Reunion

by Jennifer Fallon

  "Well, I don't know about you, but I am sick of kowtowing to these ignorant prison guards and sleeping with one eye open. Call your brother. Get us out of here."

  "I'm not exactly enjoying my stay in this realm, either, you know," Darragh reminded him, a little offended by Ciarán's suggestion that he had not contacted Rónán because he was comfortable here. "Getting a message to Rónán is no guarantee of help. And there are consequences to trying, with no assurance that Rónán is any better placed to get us out of here than the last time we communicated."

  "How long ago was that?"

  Darragh didn't answer for a moment. Ciarán knew nothing about his time in Saint Patrick's Institution for Juveniles prior to Portlaoise. When Ciarán had arrived full of his wild tale about being sent by Marcroy Tarth to find him and Rónán because if they had survived the Lughnasadh transfer of power that somehow made them the saviours of the Tuatha Dé Danann, they'd not spent much time discussing what Darragh had gone through as an inmate in St Patrick's.

  Ciaran had committed armed robbery and murder to get here. He was so proud of his efforts to secure himself a place alongside Darragh, where he might fulfil his oath to protect the Undivided, he'd not questioned whether or not his arrival was timely.

  Darragh had not had the heart to explain that in some ways, the juvenile facility was far worse than this place; at least here the threats were physically real and you could usually see them coming. The well-meaning counsellors at St Patrick's had listened sympathetically to his tales about the alternate reality he came from and assumed - just like Annad Semaj - that he was delusional. He was diagnosed at different times as having schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, schizo-affective disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, sometimes all of them at once. They'd counselled him and medicated him with lithium and when he'd attempted to contact Rónán, by putting the sharpened titanium bicycle spoke he'd stolen from the metalwork shop to use, they'd decided he was self-harming and had doped him so heavily with various neuroleptic medications that for a time Darragh found it difficult to remember who he was. In the end, he stopped trying to carve messages into his skin to his brother across realities and let them think they'd cured him.

  It was easier that way.

  But he'd stayed in touch with Rónán. There were no messages exchanged -although once Dr Semaj came good on his promise to provide Darragh with an electric razor with a titanium sheath that situation could change. But that spot just behind his ear where a tiny cut healed and then reappeared a day or so later and had done for years ... that was Rónán. That was his brother's way of letting him know he hadn't been forgotten.

  Darragh moved his hand and touched the spot just to reassure himself it was still there. It was almost healed again, the tiny scab ready to drop off.

  "I haven't communicated with Rónán since before I came here," he lied.

  "Why didn't you mention this before?"

  "Your current reaction to the news should tell you that, Ciarán," Darragh replied, a little impatiently.

  "So why now?" Ciarán asked. "Why are you willing to risk these consequences today and not yesterday, or last year, or five years ago?"

  "Because they're probably going to charge me with Hayley Boyle's murder."

  "Why does that matter?" Ciarán asked, echoing the same question Darragh had put to Annad Semaj. "They have no capital punishment here. What difference does it make?"

  "I'll have to appear in court."

  "So?" Ciarán said, still not understanding what had changed.

  "I'll be moved. I'll have to appear in court in the city to answer the murder charge."

  Ciarán was silent for a moment and then he nodded. "You'll be out of this prison with its high security and perimeter guarded by machine guns. You could be freed in transit, or from the courthouse cells. That's a good plan. What about me?"

  "What about you?"

  "Another trial will get you moved, Darragh, but I will still be here rotting away."

  Darragh hadn't thought of that. He considered the problem in silence for a few seconds and then the solution came to him. He smiled. "I'll tell them you were my accomplice. That way you'll have to stand trial with me."

  The big warrior thought on that for a moment and then smiled. "That's actually a good idea."

  "It wounds me that you sound so surprised, Ciarán."

  "I will be astonished if it works, lad. Even more amazed if your brother comes for us."

  The statement surprised Darragh. He had thought the warrior was just as full of faith in their eventual rescue by Rónán as he was. "If you doubt my brother so much, old friend, why are you here?"

  The older man shrugged in the darkness. "It was join you or go back to our realm and admit to Marcroy Tarth that I had failed. You were less likely to kill me."

  Darragh smiled. "Go back to bed, Ciarán. Get some sleep."

  "In this place? Fat chance."

  Nonetheless, the older man climbed back on his bunk and before long the tiny cell was filled with his deep, even breathing that was not quite a snore, but loud enough to be heard in the top bunk. Darragh smiled at the sound, surprised at how comforting it was, eternally grateful that the distant sobs of despair, still audible down the hall, belonged to somebody else.

  He waited a while longer, listening to the heartbreaking sobs, to make certain Ciarán was deeply asleep. When the older man's gentle snores had settled into a slower, steadier rhythm, Darragh reached under his pillow for the thin sliver of titanium sheathing from the electric razor Dr Semaj had sent earlier today.

  He tested the edge with his thumb and winced as the sharp edge drew a tiny bead of blood. It was sharp enough to do the trick but a trickier question remained. Where to place his message? Anywhere visible was likely to see him back in the psych ward.

  Darragh settled on his abdomen after running through all the places on his body he could reach and be able to stand the pain. Anywhere normally covered by clothing would do, but at least on his abdomen he would be able to see what he was writing.

  He sat up and listened for a time - not to Ciarán's snores or the sobs down the hall, but for some betraying sound that might warn him in a guard was coming.

  There was nothing. The next patrol was not due for about forty minutes, he guessed. Darragh took a deep breath and lifted his t-shirt, wondering what he should say. There was, after all, a great deal to be said.

  In the end, he settled on something quite simple. Long discussions could take place later. Face to face.

  For now, he just needed to let Rónán know he was still expecting his help.

  Biting his bottom lip to prevent himself from crying out from the pain, Darragh began to carefully, methodically, carve the words of his plea to his twin brother in his own flesh with the thin, sharpened sliver of titanium.

  It was three small words: get me out.

  Chapter 19

  There was a ruined lighthouse atop a windy cliff some hours away from the entrance to Tír Na nÓg. It was isolated, barren and had obviously been abandoned for centuries. Ren had stumbled across it in his travels years ago and he went there now, as he often did when he wanted to be alone to sort out his thoughts.

  When he arrived, blinking into existence only seconds after he had left Trása and the others outside the entrance to Tír Na nÓg, it was raining. He shivered and realized he was still wearing nothing more than the gi trousers he'd pulled on when Plunkett woke him in the tree bower in Tír Na nÓg, complaining about his abduction. Almost without thinking, Ren wrapped a bubble of warm air around himself to keep hypothermia at bay, which served to isolate him even more and not just from the blustery squall battering the old ruin. Once he was warm and sheltered, he glanced around to make sure he was alone - although who else would brave this inhospitable spot he couldn't imagine - and then sat himself down on one of the huge, moss-encrusted, fallen masonry blocks that had once been a part of the main tower and fished a small black velvet bag from his trouser pocket.

  Re
n shook the large gem it contained into the palm of his hand and examined it for a moment. It was unchanged from the last time he had studied it.

  "A lot's happened since the last time we spoke," he informed the jewel. He didn't know if the young woman trapped in the jewel's depth's could hear him or not, but it gave him some comfort to imagine she could. "I found another set of Empress twins, right where Delphine's memories said they would be. And there they were, driving another lot of Faerie through a rift into a realm that would kill them."

  He stopped, not sure if he wanted to go on, but he knew he had to. This chance to confess was cathartic.

  Ren was not particularly religious. His foster mother, Kiva, had worked her way through any number of religions while he was growing up, never sticking with one long enough for it to really affect her adopted son. But being Irish, Kiva was nominally a Roman Catholic despite her flirtation with other religions. As a child, Ren had been baptized at least three times that he could recall: once by a priest, once by a Native American shaman and once by a man claiming he came from another planet.

  Kiva had never forced Ren to believe anything in particular, but as the best schools in Dublin were inevitably run by the church, he'd absorbed a religious education - almost by default - that included most of the rituals of Catholicism, including confession.

  As a child, Ren had found the idea of a confessional rather unsettling and had avoided it as much as he could, in large part because he lacked any sins worthy of confessing, which had - perversely - made him feel quite guilty. But now, now that he knew so much more of the larger universe, now that he could perform his own miracles and knew for a fact that the God of the Judaeo-Christian pantheon was just one god among many, now he craved that cleansing absolution the confessional had promised him as a child.

  When he thought about it, he figured it was because he finally had sins worth confessing, even though intellectually he considered the concept of sin so subjective that he scoffed at the very notion of it.

  After all, one man's sins were another man's heroic deeds.

  But Ren needed to confide in someone or go mad, and the young woman trapped in this pigeon egg-sized amethyst was as good a confessor as any. Better, probably, because without one of the Djinn she would never be released and could never betray anything Ren told her ... even assuming she could hear a word of what he was saying in the first place.

  "I had to kill them," he told the stone, in a matter-of-fact tone. It wasn't the first time he'd confessed to killing Empress or Emperor twins and he was quite certain it would not be the last. But, somehow, by confiding in the young woman who inhabited the stone, it eased his burden. And his guilt. "Killed one of them, at any rate. I guess the other one will be dead by now." He stopped for a moment and closed his eyes, recalling the cold, unrelenting look on the young woman's face as he'd appeared in her chamber. She hadn't screamed. She'd barely even blinked before hurling a magical bolt of lightning at him, as if she had confronted assassins before and knew exactly what to do about them.

  "It was self-defense," he was able to assure Brydie. "She attacked me first. Does that get me off the hook?"

  As usual, the stone offered no response.

  "Do you think I'm a monster?" he asked the jewel. "If I can kill and feel no remorse, doesn't that make me some sort of psychopathic fiend?" He smiled thinly. "Do they even have psychopathic fiends where you come from? Have you any idea what I'm talking about? Can you even hear me?"

  He glanced up. The rain was falling harder, the wind driving it almost horizontally across the ruin, although he felt nothing wrapped in his magical cocoon. It was almost midday, he guessed, but the cloud cover was so thick, it obscured the sun and made it seem much later.

  "I figure it's because of all the Faerie blood I have," he surmised, still puzzled that he wasn't more guilt-ridden over the number of these dangerous twins he'd disposed of in the past few years. "I'm more sídhe than human, so I can kill humans and not bat an eyelid. I wonder what would happen if I tried to kill a Faerie?"

  He didn't really mean it. He sighed and continued with his confession. "I got the location of another reality where they're about to unleash another set of Emperor twins. Boys, which makes a change. They're itching to get into it, according to the memories of Alean - she's the twin I killed yesterday. You know how I know that? She was pissed at the idea that there were some other little psychos about to come online that might outdo her and her sister in the Let's See How Many Faerie We Can Kill In One Go stakes. That's what her mind was full of - jealousy and anger." He shook his head as he remembered being almost overwhelmed by her emotional state. "Stupid bitch. I'm glad I killed her. And her stupid, fucking sister, too."

  Ren realized he meant it. He was glad he'd killed Alean and her sister. Their realities, and many other realities besides, were better off without them.

  "And now Isleen's going to turn into one of them."

  Learning that Isleen had broken through the magical bond placed on her mind to prevent her learning the secrets of the Matrarchaí that Delphine had shared with her and her sister stung, but he wasn't as surprised by the news as the others were. Since he'd first met the twins when they were ten years old, Teagan had always been the troublesome twin, Isleen the quiet, thoughtful one. Teagan would have railed against the restrictions had she still been here.

  Isleen had said nothing while quietly working to undo them. She'd always been the curious one; the one who wanted to know what was so terrible about the memories Delphine had left for her. And she'd picked away at the bonds holding them in place like a beggar picking at a loose thread in a blanket.

  Had Teagan and Isleen been in contact, the same way Ren had kept in touch with Darragh? It only took a small, unnoticeable nick, which meant nothing to anyone other than the twins who could manifest each other's wounds and feel each other's pain.

  There was no way of knowing. The only thing of which he was certain was that this wasn't going to end well for anybody.

  "She's got Delphine's information, and she went rift running as soon as she unlocked the knowledge, probably looking for the rest of the Matrarchaí. Or at least where they're holed up. Doubt she'll have much luck with that. The intelligence she has from Delphine is more than a decade old, so I don't know what Isleen thinks she's going to achieve taking off like that. Unless she found a way to contact Teagan ..."

  He sighed. "Guess I should have pointed that out to Wakiko before I waned out of there. Might have helped her worry a little less to realize Isleen will probably be back as soon as it occurs to her that no matter what Delphine told her about the Matrarchaí, I know more."

  Ren turned the jewel over in his hand wondering, as he always did when he confided in her, if Brydie was trapped in place or able to move about inside the gem. He also wondered if he should be more worried about Isleen.

  The Undivided twins of this world were powerful sorcerers in their own right, with all the raw material to become as heartless and dangerous as the twins Ren had just killed. But Teagan and Isleen's life had taken a different path to Alean and her sister. They'd had the memories of their Matrarchaí mentor blocked when they were still young enough not to be corrupted by them and, until Teagan was abducted, a determined mother to raise them with some kind of moral compass. More importantly, they'd been brought up in a world where there was someone more powerful than they were and who would brook no thought of eradicating the Faerie.

  Wakiko still refused to consider it, but Ren, Trása, Pete and Logan had pretty much reconciled themselves to the idea that Teagan, by now, had thrown her lot in with the Matrarchaí. What else could she have done?

  But Isleen's betrayal wounded Ren. He'd trusted her.

  Since Ren disposed of Delphine, Wakiko had dedicated herself to ensuring her daughters' destiny took a different path than Delphine intended for them, an effort she redoubled when the Matrarchaí took one of her daughters from her. She'd made their world a refuge for Youkai, and had taught her remaining daught
er to welcome the refugees rather than turn them away. Backed by four part-sídhe sorcerers from other realities, she had organized the Konketsu to gather as many refugee Youkai to their realm as possible. The magicians of this reality, who had once devoted their lives to preserving their own magical bloodlines by eliminating any sídhe competition for their magic, had finally turned their efforts to saving the Youkai . It had been a struggle, at first, but once they learned their own power came from diluted Youkai blood, and that if they continued to eradicate the Youkai, the Konketsu would soon die out themselves, they'd been very pragmatic about the whole thing.

  It was easy to fall into the trap of thinking the changed attitude in this reality regarding sídhe was all his or Trása's doing, or was the result of things Pete or Logan Doherty had done since learning about their true origins. In fact, the Konketsu had identified their thinning bloodlines long before Ren and his friends appeared. Preserving those bloodlines had been the intention of the Ikushima when they first met Ren and Aoi tried to seduce him into fathering a magically-gifted child with her.

  Fortunately, the Ikushima clan had gone back to doing what they did best - making fireworks. Now they were the official suppliers to the Imperial Court, and their fortunes had taken a significant turn for the better.

  Thinking of the Ikushima made Ren realize he hadn't seen Aoi for quite a while. He should make time to pay the family a visit. Kazusa would be a grown-up by now.

  Pity it was going to be a while before he had time to make social calls.

  "Of course, that's not my only problem right now," he told his unseen confidante, as he realized he was stalling. "I have to decide what to do about Hayley."

  Ren had thought the problem of Hayley far in his past. He assumed someone in Trása's reality would have realized she didn't belong and sent her back through the rift, preferably with her sight healed, long before now. It never occurred to him she might still be in the other reality, and it certainly never occurred to him that Marcroy Tarth would have been holding her all this time.