Mystical Warrior

by Janet Chapman

She was so confused; one minute Trace was asking her to kiss him, and even teasing her about cleaning his room, and the next thing she knew he was angry.

  And then he’d simply left.

  Fiona groped through the darkness to find the bed, and pulled the blanket free and wrapped it around herself as she sat down, then buried her face in her hands.

  Trace had said he had done something wrong, but she knew better. It had been obvious for days that he desired her, and apparently so angry at what had happened on television that she hadn’t seen his truck in the yard, she had come down to his secret room to revisit the notion that she had an equal desire for him.

  Or see if what she really desired was simply to be like other modern women.

  So when Trace had startled her by walking in, looking strong and powerful, with his handsome gray eyes darkened with lust, and he’d taken her in his arms and asked her to kiss him … well, she had boldly offered him her body without asking for or even expecting any sort of commitment in return.

  Because that was how things were done today. She knew women were free to sleep with men they had no intention of marrying without being considered whores and that what had once been only a man’s privilege was now a woman’s as well. And she had desperately wanted Trace to see how bold and confident she’d become … and maybe to show him that she was just as capable of giving him sexual pleasure as any of the modern women he knew.

  Which only showed that pride really did go before a fall.

  She’d been so determined to prove to Trace how quickly she’d adapted to this century and all of its freedoms, she hadn’t once stopped to consider his feelings. Nay, she hadn’t thought past giving the man the best sex he’d ever had, so she could feel like a twenty-first-century woman.

  She had to fix this. She had to go after Trace and apologize, and she had to promise that she would never, ever throw herself at him again.

  And then she had to get the hell out of his life.

  Fiona pulled in a shuddering breath and stood up, not liking that last part but realizing there was no way she could continue living here. She walked to the table and turned on the light. She didn’t think she could rent a new apartment with only the three hundred dollars she had left, though, so until she found a job and saved up more money, she would simply have to avoid Trace.

  She quickly dressed and started braiding her hair. It shouldn’t be too hard, now that his knee was healed. He’d be going back to work, and she would simply stay in her apartment when he was home. And no more leaving eggs and bread on his doorstep, or cleaning, or new animals, or touching his tools or any of his belongings.

  And she would bring back his revolver and never come down to his room again.

  Fiona squared her shoulders as she looked around and took another shuddering breath. She would begin by putting Trace’s hidey-hole back the way he’d had it. Then she would go upstairs and send Gabriella home, tell Mac to cook his own dinner, and take Misneach for a long walk down by the ocean and explain to him that he could no longer pester their landlord.

  And tonight she would sleep in her cupboard, because …

  Because today she’d learned it was only in there that she should dream of soaring strong and free and proud.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Trace set his drink on the table and gave the man sliding into the booth across from him a warning glare. “Go away, Oceanus, preferably far, far away.”

  “I’ll have whatever the gentleman is having, please, and bring him another one at the same time,” Mac added as the waitress walked off. “Believe me, Huntsman, I would if I could. But I need to stay as close to An Téarmann and de Gairn’s magic as I possibly can without it killing me. If I leave Midnight Bay, I’m unprotected.”

  “Then you’re as good as dead, because this is Oak Harbor.”

  “And so when you bring my cold, dead body back to my father, maybe then you’ll explain to him why you forced me to come looking for you.”

  Trace downed the last bit of ice-diluted Scotch in his glass. “What’s the matter, did the women run out of pillows to fluff or food to cook you? Or did you end up burning down my house after all?”

  “I’ve been on my own for the last two days. Fiona came in about an hour after you finally drove off the other day, and sent Gabriella home and then disappeared upstairs. I haven’t seen either one of them since, except when Fiona went to the barn to feed her animals and yesterday morning, when she walked out the driveway and headed toward town.”

  Trace stared down at his empty glass, saying nothing.

  “You need to come home and fix this, Trace. The energy surrounding your house is so muddled that even the seagulls refuse to land on your roof.”

  “Go away, Oceanus.”

  “You haven’t answered your phone for two days,” Mac continued. “And your excited fishing partner finally had to come over last night to tell you he had to hire a man to help him at sea and that the winch broke twice because the traps were so laden with lobsters.” Mac took a sip of the drink the waitress set in front of him and made an appreciative sound. “Are you not pleased that the fishing is going well?”

  “Ecstatic.”

  “But you don’t feel guilty for leaving a nineteen-year-old boy to fend for himself?”

  “The man is more than capable of carrying both our loads and obviously smart enough to hire help if he needs it.”

  Mac slid Trace’s new drink toward him. “If you have anything running through your veins besides Scotch and cold, stark fear, you will come home and fix this before she does something … foolish.”

  Trace disguised his flinch by lifting his glass and taking a long swig, letting the Scotch sit in his mouth awhile and then swallowing.

  “Brooding doesn’t become you, my friend,” Mac continued quietly.

  “I’m not brooding; I’m sitting here wondering where I’m going to hide your body when I finally lose my patience and kill you. I can’t stuff you in a lobster trap, because I don’t know where in hell Atlantis is. And the way my luck’s been running lately, I’d probably sink you right on top of your father’s goddamned house.”

  Mac stopped with his drink halfway to his mouth and gave Trace a small salute with his glass. “I can see you’re finally starting to believe.”

  “What I believe is that you’re a … what in hell are you, anyway, if you’re not a drùidh? I’d like to know what to call you other than a pain in the ass.”

  Mac eyed him for several heartbeats. “I suppose ‘Your Highness’ is out.”

  Trace snorted. “We’ll go with royal pain in the ass, then.”

  “The accurate term is theurgist,” Mac growled. “Which I obviously must explain means ‘supernatural agent of human affairs,’” he said when Trace shot him a glare. But then he sighed. “Okay; then let’s just go with wizard.”

  Trace took a sip of his Scotch before leveling his gaze on Mac again. “So if you’re some big, bad-ass wizard, you ought to be able to fix Fiona’s problem all by your supernatural self,” he said, waving his finger in a circle. “So why in hell don’t you?”

  “Because the thing about being a theu—a wizard is that I’m not supposed to actually meddle in human affairs.”

  “Then what do you do, actually?”

  Mac grinned. “I protect everyone’s right of free will, so all you people can mess up your lives and then fix your own damn problems.”

  “You don’t think bringing Fiona and Gabriella here was meddling?”

  “I merely granted them something they were already wishing for.”

  “Fiona sure as hell wasn’t wishing to be herself again,” Trace countered. “She made no bones about the fact that she preferred being a hawk.”

  Mac made a dismissive gesture. “She only thought she did, but hidden inside her so deeply that even she couldn’t see—likely because she didn’t dare look—Fiona dreamed of coming back.” He leaned forward on the table. “More than anything else, she desires to be a mother and to be abl
e to live long enough to raise her child. If she hadn’t wanted a second chance, of her own free will, not even my powerful magic could have made it happen.”

  Trace stared down at his glass, running his thumb over the condensation on the side. “Can you bring anyone back?” he asked quietly. He looked up when Mac didn’t answer, and sucked in his breath at what he saw in the wizard’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Mac said softly. “But Elena’s deepest wish was to move on.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “I’m afraid I do, and if you take a moment and look deep inside yourself, you will find not only the knowledge that I’m right but also a sense of relief.” Mac leaned forward on the table again. “You can’t save them all, Trace, because sometimes an individual’s journey is more about dealing with their own demons than helping you fight yours.”

  “You could at least try to bring her back.”

  “Unlike Fiona, who remained herself even as a hawk because she wasn’t ready to move on, Elena is already walking the earth again as someone else.” Mac grinned tightly. “And with any luck, maybe the woman will have learned from her mistakes and get it right this time.”

  Trace scowled down at his drink, trying to decide if he believed him or not, suspecting that the man might be too caught up in his own problems to be interested in helping anyone else. He’d brought Fiona back as a gift to Matt and Kenzie to trade her for his own sister, but bringing Elena back wouldn’t gain him anything, now, would it?

  Trace narrowed his eyes. “What did you mean when you said I’m relieved? You think I’m happy Elena’s dead?”

  “No,” Mac said evenly. “I think deep down you know that if she’d lived, you would have found yourself tied to a woman you couldn’t save. And I also think you innately know that death is not a punishment, and that life is not some sort of reward.” He leaned forward again. “They’re two sides of the same coin, Trace, and the difference between them is really quite insignificant.”

  “Then what in hell is significant?”

  “How you choose to spend that coin.”

  Trace took a swig of his drink, again letting it sit in his mouth before swallowing.

  “You saved your mother,” Mac said quietly.

  “Sure,” he said with a snort. “And it only took me seventeen friggin’ years.” He set his glass down and leaned on the table. “Since you seem to know so much about everyone else’s problems but your own, then tell me why my mother—or any woman, for that matter—would stay with a bastard who kicked her around for sport.”

  “Because women are hardwired to stay.” Mac blew out a heavy sigh when Trace just glared at him. “Since the beginning of humanity,” he continued, “if a woman didn’t stay with her mate, she and her children faced certain poverty and even death. So, she stayed and endured, and because she had no other choice, she went to sleep every night praying the bastard would miraculously wake up a changed man.”

  “My mother had choices. There were agencies she could have gone to for help. And she had two sisters and a bunch of cousins who would have helped if she’d asked. Yet she spent seventeen years hiding the fact from everyone that she was married to a drunken bully.”

  “You think a survival instinct can vanish in only a few generations?” Mac said quietly. “As recently as the nineteen-hundreds, what did women with children have to rely on except the kindness of their families? And if they had no family to take them in, then they were on the street or living in a poorhouse. That’s why even today, even with all of the help available to them, women continue to stay: because in the backs of their minds, they ask themselves a hundred what ifs. What will I do to support myself if I leave him? What if I’m unable to make it on my own? I can’t live with my sister forever. What if the drunken bully causes trouble for my family? What if no other man will want me? What if the bastard is right, maybe I did trap him into marriage because I was too afraid to leave Midnight Bay to go to college? She was sixteen, Trace, and scared to death. And she had you to think about, which only added to her list of what ifs.”

  “You mean, like what if the bastard ended up killing his son in a drunken rage?”

  “No, I believe it was more like What if he blames me for his father hating him? And then there was her greatest fear of all: What if my son hates me when he becomes old enough to realize I can’t even put food on the table or a roof over his head because I truly am a weak, husband-trapping woman nobody wants?”

  “How in hell do you know all about my mother? And Elena?”

  “The Trees of Life truly are humanity’s conscience, Trace, and all that has happened and all that will happen is stored in them.”

  “Which you can’t get near, because you can’t get past the drùidhs.”

  “Ah, but I don’t need to get past them,” Mac countered. “I believe you would like my father, Huntsman, as the two of you have a lot in common. He didn’t trust anyone, either.” Mac shrugged. “Probably because he understood human nature only too well. Dad knew better than to cut himself—or his heir—completely off from the Trees, so he fashioned a secret entrance through which we could access the knowledge they hold.” Up went Mac’s brow again. “And knowing I’d be forced to rely on your generous nature to take me in, I did a little research before I came here.”

  Trace ran his thumb along the side of his empty glass. “Then you know what happened two days ago down in my safe room.”

  “No, actually, I don’t. Rearranging time and space and matter is simple enough, but it takes a good deal of energy to access and then sift through all the knowledge in the Trees. And right now, I need to conserve my strength in order to be prepared for another attack.” He shrugged. “Besides, my problem is more important to me than your little lovers’ spat with Fiona. Except,” Mac growled, leaning forward again, “when it forces me to hunt you down to some seedy bar three towns away from An Téarmann.” His glare turned threatening. “So, are you coming home, or am I taking you home?”

  Trace leaned back in the booth and dropped his chin to his chest. “I can’t fix the problem,” he quietly muttered, “because I don’t know how.” He looked up. “Exactly how thoroughly did you research Fiona before you decided to give her a second chance?”

  Mac folded his arms over his chest. “I am aware of all that she endured.”

  “Then do you have any suggestions how one goes about giving a woman back her … femininity? Those bastards turned her into a pleasure machine.”

  Mac sighed. “I don’t think I’m the man you should be asking.” He canted his head. “That is, if you should be asking a man at all. Maybe this is a question for Madeline.” He grinned tightly. “Although I would take her advice with a grain of caution if I were you. She sent me on a wild-goose chase after those MacKeage women.”

  Trace waved that away. “Peeps has a thing for getting even with people who piss her off.” He remembered the Sesame Street pajamas, her stealing his shoes, and how she’d sabotaged his truck, and he smiled. “Although I have to admit, she’s taken one-upmanship to a whole new level.” He nodded to himself, thinking maybe he would ask her. But then he started shaking his head. “Nope. If I ask Maddy what to do about Fiona, she’ll hound me to hell and back for a play-by-play of the proceedings and then start planning my wedding.”

  “What about Eve Gregor?” Mac suggested.

  Trace gaped at him and then snorted. “Don’t you know anything about women? You even hint to one of them that you’re interested in someone, and women turn into matchmaking tyrants. And they always tell their best friend, and Maddy and Eve are so tight you can’t slip a piece of paper between them.”

  “You have to ask someone, Huntsman, because you have to fix this.”

  Trace looked Mac directly in the eyes. “No, I don’t have to fix a damned thing, because none of this is any of my business. I didn’t create the problem, so why in hell should I be the one to fix it? You said yourself I can’t save them all, so why are you expecting me to save Fiona?�
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  Up went Mac’s brow yet again. “If not you, then who? Johnnie Dempster? Or the first man who asks her out on a date? I’m sure there are plenty of single men in town who would love to give Fiona her wish.”

  “You think it’s her wish to let some man use her again?”

  Mac frowned. “Her wish is for a child. I told you that deep down, Fiona wanted a second chance because she wants another baby.”

  “But she openly admitted to me that she doesn’t like men, so I don’t exactly see her dating every guy in town, much less marrying the first one who asks her.”

  “You don’t think Fiona’s going to figure out that she doesn’t need a husband to get her wish? Hell, half the women on that show she’s been watching have had children out of wedlock.”

  Trace stiffened. “Are you saying the only reason she … that she only wanted to … you think she was hoping I’d get her pregnant?”

  “Isn’t that what the two of you fought about?”

  “Goddamn it! She was using me.”

  Mac looked around and then leaned forward. “And I suppose your intentions were completely honorable?” he whispered tightly.

  “I sure as hell didn’t have a hidden agenda. I asked her flat-out if she was okay with it.” Trace threw himself back with a snort, waving angrily at the air. “Of course she was okay with it, because she thought she’d found herself a sperm donor.”

  “And your fight was over your using a condom?”

  “We didn’t get that far. Wait. How do you know there even was a condom?”

  “I found the empty packet on the cot in your safe room this morning.”

  “But I never took it out from under the pillow. And the packet shouldn’t have been empty, because I opened it and put it under the pillow but then never touched it.” He snorted again. “Fiona must have found it when she was tidying up.”

  “So, if you didn’t know this had anything to do with a child, what exactly did you think I was asking you to come home and fix?”

  “Her inability to … her attitude toward …” Trace dropped his head in his hands. “I knew I had sworn off women for a reason.” He glared across the table at Mac. “I got the impression Fiona thought her only role in lovemaking was giving pleasure, and it appeared to me she didn’t have a clue how to receive it.”