“No deals. The blood must be a gift or it won’t work.”
“Keep me warm tonight and maybe I’ll be feeling generous in the morning.”
I shook my head. “No deals.”
He looked to the sky. “You really aren’t going to lie with me?”
“No.”
He thought about it.
“Considering raping me? Are you that desperate?”
He jerked his head, throwing his hair out of his eyes. “I’ve never forced a woman. I don’t have to. They flock to me.”
Oi. “So nice to know you’re a gentleman.”
“Why would I give you my blood? What’s in it for me?”
“Nothing. Except maybe knowing you’ve done a good deed. You told me you were a hero. Do something heroic.”
He walked to the fire and sat. “You’re thinking Christian hero, dove. And I’m not a Christian.”
A cold breeze wrinkled the lake. I hugged myself. I wanted to ask him about Julie and about other things, but information from him couldn’t be trusted. Get the blood, get out. “Just out of curiosity, what is it about me that makes you think I’m dovelike?”
“I bet you coo in bed.” His black eyes shone, reflecting the flames of the fire. “Come sit next to me.”
“No funny business?”
“I make no promises.”
What choice did I have? I came and sat next to him, basking in the warmth of the fire.
He lay back, his head resting on his arm bent at the elbow. He was muscled like a martial artist or a soldier accustomed to running: lean and hard. And he smelled…he smelled like a man, the way young fit men sometimes smell of sweat and locker room and sun.
Somewhere far an owl hooted and her cry lingered over the pitch-black water. “What is this place?”
“Morrigan’s refuge. It’s her home.”
“She’s here?”
He nodded. “Just not watching at the moment. She sleeps.”
“Does Morrigan ever come down to Earth?”
“Why won’t you sleep with me? Afraid of your Rambo boyfriend?”
“Rambo is a character in a story. Not real. You didn’t answer my question.”
He put his arm around me. “Kiss me and I promise I’ll talk.”
I took his arm off of me. “I don’t think so. That would be a slippery slope.”
His hand stroked my arm. “Ahhh, so you want me?”
“Maybe a little bit.”
He smiled.
“I’m still not sleeping with you.”
“Why not?”
I thought of Saiman dancing in the snow. “I have a friend who can change his shape. Imagine any body and he can transform into it. He’s invited me into his bed.”
He frowned. “Can he do a girl?”
“Yes.”
“I might like to watch that.”
Men were still men, even if they lived in the mist.
Bran sat up, pulled the carcass off the fire, and stuck the spit into the ground. A knife flashed and he offered me a half-charred leg. “Here. Might as well feed you since you’re telling me a story. Don’t want to be inhospitable.”
“Thanks.” I pulled a shred of meat off the legs and chewed. Sweet aftertaste. Rabbit.
“So what is it with you? Saving yourself for marriage?”
I guffawed. “Too late for that.”
“Why won’t you play nice with your friend then? Seems to me, the man’s working pretty hard. How long has he been after you?”
“About a year. He just keeps switching bodies like they were outfits, but no matter what body he wears, I know it’s him.”
“Don’t like him that much, yeh?”
I shrugged. “He doesn’t do anything for me. There were times when he came at me with something that might have been fun, if it weren’t him. But in the end, I always remember that he isn’t interested in me. If I was thrilled, he wouldn’t be happy with me; if I was on the verge of suicide, he wouldn’t care. I might as well sleep with a blow-up doll. He’s only interested because I said no the first time.”
“That’s why all men are interested.”
“True, but with him it ends with my body. Normal men eventually look for companionship.”
He shook his head. “No. Women look for that. Men look for bedsport.”
I smiled. “If it were so, why did you invite me to sit by you?”
“I figure I’ll change your mind.”
“You won’t.”
“So you say.”
“When was the last time you had a dinner like this with another person?”
He shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“So you just eat by yourself? All alone?”
“What’s it to you?” His voice cut with a hostile edge.
“Nothing, just curious.”
He poked at the coals with a long stick.
I finished my meat and lay on my back, stretching my feet to the fire. It’d been a long day. I lost Julie and I still had no clue where her mom had gone. At least Andrea didn’t die.
I became aware of Bran watching me. Our stares connected and he went down for a kiss, but I put my hand onto his lips. “I don’t want to headbutt you a third time. Trust me, if I change my mind, you’ll be the first to know.”
He sat up, picked up a twig and snapped small pieces off of it, throwing them into the fire one by one. “I don’t understand you. I used to be good at this. Good at women. Now…You have a forward manner about you.”
I frowned. “I don’t think I’m that forward.”
“You are. Most women are now. Used to be that if a woman sat next to you like this and you fed her, it was understood she would lie on her back for you. Otherwise, why bother? Women now, they are brazen. Forward. They will sit there and they wear tight clothes, but they won’t sleep with you. They want to talk. What is there to talk about?”
I sat up and hugged my knees. “Bran, I don’t do anything for you, do I? Kind of like my friend doesn’t do anything for me.”
He stared. “Why would you think that?”
“A feeling I get. Like you’re trying to get into my pants because I’m a woman and you don’t know what else to do with me. You don’t think I’m all that.”
He sighed and looked at me. Really looked at me. “No,” he said. “I don’t. Don’t get me wrong, you’ve got a nice body and all. I wouldn’t turn you down if you wanted to spread your legs, but yeah I’ve bedded better.”
I nodded. “I thought so.”
“What gave me away?”
“The kiss.”
He reared back. “I kiss like a madman!”
“It was a kiss of a frustrated man with injured pride. There was no fire in it.” I handed him another twig. “Just talk to me. Pretend I’m a traveler who stopped by your fire. I bet you don’t get many visitors. You stay in the mist all the time?”
“I come out to play during the flares.” He encompassed the lake and forest with a wide wave of his hand. “I fish, I hunt. Never run out of game. It’s the good life.”
“So you don’t get to enter the real world unless the flare is up?”
“Yeah.”
“But the flare only comes every seven years or so. In between years, you’re here, by yourself, with no company?”
He whistled. A shaggy shape trotted from the dark and flopped at his feet. A huge, black dog. “Got Conri here.”
The dog raised his paws into the air, turning to get his belly scratched. Bran obliged. “If I get bored, I sleep. For years sometimes, until she wakes me up.”
I offered my bone to the dog. He took it out of my hands very gently and settled to gnaw it at my feet. I thought I was alone. At least I could go out and talk to other people. “You must’ve been here awhile, but you speak with no accent.”
“The Gift of Gab. One of three gifts she gave me. Gift of Gab: I speak any language I wish. Gift of Health: my wounds are healed fast. And Gift of Aim: I hit what I see. The fourth gift is my own. I was born with
it.”
“What is it?”
“Admit it was the best kiss you’ve ever had and I’ll tell you.”
“Sorry, I can think of a couple better.” Or at least one…
“Then why do I waste time with you?”
I shook my head. He wasn’t a real person. Just a shadow of one with no memories, no ties, nothing but a sex drive, good aim, and wild eyes.
“Where are you from?”
He shrugged. “Don’t remember.”
“Okay, when are you from? How long have you been here?”
“I don’t remember.”
I grappled for something, some sort of marker that any person would know. “What’s your mother’s name?”
“I don’t remember.”
I looked at the stars. This mission was doomed to failure from the start. Who was I kidding?
“Blathin,” he said. “Her name was Blathin.”
He grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. “Come! I’m going to show you something.”
We ran along the edge of the lake into the trees. Ahead a wooden cabin rose, nestled among the greenery, connected to the lake by a long dock. Bran dragged me inside.
A fire burned in the fireplace. To the right a simple bed stood against the wall, to the left a row of chests sat. Carvings decorated the walls: a tree, runes, and warriors. Many, many fighters twisted by the battle spasm and carved with exquisite detail. Under them on the table lay a scroll, depicting a man with a long staff wearing a monk’s cassock. He sat on a rock. Beside him mermaids played in sea waves. The Shepherd…
Bran grabbed my hand, pulled me to a chest, and swung the heavy lid open. A white cloth covered the contents. He jerked it aside. Human heads filled the chest.
“Oh God.”
He scooped a mummified head from the chest by a scalp lock and thrust it at me. “All of them are mine.”
This was officially the weirdest version of “come down to my place and I’ll show you some etchings” I’ve ever been hit with.
He threw open another chest. I saw a World War I Kaiser helm next to a black motorcycle helmet splashed with painted flames. How old was he, exactly?
The third chest: blades. Turkish yataghan, a katana, a marine officer’s saber with Semper Fi engraved in Old English…
“That’s nothing!” He tossed the head into the chest, snatched my hand, and pulled me to the back door. It flew open from his kick and he drew me onto the porch.
Behind the house rose a spire of skulls. Taller than me, bleached white by the elements, it bristled with spears thrust through the bone. “See!” He waved his arms, triumphant. “There is more to me. Nobody has that many! My father would shit himself if he saw this!”
No kidding.
“I’m a great warrior. A hero. Each one of those was a fight I won.” His face shone with pride. “You’re a warrior. You understand, yes?”
So many lives…The pile of skulls towered above me. “How old are you?” I whispered.
He leaped over the rail, took a skull from the pile, and put it in front of me. “My first.”
The skull wore a Roman helmet.
I sat down. It was too much to take.
He came to sit next to me. We looked at the skulls. Bran hung his head.
I touched his forearm. “What is it?”
“Nobody will ever know. Nobody but you has seen this. Nobody will ever know what I’ve accomplished. When I finally die, the only one who’ll remember me and all this will be Morrigan.”
“She’s not the sentimental sort?” I guessed.
He shook his head. “It was a fool’s bargain we made. I saved her bird, and she told me to choose my reward.”
“What did you ask for?”
“Some would’ve asked for long life, strong sons. I asked to be a hero. To always have plenty to drink, plenty to fight, plenty of women.”
The skulls glared at us with empty sockets in eerie silence.
“If you asked for strong sons, she would’ve arranged for them to eventually kill you,” I said. “You can’t win.”
“Small solace.”
“Yeah.
I touched the Roman helmet. The metal felt ice-cold under my fingers. “The magic wasn’t in the world when they were around.”
“It was dying,” he said. “There was just a trickle left. I slept through its death. When I awoke and fell through the mist, the world was on fire.”
The first flare…So many people had died during that week.
“The little girl, Mouse, you called her…I’m trying to protect her and to find her mother. The witches said they would help me but their Oracle needs your blood to heal one of them. It would be a very good thing for her to survive. She means much to many people.”
He took the skull away from me and brought it to his face, eyes to eye sockets, teeth to teeth. “What do I care?”
“The Witch Oracle lives through the ages, its members reborn, again and again. If you were to give them your blood, the covens would cherish your memory. Always. You would endure. You would be a hero and you would be known.”
He turned to me, his eyes bottomless.
“It would cost you nothing. It would mean everything.”
CHAPTER 22
THE MIST VANISHED AND BRAN AND I POPPED out onto the stone floor of the Oracle’s dome. Teleportation was overrated. Sure it got you where you needed to go fast, but hanging weightless in the mist gave me a nasty case of vertigo. On top of that, I had to cling tenaciously to Bran to be teleported, and he had trouble keeping his hands to himself.
Torches and feylanterns lit the dome. I hadn’t expected anyone to be here but despite the late hour, the three witches of the Oracle waited on the platform, alert and awake. They didn’t even blink, when we materialized in the middle of the floor. Apparently, we were expected.
To the left of the Oracle stood four other witches, two about my age and two older. Some of them wore the distinct blue tattoos that matched the swirls on Bran’s chest. Witches from Morrigan’s covens?
Bran bent over and sneezed. “I hate this fucking turtle.” He raised his head and grinned at the group on the side. “Ladies.”
The two younger witches went from bewildered to flirtatious in the blink of an eye.
I walked up to the platform and handed the still warm tube to the mother-witch. She took it. “He gives the blood in good faith,” I said. “He doesn’t expect anything. But I hope the memory of his gift will endure.”
The Oracle rose. As one, the three witches bowed.
“See?” Bran jerked his thumb at the three women. “That’s how a woman should treat a man. Next time you see me, I want you to do just like them.”
“Hell will freeze over first,” I told him.
The witches sank to their seats.
“We had a bargain,” I said.
The crone glared at me. “A bargain with the likes of you means nothing.”
“This might be a hunch, but I think you don’t like me,” I told her.
Her fingers curled into claws on the armrests of her chair.
“Maria,” the youngest Oracle whispered. “Violence isn’t necessary. The Oracle never goes back on its word.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
She pointed to the four witches on the side. “They speak for the senior covens of Morrigan. They are here as witnesses. Tell us what you want to know and I will open your eyes.”
“Here is what I suspect: Esmeralda wanted power and formed her coven, but she lacked education and training. The coven probably began by worshipping Morrigan, but whether by accident or on purpose, Esmeralda permitted Morfran to insert himself into their rites and take over.”
The seven witches focused on me. The atmosphere in the dome grew tense. I plowed on.
“I suspect that Morrigan has the ability to manifest during the flare, when the magic is at its deepest. She does it by using a magic cauldron. Morfran wanted life just as much and either taught Esmeralda how to duplicate the cauldro
n or had her steal the cauldron that had been in the possession of legitimate Morrigan covens.”
Either I had hit the nail on the head or the four representatives of Morrigan got a simultaneous case of serious constipation, because their faces turned red and strained.
“I think that Morfran is in cahoots with the Fomorians, but I don’t know why. I need to know what happened after the rite was performed, what happened to Julie’s mother, and what’s the significance of the necklace the little shaman boy named Red carried.”
“Where is the necklace?” Bran suddenly came to life.
“I’m not telling you.”
He spread his arms. “Why not? I’m the good guy here!”
“I don’t know that. It’s a trust issue. Until somebody explains this mess to me, nobody gets the necklace.”
“I’ll explain.” The middle witch of the Oracle leaned back. Above her, the mural shifted. The black lines crawled. The outlines of Hekate grew faint while the cauldron before her solidified.
“Two generations ago at the start of the Shift, Morrigan entrusted her covens with a magic cauldron.”
“They did a bang-up job taking care of it,” Bran said.
The mother-witch pinned him down with her stare. “Hush.”
“We didn’t know,” one of Morrigan’s witches said. “And she hasn’t spoken to us since the last flare.”
The middle witch silenced her with a wave of her hand. “Now then, the cauldron is her way into our world. Its magic only manifests during a flare. Morfran wanted the cauldron so that he too could experience life. He made a deal with Morrigan’s enemies, the Fomorians, the sea-demons. In exchange for their help, he would release them, through the cauldron, from the Otherworld. They’re not gods. They need little magic to exist here. They will become his first worshippers in this world.”
“But I killed at least ten of them. How many came through?”
“You don’t kill them,” Bran said. “They don’t stay dead unless I leave one of my shafts in them. As long as the cauldron feeds on the magic of the flare, they continue to return to life. The closer they are to the cauldron, the harder it is to disable them.”
Great. Fantastic. “Couldn’t you have told me this sooner?”
“It’s a trust issue,” he told me, mimicking my voice. I felt like smacking him.
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