Free Dark Vision by Debbie Johnson Page A

invisible smoke, clogging my nostrils.
    ‘Well, sweetie, he hasn’t told you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me, Goddess. I am Eithne, of the Tuatha de Danaan. And I’m here to tell you that we don’t wish to annihilate the mortals – we wish to improve them. Make them better. Bring them … up to standard. To reclaim what was once ours, and to share all that we have learned. Has he told you what the Otherworld is like? The Land of the Young? No illness, no pain, no ageing. Doesn’t that sound better than’ – she gestured around the admittedly less than glamorous surroundings of the Coconut Shy lavatory – ‘this?’
    It did sound better, but the picture of well-being she was painting was offset by the fact that I felt like I was choking to death. Nausea was rising from the pit of my stomach, and every breath I took in was tinged with a rich, sickly perfume. Like apples fallen off the tree and left for too long.
    She looked at me, at the way I was struggling to exhale, at my clenched fists and whitening skin, and her eyes narrowed.
    ‘Interesting,’ she said, reaching out to stroke my hair. ‘You can … feel it. You can feel my power. I didn’t expect that. Still, I’m telling the truth. This mortal world is – how might you put it? Fucked up? They’ve covered their sacred groves with shopping malls, their shrines with housing estates. They’ve blocked the magic of their rivers with pollution and waste. They had their chance at bounty. Why should we – why should you, Mabe? – give them another? I mean, it’s not as though they’re worth the effort, is it? Look at that woman he put you with, the dried-out bone that raised you.’
    She held up a finger, touching it against my lips, and I felt my mind prised open. I saw the vision clear as day: me, as a child. Six years old. Serious face, and hair in plaits. In a small, dark room, surrounded by strangers. The woman I’d been told was my nan looking at me like I was poison. The two men in black, the men she was scared of. One of them handing her the brown-paper package … Gabriel? His face flashed into view: the cut of his cheekbones, his fine white skin, those unmistakable eyes. He looked exactly the same then as he did now. It was definitely Gabriel. He was the one who’d given me away. Who’d left me to my fate with her, with Coleen, a woman who’d never loved anything in her life. The woman who’d raised me in silence and fear.
    Eithne pressed harder on my lips, and I choked in a breath that I knew could be my last.
    ‘Ah … you didn’t know, did you? Well, now you do. And you have a choice,’ she said, looking at me like I was an insect being divested of its wings. ‘It’s up to you. You don’t have to let him in your mind. You don’t have to feel his touch. You don’t have to play the part he has all laid out for you – the sacrificial spirit, ready to birth a nation. You can choose us. You can choose freedom.’
    I couldn’t reply. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even breathe. She could end it right now; win this war I wanted nothing to do with. Snuff me out like I’d never existed. I dragged my thoughts together, tried to come up with some way to fight back, but she was too strong. That last breath choked in my throat, and my eyes started to blur from lack of oxygen. She had a beautiful face, but it was cruel, and not the one you’d choose as your last sight.
    The door slammed back yet again, so hard it took a chunk of plaster from the wall. Eithne, distracted, dropped her touch, and I sucked air into my sore lungs, sliding down on to the floor, huddling there with the discarded tissue paper and hardened globs of chewing gum.
    It was Isabella. The singer. A fury of hair and hands, she grabbed Eithne around the neck and threw her hard across the room. Eithne slammed into the sinks in a way that would have broken a human back, and I heard the hiss of water as disconnected pipes spewed out.
    Isabella