Page 65

After giving the darkness in front of us a last hard look, Dylan finally nodded and headed back the way we’d come. When the far darrig was out of my sight, I held out my hand and called my sword. I felt a tiny tingle in my fingers but the sword never came. For the first time since I’d accepted my contract with Conn, his power failed me.

Panic shot through my body. I drew in a deep breath and it shuttered out of me in fearful gasps. Whatever was preventing Conn from helping me was my worst nightmare come true. In the beginning, it was the one thing I’d asked him over and over. He’d waved my concerns away because it hadn’t happened with any of his other keepers.

Before my breathing could become even more erratic, my chest vibrated again. I put a hand over the stone. “If ya plan to help me, I’d like something sharp enough to cut a snake’s head off and pointy enough to stab my other enemies.”

My hand tingled again. I glanced at my fingers, which I could barely see in the near darkness. I closed my eyes and thought of what it would take to kill Hisser, the worst bad guy I’d ever faced. He was a being I feared had grown more powerful than me since I’d last gone after him. What would I do if Hisser had proved to be more powerful than Conn? Conn said even Ezra was more powerful than him.

My mind drew a blank. I had no plan that didn’t include Conn, but he and Mulan were probably in more trouble than I was. His not calling me back had been a clue, but I felt a sense of dread now. Or rather I didn’t feel Conn at all. When Conn was this close, I always felt him. If he was dead, I was going to wait until he regenerated, and then I would kill him again for scaring me.

I choked on the knowledge that two of the most powerful beings I knew might be counting on me to save them. What if I couldn’t? I squeezed my eyes shut and fought my urge to scream.

Instead of screaming, I talked to the stone. “I appreciate ya getting in touch in my desperate moment. Can ya at least give me a sword?”

I instantly felt something cold in my hand and lifted my hand to look at it. Not a sword as I hoped. It was a black dagger with a white handle, the kind of weapon only appropriate for close-in kills. A giant snake would be able to strike at quite a distance. It was hard to hide my disappointment. I needed a long sword... or even a spear.

I seldom fought without help but today there was none. Who could I call? I cursed Rasmus for being gone, and then I cursed myself for leaving Orlin’s feather at home. I couldn’t be more unprepared.

Foolish—I’d been so foolish. I hadn’t even bothered to tell Ezra where I was headed.

And I wouldn’t have called Ben even if he’d been around because I considered him a rookie.

Goddess, I wished I’d spoken to my daughter yesterday. I wish I’d told Fiona and Ma one more time how much I loved them. If Conn had been killed, he’d eventually regenerate as himself. If something happened to me, I’d return as some strange woman’s helpless babe never remembering this life.

I believed Rasmus about human life cycles. It resonated with me as the truth. The truth wasn’t kind, though. Orlin flatly told me that I wouldn’t get born in the line of The Dagda next time.

So this was it for me. This one life as Aran of The Dagda was all I was going to get.

Goddess, I wasn’t done with this life. I didn’t want to die.

I closed my eyes again.Please, Danu. Help me.Send The Dagda. Send me someone.

Panic closed around me like a fist, squeezing all the air from my chest. No being I’d ever fought had defeated Conn. What kind of being could keep him from talking to me?

Venom, I suddenly thought.I needed to protect my body from snake venom.

I opened my eyes and put a hand on my chest. “Give me armor. I need ya to cover me from head to toe with something to fight snake poison.”

My bones ached and pulled. I gritted my teeth to keep from calling out as I felt the skin on top of my bones change. I ran my dagger-free hand over my arm and felt a raised texture of some sort. I winced at the pain but had to trust the stone. What other choice did I have?

Wishing I could see what it was doing to me, I gripped the dagger as I silently crept forward. My hearing began to sharpen as I moved through the continued darkness. I heard someone drag something roughly over the ground. It sounded like me when I had to drag one of those fifty-pound bags of dog food from the trunk of my car into the house.

I couldn’t see yet but there had been light in my vision. Where was the light now? I needed to see what was happening.

I moved forward slowly, taking one careful step at a time until I emerged into the room from my vision.

Light filtered through an opening above the creature’s head to highlight the massive body below it. It was a snake so large that it barely fit in the room.

Had this monster hatched from that much smaller egg?

There was no sign of the witch in my vision but a person-sized lump moved down through the snake’s rippling body. Every small slide of its scales moved the lump further through the snake’s digestion system.

Goddess Danu, please don’t let that be Conn or Mulan that it’s eaten.

I entered the room, blinking in shock at what I saw. A man’s head and torso towered at the top of the snake. The creature was an oversized naga—an unnatural one. Somehow Hisser had managed to convert himself.

“Finally,” Hisser said, looking down on me. “I thought you’d never get here. Today, I will use your blood to repay the debt I owe.”

“Turning yerself into a naga didn’t make ya any less the low-life, Hisser. We’re all adults here. Why don’t ya simply call it revenge?”