“Are you well?” Mellie asked fearfully, stepping into the room looking like the world’s saddest and youngest grandma in her gown and wooly socks. Piper sighed and rubbed her eyes. Everything was completely gone now, just the vague, annoying feeling that she knew something she couldn’t remember.
“I’m fine, Mel. Why aren’t you sleeping? Do you need something?”
“It’s Lachlan, he’s … “
Piper jumped up and hurried around the desk. “Is something wrong with Lachlan?” she asked, fearing that the pendant stopped working, or worse, was making him sicker.
“No, he’s fine. He seems better than fine, but he’s strapped on his sword and axe and was going to leave to look for that - that-” Mellie’s voice broke. “We can’t let him, right, Piper?”
Piper took Mellie’s hands. “Oh, Mellie, I wish we could stop him, but he won’t listen to us. He has to do what he thinks is right. He has to stop Brian if he can.”
Mellie’s eyes started to overflow with tears again, and Piper didn’t think she could stand it. She took the girl by the shoulders and turned her around. “Go upstairs and rest,” she said, shoving her out the door. “I have to … do some things … all right, Mellie? To help Sam and Evie.”
Mellie lingered worriedly in the doorway, unwilling to leave Piper alone.
Piper sighed. “Go in the room Evie’s using and on the dresser there’s probably some allergy pills. Take one if you want, it’ll knock you right out. Just one, though.” She made shooing motions and finally Mellie shuffled away.
Piper returned to the desk, grasping the book and waiting for something to happen. Nothing. Why did something happen sometimes and not others? It was like there was a faulty connection she couldn’t quite figure out how to access to complete the circuit. If it was just dumb luck she might run out of time before she could help Evie and Sam. Concentrating didn’t work, emptying her mind didn’t either. She didn’t know why the book was just a book now, when it had flung her into a full blown hallucination, bombarding her with information, a few minutes ago.
Frustrated tears welled up in her eyes. She brushed them away, but not before one fell onto the cover of the book, leaving a small round stain in the cloth. She rubbed at it and once again images and words began to race before her eyes.
She put the book down and the images stopped. She almost screamed and picked it up to fling it across the room. The images started again the second her fingers touched the worn fabric. Furrowing her brow, she put it down and picked it back up several times in a row, all with the same result. When she flipped through the pages, everything was clear to her, no longer just maddening random glimpses. It was as if she’d found the power switch.
“You ancient, tattered piece of crap,” she said to the book. If all it was going to take was some bodily fluid, she would have spit on the stupid thing hours ago. “You better help me figure all this out or I’ll toss you in the fire.”
Glaring at the book, she sat down at the desk and carefully wedged it open with a petrified rock paperweight, then used a pencil to turn the pages. She touched each page with a fingertip, letting the information wash over her, stopping when it was irrelevant to what she was looking for and turning to the next page.
Some of the things she saw were disturbing or downright horrifying and she had to stop and rest, getting up and walking the length of the room until she mercifully forgot. Some of the things were fascinating and even though she knew she shouldn’t waste time she would take just a moment to experience it.
On one page that to Lachlan or Mellie would have just looked like a recipe for various colored vegetable dyes, she saw someone who looked almost exactly like her, it must have been Daria herself, running through a field of heather into a blazing sunset. She stopped and crouched down, holding out her hands in front of her, gazing up into the sky. Black clouds began to gather directly over her head and lightning bolts shot out of the sky and into her outstretched palms. She laughed delightedly before getting up and running off.
Piper had no idea what it meant or why or especially how she could have done it. There were no instructions or notes, just the memory of that wondrous moment, and the feeling of pure joy and power that Daria had felt when the lightning had surged into her hands.
Piper worked carefully, turning each page and touching it, until she finally came to the page she needed. Smiling, she lifted her finger off the yellowed paper and waited. Within a few seconds the information melted away. She tried repeating the process several times, thinking it might help her to memorize everything, but it didn’t work. As soon as she wasn’t connected to the paper anymore, the information was gone.
“It’s like algebra all over again,” she said, then had an idea. A brilliant idea, if she dared think so herself. She tore up a strip of scratch paper and stuck it in between the pages she needed, closing the book with the pencil. Just touching the cover of the book engulfed her with images so she took another piece of paper and wrapped the whole thing up like a present, then opened the drawer of the desk and rifled around for a sticky note. She wrote ‘Open it and touch the page!’’ on it and stuck it to the wrapping. She stuffed the whole thing into the waistband of her great-grandma’s wide legged wool trousers and went to the kitchen to retrieve the foul bundle of bones and the vial of old blood.
She snapped on the electric lights in the kitchen and squinted at the brightness, having grown accustomed to the wavery gas lights in the sitting room where she’d been toiling for so long. Glancing at the clock, she wondered just how long she’d been studying the book. It was almost eleven thirty. Piper gathered up the nasty little packet from the counter, trying not to let the hair touch her and worried that Lachlan might have left already.
How long ago had she sent Mellie upstairs? Lachlan was just getting ready to set out at that time. Piper started to fear she hadn’t expressly asked Lachlan to come find her before he left. Surely he would do that without her having to say so though, right?
She stared down at the bundle in her hands, almost having forgotten why she was in the kitchen. These things, all neatly wrapped up with old human hair, were supposed to get Lachlan and Brian back to their own time. She shrugged and looked around for a shopping bag to put them in so she wouldn’t have to touch or look at them until it was absolutely necessary. The more time that elapsed from having contact with the book, the less she remembered, and the less urgent everything felt. Now that Lachlan had the pendant and wasn’t getting sicker by the minute, she almost didn’t understand why she had to worry at all.
In fact, she decided with renewed determination, she was going to go upstairs and put a stop to his fugitive-seeking need for justice. He wasn’t a federal marshall in this time, whatever he might be back in his. There was a whole posse of modern day police officers out looking for Brian, there was no need for him to go traipsing around in the woods in the middle of the night.
She dropped the bundle back onto the counter and ran for the front stairs, desperate to reach Lachlan before he left. When she saw the light under his door she was able to breathe again, knocking once before shoving it open.
“Lachlan,” she cried, looking around in dismay.
The room was empty. He had tried to make the bed, but the wardrobe door hung open slightly, revealing nothing but modern shirts and sweaters. She looked in the corner where he’d carefully leaned his sword and battle axe when she’d helped him move from the tower down to the second floor so he could be more comfortable, and closer to her. The sword and axe were gone, the assortment of knives he’d lined up on the glossy Victorian dressing table, gone.
A folded piece of paper was placed in the middle of the dresser, leaning against a tarnished silver candle stick. Her name was written on it in untidy script, scratchy and blotchy from Lachlan not knowing how to deal with a ballpoint pen. With a catch in her throat, she picked up the paper but didn’t unfold it. She just couldn’t, not right now. She had to find him. This dumb letter was not goodbye. Instead s
he folded it over again and put it into her front pocket, brushing the wrapped book stuffed into her waistband.
“Oh no,” she said, looking around wildly, as if suddenly remembering an important meeting she might have missed. “Crap, crap. What do I have to do?”
Remembering she’d been in the kitchen to retrieve the bundle, and had just abandoned it there to come on this crazy fool’s errand, she swore at herself and rushed back downstairs. In the kitchen, she put the bundle in a shopping bag and wound the handles around her wrist so she wouldn’t be able to ditch it again so easily. Then, not having the least clue what to do next, sat down on a barstool and tried to calm her fluttering heartbeat.
Lachlan was out in the woods somewhere, trying to find Brian at some old hunting hide that might not even be there anymore. She knew from looking at maps how big the forest was and there was no possible way she’d attempt to follow him. It would be impossible to find him in the daytime, pure idiocy in the dead of night. If she did go out there and they managed to cross paths by some whim of fate, he’d probably have some firm words for her for going out and risking her safety. She smiled and felt tears starting again, thinking she wouldn’t even mind getting bellowed at if it meant he’d come back in one piece.
Realizing, quite bitterly, that it seemed like she was just going to have to sit and wait, she stared impatiently out the kitchen window at the dark yard. As if she willed it to happen, the motion sensor ground lights started to pop on. She heard a deep rumbling swearing and saw a large shadowy figure coming up from the direction of the barn. Her heart almost burst with relief and joy. He was back, he was safe, she could now try to convince him to stay.
Jumping up from the barstool, she adjusted her top, wishing it weren’t so cold here all the time. There was nothing she could do to make her bulky sweater and great-grandma’s trousers seem even remotely sexy. She’d just have to double up on her wiles, then. Lachlan was staying, because she didn’t feel like she could live without him. If she had to besmirch his honor to get him to realize he couldn’t live without her as well, then so be it.
The back door flung open and Piper almost screamed, clapping her hand over her mouth to keep from doing it, not wanting to wake Mellie and bring her into this. The huge man in the doorway was definitely not Lachlan. He had a terrible, angry twist to his mouth, his dark tartan and filthy shirt were liberally spattered with dried blood, his greasy red hair starting to unravel from a tie at the nape of his burly neck. For a split second he stopped in his tracks and his face went slack with what seemed like recognition, then quickly changed to confusion, then back to its furious sneer.
“You are not … who are you?” he asked, slamming the door behind him, blinking in the harsh kitchen lights. Piper scrambled to put the counter between them, reaching around for a knife from the butcher’s block behind her. He laughed humorlessly and shook his head. “You needn’t bother finding a wee knife,” he said coldly, advancing toward her. He was as big as Lachlan and was across the kitchen in two strides. She continued to back up until she bumped into the refrigerator. Maybe she could fling a frozen steak at him.
“Where’s Lachlan?” she tried to demand, but it came out a bit less authoritative than what she might have wished. He knitted his brow and shook his head. He was right on the other side of the counter and this question caused him to pause. This close, Piper could see he was sweating and pale under all the grime and dried blood.
He’s sick, she thought with satisfaction. He lost the pendant and now he’s sick. “You don’t know about Lachlan?” she asked, feeling slightly braver. “Lachlan Ferguson.” She paused and let that sink in.
Brian clearly recognized Lachlan’s name and was none too pleased to hear it.
“He’s here too,” she continued, edging sideways toward the hall door. If she could make a run for it she might be able to get out the front of the house and find a place to hide. He was big and unwieldy and unwell. She clung to the faintest hope that she could outrun him.
“That is no’ possible,” he rumbled, shaking his head.
“It is possible. He’s here to kill you,” she taunted.
Brian slammed his fist onto the counter, rattling the glassware that hung above it, then leaned on the counter with both hands, letting his head drop forward.
“Who are you?” he asked, almost desperately. “You look so like her, yet so different.”
“Do you mean Daria?” Piper asked, edging away a little more.
He looked up abruptly, his eyes glittering, and Piper almost panicked and bolted. He glanced at the kitchen doorway and shook his head again, as if he could read her thoughts. Damn warrior instincts. She gripped the refrigerator handle to keep from making a terrorized dash anyway.
“She’s related to me. I mean, I’m related to her. She’s the one who sent you and Lachlan here, isn’t she?”
“Not Ferguson,” he boomed angrily, hitting the counter again. “She would no’ have done that.”
“Well, maybe she didn’t mean to,” Piper tried to appease him. “I - I think it might be unstable. The spell, or whatever she did.”
Brian stared at her and wiped his face in frustration. “I canno’ understand any of you Godless people.” He glanced up at the ceiling, tears glistening in his red rimmed eyes. “And the lights … my head is bursting.”
“You’re ill,” Piper said, affronted by the Godless comment, coming from him of all people. “You lost your pendant and now you’re getting weaker by the minute, am I right?” She expected the counter to take another pounding but he merely looked at her. She shivered.
“Aye, it’s no’ in the stables where I thought it would be.”
“I have another one,” she said rashly, her heart starting to pound. He glared at her and shook his head hopelessly as if too tired to call her out on her lies. “I do,” she said. “And I know how to get you back. I have the power, same as Daria. I can get you back.”
“Truly?” he said, spreading his hands on the counter. She saw all the blood under his fingernails and felt sick. And angry. “And you truly have another talisman against this illness?”
She nodded vigorously. “Yep. You can put it on and get your strength back, and I can send you and Lachlan home to your own time if I want.” She took a step forward.
He kept looking at her strangely and then smiled. He must have thought because she so greatly resembled Daria, that she must be like her as well. She smiled back and let him believe it for a second before she coldly delivered her first blow.
“And then Lachlan can hunt you down and string you up, or hack off your head, or whatever it is you do to each other back in your time.”
Brian looked stunned at the venom in her voice, he couldn’t reconcile it with what he thought she was. She made a sound of disdain.
“I could do that,” she continued, her heart pounding so hard she wondered if she’d stay conscious much longer. He just gaped at her, not sure what to believe. “But that would be way too easy.” She grappled under her sweater and pulled her phone out of her pocket. Her hands were shaking violently and she could barely turn it on. “You know we don’t do that here, now. Kill people. We lock them up in little boxes for the rest of their lives.” She punched the emergency number and held it up to show him, even though she knew he didn’t have a clue what she was doing. He was shaking his head slowly. “I press one more button and police will be swarming this place in seconds to take you away. You can stay in this Godless time until you die an old man, in a cage, with fluorescent lights shining down on you the whole time.”
He watched with dread as she turned the phone back around, and saw that she was going to press something on it, like she threatened. He’d seen so many things that he never thought possible since he’d been in this time, that he wholly believed that the tiny black thing that lit up could do what she said it would.
Piper watched him realize he wasn’t going to get away with murdering poor old Mrs. Abernathy, or with his other crimes, that he wa
s thoroughly screwed in both times. Just as she was about to press the send button, he knocked the phone out of her hand with a roar of desperate rage and was around to her side of the counter before it hit the floor. Before she could turn to make a break for the door, his hands were around her throat, throttling her.
Even in his weakened state, he was lethally powerful. The sickness he’d begun suffering from was probably the only thing that kept him from instantly snapping her neck. She tried to gasp out that she was the only one who could get him back, but no words could escape his vice-like grip. Kicking did nothing, it was like kicking a tree trunk and her tiny fingers were useless in trying to pry away his massive hands. He was still bellowing with anger as he shook the life out of her, bending her back over the counter. The lights in the ceiling started to flicker and black spots began closing in on her vision. She thought of Evie and Sam and Lachlan and was sorry she’d failed them.
As her vision completely faded to black, there was a terrible cracking sound and Brian’s grip loosened from her neck, but now he was crushing her against the counter, his entire weight threatening to squish her like a bug into the marble. Something warm and wet splashed against her face and neck and just as suddenly as he’d slumped onto her, Brian was lifted up and off her.
She struggled to stand upright, gasping for breath. She didn’t know where to look, everything seemed to be red. Lachlan stood in front of her, chest heaving, covered in blood. Brian lay at her feet, the battle axe buried deep between his shoulder blades, a huge puddle forming around him. Still gasping for air, she reached up and wiped her face, examining her hand which came away smeared with blood, then looked down at her sweater, which was drenched in red. Lachlan grabbed a dishcloth from the sink and carefully swabbed at her face, trying to wipe away Brian’s blood, while she stood there gulping air and choking.
“You - he’s - you killed him,” she finally rasped. Breathing hurt, speaking was agony to her manhandled throat.
Lost Highlander Page 18
