Blood Magick (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy #3)(75)

Branna went to the door, threw it open, intending to help, but saw she wasn’t needed.

He called up a wind, sent them rolling and tumbling in ugly waves. Then he opened the earth like a trench, whirled them in. Then came the fire, and the screams tore the air.

When they stopped he drew down the rain to quench the fire, soak the ash. Then simply pulled the earth back over them.

“That was excellent,” Iona breathed. “Disgusting but excellent. I didn’t know he could juggle the elements like that—boom, boom, boom.”

“He was showing off,” Branna replied. “For Cabhan.”

Fin stood where he was, in the open, as if daring a response.

He lifted his arm high, called to his hawk. Like a golden flash Merlin dived down, then, following the direction of Fin’s hand, bulleted into the trees.

Fin whirled his arms out, in, and vanished in a swirl of fog.

“Oh God, my God, Cabhan.”

“It wasn’t Cabhan’s fog,” Branna said with forced calm. “It was Fin’s. He’s gone after him.”

“What should we do? We should call the others, get to Fin.”

“We can’t get to Fin as we can’t know where he is. He has to let us, and he isn’t. He wants to do this on his own.”

He flew, shadowed by the fog, his eyes the eyes of the hawk. And through the hawk watched the wolf streak through the woods. It left no track and cast no shadow.

As it approached the river it gathered itself, leaped up, rose up, sprang over the cold, dark surface like a stone from a sling. As it did, the mark on Fin’s arm burned brutally.

So Cabhan paid a price, he thought, for crossing water.

He followed the wolf, masked by his own fog until he felt something change in the air, something tremble. He called to Merlin, slowed his own forward motion, seconds before the wolf vanished.

? ? ?

FIN MIGHT HAVE WANTED TO HANDLE THINGS ON HIS OWN, but Iona called the others anyway. Placidly, silently, Branna brewed a pot of tea.

“You’re so calm.” Iona paced, waiting for something to happen. “How can you be so calm?”

“I’m so angry it feels my blood’s on fire. If I didn’t bank it with calm, I might burn the place to the ground.”

Stepping over, Iona wrapped her arms around Branna from behind. “You know he’s all right. You know he can take care of himself.”

“I know it very well, and it changes nothing.” She patted Iona’s hand, moved to get a dish for biscuits while her angry heart beat fists against her ribs. “I never asked why you’re home so early.”

“We decided we could start the whole shift rotation today. I have a lesson at the big stables at four, but Boyle could spare me until.” Iona rushed to the door. “Here they are now. And, oh! Here’s Fin. He’s fine.”

When Branna said nothing, Iona opened the door. “Get inside,” she snapped to Fin. “You don’t even have a jacket.”

“I was warm enough.”

“You’ll be warmer yet if I kick your arse,” Boyle warned him. “What’s all this about taking off after Cabhan on your own, in some fecking funnel of fog.”

“Just a little something I’ve been working on, and an opportunity to test it out.” Fin shook back his hair, rolled his shoulders. “Brawling with me won’t change anything, but I’m open to it if it helps you.”

“I’ll be the one holding you down while he does the arse kicking.” Connor yanked off his coat. “You’ve no right going off after him on your own.”

“Every right in this world and any.”

“We’re a circle,” Iona began.

“We are.” Because it was Iona, Fin tempered his tone. “And each of us individual points of it.”

“Those points are connected. What happens to you, affects us all.” Meara glanced over at Branna, who continued to fuss with tea and biscuits. “All of us.”

“He never knew I was there, couldn’t see I was following, watching where he went. I was cloaked. It’s what I’ve been working on, and the point of trying it.”

“Without letting any of us know what you were about?” Connor tossed out.

“Well, I didn’t know for certain it would work till I tried, did I?”

He walked to Branna. “I used some of what I have of him in me to conjure the fog. It’s taken weeks—well, months, come to that—for me to perfect it as I only had bits of time here and there to give to it. Today, I saw a chance to try it. Which isn’t so different, if you’re honest, from taking a ride out into the woods just to see what may be.”

“I wasn’t alone.”

“Nor was I,” he countered just as coolly. “I had Merlin, and used his eyes to follow. He’s taunted us, and you gave him back a bit, for you know, as we all should, if we look to be doing nothing at all, he’ll know we’re doing a great deal more. Why else did I make such a show of dispatching the rats?”

Irritation vibrating around him, he turned, lifted his hands. “Is there so little trust here?”

“It’s not lack of trust,” Iona told him. “You scared us. I thought at first Cabhan had ambushed you, but Branna said you’d made the fog yourself. But we couldn’t see you, we didn’t know where you were. It scared us.”