See him for the animal he was.
If he permitted that day to arrive, he knew one of them would die.
A FEW WEEKS LATER …
• 2 •
Across the ocean in not Scotland but England, a land where Drustan MacKeltar had once erroneously claimed the Druids scarce possessed enough knowledge to weave a simple sleep spell, a hushed and urgent conversation was taking place.
“Have you made contact?”
“I dare not, Simon. The transformation is not yet complete.”
“But it has been many months since the Draghar took him!”
“He is a Keltar. Though he cannot win, still he resists. It is the power that will corrupt him, and he refuses to use it.”
A long silence. Then Simon said, “We have waited thousands of years for their return, as was promised us in the Prophecy. I weary of waiting. Push him. Give him reason to need the power. We will not lose the battle this time.”
A quick nod. “I will take care of it.”
“Be subtle, Giles. Do not yet alert him to our existence. When the time is right, I will do so. And should anything go wrong … well, you know what to do.”
Another quick nod, an anticipatory smile, a flutter of cloth and his companion was gone, leaving him alone in the circle of stones beneath a fiery English dawn.
The man who’d given the order, Simon Barton-Drew, master of the Druid sect of the Draghar, leaned back against a mossy stone, absently stroking the winged-serpent tattoo on his neck, his gaze skimming the ancient monoliths. A tall, lean man with salt-and-pepper hair, a narrow foxlike face and restless gray eyes that missed nothing, he was honored that such an auspicious moment had come in his hour of rule. He’d been waiting thirty-two years for this moment, since the birth of his first son, which had coincided with the day he’d been initiated into the sect’s inner sanctum. There were those like the Keltar, who served the Tuatha Dé Danaan, and there were those like himself, who served the Draghar. The Druid sect of the Draghar had kept the faith for thousands of years, handing the Prophecy down from one generation to the next: the promise of the return of their ancient leaders, the promise of the one who would lead them to glory. The one who would take back all the power the Tuatha Dé Danaan had stolen from them so long ago.
He smiled. How fitting that one of the Tuatha Dé’s own cherished Keltar now held within him the power of the ancient Draghar—the league of thirteen most powerful Druids that had ever lived. How poetic that one of the Tuatha Dé’s very own would finally destroy them.
And reclaim the Druids’ rightful place in the world.
Not as the much maligned, tree-hugging, mistletoe-gathering fools they’d permitted the world to believe them to be.
But as rulers of mankind.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Chloe Zanders snapped, raking her long curly hair from her face with both hands. “You want me to take the third Book of Manannán—and yes, I know it’s only a reproduction of a portion of the original, but it’s still priceless—to some man on the East Side who’s probably going to eat popcorn while he paws through it? It’s not as if he might actually read it. The parts that aren’t in Latin are in old Gaelic.” Fists at her waist, she glared up at her boss, one of several cocurators of the medieval collection housed in The Cloisters and The Met. “What does he want it for? Did he say?”
“I didn’t ask,” Tom replied, shrugging.
“Oh, that’s just great. You didn’t ask.” Chloe shook her head disbelievingly. Though the copy her fingers currently rested delicately upon was not illuminated, and was a mere five centuries old—nearly a thousand years younger than the original texts that resided in the National Museum of Ireland—it was a sacred bit of history, demanding utmost reverence and respect.
Not to be toted about the city, entrusted to the hands of a stranger.
“How much did he donate?” she asked irritably. She knew a bribe of sorts must have changed hands. One didn’t “check things out” of The Cloisters any more than one could stroll up to Trinity College and ask to borrow the Book of Kells.
“A jeweled fifteenth-century skean dhu and a priceless Damascus blade,” Tom said, smiling beatifically. “The Damascus dates to the Crusades. Both have been authenticated.”
A delicate brow rose. Awe made short work of outrage. “Wow. Really?” A skean dhu! Her fingers curled in anticipation. “Do you have them already?” Antiquities; she loved them one and all, from the single rosary bead with the entire scene of The Passion carved on it, to the Unicorn Tapestries, to the splendid collection of medieval blades.