Perenelle nodded; it wasn’t an unusual idea. She’d grown up in a world of ghosts, she saw the dead every day and spoke to them often, and yet she knew that the voices coming from the Morrigan’s mouth were not those of spirits. This was something different. She tried to remember what she knew about the Crow Goddess. The creature was Next Generation, born after the sinking of Danu Talis. She had settled in the lands that would one day be called Ireland and Britain and had quickly come to be worshipped by the Celts as a goddess of war, death and slaughter. Like many of the Elders and Next Generation, she was a triune goddess: she had three aspects. Some Elders visibly altered with the passage of time-Hekate was cursed to physically change from a young girl to an old woman during the course of each day. Others changed with the phases of the moon or the seasons, while still other triune goddesses were simply different aspects of the same person. But from what she remembered, the Macha, the Badb and the Morrigan were three different creatures with different personalities… all of them savage and deadly.

“When Nicholas and I were in Ireland back in the nineteenth century, an old wise woman told me that the Morrigan had somehow killed you both.”

“Not quite.” For an instant both eyes turned red and the creature spoke with a single voice. “We were never three; we were always one.”

Perenelle kept her face impassive, careful to remain neutral. “One body, three personalities?” she asked. Then she nodded. “So that was why the three sisters were never seen together.”

“At different times of the month, depending on the phase of the moon, each of us would assume control of this body.”

The eyes blinked yellow, the voice changed and the angle of bones beneath the flesh altered, making the face subtly different. “And there were certain times of year when one or the other of us held sway. Midwinter was always my time.”

The left eye turned red, the right eye bright yellow and both voices returned. “But this body was usually under the control of our younger sister, the Morrigan.” The creature started to cough with enough force to shake the web, and thick black liquid gathered on its lips. The red and yellow eyes flickered toward the pattern of spears behind Perenelle’s back. “Sorceress, break the Symbols of Binding… they are poisoning us, killing us.”

Perenelle looked over her shoulder. Outside the cave mouth the twelve wooden spears stretching across the corridor formed an interlocking series of triangles and squares. From the corner of her eye she could see a gossamer hint of the black light that buzzed between the metal spearheads upon which she had inscribed in wet mud the ancient Words of Power.