For a moment, Shealy and Ellie just stared at one another in shock and fear. She didn’t know what she had expected, but it had begun so quickly. Then Shealy took the child’s hand and pulled her tight to the wall, inching closer so they could see. Two men lay dead at either side of the entrance. In the center stood Cathán, her father, and a woman who looked to be somewhere in her twenties, dressed in a T-shirt, blue jeans, and scuffed sneakers. She stood with her chin raised, jaw set defiantly. At her side stood a tall, shirtless man who watched with intense, hooded eyes. He had no weapon, but Shealy sensed he was dangerous in his own right. Yet no one gave him a second glance.
Cautiously, she pulled Ellie into the chamber with her, hugging the wall and trying to keep back. The men had circled Cathán, but he seemed blithely unconcerned. He glanced beyond them and spotted Shealy. His eyes widened, and the shirtless man took a lunging step forward.
“It is you,” Cathán breathed, and Shealy felt a bolt of fear drive through her. That voice, the power that seemed to vibrate off of him.
“Who is she, Áedán?” the woman Shealy guessed to be Meaghan whispered to the man no one else seemed to see.
Áedán.
Shealy didn’t know the name, but this man . . . Her thoughts stumbled, scrambling to find order. Who was he?
“I knew you would come,” Cathán said calmly.
Her dad had been staring at Kyle and Jamie with a combination of horror and hope, but now he swung those faded eyes her way. “Shealy!” he exclaimed, distraught that she was there. “For the love of God, why didn’t you listen when I told you to go back home?”
Tugging Ellie along with her, Shealy rushed to her father’s side and threw her arms around him. “Are you okay, Daddy?”
“Yes, child. But this is no place for you. And you brought the little one.” His eyes grew damp as he touched his child for the first time. “Oh and isn’t she the very image of your mother. You must leave, though. Go home. Please, Shealy, take her and go home.”
“Not without you, Daddy. I won’t leave you here.”
The shirtless man took an apprehensive step toward Meaghan, pulling Shealy’s attention away from her father. He cut his eyes between Cathán, Shealy, and Meaghan in alarm, and suddenly Shealy knew who he was.
The Druid.
Invisible to everyone but her and Meaghan. The entity the prophecy said she would unleash on the world. Shealy couldn’t say why she was so certain, but deep within her, she
knew
. She
knew
she was right.
She felt a strange vibration in the air and with horror she realized it was coming from Cathán. “What’s he doing?” she demanded. The men had all spread out and only Tiarnan stood guard over Cathán.
Shealy pointed. “Stop him,” she said. “Whatever he’s doing, we’ve got to sto—”
But it was too late. Even as she spoke they felt the rumble, the quake of the earth. Smooth stones began to careen down from the mountains outside and slam against the strange temple. Inside, cracks spiraled down from the arched ceiling and chunks of tile separated and fell.
“Oh Christ,” Zac said, peering out at the field below. “They’re coming. They’re coming!”
Shealy knew without being told what he meant.
The creatures.
The beasts, confined without a cage, were coming to kill them.
That Cathán had called them was clear. He raised his hands and smiled as they charged up the sides of the mountain. Those with wings flew straight through the entrance. Terrified, Shealy saw dragons among them.
Dragons.
Hysteria rose with that acknowledgment. Of all the unbelievable she’d survived,
dragons
seemed to be the edge that could not be crossed.
She felt Cathán’s power surging through the chamber, and from the corner of her eye, she saw the shirtless man who’d spoken to Meaghan sway and then collapse at her feet like a puppet whose strings had suddenly been cut.
“Áedán!” Meaghan shouted, but there was nothing she could do because the beasts from below had found their way in.
It was chaos and terror, mixed into a churning cauldron of violence. Tiarnan leaped in front of Shealy and Ellie, shielding them with his body. Her father and Meaghan huddled close, defenseless against the beasts that stamped, snarling and snapping as they charged. Jamie and the others attacked the creatures with courage that made Shealy want to cry out. She had a moment of relief when she realized the dragons could not find a way through the opening, but the breath of their fire scorched the floors and tried to devour the people beyond their reach.
All around them, energy sparked like a live wire bouncing between puddles of water. She felt it building, like a shock of static electricity seeking an outlet and Shealy focused on it with all her might. Kyle had said being
inside
the Book of Fennore might mean that they had some control over it. Shealy decided this was the time to test that. With a deep breath, she reached out to that growing force and using her mind, she pulled.
Tiarnan gave her a glance over his shoulder, eyes wide as if he’d felt what she was doing. Then suddenly Ellie gripped her hand tight and that energy arrowed into the child, lighting her up with an unearthly glow. Shealy tried to shout, tried to break the connection, but Ellie held on as tightly as she could, and then with her other hand she reached for Meaghan.
The two women faced each other and suddenly everything else fell away until there was only the triumvirate they made. As if controlled by some force beyond them, Shealy held her free hand out, palm up, and Meaghan, as dazed and fearful as Shealy, placed her hand against it.
The moment they touched, the instant the triangle sealed, a high-pitched squeal hit the room like a wave. For that second, Tiarnan, Liam, and the others all glanced back, as if called by the females. Only Cathán remained unaware of what was about to come. The monsters poured through the open door with snapping jaws, driven by violence so that they turned on one another even as they attacked. The men fought valiantly, but more and more of the creatures came and it would be a slaughter in seconds.
Hurry.
Whatever it was that they were doing, they needed to hurry.
Tiarnan fought bravely, swinging his sword and cutting through the creatures. Afraid to look, afraid to turn away, Shealy watched a great and terrible shudder go through him and then suddenly he seemed to jolt and expand into an enraged giant.
Riastradh.
That’s what they’d called it.
Suddenly she knew what they needed to do. She pictured it, sent the image through the current flowing between them. From the center of the small, female trine, a spark rose like a star and found its way to Tiarnan, went through him like a meteor, changing colors as it emerged. She felt Tiarnan’s power like a blast of heat and she pulled it in and shot it back out. The light hovered for a moment and then it slammed into Jamie, then Liam, then Zac and on it went until all of the men had been touched by it and each of them began to glow.
Liam turned next, followed by Eamonn and Zac.
Riastradh.
All of them. In an instant every man but Jamie, Kyle, and her father transformed into an unconquerable army.
Each of them fought like a dozen men, finding weakness in their foe, finding victory in each blow. In a blink, the tide turned and the creatures were beaten back, heads severed, bodies dismembered. Cathán opened his eyes to find that the carnage of this battle was not what he’d expected.
Her father looked terrified, and yet his eyes scanned the room and landed on a pedestal.
“Kyle,” he shouted. “And you—Jamie!”
Kyle heard him, though how she’d never know. He stumbled back, calling to Jamie at the same time. Shealy felt the power ebbing, feared that they would lose control. She held as tightly as she could, but it was no use. The burst had come and gone.
Cathán spun on them, and raising his hands, he muttered words she did not understand in a voice that seemed to coax and seduce. It made her want to break away from the others and go to him.
All but a few of the creatures lay dead in bloody heaps, and the sparking force that had joined the men waned. One by one they turned back into themselves, pale and weakened, blood-soaked and exhausted. As she watched, they collapsed around her as Tiarnan had last night. Only Tiarnan remained
riastradh
, still bringing his blade down against the boarlike creature with the long bear claws.
Cathán advanced on Shealy with fury in his eyes, but with each step he took, the earth shook, and pieces of the ceiling, walls, and floor broke away and clattered down, down to the quarry below them. The ground tilted, breaking the three females apart, making them stagger back. The instant the connection severed the entire temple pulsed from within and then the walls, the ceiling—all of it—exploded outward, leaving the people standing on a vacillating platform that was crumbling before their eyes.
Shealy screamed as the explosion took the tiles around her, leaving her suspended on a floating dais no bigger than a tabletop. A few feet away Meaghan balanced on another dangerous section, and little Ellie stood on a piece even smaller. Shealy’s father had moved to someplace behind her, but she couldn’t see him and didn’t dare turn and risk unbalancing the unstable surface beneath her.
“Tiarnan, where are you?” she cried.
The voice that answered her was guttural and fierce, but she knew it was him. Cathán was just a few feet away, trapped himself by the unhinged flooring. But he didn’t look fearful. No, the look in his eyes was calculating.
“We will all die unless you do something, Shealy,” Cathán said. “You can stop this. Can’t you?”
Behind her, Tiarnan roared like one of the beasts he’d slaughtered and at last she dared a look over her shoulder. He was sprawled over two separated platforms, clinging as they bucked and swiveled beneath him.
Beyond Tiarnan she could see her father, Jamie, and Kyle, gripping the edges of the pedestal with the Book of Fennore between them. What were they doing?
“Stop it!” she shouted at Cathán.
“Only you can stop it, Shealy. You can get us all out of here. Help me and I will help you. Set me free and I will give you whatever your heart desires.”
The voice coaxed and lured, and she could see the reason in his words. She felt all will to resist drain away until she wanted to do as he asked. Tiarnan roared again, breaking the spell, pulling her back from a trap she couldn’t see.
She couldn’t speak, couldn’t shout a denial when that was what she wanted to do. As if hearing her defiance, Cathán smiled and shot a look at Liam, where he lay collapsed on a small plane. Cathán cocked his head, held his hand out flat, and then tilted it. Liam began to slide down the surface, knocking Nanda from his shaky position as he went.
Shealy heard Tiarnan’s agonized cry and felt her own terror building and building, begging for release. She screamed, and the sound hit the air like an explosion. She saw Cathán recoil, heard now her father’s voice raised and chanting, felt the last of the hovering floor fall away.
The screams echoed as they all plummeted down, down faster and faster. Shealy scrambled to pull her thoughts together, focusing on the clouds, pulling them together, meshing the world into something thick and gelatinous. She felt herself slow, searched through the chaos for the others and felt them there with her as the world spun, faster and faster until she was sick with dizziness. The air became so thick it had texture and she had to drag it away, seeking the way out. She remembered a carnival ride that spun so fast it pinned her to the caged walls. She felt that sick plunging feeling now but she fought it, imagining a door that only she could open. As she groped through blank oppression she saw it at last.
A world beyond the small opening that she stretched and held in place by the will of her thoughts. On the other side she saw the now familiar cliffs, the sea surrounding the Isle of Fennore. A man stood on the precipice, a woman at his side. They both turned and looked at her with disbelief. From somewhere in the fog she heard Meaghan shouting, “
Rory
!” but Shealy knew this was not where Meaghan belonged.
She reached through the mist and found Liam, dangling in space. She pulled him to her and then found Ellie, put her sister in his arms, and shoved them out of the mist and into the real world. She sensed Cathán trying to reach her, trying to go through as well, but Tiarnan was there, holding him back.
The door slammed shut and Shealy was spinning, faster, harder. She groped for another door, found the small opening and pried it wider. This world was not familiar, not to her, but she knew instinctively who belonged there. Nanda, with his deep dark eyes and kindness, went through with a shout.
Cathán was closer now, and Tiarnan’s strength ebbed. She didn’t know how much longer he’d be able to hold Cathán back.
Now she sought her father, probing through the white wash of sound and perception. She found him, linked with Jamie and Kyle as his strange chant rose in the miasma. Suddenly she understood what they were doing.
The Book of Fennore.
It lay open and spread on its dais, pages inside fanning back and forth, their color a strange and unearthly pale. In the center, several stood straight with jagged, torn edges that looked like ghastly wounds. Three cords of silver connected in a mystifying lock that dangled over the edge, sprung open. Suddenly, the pages stopped and the Book remained spread in a vulgar, sexual invitation. Blood filled the bindings, inched across the pages, and embedded in the spiral symbols before welling up and over the edges to drop off into nothingness.
In the fog she heard Cathán shouting, felt him coming closer, sensed his panic. Whatever her father was doing to the Book of Fennore, Cathán did not like it. She had to get them out of here, but how could she do it? How could she leave without knowing if Cathán would find a way to once again bring her back? Or to follow?