I claw my way back to consciousness, gasping for breath. I’m on my knees, in a gutter—no real surprise there—I’m intimately acquainted with Dublin’s gutters, having puked in more than a few of them.
I hurt everywhere. I’ve wrenched my lower back, my arms burn, my knees are bruised, and I’m drenched.
I peer up, wondering if it’s raining again. It does that a lot here.
Nope, sun is still out, well, sort of. It’s kissing the horizon beyond the—I frown. What just happened? Where am I? Not in the Dark Zone anymore, I’m halfway across the city.
A soft chuckle rolls in my head. Land of the Free, MacKayla. Home of the Brave, Beautiful, and Homicidal. You can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy that, the Sinsar Dubh says silkily.
Something splatters on my head, drips down my face.
I touch my cheek and pull my hand away to look at it. It’s covered with green goo.
And red blood.
My fingernails are stained. There’s stuff beneath them I refuse to examine.
Not looking up, not looking up.
Keep acting like this, Princess, and I’ll kill you myself. Don’t think I can’t.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, the Book says in a singsong voice and pastes an image of me, holding a gun to my own head, kneeling on the floor in Barrons Books & Baubles, on the inside of my lids. Just kidding. Never let you do it. I got you, babe, it twangs in a cheesy, over-the-top Sonny and Cher impersonation.
Grimacing, I open my eyes and peer warily up.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Impaled on the streetlamp beneath which I crouch, the Gray Woman has been tortured, flayed, and dismembered.
And left alive.
Bits of her wriggle in agony. Suckers open and close convulsively and she’s somehow still making noise: moans and whimpers of horrendous pain.
I drop my head, and nearly vomit into the gutter.
Onto a human hand. Torn off at the wrist.
He got in the way.
“No,” I whisper. I recognize the tatter of uniform attached to the wrist. It’s one of Inspector Jayne’s Guardians. I would never kill a human. Never harm an innocent. I may not like Jayne’s methods—he took Dani’s sword from her and would cheerfully relieve me of my spear if he thought he could—but he and his men perform a dangerous and much needed job for this city.
You did. And loved every minute of it. You are every bit as much a beast as you accuse me of being.
I shake my head violently, as if I might manage to expel the Book from my skull.
I’m in control, the Sinsar Dubh mocks in falsetto. I make the decisions. Lovely MacKayla, when will you learn? You’re the car. I’m the driver. But I can only drive you because deep down you want to be driven.
I shiver, chilled to my soul. I do not.
I watched the Book “drive” other cars. I count myself lucky there are only two dismembered human hands in the street with me. I crouch on my hands and knees, head hanging down, eyes closed, trembling from the exertion of the awful things I just did and from self-loathing. Part of me wants to lie down right here and quit. I was so sure of myself, so certain I was in control.
And so unforgivably wrong.
There are only two ways an enemy can defeat you, Ms. Lane, Barrons said to me the other night, more lessons at the bookstore like old times. You die. Or you quit trying. Then you die. Is that what you want? To die?
I want to live. I have so much to live for.
I’m sure the man I killed did, too. My chest is hot and tight, my muscles locked down. I can’t get a breath. I crouch in the gutter, trying to suck air, heaving soundlessly.
Get up, Mac, I can almost hear him growl. Get the fuck up.
The man orders me around even when he’s not present. I hang my head and try willing my rigid muscles to relax. It doesn’t work. I’m growing dizzy from lack of oxygen. Can’t breathe can’t breathe can’t breathe! I’m starting to panic.
Sometimes if you get too focused on a goal, Ms. Lane, you make an unwanted element of it sticky.
Not getting it, I’d said.
Fear of the power you believe someone or something has over you is nothing but a jail cell you choose to walk into. By obsessing over freeing yourself from the Book, you become more certainly its prisoner.
I force myself to do the counterintuitive, the opposite of what I want: exhale instead of inhale.
Air screeches back into my lungs so fast I choke. I crouch in the gutter, sputtering, panting.
After a few moments I push myself shakily to my feet.
How did this happen? How did the Book gain control of me without me even realizing it?
I look around slowly. Commit my crimes to memory.
Bits of Unseelie and human flesh are scattered everywhere.
There is no piece larger than a tea saucer.
I sort through them and, after a time, gather the hand of the man I murdered, cradle it to my chest, and weep.
4
“Pain without love, pain can’t get enough”
CHRISTIAN
It’s summer in the Highlands, white and purple heather has taken over the countryside, carpeting the meadows and bens. Lavender thistles explode from fat prickly pods and pale pink wild roses tumble over rocky outcroppings.
The devil is in the details.
So, sometimes, is salvation.
I focus on the soft crush of grass beneath my bare feet, the wind in my hair as I run.
We race down the hill, my sister Colleen and I, to swim in the icy early-summer slate water of the loch. It’s one of those perfect days, the sky a cloudless blue above a scooped-out grassy bowl that sprawls for miles between the majestic mountains of our home.
Nothing compares to my Highlands, nothing ever will. The land brings me peace and joy.
Although I hear truth in lies, although I’m sometimes feared and the villagers cede me a certain aloof respect, this is where I fit. The Keltar name is known and it’s a proud one. We’re integral to our village, our people, feeding the economy when it wanes with work on our land and castles. We understand that when those in our care prosper, we’re ten times stronger than we are alone. It’s the meaning of the word “clan”—so much more than family.
Scotland is the passion in my blood. She is where I was born and will die, my bones planted in the cemetery behind the ruined tower ivy claimed, past the slab etched with Pict runes, but not quite to the tomb of the Green Lady, where the roots from the tree at the head of her grave twisted themselves to form a lovely nude moss-covered body with a fine-featured face.
Family is everything. I’ll wed and raise my bairn behind the strong walls of Castle Keltar near the circle of standing stones known as Ban Drochaid, or White Bridge, whose purpose is known only to us and where magic beats like a living heart in the soil. I’ll teach my sons to be druids like their da and granda before him, and my daughters to be like the Valkyries of old. I feel a keen sense of belonging. I know exactly who I am: Christian MacKeltar, descended from thousands of years of an ancient, revered bloodline.
The first of my clan walked the Hill of Tara before Tara was named. Before names were, we tilled the soil of Skara Brae, gathering stones to build enclaves for our women and children. Before even that we stood on the shores of Ireland in the churning surf as the clouds exploded with light and watched the fiery descent of the Old Ones from the stars. Bidden by these new gods, we removed to the Highlands to uphold the Compact between our races.
My ancestors’ ghosts walk the castle corridors on the blessed evenings of the feast days of Beltane and Samhain when time is thin and reality liminal—my ancestors who embody duty, loyalty, and honor.
We are the Keltar.
We fight for what’s right.
We protect and honor.
We do not fall.
When the Crimson Hag rips out my guts again and pain burns through me until I am nothing but torment, my flesh on fire with agony, every nerve screaming as my entrails are torn again from my ragged abdomen, I struggle to remain alive though this body of mine keeps trying to die because every time I die and consciousness slips away—I lose my Highlands.
Staked to the side of a rocky cliff a thousand feet above a hellish grotto, I breathe deep to smell the heather of my homeland, I run faster to feel the dense spring of grass and moss beneath my feet. I gather roses as I pass between bushes, and bloody hell—there was a thistle in that bunch!
I plunge into the icy waters of the loch, break surface and shake water from my hair. I throw back my head and laugh as Colleen dives in beside me, missing me by inches, drenching me all over again.
Below me, inside me, there’s a pit that’s dark and comforting and quite completely insane. If I sink into it, I can be free of all torture.
But I am Keltar.
I will not fall.