Melanie opened her eyes. It didn't help — everything around her was dark and murky, and she kicked her legs again, feeling a strange lurching sensation as she came back into her body. The water around her was cool, swirling and eddying as she moved her feet and hands… she kicked her legs again, and again, some ancient survival instinct kicking in and moving her body even as her mind raced uselessly, full of questions that barely made sense — where, how, why, who, what, over and over, nonspecific, drenched in a mixture of panic and dread…
But her feet kept kicking, and her hands started paddling, and just as she was beginning to worry she'd never breathe again, she felt her head break the surface of the water and she took a gasp of the sweetest, crispest air she'd ever inhaled. Melanie had never thought that air could taste so good… she gasped again and again, heedless of the water slapping against her face in small waves, her legs paddling under her to keep her afloat as she took deep, steadying breaths of the freezing air around her.
Then she opened her eyes again.
A sky full of stars; that was the first thing she saw — her head was tilted back to get in as much air as possible, and above her was a blanket of stars as bright as she'd ever seen them. And in the sky, high and bright, was a glimmering full moon. It took her breath away even as she fought mightily to fill her lungs with air… but she was confused, too. Hadn't she checked the moon not long ago? She remembered being grateful that it was a new moon, because it meant less light to see her by outside the hotel…
The hotel. She'd been at the hotel. Where the hell was she now?
Her eyes lowered in response to that unspoken question and she blanched. Surrounding her on all sides, illuminated just enough by the moonlight, was black, choppy water. Where the hell was she? Had someone dumped her in the ocean, thinking she was dead? Could it have been Gina and her husband? Surely not… but people did do strange things when they were frightened. And hadn't she herself been thinking that Gina wouldn't do well in prison? Still, dumping the body of someone she'd known for ten years… that was something.
But this wasn't the ocean. The water that she was spitting out of her mouth was fresh, not salty… and besides, if she was in the ocean, she'd be getting a lot more than gently splashed by the waves. It was a big body of water, but it wasn't the ocean. A lake? Were there lakes near the hotel? Had they dumped her body in a goddamn lake? Anger joined confusion for the first time, and she redoubled her efforts to tread water as her breathing began to pick up again. Had they even bothered to check whether she was dead? Or had they figured she'd be drowned soon enough, even if the bullet hadn't done the job?
The bullet. Her hand, under the water, flew to her chest again. Where was the bullet? Where had she been struck? The gun had gone off, she'd flown across the room… it must have hit her hard somewhere, to do that much damage. And she could still remember the blood on her hand. It had hurt, but shock had dulled the majority of the pain… was that why she couldn't feel anything now? The shock of waking up in a lake? It was a miracle she'd woken up at all… a gunshot wound serious enough to knock her out like it had, plus water, plus time… but the more she touched her body, the more confused she felt. Unless she'd been somehow completely numbed by the cold water… she seemed to be more or less completely intact.
What the hell was going on?
But as the cold of the lake began to really take effect and she felt herself beginning to shiver, Melanie realized that what the hell was going on was actually none of her concern right now. What was important, above all else right now, was to get to shore safely — so she could warm up and not risk sinking to the bottom of this lake and drowning. She was pretty sure it was a lake, anyway. A lake would do, for now. So, with new determination she kicked her legs, scanning the lake with new focus, searching for any indication of where the shore could be. Nothing was visible, nothing but the stars and the water around her, but that didn't mean much. You could never see too far from the water. No sense panicking. It was a lake, right? That meant there was a shore in any direction she swam. She just had to pick a direction and start swimming.
Still, she hesitated in the freezing cold water. What if she went the wrong way? What if the shore was a hundred feet away on one side, but ten miles away on the other? What if she set off swimming and wound up further from shore, not closer? It was a scary thought… but it was also a scary thought to imagine just floating out here, waiting for help. Help wasn't going to come. It was the middle of the night, somehow, and the only light she could make out was the light of the full moon above her...
No, that wasn't quite right, was it? As her eyes lowered from the moon, she saw it. Just a glimpse of a bright light, a little way above the horizon, gleaming above the choppy waves, bright and reassuring. A warm colored light, like an ember or a flame… she found herself thinking, strangely, of the scene in the Lord of the Rings where the men lit all of the beacons across the country to call aid to somewhere or other. God, her father loved that movie. She loved it for him, in that dutiful way some daughters had.
Thinking of her father gave her strength. She was going to survive, because she had a hell of a story to tell him, and she loved the way he narrowed his eyes and leaned forward with dedicated interest when she got back from a job with an interesting story to tell about it. And good Lord, did she have the mother of all interesting stories about this one. So, she started kicking her legs, headed for the orange light she could see above the water, just distant enough to feel like it could well be an illusion. Well, if it was an illusion, at least it was something to point herself toward. She tried to scan the sky, too, to get a sense of which stars she was swimming toward, not wanting to get tricked into swimming in circles. Out here, it would be easy to lose your bearings. And she wanted to live.
She'd been so convinced she was alone that when she swam into someone she almost didn't recognize what the struggling shape was.
A sudden crash into something wet and stringy, that was what she registered, shock drawing a strangled cry from her throat as she struggled backwards. Firm limbs beneath the water's surface seemed to tangle with hers, grabbing at her and then releasing her, and she heard a hoarse cry a great deal like the one she'd let out, a sound of shock and confusion. Blinking hard, she tried to focus on what she'd struck… and her jaw dropped open with shock. Because there in the water in front of her, clear as day, was a man.
"Who the hell are you?" she gasped, instinctively. What a daft question. Who cared who he was? Didn't they have other things to think about? The man was staring back at her, his eyes glinting silver-gray for all the world as though they were reflecting the color of the moon ahead right back at her. His hair, too, was pale, even wet and slicked to his head — white-blonde, she'd estimate, when it was dry, at least. He looked around her age, maybe a little older… and he looked as confused as she did to be crashing into someone out here. She heard him gasp a name, but as he opened his mouth lake water slapped him in the face and enveloped the name with a coughing fit.
"Let's get to shore," she yelled, pointing toward the orange light ahead of them, and he nodded gratefully. He was breathing hard, and she had a suspicion he'd been out here a little longer than her — he looked exhausted, as though he'd simply been paddling for dear life, and as they swam she reached out to grab his shoulder encouragingly. They worked out a way of gripping each other as they swam, wordless as they worked together for the simple human goal of survival, and before too long they were helping each other stay afloat as they kicked and struggled their way through the lake.
She hoped, very desperately, that they were getting close to shore. The more they swam, the more exhausted she felt, deep in her bones. Her legs were still kicking, and the exertion of the effort was definitely keeping her warm, for now… but what happened when she ran out of energy, of drive, of the adrenaline that was still keeping her going? Would she slow down and begin to sink? Would it be the cold that killed her first, or slipping beneath the icy surface of the water? And w
hat of her new friend? Would they be Jack and Rose on the Titanic, desperately trying to hold each other up even as they sank into the water?
This is a lake, not an ocean, she told herself firmly. There's no door to float on. We're swimming to shore, not floating and waiting to be rescued. And there's no way in hell I'm letting go of him. That last thought surprised her. She felt oddly protective of the man she'd found in the lake. She supposed idly that she'd think of some questions about him later — who he was, how it was that he'd ended up in the depths of a lake in the middle of the night, whether or not it had any connection to her own presence there… but for now, it was simply a comfort to have a friend with her. He was a friend, right? He had to be a friend. She had decided that he was a friend.
It could have been minutes later, it could have been a whole hour, when she felt her new friend raise his arm weakly, pointing ahead of them as his labored breathing picked up. He was trying to speak, and she barked at him quickly to save his breath, she saw it. Up ahead — the unmistakable outline of something that wasn't just the choppy waves of the lake's surface. It was dark, and solid, cut out against the stars with reassuring solidity, and as she stared at it she realized with a pounding heart that it was a treeline, jagged and pointed, but unmistakably belonging to the ground. That meant…
"Nearly there," she gasped, straining her eyes to try to see how close the shore was. If there were trees, there was land, she promised herself, redoubling her efforts as her straining muscles worked to keep her moving. But the treeline approached agonizingly slowly. Without a reference point, she'd been able to kid herself that they were moving quite quickly through the water… but it was becoming clear that that wasn't the case. They were woefully slow, and she was gasping for breath as they swam, and swam, and swam…
She almost didn't recognize it when she felt it. It hit her chest first, her legs suspended in the water behind her and thrashing enthusiastically to drive her forwards, and she yelped in confusion as she felt her sodden coat drag against the sandy bank they'd swum into. The man beside her yelped, too, and then they were grabbing each other, struggling upright in what she realized with a joyous lurch of sheer adrenalin was sand. Solid, real sand. A bank. A shore. They'd made it.
"We made it," the man gasped as they leaned into each other's embrace, both panting hard as they staggered upright in the freezing night air. "We made it to shore —"
"Great," Melanie gasped. It was freezing cold, a new problem to face shortly, and the chill wind was freezing her to the bone as it whipped past her sodden clothes. But right now, all she cared about was the solid ground under her feet. They staggered out of the water, mutually determined to get as far from the lake as possible and collapsed together on the sand. There was a furious ache in her legs and her core muscles from all that swimming, but it had been worth it in the end. They were saved.
"Now," she said breathlessly, turning to the pale-eyed stranger beside her. "Back to my first question. Who the hell are you?"
Chapter 4
The man uttered a breathless little bark of laughter. She chuckled too, giving him a minute to regain his breath. Now that they weren't surrounded by water, she wished she had a bottle or something to drink from — the effort of the swim had made her thirsty, for all that water had splashed into her mouth plenty while they were swimming.
"I was going to ask you the same thing," he said finally once he'd regained his breath.
Strange — that wasn't an American accent, she thought, tilting her head a little. It was beautiful. English, maybe? No, too lilting. Irish? Scottish?
"But I suppose you're doing the same thing I was."
"What, a spot of night swimming?" She raised an eyebrow. "I don't make a habit of this. I don't know about you —"
"Oh, me neither," he assured her with a worried smile. "Uh, let me start again. You can call me Aelfred Grant."
"Melanie Orwell," she responded. What was it about his phrasing that was so strange? "Nice to meet you. Now how the hell did you get into a lake?"
He chuckled. "I'm from this place, originally. I was sent away when I was a child, but I've returned now that it's safe."
She blinked. "Safe?"
But he shrugged his broad shoulders. He was rather muscular, she realized as she got a proper look at him in the moonlight, built like an athlete. His clothes were wet and sodden, but there was something odd about them… a strange shine to the fabric, as though it was made out of something otherworldly. Or was that just the effect of his shining eyes and his pale blond hair, which was drying now and almost seeming to glow in the moonlight? One thing was for sure — he was certainly a handsome man. She'd investigated plenty of men in her time, many of them decent-looking, but this guy took the cake. She wouldn't have minded being on a stakeout peering through a window at him, that was for sure…
She shook herself, a little embarrassed by the tenor of her thoughts. Aelfred had more important things to worry about right now, and so did she. Like figuring out where the hell they were. "Where are we?" she wondered aloud, peering around the lake shore. It being dark wasn't helping, but she was struggling to make out any recognizable landmarks at all. Were they in a park or a nature reserve or something? Just how far had she gotten from the hotel where she'd been staking out Gina's husband's mistress?
She had a lot of questions that just weren't adding up, and it was making her teeth itch. It was the opposite of what you wanted, as an investigator — a situation that just didn't make any sense. But Aelfred, beside her, was climbing to his feet, and as he did her eyes widened. There was a scabbard at his belt — for all the world as though he was wielding a sword.
"Are you some kind of medieval re-enactor?" she asked, raising an eyebrow as she gestured to the scabbard. But to her surprise, he reached down to take hold of a hilt that jutted out above the scabbard, and withdrew a few inches of shining metal, narrowing to a wickedly sharp blade at one side. "Woah."
"A man's got to be armed," he pointed out, as though he'd just showed her a pistol and not a goddamn sword. She was beginning to suspect that her new friend was a little stranger than she'd thought. Still, something about him made her want to trust him. Though he was an armed man and a stranger, she still couldn't help but feel like he was on her side. That any danger that presented itself would be something external… something that he might just protect her from. It was a nice thought… but she had no idea where it came from.
"Hey — what did you mean about this place being dangerous?" she asked as she climbed to her feet, wincing at the redoubled gusts of freezing wind. The exertion of swimming gone, her body was starting to cool down, and she shifted from foot to foot, trying to generate a bit more temperature to keep herself from getting a cold like her father was always telling her she would if she didn't wear enough layers. Thankfully, the night had been cold, and she'd layered up — under her wet coat was a sweater, a shirt, and a woolen singlet that looked very dorky, but kept her warm as toast even on the coldest stakeouts. She was grateful for it now — wool stayed warm even when it was wet, and she was soaked through. Still, she was going to need to get inside if she didn't want to catch her death of cold.
"I have to admit, I'm not sure," he said softly, shaking his head. "You know how the Sidhe are — it's hard to understand them even when they do deign to speak with you, and when you've an audience with royalty like them, well, you don't ask too many questions for fear of seeming ungrateful for their help."
He said all of this as though it was the most natural thing in the world, as though she ought to be following along with what he was saying with ease… but she couldn't help but stare up at him, utterly baffled. What on Earth was a Sidhe? At least listening to him speak had helped her place his accent — it was Scottish, definitely Scottish, though a little stranger than the Scottish accents she'd heard. She'd had a phase, back in high school, where she'd been obsessed with castles, and plenty of the best castles left in the world were in Scotland. She'd collected a whole scra
pbook of pictures, floor plans, diagrams of how the castles had been built, what had been on each floor before they'd crumbled into ruins, and even artistic renderings of what they might have looked like… she shook her head, grinning to herself. Every small girl went through an obsessive phase about something or other, didn't she? For her best friend, it had been wolves. For Melanie, castles. Information that may never come in handy again, but information, nevertheless.
Aelfred wrapped his arms around his chest and shivered a little. "We ought to get walking," he said, looking up and down the sandy beach they'd been sitting on. "The Keep's a few miles this way, I believe, but it'll be closed up at night."
"The Keep?" She frowned. "So, you know where we are?"
"Oh, aye. Apologies," he added, blinking. "I had presumed that as a fellow traveler you, too, knew where we'd come out."
"Not even remotely," she said blankly, surprised by his phrasing. Come out? Of the lake? "Last I remember I was in downtown LA at a skeevy hotel."
It was Aelfred's turn to look utterly mystified. He repeated the city's name as though he'd never heard of it, making her frown. He might have been Scottish, but everyone in the world had heard of Los Angeles, hadn't they? And wherever they were — in a nature reserve or whatever it might be — LA couldn't be far. After all, how could they have gotten her further than a few miles in one night?
"Well, the Keep's up there," he said, pointing.
She followed his gesture — and her eyes widened at what she saw there. For a moment, she didn't believe her eyes. It was maybe a few miles away, on an outcropping of rock that seemed to be standing in the lake a few hundred feet from a distant shore. But it wasn't a natural formation. No — it was an enormous castle, carved from what looked like black rock, in the moonlight at least. Walls surrounded it, beyond which the great castle shot up into the sky, its walls dotted with narrow windows, a scant handful of which glowed from within with orange light. And there, dotting the walls and battlements, was yet more light — tiny flickering points that looked for all the world like torches. She stared at it for a long moment, utterly entranced. It looked just like the castles she'd seen in her book as a child… but not the modern photos of them, not a ruin. It looked like a hyper-realistic rendering of one of the artistic imaginings of castles.
Trusted By The Highlander: A Scottish Time Travel Romance Page 3