by J. K. Coi
Howling Sacrifices
J.K. Coi
What happens to a young and naive Canadian woman traveling alone on a particularly evil night in the Scottish Highlands? She’ll get a lot more than she bargained for when she wishes for an adventure and finds herself part of a bloody pagan ritual…and inexorably linked to a wild and dangerous wolf.
Ellora’s Cave Publishing
www.ellorascave.com
Howling Sacrifices
ISBN 9781419934063
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Howling Sacrifices Copyright © 2011 J.K. Coi
Edited by Raelene Gorlinsky
Cover art by Syneca
Electronic book publication March 2011
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Howling Sacrifices
J.K. Coi
Chapter One
Lucy groaned as the carriage hit another rut in the road. A carriage—the old man at the train station had called it a brougham—with a horse. She’d never seen one, much less been in one, before today. She also hadn’t truly been away from home before either, but this trip to Scotland to visit Aileen had been one new experience after another from the moment she stepped off the airplane. This unconventional road trip at two in the morning to get to her friend’s family home was just another one of them.
“American?”
Startled by the deep voice echoing to her in the small, cold space, she glanced away from the window and into the depths of the carriage where the moon’s glow couldn’t reach.
The man sitting across from her was hidden by the heavy shadows. Two hours ago, when she’d stepped up into the coach at the station in Crianlarich, he had already been on board with the lamp doused. He hadn’t responded to her small-voiced hello or the few attempts she’d made at friendly conversation. In fact, he hadn’t said a word in the two hours they’d been travelling together. Until now.
“I’m sorry?”
“Ye’re an American?”
“Ah, no.” She shook her head. “Canadian.”
“I suppose that would explain the subtle distinction in the accent.”
The distinction would have been a lot more obvious if she still spoke with her Maritimes accent, but fifteen years in Ontario had mostly taken care of that. She wanted to say that her accent was nothing compared to his thick Scottish brogue, but of course, that would have been ignorant so she kept her mouth shut.
Lucy suddenly wished she had the guts to turn on the overhead lamp and flood the vehicle with reassuring light, but she rarely had the guts to do anything—this impulsive trip being her one exception. Besides, something about the stranger’s deep voice stilled her hand. She had the ridiculously morbid thought that if she gazed upon his face she might not live through the night.
“I’m Lucy Cavanaugh.” Believing herself very brave indeed, she extended her hand in the space between their seats. “What’s your name?”
She was certain he was going to go back to giving her the silent treatment, but he finally answered, although he didn’t lean forward to shake her hand. “Dougald Merrick.”
“Um, nice to meet you,” she muttered, dropping her arm after an awkward pause.
“What brings you so far from home all by yerself, Lucy?”
Wary about revealing her destination to a stranger, Lucy hesitated. She was probably overreacting by imagining that she’d unwittingly climbed into a four-wheeled version of the boat of Charon with a serial killer, but she nevertheless felt intimidated by this man’s overwhelming dark presence. In fact, everything about this trip made her nervous, and even though she was no doubt perfectly safe, it was probably best that she didn’t tell him too much.
“Just visiting some friends.” She stared into the shadows, her voice turning sharp and guarded. “They’re expecting me tonight.”
Dougald chuckled, a deep bass rumbling from the darkness, raising goose bumps on her skin half from jitters and half out of an absurd compulsion to lean forward and search the shadows for the face that belonged to such a mysterious, powerful voice. She tried to ignore the impulse, torn between the contradiction of fear and temptation.
“Dinna worry, lass,” he said. “I have no intention of draggin’ ye from the carriage and out into the woods. Ye’ll reach yer friends safely.”
Lucy let out a long sigh and a breathy little laugh, embarrassed that she’d been so transparent about her misgivings. “Sorry. I know I’m overreacting. I think it’s the time of night.” She spared another quick glance out the window. The darkness was so complete she shivered.
“Witching hour of the winter solstice,” he murmured in a low voice.
She turned back to him. “That sounds ominous.”
“Many cultures believed that evil’s hold o’er the natural world was strongest during the solstice, which is why it was popular to make sacrifices to the gods on this night, to welcome back the light.”
His words only compounded Lucy’s feelings of foreboding. Cold slithered up her spine and settled over her heart as she gazed out the window once more. On one side of her, the narrow road they were traveling had been cut out of the mountain. It wound across the bumpy terrain in lazy S’s. On the other side of the carriage, craggy moors had given way some time ago to tall trees that hid even the brightest stars. There were no road lamps or markers to light the way. Anything could leap out into their path at any moment and they’d never see it coming.
It was all just a little too spooky for a girl who’d been living in Toronto for the past fifteen years, where no street went without a neon sign or two and there was never a time of day without some jarring noise ringing in the air to remind you that you were never truly alone.
“Every corner of Scotland seems to have some eerie ancient mythology attached to it. It’s a little unsettling,” she admitted sheepishly to Dougal.
“Aye. Ye’re afraid some of the stories might still prove true?”
“You mean about evil witches, fairies and magical selkies?” Lucy’s nervous laughter echoed between them.
“Ah, well. Maybe not so much then,” he chuckled. “Ye’re a modern woman, after all.”
Some of Lucy’s tension eased at his easy manner. “It’s all fascinating, though,” she said. “In fact, when I was waiting for the coach in Crianlarich—”
“You mean ‘Cree-an-larrikh’.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m butchering the pronunciation, aren’t I?”
Since he had still refused to lean forward and give her the benefit of seeing the face of the person she was speaking with, she could barely make out the shrug of his shoulders from the shadows. Was it just her, or did he seem bored?
> Of course he was bored. Lucy couldn’t even keep a Canadian guy interested for longer than it took to get in her pants—her boyfriend had dumped her like a hot potato less than a week ago—so how was she supposed to keep a dark, mysterious stranger interested?
Not that she was trying.
She wouldn’t be trying to flirt with him? A stranger? One whose face she hadn’t even seen? She wasn’t that crazy. Right?
Lucy shook her head, even as she found herself opening her mouth to speak again. She wasn’t eager to go back to the silence of before, which had felt thick and uneasy and more than just a little scary.
“The ticket master back at the station was telling me there have been reports of strange things happening in the area recently.” She chuckled, but it sounded hollow even to her own ears. At the time, she’d thought that old man was just teasing her, trying to scare the naïve foreigner with spooky tales. But now she remembered the look on his face as he’d tried to talk her into staying off the road at night, and she wasn’t so sure anymore. It had looked a lot like fear.
“And he also mentioned wolf sightings,” she added with a shiver. “But that can’t be true, right? I thought wolves were rare in the Highlands.”
“Aye,” he answered. “So rare as to be naught but a myth.”
Chapter Two
She waited for Dougald to say more, but he didn’t. After a few tense minutes, she shrugged past his rudeness and assumed their brief conversation was over.
Looking down at her hands, she forced open her death grip on the strap of the purse clutched in her lap and wondered how much longer before they would arrive at Kinlochleven.
Lucy had been a little concerned when there was nobody to meet her at the cozy town of Crianlarich at suppertime. Her conversation with the old guy at the station hadn’t helped.
When she’d called the number Aileen had given her, a man answered. She worried when he said Aileen wasn’t available, but since he’d identified himself as Aileen’s brother and happy to hear that Lucy was coming, she’d taken him at his word that she should get on the late-night coach to Kinlochleven.
Now, however, as the oppressive darkness pressed into the carriage and onto her chest, she was finding it hard to breathe. Lucy’s fears stretched over the miles still in front of her until she started questioning her judgment in getting on that plane and leaving everything familiar and comfortable to come here where she barely knew a soul.
She found her gaze drawn again and again into that void on the other side of the carriage. It was like Pandora’s Box, the darkness where her fellow passenger hid. She tried to pay him no mind since he obviously didn’t want to be sociable, but the teasing glimpses she’d had of him made him seem all the more irresistible.
And strangely sexy.
Wearing a long wool coat and black dress pants with boots, he sat in the corner of the bench seat across from her, one ankle propped on the opposite knee. The shadows concealed everything else except for his hands. Large, rough hands as if he worked outside often, despite his refined clothing. She felt a mortifying blush stain her cheeks as she pictured those hands against her too-pale skin, drawing sighs of pleasure with every firm caress.
Jesus, Lucy. You can’t be that hard up. It’s only been a week since classes let out.
A week ago she was finishing up the last of her university exams and Christmas shopping at the Eaton Centre for her boyfriend, and now she was newly single and across the world for the holidays instead.
Aileen had gone home to Scotland just after exams. When she’d invited Lucy to come for a visit, Lucy had originally said no. But after Michael’s cowardly voicemail on her cell phone saying he’d met someone he had more in common with, who made him feel more alive, Lucy decided it was time for an adventure and she called Aileen. The trip would be her chance to live dangerously and sow some of her wild oats—whatever that meant.
So now here she was, alone in a throwback travelling coach with a mysterious stranger. Normally, she would have been nervous—and she was—but not in the same way as before hearing Dougald’s voice. The sound of his voice had penetrated her like the deep thrust of a lover’s cock. Lucy swallowed hard just thinking about how the rumbling warmth of it made her feel tense and intimidated, but also needy. Wanton. And for the first time in her life, wonderfully wild.
A lone wolf’s haunting howl echoed from somewhere beyond the road, although not too far away by the sounds of it. Lucy opened her mouth to ask if Dougald had heard it too, but suddenly a loud crack split the air and the carriage jolted to the side and threatened to tip over. Lucy’s arms went out to brace herself but she still flew forward when the vehicle swerved back the other way, falling to her knees on the floor between Dougald’s legs.
He bent forward, gripping her elbows to steady her as she got to her feet, but another lurch of the carriage tossed her right into his lap. His arms came around her just as the carriage came to a crashing stop, listing to the side like a ship tossed up on the banks of a deserted island.
God, he was so warm. Warm and solid.
Perched on his thighs, she looked up and gasped as his face was finally revealed.
As hard and beautiful as what she’d seen of Scotland so far, the deep crevices in his forehead and the sharp angles of his cheeks and chin warned her that his rough good looks no doubt hid a flawed and darkened soul and she should retreat back to her side of the coach immediately. But something else in his surprisingly light eyes seemed to beckon Lucy closer. Dougald’s eyes reminded her of a winter storm, turbulent and intense. Promising adventure, danger and the realization of all her darkest fantasies.
Everything she was afraid of…and everything she desperately wanted.
His gaze found her mouth and her fingers clutched the fabric of his coat at his shoulder. It suddenly seemed the most natural thing in the world to lean into him, her breasts pressing against his chest. She could feel the tantalizing whoosh of his breath on her cheek and Lucy was certain he wouldn’t be able to miss the thunderous thumping of her heart or the pulse ticking madly away in her neck, but she didn’t seem to care.
She bit her lip. His eyes flared as he watched her. He hadn’t pushed her away yet, so she took advantage and smoothed her hand slowly up his arm.
Jesus, they made them big in Scotland, she mused, fascinated by the play of hard muscle beneath his coat.
Lucy wanted a taste. A taste of danger, of excitement. Something she could pull out to fuel her fantasies when she returned home after the holidays.
It didn’t matter that she didn’t know this man from Adam. She didn’t know where he came from, what he did, whether his beautiful Scottish wife was waiting for him to come home.
She still kissed him.
In the space of a fractured heartbeat Lucy pressed her soft lips to his. Beneath her hands his body tensed but he still didn’t push her away and she took that as a good sign.
Being more assertive than she’d ever been in her entire life, she teased him with nibbling kisses. After a long moment, he started kissing her back.
His hands rode all the way up her back and into her hair, clutching a fistful of it and tugging until she opened her mouth on a gasp. Then his tongue was sliding between her lips, rubbing against her tongue. Wet, hot and so damn erotic Lucy’s panties were instantly wet.
Exhilaration and adrenaline rushed through her bloodstream. She squirmed in his lap, trying to get as close as possible, wanting to tell him to put his hand up her skirt, feed the heat between her legs. His erection pressed against her outer thigh and she wished she had the guts to climb over him, straddle him and rub herself up and down the length of his cock. But she wasn’t that far gone.
Yet.
Feeling drunk with the rush of adventure and the thrill of passion, she did curl her fingers into his shoulders, nails digging deep into the wool of his coat. God, another kiss like that and the last of her inhibitions would melt away and she would open her thighs…
So engrossed in the ill
icit pulsing of her clit, it took Lucy a moment to recognize that Dougald’s attention had shifted.
The hand on her waist tightened as he pulled back. With regret and just a little shame, she lifted her head. His eyes glowed softly as he looked back at her. “Someone’s outside,” he whispered.
She heard it then, the rumble of an engine. And she finally remembered that their coach was busted or stuck and the driver still hadn’t come around to check on them. Guilt flooded her as she thought of the poor guy lying unconscious out there and neither of them had even thought twice about him.
“Oh God. Talk about shitty timing. I’m…I’m so sorry,” Lucy mumbled, pressing her stinging lips together. She struggled to remove herself from his lap, but her heel got tangled in the strap of her purse and she fell again, palm landing right in his crotch, over his hard-as-marble cock.
“Oh God, oh God,” she muttered again and snatched her hand away as if it burned. White hot embarrassment crawled up her neck and into her cheeks and she thanked God for the cover of night so he couldn’t see.
“It’s a’right, but perhaps ye should stay here a moment and catch yer breath,” Dougald murmured into her ear. She could feel the slight curve of his lips against her skin as he smiled over her clumsiness.
Lucy was mortified, partly because that’s exactly what she wanted to do. The hand that hadn’t been cupping his crotch was braced against his chest and she clenched it into a tight fist as she pushed herself off him. “No, I’m okay. A clumsy idiot, but okay.”
Taking a hesitant step back, she tried smoothing her long skirt back down over her hips. “What do you think happened?” she asked, desperate for a change of subject. “Is the horse all right? Did we lose a wheel and go into the ditch?”
The door suddenly flew open and Lucy jumped, startled. She’d expected to see the coach driver, but when a masked figure appeared in his place, she screamed and staggered back. She tripped again and fell between the seats to the carriage floor.