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Then started again … in reverse.
By the time I turned to look, Jack was already on the ground, and Paul was running across the O’Connell Bridge toward her. Throwing his gun into the Liffey, he sprinted the rest of the way with his hands in the air, but before he could get to her, three quick pops from a soldier behind me took him out as well. He fell face down in the middle of the intersection, just a few meters away from Jack.
As they hauled me to my feet and dragged me deeper into their hive, I felt every ounce of humanity drain from my body.
I understood now why the villagers had feared Kellen.
Called him the Devil, said he’d killed his own father.
Because he was.
And he had.
And he was about to do it again.
CHAPTER 48
CLOVER
In the hills at the foot of a plum mountain peak
Lies a sleepy old town where the dead never sleep.
The craggy stone tunnel felt endless—a dark, mildewy, cramped purgatory that closed around me a little more with every labored step I took.
The villagers know to stay out of the wood.
That’s where the spirits are up to no good.
It was hard to tell how long I’d been down there, hard to block out the intrusive thoughts telling me I was lost, or worthless, or too bleeding late.
Especially one, they confess with a shiver.
Born with the Devil inside him, they whisper.
The voices seemed to bounce off the walls and echo along the low, arched ceiling, taunting me, making me shiver.
Eyes gray as smoke, hair like black flames.
He killed the town priest and died with him that day.
But I did my best to block them out, putting one soggy runner in front of the other and repeating a poem about finding a boy that I knew I could never truly lose.
Damned for eternity, refusing to burn,
He waits in the woods for his love to return.
All the lads had left behind was a handgun with no bullets, a satellite phone that I didn’t know how to operate, and a Russian laptop that couldn’t be unlocked without a fingerprint or a password.
But the screen made a decent torch down in the Poddle.
Out where the bluebells grow high as your knee
And the clover and moss blanket every tree
I clutched the open computer to my chest as I waded through the knee-high water, thankful that I hadn’t come across any intersections or forks yet. I didn’t actually know where I was going.
Lies a ring made of stone where no fairies dare tread.
