by C. E. Murphy
I did my best side whisper to Caitríona as I finished dressing: “Al-yil?”
“Ailill Mac Mata. The love of Méabh of Connacht’s life, so they say. Of course, she killed him in the end.”
“He was unfaithful,” Méabh said with utmost serenity.
I stopped worrying about the guy behind me and gaped at her. “So you killed him? This from the woman who married every high king in Irish history?”
Just as serenely, she said, “That was duty.” Then she smiled, and I remembered that this was also a woman who had by all appearances held half the country together for millennia on end. Mostly I’d been finding her a bit condescending. All of a sudden I found her just a little scary instead. That was the kind of smile it was. I decided not to pursue the matter any further, and very sensibly turned to address the issue of the Man Who Wasn’t Morrison.
He looked an awful lot like Morrison. Not exactly like him, but a lot like him. Like somebody had sanded Morrison’s rough edges off, maybe, and polished him up a bit. His hair was more gold than silver, but Morrison had apparently been a blond back in the day. His eyes were too green for Morrison, but the height, the breadth, the smile, were all eerily similar. It made me want to trust him, an impulse I didn’t trust at all. “I think you’d better show us your true form.”
True form. Nobody said things like that. Mucking with magic really did rearrange the speech patterns laid down over a lifetime. I sighed, ready to give it another shot—something like “Show me what you really look like”—but he shrugged before I spoke. “I don’t have one, not the way you mean. I’m shaped by desire.”
Caitríona, horrified, blurted, “I don’t desire me da!”
He gave her Morrison’s best reassuring smile, which was pretty damned reassuring. Or would have been, if he’d been Morrison. Even so, I was reassured as he explained, “Not necessarily sexual desire. Safety, reassurance, stability. I answer whatever need is utmost in your mind.”
“Gancanagh,” Méabh said. I resisted the urge to say “Bless you,” and the handsome devil-may-care fellow turned to give Méabh an acknowledging nod. “You’re dangerous,” she said without sounding like she meant it. “A woman should never trust her heart’s desire. He seduces,” she told us. Me, perhaps, since presumably Caitríona was in fact not hot for her daddy. “He is one of the fae, like the fear darrig. We cannot trust him.”
“Of course you can’t. But I can lead you to evil’s lair.”
My voice shot up. “Why would we want you to do that?”
All three of them, Gancanagh, Méabh and Caitríona, said, “Aibhill,” which still sounded like “Evil” to me, but this time I recognized they probably meant the O’Brien banshee. “To Aibhill and her host of wailing women,” Gancanagh went on. “Four and twenty of them.”
“Twenty-five,” Cat said obstinately, but Gancanagh clicked his tongue and winked at me. “Twenty-four now. She lost one recently, you know.”
I did know, having kind of ripped a banshee’s head off a year ago. “Twenty-four isn’t really an improvement in the odds.”
Gancanagh smiled and shrugged. I caught a scent of Morrison’s cologne and ground my teeth together. This was not my boss. It was not the man I’d fallen in love with. It was not even, according to what Méabh had just said, technically a man at all. I could accept that intellectually, but on a gut level I was just relieved as hell to see Morrison here and ready to fight at my side. Fists knotted until my nails stung my palms, I grated, “Never mind the odds. Why would you lead us there?”
“Because I don’t want to see the world end, Walker. Aibhill’s master doesn’t have a place in his lineup for someone like me. I’m about life and love, not death and loathing, so if he wins a major victory I’m left out in the cold.” He shivered delicately, which Morrison would never do, and murmured, “I don’t like being cold.”
Morrison would probably never say that, either, but something about the way he said it made Méabh and me both take a step toward him, ready to warm him up in any way his little heart desired. Only Caitríona’s squawk of dismay stopped us, and for a few seconds we glared at each other while Cat said, “Jaysus and they’re going to be all over me da if this doesn’t end quickly. I can’t take it. We’re going with you, but don’t say a word to them, d’ye hear me?”
Gancanagh put a finger over his lips, playful and sensuous, and I thought it was a damned good thing Caitríona wasn’t suffering from an egregious schoolgirl crush at this particular time in her life. I didn’t know who the most popular Irish heartthrob was, but if she was seeing him instead of her father we would all be—so to speak—screwed. I cringed at my choice of words, even unspoken, and fell obediently into line behind Caitríona and Gancanagh.
Not so much into line, actually, as two by two, them in front and me and Méabh elbow to elbow where we could make sure neither had a better view of Gancanagh’s very fine derriere or, more important, make sure one of us had no chance to speak to him without the other. I knew I was being ridiculous, but hints of Old Spice kept wafting back toward me, and it was all I could do to not punch Méabh just for existing. A little desperate, I said, “Tell me about Ailill.”
Méabh glowered. “So you can steal him for yourself? I think not.”
“For— This is not some kind of perverse Mrs. Robinson thing, Méabh! I’m just trying to distract myself!”
“From eyeing my man!” She rounded on me, but I saw it coming and ducked under the fist she threw.
Caitríona bellowed, “Ah, fer sweet Christ’s sake, will ye’s stop?” and fell back to put herself between us. “What is wrong with you?”
“She thinks I want to steal her boyfriend. I totally don’t.” In fact, the last thing I wanted to do was get in a bare-knuckles match with somebody who had a thousand years of fighting skills on her side. Besides, if anything, she was trying to horn in on my territory, not the other way around.
I seized my head, trying to stop that line of thought. Gancanagh dropped back to walk beside me, murmuring, “She’s a beautiful woman. You’re powerful, to be sure, but there’s something exotic about her, isn’t there?”
“Morrison doesn’t like women taller than he is.” I had no idea if that was true, but it gave me something to hang my hat on. I forced my way past his flirtation and scowled at the landscape. It was still Ireland, but it seemed like every step we took it got darker. The grass turned jade, not emerald. Leaves deepened to evergreen shades, and thick-barked oaks sucked light in until we meandered through gloom. Morrison’s scent caught me off guard every time I took a breath, though Gancanagh himself sidled between me and Méabh while Caitríona tried to herd him back to a lead position. At least she didn’t want a piece of my man, though Morrison really was too old for her. Hell, at thirty-nine he was almost too old for me. Which would make him a babe in Méabh’s arms. The impulse to smack her rose again. Desperate to keep my head on straight, I muttered, “Where are we going?”
“Into the heart of Thiobraid Árann, where kings and priests once ruled.”
On the positive side, that was definitely not something Morrison would say, which helped me remember it wasn’t him. On the less positive side, I still had no idea where we were going. Caitríona volunteered, “Thiobraid Árann is Tipperary,” which I could sort of see once she’d spoken the Anglicization of it. She went on with, “The O’Brien took his crown at Cashel, where Patrick had converted his ancestors to Christianity,” while I compulsively mumbled, “It’s a long way to Tipperary.”
Cat gave me a dirty look and I spread my hands in self-defense before asking, “The O’Brien? Weren’t there a lot of them?” and then, “It really is a long way to Tipperary, especially if we’re walking. We’re sort of on a deadline here, folks. How’re we gonna—”
Gancanagh started to answer. Caitríona shot a glare his way and he subsided with a smile and a flutter of eyelashes. She, rather ferociously, said, “There may be a hundred O’Briens, but only one is The O’Brien. The leader, the king, the
one they all looked to. And The O’Brien of whom I speak is Boru, who was crowned—”
“Oh!” I said gleefully. “I know this one! At the Rock of Cashel! The big awesome castle! Mom and I went there!”
For once I didn’t get the look that said I’d crushed a thousand fondly held memories by the way I’d phrased my limited historical knowledge. Caitríona seemed pleased. I was so proud of myself I danced a little jig, which Gancanagh joined in on, catching my arm to swing me around.
Right into Méabh’s breastplate. I clanged against it and held very still, as if a rabbit who perhaps would go unnoticed by the bird of prey if I didn’t move. Of course, rabbits didn’t usually have their noses in the bird’s cleavage, not that breastplates made for a lot of cleavage. I held still anyway.
“I’ll have your head if I see you talking to my man in such a way again,” Méabh growled.
I rolled my eyes up, trying to meet her gaze without moving. “He started it.” Ah yes. Very mature, Joanne. “Besides, he’s not your man. He’s mi-aaaiii!”
“Mi-aaaiii!” was not the possessive pronoun I’d intended it to be. It was the sound of me being strong-armed straight backward, far enough away for Méabh to unsheathe her sword and waver it between Gancanagh and myself.
All my smarts left me and instead of calming her down, I baited her. “He’s your lover, remember? You probably don’t want to kill him. I sure don’t want you to.” I didn’t really care if she killed her own lover, since she’d apparently done it once already anyway. I just didn’t like the idea of this near-Morrison taking it in the teeth.
Méabh, who was apparently even more susceptible to Gancanagh than I was, snarled and moved the sword toward me. In a fit of unusual stupidity, I put both hands on either side of it and held it like I could keep her from skewering me by strength alone. I wasn’t an action hero, so there was no chance of that happening, but it looked cool. And I could keep her from skewering me by using magic, so maybe it wasn’t all that stupid after all.
It certainly got her attention, anyway. As calmly and slowly as I could, I said, “He’s not Ailill. He’s not Morrison. He’s not Cat’s dad, either. He’s a fairy and he’s screwing with us. But he says he’s going to lead us to the banshee, so if you can just keep that thing in your pants awhile longer, we’ll get there and you can have a nice big juicy fight. But right now Ganesh here has to get us there without us tearing ourselves apart over him. Okay?”
“Gancanagh,” he said, offended. I echoed that, too, mostly because I was pretty certain Ganesh was a god and didn’t want to offend it.
Méabh made him the recipient of a once-over I wouldn’t have wanted visited on me. Then she muttered, “Ailill’s eyes are blue, not green,” and stepped away, her mouth a grim line.
“Ol’ green-eyes, eh?” I said to Gancanagh. “Can’t change that, can you? Morrison’s eyes are blue, too.”
“So’re me da’s,” Cat said. She was still the only clearheaded one among us, because it was she who remembered to say, “Tipperary is a long way. How will we get there before nightfall, fairy man?”
“How far do you think we’ve come, my lass?” Gancanagh opened his hand to indicate the gloom we’d been marching through, and I finally looked beyond his glorious self to see that the landscape had changed.
Mountains had given way to trees quickly enough, but we’d left the forests behind, too, and were tromping through bogland. Stretches of low hills rolled out before us, and I could see we’d crested one, but I hadn’t particularly noticed the incline. Startled, I turned back, but the mountains had been swallowed by mist and darkness. “Hnh.”
“Hnh?” That was Caitríona, sounding suspicious.
“Nothing. It’s just kind of like the Lower World. Distance isn’t what it seems. I have to walk through it the long way, but my friend Coyote can skip and bounce all over the place.” I peered at the sun, but the gloom was too significant to tell whether it hung closer to the land than normal.
“It’s the fairy realm.” Gancanagh stopped beside me, suddenly very close and smelling very good, with his too-green gaze intent on mine. I swallowed and looked away, but that made it worse, because then his scent and body nearness seemed all the more Morrison. I wet my lips and looked back to find him smiling. Devilish, charming smile. The kind of smile that clearly needed either a kiss or a slap. Possibly both. I wet my lips again and he, being no fool, moved in for the kill.
But he had to tilt his chin up to do so. I was a good two inches taller than he was, but Morrison was exactly my height. Another mark against the seductive fairy. I got my hand between us just in time, croaked, “Walk,” and pushed him away.
In a world that made sense, he would have taken the hint and gone off all dejected. In the world I lived in, however, he looked more like I’d presented an unexpected challenge, and delight glinted in his eyes as he did as he was told.
Méabh stomped by, the weight of her footsteps putting my earlier stomp to shame. I started to protest my innocence, but Caitríona came along behind her, not so much stomping as seeming to propel herself forward by the force of exaggerated eye-rolling. Amusement overcame the feeling of unjust persecution and I tagged along behind them all, grinning. Gan’s voice drifted back to me: “This realm’s been tainted, it’s true, but I’m still part of it. It knows I’m not a threat, and lets me walk as I wish.”
His voice was like honey mead and warm chocolate, which I thought was cheating. Morrison’s voice was fine, particularly when lowered in intimacy, but Gancanagh had somehow kicked it up a notch. I clung to the content of his words, not the delivery, but it still took quite a lot of walking before I shook off the effects. “Wait, what do you mean, you’re part of it. That can’t be good, if it’s tainted.”
Gancanagh looked back at me. By all rights it was too gloomy to see well, and I wasn’t using the Sight, but his gaze was vivid and bright anyway. He breathed, “Sure and she doesn’t know much, does she,” briefly sounding more like an Irish monster than like Morrison, then went back to the more Americanized way of phrasing things. “Nothing’s all light and happiness, Walker. Seduction’s got its dark side, and so someone like me is susceptible to someone like him. And when you’re part of a pantheon that’s all magic, it’s easy for the corruption to spread. I wasn’t his way in, but I would never be able to stop him, either.”
I scurried to catch up with Méabh. “Are you two part of the same pantheon? I mean, you’re both…not human. You called him fae. You’re aos sí. I’m pretty sure that qualifies as fae.” I wished Gary was there. He’d know for sure.
Méabh scowled. “We’re all of us other than human, so we are. I’d not say I was of the likes of him.”
From her emphasis, I assumed everybody else would. “But you’re not gods, either. I mean, that’s what I’ve met so far, gods and monsters. You fae sorts are the first non-human non-monsters I’ve come across. I didn’t know there were things like you out there. I mean, where did you come from? I don’t even know if you’ve got North American counterparts. Not that I’ve run into, anyway.” I sighed. “On the other hand, there are plenty of people who’ve managed to be corrupted by the Master on my home turf, too, so even if the lineup is different I guess the results aren’t. Look, Gan, you’re also the first person I’ve talked to who was willing or maybe able to discuss the Master’s influence. So just how badly into this are you?”
He shrugged, which was distractingly attractive. “I’m nothing, really. He gets a lot more power from murders and black magic than from something like me, but if dark impulses are acted upon, he gains strength from them.”
“So couldn’t you ignore the impulses?”
He looked over his shoulder at me. “Could you ignore the magic that boils in your belly, all hot and ready, Walker?”
He really hadn’t needed to add the hot and ready part. My throat went dry and other parts of me went a bit hot and ready. “Jesus, Morris—Gancanagh.”
“And why is it we’re trusting him?” Cai
tríona muttered.
It seemed like a good question, and I was pretty sure “Because he’s sexxxay” was the wrong answer. Méabh came up with a better one: “What choice have we? It’s this or chase werewolves, and Aili—Gancanagh—is finer to look upon.”
“He looks like me da!”
I took that to mean Cat wished we would stop having palpitations over the guy, which was fair enough. I wished we would, too, but I couldn’t stop sneaking glances at his backside. “How long,” I said a bit desperately. “How long will it take to get to Evil’s lair?”
“Ah, sure,” Gancanagh said blithely, “ah sure and we’re there.”
A three-headed dragon rose out of the dark and spat fire at us.
Chapter Twenty-Three
If the werewolf hadn’t bit me, I wouldn’t have learned to keep my shields up at all times and we would have been roasted, so in some small way Tia Carley had done me a favor. But the heat blast still knocked us over backward, and we lay there in the dark for a split second before the beast galumphed toward us. Méabh, always quick with a sword, sprang to her feet and charged the dragon head-on while I mostly just wondered who or what I’d offended in a past life that this one was peopled by dragons. Except I didn’t have any past lives, so apparently I’d offended somebody in this life and was facing instant karma. That didn’t really improve anything, in my ever so humble opinion.
Caitríona sat up beside me, both hands fisted against her mouth. Tiny sounds emitted from behind the fists, but at least she wasn’t all-out screaming. Me, I kept lying there, reviewing my list of things to do: heal the werewolf bite. Kill the Morrígan. Find Gary. Save my mother. I added “string Gancanagh up by his luscious toes and use him for target practice” to the list, and finally sat up.