Gareth Brennan considered the frost-rimed grass, yellowed and made brittle by a persistent cold no summer month in Ireland had ever seen. Toeing the edge of the macabre pattern of cracked earth with his booted foot, a hard shiver raced up his spine. The Old Ones, ancestors lost long before the modern day, held that a man knew when someone passed over his grave. They’d known with certainty what time such events occurred and disbelief at the myth had turned into an old wives’ tale, suggesting that the connection between life and death was so thin that the soul rebelled at death’s most subtle threat.
Gareth had died here a little more than six months ago. And he’d been resurrected. His connection to this very place had been cemented that day. Whether anyone believed in the old legends, or his reactions, was irrelevant. Gareth knew every time man, animal or...other...crossed this ground.
Clumps of dark, cracked soil broke away as he continued to think. The ground seemed to sigh, exhaustion bleeding out of the unnatural fissures. It shamed him that fear, not fury, was his immediate response to that sound, the sound that called up memories of his death. The goddess, Cailleach, bound millennia before to the Shadow Realm, had sought to break her chains and return to this plane. She’d sought to displace the gods and remake the world to her satisfaction, placing her and her siblings as rulers over mankind.
Gareth hadn’t been of an accord. And he also hadn’t been willing to fight her, not when she’d possessed a woman who bore no responsibility in the merging of souls beyond having been born to the wrong bloodline at the worst possible time. He couldn’t condemn her for something so beyond her control. Well, that and the fact the Druid’s Assassin, Gareth’s boss and brother by choice, loved the woman. That had certainly influenced him, as well. As Regent to the Assassin and his Arcanum, second in command in all things, he’d made an executive decision. Dylan’s happiness trumped the man’s loneliness. So Gareth didn’t fight back, instead allowing the woman to run him through with a sword. A large sword. Bloody bad idea that had been.
He kicked at the earth again, and it did, indeed, sigh.
His fear intensified at the sound, one so familiar to the breathy voice that haunted him both waking and asleep.
Death.
Phantoms.
The goddess.
War.
Gareth shuddered and took a step back as he considered the scarred soil.
How much stronger was the connection between life and death if a man experienced death and rebirth in the same spot? How tightly bound would he be to the place if the Goddess of Phantoms and War herself told him she’d see him here again come Beltane?
There wasn’t an easy answer. He only knew that each time someone crossed this patch, his entire body shuddered with repulsion. His breath stalled. The goddess breathed into his ear, her voice as chilling as mortals believed it should have been hot.
“Beltane.”
Always the same singular word, and always uttered with the same undisguised intent.
She’s coming for me.
He fought the urge to run, to get in his car and drive, to get away from Ireland by plane or by sea and never, ever look back. But to what end? History had proven over and over that there was nowhere one could run to that death couldn’t find him. The goddess was cagey like that.
Bitch.
He backed away several feet, eyes on the ground as if she’d emerge at his unfavorable thought. When nothing happened, he turned and stalked toward the giant keep.
Mortals, and particularly tourists, who came to the cliffs saw only a decrepit building of tumbling stone and vine. If they came too close, a sense of bowel-loosening foreboding repelled them. And if they persisted? A little magickal push from one of the Assassin’s watchmen sent them on their way.
He saw the place, known as the Nest, for what it was. A rather foreboding castle, it had a tower on all four corners. The courtyard had been enclosed to make a huge foyer over two hundred years prior. The garage was a bit archaic seeing as it had, for centuries, housed horses versus horsepower. And Wi-Fi had gone in—thank the gods—four years ago. The place was still a drafty monstrosity, and it always would be. But it was home.
He jogged through the front doors, fighting the compulsion to keep his jacket on. He was cold, was always cold, now.
“Yer late,” a thunderous voice called out, and he knew for whom that particular boom tolled.
“And you’ve no cause to announce to the world I’ve come to drop my trousers for you,” Gareth countered.
The burly man grinned as he stepped full out of the doorway to the infirmary. “Ye’ll drop yer drawers because I’m the only one who can give ye what ye need.”
“Yep, your reputation’s toast,” an identifiable male voice called from an invisible point and was followed by general male laughter.
“Shut up,” Garret called, shaking his head. “Bunch of tools.”
He strode into the Druidic version of a physician’s office. The eye of newt was missing, but beyond that, it was relatively similar to that which a nonmagickal person would expect. Natural remedies, crushed herbs and preserved root stock shared space with modern medical equipment and, in some cases, drugs. In the midst of it all stood Angus O’Malley, the Druid’s version of a physician and owner of the voice that had started the trainee assassins chattering in the hallways.
“Did you have to call out like that, Angus? You know they’ll fear coming in here now.” Gareth nudged the door shut with his hip and, with reluctance, shed his jacket. The cold that had chilled him became abrasive and he couldn’t repress a hard shudder.
Angus looked him over with a critical eye. “No better, then.” A statement, not a question.
“No worse,” Gareth countered.
“Yer optimism’s noted.” He jerked his chin to an exam table. “Drop your denims and assume the position.”
Scowling, Gareth undid his jeans and braced his palms on the table edge. “You know, I hate this. Just get it over wi—ow! Fecking hell,” he said, teeth gritted, hands clenching. The burn of the injection and the subsequent medication was almost as painful as Angus’s warm hand laid against the bare skin of his hip. He thought it possible he melted under the incredible heat of the healer’s touch, was less than a breath away from calling stop and begging to have the needle removed, when the large man pulled it free of his flesh.
Gareth yanked his jeans up