Blade Dance

“That was a whole afternoon,” Ann said, horrified at how long she had spent in the past.

“It was only a second, here,” said the Prince. “Note the light in the chimney. The angle of the sun, such as it is, hasn’t changed.”

He was right, but she still didn’t like what had happened. “Why did you show me that?” Finn, with someone else. With his wife, Brigid. She should have been jealous, but the feeling wasn’t jealousy. It was . . . sadness? She didn’t know. She had lived Brigid’s thoughts and feelings, felt Finn making love to her. The connection, the empathy, was too strong to admit jealousy.

“You’re a berserker. Part Fae, part something the Fae respected, even envied. You’ve seen what role you might play in Finn’s world as it stands today. The same one Nancy McTeer plays. Consort, concubine, follower—if you master the fighting arts sufficiently to join the Fianna. But if the Queen came back, if the Court were restored, you could walk alongside Finn as Brigid did.”

They were false promises, and she saw them for what they were, even if the Prince didn’t. “The return of the Court won’t fix what’s broken in Finn’s world,” she said. “And from what I’ve heard about the Queen, freeing her won’t earn you her gratitude or her love.”

“And you think bringing this child back will earn you Finn’s?” asked the Prince.

“No. I think saving Davin will make it possible for us to love each other. And failing to save Davin will make it impossible for us to be together.”

“Finn left it too late,” said the Prince. “Too late for Brigid. You think he has become human by living among them, but he never told her that he loved her. I was there when she died, in his arms, and by then he couldn’t say it, because she was bleeding out her life and they both knew it.”

“People change.”

“The Fae don’t.”

She had to believe that he was wrong.

He turned his back on her and headed for the dark doorway on the other side of the chamber.

It was the smell that told her this part of the mound was . . . inhabited. It was a musty, unwashed odor that wrinkled her nose and made her hang back. That, and the humid warmth of the passage they were now traveling. An hour ago she would have given anything to be warm. Now, she wanted to turn around and run back the way she had come, into the damp and cold. The passage was leading them uphill again and toward the outer circumference of the mound, but the air didn’t feel clean or wholesome. Fetid was the word that came to mind.

The Prince felt something, too, or some other sense alerted him to the presence of danger, because he handed Ann back her cell phone and drew his sword from his back. It made no sound as it slipped from the scabbard. Neither did his feet on the damp stone floor. Ann knew she couldn’t move in such perfect silence, but she gripped the knife he had given her and did her best to follow him quietly.

A blue glow illuminated the end of the passage. Beyond was a small chamber much like the horrible lab they had passed through earlier, but this one was occupied and the unmistakable iron tang of blood hung in the air. There was also the low hum of electronic equipment. At the center of the room stood one of the ancient tables she had seen earlier, but this one was covered in monitors and laptops. A thick rope of tangled extension cords hung from an opening in the ceiling above, and a satellite dish was perched on a ledge of rock high in the chimney.

Ann gave a little cry. At the far end of the chamber, Davin McTeer sat on the cold ground, head resting on his knees. Her chest constricted and her throat closed. She realized that she hadn’t really believed they would find him alive. It was a gift from some higher power and she had never felt so grateful in her life.

Ann forgot caution. She dropped her knife and ran to him.

“Davin?” she said.

The boy looked up, and Ann knew that he didn’t believe his own eyes for a second. “Miss Phillips?” he asked in a perplexed whisper.

She knelt on the floor in front of him. “Are you all right, Davin?”

He bit his lip. “I didn’t want to go with him, but the ink made me,” he said, rubbing the tattoos that now reached all the way to his wrists. “I had to do what he said. I have to do the things he says. Forever.” Tears welled in his eyes.

“No you don’t, Davin,” said Ann. “We’ve come to take you home. And we’ll figure out a way to remove your tattoos. I promise.”

She wasn’t certain he heard her. He was looking past her, and Ann turned to see the Prince standing in the doorway.

“That’s your uncle,” said Ann. It was odd to describe the Prince in such familial terms, but there was no denying the resemblance. They shared blood, this little boy and the magnificent figure with the sword.

“My mom says that my uncle is a prince. Are you really a prince?” asked Davin, climbing to his feet. “Like in stories?”

The Prince seemed at a loss for words. He stood frozen in the doorway, staring at the little boy.

“He likes stories,” prompted Ann.

“So did his father,” said the Prince. “Just like in stories,” he told Davin.

“What kinds of stories are those?” asked a voice from the doorway. It had a strange resonance, one that made Ann’s head hurt, as though it were comprised of many voices, each one a beat out of sync with all the others, all of them subtly, undeniably wrong.

The speaker was as disturbing as the sound he made. He was tall and gaunt, and while he had nothing about him to suggest the beauty of the Fae, there was something about his eyes that suggested their cruelty. And yet he was human. Or had started out that way.

His hair hung lank around his face, hacked raggedly off at the shoulders. His skin was pale and chalky, and his lips were chapped. He was wearing a fisherman’s yellow rain slicker, but it was covered in brown and green stains. Beneath it, his chest was hairless and bare, covered in gray tattoos that appeared to move in the blue light of the computer monitors. They made Ann think of snakes. His pants had once been wool suit trousers, but the cuffs were caked in mud and tattered, long threads hanging around his bare feet.

“In our stories,” the Druid continued, “you are not the Prince but the villain.”

“And in ours, you are the monster,” said the Prince. “Did you really think you could keep this secret from me?”

“I did,” said the Druid. “For months. You’re only here now because I’m finally ready for you. Did you like my welcome mat in the passage?”

“Iron dust is a coward’s weapon,” said the Prince.

The Druid laughed. “Spare me your tinsel Fae honor.”

“You’ll be lucky if I spare your life,” said the Prince. “I want all of this, everything you have found here, packed and on its way to the compound, now.”

Now the Druid sneered. “No.”

“Everything here,” said the Prince, “is mine. I trained you. I funded your research. I fed and clothed you, and evidently you aren’t capable of doing that for yourself. Everything you are, you owe to me. You were a fucking engineer before I found you.”

“Yes. And because of that, I can tell you to an ounce how much iron you breathed in to get here. Would you like to know? Enough, I’m certain, to make it impossible for you to pass. You’re my prisoner, just like the boy, and your blood will yield up even more secrets than his has.”

Ann felt sick with horror. Davin shrank back against Ann, trembling. The Prince said nothing but he moved with efficient speed, despite his poisoned state. He unsheathed his sword gracefully and lunged at the Druid.

His thrust met empty air as the Druid vanished.

Ann felt the ground tremble. There was a deep rumbling in the earth. Iron bars shot across the opening they had come through and across the oculus at the center of the chamber.

“What the hell just happened?”’ asked Ann.

“He passed,” said Davin. “Like my dad does, only he shouldn’t be able to.”

“No, he shouldn’t,” agreed the Prince. “But he can. And apparently the Druid machinery in this mound is still in working order.”

“How can he pass if he isn’t Fae?” asked Ann.

“It’s one of the powers the Druids coveted most, and apparently, the Druids in this mound must have discovered how to acquire it. I suspected as much when we arrived. This place is too remote to come and go easily except by passing. Who knows how many years after their destruction on the mainland this group continued their work?”

“Where has he gone?”

“I don’t know,” said the Prince. “But evidently he’s not worried that we’ll be able to get away, and for the moment, he’s right about that. These mounds were built to hold the Fae. The bars can’t be shifted by anyone but a Druid. We’re trapped until I’m able to pass us out of here, or Miach and your lover follow the trail of breadcrumbs we left for them. Unless you feel a berserk coming on, of course. That would be handy, especially if you can bend iron.”

“I can’t make it come when called. And I doubt that I can bend iron.” The bars were rusted but thick, covered in strange symbols worked in repoussé.

“You’d be surprised,” said the Prince. “I’ve seen berserkers perform feats impossible for even the Fae. It’s one of the reasons we deigned to mingle our blood lines with them.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, then. There wasn’t much call for bending iron in my classroom.” She hugged Davin close to her, wishing they were both back in that safe, warm place.

“A pity. When, exactly, were you expecting Miach and Finn to turn up?”

“They were going to try to follow you by scrying, but Miach said that would be tricky. It’s one of the reasons I hitched a ride with you when you passed. I was worried that you would look for the Druid first and Davin second. I loaded an application onto Finn’s phone that could track mine—or at least that could have tracked it if there was a signal here. I was going to text him as soon as we arrived. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out.”

The Prince nodded toward the cords hanging through the chimney. “There’s a wireless router in that mess, so the Druid has some kind of network set up. See if you can use that to send your text.”

“Won’t it be password protected?”

“From who? We’re on an unknown island in the Irish Sea.”

“Good point.”

The Prince was right: the Druid’s network wasn’t password protected. Ann found it and tried her text again. Her heart nearly a skipped a beat when she heard the whoosh. A second later, her phone told her that her message had been read. Now all Finn needed to do was open the tracking application she’d downloaded onto his phone and he’d be able to find her, even if they moved from their current location.

She smiled when she saw his reply: Where the hell are you?

On an island in the Irish Sea. She typed in the GPS coordinates. Trapped in a Druid mound. Iron bars. Iron filings. Be careful. This Druid can pass.

She waited to see that it had gone through. And she was surprised, minutes later, when he texted back: I love you.

Her heart truly did skip a beat. No one had ever said that to her before. No, that wasn’t true. Her real mother had said that, twenty years ago. There had been bars between them then, too. Her chest ached at the memory.

She started to text him back, but the Druid appeared again. He flickered past Ann, an iron knife similar to the ones Nieve had brought from the forge in his left hand.

“None of that now,” he said and gave a hysterical giggle. He grabbed her cell phone and slashed at her, and for a second she thought that he had missed, then pain erupted across both her forearms and red stains blossomed through her sweater.

The Druid blinked out of sight again and reappeared across the room. Ann pushed Davin behind her. The Druid dashed her phone against the wall, shattering the case and screen. The pieces showered to the floor, and crazily Ann thought: I haven’t paid that off yet. Then the Druid lifted the iron knife to his lips and licked it, closing his eyes and sighing, horrid delight written across his gaunt face.

“Berserker blood,” he said, like an oenophile who has just tasted a rare vintage. “There are jars of it here, you know. Fae blood as well. I’ve sampled it all. They knew how to draw it, how to preserve it, even, but they didn’t understand it. They kept it to store the organs in. The hearts. And livers. And spleens. They were brilliant scholars, my ancestors, but hampered by the misconceptions of their age. They believed that the ability to pass, the gift of the berserk, the resonance of the Fae voice, must reside in some discrete organ. They didn’t understand that it was all about the blood.”

“There are more Fae on the way,” said Ann, holding her arms together to apply pressure to stop the bleeding.

“Rallying to the aid of the Prince Consort? Difficult to imagine. His own people despise him almost as much as mine do.”

“They’re not coming for me,” said the Prince. “They’re coming for the berserker and for the child.”

The Druid shrugged. “They won’t want their corpses. And they won’t want you. And while I may be able to find a use for berserker blood . . . ”

He blinked out of sight once more. Ann knew a moment of pure terror. She felt the passage of the air around her when he passed again, but he moved so quickly that she didn’t see the knife until he slashed it across her stomach.

“. . . it doesn’t have to be fresh.”