Liam and Nial furrowed their brows as though they’d heard a faint sound they couldn’t quite place. Of course. They weren’t truly Fae.
But Miach was, and the last time he’d heard a Druidic command, he’d lain himself down on a cold stone slab and held perfectly still while the bastards split him open.
There was no way to know how he would react.
“You heard it,” Conn said carefully. So difficult to speak calmly and slowly when Beth was in danger. “She has found her power.” He didn’t like to think what it had cost her. A life. He hoped the sacrifice had been deserving of death. For Beth’s sake.
“Every Fae in North America has heard it by now,” Miach said, the cracking of his knuckles the only outward sign of his struggle to resist the pull.
“Circumstances have changed,” Conn said. “You no longer need to kill her. There isn’t a free Fae who can force her to do anything. Just the opposite.”
“There is one,” Miach said. “The Druids never succeeded in marking him. His skin would not hold ink, nor would it scar. They kept him in cold iron alone.”
“The Prince Consort,” Conn said grimly. “Miach, let me go to her. There may still be time to rescue her and the blade.”
Miach hesitated. The phone rang. He reached for the receiver, then thought better of it, and put the call on speaker.
It was Elada. “I have found the Druid,” he said, his voice cold, almost metallic.
“Alive?” Miach asked.
“She commanded me to defend her. And I obeyed. She recovered the Summoner.”
“Then there is no need to kill her now,” Miach conceded.
Conn felt the prickle of tears. Beth. Safe.
“Tell her Conn is here, waiting for her,” Miach instructed. “Bring her and the sword back with you.”
A silence. Then: “I don’t think she should be moved.”
Coldness in the pit of his stomach. “What has happened?” Conn asked.
Elada didn’t answer until Miach spoke again. “Tell us.”
“I’m uncertain,” said the bodyguard. “She’s hurt. He should come.” He meant Conn.
“Perhaps—” began Miach, but Elada cut him off.
“He should come, Miach. He should come now.”
E
lada had been forced to
use glamour and compulsion on a score of bystanders at the rest stop. By the time he finished, he was sorely tempted to disobey Miach’s vow and shake Helene Whitney until her pretty neck snapped.
The woman was more trouble than she was worth. He hoped Miach’s obsession with her would fade. Up to now, the sorcerer had always followed the edict he’d lain upon his family. He restricted himself to paramours from South Boston, and to lovers who had more to gain than lose from becoming entangled with a Fae. Helene was making him forget all that. And this Druid, Beth, had brought Conn of the Hundred Battles to his knees.
The Druid and the Amazon. They were dangerous women, the pair of them. Elada, for his part, was content with the South Boston widow who saw to his needs. Her heart, he knew, had been buried with her dead marine husband, and would there remain. Maire was in no danger of becoming Fae besotted. She enjoyed his protection in the neighborhood, the firm hand he lent with her teenage son, and his undivided attention in bed. That was all she wanted from him, and all he had to give. He was the right hand of a sorcerer. Miach would always come first.
Helene had tried to get away from him again, while he was attempting to placate her would-be rescuers without a bloodbath. He’d had to compel her then, which was unfortunate, because it was not a skill he used often, and he lacked finesse. She’d fought him, turning white and gasping with the effort until his patience had snapped and he’d played on her greatest fear, conjured a small room in her mind and closeted her there, as she’d been prisoned by Brian on the island.
She’d still refused him the information he sought. “Portsmouth,” was all she would tell him. And it was all he got when he took the information by force from her mind. After that she sat quietly on the picnic bench where he left her, while he spoke with Miach.
He was patching the tires on the Range Rover when he heard Beth’s command. Like all the captive Fae, he had been marked by the Druids. Being so near her summons had been irresistible, imperative.
He could follow the direction of her voice,
pass
to where she was. He cast a quick glance at Miach’s woman sitting on the picnic bench, arms wrapped around her knees, one eye swelling shut. Fortunately, Miach knew him well enough to believe him about the Amazon’s ploy, but he doubted the sorcerer would be best pleased to find that his woman had been left traumatized and alone—vulnerable—in such a place.
There was no time for talk. He compelled her to get into the stranded Range Rover, and stay there. Then he
passed
.
Earth, water, wood, stone, and he was inside a room lined with moldering books, the sharp tang of blood in the air.
And the sword. The Summoner. Fierce magic. The Druid had found it. Which meant she did not have to die. He felt relief. His life was complicated enough. He did not need to make an enemy of the Betrayer, and the woman herself had been kind to him while he was guarding her.
There were two men in the room. One was a half-breed, the lowest, most dilute type. He was backed against the wall, sinking into the shelves, to get away from the scene playing out in the middle of the room.
The Druid lay in a tangle of bloodied blankets, a blond man crouching over her with a needle. Beth moaned and sobbed, too weak to get away from her attacker. Elada drew his sword and skewered the man through the back—piercing his heart—then threw the twitching body across the room to land beside the half-breed. Who screamed.
This must be Frank Carter. “You are her husband?” he confirmed.
“Ex-husband,” the man gibbered.
“I will allow Conn to decide what to do with you.” Elada broke both Frank Carter’s legs with a single blow from the flat of his sword, and turned at last to the Druid.
“Please,” she said. She was pale. Too pale. There was blood, too much blood. And no obvious wound. He had kept women, fathered children. He saw the discarded syringes and came to the only conclusion possible: they’d poisoned her and she had lost a child.
He wasn’t certain what to do for her, how to stop the bleeding. Pressure, but where to apply it? Miach would know. He reached for the tarp. She shrank away from him.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he assured her.
“Because I can command you?” she asked, her voice nothing but a reedy whisper, her body ravaged but her mind still sharp.
“Yes. But also because Miach gave me leave not to kill you if you recovered the sword. You did well,” he said, trying to gentle his voice.
A little smile from her. A mighty effort, because she was dying.
“Please,” she said again. “I want Conn.”
C
onn
passed
into the room
beside Miach. Frank Carter lay on the floor, his legs bent at impossible angles. His ragged sobs affronted the ears. There was a corpse beside him: Egan, Conn guessed.
“I left this one for you to deal with,” Elada explained. “The other poisoned your woman.”
Conn followed Elada’s gaze to where Miach already knelt beside Beth.
So much blood. But she was still alive. “Conn.” Her voice was weak. Not the mighty thing she’d used to summon them there.
“What did they do to her?”
Miach ignored him. His fine-boned hands were on her, Conn’s woman. He knew the man was trying to help, but Beth jerked and whimpered, and he had to fight an urge to throw the sorcerer across the room.
“Conn,” she said again. “I want Conn.”
“He’s here,” Miach soothed. “Let her see that you’re here,” the sorcerer said, his eyes never leaving Beth, his hands working busily over her.
“Will she live?” Conn asked.
No one answered him.
“Beth,” Miach said urgently. “Beth, look at me. You’ve lost a lot of blood, but you can make more. Do you understand how to do that?”
“Thirsty,” she said. “Need,” she gasped. Conn saw her try to lift her hand, to touch Miach, but her movements were clumsy and slow.
The sorcerer ripped open his shirt.
“What are you doing?” Conn asked.
“She’s lost a child, and she’s still bleeding. She needs to draw from me and make more blood if she’s to live.” Miach took her hand, placed it over his heart, pressed.
She’d been with child, and miscarried. And he hadn’t even known. Conn watched Beth’s fingers twitch convulsively, a shudder travel down her arm. “Can you stop the bleeding?” Conn asked.
Miach didn’t answer him. Instead, he addressed the woman lying on the ground, who was Conn’s love. “Beth, we have very little time. The Manhattan Fae will have heard you. They will be coming for you and the Summoner. I cannot give you any more of my power if we are to fight them. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
Conn didn’t. “What are you saying?”
“There is too much damage. I can’t stop the bleeding. Nor can she. Her only chance is to use the power I have given her to make more blood until the hemorrhaging stops on its own. And I cannot give her enough to last indefinitely.”
“No. There must be something else you can do.”
“The Manhattan Fae will be here any minute. They outnumber us two to one. Even with the Summoner, you cannot fight them all on your own. I cannot spare any more power and be of use to you and Elada in the fight.”
Miach paused, fixed his eyes on Conn. “If we fail to defeat them, if they take her in this weakened state, she will wish she had bled out here on the floor.”
It was true, all of it, and no easier to bear for all that.
“There are things that should be spoken between you,” Miach said gently, “in case there is no future opportunity.”
Of course there were. Conn knelt at her side, stroked her face with the back of his hand, and tried to speak, but he could not find the words.
She smiled and brushed her lips across his knuckles. “I release you,” she said. “I love you and I release you from your vow.”
“You can’t,” he said.
“I don’t want to die, but if I do, I don’t want you to follow me. So I release you. I
can
do that. That’s how it works. I know that now. I know so many, wondrous things, Conn; I want to tell you all of them.”
“It will have to wait,” Elada said from his position at the window. “The New York Fae have arrived.”
B
eth knew the worst had
happened. She had access to her power, but she was so weak and vulnerable. The Manhattan Fae could keep her that way and force her to their will.
“They cannot find her like this,” the sorcerer said. “We must meet them before they reach this room.”
She felt the Summoner vibrate when Conn grasped it. That was the magic binding him to the blade. She could see it as an aura all around him, a pale, shimmering light that danced over his broad shoulders and strong arms. The perfect warrior. She could see it now in the tensing muscles of his back: the speed, grace, and cunning that was Conn of the Hundred Battles. No wonder the Druids had chosen him to guard the sword.
Then he turned to her, and she could see what it cost Conn, the man and the lover, to leave her here like this.
“I promise not to die until you get back,” she said. It came out an unappealing croak, but he smiled at her anyway.
“There are a half dozen Fae out there. You have great faith in my skills, Druid.”
“Are you as good as everyone says?”
He flashed her a smile. “Yes,” he said, and
passed
with Miach and Elada out of the room.
She lay very still and listened. There was only the sound of Frank’s pitiful sobbing. She ignored it. He and Egan had killed her child, and he would have murdered her in cold blood. He didn’t deserve pity.
She couldn’t hear through the echoing house like she had before. It took too much energy. Every ounce of strength she had was going into staying alive, replacing blood as she lost it, as far as that was possible. It was like bailing out an ocean liner with a teacup.
And she could not make something out of nothing. Science had something to say on the subject, something about the conservation of matter and energy. She needed energy to make matter. Power to make blood. And she was running out of both. Miach’s gift would not last long enough to save her.
She heard voices raised—the musical but harsh tone of the Fae—heard challenges issued. It was not a nice conversation. Then the ring of steel, and the electric sensation of power dispersed. That would be Miach. She could almost taste the sorcerer’s magic in the air, like mist after rain. She needed it, thirsted for it. Wished she could run outside and dance in it and catch drops of it on her tongue.
She was going to die without it. The bleeding wasn’t stopping. She felt cold, and soon the chill would creep into her mind, and she would be unable to act. She needed to get outside. She could draw from the green growing things, the trees that brushed tantalizingly at the windows, the autumn grass she could smell outside in the air. Getting there might kill her, but she knew now that if she stayed here, she would be dead by the time Conn returned.
There was an umbrella stand full of walking sticks by the room’s door. She rose painfully, grabbed one as she stumbled into the hall. She could not go out the front entrance, where the Fae warred with one another. She must find another exit. The library opened off a long corridor leading toward the end of the house buttressed by a stone terrace she had seen from outside.
Blood trickled down her shaking legs as she walked, showering the rug in red droplets. One foot in front of the other. One step at a time. One hand on the wall above the paneling, the other clutching the silver knob at the top of the cane. She kept her eyes firmly on the furrowed carpet in front of her feet. If she looked up and saw the distance she must travel, she might not have the heart to go on.
The hall grew brighter, and she felt, at last, the warmth of sunlight on her face. A glass door, heavy as lead. She pushed it open. It took all of her remaining strength. She fell to her knees and could not get up. From here she must crawl. The stone terrace was deep and cold, inlaid with colored marble and rimmed with balustrades of poured cement. She must reach the stairs.