Cold Iron Page 26

  Conn gave the half-breeds their instructions. When they had gone, he took Miach aside. “The young Fianna were terrified to be brought here. What is it they fear?”

  “One of Finn’s get forgot his manners with our Margaret. They know the penalty for abusing a woman under the protection of Miach MacCecht,” was all Miach would say.

  After that, information began to pour in. There were five great houses in Ireland that might answer to Brian’s jumbled description. These had names, addresses, publicly available information. Tax records and land surveys. Miach’s vast network—familial and financial—and the tenuous contacts he kept up with the Fae abroad supplied a steady stream of data.

  And something more.

  Miach’s Fae associates abroad knew of three great estates in Ireland without names or addresses, thought to belong to the Aes Sídhe. Masked, like Miach’s island in the harbor. No maps, no tax assessments, no human records of their existence. If a Fae of the prince’s power bothered to conceal his demesne, Brian’s “palace” could be any of these with none the wiser.

  That made eight possibilities. “We cannot search them all in time,” Conn said. That queer empty feeling he’d experienced when he’d found Christie Kelley’s body was back again.

  “Have faith in Beth,” Miach counseled. “She will not agree to free the Court for him.”

  “No,” Conn agreed. “She won’t. She’ll die fighting him. And he’ll kill her by degrees if he can’t get his way.” He had not done so yet. Conn would know if he had. Beth was alive. For now.

  “We have done all we can to narrow the field to these eight possibilities. It is time to begin searching. We can split up. Elada and I will take the first half of the list, and you can take the rest.”

  “No.” The prince was no matinee villain. He had waited two thousand years for the return of the Court. He would not delay now that he had Beth. He would attempt to bend her to his will, and when she refused him, he would begin hurting her. “Brian said there was a mound near the house. Beth once showed me aerial photos of Clonmel. The barrows are sometimes visible from above.”

  It took an hour to find aerial views of all the five unmasked properties. Conn didn’t possess Beth’s gift for feeling Fae sites; he could only search for the telltale circular impressions in the topography that might indicate a mound, or turn out to be an ordinary hill or an icehouse. Liam and Nial pulled up satellite photos of all the properties, and Conn examined them all in minute detail, looking for a great house near the remains of a barrow.

  He found one. And passed.

  Opening the gate drank every ounce of strength Beth had taken from the prince and left her drained and swaying on the gravel, but he didn’t spare a glance for her. His eyes were fixed on the shaft, on the light at the end. He took an expectant step forward and held up a hand in elegant greeting. The wind lifted his hair, and it whipped and floated like a black pennant.

  Toward the door.

  A torrent of dry leaves, red and gold, swirled past Beth and into the mouth of the tomb. Gravel skittered over the beds, then disappeared down the shaft. A high-pitched keening sound rose up from the mound, and Beth knew she was finally hearing the bean sídhe, foretelling death and destruction.

  The wind grew in force. Now it caught the prince’s gray velvet coat, whipped its skirts, and tore the pearls free. Beth watched them shoot through the door into the mound.

  The prince whirled to face Beth. He fought against the gale to take a step toward her and away from the open gate, but the wind dragged him back. “What have you done?”

  “Opened the gate. At least, in one direction.”

  “We had a bargain,” he shouted over the gathering storm.

  “A Fae bargain,” Beth said, her voice ten thousand Druids strong. “I promised to reunite you with the Court. And I will. In exile. On the other side.”

  The pull of the gate dragged him back. His heels dug furrows in the ground. His beautiful mouth curled into a wide smile and he laughed. “You have become wholly Druid, little Beth. Unfortunately for you, I remain wholly Fae.” He lunged like a striking cobra, grasped her arm and dragged her with him toward the door.

  Chapter 13

  Conn passed, and found himself standing before a great Georgian palace. Elada and Miach followed moments later, but he was already running up the stairs to the pillared entrance. He burst through the double doors. Servants—ornamental and effete—shrieked and ran. One of the prince’s circle, a true courtier, naked, his hair sweeping the floor, glittering and useless, emerged from one of the long corridors and drew a rapier.

  Conn unsheathed the Summoner.

  The Fae ran.

  A set of glass doors opened onto a wide terrace. Stairs curved up to a balcony. Corridors stretched left and right. Curtains billowed. Frightened, pretty faces peeked around doors. Which way to go?

  “I will take the left and Elada the right.” Miach lifted both hands toward the ceiling, and every door on the ground floor opened wide. The sorcerer and his right arm set off in opposite directions.

  Conn started for the curving stairs, then stopped. There was something about the quality of light coming through the terrace doors, something about the swirling leaves and whistling wind outside that wasn’t right.

  He opened the doors and heard it. A strange keening sound. He crossed the polished terrace and looked out. The ground fell away sharply here. Marble stairs descended to a sunken garden. A reflecting pool stretched hundreds of feet through manicured English gardens.

  At the end of the prospect was a mound. Not as Druid structures stood today, gentled by the Irish landscape, but as it had for millennia, stark and glittering with quartz walls, roofed by lush grass, frozen in time.

  Within the ring of stones that guarded the barrow stood a woman in a white gown, chestnut hair streaming down her back. Beth. Before the entrance stood the prince. And visible even at this distance, was the shaft of light issuing from the mound.

  She had opened a gate.

  The wind picked up, the keening grew louder, and the prince shouted, his words lost on the gathering storm. Conn saw him try to take a step forward, only to be caught in the grip of the maelstrom.

  Clever Beth. She had opened a gate. To the Otherworld. Inward. That was his girl.

  Then the prince lunged and grasped her arm, and dragged her toward her doom.

  She dug her toes into the gravel, felt the sharp stones through her thin slippers. If the prince pulled her through, if he took her with him to the Fae Court, she would die in torment. A storm of images, a Druid catalog of Fae depravity passed before her eyes and choked her with terror. It would not be a quick death—and the Druid longevity and vitality Conn had promised would prove a ghastly curse.

  The prince’s long fingers bit into the soft flesh of her arm and squeezed until she thought the bones would break. He was halfway through the gate, and in a moment she would join him.

  “Beth!”

  She looked over her shoulder. Conn. He was there. Running down the path, so fast he became a blur. Then he was standing over her, with the Summoner raised above his head. A yard of silvered death. It fell in a shimmering arc.

  The prince’s grip slackened, then released her. She watched in amazement as he was sucked into the shaft, even as the light at the end faded and went dark.

  He was gone.

  There was a weight resting on her feet, dragging at the hem of her dress. For a moment she didn’t understand what it could be. Then she understood all too well.

  It was the prince’s arm. She tried to back away from it, but it was pinning her hem to the ground. “You cut off his arm.”

  And there was something wrong with it. There ought to be blood and mangled flesh, but there was only silver, beautifully articulated. Perfect in every detail, from the rolled sleeve of his coat to the jewels crusting the hem, like some medieva
l relic.

  “One of the queen’s enchantments,” Conn said, picking the thing up and hurling it away with distaste. “And no doubt something Miach should take charge of.”

  “What is something I should take charge of?” The sorcerer was coming down the path, the taller Elada treading faithfully behind him.

  Conn indicated the silver arm lying on the grass.

  “That,” Miach said, looking down at the severed arm, “will prove troublesome. It means the prince has a foot in both worlds.”

  “Arm, really,” said Elada.

  “Or hand,” Beth said. “To preserve the analogy.”

  Miach ignored the commentary and looked straight at Beth. “You sent the prince, or most of him, to join the Court-in-exile. How? A Druid trick?”

  “No.” Beth met his gaze without fear or apology. “A Fae bargain.”

  Miach inclined his head. “Well done.” He picked up the arm and wrapped it in his jacket. “Elada and I will attempt to free the prince’s servants. Most are long glamoured and deeply damaged. No doubt you two have matters to discuss.”

  Miach and his champion started up the gravel path, then stopped. “You will be happy to know that your friend Helene was returned safely to her home in the Back Bay.”

  She was happy to know it. She regretted dragging Helene into her troubles. “Thank you,” she said.

  “I didn’t do it for you, Beth. I still want her, and I still mean to have her. Do you plan to interfere?”

  She could. She had that power now. But not the right. Helene had to choose for herself. “Not so long as you don’t compel her, or distress her, no. I won’t interfere. That means no more stalking, no more coercive gifts, no more unwanted home repairs, and no more threatening her other beaux.”

  Miach nodded. “Then I suppose I have my work cut out for me.”

  She watched as he and Elada strode away, up the gravel path toward the house, leaving Beth and Conn alone.

  “Miach is right,” he said, surveying the entrance to the mound, now nothing more than an opening in the earth. “You did well, Beth. The prince is the tricksiest of Fae, and you outwitted him.”

  “And I would be with him in the Otherworld now if you hadn’t come. Thank you.”

  “Did you doubt I would come for you, my cow-eyed beauty?”

  Had she doubted him? “The prince thought that once you had the sword, you would abandon me. You could have.”

  “No, I couldn’t have. The Summoner was my obligation. My geis. You are what makes such burdens bearable.”

  “The prince said you wouldn’t want me now that I have my power, now that I can command you.” She reached up to touch the marks on his chest through the fine cotton of his shirt.

  “There are certain circumstances under which I might enjoy being commanded,” he said, placing a hand on her hip and drawing her close.

  She forced herself to step back. “And there are others in which you wouldn’t.”

  “Yes. But I trust you not to abuse your power. Neither your Druidic voice of command, nor the power you hold over me because I love you. I’m not trusting blindly, Beth. I know you, your strength of character. Frank Carter abused your love. You would never inflict that kind of misery on anyone else.”

  She’d forgotten about Frank, broken and bawling in the library at the clinic. Not wanting but somehow needing to know, she asked, “What happened to him?”

  “Carter? He will no longer be an impediment to your career. By now he is in a prison hospital in Boston. He has made a written admission of his crimes, and sent his university, your museum, and the relevant journals an apology for misrepresenting your work as his.”

  It was everything she had ever wished for. And it was wrong. “You used your glamour to make him do it,” she said.

  “I did not. But two of Miach’s strong-blooded sons were happy to oblige. Let us be blunt—Frank Carter’s honesty was compelled, but his crimes were real.”

  “Thank you. Now don’t ever do it again. I want to earn my position in the academic world. You can’t make a gift of it to me.”

  “I gave you back only a little part of what Frank Carter stole. The rest you must reclaim for yourself. With my mundane help, if you’ll have it. I can do for you what you did for Frank Carter. Travel with you, share my knowledge with you. Discuss your findings. Even annotate and edit your work.”

  It was everything she had ever dreamed of. “What kind of life is that for Conn of the Hundred Battles?”

  “A privileged one, if you’ll have me. And there’s no one worth fighting anymore, in any case.”

  Miach and Elada passed home that afternoon. The sorcerer used his wealth and connections to make travel arrangements for Beth and Conn.

  “You can pass home with them. I don’t mind flying by myself,” she told him.

  “I’d rather not be parted from you now that I have you safe. You get into trouble, my cow-eyed beauty, anytime I let you out of my sight.”

  Before he left, Miach took Beth aside and said, “When you return home, you will consent to be trained?”

  “Are you sure you want that?” she asked. “A fully trained Druid on your doorstep?”

  He answered her question with a question. “Do you really believe this is the first attempt in two thousand years to open that gate?”

  She hadn’t thought about it, but of course it wasn’t. “No.”

  “But it was the first to succeed. And this, from an untrained Druid only freshly come into her power. What does that tell you?”

  Wards fade. Spells dissipate. Bonds can be broken. “The borders between this world and the other are weakening,” she said.

  “The time will come, Beth Carter, when I can no longer stand alone against those who would free the Court.” And with the Druids gone, Conn would be the focus of Fae vengeance. “Will you consent to be trained?”

  “Yes.”

  The prince’s estate turned out to be quite near Clonmel. Their flight wasn’t until morning, so they borrowed one of the prince’s cars—Conn selected a gray Jaguar—and drove to the inn where they had first met.

  Mrs. McClaren was at the front desk, and Mr. O’Donovan was filling his pipe when Conn and Beth walked in.

  “A room, please,” Conn said.

  “And we’ll pay for it,” Beth added.

  “With what?” he laughed, indicating her filmy gown and kidskin slippers.

  “Good point.”

  Mrs. McClaren shot Beth a panicked look. “You’ll want two rooms then, yes? I can give you the one with the nice iron bed. That’s empty. Or the one with the iron lock on the door. We can turn Mr. Keneally out in a trice.”

  “No iron,” Conn intoned.

  “It’s all right, Mrs. McClaren. He’s bound to behave himself.” Conn shot her a speaking glance. “Or at least to obey me,” she added.

  Mrs. McClaren looked entirely amazed, yet strangely hopeful. “Has he married you, then?”

  “Yes,” Conn said, putting an end to the conversation.

  The room they were given had no iron in it, but the low sloping ceiling under the eaves forced Conn to crawl into the bed. He pushed up the hem on Beth’s gown as he went, then stopped and said, “Now, Beth Carter, I am yours to command.”

  Keep reading for a sneak peek of

  Book 2 in the Cold Iron series

  Silver Skin

  Available April 2014 from Pocket Star

  Helene had never been to Miach’s home before, but Beth had described it from one of her visits. The sorcerer was tutoring Beth, teaching her how to use her Druid talents. Helene hadn’t liked the idea, could not, no matter what her best friend said, bring herself to trust Miach.

  Now she would have to.

  South Boston was a world removed from the bustle of the rest of the city. Much of it was infill, connecting the old fort
at Castle William, originally an island, with the mainland. Separated from downtown by Fort Point Channel, ringed by light industry, it had long been a tough neighborhood of immigrants, one group displacing the next until the Irish had come and stuck.

  It was fashionable now to buy houses and condos in the gentrified parts of Southie. The Shamrocks and the Winter Hill gang were only memories these days, but muggings and robberies were still alarmingly common. And of course Miach MacCecht’s close-knit crime family remained, collecting protection money from the bars and liquor stores, receiving their tithe from the goods that arrived at the shipping terminal, the cars that rolled off the container ships. Like the milk and honey that Beth Carter had told her some Irish villagers still left outside their doors to placate the Good Neighbors, a little taste of everything profitable in South Boston was offered up to the Fae.

  Helene had taken the T as far as the Broadway station and begun walking. Back Bay, where she lived, was a neighborhood of cafes and boutiques and grand public buildings. South Boston was a neighborhood of barbershops and bakeries and light industry. Helene had chosen what she perceived to be the safest route, on a well-trafficked street with schools and businesses, but when two shirtless men covered in prison tattoos had started following her and calling out obscenities, she jumped into a passing cab and told the driver to take her to the big house at City Point.

  The driver knew exactly which house she meant.

  Her first thought was that the mansion was ugly. A jumble of spires and porches and dormers with no rhyme or reason to them. But there was an exuberance to the architecture, an undeniable joy in the variety and sheer excess of ornament, that seduced her as she drew closer. From the looks of the outside of it, she guessed that the individual rooms would be quite charming, the house taking its shape from the interior living spaces more than any architect’s plan.