HauntingBeauty







Chapter Thirty-nine


DARKNESS had never felt so thick and consuming as it did when Danni left the little cottage all alone. It waited just outside the small porch light’s glow, impatient, hovering. Complete. She’d found a flashlight in one of the kitchen drawers, but the batteries were old and the beam was no contender against the blackness of the shrouded night. Shivering, Danni looked to the mottled sky, thick with clouds that blotted out the stars and cursed the thin sliver of moon.
A cold wind had picked up and it cut through her clothes and froze her to the bone. With the tide crashing in the distance, she felt numb and displaced. Unsure of her next step. Certain only that she must take one.
Carefully she clutched the Book, still wrapped in her jacket, as she traveled the uneven path leading down to the rocky beach. Her footsteps sounded unnaturally loud, but the frantic beating of her heart was louder still. Twice she stopped and turned, convinced someone was following. Against the hope that it might be Sean, came the fear that it wasn’t. Hairs rose on the back of her neck, and she scanned the shadows, finding nothing more than her imagination stalking her in the dark. But the feeling of being watched persisted.
She stumbled on her way down the steep trail, but made it to the bottom without falling. A miracle, because halfway down, the Book of Fennore began to call her, pulsing frantically for her to hurry. Each step forward made it more demanding, more anxious. Made Danni more reluctant and more terrified. The sickening drone shook her resolve and filled her with dread. The thought of unwrapping the Book and gazing at the jewel-encrusted cover . . . of touching it . . . She wanted to run away and never look back.
But somehow she kept moving until the doorway cut from stone loomed in front of her. She forced her shaking legs to take her through.
“Just do it,” she whispered to herself.
She’d held onto to her courage when she’d gone back to her mother’s house to steal the Book. She could—she would—be fearless now. Just a few minutes more, and she could put all the wrongs of her life to right. She could save Sean. She could help her mother—make it so she wouldn’t have to disappear. And Dáirinn and Rory wouldn’t be torn apart and abandoned. She could have everything she’d ever wished for, if she could just keep it together now.
Danni took a deep, calming breath, refusing to let thoughts about the magnitude of what she intended to do crowd in. She was going to change the past. Not just her past, but that of many people. She’d seen enough sci-fi movies to fear the ripple that might wreak havoc on the world from doing so. But she had to believe that if she’d been given the power to do it, it was for a reason. Perhaps this was her purpose. She needed to be brave. To believe in herself.
She would have to send her father somewhere else to succeed. Somewhere far away. Another time, another place where he couldn’t hurt them anymore. Without the Book, he would be just a man she would never have to fear again.
She repeated this in her head as she picked her way over the uneven stones to the cavern beneath the ruins. Her waning flashlight beam reflected on the rippling water inside, turning it black and white, transforming it into a living beast crouched at her feet. With another look over her shoulder, she propped the flashlight on the ground and removed her jacket from around Book of Fennore.
The canvas wrapping felt oily to her touch and the strange humming repulsed her as she lifted the massive Book. It throbbed in her hands, responding to her nearness by whining with more intensity and volume. The barriers she’d constructed in her mind wobbled and then crashed around her. Her fingers shook as she set the Book on top of a huge boulder beside her.
Carefully she pulled back the canvas, thinking of how her mother had done the same that first time when she’d shown Danni the Book of Fennore in the vision. Danni didn’t want to touch it. With all her heart, she prayed she wouldn’t have to touch it. But of course she would. How else could she do what had to be done?
She stared at the spirals that mated in the lock over the Book’s cover and then at the embedded symbols on the cavern walls. The Book belonged to this place. She felt it. Feared it.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” a man’s voice spoke from behind her.
With a sharp cry, Danni spun to find her father leaning against the cavern wall a few feet away. Apparently not just her imagination had followed her. Why hadn’t she trusted her instincts? Why did she always doubt what she knew?
“Stay back,” she warned.
“Or what?”
“I’ll use it.”
The words felt clunky on her tongue. Ridiculous dialogue from an old gangster movie. She raised her chin, trying to look like she meant to follow through with her threat. The Book purred with satisfaction. It liked conflict. It liked the sparking tension in the air.
Cathán pushed away from the wall and moved closer. Taunting her. Daring her. In a moment, he would call her bluff. What would she do then? Let him take the Book away while she hesitated? He took another step, and she jerked her hand up, spreading her fingers wide and holding them over the cover.
“I mean it,” she warned. Sweat beaded her brow and her legs felt rubbery. But he paused, considering her with his eerie glittering eyes. Would hers look like that when tomorrow came?
“Is it not what you plan to do anyway? Surely you did not steal it only to admire the thing?”
Danni didn’t answer. Her throat was sealed by her suffocating fear.
“Do you want to know what happens when you touch it?” he murmured. There was a smile on his face, but the tremor in his voice gave him away. The Book scared him, too. But at the same time, it captivated him. His fingers curled and uncurled in anticipation of holding it again.
Cathán went on, his voice pitched low, harmonizing with the Book’s ominous throbbing. “At first, it’s like sinking into a bog. It’s cold like you can’t even fathom. It makes you feel so brittle that a strong wind might snap you in two. And then there’s darkness. Like being buried alive, it is.”
His eyes glittered wildly. They looked unnatural, hard and alien in his face.
Danni could sense his need, his desire for the Book and everything it represented. She was frightened of his answer, but at the same time, knew she needed to learn as much as she could about the Book of Fennore. With a deep breath, she asked, “So tell me, then, why you look like you can’t wait to touch it again?”
He laughed and the sound bounced and fractured against the cavern walls and the rippling pool. “Crazy, isn’t it? You’re right—I can’t wait. Watching you holding it, keeping it from me—it makes me feel nuts. Like I might rip your head off just to have it back.”
The last came with a merry glance. Isn’t that the most unbelievable thing you’ve ever heard? the look said. But there was promise in the words. There was threat and menace that Danni felt to the pit of her stomach.
He moved to her right, and Danni shifted to keep him in her sight. Using the thin barrier of canvas as protection, she gripped the Book tightly in her hands, but she was careful—oh so careful—not to let the canvas slip.
“My da could not tolerate me, did you know that?” he asked, confusing her with the random words. Frowning, she tracked him as he paced, circling the Book like a lion would his wounded prey. The pounce was coming. She had to be ready for it. If she faltered, she had no doubt he would devour her.
“I’ve no idea why he hated me,” he continued, “for I tried very hard to please him. Still he looked at me like I was the devil’s spawn. My own father.”
She clutched the Book, thinking of Colleen, the baby she’d given up. The irony of Cathán’s father thinking it was his wife who’d been unfaithful.
The glitter of Cathán’s eyes darkened. “But I think you know why he couldn’t stand the sight of me, don’t you Danni? Is it the Book telling you, whispering in your ear? It does that, but you’ll learn it for yourself in a few minutes, won’t you? When you put your flesh against it. When you let it stroke your most cherished thoughts and fondle your darkest secrets. Like a lover, it is . . . a cruel and unpredictable lover that will shower you with gifts as it brands you with a burning iron.”
He was playing mind games. She knew it, but she couldn’t evade the picture he planted in her head.
“Oh yes, it’s very intimate. Like making love, only without the affection, without the tenderness. I guess that makes it more like rape, doesn’t it? But there is pleasure, once you submit.”
“And do you?” she asked. Bravado raised her chin. She clung to it. “Submit? Roll over and give in? No wonder your father thought you weak.”
“Brave words, but then you haven’t touched it yet, have you now?”
She shrugged, leveling a steady gaze at his face, wondering if that was a crack she saw in his composure. Hoping it was, she pressed. “Maybe he thought you were someone else’s son. Maybe he wished it.”
Cathán’s eyes narrowed. “Who told you that?”
“If he thought you were inadequate, of course he’d want to blame someone else for your lacking. It’s what everyone thinks. They talk about it, about you. How you imagine yourself a king but you’re nothing but a little man with an inflated opinion of his importance. They say marrying Fia was the only smart thing you’ve ever done.”
Another fracture appeared in his composure, this one long and splintered. A smile curved her lips and satisfaction shot through her, warm and comforting, hot and thrilling. It’s the Book, a voice whispered in her head. Pleasuring itself with pain.
“You’re lying,” he said softly. But he didn’t quite hit that level of confidence with which he’d begun, and Danni pushed again.
“I’m just telling you what I’ve heard. They do find it funny, though, how you strut around like you’re royalty. Your father commanded respect and loyalty, but you . . . they say it’s a shame you’re not more like him.”
Danni felt a jolt of sheer delight coursing through her as she watched the effect of her words drain the blood from his face before suffusing it with the stain of humiliation. She hadn’t even touched the Book yet, and it was already controlling her. Already dominating her thoughts and actions. Like a weed, it took root and grew wild inside. She felt it sprouting something dark and insidious deep within her soul. Something that would leave tendrils behind if she managed to dig it up.
It was Cathán’s turn to smile. “Is it fucking your mind yet, Danni? Plunging in and out, looking for that weakness it can seed? And you haven’t even touched it yet. You must have something it wants very badly for it to reach so far.”
She swallowed hard, feeling those sharp tendrils, probing, twining . . .
“Is that how it found you?” she demanded. “It wanted something you have?”
His eyes gleamed. “A good question. One I couldn’t answer until just now. It does want something I have. The question is, why would it think of you as mine?”
It took a moment for Danni to comprehend his words. She stood there, the Book of Fennore clenched in her hands, and the idea of it washed over her. Was he saying the Book had come to him in order to find Danni?
“That’s right. It called me, sweet Danni. Called me like a supper bell. I could see it in my head, the way it gleams, the way it thrums. I wanted to touch it. To hold it.”
He took a step closer and Danni shuffled back.
“It took years of digging through old documents, plotting my family line back to the ages before we wrote our history. I listened to every senile geriatric who claimed to know a thing about it. And then I found her, my lovely bride, just waiting for someone to save her from her greedy mother and failing sister. From the fate that waited just around the corner. Fia’s mother would have made her use it once her sister . . . expired.”
His voice had deepened and it wove a spell around her until it was all she heard. She watched him, fascinated and repelled by what he said. She knew what terrible fate her mother had been destined for, could still hear Edel’s shriek and Fia’s mother blandly planning to send Fia next.
“After her sister used the Book for the last time and never came back, Fia was more than happy to let me rescue her. She thought she’d seen the last of the Book of Fennore, especially once her mother passed, poor wretched thing. It was a terrible accident, her mother falling like she did. Like someone had pushed her down those stairs. I convinced her the Book was lost. That somehow Edel had taken it with her. Fia wanted to believe it, so she did.”
He was closer. Danni hadn’t seen him move, but he was definitely standing closer than he’d been before. She took another step back and felt the solid rock wall behind her.
“What will you use it for, Danni? What deep and dark secrets lurk in your heart?”
“It’s not my heart that’s dark. It’s yours. I don’t want to use it. But I have to.”
“You must,” he said his voice mellow and soothing. “Yes, I understand that. It was my reason as well. I couldn’t lose my home, my castle. I am king here whether the idiots know it or not. I could wipe them out, just by wishing it. Sometimes I almost do—wish it. I think of them writhing on the ground, all those green paddocks stained red with their blood, slick with the carnage. Can you picture it?” he whispered. “I can.”
She gulped, clenching her eyes against the vivid image that filled her mind. The Book responded to Cathán’s grisly description. Joyously it sang out, begging Danni to touch it, stroke it, embrace it . . .
“Making someone fear you doesn’t make you powerful. It doesn’t make you a king.”
“Never underestimate the power of fear, Danni. It’s a formidable weapon.”
He took another step, and there was no place to turn, no room to evade. The Book shrieked with frustration, terrifying her beyond her ability to think. To react. A part of her mind simply shut down.
“Moment of truth, love,” he said. “I want to help you. I do. Your eyes are like windows, and I see how frightened you are. Once you touch it, once you use it, you’re never the same. You can never go back. Whatever it is that has made you desperate, tell me and I will make it go away. Let me spare you this horror. Let me shoulder your burden.”
She felt strangely disoriented as she stared into his faceted, glittering eyes. He wanted to help her. Of course he did. He was her father and fathers helped their daughters.
Something shifted in his expression, and for a moment, he looked confused. He stared at Danni as if seeing her for the first time. “Who are you?” he asked softly. “Who are you really?”
She wanted to tell him. Some part of her still believed that once he knew, everything would be different. He’d open his arms with love and do what she’d always dreamed daddies do—make everything right. Even as she thought it, he changed again, and now he looked at her with sly calculation.
“I knew you weren’t Danni Ballagh,” he said. “You almost had me fooled, sweet Danni. But you’re no innocent, are you? It’s you that brings us back to this place again and again. Well, this will be the last time for it. I don’t give a fecking shite if you’re Herself in the flesh, I swear to you this will be the last of it.”
Now the image in Danni’s head was of the keening banshee. The white ghost. Herself in the flesh. Though his words were cold, she felt his fear.
“The Book is mine,” he said. “It will always be mine.”
He trapped her with his gaze as he reached for it. A voice in her head tried to shout, tried to warn her, but Danni couldn’t move. The whining drone of the Book dulled her senses, feeding on the terror inside her. She felt drugged, powerless. Knowing it would be a fatal mistake to let him take it, Danni stood paralyzed as he reached for the Book of Fennore.