Niall turned to her, the look in his eyes not that of a man telling a tale, but of a man recounting a horror he knew all too well. “The devil appeared in the darkest hour of that terrible night, a wee devil with hair as wild as the winds and as black as night. His name was Veskin and he offered to save the lass, but at a price.”
His voice dropped, vibrating with a fury and a pain that mirrored her own.
“Veskin had no need for the chieftain’s soul. Nay, the debt would be paid in flesh. Once a generation, Veskin would claim his due—a lass. A lass marked for all the world to know she was his and his alone. A lass with eyes of two different colors—the green of the one who’d been saved and the brown of Veskin’s own.”
Julia scoffed. “That’s absurd.” She’d been flying along, half-believing, right up to the part about her eyes.
“Heterochromia—two different colored eyes—is not the mark of the devil.”
Niall’s jaw clenched. “Always, no. But in the case of the Brodies, aye. They are.” He turned away, continuing as if she hadn’t interrupted. “Veskin gave the chieftain a golden chalice—the Fire Chalice—and taught him how to use it to summon him. Then the devil made him promise to call him forth on the thirteenth birthday of every marked lass. To tie her and leave her for him in the cave down by the loch.”
“Why? What does he want them for?” But the images from the visions she’d had every time she touched that chalice strafed her mind. The blood. So much blood. And that severed foot.
She knew.
“He kills them, doesn’t he?” And not just killed them. He ripped them limb from limb.
Niall met her gaze, a terrible knowledge in his eyes. A horror that made her recoil even as the words remained unsaid between them. There was no need for the words.
She knew.
Terror hammered at the inner walls of her chest.
“If the clan fails to give the devil his due, the clan will die,” Niall continued. “When I was six, my sister Catriona was born with the cursed eyes. My mother wept. I didn’t understand the full nature of the curse until the night she was to be sacrificed.”
He shook his head, his gaze far away. “She was tied in the devil’s cave down by the loch. The ritual was performed to summon Veskin, then all fled, none wishing to risk his own life.” His gaze turned to her, defiance and a brother’s love flaring in his eyes. “I followed them to the cave that night. And when the others fled, I freed my sister before the devil arrived. Two of my cousins saw us as we escaped the cave. I told Catriona to run while I pulled my sword and held back my cousins. But she failed to get away.
“A second devil appeared, one with hair the color of the setting sun. We all saw him. We all heard her scream. But then he said something to her. He enchanted her with his words and she allowed him to put something around her neck. And then they were gone. Disappeared. Both of them.
“Moments later, the black-haired devil, Veskin, came storming out of the cave, demanding his lassie. I told him another devil stole her, but Veskin wasn’t appeased. His eyes turned red and he cursed my clan and disappeared.” Niall stopped pacing, a look of anguish aging his face. “Within days, the bairns began to die in their sleep. Within a fortnight, all the weans under thirteen were dead.
“The clan left an unmarked lass in the devil’s cave, but the summoning failed. Veskin ignored us. Two lassies were left for him, then three, but Veskin would have naught to do with any of them. And the lasses offered died in their sleep as well.
“From that day to this, no bairn has lived past his or her third year. Not a one. Until six months ago, no lass was born with the cursed eyes to save us. Until six months ago when my wife gave birth to my wee Isobel. For years, I’ve searched for a lass with the eyes, praying a by-blow was born unnoticed, but to no avail. Until now.
“When Isobel was born, I knew I must sacrifice her too young. Already, there is not a member of the clan under the age of four and thirty. Another thirteen years and too few of our women will still be of childbearing age. The clan will die. A couple of months ago, I went to the wall cupboard where Veskin’s golden chalice was locked for safekeeping, knowing what I had to do. Knowing I must sacrifice my daughter for the sake of the clan.
“But the chalice was gone. And the last one who’d seen it, my own father, had been dead for years. I searched the castle for weeks, to no avail. The chalice was gone. Without it—without a means of summoning the devil to break the curse—my clan was doomed. So I hired the Wizard to find the chalice.”
His mention of Talon wreaked havoc on her heart.
Niall met her gaze. “Forgive me, lass, but I thank God in heaven, for he answered my prayers when he delivered both you and the chalice to us this day. I have no wish for your death, but I must save my clan. I know ye canna understand, not when you have no love for these people. So I tell you now, I am sorry.”
Pity moved through her, an odd pity for the man who would offer her up to be killed. It helped, a little, to know he wasn’t doing it out of viciousness. Or evil. She wouldn’t forgive him. She wasn’t a good enough person for that. But in exchange for his explanation, she could ease his mind on one count.
“The little man who took Catriona saved her. She’s fine.”
Niall’s gaze narrowed, a spark of hope lighting his eyes. “How is that possible?”
“His name is Hegarty and while I haven’t met him personally, I know people who have, who call him a friend. He sent Cat to the future, more than three hundred years. To your descendants. They didn’t hurt her, Niall. They loved her and raised her and accepted her as their own, though I don’t think she ever told them where she’d come from. A couple of years ago, she met a man from the Hebrides and fell in love. They just got married. She’s happy. And in that time, alive and well.”
He stared at her, his expression a mix of hope and disbelief. “And ye ken this how?”
Julia shrugged. “It’s easy enough to figure out, right? I’m from that time. My father was the younger brother of the chieftain, though I wasn’t raised in Scotland. I was at Catriona’s wedding last Saturday. Afterward, she gave me the stone Hegarty used to send her to the future and told me to take it far away and not put it on. I didn’t understand why. I didn’t listen.”
“Ye put it on.”
“And here I am.”
His mouth opened, an expression of wonder and joy softening his features. “I saved her.”
“Yes.”
“And in that time, the curse is no more. She lived. You lived.”
Julia shrugged. “I guess even devils don’t live forever.”
Niall’s face slowly hardened again, though the regret in his eyes was deep and real. “I thank you for telling me she’s happy. Though I ken I deserve no such boon, you’ve eased my heart. You’ve given me a gift I’ve no ability to repay.” His mouth tightened. “If you wish, I’ve a fine whiskey. You must be conscious, but you needn’t be sober.”
Julia closed her eyes, fear shuddering through her all over again. He might be sorry, but nothing had changed. She was still going to die.
The offer of the whiskey was tempting. So tempting. To dull the pain of Talon’s death. To ease the terror of her own.
But no. She wasn’t giving up. Hegarty had come when they tried to sacrifice Catriona. Maybe he’d come again. And even if he didn’t, maybe she could find a way to fight. She refused to give up until there was no hope left.
And if any chance presented itself, she needed to be sober.
“No, thanks.”
Niall nodded, a hint of respect in his eyes. He gave a call in a language she thought might be Gaelic. Angus and another man entered the room. Each took her by one arm.
“It is time,” Niall said, his voice flat and hard once more.
As they ushered her out the door, she shied away from the terror clawing at the edges of her mind and reached for thoughts of Talon. Of the way he’d held her as she’d flown into his arms. Of the way he’d risked all to come to he
r again.
I love you, she told him silently, and felt his presence giving her strength. He’d be there with her, waiting for her as she took her last breath. Easing those last moments before they were reunited again.
He was the only good thing that had ever come into her life. Her memories of him would be the things she clung to as she died.
TWENTY
Talon awoke slowly, the base of his skull throbbing. Swallowing a groan, he pushed himself to a sitting position, feeling damp earth beneath his hands. He blinked over and over, but the darkness refused to abate. Was it still night? Was Julia still alive?
A tight band of fear and fury contracted around his chest. He’d freed her, but the damned ring’s diversion hadn’t helped them at all. Instead he’d only managed to call down the rest of the castle’s guards.
Useless bit of rock.
He rose unsteadily to his feet, his head colliding with solid stone. Jesu. Where was he? The smell of damp earth hung heavy in the air, as did the crawling sensation that he’d been buried alive.
With a growing uneasiness he felt for the ends of his tomb, needing to understand where he was. His hands encountered rock and dirt. And bones.
Human bones.
As his fingers closed around a rack of almost certainly human ribs, the bones shifted. With a crack, the skull landed on his foot.
His pulse pounded. His jaw clenched as he kicked the skull away and moved on. But his explorations uncovered six more skeletons and defined his tomb to be small and circular, little bigger around than the height of two men laid out end to end, and not quite the height of one.
But even as he thought the last, he stepped into the center and felt a faint stirring of air—and no ceiling. He looked up with surprise and saw, high, high above him, the faint flicker of light.
With a slam to his belly that nearly drove him to his knees, he understood.
He’d been tossed into a bottle dungeon—a hole deep in the ground from which there was no escape unless his jailors saw fit to throw a rope down to him.
His six skeletal companions had been given no such reprieve.
Jesu, he had to get out of here! He had to get to Julia before they took her life.
He lifted his ring and pressed the amethyst to his lips.
“If ever I needed ye, old friend, ’tis now. I seek my freedom, ring. And Julia’s.” Over and over, he demanded and pleaded, begged and cajoled, until a sound above caught his attention.
“Give me my amethyst, laddie, and I’ll get ye out of there.”
Talon’s heart stilled. He peered up through the opening of the pit and caught but a glimpse of a man. But he would know that voice anywhere.
Hegarty’s.
His thumb brushed the ring and he muttered at the stone. “Ye answer my wishes, dinna ye? But ne’er in the way I want ye to.”
“Hegarty!” he called. “Ye must save Julia. They mean to kill her!”
The wee man grunted. “Sorry, I am, lad, but I cannot. She belongs to Veskin and not even I dare cross that one.”
“You saved Catriona from him.”
“Nay, her brother saved her. I merely gave her a means of escape.”
“Then get me out of here so I can save her!”
“Give me my ring, lad,” Hegarty replied evenly. “I’ll leave ye there to rot until ye fulfill yer end of our bargain all those years ago.”
“I never promised to give it back to you, ye wee liar.”
“’ Tis of no mind, now, is it? Ye’ll not be leaving that hole with the ring, lad, and that be the truth. Whether ye give it to me now while ye still have a chance to save your lassie, or your body relinquishes it when ye die in that place, I’ll have my ring.”
Talon’s breathing grew ragged with his desperation to be free. But not without his ring! How could he save her without the ring’s magic?
He paced, thinking. Plotting.
“Get me out of here first, Hegarty. I canna possibly hand ye the ring from here now, can I? If I try to throw it to ye and miss, I’ll ne’er find it again in this dark.”
And once he was out of the dungeon, he’d find a way to be free of the dwarf without giving away his ring.
But Hegarty was not fooled.
“Take the amethyst off your finger, lad, and hold it in your palm.”
Talon’s mouth dropped open, a chill stealing over his flesh. The moment he took it from his finger, the dwarf would snatch it away.
No! He’d not give it up. It was all he had. All he was.
As if hearing his thoughts, Hegarty called down softly,
“’ Tis time ye relied on the gifts God gave ye, laddie. And ye’ve not much time, if ye catch my meaning. Twenty minutes to midnight. Your lass still lives, but Veskin comes. I feel his foul breath on the back of my neck and I would be out of here when he arrives.”
Talon felt the choice like a blade slicing him in two. He would not part with his ring! Yet what good did the amethyst do him when he was trapped in a prison from which there was no escape?
What good was anything if he let Julia die?
Slowly, painfully, his fingers curled around the metal and stone that had been a part of him for so many years. He gripped the ring, his hand beginning to shake, the sweat rolling between his shoulder blades.
It was all he was.
All he would ever be. Though Julia would disagree. What had she said to him? You don’t need the ring. You’d be a better man without it.
His muscles tensed. She was wrong.
But if giving up the ring gave him even the slightest chance of saving her, he would forsake it all.
With a tug as painful as if he ripped a limb from his body, he wrenched the ring from his finger and set it in his palm.
A heartbeat later, it disappeared.
Talon dug his bare and shaking fingers into his hair. What have I done? What have I done?
The rope slapped him in the back of the head.
His means of escape.
Shaking off the deadening pall of his loss, he focused on the only thing that mattered—reaching Julia—and began to pull himself up and out of the bottle pit. When he finally reached the top and hauled himself over the edge, his knees went weak with the relief of being free.
But as he straightened and looked around, his blood turned to ice, then to white-hot fury.
Hegarty was gone. His ring was gone. And he wasn’t free at all. The bottle dungeon was locked within a larger cage.
He leaped to his feet and grabbed the metal slats of the cage door, but it didn’t give. He might have escaped the pit, but he was still well and truly trapped.
“Hegarty.” He retained the presence of mind to keep his voice low, the call no less desperate for that terrible quiet.
His hands hard around the steel bars, his heart began to thud. Rank fear coated his flesh in a cold, acrid sweat.
No. No. He wanted to scream to the heavens and rail at God. Julia was about to die and he was helpless to save her. He was helpless to save either of them without his ring, without his magic.
The Wizard was gone.
Talon MacClure alone remained. Powerless.
Useless.
He sank to the floor, his head in his hands, as hopelessness closed over him, sweeping him into a dark pit of despair.
The night was dark but for the torches lighting the way, the air damp with the promise of rain, as the procession followed a well-worn path down the hill from the castle to the shores of the dark loch. Twenty Brodie men.
And their sacrifice, Julia thought bitterly.
Before they’d left the castle gates, they’d tied her wrists firmly in front of her. Niall Brodie kept tight hold of one of her arms while Angus kept a grip on her other, as if they feared she’d escape, which was ridiculous. There wasn’t a man among them who didn’t tower over her, who couldn’t take her down with a single blow.
But Niall was probably thinking of that last summoning, of the way he’d helped Catriona escape, and he was taking
no chances of anything going wrong this time.
Though the men said nothing as they escorted her to her death, she sensed their emotions clearly. Excitement. Fear. And a fragile hope.
And in the thumb Niall ran back and forth on her arm, she sensed regret. Yes, he was leading her to her death, but he wasn’t happy about it. That was something, she supposed.
But it wouldn’t save her.
And it wouldn’t save his daughter twelve and a half years from now.
The image of that severed foot rose in her mind and she shied away from the dark terror. Instead, she concentrated on the night, on the feel of the cool, damp breeze along her cheek and the sound of the wind in the boughs above her head. She concentrated on the feel of rocks and dirt beneath her feet, and on holding back the scream that burned and clawed at her throat.
It wasn’t fair! This wasn’t her time. She shouldn’t even be here.
Her swirling thoughts stilled. No, this fate was to have been Catriona’s. Catriona, who was, even now, on her honeymoon, her life rich and full with family and love.
While Julia had nothing and no one waiting for her. And the only man she’d ever loved was ...
A sob caught in her throat. She fought it, shoving her mind away from Talon. If she started crying now, she’d never stop. And she would not meet her death that way.
They led her down the rocky path, her body trembling from head to foot in a deep quaking that had begun when they’d tied her wrists, and refused to stop.
Finally, they reached the cave. One by one, the men placed the half-dozen torches into iron holders attached to the rock walls, illuminating the cave she’d glimpsed too many times in her visions. And her nightmares.
Her captors led her to the far wall, a wall whose rocks had long ago turned black. From the blood of the girls who had gone before.
In the middle of the carnage-soaked wall, a large hook protruded, catching her gaze, ripping away the last of her control. Shredding her courage.
Julia fought against the arms propelling her to it, digging her bare feet in the dirt as her heart raced out of her chest and panic flared across her mind.
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