Bee stood at the top of the rise wondering if she would be able to smell the sea without the reek of burnt flesh and sulphur. She watched the seagulls as silhouettes between the bull’s horns, the backdrop, a roiling mass of red and black clouds. Below the clouds, whiplashes tore through the air, ripping it with hissing cracks she could hear despite the distance. As always, the heavy stench of sulphur made her wonder if it was the smell of burning whips, or the body odour of the mass of defeated demons shuffling up the road towards Bull’s Head Rock. She watched as the rock’s maw swallowed the monsters. Their heads were down, their weapons dragging in the dust. Everything was hazy, shimmering through the shield she and her coven were providing, protection against magical attack.

  The end should be straightforward, but never was.

  The priestess, torn between duty and compassion, sighed when a green bull, easily thirty hands high, with three horns, roared and turned on Whitehead’s warriors. Covering her mouth so none would see the grimace or the pain, she said in her mind, Turn back. Of course, the demon didn’t hear. Mind speak was for others. Not that it would have mattered. The merciless warriors in white cloaks would still have surrounded the hapless beast, brandishing their flaming whips; the Maidens dealt both swiftly and harshly with even a show of dissent.

  Ever the same story.

  It wasn’t the first time Bee watched a demon turning to confront each new lash with a roar, giving it the appearance of a dancing bear. Soon, as always, it could no longer fight and sank to its knees. A Maiden ran forward, leapt and slammed her dagger into the side of its neck. No one took any notice of the fountain of blood that spurted across the road and burned the grass, least of all the shuffling mass. When the Maidens dragged the carcass away and dumped it on the charred plains, food for scavengers, the High Priestess lifted her eyes to the Four: Darkness’s demon vassals, his inner circle. They were sitting on black, bare-backed mounts, two on each side of the tunnel entrance, watching their dejected army shuffle home.

  Bee’s eyes flitted over each of them until she reached the Demon of Death, Marbh, who seemed to smile at her.

  Regardless of being half a league away, she saw Marbh clearly, as if something magnified her out of the surrounding scene. The demon’s eyes were swirling with different shades of the same colour: red. But not just colour, also different emotions: evil, hatred, disdain, and yes, even confusion swirled in their red depths. She was a demon who had questioned her purpose. The ruby on her alabaster forehead pulsed, a rhythm that spoke of Dhuosnos’s control, each pulse a message, no doubt conducting the retreat or planning the next escape. Marbh’s skin was so white and smooth that it looked like a ceramic mask. In contrast, her hair was black as jet, which accentuated the ruby. The monster had a figure many women would, ironically, kill for, and men would, no less ironically, die for. It was not the beast’s true form, but the form Marbh chose, a lie to beguile the unwary.

  “How am I even seeing this?” Bechuille asked. The priestess would not normally question her eyes, but this time, what she saw was too incredible to simply believe. “It’s just a dream, so. Reliving the end of the last Scourge.”

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  The demon laughed and said, “It is true, Priestess, you are dreaming, and soon Dagda will wake you.” Marbh did not speak the words; instead, they boomed in Bee’s head like a drummer beating a base drum for a ship’s rowers. Boom, boom. Boom, boom. Each word echoing through her skull made her teeth ache.

  “I’m asleep, so?”

  “Aye, and Dagda is coming to wake you. When he does, remember your duty.”

  “What duty? What are ye talking about?”

  “Your father has decided it is time.”

  “There, then, just a stupid dream. Me Dah’s been dead since before I was born.”

  Her relief washed over her like a wave. It was, after all, her mind replaying the end of the last Scourge, events that had shaken her, no doubt the reason for the dream.

  Marbh’s smile turned to a grimace of such malice that the priestess felt her knees weaken. Even though it was a dream, she was glad the coven stood behind her in a semicircle, chanting the draíocht mantra, a powerful incantation the coven used to channel Earth Power through her.

  “You are easily duped,” Marbh scoffed. “That is not what I was told to expect.”

  “Who told ye?” she asked, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

  “Your father told me.”

  “I wouldn’t believe anything he told ye. Me Mah said he was naught but scum, who left me, only to go die in some forgotten war. She never understood what attracted her to him to begin with.”

  “Your father lives, although it is true you never met him. Aside from when she birthed you, you never met your mother, either.”

  Why would Upthog lie? She died defending me.

  “Of course I’ve met me Mah. One of yer lot cut her throat with a talon during me first demon war.”

  “That witch was not your mother. Again, you are easily duped.”

  “What d’ye want, Demon?” Bee hissed. “Other than throwing insults at me, I mean.”

  “I already told you, Priestess. Your father commands you to remember your duty. If you fail, punishment will be severe, and many will suffer.”

  “Fail what?”

  Rather than answer, the demon’s voice boomed, “Remember your duty.”

  “What duty? What are ye talking about?”

  “Do your duty…Do your…”

  Marbh’s magnified image receded, and the voice became a low echo, a hint at a noise long since gone, replaced by the shrieking of carrion birds fighting over the green carcass. When Marbh led her horse through the gaping maw in the wake of the defeated army, Bee shuddered, as though cold, and wrapped herself more tightly in her hides.

  Me hides? What hides? Oh, I’m in me bed, so. Knew it was naught but a dream.

  But it had been so real, which was not a surprise, because it was a memory of the last Scourge. She remembered Marbh astride a dead horse staring at her. She remembered the cruel death of the green monster. There had been no strange message from the demon. No nonsense about dead fathers and mothers; only a forlorn sense of waste. And now, the same sense made her draw in a deep, ragged breath, the sigh of one profoundly saddened.

  “Instead of lying there in self-pity, you must be up, Bechuille,” a voice said from beside her. She’d not expected to hear him for some time. Worse than his timing, Dagda’s usually cheerful voice had an edge.

  Soon, Dagda will wake you. Memory of the words caused Bee to shudder.

  “Why?” she asked, turning her back and trying to forget the demon ordering her to do her duty. Usually, she’d forgotten her dreams soon after waking, but not this time. The blood red eyes seemed to be sitting over the bridge of her nose, causing an ache that made her want to vomit.

  “Come, Bee. Now. There is no time to waste.”

  “What is it?” she demanded, keeping her eyes tight shut.

  “Your brother has stolen through the portal. I want you to bring him back to face my wrath.”