Blood Magick (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy #3)(10)

3




Winter 2013

BRANNA O’DWYER WOKE TO A GRAY, SOGGY, RELENTLESS rain. And wished for nothing more than to burrow in and sleep again. Mornings, she had always felt, came forever too soon. But like it or not, sleep was done, and with its leaving came a slow and steady craving for coffee.

Annoyed, as she was often annoyed by morning, she rose, pulled thick socks over her feet, drew a sweater over the thin T-shirt she’d slept in.

Through habit and an ingrained tidiness, she stirred up the bedroom fire so the licks of flame would cheer the room, and with her hound, Kathel, having his morning stretch on the hearthrug, she made her bed, added the mounds of pretty pillows that pleased her.

In her bath, she brushed out her long fall of black hair, then bundled it up. She had work, and plenty of it—after coffee. She frowned at herself in the mirror, considered doing a bit of a glamour, as the restless night surely showed. But didn’t see the point.

Instead, she walked back into the bedroom, gave Kathel a good rub to get his tail wagging.

“You were restless as well, weren’t you now? I heard you talking in your sleep. Did you hear the voices, my boy?”

They walked down together, quiet, as her house was full as it was too often these days. Her brother and Meara shared his bed, and her cousin Iona shared hers with Boyle.

Friends and family all. She loved them, and needed them. But God be sweet, she could’ve done with some alone.

“They stay for me,” she told Kathel as they walked down the steps of the pretty cottage. “As if I can’t look after myself. Have I not put enough protection around what’s mine, and theirs, to hold off a dozen Cabhans?”

It had to stop, really, she decided, heading straight toward her lovely, lovely coffee machine. A man of Boyle McGrath’s size could hardly be comfortable in her cousin Iona’s little bed. She needed to nudge them along. In any case, there had been no sign nor shadow of Cabhan since Samhain.

“We almost had him. Bugger it, we nearly finished it.”

The spell, the potion, both so strong, she thought as she started the coffee. Hadn’t they worked on both hard and long? And the power, by the gods, the power had risen like a flood that night by Sorcha’s old cabin.

They’d hurt him, spilled his blood, sent him howling—wolf and man. And still . . .

Not done. He’d slipped through, and would be healing, would be gathering himself.

Not done, and at times she wondered if ever it would be.

She opened the door, and Kathel rushed out. Rain or no, the dog wanted his morning run. She stood in the open doorway, in the cold, frosty December air, looking toward the woods.

He waited, she knew, beyond them. In this time or in another, she couldn’t tell. But he would come again, and they must be ready.

But he wouldn’t come this morning.

She closed the door on the cold, stirred up the kitchen fire, added fuel so the scent of peat soothed. Pouring her coffee, she savored the first taste, and the short time of quiet and alone. And, a magick of its own, the coffee cleared her head, smoothed her mood.

We will prevail.

The voices, she remembered now. So many voices rising up, echoing out. Light and power and purpose. In sleep she’d felt it all. And that single voice, so clear, so sure.

We will prevail.

“We’ll pray you’re right about it.”

She turned.

The woman stood, a hand protectively over the mound of her belly, a thick shawl tied around a long dress of dark blue.

Almost a mirror, Branna thought, almost like peering into a glass. The hair, the eyes, the shape of the face.

“You’re Brannaugh of Sorcha. I know you from dreams.”

“Aye, and you, Branna of the clan O’Dwyer. I know you from dreams. You’re my blood.”

“I am. I am of the three.” Branna touched the amulet with its icon of the hound she was never without—just as her counterpart did the same.

“Your brother came to us, with his woman, one night in Clare.”

“Connor, and Meara. She is a sister to me.” Now Branna touched her heart. “Here. You understand.”

“She saved my own brother from harm, shed blood for him. She is a sister to me as well.” With some wonder on her face, Sorcha’s Brannaugh looked around the kitchen. “What is this place?”

“My home. And yours for you are very welcome here. Will you sit? I would make you tea. This coffee I have would not be good for the baby.”

“It has a lovely scent. But only sit with me, cousin. Just sit for a moment. This is a wondrous place.”

Branna looked around her kitchen—tidy, lovely, as she’d designed it herself. And, she supposed, wondrous indeed to a woman from the thirteenth century.

“Progress,” she said as she sat at the kitchen table with her cousin. “It eases hours of work. Are you well?”

“I am, very well. My son comes soon. My third child. She reached out; Branna took her hand.

Heat and light, a merging of power very strong, very true.

“You will name him Ruarc, for he will be a champion.”

It brought a smile to her cousin’s face. “So I will.”

“On Samhain, we—the three and three more who are with us—battled Cabhan. Though we caused him harm, burned and bled him, we didn’t finish him. I saw you there. Your brother with a sword, your sister with a wand, you with a bow. You were not with child.”