The Highlander Series 7-Book Bundle

by Karen Marie Moning

  “Right away, milady.” With a doting look at Gwen, the butler rushed off.

  “Why don’t we get to know each other while they catch up?” Gwen asked, turning back to Chloe. “They’ve not seen each other in quite some time.”

  Chloe glanced again at Dageus. He and Drustan were still standing in the middle of the great hall, talking intently. Just then, as if he felt her gaze on him, Dageus looked at her, tensed, and started to walk toward her.

  Surprised by his concern for her at what was clearly a difficult moment for him, Chloe shook her head, assuring him wordlessly that she was fine.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he turned back to Drustan.

  Chloe smiled at Gwen. “I’d like that.”

  • 13 •

  When the lasses hastened off to the solar, Drustan and Dageus adjourned to the privacy of the library. A spacious, masculine room with cherry bookcases recessed into paneled walls, comfortable chairs and ottomans, a dusky-rose marble fireplace and tall, bay windows, the library was Drustan’s retreat, much as the glass-faced solar that overlooked the gardens was Gwen’s.

  Drustan couldn’t take his eyes off his twin brother. He’d nigh given up hope that Dageus would come home. He’d been dreading what he might have to do if his brother didn’t. But he was here now, and the tight fist that had been clutched around his heart since the day he’d read and, in a fit of fury, burned the letter their da had left him, finally, blessedly, eased a bit.

  Dageus tossed himself into a chair near the fireplace, stretched out his legs, and propped his feet on a stool. “What think you of the castle, Drustan? It appears to have withstood the centuries well.”

  Aye, that it had. The castle had surpassed all of Drustan’s expectations. If ever a man had received proof of his brother’s love, it had been in the gift of their home. Then Dageus had topped even that gift by sacrificing himself to ensure Drustan would survive to live in it. But Dageus had always been like that: though not a man to whom soft words came readily, when he loved, he loved to a dangerous point. ’Tis both his greatest strength and weakness, Silvan had oft remarked, and truer words had never been uttered. He had the wild, true heart of a child, in the body of a jaded man. Intensely guarded, unless he chose to give it, yet once given, it was given completely. Without thought to his own survival.

  “ ’Tis even more magnificent than I’d imagined when we worked on the plans,” Drustan said. “I can’t thank you enough, Dageus. Not for this. Not for anything.” How did one thank a brother for sacrificing his soul for one’s own happiness? My life for yours, his brother had chosen. Thanks weren’t possible.

  Dageus shrugged. “You drew the sketches.”

  Ah, so he will pretend I meant only the castle and evade deeper issues, Drustan thought. “You built it. Gwen loves it too. And we’ve nigh finished having electricity and plumbing installed.”

  There was so much they needed to talk about, and naught of it would be easy to address. After a moment’s hesitation, Drustan decided to confront it directly, for he suspected Dageus would talk circles around it.

  Crossing to the liquor cabinet, Drustan splashed Macallan into two glasses, and handed one to Dageus. Thirty-five-year-old single-malt scotch, only the finest for his brother’s return. “So, how bad is it?” he asked matter-of-factly.

  Dageus flinched, a small, hastily contained reaction, but there. Then he tossed back the drink in one swallow and handed him the glass for a refill. Drustan complied, waiting.

  His brother sipped more slowly at the second one. “Worse now that I’m back on Scottish soil,” he said finally.

  “When did your eyes change?” It wasn’t only his eyes that had changed, Dageus moved differently. His most minute gestures were carefully executed, as if he could contain what was in him only by constant vigilance.

  A tiny muscle leapt in Dageus’s jaw. “How dark are they?”

  “They’re not gold anymore. A strange color, nigh like your drink.”

  “They change when it starts to get bad. When I’ve used too much magic.”

  “What are you using magic for?” Drustan asked carefully.

  Dageus tossed back the rest of his drink, rose, and went to stand before the fire. “I was using it to obtain the texts I needed to see if there was a way to … get rid of them.”

  “What is it like?”

  Dageus rubbed his jaw, exhaling. “ ’Tis as if I have a beast inside me, Drustan. ’Tis pure power and I find myself using it without even thinking. When did you know?” he asked, with a faint, bitter smile.

  Cold eyes, Drustan thought. They hadn’t always been cold. Once they’d been warm, sunny-gold, and full of easy laughter. “I’ve known since the first, brother.”

  A long silence. Then Dageus snorted and shook his head.

  “You should have let me die, Dageus,” Drustan said softly. “Damn you for not letting me die.”

  Thank you for not letting me die, he added silently, torn by emotion. It was a terrible mixture of grief and guilt and gratefulness. If not for his brother’s sacrifice, he would never have seen his wife again. Gwen would have raised their babies in the twenty-first century, alone. The day he’d read Silvan’s letter, and discovered the price his twin had paid to ensure his future, he’d nearly gone crazy, hating him for giving up his own life, loving him for doing it.

  “Nay,” Dageus said. “I should have watched over you more carefully and kept the fire from happening.”

  “ ’Twas not your fault—”

  “Och, aye, it was. Do you know where I was that eve? I was down in the lowlands in the bed of a lass whose name I can’t even recall—” He broke off abruptly. “How did you know? Did Da warn you?”

  “Aye. He left a letter for us explaining what had happened, advising that you’d disappeared. Our descendant, Christopher, and his wife, Maggie—whom you’ll meet anon—gave it to me shortly after I’d awakened. You called not long after that.”

  “Yet you pretended to accept my lies. Why?”

  Drustan shrugged. “Christopher went to Manhattan twice and watched you. You were doing naught I felt needed to be stopped.”

  His reasons for not going to America to retrieve his brother were complicated. Not only had he been loath to leave Gwen’s side while she was pregnant, he’d been wary of forcing a confrontation. After talking with him on the phone, he’d known that Dageus was indeed dark, but was holding on somehow. He’d suspected that were Dageus a tenth as powerful as Silvan believed, trying to force Dageus to return would have accomplished naught. Had it come to force, one of them would have died. Now that Dageus was there in the room with him, Drustan knew ’twould have been himself who’d died. The power in Dageus was immense, and he wondered how he’d withstood it this long.

  Cautiously, when Dageus turned his back to him and busied himself opening a new bottle of whisky, Drustan reached out with his Druid senses, curious to know more about what they were dealing with.

  He nearly doubled over. The whisky he’d sipped, curdled in his gut and tried to claw its way back up.

  He retracted instantly, frantically, violently. By Amergin, how did Dageus stand it? A monstrous, icy, rapacious beast pulsed beneath his skin, snaking through him, coiled, but barely. It had a fierce, gluttonous appetite. It was huge and twisted and suffocating. How could he breathe?

  Dageus turned, one brow arched, his gaze icy. “Never do that again,” he warned softly. Without bothering to ask, he poured Drustan a refill.

  Drustan snatched it from his hand and tossed it back swiftly. Only after the heat of it had exploded in his chest, did he trust himself to speak. He’d not kept his senses open long enough to explore the thing. His throat constricted by whisky and shock, he said hoarsely, “How did you know I was doing it? I scarce even—”

  “I felt you. So did they. You doona want them to. Leave them alone.”

  “Aye,” Drustan rasped. He hadn’t needed the warning; he had no intention of opening his senses around his brother again. “Are
they different personalities, Dageus?” he forced out.

  “Nay. They have no separateness, no voice.” As yet, Dageus thought darkly. He suspected the day might well come when they found a voice. The moment Drustan had reached out, they’d stirred, sensing power, and for a moment he’d had the terrible suspicion that what was in him could drain Drustan, suck him dry somehow.

  “So, it’s not as if you can actually hear them?”

  “ ’Tis—och, how can I explain this?” Dageus fell silent a moment, then said, “I feel them inside me, their knowledge as my own, their hunger as my own. It intensifies my desire for even simple things such as food and drink, to say nothing of women. There’s a constant temptation to use magic and the more I use it, the colder I feel. The colder I feel, the more reasonable it seems to use it, and the stronger my desires become. I suspect there’s a line that, should I cross, I will no longer be myself. This thing inside me will take over. I doona know what would happen to me then. I think I would be gone.”

  Drustan inhaled sharply. He could see a man being devoured by such a thing.

  “My thought patterns change. They become primitive. Naught matters but what I want.”

  “But you’ve controlled it this long.” How? Drustan marveled. How did a man survive with such a thing in him?

  “ ’Tis more difficult here. ’Tis why I left in the first place. What did Da tell you to do, Drustan?”

  “He told me to save you. And we will.” He deliberately omitted the last line of their father’s letter. And if you cannot save him, you must kill him. Now he knew why.

  Dageus searched his gaze intently, as if not convinced that was the entirety of what Silvan had said. Drustan knew he was about to push, so he launched an offensive of his own.

  “What of the lass you brought? How much does she know?” Though he was amazed that Dageus could still feel anything at all with that inside him, he’d not missed the possessiveness in Dageus’s gaze, or the reluctance with which he’d left her in Gwen’s care.

  “Chloe knows me as naught more than a man.”

  “She doesn’t feel it in you?” Lucky lass, Drustan thought.

  “She senses something. She watches me strangely at times, as if perplexed.”

  “And how long do you think you’ll be able to maintain the pretense?”

  “Christ, Drustan, give a man a moment to catch his breath, will you?”

  “Do you plan to tell her?”

  “How?” Dageus asked flatly. “Och, lass, I’m a Druid from the sixteenth century and I broke an oath and now I’m possessed by the souls of four-thousand-year-old evil Druids and if I doona find a way to get rid of them I will turn into a scourge upon the earth and the only thing that keeps me sane is tooping?”

  “What?” Drustan blinked. “What was that about tooping?”

  “It makes the darkness ease. When I begin to feel cold and detached, for some reason bedding a wench makes me feel human again. Naught else seems to work.”

  “Ah, that’s why you brought her.”

  Dageus gave him a dark look. “She resists.”

  Drustan choked on a swallow of whisky. Dageus needed tooping to keep that heinous beast at bay, yet he’d brought a woman with him who refused his bed? “Why haven’t you seduced her?” he exclaimed.

  “I’m working on it,” Dageus snarled.

  Drustan gaped at him. Dageus could seduce any woman. If not gently, then with a rough, wild wooing that never failed. He’d not missed the way the wee lass had looked at his brother. She needed no more than a firm nudge. So why the bletherin’ hell hadn’t Dageus nudged? A sudden thought occurred to him. “By Amergin, she’s the one, isn’t she?” he breathed.

  “What one?” Dageus stalked to a tall window, pushed the drapes aside and stared out at the night. He slid the window up and breathed deeply, greedily, of sweet, chilly Highland air.

  “The moment I saw Gwen, a part of me simply said ‘mine.’ And from that moment, though I didn’t understand it, I knew that I would do aught ever it took to keep her. ’Tis as if the Druid in us recognizes our mate instantly, the one we could exchange the binding vows with. Is Chloe that one?”

  Dageus’s head whipped around and the unguarded, startled look on his face was answer enough for Drustan. His brother had heard the same voice. Drustan suddenly felt a surge of hope, despite what he’d felt inside his brother. He knew from personal experience that oft love could accomplish miracles when all else seemed destined to fail. Dageus may be dark, but by some miracle, he wasn’t lost to it yet.

  And when one was dealing with evil, Drustan suspected love might be the most potent weapon of all.

  When Gwen joined them in the library a short time later, without Chloe, Dageus tensed. He’d yet to speak to Drustan about the attempt on Chloe’s life, and about the Draghar—whoever they were.

  Is she the one? Drustan had asked.

  Och, aye, she was the one for him. Now that Drustan had remarked upon it, Dageus understood it was what he’d sensed from the very first—the kind a man kept, indeed. ’Twas no wonder he’d refused to use a memory spell on her, and send her on her way. He was incapable of letting her go. ’Twas also no wonder he’d not been satisfied with merely trying to bed her.

  In this, his darkest hour, fate had gifted him with his mate. The irony of it was rich. How was a man to woo a woman under such conditions? He knew naught of wooing. He knew only of seduction, of conquering. Tenderness of the heart, soft words and pledges, had been burned out of him long ago. The youngest son of no noble consequence, pagan to boot, he’d caught too many of his youthful follies attempting to seduce his own brother.

  One too many of them had coyly suggested a three-way bout of love-play—and no’ with another woman. Nay, always with his own twin.

  Four times he’d watched Drustan try to secure a wife—and fail.

  He’d learned young and learned well that he possessed one thing a woman wanted, hence he’d perfected his skills and taken comfort from the knowledge that while women might eschew intimacy with him, they never turned him away from their beds. He was always welcome there. Even when their husband was in the next room, a fact that had only deepened his cynicism involving so-called matters of the heart.

  Except Chloe. She was the one woman he’d tried to seduce that had refused him.

  Yet remained at his side.

  Aye, but how long will she remain there when she discovers what you are?

  He had no answer for that, only a relentless determination to have all of her that he could. And if that determination was more akin to the desperation of a drowning man than a courageous one, so be it. The night he’d tempted death and danced on the slippery terrace wall above the snow-covered city of Manhattan—and fallen on the safe side—he’d made a promise to himself: that he would not yield to despair again. He would fight it any way he could, with any weapon he could find, till the bitter end.

  “Where is she?” he hissed, surging to his feet.

  Gwen blinked. “It’s wonderful to see you, too, Dageus,” she said sweetly. “Nice of you to drop in. We’ve only been waiting forever.”

  “Where?”

  “Relax. She’s upstairs taking a long shower. The poor girl traveled for an entire day and, though she said she slept a bit on the plane, she’s clearly exhausted. What on earth have you been doing to her? I adore her, by the way,” Gwen added, smiling. “She’s a brainy geek like me. Now, can I have a hug?”

  His tension ebbed slowly, aided by the knowledge that if Chloe was safe anywhere, it was within these walls. He’d personally chiseled the protection spells into the cornerstones when the castle had been built. So long as she remained within them, no harm would find her.

  He skirted the sofa and opened his arms to Gwen, the woman who’d once saved his life. The woman he’d pledged his own to protect. “ ’Tis good to see you again, lass, and you’re looking lovely as ever.” He bent his head to kiss her.

  “No lips,” Drustan warned. “Unless you wis
h me to be kissing Chloe.”

  Dageus averted his face swiftly. “How are the wee bairn, lass?” he asked, with a glance at her rounded belly.

  Gwen beamed and prattled on about her most recent doctor’s visit. When she paused finally for a breath, she peered at him intently. “Has Drustan told you our idea yet?”

  Dageus shook his head. He was still having a hard time fathoming that Drustan had known he was dark all this time. A hard time believing he was home, that his brother had welcomed him. Had, in fact, been waiting for him.

  “You’re my brother,” Drustan said quietly, and Dageus knew that he’d read his feelings in that uncanny way his twin had. “I would never turn my back on you. It wounds me that you thought I would.”

  “I but thought to fix it myself, Drustan.”

  “You hate to ask for help. You always have. You’ve ever shouldered more than your share of the burden. You had no right to sacrifice yourself for me—”

  “Doona even start with me—”

  “I didn’t ask you to—”

  “Och, you rather be dead?”

  “Enough!” Gwen snapped. “Stop it, both of you. We could sit here for hours arguing about who should or should not have done what. And what would that accomplish? Nothing. We have a problem. We’ll fix it.”

  Dageus hooked a ladder-back chair with his foot, turned it about and dropped into it backward, stretching his legs around the frame, resting his forearms on the top of the back. He took a perverse pleasure in seeing his elder brother chastened. Drustan was well met by his wee, brilliant wife. The bond betwixt them was a precious thing.

  “We’ve given this a lot of thought,” Gwen said, “and we think we can send someone back to warn you before the tower burns, that it’s going to burn. That way you can prevent the fire, which would save Drustan, and keep you from ever turning dark.”

  Dageus shook his head. “Nay, lass. It wouldn’t work.”

  “What mean you? ’Tis a brilliant solution,” Drustan protested.

  “Not only doona we have someone we could send, because that person might be forever stuck in the past, but I doona believe it would change me now.”