2

 

“Seasons don’t fear the Reaper…”

Inverness, Scotland, high above Loch Ness.

Christian had once believed he’d never set foot there again except in half-mad dreams.

Tonight was madness of another kind.

Tonight, beneath a slate and crimson sky, he would bury the man who’d died to save him.

The entire Keltar clan was gathered in the sprawling cemetery behind the ruined tower, near the tomb of the Green Lady, to return the remains of Dageus MacKeltar to the earth in a sacred druid ritual so his soul would be released to live again. Reincarnation was the foundation of their faith.

The air was heavy and humid from a nearby storm. A few miles to the west, lightning cracked, briefly illuminating the rocky cliffs and grassy vales of his motherland. The Highlands were even more beautiful than he’d painstakingly re-created them in his mind, staked to the side of a cliff, dying over and over. While he’d hung there, the long killing season of ice had passed. Heather bloomed and leaves rustled on trees. Moss crushed softly beneath his boots as he shifted his weight to ease the pain in his groin. Parts of him were not yet healed. He’d been flayed too many times to regenerate properly; the bitch had scarcely let him grow new guts before taking them again.

“The body is prepared, my lord.”

Christopher and Drustan nodded while nearby, huddled in Gwen’s embrace, Chloe wept. Christian was amused to realize he, too, had nodded. Say “my lord” and every Keltar male in the room nodded, along with a few of the females. Theirs was a clan of all lairds, no serfs.

It seemed a century ago he’d walked these bens and valleys, exhilarated to be alive, riveted by his studies at university and his more private agenda in Dublin: keeping tabs on the unpredictable, dangerous owner of Barrons Books & Baubles while hunting an ancient Book of black magic. But that was before the Compact the Keltar had upheld since the dawn of time had been shattered, the walls between man and Fae had fallen, and he himself had become one of the Unseelie.

“Place the body on the pyre,” Drustan said.

Chloe’s weeping turned to quiet sobs at his words, then a wild guttural keening that flayed Christian’s gut as exquisitely as had the Crimson Hag’s lance. Dageus and Chloe had fought impossible odds to be together, only to end with Dageus’s pointless death on a cliff. Christian alone bore the blame. He didn’t know how Chloe could stand to look at him.

Come to think of it, she hadn’t. She’d not once focused on him since they brought him home. Her swollen, half-dead gaze had slid repeatedly past him. He wasn’t sure if that was because she hated him for causing her husband’s death or because he no longer looked remotely like the young human man she’d known, but the worst of the dark Fae. He knew he was disconcerting to look at. Although his mutation seemed to have become static, leaving him with long black hair, strangely muted tattoos, and, for fuck’s sake, wings—bloody damned wings, how the hell was a man supposed to live with those?—there was something about his eyes that even he could see. As if a chilling, starry infinity had settled there. No one held his gaze, no one looked at him for long, not even his own mother and father. His sister, Colleen, was the only one who’d spoken more than a few words to him since his return.

What remained of Dageus’s body was positioned on the wood slab.

They would chant and spread the necessary elements, then burn the corpse, freeing his soul to be reborn. When the ceremony was done, his ashes would drop into the grave below, mingle with the soil and find new life.

He moved forward to join the others, shifting his shoulders so the tips of his wings didn’t drag the ground. He was getting bloody tired of having to clean them. Although he threw a constant glamour to conceal them from the sight of others, unless making a show of power, he still had to look at them himself, and he preferred not to walk around with pine needles and bits of gorse stuck to his fucking feathers.

Feathers. Bloody hell, he hadn’t seen that one coming when he’d considered his future. Like a goddamn chicken.

The clan surrounded the pyre somberly. He hadn’t expected to attend tonight, much less be involved, but Drustan had insisted. You’re Keltar, lad, first and foremost. You belong here. He seemed to have forgotten Christian was a walking lie detector who knew the truth was that Drustan didn’t want to be anywhere near him. But then, he didn’t want to be near anyone, not even his wife, Gwen. He wanted to disappear into the mountains and grieve for his brother alone.

Once, Christian would have argued. Now he said little, only when necessary. It was easier that way.

As the chanting began and the sacred oil, water, metal, and wood were distributed east, west, north, and south, the wind whipped up violently, howling through rocky canyons and crevices. Thunder rolled and the sky rushed with ominous clouds. Grass rippled as if trod by an unseen army.

Look, listen, feel, the storm-lashed grass seemed to be whispering to him.

In the distance, the rain across the valley turned to a deluge and began moving rapidly toward them in an enormous gray sheet. Lightning exploded directly above the pyre and everyone jerked as it cracked and spread across the night sky in a web of crimson. The pungent odor of brimstone laced the air.

Something was off.

Something wasn’t right.

The powerful words of the high druid burial ceremony seemed to be inflaming the elements. They should have been softening the environment, preparing the earth to welcome a high druid’s body, not chafing it.

Could it be the Highlands rejected an Unseelie prince’s presence at a druid ceremony? Didn’t his Keltar blood still define him as one of Scotia’s own?

As Christian continued chanting, restraining his voice so he wouldn’t drown out the others, the sky grew more violent, the night darker. He studied his gathered clan. Man, woman, and child, they all had the right to be here. The elements had been chosen with precision and care. They were what had been used for generations untold. The pyre was properly constructed, the runes etched, the wood old, dried rowan and oak. The timing was correct.

There was only one other variable to consider.

He narrowed his eyes, studying Dageus’s remains. He was still pondering them a few minutes later when at last the chanting was done.

“You must set him free, Chloe-lass,” Drustan said, “before the storm prevents it.”

He always believed he was the rotten egg of the two of us, Christian had overheard Drustan saying to Chloe earlier that evening. When the truth of it is he gave his life to save others not once but twice. He was the best of men, lass. The best of all of us.

Chloe jerked forward, carrying a torch of mistletoe-draped rowan that flickered wildly in the wind.

“Wait,” Christian growled.

“What is it, lad?” Drustan said.

Chloe stopped, torch trembling in her hands, not bothering to glance at either of them. All life seemed to have been stripped out of her, leaving a shell of a body that had no desire to continue breathing. She looked as if she might join her husband in the flames. Christ, didn’t anyone else see that? Why were they letting her anywhere near fire? He could taste Death on the air, feel it beckoning Chloe with a lover’s kiss, wearing the mask of her dead husband.

He pushed between his aunt and the pyre to touch the wood upon which the bits of his uncle were spread. Wood that once had lived but now was dead, and in death spoke to him as nothing alive ever would again. This was his new native tongue, the utterances of the dead and dying. Closing his eyes, he went inward to that alien, unwanted landscape inside him. He knew what he was. He’d known it for a long time. He had a special bond to the events occurring tonight.

The Unseelie princes were four, and each had their specialty: War, Pestilence, Famine, Death. He was Death. And Fae. Which meant more attuned, more deeply connected to the elements than a druid could ever be. His moods affected the environment if he wasn’t careful to keep tight rein on them. But he wasn’t the cause of the night’s distress. Something else was.

There was only one other thing present whose provenance might be questioned.

None but a Keltar directly descended from the first could be given a high druid burial in hallowed ground. The cemetery was heavily protected, from the wood of sacred, carefully mutated trees that grew there to ancient artifacts, blood, and wards buried in the soil. The ground would expel an intruder. Perhaps Nature herself would resist the interment.

Was it possible what remained of the Draghar within Dageus marked him as something foreign?

Christian had heard the truth in his uncle’s lie at a young age. At first, Dageus told Chloe and the rest of the clan that the Seelie queen had removed the souls of the Draghar and erased their memories from his mind. Sometime later, to aid Adam Black, Dageus had come clean with the truth…at least part of it, admitting he still retained their memories and could use their spells, though he maintained he was no longer inhabited by the living consciousness of thirteen ancient sorcerers.

Christian had never been able to get a solid feel for just how much of those power-hungry druids still lived within him. His uncle was a proud, intensely private man. Sometimes he’d believed Dageus. Other times—watching him while he thought himself unobserved—he’d been certain Dageus had never stopped being haunted by them. The few times he’d tried to question him, Dageus walked away without a word, giving him no opportunity to read him. Typical of his clan. Those aware of Christian’s unique “gift” were closed-mouthed around him, even his own parents. It had made for a solitary childhood, a boyhood of secrets no one wanted to hear, a lad unable to reconcile the bizarreness of other’s actions with the truths staring him in the face.

He eyed Dageus’s remains, casting a net for possibilities, considering all, discarding nothing.

It was possible, he mused, that they had the wrong body. He couldn’t fathom why Ryodan might give them the savaged pieces of someone else’s corpse. Still, it was Ryodan, which meant anything was possible.

Hands resting lightly on the pile of rain-spattered timber, he turned inward, wondering if he might use his lie-detecting ability to discern the truth of the remains, or if his new talents might aid him.

An immense wind gusted within him, around him, ruffling his wings, dark and serene and enormous. Death. Ah yes, death, he’d tasted it countless times recently, come to know it intimately. It wasn’t horrific. Death was a lover’s kiss. It was merely the process of getting there that could be so extreme.

He harnessed the dark wind and blew a question into the bits of flesh and bone.

Dageus?

There was no reply.

He gathered his power—Unseelie, not druid—and shoved it into the mutilated body, let it soak into the remains and arrange itself there…

“Bloody hell,” he whispered. He had his answer.

Thirty-eight years of human life lay on the slab, terminated abruptly. Pain, sorrow, grief! But not by the lance of the Crimson Hag. Make it stop! A poison in the blood, an overdose of something human, chemical, sweet and cloying. He stretched his newfound senses and sucked in a harsh breath when he felt the dying, the moment of it, rushing like a glorious wave over (him!) the man. It had been sought, embraced. Relief, ah, blessed relief. Thank you, was the man’s final thought, yes, yes, make it all stop, let me sleep, but let me sleep! He actually heard the words in a soft Irish burr, as if frozen in time, rustling dryly from the remains.

He opened his eyes and looked at Drustan, who fixed his deep silver gaze on a spot slightly above and between his brows.

“It’s not Dageus,” Christian said, “but an Irishman with two children who were killed the night the walls fell. His wife perished from starvation not long after as they hid from Unseelie in the streets. He tried to go on without them until the day he no longer cared to. He met his death by choice.”

No one questioned how he knew it. No one questioned anything about him anymore.

Chloe staggered and melted bonelessly to the ground, her torch tumbling forgotten to the wet grass. “N-N-Not D-Dageus?” she whispered. “What do you mean? Is he alive, then?” Her voice rose. “Tell me, is he still alive?” she shrieked, eyes flashing.

Christian closed his eyes again, feeling, stretching, reaching. But life was no longer his specialty. “I don’t know.”

“But can you feel his death?” Colleen said sharply, and he opened his eyes, meeting her gaze. To his surprise, she didn’t look away.

Ah, so she knew. Or suspected. She’d stayed with the sidhe-seers, searching their old lore. She’d come across the old tales. How had she decided which one he was?

Again, he slipped deep, staring sightlessly. It was peaceful. Quiet. No judgment. No lies. Death was beautifully without deceit. He appreciated the purity of it.

In the distance, Colleen tried unsuccessfully to turn a gasp into a cough. He was fairly certain she wasn’t looking at his eyes now.

That eerie Fae wind gusted and blew open the confines of his skull, leveled barriers of space and time. He felt a soaring sensation, as if he’d taken flight through a door to some other way of breathing and being: quiet and black, rich and velvety and vast. Dageus, he murmured silently, Dageus, Dageus. People had a certain individual feel, an essence, an imprint. Their life made a ripple in a loch of the universe.

There was no Dageus ripple.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Chloe,” he said quietly. Sorry he couldn’t say yes. Sorry he’d dragged them into his problems. Sorry he’d gone bugfuck crazy for a time, for so damned many things. But sorry was worthless. It changed nothing. Merely coerced the victim to offer forgiveness for what you shouldn’t have done to begin with. “He’s dead.”

On the ground near the pyre, Chloe wrapped her arms around her knees and began to keen, rocking back and forth.

“You’re absolutely certain it’s no’ him, lad?” Drustan said.

“Unequivocally.” The owner of Chester’s had packed them off with another man’s remains, intending for them to bury it and never know that somewhere out there a Keltar body rotted and a high druid soul was lost, denied proper burial, never to be reborn.

Knowing Ryodan, he’d simply considered it a waste of his precious time to make the hard hike down into the gorge and search the darkness for remains when there were so many more easily available in any city he’d driven through on the way back to Dublin. Coming by Keltar plaid wouldn’t have been difficult. The entire clan had been living for a time at the fuck’s nightclub.

“You can’t bury that man here,” Christian said. “He must be returned to Ireland. He wants to go home.” He had no idea how he knew that the corpse didn’t want to stay here. It wanted to be in a place not far from Dublin, a short distance to the south where a small cottage overlooked a pond smattered with lily pads, tall reeds grew, and in the summer the rich baritone of frogs filled the night. He could see it clearly in his mind. He resented seeing it. He wanted nothing to do with the last wishes of the dead. He was not their keeper. Nor their bloody damned wish granter.

Drustan cursed. “If this isn’t him, then where the blethering hell is my brother’s body?”

“Where, indeed,” Christian said.