"Don't wanna go," he whimpered.
"Quit being such a baby. If we go this way, we can sneak up on Aunt Laura. Wouldn't that be fun?"
"Yeah."
"Then come on."
Gulping, Alby held tightly to his brother's hand, and followed closely at his heels. He didn't like the dark. He didn't like the stale smell in the stairwell, either. But he did like the idea of scaring the wits out of his aunt.
Four cautious steps down, the door at the top closed. Terror gripped both boys. Then another sound, a soft swish, filled the narrow passageway.
Both boys released a cry. Then something lifted Alby and painfully gripped Kahl's arm, and led them away into the darkness, away from the stone stairs. Kahl's quick mind soon determined that they were being hauled between the walls. While Alby wept, he inwardly struggled to clamp down on his fears. Lachlan had told them never to fear the unknown, but he would feel better if Kevin were with them. It was upon him to protect Alby.
The coldness of the fingers pulling him along could be felt through his pajamas. The grip hurt, and he was sure it was meant to.
Another swish was heard. He was harshly jerked forward then shoved. A cry escaped him when he hit the floor. Another shriller cry was released when he realized that he'd been left in one of the bedrooms, and that the intruder had continued on in the passage with Alby. Jumping to his feet, he pounded his fists on a wall, and screamed Alby's name over and over.
Alby was beyond crying. Fear paralyzed him, paralyzed his vocal cords. His teeth remained clenched against the jarring stride of his abductor.
Another wall opened. The three-year-old felt himself being abruptly lowered. His abductor hissed, a sound that conjured up monstrous images in the boy's mind. He was roughly thrust away, struck the floor, and rolled into depthless blackness.
On the third floor, in a closet in one of the bedrooms, Kevin's fists frantically drummed at the locked door.
* * *
It seemed to take forever for the milk to warm. Rubbing her arms to ward off the chill in the kitchen, Laura impatiently paced in front of the stove. Her temples throbbed with pain. Her eyes burned. Queasiness churned in her stomach.
She wondered if she would ever feel warm again, safe again, normal again. Come morning, she and the boys were leaving this house. She was determined to put this nightmare behind her and get on with her life. Once she was settled back into her previous mundane existence, she would then try to sort through everything that had happened in this house. She would sort through the imaginary and the real, neatly categorize it all in her mind then relegate it all to a lesser plane of importance in her memory.
With a start, she remembered the milk. A groan escaped her at the sight of the liquid bubbling over the brim of the pan.
"Damn," she muttered, testily turning off the gas burner. Tears filled her throat, adding to her frustration. "To hell with—"
Her muscles tensed at a faint sound. Keening her ears, she remained perfectly still for several seconds.
Nothing.
She was releasing a sigh when another sound, of scurrying, alarmed her. Her gaze riveted on a closed door to the left of the stove. She went to it, hesitating for several seconds before she could bring herself to turn the knob. The door opened inward. The soft light in the kitchen permitted her to see but two stone steps. The rest of the stairwell was pitch dark.
"Boys?" she croaked.
She gulped and lifted a hand to the base of her throat. A cold stirring draft swept against her skin. She shivered.
"Boys?"
A soft swooshing sound could be heard moving in the close darkness somewhere above her.
A frown of impatience creased her brow. Alby wouldn't attempt to frighten her on his own. It could only mean that one or two of his brothers had also gotten up.
"Come down here," she said firmly.
No response.
Muttering beneath her breath, she returned to the kitchen, lit the wide candle centered on the table, and returned to the foot of the steps. The flickering light awarded her partial visibility of the lower half of the passageway, but it also cast long eerie shadows on the rough rock walls.
"Alby? Kahl? Kevin?" She paused in hopes one of them would respond. "I'm warning you. I'm in no mood for games. Come down here this instant!"
Silence.
Determinedly, she started up the steps, the stones beneath her bare feet shockingly cold. She held a hand in front of the flames to prevent the draft from extinguishing her light source, but it also lessened its luminance.
"Alby, you promised to stay in—"
An odor teased her smelling sense. She inhaled deeply. Recognition birthed sheer terror in the very core of her.
Gas!
"Alby!" she wailed, then a scream ripped from her throat when a dark mass unfolded and rose from the steps a short distance ahead, looming like a giant bat, its massive wings lowering toward her. Before she could release another scream, pain exploded in her left shoulder. The candle fell from her grasp as she pitched backward. She hit the stairs, tumbled in a complete turn then crumpled in a heap on the landing.
Agony radiated through every atom of her being. Blinding lights danced in front of her eyes, preventing her from seeing the advance of her attacker. A thud struck her at the base of her skull. Unconsciousness made a fierce bid to claim her, but she fought to remain alert.
Coldness washed across her prone body. Dimly, she realized she was being dragged across the floor, then hoisted up, and cast off. As if in slow motion, she felt herself landing amid an undulating sea of burning ice.
Darkness closed in. The blinding lights faded.
Boys, she silently wept, then slipped into blessed oblivion.
The cloaked figure returned to the stove and switched on all the top burners, and the oven, then fled past the threshold into the night, barely avoiding Laura's head with the heels of the thickly-soled black boots.
On the third floor, Kevin curled up in the corner, hacking coughs weakening him.
Below, Kahl used his pocket knife to unlock the bedroom door. His eyes burning, disoriented by the fumes eddying around him, he blindly made his way to the staircase. He wept within. He didn't know where his brothers were, or his aunt. Or Roan. Or the ghosts. He had to find help. His aunt had gone to the kitchen.
Stumbling through the darkness on the first floor, he made his way to the kitchen. Tears stung his eyes. He could barely breathe. Something smelled horrible, but he couldn't place it. He groped for the door, desperate to reach the outside. Ignoring the hiss of the gas pouring from the vents on the stove, he staggered down the three steps to the snow-covered ground.
And tripped over his aunt's sprawled motionless form.
Chapter 8
Laura didn't want to keep rising through the layers of pain but something urgent was forcing her to accept consciousness.
From far, far away, she could hear someone calling her name. She became aware of her body jerking, although she was sure she was not moving of her own volition.
"Aunt Laura!" Kahl wept, his tugs on her arm growing weaker. "Laura, I'm scared! Wake up!"
Scared. One of the boys is scared.
Her lids fluttered open.
White. Painful...cold...whiteness.
Lowering his head to the small of her back, Kahl bitterly wept. Its sound penetrated the dullness in her head and awakened primal instincts. Despite the pain and her stiffness, she lifted a hand and gently squeezed the boy's leg. His head shot up, his red swollen eyes searching hers with disbelief.
"Kahl," she hoarsely murmured.
"Get up, Aunt Laura!"
An explosion rocked the ground. Amid a shower of shattered glass, Kahl screamed. Laura curled into a fetal position then cranked herself up into a sitting position. She couldn't think straight. Pain radiated through her shoulders and back. An invisible vice tightened and tightened on the back of her skull and neck.
"Kevin, Alby!" Kahl cried wretchedly, tears streaming down h
is face, his arm raised in a pointing gesture toward the house.
Through the swirling haze of her dizziness, Laura focused on flames shooting out from the kitchen and tower windows.
"My...God," she rasped, floundering to her feet.
Her eyes widened in horror. Summoning almost inhuman strength, she snatched Kahl into her arms, turned and fled. She didn't feel pain, or the cold, or anything but overwhelming terror. Another explosion jettisoned the kitchen door out into the side yard. A whoosh of flames extended outward as if coughed from the throat of a ferocious dragon. A blast of air plowed into her back, lifting her and the Kahl and sending them flying. She somehow managed to twist around and land on her back, sparing Kahl the brunt of her weight.
Kahl was screaming, a raw sound of such anguish, Laura's instincts superseded everything else. Her eyes riveted on the burgeoning flames, she got to her feet and hastened the boy to his. She took him by the arm and led him to the front of the house, staying back what she hoped was a safe distance of sixty-plus feet.
Flames were visible on all the floors. Laura's gaze swept the front of the structure, again and again, a scream bubbling from the pit of her stomach, up into her throat.
"Roan! The boys!"
Half of her delirious mind wanted to chance running into the house to search for the occupants. A saner half warned her to remain with Kahl.
Her world began to spin, faster and faster until she fell to her knees. Anger and fear helped her to retain a tenuous hold on to consciousness.
Kahl repeatedly whimpered her name.
She'd failed them all.
What’s wrong with me?
The milk!
No, God, please don't let it be I left the stove on!
Had the pilot gone out?
No, it wasn't the time to find a safe little niche to place the blame.
If she didn't know better, she would swear she was dying. Her energy was draining away. She was slipping into the darkness. The damn pain! It made her want to die!
Voices invaded her ears, stampeded through her head. She groaned silently when she felt herself being jarred and lifted, jarred and carried—
"Roan?" she rasped, straining to open her eyes.
He was safe. And he would have saved the boys.
Her knight in tarnished armor.
She attempted to laugh. Searing pain in her lungs forced her to cough. The cough seized her muscles with raw agony.
"She's near fruze to daith!" cried a feminine voice.
Laura felt herself sinking downward until a hard surface formed across the back length of her. A semblance of warmth enfolded her.
"Roan.... The boys...."
"Lie quiet, lass," a matronly voice crooned above her. "Fetch me ma bag. Hurry, Tommy!"
Tommy? Where am I?
"Let these delight the throng.
For her o' duskier lustre
Whose favour still I wear,
The snow be in her kirtle,
The rose be in her hair....
The words humming through her mind brought warmth to the marrow of her bones.
"You remembered, Robbie," she said feverishly. "You still love me, dinna you?"
A wistful smile appeared on the chubby-faced woman leaning over Laura. "Take a whiff o' this, lass."
Ammonia fumes seared the insides of Laura's nostrils. She fully came to, gasping for air, her wild gaze riveted on the stranger staring down at her.
"You'll be okay," the woman smiled then cast the house a furtive look.
Laura's gaze riveted on the engulfed structure. Her heart rose into her throat, but she managed, "Kahl? Where's Kahl?"
"Wi' Farley Campbell, lass."
Shouts rained around her. Despite the woman's hand trying to anchor her down, Laura sat up, clutching the wool blanket she'd been laid on, about her. Everywhere she looked, there were people. People silently watching the house, their expressions ranging from horror to indifference. People running about, shouting orders. People and more people covering the landscape.
Then Kahl moved into her line of view. The next moment, he flung himself into her arms and wept against her bruised shoulder.
Her vision zoomed in on a figure precariously balanced on a window sill on the second floor.
Roan!
Getting to her feet and clutching Kahl's hand, she inched her way through the thickening horde of spectators. She stopped a few yards from six men holding taut a blanket to catch him.
"Jump!" one of the men shouted. "Hurry, mon! We've a catch!"
Laura wanted to scream. Behind Roan, she could see a wall of fire moving toward him. She wanted to turn back the hands of time and go back to that first night of the accident.
With all the strength she possessed, she called out, "Roan! Don't be afraid! Jump!"
She waited a moment, then, "Roan, please! The men down here will catch you in the blanket."
He cast off, sailing into the air. Laura's heart swelled and became a weighty inanimate object behind her breasts until he bounced off the blanket and hit the ground.
Wood creaked from every part of the house. Fire roared, reaching for the heavens.
Trying to suppress coughs, she led Kahl along, following closely behind the three men dragging Roan away from the house. Behind her, small explosions went off. Window panes exploded outward from every side of the house.
"Laura!"
Tearing her gaze from the men placing Roan atop a blanket and covering him with coats, Laura looked to her left to see Alby pull free of a woman's hold on his hand. He ran to Laura, his arms opened wide. Despite her pain, her weakness, she lifted him into her arms and hugged him tightly.
"Laura, Laura," he chanted, his little arms wrapped about her neck.
"It's okay, hon. It's okay," she wept. "Kevin—" She looked into the boy's eyes and felt her blood plummet to her feet. "No. No...."
Whirling to face the house, she released a tortured cry. "Kevin!" Her gaze searched the sea of faces around her but not one remotely looked like her oldest nephew. "Kevin!" She cried out to the crowd, "There's still a boy in there!"
Placing Alby on his feet, she knelt beside Roan's semi-unconscious form. "Roan! Roan, did you see Kevin? I can’t find him! Roan!"
Roan opened his eyes. After several moments, he was able to focus somewhat on Laura's features.
"Kevin?" he choked.
Laura burst into tears and drew the boys in her arms closer against her. "I couldn't find him. And I couldn't reach you."
"Stand clear!" a rough-voiced man ordered.
The people standing shoulder-to-shoulder on Roan's other side, moved out of the way for a large man. He went down on a knee, a beefy balled hand resting on a hip. "Roan, laddie. It’s Ben. Yer pub mate. Can you hear me?"
"Aye," Roan wheezed. "I'm no' deaf."
Resisting the hands trying to keep him down, he sat up. Coughs seized him. Ben's hand none-too-gently clapped him on the back several times.
"Take it easy, mate. You swallowed some smoke by the looks o' it."
"Jamey.... Ma son—"
Reality cruelly returned home to Roan. He stared into the rounded face of his old friend, and felt a swell of tears lodge in his throat.
"Jamey's gone, mate. But you saved the lad here."
Roan squinted at Laura then at the back of the boys' heads she kept pressed against the hollows of her shoulders.
"Kevin," he said. He was about to push up to get on his knees when excruciating pain razored through his left arm.
"Ma arm's broken!" he gasped, then doubled over during a coughing fit.
"Lucky it’s no' yer back," Ben said gravely. He looked at Laura then again at Roan. "She claims one o' the lads didn’t make it ou’," he said thickly. He glanced up and scowled, and bellowed to the crowd pressing closer for a look at Roan, "Get back! If you can’t lend a hand, go home, the lot o' you!"
Roan. "Roan."
In front of the curious spectators, Beth materialized and immediately knelt to one knee i
n front of the new laird of Baird House. "Are you all right?"
Roan nodded. With Beth and Ben's help, he got up onto his feet. Neither he nor Beth noticed the sickly look of shock on Ben's face, or the awed expressions of the strangers filling the driveway.
"I've got to get Kevin," Roan insisted, finally beginning to feel like himself again, in spite of the pain racking his body.
"Lachlan's searching for him."
Blinking hard, Roan looked into Beth's troubled eyes. "Can he help him?"
"If it's within his power, he will," Beth said, her voice cracking with emotion.
"Kevin," Laura whimpered, rising to her feet with a boy sitting on each of her hips.
With his right arm, Roan reached out and urged Alby to come to him. Surprisingly, the boy clung to Roan's broad neck.
Laura, who had not realized Beth had actually materialized from thin air, turned in the direction of the house and uttered, "Please, God. Give me a second chance to do right by them."
Roan stepped to her side. "Lannie will find him. Have faith, Laura. We must have faith."
Sobbing, she laid one side of her face to Roan's chest. "It all happened so fast!"
"Aye, lass. I know," Roan soothed, absently planting a kiss on the crown of her head. "Thank God you two made it ou' okay. Kahl? Ye're no' hurt, are you?"
"Where's Kevin?" the five-year-old bitterly demanded.
Roan cast a fearful look in the direction of the house. "Comin', laddie. Lannie will save him. I feel it in ma bones." Dear God, make it true. For us all, make it true!
Tongues of fire lapped at the night through the desolate portals of what had been the windows. A chimney on the west side of the house began to crumble. Flames reached high into the midnight sky from several of the rooftops.
"Lannie," Roan said in a prayerlike whisper. "I'll promise you anythin' if you just bring Kevin to us, alive and unharmed."
Fed by the broken gas lines, the flames grew until the manor's stonework exterior could barely be seen. Not a murmur stirred among the spectators. All eyes were riveted on the destructive element consuming the region's most famous house.
Laura's legs weakened, forcing her to lower Kahl to the ground. She wanted to lean completely into Roan's powerful body, and weep herself into forgetfulness. She'd never been a dreamer or a believer in the powers of prayer. She didn't even know where to begin and self-loathing ate away at her stomach.
Dawns Everlastin' (former title: Dusk Before Dawn) Book 2 Page 15
