The Legend Mackinnon

by Donna Kauffman

  He paused, his hand on the next button. “Did you not mean for me to be here with you tonight?”

  “I gave you the key, didn’t I?”

  He held her gaze for a long moment, then said, “Do you want me here, Cailean.”

  She closed the journal and laid it aside. “Yes.”

  His fingers resumed their task and Cailean’s attention was held in rapt fascination as she watched him undress. In the dim lamplight he was nothing short of exquisite.

  He didn’t move away from the end of the narrow bed. “Your turn,” he said.

  She’d been naked with him already, unselfconsciously so. But this was different. This was … erotic. She discovered she liked it. A lot. There was a dark thrill in teasing him, taunting him.

  She slowly unbuttoned the soft sleepshirt she wore. Not exactly a sexy peignoir, but you wouldn’t know by his intensifying expression.

  “You’re a vision, you are.” His voice was deep, dark and arousing. “You should be made love to under the moon and stars.”

  She thought of the mountaintop where they’d first made love and wondered what it would be like to make love with him under a summer moon. Pain pinched at her heart and she once again turned away from thoughts of the future. Right now the future was this night. This night was a certainty.

  He reached down and gripped the covers, stripping them from the bed in one hard tug. He crawled onto the bed and straight up over her body. Her shirt disappeared under his hands and her head tilted back as he feasted at her breasts. She reached for him, pulling him to her, unable to wait. She slid down and wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him insistently inside her, moving under him in a demanding rhythm.

  “I do believe I will see stars after all,” he said roughly, then took her hips and fulfilled every need she’d ever thought to have and few more she hadn’t known about.

  Cailean nestled against him, tucking her legs into his. She pressed her face to his chest and sighed as he stroked his fingers through her hair.

  “I’ve wanted to do this since I first saw you,” he said.

  “You almost did,” she said, the words muffled against his warm skin.

  He actually chuckled and her throat tightened at the wonderfully warm sound.

  “Not that, although it was a close second,” he said. “I meant this.” He dug his fingers deeper into her hair and massaged her scalp. “Your hair. It beckons me.”

  “You should have said something.”

  “One thing I’ve learned is patience.” He continued his ministrations, sending tingles along her scalp and down her neck with each stroke. “Besides, I wanted it almost too badly.”

  Cailean lifted her head to look at him. “Is that such a bad thing?”

  “Wanting? Needing? In most every case, yes.”

  “And this case?” She needed to hear him say it. Her heart was already dangling from a high precipice and she knew her hold was tentative at best. She wanted, needed, to hear she wasn’t the only one hanging by a thread.

  “In this case I had no choice.”

  Cailean tried not to tense, but she knew Rory sensed it. “Because you need me to reverse the spell?”

  “Because I need you … period.”

  She wanted to revel in this, but the dark cloud that sent a shadow over her senses was getting harder and harder to ignore. Feelings of doom she didn’t want to acknowledge were becoming stronger and she knew it wouldn’t be long before she’d have to face them.

  She closed her eyes, willing the darkness to the corners for one more night. Tomorrow they would all go to Stonelachen to begin their hunt for Lachlan’s key. Once that quest was begun, she had a terrible feeling that the darkness would consume them both.

  “What’s wrong, Cailean? What do you see? We are partners, you must tell me.”

  She stiffened at his tone. “Is it simply the information you seek? Because my feelings aren’t that conclusive. Partner.”

  He pulled her head back, not ungently, and lowered his face to hers. His eyes were black and fierce in the dim lighting. “That is not what I meant, and you know it. Partner isn’t merely a word describing a business transaction. If you can think that after this night and what we just shared—”

  “What did we share, Rory?”

  “We are well and truly joined now, Cailean. There is no escaping it. Destiny? Fate? Perhaps. I do not know. I only know that for what time I have remaining, we will spend it together.”

  Her heart, flying high at his declaration of commitment, took a sharp dive as the final words sunk in. “Time remaining?”

  “Until we reverse the curse.”

  “Your curse is immortality. If we reverse it, then you become mortal. To live out your days here, aging like the rest of us. You aren’t that old, or weren’t when she did this to you. You have many, many—” He quieted her with a finger to her lips.

  “I’ve already lived my lifetime. Too many of them. Cailean, I am done here.”

  She sat up, horrified. “You can’t be saying what I think you’re saying.” She scrambled from the bed, her heart pounding so hard she thought she might be sick or faint or both. “I won’t let you do it, Rory. I won’t.” She pressed a fist to her mouth as her stomach wrenched.

  He left the bed and came to her. She backed away, beating on his chest. “How could you do that?” she demanded. “How could you make me feel like this and tell me you feel bonded to me and—” She broke off, choking on a sob. She still fought him off. “I won’t reverse it,” she finally managed. “It would be like being an accessory to murder.”

  Rory dodged her flailing fists and pulled her to him. “Stop!” He tightened his arms around her. “Don’t do this, Cailean, stop.”

  She didn’t stop, she kept on, crying as if her heart were being torn into pieces. He’d done this to her. Shame rushed through Rory, as did anger, at himself, for being so cruelly thoughtless. He’d thought she understood.

  Rory wrapped his arms more tightly around her and held on for dear life.

  Dear life.

  He pushed her into the corner, trapping her against him, his own eyes burning as the epiphany washed over him. Her pain was more than palpable—he felt it because he shared it.

  “I didn’t know,” he said. “I didn’t know.” He repeated it over and over again as the fight slowly ran out of her. But the sobs and the pain did not. They continued in torrents that tore his own heart to shreds.

  “I love you, Rory,” she choked out. “How could you not have known?”

  “Cailean,” he said hoarsely. “I’m sorry, so sorry.” Fear lanced through him. He’d known he had feelings for her, he’d known he was forming an attachment the likes of which he’d never allowed himself to feel. He’d known she was forming an attachment as well, but he’d thought she’d understood his plan from the beginning.

  It stunned him once again, that this woman he held had given her heart. No trick, no ploy. And it was a gift he cherished.

  “I won’t do it.” The words were beyond raw, as if dredged from the depths of hell. A hell he’d forced her to live through.

  “You have to do it,” he whispered. “Don’t fight me anymore.” He lifted her into his arms and carried her back to bed. He didn’t give her a chance to escape. He slid down next to her, leaning against the headboard and pulled her into his lap.

  He didn’t say anything for a long time. He put all his efforts into soothing her, one gentle stroke at a time. He waited until her breaths were no longer hitching and her muscles had gone pliant.

  Her quiet voice surprised and stilled him. “I know you didn’t plan on this, Rory, plan on me.”

  “I don’t want to leave you, Cailean. It will hurt me, too. I thought this was my price to pay. I didn’t take into account the price you were paying.” He tilted her chin. “I’m sorry, Cailean.” He kissed her eyebrows and then her cheek. “I’m sorry.”

  “I won’t apologize, Rory.” She sat up and framed his face. “I’ve fallen in love wi
th you, John Roderick MacKinnon. The one Claren on earth who should know better. I didn’t delude myself into believing anything was going to come of it.” She paused. “Okay, so maybe I’d begun to. And I suppose the more time we spent together, the more I’d have let myself do that. I knew it would hurt me, I knew it, but never did I think that you … that you …” Her eyes brimmed again and she couldn’t get the words out.

  “I’ve been here for so long,” he began, knowing there was no way to make her truly understand. “I’ve known for so long that if I ever found the cure, that I’d—”

  “But how? You can’t just … just …”

  “I never planned it all out, if that’s what you mean.” That wasn’t entirely the truth. Early on, in his first century, he’d tried many times to end it, had schemed again and again for a way to trick destiny. “But I never had anything to regret leaving before and then when Duncan came back … well, the way just presented itself to me.”

  She sat up straight. “What are you talking about?”

  “He only has a little more than a week left. When he returns to purgatory, if we’ve found the key by then, he said he’d take me with him.”

  There was no look of horror this time. Her face crumpled and his heart crumpled right along with it. “I didn’t think about that. Of course you’d want to be with him, with … everyone. You’ll be reunited with your clan. Of course you want to go with him.”

  She leaned back into his chest and his arms came around her naturally. “I’m the selfish one, lass. Och, what a great wreck we both are.” He tilted her chin up and kissed her gently on the mouth. He felt his own eyes burn even as he smiled down at her. “Perhaps we were truly meant for each other. Who else would have us?”

  A small smile hinted at the corners of her mouth as another tear tracked down her cheek.

  “Ye make me feel as if the Lord himself has blessed me when ye smile at me, Cailean Claren.” Her smile wobbled then, but he pressed it back into place with as gentle a kiss as he knew how to give. “Yer right, I do no’ want to leave ye. I never thought of it as somethin’ I had a choice over.”

  “Duncan, your father, your other brother, Alexander—Rory, I understand now. Your destiny—”

  “I don’t know what my destiny is,” he said, kissing her again. He sighed deeply. “If I’d had yer mouth to kiss for all eternity, perhaps my immortal life wouldna hae been so much burden as pleasure.”

  “Rory—”

  This time he stopped her with a shake of his head. “No decisions tonight. We’ll begin the search tomorrow. When we find the key we’ll talk of it then.” He didn’t tell her he had what might be considered prescient feelings of his own, feelings that had long told him that he’d die when his curse was reversed, that he’d have no actual choice in the matter. “We’ll know more then.” Dear God, he hoped.

  Cailean seemed to accept that and he held her, stroking her hair until he felt the even rhythms of sleep in her breathing.

  Staring down at her, curled so trustingly against him, he said in a soft whisper the words he hadn’t thought fair to burden her with before. “I do love ye, Cailean. As much as a man like me is able.” She sighed against his chest and he thought for an instant, she’d heard him. But she slept on.

  “We’ll find a way. Destiny be damned.”

  PART THREE

  ALEXANDER

  “The illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean-tide, on which … all the universe swim … like apparitions which are, and then are not.…”

  —THOMAS CARLYLE, SCOTTISH ESSAYIST

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Delaney Claren stepped cautiously into the small stone room. She turned on her flashlight and slowly scanned the walls and floor. Nothing. Again.

  “Twelve down, twelve hundred to go,” she muttered.

  “You okay down there?” Maggie’s voice echoed down the narrow passageway.

  Delaney backed out of the room as Maggie’s flashlight beam flickered toward her. “Fine. Another empty room.”

  Maggie stepped around the bend and aimed her beam under her chin. “Am I the only one who keeps expecting a vampire to pop out of one of these tombs, I mean rooms?”

  Delaney laughed. Cailean had been right. They definitely liked Maggie Claren. “For me it’s skeletons. I just know there’s a dead body in here somewhere. And frankly, I’ve seen enough of those for one life.”

  Maggie smiled. “Don’t let Cailean hear you say that. She made me swear not to touch anything if I happened to stumble across any bones. Like that’s going to be a problem. They’re all hers.”

  “She gave me the same lecture.” They shared an exaggerated shudder, then laughed at themselves. “No luck?”

  “All empty,” Maggie reported. “Same for you?”

  She nodded. “I know Cailean is convinced we’ll find something in here, and I have to say, reading Lachlan’s journals makes me feel like she might be on to something, but this is such a massive undertaking. This place is monstrous, with these endless passages connecting all over the place.”

  “I know, it’s hard to take in, but when you imagine it full of people, with torchlight everywhere and well …” Maggie smiled wistfully, then laughed. “I’m sure I’m romanticizing it grossly.”

  Gross being the key word, Delaney wanted to say. She’d been in garrisons and fortresses in other parts of the world that equaled Stonelachen easily in terms of age. There was nothing romantic about poverty, disease, and filth. Maggie was most definitely wearing rose colored glasses, with really thick lenses. But Delaney wasn’t going to be the one to yank them off.

  “I think about the feasts they had in the great hall.” Delaney recalled when they’d all stepped into the cavernous room and Rory and Duncan had lit the torches. She got goosebumps just thinking about it. Perhaps she had a little pink in her lenses too.

  “Well,” Delaney said, “I guess we’d better get back to it. We meet Cailean in the central passageway at three.”

  “I synchronized my watch,” Maggie said, saluting with her flashlight. “We’ll recon in two hours, captain.”

  Delaney smiled and saluted before turning back to her assigned wing. There was no logical layout to the castle, which made it both the perfect fortress, since no invading army could know where all the passageways led, and the most difficult to defend. She was glad she didn’t have to work out a defensive strategy for this place. Hostage removal would be a real bitch.

  Still, it was an awesome feat of nature and ancient engineering and she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t completely fascinated by the whole thing.

  She headed around the next bend, head still half in the past, and stopped short. “There’s not supposed to be anything branching off of this.” She tucked her flashlight under her arm and pulled out the map that Duncan and Rory had painstakingly drawn. Each person had a different map, with Rory and Duncan taking the quadrants with the most damage, trying to find ways around the smaller blockages to get to the rooms behind them.

  She unfolded the map and held it against the wall with one hand, aiming her light at it with the other. “You are here,” she intoned. She followed the beam past the room along the passageway she’d taken. “No Y in the road.” According to the map, her passage should have continued curving around, with three more rooms—two on the right, one on the left—before connecting again to the main artery.

  She let the map slide down as she aimed the beam down the unmarked passageway. “So what are you doing here?” It was entirely possible that Rory and Duncan had just gotten mixed up or forgotten it. There were so many levels and so many passages that, after all this time, it was pretty incredible how much they’d been able to recall. They may have missed a thing or two.

  She walked a few yards and flashed her beam ahead, trying to see if there were any doorways or if it was a dead end. But the walls were smooth and solid and the light didn’t penetrate far enough to determine the full
extent of it.

  She debated finishing her original search, checking in with Maggie, then coming back to check on this. She checked the glowing numerals on her watch. She really should continue as planned.

  She went several more feet, half-hoping the beam of light would reveal a stone wall dead ahead and put an end to the side trip. No stone wall. No rooms either.

  She rounded one more bend. It widened out considerably, but still no rooms. No end to the passageway either. She walked a bit faster, flashing the beam of light back and forth so she didn’t trip on loose rock. The passages weren’t level, so she was moving up and down inside the mountain, with passageways above and beneath her at times, running every which direction as well and at times connecting with each other. Very confusing.

  She rounded the next bend and skidded to a halt. “Holy, sh—” She swallowed the rest, along with her heart. Her toes dangled over the edge of what looked like a black abyss. Heart pounding, she flashed the light downward.

  “Stairs,” she breathed. This passage obviously connected with another lower passage, which would be included in another search. But wasn’t this quadrant already in one of the lowest sections?

  She stood there for another moment, then reluctantly turned to retrace her steps. She took two steps and stopped. What was that sound? She sat down on the top step so she could lean forward more without fear of pitching head first off the top riser. It sounded like wind blowing through trees, or, or …

  “Water.” Rushing water. An underground spring? Not surprising since the mountain was riddled with them. The MacKinnons had done a miraculous job of sealing off minor springs, or diverting them into other spring beds and harnessing the force of the water for power. From Rory and Duncan’s descriptions, the engineering complexities achieved by such an ancient people boggled the mind.

  Seeing as she was in a lower part of the castle, with these stairs leading lower still, it was likely that what she heard was the combined forces of several springs emptying out into the stream that led all the way out to Staffin Bay. If she could hear it this far away, then it had to be a pretty powerful flow, which tied into her theory perfectly.