Edge of Yesterday (Edge Series Book 1)

by Tarah Scott

  As he’d noted earlier, no streetlights hung above the road as silent reminders that modern cars traversed the streets of Heatheredge forty-six out of every forty-eight months. Just like at Raghnall, he hadn’t glimpsed so much as an errant electric cord peeking out from behind a table. He found no facades that transformed the internet café and local bistro into two-dimensional medieval buildings.

  He wanted to tell himself that this Heatheredge was a living history museum that lay hidden somewhere in the hills distant enough from the modern Heatheredge so as not to be discovered by tourists, but how distant? Six hundred years? The bleating of sheep, neighing of horses, the creak of wagons, and the smells… How far away would this place have to be so that modern Heatheredge had no idea of its existence?

  How had he missed this the night he’d landed here? He thought back. The night had been fairly bright. No lights had shown in the cottage windows, but he’d attributed that to the reenactment. But no lights had dotted the countryside when they had traveled to Raghnall, either. He’d been exhausted, groggy from all the fighting, not to mention wounded. In retrospect, while he wouldn’t see lights as he would in Aberdeen, enough homes were scattered about the countryside outside Heatheredge that he should have seen something. Yet, even when they’d crossed the river, the mill had been eerily quiet.

  He felt like he’d been thrown into an alternate reality.

  Or back in time.

  That would be a damned hard trail for even Ginny to follow.

  Cailean’s thoughts froze. Constable Edan Drummond had investigated that man’s disappearance four years ago. The investigation revealed the man had gone missing the night of the Great Performance, the very same reenactment portraying the death of Elizabeth Ross that Cailean had taken part in before he’d found himself in this Heatheredge.

  What had Drummond said to him? “Take care of yourself tonight. People have been known to get lost in the shadows beyond the theatre lights.”

  A chill rolled down his arms. Was the man who disappeared four years ago here, at this Heatheredge?

  Had he fallen into the Twilight Zone?

  “Lennox…” Gregory leaned in, spoke in a low voice, “Crowe is up ahead.”

  “Aye,” Lennox replied. “I see him.”

  Cailean snapped from his thoughts. “Crowe? Where is he?” But before either man could answer, he caught sight of three men up ahead and recognized one of them as Val. Then he realized the man couldn’t be Val.

  “What twist is this?” he muttered. The Val Ross that Cailean knew was at least fifty years old. This man couldn’t be more than thirty. Val had said nothing about a son. “But then you wouldn’t, would you, Val?”

  “Who are ye talking to?” Lennox demanded.

  Cailean snorted. The man even wore a crow feather woven into his hair.

  “Cailean,” Lennox said, but was cut off when Crowe called his name. Lennox’s gaze shifted to him and Cailean slowed along with Lennox as Crowe strode toward them. His two companions kept pace with him.

  They reached them and Crowe said to Lennox, “Has your father returned?”

  “Nae, he is no’ due home for another week.”

  Crowe’s attention swung onto Cailean, and Cailean read a startling hardness in the man’s eyes.

  “Who are you?” Crowe looked at him, his eyes cold.

  “Cailean Mackay from Durness,” Lennox answered. “We are on our way to the merchant stalls. If there is nothing else ye need…”

  “Aye, there is something more,” Crowe said in a voice that said ‘fuck you.’ “Do you know anything about five of my men being murdered two nights ago?”

  “Murdered?” Lennox repeated. “Nay. What happened?”

  “We found them here in Heatheredge, on the east side of the village.” Crowe regarded Cailean. “Where were you two nights ago?”

  From the corner of his eye, Cailean saw Lennox’s mouth tighten. “With Lennox at Raghnall,” Cailean replied.

  Crowe’s eyes flicked to Lennox, who said, “He was with me.”

  “Where did you get that wound?” Crowe nodded at Cailean’s left arm, where his sleeve was still rolled up to his bicep. He’d removed the bandage as the wound had scabbed over nicely.

  Cailean grinned. “A lucky strike by Lennox.”

  “Lucky?” Lennox snorted. “If you recall, I bested you just a short while ago.”

  “I wouldn’t say you bested me,” Cailean said. “And I was speaking of the other night.”

  “When?” Crowe demanded.

  “When what?” Cailean blinked.

  “When did Lennox injure you?”

  “He didn’t ‘injure me,’” Cailean said. “It’s little more than a scratch.”

  “A scratch that is six inches long, and has been healing at least two days,” Crowe said.

  “Three days,” Lennox said, “and the injury required Malvina’s attention.”

  “It really wasn’t necessary for the healer to attend to it,” Cailean said.

  “Aye.” Lennox nodded. “But my mother insisted. And be glad she did.”

  Cailean shrugged. “A man doesn’t argue with Lady Ravenstone.”

  “Your speech is strange.” Something flickered in Crowe’s eyes; suspicion, annoyance? He stepped closer, his eyes narrowing. “I thought you said you were from Durness.”

  “He is, but he grew up in Cumyrnald,” Lennox said.

  Crowe’s frown deepened, but his gaze shifted past Lennox. Cailean twisted and looked over his shoulder. Lady Julianna approached with the two guards Lennox had sent with her. She reached them and Crowe said, “It is good to see you, Lady Julianna.”

  “My lord.” She nodded. “Are ye well?”

  Her words were civil and respectful, but Cailean noted none of the warmth she’d shown when she bantered with him earlier—even when she’d been angry about the swordplay.

  “I am well, now that I have seen you,” Crowe said.

  Her cheeks colored.

  “My regrets that I missed the festivities at Raghnall last night,” Crowe said. “I had business that I could not ignore.”

  She canted her head in an elegant motion. “I understand. You are a very busy man.”

  “Not too busy, should you need me, my lady.”

  Cailean caught the flash of anger in Lennox’s eyes. Julianna must have seen it as well, for she said, “Forgive me, my lord, but we are overdue for our return home. My brother and Cailean played too long at the swordsmith’s shop. My mother will worry if we are late.”

  “Of course.” Crowe looked at Lennox. “When your father returns, inform him that I must see him immediately.”

  Lennox nodded and Crowe strode away with his companions.

  Chapter Eleven

  Cailean strode alongside his companions on the narrow, unpaved main road inside Heatheredge’s gates. Julianna and Lennox walked along as if the squalor that surrounded them was normal. Someone seemed to have opened the gates of a petting zoo. Pecking, clucking chickens, and bleating goats abounded. They skirted a sheep, one of many. Scruffy dogs nosed at bones and scraps that littered the ground about the foodstalls. Scrawny cats foraged among refuse piles. Anger tightened his gut. How could Val allow such neglect?

  A clump of refuse plopped onto the road in front of them. “What the bloody hell?” Cailean halted, but Julianna whisked aside the hem of her skirt and walked around the stinking, steaming mess. He looked up at the two-storied house and glimpsed a woman pulling closed the shutters on a second floor window.

  “Cailean,” Julianna called.

  He started to follow, his attention on the upper story windows for another instant before he looked back at the street. Though he felt sure the road followed the same path as the High Street he had driven along, he recognized nothing from his world in this chaos they called Heatheredge. The woods that separated the town from the castle were taller and thicker than he recalled, which hid more of the tower.

  The Heatheredge around him didn’t deserve the m
oniker of ‘town.’ This was a crude hodgepodge of turf-walled, thatched-roofed hovels, a single track that functioned as a road, stone-walled structures that would’ve been condemned in the Scotland he knew. Just as bad were dim-looking shops and flimsy market stalls run by characters who looked and smelled as if they hadn’t seen a shower in weeks, maybe years.

  “I’ve had enough, Lennox.” He halted. “Where’s Val?”

  Everyone turned toward him.

  Lennox’s mouth thinned. “You have spoken of this Val several times. You said he was Crowe’s father. Who is he? A friend, family?”

  Cailean forced back anger. “Get real, Lennox. You know more than I do.”

  “Nae, I do no’.” The bastard stayed in character. “In fact, we know too little of Crowe for my liking.”

  “This was interesting in the beginning, but it’s over.” Cailean folded his arms across his chest. “I’m no’ going along with the game any longer.”

  “Cailean, are you ill?” Julianna placed a hand to his forehead.

  He took a step back. “I am not ill.” Losing my damned mind, is what I am.

  “You dinnae have a fever.”

  “By God, sometimes it genuinely seems he is touched in the head,” Lennox said.

  “Only sometimes,” Gregory murmured.

  Cailean retreated another pace. “I’m staying here in Heatheredge.”

  Lennox stepped up close to him. “Nae. You are returning with me to Raghnall where ye will explain who Val Ross is and what his connection is to Crowe.”

  “I don’t have any idea,” Cailean shot back. “You’re the one who knows them.” He started to turn, then halted when Gregory stepped in front of him.

  “Lennox said ye are to return to Raghnall.”

  “I don’t give a damn what Lennox said.” Cailean pushed past Gregory.

  “Cailean,” Julianna cried, but Gregory seized his arm and swung him around.

  Cailean glimpsed the knife Gregory yanked from the pouch on his belt an instant before the blade pressed Cailean’s neck.

  “Ye are returning with us.”

  Cailean shifted his gaze onto Lennox, whose hard expression mirrored Gregory’s.

  “Lennox,” Julianna said, “folk are staring.”

  “Let them fucking stare,” Cailean snarled.

  Julianna gripped Lennox’s arm. “This isnae necessary. Cailean will return peaceably with us.” She looked at him, her face softening. “You will come, Cailean? It is for your own good. If we are suspicious, then others will be, as well.”

  “You’re suspicious?” He barked a laugh. “What am I then? A hostage?”

  “If you want it so.” Lennox rested his hand on his sword hilt.

  Julianna shot Lennox a glare, then returned her attention to Cailean. “Nae, Cailean, not a hostage. A guest we are protecting.” He didn’t move, and she said to Gregory, “Put the knife away before someone takes notice.”

  He glanced at Lennox who gave a curt nod.

  “That is better,” Julianna said. “Now, Cailean, I ask that ye trust us. There are people who will no’ be kind to strangers.”

  “People like Crowe?”

  “Aye,” she said.

  The quick reply unsettled him, but he shrugged. “There’s nothing for me to tell, but all right.”

  Julianna gave him a gentle smile. “Good. Let us go now.” She looked expectantly at him, and he started walking. She fell in alongside, with her brother and Gregory flanking them. “The horses are behind the Red Lion. The tavern is—”

  “I know where the Red Lion is.” Cailean’s pulse quickened.

  At last, an ending. They would pull him into the popular pub, order a round of pints, and all have a good laugh. Christ, but they made him work for the finale.

  They trudged through muck to the far end of the road. A building bearing a large wooden sign with the picture of a red lion came into view. This wasn’t the tavern he knew.

  Cailean frowned as they approached the half-timbered tavern with its slate roof, stone chimney, and collection of small wattle and daub outbuildings. The heavy wooden door stood open and, through it, he caught a glimpse of dark wood, a warren of wattle and daub ‘partitions,’ and candlelit, smoke-hazed air. The place looked empty, but it was early yet. A stout, aproned woman swept the stone-flagged floor with a heather broom.

  The medieval-style Red Lion he knew boasted a red-patterned wall-to-wall carpeting that spread through the entirety of the main public room, an area that wasn’t, as now, divided up into little nooks by wattle and daub partitions.

  His companions continued past the pub’s entrance and around the side to the outbuildings and stables at the rear, which—he saw with dismay—encircled a cobbled courtyard with a well, instead of the large paved car park that should be there. But…Julianna’s two guards weren’t the only ones back here. Two huge, unsavory spearmen guarded a blocked, square-headed door that he figured led into the tavern’s cellar.

  “What are those thugs up to?” Cailean nodded at the spearmen. “Guarding the ale from hoodlums?”

  Lennox and Gregory exchanged a look.

  “You said you knew the Red Lion,” Gregory said, his tone suspicious.

  Lennox edged closer to his cousin, his hand hovering near his sword. “What is a hoodlum? Or a thug?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Cailean rammed his fingers through his hair. His headache threatened a throbbing migraine. Assholes with pointy-ended poles, he wanted to say. “A ruffian.”

  Julianna stepped between them. “The Red Lion’s cellar is used for more than a cold store,” she said. “Court is held in a room on the top floor. Prisoners are kept in the cellar until the day of their trial.”

  “Of course.” Cailean thwacked his aching forehead. “Those two are guarding some wretch down there, right?”

  She nodded. “Aye. A man caught poaching a deer in the woods behind Heatheredge Tower.”

  “Maybe he was starving, eh?” Cailean muttered.

  The guards stared at them.

  “Come.” Julianna grasped Cailean’s arm and pulled him toward the stables.

  They continued around a corner and their tethered horses came into view.

  Lennox helped Julianna onto her horse, then glanced at Cailean, “If ye run, I will cut you down. Your babble is starting to make me wonder if ye are a bloody warlock.”

  “Lennox.” Julianna shot him a narrow-eyed look.

  Cailean swung up onto his horse and pulled the beast’s reins hard right as he nudged the animal’s belly with his heels. “We can’t have you cutting me down, can we? Might be less messy to just pitch me into the cellar with the poacher,” Cailean said as they jingled past the two spearmen at the barred cellar door.

  They reached the road and broke into a trot. He concentrated on catching sight of something, anything, that would prove once and for all that the medieval buildings hid twenty-first century construction. They passed through the gate and left Heatheredge behind, along with a piece of his sanity.

  He racked his brain, remembering movies, stories, and articles concerning time travel. Science hadn’t advanced far enough to attempt some of the theories, much less prove that time travel was possible. Or had they? He mulled over the many disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle, the infamous Versailles Time Slip in France that saw two sensible, well-respected Englishwomen insisting their stroll through the palace gardens had whisked them back to the days of Marie Antoinette. Of course, there were also plenty of conspiracy theories that ranged from alien abduction to government plots.

  Was it possible that the Triangle really was a portal to other worlds and times? Could the two turn-of-the-century English tourists truly have slipped into another era? Much of the evidence indicated they had done so. But, if such things were true, that would mean there could be more portals in other parts of the world…like in Heatheredge.

  His chest tightened. This simply wasn’t possible. It was an elaborate recreation. They would arrive at Raghnall and
Val would be there to laugh and say ‘gotcha.’

  Cailean jarred when his horse’s foot faltered in a rut. The animal slowed, then sidestepped a large hole. Julianna and Lennox passed him, and Cailean allowed his horse to hang back until he rode with the rear guards. Lennox glanced over his shoulder, but Cailean ignored him. Tonight, he would slip away and return to Heatheredge, find the place where he’d woken. Was there a time portal at that spot? If a vortex or something similar existed, why didn’t people appear and disappear there all the time? Memory of Inspector Drummond’s description of mysterious disappearances sent a chill down his arms.

  A rider streaked in front of them. Cailean snapped from his thoughts as five more riders appeared. Gregory and Lennox drew their swords and reined their horses in front of Julianna while the guards pulled up behind her. The riders charged. Cailean stared, his brain stuck on the idea that what he was seeing might actually be real. He knew the damned blades were.

  One man swung his sword at Lennox while another attacked Gregory. The guards headed off two of the attackers. Steel rang in an ear-splitting clash of metal. The remaining two attackers skirted the fray and galloped toward Cailean. One of the men veered away and tried to break through the fighting to reach Julianna.

  A memory struck. In April of thirteen ninety-five, Lennox and Lady Julianna were waylaid on the road from Heatheredge and she was kidnapped. She died the following day during a failed escape attempt.

  “Today is the day she’s supposed to be abducted?” he muttered—which means, tomorrow is the day she dies?

  Cailean yanked his sword free and kicked his horse’s belly. The animal bolted toward Cailean’s attacker and Cailean blocked a blow intended to sever his arm from his shoulder. The bastard parried well, but Cailean was faster. He drove his opponent back several paces, then ducked beneath a swing and hit his attacker on the back of the head with his sword hilt. The man dropped to the ground.

  Lennox whirled when his assailant slumped in his saddle and then fell sideways. Lennox’s horse lunged toward the man who had broken through to Julianna. The nearest guard abruptly dropped forward on his horse’s neck and his attacker swung his sword at Lennox. Lennox dodged, barely missing the blade slicing his arm. He spun to block the man’s next blow.