Prologue

Wicklow Mountains, Ireland

June 2010

He emerged from the earth, the acrid smell of smoke hitting his nose as he brushed the loose soil from his face. He could see the flames licking at the houses, and hear the shouts of the humans as they ran, some rushing to safety, others attempting to drown the fire that had already turned the main house to rubble.

His daughter sat at the edge of the garden, staring into the flames, leaning toward the heat as if drawn by some ineffable force.

Carwyn stalked toward her. “Deirdre.”

She looked up, her eyes feverish in the moonlight. “I kept everyone away. As soon as I realized… I kept them all away. No one’s been hurt.”

He pulled her up by the collar of her singed shirt. “What have you done?”

“As soon as I realized… She’s still alive. She must be, I think. The flames keep coming, and I feel… I knew as soon as she woke—”

“What have you done?” he roared as the roof of the barn adjacent to the farmhouse started to burn. He glared at her, the blood tears staining her cheeks and her auburn hair wild around her face. His grip on her softened.

“I couldn’t…” Deirdre’s whisper could barely be heard. “I couldn’t lose her, too. Not her.” More shouts came from the houses, and somewhere near the dairy barn, a child began to cry.

Carwyn’s face fell, and his rage fled. “My daughter”—he groaned—“what have you done?” He let go of her collar, and Deirdre’s long legs seemed to crumple under her as she sank back into the cool soil of the summer garden.

He waded through the mass of people running away from the smoking farmhouse. The old building was in ruins, the top having collapsed onto the ground floors. Through the rubble, he could see the black doorway his son had dug into the hill hundreds of years before. What had once been a cozy passageway now gaped like a tomb, and rough stones had fallen in front of it, partially obscuring the entrance.

Carwyn walked toward it, listening for any sounds that escaped the scorched earth. He lifted his hands, forcing out his energy to move the rocks, as he toed off the shoes he’d been wearing. He dug his feet into the earth, letting the hum of elemental energy flow through him as he felt for her. The air hung thick with smoke, but a faint waft of new amnis, the immortal energy that animated their bodies, carried the smell of charred hawthorn to his nose, drawing him closer.

As he entered the dark passageway, he heard her; her shallow breaths echoed off the worn walls. He followed the trail of her scent and amnis, trying to keep his heart under control, knowing that any hint of danger could result in a rush of suffocating fire. He opened his mouth to speak, keeping his voice quiet, so as not to startle her.

“Brigid?”

A small hitch in her breath.

“It’s me.”

The panting picked up speed, and he scoured the past for something that might calm her. The soft refrain of a Welsh lullaby came to him, and he blinked at the memory of a solemn young girl sitting next to his son in the library, her brown eyes rose to Ioan’s, frowning to hear the fierce immortal singing a childish tune. Carwyn paused as a rush of grief threatened to overpower him.

Brigid had always been too old for lullabies.

Nevertheless, he began to hum the tune, and he could feel her energy change. At first, it smoothed out, drifting in waves, but then the waves began to sharpen, the peaks and valleys growing as he came closer. Her breathing stopped, and Carwyn could hear her heart give a single, low thump.

“Brigid?” he called again.

Carwyn turned a corner, still humming the soft tune, and brushed away the remnants of a burned oak door, blinking away bloody tears as he entered the chamber.

The furniture had been pushed to the edges of the room by the initial blast. There were still flames teasing the edges of a bookcase and a desk, but the rest of the sturdy oak had been torched. He saw her huddled figure glowing through the smoke.

The small woman sat in the center of the room, curled into herself, utterly still. Her knees were drawn to her forehead, and her arms were wrapped around her legs. No trace of clothing remained on her delicate frame and no hair covered her head. She was ***** as the day she had been born into the world, the red-gold flames swirling along her skin having burned away any trace of the human she had once been.

She did not breathe, but her heart began to race. He stopped humming and glanced around the room as he felt the slow draw of air gather around her body. Suddenly, Brigid’s head rose and she opened her eyes. Carwyn gasped. Her warm amber eyes had burned to ash-grey around the edge of her irises, and streaks of blood and soot covered her heart-shaped face.

The flames along her arms began to lick up her neck. Carwyn held up both hands.

“Calm, Brigid.”

Her face fell in pain and confusion. Then she opened her mouth, fangs gleaming in the firelight, as she let out a feral scream and the fire burst forth.

In the space of a heartbeat, Carwyn lifted his shoulders and pulled the mountain down.

Book One: Earth

Generations come and generations go,

but the Earth remains forever.

Ecclesiastes 1:4

Chapter One

Dublin, Ireland

December 1995

Looking back, Brigid Connor would not think it odd how comfortable she’d always been with monsters. The girl had learned at an early age that appearances could be deceiving. Surely her stepfather, with his soft brown hair, calm smile, and open countenance, looked like the picture of fatherly affection and care. Her mother, with her placid face and helping hands, was the ideal of domestic contentment.

So when the monsters burst into her bedroom that cold December night, with her Christmas dress hanging bright and crisp on the closet door and her stepfather bending over her, Brigid should have been horrified. She should have cried out when the dark-haired monster scooped her up in one blurring motion. She should have looked away when the red-haired demon with the burning blue eyes grabbed Richard Kelly by the throat and twisted his neck until she heard the quick pop and he crumbled lifeless to the floor.

But Brigid did none of those things. Because she knew on that cold winter night, as the frost crunched beneath the monsters’ shoes and they bundled her into the waiting car, that appearances could be very deceiving.

Her great-aunt’s waiting arms were soft and warm, and she was enveloped immediately in their embrace.

“We didn’t know, child,” the old woman whispered. “As soon as your mum… we didn’t know. Why didn’t you tell me, Brigid? Don’t worry, darling, we’re away from here now. You’re coming with me and the doctor will take care of everything. Don’t worry—”

“I have my Christmas program tomorrow at school.”

Brigid remembered a sudden silence and a shifting sound outside the car. Suddenly, a pair of blue eyes met hers over her Aunt Sinead’s shoulder. It was the monster who had snapped her stepfather’s neck. He stared at her for a moment; then in an inhuman blur, he was gone. Seconds later, she heard the car door open, and her aunt reached out. Sinead spread her Christmas dress next to her on the seat, and Brigid looked back over her shoulder.

The red-haired monster stood in the frigid night air, but no steaming breath puffed from his mouth. He looked at her with solemn eyes. Suddenly, a smile turned up the corner of his mouth. “It’s a lovely dress,” he said. “You’ll look grand in it.”

Brigid could only whisper. “Thank you.”

The car doors closed. The dark-haired monster with the kind smile slipped into the front seat, and they sped away from the tidy neighborhood in the suburbs of Dublin.

But the red-haired monster stood in front of the house that had been her prison, alone in the freezing night.

Gwynedd, Wales

December 995 AD

“Please.” He grasped her cold hand. “Don’t.”

She only squeezed his fingers and turned back to the fire.

“It is a sin,” Carwyn said quietly. “A grave one. To give in to despair—”

“You are my son,” Maelona said with a soft smile, “not my priest.”

“Mother.” Carwyn, son of Bryn, knelt before her, the wind whipping outside the door of the old cottage that fronted the cozy home. Maelona had dug her shelter into the mountain centuries before, forming and twisting the earth to her will as all of her immortal kind did. The elemental energy had sustained her life and protected her for over three hundred years. And the same mountain had sheltered her only child when he had woken twenty-seven years before, transformed by Maelona’s immortal blood as the young priest lay on the edge of death.

She had saved him. Loved him as a son. Trained him as a vampire to survive in the harsh world he had entered. Now, the powerful immortal whose energy commanded the very earth beneath him sat hunched in front of the fire, pleading with his sire to live.

“Please, I beg you, do not leave me. Your sister’s loss—”

“You know nothing of my loss.” Her voice was sharp, but softened when he raised his red-rimmed eyes to meet her gaze. “You are so young. You know only the faint mortal echo of it. Perhaps, one day, you will understand. For three hundred years she was my companion. The only immortal who knew me from my human life. The only one who understood. I told her not to leave. For her to go to the island and be killed by those Northern heathens…” Maelona’s eyes tightened in grief. “She was surrounded by water when she died, Carwyn. Her ashes drift alone in the ocean.”

Carwyn rose from his knees and sat next to her in front of the crackling fire. “Your sister’s death does not have to mean your own.”

She closed her eyes and gave him a soft smile. “I am tired of this life. You never abandoned your faith, Carwyn. Do you not believe that my soul will fly to meet hers? Don’t you tell me that God does not abandon those touched by our peculiar curse?”

“To willingly meet the day is not a natural death.”

She squeezed his hand. “There is nothing natural about this life.”

“Perhaps not. But there is much to look forward to.” His voice faltered, betraying his own fear. “Many reasons to hope.”

“There are for you.” She smiled and he remembered her joy from his early years with her. “Do not make my mistake, Carwyn. Do not fear the attachments of family and kin.” She reached up and touched his face. “Making you my son has been my greatest joy. I should have had many more children to share my life. Do not make my mistake.”

“Mother—”

“You have more love to give than any vampire I have ever known. You should surround yourself with family,” she said softly. “You had a wife once. Children. Find a new family in this life as you did in your human one.”

He frowned and looked away. “My wife is dead. My children are grown. I am only a faint memory to them. I want no other family.”

“No.” Maelona grasped his hands in her own. She was slender but tall. Unusually so for a woman of her age, and Carwyn had often wondered whether the Northern blood of the raiders who had killed her sister had not touched her own family as well. His sire was a strong woman but had been melancholy for too long. “Do not abandon love. Love is the foundation of strength. What we build on and hold to. Find a new family to share your love. Find them from those who need healing. The weak who need help. Find a mate and surround yourself with joy. This life is too lonely to travel alone.”                                                                                                           

He shook his head. “I desire no mate. Perhaps—”

“Then return to the church.” He shook his head, but Maelona continued. “Surely there are those who would understand. You have so much to give.”

“The church I knew has changed. Perhaps… I will consider it.” He knew there were other priests who knew about his kind. He knew he could be of use, but Maelona’s despair haunted his thoughts. “If you would only stay—”

“I’m leaving tomorrow evening.” A dreamy look fell over her face. “I will walk toward the West, I think.”

Cold fear gripped his gut and his blood surged hot. “Do not let your ashes fly to the sea. At least stay in the mountains. I beg you.”

A trace of her old humor returned. “I do not think I will get as far as the water. The sun will take me before then.”

Carwyn choked back a cry and embraced her. “Is there anything I can do to change your mind?” He knew, even as he asked, there was not. For seven years, she had mourned her sister’s death. She was weary of the constant struggle against bloodlust. Tired of hiding from the sun. Burdened by the loneliness of centuries. He knew Maelona would meet her end gladly.

“I have had over three hundred years of life, Carwyn. Three hundred years. Who could ask for more?”

I can.

Even as his heart broke at the thought of her death, Carwyn recognized the burning fire of survival had not lessened in him. Lost in the storm, he had dragged himself toward the smoke of Maelona’s fire twenty-seven years before, broken, freezing, and weak from days of wandering in the mountains. He had only one thought that urged him on.

He had wanted to live.

Carwyn had struggled for years over his desire. To live. To thrive. To drink up earthly life in all its rich majesty and splendor.

“Is it my own failing,” he asked, “that I do not want to join you?”

Maelona looked horrified. “No! This end is not for you.”

He blinked back tears and looked into her eyes. “Is it my own fear? Do I not have faith in God’s love? I would see Efa again. My two children taken to heaven as babes. Is it a failing that I am greedy for life?”

She stroked a hand through the shaggy auburn hair that covered his head before she rose to walk to her day chamber. She turned back at the dark hall. “You have many years to live. You possess a rare kind of joy, Carwyn. Treasure it and know that there are many paths to take. Someday, long in the future, we will meet again.”

Carwyn stared at her, knowing that by the time he rose the next night, she would be gone. It would be the last time he saw her in this world. He straightened his shoulders and stood, his presence filling the small room. Giving her, in her last moments, the confidence of his strength.

“I love you, Mam.”

Maelona closed her eyes, and a peaceful smile spread over her face. “I love you, too.”

County Wicklow, Ireland

December 1996

She rarely slept lying down. There was a shivering kind of weakness that enveloped her bones at the idea of being prone. She was indulged in her aunt’s home, surrounded by strange beings who never grew older; Brigid had come to understand the pleasant-faced monsters were both frightening and kind. Her Aunt Sinead, after whisking her away from her childhood home, never spoke of her mother or stepfather again.

Brigid had only faint memories of her aunt from her younger years. A visit for tea. A stuffed rabbit that had been put on a shelf out of her reach. Promises of visits in the country that Brigid knew her stepfather would never allow. After Brigid was taken from Dublin, no one mentioned her past life again. And Brigid did not ask. It was as if she had been reborn in the mountains the morning she woke curled into her aunt’s side.

But still, she could not rest peacefully.

So, the small girl with the dark hair and the haunted eyes took refuge in the library where the doctor worked. She curled into a corner by the fire, and the kind monster, whom she came to know as her protector, smiled at her and turned back to his books. He never approached her when she drifted in the warm room; he brushed away those who tried to take her to the bed she would not sleep in.

For the first year, she lived at Ioan and Deirdre’s home in the mountains. Brigid slept in a corner of the library couch, leaning upright in the small alcove, ready to wake at the slightest sense of alarm.

“What do you like to read?”

She looked up, blinking. The doctor was kneeling in front of her by the fire, and she wondered how he had managed to approach her without her senses alerting her to his presence.

“What am I allowed to read?”

Ioan, son of Carwyn, sat back on his heels and frowned a little. “Well, that’s an excellent question. I suppose I have things in the library that are not suitable for a child, so—”

“Like what?” She sat up straighter, not realizing she had interrupted one of the most powerful earth vampires in the Western world.

Ioan’s eyes twinkled with delight. “Oh, I have… dangerous books here.”

“What kind of dangerous books?” Brigid bit her lip and leaned forward.

“Well, there are tales of gods and rebellions. Nothing suitable for a little girl, I don’t suppose. There are some fairy tales—”

“I don’t like princess stories.”

He shrugged. “I’m not a fan of them, either. But I’m not talking about princesses.”

She scooted forward. “Well, I want to read them