The Immortal Highlander

by Karen Marie Moning

  Dageus and Drustan exchanged wry looks and shook their heads.

  Then Drustan stepped forward and slipped an arm around his wife’s shoulders. Silvery gaze resigned, he said, “Why doona we just address whether or not the lass is hungry and let matters of history and physics bide a wee.” To the general vicinity near Gabby, he inclined his head and said with quiet formality, “The Keltar bid you welcome, Tuatha Dé. The Old Ones are e’er welcome in our home.”

  Adam watched Gabrielle through narrowed eyes and, though he appreciated Drustan’s formal welcome, was pleased that Dageus recalled him, and delighted that his ka-lyrra was finally beginning to see him for who he was, it was all currently doing little to appease him.

  He’d not anticipated his reaction to seeing Gabrielle around the twins.

  He didn’t like it. Didn’t like it one bit. There was too much testosterone in the room. And all of his—no inconsiderable amount—was invisible.

  And knowing Drustan and Dageus were married wasn’t doing a damn thing to ease his mind. Really, did she have to smile at them like that? Didn’t she understand they were men and men were not to be trusted around a woman like Gabrielle, no matter how happily married they allegedly were? And Christ, he couldn’t even mark his territory. Touching her in small, intimate ways failed to establish anything, because each time he did it, it only made her invisible to them.

  He’d never hated being invisible more. Around normal men back in Cincinnati it had been of no consequence, but the Keltar were not normal men.

  He toyed irritably with his empty tumbler of scotch, rolling it back and forth between his palms, eyeing the bottle on the sidebar.

  Casting the MacKeltars a black look—which of course they couldn’t see, but it made him feel mildly better—he stood, refilled his glass, and began pacing the library. It was a spacious, masculine room with cherry bookcases recessed in paneled walls, comfortable chairs and ottomans, a dusky rose marble fireplace, and tall bay windows. He circled it, absently examining books, listening while Gabby continued filling them in on their—ah, no, her—version of events to date. He’d tried to get her to tell it his way, but she’d seemed perversely delighted by the opportunity to tell the MacKeltars all about how her life had gotten so screwed up since his advent into it.

  Gwen and Chloe were making sympathetic little noises, and he could just smell the bloody female bonding going on in the room. Everyone was bonding, except for the invisible person.

  Bloody hell, he was hungry. But did he get to eat? No. Gabby had spoken for both of them, bypassing a meal, accepting a light snack in the library.

  Shortbreads, candies, and nuts? A mortal body could expire of starvation on such meager fare.

  And she’d not yet even gotten to the part where Darroc and the Hunters had appeared yet. Gwen and Chloe seemed fascinated by the notion of Sidhe-seers and had been asking dozens of utterly unnecessary questions about what it was like to be one. At this rate, it could take all night to get to the important parts—like what Adam needed them to do. If only he could speak for himself! He was beginning to wonder if she’d even manage to get it all wrapped up by Lughnassadh.

  Currently she was elaborating about those idiotic, apocryphal O’Callaghan Books, and Chloe, antiquities lover and relentless bookworm, was trying to set up a time to come to Cincinnati to see them. Books. Faery was in danger, his queen was at risk, Darroc was trying to kill them, Hunters were on the loose, and they were talking about frigging books!

  It mollified him only mildly to hear her say, “You’re welcome to see them, Chloe, but, frankly, I think my ancestors might have gotten a lot of stuff wrong.”

  About high damn time she admitted that, he thought, eyes narrowing, his gaze raking over her possessively. Willing her to look up at him. To make him feel less invisible.

  But she didn’t so much as cast a tiny glance his way, she was too busy answering yet another irrelevant question.

  He was just about to stalk out and go help himself to something from the kitchen when Dageus said thoughtfully, “So ’tis the féth fiada he’s cursed with that keeps us from seeing him?”

  Adam’s head whipped around. “What does he know of it, ka-lyrra?” he said, suddenly alert. Dageus was another human wild card, like his Sidhe-seer; the things he’d endured in the past year had changed him in ways of which none could be entirely certain. Had changed him so much, in fact, that when the present Dageus had encountered himself in the past—which should have canceled one of them out—it hadn’t. Which was part of the reason the High Council had so firmly advocated his destruction. Of course, some among them had been driven by more nefarious motives, like Darroc.

  “Yes, it is, and Adam wants to know what you know of it,” Gabby related for him.

  Dageus smiled faintly. “More than I e’er wished to. I used it myself to borrow a few rare tomes I needed not too long ago. We call it the magic mantle, or Druid’s fog. ’tis no’ easy to wear; ’tis a chilling spell. There are two versions of it. The version the MacKeltars were taught, and the spell the Draghar knew—a much more potent, triumvirate enchantment, in the Tuatha Dé tongue. I ne’er used that version.”

  “ ‘The Draghar’?” Gabby echoed, frowning.

  “For a time,” Chloe explained, “Dageus was possessed by the souls of thirteen ancient, evil Druids who’d been banished by the Tuatha Dé to an immortal prison four thousand years ago. They were called the Draghar.”

  “Oh. I see.” Gabby sounded quite unconvinced of her own words.

  Chloe laughed softly. “I’ll explain it all later, Gabby. I promise.”

  “Bloody hell, yes!” Adam exploded, stalking to Gabrielle’s side. Closing a hand on her arm, he said urgently, “Ask him if he still retains the Draghar’s memories, Gabrielle.” During the time the thirteen dark Druids had possessed Dageus, their knowledge had been his, and they’d once been privy to virtually all Tuatha Dé lore. Adam had assumed that when Aoibheal had destroyed the Draghar, she’d stripped those memories from the Highlander’s mind.

  But what if she hadn’t? If Dageus knew the ancient countercurse in the Tuatha Dé’s tongue, he could terminate Adam’s enchantment! No mere mortal could do it, nor could he himself, but a full-blooded MacKeltar Druid who knew the ancient words certainly could.

  He’d be able to speak for himself, be seen again, be solid again, be able to make it unmistakably clear that Gabrielle was his.

  “Okay, but they can’t see me again, Adam. Stop touching me.”

  Stop touching me. Being invisible was making him feel impotent enough around the Keltar, and impotent was not a feeling Adam was capable of dealing with on any level, and her words provoked something fast and furious and primal in him. He was consumed with the sudden imperative to make her remember that not so long ago she’d been begging him to kiss her deeper, that he’d had his hand down her pants. Damn near inside her, and would have been there—with something far more intimate and personal than a hand—if they’d not been interrupted. That they had some serious unfinished business to attend to.

  In one smooth motion, he tugged her up into his arms and crushed her mouth with a hot, savage kiss, plunging deep, claiming, saying with it: I am your man, and don’t forget it.

  Had she not yielded instantly, gone soft against him, accepting his kiss completely, he wasn’t sure what he might have done. He was merely grateful that he didn’t have to find out. In the library, invisible, with little to no foreplay was not how he wanted her first time to be. He wanted her first time to be an overwhelming, mind-numbing, perfect seduction that would brand her to the very core of her glowing golden soul.

  Fortunately, she not only yielded, her knees did that little, utterly feminine buckling thing that made him feel like a veritable god among men, and he was able to make himself let her go.

  When he did, she sank limply back into her seat, lips parted, eyes unfocused. She flushed, looking dazed, then shook her head abruptly.

  He was pleased to see that Dageus and D
rustan eyed her intently, then exchanged a thoughtful glance. Good, he’d finally marked his territory, at least a little.

  “He wants to know if you retain the memories of the Draghar,” Gabby said with another shake of her head, as if she were still trying to clear it.

  Dageus nodded. “ ’tis why I brought it up.”

  “You do?” Drustan said, looking startled.

  “Aye, though they’ve gone, their memories remain. Their knowledge is mine.”

  “Christ, you told me naught of that,” Drustan growled. “All of their knowledge?”

  “Aye. Masses of the stuff littering my mind. I spoke naught of it as ’twas of no relevance. With the Draghar no longer inside me, I have no temptation to use any of it. And the answer is aye again, I believe I can remove his curse. I, for one, would prefer to be able to see him. I doona care for this invisibility of his at all. ’tis making me uneasy.”

  “Yes,” Adam said, punching the air, elated. “Do it. Right now. Hurry the hell up.” If he’d had the slightest suspicion that Dageus still possessed the memories of the thirteen, he’d have come here first, the instant the queen had abandoned him in London.

  But he’d never imagined that Aoibheal might permit those memories to endure; so much of the Draghar’s knowledge was innately dangerous, intrinsically corruptive. He snorted. His queen was slipping. When he was immortal again, they were going to have a long talk. Perhaps it was time he took a seat on her infernal High Council himself and got into the thick of things.

  “He says, ‘Would you please try?’ “ Gabby translated, tossing him a wordless little rebuke. He shrugged. Couldn’t she understand his impatience?

  “Is it forbidden magic?” Drustan asked Dageus.

  “Nay. But ’tis the old Tuatha Dé magic. Not something we were necessarily given to use, though considering the queen left me it, well . . .” He shrugged.

  “Do you feel ’tis dangerous in any way?” Drustan pressed.

  “Nay, ’tis but a chant in their tongue.”

  “For Christ’s sake, would you say it already?” Adam hissed. “I need to be seen. I can’t stand this bloody frigging invisibility.”

  “ ’tis your choice, brother. I leave it to your judgment,” Drustan said.

  After a moment’s reflection, Dageus said, “I see no harm in it.” Of Gabby, he inquired, “Where is he?”

  When she pointed, Dageus rose and, circling the area she’d indicated, began to speak.

  Or rather, Gabby thought, he opened his mouth and sound came out, but he wasn’t speaking. It wasn’t a single voice that issued from his lips but myriad voices, dozens layered atop one another, rising and falling, swelling and breaking. It was melodic yet chillingly dissonant, beautiful yet strangely awful. Like fire that one could crawl inside of trying to get warm, only to end up freezing to death in it.

  It raised all the fine hair on Gabby’s body, and she realized that if this was the old Tuatha Dé tongue, it was not a language Adam had ever spoken around her.

  Whatever tongue he’d been speaking on those infrequent occasions wasn’t this. This was a voice of raw power. Such sound could mesmerize, could seduce against a person’s will. It was old magic, undiluted and pure. The kind she’d always imagined the Hunters possessed. A terrible magic.

  As it built to a crescendo, she shuddered, closing her eyes.

  “Easy, ka-lyrra; it’s because you’re a Sidhe-seer that it affects you so,” she heard Adam say softly. “It’s why I’ve not spoken my tongue around you. Your instincts to guard, to gather your people and flee, are being roused. In ancient days you would have heard us coming on the wind and secreted your villagers away. Breathe. Slow and deep.”

  She did as he said, pursing her lips and breathing through her mouth, trying to wait it out, hoping it would end soon. He was right, the mere sound of the ancient tongue was filling her with a bizarre kind of battle-readiness, a bone-deep urge to round up the MacKeltars and make them hide. Then to ride through the nearby towns, sounding the alarm.

  Finally Dageus finished, and she heard Gwen and Chloe say simultaneously, breathlessly: “Oh, my God.”

  Gabby opened her eyes.

  Drustan had risen to his feet and was scowling, an expression mirrored by his twin. Both were glaring at Adam—whom they obviously could now see. Then at their wives, then back at Adam.

  Gabby absorbed the looks on Chloe’s and Gwen’s faces, and suddenly felt so much better about having had such a hard time ignoring the Fae all her life.

  It isn’t just me, she thought gratefully. She wasn’t a woman of weak moral turpitude, a spineless, undisciplined fairy-abduction-waiting-to-happen; the Fae did have something magnetic and inordinately seductive, something women simply couldn’t resist. Adam was affecting Chloe and Gwen in the same way he affected her.

  And how could he not? she thought, seeing him anew through their eyes. He was nearly six and a half feet of powerful, gold-skinned Fae prince, his body sculpted of pure muscle, his long black hair spilling to his waist in a dark silky tangle. Clad in those tattooed jeans, boots, an ivory sweater, and leather coat, gold torque gleaming at his neck, he dripped dark, otherworldly eroticism. His chiseled face was savagely beautiful, shadowed with a few days’ dark stubble. Ancient intelligence and barely banked sexual heat glittered in his exotic, dual-colored eyes. The faint fragrance of jasmine, sandalwood, and spicy man that always clung to him seemed suddenly to fill the room with his heady, intoxicating scent. She wondered, not for the first time, if there were some kind of chemical in the scent a Fae gave off that worked as an aphrodisiac on humans of the opposite sex.

  He was, quite simply, a living, breathing fantasy, exuding an irresistible come-hither that held an intrinsic, unspoken caveat of danger. He had a come-and-get-me-baby-I’m-pure-trouble-and-you’re-gonna-love-it kind of attitude that provoked a woman’s most primitive sexual drives. Drew her even as she knew she should be running like hell in the opposite direction. Drew her, in fact, in some perverse way, because she knew she should be running like hell in the opposite direction.

  And now that she was seeing the looks on Gwen’s and Chloe’s faces, she wondered how she’d managed to stay out of bed with him as long as she had.

  For that matter . . . just how much longer she was going to be able to resist him.

  For that matter, she amended irritably, as she watched Gwen and Chloe watching him, why she was. It sure didn’t look like they would be.

  “Holy cow,” Chloe said faintly.

  “No kidding,” Gwen breathed.

  The sexy Fae prince flashed them a smile that was pure devilish charm, sexy and playful and mischievous, briefly catching the tip of his tongue between white teeth, before his lips curved, dark eyes sparking gold.

  Gabby groaned. She choked on it hastily, camouflaging it with a dry little cough. Her own private stash of eye candy had just been made available for public consumption and she didn’t like it one bit.

  Apparently she wasn’t the only one.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Dageus?” Drustan said irritably.

  “Och, aye,” Dageus said darkly. “You liked him better invisible too?”

  “Och, aye.”

  “Should I curse him again?”

  “Och, aye.”

  Adam threw back his head and laughed, eyes sparkling with gold fire. “Bloody hell, it’s good to be back,” he purred.

  18

  Dageus and Drustan weren’t the only ones who’d like to see . . . er, rather, not see . . . Adam invisible again.

  There were twenty-three females on the Keltar estate—not counting Gwen, Chloe, herself, or the cat—Gabby knew, because shortly after Adam had become visible last night, she’d met each and every one, from tiniest tot to tottering ancient.

  It had begun with a plump, thirtyish maid popping in to pull the drapes for the evening and inquire if the MacKeltars “were wishing aught else?” The moment her bespectacled gaze had fallen on Adam, she’d begun stammering and t
ripping over her own feet. It had taken her a few moments to regain a semblance of coordination, but she’d managed to stumble from the library, nearly upsetting a lamp and a small end table in her haste.

  Apparently it had been haste to alert the forces, for a veritable parade had ensued: a blushing curvaceous maid had come offering a warm-up of tea (they’d not been having any), followed by a giggling maid seeking a forgotten dust cloth (which—was anyone surprised?—was nowhere to be found), then a third one looking for a waylaid broom (yeah, right—they swept castles at midnight in Scotland—who believed that?), then a fourth, fifth, and sixth inquiring if the Crystal Chamber would do for Mr. Black (no one seemed to care what chamber might do for her; she half-expected to end up in an outbuilding somewhere). A seventh, eighth, and ninth had come to announce that his chamber was ready and would he like an escort? A bath drawn? Help undressing? (Well, okay, maybe they hadn’t actually asked the last, but their eyes certainly had.)

  Then a half-dozen more had popped in at varying intervals to say the same things all over again, and to stress that they were there to provide “aught, aught at all Mr. Black might desire.”

  The sixteenth had come to extract two tiny girls from Adam’s lap over their wailing protests (and had stayed out of his lap herself only because Adam had hastily stood), the twenty-third and final one had been old enough to be someone’s great-great-grandmother, and even she’d flirted shamelessly with the “braw Mr. Black,” batting nonexistent lashes above nests of wrinkles, smoothing thin white hair with a blue-veined, age-spotted hand.

  And if that hadn’t been enough, the castle cat, obviously female and obviously in heat, had sashayed in, tail straight up and perkily curved at the tip, and wound her furry little self sinuously around Adam’s ankles, purring herself into a state of drooling, slanty-eyed bliss.

  Mr. Black, my ass, she’d wanted to snap (and she liked cats, really she did; she’d certainly never wanted to kick one before, but please—even cats?), he’s a fairy and I found him, so that makes him my fairy. Back off.