They rejoiced. They made their way back to their homes, to their loved ones, and there were hundreds, thousands of joyous – if slightly stunned – reunions, filled with tears and with dazed happiness. Those resurrected gave thanks, thinking their return a miracle.
Many of those who returned, though – on realising that Ireland was still cut off from the rest of the world, marooned in its own little cosmos – had seen enough death and craziness this night to go a little wild themselves. Revellers, mostly the younger of the recently revived, littered the streets, convinced they were experiencing some sort of mass afterlife. And hey, it was still dark outside and it should have been dawn hours ago, but there was plenty of drink and plenty of the opposite sex, and a lot of people seemed in a good mood, so all in all it could have been worse.
Plus, the giant talking wolves that were padding along the highways and byways quite unconcernedly kind of added to the unworldly feel. Some, of course, were mistaken for the monsters that had rampaged earlier and were made the target of attacks. However, it’s difficult to disagree with a talking wolf when it’s got you pinned to the ground and it’s asking you in a very nice voice to please stop throwing rocks at it.
PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, STORMONT, BELFAST / OTHERWORLD, NOW
Steve had been to Stormont only once before, as a schoolboy on a field trip. He remembered the long driveway leading to that huge white building. In the crimson light of the moon, seemingly hanging only a stone’s throw above them in the Belfast skies, Stormont seemed almost pinkish in its hue.
Thankfully, the presence of Brigadier Hughes at the head of their little convoy of army vehicles and massively oversized wolves smoothed their passage through the military ring that surrounded the grounds. Despite the fact that, as soon as things had gone to hell, every gun had refused to fire, all of the soldiers and police officers Steve saw were still packing, still carrying. For comfort, he supposed, if for nothing else.
As they climbed the hill up to the big house, he took a moment from his vantage point on Larka’s shoulders to glance back over the Belfast skyline. Smoke rose and fires raged from multiple sources. The huge monoliths where Lircom Tower had once stood were as much of a landmark as the skyscraper had been, and more – they dominated Belfast effortlessly, not only with their size but with their sheer incongruity.
Wily, Larka and two other wolves had made the journey with them. On Danny’s instructions, Wily told the rest of the Named to spread themselves through the city, protecting its inhabitants, ensuring that the faeries reabsorbed into Carman’s bloated mass during the showdown did not reappear.
After a minimum of raised eyebrows and voices, the newcomers and their wolves were allowed into the building itself and then directed to the Assembly chamber. Steve was prepared to meet those he’d seen regularly on the news, but he was taken aback by the smell. The place reeked of sweat and fear.
Danny stepped forward. To Steve’s mild surprise, but to Danny’s credit, he kept his hand firmly attached to Ellie’s, pulling her beside him so they could face the political leaders together. To complete the family line up was Luke – right there alongside his mother and father. Ellie had hold of his hand whenever she could and Steve was ready to wager that nothing short of a chainsaw or a crowbar could have separated the mother and son given what they’d been through.
‘There’s been no contact with the outside world,’ the brigadier admitted. ‘Christ knows we’ve tried. From the moment we were taken here we’ve been squawking with every piece of communications equipment we have. Nothing.’
‘And yet so long as you’re dialling somewhere in Ireland, the phones work perfectly,’ one of the assembled politicians said. He sounded like a man defeated.
‘Thanks to Lircom. The Network they used is built on ley lines – like magical isobars on a weather map – and it amplified them massively. Don’t ask me how,’ Danny added quickly, anticipating the question, ‘but it did.’
‘Are you saying we should stop using phones?’
‘I don’t think it’s necessary,’ Danny said and looked at Ellie. She squeezed his hand; this was it. ‘I’ve spoken to their leader, Carman. She’s …’ and he floundered, trying to think of a way to describe her that didn’t include a string of his more usual forms of speech. He needed to sound as professional as he could to these people.
‘She’s a witch-demigoddess from the Greek pantheon,’ Luke spoke up.
Danny cleared his throat. His son was making a real career out of helpful interjections. ‘Yes. There was a confrontation. I made it clear that I could weaken her significantly, and had her agree to, well, a cease-fire I suppose you could call it. Certain conditions will have to be met … on both sides.’
There was a long stretch of silence at this, then, all at once, everybody started to talk, to demand, to shout over one another. Danny simply stood there, his face impassive. He wasn’t going to try and shout over this riotous cacophony. Thankfully, he didn’t have to.
‘Silence!’ Wily thundered.
It beat the hell out of banging a gavel, that was for sure.
Danny laid his hand on the wolf’s head as a gesture of thanks. ‘I get it,’ he said. ‘Who am I to come in here and blah blah blah. I get it. That’s why I’m not dictating anything. You’ll see what I mean if you let me finish.’
More silence. Satisfied with this small victory, Danny pressed on. ‘I had the chance to stop all this craziness, and I took it. The way these fuckers work, if you have them by the balls, you can get them to swear an oath and they’re bound to carry it out. So here it is. The good news – anyone who died tonight is being brought back.’
‘Back? What do you mean, back? From the dead?’ a woman called from among the crowd.
Danny nodded. ‘I know how it sounds, but after what we’ve all seen–’
‘This is satanism. This is the Devil’s work, pure and simple,’ the woman declared, elbowing her way to the front of the throng. She stared at Danny, vibrating with rage and indignation. ‘I refuse to allow anyone to be denied access to the Lord’s country, or for them to be brought back as a vessel for evil. What happened tonight is judgement from the Lord’ – and she had to raise her voice now, to be heard over a growing rumbling of discontent from her peers (and, Steve noted, a few rumblings of approval) – ‘a final judgement on the wickedness and the depravity of our society.’
Larka spoke up then, in a deceptively soft whisper that nonetheless commanded attention. ‘Children killed before their mothers are now coming back to life. You would have this stop?’
‘Children killed by creatures like you!’ the woman screamed. ‘Demon spawn!’
On and on it raged. Steve took a seat and let the accusations fly across the room like knives. Once he saw Wily look at Danny questioningly and Danny shake his head.
‘Ireland isn’t going to be separated from the rest of the world any more,’ Danny said at last, trying to quell the rabble. ‘Carman has agreed to send Ireland back up to our world, away from hers. And some of us with it.’
Some of us. Steve looked at his friend and he knew instantly what that meant.
‘Anybody who’s been brought back, will have to stay here. It’s something to do with magic. Down here … this place, it runs on it. Up there, if you die, you stay dead. Down here, it’s possible to be brought back, but it means you can’t leave. Carman’s promised never to come back to the surface world – our world – and that her people won’t bother those left behind in her world. She’ll create,’ he shrugged, ‘a copy of Ireland for them to live in.’
‘This is your victory?’ the accusation came back instantly. Danny didn’t know who spoke; it scarcely mattered. ‘You’ll have children abandoned and alone–’
‘No,’ Danny said. ‘The people brought back have to be left behind, that’s true. But others will have a choice. They can stay, if they wish, with the ones left behind.’
‘And how will this Carman know what people have chosen?’
I will kno
w.
Everyone in the room, everyone in the city, everyone all over Ireland, heard her as the words appeared fully-formed in their minds. Over six million people – from those who were cowering in fear in their homes, to those trying desperately to escape; from the people celebrating their resurrections, to those who, by some miracle, had slept through everything – all stopped what they were doing to listen.
Attention, people of Ireland.
I will be brief. What you so arrogantly regarded as ‘your’ island has been moved somewhere … different, somewhere much more interesting. By now I would imagine most of you are aware of this. Many of you will have met my children. Many of you will have died at their hands. All of you who have, have been returned to life. You have the Morrigan to thank for this. If it were up to me, you would have stayed dead … at least for a while. Corpses do not make good sport.
At the Morrigan’s insistence, I will shortly arrange for ‘your’ island to be returned to your awful, colourless human world.
However.
Those of you who have been returned from the dead … you, I’m afraid, cannot return. Your deaths were not make-believe. They were quite real. To have you returned to life requires magic. Strong magic. Your human world cannot support this. You have turned your back on magic. If you were returned, you would be dead on arrival, and that, I’m afraid, would be a best-case scenario. So in an act of mercy, I will permit you to remain here. Alive.
I will retain this semblance of the land you knew. You can keep your homes, but your new world will be quite different to the one you remember.
There will be no sunlight here.
It does not agree with me, or with my children, and in time I will have more children. I know that, for reasons best known to yourselves, humanity is quite fond of sunlight, so this may be quite a jolt for you at first. But in time, who knows? You humans are adaptable creatures.
Here, now, we come to the crux of the matter.
Those of you who were NOT brought back from the dead … I have watched your world for many centuries. You are so in love with the illusion of choice your leaders provide you, that you play along with the theatre show they give you, even though you know that no matter what X you put in what box the same decisions will be made. I must admit it really is quite brilliant.
Well, here is a real, genuine choice for you to consider.
I can send you back.
Or, you can volunteer to stay.
For some of you – the lucky ones, you’ll term yourselves – this will be an easy choice. Perhaps nobody you care about was resurrected. Go back to your world. Rejoice. Spend your time debating which celebrity ice-skates better than which other celebrity.
For most of you – a choice lies before you. Leave your loved ones behind and go home, or stay here with them in this brave new world. When the time comes, and you will know when that is, the choice you have made in your heart will define whether you stay or go, and I will respect that choice.
So please, feel free to lie to your loved ones. Feel free to tell them you will stay with them when you know you are about to abandon them. They will soon know the truth of your decision.
The vote will take place in one hour. Voting booths will be provided inside of your little human souls, so I imagine electoral turnout will be quite high.
When her words had faded, and the shouting and the recriminations had recommenced, Danny gathered Ellie and Luke and asked Wily to take them home. The brigadier smoothed their departure with a nod. Danny shook the man’s hand and meant it.
They moved swiftly through the highways and byways of the city. Here and there, people moved through the streets, cars screeched by. Danny guessed families were assembling themselves before the hour was up. He held Ellie close. There was no conversation between the three of them – there seemed little worth saying.
Ellie sagged with relief when Wily deposited them outside the familiar shape of their little house. She was less pleased, however, when Danny finally spoke.
‘What d’you mean, you’re going?’ she demanded. ‘Going where, Danny?’
He told her.
‘Go,’ she reassured him. They kissed. He and Wily were gone an instant later.
BELFAST / OTHERWORLD, NOW
Larka had gone with him without a word of protest. They flew along the darkened roads of Belfast, the she-wolf’s massive hind-legs eating up the streets like they were nothing. For the first few minutes, they travelled in silence, and then he could stand it no longer.
‘Why did you save me, Larka?’ Steve asked her.
The wolf didn’t slow one iota as she replied. ‘We had a debt to repay to the Morrigan.’
‘I’m not a stupid fella,’ Steve said, suddenly hot with anger.
It was a few seconds before the reply came. ‘No,’ Larka admitted. ‘I apologise.’
‘You came lookin’ for me. You were sent to find me. To save me,’ he said. It had been itching the back of his mind. He had been a crumpled heap by the side of a road. The odds of anyone finding him in time were laughable, and yet Larka had been there to save him.
‘Steve … please, let me explain. There’s so much about magic you don’t understand,’ Larka said, abruptly changing the direction of the conversation. ‘Try to remember – I am not human, was not born from a mother’s womb. I sprang fully-formed from a magic cauldron, willed into existence by an evil witch.’
That brought him up short. He’d been so wrapped up in his own pain he’d never considered the origins of these strange, noble creatures that had saved him, and thousands like him, over the past few hours. He didn’t know what to say, but Larka wasn’t about to wait him for speak anyway. ‘None of us, none of my people, can survive in what you would call sunlight,’ she said.
His lips moved as he worked this out. ‘You’re vampire wolves?’
A guttural rumble shook Larka’s body and he realised she was laughing. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Your blood is quite safe from my appetites, Steven Anderson.’
‘Fuck-all wrong with my blood,’ he sniffed regally, enjoying the feeling of paternal pride at hearing Larka make her first joke. ‘So if you’re not vampires, why can’t you take sunlight?’
‘Because magic is a negotiation. When Carman spawned us, it was to act as soldiers in her war against the Tuatha, who were themselves powerful magicians. She wanted a powerful caste of warriors. The Tuatha wanted to stop her. The two opposing forces struggled, and eventually a compromise was reached; a mighty race of wolves, but who had to keep to the shadows.’
‘Okay,’ Steve said, with as much of a get to the point edge to his voice as he dared.
‘When Danny imparted his humanity to us, it was a … blueprint, if you like, with which we could create our own identities. We received his philosophies, his empathies. His priorities.’
Steve waited for more, but none was forthcoming. ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘by priorities …’
‘I was not born from a womb, but I now consider myself alive. You were not born from the same womb as he, but you are a brother to him,’ Larka said quietly.
To the eternal horror of every scrap of machismo he still fancied himself to possess, Steve wept to hear the words spoken aloud.
‘We fulfilled our debt to him by protecting the humans, but the best and swiftest of us were sent to protect those most precious to him. Unfortunately some – his father and Ellie – were hidden from us, shielded by Carman and her sons’ influence. You, we could sense. We could locate. I was sent for you. And from that moment to this, it has been an honour to protect you, to know you, to come to call you friend as he does.’
‘How did you know where to take me?’ Steve said, eventually, when he trusted himself to speak again. Larka had brought him back to Belgravia Avenue. There, sitting shivering on the doorstep, was Maggie.
The wolf merely gazed at him with those incredible eyes as he dismounted. He nodded and, on an impulse, leaned in and hugged her, great armfuls of soft wolf-coat, warm against his tou
ch. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
Larka padded away as Steve walked towards Maggie. She had witnessed the embrace. ‘Should I be worried?’ she said, forcing a smile.
He went to shrug off his coat to put around her shoulders, before thinking better of it. Holding up a wait a sec finger, he bounded into the den of iniquity to retrieve a thick purple throw from the living room settee. He settled it over them both and sat down beside her. She snuggled closer to him, put her head on his shoulder, and for a moment or two they just sat there, quiet in the light of the red moon.
Well. Here goes.
‘I have to stay,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘I was hoping you would …’ and he couldn’t even bring himself to finish.
‘You were right,’ she said. Her head still hadn’t moved from his shoulder. He’d missed that weight, he realised.
‘Right about what?’
‘The baby,’ she said.
He said the words he never thought he would. ‘No, I wasn’t. The wee glimpse of the other life told me that, Maggie. I woulda made a shit da. I wasn’t ready. You could see that; I couldn’t. You were trying to be grown-up about it and I–’
‘Steve, listen to me for a second, please. Don’t talk, just let me finish. Something went wrong,’ she said. He realised she was crying and his throat closed over so nothing else would escape. ‘Post-operative infection, they called it. Used to be really common but now,’ and she laughed, shortly, bitterly, ‘now it’s really rare because they’re done properly. Probably if I lived in America I coulda sued the balls outta the lot of them, but I didn’t have the cheek, Steve. I didn’t have the cheek to complain of being robbed of kids when I’d …’ she drew a shuddering breath and moved closer to him, unable to continue.
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