Haunting Warrior (50 page)

But somewhere deep inside him another voice spoke, this one light where the first had been dark, fair to its foul. He tried to center on it, following it down through the acrid stench of the other’s echo so he might discern the words he couldn’t quite grasp.

Remember
, the new voice said, and Rory thought it was his sister, Danni, speaking. Astonished, he concentrated on that, and sudden images burst in his mind. He saw again that night when he’d lost his father. The Book was held between them, and he’d felt himself sinking into it, being swallowed into its covers, flattened between its pages. Inside that hollow and hellish Neverland, there’d been many voices trapped and screaming, petrified and pleading. But above the chaos of their shrieks he’d heard a droning chant spoken over and over.

Now, in an instant of startling clarity, he remembered it. A flash of intuition told him the chanting had come from the woman Leary had told them about, the White Fennore. She was casting her curse, spinning it out like a great web, pronged with burrs that stuck in the flesh and held. Over and over it went, stretching on and on.

He tried to take another step toward Saraid, but his feet were locked to the cavern floor and he couldn’t move.

With a groan of frustration, he stared at the Book of Fennore. It was out of the satchel, out of the canvas wrapping. Saraid knelt before it like a statue, unmoving.

The tooled and blackened cover opened and the pages began to turn. Each was filled with spirals unending, meaningless symbols that blurred as the pages fanned before his eyes. The whir of it teased the fine strands of Saraid’s hair, but still she did not move or react. Slowly, by infinitesimal degrees, the strange concentric spirals separated as the fanning pages transformed, becoming ancient runes then letters that suddenly Rory could decipher. He read, parsing the broken language into something comprehensible. Even as he began to understand, Saraid spoke.

Her voice was low and intoned with a dark echo that was not her own. Her eyes had gone black—not just the widened pupils, not just the irises. Her entire eye. There were no whites, only unearthly flat darkness between the long, lush lashes.

“Saraid?” he whispered.

She didn’t hear him; instead she mouthed the words he’d read in the ancient script, speaking in that discordant voice that was not her own.

“I am the White Fennore. I am a gift of the Gods to the people, to be cherished and honored. I am that which you cannot comprehend. I am that which you fear. For your betrayal, Brandubh, High Priest of Éire, you will spend eternity and beyond bound within the pages of the Book you created for me. Banished like a vile creature, to be despised by all and revered by none.”

Saraid didn’t blink as she spoke. She didn’t pause. Didn’t see that he was afraid.

“All who come in contact with you will suffer for the evil and greed they carry with them as will you suffer. They will use you for their will, as you have used me. When the hearts of men are pure, you will then wither and fade to nothing.”

Rory managed to take a step closer, reaching out to Saraid. Her hands were like ice, her fingers clenched tight.

“You may promise only what you can deliver, you may take only what you are given. If you survive, you will see me again.”

Now she did pause, yet the echo of her voice sprang from everywhere and nowhere and chafed against the uneven light. The dread in Rory’s gut exploded into terror.

“Saraid, snap out of it. Stop.” He snapped his finger in front of her black, black eyes. Grabbed her shoulders and shook. Her head swayed on her delicate neck, but the frozen expression did not change nor did the black eyes return to normal.

She took a breath and then spoke again, tolling that bell of doom in a tone that was not her own.

“You will not know me, but I will judge you, Brandubh the Black Raven, and you will have one chance to prove you are redeemed. This is your curse. This is your fate. Meet it well or pay my price.”

The condemnation detonated in the cavern—there was no other way to describe it. The walls reverberated, the ground shuddered, and the pool of water chopped and turned in response. Saraid swayed, and then her eyes rolled back in her head as she keeled forward. Rory caught her limp body in his arms as he spun to face the Book again.

The black leather shone in the undulating light, and the silver and jewels that twined and crusted its surface sparkled with a fire of their own. Once again the pages began to fan back and forth, back and forth, while the vile vibration that wasn’t a hum and wasn’t a scream but something in between grew louder and louder until it seemed to come from inside Rory’s head.

He wanted to turn, to flee. To carry Saraid out into the sunshine and away from this terrible
thing
that had no place in the world of men. Instead, his feet moved toward it as if compelled.

Now what he heard was Saraid’s voice—her real one, though she still lay unconscious in his arms. She was sobbing as she begged for Rory’s life, and he knew the Book was making him witness the moments when she gave her heart to save him. The blank page in front of him began to fill with symbols, bold and black, thick and tacky as an unseen pen scratched away the terms of the deal she’d struck with the devil.

There was her name, next to it his own, and beneath, the words she’d spoken when she’d asked for his life. Rory shook his head, denying what he didn’t want to see. It was a contract. Each page of this Book was a contract. He knew it with absolute certainty.

The pages fanned again, and this time it was his father’s voice, begging for money, for power, for control over a life that had spun beyond him. Other voices joined, pages upon pages of contracts filled with the tarlike ink until Rory felt his eyes burning and his heart stuttering with unfathomable pain.

He heard his own brash words: “
I’m going to destroy it. . . .”

He’d been so sure, so confident. Had scoffed at the idea that it was invincible. But faced with this diabolic entity, he was lost. How would he do it? How could anyone?

Saraid began to cough, and her breath wheezed through her white lips.

“What are you?” he demanded of it, going down on his knees, cradling Saraid in his arms. “Stop it.
Stop it
. Let her go.”

In answer Saraid’s body curled in, her knees coming up to her chest. Not even the wheeze emerged now. Not a breath. She began to claw at her throat as her body arched in pain.

“Stop it!” Rory shouted again.

A blank page appeared again, waiting, invisible pen poised. Question mark dangling in the dank silence.

Rory didn’t hesitate. “Anything,” he said. “Everything.”

“What the fook have y’ done to my sister?” a man’s voice demanded—not in his head, but here, in the cave.

Rory spun to find Tiarnan standing in the cavern entrance, his face etched with pain and rage as he looked at the writhing woman in Rory’s arms. The arrows he’d taken on the beach had been removed, but he was bloody and battered. He rushed to where Rory crouched and pulled his sister away from Rory.

“What are y’ doing to her?” he demanded again.

Rory didn’t answer. He was looking at the Book, spread open, obscenely sexual. Waiting for its pleasure.

It seemed Tiarnan understood. In that split second, he took it all in and he grasped what Rory had not. There was no way to win, no way to defeat something so sinister, so wrong . . . so evil.

With a cry of rage, Rory bounded to his feet, pulling out the short sword he wore at his waist and slamming it into the open spine. The Book began to shriek, trumpeting that excruciating sound that made his ears feel like they were on fire. Blood spurted and oozed from the crease, thick as oil, rank and tainted, and Rory had a moment to hope. He spun and looked at Saraid, in Tiarnan’s arms now.

She bucked and writhed on the ground, black- eyed and reaching. Then she made one last agonizing effort to draw breath and stilled.

“No,” Rory whispered. “No!”

He turned back to the foul obscenity and bellowed his rage, his pain, his vengeance. He lifted his knife again, and lightning shot from the cavern walls and ceiling, zapping it from his hands and turning it to molten silver at his feet. But Rory would not be deterred.

Rory reached into the Book, grabbing the pages with Saraid’s name, snagging the ones next to it as well in his haste. Gripping the fistful of pages, he yanked. The pages were thick and slick, like seal-skin, and they held tight, refusing to tear, but Rory was not going to give up. Behind him he heard Tiarnan’s cry of anguish, and he knew that Saraid wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing anymore. Then the big man was beside him, adding the weight and strength of his grief to Rory’s efforts. He was mumbling under his breath, hot, angry words.

“I will not fail again.”

Over and over he repeated until it became a mantra to both men. They would not fail. Sweat beaded on Rory’s face and his arms shook with the strain, but then he felt it, heard it. A tear. And then . . .

The sound was like the world ripping in two—deafening, piercing, shrill beyond conception. Staggered by the power of it, Rory and Tiarnan both stood with the pieces of the pages clutched in their hands. The edges sliced through his skin, razors cutting his fingers to ribbons.

Tiarnan held the bloody pages over his head and shouted, “
I. Will. Not—
” He began to tear and shred, reducing the binding contracts to bits then tossing the pieces into the air with each angry word. “
Fail. Again.
”

Rory did the same, ripping his pages in half and half again, then he hurled them into the air.

The last tiny bit fluttered for a moment before following the others up, up to the cavern roof, where they hit the stone like rockets, bursting into flames and searing their menacing symbols into the surface where they burned and burned until the ceiling was a massive torch. The ground shook, and Tiarnan fell against him, staggering them both back. Then Rory pushed off the wall and hurried to Saraid, lifted her head, and sealed his mouth over hers, forcing air into her lungs, pausing, pressing her chest, breathing, pumping, refusing to let go, to stop trying even for a second.

Sparks showered down on them, and he slapped them out as they lit upon her tattered dress, his frayed tunic. Still he kept his lips sealed to hers. In and out, breathing, in and out.

The cave went dark and then suddenly white light exploded in a sonic boom that shook the walls and cracked the floor. Rory curled his body over Saraid’s, shielding her from the stones that broke free and fell around them. It felt like the cavern was collapsing, but he couldn’t see because that blinding light had turned the world into a brilliant haze that burned his eyes. He didn’t know what Tiarnan was doing now. Was he still there, ripping the pages from the Book?

From the depths of the searing glare, he felt a building pressure, a harrowing suction that tore at his clothes, lifted Saraid’s hair. The pull inched them forward, and desperately Rory anchored himself to a boulder with one arm, holding Saraid’s lifeless body with the other. The wrenching power towed him in, lifting his feet, trying to yank his arms from the sockets, but still he didn’t let go, not of the boulder, not of Saraid. He felt his shoulder rip with pain brighter, hotter, more excruciating than anything he could imagine, but he held. God help him, he held.

A shape appeared before him like a gigantic shadow show against a sheet of white. Squinting, he stared at it, watching it take shape and form, until he recognized the young face that stared back, mouth open in a scream. It was Meaghan. His half sister, Meaghan. There for just a moment, dressed in jeans and a U2 T-shirt, in the cavern beneath the castle ruins. He had only the split second to recognize and identify and then she was gone. The screeching horror climaxed with a thundering crack that must surely have split his skull, and then he felt something heaving the limp body he held. It jerked and twitched and then broke free. Before Rory could even grasp what it was, he felt the brush of it against his skin as it sped away.

What was it? Saraid was still in his arms. He hadn’t let her go. Was it her soul? Had he lost her despite everything?

The deafening clamor exceeded chaos, building, building, building and then . . .

And then . . . silence.

Silence, dark and velvet. Silence, black and cool.

The blinding light was gone, leaving only the mellow glow of the setting sun, there, then not as the waves rolled in and out. Shaking, he released the boulder, crying out as his shoulder protested the abuse it had taken.

There were tears in his eyes as he gazed down at Saraid. Tears streaming down his face. She lay in his arms, still and deathly pale. Was it her soul he’d felt wrenching free, succumbing to the cyclone that had tried to suck them in?

“No,” he whispered, kissing her face, her throat. “Please, no.” He tilted his head back and shouted it. “NO!”

His own voice bantered around the cave, bouncing back to shame him. He turned his face to the Book, filled with a rage that he could not contain, intent on doing what he’d set out to do, no matter the cost.

But the Book was gone. Stunned, he scanned the cavern. Tiarnan was gone, too.

Had Saraid’s brother taken it? Had he—

In his arms, Saraid moved. The motion was so slight that at first he wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it. Afraid his mind had tricked him, he looked down. Her lashes fluttered, and then her chest rose with a deep, gasping breath. And her eyes opened.

He stared into them, the brown as dark and rich as chocolate, the whites clear and shining. Glowing with the soul of the beautiful person inside. She stared back at him, blinking, bewildered. Alive.

Rory felt as if his heart had been torn out, trampled, tossed to sea. His vision blurred as he stared into her face.