The Order of Brigid's Cross - The Wild Hunt (Book 1): The Wild Hunt (27 page)

The faces in the room were grim when Sean and Em entered.
Sean closed the door behind them and stayed standing, waiting until Em took a
seat, before he addressed them.
 
“I
suppose Ian and Pete told you what we learned about the next target of The
Hunt,” he said.

“We have to stop them,” Gillian said.

“I’ve called my contacts at city hall,” Father Jack said.
“And their hands are tied. They can’t cancel the event on a rumor of danger.”

Pete studied
Sean,
saw the set of
his jaw and the steady resolve in his eyes. “What have you done?” he asked
quietly.

“Do you remember Hettie?” he asked Pete.

Pete nodded. “The old, homeless woman under Lower Wacker,”
he replied.

“Yeah,” Sean said, smiling dryly. “Except it turns out she’s
not homeless, she’s not old, and she’s not a woman.”

“She’s a young, wealthy, cross-dresser?” Pete asked.

Sean actually chuckled, and it felt good to laugh. “No,
she’s actually Mab,” he said.
“The Queen of the Unseelie
Court.
I guess I got enough of Ian’s spray in my eyes to see past her
glamour. It was a surprise to both of us.”

“I imagine it was,” Ian said. “But if she’s Unseelie, she’s
not on our side of this war.”

Sean shrugged. “Well, actually, she is,” he said. “She is
the queen, but she’s been cast out of her kingdom by the treaty and really
doesn’t have a whole lot to do with them.
 
And, because of the tea and scones I bring her, she feels that she owes
me.”

“What did she promise you?” Em
asked,
her suspicion evident.

“She told me how to stop the Hunt,” he replied.

“And just how do you do that?” Ian asked. “Adrian said that
once the Hunt was called, it could not be stopped.”

“Unless you challenge the Elk King to a duel,” Sean
inserted.

“But who would be foolish enough to…” Gillian’s stopped
halfway through her sentence and shook her head. “Oh, no, Sean, you didn’t.”

“Of course he did,” Pete
said,
his
anger evident. “Because he’s an ass who thinks he’s the only one who can save
the day.”

Sean turned to Gillian. “Yes, I did,” he replied, and then
he turned to Pete. “Partially because I’m an ass and partially because I
couldn’t see another way around it.”

“Please explain,” Father Jack insisted.

“When Ian hypnotized Adrian, we gave him the suggestion that
I was his champion,” Sean explained. “The only people allowed to challenge the
Elk King are either the Summoner or the Champion.
 
So, it’s not like I didn’t want your help,
it’s just that I kind of fell into the job.”

“And where is this duel supposed to take place?” Ian asked.

“Soldier Field.
Tomorrow night at
nine,” Sean replied. “Marcus, the gang leader we met at the Gages’ apartment,
set things up for me.”

“But you can’t trust him,” Mrs. Gage cried. “He’s a criminal.”

Sean nodded. “Yes, but he’s a criminal who is terrified of
Em,” he said. “So he was very obliging.
 
He even said he and his boys would run security for us.”

“Well, that’s comforting,” Pete said. “Is there anything
else you want to tell us about the duel?”

Sean turned and met his friend’s eyes. “No,” he said.
“Nothing else.
But Hettie, or should I say Mab, gave me some
pointers on how to fight him.
 
She told
me that he was not very agile and that his weak spot was underneath the elk
skull.”

“Well, then, that should be easy,” Ian quipped. “All you
have to do is outrun a magical horse and outfight an opponent with an arm span
three times the length of your own.
Piece of cake.”

Sean grinned. “See, that’s the attitude we need to have,” he
said.

“And what happens if you lose?” Em asked.

“I don’t lose,” Sean replied. “That’s not an option.”

“Well, if it’s not an option, I think we all have some work
to do tonight.” Father Jack said, pushing himself out of his chair. “I think
there’s a shirt of chainmail that was blessed by the Pope himself somewhere
here in the church. I’ll take a look.”

“I’ll start researching the Elk King, there might be
something out there that can give you an advantage,” Ian said, getting up and
walking across the room.

“I’ll help,” Gillian offered, joining him.

Pete shook his head and rolled forward. “You are not just an
idiot, you are a damn idiot,” he said, placing his hand on his friend’s arm.
“But I know some guys that work the pyrotechnics at Soldier Field for the
concerts.
 
I’m thinking a couple of
well-placed explosions or flares might distract the creature long enough for
you to take advantage of him.”

“Thanks, Pete,” Sean said. “I’d appreciate that.”

Mrs. Gage stood and walked over to Sean, taking both of his
hands in hers. “We are going to pray for you,” she said. “I know it might not
seem like much…”

He shook his head, stopping her. “No, I know the power of
prayer,” he said. “And I would appreciate it very much.”

She leaned up and placed a kiss on his cheek. “God Bless
You, Sean O’Reilly,” she whispered, a tear sliding down her wrinkled
cheek.
 
She brushed it away and then
turned to Jamal. “Come on, boy, we’ve got some heavy praying to do.”

Finally, only Em and Sean were left in the room. “We should
get up to the gym and practice your swordplay,” she said.

He nodded. “Yeah, we should,” he agreed. “But there’s one
more stop I need to make before I practice.”

“It’s more important than improving your skills?” she asked,
incredulous.

He nodded. “Yes. Yes it is.”

“Meow.”

The soft, plaintive cry came from the carrier Sean had in
his arms as he walked up the sidewalk to his parents’ yellow, brick bungalow on
the city’s far northwest side.

“Shhhhh, Tiny,” Sean coaxed. “Don’t be such a baby. You love
coming here. Mom always gives you chicken livers. Besides, I don’t know when
I’ll be coming home.”

“Meow,” was the response.

“Yeah, well, me too,” Sean said. “But we can’t always get
what we want.”

He opened the front door and walked inside, breathing in the
enticing aroma from the kitchen.
 
His
mother’s family-famous spaghetti sauce must be on the stovetop and garlic bread
must be in the oven. That was one of their family jokes. The best Italian food
they ever had was made by their completely Irish mother.

“I’m here,” he called, closing the door behind him. “And I
brought company.”

Margaret O’Reilly called to him from the kitchen. “Your
father is not home yet, but I’m expecting him anytime.”
 
Coming around the corner, wiping her hands on
an apron, she hurried into the room. “Ah, well, so you’ve brought Tiny,” she
exclaimed, shaking her head. “And here I was thinking you might have brought a
lady friend to meet us.”

Helping Tiny out of his cage, Sean covered Tiny’s ears with
his hand and shook his head. “
Shhhh
, Ma,” he teased.
“Tiny will think he’s not welcome.”

Margaret O’Reilly grinned and took the giant cat from Sean’s
arms into her own, scratching the cat lovingly behind the ears.
 
“Tiny knows he’s always welcome here,” she
said as the cat purred its approval of her actions. “And I seem to remember
some chicken livers I might have saved in the fridge for just an occasion.”

Tiny looked up and met Sean’s eyes. “Yeah, what did I tell
you?” Sean replied to the cat.

“So, I’m on this case that might keep me away from home for
a while,” Sean said, following his mother into the kitchen. “And I was
wondering if Tiny could spend some time with you.”

“Of course,” she said, placing Tiny on the floor in the
kitchen and opening the fridge to find the small container of chicken livers. “What
are you working on?”

Sean slipped onto a tall stool next to the kitchen counter
and grabbed a piece of garlic bread. “Well, it’s kind of weird, Ma,” he said,
breaking off a piece of bread and popping it into his mouth. “Do you remember
that scar I got when we were in Ireland back when I was a kid?”

She instantly turned and met his eyes. “Yes,” she said, her
face a little tense.

He studied her for a moment and shook his head. “You knew,”
he said, his eyes widening in amazement. “You knew it wasn’t a thorn bush all
along.”

She took a deep breath and nodded. “Aye, I knew,” she
admitted.

“Why didn’t you tell me the truth?” he asked. “Why didn’t
you let me know that those creatures were real and they lived among us?”

She pulled a stool over to the other side of the counter and
sat across from him. “Well, I’ll tell you that I was more concerned about my
son than I was about any legends, be they real or not,” she said.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“What would have happened, do you think, when you came back
to Chicago and told your friends about the scary beastie in the forest in
Ireland?” she asked.

He thought about it for a moment.
 
He thought about the grief his sister Mary
received because she could see ghosts, and she didn’t get that gift until she
was an adult.
 
And beyond the grief from
his friends, how would it have been if he, as a twelve year-old boy, had come
back with the knowledge that the creature he saw in the woods was real and not
a hallucination?

“It would have changed me,” he admitted. “I think I would
have been more fearful.”

She nodded slowly and then cocked her head to the side and
studied him. “And did you ever really believe that we told you the truth?” she
asked.

He smiled back at her. “Well, truth be told, I always had my
doubts,” he said.

“And that doubt, did it make you ready for the truth when it
presented itself again?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, actually, it did.” He realized the truth
in the words as he said them. “It really did. Why? Why did you choose to handle
it that way?”

She took a piece of garlic bread from the basket and toyed
with it for a moment. “Do you remember the first time you asked about where
babies came from?” she asked, looking up from the bread and meeting his eyes.

He grinned. “What was I? Five?”

She nodded.
“Aye.
You’d come off
the bus from your kindergarten class and marched into the kitchen demanding to
know where babies came from.”

He nodded. “It’s funny that I can remember that far back,”
he said.

“And do you remember how I answered?”

His smile widened. “Yeah, I remember you asked me what I
thought.”

“And you told me that you thought babies came from the
hospital,” she said with a chuckle. “And I told you that you were 100 percent
correct. Do you know why I answered your question like that?”

He shook his head.

“Because I knew when you were ready for it, the truth would
be waiting for you,” she explained.

He reached across the counter, took her hands in his and
then lifted them to his lips and kissed them.
 
“Thank you,” he said, “for the right answers
at the right time all through my life.”

Her hands tightened their grip on his as she met his eyes.
“Sean, what kind of special case are you working on?” she asked, fear in her
voice.

He lifted her hands to his lips one more time and met her
eyes. “What kind of case do you think it is, Ma?”

Tears slipped from her eyes and trailed down her cheeks.
“The kind of case where you walk away safe and sound,” she whispered, her voice
cracking with emotion.
“The kind of case where you come back
to me, Sean O’Reilly.”

He nodded slowly. “Yes, Ma, that’s exactly the kind of case
it is.”

Sean placed the key into the ignition of his car and turned
it on.
 
He looked over his shoulder to
see his parents standing on the front porch waving at him, a tradition they’d
always had.
 
He knew they wouldn’t go
inside until he turned right at the end of the corner.
 
He smiled at them, waved, and put the cruiser
into drive. Taking a deep breath, he pulled out of the parking spot and drove
down the street, trying not to remember the look of sadness in his mother’s
eyes.
 

By some unspoken communication, they had both decided not to
share the information about Sean’s case with his father.
 
Instead, the dinner conversation had been
filled with talk about family, memories and laughter.
 
It was exactly what Sean had needed. And when
he hugged his father goodbye and felt those bear-like arms around him, he knew
he’d done the right thing.
 

Having a family of police officers, it was understood that
each day at work could be your last.
 
They’d never allowed that idea to overwhelm or depress them, but they
had understood that love needed to be shared, anger needed to be brief and life
needed to be lived.
 
This was just
another one of those nights.
 
Tomorrow
would bring what it would bring, but for tonight, he and his family were safe
and secure in their love for each other.

As Sean turned the corner, he looked around at the
neighborhood he’d grown up in.
 
The
baseball diamond where he’d learned to play softball.
 
The small playground where
he’d stolen his first kiss.
The corner store where he and his siblings had
agonizingly decided how to spend the money they’d had on penny candy.
 
He smiled to himself.
 
He’d had a great life.

He turned onto Cicero Avenue and headed into the city.
 
The small, family-owned stores were closed
for the night, and the glow of light from apartments and homes lit the
sidewalks.
 
The low rumble from the
Eden’s Expressway just to the left of him could be heard through the closed
window, and somewhere in the distance he could hear the siren on a squad car
responding to an emergency.
 

He sighed and thought about his siblings.
 
He knew Mary was happy and safe. Bradley
Alden was a good man, and he adored his new wife.
 
It was a little ironic that the youngest of
the O’Reilly clan had been the first to get married.
 
Tom and Art had each other, and although he
knew they’d miss him, the special bond twins shared would get them through
their grief.
 
He thought about calling
them, just to speak one last time.
 
But
he knew they would figure out something was wrong and they’d worry.
 
None of them had the luxury of allowing
themselves to be distracted in their line of work.
 
It was better that they find out the news
afterwards.

Pulling into the church parking lot, he sat in his car for a
moment longer.
 
The first stars of the
evening had appeared in the night sky.
 
The birds had quieted, and moths danced around the glow of the
streetlights.
 
The old church stood
silhouetted against the glow of the downtown lights.
 
He wanted to put the car in reverse and pull
away.
 
He wanted to drive back to his
parents’ house.
 
He wanted to go back and
not answer the phone call that had changed his life earlier that week.
 

A movement caught his eye at the other end of the parking
lot.
 
Two children ran down the street
towards their home followed by parents who cautiously warned them to stay close
in order to be safe.
 
Safe.
Sean bent his head, laid it against the steering wheel for a moment and took a
deep breath. Sometimes you just didn’t have a choice.

He unlatched his seatbelt, pulled his sword from the back
seat, got out of the car and walked over to the door of the church.
 
Before he could access the security panel,
the door was opened and Ian stood in the doorway. “I’ve done a bit of research
and I found out about the forfeit,” he
said,
his tone
tense. “You have a bit of explaining to do.”

“I have to practice with Em,” Sean said, trying to move past
Ian into the hallway.

“The hell you do,” Ian said, grabbing Sean’s arm and
stopping him. “You had no right to put yourself in this kind of situation.”

“No right?” Sean yelled back at him. “No right?
 
Do you think for one moment that this was
actually my choice?
 
Do you think I
enjoyed saying goodbye to my parents?
 
Do
you think that I want to live the rest of my life locked away in some kind of
faery prison?”

“What did you say?” Em asked, standing at the end of the
hall, her eyes wide with fear.

Sean shook his head. “Dammit. This is not what I wanted.”

“What is it you wanted?” Ian asked.
“For
us to sit back and let them take you down to faery?”

Em rushed down the hall and faced Sean. “They are taking you
to faery?” she asked. “You’re letting them take you?”

“I don’t have a choice,” Sean explained, his voice tired.
“There has to be a forfeit. Those are the rules.”

“There has to be another way,” Ian said. “This is totally
unacceptable.”

Sean nearly laughed. “Yeah, I agree,” he said, his voice
calm. “And if you can figure out a way to rescue me, I’m all for it.
 
But in the meantime, I need to practice to
make sure there’s something left of me to rescue.”

Ian shook his head in resignation.
“Fine.
Go. Practice,” he said. “I’ll figure this out.”

Sean took Em’s arm and started to guide her back down the
hall when he stopped and turned back to Ian.
 
“While you’re at it,” he said, “why don’t you
look into how someone escapes from faery?”