Haunting Warrior (26 page)

“Do not worry over me,” she said sharply. “I’ll not slow y’ down.”

He might have told her that wasn’t what he was thinking, but instead he shrugged and let her believe what she wanted.

The going was slow and difficult the deeper they went into the wooded area. Roots seemed to snake out and snag their feet, stones lay hidden under leaves only to thrust up and trip them. Vines tangled around their ankles and branches barred their way. It felt as if the plants had become living beings determined to keep them captive. He figured they’d been trudging through the darkness for just a few hours, but it felt like days.

“ ’Tis a fairies’ woods,” Saraid said softly, her strange statement somehow a reflection of his thoughts.

He glanced back at her just as she stumbled over a root as thick as his arm and caught her before she went face-first into the foliage. The action earned him a hot look that made him think of pulling her closer, of holding all that heat against him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked. “A fairies’ woods?”

“Only that people get lost in such places, and if they are so lucky as to escape, they are forever changed.”

“Changed? In what way?”

“In the most important way, of course,” she answered, her voice low. “Sometimes it is their minds that go. Sometimes their youth and others times it’s their senses. Fairies are fickle creatures.”

Her eyes glittered darkly as she watched him and for a moment he suspected she was one of the fairy folk and he’d never escape her spell. Where was the point in resisting? But she’d hurt his pride when she’d faked the attraction that he couldn’t seem to control, even when he was pissed off at her.

He still held her arm in his hand and he could feel the warmth of her skin through the thin fabric of her gown. He could still picture her stripped and gleaming in the candlelight as she’d moved beneath him. But if he was honest, he’d have to admit he’d been thinking of her like that for much longer. He’d been ensnared since the first time she’d stepped into his dreams.

“Y’ can release me now,” she said, and pulled her arm free, yet even as she did it, he felt the reluctance in her that was at odds with her words and her actions.

“What? You don’t want to convince me to stay anymore?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I’m no seductress, obviously. It was foolish to think it would work.”

“Oh it would work,” he said. “You just have to try a little harder.”

“Do not play yer games with me,” she said sharply.

“Sorry. I didn’t realize you had the monopoly on that.”

“It is not a game for me. It is life.”

“Back atcha, princess.”

Her expression might have been funny if he’d felt better about it. Could he really blame her for using every weapon in her arsenal to convince him to stay when she thought he would be their savior? It was ridiculous to think he was anything more than bad news, but she’d had a visitor from the dead deliver the message and then prestochango he’d appeared like clockwork. Of course she believed it, and he was a jerk to hold it against her.

They walked for a while longer in quiet dark. The forest surrounded them with sibilance and shadow, nothing quite what it seemed in the faint glow that struggled to penetrate the phantom cloak of branches and leaves. Each step made him feel like he moved through barriers, thick and unrelenting. He was so tired he wanted to lie down and sleep for a year, but her comment about fairies, ludicrous as it was, seemed unnervingly possible in this protean world. He’d lived in the States for most of his life, yet he was still Irish enough to feel the trill of superstition dancing down his spine.

Irritated with his own susceptibility, he said, “We can rest for a while if you need to.”

“Did y’ not hear what I said?” she exclaimed. “This is not a place to dally.”

“You don’t really believe there are fairies?” he replied, pleased that he sounded strong and sure and not the least bit worried.

She wrapped her fingers around his arm, forcing him to stop and look at her.

“I believe a lot of things, Ruairi,” she said.

There was more to that statement than the words she spoke, and he couldn’t pretend otherwise. Hadn’t they both seen the unbelievable—lived the unbelievable? How could he question something as minor as the reality of a fairy woods when his own existence in this place and time was itself impossible?

He heard all this in her tone and with it, another message. No matter what had happened between them, no matter what Colleen had told her, Saraid still didn’t trust him and she certainly didn’t feel safe following him through the unknown. Good, he told himself. He didn’t want her dependent on him. He only wanted her out of his way so he could get on with his life, find the Book, and hope that it would return him to his own world, his own life.

But if that was what he wanted, why did he feel like slamming his fist into a tree? Why did it bug him that she didn’t believe he could keep her safe?

“I don’t care where we are, princess,” he said. “I need a breather. And so do you.”

He moved to a fallen log, plopped himself on it, and stretched out his legs. Reluctantly, she followed and perched next to him.

“Tell me something,” he said, watching the way the filtered moonlight shimmered over her hair, trying not to be too distracted by the midnight sheen. “Why is my dad so convinced you have the Book of Fennore?”

She considered his question before answering, and he wondered if she meant to lie to him, but when she spoke, her voice was steady and low.

“He thought my mother stole it from him,” she said at last, meeting his gaze.

Truth, then.

Encouraged, he asked, “Did she?”

“No. At least not that she ever confessed.”

“So why does he think you have it?”

“It would be more likely that
you
would know the answer to that,” she said, raising her brows.

“If it happened before you and I met on the hillside, then you can pretty much assume I don’t know it.”

She stared at him thoughtfully and he wished he understood what went on behind those dark, mystery-filled eyes. It was clear she was uncertain about what to believe, and Rory didn’t have the words to convince her. What would she say if he told her that before that moment when they’d met, he’d been in another century and place, watching people on a flat screen and drinking water from a magic spout over a porcelain sink? These things would sound as strange to her as her fairy woods sounded to him.

Finally she said, “There are stories about y’ and Cathán and yer strange ways. They say the two of y’ came from nowhere. You just appeared the night y’ stumbled into our
tuath
.”

“When was that?”

“The night Tiarnan and I were born.”

“Let me guess. Twenty-five years ago?”

She nodded. “It was storming that night and the pair of y’ were stark naked, or so the stories go. Yer father said y’ had been wandering for hours and y’ were both fever sick. My father took y’ in and later my mother nursed y’ to health. They offered friendship.” Her voice hitched over the word. “And for a while, yer father accepted it.”

Her pause lasted a long time, but Rory waited, knowing there was more.

“Then for some reason, Cathán became convinced she’d stolen the Book of Fennore. He had no proof that I ever heard spoken, but he would not be swayed otherwise.”

“So what made him so sure she’d taken it?”

“I’ve never known. There was gossip, of course. People said Cathán had the Book of Fennore with him when he arrived. They said
It
brought him to us.”

“Still not seeing the connection to your mother.”

“He thought she stole it from him while he was senseless with his fever. But she didn’t. I’d swear to it.”

“Where is she now?” he asked.

Saraid shrugged and her voice came soft and hurt. “She killed herself. Tiarnan and I were not even a year old when it happened. I’ve no memories of her.”

“I’m sorry,” Rory said and meant it. She might not have been old enough to remember her mother, but the loss was no less devastating. He could hear that in her voice.

“It was a long time ago,” she said.

“Your father married again?”

“Yes. It was years later and I don’t think he ever stopped loving my mother. The boys’ mother—Eamonn’s, Michael’s, and Liam’s, I mean—had been widowed in Cathán’s attacks and I was old enough to help with them. She needed a man to protect her and her children, and Bain needed a mother for me and Tiarnan.”

“And where is
she
now?” he asked, though he knew the answer even before she spoke.

“Dead.”

The finality of that single word brought home as nothing else had just what Cathán had done to Saraid’s people. Just how much hatred she must have for his father . . . for the man she knew as the Bloodletter.

He took her hand in both of his and held it. “I’m sorry, Saraid. For everything he’s done.”

Surprised, her gaze moved over his face, searching for the truth, searching for the lies. She’d find only honesty this time. He was sorry. He’d been responsible for what happened that night in the cavern ruins—responsible for his father coming here and destroying all that Saraid held dear.

“Y’ believe me, then?” she asked softly. “Y’ believe that I don’t have his Book? That until tonight, with y’, I’d never seen it before?”

He nodded and she let out a breath that she seemed to have held for a very long time. He did believe she was telling the truth, but he knew there had to be a reason his father was so convinced her mother had stolen it. Whatever that reason was, Saraid must know it.

He wanted to press her, but an uneasy alliance had somehow been struck between them and he hadn’t the heart, the energy to break it. He exhaled, trying to release his frustration with the air. Maybe he needed to give something to get it. A trade of secrets to seal their pact. Only Rory didn’t give his secrets easily. He couldn’t remember the last time he trusted someone enough to tell them what he really thought . . . what he really felt.

Stiffly he stood and took a step away, unwilling to show her his face when he spoke again. “I’ve seen it before tonight,” he said softly. “Once, when I was a boy.”

He could feel the burn of her gaze on his back, but he didn’t turn. He didn’t want to face what might be in her eyes when she finally connected the dots and realized Rory had brought hell’s fires to her doorstep on the day she was born.

“Twenty-five years ago,” he finished.

There was a rustle of skirts and the soft pad of her steps on the spongy earth. She came to stand in front of him, refusing to have this conversation the way he wanted it—with his back to her. He felt open and vulnerable as she stared into his eyes, powerless to look away.

“Tell me how y’ are here, Ruairi who is not the Bloodletter. Who are y’?”

He swallowed, his throat suddenly tight and dry. “I don’t know if I can answer that. I don’t know who I am anymore.”

She could have laughed. If she’d lived in Rory’s time, she might have. She’d have called it a cop-out. No one in the twenty-first century knew who the hell they were.

But she didn’t laugh. She waited patiently, her face turned up to him like a flower, her eyes open and watchful. In his entire life, he’d never felt so unworthy—and that was saying something, because for all of his life, he’d never felt worth a damn.

Saraid might have secrets, but she’d had the courage to face them. She’d married a man she thought a cold-blooded murderer to protect her people, her family, from harm. She’d done it with grace and pride, even when it came to screwing a man she’d obviously hated.

Rory, on the other hand, had run away from his family, his people. He’d left them far behind and never looked back. Never delved deep enough to know why. He’d lived with his aunt—a woman who might have answered all of his questions—and never seen outside himself enough to know to ask.

That night beneath the castle ruins had changed him, molded him into something he wasn’t. And he’d been running from it ever since. Afraid of what it was he’d become. Maybe now, knowing about Ruairi the Bloodletter, he was right to be afraid. And to run.

She took his face in her hands and forced him to look at her. To let
her
look at
him
.

“Who are y’?” she asked again.

He still couldn’t answer her, but he tried. “Evidently, I came here with my father when I was five and I grew up here—grew into this Bloodletter guy you married. But the life I know—” He shook his head. “It wasn’t here. It wasn’t in this time, this place.”

Her hands moved from his face to his chest, one resting over his heart where the scarred spirals puckered his skin.

“When I was boy,” he said, “there was a fight in a cavern beneath an old castle ruin.”

“Yer sister’s house,” she said, surprising him. “Y’ told me about it, that I led y’ there after the funeral.”

“That’s right. This cavern, it’s connected to the Book somehow. At least that’s my guess. There are spirals engraved on all the stones and walls. It’s the kind of place you can’t wait to leave.”

Her fingers traced the outline of his scar, and a shudder went through him. She felt the vibration but she didn’t move away. He wanted nothing more than to pull her closer, to bury his face in the sweet scent of her hair and forget the rest of the world existed. Hide from the truths he didn’t want to tell. Let her use him, if that’s what she wanted.

“That night, when I was five, my dad and I fought over the Book, at least that’s what my sister told me later. She said we disappeared for a few minutes and that somehow, she brought me back.”

Saraid stared into his face, and he could see her trying to discern truth from shadow. He knew she was remembering today, when his twin had faded into a boy and a girl’s voice—Danni’s voice—had called to him just before he disappeared.