Haunting Embrace (20 page)

He cared. No amount of denial would make it otherwise.

He manhandled Mickey to the back door, then down the porch step and into the yard. Only then did he spin and shove Mickey away. Mickey staggered across the dirt and then turned furiously to face Áedán. He still had the butcher knife clenched in one hand.

“I know who you are,” Mickey said, but the voice that came from his lips was not his own.

Depraved and familiar, it belonged to the Book of Fennore. Once Áedán had used it to call, to coax and cajole his victims. Now another man controlled the seductive tones.
Cathán
.

Had Áedán only known what hell Cathán MacGrath would bring to his cursed world, he would have sought someone else all the years ago when he’d honed in on the pathetic man’s pleas. Willing humans had been like weeds in a garden. It would have been so easy to pluck another.

But fate had matched them, and now it would exact its price.

“You know nothing about me,” Áedán said coldly. “If you did, you would be running away. You think you are strong? You think you can frighten
me
? I was the first nightmare. I will be the last. I had thousands of years to twist humanity into my personal playground. You are nothing but a child in grown-up clothes. Run away, child. There’s still time.”

Mickey’s dead eyes stared back without blinking. “I do not run from
humans
,” he said in that voice that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere.

“Nor do I.”

“But that’s what you are. That’s what you’ve become.
Human.
Tell me. Is it the girl that owns you now, Brandubh? Is it she who makes you weak?”

Áedán clenched his jaw, circling the other man. The creature that was Mickey mirrored his stance and steps, turning with preternatural grace, never letting Áedán get behind him.

“I could call to her,” Mickey said in Cathán’s voice. “Would you like that? I could bring her to her knees, right here.” He pointed to the ground in front of him, and then slowly mimed taking her head in his hands and thrusting his hips into the space between them.

Fury flamed inside Áedán’s gut like a madness. “Stay away from her.”

“Or what? You have nothing,
Druid
. You
are
nothing.”

That he spoke the truth made it all the worse. Once the most powerful Druid known, he’d been reduced to just a man. But he still had a mind. He still had two hands and a body that obeyed his commands. He would fight this mutated version of Mickey to the death if that’s what it took to protect what was his. Cathán would not touch Meaghan. Not with his hands, not with his voice, not with his monster.

“Oh but I will,”
Cathán answered his thoughts.

“Where did you find the Book, Mickey?” he asked, speaking to the person who no longer existed, knowing it would vex Cathán.

Áedán didn’t need an answer to his question, though. He knew. From within the world of Fennore, Cathán had sensed Áedán and used Mickey to get to him. He needed Áedán—or at least he thought he did. He wanted to know how Áedán had escaped the Book. He wanted to follow Áedán into the real world and wreak havoc here.

“Do not play games, Brandubh.”

“Why did you choose Mickey?” Áedán tried again. “Why him?”

“Mickey Ballagh is but a tool and I, a craftsman.”

Áedán’s mouth went dry, his palms grew damp. The reaction was so human that he couldn’t even pretend otherwise.

“And what can you build with a tool like Mickey?” he asked calmly, forcing himself not to reveal the panic screeching through his nerves.

“A trap. The pendant is near. I feel it.”

The words reverberated in Áedán’s head and filled his belly with ice.
The pendant?
In that instant, Áedán realized what he should have seen all along. Cathán, and by proxy the Book of Fennore, didn’t want Áedán.

They wanted the pendant. They wanted the key. With that, they’d have no need for Áedán and his knowledge. No need for Meaghan or anyone else. Cathán could open the door of his prison, free himself, and unleash the power of the Book of Fennore without help from anyone.

But there was something that Cathán had not considered. Áedán curled his fingers into his fists, thinking. He’d created the pendant to lock the Book of Fennore, to keep its secrets from the prying eyes of the other Druids who had, by then, turned against him. But like the Book, it had become a power in its own right, as Elan—the mystical White Fennore—had so elegantly demonstrated when she’d used it in her spell to condemn and banish him with her curse.

In the millennia since he’d been trapped in the Book of Fennore, he and the Book had morphed into something neither Áedán nor Elan could have envisioned. During that time, what had the pendant become? What powers had it bled from the universe, what transformations had
it
undergone?

The Book of Fennore had become a force beyond comprehension. And if Áedán had thought it through correctly, the Book and the pendant were connected by creation and evolution. The pendant had a power of its own that somehow Cathán had honed in on, and that power traveled in the airways between the Book and the pendant.

And Meaghan had been carrying it around in her
fecking pocket.

He quickly smothered the thought and masked it from Cathán.

“If you give it to me, I will let you live,” Cathán said again, inching Mickey’s body closer.

Áedán knew that Cathán lied. Áedán had never shown mercy himself, and he was not so foolish as to think Cathán would either. But he couldn’t know that Meaghan had the pendant, or he wouldn’t have tried bargaining for it.

Relief nearly took the legs out from under him.

“What is it you think the pendant will do?” he asked, not expecting an answer. Surprised when he got one.

“Free me.”

Áedán gave him a sardonic grin. “If it’d only taken the pendant to release me, do you think I would have remained a prisoner for millennia, Cathán? Are you so ignorant?”

The flat eyes narrowed and the soulless Mickey tightened his grip on the butcher knife he still held in his hand. Every day for nearly a week, Áedán had watched Mickey gut and clean his catch and then fillet it neatly. The man knew how to use a blade. But a knife that size required little finesse. He’d need only to plunge it into Áedán’s body to do irreparable damage.

Áedán did not intend to give him the chance. Wary, he kept circling, hoping to keep the other man off balance. But something caught at the corner of his eye and distracted him.

Meaghan
.

She stood on the porch outside the open kitchen doorway watching the two men with a look of horror on her face. For a moment, Áedán could not fathom that she was there. He’d
told
her to leave. He’d
ordered
her to get away. Damn the woman for being too stubborn to ever listen to what he said.

“Get out of here, Meaghan,” he commanded, keeping his attention on his foe when he wanted to march over and shake some sense into the bloody female.

“I’ve called the authorities,” she said boldly. “They’ll be here soon.”

Authorities? What was she talking about?

Mickey laughed. “How have you done that? Did you stand on the shores and shout across the channel?”

With a disconcerted frown, she spun and looked for something in the house before turning back with a stunned expression. “There’s no telephone?” she said.

“Not on the whole bleeding island. You could ask Brion MacGrath to come to your rescue, but I doubt his wife would let him go. Things are not right in that household, are they now?”

Áedán wasn’t sure what a telephone was and didn’t know Brion MacGrath, but it didn’t matter. This was between Cathán and Áedán. No
authorities
would be required.

“Meaghan, go away.”

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” she demanded, ignoring Áedán again as she stared at the man she knew only as Mickey Ballagh.

“Come closer and you’ll see,” Mickey answered.

“I don’t think so. I don’t like your voice either. It sounds different.”

“Like Cathán,” Áedán said pointedly.

As he’d hoped, Meaghan realized instantly what he meant. But the blasted woman still didn’t leave.

“Sweet Jesus,” she said. “You have the Book of Fennore?”

“I
am
the Book of Fennore,” he said, and his voice echoed in the night. He rose from his crouch and spread his arms. “I am invincible.”

“Fecking stupid is more like it,” Meaghan said, goading him. She poked a tiger with a stick, but Áedán couldn’t tell her that, and he doubted she’d heed his warning even if he could. “Don’t you know anything? The Book of Fennore doesn’t make you invincible. It makes you a slave.”

Slave,
Áedán thought
.
Yes, that’s what he’d been. All the power in the world, and he’d been merely a slave.

Mickey’s eyes narrowed until only the freezing gleam of malice showed.

Undaunted, Meaghan said, “Tell me. What did Mickey ask for when he found the Book?”

“He asked for power,” Cathán answered. “He asked to leave the world of stink and fish behind. I granted his wish.”

Meaghan turned her gaze to Áedán, and he knew she remembered his own words.
I gave them exactly what they asked for.
And in exchange, he’d taken their very humanity and left only a shell, just as Cathán had done.

“You don’t look very powerful,” she said. “You look like a walking corpse.”

The cold eyes narrowed and the face contorted with a twisted expression—something far beyond human.

“As will you when I’m finished, Meaghan Ballagh.”

Distracted, Áedán didn’t see him move until it was too late. Cathán charged—not at Áedán, but at Meaghan.

“Meaghan, run!” Áedán shouted.

Everything slowed to an excruciating speed, throwing each particle of air into stark relief as Mickey attacked, wicked knife leading the way. Áedán saw the puff of dust that rose from his footsteps. The flash of his blade as he brandished it. The ice in his dark eyes.

Meaghan watched him come with fear so strong it fragranced the air. But she didn’t flinch as he bore down, only a few feet away from reaching her. Instead she plunged her hand into her pocket and pulled out the pouch that held the pendant.

Áedán cried,
“NO!”
but it was too late.

She’d snagged the leather cord and jerked the pendant from the bag before the echo of his warning had begun. The dark kept him from seeing the color of her eyes, but in that instant he knew—
he knew—
what he would see if there had been light.. . .

Lavender swallowing the blue.

The pendant dropped to the end of its tether and then swung back and forth. With each pendulous motion, Meaghan seemed to transform. Her hair blew in a nonexistent wind until it cascaded around her face like a silvery veil. At once she seemed taller and more slender, her features morphing into those of another woman. A light seemed to glow from within her, illuminating her skin until she looked like an angel. An avenging angel.

The White Fennore. Elan.

He had no time to take it all in, not an instant to react to what he saw. The last vestiges of the man Mickey had once been vanished completely as Cathán’s greed and desire became a frothing storm around him.

Áedán lunged at Mickey’s body, knowing he couldn’t stop the other man, but needing to
try
. While he fought to defy the laws of gravity and momentum, a snapping moment of clarity broke through the chaos in his mind.

The Book and the pendant were connected by creation and evolution—two pieces of a whole—a Book that could be locked and a pendant that was its key. The pendant had a power of its own that called to the Book. And if somehow that power traveled in the airways between the Book and the pendant, it could be used.

He’d felt the humming drone of it all along, but he hadn’t understood. Now he felt the power surging and sparking like electricity all around him.

Instinct took over, and without knowing how he did it, Áedán drew on something within himself that he’d thought long dead. As his body hurled through the air, in his mind, he groped for that part of him that had once been
Druid
and turned it loose. He called to the power he felt around him, and he wielded it to his own purpose.

Mickey evaded his tackle and Áedán slammed to the ground. But just as the other man reached Meaghan, Áedán shoved him away. Not with his hands. Not with his body. But with his
mind.

With a
Druid’s power
he’d feared lost forever.

As far as he could see, every light went out, plunging them in a black velvet shroud, as if he’d pulled not only the power of the pendant, but tapped into the electric current that supplied them. Then the force of his thoughts propelled Mickey’s body through the air like a leaf caught in an icy gale and flung him to the ground. He hit hard and bashed his head against a buried rock, then lay stiff and unmoving.

For a moment, neither Meaghan nor Áedán moved. One by one, the lights came back on as shock traveled through Áedán’s nerves numbing his limbs and robbing him of speech. Back doors opened and neighbors stepped out onto their porches to find out what was going on.

Afraid of what he’d see, Áedán glanced quickly at Meaghan. She blinked blue eyes owlishly at him, her skin pale and creamy, her hair a sleek golden fall at her shoulder. The illusion of illumination had faded completely.

Áedán kicked Mickey’s knife beneath a bush before approaching her. She’d stuffed the pendant back into its pouch, her fingers shaking uncontrollably as she shoved it into her pocket.

“It’s all right now,” he murmured, pulling her into his arms even as he called himself a fool. “You’re all right.”

She nodded, but her whole body trembled. “How did you do that?” she asked against his throat. The hot touch of her breath melted the frozen numbness inside him. He lowered his head and breathed in her scent, grounding himself in the soft familiarity of it.

She felt like Meaghan. She smelled like Meaghan. But the knot in his gut would not go away. He’d seen her
change
, though she seemed completely unaware of it.