“Is the crossing that dangerous?” Sarah yelped as the car hit a bump so hard that her head slammed against the roof.
Ian didn’t bother to ask if she was all right. “The crossing isn’t the issue. It’s the island. These old villages have their superstitions. You know how it is.”
Sarah really didn’t know how it was, but she wasn’t particularly inclined to continue the conversation. She was mostly concerned about making it to the village without a concussion.
“You have my gear?” Sarah asked, hoping the change in subject would take the edge off Ian’s mood.
Ian jerked his thumb toward the backseat. Sarah craned her neck to see the ropes and holds she’d need to scale the seawall. The sight of familiar equipment eased some of Sarah’s trepidation.
Since Ian was fully immersed in his mad driving, Sarah took a moment to survey the man. He was middle-aged, with thick, bushy hair and an equally thick body to match.
“How did you become one of our contacts?” Sarah asked.
Ian cast a sidelong glance at her. “They didn’t tell you?”
Sarah shook her head. “I’m just told where to go and who to meet. No backstory required.”
Hunching over the steering wheel, Ian went quiet and Sarah thought he’d decided not to answer her, but a moment later he said, “My wife, Adele, loved to sail. She didn’t feel right on land. I used to call her my selkie.”
He gripped the steering wheel tightly. “About three years ago she got it in her mind that she wanted to chart all the islands along the southwest coast in the hopes of organizing a point-to-point race around them. We lived two counties north of here. She started from our home port of Tralee and I kept pace with her on land, meeting her at each port and resupplying her boat. But when I arrived in this village, she hadn’t made the port yet. So I waited. But she never appeared.”
Sarah barely noticed the bumps on the road as she watched Ian’s face contort with grief.
“The Coast Guard found her boat adrift in the channel three days after she was meant to meet me. They could find no damage to the boat, but Adele wasn’t aboard. She’d vanished. They concluded that she’d fallen overboard and drowned, but I couldn’t believe it. So I stayed in the village, believing that Adele might be found. I couldn’t go home without her.
“First it was days. Then weeks,” Ian said. “I left my job, our flat, and found whatever work I could in the village. Nearly four months had passed when one morning I found a letter under the door of my hotel room. It said that if I wanted to know what happened to Adele I should go the fishmonger and ask for the midnight catch.”
“The ‘midnight catch’?” Sarah watched as Ian’s lips twisted in a self-mocking sneer.
“A code phrase, of course,” he told her. “But at first I was sure it was a cruel prank. I was well known throughout the village as the obsessed, mad husband whose wife had drowned in the channel. I thought someone was having a laugh over my suffering. For a few days I ignored the message, but eventually even the risk of humiliation was outweighed by the chance that someone might have answers for me.
“Feeling half a fool, and half a nutter, I went to the fishmonger and asked for the midnight catch. The man said nothing, just pointed to a door behind his counter. I began to wonder if I wasn’t just foolish, but perhaps had a death wish—though it didn’t stop me from going through that door. Stairs took me into a cellar, but no one was waiting for me. There was, however, another door, which opened into a passage. It was soon clear that I was moving beneath the village, away from the fishmonger’s shop. The next door I reached was locked. I knocked and a woman’s voice answered: ‘You lost?’ ‘I’m looking for the midnight catch,’ I told her. The door opened.”
Sarah shifted in the passenger seat; she knew where Ian’s story was headed yet still found it unsettling. This was always the way civilians were recruited to the Searchers’ cause—hapless souls caught in the crossfire of a war they’d never known about until it took something, or more often someone, from them.
Still swimming in his own memories, Ian spoke quietly. “The woman wasn’t alone. There was a man with her. He was sitting at a small table with two empty chairs waiting.”
Ian hesitated, then laughed. “I almost ran. The way they were dressed. All that dark leather and barely hidden weapons. They looked more dangerous than a pack of wolves.”
“We try to be,” Sarah commented drily.
“So I hear.” Ian looked askance at her. “Though I’m thankful not to have seen a Guardian.”
Sarah nodded, briefly wondering if she’d encounter any of the wolf warriors during her reconnaissance. It would be much better if she didn’t, Sarah knew. She was there for answers, not for a fight. Even so, she reached out to run her fingers over the harness that held her throwing knives.
“You probably know the rest.” Ian sighed. “They told me about your war. About witches and the nightmares they command trying to infest our world. That this all started because there’s a crack between our world and theirs, and your side is trying to close it, while theirs wants to keep it open.
“And they told me that the war had killed my wife. More specifically, that their enemies, who they called Keepers, were responsible for her death.”
“You believed them?” Sarah had been born into the world of Searchers and Keepers, raised with the constant drone of the Witches War humming in the background of her life. The reality of magic and monsters had always been with her. But for someone like Ian, the darkness Sarah knew could only sound like madness.
Ian grimaced as he steered the car onto the narrow streets of the dimly lit village. “I didn’t want to. Over and over I told myself to turn around, get out of that hidden room, and never look back. But I couldn’t.”
His sudden bark of a laugh made Sarah flinch.
“Of course, it helped when they made a door out of nothing that opened halfway across the world. Seeing is believing, as they say.”
“True enough,” Sarah murmured.
The car slowed and Ian parked alongside the village quay. Even before she opened the passenger door, Sarah could hear waves crashing against the rough shore. As soon as the engine quieted, Sarah saw a lumpy shadow moving in the night toward the car.
“That’ll be our man,” Ian said, opening the door to climb out of the car. Sarah pushed hard against the wind to get her own door open and scrambled from the seat. A gale shrieked around them as Ian trudged over to meet the fisherman. Sarah opened the door to the backseat and zipped up the waterproof duffel that held her climbing gear.
When Sarah joined the two men they were already deep in conversation, but she couldn’t follow their words, as the fisherman seemed to be a native Gaelic-speaker. Ian gestured to Sarah. It was too dark for Sarah to make out many of the fisherman’s features, but even in the dim light she could see the lines that years of wind on the open sea had carved into his face. She opened her mouth to greet him, but when the fisherman’s milky eyes met Sarah’s, she flinched. He turned to Ian, speaking rapidly.
“What is it?” Sarah asked.
Ian lifted his hand, signaling her to be silent. He spoke to the fisherman again, his voice hard.
The fisherman shook his head and wagged his finger at Sarah.
Ian lowered his voice and bowed his head close to the old man’s ear. The fisherman’s shoulders lifted and fell with a sigh of resignation. He turned and stomped back along the quay to board his vessel.
“Come on.” Ian began to follow.
“What was that about?” Sarah asked as she walked beside him.
Ian cast a sidelong glance at her. “He didn’t want to take you.”
“I thought arrangements had already been made for my transport.” Sarah looked ahead. The old fisherman was casting off lines to prepare for their voyage. Whatever the issue had been, Ian had app
arently resolved it.
“They were,” Ian told her. “But when he saw that you’re young—and a woman—he wanted to back out.”
“I can handle myself,” Sarah said, bristling. “It’s just a reconnaissance mission. To find out what’s on that island.”
“No one comes back from the island.” Ian had spoken so softly, Sarah wasn’t certain she’d heard him correctly.
“Sorry?”
“The fisherman doesn’t want to take you because, as he said, ‘No one comes back from the island,’” Ian said, looking furtively at Sarah. “But I suppose that’s why you’re going. To find out why no one comes back.” As if to himself, Ian added, “Why my wife never came back.”
“Something like that,” Sarah answered uneasily. Her mouth had gone dry. All the bravado she’d felt at the Academy was withering in the face of the rough seas, the fear in the fisherman’s gaze, and the weight of responsibility transferred from Ian’s sorrow.
The fact that the fisherman’s boat appeared older and more worn than its owner didn’t do anything to reassure her. Even docked the boat tipped precariously from side to side as it was buffeted by the rough waves. The captain was already aboard, casting lines and prepping the craft, though making no acknowledgment of Sarah as she clambered onto the boat.
“Good luck!” Ian shouted over the shrieking wind.
Sarah waved in reply and then ducked into the cabin. She crouched in a corner of the cramped quarters, deciding it best for both the fisherman and herself to stay out of the way for the duration of the journey.
The captain stomped into the cabin. He gave Sarah a cursory grunt that was a sound of the barest tolerance rather than welcome. The boat’s engine rumbled to life and then lurched away from the shoreline.
Sarah remained huddled in the corner as the boat pitched and rolled along the waves. She made herself as small as she could, not because she was seasick or frightened but because it seemed that the best chance to make it across the channel lay in the captain giving his complete attention to piloting the ship. Withdrawing into herself for the duration of the trip would also offer Sarah a chance to gather the strength and resolve she’d need to complete the mission.
About an hour had passed when the fisherman’s gravelly voice drew Sarah out of her own thoughts.
“That water’s cold as ice.” He didn’t look at her as he spoke. “You sure about the swim?”
Taking his words as the cue that they’d soon reach the drop point, Sarah unzipped the duffel and pulled out her dry suit and fins. She stuffed her jacket into the bag and then pulled the suit on over her clothes. Once she was zipped in, she slipped her arms through the duffel’s straps.
The boat slowed until the engine was idling. The fisherman didn’t turn around or tell Sarah that they’d arrived. His white-knuckled grip on the wheel told Sarah she was exactly where she needed to be.
“Thanks,” Sarah said.
The captain flinched. “Tomorrow. Midnight. I’ll be back to pick you up. Same place.”
“I’ll be here.”
Sarah stepped out of the cabin onto the lurching deck. She grasped the boat rail as she donned the fins. Checking one last time that the straps of the duffel were snug, Sarah hopped over the rail and into the turbulent sea.
The dry suit protected Sarah’s body, but the waves punched the bare skin of her face like a frozen fist. Sputtering through the frigid saltwater, Sarah churned toward the shore with powerful strokes. It wasn’t easy going, but she was thankful to see that despite his misgivings, the fisherman had dropped her as close to the island as he could without running afoul of the sharp rocks banking its shores.
After ten minutes of struggling through the choppy waters, Sarah reached the island. Though the waves grabbed at her, wanting to tow her back out to sea, Sarah hauled herself onto the slippery rocks coated in seafoam. She traded her fins for climbing shoes from her pack and kept her body flat against the rough surface as she slowly crawled toward the cliff face that composed the south wall of Castle Tierney.
The medieval structure used the island’s natural features for its own defense. Carved into the very rock wall that enclosed three-quarters of the island’s circumference, Castle Tierney offered only two approaches. The first required an overland path from the one sheltered harbor on the western shore, and that route required several miles of travel through both dense forest and open moors. If something truly important was hidden within the stone keep, that territory would undoubtedly be overrun with Guardians or worse. Thus, the Searchers had elected to pursue the second approach: scaling the one hundred-plus-foot rock wall to reach a long-unused cistern that would give access to the castle’s interior.
When Sarah reached the wall, she stripped out of her dry suit, stashing it in a crevice below the cliff. She slipped into a climbing harness and gathered the ropes and cams she’d need for the ascent. It would be a slow, arduous climb. Not only was the surface slick with rain and sea spray, but she also couldn’t risk drawing the attention of anything that might be watching from above. Given how imposing and impenetrable the cliff appeared, Sarah hoped that it would be unguarded, but she couldn’t take any chances.
Slipping the duffel back over her shoulders, Sarah found her first holds. Years of battering from the wind and sea had left the rock wall pitted and grooved—one of the few things working to Sarah’s advantage. Forcing herself to take calm, steady breaths, and careful never to look down, Sarah made her way up the cliffside. She placed cams as she needed them but was careful to keep them tucked into the rock face.
By the time she reached the round hollow of the cistern, Sarah was drenched with moisture—a mixture of saltwater, rain, and her own sweat. Her muscles were shrieking from the exertion. She rolled into the dark tunnel and coiled up her rope. After she’d shimmied out of the climbing harness, Sarah put her equipment into the duffel, retrieving a headlamp before she stowed the bag.
The wind beat mercilessly at the entrance to the cistern, heavy and rhythmic like the beating wings of an immense bird. The climb had been tricky, but her next moves would be trickier still: she had to navigate the crumbling, uncharted labyrinth of tunnels that would lead her into the castle. Sarah switched on the headlamp and turned away from the sea. She didn’t see the shadow swoop past the hollow in the rock. Neither did she sense the creeping presence at her back until it was too late.
5
TRISTAN DIDN’T KNOW how long he’d been staring at the frescoed ceiling of his bedroom, but he was fairly certain the sleep he hoped for would continue to elude him. He rolled out of bed, not minding the cold of the floor on his feet. Neither did he bother with a robe before he left his room.
Seamus caught up with him halfway down the hall. Though currently in his human form, Seamus still moved with the cautious grace of the predator whose shape he preferred.
Does the old wolf never sleep?
“Restless night, eh?” Seamus asked with genuine concern.
Tristan shrugged. He hadn’t taken the time to check a clock before he left his bedroom, but the wolf’s presence informed Tristan that he’d been tossing and turning for at least a few hours—long enough for Seamus to have enjoyed and returned from his nightly run across the island.
“Where are you headed now?” Seamus asked.
“I thought a bath might help,” Tristan replied.
Seamus nodded and slowed as Tristan’s destination made it clear he was in the mood neither for company nor conversation.
When he reached the stairs, Tristan glanced over his shoulder. “Get some rest, you mangy beast,” he said, offering Seamus an apologetic smile.
Seamus laughed and the sound deepened Tristan’s melancholy. The wolf was as close as Tristan had to a friend, but Seamus was a servant—here on orders like all the others. Tristan didn’t doubt Seamus’s loyalty; he even believed the Guardian held
some affection for him. But their respective stations threw up an obstacle to true comradeship.
His sour mood worsening, Tristan made his way from the uppermost floor of the castle to the subterranean space that was home to the baths. A hot bath was actually Tristan’s second objective. His first was to tire the hell out of himself with a long swim.
The castle’s pool was narrow, but long and deep—ideal for laps. The natatorium itself wasn’t particularly to Tristan’s liking. Clad in ebony, the chamber featured sleek columns around which twisted giant tentacles that were far too lifelike. He’d learned to ignore the creeping sense that a great slumbering beast rested beneath the turquoise and jade mosaic of the pool floor.
Tristan pulled off his cotton pajama bottoms and dove into the pool. The cold water snatched his breath, but he welcomed the shock. It was the most alive he’d felt all day and it was the reason he ordered that the pool be maintained at such a low temperature.
He swam hard, stopping only when the burning in his shoulders, chest, and legs was unbearable. Hauling himself out of the pool, Tristan dripped water as he left the natatorium and went into the adjoining chamber.
Steam from the baths swirled around him, so thick Tristan could barely see. While the pool had been laid in severe, sharp lines, the baths were designed for soaking. Tristan waded into one of the sunken bowls, following its sloping floor until he was waist deep in the hot water. Then he slid onto the submerged shelf that ringed half of the bath. He let his head tip back and his eyes close as the heat sapped tension from his spent limbs.
When exhaustion had sufficiently cleared Tristan’s mind to the point where he thought sleep inevitable, he lazily climbed out of the bath. He toweled himself off and slipped his pajama bottoms on. As he slowly made his way back to his bedroom, Tristan was pleased to find himself genuinely drowsy. Perhaps he’d even pass the night without troubling dreams.
At that late hour Castle Tierney was quiet, but Tristan knew better than to believe he moved through its halls without notice. There was never a time when all the creatures within the castle walls slept. It was a place of wariness and watching.
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