by P. C. Cast
“The bastard would hardly let her out of his sight.”
“So Bres kept you in a jealous lather, and you didn’t realize she was screwing the old man?”
His jaw tightened, and I wondered for a second if I’d pushed too hard (or at least too sarcastically). Then he blew a deep breath through his pursed lips. “No, he just pissed me off while he lurked around here like a damn cockroach. I didn’t know she was screwing the old man because I wouldn’t stay in Tulsa with her.”
Curiosity whispered in my ear. What happened between Bres and Rhiannon and Clint? Why wouldn’t Clint stay in Tulsa with a woman he adored? And just what the hell was it about Rhiannon that had men falling all over their dicks to do her friggin bidding?
I felt the sudden need to pinch (or slap) myself. Who cares? My rational mind screamed. I just wanted to get out of here. I was not here to be involved in a mini—Peyton Place.
“Look,” I said sharply. “This is very interesting, but all I really want to know is why I am back in Okla-friggin-homa.” I held up my hand as he started to speak. “No—here’s what I need. Number one—” I ticked the numbers off with my fingers “—why did you jerk me back over here? Number two—how did you jerk me back over here? Number three—how the hell do I get back over there?” I spread my fingers like a baseball ump calling three strikes. (Yes, I appreciated the symbolism.)
“I brought you back here because I wanted to exchange you for Rhiannon and get her out of this world.”
“Just because she dumped you for an old rich guy?”
“No, because she is evil. She killed him. And her killing has just started. The only life that has any meaning to her is her own.”
I blinked in surprise. “Sinclair’s dead?”
“One month after they were married. Heart attack.”
“Well, shit. The guy was old and getting ridden like Sea-biscuit. He probably died a happy man. Why would you think she murdered him?” (Clint was an Oklahoma guy—he should know every red-blooded bubba dreams of dying in the saddle.)
“She told me she killed him.”
Now, that got my attention. “What?”
“She told me. Calm as we’re speaking here. She said she planned it, chose him because he was old and rich and had no living children to contest the will. First she got him all turned on so that he would be found in an overexcited state.” Clint paused, looking uncomfortable with the remembrance. “Then she explained how Bres held him down and she shot a syringe full of air into his jugular vein. She even admitted that she had insisted on rough, biting sex to set up a cover for the needle prick. She said he had a history of heart problems and a written wish for cremation. It couldn’t have been easier for her.”
“Why did she admit that to you?” I was incredulous. Being a slut was one thing, being a murderess was quite another.
“Rhiannon didn’t think I could say no to her. She thought I’d join with her if she said she needed me.” His face was an unemotional mask. “She said I could help her harness this world’s magic.” He stared into my eyes. “Rhiannon thought she could have it all in this world—both magic and technology. She explained it to me—she even let me glimpse that other world for a—”
“Glimpse Partholon!” I yelled.
He nodded slowly.
“How?” I demanded.
“I’m not entirely sure. It was like she hypnotized me, and while I was…” He paused, struggling for words, “Asleep or out, I don’t know exactly how to explain my state of consciousness, my soul seemed to lift from my body and was pulled through something that looked like a fiery tunnel.” Here he stopped and shuddered at the memory. “At the end of the tunnel I emerged over an amazing building. It was night, but I could clearly see beings that were half man, half horse walking around talking to each other.” He shook his head in wonder. “It was fantastic.”
“Was the temple made of creamy marble with thick, round walls?” My voice was choked with tears.
“Yes.” He nodded. “And it had a gigantic fountain—”
“—That looked like plunging horses,” I finished for him.
“Yes, again,” he said.
“Epona’s Temple.” Speaking the words caused a wave of homesickness to wash over me.
“That’s what Rhiannon said.”
I cleared my throat before asking, “How did your soul get back here?”
“I have no idea. I could have only been there for a few seconds, and then I was pulled through the tunnel and slammed back into my body. I had nothing to do with it. Afterward I felt fine, but Rhiannon was exhausted. She must have slept for sixteen hours without moving.”
“And she woke up expecting you to be part of her Let’s Rule the World Plan?”
“Actually,” he said grimly “she didn’t have any delusions about world dominance—she was much too rational for that. She just wanted money. A lot of money. And the power money buys.”
“Didn’t she have lots of money from the old guy?”
“Yes, but several million dollars wasn’t enough for Rhiannon. She had learned her Internet lessons too well.”
I must have looked confused because he explained.
“She learned that even several million dollars isn’t a fortune by today’s standards, and that it won’t buy her the power and autonomy she craved. She needed more, so she found it.”
“Buried treasure?” I asked only half jokingly.
“Drugs,” he answered.
“Drugs? What the hell do you mean?”
“When Rhiannon found out about this world’s fascination with illegal drugs, and the profit margin to be made in the drug trade, she said only a fool would pass up the opportunity to get and stay rich by using such an easy method.”
“She’s dealing drugs?” My mind couldn’t quite wrap around the bizarre idea of my mirror image being a female version of Scarface.
“She’s dealing drugs,” he confirmed. “At first I thought she just didn’t realize what she was getting into. I pulled up all sorts of sites that showed the dangers of drug use, what it does to kids, families, communities.” His face clouded. “She said it wasn’t her concern what the weak did to themselves, and that this world appeared to have too many children anyway. Killing a few would probably be a good idea. Rhiannon believes in the survival of the fittest.”
I felt sick and my hand automatically found the small swell of my abdomen, covering it protectively. Clint paused in his recitation but didn’t comment on my action.
“I explained to her the jail sentence she could receive for dealing drugs. She laughed and said she simply would not get caught. Then I told her she would have much more to worry about than the police, that if she lived in that part of our world she would be trafficking with thieves and murderers, junkies and liars.” He stopped, like he didn’t want to go on speaking.
“And that didn’t bother her?” I prompted.
“No. She became excited at the prospect. She said that was where I came in, that together we could harness and use an ancient evil to control this modern form of evil.” He looked as disgusted as I felt.
“What did she mean by that?” Again, I experienced the same sick sensation I’d had when ClanFintan had told me about Pryderi. Could the ancient evil Rhiannon wanted to use be that terrible three-faced god?
He shook his head. “I’m not sure. I didn’t give her a chance to explain. Suddenly it was like scales fell from my eyes and I saw what she really was, an amoral sociopath. I told her to get out and not come back. Then I threw her and her follower out of my home.”
Neither of us spoke for a moment. My mind was whirring, trying to grasp everything I’d just learned.
“Which brings me to your question number one.”
I looked at him, squinting with confusion.
“Why I tried to exchange the two of you,” he reminded me. “It’s simple—she’s evil. She’d already told me all about you, and I decided that the chances of a high school English teacher being a sociopathic goddes
s who would want to harness and use an ancient evil so she could deal drugs were pretty slim. Besides that, she’d laughed about leaving you over there in some kind of mess with demons.”
I gritted my teeth against the treachery and cowardice of Rhiannon leaving her people when she should have been warning and protecting them.
“I thought you would be happy to get out of there. Exchanging the two of you seemed like a good idea,” he concluded.
“Okay. After what you’ve explained I understand your reasoning, but you need to realize that Partholon is where I want to be—forever. I love the people she betrayed. I worship the Goddess she used. I embrace the husband she rejected.”
“I didn’t know,” he said sadly.
“So we’ll move on to questions two and three. How did you get me here, and how do I get back?”
“Well—” he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his legs and steepling his fingers in concentration “—Rhiannon told me about the spell she cast to exchange places with you. She said she used the urn as a focal point. First she got it into this world.” He paused and nodded in new understanding at me. “Obviously, Bres brought it when he preceded her here. Once it was in this world, she used it to draw the power to exchange the two of you.”
“Makes sense, go on.”
“So I decided I needed an object of power from which to work. Something that was in both worlds.”
“The trees,” I whispered.
“Yes,” he smiled self-consciously. “I knew they held unusual power, even in a forest that resonates with energy like this one does.”
“How did you know they were in Partholon, too?” I asked.
“They told me,” he said simply. “I touched their power and tried to call you to me.” He frowned. “At first I didn’t think it was going to work. I could get a sense of you, but it was muffled and fragmented, like it wasn’t really you hearing my call.”
“That’s because I didn’t hear your call, Epi did.” I couldn’t keep the frustration out of my voice.
“Who is Epi?”
“My horse. Well, scratch that—she’s not a pet or anything like that. She’s the equine incarnation of our Goddess, Epona. And I guess you could say I belong to her as much as she belongs to me. She was drawn to the pin oak grove, not me.” I thought back to her reaction. “But once we got to the grove, she acted strange, like she knew something was wrong.”
“That explains why it was so difficult for me to get a lock on you.”
“A lock on me?”
“I knew how you felt from knowing Rhiannon.” He hurried on before I interrupted him again. “Yes, you say you are nothing alike, and I admit that you don’t have her hard coldness. But it’s like you are parts of the same whole. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
I gave him a skeptical look.
“Think of it this way. Everyone has an aura—even many scientists accept that.”
I nodded.
“While I’m connected to the woods, I can clearly see auras. I can even search for one I know. Your aura and hers are almost identical.” He finished simply.
It made me feel sick. “Okay, so you found me because of my aura, which must also be similar to Epi’s since you locked on and called her, too. Then how did you get me here?”
“I called you through the trees. Rhiannon explained that there are folds between our worlds. She made them sound like louvers in plantation shutters. She said that once you find one of the folds it is possible to slide between the dimensions.”
“And the trees cause a fold?”
“I don’t know if they cause it, or if the fold caused them, but, yes, there is a dimensional fold between the trees. I went there, concentrated on your aura and the reason I wanted to exchange the two of you. When you touched the trees, you touched this dimension. I grabbed you and pulled.”
“You grabbed me through the trees?” No wonder it had felt like I was being pulled into the trees—I was friggin being pulled into the trees!
He nodded apologetically. “I was touching the two trees and concentrating, imagining a sort of slingshot of power that would bring you here and propel Rhiannon there. Suddenly my hands seemed to slide within their bark, and I felt your hands. So I pulled.”
“Okay, that’s how you got me here. I’m assuming that’s how I get back.” My stomach fluttered anxiously as I waited for his response.
His silence made me nauseous.
“Clint?” I prompted.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, we are damn sure going to find out,” I said as I swung my legs around and started to stand. Unexpectedly the sound of the ocean rushed in my ears, and the room began to gray dangerously as it tottered precariously on a suddenly tilted axis.
“Whoa!” His deep voice registered through the echoing noise, and I could feel his strong hands steadying me as he guided me back to the bed. “The trees will still be there in the morning.”
I looked up to see his image blur, and I snapped my eyelids shut, appalled at my body’s weakness. “I just want to go home,” I whispered.
“I know you do, Shannon my girl.” His voice was kind. “How long were you disabled when you made your first dimensional trip?”
I tried to make my amazingly tired brain concentrate. “At least a couple of days. The memory’s pretty hazy.” Then I added, “And I’m not your girl.”
He ignored my comment. “Keep your eyes closed and sleep. Give yourself time to recover. And don’t forget, you have to be strong enough to survive the return trip.”
I shuddered involuntarily. Shifting dimensions was horrible. Exhaustion nagged at me, and I realized he was right. And, my mind whispered, now I had more than myself to worry about. For an instant I felt a rush of fear. Maybe I could hurt the baby with too much of this Star Trek—like trading of worlds. Then a familiar wave of nausea passed through me, and I felt an ironic sense of relief. As long as I had the urge to puke up my insides, I had to believe my daughter was doing just fine.
I kept my eyes closed, concentrating on relaxing and breathing deeply. I tried not to flinch as a warm hand brushed an escaping curl back from my face.
“Sleep, Shannon,” he murmured.
I didn’t respond, and I heard him picking up the tea and biscuit tray. Through half-open eyes I watched him disappear back around the kitchen wall, and reemerge with a fresh cup of steaming coffee. He pulled the rocker back so that it was sitting in its original spot, close to the old-time kerosene lamp. He grimaced as he lowered himself gingerly into the chair and lit the lamp. With obvious stiffness he reached for the book that rested facedown on the table. I realized I had watched that same look of pain cross ClanFintan’s face after he had been wounded in battle, and I couldn’t help but wonder about the injury that had caused him to retire. It obviously still bothered him.
Feeling impossibly heavy, my eyelids fluttered. My last conscious image was that of the cover of the book Clint was reading. It was a collection of essays by an Oklahoma author, Connie Cronley, entitled Sometimes a Wheel Falls Off.
Boy, does it ever.
CHAPTER 3
At first sleep was a dark, beguiling mist. As I submerged myself within it, a stray Shakespearean quote drifted through my changing consciousness, O murderous slumber. Premonition teased my sleep-filled mind, but I couldn’t force myself awake, and instead I fell headlong into the arms of DreamLand—a place I usually unabashedly enjoy, even revel in. But from the first moment dream images began to form against my closed lids, I knew this experience would be different from anything I’d known before. Disjointed scenes played against a screen of night. They were ghostly, half-formed apparitions that drifted past my sleeping eyes—part centaur, part demon, part human—nothing that I recognized or could make any sense of.
My sleeping soul shivered and attempted to gain control of the visions, as I had always been able to in the past, but this time the land that was usually populated with fun and fantasy had changed. It was twisted into a land
scape of nightmares.
I knew I was sleeping, and I told myself that I could awake at any time, but this gave me little comfort as the disjointed images merged and solidified, morphing into the grotesquely familiar. Like I was watching a mad picture show at the Hotel California, I saw a gore-filled reenactment of the final battle between Partholon and the Fomorians—only this time the scene was minus Epona’s intervention and our eventual victory. The corpses of centaurs and humans that I knew had been killed in previous battles were awakened and, zombie-like, they rose only to be slaughtered again.
Some of them only had eyes. Some of them only had fanged mouths. And some of them appeared to have been touched by a divine hand and were unbelievably beautiful. My soul recoiled from all of them.
I did not witness my own death, but I watched as first Alanna, then Carolan, Victoria and Dougal fell under the teeth and claws of the Fomorians. And still the battle raged as over and over again they were resurrected only to be slaughtered anew. Then into my range of vision swept the demon Lord of the Fomorians, Nuada. This time my husband did not vanquish him. I watched helplessly as he ruthlessly disemboweled ClanFintan.
Turning from the body of the centaur, Nuada singled out a lone warrior, one I quickly recognized as the reanimated body of Rhiannon’s father, the mirror image of my dad. With a hiss of victory, the winged creature slashed MacCallan’s pale throat, almost severing his head.
The scream that had been building within my mind seeped into my dream, and I could hear the echo of my father’s name frame the perimeters of the awful nightmare. Suddenly the dark Lord turned and searched the area around him, as if he was looking for someone. His eyes narrowed, and he rose to his full height, wings erect and distended away from his body. Blood and foam spewed from his mouth as if he vomited maggots while he screamed, “Yes, female! I have heard your call. We will never be free of one another—I will come for you wherever you are!”