Blood Magick (20 page)

“Sure he loves the building, and he’s clever with it.”

In unison they turned to walk the horses along the river.

The air chilled, and Branna saw the first fingers of fog.

“We’ve company,” she murmured to Iona.

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Keep the horses calm, won’t you, and I’ll do the same with the hounds.”

He came as a man, handsome and hard, dressed in black with silver trim. Branna noted he’d been vain enough to do a glamour as his face glowed with health and color.

He swept them a deep bow.

“Ladies. What a grand sight you make on a winter’s day.”

“Do you have so little to occupy yourself,” Branna began, “that you spend all your time sniffing about where you’re not welcome.”

“But you see I’ve been rewarded, as here are the two blooms of the three. You think to wed a mortal,” he said to Iona. “To waste your power on one who can never return it. I have so much more for you.”

“You have nothing for me, and you’re so much less than him.”

“He builds you a house of stone and stick when I would give you a palace.” He spread his arms, and over the cold, dark water of the river swam a palace shining with silver and gold. “A true home for such as you, who has never had her own. Always craved her own. This I would give you.”

Iona dug deep, turned the image to black. “Keep it.”

“I will take your power, then you will live in the ashes of what might have been. And you.” He turned to Branna. “You lay with my son.”

“He isn’t your son.”

“His blood is my blood, and this you can never deny. Take him, be taken, it only weakens you. You will bear my seed one way or the other. Choose me, choose now, while I still grant you a choice. Or when I come for you, I will give you pain not pleasure. Choose him, and his blood, the blood of all you profess to love, will be on your hands.”

She leaned forward in the saddle. “I choose myself. I choose my gift and my birthright. I choose the light, whatever the price. Where Sorcha failed, we will not. You’ll burn, Cabhan.”

Now she swept an arm out, and over that cold, dark river a tower of fire rose, and through the flame and smoke the image of Cabhan screamed.

“That is my gift to you.”

He rose a foot off the ground, and still Iona held the horses steady. “I will take the greatest pleasure in you. I will have you watch while I gut your brother, while I rip your cousin’s man in quarters. You’ll watch me slit the throat of the one you think of as sister, watch while I rape your cousin. And only then when their blood soaks the ground will I end you.”

“I am the Dark Witch of Mayo,” she said simply. “And I am your doom.”

“Watch for me,” he warned her. “But you will not see.”

He vanished with the fog.

“Those kind of threats—” Iona broke off, gestured toward the flaming towers, the screams. “Would you mind?”

“Hmm. I rather like it, but . . .” Branna whisked it away. “They’re not threats, not in his mind, but promises. We’ll see he breaks them. I’d hoped he’d take wolf form, at least for a few moments. I want the name of what made him.”

“Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub?”

Branna smiled a little. “I think not. A lesser demon, and one who needs Cabhan as Cabhan needs it. The pair of them left a stink in the air. Let’s have that gallop now, and go by and see your house.”

“The sticks and stones?”

“Are solid and strong. And real.”

Iona nodded. “Branna, what if . . . if while you’re with Fin you got pregnant?”

“I won’t. I’ve taken precautions.” With that she urged Aine into a gallop.

•   •   •

SHE GAVE AINE A CARROT AND A RUBDOWN, SO WHEN FIN
came into the stables he found both her and Iona.

“I’m told you went for a ride.”

“We did, and it reminded me how I enjoy it.” She leaned her cheek to Aine’s. “You did say she and I should get acquainted.”

“I didn’t have in mind you going off alone.”

“I wasn’t alone. I was with Iona and she with me, with Aine and Alastar and the dogs altogether. Oh, don’t try to slither out because he’s glowering,” she said to Iona. “You’re tougher than that. We had a conversation with Cabhan—no more really than a volley of harsh words all around. We’ll tell you and the others the whole of it.”

“Bloody right you will.” He started to grab Branna’s arm, and Aine butted him in the shoulder with her head.

“Taking her side now?”

“She’s mine, after all. And knows as well as I do we had no trouble, and took no more risks than any of us do when taking a step out of the house. I suppose you’ll want a meal with the telling.”

“I could eat,” Iona said.

“We’ll have it all here,” Fin told them.

“With what?”

He took Branna’s arm now, but casually. “You’ve given me lists every time I turn around. There’s enough in the kitchen to put together a week of meals.”

“As it should be. All right then. Iona, would you mind telling the others while I see what I can put together in Finbar’s famous kitchen?”

“You went out looking for him,” Fin accused.

“I didn’t, no, but I didn’t go out not expecting to find him.”

“You knew he’d come at you.”

“He didn’t come at us, not in any way as you mean. Only words. A kind of testing ground on his part, I’m thinking. I’d hoped he’d come as the wolf, so I could try to get the name, but he was only a man.”

Inside, she took off her coat, handed it to Fin. “And we did have a lovely ride around it, coming back so I could see the progress on Iona’s house. It’s going to be lovely, just lovely. An open kind of space, and still a few snug little places for the cozy. Coming back here that way, I had a different perspective on this house. That room with all the windows that juts toward the woods. It must be a lovely place to sit and look out, all year long. Private enough, and steps from the trees.”

She rummaged in the refrigerator, freezer, cupboards as she spoke.

“I’ve a recipe for these chicken breasts Connor’s fond of. It gives them a bite.” Head angled, she sent him a challenging look. “Can you take a bite, Fin?”

“Can you?” He pulled her to him, nipped her bottom lip.

“I give good as I get. And you might get more yet if you pour me some wine.”

He turned, found a bottle, studied the label. “Do you understand what it would have done to me if he’d hurt you?”

“None of us can think like that. We can’t. What we feel for each other, all of us for each other, is strong and true and deep. And we can’t think that way.”

“It’s not thinking, Branna. It’s feeling.”

She laid her hands on his chest. “Then we can’t feel that way. He weakens us if he holds us back from taking the risks we have to take.”

“He weakens us all the more if we stop feeling.”

“You’re both right.” Iona came in. “We have to feel it. I’m afraid for Boyle all the time, but we still do what we have to do. We feel it, and we keep going.”

“You’ve a good point. You feel, but you don’t stop,” she said to Fin. “Neither can I. I can promise you I’ll protect myself as best I can. And I’m very good at it.”

“You are that. I’m going to open this wine, Iona. Would you have some?”

“Twist my arm.”

“After you’ve done the wine, Fin, you can scrub up the potatoes.”

“Iona,” Fin said smooth as butter, “you wouldn’t mind scrubbing the potatoes, would you, darling?”

Before Branna could speak, Iona pulled off her coat. “I’ll take KP. In fact, whatever you’re making, Branna, you could walk me through it. Maybe it’ll be the anniversary dinner for Boyle.”

“This is a little rough and ready for that,” Branna began, “but . . . Well, that’s it! For the love of . . . Why didn’t I think of it before?”

“Think of what?” Iona asked.

“The time. The day we end Cabhan. Right in front of my face. I need my book. I need my star charts. I need to be sure. I’ll take the table here for it—it shouldn’t take long.”

She grabbed the wine Fin had just poured, and walking toward the dining area, flicked fingers in the air until her spell books, her laptop, her notepad sat neatly on one side. “Iona, you’ll need to quarter those potatoes once scrubbed, lay them in a large baking dish. Get the oven preheated now, to three hundred and seventy-five.”

“I can do that, but—”

“I need twenty minutes here. Maybe a half hour. Ah . . . then you’ll pour four tablespoons, more or less, of olive oil over the potatoes, toss them in it to coat. Sprinkle on pepper and crushed rosemary. Use your eye for it, you’ve got one. In the oven for thirty minutes, then I’ll tell you what to do with them next. I’ll be finished by then. Quiet!” she snapped, dropping down to sit before Iona could ask another question.

“I hate when she says more or less or use your eye,” Iona complained to Fin.

“I’ve an eye as well, but I promise it’s worse than your own.”

“Maybe between us, we’ll make one good one.”

She did her best—scrubbed, quartered, poured, tossed, sprinkled. And wished Boyle would get there to tell her if it looked right. On Fin’s shrug, she stuck it in the oven. Set the timer.

Then she drank wine and hoped while she and Fin studied Branna.

She’d pulled one of her clips from somewhere and scooped up her hair. The sweater she’d rolled to her elbows as she worked from book to computer and back again, as she scribbled notes, made calculations.

“What if she’s not done when the timer goes off?” Iona wondered.

“We’re on our own, as she’d skin us if we interrupted her now.”

“That’s it!” Branna slapped a hand on her notebook. “By all the goddesses, that’s it. It’s so fecking simple, it’s so bloody
obvious
. I looked right through it.”

She rose, strode back, poured a second glass of wine. “Anniversary. Of course. When else could it be?”

“Anniversary?” Iona’s eyes went wide. “Mine? The day I came, met you? But you said that hadn’t worked. The day I met Boyle? That anniversary?”

“No, not yours. Sorcha’s. The day she died. The anniversary of her death, and the day she took Cabhan to ash. That day, in our time, is when we end it. When we will. Not a sabbat or esbat. Not a holy day. Sorcha’s day.”

“The day the three were given her power,” Fin stated. “The day they became, and so you became. You’re right. It was right there, and not one of us saw it.”

“Now we do.” She raised her glass. “Now we can finish it.”

S
HE
FELT
REVIVED
,
REENERGIZED
. B
RANNA
ACTIVELY
enjoyed preparing the meal—and Iona did very well with her end of it—enjoyed sitting around Fin’s dining room with her circle, despite the fact that the bulk of the dinner conversation centered on Cabhan.

Now, in fact, maybe because of it.

Because she could see it clear, how it could and would be done. The when and the how of it. Risks remained, and they’d face them. But she could believe now as Connor and Iona believed.

Right and light would triumph over the dark.

And was there a finer way to end an evening than sitting in the steaming, bubbling water of Fin’s hot tub drinking one last glass of wine and watching a slow, fluffy snowfall?

“You’ve been a surprise to me, Finbar.”

He reclined across from her, lazy-eyed. “Have I now?”

“You have indeed. Imagine the boy I knew building this big house with all its style and its luxuries. And the boy a well-traveled and successful man of business. One who roots those businesses at home. I wouldn’t have thought a dozen years back I’d be indulging myself in this lovely spot of yours while the snow falls.”

“What would you have thought?”

“Considerably smaller, I’d have to say. Your dreams grew larger than mine, and you’ve done well with them.”

“Some remain much as they were.”

She only smiled, glided her foot along his leg under the frothy water.

“It feels we could be in some chalet in Switzerland, which I like, but I wonder you didn’t put this in that room with all the windows, the way it’s situated so private and opening to the woods.”

He drank some wine. “I had that room built with you in mind.”

“Me?”

“With the hope one day you’d marry me as we planned, live here with me. And make your workshop there.”

“Oh, Fin.” His wish, and her own, twined together to squeeze her heart.

“You like the open when you work, the glass so you can look out, the feel of being out, is what appeals to you. Snug enough inside, but with that open to bring the out in to you. So the glass room facing the woods gives you the private and the open at once.”

She couldn’t speak for a moment, didn’t want her voice to shake when she did. “If I had the magicks to change what is, to transform them into what I’d wish them to be, it would be that, to live and to work here with you. But we have this.”

She set her wineglass in the holder, flowed over to him, to press body to body. “We have today.”

He skimmed a hand down her hair, down to where it dipped and floated over the water. “No tomorrows.”

“Today.” She laid her cheek against his. “I’m with you, you’re with me. I never believed, or let myself believe, we could have this much. Today is the world for me, as you are. It may never be enough, and still.” She drew back, just a little. “It’s all.”

She brushed his lips with hers, slid into the kiss with all the tenderness she owned.

She would give him all she had to give him. And all was love. More than her body, but through her body her heart. It had always been his, would always be, so the gift of it was simple as breathing.

“Believe,” she murmured. “Tonight.”

Sweetly, for with her practical bent she could forget the sweet, she offered the kiss, to stir, to soothe.

Her only love.

He knew what she offered, and knew what she asked. He would take, and he would give. And setting aside the wish for more, he would believe tonight was everything.

Here was magick in having her soft and yielding, her sigh warm against his cheek as they embraced. The heat rose through him, around him, with the snow a silent curtain to close out all the world but them.

He took her breasts, gently, gently, as he could still see in his mind the violent marks what shared his blood had put on her. He swore as her heart beat against his hand, he would never harm her, would give his life to keep her from harm.

Whatever came tomorrow, he’d never break the oath.

Her hands glided over him, and her fingers brushed against the mark he carried. Her touch, even so light, brought on a bone-deep ache there. A price he’d pay without question.

The water, a steady drumbeat in the hush of the night, swirled around them as their hands drifted under it to give pleasure.

Her breath caught, shaking her heart with the meeting of emotion and sensation, the rise of need and wonder.

How could tenderness cause such heat—a wire in the blood, a fire in the belly—and still have her wish to draw every moment into forever?

So when she straddled him, took him deep, and deep and deep, she knew she would never take another. Whatever the needs of the body, no other could touch her heart, her soul. Combing her fingers through his hair, she held his face as she moved over him so he could see her, see into her, and know.

On their slow climb, the swirling water glowed, a pool of light to bathe them and surround them. As they fell, holding tight, the light flowed out against the dark to illuminate the soft curtain of snow.

Later, lax and sleepy in his bed, she curled against him. As tonight became tomorrow, she held fast to what she loved.

•   •   •

IT TOOK MORE PRECIOUS DAYS BEFORE BRANNA COULD
acquire all the ingredients, in quantities to allow for experimenting, needed for the poison.

Connor looked on as she sealed them in individual jars on her work counter.

“Those are dangerous, Branna.”

“As well they need be.”

“You’ll take precautions.” His face only went stony when she shot him a withering glance. “So you always do, I know full well. But I also know you’ve never worked with such as this, or concocted such a lethal brew. I’ve a right to worry about my sister.”

“You do, but you needn’t. I’ve spent the days waiting for all of this to arrive to study on them. Meara, take him off, would you? The pair of you should be off to work, not hovering around me.”

“If we can’t use the stuff until near to April,” Meara argued, “can’t you wait to make it?”

“As Connor’s so helpfully pointed out, I’ve never done this before. It may take some time to get it right, and I might even have to send out for more before we’re sure of it. It’s a delicate business.”

“Iona and I should do this with you.”

Patience, Branna ordered herself, and dug some out of her depleting stores.

“And if the three are huddled in here, hours a day, maybe for days on end, Cabhan will know we’re brewing up something. It’s best we all continue our routines.” Struggling against annoyance, as his worry for her was from love, she turned to him. “Connor, we talked all this through.”

“Talking and doing’s different.”

“We could mix up the routines a bit,” Meara suggested, caught between them. “One of us can stay for an hour or two in the morning, another can come around midday, and another come round early from work.”

“All right then.” Anything, Branna thought, to move them along. “But not this morning as you’re both on the schedule. I’m only going to be making powders, distilling. Preparing the ingredients. And I know what I’m about. Added to it, I expect Fin by midday, so there’s two of us at it already.”

“That’s fair enough,” Meara said before Connor could argue, and grabbed his hand. “I’ve got to get on or Boyle will be down my throat and up my arse at the same time. Branna, you’ll let us know if you need any help.”

“Be sure I will.”

Connor strode over, gave Branna a quick, hard kiss. “Don’t poison yourself.”

“I thought I would just for the experience, but since you ask so nicely . . .”

She breathed a sigh of relief when the door closed behind them, then found Kathel sitting, staring at her.

“Not you as well? When did I all at once become an idjit? If you want to help, go round on patrol.” She marched to the door, opened it. “I’m after cloaking the workshop and locking up besides. It wouldn’t do to have someone wander in for hand balm while I’m doing this work. Be helpful, Kathel,” she said in a more cajoling tone, “and you’ll tell me if you find Cabhan’s anywhere near.”

Another sigh of relief when she’d shut the door behind him.

She cloaked the glass so none but who she chose could see inside. She charmed the doors so none but who she chose could enter.

And turning back to the counter, began—carefully—with wolfsbane.

It was painstaking work, as one of the precautions involved psychically cleansing each ingredient.

Some said those who practiced the dark arts sometimes imbued poisonous plants with the power to infect strange illnesses by only a touch or an inhale of scent.

She didn’t have the time or inclination to fall ill.

After cleansing, she rejarred the entire plant, or crushed petals or berries, or distilled.

From outside, Fin watched her as if through a thin layer of gauze. She’d been wise to cloak her workplace, he thought, as even from here he recognized belladonna, and angel’s trumpet—though he could only assume the latter was Amazonian.

She worked with mortar and pestle because the effort and the stone added to the power. Every now and then he caught a quick glimmer of light or a thin rise of dark from the bowl or from a jar.

Both dogs flanked him. He wasn’t certain if Bugs had come along for himself or for Kathel, but the little stable mutt sat and waited as patiently as Branna’s big hound.

Fin wondered if he’d ever watch Branna through the glass without worry. If that day ever came, it wouldn’t be today.

He moved to the door, opened it.

She’d put on music, which surprised him as she most often worked in silence, but now she worked to weeping violins.

Whatever she told the dogs stopped their forward motion toward her so they sat again, waited again. Taking off his coat, so did he.

Then she poured the powder she made through a funnel and into a jar, sealed it.

“I wanted to get that closed up before the dogs began milling around, wagging tails. I wouldn’t want a speck of dust or a stray hair finding its way into the jars.”

“I thought you’d have banished any speck of dust long before this.”

She carried the funnel, mortar, pestle to a pot on the stove, carefully set them inside the water steadily boiling inside.

“I tend to chase them away with rag or broom as it’s more satisfying. Is it midday?”

“Nearly one in the afternoon. I was delayed. Have you worked straight through since Connor and Meara left this morning?”

“And with considerable to show for it. No, don’t touch me yet.” She stepped to her little sink, scrubbed her hands, then coated them with lotion.

“I’m keeping my word,” she told him, “and being overly cautious.”

“There’s no
overly
with this. And now you’ll have a break from it, some food and some tea.”

Before she could protest, he took her arm to steer her out and into her own kitchen.

“If you’re hungry, you might have picked up some take-away while you were out. Here, you’ll have a sandwich and be thankful for it.”

He only pulled out a chair, pointed. “Sit,” he said, and put the kettle on.

“I thought you wanted food.”

“I said you’d have food, and I wouldn’t mind some myself. I can make a bloody sandwich. I make a superior sandwich come to that, as it’s what I make most.”

“You’re a man of some means,” she pointed out. “You might hire a cook.”

“Why would I do that when I can get a meal here more than half the time?”

When he opened the refrigerator, she started to tell him where he might find the various makings, then just sat back, decided to let him fend for himself.

“Did Connor put a bug in your ear?”

“He didn’t have to. It would be better if you worked with someone rather than alone. And better as well if you stopped to eat.”

“It seems I’m doing just that.”

She watched him build a couple of sandwiches with some rocket, thinly sliced ham, and Muenster, toss some crisps on the side. He dealt with the tea, then plopped it all down on the table without ceremony.

Branna rose to get a knife as he’d neglected to cut hers in half.

“Well, if you have to be dainty about it.”

“I do. And thanks.” She took a bite, sighed. “I didn’t realize I was hungry. This part of it’s a bit tedious, but I got caught up all the same.”

“What else is to be done?”

“On this first stage, nothing. I have the powders, the tinctures and extracts, some of the berries and petals should be crushed fresh. I cleansed all, and that took time, as did boiling all the tools between each ingredient to avoid any contamination. I think it should rest, and I’ll start mixing tomorrow.”

“We,” he corrected. “I’ve cleared my days as best I can, and unless I’m needed at the stables or school, I’m with you until this is done.”

“I can’t say how long it will take to perfect it.”

“Until it’s done, Branna.”

She shrugged, continued to eat. “You seem a bit out of sorts. Did the meeting not go well?”

“It went well enough.”

She waited, then poked again. “Are you after buying more horses or hawks?”