Page 90 of Her Irish Treasures
The last syllable of my name ended loudly with a jarring crash that reverberated through my head. Hot air blasted past my face, stealing my breath. The stink of smoke and cooking meat—foul, rotten meat—made me gag. Keane’s flamethrower. Metal clanged, swords hacking and swinging. Aidan. Ivarr. The ground shook, an earthquake rocking me off center. A bellowing roar made my ears roar. Doran’s gargoyle.
I couldn’t move for a moment, as if my physical body was still back at the SUV while my mind tried to focus on what was happening around me. Shaking my head took all my effort but helped clear some of the mental cobwebs. The cliff rose above us directly ahead. Chunks of concrete and rock lay tumbled on the ground. A handful of men stood outside the cave, armed with sawed-off shotguns and brutal hatchets. Another man lay on the ground, a policeman, I thought, from his uniform.
I didn’t see Jonathan anywhere. Would he look the same? Or would he take on another form to disguise himself? He could be one of Aidan’s men for all I knew. I had no idea how often a changeling could take up another human body or what kind of limitations he might have. Warwick hadn’t recognized Jonathan as fae when he’d first stepped intoShamrocked.
Though I suspected the changeling would keep Jonathan’s body. It was another way for him to torture me. To remind me of our former connection. I couldn’t remember much of what I’d lived through while married to him, but my body still carried an imprint of the haunting memory of pain and misery.
Another screeching roar rumbled the ground, making even the tough Demon Hunter guys back up a step. That didn’t sound good. At all. I couldn’t imagine Doran making that kind of sound, but it sounded big and furious.
Hammer offered me one of the rusty tools. A short trowel with a pointed, sharpened end. “Are you sure about this?”
I nodded stiffly, quickly folding up the watercolor and shoving the paper into my back pocket so I could wrap numb fingers around the wooden handle of the trowel. It wasn’t sharp like a knife but I could probably do some damage with it. It wasn’t my primary weapon. If it came down to close combat with an old garden tool, I was dead anyway.
Picking my way through the debris, I entered the mouth of the cave with Vivi and Hammer right behind me. I crouched down off to the side, hopefully hidden and out of the way until my eyes adjusted to the darkness. It smelled of old earth and dampness, sort of like the cellar on Summer Isle where Warwick had hidden my painting, though this cave smelled rank. As if some animals had been using the cave as their restroom, made even worse by the stench of smoke and burning flesh. Definitely some nasty shit.
I strained to see deeper into the darkness. Was it a narrow tunnel—or an open chamber? I couldn’t tell. The roars and crashes echoed all around us, making me think it was more of an open space. My ears throbbed with all the noise, yet I couldn’t see them. Surely Ivarr’s light or Warwick’s glowing green aura would be visible if they were so close.
I risked popping up for a better look, scurrying several feet forward. Water splashed up on my jeans. Gingerly, I stretched my toe out, testing for the depth. But I didn’t immediately feel ground beneath my shoe, even though cold water inched up over my knee. Involuntarily, I shivered, remembering the kelpie dragging me down to the bottom of the lake. Would there be another horse octopus here? Guarding the nest?
“Let me check,” Hammer whispered, coming up beside me. He carried a hoe on a long wooden handle, testing the water in front of us. He poked the stick around, and something brushed against my calf.
I bit my lip, trying to stifle a sharp inhale. “Don’t move.”
Vivi clutched me, shivering against my back. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. Something touched me in the water.”
Her breathing quickened, her fingers digging into me so hard I winced. “Oh shit. Not again. Can I use the flashlight?”
We’d found a slim emergency flashlight in the glove compartment. With her claustrophobia, we’d agreed that Vivi should carry it, though we’d only use it if we had no other choice. In a dark cave, a flashlight would be like a giant bull’s eye marking our location. But given the situation, I didn’t think we had a choice. She was about to hyperventilate—me too—and I needed to see where the guys were.
“Yeah, but be ready to switch it off quickly. We may have to make a run for it.”
She fumbled a moment and then a ray of light shot out of the slim canister, surprisingly bright and strong for such a small flashlight. She aimed down at my leg, illuminating a huge hairy rat floating in the water.
I flinched back against her before I realized it was dead. Also, not a rat, but an imp. “At least we’re in the right place,” I muttered. “But where is everyone?”
Vivi kept the light low, shining along the surface of the water. We stood at the edge of a large underground lake. More dark shapes dotted the water. Some were still moving, though they were swimming toward the center island, not toward us. It made me think of rats bailing a sinking ship.
Two massive shapes wrestled in the center, wings flapping, jaws snapping. I recognized Doran’s gargoyle immediately, but I wasn’t sure what the other creature was. It looked sort of like a scaly bird only it had three heads. A giant red lizard-slash-buzzard with three sharp beaks and massive talons that screeched along Doran’s stone hide.
Other creatures milled around the island. Imps and pookas I recognized from before. Knee-high rat creatures with massive knife-like teeth and giant green swamp monsters. Even bigger creatures that towered over Aidan and Ivarr, who stood back-to-back. Keane and Warwick fought another huge pack on the opposite side. I wasn’t close enough to see their faces, but I could feel their grim urgency. Even though they’d walled themselves off from me, I could sense… pain. Blood.
They were hurt. They were fuckinglosing.
Then it dawned on me why they weren’t holding their own.
They weren’t using their magic.
Ivarr didn’t glow with the bright light of truth. Even Warwick fought with a long, graceful sword in his hand rather than a flash of green and gold power. The Irish treasures had been reunited after hundreds of years, but they weren’t using their magical powers that made them immortal through the ages.
Fury arced through me like a fiery bolt of lightning. They were protecting me, avoiding their magic in case Jonathan was waiting. They didn’t want to expose me accidentally. Even if they’d sent me far away from them…
They’d rather die and be eaten by hairy rats and swamp monsters than risk even a faint trail of magic that would lead back to me.
Throwing my head back, I closed my eyes and spread my arms open wide. The giant wheel lay quiet and still inside me. I gave it a mental shove, trying to start the flow of magic through the spokes. But nothing happened. It was just a wooden wheel, creaking and slowing down to a bare wobble.
Every other time I’d pictured the wheel in my head, it was already spinning and full of rainbows of light. They must have locked down the magic when they shut down our connection. Which made sense. If I was their conduit, and they cut themselves off from me, they’d cut themselves off from the source of their magic as well.
