Blood War Read online

“How did you do that?” I ask. “How did you become that beast?”

  He walks up to where I am leaning out. I can hear him shuffling like an old man behind me, his feet scraping the ground.

  “To be honest, I do not know,” he says. “That, transmogrification, is a gift from the gods, rather than a skill of the individual; it comes at times of supreme need. It is a rarer-than-rare gift. It comes only to a leader—to the wearer of one of these.” He makes a fist, showing his Prince ring to me.

  Then it hits me. I become aware of the absence and consider what that third ring will mean.

  “What will it mean, now that they have the ring?”

  “That is an excellent question, Marcus. I wish I knew for certain. There is always the leader of our people, and the successor. The leader wears his Prince ring, and his King ring. The successor has the second Prince ring. That’s the way it works, but of course it’s different here. The rings are separated. Because of that there’s a scattering—of rule, power, and the magnitude of that power. The rings aren’t all, but it is a great misfortune that we have lost one.”

  I let my head drop heavily onto the stone wall. “And I gave it up to them.”

  He grabs my hair from the back of my head and pulls firmly.

  “Do not hang your head. Ever.”

  He is an old man and severely damaged. But as I look now into his famous and famously powerful mismatched eyes, I know there is more than enough reason to respect him. And to fear him still.

  “All right,” I say. “I won’t.”

  He gives my hair a small extra tug and a shove.

  “And get a haircut,” he says, like a dad.

  We walk around the top of this tower as if it were a conference room, a war room, and we were planning a corporate takeover rather than possibly the end of a centuries-old magical dynasty. Mostly he leads, walking the perimeter of the tower, taking in the air, which happens to be almost unearthly beautiful air, cool and light and just sprinkled with moisture. He walks very slowly, though, and he is visibly dragging one side of his body along.

  “I am glad, by the way,” I say. “To see you, you know.”

  “To see me not dead, you mean. Well, thank you. That is a fine sentiment toward one’s father.”

  “I mean, I didn’t know if I would…see you….”

  He waves away the subject.

  “That is past,” he says. “Your concerns are now very much present and future.”

  I know he is right. I knew it already. And now what I also fear is that he doesn’t have much of a future to be concerned with.

  “Um, well, about the future…I’d really rather, now, that you wouldn’t die.”

  “Again, I am touched. But are you saying that before, it would have been all right if I’d died?”

  I wait a polite couple of seconds.

  “Yes, once it would have been okay. But it isn’t now.”

  As if to establish his vitality, he walks a little faster.

  “At any rate, son, we have work to do, and we have to do it at a rapid pace. They have a ring. They have already grown in strength. We are very much playing on their grounds now. So you must pay attention. You must listen, you must learn, you must master your strength, your magic, an obair, because I will not always be here to help you.”

  Foreign land. Power. Strength. Alone. Jules.

  “Jules,” I blurt, as if I am redeeming something here, as if I am holding back the dam of what he is saying, of what is so obviously true, by waving this one nonfact. “Jules, father. I saw—”

  “Nothing. You saw nothing, Marcus. Or nothing more than they wanted you to see.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Marcus, you know. They can enter your thoughts, your dreams, your daydreams—it has happened before and will keep happening if you let it. You can do likewise to them, once you learn. Soul-wandering is among the most potent magics we have. If you think you experienced Jules—”

  “I did.”

  “You did not. Jules is dead, Marcus, or did you forget that?”

  “You don’t have to be a bastard,” I say.

  “Yes I do. Time, son. Time itself—time running out, Eleanor’s, perhaps mine—is the bastard. And I will venture to guess that your experience of Jules was of a sexual nature—”

  “Hey—”

  He waves me off again.

  “And if it was, you can be certain that it is due to that phantasm called Eartha walking into your subconscious. Marcus, you have to be aware. You cannot be an adolescent male any longer….”

  “What the hell else can I be?”

  “You are much more than that, and you know it. You are possessed of powers far beyond the strength of whatever young man’s urges you suffer.”

  “Obviously,” I say, “you don’t have a very good memory of a young man’s urges.”

  He turns to lay one of his powerful truths on me, then is overtaken by a rare smile and a slightly faraway look. He has a long, bony finger pointed skyward already, about to make his point.

  “Fair enough,” he says. “But all the more reason you have to be vigilant. It is strong stuff, that, and a witch like Eartha will weave spells of all kinds over you. Be aware. She is powerful, and she is clever, and she is not without her charms.”

  He is intending to help me, but he is making me feel ever more outnumbered. By Eartha alone.

  “You sound like you want to beat me to her,” I say.

  A slow smile crosses his lips. He points at me, shaking his head. “I would be no match for her,” he says.

  Then, as if he can sense my growing anxiety and need to stretch, he gestures for me to follow him down the uneven old stone stairs and outside.

  We pass through a flock of dopey, benign beasts grazing on the decadent greenery surrounding and overwhelming the castle ruins. They do not seem to notice us as we pass them by and head down to the rocky seashore below.

  “Right,” I say as we raise our voices over the aggression of the surf. “So since time is getting away from us, I had better find some things out.”

  “Yes,” he says, “you had better.”

  “Why are we here?”

  “So it’ll be existential questions, then?”

  “I can’t believe it. Now you’re going to start making jokes.”

  Again, the unusual sight of him smiling, at me, at himself, is welcome.

  “We are here in Ireland because this is where the coven is really based. This is their true seat of power and, in all honesty, it was once the seat of power for our whole people. That was one of my alleged crimes—that I moved away from the purely Celtic, ancestral world. That I tried to take us out into the wider world. That is why they took your mother here. To force you and me into coming. And, as you may have noticed, you will be hard-pressed to find the comfort and safety of your ancient forest here, Marcus.”

  “Too right,” I say. “The place is bald.”

  “Not entirely. But for your purposes, yes. You will not find a replacement for your Port Caledonia and Blackwater woods here. And the coven has long since adapted. They are in reality more a coven of the earth and the waters now.”

  “Except,” I say, suddenly remembering, “that thicket I was in last night. It was dense and strongly scented just like—”

  “No,” he says flatly. “That was invented. Marcus…” He is shaking his head, disappointed. “Marcus, I worry about your susceptibility this late in the game. You will be lured and enticed with images of everything dear. You must be more skeptical. You must carry doubt with you like a shield.”

  I know this. I hate being told. Because it holds my stupidity and immaturity up to a bright white light.

  “And perhaps try closing your eyes less,” he adds, without the least hint of a smile.

  I am starting to notice, as we continue along the magnificent, deserted stretch of beach, that there is a distinct lack of living things around my father at most times.

  “Don’t you ever get lonely?” I say, g
esturing at the emptiness.

  He doesn’t hesitate.

  “I’m rarely not lonely,” he says, making me sorrier for him than I thought I could be.

  “I hope you understand now, Marcus, that leaving you and your mother was never what I wanted, and it was never permanent. My connection to Eleanor is sacred and enduring, and it will surely follow me into the next life. They know that. That is why she is so important to them.”

  Two long creases appear on either side of his mouth as it tightens and turns downward. “They would have taken her sooner to achieve their aims; they would have taken her as soon as you came into an obair and they could sense where the two of you were. But they had hoped above all to enlist you in their cause. Once they sensed that you and I were truly together, they reverted to their traditional, vile, venal form, and took her. They killed Chuck. Nothing is beneath them.

  “They know, Marcus, that neither of us can ever leave Eleanor to them. That is how they know that they will achieve the battle they desire. It is inevitable now.”

  He holds up his fist, with the ring. He takes my ringed hand, balls it in a fist, and bumps the two rings together.

  “They need both of us dead,” he says. “There is no question of that—to consolidate their power and purge the ‘impurity’ that they perceive you to be, as the child of a witch and a human being. They will stop short of nothing.

  “Our goals are simple. We have to get Eleanor back. And we must cut the head off the creature that is the coven. We have to destroy Spence.”

  “Cut the head off?” I say, snorting a laugh. “Of Dr. Spence?” The witch professor? Eartha’s dad? “How hard could that be?”

  “Harder than you may imagine, Marcus.”

  He pauses, then pushes on. “Once our aim is achieved—if it is achieved—you will again have a people to lead.”

  “And if I don’t want a people to lead?” I don’t dare say that it is not even an if. After this is done, I don’t even want to ever see my people.

  He stops walking, looks out to sea, and I sense here the last remaining issue on which we definitely do not agree.

  “Let us first just put you in a position to have to make that decision.”

  I try not to get too excited over this seemingly open-minded response. In truth, I feel he has given me hope of a normal life someday.

  “Fair enough,” I say.

  “Fair enough,” he says. We grip hands firmly. The rings, as usual, throw a high heat when joined.

  We are still clasping hands when his attention is seized by a small motion in the distant sky. I follow his line of vision until I see it, the solitary, soaring figure disturbing the crystal peace of the sky as it circles.

  “Ahh,” my father says with resignation. “Time for us to be moving on.”

  “What?” I say, unable to make out anything specific at this range.

  “Spence’s hawk,” he says, heading back in the direction of the ruins. “This is how it is going to go from now on. We will be constantly uncovered and harried. The coven is continually moving toward us. We have to keep moving away, until we are ready to fight.”

  “But we are—”

  “We are not ready,” he says. “There are lessons yet.”

  Just as he has promised, that is how the days go.

  We travel from spot to spot, region to region, cave to castle to humble thatch-roofed farmhouse, only to be found out within hours—an obair drawing us together like magnet and metal, the coven manifested in the form of Spence’s familiar. Sometimes we are only minutes ahead of our pursuers, who we can hear, sense, cresting the hills just a field or two away.

  But all along, in every stolen minute, with every available square foot of farmyard or dungeon space, my intensive training hits maximum.

  He makes me fight him.

  “I can’t do that. You know I can’t do that,” I say as he stands before me, proud and defiant but stooped and clearly in pain.

  “You can….” This in a voice younger and surer than the face it comes out of. “And you will.”

  Every fiber of me says no. I circle him from about three feet away, and I am painfully conscious of how ridiculous this must look. He can barely keep up the pace enough to follow my circle as I go around and around him, just out of striking distance.

  “Marcus,” he says sternly.

  I say nothing, just keep circling.

  We are in a barn made mostly of stone, with a porous wooden roof. There are no animals, just a lot of space, so I can keep this up for some time.

  Until at my back I hear a quick, loud squeak and turn just in time to see a bat the size of a bulldog zip toward me and take a quick snap at my neck.

  I manage to whack him a quick backhanded chop, then watch to see him somersault away and land back up in the rafters.

  I turn, pleased, back toward my father. Who is no longer where I left him.

  “Hey,” I call. It comes out choked, because something is wrong.

  “Hey,” comes the return. But I can’t see where it’s coming from. And it is not his voice. It is Arj’s voice.

  It is a trick—my father is soul-wandering. It is a trick. I will not be easily fooled.

  Still, every bit of me goes rigid. I feel my skin prickle like I’m being sprayed with electrified water droplets.

  “Where are you?” I call, too nervously.

  He says nothing. I listen, I smell. Nothing.

  “Where are you?” I call again.

  “Right behind you,” Arj’s voice says.

  I whip around, arms raised.

  To find nobody right behind me.

  “I said, right behind you,” he says from right behind me, and before I can move again I am seized by a powerful, unbreakable grip around my neck, instantly and completely cutting off my air.

  Shit. I struggle, struggle, trying to break the grip and breathe, but I make no gain whatsoever. I try and call out, but I panic further, make things worse, exhaust myself.

  And then, blackness.

  When I come to, I find my father.

  He is on the ground just outside the entrance to the barn. No.

  I drop to my knees and moan. They have gotten here and torn him out, completely eviscerated him and left him on display for me to see: my stupidity. My mistake.

  I am hunched over him, grief-stricken. What do I do? He has not prepared me for this moment yet. He has not prepared me for so many things yet. I am fully sobbing now.

  Until he sits up and begins slapping me senseless.

  He is slapping me angrily, the way you do when you are trying to knock sense into someone but are at the same time trying to take their face off.

  And suddenly we are inside the barn, where he has sat me up from my prone, unconscious position. He is slapping me awake.

  “I told you about this, Marcus,” he says sternly but with a definite layer of warm worry in his voice. “Doubt. You must maintain doubt at all times if you are not to be fooled so easily. Don’t even believe your own dreams. It was too easy for me to soul-wander inside you and confuse you. Where is your doubt, Marcus?”

  “I had it at first,” I say dumbly as he helps me to my feet.

  “We have to go now anyway,” he says, pointing out the barn door to where we can see the pinpoint of a hawk circling.

  “I swear I am going to kill that bird,” I say, “if we accomplish nothing else.”

  It becomes, I think, the very act of staying on the run all the time and watching my father weaken that teaches me my lessons of vigilance. I am learning what he teaches me, but I am learning further still from watching over him. My senses are getting crisper every minute, as my protective feelings for him grow more intense.

  I am not caught off guard anymore by the arrival of the hawk or any other creature, and I know, almost but not quite as quickly as my father does, when a beast of any kind is close. They are always right at our heels, the pursuers, but in the chase I am becoming nimble, alert, strong, and intuitive.

&nbs
p; And of course they must know this. That is why they killed Marthe, for helping me get to this point. That is why they are so intent, ever more intent it seems, on reaching us. They are afraid of what is happening here.

  One morning I sit and watch over the old man as he lies sleeping. I do this now morning and night, as he is needing much more sleep than I. We are sitting in the back of a long-neglected granite Anglican church, where we have caught our longest night’s rest yet. I watch him now, watch his stony face struggle with the expressions and twitches of deep dream sleep as the first light spills in through broken windows, and I feel it.

  I close my eyes. I think about my father. I think about what I know of him, what I have learned of him in the brief time of our acquaintance. I think of his goals, his burdens. I think of his achievements and his failures as I know them, and his enemies.

  And there, then, I am inside. Inside his head, his spirit. I can hardly believe it. I am soul-wandering.

  He is smiling, broadly, genuinely. He is healthy to look at, with more flesh to his face and more rigidity to his spine. He still doesn’t have all of his fingers, however.

  “Here you are,” he says.

  I feel like I am six years old. I feel like I have been riding and riding my bike around the cul-de-sac in Port Caledonia, crashing and falling as usual but now, now, now he has seen it; I am not falling, and my father has seen it.

  “Here I am,” I say, smiling too wide to form the words properly.

  “They’re here again,” he says.

  “Yes,” I say at the same moment, knowing who he means even before he has said it. He smiles proudly, like a dad.

  I open my eyes. He is still unconscious. He is in no rush to emerge. I am in no rush to wake him.

  I jump to my feet because I know, an obair knows, that they’re here. Or rather, I sense more specifically, that it is here. And I do not need my father to help me with this.

  I run up the stairs to the choir balcony, then on, up to where the stairs narrow and the ceiling lowers, and I push on, shooting up the final flight, up toward the empty bell tower just ahead. I can sense it through the walls—sweeping in, spying.

  I blindly crash through the door, my arm extended ahead of me like the Statue of Liberty because I know, I know before I see it, goddammit, exactly where it will breach my line of vision.