No. He pushed the memory away with an effort, brought his mind back to the present. There were no surprises at the summit. Seven standing stones, in a circle. A fire set in the middle. Four of them, all outwardly human-looking, stood at the four compass points around the blaze, chanting something or other in ancient Gaelic that he couldn’t even begin to translate; the complexities of the language had been something he’d given up understanding a long time ago. That was Dermot’s job, after all.
They’d seen them, of course. But the cocky bastards didn’t even pause in the incantation as he and his father charged toward them. Tony raised the shortsword and yelled his best blood-curdling challenge and tried to enter the eternal contradiction of the peaceful calm of battle-mode again but there were things tugging, pulling at his mind for attention that wouldn’t allow him to do so, and as they passed within the circle of the standing stones they lined themselves up for him in his head.
Where were the sacrifices?
Why weren’t the four showing any signs of fear?
Where were the fucking sacrifices?
Supposedly seconds from death at the hands of the blades borne by their attackers, one of the four around the fire stopped chanting and looked directly at him with an expression Tony Morrigan would never forget.
“Welcome,” he said. And then:
“Now.”
Tony felt the shortsword, raised above his head to strike down at the man who had spoken, be yanked from his grip. As he tried to readjust to being disarmed, perhaps to bring the shield around and use that instead, he felt the legs taken from under him and tasted dirt a moment later, praying that the second thump that sounded a few feet from him wasn’t his father suffering a similar fate.
It was.
He held to the shield with all his strength, but as with the sword a force simply plucked it from his fingers, almost tearing them off in the process. He yelped in pain and, anticipating killing strokes about to rain down on him from his prone position, he rolled from his stomach to his back so that he could see what had-
He screamed.
It hung over him, over the entire standing stone circle, a huge black mass against the night sky, one leg perfectly balanced on the summit of each stone with one leg left spare. Nights he’d awakened in a cold sweat wondering what would have happened if the Triumph’s engine hadn’t caught into life when it had, if he’d had more than just webbing to wipe off the back bumper. The day had come.
Lines of webbing ended in his sword, his shield, and one of his father’s daggers. The lines jerked and bobbed and with a flick the weapons were thrown high and long to fall a long way from the hilltop.
Fear flooded his mind, froze his limbs, overwrote all of his training until all he could do was lie there and scream, awaiting that monstrous shape descending upon his helpless body to finish the job, to feed-
“Restrain them,” the voice that had spoken before. More webbing arced downward. His arms and legs were held fast within it in a matter of seconds.
Fear confused his perception of the next few moments. When his panic level dropped, when his body simply couldn’t process any more dread, he found himself bound in webbing from the shoulders down to the ankles, suspended by more strands between two of the standing stones. Directly opposite him, like an aged mirror image, his father had been subjected to the same treatment.
The spider – it seemed laughable to call it that, as it seemed laughable to call the beasts he and his father had battled to get to the hilltop wolves. Spiders were scabby if hateful little beasts that strayed into the wrong bed or crawled out of the wrong plughole, and this…this was a million miles from that. But a spider it was, and it descended from its perch atop the stones and before his eyes it shimmered and flowed into itself, shrinking and reforming until it was human. A woman. A girl.
The spokesperson, he of the coldly satisfied look that had first informed Tony something was seriously fucked with this whole plan, stroked the girl’s cheek affectionately. His three companions – Tony blinked in amazement, now able to see them properly for the first time – all dressed in actual honest-to-fuck business suits, stood with heads bowed and said nothing.
“Thank you, Sarah. I believe our guests have left four of our number dead on the hillside. Remove them in your usual manner.”
Sarah bowed her head in acceptance of the order and walked out of the standing circle of stones into the night. She passed within eight feet of Tony as she did so and, pausing, she turned her head, her human head, with its human eyes, and she looked at him with a face that was centuries old and had seen more horrors than even he could begin to fathom.
Eyes which were not those of a monster.
“Why?” he asked her.
“We all have our roles to play,” was her reply, before she was swallowed by the night.
If the spokesperson had heard this, he did not comment. Instead he spread his hands wide and beamed broadly, turning from Tony to James and back again every few seconds as he spoke.
“Morrigans!” he said delightedly. “Splendid sport we’ve had, don’t you agree, these past few hundred years? James, isn’t it? Knew your father well. Met him twice. Killed him once. Lovely man.”
Tony felt his mouth drop open. His father said nothing.
“You know who I am, I assume?” their captor continued, seeming as if he’d be hugely offended if the answer was in the negative.
“Dother,” James said.
Dother hopped in excitement and nodded. It was such an absurdly childish thing to do that it should have been laughable, but given their current circumstances Tony didn’t find it remotely amusing. Dother had a way of staring, a shine to his eyes that communicated intelligence and madness and a complete lack of mercy in equal measure, that made the wolf-faeries look about as threatening as doilies.
“Yes!” he crowed. “Yes, James! And this must be Tony…” he approached Tony, moving this way and that like a snake, coming almost close enough to touch, that infuriating I’ve-got-you smile never leaving his lips. “Ohhh he’s promising, James. Very promising. I can see big things ahead for you, my boy.”
Again, the Eastwood urge surfaced. This time, however, he wasn’t even able to muster a clumsy Belfast substitute for a classic comeback. Right then and there, Tony Morrigan couldn’t take his eyes from the sickle in Dother’s right hand, and couldn’t get his mind off how much he really didn’t want to die tonight, didn’t want to feel the sickle’s blade slice through the webbing and him at the same time.
“What are you going to do with us?”
“For a fair few years now we’ve been playing around with this and that,” Dother said, not answering his query, going back into the centre of the standing stone circle instead. Picking up a stick, he stoked the fire set there. “My darling little brother made the big breakthrough seven years ago as you two are well aware, and hasn’t it been a fun oul time in this island ever since…! But it’s time for the next stage, I think, to borrow a bit of a human phrase. I’m becoming quite the fan of this human concept of business, it’s so deliciously cut-throat I’m quite ashamed we didn’t invent it.”
“Can you get to the fuckin point, dickhead?” James interrupted. “I knew you faeries were cruel fuckers, but I didn’t think you’d resorted to borin people to death. If I’d wanted to take my son somewhere and have him bored shitless by a ranting lunatic I’d have taken him to St. Bridget’s tomorrow for the Mass.”
Dother didn’t hesitate. He strode over to James. The sickle flashed and there was a roar of agony and a spurt of blood.
“NO!” Tony cried out, throwing himself against the webbing, straining every muscle and sinew in his body.
“Now,” Dother said, holding up the severed ear to James’ face as if for emphasis and jerking it around like a puppet on a string, “shut up and listen, okay? And here – can’t have you bleeding out or passing out, can we…”
He passed a hand over the wound and James, still hollering and roaring with the p
ain, seemed to relax. A shiver passed through his body. The wound had cauterised instantly as Dother’s hand had passed over it, the bloodloss stopped.
Dother talked directly into the ear as though it were the receiver on a telephone. “Hello?” he said. “Come in, James? Can you hear me, James?”
“You bastard you bastard you fuckin bastard if you touch him I swear to fuck I’ll fuckin kill you you bastard!!!” Tony was saying, his mouth running on auto as he struggled once again to stay above the rising waters of panic.
The webbing wasn’t budging. His father, groggy and heavy-eyed, blinked and came back from the brink of the agonies he’d experienced. Without the ear his head looked unbalanced, unfinished, a child’s clay model. He focussed on Dother with some effort.
“Fuck you,” he said softly, in a voice only just loud enough for Tony to make out. “All these fuckin years you and your wee fucked-up family have been bangin on the door, screamin and cryin because you couldn’t come in. We’ve moved on. The whole fuckin world has moved on. No matter what you do to us, what you try to do tonight…it won’t work. You’ve been left behind, Dother.”
Dother merely smiled, not a madman’s smile, more the smile of a man who’s utterly confident in his own abilities. It was not reassuring.
“Stirring. Your illustrious ancestor herself would have been proud. Oh you’re wrong, of course, but still - bravo. Humankind hasn’t changed one bit in the last two thousand years. You’ve advanced technologically beyond all recognition, but in terms of morals? Of ethics?” he laughed. “The only thing holding you back is that now your world is suddenly much more connected. Massacres are global news. Serial killers are renowned worldwide. You feel under scrutiny and so you reign in your instinct, which I’m delighted to say remains as constant as ever – if it moves, fuck it, possess it, or kill it. You’re animals, to be used as livestock. As sport. And after tonight, that glorious destiny which awaits your kind will move one step closer.”
“After tonight,” James replied, voice calm and steady, “that hoor of a mother of yours will be down to two sons.”
“Da, shut the fuck up!” Tony pleaded. Fuck this bravado ballix. That was his Da over there, with a stump where his right ear should be. He had no desire to see any more of him be mutilated as punishment.
“You should listen to your son,” Dother said softly, rolling the knife he’d used to cut off James’ ear between his fingers. The blade moved so fast it was hard to see; the faerie possessed an incredible degree of dexterity.
“Stay outta this Tony,” James told him. To Dother he said, “He helped you, didn’t he?”
Dother grinned. “Of course he did.”
“I fuckin knew it,” James bit out. He proceeded to bark out three words in Gaelic that Tony couldn’t translate.
Brian popped into existence, as if the universe had belched him into being, sitting on the grass midway between James Morrigan and Dother. His eyes bulged in surprise at the suddenness of the summoning before his head turned to take in his surroundings and absorb its implications.
“Ah,” he said.
“You sold us out,” James spat. “You ungrateful wee cunt. The number of times I’ve protected you-“
Brian, by now recovered from the shock of materialising in the thick of things, responded by flicking James the middle finger. “You did me no favours, Morrigan. You used me for nineteen years to kill my own kind. Did you seriously think I was going to turn down Prince Dother’s generous offer?” and as he said it, he turned and bowed simperingly to Dother, who was impassivity itself at this display.
“Offer. Let me guess. Help lure us here and it’s safe passage back to the Otherworld, all sins forgiven?”
Brian nodded and shrugged in a so what gesture. “Yeah, that’s about the size of it.”
“You stupid wee bastard,” James said. “In all the centuries you spent with this fucker and his family, did you ever see them forgive anyone?”
Dother smiled at this. Brian did not.
“Yeah, but…” he said, and then turned to look at his Prince, and Tony was sure that if this had been during the hours of daylight, he’d have seen the colour drain out of the little faerie. Dother took a long step toward Brian, and another.
“The deal was real, r-right?” Brian stammered. No reply was forthcoming. Another two steps closed the distance between the two very different castes of faerie. The knife still in Dother’s grasp shone in the moonlight. This did not escape Brian’s notice.
“Cast the luck charm!” James said urgently. “Cast it now!”
“That,” Dother said, “would be unwise.”
Brian’s lips twitched and hope surged within Tony, but died again a moment later; the little faerie said not a word and merely dropped to his knees before his Prince, bowing his head, ready to accept whatever fate was to befall him.
“Well done, my child,” Dother murmured. “You shall be rewarded. Please. Stay for the ceremony. I promise you won’t be disappointed with the entertainment.”
He walked away, leaving Brian unharmed. The chanting resumed a moment later, with Dother leading the incantations, his voice rising higher and higher as the Gaelic was spoken faster and faster.
The air seemed to thicken, to be laden some indefinable quality that Tony had never experienced before, and he wondered through his despair if this was what raw magic felt like when it filled the air. Was this what the ancient world had felt like? Would this be what Ireland would feel like if they succeeded in breaking down the barrier and unleashing the full force of the Otherworld?
Maybe. But it looked like he wouldn’t be around to see it.
The wind had picked up now. From a night of eerie stillness there was now a raging torrent of air whipping around in a tight circle; and as severe as the windspeed inside the standing stones was, judging from the sensations on his back Tony got the impression it was five, ten times worse immediately outside. A twister was forming with the fire on the hilltop as its eye; further toward the centre, barely a hair moved on Dother’s head as his voice continued to rise in pitch and speed and intensity-
He caught the Gaelic word for sacrifice.
One of Dother’s lieutenants knelt to the soil and picked up a gae bolg, a belly spear, four feet of wood ending in a wickedly sharp barb.
He turned to Tony and began to walk toward him, spear in hand.
So this was it. This was how he died, barely into his twenties. As part of an archaic ritual to bring a mythical superweapon into existence. Well. It was more interesting than cancer, at any rate. The wind shrieked, making even thinking impossible, but there wasn’t much going through Tony’s mind anyway apart from the very clear thought that his father would have to watch his son die. He didn’t want that – not just for the very obvious reason, but also because of what losing his mother had done to him. Seeing his son murdered before his eyes...
At least he won’t have long to mourn. The black thought didn’t make him smile, but he was feeling fatalistic enough that even in the face of impending death he chose not to bother with any more than a cursory wrench or two against the bonds of webbing that held him, knowing they’d hold fast. They did.
Dother paused in his chanting to bark out two words. Tony didn’t catch them or what their meaning was, but it was enough to stop his lieutenant in his approach.
And to make him turn away from Tony, toward his father.
Tony screamed and wrenched, all of the strength and determination that had almost completely deserted him only moments before now returning and then some. He shouted obscenities, strings of nonsensical threats and sobbing promises of revenge and he tore and pulled and tried to will himself out of the constricting bind of the webbing and across the standing stone circle in time to intercept that bastard with the spear before he got to his father because he was so close oh God so close-
His father wasn’t looking at his approaching executioner, or the tip of the barb that would shortly enter his body. He was looking directly at Tony
, waiting for his desperate thrashing to cease so he would be still enough to be able to understand him when he spoke, and when he did, despite the freight-train hurricane that raged around them, somehow the words carried clear across the circle to his son’s ears.
“Keep our line going,” his father told him. “Pass on who we are.”
The lieutenant drew back the gae bolg, gathering momentum for the killing thrust. Dother ceased his fevered chanting. Tony let loose a mournful howl of grief.
Prematurely, as it turned out.
His father’s second dagger ripped through the webbing holding him in place from the inside. Somehow he had concealed it from the spider, prevented its confiscation. The hole it cut through the webbing gave him enough freedom of movement to twist his body to the side to step half-out of the cocoon that had held him and escape the lethal thrust of the belly spear.
Though elation was surging through his veins, for some reason Tony couldn’t keep his eyes from flitting to Dother, to gauge his reaction to his father’s escape. What he saw choked that elation stillborn.
The Prince wasn’t furious. He didn’t even seem surprised. And still that smile was there.
Seizing the spear from his opponent, James Morrigan threw the attacker off-balance by jerking it forward. Stumbling, Dother’s lieutenant walked right into a beautiful right cross that sent him sprawling. His father spared another precious second with his dagger blade in severing the remainder of the webbing that held him in place. Now free to move, he tossed the dagger to his stronger right hand and with a small, economical movement, raised it above his head and brought it blade-first down on the exposed back of the faerie who’d attempted to run him through.
Dother moved, but not toward James.
Tony gasped as a cool blade pressed against his throat. He had barely seen the faerie Prince cover the distance between the fire and himself. How fast was he?
“You don’t disappoint, James!”
His two remaining lieutenants stood between James and his son. Brian, shaking like a leaf, had retreated to the eastmost standing stone and cowered with his back to the rock, covering his eyes. The spider was beyond the circle somewhere in the darkness. Tony fervently hoped she stayed out there, hoped that the winds encircling them would be sufficiently strong to prevent her return.
Folk'd Up Beyond All Recognition (FUBAR) Page 19