Chapter Twenty

The stunned silence following Bo's pronouncement soon devolved into cacophony.

"You're insane!"

"Are you fucking kidding me?!"

"That's impossible!"

"No way. Absolutely no way!"

"All right, all right!" Bo relented, shouting to be heard and drawing the brief attention of the combatants. "It was just an idea."

"It's not a bad idea; it's just not plausible," Tamsin analyzed.

"Ex-fucking-cuse me, do you not remember the scald crow that paid us a visit right before the Under-Fae attacked?!" Kenzi asked incredulously.

"Yes, but I was also the one who noted that the scald crows warnings weren't against Mór Ríoghan, though still from her," Tamsin replied, trying to be patient.

"Oh, this'll be easy then – we'll just jot out a little note and pass it to the next scald crow we see," Kayleigh drawled sarcastically. "I'm sure the sídhe goddess of the battlefield will pay attention. How again do we know that this is Dagda's doing and not hers?"

"Again with the scald crows!" Tamsin protested.

"What, do you speak crow or something that you know their intentions?" Kayleigh shot back.

"E-nough," Bo interrupted before it could come to blows. "It was just an idea, ok? Just drop it."

"Well…" Trick began. The empath gaped at him.

"You can't seriously be considering this!"

"Not with complete seriousness, no. But at this point I'm open to any ideas."

Kayleigh let out an exasperated sigh and buried her face in her hands. "Fine. Whatever. Throw a Hail Mary pass at the apocalypse. See if I care."

"So then, that's three possibilities now," Fíonn clapped his hands, speaking with false optimism in an attempt to ease the tension. "We find the Spear and use it, we take the battle to the Otherworld to find the Sword and Cauldron, or we contact one of the last two living Tuatha." Hearing the impossibility of each spoken aloud made everybody in the circle wilt.

"Look, we still haven't made our way through all these books yet," Lauren noted. "We'll break for lunch and then keep looking. Maybe we'll find a better solution."

"Lunch? Already?" Bo asked, surprised.

"Yeah, Bo-Bo, lunch, 'cause some of us got here on time…" Kenzi teased with a smirk. Bo gave her a shove before standing up along with the others.

The group dispersed to stretch and grab their jackets. Bo was about to get her purse when Kenzi elbowed her in the side. "Don't look now, but Wolfy's coming in for the kill."

"Shit," Bo muttered under her breath when she looked up and found that Dyson was indeed approaching her with an imploring look on his face. She turned to Kenzi only to find that her best friend had retreated to Tamsin's side across the room. "Thanks a lot, 'bestie,'" the succubus grumbled, decidedly not looking at Dyson when he reached her side.

"Bo, can we – "

"Not now, Dyson."

"But Bo, I – "

"No."

"Bo, wait – " Dyson pleaded, grabbing her arm.

Bo spun around and was about to lay into Dyson for putting a hand on her, but suddenly the shifter was pinned to the wall by his neck. The hand around his throat belonged to Tamsin, her now-skeletal face contorted with fury. Brilliant white wings burst from her back and curved around so the tips of her feathers threatened to slice into the shifter in her grasp. And she would have – would have torn him to pieces with her wings and bare hands except –

"Tamsin," Bo murmured, running a soothing hand along the top of her right wing. As the Valkyrie had calmed Bo's rage before, so the succubus was calming Tamsin's now.

Tamsin held Dyson in place for another moment before letting him crumple to the floor. "Don't you ever touch her again," she threatened with a growl. Message made clear, the Valkyrie retracted her wings and let the darkness fade from her face. She put her arm around Bo's waist and turned them both away from the defeated shifter to face the rest of the group, frozen and gaping in shock as they watched the tableau play out before them.

"Damn, Bo," Kayleigh finally broke the silence. "What is it with your exes being thrown against the wall?"

"Karma, for dating her," Lauren replied, struggling to suppress a grin despite being one of said exes.

"Oh, it's not just her exes," Tamsin leered. "Though in my case it was because – "

"Tamsin," Bo cut her off with a hiss, an embarrassed blush spreading across her face.

Despite the clarity of the implications, despite the fact that it involved the woman she once loved now loving another, Lauren couldn't help but burst into laughter.

The walk to lunch eased the tension the Valkyrie's show of protection had caused, though that was mostly due to the fact that Trick, Dyson, and Hale remained behind. The group laughed and chatted and pretended that all was right with the world. Tamsin laced her fingers with Bo's as they walked, both women sharing easy smiles between them.

None noticed the scald crow observing them from the roof of the gym.

…

The afternoon progressed much the same as the morning had, though Kenzi, Kayleigh, and even Lauren abandoned grumbling over research in favor of combat practice. The human held Geraldine and was squaring off against Kayleigh, who was teaching her basic blocks and counterattacks. Dyson was taking out his angry shame on Hale via hand-to-hand combat and Aislinn was teaching Lauren how to use a crossbow, which the human was improving with quite quickly. Bo, Tamsin, Trick, and Fíonn remained immersed in the books, though Tamsin suspected that Bo wasn't reading so much as flicking pages back and forth.

Tamsin, for her part, was flipping through one of the modern books Fíonn had brought. According to Aislinn, the gancanagh had raided both his shelf and hers for everything on Irish folklore they had. The blonde empath didn't put much stock in the more recent publications, but Fíonn had a soft spot for the book Legendary Ireland, by Eithne Massey. So Tamsin had picked it up on a whim.

The Valkyrie turned the page to find herself staring at the Celtic wheel of the year that marked the equinoxes, solstices, and four seasonal festivals. She grimly traced the words "Samhain – 31 October," reminded of how little time left they had to solve this whole debacle. Briefly scanning the text, she glanced over to the next page and the poem that ended the introduction. She was about to turn the page again when three words above the poem caught her attention: "invocation of Ireland."

Tamsin read through the text above the poem, an idea forming in her mind as dread formed in the pit of her stomach. The verse was written by an ancient poet so as to 'quiet the waves' that prevented the Sons of Míl – early people of Ireland – from reaching the country's shores. The poem itself spoke of Ireland as well as the kings of Tara and Sons of Míl themselves, calling out to every facet of the country the poet could think to name.

Fíonn had said the day they met that the copper medal he wore was supposed to be able to locate the Treasures, but only if the right words were spoken. It was a long, long shot, to be sure, but Tamsin felt that an ancient invocation of Treasures' homeland was certainly a fair candidate for "the right words."

"Hey, Fíonn, do me a favor?" Tamsin asked.

"Anything for you, fair Valkyrie. Not flirting," he added before Bo could say anything. The succubus just smirked without looking up from her book, knowing that Fíonn was unaware of the bond she shared with Tamsin.

"Are you wearing your dad's medal?" the blonde continued.

The gancanagh frowned. "I never take it off, why?"

Tamsin passed him the copy of Legendary Ireland. "I want you to read out that poem in Irish while holding onto the medal."

Fíonn gave her a doubtful, questioning look, but shrugged his assent. Pulling the medal from under his shirt, the gancanagh grasped the copper disk and began to read out the ancient invocation, mentally translating the English text to Irish.

"I invoke the land of Ireland:
Much-coursed be the fertile sea,
Fertile be the fruit-strewn mountain,
Fruit-strewn be the showery wood,
Showery be the river of waterfalls,
Of waterfalls be the lake of deep pools,
Deep-pooled be the hill-top well,
A well of tribes be the assembly,
An assembly of kings be Tara,
Tara be the hill of the tribes,
The tribes be the sons of Míl,
Of Míl, the ships, the barks,

Let the lofty bark be Ireland,
Lofty Ireland, darkly sung…
I invoke the land of Ireland."

Fíonn gave a little yelp and jumped to his feet, releasing his hold on the pendant. His reaction caught everyone's attention, and eyes widened to see that the triple-spiral was glowing white. Moving as if pulled on a string, Fíonn stepped around the books and towards the pile of weaponry, still staring at the medal on his chest in bemusement. His stumbling footsteps brought him to a halt before Trick's quarterstaff, and the Blood King paled, also leaping to his feet. "No, don't – !" But it was too late. Fíonn reached out and wrapped his hand around the staff.

There was a flash of light around both medal and staff before the spiral ceased to glow. Fíonn no longer held a staff, but a spear. On the widest stretch of each side of the blade, just above the shaft, the triple-spiral was engraved in gold.

Once more, stunned silence reigned, but this time it devolved into absolute uproar. Weapons were dropped as everyone leapt to their feet and advanced on the Blood King with furious accusations and demands for explanations. The advance was only halted by Bo and Tamsin jumping in front of Trick with their own weapons drawn.

"Stop!" Bo commanded. "Just stop!" She leveled her dagger at the approaching group and they reluctantly obeyed, though accusatory rage still burned in all their gazes.

"Thank you," Trick began, but he was cut off when Bo swung around to aim her blade at him.

"You promised me no more secrets!" she accused with her own barely-contained fury. "You promised me! And now this?!"

"I swore a blood oath!" Trick protested with a shout, holding up his hands in surrender. "I was bound to secrecy upon pain of death! The oath would have killed me had I told you!"

"So you didn't just know where it was, you actually had it this whole time," Kayleigh realized.

"You knew?!" Bo spun on Kayleigh, dagger aimed at her.

"I guessed," the empath replied, her turn to hold up her hands. "Aislinn and I felt his reaction to the mention of the Spear that day in the Dal when Fíonn first told the story of the battle and the Treasures."

"This is why you didn't want us to use one of the Treasures," Fíonn inferred. "The Spear was right here the whole time and using it would have meant revealing it."

"Which would have killed me," Trick finished. "The purpose of the blood oath was so that the Treasure could never be used – hidden in plain sight from the rest of the world."

"If the Spear came to be in your possession, you must know more about the first tearing of the veil than you're letting on," Tamsin commented, though it was more of a suspicious demand.

"No, I don't," Trick insisted firmly. "The Spear came into my possession upon the death of its first caretaker. I swore the oath on her deathbed to protect it with my life and never tell a soul."

"She broke her own oath to pass on guardianship of the Spear?" Aislinn asked, startled.

"She was already dying, and it needed to be done," Trick replied. "And it's worked, until now, now that it needs to be protected more than ever," he finished angrily.

Bo was about to retort when Fíonn and Trick doubled over gasping, hands over their chests. "What, what is it?" Aislinn asked, moving quickly to her brother's side.

"It's the veil," Fíonn gasped hoarsely. He looked up at Bo. "Remember how we explained yesterday that sídhe are tied to it – that we can feel when it changes? Well, it just changed. A lot."

"Now that the Spear has been revealed, I'm guessing it's calling to the Treasures in the Otherworld, and those Treasures are answering," Trick stated grimly. "We need to act now."

"We still haven't figured out which crazy plan to use!" Kenzi protested.

"All of them," Bo decided. "We use all of them. Now that we know how to locate the Treasures, we take the battle to the Otherworld, find them, and put and end to all this, even if it means destroying all the Treasures and giving neither side dominion over the veil."

"Any other sídhe would accuse you of sacrilege right now, but I'm for it," Fíonn agreed.

"And what about Mór Ríoghan? And Dagda?" Lauren protested.

"We'll burn those bridges when we get there," Tamsin answered with a decisive but resigned sigh.

"We need to get everyone together as quickly as possible – contact the Morrigan and all the other sídhe, Light and Dark," Trick all but commanded. He reached over and took the Spear from Fíonn, who surrendered the weapon with much relief.

"Bigger question – where are we going to cross over?" Kayleigh asked. "I mean, we'll be going through one of the tears, obviously, but where do we access one?"

"Best guess? The Dal, for the same reason we left it," Fíonn replied, and Trick nodded in affirmation.

"Right. It's settled. Now grab your weapons and let's move," Tamsin ordered, going into battle commander mode. Everyone obeyed without hesitation. Lauren picked up her cell phone along with her crossbow so she could alert the Morrigan, though the leanan sídhe had probably already felt the disturbance herself.

Already armed, Bo and Tamsin stood still amidst the chaos, gazing at each other with worried but determined expressions.

"This is it, mo laoch," the Valkyrie murmured, switching her sword to her left hand so she could lace her fingers with Bo's again. "Are you ready?"

Bo smiled, squeezing Tamsin's hand. "I'm bonded to the strongest, fiercest Valkyrie ever to have lived. I'm ready, mo ghrá."

Tamsin's responding smile was only half so. "That's not what I meant, Bo. Are you ready to face Dagda? Are you ready to meet your father?"

Bo's smile faded and she took a deep, shuddering breath. "Will you be there with me?"

"Always. You know that."

"Then I'm ready for anything."

AN: The exact citations for the wheel of the year and the poem are pages 14 and 15 of Eithne Massey's Legendary Ireland, the book I've mentioned and been referring back to for most of the writing of this story. The poem can be found online as can many various, extremely complicated pictures of the Celtic wheel of the year. "Eithne" is pronounced "Enya," like the singer (fun fact: the singer apparently changed the spelling so people would pronounce it correctly).