All of a sudden her head snapped up when she heard the other man say something about birds. Christie shook his head and responded, “Are ye sure they’re no’ some kind of bats?”
The man exploded in a torrent of some dialect Alexis couldn’t make out. Christie kept casting glances at Alexis and nodding. Alexis leaned across the table. “What’s going on?”
He held up his hand and listened with his whole attention. At last, he shook his head. “I dinnae agree. Did ye see their eyes?”
The man froze. He stared open-mouthed at Christie. Christie wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin and stood up from the table. Alexis jumped up, too. She hurried to his side and murmured in his ear. “Are you telling me they’ve seen those things?”
“Aye,” he replied. “They hit two neighboring farms last night.”
“Do you seriously expect me to believe those things were real?”
He rounded on her. “Ye ken they’re real, lass. Ye said yourself they were attacking Faery, and they attacked us. That was no vision. They almost killed us both.”
The man at the table exploded. No one could mistake his words now. “Faery! I ken it! I kenned it the minute ye walked in the door. You’re one of them. Admit it.”
Christie took Alexis by the elbow. “Go find the landlady. Get your room and go there. Stay there ’til morning. Dinnae come down here again.”
“What about you?” she asked.
“I’ll see to this. Now go.”
She hurried out of the room. She found the landlady and gave her instructions, but she had to go back to the main room to get her shoes. Christie sat straddled on the bench in front of the other man. They sat with their noses inches apart and exchanged heated conversation in whispers.
Alexis hated to think what Christie was saying to that man. She picked up her shoes. The man in the arm chair grinned at her and raised his pipe in salute. She turned away to leave when the front door ripped out its bolt and blew back into the room. Freezing wind blasted inside.
Christie turned around and held up his hand to squint out into the dark. Everyone in the room stared at that open doorway. All of a sudden, a massive cloud of those flying trolls rushed through the door. How they all fit into the room, Alexis couldn’t tell.
She had no time to think before they hit her in the face. She tried to fight them off, but more and more of them attacked her from all sides. The men screamed in terror. Through the thick cloud of bodies and noise, Alexis heard Christie calling her. “Alexis! Alexis, lass! Come to me. Ye must come to me.”
She couldn’t get to him. She couldn’t move. She slapped one of those things off her face, only to find another in its place. They bit her all over. They pecked at her skin and tore at her hair. She had to do something about this before they tore her apart the way they did before.
She waved her arms around in futile confusion for a moment before her wrist struck something hard. She felt rough wood. It was the table. She groped along its length to the spot where the men just ate their food. She pawed at the dishes until she found a knife sitting by one of the plates.
She picked it up. It flooded her being with new energy. She stabbed it here and there into any body that presented itself to her view. She killed as many of the things as she could until she cleared a small space in front of her eyes.
Black wings packed the room. She could only tell where the three men were because solid clusters of the trolls covered them from head to toe. The man by the fire went down on one knee. He screamed in agony. The trolls redoubled their efforts, and he fell on his face. A ripping noise echoed over the din, and he stopped screaming.
The fire gave Alexis an idea. She raced to the fallen man and planted her feet over him. She grabbed a troll out of the air and pitched it into the flames. It let out a blood-curdling screech and burst into a bright spray of crackling sparks.
One after another, she tossed the little demons to their deaths among the flames. Her victory infected her brain with insane glee. She chortled in bloodthirsty delight, dropped her knife, and seized the poker in one hand. She took hold of the poker in both hands and swung it like a baseball bat. She clubbed the flapping trolls into the fire. Each sparkling explosion scored one for the home team.
Through the fog of rage and adrenaline, she heard Christie calling out. “Come here, lassie. Come!”
She didn’t understand until she cleared another space in front of her eyes. Christie waded through acres of those vermin. He struggled to his utmost to reach her. That was the key. They had to touch each other to get rid of these things. It worked before, so why not now?
She took one step toward him. The trolls must have understood what they were trying to do. They all stopped what they were doing and attacked in a united effort. They all piled on Christie and Alexis to tear them apart, limb from limb.
Chapter 17
Christie looked around. One man still fought these trolls. If Christie had been alone with Alexis, he would have shifted into a wolf. Under the circumstances, that could be more dangerous to him than the trolls themselves. The inn folk and the other guests might take it into their heads to burn him at the stake.
None of that mattered. He couldn’t fight the trolls as a wolf anyways. Only one thing mattered. He had to get to Alexis, but too many of the trolls stood in his path. He grabbed the nearest troll by the leg and used it as a club to pound the others away from him. He plowed a space in front of him to take a step.
One step at a time, one inch at a time, he made his way across that room. It might have been a million miles, for all the effort it cost him, but he made it in the end. He heard Alexis roaring beyond the curtain of bodies.
The crowd thinned out just enough to catch sight of her face. She bared her teeth and bellowed at her enemies. Her hair came loose. It flowed around her sweat-streaked face when she moved her head from side to side. She yanked trolls out of thin air and tossed them into the fire to meet their doom.
Time slowed to a crawl, and Christie examined her at close range. She was back. She was alive and throbbing and flushed. She could see her enemies and destroy them. For a fraction of an instant, she looked through the flapping wings, and their eyes met. She blushed in excited zeal.
He never saw her so beautiful as at that moment. He put out his hand to touch her, and she understood. She extended her hand through the cloud of trolls to touch him when the beautiful excitement dropped from her face. Her eyes darkened, and she froze. Her mouth gaped open, and she stared up into his face.
Christie lunged forward and seized her hand. The moment their skin touched, a flash of light thumped through the room. The next instant, all the trolls vanished. The front door slammed shut, and the latch caught. The fire filled the room with its heat.
One man lay dead on the floor at Alexis’s feet. The other whirled around to stare at everything, but the trolls weren’t there. Christie couldn’t take his eyes off Alexis’s stunned face. The color drained from her cheeks, and her hand went cold in his grasp.
She contracted across the middle, and her stomach spasmed. She doubled over. Christie glanced down and saw a ragged hole in the center of her chest where her heart should have been. Tattered bits of lung tissue quivered deep inside her. Blood gushed from the wound. It darkened her shirt and pants and glistened in the firelight.
She didn’t look down. Her haunted eyes searched his face. “I’m…I’m sorry, Christie.”
He rushed to her and caught her in his arms. “Dinnae bother yourself, lassie. It’s naught.”
She swallowed hard. She wavered there for a moment before her knees gave out. Christie’s guts wrenched when her weight fell into his arms. She couldn’t go down like this. She couldn’t fall to these creatures. If he lost her now, he lost everything. The whole world would fall, and he would fall with her.
He eased her down to the floor and laid her on the carpet. The blood came faster now. It covered her and drained onto the floor. Alexis stared up into his eyes. “Am I…am I gonna die, Christ
ie?”
“Wheesht, lass,” he murmured. “You’re all right, I reckon. Lie still now. You’re gonna be all right.”
“I tried, Christie,” she stammered. “I really tried. I thought I could win. I thought I could defeat them. I came close, didn’t I?”
“Ye did well, lassie,” he replied. “Ye did right well. I’m proud of ye.”
The color flashed over her cheeks once. Then it all drained away, and she turned deathly pale. Christie hugged her tighter. He couldn’t lose her like this. He couldn’t hold her and watch the life pour out of her on the floor. She deserved so much better than this.
She fought so hard. She fought against this in every way she could. She fought in the forest when the madness took her. She fought with any weapon she could find. She was so much stronger and braver than any man or woman he ever met. She was a thousand times stronger and braver than he could ever be.
“You’re gonna be okay, aren’t you, Christie?” she asked. “They won’t hurt you, will they? I couldn’t handle that.”
“Ye dinnae have to concern yourself about me, lassie,” he croaked. “Ye dinnae have to concern yourself about me because I’m coming with ye. Ye ken that. I cannae leave ye on your own.”
She tried to breathe. The air caught in her throat, and she gasped. “You are? Would you really do that?”
Christie fought hard to keep his voice under control. “You’re one with me now, lassie. Ye cannae get rid of me so easy. I’m going anywhere ye go from now on. Ye ken that.”
She smiled, but a wince of pain cut it off. Blank terror crossed her face. “I’m scared, Christie.”
He brushed his hand across her forehead. He smoothed her hair back and petted her cheek. “Dinnae be scared, lassie. Ye dinnae need to be scared of naught from now on. I’m with ye. I’ll no’ leave ye.”
She raised a hand and laid it on his shoulder. “Don’t leave me, Christie. I need you.”
“I ken, lassie. I ken. I need ye, too. I’m here. I’m right here. I’m no’ going anywhere.”
She opened her mouth, but she couldn’t form the words.
He gulped down the lump in his throat. He hugged her once for good luck. “Ready, lassie?”
She didn’t answer. Her grip on his shoulder slackened. Her body started to go limp in his arms. He had to act. “Here we go, lass.”
He bent down and kissed her. Their lips met, and he held it there. He closed his eyes and sank into that kiss. He never meant it more than right now. All his love and hope poured into her.
He opened his eyes in a familiar stretch of forest. Sun shone down through the leaves. He held Alexis’s limp body in his arms. She stared up into his eyes with a fixed, glazed expression. He looked down at the place where those trolls tore her heart out.
Instead of a bloody hole, a square space the size of a brick opened in her rib cage. Blood and gore and tore tissue still showed around the margins, but it didn’t bleed into her clothes. The perpendicular sides of the square stood up crisp and distinct in her flesh.
“It’s all right now, lassie,” he murmured. “You’re going to be just grand. Dinnae fret. I’m with ye, and I’ll never let anything happen to ye again. Do ye hear? I’m with ye.”
He kissed her again, but she didn’t respond. He leaned back and sank one hand into his own chest. He took hold and pulled out a perfect brick of his own flesh and stuck it into her ribs. It slotted into place, and the perimeter fused. It filled the gap until no one could tell the difference.
Alexis spasmed in his arms. She gasped in a huge lungful of air and lurched against his embrace. Her eyes raced around the forest canopy behind his head. When she came back to looking at him, she glanced down at his chest. No hole marred his body. The place where he removed his own heart closed up to become whole and perfect once again.
He looked into her eyes, and they both relaxed. She was going to be okay. He kissed her again, and this time, her warm lips met him. She put her arms around his neck, and they sank together onto the ground.
Christie wrapped her in his arms and closed his eyes. Why fight it? He gave her his heart to save her life, but that was just the conclusion of a long journey leading to this moment. He always knew it would end like this.
She laid her head on his chest. She breathed against his arms. The forest surrounded them in that mystical shelter where they spent the last few weeks. He didn’t have to question. They belonged here.
This forest provided them with their own personal sanctuary. They didn’t have to explain anything to anybody. They both understood what the other felt and knew and understood. Everything made sense here in a curious sort of way. It gave them a private world of two with its own rules and customs only they understood.
Night fell. Christie didn’t open his eyes. He held Alexis close to share her warmth and to protect her with his warmth. She hugged him tighter. He pressed his face against her hair. His breath warmed her scalp, and her scent came back into his nostrils to fill his brain with her pure essence.
Why did he hold himself back from this for so long? He would have stayed like this after that first night, but when he thought about it, he realized neither he nor Alexis was ready for that. It took this situation to show him what to do.
He didn’t give her his heart when he first slept with her. It took all their arguing and all the time they spent in the forest to bring them both to this point.
Toward morning, the air got too cold for them to keep lying here. He unwound his plaid and wrapped it around both of them. It trapped the heat inside and made a little shelter.
With the plaid removed, her body pressed right against his shirt. Her embrace tugged his shirt out of his belt, and she slipped her hands against his bare skin. He sucked his breath between his teeth. They both pretended to be asleep, but that raw contact startled both of them wide awake.
Christie’s heart pounded. She really was touching him. She slid her hands up his sides to his armpits. She stroked his chest. She lifted her head and nuzzled into his neck. Her precious skin excited him beyond belief.
Her touch meant so much more now than it ever did back at the inn. He could never enjoy her there because he didn’t know her. He knew her now. He knew her better than anyone he’d ever known, including his own brothers.
His brothers would never know and could never know everything that passed between him and Alexis. They could never understand it because they hadn’t experienced it for themselves.
He covered so much territory with her—mind-bending territory of the heart and soul and spirit. What did he share with his brothers that could come close to that? Not even their battles against mystical forces could hold a candle to what he’d done and seen with Alexis.
She nibbled up his neck to the tingling place behind his ear. He couldn’t hold himself back anymore. He turned his head, and their lips met in raving passionate kisses.
He had to touch her. He had to take her for himself one more time. He didn’t care if she turned around and said she hated him in the morning. He needed her right now as much as she needed him.
He pushed her lips apart and slithered his tongue inside her mouth. He probed deep into her throat while his hands went to work on the rest of her body. He pulled her shirt out of her waist band and burrowed his hands inside.
He closed his eyes and imagined his fingers trailing her ivory skin. She guided his hands to her breasts, and he massaged them until her mouth fell open in grateful moans.
She found her way out of his shirt and pulled up his kilt. Her delicate little hand closed around his aching shaft, and he thought he would die. She stroked it to raging hardness and cupped his balls in her soft grasp.
Christie ripped his mouth off her and tunneled under his plaid. He rolled her onto her back and mouthed her shirt buttons open. The plaid wrap didn’t give him much room to maneuver, but he didn’t care.
He pulled her bra aside and sucked one immaculate breast into his mouth. He kissed and bit and sucked lower to the sweet nest of
honey between her legs. She gripped his head and shoved him into it. She ground her bones into his face and filled his world with her heavenly concoction.
All the time, she stroked him until he went out of his mind. He had to crawl inside that magical tunnel to a world of intoxicating bliss. He worked his way up to her mouth, and she steered him home.
He clamped his arms around her, and their united rhythm carried them far away from any dark, cold forest. He swam through her essence. She filled him with perfumed vapors.
Somewhere in the pounding rhythm of his flesh into her deepest caverns, she rolled up on top of him. Top or bottom, it made no difference. They moved together. They swayed and rocked on an endless sea of rapture and glistening dew. They generated more heat than they could ever need until they fell panting and spent into a dreamy haze.
Chapter 18
Alexis squinted her eyes closed against the sun shining in her face. She weaseled down inside the long lengths of Christie’s kilt plaid to find her shirt and pants and bra and underwear. She didn’t want to go out into that bright cold light.
Christie growled when she woke him up. He yanked the plaid up around his shoulders to keep warm. “What are ye doing, woman? Do ye no’ ken it’s bad luck to wake a man this early in the morning?”
She popped her head up to kiss him before she hid herself again. “The morning’s half gone, mon. Time to wake up.”
He turned his face aside and covered his eyes with a corner of his plaid. “Lie still, will ye? You’re letting all the heat out.”
“Get dressed,” she told him. “Then you won’t be cold.”
“I’m no’ going anywhere,” he snarled. “Ye get dressed and get out. I’m going back to sleep until tomorrow.”
She laughed. She swam up out of his plaid and put her arms around him. She mussed his hair and kissed his closed eyes. “That’s my grumpy old teddy bear.”
She tried to extricate herself from the plaid without disturbing him too much, but she made a mess of it and he growled even worse. He finally pushed her out and curled himself up. He covered his head and turned himself into a cocoon.
Curse Breaker (Phoenix Throne Book 7): A Scottish Highlander Time Travel Romance Page 12