Page 63 of Killaney Blood

"You know who I am?" I ask.

"Killaney's pretty boy. Took you long enough."

"Who do you work for?"

He laughs through blood-stained teeth. "Work? No, no. I believe."

I backhand him hard enough that blood spatters across the floor. "Let's try again. Who are you working for?"

He spits a mouthful of blood at my feet. "Doesn't matter if I tell you. You're already dead. All of you."

I lean in. "Maybe. But you'll definitely be dead in the next hour if you don't start talking. The only question is how much it hurts before you get there."

He scoffs. "You think I'm afraid of pain? Of dying? We've all made our peace with that."

"We? Who's we?" I grab his injured shoulder, digging my thumb into the bullet wound.

He screams, body arching against the restraints.

"The feathers," I yell, twisting deeper. "What do they mean?"

"For us. The Morrigans," he gasps when I release the pressure. "They're for the Morrigan."

I exchange a glance with Shane, who shrugs, equally confused.

"Who the fuck is Morrigan?" I ask.

The man laughs a wet, guttural sound. "How can you be Irish and not know the Morrigan?" He wheezes. "The goddess of war. Death. And that's what's coming for you, your family. All of you."

I straighten, wiping blood from my hands onto a handkerchief. "A goddess? You're destroying my property for some mythological bullshit?"

"Not the goddess." He smiles with those blood-stained teeth. "Her servants. Her order. The ones who rise from the ashes your family leaves behind."

I hit him again, harder this time. "You think you're the first gang to try to move in on Killaney territory? Huh? You'll end up like all the others, dead and forgotten."

"You don't even remember me, do you?" Blood bubbles at the corner of his mouth as he speaks.

I study his face, trying to place him among the hundreds of enemies I've made over the years. Nothing clicks.

"That's why you'll lose," he continues, voice growing weaker. "That's why you'll die."

I grab his throat, squeezing. "Who. Are. You."

"Four years ago," he chokes out, "you killed my brother. Shot him in the chest."

He's right; I have no idea what the hell he's talking about.

"He died," the man continues, "but I didn't. Let's just say the Killaney family has left a long trail of survivors and affected family members, and your day of reckoning is coming."

His breathing grows more labored, blood now flowing freely from his mouth. The shoulder wound looks worse, and redness is spreading across his chest.

"Who's really behind this?" I shake him. "Give me a name!"

His eye loses focus, gaze drifting past me to some point on the wall. "We are what they thought they buried," he says over and over.

Then his body goes slack.

I check his pulse. Nothing.