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She stared at him "When you E-mailed me, I looked up the case in Charleston Cultist activity was taking place"

She inhaled on a long ragged breath "And you think thatthat they weren’t just cultists, that they were

real"

"Your fiancé was killed, right?"

She nodded "She?this Nari? toain," Sean said

"Jordan, it’s i you can," Lucian said "We need to knoe’re up against," Lucian said

"I know that a roup of cultists I didn’t ith Steven; I listened to him after a day’s work I don’t have names, or faces I’m a book critic?he was the cop," Jordan said

"Please, try to think of anything You’ve got to understand We can all be destroyed ourselves," Lucian told Jordan "In the past, when our kind have stepped beyond the li about mass destruction, we’ve found a way to ih physically wounding Now, as we’ve told you, things have changed There are two sides out there And we’re on yours"

She started to stand, then blinked The whiskey, the tiotten to her

Before she knew it, she was sliding back to the sofa She tried to stand again and speak, but the effort needed seereat

She didn’t black out

She simply faded away

CHAPTER 19

The time to heal took place on a tiny island in the Irish Sea called the Isle of the Dead

Both the Scots and the Norse, still debating ownership of many of the islands scattered south of the Hebrides?and often deciding the matter by arms? kept clear of the little island

Unless, of course, they had business with the inhabitants there

It was not so difficult in those days for the common people to accept the ‘different’ Many worshiped in church by day, and left offerings to Mother Earth by night, baked bread for the "little people," and accepted that there was surely a god, one God, but creatures as well, not thoroughly known by h of those "different" ere known in life; the iant, the blind old, the herhlands who had lived well past a century There were berserkers who could bring doenty men ere double their own size, and holy men who could touch a man, and cure his ills and woes

The folk on the Isle of the Dead were different, to be avoidedunless they were needed

Sometimes, it was the spurned who came there? dwarfs who had lost favor with the noblemen they had entertained, wiccans, cursed in their ho about famine, disease, or death

There were others there as well?those considered to be touched by the full ht Each country claiend and lore existed upon the Isle of the Dead, from the Irish selkies, banshees, and wee people to the pixies of the Scots, the fallen gods and mischief-makers of the Norse, and even the lahosts, and de them as ere the sihbors, for in their service they were safe froles between Danes and Norse and the tribes ruling their various sectors of the British Isles

Life, and death, were easy in those days, for wars and feuds were constant, and bloodshed was a way of existence Men of all ilk chose their sides, and barbarism was the rule of war