Devil's Angel (29 page)

“How?” The word tore from her. “What can I do?”

Green eyes burned fiercely into her own. “Help him remember how to laugh. If ’tis too much to ask that you love him, at least care for him.”

“I do.”

“Then you are helping him already. Promise me that you will not give up on him, even though he has given up on himself. Never surrender.”

Tears spilled onto her cheeks. “I won’t if you won’t.”

“Done, then.” He settled back, closing his eyes. “Now let me sleep.”

Erika looked at the slumbering man, feeling as if her heart would burst. “I won’t fail you, Ardan,” she whispered. “I won’t fail Conor either.”

Resolved, she rose to her feet, untying her bloodstained apron and tossing it onto the chair. Padraig rose with her. “My lady?”

“Prepare my horse. I go to bring Conor home.”

“Not alone.”

She knew better than to argue. “Three others. No more. We ride at once.”

The darkness came for him.

He had been fighting it for hours, days, an eternity. But the demons of guilt were as voracious as they were cruel. Their claws were embedded deep in his soul, and he knew they would never let him go.

Dead. So many of them dead. He was supposed to protect them, supposed to keep them safe, with his own life if necessary. But he had failed them, failed them all, and he would suffer eternal damnation because of it.

Already he could hear them, the demons, their call as persistent and irresistible as the
sidhe
. He belonged to them, they whispered, he was a part of them. They had given him his name. Surely he wanted to come to them? All he had to do was let go, to surrender to the murky void, and all would be well.

Yet something kept him from taking that final, fatal step.

Conor rode through the night, pushing his mount in a merciless drive to escape. Even then, he was powerless to outrun the demons that pursued him.

They wore familiar faces, his demons. Faces of men he had played with as a boy, trained with as a youth, fought with as a man. Murrough, chieftain of Dunlough, with young Murrough after him. His youngest nephew Brochan, fostered where he himself had been, and the son he never had. Phelan, who had a warrior’s size and a poet’s soul. Their faces taunted him the most, for when they needed him most he had failed them.

The fighting had been brutal, axes and swords. The sweet green grass had decayed into the brown of drying blood. In the trees, blood had dripped from branches like a red rain. It had been blinding, but not too blinding for Conor to miss the axe-blow that had severed Murrough nearly in half, another blow that had taken Phelan’s head.

Conor had found Brochan, had believed he was spiriting the boy to safety until they were caught in a storm of arrows. It didn’t matter that he had been felled, had nearly died. He had lived, and his brother and nephews had not.

When his mount began to stumble from the exertion, Conor slid from his back. Landing on his knees, he grabbed huge fistfuls of the chill, fragrant earth, struggling to find purchase, something to keep him rooted. His demons roiled about him, feasting on the agony in his soul.

It welled within him, that agony, struggling to break free the pitiful barrier of flesh. His muscles bunched with the urge to succumb, to allow the demons to ravage him. The emotion welled from the deepest corner of his core, gathering strength as it sought to escape. And escape it did, blistering from his throat, riding on a sound that had never before been uttered by a human.

The unnatural sound stopped Erika and her guards in their tracks on the majestic slope of Slieve Torc. Lore said that the spirit of Dunlough, the
bhean sidhe
, resided in the prehistoric stone cairn at the top of the mountain. Erika had heard her soul-chilling wail two days ago, a wail that supposedly heralded a death. Was that where Conor would be?

As if in answer to her unspoken question, the moon broke free of the clouds, bathing the cairn in its pale light and illuminating a path through the dense undergrowth below. Not heeding Padraig’s caution, Erika kneed Tempest, turning the horse up the silvery path.

Erika heard Conor before she saw him. Heard the brutality of his pain and knew she would give anything to assuage it.

She halted, waiting for Padraig to draw along side. “I will go alone from here.”

“
A bhean usuail
, I cannot allow it. The
tigerna
—”

“Needs me,” she finished for him. “I must do this, Padraig. For Ardan, for me. And for Conor.”

“My lady.” Worry was clear in his features.

Tempest shifted beneath her in the moonlight. She calmed him with a light touch, though inside her heart roiled with fear. Conor needed her. And she needed him.

“Padraig.” She waited until she had their attention. “I will go alone to Conor. We will return, as he always does.”

Reluctance limning his features, Padraig acquiesced, fading into the shadows. Erika knew he had not gone far. Padraig’s loyalty was unquestioned; he would not leave until he was satisfied. But he would not interfere.

With a word, she urged Tempest into the copse of trees. It was cool this far up the side of Slieve Torc, and their breaths steamed in the night. The full moon hung above her left shoulder, casting a silvery glow to everything about her and creating shadows that should have been menacing. But Erika knew the true menace was the darkness that laid claim to her husband.

Resolved, she straightened in her saddle. She was the Angel of Death, a fighter. She would fight for her husband. She would bring him home.

Or die trying.

“Damn you, Mórrigan!” Conor bellowed at the frigid, black sky. “You could have taken me! Why them? Why Ardan?”

Not even the wind answered him, and it only served to sear the agony into a blistering rage. “Where are you, war-goddess? Do you cower before this mere mortal? Have you no courage in your damnable black heart to face me?”

The provocation proved successful, answered by the sound of hoofbeats, the emergence of the moon. Mórrigan and her minions coming to do battle. Conor felt his lips peel back from his teeth as he unsheathed his sword. He would go, but he would not go peaceful.

It would be over. At last.

Hoofbeats came closer, the moon brighter as he readied himself for his final battle. Something silver flashed through the copse of trees, coalescing into a spectral beauty with streaming moonbeams for hair, astride a pale horse breathing fog.

He was not surprised at the form his adversary had chosen, but the twist of pain he felt at the sight did surprise him. “So Mórrigan, you’ve chosen to face me as the Angel of Death. If you believe staring at my wife’s visage will sway me from this course, you are mistaken.”

The pale apparition dismounted, silver hair gleaming in the moonlight. “Conor, I’m not the Mórrigan. I’m Erika.”

“You lie!”

“I do not.” The specter’s words were quiet, compelling. Her hands went to her cloak, sending it billowing to the ground. It was followed by her baldric and sword. “I am your wife, and I’ve come to take you home.”

Laughter tore from him, brutal and harsh and mirthless. The Mórrigan stepped back, and he laughed anew. “And what is your home? A cold black place filled with the screams of the damned? Can it be any worse than what I endure now?”

“Conor, listen to me. Look at me.” Her dress fell to her feet and she stood, glorious and nude before him. “I am real. I am your wife.”

“No!” His words were a snarl of denial. “Enough of this—it ends now!”

Brandishing his sword, he raced across the clearing. The Mórrigan made no sound, did not reach for her sword. Did nothing but stare at him with his wife’s eyes.

A cry of anguish tore from him. He could not do it. Merciful heaven, he could not strike down the witch that wore his wife’s face.

The hand clasping his sword fell to his side and he dropped to his knees, the defiance drained. “Do what you will,” he whispered, weary in mind and soul. “I am beyond care.”

Movement, the Angel of Death coming closer to him. She knelt before him, one hand reaching out to touch his marred cheek. The rush he ever felt at his wife’s touch coursed through him, illuminating his dark misery. She melted against him, pressing kisses over his ravaged face. He pushed his fingers into her hair, drawing her closer, needing her touch and her scent. “Erika.”

As quick as he grasped her he pushed her away. “Return to the dun.”

“I will. With you.” Her voice was cool as moonlight.

“No!” He stumbled to his feet and away from her. “I was near to killing you—do you not recognize that? You were close to being beheaded!”

“Yet I was not.”

How could she be so calm when he was seething inside? “Leave me be!”

“No.” She rose and came closer, and the tremble in her voice reached him. “I will remain with you, Conor. You will not turn me away. I will not let you.”

Her essence stole into him as she stepped close behind him, cooling the madness that burned his soul. He turned into her, pressing his burning cheeks into the softness of her hair. “Angel of Death, become angel of mercy. Will you show me mercy? Can you heal me?”

She stroked the dark silk of his beard. “I would like to try.”

With a groan he crushed her against him, capturing her mouth in a kiss that hovered on brutal. His hands were clumsy on his clothing and he heard the rip of fabric. He knew he should slow his pace, but need rode him with the desperation of a drowning man reaching for a rope just beyond his reach. “Touch me,
Aingeal
,” he commanded, his voice grating. “Burn me with your light. Make me forget.”

She came to him, molding her body to his, lightning melding with thunder. It was she who pushed him to the dew-covered grass, she who rose above him, straddling his thighs, her hands wrapped about his hardness.

He could not bear the waiting. Grabbing her waist, he surged inside her with one swift invasive thrust, causing her to gasp. There was nothing gentle about this joining, and beneath the storm of need the part of him that could still reason despaired for causing her pain.

“Conor, look at me.”

He did, and what he saw stole his breath. Her pale skin was aflame with desire, her eyes glittering with the same need he felt in himself. He kept his eyes on her, needing the glory of her flesh in the moonlight to banish the darkness. Fingertips scored his chest as she rode him, meeting him wildness for wildness, needing the comfort as much as he. They were warriors, their passion warring with tenderness. Need drove them, the need to be united, to be lost and found in each other.

He matched her stroke for relentless stroke as she moved above him, head tossed back, breasts thrust upward. Her pace increased, and passion blocked all but her image from his mind. When she arched backward, his name tearing from her throat, he was engulfed in silver flames that seared his heart, mind and soul. His release, when it came, was violent, shattering, bursting over and around them like thunder.

Spent, they collapsed against each other, their breaths mingling on the night air. It was a long moment before they could bear to part, but the night air forced them into their clothing. Conor wrapped Erika’s cloak about her then settled her against him tight, unwilling to be parted from her for long. “Why did you come?”

“You needed me.”

He did, and most desperate. “I didn’t believe you were real. What would you have done if I had not stopped? What would I have done had I killed you?”

“Yet you didn’t. Think on that instead.”

He shook his head, unable to put into words the horror he felt at how close he had come, how his madness had near driven him to…

Her hands on him were soothing, comforting. “Tell me, what drives you so?”

“I will not speak on it.”

“Even to me?”

His sigh trembled. “How can I be called Devil, and not face my demons alone?”

Erika cradled his cheeks in her sword-calloused hands. “I am your wife. You no longer need to face anything alone.”

The words were a balm to his soul, and he closed his eyes in gratitude for the gift. Be they truth or falsehood, he needed to hear them.

Defenses crumbling, he gathered her hands in his, needing the contact but unable to look in her eyes as he prepared to bare his soul to her. His gaze remained fixed to the darkness.

“I see them sometimes, riding through the mists. The spirits of my clan, the princes of Connacht. My foster-brothers, my cousins, my friends. I remember how they lived, and I remember how they died.”

Once begun, the story spilled from him, an unstoppable torrent. As he spoke, a gentle rain, whisper-soft and full of mist, gathered around them. He told her everything, unburdening his soul the way he had with none other.

“You are wed to a weak man, lady warrior,” he said finally, when her silence had become unbearable to him. “Will you mock me now, or will you call a
brehon
to pass judgment upon me?”

“I will not mock you, nor will I send for a law-giver.”

He snorted in disbelief. “I do not need your pity, lady wife.”