Blood In Fire (Celtic Elementals Book 2) (25 page)

Just
one
precious moment.

“And you…you wanted Aidan, because of that? Because of who he is?” The sound of her own voice scared her. It was thin and scratchy, like the voice of some ancient, tormented ghost.

Her stomach clenched. If she survived this, what the hell would she be? Did she even
want
to survive this? Tears leaked into her hair as she waited for the demon to answer her and coldly considered her options.

“You’ve a fair lot of cunning for a human. Yes, I wanted that. You should have seen him back then,” Abhartach gestured to the painting of Aidan, fat drops of her blood falling from his thick fingertips, the sharpened yellow nails glistening and red. “Like a god, he was. Perfect and strong and beautiful. His people loved him, his enemies feared him and Lugh himself envied the shine of him.”

“You wanted to take that away from him?”

Abhartach chuckled. “You aren’t so clever at that, are you? No! I wanted to spoil it, to darken it, to take that which was bright and sweet and good and
pervert
it. Turning him was to be my crowning glory, my magnum opus, if you will. I wanted him made cruel and bloody and dark, and I wanted to watch it all! I wanted to create it—to make—“

“—to make him in your image. Oh, I get it now.” As if from somewhere far away, Heather heard herself laugh. It was agony to even flutter her eyelids, but somehow she was laughing. Choking on blood, but laughing just the same.

Abhartach glared down at her, those pit-of-hell black eyes, blank and cold.

“What is it—why are you doing that?
Stop
laughing!”

“Stupid demon,” she sputtered, unable to stop laughing even when he raised the knife again. “You’ll never do that,
never.
Aidan isn't perfect, you perverted bastard. He's a goddamn ass most of the time.

"But there's one thing Aidan's not. He’s not a monster. He’s not
you
—and he won’t ever be.“

Abhartach’s hand closed over Heather’s throat, cutting off her words with one squeeze.

Her body pitched under his hold, her savaged flesh straining against her bonds uncontrollably. She was unable to scream or breathe. Once, twice she buckled, then blessed darkness slid over her like warmed silk and she smiled as it took her away from him.

When she went limp, Abhartach cursed himself for a fool. Baited by a human!

He lifted his hand and held it to her lips for a long moment. Finally, he nodded to the
daor
as the faintest puff of breath warmed his fingers. Almost gently, he took her jaw in his huge, claw-like hand, turning her blood-stained face this way and that as she lay unconscious. His dark eyes scanned her features as if searching for something that eluded him.

His eyes trailed down her throat, so pale and white, but smudged already with purpling bruises, then down her torso, the hundreds of knife wounds crisscrossing that once lovely flesh. Some thick as his finger, others thin and delicate as a hair, covering every inch of her, down to the soles of her pretty feet. What a sight she was! Her gorgeous form had been turned into a savage canvas of brutality.

When Aidan saw her, Abhartach thought with a tingling thrill, he would break. Yes, indeed.

He would break so prettily
at last.

With a sigh, the demon dropped his hand and frowned, thinking about her last words, words she thought to wound him with. Not that she had, of course. Her words were nothing. They were pitiful and insignificant, just as she was.

She was wrong.

Aidan could be corrupted, he would be twisted. And she would be the instrument to do it. He was sure of it. Wasn't he?

Abhartach squeezed his hands into fists, unmindful when his nails pierced his own skin and drew blood.

It had taken the rest of the night to come up with a plan that satisfied everyone. By then, Aidan was trapped by the sun. Ronan hadn't destroyed the
ghrian siúlóir
yet and indeed that had become the crux of their whole plan. There was only one dose left.

That was their only chance to get Heather away from the beast, instead of just inadvertently giving Abhartach both of them in some forlorn rescue attempt.

As Ronan had pointed out more than once last night, each time Aidan had been close to bolting, it was Aidan himself that was their best weapon. If Aidan was lost, then Heather was lost. Even with the sword, Ronan was only human and no match for an entire castle filled with vampires.

As usual, they couldn't count on the gods to be either for or against them.

It didn't really matter, in Aidan's opinion, because it was very unlikely this would work. At least in the way Ronan hoped. There was a chance for Heather, though.

Assuming she wasn't already dead.

Or worse.

Aidan stared in the blackness, considering what might be happening to her for the hundredth time since he had seen her struggling against Abhartach. Horrors flickered behind his eyes in glowing Technicolor madness, every possibility worse than the last.

She wasn't dead.

He was sure of that. Ronan was doubtful. The big man tried to restrain his certainty to spare Lacey, but Aidan could feel it. His friend thought she had died almost immediately.

Aidan knew Abhartach's nature far more intimately than Ronan. Killing Heather would not be enough. That was easy, and Abhartach didn't believe in easy.

Whatever she was going through right now, she was probably begging for death. He could hear her voice in his head, that awful scream that had been the last sound he had heard from her meshing macabrely with the sunlit memory of her smiling up at him.

I’ll even say please. Pretty please, if you like?

He rolled off the couch that still held her scent and onto the floor. Falling to his hands and knees, his forehead pressed to the hard bare wood as his stomach clenched.

Her fate was on him. This was the price he paid for allowing her to get too close. Gods, he was a selfish fucking bastard. The price
he
paid?

Heather was human, she hadn't asked for this shit. No matter what she thought she understood about his past, the reality of it was beyond any normal human's comprehension. He had known that, and still he had stayed. It had been his cruelty that had forced her into the night and sent her running straight into Abhartach's waiting arms.

Even if he did get her free, she wouldn't be the same. The woman she had been would be destroyed.

He could only hope that there would be something left to save.

The sun had barely set when Aidan left the library. The pale twilight stung his eyes and skin, but he came into the kitchen anyway. Except for Shelagh, who must be with the children, all the adults were there. It was crowded and for the first time in this house, he felt smothered by all the emotions buffeting him. Fear, blame, anger, sadness, shame, it all covered him like a thick, scratchy wool blanket. He rolled his shoulders restlessly as he ignored everyone else and addressed Ronan.

"Remember, five days."

Ronan was frowning, he had argued against waiting that long last night. "I donna know, tha' is an awfully long time—"

"And as I told ye, brother, we must let him settle before any of ye come near the Reeks. He must see me being compliant, he must—"

"What if he finds a way to force yer vow before then, eh? What then?"

"Then all is lost, and ye give us up as dead."

Ronan was shaking his head, but Lacey put a hand on his arm. "Let it go, Ronan. We went through all this last night. Aidan needs to do this and
now.
We stick to the plan."

With a heave of his huge shoulders, Ronan gave in. Aidan looked next to Daire, who was a bit white, but met his eyes straight on. "Donna worry about me, O'Neill, I will do my part. I owe ye."

Aidan nodded shortly, hoping remorse would steady the man's courage. Daire's role would be the most important, really. He was to play the part of a simple hiker, the Reeks were overrun with them this time of year. But in his backpack he would be carrying the last of the
ghrian siúlóir.
Aidan couldn't chance carrying it in on his person. He'd be searched. Ronan couldn’t bring it as it was far too likely the vampires knew his smell from his centuries as a werewolf.

Daire, as a pure human, should be able to get close enough to the castle to hide the potion in a place Aidan had told them of. Daire wouldn't be able to see the castle himself, not unless they got extremely unlucky and it showed itself to him. Aidan was betting against that as Abhartach wouldn't be keen to invite in any distractions once he had Aidan to toy with again.

After Daire hid the potion, Aidan would have to find a way to get it, or have Heather get it, if she was whole and able. Ronan would be waiting for them just outside the Reeks on that fifth day,to help distract, scatter or kill whatever might follow them out of
Du'n Dreach-Fhoula
.

As the plan was for them to walk out at midday, there shouldn't be much in the way of resistance. Abhartach didn't know of the potion's existance after all.

It should work.

If a few small things went very right, and a dozen big ones didn't go very wrong.

He said his goodbyes in short order. Everyone was all too aware this may be the last time they ever saw him and he wanted away from the heavy maudlin mood.

Moiré kissed his cheek before he left, her hand warm on his arm, her whisper cool in his ear. "It wasna wrong to care for her, Aidan. Whatever happens, ye mustna put tha' on yerself."

He leaned into her touch for a moment, even as her words scored his heart. Moiré was wrong. He wasn't allowed to care, he had known that and he had done it anyway.

This was most certainly all on him, and now it was up to him to deal with what he had wrought.

Du'n Dreach-Fhoula
loomed before him
less than an hour later. Stars sparkled in the blackness above the castle, but couldn't penetrate the night within it. The doors opened before he was in hailing distance.

It was the white-haired man from Limerick that stood between them, smiling delightedly as the sight of him put a hitch in Aidan's purposeful stride.

"Ye?!" So
that
had been the familiar tang behind this one's stench. He belonged to Abhartach. A slave, obviously, one of the hangers on Aidan had warned Heather about. This one was just the type, too.

"We meet properly at last! I am called Declan Foster among humans, though you, of course, may address me as you please. My master waits for you inside."

The man's eyes were glinting in a weird combination of awe and transcendence. His mouth opened again, but Aidan pushed past him without another word.

He strode into the hall as if it were nothing, as if the familiarity of this place was not sickening in the extreme. How he had hated his short stay here. The things he had endured within these walls…
the things he had been forced to do…

Aidan's jaw tightened when he heard the familiar voice call to him from the dining hall. "At last. Do come in, my son."

Not there.
Ifreann na Fola.

Abhartach was waiting, sitting in that wicked looking chair while a servant scrubbed the stone table. Aidan avoided looking directly at it as he approached the demon.

"Well, well, you took your time, but I see you found your way home at last." The white-haired man approached Abhartach and the demon waved an impatient hand. Declan took up a seemingly familiar position kneeling next to Abhartach's chair. "Sit, my wayward son, and tell me what has placed that oh so determined look upon your face."

Aidan sat, but he took care not to touch the table. He swore the thing had become imbued with the souls of all the lives that had ended on its' surface. He could feel the psychic residue of millenniums pulsing from it.

"Does she live?"

Abhartach's ugly mouth made a moue of disappointment. "Oh come now, must we be so blunt?"

Aidan only looked at him.

Abhartach shrugged.

"Very well. Yes."

Relief slipped through Aidan on a current so strong that for a second he forgot himself, until Abhartach let out a sigh of satisfaction. "Did I not tell you so,
daor
? Do you not see it?"

"Yes, master," the human fawned, in a voice so low Aidan almost didn't catch it. "You always know."

"I do. I also know, Aidan, that you wish to bargain. Let us see if you have anything worthwhile to give me." The demon sounded strangely eager.

With an effort, Aidan raised his head. "Aye. I believe I do. Myself."

Abhartach's lips twisted obscenely. "But I have that already, dear boy. Here you sit."

"'Tis true enough…but I escaped ye before. I may do so again."

"Cocky, cocky boy. I highly doubt that. Still you could try—"

"What if I promise no' to try, no' ever again? What if I swear to ye tha' I willna
ever
leave your side, tha' I will become what ye have always wanted, yer true heir in every sense? And I swear it in blood?"