Once Every Never Part 27

"That's fairly distracting," Maggie muttered, her voice bone-dry with something close to fear-well, as close to fear as Maggie ever got.

"Okay," said Clare, "our plan just got a lot more complicated."

Boudicca had raised both hands into the air. With a cry of summoning, she'd reclaimed her spirit warriors. Now, from within each of the demolished gla.s.s boxes ... things were stirring.

"Oh G.o.d," Al gasped in horror. "When I said 'bring on the bog zombies' a couple of days ago I was kidding!"

"Those poor souls," Maggie murmured, wide-eyed at the ghastly spectacle. The warriors' reanimated remains were barely recognizable as human. Hollow-eyed and leather-skinned, their faces were contorted with Boudicca's borrowed rage-as long-dead as they themselves were. They clutched their weapons with spidery fingers whose bones had long since been dissolved by the peat-bog tannins that had preserved their flesh and skin. The only thing that kept them upright was the power of Boudicca's blood magic that flowed through their desiccated limbs as surely as their own blood once had.

They heaved themselves out of the cases without muscle power or minds and, howling like banshees, began hewing about with whirling blades, smas.h.i.+ng through the cases that contained the other, smaller artifacts and tearing through part.i.tions and information boards. Laughing madly, Boudicca retrieved the detonator at her feet and spun in a circle, her face twisted in fierce, grotesque triumph.

Maggie went ashen. "If those abominations find their way out of the museum and into the city ..."

"I have to get to Boudicca," Clare said. She didn't just need to touch the queen's torc, she needed to get it away from her. From Dr. Jenkins, whose own life force was powering the queen's magic. Just as Milo's was for Connal.

"My queen!" he hailed, his voice resonating through the gallery as he stalked past Clare into the room, swinging the cricket bat like a broadsword. "Boudicca!"

"Okaaay ..." Clare threw a hand up in the air even as she fought down a panicked surge. "Change in plans ..."

Her borrowed face a mask of fury, Boudicca turned on the intruder ... and her lips stretched in a grim and welcome-less smile. "Connal."

"Andrasta bless you, Lady."

"She has not." Her voice was cold. "She was displeased with my last, incomplete sacrifice to her. I hope she looks more favourably upon this one." She turned to the shambling creatures gathering around her. "Kill him. Kill him and, for your reward, I will give you a new spirit warrior to lead you in death." She turned her flat stare on Morholt and then pointed the detonator remote at him.

"Boudicca. Do not do this thing," Connal pleaded as the first of the bog warriors charged him, sword swinging wildly with an uncanny power behind it. Connal dodged nimbly out of the way and the creature's sword shattered on the steel frame of a display case. Connal employed Milo's long limbs with the grace of a dancer as he brought the cricket bat around in a blow that sent the creature sprawling almost the length of the room. "You are a hero to thousands, Boudicca!" he shouted as two more of the bog men attacked.

And a cautionary tale to thousands more, thought Clare.

"You avenged the shame brought upon us by the Romans," he panted, parrying sword strikes as they came at him.

"I have brought more shame upon my people than the Romans ever could have," Boudicca snarled. "I sacrificed my honour. Mine ... my daughters' ... our entire tribe's." Tears, unheeded, welled up in her empty eyes and spilled down her cheeks. "So many ghosts hang upon my shoulders. Their voices haunt my sleep ..."

"I tell you again: you are a hero to many, Boudicca-" Connal whirled, and with a solid, sickening thump, smacked another bog man on the back of what pa.s.sed for his head. The creature went down but struggled up again almost immediately. Connal couldn't keep it up forever. Clare had to do something.

As long as Connal could keep Boudicca talking she had a chance to get close. She just had to find a way to sneak over to where Boudicca stood, across the room and next to a staircase.

Clare ducked back behind the part.i.tion. "Mags," she whispered, "is there some other way I can get to that staircase?"

Maggie nodded quickly. "Go back down this one and through to the end of the medieval exhibit. There's a statue of an armoured horse and rider. It's just beyond that. You can't miss it."

"Good. You and Al should stay behind this wall. If Boudicca hits that b.u.t.ton I don't want you anywhere near Morholt when he meets his explody doom." It suddenly occurred to her that she was giving her aunt orders. And Maggie was taking them without hesitation.

Without much hesitation, that is. "Clare, wait! It's far too dangerous. Your mother will never forgive me if I let anything happen to you."

"You didn't see the bill for cleaning the baby grand piano after the party, Mags. She'll probably look the other way. Al, stay with her." Clare kissed her aunt swiftly on the cheek and took off back down the staircase before Maggie could stop her.

Clare tore through the fourth level gallery, bounded up the far stairs, and poked her head around the corner. Connal must have disarmed one of the bog warriors, because now he and Boudicca were savagely going at it in a duel of flas.h.i.+ng, ringing blades.

Boudicca had clipped the detonator to her belt-the red and green lights blinked steadily-but with all that lethal steel swinging around, there was no way Clare could get to it. Just then Connal looked over to where she was crouched. Their eyes locked-and for a flas.h.i.+ng instant Clare thought she saw Milo gazing out at her. He smiled and, with his next swing, left himself wide open for a counterstrike. Boudicca saw the opening and lunged viciously, her sword slicing across his flank. Clare gasped and her brain screamed "NO!" as blood sprayed from the wound. In paralyzed horror she watched as Connal folded around Boudicca's over-extended weapon, wrenched it from her grasp, then staggered back and fell to his knees. He'd left himself vulnerable on purpose for a chance to disarm the queen.

"Milo!"

Clare heard Al scream her cousin's name from the other end of the long room. As Boudicca's head snapped around, Clare leaped at her from behind and grabbed hold of the torc. In that instant the detonator exploded in a shower of sparks and acrid smoke and Clare felt herself starting to s.h.i.+mmer. But in the moment before the lightning flash hit that would send her hurtling back through time, she wrenched the gold collar off Dr. Jenkins's neck and threw herself backward, flinging the torc down the length of the hall. It hit a marble pillar with a resounding clang, harmonizing monstrously with the skirling howl that tore from the throat of the woman who had once been Dr. Ceciley Jenkins. And Boudicca the queen.

Clare hit the marble floor hard, sliding on one hip and skidding to a stop in a pile of gla.s.s shards at the base of a display case. All around her lay the defeated spirit warriors, deflating into piles of leathery skin and once more as empty of life as they'd been for the past two thousand years. A soft, whispering noise escaped from the desiccated windpipe of the tattooed abomination that had once been Macon, proud Iceni warrior. It sounded almost like a sigh of relief.

Clare turned her gaze away from the withered remains and hunched there paralyzed with horror as, in front of her, the possessed curator threw her arms up, clawing at the air with grasping fingers. Her ear-shattering screams built to a monstrous crescendo and swirling, sourceless light painted the walls and ceiling of the museum hall in red and purple swaths. Blood rushed madly beneath Dr. Jenkins's too-pale skin-a network of crimson maplines pulsing with fiery sparks. Her rigid limbs flailed wildly and the faint, flickering outline of a wild-eyed, red-haired Iceni queen appeared, superimposed on Dr. Jenkins's form-a phantom image in a double-exposure photograph. The ghostly apparition cried out in tandem with the cursed archaeologist and then it flashed like lightning and faded ... and the screams died on Dr. Jenkins's lips. Her eyes rolled back white in her head and she collapsed to the floor in a senseless heap.

26.

A wash of dim blue shadows and silence settled once more on the museum hall.

Clare scrambled over to where Milo had fallen onto his side, his long body still curled around Boudicca's sword. He was panting and shaking, his hair plastered to his forehead and hanging in front of his eyes. Clare rolled him gently over onto his back and pulled the weapon out from under him. The long, shallow gash across his chest seeped blood through his Superman T-s.h.i.+rt, but it was nowhere near as bad as Clare had feared. His gaze was unfocused-wild still in the aftermath of the fight-but even as she watched, Clare saw that he was drifting back toward a lucid state.

Connal's lucid state.

"Connal," she said gently, helping him up into a sitting position. "Thank you. Thank you so much for everything. We did it. We got the torc back and Maggie will make sure it never falls into anyone else's hands ever again. I promise. Now we have to get Milo to a hospital." She reached for the silver cuff on his arm. "It's time for you to go-"

"No." His hand shot out and gripped Clare's wrist. "I will not go back, Clarinet."

Over his shoulder, Clare saw Al skid to a halt. Maggie, who was hurrying after her with a first aid kit, almost ran into her.

The grip on Clare's wrist tightened and Connal stood, hauling her effortlessly to her feet with him. His gaze had become flinty and there was a hard, determined set to his mouth.

Clare felt her stomach clench with apprehension. "Milo?" she said loudly. "Milo! Can you hear me?"

Connal shook his head. "He sleeps. Let him sleep forever so long as I can be with you." The silver cuff began to glow with a reddish light that pulsed in time to the blood Clare could see coursing beneath his skin.

A chill of dread flooded through her veins as the Druid prince stared feverishly out at her from Milo's eyes. Comorra had been willing to kill Clare so that she could have Connal. Would Connal be willing to do the same to Milo? It was somehow so easy to forget how different their world was. His was a place and a time where lovers' quarrels might be settled on the point of a knife.

A place where Connal had already lost so much. He must have seen things ... done things during Boudicca's rampage that had horrified him. And with the Iceni tribe in tatters, the queen gone, and Comorra-the girl he loved, even if he had barely begun to acknowledge it-dead ...

It was easy to understand how he saw this as the path away from all that misery. He could stay here. With her. In his desperation he would do it. It was madness, but everything Connal had been through may have put cracks in his sanity-and dragging his spirit into the present might have finished the job. It would be impossible to convince him to set Milo free.

Milo's mind-Milo's big, beautiful geektastic mind-would shrivel up and die, locked away in a prison made of magic. And it would be all Clare's fault.

"Miiilooo!" she shouted at the top of her lungs.

Suddenly, he doubled over with a cry of pure agony-his or Connal's, Clare couldn't be sure-and when he straightened up again his face was twisted in a snarl. His hands shot out and he gripped her by the shoulders, bringing his face down to hers and crus.h.i.+ng his lips against her mouth. Searing heat bubbled up from deep in Clare's chest and waves of warmth flooded out to the ends of her fingertips. It was like s.h.i.+mmering but without the time travel. Every nerve ending in her body tingled and sparked, and the rest of the world seemed to vanish all around her. She kissed him back, hard, and as he stole the breath from her lungs she melted into the fierceness of his embrace. When finally Clare had to pull away she was gasping for air-wide-eyed, astonished, flushed, and weak-kneed-and dead certain that it hadn't felt anything like that when Connal had kissed her before ...

"Clare ..." he ground out between clenched teeth. "... de Lune ..."

Clare de Lune!

That hadn't been Connal kissing her at all! She knew it!

"Milo?" She took a hesitant step forward but he thrust out an arm, warning her away. She gaped at Milo's face as it twisted and contorted. "Milo-take off the cuff! Take it off now!"

Milo's long fingers gripped the edges of the knotted silver band as he strained to tear the bracelet from his arm. It wouldn't budge. "Too strong ... Clare ... help me ..." His body arched grotesquely as he fought against the presence that sought to overwhelm him.

That's it, Clare thought. Time to play hardball. Dodging his flailing limbs, she grasped the sides of his face with both hands. She ducked in and kissed him on the mouth again, inhaling sharply through her nose as his arm went around her like a vise and crushed her to his chest. Milo's lips moved hungrily over hers and Clare returned the kiss with an almost equal fervour. It was almost enough to make her forget what she had to do. Almost.

Until the second she realized that it was no longer Milo kissing her.

"You see?" he murmured in Connal's voice. "You want me. You know you want me."

Sure she did.

She wanted him ... to get the h.e.l.l out of her prospective boyfriend. With Connal so pa.s.sionately distracted Clare broke the embrace and hauled back with her fist, winding up to crack him across the jaw as hard as she could. She didn't have to. With a hollow thud Milo's head suddenly jerked to one side and he slumped to the floor.

Clare looked up to see Al grasping Milo's cricket bat in two hands.

"He'll be fine," she panted, hefting the bat. "He has a really hard head. Used to fall out of trees and land on it all the time when he was a kid ..."

Clare stared at her for a moment, eyes wide, and then dropped to her knees to make sure Milo was still breathing. He was. She checked his wrist and grimaced. The edges of the cuff's design looked as though they had begun to meld with the skin on Milo's arm. Boudicca's death-cursed torc had been powerful enough, but Connal's bracelet had carried the Druid's living spirit through time and poured it into Milo's body. And now it was trying its d.a.m.nedest to stay there. Clare got up. She knew what she had to do.

She glanced over at Stuart Morholt, who was still taped to his information stand and staring at Clare and Al with something that might have been a measure of respect.

Then she turned to Al and Maggie. "Can you keep these two under control until I get back?"

Maggie eyed the bat in Al's hand and her mouth quirked in a half-grin. "I think we'll be able to handle things."

"What are you going to do?" Al asked.

"If Comorra never drinks the poison Boudicca left behind," Clare said, "if that Connal is there to stop her, then this Connal never exists. I'm going to go find him and make sure he gets to Comorra on time. This time."

"He won't be out for long, you know," Al said with a worried glance over her shoulder at the outstretched form of her unconscious cousin.

"I know." Clare nodded tersely. "Ten minutes. Give me that long and no longer." She thrust her gloved hand into her pocket and grabbed Connal's other bracelet-the one she'd taken from Boudicca's bier. He wouldn't need to leave it at the bier anymore-he wasn't going to go to the bier. He was going to take Comorra and run. Clare was going to make sure of it.

"Okay." Al checked her watch. It was a retro-cool vintage wind-up and had survived the s.h.i.+mmer trip to Boudicca's tomb just fine. "Ten minutes and then I'm calling it, pal."

"You bet." Clare nodded. She stripped off one of her driving gloves and placed her hand on the cuff. The cold, sinewy surface of the twisted silver bracelet sparked fire against her bare skin. Then the s.h.i.+mmering took over and she was gone.

IF SHE HADN'T been looking for him, Clare wouldn't have seen him.

Connal was a shadow. Just a shape in the gloom of early night, hunched and breathing heavily, clutching a shoulder wet with blood. He was crouched beside the bole of a mighty oak, his eyes closed and his face drawn tight with pain.

"Connal." Clare knelt beside him, shaking him gently.

His eyes snapped open, filled with animal wariness, and it took him a moment before he even recognized her. But then the ghost of his killer smile curved his lips and he murmured her name. "Clarinet ... s.h.i.+ning One ... have you come to take me to the Otherworld?"

"Actually, I came to ask your help so that I can keep Comorra out of the Otherworld."

"What?"

"She's on the verge of making a terrible mistake, Connal, and you have to help me stop her before she does."

The Druid's gaze sharpened and his mouth pressed together in a hard line. "Help me stand."

"Good. If you think you can make it, then we've got to go now." Clare got her shoulder under his arm and helped him to his feet. "How far is it to the village?"

"Not far. Just over that ridge. I was on my way there-"

"I know. Can you run?"

Connal nodded, fierce determination in his eyes. "I can try."

In fact, even though he was wounded, Connal could run a h.e.l.l of a lot better than Clare could. She had to push to keep up with him as he fell into a loping, ground-eating jog. The terrain was a little rough but they made it to the Iceni town in probably just under five minutes. This is cutting it close, Clare thought.

The paths were deserted and most of the buildings in the village were dark. When they reached the Great Hall they saw that its doors gaped wide like the black maw of some huge, dead beast. Only a reddish flickering light shone deep within the shadowed roundhouse, the remains of what would normally have been a roaring blaze in the central fire pit.

Boudicca was draped over a low, backless chair beside the council fire. Still. Lifeless. Emptied of rage, elegant in death. At her feet, hunched and shaking, her hair hanging in front of her face, sat Comorra.

She looked up. "h.e.l.lo Clare," she said, her eyes empty of all emotion. "Have you come to say goodbye?"

"Not exactly." Clare steeled herself and stood tall, knowing that Comorra was fragile and unpredictable in that moment. She didn't want her doing anything stupid. Like drinking from the poisoned cup she held in her hand. "I came to get you out of here."

"It's time to leave, Princess," Connal said softly. "I will take you over the mountains, to my home in the tribe of the Dyfneint."

"So that I may carry the blight of my mother's rebellion to another's door? I will not go." Comorra gripped the poison cup, her knuckles white. "My life would mean the deaths of hundreds more Celts, Connal. You know that. Maybe thousands. The Legions will not leave anyone alive who will stand as a rallying point for the tribes. I would live as one hunted and those around me would die."

Connal hesitated. A deep frown shadowed his brow.

"I don't have time for this," Clare muttered, automatically glancing at her fried, useless watch. She nudged the Druid sharply with her elbow. "Stop dawdling and say something!"

"He cannot." Comorra laughed mirthlessly. "There is nothing to say. He knows I'm right."

"Connal-" Clare was getting frustrated.

"The princess is right." Connal shook his head, his expression full of pain. "Our world is changing, Clarinet. It has changed. The Iceni are a proud people. We do not surrender without a fight-and usually not even then! This was a battle that the G.o.ds decided we were to lose and it will not end as long as Comorra lives. There would be no peace for the princess."

"But-"

"It is Comorra's decision, Clare." Connal's voice was harsh with leashed emotion. "One that I will respect."

"So she becomes just another casualty of war. A sacrifice to Andrasta." Clare tried but could not keep the bitterness from her voice. "And you're okay with that."

"Comorra is a princess." Connal said proudly. "And she is wise. And-"