“Morning shift is about to begin,” he said. “We have to get out of here before someone catches us.”
“We can’t just leave it here,” Cei objected.
“What choice do we have? If someone finds us here, we could end up in jail, or worse.”
Cei stared at the box for a long minute before he finally smashed his hand against it, hissing as the box remained unharmed, but his knuckles began to bleed. Morgan offered a handkerchief. Gwen wrapped it around the wound.
“We have to go,” she said. “We can come back for it tomorrow night.”
Cei looked at the box for a long moment before he finally conceded defeat. “I just wish I knew what was inside.”
“You took pictures, didn’t you, Tony?” Gwen asked.
“I did.”
“Maybe we can ask someone what those markings mean. Maybe they might tell us something.”
Cei touched one of the markings, his fingertips almost caressing the intricate detail. “I know some of them,” he said. “This one,” he pointed to one just above the one he had been touching, “means earth. And that one,” he said, pointing to another, “means salvation.”
“What does that have to do with the gate?” Morgan asked.
“It doesn’t. Tony’s probably right; it’s probably the Baton of Solas, the Baton of Light.” Cei shook his head as he continued to touch the markings. “This baton is said to give those with magic a way to channel their magic so perfectly that they become almost unstoppable. And if someone without magic, a human, holds this baton, it will give them the powers of a demigod.”
“Then why do we need it?” Morgan asked, earning a look of derision from Cei.
“If we had this baton, we could find the gate just by asking. And when we reach it—we could release the hounds of hell if that was what we wanted to do.”
There was real awe in Cei’s voice as he spoke. It made Gwen wonder about the baton that was still hidden inside his pack. What were its powers? Clearly, it was not as powerful as this one. But why then would Cei want it?
A noise in a distant part of the cavernous room made Tony jump. “We should go.”
Gwen grabbed Cei’s shoulder and pulled him in the direction Tony and Morgan were already heading. She could feel him hesitate as he looked back at the box, but he finally conceded and followed her. They made their way uneventfully through the hospital and stopped at a nearby diner for an early breakfast. Cei picked at his food, clearly lost in thought, as Tony and Morgan tried to keep up a patter of small talk.
Gwen swallowed a forkful of eggs, followed quickly by a bite of bacon. She shouldn’t have been hungry, not with the aches and pains still throbbing in her body after their night long excursion, but, somehow, she was starving.
“There’s a library,” Tony suddenly said. “They have some very rare books. Maybe someone there would know how to read the symbols on the box.”
Cei shook his head. “Those symbols are Druid. They have never been written down anywhere, never been translated. It’s unlikely anyone would be able to translate them for us.”
“Rhein might know what they mean,” Morgan said. “He studied to be a Druid priest.”
Tony looked up, his expression weary. “Rhein’s not here.”
“Rhein wouldn’t know anything about it, anyway,” Cei said. “This would have been a little above his pay grade.”
“I don’t know. He told me a lot about that time,” Morgan objected. “He said that he was nearly at the end of his training—”
“He lied,” Cei interrupted, leaning forward to make sure Morgan was listening. “Druid priest training took many, many years. Rhein was only halfway through it when he met his future master.”
“He told me—”
“I don’t care what he told you. Rhein’s full of crap, anyway.” Cei sat back, shaking his head as he turned to focus on anything but the people at the table.
Feeling especially stubborn, Morgan pushed the issue.
“He said that he was nearly finished when he was asked to become an immortal servant. And that he devoted his life to the service of the sons of Don, not just the one master he was supposed to serve. He said it was you who didn’t follow the rules of servitude; you should have studied with the Druid priests, but you refused. He said the only reason Gwydion made you a servant was because you could—”
“Shut up!”
Cei reached across the table and grabbed Morgan by the collar of his shirt, dragging him out of his chair, spittle flying over his face as he demanded, “Don’t talk to me about that person ever again. Do you hear me?”
“Let him go,” Gwen said quietly, standing so quickly that her chair toppled behind her.
Tony grabbed Cei’s shoulder, whispering something in his ear. But Cei seemed to only see Gwen. He stared at her with a hatred in his eyes like nothing she had ever seen before. He shoved Morgan away, causing him to fall back into his chair with a thud. And then he moved around the table, grabbing Gwen by the throat.
“Don’t push me,” he hissed in her ear. “It wouldn’t take much for me to snap your neck right here and now.”
“It wasn’t him, was it?” she asked, surprised her voice still worked under the pressure of his hand. “It wasn’t him who lost control when he finally had his freedom, was it?”
Cei squeezed. “I’m warning you.”
“It also wasn’t him who turned on his masters. What was it, Cei? Was it the loss of your family, or was there something else, something darker that made you hate Gwydion so much?”
It was the wrong thing to say. She knew immediately she had hit a chord when Cei tightened his grip on her throat, instantly cutting off the air. But she also knew that she was right. It wasn’t Rhein Cei meant when he told Morgan not to speak to him of that person again. It was Gwydion.
She should have seen it and known the night he told her how Gwydion chose him as his servant, even though he wasn’t training for the priesthood, even though he wasn’t the kind of man the gods usually wanted by their sides for all eternity. If not then, she should have known when Gwydion professed his love for Cei and then watched him walk away with such grief in his eyes. She had put it down to sorrow for the way things would play out, but maybe it was more than that. Maybe there was a lot more to the relationship between those two men than even Cei was willing to admit.
It explained that much more about Cei, about his reasons for doing all he was. If he hated Gwydion, that would explain Cei’s apparent alliance with Gwydion’s enemies.
But…if Cei hated Gwydion, why did he want to find the gate and break the curse so badly?
Or was there something else Gwen was missing?
Chapter 17
Morgan stood and waved his hand, a dagger immediately appearing in his hand. He raised it just as a big, burly man approached their table.
“You need to leave,” the man said in a voice that broke no argument.
Cei seemed to come back into himself, glancing first at Morgan and then the stranger. He let go of Gwen, who fell into her chair as cool air burned and scraped at her raw throat. She coughed, barely able to catch her breath with each spasm.
“Out,” the man repeated, grabbing Cei’s arm.
“I’m going,” Cei barked, jerking his arm out of the man’s grip and storming toward the exit. Tony hesitated a moment, his eyes on Gwen. “I need to go with him,” he said.
She waved him on.
Morgan sat close to Gwen, the weapon gone and his hand moving erratically—but essentially soothing—up and down her back.
“You okay, Miss?” the stranger asked, kneeling in front of Gwen.
She nodded, unable to trust her voice at this point.
The man lifted a glass of water from the table and offered it to her as a new fit of coughs tore through her sore throat. “Do you want me to call the police?”
Gwen shook her head no, as Morgan said, “Her brother. It was just a little misunderstanding.”
“With family like
that, who needs enemies?” the man asked, lingering a moment longer before he wandered back to the back of the diner.
Gwen continued to cough, unable to take a drink because there was no pause between coughing fits. Morgan continued to rub her back, his sighs suggesting he was growing increasingly uneasy.
“Outside,” she managed to mutter.
Morgan immediately helped her to her feet and half carried, half led her outside. Gwen stumbled toward a small oak tree she had noticed as they arrived earlier. She touched the bark and almost immediately felt the healing powers of the tree flow through her body. It had been easier with the sword wound Branwen administered, but she had been lying on the ground then. But this…in seconds, she could feel whatever it was that was bruised and swollen inside her throat begin to heal.
“I’ve never seen him like that,” Morgan said as the coughing finally subsided.
“There’s a lot about Cei you don’t know,” Gwen agreed.
He touched her back again, sorrow so clear in his eyes that she was afraid he was about to cry. “I thought…I was pretty sure he was going to kill you.”
“I’m too stubborn for that.”
Morgan smiled. “Yeah, I guess you are.”
Gwen pushed away from the tree and looked around the small street where they stood. There were few people wandering around this early in the morning. Cei and Tony were nowhere to be seen. She ran her hands over her throat, almost expecting something to be different there even though the pain and the feeling of being crushed were gone.
“You should go back to the hotel.”
“What about you?” Morgan asked. “I can’t just leave you here all alone.”
“You’re not,” a voice said behind them.
Gwen didn’t have to turn to know who it was. That voice was as familiar to her now as her own. She felt his hand slip around her waist, taking possession in a way he had stopped himself from doing before. Maybe watching another man nearly kill her was the last little push he needed to claim what she was willing to give to him days ago.
“Rhein,” Morgan said. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
“Hey, Morgan,” he said, all casual like they were standing in a high school hallway instead of in the middle of a Welsh city. “Impressive dagger back there.”
Morgan blushed. “Cei taught me,” he began to say, but then let the rest of the sentence fall into the dirt.
“Did you see where they went?” Gwen asked, turning to face Rhein.
“Back to the hotel.”
“Good. We’ve got to disappear.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“Wait, aren’t you going to let Tony know you’re here?” Morgan asked. “There are some symbols he needs translated.”
“That’s under control, Morgan,” Gwen said, glancing over her shoulder at him.
“It would be better if Tony didn’t know I was around,” Rhein added. “You should go back to the hotel and tell them Gwen took off and you have no idea where she went.”
“What if they don’t believe me?”
Rhein didn’t seem to hear him. He was studying Gwen’s throat, his fingers moving so softly over the place where bruises should have been that his touch sent funny tingles up and down her spine.
“Rhein?”
He shook his head, his hand beginning to shake just slightly. “He’ll believe you. He’ll expect Gwen to be frightened now. This is his MO.”
“MO?”
Rhein glanced at Morgan. “This isn’t the first time Cei and I have played this particular game. He’s losing his cool because he thinks Gwen is holding out on him. The closer it gets to Samhuinn, the more anxious he’ll get.”
“And the more likely he is to hurt someone.” Gwen turned toward Morgan. “Promise me you’ll be careful. Don’t be alone with him if you can help it. And don’t bait him anymore.”
The grief in Morgan’s eyes reminded Gwen of the same grief she had seen in Gwydion’s eyes. But he nodded. “I promise.”
“Do you have your cellphone?” Rhein asked.
Morgan pulled it out of his pocket to show him.
“I’ll text you here in a little while so you’ll have the number of the burner I’ve got. If you need anything, text me.”
Morgan nodded.
“This is going to be over very soon, my friend,” Gwen said, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “And then we’ll all be able to have something of a normal life again.”
“Just don’t get dead,” he said.
“You, too.”
Rhein grabbed Gwen’s hand and pulled her in the opposite direction of the hotel. She looked back and could see Morgan standing by the tree just watching them disappear. Again, a real affection filled her as she studied him, something she had not allowed herself to feel in a very long time. She learned long ago that friends came and went, and that opening herself up to the possibility just hurt more than she was willing to accept. She stopped making friends in elementary school and stopped counting on anyone other than herself long before she was old enough to understand what real friendship was. This was the first time…she wasn’t sure she up for the odds that hung over them at the moment.
***
Rhein had a room in a small boarding house on the outskirts of town. The old woman who ran the place made a lewd sound as Rhein led Gwen through the front of the house. He shot her a dirty look, but Gwen was pretty sure the woman was too blind to see it.
She fell onto the squeaky, old bed as soon as they were alone, exhaustion suddenly seeping into her bones now that she knew she was safe. Rhein seemed unsure what to do with himself, first pacing in front of the door, then sitting on the edge of the lone chair that was stuffed into a corner of the room. Then, he stood again, rubbing his hands on the front of his jeans as he tried not to look down at her.
“It’s the Baton of Solas. The relic Tony found.”
Rhein looked at her then. “Are you sure?”
“There are symbols on the outside of the box. The remnants of the oak tree told me what they meant.”
Rhein’s eyebrows rose. “I bet Cei went crazy when he realized what it was.”
“He worked himself into quite a sweat trying to get the box out of the concrete wall.”
“Why didn’t he just break it open?”
Gwen attempted a shrug, but she was lying on her side so it didn’t quite come off. “I kind of put a protective barrier around it.”
Rhein stared at her for a minute, and then he threw his head back and laughed. Gwen smiled, too tired to do much more than that.
When his laughter was spent, he came over to the bed and sat on the floor beside it, putting him at eye level with her. “You understand what this means, right?”
“It means we have to go to the gate tonight after we retrieve the baton.”
Rhein nodded. “Are you ready for that?”
She touched his cheek lightly, her fingers lingering near the corner of his mouth. “I’m ready for all the lies and the fighting and the craziness to be over.”
“Cei won’t just let you walk away. He’ll find a way to track us, to follow us to the gate.”
“And we have to be ready.”
He took hold of her hand and kissed her palm lightly. “I just wish I knew what it was he was after.”
A thought began to form in the back of Gwen’s mind—something about the way Cei stiffened when she asked him a question the night before—but it dissipated as sleep slowly moved over her.
The last thought she had before consciousness completely disappeared was Rhein whispering, “Sleep well, darling,” in her ear.
Chapter 18
Gwen knew she was asleep. There was something about her movements that told her that. But she was also floating through reality in that way she did when she visited the woman in the garden. The lady of Annwn.
“Is this a dream? Or am I really here?”
“Dreams are not that far from the reality of Annwn,” the woman said. “I called you here.�
�
“Why?”
“It’s almost time.”
Gwen wandered around the round garden, running her fingers over the silky petals of the flowers as she had done several times before. They all felt so familiar to her now, like the way her own skin felt to the palms of her hands or the way a favorite shirt felt against her shoulders, her belly. She knew all their names, too, she realized. They weren’t just lilies and roses and gardenias. Each had a unique name, a genus, names that revealed themselves to her with each stroke of her fingertip against their petals.
“You’re powers are growing stronger,” the woman said. “That is good. You will need all you have to survive the next twenty-four hours.”
Gwen looked over at the woman. “Will I survive?”
The woman shrugged. “That is completely up to you.”
“I wish,” Gwen said. “If any of this was up to me, I would be sitting in a classroom right now, working on that scholarship to Columbia.”
“And you would have missed out on the family that now surrounds you.”
Gwen couldn’t deny that. She walked to a low stone bench and took a seat, leaning forward a little as she studied a small weed that was growing along the blades of grass at her feet. She touched it and learned its name, too. It wasn’t a weed but a unique creeping vine that was trying to establish itself in this unusual garden.
Gwen felt kind of like that vine.
“Why does Cei want to find the gate? Is he trying to destroy it?”
“Yes.”
Gwen began to nod, but the woman was apparently not finished.
“And no,” she added.
“How can it be both?”
“Cei wishes to save someone from the curse, but he plans on forcing the others to continue to suffer. To do that, he must allow you to break the curse and then use the Baton of Dorchadas to destroy Annwn.”
“Is that possible?”
“It is possible. But Cei does not fully understand what it is he is doing.”
Gwen reached down and touched the creeping vine again, her fingers tingling at its touch. She thought she understood now. And that understanding placed a heavy burden on her shoulders, as it forced her to realize that Cei was as much a victim in all of this as she, Morgan, and even Paul—perhaps, especially Paul—were. None of them had asked for this. It was a war between two powers that had nothing, and everything, to do with them. Gwen never asked for this. But, perhaps, Cei didn’t either.
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