by Tia Isabella
That should have been enough to get the lad running, yet still he stood transfixed, staring into the black clouds. Hamish grew impatient, knowing he didn’t have much time left. “Lenny! Flee, lad! Now!”
Lenny came to his senses at last, nodded to Hamish, and took off running toward way of Castle MacGregor. The boy ran faster than even he thought his feet could carry him and didn’t stop until he was in the great hall of the keep. He was winded and breathless by the time he reached the hall, and he must have looked frightened, for Sir Dugald and the MacGregor took one look at the lad and shot to their feet with swords in hand. “Are we under attack?” the laird demanded with a bellow.
Lenny shook his head emphatically while he worked on catching his breath. He pointed to the doors of the keep, telling the laird between ragged breaths what was wrong. “My lord, ye must come tae the hills! Hamish told me tae bring ye in posthaste. We need men tae gentle the herds. ‘Tis the blackness I tell ye, it has come upon us again. I would never ha’ believed it did I no’ see it fer my own eyes!”
Thomas shouted for his mount to be brought from the stables then questioned Lenny as he and Dugald made their way to the front of the keep with a handful of soldiers in tow. “What did ye see, lad?”
Lenny steadied his breath then spoke with wide eyes. “The black clouds, laird! They dwell in only a portion of the heavens and are filled with rains and wind and thunder. Colors like yer eyes ha’ surely never beheld dance within the blackness. ‘Tis an omen I tell ye!”
Thomas patted Lenny on the back then took to his mount when a stable lad brought it before him. “Good work in getting tae me so quickly, lad. Ye ha’ honored yer laird this day.”
Lenny puffed out his chest with a sense of pride as he watched his lord ride away with more MacGregor men at his heels. The boy crossed himself and prayed to the saints for their protection.
‘Twas an omen. He was certain of it.
* * * * *
Maya and Sara walked along the beach with Fred and Barney at their heels. It was a tad chilly outside so they knew they couldn’t stay long. In terms of temperature, they were feeling fine since they had both donned their velvet cloaks before taking a break from Pete’s party. Maya’s cloak was black, to match her Elvira costume, and Sara’s was red, to match her she-devil get-up.
It was Fred and Barney they were worried about. Being cold-blooded creatures meant that they weren’t able to maintain their own body heat and were therefore dependent upon the climate to do it for them. The boys could only handle brief spells of chilly weather at a time, so they made sure that they didn’t wander too far from the condo.
Maya pulled the hood of her cloak over her head and gathered herself more warmly into her velvet. Sara tried to do the same, but realized she couldn’t because her horns were in the way. Maya took one look at Sara’s befuddled expression and laughed. “Okay sweetcakes, you’ve successfully made me forget about that horrid scene with Thor. I think we better go back inside, if not for our own sakes then at least for Fred and Barney’s.”
Sara grinned and agreed. “Yeah we better. Gosh,” she added in amazement when she ventured a thorough look around, “ I hadn’t realized how far we wandered off to.”
Maya glanced back in the direction of Pete’s condo then turned around to face Sara again. “You’re right. We better go. I can hear thunder in the distance. The storm is definitely coming,” she sighed. They turned around abruptly and started walking back toward the condo.
An inexplicable chill coursed down Sara’s spine. She shivered, huddling herself more securely into her cloak. “Perhaps this wasn’t such a bright idea, Maya. I think we should have gone to Orlando until the storm ended.”
Maya looked over her shoulder to the left and noticed the black clouds that were sweeping in from off of the gulf. They were the darkest clouds she’d ever seen. “I think maybe you’re right,” she agreed quietly.
Fred and Barney suddenly became agitated, almost as if they could sense some impending doom that Maya and Sara couldn’t. They nipped at their heels, demanding to be picked up. Maya leaned down and scooped Fred into her arms, helping him regain some of his lost body heat. “You’re heavy boy,” she lovingly chided as she enveloped him in her arms beneath the cloak.
Sara took note of how Maya was caring for Fred and immediately picked up Barney to do the same. “Sorry fella, I wasn’t thinking.”
The women walked a few feet more before one of them finally broke the silence. “It’s really rather beautiful, isn’t it?” Sara remarked in a whisper of awe, almost to herself.
“What is beautiful?” Maya asked, unsure as to what she was so bedazzled by.
“The storm,” Sara clarified, “if you look at it—I mean really look at it—it’s gorgeous beyond words.”
Maya smiled as she and Sara came to a halt. They were providing Fred and Barney with body heat, so what did it matter if they mingled with the approaching storm for a few more minutes. “Yes, it’s very beaut—my God Sara, look at that! Talk about beautiful!”
Sara glanced over at Maya then cast her gaze to the area on the beach that had left her friend dumbstruck. She couldn’t believe what she was looking at. “Good lord, Maya. I’ve never seen anything like that!”
Maya and Sara gaped openmouthed at a section of the sky that had turned black as sackcloth. There was wind and rain encompassed within the moving phenomenon, but it had yet to fall anywhere else.
Within the blackness Maya and Sara saw colors—beautiful, magnificent colors. It was enchanting. It was breathtaking.
It was looming right over them.
“Uh Sara,” Maya announced as she cleared her parched throat, “I think we better get the hell out of here. We are standing right under this thing but we aren’t getting wet. Doesn’t that strike you as a tad odd?”
Sara swallowed roughly then snapped her head around to look at Maya. “Yeah, you’re right. In fact, it’s more than odd I’d say. Let’s get back to Pete’s like right now!”
Maya never had to be told anything that might save her life twice. She nodded to Sara then dashed from under the blackness with her. Or tried to dash from under it was more to the point.
The moment the women trotted further than a step out of the black enclosure, the swirls of colors grabbed at their bodies and roped them back inside. Sara screamed. Maya lashed out at them, trying with everything in her to force the colors to release her.
They were soon lost in the colors, unable to see anything around them. There was color and there was blackness. There was nothing else. Pete’s condo wasn’t visible. The beach wasn’t visible. The storm inside of the blackness wasn’t even visible. Maya had a horrid thought that she and Sara had been picked up into the eye of the hurricane and would soon spontaneously combust. There was no other explanation. They were going to die.
Maya grabbed Sara’s hand and held on for dear life. If they were going to die, they would die together, she thought dramtically. Just like Thelma and Louise. Just like Richie Valens and the Big Bopper.
Just like two idiots who should have driven to Orlando to spend the damn night away from the storm, she thought dismally.
Maya screamed as she felt her and Sara floating upwards, further towards the eye no doubt. Fred and Barney came loose from their cloaks and tumbled out from their protection. But the colors wouldn’t let them go either. The colors grabbed at the iguanas, refusing to let them fall.
The women closed their eyes and screamed. There was nowhere to run and no way to loose themselves from the hold of the color bands. Of all the ways to die, neither of them had thought they would be going out like this.
And then they began to float downwards. Fast, yet with a surrealistic ease at the same time. Sara tightened her grip on Maya’s hand until Maya suspected that the bones would shatter beneath her hold. Not that it mattered. The eye would turn her into a human soufflé anyway. Let Sara grip her hand to her heart’s content.
And then they were on the ground with Fred a
nd Barney at their heels. The tendrils of color encompassed Maya and Sara for a few moments more, then released the hold on their bodies and receded upward towards the heavens.
Maya gasped. The blackness was gone. She released Sara’s hand as she gaped towards the sky, dumbfounded as to what had just taken place.
“Uh Maya,” Sara whispered in an urgent tone as she nudged her in the ribs, “I think you better swing around and have a look.”
Maya nodded and began turning slowly, afraid without knowing why to swerve around and look at anything. What was behind them that had unflappable Sara so upset? A demon no doubt with the way their luck was running today, she thought grimly.
Maya grimaced when at last she turned around and opened her eyes. A demon—ha! They should have been so lucky. There was no demon. But there were men on horseback. A lot of them. And they had swords.
Raised swords.
Raised swords and angry faces.
Oh shit. Why hadn’t they gone to Orlando?
Chapter 3
Ten men on horseback stared wide-eyed and open mouthed at Maya and Sara. There was another red-haired man who stood directly in front of them, staring at the two women in terror, as if afraid that Maya and Sara might reach out and gobble him up for dinner.
The man wore an odd outfit, what an ancient Scot might have called a plaid. His hair was dirty, long, and mangled, with a plaited braid on either side of his face. And he had the worst breath Maya had ever smelled in her life. This man would never have to worry about being gobbled up by her for dinner, that was for sure.
Sara was so stunned she couldn’t breathe, let alone help figure out what in the world was going on, so Maya decided to take matters into her own hands. But first she needed to get Billy Bad Breath to back up a step. She was going to faint for sure if he didn’t quit breathing on her.
Maya raised her hand in a motion indicating that she was about to speak. The man with the fetid breath took one wide-eyed look at her raised hand, gasped a big breath that damn near knocked her to her knees with its odor, and fainted dead away.
Apparently Billy Bad Breath was horrified at the thought of her speaking to him, Maya frowned. Ha! Like he was one to criticize. The man had obviously never heard of Listerine.
“By the saints, my lord, she has cast her spell on Hamish! He has fallen tae the ground as one dead!”
Maya turned her attention to the rider that had spoken. There was something odd about his burred speech. It was almost as if it was another language. It was almost as if it was—Old Gaelic?
The ten riders crossed themselves. The biggest of the lot, the one who was obviously in charge, raised his sword and pointed it toward Maya and Sara. He looked damn angry. Maya had never seen a more intimidating character in her life. “Speak demon wenches. From what pit of hell ha’ ye been loosed from?”
Maya looked at Sara with a truly baffled expression on her face. Demon wenches? Pit of hell?
It was at that moment that logical Sara finally rejoined the living. She nudged Maya in the side and indicated that she should look to an area of terrain beyond the riders.
Maya obeyed, then gasped. “Where are we, Sara?” she whispered.
Sara swallowed harshly, trying to get her salivary glands to work again. “I don’t know,” she squeaked, “but I don’t recall us having any castles in Florida.”
Maya looked beyond the fierce looking man with the pointed sword to the ominous structure that loomed in the background behind him.
It was formidable. And awesome. And terrifyingly familiar. It looked just like the pictures of Castle MacGregor.
* * * * *
“How in the name of God is this possible?” Maya muttered under her breath so that only Sara could hear.
Sara shook her head, her gaze never faltering from the fierce looking man that was pointing his sword straight at them. “I don’t know, Maya, but we are here. There’s no denying it. We both studied the photographs of that castle for quite a while. We both know what we’re looking at. And just look at them.”
Them Maya took to mean the riders on horseback. They definitely didn’t have the look of a modern day Scot. And the castle—the castle had been reduced to mere ruins two centuries ago. Yet now it stood tall and wonderful in all its glory, just like it had in the far away past.
Maya grimaced, then threw her hand dramatically toward her forehead in confusion and upset. The riders seemed to react to her every movement for they backed their mounts up a space at the sight of her slightly raised hand.
“She will surely turn us all tae stone, my lord!” the rider with the tongue Maya was coming to find annoying bellowed. “The demon wench will kill us all this verra day!”
Maya rolled her eyes, her worry momentarily forgotten. She raised her voice loud enough for all and sundry to hear her. “I am no demon, boys. I’m just a woman. No more, no less.”
The riders looked at her curiously then screamed in terror when her pet iguana Fred hobbled out from behind her feet. Even the big guy let out a small yelp.
“She brings with her dragons from the pit of hell, my lord! We must flee! We canna fight them!”
Maya smiled in satisfaction. She and Sara were obviously delusional, so they might as well have the upper hand in this medieval acid trip. Let the men think what they would. But please God, she silently prayed, make them go away…
Maya bent down and patted Fred on the head. “Good boy,” she praised as he let loose his lizard’s tongue to lick her arm.
The big guy pointed his sword at Maya and bellowed out a question. “What tongue do ye speak demon wench?”
“She speaks the devil’s own tongue, my lord! She will kill us all! Let us flee that we may see another day!”
Maya wanted to belt the rider with his voice of gloom and doom a good one. He was going to get them killed if he didn’t put a sock in it. She was tired of this delusion. She and Sara had obviously lost their minds when they were inside the eye of the storm.
“She speaks English,” Sara offered in Gaelic, coming out of her stupor.
The big guy looked down at Sara and fumed. “I know English, wench, and English that ‘twas not.”
Sara placated the warrior with a smile before she continued. “It is a different form of English she speaks. We come from a clan called, uh, Tampa, in a land called America. It is not the same as England.”
“Mayhap afore ye joined the demons in hell ye did, but now ‘tis plain tae the eye that ye are cursed.” The big guy spat on the ground and crossed himself.
“I am not cursed,” Sara countered, “and I am not a demon.”
The man sitting next to the big guy spoke up, directing his speech toward Sara. “Ye lie wench. We can see the horns atop yer head.”
Oh damn, Maya and Sara thought as they simultaneously paled. They had forgotten that they were in costume.
“My good sir,” Sara began, causing Maya to lift an eyebrow, “I assure you I am no demon. These horns are not real. They are a costume. Do you know what a costume is?”
Maya jabbed Sara in the ribs, causing her to wince. “Are you insane, Sara?” she whispered harshly. “If this is real, then the fact that they fear us is what’s keeping us alive at the moment.”
Sara shot a scolding look Maya’s way before replying. “Not if they believe we are demons it won’t. We’ll be burned at the stake for heresy in a heartbeat.”
Maya winced.
Damn, she hadn’t thought of that.
* * * * *
“Costume? What is costume, wench?” The big guy spat on the ground again and crossed himself—again. Maya was beginning to find that nasty little habit irritating.
Sara, unflappable even at the prospect of death, smiled reassuringly up to the giant. “A costume is clothing you wear when you are pretending to be something you are not. Perhaps you do not have such customs here?”
The giant muttered something under his breath then spit and crossed himself again. “Nay, we dinna.”
Sa
ra reached up to the two horns on top of her head, unpinned them from her hair, and threw them at the big guy. “You see…they are not real.”
Thomas caught them and examined the fake horns carefully then showed them to Sir Dugald. “They are made of fine silk,” he muttered to his commander-at-arms.
Sir Dugald took the horns from his laird’s hands and brushed them against his cheek. “Aye milord, they are silk.”
The big guy looked back at Maya and Sara, his voice and expression as unrelenting as ever. “If ye are no’ demons, then how do ye explain these creatures of protection? Surely ye will no’ try tae tell me that they are no’ real.”
Sara laughed good-naturedly as she reached down to pet Barney. It was obvious to Maya that her best friend was doing a far better job of disarming the riders of their hostility than she could have done. Left to Maya’s devices and callous tongue, the two of them would have been roasting over an open spit with apples in their mouths by now. “He is not a protector, but merely a pet, my lord. Judging from the looks upon your faces I suppose that you do not have pets like this here either?”
Sir Dugald smiled. “Nay my lady, we dinna.”
Sara glanced up at Sir Dugald and blushed. “They are harmless creatures, sir. Truly. If you would but dismount, I would be happy to introduce you.”
The rider’s smile widened to the point that Maya suspected the skin around the corners of his mouth might crack. He wanted Sara, that much was obvious.
“How did ye tae ladies come tae be here?” the big guy asked from his mount while the other man got off of his horse and strode over to inspect Fred and Barney.
Sara shrugged. “Verily my lord…”
Maya’s eyebrow rose. Verily?
“…we are as baffled as you are. One minute we were in the middle of a clan celebration and the next minute the sky grew black and we were here.”
Maya snorted. Clan celebration indeed. If the big guy thought their costumes were in league with the devil, she wondered what he’d think about Pete the priest and Chanel the pregnant nun.