by D. S. Murphy
46
I woke up seeing stars. And not just the ones in my head: I was sitting in a dark corner of Dunluce Castle, the wide open sky above me, the rough hewn stones of the ruined structure pressing into my back. I tried to get up, but my arms were restricted. I gazed with fuzzy eyes at the heavy metal chains, several inches thick, that bound my wrists. I reached up and discovered a metal ring around my neck as well. I could taste rust and brine, and hear the roar of the ocean crashing into the cave below us, singing a duet with the howling wind.
“Sorry about that,” a voice said from the darkness. “I wasn’t going to take any chances.” I looked up to see a figure step into the starlight.
Father Murphy.
I shook my head, my tongue slow and swollen.
“You?” I managed to croak out, pulling weakly at my chains.
“A little known fact about the name Murphy,” he said, “it means ‘Sea Battlers.’ I’m glad you’re awake, actually. I was hoping we’d have a chance to chat. Beautiful night, isn’t it? Only a sliver of moon—that should make you a little more compliant. Though I’ll admit I was expecting more resistance. This almost feels too easy.”
He leaned down close to me, holding my wrist and pulling out an antique dagger with a white, spiraled handle. With a sharp twist he dug the blade into arm and slashed a deep cut from my wrist to my elbow. The blood began spurting out of me. Then he wrapped my whole arm in a plastic bag and taped it off at the top.
“I apologize for the mess. The first time I did this, I used a silver chalice. It was far too dramatic. This will work much better.”
“You sent the letter from Dorothy,” I said. “You pushed me off the pier.”
“You should be grateful I tested you first. Murder is a cardinal sin, I needed to make sure I wasn’t putting myself in danger. But luckily you aren’t entirely human, which means this doesn’t count as murder.”
His twisted logic made my head spin. I took a deep breath of the sea air to clear my thoughts.
“You poisoned Jackie,” I said with narrowed eyes.
“That was actually Helena’s idea. She was tired of waiting. Thought we’d just put you all to sleep and sneak you out. After what happened with my father, I wasn’t taking any chances.”
“You almost killed her,” I growled.
“There are always casualties in war.”
“What war?”
“The most important war of all,” he said. “The holy war, the fight for our immortal souls. The merrow are monsters from the deep, but come with a singular gift. The power to heal. We use this power to attract acolytes. Helena, for example, is a devotee to our cause. Her son was dying of cancer. She asked me to pray for him, but I could do better. I could actually heal him. Save his life. For gracing her with that miracle, I’ve earned her undying loyalty.”
Who were these people? Why were they doing this to me? My eyes fell on the dagger—it looked just like the one Ethan carried in his backpack. It was a Tuatha Dé weapon, meant for harvesting merrow blood.
“Where did you get that knife?” I asked.
“Funny you should ask that, actually. Colin gave it to me, the night he died. In a manner of speaking. I grew up with your mother, seeing her and Aedan in church. I was only a few years older than her. I wasn’t sure whether she was special, like her mother, if it even worked like that. So I waited. I even volunteered as chaplain at her school just to observe her.”
“When she turned sixteen, the changes were remarkable. She started hanging out with Colin Blake, whose family practice black magic. It was the confirmation I needed: merrow were the spawn of evil, rising from the depths to tempt mankind into sin and destruction. It made sense that they’d be drawn together. Then one day at school, I heard them talking about running away. I needed to act fast. I gathered my father’s tools and set a trap. I left a note and asked her to meet me alone. But Colin followed her. He attacked me, with this knife.” Father Murphy said, wiping my blood off the weapon until it gleamed in the starlight.
“He was strong, but he didn’t count on the merrow blood I’d been saving for over a decade. It gave me the strength I needed to avenge my father. I snatched the blade out of his hand and plunged it into his heart, then I went for Branna. But I’d underestimated Colin. He summoned witchfire and flung it at me. If not for the merrow blood in my system, it might have killed me. Instead, I got this.” He rolled up his sleeves and unbuttoned the top of his shirt, revealing burn scars on his chest and arms.
“You killed Colin,” I said. You killed my father.
“On accident,” he said. “Haven’t you been listening? I only wanted your mother. I’d been waiting for years, preparing for that one moment… and Colin ruined it. Branna fled and I never got my one chance at revenge.”
“What did she ever do to you?” I asked.
“Surely you’ve put it together by now,” Father Murphy said, raising his eyebrows. “After all, this is a small town. People love to gossip.”
I stared at him blankly.
“No? It started with your grandmother, Phyllis. It was all old texts and mythology, until Aedan found her washed up by the sea. They were wed and had a child together, your mother. Phyllis would spend hours on the cliffs, gazing out at the ocean, her dress fluttering in the wind. That’s how I remembered her, growing up in Portballintrae as a boy. My father always knew there was something unnatural about her. She was far too beautiful. He wanted her with a desire that almost drove him mad. But the whole town loved her. For four years they sang and danced and were happy. Only my father knew what she really was.”
“But he underestimated her. He’d read the stories about merrow and their supernatural powers, but he still saw Phyllis as a weak and frail woman. One night we waited until she was alone and followed her up the hill towards Dunluce castle. Not far from here, actually.”
My eyelids were getting heavy listening to Father Murphy’s story. I grew weaker with each heartbeat, as my blood drained out of me. I noticed the cool feel of my dress against my skin, and the rough stone under my bare legs. I didn’t have much time.
I reached out into the water with my mind, searching for allies in the darkness hundreds of feet below. I found a school of fish, but they were too small and scared. Then a bunch of shrimp. Courageous, but not enough power. I kept looking and found a family of sharks. Better… but they couldn’t help me way up here. I took a deep breath and expanded my mind deeper, reaching farther than I ever had before. Then I felt it. There was an immense Fin whale, almost eighty feet long, a mile of the coast. I reached out to it, trying to communicate.
Help. Please… HELP! I pictured Sebastian’s face clearly in my mind, hoping the whale would understand. Seconds later I heard a booming whale song that trembled through the water like an electric current. Miles and miles away, I sensed the cry being picked up and repeated ever farther, beyond my ability to sense it.
I breathed a sigh of relief. If Sebastian was out there somewhere, maybe my message would reach him. In the meantime, I need to keep Father Murphy busy, and stay alive.
“I was ten when he killed her,” Father Murphy confessed, oblivious to what I’d just done. “He brought me along to catch the blood, but Phyllis was stronger than he anticipated. She took my father’s life with her own.”
“Serves him right,” I said.
“With his dying breath, my father told me to kill the girl. He meant your mother, Branna. She was just four at the time. Asking a ten year old boy to kill a four year old girl… I just couldn’t do it. Not at first. Instead I enrolled in Seminary, and used my father’s contacts to secure a position in the order.”
“Order?”
“The Merrow Hunters. We call ourselves the Worrem.”
“Merrow backwards,” I murmured, as my weary brain scrambled the letters. “Clever.”
“I trained until I was one of the best. When I was 21, I officially joined the order and was sanctioned to redeem my father’s death. It was my test, to earn my
place. It should have been easy. It would have been, if it weren’t for Colin. After that night, Branna was gone. Living in America with a fake name. It took fifteen years before we found her again.”
Wait, what? My brain felt like it was pushing through molasses.
“What do you mean, found her?” I asked.
“The Worrem are everywhere. We do extensive profiling to find the merrow who are secretly living among us. You’d be amazed what you can find out about a person online these days… credit history, driver’s licenses, insurance—it’s all there. I convinced them to spare you, so that you’d get sent to live with your grandfather. Sent back to Ireland, with me. So I could finally finish what my father started.”
“It wasn’t a car accident,” I said with dawning realization. “You killed my parents.”
“Not me personally, but the Worrem, yes. I was told it went smoothly; a little bit of tinkering with the brakes and the steering. Drained her blood in the morgue before burial. Nothing as messy as all this. They use a needle, back of the thigh, coroner would never spot it. I think you might have even bumped into my colleague at the funeral, he said he’d stopped by.”
I remembered the handsome priest with the mysterious smile. What had he said? That I was strong, like my mother? I didn’t feel strong. I strained against my restraints, stretching my fingers towards Father Murphy. I’d have clawed his face off if I could. He killed my parents. All of them—not only my mother, but also the dad who’d raised me and the father I never even knew about.
“The Worrem have weapons of our own, you know. Handles of black onyx, with a gold hilt that looks like a pair of angel’s wings. Passed down from one generation to the next. I never got mine. It was lost the night my father died. Killing you will redeem me in the eyes of my colleagues, and they’ll present me with a new one. With a Worrem blade and your blood to make me faster and stronger, I can take out your finned boyfriend as well, when he returns. I’ll be so powerful, I can even destroy that whole disgusting community of witches and cleanse Portballintrae once and for all.”
He took something from his pocket and I saw the gleam of a razor-sharp blade. “I hope this is as good for you as it is for me,” he said with a malicious grin.
“Please let me go,” I begged. “The merrow are coming. They’re going to destroy humanity, and I’m trying to stop them. I’m no threat to you.”
“Saving humans is our job,” Father Murphy said. “And batting your eyelashes won’t help you, I won’t fall for that trick the way my father did.”
“Do you have to kill me? Can’t you just cast out the demon?”
“You are the demon,” he said. “The evil is in your very blood. But once I draw it out, I will use it for good.”
I realized then that I was going to die, but I was barely conscious enough to care. The blood loss made me weak and unfocused. My mind drifted, churning up figures and images from the last few months. Ten pints of blood. Seven dead bodies. Four legendary relics of the Tuatha Dé. One solitary saved seal. A human can donate a pint of blood and then regenerate more, but losing three or four pints would be fatal. I wondered how many pints Father Murphy had already taken out of me.
I felt myself rising out of my body, looking back on myself. The struggle, the fear was gone, and I felt a sense of peace. I realized I’d been afraid my whole life, but I was past fear now. In my mind’s eye, I could see the entire area of the castle, the cliffs, the ocean as one landscape in my mind.
My eyes focused on the crescent moon above us. It reminded me of something. My tattoo. Sebastian’s blood, under my skin. Father Murphy searched me for weapons, but ignored both my tattoo and my mother’s necklace. Why hadn’t he taken it? Because he didn’t know what it was. I don’t think he knew anything about Tuatha Dé magic, other than the healing powers of merrow blood. He didn’t know what else it was capable of. What I was capable of.
Father Murphy killed my parents. I could have forgiven that, maybe. It had already happened. Whether I lived or died wouldn’t change anything. But if I died, this heinous man was going to take the bags of blood he’d stolen from me and use them to destroy everything I cared about. I thought of Sebastian’s face, his warm eyes and teasing smile. There was no way I was going to get out of this. I’d already lost too much blood. But there was any way to take Father Murphy down with me; to remove him from this world and spare Sebastian from a similar fate, I had to take it.
I may be chained up in this stupid castle, but I wasn’t without options. I could feel the sea water in the cavern directly under us, and the infinite sea surrounding us on this tiny peninsula of rock and dirt. I had powers Father Murphy couldn’t possibly understand; powers I’d never fully believed in until this moment. But now I was ready to give everything for one crystal clear purpose. Save Sebastian. I just hoped it would be enough. I clenched my fists together and ignited the tattoo on my wrist. I felt it burn as the power awakened—the crushed Baetulia and merrow blood fusing together in dangerous combinations. The castle walls lit up like daylight as the tattoo burned brightly.
“What are you doing,” Father Sean growled. “That’s… that’s impossible.”
He rushed at me with his knife, slashing at my throat. I kicked him in the stomach, and he fell to the side groaning. I tugged at the chains. I still wasn’t strong enough to break through them, but my mind was clear and focused.
I reached out again into the water, searching desperately until I found the whales. There were three of them now, all enormous, their vast bodies waiting silently in the dark water. I curled my fingers into fists and called to them, picturing what I needed them to do. Their powerful tails churned through the water, sending them speeding towards the shore.
Father Murphy was on his feet, and charged towards me. I flared my tattoo again, filling my body with power, and yanked one arm free of my chains just in time to grab his wrist, stopping the dagger just inches above my eye.
Then the earth shook, knocking as both sideways. Stones tumbled as the land shifted and moved beneath us.
“What was that?” Father Murphy cried, with fear in his eyes. My mother’s necklace was glowing and I felt charged with energy. My tattoo burned, illuminating my features with flickering blue light.
“You may have me,” I said calmly, “but I can’t let you live.”
The earth trembled again as the second whale rammed against the cliff below, widening the mouth of the cave and shaking the foundations of the ancient ruin. A whole wall disappeared next to us, and we were left standing on the edge of the cliff, the white water frothing below.
Father Murphy peered down in disbelief at the massive forms below. And then his mouth dropped open, as the stars disappeared. Drops of salt water fell onto my face, spreading comfort and warmth through my body. In that moment, time seemed to slow down. It was a slice of eternity, a picture frozen in my memory. Father Murphy, dropping the knife in horror as the immense shape of the whale rose above the castle. Myself, smiling in the darkness, my blue dress torn and dirty. The tattoo on my wrist still glowing with searing white heat. And the soft blue glow of my grandmother’s necklace, the royal Bætulia, as I summoned all my strength and called upon my full power for the first time.
I’d pulled up a swimming pool worth of sea water and used it to extend the forward momentum of the whale, lifting it higher than any whale could have naturally jumped. And when it was directly over the castle, I let go.
Eighty tons of whale crashed into the ruins of Dunluce Castle. I heard a loud crack as the ceiling of the cave below us collapsed, and then my stomach went into my throat as we plummeted downwards. I plunged into the cold water, and sank with the stones and rocks as they slid into the ocean. The sea water immediately began healing my wounds. The sparkles and colored lights were brighter around my arms than I’d ever seen them, bubbling furiously to fix the traumatic damage. I panicked as I realized, without my swimming cap, I couldn’t breathe underwater.
But I’d used up all my magic. As I
sank deeper into the dark ocean, the sparkling lights around my body dimmed. I was done healing—but I was also out of air. My blue dress trailed behind me, the thin fabric billowing in the water, a rainbow colored sheen of scales that reminded me of a peacock. Wait, what? My eyes widened as I tried to kick my legs, and saw only the magnificent tail that wrapped around my lower body and sliced cleanly through the water. I gasped and felt the sea water rush into my lungs. The pain was unbearable as I filled up with ocean. After all these years, I was finally drowning for real. But then I felt oxygen reenter my blood stream. It felt like a glowing flame, spreading through my body, making it stronger. A surge of energy hit me and I realized I’d finally changed.
If only I weren’t still chained to a massive chunk of stone that was sinking to the bottom of the ocean. And then, I saw Sebastian. Somehow, he’d gotten my message and come to rescue me. He smashed through the restraints and ripped open the metal cuff around my neck, then he carried me to the surface in his powerful arms.
EPILOGUE
Thanks for reading! If you’re seeing this message, I didn’t get a chance to finish polishing the epilogue before my preorder deadline. This is the end of Book One but the epilogue is important. I’ll post it on my website so you can read it:
http://www.urbanepics.com/epilogue
There are still a few details that need to be improved in this version of the manuscript, and I’ll continue improving it to make the story as good as it can be. If you noticed any glaring issues, please let me know. Otherwise, I’d love to hear what you thought! Please do me a favor and post a review on Amazon.
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