A Feral Darkness

by Doranna Durgin

  "I don't know who'll listen to us," Masera said. "We'll have to try them all."

  "We could go to the media," Brenna suggested reluctantly. "We'd probably just look like crackpots."

  "Maybe we would. We'll do what we have to." He had that look again—the one she'd noticed in their first conversation and many times since. The one that meant he had things to do and no intention of being dissuaded or interrupted. The one that said join me or get out of my way. Focus.

  Only this time, she was part of it. "We'll do what we have to do," she agreed. "Your turn."

  "My—" he gave her a puzzled look, then remembered the paper in his hand. "Hard to believe this information's just been sitting here on your couch."

  "Not for that long," Brenna said. "Yesterday evening...I was sitting down with it when I—well, when I saw the things that made me call you."

  "Remind me to thank you for that sometime."

  "I'll put it on my list of things to do," Brenna said. "Now hand over that paper or get your tongue in gear."

  He glanced at the page and shook his head. "Mars Nodens," he said, "is associated with Lydney Spring, which you knew. And he has an affinity for dogs, which you knew. What you probably didn't know is that the gods of that time went by a whole collection of different names, depending on the region in question. Throughout Ireland, Wales, and England, Mars Nodens is also known as Ludd, Nudd, Nuadu, and—" he looked up at her—"Nuadha."

  Nuadha's Silver Druid. It hit her like a physical blow; she literally felt the blood drain from her face as she whispered it out loud. "Nuadha's Silver Druid."

  Druid put his paws on the edge of the couch, alert to his name. Druid, the dog whose footprints came from nowhere. From out of the spring. Druid, with his strange fits at strange times and memories he kept passing to her. Fits that occurred when he confronted a conjunction of things future and past, things from the memories conflicting with things as they were now. Dangers she hadn't yet realized were dangers.

  Druid, with his ID and rabies tags that had led her nowhere.

  Rabies I/ II.

  "He's been vaccinated," she blurted, still breathless in reaction. "He's been vaccinated against the shedding rabies!" Much to Druid's surprise, she pulled his collar over his head and shoved it at Masera. "Look—the local phone exchange that doesn't exist—yet. Five numbers instead of six on the rabies tag, a new cycle of vaccine—Rabies I & II. He's been vaccinated, and it's right here in his blood, right now. What could CDC do with that?"

  "Arrest us, probably," Masera said absently—though his gaze on Druid was anything but absent.

  "He came from the spring," she reminded him. "With memories of things that haven't happened yet, and a vaccine that doesn't exist yet. He came from Mars Nodens. Nuadha. From the—" and then she couldn't say it. Not quite. It was too absurd when put into words.

  Masera was never so shy of such things. "The future," he said, but then even he looked surprised at what he'd said.

  Brenna shook her head. "No. No way."

  Masera said nothing. He looked at Druid and said nothing, although his mouth opened as he hunted for words. Finally he swore, a single emphatic word.

  "Anyway," Brenna said, nonsensically enough, "Nuadha liked hounds. All his statues at his Lydney shrine are hounds. So if he was going to send a dog back from...if he was going to send a dog, he'd have sent a hound."

  "Gaze hounds," Masera said, and shook his head, waving the print-outs at her. "They were all gaze hounds. Aloof dogs. Laid back, except for those moments they're on their prey. Cardigans are people-oriented herding dogs. Intensely loyal. The kind of dog who could connect with you so strongly, so quickly, that you'd put up with his problems."

  "The future." She said it out loud, trying it on for size. And then realized, "A world where no one stopped the rabies," more horrified than ever to put the borrowed memories into perspective.

  "Or Parker," Masera said. He reached over her legs to give Druid a gentle scritch, as much full of awe as affection. "He's here to change that. With your help."

  "Our help, I hope," Brenna said. "We. Us. I don't think I can do this alone."

  "We and us. Oh, yes." He gave her lower leg a squeeze, still looking at Druid. "Nuadha of the Silver Hand," he added. "That's what they called him." He dropped the paper in his lap, through with it. "He had a prosthetic hand made of silver, and an invincible sword that could not fail to slay his enemy. Looks like Druid here is one package meant to be all of it. No wonder he's nuts."

  "I don't know," Brenna said, realizing that to Druid, even being in the Pets! parking lot for the first time—seeing Masera for the first time—could pull up conflicting memories of his own past. His own past...in the future. "I'd like to think I'd have done half as well under the same circumstances. Though that does explain why he's Nuadha's Silver Druid. I'd thought maybe it was for the speckling on his ears."

  "Maybe it is," Masera said. "We could go nuts, too, if we give too much meaning to every little thing. There are enough meaning-laden things going on here as it is." He rubbed a hand along his jaw, looking speculative, still watching Druid. "Hold on," he said, carefully lifting her legs so he could get up, and not explaining further as he left the house. She heard his vehicle door close a few moments later and when he returned he had a hypodermic and packaged alcohol pad. She watched without questioning as he scrubbed the inside of Druid's front leg, held his thumb over the vein, and withdrew a full syringe of blood. Druid allowed it with a much put-upon sigh, his ears planing down to indicate his displeasure. Masera capped the needle and left again, just long enough to deposit the collection in Brenna's refrigerator.

  She didn't ask why, as he returned a final time and reclaimed his seat beside her. She didn't have to. Instead, she asked, "What next?"

  He gingerly rubbed his eyes. "Next? Are you hungry? I am."

  "I missed dinner," Brenna admitted. "Not that I ever have what you might call a real dinner, but I missed it all the same. That's not what I meant, though." She put her hands over her face, covering her eyes with the sweater cuffs. Thinking, suddenly, that she had to return to work the next day, and that she had a groomer interview along with all the customer appointments. And she had the distinct feeling their work was far from done tonight.

  "I know," he said. "Thought I'd fit it in while we still could. Because I don't think we have any choice—we've got to figure out a way to reinforce that spring anchor to Nuadha, and we've got to do it tonight. If Parker gets to it, if he re-orients it back to the darkness, we'll lose anything you might have gained today."

  "The darkness," Brenna said, suddenly overcome by a moment of great silliness, just peeking out from above her fingers and cuffs. "Let's just call it Harvey. Or Fred."

  "Parker Junior," Masera suggested.

  "Parker Senior," Brenna said. "It's bigger than him, I think. And wild. He just doesn't know it." She dropped her hands, struck by a sudden thought. "You know, as long as old Fred doesn't have access to the spring, I think it's working through Parker. After it went for us at the spring, Parker looked beat. Just as bad as me and Druid. That's how I got out of there. He might actually be its weak point right now." Then she grimaced. "I don't really want to take that thought to its natural conclusion." She should have pulled that trigger.

  She still knew she couldn't.

  "Then let's not," Masera said quietly. "Let's get something to eat."

  She opened her mouth to protest, thinking of Parker and the darkness and the spring, but Masera shook his head. "I know," he said. "I don't want to wait, either. But we'd better not be hungry and exhausted when we go out there. It doesn't mean we have to wait till morning."

  She still didn't want to wait...but she was hungry. And exhausted. She leaned her head back on the couch and sighed out some of that exhaustion. "It's dark now already," she said. "It's not going to be any darker later on."

  "No," he agreed. "Not under this moon."

  "Medusa Moon," she said.

  "Not great for
us," he said, rubbing a hand over his face. "Be better if we could put off any more confrontation with Parker until Beltane and after the new moon." He glanced at his watch. "Going on nine, now. That pizza place on Main Street should still be open."

  It was. They split a large pizza between them, eating enough to make Brenna waddle back into the house when they returned. Masera disappeared into the bathroom and reappeared wearing glasses, classic and unobtrusive frames that somehow turned his generally ruffled appearance into something more refined...if at the tail end of its day. By then Brenna was on the couch, trying to turn her mind to ways of strengthening her connection with Mars Nodens.

  Nuadha.

  When Masera sat next to her, she pulled the afghan over herself and curled up against him without saying a word.

  And with the fate of the world riding on her shoulders, she did something so mundane as to fall asleep.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  CHAPTER 18

  URUZ

  Strength & Endurance

  Something pushed her leg, gently. Something cold. Brenna muttered in irritation and swatted at it, connecting with nothing—but there it came again. Slowly she woke enough to recognize the nudge of Druid's nose. Had she forgotten to let him out? No, he'd gone when they were returning from pizza. Then...?

  Then maybe he most of all of them still had Parker and the darkness on his mind. Or maybe he was still dog enough not to know what bothered him, but had some link to Nuadha, urging him on.

  Nuadha. It was hard to think of Mars Nodens by that name. But if that's how Druid had come to her...

  She realized, then, that her generally pliable but firm sleeping surface wasn't the sagging couch to which she'd grown accustomed. No, it was flat muscle and bone and gently rising ribs.

  Masera.

  No, Iban.

  How strange, she thought, that things between them had coalesced so suddenly. How strange that they needed to say so little about it.

  But then, that was Masera.

  The living room lamp was on its lowest setting, and Brenna carefully moved back from him, far enough so she didn't think she'd wake him, and still close enough to watch him—the glasses slightly askew on his face as he leaned back against the arm of the couch with his head tipping to the side in a way that he would surely rue once he woke. She considered waking him with a kiss, and then reconsidered the old-pizza taste fermenting in her mouth and moved away instead. She padded to the bathroom to brush her teeth, plait her hair into a quick braid, and wash her face.

  The bruises looked both better and worse—already less swollen, but the red parts turning dark and more obvious. She'd spend the next few days inventing excuses for that, no doubt. I walked into a door. An elephant used me for mortar and pestle. An ancient source of angry power got pissed with me and tried to kill me.

  They all sounded about equally plausible to her.

  She rummaged on the bedroom floor for a pair of jeans that weren't too dirty. Shoving her cold feet into slippers, she moved quietly to the kitchen, turning on only the light over the stove.

  There was a particular feeling to creeping around one's own house while trying not to wake a guest who needed to sleep a little longer. A caring thing, almost like a conspiracy between her and the house, and something that made the quiet time special. Even Druid seemed to be in on it; he'd curled up on the part of the afghan that draped onto the floor, and though he followed her with those big chocolate brown eyes when she passed by the entryway, they were the only things about him that moved.

  Chocolate.

  Masera had laughed, but now she found what chocolate she had left in the house—a giant economy bag of chocolate chips, bought at the bulk warehouse and meant for cookies. Chocolate. But she needed more. What else did she know about Mars Nodens? About the spring?

  There'd been a roughly circular area of protection. Not a big one...encompassing the rocks of the old gravesite, the spring itself, and the small area she'd kept clean. So if they wanted to strengthen the connection, maybe she needed an official way to make that area larger, the perimeter stronger. Boundaries of stone, maybe—it seemed to have worked with the gravesite. Or of another material that meant something to Mars Nodens. Nuadha.

  Silver?

  She had a sudden image of her mother's old silverware sticking into the ground in a big circle around the spring, little marching soldiers holding their border. With chocolate chips spread all around the interior.

  God fertilizer.

  She clapped her hand over her mouth to hold in her laugh and avoid waking Masera, but even in her laughter she liked it the notion.

  After all, what did a god care about? That it came from the heart, that's what. Like the little drummer boy, giving his gift of music. Brenna would give something of her family's, and offer a bit of her own quirky self to go along with it. It was how she would have approached things at nine years of age, trying to solve this particular puzzle.

  After all, the last time she'd gone at this, she'd been nine. And she'd gotten it right.

  Which was how she explained it to Masera when he woke, no more a middle of the night person—for it was just going on 4 A.M.—than he'd been an early morning person. She brewed him coffee while he stuck his head under the sink faucet—literally, for he returned from the bathroom with a triangle of wetness down the front of his dark T-shirt and his hair slicked back and already getting unruly in spots. They faced each other over the kitchen table and the leftover pizza she'd forgotten to put in the refrigerator.

  "You think we should mark a border with your family silverware and then toss out chocolate chips," he repeated, still bleary—but not so bleary he couldn't convey his skepticism.

  "Strengthen the anchor point, you said. Well, I think this will do it." That plus a little heart to heart expression of appreciation. Prayer, she couldn't bring herself to think of it as.

  He tilted one eyebrow up behind the large coffee mug—I love dogs! it proclaimed, in loud colors and surrounded by cutesy hearts, a gift—and said nothing. Just looked at her that way.

  "Go ahead, give me that face. It may come as a surprise to you, but sometimes I have my own ideas—I don't need you to jump up and down about this one. I just need you to go along with it—because I don't want to go out there by myself to do this."

  "Don't worry about that," he said, rubbing a hand over his face and starting to look a little more alert. "I'm with you. I think it'd be a good idea for you to take that rifle, too."

  "Oh!" Damn! "Damn!" she repeated out loud. "I had the rifle. At the spring, this evening. When the winds stopped—when I saw Parker was whipped—I just grabbed Druid's leash and ran. I left it there!"

  "Then bring extra rounds for it," Masera said evenly. "It'll still be there. We're in the late Pylgaint aetiir. Not the best time—" He stopped short at her suddenly dead-pan expression and said, "Tides of the day, Brenna. Think of this one as the PMS tide, if it helps." He gave a mild roll of his eyes, muttering, "My mother would pinch my ear for saying that, but...as it applies to this situation, it's good enough."

  Ohh-kay. But she didn't voice the comment; she went out into the dog room and dumped some shells into her hand. Extra grain, hollow-point. The kind she used for shooting up dead stumps when she wanted to watch the splinters fly. She slid them into her front jeans pocket. She stuffed the chips bag into her knapsack and then dumped the silverware on top, hoping her mother would never find out. "My heirloom silver!" she'd say. Well, it wasn't, it was just your average silverware, and if it had been all that important to Rhona, her mother could have taken it when she'd moved out. Brenna had never considered herself the Keeper of the Silver.

  Although she seemed to have turned into the Keeper of the Spring.

  She slipped her vest on and hooked up Druid's leash, and by then Masera was truly awake and was out there with her, standing close, coming up behind her to wrap his hands around her waist and pull her back against him. He rested his chin on her shoulder and then pressed h
is lips to her neck, and said, "We'll be okay."

  She wanted to stay that way forever.

  But she grabbed the big halogen flashlight from the dryer and led him out into the yard.

  ~~~

  It seemed immensely silly.

  Even upon reflection, a gathering of all the reasons she was here on her knees jamming forks and spoons and knives into the ground with her .22 just within reach, it still seemed immensely silly. "I'm thinking," she said out loud, "of how terrifying it was when Parker and his darkness attacked me this evening. I mean, yesterday evening." She sighed and admitted, "It's not helping very much. Why did this seem like such a good idea back at the house?"

  Masera, uphill from her and working a little faster, said, "I'm thinking about what it felt like when I got a good look at your face, and it's helping a lot." She couldn't see his shrug in the darkness—they were saving the battery flashlights—but she could hear it in his voice. "Don't worry about it, Brenna. I have to admit you took me by surprise with silver and chocolate, but you were right—it's a good first step." He'd added another detail to their ritual, teaching her the rune Teiwaz—protection for the warrior—that she now carved into the earth every few inches as the circle formed.

  "Let's just get in touch with your mother as soon as you can, okay?" Although it did feel better to be doing something—anything—than just waiting to be acted upon. Even with a day of Pets! ahead.

  She sat back to survey what she could of the spring. The silver gleamed dully in the night; her knapsack with the chocolate sat in the middle of the enlarged area. It was somewhat surprising to see how many individual utensils marched around the ground, and that's when it occurred to her that maybe it didn't really matter what she used to reach out to Nuadha, as long as it was done with care and thought, and that maybe she ought to be thinking more about Nuadha than how silly she felt.