TRAILING A STRING OF “pardon me” and “sorry” behind him, Bann edged through the crowd of Doyles still packing the living room, even though the sun had set several hours ago. He broke free and stepped into the entryway, ears ringing from the din of voices behind him, all arguing at once. He glanced around. A half-dozen or so younger Knights, a mix of men and women, were seated on the wide stairs, drinks in their hands, talking. He noticed Rory and James, as well as Laney, among the stair-sitters.
Catching James’s attention, he called. “Have you seen Cor?”
James pointed up with his beer bottle. “Jenny took him and Neill to the upstairs den to watch television when she put Meggie to bed,” he called back. Rising, he murmured something to the young man sitting next to him, clapped him on the shoulder, then wound his way around the others and joined Bann. He nodded toward the living room. “They still can’t make up their minds, I take it?”
“A difficult decision.” Bann frowned. His head throbbed from trying to match Rory boilermaker to boilermaker earlier.
“Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, even after what those douchebags tried to do to Cor’s puppy. Look how many of them didn’t want to face the Stag Lord last month.” He grinned. “They missed out on all the fun. Oh, sorry.” Chagrin replaced the look of amusement. “Well, except for you getting gored. And what happened to poor Max. That wasn’t so fun.”
“It was not.”
“And now the Tullys seem to be gunning for the rest of us as well.” James shook his head. “Tribal warfare. It’s so…so medieval.”
“Which is why they’re still discussing it. There are enough older Knights here who had parents and grandparents who lived through the horrors of clan conflict and what it did to our people century after century.”
James shrugged. “We’ll just have to be more covert about it this time. Of course, the death of the shapeshifter would solve everything. If the bastard would stay dead this time.”
Nodding absently, Bann thought back to something Gideon Lir had said just before he left to chase the sun home, in spite of Ann and Hugh’s insistence he share a meal with them.
“Be mindful if you and the Tully clan do begin a war,” the Knight had cautioned them. “’Twas our warfare that brought our existence to the notice of the mortals in Éireann, which led, in part, to our exile from our homeland. You would not want a repeat here in Colorado.” He had paused, then offered his phone number to Shay. “Ring me if there be a need.”
“Not that we’re ungrateful for the offer, but why?” Shay had asked as she entered his number into her phone.
Gideon had shrugged. “I have my reasons.”
“Dad?”
Bann looked up at the boyish voice. Cor fidgeted on the top tread, jacket on and Sam in his arms. The leash dangled from the puppy’s harness.
“Sam needs to pee.”
“Come along, then.”
Cor put a squirming Sam by his feet. The Knights grinned as they all shifted to either side, letting boy and pup hurry down the stairs. Reaching the bottom, Cor grabbed the trailing leash, then he and Sam raced to the kitchen.
“Fiona and I’ll watch them if you want, Bann.” Rory rose and offered his hand to the young woman from the porch earlier.
“Boru!” Hugh hollered from the living room.
Bann noticed the voices had quieted. “Thank you, Rory.” With a nod, he walked back, James on his heels.
Waiting by the back door, Cor locked and unlocked the deadbolt in a rhythmic series of click-clunks. Still on the lead line, Sam circled, winding the leash around the boy’s ankles and sniffing the floor in a manner that told Cor his pup—it was always his pup when Sam did something wrong—was one minute away from release. “Hold on, Sammy. Dad’s coming.”
Stepping free of the coil, he looked up in surprise when Rory and a woman appeared, both wearing jackets. The woman’s hair was a brown mane of curls held away from her face with a wide headband. It reminded Cor of the hairstyle worn by the Irish step dancers his father always made him watch whenever they appeared on television. He never told his dad that the reason he had broken the lamp in his old bedroom was that he had tried dancing like that once in the privacy of his room. A high kick had sent the nightstand and the lamp crashing to the floor. Cor had never tried again. His biggest fear was that Dad might actually make Cor take dance lessons. He shuddered at the thought.
“Hey, Cor? Your dad went back to the meeting,” Rory explained. “I told him we’ll go out with you. This is Fiona, by the way.”
“Hi, Cor. Oooh, I like your puppy.” Fiona bent over and patted the dog, who wiggled with delight, the attention momentarily distracting him from his full bladder. “What’s his name?”
“Sam.” Cor unlocked the door; once outside, he released the puppy. Sam scampered off, searching for the perfect patch of earth to christen. Meanwhile, Rory and Fiona lingered in the doorway, talking softly, their arms around each other. When they started to kiss, Cor scrunched up his face in disgust.
Finally locating the ideal spot, Sam squatted in concentration. Cor always wondered what the dog thought about while peeing. After kicking dried grass over the damp patch, Sam darted away toward the wooden gate set in the back wall, a small four-legged ghost in the darkness.
Cor ambled after him. Hands buried in his jacket pockets, he tilted his head back and blew out a foggy breath, pretending he was Gimli smoking a pipe. I wonder if Dad would let me have an ax when I get older. A faint buzzy hum from the wards, like an electric toothbrush, tickled his skin as he neared the tall, wooden gate. Unable to resist trying again, he paused, chewing on his lip, then reached out and touched the gate with a finger.
He winced when the familiar sharp pain lanced his temples. It faded after a few moments. Hugh and Ann said nobody can touch the wall but them. But I can, he thought in triumph. “Hey, Rory! Watch what I can do…” His voice faded away.
A low chuff from the other side.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention as his skin tightened in anticipation of fleeing the scene. With or without the rest of his body. Heart thudding against his ribs so hard it made him nauseous, he peered through the gap between gate and post. Seeing a vague shape, he pressed his eye closer.
A four-legged form stirred in the shadow of a large pine. Black within black. Then, to Cor’s astonishment, a tail wagged, followed by a yip.
“Max?” he breathed. He started to reach for the latch when a weight pressed against his legs. He looked down. Sam was huddled next to his ankle, tail tucked between his back legs.
“It’s okay, Sammy. It’s just Max. He won’t hurt—”
“Dammit, Cor!”
He flinched and whirled around. Rory was striding toward him. Alarm made the Knight’s movements jerky. “Get the hell away from that gate!”
“But Max is out there.”
“Shit!” The Knight broke into a sprint, his already-drawn knife flashing in the light from the kitchen. Grabbing Cor’s arm, he hauled him back, almost causing Cor to lose his balance. Sam yelped when the boy stepped on his paw.
Thrusting Cor behind him, Rory stretched to his full height and scanned the woods beyond the gate. “I don’t see anything,” he said after a minute. “Are you sure it wasn’t just a shadow?”
“It was Max.” I think.
“C’mon.” Still holding Cor’s arm in a grip that hurt more than the boy wanted to admit, Rory escorted him back to the house. Sam raced ahead to the open door.
Fiona stood just outside, her own knife in hand. “Everything okay?”
“I don’t know.” Rory ushered Cor into the kitchen, then hovered in the doorway and stared back at the woods. “The kid thinks he saw the shapeshifter.”
“It was Max,” Cor repeated. “Not…not…him.”
Deep in the woods to the west, a yodel split the night, followed a few moments later by a second wail, then a third. Rory relaxed and blew out a long breath. “Coyotes. A pack of them, by the sound of it.” He turned to Cor. “I bet that’s what you saw.”
“It was Max,” Cor insisted, certain that if he said it enough times, it’d be true.
Rory laid a hand on his shoulder. “Hear that?” He indicated the voices serenading the night with sobbing howls. “Those are coyotes. That’s what you saw. A coyote.”
“But…but…” What if it really wasn’t my Max, but the other Max? A new thought turned his bowels watery. What if I had opened the gate? It was too much. Cor shrugged off the Knight’s hand and bolted out of the kitchen.
Steeling himself, Bann paused in the living room entrance. Decorated in a style keeping with the Colorado mountain lodge look of the rest of the house, the room was filled with leather furniture and aspen-log tables, and featured the ubiquitous river stone fireplace. Oak timbers, a shade darker than his torc, crisscrossed overhead like the inside of a clipper ship.
Clan members were packed shoulder to shoulder on sofas or chairs or leaning against the walls. Even the floor was full of seated younger Knights. As if on cue, every head swiveled toward him when he appeared. While a few of the two dozen or more were friendly, most looked apprehensive, neutral at best.
Standing side-by-side, Hugh and Ann held court in front of the fireplace. Shay stood next to them, talking in an undertone to Ann. Nearby, Isobel Doyle sat in a chair brought in from the dining room. Her slender fingers played a silent tune on an arm as wooden as her expression.
The low murmur that had died down when Bann appeared swelled again, as if his presence brought up more arguments both pro and con. Hugh raised his hand for silence, then pointed at a man standing in the far corner. “You were saying?”
A bald, heavyset man—more muscle than fat—sporting a dark goatee and mustache crossed his arms over his chest. “This is a difficult river you’re asking us to swim,” he said, his accent as much Boston as Belfast. “To battle both god and Fey. Why, Cernunnos is insanity personified and the Tullys are a right fierce clan.”
“And we Doyles are not?” Shay retorted. “Hell, half of us here could take on those punks.”
“Which half?” called a girl, barely out of her teens, from the center of the room.
“Why, us half.” With a grin and a swagger, Shay pointed to herself. “The half without those bothersome testicles dangling between our legs.” The other women broke into cheers.
A younger Knight in the far corner shouted over the noise. “You’re just jealous.” He smacked his chest. “Because you don’t got a pair.” The men hooted in agreement.
In spite of the seriousness of the moment, Bann relished the good-natured ribbing. He fought back a smile, knowing exactly what his future wife was going to say next.
Shay waited until the room quieted, then smiled sweetly at her heckler. “Rumor has it, William, neither do you.”
A roar filled the room, Bann laughing along with them. His laughter died when a familiar voice from the kitchen caught his ears—Cor calling for him, his tone thick with tears. Gods, now what? He met his son in the foyer.
“Dad—I saw Max. Rory said it was a coyote, but it wasn’t.” Cor was blinking furiously, trying not to cry in front of everyone. He slapped at a tear that slipped out. “It was Max,” he insisted, his voice breaking.
“Easy, lad.” Bann pulled the small body against his side in a one-armed hug. He glanced up when Rory appeared. “What happened?”
“Coyotes,” Rory said in a low voice. “A whole pack of them to the west, wailing away.”
At that moment, the other Knights began filing out of the living room. Bann noticed while some of the Doyles gave him a friendly nod or word, most avoided looking at him.
In pairs and in groups and individually, they walked out the front and down the steps. The sound of voices calling farewells and the rumble of engines protesting the cold air drifted back to Bann through the open door.
“Well, that sucks.” Shay joined him. “Too many have declared it not their fight. Guess we’re on our own.”
Bann didn’t know whether to feel relief or remorse.