper was inherited, I wasn’t Ormr.
Then he spit in my face.
Ponytail was slumping to the floor before I knew I’d punched him. A goodnight switch was located in the jaw, something Ormr knew and gave to me to use. I wiped my face clean with my shirt collar as Holly stirred, her cheek red.
Pulling my attention off the younger burglar, lest I follow through on the new urge to put my sword tip through the man’s cranium and twist, cracking his skull open like a walnut, I helped Holly stand.
“Oye, fuck,” she said, “I think he broke something.” She worked her mouth open and closed.
“Your jaw?”
“Och, no, he broke a chunk of my pride off and took a shit on it.”
I grinned at her, and she gave me a matching one.
“Yer a bit of fun like this. I’m glad my praying to meet Ormr paid off. But we better call the constable. Then figure out a way to get you back to…dunno, regular Cole?”
“Agreed.” To Peabody, I said, “We came across three men upstairs. They’ll be stirring by now; at least two have pistols. There’s a lower sea gate passage you can use. I want you to leave now. Whatever’s going on here, I don’t think it’s over.”
I felt a shiver down my spine as a warm hand pressed into mine. I heard Ethel’s voice: Balance.
The castle’s stones seemed to shudder as if they were resettling themselves.
I hadn’t realized I’d upset the balance of the place, but it was now evident I had.
I tried to remember to keep the energy in balance, but the desire to fight and protect was strong.
I wasn’t sure I was centered enough to do both.
I will try, I replied.
“I’ll get him out,” Holly said. She hissed in pain, putting her fingertips to her cheek.
“But I need to go out the front to make sure my da stays clear,” she said through gently clenched teeth.
“They’re coming back with the Rembrandt.
I didn’t tell ye earlier because, well”—Holly looked around, letting her eyes do the talking, encompassing the unconscious men and the Ulfberht sword—“the chief got stuck.”
“What now?”
“Dick had a trap set and sprung it with him inside the Otey house.”
What little bit of Ormr that had faded—drained from my body and into the stones—surged back.
I took a deep breath to find balance and reminded my soul that I was a botanist in the twenty-first century.
“Is he still there?” I asked.
Holly looked at me expectantly. “No idea. I thought you could reach out, ye know?”
I knew that was risky, as Ormr’s residual powers coursed through my veins. The last thing I wanted to do was incapacitate him in the power surge.
“Can’t” was all I supplied. Feeling the urgency of time, I redirected Holly’s attention to Peabody. “Take him. And when you come back, be careful.”
Holly held my gaze for several beats before she extended her hand up for me to clasp.
I’d seen her do this a dozen times with Rowan and felt its significance.
In the blend between Ormr and myself, I responded.
Instead of grabbing her outstretched hand, I cradled the back of her head with my palm and gently touched my forehead to hers.
Our breaths blended, and in our shared life force, Ormr recognized her as a chieftain, the right hand of her chief, and now we were bonded by battle.
Holly let me hold her, and after a moment’s pause, she copied me and gripped the back of my head. The sound of our connection crackled like electricity in my ear.
“Yer frightening as hell like this, but if this now means we’re warrior blood sisters, I’m in.
And if you tell Rowan any of this, I’ll deny it.
As we MacLaochs say, bellator ad mortem.
” She continued in Gaelic; Ormr interpreted: “You have my sword and with it my fealty. I will stand beside you until the cold hand of death takes my last breath.”
I smiled at her. “The wind is at our backs. Victory will smile upon us. Go.”
She stepped toward the basement stairs. “I’ll meet ye around front once Peabody is safe.”
“Go.”
Down the darkened hall she pulled Peabody, who looked both reluctant to go and full of awe at what we’d done.
I set to work. Grateful for Ormr’s strength, I pulled the incapacitated men out of the castle and to the gravel at the base of the front steps. I headed back in for the sixth man, the first I’d struck.
He was gone.
I stood there in the hall, looking into the dark corners around me.
A light flickered from Clive’s library. I ran toward it.
The paper-laden shelves behind his desk were ablaze.
The room, with all of Clive’s papers and books, was a veritable tinderbox.
The whole thing would catch in just moments.
The closest fire extinguisher was in a kitchen on the next floor.
Fear gripped my guts. Beyond the loss of Clive’s nest of historic items, fire in stone buildings destroyed mortar and took impenetrable rock and turned it against itself, causing collapse.
The fear was like gasoline feeding the feeling that tore through me next. A heady anger stole through my veins.
There was a great iron screech, and I turned to look: The man I’d belted off his feet pelted out of the castle. His head was stronger than I’d assumed.
My anger, like the fire next to me, found its outlet. The men who’d been there that night were there to destroy artifacts and stop anyone who stood in their way, then burn it all to the ground. I knew then how a berserker found their psychopathic rage.
Without fully understanding what I was doing, I clapped my hands around the Ulfberht and raised it upward.
Through the hallway windows, I saw the sky billow and roar, filling with unstable cloud cover.
Energy laced my anger, and I felt the Ulfberht engage.
I tilted the sword down. Lightning streaked.
The man had gotten to the top of the stairs that led toward the sea gate.
Thunder clapped before roaring out over the loch; the lightning struck him off his feet.
Ethel’s voice hissed into my mind, Balance!
I looked back into Clive’s office.
Paper smoldered and sat inert in an ash heap behind his desk. The fire was out.
Ormr’s ancestral knowledge had me flick my sword as if flicking excess blood off its tip, but it was energy I was returning to the ground. His knowledge and the spirit of him, as I let him in further, had me reassure Ethel, “Cloud fire for paper fire. We’re even.”
Standing in that rear hall as Ormr’s ancestral knowledge came trickling in, I knew that as a biologist and research botanist, I was out of my depth when it came to a castle sacking.
What was obvious was that the banker had zero intentions of letting the castle return to MacLaoch hands.
Foreclosure was likely a legal maneuver he’d employed to accomplish his goal, and without it, he’d gone to plan B: Burn it down, damn the consequences. He was a man possessed.
He attempted to trap Rowan in that manor house and send him to jail while he paid dangerous humans to burn Laoch to the ground.
And because my ancient grandfather walked with me, his experiences were mine now, and in those ancestral memories, I understood that on every floor, the four corners of the castle were ablaze.
He’d been a grand nightmare in his time with the living.
He had raided with impunity and knew how to take a structure to the ground in the time it took to strip it of its valuables.
At least, that was what Ormr would have done, so I guessed that was what Dick would do.
Moving into a jog, I went up a floor, and the smell of smoke confirmed my thoughts.
In the castle’s western corner, the tearoom drapes were ablaze.
A meal of leftover tea sandwiches was laid out and untouched on the dining table.
But it was farther up that drew me; the smoke was getting thick, making me cough.
I made it to the base of the main staircase, then up it, taking the stairs two at a time.
My body coughed at the dry air in my lungs, but the golden hue that made my skin glow kept my air filtered and me moving.
At the top of the stairs, the door to TJ’s quarters, Rowan’s old studio up in the turret, was open.
Smoke was so thick in the room above that it pressed down and billowed out the stairwell.
The castle was ablaze below me, above me, and on the eastern and western flanks. The Persian rug down the hall caught embers that floated to the ground, and the walls still held the clan’s priceless art. Some were MacLaoch portraits; their eyes seemed to fix on me as if commanding me: Do something!
The air shifted, throwing the smoke into eddies as the fire caught a new oxygen source. The fire snapped and thundered in a continual roar. Down below, the front door opened.
Moving to the top of the stairs, I could see the commotion beyond the gravel walkup.
The three men who had been in the artifacts room moved back in.
I had a feeling that those three were the captain, sergeant, and lieutenant of their band of turds.
No one in their right mind would reenter a burning building with a specter of death inside unless the riches they were promised were immense.
Another pistol had been found, and two entered with pistols raised; the other still had his brass knuckles on.
A filled pickup was in the roundabout, and my stomach lurched.
They’d plundered more than I’d realized. And even that wasn’t enough for them.
But what made my guts bottom out was the sight of Rowan in the middle of it.