Dark Vision (13 page)

‘She speaks the truth, High King,’ said Donn, ‘although I wish to hear it as little as you. The wench should not have a choice; she should be forced to accept her role, in the way she would have been in your father’s time. But whether we like it or not, Fintan’s case has been accepted by the rest of the Tuatha. In the old ways, the Goddess would have been prepared, trained to control her power and embrace her fate. And yet she remains here, raw and unschooled. You know that if it were up to me, that would not matter – she is but a vassal, and should be treated as the property she is. Sadly, that is not my decision to make, and the Faidh are insisting she is given free will.’

I wasn’t sure that Donn and I were going to end up as friends. His attitude made Gabriel look like an enlightened modern man. If this was an ally, something was very wrong. All my instincts fought against Eithne, and yet she was the one saying the words I wanted to hear.

‘The old ways became irrelevant once her sisters were killed, Donn,’ replied Gabriel, his voice haughty and cold, even to his supposed ally. ‘They were taken, and they were slaughtered. The same will not happen to Lily. I will die to protect her.’

‘That’s very touching,’ replied Eithne. ‘And typically heroic of you, Cormac, but have you ever thought to ask Lily what it is that she wants?’

I knew I was being played for a fool, that she was exploiting the obvious rift between us, but even as I battled my distress at the image of what had happened to the sisters I’d never met, her words slammed right into its target. I didn’t want to give Eithne the satisfaction of agreeing with her, so I fought down the urge to scream, ‘No, he bloody hasn’t!’ at the top of my voice. I was starting to wonder if ‘Tuatha’ wasn’t Gaelic for ‘manipulative bastards’, and didn’t really want anything to do with any of them.

I coughed, drawing attention away from the mounting tension between Eithne and Gabriel, and back to me.

‘Sorry to distract you from your glaring competition, but you’re talking as though there are options, and you two have come all the way here to discuss them,’ I said, pointing at Donn and Eithne. ‘So would someone care to tell me what they are? I’m busy too, you know.’

‘Really?’ said Eithne, voice dripping with disbelief. ‘What could you possibly have to do right now that’s more important than this?’

Sadly, I couldn’t think of a damned thing, and decided that poking her in the eye was probably the best response. If I could reach past King Swello.

‘She has to file her pop page. It’s deadline day,’ said Carmel, piping up in a small, slightly scared voice. I turned to look at her, hiding under a pile of cushions, hair still rocking electric-shock chic, streaks of old mascara under her eyes. I grinned. She’d never looked more fabulous.

‘Thank you,’ I mouthed silently. She was right: I had my real life as well. Deadlines and editions and copy to file. I’d almost forgotten it, and I shouldn’t. It mattered, at least to me. And the Dormice. I was not, and never would be, anybody’s ‘property’.

‘Yes. That. And I’ve never missed a deadline in my life. So hurry up, and get on with it. What – what are the options?’

I saw Gabriel take a deep breath, about to protest. There is only one option, blah-de-blah-de-blah.

‘Shut up,’ I said, meeting his eyes. ‘Shut up now, or I’ll never be able to forgive you. For any of it.’

For a moment, I thought he’d argue. Or explode. Pink fingers of anger were crawling across his skin, and his fists were clenched into balls the size of claw hammers. He was now a good two feet taller than everyone else in the room, and the floor tremored whenever he moved. Even Donn looked on in interest, glancing up at the quaking chandeliers.

I stood tall too, held my head as high as I could, fixed Gabriel’s gaze with mine. Tried not to blush, or gulp, or faint at his feet. Channelled as much regal as I could.

‘As you wish, Goddess,’ he said after a few beats. His tone was neutral, which, I knew, was the best I was going to get. Around us the warriors and vampires exchanged significant glances, and Donn looked thoroughly disgusted at his acquiescence. I blinked, and looked away from Gabriel. I could feel the raw power of his disappointment, his soul-deep sense of defeat and rejection. Eithne smiled, and I had a moment of doubt: surely anything that pleased her was wrong?

‘Your “option”,’ he said, his voice sarcastic and cold, ‘is to leave here. To leave my protection. To leave
me
. Is that what you want, Lily?’

‘To leave you and go where?’ I asked, knocked off balance at the thought. Leaving him. Escaping. That’s what I wanted, wasn’t it? And if it was, why did I suddenly feel so empty at the very thought?

‘You will go to Fionnula the Fair,’ said Donn, ignoring the significance of the moment Gabriel and I were sharing. Gods, I supposed, learned to be insensitive after a couple of eons or so. ‘She will be your teacher. She will answer your questions, show you the way to gain control over your … emotions. She will equip you to make your
choice
. The decision that must be made.’

My questions. My choice. My decision. All the words I’d been wanting to hear. And yet, looking at Gabriel, now merely the size of a larger-than-average mortal man, I felt a slither of fear. Of pain. He turned his eyes deliberately away from mine, and even that tiny separation stung.

It looked like I was on my own.

I don’t know what I expected Fionnula the Fair to look like, but an ageing blonde bombshell complete with Marilyn curves definitely wasn’t it.

She was fair, I’ll give her that, but I suspected her golden sheen had more to do with Loreal than luck. Her eyes were a piercing shade of blue, and she had a way of blinking very slowly as she spoke, making everything she said seem outrageously important.

Fionnula lived in a whitewashed stone cottage in a tiny fishing village between Dublin and Skerries. The coastline was wild and wet, the dark grey waves of the Irish Sea crashing up and over harbour walls and promenades, like probing fingers trying to grab the car and drag us into the abyss. I looked silently out of the window as we drove, taking in the shops and cafes and stands offering boat tours, the tourist facades fading as we headed further north.

Gabriel had the radio on to drown out any attempt I made at small talk, and Morrissey was drawling out ‘Everyday Is Like Sunday’ as we crawled our way through coastal towns that looked closed down. I was sure they were pretty in summer; now life seemed cold and hard, with heavy October sleet drenching the streets and people scurrying round with umbrellas bent backwards by the wind.

The cottage was miles away from anything other than a postbox, up a potholed drive and in the middle of dense forest. We arrived in darkness, greeted by the hoots of unseen owls and the plaintive lowing of cattle in the fields beyond.

I felt about as happy as the cows as I unpacked my backpack and followed Gabriel to the front door. He’d been playing it strong and silent for the whole journey, giving his full concentration to changing gears and braking round the winding cliffside roads that had led us here.

Carmel had been in the back, trying to keep up a one-sided conversation, but Gabriel’s face remained as set as the slabs of stone that had been used to build the cottage walls.

The door had opened without him knocking, and she’d emerged. Fionnula the Fair. Wearing a pair of mulberry-coloured skinny jeans and a low-cut top with ‘Eat Me’ printed across the front in tiny cherries. My first thought was ‘ugh’. My second was that I knew her, somehow. That her face was familiar, half recognised.

‘So this will be the Goddess, now, will it?’ she said, walking out to greet us. The rain was heavy, but it seemed to bounce off her do, a lacquered bonnet of platinum blonde.

‘This is Lily,’ said Gabriel, lifting my bag easily out of my hands, and walking inside. Strong, silent and severely lacking in social skills.

‘Don’t you be worrying about him, now,’ said Fionnula, smiling as he strutted away. ‘He’ll just be in one of those huffs that kings are always so good at. He’ll get over it, so he will. Now come in, get yourself nice and dry.’

I was expecting something rustic, maybe a blazing log fire and pictures of hay wains on the walls. Possibly a spinning wheel, complete with magical golden thread. At the very least, a mysterious black cat padding around the place.

Instead, the interior of the cottage was like something out of
House Beautiful
: all glowing white walls and polished chrome; central heating and warmth; a dining kitchen with gleaming black granite surfaces.

‘Excuse the mess,’ she said, gesturing around her picture-perfect home. Gabriel had said exactly the same about his spic-and-span apartment. These people clearly took their cleanliness very seriously.

‘Wow,’ said Carmel, dumping her own bag and sinking down into a tan leather sofa, ‘this is excellent. It’s so warm in here.’

Fionnula turned her attention away from me, and gave Carmel an appraising stare. She blinked, very slowly, her eyes a flash of blue under the fashionably dim ceiling lights.

‘And who would you be?’ she asked, lipsticked mouth curved.

‘I would be Carmel,’ my friend replied. ‘I’m Lily’s … champion. Don’t ask me where that word came from; it just popped out. And I think … it should probably have a capital “c”, just for effect.’

‘Are you, now?’ asked Fionnula. ‘You don’t look the Champion type to me.’

‘I know,’ she replied. ‘Weird, isn’t it? But that’s the word that came into my head, so I suppose it must be right.’

Fionnula blinked, again very slowly, and put out a hand to stop Gabriel as he made to leave the room.

‘A moment, if you don’t mind, Cormac Mor?’ she said, the way she used his title implying complete disrespect for it.

He stopped and nodded, apparently used to the sarcasm.

‘Surely you have people better suited to being the girl’s Champion than … that? What about Finn, or even one of Donn’s bloodsuckers? If you think she needs protection here, at least be serious about it.’

I noticed Carmel’s eyes narrow, but she stayed silent – on the outside, at least. Inside, I knew she’d be storing up the insults, filing them away in her ‘people who aren’t very nice’ box. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Fionnula the Fair found her freezer switched off at the wall on the day we left, or her Touche Éclat mysteriously relocated into a cowpat.

Gabriel cast his eyes over Carmel, a slim, dark-haired girl wearing Karen Millen jeans, and shook his head.

‘I know she doesn’t look much, but she is right. She is Lily’s Champion, in ways we don’t understand. It is a sacred role, and one she was carrying out in her own way long before we arrived. And don’t underestimate her because of that puny mortal form. I have seen her fight: she defeated two of the Faidh using nothing but her bare hands and a plant pot. Lily has chosen to leave my protection and come here, and if she chooses Carmel as her Champion, then so be it. I’m sure you’ll look after them both well, Fionnula. Not many would risk breaching your land, would they?’

‘That’s the truth, Cormac Mor, so it is,’ she said, ‘and it’d pay you to remember that. I know this is not what you wish, but it has been decided. Lily will stay with me until she is ready, and you are not to return here until you are invited. Do you understand me, now?’

‘I understand you very well, Fionnula. And I will not break the agreement. Lily will be free of me for as long as she wishes.’

He nodded his farewells to Carmel, and finally turned to face me. I hadn’t left him much choice, as I was standing in the doorway, deliberately blocking his path. His eyes darkened, and his lips looked like they’d never smile again. I felt a leap of his sadness, a shock of sorrow and regret arcing between us.

‘I know you think this is wrong,’ I said, placing a hand on his chest, wishing it could be more. ‘But you’re always talking about me trusting you. Always telling me that’s what I need to do. Always assuming that’s easy for me, after everything that’s happened. Everything I’ve found out. But maybe now is the time for you to show some trust in me, Gabriel. I need to do this. I need to find out more about who I am, and the part I play in all of this. And when I’ve done that, I’ll come back to you. I promise. We’ll at least have a chance to make things right between us.’

He covered my hand with his, and my flesh was instantly engulfed in warmth and comfort. His fingers were entwined in mine, and for once I let them be.

‘I hope so,
a ghra
,’ he said. ‘Because this isn’t some silly game. This isn’t about a man and woman. This isn’t about me, or you, or Coleen. It’s about the whole of humanity. I’m still not sure you realise how high the stakes are, and what you are risking by leaving me.’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ I murmured. ‘But it’s the only way I can do this. So what about you? Can you trust me, Gabriel?’

‘I’ll try,’ he said, kissing me gently on the forehead and moving me bodily out of his way. He turned as he opened the door, and added, ‘If you need me, for anything, just call me. Fionnula will show you how.’

He left. I heard the car door slam, the sound of wheels screeching on gravel, and felt something wet on my face.

That would be me. Crying like a big fat baby.

‘Come on, now,’ said Fionnula, fussing around me. ‘You don’t want to be crying over him. You must know what his hearing is like; he’ll be sitting in the car feeling all smug about it. You’ve made your choice, now don’t go and give him the satisfaction of regretting it. Anyway, I know what you need.’

She bustled over to the kitchen area, and emerged with a bottle of Chardonnay and three long-stemmed glasses.

‘Wine,’ she said. ‘The answer to all women’s woes.’

At that, Carmel’s interest level peaked and she roused herself enough to leave the sofa.

‘Maybe you’re not such a hag after all …’ she murmured in a stage whisper. Fionnula ignored her as she poured, but I knew, as I had with Carmel earlier, that some kind of mental score sheet had definitely been opened. That battle had commenced.

But right at that moment, I didn’t care. About either of them. Gabriel was gone. I’d been left here, with my night-news-editor Champion, and a teacher I’d only just met. And in a few days’ time, at the Feast of Samhain, I’d have to make a decision that would change the world as I knew it.