Blood Magick (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy #3)(79)

The dark must be fed. Embraced. Worshipped.

The dark would reward. Eternally.

Fin turned to the altar, took a step toward it. Then another.

? ? ?

“IT’S TAKING TOO LONG.” BRANNA RUBBED HER ARMS TO fight a cold that dug into her bones and came from fear. “It’s nightfall. He’s been more than half an hour now, and far too long.”

“Connor?” Iona asked. “He’s—”

“I know, I know. He and Meara can’t hold Cabhan much longer. Go to Connor, you and Boyle go to Connor and Meara, help them. I’ll go through for Fin. Something’s wrong, something’s happened. I haven’t been able to feel or sense him since he went through.”

“You’ll not go in. Branna, you’ll not.” Boyle took her shoulders, gave her a little shake. “We have to trust Fin to get back, and we can’t risk you. Without you, it ends here, and not for Cabhan.”

“His blood could betray him, however much he fights it. I can pull him out. I have to try before. Ah, God, Cabhan, he’s coming back. Fin—”

“Can we pull him back, the two of us?” Iona gripped Branna’s hand. “We have to try.”

“With all of us, we might . . . Oh, thank the gods.”

When Fin, his fog thin and faded, fell to his knees on the ground at her feet, Branna dived for him.

“He’s coming,” Fin managed. “It’s done, but he’s coming. We have to go, and quickly. I could use some help.”

“We’ve got you.” Branna wrapped her arms around him, looked at Iona, at Boyle, nodded. “We’ve got you,” she repeated, and held on to him as they flew.

His skin was ice, and she couldn’t warm it as she pulled him over treetops, over the lake, and the castle aglow with lights.

She brought him straight to the cottage, set the fire to roaring before she knelt in front of him. “Look at me. Fin, I have to see your eyes.”

They glowed against the ice white of his face, but they were Fin’s, and only his.

“I brought nothing back with me,” he told her. “Left nothing of me. Only your crystal.”

“Whiskey.” But even as she snapped it out, Boyle sat beside Fin, cupped Fin’s hands around the glass.

“I feel I’ve walked a hundred kilometers in the Arctic without a single rest.” He gulped down whiskey, let his head fall back as Connor and Meara came in.

“Is he hurt?” Connor demanded.

“No, only half frozen and exhausted. Are you?”

“A few singes, and I’ll see to them.”

“He’s already seen to mine.” Meara moved straight to Fin. “Clucking like a mother hen over me. What can we do for you, Fin?”

“I’m well enough.”

“You don’t look it. Should I get one of your potions, Branna?”

“I don’t need a potion. The whiskey’s fine. And you’re doing some clucking yourself, Mother.”

Meara dropped into a chair. “The way you are makes a ghost look like it’s had ten days in the tropics.”

Warming bit by painful bit, Fin smiled at her. “You’re not looking rosy yourself.”

“He kept going at her,” Connor said, and surprised Meara by lifting her up—strapping girl that she was—taking her place, then cuddling her on his lap. “He’d go for me, but that was for show. He wanted our Meara, to hurt her, so kept hammering against her protection, looking for the slightest chink. At first we tried to draw it all out, give the rest of you time, but it went on longer than we thought, and it was get serious about it, or fall back.”

“Connor made a tornado.” Meara spun a finger in the air. “A small one you could say, but impressive. Then turned it to fire. And that sent Cabhan on his way.”

“We couldn’t hold him longer,” Connor finished.

“It was long enough. We’ll all have some whiskey,” Branna decided. “Let me see where you’re burned, Connor, and I’ll tend to it.”

“I’ll do it.” Iona nudged Branna back down. “Stay with Fin.”

“I’m well enough,” Fin insisted. “It was the cold, that was the most of it. It’s so sharp, so bitter it carves the life out of you. Enervates. It’s more than it was,” he said to Branna. “More than we saw and felt.”

She sat on the floor, took one of the glasses Boyle passed around. “Tell us.”

“It was darker, darker than it was when we went in the dreamwalk. Colder, and the air thick. So thick you couldn’t get a full breath. There was a cauldron on the fire, and it smelled of sulphur and brimstone. And there were voices chanting. I couldn’t make out the words, not enough of them, but it was in Latin, and some in old Irish. As were the screams, the pleading that rose up with them. Those being sacrificed. All of that, a kind of echo, in the distance. Still, I could smell the blood.”

He took a drink, gathered himself again. “There was a pull to it, from in me. A wanting of it, stronger than before, this pull and tug in two directions. I put the crystal up, a little notch in the stones, high on the wall across from the altar.”

Now he turned the glass in his hands, staring down into the amber of the whiskey as if seeing it all again.