Emerald Isle (28 page)

Damn you, Pearce, for tainting my weapon!
Was he in on this too?

Aedon flicked his wrist, and the sword Birdie had given me long ago snapped in half and flung itself into some far-off shrubs.

Uh-oh. That was a new trick to me. I whipped my head to face Aedon. Climbed slowly to my feet.

He gave me a sinister smile. “I graduated at the top of my class. Telekinesis was my specialty.”

Of course it was. I should have maimed the kid when I had the chance.

There was a pocket full of herbs and a pouch of crystals in my coat, but nothing more powerful than that. Except the athame. There was also the broom, charged with the power of generations of my clan.

I decided to keep both hidden for the time being, lest they follow the fate of my sword.

I reached into my pocket.

“Don’t touch the phone, Miss Justice.”

Could I reason with him? His eyes were fierce, but the rest of him was stoic, still.

“This is insane, Aedon, I don’t know what’s going on with you. I’m calling Birdie.”

“You do that and I do this.” He pulled a remote control out of his pocket.

I just stared at it, a new wave of panic passing through me.

“You know that cauldron you flew all the way over here to find? Well, this”—he wiggled the device—“is linked to a bomb beneath its belly.”

Oh crap. Oh no. No, he wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t. I shook my head, tucked the phone away, and hit what I hoped was the record button. Pulled my hand back out of my pocket and held it up. “No, Aedon, you couldn’t. I know you couldn’t.”

He stepped forward and said, “My dear, you have no idea what I am capable of.” He added, in a frighteningly steady tone, “And if you truly know where the cauldron is, then you know what will happen if I detonate the bomb. Not only to all those people who will likely starve to death, but to the one thing you truly came here for.”

I swallowed hard, a chill rippling through me.

My mother.

He said, softly, “Boom.”

“You’re mad. You would blow up your own castle?”

“Not if you leave this between you and me.”

“What do you want from me, Aedon?”

“What I want,” Aedon said, a vein throbbing in his temple, “is an eye for an eye.”

He advanced on me.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I stammered, stepping back, scanning the landscape for the other three corners. “I’ve done nothing to you.”

“Revenge, my dear, can be a complex emotion.” His eyes were dark, focused, burning a hole through me. “It’s true what they say. It really is best served cold.”

“Revenge? For what?”

“For the life your mother took from me. My only son.” He removed his gloves, tossed them on the ground. “Now, I shall take her only daughter.” He shrugged off his coat, carefully placing the detonator on top of it, and crouched into a karate stance. “Right before your confirmation and her release. Poetic, don’t you think?”

This could not be happening. He seriously wanted to fight me?

“If it’s revenge you want, then why not just kill me?”

“What would be the fun in that?” He circled around me like a shark. “I intend to deliver your body bruised and beaten as my son was delivered to me.”

“He was going to kill me. She was only protecting me.”

I sidestepped closer to the hill.
Birdie, if you can hear me, tell John to get his gun. Tell him I’m just beyond the hillside, near my watchtower.

I wasn’t sure if John had brought his firearm, but I never knew a cop to travel without one.

Aedon snapped, “That’s a lie. My son was sent to retrieve the locket. He was there on orders.”

The locket. Had my mother given it to my father to hide? If so, where had it come from? Had it been hers? And how had Aedon’s son known she had it?

“Whose orders?” I asked.

“That is not your concern.”

Suddenly, I remembered the letter I took from the secret room in the library. I hadn’t had a chance to read it yet. It was still folded up in my pocket.

Aedon said, “Did you know I was once a Warrior?” Then he cracked his knuckles.

Perfect. I was going to get my ass handed to me by Clint Eastwood.

“I’m not going to fight you, Aedon.” The detonator was still behind him. If I could get him to circle farther away from it, I could reach it. Remove the batteries or something.

“You will, or I will kill not only you, but your family as well.”

I turned, scoped out the hill. Where was John? Birdie? Ivy? Ethan?

“Come on, then. Let’s get on with it,” the old man said, stretching his legs.

I faced the man who wanted me dead, suspecting he was a pawn in a much larger game.

Who had sent Aedon’s son to steal the locket?

The head of the council was growing impatient. “Come on, then.”

There are about a dozen pressure points in the head and neck that can kill or paralyze an assailant. I knew this from my training. I suspected Aedon knew it too, because he had no weapons that I could see.

I crouched into a fighting stance, circled with him. It wasn’t going to be easy to maneuver in this coat, but there was a vial of deadly nightshade in my pocket and a
dagger strapped to my thigh, so I wasn’t about to give up that insurance.

The remote was still a few feet away.

Aedon delivered a swift kick to my chest that sent me reeling. I lay on my back, dazed, for a moment, until he came at me again. Quickly, I reached my palms behind my head, flattened them into the earth, and bowed my legs, jumping into a kip-up. I delivered two swift roundhouse kicks, one to his stomach, one to his neck.

The one to the neck stunned him, and I dove for the remote. He came from behind me, chopped at my neck, but I squirmed away, flipped over, and head butted him. We somersaulted together into a pile of dead wood, and I somehow lost the remote. I didn’t see it anywhere and had no time to hunt, so I advanced on Aedon.

Going for the kill shot. A quick, explosive jab just under the nose.

Before I reached him, he waved one arm in my direction, and I was airborne. I crashed into a tangled briar patch.

So we’re going to play like that, are we?
If he was going to use telekinesis to incapacitate or injure me, I’d have to be a lot faster. And deadlier. With the force of his strength, Aedon could easily snap my neck. I couldn’t give him the chance.

I unsheathed the athame, tucked it into my sleeve. Then came out of the brush, crouched low.

“You’re better trained than I thought,” Aedon said. A trickle of blood ran down his cheek from where I had connected with my skull.

“You seem to have an unfair advantage.” I took a few deep breaths and charged in a whirly pattern, kicking his head and sending a slew of uppercuts to his gut.

He collapsed and I grabbed the athame.

“That I do.” Without warning, he catapulted up and rushed forward. He chopped the air with his hands in quick successive motions, focusing so intensely that his wound split wide open.

I screamed, tried to scramble away as my ankle twisted grotesquely until it finally broke. It made a hideous popping sound like a burst balloon. Then my index finger bent all the way back to my wrist until it snapped too, and I dropped the dagger. I thought that pain was unbearable until my knee shattered. I may have passed out for a moment then, because the next thing I knew, my shoulder was dislocated, my nose was gushing blood, and Aedon kept coming.

I prayed my neck wouldn’t be next.

“Stop,” I whispered. “Please, Aedon.”

“Begging for mercy,” he tsked. “Not very Seeker-like of you.”

With my good hand, I reached for the broom charged with generations of Geraghty power and held it up, hoping to deflect the next blow.

To my surprise, it did. Aedon flew back and smacked into a tree, and whatever body part he had planned to break in me next was broken in him. It looked to be his arm, judging from the way he clutched at it, screaming.

Then I heard someone call my name. Aedon swung his head in that direction.

And I knew it was my only chance.

Ivy, John, and Birdie stood outside the car, comparing notes.

“We all saw the same thing?” John asked, incredulous.

“It would appear so,” Birdie said.

Ivy said, “Well, that was easy.”

Birdie looked at the young girl. Something tugged at her mind, something just out of her reach, which was understandable given the amount of energy she had just exerted. Still, it seemed important.

“Yes, it was,” Birdie said. She looked at John. “A little too easy, wouldn’t you say?”

John raised an eyebrow. “What are you saying? That you don’t think the cauldron is at the castle?”

Birdie suddenly felt very weak. She leaned against the car.

“Where is Stacy?” Ivy asked.

John looked around. “She had the farthest point to cover. I’m sure she’ll be along any moment.”

Birdie put her head down, focusing on a single blade of grass, trying to decipher what her instincts were telling her.

Ivy was buzzing with the thrill of the quest. “We head back to the castle now, right? We tell the council that it’s there?”

John frowned. “Not sure that’s a good idea.” He looked at Ethan, who was craning his neck to see what they were doing. “Obviously there’s a breach. A rogue member. Nothing gets in or out of that place without a council member’s knowledge.”

Ivy ran that idea through her mind. Then she brightened. “Maybe it’s a test? To see how well we work together? Maybe they want to confirm us, but they wanted to make us do one more mission first, so they staged it.”

John said, “This was staged, all right. Just not for the reasons you think.” He approached Birdie. “What do you think?”

She was about to say that perhaps the spell hadn’t worked after all, but then a pain shot through her head. She bent over.

John reached out to her. “You all right?”

“Birdie?” Ivy asked, a quiver in her voice.

“Quiet, both of you,” Birdie said. Once they stopped speaking, the message came through clearly.

Birdie’s head snapped up. “She’s in trouble.”

John didn’t hesitate. He reached inside the car, grabbed a bag, and pulled out a handgun. “Stay here,” he barked.

Ivy said, “No. We’re in this together.”

Birdie grabbed her arm before the teenager could chase after John.

Hold on, Anastasia. Help is coming.

I grabbed the athame and, in one swift move, launched it into Aedon’s back.

He screamed in agony and collapsed forward, and I said, “Sometimes it’s the instrument, dickhead.”

I hauled my broken body up.

Then I heard Birdie whisper to me in my mind. She said they were coming for me. I didn’t know if I had killed Aedon or just wounded him, but I decided it wasn’t a good idea to stick around to find out.

John called my name again, and I said, “Here!”

My right leg was no use to me, and my left shoulder was dangling from its socket, but my will to survive was stronger than the pain. Inch by inch, I made my way forward until I saw John. I nearly bawled at the sight of him.

He faltered for a split second when he laid eyes on me. Behind him was another man. The one from the vision before the cauldron appeared. The one I couldn’t place. He moved forward, a sinister look on his face.

“Behind you!” I shouted.

John whipped around. “Where?”

The man was moving toward him slowly.

I pointed. “He’s right there!”

John said, “Where? Stacy, I don’t see anyone!”

He waved his gun in the direction of the man, whose face was twisted into a ferocious snarl. As I tried to point him out again, the man disappeared.

Who was he? Was he a spirit? Had he died here in battle?

John rushed forward, ignoring my warning, and I saw Birdie and Ivy rounding the hill.

Relief I desperately welcomed washed over me.

Then I heard Ivy scream, “No!”

I shifted to the left, following her gaze. That’s when the athame—my athame, which had been planted in Aedon’s back—pierced my heart.

John charged forward, caught me just before I dropped. I looked at the dagger protruding from my chest, then over to where Aedon still lay, facedown in the grass.

How?

The answer came in the form of that same man. A spirit, I realized, hovering over me.

He vanished, without saying a word. Without my knowing who he was.

As I felt the life force drain from my body, I managed only one word.

“Mom.”

Then the world blackened and I drifted away.

John lifted Anastasia’s body carefully. Birdie watched as the man walked toward her, carrying her granddaughter in his arms, her head lolled back, her legs dangling like those of a puppet.

Lifeless.

He walked toward Birdie, who was still frozen in shock by what she had just seen.

The dead can’t hurt you
, she had always told the girl. She thought it an important lesson for a young necromancer just learning her skills. She didn’t want her granddaughter to grow up fearful of her spirit guides. She had always taught her that the spirits were there to help her, and she them.

It had been a deadly false lesson, Birdie now realized, as a lump rose in her throat. For the blade had been pulled from Aedon’s back as if out of thin air.