Grave Sins

by Jenna Maclaine

  Devlin chuckled. “I don’t envy Michael. Trust that boy to fall in love with a redhead who has powerful dark magic tied to her temper.”

  I smiled back at him and the tension between us eased.

  “I saw her last night,” he remarked. “Up on the roof.”

  “Morrigan?” I asked. I’d wondered if I was the only one who had seen her.

  “She looked … pleased.”

  “She is pleased, damn her. Devlin, I didn’t ask for this and if I could make it go away, I would. But Morrigan says that it’s a weapon I’ll need, and who am I to argue with a goddess?”

  Devlin frowned. “I’m a Christian man, Cin. It was a hard enough leap of faith for me to accept that Morrigan actually existed. She may be a deity but she is not God Almighty, and I don’t believe that she is infallible. She is, however, the guardian and the fountainhead of our race, and I’ve heard from her own lips that we vampires are meant to fight some great battle. If she believes that the dark magic will help us all get through it alive, then I will trust her judgment. But, Cin, if this causes you to become a danger to yourself or others I will lock you up in Castle Tara myself, and Morrigan and I will have a reckoning.”

  “I accept that as your responsibility, Devlin. If I ever do become a danger, though, you’d better summon Morrigan before you try to take me. After what I felt last night, I don’t think there’s a witch alive who could bind my powers.”

  Whatever he was going to say to that was lost as our attention was drawn by the shouting of men’s voices from one of the lower floors, followed by the sound of someone running up the stairs. Devlin, even after everything he’d seen last night, pushed me behind him and grabbed Michael’s claymore from the top of the trunk. The bedroom door swung open and Justine burst in.

  “You need to come quickly,” she said, looking at me.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She opened her mouth, then snapped it shut, shaking her head. “He’s asking for you and if you don’t come quickly someone is going to get killed.”

  Justine turned and rushed out of the room. Devlin and I caught up to her on the stairs.

  “Who is asking for me? Michael?”

  Already I could hear a male voice shouting, “I’m Drum Murray and I’m telling you, mate, I’m not leaving here until I see her.”

  As we reached the first floor, Justine motioned toward the front door. “Not Michael. Him.”

  I looked across the foyer into a face I never thought I’d see again, and tripped down the last two steps. Only Devlin’s hand snaking out to catch my arm prevented me from falling on my face. All eyes in the foyer turned to me, expectantly.

  I cocked my head to one side and said, “What the bloody hell are you doing here?”

  Chapter 31

  A wolfish grin was my reply, which I suppose was proper considering that he was a werewolf. Khalid and Hashim, who had apparently been trying to throw him out the door, fell blessedly silent as the werewolf and I stared at each other across the marble expanse of the foyer. Michael, who was holding a tea tray and wearing a perplexed look on his face, gently set the service down on the Chippendale hall table and walked to stand beside me.

  “Darling, who is he?” he whispered.

  I’d met the werewolf exactly twice. The first time was in London the night I’d woken as a vampire, the night I had fought for the first time as one of The Righteous. While Michael, Devlin, and Justine had been brawling with a rogue master and his followers, I had freed a man whom I’d thought to be a human prisoner. In my youth and inexperience I hadn’t realized that the chains binding him were solid silver. When the man had promptly escaped by leaping from a window two stories up, I’d realized my mistake.

  The second time I’d seen him was after I had fought Kali and won. He had followed me to Stonehenge and, in werewolf form, saved me from Kali’s lieutenant, Sebastian. The debt of honor he owed me for rescuing him had been repaid and I’d never thought to see the man again.

  “He’s the werewolf who held Sebastian at bay until you arrived,” I whispered back. “I don’t even know his name.”

  “My name is Drummond Murray,” the werewolf said as he crossed the foyer. Khalid and Hashim moved to block his path. “I need a word with you in private, Miss Craven.”

  I regarded the werewolf for a moment, then glanced at Khalid and Hashim and nodded. They did not look pleased, but they stepped back and let him pass.

  I motioned toward the drawing room. “Please make yourself comfortable,” I said. “I’ll only be a moment.” I watched Drummond walk through the open door, and then I turned to Michael. “I think you’d better come with me.”

  He glanced down at me and nodded, following after Drummond.

  Justine gave me a confused look, and I shrugged as I closed the drawing room doors. Drummond Murray was standing by the hearth with a grim expression on his face. He was perhaps six feet tall with the sort of raw, earthy masculinity that you’d expect from a werewolf. The liberal strands of silver that ran through his long black hair belied the fact that he appeared to be only in his thirties. He’d been very lean when I had freed him from captivity, but the intervening years had added an impressive amount of muscle to his frame. Other than that, he looked exactly the same as he had when I had last seen him, thirteen years ago. Were werewolves virtually immortal, like vampires? I had no idea. Drummond was the only werewolf I’d ever met.

  “Drummond, this is Michael, my consort. Anything you have to say to me you can say in front of him.”

  “I remember,” Drummond said as he extended a hand in greeting. “I damn sure wouldn’t ever want to cross swords with you, mate.”

  Michael grinned at him. After the tension of the last few weeks it was nice to see that smile again.

  “What brings you to Edinburgh?” Michael asked.

  Drummond nodded in my direction. “She does. Her cousin sent me here.”

  I looked at him, confused. “Lorie?”

  “Actually her daughter Raina sent me. The girl wouldn’t leave me be until I came here to warn you.”

  Michael stiffened. “Warn her about what?”

  “Mary Margaret Macgregor is on her way here,” he said grimly, “and you need to get out of town.”

  I collapsed onto the sofa. “Aunt Maggie is coming here?” I asked breathlessly. “Why? And how do you know that?”

  “I work for your aunt as her gamekeeper,” Drummond explained. “I lived near Glen Gregor when I was human, and after you freed me I wanted nothing more than to go back to the Highlands.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “You don’t sound Scottish.”

  “I was held captive by an English vampire, may he rot in hell, for several centuries. I lost my brogue long ago,” he explained.

  I still didn’t believe it was a coincidence the werewolf just happened to be employed by my aunt, but at the moment it was the least of my concerns.

  “How does Maggie know I’m here?” I asked skeptically.

  “She didn’t,” he replied, “but I expect she does by now. She went to Ravenworth because she said you’re always there this time of year. Neither Raina nor I knew exactly where Ravenworth was so Raina cast a location spell. Imagine our surprise when instead of pointing in the vicinity of London, it said you were in Edinburgh.”

  “Lorie’s daughter cast a location spell? She can’t be any more than sixteen years old,” I said, surprised. I hadn’t come into my magic until I was twenty-two.

  “Why is Maggie coming here?” Michael asked impatiently.

  Drummond looked at me, and from his expression I wasn’t certain I wanted to hear the answer.

  “She’s coming to bind your powers,” he said. “And Raina says we must stop her.”

  Chapter 32

  I set down the whiskey decanter and pointed the tumbler I held at Michael. “I told you she thought I was evil.”

  And that was even before what happened in Venice. Unlike Fiona and Mrs. Mackenzie, Aunt Maggie had never c
ome to terms with the fact that I was a vampire. After I’d been turned she had reluctantly agreed to spend some time with me every summer in Inverness, teaching me how to control my magic.

  I had been taught from childhood that I would one day come into my powers and be a true witch. I hadn’t been prepared for the awesome surge of magic that had filled me the night my mother had died in a carriage accident on the way home from a neighbor’s ball. As I had explained it to Michael at the time, it was like spending your life reading about swordsmanship and then one day having someone put a claymore in your hand. In your head you understood how it worked, but having never wielded the weapon, you were bound to be inept. I’d been more than inept. I’d been a disaster waiting to happen.

  In my mother’s absence, Maggie had trained me. She had coldly taught me what I needed to know, but the closeness that we had shared when I’d been human was gone. In a way I didn’t blame her for being wary of me, once I’d been turned, but it hurt all the same. I hadn’t gone back to Inverness after Venice. I had learned to control my power, and I no longer needed her guidance. In all honesty, though, the real reason I had stayed away was that I was afraid she would take one look at me and know what darkness was buried deep inside.

  Michael was still questioning Drummond, asking all the things I wasn’t truly certain I wanted to hear the answers to. “How long do we have until she arrives?”

  “She would have made it to Ravenworth by now, and found out that you aren’t there. I’d guess that she would rest for a couple days and then drive down to London and take a ship to Edinburgh. I think that would be easier on her than a trip overland by carriage.”

  Good, I thought. I probably had a week, a week and a half at most, to get out of town. I just hoped it was enough time.

  “And she wants to bind Cin’s powers? Why now? And whatever for?”

  I smiled at him. After what I’d done to those vampires tonight I didn’t think I deserved the amount of incredulity in his voice.

  “She said she needed to do it now, before she got too old to travel such long distances. As to the why, I’ve heard her say that Cin’s magic is unnatural and dangerous.”

  It was an old argument that Maggie and I had had many times. It was true that my magic was not the same as the other witches in my family. It was not a tool I used; it was a living part of me. I required no ritual, no spellcraft to call my magic. It was always there, ready to rise and do my bidding. The Macgregor women had always needed sacred circles, ceremony, and the paraphernalia of our craft to call and focus their magic. That I did not had always worried my aunt. She wholeheartedly believed that wielding the kind of power I had without the counterbalance of blessing and sacrifice would one day consume and destroy me. I tended, however, to believe that Morrigan would not have given me such power if she didn’t trust that I could carry the burden.

  “You said you came here to stop her,” I said. “Why?”

  “Because Raina is in possession of a journal that belonged to one of your ancestors, the first Macgregor witch of your line, and she firmly believes there’s a passage that specifically refers to you.”

  “What does it say?” I asked, intrigued. Lorraina Macgregor, who was called Rainy by her family, was the first witch of our line, and the firstborn female of every generation was named for her. She was also believed by some to have possessed the second sight.

  Drummond pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “I made her write it down for me. It says. ‘One day there will come a red witch, beloved of the Goddess, to our line. Danger surrounds her, but she must be protected at all costs, for she will restore what was taken from you, and she will save our world.’ This is where Raina and your aunt have a fundamental difference of opinion. Maggie is certain that the passage refers to your great-grandmother Charlotte, who married Lord Robert right before Culloden and, because he was English and her lands passed to him, saved Glen Gregor from Butcher Cumberland.”

  I frowned. “It’s generally assumed that Rainy’s journal entries were actually letters to her husband. If that’s true, then when she says this witch will ‘restore what was taken from you,’ one can assume that the ‘you’ she is addressing is her husband. As far as I know, great-grandmother Charlotte didn’t restore anything that was taken specifically from John Macgregor, way back in the mid-1600s. And if this prophesy does refer to me, how exactly am I supposed to restore something to a man who’s been dead for nearly three hundred years?”

  “I don’t know,” Drummond said, handing me the piece of paper. “I suppose you’ll figure it out eventually. What I do know is that they call you the Red Witch of The Righteous, and that you did once save the world. Raina is adamant that you need to be protected, even if it is from your own aunt, and that’s why she sent me to warn you. Luckily I made it here before Maggie so you should have plenty of time to board a fast ship and be on the Continent before she arrives.”

  Michael and I looked at each other. “It’s a little more complicated than that,” I said.

  Drummond narrowed his eyes. “How complicated can it be?”

  I laughed harshly at that. When I’d explained to him why we were here, he sat down and blew out a frustrated breath.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked.

  “Actually, I have a spell that might do us some good, but I need a few things from the market. Obviously none of us can go out in the daylight—but you can.”

  Michael glanced sharply at me. I knew what he was thinking. Spellcraft was not my forte, but we were running out of options. Nothing had happened in two weeks, no more bodies, no more attacks. We needed to flush the villains out and we needed to do it quickly—not only because the queen was unwell and my very powerful aunt was coming to bind my magic, but also because Michael and I had finally sorted out our problems and I wanted to put as much distance between us and Edinburgh as possible before anything else went wrong. It was past time to end this, and if I could manage to work this one spell properly then we might be able to be on a Calais-bound ship in two days’ time.

  The werewolf nodded. “If it will speed things along I’m happy to be of assistance. I promised Raina I would see you safe and I think it goes without saying that I’d rather not be here when your aunt arrives.”

  I shook my head, baffled. Aunt Maggie had nearly run mad when she’d found out that I had let Michael turn me into a vampire. I wondered what she would do if she knew she was harboring a werewolf on her estate.

  Chapter 33

  MacLeod’s study door was slightly ajar, and a shaft of light spilled out into the dark hallway. I paused with my hand on the knob when I heard muffled sobs and a female voice from within.

  “I don’t understand it,” I heard Bel ask. “Am I not pretty?”

  “You know you’re beautiful, lass,” MacLeod said.

  “Then what’s wrong with me? Why doesn’t he love me anymore?” she cried.

  “Whoever he was, he was a fool to let you get away,” MacLeod replied in the sort of tone a father would use with his child.

  I certainly wouldn’t have been able to stand her for more than a month, but men often have different criteria when choosing a mate. I would have thought that a woman as beautiful as Bel would leave a string of broken hearts behind her, not the other way around.

  Bel sniffled. “Yes, he was. And I was so good to him,” she said softly, her voice taking on a seductive timbre. “You have no idea how very good I can be.”

  I cleared my throat and pushed open the door. MacLeod looked up from where he was leaning against his desk. He seemed surprised but didn’t look the least bit guilty. Bel, however, looked ready to scratch my eyes out. She was standing mere inches from the king with one delicate hand placed gently on his chest.

  “If you’ll excuse us, Bel, I need a word with His Majesty,” I said.

  She gathered her composure and nodded to me coolly. When she’d gone I closed the door and gave MacLeod an arch look.

  “Things ended badly wit
h her former lover,” he explained.

  “Does she cry on your shoulder often?”

  He shrugged. “I think she sees me as something of a father-figure.”

  I laughed. “I highly doubt that.”

  MacLeod seemed inclined to drop the matter. “What was it you wished to talk to me about?” he asked.

  “How is the queen?” I asked.

  “There’s been no change,” he replied glumly, “and I don’t know how much longer she can continue on like this.”

  “Actually, that’s what I wanted to speak with you about. I’m going to attempt a spell this evening. If it works, it should allow us to see the ghost that’s doing this to her.”

  “What sort of spell?” he asked.

  “If it works correctly, and I’m not guaranteeing anything, it should allow us to see the unseen.”

  “Such as the ghost you believe is in my townhouse?”

  “Whatever the entity is, this should allow us to see it.”

  “Do you have any plans for what we’re going to do if we actually see this ghost?” MacLeod asked.

  I blew out a breath. The spellbook I had contained several banishing spells, which might be helpful if I could work them properly, but I was reluctant to use them quite yet. I wasn’t certain what would happen to Marrakesh if I exorcised the ghost before it reversed whatever it was doing to keep her unconscious. I didn’t tell MacLeod, but in light of our villain’s recent inactivity, I was sincerely praying that all the blessings we’d had performed on these two houses over the last few weeks hadn’t driven the ghost away and condemned the queen. At this point I would be happy just to be able to see what I was dealing with.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” I answered. “If we know for certain what it is, then we can figure out a way to fight it.”

  MacLeod nodded. “All right. Is there anything I can do?”

  “I’m asking that everyone gather downstairs at midnight. I should be finished by then, and we’ll be able to see if the spell worked or not.”