Forests of the Heart (51 page)

For a long moment there was only silence, then the wolves began to snicker. The leader laughed out loud.

“She was under
your
protection?”

“‘Was’ being the operative word,” Musgrave said. “She was useful, I’ll admit, and could possibly remain so if she were able to mind her own business, but I won’t have my employees speak to me with the disrespect she did earlier today.”

“Gave you a dressing-down, did she?”

“What do you find so amusing?”

The leader smiled. “That Nuala would need protection, for one thing. How small is your brain, woman?”

“I don’t understand. The enmity between you “

“Oh, there’s no love lost, I’ll-grant you that, but even if we could harm her, we wouldn’t.”

Musgrave began to get an uneasy feeling. What did he mean by even if they
could
harm her?

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because she has the right to feel as she does for us. I’m surprised that with all your study and research you never unearthed the story.”

Musgrave’s uneasiness grew. There was a dangerous look in the leader’s eyes, a sense of anticipation that rose from the other Gentry.

“Will you tell me?” she said.

“Why not? It’s old business. Here’s the way I know it. Back in the homeland, some randy old godling grabbed himself a lovely maiden, stole her from her sacred wood and dragged her into the deeper forest where he and his mates had their way with her for a month or so. Do you want the details?”

Musgrave shook her head.

The leader smiled and lit another cigarette. “Well, they finally grew tired of the game and tossed her away. Trouble is, they left her with child—not a single birth, as a human might have, but a litter.

“She fled her homeland and came here, stealing passage on one of the famine ships. Deep in the forests of this new land, hiding from both men and the native spirits on whose lands she encroached, she gave birth to her litter. She did her best with her unruly pack, raising them from pups to young men. But every time she looked upon them, she was put in mind of their sires, and finally she could bear the memories no more. So she left them to fend for themselves and went wandering.

“Does any of this sound familiar yet?”

Musgrave shook her head, though she could guess where the story was going. “I don’t know what hardships she faced,” the leader went on, “though loneliness must have been one. Loss of place another. But finally she found a haven and though she didn’t call for us, blood calls to blood, and we came anyway.”

“She’s your mother,” Musgrave said.

“And a loving woman, too, don’t you think?”

Musgrave ignored the comment. “So you’ve never even been to Ireland.”

“Ah, well as close as. We’ve visited by way of the otherworld, but there’s not much room there for the likes of us. It’s got its own hard men and patience isn’t one of their virtues either—though marking and protecting their own territory certainly is.”

Musgrave nodded, her thoughts turning back to Nuala and her relationship with the wolves.

“So,” she said. “The animosity you feel towards Nuala comes from her having abandoned you.”

The leader of the Gentry laughed. “Not at all. We got along fine. We had the city, she had her house on the hill, and if sometimes we sniffed around her woods, we kept our distance and took care not to disturb her charge.”

“So what happened?”

“You woke ambition in us.”

“I?”

“Oh, don’t play the innocent shite. All your talk of gaining power and wresting land from the native spirits, of being more than men so we deserved whatever we could take and hold—what did you think that woke in us?”

“But—”

Again that mocking laugh. “Don’t worry. We’ve no regrets. But you can see how our mam might not be too pleased to see us turning out like the father.”

Musgrave nodded. “She set her own sights too low.”

“Perhaps. But we set ours too high.”

“No, we can still salvage something out of this. Ellie can still make the copy of the mask, infuse it with her untapped
geasan
…”

Her voice trailed off as the leader shook his head.

“We’re done now,” he said. “If we’re not gone soon, the pup will be after us in all his buggering glory. We mean to be long gone before he begins his hunt.”

He stood up, took a drag from his cigarette, then dropped the butt into the pool.

“I’d look to your own skin,” he added. “The pup won’t be any more enamored with you.”

Musgrave held her breath, but the cigarette butt only hissed and went out. Father Salmon didn’t stir.

“Wait,” she said, standing up as well.

When the leader began to turn away, she caught him by the arm. A growl rose in his chest and he pulled free.

“You can’t leave,” she said. “Where will you go?”

“West. I hear there’s great
craíc
on the coast.”

“But you can’t leave me here on my own. If you can’t stand up to the creature, what can I do?”

He shrugged. “Grow old. Die.”

Again he turned, and again she caught his arm.

“We can still make the new mask work,” she said.

This time the leader didn’t pull his arm away. Instead, he put his hands on either side of her face.

“You know what I won’t miss?” he said.

Her voice felt trapped in the back of her throat and his grip was too firm for her to shake her head. But he didn’t seem to require an answer.

“Your endless schemes and prattling,” he told her.

Then he snapped her neck and let her go. She went limp, dead before her body could crumple to the ground. The leader looked down at her for a long moment, then spat on her body and turned away.

“In future,” he told his companions, “remind me never to listen to the advice of women.”

The others laughed, then followed him in a pack as he led them west, their path wandering in and out of the spirit world to throw off the scent they left behind.

It was only about twenty blocks to the hospital, but Miki wasn’t all that sure she’d actually make it. They were long blocks, and the streets and sidewalks had grown even more treacherous than they were earlier when she and Fiona had made their way to the store. It was impossible to walk normally. She had to feel her way along the sides of buildings to keep her balance, sliding one foot gingerly in front of the other. Crossing streets was a nightmare. The rain continued to fall, shifting between sheets of actual hard rain and the insistent freezing drizzle that clung to whatever it landed upon, so there was about an inch of water lying on top of the ice. When she crossed a street, she shuffled her way over the slippery surface like a very unsteady tightrope walker, arms held out from her side. The baseball bat had long been relegated to being stuck through her belt around back.

She had the streets entirely to herself. There were no pedestrians at all, which was an eerie enough feeling. The only cars she saw had been abandoned, many of them at odd angles to the sidewalks. Twice she went through intersections where there’d been an obvious accident, the cars involved having been simply pushed to the sides of the streets and left there. She assumed that the salt trucks had been by—this was downtown, after all—but you wouldn’t know it from the unsteady footing.

She really should have ice skates, she thought again. Then she could just whip up to the hospital in no time at all. Though how the ambulance would get to the store with these road conditions was another question entirely. Maybe they could put a gurney on runners and skating interns could push it to the store and back again.

She could have wept with relief when she turned a corner and saw an army vehicle inching its way down the street in her direction. Now there was the way to travel. Everyone should have one of these Bisons, a twelve-ton, eight-wheeled armored personnel carrier. With one hand on the corner of the building, she waved frantically at the vehicle. Soldiers riding on top waved back and the Bison made its way across and down the street to where she waited for it.

Who’d have thought the day would come when she’d be happy to see the army? But then, this wasn’t Ireland, and these soldiers weren’t British.

“Do you need some help, Miss?” one of the soldiers called down to her when the Bison came to a stop by her corner.

Miss? Miki thought. Now weren’t they a polite lot. A sarcastic retort rose in her mind, but she sensibly kept it in check and merely explained her problem, giving them the address of the store. She mentioned the attack, describing the Gentry merely as looters. Lord knew what they’d make of the dead one she’d left behind the counter. Maybe they wouldn’t even notice it until she could get someone to help her remove it.

“Let me give you a hand up,” the soldier said, “and you can ride back with us.”

Miki was tempted. She’d had enough of the cold and rain to last her a lifetime, but the walk had also given her time to think—about the mess she’d made of things back at the store, about how badly she’d misjudged Donal and how extreme he had gotten, but mostly about the Gentry and where they might be going. She’d seen them heading west. What lay west but Kellygnow, where Hunter told her that the Gentry had set Ellie to some task. Kellygnow, where Donal had been all too eager to have Ellie take on some commission. It took no genius to realize that the two, task and commission, were one and the same.

She knew Ellie was safe with Hunter and Tommy up on the rez, but she still had to go to Kellygnow herself. There was unfinished business with Donal, and perhaps the Gentry as well, though she now had her murderous intentions well in check. It was more that she needed to give Donal one more chance, to see if she couldn’t talk him out of this madness.

“You go on,” she told the soldier. “I’ve got to head ‘round to my mum’s place and see how she’s doing with the weather.”

The soldier gave her a doubtful look.

“No, really. I’ll be fine.”

Finally he nodded. “Try to keep off the streets once you get there. If you fall and break your leg, you could be lying in the slush for hours before someone finds you.”

“I’ll be careful,” she promised him.

She stood by the corner, leaning against the building and watching them go, before turning west herself.

You really, really are a stupid bint, she told herself. What could she possibly do once she got to Kellygnow? Even if Donal was there, why would he listen to her now? But she had to try. Not for Donal as he was now, but for the Donal he’d been. The older brother who’d always looked out for her, the two of them alone against the great big, uncaring world.

It was easy to understand Donal’s rage in that context. But those days were long past now. There was nothing to be gained by dwelling on them. They were bad, sure, but except for their da’, no one had actively been trying to hurt them, and even he’d have to be drunk first before he raised a hand. The rest of the world had merely offered them indifference. That wasn’t something you paid back. It was something you had to get over and simply carry on with your life.

Somehow she had to get that through to Donal before he did something that he’d forever regret.

All Donal had left were regrets.

The last thing he’d expected when the Glasduine rose from the floor of the sculpting studio was that he wouldn’t rise with it. That he wouldn’t stand tall and be in control of the new shape his body had taken. But all he could do was lie on his side, huddled on the wooden floor with his knees drawn up to his chin, and watch as the creature lumbered to its feet. Crossing the room, it stopped by the windows, staring out the glass panes at the ice-covered trees on the far side of the lawn while Donal lay curled up on the floor, a frail shadow of who he’d been, no more substantial than a ghost.

It took him a long moment to realize what had happened: The Glasduine had taken all his strongest emotions, using them as the fuel it required to manifest in this world. What was left behind were only the parts the creature couldn’t use. Donal was now like the Other, that lone wolf who dogged the Gentry, a shadow made up of the discarded portions of the hard men’s leader who had gained a more substantial existence by acquiring the body of a deceased native spirit. Musgrave, in a rare expansive mood, had explained it to him one day when he asked about the straggler who always seemed to be hovering on the periphery of the pack’s enterprises. The leader of the Gentry himself refused to acknowledge the Other’s existence, giving Donal a cuff across the back of his head the one time he’d asked who that was, so often following them.

This separation between himself and the Glasduine… it wasn’t how it was supposed to be, how Musgrave and the Gentry had promised it would turn out. Either the hard men and the hag in the cottage had lied to him—a distinct bloody possibility—or he’d changed the rules himself by using the old broken mask. Perhaps control could only have been his with the mask Ellie was supposed to make, a new one, imbedded with her potent
geasan,
and lacking any previous history.

Though that would have probably turned to shite as well. The Greer luck, after all, was rarely good. But this … this was unacceptable. Was there even a chance that he could regain some semblance of a physical self? Perhaps he could appropriate some recently deceased body the way the Other had. But he knew that wouldn’t be enough. Even with the intensity of his emotions stolen from him, he burned with a need. He wanted his own body back, his own passions. He was supposed to be standing there in all his power and glory, Lord King Shite of all the Green Wood, not huddled here on the floor like some pathetic worm.

He sat up slowly and was immediately disoriented as the trivial motion sent his bodiless form floating up towards the ceiling. Flailing his limbs didn’t provide any sort of control and panic reared in him. He forced himself to be calm. To think. He let himself turn in a wobbly circle while he considered what exactly had set him drifting up in the first place. He hadn’t moved the way he’d normally do in a physical body. He’d simply
thought
of sitting up and that had set him floating.

He willed himself to stop turning like some bloody balloon and was instantly rewarded with success.