The Lost Child Read online

  “Can you see him?” asked Klassje.

  “No. You?”

  Klassje nodded. Vampire eyes were a Godsend at times like this.

  “He’s digging out some rocks and… Damn it.”

  “What?” I asked, urgently.

  “Can’t that man wear something under his kilt? I know he’s proud, but we don’t all need reminding…” Then she cocked her head to the side and smiled. “Although, I must admit he does have a nice ass.”

  “Klaasje!”

  She laughed. “There! Odran’s waving. He’s ready for us.”

  “You go next,” I whispered.

  Klassje shook her head. “That would be silly. You wouldn’t be able to see me waving to tell you when it’s your turn. Go on, get that baby to safety.”

  I nodded. She was right, of course. The light swept by and I ran as I’d never run before. I could feel my baby jogging up and down in the sling, and I worried she might get upset and start crying, but she remained calm. I wasn’t sure how. It was hard not to worry that the Fir Darrig had done something to her, on the other hand I wasn’t about to complain about having a baby that didn’t cry.

  “Are ye alright, lass?” asked Odran, as I skidded to a halt on my knees beside him, keeping low in the vegetation.

  “All good.” I waved back into the darkness in the direction where I assumed Klassje to be.

  The light swept by and I strained to see Klassje running towards us.

  “Hey! Put the light back there!” someone yelled.

  My heart sprung into my mouth as the searchlight responded to the command, swinging back the way it had just come. Odran was beside

  me, his hand on my arm, unconsciously clutching me tight enough to cut off the blood flow to my hand.

  “What is it?” another voice asked.

  It was Luce’s soldiers, talking to each other .

  “Thought I saw something moving.”

  Back and forth the light went.

  “Where is Klaasje?” murmured Odran. “Where…”

  And then we both saw her, flat on the ground, face down, just hidden from the guards by the undulations of the landscape.

  “Why doesn’t she just dematerialize?” I asked Odran, shaking my head to say I didn’t get it.

  “Ah dinnae know, lass.”

  “You want to have a look?” asked one soldier.

  Odran gently pushed me back towards the tunnel. “If it comes to it, lass, joost follow the toonnel.” He would stay to help Klassje.

  “Nah. Must have been imagining things,” the first soldier said.

  “They’re all probably dead by now anyway.”

  I started to relax until I heard that last part.

  Probably dead by now anyway?

  They don’t know what they’re talking about, Bryn, I told myself.

  Don’t listen to them. Jolie is fine. If she weren’t, you would feel her.

  I relaxed and felt Odran do the same, loosing his grip on my arm.

  We watched as the light returned to its regular sweepings. For two more passes, Klassje remained where she was, making sure the guards weren’t still taking any undue interest in this area, then she sprang up and raced to us with vampiric speed.

  “Are you alright?” I asked.

  “Well my pride is a little bruised,” Klassje admitted.

  “Why didn’t you dematerialize?”

  She shook her head. “I couldn’t. I mean, I tried, but it was like something was blocking me.”

  “Hmm, I wonder if Luce put some sort of spell on the place that disallowed you from using your vampire abilities?”

  She nodded. “Maybe.”

  “Come on,” Odran urged. “Klassje, cover the hole as ye come.”

  He crawled into the narrow tunnel he’d uncovered and I followed with Klassje behind me, pausing briefly to disguise the tunnel entrance again.

  “I can see why they’re not attempting to get everyone out this way,” I said, as we crawled, with only the light of my mobile phone to go by (it was only by chance I had it, it was not like I’d needed the thing in Faery).

  “Aye,” said Odran. “Even if the queen could get them all oot one at a time, it would be a terrible risk to take. If a single one o’ our own were caught, then Luce would know o’ the tunnel an’

  could send his soldiers in to kill the rest o’ them.”

  “Better than starving to death,” said Klassje, bringing up the rear.

  “I’m guessing Jolie’s keeping the tunnel as a last resort.” I had total faith in my sister’s leadership capabilities, but this situation would be testing them as never before. “What was this tunnel used for?”

  “In case of a siege,” Odran explained, “they would send out a messenger to fetch reinforcements. ‘Twas a dangerous job.”

  I nodded to myself. Sadly, such an option wasn’t open to Jolie as there was no one out there she could turn to for help. For the first time I began to wonder what possible endgame there might be here. I was sure that getting into Kinloch Broch was the right thing to do, but what the hell did we do once we were in there?

  Were we just joining our friends so we could die alongside them?

  I knew Odran would say there were worse reasons, but his reasoning wasn’t mine. Maybe it was absurdly optimistic, but I had no intention of dying under a Scottish mountain. I wasn’t done fighting yet and I had every intention of winning. I didn’t know how, but that was the sort of thing that could wait until later. Between me and my sister, we could come up with a way to beat Luce—I believed that with every fiber of my being. And if there was ever a moment of doubt, then the little life slung beneath me gave me fresh resolve. This girl—whoever she proved to be—was going to have a long and full life. That wasn’t my hope, it was my intention, my promise, my resolve.

  “Is this reminding anyone else of getting into Tor Clyd?” asked Klassje.

  “Warmer here,” I commented, but I was immediately reminded of the next journey that awaited us. A journey that would have to be put off, now that we’d discovered what we had. If Jolie and our

  people were under attack, I couldn’t leave to go after Sinjin.

  I’d have to stay here and fight. I’d have to defend our kingdom.

  And it was a thought which caused me a ton of pain, worry and anxiety, but it was a decision that had to be made, all the same.

  Sinjin would have to fend for himself.

  “I’m just saying, we seem to be spending a lot of time crawling up tunnels into one mountain fortress or another.”

  “True. A lesson for the designers of fortresses everywhere. Don’t build with holes in them. Haven’t they seen Star Wars ?”

  Odran chuckled to himself. “Sometimes, lass, Ah have nae idea what ye are talkin’ aboot.”

  The tunnel had been more or less flat so far, but now it rose in a sudden right angle, straight up through the rock.

  “This is the tough bit,” said Odran, gritting his teeth. Not without difficulty, he negotiated his bulky body around the corner, then began to work his way up the shaft, bracing himself against the side and walking his feet up the wall. “Ah would advise ye tae keep back oontil Ah am finished. If Ah lose mah footin’, then a man o’ my weight fallin’ on ye could do a power o’ damage.”

  I did as he suggested, holding back in the tunnel. Finally, the grunting and muffled swearing stopped and I heard Odran call down. “Y er turn, Bryn.”

  Seldom had I been so grateful for the tough training that had been part of my life growing up. The assent was not easy, my feet on one wall, my back hard against the other, my baby at my chest, but I worked my way up, inch by inch, until Odran reached down to haul me the last few feet.

  “Are ye well?”

  “We’re both good,” I said, and my baby giggled her response.

  “She’s a well-behaved bairn,” commented Odran.

  “Klassje!” I called back down, my voice bouncing around the narrow shaft.

  There was a scuffling sound
from below and Klassje came racing up the shaft, springing light-footed up to join us.

  “Vampire,” she explained with a shrug.

  “Whist!” Odran shushed us both. “Did ye hear somethin’?”

  A moment later, there was a cry and a grunt form Odran, followed by the sounds of a struggle in that claustrophobic space. The

  light on my phone revealed a jumble of limbs as Odran and his unseen attacker wrestled together in the dark.

  “Get y er bloody hands off me, ye bleedin’ fool! Do ye nae recognize me?” Odran snarled as, with a growl of effort, he upturned his attacker, pushing the man to the floor and pinning him there. “Do ye know me now?”

  My phone light illuminated Odran’s face for the benefit of the trapped man.

  “Odran?” It was a voice I knew well and I redirected my phone downwards to see the face of Rand staring up at me.

  “Well… This is a quite a surprise,” Rand said with a large grin.

  “It’s good to see you. Would you mind letting me up?”

  FIFTEEN

  BRYN

  The remainder of the journey through the darkness passed quickly and we emerged into one of the caverns that made up Kinloch Broch.

  “Jolie!” yelled Rand as he emerged, a grin on his face—good news had been in short supply for everyone lately, it seemed. “Jolie!”

  As I saw my sister appear from the throng of people, I felt as if my heart might explode from joy. And from the look on her face, she felt something of the same.

  “Bryn!” We ran to each other to embrace, when Jolie glanced down…

  at my daughter.

  “You have…” Jolie’s eyes goggled as she saw her niece for the first time. “Is she…?”

  “She’s fine. None the worse for any of it. Happiest child on the planet.”

  “Auntie Bin!” Jolie’s daughter, Emma, came bouncing up, wreathed in smiles and clutching a doll.

  “Emma,” Jolie stopped to pick up her daughter, “there’s someone I want you to meet. This is your cousin. You need to look after her and love her and always be there for her.”

  “Okay,” said Emma brightly, as if she had been asked to wash her hands before dinner. “What’s her name?”

  Jolie looked at me cautiously and I shook my head. Not yet , I said in thought.

  I’d missed speaking to Jolie telepathically. A mind can be a lonely place if you’re used to company.

  Jolie met my gaze. Where is Sinjin? She looked around. And Dureau

  ?

  I felt my heart drop. They were captured by the Darrig.

  Captured?

  Yes, but I think Sinjin is still alive. At least, I was able to feel him a day or so ago.

  Sinjin is a survivor.

  Yes. Klaasje compared him to a cockroach.

  Hmmm… almost fitting in a way. Jolie faced me and her eyes were wide blue pools of concern. Sinjin is going to be okay. You know that, right?

  I nodded. “What happened here?” I asked aloud, making a point to change the subject. Thinking about Sinjin caused me a whole mess of emotions that wouldn’t do me any good. I had to focus on the here and now. I had to focus on defending our kingdom.

  #

  It seemed as if our little expedition hadn’t been the only one go ing through the mill recently—good luck was in short supply everywhere. That said, it had only been through good luck that we’d survived at all.

  From Jolie, I learned Luce had amassed a huge army, dwarfing what the Underworld could boast, even with our Daywalker friends added to the fold. His plan had been to take Kinloch Kirk in a surprise attack by proceeding via Faery. In this world, Kinloch Kirk was well-protected and it seemed unlikely that Luce or anyone else would be able to get the drop on them. No one considered the possibility of an attack from the Fae realm.

  For years , Luce had set his sights on the Underworld, determined to destroy it out of a kind of quasi-religious fervor, but he’d never had any success in getting past our defenses. Maybe it was the deal he’d struck with the Fir Darrig that made him re-think?

  Luce had nothing but contempt for the realm of Faery, but now he recognized it as a resource he could exploit even if he despised it.

  On the portal side of Kinloch Kirk, we were virtually defenseless because the Fae were our friends. Or, at least, most of them were. They were not always the best of friends they could be selfish and arrogant (as our trip to the Seelie Court had underlined), but you forgive your friends for those sorts of

  failings and when one is in need, then the other rallies around.

  We saw it as a strength; Luce had spotted a weakness.

  The recent flight of the Daywalkers he’d been training for his army had alerted Luce to the existence of the portal in Balmoral.

  Though he had no love of the Fae, Luce knew their magic well and knew how to use the portal energy to break into Faery. Jolie couldn’t tell me what sort of havoc he might have wreaked there but he’d used the incursion to attack Kinloch Kirk from the seaward side.

  If the attack had been a surprise as Luce had intended, then it might have succeeded in wiping out the Underworld stronghold, and I shuddered to even think of that possibility. Fortunately, Mathilda had seen them coming. No one was exactly sure how, and the old Fae was keeping quiet on the subject, but by some means of divination, she’d foretold the attack and its direction. It had given Jolie barely an hour’s notice and she’d had to make decisions quickly. There was not time to mount a proper defense.

  If they stayed, then it would be to die. So she did the only thing she could do; she abandoned Kinloch Kirk and led her people to the safety of the mountains. The hope was that Luce wouldn’t know of Kinloch Broch. Sadly, that hope proved to be in vain.

  Then came the worst blow of all. Though she hadn’t wanted to surrender or run from Luce, Jolie had always known she and her people couldn’t be pinned down. The great thing about Kinloch Broch was that you always had the option of leaving through Faery. The very old and the very young, the sick and the vulnerable, could be evacuated out to safety before the fighting began; and there would be fighting—Jolie wasn’t about to roll over and let Luce win. But when she tried to leave the Broch via Faery, it only proved Luce knew about that entrance too. Jolie was under siege from both sides, grossly outnumbered and with no hope of escape.

  “What now then?” I asked, horrified by this story.

  Jolie shook her head, sadly. “Now… I don’t know. I’m not sure if Luce will attack or if he just plans to starve us out.”

  “Should we attack him first?” Klaasje asked. “With the emergency exit tunnel, we might be able to stage a diversion that would give us a fighting chance.”

  “But then what?” Jolie asked. “Half the people here are too old or too young to fight or to escape quickly enough and I’ll be damned if I’m leaving them behind. Besides; where would we go?”

  She looked up at me, her face more careworn than I’d ever seen it.

  “I don’t know,” I answered and frowned.

  She smiled and nodded. “It’s so good to see you, Bryn. And I’m so happy you got your baby back. But… in a way, I wish you weren’t here. Because I can’t see any way out of this.”

  Truth be told, I was as devastated as my sister , but I had to be strong. “There’s always a way, Jolie. We’ve been in tough situations before and we’ve always found a way out of them. Some of those ways have been crazy stupid, but they all come good in the end. Don’t give up hope.”

  Jolie smiled. “This is why I’ve missed you so much. That never flagging optimism of yours.” I smiled as she continued. “Now; your turn. Tell me what happened.”

  I’d been doing so well. I’d managed to project an optimism and a strength I really didn’t feel. But when Jolie asked me about what I’d been through, and what had happened to Sinjin and Dureau, then all that strength seemed to collapse away into nothing. I burst into tears and my sister was instantly there—wrapping her arms around me.

  #<
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  I’ d been assigned a room in Kinloch Broch for myself and my little girl, who now lay sleeping. It wasn’t as nice as the little house we’d had, it wasn’t the home I’d wanted to bring her back to, but it would do. As long as she was with me, then it felt as if there was some hope. My girl was a bright point in a dark world.

  And she was the only bright point.

  The room had been stocked with basic baby supplies, donated by the other women of the Underworld who had little kids themselves, and I was currently orienting myself with the business of diaper changing. Of course, my baby had needed changing while we were in Faery—kids didn’t stop crapping themselves just because they happened to be in another realm—but while there, I’d just had to make do with what was available. Maybe it’s best to leave the description at that.

  Now , I had all the best pharmacies could offer, and I didn’t know what to make of what. I held up the diaper; it looked simple enough. Then there were various cleaning products, some powders and some creams—both of which seemed to prevent diaper rash, but I wasn’t sure if they were to be used together or if I was supposed to pick one. And, if so, which one?

  “I don’t suppose you know how any of this works?” I asked my little girl , as she smiled up at me. “No? I thought not.” I puzzled a while longer. “How did this work while you were… gone?

  I can’t imagine the Fir Darrig wiping your ass for you.” Again, no helpful response from my baby. “Magic, I guess. I wonder if

  that’s an option now.” Was there baby-changing magic? If there wasn’t, it seemed like a gap in the market.

  “Where’s that damn book?” I asked. Along with the practical equipment, I’d been gifted five or six books on the subject of babies with optimistic titles like ‘ Everything You Need to Know About…’ and ‘The Essential Guide to…’ . I’d found them all pretty daunting and, after a flick through the opening pages, irritatingly contradictory.

  “Alright, let’s take a chance with this one,” I said as the baby cooed up at me. “Please bear with me, I’m learning on the job here.”