by A. S. Green
“Relax, cailín, I’m not going to hurt ye.”
“You’re not?”
“No.”
“Oh.” She brushed the bits of dry pine needles from her palms, and her body swayed. She put her hand to her forehead and closed her eyes, staggering a few more steps. “If that’s the case, you better pick me up again.”
Cormac sighed, hoisted her into his arms, and snagged her suitcase. She curled into him again, and his chest tightened in response, his instinct roaring, Protect! Keep her!
Not good. He had to get rid of this girl.
“I might still be a little lightheaded,” she said, sounding embarrassed.
“So it would seem.” He resumed his walk down the hill, now following the river that flowed from the falls and rushed toward Lake Superior at the bottom of the hill.
“I’m sorry,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the sound of rushing water.
“Don’t be.” It wasn’t her fault the daoine was dead, and he wasn’t going to blame her for fainting at the sight of a mutilated corpse. He had to see a dozen deaths before he stopped vomiting.
“You don’t seem very upset,” she said, sounding confused.
“Seen it before.” His voice came out like a growl, and his arms tightened around her, caging her protectively to his chest.
“You’ve seen what before?” she asked.
Cormac tucked his chin to look at her face. Her delicate dark eyebrows were drawn together over startling gray-green eyes. Clearly they were having two different conversations. Had she forgotten what she’d seen? Had her brain gone into self-preservation mode and she’d repressed the last two minutes? He frowned, and her face flushed into a beautiful shade of pink.
“Hey,” she said, looking over her shoulder in the direction he was carrying her. “Where are you taking me?”
Cormac clenched his teeth then repeated his warning from before. “Out of the woods. Ye shouldn’t have been in so deep, cailín.”
“First, my name’s not Colleen. It’s Meghan. Meghan Walsh.”
Cormac raised one dark eyebrow.
She looked away as if she regretted giving her full name, then she continued with an air of irritation. “Second, it seemed like a good enough place to camp.”
“Camp?” he asked, confused. “Ye have a tent then?” There certainly wasn’t one in her little suitcase, and he hadn’t seen anything else around her.
“I figured the trees would be some kind of shelter, and if I could have got a fire started…”
Christ, is that what she’d been trying to do with those two sticks? This girl was a bigger mess than he originally thought. He didn’t know whether to laugh or roar in frustration.
“Why were ye needing to camp?”
She sighed dramatically. “This douchebag I met last night promised to drive me all the way to Canada.” She paused there for a second before letting go of the rest. “He dumped me on the road when he realized the only kind of ride I was looking for was the kind in his car, if you get me.”
He got her. It pissed him off. It also made the rushing sound in his ears grow stronger.
“You’re Canadian?” he asked.
“No, I’m from Chicago.”
“Ye should go home,” he said, while the beast inside him roared in disagreement.
Meghan rolled her eyes. “Brilliant idea, if I had one.”
This information brought Cormac to a stop. His arms tightened, as if he wanted to be the shelter she was looking for. It was one thing for him to be homeless and on the road, quite another for her to be all alone. Still, it was nice to know they had something in common. “I understand.”
She looked up at his face, surprised. “You do?”
“Aye, but it doesn’t mean ye weren’t being stupid. Ye were standing inside a faerie ring. It’s dangerous.”
She snorted. “Is that some cute superstition from the old country? Your accent… You sound a little Irish, or something.”
Cormac’s body recoiled at her insinuation that he was a pádraig. “There’s nothing cute about a faerie ring, and it’s not superstitious to appreciate danger.”
They were still following the path that ran parallel to the river. When Cormac saw a good place to cross, he turned for it.
Meghan tensed in his arms. “What are you doing?”
“Crossing.”
“No!”
“What? Why?”
“I’m kind of…uh, afraid of water. Sorry, that’s—”
“Say no more.” And Cormac returned to the path. The last thing he wanted to do was give her more reason to be afraid.
“Actually,” she said, pushing against his chest, “you know what? I think you should put me down.”
“So ye can fall on your ass again?” He didn’t have time for this back-and-forth. He could find a safe place for her more quickly if he just carried her. Even faster if she didn’t freak out at how fast he could run. Quicker still, if his hound took over and she’d agree to hold on and ride.
“I won’t fall,” she said. “I’ve got this. I just needed another couple minutes. I’m good.”
“Let’s at least get out of the woods before ye try any more stunts.” He felt her body tense against his. He liked it better when she went soft.
“But… You’re being very cool about this, but aren’t I a little heavy?”
He glanced down to see if she was joking. Christ, she was being serious. He grunted. “You’re not heavy.” In fact, her weight was barely perceptible.
“Oh!” she said, sounding surprised. “Well, good.” Then she twisted her neck to see they were now at the edge of the woods, with a blacktop road in front of them. He set her feet on the ground.
Her hand rose to her neck and scratched. “Um… Do you happen to know if there’s a clinic nearby?”
“A clinic? Is something wrong?” He couldn’t help the swell of panic that rose inside of him.
“Probably not. It’s just that… Don’t laugh, but I think I might have got into something…maybe a little hallucinogenic up on that hill.”
He stared at her intently, wondering where she was going with this. Her face flushed.
“I thought I was seeing some pretty crazy things. There was this bloody…” her face contorted in horror, “and now I’m itching like crazy.”
He looked down again, seeing for the first time the red mottled rash on her neck. He lifted the edge of her camisole to see how far down the rash had spread.
She slapped at his hands before he got it any higher than her ribs. “What are you doing? Stop that!”
“It’s all over your stomach. Are ye feverish?” He couldn’t tell by touching her; his own body ran too hot.
“Now that you mention it…”
“I’ll get ye to a doctor.” The nearest clinic was about fifteen miles away. He’d have to carry her, and there was no way she’d understand how he did that so easily. Not unless he got creative.
“How far is town?” she asked, glancing nervously down the road.
“Still too far. Sorry about this, but…”
She returned her gaze to him. “Sorry about what? Hey. Wh- What’s going on?” Meghan took a step back. Her hand went to her head. “You’re…you’re going fuzzy.”
Cormac pulled his lips back to show his very white canines. He flashed her a devilish smile and quickly shifted into the hound.
Meghan Walsh took one look at him, and it was lights out.
So much for her not being a fainter.
Chapter Three
MEGHAN
Meghan Walsh braced herself against the edge of her chair. The examination room was painted a calming light blue, and it was brightly lit with fluorescent tubes mounted in the ceiling panels. It was germ free. Danger free. And had all the familiar trappings of a medical clinic. But Meghan Walsh was in trouble. Loads of trouble. So much fucking trouble.
First, she had zero memory of how she got to this brightly lit, antiseptic room.
Second,
she had no insurance.
And finally—and perhaps this should have been first on her list—the seriously scary, but also seriously hot, guy from the hilltop was in the room with her, leaning against the opposite wall with his massive arms crossed, muscles flexing, and looking supremely pissed off.
She didn’t know what his problem was. It wasn’t like she asked him to be here. Not that she minded the view.
He was very tall, well over six feet. His wavy dark brown hair was sun bleached at the ends, and there was a kink in it just below his ears, as if he often kept it tied back. He had a trim beard with a small scar just visible at the corner of his mouth. Not to mention, the most amazing, unblinking gray eyes that made her throat tighten, her stomach lurch, and her heart pound.
The fact he wore a black, tight-fitting, long-sleeved T-shirt that showed the cut lines of his pects didn’t help much. His pants were also black and made of heavy-duty material that was definitely worn, but showed no holes.
He had a shit-hot tooled-leather belt with a small holster for a seriously wicked looking knife, and another brown leather strap that went across his chest at an angle and was probably used for carrying tools, or something. She guessed it could have also been some kind of retro fashion statement, but she didn’t think so. This guy wasn’t dressing to impress; he looked more like someone hell-bent on taking names and kicking ass.
In fact, the last memory she had was of him carrying her down the hill. But he wasn’t so strong that he could have carried her the whole way here, was he? That is, wherever here was.
Maybe, since she ran into him in the woods, he was some kind of rugged lumberjack type. His name was probably something lumberjack-y, like Joe, or Garth, or Max…no Mack!
Suddenly feeling like she was somehow missing something, Meghan’s eyes moved to the chair beside her. She sucked in a breath of relief when she spotted her suitcase. Mack hadn’t left it behind. Thank God. She couldn’t afford to lose anything else.
Meghan wrapped her fingers around the edge of her chair while the doctor examined her eyes. Mack’s frown carved deeper into his handsome face, and she remembered.
Holy shit.
The real last memory she’d had was of him turning into an enormous, black dog with red gleaming eyes. She must have got into some seriously nasty shit on that hilltop for all the hallucinations she was having.
“You can go, er …” She let the sentence dangle, realizing she couldn’t really call him Mack out loud. He’d think she was nuts. “I can handle myself from here, and…I mean…You must have some place you need to be.”
“I’ll just make sure you’re okay first,” he said, his heated gaze penetrating her skin.
Meghan blinked up at him. How bizarre was that? It wasn’t like he knew her; he certainly didn’t owe her anything. Anything more, for sure. If he’d written “do a good deed” on his schedule for the day, he could consider that box ticked, so why wasn’t he leaving?
Everybody always left.
She glanced to the right, toward the doctor’s desk. Taped to the wall were several school photos of a girl and two boys. She wondered if they were photos of patients, or of his own children. She wished she could have been part of a family—any family, really—but especially a family that had a physician for a father. She bet nothing bad happened when your father knew how to take care of things. She didn’t know what her own father did.
The little girl’s photo was in a blue and yellow paper frame, shaped like a daisy. It made Meghan remember the fleecy daisy pillow she’d made in seventh-grade home economics. More than once over the last three years, she wished she’d brought that pillow with her when she hit the road.
“Keep your eyes on my finger, please,” said the doctor as he moved it to one side, then the other. Up, then down. She followed it with her eyes, and when he was done, he sat back in his chair, deep in thought.
Meghan used the moment of silence to examine Mack’s face. It wasn’t the first time she’d looked at him. Obviously. But it was the first time she could do so in the company of a third party. It was the doctor’s presence that convinced her she wasn’t dreaming and that this guy was real. Unworldly in the good looks department, for sure, but real.
She dropped her gaze to his mouth, and his broad lips parted on a breath, exposing very white teeth. When she raised her gaze, his eyes were intense. Steely gray, like storm clouds, and very focused on her.
Her throat thickened, making it hard to swallow.
“This rash,” the doctor said, touching the itchy welts on her neck. Mack tensed, and she could have sworn she heard him growl. She must have imagined it, though, because the doctor didn’t react. “How far has it spread?”
“To her belly,” Mack chimed in, and her eyes darted to him.
“Have you taken anything recently?” the doctor asked. “Prescription? Non-prescription?”
Meghan returned her focus to the doctor and raised her eyebrows disdainfully. “Are you asking me if I’m on drugs?”
“Are you?” he asked, as if he was used to avoidance.
Meghan pinched her lips together. For all the things she thought she’d seen on that hilltop, she supposed it was a fair question. “No.”
“Are you allergic to animals?” the doctor asked.
Mack narrowed his gray eyes. At the question? At her? She couldn’t tell.
“No. I used to have a cat, and I had a couple friends with dogs. Animals have never bothered me.”
“Mold? Dust? Penicillin? Bees? Any food?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Have you had a rash like this before?” the doctor asked.
“Once or twice.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he said, getting out a magnifier and clipping it to his eyeglasses. Then he leaned in to study her irritated skin. “Do you recall the circumstances?”
“The last time was after a Christmas Eve mass with my aunt and uncle. I even got a fever so I had to miss the dinner and all the festivities.” Not that her aunt and uncle were much into festivities.
The doctor looked back at Mack, then to her. “Where were the two of you?”
“Near the Devil’s Kettle,” Mack said, which was good because she had no idea.
Meghan blinked, remembering the terrifying sound of the falls they’d passed in the woods.
“Did you touch anything unusual when you were there?” the doctor asked her.
“Just some leaves and stuff.”
“She was near a grove of ash trees,” Mack put in.
The doctor looked doubtful, then he did a quick Google search on his computer. “They’re obviously not flowering in September. Hmmm. I suppose you could have been triggered by something that was brought into the area by someone else…on their clothes maybe, or their shoes. Were there other people with you?”
Mack’s head jerked up, and his eyes flashed.
“I’d…um…” She looked away from him and focused back on the doctor. “I’ve been alone since about lunchtime. I didn’t start itching until recently.”
“Could she really have an allergic reaction to something or someone who’d been in the area?” Mack asked, and then his eyes flicked to Meghan with a look of concern.
“It’s a theory,” the doctor said, “but only that. Perhaps I should get a better look at the rash on your torso. Would you please remove your shirt?”
Mack’s body jerked, and not like he was getting ready to excuse himself for the sake of propriety. In fact, the way his glance slashed toward the doctor, it was more like he was unhappy about the doctor asking such a question.
This surprised her, not only because it was just plain weird—he was a doctor for Christ’s sake—but also because the guy should be eager to be back on his way. Here was his chance.
“Um… Ex-cuse me?” she said, in a way designed to say, Now’s the time to go, buddy. Though, truth be told, the idea of undressing anywhere near this guy was kind of intriguing.
Mack’s eyes jerked to Meghan’s and his nostril
s flared. Then, with a growl—she was sure she hadn’t imagined it that time—he pushed himself off the wall and strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Now what the hell was that all about?
Chapter Four
CORMAC
Cormac tried to leave. He meant to leave. He thought he had it in hand when he walked out of the exam room, down the hall, through the lobby, and out the front doors of the clinic.
He told himself he wasn’t irritated by seeing that doctor’s hands on Meghan’s body. He told himself it was perfectly fine that that man should see her disrobed while he was sent away. But deep in his gut, the last thing he felt was “fine.”
He pushed those feelings down deep and kept walking because it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. There was no way in hell she could be his anamchara, his fated mate. It was unnatural. She was human… Beneath him…
And then he was thinking about her beneath him. Damn.
His body nearly turned of its own accord, and he strode back toward the clinic.
Wait. What the hell am I doing? This is insane.
Cormac turned around again, shoved his hands in his pockets, and headed away from the clinic with his head bowed low. He had a job to do.
To the Black Castle, the sídhe were unnatural, ungodly, and needing to be eradicated from the earth. They’d started with Ireland and then, after many of the sídhe escaped to North America, brought their twisted mission to the North Shore. It was time someone ended it. He was going to end it, and he couldn’t afford a distraction—least of all from a pádraig.
Cormac froze in his tracks. But if she held the key… If the doctor’s theory was right and she really was allergic to whomever had been in the faerie ring before them… If she was reacting to whatever this latest guy had been using to mask his scent… That would be reason to keep her close. She could help my cause, and I could make sure she was safe. Warm… Fed…
He shook his head like he could not believe he was actually doing this. He turned and walked toward the clinic again, his eyes on the pavement. He took five strides, growled low in his throat, then turned around again.