Reunion (56 page)

Rónán moved the blade a little, repositioning his grip. The security lighting from outside caught the blade and danced across its engraved surface, mesmerizing the baby. There was a drawn-out silence, as Rónán played the light across the blade. Darragh remained motionless.

"There must be another way." He could hear the note of defeat in his voice; the glimmer of acceptance.

"I wouldn't be here if there was," Rónán replied, still staring down at the baby he was destined to kill. "You know that," he added, looking up at Darragh. "You're just not willing to accept the truth of it yet."

Darragh held out his hand, as if he expected the blade to be handed over, and for this night to be forgotten, somehow. They had to believe he was going to protect them. "They're just babies."

"They are Partition and the destruction that goes with it."

"But they're innocents. Dammit ... they're your own flesh and blood!"

"Tell that to Brydie. And all the others." Rónán gripped the blade tighter and turned back to the cradle, steeling his resolve with a conscious act of will. "They are abominations, bred to cause chaos and strife."

"Maybe we can save them."

"Marie-Claire was right, you know. I see the future, Darragh. So do you. And I dare you to deny the future you see isn't just as filled with chaos and strife because of what these children are, as the future I perceive."

Papa ... what does he mean? Is he mad at us? Is he mad at Marie-Claire? We killed Marie-Claire for you. Why can't we tell what's he's thinking?

Darragh didn't argue with him. Whatever Rónán had seen, it wasn't in his head, so Hope and Calamity couldn't see it either. Was Destiny so clever that he had manipulated this event, this moment, to happen in
this
world, away from magic, so Darragh couldn't know what his brother knew and give the game away?

Turning back to the babies, Ren reached into the cradle with his left hand to pull back the blankets covering the children. The twin who was awake grabbed his finger. Her frightening blue eyes smiling up at him, she squeezed it gently. Darragh watched and tried to think of anything else other than what was about to happen, too appalled to allow it, too afraid to stop it.

"Help me or leave," Rónán told him, just as he did in the dream. "Just don't stand there feigning disgust, as if you had no part in bringing us to this pass."

"Perhaps the future we see isn't ours ..."

"Are you kidding me? Look around you, Darragh." He raised the blade, transfixed by the dangerous blue on blue eyes staring up at him.

"Get the fuck away from that cradle, Ren."

Darragh and Rónán both looked up to find Pete standing in the door, shotgun at his shoulder. Logan was right behind him.

See papa, he can't hurt us. If you can't stop him, we can.

Darragh didn't know if Pete and Logan had been taken over by the babies as everyone else who came near them seemed to be. Everyone but Rónán, who was somehow able to resist their insidious control. It didn't really matter. Even if they had just arrived in time to see Rónán about to murder a newborn baby, their reaction would probably have been the same.

It must have been only seconds; time slowed down for Darragh. He saw Rónán bring the knife down sharply, slicing through the swaddling and fragile ribs without remorse or regret as the flash from the shotgun blinded him. He called out, throwing himself in front of Rónán so his brother could do what must be done before these monsters realized they were powerful enough to do what the
Matrarchaí
wanted of them.

It wasn't about one or two people dying, Darragh realized, in a moment of clarity that made all the nightmares he'd ever suffered gel into a single perfect purpose. It wasn't about killing. It wasn't about right and wrong. It wasn't even about the Undivided, Faerie or human, good or evil.

It was about stopping the universe being reset back to zero and killing every living thing in the process. Creation was protecting itself. They were just the tools the universe needed to set things to rights.

Darragh's moment of clarity seemed eternal, but it couldn't have been more than a split second. His cry of protest was drowned out by the boom of the shotgun and then it vanished to be replaced by a burning, agonizing pain as his chest took the full impact of the shotgun blast at almost point-blank range.

Before Darragh hit the ground, before Rónán could extract the
airgead sídhe
blade from one tiny heart and plunge it into another, he heard an agonized wail and realized it wasn't the babies, it was him.

"Something's wrong."

"Something's wrong. Something's wrong. Something's wrong,"
Echo repeated in a panic, buzzing around like a trapped insect.

Trása peered out of the window of Annad's car at the entrance to the Castle Golf Club. The gates were closed, the rain was pelting down and there was no sign of Pete and Logan, no sign of Ren or Darragh, and no sign of Stella Delany.

"Nothing's wrong," she assured the psychiatrist. And the pixie.

"They should be here by now."

"You don't know that."

"If anything happens to my wife ..."

He didn't finish the sentence, probably because he had nothing to more add. There were few threats a law-abiding Gardaí psychologist could make to a couple of fugitives from another reality that would have much of an impact on them.

"They
are
taking an incredibly long time," Nika pointed out from the back seat.

"They're fine." Trása said it for herself as much as the others.

"We could call them," Annad suggested.

"
Call the, call them, call them
," Echo urged, although nobody paid her any attention.

"How?" Nika scoffed, as if the idea was ludicrous.

"Cell phone," Trása explained, mentally kicking herself for not thinking of it sooner. Of
course
they should call Stella. To cover her annoyance at herself, she turned to Annad and asked possibly the stupidest question she'd ever uttered. "Do you have your wife's cell phone number?"

Annad gave her a look that said he wasn't even going to bother dignifying her question with so much as a nod.

"Okay, then," Trása snapped. "Call her. Wait!"

She grabbed the phone from Annad, found the favourites list and dialed the number for Stella herself, just in case Annad got any ideas about calling somebody else. Like his workmates in the Gardaí.

Stella answered the phone on the second ring. "Annad?"

"No, it's Trása. What's happening?"

"I ... I don't know ..." Stella's voice was vague. Uncertain.

"What do you mean, you don't
know
?"

"I mean I don't know!" Stella snapped more forcefully. "Something happened. Something upstairs ... there were shots ... there're all these people milling about ... it's like they were drugged, or something and they're just coming out of it."

"What happened to Pete? To Logan?"

"I have no idea ... I haven't seen them since ... where are
you
? Where is Annad? What have you done to my husband?"

"Nothing," Trása told her. Stella sounded as if she was just emerging from a deep sleep and getting angrier the more awake she became. "Annad is fine. Where are Pete and Logan? Did they find Rónán? Or Darragh?"

"I don't
know
, I said," Stella barked. "Maybe it was them in the helicopter that took off a little while ago ... but ... you know what ... screw you, lady!"

Trása handed the phone back to Annad. "She hung up on me."

"Is she all right?"

"She sounded just fine. And I'll bet you anything you care to name she's calling the Gardaí as we speak."

Annad's eyes widened in fear. "You can't blame her for -"

"Give it a rest," Trása cut in. "We're not going to kill you, your kids, or anybody else for that matter. We just want to go home. She said a helicopter just took off from there a little while ago. Can you hear anything?"

"What's a helicopter?" Nika asked.

"You'll know it when you see it," Trása promised with a smile. Things were looking up if Pete had been able to commandeer a helicopter. That meant no Gardaí and a clear run to the golf course and the stone circle. With luck, he'd found Rónán and Darragh, and hopefully Rónán still had enough magical power left to open a rift and get them out of this dreadful place. Stella had said something about shots, but she didn't say anything about injuries or people dying, so Trása decided to hope for the best. Maybe someone had taken a shot at them as they were leaving?

I didn't know Pete or Logan knew how to fly a helicopter.

Trása glanced up, but the rain, the thunder and the lightning meant she couldn't see or hear a damn thing. Across the street, the golf club's gates were closed, but they were mostly decorative and the brick fence either side of them was low enough to step over. They could probably drive the car straight through the gates if they wanted, but that would cause unwanted attention. They would be much better off on foot.

"Come on," Trása said, putting her hand on the door latch. "We'll meet them at the circle."

"It's pissing down rain out there!"

"It's only water," Nika pointed out, "and you can only get so wet. Don't be such a baby."

"Why don't I just wait here?"

"And miss your chance to see a rift opening to another reality?" Trása asked, guessing Annad wouldn't want to pass up a chance to either see for himself that they were right, or gloat a little when it was proved they were wrong.

Annad still hesitated. "Are you sure my wife is okay?"

"Yes. I'm sure. Now are you coming or does Nika have to knock you unconscious to keep you from betraying our presence in this realm before we leave?"

"I'll come," Annad said, glancing at Nika with a frown.

Trása opened the car door and was hit with a wall of wind-driven icy rain. Echo zipped past her ear and was gone before she could stop her. The others climbed out of the car and together, bent over against the downpour, the three of them ran across the street, stepped over the fence and headed across the car park toward the fairways and the stone circle.

They reached the second fairway just as the first, faint rhythmic thumps of a helicopter's rotor blades beat their way through the air, and Trása picked up her pace.

It is nearly done,
she realized with relief, not caring about the icy rain.

Rónán and Darragh were almost home. Together, they could tackle anything Marcroy tried to throw at them. They could break the curse on her. They could take their rightful place as the Undivided of their own realm.

She glanced up and spied the helicopter in the distance.

A few more minutes
, she promised herself, determined to believe Rónán would arrive with the power to open the rift.
A few more minutes and we'll be home.

The helo pilot did an admirable job, all things considered, Pete thought. It wasn't easy - and probably against air safety regulations - to fly through weather like this. To do it with a shotgun pressed to your temple was even more heroic.

He spied Trása, Nika and Annad running across the fairway and signaled to the pilot to put down and then glanced over his shoulder. Logan and Ren in the back were working on Darragh, trying to stop the blood loss long enough to get him to the rift. Logan was doing most of the work. Ren cradled Darragh's head in his lap, talking to his brother intently. It was impossible to hear what he was telling him over the noise of the helo. It was possible that Darragh couldn't hear him either. At Ren's feet was a carryall he'd found at the castle, filled with a grotesque souvenir of their visit to this realm.

When they got through to the other side and once they'd sorted Darragh out, Pete intended to have a long and very serious talk to Ren about the contents of that bag.

"Are you sure you can open a rift?" he shouted to Ren as they began to descend. He'd asked Ren the same question back at the castle, in the chaos that followed Darragh diving in front of a shotgun blast, when Ren demanded they highjack the helo so they could get Darragh to the nearest rift and back to a magical realm before he died. So much had happened in such a short time, there had been little chance for anybody to deal with what had happened. Or what they had done.

Ren looked up and nodded. "Trust me!" he shouted back.

"Yeah," Pete muttered to himself, as he turned back to the pilot, "'cause that's worked out so well, lately."

The pilot, a ginger-haired young man, with pale skin that looked positively ashen at the moment, landed the helo with only a slight bump and then looked at Pete expectantly.

"Shut it down," Pete ordered. "All the way down." He didn't want this guy trying to be a hero and taking off while they were disembarking.

The pilot did as Pete ordered. In the back, Logan unlatched the door and kicked it open. He jumped out and then turned to help Ren unload Darragh as Trása ran up to them with Nika and Annad not far behind.

"Are you going to kill me now?" the pilot asked, in the sudden silence once the engines stopped.

"No. Just ..." Pete hesitated. It didn't matter what he told him. The moment they were out of sight, he was going to radio for help. "Give me your cell phone."

The young man reached into his jacket pocket and handed it over with a great deal of reluctance.

"Now cover your ears."

The pilot hastily did what Pete asked when he saw him aiming the shotgun at the radio. Pete let it have both barrels. He wasn't sure if the buckshot was enough to disable it, but it scared the crap out of the pilot and probably bought them a few extra minutes.

"We're going now. You can go for help if you want. We'll be gone before you get back. Have a nice life."

Pete jerked open the door in time to hear Trása demanding to know what had happened. He ran around to the other side of the helo to help with Darragh. Annad and Nika moved to assist without asking.

"What happened?" Trása kept demanding, as they pulled him clear. Darragh cried out with the pain, but they didn't have time to be gentle. If Stella hadn't raised the alarm already, the pilot was going to the moment he thought he was clear. "Who shot him? We have to open the rift! He's dying!"