“Oh, so you can hear me,” Michael said. He wrenched his left arm but within the industrial duct tape that had been looped time and again around his wrists and ankles, he could do little but vibrate with intent. “Let me out of here!”
“So you can eviscerate me?” Dermot Scully said mildly, without even looking up from his reading.
"What?” Michael Quinn looked shocked beyond measure. “Have you gone completely round the fuckin bend, Dermot? You’re my brother. Why in God’s name would I do a thing like that to my own flesh and blood?”
“You tell us,” Tony replied.
“I’m not talking to you,” Michael snapped. “I can’t think of a single reason to waste my time with someone like you.”
Tony walked to the captive man and held something in front of his face. Michael Quinn’s eyes ran along its length.
“Ah,” he said.
“Always carry one of these in yer briefcase do ye?” Tony asked him, allowing the knife’s blade to catch the meagre candlelight. “Corporate world a cut-throat industry?”
“Self-defence,” Michael sneered. His lip curled as he looked at Tony. “I’m only amazed to see you sober, Tony. Feel free to fuck off with your tail between your legs if things get too much for you.”
Tony sighed, and replaced the knife back on the table by the wall where Dermot was still tracing lines of text with his finger. “Any closer to finding anything?” he said.
Looking small and old and frail, peering over his glasses and shaking like a leaf, Dermot simply shook his head and sank into the threadbare lounger on which he sat. “There are a multitude of incantations in here, any one of which could be exactly what we’re looking for…or the worst thing we could do. You have to remember that the protections I’ve put on this house are finely balanced as is. Anything goes wrong with anything we try for him,” he tipped his head to Michael, absorbing all of this silently, “and it might all come crashing down.”
Tony pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. It was a physical gesture his son Danny also used at times of extreme stress, though whether father or son would have been aware of the other’s usage was doubtful. Dermot thought for a moment that the man had been swallowed by despair, but after a few seconds he brought his hand away and when he did so, the look in his eyes was different.
He snatched an object from the table, palming it too quickly to identify what he had taken, and pulled a chair to sit alongside Michael Quinn, whose eyes bugged in alarm at not only the gesture but Tony’s expression as he did so.
“Right,” he said simply. “Fuck this spellbook shite. Let’s try somethin more real-world, eh?”
“What are you talking about?” Michael demanded.
“You made a deal with Dother.”
There was a pause as Michael Quinn tried to conceal his surprise. It was a bad attempt.
“Dother? Who’s that?” he said weakly.
“Do not waste my fuckin time,” Tony said softly. “Every single person in this room is immune to the Sword. Dermot because of the things he knows. You because you probably made the fuckin request to Dother in the first place, so if you weren’t aware that anything had changed…how would you pay your debt to him? And me…you know why I’m not affected.”
Michael said nothing, but his eyes were wide. Sweat was forming on his brow. Tony continued to speak, his hands slowly raising, fists clenched around something within.
“You did this. You started all of this. You invited them in. You got your own grandson taken below, and now my son has gone below too. What was he, Michael, you fuckin bastard? Was Luke the price for what you wanted?”
He saw it then. A flicker; a flash; something moving behind the man’s eyes-
“GET OUT!” he shouted, pressing the horseshoe he’d been concealing into the forehead of the captured man before him. When the metal met flesh, there was a noise like meat sizzling on the grillpan and Michael Quinn hissed in pain, writhing like an animal under the duct tape. A rrrrip from the duct tape wrapping his left leg caused Tony to press in harder, gritting his teeth, bringing his entire weight to bear in keeping the man down-
With a final convulsive jerk, the fight went out of his opponent.
The result of the slackening off was instantaneous. Black liquid poured from Michael Quinn’s mouth, from his nostrils, ears and nose. Black tears seeped down his face and within an instant of them appearing, Michael began to let loose a rising wail of pain and agony.
“Wipe it off! Get it off him! Quickly!” Dermot exclaimed, almost tumbling over in his urgency. An old oilcloth was found and the black liquid was removed from wherever it had emerged. It was viscous,reeking of raw sewage. The oilcloth began to smoulder and smoke, prompting Dermot to hop in alarm and deposit it as quickly as possible into a metal mop bucket.
“What was that?”
“Spider venom,” Dermot replied, coming around to examine Michael Quinn once more. The shock of the fluid’s expulsion from his system had thrown him into a stupor; his head lolled languidly. “He’s coming round...”
“Michael?” Tony tried. “…Michael?”
With great effort, Michael managed to focus on the two men in front of him. Gone was the confrontational air from a few minutes ago, although his eyes still bugged to see Tony Morrigan standing before him, but when he caught sight of Dermot-
“Dermot!” he sagged in relief. “Oh God! Oh God, they asked me to-! Jesus Christ they wanted me to…to…” and he gagged, the bile rising in his stomach. Tony glanced around to try and locate a suitable receptacle for any puke the man might produce but could see only the mop bucket and decided against it – for all he knew a mixture of faerie venom and boke might have produced something he didn’t even want to think about.
Michael had managed to bring himself back under control. He had also noticed his current tied-up status. Confusion was replaced by understanding on his face, followed by relief, and finally puzzlement as his gaze returned to Tony. “How did you know I was…?”
“I didn’t,” Dermot admitted, nodding to Tony. “He did.”
“Family talent,” Tony said, sitting back down in the chair facing the other man. “Now start fuckin talkin. We don’t have much time, am I right?”
Michael paled. “Believe me, you don’t know the half of it,” he said.
**
Outside the house of Dermot Scully, adhering to an invisible radius of a circle that had no effect on humans but was impenetrable to those like he, Mr Black alighted from his limousine. The house was perhaps thirty feet away. Maddeningly close. Any humans walking past would notice nothing amiss, would not see the shimmering sphere formed by the protective spells cast from within. There were ways to discourage his kind from entrance into homes, if you knew them. That had been the genesis of his plan to turn Michael Quinn, powerful arsehole that he was, into a walking weapon.
“What can you see?” he asked the massive spider looming beside him. In her human guise, Sarah had taken up hardly any of the interior of the limo. Once outside, she had unfolded herself to her full and glorious extent. It was a transformation he never tired of watching, but right at this moment his mind was occupied with his quarry.
Her many eyes were as mirrors. Everything that crawled, everything that scuttled on more than four legs inside that house was hers to command; every set of compound eyes was a window she could look through.
“They have him tied up,” she said. “It’s as you thought. The older Morrigan is there too.”
Mr Black luxuriated himself with a curse. Even as a bewitched weapon, Quinn was worse than useless. He took a step forward, and hit the barrier almost immediately. It wasn’t a physical thing; not a brick wall, more like a brick persuasion, a command that even he could not compel himself to disobey. His legs simply refused to go any further.
“If he somehow opens a gateway to the Otherworld…”
“Is he capable of that?”
“I don’t know,” Mr Black admitted. “The man vanished f
or a decade, remember, and regretfully did a good job of it too. Who knows what he studied in that time?”
Her head swung to regard him. “Do you want me to try from above?” she asked, and at his nod, she reared up, front legs straight up in the air, scrabbling for purchase on the perimeter of the barrier. He watched with pride as she heaved her resplendent obsidian body onto the barrier itself, seemingly floating in mid-air. He watched her as she moved on a curved gradient to the apex of the sphere, thirty feet directly above the house.
“What…the…fuck,” came a voice to his right.
Mr Black glanced over. There was a young lad standing beside him. He was holding a joint the size of a small dog between two fingers on his right hand. It was drooping alarmingly. When he met Mr Black’s eyes, he noted he hadn’t seen pupils that big since the last series of Fat Academy.
“Here cunty,” said the youth, “is that a big fuckin spider hoverin in mid air over that gaff ar what fucks sake?”
Mr Black spared a moment to sigh even as Sarah’s body tensed and her stinger emerged from her carapace. Down it came on the barrier. There was a shimmer in the air that was visible for a brief moment, and pressing forward, Mr Black felt the barrier give minutely before returning to its previous strength.
His new friend, meanwhile, had tired of waiting for him to answer. Walking forward – frustratingly, maddeningly, walking right through the barrier that was causing him so much chagrin, he vaulted the wall of Dermot Scully’s garden until he was standing more or less underneath Sarah’s massive bulk, thirty feet above.
“HERE!” he shouted upward. Sarah’s stinger paused. “ARE YOU A FUCKIN BIG SPIDER ARE YA AYE? FUCK ME!”
Mr Black recalled Sarah with the merest of gestures. She scuttled back to him with a speed that was completely at odds with her size, legs flowing in a rhythm that only arachnids could master. The youth was staggering back toward them.
“This boy has absolutely no sense of self-preservation,” Mr Black understated magnificently.
“Are you a big-”
“Yes,” said the massive spider right in front of him, “I am a big spider.”
“How the fuck’d ya do that?” the soon-to-be-dead stoner asked. Despite the disappointments of the last ten minutes, Mr Black found a moment to smile.
**
Hill of Tara, Ireland, 26th May 1798 AD
As bullets pockmarked the trench in front of her, Molly Weston reflected that this was a strange way for a young lady to spend her Saturday night. No matter, though; despite being holed up in close quarters with several dashing young gents, she had her four brothers right with her, and woe betide the Rebel, be he a United Irishman of any rank, who fancied his chances with Molly Weston in the company of her four human chastity belts.
Besides, she thought with a grim smile as she reloaded her twin pistols, she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else right now.
They were swarming up the hill, the English, hundreds of the bastards with their shiny uniforms and their bayonets, screaming in rage and defiance for a party of their fellows in the Reay Fencibles having had their arses kicked by a Rebel force shortly before. She had been part of that force, had fired a shot that had seemed to take an age to travel the distance between her and the Englishman whose head it had caved in. She had watched him fall to the soil, a slack expression of surprise written all over his face.
Women fighting. Women killing. Recruited not long ago – though it seemed a lifetime - she had been drawn in not so much by the fine speeches about a free land, but by the simple amazing fact that the recruiters had not patronised her, had not suggested she could contribute to the cause by sewing uniforms or providing “home comforts” for the fighting men. They had asked her to familiarise herself with a weapon, not realising she’d been shooting since she was six years old. She was a better shot than two of her brothers and the equal of a third.
Shouts and chaos all around her. She looked to her right, at the crumpled body of her white horse, Dagda, cut down from under her by a long-range lucky punt of an Englishman who had paid for his crime with his life at the hands of her comrades bare moments later. How she wished she could have done the deed herself. Tears stung her eyes, but she pushed them back; she wasn’t going to succumb to the clichéd weaknesses of womanhood now, not when she’d been granted this opportunity to prove herself.
Bedecked in green and gold from her belt buckles to her hat, she knew how she looked. She knew at some level that she was being used by the local leadership as a sort of rallying call, as bait for the local lads to sign themselves up. She didn’t care. She wanted to be bait, but not for the men – if just one little girl had seen her dressed in this finery, with her sword on her belt and her pistols holstered at her sides, riding through the towns of Meath atop Dagda and think beyond the pre-assigned life laid out before her of husband, work and children, then she would go to whatever lay beyond this life content.
The English battle cries grew louder. Her hands tightened on the pistols.
She wouldn’t be leaving this life just yet.
At a shout, from her own lips, she and the men huddled in the ditch – including her own brothers – burst upwards, their guns primed. They let off a volley of shots and more than a few of the advancing English went down, screaming at an arm or a leg or simply not screaming at all.
The English were good. The English were professionals at this, not a ragtag bunch of volunteers from local villages. Too many shots of the wild volley of pistolfire went wide of their marks, too many of the men she had huddled with felt adrenaline surge through them and forgot to exhale as they fired, forgot to aim in the right places.
Reloading took time, too much time and there was too little cover. They were almost at the summit of the hill of Tara, a place she’d roamed all over as a little girl, somewhere she knew as well as anywhere. That the English were now making it their own burned at her, and she was satisfied to see that one of her shots – that from her left hand, which had always been her strongest – had brought down its target; he went down without a sound, the ball scything clean through his throat and out the other side, covering the two men running close behind him in blood and fragments of bone.
Pistols were discarded in favour of swords, and the English bayonet charge met Rebel steel with a flurry of metal-on-metal. Molly swept her own sword out and ready, knowing she was a much better shot with a pistol than she would ever be with a blade, knowing that whomever she faced would have been trained in the arts of the bayonet and would know how to counter her moves, would have male strength to draw upon.
A sound reached her ears amidst the melee, and Molly knew, somehow knew deep within her before even turning her head in the direction of the source of that terrible sound, that one of her brothers had died.
It was Pat. Pat the worst shot, Pat the second oldest. Pat who had been slow since birth, who had joined up because his three brothers had, who chuckled in a big gurping way when jokes were flying but couldn’t explain why they were funny for the life of him. Pat had just been run through from stem to sternum by a bayonet blade from one of the swifter English runners. He jerked on the metal for a few seconds and she watched, watched as the Englishman put his foot on Pat’s chest and tugged at the bayonet until it came loose, taking some of Pat with it as it came.
Something descended on Molly Weston at that moment; a rage so complete that it went through anger and into a place of calmness, where she ceased to value her own life and simply existed for the one purpose of killing anything wearing the incorrect colour of clothing.
The English were attracted to her with her distinctive uniform like moths to a flame; upon recognising her gender, however, some hesitated for a vital second, perhaps out of a long-learnt sense of chivalry, perhaps out of surprise, perhaps in amusement. Whatever the reason, for three Englishmen it was the final, most fatal mistake of their lives.
She slit the throat of one with a clumsy rush manoeuvre that should never have worked, barrelling into
him and slashing wildly, feeling warm blood spatter her face and sensing him go limp and crumple before her. She had to wipe her face with her green jacket to see properly and when her vision cleared, she realised that another opponent had just paused mid-swing in a stroke that would have cleaved her head from her shoulders. She was able to duck under the swing and stick her sword right into his chest, lancing his heart and killing him instantly.
“Fucking bitch,” a voice sounded from behind her, too close, far too close-
Time skipped. She remembered her brother, little Fergus, the youngest, and his face as he killed the man about to run her through. Before the man he killed had quite finished dying Fergus himself was dead, the bayonet of the Englishman who murdered him emerging through his forehead and getting lodged in his skull just as he was about to smile at his older sister.
She watched the Englishman trying to get his bayonet free of her dead baby brother’s head, trying desperately, wrenching his weapon this way and that and causing Fergus’ corpse to jerk and twitch crazily in some grotesque parody of life.
Molly Weston died truly in that moment, not eight minutes later when her body stopped breathing. She took her sword and chopped the Englishman’s legs from under him, unable to cut through them for lack of sharpness in her blade and strength in her arm, but her cuts went deep and he screamed as he tumbled, knowing from the amount of blood he was losing that he was as good as gone.
She stood over him, as the battle raged around her and the Rebels fell in their scores, panicking, abandoning the ancient defences of the Hill of Tara, built in a different age for a different world. He pleaded in words that didn’t even seem to be English anymore. He babbled and burbled and gurgled and choked as she drove the point of her sword right into his mouth, so hard that it went out the back of his head and into the soil, pinning him in place like a butterfly in a glass case. He spasmed and kicked and tried to break loose.
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