bent on the possession of a fine woman—a woman his brother by choice would call his own. To fight back would be to kill her. It would cost his brother everything he’d never thought to find let alone to possess, namely love.
So there would be—could be—no fight.
He braced and took the blade. With force and fury greater than any torment he’d suffered, the goddess-wielded blade ran him through, piercing and shredding and ripping. Darkness webbed across his vision. Sight fractured.
A coppery tang coated his mouth, his throat, and he choked.
He tried to scream. Pain like he’d never known, could never have imagined, rendered him mute.
Not within his head, though. Gods, not within his head. His scream ripped through his skull as his heart rate slowed, his blood cooling. He knew it was the end, heard the waves crashing against the cliffs, felt their fading reverberation through limbs grown lethargic.
Startling in its suddenness, sunlight winked out and darkness pulled at him with such force his bones shattered like fine crystal hurled against a stone wall.
Pain burned along every nerve.
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
