Brighid's Mark

by Cate Morgan

  He set his burdens on his balcony table. “Let’s see that hand.”

  Callie had nearly forgotten the dull throb in her palm, wrapped tight in Liam’s snowy white handkerchief. A Rorschach blot of blood marred it. “It’s not necessary, really,” she said, turning away. “I heal fast. But thank you.”

  “Humor me.” Liam gestured her over with feigned joviality.

  “I’m sorry,” she answered, voice soft with the distance of her wandering thoughts. “I haven’t lost my temper so spectacularly in quite some time. I’ll send Donny out for a fresh bottle to replace the one I broke.”

  “I keep a case.” He shrugged. “You and Maeve—that was quite a show. It wasn’t a game of cat and mouse so much as it was a game of cat and cat. I still can’t decide who won.”

  Callie exhaled, returning from her mental wanderings. “Neither can I, to be honest.”

  Liam proffered a hand with a smile, and she relented with good grace. He picked apart the knot in his handkerchief, unwound it from her hand. “I couldn’t help but notice she failed to answer our questions, yet managed to vanquish herself without any help from us.”

  “Ah, but she did—answer our questions, I mean. There’s no rule compelling her to give us a straight answer, of course.” She leaned against the railing. “The vanquishing was my fault—I interfered by stepping into the circle.”

  Liam swabbed the gash in her palm with witch hazel. “Care to let me in on the secret?”

  She shrugged, watching his lovely hands mend the damage she’d done. “We’re dealing with a demon of unrequited love, for one.”

  “Is it me, or does that sound a little…”

  She smiled up at him, pleasantly surprised to find his dark eyes watching her as closely as she’d watched him. She admitted she liked him looking at her. She’d really liked him kissing her, even if it meant his possession by Legba guaranteed he wouldn’t remember. She wondered if Legba kissed like Liam, or vice versa.

  She cleared her throat, heat flooding her face and making her a little lightheaded. “Soft? Unlikely. Wholly non-threatening and just a little silly? Sure. Until you put it in the perspective of the extreme. Unrequited love can easily turn to obsession, a need to possess. Unrequited love can play havoc with inhibitions, shade the black and white of what’s right, what’s clearly wrong, to gray. You know the saying that love is blind? It’s not too far from ‘the devil made me do it.’”

  Liam nestled a soft square of gauze into the hollow of her palm and started wrapping it securely in place with a roll of bandage, expression thoughtful. “But why summon a demon?”

  Callie went back to watching his hands. They were mesmerizing. “There’s a point where obsession crosses the line into hate.”

  Liam held onto her hand, though he was finished bandaging it. He tucked away the tail end of the wrappings with care. “So Donal and Chase tear apart my library, in search of a demon of unrequited love. That doesn’t answer the question of who summoned it.”

  Callie followed the twining of his Marks, anything but look into his eyes again. “Maeve didn’t have to put a name behind the demon, because it was an answer we already have. We just didn’t know it.”

  Liam stepped closer. Her fingertips touched the Marks on his arm, and his breath hitched. “Because you know who it is, just not specifically.”

  “Maeve was quick to gloat how personal Yshotha’s presence here is. That means it could only be Chase or Donny responsible. One of them had Eva killed to bring me here.” Her voice shook, but she continued to trace the inky patterns over lithe muscle and warm skin, hardly noticing Liam’s stilled breath. “And that’s why they’re in there, and I’m out here.”

  “This demon came to my city,” he pointed out, lifting her chin with his fingers. “It could just as easily be me.”

  “Yes,” Callie agreed, not believing it for a moment. She inhaled the faint tang of whiskey on his breath as her eyes drifted shut, and the jump in her pulse echoed in the burning cut on her hand. “It could.”

  The door opened again. “Callie?”

  Callie’s eyes flew open. They both turned, more than a little out of it, but didn’t step away from each other. It took a moment for Callie to focus on Chase, for reality to solidify around her.

  Chase’s eyes shifted between the two of them. The corner of his mouth turned up, and Callie felt like she’d been caught kissing the neighborhood bad boy by her pain-in-the-ass brother.

  She arched an eyebrow, unaccountably irritated. “Yes?”

  “There’s good news and bad news. We’ve figured out which demon it is,” he said, never losing his smile.

  “And the bad news?” Liam prompted, taking the bait.

  “Donny wants to summon it.”

  Donal spun a small, thick, dusty tome around on the paper-strewn library table and slid it across to Callie. “Yshotha,” he said, with grim satisfaction.

  “Yshotha?” Callie stretched over the table and lifted the open book, leaning on her forearms and balancing on the balls of her feet. Liam wasn’t sure how the physics worked, but he was as appreciative was he was fascinated. As annoyed as he was with Chase’s impeccable timing—he’d been within an inch of kissing Callie, magnetized by those whiskey eyes. Disappointment thundered in his chest.

  “Based on Liam’s description and Maeve’s reference to unrequited love, this is the bugger we’re after.” Donal’s eyes sparked with satisfaction.

  Callie pushed the book in Liam’s direction and swiveled to her elbows, long limbs on riveting display. “What do you think?”

  Liam smoothed the crackling page. He was slowly growing accustomed to having people in his space, their things underfoot and littered across every flat surface. It made his fingers itch, but he managed to restrain the urge to follow everyone with a laundry hamper and a dust cloth. Only that morning Chase had left a wet towel on one of his antique leather upholstered chairs, and Liam was almost positive the demon hunter had done it on purpose.

  Speaking of demons, there it was—the horns, the fiery eyes, the lava-run crags in inky woodcut detail. He would have said medieval demonologists possessed too much imagination and too many lonely nights for their own good if he hadn’t seen the damned thing for himself.

  “That’s it.” He raised his eyebrows at Donal. “And you want to summon this thing?”

  Chase smirked. “That’s how we hunt. If we can’t track it and bring it bay, we trap it. Provided we have the right bait.”

  Callie returned his smile. “Meaning me.”

  “What?” Donal blurted out.

  “What?” Liam echoed, half a beat behind.

  “Are you certain you want to put yourself up for this?” Donal scowled. “Eva was bait, and it got her.”

  “It won’t get me.”

  “How do you know?” Liam demanded. Of course it would get her. She would be utterly destroyed. How could she not be?

  Then he remembered her eyes when she faced down Maeve, and doubted his own judgment.

  “Because we have a connection to the Loa. We’re meant to take it down.” She leveraged up onto both feet and returned the book to Donal. “What’s it going to take for a summoning?”

  Donal’s fingers trailed across the page as he read. “These demonologists didn’t half make things complicated, did they? We’ll need a field enclosed in iron—a big one. Also, there’s a reference to where ‘fire has taken lives, created ghosts of hearts and souls.’”

  Liam scrubbed his face with both hands. “You just described most of the city. The older parts, anyway. Do you have any idea how many Great Fires we’ve had?”

  Donal did the math and conceded the point. “I imagine it’s referring to some symbolism as to unrequited love.”

  “What else?” Callie asked.

  Donal returned his attention to the book. “A lot of live obsidian, and the blood of the unrequited. Heart’s blood.”

  Callie raised her eyebrows. “Which unrequited? The object of unrequited love, or
the unrequited themselves?”

  “Doesn’t say.” Donal snapped the book shut with a dusty, papery poof.

  Chase grunted. “I don’t think it matters. Unrequited is unrequited. Let’s get this show on the road already.”

  Callie gave a fatalistic shrug. “At least I won’t have to lay open my sword hand.”

  Liam marveled at her, not for the first time. “You really think a sword is going to take this thing down?”

  She grinned. “We’ll find out, won’t we?”

  Liam turned to Donal. “What does the book say?”

  “The usual drill—abandon all hope, all ye who enter here, et cetera.”

  “A grand thing it is,” Callie drawled in an exaggerated brogue, “the ability to read Latin. I knew I should’ve stuck with it in school.”

  “It’s what you pay me for,” Donal returned. “However measly it is. Regardless, there’s no record I can find of anyone managing to vanquish Yshotha, let alone destroy it all together. And this is the most complete library of texts I’ve seen in a month of decades.” He shot a look at Liam. “It’s a little creepy.”

  “I’ve had a lot of time to collect,” Liam pointed out.

  “From what I gather this Yshotha is one of the more powerful weapons in Lilith’s arsenal,” Donal concluded. “An honest-to-goodness Greater Demon.” He sounded half-fascinated, half-horrified.

  Callie pondered the maps on the table. Liam got the impression she wasn’t actually seeing them. “Right. Donny, you’re on reagents. Chase—”

  “Location scout. I know the drill.” His eyes found Liam, narrowed. “What about him?”

  “He’s with me. It’s going to take the two of us to figure a way to vanquish this thing.”

  Blue bedroom eyes silvered to steel. Without a word, Chase went to one of three duffels on the library floor and unzippered it. He dug around a moment, then threw radios to Donal and Callie. Donal nearly dropped his in surprise, but managed to keep hold of it.

  “Military radios?” Liam asked.

  “Phones don’t work here,” Chase pointed out. “These will.” He watched as Callie set hers on the table. “They’re set to the usual frequency.”

  Callie waited until they left. Only then did she sag bodily against the table, spine bowed. “I’m a coward.”

  Liam approached her on soft feet. “Why would you say that?”

  “I’m a coward,” she repeated, slightly louder, “because I don’t want to know which one of them betrayed me.”

  “Look at the bright side,” he tried. “It still might be me.”

  She shook her head, but couldn’t help smiling. “No.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  “Maeve said it herself. This was a trap. The connection is between Eva and me, being Brighid’s Keepers. Personal.”

  Liam leaned back against the table. Her neck was still bowed, face half hidden by her unruly Halloween wig hair. “I don’t see it. You all seem so close.”

  “We are. That’s the problem.” She pushed herself upright with a deep sigh. “I’ve lost all perspective. Stepping back—stepping away—scares me senseless. I’m afraid of what I might see.”

  “But what would their motivation be?”

  She sat back on the table, bare feet swinging. “Donny was first. He fears death. Like a full-on phobia in terrifying Technicolor. He encountered the Angel of Death when he came for the girl he was in love with ever since he was a child. The young woman died, because a Keeper couldn’t save her.”

  “You?”

  Callie shook her head. “Eva, actually. Donny loved this girl. Worshiped her. Only her Da didn’t approve. So Donny turned his life around, studied for years to be worthy of her. Then the demon came and Donal tried to vanquish it. When Eva showed up it was too late. In repayment, the Tuatha Du Dannaan made him a deal of service that he would come to the Tír when he dies. But I don’t think Donny ever forgave Eva, not truly.”

  “And Chase?”

  “I found him and his sister in the streets of Dallas back when most of Texas got wiped back to the dark ages during the Seven-Year War. That was when demonic activity first became prevalent, and there are demons well-versed in either taking human form or possessing one. After all, a lot of lesser demons used to be human once. They generally remember how it goes, and Lucifer’s a shining example of how it’s done.”

  “And they got Chase’s family.”

  “They got the whole bleeding neighborhood over the age of eighteen or so, masquerading as relief workers. I’d spent weeks tracking them. Chase and his sister were travelling the streets, trying get money and food enough to reach a church compound in Corpus Christi. I took them. When Chase was old enough he joined the Texan militia, then tracked me down when the war ended. He wanted to hunt demons.”

  “He was in love with you.” Puzzle pieces snapped into place: Chase rarely spoke to Liam directly, and never with anything other than a surly tone. But the hunter watched Callie and Liam’s interactions with searching observation bordering on—what was the word Callie had used? Possession. Chase had a knack for finding the two of them alone, which was then usually followed by something like what Liam referred to as the Wet Towel Incident.

  Callie smiled. “Infatuated, more like. He was very endearing. It took time and experience, but he eventually came to the conclusion I’d been trying to convince him of—human relationships aren’t a good idea with someone like me. If he lived to be a hundred, I would still look the same as I do now, as when I ascended the first time over a century ago. I would have to hunt when he couldn’t. I would still have to fight in the End of Days, with the possibility of humanity falling, if Keepers fail.” She pressed the heel of her hand against one of her eyes, as though seeking to relieve a nagging pressure there. “I’m sorry you’ve been dragged into the middle of this.”

  “I’m not.”

  “What, not in the middle?”

  “Not sorry. The way I see it, everything happens for a reason, even if we don’t see it immediately. I’m sorry about Eva. I’m sorry you’ve been betrayed. But I’m not sorry I met you.”

  His hand inched toward hers on the table. His heart dropped a bit when she moved away from him. She pulled a corner of map around with her and bent to study it. “How did you know her?” she asked.

  “Her? Her who?” Then Liam knew. He let out a breath that was almost, but not quite, a low laugh. “Eva.”

  Callie leaned on her elbows, hands cradling her smiling-sad face. “You said she was a colleague.”

  “She was here when I arrived—a friend of Sulie’s. We met a few times over the years, being in essentially the same business, always over trouble. The La Laurie mess. Another involving the entire opium den household of a Turkish Sultan’s brother—that one was a jinn.” He paused to consider the words brought on by memory. “I guess something finally got her, after all this time.” He shook himself free of reverie. “I never knew what she was, exactly. She just always seemed to be wherever there was that kind of trouble, and biding her time for something.”

  “That was Eva,” Callie murmured. She looked out the window, eyes distant. “I wonder if it was her that sent you that dream.”

  That was a possibility he hadn’t considered. “Is that something that you—Keepers, I mean—can do?”

  “We’re all a little different.” She shrugged. “If she had a tap into the Loa here, anything’s possible. Maybe she used the last of herself, what remained of her light, to reach you.”

  “I guess we’ll never know.”

  “Maybe not.” Callie planted her palm flat on the map, motioning him over with her free hand. “I’m having an idea.”

  He joined her, ginger spice immediately filling his senses. He wondered if she tasted as spicy sweet as she smelled. A faint, not-quite remembered memory tingled on his lips and tongue. His mouth watered as he looked over her shoulder. “Jackson Square?”

  “Would it be possible to get in there at night?”

 
“Sure. It’ll be deserted.” He thought it through. Jackson Square during the day was a local trading post and flea market in conjunction with the French Market. But a mandatory curfew emptied the place at nine at night on the dot when everyone moved on to the larger space offered by the old convention center. “But can we summon a demon so close to a cathedral?”

  “Voodoo itself is a meeting of the Crossroads between church and the belief systems of dozens of African-based cultures,” she pointed out. “This city is a seething hotbed of Crossroads activity, and Jackson Square is at its heart.” She reached for the radio. “Chase?”

  The Texan’s drawl came through a heavy blanket of static. “Yeah?”

  “Can you check out Jackson Square for me?” Another burst of static suspiciously resembled a litany of creative cursing. “I heard that.”

  “Color me crazy,” he answered, “but isn’t that smack in the middle of civilization?”

  “Not at night. Just go with me on this.”

  “If you say so.” He didn’t sound enthusiastic. “Call you when I get there.”

  Callie set the radio aside. “Now we wait.”

  “There was a Great Fire there back in the mid-late eighteenth century.” Liam warmed to the idea. “Do you really think it will work?”

  “I honestly have no idea,” she said cheerfully.

  A humid breeze from the open window brushed a curl of her wild hair against the side of his face. It tickled. Without thinking, he tucked the errant strand behind her ear.

  Her smile faded as she took a step away. “Liam—”

  A gentleman of his era would never have considered what he did next.

  Well, no, it would have been considered—in exquisite and loving detail, in a never ending loop. But he never would have done it.

  She braced a hand on his chest to stop him, his heart beating against her palm. He felt the strength in her, and the fear. “This isn’t a good idea,” she warned.

  He smiled, forehead an inch away from hers. “You don’t consider yourself human, do you?”

  “I was born, and grew up, and had life and love and a world of possibility before me,” she said softly, not looking at him. “And then I became something else, and ‘normal’ ended in unmitigated disaster.”