Maybe she should run into the mall and calling 911. At least Fergus would be taken care of. She could come up with some plausible explanation for his clothes and his accent and his weapons. Then again, she couldn’t leave him lying here on the concrete.
She started to despair. She lifted his limp hand and pressed it to her cheek. A lump stuck in her throat. How could she help him? Just then, he let out a heavy sigh and rolled over on his back. The hint of animation lit his face.
Heavenly relief flooded Hazel’s heart. Oh, thank God he was okay! She bent over him and searched his face while he fought his way back to consciousness. He turned his head to one side. He cracked his eyes open and immediately closed them against the light. He groaned and turned the other way before he dared to open them again.
He blinked up at Hazel bending over him. “Lass?”
She burst out laughing, and tears welled up in her eyes. “You’re okay, Fergus.”
He looked the other way and came face to face with the tire. He frowned and blinked to clear his vision, but that didn’t help him. “Where in heaven’s name are we, lass?”
She cupped her hand under his neck and helped him sit up. “We’re in America. The curse must have brought us here after all. If it did and the others are here, too, the curse may be lifted. We have to find out, but first we have to make sure you’re not too injured to get out of here. We can’t stay here.”
He got as far as sitting up before his shoulders slumped. He cradled his head in his hand. “I’m no injured, just achin’ all o’er. Are ye sure we’re….”
“Don’t worry,” she replied. “We’re in my world. We’ll be safe here. We’re together, and that’s what really matters.”
His head shot up, and his eyes bored into her. She blushed and turned away. She didn’t mean to say that out loud. She just couldn’t get over the blessed relief of having him here with her. She always thought she would get sent back alone. Now he was here. Maybe Elle and Carmen got sent back with their men, too. She could only hope and pray.
She popped her head up to make sure nobody was coming. Then she pulled him to his feet. “Can you stand? Are you still woozy-headed?”
He leaned on the blue car to steady himself. “I’m awright, lass. Me head throbs, but I’m fit tae walk. Where’ll we go now?”
“Unless I’m mistaken, we’re not far from my house. I know this mall. We can get back to my place so we can change our clothes. We certainly can’t move around this world dressed like this. If someone saw you….” She didn’t finish her sentence.
He offered no protest. She led him out of the parking lot to the sidewalk, but they couldn’t avoid meeting people here. Passersby gave the pair some strange looks. Hazel hurried on her way. They could relax behind closed doors at her house. Then they would decide what was what.
Once on the street, she became certain she knew where she was. She navigated around the blocks. She pointed to a broad house of sandy stucco. “That’s Carmen’s house.”
“Does she ha’e any family?” Fergus asked. “We might inform them she’s safe…wherever she is.”
Hazel shook her head. “She doesn’t have any family, and she’s been gone so long it wouldn’t make any difference to the people who knew her. We couldn’t inform them without telling them where she is, and that wouldn’t work at all.”
“Are ye sure?” he asked. “I dinnae like tae leave yer people none the wiser where yer friends are.”
“You’ll just have to take my word for it. These people don’t appreciate having their ideas about the world shattered by information like that. I’m sure Grace’s husband would rather believe she’s at the bottom of the ocean than to find out she was somewhere like Urlu.”
He shook his head, but he didn’t argue. She continued on her way until she came to her own simple house. She lived in a one-bedroom cottage behind a large four-bedroom family home. She let herself through the garden gate and shut it behind Fergus. She got the spare key out of the worm farm under the elm tree and unlocked the door. The landlords hadn’t rented the place out since she disappeared. They hadn’t even removed her belongings.
She locked the door behind them and surveyed the house with a sigh. In a strange way, it was good to be home, even though this wasn’t home anymore. The place harbored a lot of bad memories of difficult times in her life. She hated the furnishings, now that she looked at them from the perspective of Urlu. She lived in castles full of servants there. She attended grand state dinners—when she chose to leave her bedroom. How could her little cottage compare with that?
Even so, it was all hers. She loved all the trinkets on the shelves and the sequined cushions on the couch. She moved around the house and checked on everything. The power was still on, but the food in the fridge was all rotten. She closed the door and left the room.
Chapter 11
Hazel returned to the living room where Fergus looked around him at everything. “Well, here we are,” she remarked. “We’ll just have to do some investigating to find out if the others came back, but before that, I’m taking a shower and changing my clothes. You should do the same thing. You can’t walk around this world in your kilt.”
“And why no, may I ask?” he shot back. “If these people cinnae deal wi’ a mon in a kilt, then I’ll no ha’e naught tae do wi’ ’em, neither.”
She laughed at him. “You and your kilt! Fine. Keep it on, but I’m going to take a shower.”
He looked around at nothing.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “We had a feeling this would happen.”
“Do ye…?” He hesitated. “Do ye ha’e ought tae eat around ’ere? I’ve no eaten a bite since we left the mound.”
Hazel jumped. “Oh, sorry. I forgot. Hold on a second. I think I have some rice and beans in the cupboard. I’ll make you that.”
She returned to the kitchen and left him standing there. He never saw a stranger house. He never saw anything like that place where he first opened his eyes, either. He didn’t understand half of what he saw in this bizarre world, and he was too proud to ask Hazel to explain it.
Rolling contraptions like carriages sailed along the wide roads. The people dressed in curious clothes, and they stared at him with a mixture of amusement and horror.
Hazel returned in a few minutes with a steaming bowl. She set it into his hands. “Have a seat and make yourself comfortable. I’ll take a shower and then you can have one. You look like you need one.”
She disappeared. He sniffed the food. He couldn’t identify anything in that bowl, but he was too hungry to care. He wolfed the contents and went back to studying the room. One whole wall of the living room displayed pictures of Hazel and her family going all the way back to her infancy. The child Hazel sat on her father’s knees, along with her sister and her brother, while her mother stood behind them and rested her hand on the father’s shoulder.
Fergus studied the images of Hazel at different times of her life. That little girl smiled the way he saw her smile under the overhang. That girl knew all about Faery, but the certainty and self-acceptance faded off her face as she grew older. By the time she became a gangly, awkward teenager, she looked out of those pictures with frightened, wary eyes. She didn’t understand herself or anybody else.
Fergus’s heart contracted. Poor girl! She grew up believing Faeries didn’t exist. Whatever she saw or experienced, she couldn’t let anybody find out. She couldn’t accept it herself.
The steady pounding of falling water reverberated from the other room. He wandered in the peaceful stillness, alone with his thoughts. She wasn’t so different from him, now that he saw the evidence with his own eyes. Had she worked her magic in her youth? Maybe she didn’t even realize she’d done it, or maybe someone punished that child for doing something she shouldn’t have.
The water shut off, and Hazel came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. Her wet hair hung stringy and dripping over her shoulders. She jumped when she saw Fergus standing in front of her. “Oh
! I didn’t see you there.”
He couldn’t stop himself looking at her all over. The towel barely came down to her thighs, and her curvy shoulders showed glistening wet above the white fabric across her breasts. She held the towel in place while she returned his stare.
He did his best to drag his eyes away. She darted around him into her bedroom and slammed the door. The whole house rattled, and Fergus flinched. He’d lost her, and he never had her in the first place. He knew that for certain now.
He closed his eyes, but he refused to let himself break down. He wanted nothing more than to get back to Urlu. He should have taken her up on that when he had the chance. He should have returned to his brothers and let her go after the Stone herself if it was so important to her. At least then he wouldn’t have to stare his heartbreak and defeat in the face every second.
He couldn’t do that, though. Even if he and Hazel parted ways, he had to find the Stone. They were on the same mission, so they might as well go together, even if there could never be anything between them.
He went back to the living room and let himself sink down on the couch. Exhaustion weighed him down. He never felt it until now. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since he left the castle, and this comfortable cottage welcomed him with open arms. It breathed Hazel all over.
A few minutes later, she emerged from her bedroom fully clothed. She wore simple grey trousers and a loose-fitting shirt. Her plaited red hair hung down her back. Fergus got to his feet when she entered.
“Sit down,” she told him. “You don’t have to stand on ceremony for me.”
He surveyed her up and down. “What’d ye do wi’ yer dress? Ye’re no turnin’ intae Carmen, are ye?”
She smiled. “I never expected to be running around the countryside fighting…. well, anything, but that’s what I seem to be doing, so I better be dressed for the job. Now it’s your turn. Go take a shower.”
“I dinnae ken what a shower is, but it’s naught summat I like the sound o’ doin’.”
She wouldn’t stop laughing at him. “It’s basically a bath. You can go take a bath if you like, but you should clean yourself up, one way or the other. Then I’ll give you some clean clothes so you can go out on the street without looking like some kind of circus performer.”
He glared at her. “So that’s it, then. You think I’m dirty. Is that’t? Is that why you’ll no ha’e naught tae do wi’ me any lainger?”
“What?” Hazel cried. “I never said…I never….”
“Ye dinnae ha’e tae say naught, lass,” he returned. “Do ye think I cinnae see the way it is? Ye feel summat fer me. I can see that all o’er ye, but ye winnae let yerself get close tae me. What happened? What is’t that makes ye withold yerself from me? Is’t that I dinnae belaing tae yer world? Are we too different, ye and I, that we cinnae cross that threshold? Tell me how’t can be, when Carmen and Elle ha’e done’t themselves?”
Her eyebrows flew up. There. He said it, and he wouldn’t take it back. He had to know the truth. He had to hear it from her own lips. Then he would know if he could walk away from her and salvage his life.
Her surprise faded in an instant, and her mouth tightened into a hard line of solid determination. She braced her shoulders. “All right. You really want to know? I’ll tell you. The Loch Nagar witch told me if I mated with an Urlu, I would become an Urlu myself. There. Now you know. She said our magic would combine, and we would take each other’s power. Nothing would happen to you because you’re already Faery, but I would become Urlu. We wouldn’t just have Urlu children like Carmen. I would become a dragon like you.”
She spun away as soon as she got the words out. She walked to the window and gazed through it with her back to him. Fergus stared at her willowy figure. He couldn’t see her curves in those clothes the way he could see them in her dress, but he sensed them under her trousers.
Her body meant something different to him in those clothes. She seemed more capable now, more prepared to meet whatever might come. She wasn’t a frail waif, but a powerful witch.
So that was it. She would become Urlu if he…. He couldn’t even think that. She would never give in now, no matter how much she wanted to. She would never become Urlu. She hated all Urlus with a passion.
He would never get her back now. He understood that to his very core, but his heart didn’t crash into his socks the way he expected. Learning the hard truth at last lifted the burden of uncertainty off his shoulders. He could give his all to this mission without constantly wondering if she would or she wouldn’t. It was all over, and he was glad.
He nodded. “That’s it, then.” He turned away. When he got to the cottage door, he looked back to find her watching him from the window. Was that something glistening on her cheek? He couldn’t be sure. He walked out and shut the door behind him.
He had no idea where he was going, and he didn’t care. He walked down the sidewalk through the leafy neighborhood. Houses sat packed one against the other. Children played in the yards, and across the street, a man sprayed water over one of those rolling things. Two women chatted over a fence between one yard and another. That didn’t change from country to country or from century to century.
The children laughed and pointed at him, but he paid no attention. He strode down the street until it ended at a major thoroughfare. Cars swished past him going both ways faster than he could see. He stood still and watched them for a while.
A city teemed beyond the road. Towers pierced the sky, and a few buzzing machines flew back and forth through the sky. Fergus didn’t see any of them. He saw dragons fluttering over Angus’s castle. He saw grooms brushing down horses in the yards and the cook picking vegetables in the gardens. He saw Carmen and Elle riding across the plain on their way to the forest.
He would never take Hazel back there. She would stay here, in the world she understood. She would never fly as a dragon over those spires and split the pastel clouds rushing over her scaly wings.
Fergus’s mind reeled at the possibilities. If the Loch Nagar witch told the truth, the same thing would happen to any Faery woman he mated with. He could choose an Urlu girl to share his life, but she would become Faery like him. If he chose a Faery wife, she would become Urlu.
Why did he want a woman who didn’t want to be Urlu? Why did he have to fall in love with a woman who hated his kind with the bitterest gall? Why did he find her attractive when she found him disgusting and repulsive? None of it made sense.
He blinked, and his vision cleared. He saw the insanity all around him. It repulsed him the same way. He didn’t belong here. If he couldn’t have Hazel, he didn’t want to be here. He would return to Urlu, to the people who knew and cared and understood him. He would pursue the Stone of Destiny from Urlu, and Hazel could do whatever she was going to do.
He took one more sweeping glance over the city. He wanted nothing to do with this place, not even Hazel. He turned on his heel and started back. That’s when he spotted what looked like a ball of wool yarn floating down the foot path, only it was much too big to be that.
He stopped in his tracks and studied the thing as it approached. It shifted back and forth as it moved, but he couldn’t see any arms or legs on it. It came closer, and it raised a shriveled face at him. He realized it was an old woman. Her clothes hung in rags all over her and hid every part of her from view. They trailed on the ground to make a shapeless ball gliding along the ground.
She winked and nodded and grinned her toothless mouth at him. His blood ran cold looking at her. In the blink of an eye, he saw straight through her. She was Faery—as Faery as any he ever saw on the mound or anywhere else.
What was she doing here? If Hazel came from this world, how many more Faery lived around here? For all he knew, thousands more lived in all these houses. How did he know this whole city wasn’t Faery?
The woman came abreast of him. She wouldn’t stop winking like they shared a big secret. He stood back to let her pass. He never saw a Faery like her before
. A foul stench emanated from her, and dirt caked her pores.
Did this happen to all Faery who got stuck in a world that didn’t believe in Faery? Hazel could have turned into this. Maybe she still would. If she stayed behind and he went back to Urlu, she might forget she was ever Faery. She might come to believe Urlu never existed, that her power was just some horrible peculiarity separating her from the rest of humanity.
He made up his mind while he waited for the woman to pass. He would return to Hazel. He would stand by her, no matter what, even if it meant he never went back to Urlu. He couldn’t let her forget. He couldn’t let her fall into ruin. She came this far. She could use her power to find the Stone of Scone, but she couldn’t do it alone.
She needed someone to ground her —someone Faery like herself. She needed someone who knew her power and what she was capable of, someone who had seen her in actin, someone to remind her and never turn his back on her.
The woman arrived at his side. She swung on her right foot in her rolling gait, but she didn’t come down on her left foot to pass him by the way she should have. She swung around and brought her hand down flat on top of his head. She raised her other arm and exploded out of her rags to an enormous size.
The blow smashed Fergus to the ground. He dropped to one knee, but she already pranced away. He leapt to his feet and whipped around to face her, but the change swept over her too fast. Her face stretched into an oblong mask of hideous rage. Her lower jaw angled to a point, and her eyes flashed fire. She towered over him and craned forward to pounce.
Fergus reacted on instinct. He didn’t have time to draw his saber. It probably wouldn’t do any good against her anyway. Sparks flew out of her skin, and sheer evil shot from every fingertip. He possessed no power strong enough to fight her. He fell back on the one thing he knew.
Destiny Stone (Phoenix Throne Book 3): A Scottish Highlander Time Travel Romance Page 8