Haunting Embrace (3 page)

It was here, in this cavern, that Áedán had breathed life into the Book of Fennore. Here, that it became a sentient being. Here, that the first, greedy, grasping human had sought it out in hopes of wielding its terrible power.

And here, that Áedán became its slave.. . .

He took a deep breath, wary now as he surveyed the cavern without crossing from the passageway into the interior. Eons had passed since he’d last stood on this brink. Time so endless that he’d forgotten the reason he’d been so determined to stay away. Now, as if under the beam of a spotlight, Áedán faced the truth.

This cavern wasn’t merely a place to him. It was a cage, a prison, where memories of the hell he’d survived for millennia still lived, still breathed . . . still sought to bring him back into the fold.

What pierced him now was not a pervasive dread that might be shaken off by turning away. It was terror, bone deep and sharp as splintered glass.

The shock of it held him hostage for a moment. Terror. From the mighty
Brandubh.

Sickened by the realization, he allowed his self-disgust to propel him forward when self-preservation fought to hold him back. Breathing deep of the wet salty spray, he advanced into the cavern.

Chapter Two

O
N guard, Áedán paused just inside and waited. A feeling like a soft breeze trembled around him, brushing his skin. For a moment, it seemed to leach the life from him. His legs wobbled, his vision blurred, and his head felt light and fuzzy. But just as quickly everything snapped back into focus, and he thought his imagination—his hated
fear
—had caused it.

Uneasy, he turned and surveyed the dark cocoon. Nothing moved. No slicing pain or debilitating pressure bore down on him. No vulnerability weakened his limbs. Only the steady beat of the tide and the rage of the ferocious storm broke the cloying silence. Carefully he opened his senses, testing the air, tasting the dark, seeking the danger he felt sure he would find.

Nothing
. Only a vague sense of incompleteness that he couldn’t define.

Relieved to the point of stupidity, he squared his shoulders and charged forward, wanting to laugh in the face of his enemy now that he had invaded its fortress. His triumphant laughter caught in his throat as he stumbled over something on the ground and nearly fell on top of it. On his knees, arms braced over the motionless form, Áedán stared in shock as recognition kicked him in his gut. A woman lay still as death on the cavern floor, her skin so pale it looked translucent, her arms and legs askew—as if she’d been dropped from above.

Meaghan.

She was so still that he thought she must be dead, and a startling sense of remorse tangled with his utter shock at seeing her again. But then she took a deep breath and her chest rose and fell.

Alive
.

He did not like the relief that flooded him. He didn’t care for the woman. He cared for only himself and his need to regain his power and take control of the bizarre circumstances that had brought him here. But he could not keep his fingers from brushing the soft skin of her cheek.

Meaghan.

He’d met her only days ago in the night world that belonged solely to the Book of Fennore. They’d been prisoners and allies of sorts. The world of Fennore existed in a realm most humans could not even conceive. Like heaven and hell, it was more a state of being than an actual place. But everything that had happened there felt horribly real . . . was, in fact, as real as the cold that seeped into his skin now. The world of Fennore was a nightmare that had the power to follow the dreamer into the light.

Áedán knew this better than anyone.

He narrowed his eyes at the female on the cavern floor. Could she be the reason he’d felt compelled to come here today? A mere human? Had she lured him here to trap him?

She looked frail and defenseless, yet he knew better than to forget that beneath that pallor lurked a feisty woman who’d almost broken his nose the first time he’d met her.

His gaze shifted to the full curves, the soft slope of her belly, bared where her T-shirt rucked up around her ribs. Dark, greenish bruises covered her arms, and a particularly nasty one spread upward from her hip bone, black and purple above the waist of her jeans. For a moment, the sight of her battered flesh touched off something inside of him. Sympathy? Compassion? Concern?

The alien emotions mocked him. He did not care about others, especially those who weren’t of some use to him. For
eons
he’d been an entity, a thing that did not experience, did not rejoice, did not mourn. He’d lived to siphon the emotions of others, to drain them dry, make them so empty that they’d choose death over their hollow existence. But he’d
felt
nothing for them, for their plight, for their demise.

And he felt nothing for this woman either.

He cupped her cheek and let his thumb trace the soft bow of her lips. She stirred and he jerked his hand away. Her pale blue eyes opened in the darkness. She looked frightened, and with a groan, she tried to lift her head. It seemed the effort would take more than she had, but after a moment’s struggle, she sat. She hadn’t seen him yet, but her hands moved to tug her T-shirt back in place and smooth her hair in a self-conscious manner so unguarded that it made him pause.

She was not aware. Not of him. Not of the cavern. Not of the danger.

Leave,
a voice inside him urged.

As if hearing his thoughts, she turned that clear, bewildered gaze to his face.

“Áedán,” she breathed, and in the moment it took for the sound to whisper over his skin, he saw her expression change from puzzlement to recognition and then to something darker, sweeter. It surprised him even as it shocked a response from him. Her eyes widened and took on a shade of lavender that teased something in his ancient memories.

How long had it been since he’d known a woman as a man was meant to?

The stark answer filled his head. An eternity without end.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, his confusion making his voice harsh, his infuriating fear still riding him.

Her eyes widened, wounded, and like a fool, he felt another wave of compassion.
Feck,
he thought, using one of Mickey Ballagh’s words.

He leaned closer and she flinched, the small reaction like a flame held to his bare skin. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he snapped. “How did you get here?”

She shook her head, and Áedán noted that her eyes seemed glazed and unfocused as she searched his features. Instead of answering his question, she placed one palm against the roughened stubble on his cheek and the other over his pounding heart. He found his own hands against the soft, rounded curves of her shoulders and told himself he meant to push her away.

He didn’t, though. Instead he stood, gently pulling her to her feet with him.

When he would have stepped back, Meaghan held on to him and rose to her tiptoes, leaning into his body and brushing her lips against his in a caress as fleeting as it was riveting. Áedán froze, unprepared for the heat that licked his nerves and burned with his blood. A beast within him lifted its head and growled with satisfaction at the hot thoughts that filled him. Perhaps this woman did have use.

But he didn’t understand what motivated her to touch him, kiss him, any more than he understood how she’d come to be here in the first place. When they’d met before, she’d been combative, berating him with little care for what he might do in retaliation. She’d had a wicked tongue that she’d used to lash out at her enemies. He’d expected that behavior from her now, but instead, her mouth moved over his again in a silken heat.

What game did she play?

He wanted to ask, but his brain had locked down, refusing any distraction from the sensuous slide of her skin against his. The hand on his cheek trailed to the base of his skull, and she pulled his head down, teasing his lips with her tongue—which was velvety soft, not wicked, not cruel—until he gave in and opened for her, pulling her body against the hard planes of his in the same simultaneous act of conquest and surrender. Her taste hit his senses like a whisper of hallowed memories, evoking the sultry languor of summer nights, the fragrant spice of misted fields, the perfume of female, aroused under a pale moon.. . .

Her soft curves molded perfectly against him, vanquishing any thought but keeping her there, yielding, responding, filling some hollow he hadn’t known existed. She made a sound in her throat that set him on fire, made his hands hungry, his lips needy, his body parched.

It was his total capitulation that pierced the fog of want and made him hesitate.

This was not right.
She
was not right.

The Meaghan he’d known so briefly had been fire and hellion. She hadn’t yielded to anyone, for anyone.

She opened her eyes slowly, confused by his hesitancy as she tried to pull him back into her embrace. Her gaze was unfocused, her pupils so huge they’d swallowed all but a thin strip of that beguiling lavender blue at the edge. None of that fierce spirit he’d come to grudgingly respect glowed within them.

Entranced,
he thought.
Bespelled
.

She fought his efforts to set her away from him, her movements sluggish, not quick and able. This woman had brought him to his knees with two quick blows within minutes of meeting him, but now she seemed barely capable of standing.

“Meaghan,” he said sharply, holding her at arm’s length as she struggled to reach him.
“Meaghan!”

He gave her a hard shake and then withdrew, needing space from her heat, from her soft scent, from her closeness. His body disagreed with his decision and urged him to take her—no matter what the terms. Have her, use her. She was only human, after all.

He scowled at his own surprising reluctance, but before he could decide what he meant to do about her, she stumbled over an uneven stone and lost her balance. He lurched toward her, trying to halt her momentum, but he couldn’t reach her in time. Her shriek joined the echoes of his inner turmoil as she plunged into the icy tide pool.

She burst back to the surface and stared at him in shock. Her eyes were blue again, wide and snapping with anger.

“What the feck is wrong with you?” she shouted in a shaking voice. “You fecking pushed me!”

That
was the Meaghan he knew. Quick on the defense, showing anger when fear might reveal a weakness.

“I did
not
push you, Meaghan. You fell all on your own.” He quickly moved to the side and reached out to her. “Here. Take my hand,” he ordered.

She flashed him a furious glare and swam to the side, ignoring his outstretched hand. “I don’t need your fecking help,” she said, the damp and cold framing her words in a vaporous cloud that hovered at her lips.

The injustice of the moment hit his fury and perplexity like oil-soaked kindling. To think, he’d thought of
her
feelings instead of simply taking what he wanted and leaving her to deal with her own circumstances.

“I didn’t push you in and you know it,” he said, still reaching for her, still confounded by the fact that he hadn’t already stormed from the cavern.

Her eyes held defiance and fear. Her body shook with the cold. “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “You’ll freeze to death if you don’t get out.”

“I-I k-know.”

Meaghan, back to her familiar stubborn and irritable self, tried to haul her body from the pool, but the freezing temperature had already made her muscles stiff and her reactions slow. She hefted herself halfway and then slipped again.

Ignoring her feeble protest, Áedán gripped Meaghan by her arms and heaved her out of the icy waters. Cursing beneath his breath, he looked at the pathetic and bedraggled female and again he felt that alien tug of compassion swiping the feet out from under him.

She didn’t want his help. He should leave her and call it a good riddance.

He sat her on one of the big flat boulders and hunkered down beside her, shrugging out of his coat and wrapping it around her as he began to rub her cold hands.

“How did you get here?” he asked as he worked.

“Wh-wh-whe?” she answered.

“Where? We are on the Isle of Fennore.”

At the panicked look in her eyes, he shook his head. “No, not in the world of Fennore.” Not the place where they’d met, where nightmares had been the only reality available. “I believe we have arrived in the year of nineteen hundred and fifty-six. I got here five days ago.”

She absorbed this in silence, still shaking from head to toes. “Oth-oth—”

“No, I haven’t seen any of the others.” He searched her face, looking for hints of what had come to pass since those last, terrifying moments when they were together. “What happened to you, Meaghan? Where have you been since—”

The sound of a rock scuttling into the cavern behind him drew his attention and silenced the rest of his question. He stood and faced the passageway just as Colleen Ballagh—Mickey’s young wife—stepped from the shadows into the cavern, a satchel in one hand, her baby in another.

He could not have been more shocked.

She wore a shapeless brown dress with a black shawl over her shoulders and serviceable shoes on her feet. Her hair and clothing dripped damply from the storm outside, which seemed to have abated, unlike his own storming rage. She paused as she crossed the threshold to let her eyes adjust to the dark.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, too shocked by the sight of her to temper his tone or words.
With the baby in her arms, at that?

Colleen ignored him as she peered through the gloom, anxiously hefting her son up on her hip, making a soothing noise in her throat. Then her eyes fixed on Meaghan, and she let out a gasp.

“Jesus in heaven,” she exclaimed, staring at the shivering woman. “Were you in the water? But why? It’s nigh on winter, girl. You’ll freeze to death!”

As if the two of them couldn’t have discerned that without her help, Áedán thought. Not even a brash woman like Meaghan would have chosen to dip into the frigid tide pool fully clothed.