A Hollow in the Hills (30 page)

She couldn’t breathe. Her chest was caught in a vice and her heart hammered at it from the inside. It would break apart one way or the other and there was nothing she could do to hold it all together. Everything was pain.

Strong arms closed around her, crushing her until she fought against them. They tried to pull her away from Jinx but she ripped herself free and threw herself back on his unresponsive body. His corpse. He was a corpse.

‘Izzy,’ said Dad. ‘Isabel.’

Voices like far off screams battered at her but they were drowned out by the fireworks and the bonfire. By the constant
shriek of pain in her head.

Holly and her kith were gone. Silver barked out orders, arguing fearlessly with Zadkiel and Azazel as if she had done it all her life. But suddenly she arrived beside Izzy, kneeling by Dad.

‘Grigori,’ she said. ‘Please. We need your help.’

Of course they did. They needed her Dad as peacemaker. That was his role. The balance in between all the worlds, like he’d shown her on the Celtic Cross so long ago, keeping it all together, no matter what.

Mum gathered her in a familiar embrace. Bruises coloured her porcelain skin and there were livid scratches on her bare arms. But that didn’t stop her taking one of Izzy’s hands and pulling it oh so gently away from Jinx.

‘You have to breathe, love,’ she said. ‘Look at me. Look at me and breathe. In and out. Ignore them. Ignore all of them. Just breathe.’

Mum was okay. That should have mattered. Dad had rescued her, or the demons had let her go when they didn’t need a bargaining chip anymore. She didn’t know and it didn’t matter. It should have made her heart sing with relief. Mum was safe. But Jinx wasn’t. She couldn’t focus on anything but that. Jinx was gone.

He was gone. His eyes, dull and staring endlessly upwards. No light in them. No light at all. This wasn’t like before. He hadn’t actually died in the Market. She hadn’t seen him dead. Sorath had healed him right on the edge of death and saved
her the agony. If only he could have waited, a moment longer. Given her time to think, to work something out, to find a way to save him. If only he had waited.

And then it hit her.

He’d said he would wait for her.

Adrenaline hit her like a jolt of electricity.

He was waiting. He had to be waiting. It was still Halloween so the rules of Samhain still applied. The doors would be open. The veil was thin. The dead could walk free if someone came for them, if someone could lead them home. She just had to get in and find him.

Just like Donn had said – she would send Jinx to him, and she would follow.

She was up and running before she knew it, sprinting across the grass to reach the Hellfire Club. She threw herself inside and dived through the gate.

The hall stood dark and empty. The smell hit her first, a smell she knew, metallic and earthy. The smell of death. She called up a flame that flickered at the end of her fingers. Not the blade. This was her own power and it took all her efforts to keep it alive in this place of death. Her frail light bounced off the walls and ceiling, revealing part of what she already guessed. Blood splattered the bronzed walls but there were no bodies. Not that she could see in the half light. Even in the realm of the dead, the smell of death hung fresh and violent as a physical assault.

‘Jinx!’ Her voice echoed off empty chambers, bounced
back to her, mocking and empty. ‘Jinx! Where are you?’

‘Gone,’ said a broken voice. ‘They’re all gone. She killed what she could kill, and took him.’

Donn’s throne had been shattered, stone pieces scattered over the dais and his body lay amongst them, as broken as the throne and his voice.

Izzy dropped to her knees beside him.

‘I brought it back. Your blade. I brought it back. So you have to give Jinx back to me. Please, where is he?’

Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth as he tried to find breath to speak. Bubbles filled it, almost a foam. He opened his eyes and they were like holes in the sky, endlessly black. She looked away, horrified, and found his glasses on the ground, twisted and crushed. It looked like someone had stamped on them. She had a good idea who.

‘She took him. When she broke me. Such power. None of the Aes Sídhe should have such power. We can’t handle it. We become monsters.’

‘You’re all monsters anyway.’ Distracted, distant, she couldn’t find the sympathy for him she knew she should feel. He had been cold and cruel. Never kind.

He laughed and the blood bubbled up from his lungs again, spilling over his chin in a glossy wave.

‘Where did she take him?’

No need to ask who. Holly. It had to be Holly.

‘How do I know? Holly goes where she will. If she is still the same. The spell she wove broke and rebounded on her.
You and your friends broke it. Killing Jinx … the spirit of Crom … the backlash …’

‘What do I do?’

‘Guard the Blade. You’re going to need it. Using it as you did, with all that fire inside you … It is part of you now. And it will change you.’ His hand closed reflexively on hers, leaving them covered in fresh blood, his as well as her own and Jinx’s. So much blood.

And Donn died.

Izzy threw back her head and screamed, howling in denial and despair.

Time moved in fits and starts. Dylan gave up trying to track it all and focused on Izzy instead. She’d stumbled back to them and dropped to the ground like a stone.

‘He’s dead,’ she whispered, her voice broken.

‘Oh, Izzy,’ said Clodagh. ‘Jinx wouldn’t want—’

Her face transformed for a moment, her eyes blazing. ‘Not Jinx. Donn. She killed him and took Jinx with her. She—she—’

Words failed her and she sank in on herself, silent and still. Broken. Dylan knew he ought to go to her, to comfort her but he couldn’t move. Everything hurt, every part of him inside and out. His head pounded, his muscles ached.

Placated, the various supernatural beings left. Amends were
promised, peace restored. Somewhere along the way, when time came to lay out the dead, they discovered that Jinx’s body had vanished and no one knew where. No amount of ranting and threats of dire retribution from Silver revealed anything. Not even David Gregory could find out anything.

Izzy had just sobbed when they told her and wouldn’t answer any questions. Or perhaps she couldn’t. With Donn dead, the Sídhe seemed at a loss. He was one of their oldest Lords.

Dylan sat with Izzy and Clodagh, watching, unable to do anything to help, half afraid of getting in the way.

‘Ash has gone,’ said Clodagh morosely. ‘Said she needed to report in. Said Zadkiel is in massive shit and she intends to make sure it all hits him and nobody else. Fair and square.’

‘Good,’ Dylan replied. Zadkiel deserved everything he got.

‘So Holly—’ she began.

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ He didn’t think the feeling of Holly in his head, using him, would ever go away to the extent that he could talk about it. Not even to Clodagh.

Izzy sat staring into space, watching the stars overhead. The mist had gone with the Fear, leaving a clear still night full of stars. The city below was like a sea of yellow and orange lights. No fires now, no fireworks. It was too late. The Samhain revels were over and everything was broken. Izzy turned the knife over and over in her hands. Her Dad had tried to take it from her. She’d just held on even more tightly. Every so often she would shiver from head to foot, but she didn’t speak. Whatever
she had seen in the hollow, whatever Donn had said, she wasn’t sharing, no matter who quizzed her. Not matter what clever questions they asked.

‘Izzy?’ he tried again.

She closed her hand around the iron blade of her knife and pulled it sharply through her fist, opening the same cut again, the one Jinx had given her. Shock turned her face from a mask to a real face once more. She felt it. It looked like it was the first thing she had felt for an age.

Blood splattered everywhere.

‘Shit!’ Clodagh exclaimed, jumping up. ‘Jesus! Help! Someone help!’

Dylan grabbed her wrist, holding it tight in an effort to staunch the blood. He pulled the knife away from her and dropped it on the grass.

‘What are you doing? Are you trying to hurt yourself?’

She blinked at him as if she had only just noticed he was there. Tears filled her eyes. ‘Everything hurts, Dylan. Everything. I don’t know how to feel it all.’

‘Here, let me see,’ said a familiar voice, as three shadows fell over them. Amadán knelt down, damp grass staining the knees of his expensive suit darker. He took her wrist from Dylan’s unresisting grip. The Magpies flanked him, grinning their sinister grins. They didn’t kneel, but one of them bent down and picked up the knife. He held it with a terrible ease. Amadán made her uncurl her fingers and tutted as he studied the deep ragged cut left behind. With a single touch, he healed
it. Dylan felt the surge of magic like fingers down his spine and Izzy sobbed.

‘What happens now?’ Dylan asked. ‘To Donn’s realm. If he’s dead, what happens to the dead?’

‘It’s never happened before,’ said Amadán. ‘I don’t know. Maybe someone else will take his place. Maybe it’s the end of days and the dead will rise up. We’ll have to see.’

‘Not comforting.’

The old man smiled a brief and humourless smile. ‘That’s not my job, touchstone. I’m no oracle. Not that they’re comforting either. Aloof gobshites, usually. Smug with it.’

‘What about Jinx?’ Izzy whispered suddenly, as if she had just found her voice again. It was harsh and ragged, but determined.

‘When you’re ready,’ said Amadán, after he had studied her for a long moment. ‘—I’ll help you find out what happened.’

‘When I’m ready? I’m ready now.’

He shook his head and smiled at her, for a moment every inch the loving godfather he sometimes pretended to be. Dylan wasn’t fooled. He could see the heartless bastard underneath the exterior. ‘I think not. Rest, recuperate, and see how you are tomorrow. And the day after. I cared for that boy, you know? Admired him. All he’s been through, all he has risen above … I don’t like the thought of Holly getting her hands on him again. When you’re ready, Izzy, we’ll be around.’

‘How will I find you?’

‘Ask the magpies, of course.’

And then they were gone, just as her father came running towards them, yelling at the Amadán to leave his daughter alone.

It took a week before she could get out of the house by herself. Just as well really, because she spent it sleeping, or waking up screaming from nightmares anyway, but she rested. Because she had to. Because she needed to get ready. Her parents were always around, keeping an eye on her, fussing over her. Not that she blamed them. But eventually, even they slipped up. Her parents didn’t want to let her out of their sight, but they couldn’t keep it up forever. Real life intervened. Gran came by, but didn’t speak to her. She watched Izzy while Izzy pretended to sleep. And then she left. Izzy learned to be devious. She learned to say ‘yes, I’m fine’ when really she wasn’t and never would be again. November brought a bleak grey rain, constant and driving, making the world beyond the glass of her windows grey as well.

Izzy thought she’d never see colour again.

But they couldn’t watch her forever. And when neither Dylan nor Clodagh came to the house one afternoon, when Gran was downstairs and Mum and Dad had to go back to work, she climbed out of her bedroom window and took off.

It didn’t take too long to find a magpie. There had been one or two around the area the whole time. She’d watched them
from the window, and they’d watched her too. Waiting for her.

She nodded her head to the magpie, who bobbed his in return. One for sorrow, two for joy. She only knew sorrow now and there was only one magpie.

‘Good morning, Mister Magpie,’ she said, the old rhyme sing-songing through her head.
One for sorrow, two for joy
… not the two she knew. ‘I need to talk to the Amadán.’

She thought she heard the sound of wings and twin shadows suddenly flanked hers. The Magpies stood behind her and she turned to face them.

‘Amadán said we were to do whatever you asked,’ said Mags. His gaze roamed over her body as if he wanted to follow suit with his grubby little hands.