The Scent of Forever

by Julie Doherty

  When she heard the bang of his bedroom door, she tiptoed to the couch. She cleared her throat, hoping the sound would wake William. When that didn’t work, she whispered, “William.” Still nothing. Finally, she peeled the blanket off his bare shoulders, exposing the bìrlinn on his meaty biceps. He’d used her hoodie for a pillow. His tangled mane spilled over it in black waves. A renegade lock curved across the bridge of his nose. She could not resist the urge to brush it aside. He was someone’s daddy. Why did that make him sexy?

  She gasped as his hand flew to her wrist.

  He stretched, then rolled onto his back, exposing the planes of his chest and belly. “Come here.” He pulled her down to him, his eyes still closed. He spread his hand across the back of her head and forced her cheek onto coarse chest hairs that rasped her skin. His arms were strong around her. He smelled warm and secure.

  With an egg burning in the pan, she closed her eyes and fought the urge to blaze a trail of lingering kisses up the valley between his pecs.

  Their breakfast sizzled and smoked. She tried to wriggle out of his arms.

  “No. Stay.” His half-groaned words flared her blood like tinder, turning her breaths to pants. She had to stop this, had to before she . . . He smelled so good.

  I can’t do this. I can’t.

  She brushed her cheek against the grain of his whiskers.

  Get up, Ann. Pull away.

  The egg. The egg was burning.

  Forget the goddamn egg!

  It was William who saved her.

  “What?” Panic crossed his face as he sat up. “Did I . . . Did we . . .” He scrubbed a hand through his wild hair. “Oh, Jesus.”

  Ann saw him look at her bare legs as she whirled away to the hearth. She flipped the burned egg into the fire and put William out of his misery. “Don’t worry. Nothing happened.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Yes, thank God. How terrible to wake up and think you made love to me.”

  He offered no salve for her wounded ego.

  Well hey, she thought, as she cracked another egg into the pan, my own husband didn’t want me, so why would he? Maybe Mike was right. Maybe she had gotten fat. Or maybe men could sense when a woman was broken. Flawed. Useless.

  Alasdair broke the growing tension by descending the stairs with the dog. “I think this old man was going to sleep the day away.” He pulled a coat off a peg. “There’s a bit of a lull. I’ll take him out for a wee stroll and check on the ferry. We’ll be back in a few minutes. I’m looking forward to that nice breakfast.” He winked at Ann, then scowled at William.

  When he’d gone, Ann watched the egg quiver in the pan. “Have I done something to make you dislike me?”

  “No.”

  “Then why have you been so mean to me?”

  “What can I say? I’m not the friendly sort.” He pressed his hands against the sides of his head.

  She turned the egg out onto a plate before sliding the pan off the fire. “Listen.” She carried the food toward a small table at the back door. “The storm’s lifting, and—”

  “It’s only a lull. They will nae bring the ferry. It’ll get worse again.”

  “It’s blown itself out. I’ll soon be able to go back to—”

  “Ye an expert on Scottish weather now?”

  She wanted to slap him, to wipe the smirk off his face. “Look, you’ll be rid of me as soon as the weather lifts. If you think for one minute that I meant to get stranded here, that I wanted to spend my vacation trapped with someone who, for some unknown reason, hates my guts, then you have another think coming.”

  “Thing. It’s thing.”

  “No, it’s not, smartass.” She slammed the food down on the table, sending a piece of bacon sailing to the floor. “Look, you Scottish turd, I’ve been in these same clothes for two days. The hair on my legs and under my arms is long enough to braid.” She smiled widely, pointing at her teeth. “See these? My parents spent a fortune making sure they’re white and straight, and this morning, I brushed them with my goddamn finger. My best friend is in Glasgow waiting to hear from me, and unless I can find a way to contact her, she’s going to go apoplectic. Furthermore”—she rammed her hands on her hips—“if I’m not on a train by tomorrow, there’s a good chance I’m going to miss an appointment I very much want to keep, not to mention, my flight back home! So cut me some slack, will you? Cut me some frickin’ slack, you big! Scottish! Asshole!”

  She trembled in the doorway, expecting an abusive retort, but he offered none.

  Looking strangely amused, he stood, slipped on his tee shirt, and said, “I’m away to the pub. Tell Alasdair I’m gonny owe him for a jacket from the shop.”

  Chapter 16

  The door to Saint Oran’s Chapel opened with a squeal that echoed off the whitewashed walls. The old man crossed the threshold, shedding all pretenses. There was truth in the din, and relief in the truth. Here, he wasn’t Alasdair MacDonald; he was Hamaziel, former celestial being, now eternally damned.

  “Stay,” he muttered to the dog. The disobedient animal followed him inside the unassuming building—as it always did—and waited until he sat on the lone bench before sinking to its wet belly on one of the ancient graveslabs making up the floor.

  Behind the altar, paper prayers tacked to a wooden cross fluttered in the sudden draft. The flame of a lonely candle sputtered. Hamaziel leaned his head back to savor its pungent smoke. Oh, that heady fragrance, acrid to mankind and splendid to the heavenly host. He closed his eyes and recalled the gray bands gyrating up to them from the sacrifices. No—he shook his head—those days were gone forever. Nostalgia served no purpose but the deepening of regret.

  He thought of the others. Homesickness gored his middle. Father scattered them to the corners of creation for what they had done, and rightly so. He’d issued one simple decree at the dawn of time.

  You shall take no earthly woman as your own.

  They were supposed to protect mankind, not destroy it by infusing it with their angelic genes. But none of them had anticipated the allure of the women. Hamaziel certainly hadn’t. He was one of Father’s favorites. Trusted. Indulged. Loved.

  He hung his head.

  Centuries after their banishment, he found Azazel and Semjaza, though he regretted the latter. Semjaza could not accept his punishment. His despair turned to fury. He vowed retribution, swearing he would destroy humanity.

  Azazel was now in Edinburgh and using the name Doctor George McFarlane. He rightly guessed that anyone finding a torc would contact the university, so he made sure to secure a job as head of the Scottish Antiquities Department. His joyful letter arrived just before Ann’s arrival, giving Hamaziel enough notice to order more of William’s paintings.

  He’d set the stage; the rest was up to them.

  The dog blinked up at Hamaziel, its eyes pools of undeserved adoration. Anyone else might think the dog relaxed, but Hamaziel knew by its taut haunches that it was anxious to return to her.

  Her. His child, one of two remaining outside the palace gates. They were the last of his original offspring. On the final day of their first lives, they fought bitterly and shouted curses they didn’t mean. Both of them died before the sun set, one by drowning and the other by sheer heartbreak. Remorseful and unfulfilled, their souls returned countless times, always searching for that nameless thing that would complete them. They missed each other repeatedly, one born in this century and another in that one. They nearly achieved fulfillment twice, most recently in the twelfth century, when he knew them as Somerled and Brèagha.

  He glanced at the tomb recess across from him, the only adornment in the otherwise austere chapel. It was bricked shut now, but it had been glorious before the Reformation.

  Brèagha was the first buried here. Somerled watered her grave with his te
ars until his eyes swelled shut and the monks dragged him away. He built a chapel over her bones and a kingdom on top of that. He joined her years later, in 1164, after dying in a battle fought to protect her.

  They were throwbacks in that lifetime, the result of recessive traits becoming dominant. An original soul in a throwback’s body was a dangerous ingredient in the recipe for creating a master race. The vengeful Semjaza knew this. For centuries, he sent his minions out to capture the gifted, knowing their supernatural abilities marked them as daughters of the Fallen. No remarkable female below the age of fifty was safe. Semjaza took them, young and old. He locked them in his underground breeding farm. If they were prepubescent, he waited until they matured, breeding them at their first ovulation. If they proved infertile or aged past childbearing years, he killed them.

  He impregnated them by force, of course, partly because he desired conception, but mostly because he enjoyed it. His hybrid fetuses grew too fast and too large during gestation, killing their mothers. Those born alive were always male, always disfigured, always sterile, and always dead by age twenty.

  When Semjaza’s minions found Brèagha, renowned in her village for her supernatural sense of smell, Hamaziel fled with her to Norway. He left her crying in a cave there. “We have to split up,” he told her. “It’s vital to your safety.” He expected Semjaza to follow him like a cat follows a bird feigning injury. He’d been mistaken.

  He shook away his sadness, reminding himself that it didn’t matter anymore; his precious jewel returned at last.

  His son’s return was never in question, for his torc remained on Iona. His daughter’s relic, however, disappeared in the eighteenth century, when famine sent millions of the desperate streaming across the sea. He lost track of her after that. Thankfully, Semjaza did, too.

  The room darkened. Hamaziel looked up at the narrow window, wondering if the mere thought of his wicked brother sent clouds to cover the sun. There’d been no word of him since Brèagha’s death in the twelfth century, but Hamaziel wasn’t naïve enough to hope he was gone for good. He would have to be vigilant. As Somerled’s direct descendant, Ann McConnell inherited at least some of Hamaziel’s genes. Any intermarriage by her ancestors would at least double the portion. If the genes became dominant—and they would—she was undoubtedly a throwback.

  Semjaza, if he was still around, wouldn’t miss the opportunity to seize her.

  The wind whistled through an unseen crack in the ancient building. The storm was intensifying. He hoped Ann was on her way back from the western side of the island, where she’d been chased by William’s ill manners.

  William should be protecting Ann, not chasing her away! When he’d first seen William’s paintings, he’d been tempted to hand over the dragon torc at once. Now, he was glad he hadn’t. Something wasn’t right.

  A raindrop zigzagged down Hamaziel’s rubber boot. He watched it splat on the floor, thinking it similar to the tears he wished he could shed. He was tired and losing hope. The body he inhabited was beginning to stiffen and ache. People often questioned how he managed to live so long. If William and Ann didn’t soon figure things out, he would need a new host. Unattached ones were hard to find.

  Chapter 17

  “Did ye apologize?” Liam swiped the back of his hand across his mustache.

  “No.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  William rocked his glass of Laphroaig. “Listen, Liam, let it be. I know what I’m doing.” He thought of Ann’s outburst and bit back a smile. When she was pissed off, her eyes were like sunlit emeralds.

  “Another round?” John asked him.

  William shook his head. If he was going to apologize to Ann, he wanted to be sober when he did it. “Gi’ me a cuppa.”

  “Tea?” Liam’s eyebrows lifted. “Are ye sick?”

  “Been hitting this stuff too hard lately. Makes me say things I should nae.” In truth, he was becoming dependent upon it. He had to stop now or he could forget bringing James home.

  “Your mobile still working?” he asked Liam.

  “Signal’s been out since last night. Ye need to call somebody?”

  “The writer does. I was hoping maybe she could borrow your phone. Says her friend in Glasgow will be worried. She might need to reschedule her flight.”

  Liam checked his phone. “Nothin’. If I get signal, I’ll head up to Alasdair’s and let her use it.”

  “Appreciate it.”

  The pub door banged open. Stephen Gordon staggered in, breathless. He bent over his knees, panting and dripping rain. “William! Alasdair sent me for ye. Says . . . the writer went oot and . . . has nae come back.”

  Fear sliced open William’s belly and dumped his guts onto his shoes. “What? Went where?”

  “Camus Cuil an t-Saimh, he thinks.”

  The Bay at the Back of the Ocean. That meant she passed right by Duncan’s . . . on her way to the weather side of the island.

  The fool!

  Liam’s glass thumped onto the bar. “William, she’ll blow out to sea.”

  William raced to the door, then threw on his borrowed jacket. “I told her it was just a lull!” To Stephen, he said, “Go back and tell Alasdair not to worry. I’ll find her.”

  “I’ll come along.” Liam finished the last of his beer while sliding off his stool. “Bet she’s in the spouting cave.” Unsuspecting tourists got themselves trapped there all the time. “We’d better get there before the tide does.”

  The wind tore at their faces and whipped their sleeves and hoods as they pushed across the machair, the flat plain where Saint Columba planted his crops over fourteen hundred years before. It was grassland now, superior pasture for the livestock, but even the sheep and cows had the good sense to stay away from it during a gale.

  What was she thinking, this overly confident American? Scotland’s gales rarely made international news, but they were nothing to trifle with. She was probably trying to stay out of his way. He only meant to keep her at arm’s length, not kill her.

  His behavior this morning was likely the final straw for her. He saw again the hurt in her eyes when he asked if they made love, and the memory nearly stopped his heart. Her reaction was too severe, a sign that her hasty misperception had its roots in an old wound. Someone had injured her—badly. God, how he longed to right that wrong, to be the man to cherish her. If only they lived on the same continent. If only James didn’t need a mother.

  They crested the gently rising landscape, and the pasture began its fall toward the sea. It ended at a long, curving bay stretching north to south. The tide was out, exposing rocks and pebbles, but ranks of furious waves broke offshore and puffed spray ahead of them. “Smoke on the water,” fisherman and sailors called the phenomenon. It was never taken as a good sign.

  “Is that smoke?” Liam pointed toward a hill to the south, where a blue-gray tendril wafted up from the gorse and heather.

  “That’ll be her.” Thank God.

  The crafty shite built a fire.

  “In the spouting cave.” Liam rolled his eyes. “I’ll head back and let Alasdair know ye found her.”

  William nodded. “Should be a faster walk back.”

  “Aye, I’ll hop and let the bloody storm do the work for me.” His laugh was lost in the wind. He leaned close to William’s ear. “Go. Save your writer. Apologize to her all night long!” He winked and spun on his heels before William could defend his intentions.

  William watched Liam go, then jogged across the beach with the gale shoving at his side.

  “Go!” the pounding surf hissed. “Go!”

  Pebbles rolled under his shoes and cramped his shins. By the time he reached the southwest corner of the bay, he was gasping. There, in a bank of yellow sand, tracks too small to be a man’s led through escarpments and heather-capped dunes to
a low plateau, where the mouth of a cave gaped toward the sea. Inside, Ann sat at a fire with her head and arms resting on her knees. He took a moment to study her, smiling at her ingenuity before reminding himself for the thousandth time why they had no future together.

  “Are ye daft?” His question echoed against rock.

  She jumped to her feet, then quickly wiped her eyes.

  Her tears stole his doggedness. “Jesus, are ye hurt?” He ran to her, surprised by the depth of his alarm. “Did ye fall?”

  She held up her palms to keep him at a distance. “I-I’m fine.” She wiped her nose with a drooping tissue. Her hoodie was soaked and cinched into a tight frame around her face. Her skirt was a limp disarray of pleats. A slice in her tights exposed the creamy skin above her knee.

  “Ye do nae look so fine.” He took her hand. “Ye’re frozen. Come on, let’s get ye back to Alasdair’s before ye founder.”

  She jerked her hand away and shoved it into the pocket of her hoodie. “I’m okay here. I have a nice fire, plenty of dry driftwood—”

  “Ann . . .”

  “No, really, I’m good.”

  The sea roared outside the cave. “Go!”

  “I hate to tell ye this, Miss Yankee Doodle Independence, but ye’re not as fine as ye think ye are. This place is called The Spouting Cave. Ye reached it at low tide.”

  He watched her process the information.

  “Oh.”

  “Come on then.”

  When she submitted her hand to his, her defeat liquefied his heart. He pulled her outside, where a band of sea foam inched closer to the cave. She had maybe thirty minutes left—an hour, tops—before the surge poured into the cave and sucked her out to sea. He shuddered at the idea, tightened his grip on her hand, and hauled her inland over the dunes. A fierce gust tore her from his grip and sent her sprawling onto a slippery slope. She clawed at the vegetation, tearing bouquets from heather that failed to hold her. William dived next to her, his move exaggerated by another blast of wind.