Troubled By The Highlander: A Scottish Time Travel Romance (Highlander Forever Book 6)

by Rebecca Preston

  Fire was a good metaphor, actually. Her feelings for Connor had certainly flared to life like a struck match, building slowly over time as they'd fed on the kindling of his company. In his arms as they made love, she felt like a bonfire… but when they lay together afterwards, that was her favorite feeling, like a little campfire crackling in the centre of her chest. Like hearth and home, that fire, the embers warming her, the cheery flames keeping her spirits up even in the midst of everything that was going on. And as he gazed down at her, a soft look in those gray eyes of his, she felt utterly safe with him. She knew he felt something similar… knew that whatever this was between them, it was important to both of them.

  It felt like all day that they slept, but it was really only a few hours. It was late afternoon when they got up, dressing slowly, ambling into the main room to put together a late lunch of bread and cheese. She was no stranger to odd sleeping patterns, having worked just about every possible combination of shifts at hospitals in her time — medicine was a twenty-four hour profession, after all. And she was more than ready to be nocturnal for a few weeks if that was what it took to defeat these creatures one and for all, and to restore safety to the villagers.

  So, the days wore on. She'd gotten into the habit of staying up all night with Connor. She'd join him on patrol on the quiet nights when the sky was clear… but when the west wind howled and the clouds scudded over the moon and stars, that's when she'd station herself at the inn. The first night of Sluagh attacks after their first successful kill made it clear the watchmen might need medical aid if they were to continue fighting — the creatures took to diving and slashing at anyone with a torch or a bow, confirming their suspicions that the creatures were not only intelligent… but deeply malevolent, too, and keenly interested in getting revenge for their fallen comrades.

  But despite this, the bravery of the watch was prevailing. The Sluagh lost a few more of their numbers each night they attacked, and though they still hovered over the homes of those male villagers with the pox, they were much more reluctant to swoop low and try to drag anyone out of the windows. They seemed to sense that it was the Watch who were their enemy now, and dove and slashed at them, clearly trying to disrupt the village's protection. A few minor injuries eventuated that first week — most of them wounds from the claws of the Sluagh. Karen, ready and waiting at the inn with all the supplies she could muster, handled them with ease.

  "Those creatures are filthy," she muttered to herself as she cleaned a wound for a young man who'd managed to slice a Sluagh's head clean off when it had dived on him, shrieking, after he'd shot an arrow at its companion. He was quite pleased with himself, though wincing at the deep gash the Sluagh had left in his shoulder — a wound that was full of festering matter that she couldn't identify but reasoned had come from the creature's claws. "Without treatment, this wound would fester and kill you," she told the young man, taking the smug look on his face down a notch or two.

  Thankfully, with Thomas's help, she'd been able to produce some home-made saline solution with boiled water and salt, and it was easy enough to clean out the shallow wound thoroughly before bandaging it up and sending the man on his way.

  "Will I be able to fire an arrow?"

  "Not for a while," she said, frowning after him as he headed back to his quarters with his shoulders slumped. That was a good point. She was grateful there were no serious injuries yet — but any injury serious enough to put a watchman out of commission was a problem. What if they ran out of able-bodied men to defend against the Sluagh?

  As the weeks wore on, the creatures grew bolder and bolder as time passed with no kills… for all the world as though they were growing hungrier and hungrier. What was it that they fed on? The bodies that had been recovered hadn't been eaten in any way — was it the life force that they drained, as Maggie had said? Thinking of it made Karen shudder, and she devoted herself anew to making sure that the injured men were keeping their wounds clean. She also visited with every reported cowpox patient to make sure they understood how important it was to keep their lesions covered to stop the disease spreading… and to double-check their window fastenings, as the disease made them a prime target for the Sluagh. She was fairly certain the spread was slowing, if not entirely stopped, when a week had passed with no new cases coming to her attention… but there were half a dozen young men with pox, and she was worried for their safety if the Sluagh were not stopped.

  The nights were crazy, and she worried for Connor every minute she spent sitting in the inn, ready and waiting for anyone who might need medical attention. But when the dawn came and the watch were dismissed from their duties, he'd come up the street to collect her, that tired smile on his gorgeous face… and they'd head home together and fall into each other's arms as the sun climbed into the sky.

  She knew she was taking comfort in the wild infatuation that marked the beginning of a new relationship, and that so was he… but despite knowing that she couldn't help but feel that there was something else here, something more to this relationship than just the physical. She knew it was still too early in their relationship to make any big decisions — especially with everything that was going on with the epidemic and with the Sluagh — but she couldn't help but think about what Father Caleb had said during her confession, about marriage. She'd never been the kind of woman who gave marriage much thought… but then again, she'd never been a doctor in medieval Scotland, either and that had been an easy enough change to make.

  Something to be thought about later, she always told herself when she found those thoughts creeping into her mind… usually in the mornings, after she and Connor had made love, when they were drifting off to sleep in each other's arms. Plenty of time to figure out what this relationship was once they'd saved the village from the threat that still stalked it almost every other night.

  And maybe, her treacherous mind would whisper before she could stop it… maybe even a wedding to plan.

  Chapter 52

  The next night the Sluagh came again. The now-familiar sound of their high, keening shrieks mingling with the west wind interrupted their dinner at sunset, and she shook her head, a little annoyed that they were back again. She'd been looking forward to simply patrolling with Connor tonight… the Sluagh's presence meant that she'd be holed up in the inn again, waiting for injured men to turn up. There'd been more and more injuries of late — it seemed that the Sluagh were getting more and more bold as time passed, and cleverer, too, picking on men when they'd run out of arrows, avoiding flying in a way that outlined them against the sky and made them easy targets for arrows. As a result, the cull had slowed a little, too — though they still had a total kill count of eleven. The men were resentful that they couldn't keep the bodies as trophies, but they dissolved each morning at dawn, even if kept out of the sunlight. No wonder there was no fossil record or other evidence of the existence of these creatures, Karen thought, if they disappeared without a trace when they died… she was beginning to see that science might have more than a few blind spots when it came to getting a full and accurate picture of the world.

  But something was wrong. She'd only just settled in for the night at the inn, her supplies prepared and ready for the wounded — it was maybe a few hours after sunset when the familiar sound of the west wind battering at the inn's shutters began to fade away. Karen didn't notice what had happened at first — she'd grown so used to the west wind's howling, and to the noxious stench that rode on it when the Sluagh were out in force, that the absence of both went unnoticed aside from a general sense that something was missing. Then Thomas stuck his head out from the back room where he'd been washing bandages, a frown on his face.

  "Did the wind just ease up, or am I losing my hearing?"

  Frowning, Karen got up and headed for the front doors to investigate. She stepped out onto the veranda, staring up int the night sky with absolute shock. When she'd gone into the inn, the night had been cloudy and overcast, the distant howls of the Sluagh making it clear
that they were afoot — but now, only hours later, she looked up to see a clear blanket of stars. It was a still night, too, with a barely a breeze rustling the branches of the trees, and she put her hands on her hips, nonplussed. The Sluagh were gone, it seemed. But where?

  "Have they given up for the night?" Thomas was at her side, frowning up into the sky as well. "Not like them to turn in early." The creatures had hunted til dawn for the past several weeks… the only exception was that first night, when they'd taken the six men and disappeared, and the second night, when little Malcolm had been taken. But why had they disappeared tonight?

  Feeling a low sense of dread in her gut and not knowing why, Karen turned and strode up the path toward the church, instinctively seeking out Brendan and Connor to see if they knew what was going on. It wasn't long before she ran into Connor, who had a tight expression on his face and could barely offer her a smile when he saw her.

  "What's going on? The Sluagh…"

  "Not sure," he said, voice low. "But I have a bad feeling..."

  They were close to Rosemary's house, she realized with a start — the Sluagh still spent a lot of their time circling this particular house. Connor wasn't sure whether it was because they remembered successfully capturing little Malcolm here and were hoping to find more easy prey in the same place, or because they were drawn to Rosemary's despair… either way, the guards tended to focus their attentions on this particular spot when it came to Sluagh hunting.

  So, it surprised her a great deal when one of Rosemary's neighbor's doors opened a crack, and a pale, worried face peeked out into the night air, gesturing to them to approach.

  An elderly woman who lived next door. Karen couldn't remember her name, but she'd checked a little sore on her arm for her, one that she was worried was an indication that she'd caught the pox — it hadn't been a cowpox lesion, in the end, but the woman had been very grateful for the reassurance. Her face now was anything but pleased — she looked like she was about to cry.

  "It's Rosemary," she said as soon as they came close enough to the door. She was wearing a nightgown with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders and had clearly not been to bed yet. "A little while ago, I thought I heard her door slam, so I opened my window to check if the wind had pried it open. I saw her walking down the street like she was sleepwalking."

  Karen's heart felt like it dropped straight into her boots. She could see panic coming to life on Connor's face, his gray eyes wide with shock, and he reached out for the elderly woman, his voice urgent. "Are you sure? Which way did she go?"

  "Toward the Loch," the woman said, shaking her head. "I called after her, but she didn't look back — I didn't want to go out there in case those things came swooping down…"

  "You did the right thing staying put," Karen told her firmly, and she nodded her gratitude for the reassurance. "We'll see if we can find her."

  Then they were off, half-walking, half-running toward the shore of the Loch, striding out of town and down toward the beach. Connor called out to the nonplussed members of the Watch as he walked and many of them fell into step with them, clearly wanting to help with whatever was going on, feeling at a loss with the sudden, early retreat of the Sluagh. It wasn't long before Brendan was with them, too, Connor giving him a brief summary of what the old woman had told them had happened.

  Karen could feel the dread prickling at her stomach as the guards peeled off in pairs and headed off around the lake, searching thoroughly in groups for any sign of Rosemary. Part of her knew what they were going to find, understood already, on some level, what had happened. Why had she done it? Why had she walked out into the night where monsters were stalking? Karen had a horrible feeling she knew exactly why. Some traumas were just too awful to recover from… and after all, didn't the Sluagh feed on despair?

  She wasn't shocked when she heard shouts from two of the guards, wasn't surprised when they approached the huddled mass on the ground, lying just as though it was sleeping… though there was something not quite right about the angle of the limbs, about the heaviness of the sprawl. Karen dropped to her knees beside the woman, checking her over in the light of the torch, feeling an odd numbness spreading out from her chest as she remembered meeting Rosemary, remembered the grief and anger on the woman's face… remembered how alive she'd been. Now, she was nothing but a crumpled body on the sand… and the expression on her face was one of bitter resignation, far from the abject terror of the men who'd been the Sluagh's first victims. Karen passed her hand quickly over the woman's eyes, grateful that she'd been able to close them before rigor mortis set in.

  "What did she think she was doing?" Connor breathed.

  She looked up at him — he was kneeling beside her, a look of grief on his handsome face, tears standing in his eyes. He looked at her, and she realized that he knew as well as she did what they were looking at. Rosemary wasn't foolish enough to go walking on a night when the Sluagh were hunting. It may have been those creatures who'd snatched her up and drained her life… but the cause of death, if Karen had been filling out a certificate, would be suicide.

  Chapter 53

  They walked back to Connor's cottage in silence. Old Maggie had appeared not long after the body had been found, still and impassive in the cold night air — she'd accepted responsibility for the body and recruited two guards to help carry it away, toward her cottage, where she said she'd give the woman a proper burial.

  "Shouldn't Father Caleb…?" Karen had asked, frowning, but Maggie's eyes had flashed, and Karen had felt Connor shake his head, just a little. But hadn't Rosemary been religious? Surely, she'd want the priest to take care of her burial…

  "He won't take her," Maggie said, her voice gentler than Karen had expected, and she realized with a rush what the two of them meant. Suicide was a sin… of course. The injustice of that chafed at Karen as she watched Maggie and the guards carrying Rosemary's body away. Surely someone so utterly lost as Rosemary deserved God's love more than anyone… but at least Maggie was there to ensure she was given a proper burial, whatever her cause of death. It bothered her a lot, though, that the six rapists had been buried by the priest… even if their crimes hadn't been known then.

  "I just can't help thinking about those men and what they did," she said, gritting her teeth, when Connor asked her why she looked so angry. "They're responsible for this, for all of this… and nobody knows it was them, that it was their fault. They got to be buried in the church yard with everyone else, too, and poor Rosemary who's only a victim of all this —"

  "I know," Connor said softly, taking her into his arms and holding her close. She comforted herself with the smell of him, the warmth of his body, the sensation of his arms around her… but her mind wouldn't leave the topic alone. "It's unjust. But Maggie will take good care of her. She's a good woman… I've attended services she's held for the dead. Rosemary's soul is in good hands… if somewhat unconventional ones."

  "I wish I'd known she was…" Karen sighed. "Not that there was anything I could have done, but still. I wish I could have talked to her."

  "So do I," Connor said bleakly. "She seemed just fine when I spoke to her last… honestly, I thought she was coming out of her grief a little. She was moving around, at least, which hadn't been the case…"

  "That can happen," Karen said softly, remembering a psych rotation she'd done back at med school. "It's common, for suicides… once they've decided to go through with it, it feels as though a weight is lifted, and they can seem quite cheerful and carefree. It's one of the signs we're advised to watch for."

  "Not much chance of anyone feeling carefree at the moment," Connor said with a sigh. The village was waking up as news spread of what had happened — dawn hadn't yet broken, but already the villagers were in the street, talking amongst each other in low voices. Karen lowered her eyes, feeling again like an interloper on their grief, and then looked up at Connor with a sudden determination burning in her chest.

  "Enough of this," she said, keeping her voice lo
w even as her temper blazed. "We have to go and talk to Mary. There has to be something she can do to stop this."

  "I thought you didn't want —"

  "I wanted to give her space to heal, true," Karen said, shaking her head. "But people are dying, Connor. How long will it be until one of those creatures takes a watchman up into the air and kills him? How much longer until someone leaves a window open and another child is taken? These creatures are wicked, and intelligent, and getting hungrier and hungrier. We need to be more proactive. We need to find out exactly what's going on here — and that means getting the full story from Mary." She shook her head. "I don't want to traumatize her, but we need to find out how exactly this curse works… and whether we can reverse it, somehow."

  Connor nodded. "I'll come with you."

  They agreed to head up to Mary's cottage later in the day — by that time, she hoped the news of Rosemary's death would have reached the girl, and maybe she'd be in a mood to share what she knew about the Sluagh in case doing so could help prevent any more deaths. Besides, it had been a while since Karen had checked in on the families up there, to make sure their houses were well barricaded.

  In the end, they rode up just after midday, after a deep sleep during the morning hours had replenished some of their energies. Though the day was bright, the atmosphere in the village was still tense… she did see Father Caleb deep in conversation with some of the women who'd been Rosemary's closest friends, and it was clear that some kind of memorial service was being organized. That would have to do, she thought with a pang of sadness, offering up her own little prayer for Rosemary. Suicide or no, she deserved the same kind of remembrance as anyone else.