Haunting Warrior (52 page)

She perched at the edge of the tide pool and waited for him to notice her. It didn’t take long. As soon as he saw her, he came to sit beside her.

“The Book is gone, Ruairi,” she murmured. “I feel it in my bones.”

“I know but . . .” He paused, looking into her eyes. “Have they come to you? I mean . . .”

“Have I seen their spirits? No.”

“I don’t think you will,” Ruairi said carefully. And then he told her of the strange visitor he’d had that morning. Colleen of the Ballagh. And she’d said that Ruairi’s work was over, but Tiarnan . . . he had a role to play still. She didn’t mention Liam, but Saraid held tight to her hope that her brothers were together wherever they might be.

“Do you think Tiarnan has gone to the future? To yer time?”

Ruairi looked as mystified as she felt. “Who knows?”

She laughed, both elated and terrified for her brothers. She had no doubt that the road ahead of Tiarnan would be long and hard. But he was alive . . .

Or at least he wasn’t dead . . .

Ruairi was giving her that crooked grin she loved so much. “Now what is going on behind those blue eyes of yers, husband?”

“Well, Nana said something else,” he said, his smile widening. Saraid couldn’t help herself; she grinned back.

“And what was that?”

Ruairi leaned over and lifted her onto his lap so that she straddled him, her breasts crushed against the wall of muscle and strength of his chest. Her arms circled his neck and she locked her ankles behind his back, loving the way his skin was so soft over a body so hard. She took his face in her hands and pressed a kiss to his mouth.

“What did she say, Ruairi?” she repeated.

His hands slipped down her back to cup her bottom, settling her more firmly where he wanted her before claiming her mouth with his, pulling her against him with his possessive caress. “She said,” he breathed against her lips, “that it was time to start populating this island.”

“Did she now?” Saraid responded, arching back as his kisses moved down her throat and his hands up to cup her breasts. “She’s a very wise woman, I think.”

“Aye,” he answered, his mouth damp and hot through her thin gown. “Do you think we should listen to her?”

“Most certainly,” Saraid said. “I think we should.”

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next book in the Haunting series . . .

Coming soon from Berkley Sensation!

S
HEALY O’Leary found herself sprawled on an enormous flat stone, confused, disoriented, and afraid. She hurt—her entire body felt battered and torn. Muscles and nerves objected violently when she moved, when she carefully pushed to a sit. She wore the pink and white dress that she’d put on for dinner that evening, but it was splattered and stained with a dark, rusty red that her stuttering brain identified as blood. Shocked, she raised her hands, looking at the raw flesh of her palms, the deep scratches on her arms, the mottled bruises mixed in between. Slowly her gaze moved down to her bare legs where more angry scrapes met with abraded knees and black-and-blue shins. Had she been in a car accident? The last thing she remembered was leaving the restaurant, stuffed and happy, laughing with her father as they stepped into the warm Arizona night air. But after that. . . .

Nothing.

She gazed at the landscape surrounding her, trying to fill in the pieces. The stone table where she sat like some pagan sacrifice awaiting a hungry demi-god was familiar. She’d dreamed of the place, many times over. Dreamed of awakening on this very stone to find herself plunged into a nightmare.

But she wasn’t dreaming now.

The landscape that crowded up to the stone altar was harsh, unforgiving, steeped in green so lush it hurt her eyes. A cool evening breeze ruffled the long waving grasses of a valley that stretched out like a carpet, connecting the rocky crag looming behind her to the dark forest in the distance ahead. The browns and blacks of bark and boulders looked like violent scars in a drenched mosaic. The colors were too bright,
too stark
to be real.

How was she here? Where was her father? What had happened to her? She focused on her high heels, trying to picture where they’d been, where they’d taken her—but then a fierce howl snapped her eyes from her scuffed, strappy sandals to the distant tree line.

The wolves. Just like in the dream, the wolves were coming.

Quickly she began to unfasten the buckles at her ankles, knowing that if the nightmare-come-true played out, she’d need to run. By the time she managed to get the first shoe off, the man broke from the trees—as he always did in this nightmare—hauling the boy along with him as his powerful strides ate up the vivid green valley. The pack of wolves chased only a few feet behind, and the sound of their ravenous pursuit brought Shealy to her knees, pain forgotten in her fear. The boy faltered and the man jerked him up, nearly carrying him as he ran, never breaking stride, never looking back to see the doom snarling at his heels.

“Hurry,” she whispered, though she knew they couldn’t hear her. Knew it would do no good even if they could.

The man was as big as she’d remembered him being. Well over six feet, perhaps even six five. Tall and muscular, built like someone who used his body as a weapon. His shirt billowed as he stretched his legs to increase his speed, and his long dark hair blew away from his face.

A dark stain blossoming from just above his heart spoke of a deep wound that still seeped, but it didn’t slow him down. Nor did the weight of the boy he carried over his shoulder. He looked up, saw the rock formation, and made the decision to reach it, as she’d seen him do so many times before. Now, though, she heard his labored breath, saw the tendons standing out at his throat, his arms, the bare chest exposed by his opened shirt, tasted the fear that salted the air, felt his desperation.

His beauty surprised her each time she saw him, but that had only been the dream version of the man. Here, flesh and blood moving ever closer, it stopped her breath. It shouldn’t be possible for one so raw and masculine to be so utterly beautiful, but he was. From the high forehead, the slashing dark brows arched over eyes she knew were the color of whiskey, framed by long lashes as black as soot, to the strong aquiline nose and the full, sensuous lips. He was the kind of man women fantasized about. The kind of man women liked to see in their dreams.

Now that he’d fixed on a destination, he pushed himself harder, gaining a few precious feet between him and the snarling pack behind. Then he reached the stones where she waited and hefted his brother up. Shealy scrambled to the edge, reached down, and hooked the wounded boy beneath the arms to haul him onto the slab.

The shock of the man’s gaze settling over her features, the stunned distress that sparked in those whiskey-brown depths, seared her. In the dreams, that emotional mélange had been tempered by the cocoon of sleep. Now it hit her with a fierce backlash, making her scoot away as he gripped the stone table and heaved his massive body up.

If she’d had any doubts before about whether or not this was real, they vanished with that look and the hot maelstrom it stirred. For a moment he simply stared at her, and she felt a stunned sense of knowing in the look—not recognition, but a bond that went beneath the skin. An intimate acknowledgment that made no sense at all even as it became an elusive answer to a cryptic question deep within her.

“Who the fook are y’?” he demanded, as if in denial of the tangible spark that flared between them. His words were spoken strangely, and she had the queerest sense that she shouldn’t understand him and yet she did. Without looking away from her face, he pulled the boy to the center of the stone as the huge wolves circled and snapped below, looking for a way up.

They would find it, eventually.

“I’m Shealy,” she said. “Shealy O’Leary.”

“Leary?” he repeated, blanching.

His gaze roamed over her, searching for something she didn’t understand, stirring an awareness that went beyond this dangerous moment. The dreams had lacked the nuances of reality, but now the undercurrents fanned her dread. With another muffled curse, he moved away, pacing from one side of the stone table to the other, looking for a means to make it defensible or a way to make their escape. She knew he’d find neither. The rising cliffs behind them left their sanctuary precarious at best. Soon the wolves would see the way up, and they would leap over the gulf, eventually finding the right launch spot to reach them on top of the stone. In the end, the wolves would get the boy first, rip out his throat, and then they would come for her while the man fought a futile battle to hold them back. A piece of him would die with each failure.

Always before she’d awaken just as their hot breath brushed her skin and their teeth grazed the soft flesh of her neck before puncturing, before tearing. . . . She’d come-to in her bed, crying, covered in sweat and scared. Shaken, but ultimately safe.

But this time, there’d be no rush of relief when her eyes opened, no “saved by the bell” feeling when her fingers touched her throat and felt the skin unmarred.
No waking up.
She was already awake and she could die here. Terror settled low in her stomach. She
would
die here if she didn’t do something to stop it.

The man had spotted the boulders clustered at a cave entrance not far away. With mounting dread, she saw him consider the odds of reaching it.

“No,” she shouted. “It’s a trap.”

He glared at her, ignoring her warning as he bent down to speak to the boy who sat gasping for breath at his feet.

“Liam,” he said softly, his voice infinitely gentle and deep. “Brother, can y’ hear me?”

Liam’s eyes were clenched tight, but at his brother’s question, his lashes fluttered, then opened. “Aye, I can hear y’, Tiarnan.”

Tiarnan. She’d never learned the man’s name before. It fit the strong warrior crouched over the boy, mirrored in an inexplicable way the sculpted beauty and steel resolve of the man.

“Just leave me, Tiarnan,” Liam went on, his voice boyishly high, his face painfully young. There was blood streaked down from his hair to his neck and a nasty cut over his eye. “Can y’ not see that’s the way it should be? Where’s the point in fighting for me when y’ know the end?”

Tiarnan’s jaw hardened and his eyes glittered with pain. “I’ll not leave y’. Y’ know I cannot do that.”

Some silent message passed between the man and the boy, something Shealy couldn’t comprehend, but it seemed to come with a decision. Tiarnan stood, reaching out a hand to help the boy to his feet, holding him steady until Liam found his balance.

“Y’ see the boulders, the opening behind them?” he asked, pointing to the cave that Shealy knew would become their tomb.

The boy nodded, glancing numbly down at the circling canines.

“Don’t look at them,” Tiarnan said. “Y’ look there—where we go. Only there.” He waited for Liam’s nod before shooting Shealy an angry look over his shoulder. “Come if y’ want.”

Not exactly a pledge of protection, but it seemed to cost him a great deal to make it.

“It’s a trap,” she repeated, shaking her head. “There’s another way into that cave, and they’ll find it. They’ll catch us in the middle. I’ve seen it.”

The last words did what the first had not. He froze, staring at her with narrowed eyes. The sooty fringe of his lashes made the golden brown of them glow like polished stones. The anger inside them felt like a lash.

She broke away from the force of that stare and took a step back, searching for an alternative that had yet to be revealed. On one side was the forest through which the man and boy had emerged. If there’d been some place to hide in there, to escape, he’d have found it. The valley below offered only wide open space for the pack to surround and kill them. That left the crag rising behind. The rock wall was sheer for ten or twelve feet before breaking down into boulders, then rocks that sloped and merged until they reached a high plateau that stretched flatly from rim to rim, as if the top of the mountain had been sliced cleanly off. On the other side she could hear the power of the sea as it spewed and churned. The only escape once they reached the top—
if they reached the top—
would be a plunge from the plateau into the icy waters.

“We need to go up,” she said, pointing at the stone wall with its broken, jagged ledges and irregular protrusions. She realized she was still holding her high-heeled sandal, dangling from the ankle strap in her hand. The other shoe remained on her foot. She bent to take it off and felt him watching with that gold, glittering gaze, looked up and found herself ensnared in it.

“Leary,” he repeated angrily.

“
O’
Leary.
Shealy
O’Leary,” she answered, her voice equally cold, not sure why her last name should irritate him so much.

He shook his head and stared at the crag. The wolves barked and growled as they circled in frenzy.