At last, the Slaugh spoke, uttering mysterious words in a raspy tone. “Evil is coming, and with him, he brings Darkness, and Violence.”
The Slaugh’s words rang familiar to me, on a level I did not like. “I can hazard a guess what he’s referring to. This is... not good.”
That absolutely set Keegan off. “Let’s get him bundled off, so we can start carving.” Keegan wasn’t kidding. He was the type who burned with a fearsome, raging anger. My own rage was a savage, but silent assassin. Keegan’s rage though; it was unapologetic, void of all reason, and nearly impossible to control. Once this wildfire started roaring, beware. It would ignite anything that comes into contact.
The Slaugh must have sensed how things were going to end, and he decided to croak out some details. “They want revenge and won’t stop till they get it.”
Keegan glared at me. “What does that even mean? It’s bad enough this fucker is vague. I can’t have you hiding things from me too!” Keegan’s grip tightened on his weapon. I wondered if I hid too much, would he turn on me?
“I’ll explain to everyone. Later,” I assured him. “Kill it.”
“Gladly.” Keegan swung the shillelagh with a speed that caused the Slaugh to nearly disintegrate. I didn’t want to think about how far a human’s head would have sailed from that impact. Even so, a brief technical monograph might be interesting. “We’re done here.” I called up a breeze to scatter the shining dust. Under different circumstances, I might have speculated about what would happen if non-magical entities happened upon a parking lot full of supernatural glitter and men with weapons. But I shelved that notion when I got a look at the wounds on Keegan. “You’re injured. It looks bad.”
With a flick of his wrist, Keegan’s shillelagh vanished. He noticed blood all over his clothes, and frowned. The claw marks on Keegan’s side were oozing. He touched the injury and hissed in pain. “Just a scratch,” he grunted. “It hurts like a bad dose, but he didn’t hit anything important.” Then he made me turn around, and took a look at my back. “Ooooh,” he said, lips pursed. “That slash is a mother. Hope it looks worse than it is.”
I looked off into the distance. The urge to suck a shit ton of magic out of the whole town was an even bigger temptation as the magic used up in the fight faded. With that fade, the pain was increasing. How sweet it would be to really hammer down on it with dark magic. I could instantly heal myself, and Keegan, but I had to fight back the need for the euphoria I could summon. Instead, I looked at Keegan. “You can make a portal, can’t you?”
“A portal? Who, me?”
“To take us back to the estate.”
Keegan avoided my eyes. He was not exactly confident with the spell required. “That’s more your thing, innit?”
“I need to save my magic for healing us. Especially for Keira.”
He didn’t ask why. All of the guys knew about ‘my problem’, and respected my need to fight off the cravings for the magical high. “All right,” he said, slapping his hands together and rubbing them. “Fingers crossed. Hope this doesn’t take us to the feckin’ moon.”
Keegan closed his eyes, muttering a spell in a lost tongue. He looked surprised and delighted when a shimmering ring appeared like an open door to another dimension. Through this portal, Cóis Dara awaited us.
“Well, roll me in pig shit and take me to the harvest dance. It actually worked. Quick, let’s crack on before it closes.”
“Wait.” I flicked my wrist, and a few sparks of blue light flew into the edges of the portal.
“If you don’t trust it? Call a fucking Uber.”
“No, no. I just enchanted the portal. Now it will heal us when we step through it,” I explained.
“Long as you saved enough magic for Keira.” Keegan plunged through, and I hastened after...
...We stepped out of the portal, and into the house. Orin and Weylyn were attending to Keira, unconscious in the sitting room. Orin was fidgeting so intensely he barely noticed our arrival. It was very rare for someone as concrete as Orin to be so lost in his own head. Strong emotions were always overwhelming for him.
Weylyn hovered over Keira, dabbing her forehead with a wet washcloth. “It’s good to see you two made it out of that mess.”
Orin jumped when he heard his brother’s voice. He covered up his alarm, but he couldn’t hide his anxiety over Keira. “Where the fuck have you been? She’s been throwing up for twenty minutes and now she’s passed out.”
I hurried across the room and examined Keira. Her skin was sallow, and glistened with cold sweat. Her body trembled with each gasping breath she drew. I placed my palm on her smooth forehead, and looked at her flushed cheeks. “She’s intensely febrile.”
“In English,” moaned Keegan.
“Fever! She’s burning up. We need to reduce her core temperature, quickly. Keegan? Get me some ice. Orin, run some cool water in the bathtub upstairs. And Weylyn, please sit her up.”
“Got it!” Keegan charged off to find the ice. Orin gave a grunt, and hurried off to run the water. Weylyn’s gaze wavered in a way that made me wonder how much apprehension he was hiding under the brave front, as he gently cradled Keira.
“I’m going to wake her up now,” I told him. Weylyn nodded. I placed my hands on either side of her face to steady her, and uttered a short spell to awaken her. The space above her rippled, like a shimmering heat mirage and her eyes fluttered open.
Keira did not wake up gracefully. She mumbled some slurred-together words, but then it struck her that she was in terrible pain, and her mumbling crescendoed to a scream. “Oooow— what— Aaah shit! What did— Oh, fuck!” She garbled incoherent words, moaning and curling up in Weylyn’s hold. There was no
