Time Everlastin' Book 5

by Mickee Madden

  "No, Laura. Let her sleep." Lachlan grinned wickedly. "I'll wake her later in ma own way."

  "Spare us," Roan muttered.

  "What about Taryn and Reith?" Laura asked impatiently.

  Lachlan's eyebrows drew down in a ponderous frown. "She's as slippery as an eel."

  "But it's been months you've been searching!" Laura said. "How could she just vanish?"

  Roan massaged Laura's nape. "Every time we think we're close, we lose the trail."

  "Aye," said Lachlan disparagingly. "From Edinburgh to Aberdeen to the Outer Hebrides, she's led us on a merry chase. I was sure she was on the Isle o' Lewis. So sure!"

  "She rented a car there, then she seemed to have vanished into thin air," Roan said. "We checked every inn on the isle. No one claims to have seen her."

  "Could she have returned to the States?" asked Blue.

  "Winston's been monitoring the passenger lists," Laura said. "Unless she purchased a ticket under a pseudonym."

  Lachlan shook his head. "Why the bother? She doesna know we're lookin' for her."

  "She may have realized we discovered she stole the dirk," said Laura.

  "Tha' wouldn’t bother her," Roan said.

  "Maybe she's deliberately leading you around," suggested Blue. She frowned, and shook her head. "No. She may be lacking in character, but I don't believe she's deliberately eluding you."

  "I agree," said Lachlan.

  "Isle of Lewis," Laura murmured. "Is that where the Callanish Standing Stones are?"

  "Aye," said Lachlan and Roan in unison. Laura's head swung from Lachlan to Roan, and back to Lachlan.

  "Did you visit the site?"

  Lachlan shook his head. "I started to while Roan and Reith questioned the inn owners, but I couldna bring maself to get too close."

  "Why?" asked Laura.

  "I dinna know." Lachlan expelled a breath and braced his elbows on his thighs. "Got a verra strange feelin' as I approached the hill it sits on."

  "What if Taryn was there?" Laura asked.

  "I would sense her," Lachlan stated.

  "What about..." Blue swallowed hard, then forced out, "Reith? Why didn't he return with you?"

  "When we got back ta our hotel," said Roan, "he said he wanted to stay and do mair checkin' on his own."

  "This is the third time he has stayed out there alone!" Blue swallowed to lessen the panic in her tone and muttered, "Not that I don't appreciate his absence."

  Lachlan's eyebrows lifted. "For a moment there, I thought I detected a wee concern, pretty Blue."

  "No!" she said curtly then withered into a slump. "Deliah will be worried."

  "Oh, aye," Lachlan grinned. "Almaist as much as you, aye?"

  "What does he think he can uncover that you and Roan couldn't?" Blue asked bitterly.

  "He's a grown mon, lass," he said kindly.

  "He definitely had somethin' on his mind," said Roan.

  "I dinna feel good abou' leavin' him behind again,” said Lachlan, “but he insisted we return here."

  "Why?" asked Laura.

  Roan shrugged. "Two weeks here, three there." Urging Laura off his lap, he exploded, "Damn me!" and walked to the fireplace, where he trenched his fingers through his curly, shoulder-length hair. "We've given up months searchin' for her!" He turned and looked at the others with burgeoning frustration. "For all we know, she could be hidin' somewhere, laughin' at us for wastin' so much bloody time on this game!"

  "Tis no game," Lachlan murmured. "I'm sure o' it."

  This time, Roan raked one hand through his hair. "It buggers me no end to care a wit abou' her! No." He sighed tiredly, looked at Laura, and forced a smile. "I do care, and I'm worried."

  "What does he think he can find?" Blue murmured, staring off into space.

  "Lass, admit ye're worried abou' him," Lachlan said softly.

  Blue shivered and hugged herself for warmth.

  "Wha' is really troublin' you?" asked Lachlan.

  Blue's eyes crept to meet Lachlan's penetrating gaze. "Do you think he'll go to the site?"

  "Site?"

  "The Callanish Standing Stones."

  "Why does tha' prospect concern you?"

  She shook her head slowly. "I'm not sure. We fairies are forbidden to trespass on those lands."

  "Why?"

  Blue's eyes widened. "They're sacred."

  "And...?" Laura urged.

  "Fairies who have violated those boundaries, have never returned," she said in a small voice.

  Lachlan stood and passed Roan a worried glance. "Weel, Blue, Reith will return."

  Closing her eyes, the Faerie queen lowered her head.

  Laura watched her, dread twisting her insides. If it turned out that Taryn was playing games, she vowed to throttle her. If anything happened to Reith, the world wouldn't be large enough to hide Taryn from Laura.

  "Laura?" Roan said.

  She crossed to him and slipped her arms about his middle. "Let's go to bed."

  "Music to ma eyes," he said, and laughed with the others when his words registered.

  "Good night all," Laura said, leading Roan from the room.

  Once collective good nights were exchanged, Lachlan gently lifted Blue into his arms. "Care to stay in the house, tonight?"

  "No. Thank you."

  "To your oak we go," he said merrily, but Blue detected the undertone of worry he attempted to mask.

  When they stepped into the night, she asked, "You will let me know if he calls?"

  "Aye."

  "He will call, won't he?"

  "Aye."

  "What if he doesn't call and—"

  Lachlan stopped short at the tree and smiled into her upturned face. "When he does, shall I tell him you—"

  "Certainly not!" she sputtered, blinked into her four-inch-form, and hovered in front of his face. "Good night."

  A grin splitting his face, Lachlan strolled back to the house.

  * * *

  Dreams invade Blue's sleep.

  Sighing with deep satisfaction, she lifts her left hand to her lips and kisses the third finger. Her Ring Of Passage emerges from the band of skin on the digit, a trick she taught herself after decades of trying to conceal the treasure from humans. Silver-blue energy crackles up her arm. Within seconds it cocoons her, pulsing and thrumming with the magic of time. She shrinks to her normal four-inch height. The aura turns to swirling blues and purples. A gasp of pure delight escapes her when buds form between her shoulder blades and unfurl into glittering, translucent silver and blue wings.

  The energy vanishes. Lifting herself just enough to straighten her legs, she bends at the waist to retrieve the body suit. It's necessary for her to sit once again to slip the leggings on then she hovers and pulls on the rest of the garment. She dons the tunic, ties the connected belt, and rockets into the air.

  For a time, she whizzes about the room, the sweet tintinnabulation of her laughter filling the room with the sound of fairy bells.

  Ting-a-ling. Ting-a-ling.

  Tis be the truer way

  A Faerie fairy sings.

  The sensation of her wings working the air temporarily banishes from her mind the fact that her legs dangle like dead weights beneath her. She zooms and careens, flying in graceful circles and spirals, exercising the ancient rites of freedom all fairies praise above all else, her thick black hair trailing behind her head like a silken comet's tail.

  "I remember," she murmurs in her sleep.

  Coasting to the window, she unlatches the right side and pushes it open. The first gust of air catches her unawares. She is whisked backward, then straightens and, head lowering into the frolicsome breeze, soars into the night. She circles the four-hundred-and-fifty year old building, gleefully zinging around, over and under the cascade of snowflakes, semi-circled again, and spirals downward and hovers above a snow-blanketed fountain.

  Turning her back to a segment standing tall in the center of a large basin, she flutters her wings. The featherlike snow flutters into
the air and away, gradually exposing one of the three gargoyle heads that are the fountain's water spouts. She hooks one arm behind her knees and lowers herself onto the bestial nose of the granite creature.

  She lifts her face to bask in the silver-blue moonlight.

  A snowflake, three times larger than her hand, unexpectedly lands on her head. She gasps, her arms flailing to remove the cold matter, then laughs outright and opens her arms to embrace the wetness. For an undeterminable time, she swipes and pokes at the flakes, now and then scooping out a portion to taste.

  "No," Blue mewled, turning onto her back, her head tossing from side to side as the dreamscape darkens and shifts back three hundred years, to one fateful night.

  Blue transforms into human size the instant she leaves Faerie's boundaries. Ahead, bathed in blue-white moonlight, she spies Reith near a gazebo, pulling his human lover into his arms. Blue advances, the events of the night compelling her on, her fears for what awaits her husband, dousing all reason.

  "Reith, no!" she wails, closing in.

  His head turns in her direction. At first she sees surprise in his eyes then hatred. A hatred so fierce and dark, it robs her of breath, and she staggers to a stop.

  "Don't," Blue whimpers. "Reith, stop!"

  A mask of evil contorts Reith's face and, before she can retreat, his arm flings out, catching her across the chest.

  The blow reels her back and she pitches over, her spine impacting with the steps of the gazebo.

  She awakens, broken and alone—

  Blue shot up into a sitting position, her hoarse breaths echoing throughout her quarters. Perspiration coats her sallow skin, and her widened eyes blink spasmodically to clear the dream from her memory.

  A soft rap on her door.

  "Go away!" she snapped.

  Burying her face in her hands, racking sobs give minute vent to the centuries of humiliation, despair and pain she suffered because of Reith.

  She matters not in MoNae's grand scheme. For Reith's redemption, no sacrifice is too small or too great, and this knowledge eats like an acid at Blue's mind.

  His choices. His actions. So easily forgotten and forgiven by all but herself. And why should she? When will her torment count, and not be swept aside for the "greater good" of Faerie, as MoNae believes?

  "I hate you," she whimpered. "I hate you, I hate you!"

  And yet...her treacherous heart called out to him.

  Chapter 9

  Reith, the ostracized king of the Kingdom of Faerie, winged through the first floor hall of the Astory Inn, maintaining a safe distance behind the elderly woman toddling along a worn runner carpet in the semi-darkness. The ghostly orange glow from her candle cast a cloak of impenetrable gloom over the passageway. Distorted shadows shifted on the walls with her movement. Shadows that intensified Reith's apprehension yet heightened his determination.

  It had been too long since he'd used his wings. Too long since tapping into his inherent abilities. Such was the self-ordained penalty he had placed upon himself for the sins of his adolescence. Although four inches was the normal height of a fairy, he had lived among the humans for centuries, six-foot tall, wingless, powerless, until the magic held by his old self—the reckless and heartless Briar Prince—had become but a memory he seldom yearned to regain.

  Only the "mission" gave him the stamina to relegate his guilt to a lesser plane of importance. But now the use of magic was taxing. He derived no pleasure from flying as he had in his youth. The muscles connecting his wings to his back, ached incessantly.

  Perhaps his conscience further punishing him?

  Or perhaps, MoNae, Mother Nature, exacting a penalty for all he had shunned in the name of lust.

  She counted on her children to live by a strict code of ethics. He had failed his people, his wife, himself, and the goddess of the earth.

  Something had triggered his internal alarm when he and Roan had talked with the MacLachlan family three weeks ago, and compounding his gut feeling that something was amiss, was Lachlan's mood when they rejoined him at car at the outskirts of the inn's property. Lachlan, who was supposed to have been investigating the standing stones while he and Roan questioned the inn folk, declared it wasn't necessary.

  Reith had witnessed many expressions cross the laird's face since their first meeting, but never the fear he read when Lachlan insisted they leave the isle, fetch their belongings at the hotel, return to Baird House and regroup for a later search. Reith could not shake a nagging suspicion that Lachlan was—perhaps subconsciously—running from something. Reith insisted he remain on the isle and poke around. It was Roan who finally convinced Lachlan that Reith—as before—would be safe on his own, especially since he had the use of his magic should he need it.

  Does Lachlan's knowin’ connect wi’ somethin’ on the isle he canna face?

  Reith couldn't imagine what that could be. Lachlan appeared to be basically a fearless man. But Reith had seen that look in his mentor's eyes, and it had branded his tattered soul.

  Fear.

  Fear in a man who had lived, died, and lived again.

  Fear o’ a person, place or thing?

  Returning to this area, Reith's first exploration was that of the stones. It was nightfall and he was flitting about in miniature when he spied the woman he later learned was called Katie. Reith wasn't sure why she stood out amongst the other visitors who came to the site day and night that first week. Something in the way she stood before the tallest menhir, looking bleak, sad and, yes, fearful.

  Her eyes betrayed that same haunted quality he had glimpsed in Lachlan's. When she returned to the site that fourth time, he followed her to the Astory Inn, where he resided unseen amidst the shadowed corners of the rooms and the oversized antique furniture.

  By the second week, the old woman, Mavis, dominated his attention. She had only to walk into a room he occupied and his internal alarms went off like a succession of cannon assaults on a castle.

  Weeks ago, Roan was ready to give up the search and let his out-of-control younger sister keep the MacLachlan dirk she stole from Baird House, and get on with the wedding plans. Lachlan also believed her disappearance self-promoted.

  How reliable was the information they garnered?

  For all they knew, someone with similar features could have stolen her credit card. For all they knew, Taryn was back in the States, doing what Taryn did best. Lying and manipulating. She could have flown out of Scotland under a false name to throw them off her trail. She had robbed Lachlan of a family treasure, after all. But these suppositions didn't set right in Reith's mind.

  Despite the new laird's assertion there was no love lost between him and his sister, Reith didn't believe him. Marrying Laura could only be daunted by Taryn's absence.

  Besides, Taryn was on a mission of her own, and not simply leading them on a merry chase across Scotland. Reith was sure of this. And her mission had something to do with Lachlan. He was also sure of this. Something deeply rooted in him believed Lachlan's future was at stake. It didn't make sense why anything Taryn would do could affect Lachlan and Beth, but the notion had clamped its unrelenting jaws on Reith and he couldn't free himself of its hold.

  For Reith, finding Taryn and returning the MacLachlan dirk to Lachlan was a mission so personal, he could think of little else. Lachlan had given Reith, a virtual stranger, shelter and employment, altering his opinion that humans were an untrustworthy and dangerous species.

  Lachlan, Roan and Winston were three of the finest men Reith had encountered during his three-hundred plus years. For Lachlan, and for Roan's peace of mind over the whereabouts of his sister, he would leave no possibility unexamined.

  His centuries of servitude to The Sutherland had taught him to trust his instincts. And his instincts were homed in on this isle. This inn. This site. And now...this old woman.

  A failure in all aspects of his former life, Reith would sooner perish than give up his obsession to unlock the truth.

  Shadows continued
to twitch on the walls as the old woman shuffled down the hall. When she stopped before one of the many doors and inserted a key with a shaky hand, he hovered close by. The door opened. He dashed around her into the room's darker recesses and perched atop a light fixture jutting out from the wall to the right of the threshold. From his vantage point, he saw a wrinkled, age-spotted, gnarled hand push the door shut.

  The candle-glow cast the woman's face in eerie relief, emphasizing the deep grooves the decades had carved into her flaccid skin as she glided trancelike across the hardwood floor. Distorted by flickering shadows, something on the far wall came into view. He squinted to see more clearly until an uncomfortable tingling coursed through him. He weakened by the second, his limbs racked with trembling.

  No' now!, he mentally cried.

  Indeed now.

  If he didn't forgo the magic to remain in faerie form, he would have little left to leave the room when the time came. The human spell exacted far less energy. Such irony. Another penalty of his misspent youth.

  Casting off from the light fixture, he soared to the right corner, crouched, and willed himself to human form while snugged within the thick shadows.

  "I couldna sleep," the old woman said on a watery sigh. "Ye missed anither month. Ye gifts are gatherin' tall now."

  Reith grimaced. He had already surmised from her rants about the house, the woman was a wee damaged in the mind. From what he could see, she talked to a scene depicted on the wall. Actually, someone painted into the landscape of the Callanish Standing Stones. Her body blocked most of the person in the mural. As she spoke, she rocked from side to side, awarding him fleeting glimpses of a man.

  "She be wi' ye still," she said bitterly. "Such insult to our clan. Ye did no' want me! Me, when ma body was young and supple! Wha' see ye in her!"

  Reith eased into a stand and stretched the taut muscles in his legs and lower back. His face scrinched up. She was daft. Rambling. Ranting at a man in a mural.

  His gaze locked onto the man's features, and something in the blazing dark eyes robbed him of breath. They seemed too real, penetrating into the most minute pockets of his soul. A look that accused and condemned. The eyes of a man—if the artist portrayed them correctly—whose own soul had been lost along the convoluted paths of life.