by Diane Darcy
When modern meets medieval, can there be a happily ever after?
Scotland, 1239
Ian fought for all he was worth. At eight, he was big for his age—sturdy as a pack horse, his mother liked to say—and he bit, scratched, and kicked, earning a cuff on the side of his head hard enough to fell him to his knees. But at last he was free.
“Mother!” He glanced wildly about, searching through legs, skirts, and feet, seeking a green gown as hard hands clamped on his arms, his shoulders, pulling him back. “Mum!”
“Ian! Go inside, love! Go with Brodrick!”
The desperation in his mother’s voice spurred him to greater fury, and a kick to the knee of one of the men holding him resulted in a loosened grip as the man cursed and stumbled back. A bite to the fingers of the hand on his upper arm and he was free again.
Ian snaked through the crowd and it only took a few moments to find his mum in the crowd’s center. He squirmed around one of the men restraining her and wrapped both arms tightly about her waist.
“Oh, Ian. No, son. You cannot be here.” She kissed the top of his head, and struggled against the men holding her fast. “You need to stay with Joan and Brodrick. Please, dearest, can you not do this for me?”
“Nae.” He screamed the word. “I’ll not leave ye.” Rough hands grabbed him by the waist and pulled. He tightened his grasp around his mother and wouldn’t let go. Fingers bit into his stomach, digging, stretching skin, hurting, and he cried out.
His mother struggled in earnest, her black braid swinging forward to fall against his face. “Do not hurt him! Do not touch him! I will talk to my son.”
The slap across her face startled Ian enough to loosen his grip so he could look up at her, and he was immediately torn away. He glanced between the adults, men he’d known his entire life, clutching and pushing at his mother. How could they have turned on them? “Let go of her! Let go! I’ll bash you!”
Clawing at the fingers holding him did no good, so he turned and bit the fleshy forearm of the man gripping him.
The man let out a yell, released Ian, and backhanded his face. “Filthy witch’s get.”
The force and pain felled Ian to the ground, but when the man reached for him again, Ian scooted and scrambled between the legs of the men and women gathered around. He turned and crawled, kicked the hand that grabbed his foot, and when he reached his mother, latched onto the leg of one of the men holding her, and bit with all his might.
The man screamed, jerked his leg, hauled back to deliver a kick, and suddenly Ian’s mother was there, covering him with her body, protecting him with arms wrapped tight about him. “Leave him be.” Tears fell hot against his neck. “Let him alone!”
Now that Ian was engulfed in his mother’s arms, in her scent, he started to sob, the fear of the last moments giving way, burning through him.
“There, there, lad.” Her English accent was strong now, sharp with emotion, and Ian wondered if the clan had turned on her because of her otherness. He’d heard the whispers. Knew some despised her. She knelt in the dirt with him, clasping him tightly as if she’d never let him go. He was eight, not a baby anymore, but right now he was exactly where he needed to be. She started to rock him. “There, there, little man.” He couldn’t help the sobs that burst from him, nor the ones that followed, threatening to overwhelm.
“Do not let her contaminate the child with her wickedness.” The voice, the new priest come to village this past fortnight, sent ice and fiery hatred through Ian’s veins. When harsh hands pulled and lifted them both, Ian clung with everything in him, clutching his mother as she clasped him in return. A blow to her back unbalanced them both and numbed his hands and another attacker jerked him away as she tried to cling. He thrust his fingers out as far as they’d reach. “Mum! Mum! Dinna touch her. I’ll kill you if you touch her!”
“You see? Already, she taints the child.”
His mother sobbed as she reached for him but her arms were captured and jerked behind her back. She drew a deep breath. “Joan!” His mother screamed for her friend and neighbor. “Take my son. Take him from here. I do not wish him to see this. Please keep him safe. Please keep him well, I beg you. He’s yours now.”
“No! Mum, no!”
Strong arms enclosed Ian as he was passed to Brodrick, Joan’s burly husband, and his mother dragged in another direction as Brodrick shouldered his way through the crowd, clasping Ian tight, restraining his thrashing legs in a firm hold. Joan was suddenly there, fear stark on her pale face, the whites of her eyes showing as she advanced with her husband toward their hut.
“Wait.”
That voice again.
Brodrick stopped and turned and Ian finally got a clear view of the man standing on the back of a wagon, his fine red garment glowing bright in the afternoon sunlight, the large gold cross gleaming at his chest. When Ian first saw the man, the priest, he’d thought him a fine figure, tall, slim, and elegant, everything a man of God should be. Later, when the priest cut himself on an edge of rough stone and visited his mother for a poultice, the man had given Ian a spiders-down-his-shirt feeling as he’d touched his mother’s hand and stared upon her.
Now he knew the man’s true character. Could see clearly that, black heart and soul, the man was the devil himself.
“I wish the boy to watch. I wish him to see what happens to witches when they practice their craft in the world of decent God-fearing men.”
“Liar! I’ll kill you! My mother isna a—”
Brodrick’s hard hand clamped tight over Ian’s mouth, but it didn’t stop Ian from glaring at the devil. He tried to convey that he may have fooled others, but not Ian. If it took the whole of his life, he’d find the man and send him back to the fiery pits from whence he’d sprung.
“He’s just a boy, your worship,” Brodrick said. “Big for his age, to be sure, but a boy nonetheless.”
“He’s old enough to understand murder, surely? And he’s threatened to kill me, has he not? Bring him forward.” He motioned to one of his men, a guard who pushed through the crowd to follow instructions.
“No!” Mum’s voice rang out. “Let him be!”
Ian was grasped with hard hands but Brodrick wrenched away and gave the man his broad back.
“What is this?” The priest’s voice was amused. “I’m unsurprised by the witch’s defiance, but would you directly challenge a man of God? Do you wish to join the witch in the flames? Or perhaps it’s your wife who has been spending too much time with her friend?”
“My wife is a God-fearing woman,” Brodrick’s voice was stark, overloud. “She is good wi’ the young ones, that is all, and wouldna wish to see one scared or hurt.”
“Release the boy.”
Brodrick slowly loosened his hold on Ian and he ran toward his mother, but was quickly intercepted by one of the priest’s men and thrown roughly over a shoulder.
“Bring him here.”
“No.” His mother screamed the word. “What is wrong with you all? Let him go!”
Ian was dumped on the ground and secured by two men, one of whom cupped his chin, urging his face upward, forcing him to stare into the triumphant eyes of the fiend himself.
“How can you do this? His mother’s voice rang out. “Have I not tended your young? Healed your wounds? Dugan,” her voice broke. “Remember when you injured your arm?”
The devil, still gazing into Ian’s eyes, lifted both hands into the air. “He has her look. Dark hair, pretty features, and green eyes.” He raised his voice. “Mayhap he is a witch in the making?”
“Laird MacGregor!” his mother sobbed. “He is your son. Your blood. Take him from here, Sinclair. Please help him.”
All eyes turned toward the laird, including Ian’s. Whispers started. His son? What did she mean?
“Take him to England. To my family. Or I swear by all I hold sacred I will haunt you and your wife,” she spat the last word, “for the rest of your short lives.”
The laird’s wife drew h
erself up. “She curses us. Did ye hear?”
“Burn her,” the priest intoned. “Before she can do more damage. And burn her spawn, as well.”
“Sinclair! Do something.”
The laird stepped forward. “Nae the boy.”
“He has her eyes,” the priest intoned.
“I say nay. Are not little children innocent before God?”
With cold fury in his eyes, the priest bowed his head. “As you wish, Laird. But I hope you will not live to regret your interference. But I insist the boy watch. As a warning against following in his mother’s destructive path.”
Ian’s mother was wrestled and tied to the beam in the center of the village, already black from previous burnings. “I wish him taken to my family, do you hear?” One of the priest’s men thrust a torch into the wood and straw.
Fire licked hungrily toward his mother.
Ian bucked against the guards as blooms of smoked filled the air. “Noooo! Nooooo! Stop!”
He met his mother’s eyes, and she gazed upon him for a long moment, before smoke started to obscure his view. “I love you, Ian. Never forget it. Now close your eyes, my love. Look away.” And then the fire reached for her and she screamed.
Ian, eyes and mouth wide, shrieked until he was hoarse, his vision blocked by tears and smoke as the minutes and horror dragged on. He clenched his eyes tight when he smelled her, burnt and quiet now, surely dead, gone from him forever. He collapsed, hanging limp and exhausted in the guard’s grasp.
“You may take him from here,” the priest said.
Ian, his body shaking, studied the man responsible for his mother’s murder. He noted the clean clothes, the jewels, and the man’s smug expression. Ian had truly thought him God’s messenger when he’d first seen him, his finery so bright and impressive.
But with his figure silhouetted against the darkening sky, the fire’s light dancing across his face, playing over the scratches his mother had marked upon his cheek the night before, how could his kinsmen not see the devil himself, masquerading as a man of God?
Brodrick collected Ian again, carried him like a babe, his face pressed to big man’s neck as Ian lay limp and exhausted, looking over his shoulder. As they shuffled away, Ian, eyes burning hotly, watched the devil climb down from the wagon and stride away. When Ian was older and stronger, he vowed he’d send the demon back to his fiery home and rid this world of evil.
He swore it on his mother’s body.
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Excerpt from Gareth (The Ghosts of Culloden Moor Book 5)
They say revenge is sweet…
Lissa Stuart is thrilled to get a job researching for an upcoming movie in Scotland—supposedly the land of her ancestors. When she brags about possibly being related to Bonnie Prince Charlie, she captures the attention of an angry, embittered warrior.
Revenge is all that Gareth thought about for the last 270 years. According to a witch helping him and the other warriors stuck at Culloden Moor, it’s not his turn to come back to life—but that doesn’t matter to him in the least! When he gets a shot at a flesh and blood existence, if only for a few days, he seizes it!
If he has his way, this time the last word will not come from the living, but from the dead.
Gareth waited, hiding from the moonlight as, one by one, everyone in the house fell to sleep.
He was planning murder.
His mind, his temper, and his very soul seemed to have darkened, bent on revenge. An ugly swirling mass of emotion seemed to have settled in his now beating chest.
The back door was unlocked, he hadn't expected otherwise. But still, it was strange to twist a doorknob. He’d seen it done before at the visitor center and on the shows the guards watched. But he’d not done the like in person.
He ran his hand down his chest about the hundredth time. Felt his heartbeat, felt his warm flesh, bone, pumping blood. That didn't matter now. As soon as his chore was done, he could consider such happenings.
He moved, silent as a wraith to the kitchen, and still slightly disoriented, he lurched a bit but caught himself on the table and managed to stay quiet.
His night vision was excellent. Had it always been? Or was it a leftover from being a ghost? He couldn’t remember. He spotted a knife on the kitchen counter, picked it up, and tested it for sharpness. He smiled. It was well honed and certainly sharp enough to get the task done.
There would be a lot of blood.
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