“Em, I—”
“Know what the funny part is? I defended you. Drew told me he went to see you, to tell you all about himself, but that you wouldn’t listen. He insisted that you ordered him to stay away from me and threatened to sic the police on him. I told him my mom wouldn’t do that. I told him that as much as I get pissed off at you, you were basically okay. You just wanted me to be happy, and you get things screwed up a bit, trying too hard. But now, I can’t help but wonder if he was right. Did you do that, Mom? Did you threaten him with the police?”
Rachel swallowed. “I—”
“On second thought, don’t answer. Life sucks enough as it is. I don’t need to know that my mom is a bitch.”
Although the word was purposely cruel, it was delivered in a very quiet and controlled manner. Em had retreated behind her icy wall. She tossed her spent batteries on top of the dresser, then shoved the drawer shut.
The family photo wobbled, but didn’t fall, and Grant’s laughing face wagged at Rachel in a smug taunt.
“I’m going to get the milk.”
Early Sunday morning, Lachlan decided he was ready to confront Drusus.
Three a.m. seemed a natural time to find a lure demon intent on perverting weak souls, and a dark, foul-smelling alley behind a graffiti-decorated apartment building seemed the perfect place to perform a locator spell.
He carefully intoned the words of the spell, ensuring his pronunciation was clear, and then scattered the necessary handful of scorched rat bones. A misty circlet formed in the air above the bones, glowing faintly. In the center of the circle, images began to appear, drop by drop, like paint splatters on a canvas. Each image showed a location around the city. Some he recognized; some he did not. As new drops wiped out old, the images came faster and faster, until his eyes could no longer keep up.
Then they suddenly stopped.
But not in a helpful spot. Instead of the usual pinpointed landmark, all he got was a four-block radius in which to search, just west of where he stood.
With a heavy sigh, he waved the damp mist away and crouched beside his latest gathering assignment.
A gut-shot punk in a black silk jacket lay sprawled amid the rubbish, a small bag of white powder floating in the blood next to him. He placed his hand on the dead man’s throat. A drug dealer. How apropos.
The familiar feathery tendrils danced up his arm, but this time there was no balmy warmth, no gentle tranquility—only the slimy ooze of a rancid soul snaking around his heart. As usual, the sensation evoked a low wave of nausea.
No more than an instant after the ooze leached into his blood, the air around him crackled and dried like mud under the desert sun. Not unexpected, of course. Unlike angels, Satan’s henchmen were never late picking up a soul.
Pop.
Still squatted next to the body, Lachlan glanced up … just as a ball of brilliant orange fire plowed into his right shoulder. He reacted instinctively, rolling back and drawing his claidheamh mòr as he regained his feet. But the severity of a fireball hitting him full on, without the mitigation of a shield spell, brought tears to his eyes and blood to his lip as he bit down to diffuse the pain.
“Hello, MacGregor.”
A wave of undiluted agony shuddered through Lachlan, and his voice broke. “Dru-sus.”
“Those hurt like hell, don’t they?” the lean, blond demon said, pointing to the writhing, blackened flesh of Lachlan’s shoulder and smiling at his own joke. “I don’t normally lower myself to collect souls, but I thought since you were looking for me, I’d oblige.”
“Nice of you,” Lachlan gasped as he wove a belated shield charm. He blinked until his opponent came into focus.
Drusus walked around him in slow, measured steps, his sharply angled face a study of youthful arrogance.
“I see you’re sticking with the tried and true. Nothing modern man has created quite surpasses an excellent blade, does it?” A soft whoosh, and then he, too, held a sword in his hands: a gladius, shorter than Lachlan’s sword and engraved up the length with his name in Roman script. “I’d forgotten what it feels like to hold one.”
Deep in the shadowy gap of the demon’s zippered jacket, a thick gold chain shimmered, a chain strong enough to support a heavy glass reliquary. Lachlan’s gut twisted.
“Perhaps you’ve also forgotten how to use it.”
Drusus swung the gladius loosely in front of his body. “You could hope for that, baro. But if you recall, it was I who taught you everything you know about fine swordsmanship.”
“No’ everything.”
“I can still picture your face the first time I disarmed you. You, a mighty clan chieftain, and I, nothing but a spindling lad. You were galled.”
“I’m less vexed now that I know you cheated.”
“Cheated?”
“Demon versus human is hardly a fair fight.”
The demon’s eyes hardened into shiny beads of jade. “Immortal versus immortal would seem to be a battle of equals, though. What do you say? Shall we engage in a contest?”
“Aye, let’s duel. The point of my sword is eager to meet your belly.”
Drusus snorted. “I admire your confidence, MacGregor. But perhaps we should get our business out of the way first, on the off chance it’s you who perishes and not I. Where’s the Linen?”
“I destroyed it.”
“Nice try. Unfortunately, destroying a relic of such consequence would leave a mystical residue of mushroom cloud proportions.” He glanced up at the sky. “I don’t see one, do you?”
That would have been nice to know. Yesterday. “You don’t really expect me to tell you where it is, do you?”
“Of course I do. You owe it to me.” The demon’s eyes glittered. “We had a bargain. You were to let me in the back gate so I could steal the Linen. Hiding it was never part of the arrangement.”
“Any bargain we struck was voided the moment you invited the Campbells into my home. The deal did no’ include the slaughter of my family.”
“Actually, it did. I just never told you that part.”
Lachlan stiffened. Even now he knew Drusus was a demon, it was surprisingly hard to accept that the young man who’d once carried an adoring young Cormac on his shoulders had watched dispassionately as Tormod sliced the boy’s throat.
“Apparently, there were words left unspoken on both sides,” Lachlan said. “Had you bothered to speak to me before running my brother through, you’d possess the Linen today. Despite the promise I made to protect it, I intended to give the cloth to you.”
The demon’s face darkened. “You lie.”
“Nay, I was your puppet, properly enthralled. But watching my wife’s throat cut before my very eyes and listening to Tormod Campbell crow about slaying my bairns shook me free of your clutches, hellspawn. I vowed then you’d never touch it, and I happily did the unthinkable simply to see you thwarted.”
Drusus grimaced. “Indeed, I never expected you to entrust it to the very clan that wiped out your family. I could have saved myself several hundred years of searching, had I considered that possibility.”
“There you have it—the Linen eludes you because of your own mistakes.”
“Not mistakes. Just the one. My only error was with you.”
Silence fell between them as Lachlan absorbed the significance of that. Irrational or not, being the only one in two thousand years to hoodwink Drusus induced a twinge of pride. Perhaps it boded well for this encounter, too.
“And tonight,” Drusus added, “I get the chance to redeem myself. We’ll battle, you’ll put up a good fight, but I’ll win. I’ll get the whereabouts of the Linen, and you’ll finally get a respectable warrior’s death. It’ll all end well.”
“I’m already dead.”
Humor softened the harsh lines of the other man’s face. “Yes, well, you know what I mean.”
And then, without warning, he lunged. The point of his sword drove accurately at Lachlan’s heart, his attack swift and sure—only
to be deflected by the claidheamh mòr.
“Oh, bravo,” Drusus said, unfazed. “I would have hated this to be a one-sided affair.”
Lachlan had been about to toss a blinding spell, so it would hardly have been a one-sided affair, with or without his excellent reflexes. But he didn’t bother to debate that. He was too busy executing a fierce downward slice toward the lure demon’s neck.
Drusus parried it. At the same time, he brought his own flavor of magic to the fight. A dustbowl of swirling red miasma rose up from the damp pavement, encircling the two of them as they dueled. Spinning madly, the crimson tornado lifted higher and higher, until it obliterated every star in the night sky. Then white-hot fireballs began to rain down on Lachlan.
His shield charm took a heavy beating. In a disquietingly short time, the hellish fury pitted the protection spell to rice paper density. But Lachlan had little time to spare for repairs.
He was battling an expert swordsman.
Had he been the same rough soldier Drusus had manipulated all those years ago, his defeat would have been quick and brutal. The demon held nothing back, hitting his blade with powerful, bone-rattling blows, the kind of blows one avoids in practice sessions for fear of irreparably damaging a blade.
Fortunately, though, Lachlan was no longer a backward Scottish knight who only hacked and thrusted. With the help of Italian and Spanish masters, at whose feet he had studied for a hundred years after his death, he’d honed his talents to a lethal edge. Those talents now served him well.
He cut and thrust with smooth, almost effortless technique. He broke through the demon’s defenses twice, slicing through the leather jacket and biting deep into flesh. His new sword glowed green with the taste of demon blood.
But victory eluded him.
The sword was not enough. Not only did his opponent’s wounds heal with incredible speed, allowing Drusus to continue fighting without respite, but moments after Lachlan scored his second successful slice, the beleaguered shield charm collapsed, leaving him dreadfully barren of protection. He swiftly called forth another, but it was whisked away before it was fully formed, with no more exertion than a horse swatting a fly.
The swirling red vapor dissolved, carried away in wisps on the night breeze. Drusus paused, staring curiously at Lachlan’s heaving chest and sweat-drenched brow.
“You Gatherers are little better than humans,” he observed, sounding disappointed. “This is hardly the challenging duel I’d hoped it would be.”
Lachlan responded by whipping a restraining spell at him, roping the demon in thick white cords and pinning his arms to his sides.
Drusus broke the binds with a single in-drawn breath. “Very rudimentary stuff, that. There’s a much better spell in the Book of Gnills. Where’s the Linen?”
As the tattered remnants of the binds fell away, the gap in the demon’s leather jacket widened, and Lachlan caught a glimpse of a faint golden glow about his neck—the reliquary. A bitter dose of failure poured into his throat, choking him. Drusus could crush him, right here and right now, if that was his desire—not without a fight, of course, but slowly, inevitably, courtesy of the indefatigable power the bastard borrowed from Satan. And when he fell, the souls of his family would be cast into hell, never to be recovered.
No. He could not let them down. Not again. He drew deep on his powers and straightened to his full height.
“Fuck you.”
His nemesis smiled coldly. “Don’t be foolish, MacGregor. Put down the sword, or I’ll be forced to wring the location of the Linen from you. Bit by agonizing bit.”
“Go ahead, try.”
“That confidence is born of ignorance. You can’t begin to imagine the pain I can inflict.” He paused, eyeing Lachlan’s firm stance and grip. “Tell me where the Linen is.”
“No.”
“Tell me where it is, or I’ll be forced to take my anger out on Emily.”
Unease crept into Lachlan’s muscles, numbing the pain of his exertions and slowing his breathing to a barely discernible flow. The demon could jump to Emily’s room in an instant. “You won’t harm her.”
“Are you certain? Are you willing to watch her suffer just to spite me?”
“You’ve spent a lot of time setting up this lure,” Lachlan said. “You won’t risk the end result by allowing her to see the real you now.” Not when the corruption of a pure soul offered Satan twice the power of an ordinary soul.
“Fine, you’re right.” Drusus shrugged. “But that still leaves me with the lovely Rachel to play with. And don’t bother to deny she means something special. I know you.”
Her name upon the lure demon’s lips was an abomination. It ate away at his insides like acid, but Lachlan successfully reined in his bitterness.
“The man you once knew is dead, inside and out,” he said. The words rang with quiet honesty—not too surprising, as he’d endured four hundred years of that truth before waking to Rachel’s siren call. “I feel nothing.”
“Come now, MacGregor. Death is not a fool. She does not lock a Gatherer’s feelings away with his soul. She’d end up with an army of passionless drones, were that the case.”
“Death didn’t rob me,” Lachlan agreed. “I believe that honor is yours.”
There was a short pause, then a deep rumble of laughter. “By Satan’s glory, are you pandering to my ego? Trying to manipulate me?”
“Believe what you want.”
The flatness of Lachlan’s comment tugged the demon’s heavy brows together. “Shall I fetch Rachel and see?”
“It won’t matter. I still won’t tell you where the Linen is.”
“She’s a fine woman, your Rachel. Beautiful and strong. The sort who quickens your pulse the moment you spy her. Admit it, baro, you care for her.”
And give the demon a reason to harm her? No. Lachlan drained every speck of emotion from his voice and buried his feelings for Rachel in the deepest vaults of his mind. “I will no’ admit what I do no’ feel.”
“Then I take it you won’t mind if I cut in? I have a sense she’ll be even more enjoyable than Elspeth was. Did I ever tell you your lovely wife gave herself to me in a desperate bid to save your life?”
Lachlan closed his eyes. The image of Elspeth’s torn and sullied gown returned to him in painful clarity, along with the tears on her face and the pallor of her cheeks. His inability to save her shuddered through him once more.
“Bastard.”
He dove at the demon, sword swinging.
And the fight began anew. Lachlan’s fury served him well, for a while. He successfully landed a spell or two and broke through the demon’s powerful defenses to score blood several gratifying times. But every Romany magic spell drained his energy. With Drusus wielding his full repertoire of primal energy and Lachlan bereft of protection, the outcome was inevitable. In the end, the sheer longevity of the battle brought him to his knees.
Drusus grabbed his hair and yanked his head up. “Tell me where the Linen is.”
“No.”
The iron pommel of the demon’s sword struck him in the face. “Tell me.”
“No.” The word, though slurred by his split lip, was still forceful.
“So be it.”
Drusus showed no mercy. He hacked and sliced until Lachlan reached the very precipice overlooking oblivion, until the roar of the express train to hell rushed past his ears, until there were no more twitches of resistance. Only then did the demon cease his attack.
“This isn’t over, MacGregor,” he snarled.
Battered, bloodied, and racked with pain, Lachlan barely felt the bastard put a hand on his heart and snatch the drug dealer’s soul.
8
Night still held the sky when Lachlan opened his eyes—one of them, at any rate; the other was completely swollen shut.
It was survival instinct that roused him. His subconscious mind registered the nutty aroma of coffee and the rumble of human voices, dragging him from the deep stupor his wounds had left him
in and forcing him to wake. Less than fifty yards away, two men, paper cups in hand, approached the entrance to the alley, shuffling along at a gait that suggested they were still half asleep. In a moment they would be upon him. They would spy the sliced ribbons of his clothing, gasp over the pools of blood, and run shouting for the police.
Unless he moved.
Now.
Fighting the numbing fatigue of a body desperately struggling to recuperate and the biting protest of multiple bleeding wounds, he tossed his sword into a nearby pile of garbage. Then he reached out a hand, clawed at the tarmac, and dragged himself farther into the alley. He resisted the urge to moan, his focus solely on his goal: a shadowed doorway some three feet away. Huddled there, he’d appear nothing more notable than a homeless vagrant.
The men were twenty yards off.
He pushed with his feet, slipping, straining, feeling a bone-deep gouge on his leg part and leak more blood. Knowing he injured himself further with every kick at the pavement, yet willing to pay the price to reach safety.
And thankfully, he did.
The pair of McDonald’s employees traipsed by in the darkness, unaware that the dark wet patches on the sidewalk were blood, unaware that only a few feet away lay a body nearly drained of essence.
Survival now assured, the adrenaline-induced tension in Lachlan’s muscles drained away. His chin nodded toward his chest as a black fog once again strove to claim him, to protect him, to heal him.
Rachel.
He sucked in a deep breath and jerked his head up.
He had to find her, make sure she was okay, warn her.
His head wobbled on his neck as he squinted at the weathered brass knob above his head. Lifting his very heavy hand, he extended it an incredible distance—miles, it seemed. But he never reached the knob.
Somewhere between here and there, his immortal body decided it required lights-out, and he fell headfirst into a vast pool of emptiness.
Rachel sighed as she tugged her wide portfolio out of the backseat. Despite her best efforts, the morning hadn’t gone much better than the weekend. Em still hated her. Breakfast had been fifteen minutes of stone-cold silence, punctuated by glares. Frankly, the drive to work had been a reprieve.
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