“Ah, Zach. I told you. She couldn’t kill me. It’s all right.”
He didn’t have a chance to reply. The darkness in the sky was taking shape. To his amazement, he heard something like thundering horses’ hooves.
“It’s the coach. The death coach,” she told him. Tears stung her eyes as she balanced herself against him and stood.
He lifted his hand as he rose with her and saw that the bleeding had stopped. He stared at her incredulously, wondering if he was hallucinating. He must be, because when he looked up…
He saw a coach in the sky, hovering over the boat and drawn by black horses with plumed headdresses.
“I have to go. I always told you that I’d have to go,” Caer said quietly. Then she pulled him close, pressed herself against him and touched her lips to his. She kissed him, and he tasted her tears as she whispered against his lips, “I love you.”
Then she jumped, as startled as he was when they suddenly heard a voice, rich with a very cheerful Irish accent, say, “No, my dear, ye need not be goin’.”
They spun around together. A woman had stepped from the coach. She had Bridey’s voice, but she wasn’t Bridey—and yet she was. It took Zach a long moment to realize that it was Bridey, but Bridey with the years peeled away, Bridey beautiful and young, dressed in a flowing black gown that waved around her in the breeze.
“Bridey?” Caer whispered. “But…I sent you on. I sent you to the emerald hills and fields, and the cottage in the woods, the light and—”
“Aye, but I couldna’ stay,” Bridey said, then turned to Zach. “A banshee is not evil, my boy, for ’tis her job to escort the good folk to the promise and rewards that await on the other side. But sometimes, like Caer here, she takes human form. And now our Caer has fallen in love with you, just as you have fallen in love with her, so I made arrangements, if you will, to take her place. So you see—” she turned to Caer “—you are free now to remain. I do na mind a bit taking your place, child. Indeed, I’m quite eager, and you must stay here and love Zach ’til the end of both your days. And as I was coming to see you anyway, I’ve been asked to see that these two go where they should, a place where no green fields await.”
“Two?” Caer said blankly.
“Aye, two.” Bridey lifted a hand and pointed.
Amanda O’Riley was lying on the deck, blood pouring from a head wound. Zach could only assume that she had panicked at the sight of the birds and had fallen, hitting her head on the rail on the way down.
“I must be goin’ now,” Bridey said. “Michael said to tell you that you did well, Caer. He’s proud of you. Ye’ll not be seein’ him again, so he said to warn ye that ye must be careful with that flesh and blood ye’ve been given, because from now on, a knife in the back or a blade against the throat, and ye’ll not be healing.”
“But—” Caer began.
“What the hell is going on here?” Zach whispered.
Bridey laughed with delight. “Ye’ve been given a gift. The gift of life,” she told him. “Caer’s life.”
A loud and terrible sound began to vibrate through the air. A wail, a scream, something both hollow and sharp, something that seemed to come from the sea and sky, carrying the threat of terror and doom. Darkness swirled around Marni and Amanda where they lay, and as he watched, their spirits rose from their bodies, rose and saw the dark shadows, like birds, like hundreds of black birds, sweeping around them.
They screamed. They frantically batted and scratched at the darkness, but the shadows consumed them and dragged them, kicking and screaming, to the waiting coach.
“Life is a gift. Appreciate it, and use it well, me lovelies,” Bridey said.
Then she turned, leaped atop the driver’s seat of the coach and waved.
Zach blinked, and the coach was gone.
The sea was calm, the sky brilliantly blue.
He looked at Caer and tried to speak, but couldn’t. He tried to touch her, and then, to his absolute embarrassment, he crashed to the deck, out cold.
He came to, still on the boat. Caer was bending over him, her eyes anxious, her Windbreaker bloodied, though the cut on her neck was already healing, and her hand strong on his. She offered him a tentative smile.
“What the hell happened?” he asked her.
“They’re dead, both of them. You shot Marni. Then the boat lurched, and Amanda crashed into the rail. She’s dead, too.”
“Sean, Kat, they were alive and—”
“And they’re going to be fine.”
He stared at her. “That’s what happened?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head, his eyes searching her face, studying it, reading it.
“You are a banshee,” he said in awe.
“No more, but…aye, I was. Can you live with that knowledge?”