And Blue Skies From Pain (27 page)

Authors: Stina Leicht

BOOK: And Blue Skies From Pain

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“Won’t his ma notice?”

“Of course she will,” Conor said. “But since she does drink and doesn’t want his da to know, she’ll only replace the bottle and not say a word.”

Liam blinked. “What of the expense?”

“Kevin says his father hasn’t said anything so far.”

Liam shook his head and drank a second glass, a third and then a fourth. He’d counted to six and was feeling good and warm when he heard a shout. Paul burst through the kitchen door.

“What is it?” Conor asked.

“Skinny Pete,” Paul said. “He’s being rompered.”

“What?” Conor asked.

“Where?” Liam asked.

“Up the street,” Paul said. “Said he was walking Karen home. I told him not to go alone, but he insisted. Have you seen Alice?”

Liam set his glass down on the wall.

“Where is it you think you’re going?” Conor asked.

“Should be me does this,” Liam said. “It’s too late for me. Isn’t for you. Aye?”

“Wait,” Conor said. “Take my jacket, then. You’ve need of its protection.”

Liam paused.
It is leather. It’ll hold up better against knives, if they have them.

“It won’t do much against anything physical, but it’ll shield you in other ways.”

“What the fuck are you on about?” Liam said. “I have to go. Now.”

“Wait. Please. Shite.” Conor glanced around him and whispered. “Not enough time. Needs a sacrifice.” His gaze settled on the brick wall. “That should work.” Scraping the back of his hand until it bled, he tugged the sleeve over it and pressed the lining against the fresh wound with a hiss of pain. He closed his eyes and muttered something quick in Latin.

Liam thought of Father Murray and his Order.
Is he a Church assassin?
The skin along his arms prickled. “What are you?”

Conor slipped out of the jacket. “No time to explain. Take it. It’s yours now. It’s the best I can do.”

Accepting the jacket from Conor, the lining felt silky and warm against Liam’s skin. The sensation of the jacket’s weight settling on his shoulders was odd and comforting at the same time. There wasn’t time to register why. He rushed through the kitchen and out the front door. Conor and Paul weren’t far behind. A crowd was already gathering at the windows and on the front lawn. He trotted through the gate and made for a group of thugs standing over someone curled up on the pavement. The gate squeaked a second time as someone followed him up the street. Liam didn’t look back, assuming it was Paul.

“Help!”

“Shut him up,” a voice said.

Liam ran. “Hey! Fuck away off, you!”

“And who the fuck are you?” a second voice asked.

“A friend,” Liam said. “Get off him.”

The questioner took two steps closer, and Liam saw that while the brute was a head shorter, he weighed twice as much. His hair was dark and his nose appeared to have been in one fight too many. “Are you going to make me?”

“Aye, I will, if I have to,” Liam said.
There are four of them and one of me.
He heard the gate creak and slam behind him a third time.
All right. Maybe two of us.

“All on your own, are you?” the brute with the flattened nose asked.

“He isn’t. Not exactly,” a female voice said from behind him.

Liam attempted to hide his shock.

“Well, isn’t that nice?” Flat-nose asked. “And who are you?”

“Eirnín.”

Glancing at the figure next to him, Liam saw it was the girl with the black hair from the kitchen. She was holding a cricket bat at the ready. Where she’d gotten it, he didn’t know.
Another of Daft Kevin’s provisions?

Flat-nose laughed and his bully boys laughed with him. “Ermine? What kind of a fucking name is that?”

“I said Eirnín, you shite for brains. An ermine is a stoat.”

“A stoat?” Flat nose asked.

“I think they make fancy fur coats out of them, Charlie,” one of the bully boys said.

“Well, then, Ermine,” Flat-nosed Charlie said. “I think you should fuck off and take your boyfriend with you before someone makes a coat of you.” He drew a small caliber pistol. “Bullet beats bat, bitch.”

A distant part of Liam took over, and he reacted without thinking, throwing himself at Flat-nosed Charlie. There was a loud bang, and he felt a hard thump in his side.
Fucker missed.
Liam didn’t pause, determined to shove Flat-nosed Charlie down and disarm him before the bastard actually hurt someone. The two of them landed in a heap on the pavement. Liam sat up first, and punched Flat-nosed Charlie square in the face. A satisfying crunch told him the fuck’s nose was broken. His knuckles hurt. Someone was shouting. Someone else screamed. Liam didn’t have time to wonder who. Flatter-nosed Charlie was sitting up. Liam bruised the knuckles of his left hand on the thug’s jaw and staggered to his feet.

That was when he knew something was wrong. He felt it the moment he straightened. Charlie tried to get up again, but Liam reared back and gave him a good solid kick in the chest. Charlie cried out. Liam staggered as two of Charlie’s bully boys jumped him. Liam slammed to the pavement. The left knee of his jeans gave away. He felt a shock as the cold seeped through. His knee stung. He couldn’t breathe. Eirnín swung the cricket bat. It connected with the first bully boy’s shoulder, and he shrieked. Another swing and the bat landed against the side of the second bully’s head with a sickening hollow thump. He dropped at once. Liam would’ve laughed except at that moment the last of Flat-nosed Charlie’s mates planted his boot in Liam’s side and an explosion of pain consumed his senses. The last of his breath came out in two words. “Fucking hell!” He shuddered in agony. Once again unable to breathe, gasping for any chance at air at all.

The next thing he knew he was staring up at Eirnín’s face. Her head was framed in a cloudy night sky, and her eyes once again glinted silver. She smelled of blood, smoke and sulfur.

“Liam?” she asked.

How is it she knows my name?
he thought. He tried to sit up but the pain knocked him flat again.

“Don’t move,” she said. “You’ve a bullet in you.” She had a smudge of crimson on her cheek. He blinked when he understood the blood wasn’t hers.

“Oh.”

“That stupid shite shot you,” she said. “You’re lucky it was only a .22. What were you thinking?”

“Get away from him.” It took Liam a moment to recognize the voice as Bran’s.

Eirnín turned. “He’s been shot.”

“I know,” Bran said.

“I can help him,” Eirnín said.

“Do as I say, girl,” Bran said. “Connacht has done enough for me and mine this evening, I’m thinking.”

Liam watched Eirnín’s expression change from concern to embarrassment. She looked down at him and whispered, “Your da is here for you. You’ll be right now. I’m—I’m sorry. About this, I mean. It wasn’t supposed to be you. I mean, no one was supposed to get hurt at all. So, why did you go and do that for?” Her soft lips burned his skin as she kissed him on the forehead. “Thank you, you brave idiot.”

He felt his head lifted and then gently laid back on the pavement. Uncle Sceolán’s face replaced Eirnín’s.

“Finally succeeded in getting yourself shot, did you?” Sceolán asked.

“I—”

“Don’t waste your breath,” Sceolán said, bending down. “Save it for the screaming later when Bran cuts that shite out of you. Fuck’s sake, you couldn’t have let well enough alone, could you?”

Liam was shivering. Snow was getting into his eyes. He blinked, trying to clear his vision. A blanket appeared from somewhere, and his uncle tucked it around him. Liam felt warmer at once. Someone grabbed his ankles while Sceolán took his shoulders. Liam had the sensation of floating as he was carefully lifted from the street. Turning his head, he saw party-goers gathered around Skinny Pete and the others. The tall redhead was among them. Liam thought it strange that no one seemed to notice him being carried away by Bran and Sceolán—no one, that is, but Eirnín and Conor. He wasn’t sure, but he thought Eirnín was crying. The sight of it tore at him, but he couldn’t have said why.

“Brace yourself,” Bran said. “This is going to hurt.”

Liam’s vision blurred and once again, he found himself thinking his father had a nasty habit of understating the truth.

Chapter 14

The Other Side

D
rowsy and aching, Liam stared across the campfire at his father and attempted to keep his breathing shallow. Every time he forgot, his ribs punished him. There were other wounded lying on the ground nearby, casualties from an earlier battle. Which battle or with whom Liam hadn’t had a chance to ask. In a field not far away the dead were laid out in neat rows. He’d thought something was odd about it when they passed among them as he was being carried into the camp. Now, he understood. The dead were close, too close. The stench was going to be horrific, if it wasn’t already.
Surely, they know that?
The faces of the dead hadn’t even been covered, and sight had been particularly bad because of the crows. While he couldn’t see them now that night had fallen, he could certainly still hear them fighting over the remains. He shuddered and then winced.

A thick fog clung to the woods. Above, the stars were brighter than in Belfast. The moon bigger. The air both felt and smelled more crisp.
Clean.
Everything about the land where his father’s people lived was, for the lack of a better word,
more.
Which was why it seemed strange to him that anyone would associate it with the word “twilight.” That word brought up of images of declining civilizations, decay and death. The place where his father had brought him was anything but dead.

Those not wounded or tending to the wounded were feasting at the centermost campfire. The fian, Bran’s warrior troop, numbered fewer than Liam would’ve thought—less than fifty he guessed. Again, what that meant he wasn’t sure.

Someone plucked out a tune on a string instrument and a melancholy male voice joined the song in ancient Irish, or so Liam assumed since he only half understood it. Another added the soft thud of a bodhrán. The music drifted out into the still night and masked the sounds of the feasting crows. His uncle leaned against a big oak tree with his arms folded across his chest and a bronze-tipped spear at his side. He seemed to be on sentry duty.

The sound of pouring water returned Liam’s attention to his father. This was the second time his da had patched him up. Kneeling, Bran cleaned the tools he’d used to operate not only on Liam but a number of the other wounded as well. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his fine linen shirt was stained with blood.

That’s my da,
Liam thought with no small amount of pride. It didn’t matter how many times he saw Bran, he found the resemblance surprising. Warm light painted shadows on Bran’s face as he worked, drawing the weary lines on his face in hard strokes. A barely perceptible scar traced a thin curve on the right side of his jaw, and beard stubble shaded his cheeks. His black hair was thick and brushed his shoulders, but the grey at his temples was the white of fresh snow.

Is that what I’ll look like in twenty years or a few hundred?

As the blood was washed away, the soothing scent of burning wood and damp, black earth took precedence. The grass was soft under him. His head was pillowed on an extra bedroll. A blanket had been draped across his lap. He was shirtless but for the bandage encasing his abused ribs, and the heat of the fire warmed his aching body while the night air chilled his left shoulder. Nonetheless, he was comfortable—if for no other reason than no one was digging into him with blistering hot bronze. Mind you, that was blistering hot bronze that had to be re-straightened periodically. With the easy availability of modern anesthetics and painkillers, Liam didn’t understand why the Fey stubbornly tended their own using primitive herbs and poultices. He supposed there was a reason, but no one had offered him one.

Fucking hell. What I’d give for one fucking Aspro Clear tablet.

Or some smack.

Don’t even think it.

His eyelids grew too heavy, and he stopped fighting to keep them open. He listened to the music as disconnected thoughts drifted through his mind, and he floated in a comfortable haze until a hard thump on his leg jarred him awake.

Bran was gone. So was Sceolán. Looking up, Liam was relieved to see Oran standing over him.

“You’re sleeping,” Oran said, his face stern.

“Aye,” Liam said. “I was.”

“You are,” Oran said, “and you can’t. Not here.”

“And why not?”

“It isn’t safe,” Oran said.

“Why?”

Oran shook his head. “If I can find you, so can that fucking bastard.”

“Haddock?”