Beyond the Highland Mist

by Karen Marie Moning

  Adam laughed. “One would think you might have realized that it hasn’t helped so far, old man. Give it up. Not even your…. sacrifice…. helped. Although it did mollify me slightly.”

  Lydia gasped. “What sacrifice?”

  No one answered her.

  “What sacrifice?” she repeated tersely. “Does he mean Esmerelda?” When no one responded, she shook Rushka by the arm. “Does he?” Her eyes flew back to Adam. “Who are you?” she demanded, her eyes narrowing like a mother bear’s as she prepared to defend her cubs.

  Rushka dragged her against him. “Be still, milady,” he gritted. “Do not interfere in that which you don’t understand.”

  “Don’t tell me what I—” Lydia began heatedly, then shut her mouth beneath the Hawk’s lethal gaze.

  Hawk turned back to Adrienne and calmly raised his hands to help her dismount, as though nothing were amiss.

  Adam laughed again, and it made Hawk’s skin crawl. “She goes with me, Lord Buzzard.”

  “She stays with me. She is my wife. And it’s Hawk. Lord Hawk to you.”

  “Nay. A vulture, a sad scavenger to pick over the unwanted remains, Lord Buzzard. She chooses was the deal made, do you recall? I saved your wife for a price. The price is now paid. You’ve lost.”

  “Nay.” The Hawk shook his head slowly. “She chose already, and ’twas me she chose.”

  “It would appear she un chose you,” Adam mocked.

  “Get off my horse, smithy. Now.”

  “Hawk!” Rushka warned, low and worried.

  “Hawk.” It was Adrienne’s voice that stilled him. Froze him in mid-step toward the smithy. Until now, the Hawk had been focusing his attention and anger on the smithy. And he knew why. It was the same reason he had delayed turning around when he heard the horses approaching. The reason why he’d looked at Rushka instead. He was afraid to look at his wife, of what he might see in her lovely eyes. Might she truly have unchosen him? Could he have been so completely wrong? He paused, hand on his sword hilt, and forced his eyes to hers. The insecurity that had seized him the very first day he’d found his wife at the smithy’s forge reclaimed him with a vengeance.

  Her face was smooth and void of emotion. “He speaks the truth. I have chosen him.”

  Hawk gaped at her, stunned. Not so much as a flicker of emotion in her silver eyes. “How is he making you lie, lass?” Hawk refused to believe her words, clinging to his faith in her. “What is he threatening you with, my heart?”

  “Nothing,” Adrienne said coldly. “and stop calling me that! I have never been your heart. I told you that from the beginning. I don’t want you. It was Adam all along.”

  Hawk searched her face. Cool, composed, she sat the mare like a queen. Regal and untouchable. “And just what the hell was Uster, then?” he growled.

  She shrugged, her hands palms up. “A vacation?” she replied flippantly.

  Hawk tensed, his jaw gritting. “Then just what were the stables this afternoon—”

  “A mistake,” Adam cut him off flatly. “One she won’t be repeating.”

  Hawk’s gaze never wavered from Adrienne’s. “Was it a mistake?” he asked softly.

  Adrienne inclined her head. A pause the length of a heartbeat. “Yes.”

  The Hawk saw not so much as a flicker in her face. “What game play you, lass?” he breathed, danger emanating from every inch of his rigid stance, charging the air around them.

  The night hung still and heavy. On the ridge not one person moved, riveted to the terrible scene unfolding.

  “No game, Hawk. It’s over between us. Sorry.” Another nonchalant shrug.

  “Adrienne, stop jesting—” he growled.

  “’Tis no jest,” she interrupted him with sudden anger. “The only joke here is on you! You didn’t really think I could stay here, did you? I mean, come on!” She waved a hand dismissively at the splendor of the wedding feast. “I’m from the twentieth century, you fool. I’m used to luxuries. It’s the little things that spoil. Coffee. Steaming showers, limousines, and all the glitter and hubbub. This was a lovely diversion—quite a little getaway with some of the most fascinating men….” She smiled at Adam, and it took every ounce of the Hawk’s will not to leap at the smithy and choke the life from his arrogant body.

  Instead, he stood like a marble effigy, hands curled at his side. “You were a virgin—”

  “So? You taught me pleasure. But the smithy gave me more. It’s that simple.” Adrienne fiddled with the reins of her mount.

  “Nay!” Hawk roared. “’Tis some game! What have you threatened my wife with, smithy?”

  But it was Adrienne who answered, in that same calm, utterly detached voice. That husky voice that made him think he’d gone mad, for the words tumbling forth must surely be lies. Yet she didn’t look as if she was being forced. There was no sword to her throat. No shimmer of tears in her eyes. And her voice, ah … it was level and calm. “He has threatened me only with greater pleasure than you ever gave me. He has true magic at his command. Don’t waste your time hunting for us. You won’t find us. He has promised to take me to places I’ve never dreamed existed.” Adrienne nudged her mount closer to the smithy’s.

  Adam flashed a blinding smile at the Hawk. “Looks like you lost after all, pretty bird.”

  “Nay!” Hawk roared, lunging for the smithy and drawing his sword in one fluid sweep. The charger bucked at the Hawk’s bellow and sidestepped wildly.

  Rushka grabbed the Hawk’s arm and cleaved his blow down so hard that the sword lodged in the earth at his feet.

  Adam raised his hand.

  “Nay!” Adrienne quickly restrained the smithy’s hand. “You will not hurt him! No bloodshed. You prom—it’s messy,” she appended. “I don’t like blood. It makes me ill.”

  Adam cocked his head and lowered his hand. “Your wish is my command, Beauty.”

  “Is this truly what you wish, lass?” Hawk’s eyes were black and soulless.

  “Yes,” she said softly. Carefully.

  “He is not forcing you?” Tell me, just say the word, wife, and I will kill him with my bare hands.

  She shook her head and met his gaze levelly.

  “Say it,” Hawk gritted. “He’s not forcing you?”

  “He uses … no coercion against … me.”

  “Do you … love … him?” He hated himself when his voice broke roughly over the words. His throat was so tight he could scarcely breathe.

  “I love him the way I loved Eberhard,” she sighed. She smiled vapidly at Adam, who suddenly narrowed his eyes at her last words.

  “Enough, Beauty.” Adam captured her hand in his. “The universe awaits us and your pleasure is my command.”

  Hawk’s heart wrenched and twisted. The damned Ever-hard. Her first love, whether he’d ever made love to her or not. He turned away before he could make a bloody massacre of the ridge singlehandedly.

  When he finally returned his gaze to her, it was too late—she was gone.

  The mass of hundreds on the ridge at Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea stood numbly as both horses and riders simply vanished into the night air. One moment they were there. The next—nothing.

  But a soft voice floated on the breeze. You were right about your falcons, Sidheach, came the strange last words of the woman he’d loved and who had effectively destroyed the once proud laird of Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea.

  Lydia clutched at his sleeve limply.

  Rushka cursed harshly in a language no one had ever heard before.

  Hawk only stared blindly into the night.

  CHAPTER 30

  “WHERE ARE WE?” ADRIENNE ASKED ADAM WOODENLY.

  He was leading her mount by the reins down a dark path through a strange forest. Twisted branches wove a gnarled canopy above her head. Occasionally a ray of faint light would pierce the dense gloom and the creaking branches would glimmer like bleached bones.

  No crickets. No normal noises, only the screech of flying creatures. The bracken rustled, revealing brief gl
impses of dwarfed gnomes with wild faces. She shivered violently and hugged her arms around herself.

  “You are in my realm.”

  “Who are you really, Adam Black?” Her voice broke on the simple sentence, raw and full of anguish.

  For an answer, she received a mocking smile. Nothing more.

  “Tell me,” she demanded dully. But the dark man at her side rode in silence.

  “At least tell me why.”

  “Why what?” He cocked a curious brow at her.

  “Why did you do this to me? What did I do? Why did you send me back in time and take me away again?” And break my heart and leave me dying inside?

  Adam stopped their mounts, amusement lighting his dark visage. He reached out a hand to stroke her pale cheek and she shuddered beneath his hand. “Oh, Beauty, is that what you think? How very self-engrossed and utterly charming you are.” His laughter rolled. But it was his next words that shafted through her soul like a knife. “It had nothing to do with you, my winsome beauty. Any beautiful woman would have sufficed. But I thought you hated beautiful men. I heard you, there in your library, swearing off men, all men. Yet, it would seem I was mistaken. Or you lied, which is more likely.”

  “What are you saying?” she breathed faintly. Any woman would have sufficed? Her heart was laid bare and cleaved through by this man’s twisted game, and he dared say so baldly that it hadn’t mattered one whit who she was? A pawn? Again? Her jaw locked temporarily. I will not scream. I will not. When she was certain she could speak without raging she said coolly, “You got what you wanted. Why won’t you just tell me who you are?” She had to find out more about this man to avenge herself. To avenge her husband.

  “True. I did get what I wanted. The Hawk looked utterly destroyed, wouldn’t you say? Crushed.” Adam flicked his hand lightly over hers. “You did very well tonight, Beauty. But tell me”—his eyes searched hers intently, and she stiffened when it seemed they might penetrate into her very soul—“what did you mean about his falcons?”

  Adrienne’s breath hitched. “He told me once that all his falcons had flown him,” she lied evenly. “You told me I had to be utterly convincing or you would kill him, so I chose that reminder to drive the point home. That’s all.”

  “That had better be all.” His face was cold and unforgiving. Just as it had been in the broch before the Hawk had come looking for her. Before what should have been the wedding of her dreams. Icily, he’d explained to her in exact and excruciating detail precisely how he would destroy the Hawk and everyone at Dalkeith if she failed his will. Then he’d shown her things he could do. Things her mind still couldn’t quite comprehend. But she’d understood that he was perfectly capable of carrying out the mass destruction he’d threatened. Two choices he’d given her—either lie to the Hawk and break his heart, not to mention her own, or stand by while Adam used his unnatural powers to kill him. Then Lydia. Followed by every man, woman, and child at Dalkeith.

  No, there had been no choice at all. The hellish decision had given her an intimate understanding of what a man called the king’s whore might once have suffered.

  When she’d left the broch shaking and pale, she’d seized one last moment of glory. She’d made love to the Hawk with all the passion in her soul. Saying goodbye, and dying inside. She’d known it would be horrible to lie to him, but she hadn’t anticipated just how deeply it would cut her.

  Adam had been unyielding on that point. He’d made it clear that she must fully convince the Hawk she desired Adam. After the incredible intimacy she and Hawk had shared, she’d known she would have to say hateful, horrid things to convince him.

  She shivered violently as Adam’s thumb brushed her lower lip. She slapped his hand away in spite of her fear. “Don’t touch me.”

  “If I thought for a moment you had tried to tell him something more, I would go back and kill him even as we speak, Beauty.”

  “I gave you what you wanted, you bastard!” Adrienne cried. “All of Dalkeith is safe from you now.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Adam shrugged indolently. “He’s dead anyway.” Adam tugged at her reins and resumed their slow passage beneath the rustling limbs.

  “What?” Adrienne hissed.

  Adam smiled puckishly. “I thought you might enjoy the scenic route back. This trail is a timeline and we just passed the year 1857. It’s that misty bend back there between the … trees … for lack of a better word. He’s been dead for over three hundred years.

  A silent scream began to build inside her. “Who are you?”

  “They used to call us gods,” he said dispassionately. “You would do well to worship me.”

  “I’ll see you in hell, first,” she breathed.

  “Not possible, Beauty. We don’t die.”

  CHAPTER 31

  SEATTLE

  NOVEMBER 1997

  ADRIENNE DREW HER ARM BACK AND WINGED THE BOOK like a Frisbee. It was supposed to fly across the room and crash with a resounding thump against the wall. Instead, it dropped limply, landing on the floor at the foot of her bed.

  She glanced at the volume in disgust and noticed that it had fallen open to a page. She squinted to read it from her perch at the footrail.

  Dreams about stopped-up commodes can symbolize many things: the dreamer is emotionally repressed. Emotional and/or physical purging is recommended. A recurring dream of this nature signifies the dreamer has endured a traumatic experience from which he/she must find some kind of release or serious psychological damage may occur.

  So much for a sign from heaven.

  Adrienne swallowed a choked laugh that turned into a sob. Who writes this stuff?

  She dangled her bare foot over the bed and poked the book shut with her toe. 1001 Little Dreams. How bizarre. She hadn’t even realized she had that book in her library. Even more bizarre that she’d been dreaming about toilets for ten nights in a row. Nothing else. Just backed-up, overflowing commodes.

  Lovely.

  But she didn’t have to be hit over the head with a dream guide. She knew what was wrong with her. Fifteen days ago she had materialized in her sprawling Victorian house at 93 Coattail Lane, Seattle, U.S. of A.

  And she hadn’t spoken to a single soul since then. Every scrap of energy she had went toward maintaining her composure—her tight skin. Tight dry eyes. Tight little death going on inside. She understood perfectly well that if she let even one tiny tear sneak out of the dry corner of her eye, she couldn’t be held responsible for the flooding that could cause mass evacuations throughout the state.

  She scratched her tight scalp with a tight little hand as she tightly petted Moonie’s silky back. She touched Moonie’s pink nose in a tight, economical motion. No stopped-up commodes in a cat’s world, Adrienne mused as Moonie curled her paws into her hair and began a thrumming little purr.

  It was Moonie’s hungry mews that roused her from the bed. Adrienne eased her aching body from the down coverlets and padded slowly to the kitchen.

  God, but she felt five hundred years old herself, in pain from head to toe from a heartache she knew would never heal.

  Adrienne woodenly opened a can of tuna. White alba-core. Only the best for Moonie. She slumped down on the floor and brushed irritably at the hand that shoved a book in front of her. “Go away, Marie, I need to be alone.” Adrienne marveled at the pale swirls of lime in the jade tile of the kitchen floor, and wondered why she’d never noticed them before. She rubbed lightly at one of the swirls. Slate tile could be so interesting. Riveting, in fact.

  “Eees book you dropped,” Marie said in her thick accent.

  Adrienne didn’t move. The book brushed her cheek. Heavens, but the woman was insistent. The book’s sharp corner poked the soft underside of her neck. Probably another stupid dream book. Well, she just wouldn’t look at it.

  “Quit shoving at me.” Adrienne took the book blindly, her eyes squeezed shut. “Go away now,” she mumbled. There. That wasn’t too bad. She applauded herself for performing a simple
function with precision. No tears. Not one thought of … the thing she wasn’t thinking of. Adrienne took a deep breath and forced a grim, tight smile.

  She was going to be fine. Small things now—big things soon.

  “I think I make for you some tea,” Marie said.

  Adrienne’s stomach heaved and rolled. “No.”

  “I think, then, I make dinner for señorita.”

  “I’m not hungry. Go away.”

  “Okay. I move things to garage,” Marie grunted.

  Move things? Leave the house? “No!” Adrienne controlled her voice with a tremendous effort. “I mean, that’s not necessary, Marie. God knows this old house is big enough for both of us.”

  “Eees no good. I no good to you. I move now back to garage.” Marie watched her carefully.

  Adrienne sighed. Marie simply had to stay in the house. She couldn’t stand the huge, aching silence, the empty rooms. The hum of the refrigerator might drive her mad.

  “Marie, I don’t want you to move back out. I really want you to stay with …” Adrienne opened her eyes, her voice trailing off as she stared in horror at the book in her hands. A Study of Medieval Falconry.

  Stay tight!

  Would you soar for me, falcon? I’ll take you higher than you’ve ever been. I’ll teach you to bank heights you only dreamed existed.

  He’d certainly made good on that promise. And now she was falling from those incredible heights without a parachute, or a Mary Poppins umbrella, or anything else to break her fall. Adrienne de Simone Douglas squeezed her arms around her stomach and started screaming.

  The tiny Cuban woman dropped to her knees and very carefully pulled Adrienne into her arms. Then she rocked her, smoothed her hair, and did her best to comfort her.

  For days and days Adrienne lay on her back replaying every precious memory on the blank screen of her ceiling. She’d pulled the drapes shut and turned all the lights out. She couldn’t stand the world to be bright without him.

  Marie floated in and out, bringing food and drink that remained untouched, and Moonie stayed at her side unceasingly.