Нора Робертс - Blood Magick

“Would you want me to stay after it’s done? I mean after all of it, for me to stay. Me and Iona?”

“We’ll see how it all goes. But it’s a comfort to me to know, should I be needing you, you and Iona would be here. Before we worry if I’ll be needing comfort, we go back, Fin and I, and find what this Midor is to Cabhan and Cabhan to him. And if the fates deal the cards, we learn how and when to stop him.”

She tipped her head to Meara’s shoulder. “I know Fin to be a good man, and that steadies me. I once tried to believe he wasn’t, because it made it simpler, but that was wrong and foolish. At the end of it all, if I can know I’ve loved a good man, I can be satisfied with that.”

9

SHE’D PREPARED FOR IT, EMOTIONALLY, MENTALLY. Branna told herself the spell, the dreamwalk, was not only a necessary step, but could and should go forward without personal issues.

She and Fin had reached a place, hadn’t they, over the past months where they could work together, talk together without anger or heartache?

They were adults now, far from the starry-eyed children they’d been. She had a duty to her bloodline. And Fin, to his credit, had unstinting loyalty to their circle.

It would be enough.

And still as they gathered together in her workshop, long after dark settled, she had to hold back trepidation.

“Are you sure about this?” Connor brushed a hand down her back, earned a quick look and a mental push.

Stay out of my head.

He left his hand warm on the small of her back. “There’s still time to find another way.”

“I’m completely sure, and this is the best way. Fin?”

“Agreed.”

“Cousin Mary Kate, are you certain you don’t want to join the circle?”

“You should go as you’ve been, and know I’ll be here to help should you need it.”

“Nan’s our backup.” Iona gave her grandmother’s hand a squeeze, then stepped forward.

They cast the circle, for ritual and respect, for protection and unity. Together Branna and Fin stepped inside it. He wore his sword on his belt, she a ritual knife.

This time, this deliberate time, they wouldn’t go unarmed.

“From this cup we drink this brew so together in dreams we ride.” Branna sipped the potion, handed the cup to Fin.

“With this drink we travel through another time and place side by side.” Fin drank, handed off the cup to Connor.

“Within our circle, hand in hand, we travel over sky and land.” They spoke together, eyes locked, as Branna felt the power rising up.

“Into dreams, willingly, there to seek, there to see Cabhan’s origin of destiny. Full faith, full trust in thee and me, as we will, so mote it be.”

Fin held out his hand; Branna put hers in it.

In a flash of light, in a burst of bright power, they flew.

Through the wind and the whirling, fast, so fast it whisked the breath from her lungs. She had a moment to think they’d made the potion too strong, then she stood, swaying a little, in the starry dark. Her hand still gripped in Fin’s.

“A bit too much essence of whirlwind.”

“Do you think so?”

She shot him a smirking glance. His hair looked as wild as hers felt. Though his sharp-featured face seemed grim, satisfaction mixed with it.

She felt about the same herself.

“There’s no point in sarcasm, as you had as much to do with the formula as I.” Branna shook her hair out of her eyes. “And it got us here, for that’s the cave.”

In the cold, starry dark, the mouth of the cave pulsed with red light. She heard a low hum, like a distant storm at sea from within. But without, nothing moved, nothing stirred.

“He’s in there,” Fin told her. “I can feel it.”

“He’s not alone. I can feel that. Something wicked, that brings more than a pricking of thumbs.”

“I should go in alone, assess things.”

“Don’t insult me, Finbar. Side by side or not at all.”

To settle it, she started forward. Fin kept a firm grip on her hand, laid the other on the hilt of his sword. “If it turns on us, we break the spell. Without hesitation, Branna. We don’t end here.”

She might have swayed toward him, such were the needs the dream spell stirred. But she steadied herself, stood her ground. “I’ve no intention of ending here. We’ve work to do in our own time and place.”

They stepped into the mouth of the cave, the pulsing light. The hum grew louder, deeper. Not like a storm at sea, Branna realized. But like something large, something alive, waiting at rest.

The cave widened, opened into tunnels formed with walls damp enough to drip so the steady plop of water on stone became a kind of backbeat to the hum. Fin bore left, and as Branna’s instincts said the same, they moved quietly into the tunnel.

His hand, she thought, was the only link to the warm and the real, and knew he felt the same.

“We can’t be sure when we are,” Branna whispered.

“After the last time we dreamed.” He shook his head at her look. “I don’t know how I know, but I know. It’s after that, but not long after.”

Trust, she reminded herself. Faith. They continued on with the humming growing deeper yet. She could all but feel it inside her now, like a pulse, as if she’d swallowed the living dark.

“It pulls him,” Fin murmured. “It wants to feed. It pulls me through him, blood to blood.” He turned to her, took her firmly by the shoulders. “If it—or he—draws me in, you’re to break the spell, get out, get back.”

“Would you leave me, or any of us, to this?”

“You, nor any of the others come from him. You’ll swear it, Branna, or I’ll break it now and end it before it’s begun.”

“I’ll end it, I swear it.” But she would drag him back with her. “I’ll swear it because they won’t draw you in. You won’t allow it. And if we stand here arguing over it, we won’t have to break the spell, it’ll end on its own time without us learning a bloody thing.”

Now she took his hand. A spark shot between their palms before they moved forward.

The tunnel narrowed again, and turned into what she recognized as a chamber—a workshop of sorts for dark magicks.

The bodies of bats, wings stretched, were nailed to the stone walls like horrific art. On shelves skeletal bird legs, heads, the internal organs of animals, others she feared were human, bodies of rats, all floated in jars filled with viscous liquid.

A fire burned, and over it a cauldron bubbled and smoked in sickly green.

To the left of it stood a stone altar lit by black tallows, stained by the blood of the goat that lay on it, its throat slit.

Cabhan gathered the stream of blood in a bowl.

He looked younger, she realized. Though his back was to them as he worked, he struck her as younger than the Cabhan she knew.

He stepped back, knelt, lifted the bowl high.

“Here is blood, a sacrifice to your glory. Through me you feed, through you I feed. And so my power grows.”

He drank from the bowl.

The hum throbbed like a beating heart.

“It’s not enough,” Fin murmured. “It’s pale and weak.”

Alarmed, Branna tightened her grip on his hand. “Stay with me.”

“I’m with you, and with him. Goats and sheep and mongrels. If power is a thirst, quench it. If it’s hunger, eat it. If it’s lust, sate it. Take what you will.”

“More,” Cabhan said, raising the bowl again. “You promised more. I am your servant, I am your soldier. I am your vessel. You promised more.”

“More requires more,” Fin said quietly, his eyes eerily green. “Blood from your blood, as before. Take it, spill it, taste it, and you will have more. You will be me, I will be thee. And no end. Life eternal, power great. And the Dark Witch you covet, yours to take. Body and power to our will she must bend.”