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His body withered, his limbs hung weighted and useless. Voices spoke to him in the twilight. Hands reached out. But ghost and flesh became indistinguishable and reality and dream entwined. The bed grew to become the cliff edge below Belfoyle. The walls expanded into a dark, moonless night, a silver cream marking the offshore shoals.
“You won’t fall, Aidan. I’ve got you.” Father’s voice. And there he was. Smiling his reassurance from a handhold just above, harness clipped to a rope disappearing over the cliff edge, where it had been securely anchored.
Following instructions, Aidan checked his footing before making his next move. The ever-present wind buffeted him as he slowly ascended.
“That’s it, son. Slow and steady.”
He remembered this day. It was June. He’d turned fifteen the week before. His birthday a celebration of laughter and parties and gifts from friends and family alike. But this had been Father’s present. A day spent together. A hike north toward the rocky beaches, culminating in a dangerous cliff ascent—something Aidan had been forbidden to do until this year.
Glancing up, he judged his next foothold. Committed to it with a lurch, taking him out of the safety of the cliff edge and into the wind. It screamed and whistled past him in a ban-sidhe shriek. Curled like smoke into a monstrous form—blind white eyes, terrible smile.
“Father!” he shouted in his panic.
But his father’s face melted into a grimace of stony hatred. Impossible evil. Reaching over, he slid his knife from its sheath.
“I’m sorry, son. You’ve failed me,” he said, sawing through the rope.
Aidan grappled for a hold, but it was useless. He fell and fell without end, the void swallowing him, the wind’s shriek becoming his father’s triumphant laughter.
Just before he knew his bones must shatter, he jerked awake. The dream faded into the walls of his room. The folds of his bed curtains. Only the pulse-pounding terror lingered. Only that proved real.
Aidan’s chest burned, and jagged razors of pain slashed their way up his throat even as inner visions savaged his mind and tore through him like an illness. He couldn’t think. Suffocated under the weight of his agony. And understood now why Daz chose madness. It was easier.
The Unseelie lurked. He couldn’t see it but knew it remained. Waited for its chance to feast upon his soul. End what he’d started with his unthinking summoning. He felt its empty stare as he slept. Heard its slithery, blood-chilling words.
Sometimes it stood within Belfoyle’s great hall. Stretched its neck as it surveyed its new home.
Sometimes Aidan found himself racing Brendan neck-and-neck down Belfoyle’s avenue, only to discover he raced an unbeatable nemesis, its steed a red-eyed monster with a serpent’s hide and blood-dripping fangs.
And other times, it spoke to him in Father’s voice. Explaining. Cajoling. Trying to make him understand.
Those visions were the worst. Those cut close to a wound still raw and bleeding. A past seeming as imaginary to him now as one of Father’s fantastical bedtime stories.
The nightmare ended on a scream of terror as a man plunged earthward before being lost among mist-shrouded rocks. Cat woke, heart racing, skin clammy. The deadly rocks disappeared, the falling man faded into memory, but the screams continued. Horrible, furious cries of pain and fear and rage. She pressed her hands to her ears, trying desperately to drown them out. Trying frantically to forget the battle raging in the room down the corridor. The ongoing fight for a man’s soul.
Daz had tried warning her. He’d told her to harden herself to all that went on behind that locked door. To ignore the heartrending pleas and choked weeping, the shrieks of animal fury, ominous threats, and fiendish curses.
“It’s not him, Miss O’Connell,” he’d sought to explain. “The beast’s domination was almost complete. To heal Aidan fully, we must draw the evil like drawing poison from a wound. The withdrawal of such a malignant force leaves a great, horrible emptiness in a person. And like an opium eater remains addicted to the drug, so does Aidan remain addicted to the unholy force. Craves to be reunited with the Unseelie demon. We must wean him from that dependence slowly.”
Cat started at a shattering of glass and a shouting pounding cry. “Let me out, damn you! You can’t hold me forever! Daz, you thrice-cursed bastard, let me out!” His voice held a foreignness in its slippery self-assurance, a haughty scorn that had never been characteristic of the Aidan she knew.
How long would this go on? How long before his strength gave out? The last episode had continued for hours before subsiding into dry, gulping sobs that tore at Cat’s heart.
“I know you’re out there! I know you can hear me. Cat? Please! I need to get out, goddamn it. I can’t take it anymore! Please, Cat!” A crash of thrown furniture. Another earsplitting shatter. “Damn you, bitch! Release me! Get me the hell out of here!”
She threw herself onto her stomach. Pressed the pillow over her head. No use. Even muffled, the tortured struggle carried through. She bit her lip, stifled her own sobs, tried blocking out Ahern’s last somber words. “He’ll recover, or he’ll break. And then there is but one merciful end.”
She didn’t ask. She already knew. She’d seen the pistol.
“Cat?” he forced out.
Maude pursed her lips. “She’s sleeping, milord.”
“Send her to me when she wakes,” he muttered as he sank back. “Tell her I’m sorry.”
“Men are born sorry,” was the last thing he heard before he fell into the sweet oblivion of sleep.
It watched him from the end of his bed. A crouched and waiting figure with a milk white, paralyzing gaze. It knew he’d never withstand the agony of withdrawal. Already a clawing ache strained Aidan’s stomach and twisted his bowels. His hands shook as if palsy stricken, and thirst parched his desert-dry mouth.
