Celtic Rain (The Battle Raven Series) (4 page)

“At least I got to enjoy it while I could.” Lara said as she turned to Aodhan and held out her arm. “I’m letting you do this because the alternative sounds a lot worse. Let’s get this over with.”

Holding out her arm Lara took in a deep breath and looked away as he sliced it. She cringed at the pain and tried not to look at it as she felt the blood flow through her fingers covering the gash. Lara paused for a second and thought about the show her and Kedryn’s favorite TV show and some of the bloodier scenes. Who knew she would actually use it as a live reference.

Lara looked around with a knot welling up in her stomach and she whispered to herself “Just do it and not think about it.”

She ran a bloody hand down her bed spread and rubbed her arm on her pillow. Whipping her arm out little splatters of blood landed on the wall, ceiling and Papyrus hanging on it. She walked out of her room dripping blood on the floor.

She grabbed the staircase railing smearing and dripping blood down the stairs. Aodhan opened one of the double doors and quickly glanced around. He motioned her outside and watched as Lara left a bloody handprint on the bottom step of the stairs and she hurried out the door onto the porch and left a trail there too.

“Good enough?” she asked .

Aodhan looked around and quietly. “Yes.” He quickly grabbed her arm and healed it.

“Jesus mom!” Kedryn said as he examined the blood. Lara gave him a sharp look and he cringed. “Sorry. Slipped. Guess I know what to do.” Kedryn said as he watched as his mom’s sharp look softened.

“Sorry you have to do this too.” she said.

He waived it off “It’s cool. A little blood won’t hurt anything. Besides it’s kind of sweet that he can do this.” Kedryn headed up the stairs with Aodhan following behind him.

Downstairs Lara put on her field jacket, grabbed her dagger and Kedryn’s clothes. As Aodhan and Kedryn came down the stairs she grimaced at the railing and walls and thought of what her family would think.

After his arm was healed Kedryn hit the panic button on the alarm and called 911 as Lara and Aodhan headed out to the jeep. When Kedryn hopped into the back seat Lara reached over and handed him the clothes he gave her and shoved the dagger in a side pocket of her frame pack. Before backing down the drive Lara looked at her house.

“Everything is going to change. I guess no back to reality this time.”

Keeping the jeeps lights off Lara backed out of the drive. She looked at the houses on either side that showed no sign of life. As she pulled around the corner Lara glanced over at Aodhan who had a strange look on his face.

He suddenly blurted out “Shut this metal beast off and get down!”

Lara jerked the wheel at his outburst and slowly pulled the jeep over turning it off. She sunk down in the seat avoiding hitting the steering wheel with her knees and shifted. She still had a view of her house that was less than a half a block away. Lara squinted to get a better view and made out some shadows that moved to the back of the house. As her eyes adjusted more to the dark she noticed the outline of a couple more.

Under his breath Lara heard Aodhan. “We got out of there just in time. This thing is the only moving object in the area and they would sure have noticed.”

In the back seat Kedryn was struggling with his window. “What is it? I can’t see a thing.” he finally got the dusty window to roll down a crack and peered out at the house.

Aodhan held up a hand for everyone to be quiet as he intently looked at the house. The two front double doors swung open and a man fell onto the porch. He rolled over and lunged after the one who had shoved him through it. Aodhan recognized the one who had fell on the porch as a tracker. The tracker now had the Firbolg pinned on the stairs punching him until he was satisfied the other was down. Something big flew past the heads of the two men on the stairs and smashed into wall.

“Looks like there is one heck of a fight going on in there. Apologies, starting upstairs was a good idea except …”

Aodhan stopped talking as he saw the look of fury on her face. He followed her eyes and saw the shattering of something else against the wall. It took all of Lara’s will power not to jump out of the jeep when she saw her precious Ming dynasty vase crash against the stairwell.

“It is possible the trackers will take care of the Firbolg for us. One is down and out on the stairs.” Aodhan said trying to distract her. He noticed she was poised to leap out of the jeep so he reached out and put his hand on her shoulder to calm her down. The last thing he needed was to be confused as to what to do.

Lara felt Aodhan’s hand on her shoulder and she relaxed a bit. She watched as a tracker walked by the doorway and kicked the man on the stairs that was now on his knees. The tracker turned looking in their direction.

“Um Aodhan, I think he spotted us.” she said.

“Cac Capaill. It is Niall.” Aodhan said

Lara recognized the Gaelic slang, and blurted out “Horse shit?” she cringed at the look he gave her and glanced at the house.

The tracker that was standing in the doorway started to step out of the double doors after them. Lara readied herself to start the jeep. Suddenly sirens
sounded and bright lights appeared as a police cruiser raced up the street to her house and then another. The cruisers stopped in front of the house and the officers pulled out their weapons stopping the tracker’s pursuit.

“I should have known he would recognize me. I just thought that if they saw the jeep taking off it would be easy to track us. That was my mistake we should have just left.” Aodhan said.

“How on earth could he even see us.” Kedryn asked as he watched the officers cautiously approach their house.

“Niall is the best. He notices everything.” Aodhan said

“Let’s go.” Lara started up the jeep, inched it forward and raced out of the area. She looked in her rear view mirror to see if anyone noticed. The police, Firbolg and trackers were focused on each other paying them no more notice. Strange, she thought. It really does happen in real life and not just in the movies that the getaway car inches away in plain sight.

In the background she heard Amy Lee on the radio singing,
“It’s true, we’re all a bit, Insane
”. Lara thought to herself, Yep that would be me and this whole situation.

Braking at a stop sign a few blocks away she looked at Aodhan and put her head down on the steering wheel. Lara took a few deep breaths to keep herself from hyperventilating and slow down her heart.

“This is soo not normal. This does not happen in real life.” she said under her breath. Lara took a couple more breaths and sat back up in the seat.

“Where are we going? I need some sort of direction. My house is trashed and collection is ruined. OhmiGosh all these years…well, I guess being alive is more important.” she looked in the rear view mirror at Kedryn.

“Um yeah mom, priorities.” Kedryn said and watched her shift in the seat turning to Aodhan waiting for him to speak.

Aodhan turned in the seat and he finally really noticed her. Lara’s eyes were a deep emerald green and her auburn hair was highlighted by the moonlight. He saw strength in the soft features of her face. Lara waved a hand over his face.

“Hello. You home?” she asked.

Aodhan shifted his eyes down from hers to the windshield. “You have green eyes.”

“Very observant.” she said and smiled.

And yours are a deep sea blue she thought as she grabbed a rubber band from the cup holder pulling her hair back up. Lara thought of the hair pins that fell out when her hair got snagged. “Ugh, those were the ones that I picked up in Rome” she said and quietly chastised herself. “Life is more important than possessions”

As she was putting her hair up Lara glanced at the man who sat in the seat next to her. Nicely cut must be at least six feet. She sighed as she looked at his golden streaked brown shoulder length hair and strong lips any girl would love. Her eyes were drawn to his strong chin with a five o’clock shadow and the bruise she gave him along with it. Lara took in the serious look on his face and
the one raised eyebrow with a thinking crease between his eyes.

Lara became overwhelmed as she thought of all of her friends. God the girls would go crazy if I brought him around. The pain of the loss of family and friends brought her back and she looked at the serious man on a mission sitting in the seat next to her.

“I’ve been swept away by a hot mental Irish man. Couldn’t he have done this year’s ago.” she said and laughed to herself.

Aodhan shifted in the seat and looked at her. His face grew from serious to pure amusement as he let out a short laugh and looked away out the window of his door.

Lara’s eyes grew wide with a mortified look on her face. “Was that out loud?” she asked and heard Kedryn burst out laughing from the back seat.

Aodhan quickly masked the amused look on his face and got serious again. He ran his fingers through his hair turned back to face Lara. He shifted again in his seat to be able to look at both Lara and Kedryn.

“I was thinking we should go to the place Eion said he was when my father last heard from him. I should be able to follow his trail from there. I believe that was eighteen years ago when he last contacted him.” he said

“Eighteen years ago. That was before I had Kedryn.” Lara said still red around the ears.

“That would explain why Eion didn’t mention Kedryn. Eion told my father that he had found Lara, the descendant and she was taking . . .” he glanced at Lara “. . . well you were taking some sort of fighting class. He also said you were a natural and was planning on offering you free lessons for lessons from you.”

He raised an eyebrow at Lara. “What lessons would he have learned from you?”

“I teach ceramics and painting. I use the carriage house and turned two rooms into separate studios. One for painting and the other for ceramics.”

“I bet if he would have made the offer you would have gone for that. You always wanted to start training again.” Kedryn said as he stretched out in the back seat.

“You would have won that bet. I’m thinking he was probably talking about the old Dojo where I took mixed martial arts at. It’s about twenty minutes away.” Lara stepped on the accelerator and drove through the stop sign heading to the interstate.

“I heard that the Dojo is abandoned now and has been ever since Sensei moved to another state. I quit shortly after I found out I was pregnant.” she glanced into the rear view at Kedryn as the window he rolled up creaked. “Tell me what you can.” Lara said as she pushed some hair behind her ear and thought, useless rubber band.

Aodhan stared out the windshield. The rain had cleared and the clouds were surrounding a bright red orange moon.

“I will give you the basics. Eion can probably explain it better though. I am not the storyteller he is. I will start with who you are a descendant of and who
we are dealing with.” he rested his elbow on the door and tapped his fingers on the window.

“You are a descendant of the Celtic Warrior Goddess Badb. She is one of three sisters that for the Morrigan. They created the portal after their defeat. It was believed that the Morrigan and all of the Tuatha de Danann escaped into the underworld. Later on a small group was discovered to have stayed behind. There was another rumor quickly forgotten that they had passed through to a different realm. Ever since the Seer prophesized about the portal being opened again Eion dedicated his time gathering information about it. Even more so after the cave was discovered.”

Lara took a sharp turn onto an on ramp and saw Aodhan’s hand shoot to the dashboard to keep himself from slamming into the door.

“Sorry. Almost missed the ramp. Please, go on.”

“As Eion was looking for an ancient scroll that would help him decipher the portal, he crossed paths with Lord Faolan” he spat out the name.

“Faolan, even the name sounds evil.” Kedryn said.

“Faolan is pure evil. He was after the secrets of the portal too. Eion decided to journey to the Firbolg lands. He snuck into Faolan’s castle to see if the scroll he needed to help decipher the runes was there. At the castle Eion encountered Kiara, his old friend’s daughter who everyone believed to be dead. At the age of three Kiara had seen a vision of the portal being opened and of the descendant. A couple of years later she was thought to be killed along with the monk who was accompanying her.” Aodhan’s attention turned sharply as he looked at a huge semi that raced past.

“The wonders of technology and civilization.” Lara said grinning at him.

He looked at her running his hand though his hair. “I still cannot stop being surprised by your realm. Where was I?”

Lara smiled looking ahead at the road “Kiara.”

“Yes, Kiara. Everyone had thought both were lost to the mountains.”

“Lost. How?” asked Kedryn

“Mountain lion attack it was thought since nothing was left except for blood and tracks. Kiara’s father and brother were devastated. Eion had also lost his only brother.”

“Obviously the disappearance was staged.” Lara said.

“Faolan is the king of deception. Eion told my father that one night he overheard Kiara speak again about a descendant of Badb being born. He wanted to rescue her but she signaled him that the portal was more important. Since Badb did not have a blood line in our realm it was obvious she had one in yours.”

Kedryn interrupted “So what about the monk? Was he still alive too?”

“I am not sure if Eion ever found out. As he was passing through the dungeons looking for him he saw that one of Faolan’s priests had a certain scroll he was missing. He struck the man down. Which caused a skirmish and had to flee the castle.”

Lara pinched the bridge of her nose hoping the headache she felt coming
on would go away. “OhmiGosh, seriously, this still is really hard to swallow. It sounds like something out of a Fantasy or Sci Fi novel my brother would have written. Kedryn, please amuse your poor old mother and tell me.”

“Again? Come on mom, he’s telling the truth. I would have stopped him and told you if he wasn’t.”

She looked in the rearview mirror at her son. “I mean seriously, portals? The next thing he’s going to tell me there is such things as “wormholes.”

Kedryn chuckled at the thought and put his feet up on the back seat to rest. He set his head onto the window behind him.

“We could have swore that we hit one when we were in Dallas. Remember how many wrong turns we took and how we got lost?”

Lara let out a laugh “This only happens in the movies and TV shows.” She grinned at him in the rear view mirror “Dallas. Not real life. I’m descended from a warrior goddess? Me? The out of shape princess? I don’t even know if I’d remember anything I have learned.”

Aodhan looked her over “You definitely do not look out of shape to me.”

“Trust me. Make me go up a flight of stairs in a tomb, a museum or even at home and I get winded.”

Aodhan looked at her profile and studied it for a moment. “How good were you when you took the, what did you call it?” he asked.

“Mixed martial arts. Do you mean how fast I caught on? Sensei said I was a natural but I really didn’t believe him.” she looked in the rear view and caught Kedryn roll his eyes.

“Please. Uncle Shane told me about how you accidentally kicked him in the head and how sensei made you work extra hard for that little mishap. What your sensei thought was a punishment turned out to be a challenge. Everything he did you would catch on quick.”

She smiled at the thought. Not of kicking Shane in the head, but of Sensei’s face when he attempted to throw her off balance and get the upper hand and he couldn’t. The incident with Shane was an ongoing joke with her brother.