Blood In Fire (Celtic Elementals Book 2)

by Heather R. Blair

  “Stop, Aidan!” She didn’t dare open her eyes, but tried to jerk away. His hand plunged into her hair.

  She could feel him deliberately winding the length of it round and round his knuckles until she was trapped. Unable to move her head even an inch—the bare skin of her throat tingling under the brush of his lips—as his words floated softly between them.

  “Why, love? Ye want to be together, ye want to be with me?” The empty laugh that ran over her skin like an icy breeze made Heather’s stomach knot with pain. Pain for him. For all he had lost and endured. “This is the way of it, death and darkness forever.”

  “Isn’t it awfully lonely in that hell of yours, Aidan?”

  His laugh this time was strangled. She felt him lean his head against the wall next to her as if he was too tired to hold it up anymore. “Ye donna understand hell, Heather, no matter what ye think. Ye've only seen the gates.”

  “I know it’s not a place you go, Aidan…it’s a place you make. A place inside your own mind and no matter how far or fast you run, it’s always there—ready to trap you in that godawful pit, to drown you in the blackness of your own soul.”

  “I do nae have a soul, Heather.” His words were bleak.

  “Bullshit.” She opened her eyes and met his. The glow had faded now, but the sheen there made her heart break. “You have the strongest soul of anyone I have ever known. The most beautiful.”

  “Darkness isn’t beautiful, love.”

  “That’s a lot you know, you stupid ass.” She struggled to turn her head, and he loosed his grip a fraction, allowing her to face him directly. “Some of the most precious things in the world exist only in the night. Stars, moonlight…”

  The smile that played over his lips was bitter. “And vampires, I suppose? Ye are mad, love. Do ye nae remember the others…do ye nae remember him?”

  “Not really,” she said. “Right now, I can only seem to see you. You taught me to love the dark, Aidan. If that's wrong, then I'm already damned.”

  Aidan closed his eyes, but not in time to halt the single tear that tumbled down his angular cheek like a lost diamond.

  Her hands came up to his chest, running over the thin cotton of his t-shirt, feeling the tension still tautening the sleek muscles there. He didn’t resist when she curled her fingers into the fabric and pulled him to her mouth.

  Slow and soft, she kissed him. Tasting that single tear burst on her lips, salty and cool. Then his mouth opened and heat poured over her like she’d been plunged headfirst into a steaming bath. His hard body thrummed lightly against hers as he pressed her into the wall. As if he desperately wanted to breach their barrier of their skin just for this one moment so they could merge into one.

  His tongue slipped into her mouth with a fierceness that made her whimper. His hand cupped the back of her head, tangled in her hair. Aidan plundered her mouth until only her fingers wrapped in his shirt kept her from sliding to the floor.

  Need coiled through her like a living thing, a living thing cold and starved that senses fire and sustenance just within reach…

  Heather would have gone to her knees now, she would have crawled….but he didn’t give her the choice.

  With an oath in Gaelic, Aidan tore himself away from her. His face was rigid, the graceful, spare architecture of his bones stark with fury, pain and desire as he watched her sink back against the wall.

  “Ye would have me kill ye? To force ye to become like me…like him?” Aidan’s disgust was palatable.

  Helplessly, she slumped back against the wall. “No, I don’t want that for us. At least not like this, Aidan.”

  “Then what are the options, eh? Where does this end, nobody? What am I to do? Become like him and change ye? Or watch ye die, bit by bit? Am I to endure tha' along with everything else?”

  Her eyes flickered over his anguished face, and then fell. “I don’t know.” She whispered.

  Aidan’s laugh rang against the stone like the slamming of a door. “Then why did ye even tell me, ye heartless bitch? Why give me something so precious knowing I canna ever accept it…or return it?"

  She couldn't answer him.

  His words flailed her to the bone with the cutting truth. He was right. She was a selfish fool…and a cruel one. Ronan had warned her.

  Heather put her head down on her knees and sobbed, the tears hot and hopeless. Dear god, what had she done? When she raised her head a long while later, the room was empty. Aidan was gone.

  From the ache in her heart, she thought he might be gone forever.

  Bav watched Aidan leave the rundown house from the scrying pool. Even after swearing to herself that she would stop watching him, she couldn't. Emptiness filled her as she watched him walk out into the trees. His head was bowed. His steps were slower and heavier than she'd ever seen. He moved as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

  In a way, she supposed it was. And she'd put it there, hadn't she? So very long ago, but it felt like yesterday sometimes.

  She remembered that night, that awful, wonderful night. The night she had thought to save him, and make him hers.

  The night she had seen his end. In this very pool. Shivering, Bav turned away from the basin and stared out into the star strewn sky.

  It had been Aidan's birthday when she'd had the vision that had changed everything. Damme, but the man had no luck at all when it came to birthdays. By then she had known all about Abhartach.

  She had watched on that earlier birthday, too. From afar as that stupid girl had saved him when Áedán turned one and twenty. Not that Jonee could have saved him without her help.

  The wench had gotten lost and never would have found Áedán at all if it hadn't been for her. Bav could have gone to him herself, of course, but it had only been shortly after his rejection of her on the battlement walls and she couldn't bear to face him again so soon.

  Bav had been horrified, but she had recognized the feel and power of a vow. It had taken every bit of strength she possessed not to interfere. The creature himself was one she knew well. In reputation, if not in the flesh.

  Abhartach.

  The name whispered in dark and secret places.

  The strange and new. He would eventually spawn the race that owed her their allegiance, by their very nature. Vampires. The goddess of death. A match made in hell, to be sure.

  There had been very few back then. Abhartach had been wary of giving Lugh cause to investigate this new race and so had been stingy with his creations. He made few and allowed them to turn less.

  When she had brought him Áedán that fateful night six years later, Abhartach hadn't turned anyone personally in over 500 years. But he had been more than willing to make an exception when she offered him Áedán. The demon had been disgustingly ecstatic.

  That had been his last birthday as a human. Seven and twenty. Every day he was growing older, as humans did, but there had been no reason to be concerned yet.

  So Bav had thought, until she'd used the scrying pool early that evening.

  She'd been spying on him, as she did almost every night. He was with his daughter again, they were chasing each other around that white washed hovel by the sea.

  Two curly golden heads shining in the firelight…

  Ti'rna No'g

  899 A.D

  The rose-tinted waters darkened before her eyes. The scene in the little house dimmed. At first Bav thought the fire was merely dying.

  Then the greyish cast on the water deepened, Isleen's form vanished and Áedán's face slid dead center of the reflection. She'd seen this before. Hundreds of times. Thousands.

  NO! Not him. Not yet.

  His eyes looked into hers, those beautiful eyes, and even though she knew what would happen next, Bav sobbed when his hand lifted to rub his chest. In the next instant, those eyes went blank and staring.

  She fell to her knees by the basin, hysterical.

  Not yet, but soon. She couldn't pinpoint the hour or the minute, she never could. But she knew w
ithout a doubt he would be dead before the sun rose again.

  So.

  She would save him, she could push death away. That was in her power. She had done it before and she could do it again. Again and again if need be!

  Getting to her feet, Bav rubbed at her cheeks, laughing at her own foolishness. Until she looked in the basin again and the terrible truth hit her.

  Yes. This time and the next time, maybe. But Áedán's heart was giving out. What if one day she missed it? What if one day she wasn't there to save him? What would she do then?

  For a long, long time Bav lay there, leaning over the basin, her eyes disturbingly dull. It was unacceptable, terrifying. But—

  What could she do?

  The one thing gods could never do was make a human one of them. It wasn't possible to make a human immortal. It just…wasn't….

  Wait. A thought occurred to her…slippery and dark with possibility.

  But that…that would be wrong. Wouldn't it?

  Bav shook her head. She was a goddess, for Danu's sake, she made her own right and wrong and…

  “I canna lose him,” she whispered to herself. She watched him play with the child, wanting to scream. The easy love between them. The way the girl basked in his affection, soaking it up like a flower in the sun…

  Her stomach burned with jealousy as the idea grew in shape and form.

  Bav knew the Fomorian half-blood’s unholy interest in Aidan, which she saw as a twisted form of her own pure love. She knew of the creature's powers, how he could exchange blood with humans and make them virtually indestructible. Some of them had lived for hundreds of years already and they were still strong…so very strong.

  If Áedán were like them, he would be safe. Safer anyway. So much easier to protect.

  Yes, she could use the demon to save him. Áedán wouldn’t resist, not to save his own life, surely. And if he did…her eyes narrowed on the laughing girl’s face and her lips tightened.

  He could be persuaded.

  She touched the reflection in the pool with a forefinger, watching as the reflection rippled and vanished, ignoring the coldness in her belly. It couldn’t be wrong to save him, it just couldn’t. And even if it was, did she really care?

  Nothing could be wrong when it came to love.

  Du'n Dreach-Fhoula

  Abhartach watched the woman from the window of the highest tower in the castle less than an hour later. She vanished in a streak of green fire as soon as she cleared the doors.

  He thought of what she had offered him and he gripped the ledge so tightly stone cracked. His. His to break, to burn, to mold. He would snap that spine of steel and forge it into his own image. His mouth watered in anticipation.

  They would meet at the tree and there he would make an end, at last.

  Northern Uí Néill

  Áedán tucked Isleen in her bed, after two extra tales and about half a dozen extra kisses. He nodded at Eunys, but made his way outside. He wanted to feel the sea on his face, he needed the air. His chest felt tight, as it often times did lately, as if something unseen were squeezing him from behind.

  Shutting the door behind him, Áedán walked down the path, the stone path had a dull glow in the moonlight. The waves crashed on the shore and the breeze was fresh and sharp in his lungs, but the tightness wouldn't ease. For some reason it grew worse and he stumbled.

  Before he could hit the sand, something did wrap around him. Soft and strong, a woman's arms. Áedán turned his head, trying to see her face but darkness slipped over him like a velvet hood and he couldn't breathe…

  When Áedán opened his eyes again, he knew exactly where he was.

  "No. NO!" He struggled, trying to believe it was merely the old nightmare come to haunt him again. That part of his life was over. He would never, ever have to go through that again, never hear that voice…

  "So nice to see you again, my boy. It's been far too long."

  One of the shadows surrounding him moved, and with a pang of pure terror Áedán saw the familiar reddish sheen of those awful eyes.

  "Get away from me!" He wrenched his body again, but he couldn't move. Something was holding him down. No, someone. Another set of eyes flashed in the moonlight. Flashed green. Bav?

  He'd not seen her in a long time either. He'd rather hoped he'd seen the last of her after what happened in the encampment.

  It still made his skin crawl, how she'd tricked him into sleeping with her. She'd finally gotten a taste of him…and gotten his utter revulsion in return. Áedán's lip curled as he stared at her now.

  Yes, once every so often, he would get an itch between his shoulders, that warning of unwelcome observation. But he had told himself he was mad, that she must have given up all hope of him returning…whatever it was she felt for him after that night. He had been utterly vicious when she had revealed herself the morning after that little farce.

  Why would she come back now?

  Why couldn't she just leave him alone?

  Áedán knew why though, maybe he had even known as a child when Uncle Ruad had told him those tales; those sad, beautiful and twisted tales.

  There was something wrong with her, something missing, something that craved love, yes. But also something worse. Something he realized abruptly he had given her time and time again, without realizing it. Exactly as Cúchulainn had.

  Pain.

  "Bav. No. What are ye doing?" He struggled against her again, but the arms of the goddess were impregnable.

  "Áedán, ye must do this. No' for me, but fer yerself. I saw ye, my love. I saw ye dead."

  For the first time Áedán stilled. Abhartach had slunk back, leaving them alone, only the shine of his eyes were visible in the dark. That anticipatory shine. Áedán shuddered and forced his focus back on Bav.

  "When? How?"

  "Ye'll never see the sun rise again. The how I donna understand exactly, 'tis something wrong inside yer heart, something broken tha' is giving out at last…

  "What does it matter? Áedán, it only matters that ye save yerself. If ye ask him, if ye free him by asking...then ye can be safe."

  His mind whirled, Áedán was barely listening now.

  Death? He was going to die? But that was ridiculous, he was young yet and strong…and….

  Áedán knew that young men died all the time, no matter their strength or lack of it. And he remember that feeling in his chest tonight…

  He looked into the goddess's eyes, trying to discern if she were lying yet again. A different fear than the one already coating his tongue teased its cold way up his spine. He didn't want to die. He wasn't ready.

  His eyes went past her to Abhartach. Of course, there were worse things.

  Yes, indeed.

  Ask him. Ask him?

  Horrified understanding illuminated Áedán's fear and burned it away. Yes, his death may be written—he'd face that if he had to—but this foul thing, he did not have to do.

  The vow protected him, the promise between Niall and the demon so long ago. The vow that said the demon could drink, but not kill, and that he could only drink those three promised times.

  His debt to the demon had been paid in full six years ago. Abhartach couldn't take anything from him, not without his consent.

  That Áedán would not give. No matter what they planned to do to him.

  "I willna. Ye canna make me do this."

  Bav saw the iron-hard resolve in his eyes. She knew exquisitely well how unbreakable his will could be. She had no choice, not now. He had forced her hand.

  "Áedán," she leaned close so the demon could not hear her, whispering soft and slow in his ear. "Ye will do this, my love. Ye will. Or I will tell him who lives in that little cottage by the sea." She heard his sharp inhalation and pressed her point home, word by word.

  "Ye will be dead by morning one way or the other. I promised him blood, yer blood, yer life. But…he might be mollified with hers. She doesn't carry the O'Neill name, nothing protects her from him, Áedán. Noth
ing…and with ye dead, no one."

  Áedán froze. She could feel his heart stutter under her hand and drove in the last nail. "Ye or yer precious girl. Yer choice, Áedán, but one of you is going with him."

  For one long moment neither of them moved, then Áedán slumped bonelessly against her.He was unresisting as she stroked his hair, his back. Bav's heart soared in triumph, warm in the knowledge he would be safe.

  Then she saw his face, his eyes staring blankly into the night. A tiny chill nipped at her cozy coccon, but she shoved it away as she held him close.

  "'Twill be alright, Áedán, it will. Everything will be alright." Over and over she murmured words of comfort, rocking back and forth.

  The demon watched them for several moments, his eyes wide.

  Abruptly, Áedán pushed away from her. He got unsteadily to his feet, bracing himself against the gnarled trunk of the hawthrone tree. His head lifted slowly as he focused on Abhartach.

  "I am ready."

  A smile broke over the demon's face. Like a black sun rising over a demented landscape. For the first time since the scrying pool a flicker of real unease went through her.

  What a truly awful creature…but a necessary evil. A useful one.

  Áedán took an unsteady step away from the tree. She reached out to support him, but he brushed her off again, almost going to his knees with the effort. Abhartach stepped forward, pushing Áedán back with one huge hand, flattening him against the twisted old tree.

  "There is no need for such useless pride, soon enough you won't be able to stand on your own. The change goes fast, but it is painful." The demon's smile widened. "Very painful. Lean back, my son, I will hold you up when the times comes."

  "Donna call me tha'."

  Abhartach laughed. "But that is what you will be from now on. I am going to give you death and then I am going to give you life. From my blood. You will be mine. My son. And eventually, I think, my heir."