Sorcha wanted to add something, but Darragh never gave her the chance. Patrick was letting them go, and they needed to take the opportunity.
At least Jack knew the truth about them, which would make things a little easier. The ability to cross through the rifts was lost to this realm and explaining it was not only tedious, it would make him sound like a lunatic. Better to stick with those who knew the truth and save himself the trouble of telling the story over and over to people who wouldn’t believe a word he was telling them.
Leaning on Sorcha for support, and gritting his teeth against the pain, Darragh limped toward the exit sign and the ramp that led down to the street. He kept hold of Sorcha until they were out of sight of the Bentley. When he let her go, he pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt. By the time they reached the car park entrance he’d figured out that if he stayed on the ball of his foot and avoided putting any weight on his ankle, he could walk without help. He would pay for it in a couple of hours, he suspected, not looking forward to the pain. He could already feel the skin pulling as the swelling tightened about his joint. He would need to do something about his ankle when they reached Jack’s place. Rónán’s memories included a medicine called codeine which would help relieve the pain.
In the reality where he belonged, a simple thought would have cured Darragh’s injury, but here, where there was no magic, ice and a hefty dose of codeine — according to Ren’s memories — was the next best thing for a sprain.
Darragh and Sorcha crossed over the network of narrow streets of the hospital campus onto a road filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic. As he watched Darragh realised, with a sinking heart, how little he really knew about this reality. He understood what he was looking at, knew where he was and how to get home from here on his own, but his brother’s most recent memory of this place had only put him here late at night. In the rain.
After Hayley was hit by the car that caused her blindness.
The memories of that night — disconcertingly — included Trása kissing Rónán, which Darragh wasn’t expecting. He had to push away a sudden surge of jealousy along with the unwanted — and unhelpful — memory.
‘What’s the matter?’ Sorcha asked.
‘Nothing. Are you all right?’ Sorcha had stopped by his side and was bent over, gasping heavily, as if she were having trouble breathing. He had never seen her like that before.
The warrior grimaced and straightened with a visible effort. ‘It’s the air in this realm, I think. It’s making me nauseous. Aren’t you finding it hard to breathe with all these fumes?’
‘It’ll be better once we get to Jack’s place,’ Darragh told her, trying to convince himself as much as Sorcha. He had no way of knowing if that was the case, but he couldn’t afford to despair. And she was right. The air — especially near the roads — stank like a tar pit.
‘I hope it does,’ Sorcha grumbled. ‘I don’t like this place, Darragh, and I don’t want to stay here. You have to find us a way home.’
‘I don’t like it here either,’ Darragh agreed. ‘So let’s find the train station and be gone from here.’
‘What’s a train station?’ Sorcha asked.
Darragh studied her for a moment and then sighed. With Sorcha for company, it was going to be an interesting ride. Wherever Rónán was, Darragh had to believe his brother would get him home again. Whatever it took.
If not, they were both lost. Forever.
CHAPTER 6
A couple of the samurai had loosed arrows at Trása as she escaped, but she’d had the presence of mind, even in owl form, to swoop and dive erratically toward the trees. A few moments after she took off she was lost in the darkness of the forest, leaving the samurai making hand signs to ward off evil. Ren could hear her calling out to him, even after she vanished from sight, perhaps to let him know she was there.
Maybe she was trying to comfort him … and assure him rescue was at hand?
Or was she so completely avian when she changed shape that she forgot who Trása was and who she was supposed to be? Ren figured there must be some residual understanding when someone changed into an animal. How else would a shapeshifter remember to return to their normal form?
‘Bakamono!’
A deathly silence fell over the compound at the woman’s angry shout. Even the mastiff returned to heel, looking disappointed he’d not been able to catch the owl. Ren gave up wondering about shapeshifters and decided to concentrate on his more immediate problem — keeping his own head attached at the neck. He had to get out of here alive and then find a way back to his own reality to rescue Darragh and Sorcha. He needed to find Hayley. He needed to save her and set things to rights in his reality — and in all the other realities he’d managed to screw up lately with his blind optimism and ignorance.
‘Idiots! You let the Youkai get away!’ The woman turned and pointed at Ren. ‘And look! There the other one stands, free as a bird, mocking you!’
By the time Ren registered that he was ‘the other one’ the rest of the samurai were on him. Ren’s face was pushed into the chilly, damp, sandy ground, his arms wrenched behind his back and held there. He forced his head up a little to look at the woman, wondering if she was about to order his death, too.
‘Where are the rest of your filthy kind?’ she demanded, shuffling over to him in tiny steps forced on her by the tightness of her kimono.
‘What … kind?’ he asked, spitting out grit and sand so he could speak. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘She means the rest of the stinking Youkai,’ someone above him explained with a helpful kick to his solar plexus.
‘I’m not Youkai,’ he grunted, his eyes watering with pain. He hoped his Japanese was close enough to theirs to make him understood. ‘I’m like you. I’m human. Ningen.’
‘You are Youkai,’ the woman insisted, looking down at him with contempt. ‘I can smell your stench from here.’
‘Chishihero-sama! His hand! Look at his hand!’
Behind his back, someone had spotted Ren’s tattooed hand. His left arm was unceremoniously wrenched around so Chishihero could study the triskalion branded into her prisoner’s palm. She was silent for a moment and then ordered the men to make him kneel before her.
They dragged Ren to his knees and forced him to lower his eyes, which placed his face about the height of the woman’s elaborate sash.
‘The mark on your hand,’ Chishihero said, in a Japanese dialect close enough to the language he spoke for him to understand it. The additional memories he’d acquired from his brother filled in more gaps, to the point where he was likely to be fluent himself, after hearing these people speak for a little longer.
‘The symbol is magical. What does it mean?’
‘Wakarimasen,’ Ren said. I don’t know.
‘You are lying.’
Ren couldn’t tell if Chishihero knew that because of the truth spell — or if she was guessing. Either way, he was in trouble.
‘I don’t know what it means,’ he insisted. ‘It’s been there all my life.’ That much, at least, was true. The truth spell was still in effect because his last statement made her hesitate.
‘You are dangerous, I think,’ she said eventually.
There was no safe answer to that. Ren shrugged. ‘I mean you no harm, Chishihero-sama,’ he said, figuring if her men addressed her as that, it might be safe for him to do so. ‘I only wish to find my way home.’
‘And where is your home?’
‘Eburana,’ Ren said, guessing the alternate-reality Japanese name for the Dublin his brother was familiar with was near enough for this realm. He’d decided one thing already — this was a reality steeped in magic. There would be no advanced technology here, and certainly no history that might have given rise to the Republic of Ireland as he knew it. Dublin was an ancient city, so it was possible, even in this realm, that they had heard of it. Besides, the answer would tell him if the exploding rift that had separated him from Hayley had jumped him and Trása into a real
ity in roughly the same geographical location as the one they’d stepped through on the Castle Golf Club course, or if they’d been thrown across the world and landed in this reality’s equivalent of Japan.
The woman struck him, backhanding Ren across his face. Her large silver ring sliced his cheek. ‘You mock me at your peril, Youkai.’
Ren fell backwards with the force of the blow. His cheek was stinging and he could feel warm blood welling along the cut. The warriors stepped back and did nothing to aid him.
‘Shall I arrange to send him to Tsubasa-sensei, Chishihero-sama?’ Hayato asked with great deference, avoiding Ren’s eye and acting as if nothing had happened. Ren didn’t know who this woman was in the grand scheme of things in this reality, but she commanded the loyalty of these samurai. He struggled to his feet, determined not to be struck again by Chishihero or anybody else.
Chishihero studied Ren thoughtfully for a few moments and then she shook her head. The mastiff eyed him like he was dinner. ‘No, Hayato … I cannot risk it. Letting the Youkai escape was bad enough. A yabangin Youkai with a magical brand and no master is far too dangerous.’
‘If we confined it …’ Hayato began rather tentatively.
The woman let out a short, sceptical laugh. ‘Confine it, Hayato? You and your incompetent minions have already proven once this evening that you can’t contain a magical beast. I don’t have the time to be responsible for its imprisonment and ensure it doesn’t escape like the other one. If I leave the plantation now, we’ll never meet this season’s washi quota and I will risk nothing that will incur the wrath of the Empresses.’ She cast her gaze over Ren again and shrugged, turning on her heel, saying, ‘I’ll send the Sensei its hand for study and a report on the incident after you’ve killed it. Come, Kiba.’ The mastiff dutifully turned, following her back to the house.
‘Whoa!’ Ren cried, when he realised the ‘it’ she was planning to murder and dismember was him. ‘Kill me? Send bits of me for study? Are you serious?’ He looked around at the samurai. Perhaps they were smiling because this was their boss’s idea of a sick joke, but he knew it wasn’t. The woman would have slit Trása’s throat without blinking. He shouldn’t be surprised she was ready to dish out the same fate to him.
‘Don’t let it speak,’ Chishihero warned Hayato. ‘It has magic. Give it a voice and it will enchant you and your men and before you know it, you’ll be letting this one escape, too.’
‘Fuck you, lady,’ Ren said in English.
Chishihero glared at Ren, but didn’t respond. Instead, she turned on her heel with Kiba at her side and began to walk back toward the main house with the small mincing steps her kimono and wooden sandals forced her to take, leaving odd tracks in the raked sand of the yard.
Hayato gave his men a hand signal, which must have meant something along the lines of ‘kill the prisoner now’ because as soon as he made it, the samurai closed in on Ren with bared katanas.
Ren’s heart began to gallop as he realised he had only seconds to live.
He refused to accept his life could end like this. Ren had just discovered he had a twin brother. He’d just found out he was a Druid prince capable of wielding unthinkable magic. He’d just pushed his best friend through a dimensional rift to an alternate reality to cure her blindness. He’d just discovered his true home.
He’d just seen Trása morph into a bird and fly away …
It wasn’t going to end like this.
Not here. Not now.
The samurai were closing in, their blades reflecting the torchfire in the courtyard. They were seconds away from slitting his throat.
Ren’s head filled with the sound of blood rushing through his ears. His eyesight began to blur as the overwhelming desire to be somewhere else overtook him. As the first touch of cold steel kissed the flesh of his throat, the world disappeared and the pain in Ren’s head exploded into a darkness so intense he was sure he must be dead.
CHAPTER 7
Brydie’s imprisonment in the amethyst jewel where she had been trapped by the djinni, Jamaspa, had robbed her of all sense of time. There was no day, no night, no mealtimes, no desire to sleep. She dozed off at times, but that was more from boredom than from a need to rest.
She knew her captor now, although his intentions remained vague. The djinni who had trapped her in this jewel claimed he meant her no harm, but neither was he inclined to release her, even when she couldn’t offer him a satisfactory answer to his questions.
Jamaspa asked many questions — some didn’t make sense but others were specific. She answered all of them honestly, because she couldn’t see any reason not to. The djinni wanted to know where Darragh went at night. More importantly, he wanted to know how Darragh had managed to sneak out of his chamber undetected. Brydie knew the answer to neither question, but her repeated denials made no impact on the djinni. Jamaspa was convinced she simply couldn’t recall and that keeping her trapped inside the jewelled brooch Marcroy Tarth had given her on the way to Sí an Bhrú would somehow jog her memory.
Brydie had no idea how long she’d been trapped. Time was meaningless here. She could pace restlessly when she grew bored with waiting. But when she tried to count her steps in order to calculate how small she now was, or how large her prison might be, there seemed to be a different number of steps each time.
Was anybody on the outside missing her? Queen Álmhath had left for Temair days, perhaps weeks, ago. She might be wondering why she hadn’t heard from her court maiden. More likely, the queen believed Brydie was so besotted with Darragh of the Undivided that she’d had neither the time nor the inclination to send a message to her mistress to let her know if her mission to conceive Darragh’s child had been successful.
And here in Sí an Bhrú? Would anybody miss her?
Probably not.
She was a stranger in the Druid stronghold and she had spent little time in the common areas of the fortress before she’d moved into Darragh’s chamber. Brydie’s foolish decision to play along with Darragh’s deception by covering for him when he sneaked out to search for his lost rift runner was costing her dearly, and not just because it made Jamaspa believe she knew more than she did. It was likely that most people here barely remembered her brief visit to Sí an Bhrú.
How would they know she was missing if they didn’t remember she’d been here at all?
Brydie thought it odd that she wasn’t more lonely or frightened. She figured the spell Jamaspa had used to trap her in Marcroy’s amethyst brooch had suspended all her bodily functions as well. Brydie felt as if she was breathing, but surely there was no air inside this tiny space. She doubted she was actually breathing, just going through the motions, protected by the enchantment that had trapped her here. She was never hungry, never thirsty and not once had she felt the urge to evacuate her bladder or bowels — something of a relief given the tiny space she occupied.
She could tell when he was coming, too. Jamaspa, from what she had seen of the djinni, could move about like a wisp of smoke. He seemed to have the ability to travel in and out of the jewel at will. When he was back, she could feel him, and see him, too, in a manner of speaking. Although he often refused to appear in a form on which she could focus, she knew when he was here, even if she couldn’t look him in the eye. The amethyst would darken to a purple so deep it made the night seem bright. When Jamaspa spoke, his voice was so resonant and commanding it sent shivers down her spine.
Brydie could feel him coming now, her skin prickling with gooseflesh.
What does he want this time? she wondered. Will he ask the same questions, over and over? Or has he thought of something new to ask me?
‘Are you well, little human?’ his voice boomed, reverberating through her bones. She found him both fearsome and yet oddly compassionate. He didn’t seem to care that he had trapped Brydie in this jewel to extract information from her, but he did seem concerned that she might not be enjoying herself. The djinni loomed over her like a nightmare and then worried he might have f
rightened her with his looming.
‘Can I even get sick in here?’ she asked, looking around the polished faceted walls of her gemstone prison. It was time she asked a few questions of her own, Brydie decided. She wasn’t going to get out of here by answering ‘I don’t know’ to everything.
‘What do you mean?’ the djinni boomed, his voice rich and loud. Brydie had to stop herself covering her ears.
‘I mean … am I dead? Shrunk down to the size of a flea? Is my spirit trapped in here with you, while my body lies rotting on the floor out there? Or am I stuck in here, whole and entire, and when you get sick of asking me the same questions and getting the same answers, over and over, you’ll finally set me free and I’ll be back to normal?’
The djinni was silent for a time, before remarking with a frown in his voice, ‘In Persia, a human captive would never dare question one of the Djinn in such an impertinent fashion.’
‘Oh?’ she said, trying to find a place to look so she knew she was addressing the djinni and not the wall. ‘How do you know that? You make a habit of trapping innocent women with your family jewels, do you?’
There was a moment of heavy silence before Jamaspa said, ‘No human captive would dare make fun of the Djinn, either.’
‘Well, they ought to come see me then,’ Brydie retorted cheerfully, rather pleased she’d been able to rattle the djinni a little. ‘I could give them a few pointers.’
‘Tell me how Darragh of the Undivided leaves this chamber undetected,’ the djinni asked, apparently deciding not to engage in any further idle chatter with his prisoner.
‘I don’t know,’ Brydie sighed. She leaned against the cool, smooth interior of the gem and sank slowly to the floor. She might as well get comfortable. Experience had taught her these questions could go on for quite a while.
Brydie woke a few hours later. Or it might have been minutes. Perhaps days. Jamaspa’s questions had gone on for hours, it seemed, leaving her wrung out and Jamaspa no closer to the truth he sought. She sat up as a shadow passed over the jewel, wondering if the djinni was back, but there was no sign of him. This shadow was outside the gem.
The Dark Divide Page 5