“Yes, but who do I know that would help Ciardha screw me over?”
Then it dawned on me.
“Greta!” I turned to see her depreciatory face. But when I looked at her, she wasn’t wearing her usual smirky smile. I accused her anyway. “It was you, wasn’t it? That’s why you’re here. That’s why you tagged along for the ride.”
“No, it wasn’t me, I swear. I had nothing to do with this.”
“Then why did you come along?” Fanny asked.
“Because … I wanted to get between Freak Girl and Owen, okay. That’s the only reason.”
Ciardha’s laugh thundered.
“Then who, Ciardha?”
“Oh, come now. Don’t any of you have another guess? My game is not fun if you’re all too dense to figure out the puzzle.”
“Look, we’re tired, hungry, thirsty and scared out of our skulls. We’ve got no energy left to play your game,” Jake said.
Ciardha grumbled and groaned, his voice like thunder filling the Umbra Perdita.
“You’ve ruined my fun. You will pay for this, especially you, Miss Adams.”
“Who is it, Ciardha? Who helped you?”
“Reveal,” he said.
The black wisp that had been hovering beside Ciardha grew and morphed. It morphed into a pixie with iridescent wings as black as a starless night. It morphed into the last pixie known to humankind. It morphed into – Macha.
12
The horrendous pixie who had aided Dughall in his dark quest. The pixie who had helped Dughall to resurrect in my time and create the black hole. She was in the Umbra Perdita. But how?
Hindergog had described Macha as having colorful wings like a dragonfly and that her colors changed depending on her mood. But the pixie I saw before me, her colors of coral and rosy-pink were gone. As she had been in her wisp form, she was a vision of black, white and grey, all color drained from her.
“You may have killed my former master, but you did not defeat me,” she rasped.
Ciardha reached his hand to Macha and patted her small cheek, then he slapped her lightly. Macha cackled at him, and her face blushed a dark grey.
“And such a stroke of brilliant fortune for me that you did not have the foresight to hunt down my dear Macha and do her in. She found her way to me, as dark beings often do.”
“How?” Jake asked.
“Brighid’s witches aren’t the only ones who know about portals or who possess magic,” Ciardha bellowed. “Macha appeared to me in wisp form, an answer to my dreams stretching back for millennia. She was just what I needed for my plan. Just the one to assist in my chicanery.”
“I don’t understand. If it’s a one-way ticket into this place, how did Macha get out?”
“Again with your dull wittedness. You bore me.”
“Wisp form,” Macha whispered.
“The black wisp,” Fanny said. “That’s what I saw. Emily, that night, at the party. I saw something – thought I saw something. And I did. It was Macha as a black wisp, and she hovered by Owen’s ear.”
“Hovered there and told him to whisper in your ear. Told him to kiss your neck, to put his tongue in your ear. He never liked you, never liked you,” Macha teased.
“I’ve never seen this … thing before in my life,” Owen said.
“You don’t remember. You were under her spell,” Greta said. “That explains a lot. I figured Freak Girl was the one controlling you. I figured she was the one who had put you under a spell.”
“What did I … do? What did her spell make me do?”
“It’s not your fault, Owen. It’s mine. Ciardha knew. He knew exactly the trap to set for me. He knew that I couldn’t resist … you. You were just a pawn in his game. I’m sorry, Owen. Sorry that you got pulled into this.”
“That’s right,” Jake said. “It is all your fault.” His eyes were cold, his pupils large and dark. His lips were set tight in anger.
“Yeah, don’t waste a second blaming yourself, Owen,” Greta said. She went to him and grabbed his hand into hers. “She used you. It’s all her fault.”
Ciardha’s dark influence had worked on me – had tempted me to use my powers in a way I knew that I shouldn’t. I felt so ashamed that I’d fallen for the trap. But worse than the shame, the knowledge that I’d doomed my friends. And to make matters worse, all of them were now squarely against me. Normally Jake and Fanny would have forgiven me – or at least stopped riding me long enough to figure out what we could do to get out of that place. But with Ciardha’s dark energy pelting down on all of our psyches, they were gaining in hatred toward me by the second.
“Can’t you see what Ciardha’s doing? He’s turning all of you against me.”
“You’ve done a good job of it yourself,” Jake said.
“Look, he knows that will cause me pain. My pain, hurt and anger only make him stronger. You getting angry at me, turning on me – it’s part of his game. Can’t you see?”
“We see,” Jake said. “I see. For the first time in a long time, I see it all clearly.”
“Jake, you once loved me. You said you did. You said you always had. Please, Jake. Please, don’t abandon me. I know I screwed this up just about as bad as it could be. But I need you. We’ve got to stick together. Like you said, right?”
“I wish I’d never known you, Emily Adams.”
“Jake, no, don’t say that, it might come true. Please, no.”
Jake had tears in his eyes and was shaking with anger.
“Jake, stop. Stop whatever you’re thinking. Remember happy times, Jake. Stop what you’re thinking or you’ll go into a nightmare.”
“I just want to forget,” he said. Soon the ground beneath us began to shake again, and then Jake began to fade.
“Jake, no!” I screamed. “Jake, you have to think positive, or you’ll go into a nightmare!”
“I’m already in a nightmare,” he said as he blinked out entirely and disappeared.
“Nooo!” I screamed.
Within seconds of Jake disappearing, I looked at Ciardha, and he had grown. Not only had he grown larger, but he looked older. Instead of a five-year-old boy, he now looked like he was ten or eleven.
“What have you done with Jake?” I demanded.
“I’ve done nothing with the lad,” Ciardha said. “It was you who sent him away. You have broken his heart. And oh, his nightmare is a delicious one – one of the best I’ve had since you arrived.”
“Where is he?” I screamed. I grabbed Ciardha by the shoulders and shook him. As I shook, I felt a heat rise through his clothing. His eyes grew rounder, darker. He smirked then, and I felt a jolt of electricity that threw me back.
“Don’t ever put your filthy human hands on me again. If you do, I will dispatch you without hesitation, Miss Adams.”
“Why don’t you just kill me? You’ve taken everything from me.”
“Everything? You still have him,” Ciardha said as he inclined his head toward Owen, who stood silently, still looking a bit dazed.
“I don’t have him. He’s not mine to have,” I said.
“Then you won’t mind if I terminate him,” Ciardha said.
“No, you can’t! He doesn’t love me, but I care about him.”
“Then it will be all the more delicious for me when I slowly torture him to death. I’ll have double the pleasure. I’ll watch him suffer and enjoy your agony at watching it happen!”
“No, don’t torture and kill Owen. Kill me. Torture me. I’m the one you want.”
“Oh, don’t you understand yet, Miss Adams? I’ll never kill you. Your life will make me powerful,” Ciardha thundered. The ground shook with his bellowing voice.
“But why me? Why not someone else?”
“Because you belong to her. Because you are one of her chosen ones. Because it is through you that I can best get to her.”
“But why do you want to get to the Goddess? What do you have against her? And how do you even know her?”
“What do I h
ave against her? She is the one who fashioned my prison and put me here. How do I know her? I know her like I know myself. She and I go way back. She is, after all, my sister.”
13
“That’s not possible. Brighid is a Goddess.”
“If she is a Goddess, then I am a God,” thundered Ciardha.
“There’s only one God, and you are not it,” Greta said.
“Insolent bitch,” Ciardha bellowed. Greta began to shake and tremble, then she fell to the ground, convulsing as Ciardha’s black voltage pinned her.
“Stop it!” I screamed.
“I thought she was your enemy. Don’t you want her to suffer? To receive payback for all the times she insulted you? Don’t you want to see her die?”
See Greta die? Did I? No. I’d thought about taking a few shots at Greta, maybe smacking that smirk right off her face. But I’d never wanted her dead.
“No, don’t kill her.”
“Oh no? Perhaps you want to do the honors yourself?”
Greta’s face was as red as a tomato, purply-blue veins visible on her forehead. Her eyes bulged in pain, and her blonde mane whipped around as her head shook uncontrollably.
“I don’t like her, but that doesn’t mean I want her dead. Stop it, Ciardha, please. She didn’t mean anything against you by what she said.”
Ciardha let his hands drop, and the black voltage receded. Greta lay gasping like a fish out of water. I ran to her and helped her up. Still filled with pride and loathing, she shrugged me off and dusted the red dirt off her pants.
“A little display of my power. I bet my sister never showed you that, did she?”
“How can gods have brothers and sisters?” Fanny asked.
“We are, in fact, twins,” Ciardha added, ignoring Fanny’s question.
“I don’t believe you,” I said. “You can’t be Brighid’s twin.”
“Why not? Do you find it so hard to believe that your precious Brighid and I are cut of the same cloth?”
“Brighid is of the light. She wants only what is in the highest good for all sentient beings. You … you are pure darkness. Evil.”
“You humans are so dualistic and didactic. You have already defined me as purely evil because you believe your Brighid is entirely good.”
“Of course I have. If she is good, then you are evil.”
“Your assumption, that she is all good, is the flaw at the heart of your premise. But I weary of this conversation. Back to my game.”
“What game?” Greta asked.
“I have a special game, a clever one, I think,” Ciardha said as he rubbed his hands together and smiled. “I created it just for you, Miss Adams. Doesn’t that make you feel special? To have a game created for you by a god?”
“No, Ciardha, that does not make me feel special. It just makes me feel pissed off at you.”
“Don’t flatter her,” Greta chimed in. “She certainly is not special.”
“I guess the bonding we shared over me saving your bacon is over?”
Ciardha burst into laughter.
“Cat fight, cat fight! Make them fight each other, Master,” Macha pled. “I want to see the blonde one rip Brighid’s whelp into shreds. Please, Master, please.”
Ciardha chortled at her, then backhanded her. She flew through the air several feet, end over end. Then she righted herself and slowly flew back to Ciardha’s side.
“Don’t beg of me, Macha. It is truly unbecoming. I didn’t have you bring her here for your amusement. She belongs to me.”
Macha’s eyes were downcast, her color drained to an even paler shade of white.
“He’s a sick puppy,” Fanny whispered.
I chimed in quickly to deflect the insane boy-god from Fanny’s comment. “You said you created a game for me. But I’m not into games, Ciardha. I just want Jake back and to get us all the heck out of here.”
“You seem to believe that you have a choice.”
“I do. I don’t have to play with you.”
Macha laughed a shrill laugh, so high-pitched it hurt my ears. Dorcha snorted loudly in approval.
“Oh, I think you’ll play this game, whether you want to or not,” Ciardha said with a sneer.
“What’s the game?”
“It’s a simple game. I call it ‘Lover’s Choice’.”
“Lover’s Choice? That doesn’t sound like a game for me.”
“Oh, but it is. I have created is expressly for you, Miss Adams.”
“What are the rules of this game?” Fanny asked.
“If I told you the rules, that would ruin my fun.”
Games, riddles, teasing. Jake’s life was in the balance, and Ciardha was playing games with me. I felt my patience stretched to its limits. I was tired, so tired of being stuck in that hell that Ciardha called home.
“I despise riddles,” I said.
“No riddles, Brighid’s wench. Just an easy choice.”
“I’m not playing.”
“As I said before, you will play.”
“I won’t. You’re a spoiled child, and I won’t indulge you in your childish whims. I refuse to play.”
I felt the heat rising in my belly, warming me from within. The torc was heating my arm, almost burning it now. I felt my power surge with my defiance of Ciardha.
“That’s right,” Fanny said. “She’s not playing. And neither are we.” Fanny’s aura brightened again, a beautiful lemon yellow, the chinks in her aural armor gone. My strength is bolstering her. Be strong, Emily.
“I didn’t ask you to play. But, Miss Adams, your continued defiance may well cost two of your friends their lives,” Ciardha thundered.
I felt my face turn white as all of the blood dropped to somewhere around my navel. Though no wind ruffled the air of the Umbra Perdita, it felt like a cold breeze had washed over me, causing a chill up and down my spine. At first, I thought that he was going to kill Fanny and Jake just to make me suffer. I quickly tried to shoo that thought out of my brain so that I didn’t unwittingly begin a nightmare that would make it come true.
“Please, I beg you, don’t kill Fanny and Jake.”
“I won’t kill anyone,” he said. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? Any suffering or death comes from your own minds. You bring it upon yourselves. Humans, so full of fears. Yummy, tasty fears.”
“Look, I’ll do what you want. You’ve got me. Just don’t harm Jake or Fanny. I’ll play your silly game.”
“How quickly she has forsaken you, Owen Breen. How does it feel to know that the girl who just minutes ago begged for your affections and so willingly let you touch your lips to hers now forsakes you for the other two?”
Owen hadn’t said a word throughout this whole exchange and had continued to look slightly dazed and confused. But his eyes were now fixed on me, and he glared at me with hatred.
“You twist my words. I’m not saying it’s okay to hurt Owen … or Greta even. Don’t harm any of them is what I’m saying.”
“Oh, perhaps you are still a lover, Mr. Breen? We’ll see.”
Ciardha then turned to Owen, held out his hands and an electric current came sizzling out of Ciardha’s fingertips, enveloping Owen. Owen’s body jerked, his head rolled back, and he screamed in pain.
Fanny and Greta both screamed for Ciardha to stop.
“Stop! Stop hurting him. I told you that I’d do what you want, I’ll play your stupid game. Just don’t hurt any of them.”
“You are playing the game. Watching this one suffer is part of my fun. Yes, yes. That’s it. I can feel your anger. I feel your fear. Sweet, delicious fear. Feed me. Feed me your fear,” Ciardha said as he kept the volts on Owen, all the while he grew older and larger right before my eyes.
“Emily, if you don’t want to help this crap weasel out any more than you already have, you need to put a lid on your fear,” Fanny admonished.
“Yeah, stop feeding the monster, Freak Girl.”
“Name-calling isn’t going to help, Greta,” Fanny said.
“Stop torturing him, Ciardha,” I said calmly. “I won’t react to your antics anymore.”
“No? How about now?” With a large burst of energy, Ciardha hurled Owen to the ground, then Owen disappeared from our view entirely.
“Where’d he go? Did you kill him?”
“I told you before. I do not need to kill him. He will do that job himself.”
“But where’d he go?” Greta asked.
“Mr. Breen is alive – for now. He’s back in an arena of sorts. An arena of his own making this time.”
“I have to go to him,” I said.
“After him? Are you sure?”
“I can’t just let him die.”
“And there you go, forgetting in an instant the one you pleaded with to remain your friend.”
“Jake.”
“She still remembers his name,” Macha sneered as she and Dorcha snorted and laughed.
“It is a wonder that you remember his name, considering the lip-locking you have done with our tremendously useful Mr. Breen.”
Panic rose in me again. I was starting to see the ‘game’ Ciardha had planned, the trap he had set for me.
“Where is he?”
“Your Jake Stevens is in his own nightmare. Each of them struggle against that which they fear.”
“Fanny, you and Greta go rescue Jake while I get Owen.”
Fanny nodded, and Greta, at least, didn’t disagree.
“Cheating! Cheating!” Macha cried as she hissed and booed.
“No, no. This is a game for Miss Adams – alone. No cheating allowed in my realm – at least not by anyone other than me.”
“Damn your game,” I said. “I told you that I’m not playing. Fanny, you and Greta will need to concentrate on Jake so you can find him and pull him back from wherever he is.”
Ciardha laughed loud enough to make the ground shake as Macha’s laughter screeched across the Umbra Perdita.
“They will go nowhere,” he said, then he turned to face Greta and Fanny. Soon they were engulfed in the same bolts of electrical energy that had gripped Jake and then Owen. I watched helplessly as Fanny’s head twisted from side to side, and her body jerked while she screamed in agony. A pain started in my body too, deep in the pit of my stomach. If I’d had anything in that empty gut of mine, I would have hurled it across the red dust of the Umbra Perdita.
The Akasha Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set: The Complete Emily Adams Series Page 37