celtictrinity

[celtictrinity]

chapter 8

    “Perhaps none of you have ever been bold enough to attempt what I am doing. The mortals worship us, they beg us for guidance. Why not rule them as they clearly need to be ruled?”

    “There are too many of us and our petty squabbles could tear the world apart, you know that. That’s why the law was instituted, Crom Cruach. To protect the world from us.”

    “Then it should be no problem if only I choose to rule the mortals. The rest of you can cower behind your rules and I will rule this world. No petty squabbles to be had.”

    “That’s not the reason the law was made. You are beholden to it as we are.”

    “But you cannot stop me without breaking your precious law, can you? Or would you destroy this world you are trying to protect simply to stop me…”

                                                  * * *

    Cinda was all for setting out as soon as they could load the truck and be gone. She hadn’t known that her friend was working on a book and it hurt a little that Shara hadn’t told her. Even more than that, the subject of the book left Cinda feeling uneasy. More so with that picture of the twins, for who else could it be, published for all the world to see. But mostly she had to wonder, and it was an unwelcome thought, had Shara Rose only been her friend to gather information for this book? Because Cinda had been fairly certain her friend hadn’t known about her own parentage.

    Sam and Ben, though still somewhat stunned to see themselves in the picture in the book, had counseled they wait until Sam could read through the whole book and they knew what it actually said rather than run off half cocked based on a picture. Especially since the boys were fairly certain they had never crossed paths with Shara Rose before in the past. Which meant she’d seen them some other way.

    Cinda knew the boys were no strangers to visions. Sam especially, but even Ben had had them. More than she had. She mostly had dreams and usually not clairvoyant ones. Still she itched to be on the road and moving. She escaped out to wander the salvage yard, which was easier to bear with her thoughts than the strange house with two strangers in close quarters.

    Bobby seemed nice enough and she was glad the twins had him. Missouri made her nervous, as powerful psychics often did. She had things in her past she would prefer remained in the past and powerful psychics, often as not, didn’t keep their mouths shut about sensitive issues. Cinda supposed it was an unfair thought, being as she was a powerful fire witch and the daughter of a god (though she certainly didn’t advertise that bit) and there had been many who had been uncomfortable around her because of how powerful she was. But it didn’t change that powerful psychics made her nervous and Missouri was clearly of the ilk.

    She’d rather deal with the itching under her skin and be able to breathe the fresh air than stay stuffed in that house with people she didn’t know and a book she had to wonder about.

    As she wandered the salvage yard in the dying light of the day she wondered if maybe her suspicions were unwarranted. Shara Rose had never felt like she was fishing for information, had never seemed to be taking notes of the things Cinda mentioned, had never pushed Cinda to talk about her father. As far as Cinda knew, Shara Rose didn’t know who her father was, only that he was a god and he’d been unkind to her.

    At some point Cinda heard a car start up and leave and she wondered who had gone and why. She wasn’t ready to return though and continued to wander the huge salvage yard. There was a kind of stark, modernist beauty in the stacks of ruined cars, harder to see in the fading light now than when she and Ben had been out earlier, but there nonetheless.

    Still, she was going to have to go in soon and assuage the ache that was building at being away from the twins. She hadn’t thought of the ties she had to the twins as being restricting, and she still didn’t. If she had met Bobby and Missouri on neutral territory, she thought she might have handled it better. But this was not her home or neutral territory, this was Bobby’s home ground. She was the interloper and she felt it with the itch of iron and the weight of the number of wards about the place.

    Just as she was deciding to head back to the house, she heard footsteps coming towards her unerringly, felt Ben’s presence soothing part of the ache that was tugging her back towards the house. She stopped and stood still, waiting for him to find her.

    Coming out of the stark shadows cast by the stacks of cars in the floodlights that lit up the salvage yard, Ben was like a welcome apparition approaching. There was concern in his green-gold eyes, washed out in the night dark. He approached her slowly and Cinda wondered what he saw in her own eyes that he approached her like a wild shy animal.

    “I came to see how you were doing,” he said quietly once he was close enough. He came to a stop just within arm’s length and studied her face. “Missouri is going to stay the night in a motel in town. She had already called and made the reservation before she got here, knowing we were staying with Bobby. She says she’s sorry she chased you away.”

    Cinda gave a soft sigh of relief that the psychic wasn’t staying the night and Ben reached for her. She went into his arms and held him tightly, face pressed against his chest for a long moment, letting his presence, his nearness, settle her nerves. Enfolded in his arms this way even the itch of iron was a faint thing she was barely aware of.

    “I’m sorry I left so abruptly,” she said into his chest. “It was… too much suddenly. I just… needed to be outside and away.”

    “I know,” Ben said softly, stroking her hair and holding her close. “It’s okay. Sam and I… we get it. If we’d known Missouri was coming, we’d have warned you, but we didn’t have a clue. In your place we’d have reacted the same way. Even Bobby gets it. You don’t have to apologize, it’s okay.”

    Cinda held on to him for another long few moments, breathing in his scent, letting his presence soothe the jagged edges of uncertainty the book had opened up in her.

    “Sam would have come out with me,” Ben continued, “but he thought it would be better to read through the book as soon as he could. He should finish it tomorrow, he reads fast, and we can make plans. If you want to go see your friend, we can head out that way once we talk. But Cinda… maybe she learned things in the time you’ve been with us. We have been fairly wrapped up in ourselves for months and understandably so. Or maybe it was a project she had been working on and wasn’t sure how to tell you. From what you told us, Shara Rose sounds like she really cares about you and wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. Sam looked through the rest of the illustrations and there’s none of you in there. So, we both think she maybe got visions when she was painting. She might not even know that real people were the inspiration of her paintings.”

    Cinda sighed into Ben’s chest before turning he head, resting her ears against his chest but not releasing him just yet.

    “I ken, it’s just a shock, it was.” Her accent had deepened, as it often did in the throes of strong emotion. “I can’t believe she would do something to harm anyone. But… she’s the only friend I’ve ever had, you ken? I’m far more used to not trusting people.”

    “You trusted us,” Ben said softly.

    Cinda smiled and looked up at him. “That was a wee bit different, leannan. We’ve soul ties, we knew each other in the moment we saw each other like we knew our own selves. There was nothing to distrust. I had been waiting for you all my life.”

    Ben smiled back down at her, cupping her face, his smile turning wondering and awed. Eight months wasn’t long enough for the awe that they’d actually found each other to have worn off. He bent down to brush a soft kiss over her forehead, then another soft kiss to her lips that she pressed back into, going onto tiptoe. Hating the difference in their height even as she let the sweet shock of the kiss wash over her.

    Ben finally pulled back. “We should head back in. You didn’t eat anything and you should. And Sam will be glad to see you smile rather than look distressed.”

    Cinda sighed before pulling away, catching his hand and turning back towards Bobby’s house. “I dinna think Sam will find anything we’re looking for in that book he’s reading. And we came here with a purpose. I dinna want to derail that with my distress.”

    Ben started walking, holding her hand firmly. “You haven’t derailed anything. Sam had already figured we might not find what we were looking for in Bobby’s library. Bobby has a lot of books, it’s true, but not many of them have to do with gods in truth and Sam has a wicked memory. Once he looked through the new books Bobby had gotten since the last time we were here, it was just a matter of finding the few books that dealt with gods and skimming through them. Sam’s read most everything Bobby owns. He can be scary sometimes, with how he can pull a passage from a certain obscure book straight from memory and recite it almost word for word.”

    Cinda noticed that Ben sounded fond and proud again as he talked about his twin. It made her smile. Ben could easily have been jealous of his twin and she didn’t doubt that he had moments of it, but mostly the twins seemed to truly be proud of each other for their talents and triumphs. They rarely fought and when they did it caused almost as much distress as being separated. And there was never any resentment in either of them over it. Cinda didn’t think most siblings were so close and she wondered if their soul bond had something to do with it.

    Then what Ben said finally registered and she came to a stop. Ben also stopped and glanced at her with an eyebrow lifted in question.

    “Ben… if Sam can do that… we didne actually have to come here, did we?�� Cinda asked the question, puzzled, with a small frown.

    Ben gave her a warm smile and tugged her back into motion. “Only if he’s tagged the passage. Usually he keeps in mind what the general subject is and certain key passages unless he’s looking for something specific. He would have tagged which books were about gods but not truly committed any of the specific passages to memory before now. We didn’t know that we would need them. So yeah, he’d still have to read them again to know for sure what they said, it just makes it easier for him to find the books he needs instead of going through the whole of Bobby’s library.”

    Cinda blinked in surprise, feeling a little awed herself. She hadn’t thought that Sam had that kind of memory going for him. To be fair, the library of books they had at their place was fairly small and far more easily looked through compared to the number of books Cinda had seen at Bobby’s place.

    By the time they reached Bobby’s porch, Cinda finally shook her head with a bemused smile. “He’s something else, our Sam is.”

    “Yeah, yeah he is,” Ben said softly before leading her into the house.

                                                * * *

     The gods used to spend a fair amount of time in the mortal world. Incarnated into a form of mortal flesh that could withstand their godly powers. The mortals were at times fascinating creatures to observe and interact with. Some gods found them more fascinating than others while some often saw them as a plague upon the world.

    Whatever their personal views, there were often children of gods wandering about. Many became the heroes of which stories were written. They often had tragic ends. The children of the gods who chose to embark on heroic quests rarely lived as long as their brethren who lived quieter lives and only focused on enhancing the lives of the villages they lived within. Those who chose to live quietly lived much longer indeed, the blood of their godly parent often lengthening their lives three to four times that of the usual mortal.

    When the gods chose to withdraw from the world to protect it and the mortals that lived in it, not all were as willing to give up their hold as others. Some had to be forced to leave, for they found their sway over the mortals a sweet thing they were unwilling to give up. The gods however weren’t disallowing worship, the mortals would do as they would. They simply felt that their physical presence in the world was too dangerous a thing for it. They could still speak to their chosen prophets, could still send visions and dreams. Could still incarnate as mortal if they so chose, to walk among them, but they would leave the greater share of their power behind until their mortal life ended and they ascended back to their godly forms.

    Some gods argued that they couldn’t do their duties if they couldn’t take corporeal form in the world. But they found that the world turned whether they were there to personally usher in certain events or not, and that they could still enhance those changes in their non corporeal forms. It meant that the number of children born to the gods lessened exponentially but the mortals seemed to settle into that as well, coming up with their own explanations for why the gods no longer walked among them.

    A few gods, incarnated into human form and knowing who they truly were, attempted to subvert the law. But a god in human form has limited power, even one that gains worshippers to strengthen them. Crom Cruach was the one who found that there was power to be gained if one could breach the underways and reach into the Otherworld. It was not an easy thing to do for a god, who though wearing human form was not truly of the world. But humans with power could do so much easier. The trick was finding humans with enough power to do what was needed.

    Crom Cruach suspected that having a child with a human with power would give him a firmer foothold in the world than simply gathering humans with power, who often died when they breached the underways, unable to withstand channeling the power from the Otherworld to their lord and Master. But a child of his, born of a human with power… perhaps that would work.

    He set about attempting to father children on women with power. Most were useless to him, not inheriting power from him or their mother and Crom Cruach despaired of ever having the perfect child. Until he fathered a daughter on a young witch. A powerful child she was and would have been the perfect tool if her mother had truly been a follower of his. She was not, however, and took the child away to hide her.

    Crom Cruach also learned that by this time, the other gods had caught on to what he was trying to do and had chosen to send another god to do the same, to sire a child that would be powerful enough to stop him. He left off the search for his own daughter and instead sought out the incarnated deity and child meant to be a hindrance to him and his. It was a calculated risk, allowing the child of his to be reared by a woman who was not his follower and dared to defy him, but he didn’t think it would take much time to find and destroy the child born to stop him and then he could retrieve his own daughter and teach her the way of things.

    The encounter did not go as planned, for though he killed the goddess’s incarnated form he had been too weakened by the fight to kill the children, for there were two, twin borns, a rarity among mortals. He was forced to hide away until he could regain his strength and power, leaving the two boys in the world. He cursed his fortune for days. His own child spirited away, the two meant to stand against him still alive and well. His plans would have to be placed on hold as he regained his strength, for it was harder now to find humans of power willing to work with him as knowledge that those who followed him often died in the end, hard deaths full of pain as they were burned from the inside out by the power that was too strong for them to control.

    It took a long time for him to regain even some of his strength, though even he felt the wash of power that filled the world when the three god-born children found each other and pledged themselves to one another. Because of the pledge he also felt their deaths and cursed his misfortune. He would have to start again. But if he’d read the wash of power correctly the three were so bound to themselves and the world and their purpose that it would only be a matter of time until the powerful daughter he’d sired walked the world again.

    He would just have to be more careful about the witch he sired her on this time.

                                                * * *

     By midafternoon of the next day, Sam had finished the book and they all gathered in Bobby’s living room. Cinda was leaning against Sam’s side this time, more at ease than the last time they’d all gathered there. She had figured out that Bobby wasn’t holding her father’s actions against her, for which she was eternally grateful. She wasn’t sure she didn’t hold her father’s actions against her. He was, after all, her blood. She’d feared all her life, despite the favor of two goddesses who seemed to love her despite her very human side, that one day she would become what he’d tried to make of her.

    “There isn’t anything in the book, as it is, that will help us,” Sam started, rubbing Cinda’s shoulders, “though it’s an interesting read and I’m glad Missouri brought it to us. But I’m going to guess that the books Shara used for her research might possibly have something that will help us.”

    “Shara Rose,” Cinda corrected quietly. “She never goes by Shara alone. She’s always, as long as I’ve known her, gone by Shara Rose.”

    Sam nodded. “Shara Rose, then. What’s more… Cinda I think she was trying to get you to come and see her.”

    Cinda blinked in surprise and gazed at him. “What makes you say that?”

    Sam shrugged a shoulder. “For anyone who doesn’t know you, I doubt they’d pick up the same things. But there’s also power in the pages of the book. It’s subtle and I doubt completely unintentional. Being bound to you, Ben and I feel it more than anyone else would have, or even could have. It’s a subtle plea to come to her. Nothing that forces you to do so, mind. More like a request. And again, I doubt anyone other than me and Ben would feel the request in the power in the pages. If you held the book and started reading it, I bet it would be clearer to you, since it’s meant for you.”

    Cinda looked astonished. She hadn’t ever given thought to putting magic in the pages of a book, although she’d heard of it being done. It was why some books had to be treated with care. Still she hadn’t thought Shara Rose would resort to doing such-

    Cinda smacked herself in the forehead and looked chagrined. “I didne let her ken I got a new phone. She does nae have my number and I never did save hers. She’s no way to contact me.” She sounded as chagrined as she looked, gazing at the book on the table that Sam had already read through.

    “She couldne have been working on this only since I’ve been with you. It takes longer than that to publish a book.” Although considering her irregular visits, maybe Shara Rose thought it was a chance she was willing to take. After all, the book did end up in her hands, so to speak.

    Sam shrugged. “I have no idea how long it takes a book to go from editor to publisher, but I suspect she’s been working on this for a couple of years. It’s partially historical, partially personal and really well written. Your friend is very talented, not just with the art.”

    Cinda reached out slowly and picked up the book, turning it to the page Missouri had directed them to yesterday. She gazed at the picture there, glanced up and studied the boys for a long moment before looking back to the picture. “I recognized her style immediately. I’ve been watching her paint for years now. But something… something in this one is different than her usual. Though she captured your essence well for someone who’s never seen you before.”

    Sam nodded. “It’s only clear to you and us and Missouri that this picture is us because you know us and we know ourselves. I don’t think most people would realize it’s us.”

    Bobby spoke up. “It’s not near as obvious to me,” he said. “I can kind of see it, a little, but not as clearly or as firmly as all of you seem to be able to.”

    Cinda ran her fingers lightly over the picture as Sam said, “Because you can’t see or feel the power that flows around us. Even Ben and I don’t see it this clearly, only in brief moments. But we feel it and looking at that picture we can both feel the currents that surround us.”

    “I can see it,” Cinda said softly. She lifted her head to look at Sam and Ben. “I can see the power around you both when I focus, just as in the picture here. I ken Shara Rose can as well. It’s part of why we teamed up the first time we met each over. Because she could see the power around things in the world.”

   “What does that have to do with the book, though?” Bobby sounded impatient and Cinda broke off her gaze, looking down at the pages and focusing on the words. She could feel the power in the book, same as the boys could, but she hadn’t actually tried to read the book. She’d looked at the one picture and the dust jacket. As Sam started to talk, she flipped to the first page and started to read the words.

    “Not much, really,” Sam said with a quirked smile. “It’s just an interesting something. No, the important thing is that however long Shara Rose has been working on this book, she did weave a powerful but subtle message to Cinda within the pages of it. Within the words themseleves so that even when it went to print the power would still be there. Most people will feel the power, like Missouri did, and it would draw them to the book, likely prompt their interest enough to buy it. But the point was- “

    “I feel it now,” Cinda said, interrupting him. She looked up, her fingers on the page, eyes startled. “She must truly wish me to come to see her. I canna believe she’d have done this for any other reason. She wants me to come to see her and it’s important that I do so.”

    Sam nodded. “I felt the edges of it, likely because we’re soul bound. It was clear to me that it was for you, though it was faint, like a whisper against the wind.”

   Cinda huffed as she closed the book. “Is nae a whisper to me,” she said. “Is quite clear.” She looked troubled, though. Why would her friend go through such trouble just to get her to come to see her? She’d never done such in all the years they’d known each other. Maybe… maybe she knew she’d found something Cinda needed to know?

    She looked up as she felt Sam’s hand on her arm, met his amber and green eyes. “Cinda… there’s nothing in this book about you or your father. She wasn’t… your friend just to pump you for information. In fact, … she tells about learning of her own parentage. I think she wanted you to know but didn’t know how to tell you. I don’t think you misjudged her at all and I think you’re right, we do need to go and see her.”

    Cinda felt the sudden release of tension she hadn’t been aware she was holding and gave Sam a wobbly smile, thankful he understood.

    Bobby gazed at the three of them and shook his head. “Just… keep me appraised. If you’re going to fight a god, I know there’s not much I can do to help but I’d like to know how you all are doing. I’d like you to stay on this side of the veil if that’s possible.” There was a fair amount of emotion in Bobby’s voice and as Cinda glanced at him she realized the grizzled older man looked at the twins as his own boys. He loved them as if they were his own and he was willing to do anything he could to help them.

    “I’ll make sure they come back safe and sound, sir,” Cinda said softly but firmly.

    Bobby looked at her, a measuring look before he said, “No sirs in my own house. Bobby is fine. And I wanna see you all back and in one piece, you hear me?”

    Cinda swallowed and felt her eyes water unaccountably. She nodded before ducking her head, feeling Sam’s arm squeeze her in a sideways hug. She understood what the older man was saying without coming right out and saying it. He approved of her. Another knot of tension loosened and she took a shuddery breath.

    She’d hoped for his approval but hadn’t realized how much it would mean to her. She was glad she had it. Now if she could just manage to keep her twins in one piece and get them through this. Shara Rose was just one more stop on the way to an inevitable meeting with her father she wasn’t looking forward to. But she wasn’t a scared child anymore. She’d grown into her power and she had the twins’ love and support. They were a team of three. She wasn’t alone anymore. They could do this.

    She prayed they could do this.

[celtictrinity]

chapter 7

    “He’s gaining too much strength. If this goes any longer none will be able to stop him. The cycle must end, Airmid, before he finds a way to destroy everything we’ve tried to protect.”

    “The others weren’t happy about this the first time we tried it. Especially because the children were stronger than they had expected. You know they are wary of the children of gods and mortals, and for good reason.”

    “Nevertheless, those three put something into motion that none of us expected them to. The time for their spirits to re-enter the world is coming. If we want them to be able to stop him once and for all, you must go now.”

    “I know. Tell the others. I will do what I can.”

    “I know you will, Airmid.”

                                                   * * *

    Ben and Cinda wandered the salvage yard, Cinda brushing absently at her arms every now and then. Ben noticed that she was faintly uncomfortable but he wasn’t sure why. Both he and Sam had picked up some faint discomfort from her since they’d showed up at the salvage yard but there hadn’t really been time to ask about it. Of course, he was uncomfortable himself, not far enough away from his twin to cause pain but enough to make him very aware of the distance between them.

    When they’d gotten in last night they hadn’t talked much before unloading the truck and heading to bed. Bobby had been surprised to see the weapons they’d brough with them and it had only sobered him more. But they had waited until this morning to talk about the events of the last few weeks.

    Bobby hadn’t seemed wary of Cinda until after Sam told him what they both remembered of that night back when they were four and a half years old. Learning that it had been Cinda’s father that had come to tear their family apart had the older man studying Cinda, who has been busy studying her knees, shoulders hunched. Ben had tugged her into his side as Sam finished up with what they knew, that their mother had come back much later that night to talk to John and John hadn’t reacted well. Bobby’s face had turned grim as Sam explained that their mother had spoken to them both that night before she’d left and John had taken them away.

    “She told us it wasn’t safe,” Sam had said. “That we had to stay with our dad. She told us we wouldn’t remember much but it was to keep us safe. And she told us she loved us very much and she’d watch over us as much as she could. Bobby… he lied to us. He told us she hadn’t come back for us at all, that she didn’t want us. For years he told us that. The only reason Mom let him take us was because she was trying to keep us safe.”

    They’d learned that after John had talked to Missouri (whose house they had been staying at after the confrontation between their mother and Cinda’s father) he’d made his way to Bobby.

    “I knew… well as much as John could make sense of what happened that night. He didn’t know he was dealing with gods, didn’t know anything at all except that his wife wasn’t human and was fighting something else that wasn’t human. He was running scared, I knew that. He came to me because we were old friends but also because of my specialty. He wanted to know what he could do to protect himself and you boys.” Bobby had paused and looked uncomfortable for a long moment before adding slowly, grudgingly, “He also wanted to make sure you boys were human.”

    Sam and Ben had been taken aback by the admission. Not that it surprised them much. John was always uncomfortable around his boys, even before they’d left Kansas and their mother behind. And knowing what they knew of themselves now, they couldn’t really get offended since it seemed they weren’t fully human anyway. But it left them wondering what their dad would have done with them if Bobby hadn’t told John they were human.

    “Did you know?” Sam’s question was quiet and Ben held Cinda a little tighter.

    Bobby pulled the hat off his head and twisted it in his hands. “I knew that there was something more to you boys. But that’s all I knew. Missouri hadn’t sent me any kind of warning about you so I trusted her judgement. I don’t have any special powers, you know that. I read a damn lot and I’ve picked up even more but it’s all intellectual knowledge, Sam. I don’t sense things the way Missouri does, the way you two do. I don’t feel the world the way you do. So, I could only go with my gut and my gut said you were traumatized boys who needed their family to care for them. If I’d known what John was going to do….”

    There had been silence between them until Cinda had finally spoken up, hesitant. “It was a bad situation. You did what you thought was best for them. They were only wee lads and you didne ken that their da was hiding things. I dinna think you acted to cause anyone harm. I believe you were trying to help your friend and his children. If you’d kent what had happened perhaps you’d have done things differently. But guilt… it does nae do much to change what’s already done and gone. It’s clear you care for them; you’ve done what you can to make up for what their da did. You canna ken everything.”

    Sam had glanced at Cinda, still huddled into Ben’s side and sighed softly. “She’s right. It doesn’t matter anymore. You already told us you didn’t think John meant to hole up for more than a decade in that old bunker you sent him off to. You couldn’t have known what paranoia and fear and strong drink would do to him. Especially if he didn’t even keep in contact. We need to focus on now and try to figure out how to handle what’s coming. Because something is definitely coming. And our mom, she told us we have to stop Cinda’s father. We need to figure out how. That’s why we’re really here. We need access to your library.”

    Bobby had studied Cinda for a long moment before pulling his cap back onto his head and sighing heavily. “I’ve regrets aplenty for my life. Can’t live this long without collecting up some. But none have ate at me as much as when John dropped off the face of the planet and wouldn’t even talk to me. Worried about you boys all those years. Was surprised and glad when Missouri called me and said John’s boys needed help. Any help you need, you got from me. You know that.”

    Sam had wanted to dive into the books right away. Cinda had spent a few hours helping him. Ben had struggled through two books before Sam had gently suggested he go work on something out in the salvage yard instead of torture himself with fighting words that didn’t want to cooperate with him. Ben had been all too relieved to put the book down and escape to do something with his hands, even if he’d felt he was somehow failing Cinda and Sam by doing so.

    Cinda had come looking for him a couple of hours later and Ben had taken a break from his single-minded focus on the engine he’d been fighting with, which led to them taking a walk through the salvage yard.

    Ben glanced sidelong at Cinda who was rubbing her arms absently and finally decided he wanted to know what about the salvage yard was setting her on edge.

    He stopped walking and Cinda paused as well, looking at him with a question in her eyes.

    “What’s bothering you about the salvage yard, Cinda? You keep… brushing at your arms absently and while you don’t seem in pain there’s something… some kind of discomfort.” Ben didn’t bother with trying to lead up to it, just asked fairly bluntly. It didn’t make any sense to beat around the bush and he wasn’t good at it anyway. None of them really were, though Cinda could circle a subject for ages before actually coming to the point.

    Cinda blinked then let out a startled laugh. “I hadne thought it was obvious. It’s all the iron. I told you and Sam I have fae in my background, aye?”

    Ben nodded, head cocked to one side. “What does that have to do with anything?”

    Cinda gestured around. “Fae canna tolerate iron. I dinna have much of the blood but I’ve enough for this place to make me fair itch. Is nae pain, leannan. It’s only discomfort.”

    Ben studied Cinda for a long quiet moment, trying to make sure she was being honest. The endearment brought a brief smile to his face as it always did, but he wanted to be sure Cinda wasn’t trying to tolerate something that was causing her actual pain for their sakes. Neither he nor Sam had thought about what being at the salvage yard might be like for her because neither of them had known her fae blood might make it painful.

    He looked around the salvage yard, suddenly registering how many old wrecks were stacked on the grounds and how much iron had to be found in the mess of metal and fiberglass gathered on the grounds of the salvage yard. “We didn’t think….” Ben said softly, looking back to Cinda in concern.

    She touched his arm, eyes softening. “Is nae pain. I promise. Is an annoying itch but naught I canna handle. I dinna usually even think of my fae blood much, there’s nae a lot truly told. But sometimes it will rear up and make itself felt.”

    Ben studied her face again and decided she wasn’t trying to hide more pain than she could handle. He was pretty sure he’d be able to tell if she was actively in pain. “Is it better inside?”

    Cinda shrugged a shoulder. “A wee bit, aye. Easier to block out. But I came looking for you, remember? I needed the break. I kent what I was doing when I walked out of the door, leannan.”

    Ben nodded but he didn’t like the idea of walking about the salvage yard now that he knew it was causing Cinda even minor discomfort. He put his arm around her shoulders and gently turned them back to the house. “We should probably rouse Sam for dinner anyway or he’ll forget to eat. He often does when he gets into the books looking for something in particular.”

    Cinda let Ben turn her and gave him a fond smile though she didn’t argue to walk any longer. Ben was glad she didn’t decide to argue because he was pretty sure he’d have been insistent and he didn’t want to come up against Cinda’s temper, which was a match for his and Sam’s easily. They ambled back towards the house. “I dinna think I’ve ever seen him at the books like he was today. I kent he could focus but I didne really understand how focused he could get.”

    Ben laughed softly. “He likes to know things and he loves books. He would tear through any books we had looking for an answer when he got a question in his head Dad wouldn’t respond to. When we first showed up at Bobby’s and he saw the books, I think he had an orgasm just from the sight.”

    Cinda chuckled softly, leaning into him as they walked. “I dinna mind books, I even like them. But I dinna have the same kind of focus he does. And he makes some intuitive jumps when looking things up I canna follow.”

    Ben nodded. “Yeah, that’s Sam. He’s ridiculously smart.” There was pride in his voice and his fond smile.

    Cinda nudged him lightly. “You are just as smart as he is, laddie boy. Dinna think I missed you were doing more anger management on that engine than actual fixing of it. Reading is nae all there is to solving a problem. Is nae your fault the words on the page dinna behave as they ought when you try to read. It does nae make you less intelligent than Sam.”

    Ben felt himself flush at Cinda’s words because they were entirely too accurate. He had been taking his temper out on the metal and had been castigating himself for not being able to help more with researching. He should have known Cinda would notice.

    “Sam usually read to me,” he said slowly. “I don’t know why reading is so hard, but it always has been and it makes me feel stupid. Sam tells me all the time that I’m not but… it’s hard to believe sometimes.”

    Cinda shrugged as the house came into view. “Everyone has different strengths. You have them a plenty. Reading is just nae one of them. Is nae your own fault for that.”

    Ben shrugged noncommittally. He mostly believed her but there was a small part of him that still felt dumb because reading was so damn hard. It kept whispering to him it shouldn’t be so damn hard, it was reading for fuck’s sake, not rocket science.

    Cinda was about to say something in response to the shrug when they both heard a car entering the salvage yard. They both went on alert as though expecting the worst. Cinda’s hand drifted towards one of the knives she had on her person and Ben’s eyes narrowed as they hurried up to the porch where the house wards were stronger than the ones in the yard. But neither of them could bring themselves to go in the house until they saw whether it was friend or foe approaching.

    Ben felt a moment of surreal disconnection at the thought and how easily it came. He and Sam were wary of people in general but they had never jumped straight to wondering if someone approaching was a threat. Of course, that was before they’d learned a dark god had tried to kill them as children and their mother had exhorted them to stop the same dark god. It didn’t feel like they were in the same world they had been in before.

    It took longer than usual for Ben to place the sound of the engine coming towards them because it was so unexpected and out of place. Once he did, he relaxed though his face looked puzzled. Cinda felt him relax and glanced at him, though not pulling her hand away from the knife.

    As the car came into view and pulled to a stop next to their truck Ben said slowly, and in some confusion, “It’s Missouri. What’s she doing here?”

    At the same time the front door behind them opened and Bobby came out onto the porch. Cinda and Ben both looked at him as he stopped, waved to the car that had just appeared before looking at the both.

    “She called about twenty minutes ago to say she was almost here. Don’t ask me what brough her out here, I didn’t call her. Didn’t even think about it. But I’m guessing she sensed something that couldn’t be said over the phone.”

    Ben and Cinda exchanged a look and then glanced back over to the car. Then Ben shook his head and left the porch to meet Missouri at her car. If Missouri felt she was needed here, he wasn’t about to argue it.

                                                  * * *

    The first time Airmid incarnated as a human, she was unprepared for the experience. Gods were not mortal and experienced the world differently than mortals did. Taking on human flesh to carry a child that might stop Crom Cruach altered the way she saw and felt the world. She thought she had been ready for it, had had others try to tell her what the experience was like. But she had never incarnated as a human, had never seen the need to, and the first time had been overwhelming.

    She’d lost herself to it, truly told, and she knew it. It’s what allowed her to be taken unawares and for her human flesh to be killed before the children she’d borne could be taught their purpose. But more than that, she’d loved her children, her twin boys, with a fierceness she had never known could exist. She’d had no children before and the way gods loved their children was different than the ways mortals loved theirs.

    She had watched over her twin boys as well as she could. Had been glad their father had taken them to be taught to use their powers, though it saddened her he seemed to think nothing of leaving the boys behind. She hadn’t expected the way grief would change the man who had fathered her children. She hadn’t loved him in the human way but she’d been fond of him. She hadn’t known he had loved her quite so fiercely, hadn’t known what her apparent death would do to the man.

    Still, she hadn’t taken human form to conceive children on a lark, there had been a purpose and the twin boys were important in a way their father was not. She’d watched over the boys as much as she could. She hadn’t counted on them coming across a third child of a god, hadn’t foreseen the soul ties the three would forge. Airmid didn’t think anyone had seen that coming or the repercussions of three very powerful children being tied in such a way. They definitely hadn’t expected the third to be the child of the one they were trying to stop.

    In the end, the gamble had failed and all three had died as only mortals could die. But their powers and magic and soul ties had tied their souls together in ways the gods couldn’t even understand and kept the purpose her twins had been born for alive and part of the fabric of the world. Therefore, the gods could only wait for the three to return to the world and hope they were more successful the next time.

    Airmid was more prepared for incarnating as a human this time and didn’t lose herself as she had the first time. She expected to carry twin-borns this time and she was far more careful about keeping her own presence as muted as she could lest she lead Crom Cruach to her again. She hadn’t counted on her twins being more powerful this time around. She did what she could to erase a signature from the power that flowed around them but they still shone like beacons and in the end all she did was postpone when they were discovered. Sooner this time than the first, but she was prepared, not lost in mortal sensations.

    Again, however, she did not count on the twin’s father reacting as he did. Time was a difficult concept for her to come to terms with and the many years that had passed since the last time she had incarnated had made such things as gods who walk among mortals a rare thing more humans not only had no experience with but could not comprehend. She knew her boys would be safer without her, to grow up and hopefully become strong enough to stop the mad dark god. She had hoped to explain to their father their purpose and have him help her but he was not willing to hear her out, indeed feared her almost more than the god who had come and destroyed their temporarily quiet lives.

    It pained her greatly to have to let her twins go. A second time, no less. And this time she could not watch over them as she had before, still wearing human flesh and feeling the need to continue to do so for the time being. She wasn’t sure what instinct led her to keep to her current incarnation of Mary Winchester rather than shedding it and regaining her full powers, but she did.

    Instead of following after her boys, which her heart wanted to do, she sought out other deities currently at work in the world, seeking a few who might shelter her, who might be willing to help her boys when the time came for them to face the dark god they were meant to stop. Airmid knew it wouldn’t happen until they had once more found their third and hoped that they would do so before Crom Cruach regained his strength from the encounter between them. She had managed to weaken him greatly and it would take time before he could go seeking her boys again. Hopefully it would give them enough time to come into their full powers, find their third and end this once and for all.

    But she missed them desperately.

                                                  * * *

    Sam crawled up out of the books once he knew Missouri had come to visit them, looking surprised and frowning in frustration. He’d had little luck poring through the books he’d pulled out in learning how one killed or stopped a god. He wasn’t sure if there was no info because there was no way to do so (which he didn’t believe, why would their mother tell them to do the impossible?) or he hadn’t found the right book yet. Bobby had a fairly extensive library but he had a whimsical categorizing system so sometimes it got tricky finding the right book. And Sam hadn’t looked for something in Bobby’s library in earnest for a while. So, his memory of the system was hazy at best.

    He hadn’t been aware of how many hours he’d been poring over books until he stood and his back protested the movement. Ben often teased him that he was gonna need glasses the way he spent hours at a time with his nose in books when he was given the chance.

    He met the others in the kitchen, where Bobby was pulling out drinks for everyone and Missouri was settling into a seat at the kitchen table. He glanced at Cinda, who was hanging back and looking awkward and like she might bolt and figured that five people in Bobby’s kitchen was about her limit of tolerance. It would have been for the twins if it had been anyone other than Bobby and Missouri, who he was pretty sure he had never seen in the same place at the same time before.

    Before he could move to Cinda’s side, Ben snagged her arm and tugged her over to the kitchen counter to make sandwiches for them all for dinner. Instead, Sam settled in a chair next to Missouri as Bobby tried to find something other than beer to offer the woman.

    “What are you doing here, Missouri?” Sam asked with a smile and a hug for her. “Kansas isn’t exactly a social drive.”

    “And well I know it,” Missouri said agreeably. “But I knew you boys would be here and I needed to give you something and you needed it sooner than later. First though… are you going to actually introduce me to the young woman with you both?”

    Sam blinked in surprise, having figured that Ben would have done so already and glanced to his twin who looked faintly chagrined. He looked back to Missouri. “This is Cinda Callaghan, our third and other half. We met her in February. I’m sure we told you about her.” Sam frowned, thinking back over the months and trying to recall if either of them had thought to call the powerful psychic and let her known about Cinda. He found he couldn’t recall.

    “No, you did not bother to call me and let me know, not that I didn’t know when you found her. Think most of the psychics and witches and anyone with power in the whole country heard when you met. It was a powerful meeting and echoed through the world. It’s nice to meet you, Cinda, dear. I hope these boys are treating you right.”

    Sam looked over in time to see Cinda toss a wary smile over her shoulder, face flushed though he couldn’t tell if it was nerves or embarrassment. He felt oddly protective of Cinda when he caught her look and sought to draw Missouri’s attention back to himself and away from their fire witch who didn’t do well with many people. They hadn’t planned for Cinda to have to deal with anyone new other than Bobby.

    “You said you needed to give us something?” Sam looked inquisitively at Missouri, wondering what she had that couldn’t have been sent through the mail.

    Missouri patted Sam’s arm. “Your meeting shook the occult world, Sam. Anyone with power felt that meeting even if they didn’t know who it was who’d met. The echoes of it have just been settling down but it’s stirred up some powerful beings. Something I think you are all already aware of.”

    Sam blinked in surprise. Then shook his head with a bemused smile. Missouri always seemed to know things and they never did know how she did so. She never explained but she was rarely wrong and she seemed to have a soft spot for them. He knew that Ben was listening sharply even as he and Cinda worked at the counter, Ben softly telling Cinda where the chips and pickles and such were as she retrieved them.

    “We learned who our mother really is,” Sam said seriously, the smile fading from his face. “And what sent dad running off into the night when we were kids.”

    Missouri touched Sam’s arm lightly before pulling her hand back and studying his face. “Yes… your memory is free now, I can see that. You can see the truth your daddy couldn’t accept. So, you know what’s coming then.”

    Sam frowned. “I know we have a god to stop,” he said, his voice hard. “But other than that, we’re woefully lacking details. Do you know anything?”

    Missouri looked at him sadly and shook her head. “I don’t have much to do with the gods of the world, Sam. I don’t know what you need to know. But that’s what brings me here. I think maybe I know someone who can help you. I just recently came across this book, newly published, called Children of the Gods. Some of the artwork is what made me think of you and Ben and I knew I needed to get this book into your hands. I didn’t want to trust to the dubious postal service while such powers are moving in the world. Too easy for one package to be waylaid and never reach its destination. Since I knew you boys would be here, I thought I would bring it to you myself.”

    She reached down and picked up a large handbag set on the floor next to her. Sam blinked at the size of it, wondering what all Missouri felt the need to be carrying around in it and wondering if she could use the bag as a weapon on its own.

    Missouri dug around in the bag for a moment before pulling out a hardback book which she handed over to Sam. “It hasn’t been out for very long, mind, and its only really known in the occult community. It’s a different book than I would usually read but when I saw it, I had to buy it. Almost as if there was a geas bound into the very words of it. Considering it was written by a very powerful witch I wouldn’t be surprised if she inadvertently did just that. Look at page 153. The author is also a very gifted painter.”

    Sam frowned, looking at the book before taking it from Missouri. At the contact he felt a tingle shoot through his fingers and Ben and Cinda both stopped what they were doing to look at him with wide eyes. Clearly Missouri wasn’t wrong. There was power bound into the book, though Sam couldn’t figure what it was meant to do.

    With a wary glance at Missouri he turned to the page she’d indicated and then stared at the full page illustration in shock. It wasn’t a portrait, exactly. The style was abstract and beautiful, illustrating flows of power Sam could recall seeing but had never thought to try to put down to paper. What had him staring so hard, though, was that within the gorgeous work he could clearly see two figures that resembled himself and his twin.

    At his shock, Ben stopped what he was doing and turned away from the counter. He moved over to Sam’s side to get a look at the picture Sam was studying and froze. “Damn,” he said softly, reverently. He and Sam exchanged a glance, both wondering who the artist was and if they’d ever met them, even in passing.

    The shock and surprise in both twins pulled Cinda over who stared at the illustration with wide eyes. She pulled the book from Sam’s hands and flipped to the back of the dust jacket and stared long and hard at the author photo there before breathing out softly, “It’s Shara Rose.”

[celtictrinity]

Celtic Trinity edits : Sam and Ben Winchester and Cinda Callaghan

[celtictrinity]

chapter 6

    “You come home with me tonight. You can’t just hole up in that old beat up truck and hope to heal up just fine. Can’t believe that old thing is even still running. Come on now.”

    Tired and pained sea green eyes gaze at the other witch, the hesitance clear in them. But she’s wounded and oh so tired and she wants to trust just once and not have it come back to bite her in the ass.

    The Black witch gives her an understanding smile. “You helped me out, girl. I won’t pay that back with treachery. ‘Sides, powerful witches should stick together when they can and I have the space for another body. Come on, now. You look like you haven’t eaten in a week.”

    The mention of food has her almost groaning, she’s tried not to think about how hard things have been. But there’s kindness and sympathy in the other witch’s eyes and through the exhaustion and pain she can’t sense anything that means her harm. She finally acquiesces.

                                                 * * *

    The next day they packed for the trip out to Bobby’s. Sam had called the previous night as he’d said he would and Cinda heard Bobby’s gruff voice for the first time over the speakerphone. She hadn’t really known what to make of the voice on the phone, picturing an older man who was grizzled and likely only ever wore jeans and flannel shirts. Which wasn’t a judgment call since she and the twins wore much the same.

    Cinda was more interested in watching the way the twins reacted to the man’s gruff affection. She’d never seen another person put the twins at ease. They didn’t do well with strangers in the same way she didn’t and the last eight months had mostly been only them, with periodic trips into town for supplies and to work the Farmer’s Market.

    Sam and Ben clearly trusted the man they spoke to, who didn’t hesitate to offer his guest room to them for a visit. Cinda hadn’t said much more than a hesitant hello when Sam had said they’d be bringing her with them. He also said they had some stuff they needed to talk to him about but didn’t want to get into it over the phone.

    Cinda could almost feel the speculation across the line when Sam had said that and wondered what the older man knew about the twins’ mother, if anything at all. She didn’t think either of them had called the man since learning who their mother was and who she had been defending them from. She wasn’t sure if he’d have been as welcoming if he knew as much. Or maybe she was just used to people seeing the worst and not the best.

    Packing wasn’t hard and didn’t take long. None of them had a lot of things anyway and they tended to travel light when they did travel. But Cinda was suddenly taken with a feeling she shouldn’t be traveling without her weapons. It could have been easy to chalk that up to the fact that before meeting the twins, when she’d been roaming the country on her own and alone, her weapons had been a part of her. She had never gone anywhere without at least a pair of knives on her person, and when she’d worked jobs for her lady Nemesis, she’d often had her full complement of knives and her tactical bow.

    She could feel Sam and Ben’s eyes on her as she pulled her knife case out from under the bed and carried it into the living room to check over the condition of her knives. The boys had been impressed with her collection of knives and how well balanced they were. Cinda set the case on the small living room table and sat on the couch before looking up to the boys.

    “I just… it’s a feeling. I dinna think we should travel without weapons. I dinna ken why I’m having the feeling but…” she shrugged helplessly, knowing she couldn’t articulate the feeling she was having. She forgot she was talking to the twins.

    Sam and Ben exchanged looks between themselves and after a moment nodded to her. They disappeared as she focused on cleaning and testing the edges of all her knives, picking out the ones she would carry on her person and which ones she planned to leave in the case. At least knives didn’t require a carry permit, which she didn’t have. She didn’t like guns much. Cinda didn’t know why she had such an antipathy to them, but she never used them if she could avoid it.

    When she was done with her knives and focused on the world outside her intense focus, she realized the twins were at the kitchen table cleaning their shotguns. Cinda blinked in surprise as she stood and drifted over to the kitchen table and her boys. She watched them quietly for a moment, noted their deft handling of the weapons. She hadn’t seen them with the shotguns much. When they hunted, they used their rifles. And knowing her feelings about the weapons they kept the guns out in the small shed/workshop next to the overhang they parked the truck under.

    Ben looked up briefly and saw her gazing at them in surprise. He shrugged a shoulder and gave her a small smile. “We don’t argue with unexplainable feelings. If you think we shouldn’t be unarmed, then we shouldn’t be unarmed. Not right for you to be the only one carrying weapons.”

    Cinda hadn’t expected that, not really, but now that she was thinking about it, she realized she should have. They were a team now, a unit, and whatever threatened one of them threatened all of them. And while all three of them were far more dangerous with the power within them than they were with manmade weapons, it felt somehow right for them to have them.

    She didn’t really expect trouble on the drive to their friend’s place, but she also didn’t think they would be coming back to the house immediately after. Again, she couldn’t have explained the feeling or where it came from but she had learned to listen to those feelings when they came. It had saved her life more than once and helped her survive the years she’d been on her own.

    When the shotguns had been cleaned and stowed in the truck with the rest of their things, including Cinda’s knife case, the three of them took a break to fix lunch. Cinda sat at the table and watched the twins as they efficiently packed sandwiches enough to feed a high school football team along with various other snacks into one cooler and drinks along with a couple of jars of raspberry preserves in another, before going through the fridge and removing anything that might spoil while they were gone.

    “You seem to have this routine down,” Cinda said, bemused.

    Sam glanced up, noticed Cinda watching them. She was pretty sure it wasn’t that he’d been unaware she was watching them, more that he was so used to her being there that he hadn’t logged her attention as significant. It warmed her, that she could watch them quietly and not set off their wariness or uneasiness. They were comfortable with each other in a way they weren’t with anyone else. It was a nice feeling and Cinda wanted to keep it at all costs. She didn’t know why her father had wanted to kill the twins but she wasn’t going to let him try a second time. She wouldn’t lose what she’d found, not even to him.

    “Hunting trips could take a few days, especially if we had to dress the animal in the field, which was usually. Before Dad let us go along with him, we’d pack for him. Then when he started letting us go on our own, we’d pack food and drinks for ourselves.” Sam shrugged a shoulder, the gesture very like the one Ben had given her when they’d been cleaning the weapons. The twins shared a lot of gestures though they could often employ the same gesture very differently at times.

    Trash separated into the bin and the compost heap, coolers added to the rest of their stuff in the truck, Cinda made one last pass through the house to make sure all the lights were turned off. The solar panels and generator provided all the power to the small house, more than enough for three careful people. But it didn’t make sense to leave anything on if they weren’t going to be back for a while.

   As they paused in the living room, Cinda examined that feeling. It didn’t feel like they were headed out for a short visit with a family friend. It felt like they were going to be gone longer than that. Cinda wasn’t sure she liked that feeling. Sam and Ben exchanged a glance before looking to Cinda.

    “It feels… like we’re going to be gone longer than we’d planned,” Ben said slowly, toying with the necklace around his neck. The fire obsidian hung was clutched in his hand and Cinda reached to touch the one resting against her own chest, glanced at the one around Sam’s neck. The three of them had worn the necklaces nonstop since they’d met. Cinda had said the stones acted as a focus for their power, seemed particularly attuned to the three of them in a way she had rarely experienced. But they were also symbols of the relationship of the three of them.

    Sam touched Ben’s shoulder. Cinda nodded slowly. “It does feel like that, aye. I dinna ken why. But I think something was set in motion when the lock on your memories was undone. I dinna think we can stop it.”

    Sam nodded. “I feel that way, too,” he said. He squeezed Ben’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get on the road. The sooner we figure this out the sooner we can come back home.”

    Ben released the stone in his hand, leaned in to Sam’s squeeze and offered Cinda a hand. Cinda took it and silently swore again she’d make sure her boys stayed alive and safe, that they’d all return to their home together. She sent a silent plea up to her goddesses to guard her heart in the shape of the twins as they loaded up into the truck and drove away from the house that had become home to her.

                                                  * * *

    Shara Rose Jacobs was the first real friend Cinda had ever had, certainly since finding herself in the states. Living with her father hadn’t given her a real reference for the difference between where she was and where she used to be. She supposed, looking back on it now, that in many ways she’d gotten damn lucky. She’d found someone when she was 18 to make her legal IDs since she hadn’t had any and certainly didn’t know how to go about getting one. The first six months after she won free of her father, she’d lived as a half wild thing, shying away from all people, uncertain if they’d been sent by her father to bring her back. A very real fear she couldn’t shake, even with Lady Nemesis’s promise that her aura was being cloaked.

    Lady Nemesis was the one who had led her, carefully, to the occult community. Helped her find shelter and learn her way around this new place. She might have been a witch born and knew all manner of occult things but learning the practical knowledge of living in the world had been much harder. Especially when she was still afraid her father would find her.

    She’d met Shara Rose when she was 20, while she was doing a job for her goddess. Retrieving magical items that had fallen into the wrong hands was a job she seemed especially suited for. She had a talent for finding what was lost. On this particular job, she’d run into a witch who was busy trying to stop the person who had the magical item Cinda was trying to retrieve.

    Shara Rose was a few years older and had grown up in the states. At first, she and Cinda had circled each other warily, Shara Rose not knowing why Cinda was after the magical artifact and Cinda just wary in general of a stranger with powers that were a match to her own. The other witch was clearly more than just a witch though it wasn’t Cinda’s place to say so. Cinda was sensitive to the energies around people and she could feel that something about the other witch was like her. It made her wonder if it was luck or her goddess’s intervention that she’d run into the other witch on this particular job.

    After feeling each other out they’d decided that working together would likely solve the problem for both of them a lot easier than trying to work around each other. Shara Rose, though still wary, was nonetheless all in once she decided to work with Cinda. They’d completed the job but Cinda had been hurt pretty badly in the doing. She’d ended up staying at Shara Rose’s place for going on two weeks while she healed up and during that time, she and the other witch became friends. Or at least as much friends as Cinda would let herself have.

    Five years with her father and the previous years of wandering Ireland and Scotland and England with her mother trying to hide from her father hadn’t left Cinda with many skills for making friends. Certainly not real friends that stuck by you. Shara Rose was the first Cinda made that could have counted as that, though it was another few years before Cinda realized it.

    They talked about the difference in their teachings and training growing up in different countries. Shara Rose did what she could to help the younger witch learn about American culture and start to fit in better. She was the one who’d helped Cinda find the old RV that she drove around the country.

    Cinda would find herself turning up at Shara Rose’s place after a particularly hard job. The other witch never asked uncomfortable questions, would just tuck Cinda up in her guest room and try to feed her better than she ate left to her own devices. The older witch also helped Cinda find ways to make money so she wouldn’t have to resort to outright thievery to make her way.

    For having had very different childhoods and growing up very differently, the two witches got along well. Shara Rose hadn’t known her own mother, had grown up with her father and a younger brother from another marriage. What little Shara Rose knew about her mother didn’t seem very flattering and it was strange to Cinda, whose own mother had loved her greatly. Until meeting the older witch, Cinda had naively believed that all mothers loved their children the way Wynne had loved her.

    Another thing Cinda learned was that Shara Rose was a great collector of occult things. While she didn’t have a goddess given geas to find and retrieve magical items fallen into the wrong hands, Shara Rose did have a conscience and power. Whenever she came across a magical item that needed to be neutralized or contained, she did what she could.

    The other witch had a big heart, Cinda couldn’t help but notice. She was known throughout the occult community and she helped out when and where she could. She was loyal to her family, though she was the only one who was magically inclined. Her father didn’t treat her as something evil, and her stepmother, while not necessarily the warmest woman, was caring in her way. She didn’t understand her step-daughter’s magic but she understood her step-daughter wouldn’t harm people just for kicks. And Shara Rose and her brother were very close.

    Cinda found it interesting, when she was at Shara Rose’s place, to peruse the books the other witch had collected over the years, to see the works of art Shara Rose created that were a magic of themselves. Sometimes she would find herself at the other witch’s place looking for clues or hints for the next magical item her goddess had exhorted her to find and retrieve. A few times Shara Rose had actually helped her, which had made Cinda’s job much easier.

    Cinda often wondered why the other witch always seemed to be glad to see her, willing to help her, when she seemed to get nothing out of it. It puzzled her until her Lady Nyx had suggested, gently, that perhaps the other witch simply enjoyed her company. A thought that truly hadn’t crossed Cinda’s mind and seemed to be a shock once it was broached. Cinda hadn’t considered she had company worth wanting to be around.

    For all that, Cinda found herself returning to visit the woman at odd intervals. She never called, simply showed up and hoped it wouldn’t be the time Shara Rose told her she needed to move on and find someplace else to park her old RV and crash for a few days. But it never happened.

    She never quite figured out how to broach the possibility that Shara Rose’s mother had been a goddess incarnate. She had been pretty upfront about her own background and her own father. Shara Rose had shown a fair amount of concern and anger on Cinda’s behalf, which truly confused Cinda at first. So, the other witch knew that Cinda’s father was a god and one that wasn’t exactly kind, even if she didn’t know all the details of Cinda’s five-year incarceration by her father.

    Cinda hardly knew that her own behavior screamed that she’d been abused and badly, hardly knew that Shara Rose had sensed a kindred spirit in her even if she didn’t know why. Nor did she know that Shara Rose considered her a close friend long before Cinda had realized they were actually friends. All she knew was that no matter what condition she showed up on Shara Rose’s doorstep in, the other witch would tuck her into her guest room, try to feed her and generally take care of her.

    Cinda had thought in passing, once, that if she’d had a sister, it would have been nice if she’d been like Shara Rose.

                                                * * *

    The ten-hour drive passed without incidence. There was a weight to the three of them, a gravity to the atmosphere. Cinda could tell this wasn’t entirely a pleasure trip for all the twins had wanted her to meet Bobby before now. She found herself trying to remember everything the twins had said about Bobby over the summer and early fall. There was a part of her that was still wary about meeting someone new, even if the twins seemed to think he was okay. That he was an occult specialist could be argued he was okay but Cinda knew better. She’d spent years tracking down magical items in the wrong hands and quite a few of them had identified as occult specialists as well.

    Still, she trusted the twins, who spent part of the drive telling Cinda about the year they’d stayed with the older man and some of their holiday visits over the years since. Cinda had already known the man had helped the twins get the house they currently lived in which was a major point in the man’s favor.

    On the drive, as Sam and Ben talked about how Bobby had helped them learn how to navigate the world, Cinda found herself mentioning more than once her friend who’d done the same for her. Cinda hadn’t mentioned the other witch to the twins much as they’d worked through the summer on gardening, general living and learning each other in a real and practical sense. Mostly because she’d been focused so much on the twins.

    But now, with music playing softly in the background as the miles disappeared beneath the tires of the truck, Cinda found herself telling the boys about Shara Rose. Enough so that by the time they pulled up to Singer Salvage the twins had expressed a desire to meet the witch who had helped Cinda so much, if for no other reason than to thank her for helping Cinda make it to meeting them.

    Cinda wasn’t sure what she’d expected but the huge salvage yard wasn’t anything she could have picture in her mind. She didn’t doubt that it looked very different in daylight than at just past midnight. That much metal in one place itched a little, curse of the little bit of fae in her background, and she sensed a number of well-done wards put up by someone who knew what they were doing but wasn’t magically gifted themselves. It made her respect of the man go up a few notches before she’d ever met him.

    When Ben pulled the truck to a stop and turned off the engine (he and Sam had switched off driving so neither of them had had to handle too much on their own) Cinda felt suddenly nervous. She swallowed hard and wiped suddenly damp palms on her jeans. This was a man who was important to the twins. What if he took a disliking to her?

    Sam touched her knee and squeezed gently. “It’s gonna be okay, Cinda. Bobby’s gruff and rough around the edges but he’s kind in his way.”

    Cinda nodded and slid out of the truck behind Sam as Ben swung around the back to meet them by the passenger door. They left their bags and the coolers and weapons (except the ones on their persons) in the truck as they walked up to the front porch of the house that had seen better days.

    The front door opened while they were halfway there and Cinda took in the man who stepped out on to the front porch under the light with a smile for the twins before he took her in.

    He was older, grizzled with a little grey in his beard, and an old baseball cap on his head. He wasn’t in top condition but Cinda could tell the older man could likely move if he needed to despite the few extra pounds. He was shorter than the twins and there was a lingering sadness in the backs of his eyes, something that looked like it had long ago made its home there and would never quite leave. Cinda wondered who he’d lost to put that sadness there.

    “’Bout time you idjits showed up for a visit. Figured I’d see you for a few days, at least, months ago. Weedin’ don’t take all damn day, even in those ridiculously gargantuan gardens you have out there.” His voice was rough with a trace of an old southern accent that had gotten worn down over the years. As they got closer Cinda noticed old grease in the quicks around his nailbeds, the kind that came from working on cars for days at a time.

    Based on looks alone, Cinda would have been wary and hesitant to approach a man like Bobby while alone. He looked like someone who was used to hard living and hard drinking and she would never have guessed he was an occult specialist by the look of him. But when those penetrating eyes met hers, she realized there was a shrewd intelligence behind them, that he was sizing her up the same way she was him. Cinda had the feeling that if she’d seemed to be a danger to Sam and Ben this man would have done anything he could have done to get rid of her for their sake.

    That thought, oddly, caused her to feel relief and a faint smile touched her lips as they reached the porch.

    “Weeding actually can take all damn day and you know it, old man,” Ben said, his voice touched with amusement. Sam snorted a laugh as Bobby smiled at the both of them then gestured to Cinda as they came to a stop on Bobby’s front porch.

    “This is Cinda Callaghan,” Sam said. Ben rested a hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly. “You’ve been saying you wanted to meet her all summer so we figured we’d bring her out before you tried to haul one of your old junkers down to Colorado.”

    Bobby gave Cinda another head to toe look that wasn’t at all sexual and Cinda appreciated that. She hated to be looked at like she was a piece of meat. While nothing Ben or Sam had said about Bobby had hinted he would be one to do so, it was nice to have it proven.

    He gave her a nod. “Bobby Singer. Don’t believe nothing these idjits tell you ‘bout me. Only half of it’s true.” The voice was full of caustic humor but Cinda could hear genuine caring under the tone. “Come on in, I’ll get you some drinks before you unload.”

    As he turned to open his door, Sam and Ben exchanged a brief look before Sam said, “I wish it was just a social call, Bobby but… me and Ben… well… we learned about what happened that night and… a little about who our mother really is.”

    Cinda noticed Sam’s voice was even and serious and Bobby turned back to give first Sam and then Ben a searching look. Let out a heavy sigh and nodded again.

    “We can talk in the morning then, after we all get some sleep.”

    Cinda had to wonder, as they followed him into the house, how much Bobby had known or suspected based on the faint trace of resignation in his voice.

[celtictrinity]

chapter 5

    “You boys look like you need more than fruit.”

    Two pairs of startled green and gold eyes turn towards the voice, a short, plump black woman with sympathy in dark eyes watching them stare at the selection of apples as though they held answers to the confusion that had become their life.

    “Come with me then. You need a good meal and some real rest and more answers than you’ll find staring at those apples.”

    Matching frowns and wariness now as they gaze at the woman who seems vaguely familiar but they’re sure they don’t know.

    “It’s been years and you’re bigger than you were but I recognize John Winchester’s boys.”

                                                 * * *

     Sam and Ben hadn’t given real thought on how one stopped a god, caught up in getting the harvest finished and the newly unlocked memories that kept rising and slotting into place, filling in bits of holes they hadn’t noticed because they’d been so young when the holes were put there. But after hearing Cinda’s story both of them were more than willing to find out if there was a way to kill a god. The haunted horror that had lit beloved sea green eyes had torn at both of them, leaving a heart bruise behind and the beginnings of a burning rage.

    John had put them through a lot but he’d never tortured them (trying to separate them didn’t count, even if it felt a betrayal every time the man tried to do so). He’d never beat them (at least not hard enough to leave lash marks like an accusation on their skin, just bruises and they could handle bruises) for no reason except that they hadn’t done something perfect the first time. John had been many things but he’d been more afraid than anything. The twins had always known that. He hadn’t been the kind of monster Cinda’s father was (and never mind that she didn’t agree, she didn’t understand, John hadn’t known how to handle the twins being different).

    As they finished the rest of the harvest, unobtrusively keeping an eye on their subdued fire witch, they tried to figure out how one went about taking out a god.

    “We’re gonna have to try Bobby,” Sam said as they worked on washing extra vegetables and fruits they were taking to the Farmer’s Market tomorrow. They had a stall there that they kept rented all through the summer and fall to sell the extra produce for money. They made a fairly tidy little sum to add to their account. They didn’t have a lot but they were doing fairly well for not having had much experience in the world until they were 17. Bobby had had to teach them about things like banks and accounts and debit cards, faintly scandalized that John hadn’t bothered to teach his sons anything about how the world worked in any meaningful way.

    Ben grunted then sighed. He’d hoped they could figure this out on their own, just the three of them. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Bobby because he did. The gruff, older occult specialist had helped them a lot and they owed him, for their current residence if nothing else. The man hadn’t had to take them under his wing and teach them but he had.

    “He’s got more books we can research than we have here and he might have a better clue as to how… how to handle this mess. It’s not going away. It would be better to get ahead of it rather than wait for it to come and bite our asses.” Sam sounded reasonable but Ben wondered who his twin was trying to convince.

    “I’m not against it. I just…,” Ben paused and looked at Sam. “Bobby hasn’t met her yet. He doesn’t know her like we do. That’s gonna make him suspicious and I don’t want him to be suspicious of her, especially now. She’s bruised enough.”

    “I know,” Sam said quietly. He glanced towards the bedroom where Cinda was taking a nap, exhausted after having woken from nightmares the night before. Then he looked at Ben. “I know. I don’t want that either. But I don’t have any other ideas and I can’t help but feel like there’s a clock ticking down somewhere. We don’t have a lot of time. Eventually he’s going to come looking for us and right now we aren’t ready.”

    Ben chewed his lip and silently finished cleaning the batch of late summer squash he was working on. Once he was done, he sighed heavily again. “You’re right. The only other person we know is Missouri and she doesn’t have the extensive library Bobby has. It’s gonna take a damn lot of time to sift through what he has looking for some hint or clue on how to stop a damn god.”

    He dried his hands and shoved his hair out of his face before turning to look at his twin. “How did we get stuck with this? All we wanted was a quiet place to live our lives in peace. Is that too much to ask?”

    Sam pulled Ben into a tight hug and held him for a long moment. He got it. He wasn’t exactly happy about this whole thing either. They hadn’t asked for any of this. And while it was nice to know their mother hadn’t abandoned them, that they had been right and she had loved them, this was still bigger than anything they could have imagined.

    “I don’t know why, Ben,” Sam said softly. “We used to wonder why we had these powers, why we were so different. Maybe this is why. And no, we didn’t ask for it, but how much in our life did we ask for? It’s the same thing just… bigger. And we have to do this for her.”

    Ben held the hug for another long moment before pulling away and moving to drop into one of the kitchen chairs. “So, we’ll call Bobby and see if he’s up for an extended visit from us.” Ben sounded almost resigned, but not quite. A glance towards the bedroom firmed his jaw and he looked back to Sam. “For her I’ll even fight with stupid research.”

    Sam gave his twin a sympathetic smile as he dried his own hands and moved to sit next to him, elbows on the kitchen table. Ben was every bit as smart as he was but reading was just not his thing. He’d struggled with it all their lives. Sam had always been more than happy to read to Ben so he didn’t have to fight with it, knowing it made his twin feel like he was dumb not to be able to fight his way through the words that seemed to swim on the page and rearrange themselves into unintelligible gibberish when he tried to read. Sam knew Ben was far from dumb but it was something that lingered.

    “I’ll call Bobby this evening, make sure he’s up for having us. We were planning to introduce Cinda to him anyway. He’s the closest thing to family we got.”

    They sat at the table in silence then, looking towards the bedroom where part of their hearts was sleeping restlessly though not having nightmares, thank all the gods. The twins were going to do whatever they had to so that Cinda could sleep at nights again. Even if that meant killing a god.

                                                  * * *

     Sam and Ben met Missouri Mosely just before they turned 18, after a rough, overwhelming winter of trying to find enough work to be able to eat, learning that hitchhiking was harder than it looked when they were both big guys who appeared threatening, and trying to adjust to all of the people there were in the world. It had been hard, bewildering, and only the sheer stubbornness they were both known for kept them going when they could have swallowed down their pride and gone back to their father.

    But they couldn’t, not really. John had been getting more erratic as he’d grown older and had tried putting more restrictions on the boys than they already had. His fear of them grated against the boys daily until they finally decided for all their sanity them leaving was the best thing.

    They’d been wary of the woman they met at the Farmer’s Market as they tried to figure out what the meager amount of money they had between them would allow them to get. They weren’t keen on fast food, having spent years at this point living off the land as much as possible. And the sheer amount of people was overwhelming, kept them skittish and wary.

    Missouri mentioning their father hadn’t helped their wariness of her. But the promise of a meal and a bed and the fact that she didn’t seem afraid of them drew them to follow her. Sam had thought it was odd that this woman was willing to take two strangers into her home, whether she’d known their father or not.

    What they learned over the course of that night was that Missouri was a powerful psychic. They hadn’t yet run into anyone who seemed to have any of the powers they had and they’d started to wonder if they were the only ones in the world with them. But Missouri knew things. It was slightly unnerving and they wondered if this was how their father felt around them.

    Unnerving it might have been, but Missouri wasn’t afraid of them and she had a brisk, motherly sympathy that wasn’t any kind of pity and the twins soaked it up. It was nice being around someone who didn’t echo of sweat drenched fear and the stink of whiskey.

    They stayed with Missouri for two weeks as she explained to them that yes, there were other people who had powers and abilities like them in the world, and they often had a hard time of it when those they lived with didn’t understand them or feared them. The twins were fascinated to learn that there were others like them out there, other people who could do the things they did.

    During the two weeks they stayed at Missouri’s, doing housework for their keep and trying not to be as openly affectionate as they would have been otherwise (they’d already learned that people looked at them oddly, the amount of touching they were accustomed to doing, more oddly than even John did) so as not to make her uncomfortable. Missouri explained about the various kind of psychic abilities and magic abilities and supernatural abilities that existed in the world. She taught them some basics, like psychic shielding and grounding to keep emotions of others from drowning and overwhelming them.

    The twins picked things up rapidly. So fast that Missouri was surprised that they could master things that, she said, it often took people weeks, months or years to master.

    Finally, she told them about an occult specialist she knew in South Dakota who could likely help them more than she could. He didn’t have powers like they did but he had far more books on lore and various things and could help them try to find some way to get a handle on what they could do. She even bought the bus tickets for them (she was horrified to learn they’d been hitchhiking for months) and told them she’d call the man to let him know they were coming.

    Bobby Singer was not at all what they expected, the first time they saw him. A gruff man about their father’s age and dressed much the same they wondered if Missouri had set them up. They couldn’t believe she would have, though. Their instincts were good and those instincts had told them they could trust Missouri.

    It turned out Bobby also knew their father. Though he was far less sympathetic of John Winchester than Missouri had been. Bobby took a long look at the twins and grunted softly before telling them to grabs their bags and come on then.

    The twin’s wariness had come back though there was nothing about the man to suggest he’d cause them harm. But he was a stranger, no matter what Missouri had said.

    They didn’t talk much until they got to Bobby’s house. Bobby kept giving them penetrating looks, studying them and taking in the wariness about them both. When they got to his place Bobby had showed them to the guest room, apologized that they’d have to share a full bed, told them to come downstairs when they were settled in.

    When they had, Bobby hadn’t minced words. He’d called John ten kinds of fool and told Sam and Ben they were damn brave to have attempted to make their way in the world without knowing anything about what they’d dived right into.

    Bobby’s gruff kindness sat with the twins easier than Missouri’s motherly concern. Bobby told the twins they could stay with him until they got a handle on making their way, he’d be more than happy to pay them for work around the salvage yard or help them find jobs in town so they could save some money and not live like hobos or runaways.

    Bobby helped them get IDs, taught them to drive, taught them to take a car apart and put it back together again so it’d work. Ben was more mechanically inclined than Sam was, though Sam wasn’t bad at it. But Sam was absolutely fascinated with the huge occult library Bobby had. Besides the official library room, there were piles of books all over Bobby’s house that made Sam’s eyes light like a child on Christmas day.

    Bobby wasn’t put off by the twin’s powers, took it in stride. Said Missouri had called him, told him a little about them and that they were free to have the run of his library for as long as they were there to look up anything they thought might help them.

    Ben let Sam do most of the looking up and finding shit on account of Sam being able to read better and faster. Both boys were used to hard work and in lieu of not having a garden to care for or having to hunt they kept Bobby’s place neat, worked in the salvage yard and eventually got jobs in town.

    Bobby flat refused to take any money from them, instead helping them set up banking accounts as Sam pored over the many books in Bobby’s place or helped Ben with his pet project of an old truck that had seen better days but he’d taken a liking to.

    The boys stayed with Bobby for a little over a year, settling in to a new kind of life, before they got restless. Having someone who didn’t fear their abilities allowed them to stop hiding them as hard as they had been around John. Who they didn’t talk about much. Bobby didn’t have much good to say about John the more he learned how much the boys didn’t know about how the world worked, said Mary would never have wanted her boys to grow up so ignorant of the world. And for all Bobby seemed to have a little bit of sympathy for John, he thought John going all the way to one of those doomsday preppers who thought the end of the world was around the corner had been an extreme reaction to whatever had gone down when the twins were only four and a half.

    If Bobby knew more than the twins did about what happened that night, he never spoke of it, though the twins eventually learned Bobby had been instrumental in helping John find the bunker the twins had grown up in. The gruff older man seemed almost apologetic when he told Sam and Ben, said he hadn’t thought John would hole up there for years and years, had thought John had just needed some time to come to terms with what had happened.

    Sam and Ben hadn’t known that there was a term for how they’d lived, or that there were other people who believed as John did, that angels and demons were going to destroy the world and there was nothing humankind could do to stop it other than hunker down and try to survive the fallout. The twins had often wondered, when John would look at them a certain way, if their father had wondered if they counted as humankind.

    About the time they got restless, Ben and Sam had finished rebuilding the old truck and Bobby had finally taught them both to drive. Bobby gifted them the truck, told them as long as they took care of her, she’d always gets them where they wanted to go, along with some property with a house in the mountains of Colorado that he thought might suit them. Sam and Ben both thought it was too much and tried to argue but the gruff older man had told them to take the gift and stop being stubborn.

    They had spent a few months on the road before heading to Colorado to get a look at the property and the house. It was more than they’d expected and while it had needed some work, they were more than capable for it.

    They might not have known exactly what they were, not really psychics, not really witches, not seeming to fit into any category Sam could find of those with powers, but they had a place that was theirs, only theirs, they were free of John and they were finally free to be themselves without ever present fear coloring their days. Sam and Ben both thought it was a good start.

                                                * * *

     Cinda almost didn’t come with them on the Farmer’s Market trip, which they bundled into their bi-weekly supply run. Sam and Ben knew they’d be gone for the whole day and they didn’t want to leave Cinda alone that long, not to mention the obscure pain that came from being separated. It wasn’t as bad as when Sam and Ben were apart but it was close. Cinda had told them that certain kinds of soul bonds caused that kind of pain on being separated. She hadn’t been surprised to know the twins could barely tolerate being apart. She was surprised when shortly after meeting the boys that pain started to apply to her.

    Sam and Ben hadn’t expected it either though they took it better than Cinda did. They were used to not ever being apart and adding Cinda to that had hardly been a chore. Cinda, however, had been used to being solitary more of her life and it took her time to adjust. It wasn’t that she wanted to remain solitary, it just took time to remember to adjust for the new bindings in her life.

    It would have been right on the edge of their tolerance to have to have left Cinda for a whole day as far as they were going, but if she’d needed to stay, they would have dealt with the pain. They were both glad when Cinda decided to come with them, though. Besides the lack of pain, they felt better having her where they could see her.

    They left before sunrise was a blush on the horizon, truck loaded up with coolers of fresh produce and a selection of Cinda’s herbal teas she had started selling along with the fruit and vegetables over the summer. Mostly soothing mixes that could help with sleep or settle stomachs.

    The long drive into town was mostly quiet, music playing on the ancient tape deck with a converter for an iPod knockoff Sam had gotten a couple years ago. Both he and Ben liked the much larger selection of music they had access to, now, and had a fairly eclectic mix, even more so since they had started adding some of Cinda’s favorites to the mix.

    Sam and Ben got the stall set up as sunrise started to color the sky. They let Cinda handle the money. She seemed less withdrawn today and she managed to talk to customers better than the boys did. Sam could manage when he had to but Ben was still more skittish of people, even if they weren’t quite strangers after four years.

    They had sold out of their produce before noon and packed everything up in the truck to head out to do the rest of the errands their biweekly trip into town entailed. Buying the things they wanted, or needed, that they couldn’t grow or make on their own, checking the small privately owned knick-knack shop to see if the last set of wood carvings and wind chimes Sam had made had sold and to collect the money for those. Stopping at the small thrift store to pick up a few things that they needed to replace, mostly shirts that had finally worn through.

    Ben stayed at Cinda’s side the whole time, Sam driving or leading them down what passed as a strip mall in the small town that didn’t quite rate city status. They were done earlier than usual, Cinda with her arm hooked through Ben’s as they finally made their way back to the truck to load up the last of their purchases and head home.

    They were on the road half an hour before Sam said, “We were thinking about going to visit Bobby now that the harvest is in. Let him meet you. Look a few things up. You game for a trip?”

    Cinda glanced at Sam in surprise. She hadn’t expected the suggestion and wasn’t sure what to say.

    “Figured we’d go before the weather started to turn for the worse,” Ben added, his tone coaxing. “Bobby’s been wanting to meet you but we didn’t wanna go over the summer.”

    Lots of reason not to want to go during the summer beyond their gardens. They’d been settling into the relationship, had wanted time where it was just the three of them and no one else. Hadn’t wanted to try to explain or justify anything, just enjoy the addition of Cinda to their lives.

    Cinda leaned into Ben and studied both of the boys. Sam kept his eyes on the road, hands on the wheel casual and not at all like he’d been planning to bring this up all day. Ben had an arm around her waist and nuzzled her hair gently before she turned to gaze at him as well.

    “This doesna sound like something you came up with on a whim,” she finally said. “Why now?”

    Sam shrugged and Ben sighed. “We told you Bobby’s an occult specialist, right?” Sam’s voice was easy, light. “He’s got one of the most extensive occult libraries we’ve ever seen. We figured there might be some things in it that might help us with our… problem.”

    Cinda blinked then huffed a soft laugh. “Aye, a problem it is, I’d say. My da wanting to kill you both and take over the mortal world.” She shook her head and then sighed herself, leaning in to Ben.

    “I dinna have a reason nae to go, laddies. If you think he wouldne mind me. Nae many are comfy with a witch under their roof.”

    “We told you we lived with him for a little more than a year, right?” Ben said, tucking her a little closer. “He’s asked about you a few times over the summer, too. It’ll be okay, Cinda. He wouldn’t have told us to bring you to meet him if he didn’t want you there.”

    “He didn’t mind us,” Sam added. “Even when I accidentally set fire to the kitchen or Ben flooded the bathroom while we were trying to get used to not having to keep our powers under such tight lock and key.”

    Cinda snorted. “You dinna have to convince me. I ken we need some answers we willne be finding out here in the wilderness. If you think it might be of help, I willne argue against it.”

    Sam and Ben both relaxed, having been uncertain Cinda would have been as willing to go see their old friend as they were. Ben kissed her hair as Sam said, “I’ll call him tonight and figure out when the best time to head out will be. We can bring him some of the raspberry preserves as a gift. He always seems to like that.”

    They drove in relative silence for a little bit longer before Cinda finally asked in a small voice, “You dinna think he will hate me, do you?”

    Sam and Ben spent the next ten minutes giving Cinda reasons why Bobby would definitely not hate her, and another ten after that assuring her that it wouldn’t change how they feel about her in any way even if for some reason he did. It was unnerving for the both of them to see Cinda so uncertain and vulnerable. They finished the drive in a more comfortable silence as they finally soothed Cinda’s fears about meeting Bobby Singer. At least the obvious ones.

    Sam and Ben both hoped they could find something that would give them a direction in the impossible task that had been set them. They hadn’t mentioned anything about their mother actually being a goddess or that they had been charged to stop Cinda’s father, who was the dark god who’d come to kill them when they were children. They had only learned of most of it in the last week or two and some things were better told face to face and not over a phone.

    As they finally pulled into home and set to work unloading the truck and stowing away the supplies, Sam found himself hoping rather desperately that they’d find something that would help them among the many books Bobby had. He wasn’t sure where they’d go next if they didn’t. But one thing was definite. He and Ben would see Cinda’s father dead if that’s what it took to ease the haunted look in their fire witch’s eyes.

[celtictrinity]

chapter 4

    She can’t hold her breath much longer, the cold water closing over her head as she struggles against the strong hand holding her down.

    Pulled up she gasps desperately for air before she’s shoved down again, her father’s face cold and ruthless in the glimpse she gets before the water closes over her head again.

    Her struggles are more desperate this time, her lungs burning as she fights not to breathe in the cold liquid that will kill her if it fills her lungs. She’s caught between fear and relief. She doesn’t want to die here but maybe she could see her mom again, the loss still aching fiercely like a wound gone septic.

    She’s dragged back up out of the water just before she’s forced to gasp and she again desperately drags air into her burning lungs, too disoriented to fight the hold her father has on her.

    “Will you still fight me, Lucinda?” The voice is calm, implacable and so cold. “I ask so little of you. You can die here, or you can do as I ask you to.”

    “Never!” Her voice is weak and raspy, her breath still heavy.

    Her father sighs and before she can even react he’s shoving her down under the cold water again, a gasped breath from instinct pulling in water that burns more than trying to keep it out as it fills her lungs and she starts to struggle even more desperately to get away from the water that’s killing her.

                                                * * *

     They ended up sleeping the whole day away, waking only long enough to eat briefly before stumbling back to bed. Slept the whole night through for the first time in days and woke with the sun the next morning. They all felt better for the relatively undisturbed sleep and never mind they lost a whole day and night to recover.

    Sam was right, of course. One day of rest didn’t cause any damage to what was left to harvest. It took most of the week to finish. The last of the fall vegetables and fruits that wouldn’t have a chance to bear anymore with the coolness coming in early this year, a bite in the air already though it was only September. Promising a harsh winter.

    Cinda had been surprised the boys knew so much about canning and preserving their own fruits and vegetables to be stored in the root cellar against the cold months. She learned by watching and doing and taught them how to dry herbs and mix the herbal teas she was so fond of. It kept them busy, something that was easier now that they weren’t being woken by nightmares of memories haunting their dreams. For the most part.

    The twins, as they worked steadily, found their memory was unlocked in truth, random bits floating up as they worked so that they’d have to pause and revel in the brief memory that they hadn’t had access to before. They had always believed their mother loved them, despite what John had told them frequently. They couldn’t understand why she’d gone away. As various memories rose to the surface and settled into the blank spaces they’d hardly been aware were there, they both started to wonder if John had actually been trying to hide them from her and not just the world.

    Cinda… found herself fighting her own memories. She had fought not to think overmuch about her father in the years since she’d managed to free herself from him. She’d had to fight to overcome the nightmares that had trailed her for months, stealing her sleep, afterwards. She’d tried to wall those years off brick by painful brick in her mind to keep them from bleeding into everything, coloring everything, making her fear the world her mother had loved so much.

    Seeing him standing in Sam and Ben’s childhood nursery had shaken her right down to her soul. His voice, his face, even the fact that she shared the same eyes. All of it punched holes in the walls Cinda had built so carefully with strength of will alone, letting some of the horror from those five years slowly start to dribble out and touch what she had now, stealing bits of color, making her jumpy, wary.

    She pretended for about three days that nothing was wrong. She wouldn’t talk about it and focused on the work of getting ready to ride out the winter with the twins. But the third day, when Sam found her swearing in Gaelic in the kitchen as she fought not to cry in anger and frustration was the end of the twins letting her keep what was bothering her to herself.

    He gently pulled her away from the kitchen counter and the mix of herbs she had been swearing at. One glance at the mixture told Sam she’d obviously measured something wrong, though he wasn’t sure what exactly had been measured wrong. He wasn’t yet good at telling herb mixes by sight the way Cinda was. But even if he hadn’t been able to tell with the glance, Cinda’s frustrated anger would have let him know something was wrong.

    Sam had only come in for a drink of water before going out to finish the last of the peas when he’d found Cinda in the kitchen and the way she subtly flinched when he touched her worried him.

    “Cinda, leave it for the moment. You’re clearly frustrated and you’ve told us more than once that frustration won’t help when mixing things that require focus and care.” He steered her towards the kitchen table and gently pushed her into a chair.

    “It was a stupid mistake. I should nae have made it. I’m better at mixing herbs than this,” Cinda said fiercely. This time Sam heard a quiver of fear under the anger.

    As he set a glass of water near her, he asked mildly, “Who’s it going to hurt? It’s only tea, Cinda. It won’t cause anyone any harm if one batch has to be thrown out. The first year Ben and I were here we fucked up canning a whole batch of beans and didn’t find they’d gone bad until halfway through the winter. It was a nasty mess but we survived it. It was a mistake.”

    Cinda glared at him. “Mistakes get you killed, they do.” Her voice was low and fierce, angry as she almost never was with them and he heard the fear under the anger again.

    Sam gazed back at her, wondering what it was she was truly fearing. Silently he sent a thought towards Ben, hoping he could take a few moments to come in and help him with their angry fire witch. Then he sat down across from her. He reached for her hand and she pulled it away. He froze in the act of reaching, surprised and a little hurt before he pulled his hands back.

    “What’s really bothering you, Cinda? You think Ben and I haven’t noticed you’ve been restless in sleep the last few days? You’ve been jumping at shadows. You nearly melted the candle last night when you lit it. Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on besides measuring some herbs for tea wrong?”

    Sam had that tone. The tone that said he could sit here all day if he had to, whatever it took to get the answer out of her. Cinda wanted to glare at him and tell him to leave it be but she’d seen the flicker of hurt when she’d flinched from him and it made her feel bad. She hadn’t wanted to flinch from him. It was like her body was on its own set of reactions that had nothing to do with what she knew. And what she knew was that neither Sam nor Ben would ever hurt her.

    Cinda took a few moments to try and pull her temper under control, take a few deeps breaths and by the time she’d calmed herself she found herself facing not one but two pairs of amber and green eyes. She hadn’t even heard Ben come in and sit down next to Sam as she’d worked to calm herself and it startled her to find them both gazing at her steadily, worry in both their eyes.

    It was the worry that undid her. The worry that brought sudden tears to her eyes that she brushed away impatiently with a huff. Six months and it still surprised her when she saw actual concern in their eyes, as though she had gotten so used to going without that it was a shock to her system that someone would worry about the likes of her.

    Ben, after taking in her angry impatience with the tears got up and went in search of the whiskey bottle and poured a double shot into a glass for Cinda. They didn’t drink much, he and Sam, having seen what too much strong drink could do as they watched it eat away at John. But sometimes one needed a good strong drink and the look in Cinda’s sea-green eyes seemed to indicate this might be one of those times.

    Cinda took the glass and tossed back the strong whiskey without even a hesitation, not even choking on the burn and held the glass out for more. Sam and Ben exchanged a look and Ben poured her another double shot before putting the bottle back in the back of the cabinet where they kept it.

    She held the glass between her hands this time, gazing into the amber liquid with a pensive stare, her sea-green eyes turned inwards. “I canna escape him,” she said softly. She finally looked up at them. “My da,” she clarified. “Ever since the other night… I thought I had put it behind me, you ken? And then seeing his eyes, hearing his voice… it brought it all back. I’ve been free of him for six years, aye, but he had me for five an’… he was nae kind.”

    She finished harshly and drank half the whiskey in the glass. “I ken you have never asked,” she continued. “An’ I love you for nae ever pushing. But I think… if it’s true we must be stopping him, as it seems it is, mayhap you should ken what he did to me. Why he wanted me. An’ what I’m guilty of before we do. Mayhap you will need to ken. I dinna ken how I will react if I ever find myself face to face with him again.”

    Ben had sat back down next to Sam and as she gazed at the twins, she saw nothing but concern, worry and love in those amber green eyes that watched her. Patience. No fear. No horror. Something like understanding and it hurt to see as she recalled that their father hadn’t often been kind to them either. Still, there was a difference between what had been done to them and what she had done.

    “Cinda… nothing you tell us will change how we feel about you, will change that we love you and are here for you. We want to help,” Sam said softly. Ben murmured an agreement and Cinda sighed.

    “Tonight, then,” she said heavily before tossing back the rest of the whiskey. “I’ll tell you what I can tonight.”

                                                * * *

     The first thing Cinda learned was that she had no friends, no allies at her father’s home. She was twelve years old and had just lost her mother and she had no one and nothing to comfort her through the loss. She hadn’t been in her father’s company for more than a day before she realized how right her mother had been to avoid this man.

    Cinda’s mother had been honest in telling Cinda her father had been more than human. But Cinda hadn’t expected the man to be an actual incarnation of a god. A god who had been in human form far too long and who’s mind had twisted more than a little. A god who wanted what wasn’t allowed: dominion over the mortal realm. Cinda knew that much, even at twelve. Her mother was a witch from a long line of witches and her family had been protectors of the supernatural world. A weight Cinda had already started to feel. So, she knew about deities and their own laws that prohibited a god or goddess from attempting exactly what it seemed her father wanted.

    Most of the servants at her father’s stronghold were fae creatures who had pledged service to him. The dark fae were not all evil, as such. It was harder to classify fae as good or evil when they were so often chaotic creatures with morals that didn’t follow human reckoning. Cinda knew that the light fae could do things that humans would count evil just as easily as the dark. But these creatures were all those who preyed on humans in one form or another and Cinda’s father had promised them freedom to hunt as they wished with no limits and no witches to stay their rampages so they had pledged themselves to him.

    However, pulling fae creatures that weren’t already in the world across the boundaries of the other world and the under world (not the same as the realm of the dead, humans didn’t always understand the terms they used, had inherited generations ago) took energy and power and a firm link to the mortal world. Something a god incarnating as a human didn’t have. They had a more tenuous ink to the mortal world, not originating there, as well as those pesky limits on their power. Something Cinda’s father had been working to circumvent.

    Cinda didn’t know how long her father had been at this, (eons, possibly) but that he expected her help was clear by the end of the first week and Cinda thought the man was daft. Why would she ever help him? She had been raised by her mother, who had loved her, to protect the world, not do things that would cause it damage. And wrenching open the paths to the other worlds would definitely cause it damage.

    Cinda’s father put up with her attitude and her frequent attempts to escape with what seemed like amusement. For the first two weeks, anyway. Until the first time Cinda used her own power against the man who was a god.

    The girl had had a moment to be fiercely glad that it seemed she had hurt him until all amusement had bled out of the handsome face and those sea-green eyes that she had inherited turned so so cold.

    Cinda learned then to fear her father. She learned through pain, pain she had never experienced before. Utter isolation for days on end. Deprivation of food and water leaving her weak and dizzy and sick feeling. She had expected most of it but the torture. That… she hadn’t expected.

    Her father hadn’t cared she was only a wee girl of twelve. She was a child of power and she had hurt him and that was unacceptable. It was quite possible that he was scared, that he hadn’t realized a child of his would be able to cause him actual pain, and he wanted her to fear him so badly she would never attempt to do so again. This child he had sired was far more powerful than he had thought she would be, which was a good thing but also meant she could never feel like she had the chance to catch him unawares again.

    For weeks… possibly months… all Cinda knew was pain. There was no schedule for it that she could learn to predict and thus prepare herself. No rhyme or reason to the lack of food and water. It threw all of her internal clocks off, as she was confined to three rooms, none with windows, and nothing to pass the time. The walls and door were spelled against her power and she was trapped as she had never felt with her mother. Who she still cried bitterly over losing at odd intervals when it seemed like too much.

    But more than the memory of her mother, what kept her fighting was the tantalizing dream visions she would still have periodically. The two out there somewhere in the world that she was meant to find, that were part of her soul. She fought for them, for the day they would finally meet, somehow, someway. She would get free of this crazed god; she didn’t know how but she would.

    Nothing scared her more, though, than the lessons at the lake. Drowning was a fear she’d held for years. Her mum said part of it could have been her nature as a fire witch, fearing water the way she did. She was still required to learn to swim but her mother never forced her into the water, allowed her to become comfortable with it at her own pace.

    Her father learned of the fear and used it mercilessly. He would take her out to where it was deep enough he could stand in it but she couldn’t touch the bottom, and half drown her repeatedly, always asking her one question, promising that it would all end if she would just agree to do as he asked.

    She managed to fight it for days (maybe weeks, she didn’t know, didn’t care, it was a long time to her twelve year old self who had been suffering already for too long) until it came out in one session that he was the one who had killed her mother. Details that gave her nightmares for weeks once she recovered from swallowing down what felt like half the lake in the stunned and shocked surprise at the relish with which her father revealed he had taken her only family away (he wasn’t family, this monster who was her father).

    Cinda hadn’t known that her father was the one who’d killed her mother. Hadn’t considered it, truly, even knowing her mother had died a violent death. It was more than she could handle the thought of, and when he shoved her down under the water, still choking and gagging from what she’d swallowed, she’d breathed in more water than she had previously. Enough to truly frighten her, to wring the fight right out of her. And as he dragged her back up, vomiting and coughing up water, trying to expel it from her lungs and trying to find air to breathe around the pain in her chest she finally screamed that she’d yield, she’d do what he wanted, just to stop, please don’t kill her here.

    The smile that had lit her father’s face had been truly terrifying.

                                                * * *

     Cinda had never told anyone about what had been done to her at her father’s stronghold, never told anyone what she’d endured. The twins had seen the scars, just as she had seen their own. They didn’t play the who’s was worse game, they never did. They understood that there was worse to endure than simple physical scars. But she’d held the moment of incandescent rage and sorrow both Ben and Sam had shown when they’d first seen the lash marks on her back and the burns on her hips close to her heart.

    She’d been scared that perhaps, the many scars she had (knife wounds on her arms and legs, picked up as she’d been trained in handling blades of all sorts; a few bites from supernatural beasties that hadn’t wanted to yield a treasure her goddess had exhorted her to retrieve; callouses on her hands from where she’d learned the bow) would put the twins off. She’d been afraid, the first night they were together, to show them. The twins had, in turns, taken the time to show her their own scars. Perhaps not as numerous in their way but each with its own story of pain attached.

    Cinda hadn’t expected that. Hadn’t expected the twins to take the time to show her that she wasn’t the only one who wore scars they preferred to hide. Hadn’t expected Sam and Ben to touch each of those scars with gentle hands and lips and wish they had been there to stop it. It had gone a long way to making her feel less shame over them.

    Sitting in their living room that evening, all three with glasses of whiskey as they sat on the couch, Cinda held on to the memory of that night as she stumbled over telling what she went through at her father’s. She didn’t give details, didn’t think she had to. They were close enough, the three of them, that she knew the twins could catch echoes of her thoughts and some of those memories were branded into her, welling up at the telling like a geyser.

    She sat between them and neither pushed her, let her tell her tale at her own rate, simply let her know they were there and not leaving, never leaving.

    Cinda still carried a heavy weight of guilt that she let her father use her the way he did. He’d used her powers, had guided her in ways to wrench open the underways to allow more creatures through from the other worlds who would pledge to him. Her fault those things were in the world now, wrecking who knew what havoc. Some she had taken down herself in the six years she’d been traipsing across this country that wasn’t her homeland. Others eluded her. But she knew they would kill and she felt the weight of each death as though she had caused it herself.

    The twins listened to her patiently, kept her glass half full as she spoke and drank to fuzz the pain. She fought against tears she had no right to shed and she gave herself no quarter, spared herself nothing. She felt she was as much to blame as the god who had sired her because she’d given in when she should have allowed him to kill her.

    When she finally fell silent, staring into her empty glass with Sam on one side and Ben on the other, she wondered how they would ask her to leave, and if she would survive it. Ben was the one who gently plucked the glass from her fingers and set it aside before pulling her into a fierce hug. Cinda was too stunned at the action to fight and found herself burrowing against him desperate for the comfort even as she knew she didn’t deserve it.

    She felt Sam get up but didn’t look up to see where he went or what he did, scared that maybe only one of them was willing to forgive her, and how terrible would that be? She didn’t want to be the wedge the drove the twins apart when they couldn’t live without each other. She’d hate herself forever if that happened.

    She was surprised to feel Sam come back, gather up both her and Ben and drape a blanket over all of them. Relieved beyond words and it almost forced the traitorous tears to fall, the tears she had no right to shed.

    “Listen to me, Cinda,” Sam said softly, his voice near her ear, her head tucked under Ben’s chin. She started to pull away to look at him but Ben held her close so she gave up trying to see his face and just listened to his voice.

    “None of that was your fault. I know you feel like it was. We know, Ben and I, how it feels when you blame yourself for something that isn’t yours to carry. We have our own burdens. But what your father did was wrong. What he made you do was through coercion. Even had you been an adult it would have been coercion, much less the child you were. He stole your mother from you, he gave you pain, he tortured you, Cinda. That you held out as long as you did was a miracle. But it was not your fault. You weren’t ready to die. And glad we are you lived because our lives would have been sorely lacking without you, forever missing our third and other half. We love you, Ben and I. We will always love you. Nothing is going to change that.”

    Sam’s words were soft against the backdrop of Ben’s heart beating in his chest, the hand rubbing soothing circles against her back (Ben, she thought, but it could have been Sam). Soft but fierce and implacable as Sam could often get, unyielding as a boulder when he got something in his mind. But she could feel the agreement in Ben, the soft sounds he made to back up Sam’s words and the way his arms never once loosened their hold as he kept her tucked under his chin.

    She hadn’t expected that. Hadn’t expected to be held as though she was precious, to have Sam speak, soft and fierce, to the tempo of Ben’s heart beat in her ears. Hadn’t expected to feel the fierce love from both of them, not diminished one bit for the telling of her tale, surrounding her like its own blanket of warmth.

    “You’re not alone anymore, Cinda.” That was Ben, his voice rough with emotion, his chin rubbing over her head. “You have us now. Always. Forever. Not one or two but three.”

    And that finally cracked her resolve not to cry tears she didn’t deserve to shed. The warmth pooled in her eyes and overflowed to soak into his shirt and she found herself sobbing quietly, shoulders shaking. The tears she had never allowed herself to shed at her father’s all those years ago when she had been alone and afraid and so sick at heart. And was held between Sam and Ben as they let her cry herself out, murmuring soothing promises to always be with her, she was theirs now and no one was taking her away, that they loved her always and nothing would or could change that.

[celtictrinity]

chapter 3

   Angry eyes and tight mouth as seven-year-old twins are forcefully pulled apart despite protests and tears. “Stay here.”

   Dragging the elder of the two out with him, ignoring the very real distress both boys are radiating, strong enough even he can feel it.

   They’d learn to manage apart, damn it. One way or another.

   Anger shifting to disbelief and fear not ten minutes out. Disbelief fading entirely as he realizes it’s not a trick or a game.

   Finding the younger of the two seizing on the floor as he returns at speed, carrying the elder in his arms.

   Watching as the seizures only calm when both boys are back in proximity and fear is joined with something else. Not Natural. Can’t help the skitters along his nerves or the uneasiness that never quite leaves him now.

   Slamming out once he’s certain they’re fine, jaw set and that phrase running through his head along with the vision of their mother that hasn’t faded in three years.

                                            * * *

    Returning to consciousness wasn’t like rising from the depths of a still pool. It was like clawing and fighting his way out of a sand pit, choking and gasping for air. Sam felt like every part of his body had been forcibly pulled apart and then put back together haphazardly without care or concern. He ached. Even as he gasped for breath, trying to steady his heart and convince himself he was alive and in one piece, he was turning towards Ben and Cinda.

   Both seemed to have found the experience similarly disturbing, Ben whimpering softly between gasping breaths with tears of pain gathered in the corners of his eyes as he sat up. Cinda had curled in on herself, shivering and far too pale, hair hiding her face from view though her gasping breaths could be heard.

   He’d had bad visions before. Both he and Ben had. But those had been more like to cause bloody noses and migraines. Not this.

   For all that, he and Ben were still clutching each other’s hands like their lives depended on the contact. Once their eyes met and they realized they were both in one piece if somewhat the worse for the wear, they both turned to Cinda who didn’t seem to be recovering quite as well. Curled around her and brushed hair from her face as her shivers slowly eased.

   Once they were all breathing more normally, Sam glanced to Ben then back to Cinda.

   “What the hell was that?” Sam’s voice was rough and raw, as though he’d been screaming for hours.

   Cinda shivered hard once more before easing herself to a sitting position, blinking rapidly. Of the three of them she was the palest, sea green eyes haunted and horrified as she looked back and forth between them, trying to get a hold of herself.

   “Nae simply a vision,” she said, every bit as hoarse as Sam, accent stronger for the emotions running through her. It made her words almost unintelligible to someone who didn’t know her well and know how to decipher her cant. The twins had no trouble understanding her but recognized that her accent was only so thick in emotional extremes.

   As if they couldn’t feel the horrified fear running through her.

   Ben rolled off the bed to retrieve a glass of water while Sam looked for another blanket to tuck around her. What they’d just seen was still bouncing around his head, too much to really process in the moment. Taking care of Cinda was easier while his brain dealt with it.

  He tucked the blanket around her shoulders and then picked her up, blanket and all, to carry her to the living room and the couch there. As with a nightmare, he suspected a change of scenery might help her calm her emotions more easily. He sat, holding her blanket wrapped body in his lap as Ben joined them, offering her a drink and looking worriedly at Sam.

   They had seen her work magic before now, had seen her manipulate power. Had even helped her a time or two. They knew how exhausting it could be, had felt it themselves. But this seemed different and had them both worried. It was less the shivers and cold and more the emotions they were both picking up from her. The twins were both sensitive to the currents of emotions around people but it was always more intense amongst the three of them. More certain sure and impossible to ignore.

   Cinda drank the water in slow sips before finally realizing the way they were both watching her. Tried to dredge up a smile that didn’t succeed and finally gave it up as a bad job and simply glanced between them both, handing the water to Sam.

   “That… was nae simply a vision,” she repeated. Slower and focusing to make her words clearer.

   “Picked that up,” Sam said softly, urging her to try and drink some more. “It felt too real, too vivid. And visions, even bad ones or intense ones, have never done that to me or Ben. Ever.”

   Cinda considered refusing the water. Considered how insistent Sam would get if she did. There was always a very small part of her that wondered, when Sam got into one of his caretaker moods, whether he would gently but firmly pour the water down her throat to make sure it ended up inside her and not remain in the glass. She’d never tested the theory. She was fairly sure he wouldn’t. She wasn’t in any condition to test the small question mark that left her wondering. She accepted the water and made an effort to finish the last half of the glass.

   “Our bodies were firmly here but… part of us… was pulled back into the past. We… were stretched across the years, existing in two times simultaneously. Has killed witches to be trying, you ken? It takes… a lot of power to pull off. Can drive one mad if it doesna kill outright.” She shook her head slowly, trying to push what she’d seen to the back of her mind so she could focus on explaining. “That… was nae what I was trying to be doing.”

   “I didn’t think it was,” Ben said softly. “You’ve always warned us before about these kinds of things. Besides… you were as stunned as we were.” He was damn sure of that much.

   Ben set the glass aside and settled close to both of them, pressed into Sam’s side with one hand resting on the blanket still wrapped around Cinda.

   Cinda huffed softly but it had less of her usual snap to it. Which was somewhat concerning as she usually had temper enough to match Ben and sass enough to keep up with them both. The twins exchanged a brief look. Clearly something about the whole thing had spooked Cinda badly. It was just as clear she was reluctant to talk about it.

   They could give her a bit to get firmly settled in the here and now before pushing it.

   “Then… how did it happen? If… you were just trying to get whatever it was that was affecting our memory to break?”

   Cinda chuckled softly. It wasn’t hysterical but neither was it amused. Grim and dark as Cinda rarely was.

  “Aye well, your mum… clearly she kent what was what. Whatever was inhibiting your memories about the night? My reaching for it triggered our wee trip. Could only have been triggered by me, you ken? The one who completed the circuit of three. No one else.”

   Sam and Ben both looked startled. “But… how? There wasn’t time! Not then. Everything happened so fast and we never saw her again. How could she have done that, much less known to.”

   Even as Sam was speaking though, his words slowed as he reached the end of his sentence, eyes going thoughtful. Watched the same expression settle on Ben’s face. They were still processing the experience. But the words brought one memory floating up in both their minds. It was brief for the moment, but clear. Later that same night, before John had pulled himself together, before he’d taken the two of them away from the only home they’d ever known, their mother coming to them.

   Cinda sighed. “She’s a goddess. That much was clear as day and couldne be mistaken. Existing in more than one time is… less damaging overall for them. She kent you would find me… somehow. She tied it all up and tucked it away so you would only remember bits until then. A lock on your memories what only had one key.” She paused, her own eyes thoughtful though still haunted. “She’s very canny, your mum.”

   “So, she put a timed lock on our memories, I get that. I even get that only you could unlock it. But… if what you said is true, about the whole being in two times simultaneously, how could she have known it wouldn’t damage us?” Ben had such a mix of emotions on his face it was hard to tell which one was affecting the defensive protective tone. Cinda glanced at him and snaked a hand out from under the blankets to squeeze his.

   “Because you are both demigods. Had I been only a witch, your own power would have cushioned me more.” She shook her head. “I dinna ken why she did it as such. Aye, ‘tis harder on you than a vision, I canna deny it. But a vision canna be interacted with the same way. A vision… is only looking out and observing, you ken?”

   Sam did know. He studied Cinda holding tight to Ben’s hand, considered the fear still lurking in her under a growing anger despite her mostly calm tone.

   He tightened his arm slightly around her, glanced briefly to Ben, who gave an almost imperceptible nod.

   “Cinda… who was he? The intruder. You… seem to know him.”

   Sam’s voice was soft and gentle but implacable. Cinda went completely still before reflexively trying to pull away from them both. Neither twin was willing to let her go and the struggle, while completely silent and brief was fierce nonetheless. Cinda finally slumped back against them when she realized neither was letting her go and buried her face against Sam’s chest. When she spoke, her words were muffled.

   “It was my da.”

                                           * * *

    John had heard that twins were different than single births. Heard it from Mary herself and the doctors. From guys who came in to the auto shop where he worked and employees at the baby store. He’d expected more of a challenge when the babies came. Two newborn infants rather than one meant twice the diapers, twice the feedings, twice the cost all at once.

   The twins, oddly, were well behaved. They didn’t cry nearly as much as other infants (or so he’d heard). Mary had told him not to bother with two cribs. He’d bought two anyway. He hadn’t thought it made sense to keep the babies in the same bed as they got to the age of standing and crawling. They needed to learn to handle themselves on their own.

   Mary had argued that toddlers didn’t need to learn to handle themselves at all when they were still learning about the world. So, the twins shared a crib until they were old enough for toddler beds.

   That they were identical was something that stressed John more than was warranted. He wanted to be able to tell them apart, not have to learn over time which was which. Mary thought that was a barbarian kind of reasoning, that there was nothing wrong with learning a child’s personality. John hadn’t meant it that way but hadn’t wanted to add to the number of arguments he and Mary had been having.

  What John finally noticed was that the twins were never apart. Even as they reached their third birthday, Sam and Ben were always together. They played together, colored together, couldn’t sleep without the other. Ben was the elder by minutes but had a less contrary nature than his brother. Sam had stubbornness in spades. And yet, the toddler was patient with his twin in ways he wasn’t with other children. Or really anyone else except maybe Mary.

  The few (very few) times he went with Mary when she took the children to a park or play area, he noticed the twins weren’t inclined to play with other children, even those their own age. And they were never far apart. If one twin went somewhere, the other followed. If anyone tried to separate them, even briefly, the wails of distress sharpened and became acute quickly.

   John thought it odd that the boys never wanted to be apart. Thought that perhaps Mary was babying them by giving in to their desire to be together, even if they were twins. Another point of disagreement between them.

   Once Mary was gone and John was solely responsible for the two boys, he determined to toughen them up. The first year or two, as hard as he was on them, he didn’t force them to work separately. He would assign them different chores in an attempt to get them apart, only to watch as they would complete one set of chores -together- before completing the other set.

  They would talk to each other, softly, and in their own private language (another thing he’d heard twins did). It made him angry that he couldn’t understand what they were saying and he tried to force them to stop. He mostly succeeded in making them far quieter around him than ever.

   By the time they were seven, John had had enough of their dependence on each other. They needed to learn to stand alone and on their own two feet. They wouldn’t always have the other to rely on. Which was what made him decide to start doing their training in the mornings separately. It meant more work for him, but if he could break them of this infantile need to have the other in sight it would be worth it.

  To their credit, the twins did attempt to explain, quietly and patiently, that they couldn’t be apart. They didn’t start off with crying and tantrums. Something John would uneasily recall later that he’d brushed off and ignored. He’d countered all of their excuses thinking they were just that. Children who had been allowed to have their way far too long.

  The crying and tantrums didn’t start until he physically separated them that morning, dragging Ben out against his will, making Sam stay behind. He ignored the real fear in his son’s eyes, angry at feeling manipulated. The twins were generally well-behaved. They followed his orders, they did their chores, they asked a minimum of questions. Something John preferred since their questions were always awkward and uncomfortable to answer. He knew there was something odd about his boys but he’d assumed, until now, it was childishness and Mary having spoiled them.

   (He tried not to think of his wife, forced himself daily not to remember how she’d looked the last time he’d seen her, like an avenging angel, her voice chill and hard in a way he’d never heard from her, along with the stranger in the twins bedroom. Drank until even the dreams blurred into something he could make sense of.)

   He hadn’t expected what had happened. Ben had dragged at John’s hand the farther they got away from the bunker that was their home now. Stumbled and fell because the child wasn’t watching where his feet went, was staring back towards the door with one arm outstretched as though he’d left his soul behind. John had snapped at him to stop being so childish. When Ben went silent, John only had a moment to be thankful the tears had stopped.

   Ben had started having a seizure. It had scared John once he realized the child wasn’t faking it. The first had been bad enough, listening to his son pant heavily as it eased, eyes glazed for a moment before the second hit. He’d glanced back towards the bunker in disbelief. They’d only walked ten minutes. Some of the things the twins had said the night before danced through John’s head, but he hadn’t been listening truly told, had brushed off and ignored their concerns. They were only seven-year-old boys. What did they know?

   When the second seizure had passed and Ben’s breath was more labored this time, John considered his options. He was ashamed to admit, to himself at least, that for the briefest of seconds he considered how it would be easier to let the twins die this way. He didn’t hold on to the thought for more than a second as he scooped up Ben and hauled him back to the bunker. Wondered if Sam had suffered the same or if the younger twin would greet him at the door.

   Sam didn’t, in fact, greet him at the door. Was lying sprawled not far from it. Bleeding from a gash on his forehead. Clearly, he’d hit it on something. He was barely conscious, one arm still stretched towards the door his twin had disappeared though.

   The hair on John’s arms had started to rise and he fought down a shiver of uneasiness as he set Ben down next to his brother and stepped back. Surely this was coincidence. Surely this wasn’t a result of trying to separate them. But cold fingers danced up his spine as he watched, saw how their breathing started to sync, watched Ben reach out blind and unerring for his twin as he slowly came around. Shivered again as he went to find bandages for Sam’s forehead.

   Other than a lump on the back of Ben’s head from when he’d gone down outside and the gash on Sam’s forehead, they were physically none the worse for the experience. But everything about it seemed wrong to John. It wasn’t natural not to be able to separate siblings.

  He tried again, with the same results each time. And while the twins didn’t suffer lasting physical damage for it, the faint look of betrayal he caught in their eyes for months after each try grated against him.

                                           * * *

    Neither Sam nor Ben moved away from Cinda as her words hung in the air. They exchanged a look, long and significant. Whole paragraphs communicated in that single glance.

   “He killed your mother, right?” Ben’s voice was soft and low, his grip on Cinda’s hand still firm and sure.

   Cinda’s breath hitched softly before she nodded. “My mum… she hid me as long as she could. He still found us. She didne wish him to have me. He… removed the obstacle.” She swallowed the tears down, forced herself to breathe evenly.

   “And clearly… he’d come to kill us,” Sam murmured softly, chin resting on Cinda’s head, arm still curled around her and the blanket. “You couldn’t mistake the intent in him. The question… is why?”

   Cinda’s breath hitched. Fingers flexed in the grip Ben had on them. “I dinna ken… why he’d have come to be killing you, young as you were. I ken why he wished to be having me…” Cinda had to pause and swallow convulsively, fighting against closing her eyes, not wanting to think of what her da had put her through in the years he’d had her. What he’d wanted her to do. How willing he was to break her to get what he wanted from her.

   “Gods are nae meant to be living in the mortal realm, you ken? They… upset the balance too easily. Long, long years ago they all agreed. If one took mortal form it would put limits on their powers. Full use of all they are they only have access to in their true form, and there are limits on how much they can do directly on the mortal plane. Otherwise their petty squabbles could destroy the world. But those of us with power and mortal blood born into the world? We dinna have the same restrictions. And the children of gods? There are reasons there are never many of them running about.”

   Ben cuddled closer and Sam rubbed her back. Cinda had never gone into detail about what she’d survived and the twins had never asked her to. It was enough to know that in some ways she’d suffered as badly or worse than they had and had been alone for it.

   “He knew her, our mother,” Ben said softly. Recalling only at that moment the words the two had exchanged before their mother had spoken to them. “He… used a different name for her but… he knew who she was.”

   “She knew him, too,” Sam added.

   Cinda nodded. “I tell you true, if he is who your mum was hiding you from, I understand why she let your da take you and hide you away. There is naught that is good and kind within my da. He is a dark god but that alone would nae explain what he is, has become. He… is corrupt and lusts for power and dominion over the mortal realm. He does need to be stopped. I’ve kent as much since I won free of him. But I couldne do so on my own, nae then. And… I dinna ken how. You canna kill a god, you ken? Nae truly.”

   Sam frowned, chin still resting on Cinda’s head, hand still rubbing her back lightly, other arm sliding to curl around his twin pressed against his side. “Mom… didn’t say he needed to be killed. She said… he needed to be stopped.”

   There were far more questions starting to line up in his head than how one stopped a god as powerful as Cinda’s father. Far more questions than he’d have thought he could come up with. Could feel them percolating in his twin as well.

   He blew out a harsh huff of breath. “None of this is gonna be solved tonight and we all need sleep. I don’t know about you two, but I’m still aching from whatever kind of time travel you can call… that… earlier. We’ll all think better for a solid night of sleep. And I’m declaring tomorrow a rest day.”

  Ben started to protest and Sam shouldered him lightly. “One day will not hurt anything left to be harvested. We all need it.”

  Ben frowned and grumbled but finally gave in and agreed when he glanced at Cinda and saw how pale she still was.

   He gave Sam a small rueful smile and gathered Cinda from his brother’s lap to carry her back to bed. She protested, as she often did, she was well able to use her own two legs but they could both tell it was half-hearted at best and she stayed curled against Ben’s chest, making no real effort to free herself.

   Ben agreed that she was indeed capable of using her own two legs but that it would do her no harm to be pampered every now and then. Sam listened to her grumble softly as they disappeared into the bedroom before pulling himself to a standing position, having had to wait for the feeling to completely return to his legs. He stretched, glancing towards the window and then the clock on the mantle of the fireplace. Frowned as he took in the time and started adding up hours. Then did so again.

   They all had fairly decent internal clocks, and they hadn’t been out here on the couch all that long. But it was damn near to sunrise and they’d gone in to attempt to free their memory only an hour or two after sunset.

  Which did more to explain the aching exhaustion dragging at him than it didn’t. Sam shook his head, glad he’d declared tomorrow -today, a rest day. They’d all need to sleep.

   He followed them in to bed. He could think after he’d slept.

[celtictrinity]

chapter 2

   The cold look in cruel eyes set every instinct Cinda had to screaming. She didn’t stop to ask questions of the stranger at the door. She turned and dashed away, through the house, out the back door, leaving flames in her wake.

   Dashing through alleys and yards, barely seeing them with fear blind eyes, not even time to wonder where her mother was.

   Caught sudden and abrupt, feeling her power muffled as she never had before, the same cold cruel eyes gazing at her acquisitively.

   Her whole world changing in one instant on one cold night…

                                                   * * *

    It had been some time since Cinda had settled in one place for any length of time, even for as long as the six months she had been with the twins. The cabin in the mountains of Colorado was almost magical in its own right. The wilderness wasn’t the same as what she’d seen as a child growing up but it was enough to feel some kind of familiar.

   For all her words early that morning, there were things that needed doing before they could attempt anything, even with the exhaustion dragging at them all. The twins had endeavored to be as self-sufficient as they possibly could, something the years with their father had burned into them. Cinda didn’t disagree, but it meant that in late September there was a lot of work to be done during the daylight hours. Cool weather came earlier in the mountains and the crisp chill in the air had already started touching the leaves with color.

   What the twins couldn’t eat, can, freeze or dry to preserve, they sold in the closest small town with a Farmer’s Market. They made a tidy sum for not having an industrial size operation. Cinda wasn’t truly surprised. Witches with any touch for plants left a little bit of magic in every green thing they tended and Ben clearly had it in spades. Sam could tend them well enough and didn’t kill the plants he handled, but he didn’t have the same magical touch for the plants themselves that his twin did. He did, however, have a way with coaxing the earth to support their two rather large gardens. Since they both tended to work the gardens they had, it mattered very little in the end.

   What the twins couldn’t grow themselves, they traded or bartered for if they could, bought outright if they needed to. Over the summer, Cinda had wondered what they had done for meat. Which was before she’d known that as Ben had a touch for green growing things, Sam had the same for anything with fur and feathers, skin or scales. While the boys were capable hunters, another thing their father had drummed into them, and could easily survive living off the land, Cinda had to wonder if their father had known the full truth of things.

   The animals within the area made it easier. Cinda had seen with her own two eyes a pair of wild feral dogs bring Sam a pair of rabbits killed cleanly and presented like treasured gifts. Sam had thanked them both solemnly. She was fairly certain she’d never quite seen the like among humans. The feral dogs weren’t the only ones. All the animals within the radius of the twins’ power would bring gifts to the boys like offerings. It was more than enough to augment their own efforts and what they had to get elsewhere.

   Living on the move as she had for the last few years, Cinda had sorely missed having a real herb garden. She made due with what she could in the old RV that had been her home. But it had been a delight to have Ben allow her have her own space to grow what she wanted to.

   She didn’t have the same kind of touch Ben had, not with every living growing thing. But she had a knack for herbs and coaxing them to grow when and where they shouldn’t prosper. Over the summer she’d helped the boys learn to apply their gifts less by instinct and more by conscious design. Taught Ben how his connection to water could be used practically, like making it easier to irrigate their gardens. Taught Sam to bank the fire in him and use it to warm the ground so they could get their planting started early, to protect early seedlings from the last of winter’s chill.

  The boys’ touch could be seen all over their property. Anyone who had the sight to see it couldn’t miss the traces of power in the area. It had puzzled Cinda, though, because there had been no signature to it. She’d yet to meet a witch or any other with the kind of power the twins had who didn’t leave some kind of signature, even those untaught. She’d puzzled at it for some time to herself, even asked her goddesses if they knew the reason. And had been told, gently but firmly, to leave it be for the time being. So, she had.

   By the time the sun had set, they’d all washed up for the night and eaten dinner, settling in the living area on the couch as had become custom, she wondered if the twins had forgotten her words of early that morning. The lack of sleep was wearing on them all and she could tell the boys were both more tired than they should have been for the day.

   She needn’t have worried.

   Sam pinned her with his gaze, his eyes a darker green than his brother’s with threads of gold. The twins’ eyes were entrancing all of their own. Sam had threads of amber gold through the green while Ben had speckles. Though the primary color was green and gold, in the time she’d been with them Cinda had seen them spun through with cobalt, touched on the edges with brown and hinting at an odd aquamarine.

   “How do we sort this out? Because really… sleep would be nice to go back to having regularly. Even when one of us has had visions it hasn’t been drawn out this way.” Ben nodded emphatically.

   Cinda had to admit to a moment of feeling thrown. She was still fair unaccustomed to people asking her for help freely and willingly with no hint of reluctance about them. She blinked a few times before shaking her head and reminding herself these were the twins.

   The boys weren’t the only ones in this with old scars.

   She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Might be best to be doing this in the bedroom. I dinna ken what effect this will have on you both if I’m successful so, laying down would like to be best.”

   The twins exchanged a glance and a shrug and rose from the couch as one, both holding out a hand to her. She hesitated only the briefest of moments before reaching out to take both their hands and letting them pull her to her feet. She doubted she would ever get over feeling dwarfed by the two of them. Not a bad feeling, she decided as she followed them to the bedroom. Just… different. Something to adjust to.

   Once in the bedroom, Cinda directed them both to stretch out on either side of the bed, crawling up and settling between the two of them.

   “I dinna think it will take much, you ken? As long as it’s been, I think whatever was done has been wearing away over time, but mostly since we’ve met. It wants to come out now. All I need from you both is to nae fight it. Let it come. And dinna let yourself be distracted by random thoughts.”

   With her back against the wall, the boys lying on either side of her, Cinda watched as they each reached out a hand to the other, fingers threaded and resting on her legs. It had taken time for her to get over the moment of skittishness that came with touch. She treasured it from either of them but still didn’t welcome it from others. The twins were much the same.

   She rubbed her fingers together lightly and closed her eyes to center herself and calm her own breathing. Exercises her mum had taught her from the time she was small and mostly automatic when she was attempting to pull on any kind of power. She doubted she’d need much for this.

 Whether it was subconscious or by design, the twins’ breathing fell into the same pattern as her own. Deep and even. With her eyes still closed she reached out to lay light fingers on both of their temples. Had she expected the reaction, she’d have warned them. She hadn’t, however, and the vision hit the three of them with the force of a freight train, lifted them up, spun them around and for a moment it felt like the world shattered around them.

                                                   * * *

   Cinda’s early memories were of constant moving. She and her mum never stayed in one place for long. She couldn’t recall ever having stayed in one place for more than a year. She definitely never remembered her mum’s eyes without a hint of shadows in the backs of them.

   Not that Cinda didn’t know her mum loved her. Wynne was Cinda’s touch stone. The one thing in her life that never changed, was always there. She thought her mum was the most beautiful woman in the world. Long dark hair with touches and hints of red and eyes that were a brown flecked green. She was firm but had a gentle touch. She had a voice like an angel. And she never feared Cinda.

   Who was a fire witch before she was anything else. The curious melding of her own bloodlines had made the young girl particularly powerful. And she had the temper to match the strength of the fire she could call. Another parent, even a witch born and raised, might have feared a toddler who could start fires when she had a tantrum. Wynne had a particular patience with her young daughter. Perhaps it helped that Wynne was particularly gifted with water and was generally able to quell any fires before they could cause considerable damage. Whatever the case, Cinda could have had a worse teacher for her gifts and her control than Wynne.

   However, a powerfully gifted witch like Cinda could and did frighten people. That her heart was as fierce as her gifts led the child to more childhood pains than most. They weren’t often close enough in those early years for Cinda to interact with other children much. She was always excited when she had the chance. And Wynne would caution her every time. “Dinna show off, my wee lassie. You dinna ken how they will react.”

   For the most part Cinda was content with not showing off her powers and gifts. Being a witch wasn’t all fun and games. She already knew this by five. But if her gifts could prevent someone from an injury she wouldn’t hesitate. And in the rural areas of Ireland as the made their slow way north over years, where witches were not unknown, the reactions could vary wildly.

   More than once Wynne had to console her distraught young daughter, who wouldn’t always understand being suddenly avoided or the hostility and fear that would greet her after a show of her powers. Gathered in her mum’s lap as she cried. “Dinna they wish me to help them?” And Wynne trying to soothe her. “They fear what they dinna understand, my wee witchling.”

   By seven, though it saddened her, Cinda had learned to be wary and keep to herself. To approach others carefully. Watch and observe. Don’t offer too much about herself too fast.

   By seven, as they’d crossed back over into Scotland, Cinda also knew the reason for their continuous moving was to keep her da from finding her. Was the reason for the shadows always lurking in the backs of Wynne’s eyes. Cinda hated anything that made her mum hurt or afraid. Declared she would protect her if her da ever showed up. Fiercely.

   Wynne would smile and gather her daughter up into her lap and hold her close before saying softly, “If your da ever shows up, you run. Dinna stop to think, my wee witchling. You run; you hear me? Whatever it takes to be keeping his hands off of you. Dinna look back.”

   It wasn’t an order Cinda liked, but she understood it was, in its way, an order all the same. Her mum’s eyes would look haunted until she agreed. She didn’t like it, wanted to argue against it but in this Wynne held firm.

   The night after she turned twelve, when a pair of eyes the same color as her own showed up at their door, it was exactly what she did. Cinda didn’t stop to think, she ran. It still didn’t save her.

   The next five years were a hell she could never have been prepared for. She escaped with her life but it had taken help. It wasn’t over and she knew it. Her da needed to be stopped, once and for all. It wasn’t a fight she’d been ready for at just turned 17. But it was one she knew she’d have to face one day.

                                                   * * *

   Cinda was no stranger to visions on their own. But the way this one took them was unlike any vision she’d experienced before. She could tell the twins were as overwhelmed and surprised as she was and they were both more deeply clairvoyant than she.

   The world seemed to deconstruct and reconstruct in the space of a few heartbeats. Once it did, all Cinda could do was try and regain her bearings. She recognized the scene mostly from the twins’ descriptions and what echoes of the old dream she had caught herself.

   It was odd to feel as though she had been dropped into the vision rather than watching it from a distance. There was less surprise from the twins and she assumed it wasn’t as odd an occurrence for them. At the moment, the solid presence of them at her back, as it were, was a comfort. This was not what she had expected, in any way.

   The nursery, at this moment, seemed set before the scene that kept replaying itself for the boys. Quiet, with the young twins alone in their room, their beds shoved close together. Neither of the boys were asleep and, vision or not, both sets of young eyes were trained on the three of them standing across the room.

  Cinda had to glance down at herself quickly to make sure they hadn’t been transported back in time in truth. She hadn’t thought they had been and felt relief that she couldn’t actually see her body or the twins at her back. It still unnerved her the way the pair of young eyes focused on them as though they could sense their presence in the room.

   I’d forgotten we’d woken first, before Mom came to check on us. That was Ben, his voice slightly awed and echoing in her head and not her ears. It was an odd sensation and one she hadn’t experienced frequently enough to be used to.

   You can’t think… this is what woke us? Sam sounded incredulous, the idea mind boggling. Cinda would have replied but the four-and-a-half-year-old twins’ eyes shifted from them to their window. They watched as a young Ben suddenly scrambled across the beds with a whimper to cling to a young Sam, both eyes widening as an unnatural shadow thickened and darkened at their window, started to seep into the room.

   Cinda had also not expected to see (and feel) the wind that started to swirl around the twins’ room as the pair fearfully watched the shadow start to solidify into something more corporeal. Sam and Ben both had been fairly reluctant to speak about what they might have been able to do as small children. Looking at the small storm gathering in their childhood bedroom and the center of calm around the young twins, Cinda could only conclude that at one point, they had both been as free with their powers as she had been with hers.

   A thought that was shoved clean out of her head by two things.

   The first was the twins’ mother appearing in the room and setting herself between her children and the solidifying shadow. The woman in the nightgown was as blond as the twins had mentioned, blue eyes with hints of green looking like a storm-tossed sea. She was beautiful and Cinda had no doubt she was everything the twins remembered about her. But in that moment, as she stood between her young twins and the intruder, she was all fierce protective mother. Calm even as the wind in the bedroom tossed her hair and nightgown. More than that, Cinda could almost see the power swirling around her along with a faint glow to her skin and hair. And something implacable and unforgiving in her expression. An expression the child twins couldn’t have seen in the moment or in memory as they could only see the back of her.

   Mary looked very much like an avenging angel. Or a goddess determined to protect her children.

   The second was far more of a personal shock to Cinda. Because once the shadow had taken full solid form, she recognized the cold, cruel sea green eyes and dark hair.

   “This grows tiresome, Airmid. Why do you think you can thwart my plans? Did your failure last time teach you nothing?” The man’s voice was a cold as a winter breeze that cut through all clothes to find the bits of exposed skin.

   When the twins’ mother spoke, her voice held a chill every bit as fierce. “You aren’t the only one who has grown stronger, Crom Cruach. Enjoy your time. Your day is coming.”

   Cinda, eyes still staring at her own father in a shock that held her frozen, felt compelled to glance to the twins’ mother. And while her father’s focus seemed intent on the women standing there between him and his intended targets, Cinda couldn’t help but notice the way those blue eyes with hints of green flicked briefly towards the three of them. It was the briefest of seconds that Mary’s eyes were on them but it felt like a sudden eternity, held by the weight and power of her gaze.

   You’ve seen and heard what you were meant to, my darlings. The voice rung through their minds, clear and so very sad. I didn’t abandon you, on that I swear. But you weren’t safe as long as I was there; he could find you through me. I’m so sorry. And I will explain more when I can. But if you are here, you’ve found your third, which means you don’t have much time. He has to be stopped and only the three of you can do so. You’ll remember what you haven’t when you return to your own time and wake, but you must go now before he senses you.

   Cinda could only assume it was by design and not accident she heard those words, directed to the twins as they were. She could feel the boys were a level of shocked that rivaled her own, but theirs was all for seeing their mother this was. They hadn’t made the connection Cinda had made that her father was the intruder that night years ago.

   She’d spent five hellish years with him. She made the connection.

   She hadn’t expected Mary’s eyes to catch hers briefly and she had to fight an urge to hide from the power in them. She’d been in the presence of deities more than once. There was no doubt in her mind the twins’ mother was definitely a goddess. But it was more the shame that rose in her that caused the urge to drop her eyes and look away.

   His deeds are not your fault and that blame is not yours to carry. This much I know. Take care of my boys. They need you so much. Even I can see that.

   Cinda’s eyes widened as she gazed back to the goddess and she barely had time to nod her head in wordless agreement before the world shattered around them again. This time darkness found them before it could reconstruct.

[celtictrinity]

chapter 1

    A remembered surge of fear. Holding tight to his brother and gazing at the stranger facing off with their mother. Their dad suddenly appearing and a moment where everything freezes.

    “Get the boys out! Take them!”

    “Mama?”

    Confusion and more fear. A fierce look in blue green eyes. A mother’s love and determination backed by something more.

    “I’ll find you later.”

    “Mama!”

                                                            * * *

     Sam sat up in bed abruptly, breath harsh in his chest from the old nightmare and blinking into the dark room. Ben was sitting up within seconds and already reaching for him. Clutching his hand and leaning close, Sam curled around his twin as the dream faded slowly. Reassured himself that it was over, part of the past.

    Cinda was slower to wake, but only by a moment or so, not having caught the echo from the old dream nearly as intensely as Ben had. There were times when the twins seemed to experience some things simultaneously, she’d found. Moments when the connection between them was so tight they’d respond as one person. A little more intensely and frequently than twins without the depth of a soul tie as they had.

    Cinda brushed hair out of her face and sat up to rub a hand over first Ben’s back, then Sam’s in turn. Sam lifted tired eyes from his brother to gaze at Cinda, who returned the gaze in concern.

   “Fourth night this week, leannan,” she said softly, voice still low and rough from sleep. “I dinna think ‘tis a coincidence.”

    Ben also glanced over his shoulder to her. He didn’t look as though he’d slept any better than Sam had and Cinda suspected that was the case. She hadn’t slept much better and she was only catching delayed echoes of the dream.

    “It’s just… old memories,” Ben said softly.

    Cinda huffed softly. “Gifted as you both are? Is nae just memories. I’ve nae seen either o’ you as disturbed as you’ve been this week past. Something’s in the wind. Time to be figuring out what.”

    Sam and Ben exchanged looks as Cinda slid out of the bed, T-shirt falling well past her knees as she padded barefoot to the kitchen, pulling her hair into a messy knot and yawning as she went. Intending to make some tea since not once were any of them able to return to sleep once the dream had woken them.

    Sam shrugged and sighed softly. “She’s right, you know,” he said in resignation. Once or twice could be overlooked. Four times in a week, though? Without any obvious trigger to be seen to make them recur? That was a pattern. Ben was right in that it was an old dream. It had returned to haunt at odd moments over the years but never as frequently as it had of late. Once every few months tops.

    Ben leaned against Sam for a long moment, eyes closed and just taking in his twin’s presence. Sam’s fingers stroked through Ben’s hair and for a moment Ben wanted to just stress it was just a dream of a memory that happened long ago.

    But they knew things now they hadn’t before.

    He sighed softly before nodding reluctant agreement. “I know. I just… hoped it was just dreams.”

    Sam wrapped his arms around Ben to hug him fiercely for a long moment before pulling away to slide out of bed, hair tousled and eyes entirely too exhausted. He’d hoped as well. But Cinda was right. Four times in a week? Waking more exhausted than when they’d gone to bed? This was more than an old dream come to haunt. And if it had to do with their mother…

    He slipped his hand into Ben’s as his brother finally crawled out of bed, clinging fiercely as they headed to the kitchen and Cinda. Their third and other half.

    Sam thought of Cinda’s words. Something in the wind. There was a storm coming. Perhaps had been coming for some time.

    Ben squeezed his hand and Sam glanced at him; familiar amber-green eyes tired but determined.

    “We’ll handle it,” he said softly. “You, me and Cinda. Whatever it is, we’ll face it. Together.”

    Sam stared at him for a long moment before nodding.

                                                             * * *

    Growing up on the fringe of the fringe had been damn hard for the twins. It hadn’t always been that way, they could both recall, in memories faded by time, soft around the edges and colored with nostalgia of better times. They’d been young when their mother had vanished (“She left us,” John would stress angrily, eyes snapping) but not so young they couldn’t recall the feel of her. Not so young they couldn’t remember they’d once had a room and a house like ‘regular’ people did.

    They hadn’t been too young not to have noticed they made their father nervous. Not nearly as pronounced as after that night. Until then their mother had had more care of them than John had. John had been a tall presence gone most of the day. A reason their mother had sometimes had sadness in her eyes, though they couldn’t really understand the whys of it. The nervousness in their father had been a fleeting momentary thing until that night, flaring up briefly and passing quickly enough.

    Their mother had never felt that way around them.

    Mary was, to the young twins, all that was warm and bright in the world. Music and laughter. Hugs and stories. The one who fed them and put them to bed. Always together, never apart.

    Mary never looked at them oddly or felt weird quivers of anxiety around them. Even when the odd things started happening around their second year. Always calm, firm and matter of fact, the twins never quite realized how different they were or how much they made other people see them as Other. Too much awareness in those young eyes that saw too clearly. Fey, the neighbors said, when inclined to be nice. Uncanny, when they weren’t.

    After that night… John was always nervous around them. He’d get a look in his eyes sometimes, right before his jaw would tighten and the shutters would come down.

    After that night Sam and Ben rarely saw anyone other than their father. They’d traveled, so far, by car. By day and night while they both asked repeatedly after their mother. Until John had finally snapped and yelled. Told them she’d left them, she had. That if she’d loved them, she’d have come back for them and she didn’t now, did she? Told them to quiet down and settle, he was doing this to keep them all safe.

    The twins hadn’t understood. Had wanted to rebel against those words. Their mother had loved them, they knew she had. But John was angry and afraid, even the twins could see that. So, with effort they swallowed down their questions as John’s knuckles tightened to white on the steering wheel.

    Sam and Ben hadn’t known there was a term for what John became until they were teens, much later. What they knew was that life changed so very abruptly after that night. All the warm and happy and bright bled out. It was hard, harsh, the way John kept them isolated, what he taught them. How he wouldn’t let anyone else but him near them. Treated them as though they had something contagious. A thought Sam didn’t have until he was almost ten since John had total control over what they learned.

    The odd things never stopped. Ever. But John didn’t respond to them well, not like Mary had. John seemed determined to beat it out of them both. He couldn’t. He just forced them both to learn how to clamp it down and control fiercely when and where it would come out. But they were small children. They couldn’t control it all the time. Especially when the man started being gone for long periods of time, leaving only the two alone with themselves and little else to amuse them.

    The years had been hard on the pair, quite possibly left scars on them they weren’t even completely aware of the depth of. Starting with the repeated insistence that Mary had left them that ran counter to every feeling the young twins had. It had always rung false to them. But years and years of having it shoved down their throats and Mary never showing up led them to reluctantly conclude perhaps John had the right of it.

    That John was hiding them from her as well as the rest of the world never occurred to them until years later, like most other things. One more thing for the twins to feel betrayed about. One more reason to justify having left the man. As if they needed another.

                                                             * * *

     Sam settled tiredly at the table as Cinda bustled around the small kitchen with purpose. Ben dropped into the chair next to him and laid his head on his arms on the table, watching Cinda as well.

    It wasn’t that their little piece of the world they’d fought hard to carve out and make their own hadn’t felt safe and cozy before but Cinda added soft touches, barely seen but deeply felt. Ben had commented with a smile that she had some fierce hearth witch tendencies underneath it all and Cinda had only laughed.

    Six months ago was when they’d first crossed paths. It wasn’t as much of a surprise as it could have been. All three had had some idea the other was out there. Sam and Ben had gotten small glimpses of her for years and years. Cinda’s had been more feel than visual. But they’d known from the moment their eyes had all met they’d been meant to meet.

    Cinda set the cups on the table easily, gathered the tea balls and honey and sugar and cream. Set it all on the table with a kind of unconscious grace, even with strands of hair straggling down the side of her face and her own exhaustion almost a palpable air around her.

    Ben lifted his head, shifted as though to get up and help and she pinned him with a firm look but said not a word. Ben felt a small smile quirk the corner of his lips and leaned against Sam instead as Cinda turned to the stove and the tea kettle there.

    The boys had learned that Cinda might be petite, a full foot shorter than either of them, but she was fiercer in some things than a lioness.

    Sam watched her pour the water to let the tea steep before setting the kettle back on the cooling stove. Noted that the small ritual of making tea was likely as much to soothe her own nerves as anything else. That she was having those nerves after all she’d been through in her own life did nothing to make Sam feel any easier. Cinda’s life had had some more fiercely brutal moments than their own.

    At least she had grown up knowing who and what she was.

    Cinda settled into the third chair at the table before looking at them both, absently brushing stray strands away.

    “The same dream has been plaguing you, aye?”

    After this long, Cinda’s accent had stopped being a surprise. A strange melding of Scottish burr and Irish lilt, sometimes with phrasing almost a century out of common usage even for the rural areas she had grown up in. At times the twins wound find themselves picking it up unintentionally. They’d already stunned her with the speed in which they picked up languages. She’d simply shook her head and wondered how either of them could have thought such a talent was at all mundane.

    Sam pulled his own cup closer to him as he nodded. Kept his hands wrapped around the mug, a little surprised at how chilled his fingers were.

    “It was the last night we saw her,” Ben said softly. Frowned as he studied his own mug for a moment, not yet willing to pull his hands away from where there were tucked around Sam’s arm. “We’ve told you what we remember, which isn’t as much as we’d like. We were only four and a half but… you’d think we’d recall more than we do.”

    Cinda propped her chin on her hand, elbow on the table as she studied them both, sea green eyes skipping from one to the other.

    “Mayhap ye were nae meant to be recalling all of it before.” Cinda’s voice was soft, thoughtful and the boys looked at her, both frowning slightly now. Cinda shrugged.

    “Until now, we’ve only been guessing at the truth. We’ve had no hard proof, ye ken? Was nae like me. My mum told me true who my da was, taught me of my power. Had her longer before…”

    Her voice trailed off into momentary silence. Over ten years wasn’t enough for her to speak of her mother’s death with ease, something the twins could relate to, even if their own mother hadn’t died.

    “The point I’m making is I didne grow up with the truth hidden by lies. Even once my da found me… there were no lies wrapped around who he was or what he wanted from me, you ken? Your own da… I dinna think much of anything he was telling you was the truth.”

    Sam snorted softly, staring down into steeping tea, as Ben said, soft and derisive, “You think?”

    Cinda waved the words away without any irritation or impatience. “Soulmates meeting cause ripples in the world around them. Is nae only felt between the ones finding each other. When they have power as we do? The ripples are much stronger and wider. Children of deities? Another level of strength. Your mum is nae dead. I trust ye would both ken if she were. If she was after protecting you both, if part of that night was that something was after the two of you? Gods may possibly have limits on their power when they take a human form but they are still powerful beings. If you were found because of her… mayhap she was far more concerned about keeping you both safe than anything else.”

    “I don’t see what this has to do with having a dream about something that happened 20 years ago.” Sam’s voice was impatient as he fished the tea ball out of the mug with deft, long fingers, set it on the saucer and set about adding honey to it. Of the three Sam definitely tended to sweeten his tea more than the other two.

    Ben eyed the large second spoonful of whipped honey Sam was scooping into his mug before shaking his head and tending to his own tea. He wasn’t quite sure where Cinda was going with this either, but she always had a point, even when it took a bit for her to get there.

    Cinda rolled her eyes. “Ben said it, laddie. You were wee kidlets but not too young to be recalling more details than you do. If your mum was more about protecting you both she could have taken bits of the night and hidden them from your recall. Made it so you wouldne be recalling more than you do until you could handle the parts tucked away. Someone was there and meant you harm, that much is obvious from the dream and what you both can remember. But you canna remember anything about who. All you’ve been able to see is a shadow blur. In dreams and visions both. You’re both too strong not to have gotten a clearer glimpse. Having this dream repeatedly? The way it’s been draining you both? Could be a sign, my lads.”

    Cinda was fixing her tea as she spoke, so used to what she did she hardly paid attention to her hands. Sam opened his mouth… and shut it again, looking thoughtful.

    He and Ben were largely self-taught. They’d done most of anything by feel and instinct, trial and error. Until they’d gotten free of their dad, they hadn’t really even known there were other people who could sense the things they could, could do some of the things they could do. Hadn’t really known the word ‘witch’ beyond what John had taught them, which had been nothing good. Had only heard the word ‘pagan’ used synonymously with ‘evil’ and ‘the devil’.

    The world had been one continuous culture shock to them the first two years. Neither of them was entirely sure how well they’d have coped if Bobby hadn’t taken them in and helped them adjust.

    They could learn fast, pick things up quickly. But picking those things up wasn’t quite as naturally instinctive as it was with Cinda. So, they didn’t often jump to the same conclusions as fast as she did.

    Ben was the first to pause, mug almost to his lips, gold-green eyes staring at Cinda as he blinked in disbelief before setting the mug back down carefully. “You think our mom spelled us to keep us safe until we could handle actually knowing who had come after us?”

    The words were soft and incredulous.

    Cinda met his gaze. “If I had a wee kidlet so small who didne ken how to protect themselves? I would.” Her voice was serious, solemn.

    Ben looked to Sam, who was already staring his way.

    “So, you think… the repetitive dream… is what, prelude to the spell breaking? Or wearing off?”

    Cinda sighed, quiet for a moment as she sipped her tea. Thinking hard. The twins stared at her, waiting.

    “Aye. I do.” She paused. Glanced towards the window that was just starting to lighten with dawn’s light. “I think… these last months? Have been a wee respite for us all. But there’s a purpose wound about us, stretching back through time. You’ve both felt it.”

    She looked back to them, still serious and solemn. “The storm you sense on the horizon? I’ve felt it, too. And this is part of whatever it is. You both need to remember whatever it is your mum tried to protect you from before any of us can be moving forward.”

    Sam and Ben exchanged glances. Her words carried an ominous feel to them. Something that caused a shiver to run through them both. Then stubbornness entered Ben’s eyes and the set of Sam’s jaw as they both looked back to her. It was a look on them both Cinda had learned to recognize over the last months and a small smile danced around her lips.

    “If it’s what it takes to learn the truth and end…”

    “…whatever this is…”

    “…so we can finally live in peace and quiet, fine.”

    The twins spoke in stereo more often than one would assume or expect, though it was more common for them to start and end each other’s sentences. Another thing Cinda had taken in stride. She nodded quietly, the smile firmly settling on her face.

    "Then finish your tea. And we’ll see what we can do about digging past whatever is left of the block on that night.”

[celtictrinity]

prologue

From now until the end of time I will be yours as you are mine Forever bound we'll always be Forever bound, forever three.

                                                       * * *

    Visitors to their village were rare. They were small and out of the way. Their only true claim to fame was the ban-draoidh who was in residence. She traveled some years to meet with others and gather children who had no other options for training their abilities. Her sister wasn’t a ban-draoidh but was a witch born. She hadn’t finished her own training as her sister did and she had regretted it. Which was why she was determined her daughter, Luíseach, powerfully gifted, would be trained. The girl was only six, would begin her training with her aunt after the cold season.

    The ban-draoidh and her sister had the only home in the village large enough to accommodate visitors, rare though they were. Which was why Luíseach was there to observe their arrival. A man and his two boys. Luíseach only noted that the man seemed worn, tired and weighed down with grief. She was more interested in the two boys, just her age, with a power in them that called to her.

    Leth-leanabhmasc, twin borns, weren’t common, even leth-aonan co-ionann, look alikes. They stayed close to each other and behind their father as he spoke to Luíseach’s mother though their eyes kept returning to Luíseach in curiosity.

    The man wanted his boys to be taught by the ban-draoidh he had heard lived in the village. They had lost their mother recently, had no other family to keep them and he had commitments he had to fulfill. He not only wished the boys to not be in the thick of the border raids but to learn how to use the powers within themselves, to become draoidh.

    Luíseach heard other things in the man’s words that weren’t said. He didn’t understand the boys, grief had darkened his world and this was the only way he could see to protect what was left of the woman he’d loved and lost. The twin boys, holding hands and quiet, reserved, almost resigned, seemed to hear it as well.

    The man only stayed the night and was gone by morning, leaving the two boys, Coinín and Seastnán behind.

    Their small village was well aware of the powers that existed in the world, the things beyond human ken. Those who walked the draoidh path, those touched by magic, those fey and other, were respected but also feared. Luíseach was one of the most powerfully gifted born to the village in generations. Not just of the village but the region. There were only a handful of children, none her age, and all were wary of her. Her mother loved her dearly and taught her all she knew about her powers and the rudiments of draoidh teaching.

    Luíseach was fey and wild, clearly not fully human though her blood was never questioned to her face. It didn’t keep people from whispering amongst themselves. None knew who her father had been, not even her. Until the two brothers showed up, she had kept mostly to herself.

    For several days she observed Coinín and Seastnán as they adjusted to the new village. They were staying with Luíseach’s family now, and though they were polite enough, they were very introverted. They kept to themselves as they explored the small village and Luíseach kept her eye on them.

    The boys weren’t unaware of her observance of them. They felt the power in her that resonated with their own. But in their home village, which was only so much rubble now, they had been feared. They were used to being isolated and having only each other. Their mother had loved them dearly and her loss had hurt. Neither was surprised their father had brought them here and while they wanted to learn to use and control the power within them, they had never been so far from everything they knew.

    They danced around each other for those several days until the twins found one of Luíseach’s favorite places. A hidden hollow near the river she had found ages ago. She couldn’t help but feel somewhat possessive of the area she thought of as her own. She watched from out of sight for a while, not certain whether to approach.

    Coinín and Seastnán could feel the presence of her all over the small hollow, as though it had sunk into the very earth. It was what had pulled them there, this sense of her.

    She watched as the twins settled in and crept closer. She’d never felt drawn to anyone as she was drawn to the twins and couldn’t put words to the way she felt the need to be close to them. But it was as though there was a tether that drew her to them and she wondered if they felt it as well.

    What got her attention was a glance from the quieter of the two, Coinín, golden-green eyes twinkling mischievously before he looked back to his brother. Seastnán, with a look of focused concentration, had his hands held out and a few stray leaves danced between them for a moment though there was no wind before settling to the ground.

    Luíseach felt her eyes widen as she watched, then lifted her gaze to meet two pairs of eyes gazing at her in silent invitation.

    From that moment they were inseparable.

    Luíseach’s mother would often find the three of them in some out of the way corner giggling over some bit of childish fun. The hollow by the river became their special place, the three of them spending hours playing with their powers and sharing childish confidences.

    Even after her aunt returned and they began their formal training, the three could still often be found retreating to the hollow. The villagers didn’t miss the way the three children were never apart. Other children sometimes teased them but mostly gave them their space. Everyone could tell the three children were not quite the same. There was something strongly other about the three that couldn’t be missed.

    As the years passed, the three grew. Into their power and learning and the bond that grew between them. Luíseach’s mother was the one who noticed it first, as the three passed their twelfth year. That the bond between them was more than one of power and learning. It went far deeper and twined around them. Soulmates were something heard of but not seen often, even by those of power. But it was clear the three were bound as such. A trinity was even rarer still.

    Coinín was quick of temper though loyal to a fault. More reserved around people than his brother and slower to smile. But when he did, it was a smile to break hearts. Seastnán was only slightly slower to anger than his twin. Fierce in the defense of his brother or Luíseach; observant of even the smallest details. Both boys dark of hair with mischievous gold-green eyes and dimples that showed in anger or glee. Luíseach had hair even darker still, eyes with more blue than green. Fiercely loyal and tempestuous, wild and fey. Always ready for mischief, she was usually the ringleader though the twins offered suggestions for mischief often enough.

    All three were powerfully gifted with an ability to affect and control all the elements, though each had a particular strength in one. Luíseach was fire touched with all the passion that came with it. Coinín was water, with a deepness and serenity but still capable of storms. Seastnán was more strongly of earth, with a strength and stability to him. But between the three there was little they couldn’t do when they put their minds to it.

    It was Luíseach who came up with the promise. Backed by the power within them and the love they shared it had more far reaching consequences than she intended. Tying them together not just in their current life but through the ages and beyond the bounds of time. It served in lieu of a marriage vow between all three of them because none of them could ever fathom choosing one over the other. They shared their love and their bodies freely with each other. They didn’t care what others thought.

    Word of them spread and many came to consult with them, to ask their advice, to have them mediate or for magical aid. In over ten years the twins had heard little from their father. And by the time Luíseach started to swell with child, the boys had put down roots. They didn’t wish ill on the man and while they wouldn’t have been averse to see him, after so many years he wasn’t part of their lives anymore.

    Luíseach delivered twin girls. Dark haired like their mother, with vivid green eyes and dimples like the twins. While there was much speculation over which of the brothers fathered the twins, Luíseach kept her own counsel. Only she and the brothers knew the truth but they all parented the twins equally.

    The girls were two when the three were called to go to a nearby village’s aid. The village had suffered from raiders. The girls were left with Luíseach’s mother while the three went to give what help they could. They never returned home. They died shortly after they arrived protecting the village from the raiders’ return.

    The twin girls left behind were raised by Luíseach’s mother, every bit as powerfully gifted as their parents had been.

    The promise, backed by their power and the strength of their bond, however, kept the three’s souls tied to each other, even in death. To one day bring them back to the world to find each other yet again. To one day stop the dark god who was Luíseach’s father. The twin’s mother was an incarnation of a goddess of healing and regeneration and had died at the dark god’s hand, though he could only kill her human incarnation. It was meant for the three to stop the dark god once and for all and had they not died perhaps they could have stopped him then.

    Until the conditions were ripe for the three to be born again, drawn together again, the dark god was free to slowly gather his forces. Careful not to draw the attention of the gods who had agreed that none should rule the mortal world the way the dark god wished to in order to keep the balance among them. Until the goddess could incarnate again. Until the three were again one and could stop him for all time.

[celtictrinity]

when they met

It was a chilly day in February when they met. They might never remember the date, none of the three paid a whole lot of attention to those things for various reasons. But they’d remember the chill in the late winter air, the pale sunlight that filtered through the clouds overhead, and the occult fair that all three had attended on a whim, never knowing how it would change their lives.

Ben and Sam had been coming back from a visit with Bobby, an old friend who’d helped them make sense of the world their father hadn’t prepared them for and had made them feel less like the abilities they had been born with were something to be ashamed of. They still had to hide them among normals who didn’t always understand that different didn’t equate to evil, but they also didn’t have to keep fighting themselves to not use abilities that were as natural to them as breathing, no matter what their father thought.

Cinda had agreed to watch a friend’s stall, despite not having planned to be in the area at all. Though friend was perhaps a generous statement and Cinda had owed the older witch a favor. Running a stall for three days had seemed a small price to pay for having been given help that had kept her from having to find a hospital. Cinda didn’t get sick, seeming immune to most illnesses that plagued normals. But trying to stitch up her own arm from a job that hadn’t gone as well as she would have liked would have been damn hard to do. It was rare enough for someone to be willing to help her that Cinda wasn’t as disgruntled about watching over the small stall as she could have been. Especially when the older witch had said any money Cinda made from the custom teas she mixed up she could keep.

At 23, all three were old enough to know the world didn’t always give you what you wanted but still young enough to hope strongly and fiercely for things. Cinda mostly wished for someone, two specific someones actually, to assuage the loneliness that had dogged her heels for years. She had felt alone in the world since her mother’s death and it was something that ate at her deep down. She wasn’t naturally one to keep to herself. It was something she’d learned, through pain and rejection.

Ben and Sam had each other so the bite of loneliness that plagued Cinda wasn’t the same. But both boys had had a sense of having a missing piece, had had dreams and visions from the time they were very small of a third that would complete them. Would be the other half of them.

Tall with brunet hair that had russet highlights and looked as though it was cut irregularly and not in any shop anywhere, the twins were imposing by their height alone. They towered over most at 6’4”. The fact that there were two of them, appearing at first glance to be as identical as mirror images, often made people initially uneasy. They had the kind of muscles that came from daily hard work and not a gym and they moved like they were no strangers to fighting. Seeing them wandering the occult fair was almost incongruous and most who were there kept a wary eye on the pair.

A closer look would have easily set most at ease as Sam’s eyes twinkled and were enchanted to be there and Ben followed his brother with harried amusement and affection. The fair had been Sam’s idea. Ben hadn’t truly wanted to be some place with so many people about. Neither of them was exactly easy among crowds. Years of being isolated with only their father to break the monotony (and often times not even him), the twins were more than used to being on their own. Their father was a difficult man on the best of days but his paranoia made him difficult to live with. And the twins made him uneasy. They always had but it had only gotten worse as they’d gotten older.

This particular fair was a yearly affair put together with various members of the supernatural community. Mostly witches and psychics and pagans but those with real power and not normals playing at being different for whatever reason. They been told about it about three years prior by Bobby. The man worried the twins were too much alone and isolated, no matter that neither of the boys ever complained. In fact, they seemed to be thriving in the cabin like house Bobby had helped them settle into. But it was remote, in the Colorado mountains. Hard to get to and no nearby neighbors to speak of. The closest town to the boys took a good hour and a half in the old truck they’d helped Bobby rebuild.

They could have, conceivably, stayed in the mountains and never come down if they’d wanted to. Their father had made sure they knew how to be perfectly self-sufficient. They had two large vegetable gardens (and Bobby often wondered how they managed to get such good crops out of the area, even coaxing things that shouldn’t have thrived in the rocky mountain soil to grow ridiculously well) and they were perfectly capable of canning and preserving and hunting for meat. But Bobby was hoping to keep the boys from turning into younger versions of their father. And while the twins didn’t have the same level of paranoia driving them the way John did, they’d picked up some just by being raised by the man. Thirteen years was a long time to live with a man who believed the end of the world was coming without picking up some of his paranoia just from close contact.

It still took three years for the twins to work up the gumption to actually show their faces at the fair. Three years to settle into themselves and become comfortable with the power that flowed in their veins before they could brave the fair, which wasn’t even a huge affair but was still more people in one place than the twins were used to. Sam had pushed more than usual when they were passing through on their way home from Sioux Falls and Ben had given in to the pleading and coaxing with less argument than usual. Both of them felt it was important in some way to be at the fair this year.

At 17, when they’d managed to get away from their father and found themselves at a loss in a world they weren’t quite ready to handle, they’d both spent more time trying to stifle the power that urged to be used than using it. It made their father unhappy, caused him to look at the twins as though they were something other. The twins didn’t understand why their father didn’t like parts of them that seemed as basic as their dark hair or their gold green eyes. They couldn’t recall ever feeling that kind of uneasiness around the mother they could barely recall. And no matter what John said about Mary having abandoned them, there was still a small part of both twins that couldn’t completely believe it, even if most of the rest of them had become resigned to never seeing her again.

But they could remember the feel of her, even if they’d been so young the last time they saw her, and it had never been tinted with uneasiness. Love and pride, yes. Uneasiness and fear, never. Those were emotions they associated with John, emotions that grew over the years as he became more convinced that there was something wrong with his boys. He rewarded them when they could stifle the powers that surged within them, punished them when those powers broke free and couldn’t be controlled.

But by far the thing that made John the most uneasy was the twins’ physical inability to be more than a certain distance from each other. Reaching the edge of the invisible tether that seemed to bind them caused physical pain and could do more than cause pain if it was pushed. Seizures, labored breathing, it was as though their bodies literally started to fail if the distance was pushed beyond what they could tolerate. John hated it. And it was a large reason they finally left their father to try and make their way in the world.

That was something they would learn they had in common, the twins and Cinda. Running away at 17 from fathers that wanted something of them they wouldn’t or couldn’t give. Though Cinda’s father was worse than John by many times, hands down. The twins suffered neglect and periodic abuse along with a flip flopping emotional absence to emotional smothering. No matter how firmly, loudly and sometimes cruelly John swore that Mary had left them, hadn’t wanted them, it was clear the man still deeply loved her and the twins were all he had left of her. Cinda’s father had never allowed Cinda to believe he actually cared for her. Cinda had been a possession and her father was the acquisitive sort who didn’t like his possessions to have opinions.

Cinda, despite her temper, was a sensitive girl. The five years her father had her would have broken a lot of people. But Cinda had had her mother for twelve years and her mother had loved her. Her mother hadn’t feared the fire starting child, the powerful witchling she’d given birth to. Had never feared her or told her to be other than what she was. Her mother had encouraged her to be herself and Cinda had had that basis before her father got his claws in her. She was a fighter and she fought to survive the man who was so much more than human. It might have taken a goddess’s intervention for her to win free of him, but Cinda had survived though with scars.

It made Cinda no happier to be among the crowd of people, not all that many, truly told, but it felt like hordes to Cinda who was used to being on her own. For six years she had wandered, making her way doing odd jobs, hunting down magic relics her goddess would charge her to remove from the hands of those who would do harm with them, never in one place for very long. Since even when her mother had been alive they had moved constantly, her mother trying to keep the powerful child hidden from her father, it was more familiar to Cinda to be on the move, but she longed for someplace to settle, to not need to keep moving and moving. But she couldn’t really settle. No place felt right and she knew that she was as much looking for someone as a place. Looking for the two who had appeared in dreams and visions since she was a small child, never able to see their faces but knowing she would recognize the feel of them once she came across them. She couldn’t settle until she found them both, that she knew.

So this cool February day, Cinda sat on the stool trying to remember to smile at customers as they came by to look at the various trinkets and sachets and teas for sale, tried to answer questions about herbs and poultices and herbal remedies patiently, all the while feeling that the only reason she had agreed to this had nothing to do with owing the older witch a favor and everything to do with the wistful lonely feeling she carried with her.

Sam and Ben had just come upon a stall with gemstones, nuggets and ovals and spheres, after having stopped at a booth that sold Tarot cards (one deck for each of them though Ben had hardly said a word, only looked longingly at a deck that seemed to be calling his name; Sam knew what his brother wanted) and another that sold herbs for smudging (sage and sweetgrass, Bobby had taught them about smudging and they did it regularly to keep their home free of negative influences). Sam carried the cloth bag with their purchases, Ben trailing him close.

Both of them looked through the various stones, picking out a few but their fingers still itching as though they had yet to find what they came for. The woman running the booth studied the pair of them as they picked out their choices with care yet seemed to still be looking for something. Watched them for another moment before finally asking softly, “Are you looking for something in particular?”

Sam looked startled to be spoken to, but recovered quickly and offered a small, hesitant smile. “I don’t… really know,” he said slowly. “We usually… find what we’re looking for when it wants to be found.” And then blushed to have phrased it in such a way.

The woman nodded, however, as though there was nothing amiss with his phrasing. “I’ve found that to be true myself,” she said softly. She studied them for another long moment before turning to dig through several jewelry boxes set behind her. She turned back to them with one in her hand, pulling the top off to show three small, oval stones that caught the light and lit up in bright rainbow colors with a black background. “Perhaps these would suit?”

Sam and Ben were both caught by the three stones, entranced by the play of colors and the sudden knowledge that they needed those three stones. That they were meant for them. Sam started to reach out to touch one and paused, glancing at the woman still holding the box with the three stones in it. “May I?” His voice was soft as he asked.

The woman handed him the box. “See if they call to you. If they do, I’ll gift them to you. I’ve only been waiting to find the right homes for them. Those stones are not for selling.”

Sam took the box almost reverently, touching one of the stones with one long finger, pausing with a soft gasp. He looked to Ben, who had moved closer to get a better look at them. “It’s like they’re alive,” Sam said softly. “Like they’ve been waiting for us.”

Ben hesitated before reaching out to touch one of the stones, his reaction much the same as Sam’s. A tingle ran through his fingers and along his body and he wanted to hold the stone in his fist, feel its weight as it warmed in his hand. He’d never had such a strong reaction to a stone before. He looked to Sam, his eyes wide.

The woman was watching them both and smiled in satisfaction. “Those are for you, for certain sure. Take them with my blessings.”

Sam looked up at the woman in surprise, as though he’d almost forgotten she was there. “We couldn’t possibly… and there’s three of them and only two of us. Ma’am we can’t just take them.”

The woman smiled gently at him, handing him the top to the small box the stones were settled in. “You were planning to buy a few others and I will gladly take your money for those. But those three stones need a special home and they clearly call to you. They’re a set and aren’t to be separated. I’m certain you’ll find reason to need the third one before the day is out.”

As Sam stood there, holding the box half out to the woman as though he would give it back, reluctance in every inch of him, the woman gently placed the top on the small jewelry box and pushed it gently towards Sam, looking at both the twins for a moment before saying softly, “It is a gift, freely given. Those stones are meant for you two.”

Sam handed the box to Ben, whose fingers fairly itched to hold it, to feel the slight weight of the three oval stones, while Sam dug out his wallet to pay for the stones they had already picked out. The woman placed the other stones in a small pouch and traded the pouch with the stones for the money Sam handed her. Counted out the change and turned back to one of the display stands that wasn’t where random customers could reach. She plucked three cords that held empty wire loops at the end and turned to hand Sam the money and the corded necklaces.

“I believe you’ll find those fit nice and snug in these,” she said gently as she pressed the change and the necklaces into Sam’s hand before he could object. “Freely given. I would have to be blind and less gifted than I am to know you boys need those stones. I don’t know what for or who the third is meant for but I know you will find them. Take the gift.” She smiled warmly at both Sam and Ben.

Sam smiled uncertainly even as he was putting away the change and tucking the pouch of stones and the three corded necklaces into the bag that already held Tarot cards and sage and sweetgrass smudge sticks. Ben gazed at the woman in wonder, not sure what to make of the fact that she’d given them the stones and too relieved to wonder too much about why. He handed the small jewelry box to Sam who tucked it into the bag on his shoulder with all the rest.

“Thank you,” Sam said softly and Ben nodded as well, not able to find his voice. The woman’s smile warmed and her eyes twinkled, amused.

The boys turned from the stall, still somewhat surprised that the woman had just given them the stones that they could still feel the presence of in the bag they rode in. It seemed too expensive a gift to just hand over to strangers but neither had they wanted to refuse it. Not those stones. But what had them both giving each other curious, almost hopeful, looks had been the woman saying they would find who the third was meant for before the day was over.

“It doesn’t mean we’ll find our third today, Sammy,” Ben said in a soft low voice, not wanting to get his hopes up.

“They’re a set that’s not to be separated,” Sam said stubbornly. “What else does that describe but us? We’ve had the two of us for always but we’ve always known she was out there waiting for us. Who else could that woman have been talking about?”

Ben opened his mouth, then closed it when he realized he had no good argument. Honestly, he didn’t want to argue. He loved Sam with every bone in his body and would do anything for his twin but he felt that missing spot that was meant to be filled with a third as much as Sam did. They always had. Enough so that when they were much younger they had asked their dad if there was a chance they could have been triplets instead of twins. A question that had confused and confounded their father, who hadn’t reacted well to them asking. All John had been able to think was what he’d have done with a third odd boy in the mix.

Sam hadn’t truly believed that they were triplets, not really. But that hollow ached in them both did feel rather like the beginning of pain if the two of them were too far apart and he didn’t know what else to call it. They’d tried to explain it to both Bobby and Missouri, once they had been comfortable enough with both of them to be more honest. Bobby had been unhelpful but Missouri had said it sounded like a soul bond. It had confused her though as she’d never heard of a soul bond before the people had met.

It was getting late, the various vendors starting to pack away their merchandise and close down their stalls to end the fair for another year as the boys headed slowly through the bustling activity headed back to their truck. They saw the tall tower of boxes start to unbalance before they ever saw who was carrying them, jumping to help brace them as they heard a voice with an odd burr swear softly, “Damn and blast it all!”

Ben caught the top three boxes just as they started to slide towards the ground and Sam stabilized the last three before they finally caught sight of the dark ponytail behind the boxes. The woman shifted the boxes and turned slightly to see who had helped her, her eyes hitting the boys about mid-chest before slowly sliding upwards to find their eyes. Sam and Ben were both caught by brilliant sea green eyes blinking in surprise, watching as recognition and a question slowly filled them.

The twins felt as though for a moment the world disappeared and the only one left in it other than themselves was the woman with sea green eyes, gazing at them in surprise and longing and a knowing they could both feel in their gut.

Cinda had started packing up a little earlier than most of the others, knowing she was going to have to do most of the hauling and loading herself. By the third day she’d figured out a routine that let her get everything packed and loaded as quickly as possibly as long as she didn’t have any customers.

She was stronger than she looked thanks to not being merely human, but it didn’t always help with boxes that could over balance when her arms couldn’t reach. She hated being short on a daily basis but today she was hating it more than usual. She was perfectly proportioned for her 5’4” frame but that meant shorter legs and arms to manage the various boxes she needed to carry to the truck to get loaded up.

Just as the boxes she had stacked so carefully before she picked them up had started to tilt out of her arms like gravity was trying its hardest to make her day more difficult, she sensed more than saw two presences approach. If she hadn’t been holding boxes suddenly turned into unruly children she might have tried to stare because those presences felt familiar in a way that was unmistakable. Had the merchandise she been carrying been her own she’d have let the boxes drop anyway and damn the damage.

But it wasn’t her things and only the fierce reminder that she was repaying a debt kept her from dropping the boxes and instead fighting to find a balance. Which she was unexpectedly helped with by a large hand nearer her face than she had planned. It took turning slightly to one side to see who had helped her, caught the uppermost boxes (and she should have known better than to stack it so high but she was so ready to be gone) only to meet nothing but a broad chest. Her eyes traveled up… and up… and up until she almost felt like swearing because of course she would have been assisted by giants and not normal tall people… until her eyes met the gold and green eyes staring at her. And felt her world rock. Her eyes flitted to the side to meet an almost matching set of amber and green eyes and she felt her world rock again, resettling back into place but different than it had been moments ago.

Cinda wanted to drop the boxes, she truly did. She clung to them and fought the need to sit down and just… stare. Visions and dreams hadn’t prepared her for the stark reality of the set of twins gazing back at her in almost as much shock and recognition. Then the boxes wobbled again and she swore fiercely even as the top most box was easily slid off the stack and held by the twin with the bag on his arm.

“Let us help you,” he said softly and Cinda hadn’t expected his voice to be so soft and hesitant, hadn’t expected the shadows in his eyes along with the soft joy of recognition. Cinda blinked for a long moment as the words took longer to register than usual before she gave a shaky smile.

“I wouldne mind some help,” she said softly, her accent deepening as it often did when she got emotional. It made the closer twin smile more warmly, a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. At least it hadn’t been so thick as to have lit those gold and green eyes with confusion instead. She snorted softly and grumbled a little under her breath as she led the way to the older witch’s truck the boxes needed to be loaded into.

It felt odd to fall into step behind the petite woman and yet familiar in a way it had no business feeling as Sam and Ben followed her, wondering about her name, wondering why she’d been trying to carry almost as many boxes as she was tall all the while silently exulting that they’d found her. And only as they followed her and loaded the boxes where she directed did either of them have the sudden fearful thought that perhaps she hadn’t been looking for them.

Ben ran a nervous hand through his hair as all three of them stood there for a long quiet moment just looking at each other. Sam shifted from foot to foot, holding on to the bag tightly as though trying to keep his hands still. Cinda tucked straggling strands of dark hair behind her ears, not even bothering to try and straighten the messy ponytail.

Finally, Sam spoke, seeming to try and break the silence. “I’m Sam. This is Ben. And…” he paused then, turning to dig through the bag he held before coming up with the small white jewelry box and opening it before showing it to Cinda. “I think one of these is for you.”

Cinda blinked, startled to see the open box tilted towards her, glancing at Ben, then at Sam’s hesitant eyes before looking down and catching her breath. “Oh…” It was a soft gasp as she reached slowly to run her fingers reverently over the third of the three small brilliantly colored ovals in the box. The one neither Sam nor Ben had touched as though she just knew which one was hers. “They’re beautiful, they are. Lit from within with their own fire.”

She pulled her hand back with effort and looked at the twins. “I’m Cinda.” She grimaced. “Lucinda, truly told, but I go by Cinda.” She paused, gave each of them a small smile that was just as hesitant and hopeful as theirs were. “I think… I think I’ve dreamed of you. For a long time.” Her words were as soft and hesitant as her smile, looking back and forth between both pairs of amber and green eyes as though she wasn’t sure what to hope for.

Sam’s smile firmed up and Ben stepped closer to his twin until they were almost shoulder to shoulder. “We’ve… we’ve dreamt of you, too. Though never what you looked like. Which could have made this easier. But what you felt like.” He stopped abruptly, leaned a little into Ben. “Both of us,” he said softly.

It was another thing they never questioned until this moment. That their third would know they were their third and other half. It had never occurred to either of the twins that the one they were looking for would think they were only to find one of them. It was always the pair of them together in everything. Standing in front of Cinda now, with her real and in the flesh, Ben had a sudden fear that the small woman in front of them would be nonplussed to be facing two instead of one.

Instead, Cinda’s smile warmed her face. “O’ course it would be both of you. I can see the soul bond between you without even trying to, laddie boy. A pair you are, a pair you’ll always be. In all these years it didne ever occur to me that you were twins. Now it makes perfect sense.”

Ben and Sam exchanged a quick, relieved, glance. Knowing that they hadn’t truly gotten to the crux of it. Sam and Ben were twins, it was true. And they did everything together. They always had. That they were involved with each other and had never been so with anyone else was something they tended to keep to themselves, having learned that it made normals react in any number of negative ways.

Cinda’s face suddenly looked uncertain. “It doesna bother you I am…” she made a gesture at herself taking in her small stature, her breasts and hips before she finished even more uncertainly, “…a girl?”

Her uncertainty made Sam feel a little less out of his depth, knowing Cinda was also worried. He smiled, then laughed softly. “We’ve always known you would be a girl, Cinda. Even when we were little.”

Cinda looked less uncertain, then suddenly laughed a little herself. “Would you be willing to help me pack up the stall? I’d love naught more than to talk with you both but I canna until I’ve made certain sure no one will be stealing things that are nae mine, ye ken?”

Sam and Ben both blinked in amusement, heads tilted as they listened to her burr thicken again. Cinda laughed softly again. “I’m a Scottish witch, lads. Who grew up throughout Ireland. My accent is a fair mangled thing, it is. But that’s what you’re hearing if that’s what’s confusing you.”

Sam and Ben did help her pack up the stall, after a brief side trip to stow the bag that Sam had been carrying for most of the day. They paused long enough to show the necklaces the stone were meant to fit into, something that delighted Cinda. The work went much more quickly with three than with one.

By the time they finished packing and followed Cinda to a nearby restaurant for dinner they were chatting with each other as though they’d known each other all of their lives and not only a couple of hours. The twins felt comfortable around Cinda as they did around few others. Not even Bobby and Missouri put them at ease the way Cinda did. Cinda found herself just as comfortable in their presence as they were in hers and it was a surprise. She was used to not feeling comfortable around many at all.

They talked well into the night, despite the twin’s original plans to head home in the morning. That was before they’d found their third and other half. Now they couldn’t seem to say enough, make up enough time for the years they hadn’t had. Learning they shared a birthday was only one of the many things that came out. Feeling that hollow ache finally filled with a person was like seeing the sun rise for the first time. Almost magical in itself.

Cinda didn’t even bat an eyelash when she found the boys were more than brothers. Only said that with the depth of the soul tie she saw they had she had expected it, would have been surprised had they not been. She was frank and not at all repulsed or repelled and she was the first to respond in such a way. It surprised the twins even as it eased their fear.

When they found that Cinda had no actual home of her own (she’d been living out of an old RV for years as she traveled the country) they suddenly knew why they’d chosen a house in the mountains that was slightly too big for two. It would be perfect for three, though. It took until well into the next day before the boys worked up the courage to ask her to come to live with them. Had she been anyone else it would have made no sense to ask someone they had only met the day before to move in with them.

They knew Bobby would be wary. But Sam and Ben couldn’t explain that they just knew she was meant to be with them. That they needed her with them. That she needed them with her. She’d been alone too long as it was.

Cinda was overcome with emotion when they offered, tears springing to her eyes. She hadn’t known how to ask, how to explain the thought of going back to her life without them hurt in a way she had no words for. She had known from the first dream she had of them that they belonged to each other in ways most people wouldn’t understand. But she hadn’t known how to ask.

She’d hugged them both fiercely as she cried and agreed and said it would only take her a week to trade in the old RV for a more maneuverable truck and to pack her meager belongings. The twins, not needing to get back immediately, offered to stay in town as she took care of what she needed to and they could all travel together. Ben was the one who told her she needn’t bother with a second truck unless she simply felt the need for her own vehicle, there was room enough in theirs to pack her things and they could always get a little trailer if she had more than would fit.

They ended up getting a little trailer, as the weather was still uncertain in February, but a trailer cost less than a truck which gave Cinda more money than she usually had or knew what to do with. They’d spent the week getting to know each other in every way they could. Along with finding out their powers meshed so well it only further proved they were meant to be together. Cinda was a witch born and had been trained in the use of her powers from day one. She was much better at explaining things to the boys than either Missouri or Bobby had been, helping them figure out things that had been inexplicable before. Promised that with her help they would grow to have complete control over their powers and abilities.

So, the twins and Cinda made their way back to the small house in the mountains the twins had been calling their own for four years now, each wearing a necklace with one of the three stones in it. That they later learned were fire obsidians and worth far more than the gifting of them. They never would have been able to afford all three, not at one time. Sam wondered often about why the woman had simply given them such a precious gift and Cinda told them that sometimes people with a gift of second sight did things like that.

Cinda slid into their lives like she’d been made to fit. It wasn’t perfect, they all had their scars. But it was as close to it as any of them could have hoped for.

[celtictrinity]

Celtic Trinity edit - Sam and Ben Winchester and Cinda Callaghan.

background by: Ashen Sorrow on deviantart