She couldn’t wrap her mind around his assertion. “But there has to have been an explosion,” she insisted. “How else would we have been blown out of the tunnel?”
Conor was feeling just as much trepidation as she was but he was more in control of it. “I have no idea,” he replied. “But it happened.”
She looked at him, the bright blue eyes pleading and searching. “But how?” she demanded softly, then her eyes grew suspicious. “Were we gassed? Maybe someone gassed us and then dragged us outside to rob us.”
He almost laughed but couldn’t quite bring himself to do it; she was serious and so was he. It was a serious situation.
“We would have seen someone, or heard them,” he took a couple of steps and ended up very close to her, looking down into her lovely face. “Even though my attention was on you, I’m sure I would have heard someone sneaking up to gas us.”
“Did you check your pockets? Is your wallet still there?”
“I left my wallet in the car.”
She pursed her lips as if he had just made an awful mistake. “Now Aisling has it and is probably charging up all of your credit cards.”
He grinned. “If she does, I’ll take it out on you.”
“Oh, yeah? And how are you going to do that?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes. No. Well, maybe.”
Conor laughed softly. They had come to a halt about twenty feet from the mound, facing each other, when an object of some kind suddenly zinged past Conor’s head and he turned, startled, in time to see several creatures in the trees off to the north side of the mound. Creatures were the only way to describe them because they were green and brown, blending in with the foliage like woodland wraiths. They whooped and yelled and threw things, and started dropping out of the trees. When they began to run, Conor could see that they were human; naked human men painted in dirty shades of green and brown.
They clutched crude bows in their hands made of thin, stripped branches and some kind of animal sinew. Conor could hardly believe what he was seeing; it was like watching an ancient reenactment only this one had the distinct element of danger; people didn’t launch arrows because they wanted to be friendly. They launched them because they wanted to kill. One of the group launched a very crude arrow again and it weakly sailed off to the left.
As they drew closer, Conor knew the meant to attack them but he still couldn’t believe it. He just stood there and observed, like an anthropologist would. Beside him, Destry let out a shriek.
“Holy Crap!” she yelped.
Her cry seemed to startle him from clinically evaluating the situation. Although he was an expert in ancient warfare, he’d never really had cause, other than an occasional bar fight, to use his skills. As big as he was, at six and a half feet tall, he’d never really been called upon to use his hand to hand combat skills in a mortal situation and, truth be told, he was a little frightened. But he could see that all of that was about to change. He was about to put his money where his mouth was. Something in his gut told him that these men were not the reasoning type. They looked like wild animals and he responded in kind.
A fist the size of a ten pound ham came flying out at the first man, delivering a crushing blow that sent him to the ground. Conor grabbed the second man by the neck and tossed him off into the trees. Two others descended on him and he found himself in a vicious fight, tossing men to the ground only to have them jump up and try to strike him. One man had a crude bronze knife blade and he swiped it at Conor, catching him in the arm and drawing blood. Furious, Conor drove his fist into the man’s head.
Destry had darted away when Conor threw the first punch; she had nowhere to go and no place to hide, but she didn’t want to get clobbered in the fight. She’d never in her life heard of gangs hanging out in the countryside of Ireland, beating up tourists. But there were at least six of them, three of them who were already out cold thanks to Conor’s crushing blows. The man could deliver a punch like nothing she had ever seen this side of a movie screen. But as she watched him, she began to realize that he might need help. She’d never been in a fight in her life but that was about to change; she had to help him.
Over to her left, the strange woman was trying to get her attention, beckoning her to come, but Destry had no intention of going with the woman or of leaving Conor alone. Forgetting her splitting headache and nausea, she quickly looked around for anything she could use as a weapon. Rocks would do but she quickly spied a fairly thick branch on the ground, about four feet long and with leaves and smaller branches still growing out of it. Swiftly, she retrieved it and the next time one of those skinny naked guys came around, she whacked him over the head with it. He fell like a stone.
This left two men going after Conor; he had one of them in a headlock and the other one by the throat. Destry rushed up with her branch and cracked the guy in the headlock on the back of the head with it. Surprised, Conor looked up just in time to see Destry brain the last man in his grip; she took a swing at his head like a baseball player swinging a bat and knocked the guy out of the park. But he was tough and she had to whack him twice.
When he fell to the ground, unconscious, Conor suddenly let out a roar and beat at his chest, kicking at the men on the ground. It was a release of fear, the expending of testosterone, on the most basic primal level. Destry, sickened by the fight, dropped her branch and staggered back, tripping over a rock and ending up on her bum. There she sat as Conor bellowed his victory.
He was hyped up on adrenalin, the primordial surge of battle in his veins. He was a strong personality as it was, demonstrative, but his victory yell was truly something to behold. For a man who had never truly been in a battle situation, he had taken to it with frightening ease. Still riding the adrenalin high, he looked up from his six victims to see Destry sitting on the ground looking horribly pale. He forgot his testosterone seizures and rushed to her.
“Are you all right?” he reached down to pick her up off the grass. “Did you get hurt?”
She shook her head, weakly trying to pull away from him and struggling to hold back the tears. But the tears came and she broke down.
“I’m fine,” she sobbed softly. “I just want to get out of here.”
He put his big arms around her, pulling her against him. “I’m sorry; so sorry,” he murmured, giving her a gentle squeeze. Putting his enormous arm around her shoulders, he pulled her away from the pile of bodies. “Come on; we’ll get out of here right now.”
“Who were those guys?” she wept.
He hugged her again, gently. “I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said. “A group of ruffians; who knows?”
“They don’t have any clothes on.”
“A group of insane nudists, then. I don’t know who they are.”
Destry was torn between giggling at his humor and her tears, and the tears won out as he began to walk her in the direction of the car park; or, at least, where the car park had once been. He didn’t know what else to do. But Padraigan was still lingering now behind him with her three little helpers, leading the shaggy horses with them.
“Wait,” Padraigan called. “Please, my lord, not that way. We must go this way.”
He turned to look at the woman, exhaustion evident on his face now that the adrenalin rush was gone. “I’m not going to…”
Destry cut him off. “What does she want?”
He grunted as he turned to look at her. “She wants us to go with her. She insists.”
Destry waved him off. “Maybe we should,” she said, her gaze on what should be the carpark in the distance. “There’s no car out there and now that I look at it, no road. There’s no farmhouse or cars driving by or anything else that moves. There’s nothing at all. We just got attacked by crazy, dirty naked guys who tried to shoot arrows at us. What in the hell is going on here, anyway?”
His gaze was moving with hers, seeing the same sights, feeling the same dread. “I don’t know.”
Destry’s teary
gaze looked up at him. “Maybe she knows.”
Conor didn’t say anything for a moment. But he came to a stop, his hands still on Destry as he turned for Padraigan. There was suspicion and anxiety in his tone, but considering the circumstances, he figured that he didn’t have much choice.
“We will go with you,” he told her in her language.
Padraigan smiled timidly, encouraging her little helpers to provide horses to Conor and Destry. Destry had ridden a great deal and mounted easily when Conor gave her a leg up. He, however, took a bit longer; throwing his big body over the back of the horse, he finally swung a leg over and sat up somewhat uncertainly. He didn’t look particularly comfortable. But as storm clouds began to gather again over head, he followed Padraigan and her little group off to the east, heading into a massive forest he had never even noticed before, and losing themselves in the dark and musty depths of the thickening trees.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The sense of urgency followed them for a few miles, fearful that they were perhaps being followed by whatever dangers Padraigan had eluded to. Through the trees they moved, sometimes traveling through bramble so thick that the horses had a difficult time getting through it. But Padraigan urged them onward and the little people swatted the horses with switches to get them going. The forest around them was thick and still, the canopy dense, and the feeling of unease pervasive. It was like an impenetrable cloak that none of them could shake, this odd feeling of disorientation and apprehension that seemed to blanket them.
Conor felt it but he didn’t say anything to Destry, who finally seemed to be feeling better after their rough experience. She was actually enjoying the horse ride, patting the animal on the neck or stroking its mane. Not being used to horses, however, Conor was more than ready to get off the animal shortly after they started. His bum was killing him, as well as something else a bit more tender, so when they eventually entered a clearing deep in the thick wood and Padraigan dismounted her small white pony, Conor slid off his big shaggy horse and started walking. He just couldn’t take riding anymore and rubbed at his backside to bring some circulation into it. He swore it was numb. Beside him and still astride her fat gray beast, Destry grinned down at him.
“Hurt yourself, Dr. Daderga?” she teased.
He gave her his best scowl. “Mind your own business.”
For the first time since he’d met her, Destry burst into unrestrained laughter. It was a wonderful sound. “Poor baby,” she joked. “Not much of a cowboy, are you?”
He cast her a long look. “I have it on good authority that you’re about to be spanked if you don’t zip your lips.”
She giggled and steered her horse away from him so that there was a good gap in distance. “I’m sorry,” she said, although she didn’t mean a word of it. She was leaning back to get a good look at his butt beneath the baggy jeans. “I hate to tell you this, but your ass is flat. You must have damaged it riding on the horse.”
He just shook his head as he walked, a smile playing on his lips. He wouldn’t look at her.
“Great,” he said sarcastically, heightening his strong Irish brogue. “Now my ass is damaged. If I had trouble getting you to go out with me before, now I’ve just lost a one of the biggest guns in my arsenal. What else can I attract you with if not my fantastic, now flattened, ass?”
Destry hooted as the horses plodded along. “How about those fabulous biceps?”
He looked at her, very hopeful. “You like my biceps?”
Her laughter faded and her bright blue eyes twinkled at him. “I do,” she admitted. “You must work out diligently.”
He snorted. “Religiously,” he concurred. “My father was an amateur bodybuilder and he started me when I was in my teens. If I don’t maintain this bulk, it turns to fat and then I’ll look just like Dowth mound – a big, round blob. So I go to the gym three or four times a week.”
“Did you compete as a bodybuilder?”
He shook his head. “No,” he replied. “I was more interested in school. My dad was disappointed, too; he doesn’t have nearly my height or build and he always wished he had. He used to give me grief about not reaching my potential.”
She watched him walk, still rubbing his bum. “You reached your potential academically,” she said. “You’re a Ph.D., for Heaven’s sake; wasn’t he proud of you about that?”
He nodded, how watching the ground as it passed beneath his feet. “Sure,” he said. “I have a double doctorate in Celtic and Irish History as well as Anthropology, but he would have been proud of me if I ended working at a petrol station.”
She smiled, looking away flirtatiously when he glanced over at her. Conor was so smitten with her that it was all he could think about even though they had bigger problems at hand. For the moment, she was responding to him as she never had before and he wanted to enjoy every minute of it. Finally, her walls of defense were cracking and he was banging away at them with a sledgehammer.
“Do you have brothers?” she asked, gazing off into the trees.
He nodded. “One,” he replied. “Gerritt is eighteen months younger than I am.”
“Any sisters?”
“None,” he looked over at her and their eyes met. “You have a sister, right?”
She nodded. “Caitlin.”
“Does she look anything like you?”
Her smile was back. “A little,” she said. “She’s taller than I am. She teaches high school.”
“Is she married?”
She laughed softly. “No,” she said. “Why? Are you looking for a wife?”
He lifted a red eyebrow. “I’ve already found one; she just doesn’t know it yet.”
Destry’s smile faded as she stared at him, knowing he meant her. She looked away and Conor could feel the mood plummet. He scrambled to get it back on track.
“Did I do it again?” he asked softly.
She was looking off into the woods. “Do what?”
“Offend you?”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she sighed, shaking her head and petting the horse absently. “No,” she said after a moment. “It’s just that I don’t know what to say when you say things like that.”
Conor watched her carefully, her body language. He wasn’t very good at reading women but he was trying very hard.
“I guess I shouldn’t say them at all,” he said quietly. “But I can’t help myself. Destry, if you’re not interested in me in a romantic sense, just say so. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable by telling you what’s on my mind if it’s not something you want to hear.”
She looked at him. “That’s not the case at all,” she suddenly averted her gaze, looking back to the horse again and fiddling with its mane. “Maybe that’s the problem. I just feel… confused.”
“Why?”
She lifted her shoulders. “Because I was supposed to be married two weeks ago,” she paused, thinking of how to voice her thoughts. “You know something? I’ve done a lot of thinking in that time and I came to realize that I’m really not all that upset about losing Jake. If I really think hard about it, he was a jerk; self–absorbed, mean at times, critical. He was hard to be around. So I guess in that sense I really don’t miss the guy. I don’t miss the pressure I felt every time he came around me. It seems to me that what I’m most upset about is being humiliated. And that’s selfish.”
He was watching her intently, gradually walking in her direction and closing the gap between them. “No, it’s not,” he said somewhat gently. “It’s perfectly natural to be upset at being dumped on your wedding day. Don’t you love the guy?”
She thought a moment; hard. Then she started to shake her head. “I guess I really don’t,” she admitted. “Sure, I thought I did at first, but then the infidelity rumors started… oh, hell, I don’t know; when we got engaged, it all happened so fast. He’s a fairly popular sports figure in the States and I guess I just got swept up in it. I think I was more in love with the idea of getting married than with who I
was actually marrying. In hindsight, being left at the altar was probably the best thing that happened to me. I just don’t see our marriage lasting.”
He stared up at her, finding her confession both interesting and oddly encouraging. “Aisling said he wasn’t very nice to you,” he said softly.
Destry smiled ironically. “He wasn’t,” she agreed. “Just little things; you know, not opening a door for me, or pulling out my chair, or telling me he loved me or that I was beautiful. But there were bigger things, too; he’d be out on the road for weeks, come home and spend the night at my house and then take off again for weeks. He rarely called me from the road and when he did, it was always really hurried as if he had better things to do. I think… I think he just used me for sex and the fact that his friends really liked me. I heard his friends say that I made him look good.”
She trailed off, falling silent, and Conor noticed that, up ahead, they were coming upon an extremely crude structure. His gaze drifted over the sod construction of the beastly little hut, realizing that it was very primitive. In this day and age, he’d never seen or heard of people still living like this in Ireland, not in the farthest reaches of the isle, and his Anthropologist’s brain started kicking in. He was starting to wonder if he hadn’t discovered an entirely new Irish culture, something primal and crude right in the midst of modern–day Ireland. His attention was becoming diverted by the new scenery but he retained enough focus to answer her.
“Well,” he finally said. “Like I said before, the guy was a moron. You’re the most beautiful women in the world and never under any circumstances would I not pull out a chair for you, or open a door, or tell you every day that I loved you. That’s what you deserve. You deserve to be treated like a queen.”
Destry glanced at him, feeling her heart race a little at his declaration, but she was prevented from replying as Padraigan suddenly headed in their direction, speaking to Conor in that odd dialect. The woman might as well have been speaking Martian for all Destry understood it, so she remained silent while the tiny white woman addressed Conor.
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