muscled organ resisted for a fraction of a moment, like a clenched fist, and then the blade pierced its wall and bathed in blood within. I jerked the sword up and to the side, ripping her heart to pieces.
Blood drenched my skin. I smelled it. I felt its sticky warmth on my hand. The Fomorian’s eyes widened. Fear screeched at me from the depths of her cobalt eyes. This time there would be no rebirth. I had killed her. She was dead, and the realization of her own fate made her terribly, painfully afraid.
It was a moment that lasted an eternity. I knew I would remember it forever.
I would remember it forever because in that instant I knew that no matter how many I had killed and no matter how many I would kill before the day was over, none of it would bring Bran back. Not even for a moment.
I ripped the sword free. Grief saddled me and rode me into the foray. I raged across the field, killing all before me. They ran when they saw me coming, and I chased them down, and I killed them before they could take someone else’s friend away from them.
The night had fallen. The Fomorians were dead. Their corpses littered the ground, mixed with human bodies of the fallen. In death, witch, shapeshifter, or regular Joe, they all looked the same. So many bodies. So many dead. This morning they spoke, they breathed, they kissed their loved ones good-bye. And now they lay dead. Gone forever. Like Bran.
I sat by Bran’s body. His midnight eyes were closed. I was very tired. My body hurt in places I didn’t know existed.
Someone had made a funeral pyre. It glowed orange in the oncoming darkness. Thick greasy smoke tainted the night.
I had taken Bran by the hand and dragged him back to humanity, back to free will and choice. And it, no,
Someone approached and tugged on my sleeve. “Kate,” a tiny voice said. “Kate, are you okay?”
I looked at the owner of the voice and recognized her face.
“Kate,” she said pitifully. “Please say something.”
I felt so hollow, I couldn’t find my voice.
“Are you real?” I asked her.
Julie nodded.
“How did you get here?”
“Bran brought me,” she said. “I awoke in a lake. There were bodies everywhere and a woman. He pulled me out and gave me a knife and he brought me over there.” She pointed back to where we had originally formed our lines. “I fought.” She showed me her bloody knife.
“Stupid girl,” I said. I couldn’t muster any anger and my voice was flat. “So many people died to save you, and you ran right back into the slaughter.”
“I saw the reeves eating my mom’s body. I had to.” She sat next to me. “I had to, Kate.”
I heard a faint jingle of chains. Then a crunch of metal under someone’s feet. A tall figure came through the smoke.
Nude, except for a harness of leather belts and silver hooks, her hair falling around her in black dreads, she stood smeared with fresh blood. The dark red rivulets mixed with blue runes tattooed on her skin. Her presence slapped me: glacial, hard, cruel, terrifying like a wolf’s howl heard at night on a lonely road.
“It’s her,” Julie whispered. “The woman by the lake.”
Her eyes glowed, streaked with radiant sparks. The sparks erupted into amber irises, suddenly as big as a house, all consuming, overpowering…The black bottomless pupil loomed before me and I knew I could sink into it and be forever lost.
So that’s what the eye of a goddess looks like.
She looked past us and raised her hand to point over my shoulder. Chains clanked.
Red peeled himself from the pile of trash. I had known he was there for a while. He had crept in when the fight was almost over, followed me, and waited there in the garbage, while I sat by Bran, numb. Probably biding his time for a good chance to stab me in the back.
Julie startled. “Red!”
I caught her by the shoulder and kept her put.
“You desire power…”
Red swallowed. “Yes.”
“Serve me and I will give you all the power you want.”
He trembled.
“Do you accept the bargain?”
“Yes!”
“Red, what about me?” Julie broke free of my grip. I didn’t hold her too hard. This was her last chance to be cured.
“I love you! Don’t leave me.”
He held his hand out, blocking her. “She has everything I want. You have nothing.”
He stepped over Bran’s legs and trotted to Morrigan’s side like the dog he was. It had come full circle: from the ancestor who had broken free of Morrigan, through countless generations, to the descendant, who willingly put on her collar.
Bran’s body had barely cooled. She showed no signs of grief.
I looked at her. “You recognize me.”
Chains jingled in agreement.
“We meet again, and I’ll kill him.”
“Fuck off. She’s too powerful for you. She’ll protect me,” Red said.
“The blood that flows through me was old when she was but a vague idea. Look into her eyes, if you don’t believe me.”
“We won’t meet again,” Morrigan promised.
Behind her, mist swirled in a solid wall. It slunk along the ground, licked at Morrigan’s feet, wound about Red, and swallowed them whole.
The tech hit, crushing the magic under its foot. Julie stood alone in the field of dead bodies and iron, her face numb with shock.
Epilogue
In the morning, when the witches came for Bran’s body, they found it sprawled among white flowers. Blazing like small white stars, with centers as black as his eyes, the flowers grew overnight, sending a spicy scent into the air. By the time the day was over, the flowers had been christened Morgan’s Bells and a rumor floated person to person that Morrigan was so distraught over her champion’s death, she had wept and the flowers sprang forth from her tears.
Bullshit. I was there and the bitch didn’t shed a tear.
The witches buried Bran in Centennial Park and built a cairn over his grave. I was told I was welcome to visit him anytime.
The next two days were spent next to Andrea bent over the reports to the Order. We’d plugged every hole, smoothed every bump, and routed out every inconsistency, until she was pure human and I was just a blade-happy merc.
It didn’t help that without magic in the world for the next few weeks, we had to resort to conventional
