Dylan was shaking his head softly and Nicole’s heart ached.
‘It makes sense,’ she continued. ‘Giving Alexander goddessblood. Think about it: the Morrígan is the Goddess of Death. If they used her blood on a freshly killed Empyreal, perhaps it could revive him. It then made him … whatever he is. Their Huntbringer’
‘Divine blood,’ their father began, ‘would definitely be something the Wake would kill for. This would be something they’d do.’
‘We can’t know this for sure,’ Kyan said. ‘We’ve never seen the assassin’s face.’
‘Right,’ Nicole said. ‘He’s always worn that mask, even when he—My god … they sent him after Remi’s dad, too.’
‘It’s him,’ Dylan said, staring out at the view outside. ‘Callum called me last night. Said Verin matched the blood.’
‘We have to find the torc,’ her father said, burning urgency in hiseyes. ‘If it also has goddessblood in, and the Wake have figured out a way to use it to make Empyreals like Alexander, there’ll be no stopping them.’
‘Wait, if Alexander has been injected with the goddessblood the Wake stole from the Druids,’ Nicole realised slowly. ‘Then, he’s … a living artefact. Ishesomehow the final divine item we need to destroy the Wake?’
‘How are we supposed to do that?’ Dylan asked. ‘Or is the final “item” Mum mentioned ruined, because it was technically the vial of goddessblood, and it’s been wasted by being injected into Alexander? Wouldn’t the blood be, I don’t know – gone, now? Or could we knock him out and hook him up to a machine long enough to give him a type of reverse transfusion? Suck the goddessblood out of him and turn him back to the way he was?’
‘It depends on if it’s been absorbed into his body or not,’ their father said. ‘Perhaps the Druid can help us. Where is she now? Can we contact her?’
‘I don’t know,’ Kyan said. ‘I told her to run when Logan showed up—’
‘Wait—’ Dylan began.
‘What?’ her father asked with deadly calm.
‘He won’t be a problem,’ Kyan said.
‘How do you know?’ Dylan asked.
‘Because I killed him.’
A moment of silence rang out in which Dylan looked between them. Nicole squeezed Kyan’s wrist in support.
‘Our next step,’ Kyan continued, ‘is getting to Edinburgh for the torc. I don’t want to go off track to try and find the Druid again. At least, not yet. And, if we need Alexander alive, we’re going to need some way to incapacitate him. Even Callum had trouble, but he did remind me of a legendary weapon that’s worth looking into.’
‘What is it?’ Bells asked.
‘It’s called the Gáe Bolg. My trainer Scáthach taught me to use it. It’s so deadly she never wanted other beings to get their hands on it, so I imagine she hid it. It was said to be powerful enough to kill any creature. Myths say it was crafted from the bones of two warring sea monsters and forged in the time before Empyreals. Usually we wouldn’t need one, but the Wake have changed the playing field.’
‘If it’s him, we need details,’ Nicole said. ‘Something that might help us get through to him. Stop him somehow. What do you know about Alexander?’
Kyan frowned, recalling. ‘He was brought in in the early days and was Scottish. Pictish.’
Her father spoke. ‘They were dangerous and powerful for a brief period of time. Mysterious, too. Not much is known of their culture.’
Nicole pulled out her phone and linked to the hotel’s wi-fi to google universities.
‘There’s a Pictish sarcophagus in St Andrews, which is an hour or two from Edinburgh. I’m sure there’ll be a scholar there who knows something. Perhaps there’ll be something in Alexander’s past that will allow us to …’ She didn’t want to sayneutralise, orkill. What would they possibly be able to do to a being that had already been brought back from the dead?
But he’d nearly killed Adam, tried to kidnap Remi, and would have choked the life out of her brother if she hadn’t intervened.
Hehadkilled her mother.
‘I’ll find a specialist and contact them. Maybe they’ll have something we can use.’
Nicole stared at the painting her family had draped across the bed in the next room.
The scent of it filled the room: burned paint and ash. Some of it had bubbled, like the edge of a dark wave swarming the piece, leaving the repainted varnish weak enough that if you tilted it one way and the other, you could see the hidden image shift beneath. Nicole watched it back and forth: Alexander’s hands reaching for the torc around Kyan’s neck, tearing it off, setting it back on, tearing it off—
