“The Father will be with you soon,” one of the mercenaries intoned solemnly, his face blank. He placed his torch into a wall bracket, then the three of them left via the same staircase they’d come down. Were there any other entrances to this dungeon? Marianne was beginning to suspect that the staircase was the only way in or out. She waited until their boot steps had faded, working the gag out of her mouth with her tongue, then spoke.
“Eamon? Eamon, are you hurt?”
“Nay, lassie, we just stopped in a meadow for a spot of raspberry tart and I got it all over the side of my face.”
She couldn’t help but laugh at that, a sad and desperate sound that echoed hollowly through the cold dungeon. “Well, we made it to the castle.”
“Aren’t we clever,” Eamon murmured.
She could see him in the torchlight scrutinizing the place where the chains attached to the wall, testing his hands to see if either one could slide out of the manacles, examining each loop of the chain that fastened him to the wall. She had a sinking feeling, though, given the professionalism exhibited by the men they’d met so far, that the chains were unlikely to be poorly maintained.
There were footsteps on the stairs – Eamon could hear them too. She saw him go still, then sag against the wall as though he’d been knocked out. Smart. Maybe he could get the jump on Teodoro if he got too close…her heart seized up in her chest. Teodoro. That had to be him on the stairs. After all the nightmares, after all the nights of plotting and brooding and hating him, she was about to meet him.
Gods, she thought, quickly, trying not to analyze or second-guess her prayer, my magic has always been about insight and intuition. I’ve never done anything impressive – never set anything on fire with my eyes, or made two people fall in love, or guided a lost soul home. Please, if you’re there, if you’re listening – I’m so grateful for the gifts you’ve given me, really, I am, but I could really – really, right now, this very moment – I could really use just a little bit more.
The man who came through the passageway from the spiral staircase had to duck his head to clear the doorway. He was huge, and he held himself proudly, terrifyingly tall – he was six foot eight if he was an inch, and Marianne’s mouth dropped open despite her determination to be brave. The second thing that struck her, though, was how thin he was. Yes, he was trying to disguise it with layer upon layer of black robes – but this was a man who was almost skeletal. She could see his bony wrist, his spindly fingers gripping the torch, the sinews and tendons that stood out in stark relief in his neck. His face was covered by a neutral white mask, no expression painted on it – just a blank face, a little like the kind she’d used a thousand years ago in college mask work classes. This was definitely an odd context for that kind of recognition.
He was scrutinizing Eamon’s form – but when he turned to her, she saw him stop dead in his tracks. Though there was nothing but darkness behind the eyeholes in his mask, she could read enough of his body language to know his shock, his fury – the way his fingertips shook, just slightly, on the torch, the long strides that carried him across the room in a rustle of fabric. He held the torch up to her face, close enough that she could feel the warmth of the flames, and she drew her lips back in as menacing a grimace as she could.
“Did you miss me, Teodoro?”
And with all the venom she could muster, she spat into the right eyehole of his mask. It was a good shot. She didn’t get the cry of anger that she’d wanted, but he did stumble back a step or two, raising one slightly shaking hand to the mask. And then his voice came – low, hoarse, whispery, and though she couldn’t consciously remember hearing it in her dreams, it was familiar to her.
“Elena Corso.” He removed the mask, wiping delicately at his eye with his sleeve, and her mouth fell open again. She had expected his face to be familiar. It wasn’t. Sure, the basic elements were there – the dark hair, the cold, cruel eyes, green just like hers, just like her father’s – but she hadn’t been expecting the rest to be such a ruin. His face was absolutely gutted by scars, leaving great pitted pockmarks in his cheeks. His eyes were sunken into a face that once had been handsome, great black pouches beneath them belying exhaustion, and burst blood vessels around his eyes suggested that coughing fits – like the one he was currently fighting to suppress – weren’t uncommon in his life. He was pale as death, and the skin on his neck was sagging and looked diseased.
“Why, Father,” she breathed, hardly knowing what was guiding her voice. “You look like you’ve been cursed.”
That got a sharper reaction out of him than the spit. He drew himself upwards and made the sign of the Cross at her, his eyes narrowed and his lips twisted with rage. “Witch,” he hissed, his voice almost like a sigh.
“Oh, yes. I am. And do you know whose fault that is? Yours. Elena Corso never did a single piece of magic, dark or otherwise, and you know it. Ironic, isn’t it? By falsely burning an innocent woman as a witch, you created one more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”
His eyes flickered, fear and fury warring for dominance, and she leaned in, making her voice as hard and cutting as she could. “You will release me this instant. You will release my companion. You will disband your men and return to Rome. There, you will offer a full and complete apology for what you did to Dolores Corso and her daughter Elena. After that, I don’t care. Die, if you like.”
He listened to all of this in silence. Then, he took a deep breath – she heard it rasp and whistle in his ruined throat and damaged lungs. And again, like a sigh, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
His English was accented only slightly – Italian. Her spiritual translator was still doing excellent work, it seemed.
“Do you hear me, Teodoro?” she demanded. “I know every one of your crimes.”
“And that knowledge will die with you.” His voice eased its way out of him like the creak of an unoiled door hinge. He turned his back on her, moving slowly but calmly to where she realized with a shock that one of his mercenaries was standing with a small, silver object in his hand, which he handed to the priest with a deft little bow. “To the whipping post, Reginald.”
The blond man came swaggering over to her cage, a grin on his face as he pitched his voice low enough for his master not to hear. “Nice try, little witch. If only you had any real power, we might actually be in for a fight and not just a bloodbath…ah, well.” He threw the door open and seized her by the wrists – she struggled, but with her feet and hands bound there was little she could do. He dragged her to a post and hauled her arms up, looping the rope that bound them over a nail high on the post – it forced her onto her tiptoes with her arms above her head and her back to the post.
Real fear began to rise in her chest as she realized how entirely trapped she was here. It surged faster as Teodoro began to approach her, slow, steady steps bringing him – and the glinting silver thing in his hand – closer to her.
“Now, little monster,” he breathed, his voice like the howl of wind through dead trees. “You will tell me the nature of the pact you made with Satan…to be returned to this damned semblance of …. your earthly form.” His breath rattled painfully as he inhaled between phrases, but his hand on the blade that he raised to trace a line across her chest was steady as a rock.
The clanking of metal distracted them both – Teodoro’s head whipped around as Eamon yanked on his chains, his voice booming and echoing against the damp stone walls.
“Teodoro! Leave her be. She’s done nothing wrong. Just like Elena.”
“Eamon MacClaran,” Teodoro murmured, wonderingly. “It has been…quite some time. The years have not treated you…well.”
Eamon spat on the ground. “Ye should talk. God’s judgment’s come early, hasn’t it? I don’t remember yer face bein’ quite as ugly as that when ye burned that innocent girl alive.”
Teodoro turned, gazed at Eamon. “Ah, yes. The witch. You watched, didn’t you? Poor coward, couldn’t… intervene to save your
whore from the flames.”
Eamon flinched at that word, pulled harder at his chains, his jaw clenched.
“Perhaps you’d have come for her earlier…. If you’d known what I did to her.” Something that must have once been a smile twisted his lips upwards and Marianne felt fury burning in her chest, an anger that didn’t all belong to her. “If you’d known what I did…in the days before she burned. What I did…with this knife, to her pretty little face. What I did…to the rest of her—”
“No!” Eamon surged forward in the chains, straining with all his might until Marianne worried that he’d tear both his shoulders from their sockets. But still they held – she could see them glinting in the lamplight, pristine, not even stretching under the onslaught of Eamon’s terrifying might.
“You were so alone, weren’t you?” he sighed, tracing the edge of the blade along her shoulder and slicing, as if by accident, a hole in the fabric there – the knife moved through the cloth like it was made of water, and she realized how devastatingly sharp it must be to cause that kind of damage. “So alone in those last days … alone but for me, and for Reginald…oh yes, I don’t doubt you cursed me…but that didn’t save you from death, did it…just proved your guilt, proved your sin, proved your ungodliness in my eye and the Lord’s...” He paused to regroup, taking another deep, rattling breath. “I bear my curse proudly, Elena Corso. It shows my dedication…to the will of the Lord. And when I die, he will take me…proudly into his arms. And you…will still be burning.”
“Fuck you,” she spat through clenched teeth. “You’re insane. Elena was your daughter.”
He stilled a little, at that. “Ah, so she did tell you…or perhaps you learned from your unholy contacts in Hell...” The blade pressed a little into her skin, drawing a single pearl of blood that swelled and then dropped down her shoulder. “Yes, yes. I sinned in fathering her…the woman drew it out of me, drew the sin forward, as women do. And then she made…you, a witch, an abomination. My only…regret is not killing her before she whelped you.”
Her rage outstripped her fear, burning brighter than the torches, brighter than the flames that she could remember now, clear as day, remember licking around her feet and her body, remember consuming her body as she called down a curse on the man that stood beyond the bonfire with a cruel smile on his too-familiar face.
“You’re not fit to speak my mother’s name.”
He looked down at her, tilted his head gently to the side. “Her name? Why girl, I don’t even…remember her name. And nor will you, when I’m…through with my work.” And he raised the knife in his spider-like hand and sliced her cheek open as casually as he’d spoken her ancestor’s name.
Three things happened, very quickly. The first was that Marianne gasped at the pain that lanced through her cheek. The second was that the torches all flared violently. And the third was that Eamon, who had roared with rage and pain at the sudden flash of blood on Marianne’s cheek, suddenly found himself stumbling forward with his chains trailing behind him. A single link in each chain had snapped clean in two.
And Father Teodoro turned to face Eamon MacClaran.
Chapter 28
Marianne made herself watch. It felt right, somehow, to bear witness to what was happening. To the complete destruction of Father Teodoro, the man who had destroyed her ancestor – the man upon whom the bloodiest vengeance imaginable was now being wrought. She kept her eyes open and didn’t blink even when the blood from her cheek started dripping onto her chest, even when Teodoro started gurgling and shrieking wetly for mercy – even when spray of blood after spray of blood spattered against Eamon’s body, leaving him a gory spectre as he flailed at Teodoro’s body again and again with the chains attached to both of his wrists. And long after Teodoro had stopped moving, Eamon finally ran out of steam – and sagged to his knees, his bloody hands palms-up in his lap. The chains clanked dully by his sides, matted with gore and scraps of Teodoro’s robes. The torches on the wall flickered again, and Marianne looked up as what felt like a breath of wind stirred the hair on the back of her neck – but how could that be, in this underground dungeon?
Elena.
You’re welcome, great-great-great-great grandmother, she thought. And just like that, it was over. It was Reginald she noticed first – Reginald Corby, dashing forward to where she still stood, arms restrained over her head and blood running freely from the wound in her cheek – amazing, really, how much blood there was in the face, she thought, knowing academically that she was probably in shock, but not being able to do much about it. A flash of concern reared its head as Corby came near her, but she knew somehow that he wouldn’t harm her. Not with Eamon so close, not with what he’d just witnessed happen to his master.
He freed her hands, then, business-like, ripped a piece of his black robes from his sleeve and held it to the wound on her cheek, which had only just started to sting. She narrowed her eyes at him as she stretched her shoulders, grateful to be out of that uncomfortable position.
“What are you doing?”
“Changing horses,” he said under his breath. “Play along if you know what’s good for ye – this could all still go pretty poorly for you and your berserker there.” Boots stomped on the steps, and suddenly the room was full of torches – a handful of the guards that she and Eamon had drunk with —had that really only been the night before? It felt like an eternity— and among them, the five mercenaries in Teodoro’s employment. She saw the physical change that came over them when their eyes lit upon their Father’s dead body – and the blood-soaked man who knelt beside him still. Even Marianne had to admit it didn’t look great. And then Reginald spoke, in a voice she hadn’t heard before – clear, assertive, strong, and deeper than the teasing malice with which he’d addressed her.
“Seize them,” he boomed. And to her shock, the guards as one turned on the mercenaries, forcing all five men to the ground as the mercenaries yelled in anger and betrayal. Another pair of boots sounded on the steps, but the man who entered the room wasn’t familiar to Marianne – a tall, older man with thinning auburn hair and an air of unmistakable authority. This had to be Lord Weatherby. The suspicion was confirmed by the way the guards stood to attention – and the way Reginald stepped adroitly forward. Marianne knew the physicality of a man who was talking like his life depended on it. In this moment, it absolutely did. “Lord Weatherby, thank the Lord you’ve come,” he said rapidly. “I’ve a lot to fill you in on.”
“Corby? What’s happened here? What has this brute done to your master?”
Marianne was beginning to worry about Eamon. He hadn’t moved – his eyes were open, but empty, and the listless sag of his body suggested his mind was a few thousand miles away if it was anywhere. And he couldn’t have been caught any more literally red-handed. She opened her mouth to speak in his defense, to say anything – but as she stepped forward, a wave of dizziness rose up and nearly knocked her over. Reginald supported her, murmuring something soothing as he did. She realized in a rush what kind of scene he’d set.
“My Lord, he has done us all a great service,” Corby said now, gesturing to Eamon. “He has saved this young woman’s life, and removed a tremendous corruption from your keep.”
“Traitor,” one of the mercenaries spat – the guard behind him cuffed him hard over the head.
“Explain,” Weatherby said, his eyes narrowing. “You are his right-hand man, you’ll understand I have more than a few questions—”
“And I’m happy to answer them, my Lord. As you say, I have been Teodoro’s right-hand man for almost twenty years. And most of those years I have spent frantically searching for opportunities to prevent the evil this man has worked. If I could tell you the innocents he has had tortured and killed, the depths of depravity he has sunk to in the name of the Lord...” He stifled a sob.
Marianne saw that there were tears standing in his eyes. Not bad work, she admitted, grudgingly.
“But finally, this brave man and his wife came to
the village here, and I knew my opportunity had come – and just in time, too. I contrived to get them both here, tonight – pretended to Teodoro that this woman was his own daughter, whom he had murdered on a false claim of witchcraft, returned from the dead. She bears only a passing resemblance, but the twisted madness of his mind did the rest.” He took a deep breath and turned to Marianne – and one of his eyes flickered, just a little, in what could have passed as a wink. “My lady, I am so sorry for what you have gone through this night.”
Weatherby turned to her. “And who, pray tell, are you in all this?”
Marianne cleared her throat. Time to play her part. “My name is Marianne. I came in the name of Dolores Corso, a woman who was frightfully abused by this so-called priest, and whose daughter was murdered in cold blood by him and his men.”
“A sin I bore witness to,” Corby chimed in solemnly, “and which will haunt me until my day of judgment. I only pray the Lord will forgive—”
“And this man?” Weatherby jerked his head toward the blood-soaked figure on the floor, who finally stirred.
“Eamon MacClaran,” he said, his head rising. “Of Clan MacClaran. This evil man planned to move against my family. Punish me as you will. I regret nothing I have done here.” He sounded like he was speaking from somewhere far away, but his voice didn’t shake.
Highlander Protected: A Scottish Time Travel Romance (Highlander In Time Book 3) Page 17