The Crossing (Immortals) (4 page)

Mac's brows lifted. "Tain got married? That's one
intrepid bride."

Christine laughed. "Yes, Samantha is very brave. She and Tain are even talking about starting a family." She shot
him a look. "Maybe that's what you need. A wife and kids."
His heart squeezed. "Not so easy finding the right
woman, love. Kalen got lucky."

"There's someone for everyone."

Mac snorted. "For an immortal demigod Sidhe prince
with an objectionable mother? I highly doubt a lonely
hearts advert's going to do the trick."

"You hardly need a personal ad. You're the famous
Manannan mac Lir. Please don't try to tell me you don't
have thousands of women throwing themselves at your
feet."

A sincere laugh escaped. "At my feet? Not usually. At
another body part? Regularly. But it's not at all conducive
to romance. What it is, frankly, is a bloody nightmare."

Christine chuckled. "And to think, a year ago you were
grumbling how hard it was to get a mature woman to take
a second look at your zitty teenage face."

"Yes, well, since then I've found the Chinese were right.
Be careful what you wish for." He glanced at her. "That
was the Chinese, wasn't it? Confucius or some such
bloke?"

"I have no idea," Christine laughed. "And quit trying to
change the subject. Here we have a healthy, red-blooded
Sidhe-"

"Only half Sidhe."

"-half Sidhe, claiming he's in a funk because he's getting too much sex. How is that even possible?"

Incredibly, Mac felt his cheeks heat. When she put it
like that, he did sound rather callous.

He pushed himself away from the wall. "Christine. Give
it a rest, will you? I came here for some peace, not for
bloody psychoanalysis."

There it was, his detestable anger, rearing its ugly head
again. The slight widening of Christine's eyes told him his
barb had hit its mark.

He pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. "I'm
sorry."

"No," Christine said. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't make you
talk when you obviously don't want to. Forgive me?"

"Nothing to forgive, love." He forced a smile and offered her his arm. "I know you mean well. Shall we go in
search of your muscle-bound husband, then?"

"All right."

He walked her to the tower door, then stood back as she
preceded him down the steep winding stair. They were almost to the lower landing when they met Kalen on his way
up. The Immortal was dressed in his habitual kilt and
white shirt, his tiny, tartan-swaddled daughter cradled
against his broad chest. The incongruous sight made Mac's
heart lurch. Oh, how the tiniest women could make fools
out of the biggest, strongest men.

Then he caught sight of Kalen's grim expression.

"What's wrong?" he asked, at the same time that Christine blurted, "Goddess, Kalen. What's happened?"

Kalen retreated to the landing and gently transferred
his daughter into her mother's arms before speaking. Christine cradled the infant's head, her worried gaze fixed on
her husband.

"A falcon just delivered a message from one of the inland faerie villages. There's been a death-magic attack."
Kalen met his wife's eyes. "It's Gilraen's village, Christine."

Mac knew Christine counted Gilraen, the garrulous
faerie who'd helped her when she arrived in Inverness a
year ago, a close friend.

"Oh no," she whispered. "Has anyone been..

"Killed?" Kalen said. "No. But several young ones are
ill." He turned to Mac. "The village elders are asking that
you come immediately."

Of course they were. Mac took his role as Guardian of
Celtic Magical Creatures in the Human World seriously, though the job hadn't required much attention in the past
year. Life magic had surged wildly since the Immortals
had destroyed the demon Mac knew as Culsu. Mac, consumed by his music and his world tour-not to mention
his brooding-hadn't so much as spoken to a faerie in half
a year.

Which begged the question-how had Gilraen known
where to find him?

"Mac?" Kalen was looking at him.

"I'll go immediately, of course," Mac said quickly,
flushing.

"I'll come with you," Kalen said.

Mac stiffened. Did his friend think he couldn't handle
things on his own? "No. The faeries are my responsibility.
I'll go alone."

"I don't think that's-"

"If I need help," Mac cut in, "I'll call you. What's happened, exactly? Does the message say?"

Wordlessly, Kalen handed Mac the scrap of parchment.

"Attack came without warning," Mac muttered, scanning
the hastily scribbled missive. "Life-draining spell. Brutal,
quick. The youngest faeries affected most of all-"

"Oh my Goddess," Christine breathed. "Tamika."

Mac's head jerked up. "Who's Tamika?"

She stared at him. "Gilraen's niece, of course. She was
born just four months ago. Kalen and I went to the naming feast. You were touring in Japan at the time, I believe.
But I can't believe you've forgotten, Mac. Faerie births
happen, what, about once or twice every decade?"

Mac's cheeks heated. He had forgotten. Some bloody
fine Guardian he was. Faeries were extremely longlived-once they reached adulthood. Their children were
few, and as fragile as human juveniles. "Right. I remember now."

"Gilraen's not sure the infant will survive," Kalen added
quietly.

Christine clutched little Elspeth. "How horrible. Who
could have done such a thing? A demon?"

Kalen shook his head. "A demon's death spell would
have left a blazing trail. Whoever did this... according to
Gilraen, they left no trace at all."

"Impossible," Mac muttered, crumpling the parchment
in his fist. "Death magic always leaves a mark."

It had damn well left its stain on him.

A gaggle of skinny-arsed fangirls, accompanied by the tall,
pasty-faced photog, were camped on the beachhead across
the channel from Kalen's island. How the hell had they
tracked him from Inverness? Gritting his teeth, Mac glamoured his way around them and extracted the Norton from
its hiding place. He hit the road with a squeal of rubber.
Enhancing the cycle's excellent motor with a high-speed
charm, he arrived in the vicinity of Gilraen Ar-Finiel's village in under an hour.

The little man lay in wait at the edge of a meadow, at a
point where the human road ran closest to his village. The
instant Mac braked, the faerie darted out from behind a
clump of moor grass, waving his hat frantically.

Mac hopped off the cycle and listened to Gilraen's
impassioned recount of the death-magic attack on his
village.

"You had no warning?" Mac asked when Gilraen came
up for air. "None at all?"

Gilraen twisted his leaf hat in his hands, his gossamer
wings drooping down his back. The faerie's green coat
was rumpled, the tip of his short beard had lost its point,
and his normally rosy skin had gone several shades toward sallow.

"I swear on sweet Annwyn, Mac Lir, there were nothing.
No hint of trouble at all. No scent of death magic. And
then..." He swallowed visibly, his Adam's apple bulging.
"The clan started falling ill. 'Twas slight at first... small pains in the head, minor cramps of the stomach. Then
came dizziness, gloom, anger. Elders started fighting, the
young ones wouldna stop wailing. But little Tamika-she
was too weak even to cry. That's when we knew 'twas a
death spell. Thank the gods ye were close by."

"About that," Mac said, "how did you know where I was?"

"Why, your fan blog, of course. MacTracker. Updates
daily, it does. Sometimes twice in a day."

Mac blinked at him. "Your village is online?"

"Aye. We got a satellite uplink last spring, so we could
follow your world tour. Yesterday's post said you'd gone to
Kalen's after that last show in Inverness. Gave road directions and all."

Bloody hell. That certainly explained the fans camped
on the beach. But how had the blogger known?

"I e-mailed Kalen, of course," Gilraen went on, "but I
know the man never checks his account. So I sent a falcon
as well."

"Smart of you." Shoving aside the acute annoyance his
unrelenting fans engendered, Mac refocused on Gilraen.
"How are the young ones doing now? Tamika, especially.
Your healer is attending them, I assume."

"Aye, so she is. The older bairns are recovering, 'tis
true. But the wee one..." The leaf hat crumpled, and a
single tear tracked down Gilraen's leathery cheek. "She's
verra bad off, Mac Lit. I fear... I fear she's dying."

Mac's gut clenched. "No. I'll take her to Annwyn at
once. She'll heal there."

Gilraen shook his head. "We'd have brought her to the
gates already, if 'twere possible. 'Tis not. Her heart flutters like hummingbird wings, and her breath is the faintest
whisper. She canna be moved."

"Why didn't you bring her immediately? As soon as you
realized what had happened?"

"By then Was already too late. The spell struck that
quickly and caught us unaware. We thought this type of evil finished with, we did. The clan's seen nary a demon or
ogre in over a year." The lines bracketing Gilraen's mouth
deepened. "Ye assured us it was safe to leave the protection
of the city, Mac Lir. We returned to the countryside with
high hopes."

The reproach hit home with a painful strike that made
Mac feel like the lowest of worms. He'd spent the last year
roaming the world-performing, brooding, grabbing stale
pleasures. If he'd been home in the Highlands, alert and
looking after his responsibilities, he might have neutralized this threat before it occurred.

The spell-caster had left no trail, Gilraen had said. And
yet... Mac frowned, concentrating. Faeries were highly
sensitive to magic, but Mac's senses were infinitely sharper.
He inhaled deeply. There was a whiff of spent death magic
in the air. The barest trace.

It was a sour stench, like milk left out in the sun. Such
rankness was only to be expected where death magic was
concerned. But what took Mac by surprise was the accompanying undercurrent of... sweetness. Like lilacs in springtime. Like laughter. Like life magic.

Now, that was exceedingly odd.

For the first time in months, Mac's curiosity stirred.

"What it is, Mac Lir?" Gilraen's wings lifted and buzzed.
"What do ye sense? Demons? Unseelies?"

"Neither. There's a residue of death magic, yes, but
there are traces of a life magic spell as well."

"Death and life magic, cast together? It makes no
sense!"

"You're right. It doesn't," Mac murmured. "But both
kinds of magic were cast here. And I'm certain there was
only one spell-caster."

"But who?"

"A human, most likely. Very few races other than humans can handle both death and life magic." But none, to
his knowledge, did so simultaneously.

Gilraen gave his beleaguered hat another half twist. A
stray leaf fluttered to the ground. "What human would
harm a faerie child? Faeries are good luck for humanfolk."

True enough. Which only made the situation that much
more bizarre. Mac scrubbed a hand over his face, momentarily startled by the scratch of whiskers. Six months earlier, after seven hundred years of not needing a razor, his
beard had come in with a vengeance. He still couldn't get
used to it. He felt like a bloody werewolf under the full
moon.

The rage bubbling inside him was certainly worthy of a
werewolf. What scum of a human would dare harm a
faerie infant? He itched to start tracking the villain, but
right now the sick child was his first priority. "Take me to
Tamika, Gilraen. Gods willing, I'll be able to heal her."

Gilraen's wings buzzed. "I hope so, Mac Lit. I hope so."

Dear Goddess. She'd gone too far this time. Too, too far.

And now an infant lay dying.

Artemis Black gripped her moonstone pendant, her
clenched fist pressing into the hollow at the base of her
throat, and held herself very, very still. Bile burned in
her throat; the Cadbury chocolate-and-hazelnut bar she'd
gulped in lieu of breakfast churned in her stomach. The
faerie clan's life essence, trapped inside the pendant, burned
her palm.

Her senses were raw; she could feel every nuance of the
energy bound to the stone. The panic and fear of the young
ones, the grief and anger of the elders. But those sensations
were new, and faint. Far more vivid was the life of the
faeries before she'd cast her spell: fellowship and feasting,
dances under the moon, the exhilaration of flight.

It was all hers now. Stolen in the most underhanded,
shameful way.

Her grip on the stone tightened. Pain sliced through
her palm. She did not let go.

She deserved to be hurt. Deserved contempt and loathing.
What she was doing was wrong, but she'd never meant it
to go this far. Normally, she excluded the young ones
from her spells, but today she'd decided to cast her net a
little wider. Time was running out, and she'd wanted this
to be the last village.

It hadn't seemed so bad when she started. Faerie life
essence was so strong-an embarrassment of magical riches,
really. She took so little from each village, relatively speaking. Until now, the effects of her theft had been negligible. A headache here, a pain there. Vague anxiety, soon
forgotten. With each magical heist, the moonstone glowed
a little brighter-and what, really, had been the cost to the
faeries? Nothing. The last six villages hadn't even known
they'd been robbed.