by Ann Gimpel
Why? Did something about his Druid blood keep her demons at bay?
The dark, cloud-shrouded night pulled closer to her, and she shivered. “For Christ’s sake, get a grip,” she muttered. “Nothing’s changed about the night. It’s the same as it was when I left the hotel.”
A man dressed in evening clothes and a topcoat strode past her. “Are you quite all right, miss?”
“Fine.” She snapped off the word. Damn it. He must have heard her. She needed to keep her mouth shut.
After angling a concerned glance her way, he nodded and kept walking.
She really should go back. The stroll was supposed to settle her nerves, but it was having the opposite effect. She was about to turn around when the bulk of Inverness Castle rose before her. On a cliff overlooking the River Ness, the red sandstone building was built around 1836 on the site of an eleventh century fort. Several castles had resided on this spot between the first one and now.
Kat knew their history well, reciting it to herself.
The calm that had eluded her returned in a welcome cascade of normalcy. Maybe a ramble around Inverness Castle was just the ticket. Ruins were where she lived, and although the current structure was far from a crumbling shell, she felt its history in her bones. The same singlemindedness that had served her well as an anthropologist arrowed through her, and she worked her way around the building.
It had been closed to the public for years, but she’d gotten inside on a previous trip by flashing her academic credentials. The subbasement area had been fascinating, complete with what was left of dungeons and medieval torture rooms. A paper she’d compiled from her visit had received critical acclaim from her peers, but she’d loved doing the research. Digging into old things, determining how cultures operated, fed her soul.
Smiling to herself, she reached out and dragged her fingertips along the rough outer wall. The darkness shattered around her, and she pitched forward. Screams crowded the back of her throat. When they emerged, they weren’t much more than high, piercing yips.
The sensation of falling brought on vertigo, but how could she be falling when she still stood, feet planted firmly beneath her. The fingers touching the wall were so cold they ached. In a dull, distant spot she recalled everything going to hell as soon as she touched the stone. She tried to yank her hand back, but it refused to budge.
The screams did come then. One after the other as blackness closed around her. The falling sensation escalated, and she landed with a spine-jarring thud. Kat forced her eyes open, not knowing when she’d closed them. It was still night. Still cold. Not raining.
Maybe she’d gotten lucky.
The moment she took in Inverness Castle—an obviously earlier version of the stately structure—she knew she hadn’t. A quick sniff yielding raw sewage, poorly cured leather, and horses confirmed her fears. She may have been blindsided before but courtesy of her last involuntary jaunt through time, she knew exactly what had happened. Hopefully, she’d missed the siege on the castle in 1715, and she’d be years too early for the next one in 1746. She opened her mouth to screech Rhea’s name but shut it abruptly. Alerting the castle guards to her presence was a very bad idea.
She got to her feet, being quiet, and brushed dirt off her pants. Her body felt stiff and bruised, so her fall had been real enough. Her shoulder bag was still with her. Apparently, inanimate objects survived time transits, but she’d found that out the first trip. Kat bit hard on her lower lip. She had to focus, not take mental side trips into inconsequentials.
Who gave a good goddamn if she had her bag? The money wasn’t any good, even if she could show herself long enough to spend any of it, which was unlikely. She felt raw, used. Her little nighttime jaunt took on a whole new meaning. Her sense she hadn’t been alone in her hotel room had been spot on, but she wasn’t used to paying attention to details like that.
Rhea might have trouble establishing corporeal form in the twenty-first century, but she’d projected enough of herself forward in time to influence Kat’s actions.
Why hadn’t Arlen warned her?
She bit her lower lip harder, enough to draw blood this time.
None of this was his fault. He wasn’t the one with the crazed ancestor. Besides, he’d tried to caution her, but she’d shined him, not taken his concerns seriously enough. He’d said she was vulnerable, but she’d had no idea how defenseless she was.
Kat turned in a slow circle, fully expecting her great-great grandmother to jump out of the murky shadows, but Rhea wasn’t there.
“Eleven, and all is well,” rang from a parapet far above.
Kat flattened herself against the wall. If they found her, all wouldn’t be so fucking well. She was in the same position she’d been in at Inverlochy. If the guard discovered her, they’d assume she was an English spy and execute her summarily. Nothing fancy like juries in this era, particularly not for women.
Because she couldn’t come up with a better hiding spot, she made her way to the castle graveyard. It was on the far side, the one not facing the river. As she walked, urging darkness to conceal her, she remembered an earlier version of the burial ground had fronted the River Ness, but it had eroded during a few high-water years, so the remaining crypts and graves had been relocated.
Unlike Inverlochy, she’d never seen anything beyond artist sketches of what earlier versions of this castle looked like. When the graveyard came into view, she was pleased by the presence of crypts. They’d provide a place to hide. She wasn’t under any illusions. Come daylight, a woman wearing a zippered jacket and trousers would create havoc.
The metal zipper would be viewed as evidence of deviltry, along with all the electronic devices in her bag. Her trousers would label her as unnatural. The only women who dressed like men were those trying to pass themselves off as such. Ergo: spies.
“Jesus. I am so fucked,” she muttered as she picked the largest crypt and peered at the writing over its arched entrance. Not Camerons. Once she established that little fact, she felt her way down a dozen stone steps into the partially buried structure.
The Roskellys had a connection with the Camerons. Maybe if she made a point to stay away from Cameron bones, it would make things harder for Rhea. She shook a fist at the air. Any illusions she’d harbored about her great-great-grandmother’s good intentions toward her vanished. Rhea may not be mentally ill by modern definitions, but the old woman was demented in her own way. For her to still be after Kat defied credibility.
Almost thirty years had passed, for chrissakes. Time to give up and move on.
Eh. Maybe time passes differently after you’re dead.
Bullshit! I am still making excuses for that woman. I need to stop right now.
She fished in her bag for the penlight she always carried and thumbed it on long enough to examine her surroundings. Rat eyes glowed red from the corners, and the rodents chittered their annoyance at being disturbed.
“Don’t get your feathers ruffled.” Kat killed the light. No reason to burn up the batteries. She’d seen enough. Her knees felt shaky, so she sank to a marble slab and threaded her fingers through her hair, massaging her aching temples.
There had to be something she could do rather than sit around waiting for inevitable exposure. Someone would find her. Either Rhea or whichever clan was in control of the castle. She tried to recall who’d held the upper hand in the early 1700s but couldn’t remember anything beyond the Munros and the Frasers, whose tenure had ended in the middle of the sixteenth century.
Most of the night stretched before her. If she was going to try to save herself, it would be far easier with darkness to mask her movements. She kept rubbing her head, hoping against hope it would spur something other than the desolation running through her.
She sat straighter and clasped her hands together to keep them from shaking. “Let’s be methodical,” she said quietly and held up an index finger. “I’m probably in the early 1700s just like last time.”
She raised a second fi
nger. “I have no idea how to return to my own time.”
A third finger. “Which means I’m going to have to trust someone who has enough magic to help me.”
A swift, bitter laugh escaped before she cut it off. She’d made a few assumptions, key to which was the existence of magic. Kat shook her head. What the fuck was wrong with her? She’d been dragged backward in time twice—and forward once—and she was still questioning whether magic was real.
It was. It had victimized her.
“For the last time,” she hissed. “If Arlen’s right and I have my own magic, I’m going to devote every iota of time, attention, and energy to learning it inside and out.” She fisted both hands, curling her fingers until nails cut into her palms. She felt like Scarlett O’Hara declaring she’d never be hungry again.
The reference to a fictional event from the 1860s, over a hundred years in the future, made her head spin.
“Focus.” She opened her fists, flexing her fingers. If there were ever a situation where she had to play the ball where it lay, this was it.
Her eyes widened. Arlen had said he was older than Rhea. Thomas told her Arlen’s family had hailed from Inverness. Putting the two together meant he was here.
Somewhere.
All she had to do was find him.
Or maybe she’d be better served to let him come after her again. How would something like that work? Could two of him exist in the same time or would the presence of the modern version create problems? She let variations of time travel folklore roll through her mind but gave it up as a time-waster. From the Star Trek version—where moving so much as a pebble could totally skew the future—to other theories that you could blow up mountains and not alter what was coming down the pike, it was clear no one who’d taken the time to write about it knew jack shit.
Yeah, and the ones who do know have kept conveniently quiet.
Katerina got to her feet. Waiting out the night in the crypt wasn’t wise. Daylight would trap her here, and by the time the following night rolled around, she’d be weaker from no food or water.
The time to leave was now.
Her stomach twisted into a sour knot, but she’d never been one to let fear rule her. She wished she had a general layout for the town, but even if she did, she had no idea how to locate the Druids. She was pretty certain they’d all be together. Safety lay in numbers, and they’d moved from an esteemed position in society to being total outliers.
If the Church found them, they were as good as dead, which argued against them living in Inverness proper.
She snorted. She’d just described her situation to a tee. For some reason, the comparison heartened her, made her feel less alone. Nothing like two hunted entities to support one other. The Church wouldn’t spare her any quarter, but neither would the laird’s guards.
She walked up the crypt steps and out into the night, but cautiously, checking for the presence of others before she crossed the graveyard. She’d follow the river north toward Moray Firth and the North Sea. Soon, she’d leave the town behind, and hopefully settled lands as well. It might be safe to ask after the Druids’ whereabouts once she was well clear of Inverness.
As she walked, blessing her stout boots and warm clothing, her mind whirled in a million directions. The reason Arlen had found her at Inverlochy was because he’d followed the same path she’d taken. Was moving away from Inverness Castle a mistake on her part?
“Doesn’t matter if it is.” She was back to muttering out loud. No one was out and about to hear her. Her footsteps were far louder than her voice.
Waiting to be rescued wasn’t her style. She’d been delighted when Arlen showed up in the Cameron crypt, but it wasn’t his job to risk himself because she’d been a dumbass bitch.
After less than a quarter hour, walls reared before her. Dumbass, indeed. Why had she expected to waltz out of Inverness without tangling with the town gates? They’d be locked until dawn, and she couldn’t afford to wait that long. She slunk into an alley that stank of piss even more than the rest of the town and dug into her memory. There had to be a way around the main gates. People came and went at all hours. She knelt and sketched a rough map of a far more contemporary Inverness in the dirt to remind herself where things were. Beauly Firth lay to the west, Moray to the northeast. If she could work her way to the water, she might locate a skiff and circumvent the gate that way.
Perhaps it was part of her heretofore ignored magic, but she’d always been blessed with a decent sense of direction. With it fully deployed, she pushed through an increasingly narrow and winding warren of dirt streets that turned so skinny a horse would have had a hard time navigating them. A couple of times, she chose wrong and backtracked when a path ended abruptly.
Once she came so close to a bum wrapped in rags, she was amazed he didn’t waken—until she smelled crudely fermented alcohol and understood he was dead to the world. Kat blessed an era where people took to their beds at night. No one had extra money for fuel to fire lanterns or fireplaces, so the dark hours remained so.
Finally, the footpath she’d chosen led to a rusted trellis. Part of the city wall at a distant point in the past, its staves had been bowed outward by someone hunting for precisely what she sought: a way in and out of Inverness that didn’t necessitate being grilled by the gate guards.
Kat didn’t question her fortune. She stepped through, thrilled her hunches had worked in her favor. Now all she had to do was keep moving.
And find the Druids.
Exactly how that would happen was anyone’s guess, but she’d been lucky so far. No reason her fortune wouldn’t hold. She couldn’t imagine being stranded in the 1700s forever.
Though the air was damp and promised rain, it held off. She was determined to cover as much ground as she could between now and dawn. One thing bothered her—well more than one, but among the top three was what had happened to Rhea Roskelly?
Her great-great grandmother had dragged her back in time for a reason, presumably to co-opt her into picking up the witch banner. If that was so, where the hell was she?
“Grannie?” Kat kept her voice low.
Rhea didn’t answer.
After two more tries, Kat gave up. It was a sure bet if Rhea made her presence known, it would be at the worst possible time. A quarter moon crested the distant horizon but was soon obliterated by clouds. Kat was immersed in thought, developing a probability map of options, when a man materialized out of nowhere and clamped a hand around her upper arm.
She reared back. Reacting instinctively, she screeched, “Let go of me.”
“Intriguing, a wench who speaks the English tongue, but oddly.”
Crap! Dumbass, once again. She tried to pull away, but it was like attempting to escape a boulder.
The man was swathed in black monk’s robes belted with a leather thong. A hood obscured most of his face. At least he didn’t reek as bad as most folk from this era. Between rotting teeth and unwashed flesh, no one smelled very appealing.
Kat cleared her throat and repeated her words in Gaelic as true to the time period as she could muster. “Let go of me.”
“I think not, wench. Ye’re coming with me.”
Panic engulfed her. She twisted and hissed and spit, managing to rake her nails down the man’s face before he captured her other hand. A slap landed solidly across her face, followed by a punch to her midsection that made her gasp with pain and knocked the wind out of her. Her face stung, and she sucked air like a gutted fish.
Tears were perilously close to the surface, but she’d be damned if she’d give him the satisfaction of knowing how badly he’d hurt her.
Not just physical damage; her pride had taken a beating too.
This time when he dragged her away from the deserted path along the water, she stumbled after him, cursing herself for a lily-livered coward. If she folded at the first shadow of pain, what chance did she have of surviving?
Chapter 8
Arlen had been home for a while. He’d
poured himself a single malt scotch with the full intention of sitting in front of the fire he’d rustled up with magic, yet he was still pacing up and down his great room. The tumbler was almost empty. He’d never been much for spirits, but worry dogged him.
He’d had the presence of mind to get hold of Sean and the others and let them know not to wait for him. Sean had asked a few questions and received perfunctory replies. Telepathy could be intercepted, so they’d set a time to meet the following morning when it would be safer to talk.
Not only wasn’t he a drinking man, he hadn’t ever grappled with a woman in his car. His totally-out-of-character spontaneity had to be a byproduct of his magic running up against hers. And the love charm he’d sensed. The one that had nearly been his undoing. She might be magically naïve, but it didn’t mean her ability wasn’t potent enough to have an effect.
Maybe not just hers, either. Had one of her witchy kin been lurking near enough to try to snare him? If they’d gotten hold of his seed, they could control him. Make his life a living hell.
Despite his dark appraisal, thinking about Katerina made his breath quicken. Arousal spilled through him. While he welcomed the sensations, they worried him too. He shouldn’t be reacting to her scent, which still clung to him.
And why not? a dour inner voice demanded.
Arlen shrugged. He was centuries removed from being a randy youth. He’d lived a monkish existence after deciding flings with human women weren’t worth it. Their order was small, and all the Druid females mated. Not much magical remained in the twenty-first century, and he’d often wondered why his kind were still around. Their primary function had been keeping evil from interfering with the Earth’s natural balance.
Evil remained, but it wasn’t the magical variety. Not much those like him could do in the face of atomic weaponry and a warming planet. He ached for Earth. Her days were numbered, her lands overflowing with far too many people, but no one seemed to care.