Authors: Jennifer Fallon
It shouldn’t be so easy to take a life.
The assassin pondered that thought as he approached the cradle rocking gently in the centre of the warm, candle-lit chamber. Ana would have set the cradle rocking to soothe the twins before she left the room, trusting their visitor so profoundly that it would never occur to her the children might be in danger.
He reached the cradle and stopped to study it for a moment. The oak cradle was carved with elaborate Celtic knot-work, inlaid with softly glowing mother-of-pearl brought up from the very depths of the ocean by the magical Walrus People, the mara-warra. It had been a gift from Queen Orlagh centuries ago and had rocked generations of twins to sleep since then.
Generations that would end now. Tonight. By his hand.
He glanced down at the blade he carried. The
airgead sídhe
caught the candlelight in odd places, illuminating the engraving on the blade. He hefted the razor-sharp weapon in his hand. Faerie silver was useless in battle, but for this task would suffice.
Warmed by the fire crackling in the fire-pit in the centre of the large round chamber, the twins slept peacefully, curled together like soft, precious petals, the one on the left sucking her thumb, the other making soft suckling motions with her mouth, unconsciously mirroring her sister. The girls were sated and content, blissfully ignorant of their approaching death. Even if they had been awake, it was unlikely they would recognise the danger that hovered over them. The man wielding the blade above their cradle — the man come to take their lives — was a friend, a dependable presence they trusted to keep them safe.
‘You can’t seriously mean to do this.’
He glanced over his shoulder. A figure stood in the shadows by the door, a presence that was both alien and familiar. A presence so like him it may have been nothing more than a corporeal manifestation of his own conscience.
‘It has to be done. You know that.’
The figure by the door shook his head and took a step further into the room. He found himself staring at a mirror image of himself, except his reflection’s face was filled with doubt and anguish, while his was calm and resigned to what must be done.
‘They are innocent,’ the anguished manifestation of his guilt announced.
‘They are our death.’
‘If preventing our death requires the death of innocent children, then perhaps we deserve to die.’
He didn’t answer, turning back to stare down at the twin girls he had come to murder. It wasn’t who they were, but what, that made their deaths so necessary.
Why am I the only one who sees that clearly?
His conscience took another step closer. ‘I won’t let you do it.’
‘How will you stop me?’ he asked as he raised the blade. One of the girls was stirring — they were too alike to tell which was which. She opened her eyes to smile up at him, her face framed by soft dark curls. Her sister remained asleep, still peacefully sucking her thumb. Which will be harder? he wondered idly. Killing the one who is asleep and ignorant of her fate, or the one staring up at me with that sleepy, contended smile?
‘I’ll kill you if I have to, to stop this.’
The assassin smiled down at the twins, dismissing the empty threat. ‘Even if you could get across this room before the deed was done, you can’t kill me without killing yourself, which would achieve precisely what I am here to prevent.’
He moved the blade a little, repositioning his grip. The candlelight danced across its engraved surface, mesmerising the baby. He was happy to entertain her with the pretty lights for a few moments. His mission was to kill her and her sister, after all, not to make them suffer.
There was a drawn out silence, as he played the light across the blade. Behind him, the presence that was both his conscience and his other half remained motionless. There was no point in him trying to attack. They were two sides of the same coin. Neither man could so much as form the intent to attack without the other knowing about it.
The girls would be dead before anybody could reach the cradle to stop him.
‘There must be another way.’ There was a note of defeat in the statement; a glimmer of acceptance.
‘I wouldn’t be here if there was,’ the assassin replied, still staring down at the baby he was destined to kill. ‘You know that,’ he added, glancing over his shoulder. ‘You’re just not willing to accept the truth of it yet.’
The man held out his hand, as if he expected the blade to be handed over; and for this night to be forgotten, somehow. Put behind them like a foolish disagreement they’d been wise enough to settle like men. ‘They’re just babies …’
‘They are our death and the death of much more besides.’
‘But they’re innocents …’
The assassin shook his head. ‘Only because they lack the capacity yet to act on the evil they were bred to manifest. Once they are grown …’
‘Dammit … they’re your own flesh and blood!’
The assassin gripped the blade tighter and turned back to the cradle, steeling his resolve with a conscious act of will. It didn’t matter who they were. It’s what they were. That was the important thing.
It was the reason they had to die.
‘They are abominations, bred to cause chaos and strife.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Of course I know it,’ he said, growing impatient with an argument he considered long resolved. He turned to glare at his opponent. ‘I see the future. So do you. And I dare you to deny the future you see isn’t just as filled with chaos and strife because of the women these girls will become …’
Darragh jerked awake, appalled by the clarity of the dream. He’d experienced the same dream often, for most of his life, but never had it been so sharp, so real, before. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, looking around Jack’s guest room. The beds in this reality were too soft. He had taken to sleeping on the floor since being stranded here, dragging the mattress from the sprung bed base to the corner and sleeping on the floor where it was darker, firmer and he didn’t feel as if he were being swallowed by a fluffy white cloud whenever he lay down.
‘Are you awake?’
The muffled question came from outside the door. Darragh looked up and eyed the glowing numbers on the digital clock across the room. They read 3:45. In the morning.
‘Yes, Sorcha. I’m awake.’
He felt rather than saw the warrior slip into the room, heard the door snick shut and her padding barefoot across the floor to where he lay. Even wearing flannelette pyjamas that belonged to their host, she stepped as if she expected to be attacked at any moment. She stopped and loomed over him, as if silently
rebuking him for his temerity. What was he thinking, trying to sleep at three in the morning?
‘The old man is finally gone.’
‘You woke me to tell me that?’ he asked, pushing himself up on his elbows. Jack was on an early-morning flight to America for his book tour. He’d made them promise before he left that if they were caught in his house, they would swear he knew nothing about it. Other than that, the old man had not had much to say about their continued presence in his home.
Worryingly, Darragh had heard nothing more from Patrick since he left on Friday, clearly unhappy about Darragh’s inability to explain the whereabouts of both his daughter and Rónán.
Sorcha glared at Darragh. ‘It’s time to call home,’ she told him. ‘I have everything ready.’
Darragh sighed. It wasn’t going to be easy to do what Sorcha wanted, but it was proving impossible to convince her of that. He yawned and sat up, rubbing his eyes. ‘You’ll need rainwater.’
‘I remember what the mongrel
Beansídhe
said,’ Sorcha told him, looking rather miffed that he thought she needed reminding. ‘Rainwater, a crystal bowl, no synthetic fibres and a magical talisman.’ She pointed to his tattooed right palm as she mentioned the talisman.
Darragh glanced at the tattoo and shook his head. ‘The last time we tried this, Rónán was here. Even with both of us, we barely got through.’
‘That doesn’t mean you can’t contact home, just that it will be difficult,’ she said, undeterred. Sorcha was extremely uncomfortable trapped here in Rónán’s world. She wanted to go home. Badly.
So did Darragh, but he was a little more pragmatic about the logistics of escaping this reality. Somehow, in this realm with no magic, he had to arrange for someone to open a rift from the other side. And he had to do it soon. Not only were the authorities in
this realm searching for his brother — and by default, him — in the reality where the Undivided twins belonged, the transfer would happen any day now. When they took the power from the Undivided and gave it to the twins they’d found to replace him and his brother, he and Rónán would die.
And yet … if Rónán had made it safely back to their reality, why hadn’t he come back for his brother already?
Why hadn’t he healed the cut on his face?
‘Rónán will come for me.’
‘I’m not prepared to assume that,’ Sorcha said, taking a seat on the edge of the bed frame.
‘Fair enough.’
‘And because it seems we’re stuck here for the time being, we need to discuss what we’re going to do about Warren.’
Darragh turned until he was sitting cross-legged on the mattress facing Sorcha. His ankle gave him less trouble that way. ‘Jack took care of him.’
She shook her head in the darkness. ‘Jack distracted him for a time. At any moment, that man will report us to the authorities. He identified Jack. He can tell them where we are. We gave Jack our word that in return for sheltering us, we would ensure he remained untainted by our presence here. We cannot hold to that promise while Warren lives and is in a position to betray us.’
Darragh nodded, unable to argue with her logic. ‘Granted. But how will the authorities even know who he is?’
‘I’ve been watching television. It seems they can track people down from the objects they own in this realm. Sometimes by the records they keep. Sometimes the traces of the sweat they leave behind.’
‘How is that possible?’ Darragh asked, wondering if the answer to his question was buried somewhere in the memories he had acquired from his brother during the
Comhroinn.
For a reality that had no true magic, they seemed to be able to achieve
some rather magical feats that neither Sorcha nor Darragh could explain.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘We just have to deal with the fact that they can.’ And then Sorcha added with a frown, ‘Warren has to die, Darragh.’
‘I know.’
‘You knew it days ago, and yet you let your brother talk you out of doing what needed to be done, at a time when it could easily have been taken care of. Instead, you let Jack propose his preposterous massage parlour plan and you let the man who could betray us, walk away.’
‘Rónán wasn’t ready to make that sort of decision.’ He remembered the look on his brother’s face when Sorcha suggested killing the owner of the car they’d stolen and whose house they’d used as a hideout on their first night in this realm.
‘All the more reason for you — who understands these things — to make it for him,’ she said.
Darragh nodded in reluctant agreement. The rules of their realm were much less shaded in grey when it came to making decisions about those who were a threat to them. ‘When should we do it?’
‘I’ll take care of it,’ Sorcha promised. ‘You must stay here and try to contact Ciarán. You are too well-known in this realm to be roaming about. Thanks to your brother’s fame and the mongrel’s treachery, your face has been shown far and wide. We cannot risk you being mistaken for him.’
As usual, Sorcha had a point. ‘How will you find Warren?’ he asked, accepting that he could not help her with this task.
‘I have his address,’ she told him. ‘And Jack left us money in case we need it. I can get there on public transport. Jack tells me it is less traceable than a cab.’
Darragh frowned. He knew Sorcha was a capable woman — she was over eighty years old, after all, even if she didn’t look a day over twenty-five — but still … this wasn’t her world.
She could see his doubt and was impatient with it. ‘Warren’s house backs onto the golf course,’ she reminded him. ‘Once I reach the course, I’ll be able to make my way there unseen.’
‘Assuming the Gardaí have left the course.’
‘You need to trust me, Darragh,’ Sorcha said, rising to her feet with a faint grunt. ‘I know what I’m doing. You follow your destined path and I will follow mine.’
Darragh studied her in the darkness, frowning. The grunt she let slip when she stood seemed very unlike her. Sorcha was a lithe and healthy woman. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Of course I’m all right. Why?’
‘I don’t know … you seem …’ he shrugged, finding it difficult to pinpoint his concern. ‘… less spry than usual.’
‘It’s the beds in this realm,’ she said. ‘They’re too soft.’
‘Do what I’ve done. Take the mattress off the bed and put it on the floor.’
‘Perhaps I will,’ she agreed, and then she was gone, slipping out of the room as silently as she had entered it.
Darragh lay back down and folded his arms behind his head. Sorcha would be gone the better part of the day, he guessed, taking care of the Warren problem. Jack had left the country. For a short time, he had this huge house to himself. He needed to head downstairs and see if he could make contact with someone in his own realm. Once he’d let them know where to find him, it was only a matter of time before someone came for him.
In the meantime, he was hiding in the house next to the home where his brother Rónán had been raised — the place Rónán had lived his life in ignorance of who he was.
Darragh smiled in the darkness. He would attempt to make contact with his own realm and then, when he was done, he would sneak through the garden wall to the estate next door.