The Crow of Connemara (33 page)

“Niall!
” Maeve snapped, and Niall scowled but went silent. She turned to Dunn. “Are yeh so afraid that I'll put a curse on each and every one of yeh for this that yeh needed to bring guns and armor? Are yeh waiting for the sí to come with their ghostly horses and spears? Do we scare yeh so much?”

A few of the gardai made a furtive sign of the cross behind Dunn. But the Superintendent merely stared blandly at Maeve. “I'm just doing me job, Miss Gallagher, as I told yeh I would. 'Tis all.”

“An' yer job involves taking us off at gunpoint? Yer not going to cram us all on that little boat yeh brought with yeh, I hope?”

Dunn glanced back at the boat. He shrugged. “I do'nah want trouble, Miss Gallagher.”

“It's trouble yeh'll be gettin',” Niall spat. “Yer nasty guns or no. The first of yeh that tries to lay a hand on me . . .”

Maeve put her hand on Niall's, shaking her head. She closed her eyes, forming her thoughts as she had with Colin when he'd been in Chicago, and sending them into Dunn's head.
The man on your left, Superintendent. Did you know he has a bad heart? Why, just the tiniest squeeze . . .
The garda to Dunn's immediate left suddenly groaned, bending forward. One hand left the stock of his weapon to clutch at right arm and chest.
You see, perhaps we don't need weapons . . .

Maeve opened her eyes again. The garda took a deep breath and straightened as Dunn stared at him. “Sorry, sir,” he said. Dunn grunted, his gaze flicking back to Maeve.

She wondered if he knew her trick for the bluff it was.

Dunn was staring at her still, his head shaking slightly as if in disbelief. “I understand yer duty, Superintendent,” Maeve told him. “We all have duties and obligations, me no less than you. But I'm telling' yeh: this isn't the time to carry yers out. Not yet.”

Dunn was still hesitating. Maeve saw him glance again to his left. “This isn't over,” he said.

“No,” she answered. “It's not.”

“Next time, it won't be just me that's coming. I've already been told that the Naval Service has dispatched two vessels at the request of the NPWS. I came out here today hoping to avoid that, because the Naval Service . . . well, they won't be as accommodating as the gardai.”

“I believe yeh,” Maeve told him. “But we're still not leavin'.”

Dunn nodded. “If that's what yeh want, then . . .” He turned to his men, and nodded his head in the direction of the gardai's launch. “We're done here,” he said. “For now.”

The gardai at the rear turned, heading toward the quay.

“Mr. Doyle,” Dunn said as the Oileánach crowd slowly began to dissolve and drift away, though Niall, Keara, Aiden, and Liam remained behind, clustered around Maeve and Colin. “If I could speak to yeh privately a moment . . .”

“Anything you have to say to me, Superintendent, you can say in front of my friends,” Colin answered.

Dunn shrugged. “What I need to know is that these
are
yer friends, and yer not being held here against yer will. Yeh stepping away from them to talk to me would tell me that. And I spoke to yer family yesterday, and yeh might want to know what they had t'say . . .” Dunn stopped. Maeve could feel Colin looking at her, as if waiting for instruction, but she remained silent. There was something in this moment. She could feel it: a new tension, as if everything she cared about hung on what she would do now, what would happen in the next few minutes. She could feel the stone in Colin's pocket, calling to her, and she fought not to react. Colin's hand dropped from her waist, and she watched him take the steps over to Superintendent Dunn. She saw him extend his hand as if offering it to Colin, but when Colin responded in kind, Dunn grabbed Colin's wrist and twisted it suddenly, turning Colin with his hand behind his back.

The click of handcuffs was loud even over Colin's shouted protest. “What the fuck—”

Niall and the other started to move forward, but the muzzles of the gardai's weapons came up at the same moment. “No,” Maeve said, and the single word held them.

“As I said, I do'nah want trouble here,” Dunn said loudly. “Mr. Doyle here's a foreign national, and I've been especially instructed to make sure that only the Oileánach are left here on Inishcorr. I'll be taking him with us, per me orders and his family's wishes, whether Mr. Doyle wishes to stay or not.”

“You can't do this!” Colin shouted. He was staring at Maeve, his glasses askew on his face, as if expecting her to do something. She stared back, keeping her face impassive.

“I can,” Doyle answered, “and I am. And I expect Miss Gallagher and her people to cooperate that far at least.” He paused, and his gaze stayed steady on Maeve. “For everyone's safety,” he added. “I truly do'nah want anyone hurt. Anyone.” His eyes, kindly despite the sternness of his expression, seemed to plead with her.

“Morrígan . . .” Niall whispered the name, like an incantation.

Morr
í
gan . . .
Once, she would have flown into a rage. The Morrígan of the ancient past would have endured none of this. She would have called her power around herself, wrapped herself in it, and sent it hurtling at this pitiful, arrogant mortal without concern for who it might kill or maim or hurt, because all that mattered was the insult to her. Even a bare few hundred years back, six or seven bodies ago . . .

She still felt the urge, the black rage boiling deep in the pit of her stomach. It would be easy to let it vomit forth, and there would be enough power still within her anger to send several of these men screaming and flailing into the sea. But not all . . . and her people had no protection against the bullets that might follow. And even if her fury caused them to flee, she knew what that would mean: the next time, they would come with a force and power that she would not be able to resist, and though many of the unbelievers would die, so would too many of those in her charge. Maybe all. Maybe they would be able to raze even the mound of Fionnbharr and slay those who slumbered beneath the hawthorn tree, and she could not bear that loss. Not now. Not when the promise was so close to being fulfilled.

This wasn't the time. They had to have more time to prepare.

She swallowed the bile instead.

He's yers, and there's a bit of time yet. There's still another way, and yeh'll get him back.

“Yeh won't harm him. Yeh promise,” she said, and Dunn nodded.

“He's not under arrest, though I'm sure someone will be talking to him about his visa when we get back. I'm only removing him from the island for his own safety.”

Maeve nodded. “Maeve . . .” Colin said. “What about—” He clamped his mouth shut then, and she wondered what he was going to say.
What about us?
Or:
What about the gateway you said I would open?
Maybe both, or neither.

“There's time for that,” she called out to him. “No worries.” Then, to Dunn: “Yeh harm him in any way, and yeh'll pay.”

He simply nodded. He turned and made his way with the gardai toward their boat, pulling Colin along with them. Colin looked back over his shoulder toward her.

“It'll be fine,” she told him. “Yeh'll see.”

She hoped she was right.

Niall was already complaining to her before Colin was even off the quay.

“Are yeh daft, Maeve?”

She didn't answer, watching as Colin was escorted up the ramp and into the police launch. The motor began its full-throated song and water spewed behind it as the launch pushed away from the quay. She could feel Niall's consternation even through the pain in her arm and the feeling that she'd just ripped away a vital piece of herself.

The need for the cloch tore at her mind, an addiction that boiled red and black inside her, touching sparks in her own uncertainty. She wanted to scream, wanted to run after Colin and snatch the stone away from him.
Mine! It's mine! I need it!

But she also needed Colin: his voice, his ability.

And the part of her that had become more human than god just wanted his love.

Niall's denunciation matched that in her own head.

“Yeh can't let him go, not with the cloch,” Niall continued to rant as the others watched, silent. “By all that's sacred, woman, place a binding on the man now before it's too late. Bring him back. Yeh can do that. Yeh ca'nah let him go—not like this, not with the cloch, not with his voice. Yeh said we must have the bard; yeh can't let him be taken.”

She clamped her jaws against the inchoate fury and agony. “Nah,” she managed to say between gritted teeth.

His hand on her shoulder spun her around. His face was close to hers, his features twisted with fury.
“Nah?
” he shouted at her. “How can yeh say nah?”

“Take yer bloody hands off me, Niall,” she spat back at him. Aiden put his hand on Niall's shoulder, and Niall angrily shrugged it away.

“Or what?” he raged. “Are yeh going to use one of yer fecking spells on
me
when yeh won't do it on those that need it?” She glared at him, and his hand dropped away in a gesture of disgust, or perhaps he saw the pain that racked her. “Don't be a fecking gobshite, Maeve. This is
all
our bloody lives yer playing with. Yeh told us that we need the cloch and yer damned singer to open the portal, and that yeh'd bring him here. Fine. Yeh did. Yeh told me to let him hit me at the pub t'other night so he could think that he'd whipped me. Fine. I did what yeh asked even though I don't think he's what yeh believe him t'be. Well, if yer right, then we ca'nah let him go and have the cloch go with him. Not now. 'Tis too dangerous. What if he don't come back? Yeh'll have doomed us all.”

He gestured at the boat, already turning its bow toward the mainland and the open sea at the mouth of the little harbor. She could see Colin, standing at the railing with Superintendent Dunn alongside him.

She wanted to agree, wanted to take Niall's advice and force the police launch to turn back, but she shook her head at the thought and at Niall.
There would be death if that happens, and yeh can't control whose 'twould be.
“There's another way, I tell yeh.”

“To open the portal? Yer blowing smoke. Yeh don't know that for certain, an' we both know that if there
is
another way, the cost would be terrible. That's why yeh snared yer little friend in the first place, so it was
him
would pay for us.” She saw him look past her toward Colin. “Damn it, Morrígan! You ca'nah go soft now. Bring him back.”

She took the pain and self-doubt and used it as a lash against Niall. “Yeh forget who I am. Yeh don't give me orders, Niall. 'Tis the other way 'round, and if yeh want out, well, yeh can take those who want to go with yeh an' find your own way. See how long yeh last. How many of yer kind have been born in the last decade or the last half-century? How long before yer all gone and dead, like the others we've known? 'Tis what yeh want?”

“Damn it, Maeve, yeh know it ain't. But I lead my kind, and I have to make sure what's done is best for us. Yeh made a promise to the selkies—and to all the others—and the man who can keep yer promise for us is bein' taken away right now.” He gestured again in the direction of the police launch, which had nearly reached the breakwater at the harbor's mouth. She could no longer see Colin or Dunn at all. “Why are you lettin' him go? Have yeh actually fallen for him? Is that it?”

“Shut the feck up, Niall!” That was Keira, pushing between the two of them. “Yer the one spouting shite. The Morrígan knows what's best.”

Niall scowled at her. “An' yer her cailleach. Yeh do her bidding. Yeh'd clean her arse if she asked.”

“Aye, I am her cailleach,” Keira responded. “Would yeh like me to prove it again? I could burn yer feckin' sealskin to ash with just a few words—”

“Enough, both of yeh!” Maeve interjected. She turned her back on them, watching as the police launch vanished beyond the curve of the island. She could feel the cloch vanish with Colin. Maeve couldn't stop the cry that the loss drew from her, a wail of anguish, though she wasn't sure which loss hurt the most. “'Tis my choice to make, and I've made it,” she told him. Then, softly enough that none of the others could hear:
“
 .
 . . an' I hope 'tis the right one.”

“He'll come back,” she told Niall firmly. “We'll bring the cloch and his voice back here to Inishcorr. We will.”