Blood War Read online

  I hold it as long as I can, as long as my father’s body seems able to withstand it. I hold my position, with my finger jammed deep in his bony old hand, feeling gristle and bone and tissue—the everything of the physical him.

  And when it is time, an estimation based on I don’t know what, I withdraw. There is a small sucking noise; then, finally, I am out.

  My arm is covered somehow, up to the elbow in blood, as if I have been performing open-heart surgery rather than fixing a hole. And I watch with something like pride and hope as before my eyes the wound completes its healing, sealing over. Still nasty, angry, and deformed, but not hemorrhaging, at least.

  Other than that, little has changed to the naked eye. There is not much more than death in that face as I look down into it. I place the hand now, more properly, on his bony chest.

  I guess you could call it a vigil. I sit there at the entrance to the cave in the side of the cliff above the angry sea. I sit there all day, all night, all day again, and all night, anxious to leave, unable to leave.

  This has not been for nothing. This will not be for nothing. I know I was not brought to my father’s island to watch him die. I say I have been brought here for a purpose. I say he is not ready to die, even if he feels like he is. I say I know better. But truly, I do not.

  I sleep sometimes but not for any great stretches. I wake one time to find myself enveloped, all wrapped up in the protective curl of the great wolf, like a cub. It makes me nearly choke with longing for my mother. I burrow deeper into his protection as I wait helplessly to know what to do.

  From time to time, I go in to check on my father, but there is no change. Never any change.

  Until finally I wake one morning to a violent red sunrise, a madly crashing sea in my ears. My guide the seal is back—I can hear her barking outside. And I wonder if it—her being here again—is my father’s doing. If he is sending me away.

  I go back to him, check on him, and can see little or nothing different.

  I place a hand on his cool forehead. Rest my hand, hold it there, try to warm him. I will not cry. And I do not say good-bye. I will be back, if only to bury him.

  In minutes I am in my boat, crossing the choppy waters again, the boat knowing what to do as it follows the seal that knows what to do.

  It is the same journey in reverse, or at least it seems to be—the same crazy weather, the same timelessness. Galway, deserted and desolate though it was when I left it, is now inviting to me, and I am eager to arrive.

  Only our destination is not, apparently, Galway. The shore where the boat finally comes to rest looks more like the surface of the moon.

  “What is this?” I say. Receiving a verbal answer from the seal seems as likely as not at this point. She is, however, unhelpful now. She lets out a series of short, intense barks, ducks out under the waves, then pops up to give me a last parting shout before swimming away.

  Here. Why here? It is almost literally a great bald mountain of rock, limestone. I can see nothing else on the horizon. Not a green hill. Not a tree, not a pasture.

  Above all, not a forest. It is as if I am being shown emphatically that I will not find my forest anywhere around here.

  I feel utterly exposed as I start trekking over the forbidding landscape, and wish for the millionth time that I had Chuck to comfort and protect me. I walk, encountering no other life but the occasional sprouting of wildflowers from this or that fissure in the stone, for over an hour.

  It is dusk and darkening fast, and I am wondering if it may not be the coven that has steered me here, and not my father, not an obair. I feel aimless again. And lost. And overlapping all of this, I feel the grief I have carried since leaving the cave.

  When it seems too dark to walk any farther, I come to a halt and scan what is left of the horizon. And I see something out in the distance. It looks like a stone rocket. It seems to confirm my growing suspicion that I am not on Earth at all anymore.

  I reach it within minutes, overwhelmed by relief.

  It is an ancient derelict round tower, plunked like a lighthouse in the middle of Mount Barren. I have to circle it to find the entrance, and when I do I find it to be nine feet off the ground. I guess this was to keep the bad guys out, but since I am not a bad guy and since there is a decrepit wooden ladder lying on the ground below, I feel invited.

  I manage to get from ground to door by stepping lightly and balancing precariously. Once inside, I do what people do. I step in through the open doorway and call out, “Hello?”

  Which is right away so silly I allow myself my first real laugh in a long old time. And I relax, as much as I can.

  It’s a stone pencil of a building. There is an empty room on the bottom level, which is only about ten feet in diameter. I follow through a cut doorway and on up the curlicue stairway to the second level, which is the same as below, only with a rough oak sort of bed deal. The bed is covered with a mattress that is about two inches thick and has something like horsehair spilling out of its many worn patches. At four different spots the walls are cut with thin keyhole window openings.

  I follow to the third and top story to find again a stone circular emptiness. But there is one additional feature here: a wooden ladder, a bit sturdier than the one outside, leading to a square wood panel in the ceiling just about wide enough for me to squeeze through.

  I climb and, after a few hard shoves, manage to get the heavy, waterlogged panel out of the way, and then I’m up.

  I would say the view is spectacular, if it were not for the numbingly unspectacular nature of the land all around me. Bare, hard, cold, nearly white, the limestone stretches, barely undulating, for as far as I can see. It is as if the earth of Ireland—if this is still Ireland—exhausted from pumping up all that greenery everywhere else, just gave up and came to this spot to die.

  Maybe I did too. But what I feel is that I came–or was led—here to sleep. I am finding at this point that every opportunity for rest is welcome, as events have left me more drained than I have ever been in my life. One would think that acquiring magical powers would leave a person feeling energized all the time. But one would be wrong.

  I barely make it back down to the second floor. My head has barely landed on the smelly horsehair before I go under.

  Jules.

  I can’t believe it. I cannot bear it.

  Jules. I have found Jules. She has found me.

  I knew, somewhere in me, somewhere, I knew this was not the end, that Jules was not at an end.

  Jules. I have traveled half the globe, would gladly travel the other half, for this as a result.

  My god.

  “Jules.”

  “Marcus.”

  “How is this possible, Jules?” I say, grabbing her so hard I hurt her, and she groans.

  Truth is I do not care how this is possible; I almost don’t even care that I am hurting her. Because it is love, I am loving her, and I will hold her just as mightily as I possibly can. I kiss her hard, aggressively hard.

  “I don’t know,” she says, her eyes wide with the mystery of it all. But then she pushes, to get distance between us. To look at me.

  I feel conspicuous, ashamed somehow, though I haven’t done anything.

  “Marcus,” she says. “What is this? What is wrong with you? You’ve changed.”

  I frown deeply. I can feel she is right. I can feel it now in a way I could not before this moment.

  “Everything has changed, Jules…since you’ve been gone. Everything…” I can’t even begin. I shake my head.

  She seizes my face in her two hands. “It’s all right, Marcus,” she says. And she kisses me mightily.

  Passionately. It is wild now, unlike anything, unlike ever before. Jules feels stronger than me, and she presses her advantage. She rolls me over on the stiff, damp bed, and she presses her mouth deeper into mine. She tears open my shirt. I manage to free a hand and grab madly at the long, flowing, lacy top she is wearing. I am yanking at it and pulling her down on top of me.r />
  We are making love angrily, and sweetly.

  It is wonderful, the most wonderful moment ever.

  And it is wrong.

  As soon as I think it, it all comes undone.

  I scream in pain. “No, Jules,” I scream, as I feel her slipping away from me.

  “Marcus?” she says, questioning, crying, scared. “Marcus? Marcus? Marcus!”

  I am sitting up in the bed in the tower, awake. My heart is fluttering like a hummingbird on speed—from the power of the dream, I think. Only…

  “Marcus!”

  It is Eleanor.

  She is not here with me, but it is her I hear out there, calling.

  I rush to one of the keyhole windows.

  “Eleanor,” I call.

  “Marcus!” she calls back, sounding scared, worried, sad.

  I bang into the wall, and my shoulder is wracked with pain as I carom my way off of one stone surface after another, trying to feel my way down the stairs.

  I get to the bottom floor and rush out the door.

  And am nearly killed. I have forgotten about the protective elevated entrance. I thrust my foot down, catching it on the second highest rung of the ladder. It snaps in half. I continue downward, snapping another rung and then another, finally catching for good on one about halfway down. Then the whole thing lurches forward, and I am vaulted several feet into the distance and sent crashing across the ground.

  I feel as if I’ve been in a car wreck as I climb back to my feet and run through the pain to where I think I heard Eleanor’s voice.

  It is pitch-black, but I think I can sense where I’m going. I run, limp, hobbling fast as I can, and I can definitely sense something, closer and closer, before I even hear anything again. But then I do hear something.

  “Marcus?”

  “Eleanor,” I scream. “Eleanor! Where are you?”

  I follow the sound, running full out, not caring what happens, what danger there may be, if only I can reach her. I am squinting to see anything and running full speed, knowing that the landscape itself will throw up nothing more than the odd bump and thatch of wildflowers.

  And once again I am proven wrong.

  I am lucky that I stumble over one of the bumps, because as I am regaining my balance, hands outstretched before me to brace for a fall, I run right into it.

  A tree.

  I put both hands on it, then bring my nose right up to it and breathe in its familiar piney essence.

  Then I reach out and find another, then another, and I realize I have found the forest. I am shocked. Pleasantly, brilliantly shocked. I am also now perfectly fearless.

  “Marcus,” Eleanor calls from farther ahead.

  “I’m coming,” I say, and plow forward with the renewed confidence of a warrior hooking up with his army.

  I weave my way deeper and deeper into this forest like I have known it forever—this ancient Celtic woodland that is mine because I am the Prince. I am certain that it is coming now: vengeance. Sweet, blood-soaked retribution.

  I can feel it. I can hear it.

  I can smell them. I am unstoppable.

  “Eleanor,” I call once more.

  I get no response. I continue straight ahead.

  “Eleanor.”

  Nothing.

  I slow down. Then I stop.

  Dead, dead silence.

  “El—,” I start.

  From all directions at once.

  They have me. Someone has my right leg, someone else my left. Acting on human instincts I ball a fist, and I drop a thunderous right hand down on somebody’s skull, but it does little. He sways, buckles, but remains standing. Then someone has my right arm, someone else my left.

  I am thrashing, kicking and bucking like a mule with eight legs, and I don’t know where the powerfulness I felt has gone. I manage to splay my fingers, to throw someone to the ground with my magic, but someone else comes up behind my back, locks a choke hold on me, and I cannot break it. My arms are completely immobilized now, as are my legs. Someone grabs me around the middle from behind and heaves.

  I go over like a felled elk.

  I can’t see anyone. I can smell them, though.

  “Cowards,” I say. “Mice. Evil, evil, spineless vermin. God help you,” I say.

  The head closest to my ear laughs. An unmistakable, vile laugh.

  “You’d better hope I die quickly,” I say. “Because if there is any life at all in me…Baron…”

  I hear him gulp loudly, and despite all, this gives me a small fiendish delight. Baron, of all people, knows what my wrath can mean. The last time he confronted me, he almost lost his tongue.

  “What’s it going to be, Arj?” I say to his shadowy figure out there somewhere.

  “Eartha? Hello, Eartha. Nice to see you again, Eartha.” I sound choked, hysterical, but I continue. “This is lovely. You should be very proud. Are you very proud? Say something. Tell me something.”

  Eartha doesn’t answer.

  “Marthe?” I call finally. “Back in line now, Marthe? What side are you on now, Marthe?”

  Arj’s overcalm voice cuts the night air like a scythe.

  “Marthe is not on any side anymore.”

  I lose feeling all over momentarily. I lose strength. Bastards. Bastards.

  Marthe. I am so sorry. Marthe was real.

  Now there’s nothing. There is not a sound. There is in fact a vacuum of sound and of scent, the woodsiness of only a few minutes earlier strangely silent. If it were not for the legion of bodies pinning me facedown to the ground, I would think I was completely, absolutely alone.

  Except just, just then, there is a something.

  Somebody takes my left hand, flattens it out, spreads the fingers. Quickly then, I feel the sharp metal edge of something, heavy metal pressed, then pressed hard against my ring finger.

  My Prince ring finger.

  It is a chisel.

  Christ.

  It takes an instant. I hear the small economical whoosh of the heavy hammer being swung through the damp air.

  “Aaaahhhh…!”

  I hear it, can nearly see it, my scream, my voice traveling in its own small body into the sky above me, over this ancient land, out and away from what is happening here, backwards and forwards to every corner of my lineage, my mystical rage.

  Then, before I can either sink into my obscene, exquisite misery or pass out from it all, someone takes my right hand, presses it to the hard ground. Someone else helps spread the fingers.

  This will be it. They will have gained too much. I can’t let it happen.

  “Nooo,” I scream.

  I feel the chisel pressed hard against the finger.

  Then another scream. Louder than mine, louder than anyone’s anywhere, ever. A sound, a squall and a roar at once, like something between the cry of a gigantic falcon and the growl of a leopard. It tears the air, blows everything around us.

  Chaos. People are falling over me, releasing me, shouting and wailing as whatever it is—a bird, but bigger than any bird that ever existed—comes cutting. Tearing, grabbing, shrieking.

  And finally grabs me, lifts me right off the ground. Then, with three powerful strokes, we are up, out, gone. It is terrible and breathtaking and thrilling: my heart is racing so fast, I feel like I may be the one doing the flying and flapping. I am filled with joy and boundless gratitude as I am carried away. Amazingly, there is no fear. My witch sense, an obair—if it is capable of telling me anything—tells me I am safe.

  As we are rising through the air, I look up. A bright white moon is emerging from the clouds, and everything is coming to light. I can see the great feathered breast of the creature that has got me. He lowers his head, curves his neck. And my life-breath catches in my throat as he meets my gaze. With his mismatched gray-green eyes.

  My senses have not prepared me for this. I am so shocked and full of wonder that I feel I have become both of these emotions. It is overwhelming, and I turn away, disbelieving, believing.
/>   I look down and watch as the fat drops of ruby blood drip from my throbbing hand down to the wide, pale, rocky expanse of the land we have left—me and the great bird that, I know now, is somehow my father. I see the stone tower where I stayed, and I see the small bodies of my enemies sprawling like moles across the ground. I see no sign of any woodland whatsoever.

  CHAPTER 5

  “They have one ring,” he says sadly, wearily. “Everything is different now.”

  “I am sorry,” I say, but at this moment I can hardly grasp it—am too busy grasping my father’s aliveness and the shifting shapes of his features, his transformation from near-death shell to beast, to man. He has somehow transformed before my eyes, in the last minutes, from the creature that saved me to the man standing before me, without visibly changing at all—as if it is completely natural to be each one, both.

  He steps up to me now and grasps my ruined hand. He begins to burn life back into it—as if we are merely reversing the positions of healer and patient, of strong and weak, once again.

  But not quite. As he repairs me this time, I see his hands shaking; I feel them, sinewy, but without the former power.

  And something else. As his magic flows into me, as the burning sets in and penetrates, I am stoical.

  It hurts, indeed. But pain is so relative. I have learned pain, and this burning of my flesh hardly measures up.

  He is finished. I remain seated, bring the newly fixed hand up to my face. I turn it around and around, trying to come to grips with the absence, with the incompleteness of it now.

  In solidarity, my father holds up his damaged hand, his right. He extends it and offers it to me, up high. I press my sorry hand to his, and they are a perfect imperfect match.

  When we press them together, I somehow feel stronger still, healthier, warmer, fuller, more complete.

  “It was not your fault,” he says.

  I get up and walk away from him. We are in another ruin of a stone tower. There are sheep and cows grazing all over the land outside as I stare down over the parapet.