by Nina Mason
A knock at the door pulled him from his thoughts. Assuming it was Mrs. King with the tea and soup, he instructed the knocker to enter, not bothering to turn. Gwyneth stirred and opened her eyes. He forced a smile and put his hand over hers.
“How long was I out?” Her voice was weak, her gaze hooded.
“About an hour,” he replied. “How do you feel?”
“Pretty crappy.”
A hand clamped down on his shoulder, making him turn. Tom wore a troubled expression. In Leith’s turmoil, he’d all but forgotten his friend.
“Might I make a suggestion?” Tom asked.
“By all means.” He’d do anything.
“I could go back to the Thitherworld and make an appeal to Glorianna.”
Glorianna, one of Morgan’s many sisters, was the good faery queen who’d given Tom the gifts of prophecy and immortality way back when.
As hope sprouted, Leith fought to keep it from blossoming prematurely. “What can she do?”
“She can’t break the curse,” Tom said, “though she might be able to mediate its effects—restore the poor lass’s strength and prolong her life for a time. Long enough to see the full moon, if we’re lucky.”
Concern for his friend eclipsed Leith’s hope for Gwyneth. Entering the Thitherworld was always risky, but was akin to suicide when the tithe was due. “You’d risk your life for a lass you hardly know?”
“I’m not doing it for her.” Tom squeezed Leith’s shoulder. “I’m doing it for you. She wouldn’t be in this state if you didn’t truly love her, so, consider this my gift—for the wee price of a noble favor.”
Distrust narrowed Leith’s eyes. Tom had always been generous to a fault. He hadn’t thought him the type to demand payment in kind. “What favor?”
Tom gave his shoulder a firm pat. “Live your life, eh? Be happy. Embrace what’s in front of you and let go of the past. Gather ye rosebuds, my friend. And, when you do, I’ll wager the book that’s hanging you up will flow from your heart.”
Gwyneth squeezed Leith’s hand, bringing his gaze back to hers. She offered him a frail smile. “Carpe diem, baby.”
They were right. The time had come to bury the past and start living for today. And tomorrow. Leith turned to Tom. “How long will it take to get there and back?”
The portal to Elphame was at Loch Katrine, a four-hour drive from Nairn, but the length of the drive wasn’t what worried Leith. How long Tom would be detained after crossing the veil was. Time moved at a different pace in the Thitherworld. A day there equaled a week in the Hitherworld.
“It’s hard to say,” Tom replied with a shrug. “But, time being of the essence and all, I’ll be back just as quick as I can.”
Leith wasn’t encouraged. Even if Queen Glorianna could help, chances were good she’d detain Tom too long. The last time the prophet paid the queen a visit, she kept him in her thrall for three years.
Tom let go of his shoulder and started to leave. Releasing Gwyneth’s hand, Leith rose from his chair.
“Tom,” he called, stopping his friend mid-stride. “Thanks a million, and Godspeed.”
After his friend departed, Leith turned back to the bed to find Gwyneth watching him.
“You look worried,” she said weakly. “Will he be okay?”
“I hope so,” he muttered, wringing his hands.
She held out her arms. “Come here and hold me.”
He lay down on the bed atop the covers, leaving the bedclothes between them like a protective barrier. He felt stiff and awkward and unsure. She rolled toward him and set her head and one arm on his chest. They lay there for a long while before she spoke.
“When was the last time you spent the night with a woman without having sex?” Her voice was as soft as her touch.
He swallowed. “In the same bed?”
“Yes.”
“Never.”
Her head came up and surprised green eyes found his. “Not even your wife?”
“My wife only came to my bedchamber when summoned for marital relations,” he quietly explained. “When I wasn’t in the mood, she kept to her own.”
“You had separate bedrooms?”
“It was the custom back then.” He gave her back her hand, but kept his atop it. “To do otherwise would have shocked our social circle.”
“Will we have separate bedrooms?”
He squeezed the frail fingers under his. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”
* * * *
Over the next week, Leith did all he could for Gwyneth while waiting for word from Tom. To keep her strength up, he spoon-fed her a variation on melas zomos, the staple black soup of the famously fearless armies of Sparta, substituting his own blood for that of a pig. His reasoning: it might not help, though neither could it hurt. And one never knew, did one?
The first time Gwyneth tried the soup, she screwed up her face in revulsion. “Holy smokes. Now I understand why the Spartans weren’t afraid to die.”
Surprised and amused by her comment, he asked how she knew about the soldiers of Sparta.
“From the movies,” she replied with a shrug.
Gwyneth seemed stronger in the mornings, but grew weaker again toward sunset. During one of her more robust moments, she e-mailed the executive at Pinnacle Pictures who’d sent her after the film rights. The contracts had arrived a few days later and were now under review by Leith’s barrister in Edinburgh.
Leith stayed with her all day and held her all night. When she was awake, they talked and watched movies. When she slept, he read, hunted, or curled up beside her, sometimes as Heathcliff the cat.
At the moment, he was writing out his last will and testament with a red-hot cannonball lodged in his gut. When his new mobile started buzzing on the desk, he jumped like a nervous feline. He snatched up the phone. If the caller wasn’t Tom, he’d be leaving for Rosemarkie in an hour. Mrs. King and Gavin would look after Gwyneth, one way or the other. As much as he hated to leave her, his errand would be in vain if he delayed any longer.
A glance at the smart phone’s screen told him the call was from an unknown number. Please let it be Tom. He pressed the button to accept the call. “Hello?”
“Leith? It’s me, back from Elphame. I’m on my way to you as we speak with a vial of restorative potion from Herself. Glorianna said the elixir should set the lass to right for another fortnight or so, which means the trip to Brocaliande is back on.”
A violent rush of relief set Leith’s pulse to racing. “That’s wonderful news, Tom. My gratitude is beyond description. How will I ever begin to repay your generosity?”
“Let’s have none of that, eh? ’Twill be enough if you keep up your end of the bargain and grab yourself a wee bit of long-overdue happiness.”
Chapter 16
“Ever been to Lewis?” Tom asked.
They were in the prophet’s circa-1975 Econoline van, heading toward Ullapool and the ferryboat that would carry them across the fifty-mile span of sea separating mainland Scotland from the Outer Hebrides.
A sun-faded shade of blue, the van was riddled with dents, dings, and patches of rust. The cab smelled of baked dust and vinyl. Crushed cigarette packets and empty beer bottles littered the floor. A split in the dashboard revealed a crumbling foam underbelly, a lightning bolt cracked across the windshield, and the ashtray overflowed with odiferous butts.
In the passenger seat, Leith was doing his best to ignore his surroundings as he read the map he’d unfurled to play navigator.
Lewis crowned the archipelago. A black star marked Stornoway, the main port on the island’s east coast. That’s where the ferry would land. Callanish lay all the way on the western side of the island.
Using the legend, Leith made a quick calculation. The distance was just over sixteen miles—a drive of less than thirty minutes, allowing for stray flocks of sheep and such.
“They still speak the Gaelic there.” Tom threw a glance over his
shoulder at Gwyneth.
They’d fixed up a bed in the back so she could rest, but she’d insisted on sitting up front with them. Tom had thrown a blanket over the bench seat to cover the stains and exposed springs.
At the moment, she was leaning forward to look over his shoulder at the map. Glorianna’s potion had restored her strength, but for how much longer?
“Do they?” She touched his shoulder. “Do you speak Gaelic, baby?”
“Aye.”
A smile tugged on the edges of his mouth. In the past week, she’d taken to calling him “sweetie” and “baby” and other such gooey terms of endearment, which, truth be told, he found, well, endearing.
“Say something romantic to me.” She tapped his shoulder. “In Gaelic, I mean.”
Letting the smile bloom, he moved his face around to hers and lifted his chin. “An toir thu dhomh pag?”
Her gaze met his with a spark. “What’s that mean?”
Tom, grinning, twisted his neck to address her. “Tell him, ‘Cha toir, ach bheir mi dhut sgailc!’”
Doing her best to parrot the difficult pronunciations, she sounded a bit like she was hawking up phlegm. “Chah TUH-r, ach vehr mee ghoot skahlk!”
Both men burst out laughing.
“What?” She looked between them. “What did I just say?”
“He asked if you’d give him a wee kiss,” Tom explained, still overcome by mirth. “And you said, ‘No, but I’ll give you a slap.’”
“Oh.” She swept a hand down Leith’s face. “That’s so sweet. And of course I’ll give you a kiss, baby.”
Fighting a grin, Leith offered his mouth to her. She met his lips with a quick peck before sitting back and looking out the window.
As dread pooled hot and hard in his belly, he did the same. He loved her so much. What would he do if the druids couldn’t save her or refused to help? Breathing the thought away, he gazed out at the scenery.
They were on A86, a two-lane highway which, for the next wee stretch, doubled as the High Street. Quaint stone cottages, row houses, and shops—most with slate roofs, chimneystacks, and front gardens—lined the road on both sides.
“This is cute,” Gwyneth observed. “Where are we?”
“Dingwall.” Leith craned his neck to look at her. “Known to Gaelic-speakers as Inbhir Pheofharai, which means ‘the mouth of the Peffery.’”
Her dark eyebrows gathered together. “What’s the Peffery?”
“A wee river emptying into the Cromarty Firth, which lies over yon.” He pointed eastward.
“Does Dingwall have a claim to fame?”
He returned his attention to the map. “It used to boast the biggest castle north of Stirling.”
“Used to? What happened to it?”
Tom snorted. “What didn’t?”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“Murders, duels, intrigues, and a good deal of political hand-changing.” Leith spread the map across his lap as he retrieved the ferry schedule from the sun-beaten dashboard.
“Is it still there?”
“Nay.” He checked the schedule. “The crown abandoned it after the death of King James the Sixth. Back around sixteen hundred. It was used as a quarry for a bit, then finally demolished.”
She let out a sigh. “Seems a shame that something with that much history should be reduced to rubble.”
“Aye,” he agreed, “but castles are incredibly expensive to maintain. As I well know.”
“There’s still a folly on the site,” Tom put in, “built from some of the original stones, if that helps you feel better about it.”
Her brow puckered. “What’s a folly?”
“The story of my life,” Leith muttered.
“A purely decorative structure, basically,” Tom inserted. “You see them quite a bit in the gardens of grand houses.”
She still looked lost, so, to clarify, Leith said, “Remember the other day when we watched Pride and Prejudice?”
“Of course.”
“And the scene in the pouring rain when Mr. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth?”
“That’s one of my favorite scenes.” Her voice took on a dreamy tone as she added, “The best one, though, is when he walks toward her across the field with the sun rising behind him.”
Leith cleared his throat. “My point was that the structure sheltering them from the rain is a folly.”
“Oh.”
Satisfied, he consulted the ferry schedule. Tonight was the full moon, so they’d need to reach Callanish somewhere around eleven o’clock to allow time to perform the ritual. Tom had the nawglen, which he’d prepared over the past fortnight, and a cross-over incantation provided by Queen Glorianna.
The last ferry set off around five o’clock. The crossing took three hours, give or take. That would put them in Stornoway with time to spare. Good. While Gwyneth seemed to be feeling her oats, he sure as hell wasn’t. Truth be told, he felt rather anemic, the result no doubt of all the blood he’d contributed to her sustenance.
He needed to feed, but not on hare. He required human blood. Since his wee mouse needed all her strength to stave off the curse, he’d be forced to tap a random donor somewhere along the way.
He studied the map of Lewis, looking for a caravan park. At this time of year, campers made the best targets. He could strike a lone straggler and be gone before anyone was the wiser.
“When we get to Lewis,” he said, turning to Tom, “I’m going to need to feed.”
“Oh, aye? Did you have any particular quarry in mind?”
“Long pig,” he said, hoping the slang might mask his intent. “Would you happen to know of a caravan park anywhere along the route?”
“What’s long pig?” she asked.
His jaw clenched. He should have known that inquiring mind of hers would never let his code pass.
“Human.”
“Oh. I see. And what’s a caravan park?”
He bit his lip, fearing her condemnation. “I believe you call them campgrounds in the States.”
She took a minute to put the pieces together, then, with notable alarm, said, “You’re not going to kill anybody I hope.”
“Of course not.” His sharp tone conveyed his offense. “I’ll just take a scant few ounces and be on my way. They won’t ever know what hit them.”
“Can I go with you?”
His common sense reared in protest. “Go with me? Whatever for?”
“To watch. I might never get another chance to see a real-live faery in action.”
Her statement made him sputter in surprise, but also gave him ideas. Human blood aroused his passions. Turning, he gave her a smile. “If I let you watch, will you let me have my way with you after?”
* * * *
As excited as Gwyn felt about their quest, she couldn’t help feeling like she’d stepped inside a movie. The Wizard of Oz or maybe The Chronicles of Narnia. When they got to Brocaliande, would she find a friendly satyr or a helium-voiced guild of candy-crafting Little People waiting to welcome her?
Her money was on the satyr.
In mythology, satyrs were nothing like the friendly creatures depicted in the Narnia and Percy Jackson films. Rather, they were lusty creatures with perpetual erections who fucked anything that moved—and probably a few things that didn’t.
She cast the strangely stimulating image away and steered her mind back to the strangely stimulating itinerary ahead. They’d be stopping off at a campground so Leith could drink someone’s blood, after which he planned to fuck her savagely. Well, at least she assumed so. The handful of times he’d tapped her veins, he’d been a total wild man during the lovemaking that followed.
As desire flamed in her loins, she heaved a dreamy sigh. She loved it when he fucked her like that, which was rare of late. Since she’d taken the elixir, he refused to drink from her and, in bed, handled her with kid gloves. Not that she was complaining. Sex with him was a scrumptiou
s feast any way he served it.
She found the idea of doing it after he’d tapped a random stranger surprisingly exhilarating. She should be appalled, not enthralled, but she couldn’t wait. Ever since she’d taken Glorianna’s elixir, she’d been unbelievably horny. However much they had sex, however many times she got off, she couldn’t seem to quell her need.
There were other changes, too. Her senses seemed sharper and more attuned, her breasts were tender, and she was having all these weird cravings. It had to be something in the potion. Or that god-awful soup he’d fed her, which tasted like a fusion of salt-and-vinegar crisps, fried pork rinds, and raw meat.
Just thinking about that horrid stuff brought the flavor back with a grimace of revulsion.
Leith didn’t know about her symptoms. She was too afraid the cause might be something less supernatural. They’d had unprotected sex that one time a few weeks ago, and she hadn’t had a period the whole time she’d been in Scotland.
Both Clara and Belphoebe had been pregnant when he lost them. He could still lose her, too. As much as she wanted to believe the druids could help her, the odds were good they wouldn’t be able to. If she was pregnant and Leith found out, the loss of her and his guilt would be that much worse. Not telling him would spare him the extra grief.
She flung the thought away. Dwelling on the possibility only brought her down, and she was trying very, very hard to keep her spirits up. Better to think about happy things. Like having hot faery sex at the campground. Tingling with anticipation, she licked her lips and closed her eyes, letting her imagination sweep her away.