The Highlander Series 7-Book Bundle

by Karen Marie Moning

  “Move the fabric and let’s see what’s under it, Taylor,” Steinmann cut him off impatiently.

  “But the cloth may disintegrate when handled,” Taylor protested.

  “We haven’t come this far to leave without discovering what’s in the chest,” Steinmann snapped. “Move the cloth.”

  Lisa battled an urge to pop out from under the desk, curiosity nearly overriding her common sense and instinct for self-preservation.

  There was a long pause. “Well? What is it?” Steinmann asked.

  “I have no idea,” Taylor said slowly. “I’ve neither translated tales of it nor seen sketches in my research. It doesn’t look quite medieval, does it? It almost looks … why … futuristic,” he said uneasily. “Frankly, I’m baffled. The chest is pristine, yet the fabric is ancient, and this”—he gestured at the flask—“is damned odd.”

  “Perhaps you aren’t as much of an expert as you would have me believe, Taylor.”

  “No one knows more about the Gaels and Picts than I do,” he replied stiffly. “But some artifacts simply aren’t mentioned in any records. I assure you, I will find the answers.”

  “And you’ll have it examined?” Steinmann said.

  “I’ll take it with me now—”

  “No. I’ll call you when we’re ready to release it.”

  There was a pause, then: “You plan to invite someone else to examine it, don’t you?” Taylor said. “You question my ability.”

  “I simply need to get it cataloged, photographed, and logged into our files.”

  “And logged into someone else’s collection?” Taylor said tightly.

  “Put it back, Taylor.” Steinmann closed his fingers around Taylor’s wrist, lowering the flask back to the cloth. He slipped the tongs from Taylor’s hand, closed the chest, and placed the tongs beside it. “I brought you here. I’ll tell you what I need from you and when. And I’d advise you to stay out of my business.”

  “Fine,” Taylor snapped. “But when you discover no one else knows what it is, you’ll be calling me. You can’t move an artifact that can’t be identified. I’m the only one who can track this thing down and you know it.”

  Steinmann laughed. “I’ll see you out.”

  “I can find my own way.”

  “But I’ll rest easier knowing I’ve escorted you,” Steinmann said softly. “It wouldn’t do to leave such a passionate antiquity worshiper as yourself wandering the museum on his own.”

  The shoes retreated with muffled steps across the carpet. The click of a key in the lock jarred Lisa into action. Damn and double damn! Normally when she left, she depressed the button latch on the door—no lowly maid was entrusted with keys. Steinmann had bypassed the button latch and actually used a key to lock the deadbolt. She jerked upright and banged her head against the underside of the desk. “Ow!” she exclaimed softly. As she clutched the edge and drew herself upright, she paused to look at the chest.

  Fascinated, she touched the cool wood. Beautifully engraved, the black wood gleamed in the low light. Bold letters were seared into the top in angry, slanted strokes. What did the chest contain that had perplexed two sophisticated purveyors of antiquities? Despite the fact that she was locked in Steinmann’s office and had no doubt that he would return in moments, she was consumed by curiosity. Futuristic? Gingerly, she ran her fingers over the chest, seeking the square pressure latch they’d mentioned, then paused. The strange letters on the lid seemed almost to … pulse. A shiver of foreboding raced up her spine.

  Silly goose—open it! It can’t hurt you. They touched it.

  Resolved, she isolated the square and depressed it with her thumb. The lid swung upward with the faint popping sound she’d heard earlier. A flask lay inside, surrounded by dusty tatters of ancient fabric. The flask was fashioned of a silver metal and seemed to shimmer, as if the contents were energized. She cast a nervous glance at the door. She knew she had to get out of the office before Steinmann returned, yet she felt strangely transfixed by the flask. Her eyes drifted from door to flask and back again, but the flask beckoned. It said, Touch me, in the same tone all the artifacts in the museum spoke to Lisa. Touch me while no guards are about, and I will tell you of my history and my legends. I am knowledge. …

  Lisa’s fingertips curled around the flask.

  The world shifted on its axis beneath her feet. She stumbled, and suddenly she …

  Couldn’t …

  Stop …

  Falling …

  DUNNOTTAR, SCOTLAND, 1314

  WATER SPRAYED LISA’S JEANS-CLAD LEGS FOR THE SECOND time that day as the man surged from the bath. He towered over her, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a snarl.

  Lisa blinked incredulously. Once. Twice. And a third time very slowly, giving the apparition time to evaporate. It didn’t. The nude giant remained, his fierce expression unwavering, his eyes narrowed. What on earth had happened to Steinmann’s office? He wouldn’t fire her if he found her with a nude man—he’d have her arrested!

  Lisa closed her eyes and shifted her feet, cautiously ascertaining that the world was solid beneath her boots again. Only when she was firmly convinced that she stood in Steinmann’s office clutching a medieval flask did she open them.

  She was not in Steinmann’s office.

  She lost her breath in a great exhalation of astonishment as she looked—really looked—at the man. Droplets of water glistened on his skin. Flames leaped in the hearth behind him, bronzing and shadowing the slopes of his muscles. He was the tallest man she’d ever seen, but his size was not confined to his improbable height. His shoulders were massive, and his broad chest tapered to a lean, muscled abdomen, tight hips, and long, powerful legs.

  And he was nude.

  She expelled a sigh of protest. He could not be real. And because he couldn’t be real, there was no harm in dropping her gaze for a quick tally of his perfection. A flawlessly proportioned man who didn’t really exist was standing naked before her. Where would any healthy twenty-three-year-old woman look? She looked.

  That sealed it. He couldn’t be real. Cheeks flaming, she averted her gaze and faltered back a step.

  He roared something at her in a language she didn’t understand.

  Stealing a glance at his face, she shrugged helplessly, unable to make sense of her situation.

  He bellowed again, gesturing angrily. He spoke nonstop in a stream of words for several minutes, waving his arms and glowering.

  She watched him, mouth agape, her confusion deepening. It didn’t help that the man seemed oblivious to the disconcerting fact that he was gloriously nude. She found her tongue and, with some difficulty, coaxed it into action. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand you. I have no idea what you’re saying.”

  He flinched as if she’d hit him; his dark eyes narrowed and he scowled. If she’d thought he was angry before, that was only because she hadn’t yet seen him truly furious. “You are English!” he spat, swiftly switching to English, though with a thick, rolling brogue.

  Lisa spread her hands as if to say So what? What was his point, and why was he so angry with her?

  “Doona move!” he roared.

  She remained motionless, cataloging him as if he were one of the museum’s recent acquisitions, absorbing the incredible length and breadth of his body. The man dripped such intense sexuality that fantasies of a savage warrior, recognizing no law but his own, shivered through her ancestral memory. The danger rolling off him was frightening and seductive. You’re dreaming, remember? You fell asleep and only dreamed you woke up and Steinmann came. But you’re still asleep and none of this is really happening.

  She scarcely noticed when the man reached for the weapon propped against the tub. Her mind registered dim amusement that her figment of fancy came replete with avenging sword. Until, with a graceful flick of his wrist, he pointed the deadly weapon at her.

  It was her dream, she reminded herself. She could simply ignore the sword. Dreams were penalty-free zones. If she couldn’t ha
ve a boyfriend in real life, at least she could savor this virtual experience. Smiling, she extended a hand to touch his flawlessly sculpted abdomen—certainly the stuff of dreams—and the tip of the sword grazed her jaw, forcing her eyes to meet his. A girl could get a kink in her neck from looking that high, she decided.

  “Doona think to distract me from my cause,” he growled.

  “What cause?” she asked, feeling short of breath.

  At that moment the door crashed open. A second man, dark haired and clad in a strange wrap of cloth, burst into the room.

  “Whatever it is, I doona have time for it now, Galan!” said the man holding the blade to her neck.

  The other man looked astounded at the sight of Lisa. “We heard you roar nigh down to the kitchen, Cin.”

  “Sin?” Lisa echoed disbelievingly. Oh yes, he is definitely sin. Any man who looks like this must be pure sin.

  “Get out!” Circenn thundered.

  Galan hesitated for a moment, then reluctantly retreated from the room and closed the door.

  As Lisa’s gaze returned to Sin, she looked down again at his improbable endowments.

  “Stop looking there, woman!”

  Her eyes swept up to his. “Nobody looks like you. And no one speaks like you, except maybe Sean Connery in The Highlander. See? Proof positive that I’m dreaming. You’re a figment of my overtaxed, sleep-deprived, traumatized mind.” She nodded firmly.

  “I assure you, I am most certainly not a dream.”

  “Oh, please.” She rolled her eyes. Closed them. Opened them. He was still there. “I was in the museum and now I’m in a bedroom with a nude man named Sin? How foolish do you think I am?”

  “Circenn. Cir-cin,” he repeated. “Those who are close to me call me Cin.”

  “You can’t be real.”

  He had sleepy, hooded eyes so dark that they seemed rimmed by kohl. His nose was strong, arrogant. His teeth—and God knows she was getting a good look at them with all the scowling he was doing—were straight and white enough to make her dentist weep with envy. His forehead was high, and a mane of midnight hair fell to his shoulders. Although none of his features was current model material, except for his sensual lips, the overall effect was that of a savagely beautiful face. Warrior-lord was the word perched on her tongue.

  The tip of the sword gently poked the soft underside of her chin. When she felt a bead of moisture on her neck, she was amazed by the verisimilitude of her dream. She brushed her fingers over the spot, then gazed at the drop of blood in astonishment.

  “Does one bleed in a dream? I’ve never bled in a dream before,” she murmured.

  He flicked the baseball cap off her head so quickly that it frightened her. She hadn’t even glimpsed the movement of his hand. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders, and she lunged for the cap, only to draw up short on the point of the sword. The top of her head barely reached his chest.

  “Give me my cap,” she snapped. “Daddy gave it to me.”

  He regarded her in silence.

  “It’s all I have from him, and he’s dead!” she said heatedly.

  Was that a flicker of compassion in his dark eyes?

  He extended the cap without a word.

  “Thank you,” she said stiffly, folding the bill and stuffing it into the back pocket of her jeans. Her gaze dropped to the floor as she pondered the sword at her throat. If it was a dream, she could will things to happen. Or unhappen. Squeezing her eyes shut, she willed the sword to disappear, then swallowed tightly as cold metal bit into her neck. Next, she tried willing the man to disappear; the tub and fire she graciously conceded to keep.

  Opening her eyes, she found the man still towering over her.

  “Give me the flask, lass.”

  Lisa’s eyebrows rose. “The flask? This is part of the dream? You see this?”

  “Of course I do! Blinding though your beauty is, I am not a fool!”

  My beauty is blinding? Flabbergasted, she handed over the flask.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  Lisa sought refuge in formality; it had served her well in the past as a compass through unknown territory. This dream certainly qualified as unknown territory. Never before had she dreamed so lucidly yet been so out of control of the elements of her dream, nor had her subconscious ever before conjured up a man like this. She wanted to know from what prehistoric corner of her soul the leviathan had come.

  “Would you mind dressing? Your … er … state of, uh … undress is not conducive to a serious discussion. If you put on some clothes and put down your sword, I’m certain we’ll be able to sort things out.” She hoped he would find the note of optimism in her voice persuasive.

  He scowled as he looked down at his body. Lisa could have sworn that the color in his face deepened as he realized his state of arousal.

  “What do you expect of me when you have clad yourself in such a fashion?” he demanded. “I am a man.”

  As if I’ve been suffering doubts on that score, she thought wryly. A dream of a man, no less.

  Snatching a woven blanket of crimson and black, he tossed it over his shoulder so that it draped the front of his body. He grabbed a small pouch, stuffed the flask into it, and finally lowered his sword.

  Lisa relaxed and took a few steps back, but as she did so, her hat fell out of her back pocket. She turned around and bent to retrieve it. Turning back to face him, she caught his gaze fixed in the vicinity where her behind, encased in tight jeans, had been only an instant ago. Dumbfounded by the realization that the flawless apparition had been perusing her derriere, she glanced at the fabric he’d wrapped around himself, then cautiously at his face. His dark eyes smoldered. She had a sudden insight that wherever she was, women didn’t usually wear jeans. Perhaps not even trousers.

  His jaw tensed and his breathing quickened noticeably. He looked every inch a predator, poised in the heightened alertness that precedes the kill.

  “They’re all I have!” she said defensively.

  He raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “I doona wish to discuss it, lass. Not now. Perhaps never.”

  They looked at each other in measuring silence. Then, for no reason she could define, drawn by a force beyond her ability to resist, she found herself moving toward him. It was he who stepped back this time. With one swift ripple of gorgeous muscle, he was out of the room.

  The instant the door swung shut, Lisa’s legs buckled and she collapsed to her knees, her heart pounding painfully in her chest. The familiar sound of metal sliding across the door told her she was once more locked in. Dear God, she had to wake up.

  But somewhere in her heart she had begun to suspect that she was not dreaming.

  “SHALL WE REMOVE THE BODY, CIRCENN?” GALAN asked, when Circenn entered the kitchen.

  Circenn drew a quick breath. “The body?” He rubbed his jaw, concealing a wince of anger behind his hand. Nothing was unfolding as he wished. He’d left his chambers, planning to find some cider wine in the kitchen, clear his head in private, and make some decisions—specifically, what to do with the lovely woman he was bound by honor to kill. But he was to be granted no such reprieve. Galan and Duncan Douglas, his trusted friends and advisers, occupied a small table in the kitchen of the keep, watching him intently.

  Since either the English or the Scots kept burning down Dunnottar every time it changed hands, the hastily patched ruin of the keep was drafty, cold, and unfinished. They were stationed at Dunnottar only until the Bruce’s men relieved them, which was expected any day now, so no further repairs would be made. The Greathall opened to the night sky where the roof should have been, so the kitchen was substituted for the dining hall. Tonight, unfortunately, it was a gathering place as well.

  “The bearer of the flask,” Galan prodded helpfully.

  Circenn scowled. He had hidden the flask in his sporran, hoping for time to resign himself to fulfilling his oath. Several years ago, he’d informed the Douglas brothers of the binding curse he had placed on the c
hest and of the vow he had sworn to Adam Black. He had felt more comfortable knowing that when it did appear, if for some reason he was unable to fulfill his oath, this trusted pair would see it finished.

  But what did one do when oaths were in direct opposition to each other? To Adam, he had sworn to kill the bearer of the flask. Long ago, at his mother’s knee, he’d sworn never to harm a woman for any reason.

  Galan merely shrugged at Circenn’s scowl and said, “I told Duncan she had arrived. I saw the flask in her hand. We have been awaiting its return. Shall we remove the body?”

  “That might be a bit awkward. ‘The body’ is still breathing,” Circenn said irritably.

  “Why?” Duncan frowned.

  “Because I have not yet killed her.”

  Galan appraised him for a moment. “She is lovely, is she not?”

  Circenn didn’t miss the accusation. “Have I ever allowed loveliness to corrupt my honor?”

  “Nay, and I am certain you will not now. You have never broken an oath.” Galan’s challenge was unmistakable.

  Circenn sank into a chair.

  At thirty, Galan was the second eldest of the five Douglas brothers. Tall and dark, he was a disciplined warrior who, like Circenn, believed in strict adherence to rules. His idea of a proper battle included months of careful preparation, intense study of the enemy, and a detailed strategy from which they would not waver once the attack was begun.

  Duncan, the youngest in the family, held a more nonchalant attitude. Six feet tall, he was ruggedly handsome, always had a day’s growth of beard so black that it made his jaw look blue, and his plaid was usually rumpled, hastily knotted, and looked like it was about to slip off. He drew lasses like flies to honey and wholeheartedly availed himself of the fairer sex’s attraction to him. Duncan’s idea of a proper battle was to wench right up to the last minute, fall out of bed, then dash off with a plaid and a sword and plunge into the melee, laughing all the while. Duncan was a bit unusual, but all the Douglases were forces to be reckoned with in one way or another. The eldest brother, James, was the Bruce’s chief lieutenant and a brilliant strategist.