Haunting Embrace (24 page)

Helplessly, she stared at the comb, where it hung suspended between them, one end in the woman’s hand and the other in her own. It had cut them both, and drops of blood wove through the teeth, filled the spiral engravings. Aghast, Meaghan watched the inevitable with the inexplicable feeling she’d been running from it for her entire life. The blood pooled and then raced down the grooves to the middle of the comb where the droplets met.

Where they merged and became one.

Jerking her gaze up to stare into the other woman’s starlit eyes with horror, Meaghan screamed.

The sound of her own shriek jolted her from sleep and slammed her bolt upright on the cot, her body hot, her mouth dry, her breath coming in raw gasps. Darkness veiled her in a suffocating shroud, making her thrash to get free of the twisted covers.

She sucked in a deep breath and tried to calm down, but it was so dark. The moon had masked itself in clouds, creating layered shadows that fingered her childhood fears hungrily. The black of night surged over her with unrelenting glee, mocking her attempt to deny it.

“It’s only dark,” she whispered. “There’s nothing in it.”

She raised a shaking hand to push back her hair, the dream still a cloying memory that clogged her throat and doused all rationality. The paleness of her skin made a gray dent in the gloom, and for a moment, she held her fingers in front of her face, trying to make out the familiar size and shape, reassuring herself that the dark had not changed her, that her blood mixing with the dream wraith’s had not fused her to her nightmare and allowed it to follow her out into the real world. Yet the greedy shadows felt savage now, ordered and hostile. The clouds around the moon gathered as if by command and held captive the waning light.

Meaghan could see nothing beyond her own bleak dismay. She rubbed her fingers with her thumb, intending to ground herself with the sensation. But what she felt had the opposite effect. Something damp and sticky clung to her skin. She lifted her other hand and felt the same substance.

Fear spiked deep within her and rebounded endlessly off the parallel mirrors of disbelief and conviction. The reflection it created refracted into a million questions and a never-ending tunnel that led to an impossible conclusion. Blood. There was blood on her hands.

The need to see swelled with her horror and swallowed her whole. She shot from her cot out into the kitchen, turning on the light. Dark, tacky red covered her fingers and splattered her palms. That whimpering sound she’d heard in the dreams returned, and with it the burn of air moving through constricted passageways. Quickly she turned on the faucet and scrubbed her hands until they were raw. The blood washed away easily enough, but she still felt it, slick and clinging. . . .

She could see no cut, no wound, no puncture mark made by the sharp teeth of the comb. Nothing to explain the blood that had followed her from the dream. Still trembling, she went back to the storage room and checked her sheets. Her bedding was unmarred by stains. Her heart thudded painfully. Had she imagined it?

She tried to convince herself the answer was yes, but it took a long time for her heartbeat to slow and her lungs to give leave to normal breathing. After a few minutes, she reluctantly turned out the light and returned to her little room.

Just as she settled onto the cot, she heard a door open and slam shut. Cautiously, she moved to her knees and peered at the door to the storage room, seeing the gray shades delineating the opening. Her ears rang as she tried to separate the clumsy stumble of footsteps navigating an unlit room and see the source of the sound. At last, the clouds shifted and a lone beam of moonshine nipped through the windows and caught the man swaying in Colleen’s kitchen.

Mickey. He’d come home. Áedán had promised to keep him away, but there he stood. Did that mean something had happened to Áedán? Or had he lied about protecting them? Heart plunging, Meaghan covered her mouth and tried to be silent.

Quickly she eased to her feet, hoping he didn’t know where Colleen had put her to sleep. Her legs trembled and her stomach hurt. She could feel the stab of adrenaline hitting her muscles, urging them to flee, but she fought the instinct, forcing herself to stand still and not draw attention. The wall behind her felt solid, and she leaned hard into it, reaching down to fumble under her pillow for the knife she’d stashed there earlier, not daring to take her eyes from the doorway. She felt the cold of metal, and without looking, slipped it into her pocket. Mickey wobbled on unsteady legs, then seemed to get his bearings and took a lurching step around the table. He came very near the doorway into the storage room. If he turned his head, if he looked inside . . .

Her fear took on a sour edge. What if he caught her in here alone? Would he finish what he started? Before he’d sauntered off with the others for the Pier House, she’d heard his voice return to normal, but the eyes had still glittered sharply.

As if he’d heard her thoughts, he took another step closer. Drunken, he could barely keep his feet beneath him. She sucked in a silent breath. With his senses so impaired, maybe she’d have a chance of fighting him off.

The moment seemed to freeze, with Meaghan a marble statue solidified by her fright and Mickey vibrating with his hostility. Slowly he turned his head and looked at her.

It was too late to hide, not that the storage room offered her any options.

Praying with equal fervor that the moon would continue to cast its glow on the room and that it would slip behind the clouds and shield her in darkness, Meaghan squared her shoulders and pulled the knife from her pocket.

But it wasn’t a knife she held in her hand. It was a comb. A silver comb. For a moment, her mind locked up as it stuttered over the impossibility of the comb clenched between her fingers, and then she flung it away. It hit the bed and bounced in the tangle of covers.

Biting back the scream that wanted to emerge, she swung her gaze back to Mickey.

“What do you want, Mr. Ballagh?” she blustered, her voice firm and unwavering. She tried to sound tough and thought she did a fair job of it. He couldn’t see her shaking hands and banging knees.

Mickey had crossed the threshold into the tiny room with a strange, jerking gait that stroked a note of alarm in the crashing discord of her fear. The oddness of his movements made Meaghan cringe against the wall, wishing she could punch through it and run.

“Stop right now, Mr. Ballagh. I’ll scream if you don’t. I mean it.”

She might have been talking to herself for all the good it did. Just then, the clouds shifted once more and another bright shaft of moonlight slanted into the kitchen. Mickey’s hovering mass in the doorway blocked it from the storage room, making her small space seem darker, more confining. She’d let him trap her—she’d let her own panic create a prison that he now filled with his looming presence. He took another step and she gauged her chances of lunging past him and through the door into the kitchen, then made a break for it. She expected him to try to stop her and nearly laughed with delirious relief when he didn’t.

Mickey turned to watch her, his awkward pace unnatural and sedate. Grime streaked his pale face. His clothes looked black in the shadows and his hands strangely white. As if disconnected, they floated at his sides. The stench of him rushed at her like a swampy wave, rancid and repulsive. He smelled of something washed up ashore and decaying beneath the hot and ruthless sun. She could feel the intensity of his stare even if she couldn’t see it.

She searched for signs of attack, tensing muscles, shifting weight, but Mickey showed nothing except that focus that felt like a laser beam following her every movement. Though the rest of him remained in shadow, his features suddenly snapped into focus, and Meaghan felt a gasp freeze in her chest. She’d thought it was grime that coated his face, but now she realized it was much worse.

It was blood. A lot of it.

He staggered from the storage room after her, stopping a few feet away. Now, the moon broke free entirely, bathing the room in a cold, bright light.

And as frightened of the dark as she was, Meaghan wished for it to return.

She could see everything now. The spotless kitchen, the pots and pans, spices and jars that lined the shelves. The table that she’d sat at just hours before.

And Mickey.

She could see Mickey as clearly as she’d seen him in the light of day. A deep wound above his eye spilled blood down his face, where it met another slashing cut that arched from ear to artery and sent a gusher over the front of him. As horrible as it appeared, that wasn’t what made Meaghan clap her hands over her mouth to hold back the scream, though.

Colleen’s butcher knife protruded from his chest.

It had been sunk deep to the hilt, where its blade would find his heart. His shirt had been gray and stained when he left that night. Now the front was soaked in blood from the collar to the sleeves, making it look thick and tacky and black. She watched with shock as blood dripped from the shirttail that hung untucked at his hips and plopped with a sickening sound to the floor.

He stared at her with eyes that did not gleam with that hard flat glitter that she’d seen before. There was no violence in them now. No fury waiting to erupt. They were endless pits, empty of thoughts, of feeling. Of life.

The blood should have told her, the knife in his heart should have confirmed it. But his mere presence—his
mobility
no matter how stilted—had contradicted what common sense might have shown. If he was walking, then he must be alive.

But Meaghan realized as she stared into those empty eyes that it wasn’t so. The lights might be on, but there was nothing and no one home inside. It didn’t matter that he stood in front of her, dripping blood on Colleen’s kitchen floor.

Mickey Ballagh was dead.

Chapter Seventeen

F
OR hours after the fight, Áedán had sat in a corner at the Pier House watching Mickey enjoy being the center of attention. He knew it was all an act. A sly contrivance that Cathán performed using Mickey as his puppet. Mickey drank and laughed, belched and railed with the others just like he had on any number of nights in his past. But the Mickey they’d all known no longer existed.

Áedán shifted in his seat, observing but shielded from the others by the shadows and his unobtrusive stillness. He’d mastered the art of obscuring himself in this way when he’d lived among his brother Druids but thought the skill lost. Somehow using the power he’d siphoned from the pendant had opened a doorway within him, and now he could reach those parts of himself that had been so long dormant. Deep inside, his own rare gifts began sparking to life.

It elated him, but it also worried him. He could feel the turn of history bearing down, preparing to repeat itself. Power had been at the crux of the events that culminated in his condemnation. He’d be a fool not to consider its role in things to come.

A war waged within him as he watched the merriment in the bar. Part of him wanted to race for the doors, find Meaghan, and leave this island and everything it represented behind, even if it meant swimming across the cold, hostile sea. Another part braced and prepared for a battle that had been eons in the making. He would need the pendant to do his part, and he had no delusions that Meaghan would willingly give it up.

He rubbed his gritty eyes and looked around him. Compact and stinking of old fish, grease, piss, and sweat, the Pier House looked ready to burst at the seams from the crowd it held. Behind Áedán, windows stretched nearly floor to ceiling and looked out on the small, Ballyfionúir port, with its man-made rock wall that kept the fierce tide subdued and the bobbing boats in its protective embrace. In the windows’ reflections, he could see the men clamoring around the bar at his back, standing shoulder to shoulder, happy to be in the stinking place, breathing air so laced with the fumes of spirits that it was like drinking the brew with each breath. He had no trouble identifying Mickey in the thick of it.

Beneath the roar of laughter, Áedán heard the insidious drone that was the signature of the Book of Fennore. Even now it spoke to Áedán, coaxing him like a whore from a candlelit window, but it could not reach him. Not anymore. That, too, had changed.

He couldn’t tell if the drone came from Mickey or from another source. A gut feeling told him that Cathán and the Book of Fennore worked through more than just Mickey, and he’d already taken his next victim. Perhaps that man stood in this room even now.

“To Áedán, the best worker the seas’ve e’re seen,” Mickey slurred, slopping his dark brew as he drank thirstily.

Whether a ruse or sheer intoxication, Mickey no longer seemed to remember the fight that he’d started and Áedán had finished. In fact, some time ago, he’d begun to speak of it as if it had been a skirmish over manners and not a battle of life and death.

“Then why was you out to kill him if he’s so grand?” Hoyt O’Shea asked, projecting his voice to be heard over the din. Hoyt had sat watchful all night, fanning the hot embers of aggression into sparking fires that flared and hissed.

Mickey leveled a finger at Hoyt and said, “Didn’t I tell you already? I wasn’t out to kill him, was I? I meant Áedán no serious harm. ’Twas just a lesson in respect, you see.”

Or a possession by the Book of Fennore,
Áedán thought grimly.

“He can work for me if you don’t like his attitude,” Hoyt answered, making the words sound like a threat.

Mickey came out of his chair, his face darkening and his eyes wild. “The hell he will, you bleeding Welshman.”

Hoyt jumped to his feet as well, but the men on either side of them urged the two back down. Mickey put up a show of resistance, but really he was too drunk to do more than fall into the chair. Hoyt sat with slow deliberation. Should they come to blows, Áedán had no doubt Hoyt would beat Mickey to a pulp. After a moment, the voices around him rose again in unnatural gaiety.

“And then comes Mickey, like fecking Ruairi of Fennore hisself, I tell ye,” a fat and ruddy man said, punching the air and miming Áedán staggering back before crashing down like a felled tree. Mickey grinned at the story, which had somehow grown from a one-strike knockout to a fistfight that had spanned an hour and miles of the island. Both Áedán and Mickey had been compared to Ruairi of Fennore countless times in innumerable repetitions, but no one seemed to notice the reiteration. Like oversaturated sponges, the drunks could not retain the words that swilled around them.