Slaughtaverty, 1745

Frost crunches under the soles of his boots as the Duke's son makes his way through the dark forest. Mist curls around him in a thick blanket, and his hair - like liquid silver - flows in the slow breeze, becoming one with it. His ethereal beauty might as well be part of the mist coiling up his legs and embracing his body.

He wears his black coat carelessly, and his step is sure as his eyes pierce the darkness around him. His anger is a force driving him on, defying the cold as it builds while he hunts. The madness he'd suffered days ago has almost completely left him while his body is healing from the effects of the poison, and yet, his boiling rage makes him light-headed with blood lust strong enough to drive him insane.

Dark shadows break away from the black of the night, filling the nearest section of the forest with hulking forms. They come to the boy, weaving among gnarled branches and through thick shrubs, their footfall whispering over the frozen ground. They can feel his anger. It is firing in their blood, igniting their hunger.

One, two... five wolves, their thick black pelts carrying a dusting of recent snow, glisten where the broken moonlight finds them through the trees and roiling mist. They surround the boy, not daring to touch him, though they know his anger is not directed at them.

They came at his summons, ready and willing to do his will.

The heir suffocated in the children's nightmares. Night after night dreams of the pig farmer and his daughter and dead little boys have Uilliam screaming. It fills the duke's son's heart with guilt, though he was not the one who turned the girl into a monster.

He could bear those memories only because he felt redemption in taking them from the little boy and letting them live in his heart instead as punishment for all the damage he'd caused. It's the other memories that drove him from the mansion tonight. Memories that tear into his very soul.

The memories of the children's lives before the pig farmer stole the boy and before the duke's son stole the life of the girl with the fiery hair.

Mairead. The girl who saved him.

Merry and Uilliam are not the only children living under the tyranny of a drunken father, a man with a less developed conscience than that of the animals trotting beside the boy. The duke's son knows every scar on the children's bodies as if they were his own. He knows of every careless shove and every stroke of the belt with the sharp buckle. He knows every kick and every punch, every broken bone.

Their bodies are ridding themselves of the wounds and scars, and he has never seen them with his eyes, except for the fading one marring Mairead's lovely face. They are, however, still there on their hearts, leaving a bitter flavour of hate in the mouth of the boy sniffing the air, searching with the pack of wolves.

He can taste the rot of alcohol-drenched organs on his tongue, his silver eyes tearing up with the stench riding on the breeze. A wolf howls, and another one growls, a low, threatening sound causing chills to run down the boys' back.

They know their target is near. They smell him too.

Leaping onto the highest of a cluster of boulders, the boy scans the area to his right, near the edge of the forest. The dark and mist cannot hide their secrets from his luminescent eyes, and he can see Angus Doyle staggering home through a field as if he's walking in the brightest hour of the day.

The man is fall-down drunk again, cursing at the shrubs and rocks that get in his way, making him tumble more than once. "I'll take me belt to ye, yer useless pieces of shite!" he slurs, spittle flying from his mouth while he tugs at his belt. He is too clumsy to undo it and drag it free, and instead, he stumbles on until he falls again. The smells of ale and piss - a consequence of that same intoxicated clumsiness - reaches the boy, causing him to grimace with disgust.

His anger overcomes his revulsion, though. The boy heard those words in the children's nightmares. He felt their terror and their pain, both mental and physical. His eyes narrow against the memories, his dark lashes closing them to malevolent slits.

"Why don't you try taking your belt to me instead, Angus Doyle!" he growls, his lips curling with contempt.

Angus hears the husky voice coming at him from the thick mist rising from the field around him. He flounces around, windmilling his arms as his breath breaks from his chest in startled puffs. His unfocused eyes find the boy standing casually on top of a high boulder, his hair shimmering in the weak light of the moon, playing hide and seek with the clouds.

"Wh-what?" Angus stammers, trying to find his balance and clear his vision. All he can see is a shape bathed in moonlight, hovering above the mist, completely swallowing the boulder the boy is standing on. It gives the impression that the boy is floating in the air. His first thought is that he is seeing an angel, but the anger on the boy's face and the blackening irises of his eyes make him wonder if it might be a demon instead.

If the man had been sober, he would've been overcome with fear and awe, seeing such a beautiful boy while remembering the rumours about the Slatherties governing this island. He is, however, deep in his cups, the liquid in his blood stirring up unwise bravery.

"Why don't ye come down 'ere and say it to me face, ye faizard!" he yells. Angel, demon, or man, Angus couldn't care less. He felt owed retribution for all the wrongs life had done to him, making him a poor widower with six children to care for.

Only four now.

The duke's son smirks, hearing the drunk man calling him a coward. Anybody who knows the boy knows that this particular smile is a warning to run. Even before the change came over his body, the smile had been a sure sign that he was losing the battle against his longing for a fight.

Now, with his childhood stripped from him and his body thrust into manhood by the trials and pain it had been through, it is not a brawl the boy is seeking. His coat flaps in the wind, his hair streaming behind him in an ash river, when he jumps, landing almost silently beside Angus.

Startled by the sound of the wind snapping the material of the young lord's coat and the sudden appearance of the boy right beside him, Angus stumbles again and falls to the ground with a satisfying grunt. Watching him, the boy's smile widens, growing more crooked.

Lying in the cold wild grass, looking up at the boy who seems to glow mystically in the pale light, Angus starts to sober up. Fear washes the alcohol from his blood as he watches the boy move, the mist following him, parting around him and enveloping him until he is the mist.

There is only one person on this island who fits this being's description, and the recognition causes the man to quake in his tattered boots.

"Y-yer Grace," Angus tries to placate him, struggling to his knees. "I... I didn't mean-"

"Of course you did," the boy chuckles. Looking down at the cowering man, he parts his lips and runs the tip of his tongue over unnaturally white teeth, displaying the sharp fangs on either side of his four front teeth.

Angus is sure that he must be passed out drunk, lying on the dirty floor of the tavern. This cannot be happening to him. In recent months, he'd lost two of his children to the pig farmer. The clever little runt, Uilliam and his youngest daughter, Mairead.

At the time, some claimed that they saw a beautiful boy lure that wench, Mairead's friend, through her bedroom window on her wedding day. Some said it was the Pavee boy the girl was sweet on, while others swore the man who stole her had hair the colour of pewter.

Looking into the impossible eyes of the stunning boy towering over him, lithe and muscular, the truth is starting to curl its fingers in Angus' pickled brain. This boy... man... this apparition took Madrigal Byrne. He knows that with a certainty born from staring into the face of exquisite death looking down at him.

This man took his Mairead, the daughter he loved and hated for 13 years.

He'd loved her for her endless determination and wisdom. He'd hated her for her gentleness, purity and the strength that defied his foul treatment of her. She never broke. She never fled and left the young ones to his temper. When he was drunk, he wanted to destroy the girl; when he was sober, he felt vile and unworthy, filled with regret and took it out on her.

This man took his sweet Mairead.

"Ye took me inion, didn't ye? Ye took me Mairead!" he accuses hoarsely. For a moment, his fear left him in light of his bewilderment and a strong broth of grief and anger bubbling in his belly.

"Of course I did," the boy snarls. "She is mine now. I have your boy too."

Before Angus can process feelings of joy, confusion, anger and relief. Before he can defend himself or make sense of what's happening. Before he can do so much as scream, he is plucked off the ground and, for an awestruck second, finds himself flying, and then his feet touch the surface of the tall boulder.

"I brought some friends to play with you," the boy whispers, his breath cold on the trembling man's cheek. "But first, I need to help you understand why this is happening to you."

Angus' heart contracts painfully in his chest as his eyes, no longer alcohol drugged, find gleaming eyes staring expectantly up at him from the mist below the boulder. He can hear the monsters' breath, rasping in anticipation as dark bodies tense, poised to strike. Their low growling grows louder and fiercer, interspersed by drawn-out howls, and for the second time tonight, Angus loses control of his bladder.

Wolves!

"Please, I beg ye-" he whimpers, trying to escape the strong arm wrapped around his chest from behind.

"My, aren't you in a hurry," the boy mocks, tangling his fingers in the man's matted hair, pulling his head to the side. "No need to beg," he murmurs almost gently, his cold lips touching the searing skin of the neck he exposed.

"N-no!" Angus yells. His scream is cut short by blinding pain, filling his mind with the white mist, eating at his ankles. He tries to struggle, wanting to free himself of the agony, but the boy is not letting him go.

He is willfully hurting him, letting the pain drag on and on, while Angus lives through heart-stopping detail of each stroke of the belt, each bruise, each break, each cut he'd ever given any of his children through the years.

He is weeping freely, shivering with pain and dread, begging for mercy while drowning in resignation by the time the boy lets him go to free-fall from the boulder where the wolves wait in blood-curdling anticipation to receive him.

The duke's son wipes the blood from his lips and sits down, making himself comfortable on the boulder. One leg dangles over the edge, the other is drawn up, the knee receiving his forearm. He sits quietly, watching and listening coldly until Angus stops screaming.

Only then does his anger abate.

The part of him that is not accustomed to his violence is rebelling at his callousness, and he knows that tonight will haunt his dreams. He also knows he will have to keep this memory buried too deep for the children to find. Mairead, with her vast capacity for compassion will be heartbroken if she knew what he just did.

Whatever guilt he might feel, leaves him when he rises to his feet, leaps from the boulder and disappears into the forest. Angus Doyle will never hurt any of his children again.

That is all that matters.

~~~