It had been a cyclone, earthquake, and hurricane rolled into one, which didn’t immediately disperse the moment Toren and Charity were sucked up into it.
The rift had held much longer, even longer than what they’d calculated would be only minutes. Minutes that would give Col Limont the chance to jump in and set things right.
But he’d missed his opportunity. For what? Love?
He’d seen Lenore drop in the fire that erupted in Charity’s apartment and he’d gone back for her.
Not seeing any way around it, Bekah had taken the leap, and, well, here she was. After meeting Col, she’d wondered all along if the task would be left to her. Perhaps it was better this way.
She saw it in his eyes.
He was never going to kill his brother.
It was better this way. She would do what Col couldn’t.
If she survived that long.
If she could avoid the remaining Sifts that long. She’d killed one. How many more could there be?
What she wouldn’t give for her pulsar right now, but since nothing material could come through a time rift, her gun was lost to her.
She needed weapons, food, clothes, shoes—and medical attention. Wasn’t like there was a drugstore down the street to forage through, so first things first. There had to be a water source near or in the village.
An hour later, she’d made a thorough search through the remaining cottages and came up empty as far as clothing or weapons, but she did find the village well and a couple of cooking pots, a rock she thought was flint, and even a water skin to carry the water in once she boiled it. She set out to build a fire. She’d boil the fabric scraps from the overturned chest and use them to bind the cuts on her feet until a Healer could do the job properly. She couldn’t risk infection.
She was exhausted and shaky, her wounds taking their toll from the amount of energy she’d expended and blood she’d lost.
Building a fire was harder than she’d thought, even with the flint she found. She considered leaving off the task. The smoke could lead the Sifts right to her. Of course her scent left a trail through the forest anyway, even as hard as she’d tried to hide it with mud. But, still, the risk of dehydration and infection were just as likely to finish her off too. Besides, she could coat herself in the ash to further mask her scent.
Her hands shook with each strike of the poker across the flint. After many frustrated attempts, she had a fine blaze and two pots of water purifying. She threw her make shift bandages to sterilize in one pot. The other pot would be for drinking.
She stabbed the end of the poker into the fire and stared at the dead Sift. It looked as gruesome dead as it had alive, blubbery skin over lean muscle. Without the eyes looking any different with the thin layer of skin, it could be staring straight at her ready to pounce and she’d never know it. She kept sneaking glances at its still chest to make sure.
Tearing her gaze away, she began to work on the guard’s cloak. There was plenty of material for to use as bandages as well as a covering.
She had to rest up, drink the boiled water, or she’d be in no condition to take on the Moon Sifter. Who was she kidding? At her best, she wasn’t a match for his kind of dark magic.
That’s why Col had been their best bet to go back here. As his brother, Shaw would never suspect him as an assassin.
But even Moon Sifters could die from a blade if she got close enough.
Or even had a freaking blade.
She had one more thing here to do. Then she’d set the dead Sift on fire and burn the cottage down around it, and be on her way before the other Sifts caught scent of her trail. Best to double-back and go to the witch’s castle, hope that Shaw Limont was there, and finish what she came to do.
The end of the poker glowed orange. Setting her teeth together, Bekah pulled it out of the fire, breathing heavily. She had to do this. No one was here to do it for her. Frightened, but resolved, Bekah placed the hot poker across the first slash over her hip and screamed.
Chapter Four
She was right back where she started, at the witch’s castle. At least this time she was somewhat clothed. She’d torn a strip off the bottom of the cloak to belt around her waist. She kept it loose to keep from chafing across the wounds she’d burned closed. At least the gashes were no longer bleeding, but the burned skin hurt with every footstep. At least the belt kept the loose folds from falling open every time she let go of the cloak. Every sound she heard in the forest set her skittish nerves on alert, fearing the Sifts were on her even though she’d stood downwind next to the burning cottage she set ablaze so she’d smell of smoke to hide her scent.
At the moment, she rested on her belly on a slight knoll above the dark stone of the tall stark castle. Black birds darted around the crenellations, screeching beneath bruise-swollen clouds that seemed ready to bust wide and drop buckets of rain.
It was a strange castle, seeming to rise straight out of a flat clearing surrounded by a hilly forest. There was no castle yard or secondary walls, just the building itself with tall imposing double doors as an entrance. The only visible guards were stationed outside the doors. The witch was obviously confident in her witchy wards.
The stables across the yard was the only friendly appearing structure, and also seemed to be the area where the mercenaries not on duty preferred to hang out.
Very few people moved about the castle. From what the hold-out survivors of her time gathered from history, the witch didn’t like nor need many people about her. She retained a handful of guards—hired mercenary types—and a few washerwomen, servants and cooks from the small village a few miles beyond the forest.
The mercenaries Bekah got, but why any of the village women would want to enter inside the witch’s liar was a mystery. Must be one doozy of a medical plan Aldreth offered. Either that or the witch left the village unharmed in exchange for services.
She watched a handful of women leave the castle through the large doors and step onto the pathway past the stables and into the forest that would take them to the small village. She had to get inside that castle and her best chance looked like infiltrating it as one of the village women.
Bekah pulled up to her knees, ready to creep through the forest and follow the women when one of the large doors pushed open again. Bekah lowered back down to watch who came out next since there hadn’t been much activity except for the women.
Even without the two guards bowing their heads in deference to the man stalking out from behind the door, she’d have known who he was.
The physical resemblance to his brother Col was unnerving. They even moved with the same prowling man-on-a-mission stride.
Shaw Limont. Moon Sifter. The destroyer of magic’s balance. The maker of monsters.
If she’d been able to carry her pulsar through the time rift, she’d shoot him right where he stood.
He adjusted a bow that was as long as he was tall across his shoulder and took off across the grass to duck into the trees only a few yards from where she hid.
Shaw Limont was going into the forest alone.
This was too easy.
Kill him, take out any remaining Sifts here, destroy their remains, and the monsters will never be created.
Unmade.
Boom. Done.
Who knew, once Shaw was dead, the Sifts that traveled through time here might simply disappear, never having existed.
She might disappear too, never having the need to travel back.
It was a paradox, but one she and all of the straggling remains of the human race needed her to take.
Fisting the fire poker she’d pulled out of the oozing temple of the Sift before she burned its body, Bekah followed the Highlander through the trees.
He moved with quiet economy, hardly making a sound as he brushed past low branches. Stepping into a small glade, he stopped and tilted his face to the open patch of dark sky.
The moonlight filtering through the canopy struck his long hair like a ripple of black vel
vet down his back. Silver light brushed the hard edges of his lean face. Of course he’d come out to bathe in the moon’s glow, the source of a Moon Sifter’s magic.
Bekah’s next breath slowed in her chest. He was beautiful like a sculpted Roman statue of marble. The Limont boys were all attractive, she’d give them that. But wow, the complete stillness of the Moon Sifter’s body struck an almost reverent hush within her heart. She’d scavenged a museum of art once, though there wasn’t much food stores left in the cafeteria. It held the same kind of reverent feel. There’d been plenty of swords and blades for the taking though, which she’d used as an excuse to linger for hours, looking at forgotten art and sculptures, a pang of sadness at what humans left to rot in the face of survival. The same sadness swirled in her chest now at the beauty she was about to destroy.
Her lips firmed. The human race was nearly gone. Because of this one man. His choice to betray his family and clan and destroy the balance of magic began it all.
There was a rustle in the trees. Both she and the Moon Sifter snapped their attention eastward.
Bekah’s hand curled tighter on the poker, dreading the Sifts had found her.
He eased the bow from his shoulder and removed an arrow from the quiver on his back and had it nocked just as a feral deer stepped into view. The man pulled the string bending the longbow.
Stretching her neck up to get at the budding green growth on the side of a tree, it was apparent by the swollen belly that the doe was carrying.
Shaw Limont’s arrow remained centered on the doe’s heart, his expression cold and deadly. Bekah watched, studying her opponent’s skill and what she was up against. His fingers twitched before lifting the arrow aside and taking the tension off the bow.
Bekah frowned, his merciful action unexpected from the destroyer of her world.
He watched the deer eat her fill and move on before he also moved, ducking back into the darkness of the trees.
Brow furrowed, Bekah followed after him, taking extra care to step as quietly as he did. Her hip exploded in pain with her movement, but she clenched her teeth against it. She couldn’t lose him now that her goal was so close. Though she was unfamiliar with wood skill, she had plenty of experience moving quietly around Sifts, sometimes as the hunter, most often as the hunted.
She stepped into a space between two wide trees the Highlander had just passed between and stopped.
Where was he?
He had completely vanished on her.
Her gaze dropped to the ground, searching for his prints.
Nothing. How—?
She was wrenched backwards from behind, a large hand wrapped in the scruff of her cloak, and spun around to face suspicious gray eyes.
But in Bekah’s life, you reacted or died. Acting on the tail end of her spin, she kept going, ramming her shoulder into his gut and going low, even as she grabbed his forearm and yanked.
Long bare legs shot over her head followed by a thud as his back hit the ground, his dark kilt hitching up around muscular thighs.
In the next instant, she was straddling his waist, the sharp point of the fire poker pushed into the black fabric right above his black heart. He stared up at her in astonishment.
She leaned her weight forward to press the poker into his flesh like she’d done to the Sift…and froze.
She’d never taken the life of a human before.
Planning to do it and knowing it must be done were entirely different from actually doing it.
He stared up at her, his arms passive on the ground by her thighs. He wasn’t even trying to push her off as though waiting to see what she would do.
She set her back teeth together. She was here for one purpose and this was it.
He was human. He wasn’t a monster.
But he was the father of monsters.
Resolved, she shoved down.
And he vanished into a cloud of swirling silver smoke. The end of the poker slammed into the soft ground, jarring her shoulders.
A rough hand encircled her upper arm and ripped her off the ground.
“Ye actually attempted to murder me.” His tone reeked of so much incredulity, it bordered on being hilarious if the circumstances weren’t so dire.
Her side screamed in pain. “I still will if you’ll have the decency to not vanish!” Okay, that sounded stupid even as she said it, but he rattled her and she was in so much pain she couldn’t think. Which, how had he done that? If he’d traveled through time, she would have seen and felt the rift. This was different. He’d vanished and then reappeared behind her. The Moon Sifter had more tricks than they were aware of.
His other hand clamped onto her wrist and he drew her up close.
Bekah tried to wrench out of his grip, but his greater strength locked her in tight. She’d have bruises.
“You’re hurting me.”
“I am hurting you? That’s rich coming from a wee mharfóir.” He studied her like she was an extra chess piece that didn’t fit on his board. She scrutinized him right back. A line of perspiration ran along her hairline. How had she ever thought he resembled Col? Col’s green eyes reflected every emotion he felt and in the brief time she’d spent with him she knew he felt things deeply. She saw how hard and fast he fell for the Healer Lenore and glimpsed his loyalty for his family. Col would never have been convinced Shaw couldn’t be redeemed.
Shaw, who had no loyalty or feeling. The gray of his eyes were the flat and emotionless hue of a knife blade just before it slices through flesh like his gaze now sliced into her, dissecting her resolve into tiny little strips.
He gave her a shake. “Who sent ye? ‘Twas MacTavis, aye? The olde skunk can decay in his bitterness. His attempts have grown feeble if he sends a slip of a lass as ye to carry out any attempt he has yet to succeed in.”
She could tell him this MacTavis whoever had sent her. It certainly wouldn’t be any worse than telling him that his nephew from a millennium in the future sent her to kill him in order to spare the human race. Yeah, that would go down real smooth.
Of course, either way it didn’t matter. She was here to kill him, but she’d already blown her best chance. Man, she was terrible at this assassination thing. Not to mention their positions were now reversed. It was her life he could take with the ease of snapping her neck with his long hands. No doubt he had the strength to do it, the man’s masculinity oozed off of him like a wintry mist ensnaring her as thickly as his hands encircling her arms.
“Answer me, lass. Which of the chieftains seeks my life this day?”
Bekah blinked. The chieftains all wanted him dead too? Popular guy. Pity none of them succeeded or she wouldn’t have to be here. She tilted her face up, way up, to stare him down. “No one sent me. I have reasons of my own to want your life.”
If anything, that amused him. His lips curled in the semblance of a near smile. “These reasons are…?”
“None of your business.”
That made those lips twitch fully. “I beg to argue as it is my death ye are after.” His gaze raked down the poor state of her clothing, at her mud-coated skin. “’Tis a reward ye’re after, then? I can offer ye far better to tell me who placed a bounty on my head.”
“Seems you have enemies in spades, so what does it matter?”
“It matters.”
She tried to shake out of his grip. “Just let me go.”
“So ye can attempt to skewer me with yer poker again? I think not.”
Asking had been worth a shot. She looked up at him through lowered lashes and smiled prettily. “I’m unarmed now. Surely you’re not afraid of a woman.”
“In my experience, ‘tis always a woman I have most need to fear.” He snorted. “Very well.” He released the hold he had on her arms.
Wary of a trick, Bekah stepped back, eyeing him and also eyeing the discarded poker on the ground, calculating if it’d be quicker to go for it or slide in close and try to get at the blade the Moon Sifter had sheathed at his hip.
She bare
ly shifted on the balls of her feet when his arm lifted and strands of what she could only think of as slivers of moonlight shot down from the sky and twisted around her like pale luminous ribbons, pressing her arms to her sides.
She flexed her fingers, but was otherwise trussed up tight by the cold misty strands. “Hey, what is this? How are you doing this?”
Stepping closer, he leaned over her, his dark hair swinging forward. “’Tis I who will be asking the questions.” Then he plucked her off the ground like she weighed nothing and began walking. At first she struggled, then realized it was pointless being that her arms were pinned by magical fairy string and his thick Neanderthal arms weren’t releasing their hold anytime soon. She could feel the muscles in his arms beneath her knees and against her spine.
She didn’t want to get away anyway, she told herself. She didn’t want him out of her sight until she could figure out how to off him. Keep your enemies close and all that.
Her injured shoulder throbbed, the raw burned over slashes in her side chafed with the movement, not that’d she’d tell him. Her feet hurt from walking without shoes and she was exhausted. If Shaw Limont wanted to carry her and use up all of his energy, that was fine by her.
Closing her eyes, she let the rhythm of his stride and the warmth of his body lull her to sleep. She’d kill him when she woke up.
Chapter Five
The little vixen went to sleep. As he carried her through the forest, Shaw glanced down at her. She wasn’t so temperamental in sleep.
He grinned. It’d been years since anyone dared verbally spar with him and he missed it.
In Aldreth’s castle, all cowed to him as the witch’s sorcerer, although he heard the whispers of “destroyer,” “betrayer of his clan,” “witch’s demon consort”.
All true. And more.
He’d brought ruin to the world, been the means to unbalance magic and allow darkness to overcome and swallow the light. More and more beasts of dark magic sprang into the world while those of light dwindled. ‘Twas an honorable thing that the clan chieftains wanted to run their daggers through his frozen heart. ‘Twas no less than he deserved, and on occasion he was ready to appear in their midst and let the remaining clans have at him.
Highland Moon Sifter (a Highland Sorcery novel) Page 2