Celtic Evil: A Fitzgerald Brother Novel: Roarke (28 page)

Kerry and Ryan had gotten
there by then and had taken in the grim scene. “Mac, a little less
lecturing would be nice,” Kerry saw the pain his brother was in but
also knew he didn’t have the strength to remove the spell, so he
knelt down to lightly run a hand over their friend’s
head.

“Remove the evil that has
been done to taint this child,” he spoke the spell quietly and felt
it lift instantly even before Jessica jerked against Roarke’s
hold.

Her eyes snapped open,
blinked rapidly then started looking around even as pain seared,
and she began gasping.

“Be quiet, luv, and just
lay still,” Mac urged, hearing Peter Daniels arrive in the house.
“Single GSW, in and out, and she’s losing blood. Probably other
wounds but we deal with this first.”

Peter stared hard. “How the
hell did she get shot?” he demanded, knowing Cam wasn’t going to
like this.

“Later, just help me get
her stable,” Mac shot his brother a look that could have killed and
probably would have if Maggie hadn’t come tearing down the steps at
him.

“Mac!” she stopped when she
saw the blood and felt the tension between the brothers. “My God,
what do ye…?”

Shaking his head, he
mentally told the reporter what he would need then scowled. “Give
her to me, Roarke.”

Peter had a good hunch on
what happened from the way their mystic was yelling, but knew there
had to be a reason.

“I can…” Roarke didn’t want
to let go but felt Kerry ease him away from the girl. “Kerry, I had
a reason…”

“I know, but right now let
Mac have her and go get cleaned up,” Kerry urged, looking at Ryan,
who merely nodded his understanding.

Watching as Peter helped
Mac carry Jessica back upstairs with Kerry following, Roarke looked
at his bloodstained hands before heading downstairs without a word
to anyone.

“Why would he shoot her,
Ryan?” Ian felt dumbfounded by this. “I thought he loved
her.”

“He does, kid,” Ryan
sighed, scrubbing his face. “Mac’s thinking like Mac right now and
not asking what he’d have done if little Maggie had been in the
same position.”

A snort behind him caused
him to see the aforementioned woman coming back up with a bag,
towels and Deirdre. “Well, I’d like to think Mac wouldn’t shoot me
just to prove a point to some evil witch.”

“Roarke shooting Jessica
was the only way Sebastian was going to let go and they both knew
it,” he replied, hearing glass breaking from downstairs. “Go help
big brother, Maggie. I have to go be big brother again
myself.”

Pausing, she looked down at
the black haired gambler. “I didn’t think you liked doing
that.”

“I don’t, luv,” Ryan
returned, motioning to Ian to come with him as he tracked the noise
to the living room where the mirror above the fireplace was now
shattered. “Well, I’m not sure if letting Mac pull glass outta you
is a bright plan right now.”

Roarke didn’t move as Ryan
stepped up behind him to see him staring at his hands, which were
now bleeding from being put through the mirror. “Did I have another
option?” he whispered. “If we had fought him, he’d have killed her
or done so much worse than he did.”

“It’s alright, brat,” Ryan
assured him, knowing it wasn’t getting through as he put his hand
on the shaking shoulder, and then what happened took them all by
surprise.

All the emotion, the pain
and fear that he had buried that night suddenly came out as Roarke
whirled at the touch, but instead of lashing out as both really
Ryan and Ian had expected him to, he latched onto his brother like
he had never before and all the walls crashed at once.

“I’d never hurt her, Ry,”
he whispered, gripping harder as his body was suddenly overtaken
with waves of trembling. “I… just…”

Ryan closed his eyes as he
felt the emotions swamping his brother sitting on the sofa, and
just gave in and pulled him fully into his arms to let him release
all the anger, the fears but when the sobs from the past began, he
sent Ian out with a sharp look.

“Find where Deirdre hides
the hard liquor,” he told him, wanting a drink and figuring one
couldn’t hurt his brother.

As Ian darted out, Ryan sat
back and stayed silent. Figuring what his brother needed was to
vent more than anything right then.

By the time the youngest of
the Fitzgeralds returned with what appeared to be an ancient bottle
of something and some glasses, Roarke had become mostly silent
except his breathing was labored.

“Okay, before we get you
cleaned up and even try to approach Mac, let’s have some of this,”
Ryan spoke with his usual tone, taking the bottle as his eyebrows
shot up. “Where’d you find this?”

“It was in a locked cabinet
in the kitchen,” Ian shrugged, sitting on the coffee table. “Since
it was locked I figured there had to be something good
inside.”

Turning the bottle over in his hands, Ryan
recognized it as a bottle of whiskey his father had kept.

“Ah! A good stiff drink is
just what this situation calls for,” the wiry silver haired
Irishman who had been upstairs with Maggie announced cheerfully as
he entered the room, clapping his hands. “Good year this bottle
was. Be a good boy, Ryan, and poor us some drinks.”

Ian blinked at the
whirlwind that was the little man even as he saw Roarke pull back
at the new voice, wiping his face quickly.

“Don’t want any of…” he started to object
when the older man plopped down on the sofa on his other side and
laid a hand, slightly weathered with age, on his leg.

“It’s the height of bad
manners when any true Irishman refuses to drink with kin, boyo.”
His eyes bright as he grinned, took the glass, and held it up to
the light. “Especially when that kin is your own grandfather and
the drink is an excellent aged whiskey.”

Ryan smiled into his own
glass, knowing he’d be answering questions until hell froze over
from Ian over this. “One drink, Roarke. It’ll settle things a
bit.”

He poured some of the amber
liquid into a glass, then while Lorcan Kerrigan kept Roarke’s
attention, he shifted his wrist slightly. “Drink up, then we’ll go
see if I should toss Mac outta the house.”

“You...” Ian began when a
sharp kick shut him up then he blinked at the glass that was shoved
into his hands. “I’ve never really…”

Lorcan shook his head, his
full thick mane of silvery blond hair moving. “Damn bloody shame
too, lad. I had me first drink at the age of two at my own sainted
grandpa’s knee.”

Hesitating, Ian caught
Ryan’s shrug that meant he might as well, and saw that Roarke had
downed the single drink without a wince, so he did the same and
then saw stars.

“Should probably have
warned the lad this is one hundred fifty year old stuff and will
kick like a mule,” Lorcan mused, holding his glass out for a
refill.

Ryan shot his grandfather a
sour look, then looked to see that Roarke was staying still as the
combo of the liquor and the sleeping spell he’d slipped into it
started to work, which allowed him to grab Ian before he fell
forward.

“Just breathe through it,
kid,” he laughed, gently slapping his baby brother on the back
until he stopped choking.

“Lorcan!” the sharp accusing tone of his
wife had the wiry little man sitting up straight.

Fiona entered the room and
took in the sight with one look. “Are we trying to get our
grandsons drunk on purpose?”

“Now, Fi, this isn’t what
it appears.” He began soothingly but stayed sitting as one brow
rose. “It’s a man’s right to have a drink with…”

“I told Ian to get the
liquor, Gram,” Ryan broke in once Ian was breathing again. “Though
Ian drinking it wasn’t exactly in the cards.”

Shaking her head at both
her husband and the elder of her present grandsons, Fiona walked
over to look at Roarke who had fallen asleep still sitting up.
“This will hurt him more.”

“We’ll see,” Ryan spoke
quietly, downing his second drink easily then rising to his feet to
pull his brother up with him. “Right now, all the brat needs is to
sleep this off.”

Ian, still unsure about all
this, decided to help his brother get Roarke upstairs. “You think
it’ll be that easy?”

“I make a good chunk of my
living off weighing the odds, Ian,” Ryan had just shifted to lift
his sleeping brother up over his shoulders to go upstairs. “I never
make a wager I don’t think I can win, lad.”

As the boys left the living
room, Lorcan Kerrigan lost some of his cheer as he reached for the
whiskey bottle again. “They will suffer so much before this is
over.”

“Aye, my heart, I fear
you’re correct,” Fiona sat on the sofa with a sigh, waving a hand
toward the bottle to bring it to her. “I think you’ve had enough of
this and it can be put to use elsewhere,” she decided, standing to
go see to her other boys. “Don’t be annoying to those lads
outside.”

Lorcan laughed as his wife walked out
silently and he sat back on the couch, wondering what else he could
find interesting.

Maggie Cavanaugh had watched silently while
Patrick ‘Mac’ Fitzgerald and Peter Daniels worked to stop the
bleeding that was very close to costing Jessica Hadley her
life.

Finally, after what seemed
like hours, Peter stepped back. “If those stitches hold and she
stays stable overnight then it looks good.” He didn’t add that it
had better stay that way since they were out of blood to use as
replacement.

“Damn bloody lucky that that bullet missed
all vital organs and didn’t do any muscle damage.” Mac countered
bitterly, slumping back on the floor and accepting the clean towel
Maggie handed him.

“Was it luck or skill?”
Kerry asked quietly from where he’d been standing by the window all
through the operation.

Mac scowled as he got to
his feet, temper still on the surface. “Roarke shot Jessica through
the bloody chest, Kerry!” he snapped, whirling. “None of us were
expecting him to do that and he couldn’t have known it wasn’t a
kill shot. No one’s that good.”

“Little brother is that
good and I knew what he was planning,” Ryan spoke from the
door.

Having taken his brother to
his old room and gotten him settled while Ian helped Deirdre wash
some of the blood off and treat his hand where he’d slammed it into
the mirror, Ryan had gone to change himself, then decided to check
on the others.

“You knew he was planning
on shooting her?” Mac was livid but Maggie’s slim hand kept him
still as his brother came into the room. “Do you have any idea the
risk if I couldn’t save her?” he demanded. “She can still die if
infection sets in if I can’t heal her totally.”

“Roarke can heal that once
he wakes up,” Ryan shrugged, looking at the young woman to see she
was pale under the blankets, and felt the low emotions that the
painkillers and Mac’s powers hadn’t dulled. “He had
reasons.”

“He risked her life!” Mac
shot back, all the recent events making his normally calm temper
snap as he went nose to nose with his unusually calm brother. “It
was plain stupid macho tricks. How do you think she’ll feel if she
wakes up to learn her so-called ‘boyfriend’ shot her?”

Maggie was watching this
closely, knowing that with the tempers involved, this could get
ugly, when Kerry finally stepped between his brothers.

“Relax, Mac,” he urged,
looking at Ryan. “You should have told us.”

“If I had, one of you would
have stopped it and Roarke needed it to go down like he planned it
if he had any chance of pulling the lass out alive,” he shrugged,
running his hands through his long black hair as he wondered how to
explain this.

Ryan walked around their
parents’ former suite, fingering a small photo on the master
fireplace as he did so. “He figured out in the cemetery that he had
to face Sebastian down and what he’d use against him. The question
was how he could get the surprise on Sebastian without Jessica
being hurt more.”

“I’d guess shooting her
worked,” Mac snorted, turning to walk away when he suddenly felt
himself yanked around.

“Go look at him and then
tell me he isn’t hurting more by what he had to do,” Ryan shot back
angrily. “All this pain, the guilt he’s had has tripled by knowing
that he hurt this girl when he’d rather cut his own heart out, but
do you think he’d have risked it if he hadn’t found a way to let
her know it would happen?”

Several sets of eyes looked
at the security expert warily, then Kerry sighed. “You were working
against Sebastian’s spell on Jessica while his attention was
centered on Roarke. That was how she was able to speak to him, but
not what Sebastian wanted her to say.”

“Gold star for you, big
brother, nice guess,” Ryan smirked; this night’s events had left
him rawer than he had been in years. “I couldn’t break the full
spell but did allow their link to come back enough that she could
feel Roarke’s thoughts. He needed her to understand and trust that
he could do it.”

“But will she when she
wakes up?” Maggie had to ask, remembering what she had seen and the
residual effects she’d picked up from Mac. “That thing hurt her so
much, so will she be able to understand all that
happened?”