Completely Folk'd Read online

  Dub had used Danny’s distraction in order to take a long step backward, out of range of the silver blade. ‘The invitation was for you only, Morrigan.’

  Danny turned his back on the hulking prince. He had more important things to do. He took Ellie’s hand in his, wondering if he should reach out, use the powers he’d honed on his journeys to instantly convey what he wanted to tell via touch, as he’d done with his father. But no, that didn’t seem right somehow. If he couldn’t find the words, if he stumbled over them, he’d have to trust, as every man did when trying to say something important, that the emotions behind them would let her know what he wanted to say to her.

  ‘Ellie,’ he began, ‘I’ve seen things, I’ve been to places you wouldn’t believe.’

  Ellie raised an eyebrow and indicated the world around them. ‘I wouldn’t believe? Seriously? Are you takin’ the fuckin’ piss?’ she said.

  She had a point. ‘Okay, maybe you would,’ Danny admitted. ‘I’m talking about the first place we found ourselves. The world where we weren’t together.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, biting her lip.

  ‘Yeah. My time was my own. I had the job I’d always wanted. Well paid, big car, all that shit, and’ – he figured in for a penny, in for a pound – ‘the sorta life I always dreamed about having when I was with you.’

  She didn’t slap him, as he had somewhat expected. She just nodded. ‘Yeah,’ she said, and seeing the look on his face, gave a thin laugh. ‘What? I’m meant to be surprised, Danny? This may astonish you but you’re not exactly Russell fuckin’ Crowe in terms of acting ability. Now, no harm, but I think we’ve bigger fish to–’

  ‘Wait,’ he said, holding up a hand. ‘I’m trying to tell you that having everything I wanted wasn’t enough. Not cos I knew it wasn’t real, but because it wasn’t right.’

  She said nothing. He could see his words weren’t being lost on her, though. He pressed on.

  ‘There’s probably a million lovely poetic ways to say what I’m trying to say,’ he said. ‘But what it boils down to is – I got everything I thought I wanted, and I didn’t want it. I wanted my life back. My life with you, and with Luke – shitty nappies, kids’ TV, fuck-all money, late nights. All the rest of it. I know I didn’t choose how it began. I know you didn’t either. But I know now that it doesn’t fuckin’ matter how something begins. It’s why we choose to keep going that matters.’

  She looked about to say something so he pressed on quickly before she could. This needed saying, before anything else happened. Before he lost anything more.

  ‘Ellie Quinn, I love you,’ he said. ‘Maybe I didn’t always. Maybe I didn’t when Luke was born, even. But by fuck, I love you right here, right now, today. When I think of how close I came to never having you, it scares the hell out of me. So I’m standing here now asking you to forgive me for ever not knowing that.’

  He paused, trying to decide if he’d said all the things he wanted to say in case he never got another chance to. ‘I want to–’ he began, but whatever he was about to say, it was rudely interrupted by a deluge of blood. It spattered over him, over Ellie, over everything. His first horrified thought was that something had happened to her but, thankfully, it didn’t take long for him to realise she was fine. His second thought was that something had happened to him, and his mind had yet to catch up.

  He turned to find the source of the blood to see Dub, all ten feet of him, holding his own innards with nothing but stunned amazement on his face. Beside him, soaking wet, was Dother. His face was elongated into something wolfish and his hands were claws – his right hand, a particularly vicious-looking curved claw that was now covered in blood and flesh. He had just eviscerated his older brother.

  Dub’s mighty form keeled over, a Lircom Tower collapse in miniature, except this time there was no last-minute reprieve. His massive body hit the deck with a thump that Danny and Ellie could feel in their bones. Watching with satisfaction, Dother shifted his face and body back to fully human.

  ‘I never liked you either, fuckface,’ he spat at his brother’s corpse. His gimlet eyes burned hot as coals as he turned to take in the two humans before him – his face a terrifying thing to behold … then, with a broad smile, he began to applaud. ‘Danny, lovely speech. Sorry to interrupt.’

  Danny raised the Sword in one smooth move, taking a step backward to better put himself between Ellie and Dother.

  Dother snorted and rolled his eyes derisively. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘You’re safe. It would be the understatement of the century to say that I can’t be arsed with you. I just had a score to settle with this big bastard … going back a very long time. My thanks for weakening him, by the way. It’s hard to spill someone’s guts when they’re intangible. Believe me, I’ve tried.’

  ‘Some fuckin’ family,’ Danny commented. ‘What went right with Dian? How come he’s the only decent one among yous?’

  Dother’s smile only grew. ‘Ah yes. Blessed Dian,’ he said. ‘Amazing what you learn when you’re struggling to repossess your own body.’

  He sat himself down on his brother’s corpse like it was a park bench. His body language was one cigarette away from post-coital. ‘Y’know,’ he said, sighing, ‘it’s not easy being the middle child. I did what my mother wanted for two thousand years and where did it get me? She thought higher of this brainless lump and that other sap than she did me. So fine. I’m done with it. Go in there and do what you need to do. But before you do, and seeing as you gave me the window I needed to settle my score, you deserve to know the truth.’

  ‘I wouldn’t believe you if you told me–’

  ‘Oh, shut the fuck up, will you?’ Dother hissed, with a ferocity that caused Danny and Ellie both to take a step back. ‘What’s happened to you, Danny? You used to be the one cutting through all the story time bullshit, didn’t you? Now look at you. Think you have this all figured out, don’t you? Big epic hero? Last minute speech to your beloved? March in there magic weapon in tow, and get your baby boy back, right? You couldn’t be more wrong.’

  Danny glanced at Ellie, and saw that she too was thrown by this. If Dother was lying, he was doing a truly spectacular job of it.

  ‘Okay,’ Danny said. ‘Tell me. There can’t be many fuckin’ surprises left anyway.’

  THE OTHERWORLD, 1890 AD

  ‘Whoever would have guessed,’ Carman said, boredom dripping from every word.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Months of waiting around, and for that?’

  ‘Was it months? I remember months. They were like longer days, weren’t they?’

  ‘Kristin?’ Carman said, ignoring this. ‘Kristin?’

  ‘Mmm. Should’ve been Bobby.’

  ‘Pffffff,’ Carman blew out a breath. ‘Bobby! That wimp! Sue Ellen, now – that’s a woman!’

  The Morrigan flapped her wings and hopped up and down, a gesture Carman had long since learned to interpret as tacit disagreement. ‘She’s weak,’ the crow replied dismissively. ‘Finds her solace in a bottle rather than taking a blade to the miserable bastard as she should have done.’

  With a gesture of annoyance, Carman swept her hand across the surface of the Dagda’s cauldron, abruptly curtailing the Dallas closing credits. Her eternal nemesis was perched peacefully on the rim of the Cauldron, tucking her beak under a wing to preen a few feathers that had been caught up during flight.

  ‘How did it come to this?’ Carman asked, as she always did.

  The Morrigan’s little bird head reappeared, a beady eye focused on the woman responsible for the death of two of her children, the exile of her people, the loss of her home and way of life.

  ‘Don’t start that again,’ she said. ‘At least you have representatives up there.’

  ‘Yes,’ Carman agreed. ‘A scheming, backstabbing bastard who constantly plots my downfall and lusts for my throne, and Casper the Friendly Faerie. Mitéra’s special boys.’

  ‘I had sons once,’ the Morrigan spoke quietly. ‘Remember?’
/>   ‘Oh bitch, bitch, bitch.’

  They remained in contemplative silence for a few moments. The rolling landscape of the Otherworld stretched out in all directions around them. Walk in a straight line for a few days in any direction away from the circle of the standing stones and lo and behold, it would reappear on the far horizon once more.

  ‘Won’t be long now,’ Carman spoke up, unable to keep the anticipation from her voice.

  ‘Thirty-odd years, give or take. It’s amazing,’ the Morrigan said quietly.

  ‘Amazing?’

  ‘Us. Working together, wanting the same thing. What does that say about us?’

  ‘That we’ve grown older and wiser,’ Carman replied.

  ‘Or that we aren’t as wise as we should be,’ the Morrigan said softly. ‘I hate being a crow. Have I mentioned that?’

  ‘Soon,’ Carman promised her companion. ‘A few decades, give or take, and when the Merging is complete, my first act will be to restore you to your former glory. So long as you play your part, of course. Which you will, I trust?’

  The crow couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘Yes.’

  They looked at the vista spread out before them. The Tuatha Dé Danann, hopelessly nostalgic to the last, had chosen to style the Otherworld after the scene of their two greatest victories. They had recreated Mag Tuired’s landscape on a massive scale. Whether it was intended as a tribute to the warrior woman who had secured them victory on both occasions, the Morrigan did not dare to speculate.

  ‘I’ll bring them back,’ the crow said, and with a flurry of wings it took off over the plains, leaving Carman standing alone.

  Not long now, the Morrigan promised herself as she flew. One more generation in human terms, and then … then she would once again stand amongst her people. Be a part of something again. Her people would live. Ireland would be their home once more.

  That was worth a few human lives, wasn’t it?

  BELGRAVIA AVENUE, BELFAST, NOW

  Larka tossed a slug-faerie into a lamppost. ‘Steve, behind you!’ she bellowed.

  Steve turned and through sheer chance, managed to use the barbed flail he carried to shatter the skull of a half-human, half-millipede being that had, on hundreds of miniscule little legs, been sweeping down the nearest wall with the intention of tearing his head off.

  A Humfipede, he thought. That’s a new one. Has to be worth seventy points, surely.

  Larka used her massive jaws to finish the job. Steve had to hand it to her – she’d have been great in a zombie movie. She always made sure of the kill.

  Their immediate perimeter was clear. He ran to the door and began to pound on it. Not entirely to his surprise, no-one answered.

  ‘Maggie! Maggie, open up! It’s Steve!’ he shouted, as loudly as he could, hoping fervently there wasn’t a squad of wasp-faeries overhead that would zero in on his cries. There were more varieties of these disgusting fuckers than he could keep track of. Someone, sometime, was going to have to document all of this. It wouldn’t be him, though – with his limited literary capabilities it would be a pop-up book with pull-tabs. Look Daddy, when I yank on this, the fucker’s head comes right off! I can see into his brains! COOL!

  The possibility existed, he reflected, that he might have taken a shade too many drugs.

  ‘We need to get inside,’ he told Larka. ‘Door’s locked and bolted to fuck and back and no one’s answering the door or the phone.’

  ‘Stand aside,’ she replied calmly.

  Crash.

  ‘Will that suffice as an opening?’

  He picked a particularly large splinter of wood out of his right nostril and brushed pulverised brick off the top of his head, peering through the sudden dust cloud to see a gap you could have jack-knifed a Humvee through.

  ‘Do rightly,’ he said, stepping into the house. ‘Maggie! Maggie!’ he called. There was no answer. He felt his stomach drop another foot or so.

  ‘I can smell something,’ Larka observed, stepping cautiously into what remained of the entranceway, sniffing the air around her.

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied.

  ‘I apologise, Steve. I know you fear for your mate.’

  ‘She’s not my mate. She’s not even my friend at this point.’

  ‘I don’t wish to alarm you,’ Larka continued, ignoring the interruption. ‘But what I smell has the unmistakable aroma of …’

  He knew where this was going. ‘Death?’ he guessed.

  She hung her head in sadness. ‘I fear so.’

  ‘This is Belgravia Avenue,’ he said dismissively. ‘Three fellas live here. Student fellas. What you’re smelling now is boxer shorts so old that if you handed them into the Antiques Road show, the presenters’d piss themselves with excitement.’

  ‘It’s strange,’ Larka commented. ‘I thought I grasped the fundamentals of English, but clearly I have more to learn–’ She stopped, abruptly, and changed her stance from the deceptively languid investigative gait she’d adopted since entering the house to something more rigid and battle-ready. Her head swung to the closed door of the room they were approaching on the right, the downstairs front bedroom.

  ‘There is movement inside,’ she said softly. ‘Coming toward the door. Be ready.’

  He tightened his grip on the flail. It had tasted blood tonight and he was ready to give it more if it meant protecting Maggie.

  Maggie. Jesus. That he should be here, now, braving the unknown horrors of the apocalypse to defend her of all people. That, incredible as it now seemed, they’d been in the same room together mere hours ago – she was apparently with Danny just as he’d been with Ellie. Memories of that almost-verse still lingered. What did it mean? What did any of this craziness mean?

  Right now, it didn’t matter. Hearing her terrified voice on the phone begging him to come to help her had cut through a lot of baggage, both real and semi-real, that had built up between them.

  Larka tensed her body, ready to spring the moment anything hostile poked its head, heads, or lack of head through that doorway.

  The door opened and Steve’s first act was to reach out his hand and stay Larka’s leap with a gesture.

  ‘Christ,’ Flan said. His spindly, dishevelled form was clad in a tartan dressing-gown with a hairstyle that suggested every single strand of hair on his head had a pathological hatred of every other strand of his hair and had decided to stay as far apart from them as possible. On his head he sported a pair of headphones so ludicrously big you half expected him to be ordering around a squad of Cybermen.

  ‘Flan!’ Steve said. ‘You’re alive! Where’s Maggie? She okay?’

  Flan blinked. It took him a few goes, but he managed it.

  ‘Is he injured?’ Larka inquired.

  ‘I don’t think “injured” is the right word, no,’ Steve said carefully.

  ‘OH MAN …’ Flan shouted, rubbing his eyes. ‘SORRY, YOU KNOCKIN WERE YE? I THINK I, UM, I THINK I FUCKIN’ FELL ASLEEP OR SOMETHIN’ … TIME’S IT?’

  ‘Flan, will ya take them headphones off, fer fucks sake!’

  ‘WHY’VE YA BROUGHT A DOG? LOOK’T SIZE OF THE CUNT! IF IT CURLS ONE ON THE CARPET, LANDLORD’S GONNA SHIT A BRICK.’

  Flan tailed off. He had just spotted the splintered, ruined remains of the front door.

  ‘Is he an idiot?’ Larka inquired.

  ‘Give him a minute …’ Steve began, and then reconsidered. He reached forward and ripped the massive headphones from his friend’s head, causing Flan to yelp in pain and give him a wounded look.

  ‘Somethin’ happened or what?’ Flan asked in a small voice.

  ‘You might say that,’ Larka told him.

  ‘Flan … where is Maggie?’ Steve asked again, feeling his patience ebb.

  Flan didn’t answer. He was staring at Larka, seemingly wondering if he’d really heard the huge dog in front of him speak. He reached forward with his hand and, as Steve looked on, amazed, and as Larka narrowed her eyes but remained still … he petted the great she-wolf’s head,
slowly and carefully, as if he were MacGyver choosing to cut the red or blue wire with four seconds left on the doomsday clock.

  ‘Who’s a nice doggie?’ he said.

  ‘In centuries past these people wore bells,’ Larka observed. ‘That made them easier to identif– oooh’ and her tail wagged as Flan’s fingers found a particular spot behind her left ear. ‘Oooh that’s good …’

  ‘Flan! Maggie! Where the fuck’s Maggie?’ Steve tried once more in despair.

  Flan turned his head. ‘Aye, Maggie. She turned up earlier,’ he said in a singsong, please-leave-a-message-after-the-tone sort of voice. ‘Lookin for you, funny enough. After that I went to bed. Tell you what, her voice gives me a sore fuckin’ head, lad.’

  They heard it then.

  ‘The roof,’ Larka said.

  Steve took the winding staircases three steps at a time, turning the corners inside the three-storey house like an Olympian. At the top of the final staircase, the ladders leading to the attic had been pulled down. He scaled them like a monkey, finding himself in the ancient mustiness of the Belgravia Avenue vintage attic, a place that made the rest of the house smell like a rose garden in comparison. Someone had placed a box under the open skylight – no doubt to stand on and get a better look out into the night.

  Zzzzzzttttt.

  That was all the warning he got.

  The wasp-faerie smashed into him from behind, descending from the attic’s ceiling where it had curled all six of its segmented legs flat against the wooden beams, subsuming itself into the darkness until he passed by below. Claws lanced into his back, ripping into his flesh.

  The barbed flail went skidding across the attic floor, hopelessly out of reach. He felt hot, rancid breath on his neck as the thing brought its snapping jaws down. Larka had been behind him on the stairs, but how would a wolf her size climb a ladder and squeeze her enormous body into this confined attic?

  He was alone up here. Alone, and doomed, and about to feel those teeth rip into the soft flesh of the back of his neck …

  ‘Leave him alone!’

  He felt the weight of the wasp-faerie lift off his back, heard it hiss in pain and outrage as, from a set of decades-old decomposing boxes, a newcomer wielding the flail recently knocked from his grasp managed to land a glancing blow at his attacker.