Chapter Twenty-Four
After Morgan left and her echoing warning faded, he heard the familiar voice of Erin, whispering in the walls of his confined space. It was actually half an hour since Morgan’s exit, but in that time, he just sat on the stone floor, staring at the spot from which she departed.
When he looked up, he saw what he knew he would see – the auburn-haired woman standing over him. He was starting to get tired of visitors and wished he could spend the rest of the afternoon in quiet isolation. They only served as reminders of his upcoming death.
“What now?” he glared up at her, not wanting to deal with whatever she was going to say to him.
“Wow, what a warm welcome for the person who is going to free you from this… place. Did you make your choice?” She circled the room, picking at the decorations, inspecting with her eyes and hands as she went.
He nodded and stood up, brushing the dust from his pant legs. “Ready as I’ll ever be after the visit from that Banshee.”
Erin stopped in her roaming and turned her head toward him, her hand still resting on the cabinet door. “What did you say? Sidhe?”
“Yeah, a young one around my age. Morgan was her name. I figured that with everything you seem to know, that you would have already be familiar with her.”
Erin didn’t respond to what Aidan said, but just asked, “What did she want from you?”
“She’s keening my death,” he said it so calmly, so smoothly. But he knew that if all of this was going to come true, there wasn’t much he could do about it. All he could do is make the most out of the time he had left.
“A keen? Is that what she said?”
Her face was sincerely concerned – the most he had seen since meeting the mysterious woman in person.
“Yeah – three calls, red eyes, deafening scream. You know about this type of stuff?”
Erin shook herself awake from her daze. “I never believed that you would—” She was lost in her own mind, staring into space.
“Die? You never thought that a human being would die someday?” His sarcasm bled through. “Well, I have news for you, lady. Humans are mortal. We have expiration dates and apparently mine is tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” she asked him. “No, I refuse to let that happen.” She stalked about the room as though looking for something.
Arms outstretched, she guided the orb to the floor and whispered an incantation, its color fading to grey.
“Well, according to that girl, it’s going to be tomorrow.”
“Not if I can help it.” A tear fell down her cheek, and she swiftly brushed it away. “That explains a lot about Quinn.” She didn’t look up from her work but kept running her hands just inches from the surface of the sphere.
“What about Quinn?” Aidan’s curiosity was peaked since he had not heard from his uncle since the day at Keiran’s shop. Holly told him that Quinn was with his siblings, but something in his gut told him that Erin knew more.
Her eyes narrowed, her mind obviously processing. “Nothing of importance right now. What’s imperative is what you are going to do. Quinn can take care of himself – I hope.”
“What do you mean you hope? Is something wrong?” Aidan was irritated that Erin was pushing everything aside and dropping hints without explaining a thing.
“He’s… a little tied up. I’m sure he’ll be here soon enough.” She smiled, but not a stitch of it comforted Aidan.
While Aidan definitely felt that he did not need his uncle around for his own benefit, he did, however, wish he could see first-hand that everything was okay. If what Erin told him was correct, then Quinn was busy with something and would be back, but that clearly contradicted what Holly told him before.
“Now,” she turned to Aidan, her face serious, “I cannot just pick you up and take you out of here. There is a magic on this place that prohibits what I can do. However,” her arms reached into the orb, buried up to her elbows in the grey haze, “this may help.”
She fumbled more in the orb, pulling with all her might on something in the sphere. Suddenly, as though whatever she played tug-of-war with let go, she flew backward and with her emerged a silver, double-sided axe, its handle speckled with emeralds that glistened in the dim grey light.
“Whoa!” Aidan’s eyes went wide as he rushed across the room to help Erin to her feet.
Once standing, Erin held the jewel-encrusted axe out to him, but he hesitated to take hold of the mighty weapon. This was too familiar. And the next second he knew what it was – the bloodied green axe from his nightmares. The one that accompanied the female scream in Uncle Quinn’s cabin.
Only death can come from that.
“Take it,” she urged, pushing the axe toward him, but he shrunk back.
All of this coming together was more than he could handle. Ban Sidhe? He unwillingly accepted the idea, but he still realized the truth of the fabled creature because it was better than believing he was going insane. Safe-room in the middle of the mountain? His mind could justify that it was a holdover from the Cold War era. But the glowing green axe from his dreams? No—his nightmares facing him head-on was over the top.
“I can’t.” He shook his head.
“Aberdeen’s Axe. It’s yours. You are meant to have it.”
“What do you mean that I’m supposed to have it? I’ve never even heard of it before.”
She bowed her head and spoke solemnly, “It was your grandfather’s.”
“What the heck are you talking about?” His eyes crinkled.
“Your grandfather. My father. He left this for you.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Aidan took a step back. “You have me mistaken for someone else.”
“No, I’m not mistaken. Your grandfather was Aberdeen, and he left this for you before he passed.”
“No, my grandpas are Charles and Harold. Besides that, my grandparents are still alive!” Aidan shook his head in frustration and went to the cupboard for another bag of cheesy puffs. With an exaggerated flourish he ripped open the bag and shoved a fistful in his mouth, smearing orange on his cheeks in the process. He turned back to Erin, his eyes full of angry tears. “And if this was from your father, then that means you’re claiming to be my mother!”
He gave her a clear look of disgust, the snarl at the edge of his upper lip twitching at the thought of the woman trying to brazenly lie to him. There must be a reason for her wanting him to take the axe – part of some backdoor plan she was arranging. He wouldn’t be a part of it. Not now. Not ever.
Erin turned her head to the side, her face softened in the faint glow of the grey orb. “But I am, Aidan.”
He crumpled the snack bag in his fist, his lips drawn tight as he glared at Erin. “No. My mom is in Arizona right now, taking care of my grandfather. You are just some crazy lady who had an affair with my dad! And now you won’t leave me alone, and you’re just stalking me!” He walked forward and shoved the jeweled axe handle at her chest. “I don’t want to be a part of your insane plan any longer!”
“But Aid—”
“No!” he cut her off. “I’ve had enough of all these hallucinations and stupid claims by people I’ve barely met!”
Delicately she pled, “I know it seems strange and confusing. But I will tell you one truth. I did have a relationship with your father, but it was months before he met your mother. Once he was married, we hardly saw each other.”
“What? I saw the two of you at that restaurant!” Aidan’s chest thumped wildly with the memory of what he knew from the banks of his mind.
“You saw me having a meal with him, yes. But the rest of what you saw was all in your head, Aidan. It was all something you constructed from a flashing image.”
“I know what I saw when he held your hand across the table!” he retorted, his face burning red.
“I was consoling him, Aid!”
“Yeah, right,” he mumbled.
“It’s true! I hadn’t seen him in fifteen year
s – not since the day I bundled you up and handed you over. He was married at that point – to the woman you know as your mother – and they agreed to raise you as their own.”
“Right, and I suppose that you’re some kind of royalty too, and I’m a prince?” Sarcasm leeched through his cracking voice.
“I know it all seems much too fantastical, but what I’m telling you is the truth, and you deserve to know it! No, you’re not a prince, but I’m the Queen of another place apart from here. It’s a place where those who pass-on go to rest. I’m the Queen of the Sidhe, Aidan.”
Aidan rolled his eyes. “Okay. Fine. Let’s play your little game. Then if you’re the Queen of the Sidhe, like you claim, then can’t you just step in and stop this whole Keen and keep me from dying?”
“It’s not like that.” She still held the axe in front of her. “Traditions must be kept. Even I can’t intervene with that. Your conception was meant for this moment. This purpose. What can I tell you to make you believe that I am your mother?”
“Nothing,” he looked at her with coldness in his eyes that she had not seen before. “Even if it were true, I’d never admit it. If you were my mother, you were never there for me. You just left me to be someone else’s problem. So either way, I don’t really care. You’ll never be my mother, even if my dad were to say so.”
Erin sighed and set the axe down, propping it against the nearby wall, its jewels sparkling in the dim light. “I know I can’t make you love me, and I know I can’t make up for the years I was gone. But maybe I can show you something that will at least convince you to get out of this place.” She walked back to the orb, touching the surface with her fingertips, massaging it with delicate swirls. “Look,” she nodded toward the shifting mists.
Aidan hesitated, his arms crossed resolutely across his chest.
“Come on, please. If you still want to stay here and not follow what I say, I will leave and you’ll never see me again.”
He grumbled and walked over to the floating sphere, looking at it to placate the insane woman. In its swirls he started to see shapes, and as they moved, the picture became clear as though he was watching television in its surface.
In the scene he could see a much younger version of his dad, sitting in a restaurant, talking and holding hands with a red haired woman. Not just any woman – it was clearly Erin, but she looked the same as she did now. His dad paid the bill and they walked out, arm in arm, obviously drunk on love. It made Aidan queasy to see his dad falling all over another woman. Especially one who, up until now, he believed his father had an affair.
“I met your father when I was supervising the keening of his grandfather’s death. I needed a human to help me bear a half-Sidhe child; a child who could fulfill an important role in the future of the Sidhe. But your father and I fell in love quickly. Three months later we were inseparable.”
The scene flashed forward to his dad’s old apartment – the one he saw in his parents’ photo album except it was totally devoid of any sign of Mom’s existence.
So maybe it is before they were married. It doesn’t prove anything. Besides, this whole thing I am watching could be some magic trick she is putting together to fool me.
The man and woman collapsed on a bed, their arms entwined. Aidan diverted his eyes, not wanting to see his dad making out with any woman. He peeked back and the scene moved on.
His father was sitting on the couch, a piece of paper in his hand. He read it over and over again like he could not believe the words written on the page. Tears fell down his cheeks and onto the paper. He took the framed picture of Erin and him and threw it against the wall, the glass shattering on impact.
“That was when I left him. I was pregnant, but I didn’t tell him. I knew it would make it harder for him to move on. I had ignored my other responsibilities long enough. I was selfish by being with him. Our relationship was not about me and him, it was now only about you, Aidan.”
The scene shifted to one which was more familiar.
He knew the church from his parents’ wedding album. The colors from each picture taken and preserved, every memory of flipping through the images engrained in his mind.
How could she know all of that?
Was Erin somehow tapping into his memories of looking at his parents’ old pictures and recreating scenes based on that knowledge?
He gazed on at the scene before him, framed in grey mists.
A woman sat in the back row of the chapel, her brimmed hat shielding much of her face, her belly swollen in obvious pregnancy. He knew it was Erin before he saw her face. Sure enough, the angle changed, and he saw her face hidden beneath the oversized brim. Her high cheekbones, her lightly freckled nose.
In the aisle, his grandpa and mom walked slowly by the woman with the red hair, neither one even glancing at her once. Dad stood at the front of the chapel, his eyes full of joyful tears as he watched his bride-to-be make her way toward him.
Flash again, and it was the reception – another scene he knew from pictures and the wedding video. But now he saw Erin, with her hand on her belly, motion with her head at his dad. She walked out of a back entrance, and a minute later, her father excused himself and quickly followed.
Flash another time, and the two argued in a back hallway, Erin crying and pointing at her stomach again and again. His dad wiped the sweat from his forehead and kept looking over his shoulder to make sure no one was overhearing their conversation. He reached for his wallet and opened it, trying to throw every piece of money at Erin, but she stared down at it in disgust. She shoved him away from her and ran out of the building. His dad looked defeated.
“I knew he would move on, I just didn’t know it would happen so quickly. I wanted him to know about you, that was all. I knew I would need someone to watch over you, and that time was quickly approaching.”
Flash. The outside of his parents’ first house. Erin walked up to the door and knocked three times, a bundle of grey wool blankets in her arms. She looked about her nervously, her foot tapping as she waited for someone to answer. Then there Mom was, opening the door, and his childhood puppy, Manny, raced out onto the grass. His mom ran out after the puppy, grabbing it by the scruff of the neck and hauling him back inside. She invited the woman to come in, but she refused. There were words between the two women, and Erin kept looking over her shoulder. His mom looked angry, then worried, and finally she reached out and took the bundle from the woman’s arms. Erin appeared to be pleading, then thankful, and finally she turned and ran down the walkway. His mom stood in the threshold, the child in her arms, a look of disbelief on her face.
Then everything went back to grey swirling clouds.
“Now do you believe me?” her eyes revealed the pain she held inside each memory she showed to Aidan.
The timing Erin showed him all made sense. He never understood why he had pictures of Manny as a puppy with his mom who never looked pregnant, and then on the next page a picture of himself with the pup just a few weeks later. He began to wonder if his parents’ wedding date was also flubbed in order to keep him from guessing. “You’re really my mom?”
Erin let out a relieved sigh, “Yes.”
“And the woman who loved me is not related to me by blood at all?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Aidan took a minute to let it all sink in. He and his mother had always been closest. His father always kept him at a distance. But his mom? She was his biggest fan, his number one support, and now to find out that she did all of that for a child that was a result of her husband’s one night stand?
“Your mother is a special woman. I knew that your father would never take you in. But your mother? She accepted my story. She accepted you. She figured that if you were half his, you were also half hers. She couldn’t turn you away the moment she saw your shock of red hair. ‘Just like my dad,’ she commented. She thought it was meant to be.”
He looked up at Erin. “So why did you leave me?”
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“It’s not as complicated and dramatic as you would imagine. I’m a Sidhe. I live between this world and the next. I travel between the two – part of the duty I took on centuries ago. I met your father during Samhain – one of the few days of the year where I’m off duty, so to speak – and one thing led to another… as you saw,” she explained.
She stepped over to the axe and picked it up again.
“I couldn’t keep you – a half-mortal – in the world of the Sidhe. So the only chance I had was to give you over to the mortal world.”
“So why come back into my life now?”
“I’ve kept an eye on you your whole life – always at a distance. When I came to see your father and had dinner with him, I was getting my yearly update on your growth. He told me he didn’t want me coming around anymore. He didn’t see what it was worth. I told him that everything would be better if he would let me meet you, but he refused.
“After that visit, I was tempted to do as he asked – leave you alone and never let you know me. But I had to see you one last time. I had to make sure everything was okay. That was when I came up to Winchester and saw you with her. That thing.” Erin’s disgust at the very mention of Holly was apparent on her sneering face. “I tried to warn you about her but also keep my promise to your father. It didn’t work. You still went near her. You still were in danger. And now look – you’re up to your eyeballs in trouble.”
“In all fairness, I was starting to figure out what a psycho she was before I was locked in here, but then that girl visited me and told me I was going to die. I didn’t have anyone else to turn to,” said Aidan.
“This is why you must take this.” She held out the axe once again, and this time Aidan looked at it differently than he did the first time she offered it. “My father was Aberdeen, one of the strongest Transfigurines the Sidhe had ever seen. That was rare for a male Sidhe. Usually the most skilled Transfigurines are female. His axe? Well, it was one of his other skills. It was forged for him by an ancient race of elves from the old world. It was a present for some favor he did for them. In it are runes and magic deeper than the oceans. In the right hands, it can overpower even the darkest of magic.”
She held it out to him once more. This time he took hold of it with both hands.
If I’m going to die tomorrow, I might as well go out swinging.
“Good,” Erin genuinely smiled for the first time since she arrived in the stone chamber.
“Now, how do I get out of here?”
“I thought you’d never ask. I’ll be going out the way I came in.” She walked to the door and pointed at it. “But you will be able to wield that axe and get through this door and out the rock wall at the top of the tunnel.”
“With this?” he indicated the weapon in his hands. “You’re absolutely sure this will get me out?”
“Yes. It’s also the only weapon that will kill the Leanan.”
“The what?”
“Holly.”
“You telling me I have to kill my aunt?”
Erin stared at him, her eyes serious, “She’s a killer, Aidan. She’s not human. She’s a monster. I don’t know how she was let loose, and I don’t know what she’s trying to accomplish. But what I do know is that she can seduce any man and suck him dry of his very life. Your Uncle Quinn has been under her spell since the day he met her. He doesn’t have cancer, Aidan. She’s using his life-force to make herself stronger. Soon she’ll be done with him and finish him off.”
He stared down at the axe in his hands. “Unless I stop her myself?”
Erin nodded.
“So how do I stop her?”
“How do you think?”
His mind went to the numerous zombie and vampire movies in which he regularly indulged. “Chop off her head.”
“Absolutely.”
Aidan nodded, unsure he would be able to do what Erin said he must. He stared at the door in front of him, his mind thinking of his family on the outside. He couldn’t trust they were safe as Holly told him. If she really was the thing that Erin said she was, his family was in extreme danger. The sooner he escaped the mountain, the better.
“One more thing, Aid.”
He turned back to the woman who he now felt for certain was his biological mother.
“I’ll be out there with you tonight. You can’t go for her in the night or else you will surely lose. She has impeccable senses, but they are heightened at night. You ever heard of vampires?”
“Yeah?”
“Myth. But the Leanan? It’s the closest thing to a vampire that actually exists. I’ll keep you safe for the night, but I have to return to the Otherworld. There are rumblings of an early escape and overthrow. I must be there to help maintain order.”
She turned to leave, her form beginning to fade just as before. “And remember,” she whispered in the fading frame, “I have loved you since the first moment I saw you.”
And she was gone, her light floating up and out of the vent – into the night.
Aidan turned back to the wall, raised the axe above his head and to the side. He aimed for the center, not quite sure where to strike his first of what he thought would be several blows. He swung it like his hardest baseball swing, readying his body for the impact.
Wham! The axe hit home, a miniscule dent left in the center of the door. He bent forward and looked at the dent.
“Is that it?” He held the axe up again, ready to strike, when he felt his hands turn warm. He looked at the axe and it glowed green. “Maybe this time it will make a difference.”
He swung with full strength, hit the same mark, and sure enough, the dent cracked and splintered outward, the door becoming a mosaic of its former self. Then the door crumbled and fell into a heap.
“Success!” he shouted as he clambered over the pile and ran up the tunnel.
The axe showed him the way, and after a few minutes he was at the dead end. This time he did not even hesitate as he swung and hit the wall. The wall trembled and then suddenly blasted outward, Aidan covering his face with his arms to avoid the flying debris.
When the dust settled, he climbed over the rubble and into the darkening evening. The sun barely peaked over the western mountains, and he knew he did not have much time. Down the trail he ran, not sure where he was running in order to hide from Holly, but he knew that the sooner he was off the trail leading to the mountain, the better.
I’ll bet she heard that blast. If she didn’t, I’m crazy.
Fifty feet in front of him down the path stood Erin, waving her arms desperately to get him to hurry.
“She knows something happened! Quickly! I must get you out of here! Hold on to my shoulders, and don’t let go!”
He did as instructed, keeping one hand on her shoulder, the other holding onto the axe. Her frame began to shudder and then she bolted into the air. It wasn’t until they were hundreds of feet above the ground that he realized that his mom was no longer in human form. He found himself straddling an enormous winged lion who gained height with each beat of wings.
“Rest, Aidan. Rest,” she told him as she continued flying. “I’ll take you to a safe haven, and then tomorrow you’ll begin the real journey.”