“I’m with you, and with him. Goats and sheep and mongrels. If power is a thirst, quench it. If it’s hunger, eat it. If it’s lust, sate it. Take what you will.”
“More,” Cabhan said, raising the bowl again. “You promised more. I am your servant, I am your soldier. I am your vessel. You promised more.”
“More requires more,” Fin said quietly, his eyes eerily green. “Blood from your blood, as before. Take it, spill it, taste it, and you will have more. You will be me, I will be thee. And no end. Life eternal, power great. And the Dark Witch you covet, yours to take. Body and power to our will she must bend.”
“When? When will I have more? When will I have Sorcha?”
“Spill it, take it, taste it. Blood from your blood. Into the cup, through your lips. Into the cauldron. Prove you are worthy!”
All warmth had drained from Fin’s hand. Branna pressed it between hers, gave him what she could.
“I am worthy.” Cabhan set the bowl down, rose to take up a cup. He turned.
For the first time Branna saw the woman in the shadows. An old woman, shackled and shivering in the bitter cold.
He walked to her, taking the cup.
“Have mercy. On me, on yourself. You damn yourself. He lies. He lies to you, lies to all. He has chained you with lies as you have chained me with iron. Release me, Cabhan. Save me, save yourself.”
“You are only a woman, now old, your puny powers leaking. And of no value but this.”
“I am your mother.”
“I am already born,” he said, and slit her throat.
Branna cried out in shock and horror, but the sound drowned in the rising roar. Power swam in the air now, black as pitch, heavy as death.
He filled the cup, drank, filled it again. This he carried to the cauldron, poured through the smoke. And the smoke turned red as the blood.
“Now the sire’s with it,” Fin said, and Cabhan went to a bottle, poured its contents into the cauldron.
“Say the words.” Fin’s fingers, icy in Branna’s, flexed, unflexed. “Say the words, make the binding.”
“Blood unto blood I take so the hunger I will slake and the power here we make. From the dam and from the ram mix and smoke and call dark forces to invoke my name, my power, my destiny. Grant to me life eternal and sanctuary through this portal. I am become both god and demon and reign hereby over woman and man. Through my blood and by my power, I will take the Dark Witch unto me. I am Cabhan, mortal no more, and by these words my humanity I abjure.”
He reached through the smoke, into the cauldron, and with his bare hand, pulled out the amulet and its bloodred stone.
“In this hour by dark power I am sworn.”
He lifted the amulet over his head, laid the glowing stone on his chest.
The wind whirled into a roar as Cabhan, his eyes glowing as red as the stone, lifted his arms high. “And I am born!”
From the altar leaped the wolf, black and fierce. It sprang toward Cabhan, sprang into him with a deafening scream of thunder.
Something howled in triumph, and even the stones trembled.
He turned his head. Through the dark, through the shadows, his eyes, still glowing, met Branna’s.
She lifted a hand when his arms shot out toward her, prepared to block whatever magicks he hurled. But Fin spun her around, wrapped around her. Something crashed, something burned.
And he broke the spell.
Too fast, too unsteady. Branna clung to Fin as much to warm him—his body burned so cold—as to keep herself from spinning away.
She heard the voices first—Connor’s steady as a rock and calm as a summer lake—guiding her. Then Iona’s joining his.
Don’t be letting go now, Connor said inside her head. We’ve got you. We’ve got both of you. Nearly home now. Nearly there.