Haunting Embrace (7 page)

“I’ve not had many visions,” she said. “My first came only last year.”

Surprised, Meaghan blurted, “You didn’t have them as a child?”

Colleen shook her head. “My mother had them and her mother before her so I knew it was only a matter of time before they started for me. I’m not sure if coming here spurred them to start or if it was just my time, though.”

Meaghan suspected that the Isle of Fennore had a role in it but she didn’t say it. Instead she waited impatiently for her grandmother to reveal just what had happened in this vision.

“I saw you with two others,” Colleen said at last. “A big, strapping blonde man with the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen.”

That would be Rory. Her half brother.

“Beautiful eyes like yours,” she went on, surprising Meaghan. “There was another woman with you. A lovely lass. She had eyes like a stormy sky.”

Danni. Her half sister.

“What were we doing, the three of us?”

“You were in the cavern.”

“Alone?” she asked.

Colleen shook her head. “I don’t think so. I heard other voices, but all I could see was you three. That and a book.”

Meaghan’s mouth went dry. “What book?”

“Now isn’t that a strange question. Does it matter what book?”

Yes, it could matter a great deal. Especially if the book had been the Book of Fennore.

“That’s it? That’s all you saw? Did we say anything?”

“Nothing that made sense. I thought I heard
what will be, must be
or something of the like, but I’m not certain of it.”

Meaghan pondered that, as perplexed as Colleen seemed to be by the vision and its message.

“How long ago did this happen, Colleen?”

“A few days.”

“And why do you think . . . what does it mean?”

Colleen was silent for a long moment and then she said, “Saraid, she told me that the Book of Fennore had been found—found and opened. I didn’t believe her. The Book of Fennore is a legend. A myth.”

A myth like Ruairi of Fennore,
Meaghan thought, swallowing a bubble of hysteria. Once Meaghan had considered the Book of Fennore a myth as well. The half-known bits and pieces of its history had drawn Meaghan’s curiosity for as long as she could remember. Like a dark fairy tale, the legend told of an evil Book that imprisoned a powerful entity, a twisted genie in the bottle who promised dreams and delivered doom.

Her mother’s first husband, Cathán, had been obsessed with finding it, convinced he could bend the entity inside it to his will. Instead—like Meaghan’s half brother—he’d vanished from the cavern beneath the castle ruins never to be seen by the good folk of Ballyfionúir again.

But Meaghan
had
seen Cathán again—when she’d found the Book of Fennore, he’d been there. She’d felt the terrible power of the Book and cowered before the entity that controlled it, wondering how anyone could be foolish enough to think they could manipulate such a great and terrible thing. Then she’d realized that Cathán had become one with that twisted power, an integral part of the evil that oozed from the Book’s ancient covers and blew in the breeze created by its fanning pages.

“The Book exists,” Meaghan said, remembering the cold light that had glittered in Cathán MacGrath’s eyes. “I’ve seen it. It is everything the legend claims it to be, only worse.”

“You’ve seen it?” she said with a wry smile. “And do you have visions as well?”

Meaghan shook her head and Colleen’s eyes widened at the implication of that. If Meaghan hadn’t seen it in a vision, then she’d seen it in reality.

“You’ve seen the Book of Fennore,” she repeated. “And where, might I ask, were you when this happened—No, never mind, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. But I suppose next you’ll say there’s an evil Druid afoot, too?”

Meaghan shook her head. “Did Saraid tell you there was . . . an evil Druid?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have made it up, would I? She said this Druid was the Book’s master and now he’s free. So tell me. Is it true?”

A shudder went through Meaghan at the idea that it might be true. “I don’t think so, but I only just got here. I don’t know. Perhaps.”

“Perhaps?” With a snort of disgust, Colleen thrust Niall in Meaghan’s arms. “Hold the wee lad, will you now?”

As the weight of the baby who would one day grow up and become her father settled against Meaghan, she felt as if she’d splintered into a thousand pieces. She’d begun to hope that she might be able to deal with the shifting planes that had become her life, but all it took was this—the cooing infant in her arms—to send her into a wild tailspin. There was only so much one person could take, and Meaghan feared her threshold had been reached about the time she’d awakened in the cavern and seen Áedán staring at her with that complex and frightening look in his eyes. Holding her infant father in her arms breached it completely.

Unaware of Meaghan’s distress, Colleen dug into the pocket of her ugly brown dress and pulled something out. She held it in her closed fist for a long moment, as if unsure whether or not she meant to show it. Meaghan felt dread fill her in a chilled wash. Whatever it was that Colleen held, Meaghan didn’t want it. She didn’t even want to see it.

But she couldn’t bring herself to turn away. It was as if she’d been nailed to that spot and then turned to stone.

Colleen opened her fingers, and there, against the faint pink lines of her palm, was a soft pouch with a drawstring top. She made short work of opening it, then let the contents spill into her open hand. Strung with a leather cord was the most incredible pendant Meaghan had ever seen. And coming off it in steady, thrumming waves was menace.

She tried to take a step back but couldn’t move.

The pendant wasn’t beautiful for all its bling. It glittered with an array of jewels that radiated from an emerald set like an island at its center. Diamonds, dazzling stars in a midnight sky, and opals, mysteriously opaque and alive with colors, made a rich web around it. Rubies like drops of blood woven with silver and gold twisted into spirals that seemed to go on without beginning or end.

The markings of the Book of Fennore. The same symbols that were etched on the walls of the cavern she’d just come from.

This was not the first time she’d seen the pendant. The night before Colleen’s funeral, Rory had been carrying it in his pocket, and she’d glimpsed it when he’d pulled it out during Colleen’s wake. She remembered the churning turmoil of his emotions as he’d fingered it. The next day, he’d gone to the cavern and never returned.

“Saraid gave that to you?” Meaghan breathed, staring at it now, knowing the unique amulet was the same one.

“Aye,” Colleen answered. “But she said it was yours. She was adamant that I deliver it to you. Would you know why?”

“No,” Meaghan said numbly.

But there could be no mistaking that the pendant was connected to the Book of Fennore.

Colleen reached for her son and shifted him into her arms before she held out the pendant to Meaghan, as if sensing that something momentous might occur the instant Meaghan touched it. Who knew if she was right?

Swallowing a lump that lodged in her throat, Meaghan gingerly took the amulet, careful to keep the small satchel between the silver and her palm. The thought of touching it with her bare skin repulsed her. Had Rory felt this way?

Her hand shook, and Colleen’s eyes darkened as she watched her. The pouch she held around it was very soft, the pendant surprisingly light. And yet, the weight of it was ominous. She lifted the leather cord and let it dangle for a moment, mesmerizing as it glinted in the clouded daylight.

“Are you going to put it on?” Colleen asked with interest.

“No.”

“And why not?”

Because it scared the piss out of her, Meaghan wanted to say, but didn’t. After all she’d been through, it seemed ridiculous to fear a piece of jewelry.

“I wouldn’t be telling you what to do,” Colleen said with an ingenuous gaze. “But I got the sense that you’d have to put it on to know.”

“To know what?”

“Whether or not it will take you home.”

Blankly, Meaghan stared at her grandmother.

“It can do that?” she asked. “Saraid said it would take me home?”

“Not exactly. But why else would she have come all that way to deliver it?”

Meaghan stared at the pendant with frustration and a sick fascination. It seemed to taunt her as it dangled in front of her, teasing her blasted curiosity. What would it do? What
could
it do?

Meaghan was a lot of things, but she’d never been one to bow to her own fear. Without giving herself time to doubt, she put the cord over her head and let it drop to her chest, glittering against the backdrop of brown wool. She wasn’t foolish enough to let the silver or gems touch her skin. For an empath, metal was a great conduit of the emotions its last owners had felt. Something this old would have a thousand memories—a million emotions—embedded in it, all of which might pull her down and never let her surface again.

“Is that it, then?” Colleen demanded when nothing happened.

Meaghan clenched her fist around the pouch she still held. She felt nothing, not even the humming power that had rushed at her when Colleen unveiled the pendant. Was this really her ticket back home? And if so, was she supposed to do something to activate it? The amulet was quiet and serene now, and she no longer felt that air of threat around it.

Colleen sighed. “Well then, it looks like you’ll have to find the Book of Fennore and see if that gets you home.”

“Find the Book of Fennore?”
Meaghan repeated, her voice shaking with anger and resentment.

“Aye, she mentioned that, too.”

“Did she happen to give you a hint about where it might be or what the feck I’m supposed to do with it once I find it?”

“Don’t be using that tone with me, missy.”

“I’m sorry. But really? Find the bleeding Book of Fennore. I just escaped it, for the love of Jesus.”

Colleen raised her brows at that, but she didn’t comment. Meaghan supposed she should feel grateful. How in the world could she possibly explain being
inside
a world created by the Book of Fennore?

“She didn’t tell me where it was, only that this Druid is free and now there’s another evil, a more terrifying evil, within the pages of the Book.”

“Evil is evil,” Meaghan said testily.

“Well, I wouldn’t be arguing that point. All I’m about is telling you what she said.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Please, go on.”

“She said the Book has always had a master, and that master was the Druid.”

“Who is now free.”

“That’s right. And so someone else is in there now.”

“And he’s more evil than the Druid was,” Meaghan said with a desire to laugh at her own deadpan tone and casual acceptance of the ridiculous.

Colleen nodded. “Some
one
, some
thing
. Who knows what it is that can climb between the covers of a book?”

Meaghan did smile then, albeit grimly. “You’d be amazed what that Book holds.”

“Aye, and aren’t I wondering how you know. But I’ll save my questions until my message is delivered. She said it was important. This evil inside the Book now, he knows the future, she told me. Just as you do. He will be trying to change it.”

“Change the future? Well, that’s fecking fantastic, isn’t it? Why does he want to change the future?”

But even as the words left her mouth, Meaghan knew. In those final moments when she’d been trapped with Áedán in the world of the Book of Fennore, there’d been a battle between none other than her mother’s first husband, Cathán, and a small army of men who fought against him.

Cathán, the father of her beloved half brother and half sister, Rory and Danni. Cathán, who’d vanished from the cavern beneath the castle and been presumed dead before Meaghan was even born.

But Cathán was very much alive when last she’d seen him. Alive, but imprisoned by the power of the Book, just as the rest of them had been.

She recalled the cold ice of Cathán’s blue eyes. The cruel twist of his mouth. If ever Cathán had been human, if ever there’d been compassion or kindness inside him, it no longer resided in the man he’d become. She had no trouble at all believing he’d turned to the dark side—no problem accepting that somehow he’d become this
new evil. The more terrifying evil
.

And he already knew the future. Like Meaghan, he’d come from it. If he could move freely through time, he could change whatever he wanted. The question was . . . what would Cathán want to change? Meaghan knew her mother had still been married to Cathán and been pregnant with her when Cathán had disappeared. She also knew that Cathán was not her biological father—and Meaghan had stupidly blurted out that fact when she’d met the awful man.

She remembered the fury in those frigid eyes when he’d learned who she was. Áedán had warned her not to taunt him, but she’d been victim to her own anger, and she hadn’t been able to stop herself from throwing in his face that her father was Niall Ballagh, a good man.
The better man.

Horrified by her own idiocy, she looked at the baby in her grandmother’s arms, the child who would grow up to be her father, and her heart was cold with fear.

What would Cathán do if he had the power to change anything?

Would he begin by wiping out the man who would steal his wife and children?

And then . . . another thought. She didn’t know the year of Cathán’s birth. He’d meant nothing to her until she’d become his prisoner. But if the child Colleen held was Niall, then most likely a baby Cathán existed somewhere in this time and place, and perhaps even now cried for a bottle or a nappy change?

“Sure and I don’t know what is going on in that head of yours, but I can see it’s taking you to someplace dark and unwanted.”

Silently, Meaghan nodded.

“I don’t know why this Saraid told me the things she did, but I’m thinking there are reasons. I’m not after knowing what they are. A person shouldn’t know too much about what awaits them in the future, should they now?”

“No.” Especially if that future was at risk of changing for the worst.