Catch & Hold-Legend (Legend series) (27 page)

He must have felt the parting of the atmosphere as I arrived from Daoine, for he shifted out of range. Still, I charged at him, purposely allowing him to think the human—the weakness of the human that he knew I was—could be overcome. He sneered at me and growled, “You can’t save her.”

“No? We’ll see,” I said on a low note. Hearing the primal threat in my voice, I was momentarily impressed with myself.

“Stop!” commanded my queen. “Radzia MacDaun …”

“Sorry, my Queen, want to follow your orders, but this time, this thing that calls himself a Seelie Fae is going down.” Although I allowed him to see me thrust, before I completed the movement I shifted in behind him and nearly, by damn, nearly caught him. At the last moment he realized and jumped out of the way and then shifted (or tried) to shift behind me. I was, however, ready for him, and I slashed through the air, but once again he jumped out of the way.

This time he was behind my queen, with the death sword to her neck.

She clucked her tongue and would not be held hostage. She vanished and emerged beside me to whisper, “My sweet Princess, there is no need for all of this. Did you think I was being held against my will? Did you think it was an accident that I was not guarded at the portal?”

It dawned on me. She had set a trap for Gaiscioch. His taking her captive had been part of her plan, and I had royally messed up. She saw both the understanding and dismay in my eyes and gently chucked my chin. “No matter—perhaps it was never I who was supposed to finish him. After all … you are key in the prophecy.”

However, Gais wasn’t concerned with prophecies. He moved in a frenzy and bellowed so that his voice seemed to reverberate against the prison walls. “Do you mean the net never held you …?”

“You see, Gais, it belonged to the Dark King, and long ago he removed its power to enslave a queen,” she said softly. I could tell from the look on her face she wanted to taunt him.

“All this while you could have escaped, Aaibhe … but you didn’t. You prolonged your captivity to be
with me.
”

“To be with you?” she snapped back at him in high temper. “I loathed every moment I have been with you, but I needed to keep you here and detain you from opening the largest of your portals.”

“No—I don’t believe that. You still care for me … you will care for me …”

He sounded as though he had gone over the edge, and I thought it would be a good time to use my sword. I took the opportunity and thrust forward at him, but he was so incredibly quick and maneuvered away, even as he went towards the queen.

“Care for you?” Aaibhe’s head was held high, and her brilliant eyes looked dark and full with sadness. “I despise you and all that you are. You murdered my Conall. You have turned on your race and lead abominations onto the earth, and, Gais … if I were not a queen, I would kill you now with my own hands … as you know I can.”

“Well, I’m not a queen,” I said and dove at him again while his attention was, I thought, totally on the queen.

He turned on me with all the hate and bitterness he felt in that moment and nearly got close enough to knick me. Luckily, I’m agile; I bent backwards from the waist up and then shifted.

He knew exactly where I would step out and was there waiting. He was a skilled warrior, fast and intuitive. I raised my sword, and he blocked it with his own.

The resulting vibrations shook the entire room, and the sound the two swords made when they met made me want to put my hands over my ears.

There is nothing like the sound of two death swords when they clang in battle. I had heard the stories, but never imagined …

It is like time exploding against itself in a wave of vociferous agony. Death swords have a ‘life’ of their own, and when they meet in battle, it is brother against brother. They are loyal, must be loyal to their bonded owner, but they physically suffer when pitted against one another blade to blade.

It was an awesome sound of power and sadness combined, and it actually made me want to cry. I thought the sound the two blades made upon meeting must have been heard around the world …

And Gais, who had not heard this sound since the destruction of his beloved Danu, was nearly as awestruck as I for a moment—only a moment.

I can’t tell you what he thought, but he leveled his glaring, hate-filled eyes at me and on a hushed promise said, “You, Radzia MacDaun, will soon join your father!” Then he shifted off.

I thrust at him with my sword, but again those words
too late
hit me in the face, and now it was my time to scream! I forgot about the queen standing nearby. I forgot about the world presently in danger of total destruction … I only remembered my dad, and I started to shift off after Gais.

Something stopped me!

The queen had thrown a net of magic around me, or perhaps it had been there before I started to shift? At any rate I turned to her and begged, “Let me go!”

“Yes, when you have collected yourself for the battle,” she answered me softly.

“I am collected, and I am no longer looking for a fair fight. Please, my Queen, let me go after him.”

“Indeed—go then. I must collect the others and meet you there at his portal in Dublin. It is where he will make his largest strike. We can advance on the other portals after we contain the one at Trinity.”

I shifted after Gaiscioch and knew this time was the hour. One of us was going to die, and if I had to go down, he was going with me …

* * *

Princess Breith, or as she became when she married Z’s father, Lady Breith of MacDaun, called out in a clear voice, “Allow him to enter, my dear ones.”

The five stern-looking but pretty Daoine Fae stepped aside, and the chamber door opened wide for me. I went inside and saw my
enfant’s
mother, not only out of her state of illusion but sitting up near the window on a brightly upholstered settee.

I went to her and formally went down on one knee to present myself, but she touched my shoulder and bade me sit with her on the settee. Radzia’s mother was not only beautiful, but she had a sereneness about herself that was soothing in its soft aura.

“You must be Danté … Radzia spoke of you,” she said as I got up and sat a respectful distance from her, at an angle so I could fully face her. “So tell me … do you love my daughter?”

“Love her? I adore her beyond hope of ever being able to live without her, and that is why I am here.”

“Good—then keep her safe,” she said on a frown.

“Precisely why I am here,” I answered, now in a hurry to get on with it. I had to get to Z because I knew my
enfant
and what she would sacrifice to kill Gais and free the queen.

“What do you mean?” Princess Breith’s brilliant eyes lit with concern.

“She has gone to save the queen—” I started.

“It is done, and Queen Aaibhe was never in danger,” she said, her face again lit by a soft, faraway smile. “Radzia called on me, and together with Queen Mab we made a connection … and—”

“Then, why is she not here with you? I can think of only one thing that would have kept her from coming immediately to you after your long … sojourn away from her.” I knew at once that Z must be on Gais’s trail. I knew her better than myself.

Z’s mother frowned again and stood up. “What are you saying?”

“I am saying that she is bent on destroying Gais for his cowardly murder of your husband, and I need to know where Z is.”

“Her scent … follow her scent and stop her.”

“She has disguised it,” I answered.

Z’s mother smiled proudly. “Ah, then she has learned a thing or two …”

“And more—and they will not be enough to beat Gais. He is seventy thousand years old with all that time and battle experience to ward her attack and kill her before she can counter … she fights fairly—he does not.”

“Then follow his scent—now! Do it now!”

I kissed her fingers. Damn, why hadn’t I thought of that? It was an easy thing to pick up his Dark Magic scent. He wasn’t a Royal and couldn’t disguise his scent from either the Royal Trackers or me!

And there he stood, sword raised against my Z as she stepped into his trap!

* * *

I saw Danté out of the corner of my eye. He was coming at Gais, flanking him, but that would put him in danger … it was wide open at his back. Didn’t he know I knew what I was doing? I couldn’t speak or send him a message because I wanted to concentrate on Gais’s movements, his steps, his shift distances. Rolo, ever hanging from my chain belt, and I had a plan.

Not too long ago, Rolo had sent me underground to escape the Trackers’ gold net, and it occurred to him that I should do the same and come up near Gais’s legs and slice them off. Oh! I liked that!

Go underground, track him, and up and slash hard and fast.
Yes.

But Danté’s arrival was nixing that, as now the ground thundered with the two of them going at one another. I couldn’t take the chance of coming up too close to Danté.

At our backs, the portal had opened, and Trinity grounds were filling with hordes of Dark Fae. It was midnight and Halloween, and it was true: black magic was at its strongest on this day and until midnight tonight.

Queen Aaibhe and Queen Mab, both heavily guarded by Royal Trackers, were working to close the dolmens.

Breslyn and Ete were cutting down numbers of monsters too many to count, and Deimne was in the air, swooshing in with great sweeps to leave ten and twenty dead at a time.

The others I knew were fighting at the smaller portals, so my job was to do what I had been planning and training for all the months since my father’s murder. I was going to kill Gais … in slow degrees if I could.

Gais suddenly shifted away, and both Danté and I looked around trying to get a fix on him. Then I felt him behind me … and his sword was close, way too close, and he said, “Come closer, Danté, and I will aim my sword at her human heart and plunge it so deep she will disintegrate.”

“You will be dead before you can move it towards her!” Danté snapped.

“Still … I think I’ll chance it, Danté—maybe it may be worth it …”

I turned and faced Gais, and all at once I felt a sure, overwhelming sense of completion as I told him, “Too bad … Gais, you have just made your last threat.”

He laughed. “Yes, too bad for you, Daoine …” And then his face took on an expression of surprise and horror, and I jumped out of the way as he fell forward.

What he had not sensed, what he had not realized, was that my mother, Princess Breith of Daoine, my father’s bride, had shifted in behind him. She thrust her death weapon into his back as she softly said my father’s name: “For Nemid …”

I rushed into her arms, and in the midst of the battle raging all around us, and in the center of Trinity awash with blood and gore of the Dark Realm’s abominations, we held one another while my Danté stood guard.

Gaiscioch lay dead at our feet, too easy for my liking, but dead, and I whispered my father’s name, as my mother had, “Nemid MacDaun!”

~ Epilogue ~

I would like to tell you that it ended there and all was well, but that wouldn’t be quite the truth.

Oh, with Gaiscioch dead and out of the way, we were able to (or rather the two queens were able to) hide away the portals he used to bring the Dark Fae through their Realm to ours. And then they went about the business of repairing the fissures in the Dark Realm’s Prison Wall.

Many abominations were dispatched back to the Dark Realm; more were killed and their corpses disposed of.

As it happened, humans thought it was a ‘movie stunt’. The people that were killed and found were said to have been killed by a serial killer, and the hunt for same began.

Queen Mab and Queen Aaibhe found Pestale’s two brothers in a hovel with a group of five women, two of them already dead; the Dark Princes were returned to Morrigu’s palace, and their portal was (we hope) permanently shut down.

However, here is the rub—Pestale is still out there.

He has more than the Seelie Fae to worry about, though. Chancemont of Dravo is after him, and I do believe Chance will not rest until he finds him and exacts his revenge for Lana’s death.

Trevor, Danté’s brother, has bound himself to Chance in the search for Pestale, and they make a formidable pair.

My mom still remains in Daoine. It is too difficult for her to return to MacDaun, where she and my dad made so many beautiful memories. She is very active though, and Queen Mab has appointed her to the Daoine Council. I know it will take time, but she will come to MacDaun more often, I hope.

Danté and I are at MacDaun a great deal. It feels like home to both of us, although he is very prone to shifting us in the middle of a kiss to his bed at Lugh Palace.

Rolo spends less time now hanging from my belt, as it is not quite the fashion statement I want to make, but he is always nearby, as our swords are … just a thought away.

After my dad’s murder and my mom’s collapse … I knew she was free falling. I suppose I was as well, but now—now Danté takes me in his arms every moment he can, and he tells me that I will never fall again, that he will always be there to catch and hold me, and I know it as a truth.