by J. Kowallis
I breathe deep, fast, uncomfortably. It’s not Coll, and he’s touching me. Licking me. Running his hands over my body.
Revulsion replaces my hunger. Disgust. Everywhere he touches me, each flick of his tongue in my mouth makes me want to vomit, and my limbs shake. But, I can’t . . . I can’t push him away. I have to keep him distracted until the black shade of his veins returns to normal.
Not Coll, I think again through my own panic as he grips my wrists in one hand and pins me to the bed.
No, I think to myself. My hands. My palm. He’ll see my palm. He’ll see the hexen’s cross on my hand. The mark of the circle on my skin, cradling the actual staff of Woden.
Craniarann. The one thing the Geris would kill me to get at. If he sees it, he’ll know.
I twist my right arm around, facing my palm against the bed’s coverlet, to avoid letting him see.
His body presses down on top of me, and he growls in my ear.
My breathing shakes and I seize. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch his veins. Wishing for them to change back to normal. Faster.
Coll releases my wrists, but somehow, I remain pinned as if he hasn’t moved. I try to pull my arms back down, hoping to maybe put enough pressure against him to get him to slow down, but I can’t move. He’s hexed them into a frozen position. Using both of his hands, Coll grips my bare legs and slides around the front of the other, inching toward my inner thigh. My heart pounds. I want to scream, “no.” Oh, the spirits. I want to scream. I want to curse. I want to peel my skin off.
But I can’t.
He growls in the back of his throat and pushes harder against me, gripping the elastic of my underwear and with the casual grace of a hexen, he makes it vanish.
I buck my hips against him and clench my thighs around his waist, pinching his hands where they are. I can’t let go. I can’t.
I can’t breathe.
Coll yanks his hands free and claws down my leg. Just enough to break the skin. I release my thighs with a hiss, and this gives him just the right amount of space to unfasten his pants. In a split-second movement, I try to pin him again, but it doesn’t work.
A large tear trickles from my eye and I stiffen.
His fingertips move from his clothing and dig once more into my flesh and claw up my thigh. I gasp, feeling him against me and look at his skin once more, praying to my ancestors to make it end.
His veins are faint, almost invisible again. This sets off a flood of adrenaline in my own veins and I immediately twist and fight back, battling his magic’s hold on my wrists. Using my elbows, I push against him again. This time, I won’t let my movements be confused with passion. This time, I fight.
It just makes him hold me down tighter.
“Coll, get off. Get off!”
He bites my ear, breaking the skin.
I yelp. “Coll! Get off me, you bastard!”
Coll’s hand reaches up my torn dress.
“Nyrte,” I gasp the single spell. With a magical flood of strength in my body, I shove against him, knocking him back only a few inches. But it’s enough to break his concentration, and my wrists fly. I slap Coll across the face. He growls and pushes harder, forcing himself between my legs.
“Lochel!” The spell, combined with my own emotions and special abilities, causes a chain reaction. As if he knew what spell I planned to scream out, Coll blocks it just as a violent burst of wind shatters his wide bedroom window. Glass flies in every direction as he pulls away and I mutter one more simple hex. A spell I didn’t even know I knew.
“Mide a lytreat, you son of a b—”
A blinding streak of light bursts through the window and the smell of burning air and flesh immediately fill the room as the bolt of lightning drills into Coll’s chest. He slams against the bed’s headboard and rolls onto the floor.
I lay on the bed for only a moment before standing and straightening my dress, pulling the thick strap back where it should be over my right shoulder. I pant, I shake. I wish I could strip down to my bones and dose myself in lye.
Coll groans and rolls over on the floor, beating it with his palm as he coughs. “Are yeh crazy, yeh bitch!?” he belts, husky voiced.
Shaking, I brush my hair out of my face. “Bastard.”
He crawls a couple paces and grips the edge of the bed. Those eyes—so dark, so distant—open wide and size me up with a fury I’ve never seen before. “Want to explain what just happened?”
“I told you to stop,” I hiss.
“Yeh may ‘ave said, ‘stop,’” he rasps, “but your body said otherwise.”
“Don’t say another word or I’ll kill you.” With that, I travel back downstairs for my bag. The familiar tug in my gut, the glow in my limbs, is all accompanied by a nauseous pit in my gut and a cringe in my chest. I know he stepped out of his bedroom. I feel his eyes watching me gather my things, peering at me from the balcony above. Knowing this, I can’t bring myself to look back at him.
I immediately travel back to Angie’s front porch and grip the posts holding up the overhanging roof. Ireland is cooler than England tonight. The breeze more chilled. It prickles my skin and echoes inside my hollow chest.
He’s not Coll.
He’s not Coll.
I stumble toward the lake’s edge, dropping my bag on the grass, kicking my shoes off along the way. Water licks my skin with a chilled tongue. Mud squishes between my toes, oozing around each foot. Hair prickles on my legs, my arms. Vigorously as I can, I dunk into the water and start to scrub at my skin. Rubbing. Washing. Erasing the fact that Ruhmactír touched me.
Kissed me.
It wasn’t even Coll.
Even this filthy lake water feels better than the residue of disgust.
When my legs collapse, water envelopes me up to my waist. Then, and only then, do I allow myself to actually think. To feel the fury, darkness, hate, anger, fear, and terror. It all explodes inside my mind. The things he almost did. The things I let him do.
My body shakes. The water laps against me.
And then, the tears finally flood my eyes and refuse to stop. Because it’s not Coll.
And I hate myself for being right.
Twelve
Far in the distance, I think I see the early hints of a sun beginning to rise. Though, it’s only two in the morning, so it’s most likely the faint glow of the moonlight reflecting off the ocean in the distance. Tears have clouded my eyes for a couple hours and are now dried and stiff on my cheeks. The skin around my eyes is raw and tender.
My body shakes again. Even with the wool blanket wrapped around me—the one that usually rests over the back of the Adirondack chair on Angie’s porch. The tips of my fingers and my toes are a shade of periwinkle. I might have magically dried my dress, but the cold is still there.
It’s been hard to accept. I’ve barely been able to move for the last couple hours. Ever since I sludged out of the lake and found myself numbly sitting on the front step of the porch.
Coll is not Coll.
I sniff and wrap my arms around myself tighter, looking over the lake. The winds have died down and I only see the grass move in delicate, tiny ways. Every once in a while, the small baby hair poking out from my hairline shifts and quivers in my peripheral vision.
What he did—who he is.
I can’t even complete the thoughts that pop up. I push each one away.
The hinges of Angie’s front door groan ever so faintly, making an uncomfortable chill roll up my spine.
“Bug?” Alaric’s voice is tentative. Cautious. “Are you all right?”
I shrug, sniffing lightly.
“Why are you sitting out here? When did you get back?”
“Around midnight,” I croak. “I just didn’t feel like coming inside.”
My dad shuts the door and takes the couple steps needed to meet up with me. He accidentally kicks my high heels, apologizes, and bends down to move them. Having cleared a spot, he sits down and coughs. “Do you want to talk?”
> Focusing on the surface of the lake is the only thing keeping me from being overwhelmed. Talking about it just defeats the purpose. I shake my head.
I hear him take a deep breath and out of the corner of my eye, I see him nod. “Well, one way or another you’re going to have to.”
My nerves grate, and my anxiety prickles. Instinctively, my mouth pulls down into a hateful contortion just as the door opens again.
“Alaric, get back in here.”
“Why?” he asks.
Angie pauses. “Just do it.”
Another frustrated sigh. Alaric puts a supportive hand on my shoulder, kisses my head, and leaves me on the porch. The door closes once more and I exhale, surrounded by the stillness of the night. Then, in that very silence—before my mind can start putting thoughts together again—a set of feet shuffle.
I jerk around, startled. Angie, who apparently didn’t go in the cottage with Alaric, moves around to take his spot on the stair near me. “Sorry,” she apologizes. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s okay,” I breathe, looking over at her.
“Is it?” she asks. “Okay?”
Angie looks at the tear in my dress, from the hem to the hip. Not wanting her to pry, I quickly whisper a stitching spell and watch as the fabric repairs itself. As if I’m going to hold onto this dress. Am I kidding? I’m throwing it out.
I take a deep breath, again, turning a shoulder to her and letting her know I’m not talking.
“I was attacked once,” Angie’s usually chipper and equally harsh tone is shockingly diminutive.
This finally makes me really look at her. “I wasn’t—” The rest of the sentence never comes out. I just sit here, shaking my head. Shaking everywhere. I can’t stop the tear that trickles from my eye and plops firmly on my arm like a small wet bite.
I run my hand over my face, tucking my hair behind my ear.
Bite.
The bite.
In my pathetic attempt to hide the bite mark on my ear, I pull my hair back around my face. But it’s too late. Angie leans forward in a flash and pushes my hair back. There’s a moment where I actually think about fighting back, telling her it’s none of her business. I don’t. I don’t even think I want to. Maybe that’s why I tucked my hair back. Something inside me wanted her to see that bleeding ear.
“Talk to me. If my foster son did this to you, I’m going to murder him. I don’t even care if the tás is outlawed. I’ll hex him to Hell.”
I scrunch my nose and drop my face into my hands. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to even think about it.
Again, I just shake my head.
“It wasn’t him?” her voice growls.
“Angie,” my voice breaks, echoing in the shallow pits of my hands.
“You can tell me.” She brushes her hand down my hair and across my back. “Talk to me.”
After another prolonged inhale, I lift my head and look over at her. A fresh blanket of tears falls down my face. “When I saw him in the restaurant, I wanted it to be him so badly. I remembered him how he was. How it felt to be around him. But the depth was gone. Everything was different.”
Angie continues to rub my back, her eyes never leaving mine.
“Then, I couldn’t get that damn powder into his food. There was never a right time. The one time I tried, I failed. I didn’t even get close. By the end of the meal, I had to come up with another option. So, I—” I choke, “I invited myself to his apartment.”
“Alone?”
“How else? How else was I supposed to do it, Angie? If I hadn’t done it tonight—”
“Then we would have found another way,” she interrupts.
I shake my head. “No, we wouldn’t have. As it is, Sera and Emilia are already in danger by being near him.”
Angie’s face darkens. “I’m going to assume by that you mean Coll is someone else.”
I nod. “It’s Ruhmactír.”
“You know for sure that, that ancient bastard has invaded Coll?”
Another nod. “He said something earlier in the night. Something Adrian said to me months ago. It was innocent enough, but I knew. Well, I knew inside, but I needed to know with my eyes. Because I didn’t want to believe it.”
I bite softly on my lip, remembering it all.
“I mixed the powder with my lip color. Kisses escalated, and the next thing I knew, he had me pinned to his bed, his veins black as tar.”
Angie swallows loud enough for me to hear her. “Did he assault you?”
“Depends on how you define it. If you’re asking if he raped me, no. My magic didn’t give him the chance to. I used a spell that,” I pause, remembering the way the words just popped up in my mind, “I’ve never heard before. It saved me.”
We both sit in silence. Right now, that’s all I can do. Admitting that Ruhmactír touched me, bit me, put his hands on me, actually voicing the words, “he had me pinned,” fills me with an anger. A fury that takes over the hollowness.
If I feel like this now, I can’t imagine how Coll feels. Trapped. A prisoner inside his own body. That is, if he’s still in there.
After some minutes of thought, harboring the wrath, my body shakes for a completely different reason. For months, Coll may have been lost inside himself, possessed by his ancestor.
Thinking this, thoughts and questions start to whirl in my mind. Was Ruhmactír actually able to restore his own memory? Was he affected by the memory hex in the first place? Did he immediately begin to control Coll, or has it been a more gradual process? If Ruhmactír actually gained full control of Coll’s body from the start, why would he call me three months ago? Is there a chance that Coll briefly gained control of his senses and called me?
Oh, no. What if he had? What if . . . for one brief moment—
“What is it, dear?” Angie’s voice is soft but there’s an edge of tension to it.
“Coll,” my voice breaks. “He called me.”
She nods. “I know. You already said that. Wasn’t that three months ago?”
“What reason could Ruhmactír have had for calling me only once?”
Angie lifts her eyebrows and inhales deeply. “I don’t know. Perhaps he wanted to know where the staff was?”
I shake my head. “Then why not try again? Or why didn’t he visit me like Frec did as Michael? One single instance of contact for three months? Angie,” I pause, struggling to voice it out loud, “what if for one small moment, Coll had control of himself. What if it really was Coll who called me? And I hung up on him?”
Angie purses her lips and looks at her fingers as they knot together. She begins to pick at the dry flaking skin around her nails. In the stillness of the early morning, I hear her swallow. “Taran, we don’t even know for sure if Coll is still in there. There’s no use making yourself agonize over it.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I groan.
“Honestly, at this point it doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. What matters now is that we know who we’re dealing with, and we know we need to find a solution to stop him. The only reason we’re not stooping to killing him is because there might be a chance . . . a slim chance” her own voice catches, “that we can get our Coll back.”
She stands, groaning while she straightens her back and her legs. “So, what I need you to do is get upstairs, get changed, and go to bed.”
I jerk toward her. “What? Go to bed?”
“You’re no good to us exhausted and shaken. What we all need is some decent sleep, some solid food, and clear minds. Then, tomorrow—maybe the next day even—we start the real work.”
“I don’t—I don’t have time to sleep. And what about Emilia? Sera?”
Angie’s bottom lip draws down. “They’ve been fine for the past three months. They’ll be fine until they’re not.”
“Yes, but who says they’re fine right now?” I ask before reaching for my shoes and standing. My knees almost give out underneath me and Angie rushes to grab my
arm.
“As their foster mother, I do.” Then, almost as a quiet aside she asks, “Are you all right?”
I nod, gaining my balance. “I’m fine. I just need some warm clothes and then I can start looking for a spell to reverse Coll.”
“No, you are going to bed,” she contends.
“No, I’m looking for a spell.”
I pull away from her and head into the house. I lean a bit more than I typically would on the door handle, but once inside, I shuffle for the stairs.
“Taran,” Angie’s voice drops to a rough, cautionary tone.
“If you want to sleep, fine,” I respond, whirling on her as fast as my trembling legs allow. “I’m getting to work.”
There’s a lot of annoyance in her face, but she doesn’t say anything else. Making sure I grip the handrail tighter, each step up to the second floor is harder than the first. I sigh a little in relief when I finally reach the top, ambling into the small bedroom. The moonlight leaks through the drawn curtains and leaves glowing lines of light across the bed and floor.
My hands go slack and my shoes, once dangling from my fingertips, clatter to the ground. I look at the bed, my lips pursing. Twitching. I think of Ruhmactír pinning me to Coll’s bed.
I can’t sleep. I don’t want to. Even if my heavy eyelids are telling me otherwise.
Not on my bed.
After a quick summons, my grimoire, a small bundle of sage, and three other books appear in my hands. I set them on the small vanity next to the bed. I’ll need them tonight, but first, and most importantly, I just want to get out of this dress. I slip it off and toss it in the corner, reminding myself to burn it later. Dressing in the only sleep shirt I’ve used since I’ve arrived—the baggy, thin Adidas number—I summon a new pair of underwear, cast my hair up into a messy bun with the strands whipping around and holding in place with an elastic, and grab the stack of books. One of which is Angie’s grimoire. I made the mistake once of trying to cram Móraí’s knowledge into my head using a spell. I need to know more about possessions, potions, and magic as a whole, but this time I need to do it the right way.
With a snap of my fingers, I summon the new crest candles back at my apartment. A wave of my hand, and their flames ignite. Picking up the sage, I briefly light the end of the dried herbs with one of the candle flames and softly blow it out. With the spicy smoke wafting around me, I wave the small bundle into every corner of the room, sending smoke over doorways and especially into the darker shadow spaces. Once I feel the space is cleared of any chance that Hellia Morrigan could influence my search from the realm of the dead, I set the sage bundle on a small dessert plate I haven’t yet returned to the kitchen. The smoke continues to curl up toward the ceiling and lightly fill the room.