Callum’s lips pulled into a flat line. ‘Never see her again.’
The thought was like an axe to his chest. Nicole had given him reason to hope again, after so long. Then to never see her again?She would be safe, though.She would be free from their clutches.
But that was a lie.
Kyan shook his head. ‘They’d only send others after her. People like Logan. No doubt that was another reason why they brought him in on this. If I fail, that fucking bastard will be hunting her next.’
‘Okay, option number two: warn her, and the clock starts. You delay discovering her for as long as possible so she has time to follow the last of Freya’s clues. Then hope she finds whatever it is that little madam hid on her art history conspiracy that can save them from the Wake.’
‘And, what? Stand aside and wait? We’ve found out the Wake are experimenting on creatures, that they may be trying to summon the Wild Hunt – they claim it’s a Druid, by the way. They’ve given Logan a mission to bring them in.’
Callum’s brows drew together, eyes ravenous. ‘A Druid?’
‘You think a Druid would summon the Hunt?’
Callum pursed his lips. ‘I think they couldbe interested in it. After all, the Druids believed in the transmigration of the soul …’
‘And soulmates,’ Kyan remembered, the embers of his mother’s voice drifting through his mind.
‘Each of us was made from a piece of a star,’ she had told him allthose ages ago as her finger tapped his solar plexus. They’d been sat beside one another at a bonfire, her forest-green cloak pooling around them, the night sky above bright with galaxies you could barely see anymore.
‘Some of us just have more star than others, more power. But all of us have ourréalta treorach.’
Yourguiding star, it meant. Your soul-partner. The person you were always tugged towards, no matter where you were in the world, no matter what life you lived.
Some other supernaturals called itmate. Humans, soulmate.
And yet it was more cosmic than that, a concept that stemmed back to a time when gods had walked the earth.
‘However, do I think the Druid’s summoned the Hunt?’ Callum continued. ‘Unlikely. Freya’s clue said that’s what the Wake want, a Dark Age. And fucking with the Wild Hunt would be a sure way to achieve that goal.
‘Most likely, they’re setting the Druid up like they did with Lynch in Estwood. Speaking of, is there any actual material to go on? Proof? Have the sites been visited? Any evidence of blood magic?’ He’d moved closer, close enough Kyan could see the concern in his friend’s eyes. ‘Because you’re the only Empyreal who would take this mission for personal reasons. They never send us if there’s an emotional connection.’
‘They said that’s exactly why they gave me the choice.’ His words were razored, like he’d been screaming. Perhaps it was just his body remembering that he had screamed enough over his mother’s body that he couldn’t speak for days. Then spent the next few months in near silence, returned to the cold training keep in Scotland and the watch of his sharp-eyed trainer, Scáthach.
Back then, only a few things had dragged him out of his bleakness, Callum being one of them.
Purpose, being the other.
Kyan swallowed. ‘The Wake said I’d be the best at identifying Druid magic. That they’ve been killing people.’
‘Killing how?’ Callum took the two files Kyan had almost forgotten were in his hand and flipped through the pages. He’d got himself a copy of Logan’s mission file and information on the so-called ‘Druid killings’, so the other Empyreal couldn’t get too far ahead of him.
Callum shook his head. ‘Please. Mistletoe in the stomach? Garrotted?Bogs?’ He clucked his tongue in disgust and smacked the file against Kyan’s chest, then stalked around to the low couch set before mahogany shelves lined with expensive shirts. ‘This sounds like that ridiculous human archaeologist theory that those bog-people were Druid sacrifices.’
‘You know it might not be a mere theory. Those killings happened.’
‘Yes, but Druids don’t need to kill like that.’
No, the role of the Druids was communication with the gods through blood magic, divination, and their deep connection to the earth’s magic:soulsblood. Magic that lived in all creatures and humans too, vaguely known by them as life-force, or merely ‘energy’. It was why modern humans thought the Druids performed sacrifices, as historians and contemporary Roman sources knew so little of the Druids other than their bloodstained altars.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Kyan said. ‘They’re happening and they’re being linked to a Druid. Who knows why they might be doing it. If they were trying to contact the gods after all these years, maybe they found something else.’
Callum’s jaw flickered. ‘You’d better hope not.’
Without gods to contact, what would a Druid have been doing all this time? Hiding? Orhadthey been in contact with the divine?
Kyan had been raised to believe in the deities of his people; had known the Irish gods were real. Had even been certain he’d met one after he’d transformed and his mother took him to get his torc fashioned in the divine mountains that still stood proud as immortals today.
