The Undivided (37 page)

Jack O’Righin had an abiding mistrust of the law and anybody involved in keeping it. He was unilateral in his hatred of the judicial system. He didn’t particularly care who was running the show, what their political or religious views were — he hated them all. So when young Ren Kavanaugh rang him and asked to meet, Jack didn’t think twice about agreeing to help him, or not betraying his location. It would have been more out of character for him had he refused to help the boy.

He glanced in his rear-view mirror, but the road was clear. Jack remained unconvinced he was free of surveillance, so he turned away from the park he was headed toward, and took a route in the opposite direction. The blue Honda behind him turned as well.

Now, isn’t that interesting. Are you following me or was that just a coincidence?

The fallout from Ren’s arrest and disappearance was still settling, and Jack found himself caught up in it along with everyone else who knew the lad, much to the consternation of his publicist. There was a story that Jack’s granddaughter had been mixed up in the alleged arson, the death of some old homeless bloke, and Ren’s escape from gaol.

Jack had thought them all insane, and told everybody —
including the media — that he’d had nothing to do with any of it. Anybody who’d so much as glanced at the dustcover of his book would know his wife and daughters died more than thirty years ago. He had no family. He had nobody. He certainly had no granddaughter and no idea who they were talking about when they accused him of being involved in the fiasco that had resulted in one dead homeless man, one missing teenager, one extremely pissed off drug lord and a smoking ruin that used to be a warehouse in downtown Dublin.

Jack turned right again, leaving the turn until the last minute. The Honda sailed past the intersection, the driver not so much as glancing in Jack’s direction. He breathed a sigh of relief and turned right a second time, so he could resume his earlier course. He turned his thoughts back to his imaginary granddaughter.

Murray Symes claimed to have seen her. Even Hayley said Ren had been with a girl matching Murray’s description of Jack’s ‘granddaughter’ the day she was hit by his car in the mêlée outside Kiva Kavanaugh’s house. Under interrogation, Ren had insisted that the girl was with him at the warehouse, the Gardaí told Jack. Ren had even asked his lawyer, Eunice Ravenel, to find out what had happened to the girl. Worse, there were photos of a slender blonde holding Ren’s hand, taken by the paparazzi at the scene of the accident.

But even though everyone had grilled Jack relentlessly on his connection to the girl, he stared at her picture and drew a complete blank. He didn’t know who she was or remember ever seeing her before.

There were other reasons he felt guilty about Ren’s troubles; guilty enough that he thought he owed it to the lad to help him out. The day after Ren’s arrest Jack had received a very angry call from one Paddy McGrath, an old cellmate from The Maze, who accused him of dumping him in all sorts of strife with the currently incarcerated — and very irate — Dominic O’Hara.
Jack listened in stunned disbelief as Paddy ranted at him. He didn’t know what the man was on about. Even Paddy’s furious accusation that
‘I told you about that deal in confidence and y’threw me in the shite!’
made no sense to the old man. What he was able to glean, however — besides the loss of Paddy’s dubious friendship — was that Ren had received the information about Dominic O’Hara’s warehouse drug deal from Jack.

Jack couldn’t say how, and he couldn’t imagine what had possessed him to involve a nice kid like Ren in anything so shady but, apparently, he’d been the lynchpin around which the ensuing trouble revolved.

The least he could do was help Ren get out of it.

He turned again, after glancing in the rear-view mirror, and once he was satisfied the road was clear, turned toward the park where Ren had asked him to meet. He spied Ren across the empty lot, near a few scattered picnic tables, one of which was occupied by a few kids Ren’s age, and an older man. The remains of a takeaway meal sat on the table in front of them. Ren was leaning on the trunk of a late-model silver Audi.

Ren waved. Jack drove diagonally across the parking lot’s painted lines and pulled up beside the boy. The group sitting at the table watched him warily, and now he was closer, he could see the older man had his mouth taped shut.

‘Jayzus H Christ!’ he said, climbing stiffly out of his car. ‘What the fuck have you gone and got yourself mixed up in, laddie?’

‘Thanks for coming, Jack.’

‘Don’t thank me,’ Jack warned. He stared at the man with the tape over his mouth. The man’s hands and feet were taped, too. ‘You adding kidnapping to your repertoire, now, you stupid git?’

‘It was kinda unavoidable,’ Ren said, a little defensively. ‘We haven’t hurt him.’

‘No, but you’ve let him see you. All of you,’ he added, turning to look at the other kids. One of them, the dark-haired woman with the dangerous look about her, he didn’t know, but on closer inspection, she seemed to have a few years on her companions.

‘Jayzus H Christ!’ he muttered again. The pretty girl with the long blonde hair he recognised from the paparazzi photos as his alleged granddaughter, and the other lad … Jack stared at him in disbelief. ‘What the fuck …?’

Ren smiled briefly. ‘Funny. That’s exactly what I said.’

Jack stared at Ren’s twin, shaking his head. ‘Who … how …?’

‘It’s not going to be easy to explain.’

‘Aye,’ Jack agreed, ‘but if you want my help, Rennie, my boy, you’re gonna have to give it one hellava good try.’

Jack listened to Ren’s story, growing more and more incredulous by the minute. Except that sitting opposite him was the proof of Ren’s wild tale. Not only was Trása there — he still didn’t recall ever seeing her before — but sitting next to Ren was Ren’s identical twin brother. Yet the crazy story Ren was peddling — involving Druids and alternate realities — seemed ludicrous, even after Ren and Darragh showed him identical tattoos on their palms, each on the opposite hand to that of his brother.

The mysterious wounds Ren suffered; the wounds Jack had observed himself — caused by Faerie silver, if you believed their tale — were the result of the psychic link across realities between the brothers. The whole story was insane, except that it answered so many questions about Ren, it actually made a strange sort of sense.

‘Hold on a minute,’ Jack said, trying to keep the story straight. He jerked his head in the direction of the man with the duct tape across his mouth. ‘Who is this?’

‘That’s Warren,’ Trása told him, smiling brightly.

‘We found him in a car park at the Castle Golf Club,’ Ren explained. ‘We needed a car and didn’t want him reporting the Audi stolen …’

‘So you stole him instead?’ Jack looked at the frazzled, terrified man. He looked like an accountant or something equally dull. ‘I’ll be bound you’re wishing you’d stayed home from the club last night.’ He turned to Darragh who was sitting closest to Warren. ‘Take the tape off his mouth.’

Darragh glanced up at Ren, who nodded. He peeled the duct tape off and tossed it on the table next to the remains of their takeaway meal. Warren stared at Jack, as if trying to figure out how he knew him. Then he nodded as it came to him. ‘I know you. You’re that terrorist who wrote the book.’

‘Yeah … thought you might figure that out. Not very bright of you to admit, though. You’d be better off pretending you have no idea who I am. Given my history’n all.’

Warren shrank back from Jack.

Then Jack turned to Ren and the others. ‘What are you going to do with him?’

‘I was hoping you’d have a suggestion,’ Ren said.

‘We have to silence him,’ Darragh said. Jack regarded Ren’s brother silently. Reading the sub-text of Darragh’s words, if he needed proof that this boy had been raised a whole world away from Ren, it was in the matter-of-fact sort of tone with which Darragh pronounced a death sentence on this hapless accountant. Darragh may not come from another reality, Jack thought — still not sure he believed that part of their tale either — but he certainly didn’t come from Ren’s world of red carpets, personal trainers and private music lessons.

‘Silence him how, exactly?’ Ren asked.

‘You know how,’ the dark-haired, dangerous-looking woman said. ‘We’ll have to kill him.’

Warren stared at them all, one at a time, through bleary,
disbelieving eyes. ‘Kill me? Are you fucking kidding me? You’re gonna
kill
me?’

‘You don’t have to kill him,’ Jack said. He had a feeling both Darragh and the woman — Sorcha, she said her name was — were perfectly capable of carrying out the threat. He’d not seen that sort of pitilessness since he was a lad planning to blow up a bus in downtown Belfast. He recognised it for what it was now. At the time, when he was young and had a cause to die for, he’d mistaken such disregard for life as heroism. Now he knew better. It wasn’t heroism, or loyalty to the cause. It was the inevitable result of growing up seeing too much injustice, death and violence and being numbed by it.

‘If you let him go,’ Darragh pointed out, ‘he’s going to tell everyone about us. Rónán says the Gardaí are looking for him.’ He looked pointedly at Trása but she couldn’t meet his gaze. ‘We can’t risk him being arrested. We have to get back to my realm.’

‘I said I was sorry,’ Trása mumbled.

‘Let him tell anybody he wants,’ Jack suggested. ‘What’s he going to say? “I was accosted by a naked fairy from an alternate reality who took me home, spent the night, and then shoved me in the boot of my car and drove me around Dublin for the morning?” I mean, that’s all you’ve done with him, isn’t it? You haven’t robbed a bank, or tried to kill anybody, have you?’

‘Not yet,’ Sorcha said in a rather ominous tone.

‘I can tell them about
you
,’ Warren threatened, glaring at Jack.

‘You’re not helping your cause, mate,’ Jack told him. He glanced at Ren, who was standing at the end of the picnic table with his arms folded, looking apprehensive. ‘Don’t worry about me, lad. I’m an old hand at this. My tracks are covered. As far as the rest of the world knows I’m having a massage, and the lass who’s giving it to me will go to her grave insisting I was at the Happy Moon Therapeutic Massage Parlour all morning. Warren
can tell people he’s met me. I’ll deny it, and I’ve got witnesses who’ll back me up.’

‘The cops will know you’re lying, O’Righin,’ Warren said.

‘Are you sure? I won’t be the one telling the naked fairy story.’

Ren was still not convinced. ‘I don’t know …’

‘In my realm, he would be dead already,’ Sorcha remarked.

‘We’re not in our realm,’ Trása reminded her.

‘Enough, already,’ Ren snapped impatiently at the girl who claimed to be half-Faerie. Jack tried to recall her, tried to remember her in his house, but she remained a blank hole in his memory.

Ren turned to his brother. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think Sorcha is right. In our world, this would not be a discussion. But Trása is also right. This is not our world. You know better than I how to proceed.’

Jack decided he liked Darragh. The lad had a head on his shoulders, for all he had probably seen too much death and violence for one so young.

‘Then we don’t kill Warren,’ Ren announced.

‘What are you going to do with him?’

Ren grinned suddenly and glanced at his brother, who smiled too. Jack wasn’t sure if it was because the boys really were psychically linked, or they’d just had the same thought at the same time. Turning to look at Warren, Ren smiled even wider. ‘How do you feel about massages, Warren?’

The balding accountant looked at them blankly. ‘
What?
’

‘A massage,’ Ren said. ‘That should keep you occupied for the next few hours.’

Warren turned to look at Jack. ‘Is he serious?’

‘I think so.’

‘Then we have a happy ending,’ Trása said brightly.

Jack shook his head. ‘Only if I pay extra, lassie,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Ying Su’s happy endings don’t come cheap.’

It took some time to get the truth out of Brógán, but Marcroy Tarth eventually learned what he needed to know. The news left him stunned and somewhat at a loss.

He knew the boys had entered a rift. What he hadn’t known, until he’d tortured Ciarán to make Brógán talk, was that both Darragh and Rónán had jumped to another realm, the one where Rónán had grown up.

That was a mixed blessing for Marcroy. It solved his short-term problem about what to do with the Undivided, but it didn’t do much to fix his longer term problem — how to explain to Jamaspa and the Brethren where Darragh had gone without admitting that Rónán had been found, and that the boys had been reunited — even in another reality. Not to mention his failure to stop it happening.

Brógán had not yet revealed the reason for Darragh’s jump to the other realm to Marcroy. But he’d already betrayed the Undivided once. Marcroy was confident he could make the Druid healer do it again.

‘Is he conscious yet?’

Plunkett poked at the bloodied body on the floor of the roundhouse with the toe of his boot.

‘I think ye may have killed him.’

‘No. I can feel the life in him,’ Marcroy said. ‘Throw some water on him.’

Plunkett muttered something under his breath that Marcroy didn’t catch, but did as his master bid, waddling outside to find a bucket. Marcroy sighed and turned to Brógán, who was seated behind him, restrained by invisible magic bonds that caused him no physical harm, although one would never guess, given the tears streaming silently down his cheeks. The brindled light seeping through the rough twig walls made it hard to read his expression, but Marcroy didn’t need to see Brógán’s face to know the man was consumed by guilt, remorse and fear.

‘For pity’s sake, can you not let him be?’ Brógán begged in a low, defeated voice that made Marcroy smile. It was the voice of abject surrender.

‘Only you have the power to free him,
Liaig
,’ Marcroy said, squatting down to look Brógán in the eye. ‘If you wish to halt Ciarán’s suffering, all you have to do is tell me why Darragh went back to the other realm with Rónán.’ He reached forward and gently wiped a tear from the young man’s cheek with his thumb. ‘Ciarán would want you to. While he still has all his fingers.’

‘May
Arawn
strike you down,’ Brógán spat, in a bold attempt to appear uncowed. ‘May the King of Hell consume you, may the God of
Annwn
feast on your liver. May the —’

‘Yes, yes,’ Marcroy cut in impatiently, rising to his feet. ‘I get the idea. Although it’s a bit late for a show of defiance, don’t you think? You’ve already told me most of what I want to know. And while Ciarán was still conscious to hear your betrayal, what’s more. I think that’s not going to reflect well on you at the next Druid Council.’

‘I will confess my betrayal to the Council myself,’ Brógán announced. ‘I will tell them how you captured us, how you tortured Ciarán to make me talk …’

‘You’ll tell them how I captured you?’ Marcroy laughed, genuinely amused. ‘You’ll sully the reputation of the fearsome Ciarán mac Connacht to save your own neck? How do you think that will go down in Council? What are you? A lowly healer? And you think they’ll believe you when you tell them the mighty protector of the Undivided was tricked by a
Leipreachán
, a mouse and a handful of
Brionglóid Gorm
?’

Brógán averted his eyes, aware Marcroy spoke the truth.

The two Druids had made a fatal error in assuming that — once the rift had closed — Marcroy’s spies were gone. But Marcroy was not nearly so complacent as they imagined. He didn’t trust Trása any more than he trusted Plunkett.

Disguised as a wolf, running by night, sleeping by day, immersed in his animal form, Marcroy had arrived in time to see the lone white owl flying into the rift. He wasn’t really surprised Trása had followed them. Once he’d told her only the Undivided could release her from his curse, he knew she’d not rest until she found them, looking for their help.

He hadn’t expected her to jump through a rift after them. Nor was he sure what might have happened to her on the other side. She was trapped by a magical curse that couldn’t be sustained in the other realm. There was a good chance, he’d realised as he changed back into mouse form, that she was dead.

That would be … inconvenient. He’d had further plans for his mongrel
Beansídhe
niece.

Still, her dramatic flight through the closing rift had given Plunkett the opportunity to get close to Ciarán. It was not possible to glamour a Druid, but it was possible to knock them out cold with
Brionglóid Gorm.

Marcroy had watched as Trása swooped and dived at the Undivided and their Druid escort, heading at a run for the stone circle. In his favoured wolf form, he had loped along beside the road, hidden in the shadows, curious as to what the Undivided
were up to. He knew they were heading somewhere … it had shocked him when Ciarán raised his red jewel and opened a rift to another realm, rather than a link to another stone circle in this realm.

He’d watched as first Rónán, and then Darragh carrying the unconscious Sorcha, dived through the rift, followed at the last minute by the owl that was his cursed niece. Marcroy had resumed his
sídhe
form while Ciarán and Brógán were still standing there wondering what the owl’s disappearance into the rift meant.

That had been the time to strike.

‘Plunkett!’ he hissed.

The
Leipreachán
appeared, and dropped to his knees, bowing obsequiously. ‘I be here,
tiarna.
As ye told me to be. Waiting for yer call.’

Marcroy was unconvinced by Plunkett’s grovelling subservience, but it suited him to let the lesser
sídhe
think he was. He pointed toward the stone circle in the moonlight, where Ciarán and Brógán were. ‘Go and tell Ciarán you have news for him. About the Undivided.’

Plunkett was puzzled. ‘Are ye certain,
tiarna
? He hates me.’

‘Then you’d better talk fast, so you can get the words out before he runs you through,’ Marcroy told him unsympathetically. ‘Did you bring what I asked?’

The disadvantage of travelling in wolf form meant Marcroy couldn’t carry anything he couldn’t hold in his mouth. Making the
Leipreachán
follow him was almost as convenient as having pockets. Plunkett nodded and reached into his own pocket, pulling out a handful of blue powder.

Marcroy nodded. ‘When he grabs you by the throat, as I’m sure he will the moment you get within reach, blow it in his face. I’ll take care of the other one. He’s not armed.’

It had been as easy as that. All it had taken to capture the
two Druids was Plunkett allowing himself to get close enough to Ciarán to be caught. Neither man had thought to check the
Leipreachán
’s pockets for
Brionglóid Gorm.
Or field mice.

Brógán was sweating, despite the chill in the air. ‘When the Council sees what you’ve done to Ciarán …’

‘Sees what?’ Marcroy asked, looking down at the unmoving warrior.
Where is that wretched
Leipreachán
with the water?
‘We’ll heal him up and he’ll be as good as new, as soon as we’re finished here. Unless …’ He let the sentence hang, and turned to look at Brógán. ‘Well, if he dies because you won’t talk, the Druids will be able to draw their own conclusions when they see his body.’

‘They’ll know Ciarán was murdered.’

‘How?’

‘I’ll make sure they know who is responsible.’

‘You most certainly will not,’ Marcroy told him, marvelling at the young Druid’s naïveté. ‘If Ciarán dies, my lad, you’ll die with him. Or perhaps not,’ he said, changing his mind as a better plan came to him. ‘Perhaps I’ll just send you to
Tír Na nÓg.
And let it be known among the Druids that you’re enjoying the full delights of my magical homeland. I’ll arrange for you to have your very own
Daoine sídhe
lover. Trása’s mother is particularly fond of young Druids …’ He smiled sympathetically. ‘The conclusion the Council will draw from that news will be that Ciarán was betrayed by one of his own. Good thing being trapped in
Tír Na nÓg
will mean a time shift for you, isn’t it? Perhaps, by the time you convince somebody in my land to show you the way out, everyone in this land will have forgotten your treachery.’

Brógán shook his head. ‘Nobody will believe a Druid would betray his own kind.’

‘Ah, what delightfully short memories humans have. Has the name Amergin already faded from your thoughts?’

The young man looked away, unable to meet Marcroy’s eye. ‘Of course not.’

‘So, the Council will believe you betrayed Ciarán.’ He turned his back on the young man, adding, ‘In fact, by now they’re probably expecting it. Hardly surprising, I suppose, that the Undivided — the supposed pinnacle of Druid wisdom and prudence — have gone whoring around another realm for a bit of a lark.’

‘They’re not whoring around another realm!’ Brógán objected before he could stop himself.

‘Then enlighten me, young Brógán,’ Marcroy said, still with his back to the bound Druid. ‘What
are
they doing there, if not having a lark? Refining their magical skills? I doubt it, given they’ve jumped to a world without magic. Or perhaps they’ve gone there to fetch technology. Is that it? Are the Undivided now so corrupted by the one-half of them raised in a world filled with poisonous technology, that they have gone to that world to bring back the tools to destroy us?’ Marcroy didn’t really believe that, but as he was saying it, it occurred to him the argument would sound very compelling when he delivered it at the
Lughnasadh
Council.

In fact, with this foolish act, the Undivided had handed him the very weapon he needed to remove them. With the return of Rónán, his plan to remove them had seemed doomed, but now there was real hope.

Even if Darragh returned with Rónán in time for the
Lughnasadh
, all Marcroy had to do was reveal where they’d been. He was quite certain, in light of such news, the idea of transferring the power to the new heirs, even with the Undivided alive and well — and restored — would seem prudent, rather than premature.

Before Brógán could answer his question, however, the
Leipreachán
returned with a pitcher of water, which he unceremoniously tossed over Ciarán. The warrior groaned, but
didn’t regain consciousness as the water pooled on the dirt floor around his head.

Marcroy didn’t mind. He could have healed the warrior and restored him completely. Even Brógán, had Marcroy left him unbound, had the power to undo all the damage done to Ciarán thus far. That was part of what made this method of extracting information so effective. It wasn’t that Brógán
couldn’t
stop what was happening to Ciarán. It was knowing he
could
ease the warrior’s pain, heal his wounds, take away the hurt … if only he were free.

Or if he betrayed the Undivided.

One option was in front of him, visibly suffering. The other in another reality with no guarantee — Marcroy had been at pains to point out — they might ever return.

It had never occurred to Marcroy to do the reverse — torture Brógán to make Ciarán talk. The warrior Druid would have stood there and watched him pull Brógán apart, limb from limb, and not offered so much as a comment on the weather, if that comment meant betraying the Undivided.

Having observed Ciarán’s fanatical devotion to the boys since they were babies, Marcroy often wondered if it was Ciarán himself who’d fathered them. It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption. The boys were conceived during a Druid festival, after all, in which both the warrior and their mother would have taken part. Even Marcroy had been there, tasting the pleasures of human flesh, masked and anonymous as any Druid. If Ciarán wasn’t their father, he might well believe he was, which would have the same effect and could account for his loyalty to them. Whatever the reason, Marcroy knew there was no point trying to torture Ciarán.

‘Ye may have to wake him up the hard way,’ Plunkett remarked, frowning at the lack of response his pitcher of water had evoked from the Druid warrior.

‘Perhaps you should nip outside and see if the sun has fallen from the sky and been replaced by a pudding,’ Marcroy said.

‘Eh?’ Plunkett responded with a puzzled look.

‘That’s probably the only circumstance under which I’m likely to take the advice of lesser
sídhe
, Plunkett. I just thought it would be useful to know if we’re there yet.’

Plunkett’s shoulders slumped as he mumbled an apology.

‘I should think so,’ Marcroy said. ‘Now leave us. Brógán and I have much to discuss.’

Plunkett didn’t need to be asked twice. He blinked out of sight, the clay pitcher shattering into several pieces as it fell from his vanished hand. Marcroy turned back to Brógán and took the stool opposite him, pulling it closer so he could look the young Druid in the eye. ‘Do you know the danger, my hopeless young friend, that you court by protecting RónánDarragh?’

‘I’m not afraid of anything you do to me,’ Brógán announced. It was so obviously a lie that Marcroy couldn’t imagine why he bothered to waste his breath.

‘I’m not speaking of physical discomfort. Clearly, you’re not going to succumb to anything so crass.’ Marcroy let the compliment sink in. ‘I speak of the danger to our whole world.’

‘What danger?’

Ah, you puny humans are so easy to lead in a merry dance
. ‘Rónán has spent his life in a realm that has no respect for magic. No respect for our traditions. And worse, no understanding of the danger he brings with him into our world.’

‘And whose fault is that?’ Brógán asked. ‘You sent him there.’

‘And if you’d not interfered, that’s where he would have stayed. Do you not see, my young friend? You all condemn Amergin for his part in the plan to remove the Undivided, but he was a greater patriot than any who has come before. He sacrificed everything because he could see it.’

Brógán was looking confused. ‘See what?’