Highland Protector (MacCoinnich Time Travels Book Five) (5 page)

Simon returned with another pot of
coffee, which Giles couldn’t help but accept. Though he knew at some point, the
caffeine would probably leave him in a heap on the couch, who knew when he’d ever
have the opportunity to drink the real stuff again in such quantities.

“Find anything?” Simon asked.

Giles pushed his fingers beneath his
glasses and rubbed his tired eyes. “Nothing that makes any sense. It reads like
a bible. This couple begot these children. These children begot these. I
understood about the strong family bonds long before now. I see no reason this
information is important or how it might help serve Amber.”

“Is it a complete family tree?”

“Not hardly. There are generations
with very little information. Missing links and names that changed with
marriage. I even added an entry or two after I had learned of a branch that wasn’t
represented in the pages.”

“From other books?”

“No, no…from the warriors. When they
return, they sometimes have intel that helps fill in some of the pages.”

“You’ve spoke of these warriors. Who
are they?” As the hour grew late, Giles could hear the thick Scottish accent
fill Simon’s tongue. With Amber, it was simply there. With Simon, it was as if
he was readapting to his new time and slipping in and out of the brogue.

“I’m not sure how much I should tell
you. I’d hate to change the course of the future by saying something vital.”

“A little late for that, don’t you
think? Besides, the Ancients wouldn’t have assisted you into this time if they
didn’t want you here.”

“You really think the Ancients had a
hand in this?”

“Who else?”

Giles couldn’t imagine. “The Ancient
power is so seldom talked about in my time. I’ve doubted it existed.”

“Who do you think guide us then? The
moon?”

“It’s hard to believe in something
you’ve never seen with your own eyes. So few people have any faith in a higher
power in my time. Oh, they may say they do, but do they truly believe it? No.”

Simon sat forward, leaned on his
elbows, and lowered his voice. “The Ancients are real, second only to God. I
have seen their power, witnessed them…as has Amber.”

Giles swallowed and felt Simon’s
words soak into him. He shivered in the warm room.

“They brought you here, and I for one
will learn everything I can from you. I have sworn to protect Amber and, so
far, have only been able to stand by and watch her deteriorate toward a slow
painful death. You may not see exactly what the Ancients want you to see
because you’re not looking hard enough…or because you don’t believe they hold
the answers. Lora would never have sent Amber to this time if the answer to her
survival was anywhere else. I have to believe we will find a way to save her.
She did not survive Grainna only to die now.”

Simon’s hard stare made the coffee
sit like a stone in his gut.

“Now, let me ask you again. Who are
these warriors and what is it they do?”

Chapter Six

Kincaid stood among his peers who all
held expressions of doubt and concern. Unless they were traveling to retrieve
another branded warrior, none of them had journeyed in time alone. Ever. Safety
in numbers and all that…

He couldn’t say for sure if any of
those in the room held any blood relation, yet Kincaid considered each of them
a brother…a sister. They were his family and had been since his father
abandoned him. Leaving them was the only thing about the trip that bothered
him.

What was he worried about? He’d find
Giles, grab him, and bring him back.

“You have the path?” Kincaid asked
Colleen. The blank expression on her face would have troubled him if he wasn’t
used to her stoic exterior.

“I have
a
path.”

He peered closer.

She blinked twice.

What are you not telling me?

“I don’t like this!” Rory said.

“We heard you the first time.” Owen
shoved the other man’s shoulder as he spoke.

“Give me one good reason two of us
can’t go.”

Colleen responded to Rory while never
losing eye contact with Kincaid. “The loss of two warriors is twice as hard as
the loss of one.”

Kincaid swallowed. Not that he feared
for his life. He didn’t.

Colleen on the other hand, did. That
was obvious.

The air in the room hung heavy, like
a thick fog threatening the shore for weeks on end. Kincaid cut through it, met
the eyes of his brothers, and ignored his rising heartbeat.

“Destiny is not something one can
avoid,” he said and, because he felt it deep in his soul, he told them, “I
will
see you again.”

“Fuck!” Rory mumbled under his
breath.

“Until then.” Kincaid focused on
Rory, met his green-eyed gaze. “Until then.”

He turned toward Colleen and saw the
blue aura surrounding her. From it, he saw one tiny strand. When he focused, he
noticed it turn red, then white-hot. That was his path…his destiny.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

He nodded.

Then, as if he wasn’t already uneasy with
his solo journey, Colleen, who never smiled, offered a half-ass grin.

The energy of her power and his
circled around him as he focused on the white strand that would lead him where
he needed to be.

The lids of his eyes started to drift
closed so he could remove everything except the single thought of his path, but
then Colleen’s rapt attention forced his eyes to hers. Beyond her, he saw a
white light in the form of a woman. Her hair flowed down well past her hips,
her soft glow welcomed him into her warmth. The woman opened her lips and
spoke, but it was Colleen’s voice he heard. “You cannot change who you are…but
you can shape who you will be.”

Before Kincaid could utter one
syllable the world around him dropped away.

The familiar shift in time was a
comfort. He remembered the first time, the exhilaration, the way the light
flashed around him like a vortex, and the way the shift shoved his stomach up
somewhere near his neck. He swallowed it down then and didn’t even feel it now.
The weightless feeling was nothing more than falling into a body of water after
a high dive. No fear. No worries. He would land as he always did, alert and
ready to battle or observe.

He felt the pull of his exit
approaching and waited until the last second.

He jumped and found himself slammed
back into the vortex, falling.

What the hell?

The ink in his arm sparked hot and he
kept falling. Without thought, he attempted to jump again and ended up on his
ass in the shift.

Instinctively, he shielded himself
and waited. The journey wasn’t letting him go. He knew he’d flown past Giles
and his intended target, but he was powerless to stop.

The world stilled, briefly and the
shore of a rocky cliff came into focus. There, he witnessed two teenage boys
kicking water and a young woman lifting her heavy skirts, joining them in the
fun.

Before he could smell the salt air,
the world shifted again. He landed between the dark shadows of stone walls.
There stood a clan…men and women alike. They held hands with one focus. The
youngest, the young woman from the beach with her dark hair swept over her brow…her
eyes shot like daggers across the room.

When Kincaid managed to look away, he
lost his ability to breathe. The world dipped again.

On some level, he realized he was
being shown a series of events, but he couldn’t process any of them before he
saw another scene.

He was in the Keep. Felt the familiar
walls as if it were his own bedroom. The turret where he and his men had last
been wrapped around him like a blanket. Only this time the blanket had a hood
and he couldn’t see past the folds of material.

Nausea built in the back of his
throat in hot waves.

“Enough!” he yelled to anyone
listening.

He slid faster than he’d ever before
and slammed onto the floor. Birds chirped in his head as the world came to a
crashing halt.

“Oh, shit!”

Kincaid heard the shout through his
fall, rolled onto his shoulder, and came up on the balls of his feet with his
blaster in his hand.

Feet away sat a man with a primitive
weapon pointed directly at him. To the man’s right, a bottle tilted on its side.
The smell of hops and barley filled the air.

“Who are you?” Kincaid demanded.

The man inched his finger toward the
trigger of his weapon. “You just dropped into my living room. Who the fuck are
you?”

He didn’t release the man’s
attention. Flat screen TV, not a vid scan or halo projection. Not the tube type
either. Leather chair, not the synthetic fabric of the twenty-second century.
The air felt cool…artificially cold.
Wow, is that Freon?

Kincaid had never been in this
century, avoided it like a rampant case of Pox. Grainna lived in this
century…at one point or another. For that, he felt his heart beat reach
dangerous proportions.

He stood to his full height, felt his
shield like the invisible armor that it was.

“Freeze, Mother Fucker.”

Kincaid made nice, lowered his weapon,
and lifted his hands. “I come in peace.”

His adversary squared his shoulders
and gave a curt laugh. “You’ve watched too much late night television.”

Actually, he only watched the news.
Which he had to admit was late at night. But he didn’t think that was what the
man was referring to.

“Who are you?” he asked again.

Kincaid narrowed his eyes. “Does it
matter? I just dropped into your living room. Does that happen to you often?”

The man’s jaw twitched and Kincaid
grinned. His ease of the situation told him he’d seen the like before.

“Damn Druids. Life was easier when I
only had to deal with drug dealers and lowlifes.”

The nausea that rolled in his gut,
now settled and Kincaid released a rare laugh.

“It’s not funny. Damn good thing my
kids are with the ex. This would have put them on the therapy couch for years.”

The man’s weapon now pointed toward
the ground.

Kincaid took a chance, lowered his
shield far enough to extend a hand. “I’m Kincaid. From the future. I’m looking
for a friend.”

His unexpected host glared at his
offered hand. “He’s not here.”

“I can see that. But you must know
where he is, or I wouldn’t have been brought to you.”

The man released the cock of his gun,
holstered it, and rolled his eyes. “Just when I thought life was going to get
back to normal.” He took Kincaid’s hand, shook it hard once. “I’m Jake. Jake
Nelson.”

Through a hooded gaze, Kincaid
observed Jake Nelson as he moved about his home, switching off his television
set and snatching an old phone from a cradle. He punched in a series of numbers
and held the devise up to his ear.

“Who are you calling?”

Jake held up his palm as he spoke
into the phone. “Hello, Matilda.”

Matilda?

“Don’t you wish! No. I have
a…visitor. Someone I think you should meet.”

Jake paused again and huffed out a
laugh. “No. His weapons look scary but for all I know they’re toys.”

Kincaid was half tempted to shoot the
old TV into tiny pieces of dust to demonstrate the power of future firearms. He
didn’t. Seemed Jake was having a pointed conversation with someone who knew
about Druids. From Jake’s relaxed state, so was he. “Hey! You’re the one who
moved across the country and told me to call you if anyone showed up. Someone
showed up, Selma. So wipe the green shit off your face and get your skinny ass
over here. I’m paid to put away crap from this time, not deal with nomads from
the future.”

I’m not a nomad. I have a
cause…dammit!

“Drive your broom or twinkle your
nose…or hey, take the bus, just get here.” Jake hung up the phone and crossed
his arms over his chest. “You know…you guys need to develop a warning bell or
something. You’re bound to give a guy a heart attack.”

Kincaid was tempted to crack a smile.
The man reminded him of Rory, even looked like him a little now that he thought
about it. Same dark hair, same eyes.

“I would have knocked if I knew how,”
Kincaid told him. “I take it you’ve had visitors before.”

“Round about. I’ve seen more shit in
the last couple of years than I can explain.” Jake nodded toward Kincaid’s
weapon. “That thing work?”

Impulsively, he moved the hip where
he held his blaster away from the man. “It works.”

“Fire projectiles?”

He shook his head. “Not bullets, if
that’s what you mean.” Instead of elaborating, Kincaid glanced around the room
trying to pinpoint the time in which he’d landed. “What year is it?”

Jake narrowed his eyes. “You don’t
know?”

Kincaid hesitated, unsure of how much
to reveal. “Who has
visited
you in the past?”

“What year are you from?”

The two of them stared each other
down…asking questions and not giving answers.

He lifted his own personal shield and
prepared to wait the other man out.

****

Selma Mayfair twisted her fingers
around the phone receiver and cursed Jake Nelson…again. The man aggravated her
from the top of her head to the very tip of her polished toes. At least he
called her and not his colleagues at the police station. She’d have to give him
that. Apparently, he was going to keep the oath he made to the MacCoinnich’s.
And the one he gave to his ex-partner, Todd, who was happily married and living
in the sixteenth century with Myra and their bushel of kids.

Hitting speed dial, Selma waited
through the rings until someone at Mrs. Dawson’s picked up.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Helen…it’s Selma.”

“Hey there. How are you settling in?”

Selma had relocated to the west coast
after Simon returned to the twenty-first century. She’d met Liz, Simon’s mom,
less than two years ago, and felt it was her responsibility to stay close to the
only two MacCoinnichs living in her century. Before meeting Liz, Selma thought
herself a witch, hence Jake’s catty comments about flying brooms and green
faces. Now she understood her heritage was deeply rooted in Druid blood. To
those around her, she was still witchy Selma, which suited her fine. No one
would think anything of her lighting candles and casting spells.

“I’m unpacked but the car is still in
the shop. It really didn’t like the long drive.”

“Cars are picky sometimes.”

“Listen, I just got a call from Jake.
Seems someone
popped in
unexpectedly.”

Helen sighed. “Popped in?”

“He wanted me to come over and check
out his futuristically dressed visitor. I thought maybe Simon could come
along.”

“Friend or foe?”

“Hard to say. You know Jake. He’s not
exactly warm and friendly.”

“I don’t know, Selma. He’s always
been nice to me.”

She snorted. “That makes one of us.”

“Hold on…” Through the phone, Selma
heard Helen tell Simon about Jake’s visitor. When she got back on the line she
said, “He’s on his way now to pick you up.”

“Good. I didn’t want to go alone.
How’s Amber?”

“Not so good. We have to figure out
something to shelter her. Every day she grows weaker. She hasn’t even left her
room today.”

They talked for several minutes in
joint misery over Amber’s plight before hanging up. There wasn’t anything they
alone could do. It would take intervention from someone outside their circle, and
they had a rather powerful circle.