Blood Magick (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy 3)

“Sure you’re welcome,” Fin murmured when the dog lowered again, accepted the biscuit.

“He has a brave heart, and a kind one,” Branna said. “A fondness and a great tolerance for children. But he loves, truly loves a select few. You’re one of them.”

“He’d die for you, and knows I would as well.”

The truth of it shook her. “That being the case we’d best get to work so none of us dies.”

She got out her book.

Fin finished the tea, brought two mugs to the counter where she sat. “If you’re thinking of changing the potion we made to undo him, you’re wrong.”

“He’s not undone, is he?”

“It wasn’t the potion.”

“Then what?”

“If I knew for certain it would be done already. But I know it brought him

terror, gave him pain, great pain. He burned, he bled.”

“And he got away from us. Don’t,” she continued before he could speak. “Don’t say to me you could have finished him if we’d let you go. It wasn’t an option then, and will never be.”

“Has it occurred to you that’s just how it needs to be done? For me, of his blood, for me, who bears his mark, to finish what your blood, what cursed me, to end him?”

“No, because it isn’t.”

“So sure, Branna.”

“On this I am. It’s written, it’s passed down, generation by generation. It’s Sorcha’s children who must end him. Who will. For all those who failed before us, we have something they lacked. And that’s you.”

She used all her will to keep her mind quiet as she spoke, to keep her words all reason.

“I believe you’re essential to this. Having one who came down from him working to end him, working with the three, this is new. Never written of before in any of the books. Our circle’s the stronger with you, that’s without question.”

“So sure of that as well?”

“Without question,” she repeated. “I didn’t want you in it, but that was my weakness, and a selfishness I’m sorry for. We’ve made our circle, and if broken . . . I think we’ll lose. You gave me your word.”

“That may have been a mistake for all, but still I’ll keep it.”

“We can end him. I know it.” As she spoke, she took the crystal from her pocket, turned it in the light. “Connor, Iona, and I, we’ve all seen the first three. Not in simple dreams, but waking ones. We’ve connected with them, body and spirit, and that’s not been written of before.”

He heard the words, the logic in them, but couldn’t polish away the edges of frustration and doubt. “You put great store in books, Branna.”

“So I do, for words written down have great power. You know it as I do.” She laid her hand on the book. “The answers are here, the ones already written, the ones we’ll write.”

She opened the book, paged through. “Here I wrote you and I dream-traveled to Midor’s cave, and saw his death.”

“It’s not an answer.”

“It will lead to one, when we go back.”

“Back?” Now his interest kindled. “To the cave?”

“We were taken there. We’d have more, learn more, see more, if we took ourselves. I can find nothing about this man. The name meant nothing to Sorcha’s Brannaugh. We need to seek him out.”

He wanted to go back, thought of it every day, and yet . . . “We have neither the place nor the time. We’d have no direction, Branna.”