The door exploded outward from the workshop, pulled off by ropes attached to running horses. Inside, John and his men found Alistair MacBain huddled over a workbench, headphones over his ears as he concentrated on a small mechanical device. A deep vibration emanated from this device, reaching well past the workshop itself. John could feel it in his own lungs.
As the doors crashed onto the ground, the big man jumped to his feet in surprise, then turned to face the six of them. Alistair’s eyes quickly found the man with the disruptor and then took in Fiona being held on the farthest horse. He turned to John as he removed his headphones.
“You need a mask to fight me?” he asked. “Where’s your honesty?”
“I should ask you the same question,” John said, the small box strapped to his throat altering his voice into something demonic.
“Cannae use your own voice, even?” Alistair asked. “Did I train a coward all those years?”
John had known they would all recognize him, and still he couldn’t bring himself to enter the estate undisguised. He was here to get what was rightfully his. He knew he would have to terrify the inhabitants of the estate to do that, and it was easier to face them, to scare them, to order them, in a mask.
And the mask was liberating. He’d kept his hatred of Briac under strict control for so long, but now, disguised, he could allow it to the surface. He’d set fire to his own cabin, deep in the woods. Briac had kept him there for years, isolated, like a stray animal allowed to sit at the edge of camp, close enough to see the campfire but not to feel its warmth. It was frightening how good it felt to let the hatred out, to watch that structure burn.
His men had set fire to the other cottages before he’d been able to stop them, and he’d found it was a relief to watch them all burn, to destroy Briac’s home entirely. They were just houses, after all—his men had made sure they were empty before setting them alight. Though John didn’t mind the idea of hurting Briac, the others on the estate were a different matter. He wanted to keep them safe.
He was relieved that he hadn’t seen Quin anywhere. She must have gone, as she’d told him she would do when they’d last been together. She was somewhere far away and safe.
Now, sitting astride his horse outside the workshop, his eyes turned to the device on the table behind Alistair. It was like a vise grip, but instead of metal it was made of the same oily black substance as a whipsword. Held tightly inside it was an athame.
John had never been allowed in the workshop before, had never seen this device. He looked again at the headphones, which were now hanging around Alistair’s neck. The vibration, he realized, was coming not from the vise but from the athame itself. Alistair was doing something to the dagger, tuning it, maybe, and the headphones provided protection for his ears.
“Whose athame is it?” John asked in his distorted voice.
“It happens it’s mine,” Alistair said. Then, more softly: “You were wondering if it was hers?”
John slid off his horse and moved into the workshop, nodding to the man with the disruptor as he did so. This man ran his hand down the side of the weapon, and it crackled to life with a high whine.
“Careful now,” Alistair said to the man. “That wee toy is dangerous. I bet he has not told you how dangerous.”
John studied the athame inside the device. On the pommel was a tiny carving in the shape of an eagle—it was the symbol of Alistair and Shinobu’s family. It was not the carving he’d hoped to find, but any athame was better than none.
“I told you, it’s mine,” Alistair repeated.
John studied the vise itself. It was more complicated than it had seemed at first glance. The stone dagger was held tightly in several places. And there was a sort of razor hovering over the athame’s surface that could be used, John guessed, to shave off minute amounts of stone in order to make the dagger’s vibration perfect. Used incorrectly, though, the razor could likely cause harm. John reached a hand toward one of the levers, then stopped. He didn’t want to risk damaging the athame.
“How do I get it out?” he asked, keeping his voice quiet, which made the words sound like a growl.
“Can’t tell you that,” the big man said, keeping his eyes on the disruptor.
It was hard not to like Alistair, who had, at one time, tried to help John’s mother. But John reminded himself that the big man had also been a faithful ally of Briac Kincaid for years. John was not going to leave without an athame; if Alistair helped him, everything would be easy and no one would be hurt. Slowly, keeping his hand steady, he raised his gun to Alistair’s head. “You can tell me. I know you can.”
“All right, you caught me. I can. But I won’t.”
“This doesn’t have to be hard,” John said, his voice scratching and hissing.
“I’m afraid it does,” replied Alistair.
John nodded subtly. The disruptor let out a higher whine, preparing to fire.
“Will I be likely to explain it to you when I’m in a disruptor field, lad?”
“Very well.” John hesitated, hoping he could trust his men to follow orders and kill no one without a direct instruction to do so. Then he gestured at the man who sat behind Fiona on horseback.
John avoided looking in her direction as the man pressed a knife to her throat and Fiona let out a strangled cry. He kept his eyes on Alistair.
“Remove the dagger from the device,” he said evenly.
“I can’t do that,” Alistair replied. “No matter what I feel, the athame is more valuable than a life.” His eyes, however, told a different story—they darted again to Fiona.
John steeled himself and gestured again. The man began to make a shallow cut across Fiona’s throat. She struggled frantically within his arms, blood dripping down her fine, white skin.
It’s only a little blood. He won’t cut her deeply, John told himself. Please don’t cut her deeply! He swallowed, kept his gaze on Alistair. The big man looked at the ground as the cut along Fiona’s neck grew longer. At last Alistair nodded, giving in. He reached for the vise grip and began to unwind the levers holding the dagger in place. The knife at Fiona’s throat stopped moving.
“Easy,” John said to Alistair.
Alistair’s hands moved slowly over the many levers of the apparatus. The athame itself began to move as the device loosened around it. At the moment when John expected the dagger to fall out onto the table, Alistair very gently took hold of the longest lever with both hands. Then he twisted the lever fully around, his huge arms straining as he yanked it toward himself in one sudden, brutal motion and the razor within the device bit deeply into the dagger.
At once, the athame began to throw off a terrible vibration. They could all feel it in their teeth, in their bones. It was like metal tearing or glass cracking. John’s muscles tightened of their own accord, his fists clenching, his legs beginning to cramp.
Across the room, the man with the disruptor experienced the same tightening of his own muscles, just as his horse staggered backward, similarly affected. Involuntarily, the man’s right hand clamped onto the disruptor, and the weapon fired.
John’s teeth were gnashing uncontrollably. He saw disruptor sparks shooting toward him, but he could hardly get his legs to move. With a huge effort, he threw himself to the floor, landing like a bag of bricks.
The sparks passed above him and collided with Alistair.
The vibration from the athame stopped dead, as if snuffed out by an unseen force.
There was silence as everyone slowly regained use of their muscles. Then Alistair began to scream and beat at his own head.
John struggled to his feet and grabbed the device holding the athame. He saw then why the vibration had stopped. The razor arm within the apparatus had cut deeply into the shaft of the dagger, shattering the blade. Some of the stone pieces were still locked in the vise. Others had scattered across the workbench, along with a handful of gritty dust. The color of the stone itself had changed, become more gray, its surface dull. Whatever energy had existed inside that ancient artifact was gone.
Alistair was staggering toward the barn door. His red hair stood on end as multicolored sparks danced around his head and shoulders. He could not walk in a straight line, but kept turning back, striking out at the air, then staggering again toward the door. Fiona was crying freely as she watched him, and John’s men stared in stunned silence.
John himself felt a rolling wave of nausea as he saw Alistair stumble through the doorway amidst those rainbow flashes. This sensation mixed with a regret so strong, it was physically painful. Not Alistair!
He ran for his horse and leapt up into the saddle. Bringing the animal close to the man with the disruptor, John slapped him across the face. He knew Alistair’s condition was not the man’s fault, and yet he couldn’t stop his anger—at Briac, for putting him in this position, and at himself for losing control of the situation.
“How could you?” John screamed with his distorted voice. “He was a good man, and you’ve destroyed him.” He put his hands to his head for a moment, then ordered, “Go find Briac!”
The explosion from John’s blasting coil took out half the wall, but the withered figure made no move, not even a small flinch. The figure’s position on the hospital bed and the faint sparks dancing around its head were just as they had been a month ago.
John stepped through the dust and smoke into the room. His eyes swept the medical machinery along the back wall, and then he took a seat on the edge of the bed.
He had never been alone with this creature. He’d always been in Briac’s presence, and very much on guard. Now, gently, his fingers found the bottom edge of the ancient hospital gown covering the figure, and slid it up the withered left leg. On the upper thigh was a puckered scar, as long as a man’s hand. It looked like a sword or knife injury that had been sewn up very carelessly.
He had known he would find that scar, and yet it still took his breath away. Briac had stood here twice, taking perverse pleasure in making John look at this decaying, tortured figure as John tried to pretend he had no idea who it was.
John dropped the gown back into place. Though he could not stand the thought of touching the body, he forced himself to put a hand on one of the bony shoulders. He studied the sunken eyes, the withered nose, the prominent jawbone. Nothing was left of what the face had once been.
He took out a knife and positioned it above the creature’s chest. It would take only one hard thrust, he told himself, to drive the blade into the heart and put an end to it. He held the knife there for a full minute, trying to make that thrust, but he could not. Finally, he let his hand drop to his side.
He sat on the bed for a long while, unsure of what to do next. Slowly, as though he could not support its weight, his head fell forward until it was resting on the mattress next to the figure. He closed his eyes, pushed his forehead into the old sheet. The tears started gently but soon became fierce. His body convulsed in sobs, the sort of cries a small child might make when he discovered his world was ending.
At last, still crying, he stood up from the bed and blindly cut through all of the IV tubes. One by one he switched off every piece of machinery in the room.
When the equipment had all gone silent, he turned to look at the body in the bed, expecting to see some change. There was none. The figure was completely still, and the sparks still danced around its torso.
It might take hours, or even days, he realized, before the figure finally died and the sparks went out. Surely, after all this time, the end would be painless.
As he stood by the hole in the wall, he loosened the distortion box around his neck so his voice would not sound demonic. “Soon I will have back what is rightfully ours,” he said quietly, his natural voice sounding foreign to him. “I will pay them for what they’ve done to you and put things back as they should be.” He paused, looking at the body for the last time. “Goodbye, Mother.”
Tightening the box around his throat again, he stepped back out into the night.
