Shadow Spell

7

HE THOUGHT TO GO TO THE PUB. HE WAS TIRED OF magicks, of spells, of mixing potions. He wanted some light, some music, some conversation that didn’t center on the white or the black, or the end of all he knew.
The end of all he loved.
And maybe, just maybe, if Alice happened to be about, he’d see if she was still willing.
A man needed a distraction, didn’t he, when his world hung in the balance of things? And some fun, some warmth. The lovely, lovely sound of a woman moaning under him.
Most of all, a man needed an escape when the three most important women in his life decided to have a wedding-planning hen party—not a term he’d use in their hearing if he valued his skin—in his home.
But he’d no more than walked outside when he realized he didn’t want the pub or the crowd or Alice. So he pulled out his phone, texted Fin on his way to his lorry.
House full of women and wedding talk. If you’re there, I’m coming over.

He’d no more than started the engine when Fin texted back.
Come ahead, you poor bastard.

On a half laugh he pulled away from the cottage.
It would do him good, Connor decided, after most of a day huddled with his sister over spell books and blood magicks to be in a man’s house, in male company. Sure they could drag Boyle down as well, have a few beers, maybe play a bit of snooker in what he thought of as Fin’s fun room.
Just the antidote to a long and not quite satisfying day.
He took the back road, winding through the thick green woods on an evening gone soft and dusky. He saw a fox slink into the green, a red blur with its kill still twitching in its jaws.
Nature was as full of cruelty as of beauty, he knew all too well.
But for the fox to survive, the field mouse didn’t. And that was the way of things. For them to survive, Cabhan couldn’t. So he who’d never walked into a fight if he could talk his way out of one, had never deliberately harmed anyone, would kill without hesitation or guilt. Would kill, he admitted, with a terrible kind of pleasure.
But tonight he wouldn’t think of Cabhan or killing or surviving. Tonight all he wanted was his mates, a beer, and maybe a bit of snooker.
Less than a half kilometer from Fin’s, the lorry sputtered, bucked, then died altogether.
“Well, f*ck me.”
He had petrol, as he’d filled the tank only the day before. And he’d given the lorry a good going-over—engine to exhaust—barely a month before.
She should be running smooth as silk.
Muttering, he pulled a torch from the glove box and climbed out to lift the bonnet.
He knew a thing or two about engines—as he knew a thing or two about plumbing, about carpentry and building, and electrical work. If the hawks hadn’t taken him heart and mind, he might have started his own business as a man of all work.
Still, the skills came in handy in times such as these.
He played the light over the engine, checked the battery connection, the carburetor, flicked a hand to have the key turn in the ignition, studied the engine as it attempted to turn over with an annoying and puzzling grind.
He couldn’t see a single thing amiss.
Of course, he could have solved it all with another flick of his hand and been on his way to mates, beer, and possibly snooker.
But it was a matter of pride.
So he checked the connections on the fuel pump, rechecked the connection on the battery, and didn’t notice the fog swimming in along the ground.
“Well it’s a bloody mystery.”
He started to spread his hands over the engine, do a kind of scan—a compromise before giving up completely.
And felt the dirty smudge on the air.
He turned slowly, saw that he waded ankle deep in the fog that went icy with his movement. Shadows drew in, dark curtains that blocked the trees, the road, the world. Even the sky vanished behind them.
He came as a man, the red stone around his neck glowing against the thick and sudden dark.
“Alone, young Connor.”
“As you are.”
Spreading his hands, Cabhan only smiled. “I’ve a curiosity. You have no need for a machine such as that to travel from one place to another. You have only to . . .”
Cabhan swung his arms out, lifted them. And moved two feet closer without visibly moving at all.
“Such as we respect our gift, our craft, too much to use it for petty reasons. I’ve legs for walking or, if needs be, a lorry or a horse.”
“Yet here you are, alone on the road.”
“I’ve friends and family close by.” Though when he tested, he found he couldn’t quite reach them—couldn’t push through the thick wall of fog. “What have you, Cabhan?”
“Power.” He spoke the word with a kind of greedy reverence. “Power beyond your ken.”
“And a hovel beyond the river to hide in, alone, in the dark. I’ll take a warm fire, the light of it, and a pint with those friends and family.”
“You’re the least of them.” Pity dripped like sullen rain. “You know it, as they do. Good for a laugh and the labor. But the least of the three. Your father knew enough to pass his amulet to your sister—to a girl over his only son.”
“Do you think that makes me less?”
“I know it. What do you wear? Given you by an aunt, as consolation. Even your cousin from away has more than you. You have less, are less, a kind of jester, even a servant to the others you call family, you call friends. Your great friend Finbar chooses one with no power over you as partner, while you labor for wages at his whim. You’re nothing, and have less.”
He eased closer as he spoke, and the red stone throbbed like a pulse.
“I’m more than you know,” Connor replied.
“What are you, boy?”
“I’m Connor, of the O’Dwyers. I’m of the three. I’m a dark witch of Mayo.” Connor looked deep into the black eyes, saw the intent.
“I have fire.” He threw his right hand out, held a swirling ball of fire. “And I have air.” Stabbed a finger up, twirled it, and created a small, whirling cyclone. “Earth,” he said as the ground trembled. “Water.”
Rain spilled down, hot enough to sizzle on the ground.
“And hawk.”
Roibeard dived with a piercing call, and landed soft as a feather on Connor’s shoulder.
“Parlor tricks and pets.” Cabhan raised his arms high, fingers spread wide. The red gem went bright as blood.
Lightning slapped the ground inches from Connor’s boots, and with it came the acrid stink of sulfur.
“I could kill you with a thought.” Cabhan’s voice boomed over the roar of thunder.
I don’t think so, Connor decided, and only cocked his head, smiled.
“Parlor tricks and pets? I bring fire, water, earth, and air. Test my powers if you dare. The hawk is mine for all time. He and me as part of the three will fulfill our destiny. Light is my sword, right is my shield, as long ago my path was revealed. I accept it willingly.”
He struck out then, with the sword formed from the ball of fire, cleaved the air between them. He felt the burn—a bolt, a blade sear across the biceps of his left arm.
Ignoring it, he advanced, swung again, hair flying in the cyclone of air, sword blazing against the dark.
And when he sliced it down, Cabhan was gone.
The shadows lifted, the fog crawled away.
“As I will,” Connor murmured, “so mote it be.”
He let out a breath, drew in another, tasted the night—sweet and damp and green. He heard an owl hoot on a long, inquisitive note and the rustle of something hurrying through the brush.
“Well now.” For a moment, Roibeard leaned in, and their cheeks met, held. “That was interesting. What do you wager my lorry starts up easy as you please? I’m off to Fin’s, so you can go ahead with me there and have a visit with his Merlin, or go back home. It’s your choice, mo dearthair.”
With you. Connor heard the answer in his heart as much as his head. Always with you.
Roibeard rose into the air and winged ahead.
Still throbbing with the echoes of power—dark and light—Connor got back in the lorry. It started easy, purred, and drove smoothly the rest of the way to Fin’s.
He walked straight in. A fire crackled in the hearth, and that was welcome, but no one sprawled on the sofa with a beer at the ready.
As at home there as he was in his own cottage, he started toward the back, and heard voices.
“If you want hot meals”—Boyle—“marry someone who’ll make them.”
“Why would I do that when I have you so handy?”
“And I was happy enough in my own place making do with a sandwich and crisps.”
“And I’ve a fine hunk of pork in the fridge.”
“Why are you buying a fine hunk of pork when you don’t know what in bloody hell to do with it?”
“Why wouldn’t I, again, when I have you so handy?”
Though his head ached a bit, like a tooth going bad, the exchange made Connor chuckle as he continued back.
Strange, he felt he’d already had that beer. Quite a lot of beer, as he seemed to be floating right along, but on a floor tilted just a bit sideways.
He stepped into the kitchen where the lights burned so bright they made him blink, made his head pound instead of ache. “I could do with a hunk of pork.”
“There, you see?” Grinning, Fin turned—and the grin fell away again. “What happened?”
“I had a little confrontation. Jesus, it’s hot as Africa in here.”
He struggled out of his jacket, weaving a little, then stared at his left arm. “Look at that, will you. My arm’s smoking.”
When he pitched forward, his friends leaped to catch him.
“What the f*ck is this?” Boyle demanded. “He’s burning up.”
“It’s hot in here,” Connor insisted.
“It’s not. It’s Cabhan,” Fin bit off the word. “I can smell him.”
“Let me get his shirt off.”
“The girls are always saying that to me.”
Impatient, Fin merely jerked a hand over Connor, and had him bare-chested.
Connor stared at his arm, at the huge black burn, the peeling and bubbling skin. He felt oddly detached from it all, as if he looked at some little wonder behind glass.
“Would you look at that?” he said, and passed out.
Fin pressed his hands to the burn. Despite the pain that scorched through him, he held them there. Held the burning back.
“Tell me what to do,” Boyle demanded.
“Get him water. I can stop it from spreading, but . . . We need Branna.”
“I’ll go get her.”
“It’ll take too long. Get him water.”
Closing his eyes, Fin opened, reached out.
Connor’s hurt. Come. Come quickly.
“Water’s not going to help.” Still Boyle knelt down. “Either of you. It’s burning your hands. I know what that’s like.”
“And you know it can be fixed.” Sweat popped out on Fin’s face, ran in a thin river down his back. “I can’t know how far this might take him if I don’t hold it.”
“Ice? He’s on fire, Fin. We can put him in a tub of ice.”
“Natural means won’t help. In my workshop. Get— No need,” he said with relief as Branna and Iona, with a wild-eyed Meara between them, popped into the kitchen.
Branna dropped down to Connor.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. Cabhan for certain, but that’s all I know. He’s feverish, a bit delirious. The burn under my hands is black, deep, it’s trying to spread. I’m holding it.”
“Let me see it. Let me do it.”
“I’m holding it, Branna. I could do more, but not, I think, all. You can.” He set his teeth against the pain. “I won’t let him go, not even for you.”
“All right. All right. But I need to see it, feel it, know it.” She closed her eyes, drew up all she had, laid her hands over Fin’s.
Her eyes opened again, filled with tears, for the pain under her hands was unspeakable.
“Look at me,” she murmured to Fin. “He can’t, so you look for him. Be for him. Feel for him. Heal for him. Look at me.” Her eyes turned the gray of lake water, calm, so calm.
“Iona, put your hands over mine, give me what you can.”
“Everything I have.”
“It’s cool, do you feel the cool?” Branna said to Fin.
“I do.”
“Cool and clear, this healing power. It washes away the fire, floods out the black.”
When Connor began to shiver, and to moan, Meara dropped down, pillowed his head in her lap. “Shh now.” Gently, gently, she stroked his hair, his face. “Shh now. We’re here with you.”
Sweat poured down Connor’s face—and ran down Fin’s.
Branna’s breathing grew shallow as she took in some of the heat, some of the pain.
“I’m holding it,” Fin said between his teeth.
“Not alone now. Healing hurts—it’s the price of it. Look at me, and let it go with me. Out of him we both love, slowly, coolly, out of him, into you, onto me. Out of him, into you, onto me. Out of him, into you, onto me.”
She all but hypnotized him. That face, those eyes, that voice. And the gradual lifting of the pain, the cooling of the burn.
“Out of him,” she continued, rocking, rocking. “Into you, onto me. And away. Away.”
“Look at me.” Now he told her as he felt her hands begin to tremble over his. “We’re nearly there. Boyle, in my workroom, a brown apothecary bottle with a green stopper, top shelf behind my workbench.”
Gently, he eased his hands back so they could see the wound. The burn, raw and red now, was no larger than a woman’s fist.
“He’s cooler,” Meara said, stroking, stroking. “Clammy now, but cooler, and breathing steady.”
“There’s no black under it, no poison under it.” Iona looked from Branna to Fin and back for confirmation.
“No, it’s but a nasty burn now. I’ll finish it.” Branna put her hands over it, sighed. “Just a burn now, healing well.”
“This?” Boyle rushed in with the bottle.
“That’s it.” Fin took it, opening it for Branna to sniff.
“Yes, yes, that’s good. That’s perfect.” She turned up her hands for Fin to pour the balm into them.
“Here now, mo chroi.” She turned her hands over, gently, gently rubbed the balm on the burn—now pink, now shrinking.
As she rubbed, as she crooned, Connor’s eyes fluttered open. He found himself staring up into Meara’s pale face and teary eyes.
“What? Why am I on the floor? I hadn’t gotten drunk yet.” He reached up, brushed a tear from Meara’s cheek. “Don’t cry, darling.” He struggled to sit up, teetered a bit. “Well, here we all are, sitting on Fin’s kitchen floor. If we’re going to spin the bottle, I’d like to be the one to empty it first.”
“Water.” Boyle pushed it on him.
He drank like a camel, pushed it back. “I could do with stronger. My arm,” he remembered. “It was my arm. Looks fine now.”
And seeing Branna’s face, he opened his arms to her. “You tended me.”
“After you scared five lives out of me.” She held on tight, tight until she could trust herself. “What happened?”
“I’ll tell you, but— Thanks.” He took the glass Boyle offered, drank. Winced. “Jesus, it’s brandy. Can’t a man get a whiskey?”
“It’s brandy for fainting,” Boyle insisted.
“I didn’t faint.” Both mortified and insulted, Connor pushed the glass back at Boyle. “I fell unconscious from my wounds, and that’s entirely different. I’d rather a whiskey.”
“I’ll get it.” Meara scrambled up as Iona leaned over, pressed a kiss to Connor’s cheek.
“Your color’s coming back. You were so pale, and so hot. Please don’t ever do that again.”
“I can promise to do my best never to repeat the experience.”
“What was the experience?” Branna demanded.
“I’ll tell you, all of it, but I swear on my life I’m starving. I don’t want to be accused of fainting again if I pass out from hunger. I’m light-headed with it, God’s truth.”
“I’ve a hunk of pork. Raw,” Fin began.
“You haven’t put any dinner on?” Branna pushed to her feet.
“I was thinking Boyle would cook it up, then Connor came in. We’ve been a bit busy with this and that since.”
“You can’t cook up pork in a fingersnap.”
Fin tried a smile. “You could.”
“Oh, save your shagging pork, and get me a platter.”
“That sort of thing’s in the—” Fin gestured toward the large dining area off the kitchen with its massive buffets and china cabinets and servers.
She marched in, yanked open a couple of drawers. And found a large Belleek platter. After moving a nice arrangement of hothouse lilies, she set the platter in the center of the table.
“It’s a frivolous use of power, but I can’t have my brother starving to death. And since I had already roasted a chicken with potatoes and carrots tonight. So.”
She shot the fingers of both hands at the platter. And the air went redolent with the scents of roasted chicken and sage.
“Thank all the gods and goddesses.” With that, Connor dived straight in, ripped off a drumstick.
“Connor O’Dwyer!”
“Starving,” he said with his mouth full as Branna fisted her hands on her hips. “I’m serious about it. What’s everyone else eating?”
“Someone set the table, for God’s sake. I need to wash up.” She turned to Fin. “Have you a powder room?”
“I’ll show you.”
She’d never been in his home, he thought. Not once would she agree to cross the threshold. It had taken her brother’s need to have her step foot in it.
He showed her the powder room tucked tidily under the stairs.
“Let me see your hands.” She held herself very straight while the voices and good, easy laughter flowed from the kitchen.
He held them out, their backs up. With a sigh of impatience, she gripped them and turned them over.
Blistered palms, welts along his fingers.
“The balm will take care of it.”
“Stop.”
She laid her hands—her palms to his palms, her fingers to his fingers.
“I’m going to thank you. I know you don’t want or need thanks. I know he’s your brother as much as mine. The brother of your heart, your spirit. But he’s my blood, so I need to thank you.”
Tears trembled in her eyes again, a glimmer over the smoke. Then she willed them back and gone. “It was very bad, very bad indeed. I can’t be sure how much worse it might have been if you hadn’t done for him what you did.”
“I love him.”
“I know it.” She studied his hands, healed now, then gave them both a moment. She lifted his hands, pressed them to her lips. “I know it,” she said again, and slipped inside the powder room.
As deep and true as his love ran for Connor, it was a shadow beside what he felt for her. Accepting it, Fin walked back to the kitchen, watched his circle prepare for their first meal together in his home.
* * *
“WHY DIDN’T YOU CALL US?” BRANNA ASKED WHEN THEY’D settled in with the food and Connor’s tale.
“I did—or tried. There was something different in the shadows, in the fog. It was . . . like being closed into a box, tight, so there was nothing else, not even sky. I don’t know how Roibeard heard me or got through unless he was already inside the box, so to speak. The stone Cabhan wore beat like a heart, and the beats of it came faster when I called the elements.”
“In tune with him?” Fin wondered. “Showing excitement, temper, fear?”
“I don’t think fear, as he thinks so little of me.”
“Bollocks.” Meara stabbed a carrot. “He was mind-f*cking you so you’d think little of yourself.”
“She’s right on that,” Boyle agreed. “Trying to get under your skin, he was. Weaken your defenses. It’s a common enough tactic in a brawl.”
“I saw you brawl once.” Iona thought back, smiled. “You didn’t say much.”
“Because I was punching the stupid. But if you’re thinking your opponent’s got skills, maybe even better than yours, mind-f*cking, as our Meara put it, it’s a good tactic.”
“What the bastard thinks of me either way isn’t something I worry myself about.” Content enough now, Connor shoveled in potatoes. “The lightning strike gave me a jolt, I confess.”
“He didn’t strike you because you have the amulet, and that’s protection,” Branna considered. “And because he wants what you have more than your death. He tried to undermine your confidence, and put bad feelings between you and me, between you and Fin.”
“He failed on all counts. And here’s the thing. When I struck at him, the stone glowed brighter, but then—I felt something burn—nothing like it came to be, but a quick burning. And the gem, it dimmed after that. Dimmed considerable just as I struck out again, just before he vanished, and the shadows with him.”
“What he did to you took considerable from him.” Branna ran her hand down Connor’s arm. “To close you in, then cause you harm, to, well, show off for you as well. It cost him.”
“If I’d been able to call you, if we’d all been there.”
“I don’t know,” Branna mused.
“We do know he wasn’t willing to risk it. He’s not ready to take us all on again, or hasn’t the balls for it.” Fin looked around the table. “And there’s a victory.”
“He wasn’t weak, I’ll tell you that. I could feel it pumping out of him. The dark, and the hunger of it. I didn’t see him strike, and would swear he never touched me. Yet, I felt that burn.”
“Neither your jacket or shirt were scorched. But your shirt?” Boyle gestured with his fork. “Smoke came through it from the burn on your arm. Yet you’re wearing it now, and there’s no mark on it.”
“That’s grand, as I’m fond of this shirt.”
“He stayed as a man,” Meara added. “Because he didn’t choose to use his power for the change? He needed all he had to hurt Connor. If Fin hadn’t kept it from spreading until Branna got here, it would’ve been far worse—is that right?”
“Much worse,” Branna confirmed.
“And worse, much worse, would have taken more from you—from the three. He’s studied you all your lives, one way or another, so surely he knew Branna would come, and she’d put all she had into healing Connor—that Iona would add what she could. But that much worse might’ve put Connor down for a day or two, depleted the three of you. He wanted that, risked that. But he didn’t count on Fin,” Meara explained.
“I was nearly here,” Connor pointed out. “He had to suss it out here’s where I’d come.”
Impatient, Branna shook her head. “He’s watched you, studied you, but he doesn’t understand Fin at all. Not at all. He can’t see beyond the blood shared between them. That I would be called and come, yes, but that Fin would take the pain, the risk, the burning to stop the spread? He doesn’t know you at all,” she said to Fin. “He never will. In the end, that might be his undoing.”
“He doesn’t understand family, and because he doesn’t understand, he doesn’t respect. He won’t win this,” Connor said, and helped himself to more potatoes.
* * *
AFTER THE MEAL AND THE CLEARING UP, CONNOR DROVE Branna home, Meara with them.
“Will you be staying?” he asked Meara.
“No—unless you want me,” she said to Branna. “I know we’d planned a night of it.”
“Go sleep in your own bed. We’ll have our night of it, and wedding plans another time. Connor will drive you home.”
“I walked from the stables.” Meara leaned forward to look at Connor around Branna. “You could just drop me there.”
“I’ll drive you home. It’s late, and it’s an uneasy night at best.”
“I won’t argue with that.”
So he dropped Branna off, and waited for her to go inside, though he doubted Cabhan could manage so much as a poke with a sharp stick that night.
“She’ll want just you,” Meara said quietly.
“You’re never out of place with us.”
“No, but she’ll want just you tonight. I’ve never seen her so frightened. We’re all standing in the kitchen, with her just pulling the chicken from the oven, and laughing over something I can’t even recall. Then she went white as death. It was Fin calling her, though I don’t know what he said.”
Gathering herself, Meara paused a moment. “But she said only, ‘Connor’s hurt. At Fin’s.’ And she grabbed my arm. Iona grabbed the other. And I was flying. A blink, an hour, I couldn’t say. All these years I’ve known you and Branna, and I never knew the like of that. Next I know we’re in Fin’s kitchen, and you’re on the ground, paler even than Branna.
“I thought you were dead.”
“It takes more than a bit of black magick to do me.”
“Stop the lorry.”
“What? Ah, are you sick. I’m sorry.” He swung to the side of the road, stopped. “I shouldn’t be joking when—”
His words, his thoughts, the whole of his mind dropped into a void when she launched herself at him, chained her arms around him, and took his mouth like a madwoman.
Like a hot, mad, desperate woman.
Before he could act, react, think, she pulled back again.
“What— What was all that? And where’s it been?”
“I thought you were dead,” she repeated, and latched that hot, mad, desperate mouth to his again.
This time he acted, grabbing on to her, trying to shift her around so he could find a better hold, gain a better angle. All the while her taste pumped into him like a drug, one never sampled, one he wanted more of. All of.
“Meara. Let me—”
She jerked back again. “No. No. We’re not doing this. We can’t do this.”
“We already did.”
“Just that—” She waved her hands in the air. “That’s all of it.”
“Actually, there’s considerable more, if you’d just—”
“No.” She threw her arm out, slapped a hand to his chest to stop him. “Drive. Drive, drive, drive.”
“I’m driving.” He pulled back onto the road, realized he was as unsteady as he’d been after Cabhan’s attack. “We should have a talk about it.”
“We won’t be talking about it, as there’s nothing to talk about. I thought you were dead, and it’s got me shaken up more than I understood because I don’t want you dead.”
Because he could feel the chaos inside her roiling around, he tried for ease and calm to counter it. “Sure I’m glad you don’t, and glad I’m not. But—”
“There’s not a ‘but’ about it. And nothing more to it.”
She leaped out of the lorry almost before he pulled in front of her flat.
“Go home to Branna,” she ordered. “She needs you.”
If she hadn’t said the last, he’d have marched right up to her flat, pushed his way in if necessary. Then they’d have seen what they’d have seen.
But because she was right, he waited until she’d shut herself inside. Then he drove home, more puzzled than he’d ever been about a woman.
And more stirred by one than he could remember.