Druid Surrender
A Druid Quest Novel
Stacey Brutger
A DARK, ENCHANTING TALE OF LOVE AND MAGIC IN VICTORIAN ENGLAND.
Brighid Legend has been on the run for over a year, hunted by the people who murdered her mother. Born a Druid with the power to control the elements, Brighid knows her pursuers will never stop until she is under their control. To escape detection, she struggles to hide her powers and finds safety in a small, out-of-the-way village. But after a series of mysterious accidents, she fears something sinister has invaded her new home. While she searches for the source of the trouble, suspicion falls on her, and Brighid flees, only steps ahead of the villagers seeking vengeance.
Wyatt Graystone, Earl of Castelline, retires when the life-and-death clandestine investigations he did for the Crown becomes more tedious than adventurous. Something vital is missing from his life. The last place he expects to find the missing spark is in a woman he literally leaps through fire to rescue from being burned at the stake. But the danger is far from over. To his frustration, the infernal woman adamantly refuses his assistance, pushing him away at every turn, when his only desire is to claim her for his own.
But someone has targeted Brighid for a reason. As the threats to her life intensify, Wyatt is determined to uncover her secrets and do whatever it takes to ensure she survives. When their pasts come back to haunt them, they must overcome their worst fears or risk losing everything. Saving her life is the biggest battle he’s ever faced...and the only one that has ever mattered.
WILL THEIR LOVE BE ENOUGH TO SAVE THEM . . .
This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations for articles or reviews. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials.
Copyright © 2016 Stacey Brutger
Cover artist: Amanda Kelsey of Razzle Dazzle Design (www.razzdazzdesign.com)
Editor: Faith Freewoman (www.demonfordetails.com)
All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
England 1880
The chilling chant of kill the witch echoed through the trees, spurring Brighid deeper into the forest. She’d taken a shortcut to reach the stables, determined to use any means at her disposal to outrun the people chasing her…even if that meant stealing a horse. As the sun dipped below the horizon, the once-familiar trail felt foreign in the thickening shadows, and she dodged branches that snatched at her like greedy hands.
She cast a quick glance over her shoulder and saw nothing but the deep, dark, ominous forest.
No sign of pursuit—yet.
But she felt them out there, waiting to pounce.
When she turned around, Brighid stumbled to a halt, confounded to find the path had vanished into nothing. She whirled, but each tree looked the same. Panic crept up her spine, her breathing sounding harsh in the silence, when she heard the menacing chant again. It was barely a whisper, a phantom that seemed to emerge from behind every tree.
A shiver of dread raked down her spine, prodding her forward. The stables had to be just ahead. She’d come too far to give up. She grabbed a few branches and snapped them before changing directions, laying a false trail every few minutes. The stitch in her side intensified until her gait became clumsy.
She needed a few seconds rest, time to regain her bearings. She couldn’t continue running blindly like a ninny, or she would surely be doomed. She halted and leaned against a large oak tree, ignoring the hard ridges of bark that dug into her spine. Though temperatures were unseasonably low for early autumn, a sting of sweat prickled along the back of her neck.
The air felt thinner, making it difficult to catch her breath.
She tipped her head back to gauge the angle of the moon, but only a trickle of silvery light filtered through the thick branches.
Not enough to calculate her position.
After months of being on the run, she’d been foolish to believe she was finally safe. Last year she had barely managed to escape the fire that killed her mother, barely eluded capture by men who hunted people like her.
People who had special gifts.
With her mother’s death, responsibility fell to her to rescue her cousins. She was the most senior member of their group, groomed to follow in her mother’s footsteps. It didn’t matter that her training wasn’t complete. Her cousins expected her to come up with a plan to keep them all safe—if she didn’t get herself killed first.
Despite her precise planning over the last year, she made a fatal mistake, and her carefully constructed world was crashing down around her.
She could pinpoint the exact time everything went to hell—a freak accident at the mill where she worked.
All she had to do was pretend to be normal, not get involved. She should have concentrated on locating her cousins. Instead, she became mired in a murder investigation…and ended up being the prime suspect.
She should have left well enough alone, but she couldn’t in good conscience stand by while people died. Becoming involved had been a calculated decision—a gamble to save lives—and she lost.
In her quest to find the truth, an innocent girl had died in her place, and the factory workers put the blame squarely on her. They weren’t wrong. Regret tightened around her like a vise. When the girl offered to help locate the killer, Brighid should have refused.
Now the factory workers were out for vengeance.
A tremor shook her hands, and she curled them into fists, struggling against the petrifying fear that threatened to take over. Shivers that had nothing to do with the cold crept over her skin, as if Death had come to stake his claim on her soul.
Torchlight shimmered through the trees as people drew nearer, the light threatening to steal the precious shadows concealing her.
A twig snapped much too close for her comfort. Brighid bit back a yelp and swiveled, frantically searching the trees for the ones determined to drag her to her death. The boogeyman was alive and well in these accursed woods, and baying at the moon for her blood.
Refusing to go meekly to her death, she pushed off the tree and promptly smacked into something hard, large and…goddess save her…human.
Brighid threw herself backwards, only to have strong hands seize her arms and hold her fast. She muffled her scream behind clenched lips, unable to afford drawing more attention.
One person she could evade, more would seal her fate.
She swung out wildly, and cursed when she only ended up hurting herself by slamming into a solid wall of muscle. She brought up her knee to drop him, but her skirts hampered the blow.
Panic clawed up her chest. She couldn’t allow herself to be trapped, or they’d use her as fodder for the flames.
“Brighid.”
Her head snapped up at the raspy sound of her name, and she stilled. A small kernel of hope seized her throat, and she swallowed hard around the lump. “Brin.”
Relief made her knees wobble, and she clutched at his forearms. “Thank heavens. You have to help me. The villagers believe me to be a witch. The men are building a pyre and plan to burn me at the stake.”
As the torches drew ever closer, she couldn’t tear her eyes from the hypnotizing, deadly flames.
She slowly backed away, trying to melt into the su
rrounding trees when muscular arms tightened around her. The first hint of unease skittered along her nerves. Dread slithered down her spine, and Brighid turned to face him. The complete lack of compassion nearly crippled her resolve. “Please, not you, too.”
“You and my sister were alone in the factory, and now she’s dead in her grave. Because of you.” The once-laughing eyes of her friend were as bitterly cold as the North Sea.
His indifference to her plight was almost more damning than his words, the blow striking down the last of her hope in one fell swoop. “You know me. You know I would never hurt anyone. Someone has been sabotaging the mill, laying the blame on me to cover their tracks. Your sister had proof. We met so she could show me, only someone else arrived first and silenced her. Those stairs didn’t collapse on their own. Someone killed her.” Brighid hated the plea in her voice, but she didn’t know how to pierce the thick wall of suspicion he wore like a cloak. He had to believe her. She’d never be able to escape without help. “Killing me won’t stop the accidents.”
“You cast a spell on her. My sister wanted to be strong and independent like you, and it cost her everything. Without your influence, she would still be alive.” His hold tightened, his arms threatening to crush the life out of her. Her fingers tingled, threatening to go numb from his unrelenting grip, and she knew she’d have bruises along her arms come morning.
If she lived that long.
“Brin.” Shock rooted her to the spot. His hatred leached the last of the warmth from her bones.
Frustration brought a rush of tears to her eyes, and she swallowed hard, pressing her lips together, refusing to let them fall. Her powers stirred deep in her bones, sensing the threat, and her breath stalled in her chest.
Holding back her powers was like battling the wind…impossible.
Voices drew closer and apprehension swelled through her, doing its best to strangle her. “I mourn the loss of your sister, but if you don’t release me right this instant, you’ll become nothing more than a murderer and you know it. Your sister would be ashamed of you.”
Silence thickened as he shot her a hesitant glance from the corner of his eye.
His arms gentled.
Surprise coursed through her, her rising powers slowly evaporated, and she pressed her forehead against his shoulder, relief leaving her giddy. “Thank heavens. For a moment, I feared—”
“She’s here!”
His shout dried the words on her lips.
“Don’t do this.” Her voice quivered as fear gnawed at her insides. She shoved at him in a blind panic, but his hold remained a most effective cage. Individual voices rang out in the unnatural silence. The chant of kill the witch echoed in the treetops, surrounding her until it was all she heard.
Nightmares of another time sank their claws into her mind. Her mother’s screams of agony, the smell of her singed hair and charred flesh thickened around her until her stomach gave an alarming lurch. She ruthlessly shoved the horrors of her past away, burying them deep in her mind where they belonged.
“Please! Think. You know me. I’m no witch!” The torchlight grew brighter, the villagers advancing much too fast. She watched the flames dancing through the trees in morbid fascination.
Flames that would soon scorch her skin.
Heat she could already feel nipping at her skirts.
She couldn’t have eluded the massacre at her school only to die here.
“B-Br-in.” Her teeth chattered, making her stutter. Desperation warred against resignation. The moment stretched as the villagers emerged from the forest like spiders crawling out of the darkness.
The finality of her fate settled hard on her shoulders.
A future that seemed almost predestined.
She did not want to die.
Power sizzled along her skin, eager to be unleashed. Only there were too many people. They were too spread out. She had to bide her time. For once in her life, her powers obeyed. Heat sputtered under her skin and slowly absorbed back into her body, biting along her flesh like a swarm of bees in retaliation for being denied, leaving her panting and shaky and utterly helpless when it vanished.
She turned and studied the determined, enraged faces of her executioners. Not one of them would step forward to stop this atrocity. She narrowed her eyes, scrambling to devise another plan. Her cousins were counting on her to stay alive and rescue them. Escape might be more difficult than it had been in the past, but she’d survived too much to surrender now.
“Do you hear something?” Wyatt Graystone halted Crusader, his favorite mount, and cocked his head. Moonlight illuminated the empty road, barren branches overhead swinging in the breeze, twisting like skeletal hands blindly searching for unwary travelers.
“What?” Aaron stopped his horse, carefully examining their surroundings. A pistol appeared in his hand as if out of thin air.
“Do you hear…” Wyatt hesitated, “…chanting?” Eyes narrowed in concentration, he listened as whispered voices rose and fell in the inky darkness.
Aaron tipped his head toward the wind as he listened then gave a slow nod. “Aye, but from where?”
Wyatt had wondered if his brain was pickled by the large quantities of alcohol he’d downed to celebrate the completion of his final job for the war office. Aaron’s confirmation, however, denied him that possibility.
Knowing his friend would follow, he guided his horse off the road and effortlessly dodged the trees he’d played in so often as a child. The farther they traveled from the road, the more the fog thickened, until the air became as murky as soup.
It’d been close to a year since he was home. He should have waited for morning to travel, slept off the toasts, but the disturbing news of mysterious accidents at his factory made this trip urgent. He wanted to believe the incidents were nothing, but they were too numerous to be dismissed without investigations.
His work had regularly led him into dangerous situations. He knew people would kill to silence him and conceal the sensitive information he’d ferreted out over the years. If any of his enemies learned his true name, they wouldn’t hesitate to come after him and destroy everything he held dear just for the pleasure of it.
With each mile closer to home, the uneventful country life he’d dreamed of after the havoc of the past few years faded farther and farther into the distance the harder he tried to grab it.
He wanted peace, damn it!
He wanted to settle down and marry a woman who was without artifice. Someone who had no desire for a hectic London life. This was his one chance to begin again, and he was determined not to mess it up. An unsigned special license, a parting gift from the home office for services rendered, burned in his pocket. They must have exchanged some big favors to acquire the document.
But as he followed the eerie whispers, they swelled into a menacing chant, and the peaceful existence he desperately craved vanished into wispy smoke that slipped through his fingers.
Tension radiated down his spine, a sign of danger that he trusted implicitly.
The last of the liquor’s blissful haze dissipated when he spied at least twenty torches flickering in the heavy darkness. Their horses broke through the clearing behind the factory, and Wyatt pulled up short. Storm clouds swirled across the sky. Wind whipped around them, built speed until the tops of the trees bent to the ground as if they were trying to uproot themselves.
But that wasn’t what held his attention.
“Dear God.” Wyatt fisted the reins, and his heart gave a sickening lurch.
The villagers were gathered around a lone woman tied to a stake. Her dark red hair swirled around her lithe form, and her vivid green eyes were bright and defiant. Faggots were stacked knee-high, enclosing her in a four-foot circle. Three men armed with torches tossed their burdens onto the pile, the fire igniting the hay with a lusty roar.
The hungry flames galvanized Wyatt into action. At his urging, Crusader surged forward without hesitation.
“Halt!”
The
order was drowned under the villager’s cheer.
The fire shot through the kindling and leapt higher, greedily licking the ever-narrowing distance toward the woman.
“Holy hell.” Wyatt leaned over Crusader and urged the beast to even greater speed.
He surged into the crowd at a fast clip. Several grumbled when jostled by the horse’s bulk, while others scattered rather than risk being trampled. Confident Aaron would cover his back if the crowd turned ugly, Wyatt never allowed his attention to waver from the woman behind the growing wall of flames.
The girl remained motionless, her eyes squeezed tight against the heat and smoke. Fire ate its way toward her feet, flirting with the edges of her skirts.
Time stilled.
Voices became muted by the roar of the blaze.
He refused to believe he was too late.
A violent cough racked her petite form, lifting the near-suffocating pressure from his chest.
She was alive, but he had to act immediately if he wanted to keep her that way.
Wind gusted, shooting the flames higher against the night sky. A yard from the inferno, Wyatt reined in Crusader and jumped to the ground before the animal even halted. The impact jarred his knees, but he refused to slow down when seconds could mean the difference between life and death.
The two men who’d tossed the torches blocked his way. Wyatt narrowed his eyes and assessed the danger. Their wide stances threatened mayhem should he interfere. Their shoulders were lined with muscles from years working the fields, but they lacked the focus of a true fighter.
“Step aside.” He tried to muscle his way forward, but the two men shoved back, doing their best to throw him on his backside. The urge to bash in their skulls rippled through him, and only his grim determination to rescue the woman kept him focused on his task.
Behind him, a disembodied voice rose from the crowd. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
Druid Surrender (A Druid Quest Novel Book 1) Page 1
