Mystical Warrior (Midnight Bay)

by Janet Chapman

  Not actually having seen Fiona since she’d moved in, Trace had feared he really was going to have to tell Kenzie to come get her body. But every night for the last six nights, he’d watched the lights go off the moment he drove into the yard and heard what sounded like a mouse tiptoeing overhead late into the evening. And every morning, he would back out of his driveway and wait on the road, and sure enough, the lights would come on the moment his invisible tenant was certain he was gone.

  He felt a tad guilty for having stormed up there the first night to point out that just because electricity was included in the rent, that didn’t mean she could keep every damn bulb burning all night. But, still sore at being duped by a couple of eleventh-century highlanders, he hadn’t been in a generous mood.

  Trace chuckled humorlessly as he scraped the passenger side of the windshield. He’d have liked to have been a fly on the wall in the two Gregor households as Kenzie and Matt discussed Fiona’s future with their twenty-first-century wives. He didn’t know Winter Gregor very well, having met her only last month when she and Matt had driven Fiona down from the mountains, but he’d gotten the impression the woman had felt a tad guilty herself.

  Whereas Matt Gregor had simply looked relieved. Having a long-lost sister suddenly show up while dealing with a new infant and fighting sleep deprivation had obviously been too much for the powerful wizard, and Matt had somehow persuaded his wife—who had also shown signs of needing a good night’s sleep—that Kenzie and Eve were in a much better position to help Fiona adjust to her new life.

  But seeing his own impending fatherhood and two a.m. feedings fast approaching, Kenzie had, in turn, decided to pawn Fiona off on his good buddy, who just happened to have an empty apartment he desperately needed to rent.

  Trace climbed into his truck, directing his scowl at himself. Apparently, working twelve-hour days wasn’t as good an excuse as having a baby, whereas his own military background made him a perfect chump to babysit a beautiful woman afraid of her own shadow. “Oh, and while you’re at it, Huntsman,” Kenzie had said just before leaving, “could ye maybe help us help Fiona get over her fear of men?”

  Trace snorted and backed out of the driveway. There was no us, as he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the highlander since.

  Great. Wonderful. How friggin’ fantastic lucky was he to get sucked into the remains of the Gregor clan—that just happened to be a family of magic makers. That’s what his other good buddy, William Killkenny, called them, anyway; and William should know, since he was a ninth-century Irish warrior. Only instead of traveling through time as a noble little hawk like Fiona Gregor, Killkenny had shown up in Midnight Bay last spring as a goddamn dragon.

  Trace had thought he’d left his war behind in Afghanistan five months ago, but it seemed he’d only exchanged one nightmare for another. Whereas Matt Gregor was some sort of ancient drùidh, Kenzie Gregor, it turned out, was a soul warrior, who helped time-traveling displaced souls cursed to live as monsters become human again.

  Which was what had originally brought William Killkenny here.

  But then, Trace’s cousin Maddy was why the Irishman had stayed.

  And because whoever or what ever had cursed the displaced souls didn’t care for Kenzie’s interference, this desolate section of the coast of Maine had been weathering freak storms every time the evil forces came up against the highlander.

  Mainers could deal with good old-fashioned homegrown bogeymen—because any idiot knew you only needed a shotgun to send them scurrying—but dragons, mermaids, demon wolves, and magical tigers … well, Afghanistan wasn’t looking so ugly anymore. At least he’d understood that fight, even if he hadn’t liked his personal role in it, whereas now he couldn’t even tell the good guys from the bad guys.

  Take the magical tiger, for instance; turned out it was another powerful drùidh by the name of Maximilian Oceanus, from what was supposed to be the mythical continent of Atlantis. Mac was the one who had turned Fiona Gregor back into herself, as a thank you to Kenzie for helping his own sister escape some bad-ass fiancé.

  Carolina Oceanus had been the area’s latest tourist attraction, a mermaid that had quickly displaced Midnight Bay’s infamous dragon when Trace, in a moment of outright insanity, had broadcast a Mayday that he had spotted a naked woman swimming ten miles out in the Gulf of Maine.

  Noticing that the lights in the upstairs kitchen had come on, Trace blew out a heavy sigh and headed toward the docks. All he’d dreamed about for the last two years was coming home to Maine and living a quiet, peaceful life as a fisherman, where the only battles he waged would be against Mother Nature, and the only demons he had to fight were the ones in his head.

  Dammit, magic wasn’t supposed to be real.

  But Matt Gregor and Maximilian Oceanus sure as hell weren’t selling snake oil, William Killkenny certainly knew more about the art of war than most modern generals, and Kenzie Gregor … well, dammit, he had seen Kenzie turn into a panther.

  And if that wasn’t proof enough, Trace had several new scars on his already battered body as evidence, made by a pack of demonic wolves that had shown up in the last hurricane-force storm that had nearly wiped Midnight Bay off the map.

  Yes, he could see his hope of a peaceful life heading to hell in a handbasket.

  But that didn’t mean he had to let a beautiful woman with vulnerable golden eyes sucker him into going along on the ride. He’d already been there and done that, and he was smart enough to learn from his mistakes.

  Especially the ones that nearly killed him.

  Fiona stood on the sidewalk at the end of the driveway, snuggled inside an ankle-length wool coat, as the November sun struggled to warm the air above freezing. She smiled down the street in the direction of Dragon Cove, feeling quite proud not only of having survived six whole days living on her own but also of actually enjoying herself. She rather liked nobody constantly reminding her how lucky she was or telling her what she should be thinking or doing or planning to do, and this morning, her newfound freedom even had her feeling brave enough to venture into town.

  Well, maybe only semibrave, since she wasn’t exactly going alone.

  Not that Gabriella would be much help if they got into any sort of physical confrontation, but the young girl certainly had plenty of moral support to offer. And truth told, Fiona had every hope that Gabriella’s courage, however naïve, might actually prove contagious.

  Not seeing any sign of her new friend, Fiona turned toward the house that was slowly starting to feel like home and realized that the sad-looking structure appeared more abandoned than lived in, although attempts had been made to rectify that.

  A new coat of yellow paint covered the bottom half of the house, while the top half still had patches of weathered wood showing from years of neglect. Broken shutters—some holding on by a single hinge—hung crookedly beside the upstairs windows, and decades of seagull droppings made the black roof appear almost white. The porch that ran across the front and down the left side of the three-story structure had patches of new lumber holding the rotten wood together, and its roofline sagged so badly that it gave the illusion the house was smiling.

  A large maple tree on the front lawn had been felled by a storm—a while ago, judging by the color of the exposed trunk—and the branches were still waiting to be sawed into firewood and stacked inside the long shed that connected an equally run-down barn to the house. And there was enough grass and weeds covering the dirt driveway to feed a small herd of goats, except where a path had been made by her landlord’s pickup, which was—thankfully—rarely there.

  Such was the life of a lobsterman, Eve had explained in an attempt to reassure Fiona that her landlord would hardly be around. Trace spent not only long hours at sea on his lobster boat but many hours mending and rigging his traps, cutting bait, and repairing the new boat he and his partner had just bought.

  It certainly was fine with her that the man left before sunrise and didn’t return until after dark. Having the p
lace to herself went a long way toward making her exile bearable.

  Well, bearable except for Kenzie’s rule that she couldn’t ask for help from anyone even remotely related to her. And for some stupid reason, her dear, sweet, loving brother had decided to include Eve’s mother, Mabel Bishop, as well as Madeline and William Killkenny, in his imperial dictate.

  But then Fiona went back to smiling, this time quite smugly. Gabriella Killkenny had not been mentioned by name, likely because Kenzie assumed that William’s little sister would be too busy struggling with her own sudden appearance in this century to be helping anyone, much less another displaced time traveler.

  Which only showed how little men knew about women. Seventeen-year-old girls, no matter what century they were born in, had the resiliency of oak trees. Beat them, break them, even kill them, and they sprouted right back up—usually even more determined to master their destinies.

  Lord, she hoped courage really was contagious.

  Because by the time a woman reached twenty-nine years of age, she’d already learned many of life’s harsher lessons, not the least of which was that men are by nature brutes and, more often by choice, bastards.

  Fiona took a calming breath, willing herself not to go there. She was a human being again, living in a wondrous new century, and she needed to let go of the past if she hoped to have any sort of decent future. Those bastards may have stolen her innocence and ultimately killed her and her son a thousand years ago, but she refused to let them kill her newly resurrected dreams.

  She only wished she could have another babe without needing a man to conceive one. Surely in this modern time, there was some miraculous means to make that happen. Men mostly got in the way of child rearing, anyway, with their endless demands, rules that made sense only to them, and punishments that rarely fit the crime.

  “Fiona!”

  Fiona turned to see Gabriella running up the sidewalk, her coat unbuttoned and her long auburn hair flapping in the breeze. “What’s the matter?” she cried in alarm, rushing forward as her gaze darted behind the girl. “Is someone chasing you?”

  Gabriella halted and glanced back down the sidewalk before giving Fiona a quizzical look. “No. What makes you think that?”

  “Then why were you running?”

  Gabriella shot her a smile, throwing her arms wide. “Because I can.” She looped her arm through Fiona’s and started walking toward town. “I’m so glad you invited me to go shopping with you. I wish to go to the bookstore and buy something called a magazine that Mabel told me about. It’s especially for young women, and Mabel said it will be easier to learn how to read if it’s something that interests me.”

  Fiona started to tell Gabriella that Eve’s mother had also taught William to read when he’d been a dragon and that she had sat perched on a branch and learned right along with him, but the girl just kept on talking.

  “Mabel said the magazine is filled with pictures as well as with something called articles that explain how I can apply makeup and do my hair. And she said there are even suggestions on how to talk to boys,” she continued excitedly. She suddenly laughed. “Only William walked in just then, and he said that I was not to talk to any boys. Ever!” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, Mabel believes that if I stay focused on my lessons all this winter and through next spring, I should be ready to attend school next fall with the other young people my age.” Gabriella frowned. “But it appears I’ll be in school only one year, and that just when I’ve made friends with everyone, we’re all going off to different schools, called universities, in distant towns.”

  “Did you have much trouble sneaking away?” Fiona asked when Gabriella stopped to take another breath.

  The girl laughed again. “Have you met Maddy’s daughter, Sarah? She was more than willing to help me sneak off, saying she needed the practice for when she’s seventeen.” Gabriella squeezed Fiona’s arm looped through hers. “I believe I’m going to like being an aunt, even if my ten-year-old stepniece is smarter than I am.”

  “Just temporarily,” Fiona assured her. “You’ll soon catch up to the women your age in this century.” Fiona stopped walking, her bravery suddenly deserting her when she saw all the vehicles and people. “Maybe we should come back later, when the town is less busy.”

  “But that’s when shopping is the most exciting,” Gabriella countered, starting them off again. “It’s the people that make it interesting.” She gave Fiona a curious look. “Was your eleventh-century village very small?”

  “We lived high up in the mountains, well away from everyone.”

  “But you must have gone into a nearby village regularly to barter for goods.”

  Fiona dropped her gaze to the sidewalk. “My family made a point of keeping to ourselves, as we weren’t welcome in society.” She stopped and looked Gabriella directly in the eyes. “Unless somebody had need of the magic. Then it was suddenly okay for them to sneak up to our cabin with their trinkets and bribes and ask Mama to cure a sick child or make the rain stop or have her mix them a special potion.”

  “Your mother was a magic maker? Like Mac?” Gabriella asked in surprise.

  “Nay, not like Maximilian Oceanus. The man who gave you your life back and brought you here is a drùidh, whereas my mother was a Guardian. As … as I believed I was when I died and came back as a hawk.”

  “But what’s the difference between a drùidh and a Guardian?” Gabriella asked.

  “Drùidhs protect the Trees of Life, which are what power the world, whereas Guardians protect people from the drùidhs.” Fiona snorted. “Only it seems I wasn’t a Guardian after all, since I couldn’t even protect myself from Maximilian. He was so certain he was doing my brothers a huge favor by giving me back to them, he didn’t seem to care that I didn’t want to be human again.”

  “You didn’t?” Gabriella asked in surprise. “But why?”

  “I was safe as a hawk, and I liked helping Kenzie free those poor, displaced souls from the dark magic. But now I’m just a powerless woman again.”

  Her friend frowned. “Women aren’t powerless.”

  “No? So, you’re saying that in the ninth century, you could choose who you married or, if you preferred, that you didn’t marry at all?”

  “Well, of course not. But only because I was too young and inexperienced to make such an important decision.”

  “So your mother could have made the decision, then?”

  “Well … no. My father would have chosen for me.”

  Fiona nodded. “Exactly. And you couldn’t hold land in your name, you had no say in political matters, and you even had to ask permission to go visit a friend.”

  “But this isn’t the ninth or eleventh century; it’s the twenty-first, and women have lots of power today.” Gabriella grinned. “You should be thanking Mac for bringing you to this century.”

  “If that’s true, then how come you had to sneak away today instead of simply telling William you were going to town with me? And how come I wasn’t even asked if I wanted to live over a man I know absolutely nothing about? I’ll tell you why,” she rushed on when Gabriella tried to speak. “Because my dear, sweet, loving brothers decided it was for my own good.”

  “But that’s not what William—” Gabriella’s face suddenly darkened, and she looked away.

  “What?” Fiona demanded, nudging her. “What did William say as to why Matt and Kenzie banished me? Come on, Gabriella,” she implored more softly. “You’re the only friend I have. Please tell me.”

  “Um … I overheard William telling Maddy that your older brother sent you away because you were—” Gabriella finally looked at her. “Because you’d grown possessive of your new niece and that whenever baby Fiona started to cry, you would rush to her before Winter could, as if she were your child. And Matt told Kenzie that if he didn’t make you leave before his son was born, you’d start mothering his new babe, too.”

  Fiona must have visibly recoiled, because Gabriella took hold of her shoulders. “Bu
t then Maddy told William she knows for a fact that your sisters-in-law are the ones who suggested you move into a place of your own,” she continued. “They believe that you won’t ever become a modern woman if you continue hiding behind your brothers.”

  “Eve and Winter are the ones who sent me away?”

  “No, they set you free!” Gabriella took another deep breath. “I know you died giving birth to your son,” she continued softly, “and that he died a couple of weeks later because your papa had gone mad by then and didn’t know how to care for a babe. And I know that you were … raped just like me.” She smiled sadly. “But all that happened over a thousand years ago, Fiona. And Maddy told me that if I don’t let go of my anger, I will be giving the bastard who raped me even more power. He took my chastity and my life, but that doesn’t mean I have to give him my spirit.”

  “But those men took something from us that we can’t ever get back,” Fiona whispered. “Even if we wanted a husband after what they did, no man would want us. We … we’re used goods, Gabriella, no better than camp followers or whores.”

  Instead of being shocked, the young girl gave a musical laugh. “Omigod, don’t ever let Maddy hear you say that! I said almost the same thing to her last week, and she got so angry I thought she was going to explode.” Gabriella started them toward town again. “I think you should invite Maddy over to your new home for tea and ask her to explain how men view women today.”

  “I’m not allowed to talk to Madeline,” Fiona muttered, dragging her feet in an attempt to slow them down.

  Gabriella laughed again. “Nobody is the boss of you anymore, Fiona. You are a modern, independent woman now, and you are the one who decides who you talk to.”

  Fiona suddenly stopped walking when she got a strange feeling deep in the pit of her stomach. “You’re right,” she whispered, the unraveling sensation making her light-headed. “Matt and Kenzie gave up their rights to tell me what to do when they sent me away, and I am master of my own destiny.” The dizziness blossomed into something akin to euphoria, and Fiona slid her arm through Gabriella’s and started striding down the sidewalk. “Come on, my smart friend, let’s go see if that bookstore has any magazines for women my age!”