Myles’s hands appeared on the seat, his knuckles white. “Turn around. Just turn around and get the heck out of here.”
Thane shook his head. “It’d be too obvious.”
Six kingsmen—one in Campbell tartan and the others in government black—poured out of the truck and toward the nearest car. They shouted something unintelligible at the driver.
“Who cares about obvious if we can get away? I don’t want to be killed before we even have a chance to do anything.” Myles’s voice was raw like he’d been screaming. Purple circles hung under his eyes.
The driver of a red car lowered the window to talk to the kingsmen.
Aini clasped Thane’s arm, her fingernails biting his skin. “What are they doing? I can’t see.” She craned her neck to look out the windscreen and see beyond the cars behind the red one.
“Well, I think we all know they aren’t doing anything awesome,” Myles said. “Get us out of here, man.” He pulled at Thane’s sweater.
Aini gripped Myles’s wrist. “Calm down. Everyone calm down. They might just ask her a few questions, maybe rough her up a little, then let her go. It’s best we stay here and stay quiet. If we make a fuss, they’ll take us all in, including that poor woman.”
Thane was very glad to hear her managerial voice. That’s what this group needed. A level head. But despite her sure tone of voice, sweat beaded on her forehead and upper lip.
The kingsmen ripped the red car’s door open and pulled a woman from the driver’s seat.
A man crawled from the car, reaching for the woman. “Leave her alone. She isn’t a sixth-senser. I told them that already. She was already questioned. We are loyal to the king!”
The woman spat at the two kingsmen who held her. The tallest of the two cracked her across the mouth. The man with her flew at the kingsmen who easily shoved him to the road. With a shout, the woman drove a knee into the closest kingsman’s groin. His associate threw her to the ground and raised his stick.
Thane saw Aini there on the road instead of the stranger.
Her terrified eyes.
Her hands raised to defend herself.
Blood streaming from her mouth.
Thane was out of the truck and running before anyone could stop him.
“Stop!” Aini was behind him, but Thane couldn’t hold back now. They were beating that woman and man and it could’ve been Aini. His mind didn’t see the error—the fact that he’d now dragged Aini right into the fray. His heart pounded and he had to DO SOMETHING.
“Hey!” Thane waved a hand. “I doubt you’ve put her through a proper trial, hm?”
Rage stretched his voice and sharpened his senses. The road smelled like oil. The sky was too blue, too dark, too much. The blood on the woman’s face was the brightest red he’d ever seen. Aini’s and Vera’s boots, only a step behind his, popped along the ground like gunshot.
As a group, the kingsmen straightened. “And that’s none of your business,” one with a wide face said.
“It’s everyone’s business!” Vera stuck out her chin and looked ready to fight.
So was Thane.
Thane hit the kingsman hard in the throat. Another set of hands was on him, tugging and hitting, then Thane was punching another kingsman.
A woman screamed. Not the sixth-senser. Samantha landed in the tall grass on the side of the road, her face contorted in pain.
Rob’s cap flew off as he lunged at a kingsman Myles was kicking between the legs. The kingsman shoved the kick aside expertly and spun to throw an elbow at Rob.
A fist rocked Thane’s head back and light flashed behind his eyes. He stepped back dazed, then was shoved to the ground.
Beside him, the kingsman downed Myles. The colonial struggled against the man as he tried to tie him up. Myles threw out insults about the kingsman’s mother that would’ve been funny on another day.
Vera elbowed another kingsman in the face, but he took the blow like a real fighter. The man grabbed her arm, pulled her close, and hissed something probably really vile into her ear. He tossed her against the kingsman truck and held her in place with his wooden baton.
Aini lay near Myles’s feet, her eyes on fire. A Campbell kingsman started rummaging through her pockets. The Campbell colors on the man’s kilt were another punch to Thane’s spirit.
“Get your hands off her!” Thane rose up and was knocked across the head.
“Search them for their IDs,” the kingsman above Thane said.
Where was Bran? Rob, Myles, Aini, and Neve were all captured. Samantha lay bleeding and still, near the roadside. Her trousers were bunched up and she’d lost a shoe.
The kingsman jerked Thane’s back pocket open and ripped out his wallet.
“You should have to take me to dinner before you enjoy yourself like that,” Thane said.
“Nice eyeliner.” The kingsman snapped the fake ID against Thane’s nose.
Thane threw the man a finger. It was better the kingsman think he was merely a minor thug rather than a true criminal.
The kingsman’s boot pressed into Thane’s lower back. “That’s enough now, lad. Settle yourself.”
Aini’s captor eyed her ID. “This says you’re from Glasgow.”
Racist prat. He thought because she had light brown skin she couldn’t be from here. Ignorant ape.
“Just moved there,” Aini said.
Smart girl. That would cover her very non-Glaswegian accent.
“Eh, Hal!” the Campbell kingsman shouted. “Didn’t we get a new list of rebels to keep an eye out for this morning?”
The boot in Thane’s back pushed into his spine and sent sparks of electric pain down his legs. “Aye. Haven’t read it yet.” Thane twisted to see Hal turn on his phone.
The sixth-senser—the one the kingsmen had beaten—moaned. Someone was sniffing like they’d been crying.
Hal held up his phone. “Your girl there looks like number 23. Minus the purple hair.”
The Campbell nudged Aini with a toe, and she thrashed, ready to snap the man’s foot clean off. “You a rebel, darling?”
Anger roared inside Thane, fear cowering just behind it.
“Hmmm, she does,” Hal said. “Get her up.”
Thane put his hands under his shoulders and shoved his way to his knees. Hal kneed him in the side. Thane’s breath went out of him in a blast, and he dropped to the road again.
“This one’s very concerned about her safety.” Hal put his face in Thane’s. “There is something familiar about your features, pal.”
People didn’t usually see the resemblance between him and Nathair. But maybe this one did. Or he’d seen him at a gathering. Doubtful. It was only the top ranking clan representatives and members of the closer sect of the family that came to those. If this man did recognize Thane, could Thane use that fact? Maybe craft some story about traveling under cover? Only if Nathair didn’t know yet what had happened on Bass Rock and therefore hadn’t reported Thane as a traitor. If he knew and these men knew…
Hal lifted his phone and held it beside Thane’s cheek, bumping his face roughly. “I think that you might just be—”
A great shout came from the greenery at the side of the road and Bran blasted into the Campbell kingsman, knocking the lout to the ground.
Vera did something too quick for Thane to catch, then somehow she had the baton. “The stone!” She locked eyes with Aini.
Freed, Aini scrambled to her feet and leaped onto another kingsman’s back. As Thane rammed his forehead into Hal’s nose, he noticed Aini slide an arm around the other kingman’s neck, choking him and bringing him to his knees.
Thane was so relieved he’d taught her a couple moves.
A kingsman near the downed sixth-senser from the red car pulled something from his belt. He raised it up.
“Tav! Down!” Thane shouted, using Aini's false name.
She hit the ground as the kingsman’s gun fired one ear-splitting shot, then she scrambled toward the back of the truck.
Thane took out the man’s legs and Neve tore at his arms, but he got off one more shot.
Where was Aini? There was no sign of her behind the truck. Was she taking cover? Thane hoped she was, but it wasn’t like her to hide when her friends were in trouble. No. She was up to something. He’d bet it all on that.
Grabbing the blazing hot gun barrel, Thane pushed the weapon in the kingsman’s hand up, then jerked it free, popping the kingsman’s finger loudly. Thane cracked the man’s temple and watched him fall to Neve’s feet. She dusted her hands and tried to look tough, but her whole body shook.
Bran dispatched the last of the kingsmen, Myles and Rob at his side.
All the kingsmen were down, on the ground, injured and vicious as hungry dogs.
The sixth-senser and her husband lay close and quiet on the road near two of the wooden batons that had bloodied them both. They weren’t groaning or asking for help so hopefully they were fine.
Aini flew out from behind the truck with the Coronation Stone in her small hands and its burlap bag under one arm.
The kingsman eyed the stone. Only one seemed to react. His eyes widened with curiosity as he lay inert, injured enough not to move, beside the sixth-senser’s tire. He didn’t seem to know what the stone really was, but he knew enough to wonder. He’d talk. He’d tell the others. That couldn’t be allowed to happen. If the kingsmen spread the word about seeing them and also a stone, Nathair would know what was going on and winning the rest of the clans over would become an impossible feat if it wasn’t already. Nathair would prep a story, a great speech, and Thane and Aini and the rebels would lose this war before it even really started.
“Here!” Aini held out the stone and hurried toward him.
Then she noticed one of the kingsman who'd been knocked out. Drool pooled from the man's mouth and onto the roadway. She stopped, and her gaze dragged to the kingsman at Neve's feet. His broken finger stuck out at a nasty angle as he moaned and tried to get up. A nice goose egg was already rising from his head where Thane had clocked him. When Aini saw Samantha, bleeding and still beside the road, her shoulders slumped. She wrapped the stone up and went back to the truck.
Thane reached out a hand to call her back and tell her it had been a good idea to get the stone, even though she'd left it a bit late. But he let his hand fall. Would the stone have helped here? Why didn’t it?
Rob kneeled by Samantha.
“How is she?” Neve asked, keeping one eye on Myles who’d put a foot on a kingsman’s back to keep him down.
A smear of red colored the wrinkles between Rob’s eyes. “She is alive. But I think her leg is broken and her nose too. She has a cut along her ribs. Pretty deep. We have to find someone to stitch her up.”
Neve pulled a small bag from her pocket. “I’m no Shelby, but I can do that.” Before Thane could wonder at how amazingly courageous these people who hadn’t grown up with violence were in this moment, Neve was threading a needle and whispering comfort into Samantha’s ear.
“Eh, man,” Thane said to Myles, not wanting to use his real name. The colonial met his eyes. “We can’t leave these men here.” They knew too much.
Aini appeared again, rubbing her eyes. Blood caked the skin around her wrist and a red slash glared above her eyebrow. “We can tie them up. Leave them behind the hedges there.”
“But the truck. More kingsmen will see that truck and find the men and our story will be told.”
“We have to…” Aini’s tone flattened. “We have to kill them.”
“You were hoping the stone would, so what’s the difference?” Myles scratched his almost hairless skull. Bones gleamed under his skin. “Why didn’t the curse work for this? Where were the kings this time?”
Neve looked up from her stitches. “I’m thinking our friend here must be in contact with the stone for the curse to function,” she whispered, obviously meaning Thane.
Aini swallowed and held her stomach with splayed fingers. The blood on her hands was still vibrant and horrible.
“Aye,” Vera said. “I think she may be right on that one. The connection between him and the stone blazed when Tav brought it out, like it wanted him to come closer.”
“We won anyway,” Rob said quietly, gaze on Samantha.
The weapons they’d knocked from the kingsmen’s hands were black marks on the pale road.
“They are arming regular kingsmen with guns now.” Thane shouldn’t have been surprised. “Everything will be more dangerous now.”
They were very lucky the Campbell kingsman hadn’t pulled the gun he surely had too. Must’ve thought he and his could handle this group. Pride in Aini and the rest swelled inside Thane, but the knowledge of what killing these now-unarmed and injured kingsmen would do to Aini crushed it flat.
“So we must kill them,” Aini whispered. She tugged the gun from the Campbell kingsman’s belt and held it like a venomous snake.
Thane hated himself. Despite the fact that he was rebelling, that he was the Heir, this was still his fault. It was his blood causing her this pain, his own father, his own clan.
“I’ll do it.” Thane took the gun, checked it for bullets, and aimed.
Bran let out a curse. “They’re dead.” He covered his mouth and looked down on the sixth-senser woman and her man. “Beaten to death. Gone.”
Neve’s head dropped and her stitching hands hovered over Samantha’s bright, bloody wound.
Suddenly Thane just could not do it. He couldn’t spill this blood. Not today. At least not today.
“No. We’re not killing these injured in cold blood,” he said. “I won’t have us be like them. Help me tie them up.”
Aini was nodding.
“We’ll chuck them behind the shrubs and shove their truck into the loch so they won’t be found as quickly.”
“What loch?” Aini squinted into the distance.
“There’s one not a mile from here,” Neve said, staring at Samantha. “I know close to nothing about these kinds of injuries, but my guess is that she needs a doctor. Now.”
Rob lifted the bleeding woman like she was nothing more than a rag doll. “I’ll take her back to Shelby’s. Our special friends have docs that can come there to help her,” he said, meaning the Dionadair. Thane was glad none of them knew Shelby's real name. That good woman didn't deserve trouble.
“If she worsens…” Neve bit her lip.
Bran put a hand on Neve’s arm.
“She knew what she was diving into.” Rob pressed his lips together as he looked at Samantha. “This is her cause and she’d be happy to suffer for it.”
Rob settled her into the back seat of the sixth-senser’s red car and he was gone before Thane could muster up a word.
The group gathered around the dead sixth senser and her man.
“What do we do?” Neve whispered.
They couldn’t very well cart two deceased with them on this mission. But Thane couldn’t leave them here on the road like this. “Help me out?” He lifted the man onto his shoulder.
Bran, Myles, and Aini worked together to gently lift the woman. They set the couple in the grass beside the road.
“We’ll cover them as properly as we can.” Thane began stacking stones on the bodies. The group joined in until the dead rested, protected and together.
Aini whispered a prayer and retrieved her gun from where she’d set it on the ground at her feet.
“Now!” a stranger’s voice crowed.
The Campbell kingsman shoved himself up, the rest of his men with him. He grabbed for the gun in Aini’s hand, but she sprinted toward the Dionadair truck. The engine groaned to life as Thane dodged a blow from Hal, then took a blow to the stomach.
Kingsmen were coming at all of them, bleeding, angry, and dangerously efficient.
Thane raised his gun and fired it into the air. Hal leaped back.
The man fighting Myles jerked, surprised a
t the gunshot. Myles rammed his shin into the man’s groin.
Vera shrieked like a banshee, grabbed up a baton, and whipped it into another kingsman’s knee.
“To the truck!” Thane snapped a palm into Hal’s already broken nose, then grabbed the back of Vera’s dress and pulled her toward the vehicle.
Aini drove into the fray. Everyone took hold of the open passenger door or the side mirrors, grabbing whatever they could. Neve hung off, feet swinging.
Hal held his face. “Stop them!”
A kingsman snared Neve’s leg and swiped a knife at her. Blood spilled down her ankle as she broke free and clambered into the cab, past Thane and Vera.
Bran stuck his head into the window on Aini’s side as Aini sped up. “We’re done now, you know. They have our new descriptions. They have a good guess at least on who we are.” He was looking right at Thane, his dark eyes hard.
“Nothing more we can do about it.”
Aini took a curve and they fell into the cab, piling on top of one another, feet on top of feet and shoulders and hips painfully shoved together.
Gunshot smacked the back of the truck.
“We just need to drive and drive fast,” Thane said. “They’ll be following us until they have us or we’re safe hiding with Callum. If he doesn’t decide to hand us over which he probably will.”
“It’ll be tough for those numpties to trail us without these.” Vera dug a set of keys from her bra and dangled them from a finger.
“Nice!” Aini grinned viciously, hands white-knuckled on the wheel.
But the victorious feeling died as they drove on toward Huntingtower Castle. Samantha might’ve died already. Rob was with her and so they were short another operative. A solid group of very angry kingsmen had seen Thane and Aini and would most likely figure out who they were and make a full report. Said report would land in Nathair’s inbox along with a mention of a certain stone.
The window of Nathair being in the dark was closing fast if it wasn’t already shut.
They may have escaped with their lives but that battle had been a big, bad loss, and Thane didn’t see how they would wiggle their way to freedom now. Not with Nathair prepared for battle, prepared to argue against Thane’s claim to chief.
The Edinburgh Seer Complete Trilogy Page 33