"Well, tell them I said 'fuck you'," he told her pleasantly.
Kiva smiled at that. "I might word it somewhat differently, but I will pass on your sentiment."
Ren suddenly found himself at a loss for words. "I guess this is goodbye, then."
"I suppose a hug is completely out of the question?"
Completely, Ren thought, surprised she'd suggested it. "We were never that close, Kiva. Don't pretend we were."
"Don't hate me, Ren."
"I don't care enough about you to hate you, Kiva," he said.
"That's harsh," she said, her eyes welling with tears.
He was certain she was acting. Nobody could squeeze out a single poignant tear quite like Kiva Kavanaugh. "Explain that to Hayley," he replied, "when you tell her what the Matrarchaí did to her mother."
Ren didn't wait for her to answer. He'd spent more time here than he meant to. Plunkett should have made off with the ruby necklace and shorted out the phones ages ago. He needed to leave. He needed to get back to the Shard and be gone from this world before Kiva could warn the Matrarchaí that he was back.
Kiva didn't try to follow him out of the hotel room. She probably reached for the phone as soon as he was out of sight, anxious to call her masters and report she'd seen him.
It didn't matter anyway. He found out what he came to learn. Kiva was Matrarchaí. So was Kerry Boyle.
What mattered now was that their time here was critical. Even with the phones shorted out, the Matrarchaí would know soon enough that he was in London. He needed to get back to the ninja reality, soak the rubies Plunkett had stolen in the Pool of Tranquillity and get back to Dublin to rescue Darragh before it dawned on the Matrarchaí that the easiest way to be rid of him was to murder his brother. And he didn't doubt for a moment that the Matrarchaí's long arm reached all the way into Portlaoise Prison.
Chapter 31
It was impossible to see the ground from so high up, but Pete couldn't help but try. The sun was sinking rapidly in the west and any moment now the wall would start crackling with lightning and the rift would open.
Pete found himself anxious to step through. Even given its magic and its ninja-Leipreachán, its arrogant Faerie lords, psychically-linked twins, pixies and mermen, and gorgeous women who wielded magic and wore mummified body parts around their necks, somehow the other reality made more sense than this one. Although they'd returned to this reality in a different city, even allowing for the obvious differences between London and Dublin, the world Pete had left behind no longer existed.
It wasn't really a surprise to learn he no longer belonged here. He'd had a sneaking suspicion that would be the case. He knew enough about the psychology of the human mind to know that his new reality had become the norm a long time ago, and however much he might pine for the good old days, given what he knew now, given what he could do, what he had seen, he could never go back.
It was good to know that for certain. Interesting, too, that Logan had worked out the same thing with not nearly as much agonized soul-searching, which was probably why he hadn't felt the same need to prove what he felt to be the truth by coming here.
"It be a crazy place, this realm!"
Pete almost jumped out of his skin at the sudden exclamation. Plunkett had appeared behind him without warning, clutching a ruby-encrusted necklace in one hand and a slice of half chewed bacon in the other.
"What is that?"
"It be the rubies the Lord Rónán be after. I stole them for him, just like he asked."
"I meant that," he said, pointing at the bacon.
"That be me dinner."
"Where did you get it?"
"At the hotel where the actress be staying. People be leavin' trays out in the halls with treats on them."
Pete rolled his eyes. "They're not treats left out for Leipreachán," he explained. "They're leftovers from guest's room service."
"It be all the same to me," Plunkett replied testily.
"Where's Ren?"
"I don't be knowing that. When I left him he be talking to the actress."
Oh Christ, Pete thought, that's all we need. "She was there? In the hotel?"
"Aye. We had a grand plan, too. Lord Rónán be keeping her distracted while I open the safe and be appropriatin' the rubies." He held the necklace up for Pete to see. "It be a pretty little trinket, don't ye think?" He handed the necklace to Pete, far more interested in the bacon he'd found than Kiva Kavanaugh's priceless ruby and diamond necklace.
Pretty didn't begin to describe it. It was spectacular. If Ren's rather peculiar plan to soak the rubies in magic and then swallow them was going to work, he certainly had plenty to choose from. But the necklace and the desperate ploy to rescue his brother was the least of their problems right now. Ren had promised Pete that Kiva wouldn't be in her hotel. Pete had only agreed to let him go to the Savoy alone because he claimed there was no chance he would run into his adopted mother.
Bastard probably knew she'd be there.
"When did he leave?"
"He not be goin' yet, when I be leavin'," the Leipreachán told him. "He still be talking to the actress."
"He saw her then? Spoke to her?"
"Aye. Quite deep and meanin'ful a conversation it be too, if ye get what I mean."
"I'm going to kill him."
"Why?" Plunkett asked, rather startled by Pete's angry declaration. "Have ye been recruited by the Matrarchaí while we be gone?"
"I'm going to kill him for lying to me," Pete explained, wondering why he was bothering to explain anything to a Leipreachán. He glanced at the rapidly sinking sun. "We're supposed to call Logan at sunset."
Before the Leipreachán could answer, the fire escape door banged open across the hall. Pete breathed a sigh of relief and turned to watch Ren exit the stairs at a run. "Get Logan on the puddle phone!" he shouted as he ran. "We need to get out of here."
"What the hell have you done?"
Ren reached him and kept running, straight across the echoing hall to the bowl of pure rainwater they'd brought from the other realm so they could scry out Logan with as little effort as possible. Here in the Enchanted Sphere, the water would not have leeched magic into the barren world around it; it was probably still as magically charged as when they brought it through the rift.
"I spoke to Kiva."
"You said she wouldn't be there."
Ren squatted down in front of the bowl. "I was wrong."
"You mean you lied."
"It doesn't matter, Pete. The Matrarchaí are probably already on their way."
"Why? What did you tell her? Did you tell her where we came through? And why? Or maybe you thought it might be a bright idea to tell her she where could find the rest of us?" It occurred to him then that Ren had just admitted Kiva was Matrarchaí. Having discovered his own mother was a key member of that menacing organisation, he felt a fleeting moment of sympathy for Ren.
Only a fleeting moment, though.
Kiva had not, apparently, tried to kill him. Not the way that Delphine had been planning to kill her sons.
"They'll be able to work out where we are easily enough," Ren pointed out kneeling down so he could stare directly into the water. "There aren't too many stone circles in downtown London we could have come through."
"You're a fucking idiot, Ren."
"Bite me," Ren replied without rancour, and then closed his eyes, drawing on the magic of the Enchanted Sphere and the water, to enable him to contact Logan.
For a long while, nothing happened, which Pete found a little odd. Logan was expecting their call. He should have been waiting on the other side to open the rift and bring them home. He certainly should have answered the moment he realized someone was trying to scry him out. Perhaps he just wasn't near any water, although how that was possible, given he should have been waiting on a damp cliff top overlooking the ocean, Pete couldn't imagine.
A few moments later, without any answer from Logan to Ren's puddle phone call, the hairs stood up o
n Pete's forearms, which was just before the embedded stone circle hidden behind the walls began to crackle with red lightning.
With the rift opening, Ren abandoned his attempt to scry out Logan. He stood up and took several steps back, shielding his eyes against the lightning. Logan must have decided not to wait for their call, but to open the rift the moment he felt someone trying to scry him out ... assuming, rightly enough, that they were ready to come through. A good thing too, given Ren was worried he had the Matrarchaí on his heels.
"He not be wastin' time, ye brother," Plunkett remarked as he stepped back behind Pete. "I be guessin' that ye'll no longer be needing me services after this?"
"We'll see," Ren said, with a non-committal shrug. He turned to Pete. "Do you have the necklace?"
Pete nodded, pulled it out of his pocket and tossed it to Ren, who barely gave it a glance before he shoved into his jacket. "If she doesn't set the Matrarchaí onto us, at the very least, Kiva's going to call every cop in London when she realises this is missing."
Pete frowned. "You and I are going to have a long talk about this when we get home."
Ren flashed him a quick grin - a glimpse of a younger, less serious Ren that Pete had not seen a sign of for a very long time - and said, "Yes, Dad."
"I meant it," he said. "You're a fucking idiot."
Ren didn't bother to answer, although he seemed amused by Pete's irritation, rather than bothered by it. They waited in silence for the rift to resolve itself and a few moments later were looking through the lightning at Logan on the other side, framed by the setting sun behind him. Plunkett was through the rift and had vanished with his half-chewed bacon before either Ren or Pete could stop him. Not that it mattered. They knew his true name. They could call him back anytime they wanted.
Pete stepped through the rift with Ren close on his heels. As soon as Ren was through, the rift collapsed, in anticipation - Pete assumed - of opening the next rift back to the ninja realm, where Nika waited for him, and where Ren planned to soak the rubies in his pocket in the intoxicating waters of the Pool of Tranquillity.
It was only then that Pete realized there was something wrong with Logan. He was standing rigidly in front of the closed rift and made no attempt to open another. Pete stared at him for a moment and then realized he had the same frozen stance Abbán had been forced into when Nika bound him with her magic to bring him through the rift.
He didn't get a chance to do anything - not warn Ren it was an ambush, or do anything to help his brother before Pete found himself similarly bound. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Ren had been trapped too. He fell to his knees as the invisible magical bindings threw him off balance. A moment later a figure stepped out from behind Logan. He was Tuatha Dé Danann, complete with billowing white cloak, thigh boots, white trousers and a gossamer shirt surely meant to entrance any mere human he happened across.
By the look on Ren's face, he knew who their captor was. Pete guessed it a moment later. They were, after all, standing in his realm.
"So," the Tuatha Dé Danann prince announced, his gaze fixed on Ren as if Logan and Pete didn't even exist, "the Undivided returns divided."
Ren was still standing, but his mouth must have been covered by the bindings because he could only make a stifled sound that Pete couldn't understand. He turned his eyes to check on Logan, who was frozen in place, unable to do anything more than roll his eyes to let Pete know he was okay.
Jesus, how did Marcroy find us so quickly? They'd been gone about ten hours at most and wouldn't have spent more than a few minutes in this realm. Had Logan stayed here, instead of returning to the ninja realm to wait, as they'd planned? Is that how Marcroy found them?
"And you have come alone," Marcroy added with a sigh, looking disappointed. "Pity."
Marcroy glanced at Pete then and shook his head. His cat-slit eyes were disconcerting. He reminded Pete of Stiofán, that arrogant sídhe lord who liked to give Trása so much trouble. "These two, I suspect, are your eileféin," he added with a frown. "They cannot stay in this realm."
Pete had heard Trása talk of the punishment awaiting anybody in her realm who deliberately brought a person's eileféin through a rift, but she never mentioned the specific details. Pete had always privately considered it a bit of a bluff because, by definition, if you were crossing realities then another one of you probably existed in the world you were visiting somewhere, and you were, simply by being a rift runner, breaking the rules.
Faerie logic, however, seemed to be a fluid thing that often made allowances for the circumstances. A Tuatha Dé Danann couldn't break their own rules, Pete had observed, but they were fairly creative at bending them around any obstacles that appeared in their way.
Without any further discussion Marcroy opened his hand to reveal the large ruby they had so recently stolen from Abbán and brought to the ninja realm.
Shit, Pete thought. Abbán must have scried him out from the Pool of Tranquillity and told him where he was. The merman hadn't been as drunk on the pool's magic as they thought.
Too late now to do anything about it, he realized, as another rift opened behind him, the air crackling with magic and red lightning. As soon as the rift was stable Marcroy turned to Pete and Logan, opened his arms wide and lifted them off the ground. With a short, sharp, flick of his wrists, he tossed the brothers through the rift to the reality beyond.
As they landed hard on the stony ground beyond the lightning, their magical bonds dissolved in the magic-less air around them. They rolled to a stop against the tall, moss-covered standing stones as the rift closed behind them, cutting them off from Ren and Marcroy.
Bruised, and more than a little stunned by how quickly everything had happened, Pete climbed painfully to his feet, wondering where he was.
Logan did the same, shaking his head. "Where are we?"
He looked around at the ancient stones, worn away to almost nothing, the low bushes shaded by tall trees. The sun had set so it was hard to tell what was beyond the tress, but there was a smell in the air that was hauntingly familiar and in the distance he could hear something he knew all too well.
"Listen," he told Logan.
His brother cocked his head for a moment and then turned to Pete.
"Traffic," he said, recognizing the sound immediately.
"And no magic," Pete added, breathing in air that seemed barren and dead for the lack of it.
"We're home," Logan concluded, sounding more than a little surprised. "The bastard threw us back into realm you just came from."
Chapter 32
Although he would have died before admitting it, at first glance Marcroy was rather pleased with the way his sons had turned out. He still wasn't quite reconciled to the notion that he had sired a couple of half-human brats, but if he had to lay claim to any mongrel get, then as mongrels went, they had grown into handsome young men with more than a touch of their Tuatha Dé Danann father's looks and presence.
And more than their fair share of his power, too, Marcroy guessed, as he debated the advisability of releasing Rónán before he delivered him to the Hag. Rónán radiated power as he struggled against the bonds in which Marcroy had contained him, almost to the point where the Tuatha Dé Danann lord debated strengthening them for fear the young man would break through. That should not have been possible. Rónán, for all that he looked entirely human, had the strength of a pure sídhe prince, something that Marcroy would not have believed possible had he not been confronted with the evidence in person.
But then, RónánDarragh should never have survived the transfer of their Undivided power to BrocCairbre, in the first place. Whatever it was about these young men - whether it was their paternity or some unimaginable forces of Destiny at work, Rónán and his brother Darragh were special and Marcroy was beginning to understand why the Hag was having visions about them.
Not prepared to risk releasing him completely, Marcroy loosened the binding around his mouth, so that Rónán could speak.
"Yo
u look like your brother."
"Imagine that," Rónán replied with almost as much disdainful scorn as Marcroy himself could muster when he chose. "What do you want from me?"
Marcroy stared at the young man for a moment, trying figure out what it was about him that he found so disturbing, and then it came to him. "You are not afraid."
"What's to be afraid of?" Rónán asked. "If you were going to kill me, you'd have done it as I was coming through the rift. Better yet, instead of throwing me through a rift when I was a toddler, you could have killed me back then and rid yourself of the problem that is me and my brother, twenty-five odd years ago."
"Do you know who I am?"
"Don't you mean to ask if I know what you are ... Dad?" He spat out the word like it had a foul taste.
Gods above and below, am I the only one who didn't know about these boys?
"Who told you I am your father?"
"The Matrarchaí. Who told you?"
This was getting him nowhere. Marcroy had expected shock, even a little awe from his son at discovering his lofty parentage, not disrespect. He certainly hadn't expected either of the boys to know who had fathered them. That moment should have been his to reveal, in a time and place of his choosing. One would have thought that on learning of their royal parentage, they might have sought him out, availed themselves of his wisdom and largesse - that he would have vehemently denied owning any mongrel get and refused to have anything to do with either of them before the Hag had ordered it so, was really beside the point. RónánDarragh should be much more impressed by who had given them life.
"The Brethren wish to speak with you," Marcroy said, deciding nothing further was to be gained by engaging this brash young pup in conversation. "I have taken it upon myself to deliver you to them. But I need both of you. Where is your brother?"
"Somewhere you'll never find him."
"The Hag demands to see him."
"Bully for her."
Marcroy found himself at a loss for words, and at a loss about what to do next. Darragh was, he suspected, back in the reality Rónán had just appeared from - a barren, magic-less desert that Marcroy could not enter without dying. He could send Rónán back for Darragh, but it was certain he would never lay eyes on either of them again if he let Rónán loose in a realm where he could not follow.
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