Dark Isle (Celtic Legacy Book 2) (15 page)

She’s right about that.
Remember Luke’s first reaction? Disbelief. I’ve no doubt that Nuadha will ignore all the signs that Chaos is coming
too
,
Cora said.

“We discussed Chaos. Not that you want to believe that’s what’s happening
,”
I said, enduring the glare from Aednat. I wasn’t going to keep things from Luke
;
he was trying to help me, trying to keep me alive
—even
if he was irritating the hell out of me with his arrogance.

Luke held up his hands in mock surrender
. “
Fine, okay, I believe you!
”
He looked from me to Aednat and back again. I could see he was just playing along.

Jaw clenched
,
I struggled not to yell at him. “My ancestors
confirmed it too, Luke,
before Aednat and I spoke last night.
That’s three warnings that Chaos is about to be unleashed if we don’t stop Balor. How many more do you need?
Card is digging it out of the ocean for Balor, that’s what’s causing the earthquakes.”

Even as the word
s
left my mouth, another
quake
rumbled through the Island. Luke steadied me as I held tight to Aednat. Her eyes were wide with worry. “We must hurry if we are to stop him.”

“You don’t want our help now to restore you to your throne?” Luke asked, his surprise obvious.

Without a pause, Aednat no
dded. “
It is the way of a
true
leader
;
sometimes we must give up what we want most to do the right thing.
Maybe Aednat must give up throne in order to manage Chaos, maybe not. Only time will tell.
”

Words so wise coming out of such a
young
-
looking girl were more than a little unnerving, but she spoke truly.

“Besides,” she continued
.
“
Aednat knows
where Lir is
;
if we free him, he will stop Card. He is the only one that can.
Besides Quinn
,
that is.
”
She gave me a wink of her blue eye.

I closed my eyes and the light flickered across my eyelids. “Let me guess, Lir is being held captive by the
Banshee
Queen
.”

“No, that is not true
,
”
Aednat said. She smiled up at me. “Easier than getting past the bad
Queen
. Lir is being held deep in the lake, the monster guards his cell.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Luke asked, lifting his hands to the air
once more
. “If I’d known we only had to get past the lake monster, with only the three of us, me with a single sword, Quinn with a dagger and you with . . . do you have some weapon we haven’t yet seen?” Aednat shook her head and he continued. “Well then, of course, that will be eas
ier than
getting wet in the rain.”

His sarcasm was completely lost on her. She nodded, smiling from ear to ear. “Good, we go get Lir. For when the earthquakes stop, then we are too late.”

For the first time, I sent up a prayer to whatever God or gods would hear me that the earthquakes would continue
,
and
that we would make it in time to stop
Balor from releasing Chaos
.

Despite the fact that I wanted to hurry, my body wasn’t quite ready for a full out run through the forest.
Not even with the Fairy Honey helping me along.
My feet kept tripping on unseen roots
,
and
rocks seemed to throw themselves into my path
,
smashing my shins.
Since Aednat had closed the gateway closest to us
in order
to block the other Banshees, we had
to
trek through the coastal forest to get to the next possible gateway.

“Damn it!” I yelped for what seemed like the hundredth time, falling again to my hands and knees. The only thing that saved me was the fact that we were still primarily on mossy ground.

Luke helped me to my feet. “Will you let me carry you now?” It wasn’t the first time he’d asked. Panting, I nodded. My legs were wobbling, I could only just get my feet high enough to take a step, but not high enough to avoid tripping
.
My lungs burned,
as though I’d been running
,
not taking a walk through the cool coastal forest. It was time to admit defeat, at least on this.

“Are you going to . . .?” I didn’t get a chance to ask which way he was going to pack me. With an ease that shouldn’t have
surprised me
, but did, Luke scooped
me up, his right arm under my legs
and his left supporting me
. At least he didn’t stick me on his back like some little kid
going for a piggy ride with
her
dad
.

Skipping through the
ferns and shrubs ahead of us, Aednat called over her shoulder. “Sleep, Quinn. Let your body heal.”

Even
with the jostling of Luke’s footsteps
, the moment my eyes closed I was asleep
.
Deep and dreamless, when I woke sometime later, I could feel my body already healing. Slowly, but at least it was healing. Lifting a hand to touch Luke’s arm, I got his attention.

“I think that you need to train me, Luke. I mean, if you are willing to.
That was one of the last things Cora told me
,
” I sai
d
.

Luke glanced down at me, his blue eyes and soft lips so close, so tantalizing. Heat rushed through me, so much
so
that there was no way he couldn’t feel it with our bodies pressed against each other. He didn’t say anything, just stared at me, the air seeming to thicken between us. His feet stopped, his arms tightened around me
,
and he leaned his head down to mine, his lips brushing against my cheek then across to my mouth.

“I will teach you anything you’d like to learn.” His voice tingled across my skin. Feeling bold, I reached up and ran my fingers through his hair and tugged him closer. “Anything?”

If I thought the heat rushing through me was bad before, it was nothing to the blaze that lit inside as he let
m
y
legs down so that I stood in front of him.

Cupping my face, he surprised me
;
he bit
down on my lower lip
and pulled
me closer. I let out a yelp, he chuckled and then we were kissing.

Like
our first kiss that seemed so long ago,
it was if I was drinking in the sunshine, the heat of his mouth, the taste of his lips on mine
sweeping
through me, whispered to me all the things that my mother told me good girls didn’t do
—e
specially
not with someone that they had only known a few days.

I wrapped my arms around him, revelling in the fact that his muscles trembled under my hands. He broke the kiss of
f
, his eyes full of
a
hunger I knew I’d caused. I smiled up at him, unable to stop the goofy grin I
could feel s
pread across my face.

He grinned back
,
and then a clod of dirt hit him in the
side of his
head, roots and mud marring the moment. We both spun to see Aednat standing with her hands on her hips, a glower on her face.

“You two, no kissy kissy. We have a job
,
”
s
he
said, her tone that of a rebuking mother.

Embarrassed
, I nodded, “You’re right.”

Luke still hadn’t said anything. Instead, he’d lifted the edge of his shirt to wipe off his face. I couldn’t resist reaching out to touch the skin along his ribs. It was bare, no tattoos like Bres had.

Bres.

His name caused a pang somewhere in the region of my heart, but I pushed it away. No,
Bres had
made it very clear what he thought of me.
It was time to completely let him go
;
we were not friends, there was nothing that could ever be between us.

I reached out and took Luke’s hand. “We’d better go.” With a glare at Aednat, and a far softer look for me, he laced his fingers with mine.

“I suppose you’re going to want me to teach you other things now?”
h
e
asked
, his eyes sparkling with good humour
. I stepped over a log and he gave me a lift to help me keep my feet from tangling up.

“Well, how about magic things? Or maybe fighting? Everything I’m doing, I’m just lucky I haven’t cut off my own hand, or exploded
,
” I said. Reality was, I was more than lucky
;
it was
as
if someone was looking out for me.

For the next hour we walked and Luke taught me as best he could. We worked on the fireballs that I’d started to learn in
the Labyrinth with . . . someone else. Then he showed me something that I took to like a fish to water.

“Here, hold your hand out, now, don’t think of Fire, just think of your power being a single bolt
,
”
Luke said
.
I lifted
my hand, took aim at a small boulder on the side of the path and called up my power. It was so easy, far easier than using Fire
.
Pure energy shot out of my hand
.
I
t
was invisible to the naked eye and it hit the rock
hard
.
I mean, explode
-
it
-
into
-
dust
-
that
-
floated
-
on
-
the
-
air
-
and
-
made
-
it
-
difficult
-
to
-
see
,
hard.

“Holy shit!” I yelped, “Did you see that?” The pain in my body was forgotten in the brief moment of exultation. That had been almost too easy and I could see in Luke’s eyes that he was as
shocked
as
I was
.

“Okay, well, you’ve got that down. Let’s move on.” He stared at
the mini crater in the earth
where the rock had been as we passed
by
. Damn, that was an awesome tool.

Then we worked on
raising
Barrier
s, particularly the ones that
I could put up around myself a
nd other people if need be to keep the bad guys out.

“Don’t hold it. The Barrier draws too strongly on the life force of the one who calls it forth
,
”
Luke said.

I let the Barrier drop. “Or from someone else
,
like Balor does
. How do you do that?”

He shook his head, blond hair catching the light. “It’s not taught by the Tuatha. It is considered an abomination to steal another’s life force for your own uses.
But it is possible to use another’s life force to power any of your abilities.
”

Chewing on a fiddlehead I’d snatched from the last fern bush we’d passed
,
I considered his words. “So do you mean that you can’t do it, or you won’t teach me?”

His lips tightened and I could see he was considering my question. A slow rumble filled the ground and the earth shook with a tremor. Good sign. The fear between earthquakes was heightening, but we couldn’t go much faster
thanks to my injuries
.
It would have been nice if Luke
had the ability to
heal like Ashling could, but of course if that was the case he’d have healed me right off the bat.

“I don’t know that it’s something you should attempt. It’s difficult, draining. You have to make a connection with someone and they have to be willing to let you draw on them. Then you take that life force and build the Barrier as you would normally
,
”
h
e
said, releasing my hand to rub at the back of his neck. “I don’t like teaching you these things
;
I’m not a mentor, I
’m not good at explaining them
.
If you do draw on someone, but do it wrong, then they can turn the power back on you and take your life force. It’s dangerous.
”