“Ye will die now.” Toren seethed.
“Release him, MacCallum,” Elizabeth ordered, but Toren continued to hold.
“Toren, I am okay. Toren.” Kat stepped up and touched Toren’s shoulder.
Toren’s grip relaxed and Fergus pulled in a rush of air.
“I’ll ignore, for the moment”—Elizabeth stressed—“that you stepped down by order of your wife and not mine.”
“Your Majesty,” Kat said and bowed her head. “You can see the damage Fergus Campbell has inflicted on me. He is a lying vindictive man who is out to conquer the MacCallums to take their lands and home. He will do anything to make you believe lies against us, even steal from Your Majesty.”
“False accusations!” Fergus coughed. “I have nothing on me.”
“I saw him slip the necklace into a hidden pocket inside his doublet.”
“Guards,” Elizabeth ordered while Fergus sputtered. They removed his jacket and turned it inside out. Sewn into the side was a small hole.
“That is nothing, a rip,” Fergus insisted.
Sewn into the pocket, Drakkina’s voice wafted through her mind. It’s still there. I can feel its power.
“I saw him slide it into some hidden pocket on the inside,” Kat said and a guard probed along the material.
“Here,” he called and split the satin lining where the small rip sat. Out fell the necklace into the guard’s hand.
Quickly, release it to me! Drakkina’s words whirled on the wind that tugged Kat’s drying hair across her face.
Toren must have heard the crone’s words for he grabbed the necklace from the startled guard’s hands.
He closed his eyes for the briefest of moments. “I cut yer tether.” Kat felt the tickle of magic vibrate in the air, an awareness that glanced off to mix with the wind. It felt like a release, a knot loosened in a child’s stubborn shoe.
Kat watched Toren’s fist around the circle holding the dragonfly. It tensed, white knuckles in the torchlight. The wind buffeted them. Elizabeth’s skirts flapped high, her red ringlets snaking free of the intricate weave, the pearls in her hair dropping amongst the Dover pebbles.
“Toren MacCallum,” Elizabeth called above the howling wind. She held out a hand, her long fingers stretched for the necklace.
Give me my dragonfly! Drakkina screeched from above. The demons are upon us!
A gust of gravelly wind tore along the thatched rooftops of the fishermen’s small cottages behind. As if a hand slid along the eaves an entire roof lifted up. Guards rushed for Elizabeth, blocking her body from flying debris.
Toren bent down as if picking up the necklace, though Kat hadn’t seen it leave his hand. She backed against a building, her eyes moving to the black swirling sky. The moon had been obliterated, the stars swallowed, the soft black of the night mutated into an oily black mass. Lightning flashed in the depths of the thundercloud and in the silence following the crackling clap of thunder, Kat heard voices. Keening, growling, gnashing like animals, yet with words.
The hairs along her body rose in defense and she nearly pulled her magic to hide. But the magic she used to hide would mark her like a bright beacon in the dark. So she gently touched her raw back against the brick side of a building. Hadn’t the brick house survived when the wolf blew?
“Your Majesty!” the captain of the guard yelled. “Come away!”
Elizabeth thrust her hand to Toren. He let the necklace slide through his fingers, the chain catching on the ends of his digits.
“Yer necklace, Yer Majesty.”
Elizabeth snatched it from his hand. Glanced at it and back at him. Her hair streamed around her pale face and crimson lips. “The dragonfly?”
Kat’s gasp was swallowed by the noise around them as Toren held up the amulet.
“It fell off.” He stared at her. “The piece is better without it.”
“Your Majesty, it is not safe in this storm!” The guards formed a perimeter around Elizabeth, ever queenly despite the world crashing down around her.
“With Spain at my doors, I cannot bring myself to fear the wind,” she said against the howl, but tipped her head to Toren and turned on her heel, necklace in hand.
Kat rushed to Toren, careful not to touch the amulet. A tree in a churchyard creaked and groaned as it tipped, slowly uprooting. Its long roots popped out of the earth like gnarled, dirt-dripping fingers from the grave.
Toren anchored Kat against him, the two of them facing the swirling mass above. The voices grew louder.
“Kill, rip, slice away the magic! Freedom! Strip the powers! Kill! Break! Tear! Drakkina! My Drakkina!” The last word came like a wail through the crack of electricity, arcing down to split another tree.
The mix of voices spilled over one another in a chaotic swirl of hate and vengeance. And they apparently knew Drakkina’s name. Was it because she was their captor? Wails, curses, and a deep thudding surrounded Kat and Toren. The demons’ hate felt very personal which made it all the more powerful. They wanted to kill Drakkina and anyone associated with her white magic.
Kat clung to Toren’s arm. Drakkina materialized before him, her hands outstretched.
“Give it to me.” She spoke, her lips moving but the sound only heard in their minds.
“I doona trust ye, witch,” Toren said above the dissonance of cries.
“You have no choice, Highlander,” she said and her face showed calm determination. “They will kill us all if you don’t.”
Toren’s one arm squeezed Kat to him as if he were afraid that she’d be ripped away, tossed up into the jaws of the wind. With his free hand he laid the amulet in the crone’s ethereal cupped hands. The amulet quivered on contact, the wings of the dragonfly fluttering, accepting and then settling into her palms, becoming a part of her.
Drakkina’s image intensified, solidified into a real body, standing there. Even the dragonflies that flitted about her hair thickened into life. Drakkina ducked with them as a cart flew by above their heads, hay and early fall apples shooting out in all directions.
Kat pushed back against the solid brick and stared at the black sky. It loomed lower and lower as if it would lay upon them like a wet blanket and smother them.
“Now what?” Kat called.
“You can’t stay here,” Drakkina said staring at Kat. “They know you are here. They know your smell, your power.”
Drakkina’s eyes shifted to Toren. “You know that Highlander. She cannot stay. She will die here.”
“Fergus Campbell still lives,” Toren said.
Kat’s mind whirled. Toren’s whole body was stiff, solid, strong against the attack that crept closer.
“I cannot keep them away forever,” Drakkina said, “even with my amulet.”
A warding, of course. Kat could feel it now. An invisible shield that kept out the evil ink raining down from the skies. It dripped around the ward, sizzling as it sank into the wet ground. Grass shriveled where it touched as if burnt by flames. Kat shivered against the scorched rawness of her shoulders and neck. The heavy leather basque, although it nearly towed her to the bottom of the ocean, had protected her skin from the blaze on the Hell Burner. But the skin above the corset burned even as she shivered with the icy cold of the demons’ collective breath.
A tree limb ripped from an oak and hurled through the darkness, through Drakkina’s warding. Toren threw Kat to the ground as the ragged javelin ricocheted off the brick wall just over her head. Mud and pebbles rained down on Kat. She opened her eyes and stared over the scratchy twigs now separating her from Toren.
“My warding only stops the demons, not what they can throw,” Drakkina answered. The ground began to rumble and quake.
“Toren!” Kat yelled. Another tree flew through the air as a tornado bore down around them, swirling along the perimeter of Drakkina’s shield. The ground beneath Kat began to split. She screamed and pressed backwards along the side of the brick building. The crevice grew into a gaping maw. The heavy wet court gown dragged in
the mud as the brick wall crumbled away, falling into the crevice. Kat crawled backwards, sharp pebbles slicing her palms as she fought to hold onto a tilting, breaking apart shoreline. It was as if the mouth of hell was opening at her feet.
“Send her!” Toren yelled above the chaos and deep gravely sound of churning earth. “Send her, now!”
Drakkina floated slightly above them, her hands outspread as if damming back the demonic press. “On the currents of my blood, on the currents of my renewed power, send her now, Earth Mother—”
“No!” Kat yelled, but Drakkina continued her power-filled words. “Toren!”
Toren’s strong body stood solid on the other side of the chasm that had opened. Through the steam misting up from the earth, Kat watched Toren’s face waver as if through water. “No!” she screamed. “Together, we stay together.”
Kat watched Toren’s lips move but she couldn’t hear his voice. His lips mouthed the words she felt radiating from him as she melted into a thin red line. I love you too, Kat screamed in her mind for words were useless without a mouth.
I must send you somewhere else first, before you can go home. Drakkina’s words whispered through Kat’s mind as the thread shot off into the night, up through a break in the dank black clouds.
Kat’s thread soared, guided by Drakkina’s magic. Dodging, piercing, diving, hiding, it flew. Kat’s consciousness lay helpless upon the thread, watching the sun and moon chase each other across the sky, faster and faster until they blended into a whirling flash. There was no time, just flashing, just pulsing power that was Kat’s consciousness. Could she unravel, disperse into the space between seconds, dissolve away? Toren? Alone, so alone. Bright and dark over and over. Only melting and pulsing along a thin, stretched wire. Toren! Help me! Kat railed at the flashing.
Fullness enveloped her essence and the thread expanded. The flashing turned into a bright noon sun, beating down on Kat’s filling body. She shot down upon a hot desert, into the shadow of a pyramid. Kat glanced down her body. Besides her own blue moonstone that she wore around her neck, only the thin smock under her dress remained, wet and sucking against her skin. What had happened to the ruined court gown? With the expansion of Kat’s body, the burns on her back screamed as the dry heat bit the angry flesh.
Kat swallowed against the pain and glanced around, her mind whirling through ancient history. A young boy with a shaved head stood before her wearing nothing but a loin cloth. His eyes were round as moons. He ducked his head and flattened himself on the sand before her feet.
“Goddess, you bless me,” he called, lips in the hot grains. The words were foreign and heavily accented, but the stone at her neck translated the words. The boy had obviously seen her expand and descend.
Kat looked up at the half built pyramid. “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore,” she mumbled, shaking her head. “Drakkina, where have you sent me?”
Use your magic, Katell, and prepare to thread again. Drakkina’s voice hummed like a tickle through Kat’s head as if from far away. We’re leaving trails for them to follow, trails that will lead nowhere.
“Toren?” Kat called as she opened her magic, cloaking herself in the golden splendor of an Egyptian queen. But the vibration of Drakkina’s voice had flattened and disappeared. The boy looked up and then slammed his face back to the ground, not daring to look at a now golden Kat. In that brief glance Kat had seen ferocious fear and doubt. Such a young child for so much worry. Just like one of her boys back at the orphanage.
Kat knelt to the boy and touched his little head. She felt her body start to melt inside again and yanked back her hand in case touching him would bring him with her. “You will do great things, child. Stand. You are blessed,” she said and straightened.
Once again her body elongated into a single thread and shot up into the cloudless sky. She watched the boy stand, head held high, determination marking his young features.
Next she landed in a jungle, then a Victorian train station. Kat stopped interacting with those who happened to see her. Instead, as soon as she felt herself expand, she released her water magic, cloaking herself with invisibility. A city around the turn of the century, a medieval castle, the Great Wall of China, a Native American sweat lodge.
Kat landed once more outside a small cottage inside a circle of ten tall stones. The smell of bread baking wafted from an open window. Laughter bubbled from within along with a long, low chuckle. Kat’s heart pounded in her expanded chest. She moved with invisible steps to the window and peeked in, drawn by the familiarity. A woman, large with child, hummed as she pulled bread from a stone oven. She turned to the window and smiled, a curious tilt to her head. Kat threw herself to the side of the house and released her cloak. If this was her family, there was no way she was leading the demons here. What was Drakkina thinking?
You are safe here. The stones hide you. Sit and wait. Drakkina’s voice vibrated through her head. Still uncloaked, Kat pushed up to the corner of the window so that only her one eye could take in the domestic scene. A man, handsome, tall, sat near the hearth, carving a piece of flat wood. Pieces of a half made cradle lay beside him. Two older girls helped their mother punch and mold several mounds of soft dough. Two toddlers rolled a leather ball between them near their father. Twins?
“Katell, not too close to the fire,” the man said and put down his carving. He pulled one of the girls up onto his lap and tickled her until she giggled helplessly. Kat stared at her young self, tears soaking down her cheeks. She watched the older girls, wondering which one was Merewin.
Her eyes turned to the other twin. She had a twin sister she didn’t know anything about. How many times had she felt that part of her was missing? How many times had she wished for sisters, a family? Too many times to count. She swallowed against the pain in her raw throat. So she’d created a family. She had Lisa, she had her children, waiting for her in the future. She had Toren. But he was in the sixteenth century battling brutal vengeful demons. A small sob escaped Kat and she sunk to the ground, the scene no longer giving her any solace. Home, where was home? Here? With her children in the twenty-first century? No, she cried into her knees and wiped the back of a hand across her runny nose. Her home was with Toren.
“Toren,” she whispered against her knees, then felt the low vibration of Drakkina’s magic softening her core, liquefying her from the inside out. Kat released a breath and stood, eyes peering through the window once more before the scene began to waver. Her eyes rested momentarily on her mother’s large stomach. Drakkina had mentioned three sisters. Was there another?
No magic now, Drakkina’s voice directed as Kat shot off into the sky.
Where is Toren? Kat yelled, but her words garbled into nothing but a strange howl of wind as her face dissolved completely into Drakkina’s thread.
The flickering light once more took over, drowning Kat’s essence in nothing but bursts of light and dark mixed with speed. Was she moving or was time? Kat wasn’t certain. It didn’t matter, nothing mattered. Where was Toren? Her body gone, Kat was pure thought and emotion. Despair enveloped her, sucking her strength. She didn’t have a heart but knew it was broken, crushed under the weight of fear and loss. Together. They had decided to stay together, wherever that was, whenever that was. He was part of her now and without him, Kat would be broken.
The sun and moon slowed until Kat could clearly see the celestial bodies moving across the light and dark skies. East to west, right to left, arching high over her thread until they stopped. Kat hung suspended, not expanding, under a hot sun and blue sky. Then the sun moved left to right, west to east, followed by the moon as if time backed up, adjusting, pushing her thread back into a dark, inky night.
Kat’s thread swelled. No magic right now, Drakkina’s breezy voice instructed. I’ve brought you home.
Kat descended into the night, rain drops pelting her as she expanded, down through the roof of a large house, through floors, her half filled body sliding through the wood and metal like a straw penetra
ting jello. She alighted on soft carpet in darkness. Sparks of lightning outside illuminated a familiar hallway. The Manning House. Wind roared and the house shook. Kat flattened herself against the wall. Swirling voices clipped with hatred and anarchy accompanied the howl of the wind around the house. The demons were hunting her. No magic. Drakkina’s words ran through Kat’s numb brain. She stood in the dark, staring out at the blackness.
“I will catch ye this time,” Toren called out through the rumble of thunder.
“Toren,” Kat whispered and watched as a woman ran past the opening of the hallway, through a door into the kitchens. A chill ran up Kat’s spine. The woman had been in nothing but her underwear. Kat held her breath as she waited.
Toren strode across her path of vision. He paused and turned toward her form in the dark hall as if he sensed her there. Should she say something? Every part of her ached to run to him, grab hold and never let go. But what would that do to everything they’d accomplished in his time? Kat’s hand reached out on its own accord. And then the back door slammed, pulling Toren’s gaze away from the pitch blackness hiding her.
“Through the kitchens,” he said and pushed into the swinging side door. Within seconds he would find her former self, in nothing but Wednesday panties and a black bra, cursing, wet and cold in the gazebo out back.
Kat sunk to her knees in the corner. Tears washed down her cold cheeks. “Toren,” she murmured. Why hadn’t she let him bind her to him? Wouldn’t that have kept them together? “I bind you to me,” she whispered. She waited but nothing happened. No magical boom whooshed around her, making Toren materialize in front of her face.
The roaring of the demons outside shook the house as Kat waited. She cried quietly, wishing, praying, wanting. Within moments the thunder ceased, the lights flickered on in the ballroom, a small overhead light in the hall illuminated the stretch of ecru colored carpet, dark wet spots beneath her feet. “They’re gone,” she whispered.
“Kat?” Lisa’s voice came from the end of the hallway. Several people stood beside her, dessert plates in hand. Lisa’s feet thudded closer to where Kat huddled, wet in the thin ankle length smock.
Masquerade (The Dragonfly Chronicles Book 3) Page 28