Joan of Kerry

  Joan and the Abhartach

  Kat Simons

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Thanks

  The Trouble with Black Cats and Demons

  Excerpt

  Chapter 1

  Books By Kat Simons

  About the Author

  Ancient monsters beware…

  * * *

  Joan has spent her life facing down the monsters that no one else can defeat. But the rise of dark, hungry beings in the fields of Ireland brings portents of something more ancient and deadly. A monster out of myth. And a plague of death that could destroy everything in its wake.

  Joan is all that stands between this rising evil and her home. Just her. Her sword. And her one true ally.

  All in a night’s work, for a hero and her dragon.

  JOAN OF KERRY: Joan and the Abhartach

  Copyright © 2021 by Katrina Tipton

  * * *

  Cover design: T&D Publishing

  Cover art: © Valentyn Oleinikov | © Vitalii Gaydukov | © Tudorpopaart | Dreamstime.com

  Published by: T&D Publishing

  * * *

  T&D Publishing: https://tanddpublishing.com/

  Kat Simons Website: https://www.katsimons.com

  Kat Simons Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/OxQQL

  * * *

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  * * *

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  eBooks are not transferable.

  They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

  To my own Irish hero.

  1

  Joan looked at the dragon. The dragon looked back.

  “Well,” Joan said.

  Rory grumbled and moved a chess piece. “You cheat,” he said.

  “You wish. It would give you a way to justify always losing to a human.” She made her move, smiling at Rory’s grunt, a gesture that released a little plume of smoke from his raised nostrils. “I’ve been playing this game since I was four. If you hadn’t distracted me with all the adventuring and hero stuff, I’d be a grandmaster by now.”

  She munched on a handful of popcorn from the bowl next to her on her overstuffed couch, watching the board as Rory considered his next move. Her cozy sitting room smelled of popcorn and the combination of peat and wood burning in her fireplace. Outside, a soft rain pattered against the windows. It was going to be a muddy night’s work.

  “I distracted you?” Rory managed to look incredulous, which was quite the feat for a dragon. “Who was the one who swooped in to rescue you from that goblin?”

  “I only missed the goblin attacking because you were flying overhead,” she said, watching Rory reach out to make a move, then pulling his taloned forepaw back, reconsidering. “If I hadn’t been looking up at you—” she made a show of looking up at Rory to emphasize her point, “—I’d have seen the goblin coming and taken care of him myself, thank you very much.”

  As a fully grown, adult dragon, Rory wasn’t exactly small. But he could change his size to suit the situation, which was handy. In his more compact form, the bulky reptile even managed to—barely—fit inside her house. His head came to her ceiling, though he had his serpentine neck curved down to look at the board on the little square coffee table. He’d flattened the spikes that circled the base of his head so they laid against his neck, giving him a bit more room. She kept the ground floor of her little two up, two down country cottage spare so he’d have more space, but there was only so much she could do.

  She’d had giant, sliding, wooden barn doors installed against one side of the house so he could get in and out. They were beautiful, antique white, and kind of modern looking in their retro way, but getting the builders to put them in during the reconstruction had raised some eyebrows. She’d played up the American accent she’d picked up at university and pretended to be a bit of a dithering girl, and they’d done as she’d asked. She’d had to do a full restore of her Gran’s old Kerry cottage, so they were making good money off her at any rate. Despite the fact she’d grown up in Dublin and still considered it home, the city didn’t afford a lot of room for an adult dragon to come and go without notice.

  It didn’t hurt that the cottage put him that much closer to the coast off which his little rock of an island sat in the cold Atlantic surf. Not that distance mattered much when you could fly above the clouds. But it was a nice bonus.

  Rory wrapped his long, spiked tail around his body, tapping the tip on the wooden floor as he considered his pieces—white because he was always white. He reached forward to make a move, reconsidered again, and jerked his foreclaw back. The ruby color in his multi-faceted eyes dimmed as he blinked transparent inner lids. He’d already lost. She had his queen trapped. But Rory was terrible about giving up.

  In other circumstance, that was a very helpful trait.

  He finally made his move, then scratched at a golden scale on his forearm. His claw dislodged one of the valuable little disks. It fluttered to the rug under the wooden coffee table unnoticed. She made a mental note to retrieve the scale so it didn’t attract irritating leprechauns. The little buggers wouldn’t feck off if there was a dragon scale lying around loose.

  “That was a suicide move,” she told her friend of many years. “Why not just give in to the inevitable?”

  Rory grunted and sat back on his haunches. “This is embarrassing. I’ve been alive for more than seven thousand years. I witnessed the invention of chess. How can you beat me all the time?”

  “You didn’t study the game. I did. My dad was a protégé and this was in my house all the time.”

  Her dad’s other obsession, Joan of Arc, was the reason a good Irish girl was walking around with a French saint’s name instead of a more conventional Irish saint. At least, that was the explanation she gave everyone who asked. She left out the reincarnation part as it tended to upset people.

  “You were too busy rescuing maidens from ‘death by dragon’ sacrifices to pay attention to the changing gambits,” she finished.

  “You’re just trying to make me feel better,” Rory said, his deep voice a rumble in her head.

  Aloud, he sounded like a series of guttural growls and softer chuffing sounds, almost like a big cat, with the occasional hiss thrown in. His “voice” was in her head, translated to her language. He even had a slight Irish accent to accommodate her and make her feel more comfortable with him.

  From the beginning, Rory had been all about making her feel more comfortable with him, so they could do their thing.

  To be fair, it hadn’t taken her long to adapt to having a dragon friend and compatriot. It seemed almost normal once it had happened. Which was, she imagined, likely why it had happened.

  “Time to leave?” she asked after cleaning up the chess set and putting the popcorn bowl back into her little galley kitchen.

  They did have a job to get to tonight, but there was always that waiting time to deal with. Those hours of hanging around until they could go out and take care of the bogeyman. Or woman. Or whatever else was causing chaos in the countryside and needed a hero and a dragon to sort it all out.

  Rory glanced at the windows. “Time,” he said. “Gonna be muddy, though.”

  “Ah sure, it’s Ireland. Not like we melt in a little rain.”

  Rory snorted, releasing another plume of smoke. “After you,” he said, swinging out one forepaw in a gallant gesture.

  Her turn to laugh. She grabbed her sword, hanging carefully beside the barn doors, and dropped the scabbard strap over her head so the sword settled across her back, then slid open the doors. The rain blew gently into her face. At least it was late spring and the chilly breeze wasn’t enough to rip the skin off her. She didn’t bother putting on a coat. Her fleece would do. She’d be warmed up soon enough.

  “Which direction?” she asked after closing the barn door behind Rory.

  He raised his head to the sky and scented the air with his long, forked tongue. “North tonight. Farm near the Kerry-Limerick border.”

  He expanded to his full, natural size, only a little smaller than a fighter jet, massive and impressive in the open field behind her cottage. Then he dropped to the ground, folding his foreleg into a step so she could swing up onto his neck, down near his huge shoulders but in front of his wings. For the flight, her job was just to hold on and not fall off. They’d tried a few times to rig a saddle or at least a strap for her to hold during flight, but those always ended up getting destroyed, and she’d have to ride home without the support anyway.

  She braced for the liftoff as Rory sprung into the air. No running start necessary. He threw himself upward, snapped his expansive leathery wings open, and with three powerful flaps, reached a nice cruising altitude. High enough to be difficult for humans at ground level to see, low enough Joan could still breathe and they didn’t draw the attention of air traffic control at any of the airports.

  The cold night wind enveloped her as they turned north.

  2

  They reached the cattle farm in less than half an hour— if humans knew about it, dragon flight would be the envy of anyone stuck on the motorway or crawling behind a tractor on a back road—and landed in an open field. Despite the fact that Rory hadn’t stolen or eaten cows in several centuries, the cattle still reacted to his presence with a lot of panicked mooing and hurrying away to the opposite side of the field.

  Just as well since the neamh-mairbh were already rising up out of the soil. Best for the cows to be out of the way.

  Joan slid off Rory’s neck, her wellies squishing in the damp soil beneath a layer of stiff grass, and took a moment to steady her legs. It was easier done when they hadn’t had far to fly. She shook out her arms, rolled her neck and shoulders to loosen her muscles, and started toward the walking dead as she pulled her sword free of the scabbard.

  No ordinary vampires for the Irish, no, she thought as she watched the shambling corpses head toward her. And not typical zombies either, even if their Irish name translated to walking dead.

  The neamh-mairbh were technically more like vampires in that they went after victims and drank their blood. They were animated by magic, though. Their green eyes glowing in the darkness, their smiling mouths full of sharp teeth and wicked long canines. Skeletal, pale, their clothes dirty and torn. No gray sluffing skin. But horrible bad breath she could smell from yards away across the grassy field.

  She swung her trusty knights’ sword in front of her a few times, then rolled it in a circle over her hand to help her settle her grip in the right place—and because she fancied the visual effect of rolling her sword. Rory stayed behind, keeping the cows at a distance so they wouldn’t get in the way. He’d join her if she needed him.

  They’d had what felt like a full blown infestation of neamh-mairbh lately. Three tonight. Four last week. Another two up near Dingle. Who knew how many in Derry. She tried not to cross into Northern Ireland to work if she could avoid it. They had their own guardians and she didn’t like to get in the middle of the politics. Still, she might have to break that rule and cross boarders soon if she couldn’t find the source of all these vampires suddenly rising up.

  “I’m telling you who it is,” Rory said in her head as she reached the first vampire.

  She braced for its lurch toward her, then stepped to one side and sliced it neatly in half. That wouldn’t kill it. The damned things couldn’t actually be killed thanks to the magic that animated them. But they could be disabled and buried so they didn’t keep walking about causing trouble. The vampire gnashed its teeth at her, the nuclear green glow of its eyes brightening. It tried to pull toward her, but she drove her sword into the center of its back, momentarily pinning it to the ground, then forced the sharp blade down along vertebrae, further damaging its spine.

  “That’s a myth,” she said to Rory as she faced the second and third creatures. She skewered the second vampire on her sword as it flung itself toward her throat. It kept reaching, its long fingers tipped by wicked sharp nails crusted with a sticky black substance she was pretty sure was dried blood.

  How many had they gotten to before she and Rory had sensed this group?

  “I’m a myth,” Rory said. “So are vampires. So are reincarnated heroes. Yet, here we are.”

  He sounded very smug. He got that way after he lost a chess match. His way of paying her back with his superior seven-thousand-year-old intelligence. She kept telling him if she lived seven thousand years without getting killed, she’d be just as clever as he was.

  She jerked her sword out sideways from the creature she’d impaled, again cutting the vampire almost in half. This one remained attached to its legs enough that it tried to swing back toward her. The motion sent it careening until its top half was folded next to its bottom half. No blood splattered anywhere. She’d caught them early, no feeding tonight. They were hungry and desperate, but not nearly as fast as they’d be after their first meal. Faster than an ordinary human might be able to fight off. But as Rory liked to point out, she wasn’t ordinary.

  He didn’t always intend that as a compliment.

  The third creature reached her in a rush, a tad faster than its fellows, though still considerably slower than it would be after feeding. When she stabbed through this one’s chest, some black blood dribbled out of the wound and its mouth. It screamed at her, revealing its rows of sharp teeth. Its fetid breath made her gag. Its glowing green eyes brightened as it forced itself closer to her, pushing farther onto her sword as it went.

  She shook her head. “Such a wasted effort.”

  It was strong, no doubt. And it had obviously fed so well last night it still had some of that energy left. But as it was already impaled, and her sword was very sharp, forcing the blade into an even better position to rip the creature in half seemed a bit self-defeating. Its sharp nails grazed her fleece as she jerked the sword one way, cutting a bit of room to the right. Then she gave a might swing to the left. Her sword swung free of the creature, taking one arm and half its chest with it. Shards of bone poked out of the wound. She went with the momentum of her swing, circling around to finish slicing the thing in half.

  As she stepped away from the still struggling creature, she rolled her shoulders. That one had twinged a bit. She’d placed the sword too high, had to go through too much bone. Lesson learned. It might stink more, puncturing the gut, but cutting them in half through the soft waist was easier than trying to slice across the rib cage. Even for a blade like hers which, technically, could slice through bones like butter.

  She walked backward toward Rory, keeping an eye on the three bodies. The magic animating them could only do so much with their current wounds. But if she buried them upright again, they’d be back tomorrow night, the magic having time to work on them during the day. She’d tried, the first time, burying the pieces in different spots. That hadn’t worked. Somehow, they’d ended up reassembled, and she’d just had to destroy them all over again.

  Next, she’d attempted to follow the old custom of burying them head down and putting a stone over their grave. That had worked okay, keeping some of them down. But not all of them. She hadn’t used a yew sword, mainly because she didn’t have one, and she hadn’t bothered to build a proper cairn, which hadn’t helped. She’d ended up consulting a druid for a modern take on the best way to bury a neamh-mairbh and been told there was magic in a properly constructed cairn, so she’d added that to the process.

  In the end, though, they’d found the best way to keep the things down was to let Rory burn them to ash and bones and then bury the remains in the druid-recommended way.

  “You know it’s the Abhartach,” Rory said as they waited for the bodies to stop moving.

  They had to be careful with dragon fire so they didn’t accidentally light up the whole field. The wet night and the misting rain would help, but dragon fire still had to be focused. That meant waiting on the bodies to be still, not lurching, lunging bits.

  “He’s still buried under the dolmen up north,” she said reasonably, wiping a hand down her face to clear away the damp building up from the rain. “Hasn’t been out in centuries.” She’d even double-checked on a satellite app. The Slaghtaverty Dolmen was still intact with no issues.

  “He’s the only one with the magic to animate the dead this way,” Rory said. “Green glowing eyes and all.”

  “Is he doing it from the grave? His magic was contained a long long time ago. This has to be something else. Someone else figured out how the old fella did this and is doing the same. Deal with a demon, an evil druid, wizard or the like.”

  The third creature, the one who’d still had some strength left, was taking a long time to face its end. From across the field, the cows continued shuffling around, making soft distressed sounds. She couldn’t tell if they were more upset by the stench of rotting flesh and broken magic, or just the presence of a giant golden dragon in their field.

 

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