The Calling

13. Truth

February 29, 1984

The light of day dawns…and with it love dies.

Maeve woke in my arms. Morning dew glistened on her skin. I pulled a bit of straw from her hair and told her how beautiful she was.

“No, Ciaran!” She scrambled to her feet. “This can’t be. I’ve made my life with Angus, and you have a wife and children—”

“Forget my wife and children. I’ve left them. And damn Angus!” I cried. “I’m tired of things coming between what we know is meant to be. We are mùirn beatha dàns. We are meant to be together.”

But she wouldn’t hear of it. She went on and on, scourging herself with guilt. Angus had been so good to her, so patient and kind. How could she hurt him this way? What we were doing was wrong, immoral, a betrayal of the worst kind.

“What about betraying our love?” I asked. “You’ve been perfectly willing to do that these last three years.” I explained that I’d given up my life in Scotland. My family, my coven, they were no longer a part of me. I was here in America prepared to start my life over with her. What more could she want from me?

“I can’t live with you and live with myself,” she said. She fled the field like a frightened rabbit, she who was once destined to be high priestess of Belwicket.

“Well, I can’t watch you live with Angus,” I shouted at her fleeing form.

So tell me, Maeve, now that you’ve chosen a course I can’t forgive, what is the value of your life?

— Neimhidh

With Ciaran gone from the room, the owl took over. “The rites must continue,” she said.

They started their chanting again. I felt the dark energy building, the summoning of the purple-black light that would take my magick from me. And there was nothing I could do to stop it. I was completely outmatched.

I thought about Hunter. How much I loved him. How he was about to lose his life for me. How he was mymùirn beatha dàn and I’d known it all along but had never let myself embrace that truth. And I’d had the nerve to criticize Bree.

A world of regret rose up inside me. Regret for everything I’d done wrong.

I’d never told my parents how much I appreciated them. They’d given me a wonderful home and all their love, and when I’d found out I was adopted, all of that had seemed insignificant. Because of me, Mary K. had been kidnapped. Because of me, Cal was dead. He’d given his life for me and I’d wasted it completely.

Because of me, Hunter was going to die. That was the hardest thing of all.

My mind was spinning. I’d been alive only a little over seventeen years. How had I managed to make such a complete disaster of everything? The purple-black light crackled around me, and I thought, Take my power. Take my life. You’re welcome to it.

Well, I’ll drink a toast to you, Maeve Riordan. You pulled one over on me from beyond the grave. You were so young and beautiful when you died. I daresay you wouldn’t find me attractive now. My own reflection stares back at me from this silver goblet, distorted, gruesome. How did I ever get such a beauty to love me, even for a night? Look at my eyes, two dark muddy slashes unlike anyone else’s…except this girl’s.

What do you think, Maeve? You know me better than most, so answer the question that looms before me: Can I now destroy our daughter?

The purple-black light surrounded the inner circle, holding me fast. The masked Amyranth witches stood in a circle around me, murmuring their chant.

I couldn’t even control my own muscles. I tried to cast my senses to see just how much my tormentors were enjoying the show. But by now I was too weak even to do that.

The cougar held up a hand, and with a dull horror I saw that a cat’s curved claws were growing from human fingertips. He muttered an incantation. The purple-black light crackled loudly and shot through my chest. I felt it wrap around my heart, squeezing mercilessly.

The magick was ebbing out of me. I felt it leaving. I didn’t want to give in to Amyranth, to Ciaran’s coven. I didn’t want to let go of my magick. But I was so very tired of fighting. I felt the last bit of my resistance float away, and I followed it.

“Morgan, come back!” It was Hunter’s voice. A hallucination, I told myself, and slipped back into the fog.

“No! I won’t let you go. Not like this.”

I forced my eyes open. Hunter stood in the doorway. A new aura of power seemed to flicker around him, his own sapphire light tinged with a purplish glow I’d never seen before.

Was he really there? How had he gotten away from Ciaran? Where was Ciaran? I couldn’t imagine that Hunter had single-handedly overcome such evil. It had to be a dream.

“Seeker.” The viper advanced on him.

Not a dream. My heart leaped wildly in my chest.

The weasel hurled a ball of blue witch light at Hunter. It found its target, and Hunter gasped in pain.

I struggled to pull myself out of the deadening fog. Hunter. I had to help him. Mentally I began my draw-power chant again. An di allaigh…

Power stirred inside me, faint as a hummingbird’s heartbeat. But there.

In my mind I sang the chant again and again until I felt a thin, steady stream of magick pouring into me. And then I sent it all to Hunter. Help him, I charged it. Make him stronger. Heal his wounds.

Hunter blocked a blow from the jackal, then turned and shot me a quick look of gratitude. I love you, Hunter, I thought. You’ve got to survive this.

Then Hunter chanted a spell in a language I didn’t recognize. The fine garnet inlays on the table began to shudder. I watched wide-eyed as their forms rose into the air, glowing with the bloodred light of the gems. They were sigils, I realized. Hunter was calling them up.

The masked witches moved away from him, and I felt their terror. “Impossible,” one murmured. “There’s no way a Seeker could know how to use those sigils.”

How did he do it? I wondered with distant amazement. Could the council really make him that much stronger? He seemed practically invincible.

The witch in the bear mask charged Hunter, but the witch never made it. He let out a sickening scream as he hit one of the glowing red sigils. He crashed to the floor, where the sigil ate at him the way fire ants devour a body.

And then Hunter was at my side, his athame out, its blade slicing through the spelled ropes that bound me. I felt him lift me from the table, murmur, “Thank God you’re still alive.”

“Hunter, no,” I whispered. “Save yourself.”

“Shhh,” he whispered. “It’s all right.”

But the fog was washing over me, drawing me under again. And this time I let it take me.

Time had passed, I don’t know how much. There was only Hunter and me, and we were on the sidewalk. He set me on my feet gently. “Do you think you can walk?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, though I was still terribly weak. Then Hunter was pulling me away from the house.

We got as far as the Museum of Natural History, where we both collapsed on the steps. It was dark and cold, and our breath came out in little clouds of vapor.

“Are you all right?” Hunter asked.

“I think so. My power…they didn’t take it.”

“No,” he said softly. “You fought off an entire coven of Woodbanes. Thank the Goddess. I was nearly out of my mind with fright for you.”

That was when I started to cry, great, gulping sobs that felt like they’d never stop.

Hunter folded me into his arms and held me. For a long time I stayed there in the shelter of his arms, crying until I had no more tears. Even after I stopped crying, I stayed there, listening to the steady sound of his heart, thinking it incredibly precious.

“I must be a mess,” I said, finally breaking away to blow my nose. That’s when I noticed Hunter’s face was as tear-streaked as mine. “Hunter?” I asked uncertainly. “Are you okay?”

He nodded. “I’d better send a message to Sky, let everyone know we’re all right.” He concentrated for a moment, and I knew the message was being sent. “Here,” he said then, taking off his jacket and draping it over my shoulders.

“How did you find me?” I asked. “I called you, but I got no answer. Ciaran was blocking my messages.” I shuddered.

“I finally found Ciaran’s ex-lover, and she told me where the coven was,” Hunter explained.

“What happened to the Amyranth witches?” I asked.

“Still in the house. Recovering, I imagine. I hit them pretty hard, but I don’t think I did much permanent damage,” Hunter said. “I was more concerned with getting you out alive.”

“But they’re still there.”

“Yes. I’ve sent a message to the council, but I doubt they’ll get there before Amyranth clears out of that house. They’ll surface again, though,” he added grimly.

A kid came up to us, clutching a fistful of individually wrapped roses. “Hey, mister, want to buy a flower for the lady?” he asked.

Hunter stood up. “Yes, God, yes, I ought to buy her an entire bouquet, but”—he reached into his pocket and pulled out his billfold—“I’ll take one. Keep the change.”

“Thanks,” the boy said, his face lighting up as he realized Hunter had given him a twenty.

“That was generous,” I said as the boy ran off and Hunter dropped down beside me again.

He shrugged. “I’m feeling generous and grateful—and phenomenally sorry. So much more than sorry.” He handed me the flower. “Morgan, I don’t know how to apologize.”

“For what? You don’t have anything to apologize for,” I protested. “I’m the one who charged in there like the Mounties to the rescue.”

He gave me that stern Hunter look. “You did, and remind me to give you a hard time for it someday, but the truth is—this was all my fault.”

I snuggled closer. “How do you figure that?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I should have realized Amyranth wanted you.”

“Stop blaming yourself,” I told him. I ran my hand along his smooth cheek. He was so dear to me. “It was the council who got it totally wrong. How could they have thought the target was Ciaran’s child?”

Hunter didn’t say anything.

“I guess I shouldn’t blame them,” I added grudgingly. “I mean, I did see myself as a wolf cub in the dream. But obviously that didn’t mean what we all assumed it meant.”

Hunter gazed at me with an expression of pity and grief. “Oh, Morgan,” he said. “I thought you already knew.”

“Knew what?” Sudden, nameless dread lodged somewhere below my heart, a dark, cold mass.

“The dream meant exactly what we thought. The council didn’t get it wrong. The target was Ciaran’s child.”

“But Killian was never their captive and—”

“Never mind Killian. There’s one thing none of us knew,” he interrupted, his voice gentle. “Not even Ciaran—until he did tàth meànma on you. He saw Maeve holding you as an infant—and he heard what she said about your eyes. Morgan, Angus had blue eyes. Yours are brown…like your father’s.”

“No.” I started to shake again as I understood what he was saying. “That can’t be. It’s impossible. I won’t believe—”

Hunter put one hand on the side of my face. “Morgan, you are Ciaran’s child.”