Cage of Thorn (The Blackthorn Cycle Book 2)

by L. M. Hawke

  She crept closer, bending down to examine the moss. A footprint, small and slender enough to belong to a woman, was embedded in the moss. Beyond it, just where the shadows under the trees began to obscure the forest floor from view, was another. The moss held the clear outlines of the prints so distinctly that they seemed almost deliberate, as if the moss had a will of its own… as if it wanted Una to see. She stared down at the prints suspiciously, her spine tingling with fear. Then she realized that the prints were beginning to glow. The light that emanated from the footprints wasn’t bright—it was barely enough light to register at all among the shadows. But it was certainly there. As Una watched, more prints lit up and gleamed softly, creating a distinct trail back into the blackness of the forest.

  Still Una hesitated. The Seelie were behind her, coming ever closer—she could hear them regularly now, their soft voices prodding at her through the trees. She had no way of knowing whether the prints were left by Etain. Perhaps they were Seelie prints, or the trail of some other creature.

  And if they were the Leanan’s prints, it might be dangerous to follow them.

  But isn’t that what I’ve come to do? To track her back to the lair?

  Swallowing her fear, Una hitched up her long, ragged skirt and followed the footprints into the darkest reaches of the forest.

  The prints guided Una through glades dark as caverns, past spikes of exposed black rock and the deep cracks of ravines in the earth. The forest was thick and forbidding, blocking out most of the purplish half-light of the Otherworld. But the footprints’ glow led her on as steadily as a beacon in a storm.

  The trail led over the mossy edge of a dell and down into a dark hollow. Una climbed carefully down into the depression, which held a pocket of clammy air that smelled like the turned soil of a fresh grave. She shivered in the cold and damp, looking about for the next glowing footprint to follow.

  “There you are, little thing.”

  Una looked up, icy with fear, at the sound of the woman’s voice. But there was no woman to be seen; the dell was empty.

  “Who’s there?” Una said.

  A rich, mocking laugh filled the dell. The sound was like a fist slamming into Una’s stomach. Something stirred at the edge of the hollow—a blackness deeper than the forest shadows, dark as a starless night.

  The shadows parted like curtains. A woman stood on the edge of the dell, tall and slim as any Sidhe. Her hair was black and shining, her features sharply defined, her eyes a vivid brown color that held more than a hint of red. Yes, the woman was Sidhe all right—but she wasn’t Seelie. Una could sense that at once.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” the Sidhe purred.

  The arrogance of the dark woman’s voice made Una’s legs quiver. The arrogance… and the familiarity. For Una had heard the voice before. She recalled it instantly, placing it with a shudder of grim recognition. Una had heard this woman speak on the night when she had backtracked to the blackthorn grove at the crossroads—when she had heard Ailill pleading distantly with this very same creature.

  Una had found the Leanan after all. Or rather, the Leanan had found her.

  12

  Una’s mouth fell open with shock as she faced the vampire Etain. Even in the near-darkness of the forest dell, Una could see the Leanan’s ethereal beauty—the high cheekbones, the delicate nose, the mesmerizing eyes that glittered at Una from the dimness. Such a beautiful woman shouldn’t have struck that deep chill of terror into any person’s heart, yet there was something undeniably cruel in her countenance, something dreadful and sinister in her laugh, her smallest movement. Even the Seelie, with all their magic, had never made Una feel like a tiny, helpless animal caught in the claws of a predator.

  “You don’t look like much,” Etain said. “That hair—a rat’s nest. And that dress.” She smirked, casual in her spite. “But you are the one, aren’t you? The one those Seelie fools have been after… the one my own favorite pet tried to woo.”

  “Ailill?” Una said, too desperately. “Where is he?”

  In the darkness, Una could just make out the delicate lift of one of Etain’s dark brows. The Leanan did not answer.

  “All scratched and bruised,” Etain went on. “What a pity. Not so beautiful now, are you? Not that humans are especially attractive at the best of times.”

  Una breathed deeply, trying to calm her nerves, hoping to hide her shudders of fear from Etain. But it was a futile effort, and anyway, how could Una help but feel terror as she stood before such a powerful enemy? Not only an enemy, but one who had set a trap for her?

  You blundered straight into the snare, Una scolded herself. Blind damned idiot that you are.

  “What should I do with you now?” the Leanan wondered aloud.

  She walked down the face of the dell with impossible grace, untroubled by the steepness of the ground. Una shrank away as Etain drew nearer—which only seemed to amuse the vampire all the more.

  She chuckled coldly. “Should I make an end of you quickly? Your blood is warm; I can smell it, feel it. It would do me well, to drink you dry now and leave your husk here in the forest for your friends to find.”

  Una swallowed hard. She drew herself up with a monumental effort. “The Seelie Court will protect me. Even at your strongest, you didn’t manage to break into their palace; their magic defeated you. What do you think they’ll do to you if you try to harm me?”

  Etain flicked her unworried gazed back through the forest, the way Una had come. “Shall we find out? Shall I alert them to your presence now, little thing? I will draw them here, if you like, and then we will see what the Seelie can do against me—since you seem so utterly convinced that those pathetic fools can do anything at all beyond the protection of their circle.”

  Una went cold to the very depths of her bones. She hoped Etain couldn’t see how she blanched, but no doubt that hope was as futile as all the rest. She did her best to glare steadily at the Leanan, tried to look fearless, defiant. But she couldn’t fight the current of dread that washed through her heart. Would the Seelie die if they challenged the Leanan here, beyond their circle of spells? If so, then Una had led them into a death trap. Now all she could do was hope they hadn’t tracked her here, to the vampire’s dell.

  “No,” Etain purred, “I think not. What good would it do me to kill just a few of the Seelie, and alert the rest of them to my whereabouts—and yours? I can do better than that. I can do more.”

  She reached a pale hand out, grasping for Una’s arm, but Una cringed away. She couldn’t stomach the thought of the Leanan’s touch. Etain tossed her head in frustration, sending her black hair rippling in waves. Then she snapped her fingers. As quickly and easily as that, Una felt an invisible force seize her, wrapping tightly around her body. The force dragged Una toward Etain. She dug her feet into the forest floor, resisting the pull, but it made no difference. She would go wherever Etain wished her to go.

  The Leanan turned away, drifting gracefully through the dark heart of the wood. Una was hauled along behind her, helpless to change her fate. She looked down at the ground as she was pulled along behind Etain like a child’s toy on a string; the Leanan’s glowing footsteps faded, smoothed themselves out of the springy moss, and vanished.

  The Seelie wouldn’t have an easy time tracking down Etain—or Una. But it made little difference, as far as Una could see. The Seelie might have no power left to rescue her from the Leanan Sidhe.

  The distant sounds of the Seelie tracking party had long since faded by the time Etain, with Una in helpless tow, reached her stronghold. Una was trembling and sick with exhaustion, for she had resisted the force that dragged her along every step of the way. Resistance did her no good, but she couldn’t relax in the Leanan’s magical grip, couldn’t convince her muscles to stop clenching or her mind to stop racing.

  She had, however, willed herself to note exactly where she was, and to determine, as best she could, which direction Etain was moving. She still doubted her abili
ty to read direction accurately in the Otherworld, but even the smallest clues to her whereabouts might provide some salvation now.

  In her desperation to record every detail of the environment, Una had found faint notes of familiarity in many of the land’s features. Everything around her was vaguely reminiscent of hill country around her cottage, back in Kylebeg. This landscape was thickly forested, where Kylebeg was carpeted in emerald pastures… but the hills and crags and tracks were almost exactly alike. Etain even dragged Una through the crossing of two forest paths, both lined with glowing purple and gold flowers, and surrounded by blackthorn trees. The scene called to mind the crossroads at the bottom of the Una’s hill.

  The sight of so many almost-familiar places only intensified the ache of homesickness in Una’s heart. She did her best to fend off despair, for she knew she must keep her wits about her if she was to overthrow Etain. But it was hard not to feel helpless and despondent, caught as she was in the invisible fist of the Leanan’s power.

  Well beyond the crossroads, Etain dragged Una toward a massive boulder, half again as tall as a man and covered thickly with lichen, moss, and ferns. The stone rested between two massive oak trees with twisted, spreading limbs. The trees’ foliage glittered with tiny points of purple light; that light glinted off a metallic sliver that protruded from one of the tree’s trunks. It would have been a beautiful sight, had Una not been too desperate to appreciate it.

  A thought wormed through Una’s mind. A natural place, but unique somehow… different than what’s around it. The huge boulder with its sentry oaks was certainly unique. Had she come to the Leanan’s lair?

  As if in answer to Una’s internal question, Etain stood before the boulder and raised one hand in a commanding gesture. She uttered a few words in a language Una didn’t know, although its intonations had a familiar ring. The language sounded much like the Seelie names and words she had heard, yet the sound was harsher, more guttural. She supposed it must be the Unseelie tongue.

  A line of magenta fire ran down the boulder’s face, tracking from its peak to the forest floor. The glowing crack split wider, and wider still. The boulder groaned, a tortured sound, as its two halves pulled themselves apart. To Una’s amazement, a door appeared between them, revealed in the vibrant pink light. The door’s lintel was made of the same purple-veined white stone as the door that had appeared in her cottage when she had donned the blackthorn crown. The carvings on the door’s face were similar, as well.

  The portal, Una thought. This is the entry to that creature’s lair.

  Lifting her hand with a jerk, Etain wrenched Una forward. Una’s legs tensed again, trying to stop the motion of fate. But there was nothing she could do to prevent the Leanan now. Una was dragged through the doorway and into Etain’s private realm.

  13

  The Leanan’s domain was far more lavish than Una had imagined it to be. The furnishings were rich and beautiful; they could have come from any grand mansion in the human realm, or from the Seelie Court itself. Lush red draperies hid niches in the walls or framed marble sculptures on pedestals, yet the walls that surrounded all this material beauty undulated with subtle curves, and seemed to be carved out of granite. There were no joins between masonry, no right-angled corners; the walls were all hard and cold and stony, and utterly devoid of windows. Mica flecks in the stone walls picked up the soft glow of the same orb lights Una had found in her chamber at the Seelie Court.

  Mica… Una peered more closely at the nearest wall, noting its rough-stone texture, its raw grayness. She had the distinct impression that she stood in the center of a hollowed-out boulder—a stone larger by far than the one that had split itself open at Etain’s bidding.

  The Leanan issued another command in her guttural tongue, and the passage closed behind them. The white-framed door vanished; windowless stone walls encircled Una with their strange, disorienting curves.

  No door… no windows.

  With a sickening lurch of her stomach, Una realized that she was in fact standing inside the boulder—that through the power of her magic, Etain’s spacious lair existed within that great rock. The knowledge that she was now inside a stone made her feel dizzy and weak. She bit her lip, but she could do little else to quell the rapid rise of panic. She looked around the huge chamber, trying to learn whatever she could of her surroundings.

  There were no doors like the one that had appeared between the boulder’s halves, but simple, unadorned arches were carved into the stone, leading off to additional rooms and corridors. The dome-like room where she now stood seemed to be a hub of sorts—the central passage of Etain’s warren of a lair.

  Etain pulled Una through the nearest arch. The force that held her relaxed; she could move under her own power again, and she turned slowly, taking in the new sights that greeted her.

  The new room looked like an apothecary. Its walls were inset with dozens of small niches, and each niche was filled with small glass bottles, baskets of herbs, and other items Una couldn’t begin to name. A long wooden table stood below the niches. Una surmised that this must be the place where Etain did the bulk of her magical work.

  A huge stone bowl rested on the floor in the center of the room, its surface reflecting the directionless light with a dull sheen.

  And beyond the giant bowl, in an alcove across from the doorway, a large niche held a man, pale and still, sprawled on a tangled stack of blankets and cushions.

  “Ailill!”

  Heedless of the Leanan’s power, Una shoved past the creature and ran to Ailill. She fell on her knees beside his bed, tears blinding her for a moment until she blinked them away. Tentatively, frightened of what she would feel, Una laid a hand on Ailill’s chest. But in the next moment, she sighed with relief. He was alive—breathing shallowly, but warm to the touch and responsive, though he only murmured and tossed weakly, like a man trapped in a dark dream. His voice and his movements were weak, though. There were dark circles around his sunken eyes, and his face was so pale it looked like polished marble.

  Una ran her hands over his body, trying to reassure herself that it was in fact Ailill. Her fingers traced down the length of his arm, and encountered something unexpected—something rough and foreign. Una examined his hand.

  There was a piece of dark cloth tied around his wrist. She lifted his arm, and now she could see that a thin, flexible, transparent tube snaked away from Ailill’s flesh—and that his blood was flowing through it, drip by drip. With her eyes, Una followed the snaking path of the tube across the floor. It drained into the great stone bowl. She realized that that sinister cauldron held a pool of blood. Una’s heart and stomach lurched. She swallowed hard, resisting the urge to vomit.

  “Get up,” Etain said. “I haven’t brought you to fawn over that man.”

  Una considered defying the Leanan, but she knew the creature’s power was too great. She stood slowly, reluctantly turning away from Ailill. “Then why have you brought me?”

  Etain drifted closer. She leaned in; Una clenched her fists to avoid flinching away from the Leanan as Etain drew in a long breath beside Una’s scratched face. Then Etain moved, shifting herself subtly, breathing in yet more of the space around Una’s body. It was almost as if Etain were sniffing her, or… tasting her. Goosebumps raised on Una’s arms.

  “You’ve been inside the Seelie Court,” Etain said. She sounded satisfied—victorious. “I can sense it on you. I can taste their power still, clinging to you like smoke from a fire.”

  “Yes,” Una said levelly. There was no point in denying it. “I’ve been inside.”

  “Good.” Etain smiled, and it was like ice cracking on a lake. “I’ve a task for you, little human. I will make good use of you. Yes, very good use indeed.”

  “Wh… what use?” Una hated how weak and frightened she sounded, but there was no denying reality. She was weak and frightened.

  “You’ll learn it soon enough.” Etain turned away, disappearing into another chamber of her lair.

&n
bsp; She seemed totally unconcerned by Una’s freedom. At first, Una felt heartened by that fact—as much as she could feel any glimmer of hope while trapped in a vampire’s cavern. It would be easier this way to win freedom—for herself and for Ailill. But then the reality of her circumstances caught up to her. Etain was only content to leave Una unrestrained because she was already as restrained as a person could be. She was trapped inside a boulder—the recollection of that disturbing fact sent a lurch of nausea and fear through her gut. Where could Una possibly go without Etain’s permission? And what damage could she do here in the Leanan’s home—a mere human, with no magical power of her own? She was even more helpless here than she had been in the Seelie Court.

  Ailill stirred; Una set aside her fear of Etain for the moment. She went to him quickly, knelt at his side again, and brushing his dark hair from his forehead. It was matted with sweat and grime.

  “Una?” Ailill said faintly. His eyes were still closed.

  “I’m here,” she said.

  Ailill’s eyes opened. The effort seemed to cost him greatly, for he trembled afterward… but those eyes were still as brilliantly blue as they had ever been. The sight of them choked off the breath in Una’s throat. Love and hopelessness surged up inside her.

  “You really are here,” he whispered. Despite his weakness, the words conveyed his wonder and joy.

  But then his face fell. “I wish you weren’t here, Una. There’s no way out, you know… no escape. I’ve already tried, many times.”

  “Well, what else was I to do?” Una said. “You came here for me—to the Otherworld, I mean. Now I’ve come for you.”

  “I wish you’d stayed in our own world, where it’s safe for you.”