Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Rowan had quit making fog a while ago, but it was thick enough now that he could practically scoop it with his hands, and there was nothing he could do but feel around for the next rocky step and listen for footsteps that weren’t Holly’s.
And hope he bumped into the Rembrandt-thieving Lou Gillian, Mickey’s da, so he could set the man’s teeth straight. With his fist.
A figure moved out of the fog. Rowan cocked his arm, and then relaxed—it was Double-A. This was a great example of why he preferred no guns; they’d have done something irreversible before realizing their mistake.
Lightning crashed overhead, and Rowan felt Cole was coming.
“Tha’ yer bride?” Double-A asked. Then he swore, as he lost his cigarette. He finished popping one boat motor’s cover and pulling its starter wire.
Holly answered, “Maybe she can clear some of this fog. Ye were a little too good at creating it, my liege.”
Double-A gave him a grin. “Yer uncle would be proud of ye. And on this night? He’d tell ye: You know what tae do.” Double-A lit a cigarette.
“Da,” Holly said to him as he put his lighter to the tip of the cigarette. It sounded like an old argument that no longer had words, just a tone.
He answered, “I know, love. This is my last. I promise.”
Holly tsked. “Love ye, Da, but I see why Mum left yer arse.”
“Fuck, I’ll quit today, then.”
Holly corrected him, “Not your smoking. You lie like a pastor quotes the Bible.”
“I’ll quit smoking and take up the Bible, then.”
“Och, fuck nae.”
“Ye don’t think a pious life is for me?”
“No, I’m pretty sure the Lord would ask ye to stop smoking, and you’d tell him, ‘Right after ye provide world peace.’ Then you’d find yourself in hell.”
Double-A’s laugh was cut short as golden light blew out from the MacLaoch stream. There were shouts as Cole moved toward them onto the rocky beach. The fog billowed and blew eddies.
“Good, I can get to the other boats now.”
There was a hammer click, and Lou Gillian stepped out of the moving mist. “No, ye ain’t.” With the eye of his gun trained on the group, he added, “Do as I ask. Or the pretty bird gets it.”
Rowan felt his guts bottom out, but Holly had no reservations about the gun being pointed at them.
“Aw,” she said nudging Rowan, “he called you pretty. Isn’t that sweet?”
Lou scrunched his face at Holly. “Yer a daft one.”
Rowan realized, when Double-A was suddenly there with his arm over Holly’s shoulders, what was happening.
“Oh, come now, she’s not daft. She’s just had me for a da, so don’t hold it against her.”
Holly gave a sloppy guffaw.
Lou pointed the pistol at Holly. “What the fuck is wrong—”
Double-A was at Lou’s side, twisting the pistol down and out. In the next moment, Double-A hammered the bridge of Lou’s nose with the butt of it.
Lou cried out. “Oye, ye fucking wank, you broke my nose.”
Holly moved in. “And now for yer nuts,” then punted his crotch like a game-winning football strike.
Air hissed between his teeth before his knees knocked in, and he went down. Double-A put the muzzle to his cranium, and that was when Rowan stopped him.
“No. Constable is on his way.”
“Och—”
Lou was as much an old fighter as Double-A and, with a shout, launched himself into Double-A, knocking him back and the gun loose.
Holly grabbed it midair, and in the lightened fog, Rowan saw ten men hurtling themselves down the beach toward the waiting boats.
“Oye, fuck,” cried Rowan. “Holl! Put a hole in the motor cases!”
Lou was on Double-A. Double-A fell and hit his face. Rowan raised his boot and slammed Lou sideways.
Double-A blinked, his nose bleeding. Rowan held his hand down for the elder Whisky Boy. “Ye all right, Uncle?”
“Oye. I think I’ve gone a bit daft, yer liege. There’s two of ye now.”
He looked around for his lost cigarette and found it on his chest. After popping it into the corner of his mouth, he grasped Rowan’s hand and let himself be pulled up to standing.
Shots rang out as Holly put holes in boat after boat.
“The hulls if you can’t sight the motor!”
“What? It’s got our stuff in there!”
“Better the sea has them than these fucks.”
Fog now hung only over the middle loch, where the low drone of a motor was adding to the shouts and chaos around him.
The Whisky Boys were grabbing at Lou’s men, punching and scrambling to keep them from the boats. The young blond was running like his life depended on it. He was making his way to the far boat on the beach.
On the upper edge of the beach was Cole. She was flanked by TJ and Eli, with the glow of her ancestor behind her, and she was harnessing power that seemed to come right out of the ground.
The stones began vibrating and then rising off the earth.
“Oh, shite.”
The clouds overhead rumbled and spit lightning.
“Get down!”
Yes, mo ghràdh, he said into their connection as groans rose.
On the beach it seemed each of the banker’s men had been struck.
They writhed on the rocky shore as if they’d experienced a shock.
Rowan smiled. But then he saw Ponytail. Rowan took off after him.
His footing was solid, as if Cole’s effect was for everyone but him.
Rowan was close to the kid when a bullet whizzed by. Rowan ducked but kept running. The bullet crashed through the side of the hull of the boat the man had jumped into. The boat’s motor revved, and with an incoming wave, it tore back off the beach. Rowan ran into the water then leaped.
Cold water collided with his shins and blew up the front of his body. Rowan caught the edge of the boat, but his grip was ripped off when the next wave brought the nose up and threatened to crush him back onto the beach.
Rowan tumbled in the surf, and when he caught his breath, he made it to standing. Water streamed off him as he watched the boat turn and gain speed out of the calm loch.
“Goddamn it!” he shouted, as water sprayed off his upper lip and dripped into his eyes. “Fuck!”
Holly was next to him and took aim. “That little son of a bitch owes me some brain cells…”
Rowan put his hand on her arm. “I want to say yes. But later we will regret it. It’s with the gods now.”
Holly and Rowan waited a moment until the lapping waves next to them were the only sounds they could hear.
The boat was a gray speck out in the distance as they slowly returned to the chaos.
Double-A had Lou pinned, and Rowan watched as Mickey approached, squatted down, spoke to the man, and then stood.
Double-A released Lou, and before Rowan could protest, Mickey brought his boot down.
Holly hissed next to him, watching the violence.
A shadow moved out on the horizon, and Rowan squinted at it.
“What is tha’?” he asked and got his answer as the HM Coast Guard vessel threw on its lights and, with a spotlight on the fleeing skiff, commanded it to: “Halt. HM Coast Guard requests your compliance. Refusal to obey will result in the use of force.”
Holly giggled. “This is an auspicious night.”
Back to the beach, Rowan saw that the rest of the banker’s men were either unconscious or being tied up by Whisky Boys as the constable moved down onto the beach, handing out temporary loop restraints.
Cole was approaching him, a soft smile on her face. Her passenger was gone, and her golden glow was fading.
“Got ’em all.” She looked up to the towering castle perched on the hill like it had been for centuries. “And she’s still standing.”
Rowan, wet and cold, pulled me into his arms and hugged me tight.
“Aye, we got them all.”
After a long squeeze, Holly said from behind him, “Aw, the boat stopped. I was hoping he’d try to outrace it like it’s 1989.”
“Och, I’m glad it’s—”
I felt the ground shake beneath our feet.
Rowan looked at me. “Was that ye?”
I shook my head. “That felt farther away…” I looked at the castle, and it seemed to be flexing on the horizon as if someone were playing whack-a-mole with its foundation boulders. One would slip out, and they’d smack it back in, then another would pop out.
“Uh-oh.”
Rowan whispered, “The castle.”
He saw it too.
It was no longer ablaze, but something was seriously wrong.
Holly pipped up, “I could be mistaken, but that sounded like a detonation.”
“He didn’t…” Rowan uttered.
My insides felt as if they were tumbling down an elevator shaft. “I need to get to Ethel. She said if I didn’t stop using my power, I’d use the power in the castle’s stones.”
“No, Dick Murdoch,” said Rowan and started moving toward the castle.
“No,” I said, still focused on what I believed to be true, “she’s in the tidal flats!” and I waved for him to follow me over the rocky shore. As we were reaching Ethel, so too was Peabody, running back through the sea gate toward her, throwing wide his arms.
“Oh, fuck” came from Holly.
The castle gave a massive shudder.
Rowan made a sound that I could only assume was the sound one might make when their guts are yanked out of their bodies via the mouth. He choked and staggered back as the first turret broke. Chunks of it tumbled down, crashing onto the back stone patio and off the bowling green.
I choked too on my scream when Castle Laoch groaned and then in a terrible roar fell to its knees like a massive cliff imploding upon itself. Boulders and rock fell off the cliffside and what was once a beautiful castle crumbled into a rockslide down toward us.
I screamed.
Holly shouted.
Rowan grabbed us both, and we ran to the tidal flats and then into the loch.
We dove off the rocks, following Rowan, who knew the depths of every part of the loch at every tide level.
Cold water splashed up around us as the earth shook.
We panicked, swam, grabbed each other, and swam harder as boulders hit the water, rolling into the sea behind us.
Then suddenly, it was quiet.