Highlander’s Curse

by Melissa Mayhue

  She’d not called him by that name before. Hearing it from her lips set the very foundations of his world to trembling. He would give all that he owned if only he had the faith in himself that she showed in him at this moment.

  Abby felt her heart close to breaking as she watched the indecision radiate from Colin. She’d never seen him like this before. For a fact, she suspected this moment was a first for her brave, hardheaded warrior. He was not a man given to vacillation.

  How very odd it felt to realize that the whole of her world, the whole of their world together, rested on this one decision. Right or left. East or west. See to his kinsman or attempt to change the future. Colin would choose one or the other and that choice would change everything for them from that moment forward.

  “Bollocks,” he muttered at last, reining his horse around and directing him toward where she waited. “Let’s have at this band you’re so sure you can find.”

  They rode side by side, once again in silence. He was obviously on alert, constantly scanning the road ahead for any sign of danger. Confident in his ability to protect them, Abby allowed herself to sink inward, using the quiet to explore the extent of her ability to find something.

  She visualized the tendril, taut and straining, stretching far out into the distance ahead of her. It was a new sensation to find something so far away. She felt as if she floated over this world, outside her own body, carried forward on wings, always keeping one eye on the pulsating tendril far below her.

  The deeper she allowed herself to fall into the vision, the more real her surroundings became. Rather than the black mist that normally surrounded the energy she sent out, it was as if the mist coalesced into the countryside through which they traveled. The tendril snaked forward, pulsating its fluorescent light along the very road over which their horses carried them.

  Below her, trees formed a canopy over the road, so full and large she couldn’t tell where one set of limbs ended and the next began. So dense were the branches she even lost sight of the tendril at times, able to track it here only by the faint pulsing light flickering below the canopy.

  There! Movement to the left of the road. That must be the tendril. But no, the light still shone in pulsing blips from the center of the canopy. Curiosity invaded the vision. If not the tendril, then what had she seen?

  Abby stopped, hovering above the trees, straining to peer between the leaves, searching for any trace of the movement.

  “What is it?”

  Like being snatched from a speeding car, Abby’s thoughts slammed back into her body.

  Colin’s hand gripped her arm, his face only inches from hers.

  “What’s wrong with you? Abby! Answer me!”

  She shook her head, struggling to form the sounds she needed to use. “Nothing,” she managed at last.

  “Nothing?” He sat back, disbelief written across his face. “You can hardly expect me to believe that. You stop yer horse in the middle of the road and when I try to speak to you, it’s as if yer no even there.”

  “I wasn’t there.” She took a deep breath, hoping to clear her foggy mind. “I was trying to follow the trail to the band. I told you, I’ve never done this over such a long distance before. I guess I just got a little carried away. I’m fine now. A little fuzzy, but fine.”

  Fine if she didn’t count the booming headache her unexpected reentry to the real world had brought with it. She reached up to rub her temple, thankful the sun had slipped behind a cloud, leaving only a dappled pattern of light on the road rather than the bright glare they’d ridden through for the better part of the day.

  “Stay behind me and keep yer eyes open.”

  She looked up at Colin’s urgent whisper. His attention was directed ahead of them, though he continued to speak to her with the same low urgency as before.

  “If anything looks to be amiss, turn yer mount and ride hard. Do you ken what I’m saying? Dinna think about it. Dinna pause to look back. Just do what I’ve told you and ride.”

  Abby studied her surroundings closely for the first time in a long while. It wasn’t clouds that shaded them but a heavy overhang of large trees on either side of the road on which they traveled, just like those she’d seen in her vision.

  In the distance, a man walked toward them, leading a horse behind him. His progress was slowed by a heavy limp, but as he drew closer, he lifted his arm in greeting.

  “He seems friendly enough.”

  “They always do. Until they turn on you.”

  Suspicion must be an instinctive function of the warrior brain.

  “Don’t be such a dinosaur, Colin. Look at the poor man. He can hardly be a threat. He can barely walk, let alone—”

  A rain of arrows ended her tirade, and the world around her erupted in a cacophony of battle: men yelling, swords clanging, and most immediately, her own horse screaming in response to the arrow sticking out of his shoulder.

  Behind her, Colin shouted for her to ride, but fleeing was her last concern at the moment. Her only thought was to stay on her horse’s back. When her mount reared in response to the pain, the reins jerked from her grasp. She leaned against the big animal’s neck and tangled her fingers in his mane while she clenched her knees in an attempt to keep her seat, all to no avail.

  The sensation of this particular flight was both unsettling and short-lived, followed by a bone-rattling crash to the hard-packed earth of the road that left her flattened and gasping for her next breath.

  She forced herself to her hands and knees, scrambling backward just in time to avoid the vicious kick of her terrorized mount. She pushed up to her feet and lunged for the side of the road, slamming her shoulder into a tree in her urgency to escape the big animal’s frenzy.

  On the far side of the road, Colin fought off at least three men, his sword flashing in the dappled light as he kept his back to the forest, drawing them farther away from the spot where she clung to the tree. His sword slashed in a blur of movement, and one of his attackers fell with an ear-piercing scream.

  Down to two men. He could handle only two.

  Three men.

  “Behind you!”

  She screamed the warning too late as the third man emerged from the forest, swinging a club that struck Colin in the back of the head. He crumpled forward and fell to the ground, motionless, as an eerie silence filled the air.

  “Colin!”

  Pushing away from the tree, she ran to reach him, as uncaring of the men standing around him as about the pain searing through her body.

  She had almost reached him when arms clamped around her like a vise, sweeping her off her feet. She clawed at the hands holding her and kicked the air, connecting with flesh hard enough to make her captor yelp.

  Her efforts earned her a head-rattling shake. “Be still, shrew, else I’ll make you wish you had, I swear it!”

  The smelly beast who held her slipped his meaty arm around her throat, leaving just enough space for her to dip her chin and sink her teeth into his forearm.

  He yelled out in his pain and slammed her to the ground at his feet even as his companions’ laughter echoed in her ears.

  She would have continued to fight, useless though it might be, but from here her view of Colin was unobstructed and what she saw shattered her will.

  Not Colin. Colin’s body.

  Lifeless, unmoving, he lay not six feet away from her, on his back, his face turned away from her, his head pillowed in a pool of his own blood.

  A scream curdled up from the depths of her soul, primeval and ancient in its pain. Nothing mattered but reaching his side.

  Ignoring the men around her as well as the one who approached on horseback, she clambered to her feet and threw herself toward Colin.

  The man he’d felled lay in her path, but he was no obstacle. Turning her face from the gaping wound in his chest, she climbed over him to get to Colin as if the man’s body were nothing more than a large rock in the road. She tightened her fingers around a handful of the material of
Colin’s tunic, pulling his arm toward her as she reached him. Even her hand to his face brought no sign of life.

  “Colin?”

  This couldn’t be happening. She’d only just found him; she couldn’t lose him so soon. It wasn’t right. How could the Faeries who’d worked so hard to bring them together allow this to happen?

  “Send us back,” she whispered as she bent over him. If ever she’d needed to believe in the Magic, this was the time. “Please send us home. Get us out of here, now! I wish to go home!”

  She waited, holding her breath. Waited for the mysterious Magic to manifest itself and whisk them to safety. Waited for the green glow of lightning or an earthquake or whatever form it wanted to take.

  Waited until unfriendly hands fastened around her waist and dragged her from Colin’s side.

  “Goddamned freaking worthless Faeries!” she screamed, kicking with everything she had left as the man who held her lifted her up to the newcomer on horseback.

  She tightened her hand into a fist and drew back, swinging wildly at her new captor, but he caught her wrist, easily deflecting her blow.

  “I’d recommend against any more of your useless hysterics, my good woman. If you continue, I’ll have one of these men slit your throat and dump your body on the road along with his. Do you understand?”

  Whoever he was, he spoke with a distinctly British accent.

  “We’ll take her with us to rejoin the company and add her to the other prisoners. A woman, a lady by the looks of her in spite of her behavior, will likely bring MacDougall a fair ransom.”

  “Or a fair bedding,” one of the men shouted, to the laughter of all.

  “What about him?”

  “Leave him,” her captor ordered. “If he’s not already dead, he’ll bleed out soon enough. We’ve our hands full with the lot we already hold.”

  If he’s not already dead. . .

  In spite of these animals, in spite of the betraying Faeries, those few words gave her something to hang on to as the horse picked up speed, carrying her away from the other half of her Soul.

  Her heart lay behind her on the road, but those five words gave her hope that her heart might yet live, if only she could figure out some way to escape these men and get back here.

  Flynn bided his time in the trees, watching the drama play out on the road ahead of him.

  When the soldier had lifted Abigail to his mount, he’d considered using the weapon he’d brought with him. Briefly considered.

  He reached for the weapon tucked in his waistband, clenching his teeth in irritation as his fingers passed right through it.

  The blood he’d taken from Abigail had worn off.

  Once again, his body had returned to the insubstantial state that had cursed his people since their banishment to this half-existence on the Mortal Plain. He could neither commit nor experience violence. The only ability left to his people in their punishment had been the Compulsion, an ability to control the weaker-minded among the Mortals to do their bidding.

  But that was before the discovery of the consequences of taking blood. Through the ingestion of fresh blood, he could do anything.

  Too bad the only blood available to him at the moment was wholly Mortal. Though it would restore his ability to act as he needed to, it would not carry the sweet tang of Magic. For that, he needed to find Abby.

  Ah, well. For now, Mortal blood would suffice.

  “Come to me, blacksmith.”

  He waited impatiently while the big man he’d taken in the last village lumbered over to him, eyes blank, waiting to be told what to do.

  “Take your knife from its sheath. I’d have you draw its blade across your finger. Do it now.”

  Without hesitation, the blacksmith did as he was told.

  Large of body, small of mind. It suited his purposes to have one such as this under his Compulsion.

  Flynn lifted the man’s finger to his lips, fighting the revulsion he felt in taking the filthy Mortal blood into his mouth. It couldn’t be helped. He needed what the blood would give him. He needed to be solid and whole to take Abigail from the soldiers.

  “Mount up, blacksmith. Follow with me.”

  Flynn directed his horse forward to where the two bodies lay on the road.

  Good. The soldiers had saved him the effort of dealing with MacAlister. It made his task of recovering Abigail much easier.

  Once again, he’d follow. He’d wait and watch for the inevitable opportunity to make her his.

  Thirty-four

  Abby landed hard, pushed from her perch on her captor’s horse to the ground below. She stumbled and fell to her knees, completely ignored for the moment, as the men were greeted by their companions.

  So much for all that medieval chivalry she’d read about.

  “You’ll want to collect that wee weapon that dangles at her hip,” one of them pointed out as another pulled her to her feet.

  Her weapon!

  She grabbed for the knife too late. The man who held her twisted her wrist, breaking her hold on the weapon.

  “Sir Stephen’s got the right of it on this one. Who but a fine lady would forget to use the weapon she wears for decoration, aye? It’s a fine ransom our laird will demand for her return.”

  He dragged her through the waiting, jeering soldiers toward the far side of their encampment, back to a line of bedraggled and wounded men kneeling on the ground. Their arms were held high up above their heads, their wrists tied together over a rope strung between two trees. Clearly, these were the other prisoners Sir Stephen had mentioned.

  “On yer lovely arse, lassie,” her captor ordered, pushing her to the ground.

  “Have a care with the lady, you oaf,” the man on the ground next to her growled. “I’ll remember you well when my bindings come off.”

  “Remember this,” her captor offered, sending a well-aimed foot into the prisoner’s midsection that would have doubled the man over had he not been held up by his ties.

  He jerked her to her knees and roughly pulled her arms above her head, then halted his efforts, turning to call out.

  “Angus! There’s no enough of her to reach the line when she kneels. Should I let her hang?”

  “Bind her by one hand. It’s no like she’s much of a danger to any of us. Perhaps she’ll find use for that free hand in fending off admirers, aye?”

  “Or in pleasing them,” someone else shouted, drawing another round of laughter.

  “It is my order that the lady will remain unmolested.” Sir Stephen approached on foot, one man with a sword drawn on either side of him. “Your laird made quite clear his desire for captives who would bring him a healthy ransom. Despoiling her would only lessen her value. I can’t think he would go easy on any one of you who ended up costing him silver.”

  Perhaps she’d judged too soon. Maybe chivalry was only in intensive care and not completely dead after all.

  “She’s spoils of war,” the one named Angus countered. “Our laird has never denied us what we claim from battle.”

  Sir Stephen stared at the man, his eyes as cold and hard as they’d been when he’d stared at her and threatened to have her throat slit.

  “That may be so. But until we reach Dunstaffnage and I turn her over to your laird, you’ll do as I say or I’ll skewer your hide to the nearest tree and leave you for the wolves to dine upon. Do I make myself clear enough?”

  He waited for a scattered round of ayes before he spoke again. “Give her a bucket to kneel upon, but tie both her hands. Our guest is . . . spirited.” With a formal nod of his head in her direction, he turned and, along with the men on either side of him, disappeared into the small tent at the far end of the encampment.

  “Arrogant English bastard,” the man holding her arm muttered as he tied her hands over the rope above her head. Then he leaned in close, his fetid breath flowing over her face. “When we reach Dunstaffnage, I’ll be having you as payment for my cousin what yer man gutted back there on the road. Just you remembe
r Fergus, my fine lady. We’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”

  “I’ll certainly be remembering you, Fergus,” the man next to her taunted, earning himself another kick to the stomach.

  “You’ll no have an unbroken bone left in yer body if you dinna cease yer constant aggravation of these brigands.” This from farther down the line of prisoners.

  “Mayhaps,” Abby’s neighbor replied after he sucked in his breath. “But bones will heal and what I intend for that man when my bindings come off will no, that much I swear.”

  Fergus returned with a bucket, which he slammed to the ground beside Abby. He pushed her down to kneel on it and proceeded to tie her ankles just as the men with her had been bound. With another leering promise of what awaited her at Dunstaffnage, he left, joining his companions around a large campfire to share in the skin of drink they passed among them.

  Night had arrived, bringing with it a curtain of darkness barely pierced by the sliver of moon hanging above them.

  It brought desperation along with it as well.

  How long had Colin lain in that road, blood seeping from the wound in his head? Hours. How could any man survive that?

  They couldn’t. He couldn’t.

  She was on her own. The only man she’d ever wanted, the one she’d waited and wished for her whole life, taken from her by these filthy, warmongering, piece-of-shit excuses for men.

  Desperation faded into despair.

  Slow, hot tears tracked down her cheeks. Once they began, there was no stopping them. Her breath caught in her throat, jerking her chest in little coughing sobs. She clenched her teeth together to hold back any sound, determined not to let her captors see how they’d defeated her, but her pain was too great to control for long.

  “Did they harm you, my lady? Where are you wounded? Are you in pain?”

  Unending, horrible pain such as she’d never imagined. But she could hardly tell the man next to her it was no wound he could see, only her heart that had been torn to pieces. Not with him looking as if he’d been beaten over every inch of his body, anyway.

  “I’m not. . . no wounds,” she managed at last.