by Annis Reid
He sighed. “I know it, lass. But how do ye expect to distract his guards? Ye know the MacGregor would not leave him alone.”
“I don’t know. I guess I’ll think of something.”
He grunted. “Ye shall think of something. I’m certain of it. Come along, then. Stay behind me. I shall lead the men out and give ye time to free him.”
“Thank you,” she breathed in relief. He ambled his way down the wide road, humming to himself like he was enjoying this little adventure, while her heart raced out of control and sweat rolled down her back. At least he was having a good time.
He waved a hand behind him, signaling her to stop behind the last building before the jail. She ducked behind a wall, watching, holding her breath while he continued on. He staggered a little, singing off-key. Was he pretending to be drunk?
He raised his voice once he was inside, though she couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying. It was just general commotion to confuse the men, she guessed. Was he convincing them?
She got her answer a moment later, when the one-eyed man staggered outside followed by a guard carrying a sword. So Kirk didn’t believe in leaving the guards unarmed, just in case. Jerk.
“I dropped it somewhere around here,” the one-eyed man slurred, raising his voice so she could hear. “I canna see a damned thing in the dark, and ye know Sorcha will have my hide if she believes I lost a purse of coins.”
Wow. He was laying it on thick.
When they were clear of the building, with the slurred voice droning on and on about being clumsy and how his wife would box his ears for losing so much money, she darted for the jail. It was empty except for the cell she had only just been in earlier.
There he was. Bruised, filthy, covered in dried blood. But alive. “Kaden!” she whispered, opening the door to the cell. “Come on. We have to get outta here.”
“Lass?” he asked, blinking like he didn’t believe it was her. “How are ye here? Are ye truly here?”
Something in his voice just about broke her heart. She kissed him, quick, but hard. “I’m here,” she whispered. “And Kirk’s passed out thanks to a few berries I slipped into his mead, so we have time to get the hell out of the village. You can’t come back here, you know that.” As she whispered, she opened the shackles.
One thing she had learned from watching time and again was how to open the damned things.
“’Tis not myself I care about, lass,” he grunted. “’Tis yourself. We must get to the henge, quickly. I dropped the rune my mam gave me. I could not even protect that.”
“I got it.” She patted her pocket. “Don’t worry.”
“It seems ye have thought of everything,” he murmured in approval. Or what she thought was approval. There wasn’t much time to check.
“Yeah, everything except how to get to the henge quickly. I didn’t think to get a horse from the stables, but somebody probably would’ve wondered why I was doing it, so there wasn’t much of a choice.”
“We shall have to run, then. Can ye?”
“If it means getting away from that monster, I could run a marathon.” She slipped her hand into his. “Come on. Your friend with the one eye can’t keep that guard distracted for long.”
“Fergus? Ye made him do it?” he asked as they peered outside, making sure it was safe to leave.
“Make him? It was his idea. He should’ve been an actor.”
Kaden was chuckling softly as he led her outside and around the building. “Damn him,” he muttered. “I thought perhaps he would have left the horse here, tied off.”
“I am no fool—do ye not know it by now?”
“What the hell?” Anna demanded when she turned to find Kirk on horseback, swaying slightly but otherwise in decent condition. “What do I have to do to get rid of you?”
21
No matter how important it was for them to get away and get away fast, there was no denying the desire to end the wretched man’s life then and there. He deserved it for what he’d done to an innocent woman.
No. Two innocent women. Neither his mother nor Anna had ever done him harm.
Kirk snickered at Anna as he looked down on them both, sitting stride Aonghas. “It takes quite a bit to be rid of me, lass. Ye are not much of a witch if ye canna kill a man more easily.”
“I wasn’t trying to kill you. Though now I wish I had been,” she muttered.
Kaden nearly laughed as he watched Kirk slide from the saddle. He might have been alive. He might even have been able to ride a horse through the village. But he could hardly stand straight on his feet, and his speech was terribly slurred.
Kirk’s gaze fell upon him. “I will make ye watch as I cut her throat,” he promised. “She has been a curse to me since the moment ye brought her to my home. And after she is dead, I will fill the village with yer screams. Bairns will tell their grandchildren of the night Kaden MacGregor was tortured until he died.”
“Bairns will speak of this night,” Kaden growled, “but not for that reason.”
It came as no surprise that Kirk slid a knife from his belt. He’d likely been using it to cut his meat. In fact, it was still stained with gravy. He’d picked it up from the table upon leaving the house, Kaden supposed.
He pushed Anna aside and threw himself at Kirk, knocking him off-balance, if such a thing were possible when he did not have his balance at all. Kirk staggered, arms flailing, and landed on the ground with a thud. The knife fell from his hand, and Kaden picked it up.
“Ye killed my mother today,” he murmured, his fingers tightening around the handle. “This is for her.”
One quick, strong thrust into his chest, just over his heart. Kirk did not have the chance to cry out, his death instant and painless.
Men such as he did not deserve a painless death, but there was the matter of escaping to be considered.
He looked down at the man’s body, now limp and lifeless, and asked himself how he could ever have believed him good, honest, noble. Headstrong and prone to temper, yes, but good at heart and always with the clan first and foremost in his thoughts.
“Kaden?” Anna whispered. “Are you okay?”
“Better now,” he grunted, standing and turning away to find her in the saddle atop Aonghas.
“I figured it would help. Come on,” she hissed, waving him on. “We’ve gotta go! They’ll be coming, and when they find him…”
Yes, when the found Kirk they’d come on the run. Whether or not he’d deserved to be jailed for treason was one thing. Murdering his chieftain was entirely another.
He took the reins upon mounting behind her and the horse bolted down the road as if it, too, understood the need to make haste.
Moonlight turned the trees and grass silver, all of it rushing past them as they tore through the night. Image after image crashed through his mind. The stones, his mother’s smile, her sliding the rune into his hand.
She’d told him it was up to him to carry on after she died. What did that mean? He’d asked himself time and again during his captivity but had not yet come to understand.
Though when she’d slid the rune into his hand, and the engraving had touched his skin, there had been no denying the warmth. The tingle. He could not explain it, but it had been there.
Was he possessed of the same power his mother had known? Or had she somehow passed it on to him in those final moments? Was that part of what she’d meant by him knowing if she had passed on to the next world, even if he’d not been with her?
Anna tried to turn and look behind them. “Nay, lass,” he shouted over the pounding of hooves and of his heart. “They would not follow so soon. Worry not.”
Though he was worried, and he suspected she would worry as well. It would only be a matter of time before the guard returned from the fool’s errand Fergus had sent him on. He would find Kirk alongside the jail, only half-covered by shadow. And they would be in pursuit moments later.
So long as there was time to get her through, it would be well worth
it.
In the moonlight, the henge seemed to glow. Perhaps it did. Perhaps it always had and only now he could see it clearly, now that he had been given the rune. “Nearly there,” he promised Anna, though she knew it well enough without him saying so.
Nearly there. He was nearly about to give her up for good.
It was for the best, and he knew it. He would have stepped in front of an arrow for her just as his mother had done for him. Anything just as long as she was safe. That sort of love made it possible for a person to do anything needed of them, all to protect their loved one.
His mother had taught him this lesson. She’d taught him so much, and had lived long enough to help him see the love in front of him. Love in the form of a woman who had somehow found him and touched his heart and opened him up to emotion and sensation he’d never dreamed possible.
If that was all her presence in his life was meant to bring, that would have to be enough. It would be more than enough.
He pulled up on the reins and was out of the saddle nearly before the horse came to a stop. “How did ye learn to mount a horse?” he asked, helping her down.
“How did I learn how to unlock iron shackles? I paid attention.” She laughed nervously, laughter tinged with emotion. “Is this gonna work?”
“I canna lie to ye, lass. I dinna know. Mam… she never had the chance to explain why this would send ye back to your time. I suppose the rune has to do with it.”
“Yeah, and maybe my tattoo,” she said, pulling back the cloak she wore to reveal the rune painted on her skin. “It hurts. Throbbing, aching.”
“Ye were shackled to the wall,” he reasoned, looking over his shoulder again and again, waiting to hear hooves announcing the approach of half the clan searching for their chieftain’s murderer.
“I used the rest of the meadowsweet on myself earlier,” she explained, words tumbling out of her mouth almost too quickly for him to make sense of them. “It took the edge off. No, I think it has to do with the stone and the rune.”
She slipped a hand into her pocket and withdrew the rune, the two of them gasping at the sight of it.
“It glows,” he whispered, awed.
She dropped it into his hand. “Your mother gave it to you. Maybe you’re the one who’s supposed to use it.”
It was heavier than it ought to have been. Much heavier. And once again, its touch against his skin sent a tingle through his palm, the sensation this time moving up his arm. When he closed his fingers around it, the sensation grew stronger. It pulsed, glowing even through his fingers.
“You have the same power she did,” Anna whispered, staring at his clenched fist. “You just didn’t know it.”
“I canna,” he protested.
“It didn’t do that when I held it,” she reminded him. “Although…” One hand covered her tattoo.
“Perhaps ye have power of your own,” he murmured, cupping her cheek with his free hand. “How I will miss the sight of ye, lass. The touch of ye. The power ye have over me will not die simply because ye leave me. Ye will always be in my heart, in my thoughts.”
Her tears dripped onto his hand, reminding him of the day they first met. Hardly any time at all when one thought of the hundreds of years separating them, but it felt like a lifetime to him just then. As if he’d known her all his life.
“You’ll always be with me,” she whispered, a tremor in her voice. “Always. I’ll never forget you.”
“And I shall never stop loving ye, Anna Cooper. I love ye most terribly.” He drew her closer, danger be damned. He had the rest of his days to worry himself over danger. He had only another moment or two with the woman he loved.
“I love you,” she wept, her hand covering his. “So much. I don’t know if I can do this. If I can leave you. How can I go home without you? What’s the point of being there if you’re not there with me?”
He smiled, wiping her tears away. “Ye have others who need ye. And ye dinna belong here, truly. Ye shall always ask yourself if ye chose well, if ye should have gone home after all. I could not hold ye back that way. I would not have ye hating me years from now.”
He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, committing her touch and taste and scent to memory. “Know that until my dying day, I will love ye. Know that. Carry it with ye always, my heart. My darling.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down for a deep, searching kiss that for a moment made the world stop. It was only them, in one final embrace. He would have this to remember, at least.
Until hoofbeats echoed in the distance.
“They’re coming,” he breathed, touching the hand holding the rune to the stone with the same carving.
“Kaden!” she gasped, eyes wide. He looked up and saw what had startled her so.
The carving in the stone glowed as the rune did.
“Oh, my God,” she breathed as golden light bathed her face, her hair. “It’s beautiful.” She leaned against the stone, reaching up to touch the carving with one finger.
“As ye are, my love,” he said. “Now go. Allow yourself to go through.” She seemed to shimmer the longer she leaned against the stone.
“My arm. It burns!” she gasped, jerking as if to break the connection.
Some instinct told him to hold her in place. Perhaps it was his mother speaking to him. “Dinna move from it!” he commanded. “Ye must maintain the connection. Ye are fading from me, love, the stone is the gateway. Go now.”
She looked up at him, her face fading, her voice sounding as if it came from far away. Those eyes of hers, still shining up at him. “Come with me!” she shouted, reaching for him.
Hoofbeats. Louder all the time. Shouting men. Men who would surely kill him where he stood.
The woman he loved and would always love, holding her hand out to him. A hand which was fading with each beat of his heart.
“Please! Kaden, come with me! I love you!” she shouted, her voice barely a whisper, other voices drowning it out. The voices of men, his men. No longer his.
He had to decide.
He decided, placing his hand in hers.
22
It all happened in the time it took to blink an eye. Maybe less.
One second she was in the henge, leaning against the Fehu stone, reaching for Kaden and begging him to come with her.
The next, she stood next to the stone. Instead of moonlit night, it was mid-afternoon. Golden sunlight spilled over the amphitheater and made the semi-circular henge look like it was glowing. Just the way it had on the other side, hundreds of years ago.
The amphitheater! It was just like it was when she left it! The chairs, the benches. And the stage sitting in front of it all, filled with equipment and lighting rigs and everything. Just like she had left it, all of it, like no time had passed at all.
“Kaden!” she gasped, looking around, expecting him to be standing next to her and staring in wonder at this new world she had only ever described in vague terms. He might be in shock and would probably need a little help.
He needed help, all right.
He was unconscious.
“Oh, honey,” she whispered, kneeling. He was out cold, still holding the rune in his fist. He wore the same tunic and trousers he had before—no surprise, since she was wearing the same clothes she’d come through in. “Wake up. You’ve gotta wake up.” He had a pulse and was breathing. A good sign, anyway.
She took off the cloak and draped it over him to hide the bloodstained tunic. Hopefully, that would be enough. Anybody who might see him up here would assume he was a festival goer who’d had a little too much to drink.
She stood, turning to the stage again.
And she saw herself out there. Alone, walking back and forth, examining the cables. “What the hell?” she whispered, eyes wide.
Not only had she come back in time for the show, but she’d gotten there moments before she shocked herself.
She clamped a hand over her mouth so the version of her onstage wouldn’t he
ar the version of her by the stones.
“Can’t have a singer without their microphone,” the onstage Anna called out to nobody.
Anna held her breath, knowing what was coming next. She watched herself take the mic in one hand and jiggle the cord with the other.
When the shock came, it was nothing more than her body jerking once, then falling off the stage.
She never hit the ground. She just… vanished.
“Holy crap,” she groaned, then looked down at Kaden. He was still out. “I wish you could’ve seen that with me. Why should I be the only one traumatized by it?”
Then again, he had enough trauma coming to him. She crouched by his side, kissing his cheek. “I’ve gotta go, but I’ll be back. Please, stay here and stay out of trouble.” If worst came to worst, she could explain his behavior away by calling him a cosplayer, like she had first assumed.
“Anna?” The sound of Piper calling her name through the microphone—now magically working, big surprise—made her turn and wave her arms.
“What are you doing out there?” Piper asked, her voice coming through the speakers set up at intervals around the amphitheater. “Come on!”
Sure enough, the audience was starting to flood the place, staking out their seats, putting blankets out on any bare patch of ground they could find. They would be performing in just a few minutes.
Performing! After everything she’d been through, she now had to put on the performance of her life and win over the audience and whoever happened to be watching who might give the band their big break. No big deal, right?
To think, she had been nervous before the whole time travel thing happened. Before she had watched a battle from that very spot.
The sense of past and present colliding was enough to knock her off-balance for a second, and she had to touch the center stone to steady herself. It was still warm to the touch—though if that was just the sun doing its job or what, she didn’t know.
Men had died there on that field where now people got ready to enjoy a rock concert. Men had spilled blood, screamed, begged for mercy.
And she had said goodbye to Kaden there, right there by that stone.