by KB Anne
Eight of Cups
Before she touched the glass sphere, she swallowed. She’d waited so long to discover the truth of her destiny. Mathair Mhór and Gallean had only hinted at it; they’d never shared the full prophecy. Now, it was here before her.
Her fingers sparked as she took hold of it. The glass sphere grew warm with her touch.
* * *
Seen but not seen.
Drifting into permanent destruction.
Terrible power bestowed unknown.
Thirst insatiable.
* * *
Conquered but not oppressed.
Hidden but not accessible.
Subversion of power through unexpected fall.
Seed rooted.
* * *
Precious taken. Revenge sought.
Maim but not kill.
Iron fate sealed by future seed.
Weather the storm. Caught unawares.
* * *
Caer exhaled and returned the glass sphere to its rightful place. The prophecy entailed many layers. She’d mull over the lines to sort out which ones pertained to her.
All the lines pertain to you.
She jumped, unsure of who had spoken. Gigi was in the Earthly Realm. Mathair Mhór had spoken to her recently, but the timbre of the voice didn’t resonate with Caer as that of her mentor. Nor did it sound like Gallean.
The answers you seek will be found if asked.
She blinked at the realization that the glass sphere had spoken to her. She sat down at the desk and scribbled down the lines of the prophecy.
What does it mean?
Images bombarded her mind. A young boy covered in animal skins crept down a dark tunnel. He wanted to discover what his father and the Druids were up to. They had gathered strange herbs he didn’t recognize under the light of the crescent moon and had taken off for the cave.
Up ahead he could see the flickering light of a flame and heard low chanting in a language he did not understand. As he got closer, he sank lower and lower until he was sliding along the cave tunnel floor like a snake. The chanting grew louder and more and more feverish. He had to see what was going on. He rounded the final bend, and what he saw churned his stomach. Horrible shadow monsters emerged from the cauldron and lengthened along the walls as if dancing with the Druids. What magic was this?
The men continued chanting. The fire grew higher, reaching the air shaft. The potion in the cauldron bubbled and hissed each time a Druid added an herb, a frog’s leg, a dried mushroom. Even from where he lay, he could tell the liquid was turning noxious, but he found himself rooted to the place, unable to leave.
The flames licked the cauldron as if lovers. He watched with fascination and horror as his father withdrew an eyeball from his cloak and chanted something as he tossed it into the cauldron.
The concoction erupted. Noxious gases burst into the air, shot over the Druids, and settled in the boy’s eye before he had time to react. He kicked, he screamed, he moaned as he convulsed in pain. The words of the prophecy slammed into his subconscious.
* * *
Seen but not seen.
Drifting into permanent destruction.
Terrible power bestowed unknown.
Thirst insatiable.
* * *
Conquered but not oppressed.
Hidden but not accessible.
Subversion of power through unexpected fall.
Seed rooted.
* * *
Precious taken. Revenge sought.
Maim but not kill.
Iron fate sealed by future seed.
Weather the storm. Caught unawares.
* * *
Caer fell back in her seat, panting. Their fates had become entwined the day Balor spied on his father and the other Druids.
What turned a sweet boy into a monster?
She splayed her fingers back on the desk. The boy lay on the cave floor, his hand pressed to his injured eye. A large hulking man in a brown animal fur—his father—glowered at him. He muttered something about being ruined and a monster before he slapped the boy across the face. The boy fought not to cry, but tears fell from the uninjured eye.
His father’s lip curled in disgust. He gripped the boy’s arms and picked him up. The boy pleaded with his father, begging him to let him stay, but his words did not soften the disgust. The man carried him out of the cave.
His father ripped the boy’s hand from the ruined eye. Blinding moonlight funneled into it. The boy screamed in pain, trying to fight his father and protect his eye, but he soon grew quiet as his body stilled. In the eerie silence that followed, the father nudged the boy with his foot to ensure he was dead. The boy sprang up. His father backed away in terror, and the boy’s gaze fell on him, turning him to stone.
The other Druids descended upon him, bombarding him with killing curses. Balor flung his hands and used tree bark as a shield, but many of the curses found their mark. Rather than killing him, his body stretched and grew, turning from a boy, into a man, into one of the terrifying monsters from the cauldron. But instead of living in the shadows, this monster was real. As his ruined eye fell upon one of the Druids, he turned to stone. The fighting stopped when the final Druid’s body fell to the ground and shattered. Balor, no longer recognizable as the sweet boy he once was, took in the destruction he had caused. A cruel smile rippled across his face before he lumbered off into the darkness.
Another vision appeared. A woman with long brown hair stood at the ocean’s edge. As the waves kissed at her toes, she smiled, staring off onto the horizon. From the sand dunes, Balor watched her. He’d watched her many times alone on the beach. Though the prophecy dwelled in the back of his mind, the draw of the woman superseded any warnings therein. He self-consciously tugged at the patch covering his ruined eye as he swallowed. He took a step toward her, then another, approaching her with the cautious speed in which a boy might approach a deer in a meadow for fear of it springing off before he’d had a chance to pet it.
The woman startled as a shell crunched beneath his foot. She turned to him, her eyes wide with concern. She scanned the sand dunes in hopes of finding someone to help her. He lifted his hands to demonstrate he meant her no harm. Her stance softened, but she was still ready to flee if needed. He withdrew from his cloak a giant conch shell and offered it to her. She smiled as she took it, cradling it in her hands.
He said something to her. She flipped the pearly white conch over to its pink underbelly and put it to her ear. Her entire face brightened when she heard the sound of the ocean. Balor’s lips turned into a smile at her delight. She kept listening to the ocean as he spoke gentle words to her. Her smile soon became laughter. Soon, they were walking hand in hand.
Another vision of a swollen belly with a crone hovering between bent knees. The woman screamed as she pushed and pushed to no avail. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Her dark skin was pasty. Balor stood in the shadows, his face pinched in agony for the woman who was now his wife.
The crone encouraged the woman to push one final time. Soon the cries of a newborn filled the cave. The crone held up the baby girl for the mother to see before taking her aside to be cleaned and swaddled in soft furs. A single tear fell from Balor’s eye as he watched his baby girl. With the attention placed on the infant, no one noticed the blood, far more than the afterbirth, that continued to pour from the mother. Nor did they notice she had stopped breathing until it was too late. No matter what heroic actions the crone and Balor did for her, there was no breathing life back into her.
The crone would pay for her neglect. He lifted the patch. The crone’s mouth opened as she realized what was happening, but it was too late. She was already turned to stone. The infant wailed from her cradle, crying for her mother’s touch, which she would never receive.
Balor clutched his wife’s dead frame to his chest and released a roar that ripped across the seas, shooting fear into the hearts of every man, woman, and child. Cross him and they too would be turned to stone. He curse
d the heavens and the hells.
In the silence that followed, he mourned, only to be interrupted by the soft cries of the baby, his daughter, who had caused his true love’s death. He stomped over to her, his hand on the patch, prepared to turn to stone she who had killed his wife. But as his good eye fell upon her, his hand stilled. He ought to be rid of her, but he found he couldn’t. His wife’s legacy must live on.
The words of the prophecy arose in his mind. That his future seed would lead to his undoing would not come to pass. He was in command of his own fate. There’d be no destruction but what he himself wrought on his enemies. He sent his daughter away to live in a cave. Kept hidden from men and cursed to bear no children, there’d be no risk of any future seed being born to ever fulfill his role in the prophecy.
The Balor from Caer’s visions didn’t match the monster who’d sliced her father’s throat. The monster who she had been running from her entire life.
Another vision quickly descended upon her. A hooded man sat in a dark corner of a tavern. He was waiting for someone. The door opened and a tall, powerful man walked in. Patrons backed away from him as he strolled through the tavern to the dark corner. Raw power emanated from him. He greeted the hooded man, who offered him a seat. There was something familiar about both of them. She studied them and came to realize that the hooded man was her father and the other was Gallean. Amorin had told her that her father and Gallean were friends, but that didn’t explain what they were conspiring about as they drank their ale. A decision was made. Her father nodded and together they left the establishment.
Subversion of power.
When her father was alone outside, he stretched his wings and flew across an unnamed sea. His feet alighted on a rocky outcropping. There at the mouth of a cave stood a beautiful woman. Her eyes were the color of malachite. Her lips red rubies. Her skin the fertile soil. Her black hair framed her face. His mouth fell open as he gaped at her.
She peeked up at him from beneath her long black eyelashes. “Who are you?”
His intention was to free her from imprisonment and allow her to live among others so she could eventually marry and have a child who would fulfill the prophecy, but that plan expired the moment he laid eyes upon her. It didn’t matter that she was the daughter of Balor or that he and Gallean had formulated a plan to eliminate Balor who had taken to conquering neighboring lands and turning all the inhabitants to stone. He was lovestruck.
Caer watched images of her father courting the woman, her mother, for weeks until she looked at him with the same longing as he looked at her. They stood on the same rocky outcropping on which her father had first landed. He took her hand in his and spread his wings. Together they flew across the same sea to live a lifetime together.
A roar rippled across the air, almost knocking them out of the sky, but her father’s powerful wings weathered the storm. As the distance expanded between them and the island, Balor appeared in front of the cave. He had sensed that the next lines of the prophecy were beginning to unfold and had gone to check on his daughter, to ensure she was alone.
Iron fate sealed by future seed.
Caer sat back gasping as she recovered from the onslaught of visions. Her heart pounded in her chest as she realized that she was indeed the granddaughter of Balor, and though she felt sympathy for him for the travesties he experienced from his own father and the loss of his wife, his fate had been sealed when he slit her father’s throat.
Weather the storm. Caught unawares.
Caer now understood the final lines of the prophecy. It was time to end Balor’s scourge once and for all.
23
Walked into that One
Gram always told me an overinflated ego would get me nowhere, and that’s exactly how I got myself into my current predicament. I had known Declan and the werewolf pack were a distraction, yet I had played around with them rather than searching for the source of the chaos-causing magic. Of course Breas was behind it. Well, not Breas himself. His magic isn’t strong enough to cause the type of upheaval occurring at the festival. But Witch Kensey and Maria certainly could. And since they’re all besties now, I should have been on the lookout.
Alaric leaps toward me to free me from Breas’s clutches.
Wait.
He stares at me, puzzled. I don’t want to wait.
Let’s see who else is here. I drop in Alaric, Ryan, and Scott’s heads.
No sooner do I channel those words than Maria strolls in wearing her same black miniskirt and skimpy black tank top along with her black stilettos. She doesn’t have a problem revealing an abundance of skin, but at least she has some clothes on, which is more than I can say for the streakers we’d witnessed earlier.
Maria drapes her arm around Scott. “Hey there, handsome. I’ve missed you.”
Scott stills as she pushes her chests into his. To his credit, he doesn’t even drop his gaze to ogle her exposed mounded flesh. Although he’s uncomfortable and unsure what action he should take next, he’s glad that Caer isn’t here because she would be jealous.
Oh, Scott. If Caer were here, she’d already have Maria pinned on the ground with her sword.
Ryan tries not to stare, but he’s heard about an ancient Maleficium sorceress, and although we did tell him Carman had taken on a vessel, Maria isn’t what he envisioned. Lizzie narrows her eyes at Maria. I take that small reaction as a very positive sign. If she’s jealous, that means she feels, and if she feels, she can be persuaded to feel more, and if she can feel more, she can change.
“My wife, I’ve missed you,” Breas whispers in my ear. It does nothing to me. He lacks the low husky undertone Alaric uses. Aside from that fact that he’s not Alaric. Plus I loathe him.
“For the last time, I am not your wife,” I snarl. It’s really getting annoying when he brings that crap up. “The only reason I was once was for the greater good. I sacrificed myself for the people. And look where that got me. You betrayed me to steal the Vessel of Life and open the portal for the Fomorians. I’d say that was legitimate grounds for divorce.”
“But, Gigi, think about the moments we shared back in Vernal Falls. I’d say they were very intimate.” He’s trying to provoke Alaric, and from the sounds erupting from my lover’s chest, I’d say it’s working.
Alaric, don’t listen to him. I love you.
Scott removes himself from Maria and holds Alaric’s shoulders. A casual observer would assume the gesture was to calm down a jealous friend, but that it wouldn’t actually restrain him from fighting. With the strength in Scott’s hands, however, he could hold back a herd of wild horses, or in this case, one wild wolf.
“Or what about in Kildare, when you’d already met someone else, but you still did all sorts of things with me?”
He’s hitting below the belt, but he’s wrong on so many accounts.
“Are you referring to the night you spelled my entire family with your treats or the lunch picnic when you drugged me and took my blood to raise”—I glance around to find Witch Kensey— “that.”
He chuckles, but it’s all twisted and corrupt. “You figured out my secret. You were always a fast learner. But not fast enough, because you let yourself get caught by me again, and I’m very grateful because I need more of your blood. Along with other things.” He presses against my hip so that I can feel how turned on he is. He is a voracious horny bastard.
Get ready to run.
“You also don’t learn,” I shout as I pull up my leg and slam my Doc into his godly balls. As he doubles over—because god or not, a greeting up the chunk levels the playing field—I spin from his clutches, grab Alaric’s hand, and sprint away. Ryan, Scott, and Lizzie follow in fast pursuit.
“Can your pack keep them occupied?” I ask Alaric.
“Attack!” he shouts over his shoulder.
I soon hear growls, snarls, and screams as a riot of supernatural proportions erupts behind us. We dive into Sam’s truck. Sphinx leaps up, wondering what all the commotion is about, but soon
settles back onto my lap since we’re all in one piece. Alaric peels out of the parking lot faster than Breas can strip naked.
Kilkenny, here we come. I drop in everyone’s head just in case any Maleficium witches are listening.
* * *
After thirty minutes on the road, I finally break the silence. “Well, that was an unexpected turn of events.”
Scott puts his arms on the back of my seat. “How did they know we were going to be there?”
I place my hand on Alaric’s leg. “Pull over.”
When the truck stops, everyone climbs out and circles around Lizzie.
I draw up a searching spell and send it over her.
“It doesn’t make any sense, though,” Ryan says. “She’s been working for Clayone, not Breas, Kensey, or Maria.”
Alaric scrubs his chin. “He does make a point. Why would she side with them when my dad is on the outs with them?”
“Maria did offer me to him in the tunnels. Maybe they’ve made amends?”
“From his reaction, he was surprised she had offered you up,” Alaric says. “Besides, it wasn’t like you had anyplace else to go in there.”
“Back to the spy,” Scott says. “Did you find anything?”
I shift my attention back to Lizzie. “No, nothing came up. Unless they went old-school with a tracking device or something.”
“Nan would never rely on modern technology for something like that,” Alaric says.
Ryan keeps studying Lizzie like he can penetrate into her soul and bring her back. Her eyes pulse between red and hazel, and I begin to think maybe he can.
Then it hits me. “Wait a minute. There is someone else here who was working for the enemy.”
Alaric runs his hands through his hair. “But I was tortured by Lizzie, who we’ve established is only aligned with Clayone.” His eyes widen as he glances at Ryan. “Oh . . .”