Lightning In Sea (CELTIC ELEMENTALS Book 3)

by Heather R. Blair

  Silently, Mac cleaned up the mess, tossing towel after towel into the hall before striding out to take them all away. He returned minutes later to carry her limp body to the bathroom, helping her stand to rinse her mouth and splash her face before returning her to his arms and the bed without a word exchanged between them.

  He laid her down, wrapping the sheets and blankets tightly to her chilled form, his eyes dark and impenetrable as he pulled her close. He cupped her face with both his hands, their size making her feel like a child recovering from one hell of a nightmare, except his gaze was just as haunted as she felt.

  “What was that?” she whispered she didn’t know how long later. “Mac. What in the hell was that?”

  He let her go to get to his feet, both hands digging into his hair. “It was naught,” he croaked. “Naught but a dream.” His hands and voice shook.

  “I just coughed up damn near a gallon of seawater!” She rubbed her lips, her voice hoarse and frightened. “I can still taste the fucking salt, Mac.”

  “Sloane . . . I canna. Ye’re no’ ready for this. I’m sorry, love.” His voice was gruff, his expression haunted. “I’d nae idea ye’d make me lose control like tha’.”

  “Ready for what? Lose control how? Are you saying you did that to me? How? What happened to honesty between us? Tell me what happened, Mac!”

  He hesitated. “Tha’s no’ possible.”

  “Fine,” she said, sitting up abruptly, her shakiness gone. “Then I’ll leave.”

  “Ye canna leave. ’Tis the middle of night—”

  She blinked, glancing out the window in amazement. Where had the day gone?

  What did it matter? Frustrated and pissed, Sloane got to her feet, looking around for her clothes.

  “I’m leaving. Now.”

  He sighed at the look on her face, but nodded, his own face haunted before he shuttered it. His expression was blank as he turned to gather her things. “Fine then. Mayhap tha’s best.”

  They said nothing during the drive back to Jenny’s flat. Both of them knew she was in no shape to spend a night alone in her new house. But while her fright had not left her entirely—hell, Sloane wondered if she’d ever forget the singular terror of drowning while wide awake—rage was beginning to take its place.

  She opened the truck door as soon as he stopped the truck, not even turning her head when he cursed and made a half-hearted grab for her arm. She ran into the flat and slammed the door. Minutes later, she heard the truck shift into gear, the sound of the tires fading away until the silence deafened her.

  Sloane leaned against the door. This was all too familiar, her broken and sad, Mac leaving. The only thing missing was the damn rain.

  “Sloane?”

  Jenny’s sleepy voice called her name once before she turned over and went back to sleep but Sloane didn’t move to join her. Instead, she grabbed the key back from the table and slipped out into the night, completely forgetting what might be waiting for her there.

  17

  Dublin Airport

  “Maybe we shouldna go.”

  Heather Kantos O’Neill blinked, staring at her husband on the tarmac, not sure whether to laugh or cry. Aidan didn’t do indecisive. But the prospect of meeting his daughter had the ancient Celt warrior and vampire twisted into knots.

  She could coddle, or she could give him a kick in the ass—or arse, as he had corrected her a hundred times. Gods knew he had a beautiful one. “Look here, mister. I borrowed this jet as a personal favor. We’re damn well taking it.” She tugged him toward the gleaming silver and white Lear. The moon shone on the runway, faint stars sparkling high above in the silky black Irish night.

  “Aye,” he said absently, then stopped at the foot of stairway. “She might hate me.”

  “Nah,” Heather waved a hand dismissively. “She’ll just think you’re batshit crazy.”

  Aidan blinked those crystal eyes that still had the power to mesmerize her, before he smirked. “Thanks as always for the support, love.”

  “It’s what I’m here for. That and making inappropriate use of your body, of course.”

  His smile grew. “Of course.”

  “They have nice big seats on the Lear, you know. And no stewardesses to interrupt for a little hop like this. Only the pilot and us.”

  “Well then,” Aidan’s nerves seemed to have settled nicely, “let’s go up and inspect those seats, shall we?”

  Mac wasn’t sure what bloody impulse had made him confide in Bav this morning, but he was regretting it already.

  He’d expected to have time to ease Sloane into accepting who he was, and accepting his solution for him. But his talk with his sister had gotten him out of sorts. No matter how clearly he’d worked out the details in his head, things were likely not going to go as well as he wished. For any of them.

  It could all go wrong. He could lose her.

  That knowledge had made him far too ravenous to have Sloane again, to clear away the unease in his mind by any means necessary.

  He’d lost control. He could have fucking killed her.

  He nearly had.

  When his curse exploded through the cab of the truck with enough force to crack the windshield, he pulled off the road and opened his door, stalking into the night.

  His footsteps took him to the cliff ahead with unerring purpose. Mac stripped his clothes away with each step, the sea stirring at his approach, sensing its master’s mood.

  When he dived off the rocky face, a burst of lightning split the sea in two, illuminating the dark waves rising to salute him as he fell.

  Sloane walked without conscious thought, her mind ricocheting back and forth.

  She was still reeling from what had happened with Mac. Not just the off-the-charts sex and the sudden, undeniable strength of their connection, but meeting his sister, and then what had happened earlier tonight.

  What had happened tonight?

  The longer she tried to puzzle it out, the more it faded away. Sloane found herself on the beach, looking at bits of shells winking in the sand. If she hadn’t known better, she’d think what had happened in Mac’s bedroom had been a drug-induced hallucination. Except Sloane had never touched anything harder than a couple of blunts in her entire life. And there was no way Mac was into any of that shit. So what the hell?

  Could she be losing her mind? But she’d felt the water pouring from her own mouth. Tasted it. Not to mention when she had been in Mac’s bathroom, with him holding her upright, she’d seen the mark on her back in the mirror. It looked like road rash, the reddened place where something in that water had brushed up against her, but she knew better. Sloane had grown up around surfers and the sea, albeit a far distant one to this. She’d heard stories of encounters with sharks, felt the roughness of their skins in displays. A shark had bumped her when she was in that terrifying watery world. The proof was on her very skin.

  Like the fear that etched deeper into her psyche with every step down the empty beach. Fear . . . and wonder, too, if she was being honest. For a few minutes, it had been beautiful and awe inspiring, watching as that deadly magical world had surrounded her, ready to grant life and death in the blink of an eye.

  Death had nearly won.

  Then there was Mac’s reaction to ponder. Neither surprised or questioning, just quiet and fierce.

  Yer no’ ready.

  He knew what had happened to her. He fucking knew.

  A particularly nice conch caught her eye, glimmering in the moonlight. It looked almost familiar somehow, stirring something inside her. It was beautiful, pink and delicate. Sloane bent to pick it up absently, her mind still on Mac. What the fuck had he—

  “Well, well. This is going so much easier than I had anticipated.” Sloane froze at the familiar voice, squeezing the conch so tightly the edges bit into her fingers. For the first time, Sloane realized how far from town she’d walked.

  She turned slowly, trying not to panic.

  It was hard to make out his features here
, away from the lights of Ramsey, but it was definitively the same man from the other night. He was taller than she had remembered, tall and very thin. Instinctively, she kept her gaze away from his eyes, trying to think.

  How could she have been so stupid?

  She wrapped her arms around herself, still holding the conch.

  “Cold are you?” The man smiled and for the second time in as many minutes, Sloane thought of sharks.

  Abruptly, she dropped her arms, refusing to let him see he was intimidating her. “It is getting chilly. I should go back now.” She moved to go around him, pretending there was a chance he would simply step aside, but of course he didn’t, that smile widening until she had to look away, afraid of what she would see.

  Again.

  “I had heard you were protected,” the man said conversationally. “I am beginning to think those tales were exaggerated.”

  She frowned, stepping back to plant her feet in the sand. “I will protect myself.” She was strong, not some delicate flower and if he thought he could take her without a fight, this psycho was sorely mistaken.

  His ringing laugh hurt her ears. “Protect yourself from the likes of me? Oh, I’d like to see you try, little girl.” He grinned and despite the darkness, there was no avoiding the sight of his teeth this time. Except she had to admit it this time. Those weren’t teeth, they were fangs. Huge and sharp and gleaming. Sloane gasped as the man began to laugh harder. “Go ahead and run, if you like.”

  Before she could move, he leaned in close, those pale lips nearly touching her ear. “I’ll even give you a head start.”

  Instead of running, Sloane let instinct take over. Since he’d obligingly bent down so close, it was a simple matter to swing her arm and slam the heavy conch into his temple. There was a cracking noise, either of the shell, his skull or both. While he roared in anger, Sloane ran.

  She ran almost every day. Usually three miles, sometime five, but never less than two. She was agile and swift, even in the sand, but she could hear the man gaining fast. Too fast. What the hell was this guy?

  Her fear began to build as she realized he was toying with her.

  “Declan!” The name rang out over the sand in a voice both fierce and commanding.

  Both Sloane and her pursuer turned their heads. A man was descending rickety steps to the beach. A man in a black leather coat with eyes that seemed to shine as bright as her attacker’s. “Or should I say, daor?” There was a taunt in that voice, loud and clear.

  The man with the pale hair stopped in his tracks, his upper lip curling. Whether it was more in fear or disdain she couldn’t tell, but as the man in the black coat drew closer, fear seemed to win out.

  Her attacker threw out a hand at the man in the leather coat, and something fell to the sand between them, something like a smoke bomb, because mist poured from it. Or not mist exactly, but a heavy fog, one that quickly enveloped the pale-haired man. Sloane instinctively scooted away from the odd haze, drawn toward the man in the black coat, who stood irresolute, seeming to want to chase her attacker, but eyeing the mist with wary distaste.

  Her attacker watched them both with a snarl. “I am no longer a slave . . . and you won’t win this time, O’Neill. I will watch her die, as I watched him die.”

  With a vicious curse, the man in the coat stepped forward, no longer caring about the hazy barrier between him and her attacker. Sloane cried out in warning, but in the blink of an eye both the mist and the white-haired man had vanished. Only Sloane and her savior remained.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  The man’s head jerked her way, but oddly, he seemed afraid to look directly at her. He did take a step closer when she swayed, though, and just before she pitched over completely, he slid an arm around her middle. She was shamefully grateful for the support, biting back a sob as she curled into his solid strength. The feel of his arms tightening around her was strangely familiar. Abruptly, she realized the stranger was shaking almost as much as she was.

  “Come now, love. It will be all right.” The low murmur of his voice made her feel inexplicably cherished and safe. For the first time, she noticed he was wearing gloves, supple leather ones like the gloves professional drivers favored. He guided her quickly and silently down the beach. In no time at all the lights of the pier surrounded them. He released her with seeming reluctance. “Sit,” he urged.

  Sloane finally noticed the bench he’d led her to. Even though her knees were still knocking together and her heart was racing, she didn’t do as he bid.

  Instead, she continued to stare at the man who had chased the monster away, marveling at the lights catching the gold in his dark-blond curls. He looked so familiar, or like he should be familiar. She couldn’t explain it, but as she watched him, laughter seemed to ring in her ears.

  A child’s laughter along with the beats of hooves on sand and the rumble of the surf.

  “Faster, Da! Faster.”

  She blinked and the voice in her head vanished.

  “Are ye all right, love?” As he moved closer, she knew, even before a streetlight illuminated his face, that his eyes would be blue, a translucent blue that was nearly crystalline. And that they would be warm. Warm and loving . . . and sad.

  So very sad.

  “Isleen,” he breathed. “Doona be frightened, love.”

  She wasn’t. Not by him. Even though he called her the same strange name that horrible man had used. In his voice, it sounded right. It tugged at something deep inside her, something wonderful and heart-breaking.

  They stared at each other, an arm’s length apart, neither moving for what seemed like ages.

  Then, hesitatingly, the man in the leather coat opened his arms, the look on his face somewhere between fear and longing. Without a thought, Sloane fell into his embrace, sobbing without knowing why.

  18

  Heather took a step back, her own eyes filling with tears. Of all the things she and Aidan had imagined coming here, this possibility hadn’t occurred to either of them. She turned her back to give her husband and his daughter some privacy, her undead heart hammering as she watched the shadows for that loathsome shape to appear again.

  Declan.

  Aidan had ran for the beach the second their train up from Douglas had stopped, muttering something about Isleen and shells that made no damn sense. She’d followed as quickly as she could, but Aidan had centuries of being a vampire to her scant few weeks. Not to mention a psychic power she’d never fully understood. She’d only arrived on the sand in time to see Declan vanish.

  That pissant fuck face. Here. Alive. Or as alive as a psychotic, twisted vampire could be. She’d like to be the one to end him. Just like she’d ended his demented king. Heather smiled, baring her own fangs to the night.

  Abhartach had conspired with the goddess of death to take away both her husband’s life and his daughter. Heather had killed the vampire king for that, making sure he could never hurt Aidan again. But now Declan was here, the most devoted servant that fucked-up monster had ever had, after Aidan’s long-lost daughter. It was as if Abhartach was reaching out from beyond, trying once again to tear them apart.

  Heather rubbed her arms, feeling the scars there, dozens of them. She barely noticed them these days, but just now they burned almost as badly as when they were first made.

  Sloane’s choked voice tuned her ears back into the conversation behind her. Heather’s eyes, though, stayed front and center, constantly sweeping the beach for shadows that didn’t belong.

  “I’m not adopted. Believe me, I’ve checked. How is this possible?” She sucked in a breath, unable to articulate what her heart and soul were telling her was true, that she owed her life to this man in more ways than one. “You and my mom didn’t . . . ?”

  He smiled gently, but his eyes showed his frustration. And fear. What the hell could a man who sent nightmares like that white-haired bastard scampering have to fear? The warmth his appearance had first filled her with began to fade as her fra
yed nerves started to jangle.

  “Nae, love. I’ve never met the woman you call your mother in this life. I doona know how to explain it to ye, but ye are mine. My daughter. I thought ye were lost to me for so long. So long . . .” His voice trailed off and he looked to a woman Sloane just now noticed. A tall, slim woman with her back to them.

  The instant the man’s eyes went to her, the woman turned as if he’d tapped her on the shoulder. Long dark hair swirled, revealing intense violet eyes in the bright lights of the pier. Sloane sucked in a breath as another shockwave hit her.

  “I know you, too. I mean, not know you, but . . . you’re Heather Kantos, aren’t you?”

  “Aidan prefers Heather O’Neill nowadays, but that works.” The woman shook her hand warmly as that surname sent another flurry of those odd whispers through Sloane’s head. These ones cruel and curious. “Bastard, they say. O’Neill’s by-blow, tha’s right.”

  Aidan. Of course. The man in the leather coat was called Aidan O’Neill.

  No. Aedan. Father.

  Da.

  Again, she heard that high childish voice. The feel of a shell in her fingers. Tis for if yer lonely, Da.

  Sloane let go of the woman’s hand, putting her own to her head. “I keep hearing voices . . .” She gave them a sheepish smile, thought at this point, she was kind of beyond something as mundane as embarrassment. “I don’t usually, I swear. But since you showed up, I’m hearing things constantly. Like memories whispering in my head. Except these memories aren’t mine. Not exactly.” She rubbed at her temples with a small groan, unable to explain.

  Aidan flinched at her distress. He moved to cup her face in both his hands, his fingers circling her temples lightly. “Relax, Is . . . Sloane. Relax. Take it in bits and pieces, a chuid den tsaol.”