Malcolm kicked one of them away but couldn’t reach the other in time. The Highlander made a parry. Malcolm twisted to avoid it, but he couldn’t react. The blade hit him in the stomach just below his sternum, and he doubled over in agony.
Chapter 32
Cold steel slithered into Malcolm’s gut, and a sickening sensation gripped his heart. He winced, and his arms weakened. He couldn’t fight all these men, and now he was injured.
The scene winked before his eyes, and he realized it was hopeless. He and Vic would never get out of this room. He’d failed her, and now they would both end up dead.
He couldn’t stand up straight. Pain and nausea flooded over him. His life energy drained out through his shoes. Some animal part of him read the horrible truth in his body. He was bleeding internally.
He made a limp show of swatting his enemy’s weapons away, but his heart gave out. He put hardly any effort into defending himself or Vic. Why bother? He ought to just lay down his weapons, kiss her goodbye, and let the Gunns have their way. That would be the peaceful, easy way to die, rather than dying scared and bloody and lost.
Every time he lifted his saber to block another blow cost him more strength than he could muster. One of these times, he wouldn’t waste the effort.
He cast a sidelong glance at Vic and found her staring up at him from the floor. She still hadn’t pulled her ax out from that man’s weapon. She wasn’t even trying to. Her gaze was fixed on his stomach, and her features writhed and twisted in all the wrong ways. She gaped at Malcolm’s face, and he read the inevitable in her eyes. He was a dead man.
Her glorious beauty contorted into a hideous mask of fury, and she launched herself off the floor, shrieking to raise the roof. A ragged, tormented bellow broke from her throat.
“Noooooooo!”
The man Malcolm killed to protect Vic dropped away, and she dragged her ax out from under him and plunged between Malcolm and his assailants. The next thing he knew, she’d grabbed her ax handle in both hands and started swinging like she’d never swung before. She took her stand between Malcolm and the Falisa horde, screeching in her enemies’ faces and smashing every weapon that came within range. She killed without discrimination, and the bodies piled up in front of her, creating a barrier that slowed the Gunn army down. They had to climb over their comrades just to come near her.
Malcolm wilted against the wall. He ought to be in there with her. He ought to be fighting to protect her instead of the other way around, but he couldn’t summon the strength to stand upright. Every moment robbed him of his will to live. His eyes blurred, and his head swam.
Vic backed up against him in the fury of her battle and then spat over her shoulder between strokes of her ax against steel, “Get out! Get out of here!”
“I cannae,” Malcolm whispered. “I cannae stand.”
“The window!” she shrieked. “Get out the window.”
He shook his head, but his breath shortened until he couldn’t form words. He panted for air, and his mind wouldn’t function.
Vic cast one more desperate glare at him over her shoulder, then had to concentrate on keeping a few inches of breathing space around her. All at once, she whipped around and smashed her ax into the window. Glass showered into the room.
Malcolm closed his eyes, but he couldn’t lift his arms to act. He was done for.
Vic gave him a shove, but all her efforts went toward holding the enemy at bay. “Get out, Malcolm!” she bellowed. “Get out now!”
He opened his mouth, but his arms and legs turned to water. They wouldn’t obey him. Beyond his awareness of pain and numb fear, something pushed him from behind. He rallied to open his eyes and found Vic standing next to him. She hooked her arm behind his back while she held her ax on high with the other.
She jerked him off the wall and pushed him around to face away from her. He screamed in pain but lacked the power to fight her. That one inch of movement brought him to the window. She let him go and turned her back to him. She had to. The Gunns were pulling the bodies impeding their progress out of the room, clearing a path to her and Malcolm. Dozens of weapons were aimed at her from every direction, ready to fire as soon as their friends gave them a clear shot.
Vic backed into Malcolm. Her body grazed down his back, and she shoved him the rest of the way to the window. He flopped forward, barely getting his head tucked and one arm in front of his face to protect himself from what remained of the broken glass. His head and shoulders pitched through the opening, and he found himself staring straight down at the brick entrance porch in front of the Guild House. Before he could protest, she tipped him the rest of the way out, and he fell screaming, onto the steps.
He curled into a fetal ball and closed his eyes. He heard his voice groaning in agony, but the sound didn’t appear to come from anything he could recognize. He hugged both arms over his stomach where that mortal wound seared into his vital organs. Being immortal didn’t mean a thing if he could die like a beaten dog on the Falisa’s doorstep.
Just then, something hit him hard. He whimpered in pitiful despair when rough hands seized hold of him. They wrestled him onto his back, but he couldn’t uncurl himself. His body started to go cold and stiff.
“Get up, Malcolm!” someone yelled in his ears. “Get up! We have to get out of here.”
He struggled to place that voice out of the shadows of his memory. He knew that voice. Who was it?
“Malcolm!” the person screamed. “You have to get up!”
Realization flooded into his brain. It was Vic talking to him. Blessed, beloved, beautiful Vic. If only he could see her again, just one more time before he died. He would kiss her goodbye. That would be a nice, peaceful death.
Those torturous hands and that voice wouldn’t leave him alone in his daydream. “Malcolm, listen to me! You have to get up. I can’t lift you.”
Her angelic countenance wavered before his eyes, and he heard pounding noises in the distance. Then he remembered the battle upstairs. “Ye go on home now, lassie. Leave me here. Ye can get free in time. Just place me hand on yer head, and I’ll cast the spell to send ye back. Ye’ll be safe. That’s all that matters.”
“I’m not leaving you here,” she cried. “Come on. Get up, and we can get out of here.”
“I cannae, lass. I’m done for. Go on and—”
“Oh, will you shut up!” she shrieked. “Get up now, or I swear to God, I’ll kill you myself.” Unwilling to wait around anymore for him to help her, she hauled him into a sitting position.
Lightning bolts of pain rocketed through him, and he snarled in rage at her for doing this to him. Why couldn’t she just leave him here to die in peace?
She got behind him and lashed her arms around his chest, fighting him every step of the way until she’d shoved him over on his hands and knees. From there, she forced him to his feet.
He sobbed and whined, but she wouldn’t leave him be until he staggered to his feet. “Now what?” he asked. “Now I’m up, and we have nowhere to go. I’ll only slow ye down.”
“Don’t talk,” she snarled. “Just keep quiet.”
He wavered on unsteady legs, knowing he couldn’t stay conscious much longer. He blinked when she led a saddled horse in front of his eyes, then took a moment to understand what she wanted to do.
She pursed her lips and went to work laying his flaccid arms over the saddle and lifting his foot into the stirrup. She muttered under her breath, “We don’t have much time. They’ll all be coming through that door any second, so I need you to push yourself up. I’ll help you, but you’re too heavy for me to lift you. Just do this, and then you can relax. I’ll do the rest. Understand?”
He wanted to answer but couldn’t. He submitted to her hands when she gave him one more almighty heave. He jammed his foot into the stirrup and straightened his leg, but she wound up doing most of the lifting. She pushed him up, and he flopped over the saddle. He couldn’t bring his other leg over, so he drooped there like a sack of potato
es.
Vic swiveled his other leg over, and from there, he managed to sit the rest of the way up. She paid no further attention to him, and a moment later, appeared sitting astride another horse. She trotted over and took hold of his mount’s bridle.
The Guild House door burst open, and Highlanders flooded onto the steps.
Vic touched her heels to her horse’s flanks, and both animals shot forward with a squeal. Malcolm held on to the saddle horn for all he was worth. Staying on was the best he could do under the circumstances.
Musket blasts followed them out of the yard and down the street.
Vic galloped them out of town, then cantered up a steep hill before she paused to look back. “Damn. They’re coming after us. We have to find a place to go to ground.”
She wheeled her horse around and charged down the hill’s other side, not stopping to rest until she found a deep gully packed with dense forest. Malcolm swooned in and out of consciousness during the ride. He didn’t care what she did with him. The pain and hopelessness eating away his insides sapped his strength.
Chilly shadows roused him to glance around.
Vic sat as firm and sturdy as ever on her horse, casting a fiery glare around the woods. “There must be somewhere on this island we can find shelter. They’ll be searching for us. We need to hide. You need to hide somewhere where you can heal up.”
“We’ll no’ find anywhere to hide on this island,” he gasped.
“I know that!” she snapped back. “You don’t have to throw a wet blanket over me. I already know it looks bad, and you’re bleeding out.”
He heaved another few tattered breaths before he got up the energy to speak. “I was just about to say…we’ll no’ find anywhere to hide on this island…but we will on the other…”
She cocked her head and waited for him to finish. “The other what?”
“The other island.” His chin collapsed to his chest. He started to pass out again, but he drew on a forgotten well of power to get the words out. He kept his eyes closed to concentrate on making his lips form the sounds one after the other. “The next island over…Flotta. We can find…some…one there.”
Vic looked around the woods again and then glanced at Malcolm, but she didn’t ask any more questions. She took a fresh hold of his mount’s bridle and set off through the trees at a steady walk.
Malcolm gave himself up to the black void overpowering him. He folded over and drifted away into sweet, sweet unconscious bliss where he couldn’t feel his wound anymore. A shattering blow woke him from his trance, and he screamed out loud. Stamping hooves drummed in his ears, but he couldn’t see anything.
Vic’s gentle whisper drifted into his ear. “It’s all right. I had to get you down, and you wouldn’t listen to me, so I had to pull you down. Just a few more feet, and we’ll be in the boat.”
Boat? He didn’t understand, and he didn’t care. He turned his face away while she dragged him by the arms. He didn’t even try to help her lift him up. Another devastating impact jolted him from his trance when she dumped him into a shallow dinghy. Then he was rocking and drifting and dreaming on easy rolling ripples. When he opened his eyes, he stared up at a sky sparkling with stars and a golden moon. He had no idea where he was. Maybe this was Heaven.
“Wake up, Malcolm!” she yelled.
He flinched away from the sound, and when he looked, blinding light pierced his brain.
“You have to wake up now, Malcolm,” Vic ordered. “We’re on Flotta. I need you to tell me how to get wherever it is you said we could rest, and I need you to walk there. I’ll support you as best I can, but I can’t carry you and we don’t have any horses. You have to walk.” She paused. “Are you listening to me?”
Gravity pinned him to the ground. His arms and legs sank into the soil. The cool breeze soothed his fevered skin, but he refused to sit up. “Ye go on, lass. Ye go find Norris Gunn. He lives on a farm on the eastern coast of the island. He’ll find a way to send ye home.”
“You bastard!” she hissed. “Do you think I came all this way to leave you on the beach? Come on. Get up. You’re not dead yet, Malcolm. If we can get there, you won’t be.”
He sucked in a lungful of air, but the signal from his brain to his voice took too long and he forgot what he was going to say before it got there.
“Don’t you dare die on me, Malcolm Gunn!” she thundered in his ear. “Do you really expect me to go back to San Francisco alone? If you heal up, you’ll be there waiting for me. Don’t you dare die on me after I just got you out of that hellhole.”
Those words acted on his subconscious. How ever much he might like to give up and die here, she gave him no choice. She wrestled him upright. Her orders braced his legs under him when he lacked the will to do it himself. Her driving determination demanded he put one aching foot in front of the other. He didn’t have to think. She supported him on her shoulders. One tormented step after another, she staggered her way across the island. She stopped to rest in a clump of trees and let him slump against a stone wall.
“Christ, you’re heavy,” she gasped. “You weigh a lot more than Noah. Just don’t get too comfortable because we’re not staying here long. Don’t sit down, either. I don’t think I can get you up again.”
He blinked several times before his vision cleared to look at her. Covered in blood and caked in mud, she looked as alert as ever. This arduous ordeal hadn’t made a dent in her. She scanned the surroundings until she came back around to find him studying her.
Her voice softened to something closer to what he was used to. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I know it hurts. I wouldn’t do this to you if it wasn’t necessary.”
“It’s no’ necessary, lass,” he whispered. “Ye could go on yer own and make twice the time. I dinnae like to slow ye down. It’s only putting ye in danger when ye could get away.”
“Are you crazy?” She walked over to him and leaned against the wall at his side. “Why would I want to run off like that? What’s the point of me getting away if I don’t have you?”
He stared at her, unable to believe she’d just said that. Did he imagine it? “Lassie…”
She laid her arm around his shoulders. Her fingers stroked his hair, and she darted in to kiss him on the forehead. “Neither of us is going anywhere without the other. Just remember that the next time you suggest I leave you behind. If you’re going back to the Guild House under guard from the Gunns, or if you die, or if you get away, I’m going with you. You’re not getting rid of me, and I’m not leaving you behind. We’re together. There’s nothing waiting out there for me but you. I have nowhere to go in this world except where you’re going to be. That’s the way it is, so don’t say anything more about it.”
Malcolm swallowed down a lump stuck in his throat. What was this woman standing next to him? She must be some kind of angel sent from Heaven to give his life meaning. No one had ever said anything like that to him before, not even Niall.
No one stood by him. No one shared his troubles or his danger. No one sacrificed their own comfort and safety and possibly even their life to save him. All his miserable life, he’d sacrificed and suffered and gave so others could live in peace. Now she was here. In one instant, she’d turned his world on its head. She valued him beyond anything he ever thought possible.
She tore a piece off her dress and wrapped it around Malcolm’s wound. As he watched her, he couldn’t shake the overwhelming reality of what she’d just said. He wasn’t alone anymore. She was here, and she wasn’t going anywhere without him.
In that moment, he knew he could go on. He had to live. He had to see her to safety in her own time, and he would live for the next three hundred years until he saw her again. No other option remained open to him.
She helped him up, and he responded with at least half his usual energy. He couldn’t give up now that he held this precious treasure in his arms. His life meant so much more now than it ever had before. All these years, he’d staked his identity and his pur
pose on being the Angui’s man inside Clan Gunn. Now he had something to really live for. He had a future, and he had someone to share it with.
They staggered the rest of the way across Flotta but didn’t reach Norris’s farm until sunset of the second day. Vic collapsed against the fence and let Malcolm slump to the ground. “Which house is it?”
He nodded, too exhausted to point. “Over there.”
Chapter 33
Vic pounded on the cottage door. The farm to which Malcolm directed her wasn’t much more than a collection of hovels on the far distant coast of a windswept island. The wind whipped up the ocean not far away, and she shivered.
She would be glad to get indoors after the last two days on the run for her life. She only hoped and prayed this Norris Gunn character really was a friend and wouldn’t sell her and Malcolm out to the Gunns.
No sound came from inside the cottage.
She banged her fist against the solid wood one more time, but nothing happened. Her heart sank. If they didn’t find help soon, Malcolm would probably die. His skin grew colder, sweatier, and more ashen with every passing hour.
She turned to look out over the landscape. Where could she go now? Where could she hide him in this dreadful country?
She set off toward the fence where she’d left him when she noticed a flash of movement near one of the other buildings. She hurried toward it and came upon an old man standing bare-chested in what looked like a stable. A wide leather belt strapped a dirty Gunn tartan kilt around his muscular waist. Other than that, he wore no clothes at all to keep away the cold—no shoes, no socks, no shirt. His dirty sandy-blond hair draped his enormous shoulders, combining with his full beard and his body hair to form a solid mat over his whole hulking frame down to his kilt. He glanced up at her with flashing blue eyes. They blazed out of his feral face with quick, intense flickers, and his booming deep voice rose out of the very Earth itself. “What do ye want?”
Spies of the Angui - Cipher's Kiss Book 3 Page 22