The Screaming Stone: The Otherworld Series Book 2 (22 page)

“He is not alone,” Annie angrily ground out between her clenched teeth.  Her golden red hair fell like a curtain in front of her face but did not completely obscure the look of determination that had settled there. 

Duncan fell in love with her all over again. 

Her light, her strength, beauty and power shone through even in the darkest of times.  Her arms stiffened as she pushed herself off of the ground and her weakened human legs held strong accepting her weight and the power they held.  She glared back at a shocked and stunned Bres who took a wary step back.  Annie advanced one shaky foot carefully placed in front of the other.  Duncan shadowed her content to let her lead the advance.  If Bres was occupied by her it gave him the opportunity to strike, hopefully without warning.

Answerer began humming loudly in his grasp as it begged for blood.  It, like Duncan, had been made for one purpose and sensing that that time had come it was overflowing with joy.  Duncan tightened his grip on the sword as it threatened to jump out of his hand.  It wanted to move.  It wanted action.  It wanted blood.

The blue light was back in Annie’s eyes it was a reminder to Bres of the power she had summoned just moments before to lay waste to his band of body guards.  Bres retreated one step, then two, then three.  With each slow step she took towards him he lost one step.  She continued advancing slowly, one foot moving then pausing before the other followed suit.  She was succeeding.  She was driving him away from his post.  She was driving him away from the stone.  In her footsteps Duncan followed like a shadow that would always guard her back.

They had made progress, gaining territory as quickly as Bres was losing it until they all stood the same distance from the stone.  Annie’s next step faltered and her legs threatened to buckle beneath her.  The light in her eyes dimmed and flickered out and her chest was heaving with the effort it took to keep herself upright.

Bres laughed.

“It was a lovely bluff while it lasted,” he said mockingly.

“Obviously you’ve never played poker with her.  Annie never bluffs.  That’s why she always wins,” shot back the voice of one angry Kat.

Duncan did not flinch.  He did not take his eyes off of Bres.  He knew well what had appeared behind them.  Annie’s army had climbed the hill.  Bres’ confidence slipped and was quickly replaced by fear.

“Funny I thought he’d be taller,” Autie said presumably to Knackers who snickered in response.

“Nah, he were always on the short side,” Knackers confirmed.

“Enough!” Bres bellowed in rage.  “Flyers!”

“Failinis!” Annie countered.

A deep rumbling growl that did not originate from Duncan vibrated the ground beneath their feet.  Duncan’s head swung to the left anticipating an unseen attack.  What his eyes saw defied belief.  A gigantic wolfhound slowly crept out of the shadows.  The hound’s ginger colored hair stood up at odd angles and created an evil looking ridge that started at its neck and continued down the length of its long spine ending at its tail.  Its loud feral growl rumbled out of its chest as it bared its teeth in a show of power.

A Nightflyer plunged out of the night sky.  The monstrous dog leapt up and easily captured it within its massive jaws.  It bit down, snapping the Nightflyer in two like it was nothing more than a brittle stick.  Duncan watched in stunned silence as his brain tried to accept the truth of his eyes.  The playful puppy that had but hours before showered him with loving attention now held in its massive jaws the dying remains of one of the Otherworld’s most feared creatures as if it were little more than a chew toy.

“Failinis?” he whispered questioningly.  Failinis swung his head in his direction.  He dropped the now dead Nightflyer and yipped playfully as its tongue fell out of his mouth before turning his attention back to the barrage of Nightflyers that began to fall from the sky.

“That is impossible,” hissed a stunned Bres as he pointed a shaking finger at Failinis.

For the first time and quite possibly the last Duncan agreed with him.  “How?” he asked the mammoth wolf hound. 

“Names have power,” Griffin quietly reminded him appearing on his left with Kat’s hand firmly gripped within his own bear-like hand.

“Well he evens things out a bit,” Robert said.  He had taken up position on Duncan’s right and rolled his shoulders and neck loosening them up while he readjusted his grip on his sword.

“Enough!” shrieked an outraged Bres.

The smug confidence that had seemingly exuded from his form a few moments ago melted away as his eyes volleyed back and forth between Failinis and Duncan.  His eyes finally settled on Duncan and narrowed for a moment.  Duncan could have sworn he heard the deranged god whisper the word “impossible” again but Robert had chosen that moment to be heard.

“Get her to the stone,” he told Duncan never taking his eyes of Bres.  “Don’t let her go,” he warned.

“Never,” Duncan swore vehemently.  He stepped behind Robert and began slowly side stepping towards Annie who stood just beyond his reach.

“Flyers!” screeched an infuriated Bres.  His green eyes began to glow as his hands extended and pointed at the small group huddled a top.  “Not one lives,” he ordered as the wind began to howl and the light of the moon and stars was suddenly blocked out by the mass of flying creatures that circled overhead like vultures awaiting a feast.

“Oh yeah he’s pissed,” Robert muttered to a wide eyed Knackers who could only nod his head in acknowledgment.

Duncan took two lunging steps to reach Annie before the Nightflyers fell upon them from the sky.  He wrapped his left arm around her waist and began dragging her towards the
Lia Fáils
slashing at anything that dropped down into the arc of his constantly moving sword.  Failinis flanked Annie on her right side protecting her beyond the reach of his sword, while the rest of the group guarded their back.  He hoped Griffin and Kat had enough power left to protect the others.  He couldn’t spare his eyes to glance back and check on them, he had to keep Annie moving towards the stone.

“Light,” he heard Robert scream above the unearthly screeches.  “They’re afraid of light!”

He felt Annie squirm in his grasp and squeezed her tighter.  “What are you doing?”

“My phone,” she said panting.  “I’m looking for my phone.”

“You doona need it now!  Just keep moving towards the stone we’re almost there,” he said as he removed a clawed hand from one of the Nightflyers that had dared to come close enough to the deadly trio.  He tried to sound encouraging but he knew his voice was tinged with desperation and panic.  Both escalated as she dug her feet in and continued to try and locate her phone.

“I need my phone,” she muttered again.  Her voice seemed so distant and distracted.  “I need it.  Their afraid of the light”

“Just hold on to me,” he begged as he sliced through the neck of one of the Nightflyers that had drifted too close to his sword.  He felt her weakening grip tighten slightly as she tried to obey.

Answerer was singing in battle lust glory as it began to drip with liquid victory.  It slashed, it hacked, it skewered anything and everything as it anticipated every lunge of a tooth filled jaw, or swipe of a spiked tail.  It shot over his head as it separated one flyer from his wing causing the creature to spiral out of control and fall into the wall of flame that had begun to creep up the hill.

Whatever creature Answerer missed Failinis made short work of.  Some flyers were simply chomped in half by the hound’s enormous jaws; others were shaken and flung hundreds of yards away.  Those were the lucky ones.  Their death was swift.  The unlucky Nightflyers who tested Failinis’ strength went hobbling away on missing limbs or fluttered off balance as their wings were ripped from there body.  Some screeched in pain and lashed out at other Nightflyers who happened to be in their vicinity.

Together they were making progress.  They were just a few feet from the
Lia Fáils
now.  The grass that had once adorned the hill had worn away either under the power of the stone itself or because of the many feet that had walked upon this hill over the centuries.

Bres had been distracted by the battle raging around him and realized, almost too late that they were very nearly within touching distance of the stone.  His blonde head whipped around and froze them with a glare.  As a member of the Unseelie he was not as strong as he would have been had they waited one day more and Duncan was glad he had heeded Annie’s advice.  Had this been tomorrow they would have and could have been obliterated by this one god.  He was one of the ancients, one of the first to touch the shores of the emerald isle.  He had grown weaker once he was out of the light of the Seelie court but he still had power; and it was tainted with a darkness that threatened to steal the breath from his lungs.

Duncan’s feet felt leaden as he struggled to move his foot a matter of inches.  He was almost completely frozen.  Annie, whom he had earlier carried with ease, was suddenly too heavy for him to hold and she dropped to the ground in a heap of flesh and bone.  Failinis seemed to be the only one unaffected by the staying power that poured out of Bres’ emerald eyes.  He growled and paced back and forth looking and waiting for a weak spot to present itself.

“Call off the hound Faeriedae,” he ordered.

Duncan hesitated. 

Bres seemed out matched as he was out numbered.  Duncan had never seen nor heard about his power in battle.  Even if Duncan could not reach him, Failinis could tear him in two and end the coming battle between the two ancient factions in the Otherworld before it had ever truly begun.

Bres’ was not patient.

He clenched his left hand into a fist and Annie screamed in agony at his feet.  Duncan did not hesitate again. 

“Failinis,” he ordered.  “Get back.”

The hound growled once more before obeying the command.  Bres tilted his head to the side and smiled in victory as a fiery pain sliced its way down Duncan’s back.  Bres laughed wickedly and the noise seemed to break the spell he had woven around Duncan. He spun around and came face to face with the biggest Nightflyer and his equally large rider.  The rider said nothing.  His face was mostly obscured in the shadow, but there was one feature he could make out.  The rider had only one eye.

Annie stumbled to her feet behind the new threat.  Her head and eyes taking in this new horror that stood between them.  Their eyes locked and he smiled sadly at her.  His one wish in this moment was that she would not be there, that she would not see him die.  He pleaded with her silently begging her to touch the stone and let everything else just, happen.  Understanding lit her eyes as they quickly filled with tears.

His back burned, screaming in agony as the poison of the Nightflyer began to spread.  His time was short.  The poison was already pumping through his system spreading further and further with every beat of his heart.

“Go.”  That one word ached to say.  His voice cracked and a shuddered breath escaped him as he had to say the one word he swore he would never say to her.

She shook her head denying something she could not say and he could not hear as the creature before him chose that moment to attack.  He felt its teeth sink in.  He felt the searing pain that blossomed quickly and erupted in a gush of blood.  His uninjured arm moved at the same instant sinking Answerer to the hilt into the creature’s neck as together they tumbled down the opposite side of the hill together.  Blackness took him before they hit the bottom.

Chapter Twenty

Death Marches on

The sound of weeping awoke him.  For a moment he was stunned that he felt nothing.  Although death itself, or at least his death, had been painful his body registered no discomfort now.  His eyes slowly began to focus on the pinpricks of light that hovered above his head.  They were called stars, he reminded himself.  He took a few moments to linger on the peace and beauty of the sight.  Death could have delivered him to many different lands but he could be content with the quiet beauty of this spot.

The sound of weeping, no not weeping, whining pulled his attention away from the star littered sky.  Slowly he turned his face in the direction his ears told him to.  Laying a foot away from him was the largest dog he had ever seen.  A memory came back to him and with it a name.

“Failinis?” his cracked whispered voice asked.  The dog picked its head up and stared back at him with ginger colored eyes full of relief.  The hound answered him with a sharp bark.  “Failinis,” he repeated turning his attention back to the sky over his head. 

His eyes found the full moon and a sense of confusion washed over him.  He was forgetting something.  The feeling began to grow the longer he gazed upon the moon, it grew with such intensity that it began to hurt.  It started in his back and quickly spread to his left shoulder than down his arm ending with in a pulsating ache at the tips of his fingers.

Failinis whined again drawing his attention away from the moon and back to him.  The dog had crawled towards him and was now nudging him with his cold brown nose.  The nudge turned into a push. It was hard and insistent against his right shoulder causing him to roll slightly onto his left shoulder which screamed in pain.  An ingrained instinct forced him to sit up.  His body throbbed with the effort.  After a few breaths it seemed to ease slightly.  Failinis appeared on his left and he began licking his shoulder.  The pain lessened even more.  The dog padded around to his back and began nudging him to his feet.  He hissed anew in pain before it too lessened under Failinis’ careful attention.

His wobbly legs finally accepted his weight but were not quite ready to walk as he stumbled and fell back onto his knees.  Failinis, refusing to give up barked sounds of encouragement.  If he was dead what was the rush?  Why did he feel like he needed to climb this small hill before him? 

His brain refused to allow him to remember anything as his eyes opened and gazed with confusion upon the Irish night sky.  He was suddenly struck with the strangest feeling of coming home.  The stars in the sky, the cool misty feel of the air, the scents that surrounded him, he knew where he was; he even knew that it was summer.  Nothing felt, smelled and sounded like Ireland in the summer.

Summer, Ireland…

Ireland, summer…

These two thoughts bounced around his head freeing his mind from the haze that had covered it.  A mist blew in from behind him.  It settled above the grass at his feet covering them from his sight.  A chill swept up his spine causing his seared back to throb again. His breath escaped his lungs in tiny clouds and skin grew cold.  Sound disappeared and even the lights in the night sky seemed to fade.

Death had come.

A terrible shriek of grief laced with the pain of a soul lost deep in suffering shot though the mist.  It screamed once, twice, then three times before silence gripped the hill once again.

Death had come.

For the space of three breaths the silence beat loudly at his ears before being replaced by the sound of carriage wheels on a gravelly path.  The sound sent a new chill down his spine followed by a new breath stealing shock of pain. A low moaning melodic tune accompanied by the distinctive sound of horse hooves keeping a slow steady beat reaches his ears.  It was a dirge, a death dirge.

Death had come.

He turned his head and watched as the darkly robed figure of death emerged from the depths of the mist.  In its wake a skeletal horse drew a large dark carriage that housed one single wooden coffin.  Death kept its face hidden beneath the dark shadow of his hood as it silently passes him by without the slightest hint of acknowledgment. 

Death left him.

He turned his head to watch as death passes him by and the pain in shoulder resurfaced causing him to wince.  If he could still feel pain, then he was not dead, not yet, and if he was not dead then someone else was
.
Quickly he understood.  He understood the strange feelings, he remembered what he had forgotten and he was suddenly filled with the same sense of urgency as Failinis.  He remembered, and wished he hadn’t.

He compelled his legs into motion.  Each step jarring his own injuries, but he ignored the physical pain.  He was awake now, and he was aware.  Whoever death has come to claim it is not him and now his worse fear has become a reality. 

He pushed his legs faster and faster until he was sprinting up the hill.  The wounds on his back opened up further and blood began to drip down his back, but still he ran.  He needed to beat death, he needed to cheat death of whomever he has come to claim.

Death needs to leave.

As he crested the hill he could see a small group,
her
tiny army huddled around, each of them weeping.  He refused to believe his eyes, refused to think the worst.  He has done that already tonight.  But he cannot see her.  Knackers and Autie are leaning on each other for support.  Kat and Griffin are both bent in half, their grief too heavy a burden to keep them from the pull of the figure lying in a pool of blood on the ground.  But still he cannot see her.  The sound of hoof beats tell him he has not completely out run death.  With one last burst of speed he reaches the group and falls to his knees.

Robert’s lifeless body lay in the center of the small mourning party.  His eyes are closed and for a moment he convinces himself that he is only sleeping.  With strength he was not aware he possessed Duncan lifted the young man off the ground and shook him.  He screamed at him.  Then he begged as the tears began to fall from his eyes.

“Saved me from a flyer he did,” choked out an emotional Autie.  “The stupid fool left the circle to save me an’ throw me in,” he finished with a pathetic wail.

Duncan could not look upon the group.  He had failed them.  He had let one of them, one of the best of them, die.  He wrapped his arms around Robert and held him close as tears of agony as much as shame fell upon his once lively friend and brother.  The hoof beats were growing closer.

Death needs to leave.

He would not surrender Robert to death.  If he was not dead, Robert could not and would not be dead.  He carefully laid Robert back down as gently as a mother putting her wee bairn to bed and turned his angry eye on the hooded figure of death.

Death stood just beyond the group as if the presence of life confused him.  He tilted his head to the side and studied Duncan from beneath his hood with unseen eyes.  “You canno’ have him,” Duncan croaked painfully.

Kat wailed loudly, her heart wrenching scream rivaling that of a Beansidhe.  The sound strengthened his resolve.  Death would not take him.  Finn deserved more time with his son.  Kat and Griffin deserved more time with their friend.  He was too young to succumb to death.

“He died with honor,” Knackers said behind him.  “He died tryin’ ta defend Annie wit his last breath.”

Duncan fell to his knees as his grief overwhelmed him.  Robert was dead, he had died defending

Annie.  Annie was gone.  The force, the power of that realization hit him hard in the gut forcing all of the air out of his lungs.

“Please, take me,” he begged death.  Death ignored him and went about his task of collecting his charge.

The silent figure of death passed through the group like smoke.  He reached out his hands and soundlessly called for Robert’s body to join him.  Death held his hands palms towards the sky and pushed the mist under Robert’s unmoving form.  The hooded figure slowly curled its bony fingers towards its palm and the mist elevated Robert. 

“No, please leave him with us,” Duncan begged as more tears began to fall from his eyes.   A firm hand landed on his shoulder drawing his attention away from death stealing Robert away from them and away from life.

“When the Ankou comes he will no’ go away empty,” spoke a strange voice.

Duncan spun his head to face this new stranger.  He jerked his shoulder out of his grasp and willed Answerer to his grasp.  He sliced down and was stopped from connecting with the stranger by the strangest of weapons, a club.  Duncan’s back protested, crying out in pain, but he swallowed back the physical agony.

“What have ye ta say aboot it ol’ mon?” he snarled.

“Ye must be the light now Duncan, for them,” the stranger responded with a said smile indicating the small group of the Derby nine that had survived the night.

“He’s gone, she gone,” he sobbed as he fell to his knees and agony came rushing back.

The poison he had been fighting reclaimed his body just as quickly and easily as Robert’s soul had been claimed by the Ankou.  The world blackened again and this time Duncan prayed death would save a place for him so that he could ride besides Robert who was on his way to the Westlands.

Death marched on.

He had collected his charge; he had once again ignored the pull of life, but just barely.  For one amongst them shone brighter than the rest.  Their light was bright and warm like the long forgotten sun.  They had met before the Ankou and the shiny one; and they would meet again.  Death should not have such thoughts, it should not remember; the Ankou were above and beyond that.  Death tried to remind itself of that as it produced its spinal whip and urged his deathly horse away from the seat of the ancient kings, and away from the lost ones.  He would see them all again. 

Death always met everyone.

Epilogue

Time, that distance that cannot be measured has quickly escaped my notice until a month past Midsummer has come and gone.  As a group they, we, have all agreed to give her up.  All attempts to contact Manny or any other Fae have faded into disappointment.

Nothing seems real.

I have tricked them all into believing that we need one final goodbye, that I need it.  It took some convincing as for a while I was not in my right mind.  Robert had warned me not to let go of her, now they are both gone.  I failed him, I failed us all; but more importantly I have failed her. 

No one alive saw what happened.  Bres left no witnesses.  We think, we hope, she touched the stone and that it drew her into the Otherworld.  The veil has become a metal wall that none of us can breach.  Now separated by such an impenetrable obstacle I can think of only one place to go and one thing to do; go back to where it all began.  Rian, Kat, Griffin Knackers, Finn, Fiona and even Autie, we all together travel back to the place where it all began.  Back to the one place that still holds a whisper of her memory- Lough Gur.

The memories are old and almost hollow as it happened in another time and another place. They are so far removed from and who I met and fell in love with such a short time ago.  Annie, Áine they might both be gone; but I allow myself this one last chance to feel hope.