Witch blood. The genes of Old Ones and humans mixed unpredictably. Besides the sterility thing, Power skipped and surfaced in chaotic variations. Even untrained, this redheaded witch was dangerous--nearly as dangerous as Fiona.
He coughed again and spat out a deformed lump of copper and lead. The poison and his instinctive antidote had tarnished the bright red metal jacket to the green of a weathered statue.
Sean needed to follow the woman, follow her carefully. The Power of the Summer Country would pull her back to Brian and her sister. He could use her for revenge, use her against Fiona and Brian before he passed his pain back to the bitch with added interest. She was far enough away now that he dared to move.
He forced himself to his hands and knees. Healing tissue screamed at him, and he panted for air. Racking coughs cleared more blood and torn tissue from his lung.
He reminded himself to just move very carefully. All his energy must concentrate on healing. He was in no condition to challenge the bitch right now. After she’d fought Dougal and maybe Fiona, she'd be weaker. And besides, he couldn't leave the forest until Fiona released him.
That would give him time to plan.
Something else detached itself from the shadows and followed the woman--Dougal's mutated black leopard. It was about as big as a lioness.
Lovely. Now he had to hide from that, as well. Sean squandered some of his precious hoard of Power on masking the scent of his blood.
The cat stalked Jo for about a dozen yards. Then it shied away from her trail and looked for safer game.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Maureen played chess against Brian. The position seemed surreal, like her life since Liam and the ice-storm alley. This pattern of pieces hadn't grown from any normal opening and development, but she made the best of what her dream offered to her. At least the rules for moving remained the same.
She'd schemed and even sacrificed her queen to force a passed pawn and advance it to the seventh rank, protected by a rook. Brian ignored the threat because he had his own attack and the potential queen was blocked from direct view of his king.
He picked up his own queen and moved it three squares along the black diagonal. "Mate in one move," he said, with Dougal's voice.
She looked up. It was Dougal on the other side of the board, not Brian. She hadn't noticed the switch. His sly smile implied a double meaning to the threat.
She glared at him with her teeth bared. Chess was not a game. Chess was war. Chess was domination. Chess was a battle of wills in which your opponent must be destroyed--not just defeated, but destroyed.
Chess was life.
She ignored Dougal as she looked over the position, noting his forces that backed her king into a corner and the single bishop's move that would force the checkmate. Queening her pawn would be useless. None of her other pieces could intervene, could even move to a point to interpose their bodies in sacrifice. Dougal was sure of his win.
She smiled, and advanced her pawn. Dougal shook his head and reached for the replacement queen.
"Knight," she said. He blinked. "Check."
The knight reached out with his crooked move, the only move that could fly over another piece, and attacked Dougal's king. The king retreated one space. Dougal's threatened mate still hung over the board.
She advanced another pawn, the single-space and diagonal threat of the weakest piece on the board. "Check."
If he moved his king further, to capture the undefended pawn, he'd be even more exposed. She could draw with perpetual check. Instead, he captured with his queen, dividing his forces and removing the checkmate threat. Maureen could cover her king now, and battle on.
Instead, she moved her bishop along the white diagonal. "Check, and mate."
Dougal's queen sat on his only escape square.
Her dream faded back into the stone walls, taking the inlaid marble board and the ivory chessmen with it and leaving cold, damp loneliness behind.
Those were her favorite strategies, the feints and the unexpected moves, the misdirection. Offer her enemy a goal juicy enough to tantalize and make it just one move further off than her own attack would take. Sacrifice, even her most valuable pieces. Then strike for the throat, with a force so weak it was easy to overlook.
Too bad life wasn't a fucking chess game.
* * *
"Damn Jo!" Maureen's voice was a weak mutter, barely audible even to herself.
"Damn Jo and Brian and David, damn them all for following me, for making such a simple thing so complicated!"
Maureen sat on her thin mattress on her iron bunk in her cold stone cell and stared at her hands. They were skeletal and dirty, with a translucent pallor under the grime as if she didn't have enough blood to spare to turn them pink. They trembled with cold and with exhaustion.
Padric never gave her enough food. Dougal invited her to feasts, but Padric starved her. She muttered to herself about the "good cop, bad cop" routine, but that part of her brain was shutting down. Right now, she didn't fucking care where the food came from, just as long as it came.
Her eyes blurred. She suddenly saw twenty fingers instead of ten. Her head sank to her chest, and she jerked back with a grimace and rapid blinks to clear her sight. Her eye-sockets felt as if they were filled with gravel.
Now each finger was ringed with a thin halo of purple light. At least there were only ten of them.
Her skin itched as if things crawled on her, either the layers of her own sweat and the filth of the cell or bedbugs and lice. More likely, it was just the lack of sleep and food fucking with her brain, twitching her skin's nerves with another kind of hallucination. Or maybe it was the DT's, the snakes and bugs
