by Hazel Hunter
“An island has only so much graze. The herd needed thinning, else they’d starve,” he told her, and lifted her off the mare to set her on her feet. “We’ve livestock enough to keep the castle’s larders filled for years, but the villagers dinnae have a tenth so much. These men’s families will be glad of the meat.”
He’d said the clan cared for the island’s families, and now the hunt made more sense. “You’re really a neat laird, you know that?”
One of the villagers shouted as a huge stag scrambled to its feet, an arrow piercing the side of his neck. The animal kicked away the hunter and bellowed with fury before lowering its long, many-pointed antlers. It charged straight at Kinley and the laird.
Lachlan ran toward the wounded stag, catching it around the neck and dragging it to the ground. A long blade flashed in his hand before he buried it in the thrashing animal’s chest, and the huge furry body went limp.
Kinley felt horrified as she rushed over to the laird, who staggered to his feet and pulled a broken section of antler out of his left shoulder. Blood from three large puncture wounds soaked the front of his tunic.
“Lachlan.”
“I couldnae let him at you, lass.” He caught her with his arm and tugged her against his uninjured side before addressing the villagers gathering around them. “My lady and I must be off now, else someone mistakes me for a fresh haunch. Get to it, lads.”
The men seemed remarkably unconcerned as they tugged on their caps and forelocks before turning their attention to the carcasses. As Lachlan took Kinley back to the horses she wriggled free and blocked his path.
“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded. “You can’t ride anywhere like that. You’re losing too much blood.” She pressed a hand to her forehead as she looked around them. “We have to get you to the village doctor, or healer, or whatever you call the guy who sews up antler holes in men who wrestle deer.”
“They sew wounds in San Diego, do they?” He gripped his saddle and jumped up onto Selon with one smooth motion. “Sounds painful.” He reached down to her, and when she took his hand he hauled her up and held her as he walked his charger over to Tama. “Swing on, that’s a good lass.” Once she had clambered onto the mare he nodded toward the ridge. “We’ll ride to the loch and have a soak. Can you swim?”
She gaped at him. “Have you completely lost your mind?”
He grinned and tapped his temple. “Doesnae sound like it.” He made a clicking sound to Selon, who trotted away with him.
Kinley caught up and paced him, expecting the laird to keel over and fall off the big stallion at any moment. Lachlan instead kept his seat, pointed out some crofts they passed and told her of the families working them, and generally behaved as if he hadn’t been impaled by the stag. By the time they reached the loch Kinley was almost frantic, especially when he helped her down and she saw he was still bleeding.
“Okay, you’ve impressed me with your awesome highlander stoicism,” she told him as he drew her down to the edge of the water. “Now we need to get you back to the castle, so I can–” She gaped as he removed his tunic. “What are you doing?”
“Having a soak,” he said and eyed the blood-stained shirt before tossing it to the ground and reaching for his trouser laces. “If you cannae swim you should stay on the bank. ’Tis deep here, and the loch’s currents can be devious.”
Seeing the wounds in his shoulder made her feel sick. “Lachlan, you’re badly hurt. Now is not the time to take a dip. Please.”
He removed his boots and dropped his trousers. “’Tis the best time, lass.”
Kinley tried not to stare, but the laird had the most perfectly ripped body she’d ever seen: a huge muscular chest beneath his giant snake tat, abs so hard and defined they’d have made body builders weep in defeat, and lean hips above long, strong legs with large, high-arched feet. Even with his skin streaked with blood, Kinley wanted nothing more than to jump on him and drag him to the ground. But something else gave her pause: namely, the thick, long column of his penis, which was all serious business. Framed by a thatch of dark body hair, and swelling bigger with every moment that passed, it looked hell-yeah ready to make her acquaintance.
Lachlan glanced down at his erection and then at her. “You’re no’ screeching.”
“I’m too busy losing my mind,” she told him. “Don’t you dare go in that water. I mean it, Lachlan. If it doesn’t kill you, I will.”
“Trust me, lass.” He waded in and dove under the surface.
Kinley shouted his name as she waded in after him, splashing wildly as she went and desperately peering into the dark waters of the loch. He might be bold and built and beautiful, but if she didn’t get him out of the damn lake he might finish bleeding to death in it, and then what would she do? Tell the clan their laird was a reckless moron who thought swimming in ice-cold water was the way to treat deep animal puncture wounds?
All around her the water took on a subtle glow, and she felt every inch of her skin tingle as if in response. Something was happening beneath the surface of the loch. Lachlan’s scent—the smell of cool, clear water—rose to fill her head as something whirled around her legs. The man himself suddenly emerged, scooping her up in his arms and carrying her back to shore. She looked at his injured shoulder and saw nothing but three faint pink marks and unbroken skin.
“You’re healed,” she said and touched one of the marks. “Lachlan, what happened to your wounds?”
“The loch’s waters heal me and my clan.” He set her down on her feet and rolled his head from side to side.
“Water heals you. Ah, no.” She shook her head. “Water is just water.”
“No’ here, lass.” He dragged his hair back from his face. “And no’ for the clan.”
Kinley peered at him as one of her grandmother’s stories emerged from her memory. “Are you and the clan kelpies?”
“Have you seen us turn into horses and eat mortals?” Curling up his arm, he tested the shoulder and nodded as if satisfied. “No’ even a twinge left. Now, would you like to–”
Kinley slapped his face as hard as she could, throwing all her weight behind the blow. He barely blinked, so she thumped him on the chest, kicked his shin and released a screech of fury.
“How could you do that to me?” she demanded. “Do you have any idea how scared I was? That I’d have to go and tell the clan you were dead? And then Evander would blame me and kill me for sure?”
“Raen would keep Evander from killing you,” Lachlan said and tried to put his dripping arms around her. He sighed as she eluded him. “Kinley, I told you, we are no’ mortal.”
“I thought you were joking.” Dazed now, she sank down onto the bank and stared at the jagged silhouette of the opposite ridge. “You’re not undead. I’ve seen you eat food, and walk around in the sunlight.”
His mouth hitched. “I’m no’ undead.”
Kinley turned her head as he sat down beside her, and for the first time saw the faint marks of the scars on his body. A few had been covered by the snake ink, but dozens of others appeared all over his chest, arms and legs, as if he’d been stabbed hundreds of times. The most ominous scar was a thin line that completely encircled his neck. She couldn’t believe she’d missed them, until she recalled the piss-poor lighting inside the castle.
“Why does the lake heal you?” Kinley demanded.
He laced his fingers through hers, and drew her to her feet. “I will tell you, my lady, but first you must take an oath of loyalty to me and mine.”
Kinley understood what he was asking. She’d sworn an oath when she’d enlisted in the Air Force. She didn’t know why he wanted her to, but he probably wouldn’t tell her anything until she did.
“All right,” she agreed. “What do I say?”
Lachlan reached for his belt, and removed a small knife. Instead of cutting himself or her, he wrapped her hand around the hilt. Then he folded his hand on top of hers and used an old piece of cord to bind her wrist to his.
“Say thus:
I pledge myself to Lachlan McDonnel, laird of the McDonnels, and his clan. Ever when they call on me, I am theirs to command. Their battles are mine, and their secrets I keep. This I swear on my soul and my life.”
As she repeated the powerful words, she watched the laird’s dark eyes, and how suddenly ancient they seemed. When she’d finished her oath, she asked, “Why does the water heal you?”
“’Tis where the clan and I were slaughtered by the Romans.” Lachlan’s gaze grew distant as he looked out over the loch. “And where we awakened as immortals.”
Chapter Thirteen
LACHLAN TOOK KINLEY back to the stronghold, where they looked after the horses before retreating to his tower. Word must have gotten around that the laird wanted some alone time with her, for the great hall was deserted, as was Lachlan’s chamber. She saw that Raen had left out a bottle and two cups for them, as if he’d known they would need a drink.
Kinley didn’t want whiskey. She wanted answers, and to get them she needed a clear head.
“You said you weren’t a selkie or a kelpie, and I know you’re not the Loch Ness monster, so how does a big, cold lake bring you back from the dead?”
Lachlan peered at her. “There’s a monster in Loch Ness?”
“Probably not,” she admitted, shivering. “Forget I said that. Tell me about this loch.”
Lachlan leaned against a wall and watched her as she crouched down to feed some splits to the fire.
“It happened when the Roman legions first came to our lands,” he said. “I will tell you, but first give us a taste of that bottle, lass.”
Kinley poured some whiskey for him, and then perched on the chair by the fire.
The laird described the Roman invasion of Scotland, then known as Caledonia. Ruthless and unstoppable, the legions had quickly conquered Britannia and marched north to claim the highlands. They called Lachlan and his people “Picts” for their tattoos, which the invaders considered barbaric and uncivilized.
“They sneered at us when our ancestors came here from an ancient land of powerful, learned peoples,” Lachlan said. “In the time before the Great Flood, the Pritani ruled half the world, long before Rome was so much as a croft by a river.”
Kinley felt enchanted now. “Half the world. Impressive. So did you teach the Romans not to sneer?”
His smile faded. “Naught could stop that, or them.” He told her how the southern tribes had marauded the Romans with blitz attacks on their columns by day, and stealthy raids on their encampments by night. “They did well,” he said, “but the legion had no’ come for the Pritani. They hunted the magic folk called druids.”
An odd chapter in a history textbook from school came back to Kinley, probably because she’d always loved telling her grandmother whatever she learned about Scotland. During their invasion the Romans had gone after the druids, as they were believed to be bloodthirsty primitives who performed human sacrifice. One of the Roman Emperors had even ordered that the entire druid race be wiped off the face of the earth. His legions did their best by attacking any druid settlement they found, massacring the inhabitants, and burning their homes and fields.
“Were the druids members of your tribes?” she asked.
He shook his head. “They lived among us, and traded with us, but they were no’ like the Pritani. Druids didnae believe in fighting, and refused to use their powerful magics against others. They go a different way, and I admire that. They couldnae defend themselves against so many. I summoned the war masters of all the other Pritani tribes, and convinced them to help me hide them away from the Romans. When I had gathered two thousand warriors, we began to raid the legion’s camps. That allowed the Druids to escape.” He took a swallow from his cup. “I should have ended it there, but I wanted them gone from our lands, so I lured them here, to Skye.”
The rasp of pain in his voice made Kinley reach out to touch his arm. “Listen, we don’t have to talk about this tonight.”
“’Twill always be the wound that cannae be healed.” Lachlan folded his hand over hers. “I thought we could prevail on our own land, but I had never fought against a legion. They came and came and kept coming, Kinley, as if the world were filled with naught but Romans. So many of them landed their boats and marched on Skye that we soon saw how it would be.”
She rubbed her thumb against his palm in a soothing caress. “I’m guessing you didn’t run.”
He smiled a little. “Pritani warriors dinnae run or surrender. We fight until we prevail, or we die. It didnae take long for them to overrun our front lines, and swarm over us like hungry rats. They bound us, and dragged us to the loch, and offered us freedom if we would tell them where to find the druids. No’ a single man would betray our friends, so there we died. They tossed our bodies in the water.”
If any other man had told her such a story Kinley wouldn’t have believed it. But she’d seen his wounds vanish.
“So being in the water brought you and the clan back from the dead?”
“No, faodail. After the Romans left the island, the druids came back.” Absently he rubbed the thin scar around his neck. “When they knew what we had done, they surrounded the loch, and cast a spell to awaken us, and change us. When we came out of the waters, we were whole and healed. Since that day of awakening we dinnae age or suffer sickness. We cannae die as mortal men do. But being reborn in the loch gave us more than eternal life. The magic bonded our spirits to its water. It heals us, and protects us, and takes us wherever we wish.”
“That must have been some spell,” she said, and saw his shoulders stiffen. “Did something else happen to you?”
“No’ to the clan.” He finished his whiskey. “When the druids awakened us back to life, they cast our deaths on the legion. The conclave intended the curse to change them into living corpses, the undead, so they would all burn like torches at daybreak. But as soon as the Romans learned that sunlight would kill them, somehow they found a place to hide from it. They learned to live by night, drinking the blood of mortals.”
“Gruesome bastards,” Kinley muttered, and then scowled. “Didn’t the druids know that cursing six thousand, highly-adaptable men might not turn out so well?”
“They do now,” he said and started to say something else. But then he shook his head and went to his wash basin, where he tugged off his damp tunic. “You should go to bed. ’Tis late.”
She got up and started for the door, and then stopped. Since moving into her own room Kinley hadn’t slept very well at all. Even when she worked herself to exhaustion during the day, she usually spent half the night staring at the curving ceiling above her bed while she thought about Lachlan, and what he was doing, and if he lay awake thinking about her.
Kinley had been trained to evaluate and solve crisis situations. Lachlan might be big, strong, handsome, and tempting as all hell, but he was still an unknown. Unsure what to make of his history, and concealing from him her own, didn’t put much in the Let’s Do This column. Oh, she wanted him—wanted him until it gnawed at her insides with hot, sharp teeth—but sex rarely made things less complicated. Since she’d pledged her loyalty to the clan, in a sense that made him her commanding officer. It was never a good idea to sleep with the brass.
No, she had plenty of good reasons not to do this. Yet the one thing she couldn’t get out of her head was that moment on the battlefield, and what he’d said just before snatching her up in his arms: Come here to me.
She had come here to him. It didn’t feel accidental. Everything about him made her hot and crazy and almost tearful, especially now that she knew what he’d gone through on the other side of becoming immortal. Could he really be twelve hundred years old? Did it matter?
He wanted her, she wanted him. That was what mattered. She bent down to remove her boots.
As if he knew what she was thinking, the laird stopped splashing his face with water and turned around.
“I’m no’ sleeping in the hayloft again, Kinley lass.”
“Yeah, you to
ld me that.” She reached to unlace her trousers.
He came to her so fast she jumped under the hands he put on her shoulders. “My own bed isnae all I want.” He looked over her head, as if meeting her gaze might be too much for him. “If you stay, I’ll have you.”
Kinley glanced down. The bulge in his pants suggested magnitude on an astronomical scale. There was a slight tremor in both of his hands. When she looked up she saw that his eyes had gone as dark as ink, and glittered with something about to snap its leash.
“Well, then.” She skimmed her hand up his chest and pressed it against his lean, hard cheek. “I think we should get to it.”
Lachlan turned his head into Kinley’s hand, pressing his mouth against her palm as he reached between them. She felt him tug loose her laces before he slid her trousers down over her bottom to her knees. He knelt to remove them, and then remained on his knees as he pressed his face against her belly and nuzzled her.
Threading her fingers through his thick, heavy mane, she drew his hair back so she could see his mouth on her skin. He looked up at her while he grazed the edge of her navel with his teeth. She felt the curve of his smile before he laved her there with his tongue. Had she ever thought of her stomach as an erogenous zone? What he was doing to her set off little quakes of sensation that shot through her like crackling sparks, and made her go completely, utterly wet between her thighs.
“My knees are turning to prymerose pudding,” she told him.
Lachlan made a tortured sound and stood, his hands catching the edge of her shirt and tugging it up over her head. The last of her clothing went sailing behind him to float down onto the floor. Then he held her at arm’s length, not inspecting or ogling, but admiring her.
His silence unnerved her a little. “Stop staring. I know you’ve already seen all the goodies.”
“Aye, but you’ve no’ goodies,” he said, his voice so deep now it seemed to pour through her like dark honey. “You’ve lovelies.” His fingertips trailed over the contours of her breast, the touch whispering all her nerves to life. The sensation felt so exquisite a rush of reaction flashed through her, saturating her flesh with aching heat. He pressed the backs of his fingers against her swelling curves. “And they blush for me.”
