Blood of the Fey (Morgana Trilogy) (52 page)

“You can’t be,” I say, the shock still impeding my neurons. “Fey can’t withstand the touch of iron…You couldn’t have been able to live with us, drive…take a plane.”

“It’s called a seal, Morgan,” Dean says. “I thought you knew all about those.”

“But you saved me,” I say, louder, still trying to make sense in a world that’s disintegrating before my very eyes.

All those memories of my time growing up in Europe, being shuffled from one boarding school to the next. But Dean had always been there to pick up the broken pieces and set them right again, to tell me that everything was going to be all right, that I had nothing to worry about.

“You even got me out of jail!”

Dean’s eyebrows rise high over his dark eyes. “Of course I did,” he says. “How else would I bring you here? Now enough with all the questions, and get up.”

A terrifying thought strikes me like a well-sharpened ax. I bite hard on my lip to stop it from trembling.

“The murders…was that you?”

“Not directly, no,” Dean says with an exasperated sigh. “Now get the hell up and follow me.”

“No.” I sink farther into the wine barrel behind me, as if it’s going to swallow me up.

His hand strikes out, tiny dark bolts of lightning firing out. I scream and raise my arms over my face. Pain shoots down from my shoulder to the tip of my fingers, and I hear Dean curse. Breathing hard, I slowly lower my arms to palpate my body, looking for any
hole or missing limb. Instead, I find Dean leaning heavily against the wooden casks behind him.

“You will come with me,” he says, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. “Whether you like it or not.”

“Or else?”

“There is no else,” Dean says, grabbing me by the arm and forcing me to my feet.

“Let. Me. Go,” I say, struggling against his hold.

My shoulder, still aching from my fight with the banshee, hurts like I’ve been stabbed with a red-hot poker. A spasm sends goose bumps down my arm, and, to my surprise, I see Dean wince.

“I said to come along nicely,” he mutters.

Without letting me go, he raises his other fist and clocks me in the face. My vision goes momentarily dark. I feel Dean catch me before I collapse on the floor, then fling me over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes.

I try to move, resist some more, but my whole body feels like someone’s pulled my plug. As if through foggy lenses, I see Puck scutter away behind Myrdwinn Junior’s prone body, and I remember I have yet to give Vivian the message. Then Dean makes a sharp turn, and I lose them both from sight.

My body swings back and forth with every step Dean takes, sending sparks of pain down my left arm. I hear Dean’s labored breathing as we make our way slowly up the stairs. The noises of battle greet us before we even reach the ground floor. My heart lurches inside my rib cage—what is going to happen to all these people?

“Morgan?”

I blink and look sideways at the indistinct shapes moving toward us from a side hallway. Though I can’t distinguish anyone’s face, Bri’s voice is unmistakable.

“Who are you, and what are you doing to Morgan?” Bri asks.

I want to tell her to stay away, warn her to take cover, but only manage a half-choked gasp.

I feel more than see Dean strike Bri down, the hairs on my body rising from the blast’s aftermath. I want to punch his back, scream Bri’s name, but the air feels like it’s gotten as thick as cream, and my movements get sluggish.

The cool air whips around me the moment Dean pushes the outside door, carrying with it the acrid smell of smoke coming from the burning forge and wharf. Without hesitation, he marches forward into the fray. Even in the midst of battle, the sounds of steel hitting sharpened bones, and of rattling explosions, seem dim.

I hear someone call my name, someone who sounds strangely like Arthur. I strain to lift my head. I think I see a gleam, hear the distinct though oddly distant sound of someone battering furiously at something, but then my head falls back against Dean’s dorsum, and I pass out.

I wake up the moment I’m dropped into snow’s freezing embrace. I roll over and heave, my whole body shaking with the effort. Once I think I’m safe from fainting again, I sit up to see where we are.

I know we’ve reached the surface—the snow, bright sunlight, and the distant rumbling of cars make it obvious—but it’s not until I see Dean sitting against a tall stone that I realize where exactly.

“Island Park,” I croak. I blink as the sun’s reflection makes my eyes water. “Why are we here?”

But Dean won’t answer. He doesn’t move from his sitting position, and, upon closer inspection, I note the sweat beading on his pale features. His eyes are closed and his breathing labored. Could he be ill?

My first instinct is to go to him, like he’s always come to me in times of trouble. Then I recall the nightmare that’s still unfolding down below, and I decide against it.

Slowly, I get to my feet, my knees creaking, then take a long step away from the cairn and toward the shore, leaving deep imprints in the thick blanket of white. No boats can come here in this season, but perhaps the ice is strong enough that I can walk on the lake back to the city’s safety.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

The low voice sends shivers down my spine. I look over my shoulder; Dean’s eyes are open. He jerks his chin toward me, and I feel something brush against my legs before I hear the chilling laugh.

“Massster,” the banshee hisses, prostrating herself at his feet.

I nearly fall back down into the snow.

“Master?” I repeat. Dean is that creature’s master?

Using the standing stone behind him for support, Dean slowly gets up. It all starts to make sense now—that night I ended up fighting the banshee on this island, the reason he’d been the one to save me…

“You were here that night, weren’t you?” I ask, anger boiling in the pit of my stomach.

“Now you realize,” Dean says, avoiding my eyes.

I reel back. This isn’t possible. Dean—
my
Dean—in league with the banshee who’s been killing all these people? But pieces of the puzzle finally come together—how Ella tried to warn me, and then disappeared in the process…

“Ella,” I say, recalling the hunched-over shape in the yard. “You killed her too, didn’t you?”

“A necessary sacrifice for the freedom of a great one,” he says.

“You mean a degenerate man killer,” I say and have the pleasure of seeing anger flare on his otherwise expressionless face.

“You killed my father,” I murmur, feeling my eyes go wet.

Impassive, Dean looks at me for a long moment. He sways as he pushes himself away from the stone, toward me. The banshee rushes to his aid, but Dean shoves her away.

“You’re the one who got those Fomori in?” I ask, hating how my voice trembles.

“I needed a diversion,” Dean says. “And with the Board safely away, the plan seems to have worked, don’t you think?”

“A diversion?” I repeat. “To get all those people killed?”

Dean shrugs. “Nothing more than what they’re doing to us,” he says. “At least their deaths are quick. Much better than spending eons as a slave until your powers are so depleted you cease to exist.”

“And me? You tried to poison me!” I exclaim. “That’s why that cat was asleep when you brought me back inside, wasn’t it?”

The spilled bowl of milk, the insistence I drink that stupid hot cocoa of his…For some reason, this hurts me even more.

“Why me?” I whisper.

“You’re the missing ingredient,” Dean says simply. His dark eyes come to rest on my face, then slide down to my left shoulder.

He stumbles toward me, and I back away. “Stay away from me,” I say, looking between him and the dark cowl that covers the banshee’s deathlike look, “you and your gofer.”

“Trust me,” Dean says, “if there was a way around this, I would have found it.”

“Around what?” I ask, confused by his tone. Could he actually be sad about this? A spark of hope flickers in my chest; if Dean doesn’t truly want to hurt me, maybe I still have a chance to get away. I take another step back, feeling the ground slope gently down. “Why did you bring me here?”

“To fulfill your destiny,” Dean says.

And with a sudden burst of speed, he jumps to my side and grabs my arm, his thin fingers digging into my flesh. He jerks me after him.

“You’re hurting me,” I say, feeling woozy once more.

“It’ll be over soon,” Dean says through gritted teeth.

The banshee hovers around us, one moment pacing ahead of us, the next pushing me in the back to make me move faster.

“Are you going to kill me?” I ask.

Dean has us hurry toward the circle of stones until we’re standing in its center beside a small, oblong knoll that wasn’t here the last time I was on this cursed island.

“I have ffffinished the circle,” the banshee rasps.

I see that, where there had been seven stones before, there are now eleven of them forming a circle around us like a rough draft of Stonehenge. Dean lets go of my arm and strides to a wide gap in the circle.

“I see,” he says, his crisp voice reaching me over the whistling wind. The banshee’s gray form moves about Dean like a will-o’-the-wisp, excited.

“I did everything Massster asssked,” she says.

“Yes,” Dean says, reaching behind him, “but you missed a spot.”

I see something glint in his hands before it gets buried in the banshee’s tattered robe. A keening wail arises from the Fey. Her clawed hands reach out for Dean as she sinks slowly into the cover of snow in a gray heap.

“You’ve served me well,” Dean says before pulling his hand away.

If I had any food left in my stomach, I’d be throwing up right now. I know how horrible the banshee is, how she’s attacked me and those knights, how she’s left Percy on the brink of death.
Yet…a small part of me can’t help but feel pity for the creature and the way she was used. Had it not been for Dean, would she still have committed all those atrocities?

Small tremors that rapidly increase in intensity shake the ground. As the wail turns into a howl of pain, I realize that the banshee’s struggling to dig out of a growing hole in the ground, her claws raking through the snow uselessly.

“Massster!” she pleads.

A poem comes back to me from the depths of my memory, one Jack recited in the library before an ancient stele.

Four men to raise the stones their blood did shed…

A frisson runs down my neck—all those people reported disappeared, four in all.

Four Fey their essence over the cairn did spread…

And now this banshee, a Fey, is being fed to the earth to complete the circle—the circle that’s supposed to be a prison— thereby reversing the process…

My mind loses track of my surroundings, and, next thing I know, I’m lying in the snow next to the churning earth, pulling on the banshee’s bony arms. There’s a strange resistance, as if the ground’s sucking away at the banshee’s body, inexorably dragging her farther and farther down.

Dean’s hand grabs the back of my jacket and tries to haul me away.

“Stop it!” I yell, anger flaring through me.

Again, I feel that numbing pain shoot down my left arm from my shoulder. Dean lets me go with a curse.

“Come on,” I say, gritting my teeth as I pull harder at the creature’s arms.

With a sickening crunch, the banshee’s suddenly released, and we both tumble backward. The earthquake continues for a while longer, then slowly fades away.

Shaking my head, I look about for the creature. I find the banshee stretched out in her tattered cloak a foot away from me.

“Are you all right?” I ask, half crawling, half walking over to her.

The creature whimpers as I try to feel for a pulse, then snaps at me. I jerk my hand away, but not fast enough, as she claws down my side, tearing my jacket from collar to sleeve, nearly ripping my arm off in the process. The banshee then quickly pushes herself toward the lake, leaving a dark path of blood in the snow behind. Then, with a final gasp, she rolls over onto the frozen water, shatters the ice with one long talon, and sinks into the dark waters.

“You fool,” Dean says, panting.

He’s holding his right side like something’s bothering him, and for the first time in my life, I hope he’s in intense pain.

“What, did I foil your plans?” I ask, a self-satisfied smirk on my face.

“Not exactly,” he says, grabbing me by the wrist and forcing me back to the center of the stone circle. “Though it does change some of the variables.”

As we reach the knoll again, Dean pulls his knife back out and slashes my exposed arm. I scream as pain explodes down my body, sending stars into my vision. Sweating profusely, he tugs on my arm so the blood falls freely onto the small mound, turning the snow scarlet.

“No!” I yell frantically. “Let me go! What are you doing?”

“Undoing something that should never have been allowed,” Dean mutters.

Once again, the ground shakes, and Dean releases me. I scramble backward, away from the earth, which, I know, is going to try to swallow me whole. But the ground doesn’t attempt to suck me in, and I watch, mesmerized, as a large rectangular stone engraved with runes slowly emerges from its depths. Then stops.