Blood In Fire (Celtic Elementals Book 2) (17 page)

Áedán had never been so proud of his father as on that blissful morning when the torc had been placed around his throat, flashing in the first rays of the sun on Litha, the summer solstice.

He knew things would change now, had indeed already changed. Like this visit to Connaught. His father was a believer in uniting the clans, though some had said it couldn’t be done. But the battle of Dublin when Áedán had been no more than a suckling babe had lifted many people’s hopes. Together, bands of Connaught,
Uí Néill
and Uliad warriors had driven the Norseman back and retaken the city once more. Could there be a true high king in Tara once more?

Could it even be him one day?

His cheeks colored at the bold thought, but not in shame at his pride. In excitement. He had seen how his Da had cajoled and stirred the men of
Bréifne, one of the holds they had visited in
Connaught.

They had not obtained an oath from the lord of
Bréifne
, but Áedán had no doubt that his father would, given time. Aligned with all of Connaught, and
Uí Néill
and Leinster already behind them, then Uliad nearly there…the dream could be so close.

Munster, of course, was another story. Bloody southerners. Still…

“Áedán!” His father’s deep voice rolled up the hill, startling Áedán from his dreams.

The dark auburn of
Eirnin
’s hair, so unlike his son’s, caught the light and flamed as he stalked over the rise. A big, husky man, much like his elder brother, Ruad, the
Uí Néill
king was nevertheless more a statesman than a warrior. Oh, he had proved his prowess on the battlefield, yes indeed. He would have never attained his position without it. But this was a man with a keen eye and a quick mind. A man who could not only fight battles and win them, but plan for a day when the battles would be needed no longer.

He shared a certain sly humor with his son, but lacked Áedán’s unabashed enthusiasm for pranks and life in general. Though
Eirnin
could easily pull a tale from the air and stir a crowd to cheers, as he had done recently in Connaught. He was a loving, if stern father and very similar as a ruler. He was a somewhat solemn man in the best of times. Tonight, his countenance was positively broody.

Áedán frowned in confusion.

“Here, Da. Is something amiss?” A fleeting concern for the men below teased his heart, but his father’s quickly shaken head dismissed that worry.

“Nae. All is well. It is only…damme, Áedán! We must needs talk. 'Tis yer birthday tomorrow.”

Áedán smiled. He was well aware of this. They would not be home by then, more's the pity. His mam had promised him a feast of feasts when they returned. She had been a bit teary-eyed when she’d said it, but when he asked what was wrong, she had waved him away with a shaky laugh, saying only—

“Ye leave me as my child, but 'ere I see ye again, ye’ll be a man.”

He had smiled and kissed her, the tears on her cheek salty against his lips as they had hugged hard. He loved his mother better than any person on earth, save Unc Ruad, and his da.

“Aye, Da.”

“"Tis an important birthday, for all young lads. This night will mark your last a child, with the dawn ye will truly be a man. In age, if yet no'
quite
in spirit."

Despite that odd tightness in his face, a smile flitted over Eirnin's lips.

"I have nae doubt tha' will come in time. Yer a fine lad, Áedán. Strong when it is needed, and kind when warranted. Fair and true, fer all yer infernal trickster ways. I couldna have wished fer a better son.”

The words his da spoke, however wonderful to hear, sounded apologetic in a strange way.

Áedán was confused. Something had started to coil tightly inside him, that odd tingling sense he got sometimes. When he could almost hear what was in other's people's minds and feel what was in their hearts.

His father, his brave, stoic father was frightened…and sad.

“For ye, lad, the morrow night will be of far more import than the day.”
Eirnin
swallowed and grasped Áedán's shoulder, hard enough to be uncomfortable.

Despite that, Áedán didn’t shake off his father’s touch. Indeed, he felt like he couldn’t move at all. Somehow Áedán knew that here and now, things were going to change.

Forever.

“I need ye to be strong, Áedán. Stronger than ye have ever been.”

Áedán swallowed, but straightened his spine. “What happens morrow night, Da?”

Eirnin
closed his eyes, his fingers digging into Áedán’s thin, wiry muscles so tightly for a moment it was an effort for the boy not to cry out. When his father’s eyes opened again, they were so dark a blue as to be black.

“Tomorrow a price must be collected, and ye must pay it, lad.
Pay it in blood
.“

Aidan sat up abruptly, his eyes flying open. The room would have been pitch black to human eyes. The fire had died down so that only a coal or two glowed faintly.

Darkness was never impenetrable to a vampire. One of the first lessons he learned from
Abhartach. Aidan stared straight ahead, forcing down the fear of his long dead younger self.

Cold hatred took its place.

The seeds of hatred that had been sown that day on the hill of Cooley.

Why had he dreamed of that day?
Why now?!

Stupid fucking question was the short answer. His past was knocking on the proverbial door lately.

Aidan got up and knelt in front of the fire, stirring the coals to life. He had often wondered how his Da had felt that day. How he been able to bear the burden that he had laid at his only son's feet?

Eirnin
had explained that centuries ago, their ancestor, his father’s own namesake, Niall, had made a deal with a devil. A demon fae named Abhartach. The first of his unnatural kind.

Once Abhartach had been merely a fae/Fomorian halfblood. Rare enough, but not unheard of. Then the creature had developed some very strange and evil habits.

The fae had long been known for stealing humans into their world, particularly women and children, but often times men as well. This Abhartach was no different.

That was until he carelessly murdered an unwilling victim. The story was that the human’s blood had sprayed across his face and that once he got a taste, the demon fae developed a hunger for it that he could not resist. He started to kill for blood alone.

Over time, the merger of human blood with his already unusual half-fae, half-Fomorian blood turned this Abhartach into something unholy and
other.

Something the world had never seen before.

His father had not had the word ‘vampire’ and indeed, Aidan himself didn’t hear the term until centuries later. Words did not matter, all that mattered back then was duty. The duty that had been awaiting him from the day he was born, his birthright in a way.

When Abhartach had first come so long ago to what was then the
Uí Néill
, he had been a ravenous beast, lost in the throes of his newly-awakening blood lust. People disappeared, sometimes whole families in one night. The countryside began to live in blind terror of the setting of the sun.

Niall, along with the head of the neighboring O’Kane clan, hatched a plan to seize the demon. They baited him with one of the lovely daughters of the O’Kane and lay in wait. Sure enough, the two brave chieftains were able to trap the demon and cut off his head. They buried him under a young hawthorne tree and slept the night and half the day away in pleased relief at their accomplishment.

By the time they were ready to travel on, it was sunset again and Niall, the last to leave, was horrified to look back and see the creature digging itself out of ground as dusk fell. The demon was whole once more.

Thus began a test of wills. Niall told the O’Kane to get his daughter to safety. He beheaded the creature again, hacked its' body into pieces and buried them in different spots around the hills. And he waited.

The next night the creature unearthed himself again, again whole. Over and over, for nine days and nine nights it happened.

Aidan had reason later to wonder morbidly if his gormless ancestor had ever thought to try leaving the creature out in the sunlight, but then he found out that sunlight had only become dangerous to Abhartach sometime many years after Niall's encounter with the demon. That was probably the tipping point, at which Abhartach had truly morphed into the soulless creature that would eventually be named by both Bram Stroker and James Joyce as ‘vampire.’

It had been on the last evening, the ninth, when pushed to the limits of the human endurance, Niall had forced a compromise with the demon. In exchange for Abhartach leaving Niall’s lands and the people therein free from harm—and also in payment to the demon for the nine days he had been 'killed'—Abhartach would secure the right to feed from the eldest of Niall’s sons three times, once on his first birthday as a man, then three years later, and again in three. And on for nine generations. Only then would Abhartach be satisfied.

Aidan scrubbed his face and sighed.

Stupid bargain. His cursed ancestor should have found a way to kill the bastard then and there, whatever the cost.

But Niall hadn't.

And so at the tender age of fourteen,
Áedán
had been left in the dark. In the night. To meet the monster for the first time. He closed his eyes as he let the memories run their course.

They had been far from that legendary hill in Cooley by the next night. They made camp just across the border onto their own lands. It had been a flat spot, with a twisted, strange looking hawthorne tree. His father had bound him to the tree even though
Áedán
had tried to refuse the ropes. He was young and strong and stubborn. Whatever was coming for him, he would not run. He swore it. His father had smiled, sad and proud.

And bound him anyway.

That night had been foggy and damp. Moonless, starless, cold and black. So black.

A dark so thick it was hard to breathe through it. To hear. The heavy silence had been almost unbearable. So
Áedán
thought, until he heard the footsteps.

Deliberate and slow. The voice was the same.

“The last of Niall’s offerings. My, my.” Hot breath pulsed at his ear and
Áedán
started in shock, the ropes stopping the movement short. He hadn’t sensed the creature was so close.

“Fresh, young and sweet.” A roughened finger caressed his cheek, the edge of a thick nail. Bile rose in
Áedán
’s throat.

“Take what it is ye came to take and then go.” His voice, which had so recently and proudly changed to the deeper tones of a man, went high as a girl’s as he addressed the demon he could not see.

Laughter trembled the ground beneath his feet.
Áedán
felt those rough fingers slide into his hair. His thick, golden curls that made all the woman and girls at home sigh and all the boys that were fool enough, tease him mercilessly, until he’d taught them better.

With a cruel twist,
Áedán
's head was wrenched back and that flinty breath filled his nose.

“So brave and so ignorant. You don't give the orders here, little one.”

“Ye canna hurt me, tha's no' part of the bargain.”

More laughter, so close Áedán could feel the creature’s mouth hovering above his own. He wanted to retch, but closed his eyes instead. It made no difference.

Open or closed, the dark was everywhere.

“Oh, foolish boy, I see someone needs training. I cannot kill ye, true. No one said anything about not
hurting
you.” The fingers in his hair tightened again, making his eyes sting even as Áedán’s knees trembled at those words. The voice turned considering, almost caressing. “If you scream loudly enough for your father to hear, I’ll make the pain short. Is it a bargain, young master?”

“Nae. I willna scream.”

“We’ll see about
that
.”

The fangs had pierced his skin then, cold and deep, as the darkness outside slithered its way inside him. He had thought he would die of the pain, but he hadn’t screamed.

Not once.

Aidan sighed as he let the familiar sickness of the memories take their course and fade. He had been foolish to taunt Abhartach, in hindsight it had only served to make the demon more vicious in his feeding. Abhartach had bit him at least half a dozen times, tearing his flesh, incensed at his defiance.

And so very intrigued by it, as well.

That far-ago boy could only be who he was. It was hard to blame him for all that had followed.

Áedán
had been a romantic dreamer. Strong and temperamental. Sharp of tongue and fierce of heart. Full of high hopes fueled by his near worship of the old tales and his fervent wish to be just like his greatest hero. That was all
Áedán
had wanted, to be a hero, the bravest and best of them all.