Wolfsbane: 3 (Rebel Angels) (21 page)

I slipped hesitantly off the bed and went to him. Seth glanced at me, then gave a mirthless laugh before rolling his head round to press his forehead to the cold stone. ‘Finn, are you
never going to take good advice?’

‘You’re not my Captain in this room.’

He shook his head; then his face darkened and he pressed his forehead against the stone again. I reached out, but though I’d stroked my fingertips across the scars not long before, had
wrapped my arms around his shoulders and pulled him fiercely against me, now he flinched away from even the threat of my touch.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘Leave me alone.’

Anger tightened the muscles around my lungs so that I could hardly breathe. I laced my fingers into his hair to turn his face to me, then took it in my hands. There were tears at the corner of
his eyes, and I wiped them away with my thumbs. He’d done that for me once, a very long time ago, and the memory was sudden and piercing. ‘It’s like this? Every night?’

He gave a dry laugh and pressed his forehead to mine. Its heat was intense but I made myself stay still. ‘More or less. It’s a long time since she last made me cry. She knows, Finn.
Didn’t I tell you she’d go spare?’

I pulled back a little, examining his body. His arms and chest were hacked about with the superficial scars of four hundred years. There were layers of them, some fainter, some more recent. If
you bothered to count them, you could probably date him like a tree. The line of his obliques was distorted by a deep ugly dent below his ribcage that hadn’t been there thirteen years ago. I
raised my hand to push the black hair away from his ear to see again what I’d seen earlier, the straight clean line of the top of his ear where a centimetre of it had been sliced off, and the
long corresponding scar on the side of his scalp. He didn’t flick me away as I thought he might, only folded his arms and studied my eyes.

‘I bet it takes a lot to make you cry,’ I said.

He smiled. Then his pupils dilated and his lips parted in shock. He flung the palm of his hand up against my forehead and shoved me away. ‘Get out. Get out! Don’t be
stupid.’

Too late. Recoiling, I yelped once like a scalded dog before my breath stopped in my lungs. When I breathed again it was through clenched teeth. It wasn’t my pain but I could feel the echo
of it even now between my shoulder blades.

I swore on a high breath.

‘You numpty.’ He cupped my head in one hand and drew my face into the hollow of his shoulder. I could taste his skin against my gritted teeth, could feel the sting of pity in my
heart turning to a wintry rage.

‘If it wasn’t for Rory,’ he said, almost to himself, ‘I’d have met her long ago. I’d put an end to it one way or the other, but there’s Rory. And now
there’s you and I’ve made you a promise.’ His thumb stroked the back of my head idly. ‘I can’t take the gamble.’

The casual touch of his thumb against my scalp at last began to calm me down, loosening my rage-clenched jaw. ‘I’ll kill her for you.’

He pushed me away. ‘You will not.
Will not.
If I ever have to kill her it’ll be on my hands, no-one else’s.’ His fingers tightened in my hair. ‘When my
brother needed an end made to him Eili had to do it, because I was up to my neck in shame. His blood is on my hands, Finn. I won’t have his lover’s too. Not unless it runs off my own
blade.’

I’d never heard that dead note in his voice. ‘I hate her,’ I whispered.

Seth pulled me back against him. ‘Don’t do that.’ His voice gentled. ‘She’s loyal to Conal, and she spared him a terrible death. Of course it warped her.’

‘That was
a long time ago.
I’m grateful to her, okay?’ I hissed. ‘But Conal wouldn’t want her kind of loyalty. She’s warped all right. She’s a
hater.’

‘So don’t turn into one yourself. Then she would have beaten you. And me.’

Hesitantly I kissed his lower lip. He let me, his breathing quickening with happiness and lust. ‘And there’s another thing anyway. You’re not good enough, Dorsal Finn.’
His teeth flashed. ‘She’d slice you like a ham.’

I bit his lip hard, making him wince. ‘I’m not good enough
yet.
’

‘Yet,’ he agreed with a wary grin, touching a thumb to his lip. ‘Anything you say. I’ve taken enough of a hammering for one night.’ Thoughtfully he said,
‘She’s finished for now.’

‘So come back to bed.’ I took his hand. ‘Only, Seth? There’s a bloody great
w
olf
in it.’

‘Aw, Finn.’ He gave me a spaniel look. ‘He isn’t well. And he’s only at the foot of it.’

‘Two words, Seth. No. Fecking. Way.’

‘That’s three. Just a few nights, Finn. I promise. Then he’s back on the hearth rug.’

‘If he isn’t, the raven gets to roost on the headboard.’

‘Oh, gods.’ He looked heavenwards. ‘What have I let myself in for?’

The first grey fingers of dawn were silvering the window ledge an hour later before I was sure Seth was deeply asleep, enough for me to risk a glance at Branndair. The wolf’s yellow eye
was open, looking right at me.

Cautiously I craned my head over Seth’s arm to get a better look. There was crystal clarity in that eyeball. Not much sign of a concussion now. I opened my mind to the wolf.

In a pig’s ear you’re not well
, I told him.

His eye sparking gold, Branndair raised his head, his jaws opening in a knowing grin. I knew when I was beaten, so I grinned back.

‘I don’t suppose it occurred to you to ask me,’ said Rory. Perched on the top rail of the paddock fence, he was rubbing oil into a bridle like he wanted to
erode the leather altogether.

‘No,’ said Seth. Stripped to the waist in the summer sun, he hammered on a fencepost as I stared at his tattoo. Conal had one the same, Eili said. Only Conal’s was presumably
not distorted by a traitor’s flogging.

Nobody else was working on the fence. Three men and a woman were hacking pretend lumps out of each other, sword-practising in a roped-off section of the courtyard; Sulaire the cook was
butchering a deer carcass in the open air, cheerfully drenched in blood to his elbows. Branndair was darting between his cast-off scraps and three kids who had nothing better to do than rub his
tummy and pretend to run away.

I got the feeling the rest of the clann were delicately avoiding Seth and Finn and Rory.

As for me, Seth hadn’t met my eyes since breakfast. He was avoiding me, the treacherous miserable coward. But I watched his every move, almost every second: mending fences in the sun when
he ought to be dead. And my father should be cantering that black horse round the arena. My father, not the black-haired bitch who’d stolen Rory’s.

W
hat right does she have to your father’s horse?

Taghan had said that; Taghan, with her quiet smile and her green eyes that saw everything. Eili had brought her to me, had leaned back silent on the balcony wall, knowing she herself had said
all she needed to say.

W
hat right did she have to your father’s love?
Taghan had asked me, turning her dagger in her fingers. The picture of Conal and the baby Finn lay between us, so that my
own father stared resentfully at me.
Finn MacAngus is the girl Conal was fathering when he should have been a father to you. And how did she repay him?

By getting him killed.
I’d heard the whole story by then.

Taghan inclined her head, lips quirking.
Seth was the true betrayer, but Finn left Cù Chaorach even before he did. She abandoned the man who brought her up, and all for the empty
flattery of Kate NicNiven.

I had my first twinge of doubt then.
I thought she was captured? I thought they took her?

And she stayed of her own free will. Seduced by Kate, and for a few sweet words. My brother went to Kate out of belief and honour, centuries before Finn was born. And when the fickle bitch
changed her mind at last, she sent Seth to kill him. My big brother, Hannah. Finn didn’t turn her coat in time to save Cù Chaorach
– Taghan gave Eili a lingering look
–
but Seth was in plenty of time to kill Feorag.

Taghan’s voice was so low and calm that when Eili finally spoke I nearly jumped out of my skin.

T
here are some who say Seth has paid for what he did to your father, Hannah. There are some. But no-one believes Finn has paid.

I glanced from one woman to the other, alarmed.

Come, now.
When Eili tried to be soothing, it was like the madness burned through her like a visible thing. Her eyes were embers.
We don’t want her dead. We want her gone. And
so do you.

Taghan laid down her dagger then, right on top of the photograph, and clasped her hands.

I never knew my brother as I should have done. I was so young when he went over to Kate. I never agreed with what he did, but I knew why he did it. I’d have liked the chance to talk to
him.
She touched her fingers to her temple.
Instead I felt him die.

Eili came round behind me, laid her hands on my shoulders, bent her lips to my ear.
Why should Seth have Finn, Hannah? When Taghan never had Feorag, and you never had y
our
father?

Why indeed.
Y
ou won’t hurt her?

W
e
’ll send her away, that’s all. We’ll send her away so she can never come back. Just make sure she comes to us.
Eili glanced at Taghan, who was
sliding her polished blades one after the other into her belt.
Get Finn away from Seth, and bring her. I know the best place. The
only
p
lace. That’s all you have to do,
Hannah. We’ll take care of the rest.

I shook my head.
Finn won’t just come. Why would she come with me?

T
here’s only one way to make sure she does.
Taghan smiled up at me.
She’s bound to Seth. She has responsibilities to him, and to his. Do it.

It’s not as if we’ll hurt her,
said Eili.

Did I honestly believe them? Maybe not completely, but I believed them enough. Perhaps I didn’t want Finn dead, but I certainly didn’t want her happy.

And she looked far too happy now, here, despite the atmosphere. There was a shine in her eyes that was not a bit like the insane glow of Eili’s, and the looks she cast Seth made me want to
throw up.

‘I see, Father. You didn’t think you should ask me if you were planning to bind.’ Fiercely Rory rubbed the bridle’s cheekpiece. ‘So did you think you might tell me,
then?’

‘I’m telling you now,’ said Seth.

The black horse shook its arched neck as it cantered past, massive hooves sending up duststorms. Rory shot Finn a hateful glare, but too late to connect, so he turned it on Seth instead.
‘Don’t you think it’s my business who you sleep with?’

‘No.’ Seth wrenched out a length of rotten wood and took a splinter out of his finger with his teeth. ‘No, Rory, I really don’t.’

Rory examined the bridle’s browband, picking at a loose piece of stitching. ‘Funny how things change. You never used to let them come between us. You never stayed the night with any
of them. I used to wake you up at dawn, remember? I used to crawl in beside you. You were always there. You were always in your own bed.’ He raised his voice. ‘Even when I knew fine you
hadn’t started out there.’

He’d turned up the volume as Finn rode by once more. She didn’t react, except to shoot him a look of understanding. I hated her even more.

Seth slammed a mallet into the new fencepost, then shoved his hair out of his eyes with a forearm. ‘I’m not letting anybody come between us now, Rory. Nobody’s trying.’
He gave me a direct stare and said through his teeth: ‘Well. Finn isn’t.’

‘Right. Now that’s out in the open, anything else you haven’t told me?’

‘Nothing you need to know.’ Seth sucked his bleeding finger. At last he glanced my way, and I stared levelly back.

He seemed thoughtful, but he didn’t try to read my mind. Too much on his, I thought contemptuously, and just the one thing as well.

Beside Seth, at the gap in the broken fence, the black horse halted, snorting and pawing the sand, and Finn slipped off its back. I couldn’t look at her. If I did I might scream,
That’s not your horse, you thieving bitch.
Finn was scowling at me, but I was blocking my mind the way Eili had taught me. It wasn’t hard; it came easily and naturally, and
Seth in particular was easy to block. I knew why that was. He didn’t want to look, didn’t want to know.

‘You know, Rory,’ said Seth, ‘if you’re at a loose end there’s plenty needs doing around here. There’s ditches need clearing down in the lower
fields.’

Rory bit his lip hard enough to hurt. ‘I’m your son.’

‘What does that mean? You’re too good to clear ditches? Because you’re not.’

‘No,’ Rory spat. ‘It means your love life’s your business, but I’d have liked to know before
Eili.’

For a long time no-one spoke.
Explain that to him
, I thought with an inward grin.

Getting his breath back, Seth rubbed his temples. ‘Eili only knew because she…’

‘Because she what? Go on.’

‘Because she pried,’ Finn interrupted.

‘Pried, did she?’ Rory’s sneer gave him a distinct look of his father. ‘How devious. How underhand. How very
Finn MacAngus
.’

Seth hissed through his teeth. ‘Watch that mouth, sunshine. You’re not too big for a skelping.’

‘I think you’ll find I am.’

‘Then you can get your arse to the armoury and find yourself a practice sword. This arena, five minutes.’

‘Gladly, since it’s your answer to everything.’ Rory kicked a stone viciously, sending it spinning past his father’s ear. Seth didn’t dodge, only bared his teeth as
Rory turned and slouched towards the armoury.

I smirked; Seth glowered at me. Finn said, ‘That went well.’

‘If I could give him a spell in somebody else’s army, he’d be out of here.’ Seth rubbed his face.

‘The trouble is,’ said Finn, ‘he’s right.’

‘Oh, not you too.’