The Immortal Highlander

by Karen Marie Moning

  And when Gabby’d passed on those words, she’d glimpsed a flicker of emotion in Adam’s dark gaze that had made the breath catch softly in her throat.

  How could she have ever thought that Adam Black felt no emotion? Even the queen had displayed emotion. That was a fallacy in the O’Callaghan Books she’d be swiftly amending. Along with about a zillion others.

  Still, she could understand how her ancestors had gotten it so wrong. If she’d had to go on the mere appearance of Queen Aoibheal, or of the Hunters, or even of Adam, without ever having interacted with them, without having come to understand so much about their world, she’d have thought the same things.

  But she knew so much better now.

  She’d spent another scorching, delicious, decadent night in Adam’s arms.

  He was the kind of lover she’d never imagined existed, not even in her most heated fantasies. And she’d had some pretty darned heated ones.

  He was inexhaustible, alternately tender and wild, playful, then staring into her eyes with deadly intensity. He made a woman feel as if nothing existed but her, as if the entire world had melted away and there was nothing more pressing than her next soft gasp, her next smile, their next kiss.

  He’d still spoken no words of either feelings or future. Nor had she.

  Though the queen herself had guaranteed Gabby’s safety when this was through, she was having a hard time seeing past their date with Darroc. She knew she’d not be able to truly draw a deep breath until it was over.

  Then she would face her future.

  Then she would try to decide—assuming she had any decision to make, that he didn’t simply abandon her once he was all-powerful again—how in the world a mortal and an immortal could have any kind of life together.

  “Promise you’ll come back. I mean it, and soon,” Gwen demanded, hugging her tightly. “And you have to call us and let us know the minute Darroc shows up and this is over. We’re going to be worrying. Promise?”

  Gabby nodded. “I promise.”

  “And bring Adam back too,” Gwen said.

  Gabby glanced at her tall, dark prince. The day had dawned swathed in a thick white fog, and though it was already ten in the morning, none of it had burned off. And how could it? If there was a sun anywhere in the sky, she certainly couldn’t see it. Above her, the world had a solid white ceiling. Beyond Adam, who stood a dozen feet away, near the rental car they’d arrived in, was a white wall.

  Adam. Her gaze lingered lovingly on him. He was wearing black leather pants, a cream Irish fisherman’s sweater, and those sexy Gucci boots with silver chains and buckles. His long, silky, black hair spilled to his waist, and his chiseled face was unshaven, dusted with a shadow-beard. Regal gold glinted at his throat.

  He was heart-stoppingly beautiful.

  She glanced back at Gwen and was horrified to feel a sharp sting of tears pressing at her eyes. “If he’s still in my life, I will,” she said softly.

  Gwen snorted and she and Chloe exchanged glances. “Oh, we think he’ll still be in your life, Gabby.”

  Her meticulously erected defenses on that very topic trembled at the foundation. She stiffened mentally, knowing that if she wasn’t very, very careful, she could turn into an emotional basket case. If she let herself feel even the tiniest of the many fears she was suppressing, they would all break free. And there was no telling what she might do or say: The Banana Incident, case in point. Emotion did unpredictable things to her tongue. Bad, bad things.

  Despite her resolve to keep her fears at bay, she heard herself say plaintively, “But how? For heaven’s sake, he’s going to be immor—”

  “Don’t,” Chloe cut her off sternly. “I’m going to share something with you,” she said with a glance at Gwen, “that a wise woman once told me. Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith. Just do it. Don’t look down.”

  “Great,” Gabby muttered. “That’s just great. It sure seems like I’m the one having to do all the leaping.”

  “Somehow,” Gwen said slowly, “I think before all is said and done, Gabby, you won’t be the only one doing it.”

  “Turn left,” Adam instructed.

  “Left? How can you even see a left in this pea soup?” Gabby said irritably. She could barely make out the road ten feet past the hood of the compact car. But it wasn’t just the fog that was aggravating her; the farther they got from Castle Keltar, the more vulnerable she was feeling. As if the most magnificent chapter in the Book of Gabrielle O’Callaghan’s Life was coming to a close and she wasn’t going to like what she found when she turned the page.

  She understood now why her friend Elizabeth, with her near-genius, analytical mind gave wide berth to murder mysteries, psychological thrillers, and horror stories, and read only romance novels. Because, by God, when a woman picked up one of those steamy books, she had a firm guarantee that there would be a Happily-Ever-After. That though the world outside those covers could bring such sorrow and disappointment and loneliness, between those covers, the world was a splendid place to be.

  She glanced irritably at Adam. He was looking at her. Hard.

  “What?” she snapped belligerently, not meaning to sound belligerent but feeling it to the core.

  He said softly, “You aren’t falling for me, are you, Irish?”

  Returning her gaze fixedly to the road ahead, Gabby clenched her jaw, incapable of speaking for several moments, her stomach a stew of emotions, a veritable pressure cooker about to blow. She muttered a few choice words Gram would have shuddered to hear.

  “Why do you keep asking me that?” she snapped at last. “I’m really sick of you asking me that. Do I ask you that? Have I ever asked you that? That is such a patronizing thing to say, like you’re warning me or something, like you’re saying, ‘Don’t fall for me, Irish, you helpless, weak little woman,’ and what’s with this frigging ‘Irish’ bit? Can’t you call me by name? Is that one of those depersonalizing touches? Like it removes you a bit from the immediacy of the moment, somehow makes me less of a human being with feelings? I’ll have you know, you arrogant, overbearing, thickheaded, underdisclosing, never-ask-me-any-questions-because-I-sure-as-hell-won’t-answer-them-to-you-O-mere-mortal prince, that I took my fair share of psychology courses in college, and I understand a thing or two about men that applies to ones who aren’t even of the human persuasion, and if I were falling for you, which I’m here to tell you I’m not, because falling implies an ongoing action, an event that’s taking place in real time, here and now—”

  She broke off abruptly, on the verge of revealing too much. Too wounded, too uncertain of herself, of him, to go on.

  Inhaled. Puffed her bangs from her face with an angry breath.

  Long moments unfurled and he said nothing.

  Gritting the words slowly, she said, “Why didn’t Morganna take the elixir of immortality? I need you to answer this.”

  The silence stretched. She refused to look at him.

  “Because immortality,” he said finally, slowly, as if each word were being forcibly pried from his mouth and was paining him more deeply than she could possibly know, “and the immortal soul are incompatible. You can’t have both.”

  Gabby jerked and looked at him, horrified.

  He slammed his fist into the glove box. Plastic exploded as his hand went right through it. Half the little door dangled for a moment on one hinge, then fell to the floor. His lips curved in a bitter smile. “Not what you expected to hear, eh?”

  “You mean, if Morganna had taken it, she would have lost her immortal soul?” Gabby gasped.

  “And Darroc thinks humans aren’t very bright.” Dark sarcasm dripped from his voice.

  “So, er . . . but . . . I don’t get it. How? Does a person, like, have to hand it over or something?”

  “Humans have an aura surrounding them that my kind can see,” he said flatly. “The immortal soul lights them from within, makes them glow golden. Once a human takes the elixir of life, that soul begins to burn out, until t
here is nothing of it left.”

  Gabby blinked. “I glow golden? You mean, right now, as I’m sitting here?”

  He gave a bitter little laugh. “More intensely than most.”

  “Oh.” A pause while she tried to collect her thoughts. “So, do they change, the humans who take it?”

  “Ah, yes. They change.”

  “I see.” The utter lack of inflection in his reply made her deeply uneasy. She suddenly had no desire to know how they changed. Suspected she wouldn’t like it at all. “So then, that means our Books were right about the Tuatha Dé not having souls, doesn’t it?”

  “Your Books were right about many things,” he said coldly. “You know that. You knew it when you took me as your lover. You took me anyway.”

  “You really don’t have a soul?” Of all he’d just told her, she found that the most unfathomable. How could it be? She couldn’t get her brain around it, not now that she knew him. Things that didn’t have souls were . . . well, evil, weren’t they? Adam wasn’t evil. He was a good man. Better than most, if not all, she’d ever met.

  “Nope. No soul, Gabrielle. That’s me, Adam Black, iridescent-eyed, soulless, deadly fairy.”

  Ouch, she’d said that to him once. Seemed a lifetime ago.

  She stared into the fog for a time, driving on autopilot.

  And she tried not to ask it, but she’d just begun to believe that maybe the Tuatha Dé weren’t quite so different from humans, only to find out that they were, and she couldn’t stop herself. She had to know how different. Precisely what she was dealing with. “Hearts? Do the Tuatha Dé have hearts?”

  “No physiological equivalent.” Bored-now voice.

  “Oh.” Upon discovering how erroneous so much of the O’Callaghan lore was, she’d pretty much ejected the bulk of it from her mind, tossed it out with her many preconceptions. But parts of it had been right after all. Big parts.

  More driving. More silence.

  You’re not falling for me, are you, Irish? he’d said.

  And she’d had a minor meltdown because that was precisely the problem. She wasn’t falling. She’d fallen. As in, past tense. Way past tense. She was hopelessly in love with him. She’d been building a dream future for them inside her head, embellishing it with the tiniest and most tender of details.

  Gwen and Chloe had been absolutely right, and Gabby’d known it herself, even then. Just hadn’t wanted to admit it. Just as she hadn’t wanted to admit that the reason she’d wanted so desperately to know why Morganna had refused the elixir was because Gabby had been secretly hoping that he would fall in love with her, too, she could become immortal, and they could love each other forever. They could have an eternal Happily-Ever-After.

  But she wasn’t stupid. Ever since he’d told her about Morganna refusing the chance to live forever, she’d known there had to be a catch. Just hadn’t known what a whopper of a catch it was.

  Immortality and the immortal soul are incompatible.

  Though she’d never considered herself a particularly religious person, she was deeply spiritual, and the soul was, well . . . the sacred essence of a person, the imprint of self, the source of one’s capacity for goodness, for love. It was what was reborn again and again on one’s journey to evolve. A soul was the inner divine, the very breath of God.

  And his elixir of life reeked of Faustian overtones: Here, take this and you can live forever, for the small price of your immortal soul. She could almost smell the acrid brimstone of hellfire. Hear the rustle of unholy contracts scribed on thick, yellowed parchments, signed in blood. Feel the breeze from the leathery flapping of winged Hunters coming to collect.

  She shivered. She didn’t count herself a superstitious person, yet it got to her on a visceral level. Made her blood run cold.

  A soft bitter laugh cut into her thoughts. “Not interested in living forever, Gabrielle? Not liking the terms?”

  Oh, that tone was like nothing she’d ever heard him use. Wicked, cynical, twisted. A voice truly befitting the blackest Fae.

  She glanced at him.

  And sucked in a sharp breath.

  He looked utterly devilish, his black eyes bottomless, ancient, cold. Nostrils flared, lips curled in something only a fool might call a smile. He was, at that moment, every inch an inhuman Fae prince, otherworldly, dangerous. This, she realized, was the face of the Sin Siriche Du; the face her ancestors had glimpsed on long-ago battlefields, as he’d watched the brutal slaughter, smiling.

  “Didn’t think so.” Silky sarcasm dripped from that deep, strangely accented voice.

  A dozen thoughts collided in her mind and she floundered mentally, trying to figure out where to step next in this conversation that had started out so innocuously, only to become such a quagmire.

  He looked so remote, so detached, as if nothing could touch him, as if nothing she could say would matter anyway. And a little doubt niggled at her: Was this, then, how he was when he was fully Tuatha Dé?

  She couldn’t believe that. She wouldn’t believe that. She knew him. He was a good man.

  Leap, Gabby, an inner voice whispered. Tell him how you feel. Throw it all on the line.

  She swallowed. Hard. Were Gwen and Chloe here, she knew they would echo that counsel. They’d taken such leaps, and look where it had gotten them. Who was to say it wouldn’t work for her?

  There was only one way to find out. Nothing risked, nothing gained.

  She drew a deep, fortifying breath. I love you, she whispered the words in her mind. She hadn’t had a lot of practice with those words, had only ever said them to Gram, and long ago to parents, both of whom had gone away. She wet her lips. “Adam, I—”

  “Bloody hell, spare me whatever sniveling excuses you’re about to offer,” he snarled. “I didn’t frigging ask you to take the elixir, did I, Irish?”

  Tears filled her eyes and her teeth clacked shut. Oh, she hadn’t needed that reminder! She was all too aware of that fact. And that he’d never said so much as one word about any kind of future together. Nor a single word that seemed to hint at any degree of commitment or emotion. Oh, there’d been sweet words in bed, even out of it, but none of those things to which a woman was so attuned, those seemingly casually spoken phrases that hinted at a tomorrow and a dozen tomorrows after that. No mentions of an upcoming holiday, or a place or thing he’d like her to see. No subtle words that were really subtle pledges, testing the water, seeking like response.

  Not one.

  Her declaration clotted in her throat. And suddenly she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sit in the car with him one moment more.

  She slammed on the brakes, jammed the car into park, and hopped out onto the road, walking blindly, scooping angrily at fog. The external environs too accurately mirrored her internal landscape: Nothing was clear, she couldn’t see ten steps ahead of her, couldn’t get a fix on where she’d just been.

  Behind her, she heard his car door slam.

  “Stop, Gabrielle! Come back here,” he commanded roughly.

  “Just give me a few minutes alone, okay?”

  “Gabrielle, we’re not on Keltar land,” he thundered. “Come back here.”

  “Oh!” She stopped and turned abruptly. She hadn’t realized that. When had they left Keltar land?

  “No,” a cool voice said as Darroc stepped out of the fog between them, “you’re not, are you?”

  Then Darroc was turning toward Adam, and she heard a sudden, sharp, short burst of automatic gunfire.

  And Adam was flinching, jerking, great splashes of red spreading across that cream fisherman’s sweater, his dark head flying back, arms outflung. Falling back, going down.

  And Hunters were closing in all around her.

  She felt their talons on her skin, felt a broken sob clawing its way up her throat.

  And then she fainted and felt no more.

  Ah, ka-lyrra, I look at you and you make me want to live a man’s life with you. To wake with you and sleep with you, argue with you and make love with
you, to get a silly human job and take walks in the park and live so tiny beneath such a vast sky.

  But I will never stay with another human woman and watch her die. Never.

  —FROM THE (GREATLY REVISED) BLACK EDITION OF

  THE O’CALLAGHAN Book of the Sin Siriche Du

  23

  Gabby raised the plastic shade over the plane window and stared out into the dark night sky.

  Alone, hence visible, she’d had no choice but to book a flight, putting it on her credit card. The only flight available had been the red-eye, and she had three lengthy layovers to look forward to, in Edinburgh, London, and Chicago.

  When she’d regained consciousness, she’d been lying in the road.

  Alone. With a sick, horrid feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  Watching the man she loved being brutally shot had been the purest hell.

  She’d heard the bullets ripping into his body with dull, wet sounds, she’d seen his blood spurting, and—if it had indeed been only an illusion courtesy of the queen, as she prayed it had been—the look of pain and shock on Adam’s face had been stunningly, horrifyingly real.

  She’d forced herself up on shaky legs, trembling, desperately looking around for someone to tell her that it hadn’t really happened. That the queen hadn’t really let him die.

  But there’d been no one there to reassure her. Only thick, swirling fog and aching silence.

  Apparently, Faery was done with her.

  There wasn’t even any blood anywhere; no sign that anyone had ever been on that road but her.

  So what, she’d raged, shaking her fist at the dense bank of clouds above her, I don’t even get to know what happened? That’s bullshit. If you think I’m just walking away without explanations, you are so wrong! Where is Adam? What happened? Show him to me! Tell me he’s okay!

  But walk away, or rather drag her miserable self away, was exactly what she’d finally ended up doing.

  She’d been out of her head for a time. She’d raged and shouted until her throat was raw, until she was capable of making only broken croaking sounds. She’d stalked and paced and stomped until her legs had given out, until she’d slumped against the car, then slid to the ground in exhaustion.