Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (97 page)

Down again, past the thick satiny mermaid ribbons of kelp, into the deeps where far below, if you believed the legends, lay a lost land where those with the ears for it could hear the bells that still rang in drowned towers. Down, down until his lungs were heavy as stone and aching with tension and then, miraculously, a hand, barely clinging, caught there by some wisp of fate. Pat grabbed onto it and pulled up with all the force in his chilled muscles.

They broke the surface of the waves, coming from the chilled lands below into the twilit air of the world above. Pat grabbed the rock with one hand and pulled his brother to him with the other, turning his face upward to the sky so that he might breathe, if indeed he could.

He couldn’t tell if his brother was alive or not. Casey was so bruised and battered that he was almost unrecognizable and what Pat could see of him was fish-belly pale, tinged green about the edges.

He heard the rumble of the boat then and looked over the rock to see it breaching the dark green waves that parted over its hull like horses composed of mercury, shimmering and scattering to the edges and converging again on the plane of the sea.

He swam, towing his brother with him, out beyond where the rocks could savage the boat’s hull. His muscles were screaming with exertion and cold and it seemed to take an eternity to reach the small, bobbing craft.

David pulled Casey in, with Pat providing as much leverage as he could from below.

Once in himself, he collapsed beside his brother, streaming seawater, so cold that he could not feel anything other than fear at how still Casey lay in the bottom of the boat. David was bent over him blowing and compressing his chest.

“I’ll do it,” Pat said grimly. “He’s my brother.”

Life/Death. The line was so fine and he had been near it more than once himself. He understood the siren call that existed on the far side, how it seemed at times simpler just to let go, let the tide take you where it would. But he was not going to allow his brother that luxury today. He started the compressions, timing them ruthlessly, determination and fury informing every cell of his being.

A thin stream of seawater trickled from Casey’s mouth. His face was still that dreadful shade of white with the bronzy green tint around the edges. Pat prayed, a rosary of grim panic turning over and over in his head and heart. Breathe, press, press, press, breathe, the rhythm of it the only thing in the universe. He couldn’t feel the boat rocking beneath him, nor the wind that whipped them nearly blind. Waves were coming up over the side so that Casey lay in a foaming pool with fronds of seaweed clinging to his clothes. As though he had left the core of himself behind in the drowned abyss below, with its bells that forever haunted the place between worlds.

“Pat…” David ventured.

“Shut up, do ye hear me? This is not happening. He is not focking dying from drowning. I won’t have it,” Pat said and went back to breathing for his brother, moving his chest with as much force as he dared to exert, being that the man’s ribs felt like shattered glass under his flesh.

“Don’t you goddamn dare,” he hissed and hit Casey’s chest with the flat of his palm. “Ye don’t get to go this way, not now, so just get that out of yer head, ye bastard.”

The trickle of water turned to a stream, gushing out and causing Casey to choke. David turned him on his side, slow and deliberate. Gasping, he fought for air, the terrible blue-green of his skin slowly turning to white.

When Casey’s breathing steadied, David eased him onto his back once again. He still looked utterly drained, horribly pale, dark hair threaded with fronds of kelp. He looked like a merrow brought up from the bottom of the sea after a particularly rough night on the tiles. He looked, thought Pat, like Holy Hell.

One dark eye cracked open and sighted itself hazily upon Pat’s face.

“I thought if ye were swearin’ it had to be serious.” The eye closed then and did not open again for the rest of the agonizing ride over the waves to the mainland. Pat couldn’t tell if Casey was unconscious or just ignoring him. Either way he was relieved in small measure, for he knew his brother was in very bad shape. But at least he was breathing now.

On shore it was twilight, coming on for a dark night with neither moon nor stars in the sky. That was for the best, for they did not need witnesses. They transferred Casey, barely conscious, to the car.

“I think it’s best if we get him to a safe house,” David said. Taking in the look on David’s face, Pat knew the man had good reason to suggest this.

“All right. I know where to take him, but he needs the attention of a doctor first.”

“I know someone who can take care of him and won’t ask questions.” There was a curious flush on David’s face.

“Do ye?” Pat said. “Ye’d best call him then.”

The ride to Kerry was the longest Pamela had ever undertaken
in her life. It felt as though they would never arrive and that Casey might slip away while they were taking back lanes and stopping for cows and sheep to meander with maddening slowness across the roadway. Pat seemed to feel it too, for he used the horn more than once and cursed softly under his breath a time or two.

Pat had called her late in the evening when she had begun to truly worry why Casey had not come home. He had let her know her husband was still alive, but beyond that had not given details. She spent a sleepless night and left first thing in the morning while Conor still slept. Gert had come the night before and so she left her son in the woman’s capable hands.

Pat met her at an agreed-upon spot just as the sun rose. She left their car there, tucked into a swathe of hedgerow, and joined Pat in a car she did not recognize. He handed her a note that said they were going to Casey, in Kerry. She had merely nodded at him, understanding implicitly why they could not speak.

When they came up over the final rise on the looping road down to the cottage and the sea spread out before them, she heaved a sigh of relief. Her chest was tight with apprehension and it took everything she had to not get out and run the last few yards as Pat slowed the car.

Father Terry was inside, making tea in the kitchen. He still looked like a scarecrow, all angles and black cloth, but she had known few men in her life who exuded a sense of comfort the way this man did. She felt a little of her worry ease from the minute he hugged her and raised a grizzled brow at Pat.

“He’s alright, lass. He’s just woken up. He’s in the bedroom.”

She removed her rain-sprinkled jacket, put it over the back of a chair and took a deep breath before opening the door to the bedroom. The sight that met her eyes made her bite down hard on a gasp. It was as though a masterwork in oils had been desecrated in some way, a beautiful canvas that had been painted with heavy viscous oils in all the darker colors: the ebonies and earths, the cobalts and ochres and deep crush of violets. As though all those colors had been spread in plenty with a brute hand, and then smeared with water and oil. And amidst all this, the thin lines of alizarin crimson where cuts had only just glazed over, the skin so thin that the brush of a moth wing might open them up again, causing them to well with blood. A large bandage was wrapped around his ribs and his left hand was completely swathed in gauze and tape. The right had two fingers splinted. One swollen eye slitted open.

“Christ, Patrick, I told ye she wasn’t to come here.” The words cost him, she could see, for they came out slowly and slightly slurred.

“Aye,” Pat rejoined, standing with one hand on her shoulder to steady her. “Have ye tried to stop her from doin’ something she’s bent on recently?”

“Point taken,” Casey said, and attempted to sit up. She was at his side without even being aware of moving.

“What the hell happened? Jesus, Casey.” She burst into tears from the sheer relief of seeing him alive, but also for the beating he must have taken at those bastards’ hands.

“Patrick, Father Terry—could ye give us a minute?” Casey asked softly and the men melted out of the wee cottage.

“It looks worse than it is, darlin’. Come here. Let me hold ye.”

This was accomplished with no little shifting and a few muffled curses on Casey’s part as he moved over so that she could sit on the bed beside him and then pulled her into his arms. He winced as she touched his ribs but wouldn’t let her pull away despite his obvious pain.

“A few of my ribs are broken, so I feel like I’m made of shattered glass inside. God woman, it feels good to have you here, much as I didn’t want ye to see me this way.”

“Who was it, Casey?”

“I don’t know an’ that’s the honest truth. ‘Twasn’t the bastards that came to our home, but likely someone sent by them or whoever their boss is. They jumped me when I was lockin’ up on the site. They had to have been sittin’ there waitin’ for a bit to know I was alone.”

She sat back, careful not to jar him, wanting to assess the damage now that the initial shock had passed.

One eye was swollen completely shut and was the color of a plum. There was a nasty cut through the eyebrow above said eye and a split in his bottom lip that was going to leave a permanent scar. He had an ugly lump on his jaw but it appeared unhurt beyond that. His nose, by some miracle, was untouched.

Further assessment, which caused Casey to utter several very descriptive expletives, brought to light that he had three loose teeth, stitches inside his mouth, and a deep livid bruise inside his right ear.

“Jesus Christ,” she breathed out, trying to take in the extent of his injuries and deciding it could only be absorbed in small increments. There wasn’t an inch of him that wasn’t battered or bruised in shades the human body should never achieve. There was a particularly red-black one peeking out of the bandage over his ribs that made her draw her breath in, shaking with fury. How dare someone hurt him this way, how dare they take this body that she so loved, that she depended upon for so many things, and hurt and maim it. She touched the edge of the deep crimson bruise and he gasped, arching away from her.

“Oh God, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Ye didn’t, it’s just that it feels like an ox stampeded over my kidneys an’ they’re a wee bit grumpy about it. At this point, I’m just glad I can still take a piss without bleedin’ to death.”

“What did the doctor say?”

“Well, he shook his head a great deal, but in the end he said I’d live, even if it seemed a somewhat undesirable state for the first few days. He’ll be back day after tomorrow to look me over again. He could save himself the trip. Time is all that’s needed. I do wish they hadn’t broken my damn fingers though. It’s hard to deal with buttons or zippers or anything else.”

She bent her head and kissed the back of his hand, though there was a good half inch of gauze between her and his skin.

“Ye seem very calm, Jewel. I was certain ye’d be furious with me.”

She shook her head. “No, not right now. Right now I’m just glad you’re alive, man. Later, I’ll probably be furious, but that can wait.”

She gingerly removed herself from his arms and stood, taking care not to jar the bed, no easy feat with how awkward her own movements were becoming.

“Do you think you might manage a wee bit of something to eat? Gert sent some of her beef broth along. I’m going to go heat some up for you and see if your brother is hungry.”

“A wee bit, maybe. The inside of my mouth still hurts like hell.”

She leaned down carefully, hands pressed to the round of her belly, and kissed him softly over each eye. He looked up at her, a battered warrior, bruised and broken in some places, but unbowed. It relieved some of the tension in her body to know that he would survive this with his spirit intact. That, above all, was what mattered.

“Pamela, now that ye’ve seen me an’ ye know I’m goin’ to be fine, ye should go back home to Conor.”

“
I
am not going anywhere, Casey Riordan. I am here until you are well enough to be moved home. Pat can bring Conor here. But you are not moving out of my range of vision for the foreseeable future.”

Casey opened his mouth to protest, and then taking in the look on her face, promptly shut it. “Alright,” he said, in an unusually meek tone. She thought it was a measure of how weak he was feeling that he was so uncharacteristically agreeable.

A half hour later, she shut the bedroom door quietly behind her. Casey was sleeping heavily, though with a slight rattle to his breathing that worried her. He had managed half a bowl of broth before pushing it away and turning his head. She suspected what little nourishment he had been persuaded to take had been for her sake and not because he was hungry. He was also in a great deal more pain than he was allowing her to see. She suspected this was half the reason he wanted her to go back home.

In the kitchen, Pat sat by the table, looking at her questioningly.

“He’s asleep for now,” she said. “Pat, I need you to do me a favor.”

“Anything, Pamela, ye know that.”

“I want to keep him here for awhile. I—I can’t go back to Belfast. Will you bring Conor here to me? Gert won’t mind having him for a wee bit, until you can get back.”