by Tefft, Cyndi
Aiden, are you there? I called in my mind, ignoring my dad.
Aye, I’m safe, lass. The beast ran off and I never saw it at all. The confidence in his voice soothed me, but I could hear the exhaustion and frustration as well.
Please come back. I’ve been worried sick.
“Lindsey? Hello? Are you in there?” Dad lifted me off the ground and I winced at the stabbing pain in my back.
“I’m fine, Dad.”
“What were you doing, sleeping on the floor? And with this?” he repeated, waving the iron rod around.
“I heard something outside. I was afraid it would try to get in. I must have fallen asleep waiting.” It sounded lame even to my own ears and he didn’t look like he was buying it, either. But he just shook his head and put the poker back with the other fireplace tools.
“Well, don’t do that again. You scared me when I saw you lying there on the ground.” He pulled me into a warm hug and the little girl inside me sniffled with relief in the safety of his arms.
“Sorry, Dad.”
He kissed the top of my head and stroked my hair like he’d always done before.
I pulled back and gave him a brave smile. “Hungry?” I asked and he nodded.
The butter had barely begun to melt in the cast iron skillet when Aiden arrived. I practically raced to the door and threw my arms around him.
I’m fine, love. Don’t concern your Da. His voice was tender with a slight tone of censure. My lip quivered as I looked at him, but I nodded. “Smells good, lass. Mind if I join ye?” he asked, loud enough for my dad to hear from the living room.
“Aiden, come to see me off?” Dad asked, heading into the kitchen to shake his hand.
“Are you leaving today, then? I’d be pleased to help you pack,” Aiden offered and Dad laughed.
“I’ll bet you would, son. I’ll bet you would.”
“Dad,” I said in my most threatening voice, “be nice.” He turned an innocent smile to me and invited Aiden to join us for breakfast.
When Dad was finished loading the car to go, he started to shake Aiden’s hand goodbye, but then muttered something under his breath and yanked him forward into a hug, smacking him on the back. Then Dad looked him in the eye, one arm gripping his shoulder.
“Remember what I said.”
Aiden nodded somberly and replied, “Aye, sir. That I will.”
Dad pulled me into a big bear hug. “I love you, sweetheart.” His eyes misted up when his arms relaxed around me. He kissed me on the forehead and gave me another quick squeeze, then turned and got into his car. We stood in the drive, waving to him as he drove away, the dust from the road swirling in a cloud behind him.
As soon as Dad was gone, I wheeled on Aiden. “You didn’t find anything?”
He shook his head. “Nae, I searched the woods all through the night and couldn’t pick up the trace.” The set of his shoulders and clench of his jaw told me that guilt was eating him alive. “It’s gone.”
‘For now’ is what he didn’t say, but it came across loud and clear.
“Was that…?” The words lodged in my throat like a wadded up ball of sandpaper. “…what I think it was?”
Aiden hesitated, like he didn’t want to tell me, but finally he nodded, his face grim.
“A hell transporter.”
Hearing the words fall from his lips mowed down my last shred of self-control. Fear slammed into me like a runaway semi-truck and I started to shake all over.
“But why? What does it want? To… to kill us?” My voice came out in a horrified squeak. My mind conjured up images of Aiden being torn to pieces by the evil creature, blood everywhere, screams echoing through the woods. I squeezed my eyes shut as tight as I could to block it out. “What are we going to do?”
Aiden gripped my shoulders with both hands. “Lindsey, we cannot let fear overtake us. The enemy wants us to be afraid so we make mistakes. I won’t let that happen.” His eyes held my own with fierce determination until I finally nodded, though my insides still churned with terror at what could happen. “We will defeat the beast. I won’t let any harm come to ye. I promise.”
“But how?” I asked and immediately wished I hadn’t because I wasn’t prepared for his answer.
Aiden’s face crumpled into a frown. His fingers curled into tight fists at his side.
“I don’t know.”
He strode across the dirt driveway to the woodpile and grabbed the axe with one hand. He placed a new log on the chopping block, swung the axe up in a wicked arc and brought it down with brute force like he was cleaving the beast’s skull in two. The loud crack reverberated through my bones. The pieces of wood rolled in opposite directions, bleeding splinters onto the ground. The axe stuck in the block and Aiden yanked it free, then grabbed another log.
“Think,” he said under his breath before hoisting the axe up for another blow.
Crack!
“What do we know about the beast?” he asked to the woods in general while he bent to throw the broken pieces onto the pile. He recited the details of his first encounter with the hell transporter in between, the same thing he’d told me before.
“It started out as a swirling black mass with a screeching sound like ravens fighting over a carcass. And that smell...” He swallowed hard and wiped a hand down his face. “Then when it touched down to take the soul, it turned into that wolf-like beast with fangs.” He stared at the ground like the answer was written there. With a hard shake of his head, he turned and picked up another log.
Crack!
The sound ripped through me like I’d stuck my hand on a live wire. I started grasping at straws in an effort to make him stop.
“Did it try to talk to you when you saw it? Were you able to communicate with it using your mind back then?” I asked.
“No. You’re the only one I’ve ever been able to hear in my head.”
“Until now,” I said.
His head snapped up. “What?”
“Last night, it said ‘Transporter’ and ‘Mine.’ You didn’t hear it? You jumped up and took off running, so I figured we both—“
He shook his head hard. Staring at me, he said, “I recognized the stench.”
“Oh,” I said, unable to wrap my head around what this might mean. I could hear the hell transporter but Aiden couldn’t? Or was it just talking to me and not him? Why would it care about me?
“Is that all it said? What did it sound like?”
I described the guttural, hissing noise and Aiden’s face grew even more fierce. He wasn’t afraid. He was angry. Muttering to himself in Gaelic, he resumed his ritual slaughtering of the wood.
Crack!
I just about jumped out of my skin.
“Was it wearing clothes? Did it have any specific markings?” I tried again.
He shook his head. “The beast was lightly furred, with a skeletal face. Part wolf, part reptile... I don’t know. It wasn’t like anything I’ve ever seen on earth.” He wiped sweat from his brow with his forearm and leaned on the handle of the axe. “Markings? No, not that I recall. Just the blood red eyes.” He leaned down to retrieve another log and everything in me screamed to find something—anything—to keep him from making that sound again.
“Wait!”
He stopped, the axe clutched in one hand.
“Um…” Rolling a fallen pinecone between my feet, I racked my brain to find the missing puzzle piece that would give us some clue. “You said ‘touched ground’ like it was in the air before.” He nodded, staring at the chopping block, waiting for me to continue. “So it was a black mass that reeked to high heaven before it turned into the beast. And we heard that screech, too. Maybe last night, it never touched down and that’s why you couldn’t find any trace of it.”
His eyes met my own for a heartbeat. And another. Hope and guilt warred across his face.
“It’s not your fault,” I said. His shoulders relaxed a fraction and he dropped the axe to the ground.
Hope won.
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Relief spread through me. I offered him a weak smile.
“Perhaps that’s true. But I still don’t know how to defeat it,” he said.
“Yet,” I said with more confidence than I felt.
Finally, he smiled.
“Yet.”
Chapter 10
The remaining days of summer slipped away and the hell transporter never returned, though I swore I felt its shadow everywhere I went. Aiden searched the woods constantly, but never found tracks or any sign of the creature. Unwilling to sit and do nothing, he raided the rusty, spider-filled shed that held tools from when the cabin was originally built decades ago. He fashioned a spear from a tree branch and an ancient pair of clipping shears, forging the metal into a sharp point and binding the tip to the wood with leather cut from an old chair. His ingenuity and determination amazed me, but his constant target practice served as a painful reminder that our carefree honeymoon was over. I forced myself not to dwell on it since having to go back to school was stressing me out enough.
The day before we had to leave, I was in the bedroom packing half-heartedly. Aiden had been moody and preoccupied all day. He came in from refilling the kindling hopper, his features drawn. He seemed to steel himself for something as he asked, “Will you take a walk with me?” The look on his face unnerved me, but I agreed and followed him outside.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
He stroked my hand but didn’t look up. “Aye. I want to show you something.”
I followed him wordlessly through the woods and up a part of the hillside where I’d never been before. The thick underbrush scratched at my legs and he paused to pull tree branches aside so I could pass through.
“I wish I’d my claymore with me. It would make this fair easier.”
“A claymore?”
A flicker of a smile crossed his face and he gripped both hands over the hilt of an invisible sword, slashing it back and forth in the air. “‘Tis a great sword, nearly as tall as a man, and it takes two hands to wield it proper. I haven’t my broadsword, either, which is smaller than a claymore but larger than a dirk.” He touched the dagger on his belt absently as if to check that it was still there. “I used a claymore against the English on the day of my death.”
I shuddered as I remembered seeing the enemy soldier’s head fly away from his body with one swipe of Aiden’s massive blade. I was personally glad he didn’t have the sword as a physical reminder of that day, but I didn’t tell him so. He helped me step over a fallen log and assured me that it wouldn’t be much farther.
The sound of running water burbled through the trees, but I couldn’t see the source. A whisper of a trail materialized in front of us, which made the going easier. My legs were starting to ache from the climb but I didn’t say anything. A light breeze wrapped around us on what would have been a peaceful hike, were it not for the tension coating Aiden’s stride. When we reached the path’s end, the trees gave way to a thin stream. A small covered bridge with a bench in the center was nestled in the woods, overlooking the trickle of water.
“Wow, it’s beautiful,” I said. He took my hand and led me to the bench. “I’ve come to the cabin every summer since I was born and I’ve never seen this before.”
“She’s a bonnie wee bridge, isn’t she?” A sparrow landed next to the water’s edge, fluffed its feathers and took a bath. Nature enveloped us in a pine-scented embrace. Resting against Aiden’s chest, I looked up under the eve of the covered bridge to find the words ‘Be Still and Know’ etched in the wood.
“Did you do that?” I gestured to the words and he shook his head with a private smile.
“No, but it was exactly what I needed to see when I found it. God’s very clever that way, aye?” The smile faded from his face, though and he took both of my hands in his own.
Something was wrong and I had no idea what it could be. I knew he was stressed about the hell transporter—we both were—but this was different. Unease bit at me and my mind whirled to come up with reasons for that look on his face.
Was he going to tell me he wasn’t coming back to Oregon with me? Was he too afraid to see me get hurt by the hell transporter? Where would he go? I couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from him again. Why would he do that to me after all that we’d been through?
“I need to ask something of you, Lindsey and I do not want to. I have spent a great deal of time trying to find a way around it, but I cannot think of another way.”
My eyes pleaded with him to stay but I swallowed hard and nodded for him to continue.
“When I asked your Da for his blessing, he asked me how I was planning to provide for you. Even though I told him I’d a modest inheritance from Uncle Alex, you know I haven’t any money. And you told me at the start of the summer that I’d need papers to find a job, and I don’t have those, either. I’ve naught but a few coins in my sporran. Well, they might be worth a fair price to a collector, I suppose.” He shrugged and looked down at our linked hands.
“Money isn’t important. We’ll figure something out, just don’t…” The words wouldn’t come out.
“Don’t what, love?” His eyes met mine and my hands started to shake.
“Don’t leave me,” I said in a whisper.
“Oh, Lord in heaven,” he said, pulling me tight against his chest. “You thought…? Lindsey, mo chridhe, how could you believe I’d ever…?” He turned to face me then and cupped my cheeks in his hands.
“I will never leave you. There is nothing in this life or the next that could keep me from you. Not school, not your Da, not an entire army of men. As long as I draw breath—and even after—I am yours.”
When his lips touched mine, I wrapped my arms around him and held on tight. The tremors in my chest subsided with his kiss and I allowed myself to breathe again.
“So what did you want to ask me? You had me all worried,” I said when we broke away.
“As I said, I’ll need papers and I can’t get them the honest way, so I will need to find someone to fake them for me.”
“But how? I have no idea how you’d get a fake driver’s license or passport or Social Security Number.”
Sadness crept into his eyes and he shrugged. “Regardless of the century, men who are willing to do wrong for a price can always be found.”
“How would you even know where to look?”
“‘Tis not the finding them that concerns me, but the price.” His gaze rested on my hands. “The only thing I have of any real value… well, ‘tis not truly mine, in fact…” He reached out and twisted my wedding ring, the sun glinting off the gems in the gold band.
My mind flashed to that day in between, where he’d proposed while we swam in the lake. The ring had been passed down to him from Nanny Fraser, his aunt on his mother’s side. When I’d been revived after the accident, the ring was still with me, the only proof I’d had that it wasn’t some massive hallucination. For months, it had been my only connection to him and now we needed it to save us again.
“I wouldn’t ask if there were any other way. Believe me. I know what it means to you. To us.”
I pulled off the ring and put it in his palm, closing his fingers around it.
“Aiden, you don’t have to ask. It’s yours. Everything I have is yours. You’re all that matters to me.”
He trailed his thumb over my cheekbone to my jaw, then leaned forward to kiss me. I wound my fingers through his hair and the tension released from him like a rope unfurling in my hands. His touch was tender at first, but then his kisses became deeper, stronger. When he ran his tongue across my bottom lip, I made small noise of pleasure against his mouth. The scent of him, the sound of the babbling creek beneath us, all of it combined made me want to freeze that moment in time forever.
Breathing hard, he leaned his forehead against mine.
“Merci, ma chèrie. Je t’aime,” he said.
“I love you, too.”
After a moment, he leaned back, a grin lighting his eyes. �
��I made you a wee replacement, in case you said yes.” He put the ring in his sporran and pulled out another, this one made from wood. He’d whittled a small band of pine and engraved it with a looping Celtic design. He slipped it on my finger and I was surprised how perfectly it fit.
“You made this?” I asked.
“Aye, it kept me from going mad the day we were apart.”
So I wasn’t the only one. For some reason, the thought made me smile. I held up my hand in the sunlight, appreciating the workmanship of the ring.
“It’s all going to work out, right?” I asked of the woods at large, my eyes drawn to the scripture engraved under the eave of the covered bridge. Aiden began to pray out loud and my heart joined in fervently. The soft music of the stream and the sunlight streaming down through the trees filled me with peace. I didn’t have any answers, but as we got up to leave, I felt more confident about the future than I had in months.
Chapter 11
A shiver of excitement ran through me as I climbed the stairs of Jamison Hall to my dorm room. Aiden was right behind me, hauling my bags—two in each hand—up the interminable steps to the third floor.
“Two hundred lassies live in this building together?” he asked with a little too much interest, earning a hairy eyebrow in response.
“Mmphm, but only one you need to be concerned with,” I replied and he laughed, helping to dispel my nervousness about him meeting my friends. Jennifer, Stephanie and I had agreed at the end of last year to share a triple dorm room again and I couldn’t wait to see them. Still, introducing them to Aiden was another thing entirely.
I turned the key in the lock, part of me hoping to see one or both of my friends, and part of me hoping the room would be empty. The door was already unlocked, though, and when I pushed it open, it was neither Stephanie nor Jennifer who returned my smile, but Paul.
“Hey, Lindsey! Welcome back. Jen told me she hasn’t heard from you all summer.” Paul seemed exceptionally cheerful and friendly, apparently jazzed that school was starting so he could resume his reign as captain of the basketball team.
