The Connelly Boys (Celtic Witches Book 1)

by Lily Velez

  “Bullets won’t do anything,” Zoe called out to me. She jumped back as an Unredeemed swiped out at her with an axe, and then she swung an axe of her own at its arm in response. The limb came clean off. “Not these at least. And cutting off a head or limb hardly fazes them. They just grow it back. Only iron to the heart can kill them. But it has to be the heart of the original.”

  I surveyed the growing army of Unredeemed. Every last one looked identical. “How can you tell which ones are the originals?”

  “You can’t,” she said. She pulled a spear from the blood-soaked, limb-ridden ground and tossed it to me. “You just have to kill everything that comes your way and hope you get lucky at some point.” The formerly one-armed Unredeemed, who’d already sprouted a replacement limb, came for her again, and she blocked its attack with a grunt, throwing a powerful kick against its chest.

  I shifted the spear in my hands, pocketing the gun, and faced the mayhem before me. For the briefest seconds, I closed my eyes and channeled the moment when Brigid had come to me, when I’d been surrounded by my sisters. I recalled the flow of energy that had coursed through my body, the way my skin had burned under Brigid’s touch. The god-touched. She’d chosen me. I was here for a reason. And I’d make it count.

  I tightened my grip on the wooden handle of the spear and bulldozed my way into the fight. The stench of blood and sweat was everywhere, and my ankle still screamed in pain from my earlier fall, but I was operating under one unilateral focus: kill or be killed. My strategy was to attack from behind. I sank the blade of my spear into one creature’s shoulder-blade. It snarled and turned toward me with an open, hungry mouth…which I filled with three bullets from my gun. It was enough to knock the creature down for a brief count.

  I freed my spear and went on to the next Unredeemed. This one was fighting against Jack, whose face was covered in fresh, bleeding cuts, his hair in disarray as it fell over his eyes. I stabbed one of the creature’s calves as it leaned over Jack’s fallen figure. It roared and spun toward me before I could free my spear, swinging a club embedded with spikes. I almost didn’t duck in time.

  The club came for me again. I dropped flat to the ground to avoid getting my head bashed in. As I clambered to my feet, the Unredeemed made for a third attempt, lifting the club high above its head to smash me right where I crouched. There was no time to react. All I could do was stare as the spikes sped toward my face. I was going to die.

  Except the club froze mid-attack. As did the creature wielding it.

  Everything froze.

  My heart galloped as I tried to make sense of what was happening. Was it Brigid’s doing? But then the creature’s head rolled cleanly off its shoulders and its body slumped to the ground. Jack stood behind it, my spear in his hands. He forced its point into the creature’s heart. Out of breath, he took my hand and pulled me to my feet. All around us, the others were paused in varying scenes of combat, like action figures on a collector’s shelf.

  “I can’t hold it for much longer,” Jack said. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded, too breathless to properly respond. Jack handed my spear back to me. Then he swiped a weapon from the ground and beheaded three more Unredeemed, his magic losing hold just as the third one’s head hit the earth. The battle resumed.

  I forced myself through the sea of creatures, cutting, ducking, slicing, dodging. I tried to get a visual on Seamus and the ritual, but I couldn’t tell up from down or left from right. It was like being at the center of a disturbed hornet’s nest, absolute anarchy surrounding me. My greatest fear became that we’d be too late, that we wouldn’t stop the ritual in time.

  No. We had to. Failure wasn’t an option. Help me, Brigid. I summoned all my adrenaline, all my resolve, all my anger, pulling it from the pit of my stomach and pushing it through my body in a hot rush. There was something else kindling too, deep in my chest, the same sensation I’d felt when I’d told Seamus we wouldn’t back down without a fight. Surely it was the goddess, stirring something up in me, empowering me with her strength. And indeed, the moment her name filled my mind, I couldn’t feel the pain in my ankle anymore. The fear vanished. The exhaustion in my muscles faded. I felt as if I could take on the world.

  Riding the high, I zeroed in on my next kill and sped forward, only to come up short when my wrist caught on something. Or rather something caught hold of me. An Unredeemed sneered at me cruelly, its grip like a vise on my wrist. It applied more pressure, and I cried out in pain. It could easily snap my wrist like a twig if it desired.

  The Unredeemed yanked me against its chest and snarled in my face. I glared at it, baring my own teeth. Then I tipped my head back and rammed it full-force against the creature’s face, ignoring the pain that blossomed throughout my skull. The creature staggered back, blood gushing from its nose, staining its filthy teeth. Before it could retaliate, I plunged the blade of the spear into its heart. It eyes sparked once. Then the life slowly drained out of them. It sagged forward and crashed to its knees, and when it did, seven other creatures instantly dropped too.

  An original! Finally!

  Something savage and wild in my heart made me reach down to dip two fingers in the creature’s blood. I smeared it across my face on both cheeks, making parallel stripes like the war paint the first Daughter had worn. Emboldened, I went after more of the creatures, stabbing them from behind to pierce their hearts as well. Some fell without further fanfare. Others fell and brought down their replicants with them.

  The others were succeeding in finishing off The Unredeemed too. Lifeless bodies were strewn around Rory, who’d come into possession of a flail and used it in close combat against two opponents. Zoe and Connor had taken out an impressive number of the creatures, their movements lightning-quick and yet so eloquent, like a dance they’d performed many times before. Connor shoved a knife into a creature’s heart, and it, along with its carbon copies, slumped to the ground.

  Five Unredeemed were ganging up on Jack, though. I pressed forward, swinging wildly at the creatures approaching him. I kicked at the back of one creature’s knees, and the second it fell forward, I forced the spear into its back until the iron point emerged from its chest, dripping blood. I heard bodies drop to the floor a moment later. Another original.

  With so many bodies fallen, I finally had a line of sight to Seamus and the ritual. My heart screeched to a violent halt. Seamus had both hands lifted to the skies. He was yelling an incantation to be heard over Jack’s lightning and thunder and wind.

  I raced for the altar, but before I reached the menhirs and the ring of torches, I slammed hard into an invisible wall, pain shooting down my face. I stumbled back, my breath caught in my throat.

  No! Seamus had lifted a ward around his ritual. I pounded my fists against the force field, screaming. “Let my dad go!”

  But Seamus was deaf to my pleas. He continued petitioning the skies as if absorbing the powers of heaven itself. I slammed my fists against the ward again and again as if one more hit might be the one to shatter Seamus’s defenses. Jack was beside me a moment later, his palms against the ward as he muttered something under his breath, but not even his magic could bring down the force field.

  I was so consumed by the obstacle of the ward that I didn’t notice it at first when the ground began to tremble. It shook far more aggressively than it had when the menhirs had emerged from the earth. While I’d never been in an earthquake before, it was precisely how I’d imagined one to be. It was impossible to stay upright. I fell back, and Jack crashed down next to me.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Before he could respond, the earth began to tear in two, a jagged line carving down the center of the hill’s summit before it split open like a hungry mouth. The gap slowly widened further and further, the ground still shuddering in spasms. The remaining Unredeemed fell into the crack, screaming all the way down as flames lashed out at them.

  I started to redirect my attention to Seamus, but then I noticed the stricken
look on Jack’s face. “Jack, what is it?”

  He met my eyes, and the terror in his gaze froze me. He only said two words. Two terrifying, horrifying words.

  “They’re here.”

  46

  They were demons. Actual demons this time. The fire-and-brimstone kind.

  And there were hordes of them. They crawled out from between the cracks that were quickly splitting the summit into so many fractions, like ants chaotically zigzagging out of a fallen kingdom. If The Unredeemed were the byproducts of dark magic unchecked, then these creatures were the ones who’d spun that dark magic into existence to begin with.

  Their skin was an oily black, and though humanoid, they moved on all fours, spines curved against taut skin like a column of giant knuckles. Bat-like wings stretched out along their arms, the flesh so thin you could see the web of veins, and there was a hungry look in their red eyes that made my heart hiccup. They were everywhere, an infestation, and wave after wave of them kept emerging from the cracks in unending throes, as if the earth was bleeding them out.

  I needed the Hallowstone!

  My eyes scanned the tumultuous landscape as I broadcasted a pulse of magic to the star fragment, letting it know I was searching for it. Its consciousness burned in my chest, acknowledging the summons. Immediately, there was a tug in my stomach, and I turned in the direction it’d come from, my gaze swinging back and forth anxiously.

  There!

  An approaching demon had moved its leg at just the right moment, allowing me to catch a flicker of light on the ground. But as the earth we stood on continued to split and shift, the Hallowstone was racing down an incline, heading straight for a crevice that led to the unknowable abyss beneath us.

  I bolted for it. Jaws snapped at me in passing, and talons clawed at my arms, drawing blood. I kept running. I dodged lunges; I disentangled myself from gangly arms. Nothing was going to stop me. Not even the earth’s tremors as the summit ripped itself apart, throwing me off balance more than once. But I sprung back to my feet each time and kept going. I leapt over a crevice that was already three feet wide and growing and charged for the Hallowstone. It was nearing the jagged edge of a fissure. I had only seconds now. I pumped my legs harder and dove to the ground for it—and caught it!

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  I quickly shoved the Hallowstone into the front pocket of my jeans before turning around to face the hideous demon. The thunder was raging above us, and lightning filled the sky from horizon to horizon, brilliant and bright and devastating, like glorious bayonets shooting down from the heavens. The summit was a sea of black, overrun with demons.

  The creature before me grabbed my arm and dragged me along, carefully navigating the gaping clefts in the earth lest we fall in to our deaths. Once we neared the ring of torches, it shoved me to the ground, where I joined Jack and the others, who were already kneeling before Seamus’s ward, demons surrounding them. Lucas had finally come to and was still restrained, but the dazed look in his eyes told me he was still trying to piece together what had happened between our arrival at Uisneach and now.

  Everyone else was focused on Seamus, and when I turned my attention to him, I saw why. The Reaping had begun. All of the menhirs were now attached to the cauldron by those red threads of light. From above, the ritual must’ve looked like a giant wheel with glowing spokes. My eyes jumped from one menhir to another, as if I could somehow determine which one contained my dad’s soul.

  Then my breath caught. A form made entirely of light began to slowly emerge from one of the menhirs, taking the shape of a person at rest like the recumbent effigies in the Hall of Kings. My eyes widened, and my heart throbbed. It was a soul. It slid across the thread of light leading to the cauldron, and as it did, flashes from its life played above it. There was a wedding, the birth of a child, a house fire, holidays with loved ones. Significant moments that had impacted this person’s life, that had been permanently engraved on their very soul.

  Seamus stood at the end of the thread of light with a scythe, symbols like Jack’s demon’s mark engraved on its blade. When the soul approached him and paused, he carved open its chest with the point of the scythe. He held out a hand, speaking words in that evil tongue. After a few moments, small orbs of blue light tentatively rose from the cavity like a cluster of will-o-wisps. The soul’s Mastery.

  The Mastery seemed to hesitate, perhaps sensing Seamus’s impure intentions. It tried to dive back into the soul of its witch, but Seamus barked a command at it, and black fibers of his dark magic materialized, pulling at the Mastery until it was stretched so tight I was sure the Mastery would snap in two. The dark magic intensified, wrapping itself around the Mastery like a leech, choking it out. The Mastery dimmed, losing its strength, and then it blinked out in the dark magic’s grip as it was swallowed whole and absorbed by Seamus. The first Reaping complete, the soul continued down the thread of light until it reached the cauldron, where it dissolved and poured its essence into the bubbling water.

  My stomach lurched.

  A second soul emerged from the next menhir. This one was clearly a young man. When flashes from his life played, I saw birthdays, rugby games and trophy ceremonies, parties with friends, a kiss with a girl on a rooftop. His life had fewer flashbacks given his age, and it wasn’t long before Seamus butchered him for his Mastery. As before, the Mastery tried to resist, but the dark magic was too strong, eventually overcoming it. Afterward, the young man’s soul joined the boiling stew in the cauldron meant for the Soul-Eater.

  My heart pounded a wild rhythm between my ribs. A quick glance assured me the demons closest to me were preoccupied with the ritual, their beady eyes trained on Seamus like dogs watching a master’s every movement. Slowly, I pulled the Hallowstone from my pocket. Once it was free, I cupped both hands over it, tucking them between my knees as I sat back on my heels.

  Three more souls went through the Reaping. I wanted to watch the scenes from their life. I wanted to honor them in that way. But I needed to focus on the Hallowstone. I needed to focus on channeling Brigid’s power if I wanted any chance of ensuring Seamus didn’t take any more victims. I closed my eyes and allowed the sensation of the Hallowstone’s pulsating life to bleed into my palms, warming them. Our magic intertwined, weaving together, drawing closer.

  I reminded it of the vows I’d taken as I’d knelt before Brigid, surrounded by all the Daughters who’d ever come before me. It was my turn to continue their legacy. I’d been born for this very moment, destined to defend these witches with my life. It’s time, I told the Hallowstone, embracing the energy radiating from its center, my heart welling with gratitude as I opened myself to its power, to the strength with which the goddess would equip me. I’d felt a glimmer of it earlier, but now I was ready to let it completely consume me.

  Something pierced the inside of my arms, as if someone were using a fountain pen to engrave words upon my skin, its tip burning. My eyes snapped open. The runes Brigid had given me—they were glowing! I rushed to cross my arms before any of the demons could notice, tightening my fingers around the Hallowstone. Heat was pouring into me from the top of my head. It raced down my veins, as hot as fire.

  My body instantly felt several sizes too small for me, as if in my true state, I was taller than mountains. My pulse spiked, my adrenaline becoming a fast-paced battle march. The Hallowstone grew hotter too, so hot I was afraid I’d drop it. Brigid’s power overtook every part of me: my muscles, my bones, my lungs. It hummed just under my skin, igniting the magic in every cell of who I was. It was like a phoenix awakening within my ribcage, my chest transforming into a forge to keep its fires raging. It startled me at first, but when I hesitated, the heat reduced, so I made the choice not to be afraid. Whatever this was, I would feel it fully, embrace it fully, be it fully. When I made that decision, the heat returned, sweeping over me. I was a living inferno, flames wholly engulfing me to create something new out of the ashes.

  I felt more alive than I’d e
ver felt before.

  Alive and strong. Strong enough to end this now.

  Beside me, Jack tensed, which is how I knew Seamus had finally come upon Maurice’s soul.

  “Seamus, stop!” Jack darted to his feet in a single bound and made for the ward, but demons were upon him at once, restraining him. He struggled against them, shoving them away, but more came until he was pinned to the earth.

  The images from Maurice’s life played as his soul journeyed across the thread of light. Like the others, there were the typical scenes: family gatherings, a wedding, the birth of his children. There were battles from war as well, lone pilgrimages to sacred sites, and many, many interactions with the Connelly boys, Jack most especially. Jack aged right before my eyes, from a little boy hiking through the forest with his grandfather as he learned about the holy connectivity between a witch and nature to the young man he was today, poring over books with Maurice as they tried to find any method by which they could break his curse.

  “I’m sorry, Jack,” Seamus said. “I truly am.” His face was aglow in the milky light of the moon, and though his features were tortured with regret, there was a gleam of power in his eyes. He’d already consumed so many Masteries. There was no chance he’d decline the invitation to feast on more.