Time Everlastin' Book 5 (27 page)

Mavis led the group into the
drizzling night. Dougie carried an unconscious Reith. Flan carried
Blue. Behind Katherine, Katie, Charles and Gil followed like
mourners at a wake. Only these mourners carried altar clothes and
other paraphernalia Lachlan didn't deem necessary to question. It
didn't take an astute mind to figure out they were the articles to
be used in the sacrifice.

It occurred to Lachlan that
not a nocturnal sound greeted them as they headed away from the inn
and in the direction of the standing stones. No insects, birds,
rodents. Nothing but a sepulchral heaviness in the air.

Always the same conclusion
snagged him. The slightest move could incite one of the MacLachlan
clan. The risk to Reith, Blue and Roan was not worth venting his
outrage.

Yet, if he did nothing, all
their lives would end this miserable night, and at a scene he
wasn't particularly fond of calling his final resting place.
Instead of a proper headstone, the megaliths would crown their
passing.

Megaliths that for reasons
beyond his comprehension, instilled a terrible fear in
him.

"Lannie," Roan
whispered.

Before Lachlan could
respond, Katherine's cold voice rent the night. "There's no need
for talk." To emphasize her statement, she poked Lachlan in the
back, the hard lip of the gun barrel penetrating his damp linen
shirt and making him wince.

"Ye're daft if you believe
you can—"

He bit back the remainder of
his words when she again prodded him between the shoulder blades.
He reeled around, stopping the procession. "Fegs, womon! You jab me
one mair time and I'll introduce you to a real Scot
temper!"

Katherine was unimpressed
with his bluster and towering height, for her eyes remained as
unemotional as a rock. "Move. One more stunt, ma-lad, and you'll be
buried where ye stand."

"Lannie," Roan said in a
hushed voice, the concern in his tone dousing the fires burning in
Lachlan's gut.

"Aye," Lachlan growled, and
faced forward. His teeth were clenched so tightly, a muscle
throbbed along his jawline. Briefly, he met Mavis' pale eyes. They
stared through him, their maniacal gleam penetrating the
cloud-induced semi-darkness like a demonic beacon. When she tired
of the stare-down, she continued on, humming a haunting melody he
didn't recognize.

The climb up the hill to the
standing stones proved difficult for the Baird House men. With
their hands bound behind them, their balance was precarious at
best. Now and then, Lachlan cast Roan a furtive glance. The man's
face was masked in granite, making his thoughts difficult to
determine. Lachlan sensed his friend was overwhelmed with
helplessness and a belief their fate was unchangeable. He wanted to
shake Roan, shout at him to cling to the hope they would all escape
unscathed.

His mind drifted back to
1844, when he lay slowly bleeding to death, walled up in the tower
at Baird House. Even with the onset of cold that warned him he was
dying, he had clung to life. Had clung to the existence he had
taken for granted and all it represented. Perhaps that tenacity had
been what enabled him to tap into the energy in the grayness and
remain earth-fast for a century and a half.

Death was an unacceptable
alternative to life.

By the time the group
crested the hill and the standing stones stood magnificently before
them, Lachlan's ire beat back any remnants of the fear he'd earlier
experienced. The sounds of feet plodding over boggy earth intruded
upon the otherwise stillness. His mind absorbed each stone the
procession passed and, as they neared the center menhir, a burning,
tingling sensation swept beneath his skin and insinuated itself
into his brain.

His heart raced and his
lungs strained for each breath. It was not fear igniting his
adrenaline, but a vibration seeping up through the ground. A
vibration he knew was somehow connected to him alone.

"Halt!" Mavis
ordered.

Like well-trained soldiers,
the family obeyed. Roan and Lachlan exchanged a brief glance, then
Lachlan craned his neck to see around the old woman.

Hot bile rose and crashed
against the walls of his throat.

"Sweet Jesus," he said
sickly, and lifted his face to the cold mist.

Above an empty cairn, two
altars had been hastily organized. Mavis positioned herself between
them at the far end, facing her audience, and standing over Blue
and Reith when they were laid upon the wet stones.

Her old eyes lifted to the
heavens, her euphoric expression mocking the solemnity of the
ritual to come.

Katherine pressed the gun
into Lachlan's nape. Katie held a kitchen knife to Roan's throat.
The others gathered around the old woman, dressing her in a long,
white robe then placing white cloths across the chests of the
unconscious fairies. Lastly, Mavis opened a wooden chest she had
carried from the inn, removed two objects, and passed the box to
Charles. To Dougie she handed a filigreed silver bowl. The second
item she held upside down in front of her face, as if to bestow
upon the onlookers a most divine privilege.

Roan gagged. Katie withdrew
the blade in time for him to fall to his knees, where his stomach
purged its contents. For a moment, Lachlan thought Katie had cut
Roan's throat, and quaked with rage and revulsion. When Katie
yanked him back onto his feet and repositioned the blade, Lachlan's
ability to hold back, snapped.

"I spit on the blood o' ma
mither's clan!" he shouted, glaring at the insidious sacrificial
dirk in Mavis' hands. Three twisted, serrated blades, arranged to
form a circle. Designed to isolate a heart with a single plunge. A
few twists and the organ could easily be extracted,
intact.

"Mind yer tongue!" Katherine
snarled.

"I am the Lachlan Ian Baird,
laird o' Baird House in Crossmichael."

"Och, he's the bloody ghost,
is he?" Dougie laughed, but quieted when the intensity in Lachlan's
eyes penetrated his slow reasoning.

"God, hisself will tell you
I'm no' a mon to reckon wi'. Dead or alive, I will kill you all if
one ounce o' blood is spilled from ma friends!"

Katherine shoved the muzzle
into his left ear. "Ye will no' cheat us o' freein' our
leader."

Despite the pain the metal
caused him, Lachlan turned his head until he could stare directly
into the woman's eyes. "Take lives to free a legend? A
myth?"

"He has the riches due our
clan for centuries!" Charles said.

Lachlan's eyes moved to each
face. "Wha' good are riches to the dead? I should know. You canna
take it wi' you."

"Let us be done wi' the
ceremony!" Mavis sang out. She turned to Reith, the dirk held high
above his chest. "Katherine, I need ye across from me."

"Give me the gun," said Gil,
and stepped into her place.

Katherine stood on the
opposite side of the alter, her gaze locked on Reith's
expressionless face. Without prompting, she slid the cloth over his
features, and unbuttoned his shirt, exposing his bare
chest.

In a low warble, Mavis
initiated a Gaelic chant. The clan joined in, the sinister tones of
their unified voices charging the air around them.

"Leave them be!" Roan cried,
and gasped when the blade Katie held, nicked the flesh beneath his
Adam's apple.

"Tis a terrible way to die,
suffocatin' on yer own blood!" Katie hissed into his ear.
"Interrupt again, and I'll slit ye from ear to ear!"

The chanting resumed, their
voices more powerful. Overhead, thunder rumbled and electrical
currents gathered. The chant crescendoed as a white-hot ball of
light descended over the site. Countless slivers of lightning burst
from the globe and clawed at the top of each menhir. Their
luminance suffused the area, creating a protective, impenetrable
dome that shielded the clan and its prisoners from the rain and any
chance of outside interference.

With sickening clarity,
Lachlan saw the dirk lift higher in the old woman's hands, the
maniacal rapture in her expression as obscene as her
intent.

The chanting rose in volume.
Lachlan felt it sing along his nerves, infest his blood. He glanced
at Roan. The man's shocky features told Lachlan that his friend was
indeed resigned to bear witness to the slaughter of the fairies.
And perhaps, resigned to his own impending death.

Not Lachlan.

Pain clutched his chest as
an extraneous heartbeat drummed in his ears, out of cadence with
his own. As seconds passed, they became one, and the burning in his
gut intensified. From an undesignated source, he experienced an
infusion of strength, an infusion of hope. Someone or
some
thing
tapped
into his mind, probed, found its answer and withdrew, leaving
Lachlan imbued with steeled determination to thwart the
ritual.

His mind raced to formulate
a plan, but concentration was elusive, the fairies' prone and
vulnerable forms, disrupting his focus. Unless he got beyond his
fear, beyond even the slightest niggling doubt in his ability to
change the course of their destinies, all was lost.

Agony capped his skull as if
to further hinder his ability to think his way clear of their
predicament. A jarring quake seized the ground. Within seconds, the
mystical ball of light vanished, Mavis, Gil, Katie and Roan toppled
over, Katherine fell to her knees and struck her chin on the edge
of Reith's slab, and Lachlan, somehow retaining his balance,
sprinted forward through a deluge of rain.

Mavis rose adroitly for a
woman her age. Her eyes demented, the white robe soaked and
clinging to her bony frame, she swung up the dirk above Reith.
Lachlan sprang atop the altar and kicked the dirk from the old
woman's hands. The force of his action caused him to lose his
balance. His buttocks hit the hard stone, while his back and
shoulders impacted with Reith's chest.

Air ejected from Lachlan's
lungs. His mind went into a tailspin as shouts and cries rang out.
He blinked and saw Charles arc the dirk, preparing to embed it in
Lachlan's chest.

Time came to a
halt.

Lachlan's life flashed
before his eyes, every joy and hardship a convoluted enactment on
the stage of his mindscape. From far, far away, he heard his
children call to him, heard Beth cry out in anguish. The family he
had waited so long to have was slipping away as time's gates opened
once more.

Charles released a
resonating hiss as he threw his weight into plunging the
sacrificial dirk downward.

Then it came.

Chapter 14

Taryn woke reluctantly from
dreams reenacting the hours she'd spent in Broc's arms. Every
muscle ached deliciously as she stretched beneath the cover of
leaves. Never had her mind and body felt so satiated.

So...contented.

Realizing she was alone in
her den, she smiled and stared at the ceiling, and pondered where
Broc could be. It struck her funny how making love with him had so
altered her life. A different Taryn had been born. A Taryn happy
and satisfied to embrace a life in this underworld, as long as she
remained with him. She'd never felt like she belonged to anyone
before—not her parents, her brother, nor the string of lovers who,
collectively, had not afforded her a modicum of the pleasure Broc
had. Previously, a lover left her feeling needy for something she
couldn't define.

Feeling somehow unclean.
Used, although she usually initiated the affair.

Not even Lachlan measured up
to Broc in her heart. Thinking back, he was but a stepping stone to
prepare her emotionally to accept her destined significant other.
And accept him, she did.

Climbing off the makeshift
bed, she cleaned her teeth at the basin with a leaf, donned the
shirt she had previously worn, and left the chamber. Arriving at
the first pool, she dove in and swam to the bottom, where she sat
cross-legged, flung out her arms, and release a singsong cry in
triumph of a new beginning. She no longer feared the pressure of
water in her lungs.

No longer feared
anything.

Taryn Eilionoir Ingliss at
long last was truly in love.

She left the pool and padded
to Broc's den, humming a medley of oldies from the sixties. He
wasn't there. Undaunted, she went to the sun room. Only the horse
occupied the chamber. Munching on a patch of vegetation, he stopped
long enough to cast her a questioning look.

Still humming, she headed in
the direction of Karok’s chamber. No sooner did she enter the
passageway, she heard Broc's voice.

"There be no changin' the
game now!" he bellowed. "I want her gone!"

A burning sensation formed
in Taryn's throat as she peered hesitantly around the stone arch,
into the room. Karok was perched atop a rock, glowering down at
Broc, who, dressed only in a clean kilt, was a formidable presence
wielding a claymore beneath the creature's nose.

Karok released a gurgled
growl and back-handed the blade aside.

"Ye like her?" Broc raged
scathingly. "Then ye bed her! I've had ma fill. I canna love
her—no' one as she—so ye have lost this round!"