Morrigan's Cross
Page 27

He glanced back. “Aren’t you the helpful one?”
“I’m too revved up to sleep, too restless to sit. So, coffee, tea, milk?”
“I wouldn’t mind the coffee. Thanks for that.”
She brewed a short pot, brought him a mug of it. Then stood behind him, staring out into the night sky. “What was he like as a boy?”
“As I told you.”
“Did he ever doubt his power? Ever wish he hadn’t been given the gift?”
It was a strange sensation, having a woman question him about another man. Generally if they weren’t talking about themselves they were asking about him, trying to nudge aside what some of them saw as a curtain of mystery.
“Not that he ever told me. And he would have,” Cian said after a moment. “We were close enough in those days.”
“Was there someone—a woman, a girl—for him back there?”
“No. He looked, and he touched, and he had a few. He’s a sorcerer not a priest. But he never told me of one special to him. I never saw him look at any of the girls as he looks at you. To your peril, Glenna, I’d be saying. But mortals are fools when it comes to love.”
“And I’d say if you can’t love when you’re facing death, then death’s not worth fighting. Lilith had a child with her. Did he tell you that?”
“He didn’t, no. You need to understand there’s no sentiment there, no softness. A child is just easy prey, and a sweet meal.”
Her stomach turned, but she kept her voice even. “Eight or ten years old, I’d say,” she continued. “In the bed with her, in those caves. She’d made him like her. She’d made that child like her.”
“That shocks and angers you, well, that’s fine then. Shock and anger can be strong weapons in the right hand. But remember this. If you see that child, or one like him, put your pity away, because he’ll kill you without thought or mercy unless you kill him first.”
She studied Cian now, that profile that was so like his brother’s, yet so completely his own. She wanted to ask if he’d ever turned a child, or fed on one. But she was afraid the answer might be unforgivable, and she needed him.
“Could you do that, destroy a child whatever he’d become?”
“Without thought or mercy.” He glanced at her, and she saw he’d known the other question running in her mind. “And you’re no good to us or yourself if you can’t do the same.”
She left him then without a word and went back to stretch out beside Hoyt. Because the conversation with Cian had chilled her, she pulled her own blanket up to her throat, curled toward Hoyt’s body heat.
And when she slept, finally slept, she dreamed of children, with sunny hair and bloody fangs.
She woke with a start to find Cian leaning over her. A scream clawed up to her throat until she realized he was shaking Hoyt awake.
She pushed at her hair, skimmed her fingers over her face for a quick glamour. They were speaking in low tones and, she realized, in Irish.
“English, please. I can’t follow that much, especially with the accents.”
Both turned vibrant blue eyes on her, and Cian straightened as she brought her chair up. “I’m telling him we’ve about an hour flight time left.”
“Who’s flying the plane?”
“King’s got it for the moment. We’ll be landing at dawn.”
“Good. Great.” She barely stifled a yawn. “I’ll throw some coffee and breakfast together so... Dawn?”
“Aye, dawn. I need a good cloud cover. Rain would be a bonus. Can you do this? Otherwise King will land it. He’s capable, and I’ll be spending the rest of the flight and the day in the back of the plane.”
“I said I could do it, and I will.”
“We can do it,” Glenna corrected.
“Well, be quick about it, will you? I’ve been singed a time or two and it’s unpleasant.”
“You’re welcome,” she muttered when he left them. “I’ll get a few things from my travel case.”
“I don’t need them.” Hoyt brushed her aside, got up to stand in the aisle. “This time, it’ll be my way. He’s my brother, after all.”
“Your way then. How can I help?”
“Call the vision to your mind. Clouds and rain. Rain and clouds.” He retrieved his staff. “See it, feel it, smell it. Thick and steady, with the sun trapped behind the gloom. Dusky light, light without power or harm. See it, feel it, smell it.”
He held his staff in both hands, braced his legs apart for balance, then raised it.
“I call the rain, the black clouds that cover the sky. I call the clouds, fat with rain that streams from the heavens. Swirl and close and lay thick.”
She felt it spin, spin out from him, spin out to the air. The plane shook, bucked, trembled, but he stood as if he stood on a floor of granite. The tip of the staff glowed blue.
He turned to her, nodded. “That should do it.”
“Well. Okay then. I’ll make coffee.”
They landed in gloom with the rain like a gray curtain. A little overdone, in Glenna’s opinion, and it was going to be a miserable drive from the airport to wherever the hell they were going.
But she stepped off the plane and onto Ireland, and there it was. A connection, instant and surprising even to her. She had a quick sense of memory of a farm—green hills, stone fences and a white house with clothes flapping on a line in a brisk wind. There was a garden in the dooryard with dahlias big as dinner plates and calla lilies white as wishes.
It was gone almost as quickly as it had come. She wondered if it was her memory from another time, another life, or simply a call through her blood. Her grandmother’s mother had come from Ireland, from a farm in Kerry.
She had brought her linens and her best dishes—and her magic—to America with her.
She waited for Hoyt to deplane. This would always be home for him, she saw it now in the pleasure that ran over his face. Whether it was a busy airport or an empty field, this was his place. And part, very much a part, she understood now, of what he would die to save.
“Welcome home.”
“It looks nothing like it did.”
“Parts of it will.” She took his hand and squeezed. “Nice job with the weather, by the way.”
“Well, that at least, is familiar.”