Dark Isle (Celtic Legacy Book 2) (19 page)

The other held a long whip,
which
seemed to be braided with bloody sinews and tendons, but again, she was a true beauty, midnight dark hair floating
around her face
, black eyes pinn
ing
me to the ground.

“No, Quinn!” Aednat pushed me, forcing me to break eye contact. I shook myself.

“Thanks
,”
I said, letting go of the root and continuing to climb down the
cliff
as fast as I could
, digging my fingers into small crevices and using anything I could for balance
—
boulders that jutted out, more roots and even tufts of grass
.

“Where you going?” Aednat screeched.

I flung my hand back towards the
Banshee
s and with the movement sent a burst of blue flame from my fingertips. The guards danced away, dodging the fire with ease. “Away from them!” I
shouted over my shoulder. From the falling rocks around me,
I’d guessed that
Aednat saw the sense in what I was attempting. We couldn’t fight the guards on the bluffs
;
it would be too easy for them to
maneuver
us into a fall.

A glancing blow
made me lose my grip with my right hand
and
swung me out from the rock face
.
M
y
fingers
were
able to hold on
just
long enough to see that it was the
Banshee
with the scythe.
A sharp, searing pain erupted on the right side of my back, the scythe making a perfect crescent moon slash on the top layers of skin. A few inches more and she would have sliced me in half.

“You think to free the humans?”
She was f
loating in the air a few feet out from the bluff
;
I clearly had no clue what I
w
as dealing with. She let out a long laugh, exposing her bare white neck. Using the same power bolt I’d levelled Bres with, I flung it at her, aiming for the hollow of her throat.

It snapped her head back, quite literally. The power bolt broke her neck, leaving her head dangling backwards as her body floated midair for a split second,
before
tumbl
ing
down, bouncing off the bluff face several times
and
landing on the rocks below.

One
Banshee guard
down
;
one t
o
go.

Before I had time to see where she was, the second Banshee’s
whip curled around my wrist and yanked me off the bluffs, flipping me out into midair.

I couldn’t stop the screech that escaped me. “Aednat!”

Her small body hurtled through the air and grabbed me around the waist. “Hang on!”

She slowed our fall, though I had no doubt it was still going to hurt like hell. Lucky for us, we landed on the body of the fallen
Banshee
and not on the rocks beside her.

T
he lone
Banshee
above us let out a wail that made my skin want to jump off my body. Spinning in a mini vortex, she disappeared in a
whirl of her hair and whip.

Aednat stood and stared up at where the
Banshee
had been. “She’
s
gone for re-
enforcements
. Hurry.”

I scrambled to my feet.
“You can fly
too
?”

She nodded as we ran to the edge of the clearing.
It seemed that
when
ever
I thought I knew what was going on, something new
would
jump out at me. Like the Barrier that we ran smack into, our bodies bouncing off
with dual thuds
.

“Ouch
,
”
Aednat grumbled, rubbing her nose. “Stupid
bad Queen.
”

Yes, I should have known we couldn’t just walk in and take
the hostages
away. I slid my hands over the
surface. It was similar to the Barriers I could make, but it hummed with a low frequency that set my teeth on edge. I tried to pull my hands away and they stuck, a tacky glue
like substance
covered the surface of the strange Barrier.

I made eye contact with a man about twenty feet away, but he looked right through me, as if I didn’t exist.
“
If we can get them out, how do we break the spell?”
I wiped my hands on my pants.

Sidling closer to me, Aednat grit her
sharp
teeth
for
a moment before answering me. “We have to get them all the way out of the forest boundaries.”

In other words, we had to get them to hike for at least an hour through heavy bush in a zombie-ish state of being. Of course, that was if we could get them out at all.

I wracked my brain for a solution. “The last Barrier I dealt with, only Fomorii could cross it. So with this one, is it only humans that can cross it?
How does it work with
Banshee
-
made Barriers?
” Blinking
,
I stared at the group of milling people.

Aednat
paced the edge of the Barrier, chewing on her fingernails. “They sing to them, like pied piper from stories and the humans follow.
They have j
ust enough fae blood to let them hear the
Banshee
’s song, not enough to let them see the truth of the
Banshee
.”

“Would they follow you, if you
sang to them?” I asked, my heart pounding with hope. This had to work
;
it had to give us the chance we needed to save Luke
.

Her eyes widened. “Yes, Aednat sings, humans follow
. But only once they are out.
”

Frustration filled me. “Aednat, how do we get them out?”

“Banshee has to lead them, a Banshee has to create an opening
,
”
s
he
said
,
as
if
it was the most obvious thing in the world.

She leaned in and touched the Barrier, her hand sliding through as if there were no obstacle.
“But too many are here for Aednat to lead them out.” Around her hand and body was a small opening.

I glanced over at the fallen body of the Banshee guard. “What if we used her body, propped it in the way?”

Aednat nodded
.
“Might work.”

With no time to waste, I ran over and dragged the lifeless body back to
where Aednat stood.
I laid
the Banshee
out along the bottom edge of the Barrier and an opening about five feet high and
two
feet wide appeared. Perfect to squeeze some people through.

Aednat
started to sing,
her whole body getting in on the
act
. Hands lifted above her head, they twirled in the air as she danced around the edge of the Barrier. At first it didn’t look as th
ough they could hear her.

Then, slowly, they lifted their heads as a unit, a giant shamblin
g horde of zombie-like humans
that shuffled their way to the edge of the Barrier. I crossed my fingers as they drew close.

“Come on, work, work
,
”
I said
. It had to work, it just had to
;
o
therwise
, we were beyond screwed.

With a speed that bordered on painful, the trapped humans
made their way through the opening, stumbling over the downed Banshee
, their feet shuffling along as they drew close to Aednat.
A small sigh of relief escaped me and Aednat at the same time. She gave me a smile, her face lighting up. “
Aednat has
them.”

I gave her a little shove. “Go
on, get them out of here.
Go southwest, I think that will be better.
”
That would bring them out by the lake, close to the highway.

With a nod, sh
e trotted to the head of the column, her voice rising and falling. As the song began to pick up speed, so did the human’s movements. Singing, trilling out words that made my heart want to leap and my feet follow her commands, Ae
dnat sang loudly, the intention
clear. In the space of a few heartbeats, the humans were trotting behind her, the entire group disappearing into the trees.

Are you going to
wait here for the
Banshee
s to show up? Or do you have a plan?
Cora’s sarcasm was not lost on me. Of course I didn’t have a plan. She knew it and so did I.

“
I’m going to s
tall them, give Aednat a chance to get the humans out.” It surprised me how fast I came to identify with the Tuatha, placing “humans” in a completely different category than myself.

“What if I made my own Barrier?” I said.

It would slow them, but you couldn’t fight and you’d be trapped. You need to be able to fight and run.

I
stared down at the body
of the
Banshee
I’d killed. Her
limbs were like a
mangled pretzel, blood pooled
around
her head.
I’d done that, with a single bolt of power.
Coughing, I turned my head and took a slow breath in an attempt to push the nausea away. Her broken body was etched in my mind though
,
and
I couldn’t make it disappear.

Focus Quinn, grieve later.
Cora was right
;
I did not have time to be squeamish.

An idea forming, I bent and retrieved the scythe. I’d never learned how to use Glamour, but it was there in my blood
,
like all the other abilities that I’d been learning. Forcing myself, I stared at her face, tried to memorize the lines and curves of her jaw, shape of her eyes, colour of her hair.

Holding the scythe up, I stared into the reflective surface and thought about the
Banshee
’
s face. Finally, I gave up, closed my eyes and willed it to happen. I needed this Glamour to work, as much as anything I’d tried so far
;
it was a desperate need.
My skin began to tingle around my eyes, lips and nose, intensifying until it was like I was touching an electric fence.
P
ower
rushed through me, then began to fade. I let go of
it
with a gasp, dropped the scythe and put my hands on my knees.
Opening my eyes, I
angled my head so I could see in the scythe
’
s surface.
I’d done a pretty good job and the
Banshee
stared back at me
.

A moaning wail floated towards me from the tops of the bluffs. Crap, they were almost on me!

Using the same technique, I put my hands on the
Banshee
’
s face and p
laced
a Glamour on it, turning it into my own.
The skin jumped and leaped, twisting until I was staring down into my own stilled and broken face. Again the nausea rose and I turned away from the body.

As the first
Banshee
came into view from the top of the bluffs I shouted up at her. “They went that way!” I pointed northwest. “They are pushing hard to reach the other side of the forest.”

The
Banshee
screeched and lifted her serrated sword high in the air.
My gut clenched. S
he knew I wasn’t one of them
! What made me think I could fool them?
With a burst of speed she flew down the cliff towards me.

Hold, Quinn! Just wait.

Never had it been so hard to keep my body still. I did as Cora said
,
and
held my ground,
not
lift
ing
the scythe or my dagger. Brushing past me,
close enough that she ruffled my hair, the Banshee
circled to the right.

“Hurry sister, we
can
catch them if we hurry!” She
s
a
ng
to me, her voice pulling me along a few steps. I shook my head.