“Lorna….”
She heard her name clearly and knew it had not come from Daniel. It was a man’s voice but it was not her brother’s deeper tone. There was a hint of a brogue in the two syllables—drawn out in a sensuous whisper. It was a low voice filled with longing and infinite sadness.
Wind pushed against the eaves and the window creaked, the roof timbers popped, and Lorna’s heart thudded painfully in her chest. She reached for the cover she’d kicked off during the night—drawing them up to her neck as though they were armor to protect her. Eyes wide, she stared at that slender crack of light at the window. Beyond the pane, something—someone—lurked. She knew it as plainly as she felt the shivers rippling through her body. A darker shadow passed beyond that sliver of light and she stopped breathing.
“Lorna….”
“Go away,” she murmured. “Go away and leave me alone!”
“Come to the window ….”
It was more a command than a request and the words made Lorna want to throw aside the covers and do as she was bid.
“Go away.”
“Lorna….”
“No!” she said forcefully.
“Please….”
She slammed her palms over her ears to shut out the relentless, beseeching voice. The sound of it touched her, saddened her, but she refused to give in to the pleading. She was afraid if she did, there would be no turning back. She knew whoever—whatever—lurked outside her window wasn’t human. It was part of the demon’s hour.
Elbows pressed together, hands clamped over her ears she kept her eyes on the splinter of light hemming the curtains. At long last she slowly lowered her hands, listened, but there was no repetition of the ghostly voice. There were no more squeaks of the aged wood, no further popping of the timbers or plinking of the window panes. After awhile her eyelids grew heavy and began to lower. She strove to stay awake but the lateness of the hour, the tiredness that had yet to be appeased, the warmth of the room closed her eyes and once more she sank into sleep—restless now and plagued by strange dreams of a handsome amber-eyed demon.
Chapter Three
She had overslept and the guilt was a sandspur beneath her saddle as she hurried into the kitchen only to find it empty. It was well after eight of the clock and she knew Daniel would be celebrating morning mass at the little church next door. Rather than rushing over, intruding at that juncture, she decided to start breakfast and have it ready when her brother returned. Taking out the bread, eggs, sausage patties, jam and tin of grits, she set about preparing the meal. By the time Daniel came through the back, she had the sausage crisply fried and the grits boiling.
“Danny, I am so sorry. I .…” she began but her brother waved away her apology.
“I looked in on you but you were sound asleep,” he said. “I didn’t have the heart to wake you. I know what a journey it is to get up here.”
“I will be up in time for mass tomorrow,” she said.
Daniel smiled tiredly. “I will enjoy having someone other than myself to say the mass for.”
His words surprised her. “No one comes to morning mass?”
He shook his head as he washed his hands at the sink then dried them on a towel hanging on one of the lower cabinet drawer pulls. “Not once in all the time I’ve been here.” He went to the table and pulled out his chair.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. She and her brother had been raised to attend daily mass.
“The food smells delicious,” he said. “I usually have a boiled egg and toast every morning.”
“No wonder you’ve lost weight,” she said.
“You should be proud of me, Sis. I have learned to boil water,” he told her.
Lorna laughed as she brought him his plate. Two over-easy eggs, four slices of buttered toast, a mound of fluffy grits with a big pat of butter in the middle, and two large sausage patties were placed before him along with a piping cup of coffee—real coffee she had brought with her from the Miconoh Territory. She smiled when he took a sip and sighed with contentment.
“Good?” she inquired.
“Heavenly,” he agreed. He picked up his fork to pierce one of the eggs then took a piece of toast to dip the point into the egg yolk.
After fixing her own plate, she returned to the table and began eating, watching her brother as he relished the meal. She was already planning in her head what she would fix for the noon and evening meals.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Daniel said in between cutting the sausage into chunks.
“I wrote you that I would,” she defended, “but I didn’t hear back from you.”
“Snake bite laid me low for awhile,” he said as he mixed the grits, yolk-less eggs and sausage in a pile. It was the southern way of eating the meal for their mother had been from Flagala and had taught them the joys of her special way of cooking.
“Why don’t you want me here?” she asked, her voice revealing the hurt.
Daniel looked up with a forkful of food almost to his lips. He frowned. “Lorna, you know I love you but you don’t know what you’ve walked into here.”
“Then tell me,” she said. She poked listlessly at her food, no longer hungry.
He shoved the forkful of food into his mouth, talking around it, his voice a bit gruff. “Let me finish the excellent meal you prepared first then we’ll go out on the porch and I’ll tell you the whole of it over a second cup of coffee.”
“All right,” she agreed.
“Eat your food before it gets cold.”
Though the meal tasted like ashes in her mouth she cleaned her plate and would have cleared the table but Daniel motioned her to remain seated. He picked up the plates and took them to the sink.
“Nothing left for the hogs this morning,” he said. He nudged his elbow toward a sealed ten-gallon container by the stove. “You found the slop bucket?”
“Aye,” she said.
“There’s a chicken coop out back so if you would I’d appreciate you seeing to that.”
“Sure.” She watched him rinse the plates, run water into the basin and make quick work of what had to be washed. When he was finished, she stood and brought their cups to the stove to pour that second cup.
They went out on the porch where the morning air was already warm and dry. It was going to be another hot day with not a cloud in sight.
“We desperately need rain,” Daniel said as though he knew what she had been thinking. “Haven’t seen a drop in over two months.” He took a drink of his coffee then sat in one of the two rockers on the porch.
“Is that normal?”
“Not at all,” he told her. “Usually this is the wet time of the year for the Hill.”
He was silent for a moment then began speaking in a low voice, his gaze locked on the forest beyond.
“Kirkland Tabor and his people lived in what used to be called Scotland back in the early seventeen hundreds. If you recall your history, that part of the country was renamed Chale by the goddess after the Burning War,” he clarified.
“The Triune Goddess Morrigunia,” Lorna said and watched her brother’s lips tighten. “Is that who they worship here?”
“They have no organized religion that I have been able to discover,” he stated, “although they believe in God.”
“Then why did the Bishop send you here, Danny? I thought the church was no longer proselytizing.”
“It isn’t,” he replied. “I wasn’t told why I was being sent. All I know is the people had asked for a priest—me, in particular. It wasn’t until I arrived that I found out I had been sent to help them quash the evil dwelling here.”
“What evil do you…?” she started to ask but her brother didn’t seem to hear her.
“Tabor and his followers fled Scotland and landed in what was then New York but the big city overwhelmed them. They came west and—being highlanders—sought the mountains in which to settle. Their reasoning was the farther from civilization they could get, the better. There would be n
o one to deny them the right to worship as they saw fit.”
He drained the cup and shook his head at her offer to refill it. He pointed to the forest.
“This was mostly wilderness back then,” he said. “Nothing much except natives and their camps were few and far between up this way. Dovertown was just a trading post but the man who ran it owned a barge upon which one of his two sons took goods down river to Baxley. When Tabor and his people got here, they saw all the green land on the other side of the river and paid the bargeman to take them across. They hiked up here, liked what they saw and so they homesteaded it, filed papers with the territory to seal the ownership.”
Daniel was quiet for a moment, stretching his long legs in front of him and threading his hand together to lay them on his flat belly. He laid his head on the rocker’s back.
“Tabor and his boys helped the trader’s sons build a ferry and string the rope across the water so they could travel back and forth between the Hill and Dovertown for things they couldn’t grow or make up here. The boys became good friends but the only time they saw one another was when they were working on the barge or when the McGregors came down to the trading post.”
“The trader’s sons weren’t welcome up here?” she asked.
Daniel shook his head. “No one was. Old man Tabor made it clear that this was private land and he wanted no visitors. From all accounts he was a real piece of work. He ruled the settlement with an iron hand and a ready fist for those who dared oppose him. He had seven sons and one daughter—who was the youngest of the lot at seventeen. His wife had died giving birth to the girl so she was the one who took care of those eight men. When they settled here she was seventeen years old and Tabor was very strict with her, treated her brutally by all accounts. Before they’d left Scotland, he’d betrothed her to Craig McGregor’s oldest son, Diarmuid. The wedding was to be at the winter solstice after the girl had turned eighteen.”
Lorna’s brother closed his eyes but continued with the tale.
“Her name was Sara and supposedly the most beautiful woman in these parts. She had hair the color of a polished penny and deep green eyes. They say her voice could charm the birds down from the trees and the creatures from the forest. It was her lovely singing voice that started all the trouble.”
Afraid her brother was falling asleep for his voice had gotten lower and the cadence slower, she cleared her throat. “She sang herself into trouble?” she asked in a voice that was louder than normal.
Daniel flinched and his eyes snapped open. He reached up to scrub at his face. “Aye, that she did,” he said. “When her brothers were helping to build the barge the Tabor family camped by the river’s edge in three tents. Old man Tabor refused to allow Sara to stay behind at the Hill because he didn’t trust any of the men where she was concerned. She would fix their lunch and would always make enough for the two sons of the trader, Duncan and Jeremiah. One of the boys—usually her youngest brother Seth—would row across to get the food at midday but on that fateful day, it was Duncan, the younger boy who came to fetch the vittles.”
He shifted in the chair, drawing his knees up, leaning forward to brace his elbows on his thighs as he stared intently into the forest.
“When Duncan came ashore, old man Tabor apparently was nowhere in sight. Conjecture is he was taking a nature call around about that time. Sara was sitting by the campfire frying bread, singing an old folk tune. Duncan was mesmerized by her voice and stood there listening until she became aware of him. She turned around and—as it has happened time and again and most likely always will—two gazes collided and two hearts were captured at first sight.”
“Not good,” she said.
“Not good on several accounts,” Daniel acknowledged. “Not only was Duncan an outsider, Sara was engaged. Her future had already been decided by a father who would not take kindly to it being altered. The men of the Hill rule their women with a heavy hand and those two falling in love that day was a tragedy in the making.”
“Did old man Tabor have a fit when he found Duncan there?”
“Duncan was already gone before Tabor returned but the damage had already been done. That very night the young man snuck up to the Hill to meet with Sara and she crawled out her window to join him.” He shrugged. “The inevitable happened, of course, and before the summer was out she was beginning to show. They made plans for her to leave the Hill, to run away with Duncan for they knew that was the only way they could be together.”
“But they were caught,” she said softly.
“Tabor had been suspecting something wasn’t quite right for a few weeks and had taken to watching his daughter very carefully. He told his best friend Lucas McKenna he thought his daughter might be sneaking out the cabin’s kitchen door to meet Diarmuid McGregor. I don’t guess it ever occurred to him that she would be disloyal and dare climb out her window to meet with any man other than her betrothed.”
“The heart doesn’t always do what the mind thinks it should,” Lorna observed.
“I’m sure that’s true,” Daniel agreed. “At any rate, old man Tabor and three of his sons caught them in the forest as they were making their way to the river. Duncan had loaded a canoe with what they would need and was going to take it down to Baxley then backtrack northward to the Provinces to throw off anyone who might follow.”
“The farther from her father the better,” Lorna said.
Daniel nodded. “As you can imagine, Tabor was enraged. Two of his sons grabbed and held him while the old man beat Duncan unmercifully. The fourth brother was holding Sara as she struggled to get to her lover. No doubt afraid of what her father would do to Sara, Duncan found the inhuman strength to break free. He knocked out one of her brothers, kicked the second in the groin and shoved Tabor to the ground. He went after Sara to get her away from her brother but that brother drew a knife, came at Duncan and would have gutted him if Sara hadn’t pushed between them, impaling herself on the blade. Duncan caught her as she fell and she died in his arms. Stunned, grief stricken, he didn’t fight them when they dragged him to his feet and tied him to a tree. They piled dried branches at his feet, laid Sara atop them then set the branches ablaze.”
“How horrible,” Lorna said, tears filling her eyes.
“If they had expected Duncan to scream they were disappointed. He looked each one in the eye through the flames and smoke and told them he would come back from hell, itself, and take from them what they had taken from him. No woman, he said, would be safe from him for as long as there were inhabitants living in the Hill. He died looking down at the charred body of the woman he loved.”
“Oh, Danny, that’s awful!” Lorna said. She wiped at the tears flowing down her cheeks. “How could anyone be that cruel and her with a baby alive inside her?”
Her brother fell silent again then got out of the chair to stand at the edge of the porch. His attention was riveted on the dark shadows lurking in the forest.
“And did he?” she asked quietly. “Did he come back?”
Daniel said nothing for a moment then released a long breath. “Something came back. Just as it had once before,” he said. “In Scotland.”
Lorna’s forehead creased. “I’m not following. What do you mean?”
“Long before Kirkland Tabor was born his great-great-grandfather Reynolds Tabor and his people had burned another man alive for a crime he hadn’t committed. An ancestor of Sara’s had accused a man named Allyn McCorley of having seduced her, of having taken her virginity. Tabor believed her even though no one bothered to examine her to make sure she was telling the truth. They tortured McCorley in an attempt to get him to confess but he denied ever having laid a hand to the girl who had just turned fourteen.” He reached up to hook his hands around the porch rafter. “As the flames leapt around him, he, too, cursed Tabor and the people of the entire village and told them he would come back, that he would come after the women. A month after his ashes were scattered in the forests, the first woman came up missing. Then a
nother disappeared a year later and still another the year after that.” He looked around. “That went on for three years before the Elders of the village decided to leave Scotland, hoping to leave the evil of McCorley behind.”
“But they brought it with them,” Lorna said.
“Aye, it followed them here. There are those who believe Allyn McCorley and Duncan Daughtry became something else the night they died, that their souls were taken from them and merged into a third entity, melding with it.”
“Something else?” Lorna questioned.
“Something vile and deadly. A creature they call a Nightwind, an incubus demon now thrice as powerful and more determined than ever to go after the women of the Hill.”
Lorna got up and went to her brother. “If they believed in that superstitious nonsense, what was it they thought you could do?” she questioned, putting a hand to her brother’s back. She rubbed her palm over his shirt, frowning as she realized he had lost weight for she could feel his ribs.
“They wanted me to perform an exorcism,” he said.
Her hand stilled. She knew there was a high price to be paid by a priest engaged in such a powerful ritual. “Did you?”
“I did but it only made matters worse. Where there had only been a woman a year missing, suddenly there was three, the last being Johanna Reid, Sean Reid’s oldest girl, just two months ago.”
“What do you think happens to them, Danny?”
Her brother hung his head. “I think the Nightwind comes to the Hill, seduces them then lures them to their death in the forest. They think the stones protect them,” he said. “I know better. He crosses them at will. They think he only comes out after sundown but I think he can go and come whenever the mood strikes.” He pointed to the forest. “I’ve felt him many a time standing right there though I’ve never actually seen him.”
Lorna turned to look where he was pointing and felt a shiver run down her spine. She vividly remembered the man she’d seen along the river bank in the light of day who had vanished so suddenly. She tucked her bottom lip between her teeth.
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