Highland Moon Sifter (a Highland Sorcery novel)

by Autrey, Clover

  Another contraction rolled through her and she curled around her belly. She was weeks away from giving birth. This couldn’t be happening.

  “Walter!”

  Charity craned her face up to a petite older woman in flower patterned pajamas and furry slippers, staring at her from the adjoining living area.

  “Walter, quick. There’s a naked lady in the kitchen.”

  “What are you talk—oh.” A wiry old guy rushed out of the bedroom, shoving his glasses up onto his nose. “Uh, you stay there. I’m calling the cops and I have mace. How’d she get in here?”

  Charity shuddered around another labor pain. Too close. They were coming too close and hard. “Please,” she cried. “My-my sister. Lenore. Call my sister.”

  “Walter, stop, hang up.” The woman edged closer, then slowly shifted to her creaking knees. “Oh dear. She’s having a baby. Hang up on the cops. They can’t do nothing. Call 911.”

  “Lenore,” Charity whimpered. “Lenore.” And then another pain exploded in her abdomen, tearing her apart and her plea turned into a scream.

  ~~~

  Staying low, Bekah crawled away from the witch and the fluctuating arc of magic that streamed between Aldreth and Shaw. The world had gone mad, the ground rolling and cracking beneath her knees, the walls of the keep tottered like an old man, stones breaking off and falling around the courtyard. Women and children fled the great hall, running out through the swaying gates into the meadow. The sky broke open, thundering and lightning in cacophonous bursts that rumbled through Bekah’s teeth. Clouds rolled overhead like a gathering storm. And the ocean heaved out of its boundaries, spewing high upon the keep’s ocean-facing wall like a fountain, spraying gusts of water over them.

  Through it all, Shaw and Aldreth kept at it, focused entirely on each other. Aldreth’s hair lifted in a current, a halo of vibrant black outlining her frame and flapping, smoldering gown. Her features were set in a horrible snarl of rage, the glow of insanity, shards of blue crystal in her eyes.

  Shaw looked so much worse, holding himself upright by will, his gray eyes shone silver and bruised within a milk white face. Yet he was the most beautiful thing Bekah had ever seen. A stunning warrior of light and magic, holding evil away from his family.

  He couldn’t keep this up indefinitely. Nor could Aldreth, though the crazy witch would last much longer and kill Shaw in the process.

  Bekah couldn’t let that happen. Not Shaw. Funny, when she’d traveled back through time to do just that.

  Which…she scanned the yard for the Sift. Toren was down, dazed, one hand and one knee on the ground and levering himself back up. The warriors were scattered around the yard, more than half unmoving, the rest fighting to regain their feet.

  But the beast?—Bekah looked frantically around the yard, between the fleeing clan…and there. Her pulse revved into gear.

  For once a Sift would be an advantage. It slunk along the ground on all fours, stalking toward Shaw, its loose skin flapping in the roaring wind.

  “She’s killing him!” she shouted at the monster. “Your creator. He dies, you never live.” Her breath froze in her chest, a hard painful sliver of ice.

  Shaw staggered back a step. Aldreth advanced.

  Tiny pebbles of blood dotted his forehead like drops of perspiration. A line of crimson ran from his ear and along his neck to the vee of his throat.

  Another abnormal time rift opened silver and violet beside him, like a swirling crackling mirror floating in the air, so close, too close, close enough to rip Shaw away.

  Better than dead.

  Which is what was happening now. The toll of whatever he was doing to Aldreth with his magic was killing him.

  Bekah slunk forward, resisting the urge to rush to Shaw. Gods, she wanted to shove him out of the way of whatever the witch was unleashing on him. She kept an eye on the Sift creeping toward them.

  Behind Aldreth, the Sift straightened to its full height, folds of skin wobbling, and for a moment Bekah thought she could see black orbs beneath the transparent film across its eyes, reflecting the shiny silver of the rift. Flares of magic rolled over it like blasts of wind, folding back loose skin like a jet wash, yet it stood firm against it.

  Part of Moon Sifter magic, sired from Shaw, the current rolling into the Sift had no effect on it.

  Bekah’s mouth went dry, watching it play out, willing the Sift to act before Shaw’s magic was spent and it was too late.

  Do it! Stop it now! Save Shaw.

  But the word that spewed from its crackled throat was one she’d never dreamed of hearing from a monster.

  “Motherrrr,” it cried, the word ground glass cutting its throat, and scraping painfully across Bekah’s eardrums.

  Aldreth spun, streamers of quicksilver arcing in a wide swath across the yard.

  Bekah dropped to the ground as pinpricks of charged current gusted across her back, rolling her across the ground.

  “Motherrrr!” the Sift cried again, long arms sweeping around Aldreth as it plunged, pulling her off her feet. Together, monster and witch, bodies tangled, fell into the unnatural silver pool of a time rift that swallowed them whole.

  The magic abruptly blinked out. The ground stopped shaking and the remaining time rifts, more than twenty of them, vanished out of existence, leaving the atmosphere sizzling with energy similar to the aftermath from a detonation.

  Shaw’s eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Bekah raced to Shaw, rolling him over onto his back, her hand immediately flying to his neck to find a pulse. Finding blood, she splayed her other hand over his chest, feeling for him to breathe.

  “Come on come on come on, you don’t get to do this. Not after all this.”

  His skin was ashen gray, lips cracked and white. His only color were smudges of blood on his face and a larger trail coating the side of his jaw and neck. His neck where there should be a pulse. “No, you don’t get to die. Just, no,” she shouted in his face, even while she started chest compressions. What she lacked in magic, in healing, she made up for in knowledge and determination. She wasn’t letting him go. No way. This entire mission had been screwed up from the get-go. Shaw wasn’t going to die. She wasn’t going to let him.

  Shifting, she cleared his mouth and plugged his nose to start rescue breathing.

  His lips were dry and salty, wet with blood. Cold. Too cold and unmoving. His chest expanded slightly with her breaths.

  Then went still.

  Shaw wasn’t anything like they’d thought. Screw what history claimed about him. He wasn’t a monster. He wasn’t the betrayer. He didn’t destroy the world.

  He was a good man. The best. And damn it, he wasn’t going to die. Not like this. Not while she had anything to do about it.

  She felt someone move up behind her and spared a quick second to glance over her shoulder.

  The devastation on Toren’s face nearly shattered her. His strained “Shaw” shoved her head beneath the waves.

  No. Suck it up. She couldn’t fall apart now.

  A tear slipped down her cheek and into her mouth. Her face was wet with them.

  Grabbing Toren’s hand, she placed his palm where hers had been just below Shaw’s sternum. “Press down when I tell you, exactly how I did, not too hard to break his bone. Thirty compressions. Understand?”

  She watched out of the corner of her eyes for his long hair to dip with his nod. She couldn’t risk seeing his expression again.

  “When I tell you.”

  Again, the ends of his hair dipped, black feathery tips grazing Shaw’s pale arm.

  Bekah went back to breathing for Shaw, willing her life into him. He was welcome to everything she had. All her essence if he’d only wake up and take it.

  She breathed again, a little too hard, willing his lips beneath hers to warm. To wake up, to give her that arrogant indulgent grin. She breathed and breathed and breathed, feeling his chest expand with her air.

  Sh
e was not losing him. She would not lose him.

  “Now,” she ordered Toren, watching as his arms locked and he pushed on his brother’s heart while she counted and felt for a pulse, yearned for Shaw to take a breath on his own.

  They were losing him.

  She was losing him when she’d only just found him.

  “Shaw, quit being stubborn and start breathing!”

  She looked up at the heavy clouds and pled to whomever—whatever—might be listening. “Please, this isn’t right. Just let him live. Let him live.”

  She felt movement around her, the other warriors now awoken, and the women who had fled with their children. They stood around them, watching.

  She didn’t care, didn’t want an audience. Everything was numb to her, the world fading to dull colors. “Just…please.” Her shoulders shook in a sob, and just as she was about to lower back to breathe for Shaw again, the clouds rolled open and a shaft of moonlight streaked down, falling upon them, the only moonlight in the courtyard hitting them like a search light.

  Bekah glanced at Toren’s astonished gaze and then quickly went back to work.

  Breathebreathebreathe…breathe.

  She pushed the litany through her mind, pouring her life essence into his. Breathe.

  His lips twitched beneath hers, a miniscule movement so small she feared she imagined it.

  She stopped breathing for him, stopped breathing for herself, waiting, her lips remaining fixed upon his, waiting, waiting.

  Again. His mouth moved. He sighed, a small puff of his own breath blew over her mouth.

  Bekah lifted her face to see his better, and cupped his cheeks between her hands.

  “Press down?” Toren asked, his voice urgent.

  “Wait.” Bekah laughed, half-sobbed, her fingers seeking Shaw’s pulse, while she watched his chest expand on its own. She found his heartbeat, thready, but there. “He’s back with us.”

  This time, she did look at Toren, spilling fresh tears at the transformation from distress to relief. She turned back to Shaw, at the dark lashes lifting to reveal confused gray eyes that tracked around the area until they found his brother. His gaze widened a fraction, and then moved on until they landed on her.

  There was something new and wholly unguarded in his disoriented state.

  There was no question that the emotion within the lightening of gray was focused only on her, and she was ready to spend the rest of her life figuring out exactly what it meant.

  “Don’t ever do that again. You hear me?” She rubbed at the blood at the side of his face, smearing it on his skin.

  Eyes hazy, he nodded, his forehead crinkling.

  “I mean it.” She swiped at her tears, smudging his blood across her cheek and felt his clammy palm take her hand and stop her.

  “I willna,” he rasped, his voice scratchy and weak.

  “Willna what?” Now that the crisis was over and he wasn’t dead, Bekah felt the effects of her adrenaline crashing. Gods, he almost died. She’d almost lost him.

  Dark brows scrunched over perplexed gray eyes. “Willna do whatever ‘tis ye’re blabbering on about.”

  “You promise? You promise me?”

  “Aye.” His other hand not holding hers slipped between the bangs hanging in front of her face and her forehead. “I promise to you whatever ye’ll have of me.”

  He meant it. She saw it in the sincerity of his expression, the hopefulness in those deep penetrating eyes.

  “Just live,” she said roughly, overcome by what she felt streaming between them as though they were the only two people in existence. “Just live. And keep on living. You promise me that.”

  “Aye. I promise.”

  “Good. Well, good.” She leaned back, then thought the better of it. “Oh, the bluidy hell with it.” And her mouth was on his again, this time not rescue breathing for him, but for her own life, making sure in no uncertain terms that he was alive and real and staying that way, and that she was alive and with Shaw Limont, the man she’d left everything behind to come kill, and the man she’d risk everything for to keep him alive.

  As far as she was concerned, History was wrong about him. And History could just go screw itself.

  Present Day, Seattle Washington

  “Drop whatever’s in the bag on the ground, Pretty.” Five men emerged from the pockets of shadows within the littered and decrepit alleyway.

  Col sighed. ‘Twas the reason he made the runs to Starch’s now, rather than Lenore. This part of the city grew more dangerous on a daily basis, attracting new drug dealers, new weapons dealers, and even cult factions preying on the ever increasing surge of magical beings popping up in Washington. ‘Twas as though this section of town especially drew dark-minded persons and creatures like an evil mecca.

  It also kept him in coin.

  Since their first unfortunate meeting, Col and the black-market crime boss ogre had come to a wary agreement. Starch supplied Lenore with any ingredients, herbs or otherwise, at a discount, while Col lent his unique abilities to driving out undesirables attempting to set up shop in the ogre’s territory. Col loved his job. Not to mention it paid well. A man had to make a sufficient living to endure in this century. And acting like a tough guy from The Godfather for a real life mobster made it all the better. He grinned inwardly, obsessed with the movies this century offered as entertainment.

  But this group of thugs had a little more backbone. The threat to move on that Col delivered last night had apparently gone unheeded. Col narrowed his gaze, seeing them better in daylight. Ghouls. They were ghouls, as thick-brained as their skulls were hard.

  No matter. He was itching for a brawl anyway. He thought about shifting into one of the African lions he had seen on television to watch the ghouls soil their breeches, but where would be the sport in that? He wanted to feel the impact of his knuckles on flesh for a change, prove to these ruffians they weren’t a match for any Scotsman in any form.

  He laughed when the first one swung at him and then practically walked into his fist. The second went down almost as easily, though the flexible ghoul got a jab into his stomach, bowing Col over enough that it made Col’s knee coming up into the ghoul’s unprotected belly entertainingly unexpected, just as the three ghouls on his left rushed him.

  Now this was fun.

  “Doesna look like fair odds.”

  “Mayhap, though I believe little brother can take them.”

  Col jerked at the familiar voices and an uppercut got past him, spinning him around to smack chin first into the back of a building that make up part of the alley’s wall.

  Shaw winced on his behalf, but the hit didn’t stun Col nearly as much as the sight of his brothers, leaning casually in ill-fitting clothes against a large dumpster across the alley.

  “Wha—?” Col’s query was interrupted when the three standing ghouls crashed into him, all going down in a crush of sinewy arms and legs.

  Before he got off one hit, some of the weight was removed as a ghoul went flying through the air and a second one was lifted bodily, arms and legs pin wheeling, before Toren batted him out of Shaw’s grasp.

  “Unfair, that one was mine.” Shaw scowled.

  “My apologies.” Toren tugged the last ghoul off Col even as Col got a hit in and shoved him at Shaw. “Ye can have this scrawny fellow.”

  “That does not make up for it.”

  The sound of flesh smacking flesh echoed along the concrete while grinning, Toren extended his arm and plucked Col up from the ground, holding him at arm’s distance while his assessing gaze traveled down the length of him.

  “But…h-how?” Col stammered when a curse and a squeal rang out, followed by pounding feet as four of the five ghouls ran off and Shaw strode back, shaking out an arm to loosen muscles.

  Relief hit Col hard enough to bowl him over again. He latched onto Shaw’s wrist, grounding himself to the reality that Shaw was here. Safe. And alive. Without another moment’s hesitation, he flung his arms around Shaw’s neck, pul
ling him close and just hung on, reveling in the strength of his brother as Shaw’s arms wrapped around him and then also Toren encircled them both. The hollow aching place in his chest filled with warmth. By the rood, he had missed them.

  “How—Shaw, there was a woman who went back through the rift to kill you.” Shamed, Col dropped his gaze.

  “’Tis all well.” Shaw squeezed his arm. “Bekah.”

  “Aye, you met her then. I’m sorry, I could not stop her. I feared…”

  Shaw’s grin transformed him into a predatory wolf. “She made a fair attempt at it, but I convinced her otherwise.”

  “Did ye…” Bekah had done what she felt was right. He did not wish her any ill.

  “Worse” Toren’s tone turned serious. “She’s found herself promised to this lout.” A wicked smile settled onto his face.

  Col’s mind was reeling. “But…?”

  Toren slung an arm over Col’s shoulder and drew him away, coming up short when Bekah herself stormed around the corner, tucking in a man’s shirt into loose sweat pants. She jabbed a finger in the air. “I turn my back for two minutes and you get into a fight without me? I saw those ghouls hauling butt out of here, all black and bloody. You didn’t even wait for me to get you some boots.” She dangled a pair of worn and dirty cowboy boots out toward Shaw.

  Shaw’s shoulders lifted in a sheepish shrug, completely uncustomary for his usually scowling brother. “What is yer constant concern with my feet?”

  Col’s gaze dropped, seeing that Shaw, indeed, had no shoes on.

  “You could get tetanus,” Bekah snapped. “I see you found him. Hi, Col.” She looked up at him through her long fringe of bangs.

  Col grinned back.

  “Well, this is all well and good. As much as I am pleased to be reunited, Col…” Toren clapped his hands together. “Have ye come across my wife?”

  ~~~

  “Who is the most handsome baby in the world?” Judith Greves cooed at her great grandson. “You are, yes, you are.”