Blood War Read online

  “Oh. Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t,” he says, shrugging. “I just knew to be here. I listened, you see. And I came. An obair, you see. I am your ferryman for this next short leg of your journey, then I will be gone again.”

  He gestures for me to come, then starts to walk. “Right this way,” he says.

  I follow him, scared to ask my next question.

  “You mentioned my father. Where is my father?”

  “I don’t know,” he says.

  “Is he all right?”

  “I don’t know,” he says.

  He exits the building and we emerge into the gray-white, moisture-dense light of the parking lot around Shannon Airport. Mr. Blake walks with some bounce and looks up to the sky as he goes, like he has just stepped into glorious sunshine. An almost imperceptible rain starts.

  “Soft day,” Mr. Blake says happily.

  I’m thinking Mr. Blake has lots of soft days. Whatever. “If you don’t know where or how my father is…how do you know where to take me from here?”

  He turns halfway toward me while still bouncing merrily along in the opposite direction.

  “You traveled a fair few miles farther than myself,” he says. “How did you know to be here?”

  Right.

  Sitting in the back—he insists I sit in the back—of Mr. Blake’s comfortable brown Mercedes, I try to get a little more grounded.

  “Galway?”

  “Yes, sir, Galway. You will like it. Lovely medieval port, but bang up-to-the-minute modern and cosmopolitan as well. Sure, it’s bags of fun.”

  “Great,” I say, thinking that what I was looking for was more explanation and less tourist bureau. “But, Mr. Blake, why Galway? What is there for me?”

  “I don’t know,” he says.

  Of course he doesn’t. I sit back and watch Ireland go by.

  It does not go by at a particularly fast pace, partly because I am so anxious to get to Galway and whatever it holds that any speed would be too agonizingly slow, and partly because the road, which is the primary route between one of the country’s major airports and one of its largest cities—

  “Third largest,” Mr. Blake says helpfully.

  “Sorry,” I say, “was I thinking out loud?”

  “No,” he says.

  “Ah. Right,” I say, realizing I am back in the company of the unprivate thought. It is as unsettling now as it has always been—with my father, with the coven—that my fellow witches can read my mind.

  “Would you like me to not be doing that?”

  “Reading my thoughts, you mean?”

  “Well, ’tisn’t exactly reading. But I could stop listening, if you prefer.”

  “If you don’t mind, for the time being anyway.”

  “Not a’tall,” he says, and apparently checks back out.

  The road weaves in and out of seemingly every little gray village between the two points. And every time we slow down—in front of the shops featuring mostly chocolate and cigarettes and the Irish Times, and the pubs that pop up unbelievably often, and the fish-and-chips establishments—people gawk at us. Not every person, mind, but maybe one in three. They stop, especially the young ones, as if there is a passing dignitary or sportsman in the car. In the backseat of the car, precisely.

  All the gawking people, with their expectant, apprehensive faces. Their shimmery, magical, witch faces.

  I am relieved, oddly enough, to see them. I am shaken also to see them. I feel somewhat out of my depth. If they are my people, this is still their place.

  “Mr. Blake—”

  “Yes, sir, I can drive faster if you prefer.”

  “I prefer.”

  I cannot believe what I see. If it is true, then this must be the witch capital of the world. I see them now, even more clearly than I ever saw the witches at my school. I see them when we whiz through the small towns—although at this speed everyone looks a little shimmery—and I see them by the side of the road in the hinterlands, among the people driving herds of black-faced sheep alongside speeding traffic. I see them in the distance, putting stones back in place here and there, along the many miles of dry stone walls that zig and zag to separate each sloping little green field from the next.

  I see them now, as if I have been fitted with some powerful new glasses that also allow me, unfortunately, to be seen. I have to admit it worries the hell out of me—the way you get worried in a strange city when you feel like you are surrounded by unfriendly native people. I wouldn’t half mind having Mr. Blake step back into my head and reassure me somehow.

  “It’s to do with the smaller towns and countryside, Marcus,” he says. “You won’t have all that staring up in the big town. They’re much too sophisticated for that sort of carrying-on. They’ll notice you all right. But they won’t let you notice that they notice.”

  “Really?” I say, “Well, I’ll look forward to their sophistication. This stuff is giving me the creeps.”

  Mr. Blake tilts his head slightly toward the back. “Right. Well, it is the sophistication, and the fact that a lot of people…well, you’ll find that a lot of our people—especially the younger, hipper, who tend to want to reject the old ways…”

  “Please, Mr. Blake, can you get to the point?”

  “Well, a lot of folks will think this is a load of bollocks. Frankly.”

  “What is?”

  “The Blood War.”

  “Well, is it?”

  “Of course it’s not. It is all. It is everything. But you already know this. You understand the seriousness of your quest, or you wouldn’t be here.”

  Mr. Blake somehow manages to say all these things with a kind of elevation, a chipperness, that makes you almost forget the gravity of the situation. I think of the younger lot of witches I know—Eartha, Arj, Marthe. Clearly and unfortunately, they do not take their generation’s attitude.

  Maybe what sets them apart is their relationship with Spence himself. He is supposed to be some kind of leader, though he is so bookish, so geeky and unintimidating, he doesn’t seem the type. Still, I am the first to understand that looks can be deceiving. Even when you know to be on your guard—as has been the case with his daughter, Eartha.

  Even now I feel the blood rush to my face at the thought of Eartha, and I do not know whether it is all hatred that causes it. Time and again, she has drawn me close to her, though I have known better. Time and again, she’s slithered into my dreams, my nightmares, my bedroom….

  Luckily, Mr. Blake manages to zip us along at a nice enough pace that we are soon pulling into the town of Galway, in the county of Galway.

  I look all around as we tool our way through what turns out to be not a very large place. There is a mix of familiar American fast-food joints, record and clothes shops, slapped right up against buildings that are older than my whole country. As expected, I see people shimmering, loads and loads of people, radioactive compared to how the witches seemed in Blackwater.

  But for the most part, they pay us no attention.

  We pull up in front of a grand old joint, the Great Southern Hotel, banged right up against the train station. It’s a big stone square, five stories high (which around here makes it a skyscraper) and covering most of the block.

  “This is it, then?”

  “’Tis.”

  “Looks pretty nice.”

  “You can afford it.”

  “Yes, I guess I can. For a couple of nights anyway.”

  Mr. Blake takes my bag again and sees me into the lobby and to the registration desk. I feel awkward and start fumbling for some of the many dirty dollars in my pocket.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I haven’t had a chance to exchange my money yet, but—”

  “Out of the question,” he says, backing away from me, smiling just the way he has smiled all along.

  “I must owe you something….”

  “Not a’tall,” he insists, and finally the smile subsides, a look of fatherly worry replacing it. “Just take care, Marcus Aurelius. Wel
come, fáilte. But remember, this is not the place you left behind. Don’t be confused.”

  I wish I could say I won’t be. But I am sure I will be very confused. I am, however, forewarned.

  He somehow manages to smoothly walk backwards through the hotel’s revolving front door, his warm smile returning at the last moment and giving my spine a snapping like a bullwhip.

  Don’t be confused, he tells me. Not bloody likely.

  After checking in, I decline any help with my one measly bag and trundle myself up to the top-floor room they’ve assigned me. By the time I am standing, weaving, in front of my door, I realize that I am again, or still, totally exhausted. I feel I will be this way forever.

  I open the door, walk through, and fall straight over on the bed.

  Maybe I am on my own. Maybe I am not. Maybe I am already trapped, or on my way there. Maybe I am fated by Cernunnos to win. Or to lose.

  Maybe time is running thin. But for now, I lie here on the bed and wait for a sign.

  What else can I do?

  CHAPTER 3

  When I wake I am still facedown on the bed, and I can feel that the spread has dug a pattern of wrinkles into my weary face.

  I go slowly to the window and look out over the now darkening town of Galway.

  Out to my left, I see a maze of streets, medieval in their twisty layout the way they curve and then pike and then turn back on themselves. There is the thin rocket of a spire of an ancient church rising above the tangle, and the slightly smaller peak of another, both in dark, nearly burnt stone. Farther out in the same direction, the streets open up to a waterfront, a working harbor, a beach, and a great wide bay. In the distance a good-sized island clutches the last of the evening light.

  Off to my right there is a lot less of note. It is flat, for the most part, with the occasional bump of a hillock, and section after section of big housing developments, but nothing else much.

  Finally, right down the dead-center heart of the town, splitting it almost perfectly in half, is one of the fastest-moving rivers I have ever seen. It’s brown and busy, and it has tiny little whitecaps hopping up like salmon all over it. Mr. Blake mentioned it in the car, I remember. The River Corrib.

  Now I search the view for something else and, not believing I do not see it, I search again and again.

  I get a chill.

  There are no woods in sight. Barely a tree, even. This, this place is supposed to be the source and origin of my power, my father’s power, our god Cernunnos’s power. The woods in Port Caledonia are where I got my first stirrings of magic and where that magic grew. Come to think of it, I don’t believe I have ever been more than a few miles from any woods.

  A thought occurs to me too, as I take this all in. I don’t even hear an obair now, and I believe this is why. I am lost, untethered without the woods.

  With a movement that’s pure reflex, I take my half bottle of Irish Mist out of my bag. Then I plunk back down on the bed, and switch on the television to a soccer game.

  I take one sip, one long, long, long sip.

  And suddenly I have a vision.

  It is a very clear vision of myself, right now.

  “I have come all this way,” I say, standing, checking myself in the mirror, “to sit in an Irish hotel, to sleep, drink straight from the bottle, and watch soccer?” I glance toward the TV again, then back to the mirror. “Soccer,” I say. I drop the bottle on the floor.

  But what the hell am I supposed to do? Somebody, something, should be guiding me here. I am waiting for clues, but waiting feels like a luxury.

  I grab my bag, check to see what I have packed to protect me from the Irish October evening.

  A denim jacket.

  I throw it on and get out.

  I am taken completely by surprise by the bone-depth of the raw Galway chill, and I wish I still had my bottle. It isn’t frigid the way some winters are back home, but it is a different, insidious, relentless thing that doesn’t announce itself until you are outside for a while and trapped in its gnarly fingers.

  I think of recent days in Blackwater. Sweating. Again, I cannot believe how far away I am. How far, how quick.

  So I march steadily, with a chilly sense of purpose but without any direction to speak of. I cross the green of the square, Eyre Square it is called, right in front of my hotel, past the plaque that tells me this is one of the last spots John F. Kennedy visited before dying. I continue on through, down the center of town through Shop Street, onto Quay Street, and I realize that, as sure as salmon make their way upriver, I am making my way to the water that I saw from my window.

  I realize one other notable thing. I see not one single other person. Not a mortal. Not a witch. Not even a dog. I am chilled further, a dangerous air of anticipation sweeping over me.

  I push on. Until I am at a place, a thing called the Spanish Arch. It is a small arch as arches go, and I have no idea what makes it Spanish, but it does reside hard by the water, which, at some point I guess, flows into the Atlantic.

  Which stretches to the shores, I realize, where I came from.

  I walk out to the edge, the very edge of the stone pier, and I face home.

  I am tiny. The water, the world, everything is flowing right past me, out of Ireland, and toward North America, it seems. I actually catch myself straining, squinting, trying to catch a glimpse of whoever is watching me out there. It feels like somebody is, but maybe I am only hoping.

  “So,” I say to whoever I hope it is and isn’t, holding myself against the creeping cold. “What now, huh? What the hell now? What? Where? Why?”

  I know I have to be here, in this city, for a reason. Mr. Blake knew it too, and that goes some way in reassuring me. I am following the vaguest of diagrams—but surely I am following something. Still, it is maddening. “There is nothing here. This place is no place.”

  I want to go home.

  The wind now kicks up fiercely. It is blowing right through me, and as my hands try to warm my arms, I wonder what will warm my hands. They are stiff as coat hangers. I look at them. They are thin as coat hangers, twisted into horror-show approximations of hands.

  I edge ever closer to the lip of the quay. I stare now, straight down into the water. I stare and I stare and I stare, and I want my father; I want my mother.

  I want my liquor, is what I want.

  Next thing I know, my hand, my fist, my frozen claw is locked around the neck of a bottle.

  Irish Mist. My bottle, my half-empty bottle that I left on the hotel room floor, that I took with me across the ocean, that I took with me from…the liquor store, from unfortunate Marissa.

  I hold it up, stare at it.

  I drain it.

  I feel the liquor spread through me, down my gullet, expanding in my chest, spreading further through my grateful belly. It is as if I have drunk a quart of warm molasses, and it is clinging to the walls of me like a protective coating.

  I am immediately warmer, more settled. My senses now tune in to the world around me: now that I am not consumed with cold, I hear things, distant sounds, the faintest hint of an obair, I think. And I scent.

  I turn my nose upriver, away from the bay. And now I can hear it more clearly—even without the woods to orient and ground me—like it is calling my name, and I can smell it too. I follow.

  Walking right along the edge of the river, I head up through the deserted town—past the arch again, the big, ugly, modern hotel, and up to a bridge, the sound and spray of the spectacular, grungy river getting more intense with every step.

  I walk out to the middle of the bridge and I stare over the side, watching the angry brown water charge my way. It looks like it’s coming down just for me, rushing to me, under me, into me. The river thunders, shakes the bridge under my feet, and I close my eyes and spread my arms to take it in.

  I feel I know this place—if not this country, then this spot.

  The moisture-soaked wind is blowing mightily, right into me now. I am baptized. And frozen to the bo
ne.

  I open my eyes.

  They’re there. On the next bridge spanning the Corrib farther upriver. All of them. At least, all of them who matter, aside from Spence himself.

  Arj, Baron, Winston, Marthe. For real, in the flesh. And in the center, at the curved crest of the bridge, is Eartha. Eartha, so nearly physically identical to my love, my dead Jules. Eartha, whom I cannot seem to stay away from, whom I cannot seem to purge myself of, no matter how much horror she brings to my existence. She smiles. I ignore her.

  Eleanor. Where the hell is Eleanor?

  “Fáilte,” Arj calls out in a mock-friendly tone. The river roars, but I hear his voice as if we are chest-tochest. “Welcome. How was your flight?”

  I say nothing. Blood is surging hot through me every which way, thawing my ears and eyes, my legs and hands. I am ready. I am so ready for this.

  Then, just like that, they begin filing away, off to the left, where the bridge empties into a tangle of narrow cobbled streets. Shit.

  Instantly I move myself and am on their bridge, but they are gone and vanished.

  And someone is behind me. I whip around, elbows pulled back with my fingers facing forward, witch-style. And, seeing, I stop, stand still, lower my hands, but only slightly.

  It is Marthe. Of course. If there were one I would trust, it would be Marthe. That is why she is here. They left her behind.

  I do not trust. Must not trust.

  “It is good to see you, Marcus,” she says.

  “No it isn’t,” I growl. “And if it is, I will fix that.”

  “You will not win, Marcus. Please accept that. You do not know this place. Everything will be different here. Different in ways that will not be good for you.”

  Her manner is all gentle, understanding, and warm to me in the way that Marthe has always been warm to me, ever since the coven and I found each other. As if she cares. As if she has a genuine concern for me. All the more precious it is, here and now, with me in this cold foreign land. And so alone. All the more precious.

  All the more hateful.

  I slap her face, hard.

  “Stop it,” I shout.

  She whimpers. “Please, Marcus…”