Labyrinth

by Tarah Scott

  “Colin? You think—my God, woman, you have no comprehension of your good fortune. He called you here as he did the others, yet you stumbled upon my room instead.”

  “Called me here? I saw you the day I arrived.” She took four steps and stopped in front of him. “You were waiting for someone. Who?”

  Surprise flicked in his eyes. “Leave.”

  “Fine by me.”

  She took two steps, reached around his neck, and pulled him to her. He stiffened, but she forced his mouth to hers. Lips touched in moist warmth, and the desire that had lowered to a simmer bubbled over. Margot arched against him. His hard length dug into her abdomen. She moaned. This had to be the way out. Each time she’d had one of these dreams, she’s woken during climax. Colin abruptly shoved her away. She stumbled and fell.

  “What’d you do that for?” She pushed to her feet.

  “Get out!” he thundered.

  “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

  “Do ye not understand? Colin will come for you.”

  She frowned. “Colin? Sugar, you’re a dream, and a dream can’t be schizophrenic. I get enough of that in real life.”

  “It was not I who fucked you against the wall. It was Colin.”

  “Like I said earlier, you can’t know what you did in another dream.”

  He shook his head. “You do no' ken. I am Logan.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Margot stared. “Logan?”

  Dread began another slow climb up her spine. Cat’s private version of the legend said the spell was meant for Logan. Yet Colin was the legendary serial killer. This man—her dream lover—was claiming to be the good brother. How many more twists could this dream take?

  “Go,” he said, “and this time, do. not. return.”

  “Wake me up and I will.”

  He grasped her shoulders. “Lass, this is no dream. This is my and my brother's prison. He had you once. He will not make the mistake of losing you a second time. The moment I close my eyes or turn my back, he will call, and you will go.”

  ”Listen, Colin—”

  “Logan.”

  “Well, damn—Logan. If I’ve been with Colin before, why didn’t he kill me?”

  He released her. “I do not know. The only woman who—” He broke off.

  “What were you going to say?” she demanded. “The only woman who what?”

  “Get out while you can. I cannot protect you.”

  ”I can kick his ass—hell, I’ll kick yours.”

  He bent his head so that his nose was a bare inch from hers. “I kicked your pretty ass. You have seen only a glimpse of my temper, and my brother’s is twice the size.”

  “Only a woman pure of heart can free him. That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it? Does the rest go something like, the woman must be pure of mind, have a heart of gold, and the body of Aphrodite?”

  Margot didn’t wait for an answer, but spun and threw her palms up in exasperation. “I’m locked in a fucking loony bin. I’ve lost it, stepped over the edge. I’m as sick as Cat.”

  She took three steps to the bed and dropped onto the mattress. “I’m too damn tired to keep this up. Maybe if I go to sleep, I’ll wake up in real life.”

  He crossed to the bed and sat beside her. “You have tempted fate by coming here.”

  “It wasn’t my doing.”

  “No one can force you, lass, not even the witch that imprisoned me here.”

  Margot thought of Cat. “No. It took another witch to get me here.”

  “What?”

  “Cat. My long lost murdering best friend, Caterine Bowers.”

  “Catraoine?" Shock flashed across his face. “It isna' possible. Hair black as night, green cat eyes, a body—” he broke off, and Margot finished, “worth the sinner’s price?”

  She laughed in an effort to ward off the chill that coiled in her belly when he gave a small nod. “Sugar, you’re just a figment of my imagination, an extension of me. You can’t help but know everything I know.” She grimaced, “Talk about a new spin on fucking yourself.”

  “Catraoine has returned,” he said. “She has spanned time. That should not surprise me. She wanted my brother, cost be dammed. When I dragged him into this hell with me, her anger must have known no bounds.”

  “Dragged him?”

  “Catraoine promised Colin the Templar’s treasure.”

  “The treasure doesn’t exist,” she said.

  “Of course no',” he said with a deprecating snort. “But greed clouds logic. Together, Catraoine and Colin were going to find the treasure and resurrect the knighthood.”

  “Resurrect the knighthood? Why? The treasure is supposed to be so immense they would be among the richest people in the world. What would they need with the Templars?”

  He gave a harsh laugh. “Why settle for riches when they could rule as the Templars did?”

  “That sounds like Cat. She would rule in Hell if that was her only choice.”

  “Aye, and they would not have been satisfied until they ruled all three realms. But they needed capital for the campaign. Colin imposed a heavier work load on our tenants and increased labor by taking on slaves and serfs. When I learned how he was abusing them, I confronted him. He denied knowledge of the mistreatment and blamed the overlords. I was no' so easily put off, and he plotted with Catraoine to dispose of me.”

  “Dispose?” Margot raised a brow. “That sounds nasty.”

  The corners of his mouth turned down. “Few things could be worse than this prison.”

  “This spell is how they disposed of you? Why not just kill you?”

  “Mayhap when I have the answer to that, I will be freed from this hell.”

  “I thought a woman of pure mind could free you from the spell—let’s not forget the body of Aphrodite.”

  “The spell is intended for my brother. I have no such savior.”

  The words were spoken with conviction—too much conviction. What was he hiding? Margot grimaced inwardly. She was taking this dream too seriously—awareness rolled over her. She shoved to her feet.

  “What is it?” he demanded.

  “I intend to find out.”

  He shot to his feet and seized her arm. “Colin is calling you. I will not let ye go to your death.”

  “How can he possibly hurt me?”

  A heartbeat of silent passed. “You saw the other women.”

  Margot gave a slow nod. She’d seen them. “How does he kill them? There’s no sign of violence.”

  His mouth thinned. “Leave it be, lass. Return home." He squeezed her arm. "Forget this place.”

  “So far, my only way out has been through you—and you say—your brother. Unlike those women, however, I'm still alive.”

  “You have no comprehension of the power in her magick.”

  Margot scrutinized him. “A reincarnated witch.”

  His brow furrowed “Re-incarnated?"

  "The afterlife, the soul being reborn."

  "Ategenos—rebirth. Aye," he murmured. "Even her name is the same.”

  Margot gave him a deprecating look. “Come on—”

  “Catraoine— it is the Irish Gaelic of the Old French Caterine, meaning pure.”

  “Pure?” Margot laughed. “Cat is anything but pure.”

  “She is the same woman, the same murderess.”

  “Murderess, yes,” Margot agreed.

  “How many has she killed?” he demanded.

  “Two that I know of. But there will be more, if there haven't been already.”

  He nodded. “She murdered in my lifetime, as well.”

  Margot pinned him with a stare. “Who?”

  “Her husband.”

  The earlier chill dug deeper. What had she expected? This was her psyche following a pattern that wasn’t about to quit until she fit the final piece into the puzzle.

  “Which method did she use to kill?” he asked.

  Margot started from her thoughts. “What?”

&
nbsp; “Catraoine understood the mystery of herbs. Rumor said she fed her husband a poison that paralyzed him. He fell while…”

  Margot’s surroundings melted into the vision of a champion swimmer as his muscles shut down while swimming. The arm reaching over his head for a powerful stroke hit the water with an uncontrolled splash and he kicked in a frenzy to stay afloat. One leg, then the other seized up. He sank, the muscles in his mouth not obeying the command to close, and water filled mouth and nostrils.

  Laryngospasm; the uncontrolled muscle spasm that should have shut down the passageway into the lungs to keep the water out until he succumbed to blessed unconsciousness didn't happen because the laryngeal cords were deadened by the lethal herb, and water gushed into his lungs as he descended deeper into the murky depths. Each second of the seven to ten minutes it took to suffocate lengthened into an eternity of terror as he stared into the shadowy nothingness of water until his sight dimmed to a point, then mercifully, went dark.

  A sob broke into the picture and Margot realized she had made the sound.

  “Lass.”

  Strong arms encircled her and pulled her tight against a solid chest. Tears stung like tiny needles and grief gushed forward.

  “Donny,” she whispered, and buried her face in his chest.

  She cried until her eyes ran dry, then she quieted and relaxed deeper into his warmth. “It’s not so much that he’s gone,” she said, “people die.” Even family. “But to die like that.” An involuntary shudder shook her.

  “You loved him?”

  He’d introduced her to Jason Aldrich who became her first lover, and talked Laura Henderson, head cheerleader in high school, into getting her through tenth grade calculus. Margot had attended his and Cat's wedding. She grieved for a life cut too short, the violence of death, and the naivety that had clouded vision when it came to Cat—not just Donny’s, but hers. Understanding hit like a clap of thunder.

  She straightened. “Oh my God, it’s my fault.”

  “What?”

  Margot met his gaze. “No one knew Cat like I did. I told myself she wouldn’t marry Donny for his money. I defended her. I swore she had gotten past the compulsive need to prove she was as good as everyone else.”

  “You canna' blame yourself,” he said. “No one can predict such things.”

  “Cat went behind Donny’s back and aborted their baby. She had no intention of being saddled with Donny, or a baby. Did Catraoine get away with the murder?”

  “Aye, poisoning is nearly impossible to prove.”

  “Not in the twenty-first century—not if you know what to look for. It’s time to wake up.” She met his gaze and her chest tightened as if squeezed by a vice. “If I could take you with me…” Margot traced his mouth with a finger. “Despite how strangely this dream started, I figure the way out has to be the same.”

  Broad fingers closed over hers. “How did this dream start?”

  Margot grimaced. “You’re going to ruin the moment.”

  A corner of his mouth turned up and he stroked her hair. “Mo nighean donn.”

  A tremor rippled through her at the soft note in his voice. "What does that mean?"

  "My brown haired lass."

  He placed her hand over his heart and covered the flattened palm with his hand. The powerful thump, thump, thump of his heart beat against her fingers.

  "Tell me how you came here this time."

  “All right—” Her voice broke, and she flushed. She was acting like a high school kid. Margot swallowed against a dry throat, and said, “I fell asleep in a chair front of the fireplace. Instead of finding myself here as I did the other times, I dreamed Cat came to my room and put a damn voodoo spell on me.” Her stomach gave a nauseous turn. “If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect myself of taking drugs. Damn weird, even for these dreams.”

  “Did she use sweet smelling herbs?”

  “Sure. Voodoo is based on the use of herbs and spices.”

  “Yet, in the past, you came here of your own accord?”

  Margot nodded. “Right. I just fell asleep.”

  “Just fell asleep. Lass ye are not sleeping, you never have been. Each and every time, you entered the painting. This time, Catraoine imprisoned you here just as she did me.” She opened her mouth to argue, but he seized her shoulders and gave her a hard shake. “Tell me this time is no different.”

  Her blood went cold. This was different. Only, not for the reason he thought. There was something he didn’t know because she hadn’t known until this moment. All this time she thought she'd fallen asleep in front of the fireplace, but Cat’s appearance wasn’t part of the dream. She had sneaked into the room through a secret passageway and rendered Margot unconscious with her herb potion. Margot had experienced the affects of the drug as being sucked into the painting.

  Panic rushed like a dust devil through her. How long had she been unconscious? Was she feeling no pain because there was no pain, or because Cat had used the same muscle freezing herb she’d used on Donny?

  Margot envisioned herself laid out on the bed in her room, dressed in sexy lingerie as the dead women were, in readiness for the tortured Lord Colin Morrison to fuck her brains out in hopes that when she rode the wave of orgasm he would be freed from this prison. But magic didn’t exist, and people didn’t live three hundred years. But that didn't change the fact that like the women in her dream, the gold quilt on her bed would grow old and dingy, until nothing remained but dust.

  “Sweet Christ,” Margot whispered. “Cat’s going to kill me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Nay.”

  The deep male voice yanked Margot from the memory of the dead women.

  “It is not her you need fear, but Colin,” he said. “You must leave here. I…” His hands dropped from her shoulders. “I cannot protect you.”

  Anger shot through her. She hadn’t survived thirty-two years in a Mississippi backwater town—twelve of those years on the Wilkinson County police force—to end up a damsel in distress.

  “I don’t need you or anyone else to protect me. There has to be a way out.”

  Her gaze caught on the sword and dagger hanging over the mantle. Nothing in this dream could hurt her. Cat forcing more mind-bending drugs into her body or tossing her over the cliff Castle Morrison sat on would kill her. She needed to shock herself awake. Margot rose and hurried to the fireplace.

  “Kylyrra," he said.

  She pulled the dagger from its scabbard and slashed the blade across her palm. Pain sliced through her. Blood welled across her creamy flesh. The dagger was yanked from her, but she couldn’t tear her gaze from the sight of her bleeding palm.

  Wake up.

  “Have ye gone daft?” he demanded.

  He threw the knife aside with such violence it hit the brick wall of the fireplace and landed with a clatter on the hearthstones . He grabbed her wrist.

  Margot lifted her gaze to his face. “It’s so real.”

  He balled her fist to staunch the blood. “Nothing could be more real.”

  He pulled her to the bed and pushed her onto the mattress. She sat like an obedient child while he fetched bowl and pitcher from the small table beneath the window, then ripped a strip of fabric from the sheet. He pressed the cloth against the bleeding palm. When she didn’t move, he grasped her other hand and pressed the fingers against the rag. He tore several more strips, poured water into the bowl, dipped a strip, and wrung it out.

  He removed the blood-stained cloth from her hand, tossed it onto the table beside the pitcher, and dropped onto one knee in front of her. “What did you hope to accomplish with such insanity?”

  A tremor radiated through her stomach. “Am I too far gone to wake up?”

  Maybe Donny had been lucky to die in ten minutes.

  He began cleaning her wound with a strip of cloth. “I counted thirty-five sun rises before finally accepting the truth.”

  “Truth?” she repeated. “Voodoo is a tool used to control the ign
orant. It isn’t real.”

  “When you find yourself back in that chair before the hearth, tell yourself that—but get as far away from Castle Morrison as ye can before closing your eyes again.”

  She would get as far away from this house of horrors as possible—and Cat was going to prison.

  “The legend says you can only be freed while fucking a woman.”

  His head snapped up. He stared for a moment, then went back to cleaning the wound. “You forget, I am no' Colin.”

  “You’re saying he killed those women?”

  He tossed the blood-stained rag onto the table with the other one, took a fresh cloth from the pile beside her, and began wrapping her palm. “How is it you know of the spell that imprisoned Colin and me?”

  “It’s big news.”

  His gaze jerked onto hers again. “Big news?”

  “The castle is a high priced hotel. People pay big money to get a taste of seventeenth century life.”

  "Hotel?"

  "An inn, a place to stay away from home."

  He stared. “You mean there is an ample supply of women frequenting the castle?”

  “That’s right.”

  His mouth thinned. “When you return, destroy the painting.”

  “Cat owns the castle.”

  “She will continue to feed him victims.”

  But it wasn’t victims Cat intended to feed the killer ghost, but a single victim: her.

  “Why does she want him out—that’s right, the treasure.”

  “They were lovers.”

  “Lovers?” Margot gave a harsh laugh. “Seems like a helluva lot of work just to get laid.”

  He looked up at her, clearly not understanding.

  "She is going to a lot of trouble for a good fuck."

  His mouth thinned. “Their union transcends the physical.”

  Voodoo herbs and sex. Drugs weren’t her style, but she’d heard they could induce mind-blowing sex.

  He grabbed a clean strip and wrapped her palm more tightly over the other cloth. “This will do until you can have a physician see to the wound.” He tied off the end and stood.