Katie gasped and backed away from him, her bloodstained fist pressed to the center of her chest. She stared at Ramsay’s face, clearly searching for an explanation. She too had felt the melding.
Emrys motioned to the tree line and Ramsay’s horse, Dubh, stepped forward, saddled and ready to ride. Emrys rested a trembling hand on Ramsay’s shoulder and smiled. “Goodbye my son. May the goddesses be with ye. Be sure and keep to the path.” Emrys’s strength was waning with the setting of the sun. Suddenly, his father seemed a great deal older.
“We can leave now?” Katie tugged on Ramsay’s arm. “We can leave—right?”
Watching Emrys as he allowed Katie to pull him over to Dubh, Ramsay gently resisted and halted Katie in her tracks. “Something isna right, lass.” Be sure and keep to the path? What the hell does that mean?
“Something hasn’t been right about this whole damn day,” Katie snapped. “Now come on.”
Emrys slowly nodded, a sly smile pulling up the corners of his thinning beard. He slowly bent and retrieved Ramsay’s spear and tossed it to him. “Ye’ll need this, boy, and if yer wise, ye’ll heed m’words. Keep to the path.” He nodded at Katie. “And keep yer lady to the path, as well.”
Chapter 9
Still cradling her fist against her chest, Katie rode along in silence, trying to sort through the crazy myriad of emotions churning through her. Stay calm. At least we’re riding away from the wild wizard of the mountain and his crazy henchman.
She opened her hand and examined the slight cut that had finally stopped bleeding. She was familiar with such rites. Read about them. Taught them in class and tested students on ancient customs. Handfastings. She’d never heard of the blessing binding or whatever the hell Dwyn had done but handfastings she knew. Apparently, I now have a husband. She rolled her eyes and jerked her fist back up against her chest, moving in the saddle as she did so.
Ramsay tightened his arm around her. “Sit still, lass. I dinna wish ye t’fall.”
“Oh, just shut up!” She’d remained silent for as long as she could and that was currently the nicest thing she could think of to say to Ramsay at this particular moment in time.
Ramsay shifted behind her. He sucked in a deep breath and slowly blew it out, fluttering her hair in the process and pissing her off even more. “Everything I did back there was for yer welfare—believe it or no’.”
“Why the hell didn’t you and your brothers jump in and grab him? I know he had a knife but he’s an old man! Any one of you could’ve taken him.” She hammered an elbow into Ramsay’s rock-hard middle to accentuate her words. “The four of you are a big ass wall of muscle against one decrepit old man and yet none of you did a damn thing. What are you? A bunch of chickenshits?”
Ramsay didn’t answer, just shifted sideways, rooted around in the leather bag lashed to the side of the saddle, and pulled out a full bottle of whisky. He nudged it against Katie’s arm. “Here. ‘Twill take the edge off.”
She doubted that very much but it sure as hell couldn’t hurt after the weirdness she’d just experienced. If not for the strangeness of the situation, she would’ve reveled in it. She’d been neck deep in what appeared to be druid history. A groundbreaking find that literally gave her a buzz, until neck deep rushed to over-her-head level and she was suddenly drowning in the druid shit. Breaking the seal and twisting the cap free, Katie took a large enough swig to make her eyes water and trigger a burning cough.
“Easy there, lass.” Ramsay reached around her, rescued the bottle, and helped himself to a long swallow.
Glancing around the unfamiliar part of the woods and lengthening shadows, Katie snatched the bottle back and took another deep drink. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she balanced the bottle on her thigh for easy access. “I hope we’re headed to the keep because I am so out of here tonight. I don’t care if I have to walk out of Brady, North Carolina.” So much for going along with the crazy old man. A sliced hand and a day of unbelieveable crazy that I can’t even describe. I couldn’t have made today’s shit up—not in a thousand years.
She took another deep drink and peered up at what little sky she could see through the leafy tops of the trees. “Are we going down the mountain or up? This direction seems off.”
“I must keep to the path, lass. Did ye no’ hear Athair’s words?”
Katie kicked her feet and yanked the reins out of Ramsey’s hands, pulling on them until Dubh came to a standstill. “Are you fucking kidding me? He’s nowhere near here and you’re still doing what he says? It’s over, Ramsay. We did what the hell he wanted and now it’s over. What the devil is wrong with you?” She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and pretty soon, with another healthy snort or two of the whisky, she’d probably do both simultaneously. “I know I said I was willing to humor the man, but this…this…” she struggled to choose the right words. “This went way beyond keeping some confused old man happy. I’m sorry—but I’m out. No more playacting. I’m out of Brady tonight.”
“Ye saw the lightnin’ and heard the thunder after Dwyn spoke the blessing, aye?”
He hadn’t heard a word she’d said. Totally ignored her. Totally. Katie took another deep swig then said, “Aye, laddie, I heard.” She sounded a great deal like a tipsy Scottish parrot—even to her own ears. She hit the bottle again.
Taking the whisky from her, Ramsay shoved it back down into the leather bag and cinched it tightly shut.
“Hey!”
“Ye can have more when we stop for the evenin’.”
Katie looked around and held up both hands as though revealing a surprise. Dubh hadn’t resumed his slow plodding walk. “Looks to me like we’re stopped now.” She rocked in the saddle to get Dubh moving and thumped both elbows hard enough into Ramsay’s stomach to make him grunt. “Take me to the keep, Ramsay. Now.”
“We must keep to the path,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Why?” Katie roared out with an angry growl that made screaming seem pathetic and made her want another drink to wet her throat. Her vented frustration caused a nearby flock of birds to evacuate their roost and flutter up through the trees. “Get it through your head—your father isn’t here. Neither is Dwyn. Take me to the keep. I’m ready to pack my shit and get the hell away from Brady, North Carolina, and forget this cult of yours ever existed.”
“Aye, lass. I know,” Ramsay answered in a quiet resigned tone. He urged Dubh forward and gently but firmly pulled Katie back against him. “But ye must understand, Athair’s words were a warnin’ and Dwyn agreed with him. We must keep to the path—at least until the sun rises and we see what the mornin’ holds. I think we might be safe by then.”
“All the morning holds is my happy ass buying a bus ticket out of Brady, North Carolina, since Adam finally decided to text me and tell me he can’t get here ’til the weekend.”
Ramsay’s thighs flexed around her, urging Dubh to resume at a faster pace. “There’s a clearing up ahead. Still well on the path. We can safely spend the night there.”
“I am not camping out even if I have to walk back to the damn keep in pitch-black darkness.” And she’d be taking the damn whisky bottle with her. All she had to do was head down the mountain. If she missed the keep, at least she’d find some sort of civilization eventually and get the hell out of here.
“Ye’ll no’ walk. I intend to explain everythin’ to ye and then ye’ll sleep and in the mornin’, if ye wish, I’ll find ye a way home then.”
“If I wish? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
Ramsay remained silent, but Katie felt victorious by the tensed hardness of his body. He was pissed. Good. I am too. Admittedly, the man was intriguing beyond words—what with his background and that mind-boggling druid altar in his own backyard. And he was gorgeous. And more than likely an awesome lover. But…damn. How much did a girl have to put up with just to get close to a gu
y? This afternoon had been a little much.
“I need another drink.” She had quite the bravado-building buzz going on and she wasn’t about to let it fizzle out.
Ramsay grabbed hold of her hand as she fumbled with the ties on the saddle bag and in one graceful movement, he dismounted and pulled her down into his arms.
“What do you think you’re doing now?” She thumped his chest with her fist. “Put me down.”
Without a word, Ramsay thunked her down on a hollow log, hard enough to make her teeth rattle. He strode back to Dubh, removed his spear from the holster, then stripped the animal of saddle and rigging. Tossing the articles into a pile on the ground, he patted Dubh on the flank then returned with whisky bottle in hand.
Staring down at her, his face shadowed by the subtle shade of early nightfall peeping through the canopy of leaves behind him, he finally blew out a heavy gusting sigh, took a long drink, then handed the bottle down to her.
Katie started to take a drink but something about Ramsay’s stance and the way he kept clenching and relaxing his fists kept her from taking the sip. She slowly lowered the bottle and leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees and balancing the bottle between her hands. “Now what?”
When Ramsay finally spoke, the deep richness of his voice was low and steady. He talked as though in a trance. “As of this evenin’, ye are now the wife and soulmate of Ramsay Danann MacDara. Third son to the MacDara high chieftain. Born at MacDara Broch in the Highlands of Scotland…in the year 884.”
The bottle of whisky almost slipped from between Katie’s hands. She double-clutched the long neck of it to keep it from hitting the ground. I haven’t had enough alcohol to hallucinate or hear things.
Gently, she set the whisky bottle down between her feet. She sat up straighter, planted her hands on her knees, and locked her elbows. Surely, I heard him wrong. She leaned forward a bit and angled an ear toward him. “Come again?”
“Ye are my wife. And soulmate.”
“Yeah…I already had the handfasted wife part figured out. History buff—remember?” Katie shooed away his words and swallowed hard, doing her level best to reason out what he was saying. A hysterical rant wouldn’t solve anything—at least not yet. “Repeat when you said you were born?”
“Ye heard me correctly, lass.” Ramsay shifted his faraway gaze back to her. “I was born in the year 884 A.D. and when I was but a lad of sixteen summers, the goddesses lifted us up out of our time and brought us here. We arrived in North Carolina seventeen years ago this past spring.”
“You’re…you mean like…” Katie peered at him closer but even in the hazy lighting of early evening and several healthy swigs of whisky, she was pretty damn sure that Ramsay was telling the truth—or at least he believed what he was saying was true.
For the first time since she’d met him, Katie really believed he’d finally stripped himself of all pretense. Now he stood there with every fiber of his being exposed, waiting for her to react to the implausibility of what he’d just shared.
She pressed a hand against her chest and cleared her throat, doing her best to slow down her wildly thumping heart and keep her stomach from reversing gears and sending the whisky back out. “You mean…like time travel?”
Ramsay lowered himself down to the log beside her, reached around her leg, and helped himself to the whisky. “Aye. Time travel. We were brought forward in time—along with the Heartstone and the sacred weapons that are in our charge—to escape a bloody siege of the horde that wouldha ended the world as we now know it.”
Heartstone. Sacred weapons. Time travel. Katie reacted the way she always did when faced with something incredible. She assumed professor mode. Holy quantum physics…he’s serious. She automatically sifted through memories, in this particular case, she focused on the time that she and her father had spent in Scotland. But nothing in all her studies, or her research, had hinted at anything like this.
The archeologist in her perked her ears and excitedly wanted to know more, every last bit of it. But the vulnerable woman in her whose whispered hopes about the possibility of a budding relationship were about to be destroyed by the realization that the man in front of her, the man she’d been so intrigued by, had to be either delusional or suffering from the brainwashing of a strange cult made her want to scream and make Ramsay take it all back.
She rubbed a shaking hand across her eyes. But it all makes sense. Fits in with what just happened. Druids. Stones. Goddesses. And all the weird secrecy at the keep. Seemed like she’d read a little-known legend about druid clans a long time ago—one that should’ve never been written down precisely because it pertained to druids. She held her head between her hands and massaged her temples. Alcohol was not conducive to memory retrieval.
What had that damn legend said? What was it? Need more data. That’s all she could hold on to to keep from grabbing that whisky bottle and whacking Ramsay with it. Data will explain everything. Logical. Real. I’m smart. I’ll sort through it and figure it all out.
“Um…” She stared down at the toes of her tennis shoes as she nervously tapped them in the leaves. “Could you elaborate? Heartstone? Sacred weapons? I’m afraid I’m not familiar with any historical information on those.” She’d switched fully to research professor mode. Her safe mode. For now.
Ramsay pushed himself back up from the log and took to pacing back and forth in front of her. “Clan MacDara is the chosen of all the druid clans. Chosen by the goddesses, Danu, Bride, and Scota.” He paused in his pacing and glanced back at her. “If ye’ll recall, ye discovered their symbols carved into the haft of my spear.”
Katie just nodded.
Whisky bottle clutched in one hand, Ramsay resumed his nervous walk in a tight circle. “We’re druids, aye? I’m certain ye figured that out when we arrived at the altar. And the other druid clans look to us for leadership and guidance.”
Katie motioned for him to keep talking, not fully trusting herself to speak. The best thing she could do right now was listen and do her damnedest to stay calm—at least until she’d gathered her bearings enough to head down the mountain on her own.
Ramsay mimicked her quick nod as though convincing himself that he still had her attention and she wasn’t distracted by plotting her escape. He took another short sip from the bottle then continued speaking as he slowly strolled back and forth in front of her. “Centuries ago—longer than anyone can say—the goddesses chose Clan MacDara t’guard the blessed Heartstone and gave us the four sacred weapons forged for our duty by the goddess Bride herself. The other druid clans support us in this legacy, aiding us in any way they can. They’re spread all over the world now. Some even in North Carolina. They’ve assisted us down through the ages to ensure our clan doesna fail in its purpose.” He paused for a moment and looked down at her with a pained expression. “And at times, the goddesses send us back through the centuries to aid our allied clans when their survival is endangered. Ross and I go more oft than the others. Alec is acting chieftain here, what with Athair growing more addled, and Grant only recently mending his broken oath t’serve the goddesses.”
Did he just say they go back in time…frequently? Shaking her head against information overload, Katie held up a hand to slow Ramsay’s storytelling down. “Wait. I get the goddesses part but what exactly is the Heartstone? A druid amulet or something?” Katie understood how she might not have heard about this particular myth. Druidry and their belief systems were still a very large unknown because nothing was recorded. All things “druid” had been passed down through the generations of believers strictly by word of mouth. That’s why she’d been so surprised several years ago when she’d come across that small bit of parchment vaguely referencing the druid clan system legend. And to add even more weirdness to the situation, that bit of parchment had somehow disappeared before it could be catalogued and placed in a museum.
Ramsa
y stared at the ground as he paced, rapping his knuckles against the whisky bottle in tandem with every step. “Nay. ’Tis no amulet but an actual stone. Large enough that it could be a cairn in its own right.”
A cairn? Piles of stone used as markers long ago—for graves, passages, anything deemed important enough for the effort required to gather and build such a thing strong enough to withstand the harshness of the land.
“How big is it?”
If Ramsay was telling the truth—or at least his delusional version of it—then he said the goddesses had brought the Heartstone and the weapons forward in time with the MacDaras. And if that was so—where was it now? She hadn’t seen anything at the altar matching that description.
Ramsay extended his hand about waist high—his waist, which was slightly higher than most. “When the base is on the ground rather than the pedestal, I’d say it nearly reaches this high.” With the whisky bottle in one hand, he measured out a space between his hands that looked to be about three-and-a-half- to four-feet wide. “ ’Tis about this wide at the base. Three sides that come to a point and the signs of the goddesses are etched deep in each side.”
“So, it’s a three-sided pyramid,” Katie repeated. It sounded as though the Heartstone was Scotland’s version of an ancient pyramid—but with three sides instead of four. She could see it as clearly as though it were there with them. She rubbed her fingertips together, almost feeling the cold graininess of the roughly chiseled stone. She could just imagine the minute crystals sparkling in the texture of its carved surface. She’d been on enough digs to easily visualize what Ramsay described. “And the weapons?” she asked before Ramsay could either agree or disagree with her description.
“A hammer. A sword. A shield. A spear.” Ramsay stopped pacing and faced her. “My spear.”
“So, that’s why your mother was pissed about the spear. You were traipsing around the woods with one of your family’s ancient artifacts from the goddesses.”
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