‘Watch my back!’ yelled Fionn as he turned and sprinted in the opposite direction, his heartbeat thundering in his ears.
‘FIONN! NO!’ screamed Tara.
Fionn only moved faster, picking his way through the mounting rubble. Across the cove, the Sea Cave yawned at the sky, its shell cracked like a broken egg. The Soulstalkers were crawling out from the toppled cliffs and crowding around its crumbled walls. They didn’t turn their heads to look for Fionn, only pressed themselves tight to the rock as it made echoes of Ivan’s commands.
‘Come on, old man. Move,’ he hissed.
Fionn recognised the cursed cauldron as it was hoisted on to a tower of rubble. It was battered and cracked and coated in wet sand, but there was smoke still churning above it. Whatever curse it wore hadn’t been broken. Fionn watched in horror as his grandfather was pushed up after it, then shoved roughly to his knees.
‘Get down!’ hissed Ivan. ‘Hurry up!’
His knife glinted menacingly in the moonlight.
‘Stop!’ Fionn shouted as he ran. ‘Let him go!’
His grandfather tried to raise his head. ‘F-Fionn? Is that you?’
Ivan looked up. The explosion had ripped his right ear off, and singed a jagged line through his beard. ‘See how our magic helps him?’ He raised his grandfather’s head so Fionn could see the recognition in his glassy eyes. ‘See how he knows you without his tricks?’
‘Fionn,’ his grandfather rasped. ‘Get out of here. Get back up the cliff!’
‘Retreat as you like,’ grinned Ivan. ‘I only need one of you.’
He slammed Fionn’s grandfather’s head back into the cauldron, his fingers twined in the collar of his blue jumper. ‘Storm Keepers,’ he said, peering over the cauldron now. ‘As it turns out, this one was easier to catch. Honestly, I don’t know how I missed it before. He reeks of magic.’
She will rise when the Storm Keeper bleeds for her.
All of a sudden, Rose’s words swam through Fionn’s mind.
You are a Keeper once, you are a Keeper forever.
Ivan brought the knife down, and slashed a deep line along his grandfather’s cheek. He slumped into the cauldron’s mouth.
NO!
A firestorm erupted in every corner of Fionn’s body, a blazing heat beginning in his toes, twisting, and swelling up through his legs and into his arms, until it felt as if he might burst into a million pieces.
The ground exploded around him. Soulstalkers were thrown into the air like confetti, the knife flung from Ivan’s grip. He was thrown backwards, releasing Fionn’s grandfather and tumbling down the rocks with the cauldron crashing after him.
Fionn didn’t break his advance. His vision clouded with red mist as debris cycloned around him, picking up shells and seaweed and pebbles and rocks. He shot them at Ivan like bullets, snapped spires of rock from the broken cliffs, and spun them through the air.
There was a voice whispering inside Fionn’s head, a needle stitching his magic to his rage until he couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. He could sense the link now; his unchecked emotion was the true source of his power. His loyalty. His love.
This, his magic seemed to say. This is how it works.
Not with your head, but with your heart.
‘You had no magic!’ screamed Ivan, his hands coming to his face as the cauldron rolled over him, the thick, dark liquid spilling out on to the rocky sand. ‘You’re broken!’
Fionn was not broken. And he wasn’t finished either.
The lightning came with a fresh torrent of rage. It ripped through Fionn’s heart, filling his body with fizzing white heat. He screamed as it sparked from his mouth and his eyes and his ears and his fingers, spearing through the world in a jagged bolt. Not wielded, but created. Borne of his soul.
It smashed through the cauldron, shattering it to smithereens before slamming into the Soulstalker’s chest.
Ivan was skewered in a single, deafening blast, every inch of him burned up in a thick curl of smoke.
Incinerated.
Just as the ground began to tremble.
Chapter Twenty-Six
THE RAVEN QUEEN
The cauldron liquid bubbled as it devoured the earth. Dark magic seeped from the ground like a noxious gas, turning the air around Fionn thick and wavy. His grandfather was on his knees, trying to crawl through it. ‘Cormac?’ he rasped. ‘Are you there, Cormac?’
Fionn pressed his sleeve over his mouth and leapt over the creaking rock. ‘I’m right here!’
He dragged his grandfather to his feet, shouldering his weight as he led him back towards the beach. ‘This way. Hurry!’
The darkness curled at their backs.
‘Don’t turn around,’ said Fionn. ‘Just keep moving.’
The surviving Soulstalkers peeled backwards, streaming into the shallow water. There they stood, shoulder to shoulder, bringing hands to damaged faces. Their tattoos were glowing silver, as though moonlight was bleeding from their skin.
‘She’s rising!’
‘At last, the Raven Queen returns!’
‘What’s going on?’ muttered Fionn’s grandfather. ‘Who are these people, Cormac?’
‘Just keep moving,’ gritted Fionn. ‘We need to get away from here.’
‘Fionn! Hurry!’ came Tara’s voice from overhead. ‘If we raise the tide now, we’ll drown you!’
‘Don’t look back!’ yelled Sam, as he sent a gust of wind to hurry them along. ‘Just keep going!’
The rest of the islanders had gathered up on the cliff-side now, candles readied in their grasp. Shelby was picking her way down the rocks, waving the Tide Summoner back and forth. ‘You can do it, Fionn!’
Fionn felt the gathering dark like a hand on his shoulder, pressing him into the earth. His grandfather was a second weight. His feet were barely dragging on the sand now. ‘Let me go, Cormac,’ he murmured. ‘Let me lie down.’
‘Not yet,’ gritted Fionn. ‘Not at her feet.’
The sand thumped, and then rippled like a carpet. Fionn was knocked to his knees, his grandfather coming down heavily on him.
Across the cove, a gaping hole appeared in the earth.
Out of it came a flock of shrieking ravens.
And out of the ravens walked Morrigan.
Fionn’s grandfather gripped his wrist. ‘Dagda save us all,’ he breathed.
Morrigan.
The word travelled along the headland, leaping in and out of fearful mouths.
Down in the cove, it carried a different meaning.
Queen.
Leader.
Keeper of our souls.
It was awe.
Redemption.
Joy.
The Soulstalkers fell to their knees and pressed their faces to the damp sand. They glowed like beacons of light, their strength beginning to return to them. Their purpose, reignited, after all this time.
The Raven Queen is risen.
All hail the Raven Queen.
The birds splintered into the sky, leaving Morrigan alone on the beach. She unfolded her limbs in a series of loud clicks, straightening her spine and cracking her fingers, one by one. Then she rolled her neck around and settled her gaze on Fionn.
Fionn felt it like a bullet in his chest. He spun around, scanning the rocks. Shelby was holding the Tide Summoner against her chest, her horror a perfect mirror of his own.
‘Blow it!’ he shouted.
‘I can’t, Fionn – you’ll drown!’
‘Now!’ he roared.
He turned to his grandfather. ‘Run for those rocks, Grandad,’ he said urgently. ‘Crawl if you have to, and climb quickly – the people up there will help you.’ His mother was already slipping her way down to help. ‘I’m going to keep Morrigan down here, on the beach.’
Fionn’s grandfather gripped him harder. ‘What are you talking about, Cor—’
‘Go!’ said Fionn, pushing him away.
He turned from him, and before fear could chang
e his mind or send him running just the same, Fionn marched towards Morrigan.
Her cape of souls trailed along the sand behind her. The solstice moon threaded shards of silvery light through it, while the strain of her movements flickered in her jaw. She was stiff, weak.
She stopped before him. ‘It has been a long time, Storm Keeper.’
Fionn eyed the folds of her cloak. The souls shifted – their mouths twisted in agony, eyes wide with eternal pain. ‘I can’t say I’m glad of the reunion.’
Morrigan blinked too slowly, blood-red capillaries wiring the paper-thin skin around her eyes. ‘And yet you’ve come to greet me.’
Fionn reached for his magic, but found only fear guttering inside him. Dread was tight as a noose around his neck as his grandfather scrabbled up the cliffs behind him. ‘I thought it might be nice to kill you,’ said Fionn, stalling for time. ‘The same way I killed your brother, Ivan, just now.’
Morrigan’s smile dissolved. She shot her hand out and seized him by the throat, choking the breath from him in an audible whoosh!
Fionn’s body lit up like a fuse. Every inch of him was on fire, his magic scalding him from the inside out. It railed against Morrigan’s shadows as her fingers closed around his windpipe.
Someone screamed his name.
Morrigan brought her nose close to his, her dark eyes glittering with curiosity. ‘Dagda?’ she whispered.
Fionn closed his hands around her wrists. ‘Let go,’ he gurgled.
Morrigan tugged him closer, sniffing the air around his face.
‘What is this?’ she hissed. ‘What are you?’
Fionn dug his fingernails into her icy skin as a gust of wind tried to cleave them apart.
‘I can’t get her!’ yelled Tara.
Another gust smashed into them – this one stronger than the last. The islanders were banding together, but it wasn’t enough to shake Fionn free. Morrigan only tightened her grip. ‘You are not what I thought you were, little Keeper. Not then, and not now.’
Fionn was lifted up into the air. His feet dangled below him, his hands like cuffs around her wrists.
‘I’ll use you before I kill you. What you took from me, you will return two-fold.’ She turned and marched into the waves, swinging him like a puppet from a string.
Far away, the Tide Summoner rang out, clear as an ancient, haunting knell.
It followed them into the ocean, where it skimmed the water like a stone before disappearing into its depths.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
THE NINTH WAVE
The sea was swelling. Morrigan pushed through it, dragging Fionn behind her. He thrashed and twisted in her grasp, his heels scraping along the seabed as he glimpsed the cove behind them. There were so many faces staring after them, horrified islanders stuck on the cliffs, tattooed bodies glowing along the shore, and there, lumbering across the sand all by himself … Fionn’s grandfather.
‘ONE!’ cried a voice from the cliffs.
Shelby.
Fionn tried to grab hold of the name as Morrigan’s cape shuttered around him.
He tumbled over himself, swallowing a fistful of saltwater.
‘Dagda,’ Morrigan hissed, her eyes on the rising tide. ‘Here, even when he’s not.’
‘TWO!’ came a faraway voice.
Shelby, Fionn reminded himself.
Shelby was calling the tide home.
Eight waves to call the tide,
On the ninth wave, the Merrows ride.
Nine waves. Nine waves and they would have an army.
Morrigan halted, as another wave crashed into them. It brought the water to Fionn’s hips. Already the horizon was brewing another one.
‘THREE!’ yelled the distant voice.
‘My Stags,’ she hissed again. Fionn didn’t have to turn around to see; he could feel their nearness in the hairs on his neck. ‘My brothers.’
Another wave crashed into them.
‘FOUR!’
The tide climbed to Fionn’s chest.
Morrigan’s cape lifted into the air, the patchwork of contorted faces taking flight around Fionn. They stroked the notches in his spine and whispered their screams into his ears.
‘Let us see what Dagda’s shadow can do.’ She began to mutter – a string of deep, guttural sounds that choked out of her. Her jaw dislocated with a sickening click! and shadows streamed from her gullet in thick, dark plumes. They plunged into Fionn’s open mouth. He heaved violently, his body screaming as they rushed down his throat. The icy tentacles wound through his bloodstream, prodding, twisting, searching. They found the flame inside him, and took it. They licked the heat from between the bones of his ribcage, swallowing his magic in desperate, greedy gulps.
‘FIVE!’
Fionn was lost in bone-shuddering agony. He had become a black hole, his mouth and his chest and his mind blown wide open to the darkness.
Take it. Take it all. Just let it be over.
There was an almighty crack! from somewhere over his shoulder. Morrigan roared as the first rock split in two. ‘BREDON!’
Her cape billowed, the folds shifting to reveal the image of a brute male with a crimson eye. The ruby glinted at Fionn, as he pulled his lips back and bared his teeth like a wolf. He had Ivan’s sharp cheekbones and the same dark gaze, but his neck was thicker, the veins in his forehead moving like worms under his skin.
‘SIX!’ came a voice from the strand. Fionn was sure he recognised it, but he couldn’t catch the name as it flitted by. He couldn’t remember what the number meant.
There was sea-salt on his tongue and water around his neck now. The shadows were still rifling through his insides, licking away the light. Soon there would be nothing left.
He could feel the emptiness yawning inside him.
The second crack! made the sea tremble.
The face was already waiting in the shadows, watching Fionn. It had the same violent eyes and pallid skin, but there was no smile, no teeth bared like a rabid animal. His mouth had been sewn shut, his bloodless lips bound together with thick black twine.
‘ALDRIC!’
Aldric the Silent. Aldric, with his mouth sewn up.
Fionn began to shudder. There was so little of him left now – the barest flicker of light hiding in the recesses of his bones. Soon, there would be nothing but a dry, soulless husk.
‘SEVEN!’
A wave slammed into him, and he was knocked free of Morrigan’s grasp. The darkness faltered and his thoughts rushed back in.
‘KEEP FIGHTING IT, LAD!’ Through a crack in the dark, Fionn heard his grandfather’s voice. ‘DON’T GIVE UP!’
He remembered then – his own name.
Fionn.
His purpose.
Survive.
‘My Queen!’ came a chorus of shrieks. ‘The tide!’
Fionn launched for the shore but Morrigan was on him in a heartbeat. Her cape surrounded him again, her shadows coming thick and fast, but this time Fionn held on to himself. He shut his eyes and concentrated on his grandfather’s words, the sound of his own name. He found that kernel of light deep in his chest and curled his mind around it.
‘Keep fighting it, lad!’
His magic flared.
Morrigan hissed.
The warmth in his chest spread to his shoulders, and then his arms. Morrigan’s shadows grew clumsier, prodding with urgency – desperation. She was muttering under her breath. Fionn held on to his grandfather’s voice, to the memory of him blasting the beach apart to save him. He squeezed tighter and tighter, until his magic crawled up his throat, and Morrigan snapped her hand away with a blood-curdling shriek.
‘EIGHT!’ yelled Shelby, and Fionn remembered her too.
The eighth wave swept over them with the force of a high-speed train, and he surrendered to it. They were blown apart from each other, into a sea of churning froth. Fionn let himself sink down, down, down, away from the shadows, away from the darkness, and into the quiet, endless water.
; In the depths, the current sang him a lullaby.
Eight waves to call the tide,
On the ninth wave, the Merrows ride.
An arm came around his middle.
Fionn was pulled up through the waves, breaking the surface in a sucking gasp.
‘Swim!’ shouted his grandfather. ‘Swim with me, Cormac!’
‘NINE!’ yelled a distant voice. ‘The ninth wave!’
Fionn swam, and the final wave came after them, like a stampede. The tide was so high it careened over the Soulstalkers and climbed up the cliffs. They were pedalling just as desperately as Fionn, half of them yelling for their Queen, the others swimming for the cave tunnels.
‘The Merrows are coming!’ yelled Shelby.
The wave hurled Fionn and his grandfather towards the cliff-side. Under Tara’s command, the islanders reached down and curled a fist of wind around them. They were pulled up from the roiling sea, their arms and legs splayed out like starfish.
They were blown over the cliff-edge, where they floated like balloons, until Fionn’s mother and Sam’s father pulled them down by their legs. They rolled on to the grass in two identical heaps, crumpled but alive. Both gasping for air. The islanders blew out their candles and scattered their gust of wind, just in time to watch the sea explode.
The ocean spat out its warriors in a deafening cry. The Merrows leapt from the waves like dolphins, their shining eyes bright as the full moon. With Lír leading her army, they moved through the water like scythes, their sharp-toothed mouths gnashing at the ravens that tried to beat them back.
Fionn crawled to the edge of the broken cliffs and watched in terrified wonder as the Merrows made quick work of their prey, descending on the flailing Soulstalkers and dragging them down into the depths of ocean. Their teeth cut through bones as if through butter, their lithe arms snapped limbs and necks and ribcages. Those who broke away were herded back, spun inside an endless whirlpool until they drowned in the froth.
For a long time, the sky sang with the screams of dying Soulstalkers. The islanders watched from the cliff-side as the Merrows rose up from the annals of history and brought their reign of terror to the ocean’s surface. They dived and shrieked and swam and fought until the sea fell eerily still. Until there were no faces bobbing on the surface, no hands reaching up through the waves.
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