Highland Moon Sifter (a Highland Sorcery novel)

by Autrey, Clover

  Yet there were two purposes left to him whereas he could not do so.

  And certainly not by the hand of a wee mharfóir. Assassin.

  She shivered against him and Shaw immediately allowed the bands of moonlight to dissipate. Unconsciously her dirty hand immediately came up and her slim fingers twined in the fabric of his shirt, seeking warmth. It had been a long time since anyone sought comfort from him.

  What was he to do with her?

  She certainly couldn’t be left to trounce about the forest clothed in naught but a man’s cloak. Especially with the intent to murder him. If it had been one of the guards who had come upon her instead of him…

  Shaw frowned, not liking that a bit.

  She stirred, her down-soft hair rubbing against his arm. Strange creature. When he’d glimpsed her following him, he’d thought she was one of the ethereal Fae returned to the world with her fairy bright hair shorn strangely short, yet slanting long across large wide brown eyes.

  Yet she was too small to be of the tall willowy Fae. Nor could any of the Fae still be here in their world. ‘Twas he himself who locked the gateway into the Shadowrood, the otherworld of the Fae, along with his clan, thereby keeping their magic safe from the witch. At the time, he had thought he’d been doing right by them. He was no longer so certain.

  There were no more Fae in the world. No more Clan Limont to hold the powers of magic in balance.

  His doing.

  All his doing.

  The branches overhead rustled, spraying leaves down on them. Shaw stopped, searching the gloom above, feeling the unnatural disturbance in the woods.

  They dropped silently from the trees.

  Monsters. For that was the only name befitting them.

  Three. Wide hunched over creatures of dark leathery hides draped in wrinkles like the great mastiff dogs of kings. Seemingly sightless, with thin disfigured skin instead of eyes. Their faces turned toward him, nostrils expanding, sniffing the air while their long clawed fingertips dug into the decaying leaves on the forest floor.

  His dagger was at his hip, his crossbow across his shoulder. He’d have to drop the woman to get to either of them.

  Yet he had the source of moonlight…

  “Fatherrrrr,” the beast directly in front of him slurred, its grindstone voice rasped across the crisp autumn night air.

  Shaw nudged the woman with the front of his shoulder and dropped her legs, still holding her about the waist until she awakened.

  The moment her foot touched the ground, she jerked upright and gasped in a painful breath through clenched teeth, curling inward.

  Injured? She had hidden it well, his wee mharfóir, showing no weakness.

  She came awake like a warrior, instantly alert and sizing up the situation even as she had his own dagger removed from its sheaf on his thick belt.

  Impressive, despite the fact she might as easily turn the blade on him.

  Now that she was steady on her feet, he drew his bow and several quivers off his back. “Friends of yours?”

  “That’s funny, you of all people, asking that.”

  He flashed a puzzled glance at her.

  Her knees bent, blade out and gripped in a warrior’s stance, pointed toward the beasts who seemed content to watch them for now.

  The creatures swayed forward, pawing at the ground like feral boars.

  The one directly in front of them snuffed, nostrils flaring wide, sampling their scent.

  “Fatherrrrr.” Its guttural voice scraped like thistles along his nerves. “Give us the unmakerrrr.”

  So the creatures could talk. And apparently reason. Interesting. “Unmaker?”

  The monsters heads turned toward the woman as one. So they wanted the lass.

  “Say that I do. Then what? I simply walk away?”

  The woman’s head jerked.

  The beast nodded.

  Interesting. Also not something that was going to happen.

  Shaw moved sideways into the space the lass had left between them, keeping her close. He wasn’t foolish enough to take her by the arm and drag her back to his side, not without getting stabbed for his trouble, yet he wasn’t going to leave her vulnerable.

  She had attacked him, yet the monsters clearly wanted her, were in fact, willing, or so they said, to leave him be. The little minx was proving to be quite the puzzle.

  “What do ye want with her?”

  Pale lips rolled back over gleaming teeth. “Unmakerrrrr. Naughty naughty girrrl. We hungerrrr.”

  Disgust pulled in Shaw’s belly. Well, that was out of the question.

  His bow twanged, taking the creature in the veined translucent skin where an eye should be. It shrieked, charging at him for the kill. Shaw momentarily froze in astonishment. It kept coming where a lesser beast would already be dead from that injury.

  Claws grazed his forearm. Shaw turned his own body into the woman’s, shielding her even as she lunged to knife the beast. Liking her tenacity, Shaw plucked the blade from her grasp, reaching back to skewer the creature rushing them.

  Its companions got to it first, and instead of joining their brother in the attack on him, they tore into the first beast with claws and teeth and fury. Hot breath washed across his arm before the others bore it to the ground, spraying his back with hot gray blood as the beast’s entrails were torn out and flung aside.

  Shocked, Shaw rolled to his feet, dragging the lass with him. The two Sifts just killed one of their own to keep him alive. What by all that is holy was going on here?

  The lass pulled him back and away as the shrieking, ripping beasts tumbled toward them.

  “Give me the knife,” she hissed. “I can kill them now!”

  Her scowl suggested fierceness able to do it, though he was loathe to let any slip of a lass get near such a whirlwind of savage shredding. If the creatures needed killing, he’d be the one to do it and the fact was he didn’t want their viciousness in his forest, especially this close to the village.

  Yet the two shredding the other one to pieces had done it to spare him and he wanted to know why.

  Drawing forth his magic, he thrust strands of moonlight out to bind them…and nothing. The silver threads hit the beasts and melted away. His magic did not work on them.

  Déithe!

  The woman lunged for his knife again and when he turned it away she grabbed an arrow out of his quiver and ran toward the beasts, plunging the shaft’s tip into a meaty thigh.

  The creature twisted, slapping out, knocking the girl across the ground and lunged over her.

  Shaw roared, running into the fray, knife grazing across thick muscle—rood’s dung, they were as hard as stone—and rolled with the beast to the ground, knocking it off the girl.

  The beast leaped over him, bowling Shaw over onto his back, spun, then jumped on to him, claws extended to rip into his chest, saggy face wobbling in rage, nostrils wide, then just as quickly stopped and slammed claws into the ground on either side of his head.

  “No, Fatherrrrr,” it hissed, washing putrid breath over his face. “No.” And as quickly as they’d appeared, it leaped backwards and scrambled up into the trees.

  Twisting to his elbow and stomach, Shaw saw the second one flee just as quickly, leaving a trail of swaying foliage and leaves and pine needles spiraling to the ground.

  Nothing about that encounter made sense. Father?

  He wasn’t one to spread his seed around, not as a cursed Moon Sifter, and he knew he’d never bedded a wench that uncomely, but a monster? Never.

  The woman wasn’t stirring. The length of her unusual bangs slipped across her face, exposing a lump on her forehead.

  He lifted her slim form into his arms.

  She was more than he’d at first thought. Much much more. The way she fought, her strange manner of speech, similar to how Charity spoke.

  Shaw frowned. The beasts wanted her dead or worse when they clearly meant him no ill.

  ‘Twas apparent, he had not been asking her the ri
ght questions.

  Chapter Six

  Wood smoke drifted around her with the crackle of a cheery fire. Bekah pressed into her worn blanket, secure that Matthew and Luke would wake her if any Sifts came close to the abandoned parking garage they’d holed up in after the supply run. Sleep was hard won and only taken while she traveled with those she unequivocally trusted, so she slept as long as she could, knowing the guys would wake her for her watch.

  Sighing, she curled her fingers around the handle of her pulsar, always out and in easy reach and…it wasn’t there.

  Alarmed, she came fully awake, eyes opening to a smoke-hazed room. Thatched ceiling, mud walls, dirt floors. Cottage. Closed wood shutters, the only light came from a blazing fire in the hearth where a man stood, black hair trailing down his broad back as he stared into the flames.

  Bekah pulled up to her elbow and winced at the disorienting pain that the slight movement flared in her temple. She wasn’t with the boys, running supplies back to Alexander’s holdout. Matthew was dead. Eaten alive.

  Grief welled up in her throat, threatening to overcome her. She slammed down on it. Hard. Put it away to bring out later when it was safe to mourn.

  He’d died to get Col Limont here to Thirteenth Century Scotland.

  Except Col wasn’t here.

  She was.

  She pushed the heel of her hand against her head and the blanket fell off her shoulder, revealing—where the hell was her cloak?

  At her movement the man, the Moon Sifter, turned, the sole person she left everything behind to come here to kill.

  She snatched the blanket back up. “Where are my clothes?”

  One shoulder lifted in a shrug. “I needed something to start the fire with.”

  “The whole thing?”

  The fire blazed behind him, fueled by varied sizes of split logs. He was being spiteful or…she studied his smug expression…he believed by taking her clothes away he’d make her vulnerable, having to hold a blanket up for modesty. Well, he’d underestimated her resolve. She had no qualms about killing him while bare-butt naked and then she’d take his clothes for her own after doing it. Which, no time like the present.

  She flung herself at him, leaving blanket behind, intending to knock him off balance into the hearth where he’d either fall in the fire or hopefully knock his head against the stone mantle. Either way, it would give her enough of a distraction to grab up his blade again.

  Except her forward momentum came to an extreme stop. One second she was moving, the next she wasn’t, hands flat and arms jolted against an immoveable chest. Holy crap. What was he made of, unbreakable granite?

  His arms swept up, long hands clamped around her. Flat gray eyes glared down at her and she swallowed. Fear, or something else, swirled in her belly, rising upward into her breasts.

  Had to be fear. Or the sudden chill, though she had to admit there was something uncharacteristically strange happening to her, something sensual and unsettling about being so close to the Highlander while he was fully dressed and she was completely bare.

  She shook her bangs over her eyes, hiding the only way that she could.

  His hands tightened around her arms, the backs of those strong capable fingers grazing the sides of her boobs and she exploded inside, then every nerve ending across her flesh puckered.

  Holy holy crap.

  He gave her a little shake, for which she was glad, because she needed her traitorous brain cells seriously scrambled, even though pain streaked through her head and along her side.

  He growled down at her. “Ye are that intent upon my death? What have ye been promised?” He paused, his dark brows bunching into a scowl worthy of the demon soul he sported. “My brother. Did my brother send you? He has grown that desperate?”

  Bekah pulled out of his grasp and fortunately he let her. She needed the small distance. She couldn’t even think within his proximity. “Why do you assume Col sent me?”

  He went utterly, completely still. Predator-watching-through-grass still. Goose pimples raised along her skin for altogether different reasons this time.

  She flipped the hair from her eyes and gasped.

  How had she ever thought those gray eyes void of emotion? They were drenched in it now, raw worry, fear and pain and so much love for his brother it was like looking into the deepest primal of heartaches, emotions crashing against each other, waves shearing upon rocks. She shied away, instinctively knowing she was not meant to see any of that.

  Yet she had and she could never unsee it, even as she intended to plunge his own blade into his heart.

  She turned away.

  “I spoke of Toren.” Shaw’s voice broke raggedly behind her, a mournful discordant note. “I thought…I thought he must have opened a rift, brought you here. I know ye’re from a different time.” He took her elbow and turned her back to face him, his features studying her, and handed her a pile of clothes.

  She pressed the fabric to her chest even though she felt far less exposed than the wretched hope opening the shutters on his face.

  “I had not considered…Col, he is alive?”

  The quiet plea spoke to her soul. She could at least give him this. She owed him news of his brother before…

  “Yes. He’s well.”

  He took another step toward her and nearly stumbled. If she hadn’t been watching so closely she might have missed the little totter. She looked closer still, noting the deep brackets of pain around his mouth, the small trickle of sweat along his hairline. Ill?

  “I thought…” He breathed out. “All this time…where? Where is he?”

  “He’s…” She stopped herself. Moon Sifter. They didn’t know much about what they could do. No one did, they were far too rare. There hadn’t been another born for five centuries before Shaw and none since. Shaw probably didn’t know the extent of his abilities himself, with no one to teach him. Yet Alexander reasoned out that a Moon Sifter’s magic closely resembled that of a High Sorcerer’s and in fact, had often been mistaken as one, until the darkness of their powers overtook the light and they either destroyed themselves or wreaked catastrophe upon their generation.

  Shaw had not only unbalanced all magic, allowing the dark to overtake his century, but the darkness had reached far into the future, nearly a millennia into the future, the creatures of his making—the Sifts—had all but annihilated the human race.

  That knowledge brought to the fore of her memories shoved away any sympathy she felt for the devastation transparent in his features or his little stumble. She couldn’t tell him where his brother was because with his power, he’d be able to open a time rift and go snatch Col up.

  Then she’d have two Highland warriors to contend with because no way would Col allow her to kill his brother.

  Well, she’d had brothers too. Brothers in arms and spirit, if not by blood and she’d lost them brutally and bloody.

  “Tell me where he is.” The Moon Sifter demanded, a dark impatient scowl covering the deep worry.

  She took another step backward, the back of her knees running into the little cot of braided tree limbs. “No.”

  “No?” His glare was hot enough to light tinder.

  Technically she was at his mercy, outsized and outweaponed. Definitely outmagiced. He probably thought he could do whatever he wanted to get his information, but she wasn’t as easy to crack as that. Let him get close enough and she’d show him a trick or two about martial arts. The bigger they are, the harder—

  “Very well.”

  Huh?

  “When ye’re hungry enough, ye’ll tell anything I want to know.” He went to the door and turned back, his eyes barely closed before thin translucent tendrils of silver light pulsed around him, growing, then expanded outward, covering every wall in a fine misty sheen that suddenly dissipated out of sight.

  Grinning, he bowed curtly. “Ye’ll be safe until I return. Naught will come in…” His grin widened. “Naught may pass out.” And with that he was gone, the door thuddin
g closed behind him.

  Smug Scotsman!

  Bekah raced to the door and tried to jerk it open, but it wouldn’t budge.

  He’d trapped her inside with his dark moon magic.

  He thought to starve her? Not likely. She’d been hungry before. She could last.

  Chapter Seven

  He wouldn’t make her go hungry for long. When she became desperate enough to search, she’d find food inside the chests. He was not the brute she’d shaped him to be in her mind, though with his reputation and with what he’d done to his family, he may as well be.

  But Col. Col was alive.

  He stooped against a tree trunk for support, his strength waning from Aldreth’s bind.

  He could not be gone from the witch for any lengthy amount of time without sickening. ‘Twas part of yielding his magic to her, a blending between them.

  He was trapped as tidily by her as he had been within her dungeons.

  Pushing off the tree, Shaw stumbled like a drunkard through the forest. He had to get back. His essence was draining and once gone, if he died, there would be no one to hold back Aldreth’s ever-increasing insanity.

  He hated leaving the lass, even without her knowledge of Col, leaving her adrift with those strange creatures about went against every fiber of his being, nor could he bring her back to the castle, knowing what Aldreth would do to any woman who came near him.

  So he’d done what he could, weaving a barrier of moonlight, though it’d taken the last of his reserves to conjure it and would eventually fade. Hopefully not before he could return.

  The obstinate lass would tell him the fate of his brother. He’d believed Col dead, sucked into the unnatural rift conjured out of the exploding flare between his and Aldreth’s dueling magics on that ill-fated day upon Crunfathy Hill.