“I assure you it’s the real thing,” I said to him, and to Oberon I said, Change in plan. Just lie down behind him when I say. I’ll push him over your back so he falls down.
‹Okay.›
Bres’s glamour form shrugged and said, “You can give your cheap sword to me if you’d like. It will only delay things, and I’ll have to come back again with another offer. But I can guarantee that offer won’t be as generous as the one I’m giving you now.”
And that was when the true Bres on the green overlay grinned wickedly and raised his sword over his head in a two-handed grasp, ready to split me in two.
Now, Oberon, I said, keeping my face pensive as if I were thinking over Bres’s words. I started talking out loud to hopefully mask any sounds Oberon made as he moved.
“Bres, I think you’re missing something important,” I said, even as he brought his sword down with all his strength and I stepped out of the way to the right at the last instant. His glamour persona was still standing there, smirking, but I didn’t pay attention to that one anymore. The green one-the real Bres-had just tried to slay me. While he was hunched over awkwardly on his follow-through, I kicked at the nerve cluster in his wrist to make him drop the sword, then put another one in his face to make him stand back up. It didn’t get through his helmet, but any blow to the head is going to make you pull away. Then I pivoted on my left foot and spun clockwise, delivering a roundhouse into his solar plexus before he could set himself. He staggered backward and fell over Oberon in a tremendous clatter of bronze and hardened leather, still not hurt but pretty humiliated by this point. He gave up on the glamour, and the smirking Bres merged with the one on the ground, so that my faerie specs and my normal vision showed the same thing again.
I could have left it there. He was disarmed and no danger to me now, and if any of the Fae had been around to see him fall flat on his ass, he would be shamed in a legendary fashion. Except that he had tried to kill me with a glamour. He would never fight me fairly, because he could not win that way-he’d never been much of a terror on the battlefield. If I let him live, then he would send a series of assassins my way, just as Aenghus Og had been doing for centuries. I didn’t need twice the headache I already had.
Plus, in the parlance of our times, he was a douche bag.
So I didn’t leave it there. While he was still on the ground, I whipped Fragarach out of its scabbard and plunged it straight through the center of his bronze cuirass, which offered no resistance to the magical blade. Bres’s eyes bulged and he stared at me in disbelief: After surviving the epic battles of ancient Ireland (in respectable armor), during which he could have died heroically, he was going to meet his end in a fight that lasted less than ten seconds because of his own overconfidence.
I didn’t gloat over him, because that’s how people get cursed. I yanked Fragarach out of him quickly, causing him to gasp in pain, and then I brought the sword down on his neck, severing his head before he could utter a death curse against me.
‹When he said to give him the sword, I don’t think he meant for you to stick it in his guts,› Oberon said.
He took a swipe at me with his sword, I replied.
‹He did? I didn’t see that.›
He didn’t see you either. Well done.
“Ye killed him,” I heard a tiny voice say. I turned to see the widow standing up, whiskey glass trembling in her hand before it slipped out and shattered on her porch. “Ye killed him.” Her voice quavered. “Are y’goin’ to kill me too now? Send me home to the Lord so I can be with me Sean?”
“No, Mrs. MacDonagh, no, of course not.” I re-sheathed Fragarach to remove the threat it represented, even though the blade wasn’t clean. “I have no reason to kill you.”
“I’m a witness to yer crime.”
“It wasn’t a crime. I had to kill him. It was self-defense.”
“Didn’t look like self-defense to me,” she said. “Ye kicked him and pushed him and then ye stabbed him and cut off his head.”
“I don’t think you saw the whole thing,” I replied, shaking my head, “because I was partially blocking your view. He tried to stab me with his sword. See it lying there on the ground? I didn’t pull that out of its scabbard. He did.” I stayed where I was and let her process it. When someone thinks you might kill them, the last thing you want to do is edge closer to them in an attempt to comfort them, but people always seem to do it in the movies.
The widow squinted at the dim outline of the sword, and I watched the doubt seep into her expression. “I thought I heard him threaten ye,” she said, “but I didn’t see him move until y’kicked him. Who was he? What did he want?”
“He’s an old enemy of mine-” I began, and the widow interrupted.
“Old enemy? Aren’t ye only twenty-one? How old could yer enemies be?”
Gods Below, she really had no idea. “He was old in the way I see things,” I said, and then I thought of a story to tell her. “He was really an old enemy of my father’s, so he’s been my enemy from the day I was born, if you see what I mean. And after my father passed away years ago, I became the target instead. That’s why I moved here, you know, to get away from him. But I heard a couple days ago that he had found me and was coming, so I started wearing this sword to protect myself.”
“Why didn’t ye get yerself a gun like all these American boys do?”
I grinned at her. “Because I’m Irish, Mrs. MacDonagh. And I’m your friend.” I modulated my expression to earnest pleading and clasped my hands together. “Please, you have to believe me, I had to kill him or be killed myself. And I hope you know that I would never, ever hurt you.”
She was still unconvinced but was wavering. “What was the nature of the argument he had with yer da?” she asked.
I couldn’t fabricate a plausible lie on the spot, so I told her a part of the truth. “It was about this sword, actually,” I said, jerking my thumb back to the hilt. “Da stole it from him long ago, but in a way it’s more like he brought it home. It’s an Irish sword, you know, but this bloke had it in his private collection, and it didn’t seem right, him being British and all.”
“He’s British?”
“Aye.” I felt ashamed for pushing the widow’s buttons like this, but I couldn’t afford to keep talking all night with a decapitated body in the street. Her husband had been in the Provos during the Troubles and was killed by the UVF, whom the widow had always assumed, rightly or not, to be puppets of the British.
“Ah, well then ye can bury the bastard in me backyard, and God damn the queen and all her hellish minions.”
“Amen,” I said, “and thank you.”
“Not at all, me boy,” the widow said, and then she laughed. “Ye know what me Sean used to say, God rest his soul? He said, ‘A friend will help ye move, Katie, but a really good friend will help ye move a body.’ ” She cackled hoarsely and clapped her hands together. “Not that I can help ye move a big bugger like that. D’ye know where the shovel is?”
“Aye, that I do. I wonder, Mrs. MacDonagh, if you would have some lemonade or something in the house? I have a feeling I’ll need it.”
“Oh, sure, me boy, I can whip something up. Ye just get busy and I’ll come out with a glass.”
“Thank you so much.” As she disappeared inside, I turned back to Oberon, who was still in camouflage. Think you can carry the head back to the backyard? We need to get this out of sight. Night had fallen, but the streetlamps were coming on, and anyone driving down the street would see a slight problem in their headlights.
‹Not much to grab on to with that helmet on. I guess I could nudge it along with my nose.›
Good enough, I said. As I bent down to pick up the body and Oberon began playing a macabre game of snout soccer, the battle crow showed up. It took one look at the carnage and squawked angrily at me.
“I know,” I said in an urgent whisper. “I’m in deep trouble. If you will follow me to the backyard, we should be able to speak privately there.” The crow squawked once more before launching itself into the air and flapping over the roof.
I hauled Bres off the street and slung him over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. I felt his blood oozing through the back of my shirt-I’d have to burn it.
When I got to the backyard, the Morrigan was already in human form, standing pale and silent with her hands on her hips. Her eyes were glowing. This wasn’t going to be a nice chat.
“When I agreed to your immortality, that did not give you permission to kill the Tuatha De Danann,” she
