He scanned the horror of jars, filled with the pieces of the woman who’d birthed him, which Cabhan had preserved for his dark magicks.
The world Fin knew, his world, seemed not just centuries away, but as if it didn’t exist. Freeing the demon, giving it form and movement had drawn the cave into its own kind of hell where all the damned burned cold.
He smelled brimstone and blood—old blood and new. It took all his will to resist the sudden, fierce need to go to the altar, take up the cup that stood below a cross of yellowing bones, and drink.
Drink.
Sweat coated his skin though his breath turned to clouds in the frigid air that seemed to undulate like a sea with the fetid drops sliding down the walls and striking the floor in a tidal rhythm.
Something in its beat stirred his blood.
His hand trembled as he forced himself to reach into the bag, open the pouch, take out the crystal.
For a moment Branna was there—warm and strong, so full of light he could slow his pulse again, steady his hands. He rose up within the fog, up the damp wall of the cave. He saw symbols carved in the stone, recognized them from Ogham, though he couldn’t read them.
He laid the crystal in a chink, along a fingertip of ledge, and wondered if Branna’s charm could be strong enough to hide it from so much dark.
Such deep, fascinating dark, where voices chanted, and those to be sacrificed screamed and wept for a mercy that would never be given.
Why should mercy be given to the less? Their cries and screams of torment were true music, a call to dance, a call to feed.
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.”