Chapter 6

"Nick Boyle."

"Nick."

"Derek…?"

"Nick…."

"Yeah Derek?"

"Nick!"

"Geez Derek, I'm already on my way to the hotel, don't be so uptight."

The dial tone picked up when the young man had hung up on his boss, leaving Derek to stare at his cell phone before sighing. Typical, he had been worried about his young friend, who had left to the local pub to gather some info hours ago and now he was being 'uptight' because he worried, as if they weren't in Connemara, Ireland, where he had lost a team mate about five years back. It was only natural for him to worry, but Nick probably blamed that because he was acting like an old man.

A knock on the door announced the subject of his thoughts, so when he opened it, he was ready to give his colleague an ear full, only to frown, taking in the state of Nick.

"My Gott! What happened to you?"

The young man was nursing a split lip and fresh blood was dripping down from a small cut above his eyebrow. Now what? It seemed they couldn't go anywhere without the ex-Seal being hurt, and that silly grin on the bruised face wasn't helping either. Puzzled he let Nick into their shared hotel room, watching him settle in a chair, using his sleeve to gauze the bleeding.

"Here, use this, your clothes have enough stains already and I don't want Alex's wrath over me."

The tall Dutchman pushed a clean washcloth in Nick's hands, while searching in his suitcase for the first aid kit, a travelling companion he never forgot and had always been used so far. Giving Nick a questioning look, he still waited for the answer from his young colleague. Sighing the security chief complied, knowing there was only one way to get Derek of his back.

"I needed to get some information, and I did, like you asked me to."

"Getting information or get punched in the face, I think those two are very different from each other Nick."

Nick chuckled, watching his boss rummage through the first aid kit while glancing at him with upraised eyebrows. Derek could be so unknowing some times, and that really didn't happen a lot.

"You should have seen the other guy! I really got him.........Ouch!"

This time it was Derek's turn to chuckle when the security chief gave him a glare for applying salve to the cut without warning. What happened to the tough guy whenever it was time to get he injuries bandaged?

"So you're telling me you beat up another man in order to get the information? What ever happened to asking it politely?"

"We're in Ireland, where people just don't hand out info on a silver platter. You gotta work for it, make sure they trust you and then, if you're lucky, they might say something. So I bought them a beer, chatted away and won the fist fight. In their book that means I'm one of them now."

"Of course, your last name being Boyle and having Irish blood in your veins didn't help with that either."

Nick glanced up to meet the other man's look, and grinned, winching when his lip started bleeding again. Okay, so that helped too, but he wasn't gonna admit that to the smirking Precept. Damn Derek, he always knew how to make a story less attractive.

"You wanna know what I found out or are we gonna discuss my Irish heritage?"

"As much as it would be an interesting discussion, we can save it for another time. I'm more interested in what you found out that had to be worth taking punches for."

The young man batted away Derek's hand from his face when the man had been ready to apply some strips to the cuts. Last thing the Ex-Seal wanted was to look like it even bothered him. Derek meant well with it, but it was more suiting for kids, not Nick Boyle.

"There's some weird shit going on here alright. The past few nights there have lights coming from the old burial ground a few miles from here. It has a stone circle just like Stonehenge, so I'm guessing there gotta be some dead druids buried there or at least it draws the spirits there. That's not all, two men have gone missing already since then…"

"Two nights, two men missing, that means it started when our chalice broke. And if it happens every night, it means this night another man will disappear."

"So we have to get to the burial ground now and stop those dead druids before that happens."

"We cannot go in blind Nick. We don't know how to defeat them and I don't want any of us ending up missing. I'm sorry, I know how you feel but we have to wait."

Nick glared at him angrily, not believing what he just heard. They were here to stop innocents getting killed and now they had to sit still and watch while they knew what was going to happen. He wasn't angry with Derek but just with anything.

"I'm getting a shower."

Derek nodded quietly, watching his young colleague ducking into the shower and locking the door with a curse. He too felt the quilt of knowing what was about to happen weighing down on him, but he pushed it away. He rarely let a case get personal, though to Nick everything was personal, he always got too involved. This was going to be a long night.