Born In Water

by Sarah Hegger

  “In the daylight?” Maeve had never risked discovery like that.

  Thomas shrugged. “It is still early and there is nobody about. What I need you to see can only be glimpsed in the morning light.”

  Last time she’d gone to the village without Roderick was one time enough, and she nodded. “Roderick is with Bronwyn.”

  “She is the one?” Thomas tilted his head. “The daughter of life?”

  “We believe so.” She sent a surge through the bond for Roderick to hurry. “Alexander appears to believe so as well.”

  Thomas grew thoughtful. “That one has changed much, but he has to hide it from Rhiannon.”

  That name made her shiver. “He killed witches.”

  “No.” Thomas shook his head. “Mainly he fought coimhdeacht, and he did not use magic.”

  “Shall we give him a medal?” Maeve couldn’t keep the anger out her voice. “Because I remember clearly how he tried to have the village drown me.”

  “I have thought on that.” Thomas stroked his chin. “He had to have known Roderick would get there before you were drowned.”

  Maeve snorted, because she was certain of no such thing.

  Roderick strode into the caverns. “What is this about?”

  “Hi.” Bronwyn was almost running to keep up with him. “I came along for the ride.”

  Maeve didn’t bother to ask. When Bronwyn made statements like coming along for a ride, it sounded nonsensical at first, and then the meaning became clear in context.

  “Brother.” Thomas greeted him with a raised hand. “Maeve is needed on the green.”

  “No.” Roderick folded his arms.

  “Way to go on the seeking consensus thing, big guy.” Bronwyn slapped Roderick on the shoulder.

  Bronwyn wasn’t interested in Roderick that way. Maeve reminded herself one more time for luck and let it sink in. Also, Roderick may be her coimhdeacht, but she did not own him mind, body, heart and soul.

  With a chuckle, Roderick glanced at her. “Near enough you do.”

  Blast! She really needed to master the masking her thoughts thing better. She turned to Thomas. “Why do you need me to go to the green?”

  “It matters not.” Roderick thrust his chin out and scowled at Thomas. “She is not leaving Baile’s wards, and most especially not when it is light outside.”

  Thomas thrust his chin out and scowled back. “Rhiannon is not there. I would know if she were.”

  “I care not.” Roderick glared. “Last time Rhiannon was not supposed to be there either.”

  “She can’t go near the part of the green where I want Maeve to go,” Thomas said. “When you were cast into stasis, it extended Baile’s wards to that point.”

  “Still no.”

  Bronwyn was studying Thomas. “Not to be rude, but how are you even here?”

  “Magic.” He widened his eyes at her and then chuckled. “Roderick.” He jerked his chin. “He is the original coimhdeacht, and he will call more to him.”

  “More ghosts?” Bronwyn made a face. “Yay.”

  Thomas laughed, his hazel eyes crinkling at the corners. “Not all of them will be ghosts.”

  “Are you a seer now?” Roderick raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Perhaps.” Thomas shrugged. “Brother, you know I would not ask her to go to the green, and at this time, if it wasn’t important.”

  Roderick frowned and mulled this over. “What is there that is so important?”

  “You need to see it.” Thomas looked serious. “Maeve needs to see this.”

  Shaking his head, Roderick said, “The passage may not be safe.”

  “What passage?” Bronwyn looked from Roderick to Thomas, her eyes alight with interest.

  “It’s safe, as you already know because you came that way on first waking,” Thomas said.

  Bronwyn gasped. “No! Are you guys talking about a secret passage?”

  “Not as secret as I would like.” Roderick gave her a repressive stare.

  Clearly Bronwyn had recovered from her awe of him because she grinned back. “That is so cool.”

  “A secret passage impresses you?” Thomas smirked. “Goddess Pool, the sigils, the magic, Baile being sentient, even me—these things you take in your stride. But a secret passage makes you smile like a delighted child.”

  Shrugging, Bronwyn grinned wider. “This is very Hogwarts.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Bronwyn used her cellphone to light the way. The gloomy passage was tall enough for Roderick not to have to bend, but narrow. It smelled stale, but there were no signs of damp, and thankfully, no spiders. Her imagination kept leaping to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The scene where he follows a secret passage infested with bugs. And really, what had Spielberg been thinking? Actually, her last two weeks could very well be part of a Spielberg movie.

  Flitting along ahead of them and not needing any light, Thomas led the way. He hadn’t said anything since he’d muttered some sort of spell, and a hole in the rock wall had opened. It was taking more and more to shock her since her arrival in England. Secret passages appearing in walls—no problem!

  They followed the passage through a number of twists and turns until it ended in more rock. Again, Thomas muttered his spell and fetid air flooded in.

  Bronwyn keep her breathing shallow as she stepped into a space even darker than the passage. It smelled of rot and mildew. Things with claws that scrabbled along the floor retreated as they advanced. She for damn sure wasn’t going to investigate.

  “These are the crypts beneath the church,” Thomas said. “In the nineteen sixties they tried to turn this into a restaurant and gift shop, but I persuaded them not to.”

  “What did you do?” For all his charm and easy smiles, Thomas had a steel core running through him that might make him a formidable enemy.

  His smile was feral. “I made them run away.”

  “You went full ghost, didn’t you?” Bronwyn could only imagine how wicked he could be.

  Thomas’s grin widened. “There are few enough advantages to this state of being.”

  “It stinks in here, and it never used to,” Maeve said, scrutinizing where she put her feet.

  Bronwyn didn’t blame her. The floor was suspiciously slippery and squishy underfoot.

  “With Baile being silent for so long, the crypts have suffered from her loss.” Thomas led them to a small door at one end of the crypt. Being underground messed with Bronwyn’s sense of direction, but she suspected they were on the western side of the church.

  Roderick stepped in front of the door and motioned her and Maeve back. “I go first.”

  “Fine with me.” If he wanted to charge around being brave, she wasn’t planning to stop him. He made a far better hero than her anyway.

  Opening the door, Roderick paused and drew his sword.

  Light flooded into the dark space.

  Bronwyn had no idea where the sword had come from. It looked like he’d produced the sword from thin air.

  Winking at her, Thomas whispered, “It’s a kind of magic.”

  She made a face at him. Apparently ghosts could watch movies.

  Roderick stepped into the stairwell beyond the door and looked around. He stood a moment, poised and alert, and then glanced at them. “Come.”

  He took Maeve’s elbow and pointed. “The stairs are slippery; be careful.”

  Even though Maeve and Roderick weren’t lovers, what they had was what others craved, the intimacy of knowing each other so well, the deep caring and sense of connection. And may her feminist heart forgive her, but the way Roderick looked after Maeve and protected her made Bronwyn long to be that important to someone.

  “It’s a grand thing.” Thomas smiled at her, his face wistful. “I didn’t understand until Lavina bonded me how it would enrich my life.”

  “You must miss her.”

  Thomas lost his habitual cocky expression. “Like a piece of my soul.”

  Roderick reached the top of t
he stairs and peered into the churchyard.

  Over the morning chirp and chatter of birds, Bronwyn strained to hear if anything or anyone else was about.

  “Come.” Roderick motioned them up and into the churchyard.

  Strengthening sunlight striped across the gravestones littering the small churchyard. Some gravestones still stood proud and tall, others leaned like drunken frat boys, and the older ones were worn by time into stubs. Thick grass grew up and around the stones, the last of the daffodil stalks almost bent over double amidst the grass.

  The tense silence was getting to Bronwyn. “Sneaking around a graveyard in broad daylight, what could go wrong?”

  Thomas chuckled. “I like you, Blessed.”

  “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

  Roderick glared at them over his shoulder.

  Maeve stopped and looked at Roderick.

  Standing statue still, Roderick stood beside his former plinth and studied the silent churchyard.

  “Why are we stopping?” Bronwyn sidled closer to Thomas.

  “The wards.” Thomas pointed to a spot in front of the empty plinth. “That’s where they end. Once we step beyond them, we no longer have Baile’s protection.”

  “Oh.” She had felt that strange feathers-sliding-over-skin sensation of the wards when she’d approached the caverns alone from the beach, and again the day she and Niamh had snuck out to Tesco.

  The green was still empty, and nobody was moving about its perimeter, but the villagers would be stirring and ready to be out and about. Still, they waited, all gazes locked on Roderick and waiting for his okay. The longer they hesitated, the more chance someone would come along.

  Finally, with Bronwyn toeing the edge of screaming point, Roderick nodded, and he and Maeve moved forward.

  Thomas stopped at the wards and shrugged. “I can go no further. I’m tethered to Baile.”

  “Why are we here?” Roderick looked tense and unhappy.

  “Wait.” Thomas’s voice grew raspy. “The sun strikes the green just right and they’ll come for the spirit walker.”

  Bronwyn looked around them. “Who?”

  “Lavina.” The way Thomas said her name was loaded with pain so longstanding and deep that, like wood, it had petrified.

  Maeve frowned and tilted her head, as if listening to something.

  “What is it?” Roderick drew closer to her. “Maeve?”

  A strangled gasp came out of Maeve, and her spine snapped straight. “No.” She covered her mouth with both hands. “Oh, no, no, no.”

  “Maeve?” Roderick reached for her.

  She pushed his hands away. “No-o-o!” She crumpled from within, hugging her torso. “They’re still here.”

  Anguish creasing his features, Thomas watched Maeve.

  Roderick glanced from Maeve to Thomas and looked like he wanted to kill whatever was hurting Maeve but had no idea what that was.

  At first, Bronwyn thought she was imaging the shapes flitting around Maeve. They didn’t look like much of anything, just disembodied body parts that appeared as they crossed the slanting sunbeams and disappeared again as they passed beyond.

  Maeve turned to Thomas, her eyes like bruises in her face. “They are trapped here.”

  “Yes.” Thomas stared at the shapes around Maeve. “The blood magic they performed to put you in stasis severed them from Goddess.”

  “The final casting?” Roderick looked at Thomas. “Those witches are trapped here?”

  “Yes.” Maeve walked further into the green, following the flitting shapes. Tears streamed down her face. “Roderick, they’re trapped, and they’re hurting. They can’t move on, and they can’t leave this plane. Their souls are cut from the cycle of birth and rebirth.”

  Striding forward, Roderick took her by the shoulders. “This is not your fault, Maeve. You didn’t choose this for yourself. When they cast that spell, they knew what they were doing.”

  “No, they didn’t.” Thomas’s anger was all the more potent for its unexpectedness. If he could have crossed the wards, he might have attacked Roderick. “How can you stand there and say that as if anything about that sodding day was thought out?” He gripped his nape. “Everything was insane, a total panic, and Lavina and Colleen did what the spirits of the first three told them to do. They did as they were bid, but they wouldn’t have wanted this.”

  “Blessed.” Roderick followed Maeve across the green. “You stray from the wards.”

  “They need me, and I cannot fail them.” Maeve stared at the ghostly witches. “That day they gave their all for me. They gave their very souls.”

  There was a lot about that day Bronwyn still didn’t understand, but now was not the time to ask. She moved to Maeve’s side and put her arm about her shoulders. “You’ll help them, Maeve. We’ll find a way.”

  Growing more agitated, the wispy shapes around Maeve flitted this way and that.

  “They severed themselves from Goddess so we could live and reach this time.” Maeve reached for the trapped witches. “They are begging me to free them.”

  “You will free them.” Bronwyn didn’t know how, but she refused to believe these women who had made the ultimate sacrifice deserved this fate.

  “You have to free them,” Thomas said. “I can still feel echoes of Lavina’s pain, and no soul should be allowed to exist like that for eternity.” He looked at Bronwyn. “That is the true meaning of hell, having your soul forever cut off from the source of life, trapped in the moment of your death for eternity.”

  The healer in Bronwyn rose to the surface as she turned to Maeve. “You can do it. I bet nobody had survived all those hundreds of years as a statue before either. Compared to that, anything looks possible.”

  “I want that to be true more than I can say.” Maeve shook her head, then drew in a deep breath and said, “But you are right this is a new time with new rules and new possibilities. Once I have my power again, if there is a way I can release them and return them to Goddess, I will do it.”

  Bronwyn gave Maeve a squeeze. “They did the blood magic to save the cré-witches? That has to count for something, right?”

  Roderick shook his head. “Not necessarily. Cré-witches are forbidden from using their magic to take life or harm, even to protect themselves. For this reason, the coimhdeacht were called. Even when her life is in danger, a witch may not use her magic for harm.” He grimaced. “And they used blood magic, the magic of death, to send Maeve and me into stasis. They took their own lives, and it matters not why they did it; it matters only that they did it.”

  “I will free them.” Her face fierce in her determination, Maeve turned to Thomas. “I will free Lavina.”

  Thomas bowed his head to her. “My thanks, spirit walker. My Blessed has need of you.”

  A weird smell made Bronwyn shudder. Coppery and dark, it smelled like rotting corpses. “What stinks like that?”

  Roderick tensed. “Get behind the wards.”

  A knockout blonde stepped out from behind a tree. “Oops.” She giggled. “I guess hiding has become pointless.”

  “Edana.” Maeve gasped.

  Roderick lunged for Maeve.

  “Hello, Roderick.” Edana smiled at him, coy as a girl on her first date. “You are looking as fine as ever.”

  Grabbing Maeve by the waist, Roderick propelled her across the wards, turned and ran for Bronwyn.

  She had no idea what this was about, but she trusted Roderick. Bronwyn ran toward him, only to be stopped short as something grabbed her hair and yanked her back.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” A woman spoke from behind her. She tightened her grip on Bronwyn’s hair making her roots scream in protest. “We’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get our hands on you, sweeting.”

  “Fiona.” Roderick snarled and raised his sword. “Get away from her.”

  “I would.” Fiona laughed and pressed something cold and hard against Bronwyn’s temple. “But she really is too important, and we can’t let y
ou have her.”

  “Roderick!” Thomas thrust out his hand. “Stop! That’s a gun.”

  A gun! Someone had a gun to her head. Bronwyn fought the rising tide of panic. Someone had a fucking gun to her head.

  Roderick hesitated and glanced at Thomas.

  “The gun can kill her before you can reach her.” Thomas shook his head. “Your sword is useless against it.”

  Edana put her hands on her hips and giggled. “Poor darling. You really are quite out of date, aren’t you?” The look she gave Roderick was pure carnal lust. “I see you have made some concessions to this time.”

  “Edana. How are you alive?” Maeve glared at Edana with more venom than Bronwyn would have thought she possessed. “My one comfort was knowing you’d died.”

  “Sorry.” Edana shrugged and indicated Fiona. “But Fiona and I made a deal with our lady, and here we are.”

  “Fiona?” Her brain was slow in getting there, but Bronwyn put the pieces together. “As in the old coven leader.”

  “One and the same, sweet cheeks.” The gun pressed into her temple. “And Rhiannon is most eager to see you.”

  Face intent and deadly, Roderick stepped closer.

  Fiona yanked Bronwyn’s head back. The cold click of the hammer cocking seemed impossibly loud. “I will kill her. Rhiannon would prefer her alive, but between dead and hiding in Baile, she’ll take dead.”

  His face hard as steel, Roderick said, “You’re lying. Bronwyn is no use to her dead.”

  “Perhaps you’re right.” Fiona laughed. “But are you going to risk it?”

  “Roderick.” Maeve grabbed his arm. “You can’t let them take her.”

  “He can’t stop us.” Fiona dragged her back.

  Bronwyn’s scalp burned from the tension on her hair.

  Roderick moved in a blur of motion, coming for Fiona.

  Edana pulled out a gun and shot.

  The bullet slammed into Roderick and stopped his forward momentum. Blood bloomed across his chest.

  Maeve screamed.

  Roderick surged forward again.