Blood In Fire (Celtic Elementals Book 2)

by Heather R. Blair

  Munster, of course, was another story. Bloody southerners. Still…

  “Áedán!” His father’s deep voice rolled up the hill, startling Áedán from his dreams.

  The dark auburn of Eirnin’s hair, so unlike his son’s, caught the light and flamed as he stalked over the rise. A big, husky man, much like his elder brother, Ruad, the Uí Néill king was nevertheless more a statesman than a warrior. Oh, he had proved his prowess on the battlefield, yes indeed. He would have never attained his position without it. But this was a man with a keen eye and a quick mind. A man who could not only fight battles and win them, but plan for a day when the battles would be needed no longer.

  He shared a certain sly humor with his son, but lacked Áedán’s unabashed enthusiasm for pranks and life in general. Though Eirnin could easily pull a tale from the air and stir a crowd to cheers, as he had done recently in Connaught. He was a loving, if stern father and very similar as a ruler. He was a somewhat solemn man in the best of times. Tonight, his countenance was positively broody.

  Áedán frowned in confusion.

  “Here, Da. Is something amiss?” A fleeting concern for the men below teased his heart, but his father’s quickly shaken head dismissed that worry.

  “Nae. All is well. It is only…damme, Áedán! We must needs talk. 'Tis yer birthday tomorrow.”

  Áedán smiled. He was well aware of this. They would not be home by then, more's the pity. His mam had promised him a feast of feasts when they returned. She had been a bit teary-eyed when she’d said it, but when he asked what was wrong, she had waved him away with a shaky laugh, saying only—

  “Ye leave me as my child, but 'ere I see ye again, ye’ll be a man.”

  He had smiled and kissed her, the tears on her cheek salty against his lips as they had hugged hard. He loved his mother better than any person on earth, save Unc Ruad, and his da.

  “Aye, Da.”

  “"Tis an important birthday, for all young lads. This night will mark your last a child, with the dawn ye will truly be a man. In age, if yet no' quite in spirit."

  Despite that odd tightness in his face, a smile flitted over Eirnin's lips.

  "I have nae doubt tha' will come in time. Yer a fine lad, Áedán. Strong when it is needed, and kind when warranted. Fair and true, fer all yer infernal trickster ways. I couldna have wished fer a better son.”

  The words his da spoke, however wonderful to hear, sounded apologetic in a strange way.

  Áedán was confused. Something had started to coil tightly inside him, that odd tingling sense he got sometimes. When he could almost hear what was in other's people's minds and feel what was in their hearts.

  His father, his brave, stoic father was frightened…and sad.

  “For ye, lad, the morrow night will be of far more import than the day.” Eirnin swallowed and grasped Áedán's shoulder, hard enough to be uncomfortable.

  Despite that, Áedán didn’t shake off his father’s touch. Indeed, he felt like he couldn’t move at all. Somehow Áedán knew that here and now, things were going to change.

  Forever.

  “I need ye to be strong, Áedán. Stronger than ye have ever been.”

  Áedán swallowed, but straightened his spine. “What happens morrow night, Da?”

  Eirnin closed his eyes, his fingers digging into Áedán’s thin, wiry muscles so tightly for a moment it was an effort for the boy not to cry out. When his father’s eyes opened again, they were so dark a blue as to be black.

  “Tomorrow a price must be collected, and ye must pay it, lad. Pay it in blood.“

  Aidan sat up abruptly, his eyes flying open. The room would have been pitch black to human eyes. The fire had died down so that only a coal or two glowed faintly.

  Darkness was never impenetrable to a vampire. One of the first lessons he learned from Abhartach. Aidan stared straight ahead, forcing down the fear of his long dead younger self.

  Cold hatred took its place.

  The seeds of hatred that had been sown that day on the hill of Cooley.

  Why had he dreamed of that day? Why now?!

  Stupid fucking question was the short answer. His past was knocking on the proverbial door lately.

  Aidan got up and knelt in front of the fire, stirring the coals to life. He had often wondered how his Da had felt that day. How he been able to bear the burden that he had laid at his only son's feet?

  Eirnin had explained that centuries ago, their ancestor, his father’s own namesake, Niall, had made a deal with a devil. A demon fae named Abhartach. The first of his unnatural kind.

  Once Abhartach had been merely a fae/Fomorian halfblood. Rare enough, but not unheard of. Then the creature had developed some very strange and evil habits.

  The fae had long been known for stealing humans into their world, particularly women and children, but often times men as well. This Abhartach was no different.

  That was until he carelessly murdered an unwilling victim. The story was that the human’s blood had sprayed across his face and that once he got a taste, the demon fae developed a hunger for it that he could not resist. He started to kill for blood alone.

  Over time, the merger of human blood with his already unusual half-fae, half-Fomorian blood turned this Abhartach into something unholy and other.

  Something the world had never seen before.

  His father had not had the word ‘vampire’ and indeed, Aidan himself didn’t hear the term until centuries later. Words did not matter, all that mattered back then was duty. The duty that had been awaiting him from the day he was born, his birthright in a way.

  When Abhartach had first come so long ago to what was then the Uí Néill, he had been a ravenous beast, lost in the throes of his newly-awakening blood lust. People disappeared, sometimes whole families in one night. The countryside began to live in blind terror of the setting of the sun.

  Niall, along with the head of the neighboring O’Kane clan, hatched a plan to seize the demon. They baited him with one of the lovely daughters of the O’Kane and lay in wait. Sure enough, the two brave chieftains were able to trap the demon and cut off his head. They buried him under a young hawthorne tree and slept the night and half the day away in pleased relief at their accomplishment.

  By the time they were ready to travel on, it was sunset again and Niall, the last to leave, was horrified to look back and see the creature digging itself out of ground as dusk fell. The demon was whole once more.

  Thus began a test of wills. Niall told the O’Kane to get his daughter to safety. He beheaded the creature again, hacked its' body into pieces and buried them in different spots around the hills. And he waited.

  The next night the creature unearthed himself again, again whole. Over and over, for nine days and nine nights it happened.

  Aidan had reason later to wonder morbidly if his gormless ancestor had ever thought to try leaving the creature out in the sunlight, but then he found out that sunlight had only become dangerous to Abhartach sometime many years after Niall's encounter with the demon. That was probably the tipping point, at which Abhartach had truly morphed into the soulless creature that would eventually be named by both Bram Stroker and James Joyce as ‘vampire.’

  It had been on the last evening, the ninth, when pushed to the limits of the human endurance, Niall had forced a compromise with the demon. In exchange for Abhartach leaving Niall’s lands and the people therein free from harm—and also in payment to the demon for the nine days he had been 'killed'—Abhartach would secure the right to feed from the eldest of Niall’s sons three times, once on his first birthday as a man, then three years later, and again in three. And on for nine generations. Only then would Abhartach be satisfied.

  Aidan scrubbed his face and sighed.

  Stupid bargain. His cursed ancestor should have found a way to kill the bastard then and there, whatever the cost.

  But Niall hadn't.

  And so at the tender age of fourteen, Áedán had been left in the dark. In the night. To mee
t the monster for the first time. He closed his eyes as he let the memories run their course.

  They had been far from that legendary hill in Cooley by the next night. They made camp just across the border onto their own lands. It had been a flat spot, with a twisted, strange looking hawthorne tree. His father had bound him to the tree even though Áedán had tried to refuse the ropes. He was young and strong and stubborn. Whatever was coming for him, he would not run. He swore it. His father had smiled, sad and proud.

  And bound him anyway.

  That night had been foggy and damp. Moonless, starless, cold and black. So black.

  A dark so thick it was hard to breathe through it. To hear. The heavy silence had been almost unbearable. So Áedán thought, until he heard the footsteps.

  Deliberate and slow. The voice was the same.

  “The last of Niall’s offerings. My, my.” Hot breath pulsed at his ear and Áedán started in shock, the ropes stopping the movement short. He hadn’t sensed the creature was so close.

  “Fresh, young and sweet.” A roughened finger caressed his cheek, the edge of a thick nail. Bile rose in Áedán’s throat.

  “Take what it is ye came to take and then go.” His voice, which had so recently and proudly changed to the deeper tones of a man, went high as a girl’s as he addressed the demon he could not see.

  Laughter trembled the ground beneath his feet. Áedán felt those rough fingers slide into his hair. His thick, golden curls that made all the woman and girls at home sigh and all the boys that were fool enough, tease him mercilessly, until he’d taught them better.

  With a cruel twist, Áedán's head was wrenched back and that flinty breath filled his nose.

  “So brave and so ignorant. You don't give the orders here, little one.”

  “Ye canna hurt me, tha's no' part of the bargain.”

  More laughter, so close Áedán could feel the creature’s mouth hovering above his own. He wanted to retch, but closed his eyes instead. It made no difference.

  Open or closed, the dark was everywhere.

  “Oh, foolish boy, I see someone needs training. I cannot kill ye, true. No one said anything about not hurting you.” The fingers in his hair tightened again, making his eyes sting even as Áedán’s knees trembled at those words. The voice turned considering, almost caressing. “If you scream loudly enough for your father to hear, I’ll make the pain short. Is it a bargain, young master?”

  “Nae. I willna scream.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  The fangs had pierced his skin then, cold and deep, as the darkness outside slithered its way inside him. He had thought he would die of the pain, but he hadn’t screamed.

  Not once.

  Aidan sighed as he let the familiar sickness of the memories take their course and fade. He had been foolish to taunt Abhartach, in hindsight it had only served to make the demon more vicious in his feeding. Abhartach had bit him at least half a dozen times, tearing his flesh, incensed at his defiance.

  And so very intrigued by it, as well.

  That far-ago boy could only be who he was. It was hard to blame him for all that had followed.

  Áedán had been a romantic dreamer. Strong and temperamental. Sharp of tongue and fierce of heart. Full of high hopes fueled by his near worship of the old tales and his fervent wish to be just like his greatest hero. That was all Áedán had wanted, to be a hero, the bravest and best of them all.

  Aidan hadn't been that child, that man or that human for ages.

  His lips twisted as he stood back from the now blazing fire.

  He'd have given almost anything back then to be just like Cúchulainn. But he hadn't even managed a noble death. Just a perverted mockery that would indeed end with a bloodstained tree—the same twisted tree that Abhartach had first taken him against. His life would end for good right there only a scant dozen years later.

  That particular memory wasn't one he was willing to face right now.

  If ever again.

  He opened the door and let the fire eat away the dark, wishing it could burn away the blackness of his past as easily.

  Chapter 10

  Bav opened her eyes to a hill overlooking the sea. Unsurprising that. Everywhere on Mac's damn island was a hill overlooking the bloody sea. She had expected maybe an entrance to the Otherworld. She knew Mac had one, though no one knew where it was.

  This was just a simple hill. In the real world. She could smell the grass, the salt spray of the air…even the sheep dung. Her nose wrinkled.

  Where was he?

  At her thought, a man stepped away from the shadow of a standing stone. He was nearly bigger than the stone itself. His hair was russet, even in the scant light of the moon it shone red and it was wild. His eyes, though she couldn't make them out at this distance, she knew to be greenish-grey, as varied in their moods as the sea he loved so well. Manannán mac Lir.

  His only consideration to her audience was his lack of modern dress. He wore a rough storm-blue cloak, cut of shark skin. His trident wasn't visible, but that didn't mean it wasn't here.

  "Bav."

  "Brother."

  He gave her a sharp look.

  Usually they played down the family relation, by mutual agreement. They were two of the few of the Tuatha de Nanaan that could claim full-blooded, legitimate status. Danu was their mother, as she was of all the oldest of the de Nanaan, and Lir was their father. In their case, as in a lot of royal families, the closer the relationship, the keener the hatred.

  She couldn't stand him, Bav thought as she regarded her older brother face to face for the first time in an eon, but she had a wary respect for him.

  Oh yes, wary fit her feelings for Mac perfectly.

  "To what do I owe this visit, sister dear?" Mac's voice made a bored sneer of turning her familial term back in her face.

  That was the question, was it not? How to approach her worries with him, that was a better one. She couldn't overplay her hand. She needed to get information from him, not give it out.

  Tricky, tricky.

  She had mulled for a long time last night on the proper approach. Hopefully, not in vain.

  Vanity, that was the thing.

  Traditionally, vanity was unfairly labeled a woman's vice. Bav had always found most men to be vain, in one form or another. Either about their strength, their intelligence, their fighting or sexual prowess.

  She knew that if you could find their particular vanity and make use of it, either to stroke it or challenge it, you would have control of the man.

  Mac wasn't so easy. He was proud, sure enough. But not vain. Vanity was empty where pride was strong. She hadn't thought she could reach him through vanity. Then it occurred to her, there was one area. Maybe.

  Magic.

  "Actually…I need some advice."

  Mac's eyebrows shot into the sweep of hair that fell over his forehead. "Advice?"

  "Yes, I need to change a spell of time."

  He frowned, his face unreadable. "Tha' canna be done, no' by us. Yer in need of Aine…or Lugh. But ye know tha' already."

  Bav drew a breath. Was she reading too much into his tone, or had she heard just a hint of slyness there? A shiver worked down her spine as she forced herself to continue calmly. "Tha' is the problem, I enlisted the chit's help and she made a mess of it." She was being paranoid, that was all.

  The chances Mac knew anything from Aine herself had to be slim to nil. Not with the history between Mac and Aine's part of the family. The circumstances that had destroyed Mac and Aine's half-sister, Fand's, marriage weren't the sort that led to polite conversations. If Mac and Aine had said two words to each other in the last millennium, she'd eat crow.

  It was only the possibility that he might have felt the original spell that brought her here. She knew the vision of him in the pool was likely only due to his past promise to Aidan.

  The future was hers.

  The spell she had first cast on the girl had been so long ago and she had been so s
ecretive. So very careful.

  Mac couldn't know.

  But she must be sure before going forward. If Mac knew, if he interfered…

  Everything she had done was pointless.

  "Did she now?" Mac's eyes wandered to the sky, where the moon was draped in clouds of silken blue."

  "Ye know her magic is no' the strongest, but 'tis stubborn. I believe she said the words I gave her wrong."

  "Ye believe?"

  Bav shrugged. "I confronted her, but she insists she spoke exactly as I bade her."

  Mac chuckled softly. "Really? Did ye expect tha' one to say any different to yer face? Lying is second nature to her kind. To all our kind." Bav swallowed hard as he continued.

  "I am curious though, how do ye know it weren't yer magic tha' went wrong and no' her words? Truth be told, sister, ye make a mess of things fair often."

  She ground her teeth together as Mac's gaze lowered to hers. His face was bland, but she could read the lazy satisfaction there. Oh, sweet Danu…!

  He knew.

  "I was tricked." Everything was spiraling away from her, the ground seemed to tremble under her feet. Her plans, everything coming together perfectly. Her last hope to bind Aidan to her at long last, the one she had worked on for centuries…all gone. In one sardonic look from her brother's eyes.

  He tsked. "Donna feel quite so good from the other side, does it, sister?"

  "How long have ye known? Who told ye?" Bav couldn't think, couldn't face that everything she had done had been for nothing.

  He gave her a smile, but didn't speak.

  "I only wanted to see him happy again, ye know." Tears streaked her face, leaving ghostly trails in the moon's light.

  For the first time, Mac showed a twinge of temper. His huge hands clenched and far in the distance Bav heard the low growl of thunder, followed by a flash of lightning over the black sea.

  "Yer a narcissistic twat, Bav! Ye always have been. As much as ye may lie to others, fer bloody sake's, donna lie to me—or yer own self! Ye would use her, just as Abhartach sought to use her What makes ye any different than tha' abomination?"