The Morrigan’s face flushed with anger. ‘My people have made it known that any who refuse the call to sleep once within the Otherworld will be stripped of their human form and of their powers.’
The crow. Another piece of the puzzle fell into place in Danny’s head. So that was why the Morrigan was trapped as a bird, powerless.
Amergin paused. He was not without mercy. ‘Is there any way the magical lineage within him could be taken?’ he inquired. ‘If he were fully human like his father, I would welcome him into our society.’
The Morrigan hesitated. ‘Perhaps,’ was all she said.
Back with her people, the notion did not sit well.
‘Magic cannot be destroyed!’ the Dagda raged. ‘What you’re proposing is monstrous! It has never been done!’
‘What option do I have?’ the Morrigan returned. ‘He is not of one world, nor the other. The humans will not accept him unless he is one of them. Please. He is just a child!’
The Dagda considered this. He was also not without mercy.
‘We will try,’ he said. ‘But destroying a child’s birthright is an act of destruction. Dark magic. It may be beyond us.’
‘But not,’ a new voice sounded, ‘beyond me.’
Dother.
Danny felt his head spin. ‘What’s that cunt doing here? Why would he help?’
‘The Dagda is correct,’ Dother said smoothly, unaffected by Danny’s interruption. ‘Magic cannot be destroyed. The Morrigan’s human line cannot be purged of magic. Not entirely. But the full bearing of the boy’s gift from his Tuatha lineage can be moved, through time itself. Think of it as a hibernation. Certainly enough to satisfy the Milesians, and to allow the child to live amongst them.’
‘Why would you, of all people, do this for us?’ the Morrigan asked him, asking Danny’s question for him.
‘Simple,’ he said easily. ‘If I perform the necessary ritual, all of the potential magic in your descendants – all of it – will be dumped into one body. And that will be tainted by us, by our mark. Think of the destiny that person will have, Morrigan. Think of what he could accomplish. He will be greater than any of us. He will bestride our worlds. He will hold the key to reuniting them. And it will be for him to choose which one to embrace.’
Throughout all of this, Danny felt as if his body were being lowered into liquid nitrogen. Cold fingers grabbed at his heart. It had once seemed so simple – the Morrigan represented the good and the faeries the bad. But in reality, the Morrigan – and, centuries later, his own father – had conspired with their enemies to bring about every bit of the misery he’d undergone.
They had created him.
‘Now,’ her voice whispered in his ear, ‘you understand. You have everything you need. The Ordeal is over.’
The world around him fragmented. He felt his grip on himself, on the fragile unreality around him, slip.
‘Remember,’ she went on, ‘remember what love brings. Strength, yes. But it also brings weakness, Danny. You will have your own choice to make. Make it wisely.’
Before he could ask what the hell she meant by that, the pain hit him, like nothing he’d ever experienced, and considering he’d recently been ripped limb from limb and tossed into a cauldron, that in itself was quite the achievement. Pressure built in his body, his mind, as if everything he was and ever had been was being compressed, his soul ground down to a paste to be passed through the cosmic toothpaste tube …
Jesus Christ, he realised, with the one small corner of his brain that wasn’t begging for death to come and come swiftly. I’m being born …
The pinprick of light up ahead became a dot, became a tear –
Danny Morrigan, whole and reborn, shot out of the Dagda’s Cauldron. Sights and sounds and sensations overloaded him, as if he were experiencing each of his senses for the first time – as if he were a newborn infant overwhelmed by the intensity of existence outside the womb.
He hit the ground and curled up into a foetal position until the roaring in his ears subsided and he was able, nursing his head and blinking furiously, to slowly get to his feet. The white and dark blobs around him resolved themselves into shapes. Some sort of howling noise was echoing through his ears. Something was approaching him, fast. He could feel it.
He expected, not unreasonably in his opinion, to see the circle of standing stones; to see the place he’d entered the Cauldron in the first place.
Instead, he found himself in Dother’s penthouse office in Lircom Tower. Before he could adjust, however, he was knocked off his feet by the creature emitting the howling noise he’d heard earlier. It was not, as he’d imagined, the feral growls of some faerie monstrosity, it was Ellie, and she was crying out in joy.
Ellie Quinn, in the flesh. Her eyes were wide, streaming with tears, full of knowledge. This was not the Ellie Quinn of the other reality who had known him only as a friend.
This was his Ellie.
‘Danny!’ she cried, wrapping her arms around him.
He drew her closer. It seemed a lifetime ago since he’d stolen a kiss from her in the impossible little domestic setup she’d had with Steve. He thought then of the Cauldron and he realised in a very literal way that it had been a lifetime ago. He kissed her again, not a stolen kiss this time, a full and hungry kiss that felt like fuel to his impoverished body.
When she broke from him, her body began to shake with uncontrollable sobs. She looked at him with a face full of sorrow and he knew in that horrible, bottomless moment that something terrible had happened.
Only much, much later would Ellie realise that after that kiss, the injuries she had carried since the car crash had faded away as though sustained in a dream.
‘My daddy,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘Danny, he’s–’ and she could go no further.
He drew her closer and let her cry. His synaesthesia – his magical ability, whatever it was – blended the sadness, proximity and strength of her grief together until it came close to overpowering him. He was carried along by the wave of her bereavement. Michael Quinn, her father, had been no friend to Danny – the older man had hated him with such awful intensity that it had stunned him – but he was Ellie’s father all the same.
When he and Ellie finally broke apart, Danny saw his own father. He reacted purely on instinct.
‘Son, I … ooffff,’ was all Tony Morrigan was able to say before his son enveloped him in a hug that took his breath away.
‘I know!’ Danny said, babbling like an excited little boy. ‘I was there with you in the cottage, Da! I know everything!’
‘Cottage?’ Tony returned, his mind whirling. ‘Son, what–’
As though it were the most natural thing in the world, Danny released his embrace enough to touch his fingers to his father’s forehead. There was no visible evidence of what he was doing, no spark jumping from fingers to head, nothing so showy – at least not in the visual spectrum the assembled humans could perceive – but the effect was immediate.
‘Jesus,’ Tony gasped, losing his equilibrium so suddenly and so completely that Danny had to catch and steady him. ‘So that’s where that big fuckin’ TV came from.’
They remained in a half-embrace for a moment longer, and a look was exchanged between father and son, the sort of look that hadn’t been passed – at least not both ways – from one to the other since Danny was ten years old.
There was something else in his father’s demeanour. Some piece of bad news that he had to impart. Danny could see it as clearly as if it were written on the his father’s face in flaming letters.
‘Steve,’ he said. ‘It’s Steve, isn’t it? Where is he? What happened?’
BELFAST CITY CENTRE, NOW
None of this was going according to plan.
When the mortal world had collided with their own, the Queen had instructed them to have their fun, had set them loose to engage in the sort of sport they had been denied for hundreds of years. Humans had grown weak. Oh, they had developed better weapons, that was
certain, but the majority of the human population had allowed themselves to grow soft. More than half were now fat. The arts of swordsmanship and combat were long forgotten.
At first the hunt had indeed been easy and he had enjoyed skittering from rooftop to rooftop, watching the humans below him scatter in panic and fear as his faerie brothers and sisters herded them like cattle, picking off little groups and doomed individuals here and there. He had chosen three targets and descended upon them in a flurry of excitement, beating the stubby little wings he possessed – wings, which if they followed the laws of science the humans held so dear, could never have allowed him to get off the ground.
That had been before the wolves – his brothers! – had appeared. He had welcomed them initially. They were the most efficient warriors they had, devastating and disciplined. Evidently they still were; but it was not against the humans that those skills were being employed. He had watched, from the safety of a rooftop, as they encircled the humans and, rather than devouring them, had protected them, turning their fury on the attacking faeries and taking them apart with surgical precision.
How dare they! His proboscis vibrated with anger. He considered flying to the circle of the standing stones, imparting the news of the betrayal personally to the Queen. Perhaps she would look favourably on him for doing so.
He hesitated. That was an awfully big perhaps. She was equally likely to take out her anger on him and tear him apart. Stories of his Queen’s temper were, in every sense of the word, legendary.
No. She would know by now anyway. Nothing escaped her notice for very long, in his experience. She would know and she would exact a terrible vengeance on the wolves for their rebellion, and that would be that. In the meantime, all that was left for him to do was to stay out of their way and–
His compound eyes spotted a human moving slowly, painfully, in the street below. Wounded prey. His wings spasmed with excitement. The wolves were close – he could smell them, taste their scent in the air – and he knew he would risk detection if he left the rooftop, but he couldn’t resist the lure of wounded prey.
Yes. Yes, he would swoop, and pick up the miserable thing, and be back at some secluded place in a matter of seconds, and there he could feast over this one at his leisure, drawing out the death of the human for as long as possible to keep the meat fresh.
He launched himself from the roof and realised, with some degree of puzzlement, that the human below him had his hands and feet bound together – by whom, he could not guess, but it was an incredible stroke of fortune. Wounded prey that had no chance of fighting back? Oh, this was going to be such fun!
His six legs unfurled from his segmented body and spread out, ready to envelop the human in their embrace and lift–
Suddenly there was movement to his left, a growl, and a sensation of pressure.
Then nothing.
*
Wide-eyed, Steve took in the sight of the giant wolf that had just caught the oversized wasp in mid-air with its massive jaws. With a wet and horrible crunch, the wolf brought its jaws together once, shook its massive head, and casually tossed the wasp-thing’s broken body thirty feet or so to land in the middle of the dual carriageway. There, it was promptly ground to a pulp by several speeding vehicles, their drivers terrified out of their wits at the madness unfolding all around them.
‘Mmmmffff …’ Steve whimpered weakly through his gag, panicking as the wolf dipped its enormous head towards him, teeth bearing down.
With a delicacy that Steve would not have believed possible, the wolf bit through the bonds holding his ankles and wrists together. He wriggled free, pain still coursing through him and tugged at the gag around his mouth.
‘You are injured,’ the wolf said, looking at Steve as it spoke. It had the most remarkable set of eyes he had ever seen – soulful, gentle, and strong. Absurdly, he thought of Maggie.
‘You talk,’ Steve returned faintly. It was, in his view, a fair riposte.
‘It is not safe.’
He looked over at the pulverised remains of the man-sized wasp that, thirty seconds ago, had been poised to snatch him away to Christ-knew-where. Cars roared by, tyres screeched and he could see more of the wasps hovering around. Screams rang out in the Belfast night. He could see flames erupting from various points in the city. He heard the sounds of crashes, of breaking glass. Unearthly shrieks followed by very human ones. And the howls of wolves, first one, then another and another – a chain of them ringing through the city.
‘Might be onto somethin’ there,’ Steve said.
The wolf got down on its belly and bowed its head. ‘Onto my back,’ it said. ‘I will take you to safety.’
‘’Kay,’ he said, putting up no resistance. Trusting a hugely oversized talking wolf now seemed like the thing to do.
He was badly injured, he knew. He was coughing blood, and imagined he could feel some of the crushed glass rolling around inside him like trainers in a washing machine. Yet almost as soon as he clambered onto the giant wolf’s back he thought he could feel a slight easing of the pain. Fearsome and nightmarish though it was, somehow this beast was healing him with its very proximity. He couldn’t explain it but he was grateful nonetheless.
‘Where do you need to go?’ the wolf asked, turning its head around to look at him. Steve scanned the Belfast skyline around him, searching for a particular shape … there. City Hospital, the great squat box.
He pointed. ‘Big cube,’ he managed.
‘Hold on,’ the wolf replied, and it leapt forward, bounding along at an incredible rate, travelling through a city gone insane. He wondered what had happened to Ellie and Tony, if they were even still alive. If Danny had …
We don’t need this one. He’s of no value.
Dother’s words burned in him. He’d been thrown from that limo, cast aside and left to die. He was not important enough even to bother kidnapping. Why he’d been spared, how he was still alive, he had no idea, but he knew one thing; he was tired of being discarded.
‘Change of plan,’ he said, his voice hitching in rhythm with the impact of the wolf’s paws on the ground below. ‘Place to the right. Medicine inside.’
It was a chemist. Closed, naturally, at this time of the night, but that didn’t bother his mount one little bit. Stopping just shy of the glass-fronted façade, the wolf reared up to protect its passenger and with one sweeping motion of its front right paw reduced the reinforced glass window to shards. Ordinarily the noise would have drawn a lot of attention; tonight, it was just one more chaotic noise in a symphony.
Searching inside, Steve found painkillers and swallowed a handful. Bandages were applied to the cuts still oozing blood. While he was doing this three creatures defying description – he had made out claws and teeth and drool – had attempted to force their way past the wolf guarding the entrance, only to be summarily executed. One of them, however, had managed to lash out with a barbed tail and gash a channel in the wolf’s underside.
‘Hold still,’ Steve said, as the pills began to take hold and the worst of the pain ebbed. He did the best he could with what he had to close the wound and stop the wolf’s bleeding. When he was done, it regarded him with those impossibly intelligent eyes.
‘I am Larka,’ it said, and Steve realised that, although the voice could not exactly be said to be female – at least not in any human sense of the word – the wolf itself was. ‘Thank you.’
‘Steve,’ he replied, feeling wonderfully fuzzy-headed and that everything was beginning to make sense. ‘And I fuckin’ loooooove drugs.’
Larka cocked her head at this. ‘Steve,’ she said, ‘there will be others who need my help.’
‘I know,’ he replied.
The creature that had wounded Larka still lay on the pavement beside them, and seeing it there gave Steve an idea. He dropped to his haunches beside the thing and ripped out its barbed tail, swinging it through the air and liking very much the zzzzip sound it made as he did so.
Before Larka could r
eact, or protest, he had swung himself up on her broad back once more.
‘Well, what we waitin’ for?’ he asked. ‘Let’s fuckin’ get these ugly cunts.’
Larka grinned and launched them forward into the night.
LIRCOM TOWER, BELFAST, NOW
No. No, it couldn’t be true. Steve was … Steve had always been there. Would always be there. Even through all this madness, he’d imagined Steve drifting along with his usual laidback approach to life and, when it was all sorted, there he’d be, pushing for a KFC, making some quip. His best friend, tossed out of a moving car.
‘Danny, I’m so sorry,’ Ellie said.
‘I know.’
‘He …’ she hesitated, ‘I was wrong about him, Danny. I just wanted you to know that.’
Danny nodded. The grief for his friend was hot and raw but as horrific as it was to contemplate, there wasn’t time to feel the loss right now. He forced his attention onto the figure standing a little way away from the rest of them.
It looked like Dother, sounded like him, but it wasn’t him. Danny concentrated, called upon the things he’d learned, and looked through the filter of his other senses. The sixth sense people called telepathy wasn’t really a sixth sense at all; it was a combination of the other five working in perfect synchronicity. Get it right and it was like pulling back a veil, enabling you to see the truth of things.
‘Dian?’ he said.
‘At your service,’ Dian replied, bowing slightly. ‘Apologies for the temporary meat-coat, but long-range possession isn’t the easiest of feats to accomplish, never mind having to transport yourself down a telephone line to do it. Thankfully,’ and he grunted at the irony, ‘my dear brother was considerate enough to upgrade his network, or it might never have worked at all.’
‘Dian?’ Ellie asked. ‘Who’s Dian?’
OTHERWORLD, 47 AD
‘Brother?’ Dother called into the void. A note of impatience entered his voice. ‘Brother, I know you’re in here. This is getting ridiculous. You’ve already stayed in here too long to come back in your own body. Mother is not pleased.’
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