Born of Oak and Silver (The Caradoc Chronicles) (31 page)

Instead of complying, I laughed cruelly in her face. I possessed the Sword, m
y Druid ran free—she no longer had any effect upon me aside from the faint tingling of my nerves as I noticed her pheromones being released. She smelled good, I’d give her that, but that was all.

Bram’s sudden tensing behind me made me aware of what must have been his plight.

“Bram,” I hushedly spoke, “close your eyes. Fight the temptation to look at her. Cover your ears and resist. I’ll not leave you alone, but I expect the same of you.” Bram instantly obeyed. It was imperative that I face Maurelle without expending too much concern elsewhere.

“Oh
, Daine, you do so amuse me. You will give me the Sword, and I would be the most grateful beneficiary should you choose to do so without a fight.” Her voice oozed rancid honey. Her sweet voice masked the venom that coursed through her veins.

“No,” I sneered
. “The answer will always be no.”

She walked back and forth at the same careful distance
, feigning a sulk. Her eyes were calculating. “Do not be so sure of that.” She smiled a smile that was pure poison, and sifted away.

I could not sense her anywhe
re near, and neither could the Earth. I turned to Bram, gently removing his hands from where he held them firmly against his ears. His eyes remained firmly shut. Blood that had begun to fall in tears marred his skin, beard, and clothing. I removed the handkerchief from my back pocket, and swiftly went to work on his face.

He refused to look at me, so determined was he to abstain from looking at Maurelle and become a pawn of her will ever again. “Bram, it’s all right. She has gone. Come, let us not waste any more time, and do just the same.” His eyes popped open, and he nodded his definite agreement.

We pushed through the thick undergrowth, finding our horses chewing sweet summer grass not far from where we had left them. In much better spirits, we mounted our horses, and turned them around to begin the journey home. I’d had presence of mind enough to bring an old tablecloth with me before I’d woken Bram. I wrapped the Sword in it now, and lay it solidly against my legs, feeling it shift from the left to the right as my horse walked.

Just before mid-morning we turned onto the long drive that led to our home. We allowed the horses to move past the house
; they were anxious to reach their stalls and oats and water. We tended to them, taking our time to make sure that we had done it well. I took the Sword from where I had kept it, always at an arm’s length, and removed it from its covering. It was beautiful as it glinted in the sun.

I was anxious to show Ayda. Our children would now always be safe from any threat. I breathed a sigh of relief, finally allowing myself to feel the joy I had been too afraid to acknowledge until now.

As we mounted the stairs, I began to feel uneasy. My disquietude seemed to increase with every step we made toward the house.

Bram stopped walking and looked at me
curiously. “What is it Daine?”

I extended my hand, rapidly moving it in an indication to cease his inqui
ry. I closed my eyes, listening—the house was silent. The house was never this quiet with the children around. Perhaps they had gone into town? I allowed my senses to fan out, noting that the breeze had ceased to blow, the birds to chirp, and even the insects to hum. I inhaled deeply, and smelled blood ever so faintly.

My eyes shot open as I grabbed Bram’s hand and pulled him forward. I felt him charging, as he too began to feel the terrible wrongness that had
veiled our home. We stormed up the large curving stair for the upper floors where the bedrooms lay. We dashed into the children’s bedrooms, entirely dismayed at having found them all empty. My room too was deserted.

“Do you think they went into town?” I voiced, strained and grasping for threads of hope that were hurriedly slipping away.

Bram pursed his lips, his head only barely moving to indicate that he did not.

My heart contracted
; terror exploded inside of me. I raced back through each of the bedrooms, searching them all again. I felt a calm hand firmly squeeze my forearm as I blindly stared at my daughter Charlotte’s made bed, tears blurring my eyesight as they refused to fall.

“She took
them.” Bram’s voice brought me to sharp attention where he stood. “Come, she will have taken them into the shelter of the woods.”

I needed no fu
rther coaxing and rushed from Charlotte’s room, down the stairs, and out the back door. I ran with the wind as my aid, making it as swiftly as I could to what had been my boys’ favorite place to play. A massive log that had had its interior partially rotted out served as their dungeon, castle, fort, and keep. I knew instinctively that this was where they would be.

The sun continued to shine brightly, breaking through in patches to the forest floor where it had found its way through the heavy canopy. The heat was interminable. There was no relief to my suffering in sight.

I broke through the trees, finding the area where my children played to be entirely empty. I heard Bram coming to a stop just beside me, and set my jaw to mask my dismay at having not immediately found them happily at play. It was Bram who then closed his eyes; taking a deep breath to steel himself, he motioned to the far side of the tree. The roots had come free of the ground and made a perfect shield to our eyes of the other side.

With trepidation,
I made my way around. Bram followed a mere step behind.

Both of us were ready for the fight that Maurelle
was sure to give. I raised the Sword, and moved quicker than the eye could catch to the other side of the upturned roots.

I froze, the S
word nearly dropping from my hand as I lost the strength to hold it up.

My three sons lay
dead, torn and bloody. Their bodies were flayed to ribbons in some places, as they lay unfamiliarly upon the forest floor. The ground around them had dampened with their merged blood.

I fell
upon my knees, my heart truly broken and rendered almost entirely useless as I stared up into Ayda’s eyes.

She held my daughter fiercel
y with unnatural clawed hands. She had one poised and ready at my silently crying daughter’s throat.

“Ayda. Please. You do not have to do this.” I swallowed h
eavily. Was there even air to breathe here?

Ayda laughed evilly, a sound that I had never heard cross her lips. Her clothing resembled the tattered
rags that had hung from her after her encounter with the Nuckelavee. Her hair was a wild, unkempt mess, her eyes glowed an unearthly, flat blue. She was everything that I’d thought would have been rebelled against by the well-groomed woman with lively eyes of emerald green that I knew and loved.

Then she smiled, revealing teeth that had been broken and turned into
crude fangs. It was the voice of my wife that then spoke. “Ah, but I do. And what’s more, I want to. Have you any idea how disappointing it was to have born children with no hint of the Fae?” Her eyebrow rose, making a parody of the woman that I loved.

“Why would our children have carried traits of the Fae, Ayda?” I asked roughly, confused. I looked at
Charlotte, and longed for nothing more than to hold her.

Ayda looked blatantly at me as she ran a claw down our daughter’s neck, causing her to begin to openly weep. I watched with wide-eyed horror as blood trickled down her neck and onto her dress. “Because, you fool, that was the deal that I made with Maurelle. If I were to help her, in any way that she asked,
then I would be made into one of the Fae.”

It was my turn to laugh, and I did so mockin
gly. “I, the fool. Oh Ayda, when have you not learned that deals with the Sidhe never work out as promised?”

“Apparently,
you must be blind. Am I not now similar to them in power and capacity?” Her hand flexed above my daughter’s throat.

In response, my own hand
tensed. I could not kill her with lightning; that would undoubtedly kill my precious girl too. There was nothing I could do but try to convince Ayda to let her go.

“Ayda,” Bram’s voice sounded out as he came to stand beside me, “it is not the Fae that you have been changed into, but
nothing more than a
Ban Sidhe
. You have become their puppet, and slave, and willingly traded your own soul to do so.”

“Pot calling the k
ettle black, aren’t we, Grandad?” She began to sharpen her claws against one another; the hand that held our daughter now pierced the delicate skin on Charlotte’s chest. Charlotte cried out, and Ayda leaned down to whisper something into her ear, something that had her simpering in a massive show of will to stop crying. Having succeeded, Ayda stroked our daughter’s cheek with her claws almost tenderly.

I cringed.

“Tell me, when did you so lightly trade your humanity? Was it when you could no longer do anything to thwart Brigid from marrying Daine? Or was it when your father refused to allow you to move to Drumcliff to pursue your Druid training and conquest of possessing Daine as your own?” Ayda raised herself and regarded both Bram and me squarely; Bram’s questions had surprised her.

“So
, you knew about all of that then?” Ayda asked rhetorically.

In unnecessary response, Bram gave but the faintest inclination of his head.

Straightening herself, concernedly regarding her claws as if they were painted and chipped, she answered coldly, “I met Maurelle sometime before that. I was a young girl, hopelessly in love with a boy who didn’t even notice that I existed.” Her gaze tore away from her claws to give me a blatantly murderous look. Then she demurely returned to inspecting her elongated fingers and nails.

“When I fou
nd that I possessed the Druid, possibilities blossomed within me. Perhaps now I could join my love in Drumcliff, and win his affection all for my own. When I revealed my Druidic capacity to Father, he refused to send me to Drumcliff. He was spiteful, choosing to instead instruct me personally and keep the knowledge of my gifts to himself. Apparently, he did not truly do that, now did he, Grandad.” She looked up to regard Bram suspiciously.

“And so you killed them.” There was no question in Bram’s voice.

“Yes. Maurelle appeared and made me an offer: to live forever as the Fae in exchange for my willingness to help. I eagerly accepted. If I could live as the Fae, with their beautiful men as dutiful companions, then it did not matter that I was rejected and scorned by the only human who ever made me burn with desire. She sent the Nuckelavee, and I helped him kill them all. All, that is, except for Brigid. She knew of my feelings for you,” she pinned me with her lifeless, blue eyes, “and stood in my way. For that, I killed her myself.

“
I watched as the Nuckelavee used her, and then in amusement as his semen burned and began to consume her from the inside out. Only then, as she writhed in pain, did I pour the lamp oil upon her body. I called fire, and sent the flames to gently lap at her skin. I delighted as she was burned slowly alive, the fire held back from ending her quickly by my very own hand.” Ayda beamed at us with pride.

“And now,” she continued, “Maurelle h
as asked that I retrieve the Sword. I have already killed the three,” she gestured callously toward the broken bodies of our sons that lay upon the ground, “and should you refuse, I will kill the girl too.”

My jaw tightened visibly as I bit down, feeling my teeth ache in the effort.

“Quite the conundrum, isn’t it, Daine?” She drummed her hand upon the auburn curls of my daughter’s head. “Save your daughter, or retain only the merest possibility of saving humanity. Whatever will you choose?” She laughed giddily.

“Ayda, y
ou have . . .” Bram was not able to finish before Ayda had called the wind and had him blown forcibly into a tree behind her. The tree groaned upon impact, and although he was hidden behind the massive root system, I heard his body strike the ground with a sickening thud.

“Why
, Ayda? Did I not love you enough? I gave you everything, everything that I am. There was never a second thought for Brigid; I only dreamed of you,” I said desperately.

Ayda stuck out
her bottom lip, twisting her face into a mask of sadness. “Oh, my poor baby.” She then smiled, revealing her broken and jagged teeth, her lifeless, blue eyes ghastly. “Come now, you’re stalling. Choose. Your precious Charlotte, or the Sword?” Her hand moved to fondle the throat of my daughter with her claws.

I allowed my eyes to fall away from Ayda’s, dropping
until they found the terrified eyes of my daughter. I choked on the sob that had begun to rise in my throat. My voice ragged and breaking, somehow I managed to tell her, “It’ll be alright, Pumpkin.”

I had barely
choked it out, seeing the hope blossom in my daughter’s eyes, before Ayda’s claws slashed down and tore out Charlotte’s throat. Ayda cruelly let her fall to the ground, stepping away with blatant hatred.

I fled forward, uncaring of the consequences. I watched
helplessly as Charlotte’s tiny hands went up to her mangled throat in an effort to stop the torrent of blood that was spurting out. My hands incapably covered her own. There was nothing I could do to save her as she began to choke on her blood. Her lips turned a deathly shade of blue as her skin waxed sickly pale. I leaned over her, speaking the words for instantaneous healing against the exposed muscle and tissue of her neck.