“In a world without Jews or vampires, or other undesirables, there will be so much good. And we will prevail. You see how you tried to stop us and did not succeed. Good triumphs over evil. It is the way of the world. Your England shall not stop us invading. You British will soon see your king on his knees, bowing to our Hitler. It is only a matter of time.”
She shook her head, smiling.
“No. No, you're quite wrong. That precious stone, set in the silver sea? You think it's small and weak and can be tamed, like Napoleon did before you. But no. My England never did, nor never shall, lie at the foot of a proud conqueror.”
The doctor was bemused, but relaxed. That he was still alive meant that Brigit was surely playing him, was going to accept his offer. She had too much to live for. She wasn't going to sabotage it.
“Let me have the children, Brigit. They were never meant to be. We are simply righting wrongs.”
“Is that what you think you are doing?”
“I think of myself as curing a cancer.”
“How benevolent. But I do not understand you. You would see them dead, they, who have souls, and you would think yourself a hero for it. It's a tale you would tell your grandchildren, dandling them on your knee. You could douse their light and feel strong, and yet somehow, I'm meant to be the soulless, evil one. No, I do not understand you.”
Dawn was breaking, and the Irish coast was in sight. It was an overcast, misty morning, and Brigit was happy for it, even though safety was still such a long ways away. Death might be standing on the shore, beckoning her to his side again, and this time forever, or perhaps to snatch the children from her grip. Death would accept the doctor but take the three of them as well; it had no qualms and no quotas, just its steady stroll through the sentient world, collecting as it went.
To kill the doctor would, indeed, achieve nothing. They'd meant to break the spine of a beast, and they'd hardly touched it. Their fight had turned out to be merely fragmentary. It was the human fight that was going to matter now, the only one that had ever mattered.
Still looking at the looming coast, Brigit slowly drew her talon across the doctor's throat and pitched him into the water. It was drizzling. She extended her hands, watching the blood drip off them. The wind grew stronger as they approached Ireland.
Hey, ho, the wind and the rain.
Alma joined her at the railing.
“What happens now?”
“We change for the mail boat to Holyhead and then catch the train for London.” Brigit was calm and matter-of-fact.
“Will they follow us?”
“I won't leave a trail.”
Â
Eamon crept from his hiding place on the mail boat. He found being a stowaway distasteful, something for which he was too old, but there was no choice. He knew he could do more good assisting them onto the boat from where he was and couldn't risk the clouds breaking. Still, he was itchy to be on the dock. He could sense the waiting hunters, smell their weapons and their hot blood. Two were after the children, which made
no sense, but the others were even more frightening in their way. They didn't care what they killed on their path toward ending the reign of Brigantia.
Brigit took her time identifying the luggage and arranging for it to be transferred to the mail boat. She was cool and unruffled, and the talk that was flying around of four missing men didn't bother her.
The border patrol, too caught up in the excited rumors, stamped their papers with an absentmindedness Brigit almost found disappointing. She was hot for another charade. She and the children repaired quietly to the waiting room.
The rain had stopped, but the clouds hung firm. For once, Brigit was not concerned about the sun. She was seeing an echo of last week's cataclysm. Men climbing the roofs of the dock buildings. They were armed with bows and arrows, and fire. Their three selves were the only passengers set for Wales, so there was no hope of human camouflage. She couldn't believe they would really strike down the children in this ignominious fashion as well, but then she saw the two men outside the waiting room. Nazis. They were in suits, not uniforms, but she knew them by the scent. Nazis. There to return the children to Germany. She was briefly bewildered, then remembered that the IRA had courted Nazis, offered to spy, tried to help them with plans for the invasion of Britain. The enemy of their enemy appeared to be their friend, and many Irish had little love for Jews anyway, so hardly cared what became of them. Now Brigit saw what Doctor Schultze had meant about what was waiting for them here. Of course all these slaves to ruthless ambition were still working together. It seemed utter madness to Brigit, as though the Irish were inviting foreign roosters to rule the coop, but madness was the order of the times.
Or perhaps it's shortsightedness, or maybe even just stupidity. Or they simply don't care. With devotion's visage and pious action men do sugar o'er the devil himself.
The ceaselessness of the violence, the keenness to let ever more blood ⦠that order for guns, for so many guns. Brigit swallowed a sob as she had a flash of hundreds of thousands of dead, mountains of dead, the millions of humans who had died under fire since she'd first walked the dark earth compounded in one outpouring of pure horror, the sort only
man could inflict upon itself. The obsession, the need to destroy, the opposite mark on the land. She could only hope that this excess of energy and resources they were wasting in an effort to cut down her and the children would stand as a paradigm, that their obsession with death would eventually bring about their own destruction.
But not soon enough. Oh, Eamon, we failed so completely.
The whispered answer in her head made her gasp.
No, not at all. You're nearly there. I'll help.
She'd known Eamon would be there, but feeling him so close, so truly close after so long, filled her with as much terror as longing. Would they see him, would they turn on him? If she had to fight for both the children and Eamon, how could she ever ⦠?
They will all survive. There is no other option.
With that, she took out her handkerchief and wiped first Lukas's face, then Alma's.
“It's nearly time to go.”
Alma's eyes were too white around the irises.
“They still want us.”
“Yes. We're of high value to them.”
“Why can't they just let us go?”
“Human nature is a funny thing.”
Alma's face crumpled. She looked tiny, a toddler frightened by a nightmare.
“Papa says that millennials can run fast if they have to. A mile in the space of a heartbeat.”
“Not quite that fast, but that's the general idea.”
“That means you could get away. You could get away and leave us here.”
Brigit felt her hand rise to smack the insult out of Alma's mouth, but remembered just in time that the girl was exhausted and terrified and still just a child. She gripped Alma's jaw instead so that she could look directly into her eyes.
“I am a creature of honor. I swore a solemn oath to your father, and I swear now by all that you hold holy, by the love that binds me to Eamon, by the strength in all my brethren here and gone, you are as surely my charge as if you were of my body, and I
will
see you to safety.”
Tears sprang up in Alma's eyes and Brigit dabbed at them hurriedly, hissing at her to control herself, that they still had to look calm and untroubled, even if they were walking straight into slings and arrows.
But how? How are we going to do this?
She was exhausted herself, weak and worn and frightened. She was at a tremendous disadvantage. If there was time to think, to plan, if only she and Eamon could actually talk ⦠but the boat would leave in seven minutes. There was nothing for it. They had to go.
Once again, she hefted Lukas into her arms, although now he was quiet and still from fear, rather than illness or exhaustion. She would have liked to carry Alma as well, to be more sure she could guard the girl, but they could not look so suspicious until the end. An idea was growing in her, a possibility, the possibility of the speed Alma had mentioned ⦠and something more. A way to send the children to the boat while she remained on the dock to see this thing through to a bloody end. Combine her own strength with that of Eamon and Mors and use it in one quick, benevolent gesture to the human race. She knew it was a defiance of nature, whose laws she respected. That power was for vampires alone. But maybe, just this once, she could bend the laws that bound her.
Nature was certainly on their side in so far as the cloudy sky was concerned. They strode under it boldly, basking in pretended entitlement, trembling under the façade but too proud to let it be seen.
The Nazis waited until she was at the brink of the short pier leading to the waiting boat. She could just make out a shadow of Eamon, hovering near the railing. The two men flanked her.
“Hand over the children now, and perhaps you will be spared much pain.”
The various hunters and men just along for the fun of seeing a vampire killed, and in daylight no less, quivered with delight. They couldn't hear the conversation on the ground below, but they knew how it was going. Most of them didn't mind the idea of killing the children as well, since they were only Jews and it was in such a good cause, but they would rather not.
Brigit looked from one man to the other. They marked her hesitation, took out pistols from inside their jackets, and cocked them. To her grudging admiration, hovering hunters tossed each man a sword as well.
Alma's palm grew sweaty in Brigit's.
Eamon. We need music again. Not to calm the savage beast, but to arouse it.
He met her eyes. They were at exactly the same distance as they had been that night, 750 years ago. He winked, and she winked back.
And so they began. A low hum, a whisper, a song of juxtaposition and contradiction. Wave upon wave of rhythm to intoxicate and yet soothe. An aural heat to cool. To create an invisible fog. It was a song composed of melody so ancient and powerful, the planet had nearly forgotten it. Stirring a memory in dirt deep beneath the ugly buildings of the port, the earth sighed and stretched luxuriously. The rolling earth shook the men and they looked around, nervous.
Each note vibrating through Brigit and Eamon seamlessly wove together to make a tunnel, through which reached the vaguest essence of a smoky hand.
The flaxen rope through the labyrinth.
She nodded to the Nazis and bent to Alma, as though kissing her good-bye, and pressed her hand to the girl's heart, whispering into her ear.
“Take Lukas by one hand and grab hold of that large hand. It may look like an illusion, but I promise it's solid. Keep tight hold of it and you will get to the boat. Eamon will take care of you.”
“What are you doing?” Alma breathed, trying to hide her panic.
“Go!”
And Alma obeyed. To anyone else, they were gone in a blink, but Brigit saw them holding the hand, saw them pulled swiftly to safety on a wave of ancient music, saw Eamon receive them, scratched and coughing and crying from the pain of a path they weren't meant to cross. She had a brief moment of satisfaction in the reunion before she turned her attention to the men flanking her.
All right, my demon. Let's create the sort of chaos that could wake the dead.
The demon smiled at her. It reached out and took the fire into its mouth, where it would keep it, under control.
If only Mors could see this.
The Nazis were stunned to receive broken noses at the hand of the
creature between them, and could hardly comprehend how the children had escaped. One of them still held his sword and swung out at Brigit, clipping her thigh. She ignored the pain and crushed his wrist beneath her foot as she seized the sword and plunged it into his heart. The other Nazi screamed to the hunters to do their duty.
Arrows flew down at Brigit. She whirled desperately, batting them away with the sword while begging Eamon to remain where he was. This was her fight now.
“Which of you will come and fight me like a man?” she bellowed into the throng. The men hesitated, wanting and needing that fight, but knowing, too, what it might mean.
From the boat, Eamon, Alma, and Lukas watched in stunned silence. Eamon kept a hand tight around each child's shoulder and they welcomed the touch as though it were familiar. He hummed steadily, a calming, joyous little tune that made them think perhaps they were not watching their guardian engage in a fight with several dozen hunters, while the sky threatened to brighten.
With guttural battle cries, the hunters leaped to the dock to take on the vampire eye to eye. This was what they were meant to do, after all, destroy great evil at close range. Filth could be disposed of at a distance, but evil of this magnitude must be looked in the face and smiled on before it was vanquished. None of them had ever even tried to take down a millennial, but they were many, she was one, and they knew how to fight.