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,” I said quietly. “I saw how broken you were. We’re here now and we’ll get the bastard that did this. I promise you that.”
“Describe for us where he was,” Ryodan ordered. “Omit no detail.”
She began to shiver as she spoke, rubbing her arms as if to ward off a bone deep chill. “We were in some kind of huge cavern. There were…I don’t know, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people, but they weren’t…right. They were blank, looked nearly starved, like puppets being controlled, moving jerkily, and they chanted nonstop, saying Balor’s name over and over. He was building an army of humans, controlling them somehow.”
“He takes their souls,” I told her grimly. “He tried to take mine.”
“He already came after you?” she exclaimed.
I nodded.
“How did you escape?”
I smiled faintly. “I have a few unique talents. Back to the cavern, tell us more.”
She sighed. “It was like those caves beneath the Burren, but I could see tunnels shooting off in all directions. I got the impression we were deep below the earth.” She shook her head, “No, that’s not quite right, they looked more like…corridors that had been carved out a long time ago. Tall, made of stone blocks, with high rounded arches. There were fires in the main cavern and hundreds of ancient-looking torches bolted into the walls everywhere, vanishing down the corridors.”
“Metal sconces?” I said, using my gloved hands to sketch an image in the air. “With three stems going up into cups the size of my fist that had flames in them?”
“Yes, how did you know that?”
“And did those three stems shape a sort of clover?” I demanded.
“With a bent leaf,” she said, nodding.
Was she fucking kidding me? “Did it feel like you were in an underground city more than a cave?” I said tightly.
She nodded again. “Yes. That’s what I was trying to say. It didn’t seem like a natural cave, but something that was deliberately planned—”
“Bloody fucking hell, that bastard is beneath the abbey!” Ryodan exploded.
“What abbey?” Roison said.
I shot him a dark look. “When Balor woke up, he never left. He stayed put in the one place he knew the Fae would never come, building his army, absorbing power, right beneath our bloody feet. That’s how he got our sidhe-seers. They weren’t abducted at Elyreum. He either took them on their way back in late at night or simply came up and grabbed them while they slept. That son of a bitch planned to get strong enough to destroy us all, while being protected by us, then kill us and go after the Fae!”
“But wouldn’t you have heard the chanting and screaming?” Roison said.
“Not as deep as our underground city goes, no. I’m not even sure we would have heard him in the cavern the Sinsar Dubh once occupied, if the door was closed. Everything is solid rock and most of it dozens of feet thick.” Damn the Shedon for not letting us explore the Underneath! I thought as I yanked out my phone and fired off a text to Kat:
GET EVERYONE OUT OF THE ABBEY. WE THINK BALOR IS BENEATH IT
“I’m coming, too,” Roisin said instantly.
“You’ll slow us down,” Ryodan said curtly.
I agreed with him on that score and told her so. “Sit tight and wait. I promise to text you the moment we kill him. We’ll find your family, Roisin, I promise.”
I didn’t tell her I was afraid there was nothing we could do for them once we did. The feeling I’d gotten from Balor was once you lost your soul, it was a done deal. Souls weren’t pickles that could be stuffed back into a jar. Especially not as brutally as he’d tried to wrench mine from my body. Then there was the whole annihilating of personality facet once he had them. He’d felt like a massive pulping blender, breaking down souls into fundamental nutrients to fuel himself as if humans were his protein powder.
As we stalked from the flat, Ryodan shot off a text to Christian, a second to Lor, telling him and the others to meet us at the abbey, and a third to Barrons, though I doubted he’d be joining us. Protecting Mac from Fae attack was paramount.
We had this. One way or another.
You promised. You’re the last resort, Dani, Ryodan reminded tightly.
I nodded.
I heard that, he snapped.
