Grave Stones Page 18

  Lassi’s eyes widened. “How horrible,” she said in a whisper. “Did the...did she...did the Dearg-Due do that because she wanted you to feel accused of betraying your lover?”

  “Reason would have it.”

  For a moment, Lassi forgot this was nothing but a fanciful tale. “There’s nothing reasonable about what you said. What did you...how did you react?”

  His mouth pulled down in a frown. “I don’t remember. I must have screamed or cried out in anguish because people came running. And I was convicted of murder. They thought I killed her because she refused me. Nothing could be further from the truth. I tried to save her from me by fucking...” His lip curled in a sneer. “I tried to save from me by fucking Bree O’Connor.”

  Lassi wanted to comfort him. Her eyes grew moist. Wait. He’s a psychopath. This is nothing but a tall tale. She shook the sympathy from her brain. You’re letting yourself believe his lies. What kind of a sick man would make up a story like that? She drew from her medical training once more, and steeled herself from believing him. “Okay, so you’re accused of murder, it’s 1796—then, what happened?”

  “I felt so guilty I didn’t try to defend myself.” A humorless chuckle left his throat. “How wicked is it, that had I plundered her milky shores I would have lived an ordinary life and not been responsible for trapping the Dearg-Due each year for the rest of my days?” His gaze appeared hollow. Fathomless. Without hope.

  But then he focused, letting his gaze linger on hers. “Beloved, Lasairfhíona. If that would have happened, I would never have met you. Perhaps my penance is complete.”

  Torn between believing him and falling for his endearments, and running far away, she willed herself to stay neutral, be a professional and let him think she believed him. “So, what happened next?”

  “The magistrate sentenced me to be hung from the neck until dead. He addressed some severe remarks to me from the bench about seducing young ladies of good breeding above my station in life. I fancied myself a gentleman. But in his eyes, I was nothing but a blacksmith.” He sneered. “The magistrate’s clerk was more than happy to sell a copy of the remarks to an enterprising young reporter from Dublin. The magistrate was highly gratified to see them in print and kept a copy of the paper casually on display in the parlor for years to come.”

  A chill snaked up Lassi’s spine. What if this is some way to trap me and add me to the list of murders? What if this is the sick game he plays with all his victims? He tells them lies, wooing them into feeling sorry for him, then he strikes. She tried to draw away from him as surreptitiously as she could.

  His hand shot out and seized her jaw.

  She yelped, struggling ineffectually from of his iron grip.

  “I know you’ve been humoring me, Miss Finn. This whole time. Talking to me in soothing tones like a good little nurse.”

  Her gaze skittered about like marbles on linoleum. “No, I...” She had difficulty speaking since her jaw was being held by unyielding power.

  “Liar. I’ve had to live with my freakazoid self for nearly three centuries. That’s more than anyone’s fair share of human interactions. Think I don’t know how to spot a lie?”

  His words struck like a sharp-fanged serpent. She longed to slap him, wriggle out of the stones, and race away. But, clasped in his rigid fingers, all she could do was stare at him for a few terrifying seconds, letting the pain of his grip force her to deal with reality. He’s a murderer. A killer and a psychopath. Her gaze darted toward the opening. I need to escape. I can leave everything—the cottage, my Barbados dreams, fecking Ballyna-nowhere, and bury myself in my Dublin life again.

  Her heart clattered about in her chest, begging her to choose another way. Good Christ, it’s gone too far. I need to know the truth. If whatever happened between us isn’t real, I can deal. I might hate myself for a while, for having been fooled, but I can deal.

  If it is real and he’s telling me the truth and I leave him, the heartache I’ll feel will be devastating. I’ll never find a love like this again. She let out a shuddering lungful of air.

  His fingers relaxed. He drew his hand away, leaving her cheeks stinging.

  “Okay. Tell me the rest. How did you end up living past your time?” She fingered her jaw, hoping no visible bruise formed.

  “No more pretending to believe me?” he asked.

  “No more manhandling me?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I needed you to stop pretending to believe me.”

  “Thank you.” She nodded. “But if you ever do that again to me I’ll kick your ‘nads into your throat.”

  He touched his groin and winced. “Understood.”

  “Good.” She nodded again. “This is unquestioningly the most screwed-up story I’ve ever heard. But, I’m suspending skepticism until you get to the end.”

  He nodded. “All right. I can prove it to you once I’m done.”

  “Oh, boy. Not sure I want to see, but… So, you’re sentenced to death by hanging.” She fingered her throat.

  Outside the stones, the wind whistled and shrieked. The waves continued their furious assault on the rocky, sandy shore. Lassi lifted her gaze overhead. As the sun descended, it painted the clouds with blood-colored light.

  “Yes. It’s the least they could do to me. I lost the will to live. I hadn’t eaten for days. I refused all food or drink since my sentencing. I would have refused before, but I was force-fed on the warden’s orders—they didn’t want me dying before I could face justice for Rosalie. My days and nights consisted of trying to block out the nightmare of Rosalie’s eyes.” Deep rings of sorrow pooled beneath his eyes, giving him a vacant, horrified expression. “The night before my execution, I received a visit from Father Quinn, the prison chaplain. He came in my cell and sat with me. Simply sat. I’d grown catatonic. After a time, he said he knew I was innocent. That made me take a breath at least.”

  Lassi gasped, recalling her outrage at being arrested for murder. When Mary and Ryan Conway released them both, she’d been relieved, too. She couldn’t imagine what it would have been like if she’d been sentenced to die for a crime she didn’t do. She took Cillian’s hand in hers and squeezed.

  He looked up from his nightmares and let the slightest of smiles curve his lips. “Thank you.”

  “Then what happened?” she said softly.

  “Father Quinn went on to say he knew Rosalie Burns was killed by the Dearg-Due. I managed to blink at him so he knew I was listening. But I was as skeptical as you are. I thought it utter nonsense. The stuff of fairy tales designed to frighten.” Cillian let out a laugh. “That poor priest. I’m certain I smelled like a shite-storm and looked a mess. I lay in dried vomit, piss, and excrement. My body was covered in scabs and scars. I used rocks and pebbles to scrape my skin then I’d pick at them so I wouldn’t heal. It was my way of atoning for my sins against Rosalie.” He trained his haunted gaze on her. “He went on to tell the true story of Maggie Strongbow from a hundred years prior, and how she became the Dearg-Due. You know bits of the legend, right?”

  She wriggled her legs. They’d grown numb from sitting in such a cramped position. “Only as much as Aengus recalled.”

  Cillian nodded. “Father Quinn told me that for more than 100 years, the Dearg-Due had been hunting in Waterford City on the anniversary night of her death—July 15. He had young men pile stones on her grave every year to keep her there, but the one night she couldn’t be stopped was the night of her death. At first, I didn’t believe this, but when Father Quinn rattled off the deaths of people who were drained of blood every July 15 for the past ten years, I had to accept the truth.”

  “The murders began on July 15th. That’s the day I...” She couldn’t finish the sentence as she pictured herself cleaning up the grave site. Whispery shivers crawled up her skin, like a nest of spiders had been born in her shirt. “Can’t she be stopped?” Her voice came out trembling.

  “No. The Dearg-Due is unstoppable. However, Father Quinn told me of an ancient
secret that might work to contain her. Might, being the key word. It required a sacrifice, through—me. At that point, I’d have let him plunge a dagger into my chest while I lay on a bloody stone altar. It might have felt more righteous. But, no. Father Quinn explained the sacrifice was not death...but life. Eternal life.”

  Lassi scoffed. She squeezed her fingers into fists to keep from reaching over, pulling up his lip, and checking for fangs. “I thought you assured me you’re not a vampire? You’ll have to forgive me if I suspend belief at this point. I mean, I was rolling with the story, but...”

  Cillian leaned forward and shushed her protest with a searing kiss. He pulled away, leaving her panting. “Shut up, Lassi, and let me finish. This is hard enough.”

  “I can see that,” she said with a smirk, eying the bulge in his trousers.

  His sharp, reprimanding gaze stung as if he’d slapped her. “I wouldn’t get me started. If I were to do to you what I want so badly to do, you could all—every one of you—be dead tonight, ripped apart by the Dearg-due. Torn to bits.”

  Her hand flew to her mouth.

  “And I’d be left bereft. I don’t think I can cope with that kind of heartbreak again.” His eyes moistened.

  Lassi shifted uncomfortably.

  “So.” Cillian adjusted his trousers. “Father Quinn had a plan based on the ancient pagan information he had uncovered. Basically, it was this—they needed to dig up the Dearg-Due first thing in the morning and move her coffin to some little fishing village.”

  “And the village was Ballynagaul, right?”

  “Exactly. There are ley lines in this village—deep veins of magic running through it. The grave needed to be right next to the beach. Only stones and rocks from the deepest part of the ocean could keep the Dearg-Due from rising, and only one creature was supposed to be capable of calling forth such rocks and stones—the Leviathan.”

  Lassi’s nose wrinkled. “A whale? He turned you into a whale?”

  Cillian scoffed. “Not exactly. You’ll see soon enough.”

  She stared at him open-mouthed. “What, exactly, will I see?”

  “Wait and let me explain. I sat in disbelief, not understanding what this had to do with me. You think you’re skeptical? When Father Quinn continued he told me he had the power to transform me into a Leviathan—the great monster of the sea—but not a full-time monster. I thought he’d lost his fecking mind. Never in a million years would I have believed him. He said I would live as a human and have control over my ability to transform. I could make sure the ocean rocks stayed in place and guard the grave of the Dearg-Due...for all time.” Cillian let out a laugh. “The only thing I could think to ask was, ‘wouldn’t people notice I wasn’t getting older or dying?’ I mean, time was ticking and the thought of having my neck sliced sounded like a worse fate compared to being turned into some sort of freak monster. But all I cared about was whether or not someone would notice.”

  Both Lassi and he rubbed their necks at the same time.

  “Father Quinn explained that the ancient magic would sort of blank out the minds of people when their thoughts went in that direction. Anyone who came within the village boundary and questioned my existence would instantly forget it was an anomaly. The easiest way for me to live permanently in the village would be for me to become the parish priest. Father Quinn would have done it, but he was too old. To survive the transformation to the Leviathan, the sacrificial man must be young and strong. I was both of those—when I was eating, that is. I was scared beyond my wits.” One of his big shoulders rose and fell. “So, I let myself be eternally damned and willingly embraced a celibate existence as a half-monster living only to guard a murderous creature who took the life of his true love because I had to be an idiot and fuck around. It sounded good. It sounded like the kind of penance that would make me feel worth living. It appealed as the kind of sad, miserable life that could ease the horror of Rosalie’s eyes after, say, oh, a few centuries.” A bitter laugh escaped his lips.

  Another shudder crawled across her skin. “How did he do it? Father Quinn, that is? How did he transform you?”

  “He worked some confessional blackmail magic on the warden, magistrate, and guards, and the next morning, instead of meeting the hangman, I sneaked from the prison, shouldered a shovel and went to Strongbow’s Tree to dig up the Dearg-Due. There was a wild, punishing race with a wagon and a double-team of horses to get to Ballynagaul before sundown so we could rebury her and perform the ritual to transform me.”

  Lassi shifted uncomfortably. “What was the ritual like?”

  “Like something I don’t care to recall. There were a lot of chants, fires, waving of intoxicating smoke-filled urns and so on. It was extraordinarily painful, but I welcomed the pain, feeling it my due.” He lifted his raincoat, his suit jacket, and his undershirt, revealing a scar running from his waistband to his throat. It glowed faintly with a blue-green light.

  Lassi gasped and patted her mouth several times, trying to keep her reaction inside. Then, she extended her hand and trailed her forefinger along the scar. Her hand pulsed with heat, like pushing her hand through a bolt of liquid electricity.

  “That feels nice.” His eyes fell closed. “This is the first time I’ve felt anything but searing pain or numbness there.” He took her hand, brought it to his lips and kissed her fingertips. “It starts at the base of my cock. They made a wicked slice from here to here.” He touched his groin and the delicate hollow at the base of his neck. “We didn’t have anesthesia in the 18th century. Well, we had chloroform but not where the ritual was performed. I was taken to a crypt in a graveyard. It was all hush-hush secret.”

  “Oh, Cillian!”

  “Right. You can see why I would want to forget such a thing.” He let his garments fall back over his belly. Then, he tucked his shirt back inside his waistband. “We buried Maggie Strongbow by the ocean, right over there...” He pointed outside the stones in the direction of the vandalized grave-site.

  Lassi vigorously rubbed her arms with her palms.

  “And, as the Leviathan, I call forth rocks of all sizes, from pebbles to boulders, from the depth of the ocean to cover her grave. The first time I did it, I felt like a conquering hero. I got the job done not a moment too soon, because right as the sun was setting, the earth around her grave began to vibrate. But she couldn’t escape, thanks to me.”

  “I see,” she said.

  They both grew silent.

  Lassi mulled over his words, iciness working its way inside her skin. She kept brushing her arms and massaging her biceps.

  The wind continued to lash overhead.

  Cillian studied her, maybe waiting for her to process and say something meaningful, or freak out and run away.

  She stared at her jean-clad legs...and his priestly garb. “So, you’re not really a priest,” she said, her head bowed.

  “Not really, no.”

  “That’s at least something,” she said, keeping her eyes pointed toward the sand.

  He reached out his hand and cupped her face.

  She pressed into it like a cat.

  “You’re connected in all this, too, love.”

  She stopped pushing into his caress and lifted her gaze to his. “How so?” she whispered.

  “You’re a Finn. You’re magic. You’re extremely powerful from what I’ve seen.”

  There’s that magic declaration again. She scowled. “What if I don’t want to be magic?”

  “You can hide from it, but you’ll no doubt get sick. Why do you think your mother and grandmother died so young?”

  She shrugged. “Genetics, I guess.”

  He chuckled. “Of a sort, I guess. The Finn women have cared for me since this whole thing began. After I got settled in the rectory, Mairead Finn came to work for me. For some reason, the magical fuzziness preventing people from knowing I don’t age didn’t take with motherly Mairead. She confronted me one day and I had to tell her the whole story.”

  “Mairead? Which o
ne is she?”

  “The first of several. Your great-grandmother Roberta was the last.”

  “Why would I not be told she was my grandmother?”

  Cillian shrugged. “Your mother wanted you to stay far from the truth while letting you know you still had relatives in this town, is my guess. Or, maybe she wanted to keep you away from a life of forced labor. But, I assure you I’m easy to work for.” He winked.

  Lassi stiffened, suspicion forcing her thoughts in a downward spiral. “Oh, no. I’m not going to move in and be your bloody housemaid, Cillian Ward, if that’s what you’re thinking. All this seducing bullshit. For a second I almost bought the tale. I was all ‘poor, Cillian, such a fate.’ But this is merely a ploy to get me to clean your fecking rectory.”

  A horrifying thought pricked her mind. “Tell me you didn’t fuck Roberta.”

  His head jerked back. “No! I’ve been celibate, Lassi. That means no sex, in case you didn’t know.”

  She scoffed and tried to wriggle her way to standing but he caught her hips.

  “Sit down.” His voice came out as a command.

  “Why should I?” She huffed and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Because if you don’t, the Dearg-Due will strike again. We’ve got less than an hour now to stop her.”

  She threw up her hands. “So, what are we doing all cozy in here with you telling me tales? Why aren’t you simply stacking stones on her grave?”

  “You need to know what you’re dealing with. And, I can’t find her.” A sheepish expression crossed his face. His gaze slid to the side.

  “What? What do you mean, you can’t find her?”

  “She hasn’t returned to her grave at night for rest.”

  Lassi’s scalp prickled. “Holy monkey balls, this is worse than awful.”

  “It is. I need your help. But first, I need you to know everything.” He shook his head. “You’re just like Mairead. You’ve got the same sharp-tongued attitude. She pointed out someone needed to know about the Dearg-Due, in case something happened to me. So, she worked some magic on the Finn women so that they’d continue to work in the rectory, keeping the Dearg-due secret in case I was killed or something. They’d be drawn here. I told her she had enslaved all the future generations of Finn women to serve me and I wasn’t okay with that. She shrugged and retorted everyone has a purpose. Sometimes you choose it, sometimes it’s given to you...and rather than stand there Daffin’ about Free Will, she had supper to get on with, unless I’d rather eat righteousness and drink rectitude. I think this is one of those things that’s given to you, Lassi Finn.”