Haunting Beauty (42 page)

He took another step, and there was no place to turn, no room to evade. The Book shrieked with frustration, terrifying her beyond her ability to think. To react. A part of her mind simply shut down.

“Moment of truth, love,” he said. “I want to help you. I do. Your eyes are like windows, and I see how frightened you are. Once you touch it, once you use it, you’re never the same. You can never go back. Whatever it is that has made you desperate, tell me and I will make it go away. Let me spare you this horror. Let me shoulder your burden.”

She felt strangely disoriented as she stared into his faceted, glittering eyes. He wanted to help her. Of course he did. He was her father and fathers helped their daughters.

Something shifted in his expression, and for a moment, he looked confused. He stared at Danni as if seeing her for the first time. “Who are you?” he asked softly. “Who are you really?”

She wanted to tell him. Some part of her still believed that once he knew, everything would be different. He’d open his arms with love and do what she’d always dreamed daddies do—make everything right. Even as she thought it, he changed again, and now he looked at her with sly calculation.

“I knew you weren’t Danni Ballagh,” he said. “You almost had me fooled, sweet Danni. But you’re no innocent, are you? It’s you that brings us back to this place again and again. Well, this will be the last time for it. I don’t give a fecking shite if you’re Herself in the flesh, I swear to you this will be the last of it.”

Now the image in Danni’s head was of the keening banshee. The white ghost.
Herself in the flesh.
Though his words were cold, she felt his fear.

“The Book is mine,” he said. “It will always be mine.”

He trapped her with his gaze as he reached for it. A voice in her head tried to shout, tried to warn her, but Danni couldn’t move. The whining drone of the Book dulled her senses, feeding on the terror inside her. She felt drugged, powerless. Knowing it would be a fatal mistake to let him take it, Danni stood paralyzed as he reached for the Book of Fennore.

Chapter Forty

“
N
O!” The shout snapped Danni out of the trance Cathán had put her in. She felt light-headed, as if he’d somehow sucked the air from her lungs, the oxygen from her brain. At the opening that led to the stairs, Dáirinn and her mother stood like wax figures. Fia’s expression was stretched in a mask of horror.

Cathán turned in a rage to face them, and Danni used the distraction to escape the corner where he’d pinned her.

“What are you doing?” Fia breathed, looking back and forth between Cathán and Danni. “Do you not know what it is? It’s evil. Why would you bring it here?”

Before Danni could answer, she heard the sound of a motor, and a moment later, a dingy slid through the narrow oval at the mouth of the cavern. Niall Ballagh cut the engine and stared in shock at the cluster of people inside. The boat drifted for a moment before Niall regained some composure and barked an order at Michael to tie off the boat using the stake embedded in the cavern floor for that purpose.

“What’s this?” Cathán asked, his voice as cold and dark as the waters lapping against the stones. “What in bloody hell is this?”

No one spoke as they stared at one another. Danni felt as if she’d been pulled out of her body to watch from above. She saw a shadow move at the doorway leading in from the rocky shore, and Rory appeared, towing Sean behind him. The two stopped and joined the suffocating silence.

Everyone was gathered now, just as they’d been in the vision. In a moment, Cathán would pull his gun, aiming for Niall, but mortally wounding Michael. Danni would be his next target—now she understood why. She still clutched the Book tightly in her arms. He would simply kill her and take it.

And then everything would begin again.

“No,” she said. Her voice sounded strange in the cloying quiet, so she said it again. “No.”

The time for questions—for doubt—had passed. Danni ripped away the canvas covering and held the Book of Fennore in her bare hands. It trembled, shivering with excitement as she prepared to go to that frozen, black land Cathán had described. As she braced herself for what would come. Closing her eyes, she said, “This will not happen again. . . .”

Before she could finish, Rory let out a scream that echoed like an explosion in the enclosed chamber of rock. Danni faltered and Cathán moved quickly, snatching at the Book. Danni fought for it, but he was too quick, too strong. Even as Sean rushed forward, Cathán wrenched it free with a triumphant shout. He didn’t hesitate, not like Danni had. Using one of the boulders as a table to hold the heavy Book, Cathán planted his left hand on the cover and closed his eyes.

The vibration in the air took on substance until it seemed like they were all plunged into deep, frigid waters that pounded fiercely against a seawall. As they watched in horror, the vibration seemed to sink beneath Cathán’s skin. He looked like a mirage, shimmering in the heat of a relentless sun. It seemed he wasn’t really here anymore, yet they could see him fluctuating with the pulsing beat of the Book.

It was horrific and captivating and not one of them could look away. Cathán had a gun ready and pointing at them before anyone noticed that he’d fumbled it from his pocket with his free hand. It felt to Danni that everything happened at once, and yet, somehow it came painfully, dreadfully slow. Each instant registered before moving to the next.

“You’ll never have my wife,” Cathán said to Niall, the look of hatred burning in those terrifying eyes. Without warning, he pulled the trigger.

The bullet appeared to glide across the cavern, and Danni thought for one brief second that she might actually stop it. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to change her destiny. Perhaps she hadn’t failed.

But even as she moved to intercept it, she saw Michael rush at his father, push him out of the way just as the bullet slammed into the boy’s chest and into his heart.

At the same time, the grown-up Sean bellowed with agony, and Dáirinn let loose a cry that echoed endlessly around them. Torn between going to the boy or the man, Danni hesitated, and Cathán’s next shot caught her in the back. It felt like a fiery rod, jammed deep into her flesh. She fell to her knees then collapsed on the stone floor.

She was instantly numb and couldn’t move her arms or legs. It took all her effort to turn her head. Sean was trying to make his way to her but he moved like a man underwater, and even as she watched, he began to fade.

“I love you,” Danni tried to say. But her voice was just a hoarse whisper. Why hadn’t she told him before? Why had she let him walk away without saying those simple words?

“Danni,” he said as his image wavered. “You can stop it. You don’t need the Book.” Blackness crowded into her head, and his words became distorted. What did he mean?

“You can change it. Trevor is alive. You changed the past. You saved him.”

It made no sense. What was he talking about? And then Danni remembered those moments when she’d clasped hands with Dáirinn and Rory, when the image that came to her had been of Sean’s brother, dead on the kitchen floor.

Comprehension was there, hovering just above her ability to grasp it.

Still Sean struggled. “What happened when my mother died, it was different. The first time, Trevor died with her. But today . . . he’s alive. You saved him.”

She still didn’t understand. But she couldn’t ask because he was vanishing—
vanishing
. Tears streamed down her face as she saw the realization come over him.

“No,” she whispered. He didn’t know she loved him. He didn’t know how much he meant to her. “Don’t leave me.”

He was gone in an instant.

A sob caught in her throat as hot tears streamed down her face. Danni turned her head and watched as a ghostly shadow stepped from Michael’s inert form and faced her. Niall began to moan as he gripped his son’s lifeless body against him.

It seemed like hours had passed since Cathán had fired his first shot, but only seconds had lapsed. Now it was Fia’s voice she heard as her mother tried to keep Dáirinn from launching herself at Cathán—at the Book he held in his hands. Fia managed, but at the same time her other child raced forward. Fearlessly, Rory attacked, slamming his small body into his father’s, catching him at the waist and knocking him off balance. Cathán stumbled back, pulling the Book with him while Rory grappled to take it away.

That wasn’t supposed to happen, Danni thought as consciousness began to ebb with the waning thud of her heart.

Rory gave a mighty shout and yanked the Book free. For a moment, he stood petrified, his small hands sinking into the shining black cover. His eyes were wide with the horror of whatever he saw and then Cathán flung himself at the boy and they both disappeared into thin air.

Chapter Forty-one

D
ÁIRINN stared at the place where her brother had been and fear like she’d never imagined closed on her. She could hear her mother crying, hear Michael’s father sobbing, see the blood pooling beneath Danni’s body. And in her head, she heard her brother shouting, begging her to help him.

Her arms and legs felt stiff as she jerked free of her mother’s hands, crossing to where Danni lay. She knelt beside her, feeling the blood soak through the knees of her pants. It was already cool.

“What did he mean?” Dáirinn asked, looking into Danni’s gray eyes, feeling as if she was looking into a reflection of her own. “He said you saved Trevor. What did he mean?”

Danni blinked her eyes and her lips moved, but she couldn’t speak. She was dying.

“Come away,” Fia said, trying to pull Dáirinn to her feet. “Come away from her.” And then suddenly Fia stilled. She stared down into Danni’s face, her own blanching as her fear became something else. Slowly she looked to her daughter, Dáirinn, and then back again. Danni saw comprehension, disbelief, and anguish war for control of Fia’s emotions. And then something else gleamed in Fia’s eyes. It was love; it was remorse. It was pride. In that split second, Danni thought Fia had realized the situation—somehow put together all the missing pieces and come away with the whole picture.

Whatever she might have said was lost, though, because Dáirinn used her mother’s shock to dodge free of her grasping hands. Scooting closer to Danni, she demanded again, “What did he mean?”

Danni moistened her lips, looking to Michael, and suddenly Dáirinn saw the shadowy form standing over the boy’s body. It was his spirit. She knew this even as his eyes lifted to meet hers. Her body went rigid. She felt like a tether bound them, pulling them tight into a circle that couldn’t be broken. Dáirinn and Danni. Michael and his spirit.

She reached down and took Danni’s hand in hers. Leaning over, Dáirinn stared into the eyes that looked so much like her own. In that moment, another deep understanding seemed to wash over her. They were connected, though she didn’t know how.

Danni’s husband had said,
You can change it.
He’d said Danni had saved his brother, Trevor.

Dáirinn’s eyes widened as she snapped her gaze back to the spirit who’d materialized in almost the same way Mr. Ballagh had disappeared. An inkling of the truth hovered over her. Then she heard Rory’s voice, weaker now as he shouted in her head.
Help me.

Chapter Forty-two

D
ANNI focused on the intensity of Dáirinn’s eyes and everything else fell away.

You can change it . . . .

It was Sean’s voice and it was Dáirinn’s and it was her own, speaking from some well of knowledge within her.
You can change it . . .
the voice insisted again. Louder this time.

She felt something stir in her heart. It shuddered and built until it was a pressure that threatened to explode. Danni stared into the eyes of her child-self and reached for that pressure, wrapped herself around it and let it expand and expound until it engulfed her completely. Surrounded by the shimmering spark of it, Danni focused on the center where explosions of energy snapped and popped and sizzled.

She forced any fear from her mind, because what did she have to lose now? Everything she’d ever wanted, everything she’d ever dreamed of was gone. But she could get it back, if she just believed.

She steeled herself for the pain that would surely come. In her mind, she stepped to the edge of that swirling nucleus lurking inside her. The searing jolt tore a gasp from her lips and brought her consciousness back to the cave. Back to the child holding her hand, feverishly begging her to do it—whatever
it
was. Danni pictured her thoughts like tendrils of smoke, seeping into quiet places, finding a way through the barriers that kept her separated from the child she’d once been. Dáirinn inhaled sharply, and Danni forced herself in with it, following the gasp into Dáirinn’s lungs, through her blood to her heart, her mind. The child took another breath and suddenly they were one.

Danni’s memories were streaming out like a film played in fast-forward for Dáirinn to see. She felt Dáirinn trying to slow them down so she could absorb them. Together they watched Fia hugging her sister in front of a bungalow on a sunny street by a beach, promising to be back soon. They left Rory behind in Edel’s care as they climbed into their car. Then Danni and Fia were driving across the desert, her mother quizzing Danni about their new names, where they were from, who they were.

Fia had gone to Arizona because it seemed like the other side of the world. Cathán would never find her there. She’d separated her children for their safety, fearing together they might somehow send a signal that Cathán, through the Book, would receive.

She’d always intended to go back for Rory as soon as it was safe.

Finally Danni saw the answer to why her mother had abandoned her. Cathán had found Fia. Her mother had seen him first, though, and she did the only thing she had time for. She’d left Danni at Cactus Wren Preschool and ran, praying Cathán would follow her and not find the children.

As one, Danni and Dáirinn felt the memories, the years of not belonging. United, they experienced the years of isolation, of never feeling a part of the world. There was Yvonne with her smile and biting wit, offering sanctuary in the chaos. And then Sean was at Danni’s front door and there was no slowing down anymore because it all came in a tide that washed over them both.