Eoin O’Malley landed with a thud and a savage curse as his injured hand hit the tree trunk next to him. The lush landscape behind the Black Cat Inn had grown and changed since he’d been gone these two years past. He hadn’t realized until he saw his sister, appearing out of thin air like a warrior goddess, how homesick for Éire he’d been.
It had gone against his instincts to leave her, but the purpose in her eyes told him she’d had a plan, and anything he’d have done in an attempt to help might’ve spoiled it. Still, he felt like a fecking coward for abandoning her as he had.
Taking stock of the inn and pub, he leaned back against the oak tree in shock. Had that happened before or after Bridget appeared in his apartment?
Panic set in, superseding his shock.
His family might be under all that rubble!
Running for all he was worth, he closed the distance between the forest and the inn in less than a minute.
“Cian! Carrick!” He tore through the rubble, shoving drywall, wood, and furniture out of his way. “Roisin! Aeden!”
“They’re safe, son.”
He whirled around to see Alastair Thorne step through an opening in the outer wall. The man looked pristine, not a hair out of place, and almost exactly as Eoin remembered him from ten years before when the senior Thorne had attended his first gallery showing.
“Where are they, Alastair? My brothers, where?”
“Likely in your family’s magic room, yeah? Why don’t you show me where it is, my boy-oh, um, my boy?”
A chill encouraged his neck hair to stand on end. “Sure, and I can do that,” he lied with a smooth, practiced smile, the one he reserved for handsy art patrons. “But would ya be doing me a solid and healing my hand first?”
Silver-blue eyes narrowed, but he smiled in return. “And what happened to your hand?”
“That gobshite Shane O’Connor thought he’d get the better of me, he did.” Eoin lost his smile. “But he was wrong. Dead wrong.” In truth, he had no idea if Bridget succeeded in whatever she’d concocted, or if Shane was even now standing over her broken body and gloating like the madman he was. However, if it was truly Alastair Thorne in front of him and not an impostor as he truly suspected, the man would be able to read the truth from Eoin’s energy and internal conflict, as only a real empath could.
“Dead?” Rage curled the upper lip of the man in front of him.
With a casual scratch of his neck and a look around their destroyed home, Eoin nodded. “Aye.”
And because he anticipated the strike, he reacted accordingly, diving behind the overturned sofa just as the fake Alastair tried to firebomb him.
“Deflammo!” Cian’s sharp command echoed throughout the room, and dust particles fell down on Eoin from above. The inferno was snuffed out in an instant, and he peered over the smoking edge to see his brothers, shoulder to shoulder, in a fighting stance Cian had learned from his spy days.
“You can drop the act, whoever ya are. If you’re Alastair Thorne, I’ll be eating me feckin’ left boot,” Carrick said, edging in front of the sofa.
Eoin rose to his feet and stepped in the gap between his brothers. “Timely save.”
“You always were dramatic,” Cian said with a light laugh.
Carrick didn’t bother to shush them, instead taking a step forward to confront the stranger. “We know you’re not Loman—”
“Or Shane,” Eoin inserted.
“—or Shane,” Carrick added with a nod. “How about you tell us who you are before we kick the shite out of ya?”
“You, O’Malley? You think you have what it takes to fight me?” The stranger laughed, and his disguise faded away. The three of them shared a look, no closer to figuring out who the man was than they were ten seconds before.
“Sure, and I’d give it a go.”
Cian laughed at Carrick’s flippant reply, and Eoin was hard pressed not to chuckle himself. Being Irish, and pub owners to boot, his brothers were always up for a good tussle.
“Doyle.”
Cian’s face lost every trace of humor, and he edged closer to Eoin. “Get out, and take Carrick with you,” he said in a low voice.
“Not going to happen. I—”
Bridget burst through the opening, accompanied by Ruairí O’Connor and some Loreal-blond, supermodel-type dude Eoin had never seen before. Ruairí stopped short, and based on his slack-jawed expression, he was thoroughly shocked.
“Fuck!”
“Does your father know you’re a turncoat?” Doyle spat on the scarred wood floorboards.
“Aye, Madden, he did know.” He gestured to the ground with a tilt of his chin. “You’ve still got the manners of a barnyard animal, I see.”
Eoin inched closer to Cian. “How did he get past the wards?”
“If you take a good look around, you’ll notice the wards didn’t hold up.”
It took everything he had not to laugh at his brother’s response. Cian was seldom serious when it came to confrontation. He employed humor in every aspect of his life and gained great pleasure if his quick quips could disorient and anger an opponent into making a costly mistake. Cian had a charm all his own.
“A cornered animal,” the blond man beside Bridget said. “Never a good combination.”
Mr. Loreal lifted his arms, palms upward, and Eoin could swear he felt an atmospheric change. An instant later, electricity crackled between the guy’s fingertips.
“I hope he’s on our side,” Eoin said in an aside to Cian.
“Aye. And be grateful he is. Knox is feckin’ lethal.”
“You’ve one real choice here, friend,” Knox said casually, as if discussing the weather. “You can allow yourself to be arrested on behalf of the Witches’ Council, or I’ll kill you where you stand.”
The cool delivery of the ultimatum caused Eoin’s stomach to flip. Sure, he’d always known of the feud between the O’Connors and the O’Malleys, but it hadn’t truly touched him. Happily creating away in his studio in New York, he was far removed from any drama. Or at least he had been until tonight.
Shite got real when Shane O’Connor had shown up with his thug in tow, and Eoin was still worried for his sister, Dubheasa. Her last text to him had been to say she needed a vacation and was going off with her girlfriends for the weekend. No amount of trying on Shane’s part had gotten her to respond to the inquiring messages he’d sent as he tried to lure her to Eoin’s place.
Dubheasa was brilliant, and she knew Eoin never asked about her personal life or whereabouts. He only ever told her to have fun, be safe, and call if she needed bail money. He certainly had never been pushy about details the way Shane had been. Eoin only hoped she understood and had gone into hiding for her own safety, especially considering Bridget’s call the other day.
When Madden Doyle glared at Knox, raw hatred on his face, Eoin sensed what was coming. He didn’t have long to wait.
“I’ll never surrender to the likes of you! I’ve the blood of kings—”
Without a by-your-leave, Knox fried his arse.
Eoin’s legs grew shaky when he saw Madden shudder from the electrocution and wet his pants. When the second bolt hit him, the smell of burnt flesh filled the room, and Eoin dashed for the door, afraid he was going to toss up his last meal on Bridget’s not-so-pristine floors.
She gave him a concerned look as he passed her, but he kept going until he was breathing fresh air again. When had his family become embroiled in murderous games? Had he been so oblivious to the goings-on of his siblings, so willfully ignorant of the dangers?
He ran a hand across his buzzed hair and winced in pain. The beating he’d taken at the hands of Shane’s hired mercenary came back to haunt him in the form of his bruised scalp and broken finger. His ribs didn’t feel all that grand either, now that he was moving around.
“Eoin?”
Alastair Thorne turned the corner, and Eoin had a moment of panic. Was this a ploy, then? Were all the O’Conner family members going to show up as Alastair and try to hurt his family in sneak attacks?
“Calm down, son. Your emotions are all over the place, and you’re making it hard to concentrate.”
One look into Alastair’s concerned sapphire eyes, and Eoin breathed a sigh of relief. “Sorry, sir. There was another—” he pointed toward his home “—another you that wasn’t you. I’m a little on edge, to be sure.”
“Another me?” Alastair’s dark-blond brows snapped together, and the air around them grew overcast and dark as he tugged first one cuff, then the other.
The changing weather and approaching storm clouds told Eoin all he needed to know. This was, indeed, Alastair Thorne, one of the most powerful warlocks to ever walk the earth, and the type who didn’t suffer fools lightly.
“You can remain calm. A hair model named Knox took care of him for you, he did.”
As quickly as Alastair’s temper flared to life, it disappeared in the face of Eoin’s comment. “Hair model?” he choked out on a laugh.
“It’s all those flowing Loreal-blond locks of his. I’m sure I saw that exact shade on a shelf in the supermarket.”
Alastair nearly bent double laughing, and Eoin joined him. Maybe it was the relief of knowing his family was unhurt, or perhaps the punch to the head had sent him over the edge, but suddenly, the entire situation seemed hilarious.
After they both sobered, Alastair’s gaze swept him from head to toe. “Do you need a healer, son?”
“For my broken hand, yeah. This hard head of mine likely wasn’t damaged.”
Lips twitching in an effort to suppress his grin, Alastair held out his hand. “Then let’s get those broken bones repaired.”
After leaving work with all her belongings in a box, Dubheasa climbed in the back of a cab and texted Eoin she was going away for a long weekend. With a sigh, she shut off her phone and tossed it into her Coach shoulder bag. Lost in thought, it didn’t register right away that her cabbie had made a wrong turn.
“Hey!” She leaned forward, prepared to give him a tongue lashing, when she caught sight of the man driving. “You!”
“Dovie, I need you to hear me out.”
“Stop the fucking car.”
She tried the handle, uncaring that she was in the middle of rush-hour traffic or that she’d need to leave her box of personal items behind, prepared to jump if she had to.
“Listen, love, I’m not going to hurt ya. We just need to talk.”
“I said, Stop. The. Fucking. Car!”
“No.” He winced when she screeched. “Jaysus, woman! You like to deafen me!”
“I’d like to cut off your bollocks and shove them—”
He turned up the radio to drown her out.
“I swear by all that is holy, I will gut you!”
When he began whistling as if he didn’t have a care in the world, she lost her temper completely and banged on the glass partition. “This is kidnapping, and a punishable offense here in the States, you tool. I’ll see you locked away for life, I will.”
With raised brows, he turned down the music. “Did ya say somethin’, love?”
Slipping a hand inside her purse, she felt around and withdrew pepper spray, surreptitiously setting it in her lap, then reached inside for her phone.
“I wouldn’t do that, Dovie.”
“I’m not talkin’ to you. And my feckin’ name is Dubheasa.”
He sighed heavily. “You’ll always be me Dovie.”
“I’m not your anything, you delusional toad.”
Minutes ticked by, and he remained silent, not trying to talk to her again. And as they approached the Lincoln Tunnel, heading toward New Jersey, her nerves went on high alert. In the city, she might’ve stood a chance of getting away, but whatever destination he had in mind was too far out for her comfort zone.
“What’s your name?” She’d read somewhere that it might work to make yourself seem human to an attacker. Perhaps it worked similarly with an abductor. “Your real name, not the one you gave me when you first showed up at Lamda,” she added quickly.
“Ronan O’Connor.”
One of them was going to die.