Wolfsbane: 3 (Rebel Angels) (48 page)

‘I’ll tell you later. Right now we’re getting out of here. All of us.’ He stood up and drew her to her feet, then glanced up and went to the window. Smoke was rising from
the courtyard in a black column, fires were leaping up around the ramparts and in a great semicircle around the gate. For a moment, he shut his eyes.

‘Look, Finn. Our dead are giving us some breathing space. Let’s not waste it.’

I sat on one of the huge oak tables, counting the clann as they stumbled through the hole in the kitchen wall. I did not like the total I’d reached, and there were very
few of them left waiting their turn in the hall with their hastily gathered belongings. Even accounting for the men and women left on the ramparts, there were an awful lot missing. The missing, I
supposed, were the ones piled in the great pyres that burned in every alleyway but one. The remaining pyre in that alleyway would be torched by Seth and Jed and the last guards as they withdrew.
Even then I knew my father had doubts about the time they would buy.

My father’s dun was burning. I wondered what Kate would be thinking right now. Probably that Seth’s people had despaired over the loss of their Captain and his son, that they had
grown sick of the stench of smoke and death that hung over the place, that they had decided to kill themselves fast and cleanly rather than wait for Kate and her filthy imagination to do it.

Finn said Kate’s greatest weakness was her vanity. All the same, how long would it take her to realise that mass suicide was not what the clann had in mind? Finn knew Kate, she’d
been with her for a while, but I didn’t want to press Finn for any more answers. She was sitting on the floor at the other side of the hall with her head in her hands, and she hadn’t
spoken since Seth had gone out into the dun. He hadn’t let her follow; indeed he’d threatened to lock her up again if the notion so much as crossed her mind.

He’d gone himself, though, despite his own wounds, and despite all Finn’s reasonable, logical, desperate begging. He didn’t want Kate to know he was there, but so what? From
even a short distance he was unrecognisable, and any enemy who got too close did not live long enough to get over their shock and tell Kate.

Hannah limped into the hall in an exhausted daze, Grian gripping her arm. She was bloodied up to the elbows.

‘Here, Rory,’ he called. ‘Take your friend. She’s earned the right to go now, and then some.’

‘I want to stay a bit longer,’ she said dully.

‘You’re not capable any more,’ Grian said as I clasped her hand in mine. ‘There’s nothing more to do anyway. Go.’

She edged so close to me as we stared round the hall together, I put my arm around her shoulder. ‘Was it awful?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said shortly. She gulped hard. ‘Rory? There’s a few won’t get through the flood in the tunnel. They just won’t make it.’ She hesitated, and
slight hysteria crept into her voice. ‘I think that’s why Grian sent me away.’

I put my other arm round her too. ‘They’re not going to want to wait for Kate,’ I mumbled. ‘That’s the thing.’

She didn’t say any more, just stood and stared with me as the hall emptied. Distantly there were shouts, screams and the renewed crackle of flames. A deafening bang and short explosions
signalled one of the wind turbines being dragged over.

The pulse of my blood was a racing, powerful drumbeat. Hannah looked at me; I felt hers beat the same rhythm through her skin. And then I realised it wasn’t us; it was the sound of real
drums, and a rising sinister howling.

‘She’s coming,’ I said.

Finn’s head jerked up and we followed her gaze as the last defenders raced into the hall. Seth was last in, fresh blood on his sword, and he stood at the door counting heads, barking
questions at Jed and the bloody, almost unrecognisable Iolaire. When he was satisfied with their answers and with his own head count, his eyes closed. I knew he was scanning the whole dun, and when
he was finished he looked up and said, ‘Rory?’

‘Dad.’

‘Then we’re all here.’ He and Jed and Iolaire swung the doors shut and heaved the barricade into place. Half-blinded with blood, Iolaire staggered back, close to collapse, and
Jed caught his arm. Jed flinched as Iolaire’s elbow brushed his arrow wound, and I frowned, but before I could say a word, Jed had turned to give me a ferocious warning glare. I took a step
back and shut my mouth.

Seth was still for a fleeting, tantalising moment more. Distantly, as someone Saw his mind, a monstrous screech of female rage rose above the turmoil, silencing even the drums and the war
howls.

‘We have a few minutes,’ said my father with a note of satisfaction. ‘Get going.’

‘She’ll know where we are.’ There was panic in Hannah’s voice. ‘She’ll know where we’ve gone and she’ll come after us.’

‘She’ll work it out, but it’ll take her a while to find the tunnel. And when Rory’s sealed the Veil she can’t follow. She needs a watergate, like everybody else.
Like everyone but Rory.’ Seth grinned at me.

One man pushed forward through the remaining clann. ‘I’ll stay, Murlainn. It’ll give you a little extra time to get to the gap in the Veil.’ As Seth opened his mouth to
argue, the man lifted his hand to his long brown hair and pushed it back from his temples and forehead, and whatever Seth had been going to say remained in his throat. Instead he stepped forward
and embraced him tightly.

‘Righil.’ He stepped back. ‘Don’t let her take you.’

‘No way.’ Righil laughed unsteadily and caressed the handle of his dirk.

‘
I’m staying too
.’

Another figure shoved past me to stand by Righil, and my breath stopped in my throat. Cadaverous where the others were thin, his body was bloodied and bruised and his eyes were sunk in deep dark
hollows in his skull. His once-immaculate goatee had grown into a ragged dirty beard, but the hair on his head had been hacked off, leaving grotesque half-healed wounds in his scalp.

Seth stared at him. ‘I see no grey on you, Sionnach.’

Hannah gave a shocked cry, then tugged free of me and ran to Sionnach. ‘YOU’RE NOT STAYING!’ she yelled in his face.

Just for an instant, shock thawed the blank freezing pain in his face, and something sparked in his brown eyes. Hannah seized her moment. Grabbing him by one bloody hand, she hauled him into the
tunnel mouth. He cast one stunned look back at Seth, and then he was gone.

Righil turned to face the barricaded door, unsheathing his sword as the screams of the frustrated attackers drew closer and something heavy crashed against the door. He glanced back over his
shoulder as if unable to believe we were still standing there. ‘
Go!
’ he yelled. ‘Hurry!’

I darted into the tunnel as my father grabbed the snarling Branndair by the scruff of the neck and yanked him in too. Lifting the last flashlight Seth took Finn’s hand, but Finn was
looking up at him in shock as he pulled her after him. ‘Righil… why…’

‘Didn’t you see?’ Seth wasn’t looking at her as he hauled on a lever and shoved on the door with his shoulder. Beside him Finn and I shoved too, and it began to grind
into place. ‘Grey hairs. Righil only has a few weeks left. He’d rather spend them now than run and rot in exile.’

‘A few
weeks?’
Enough weak light still filtered in from the kitchens for me to see that Finn had gone pale.

My father looked hard at Finn as the door swung into place and they were shrouded in darkness. His voice quietened, but I heard the edge to his murmur. ‘I warned you, Caorann.’

Seth switched on the flashlight, making our faces ghostly, and played the light across the blank stone, hesitating as if suddenly reluctant to leave. We could hear no sound beyond it, but I
suspected that was because of the thickness of the stone, not because the noise had stopped. Then we turned and ran. It was easier with light.

It didn’t seem so far this time, but neither Seth nor Finn were in good shape and they were gasping and panting in the cold stale air when they came to a halt. I was anxious about them
both. Distantly there was a scraping of stone on stone, ferocious vengeful shouts, footsteps breaking into a run and swiftly joined by many more.

Then I was concentrating on the Veil again, feeling in my bones the moment when we stepped through the gaping hole. In Seth’s torch beam still water glinted, a tiny tremor left on its
surface from the last of our people to pass through the flood. I felt for the edge of the ripped Veil, but as my fingers closed on something we all hesitated, Branndair growling deep in his
throat.

The shouts had stopped, but the voiceless pack sounded louder now, deadlier, the pelting footsteps magnified by the tunnel and far closer already. Finn took a scared breath and held it in the
echoing chamber, and we waited for what seemed an age too long.

Seth said desperately, ‘I can’t drop my block again, Finn. Righil? I need to know.’

A brief pause, and ‘He’s dead,’ she said. She was weeping but her voice was clear and steady. ‘Let’s go. Let’s
go.
’

My father turned to me. ‘Rory,’ he said, stepping back. ‘Close the Veil.’

‘Dad,’ said Rory dangerously. ‘Dad, where did you get the boat?’

Seth didn’t answer, too busy frowning at the chart in front of him and biting his nails, looking from the chart to the sea and back with unnerving frequency.

Rory tried again. ‘Dad, did you steal this boat?’

Seth affected a look of wounded shock. ‘We do not
steal
, Rory. We borrow.
Rent
. The owner will get it back, and there’ll be money in the cabin, and if he’s
the superstitious type his grandchildren will be bored sick hearing about the night his boat was borrowed by the Little People. We’re doing him a favour.’ He winked. One hand on the
wheel, he risked a glance up at a fading moon streaked with cloud. ‘It’s almost morning.’

It had taken a good many trips across the sea loch and back to get everyone to the other side, and Rory was glad this was the last time. Must have been a while since Seth sailed a boat anywhere
but into the ocean off the dun, and anywhere at all on this side of the Veil. Rory hadn’t told Seth he was reading the sea chart upside down, in case it was too much of a blow to his
father’s pride, but it didn’t seem to have made a disastrous difference. The kyle was deep and the tide was racing, but the engine was strong and they had hit no hidden shoals, and Seth
was well used to the route by now.

Hannah knelt at the stern, leaning over to watch the seals. She had parked herself there to be next to Sionnach. His eyes were empty and dazed as he stared into the middle distance, but Hannah
was keeping up a stream of inane chatter in his ear and he occasionally glanced at her in a kind of bewildered shock.

‘Jed,’ said Seth. ‘Want to take over?’

Jed’s skin had a sick greenish tinge, but he sounded cheerful enough. ‘I’ve never driven a boat with an engine.’

‘There’s a coincidence.’ Seth grinned, flexing his left hand. Wincing, he glanced down at it in surprise, and frowned.

‘Now you tell me.’ Jed raised his eyes skywards and took the wheel as Seth sat down beside Rory and stretched his arms. A woman close by was weeping over her sheathed sword as she
wrapped it and her dead lover’s weapon in the same cloth. On the starboard side, someone quietly played on a whistle. Otherwise there was silence as almost all the Sithe on board stared back
in the direction of their lost home.

‘Hey, Dad.’ Rory reached for his hand. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ growled Seth, drawing his other hand down over his face. ‘But tell Carraig if he doesn’t quit playing
Farewell to Fiunary
I’ll stab him
with his own tin whistle.’

Seth rested his arm across his eyes as he leaned back. Rory glanced back at Hannah, still gazing at the bobbing heads of the seals and talking incessantly to Sionnach.

‘Rory,’ said Seth after a moment. ‘You can’t have her.’

Rory tugged his hand out of Seth’s, stiffening. ‘What d’you mean,
can’t?’

‘I mean you mustn’t. Rory. If all you wanted was each other, it’d be fine.’ Seth took his arm away from his eyes, but he went on staring at the sky. ‘But
she’ll get broody, a gràidh. She’ll want kids, and so will you. All of us do, we’re never indifferent. It’s too difficult for us to have them.’

‘So why can’t we?’ Rory’s voice was sullen.

‘Ach, Rory, there’s so much I’ve never told you. I thought I had all the time in the world, and I didn’t. Look, Hannah’s your cousin. You have the same blood and
you can’t mix it. The gene pool’s shallow enough, Laochan.’

‘Oh. That’s what she talked about.’ Rory paused. ‘And that’s why we can’t have kids?’

‘Same as I told you. Not can’t. Mustn’t. Why d’you think we keep track of our families? Why do you learn your birth name to four generations, Rory MacSeth MacGregor
MacLorcan MacLuthais?’

Rory didn’t smile. ‘You’re related to Finn, Dad.’

‘No, Rory. Conal was, but I’m not. He and I had different mothers. And Reultan wasn’t Griogair’s.’

‘Right.’ Rory stood up. ‘Right, Dad. I’ll bear all that in mind.’ He walked back to the stern of the boat, knelt down next to Hannah and put his arm ostentatiously
round her shoulders.

Seth watched him for a moment, then got up and went to Finn. She was propped against the cabin bulkhead, staring back at the grey dawn-lit headland they’d left for the last time. Branndair
lay at her feet, still not speaking to Seth after the indignity of having a bag tied over his head and being dragged with a rope through the flooded section of tunnel. Seth propped himself beside
Finn, their shoulders touching.

He reeked of blood and smoke and sweat and death, but then so did she.

‘You stink,’ she said fondly.

‘You too. I love you.’ As he turned and kissed her, he caught sight of his reflection in the cabin window. ‘Gods,’ he said softly. ‘Sure you still fancy
me?’

She took his face in her hands and kissed the hideous gash on it. ‘I love you more than my life. I’m going to look after you. It’ll be all right, you’ll see.’ She
kissed the cut on his cheekbone, the one on the bridge of his nose, the ugly swelling on his jaw, his half-shut eye that drooped slightly because of the cut nerves. ‘You’re lovely.
Always will be. Can’t help yourself, gorgeous.’ Her lips moved to the next wound, and the next bruise.