Roisin, her father, and brother had been abducted by four men nearly a week ago. They’d broken into their home, shot them with paralytic darts, dragged them down the street, tossed them into a pile with other bodies near a mirror, then gone back out into the streets to collect more.
But her abduction had taken a darker turn than mine. The men who’d collected them had been sadists, raping and torturing their captives. They’d broken her father’s legs and badly beaten her brother while she lay helplessly by, being raped again and again.
I will fucking kill every last bloody one of them, Ryodan snarled in my mind.
You and me both, I returned grimly.
Eventually, they’d transported them through the mirror and added their bodies to a growing mound of paralyzed, tortured humans.
“It was like something out of a horror movie,” she said hoarsely. “I couldn’t move. I hurt everywhere and could only see what I was pointed at. I couldn’t even shift my eyes in my head. I could hear people talking.” She shuddered. “The things they were saying were horrible. They hate humans and plan to eradicate us from the face of the earth. And they’re not Fae.”
“Why did you ask if my last name was O’Malley?” I said.
“Because the one behind it all—they called him Balor—wanted you. That was what I heard right before I crawled back through the mirror. He sent a hideous little monster that could split itself up into roaches out to find you. Balor said he was going to collect you personally.”
“Papa Roach!” I exclaimed.
“The bastard keeps switching sides,” Ryodan said, cursing. “I’m going to kill that fuck once and for all.”
“I saw a roach in my shower a few nights ago,” I told him.
“And you’re just now telling me that?”
I shrugged. “I’m never certain if they’re just roaches. They can’t all be Papa Roach.”
“They are,” he growled.
I frowned at him. “You mean every roach in the whole world—”
“Yes. And he’s dying the next time I see one.”
Roison stared between us. “You guys already know about all of this?”
“Not all of it,” I said. “How did you escape?”
“Because of Gustaine—that’s what Balor called the roach monster. Balor had just removed the paralysis spell from a group of us when Gustaine interrupted and distracted him.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I could move but my father and brother were too badly injured to escape.” The tears began to run down her cheeks and she wiped angrily at them. “They kept jerking their heads toward the mirror, telling me to leave.”
Oh, God, how do you leave the people you love like that; yet how do you stay? There’s no point in staying. Either one of you lives or you all die. It’s a horrific choice with painful repercussions either way. “I’m so sorry.”
“I had to go. It was the only chance they had. I had to get back and figure out how to save them. But when I got back, I couldn’t…I just couldn’t function and you found me and brought me here and I slept for days.”
“You were in shock,” I told her. “Your eyes were glazed. You’d been through hell and it takes time to pull it together. I think you did it in record time.”
“It’s been six days!” Roisin cried. “Who knows what’s happened to them in that time!”
“You did the best you could,” I said quietly. “I saw how broken you were. We’re here now and we’ll get the bastard that did this. I promise you that.”
“Describe for us where he was,” Ryodan ordered. “Omit no detail.”
She began to shiver as she spoke, rubbing her arms as if to ward off a bone deep chill. “We were in some kind of huge cavern. There were…I don’t know, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people, but they weren’t…right. They were blank, looked nearly starved, like puppets being controlled, moving jerkily, and they chanted nonstop, saying Balor’s name over and over. He was building an army of humans, controlling them somehow.”
“He takes their souls,” I told her grimly. “He tried to take mine.”
“He already came after you?” she exclaimed.
I nodded.
“How did you escape?”
I smiled faintly. “I have a few unique talents. Back to the cavern, tell us more.”
She sighed. “It was like those caves beneath the Burren, but I could see tunnels shooting off in all directions. I got the impression we were deep below the earth.” She shook her head, “No, that’s not quite right, they looked more like…corridors that had been carved out a long time ago. Tall, made of stone blocks, with high rounded arches. There were fires in the main cavern and hundreds of ancient-looking torches bolted into the walls everywhere, vanishing down the corridors.”
“Metal sconces?” I said, using my gloved hands to sketch an image in the air. “With three stems going up into cups the size of my fist that had flames in them?”
“Yes, how did you know that?”
“And did those three stems shape a sort of clover?” I demanded.
“With a bent leaf,” she said, nodding.
Was she fucking kidding me? “Did it feel like you were in an underground city more than a cave?” I said tightly.
She nodded again. “Yes. That’s what I was trying to say. It didn’t seem like a natural cave, but something that was deliberately planned—”
“Bloody fucking hell, that bastard is beneath the abbey!” Ryodan exploded.
“What abbey?” Roison said.
I shot him a dark look. “When Balor woke up, he never left. He stayed put in the one place he knew the Fae would never come, building his army, absorbing power, right beneath our bloody feet. That’s how he got our sidhe-seers. They weren’t abducted at Elyreum. He either took them on their way back in late at night or simply came up and grabbed them while they slept. That son of a bitch planned to get strong enough to destroy us all, while being protected by us, then kill us and go after the Fae!”
“But wouldn’t you have heard the chanting and screaming?” Roison said.
“Not as deep as our underground city goes, no. I’m not even sure we would have heard him in the cavern the Sinsar Dubh once occupied, if the door was closed. Everything is solid rock and most of it dozens of feet thick.” Damn the Shedon for not letting us explore the Underneath! I thought as I yanked out my phone and fired off a text to Kat:
GET EVERYONE OUT OF THE ABBEY. WE THINK BALOR IS BENEATH IT
“I’m coming, too,” Roisin said instantly.
“You’ll slow us down,” Ryodan said curtly.
I agreed with him on that score and told her so. “Sit tight and wait. I promise to text you the moment we kill him. We’ll find your family, Roisin, I promise.”