Wolfsbane: 3 (Rebel Angels)

by Gillian Philip

  ‘And the girlfriend?’ The bearded man smiled, but his voice was as cold as stone.

  ‘Oh, kill her.’ Kate shrugged. ‘Or not. Whatever. Do as you like with her.’

  ‘You’ll leave that girl alone.’ With a snarl Eili stepped in front of him. He sighed, drew a sword and swung lightly at her. Her twin swords caught his and she forced it up and away, and he laughed and lunged harder. She swerved, parried, and he met her head on.

  The grey kelpie reared behind her, but it didn’t get time to join the fight. A single yellow-fletched arrow buried itself in its throat, and then four, five, six more. It bellowed, neck bristling with yellow feathers and welling with blood, and as the first archer stepped back into line, lowering her longbow, the creature sank to its knees, teeth bared and eyes rolling. The archer lifted a hand, staying her detachment’s fire. With a bubbling of pink froth the kelpie blew out its last breath and pitched sideways.

  Finn ripped a dagger from her belt, breathing hard. As soon as the hilt nestled in her palm, as soon as her thumb found the edge of the blade, she knew she could do this thing without thinking. Confused, she glanced down at the weapon, but her hand was already going through the motions: the adjustment of angle, the flexing of muscle and tendon.

  Forget that Kate lived and moved and breathed. That was all.

  Your ruthless streak is showing, Finn.

  Oh God. Her damp palm was one with the hilt.

  Don’t let him down. Not now.

  The smooth motion of her arm, the iron control of each muscle, the delicate flick of fingers: it was all instinctive. Taghan. Thank you. Her dagger flew straight and true towards Kate’s throat.

  Kate’s head snapped round, and she flung up her hand as if to deflect the blade. Instead, the blade never reached her. It juddered to a halt in mid-air, quivering as it hung for a moment before clattering to the ground.

  No. An accidental bad spin, a freak gust of breeze.

  Finn drew another knife, sent it flying at Kate’s throat. Almost before it left her fingers, she followed it with a third.

  One braked in mid-air, clattered to the rocky earth. The third Kate allowed within a finger’s breadth of her jugular, where it hovered for a tantalising instant. Then it too smashed to the ground.

  Kate lowered her hand and walked closer, smiling up through her long lashes at Finn.

  ‘Now, you see?’ The queen shook her head sadly. ‘That’s the kind of aggressive behaviour that’s got your lover in so much trouble. Think yourself lucky I want you to die today, Fionnuala, because you really deserve a more prolonged punishment.’

  What was that, telekinesis? What Conal called witchcraft? Whatever it was, it was nothing she could fight. Not a soldier in Kate’s line moved. Finn looked at Eili’s grey kelpie. Its black eye was dead, the green light gone, and Finn was glad she had sent the black away.

  As if the volume had suddenly been turned up in her head, she heard the explosive noise of a fight not ten feet away. Eili and the bearded man Alasdair were fighting it out on the flat smooth rocks of the riverbed, water trickling languid between their feet as they hacked lethally at each other, striking, parrying, turning.

  So, Finn thought, she could throw a knife – a little late in the day – but she still couldn’t wield the sword sheathed uselessly on her back. Eili wouldn’t thank her for a distraction, and Finn would probably only manage to hurt Eili. She was an amateur, for God’s sake. Maybe she should just have gone with Rory: she might have been more use, might even have lived into the bargain. The tear will stay open, Rory had said.

  Yes, but even if Finn lunged for it and found it right away, even if by some miracle she turned and ran and made it to the tear in the Veil without an arrow between her shoulder blades, that would only help Kate pinpoint it. She couldn’t, wouldn’t try. She’d made her choice, and like all her other choices, she had to live with it. Die with it.

  More bitterly than ever she mourned the loss of the years, as she raised her eyes to Kate’s and gripped her sword hilt.

  ‘Seth will be right behind you,’ she said.

  Kate smiled wolfishly. ‘As he so often was.’

  ‘You’re a guinea a minute. What’s the plan, Kate, when the Veil’s gone?’ Finn gave Kate a reckless grin. ‘I’m not sure you’ll cope with full-mortal politics.’

  Kate’s smile froze. Ignoring the frenzied clash of swords and Eili’s gasping breaths, she took a step towards Finn.

  Finn slid her sword carefully from its scabbard, desperate for it not to catch and stick. She raised it, hoping she looked even vaguely professional. ‘You can’t harm me.’

  ‘No, but he will, when he’s finished with that whore of Conal’s. He’ll take his time, too.’ Kate sighed in sorrow. ‘Oh, Fionnuala. You’re such a disappointment to me.’

  ‘I promise you.’ Finn swung the blade lightly in front of her. She could feel her jaw trembling and she wanted Kate to look at anything but that. ‘Seth won’t be in time for us but he’ll be in time for Rory.’

  ‘Alasdair will have all the time he needs. Ah, Finn: have you forgotten how easy it was for me to do away with Rory’s mother? I know how the time warps, I feel it in my marrow.’ Kate tilted an eyebrow sweetly. ‘Besides, when Seth gets here his heart will break. The mind and the body don’t take so long after that.’

  Finn set her teeth. ‘It doesn’t matter what happens to me. He’ll get his son back.’

  Kate laughed gently. ‘Oh, you’re such a child still. No emotional intelligence, that’s your trouble. That’s what comes of being such an incorrigible loner. Of course it matters, you silly girl, it matters enormously. It’ll affect everything: his morale, his judgment, his soul.’

  ‘And what would you know about souls?’

  Finn risked a glance at Eili, breathing raggedly now. Her deep red hair was darkest claret, slick with blood, and a gash had been opened across her beautiful face. As she dodged another blow, she lurched, and blood spilled from a deep cut on her thigh. Her arms were cross-hatched with sword slashes, her grip slippery on her sword-hilt.

  The man Alasdair was as fresh as if he’d just begun to fight, his superior smile unshaken.

  ‘You’re bound, you and Murlainn, aren’t you?’ Kate smirked at Finn. ‘But dear me! That means he swore to protect your life, Finn. Where is he?’ She glanced innocently around at the empty moor.

  ‘I’m glad he’s not here,’ said Finn.

  ‘Are you? I don’t think so.’

  Finn tried to swallow but couldn’t. She knew her turn was coming, but she hadn’t thought for a moment that Eili would be bested by the first of them. And nor had Seth. Seth had sent her because he’d known Laszlo was occupied, because he had thought they were safe with Eili, that Kate had no-one else who could compete with her. But the man Alasdair was better than Laszlo. Experienced, wily, he was the best swordsman Finn had ever seen.

  Finn would barely delay him; what a waste of her life. It all seemed so horribly imminent now. Hell, and she’d thought she had all the time in the world. Over on the other side, homesick and miserable, she’d consoled herself with the knowledge that her Sithe life stretched out before her into an unseeable future. And now, just like that, it was over.

  It hadn’t been her mother, that blurred and indistinct figure behind Eili’s fetch. Of course it hadn’t: Stella was dead and gone. Finn didn’t see dead people. She saw people on the brink of death, doomed people, living ghosts.

  She’d seen herself.

  She was scared, terribly scared, but she was most afraid of losing her dignity. The only way she might preserve it was to go to Alasdair voluntarily before he turned his attention to her.

  ‘Yes,’ she told Kate, ‘I am glad. I’m glad Seth’s not here because he’ll live to come after you. Seth will kill you now.’

  ‘He won’t have the heart for it, my dear.’ Kate tossed her hair back over her shoulder. ‘Not after he finds you.’

  And that was what finally decided her, because after all she’d
rather die fast, and not just for her own sake. Finn shot Kate a last look of hatred and then, as Alasdair drew back his arm for a killing blow to Eili’s throat, she darted to the left, gripping her sword, and leaped for his back.

  Eyes in the back of his head, he had. He dodged and his left fist swung back, catching her in the cheekbone so that she fell stunned like a shot bird. With his attention deflected, Eili ducked from his thrust and swung wildly, but he dodged with ridiculous ease. His blade missed Eili’s gut, but his flying foot caught her in the throat. She dropped like a stone.

  Eili’s breath gurgled in her gullet as he straddled her prone body, and as she struggled to get air into her partially crushed windpipe Finn went for him again. This time he paid Finn a little more attention, enough to flip his sword in his hand and drive it backwards between her ribs. Her impetus took her right up to its hilt, and then he yanked it hard back out of her, turned back to Eili and skewered her to the ground.

  He looked around, as if his interest was mildly piqued by what he had done. One of Eili’s swords lay inches from her twitching hand and he lifted it, examining the blade.

  ‘A beauty,’ he said, taking time to admire the light springing steel. ‘That’s quite a talent of yours. But it’s gone now. And I’m so used to my own sword.’

  He put a foot on Eili’s chest and drew out his blade. As if he’d sucked it physically from her lungs, a high tremor of sound escaped her. Eili pressed her lips hard back together. She did not make another sound, not even when he took her own sword and thrust that into her instead, impaling her once again on the peat.

  He looked from her to Finn, fingering his dirk.

  Kate shook her head as she hurried forward to touch his arm. ‘My sympathies are with you, Alasdair, but I was bluffing her. You haven’t time for any of that nonsense. I didn’t know Fionnuala had it in her, but it’s quite convenient. You’d have held us up far too long otherwise.’

  ‘All the same... just for Murlainn…’

  Kate stooped to touch Finn’s forehead with a cold fingertip, cocked her head in mild interest, then stood up and shook her fingers.

  ‘Dear me, Alasdair, no. Your blow was too good; she’s far beyond you. There’s nothing in her worth taking. And I doubt she’d feel a thing you did; it wouldn’t be worth the time you’d waste. These two aren’t going anywhere, and we don’t want to be here when Murlainn arrives, not in the first flush of his rage. Besides,’ she added with coquettish severity, ‘it’s high time you were going after the boy.’

  ‘You did what I showed you?’

  ‘To the letter. It’s a stroke of genius and I thank you from the bottom of my royal heart. There’s nothing either of them can do about it. Go.’

  Alasdair looked from Finn back to Eili, and shrugged. ‘Healer, heal thyself,’ he said with an ironic smile, and sauntered off towards the tear in the Veil.

  Finn was vaguely aware they were all leaving, the killer and Kate and the riders too, but it was as if they existed beyond thick plate glass; she couldn’t hear them any more, and nothing they did could affect her. For herself she could see only the sky. She was afraid to move, because there seemed a slim possibility that if she lay very still and did not allow the blood to flow, she might live. Then it occurred to her that they wouldn’t have left her like this if that were true. A hot tear flowed out of her eye, tickling her cheekbone and ear and dissipating at her hairline.

  It didn’t hurt. At least, it hadn’t hurt when it happened, and now it didn’t hurt as much as she’d expected. Actually, though, it was beginning to hurt. Soon, she realised, it would hurt a lot.

  Mostly, though, she just felt scared, and sad, because she didn’t want to die. She’d had so little time here. She’d only just got her name, and now Seth would never know it, because Eili was the only other one who knew it and she was dying too.

  Another tear welled up and flowed out into her hair. She could almost hear her mother’s fond jeering: I warned you, Fionnuala. She could hear Hannah’s chestnut moving uncertainly, then the rip of its teeth as it began to graze. Kate’s troops hadn’t bothered to kill or steal it, and it wasn’t so nervous now that the grey kelpie lay dead, a blood-spattered unthreatening hulk. Finn was aware of Eili’s hand twitching uselessly against the ground, and the horror of it twisted in her chest and gut. That made the sword hole hurt. Now, it hurt a lot.

  Finn became aware of someone else, someone near her. With great reluctance, she lolled her head to the side.

  Conal smiled at her and she smiled back, surprised that she wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t scared at all, but then there was no reason to be afraid of him. All she felt was an intense, quiet happiness. He was crouching close to her, and as she moved her head to see him better, a lance of awful pain went through her. He put a comforting hand against her face.

  No. Nothing to be afraid of. Conal couldn’t help her, of course, but it was nice to have him there, and it felt right. There was no wound in his throat, and though the faded blue shirt he wore was half-blackened and stiff with blood, when he leaned forward and the gash in it sagged open, there was no hideous hole beneath it, only his damp tanned skin and muscles all in one piece. Conal was free, then. Eili must be dead, or closer to it even than Finn, because he was free of her suffocating grief.

  ~ I’ve missed you, she told him happily.

  ~ I missed you too. He smiled. ~ A lot.

  There was someone behind Conal, someone she could see only vaguely, a dark-haired man with intense green eyes. She didn’t know him and yet she did, always had, because he was the man she could see in her own face. He stood back as if he was shy of coming closer. Conal glanced at him, then looked back at Finn, his smile softening.

  His finger stroked her cheekbone the way it had the last time she’d seen him alive. This time, though, she was the one who couldn’t move, she was the one with her lifeblood soaking into the peat. Panicking a little, she choked, coughing thick blood.

  ~ Sh, sh. He touched the corner of her mouth gently with his thumb, catching the blood. His fingers caressed her temple. ~ Oh, Finn, love. What about Seth?

  Seth. Oh, Seth. But he was in a different dimension now, and receding. Soon she’d be far beyond him and this crippling sadness of separation would be permanent. Couldn’t be helped. Finn’s eyeballs slewed to the twitching half-corpse on the periphery of her vision.

  ~ Well, what about Eili?

  ~ Eili and I have time enough, toots. His fingertips brushed her forehead, raked gently through her hair, gripped the back of her skull. ~ But you have to go to her.

  Then he paused just for a moment, and smiled. ~ Tell him not to be so scared, okay?

  The air rushed into her lungs without any invitation, and she curled upright, gasping. For a moment she was shocked silent and then she cried out with the pain and the sadness. There was no-one there. No-one at all. Conal and her father had never existed: hallucinations, that was all. The vast moorland was deserted but for her and the chestnut horse and Eili, and the dead kelpie, and fifty yards away the scattered corpses of the slaughtered patrol.

  The glassy screen was gone: everything was real and vile again. Finn sobbed once and clenched her teeth, then rolled over onto her hands and knees so that she could see Eili. The woman was whiter than bleached rock but her pale lips trembled with remnants of breath.

  ‘Come here.’ It was a vehement whisper.

  ‘…what…’

  ‘Don’t waste your last breath.’ Eili sucked in one of her own. ‘Come here.’

  Finn sagged down, sobbing at the sight of her own blood spilling onto the heather.

  ‘I cannot come to you!’ Eili snarled.

  Finn pulled herself on her elbows. It hadn’t seemed so terribly far before, when she’d been afraid of the near-corpse in the heather, but now it was the longest journey she’d ever made. Oh, it hurt now, all right, and terror bit hard in the wound with every pulse of blood.

  ‘Come. Here.’

  Finn crawled by her fingertips, inch
by inch, because the elbow-crawl opened her veins too far and she was terribly scared now. Scared, but she had to get there. Had to. There was a message to deliver. Right now she couldn’t remember it, not a word of it or even what it was about, but it was lodged in her brain like an axe-blade and it had to be delivered.

  Her fingertips found more peat, more grass, more solid earth, and dragged the rest of her after. It felt like the last effort she would ever make when she slumped down at Eili’s side and coiled against her splayed jerking hand.

  Eili gave a long rattling sigh that Finn was mortally afraid was her last. Then another breath sucked into the skewered lungs and Eili’s fingers were creeping across her flesh, finding the sword hole, thrusting into it.

  Finn didn’t have the strength to scream. If she’d had any energy left in her she might have recoiled from those creeping fingers, but she didn’t. Maybe Eili only wanted to kill her, but it was all the same now. Finn laid her cheek against the bloodstained peat and stared at Eili’s bone-pale face and the dark lashes that lay on her jutting cheekbone. She’d have thought Eili was dead now, if she hadn’t felt the residual heat of that hand in her raw flesh.

  And then it began to hurt a great deal and Finn began to cry, watching Eili’s face until it was lost in blackness and she was no longer aware of anything at all.

  HANNAH

  As soon as we passed through the Veil I felt the change in Rory. I swear he hardened like soft shell fossilising. When my mind brushed experimentally against his, I felt nothing but steely resistance.

  Rory looked back at the tear once, shimmering like a scratch in the air. I could practically hear him willing Finn to come through after us, but nothing stirred and broke through the gash, no running figure materialised, and at last he kicked the horse’s flanks and galloped it down the length of the deer fence. I hung onto his waist, scared of him for the first time since the day I met him. The horse arched its neck and kept to its unhurried canter. Rory didn’t seem worried, and that alarmed me as much as anything else. He was way too calm.