Celtic Evil: A Fitzgerald Brother Novel: Roarke (5 page)

Rolling over so that he was
now at the bottom of the bed, Roarke let his eyes roam the room
before again settling on his friend. “You know, that’s one of the
few girly-girl things I’ve ever seen you do.”

Little lights flashed
behind her blue eyes but Jessie just narrowed a look at him through
the mirror. “Brushing my hair is a way to relax. Just because I
don’t have a closet full of designer clothes or shoes doesn’t mean
I couldn’t compete with some of the tramps you’ve
dated.”

“Don’t doubt it,
a gra
,” Roarke smiled,
easing his shirt off since he knew it was just the two of them.
“Especially considering I really only plan on dating one
woman.”

“Flattery won’t help you
now, Roarke,” Jessie countered, going back to brushing her hair but
watching her friend’s reflection and again seeing the white scars
that littered his back from years earlier, and knowing where the
many others were. “Roarke, are they hurting?”

Rolling off the bed to go
close the balcony doors to stop the street noise, he paused next to
her to meet her eyes in the mirror. “Let it go, luv.” He read her
concern easily, lightly pressing a soft kiss into her hair. “I’m
fine, just a slight headache.”

A mild lie, he knew, but
Roarke knew if he told Jessie the headache had been with him for
the past several days and had turned into a full-fledged migraine
tonight that she’d worry, and he didn’t want her to
worry.

He sat back on the bed to
watch Jessica finish what he knew was a nightly routine. Roarke was
silently considering how to go about conning his friend into
spending the night in his room, which was something they’d never
talked about before, when something from the mirror made him
look.

The mirror on the vanity
was a large oval one that was almost one hundred fifty years old
and was sure to look different in varying lights, but as Roarke’s
eyes narrowed to study it harder he found it more difficult to see
Jessica’s reflection as it began to cloud over.

“What the bloody…?” he
whispered, easing forward on the bed as a form began to take shape
in the mirror and he found himself looking into green eyes that he
remembered so well. “Mum?”

Jessica had been finishing
brushing her hair, wincing as a wound on her shoulder pulled
slightly, she glanced back to see if Roarke had noticed when she
frowned at him. “Roarke? What’s wrong?”

Her friend was sitting up in the center of
the bed; his one hand flat on the bed while his other was reaching
toward something.

Roarke’s skin had always been a healthy tan
from his time outdoors but right then it was a near sickly white
while his eyes were almost dilated as he stared at her mirror.

“Roarke, what’s wrong?” she
asked, shifting on the seat to look at him fully and not liking the
sudden feeling in her room. “Roarke!”

After trying to get his
attention for several minutes but failing and feeling an uneasy
sense of dread getting closer, Jessica keyed the in-house intercom
while keeping her eyes on her now trembling friend. “Cam! I need
you and Nick up here, now!”

Not able to hear the
response from her friend as a sudden squealing came from the radio,
and looking at the radio to check it, she felt the cold before she
saw the shadow. “Shit!”

Jessica started to swing on
the stool to face the growing shadow but didn’t have a chance to
move or defend herself as something cold gripped her throat,
stilling her scream and her powers.

Very oblivious to the
events threatening his friend, Roarke was staring into the bright
green eyes of his mother as they formed in the ancient
mirror.

“Mum?” he asked again, his usually quiet
voice going even more so as the image of Brenna Kerrigan Fitzgerald
formed in the mirror.

“Hello my brave little
boy,” the vision of his mother spoke in her same soft accent that
he recalled so vividly and at times so painfully. “It’s been so
long, Roarke.”

Blinking his eyes and
struggling to breathe, he finally was able to see the solid image.
“Are you real?”

The same soft musical laugh
he’d grown up hearing and adoring until he was eleven. It was his
mother’s laugh that he could recall hearing before his nightmare
started fifteen years earlier.

“Do you doubt your own
eyes, boyo?” she asked cheerfully, stepping fully from the mirror
and wearing a lovely, form fitting dress in a bright sunny yellow
that seem to go perfectly with her blond hair. “Can you doubt your
own senses?”

Her long fingers lightly
touched his hair as it had done so many years before. “So many
doubts and fears you have, little boy.”

“I saw you die so I’m
pretty sure I’m dreaming, Mum,” Roarke shook his head, a buzzing
beneath his skin trying to get his attention but Brenna’s smile
kept his attention.

“Aye, I know you did. It
was a tragic event when a child of your age had to see your father
and I give our lives up to save you,” a gentle mother’s tone spoke
the words but they still made him cringe as the buried guilt began
creeping back up.

Among the many other things
he buried in his twenty-six years, the fact that he’d been told
plainly that his parents had sacrificed their own lives for his
weighed heavily on him to this day.

“If I could’ve stopped it I
would have, Mum,” he whispered, the buzzing in his brain really
starting to hurt now. “I didn’t want you or Da to die.”

“Oh, I know that my dear
heart,” Brenna’s green eyes had flashed something else but her
‘son’ had missed it. “You were but a child and a parent’s sole duty
is to their children even if it meant also leaving your brothers to
fend for themselves, so was it a fair tradeoff?”

The sudden burning tears
blinded him but also something else began to burn. “Jessica” he
whispered, shivering as his ‘mother’ gently touched his
face.

“The girl isn’t an issue
for you, my child,” she soothed with a smile. “I can take all your
pain, your fears, and guilt away and all the pain your brothers
will face soon will also go away.

“Give me your hand. Come
with me to join your father and all will be as it was meant to be,”
she told him softly. “No more fears or shame, my little boy,
because how will Kerry or the lads react if they learn the truth
behind all you hide?”

This caused Roarke to
nearly recoil and the slight break in contact caused his mind to
hear the scream and the gunshots.

Jessica had been struggling
against the cold power that gripped her throat and was slowly
pulling the life and power from her even as she saw the shadow
close to Roarke. Unable to use her powers that she rarely used or
scream for Roarke, the panic was about to set in when the first
loud shot was heard hitting the sealed bedroom door.

The shot didn’t break the
door, but it did interrupt the focus of whatever had entered the
room since she felt its grip lessen slightly.

“Roarke!” the scream was
muted and weak but seemed to have some effect when, before she
started to lose consciousness, she saw his eyes flicker to pure
smoke. “Fight it!”

It was the terror he felt
in his mind that caused the young Irishman to shift his attention
from his ‘mother’ to the voice and he finally saw past the gray
mists to see the shadow striking at Jessica from inside the
mirror.

“Leave her alone,” his tone
was low and dull but as he looked toward Brenna, his temper was
starting to surface.

“Join your father and…” the
shadow woman broke off when the boy broke free of her grip and
lunged forward. “No!”

Roarke’s action was to both
free himself and grab Jessica away from the grip of the shadow
creature that was now pulling her toward the mirror. “Leave her
alone!” he yelled, emotion more than control causing his powers to
break the mirror and the girl to collapse into his arms gasping.
“You’re not my mother.”

The shadow woman smiled
cruelly as more shots came through the door. “No, but do you often
wonder if she’d hate you for causing such misery to your
family?”

Stepping away from them and
toward the now open balcony doors, it looked back just as the
bedroom door burst in. “You were born of the five. Five into one,
one to become five but it only will take one to finally fall to
break that accursed circle and free my master.

“You were meant to die that
day, Roarke Michael Quinn Fitzgerald, and without your brothers you
will see that death come soon for why would they suffer the pain
for one such as you?” it taunted, eyes dropping to Jessica then
back to him. “The Mistress of Shadow and Light cannot protect you
as you will end up destroying them all if you don’t end it
yourself.”

A bolt of light and flame
shot to the creature’s heart just as it vanished with an echoing
laugh, as Jessica lowered her hand. “Get outta my house, demon,”
she managed to get out, breath still not wanting to
come.

“What in the hell was that
thing and why did I put two clips from my magnum in the damn door
but it wouldn’t budge?” Cameron Young, the long black haired,
brown-eyed leader of the Mavericks, demanded as he entered the room
warily with his team close behind. “Boss, what the hell’s going
on?”

Jessica didn’t have the
answers her friend would want or accept, but what she did know was
that to face what it had been, they’d have to go back to the one
country where Roarke had refused to go near in years.

“Later,” she waved the
upset mercenaries off to focus on Roarke, whose arms were still
around her, but he’d gone almost totally into himself as he did
when in shock or hurt too bad. “It’s alright, luv.” She whispered,
feeling his arms pull tighter as they had one time before. “It was
wrong and we’ll make it better.”

Cam was sure that was a
bold lie as he motioned to his medic to help him.

It took a good couple hours
to get Roarke calm enough that he was able to sleep alone, or at
least so Cam could get Jessica away.

“Answers?” he challenged,
hearing his accountant muttering about damages. “Nick said the
thing was a conjured demon.”

“We need to take him back
to Ireland,” she replied slowly, still feeling the grip on her
throat and the evil that was in that room. “That thing knew too
much, so I think Kerry will be expecting it.”

Knowing what that could
mean, Cam rubbed his eyes. “I hate magic crap and especially when
it means facing some centuries old wizard with delusions of
grandeur.”

“No choice,” Jessica heard
the first shout and knew it would be hard on her friend to go home
for more than one reason. “It knows how to hurt him. He still has
too much guilt and Kerry needs to make things right or…”

“Or we make things right,”
Cam smiled, tapping his .357 Desert Eagle Magnum on his
palm.

“Call Kerry and tell him,”
his employer ordered even as Roarke screamed in terror, and Cam
knew this nightmare was of the day he witnessed his parents
murdered in front of him.

“Yep, this should be fun.”
The mercenary leader muttered.

CHAPTER TWO

The house he’d grown up in
and had been born in was unusually tense and quiet since the events
at breakfast only a few days prior.

Kerry Fitzgerald knew the
stalwart Mrs. O’Connor would do her best to keep things running
smoothly and he, himself, made sure things were as normal as
possible. Even if he couldn’t get past the dreams of dread that
filled his nights and his days with apprehension.

Coming from the upstairs
rooms that were off limits to all save him, Kerry heard the loud
roar of what he knew was a speed-crazed death machine of a
motorcycle.

He stopped on the second
floor patio balcony to watch the neon blue bike roar up the
driveway of the manor and skid to a stop with a storm of dust and
stone.

The biker slowly looked around as if gauging
his environment before removing the helmet that matched the bike’s
color.

Ian Fitzgerald slowly
removed the helmet, leaning his arms on it as he looked around the
grounds, then at the two-story manor where he’d been told he’d been
born.

Those memories were fuzzy.
However, he did have other clearer ones of running free and happy
in a huge yard. Laughing as he chased after his older… a sudden
buzzing in his brain made him look up to the second floor patio and
locked eyes with his oldest brother.

In his eighteen years,
there had been infrequent visits by his brothers at different times
so they weren’t strangers to each other, yet this time Ian could
feel this was different. This visit would change all of
them.

Kerry’s breath had caught
in his throat as he struggled to remind himself that the baby was
now an eighteen-year-old college junior. A slight incline of the
head was all he gave before stepping back inside the
house.

Deirdre O’Connor had heard
the bike and hurried from the kitchen to see what was happening.
The look on her young Lord’s face warned that it was finally
happening.

Taking a deep breath to
steady his suddenly unsteady nerves, Ian put his leather riding
gloves in his helmet and left it sitting on the seat while he
gathered his single travel bag, then headed up the dozen massive
stone steps to the huge front door.