Cursed to Kill

by Claire Ashgrove

  As if they all sensed Cian had deferred the final resolution to Fintan, the grotto filled with silence.

  “This is Cian’s choice.” Fintan met Cian’s pleading gaze, understanding shining in his steely grey eyes. “It is his life. Further, the woman who he loves is in jeopardy as long as he bears the curse. As keepers of the ancient Celtic ways, we cannot influence those who have not made a choice. It is not our way.”

  Taran made a sound very similar to a snarl. He smacked an open palm against his thigh and bolted to his feet. But he did not leave. He paced the small patch of barren ground before the Northern-most stone. In his furious march, Cian read his acceptance. Taran despised the truth, but he wouldn’t hinder the rite.

  The way the fire suddenly snapped signaled the same resignation from Brigid. Tremendous power radiated from her fierce glower. Her silence, however, confirmed her acceptance.

  “Begin, brother,” Isolde coached with a soft smile. “It is your rite to conduct.”

  Belen smirked. “How can we when the woman isn’t present?”

  “She is,” Rhiannon and Dàire said in unison.

  Cian’s stare snapped to the trees. Miranda was here? Goddess above, he didn’t want her to witness this. He’d specifically instructed Rhiannon to leave Miranda locked in her room.

  “Relax, Cian.” Dàire’s smirk drifted to Belen. “She can’t be harmed. She sits on the Sacred Tree.”

  The old Oak that had withstood even the Roman’s assault—Cian’s interlaced lungs loosened a fraction. For years, the power in those branches had kept the Selgovae safe. Forced the invaders away. It stood straight and tall, protector to the people, until it splintered the night Drandar murdered their mother. Cian had hewn the cracked and toppled logs, crafting them into the very foundation of Sgàil na Faileas. He didn’t want Miranda seeing this, but as long as she remained there, she would be safe. From his brothers, from him, from their father.

  ****

  Miranda recoiled, torn between the desire to run far away from these people and the fascination of what would come next. On one hand, the discussion she was hearing bordered on sheer insanity. Immortality, demons, magic—who the hell believed in that stuff? On the other hand, eight people had just discussed the impossible with the same casualness as if they debated what to have for a family dinner. The subject was completely comfortable to them.

  Disturbingly natural.

  Before her eyes, the fire rose higher as Cian recited from the pages. “With birth comes the greatest power, for it is the very definition of life. Equal and counterpart comes death, and let those who came into this world this night direct the forces of nature. For it is channeled through the vessel that will experience both.”

  A strange shimmy rasped through the leaves. With the rustling came the feeling she was being watched. Goose bumps prickled. Sudden chills made Miranda shudder. Today was Cian’s birthday. If she’d understood that correctly, the runic writing described him. As if his mother had known. Impossible.

  Wasn’t it?

  Her hair stirred like fingertips pulled through the short lengths. She jumped, a shriek rising to her throat. Before it burst free, a feminine voice caressed her ears. “Be strong.”

  Holy shit.

  Miranda huddled into her arms as she nervously glanced around the woods. Now she was hearing things. The damned scene in front of her had her imagination working overtime. Muttering, she looked back at Cian, annoyed she’d missed several bits of what he’d said.

  “…of the Stones that stand around me accept this offering. Take that which would feast upon the blood of newborns and contain it in the earth. It is, it—” Cian’s voice broke on a pained gasp. He pressed a hand to his chest. His shoulders heaved visibly as he drew in a breath. “It shall be…chained…”

  As Miranda looked on, Cian’s pain became unmistakable. Though she could see only his back, when he lowered his hand to drop a page from the manuscript, his palm bore a stain of crimson. Her heartbeat jumped into double time. What the hell? No one had touched him. Why was he bleeding?

  His words became lost in the cacophony of her thoughts and her rising worry. Each syllable he recited made the next more difficult. Rhiannon, who stood before the stone directly opposite Cian, winced in rhythm with Cian’s utterances. At his left, the blonde, Isolde, shed quiet tears.

  The world around Miranda shifted. Though nothing had physically moved, nothing had substantially altered, she recognized the difference. Life brimmed, little pulses of energy that resembled pricks of static electricity. Between those staccato spikes, a stifling nothingness lingered. As if something waited to choke out the budding zings.

  Cian recited another phrase that the buzzing in Miranda’s ears drowned out. But his sharp cry of agony cut through the noise, bringing her to the edge of the thick trunk. He dropped to his knees, and Isolde buried her face in her hands.

  Miranda struggled to rise. Whatever was happening, she couldn’t bear to sit here and watch Cian suffer. Yet despite her multiple attempts, she couldn’t lift herself more than an inch off the trunk. An invisible force pressed on her shoulder—a hand. Yes, a hand squeezed. Hard.

  She gasped at the instantaneous sharp pain in her shoulder. She’d have called herself crazy, but no matter how illogical it sounded, she’d swear fingers dug into her skin. Touched bone.

  Twisting to escape the painful vise, she swatted at the air surrounding her left side. “Let me go, damn it! He needs me.” She couldn’t begin to explain how she understood what Cian needed. Never before had she been more convinced of something. He needed her.

  “Let. Me. Go!”

  As she screeched the order, the papers tumbled from Cian’s hands, and he collapsed on the ground. He didn’t move. Didn’t so much as grimace.

  In that exact moment, the imprisoning hold on her shoulder disappeared. A cold wind blew through the trees, engulfing her sweater and chilling her all the way to the bone. It blew so hard she stumbled.

  “Go,” the strange, feminine voice whispered with the leaves.

  Miranda didn’t stop to consider the oddities taking place around her. Fear for Cian drove her forward. She bolted through the dense foliage, unmindful of the twigs that snapped across her face and arms.

  “Stay back!” Rhiannon cried as Miranda darted into the center of the standing stones. “Drandar’s here. Go back to the tree trunk, Miranda!”

  Ignoring Rhiannon’s warnings, Miranda dropped to her knees beside Cian’s motionless body. She cradled his head in her lap, bent over to press a kiss against his parted mouth. “Cian,” she whispered. “I’m here.”

  His lips were cold. His skin as well. Across his chest, shallow cuts marked an X. Blood trickled over his ribs onto the grass beneath him. As Miranda’s thumb grazed over the side of his neck, she realized his pulse had come to a standstill. “Cian!” This wasn’t happening. He couldn’t be…

  Miranda couldn’t finish the thought. The idea that Cian might be dead shredded her heart and froze her lungs. Tears rose to her eyes, blurring his handsome face.

  “So sweet, isn’t it?” An eerie, masculine voice echoed from beyond the ring of firelight. “Taran, would you like to claim her, or shall I?”

  “Father.” A smile curved on Taran’s mouth as he looked to the trees behind Miranda.

  No sooner had the word left Taran’s lips did Isolde rise to her feet. She brought her hands before her belly, thumbs and forefingers touching, palms facing outward, and raised her arms above her head before separating them and letting them fall to her side. “Be gone, vile creature of darkness! You cannot harm those within these stones.”

  “Daughter, you embarrass me,” Drandar spit out with disgust.

  Brigid and Taran laughed openly, while Belen hid a smile.

  Miranda ignored the siblings surrounding her, unable to process anything beyond the man who lay unmoving in her arms. “Cian, don’t do this to me,” she begged. “Oh, God, don’t do this to me.”

  She cradled him close, r
esting her cheek against his. Tears fell freely, sliding from the corners of her eyes to wet his skin. He’d warned her he might not return. Rhiannon had mentioned he might die. Not once had she taken either of them seriously. Now, she wished she had. Wished she’d prodded someone into telling her things sooner. Wished she’d had time enough to tell Cian exactly how much of her heart he possessed.

  “Bring her to me, Brigid. Show the poor excuse of a daughter, Isolde, how to honor her father.”

  Before Brigid could do more than push her hair out of her way, the moonlight shone brighter. No, not moonlight, Miranda realized as she lifted her eyes to the stars. An ethereal light, as pure and brilliant as new-fallen snow. Awestruck, she watched as it gathered from a disbursed cloud of tiny particles into a thick mass, then coalesced into the form of a woman.

  Long blonde hair floated around delicate shoulders, accenting the regal lines of her face. She wore a Mona Lisa smile that registered more in her blue eyes than on her mouth. In a heartbeat, Miranda made the connection. Except for the color of her eyes, the woman looked exactly like Isolde.

  Cian’s mother.

  She reached an elegant hand toward her fallen son, her fingertips grazing his chest. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders, shielding Cian’s face from Miranda’s searching gaze. Blue eyes locked on Miranda. “I am Nyamah, high priestess to the Selgovae. The fates have weighed my son’s life against the future he might have as a mortal.” Her voice carried to Miranda’s ears, melodic, yet muffled, as if she spoke through a funnel that took the sounds and morphed them outward, separating them like the faint particles Nyamah had initially presented herself as.

  Miranda nodded, recognizing the same voice from the tree stump.

  “If it is your desire, I give him to you.”

  Fresh tears burst free as Miranda furiously nodded. “Yes. Yes, please.”

  This time, the smile touched Nyamah’s mouth, lifting the corners and animating the numerous tattoos on her face. “It is a great responsibility to lead the Selgovae. This will fall to you, as his equal, as a member of my family.”

  Unable to speak through the emotion that clogged her throat, Miranda nodded again.

  Nyamah stroked Miranda’s cheek, a caress that lacked substance and felt more like a whisper. Then she drew back, gliding away from Miranda and Cian to touch each one of her children’s heads before she drifted closer to the stars. She looked to the atmosphere, the treetops that kissed the sky. “You cannot harm them, Drandar. I will not ward them all, but this pair belongs to me.”

  As an angry hiss slithered through the thick branches, Nyamah disappeared. Cian gasped. His lashes fluttered, then lifted, and his gaze locked with Miranda’s. Wonder and disbelief filled bright green eyes.

  He lifted an unsteady hand to touch the side of her face. “You’re here.”

  “Yes,” Miranda choked through her tears. “I’m here. Always.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  One hundred feet away from the circle of nine stones of power, Cian sat atop a toppled monolith with Miranda cradled against his chest. The breeze blew through her short hair, tickling his chin and filling his nose with the scent of her citrus shampoo. He inhaled deeply and reveled at this, the first moment he had experienced in months, where being close to her didn’t fill him with horrific desires.

  She was soft and warm, and he ached to make love to her.

  He nuzzled the side of her face with his cheek. “I don’t deserve you.”

  Miranda chuckled as she lifted their interlaced hands and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “I wouldn’t go that far. But for the next few months I expect some major ass kissing.”

  Emotion surged through him, constricting his chest. After everything he’d put her through, it was a miracle she didn’t hate him. That she was still sitting here with him blew his mind. Were there roles reversed, he wasn’t sure he’d have made the same decisions.

  She stirred, twisting her body so she fit more snugly between his outstretched legs. Her palm grazed down the center of his chest, and her soulful brown eyes lifted to his. “I love you.”

  No. Were the situation the other way around, he’d have done exactly the same thing. He knew it then, as certainly as he knew what he’d been through tonight had freed him. He dusted his lips over the crown of her head. “I love you too.”

  “Let me get this straight.” A soft laugh drifted off her lips. “The ritual wasn’t designed for you, but just for the holiday. And since you’re all born on holidays, any one of you could have performed it?”

  He nodded. “Right. Drandar impregnated our mother so that she would birth a child on each holiday. She tricked him eight times before he realized she was accumulating the power to destroy him.”

  Cian cringed at the shudder that rolled through Miranda’s shoulders.

  “And the circle,” she gestured to the standing stones, “That’s where he killed the infants who didn’t survive?”

  Again, he nodded, albeit more slowly. Centuries had worn the deaths into numbness, but hearing Miranda voice the bloody history of his tribe roused all the buried feelings. Eight infants, also his siblings, had lost their lives after only taking a few breaths. The tribe celebrated the spilling of their blood. Revered Drandar’s growing might.

  All except Cian’s mother whose phenomenal power granted her the ability to shield herself from his dark intentions.

  “And his purpose?” Miranda asked in a whisper.

  “To create a tribe like my sisters and brothers. Most especially like Brigid, Taran, and Belen, men and women who embraced the same thirst for blood and immortal power.”

  He wound his arms around her more tightly as another shiver worked down her spine.

  “Why were they so upset? This was your choice, as others said.”

  “Because…” Cian shifted her, pulling her further upright and twisting her more fully toward him so he could nibble at her sweet lips. “Drandar bound my mother’s spirit to the earth.” Taking a moment to enjoy the softness of her mouth against his, he let a kiss linger before continuing, “If the rituals are completed, my mother’s power will be restored and she’ll destroy Drandar. Then she can rest in peace.”

  “Mm,” Miranda murmured as Cian suckled at her upper lip. Her distraction was evident in the way her fingers curled into his forearms. The quickening of her breath. “And you? Why did she ward you?”

  He trailed the tip of his tongue over the soft fullness of her lower lip. “I’m her firstborn son. The first she succeeded in secreting away.”

  Miranda resituated herself, straddling his lap and looping her arms around his neck. “She gave you to me, you know.”

  No, he hadn’t known, and hearing that his mother had surrendered his keeping to Miranda swelled his chest to painful limits. Nyamah loved all her children, but he had been the one she visited with the longest when she managed to find a few moments to sneak away and see her children the old woman of the woods raised. She had always favored Cian. Maybe because he lacked the powers the others possessed, maybe because as the oldest he understood the role of mother most and craved what he couldn’t have. He didn’t know. Still he recognized the meaning in his mother’s gift. She approved of Miranda. Not just for him. As part of the tribe that she had loved and served.

  “What do you intend to do with me?” he murmured in a hoarse voice.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” A smile crept into her big brown eyes, and she slid a delicate palm down his chest. Her fingertips danced tauntingly over his stirring cock. “I suppose I could find a use or two.”

  With a low groan, Cian wound his arms around her tiny waist and kissed her thoroughly. His thoughts blurred, the slide of her tongue against his more intoxicating than any fermented drink. Hunger sparked in an instant, the need to feel her body gliding against his, to experience her with the newness of mortality, igniting like the logs that crackled in the distance. His hands threaded through her hair, tipped her head back to claim her more deeply.

  Miranda b
roke the kiss and eyed him warily. “Are you certain you’re done with plotting ways to kill me?”

  Cian couldn’t hold back a soft chuckle. Brushing the tip of his nose against hers, he grinned. “I assure you there are many, many things I want to do to you.” He dipped his head to give the delicate skin along her throat a sharp nip. “Killing you isn’t anywhere on the list.”

  “Good,” she murmured huskily. Flattening her palm against the center of his chest, she pushed him back onto the rock. Her impish smile lighted in her eyes as she slid her hands over his abdomen. “Because I’ve thought of one, very important, use for you.” One palm slipped lower to stroke his hardened cock.

  “Do tell,” Cian managed through a closing throat.

  Bending forward, she dragged her breasts over his chest as she inched her way to his mouth. “I want to make love to you on this rock.”

  He groaned softly, his body answering like a snapping whip. Dipping his fingertips beneath the hem of her sweater, he stroked her trim sides with the pad of his thumbs. His gaze latched onto hers. In those soulful depths, love shone bright, love he had nearly destroyed. Love he couldn’t live without.

  “Miranda?” he whispered, suddenly in need of something deeper, something more binding than the simple words I love you.

  A smile drifted across her swollen lips. “Yes?”

  “I want you to be my wife.”

  For a frightening moment, her smile slipped. His heart skipped several beats. Silently he cursed himself for leaping way ahead.

  When tenderness infused her expression and tears touched the corner of her eyes, the instantaneous knot behind his ribs unwound. He expelled the breath he’d been holding, closed his eyes in relief. Soul-deep hunger ignited, only this time, it carried nothing of the dark horrific taint. Just the need to love her thoroughly. Until the end of his mortal lifetime.

  “If you’re going to be there when I wake up, I can agree to that.”