Samhain

 

 

I won’t give you the details here of the first part of what we did. It was hard not to giggle through some of it, although I thought of Bal-sab as we created the protective circle and any derisive laughter died in my throat. I’m not proud of my part in killing the goat. The poor little animal kicked and cried and shook, and even though its life ended quickly, it seemed like hours for me. Somehow assisting Conor with the sacrifice of the goat affected me far more than sharing a murder with the Morrigan had. I grew up with a hunter and tried to imagine this as no more than cleaning fish with dad, or watching him dress a deer; but I thought even my father would have a difficult time with a small, howling goat.

Conor, however, seemed to have no such compunctions. He performed his part of the ritual with clenched-jaw efficiency. I wondered if he’d done it before.

The goat’s body, head submerged in the tub of water, had just ceased trembling when the air in the grove changed. The sky, still a faint shade of purple, abruptly darkened; the temperature dropped, my skin goose-pimpled.

Conor’s steel melted. He looked up, eyes widening. “My God…” he breathed.

Yours, maybe. Not mine.

Bal-sab had arrived.

I went over the protection spell in my mind, hoping we’d done it right. The Lord of Death’s unrelenting appetite would easily take us if we hadn’t. We waited a few seconds, breathless—but the circle held. Bal-sab would be taking only what we offered.

“Let’s finish this,” I said to ó Cuinn.

His attention snapped back to me, and for a minute I saw him sag. After the way he’d dispatched the goat, I expected the next sacrifice to be easy for him. He didn’t move, but only gazed towards the SUV.

“Conor…?”

Without a word, then, he trudged off to the parked SUV, opened the middle door, and reached in.

When I saw our intended victim, I understood his hesitation. My own resolution, which I’d spent the day—days—trying to build up vanished instantly.

“Your son…?”

Because it was a five-year-old boy he’d brought out of the SUV. The little boy—Alec, I remembered—looked like Conor, but like the Conor I’d seen in the photograph on his desk: Younger, fuller, happier. The boy still clutched some sort of little talking stuffed animal in one hand. He seemed small even for five.

Five.

“No,” I said.

Conor clutched his son’s hand in fingers still stained with goat’s blood. At least his voice broke when he said, “We have to.”

“No. This isn’t what we talked about.”

“It has to be an…extraordinary offering. We’re trying to correct two thousand years of mistakes with one night.”

I felt Bal-sab roil with anticipation above me. I felt the Morrigan’s lingering presence within me, telling me Conor was right. This would work.

“Daddy?” said Alec, his accent thick even in two simple syllables. He looked up at his father with love and confusion.

I tore off the robe.

“What are you doing?” Conor released his son and started towards me.

“I’m leaving.”

“You can’t. I can’t finish it alone. The ritual requires both of us.”

I’d nearly reached the edge of the circle then. “I know. That’s why I’m leaving.”

“You won’t be safe once you step out of that circle.”

I knew that, too. And I’m ashamed to admit that I’m enough of a coward that I stopped. For a second. Long enough to say, “None of us are.”

Then I stepped past the lines we’d drawn and walked out into the night.

I expected Bal-sab to engulf me. The last thing I’d feel would be agony, or intense cold, or the breath of eternal suffering.

Instead there was nothing. As soon as I was out from beneath the oaks, the sky returned to normal, I heard the distant sounds of freeways, saw the glow of the valley to the east…

And knew that I’d just damned the world.