Heart Of A Highland Warrior (2 page)

CHAPTER ONE

B
REE STARED AT
the rotting coffin, wondering who was inside. On the other side of the open grave, the big white cat stared at Bree, its hypnotic green eyes so similar to Bree’s as Ronan frequently reminded her.

“It could be someone local,” she said to the cat. “But why dig up some old farmer’s grave? Maybe it’s a soldier from the Civil War.” Sometimes the bodies had to be buried wherever they lay. But this wasn’t the first grave near her house that had been disturbed. Her favorite grave, the unmarked one in the graveyard behind her house, had also been dug up. She
’d
thought Druan might have opened it in his search for the missing key to Faelan’s time vault. But Druan was dead now, and this hole was fresh.

Could have been a Civil War buff looking to add to his collection. Or her collection. Not all Civil War buffs were male. Bree was proof of that. The Civil War was her area of expertise. She
’d
spent untold hours taking part in reenactments and searching fields for buried treasure with her father. He wasn’t her real father, but an uncle who
’d
pretended to be her father. She still had a hard time with that. They
’d
been so close, like two peas in a pod, her mother said. The mother who wasn’t really her mother but her aunt.

Bree rubbed her belly and wondered how she
’d
explain all the craziness to her little girl or little boy when the time came. How would they tell the child that her—or his—father was over a century old? That one set of grandparents were even older, one of them perhaps a vampire hunter, and the other set was really a great-uncle and great-aunt who had pretended to be Bree’s real parents in order to protect her? She still had so much to learn about her real parents, Edward and Layla.

The best part was that Bree had gotten a sister out of the craziness. Shay. They had different mothers, but Edward was also Shay’s father. Bree had always wanted a sister, so much so that sometimes she
’d
pretended Emmy the panda was her sister.

A glint of metal along the bottom of the coffin caught Bree’s eye, pulling her from her musings. “There’s something under the coffin,” she said, partly to herself, partly to the cat as she peered into the hole. “I wonder if I have time to check it out before Faelan and Ronan get back from Albany.” They were at the castle meeting with the other warriors. Jamie had something urgent he needed to discuss. She thought the cat rolled its eyes, but it was probably her imagination. “Faelan will kill me if he catches me even messing with a grave in my
condition
. That’s what I get for marrying a Highland warrior from the nineteenth century.”

He still didn’t get the whole women’s lib thing. Modernizing him was turning out to be a slow process. She smiled, picturing his handsome scowl. Not that she wanted him totally modernized. His chivalrous, protective nature was a pain in the butt sometimes—actually, a lot of the time—but he was just so hot when he went all he-man on her.

The cat continued to watch her, not answering—not that she expected it to. But this cat wasn’t quite normal. He had shown up at Shay’s house in Virginia. No one knew where he’d come from, but he appeared intent on hanging around. He
’d
sort of adopted himself into the clan.

Why shouldn’t she check it out? She was an expert. This is what she did. She looked around to make sure Faelan hadn’t arrived, then started climbing down into the hole. “Hiss if you see my husband coming,” she said to the cat, who moved closer to the edge of the hole, watching her with what appeared to be a scowl.

“Don’t scowl at me. You’re the one who led me here.” It took some delicate maneuvering to get down. In the past, she would have jumped, or shimmied down like a kid, but she had to worry about jolts and jarring the baby inside her. She noticed the lid of the coffin was slightly ajar, as if someone had already tried to open it. Or get out. Everyone had heard stories about people being accidentally buried alive. They had been only stories to her until she
’d
seen a coffin in England with bloody claw marks inside the lid.

Shuddering just a little, but not enough to make her leave, she knelt on top of the coffin since there wasn’t enough space to reach the other side. Leaning, she grabbed for the shiny object. She heard a crack, and the lid shifted. “Drat.” She tried to see inside, but it was too dark. Stretching again, she dug until she
’d
freed the object. “Oh my.” It was a dagger. Still kneeling on the coffin, she cradled the dagger in her hands. It was covered in dirt. She used her shirt to wipe it clean, and her breath caught as the metal emerged. It was stunning. Old. Seventeenth or eighteenth century.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Blast. Bree looked up at Ronan, who was glaring at her. “I found a dagger.”

“I don’t care if you found the pope buried down there. Are you insane? Do you know what your husband is going to do to you if he sees you there?”

“Where is he?”

“Right behind me.”

“Thanks for the warning,” she muttered to the cat, and then she saw it was gone. She looked up at Ronan. “Help me climb out before Faelan gets here.”

“I don’t want to be here when he finds you. I’ll get blamed for another one of your fiascos.”

“Don’t you dare leave me in here.”

“You got yourself in.” He looked at the mud on her shirt. “Good God. Did you fall in?”

“No. Come on, help me. Getting out of here isn’t going to be as easy as it was getting in.”

With a scathing sigh, Ronan bent down and reached for her. Bree stuck the dagger into her waistband and took his hands. Ronan pulled her slowly out of the grave but didn’t let go even when she was on solid ground. He looked like he wanted to shake her, but his hands on her shoulders felt more like a caress. “You’re driving me crazy.” A look too similar to longing crossed his face, and even though she was madly in love with Faelan, she couldn’t deny the tingle she felt. Ronan was gorgeous, not to mention sexy as hell. He left a trail of broken hearts behind him, or so the other warriors said. Ronan begged to differ, but Bree was certain the trail was there whether or not he had anything to do with it. Women turned to mush whenever Ronan was around. He must be giving off mega-pheromones or something if even she wasn’t immune.

“I turn my back for a bloody minute, and you’ve got your damned hands all over my wife.”

Ronan rolled his eyes as Bree turned and looked at her husband, who was stomping toward them. His hair was loose, the way Bree liked it, and he was wearing his kilt. God, he was a sight.

“I was making sure she didn’t fall into this hole,” Ronan said.

“Hole? Damnation. We haven’t been back from Scotland a full day, and she’s already found a bloody hole.” Faelan’s jaw went slack. “That’s a grave. What’s it doing here?”

“Don’t ask me,” Bree said. “I didn’t put it there. I just found it. It could be a soldier from the Civil War.”

A look of guilt crossed Faelan’s face.

“Hell no,” Ronan said. “Don’t even go there.”

Bree wished she hadn’t mentioned the war. Faelan had been sent by Michael the Archangel to stop the ancient demon Druan from his part in stirring up the war, but something had gone wrong, and Faelan was the one locked in the time vault instead of Druan. Needless to say, Faelan hadn’t stopped the war. He
’d
slept through it and the century and a half that followed. Though the clan had stressed that it must have happened that way for a reason, Faelan still felt responsible for the failure.

“I don’t know why you keep doing this to yourself,” Ronan said. “For the last time, you couldn’t have stopped the whole bloody war. Nobody could have. It must have been some kind of test. To teach you a lesson, you thick-headed bastard.”

Ronan was one to talk about guilt. He still believed he was responsible for his brother Cam being captured and killed by vampires.

Faelan made a grunting sound that might have been agreement or a curse. Then he turned to Bree. “You’re not thinking about climbing down there and opening it, are you?”

Guilt trip averted. “Me?” she exclaimed, glancing at Ronan, who looked like Joan of Arc with muscles and a sex change. Faelan did tend to blame Ronan for Bree’s mishaps whenever he was around.

“You’re a magnet for holes and graves,” her doting husband said.

True, she found more than her share. Perhaps she should stop looking for them. Graves, not holes. She liked graves. The holes just seemed to find her.

Faelan gave Ronan a disgruntled look and moved closer, looking into the hole. “You shouldn’t even be out here,” he said to Bree. “I’m going to find some way to keep you from wandering.”

“Good luck,” Ronan muttered.

“I was just going outside for some fresh air,” Bree said, “and I saw the cat acting strange.”

“He’s always acting strange,” Faelan said.

He did come and go as he pleased, often tagging along with Shay or Bree when he wasn’t stuck with Matilda, who believed the cat warded off vampires. She was convinced it had killed the vampire that had gotten inside the secret passage of the clan’s castle in Scotland. The warriors thought she was insane until they saw the pile of dust. That left them with three possible explanations. None of which were logical. Either the cat killed the vampire, or Matilda’s bottle of water, which she had thrown at the vampire, had killed it. She believed the water was holy since it had been clutched to her breast in terror as she prayed. The last possibility was that the vampire had committed suicide to get away from Matilda. Bree’s money was on the cat.

“It was walking with…purpose,” she said. “So I followed it.”

“Probably looking for a mouse,” Faelan said.

Bree looked at the coffin. “It led me to this grave. It was here a minute ago. I think it left when you showed up.”

“Smart cat,” Ronan muttered.

“This is the second grave opened near the house,” Bree said. “I think it must be a Civil…someone looking for treasure.”

Faelan shook his head. “In the same spot where my time vault was buried?”

“The same spot?” Ronan looked at the open field, bordered by trees. “You’re right. I didn’t notice before.”

Neither had Bree. Faelan had shown them roughly where he had encountered Druan and the other ancient demons—Malek, Voltar, and Tristol—before Druan trapped Faelan in the time vault.

“Aye.” Faelan crossed his arms over his chest and gathered his face into a spectacular frown. “Too much of a coincidence for me.”

“Bloody odd,” Ronan agreed.

“Maybe someone thought it was senseless to waste a perfectly good hole,” Bree said. The Civil War had started not long after Faelan’s time vault was buried. It was possible that a soldier had been buried there after the time vault was moved to the crypt.

Faelan squatted, kilt dangling between his knees. “The grave wasn’t open when we left for Virginia to help Cody. So who dug it up?”

“Maybe it was the cat,” Ronan said, rolling his eyes.

Bree shook her head. “No, the cat wasn’t here then. It was in Virginia.”

“Are you se
rious?” Ronan asked, and then said to Faelan, “I think your wife’s losing it.”

Of course he was joking. But still…“Cats can dig,” she said lamely. Especially big, mysterious cats with hypnotic green eyes.

Faelan scoffed. “If that cat’s digging up graves, it’s time to find him a new home.”

“Maybe Anna found the grave,” Bree said.

“How would she have known this grave was here?” Faelan asked.

“Maybe she discovered something in Angus’s notes,” Bree said. “He was sent here to look for Faelan’s time vault key. He could have made some note about this spot.”

“Anna hadn’t found his notes when I talked to her a couple of days ago,” Ronan said.

“She could have found them later. I’m surprised she hasn’t come back,” Bree said. “She left all her stuff.”

“At your house?” Ronan asked.

Bree nodded. “Her clothes and her boots. Even her purse.”

“She left her boots?” A frown started along his forehead. “She always wears boots.”

“Maybe she brought another pair,” Bree suggested. A demon hunter would need more than one pair of boots. Certainly one as good as Anna. “Although I don’t know why she
’d
leave her purse.”

“Can’t see any female doing that,” Faelan said.

“Her wallet’s still inside?” Ronan asked.

“I didn’t check.”

“We should.”

“You’re worried about her?” It suddenly occurred to Bree what a great couple Ronan and Anna would make. They were both gorgeous, and despite Ronan’s reputation, Bree had never seen him with anyone. The same went for Anna. She didn’t even flirt, unlike Sorcha, who tormented Duncan with her blatant come-ons to any hot guy who happened to be around, which was often, since all the warriors were hot for the most part. Beauty was part of a warrior’s armor. Demons were distracted by beauty like women were distracted by diamonds. In some way, Bree supposed it made sense. Distract the demon with your looks, and then catch him—or her—off guard and bam him with your warrior powers. Strength, speed, strong senses.