The Sea Thy Mistress (33 page)

“Good,” she taunted. “Strike me, pet. Fight me.”

His nails pressed into his palms. He ached to hit her, crush her, make her hurt. To assert his power over her.
I am going to find a way to make you pay for what you did to my son.

“I couldn’t hurt you,” he said, remembering the lithe capability in her body, the easy force with which she’d straight-armed him against the door of his house with her fingertips.

She smiled, eyes sparkling in the darkness like the moonlit sea. “It might be amusing if you tried.”

He forced his hands open, stood straight, looked her dead in the eye. “I’m not interested in amusing you.”

“How about serving me in other ways? I know you want to hit me. Wipe this smile off my face.…” It widened, and she curled the fingers of both hands toward herself, a beckoning gesture.

He shook his head, rearranging his face until he hoped he looked amused.
I just have to keep her here long enough for the cavalry to arrive. No fear,
he thought.
Nothing to be scared of, Cahey. It’s just a little pain.…

“You can’t hit me,” she taunted. “You’re a coward.”

“I won’t hit you,” he said, and let his hands fall limp at his sides.

Her next blow was a kick, direct to the diaphragm, and then another that was aimed at his chin but took him in the shoulder as he twisted aside. He nearly swung back at her but asserted himself, chose not to.

Two, three.

He knew how this worked. When they were that much stronger than you, fighting only made it worse. He just had to take it, and just hope she didn’t get bored or he didn’t get unconscious before Cath and the girls got there.

Cathmar shouldn’t have to bloody his hands with this.
And there wasn’t a thing in the world Cahey could do about it.

He licked his lips. “Would it be easier for you to justify this if I fought back? Because I’m not going to. Pet.”

Her left fist thumped just under his rib cage. He doubled over, gagging, straightened up again.

Four.

He wasn’t frightened anymore. The anger rushing through him was a clear stream, a powerful, directed river.
Is this what wrath feels like?

Despite the channeled rage, he found his voice calm, infuriatingly level. “Would you feel better if you had an excuse to hit me?”

A kick to the side of the knee. Agony coupled with an awful crunching sound.

Five.

He gasped, somehow stayed on his feet, without the concentration to will the damage gone. “It’s all about the power with you, isn’t it? Breaking me. Owning Cath. Taking Muire’s place … as if you ever could.”

She laughed, wiping a spatter of blood off her cheek, necklace sparkling. “I am a goddess, pet.”

“No,” he said, earning another blow,
six,
“you
were
a goddess. Now you’re a mean old bitch with control issues.”

She broke his nose. He went down on one knee, Alvitr’s sheath cracking on the stones.

Seven.

“You know,” he said around the blood in his mouth. “
She
never had to lie to get me in bed with her.”

Oh, that might have been a mistake.

The fury in her face cleared, but what replaced it made him cold all over. She grabbed him by the queue, tilted his head back, bent over him. She spoke in a low, controlled tone. “Summon your mistress, pet. Call her up. Maybe she can save you.”

“No,” he said. That was what she’d been after all along. Getting Muire to come to him. To her.

“Say her name!” She doubled fist into fist, swung upward with her shoulder in it. The blow connected under his chin. He toppled backwards on the cold stone.

Eight.

Her words came in rhythm with the blows. “Call her. Damn you. Say her name.”

nine

ten

eleven

twelve …

He lost count.

Stone chill against his face, he wondered bitterly if she’d counted on his ability to take a beating, or if she really intended to kill him with her hands.

The second time a rib snapped, he had to assume she did. He tried to roll away, and she kicked him again. “Get up, you son of a bitch,” she snarled. “Get up and fight me!”

“No,” he said around the taste of blood. “I’m not going to bait your trap.”

Then her boot struck his temple, and it didn’t hurt much anymore.
This is what Mingan intended the Imogen for,
he realized.
This fight. She told me she was a weapon, and I never listened.

The enraged goddess stood over him. He had a clear view of her boots, blue leather smeared with his blood. He thought it was a fitting image, and would have chuckled if he could have drawn breath. Pain lanced through his right side, though, and there was more blood in his mouth than there should have been.

Punctured lung,
he thought, and the moonlit sky overhead went red.

*   *   *

“Light,” Selene said, watching the struggling figures by the chapel on the bluff. No. Not struggling. One attacking. The other—unresisting. Getting hit.

“Come
on
!” Cathmar yelled, lurching forward, out from under the eaves of the little cottage with the blue tile roof. Selene’s quick ears picked up what he said next, barely aloud. “Come on, angel steed; we need you now.” She glanced over at Aethelred, who jerked his chin after the boy. Aithne was already running in pursuit.

Bright One,
she prayed,
hear Cathmar and bring Mingan back fast.

“Go,” Aethelred said.

She didn’t nod, just pelted after the other two, a long forever as they crossed the beach, an eternity scrabbling up the trail behind in a shower of small stones.

She would have run Cath over if she hadn’t checked herself. As it was, she reached the top of the bluff overlooking the ocean a half-stride behind him, hitting Heythe low—claws and teeth bared—a second after Cathmar hit her high, grabbing at her throat.

For all the help that gave them. The goddess shrugged the angels aside as if they were irritable puppies. Cathmar struck the paving stones neck and shoulders first and Selene didn’t see him trying to rise. Being Selene, and once Black Silk,
she
landed on her feet and came up with Solbiort in her hand, but the crystal sword stayed dark.

She had enough time to see the goddess backhand Aithne across the face, sending her sprawling, Sceadhu gouging sparks out of the flagstones.
Aithne
had had the sense to draw her blade before she piled into Heythe, not that it helped.

“That will do you no good,” Heythe said calmly, her eyes meeting Selene’s. “But you’re welcome to try it.”

Far below, the ocean tossed and hissed and tore.

“Yes,” Heythe said. She turned her back on Selene and walked over to the edge of the bluff. Spreading her arms wide, she looked out at the moonlit sea. “Well,” she said, “come and get me, then. Save them. Your lover, your friends, your son. All you have to do … is intervene.”

Over the ocean, something began to shine. Light rippled, pooling as if everything else fell into shadow and all the radiance were drawn to one place, one point. What rose up from the sea, then, was enormous: serpentine but not a serpent, a fell tendriled beast wrought of Light.

Looming over the chapel and the bluff, casting a light instead of a shadow, she
hissed.

Selene knew her by her eyes.

“Muire,” she said. “Holy fuck.”

Which is when a motion caught her eye, and she saw the figure—gleaming with chrome—stagger down the beach to the sea, far below.

*   *   *

Aethelred scrambled across the moonlit sand, racing the stronger figures scaling the cliff trail. He was glad they had left him—glad and sorrowful, for they never would have permitted what he intended, but he would have liked to say farewell.

He saw the Wyrm come out of the water, and he cursed his slow feet.
Hurry, old man, hurry.

“One last favor for my kids,” he muttered, as he splashed into the surf, shoes and all.

The Wyrm coiled her head back, ready to strike a killing blow at the slender blond figure who taunted her with the lives of her loved ones, far overhead.

Aethelred drew breath deep and shouted her name. In midstrike, she pulled her blow. That great head slanted aside and struck only air.

“Muire!” he shouted. “Bearer of Burdens! By moonlight, earth and ocean, I summon you!”

Massive as a sledgehammer, the vast blunt nose swung down to him. S
PEAK
.

“I beg an intervention.”

Cool mist enfolded him. Sorrowful, vast silver eyes filled up with starlight looked down into him. A
ETHELRED
, she said. I
WOULD HAVE HAD YOU SERVE ME LIVING
,
BRAVEST ONE
.

“I’ll serve you any way I can, old girl.” He jerked his staff up at the slender blond figure raging on the cliff. “Her I won’t serve at all.”

Y
OU KNOW THE PRICE
. Aethelred thought he’d never heard anything as sad as her voice in that moment.

“The deal is made, my lady,” he answered. Across the ocean, a great wave was building. He saw the swell, felt the undertow suck at his legs as it came.

He closed his eyes. He heard an enraged feline yowl—Selene screaming, somewhere very far away.

The water fell over him.

*   *   *

Although distracted by the figure on the beach, Selene hoped to see the Grey Wolf step out of the shadows, catch Heythe by the throat, end her life with a gesture.

Around the hope, Selene knew that this enemy was beyond even Mingan’s power.

And then she understood what Aethelred was doing.

“Aethelred,
NO
!” She almost went over the cliff, as if in some bizarre supposition that she could reach him in time. Cathmar, prone on the flags, apparently conscious after all, grabbed her ankle and she fell hard, facedown on the stones.

She rolled aside in time to see what happened.

There was blood on the Wyrm’s insubstantial face when she rose once more.

A
N INTERVENTION HAS BEEN PURCHASED
. H
EYTHE
,
WOULD YOU STILL TRADE BLOWS WITH ME NOW
?

On the sharpness of nausea Selene realized that that was what Mingan and Aethelred wouldn’t tell anybody. That any of them could buy Muire’s intervention with a life.

I was the price the Wolf wouldn’t pay.

“All right,” Heythe said, with a cold satisfaction. “Not what I bargained to buy, and a harder battle, but I can fight this war, too.”

Selene swore she saw the Serpent smile.

And Selene’s heart locked hard in her chest when she saw Heythe smile in return, reach out into the silver-white Light surrounding the Wyrm, grab and twist and
pull.

The Light shredded and stretched, settling around the goddess’ shoulder like a cloak, threading her hair. Gold, darker and richer than the pure moonlit blue of the Wyrm’s aura, spread creeping feelers along the Light.
Where’s her necklace?
Selene squinted into the brightness, but Heythe’s neck shone naked ivory in the tangled light.

Heythe faced the Wyrm, bound in unspoken struggle. Radiance surrounded both, blue-white shot through with golden threads. It pulsed like a heartbeat, and now the Wyrm’s white Light predominated, and now Heythe’s hard hot light like the sun.

Heythe faced the Wyrm. The wrong direction to notice the bloody figure of Cahey dragging himself to his feet. Selene, nearly taking a half step forward, saw him reach down and painfully fumble Alvitr’s peace strings loose before dragging her from her broken sheath.

Selene didn’t dare move, lest she catch Heythe’s peripheral vision and cause her to turn her head.

Slowly, silently, blood that gleamed black in the moonlight bubbling from his mouth, Cahey came up behind the goddess. Selene held her breath.

He stalked Heythe like a cat stalking a bird. The pounce was catlike, too: in an instant, he clutched a fistful of golden hair in his left hand, laid the blade of his sword across her throat, and dragged her head back.

Selene’s quick ears picked the words out of his amused whisper. “I wondered, ‘pet,’ why you never
would
kiss me.” Blue eyes flared, starlit. He crushed his blood-slick mouth down on hers.