Old Dog, New Tricks (22 page)

I battled against the grief I had caused him. Mac had known the Morrigan would target me when he vanished. He had been in Wink, masquerading as Diode, watching over me and waiting, since King Moran died.

“Moran didn’t die,” I reminded her. He had help. “You killed him.”

“His death was a small price.” She waved her hand. “Think of it.
Me
. Living where and how I choose. No more being yanked back across realms after completing a summons. No more waiting for the dinner bell to ring. I could have fed without compunction. I would have been...free.”

“
Free?
Why should I care about your dreams of freedom?” My voice lowered to a growl. “What about all the death-touched fae you kept imprisoned in the caves?
What about me?
Daire and Odhran delivered me to Balamohan on your orders.”

“That was the one right thing they did,” she sneered.

Her vehemence surprised me. “What do you mean?”

“They took the charmed portals I gifted them and vanished. They haven’t returned to Faerie.”

I laughed in her face. “Betrayers through and through then.”

“I see nothing amusing in the matter, and when they are discovered, their insolence will be punished.”

“You don’t get it, do you? Is it really so amazing that your followers aren’t loyal? That they would ditch your special brand of crazy the first chance they got? It’s more shocking to me that any stick around at all.” I marveled at her gall. “Balamohan feasted on your daughter, and you allowed it to happen. If you would do that to your own child, then what wouldn’t you do to anyone else?”

“Branwen made her decision.” The Morrigan’s face blanked. “She chose her selkie over me.”

I sucked on my teeth. “With a mother like you, I can’t imagine why.”

Maybe the rift between mother and daughter had nothing to do with Branwen choosing her lover over her family and everything to do with her ability to leave Faerie for the mortal realm without repercussions. She could have lived a good life with Dónal if her mother hadn’t sent Balamohan to acquire her for his death fae menagerie.

Now the jailed fae made more sense. The Morrigan had tasked fae like Balamohan and others to gather her a food source large enough she could survive in the mortal realm without being noticed. The mass murder of humans would paint a mark between her shoulders. Fae weren’t anxious to come out of the closet to humanity, and they wouldn’t thank her for exposing them. Unless she turned on her own kind first...

A spate of fresh kills would expose her location to the conclave before she cemented her base of power, but the methodical abduction of fae over centuries? Well, that was harder to trace. She had cultivated the means to sustain herself for as long as the savory bits of death shaved off her victims satisfied the twisted cravings she harbored.

Memories raised gooseflesh down my arms and made my stomach clench.

Balamohan had fed on me, used his sticky-slimy tongue with serrated teeth on the end to cut out a plug of my skin and drink deeply of me. Death clung to fae like me. I was a portent, after all. What he did went beyond collecting the debris of my nature. He delved into the part of me marked by age, by past sickness and injury, by the natural passing of time, and he devoured the dark spots that I had earned from living these nineteen years. Balamohan could have kept me alive—and undying—forever.

“You are a single lash in the eye of eternity.” The Morrigan’s bleak gaze unfocused. “You can’t understand what it’s like to feed on death while living in a realm of immortals. You can’t know how the gnawing hunger of forever feels in your gut while you wait for the next summons, the next meal. Strife and war are just as filling as death, and I have been denied those too, by your father’s policies. His dream of peace became my unending famine. I am a
goddess
.” Rage simmered in her tone. “The realms should tremble before me. The fae should fear me and my teeth the way they once did. Half-bloods and cowards secure behind their conclave badges should not have the power to control me.
Not
me.” Her body shook with barely leashed fury. “I am tired of starving. I am ready to feast.”

“I’m sorry.” I understood the burden of hunger. More than she would ever know. “I can’t let you enslave others to save yourself. People shouldn’t have to suffer for you to live. This ends here, now.”

“You want to end me?” A vicious snarl curled her lips. “I can’t die.
I am death
.”

She slid a serrated blade the length of my forearm from an air pocket, and my stomach knotted.

My voice trembled. “Killing me solves nothing.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Her knuckles whitened on the handle. “But it will make me feel better.”

She lunged, slicing the air inches from my throat before instinct kicked in and I dodged her aim. Power flooded my runes, lighting me up, igniting the hunger low in my gut that resonated with hers.

“Your magic can’t hurt me.” She danced out of range. “Did Rook teach you nothing?”

The light show wasn’t a threat. It was the magical equivalent of my stomach rumbling.

I reached for the knife strapped to my thigh and came up empty.
Are you kidding me?
I had used it for practice when Mac taught me how to make my own air pocket and forgotten to remove it. Who does that? Me apparently. I wasn’t nearly as proficient as the Morrigan at snagging items out of thin air. In the time it took me to focus and reopen the blasted pocket, she could poke me three new holes.

“Is that it?” She cocked her head. “You have no defense?”

The best answer I could manage was gaping at her like a suffocating carp.
Classy
.

“This will be easier than I thought.” Faster than she finished her sentence, she sprang at me.

Hands sifting through the air in front of me, I latched on to my pocket and spread my fingers. The Morrigan’s aim was true, but her form was sloppy, and I whirled to one side, using the flat of my forearm to deflect the blow while fumbling with my pocket. She continued the motion, spinning left, her shoulders brushing against mine as she whirled behind me. Instinct brought my head around as a whisper of air parting sang in my ear. Her blade shot forward, nicking my throat. My eyes closed on a prayer and popped open when she braced a hand on my shoulder and began jerking her arm backward.

“Release me,” she hissed near my ear.

“You’re the one wrapped around— Oh.” I dared turn my head. “That was unexpected.”

Her blade had rung the hole made by my hands, and just as my hand had entered Mac’s pocket that night in his kitchen, mine was nursing her fingers. Fear clenched my grip around her wrist, and I tightened the mouth of the bubble, trapping her hand and her blade inside the pocket.

I yelped when her teeth sank into my ear, and slung my arm hard into her gut. She bent forward, and I threw all my weight behind slamming my elbow into her spine. She dropped facedown with a grunt, but I hit the dirt with her. My tailbone screamed in agony, but I still gripped her wrist through my pocket. Delayed reaction to the sheer depth of the crap I was in dumped buckets of icy adrenaline over me. The shock to my system left me jittery...and inspired.

I firmed my grasp on the mouth of the pocket and leaned backward, drawing my hands up past her elbow, and the fragile-seeming bubble expanded, coating her in a wash of invisibility. I lost my grip when her battle cry startled me. Her other fist hit my spine, and I grunted, arching my back. Holding the pocket with one hand, I sank my elbow into the base of her neck once, twice, until she slumped to the ground. Sheer panic sent me into hyperdrive. I pushed to my knees and straddled her hips, bringing her arm with me. I had to flop across her back to reach her other arm, but I managed to thread it through the widening mouth of the pocket too. I had her locked inside the bubble up to the elbow when she flung her head back and hit me in the jaw with the crown of her skull.

Fireworks exploded in my mouth.

Blinded for a moment by pain, I struggled to hold on to her, knowing this was my one shot. She wriggled under me, managing to flip her body over by the time my vision returned. Hatred boiled in her black eyes as she stared up at me, and her narrow chest heaved. She bucked her hips, but I held her wrists.

“You think that pathetic bit of child’s magic can hold me?” The Morrigan thrashed her head and wedged her heels into the damp ground. “No common spell can contain a goddess. It is
impossible
.”

Death-touched fae were impervious to other death magics. Other benign spells? Not so much.

Too bad I only knew a handful by heart. At the moment, the air pocket was the best I had.

“It doesn’t have to last.” I shot forward when her knees hit my throbbing tailbone.
Ouch
. “It just has to keep you out of my hair long enough to handle business. Then I couldn’t care less what you do.”

A knowing smile crept over her face. “You mean fetching your incubus.”

I hesitated, and that was all the opening she needed.

“I gave him to Bháin.” She was all smiles. “I thought a plaything might soften him toward me.”

My brow furrowed. “Shaw can’t...”

My thoughts spun toward the complex glamours Bháin was capable of fabricating. If he wanted Shaw to believe he was me, then Shaw stood an ice cube’s chance in hell of resisting him. Oh God. I would kill Bháin if he used Shaw that way.

Her brittle laughter shattered my panic.

“Shaw is mine.” Sliding down her body, I used my weight to flatten her knees to the ground and keep her still. Spreading my hands, I blocked out the vile, detailed fantasies she spewed at me and let my focus narrow to widening the mouth of the bubble. Sweat poured down my temples as I cleared the crown of her head. Her pupils disappeared, leaving black voids of terror.

Magic shimmered between my thighs. Skin and cloth turned to feathers. Mass shrank until the legs vanished under my butt and her waist shriveled. Her face elongated into the weathered, orange beak.

Heart pounding, I fought her transformation. Once she turned into a crow, she could expand her body until it was the size of an elephant. I had ridden her that way, watched her gulp down a hound while in that form, and I did not want to be her next meal.

With an ear-ringing
caw
, her body morphed into that of a crow. One oily wing wriggled free. My pulse sprinted, hands tightening on the wing still inside the bubble. Her squawk of frustration set my nerves jangling. Her voice rang deeper. Her pinching beak snapped closer. I couldn’t hold on much longer.

Risking it all, I released her wing, and the writhing, cat-sized crow hit the ground. She landed on twiggy feet and hopped. Her wings snapped out to her sides, and I clapped my hands over her head.

“
Buille
,” I shouted, and magic gathered between my fingers. I spread my hands a foot apart and fell forward on top of the Morrigan. She beat at the walls of the pocket, but the barriers of her invisible prison held. Scooping my hands underneath her—which earned me a peck hard enough to rip tender skin from my palm—I sealed the pocket and rocked back onto my knees. Panting, I gasped,
“Eitilt.”

The bubble, now stretching about two feet in circumference around the giant bird, rose from the ground and bobbled on the breeze inches from my nose. The Morrigan’s beak opened, but the pocket muted her screams. A tingling sensation on my nape pushed me to stand, and I breathed,
“Imíonn.”

Between blinks, the Morrigan vanished, but the uneasy feeling persisted.

Act casual. Not like you’ve got a death goddess and current ruler of Faerie trapped in a bubble.

Thank God for the annulment. At least Daibhidh got that much right. After pulling this stunt, I did not want my ex-mother-in-law tapping into my power through any lingering familial bond to burst her prison before I was long gone and she had no way of retaliating.

If that made me a chicken, well,
cluck, cluck
.

Unhurried steps brought me closer to the safety of Mac’s den. I exhaled when I spotted the tree, then cursed when a flock of Aves landed between it and me. Clearly, they wanted their master back.

Too bad I had no intention of setting this little bird free. Not now. Not ever if I could help it.

“Move aside,” I ordered them, exhaustion thick in my voice.

“Move aside,” the nearest one said, head tilting.

“Move,” the next said.

“Aside,” a third parroted.

From there a wave of nonsense broke across the flock, and they all did that freaky head-twisting thing that makes birds look like their necks have been wrung. I stifled a shudder and took a step. A rustle of feathers made me cringe as the largest bird—a female?—did the same. Aggression or more mimicry? I wasn’t sure. I took another step. She did the same. So did the two Aves closest to her. No way to know, but I was betting those were her mates. Maybe those three were the head tweety birds?

No attack. No aggression. What gives?

I braced my feet apart. “What do you want?”

“What do
you
want?” the centermost one queried.

Tired laughter shook my frame. “A hot shower, some food and a safe place to sleep?”

Fat chance of me getting even one out of the three anytime soon.

A scrawny bird shoved its way forward, bowing to the female and keeping its head tucked when the males began hissing at him. Inching nearer to me, the tiny Aves studied the scuffed tops of my boots.

“Want Morrigan,” he said on a soft hiss of breath.

My gaze pegged the slight male. “You can’t have her.”

The small bird bobbed his head. “Want Morrigan gone.”

“What?” I cocked my head. Crap. Now they had me doing it.

“Dog Girl rule Faerie.” He hopped in place. “Dog Girl rule Aves?”

“Um, no.” I backed up a step like they held a crown aimed at my head. “I’m going to pass on the whole ruling-Faerie thing.” A collective hiss spread through the flock. “That means I won’t be ruling the Aves either.” I gestured toward the tree. “Do you mind? I would like to get inside for a minute.”