16. A Zombie Interlude

Ireland was lovely, but after a week of sex, great food, and walks about the Giant's Causeway, Daniel was ready for something new. He missed home. When Rory shared that Cian was giving a tour of the sidhe mound, Daniel came to a halt in the middle of the national park and turned to his husband.

Daniel gently grabbed his arm and tugged his husband into the shadow of a tall boulder, speaking in a harsh whisper. "What do you mean Cian took them to the sidhe mound? What are they doing?"

Rory made sure no one in the immediate area was close enough to hear before he answered. He leaned down and spoke in Daniel's ear, making him shiver. "The sidhe mound is more than the temple. It's larger than it looks, and within its walls lies an ancient graveyard. Cian is taking Eroch there to play with some zombies."

Daniel had no idea what to say, and he blinked at his husband for a long moment, trying to gather his thoughts.

"And they didn't invite us? Rude." Daniel pouted. "I want to see ancient zombies in a magical moving temple."

Rory gave him an indulgent smile. "Let me ask the mound for a doorway before you get your hopes up. It rarely listens to me unless there's an emergency. If it answers me, we can sneak off and join my brother on his rather blasphemous adventures in dragon-sitting."

The underhill of the sidhe mound was in a mercurial mood, one that reflected how Cian was feeling at the moment as well—reckless, a bit tempestuous, and staving off boredom by indulging a young dragon celebrating a growth spurt.

He led Eroch down the stairs into the main temple, the dragon hopping down the last few steps with unrestrained glee. Gone was the hesitation and fear brought on by previous experiences in the temple, and Cian was relieved. His dishonor left a mark on the world and rectifying it would take time. The young dragon was unencumbered by human cultural beliefs and expectations of justice, redemption, and rehabilitation, which was a refreshing perspective to experience, from his point of view.

He spent too long alone among humans, and it wore on him through the centuries while his brother hung betwixt and between this life and the next.

"Where are we going?" Angel called out from the rear of their little group, and Cian sighed in exasperation, though he did stop and wait for the Salvatore brothers to exit the staircase and join him and Eroch in the temple proper.

"The youngling wishes to play with zombies," Cian informed Angel with a haughtily arched brow, gesturing to Eroch, who was all but hopping with excitement. "I am endeavoring to oblige."

"I am not raising zombies just so he can crush them like Godzilla," Angel warned, crossing his arms over his chest.

"No need," Cian dismissed Angel's concerns with a casual wave of his hand, resuming his walk across the wide, open space.

Angel grumbled something unflattering under his breath, amusing Cian amused, who had heard far worse in his immeasurable life. Though, all of this was new to him, a miracle of sorts after living for so long. He recalled no other moment in his life where he was indulging a baby dragon with a guided tour of the mysteries of the sole remaining sidhe mound in the world. And in the company of a necromancer and a fire mage, walking at his back no less, without worrying that either would attempt to subjugate him or try to murder him.

When he stopped at the far wall on the longest side of the temple, the seamless, unmarred stone wall shivered, the near-sentient energies evaluating his desires and thoughts, reacting accordingly. A door formed from the wall, its structure coalescing out of stone that now moved as overly wet clay. In a short blink of time, an archway stood in front of them, empty of doors, darkness beyond, and a great sigh shook the entire sidhe mound. It had been many years since he visited this part of the underhill.

Damp, slightly cool air rushed through the arch, and hints of crickets and frogs chirping in the darkness met the ears of his astonished companions. Eroch churred softly, head up, wings mantled slightly as he took deep sniffs, scenting what lay beyond.

Isaac moved up next to Cian and peered into the darkness, though the longer they stood at the threshold, the more their eyes adjusted and a hint of light could be discerned in the distance.

"What's in there?" Isaac asked quietly, unable to tear his eyes away from the shadows.

"A graveyard," Rory called out from the far side of the temple.

Isaac and Angel both jumped, startled at the sudden appearance of Rory and Daniel. Cian merely sighed, hands clasped behind his back as he waited for his brothers to join them, turning slightly to watch their approach.

"Aren't you supposed to be in Ireland?" Angel called, though welcome filled his voice.

"We'll go back after the zombie tour!" Daniel shouted back as he bolted toward Isaac.

Daniel collided with Isaac, who greeted him with a backslapping hug and a ruffle of his golden locks. Storm-born eyes full of affection and giddy excitement and a sweet smile lit up the temple in a way it hadn't seen for centuries, perhaps even longer. Cian was not one for joy, but Daniel's smile was one he enjoyed receiving. Cian was more reserved, and people largely bored him, regardless of species, and yet Daniel was now in the same category as Rory—a brother, and much loved.

Daniel went to Angel next, hugging the necromancer in obvious delight at being reunited. Daniel seemed to sense Cian's reticence, as all he did was send him a brilliant smile and a small wave, charming a small smile from Cian in return.

Daniel was an exception to the typical ennui that plagued Cian when forced to endure company other than his twin's. Cian was fond of Daniel as he'd never been with any else other than Rory since they were children.

Rory quietly greeted the others and slipped through the Salvatores to stand at Cian's shoulder, a slightly arched brow signaling both sarcastic amusement and gentle pride, his twin able to decipher Cian's thoughts and feelings as if they were his own. It had always been that way, and Cian rarely withdrew himself from the bond between them, a perpetual running commentary always humming in the back of their minds.

"You're in a peculiar mood," Rory murmured. Isaac and Daniel were peering into the darkness of the archway, commenting in awed tones about what they could hear coming from the shadows.

"Novelty is hard to come by," Cian replied. Angel heard him and rolled his eyes, though Cian sensed no malice from the young necromancer. Sarcasm was Angel's default response to almost every situation.

"The door is open, little brother," Cian raised his voice just enough to be heard over the hurried whispering between Daniel and Isaac. Neither youngling had made any attempt to cross the threshold yet, despite their curiosity.

Daniel jumped, whirling to glare at him, and Rory chuckled. "Come, beloved, take my hand," Rory said to Daniel, joining him at the arch. "We can enter together."

Isaac groaned at the sweetness, and Daniel flipped him the bird, the fire mage chortling in glee as he followed behind Rory and Daniel.

Eroch, not to be outdone, stampeded behind his family and disappeared behind the trio as Rory guided them down the path. Angel paused on the threshold, eyeing Cian.

"I shall go last, so no one gets lost," Cian explained. Angel made a slight grimace, but gamely strode into the darkness, shoulders back and chin up. Angel Salvatore was hard to intimidate—not that there was danger to be had within the sidhe mound.

Well, not a lot of danger. Nothing the Salvatores and a dragon toddler couldn't handle.

Cian stepped through the arch, bidding the mound to close the way behind them. A set of bronze and stone doors glimmered to life within the arch, shutting with a soft click of a latch.

Better to keep the graveyard inhabitants safely contained. Cian was in no mood to wrangle escaped prehistoric zombies. They'd yet to figure out how doors worked.

"Where are we, exactly?" Daniel asked in a soft whisper, leaning into Rory as they walked along the stone path. Surrounded by darkness, mist whirled over the path ahead, and chirping critters could be heard in the swampy undergrowth on either side of them. The sky above was a weird mix of suffused light, heavy fog, and the occasional swirl to match the muffled flaps of winged creatures. Big or small, Daniel could not tell, and he was afraid to use his new senses to find out.

Sometimes not knowing was preferable.

"The mound is capable of holding within itself a multitude of worlds, which can be of any size. In my youth, we once visited a realm that held within it an ocean, whose far side was never mapped." Rory's casual explanation was both reassuring and alarming.

"This space could be infinite, is what you're saying," Isaac interrupted, leaning forward between them, having overheard Rory. "This creepy swamp straight from an 80s monster-movie set could be infinite. That's just great."

Isaac sounded both sarcastic and excited, a feat that had Daniel snorting out a laugh, relaxing a fraction. Rory would never let him get hurt, and he was reasonably certain they could say the same for Cian.

Cian was at the rear of their little group, and Eroch was bouncing around their feet as they slowly walked deeper into the mysterious swamp. From what Daniel was able to discern, the pathway was the only solid ground; water was visible everywhere through fog and thick vegetation, and Eroch proved this true when he nearly slipped off the path, one wing tip dipping into the swamp with a loud splash.

Cian was there in an instant, faster than Daniel ever saw one of the fae brothers move before, his new eyes able to see the High Court Sidhe's reflexes with startling clarity. No mortal could move like that.

"Careful, Little Trouble, lest you wake those slumbering in the mist," Cian gently shooed Eroch from the edge toward the middle of the path, a swift flick of his wrist clearing the mud from the dragon. Eroch made a subdued churr but did as ordered, slightly more restrained in his excitement, wings held in tighter along his ribs and down his flanks, though they were too big with his growth spurt to be efficiently folded back as he had done when the size of a housecat.

Daniel smiled at Eroch before returning his attention to what lay ahead. He leaned into Rory again. "What's slumbering in the mist?"

Rory gave him an amused glance, one brow quirked. "Not inclined to look for yourself? The mound knows you well now, and your new senses can parse out the truth with a little effort."

Despite his new state of being, Daniel was not sure how to go about using his newer, stronger, and far more precise awareness of the natural world—information came at him with a depth and breadth that would have overwhelmed him as a human, and even now as a new sidhe, he was reluctant to open himself to the mound—an environment that was the quintessential foundation of the High Court Sidhe. The mounds, temples—undercrofts, underhills—were the Courts that gave Rory and Cian's people their names.

"I'm nervous that I'll learn something I wish I didn't, or that something might be looking back at me," Daniel whispered to Rory, and he caught Cian's reaction to his words over his shoulder. Of course Cian heard him—his senses were honed and sharp enough to hear a whisper rooms away from the speaker. Cian shook his head in amusement and rolled his eyes, and Daniel wrinkled his nose at his brother-in-law in annoyance, then promptly ignored Cian by looking ahead.

Cian chuckled quietly, and Rory sighed, fondly exasperated at his twin's antics.

"Beloved, nothing here will be allowed to hurt you," Rory vowed, leaning down and pressing a firm kiss to his forehead, causing Daniel to flush, pleased and slightly embarrassed. "I may not be the undercroft's master, but it knows when to listen. I can prevent it from causing harm, and it is well-heeled to Cian's will. No cause for worry."

Isaac made a cooing sound where he now walked beside Eroch and Cian, Angel bringing up the rear. Daniel flipped off his best friend without turning around, Isaac snorting out a laugh in response, unfazed.

Daniel finally caught the distinction in Rory's words. He stopped in the middle of the path, Isaac nearly running him over, and Cian neatly sidestepping around them to end up in front of the group. Eroch unfortunately barreled into his legs and nearly took him out at the knees. Daniel winced and squatted to help untangle Eroch's wings and legs, and Eroch grumbled at him as he bounced off, smoke escaping his snout to match his displeasure.

"What's the holdup?" Angel called, sounding bored. Aggravated, even, with a hint of caution.

"You said nothing would be allowed to hurt me," Daniel demanded of Rory, seeking clarification. "That means things in here can hurt me. What's in here, aside from a zombie pit?"

"The kraken hasn't roused in millennia, so no worries there," Cian unhelpfully declared, hands on his hips as he spun around in a slow, lazy spiral on one heel, eyeing the surrounding fog. "And the few revenants that call this place home have no interest in meddling in our affairs." Cian stopped his turn, shrugging one shoulder. "The few monsters that might cause a bit of trouble haven't keyed in on our presence yet, but our assorted party members will give them pause if they come sniffing around. It's the creatures we might encounter that will be interesting."

"Creatures?" Isaac squeaked out, brows raised. "What kinda creatures?"

"Ones long extinct in the mortal world," Cian replied, looking out to his left into the dense fog bank. "Our people had a long habit of secreting away the few remaining members of species that humans drove into extinction." Cian frowned, eyes cold, distant, as if lost in memory. "Too bad it was not an option we considered for ourselves."

The High Court Sidhe were functionally extinct. There were around a hundred left of their species, and they were remarkably slow to reproduce, and Daniel had no idea how genetics would play out with such a small population, and how closely related the survivors might be—it was a topic he was afraid to broach with either twin. He avoided talking about it and reiterated Isaac's question.

"Creatures? And what animals were hidden away by the sidhe?"

Cian shook off his melancholy, and side-eyed Angel with a mischievous glance through the crowd. "It's too damp here in the swamp, but the forest on the other side of the zombie pit has a few surprises in it. If we've got time, I might be able to persuade the unicorns to come out and say hello. Or, well, Rory might—he's more to their taste than I am."

"Unicorns?" Angel exclaimed, unusually excited. "Quit dawdling and let's get moving! We've got zombies to incinerate and some fancy horses with spears to fawn over!"

Eroch bounced in agreement and spun about, dashing into the fog ahead on the path, Cian following.

Daniel looked around one more time, took a deep breath, and followed, and Angel impatiently brought up the rear, dragging a bemused Isaac along by the elbow.

The zombie pit did not disappoint.

Cian grabbed the young dragon around the neck and gently dragged him back from the edge of the pit, preventing him from swan-diving into the teeming mass of undead far below. Eroch was no longer the tiny eggling of a size to sit upon one's shoulder. And he was a lot stronger than he looked, but Cian would be as careful as he could without letting the youngling hurt himself in his excitement.

"Wait, Trouble, lest you give your brood-father a heart attack," Cian cautioned, gesturing to the necromancer's pale face and pinched expression, hands on his hips as he eyed his wayward child.

"Can you sense them, necromancer?" Cian called out over the racket made by the horde below them, the undead creatures having finally noticed the living far above them on the edge of the pit.

Angel came up beside him and Eroch, peering down into the pit. The sides of the pit were well-worn rock, smoothed out by centuries of rotting hands uselessly scrabbling at the sides in search of flesh to consume. Many of the creatures far below weren't even human, claws and talons in place of fingers. The spells on the pit and the extension of Cian's will through the underhill kept them contained.

"I can sense them," Angel said, clearly distracted as he took in the various natures of the undead below. Not all came from the same source—necromancers made many of them in the far past, and others were the result of curses and hexes. Still others, a handful in fact, originated from a random natural disaster eons ago.

"Is that…is that a dinosaur zombie?" Daniel asked, incredulous. Rory's arm was around Daniel's waist, securing him as he leaned over the edge to get a better look. He pointed to the right of the horde, and Cian tried to pick out the one he meant.

"The giant bipedal lizard? I think that might count as a dinosaur, by pop culture definition for certain," Cian replied with a shrug. "I never cataloged the horde. An old, old fae once collected such things. Death fascinated him for eons, including when death came for him. Hence the swamp, and the pit."

Isaac cautiously peered down into the pit, eyes wide when he saw the one Daniel called a dinosaur. "That…that's a fucking tyrannosaurus rex. A zombie T-Rex in a fucking pit. Holy Hecate, you've got a T-Rex!"

"Is that what it's called?" Cian mused, arching a brow. He knew full well what it was, of course, but he was having fun picking on the Salvatores. "I had no idea."

Rory nearly choked, trying to glare at him between outbursts of incredulous laughter. Cian tried not to gloat at making his usually unflappable brother laugh.

"It's not a unicorn, but still impressive," Angel declared, trying not to stare at the lumbering beast. It was twenty feet tall and nearly fifty feet long, one of the largest zombies in the pit. "How is…just how."

"The one who collected these beings for study was quite old, even by my people's standards." Cian shrugged. "The giant, feathered lizard zombie resulted from a cataclysmic event that produced a tremendous amount of death magics in an instant, an event that shook the world and produced quite a few prehistoric zombies. There are a few more like it down there in the teeming mass, though I think it's the only one of its species to last this long. The rest were quite small and got crushed in the horde."

Cian paused, eyeing the pit and its inhabitants, then shrugged one shoulder. "They've been down here for eons and it's time we properly disposed of them. But we can let our young dragon have fun before our resident necromancer lets these old ones fall to dust."

"You'd let me destroy them? Why?" Angel asked.

"Knowing a necromancer with a good heart is rarer than a zombie dinosaur," Rory spoke up, drawing Angel's attention. "The collector was the previous master of the underhill before it chose Cian as its new master. These soulless husks are weapons in the control of anyone without scruples. And approaching a necromancer for help with this collection was not a priority the last few centuries."

While Rory slept in limbo, Cian's focus had been elsewhere.

"It's an army of undead monsters," Angel said softly, and he backed away from the edge of the pit. "No one should have this."

A click of a phone camera made them all turn to Isaac, who was taking more pictures of the zombies. "Constans doesn't believe it's a dinosaur. He said pics, or it didn't happen."

"You have a cell signal down here?" Daniel asked, surprised. He pulled out his own smartphone and checked, delighted when he saw he too had a signal.

"You have cell service in a pocket dimension," Angel said, less a question and more a statement of doubt. A quirked brow from the necromancer was as pointed as a verbal barb.

"Rory was the one who slept through the advent of modern technology, not me," Cian answered, as haughtily as he could manage. "I watched the moon landing live on television and saw Queen perform Bohemian Rhapsody at Live Aid. I even own an original Walkman and a Nintendo Game Boy." He paused for dramatic effect, then continued. "I stole a cell tower in Wyoming about a decade ago and installed it in the undercroft. Works perfectly."

As if to prove Cian's point, a ringing came from Angel's pocket. Angel tugged out his own phone, and he answered it immediately, though he walked away from the pit several feet to be polite. Futile, but they appreciated the politeness. They all had heightened senses, though Isaac was still developing his as the fully bonded mate of a vampire, and they heard every word of the conversation.

"My master showed me the most remarkable picture, my love," Simeon drawled. "Is there something you'd like to share, mo ghra?"

"You wanna see the zombie dinosaur."

"Indeed. Master Batiste and I would love to join the expedition, if that is permissible."

Rory and Cian shared a quick glance and a thought, and Rory nodded. "It's still daylight, so take the library portal and ask it to drop you in the center temple."

Simeon, with his own preternatural hearing, heard Rory easily through the phone.

"Excellent. We'll be waiting."

"Do we need to walk all the way back to the temple?" Daniel asked, not looking forward to the trek by the frown on his expressive face.

"No need," Cian said, and with a vague wave of his hand, summoned a stone arch on the end of the path that brought them to the pit. It flashed with light, then the temple came into being in the archway. "A mere step or two. It will bring you all back as well."

"I will never get used to that," Isaac declared. "I'm going to meet them, too. I haven't seen Constans since this morning."

"It's only been a few hours," Daniel teased.

"You haven't left Rory's side since you got married," Isaac shot back, though without rancor.

"Quit it, I wanna see my mate," Angel declared loudly, and Daniel and Isaac ceased their good-natured bickering, both grinning. "Let's get our men down here before any more shenanigans begin."