Chapter Twenty-Four: Elsewhere…

Crom Cruach leaned back against the molding chair and watched his Priest at work. The mortal was inches from death, the blood from the multiple wounds soaking the rotting wood and cloth around her. The rest of the family they had taken had died hours earlier; the woman, the mother, had held out the longest, fought the hardest, even when her husband sagged in his bonds, mind broken from the tortures they put him under.

Crom Cruach was bored.

The woman screamed, her bowles letting loose for the third time that evening. Urine splashed at his Priest's feet, defiling the once-holy ground even more. The desecrated altar of the One God's temple was awash in blood and other bodily fluids. They had ripped the girl-child's undeveloped womb from her body and forced her older brother to eat it; the mother had fought viciously then, but to no avail.

"Enough," the single word made the Priest freeze, then bow his head in acquiescence. The mortals were fun to play with, giving him a mere taste of the power his other prey had pushed into his veins like the sweetest of drugs.

The Priest grabbed the woman's hair and yanked her head back, slitting her throat with a sure hand and a sharp blade. The arch of arterial blood splashed into the air, blotting out the moon for a mere second, and then fell to the floor with a dirty, human splat.

Crom Cruach stretched back in his makeshift chair, the rotted remains of tapestries from the church cellar. Already the power from the massacre on the coast was receding; he needed a new rush of prayers, of blood, of sacrifices to his name. He needed more priests, more supplicants to worship his name.

Crom Cruach spread his arms wide and closed his eyes. The night's dark pulse swelled in his ears. He gathered a hard knot of power inside of his chest, curling it tighter and tighter until it beat out the words of his name like a devotional chant. He released it into the night, calling all the Dark, all the corrupt, all those who worshiped destruction to come and find him, to become his Priests, his followers, his beloved, desired disciples.

All over England, the huddled remains of Lord Voldemort's Death Eaters stirred and took notice. Their Dark Marks throbbed in time to some pulse that was not their own. Their eyes turned to the west, to the ragged shores that faced Ireland's rocky beaches.

Crom Cruach had found his new disciples.

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Rufus Scrimgeour was tired.

He rested his elbows on his messy desk and cradled his head in his hands. The headache behind his eyes pounded in time with his pulse, even the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up straight. A shudder rippled over his skin, but the migraine gave him little time to take note of it.

The race was not going well. He had too many fires to put out with Potter's appearance, disappearance and the subsequent ravings of Black and his household Healer. Keeping the papers on topic, focused to the ideal points of the political race he wanted to be in the forefront of everyone's mind…that was almost impossible.

He lowered his hands and let his forehead rest against the cool wood of his desk. The stack of papers under his skin rustled as he moved to find a more comfortable spot. If his aide had not also been buried under a stack of paperwork, he would have foisted it all off onto the industrious young man and went to go speak to people on the streets, to further his agenda, to make them stop whispering about nonsense and to sit up and take heed of what was really going on in Fudge's Ministry. Most days he felt like he was losing a hopeless race.

He needed Potter gone – or, well, not gone, but silent, away, hidden perhaps, but he refused to fall to Fudge's thinking and lock the boy away in Azkaban. He was a better man than that, he had to believe that. But the truth remained; he needed the boy and his problems out of the spotlight. With the school term starting, he had the perfect opportunity to keep the boy's movements silent and away from the public eye. But Rufus Scrimgeour was not a man moved by bribes or threats, no matter what the Headmaster called them.

Still, a reasonable voice protested in the back of his mind, the old coot has a point. Tit for tat, he'll keep the boy away from the public and all you have to do is…He closed his eyes against the thought. He didn't want to, he had never wanted to, but he needed the Headmaster's support in this. He had no choice.

With a sigh, Rufus pushed himself up from his desk and studied the oh-so polite letter sitting in front of him. He found his quill and ink and penned a short note into the margin, signing his name hard enough to tear the parchment. He turned to the owl sitting at his sill and handed the creased letter back to it.

For the good of the people, he shook his head and turned back to his work. Sometimes deals with the devil must be made.

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Out in the Dark, in the Otherworld, a call winged through the night.

Gwenn froze in the middle of stirring a great pot of stew. The shutter to one of their windows flew open with a loud bang, startling the small host of children gathered around her hearth. Merle was close enough to secure it, but still, Gwenn's heart beat hard in her chest for a reason she could not name.

Elsewhere in the great, sprawling Dark, a figure tripped as it walked down a brightly lit Path that led to a noisy fair in the distance. The bright day, with the new-born sun of their world seemed to darken for a long second. The edges of the Path seemed to grow faint, bilious, as though the Dark was striving for a way to beat back the sunlight and the grass and all the life that had been restored to the once-somber lands. The selkie shuddered as he picked himself up from the Path, dusting the dirt from his clothes. The moment was over as soon as it came, but it left a cold ball of dread in his stomach that no amount of warm ale would loosen.

In a castle full of childish laughter, the sound of mirth fell silent as the call rolled over the sky. Erin stood on her bale of hay, her rough, wooden sword lax in her hand as she studied the bright blue sky. Goose flesh broke out over her arms at the faint memory that call brought forth. Her sword clattered to the ground as she jumped from the bale of hay, running for the wide open doors to the castle. The Winter King met her there, drawing her into his arms as he lifted her to his hip. They both studied the sky with eyes that held no laughter.

In the Dark the call flashed fast as lightning. The Morrigan screamed back a challenge to the sickening strike that spread over her skin. The scent was fresh. The scent was close. She would hunt it to the ends of the world and beyond. She would destroy it, crush it to mud and dust so that it never bothered her dream child again.

Somewhere in the mortal realm, a reborn god laughed as its Priest painted them both with the entrails of a fresh kill.

End Chapter Twenty-Four