The Dark Highlander (17 page)

“But what if she . . .” Drustan trailed off, but Dageus knew he’d been about to voice the fear that he’d been forced to face when he’d sent Gwen back.

“What if she runs screaming from me? Cries ‘pagan sorcerer’ and hates me?” Dageus said with a chilly smile. “’Tis my worry, no’ yours.”

“Dageus—”

“Drustan, I need her. I
need
her.”

Drustan stared at the scarce-concealed despair in his brother’s eyes, and had a sudden flash of insight: Dageus was walking a razor’s edge, and he knew it. He knew he had no right to take Chloe, verily, he knew he had no right to have brought her this far. But were Dageus to give up on those things he wanted—to accept that, because he was dark, he had no promise of a future, no true rights to anything—he would have nothing left to live for. There would be nothing to keep him fighting another day.

And which would win then? Honor? Or the seduction of absolute power?

Christ, Drustan thought, a chill seeping through his veins, the day his brother stopped wanting, the day he stopped believing there was hope, he would have to face the fact that his only choices were to become utterly evil . . . or . . .

Drustan couldn’t make himself finish that thought. And in Dageus’s tortured gaze, he could see that his twin had figured this all out long ago, and was fighting the only way he could. If Dageus’s desire for Chloe was the thing standing most firmly betwixt he and the gates of hell itself, Drustan would chain the wee lass to his brother himself.

A bitter smile curved Dageus’s lips, as if he sensed Drustan’s thoughts. “Besides,” Dageus said with light mockery, “at least I know I can return her. Gwen had no such assurance, yet you took her. If aught goes awry with me, I promise to send Chloe back, one way or another.”

It would mean he was dying, for that was the only way he’d let her go. Even then, she might have to be pried from his fingers as the life fled his body.

“All right.” Drustan nodded slowly. “When will you return?”

“Look for us three days hence. ’Tis as close as I care to pass myself.”

They regarded each other in silence, much unsaid between them. Then there was no further opportunity, for Chloe and Gwen joined them in the circle.

“What are you doing?” Chloe asked curiously, peering at them. “Why are you writing on those stones, Dageus?”

Dageus looked at her a long moment, drinking her in greedily. Och, she was beautiful, so unselfconscious, standing there in her slim blue trews, sweater, and hiking boots, her hair a riot of curls tucked into a loose knot that was already falling out. Huge eyes, wide and full of innocent joy. She wore Scotland well. With a flush in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes.

Eyes that, in a short time, might regard him with fear and loathing, as the lasses in his century would have, had he ever revealed the extent of his Druid power.

And if such comes to pass?
his honor prodded.

I’ll do aught I can to seduce her back out of it,
he thought, shrugging,
using every underhanded trick I’ve got.
He’d give up when he was dead.

If anyone could accept it, she could. Modern women were different from the lasses of his time. While sixteenth-century lasses were quick to see “magycks” in the inexplicable, twenty-first-century women sought scientific explanations, were better able to abide the thought of natural laws and physics beyond their understanding. He suspected ’twas because so much progress had been made into scientific inquiry in the past century, explaining previously inexplicable things and exposing a whole new realm of mystery.

Chloe was a strong, curious, resilient lass. Though not a physicist like Gwen, she was clever and had knowledge of both the Old World and the new. An added boon was her insatiable curiosity, which had already led her into places most would not have ventured. She had all the right ingredients to be able to accept what she was soon going to experience.

And he would be there to help her understand. If he knew Chloe half as well as he thought he did, once she recovered from shock, she would be positively giddy with excitement.

Averting his gaze from Chloe’s inquisitive look, he glanced at Gwen. “Be well, lass,” he said. He hugged her, then Drustan, and stepped away.

“What’s going on?” Chloe asked. “Why are you saying good-bye to Gwen and Drustan? Aren’t we staying here to work on his books?” When Dageus didn’t answer, she looked at Gwen, but Gwen and Drustan had turned and were walking out of the circle.

She looked back at Dageus.

He extended his hand to her. “I have to leave, Chloe-lass.”

“What? What on earth are you talking about?” There was no car nearby. Leave how? For where? Without her? He’d said “
I
have to leave” not “we.” Her chest felt suddenly tight.

“Will you come with me?”

The tightness eased a bit, but confusion still reigned. “I d-don’t understand,” Chloe sputtered. “Where?”

“I can’t tell you where. I have to show you.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” she protested.

“Och, nay, lass. Give me a bit more time and you’ll not think it so,” he said lightly. But his eyes weren’t light. They were intense and . . .

Listen with your heart,
Gwen had said. Chloe drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. She forced herself to push her preconceptions aside, and tried
looking
with her heart. . . .

. . . and she saw it. There in his eyes. The pain she’d glimpsed on the plane, but had told herself wasn’t really there.

More than pain. A brutal, unceasing despair.

He was waiting, one strong hand outstretched. She had no idea what he was doing, or where he thought he was going. He was asking her to say “yes” without knowing. He was asking for that leap of faith Gwen had warned her about. For the second time in less than forty-eight hours, the man was asking her to throw all caution to the wind and leap with him, trusting that he wouldn’t let her fall.

Do it,
Evan MacGregor’s voice suddenly said in her heart.
You may not have nine lives, Chloe-cat, but you mustn’t be afraid to live the one you’ve got.

Chills shivered up her spine, raising the fine hair on her skin. She glanced around at the thirteen stones encircling them, with funny symbols that looked like formulas etched on their inner faces. More symbols on the central slab.

Was she about to find out what those standing stones had been used for? The concept was too fantastic for her to wrap her brain around.

What on earth did he think was going to happen?

Logic insisted
nothing
was going to happen in those stones. Curiosity was proposing, quite persuasively, that if something did, she’d have to be a fool to miss it.

She blew out a gusty sigh. What was one more plunge, anyway? she thought with a mental shrug. She’d already been so completely derailed from the normal track of her life that she couldn’t get too worked up at the prospect of another loopy turn. And frankly, the ride had never been so fascinating. Drawing herself up to her full height, squaring both her shoulders and her resolve, she turned back to Dageus and slipped her hand into his. Notching her chin up, she met his gaze and said, “Fine. Let’s go, then.” She was proud of herself for how firm and nonchalant it had come out.

His eyes flared. “You’ll come? Without knowing where I’m taking you?”

“If you think I’ve come this far to be dumped along the wayside, you don’t know me very well, MacKeltar,” she said lightly, seeking strength in levity. The moment was simply too tense. “I’m the woman who snooped beneath your bed, remember? I’m slave to my curiosity. If you’re going somewhere, I am too. You’re not getting away from me yet.”
God, had she really said that?

“That sounds as if you’re telling me you plan to keep me, lass.” His eyes narrowed and he went very still.

Chloe caught her breath. It was so similar to her dream!

He smiled then, a slow smile that caused tiny lines about his eyes to crinkle, and for a moment something danced within the coppery depths. Something younger and . . . free and breathtakingly beautiful. “I’m yours for the asking, sweet.”

She forgot how to breathe for a moment.

Then his eyes went cool again and abruptly, he turned back toward the center slab and wrote a series of symbols. “Hold my hand and doona let go.”

“Keep him safe, Chloe,” Gwen shouted, as a sudden, fierce wind kicked up through the stones, scattering dried leaves in swirling eddies of mist.

Safe from what?
Chloe wondered.

And then she wondered no more, because suddenly the stones began spinning in a circle around her—but that wasn’t possible! And even while she was arguing with herself over what was and was not possible, she lost the ground and was upside down, or something, and then she lost the sky too. Grass and twilight swirled together, speckled by a mad rush of stars. The wind soared to a deafening howl, and suddenly she was . . .
different
somehow. She glanced wildly about for Drustan and Gwen, but they were gone, and she could see nothing at all, not even Dageus. A terrible gravity seemed to be pulling at her, sucking her in and stretching her out, bending her in impossible ways. She thought she heard a sonic boom, and then suddenly there was a flash of white so blinding that she lost all sense of sight and sound.

She could no longer feel Dageus’s hand.

She could no longer feel her
own
hand!

She tried to open her mouth and scream, but she had no mouth to open. The white grew ever more intense and, though there was no longer any sense of motion, she felt a nauseating vertigo. There was no sound, but the silence itself seemed to have crushing substance.

Just when she was certain she couldn’t endure it one more instant, the white was gone so abruptly that the blackness slammed into her with all the force of a Mack truck.

Then there was feeling in her body again, and she wasn’t thrilled to have it back. Her mouth was dry as a desert, her head felt swollen and oversized, and she was pretty sure she was about to throw up.

Oh, Zanders,
she chided herself weakly,
I think this was a little more than just another loopy turn.

Chloe stumbled and collapsed to the ice-covered ground.

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.”

—
THE PROPHETESS
E
IRU
, sixth century
B.C.E.

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.”

—M
IDHE
C
ODEX
, seventh century
C.E.

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.”

—G
EORGE
S
ANTAYANA
, twentieth century C.E.

JULY 24, 1522

16

There were voices inside his head. Thirteen distinct
ones: twelve men and the jewel-bright tones of a sultry-voiced woman, talking in a language he couldn’t understand.

The voices were but a susurrus, a sibilant murmuring. No more than a stiff wind rustling through oaks, yet like a wind, it blew darkly through him, stripping away his humanity like a fragile autumn leaf no longer firmly anchored to its branch. It was the wind of winter and of death and it accepted no censure and would abide no moral judgment.

There was only hunger. The hunger of thirteen souls confined for four thousand years in a place that was not a place, in a time that was not a time. Locked away for four thousand years. Locked away for one-hundred-and-forty-six
million
days, for three-and-a-half
billion
hours—and if that was not eternity, what was?

Imprisoned.

Adrift in nothing.

Alive in that heinous dark oblivion. Eternally aware. Hungry, with no mouth to feed. Lusting, with no body to ease. Itching, with no fingers to scratch.

Hating, hating, hating.

A seething mass of raw power, unsated for millennia.

And as they felt, so Dageus felt, too, lost in darkness.

The storm was nature at her height of savagery. Chloe had never seen such a squall before. Rain mixed with jagged chunks of hail pelted from the sky, bruising her, stinging her skin, even through the thickness of her jacket and sweater.

“Ow!” Chloe cried
“Ow!”
A large chunk of ice struck her in the temple, another in the small of her back. Cursing, she tucked into a protective ball on the hail-covered ground and wrapped her arms around her head.

The wind soared to a deafening pitch, keening and howling. She screamed into it, calling Dageus’s name, but couldn’t even hear her own voice above the din. The ground trembled and tree limbs crashed to the earth. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed. The shrieking wind whipped her hair into a sodden tangle. She hunched in a ball with no hope but to endure it and pray it didn’t get worse.

Then suddenly—as abruptly as the fierce storm had arisen—it was gone.

Simply gone. The hail stopped. The deluge ceased. The wind died. The night fell still and silent but for a soft hissing sound.

For a few moments Chloe mentally tallied her bruises, refusing to move. Moving would mean acknowledging she was alive. Acknowledging she was alive would mean she’d have to look around. And frankly, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

Ever. Thoughts were colliding in her head, all of them impossible.

Come on, Zanders, get a grip,
the voice of reason endeavored valiantly to assert itself.
You’re going to feel downright silly when you look up and see Gwen and Drustan standing there. When they say “Gee, don’t you hate it when a storm comes up so fast? But that’s how they are in the Highlands.”

She wasn’t buying it. She wasn’t certain of much at the moment, but she was pretty darned certain storms like that didn’t happen, in the Highlands or anywhere else, and furthermore, she didn’t hold out much hope that Gwen and Drustan were anywhere nearby. Something had happened in those stones. Just what, she couldn’t say, but something . . . epic. Something that reeked of a kernel of truth secreted in ancient myths.

After a few more moments, she drew her arms back and peeped cautiously out. Rain poured from her hair, dripping down her face. She braced her palms on the ground and suddenly understood what the hissing noise was.

The earth was warm, as if it had been sun-heated all day, and the pellets of hail were steaming on it. How could the ground be warm? she wondered, baffled. It was March, for heaven’s sake, and forty-degree weather didn’t heat the soil. Even as she thought that, she realized the
air
was warm, now that the heavens had stopped dumping a small icy flood on her. Humid and positively summery.

Gingerly, she raised herself up a few inches and glanced about, only to discover she was swathed in a cloud. While she’d huddled, a thick soupy fog had surrounded her. She was completely walled in by white. It made the already eerie situation even spookier.

“D-Dageus?” Her voice quavered a little. She cleared her throat and tried again.

If she was still in the circle of stones—and she was beginning to think that might be A Very Big If—she could no longer see them. The fog consumed everything. It was like being blind. She shivered, feeling horribly alone. The past few minutes had been so bizarre that she was beginning to wonder if she’d not . . . well, she wasn’t sure what she was beginning to wonder, and would rather not wonder it.

Some people say they’re portals . . .

She scooped at the fog with her hand. Condensation beaded on her palm. It was thick, dense stuff. She blew at the white air in front of her. It didn’t puff away.

“H-hello?” she called, feeling frantic.

A dark swirl of movement flickered in the whiteness. There. No, she thought, turning, there. Inexplicably, the temperature dropped again and her teeth began to chatter. The hail stopped steaming on the ground.

She sat back on her knees, drenched to the bone, shivering and waiting nervously, half-expecting something awful to leap out at her.

Just when her frayed nerves were about to snap, Dageus glided out of the fog, or rather, one moment he wasn’t there and then he materialized in front of her.

“Oh, thank
God
,” Chloe breathed, relief flooding her. “Wh-what—”
just happened
was what she was trying to say, but the words died in her throat as he moved nearer.

He was Dageus, but somehow . . . not Dageus. As he moved, the fog swirled away from him like something out of a creepy sci-fi movie. Against the whiteness, he was a great, hulking dark shape. The expression on his chiseled features was as cold as the ice upon which she knelt.

She shook her head, once, twice, trying to scatter the idiotic illusion. Blinked several times.

He’s almost inhumanly beautiful,
she thought, staring. The storm had ripped his hair free from his thong and it fell to his waist in a wet, wind-tossed tangle. He looked wild and untamed. Animal. Predatory.

He even moved like an animal, fluid strength and surety.

And all the devil ever wants in exchange,
a small voice said warningly,
is a soul.

Oh, puh-lease,
Chloe rebuked herself sternly.
He’s a man, nothing more. A big, beautiful, sometimes scary man, but that’s all.

Graceful as a stalking tiger, the big, beautiful, scary man dropped into a crouch on the ground before her, his dark eyes glinting in the shadowy night. They knelt mere inches apart. When he spoke, his words were painstakingly articulated, as if speaking was an immense effort. His words were carefully spaced, tight, coming in rushes, with pauses between.

“I will give you. Every. Artifact I own. If you kiss. Me and ask no. Questions.”

“Huh?” Chloe gaped.

“No questions,” he hissed. He shook his head violently, as if trying to scatter something from it.

Chloe’s mouth snapped shut.

It was too dark to see his eyes clearly, the sharp planes of his face shadowed. In the misty gloom, his exotic coppery eyes looked black as midnight.

She peered at him. He was perfectly still, motionless as a tiger before the killing lunge. She reached for his hands and found them, in tight fists.
Most reserved when he feels most strongly,
she reminded herself. She closed her hands over his.

His body was racked with sudden shudders. He closed his eyes briefly and when he opened them again, she could have sworn she saw shadowy . . .
things
moving behind them, and she had that strange feeling she’d had once before in his penthouse, as if there was another presence with them, ancient and cold.

Then his eyes cleared, revealing such utter desolation that her chest tightened and she almost couldn’t draw a breath.

He hurt. And she wanted to take it away. Nothing else really mattered. She didn’t even want his stupid artifacts in exchange; she only wanted to wipe that horrid, awful look from his eyes however she could.

She wet her lips and that was all the encouragement he seemed to need.

He crushed her in his arms, swept her up and, in a few powerful strides, backed her hard against one of the standing stones.

Ah, so the stones are still here,
she thought dimly.
Or I’m still here. Or something.

Then his mouth was hot and hungry on hers and she couldn’t have cared less where she was or wasn’t. She might have been leaning up against a great big nasty, winter-starved bear for all she cared, because Dageus was kissing her as if his life depended upon their tangle of tongues and the heat between them.

He sealed his mouth tightly over hers, his velvety tongue seeking, claiming. He thrust his hands into her wet curls, wrapping handfuls of it around his fists, holding her head cradled in his big, powerful hands, his hot tongue plunging deep into her mouth.

He kissed like no man she’d ever known. There was something about him, a rawness, an earthy sensuality that bordered on barbaric, something she’d never be able to explain to someone else. A woman had to be kissed by Dageus MacKeltar to fully understand how devastating it was. How it could bring a woman to her knees.

For a moment she couldn’t even move. Could only take his kiss, not manage the strength to return it. She felt like she was being consumed, and knew that sex with him would be a little bit dirty and a whole lot raw. No inhibitions. She’d been tied to his bed with silken scarves; she knew what kind of man he was. Dizzy, light-headed, she clung to him, arching against him, reveling in the sensation of his big hands gliding over her body, one burrowing impatiently beneath her bra to close roughly over her breasts, teasing her nipples, the other cupping her bottom and lifting her against him. Feverishly, she wrapped her legs around his powerful hips.

She was so aroused that she throbbed, aching and empty. She whimpered into his mouth when he shifted that last bit, fitting them together so the hard ridge of him was cradled in her yielding heat.
Oh, finally!
After denying herself, refusing to even let herself
think
about it, he was there, trapped snugly in the vee of her thighs, huge, hot man. He braced her back against the stone again, grinding himself against her, driving her to an erotic frenzy.

Tangling her fingers in his thick silky hair, she strained against him, arching forward each time he thrust, meeting him. His lips were locked to hers, his tongue deep in her mouth. She was delirious with need. Her defenses had not merely dropped, they’d toppled, and she wanted shamelessly, everything, all that he’d been teasing her with for so long now.

As if he’d read her thoughts, he captured one of her hands in his and guided it between them, pressing her palm to the hard ridge in his jeans, and she gasped when she realized how big he was. She’d only caught a glimpse of him when he’d dropped his towel, but she’d been wondering about him ever since she’d found those incriminating condoms. It wasn’t going to be easy to take him, she thought, with a dark erotic shiver.
Everything
about him was too much man, and it exhilarated her, seduced her into finally acknowledging her most private fantasies. By his sheer nature, he was the answer to them all. Dark, dominant, dangerous man.

She touched him frantically, trying to shape her fingers over him through his jeans, but the damn things were too constricting, strained by his heavy bulge. She gave a small whimper of frustration and, growling savagely, he shifted her in his arms, braced her against the stones, holding her with one arm, while roughly unfastening his jeans.

Chloe panted, her eyes wide, watching his beautiful dark face, taut with lust while he freed himself. She wanted, needed, was beyond thinking about it anymore. The intensity of the attraction between them was mind-numbing. Then he was pushing the hot, thick hardness of himself into her hand.

She couldn’t close her hand around it. Her breath hitched in her throat and she dropped her head forward against his chest. There was no way.

“You can take me, lass.” He cradled her jaw with his palm and forced her face back up for more urgent, heated kisses. He closed his hand over hers, moving it along his thick erection. She whimpered, wishing her jeans would just melt away so she could take him inside her.

“Do you need me, Chloe?” he demanded.

“I’d say she does, but I doona think ’tis either the time or the place,” a dry voice cut through the night briskly.

Dageus stiffened against her with a savage oath.

Chloe made a sound that was half-startlement, half-sob.
No, no, no!
she wanted to scream.
I can’t stop now!
Never in her life had she wanted so desperately. She wished that whoever had spoken would simply disappear. She didn’t want to come back to reality, didn’t want to think about the consequences of what she was about to do. Didn’t want to return to the myriad questions that she would have to face: about Dageus, about her whereabouts, about herself.

They froze in that intimate moment for what felt like a miserable eternity, then Dageus shuddered and with a hand beneath her bottom, leaned her against the stone and dislodged her hand. She had a hard time making herself let go and they waged a short, silent, silly little battle that he won, which she reluctantly conceded was probably only fair since it was part of his body. He stood still, inhaling measured breaths, then lowered her to the ground.

It took him several minutes to refasten his jeans. Dropping his dark head forward, lips to her ear, he said in a burr thickened by desire, “There will be no takin’ this back, lass. Doona even think to be tellin’ me later that you willna hae me. You
will
hae me.” Then abruptly, wrapping one strong arm around her waist, he turned them both to greet the intruder.

Still dizzy and breathless with desire, it took Chloe a few moments to focus. When she did, she was startled to discover that the fog had vanished as utterly as the storm, leaving the night bathed in pearly luminance by a fat moon hovering just beyond the mighty oaks that towered around the circle of stones. She refused to dwell on the fact that a short time ago there had been no oaks around the circle of stones, only a vast expanse of manicured lawn. If she thought about that too long, she might start to feel sick to her stomach again.