Chapter Forty
The reasons for holding the briefing in Neamh were simple: security was easier, secrecy was assured, and no one had to deal with the storms and floods currently ravaging the outside world.
However, I suspected my safety was the real reason Owen had refused an outside meeting.
And since everyone had been told that I was the key to winning the battle, the meeting couldn’t happen without me.
Who would have ever thought that I, of all people, would be an essential part of a military briefing?
The key to winning the battle. The phrase rattled around my head, and I swallowed hard as I hurried to Freya’s cottage, running a bit late after my second training session with Charles.
Those words had been associated with me for days now, but what the hell did they mean?
What was I supposed to do? How could I turn the tide against Craos?
Charles didn’t know either, which unsettled me more than I cared to admit.
I certainly wouldn’t be the only one at the meeting feeling less than optimistic. Last night, Jace had looked a little green when he discovered that a General Hargraves would be representing the Canadian contingent today.
“Hargraves?! They chose that asshole? We’re doomed!” Jace threw his head down on the table. I’d never seen him look so defeated. Even Owen looked grim. He must have known Hargraves from his time in the CAF.
“What’s wrong with him?” Shae asked.
Jace half raised his head. “He’s a rich, ruddy-faced drunkard who likes to blow things up.
He’s going to get us all killed. Command is laughing at us, Owen!
They don’t believe there’s a demon in another realm causing the storms and coming to kill us.
They’re sending us their worst and keeping their best at home for the evacuations and emergencies! ”
“Our situation does seem absurd,” I admitted. “If I were in their position, I’m not sure I would believe us, either.”
“I swear to God, Owen,” Jace continued, “this is the last straw. If I survive this war, I’m quitting the army and working for you.”
“Say the word, buddy, and you’re hired,” Owen said with a weary sigh.
After a long silence, Jace swirled the beer in his stein and, with a nonchalance even I found suspicious, said, “There is a general who would be the perfect choice.” He avoided Owen’s eyes.
“No,” Owen said, his face turning hard.
“Oh, come on, man!” Jace groaned. “If you can’t bury the hatchet at the end of the world, when can you?”
“Never. The answer is never. And that’s final. I will not ask him for help.”
“What general?” I asked.
“General Marcus Grant. Finest in the CAF,” Jace said with a grin. “Disciplined. Calculating. Methodical. A true leader—”
“You can quit with the fanboy attitude. The answer is no.”
“General Grant…as in your father?” I asked with surprise.
Owen gave a curt nod, his face stony.
“And we’re not asking him because…”
“Because he blames me for Ava’s death,” Owen spit out, and I caught my breath.
“Now, I don’t know that the conversation went quite like that—” Jace began.
“And he’s disappointed that I got kicked out of the army,” Owen continued, his jaw clenched.
“Honourably discharged,” Jace corrected, but Owen ignored him.
“And I’ll never be good enough in his eyes. I will not work with him. Final answer.”
I worried about the resilience of Owen’s beer stein. His grip on its handle looked like it could crush a rock.
“This is the end of the fucking world, Owen,” Jace pleaded. “We need him. Hargraves is going to get us all killed. You haven’t been there the past five years. He’s even worse than you remember.”
“We have Kira,” Owen countered. “We have all that we need.”
I wasn’t sure if I should be pleased by his faith in me, or terrified that I was apparently leading an army.
“No offence to Kira, but she’s not a military strategist.” Jace glanced apologetically in my direction.
“No offence taken,” I said quickly, giving him an encouraging nod.
“She’s all that we need and that’s final.” Seeing Owen was as immovable as a boulder, Jace finally sighed. “Okay, buddy. We’ll see how it goes. But if we survive this battle, I’m going to kill you for putting me through a meeting with Hargraves.”
The conversation had ended there, and Owen had refused to talk about it when we returned to our cottage. We had fallen asleep, and then I had left before sunrise to meet with Charles.
As I neared the kitchen door now, the cacophony of voices talking over one another stopped me:
“So, is this like the garden of Eden or something? How do you think plumbing works?”
“All I’m saying is, why don’t we all get swords?”
“Right?! I’d look badass, too, with one of those babies strapped to my back.”
“Did you see the news about the latest storm? The worst one yet. They say tens of thousands are dead.”
“I’ve heard they’ve got this girl who’s special or something. Key to winning the battle. Sounds like a marketing ploy if you ask me.”
“Didn’t she already fight the demon? And lose?”
“We’re so fucked.”
“Oh, please. None of this is real. We’re wasting our time here. We could be out there right now, helping people.”
Suddenly, one voice rose above the rest, and I guessed immediately to whom it belonged.
“This is ridiculous,” General Hargraves bellowed. “It’s not the Middle Ages. Druids? Special powers? This is war, not a magic show. We have certain ways of doing things in the army, and working with witches is not one of them! Whose idea is this, anyway?”
The scent of beer wafted toward me. Was he drinking? It was nine o’clock in the morning.
“Not to mention that we’re sitting ducks between these two ridges,” Hargraves shouted over the other voices. He paused, no doubt taking another gulp of his ale. “Ceding the high ground to our enemy?! It’s insanity!”
“Our enemies are wraiths,” Jace said, exhaustion lacing his voice. “With all due respect, General, do you think it matters where we stand?”
I peeked around the door frame and saw my friends and military officers—about fifteen people in all—crowding the kitchen.
While they argued and pored over maps spread across the table, they all drank coffee and tea, except Hargraves, who did indeed have a full stein of beer.
A few people stared at laptops or studied their phones.
Freya’s back was to the group as she washed dishes in the sink, but I had no doubt she was listening to every word.
Shamus leaned against the counter beside her, studying the military personnel with a mix of consternation and rapt fascination.
Shae sat quietly at the table, her hands around a mug, while Jace leaned back on two chair legs looking beyond frustrated.
And then there was Owen. He stood tall and silent amid it all, legs braced apart and arms folded across his chest, the sword clearly visible at his back.
We had discovered early on that the sheath only made itself and the sword invisible outside of Neamh.
He wore a bored expression on his face, but I knew by the set of his shoulders and the tightness around his eyes that he was just as angry as Jace.
And the tick in his jaw told me he was about five seconds away from punching the general in the face.
Hargraves slapped the table, sloshing beer onto one of the maps. “Okay, let’s pretend I believe you. What we need is a fifty-megaton nuclear warhead. We send that baby straight into the rift. Obliterate this demon’s ass and drive it and any others from this world and the next!”
Freya turned and levelled Hargraves with such a hard stare that if looks could kill, he would have been six feet under three weeks ago.
“That’s not a wise idea,” she said, wiping her hands on a tea towel with extra vigour. “We don’t know the physics of the other realm or how our world connects to it. And what if Craos turns the nuke back on us? Or amplifies it?”
I leaned back, pressing myself to the wall outside the kitchen. I needed a minute before I walked into that mess.
The general took another loud gulp of his beer. “There’s a simple solution to all of this. If Kira is a descendant of Craos and she is his anchor to our world, shouldn’t we just—” He made a clicking sound with his tongue. “—and the problem would be solved?”
Stillness, heavy and thick, fell across the kitchen, and my heart lurched at what he had just implied.
Owen’s voice cut the silence like a knife, his voice low, lethal, and terrifying in its intensity.
“If you ever threaten Kira’s life again, you won’t live to see how this battle unfolds.
She is under my protection, and the Yew tree has said she is the key to winning this war.
And before you suggest going against the Yew’s advice, may I remind you that you are currently standing in a kitchen in an enchanted garden that is untouched by the hellscape that is now Earth.
Your presence here is an invitation that I am sure the Yew would not hesitate to revoke.
You will respect Kira, and you and your men will damn well defend her during the battle, or I will personally deliver you to Craos and watch with satisfaction as Shadowbane eat you from the inside out. Are we clear?”
I peeked around the corner and my breath caught at the look on Owen’s face. He was pinning General Hargraves with a stare that had the other officers stepping away.
General Hargraves’s face blanched. He started stammering, “Well…of course. Yes. It was just a suggestion. I meant no harm by it. Not really. Just brainstorming. You know how these planning meetings can go… Ideas get away from us sometimes.” He took another long drink from his stein.
Owen’s face was pure steel. “See that your ideas do not…get away from you. Freya, I believe the general has had enough of his beer.”
Freya immediately intercepted the stein on its way to the general’s mouth, and he was left red-faced and wide-eyed, his hand now empty.
“How dare you? I’m a general!” he spluttered, but one look at Owen and he swallowed his next words.