Нора Робертс - Blood Magick

“Come back to me,” Branna added, though it hadn’t been part of the spell.

“As you will,” Fin said, his eyes on hers, “so mote it be.”

His fog swirled, and he was gone.

“It won’t take long.” To comfort, Iona put her arm around Branna’s shoulders.

“It’s so dark. It’s so cold. And he’s alone.”

“He’s not.” Boyle took her hand, held it firmly. “We’re right here. We’re with him.”

But he was alone in the cold and the dark. The power here hung so thick and dank he felt nothing beyond it. Black blood stained the ground where Cabhan had shackled and killed his mother.

He scanned the horror of jars, filled with the pieces of the woman who’d birthed him, which Cabhan had preserved for his dark magicks.

The world Fin knew, his world, seemed not just centuries away, but as if it didn’t exist. Freeing the demon, giving it form and movement had drawn the cave into its own kind of hell where all the damned burned cold.

He smelled brimstone and blood—old blood and new. It took all his will to resist the sudden, fierce need to go to the altar, take up the cup that stood below a cross of yellowing bones, and drink.

Drink.

Sweat coated his skin though his breath turned to clouds in the frigid air that seemed to undulate like a sea with the fetid drops sliding down the walls and striking the floor in a tidal rhythm.

Something in its beat stirred his blood.

His hand trembled as he forced himself to reach into the bag, open the pouch, take out the crystal.

For a moment Branna was there—warm and strong, so full of light he could slow his pulse again, steady his hands. He rose up within the fog, up the damp wall of the cave. He saw symbols carved in the stone, recognized them from Ogham, though he couldn’t read them.

He laid the crystal in a chink, along a fingertip of ledge, and wondered if Branna’s charm could be strong enough to hide it from so much dark.

Such deep, fascinating dark, where voices chanted, and those to be sacrificed screamed and wept for a mercy that would never be given.

Why should mercy be given to the less? Their cries and screams of torment were true music, a call to dance, a call to feed.

The dark must be fed. Embraced. Worshipped.

The dark would reward. Eternally.

Fin turned to the altar, took a step toward it. Then another.

• • •

“IT’S TAKING TOO LONG.” BRANNA RUBBED HER ARMS TO fight a cold that dug into her bones and came from fear. “It’s nightfall. He’s been more than half an hour now, and far too long.”

“Connor?” Iona asked. “He’s—”

“I know, I know. He and Meara can’t hold Cabhan much longer. Go to Connor, you and Boyle go to Connor and Meara, help them. I’ll go through for Fin. Something’s wrong, something’s happened. I haven’t been able to feel or sense him since he went through.”

“You’ll not go in. Branna, you’ll not.” Boyle took her shoulders, gave her a little shake. “We have to trust Fin to get back, and we can’t risk you. Without you, it ends here, and not for Cabhan.”

“His blood could betray him, however much he fights it. I can pull him out. I have to try before. Ah, God, Cabhan, he’s coming back. Fin—”

“Can we pull him back, the two of us?” Iona gripped Branna’s hand. “We have to try.”

“With all of us, we might . . . Oh, thank the gods.”

When Fin, his fog thin and faded, fell to his knees on the ground at her feet, Branna dived for him.

“He’s coming,” Fin managed. “It’s done, but he’s coming. We have to go, and quickly. I could use some help.”

“We’ve got you.” Branna wrapped her arms around him, looked at Iona, at Boyle, nodded. “We’ve got you,” she repeated, and held on to him as they flew.

His skin was ice, and she couldn’t warm it as she pulled him over treetops, over the lake, and the castle aglow with lights.

She brought him straight to the cottage, set the fire to roaring before she knelt in front of him. “Look at me. Fin, I have to see your eyes.”

They glowed against the ice white of his face, but they were Fin’s, and only his.

“I brought nothing back with me,” he told her. “Left nothing of me. Only your crystal.”

“Whiskey.” But even as she snapped it out, Boyle sat beside Fin, cupped Fin’s hands around the glass.

“I feel I’ve walked a hundred kilometers in the Arctic without a single rest.” He gulped down whiskey, let his head fall back as Connor and Meara came in.

“Is he hurt?” Connor demanded.

“No, only half frozen and exhausted. Are you?”

“A few singes, and I’ll see to them.”

“He’s already seen to mine.” Meara moved straight to Fin. “Clucking like a mother hen over me. What can we do for you, Fin?”

“I’m well enough.”

“You don’t look it. Should I get one of your potions, Branna?”

“I don’t need a potion. The whiskey’s fine. And you’re doing some clucking yourself, Mother.”

Meara dropped into a chair. “The way you are makes a ghost look like it’s had ten days in the tropics.”

Warming bit by painful bit, Fin smiled at her. “You’re not looking rosy yourself.”

“He kept going at her,” Connor said, and surprised Meara by lifting her up—strapping girl that she was—taking her place, then cuddling her on his lap. “He’d go for me, but that was for show. He wanted our Meara, to hurt her, so kept hammering against her protection, looking for the slightest chink. At first we tried to draw it all out, give the rest of you time, but it went on longer than we thought, and it was get serious about it, or fall back.”

“Connor made a tornado.” Meara spun a finger in the air. “A small one you could say, but impressive. Then turned it to fire. And that sent Cabhan on his way.”

“We couldn’t hold him longer,” Connor finished.

“It was long enough. We’ll all have some whiskey,” Branna decided. “Let me see where you’re burned, Connor, and I’ll tend to it.”

“I’ll do it.” Iona nudged Branna back down. “Stay with Fin.”

“I’m well enough,” Fin insisted. “It was the cold, that was the most of it. It’s so sharp, so bitter it carves the life out of you. Enervates. It’s more than it was,” he said to Branna. “More than we saw and felt.”

She sat on the floor, took one of the glasses Boyle passed around. “Tell us.”

“It was darker, darker than it was when we went in the dreamwalk. Colder, and the air thick. So thick you couldn’t get a full breath. There was a cauldron on the fire, and it smelled of sulphur and brimstone. And there were voices chanting. I couldn’t make out the words, not enough of them, but it was in Latin, and some in old Irish. As were the screams, the pleading that rose up with them. Those being sacrificed. All of that, a kind of echo, in the distance. Still, I could smell the blood.”

He took a drink, gathered himself again. “There was a pull to it, from in me. A wanting of it, stronger than before, this pull and tug in two directions. I put the crystal up, a little notch in the stones, high on the wall across from the altar.”

Now he turned the glass in his hands, staring down into the amber of the whiskey as if seeing it all again.

“And when I no longer had it with me, the need was more. Bigger. The pull more alluring, you could say. There was a cup on the altar, and in it blood. I wanted it. Coveted it. Innocent blood, that I could smell. The blood of an innocent, and if I only took it, drank it, I would become what I was meant to become. Why was I resisting that? Didn’t I want that—my own destiny, my own glory? So I stepped toward the altar, and went closer yet. All the chanting filled the cave, and those screams were almost like music to me. I reached for the cup. I held my hand out to take it. Finally just take it.”