The Highlander Series 7-Book Bundle

by Karen Marie Moning

  How much we’ve forgotten and lost, he brooded. He’d scarce given thought to the legendary race that had allegedly set the Keltar on their course. Not until his son had gone and broken his oath, thus violating an alleged Compact whose existence had become far more myth than reality.

  Well, he brooded darkly, now at least we know the old legends are true.

  Little comfort, that.

  Nay, his search had failed to unearth even an iota of useful information. Indeed, he’d begun to fear that the Keltar had been unforgivably careless in their guardianship of the old lore, that Dageus’s broken oath was merely one more failing in a long list of failings.

  He suspected they’d quit believing centuries ago, pushing away the mantle of a power that exacted too high a price. For generations, the Keltar men had been growing increasingly morose, weary of protecting the secret of the stones, weary of hiding away in the hills and being regarded with fear. Weary of being so damned different.

  As the dark ages gave way to lighter ones, so, too, did the Keltar seem to wish to lay down the burden of their past.

  His son thought he had failed, but Silvan knew better. They’d all failed.

  On the morrow they would sit down with the ancient writings and search anew. Silvan hadn’t the heart to tell his son that he’d nearly finished searching, and if there was some answer to be found in them, he was too dense to discern it.

  His eyes narrowed and his thoughts turned to the wee lass his son had brought with him. When the storm had wakened him—a storm the likes of which he’d heard but a few times before—he’d rushed outside, praying ’twas Dageus returning.

  It had taken some time for the fog to clear, and though he’d called out, Dageus had not replied.

  When the fog had lifted, Silvan had understood why.

  In Silvan’s estimation, ’twas the lass that might yet prove to be their finest hope. For so long as his son loved her—and he did, though he knew it not himself—well, evil didn’t love. Evil tried to seduce and possess and conquer, but it didn’t feel for the object of its desire. So long as love was alive in Dageus, they had a toehold, however small.

  Och, he and the lass were going to become close, Silvan decided. She was going to learn about the young Dageus who’d once strolled these heathery hills, nurturing the earth and healing the wee beasties, the gentle Dageus with the wild heart. He and Nellie would see to it. Dageus’s gifts had always leaned toward the healing arts, and now he was in need of healing himself.

  If the lass didn’t already love his son—he’d not had sufficient chance to probe her—he would do all in his power to win her for him.

  Doona poke at them, Dageus had warned him bitterly, meaning the ancient evil within him.

  But Silvan had poked. Silvan always poked. And despite the barriers his son had erected, buffering it a bit, it had poked back and Silvan was, quite simply, horrified by what was growing inside Dageus.

  • 18 •

  “I know I’m dreaming,” Chloe announced conversationally the next morning as she descended the stairs to the great hall. She slipped into a chair, joining Silvan, Dageus, and a woman she’d not yet met—er, dreamed about—for breakfast.

  Three pairs of eyes regarded her expectantly and, heartened by the attention, she continued.

  “I know I didn’t just use the equivalent of a little outhouse upstairs in a closet.” With straw for toilet paper, no less. “And I know I’m not really wearing a gown, and I’m certainly not wearing”—she peered down at her toes—“beribboned little satin slippers.” Straightening in her chair, she scooped a spoon of jam from a dish. “And I know this strawberry jam is just a figment of—eww—what is this?” Her lips puckered.

  “Tomato preserves, m’dear,” the man who’d been identified to her earlier in the dream as Silvan replied mildly, with a smile he tried to hide.

  Not good, Chloe thought. In a dream, the dreamer controlled how things tasted. She’d been thinking sweet strawberry jam and gotten a nasty, unsweetened vegetable. More proof, she thought dismally, as if she’d needed it. She glanced about the table for something to drink.

  Dageus slid a mug of creamy milk across the table to her.

  She drank deeply, peeking at him over the rim. She’d had erotic dreams about him all night. Frighteningly intense dreams in which he took her in every way it was possible for a man to take a woman. And she’d loved every minute of it, had awakened feeling all soft and kittenish, nearly purring. His black hair was pulled back from his sculpted face in a loose braid. He wore an unlaced linen shirt that revealed a sinful expanse of golden, muscled chest. Big, beautiful man. Sexy, scary man.

  Chloe wasn’t stupid. She knew she wasn’t dreaming. A part of her had acknowledged it last night or she wouldn’t have fainted. That, in a strange way, seemed proof itself: a dreaming mind fainting from the “reality” of its own dream? An already unconscious mind slipping into unconsciousness? She could get tangled up in that thought if she pondered it too long.

  Upon awakening this morning, she’d wandered the upper floor, scurrying down corridors, peeking into chambers and out windows, piecing together bits of information. She’d touched, peered, shaken, even broken a few minor things that she’d deemed replaceable as part of her examination.

  All of it, the textures and scents and tastes were simply too tangible to be a figment of her unconscious mind. Furthermore, dreams had narrow focuses; they didn’t come complete with periphery guards and servants going about duties she’d never conceived of, beyond the windows.

  She was in Maggie MacKeltar’s castle … but not quite that castle. There were additions missing, an entire wing not yet constructed. Furniture that hadn’t been there yesterday, more furniture that was missing today, to say nothing of all the new people! To all appearances—impossible though it was to fathom—it was Maggie’s castle nearly five centuries ago.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me?” She slid Dageus’s mug back and glanced curiously at the older, fortyish woman. She couldn’t be his mother, she mused, unless she’d had him incredibly young, even for medieval times. Dressed in a lapis gown similar to her own, the lovely woman had a gently faded but timeless beauty. Her ash-blond hair was swept up in an intricate plait, with fringy bangs wisping about her face, rather like Gwen’s, Chloe thought.

  “ ’Tis your dream, lass. Make up her name yourself,” Dageus said, watching her with a mocking expression.

  He knew she knew. Damn the man.

  “Oh, Dageus,” Chloe sighed, slumping in her chair, “what did you do to me? I thought you were just a wealthy, eccentric womanizer. Well, I also thought you were a thief for a while,” she muttered, “and a kidnapper, but I didn’t think—”

  “Would you like to see the library, lass?” he offered, his dark eyes glittering.

  Chloe narrowed her eyes. “You think it’s going to be that easy? Show the girl a few impressive books and she’ll think it’s all right that you somehow yanked her back in time?” Sadly, she mused, he might be onto something, because the instant he’d said “library” her heart rate had quickened. A zillion questions perched on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t yet bring herself to talk about reality as if it were real.

  “All right, then. Let’s go to the stones. I’ll send you back this very moment.” He pushed himself to his feet and she got her first look at him from the waist down. Snug black leather trews encased his powerful hips and thighs. Holy cow. Her mouth went dry. There was an impossible-to-ignore bulge in them.

  “Wait just a—” Silvan began, but stopped abruptly at Dageus’s warning look.

  “You know you’re not dreaming,” Dageus said flatly.

  Chloe forced herself to tear her gaze away from his lower body and pursed her lips.

  “Then come. I’ll send you back.” Dageus gestured impatiently at her.

  Chloe remained seated. She wasn’t going anywhere. “Are you saying that you could send me back any time?”

  “Aye, lass. ’Tis nau
ght more than a bit of physics your century hasn’t yet stumbled upon for themselves.” His tone was detached, as if discussing nothing of any more significance than a new bit of twenty-first century technology. “Though from what I read while in your time,” he continued, “I’d wager it won’t be much longer.” When she made no reply, he said, “Chloe, Druids have long possessed more knowledge of archeoastronomy and sacred mathematics than anyone. Did you truly believe yours was the most advanced civilization ever to have existed? That none came before? Consider the Romans and the subsequent Dark Ages. Think you Rome was the first great civilization to rise and fall? Knowledge has repeatedly been gained and lost, to be one day regained again. Druids have merely managed to hold onto their lore through the dark times.”

  A plausible, albeit mind-boggling possibility, she conceded silently. It certainly explained the purpose of all those mysterious stone monuments that stumped modern man, many of them constructed as early as 3500 B.C.E. Historians couldn’t even agree on how the ancient monuments had been built. Was it conceivable that thousands of years ago a race or tribe had lived that had achieved an advanced understanding of physics, necessary to both construct those “devices” and use them?

  Yes, she acknowledged, awed. It was conceivable.

  He’d said “Druids,” as in he was a Druid. So, she mused wryly, the tricky man had actually told her the truth back in his Manhattan penthouse. She’d simply not believed it.

  She’d studied Druids as part of her course work in the master’s program. She’d waded through the scant facts and stranger fictions. What was it Caesar had written in the first century C.E. during the Gallic War? Druids have much knowledge of the stars and their motion, of the size of the world and of the earth, of natural philosophy, and of the powers and spheres of action of the immortal gods.

  Caesar himself had said it. Who was she to argue?

  Pliny, Tacitus, Lucan, and many other classical writers had also written about the Druids. The Romans had persecuted the Druids for centuries (while their emperors privately availed themselves of their prophetesses), forcing them into hiding. Christianity had further forced them to adapt or disappear. Had it been because they’d feared the power the Druids possessed? Were Druids perhaps like the Templars? Hiding throughout the centuries, protecting fabulous secrets?

  She was starting to feel light-headed again, dizzied by the possibility that all those myths and legends carefully scribed in Ireland thousands of years ago were true. When the truth was so fantastical—why bother hiding it? Who would ever believe it? Nobody but a girl who’d gotten herself all wrapped up in it. A girl who’d stood in an ancient circle of stones and felt a gate or portal or whatever it was, open around her.

  “Come, lass,” Dageus interrupted her thoughts. “I’ll return you and you can forget all about me. You may keep your artifacts. I release you from your obligations. Go home to New York. Have a nice life,” he added coolly.

  “Oh!” Chloe snapped, leaping to her feet. “You are so cold. And you certainly managed to pick up your share of modern colloquialisms, didn’t you? Have a nice life, my ass. Do you really think I’m not in this up to my ears now? Do you really think that if I’m in sixteenth-century Scotland I’m letting you send me away?”

  His smile was chillingly predatory, carnal and possessive. “Do you really think I brought you this far to be letting you go, Chloe-lass?”

  Chloe had a sudden urge to fan herself. He knew her, she realized. He’d learned a bit about what made her tick. If, when she’d come downstairs pretending it was a dream, he’d coddled her, she might have trundled back upstairs and tried to convince herself that if she went back to sleep everything would be okay.

  Instead, he’d pushed her, threatened to send her away, knowing she had a mile-wide stubborn streak and would fight to remain.

  “I’m really in the sixteenth century?”

  Three people said “aye” with calm assurance.

  “And I haven’t gone crazy?”

  Three firm “nays.”

  “And you could really send me back that easily? Any time I wish?”

  “Aye, lass. ’Tis that easy. Though I would endeavor to talk you out of it.”

  She’d come to know him a little, too, what made him tick. And from the deceptive gentleness of his voice and the look on his face, she knew he’d tie her to the bed again if she tried to leave, not attempt reason. She peered at him intently. He was still. Implacable. Hands fisted at his sides.

  He cared about her. She had no idea how much of it was just that mind-boggling attraction between them, but it was a start. And he obviously had a high opinion of her, if he’d thought she could handle this. She felt a little flush of pride. No, she wasn’t going anywhere.

  However, he owed her some serious explanations.

  Oh, for heaven’s sake, she thought with droll exasperation, this certainly explains a lot. It’s no wonder I haven’t been able to keep my hands off the blasted man since the day I met him. He’s an artifact! A Celtic one at that!

  “Well, that’s one way of thinking of me, lass,” Dageus purred, his dark eyes gleaming with satisfaction.

  “Tell me I didn’t just say that aloud!” Chloe was horrified.

  Silvan cleared his throat. “You did. He’s an artifact.”

  Chloe groaned, wishing she could just sink into the floor and be swallowed up.

  “I’m Silvan’s wife, Nell, by the bye,” the pretty fortyish woman said. “Dageus’s next-mother. Would ye be liking some kippers and tatties, lass?”

  She decided next-mother must be the medieval equivalent of second wife. “It’s, er, very nice t-to meet you. And yes, I would,” Chloe stammered, sinking limply down into her chair.

  Only then did Dageus reclaim his seat. He was staring at her intensely, his gaze full of sensual promise. She shivered. His expression couldn’t have said any more clearly that Chloe Zanders had kept her virginity quite long enough.

  “You look lovely this morn, lass,” he said silkily, as he passed her first a platter of potatoes and eggs, then one of fat wedges of ham and kippers. “I fancy you in a gown.” His eyes added that he knew there’d been nothing to put beneath it when she’d gotten dressed, intimating that he was the one who’d chosen her gown and brought it to her room while she’d slept.

  Her erotic awareness of the man—an eleven on a scale of one to ten—rocketed to a twenty. Chloe took a deep breath, managed a “thank-you” and turned her attention toward something tangible to tackle: food.

  Simon Barton-Drew’s face was grim as he replaced the phone in the cradle.

  Trevor hadn’t phoned in for fourteen hours. Simon had been trying to reach him on his cell since early that morning, with no success.

  And that could mean only one thing.

  Scowling, he kicked a chair across the room. Trevor had better be dead, he brooded.

  Stalking to the outer door of his office, he swiftly locked it. Before closing the blinds, he glanced out at the rain-slicked street. With the exception of a mangy alley cat noisily wrestling a bit of trash from a nearby Dumpster, the area was deserted, the street lamps buzzing as they flickered on. As much time as he spent in the dilapidated Belthew Building on Morgan Street in a seedy section on London’s outskirts, Simon felt more at home there than in the elegant brownstone where his wife had stopped waiting dinner for him twenty years ago.

  The land on which The Belthew Building stood had been owned by the Druid sect of the Draghar for centuries. Constructed above ancient labyrinthine crypts, it had served as their headquarters for nearly a millennia, in various incarnations. Once an apothecary, then a bookstore specializing in rare books, then a butcher’s shop, once even a brothel, it now housed a small printing business that drew little notice, and there was no paper trail connecting it to the powerful Triton Corporation.

  Their members were the elite, well-placed in society, many in government, more still in the upper echelons of large holding companies. They were wealthy, learned men with
impeccable pedigrees.

  And they would be furious to know that he’d lost contact with Trevor. Though Simon was Master of the Order, he was nonetheless accountable. Highly accountable, in this sensitive time. His followers had not funneled so much money and time into the sect for anything less than the promise of absolute power. They all possessed a certain degree of ruthlessness that would come to the fore should they think him incapable of controlling his minions.

  Flipping off the lights, he moved through his darkened office by rote. He removed a painting mounted on one of the many recessed wood panels of the wall and typed in a sequence of numbers. He replaced the painting and, as the paneling slid up behind his desk, he opened a second door and strode down a narrow hallway.

  Several minutes and several additional complex passkeys later, he entered a passageway that sloped sharply downward, where it met a precipitous fall of worn stone stairs. When he reached the bottom, he turned and took the next flight, then a third, then hurried through a maze of dimly lit, damp tunnels.

  He had to send someone to Inverness to discover if Trevor had been taken alive. And if so—to tidy up. It would require the most loyal and committed men he had. Men who would never let themselves be taken alive. Men who would die for him without hesitation. The best men he had.

  His sons were where they could nearly always be found, in the electronic heart of their operation, monitoring innumerable facets of their business.

  And they were, as always, eager to serve.

  After breakfast, Dageus asked Nell to take Chloe to find a light cloak suitable for her to ride in. Chloe, her inquisitive gaze darting everywhere, allowed herself to be led from the great hall.

  After the women departed, Silvan arched an inquiring brow. “Doona you wish to be starting with the texts, lad?”

  Dageus shook his head. “I need this day. I need to show Chloe my world, Da. What it was like. What I was like. If only for a day.” That wasn’t exactly the truth. The truth was the night had been hellish and the morn wasn’t getting any better. He’d not been able to sleep, strung tight as a corded bow. He’d passed the time till dawn fantasizing about Chloe and all the ways he would seduce her. He’d scarce maintained his tight façade of calm through breakfast. And when Chloe had admitted what a battle she’d been fighting to keep her hands off him, it had been all he could do not to toss her over his shoulder and drag her off to his bed.