His scream echoed....and echoed...and echoed. All in his mind.
But there was no one to hear him. This was a solo trip. The magnitude of his isolation, his desolation, raked at his soul.
Shards of cold shredded his skin until it hung in tatters.
He didn’t bleed.
Dead men don’t.
He knew it was the end.
Pressure gave way to a temporary vacuum, his legs, his arms, his spine—all broken. Entirely useless.
Fear choked him, stealing the last of his will. He continued to fall, his body indefensible, his sense of self splintering.
His heart stopped, and the vast depth of the silence inside him created a terror unlike anything he’d ever known.
The darkness began to gain weight, to possess a malicious awareness of him. In the heart of his growing horror, a presence began to form.
His body slammed into the ground. Cold seeped through him and his skin cracked, reformed and cracked again. And again. And again. The cycle sped even as the fissures deepened, skin to muscle to bone.
He opened his mouth and cried out, the horror of his reality skating across his mind on the finest of blades.
A face, both hideous and desirable, parted the mist above him as it moved into view. Macha, the Goddess of Phantoms and War, loomed over him. She didn’t bother to hide her vicious delight. “Welcome to the Well of Souls, Gareth Brennan.”
She swept low, gripped his hair and canted his head back at an entirely unnatural angle. Cold lips pressed against his, peeling skin away when the contact was broken. Then she produced a metal discus with the Ogham Idad on it. She blew across the face of the piece, smiled down at him and then slammed it into the pad of muscle over his heart.
Skin froze, burned, blackened and flaked off, the metal welding to bone.
Gareth roared with a combination of pain and fury.
She’d...branded him?
Bones healed with supernatural speed only to afford the cold the opportunity to break them over and over, as thoroughly as that same cold ravaged his skin, his muscle, his organs.
The goddess gripped him by the throat then and lifted him, holding him at arm’s length. “You are forever mine, but your service only begins here. Where my sister failed to release her brethren, I won’t. You’ll be my tool, my sword arm for eternity. With you as the head of my immortal army, I will release my brothers and sisters and retake every realm.”
It turned out the Druidic belief that Tir na nÓg awaited all warriors was a lie.
In the heart of eternity was eternal pain and terror.
Nothing more.
A clap of thunder sounded, the sharp sound shocking him out of the memory-induced numbness. He caught the sight of his eyes, wide and panicked, in the rearview mirror. In the ambient dash light, his lips were blue.
Digging through the glove box, he retrieved a pair of driving gloves and sheathed his hands. Then he stumbled from the car and turned toward the pub, the only thought he could grasp was that the woman, the bartender, the woman he’d dubbed “Ash,” had generated a warmth that permeated his bones. It suddenly didn’t matter what she was, what her intent was. He needed that warmth, needed that affirmation of life in the absence of his own and the damage done to his hands by his element.
He’d never been weak, never been afraid, never been one to avoid a fight. As Regent, he was more likely to seek trouble out, to get to the heart of the matter and eradicate whatever conflict existed by any means necessary. The Druidic race counted on his efficient brutality just as much as his brothers in service counted on him to retain the dregs of who he’d been as a younger man—the fun-loving lad with the sharp wit and quick smile. It had been a balance all these years, one he’d managed. No longer. His control was gone, stolen by the queen’s hand.
Dissatisfaction raced through his veins. Every second brought Beltane closer, and what did he do? Sit here waiting. He thumped his head against the headrest. There was more to life than this, more to living than waiting to die.
“Not for me,” he whispered, letting his eyes drift shut. “Never again for me.”
* * *
The music swelled, rallying the patrons. Ashley took orders and slung drinks as fast as she could. Tables were moved aside and an impromptu dance floor was created. Drunken customers spun wildly about the floor in traditional Irish dances, some in pairs and others stepping out alone.
There shouldn’t have been time to consider the strange interaction with the unknown man who, for all intents and purposes, appeared to be the leader of the group of young men still collected in the corner booth. For all that, she couldn’t get her mind off him. Twice different men from the table had hailed her, but there wasn’t time to answer their summons or put down their flirtation as more than juvenile. She’d glanced around, looking for the men’s leader as they each retreated, but she couldn’t find him. The crowd seemed to have swallowed him. Or he’d left. Dangerous, that absence, given his air of malice as well as his aura’s pitch-black, densely saturated depth.
She shivered. A man didn’t develop an aura like that from doing good works in life. Not even close. Someone as marked as he was had to have a violent history, a past that would likely keep her—her—up at night. His hands, scarred and broad, had been strong and capable, his body even more so. The air of subtle menace that surrounded him, giving depth and substance to his aura, said he had killed before—must have—and wouldn’t hesitate to do so again if necessary. That subtlety was far more terrifying than overt aggression. He was a predator who would slit a man’s throat between breaths and disappear into the night.
“Don’t be a fool,” she muttered to herself. “You served him a drink. You watched him across the room. That hardly a killer makes.”
But the truth was there in his very presence, his persona, his command of the men at the table. He was Other, had acknowledged her as such and was currently invisible to her searching gaze.
A plan took root, began to form—one that was wild and reckless and measured by levels of desperation. Hers. If the man was as wicked as all that, he could well be the one to see her through her triennial fertility cycle, to keep her safe should the proverbial wolf end up at her door. Would he use that violence to her advantage? Could she convince him to give up a week of his life, maybe a bit more, and commit to staying with her until the worst of it had passed? She could move on then, would move on so as to leave no trace of her extended stay here in the village. She took it to extremes to ensure she always stayed two steps ahead of the men of her clan who would seek to call her their own and to hell with her preferences.
She’d get through this cycle and leave not only the county but the country. Maybe she’d try Wales this time. She could settle in a little village deep in the mountains and make some sort of life until it was time to see Geoffrey and, once again, move on.
But that was years away. This epithicas had to be addressed sooner, not later.
Siobhan, the barmaid, flounced up to the bar’s edge and glared at Ashley. “The table in the corner is asking for a round of Jameson’s
