Dark Hero; A Gothic Romance (Reluctant Heroes) (53 page)

“My precious child, you’ve made me and your grandmother very
proud.” The male voice replied to her inside her head. “All will be well, my
little one. All will be well, I promise.”

The sweetness that filled Elizabeth as her true father spoke
to her was a soothing balm to her frantic, frenzied soul. His voice was like a
waterfall flowing gently inside of her, a waterfall of warmth, tenderness and
absolute, perfect love.

It was a timeless moment of perfection and completion that
Elizabeth did not wish to end.

“Ah, my brave lad, you’ve come.” Her father’s spirit used
Elizabeth’s vocal chords to speak aloud. “Hold my girl. Hold her while I step
away so she doesn’t collapse from the shock.”

Elizabeth started as solid human arms surrounded her.
Donovan slipped his arms under hers and about her waist from behind. As he did
so she felt a sudden jerk within, as if something were moving and sloshing
about inside her. And then that something very abruptly stepped through her
body and stood in front of her.

She felt like a cast off garment being tossed to the floor.

Donovan’s arms supported her as she wilted. She leaned back
against him from within the circle of his arms. “Oh, Dear.” She gasped, staring
at the apparition who had stepped out of her body. Shawn O’Flaherty resembled
an older version of her brother, more bulky and solid.

Two other spirits stood beside him. She recognized them
instantly, although she had never met the gentlemen. They were her uncles, Rory
and Pierce O’Flaherty.

“Name one of the lads after me.” Her father told Elizabeth
and then he and his brothers stepped into the crowded throng of spirits and
disappeared among their grey shifting forms.

“Donovan?” She whispered, gaining strength from his mere
name. She leaned back, against his solid form. “How can you be here?”

“Kieran sensed you needed help. He sent me across the
boundary.”

Elizabeth shivered violently. Her teeth chattered.

She hissed as the icy cold air sliced through her again. The
abrupt cold was painful.

Someone was coming. She felt the spirit emerge from the
other side of the Veil.

Immediately, there was a stirring amid the gathered souls.
They stood still, recognizing the presence of a soul whose arrival was much
anticipated and was essential to the outcome.

 “I’m so sorry, my dear child.” The female spirit whispered
with deep regret before moving to stand between her and her cowering
stepfather. “I’m so sorry I hurt you.”

Elizabeth gasped. Her eyes filled with tears at her mother’s
words.

“William.” Her mother spoke audibly in a light, sweet
feminine timbre Elizabeth recalled from when Mama was alive. “Why are you
hurting my children?” The spirit of Angela Fletcher stepped forward gracefully,
inch by dainty inch. Her form wavered, fading and then re-emerging in a jerky,
inconstant manner. “You will stop this. Now.”

“Go away!” Fletcher shrieked, clutching Michael’s
unconscious form against him as if his son were a talisman against the enraged
spirit. “You’re dead--Angela--you can’t be here!”

Angela’s ghost materialized into a solid form. She stood
before Fletcher dressed in her burial gown. “Yes, William. I am dead; because
you killed me.” She tilted her head, one way then the other, as if puzzled,
trying to understand. “Why do you seek to kill my children? Why is my baby
bleeding? What have you done to my sweet little Michael?”

“I--I--“ Fletcher blustered, his face contorting into an
ugly mask of terror. “I didn’t shoot him, woman--they did!” He pointed toward
the doors where Mr. Duchamp had fired at him. “Here--take him then, your
precious little boy. Take him and be gone, I say.” He shoved Michael’s limp
body to the floor and rose clumsily. He backed away, taking refuge behind his
chair, as if that would shield him from Angela’s steady, predatory approach.

Elizabeth wanted to go to Michael’s crumpled form on the
floor, but she could not. Donovan held her tight against him.

“Easy, my darlin’ lass.” Sheila spoke. Elizabeth turned her
head. Sheila stood beside them, a solid form, just like her mother. She placed
her cold hand on Elizabeth’s arm.

“But Michael--he’s hurt.” Elizabeth pleaded, with both
Donovan and Sheila.

“Ach, he’ll live to give you much trouble in years to come.”
Sheila countered. “Let her confront him. This is her moment. Her one chance to
stop cowering and being a victim, her opportunity to initiate the justice she
craves. The ancients have decided she must instigate the judgment, and he. . .”
Sheila’s snowy white head tilted toward Donovan, “He must finish it.”

“Angela--What are you talking about, my love?” Fletcher
shook his head, denying her accusation, his eyes wide with pure terror as he
tried to speak to her in loving tones Elizabeth had never heard him use when
her mother was alive. “They shot him--they shot your boy!” He gestured wildly
beyond Elizabeth and Donovan, to the closed doors. “Go haunt them, not me.”

He was shaking. Elizabeth noted the shivering of his limbs
with satisfaction. Yes, he deserved to be frightened for what he had done; to
Mama, Sheila, Father, Kieran, the Uncles and likely countless more. And now
Michael, his own flesh, was bleeding due to his maliciousness.

But Mama was only a spirit. And a timid one, just as she’d
been in life. Elizabeth doubted her mother would have the temerity to do
anything more than glare fiercely at Captain Fletcher.

“
You murdered me
.” Angela Fletcher accused. “
You
murdered me, and you raised my children in fear instead of love. You broke
their tender spirits. You bruised their bodies and poisoned their souls. You
killed Shawn, my one true love. You sold my son to strangers. You tried to kill
my daughter, time and time again. Sheila warned me. But I was foolish. I didn’t
believe her. I believed you. I see now what I refused to see then.”

Mama’s pale hand rose. She pointed at him, leveling yet
another accusation in the wake of so many others. “You are a pernicious evil
that must be banished from the earth.”

Before Elizabeth could blink, her mother’s spirit had moved
to hover before Fletcher’s graying face. She snarled with malevolence. Her face
became skeletal, frightening to behold.

Captain Fletcher screamed like a terrified child.

He kept on screaming when Mama took his face in her suddenly
claw-like hands.

And then the screaming stopped. He gazed up at her with
shock mingled with horror. He coughed and gagged. Blood oozed from his mouth.

Elizabeth cringed, and started to turn away. Sheila stopped
her from turning into Donovan’s protective embrace.

“No, child. It is the duty of the priestess to bear witness
when judgment is dispensed on behalf of her people.” Sheila’s cold, solid hand
touched Elizabeth’s cheek, cupping it lovingly. “Watch, record it in the Book.
It is your duty as it was once mine.”

Elizabeth did as her grandmother bade. She watched Mama
confront the man who abused her in life, the man who would murder her children,
steal her inheritance and then spit on her as she lay gasping her last breath.
Fletcher was turning blue, gasping for breath and no wonder.

Mama’s hand was reaching inside of his chest. It was a
transparent, ghostly hand.

“Now, Lad. You must finish what she has begun.” Sheila
commanded, quickly wrapping her arms about Elizabeth. “Donovan O’Rourke
Beaumont, living Descendent of the Clans O’Rourke and O’Donovan! You are the
chosen vessel of the ancients to secure justice on behalf of the innocent. You
are chosen to be their sword of vengeance in this matter.” Sheila spoke the
decree of the Ancient Dead and the Druid priests and priestesses of ages.

 Donovan remained immobile as they watched Mama’s hand
disappear inside Fletcher’s chest. She was squeezing his heart, crushing it.
Fletcher coughed, gasped and clutched helplessly at his chest. Fletcher’s eyes
bulged and his face was a mask of blue-grey horror.

“Finish it!” Sheila shrieked, raising the hackles on
Elizabeth’s neck as her image turned blue and she spoke in the frightful voice
of the Banshee. “Now. Dispense the Justice of the Ancients. Use the blade.”

Donovan sprang forward, leaving Elizabeth trapped in
Sheila’s icy embrace. He lifted the machete clutched in his fist and swung the
heavy steel blade in a wide, level arc.

There was a wet, fluid whooshing sound as Captain Fletcher’s
head flew up from his body, bouncing and turning slightly in a ruby spray of
blood before hitting the floor.

Chapter
Forty Five

Fletcher was dead. Elizabeth stared at the filthy bare feet
of her tormentor.

His body lay sprawled on the floor several feet in front of
her. He always wore boots.

And the sound of them on the stairs, in the halls, was the
stuff of her worst nightmares.

“Close the Veil.” Kieran shouted. “Send them back, quickly.”

Elizabeth bent double. She dropped to the floor on three
limbs and vomited the contents of her stomach onto the carpet. The scent of so
much blood was revolting. Fletcher smelled like he’d bathed in pig manure. She
gagged, and retched.

“Lizzie.” Donovan prompted, touching her ankle. She looked
in the direction of his hand. He was bent over Michael’s body, but gazing
desperately at her. “Send those things back. Get them out of here. You’re the
only one who can do it. I have move Michael and Kieran to my surgery room.”

She wiped her mouth with the edge of her shawl-sling and
steeled herself for the task ahead. There was nothing left to bring up. Her stomach
was empty. Elizabeth rose and stood in the center of the circle. She raised the
dagger. Chanting in Gaelic, she commanded the spirits to return to the Veil.
Within the span of minutes the grey mists dissolved. Seeing no loitering
spirits, she walked the boundary, retracting the sacred circle by pulling the
energy back into the dagger and through it, into herself, as she had seen
Sheila do thousands of times before.

It was done. She dropped the dagger. She stood with one hand
in a sling, the other dangling at her side, coated with her blood. Kieran rose
and staggered slowly towards her. She met his unsteady strides. They embraced
with one arm as both of them had one free to use. Kieran’s arm was bound and
wrapped tight in Chloe’s shawl.

“You did it.” Kieran sighed and kissed her hair. “My brave
little sister.”

The room was suddenly swarming with men; Ambrose and his
guards, Gareth, Barnaby, and Pearl. Even poor Gus O’Leary, who staggered in
holding a cloth to his head. As two footmen helped him to an overturned chair
another righted it so Gus could sit down.

Elizabeth and Kieran stood in their midst, clutching each
other, unwilling to let go and face their curious audience. Everyone was
looking at them with shock, wonder or horror.

Donovan was shouting orders, as always, as the man in charge
of the world--his world, at any rate. Elizabeth wanted to lie down, to sleep,
for days on end. But Michael was injured, and Kieran. Donovan, too, but one
would never know it by the veracity of his voice as he instructed his men to
remove Fletcher’s body and bring a pallet to carry Michael to the surgery on.

“My boy.” Barnaby intruded, genuinely worried about Kieran
as any father would be upon seeing his son bleeding so. “I was with your
grandfather upstairs. I sensed something, but I couldn’t get past the count’s
men in the hall.”

Pearl and Chloe were comforting little Gavin. Chloe sat on
the floor and held the boy on her lap. She was speaking softly to him as Pearl
checked the child for injuries. Johnny O’Reilly appeared in the doorway and
seeing his little brother among the wounded, he ran across the long room and
dropped to his knees to hug Gavin close.

“Lizzie.” Donovan was at her side, pulling her away from
Kieran’s embrace and into his own “I could think only of getting to you. When I
heard he escaped I came straight here.”

His words had the effect of a harsh slap. “What?” Elizabeth
cried out harshly, overcome with emotions. “How could you hear he escaped? From
where? Where was Fletcher that he could escape and come here?” She demanded,
knowing the answer.

Donovan’s countenance became a study of shame and regret. He
looked down for a moment, as if to avoid her gaze, and then, thinking better of
it, he raised his eyes to meet hers. “I had him kidnapped after your rescue. I
learned from Captain Sully that Fletcher hired the smugglers to abduct you. I
wanted revenge. I wanted him to pay for what he did to you. So I made him my
indenture. But I underestimated his--“

“You brought the devil to us!” Elizabeth shrieked. Everyone
in the room froze and watched them. “You brought the devil here.” She slapped
him across the face and pushed at him. He didn’t budge. She hit his solid torso
with her balled fist, and then pounded his chest, over and over. “I trusted
you, do you hear me? I trusted you--how could you bring him here?”

Donovan didn’t move. He didn’t restrain her. Ambrose stepped
close with an imposing frown, but the others merely watched as she vented her
fury. She kept hitting Donovan and screaming at him, releasing all her terror.
“How could you! You brought the devil to us! You did this--you did this to
us--and Michael will die--”

“No, he won’t.” Donovan grabbed her fist at last, cupping it
with his meaty hand. “Michael will live.”

That did it. Elizabeth crumpled against him with frantic,
terrified sobs.

Donovan caught her to him, hugging her and soothing her as
she cried against his blood spattered shirt. “Shhh. You’re angry with me. It’s
all right. It’s over, my love. It’s all over. Fletcher is dead. He can’t hurt
anyone anymore.”

Elizabeth nestled against him, seeking the assurance only he
could give.