“You’re freaking me out,” Chloe said uneasily.
“You haven’t begun to be freaked out. One question, just between you and me, and don’t lie to me: Do you want him?”
She stared at Gwen in silence for a long moment. “Is this really just between you and me?”
Gwen nodded.
“I have since the moment I met him,” she admitted simply. “And it doesn’t make a bit of sense to me. I’m all possessive about him, and I have no right to be. It’s crazy. I’ve never felt anything like this before. I can’t even reason with it,” she said, frustration underscoring her words.
Gwen’s smile was radiant. “Oh, Chloe, the only time reason fails is when we’re trying to convince our minds of something our heart knows isn’t true. Stop trying. Listen with your heart.”
“I doona like this,” Drustan growled at Dageus.
“Did you give Gwen a choice?” Dageus countered, as he finished etching the second-to-last formula on the central slab. He need but etch the final one to open the bridge through time. He and Drustan had agreed that he should return to six months after last he’d been there, to avoid his past self, and in hopes that Silvan may have discovered something useful in the interim. “Chloe’s a strong lass, Drustan. She held the point of my own sword at my chest. She fought off her attacker valiantly. She chose to come to Scotland with me. Though sometimes she hesitates, she fears nothing. And she’s smart, she speaks many languages, she knows the old myths, and she loves artifacts. I’m about to take her to them. If for naught else, she’ll forgive me for that,” he added, dryly.
Och, aye, she would. He could put texts in her hands that would make her weep with the joy of a true bibliophile and guardian of relics. They shared that: Her chosen profession was to preserve the old things, and she hadn’t been satisfied with merely preserving, she’d studied it all, much as he had in his role as Keltar Druid.
“Gwen knew what I was.”
“But she didn’t believe you,” Dageus reminded. “She thought you were mad.”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts. If you’d haud yer wheesht a moment, you’d hear that I intend to give her a choice.”
“You do?”
“I’m no’ entirely without scruples,” was his mocking reply.
“You’re going to tell her?”
Dageus shrugged. “I said I’d give her a choice.”
“The honorable thing would be to tell her—”
Dageus’s head whipped up and his eyes sparked dangerously. “I doona have time to tell her!” he hissed. “I doona have time to try to convince her, or help her understand!”
Silvery gaze warred with copper.
“You do realize that once you take her through, she’s going to know that you’re a Druid, Dageus. You’ll no longer be able to pretend you’re naught but a man.”
“I’ll deal with that. She knows there’s something no’ quite right with me.”
“But what if she . . .” Drustan trailed off, but Dageus knew he’d been about to voice the fear that he’d been forced to face when he’d sent Gwen back.
“What if she runs screaming from me? Cries ‘pagan sorcerer’ and hates me?” Dageus said with a chilly smile. “ ’Tis my worry, no’ yours.”
“Dageus—”
“Drustan, I need her. I need her.”
Drustan stared at the scarce-concealed despair in his brother’s eyes, and had a sudden flash of insight: Dageus was walking a razor’s edge, and he knew it. He knew he had no right to take Chloe, verily, he knew he had no right to have brought her this far. But were Dageus to give up on those things he wanted—to accept that, because he was dark, he had no promise of a future, no true rights to anything—he would have nothing left to live for. There would be nothing to keep him fighting another day.
And which would win then? Honor? Or the seduction of absolute power?
Christ, Drustan thought, a chill seeping through his veins, the day his brother stopped wanting, the day he stopped believing there was hope, he would have to face the fact that his only choices were to become utterly evil … or …
Drustan couldn’t make himself finish that thought. And in Dageus’s tortured gaze, he could see that his twin had figured this all out long ago, and was fighting the only way he could. If Dageus’s desire for Chloe was the thing standing most firmly betwixt he and the gates of hell itself, Drustan would chain the wee lass to his brother himself.
A bitter smile curved Dageus’s lips, as if he sensed Drustan’s thoughts. “Besides,” Dageus said with light mockery, “at least I know I can return her. Gwen had no such assurance, yet you took her. If aught goes awry with me, I promise to send Chloe back, one way or another.”
It would mean he was dying, for that was the only way he’d let her go. Even then, she might have to be pried from his fingers as the life fled his body.
“All right.” Drustan nodded slowly. “When will you return?”
“Look for us three days hence. ’Tis as close as I care to pass myself.”
They regarded each other in silence, much unsaid between them. Then there was no further opportunity, for Chloe and Gwen joined them in the circle.
“What are you doing?” Chloe asked curiously, peering at them. “Why are you writing on those stones, Dageus?”
Dageus looked at her a long moment, drinking her in greedily. Och, she was beautiful, so unselfconscious, standing there in her slim blue trews, sweater, and hiking boots, her hair a riot of curls tucked into a loose knot that was already falling out. Huge eyes, wide and full of innocent joy. She wore Scotland well. With a flush in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes.
Eyes that, in a short time, might regard him with fear and loathing, as the lasses in his century would have, had he ever revealed the extent of his Druid power.
And if such comes to pass? his honor prodded.
I’ll do aught I can to seduce her back out of it, he thought, shrugging, using every underhanded trick I’ve got. He’d give up when he was dead.
If anyone could accept it, she could. Modern women were different from the lasses of his time. While sixteenth-century lasses were quick to see “magycks” in the inexplicable, twenty-first-century women sought scientific explanations, were better able to abide the thought of natural laws and physics beyond their understanding. He suspected ’twas because so much progress had been made into scientific inquiry in the past century, explaining previously inexplicable things and exposing a whole new realm of mystery.
Chloe was a strong, curious, resilient lass. Though not a physicist like Gwen, she was clever and had knowledge of both the Old World and the new. An added boon was her insatiable curiosity, which had already led her into places most would not have ventured. She had all the right ingredients to be able to accept what she was soon going to experience.
And he would be there to help her understand. If he knew Chloe half as well as he thought he did, once she recovered from shock, she would be positively giddy with excitement.
Averting his gaze from Chloe’s inquisitive look, he glanced at Gwen. “Be well, lass,” he said. He hugged her, then Drustan, and stepped away.
“What’s going on?” Chloe asked. “Why are you saying good-bye to Gwen and Drustan? Aren’t we staying here to work on his books?” When Dageus didn’t answer, she looked at Gwen, but Gwen and Drustan had turned and were walking out of the circle.
She looked back at Dageus.
He extended his hand to her. “I have to leave, Chloe-lass.”
“What? What on earth are you talking about?” There was no car nearby. Leave how? For where? Without her? He’d said “I have to leave” not “we.” Her chest felt suddenly tight.
“Will you come with me?”
The tightness eased a bit, but confusion still reigned. “I d-don’t understand,” Chloe sputtered. “Where?”
“I can’t tell you where. I have to show you.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” she prot
ested.
“Och, nay, lass. Give me a bit more time and you’ll not think it so,” he said lightly. But his eyes weren’t light. They were intense and …
Listen with your heart, Gwen had said. Chloe drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. She forced herself to push her preconceptions aside, and tried looking with her heart. …
. . . and she saw it. There in his eyes. The pain she’d glimpsed on the plane, but had told herself wasn’t really there.
More than pain. A brutal, unceasing despair.
He was waiting, one strong hand outstretched. She had no idea what he was doing, or where he thought he was going. He was asking her to say “yes” without knowing. He was asking for that leap of faith Gwen had warned her about. For the second time in less than forty-eight hours, the man was asking her to throw all caution to the wind and leap with him, trusting that he wouldn’t let her fall.
Do it, Evan MacGregor’s voice suddenly said in her heart. You may not have nine lives, Chloe-cat, but you mustn’t be afraid to live the one you’ve got.
Chills shivered up her spine, raising the fine hair on her skin. She glanced around at the thirteen stones encircling them, with funny symbols that looked like formulas etched on their inner faces. More symbols on the central slab.
Was she about to find out what those standing stones had been used for? The concept was too fantastic for her to wrap her brain around.
What on earth did he think was going to happen?
Logic insisted nothing was going to happen in those stones. Curiosity was proposing, quite persuasively, that if something did, she’d have to be a fool to miss it.
She blew out a gusty sigh. What was one more plunge, anyway? she thought with a mental shrug. She’d already been so completely derailed from the normal track of her life that she couldn’t get too worked up at the prospect of another loopy turn. And frankly, the ride had never been so fascinating. Drawing herself up to her full height, squaring both her shoulders and her resolve, she turned back to Dageus and slipped her hand into his. Notching her chin up, she met his gaze and said, “Fine. Let’s go, then.” She was proud of herself for how firm and nonchalant it had come out.
His eyes flared. “You’ll come? Without knowing where I’m taking you?”
“If you think I’ve come this far to be dumped along the wayside, you don’t know me very well, MacKeltar,” she said lightly, seeking strength in levity. The moment was simply too tense. “I’m the woman who snooped beneath your bed, remember? I’m slave to my curiosity. If you’re going somewhere, I am too. You’re not getting away from me yet.” God, had she really said that?
“That sounds as if you’re telling me you plan to keep me, lass.” His eyes narrowed and he went very still.
Chloe caught her breath. It was so similar to her dream!
He smiled then, a slow smile that caused tiny lines about his eyes to crinkle, and for a moment something danced within the coppery depths. Something younger and … free and breathtakingly beautiful. “I’m yours for the asking, sweet.”
She forgot how to breathe for a moment.
Then his eyes went cool again and abruptly, he turned back toward the center slab and wrote a series of symbols. “Hold my hand and doona let go.”
“Keep him safe, Chloe,” Gwen shouted, as a sudden, fierce wind kicked up through the stones, scattering dried leaves in swirling eddies of mist.
Safe from what? Chloe wondered.
And then she wondered no more, because suddenly the stones began spinning in a circle around her—but that wasn’t possible! And even while she was arguing with herself over what was and was not possible, she lost the ground and was upside down, or something, and then she lost the sky too. Grass and twilight swirled together, speckled by a mad rush of stars. The wind soared to a deafening howl, and suddenly she was … different somehow. She glanced wildly about for Drustan and Gwen, but they were gone, and she could see nothing at all, not even Dageus. A terrible gravity seemed to be pulling at her, sucking her in and stretching her out, bending her in impossible ways. She thought she heard a sonic boom, and then suddenly there was a flash of white so blinding that she lost all sense of sight and sound.
She could no longer feel Dageus’s hand.
She could no longer feel her own hand!
She tried to open her mouth and scream, but she had no mouth to open. The white grew ever more intense and, though there was no longer any sense of motion, she felt a nauseating vertigo. There was no sound, but the silence itself seemed to have crushing substance.
Just when she was certain she couldn’t endure it one more instant, the white was gone so abruptly that the blackness slammed into her with all the force of a Mack truck.
Then there was feeling in her body again, and she wasn’t thrilled to have it back. Her mouth was dry as a desert, her head felt swollen and oversized, and she was pretty sure she was about to throw up.
Oh, Zanders, she chided herself weakly, I think this was a little more than just another loopy turn.
Chloe stumbled and collapsed to the ice-covered ground.
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.”
—THE PROPHETESS EIRU, sixth century B.C.E.
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.”
—MIDHE CODEX, seventh century C.E.
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.”
—GEORGE SANTAYANA, twentieth century C.E.
JULY 24, 1522
• 16 •
There were voices inside his head. Thirteen distinct ones: twelve men and the jewel-bright tones of a sultry-voiced woman, talking in a language he couldn’t understand.
The voices were but a susurrus, a sibilant murmuring. No more than a stiff wind rustling through oaks, yet like a wind, it blew darkly through him, stripping away his humanity like a fragile autumn leaf no longer firmly anchored to its branch. It was the wind of winter and of death and it accepted no censure and would abide no moral judgment.
There was only hunger. The hunger of thirteen souls confined for four thousand years in a place that was not a place, in a time that was not a time. Locked away for four thousand years. Locked away for one-hundred-and-forty-six million days, for three-and-a-half billion hours—and if that was not eternity, what was?
Imprisoned.
Adrift in nothing.
Alive in that heinous dark oblivion. Eternally aware. Hungry, with no mouth to feed. Lusting, with no body to ease. Itching, with no fingers to scratch.
Hating, hating, hating.
A seething mass of raw power, unsated for millennia.
And as they felt, so Dageus felt, too, lost in darkness.
The storm was nature at her height of savagery. Chloe had never seen such a squall before. Rain mixed with jagged chunks of hail pelted from the sky, bruising her, stinging her skin, even through the thickness of her jacket and sweater.
“Ow!” Chloe cried “Ow!” A large chunk of ice struck her in the temple, another in the small of her back. Cursing, she tucked into a protective ball on the hail-covered ground and wrapped her arms around her head.
The wind soared to a deafening pitch, keening and howling. She screamed into it, calling Dageus’s name, but couldn’t even hear her own voice above the din. The ground trembled and tree limbs crashed to the earth. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed. The shrieking wind whipped her hair into a sodden tangle. She hunched in a ball with no hope but to endure it and pray it didn’t get worse.
Then suddenly—as abruptly as the fierce storm had arisen—it was gone.
Simply gone. The hail stopped. The deluge ceased. The wind died. The night fell still and silent but for a soft hissing sound.
For a few moments Chloe mentally tallied her bruises, refusing to move. Moving would mean acknowledging she was alive. Acknowledging she was alive would mean she’d have to look around. And frankly, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
Ever. Thoughts were collidin
g in her head, all of them impossible.
Come on, Zanders, get a grip, the voice of reason endeavored valiantly to assert itself. You’re going to feel downright silly when you look up and see Gwen and Drustan standing there. When they say “Gee, don’t you hate it when a storm comes up so fast? But that’s how they are in the Highlands.”
She wasn’t buying it. She wasn’t certain of much at the moment, but she was pretty darned certain storms like that didn’t happen, in the Highlands or anywhere else, and furthermore, she didn’t hold out much hope that Gwen and Drustan were anywhere nearby. Something had happened in those stones. Just what, she couldn’t say, but something … epic. Something that reeked of a kernel of truth secreted in ancient myths.
After a few more moments, she drew her arms back and peeped cautiously out. Rain poured from her hair, dripping down her face. She braced her palms on the ground and suddenly understood what the hissing noise was.
The earth was warm, as if it had been sun-heated all day, and the pellets of hail were steaming on it. How could the ground be warm? she wondered, baffled. It was March, for heaven’s sake, and forty-degree weather didn’t heat the soil. Even as she thought that, she realized the air was warm, now that the heavens had stopped dumping a small icy flood on her. Humid and positively summery.
Gingerly, she raised herself up a few inches and glanced about, only to discover she was swathed in a cloud. While she’d huddled, a thick soupy fog had surrounded her. She was completely walled in by white. It made the already eerie situation even spookier.
The Highlander Series 7-Book Bundle Page 140