Troubled By The Highlander: A Scottish Time Travel Romance (Highlander Forever Book 6)

by Rebecca Preston

  That, Connor explained to her over dinner, was something the Watch was already working on. Brendan had spread the word among the Watch at the castle that there would be hunting trips each night, men put on duty in the village to watch for the Sluagh and kill as many as possible with arrows and slings. Fire and iron were their weapons, and the blacksmith in the village — as well as the blacksmith at the Keep — were both hard at work producing as many iron-tipped arrows as they were able. The best archers of the Watch were being organized into shifts, prioritizing the hours of the night that the Sluagh had attacked, and at Karen's suggestion, Connor ensured that several were placed near Mary's cottage, in case the creatures saw fit to visit the person who'd first summoned them there. This was done without revealing the reason, of course — his justification was that the creatures may revisit the hillside upon which they'd dropped their victims, and that Mary's cottage was a good vantage point.

  With all that done, all that remained for the two of them was to wait. As the night drew in, they both grew restless… it had been a clear day and the night seemed bright and still, with stars shining peacefully down, no sign of the dark clouds or hot west wind that had heralded the approach of the Sluagh earlier. They decided to retire to bed, reasoning that it would be valuable to get some rest tonight if the Sluagh weren't coming… but it took a long time to get to sleep, wrapped tight in each other's arms. Somehow, though they had the time to themselves, neither of them felt much like sex… the memory of Mary's trauma was still fresh in both of their minds, and the comfort they needed was easy enough to get from physical touch and nothing more.

  They must have dozed off for a few hours before Karen became aware that she was awake... but what had woken her? She stirred a little, hearing Connor's rhythmic breathing and feeling the soft rhythm of the rise and fall of his chest… but then she heard it again. The sound of the cottage's western windows, nailed shut, but still rattling as if in a high wind. And when she breathed through her nose, her eyes widened as she smelled the unmistakable scent — the high, awful reek that she'd first encountered the night those six rapists had met their just ends.

  Connor was awake too, his gray eyes gleaming in the dark. They could both hear the wind howling, now, make out the distant shrieks of the creatures that had been plaguing the village.

  The Sluagh were here again. But this time, they were prepared.

  Chapter 49

  They rose fast, moving around the room to get dressed with practiced ease. Connor had suspected this might happen and had made a point of laying out their clothes carefully so that they could get dressed as quickly as possible. It wasn't long before the two of them were heading out, Connor clad in his armor with his sling at his side, Karen wrapped in a warm winter cloak that she hoped would keep the chill from her bones. Connor had given her a knife, too — a long, wicked thing carved of iron that he encouraged her to keep on her person at all times.

  "The Fae hate iron with all their hearts," he told her firmly. "Just having it on you should offer you some protection from them… just make sure you leave it at home if you go to visit Maggie," he'd added with a smile.

  It was tucked away in the bodice of her dress now, and she reached in to give the handle a reassuring squeeze. Knowing it was there made her feel safer as she headed out into the night with Connor, a lit torch lifted high in her hands. Sure enough, the village was abuzz — the Watch was there in considerable numbers, including a number of unfamiliar faces she reasoned must be guards from the Keep. She spotted Brendan, too, the Captain holding a torch high as he squinted into the sky — when he saw Connor and Karen coming, he gave them a tense smile of recognition, though his mind was clearly on the battle at hand.

  "Ah, good," he said, giving Karen a quick grin. "We've got a witch on our side."

  "Very funny," she said with a roll of her eyes.

  She liked Brendan. He had a quick wit and a warm smile — and she was very much looking forward to meeting his wife when all of this was over.

  They headed for the church, which offered a decent vantage point over much of the village. From up here, it was rather a beautiful sight… the little houses all shut and barred for the night, the occasional point of light burning in a window as the villagers peered out to see what the Watch were up to out there. You just couldn't put a stop to good old human curiosity, it seemed, no matter the dangers… but if the creatures were in fact frightened of fire, a light in a window shouldn't be a risk. The torches held by watchmen lit up the streets… but that wasn't where her attention was. Karen turned her eyes to the cloudy skies over the town as that hot west wind flapped at her cloak.

  Sure enough, there they were — those familiar shadows she'd seen in the clouds that first night, just dark enough to hide the skeletal shapes, the flapping of dark, feathery wings. She studied the groupings of the creatures, realizing that it was possible to see where they were by tracing the clumping of the shadows… and she realized, to her surprise, that they were moving not in one great flock, but in smaller groups.

  "They're hunting in packs," Brendan breathed, clearly coming to the same conclusion she was.

  A thought occurred to her, and she narrowed her eyes, scanning the rooftops…

  "Connor, where does Rosemary live?" she asked, noticing a thicker clump of shadow above one particular house… and sure enough, her lover raised his arm to point to the house that the creatures were gathering over. She turned, certain she knew where else she'd see a concentration of Sluagh… and sure enough, there was a dense grouping of them where she knew Mary's cottage lay. She remembered the way Mary's mother had barricaded the windows shut and took a deep breath to steady her nerves. Everyone was safe — everyone was inside, making sure the Sluagh couldn't get them…

  There was one more concentration of the creatures, and she realized with a start that they were circling low over the little cottage that she and Connor had visited just that afternoon — the cottage where a young boy with pox lived with his mother… she remembered the broken little figure of Malcolm on the hillside and felt an icy chill move through her. Connor was clearly thinking the same thing — her eyes widened as he set off down the hill toward the house, shouting for the guards he passed to come with him, insisting that they intervene in what was clearly an attack being planned. She hesitated before following him, not wanting to get in the way or distract him, and she and Brendan waited up on the hill, watching as the guards assembled by the house. Was the little boy awake? she wondered. Did he know what kinds of monsters were gathered outside? They'd done their best to avoid letting the children know that there were creatures stalking them… it was bad enough to be so unwell without adding that terrifying nightmare to the mix.

  The creatures were swooping lower and lower. Even though they were tangled in shadow, knowing what she was looking for made it easier to make out the shapes of the creatures as they swooped and dived. She saw one make what looked like an attack on a group of guards, diving low as an unearthly howl of wind rose in the darkness… but as the guards lifted their swords to defend themselves, the creature fluttered away, recoiling from the iron as though it had been burned by even getting that close to it. She reached into her bodice for her own knife, squeezing it to reassure herself that she was safe, and Brendan glanced at her.

  "You're armed with iron, then?"

  "Connor gave me an iron dagger, yes," she said with a smile.

  He nodded his approval. "Faeries are fiercely averse to it. Should keep you safe. Not that you should be risking your neck," he added warningly.

  His eyes went to the flock of Sluagh, and she realized the men on the ground were preparing bows and arrows. She watched as Connor called them to attention, then gave the order to draw then loosen their bows. The arrows went flying into the darkness, aimed high above the rooftops — as she listened, she heard the clatter of a few of them hitting the peak of their arc then falling down to the streets below.

  But not all of them missed their mark, or so it seem
ed. The eerie howling of the wind seemed to reach a high point, and she heard a shriek that was quite unlike any that had come before. While the Sluagh's screeching had sounded like hunger and anticipation, this shriek was entirely different… this one spoke of pain, and anger, and rage. And as she sought the source of that dreadful sound, she saw a bundle of shadows plummeting from the sky with an arrow somehow jutting out of its middle. It hit the ground hard and she realized she was running toward it, Brendan on her heels. Had they really brought one down? Was it as simple as that — an arrow through the midsection and they were done for?

  Part of her didn't believe that it had really happened — she expected to find a bundle of rags on the ground outside the little cottage when she reached it, or else nothing at all. Some part of her, she realized, was still in denial about the true nature of these things, desperately hanging onto the illusion of ignorance to shelter itself… despite the deaths, despite everything that had happened to prove once and for all that magic was real and so were monsters, her mind still couldn't accept it. Still didn't want to.

  But then she approached the circle of guards who were standing around where the creature had fallen. They looked up at her, an odd mixture of expressions on their faces in the torchlight — some looked triumphant at their victory, others looked frightened by what they'd seen, still more just looked tired. Connor's eyes were already on the sky again, looking for more of the creatures, his mind clearly on the rest of the job of killing the whole flock… but they'd retreated a little, it seemed, hiding in the relative safety of the cloud cover as they coped with the fact that one of their own had been struck down in vengeance.

  And Karen crept closer to the dead body of the first supernatural creature she'd ever seen.

  Chapter 50

  The monster was much bigger than she'd expected when she looked at it in the firelight. For some reason — perhaps the wings — she'd been expecting something roughly the size of a crow, maybe a little larger… like the winged monkeys from The Wizard of Oz, perhaps. She hadn't expected the Sluagh to be the size of an adult human, for sure, and it made her recoil a little, shocked by how human-like the corpse was. For a moment, she felt an odd thrill of dread at the association — what had they done? It was as though they'd struck down a person, not a monster…

  But then the torchlight illuminated the creature better, and she got a look at it that wasn't obscured by shadow, and that particular impression faded as quickly as it had arrived. This was no human. This was nothing close to human. Sure, it was loosely humanoid… it had four limbs, two legs and two arms, and a rounded head sitting on top of its shoulders. But that was the end of the human associations. Its body was skeletally thin, with bones jutting out through its corpse-pale skin. And its face was nothing short of monstrous. All she could look at as her eyes traveled to its face was its jaw — a mouth full of black teeth that jutted out in random directions, with the sickly appearance of rot … a narrow, pointed nose, and a pair of jet black eyes that stared horribly into nothingness, the life, or whatever passed for it, having clearly already fled its body.

  She remembered the bodies she'd examined, the way they were slashed and scratched, and she scanned the monster for an indication of what had caused those wounds — and she found it, alright. There, at the ends of its painfully slender arms, were hands that were more claw than hand — it was as though five great curved blades jutted directly out of the creature's wrists. No wonder the men had been so badly sliced up — the creature wouldn't be able to lift anyone aloft without tearing their flesh if it had tried.

  There, in its side, was the arrow that had brought it down. Karen dropped to her knees beside the creature to get a closer look, very interested in this particular part of the puzzle. The arrow had sunk into the creature's flesh as though it was liquid — she could tell that at least six inches of the arrow's length was in the Sluagh's side, maybe more. How had it struck with such power? It must have moved through the flesh like a hot knife through butter… and she wrinkled her nose as the faint smell of burning reached her. Sure enough, a tiny amount of smoke seemed to be creeping out of the wound that the arrow had left, and she reached down curiously to ease the arrow out of the creature's side. Sure enough, it came away easily, and she saw how deep the wound was, how it sizzled with contact with the iron arrowhead.

  "Maggie wasn't joking," she said softly, shaking her head. "Iron really does end these creature's lives."

  "Aye — tears them up and stops them flying," Connor said, and an echo of approval went up among the men.

  It was heartening, to see their terrifying enemy brought down like this… to know that the thing that had killed seven people could be killed itself, that they were more than equipped to win this battle.

  "I've seen what happens when iron touches Fae creatures up close. It drains their energy as well as burning their flesh."

  "We have plenty of iron arrows?" she asked, looking up at the men, and there was a chorus of agreement. "Good. Let's get as many of these out of the air as we can." She looked down at the creature again, curious now about the great wings that sprouted from its shoulders. It had fallen hard, and it was clear that plenty of bones in those wings had been broken — both by the fall, and by the guard who had kicked the creature over onto its back to be examined. She nudged it gently back the other way with her foot, wanting a better look at the wings, but not especially keen to touch its flesh with her bare hands. What she wouldn't give for a few pairs of rubber gloves…

  The wings were covered in black feathers, but it was clear they weren't flight feathers from how bedraggled and droopy they were. Beneath them, the wings were black and leathery, more like a bat's wings than a bird's. They were enormous, too. Folded and broken beneath the creature's body it was hard to get a good look at the wings, but they were at least the length of the Sluagh's body, and from the looks of it they'd spread out to be a few times wider than the skeletal creature.

  But those eyes… she kept coming back to the creature's face. Despite the mask of death that had frozen its face solid, she couldn't help but gaze into those black eyes. What she saw there was evil… and, what was worse, intelligent. These weren't simple carnivores, hunting their prey. These were intelligent creatures who knew what they were doing. Connor seemed to be thinking along the same lines — he put his arm around her as she got back to her feet, looking around at the men still gathered around the monster's body. She realized she could make out their faces better now, and with a shock realized that the dawn was approaching.

  "We have our work cut out for us here," Connor said firmly, giving each man a sharp look. "There are dozens of these things — maybe more, it's hard to tell. They're intelligent, as shown by the way they backed right off when their friend here was killed, and they'll almost certainly be back with new tactics to try to get what they want without us killing them in return. We'll have to be careful in the face of their attacks… and we'll have to keep the villagers inside at all costs."

  The guards nodded, their faces set and determined. But they were distracted by a tiny sound, like air escaping from an inflatable pool toy… a gentle hissing, just on the edges of hearing. For a moment, Karen was frightened that another Sluagh was about to ambush them — but then she realized that smoke was rising from the dead creature that lay at their feet, for all the world as though it had been set on fire. She was struck by confusion — hadn't she taken the iron out of the creature's wound? What could be happening to make it smoke like this? Then she realized what was happening. The sun was rising… and it was dissolving the monster before them as it did.

  She stepped back, a little shocked to see how quickly the light of the rising sun was doing its work, and they stood around together in what felt like an odd little funeral procession as the monster's body slowly dissolved. The smoke rose into the dawn air, and within ten minutes it was as though the Sluagh had never been there… but for the image of its gaunt body and awful face, burned into Karen's memory in a way she kn
ew she'd never forget.

  "One down," Brendan said, taking a step forward to address his men. "Who knows how many left to go? Get some rest. We'll be working from sunset to sunrise until the last of these things are gone."

  And with that, the group of men dissolved. It seemed the majority of the guards from the Keep would be staying at Thomas's inn — she saw them heading back that way, clapping each other one the shoulders in congratulations for a good night of hunting. Brendan was headed back to the Keep to keep the Laird and his people up to date about what was happening — he gave Connor and Karen a little wave as he headed for the stables to fetch his horse for the ride back. And then they were alone.

  "Well, then," Connor said, a smile dancing across his face. "I suppose we'd best do as we're told and get some rest."

  She followed him to his cottage, smiling to herself. Something about his expression suggested that while they might be headed for bed, sleep might be a while away just yet…

  Chapter 51

  In the end, it was mid-morning before the two of them fell asleep, wrapped in each other's sweaty arms and utterly sated. She'd never had sex like this before in her life — not that she was especially experienced on that front, but the handful of sexual relationships she'd had included sex as a kind of obligation, something she felt more or less like she had to do to keep the peace. Not that she hated it — it was enjoyable enough, in its way — but she'd never understood the wild passion that some of her friends reported, that seemed to happen in books and movies about love and romance. The idea of being so infatuated with someone that your body physically ached for them… well, until she'd met Connor, she'd thought that was just a poetic exaggeration. Now, when she felt his hands on her body, his lips on hers, his hot breath against her throat, against her chest, tingling up and down her spine as he kissed and caressed every inch of her… well, she understood why people talked about passion and desire as though they were an all-consuming fire.