by Lily Velez
“The stars shone with the news of your impending birth,” Alistair said. “You would be the most powerful witch to ever be born into the clans of Ireland. Did you really think it was mere happenstance that your mother would suffer a difficult childbirth, or that your desperate and reckless father would seek out a demon to save her life and yours?
“On the contrary. The darkness called to him that night in a song like that of a siren’s. He would’ve never been able to resist it even if such was his wish. And the moment the bargain was struck, you became ours, the mark on your hand and its glorious curse securing you to our cause. Everything we could’ve ever hoped for came into alignment that night.”
My heart thundered in my chest. “You’re lying,” I said.
“Jack knows I’m not. He can feel the truth of my words in his bones.”
I wanted Jack to refute the statement. I wanted him to silence Alistair, to send the full force of the four Quarters against the demon and somehow overcome him.
He said nothing. His face only hardened, a single muscle pulsing at his jaw.
“Two conditions had to be met before I could break the Thirteen Seals,” Alistair went on. “First, your time had to be up. You took care of that yourself, and well ahead of schedule too. You have my gratitude for that. Originally, all we could do was bring you to the forsaken lands to bide our time before the second condition was met, which was my somehow finding a way to the world of man to get to the seals. But our darling, unpracticed witch here expedited our timeline with that spectacular show she put on at Uisneach. I truly couldn’t have asked for a more well-matched pair.”
My head swam dizzily. No, no, no…
“The Dark Lord has such plans for you, Jack. You will spearhead the construction of the wards against the gods. You will cow the Dark Lord’s subjects into submission. You will be a prince among demons. And that mark on your wrist you so resent will be the reason for all of it. Finally, you will become everything you were meant to be. All because of a simple bargain your father struck long ago. It was the perfect orchestration of events.”
A shadow passed over Jack’s features, a dangerous gleam in his eyes. In the next instant, he charged for Alistair, fisting the front of the demon’s shirt and shoving him against the menhir.
“Jack, no!” I rushed forward, grabbing onto his arm, but his hold was unyielding.
“The perfect orchestration?” Jack all but hissed at Alistair. “You destroyed my family!”
Alistair sneered. “The little you’ve lost is nothing compared to what you stand to gain.”
Jack snatched the saw-toothed dagger from Alistair and pressed the blade against the demon’s throat. Against my dad’s throat.
“Jack!” I cried out. “Stop!” I’d never seen him like this. Even when we’d faced The Black Hand in Dublin, he’d acted with a sense of control. Threatening but restrained. This Jack didn’t care about restraint.
I knew I couldn’t blame him. Not with what he’d just learned about his parents’ doomed fates being planned from the start…and all because of him. But the point still stood that that was my dad opposite him, and I desperately needed him to remember that.
Alistair was all grins again. “I’ve hit a nerve, I see.”
“Do you think I’m going to let you break open that next seal or any of the seals that follow?” Jack asked him, his voice dark, deadly. The rain darkened his hair, the locks falling over his forehead into his searing eyes.
“I do actually. Because the only way to stop me is to tear open my vessel. But surely you wouldn’t kill your precious Scarlet’s dear father, would you?” His eyes gleamed, as if he were enjoying the suspense. “Or perhaps you would. Why shouldn’t you? You’d be doing the world a favor, staving off the inevitable for a little while longer. And that’s what you want, isn’t it? To be good and for others to see you as such?”
Words eluded me. I could only stare in horror as Jack held my dad against the menhir, never once loosening his grip on the blade. My mind spun as I tried to think of what I could possibly do to defuse the situation.
“But you aren’t good,” the demon continued. “You were born to be dark. Even now, it’s taking every fiber of your self-control not to lick the blood off that blade, isn’t it?”
Everything came to a standstill.
What…?
I focused on Jack, not understanding. But then I saw it. The strain on his face. There was a conflict raging inside of him, one I couldn’t begin to comprehend. It festered in his soul, gnawing at every part of who he was, eating him alive from the inside out.
He confirmed it the moment his eyes dropped to the blood-stained knife.
“It’s calling to you, isn’t it? Its music is irresistible. Did you really think abstaining would somehow save you? Far from it. It only increases your appetite, makes you mad for a single drop, makes you lose control the way you already have. You think you can break your curse and escape your destiny, but you can’t. You think you’ll outrun us forever, but you won’t. One day very soon, a demon will catch you and drag you to your proper place at the Dark Lord’s side, where you will do his bidding for all eternity.”
“He may own my soul,” Jack said through clenched teeth, meeting Alistair’s eyes again, “but he doesn’t control my free will.”
“By all means, resist. Make it entertaining for us. We’ll see how many brothers it takes to break the all-powerful Jack Connelly.”
Jack’s jaw tightened, the veins in his neck taut.
“Or kill me now,” Alistair offered, “and none of it comes to pass.”
A moment of hesitation.
“Go on,” the demon urged, his grin wild, his eyes feral. “Do it. Cut open my throat.”
I couldn’t move, as if I were paralyzed from shock. I couldn’t speak. My protests were stuck to my tongue. Rain streaked down my face, gathered onto my lashes, spilled into my eyes. The winds continued to buffet me, their cold reaching deep into the marrow of my bones. But I remained riveted to the ground, my gaze fastened to Jack.
His eyes were fire. For a heart-stopping moment, I truly believed he was going to do it, that he’d forgotten everything he’d said to me about never doing anything to hurt me. He tightened his grip on the dagger’s handle and raised it over his head, a decision made.
“Jack, no!” I cried out, my throat thick with heartache.
Before I could blink, the glistening weapon came down in a rushing arc, surprise flashing in Alistair’s ruby eyes.
But the blade didn’t strike Alistair. Instead, it sank partway into the menhir’s face, less than an inch from the side of the demon’s head.
Alistair was stunned for all of three seconds before his menacing grin returned. “I’m almost disappointed,” he said. “But you’ve made a wise choice.”
He twisted and slapped his bloody palm against one of the seals carved into the menhir, speaking an incantation in that hair-raising tongue. The seal glowed as bright as a new brand under his ministrations before a crack shot across the menhir’s face, cleanly dividing the seal in two. I noticed three other seals were also broken in a similar manner, one of which matched the Dullahan’s mark.
Thunder growled above us, as if in response to the dark deed Alistair had just performed, and the rain fell harder, sharp little arrows that stung as they slashed across my cheeks.
“It’s truly been a pleasure,” Alistair said.
“You’re not going to win,” I told him, but my voice was thin, and under my coat, I was shaking.
“You Daughters of Brigid have always been a resilient bunch,” Alistair said. “Best we not take any chances with you.”
He snapped, and in an instant, I was on my knees, clawing at my throat as the breath in my lungs suddenly vanished. My throat tightened, my chest clenched, and an invisible fist crushed my heart so mercilessly I thought I’d die at any moment.
“What are you doing to her?” Jack demanded, rushing to my side, trying to hold me up lest I collapse.
Alistair’s red eyes were vicious, brutal. The worst part was that he wore my dad’s face, reducing a kind and gentle man to a living nightmare.
I latched onto Jack’s coat sleeve. I didn’t have the breath to cry out so could only squeeze his arm as an excruciating pain raked through my insides, as if something were being peeled away from me, the very fibers of who I was fraying, shredding. My mind unraveled, and all I wanted was for darkness to consume me. Once I could, I screamed. I screamed and screamed and screamed until my throat was raw and my voice shattered.
When the sensation at long last subsided, I slumped against Jack, my vision blurred with tears. Every one of my muscles screamed with pain. I was exhausted as I’d never been before, my body like a broken shell that was battered and bruised and aching.
“There,” Alistair said. “Much better.”
“What have you done?” Jack asked, his tone lethal.
“I’ve bound her magic,” the demon said. “I’ve scrubbed every shred of it from her soul and locked it deep inside her, where it will remain as long as I walk this earth. And mark my words, I don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon. In nine days, it’ll be the end of your world as you know it.” That hideous grin split across his face once more. “The end of your world, and the beginning of mine.”
8
Scarlet
“We may not be able to stop Alistair by destroying the vessel he’s chosen as his host, but it’s not the only way to stop him.”
The next morning, Jack and I were at Crowmarsh with his brothers. Though it was a school day, stopping the end of humanity as we knew it more or less took priority over pre-calculus and chemistry.
I stared down at the cup of dark tea warming my palms. Steam rose from the liquid in curling, silver ribbons, and the sweet aroma of hawthorn berries and rose petals filled the air. It was a spelled tea, one meant to ease physical aches.
Though the majority of my pain had subsided last night, I still felt sore, raw, as if someone had scraped every inch of my soul with sandpaper until it had bled. And I felt weak. And I felt worn down. And I felt…empty. Like a deserted home. Like a barren field where things didn’t grow anymore.
Though I’d gone the first seventeen years of my life without magic, discovering I was a witch had changed everything. I’d begun to develop a connection with an innate part of me that was like a sacred spark in the center of my being.
And now that spark was gone.
Alistair had severed my ties so that the void in me was bottomless.
Where are you? I called out into the void. How can I free you?
But my magic never replied.
My grip on the tea cup tightened. I wanted to cry, but I wouldn’t. I’d shed enough tears last night as Jack sat at my bedside here at Crowmarsh through it all, holding my hand as the aftershocks of pain came and went in waves. By morning, though I was still tender in every part of my being, my resolve had calcified into something that burned steady in the center of my chest.
Anger.
Total, blistering anger.
Alistair had ripped my birthright from me, my very identity.
He’d be sorry for it.
I would stop him from breaking the Thirteen Seals, I would send him back to the Otherworld, I would free my dad from Alistair’s control, and I would get my magic back.
And I would save Jack from his alleged fate too.
Presently, he strode across the length of the library’s wraparound balcony, running the tip of his index finger along the colorful tapestry of book spines. I kept thinking about what his mother Alison had said when I’d been inside her mind during the transference spell at Serenity Falls.
Should he, as powerful as he is, be exposed to magic that dark again, she’d told her husband, Redmond, it’ll be the end of him.
As it happened, Jack had exposed himself to dark magic several times since then. So what did that mean? All morning, I couldn’t keep from staring at him, waiting for the slightest indication to surface that he wasn’t as self-possessed as he’d have the rest of us believe. Did he truly crave demon blood and the dark magic it granted the way Alistair said he did? Was he fighting a secret battle none of us were equipped to help him win?
The possibility unsettled me.
“I remember reading about the Dark Lord’s armies when I was younger,” Jack went on, still hunting down a specific book. “They were called the Fomorians. That has to be what Alistair is.”
“So what are they exactly?” I asked. I was still reeling from Alistair’s impossible strength. He’d been able to withstand a blast of magic that had easily incinerated and banished other creatures, including a pack of Wraiths.
He’d also stolen the Hallowstone from me, and fury burned between my ribs at that reminder. Father Nolan was surely going to kill me, priest or not. As a Keeper, he’d guarded the Hallowstone with his life, eventually entrusting it to me. Now a demon possessed it.
But not for long, I assured myself, glowering at my tea.
“They’re a supernatural race that’s been around since before the time of Ireland’s first settlers,” Jack answered. “Back then, they were described as nothing short of monsters, ones with the powers of gods. They were said to be the personification of destruction, chaos, and death.”
“How nice,” I said, my tone marvelously flat.
Lucas grinned at me as he performed a card flourish that sent his cards flying straight up into the air, where they created a Celtic trinity knot above us. It made me think of planes that drew shapes in the sky with their air trails.
“If I were a god, what do you think I’d be the god of?” he asked me.
“Do you even have to ask? The god of mischief obviously.”
That earned a winning smile from him, his eyes flickering with delight. He tugged on a lock of my hair. “You’d be the goddess of beauty for sure.”
In spite of the circumstances, I blushed, though I couldn’t help but wonder if Lucas was only being extra nice because of my plight. When Jack had told his brothers about Alistair depriving me of my magic, they’d all looked at me with varying degrees of shock and pity. Even Connor had toned down the vitriol in his eyes, which was saying a lot.
“The general consensus,” Jack continued, “was that the Fomorians hailed from another world. It’s all in their name. The Old Irish fo means under, below, beneath.”
“As in Underneath,” I said, one of the names that referred to the abode of demons.
“Exactly. Whereas the second part of the name comes from the Old Irish term for an evil entity.”
Heavy furniture screeched across the floor of the room above us. As one, we all looked up.
“Should we really be talking about this while we have company?” Connor asked.
Upstairs, a Healer from the Ó Conghalaigh clan, the clan from which the brothers hailed, was preparing a space at Crowmarsh for the boys’ mother. Maurice’s passing had granted Jack the authority to oversee Alison Connelly’s private affairs and legal matters, and one of his first orders of business had been deciding it was time for her to leave Serenity Falls and come home. Here, she’d remain with a live-in Healer as Jack and the others tried to figure out how to wake her from her magical sleep.
“I’ve spelled the room,” Jack replied without taking his eyes off the book spines. “The Healer won’t be able to hear a single word we speak, even if she stood just beyond the threshold.”
“I still don’t like it,” Connor said, arms crossed as he scowled at the ceiling. “Are we sure we can even trust this woman?”
“Connor, she’s our great aunt.”
“We haven’t exactly had the best track record with family relations as of late.”
It was strange. Despite the five of us and a Healer being present, the Connellys’ family estate just outside of Galway felt emptier than ever. I couldn’t keep my eyes from drifting to the claw-foot desk on the other side of the room, the one Seamus had sat behind only weeks ago.
I shuddered at the thought of him and downed a gulp of tea, appreciating the way it warmed my chest almost instantly, so that it was like a fire had quickened to life there. Seamus was still locked away in The Citadel, the prison for wayward witches located Elsewhere. Jack still held out hope that Seamus would decide to renounce dark magic. He was the only one among his brothers who did, but for his sake, I hoped his faith in his uncle would prove valid.
“We can trust Prudence,” Jack said. “Right now, we have more important issues to deal with. There are countless stories of the Fomorians fighting under the Dark Lord. They were fearsome and formidable and left a trail of death in their wake wherever they went. They were also masters of deception.” He paused at a shelf and pulled a book forward. “Here it is.”
He opened it and flipped through the pages as he walked. Between one step and the next, he wayfared from the balcony to the center of the first floor, the blasts of wind blowing my hair back and sending Lucas’s cards out of their formation. A few of them rained down upon Rory and the fox curled up on his lap. With a frown, he brushed them off.
My gaze paused on that fox, which Rory now called Jinx. I wasn’t entirely convinced it was the same one the youngest Connelly had first brought home. The animal was already filling out, the former dullness of its coat replaced with a healthy luster. Clearly, Rory had spelled whatever formula he was feeding Jinx, but I was still colored impressed by how far the little fox had come in mere days.
His ears twitched, as if he were following our conversation, his honey eyes switching from person to person. He complemented Rory well. They were both quiet observers, content to exist within their own private worlds.
“That deception is no better exemplified than in this very story,” Jack said. “It takes place during the reign of the High King Airgetmar, who began his rule in 778 B.C. According to the story, a band of the king’s warriors led a coup d'état against him, imprisoning him in a tower to seize his kingdom.
“There was one warrior named Sétna, however, who had long been favored by the gods for his bravery in battle and who refused to betray the king. He was shocked by what his sword-brothers had done, but it wasn’t long before he uncovered the truth of the ploy. The men were unlike themselves and far from being in their right minds. Sétna realized they had to be under the manipulations of Fomorians.