by Ann Gimpel
“But who is it and—?”
The screen flashed. Mary Elma had disconnected. The phone chimed its text tone. Maggie was so tired the letters and numbers blurred, so she made them larger. Clicking keys, she fed the address into the phone’s navigation system. Ever obliging, it spit out a list of directions.
For a moment, she considered ignoring Mary Elma’s edict. The least her grandmother could have done was talk with her, tell her where the hell she was sending her… “This feels like Mission Impossible where the tape self-destructs right after I hear the instructions,” she muttered. Seized by sudden panic, Maggie stared at the phone, but the directions were still on its display.
Guess that settles it. She turned the key in the ignition and headed north toward Loch Lochy. As she drove, she forced herself to breathe deep, cracking a window for more healing air. It took a while to locate the indicated address. As frequently happened with the map system in the phone, it sent her on a wild goose chase, and she had to retrace her steps a couple of times.
Finally, she found the place and got out of her car. A whitewashed cottage was set at the end of a long, brick walkway. Wild roses grew over a fence that was falling down in places. The flowers smelled wonderful: lush and heady. Who the hell had her grandmother sent her to? Would they simply accept her as blood kin of one of the most powerful witches on Earth?
May as well find out. She got her bag, locked the car, and marched up the walkway. Maggie walked for a long time. Much longer than it should have taken. At one point, she turned around and stared at her car. Her eyes said it was only fifteen yards away. Her legs told a different story. Aha! This is another witch’s house. That must be it.
She thought about the tricks various relatives used to camouflage their dwellings and meeting places. Problem was she’d never developed her magic sufficiently to defeat another witch’s casting. She walked for a few more minutes and turned to look at her car. It hadn’t moved, so obviously neither had she.
Anger sparked. She was too tired to play games. She sat on the bricks and reached for her phone. In that moment, the darkness she’d sensed earlier rolled over her in a cloud and tightened, obscuring the brightness of the midday sun. Panic threw her heart into overdrive. She heard herself panting, her breath hoarse in a too-dry throat. Maggie pushed to her feet and ran toward her car. If nothing else, she could put distance between herself and what threatened her.
“Enough. Stop where you stand,” a woman’s voice cracked like a whip in her head. Maggie tried to keep going, but couldn’t. It was as if her legs were stuck in deep mud.
“Please,” she moaned. “If you’re going to help me, for Christ’s sake do it now before I get swept off to wherever Rhukon’s taken Lachlan.”
“Pull yourself together. Turn toward the house.” Maggie’s body spun of its own volition. Fear turned her belly to water. She clapped a hand over her mouth and forced herself to take shallow breaths, afraid she’d heave her breakfast onto the tidy bricks. “Look at the house. Really see it.” Sounding less harsh now, the voice had an almost hypnotic quality.
Maggie focused on the house. The white cottage was gone. In its stead stood a three-storey stone manse with ivy crawling up its sides. From the looks of it, it had been there for hundreds of years.
“Now that you see it, walk toward it. The house will let you inside.”
She had no sense of propelling her limbs forward, but she moved inexorably closer to the house. The nearer she got, the more her sense of danger retreated. It wasn’t dark anymore; the Scottish sun felt warm and welcoming. Somehow, never mind how, the good magic was strong enough to push Rhukon’s aside. Maggie floated up a dozen steps and collapsed on the far side of a carved, wooden door that had swung open to admit her and slammed shut in her wake. Sobs raked through her as she lay prostrate on a shiny, hardwood floor.
“For the love of Pete,” a strident voice right next to her said, “if your kinswoman had told me what a ninny you were, I wouldn’t have been so quick to say I’d help. Get up and tell me what that mess in my yard was all about. Who in blazes is after you?”
“American?” Maggie pushed herself to a sit and stared at a buxom woman of about five foot eight. She was dressed in a floor-length denim skirt and a green T-shirt with a witch atop a broomstick. Beneath the picture were the words, My Other Car is a Broom. Bare feet with bright red toenail polish peeked from beneath the skirt. Red curls stuck out from her head in all directions before trailing down her shoulders and back. A pair of sharp, brown eyes radiated displeasure. The woman looked to be in her forties, but looks were often deceiving with witches. Power flowed around her like a gown. She fairly crackled with it.
“Once upon a time I lived in the States, but that’s not important.” The woman hunkered next to Maggie and laid a hand over hers. Maggie felt the spell, welcomed it because it cleared her head and settled her stomach.
“Thank you.”
“I’m Mauvreen, and you’re welcome. Come on into the parlor and have some tea and biscuits. You can tell me what’s got Mary Elma so fired up.” Her eyes narrowed. “After that, you’ll sleep for a spell. You need it. You’re dead on your feet, woman.”
Lachlan flung magic about himself, but it didn’t even slow his descent. One moment, he’d been kneeling and lacing a boot, the next, something slammed into his body out of nowhere and shoved him down into darkness. He hadn’t had even a moment’s warning it was coming. The sense of falling was absolute and disorienting.
“Kheladin.”
“I canna help. Something shackles my wings.”
His next thoughts were for Maggie, and he sent prayers to every Celtic deity who might be close enough to listen to keep his mate safe from harm. A bone-crackling thud sent pain ripping through him. For long moments, he was afraid he’d broken something and would need to cast magic to heal himself. He stretched his arms and legs experimentally and blew out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Thanks be to the gods, I only got the wind knocked out of me.
Lachlan pushed to his feet and summoned his mage light. It took more effort than he thought it should, but it finally sputtered to life. He gazed at his surroundings. Stone walls stretched as far as he could see on both sides of him. A low stone ceiling dripped water. Red eyes stared at him in the reflected glow from his light. Rats.
What was this place? He bent closer to examine the stonework. Clearly manmade. Someone had carved this tunnel, or at least reinforced it so it wouldn’t collapse. Corridors led in either direction.
Where am I?
Recognizing the stupidity of racing off half-cocked, he forced himself to catalog what he knew, which wasn’t much. He felt for Maggie’s energy but couldn’t sense her at all. Maybe that was a good thing, unless the same magic that had captured him had dropped her in a totally different location. Mage senses on full alert, he turned in a circle, emitting power like a dowsing rod. Though he took his time, Lachlan didn’t know any more when he was done than he had when he began.
He turned his mind inward to the dragon. “Do ye recognize aught?”
“Nay. Mayhap if we traded places…”
“There isna enough space. We’re in some sort of underground tunnel system. I’ll mark where we are and walk in one direction until either we’re above ground or hit a dead end.”
“Canna we use magic to leave here?”
Lachlan considered it. The prospect was tempting, but the problem about using magic to travel was he needed a firm destination in mind and some sort of connection with it. He could try for Maggie’s home but didn’t want to rain disaster down on her. If he weren’t careful, Rhukon, or whoever the author of the current disaster was, would snare her, too. If they hadn’t already.
“Do ye think the black wyvern is responsible for this?” Lachlan asked sidestepping Kheladin’s query about magic for now.
Snorting, whuffling dragon laughter filled his mind. “Who else? He doesna like to lose, and we made him look like a fool in front of his cohorts.�
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“Can ye sense him—or the red--anywhere near to us?”
Kheladin was silent so long, Lachlan started to ask again, when he heard. “’Tis strange. I doona sense either Connor or Rhukon, yet I do detect other dragons. Many dragons. Just as it was afore Rhukon captured us in the sleeping spell.”
“Ye must be mistaken. How could that be?”
“I doona know, yet I trust what my magic tells me. Pity ye canna let me look for myself.”
“Once I get us above ground,” Lachlan promised. Confusion jockeyed with uncertainty. He didn’t know what had happened, but he had to act—and quickly before whatever had attacked them struck again. He and the dragon were vulnerable in the relatively narrow tunnel, open to strikes from both sides. It wasn’t a defensible position. The warrior in him knew it.
Since one direction seemed as good as the other, he started walking. If the earth beneath his feet trended downward, then he’d retrace his steps and go the other way. He walked for a long time. Lacking any other way to mark his progress, Lachlan counted steps. He’d reached six hundred-thirty when the tunnel’s floor developed a definite slope to it, an upward cant.
He dared to let himself hope he’d chosen wisely. Before Rhukon ensorcelled him, Lachlan had always considered himself a lucky man and a blessed one. Now he wasn’t so certain. With effort, he pushed his doubts and fears aside. They wouldn’t help him, wouldn’t return him to Maggie’s side.
After fifteen hundred steps, the air began to smell cleaner, less dank. The rats, constant companions on his journey so far, thinned out, apparently preferring the darker, damper segments of the tunnel. Either his mage light was getting brighter, which meant his magic was strengthening, or…
He doused the light and shut his eyes to defuse the afterimage. When he opened them, his mouth split in a grim smile. Daylight. It was a way yet, but it spilled into the tunnel and provided pale illumination.
After close to three thousand steps, he marched from the tunnel into a thick forest. “Okay,” he murmured, borrowing one of Maggie’s words, “I’m out, but this forest could be anywhere.”
He cast magic about himself, hunting for anything living and gasped. Kheladin had been right. There were dragons here, along with wolves, bears, coyotes, and a few, isolated pockets of people. He headed for the closest place he sensed men. They’d tell him what he wanted to know. In less than half an hour, he came upon a clearing with a small house. Not knowing whether he’d be seen as friend or foe, Lachlan cloaked himself with magic and approached carefully but stopped long before his presence might have alarmed the people he saw milling about. The dwelling’s mud and stone walls and thatched roof answered his questions more poignantly than any person could have. If that weren’t enough, a horse burdened with a plow yoke corroborated the unpleasant truth.
Lachlan faded back into the forest, the dragon clamoring in his mind. “Kheladin. Be quiet. We’re back in the sixteen hundreds. Or maybe it’s the fifteen hundreds or fourteen hundreds.”
“How—?”
“I doona know, and it doesna matter. Rhukon went to great lengths to separate me from Maggie, so he could sidestep the prophecy.” He pounded a fist into his thigh, cursing his own stupidity and inattention and sank into the dirt at the base of a large tree. If he’d been at the top of his game in that blasted store, and not thinking about burying his cock in Maggie, he might not be in this predicament.
He thudded his fist into packed earth and then did it again and again until his hand ached. Lachlan marshaled his weary mind. Right now he was reacting, when what he needed to do was think.
The Morrigan must be mixed up in this. The Celts mastered time travel eons ago.
“Maggie.” Her name leapt from his mouth in a breathy whisper, half entreaty, half prayer. “How will I ever get back to her?”
“If we’re really back in our own time, let me out. I can find our castle from the air.”
Lachlan recognized a good idea when he heard one. He’d barely stripped off his clothes when he felt himself shift.
Chapter Seventeen
Maggie woke to the soft murmur of voices. For the barest moment, she had no idea where she was and just enjoyed stretching out her limbs. Truth—cold and ugly—pushed the breath from her lungs, and she leapt from the bed. Jolted back to reality, she stared at the neat guest room Mauvreen had led her to and the double bed with its cheery patchwork quilt where she’d literally passed out.
Bet my witchy host had something to do with that.
Maggie hurried from the room. She had no memory of how the house was laid out, so she just followed the voices and hoped to hell that since she was inside, the house wouldn’t play any more tricks on her. It took a number of twists, turns, and half flights of stairs before she found the main floor. Memory returned in filmy wisps. She dashed into the parlor where she’d had tea, but it was empty. A door on its far side stood open. Through it, she saw Mary Elma and Mauvreen, sitting by an enormous stone fireplace drinking something out of heavy, ceramic mugs.
“Gran!” Maggie loped into the room.
“Child.” Mary Elma shot to her feet. Maggie didn’t see her cross the large room, but somehow she ended up in her arms. Maggie clung to her as if she were drowning, embarrassed by tears she couldn’t control. They splashed from her eyes as if someone had turned on a spigot. “There, there. Pull yourself together.” Mary Elma stroked her back. “There’s not a minute to waste.”
Something in her grandmother’s tone got through. Maggie remembered that tone from her childhood. It didn’t leave any room for argument—or self-pity. She disentangled herself from her grandmother and straightened her shoulders. Mauvreen thrust a mug into her hands. “Drink this.”
“What is it?” Maggie sniffed at the fragrant liquid.
“Booze.”
Maggie turned her gaze on her grandmother’s friend. “A bit early, isn’t it?”
Mauvreen shrugged. “As they say, it’s always five o’clock somewhere.” Maggie remembered telling Lachlan that; it brought a fresh spate of tears.
“Drink it.” Mary Elma’s words were more command than suggestion. She drew herself up to her full height of six foot two and frowned at her granddaughter. “Now. You have to learn to pick your battles, child. This isn’t one of them.”
Maggie’s lips twitched into half a smile. “For once I agree with you.” She moved the mug to her mouth and sipped. Yes, there was definitely alcohol in the mix, but herbs and other things, too.
“Better.” Her grandmother’s mouth curved into a wry grin. “We only poison our enemies.”
Enemies! “I’ve got to find Lachlan. Do you know where he is, Gran?”
Mary Elma’s grin flattened into lips pursed in a hard, flat line. “Yes.”
“That doesn’t sound good.” Maggie’s hands shook enough she worried she’d drop the mug.
“It’s not,” Mauvreen seconded. “Grab a seat. We need to strategize.” She flicked fingers at the cold hearth; it blazed to life. “Fires are good for many things, not the least of which is dispelling the chill shadow from fell deeds.”
Maggie sank into a deeply padded, needlepoint chair. The two witches dragged their matching chairs close. “How long did I sleep?”
“A few hours,” Mauvreen said. “You needed rest, so I saw you got some.”
“I suppose that’s why I have absolutely no memory of getting from the parlor to that bedroom I woke up in.”
Mauvreen quirked a brow but didn’t say anything. She exchanged glances with Mary Elma who said, “We can give it to her straight. My granddaughter’s a doctor. While she may have been foolish about her magic, she’s far from squeamish.”
Maggie took a large swallow from her mug. The drink had something in it that strengthened her, made her less shaky. “Give what to me straight?”
Mary Elma skewered her with bottomless, dark eyes. “Did you consummate your bond with Lachlan?”
To her dismay, Maggie felt herself blush. “Yes. More than onc
e, if it matters.”
“Did you meet the dragon?” Mauvreen asked.
“I not only met him. I rode him.”
Mary Elma clapped her hands together. “Better and better. This won’t be as difficult as I feared.”
Maggie twisted her head from side to side to ease the iron bar of tension sitting between her shoulder blades. “Stop talking in riddles. Just tell me where Lachlan is and how I can get him back. Are we all going to go fight Rhukon or something?”
“Tell me what you know about Lachlan and Rhukon.” Mary Elma sat straighter in her chair. “In fact, start at the beginning, and tell us everything.”
Maggie raised her cup again, drank, and was surprised she’d drained it. Mauvreen plucked it from her hand, refilled it from a kettle Maggie hadn’t noticed sitting atop the hearth, and gave it back. “All right.” Maggie nodded. “A few days ago, I’d taken off some time in the middle of the day. I was walking near the intersection of…”
Her story took much longer to tell than she’d expected, since one witch or the other interrupted with requests for either more information, or clarification, over and over again. “…Anyway, that’s about it,” she finished.
“Fascinating.” Mauvreen’s brown eyes glowed.
“Yes, isn’t it?” Mary Elma agreed.
The circular conversation had sucked her dry but didn’t tell her anything she wanted to know. It grated on Maggie. She waited while the witches stared at one another, presumably communicating telepathically. She tried to listen in but couldn’t. After about five minutes, Maggie cleared her throat, but the other women ignored her. Finally, she’d had enough. “Hey! I need to know where Lachlan is. At least an hour ago Gran said there wasn’t a moment to lose. I want to get moving.”
“Oh you do, do you?” Mary Elma focused intently on her. Maggie forced herself to stare right back. “Alrighty, child. Lachlan is back in the middle of the sixteenth century. He’ll be right at home there, since he lived through those times. I imagine his castle is intact. Dragons still fly free, which should please Kheladin.”