A Terrible Beauty

Katie heard a deafening bang, and an echo that came from the woods, and a further echo. She threw herself sideways into the mud because she recognized it instantly. Not a witch, or abean-sidhe, but a gunshot.

'Armed garda!' shouted Liam. 'Drop the gun and put up your hands!'

Lying on the ground, she closed her eyes behind her blindfold and whispered, 'Mary Mother of God, thank you. Mary Mother of God thank you, thank you.'

She heard Liam squelching toward her. He bent over her and eased the blindfold away from her eyes, one handed. With his other hand he was keeping his gun leveled at Lucy.

'Are you all right, Katie?'

She blinked against the lashing rain. 'I'm grand, Liam. Thank you. I'm grand.' She was too relieved to be embarrassed by her nakedness.

'You can't stop Mor-Rioghain now!' Lucy screamed. 'This has taken years, and years, and so much blood! You can't stop Mor-Rioghain now!'

Liam yanked at the cord that bound Katie's wrists, and after three sharp tugs she was free. Muddy all over, she climbed to her feet and picked up her clothes. It was only when she went to retrieve her blouse that she saw John lying in a deep furrow with his throat cut.

'You can't stop this now!' Lucy was croaking, and she was staggering around and around in hysterical fury. 'You-cannot-stop-this-now-not-after-everything!Don't you understand?Don't you fucking understand?I have to be me! I have to be me!I have to know what I am!'

Katie knelt down beside John and felt his pulse. The boning knife had cut his larynx but it had missed his carotid artery, and although his breathing was very shallow he was still alive. She took out her handkerchief, folded it into a pad, and pressed it against his throat. Then she said, 'Liam, quick, give me your phone. We have to get the paramedics up here.'

Lucy kept on spinning around, her arms flailing. Liam threw his phone to Katie and then he approached Lucy with his gun held in both hands. 'Keep still! Don't move! Stop going round and round for feck's sake! Put your hands on top of your head and kneel on the ground!'

Lucy abruptly stopped spinning, and lifted her head, and gave Katie that mad wide-eyed stare that she had given her before.

'Do you hear something, Katie?' she said. 'Do you hear something, coming through the woods? The door's open, Katie. The door's open! Mor-Rioghain is rushing our way!'

'Will you ever put your fecking hands on top of your head!' Liam roared at her.

Katie slowly lowered Liam's cell phone. She could hear something, she swore it. That cackling hiss, that ground-quivering rumbling sound. And there was afeeling, too, an indescribable feeling that something huge and terrible was coming closer and closer.

'She has to have a living sacrifice, Katie, and if it can't be you then it'll have to be another strong woman, won't it? And who can you think of who's stronger than me?'

'Lucy! Calm down! Calm down! Do what Liam tells you! Put your hands on your head and kneel on the ground!'

'Too late, Katie darling! Mor-Rioghain's coming!'

With that, Lucy wrestled herself out of her black leather coat and threw it aside. Then she pulled off her black poloneck sweater, and her black lacy bra. Her breasts were big, and dark-nippled, and veined with blue.

'Kneel down!'Liam yelled at her.

'You don't understand anything!' Lucy screamed back at him. 'You don't understand anything at all!'

Then, suddenly, she stiffened, and stood still, as if she had heard what she was waiting for, and she smiled a waxy-looking smile.

'Mor-Rioghain,' she breathed. Behind her, the branches of Iollan's Wood were thrashing from side to side like the arms of drowning bathers. Katie swore that the temperature was dropping, and that the rain was even colder, and when she looked up the sky was crowded with silent, wheeling crows.

Raising her voice against the rain, Lucy said, 'All my life I never knew what I was, or understood myself. And then I found out about Mor-Rioghain-that she could give you everything you ever wanted. Other people get everything they want, other people understand themselves. Why not me?'

The wind was rising. The wet leaves of autumn were being lifted from the floor of the woods, and there was a death rattle of bracken stalks, like a thousand old people with bronchitis. Soil began to fly from the furrows in a black blizzard.

'You can't haveanythingat the price of somebody else's life!' Katie shouted. 'You can't!'

Lucy unbuckled the belt of her tight black leather trousers. 'Who are you to judge me? ' she shrieked. 'Who are you to judge? If I can't have you as a sacrifice, then I'll sacrifice myself, and ask for Mor-Rioghain to give me my life back!'

She forced her trousers down to her knees. She wasn't wearing any underwear, and when Katie saw her she slowly raised her hand to her mouth, and stared at her, and simply couldn't believe what she was looking at.

Lucy had a fully-developed penis, and testicles, and curly black pubic hair.

'Christ,' said Liam.

Something happened then, but Katie didn't mention it in her report, and neither did Liam, and they never spoke about it again, even to each other. But they both felt as if the world had gone blind, as if the atmospheric pressure had dropped so much that nobody could breathe. Lucy picked up her boning knife and what was Liam going