The Angel Stone: A Novel (28 page)

“Of course. Every seven years we demand a tithe from the fey in exchange for not slaughtering all the fey in this world. But this year the Fairy Queen planned to renege on our deal and keep William for herself.”

“But you took Mordag
before
Halloween night,” I pointed out.

“Ah, she was a hostage. We always take one when the tithe is due. The queen knew the price of keeping William. But if we offer to spare her kind until the next tithe is due, then she’ll let you and William pass through Faerie. You can take him back to your own time.”

I thought of the old stories, like Tam Lin, in which the fairies paid a tithe to hell with a human sacrifice to the devil. But it wasn’t to the devil, I saw now; it was to the nephilim, a bribe to keep them from killing their own. It made sense. And
if the Fairy Queen had already bargained with the nephilim, perhaps she would again. William could travel back to Fairwick with me …

“But Callie will not do that.”

It was William, at my side, his hand in mine. I knew without looking at him that if he let me sacrifice his village for his life, he wouldn’t be the man I loved, just as he knew that if I sacrificed Fairwick to stay with him, I wouldn’t be the woman he loved. I realized in that moment both how much I loved him and that we could not be together. I felt the brooch pulse once over my breast, and the spell echoed in my head.
Abi dolorem! Paenitentiam apage!
As I heard the words, the angel stone dropped into my hand like a ripe apple falling off the bough. Endymion Endicott’s eyes grew as wide as apples. Before he could react, I slapped the stone into the brooch. It slid into the space between the two hearts as though it was meant to go there. Energy pulsed through me—a wild, elemental force so powerful I wasn’t sure I’d be able to channel it, but then William squeezed my hand and called behind him. “Now, lads!”

At a signal from William, the Stewards raised the plaid field to enclose the circle, trapping the three nephilim in the courtyard. The monsters opened their mouths and made a terrible sound like crows cawing. In answer came the beating of wings above our heads. I looked up and saw the shadow of black wings against the moon. Hundreds of nephilim. So many they soon blocked out the moon. Another signal from William triggered the Stewards to raise their arms. The tartan arced over the courtyard, forming a dome that protected us from the nephilim in the air. We had only to deal with these three.

Facing Endymion, I felt the energy of the tartan thrumming through me. It could be channeled through the stone. I held
up the stone and aimed it at Endymion, but at the same moment Endymion gave a signal to the two other nephilim and they dropped their torches on the bonfires. I heard Nan and Una and Mordag screaming. I aimed the stone instead at the nephilim closest to Una. A beam of white light shot out of the stone and struck him. He burst into flame, his screams like the caws of a crow. The second nephilim was running toward me, but I aimed the stone and struck him a glancing blow that set his cloak and hood on fire. He clawed at his burning mask with gloved hands. As the mask burned off, it revealed a face beneath with the same long black beak and glowing red eyes, only now the beak snapped angrily, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth. The burned-away gloves uncovered long yellow talons, which reached out and grabbed me by the throat, pulling us both into the burning pyre. Searing pain scorched my back, and the stench of the monster’s breath—a smell like rotting meat and burning flesh—filled my lungs. He opened his mouth wide as if to swallow me … Instead, he seemed to swallow himself, dissolving into black ash that coated me with a sticky resinous film. I blinked in the black rain and saw above me another figure cleaving the flames, but this was not a nephilim. I had seen this creature before—a dark-cloaked man riding a wave of white moonlight, just as my demon lover had come to me. William strode through the fire and lifted me in his arms, his tartan cloak shielding us. I looked back only long enough to see two Stewards wade through the flames, their cloaks protecting them as they rescued Nan, Una, and Mordag.

When I turned back, Endymion stood before us. The fire had burned away his cloak and gloves, revealing eerie white flesh that glowed with a bluish light. Unlike the other two nephilim, Endymion’s face was beautiful—the face of an angel. His unfurled
wings were golden in the firelight.
How cruel
, I thought,
to be granted such beauty but still be a monster in your parents’ eyes
.

I felt William’s muscles tense. He slowly lowered me to the ground, placing me beside him. I clenched the stone in one hand, William’s hand in the other. Endymion smiled.

“What a worthy opponent you’ve turned out to be,” he crooned, his voice gentle as a lover’s. “I look forward to meeting you again.”

Then, before I could aim the stone at him, he rose straight into the sky, his great wings beating the air into a maelstrom of ash and sparks. The tartan dome, weakened by the breaks in the line as the Stewards tended to the accused witches, shattered. A rain of multicolored sparks drifted to the ground. I stared up, waiting for another attack, but nothing came. The sky above was clear, the full moon pouring white light into the courtyard like cool water to bathe our burns and clean away the ash. I looked at William. His hair, singed from the fire, stood up in wild peaks, his face blackened with ash and streaked with blood. He resembled one of the wild blue-painted Picts that had defended Scotland from the Romans centuries ago. Like a warrior. I glanced around the courtyard and saw that the Stewards and the villagers were all stained with ash and blood. Una and Nan were tending to them. The glow of the tartan was still on them, and Nan was using it to bind wounds and heal burns. She looked up from treating a gash on Jamie McPhee’s forehead and caught my eye. She administered a quick stitch in glowing blue thread, told Jamie he was a “braw lad,” and came toward us.

As she approached, her eyes were on my hand that held the stone. I still held William’s hand in the other. She reached out her hand for mine, and I laid it in hers. She gently un-pried my fingers from the brooch. I heard William gasp. As
I’d used the stone, the silver of the brooch had heated up and burned my skin. The silver was embedded in my flesh. Nan lifted the brooch as gently as she could but not so gently that it didn’t hurt like hell. William squeezed my hand as I bit back a scream. Seared into my palm was the pattern of the two interlocked hearts. Nan laid her hand over mine and emitted a healing green light, which smelled like mint and felt like a balm. When she moved her hand, the pain was gone, but the mark was still there.

“Aye,” Nan said, “some marks are worth keeping.” She lifted her eyes from my hand to my face. “Remember us when you look on that. The Stewards of Ballydoon will always remember you. You’ve given us a way to protect our village. And now that ye have the stone, you can save yours.”

She squeezed my hand again, bathing it once more in her healing green light, then nodded, her eyes shining, and turned to go back to tend her village.
As I must do now
. The green balm could do nothing to ease the ache I felt in my heart knowing that. I turned to William.

“I know ye must go,” he said. “Do you have to leave from a particular place?”

“No,” I said. “I’m the door, so I can open a passage anywhere. But I don’t want it to be here. I have an idea of where it should be. Will you come with me?”

William smiled and touched my face. A bit of the red from the tartan warmed my cheek. “Whither thou goest, I goest.”

We walked out of Castle Coldclough and down into the blasted ravine.

“You still have to get past the Fairy Queen,” William said as we walked. “She cursed you, too, remember.”

“Yes,” I said. I hadn’t let myself think about that until I had
the stone, but now I did. “I think I can convince her to remove the curse. I understand now that the tithes she’s been paying have been to save her people from the nephilim. But when she sees that I have the stone and that I can protect her people in the future, she’ll have to see reason.”

William made a skeptical noise—he knew the Fairy Queen better than I did—but he didn’t argue. He seemed to be working something out in his head. I was, too. If the Fairy Queen was willing to bargain to let me through Faerie, mightn’t she be convinced to let William through, too? But if I brought him with me to Faerie and she didn’t let him into my time, then he’d be trapped in Faerie again. I couldn’t take that chance. It was better to leave him here in Ballydoon, where he was safe. Perhaps he had also figured out the same thing in his head. We walked in silence to the bottom of the ravine, where the petrified vines twisted together like a nest of snakes.

“Here?” William asked. “It isna a verra pretty place.”

“No,” I admitted, “but it once was. And it can be again.” I let William’s hand go and took a step back. I closed my eyes and uttered the words I’d used when I first tied myself to the door.
Cor mea aperit, tam ianua aperit. As my heart opens, let the door open
. I felt a swelling in my chest … and an ache. It felt different than when I’d last done the spell. It hurt—as if to open the door I had to break my heart open.

Because you’re leaving him
.

I opened my eyes. A small white light was glowing amid the blackened and petrified vines.

“I don’t want to leave you,” I said. The light wavered like a candle in the wind.

“I know you must go back,” he said, taking my hand. The light grew into a pillar and then swelled into an arched doorway. As its light touched the petrified vines, they turned
green and flowers bloomed. The air was heavy with the scent of honeysuckle, the scent that had first brought him to me.

“I love you,” I said.

William smiled and shook his head. “You love the man I will become …” He bent his head to mine and kissed me on the cheek, whispering in my ear, “… And so I must become that man.” Then he wrapped his arms around me and stepped us both through the door.

We went straight into Faerie, finding ourselves in a flower-bedecked meadow under a lilac sky. Lambent gold light lapped over everything, but there was no visible source for it—no sun, no moon. It may have been dawn or twilight. It was peaceful and beautiful, but I knew that appearances here could deceive.

“William, what were you thinking? The Fairy Queen said she’d kill you if you came through Faerie again.” I anxiously looked around for Fiona, wondering if I could get William through Faerie and into Fairwick. The last time I’d gone through the door, I hadn’t paused in Faerie. That hope was destroyed, though, when I saw a procession climbing the hill toward us. It was too late.

The procession was led by Fiona the Fairy Queen and King Fionn on horseback. Behind them was a host made up of myriad creatures: satyrs and centaurs; winged blond Valkyries; a great stag with gold-tipped horns, a herd of deer in his wake; women with feathered legs and the faces of owls; short white-bearded men with red caps, looking like an army of garden gnomes. Even more frightening creatures lurked on the edges
of the crowd and in the woods bordering the meadow. Rat-faced goblins and pointy-eared imps chattered and hissed but scared me less than the Fairy Queen, whose emerald-green eyes were fastened on William. I moved to stand in front of him, but he tightened his grip on my arm and held me back. “It’s all right, lass,” he hissed under his breath. “I know what I’m doing.”

But no whisper was low enough to escape the Fairy Queen’s ears. In an instant she was upon us, swooping down from her horse and over the grass with the preternatural speed of a hawk, a long sharp-nailed finger an inch from William’s throat.

“Didn’t I tell you,
boy
, that if you came back to Faerie I’d pluck out your eyes and heart?”

“Fiona,” I said, the anger pulsing in my voice with the same force as the blue vein that throbbed beneath William’s skin just where the Fairy Queen’s nail was poised. “Let him go.”

Her green eyes slid toward me with the malevolent stealth of a snake. I’d known the Fairy Queen in Fairwick and had found her formidable, but I’d never thought she was evil. Perhaps she’d gained civility in her long years living among mortals. This Fairy Queen, though, looked very much as if she would pluck out William’s eyes, eat his heart, and then happily dine on my spleen.

“Who are you to address me by my name and make demands of
me
? I cursed you, too!”

“I’m the doorkeeper,” I said, “and I have
this
.” I held up the Luckenbooth brooch.

The green eyes widened as they took in the angel stone. She took her finger away from William’s throat and made a grab for it, but I swept it out of her grasp, stepping back to get her farther from William. Instead of running away, though, he
moved to my side and addressed the Fairy Queen. “Aye, Cailleach found a way to destroy those bastards.”

While William’s pride in me was heartening, I hoped he wouldn’t make the Fairy Queen even angrier.

“And did she destroy them all?” Fiona asked nastily.

“No,” I admitted. “Some got away. But the rest are in Fairwick, back in my time. Let William pass and we’ll destroy them there. You won’t ever have to pay a tithe again. I’ll restore the door. You’ll be able to pass between the worlds …” I hesitated, not entirely sure that I wanted to let Fiona back into my world after what I’d learned she’d done to William and other unfortunate young men before him.

“You think to dictate terms to
me
?” she thundered.

“Are you so reluctant to give up your human boys?” The question came from golden-haired King Fionn. He stood even taller than Fiona and had the same fiercely green eyes.

Fiona turned to him, her emerald eyes sparking. “As if you haven’t had your own human lovers!” Although she snarled the words, they lacked the conviction she’d had when addressing William and me. She was either afraid of the king or in love with him, I couldn’t tell which. Either way, I didn’t want to be in the middle of their lovers’ spat.

“We want to return to my time and get rid of the nephilim. Surely that is in your interest, as well.”