THIRTY-THREE
Patrick
They came while Patrick waited for Grace to return. A terrible crack of thunder, and then the maid appeared at his study door with a nervous curtsy. “You’ve visitors, Mr. Devlin.”
Thinking it must be Grace and her family, he stepped out into the hall to welcome her and saw the crowd of people standing in his foyer.
Rory Nolan and Jonathan Olwen and Simon MacRonan were there. Behind them stood Daire Donn and five strangers: one beautiful woman and four men, one of whom was seven feet if he was an inch, with arms the size of small logs and a craggy, scarred face that would have been frightening on a dark night and was still rather disturbing during the day. One eye was hidden behind a patch.
Daire Donn stepped forward. “My good Mister Devlin, we have arrived.”
Patrick motioned them quickly to follow him into the study. When they were all there, he shut the door. Thunder rumbled again.
Daire Donn smiled. “My companions, this is Patrick Devlin. Devlin, this is Bres, former King of Ireland”—he gestured to a man with fair hair and a patrician nose, and then to the giant—“and the good Balor. Their reputations, I think, precede them.”
And they did. The fair Bres was the king that the Tuatha de Dannan, the old gods, had deposed, the one the legends said had enslaved the Irish and raped the land until it was fallow. And Balor was the giant with the venomous eye that slew every man who looked upon it.
History is written by the victors, Patrick reminded himself.
“Miogach, son of Lochlann,” Daire Donn went on, introducing a dark-haired man with sharp gray eyes, “and Tethra”—the Fomorian god of the sea, whose hair hung in dense and twisted locks about his face, tangling in the ends of his thick, curling mustache. “And the lovely Lot.”
She was breathtaking, with long blond hair and nearly purple eyes. Lot—whom the legends said had lips on her breasts and four eyes on her back. She was fully gowned, but still . . . Patrick thought of how horrible she’d been in the stories, and again he marveled at how history lied.
“We understand the Fianna have refused our fight,” she said in a light, musical voice.
“They have refused to stand with you,” Patrick corrected gently.
“And so they become the fight,” she said. “Well, ’tis most disappointing. We had hoped to aid Ireland rather than battle old enemies.”
“One would think old hurts assuaged after two thousand years,” Bres said.
“It was disappointing to us as well,” Simon said. “But the Fianna have chosen their course, and now we must defeat them before we can turn to our most righteous cause.”
“Well I, for one, relish it,” said Miogach. “Finn has always deserved a comeuppance. I’m happy to give it to him.”
Thunder cracked. Daire Donn frowned at Tethra. “I think you can stop that now.”
Tethra shrugged. “I did stop. ’Tisn’t me.”
Lot turned to Patrick. “Your friends tell us you have the veleda. Might we meet her?”
“She’s at her mother’s house. But I expect her here shortly.”
Thunder and purple lightning struck, illuminating the study. Purple? “What was that?” Patrick asked.
Lot raised her eyes to the ceiling as if she could see the storm through it. “’Tis Druid fire.”
“Aye,” said Tethra. “Not far either.”
“A few blocks south,” said Daire Donn.
“The Fianna used to have a stormcaster who made lightning this color,” Miogach noted. “A lass with dark hair.”
Daire Donn looked at Patrick. “Where did you say the veleda is?”
“Perhaps more importantly, where are the Fianna?” Bres asked.
And then Patrick knew where the lightning came from.
Grace.