by Jaime Rush
“And this.” She stepped so close, her body pressed against his. He tried bloody hard to make himself step back. That wasn’t happening. Or at least not to react. Too late for that.
She slid her fingers into his hair. “This.” She pressed her mouth against his, moving it back and forth over his. “But I wasn’t thinking about Magnus. I was hot from watching you.”
His lips softened, and in a blink he yanked her fully against him, dipping his tongue into her mouth, tasting her. He let his mouth move instinctively, fitting hers, imprinting every sensation into his cells. It was like what he’d seen in the movies he’d watched over the years, and it was different, too. It was real, the feel of her hot, moist mouth, her tongue dancing with his.
His hands slid up and down her backside, itching to slide inside the waistband of her pants, to cup her arse.
What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing? Proving that you’re crap?
They both stepped back simultaneously, breathing hard.
“I don’t know what got into me,” she said, putting the tips of her fingers against her mouth. “Maybe I have a dead prostitute’s energy clinging to me.” She gave him a wry smile.
He couldn’t help smiling at that, but it quickly fled. “And I am an idiot.”
“You’re only an idiot because you’re fighting a lost cause.”
“The last time I gave in to something I wanted that I shouldn’t have, I killed my mum.”
She grasped his hands in hers. “Kissing me isn’t going to get anyone killed.”
“It would kill me if, when Magnus wakes, I had to say, ‘Glad you’re back, and oh, by the way, I stole the first girl you ever said was special. Sorry ’bout that.’ ” He realized he was stroking her fingers and released her hands. “Until you came along, I had no hope of ever regaining my honor. But protecting you, making this situation right, and not giving in to my feelings for you, I get the sense of it again.”
He pointed to the clan battle cry, on a plaque along with the clan badge: a bull’s head between two flags. “Hold fast. That’s what I have to do. You tempt me, aye, you do.” He brushed aside her bangs. “And not just because you’re beautiful. You’re brave and strong and you’ve got a fire for life. I see why Magnus was drawn to you, and that’s all I can think about: Magnus was drawn to you. I need to keep this last scrap of honor, Jess.”
Her chin trembled. “I don’t want to be a source of angst for you. Maybe what I feel for you is because you’re helping me.”
“What do you feel for me? No, don’t answer that.”
“I’m not sure I’ve got it figured out myself. Why I want to kiss you, that’s easy. Why I want to go into your shadows and turn on the light, not so much. Maybe we’re drawn to each other because we’re lost souls. We are drawn to each other; we can’t deny that. But getting involved would cost too much. Your honor, maybe even your relationship with Magnus. And me, I can’t dream of having a boyfriend or husband. I’d be afraid of losing my temper and Becoming Darkness every day of my life. I can’t have children because I’d pass it on to them. There are many pleasures in life besides falling in love and having a family. Those will have to do.”
God but he wanted to pull her against him. To pick up where they’d left off, to hell with honor. He couldn’t bear to think of her living out her life without children, not the way she’d interacted with them at the music store. Not without love. No, she’d find it with Magnus. They’d work it out. And he would have to see her and know the taste of her and how she felt against his body. He would get plenty of torture then.
“I want to find out more about Darkness,” he said. “I’m going to project back to the day your mother was killed. Maybe I’ll see something that will give us a clue. Before I took the antidote, I could travel at will, just pick a date and place or event and go. Past or present, but not future.” He hadn’t been able to travel back to the carnival, though. “How long ago did it happen?”
Her expression darkened. “Fifteen years ago.”
He flopped down on the bed, settled his hands on his stomach and closed his eyes. He waited for the familiar spinning sensation. Nothing. He sat up, rolled his eyes upward. “Olaf!”
The Highlander’s energy buzzed through him, and Lachlan could see the imprint of him on his own body.
“Ye called upon me? I am honored. Or are ye gonna tell me to be gone again, and rudely at that?”
Lachlan felt his mouth quirk in a smile he tried to bank. “Ask the lass here. I can be mighty rude. Not as rude as, say, someone latching onto a person without asking permission, I might add.”
“Is that what ye summoned me for, to take me to task?”
“No, I need your help with the astral travel. Seems I can’t do it without you.”
The ghostly man crossed his arms over his—well, Lachlan’s—chest. “Told ye.”
“I mean to go back and solve a mystery for the lass here.”
“Are ye asking? I haven’t heard ye ask yet.”
Another roll of his eyes. “Please help me astral travel.”
“Be happy to.”
Lachlan dropped back, his body going limp. He felt the weightlessness, the spinning. He was in a dark space and heard soft whimpers and stuttered breathing. A door opened, sending enough light in for him to see a little girl: Jessie, with long brown hair and eyes filled with fear and tears. The sight of her grabbed his chest like a fist.
She nudged the door open and inched out of a closet, pulling herself by her fingers until she could see down the hall into the kitchen.
Blood. Lots of it, slowly spreading across the white tile floor, and a woman lying in it. Jessie whimpered, her body trembling. He wanted to go to the kitchen, but a stronger need kept him there, with her. She was so focused on the scene, she didn’t see his ghostly image there. He wouldn’t leave her alone, though.
He couldn’t see either man, but he heard them. One wanted to heal the woman with Darkness. The other man didn’t want that to happen. They stepped into view, Russell squaring off with the other man. Except the man who looked like Russell was really her father. They talked about Jessie, and Russell wanted her contained, trained. Was that what he was after now?
The men Became wolves, fighting, tearing up the kitchen. Lachlan started to go to the kitchen, but her whimpers kept him there. He was torn. He compromised, moving out a few feet when the black smoke surrounded the gray smoke.
“I banish you to the Void, Henry!” Out of the smoke, the man appeared, the one he knew as Russell. A thin trail of gray smoke drifted upward, following Russell’s pointing hand. “Go and be no more.”
Jessie got to her feet, stumbling.
No! He wanted to warn her, to stop her, which was ridiculous because she was obviously all right.
Curiously, the man knelt by her mother and sent the Darkness into her body, as Jessie had done with Magnus. But it wouldn’t penetrate, and he shot to his feet and turned around. Jessie was running toward him now, holding the penguin he’d seen in her bedroom.
He knew the instant she realized he wasn’t her daddy. She came to a stop, and he grabbed for her. She yelled, “Fade!” and disappeared. Russell swiped at her, but Lachlan saw a door at the end of the hallway move as someone passed by. Russell kept searching for her, heading toward the room. Lachlan grabbed his sword and followed the man.
He felt hands gripping his wrists, and his eyes snapped open. He stood now, hands on his sword handle, Jessie standing in front of him with her hands on his wrists.
He’d done it again, acted it out. “What the hell are you doing? I could have cut you.”
“I knew what was happening, and I wasn’t going to let you hurt yourself.”
He dropped the sword on the bed, rubbing his forehead. The fatigue he usually felt after projecting weighed heavily on him. He could see Olaf’s ghostly image, could feel his fighting energy. Or was it his own?
“That’s what happened with my mum,” he said. “Remember when I said it was like
being in REM sleep, where my body was paralyzed? With Olaf, it’s like the sleep disorder where you’re not paralyzed. People drive, walk, even run through glass windows. I could have hurt you.”
She stood right there in front of him. “I’m not afraid of you and your sword, Lachlan.”
The words stirred him. “Then you’re a fool.”
“Look, if anyone can handle your . . . situation, I can. I’ve dealt with worse.” Her mouth tightened. “As you know.”
He touched her cheek, because he couldn’t stop himself. If he could go back and change what had happened, prevent her father from being killed. Except . . . he wasn’t dead.
She leaned into his hand, probably an involuntary movement. “You look . . . haunted. What did you see?”
Focus on that, not on her. “Did your father ever mention someplace called the Void?”
She shook her head.
“Russell sent your father’s soul there. I could see it go.”
“You mean he could still be . . . alive? Or here, like Olaf?”
“I’m no’ alive,” Olaf said mournfully, head drooping. “Dead I am, ne’er to come back. My own kin sends me off like a bad dog what’s peed on the rug.”
Lachlan said, “For pity’s sake, I was testing your word.”
“Is that an apology?”
“You can take it that way.”
Olaf patted his chest. “Ye need me. Let my men down at Culloden, I did. Should have been ready for the enemy to come up on our flank at Culchunaig. Left us wide open to the loyalist Highlanders who betrayed us. Our own clansmen fought for the British. ’Twas shameful, it was.”
Lachlan realized that for Olaf, that had happened mere months ago. This cousin many times removed had died at roughly his age, fighting for what he believed in. Maybe it was as much their sense of failure as their hunger for battle that united them.
Still, it was the getting rid of him that worried Lachlan.
“Olaf, snap out of it,” Lachlan said. “You can’t do anything about that. You can help us now. Have you—”
“I had a lass, too. As bonnie as Jessie, she was, and a spitfire, too.”
Lachlan reined in his impatience. “Olaf, I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Sorry, that ye are. I get to live longer through ye, and ye hardly live at all. Not till she came along.”
Lachlan rolled his eyes again. “Can we focus? Have you heard of the Void?”
Olaf paused. “Dinna know what it’s called, but there’s a place, a dead area, if you will. Scary. I’ve felt it around the bloke what turns to the wolf. Like if the area got too close, I’d be sucked in.”
Jessie stepped closer. “You think my father is there?”
“Sounds like it. Olaf, how do we get there?”
“Dinna know. I can have a look.” He didn’t sound very enthusiastic about it.
“Please.” She said the word on a breath.
After a pause, Olaf said, “I’ll try my best, lass.” His energy left Lachlan in a soft whoosh.
“Don’t get your hopes up too much, Jess. That was a long time ago.”
“I know. But if there’s a chance of bringing my father back to his body, I have to take it.”
“Of course you do.” He expected nothing less of her.
Chapter 12
Lachlan and Jessie waited for fifteen minutes for Olaf to return.
She spun her fingers in her hair, the movement growing faster as time ticked by. “He was worried about getting sucked in. What if he does?”
“Then we carry on. Instead of sitting round here worrying, let’s go into town so I can get that haircut.” He grabbed his black coat, tattered and bloody at the bottom edge, and paused. “My favorite one, too.”
“Sorry.”
He looked at her. “It’s just a piece of material. I’ve got others.”
She followed him through the kitchen and a dining room to another room. It was crammed with pictures, and too much furniture. He walked to the closet, and she looked at some of the pictures stacked on the floor. Family pictures, some posed, some candid. A folded blanket that looked so soft she had to touch it. Two televisions, a stereo system pushed off to the side. The stuff he’d taken out of his room.
He walked out of the closet holding a coat a lot like the ruined one. “Ready?”
“When are you going to stop punishing yourself?”
He looked at the coat. “It’s not that bad.”
“This is all your stuff, isn’t it? You took it out of your room so you could live like a monk. When does your self-imposed sentence end?”
“When I can get something right, for you and for Magnus.”
“When you sit out there meditating, what are you thinking about? I’ve tried meditation, and it’s damned hard to clear your mind completely for more than a second or three.”
“I ask God for forgiveness.”
“He’s pretty easy about that, you know. You ask, He forgives. You’re the hard-ass.”
“I know it’s not right asking someone’s forgiveness when I can’t forgive myself.”
Lachlan walked past her, leaving her to follow again. Fine, she’d follow. He punched in a code on the alarm pad, and they walked out to the garage. He entered a code for a bay that did not hold her vehicle. His vintage red truck was revealed inch by inch as the door rose.
He opened his door and carefully set the sword in the back. It had been scary when he’d grabbed the sword, an agonized ferocity in eyes that were clearly seeing something that wasn’t there. Her first instinct had been to run, but she was tired of running all the time. Running from Russell. From affection. From wanting Lachlan. So she’d taken hold of his wrists and stopped him. She felt stronger for it.
“Why swords?” she asked. “Because of your Scottish history?”
“That and I like the primitive feel of them. Broadswords were considered the darling weapon of the Scots. Their style was to rush onto the enemy. I don’t trust guns as a rule. They misfire, jam up. Dad trained us to shoot from early on. I held my first gun at age five.”
“Five? That’s ridiculous. And probably illegal.”
“We didn’t live by the rules of society. But to be clear, I’m talking BB guns. At least until we were ten. He wanted us to be able to protect ourselves. Not only from the man who was hunting him, but we did live way out in the woods. Bears, cats, crazy people . . . best to be prepared.”
She knew prepared. “My dad must have lived the same way, always looking over his shoulder. He didn’t teach me to shoot, but he gave me this symbol.” She ran her fingers over the cross in her skin under her shirt. “But Russell threw Darkness over me so I couldn’t hide.” It left her bereft, knowing that this symbol wasn’t protection. She’d had it carved into her skin for nothing.
“Don’t you see? It’s Darkness that lets you Fade. Your dad wasn’t ready to tell you that yet, so he came up with the symbol. That was easier for a kid to understand.”
She walked around to the passenger side and stopped at the sight of a car’s carcass and an array of parts all over the concrete floor in the last bay. “It looks like a car exploded.”
“A 1969 Camaro. That’s what I do.”
“Tear apart cars?”
He chuckled. “Aye, actually. Then put them back together. I buy old cars, rusting masses of metal, and make them pretty again. People pay a lot of money for a vintage car. Word got out and now they come to me with cars they want restored.”
She looked at all the pieces and realized there was a method to the chaos. “This truck is one of your projects, too?”
She saw a hint of pride as he patted the roof. “Just finished it.”
She turned back to the shell of the car. “So what got you into doing this? It must take a lot of time, and it’s probably a lot of work.”
“Aye, and that’s a good thing. I can lose myself in the process, and I get the satisfaction of seeing it through to a finished state. I take rusty, broken cars and make them shiny and wh
ole again.”
She tilted her head, seeing his passion but also a yearning. “You do see the profundity of that, don’t you? That you take something broken and make it whole? That you’re drawn to that, feeling so broken yourself.”
He looked right at her. “No, dinna see it at all.” Then he got in.
She took one last look at the car and got into the truck. “You’re starting to sound like Olaf. Did you hear yourself just now?”
“I said ‘dinna.’ ” He shuddered. “Hope he’s not planning to take over my body. Russell used Darkness to do so with your dad. Don’t know if ghosts can do that as well.”
“Olaf lost his life, and sees you not living yours to the fullest. It bothers him.”
“Hopefully not enough to justify him taking me over.” He started the engine and looked at her. “I have something to live for at the moment.”
She shivered at those words. She had given him purpose. Well, her situation had, anyway.
She rolled his words around in her mind as he drove down the long gravel road. “You have a bit of brogue anyway. Magnus said he got his from your mom. Your ‘mum.’ ”
“Aye. She had a thick brogue, and being that we weren’t around other people, Magnus and I picked it up. Even Dad would sometimes slip into it when he was in a playful mood. Didn’t even know I had an accent until ladies commented on it when I went to town for supplies. ‘Ooh, I love your accent. Are you from Scotland?’ ”
She had to laugh at his impersonation of these “ladies” and the way he tilted his head, batting his eyelashes and fluttering his fingers. He seemed surprised at her laughter. He had a way of raising one eyebrow and giving her this adorable puzzled look with a hint of a smile.
“Mm, is that what they did?” she asked. “And you loved every second of it, too.”
He shrugged, his smile reserved. “It was alright. Magnus sucked it up more than I did.”
“Magnus is a flirt of the highest order. How did you and he end up being so different?”
“Curious, isn’t it, being we only had each other growing up? We were close, but different from the beginning. He craved connecting with other people. When we’d go to town for supplies or the occasional movie, he’d migrate to other kids and within minutes be playing with them like he’d known them for years.”
