He Who Writes With Fire

By Liz Ellor

Praise for The Colder War Series
"It sucks you in like a whirlpool, and leaves you begging for more."
—Unusual Book Recomendations

Decades have passed since Seamus O'Brien detonated his last bomb. The former IRA member has dedicated himself to living a quiet life with his family—until the day a young valkyrie demands his assistance in murdering the spies that killed her family.

He couldn't want less to do with Borghild Asen and her revenge. But Seamus is a witch, the son of an ancient and feared bloodline. And despite how he tries, he can't ignore the truth: that he has the power to re-write history in fire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Liz Ellor
• Release date: Oct 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310522802

Book preview

HE WHO WRITES WITH FIRE

LIZ ELLOR

Copyright 2015 Liz Ellor

Published by Liz Ellor at Smashwords

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ON THE HISTORY

PART 1: WHITE WINGS

PART 2: WITCHES’ WILL

AUTHOR’S NOTE

ON THE HISTORY

Many of my American readers, especially the younger ones, may not understand some of the references in this story. This is not a failure of their intelligence, but a general failure of our schools to teach any important events occurring after World War Two—and a complete failure to teach what happened outside our borders.

Irish republicanism is a complex subject, which I will here distil into two pertinent facts: first, that the Protestant English conquered Ireland and used brutal methods to keep the Irish Catholics subordinate to the Crown, and second, that many Irish Catholics have themselves used brutal methods to rebel against English authority and anything they see as English. The relative amounts of brutality and its justifications are for the reader to explore and pass judgement on independently; the narrator here is biased.

For him, what matters is what passed between 1972 and 1984, in the city of Belfast, in the province of Ulster, in Northern Ireland—the last part of Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom. Starting as a boy of twelve, he and his friends in the Provisional IRA (Irish Republican Army) planted bombs and planned ambushes to kill whoever they believed was an enemy of a united, independent Ireland. Meanwhile, both the police and rival paramilitary groups like the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) used similar tactics to arrest or kill anyone they suspected of having links to the IRA.

This story takes place in the autumn of 2004, six years after the Good Friday Agreement called for the disarmament of all paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. The Provisional IRA did not officially complete disarmament until a year after this story takes place. Even today, scattered killings linked to this terrorist group occur.

PART 1: WHITE WINGS

Faggot.

The word struck Seamus like the blast wave of a pipe bomb.

The lad who’d spoken to him was fourteen. Old enough to know better. If he was a Catholic, he’d be a man. Instead, the boy was as plump as a prize pig, with a shitty little sneer, wearing a tailored suit worth at least three hundred euros, fresh back from a term abroad in the States. And that’s all he learned. A strip of exposed skin shone white where the boy had recently worn a wristwatch in the sun. Seamus had a wand strapped to the inside of his work jacket that, with a touch to that pale band, would drop the child with a coronary. Fat little wanker. No one would guess that a witch was to blame.

Are you deaf, faggot?

Seamus bent and resumed digging. The sun beamed down on his back, soaking through his thinning hair. Five minutes later, the lad was gone.

I’d have punched him, said Doyle. Made ‘im shut his fucking trap.

His father goes drinking with the judge. Seamus shook his head. Not worth the trouble. Rumour had it Pat Grady was also a former member of the UFF. It was easy to picture the ugly bastard grinning as he gunned down one of Seamus’s old mates. But he couldn’t dwell on that. Those days were long gone. Today, he was only a man with a job to do.

You can’t let them get away with it! Like most of his crew members, Doyle was in his early twenties and thought he knew how the world worked. He does that today, and next week—

"Next week, we’ll be over at Mrs. Flanagan’s, putting in her new garden wall and mocking the bloody cherub statues. Punching a child isn’t worth a prison term." Not that he’d bother staying in long, but starting a new life wasn’t worth it, and MI5 . . . well, his name was probably still on their lists. Wasn’t worth it at all.

The other crew members began laying the stone that would line Mr. Grady’s artisanal koi pond. Seamus watched, taught two how to properly judge a level, shouted at one for not adding the bonding agent to the mortar, and resumed digging the trench for the pipes. Sweat dripped into his eyes. This used to be a farm. A place where things grew. He’d never understand why the Grady’s insisted on stripping the property of its usefulness, but then, few enough people knew what it was like to be turned from a useful thing to a relic.

I’d like to buy you a pint after work, said Martin MacGarvey shouted. He was a new hire, and pretty, with chestnut hair and green eyes every girl in County Mayo coveted. You’re the best boss I’ve ever had, taking on all the hard work yourself.

Seamus might have dared say yes, if Martin hadn’t been his employee. Digging clears the mind. It helps keep me young.

You idiot, he thought, returning his shovel to the earth. He was forty-four. Hardly old. Granted, he had a touch of the grey, but his sand-coloured hair hid it well, and the lines on his forehead had always been there. His power kept his body strong, and he liked to think his mind was as sharp as any man’s. Say something, fool, salvage it!

But there was nothing to salvage. Just the ground, and the trench for the pipes, and the ache in his shoulders as he moved earth aside.

Boss? someone asked. Why aren’t you going straight down the hill?

Trade secret, he grunted, and a few crew members nodded their agreement. As long as no one looked at it from above, they wouldn’t see anything strange about the ditch he’d created.

A loud noise from the drive caught his attention. The sound of raised female voices followed. Seamus cursed. "Stay here. And no one