Reunion

by Jennifer Fallon

  There was no fear of the prisoners taking them down. They were armed with automatic weapons.

  A baton wasn't going to be much use against gunfire.

  "Where is my brother, Darragh?" Rónán demanded of the nurse who was looking at him with wide-eyed terror.

  The nurse had been trained well. She was an older woman, probably nearing retirement. She was frightened, but she wasn't going to sacrifice her life for one, inconsequential prisoner. "Third door on the left. The keys are in my pocket."

  "Give them to me." She fished out a set of keys and tossed them to Rónán. "Who else is in here at the moment?"

  "Two other prisoners locked in their cells. The doctor's on his morning break."

  Ciarán turned to Rónán. "Don't just stand there, man! Go! Get your brother!"

  Rónán hurried down the hall, sorting through the keys. Ciarán turned toward the bars and the corridor leading to the medical center. They would know this was the seat of the trouble. There were cameras everywhere in this place and even if they couldn't figure out how Rónán had taken out the guard, they would have seen him flying across the room and hitting the bars.

  "You'll never get of here," the nurse told him, as he surveyed the rest of the room, looking for some sort of defensible position.

  There was a camera in the corner, watching their every move.

  "Give me your sweater," he ordered, pointing to the cardigan draped over the back of her chair.

  She tossed it to him without asking why. He threw it at the camera where it caught by one sleeve, blocking the view of the control room. He could already hear the footsteps pounding down the hall. It wouldn't be long now.

  Rónán returned, half dragging, half carrying Darragh, who looked dazed and quite oblivious to what was going on. He'd been heavily medicated, and by the look of him, woken from a deep drug-induced sleep. He was in no state to defend himself against anything.

  "You have to get him out of here," Ciarán ordered Rónán. "Now. You can come back for me when he's safe."

  Rónán stared at Ciarán for a moment, and then shook his head, his expression grim. "I can't come back. I only have enough juice for one trip."

  There were shouts in the corridor now. In a matter of seconds they would be overrun.

  It wasn't even a hard decision. This is what Ciarán was born for.

  "Then go. And do whatever noble thing destiny has in store for you, Rónán of the Undivided, so that I do not die in vain."

  Darragh looked up then, and stared myopically at Ciarán. "Die? Who's going to die?"

  "Not you, leathtiarna. Not today." He clasped the drugged and semiconscious young man by the shoulder for a moment. "It has been an honor, leathtiarna." Then he looked up at Rónán. "Go. Now." He turned to the nurse. "You'd better get down."

  She did as he suggested without hesitating, hiding behind the desk, her hands over her ears as if she knew what was coming.

  "I'm sorry ..." Rónán began, but at that moment the soldiers appeared. Rónán looked up, saw what was coming for them and, without another word, Darragh slumped in his arms, he winked out of existence, waning both of them to safety.

  Ciarán turned to find the soldiers charging toward the bars, weapons drawn, demanding he drop the baton. He didn't. His work was done here. RónánDarragh were safe. He had fulfilled his duty as the Druid guardian of the Undivided.

  And he had no intention of spending another day as a prisoner in this dreadful realm.

  Ciarán raised the baton and charged at the bars, knowing they would cut him down, hoping they would take him out quickly.

  The sound of the gunfire was deafening. Bullets slammed into him like a dozen burning knives being driven by hammers into his chest, one after the other.

  Ciarán mac Connacht smiled as he fell, proud that even after all this time in this magic-less realm, in this place without hope or honor, he had found a way to die like a true warrior in battle.

  Chapter 42

  Be very sure of the place you are waning to.

  Ren remembered the Hag's warning clearly, and had tried to run through a list of places of which he had sufficient knowledge to be sure of where he was going.

  There weren't that many places left.

  He'd been gone from this realm a long time, and even when he was here, there were not many safe places he knew intimately enough to be sure that when he willed it, the magic would take him there, without fail.

  The place had to be somewhere he was familiar with, somewhere private, and somewhere he'd be able to recover and regroup. The magic-infused jewels Ren had swallowed to give him power, burned like dollops of hot lead in his stomach. He wasn't sure how much longer he could keep them down.

  Ren was fairly certain the Hag's optimistic estimate of the jewels providing him with several hours of magic was way off the mark. He'd be lucky to make it through the first hour.

  He'd waned into the prison yard almost as soon as he stepped through the rift at the golf club. Ren didn't need to know that location very well. Portlaoise was a high-profile prison because of the population it housed. He'd seen it on the television news plenty of times as a kid, and figured he could visualise the yard well enough to arrive there safely. He'd had no plan beyond that, other than to locate Darragh.

  His secret hope was that by arriving mid-morning, Darragh would be in the yard and they could wane out of there together mere moments after Ren arrived. If they were lucky, while the other prisoners were still trying to decide if they'd imagined one of their prison mates' doppelganger appearing and then disappearing out of thin air, they could be long gone. In a perfect world, the guards probably wouldn't even realize Darragh was missing until they did a head count later that morning, which Ren was quite sure they did several times a day.

  All his plans had gone pear-shaped, of course, when he waned into the yard and found not Darragh, but Ciarán mac Connaught.

  Ren was shocked to find Ciarán there, but not really surprised when he thought about it. For all that Marcroy had sired them, Ciarán was probably the closest thing to a father Darragh had ever known. Ciarán certainly treated Darragh like the son he'd never had.

  If Darragh had been stuck here in this realm, it was no surprise Ciarán had found a way to stay with him. A warrior Druid wouldn't have known how to do anything else.

  Darragh's grief for Ciarán's loss was something Ren would have to deal with sooner or later. Perhaps he wouldn't tell his brother that when they'd waned out of Portlaoise Prison, Ciarán was preparing to die covering their escape. He would have to tell him the truth eventually, but maybe Darragh hadn't noticed what had happened, so he probably had some time before he had to deal with the inevitable questions and, perhaps, the blame Darragh might put on him. His brother had been semiconscious, after all, when Ren dragged him from the hospital bed where he was tied down with Velcro straps, and so heavily medicated he barely recognized Ren, let alone understood he was being rescued.

  Ren forced himself not to dwell on Ciarán's choice. There was nothing he could have done to change the outcome. He hadn't known Ciarán was in Portlaoise. And Ciarán could have chosen to surrender peacefully. Ren would have promised to come back if he had, although Ciarán had probably known any such promise would be a hollow one at best. Ren had risked everything to rescue his brother and that had taken him ten years. The Druid warrior clearly didn't want to wait that long again for his own liberation.

  So Ren had taken Darragh and waned to the place he knew best in this entire realm - his old room in Kiva's house.

  It was a huge risk, he knew that. Kiva might be back from London. Kerry might be vacuuming the room when he appeared. She might have sold the house to someone else ... any number of things could go wrong.

  But he knew the location of his room, knew that if they could stay hidden until the house was empty, he could take Kiva's car, or even sneak next door and borrow Jack's car - assuming the old guy was still alive and speaking to him. He could then drive them back to the gol
f course, where, according to the Hag, he would find a way to leave this world.

  He wasn't sure what that meant, but he was hoping it meant Pete or Logan were in this realm and had found a way home. It made sense that Marcroy would have tossed them back into the realm from which they had just appeared; and the one stone circle he was sure they all knew about here in Dublin, was the ruined old circle at the Castle Golf Club. How they were supposed to open a rift from there without magic remained an unanswered question. Maybe the Hag would open it for them from the other side. Remarkably, he hadn't needed any help opening the rift from his realm to this one when he was artificially charged up on magic. He'd been able to will the rift to open with a thought.

  That feeling almost made the sickening sensation of all that dead weight in his stomach tolerable.

  If there was no sign of Pete or Logan at the golf club, Plan B was to find a way to get Darragh and himself to London so they could use the Matrarchaí's rift in the Shard. It wasn't a very good Plan B, as Plan B's went. It would be a much more difficult proposition to reach the Shard with an escaped convict as a companion and international borders to cross.

  Ren lowered Darragh to the floor as soon as they appeared in his old room, as gently as he could manage. Then he staggered to the door to make sure it was locked from the inside before stumbling to the bathroom. He began to retch violently.

  For a time Ren forgot all about Darragh, too busy wondering if he was dying. It felt as if his insides were trying to claw their way out of his body via his oesophagus, using grappling hooks and barbed wire to haul themselves out. The first of the rubies landed in the sink in a puddle of vomit, no longer shiny and glowing with magic, but dull and lifeless. He didn't like the look of the blood, but there was more of it to come. He vomited again, hoping nobody could hear him, wondering idly if he should have turned Darragh on his side like they warned you to do with unconscious people in first-aid classes, so they didn't suffocate, before he hurled again and brought up more of the depleted stones.

  Again his stomach heaved and the rubies, which had seemed so benign and harmless on the way down, wreaked their revenge on the way back. He wished he'd counted the exact number he'd swallowed. He wouldn't know if they were all out once his stomach settled down - assuming it ever felt normal again.

  "You ... okay?"

  Ren turned his head a little to find Darragh leaning against the door jamb, holding it for support.

  He nodded. "I'll be fine."

  "What did you do?"

  "What I had to," Ren told him, as his gut spasmed violently and he vomited out another half dozen or so rubies into the sink.

  Darragh watched him in the mirror for a time as he heaved again, before saying in a carefully neutral voice, "You took a long time to come for me."

  Ren closed his eyes for a moment, knowing he had no answer which didn't sound either cowardly or self-serving. Eventually, he looked up and spoke to his brother in the mirror.

  "I'm sorry." He couldn't think of anything better to say.

  "You had your reasons, I don't doubt."

  Darragh was being very understanding. Was he really feeling forgiving, or had the drugs they pumped into him calmed him down to the point of apathy?

  "I did."

  "When we share the Comhroinn, I'm sure I'll understand."

  Still feeling like his stomach wasn't done rejecting the indigestible stones he'd swallowed to rescue Darragh, Ren turned to his brother, shaking his head. "There won't be any Comhroinn. Not in this realm. Not without magic."

  Darragh nodded. "When we get home then."

  If we get home ...

  "How long can we hide here?"

  "Overnight if we have to, I hope," Ren assured him. He looked past Darragh into what had once been his old room. It was elegantly decorated now in a peach and cream palette ... soulless and with no hint this had ever been the room of a teenage boy. "It looks like Kiva's turned my room into a guest room, but as she hates having house guests, I'm betting nobody will have a reason to come up to this end of the house if we're quiet."

  "You'd best stop puking so violently then."

  Ren smiled briefly. "Excellent suggestion."

  "Can we talk, Rónán, if we can't share our news any other way?" Darragh asked, searching Ren's face for something ... perhaps a sign that his brother was going to be honest with him. "Will you tell me what's been going on?"

  "Of course. What did you want to know?"

  "Let's start with what happened to Ciarán," Darragh said.

  Chapter 43

  "Is this the place?"

  Trása looked down at the address scrawled on the post-it note Echo had brought them and nodded. "That's what it says here. Are you okay?"

  Nika was pale and more than a little shaken by her cab ride. It had been so long since Trása first stepped into this magic-less world with its automobiles, telephones and television, that she had forgotten what it must be like for someone to experience it for the first time. Even though Nika was a seasoned rift runner, used to seeing realms far different to her own, she had never stepped through to a reality so devoid of magic before, or one so reliant on technology. She seemed uneasy and restless. Trása doubted she'd be truly happy until they were back in a realm where there was true magic to be had for the taking.

  She glanced up at the sky, detecting the first glimmering of dawn creeping over the roofs of the neat row of houses where Pete and Logan were apparently hiding. Trása had no idea whose house this was, and it didn't really matter. Echo had found "the boys" and to prove it she'd brought the message they'd sent to come here. The only reasonable conclusion was that this house must be safe and whoever owned it was willing to aid them ... and hopefully, not aligned with the Matrarchaí. Unless, of course, they'd done what Trása, Ren, Darragh and Sorcha had done when they came here looking for Hayley, and had found some random stranger to take them in.

  For a fleeting moment, Trása wondered what had become of Warren. Did his wife ever realize her house had been invaded by visitors from another reality? Did his kids miss the clothes they'd stolen?

  It didn't matter. Warren was barely a wisp of a memory. Right now, there were more practical considerations to deal with. "Take care of the cab driver," she ordered Toyoda.

  The little Leipreachán nodded and waned into the front seat where he appeared on the lap of the rather bemused cabbie and proceeded to convince him he'd never been here, nor expected payment for the rather long cab ride they'd just clocked up.

  As they climbed out of the cab, Echo reappeared, flitting about excitedly at the prospect of seeing "the boys" again. Toyoda appeared on the sidewalk as the vehicle pulled away, the driver not even looking back at them.

  "Should we have kept the carriage and its driver here?" Nika asked.

  Trása glanced at her and smiled. Echo had found her some jeans and a sweater but Nika looked so out of place in the long, dark woollen Merlin's robe she insisted on wearing, even though the realm where she had been Merlin was long gone. "Not really. We can always call another one."

  Trása studied the neat house and noted the cars parked in the street in front of all the other neat houses. They all seemed quite new and expensive, even to her untrained eye. "We may not have to worry about it anyway. Pete and Logan might have already found a vehicle to return to the rift."

  Nika glanced at the cab disappearing down the deserted, dawn-lit street for a moment and shook her head. "Are you sure? Do Pete and Logan know how to operate such a machine?"

  "Of course, they do. It's easy," Trása assured her, smiling at Nika's concern. "Even I can drive."

  "Truly?" Nika seemed very impressed.

  Trása nodded, not going into the details of her one and only driving stint in a stolen car. Nika did not need to know that it was more good luck than good driving skills which got her and Ren's friend, Hayley, to their destination without killing either herself or any number of innocent bystanders along the way.

  "You'd be surprised to lear
n some of the things I've seen and done when I've been rift running," she said. "Just wait until you see television for the first time. Toyoda, Echo, come here!"

  The pixie and the Leipreachán did as she ordered, appearing in front of her to receive their orders. Trása marvelled at their obedience. And lamented the loss of her Youkai kingdom. Now that Marcroy had found the ninja reality, she was a Faerie Queen no more. She was back to what she had always been - a troublesome, mongrel, half-beansídhe rift-runner desperate to find her place in the world. This one or any other.

  Trása forced her attention back to the job at hand. She may not be their queen any longer, but she was responsible for these creatures and it was her job to ensure they remained protected, particularly in this realm full of limited magic and unknown dangers. "I want you two to stay out of sight until I know it's safe."

  "Boys asked us to come. Boys asked us to come," Echo insisted zipping about Trása's head so fast it made her dizzy to try and stay focused on the little creature. "We'll be well. We'll be well. We'll be well."

  "Let me be the judge of that. Now scat. I'll call you back when I need you."

  The Leipreachán and the pixie - somewhat to Trása's surprise, did exactly what she asked. They winked out of existence, leaving Trása and Nika alone in the quiet suburban street.

  Nika looked up and down the street, frowning. "It is hard to credit this is the world Pete and his brother come from."

  "Well, technically, they don't come from this world," Trása reminded her turning to study the house. There was a light on in the front room, but no indication of who might live here. "They just grew up in this realm."

  "Do you think they'll want to stay here now they've found their way back?"

  Trása turned to Nika, curious about her tone. "Is that what's bothering you? You think now Pete's back in this world he'll want to stay here?"

  "This place has many temptations," she said, as if bracing herself for the inevitable. "You said it yourself. This realm has many strange and wonderful contraptions. What if Pete misses them? I would not be surprised if he chose them over ... his other life."