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Annals of Fear II	By : DeathNoteFangirl Category: Death Note > Yaoi-Male/Male > Mello/Matt Views: 5803 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note and I do not make any money from these writings

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"I know that you're behind me."    Kiana spoke more steadily than she felt.

When the lights had gone out, she had been on her knees, bent double, before the topless altar.    Her entire torso had been stretched inside the gap, as she desperately shone her torch into the dog-legged shaft.   The rope was loose.   She had experimentally tugged, quite gently, on it and it had started to rise.   She had dared not pull too hard, for fear of Fenian dangling there.   Had he been wearing a helmet?   He usually did.   Kiana's mind was blank.   She had seen him only minutes before and she couldn't recall what he was wearing.    She had called his name and listened.   There was nothing to hear.   No response; no moaning; no breathing; no twitch of movement.    The brickwork bulged out, almost touching the stone to the side, about three feet down. There was no vision past that.    It blocked her view.

Then the lights had gone down and, in that same instance, Kiana had felt a heavy hand clamp down on the back of her neck.   It had held her in an iron grip, ice cold, and trying to force her down.    As for the rest, it all happened so fast.     Kiana dropped the torch.   Her hands scrambled for purchase on the brickwork. Her right hand touched the great stone slab.   Instinct had already warned her to keep well away.    She didn't even register what made her instantly recoil now.   It was too fast, too frightening.    She let go and was almost lost.    She heard the torch bounce off walls, until the distant crunching smash.    Her left foot found the anchoring rope and she coiled her whole leg around it.    The idea in her brain now, her right arm was looped around the trailing rope. It briefly occurred to her that the rope could be undone.   That would be the end of her, but also of Fenian.

Kiana fought back.    It was not with her body, but with her mind.    Her mind flashed, lightning fast; it had already discounted the notion of this being a murderous Mello, or any of the other Wammy's.    But her weapons of choice were spirit and instinct.   There was evil here.   Sorrow and evil.   She felt it, tangible, like a knot around her throat.    It was working on her psyche.   She wanted to die.   She wanted to let go and plunge head first down this shaft, because it would get her away from this.   She held on more tightly and called upon Scáthach, Morrighan and Bride.

But this wasn't Éire.   Uncertainty settled like radioactive dust, all over her sensibilities.   Kiana realised that she hadn't been right since she had arrived.   If this was her own soil and rock, she would have handled it all.   But this was hard Wales and she didn't know the energies here.    They are still Celts!   It doesn't matter!   A tiny voice of reason deep inside screamed against the drowning doubt.   What was this shit?    Did she know any Welsh deities?   Yes!   Her second thoughts colluded.   You read a whole book about them on the way over.    You giggled over the fact that one of yours had made it over here.   Kiana's eyes had opened wide. She hadn't even known that she had shut them.

Meaḋḃ was once an ancient sovereignty goddess.   Yet even in Christianised Ireland, She had been made flesh.    Riding in Her chariot, as the legendary warrior queen of old Connacht.   Buried standing upright, Her weapons at hand, facing Her Ulster enemies from Her cairn at Knocknarea.    The bold, brash, intoxicating Queen Mebh.    She, who had apparently transformed, halfway across the Irish Sea, into their queen of the fairies. The bringer of dreams.   The queen of air and darkness.    The Anglocised Ulstermen called her Maeve.   But what did the British name her, when they took her home?   Their stolen Irish goddess.

Kiana felt the name coming from the pit of her solar plexus.    It rose and grew in feeling, in meaning.   As it emerged from her mouth it was more than it ever could have been, reasoned in her mind.    It was the cry of a millennium; of a thousand voices screaming out.   It was everything.   It was nothing.   It was all she had the potential to be; and it was all she never was.    It was the chorus of her ancestors; and it was the sound of this single moment in time.    "Mab!"   It was so right.   If Mab was not behind this mess, then She was the one to sort it out.    She was the one to invoke here; as a heartfelt rendering from the centre of her being.    "Mab!"    The name echoed in the shaft; it seemed to come back too.   Kiana felt filled.   Glowing.   She remembered that she had raised the Tower of Light, before she'd even entered the house.    She remembered it all. The seeing, the knowing, the doing, the daring; the Mysteries learned at her mother's and grandmother's knees.    The secrets. Her initiations - the formal and the real.    She felt as if a veil had been pulled from her face.    She knew who she was.   She knew where she was. She knew what to do.

The hand had gone.   Kiana didn't recall the moment of it leaving.   She felt buoyed and invincible; brave with the rock of ages.   The psychic chatter was still dense, but she could deal with that.   She had been born to deal with that.    That rank, overarching evil had gone.    All this from a Goddess with whom she had never worked before.    Kiana hauled herself backwards and slipped onto the priest hole floor.    She was soaring!   Her mind filled with the wonder of living; the grandeur of the solar system; the miracle of the atmospheric spheres; the majesty of the land; the cradle of the abyss.    She laughed aloud.   Drunk on this.   She was more an Aisling now than she had ever been.   This is what an Aisling was.   The Seer.   The Wisewoman, needing nothing but the energy of the world around her.   She knew everything!   She just had to reach out and grab it. Learn.   "Oh wow! Oh wow! Oh wow!"   She could see the atoms in her arms!

Kiana gazed in wonder at this world transformed.    Her leg was caught.   She gradually, distantly unhooked it, letting go of the rope that she gripped in her right hand at the same time.    She was staring at the colours bouncing in the air.   She tried to stand, but her foot had gone to sleep.   It had been wrapped in rope.   She reached out for something to steady herself upon and her hand landed, full palm, flat down, on the stone in the altar.    Everything drained away.     That great divinity of feeling ebbed back, as if it had never been.   She tried to catch the last wisps of memory, but even those tiny tendrils were too overwhelming to hold.   She was left with the belief that something amazing had happened to her, but she couldn't grasp what.   Just a name.   The name of the goddess.    Mab.

There was an evil in here.   She had to run away.   But she couldn't because of Fenian.   Kiana jolted back.   She had forgotten Fenian.   Kiana breathed, "What the fuck is going on in here?"    That's when she knew, with a tingling, buzzing clairsentience, that someone or something was standing behind her.

"I know that you're behind me."    Kiana spoke more steadily than she felt.   Her hand was still on the slab of rock.    She kept it there, though her psyche recoiled from it.    She wanted to know.   "My name is Kiana O'Flaherty and let me tell you this.   You have met your match."    She turned around to face him head on.

She was quite alone.   There was no-one there.   She shivered.

Yet there were footsteps coming closer.   Kiana tensed.    She was close to tears, with her heart pumping pure adrenaline, or so it felt.   She recognised the voices calling down.    Century and Lauren.   Up in the room above.   Century was wheezing fit to drop.   Lauren was apparently in their party now.   The fickle alliances of Wammy's House people.    It was Lauren who called into the darkness to her.    "We got the message to Deontic, before the power went down.   The emergency services are on their way."

"Thank you."   Kiana whispered, still stunned by all that had happened to her.   But she coughed and reiterated it more loudly.   "Thank you very much."    She had no idea which parts had been real; and if any of it hadn't been real, then what had it been?

"Have you heard from him?"   Lauren asked.    It was too dark to see, but Kiana had the impression that Lauren was leaning into the priest hole from above.

"No."   Kiana felt her way to the edge of the altar and listened carefully.   What kind of state did he have to be in to make no sound at all?    She tried to reach out for him, to send healing on the ether.    She couldn't feel him at all.    Yet she always had before.   She could sense him coming home from 20 miles away across the bog.    Perhaps she'd gotten too complacent out there. She ought to move into the city itself.    Keep herself sharp by trying to survive, psychically, in all the hustle and bustle of a modern urban sprawl.    "Did they say how long they would be?"

Lauren had been whispering up above.   She leaned back in.   She'd heard.   "No, sorry.   The power cut off before Deontic could give us that information.   But she received it.   I know that much."

Kiana had a really bad feeling about this.   She just couldn't envisage the search and rescue unit in the courtyard.   She saw no ambulance there either.    She wondered how quickly she could get O'Leary over here.   But there was no way to contact him.   He'd come. He'd come for Fenian.    "Lauren?"

"Yes?"

"What's Century doing?"

Lauren replied in the over-bright voice of someone trying to instil calm, "Century's fine.   He's going to be just fine.   He's just going to sit against this wall for a bit."

Kiana understood.   "That's good."   She called back, a little more dully than she had intended.   She was just glad that he couldn't see her face.   "And just for extra reassurance, he can go into the ambulance with Liam."

There was more whispering above, then Lauren called back, with increasingly forced bonhomie. "Yes, he'd like that."

"I bet he would."   Kiana muttered and bowed her head to wait.

Author's Note: There is a discussion happening about this story here: http://mrsjeevas.joharrington.co.uk/forum/viewforum.php?f=11
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Annals of Fear II