Drawn into Darkness

by Annette McCleave

  “I don’t know. I just know I can’t let him do it alone.”

  The Romany mage exchanged a pained look with Brian, then sighed. “All right, return to him if you must. But I can’t let you go unarmed. Repeat after me, Irst am dol marga volumchis.”

  She mouthed the awkward sounds twice, just to make sure she got them right. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s an augmentation spell. If you get within a hundred feet of MacGregor, close your eyes, picture a thick shield encasing his body, and say those words.” He shrugged. “Can’t hurt.”

  His eyes dropped to Rachel’s small leather purse, which by force of habit still hung over her shoulder.

  “Any spare change in there?”

  She shook the purse and numerous coins rattled.

  “Good,” said the mage. “If you get really stuck, toss some coins in the air, say, Figa gi bovismir, and imagine them whipping toward Drusus.”

  “And here’s a couple of extra crosses,” Brian said, draping more silver chains around her neck. “I just wish I could cover you from head to toe.”

  She smiled at the two men, grateful. Then, unable to prevent a brief mental jag into the future, she grabbed the young Gatherer’s hand. “Go with them, Brian, please. Save my little girl.”

  His gaze met hers over the flashlight. For once his eyes were serious. “If it’s in my power, I will. Good luck, Rachel.”

  She took a deep breath, hugged her purse to her chest like a life preserver, and dove back through the barrier spell in search of Lachlan.

  Lachlan scored first blood.

  The powerful shade spell coiled around Drusus, pinning his arms tight to his body, allowing Lachlan an unopposed swing. Although Drusus leaned away, the claidheamh mòr sliced across the demon’s upper shoulder, just under the cap of his leather armor, and a spurt of red escaped the parted flesh. The shade magic proved even stronger than anticipated, and he scored a second cut on the demon’s thigh before Drusus shook it off.

  All in all, a very successful start to the battle.

  But he had no time to crow.

  Drusus whipped a series of blistering white fireballs at him, each of them hitting the same spot in his shield, deeply pitting the charm, almost breaking through. Reflecting nothing but cold determination, the demon ruthlessly closed in, the sinews of his forearms flexing with every bomb. Lachlan had to dance back on the uneven stone floor to avoid the fourth and potentially fatal blow. At the same time, he parried a smooth and very precise downward cut from the demon’s sword, one intended to break his blade.

  Fireballs weren’t the only weapons at the demon’s disposal.

  No sooner had Lachlan repaired the gouge in his shield than the demon raised a flurry of dead bats from somewhere in the caves. They flew at Lachlan’s shield, unable to penetrate it, but blinding him with the sheer volume of their fluttering, ghoulish wings. His shield took another heavy pounding of fire from Drusus, and sightless, Lachlan dove desperately to the right.

  He struck the wood-framed divan with his shoulder and grunted as he rolled back to his feet. Grateful for the freedom his plaid provided and temporarily free of the phantom bats, he parried yet another of the demon’s masterful blade strokes and flung a summons into the shadows.

  The eerie howl that immediately rose into the air gave him gooseflesh.

  The shadows stirred, and a grisly chill descended like heavy dew. Long, inky fingers reached out from every darkened crevice in the cavern. Screeching loudly, the bats swerved up and over his shoulder in a desperate attempt to flee. The bone sappers he’d summoned slithered over the walls in rapid pursuit, eager to dine upon their spirit forms.

  The battle was once again between him and Drusus.

  And the battle suddenly became treacherous as the demon called down an icy rain from the countless stalactites decorating the ceiling. If that wasn’t enough, a sluggish river of mud poured into the cavern through every open hole, sucking at Lachlan’s boot-clad feet, slowing his movements.

  Drusus was unfazed by the perilous ooze. His muscles were honed by a millennium of wading through the swampy water of the River Styx, and he maintained an easy stance, swinging his sword without pause.

  Lachlan racked his memory of the Book of Gnills for some spell that might rid the room of the numbing and ever-deepening mire, but came up with nothing.

  Instead, he tossed a spell at the mud, transforming globs of it into bolts of frozen muck, which he tossed at Drusus in rapid succession.

  Each invocation of shade magic came at a price, however. One by one, as Lachlan countered each of the demon’s fierce attacks with a new spell, items in the grotto disappeared. The divan, the iron pot, the cushions, the curtains—all vanished. But that was not nearly as worrisome as the way the air inside the cavern began to distort, shimmering like water cascading down a glass wall.

  The cavern was quickly growing unstable and Lachlan knew he had little time left to produce a spell that would bring Drusus to his knees. Small individual spells like cripple or blind would have no effect because they couldn’t pierce the demon’s powerful shield charm. It had to be something big, something overwhelming.

  But, damn it, what?

  The walls of the tunnel shuddered again and Rachel cringed, lifting her arms defensively over her head. Fragments of rock and plumes of dust rained down on her, stinging her skin and littering the path before her. By her best calculations, she had almost reached the cavern, but with every additional tremble of the earth, she fought a savage claw of fear. Her throat was so tight, it threatened to cut off her air supply.

  Alone in the dark, she found it hard not to imagine the worst: dying in the tunnel, buried under a crush of rock, never having reached Lachlan. But it was that very same fear that impelled her forward: No way was she going to die without seeing Lachlan again.

  The earthquake subsided. Rachel pulled in a thin, rattling breath and continued her journey.

  She picked her way carefully down the tunnel, guiding her advance with a hand on the rock wall. Seeing Lachlan again also meant seeing Drew again, a very uneasy thought. Two spells and a bunch of crosses would not hold a two-thousand-year-old demon off for long, and if she truly wanted to help Lachlan, she had to survive more than a minute.

  How?

  Brian’s last words popped into her head. I wish I could cover you from head to toe. In crosses.

  She halted, her pulse skittering.

  He had smiled ruefully when he said it, assuming it was impossible, but was it? No. She dug into her purse and pulled out a handful of black markers. Not unless the crosses had to be silver.

  Yanking the lid off one marker with her teeth, she bent and drew an outline of a simple cross on her white sneaker. Then she swiftly moved up the leg of her jeans, adding more crosses and smiling. This was one time when her talent for drawing fast would work to her advantage.

  She had to peel off her blouse to cover the entire thing, front to back, and a ripple of worry ran through her when she realized the black ink was barely discernible against the purple cloth. Would they still work?

  A sigh left her lips.

  Only time would tell.

  Her elbow scraped against the rock face as she buttoned her shirt, making her wince. In this one spot, for about ten feet, the walls were smooth and dry, worn flat by subterranean water that no longer trickled down its surface. The ceiling was close, no more than a foot and a half above her head, and the tight confines bred a strong sense of being trapped.

  That’s when the idea struck her.

  A trap.

  * * *

  Lachlan sucked in a sharp breath and leapt back to avoid a wicked, two-handed slice that slipped through his battered shield charm. He needed something big, something shocking, something unexpected.

  Something like … shattered lightning.

  The rough wall of the cavern loomed at his back, and Drusus continued to press at him, his muscular legs churning through the mud, his lean face tight with single-min
ded resolve.

  Lightning was a dangerous choice.

  Once the electrical charge fragmented, he’d have no control over the direction of the flying shards. The bombardment of fireballs and hacking sword blows had thinned his shield alarmingly in spots, and if a concentrated jolt of energy hit precisely the right spot … the battle would be over.

  But if several splinters struck Drusus at once and weakened the lure demon’s defenses, and if Lachlan could take advantage of the short moment before the demon renewed his power by calling on Satan, he had a better-than-average chance at thrusting his claidheamh mòr right through the bastard’s heart.

  A lot of ifs.

  But, honestly, he was out of options.

  The river of mud was the only transmutable object left in the cavern, save the walls themselves, so he used it. Leveraging his core energy, he reached out, tapping into the physical fabric of the mud, seeing, feeling, and sensing the whole of the slippery goop. Every molecule of water and every grain of sand became familiar, became malleable, became his.

  Flexing his heavy thighs to improve his stance, he gathered all of the raw energy seething inside the ooze, absorbed it into his body, and then drove it through his feet, into the ground.

  The guttural words of the lightning spell rolled off his tongue, and instantly every hair on his body stood on end. Sparks of brilliant blue light licked over his body and snapped out toward the cavern walls, each fine strand bouncing and colliding with the others until a thick beam of white energy formed.

  Then it exploded.

  And at the height of the spectacular light show, Lachlan sprang toward Drusus, his shoulders bunched to deliver one last powerful swing of his mighty sword.

  He got his moment.

  But only through a miracle.

  Five shards of shattered lightning struck Drusus simultaneously, causing his feet to stagger and his knees to buckle. His sword arm faltered, and Lachlan leapt for the kill, already seeing the coup de grace in his mind—a fierce and decisive slash to the base of the demon’s neck. But in midair he, too, was struck by a shard, one that ricocheted off the stone wall and shocked his shield with an eyebrow-singeing blast.

  The bolt should have pierced his shield and knocked him off balance, but at the very moment his protection spell was about to collapse, it gained a vital, lifesaving boost from somewhere outside the grotto.

  Lachlan completed his swing, and his blade dug deep into the flesh of the demon’s neck, spraying blood in all directions. The claidheamh mòr glowed green and a fissure of power raced up Lachlan’s arm, adding to the triumphant throb of his heart.

  Success.

  He snatched the reliquary from the demon’s neck, breaking the heavy gold chain with a single sharp tug and a deep, triumphant roar that reverberated off the cavern walls.

  Then he pulled his sword free of the demon’s neck and stared into a pair of shocked green eyes. “Die, you filthy bastard.” His final thrust went straight toward the demon’s heart.

  But it never reached the target.

  Even as blood spilled over the demon’s lips and dripped onto his leather armor, Drusus batted away the sword and rose to his feet, the light returning to his eyes.

  “Too little, too late,” he snarled. Red droplets spattered on the floor, flung with each caustic word. “And I believe that’s all you’ve got, MacGregor.”

  Before Lachlan’s eyes, the horrific wound on the demon’s neck began to mend, blood retreating, flesh merging, skin weaving together. The moment of opportunity had passed, and Drusus had pulled from the boundless supply of energy available to him in hell.

  But there was one last ace up Lachlan’s sleeve. The cavern was already unstable and the shattered lightning had created a substantial tear in the planar barriers. A focused spell could expand that rip and collapse the entire cave. Nothing would survive the destruction—not he, not Drusus … and not the souls of his family. But wasn’t that preferable to letting Drusus win?

  “Lachlan!”

  He stiffened at the sound of Rachel’s voice.

  God, no.

  Lachlan’s heart dropped into his boots.

  A perverse smile twisted the lure demon’s thin lips. Menace radiated off him in furnace-hot waves, and the need to punish both Lachlan and Rachel with all the vitriolic horrors of hell shone with lethal promise in the miserable wretch’s eyes.

  This was not going to be good. Without waiting for his pulse to restart, Lachlan spun on his heel and raced for the mouth of the grotto.

  * * *

  As Lachlan turned and ran toward her, Rachel tossed a handful of coins in the air, murmured the second spell, and visualized the bullets of metal barreling toward Drew. Having seen the demon recover from the brutal damage of Lachlan’s sword, she didn’t have a hope that a few pieces of metal would stop him, but she prayed the distraction would give Lachlan the chance to reach her.

  And it did.

  Drew blocked the coins instead of shooting a fireball at Lachlan. Lachlan dove through the entrance to the tunnel with milliseconds to spare. The instant his warm fingers touched hers, her heart settled and her fear became manageable.

  He barely paused as he tore up the slope, using his immense power to lift her clear off the floor and haul her against his side. Her flashlight and purse went flying, and the silver crosses cut into her skin, but she didn’t complain. This was life or death. As the muscles in his body flexed and strained with every leap through the darkened stretch, she tried to compare the length of his stride to her tentative steps on the descent.

  When she was fairly sure they’d reached the right spot, she dug her fingernails into his shoulder and shouted, “Stop!”

  To her amazement, he did so without querying her decision. Instead, he twisted abruptly, tucked her behind his back, and faced the demon … who stood a mere three feet away.

  “Running away, MacGregor? Surely not.”

  “Let her leave. This is between you and me.”

  Peering around the broad expanse of Lachlan’s naked back, Rachel spotted the red glow of Drew’s eyes and shivered.

  “The time for generosity has passed,” the demon growled. There was nothing suave or smooth about him now. His skin was dark and mottled, and an odor of hot charcoal accompanied his words. “I let her go once. Not again. If she desires to spend her last moments in your company, so be it.”

  Lachlan’s heart beat steadily beneath her hand, showing no sign of the terror shuddering through Rachel. With numb fingers, she pried his hand off her hip and guided it to the tunnel wall, pressing it against the outline of the cross she prayed was drawn there.

  His fingers stilled, then slid along the wall of their own accord, tracing one cross, then two.

  “It’s no’ her last moments we’re discussing, Drusus; it’s yours,” he said. His warm hand squeezed hers. Then he placed the reliquary in her hands and pushed at her gently. “Back up a few feet, Rachel. Give me some space.”

  The demon’s chuckle echoed harshly in the tight confines.

  “I have to admire your bravado, I must say.”

  “Cease your idle chatter, hellbrat,” Lachlan goaded. “Take up your sword and test my resolve.”

  “As you wish.”

  With his words, a furious gust of hot air tore through the tunnel, accompanied by a bone-rattling shriek that curdled Rachel’s blood. Not quite human and not quite animal, it brought to mind some ancient evil crawling up from the bowels of the earth.

  The swords of the two men collided in a brilliant flash of light, and Rachel closed her eyes.

  Then, suddenly, there was silence—and fresh air.

  She opened her eyes.

  They no longer stood in the dark tunnel but high upon a stone wall that encircled a slate-roofed house, rolling hills, and verdant forests stretching out to the horizon in all directions. The sun beamed through the patchwork of a mostly cloudy sky, and the wind that tugged at their clothing was cool and damp. It was a hauntingly beautiful setting
that begged to be captured on canvas.

  Lachlan and Drew stared at each other, frowning. Both men had abruptly acquired shoulder-length hair and they looked strangely … normal. Nothing glowed, and their lean, rippling muscles had turned a healthy pink color in the brisk breeze.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  Lachlan’s gaze dropped to the damp gray parapet beneath his feet. “MacGregor Manor.”

  Drew bent and picked up a loose stone, turning it over in his hand. “No, this rampart is too solid. Your ancestral manor has long been a moss-covered ruin.”

  “Don’t be so two-dimensional.” Lachlan’s face twisted. “The condition of the wall would depend on when we were.”

  “When?” Rachel squeaked. “What do you mean, when?”

  Lachlan stared at a large, dark stain on the stones for a long moment, then out at the lush green hills. A wistful look swept over his features, and then disappeared. “May 17, 1603.”

  “We’re in 1603? How is that possible?”

  “Obviously, he knows something we don’t,” Drew replied. His gaze returned to Lachlan’s face. “What did you do, MacGregor?”

  Lachlan stood tall and broad, his chest bare, his kilt hanging past his knees, his long sword steady in his hands. He was every bit the primitive Scottish warrior. Although her stomach was unsettled by the concept of jumping through time, the sight of him in his natural environment stirred her pulse like never before.

  “I called upon the grace of God and prayed for a fair fight,” he said quietly.

  “The grace of God? You are no angel, baro, far from it. Why would he help you?”

  “Because I asked him.”

  Drew snorted. “Why here, why now?”

  “I should think that was apparent. This is the day the Campbells snuck in through the water gate at your urging, the day my wife and bairns were slain. This is the day you ran a sword through my brother’s belly, intending to snatch the Linen from his lifeless hands. This is the day our miserable destinies became entwined. It seemed only just that they part here.”

  “And how do you intend to make that happen?”