Sacrifice

by Heather McCollum

  As if down a long tunnel, another voice started, warbled and deep. It hovered on the outside of her, drawing her to listen. Her body moved, floating. Warmth surrounded Anna, and she inhaled a familiar scent composed of strength, outdoors, and freedom.

  Anna’s lethargic heart thumped in her chest, and weight pressed along her frame. The movements made her body ache. She mumbled, but she was too tired to be angry. She would fight more after a short nap.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Open your eyes, Anna.”

  Drustan tugged the soaked wool from her delicate, cold form. Its sopping weight stuck to her, nearly frozen to her skin. He yanked it, throwing it away from him. The fire that his magic had started withered down to a natural flame, struggling against the gusts that found their way into the cave. But he couldn’t let go of Anna to release his magic. She was too cold, dangerously cold, wet and unresponsive, the pallor of death.

  Drustan tore open the buttons that kept her gown together and rolled the icy fabric down Anna’s arms, stripping her to her undergarments. Shucking his outer jacket, vest and shirt, Drustan pulled her up against his naked skin. She jerked as her icy skin touched his heat. With a snap, Drustan threw the dry blanket he’d brought around them both and wrapped her in his arms.

  Her head lay against his collarbone, and he rested his chin gently on her wet hair. He leaned against the rock wall with her cradled on his lap. “Come on, Anna.” All he wanted were signs of life. A drip of water from the ice in his hair fell on Anna’s forehead. He bent down to kiss it off, and something like a small sigh escaped her lips. He held still, coiled, willing his heat into her, waiting to see if the noise meant she was waking.

  Damn! Even with all his power, his magic couldn’t help her. He stared at her slightly-parted lips and porcelain face. Her wet lashes lay stuck together in points against her smooth skin like the painted lashes of a china doll.

  Anna shivered against him. Yes! Drustan’s relief exploded along his tight muscles, jostling her gently as he pulled her tighter against his chest. He feathered kisses across her forehead while deep shudders racked her soft body. “That’s it, Anna, fight off the cold.” He yanked his warm hand out of the covers and placed his palm on the icy cheek turned away from his chest. In the dimness of the tiny fire, he watched her eyes squeeze tight and then blink. Once, twice.

  “Anna?” he said, softly.

  Her lips rubbed together, the icy gray beginning to fade. “What…what…took you so long?” she asked.

  He huffed and couldn’t help the smile from working up from his frantic heart to his mouth. “Damn dragonflies are bloody hard to follow in a blizzard.”

  She brushed her head against him, pressing closer to the heat of his body. He reveled in the feel of her thawing, and watched the little flame die away on the damp twigs set before them. Anna tried to push upright, but he held her close. “Let the heat penetrate. You were like a flower encased in ice when I found you,” he said, listening to the shrill, twisting wind outside. He would never let her out of his sight again.

  “Hypothermic,” she said, her head bumping his chin as she tried to look below the blanket. Her cold hand lay upon his bare chest, then jerked back. “Where are your clothes?”

  “Body heat conducts better when one is naked.”

  “Am I naked?” She wriggled until she must have felt her chemise.

  “Your undergarments were adequately dry so I left them on you.”

  She stilled in his arms. “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  “Considering the blizzard out there, and the fact you almost died a short while ago, I’d say we will be staying in here until morning at least,” he answered.

  “Are the demons causing this? Drakkina said she sensed magic.”

  Drustan watched the swirl of white flakes dance into the front of the cave. “It smells of white magic, not of death. I don’t think it comes from Semiazaz.” He looked down at her. “So, Drakkina led you here?”

  Anna pushed against his chest to straighten. She nodded, and gratitude for the witch who’d tried to kill him filled his chest. Why would she do that? Did she feel that with Anna there was a stronger chance of her winning the final battle? Semiazaz certainly did, which was why Drustan must keep a close watch over the fragile woman in his arms.

  Anna regarded him in the dark, the white snow reflecting what little light there was outside. “Did you know that Semiazaz once loved Drakkina?”

  “He still does,” Drustan said.

  Anna shook her head slightly. “And yet he allows those demons to try to catch her and kill her? That isn’t love.”

  “Semiazaz blocks me from his true thoughts and feelings, but I know he still cares for her.”

  “How do you know?”

  Drustan shrugged, his skin rubbing against her bare arms. The skin-on-skin contact was distracting, and he shifted where he sat. “All these hundreds of years and his group of hunters haven’t been able to catch the witch?”

  “They are bound together, so they move slower and are less effective?” Anna guessed.

  He shook his head. “More likely he’s been saving her for a long time.”

  Anna turned, her back pressed to his chest. Drustan watched the swirling snow from over her head and listened to the angry howl of the wind. “I used to think,” she started and stopped, but he didn’t press her to continue, just waited and enjoyed the weight of her against him. “Well,” she started up again. “A doctor is trained to judge things quickly, good or bad, mild or lethal. But I suppose some things, some people, fall in the middle.”

  “Don’t misjudge Semiazaz,” Drustan said. “He is lethal and bad.”

  “I’m not talking about Semiazaz,” she said, her voice small against his chest.

  “I, too, am lethal, Anna,” he said.

  “And yet you save children from cancer, and near drowning, and bullies.”

  “Tenebris saved Josiah,” Drustan answered.

  He felt her turn in his arms so that she could meet his gaze in the dark. “You are good, Drustan.”

  A part of him, deep in his chest, squeezed. “How do you know?” he asked.

  “I have excellent judgment,” she whispered.

  “I hope it’s not on par with your sense of direction,” he replied but felt his chest relax.

  “My sense of direction is just fine,” she defended, and a little chuckle rumbled out of him. She huffed. “Very well, yes, my sense of a person’s character is superior to my sense of direction. And you’ve become more adept at laughing, I see. Quite annoying.”

  “I have trouble keeping up with your preferences,” he said. Anna’s shivering had ceased, and under the blanket it was toasty warm. Drustan could just make out the outline of her face turned to him in the dark. “I’ve had rare opportunity to learn polite responses,” he said, the smile leaving his voice. “I converse with Hell-spawn usually. Evil teaches evil.”

  He listened to her soft breaths until she spoke. “Despite your upbringing, you are a good person,” she said.

  Drustan sat there, holding her, letting her words spread like a balm along the raw tightness in his chest. She put her hand to his cheek when he didn’t respond. “You should believe me,” she said.

  “No one has ever thought of me as good,” he said. “Even those who thought well of me for a time.”

  Her hand dropped from his face, but she didn’t move away. “I’ve found that people have a penchant for thinking that everyone and everything is corrupt at heart. They judge harshly, perhaps as a defense mechanism.”

  “I believe you’ve judged me harshly or you wouldn’t have run this afternoon,” he pointed out, ignoring the twang of pain he felt at her hypocrisy.

  “You kidnapped me, threatened to kill my employer, and then said that if I left, you’d basically destroy Scotland or the world or something,” she said, flipping her hand outside the blanket.

  “And you left anyway.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t destroy the w
orld.” She poked his chest with a finger. “Good heart, remember. And I will not be manipulated with threats.”

  She’d successfully talked them in a circle with her once again on top of the debate about his evil nature. Somehow her assurance of his goodness meant something, something large. He smiled into the shadows, understanding clearly how she’d managed the rigors of medical school despite the prejudices of masculine stupidity flooding her society. Those men never stood a chance against Anna Pemberlin.

  They sat bundled together for a stretch of time. Drustan tried to keep his blood from stirring, but a saint would be hard pressed to keep modest thoughts with Anna snuggled against his naked chest in her underclothes. She didn’t pull away nor press against him but seemed content to soak in his heat.

  The smell of the floral soap she favored for her hair seemed activated by the melted snow, making the clean scent rise up on waves of their mixed body heat. The skin of her bare arms was smooth and now only slightly chilled. When he thought of her breasts pressed against him, separated only by a chemise and stays, he nearly groaned. If this was a dream, he’d lay her out under him on the blanket, stroking her and kissing every inch of her perfect form. But this wasn’t a mere dream, and the truce between them seemed more fragile than the threads of time Semiazaz wished to snip. He must refocus.

  “Nuns,” he said, forcing the faces of his teachers and caregivers to cover his thoughts of Anna naked and undulating beneath him.

  She shifted slightly. “Nuns? The ones who raised you?”

  “Yes,” he said, sifting quickly through memories. “Sister Henrietta loved snow. She taught me how to roll balls together to build a fort,” he said stiffly.

  “It’s a fond recollection?” Anna asked.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I wasn’t strong enough to lift one, so I levitated it with my magic. It sent her screaming.”

  “Oh,” Anna said, and he braced himself for her pity. But instead he heard a soft chuckle. “I can see how a gigantic flying snowball might send a nun screaming.” At the sound of her merriment, Drustan felt the knot he kept tight around the memory loosen.

  “She slipped and fell in the snow,” he said, his mouth tightening again. “She thought I did it and called me the devil.”

  “I’ve been called the devil before,” she said simply. “What I would have given to have a huge hovering snowball to drop on Dr. Bradley’s head.”

  His smile returned. “Your wish is my command.”

  “You wouldn’t.” She laughed.

  “Only if you’d like me to. A quick trip down to London and a snowfall.”

  She chuckled just under her breath. “I will definitely consider it.”

  Under the blanket, Anna found his hand. Her fingers were still freezing as she laced them between his. “People are the cruelest when they are afraid. She shouldn’t have called you that,” she whispered. “You were a child.”

  “I never sought to harm her,” he said, cupping the hand to warm it further.

  “Of course not. Heart of gold. I’m always right about hearts.”

  “Anna, I’ve not always been kind.” He stopped rubbing and just held her fingers lightly.

  “No one has.” When he didn’t say anything she continued. “How so?” Her voice remained light but her back grew rigid as if waiting to be shocked.

  The wind whipped through the cave, blowing wet twigs where they’d burnt out, scattering them as if the small fire had never existed. “I’ve killed,” he said.

  “Your caretakers as a child. And those two women you spoke of?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But there were more.”

  She shifted so that he felt her trying to see him in the dark. Outside, the storm’s howling quieted as if it, too, listened to hear his sins. Did the Earth Mother wish to note his confession?

  “You’ve apparently judged yourself as guilty,” Anna said. “But you’ve always done so. Maybe you need a neutral party to weigh the evidence.”

  “And you are that that neutral party?” he asked, wondering if she’d have a better reaction than the priest he’d confessed to a decade ago.

  “More so than you.”

  He breathed deeply and leaned his head back against the rock, letting her sit up so that they didn’t touch. With the receding wind, the cold didn’t seem as bitter. They remained under the blanket, and his body heat had warmed the space. “Before I came to Scotland I lived in North Carolina in the States. The Great War was over, with President Lincoln uniting the states and freeing the slaves. The loss was not an easy one for the South. Loathing and vengeance sat simmering and heavy in most peoples’ minds. I picked up on all of it.

  “I built a secluded cabin in the woods to keep my distance, but any time I went into town for supplies, I was inundated with the twisted thoughts of so many. Hatred, hunger, deep-pitted sorrow and betrayal. It was all I could do to plod through the streets and get home. The dark feelings lingered, echoes reminding me of the atrocities I’d seen in the peoples’ minds. I wasn’t as good at keeping them out as I am now.”

  Anna shifted the blanket to keep them covered while she leaned back against the wall next to him. Her arm lay along his, from shoulder to wrist. “I can’t imagine how hard that must have been,” she said.

  “I managed. Kept away. Until one day I woke to a wave of fear and hatred coming from right outside my cabin. It was a lynching, a group of foolish white men, furious and merciless. They had a black man who had been a slave and a white man who had been a Northern sympathizer. They were going to hang them from my oak tree. I came out to stop it, and one ran at me.”

  Drustan rapped his fisted knuckles against the rock. “There were twelve of them,” he said. “Plus the two they had trussed up with ropes.” Blood swelled from gashes on the black man’s face, and blood gushed from a broken nose on the white man. Their fear felt like a tightly-wound, wet blanket, suffocating and leaden. Yet they stood tall. There were just too many to make running a possibility.

  “The leader of the group grabbed me before I could stop him and his thoughts exploded in my mind. Such dark pain and lust for revenge. He blamed everything on the blacks and the Northerners. He wanted them cut inside and out, to suffer.” Drustan barely noticed the sting as the skin over his knuckles broke open. He rubbed them on the blanket and shoved his hand back underneath to lay flat on his thigh. “The darkness of his soul surprised me. Me, constant companion to a horde of demons, and yet his evil surprised me.” He shook his head, letting out the huff of a dark chuckle.

  “Did he die when he touched you?” Anna asked.

  “I’m sure he felt sick, but there wasn’t time for him to die from a mere touch. With a single thought I unleashed the power inside me.”

  “You killed him then,” Anna said.

  She didn’t understand the extent of his power or his evil.

  “I killed them all,” he said, his voice low. “All twelve of them, flayed their bodies open where they stood.” He heard her swallow. Maybe her bile rose up her throat unbidden like his did when he thought of it. But it was better for her to know.

  “They were going to murder those men, Drustan,” she whispered.

  “Eleven of them perhaps,” he said. “But one…He was a younger brother, just forced to go along. I didn’t realize that until afterwards. The two bound men just stared at me, terror in their eyes like I’ve never seen before. I was a monster. My magic tore through their bonds, and they ran away.”

  He felt her fingers encircle his arm.

  “I am a monster,” he repeated.

  They sat side by side in silence. Drustan’s mind churned over the disgust and retching terror in the faces of the two survivors, their judgment chiseled in his memory.

  A slow exhale escaped Anna. “I don’t like people,” she said softly.

  Confusion at her switch in topics kept him silent.

  “I’m a doctor, but I don’t like people,” she said.

  “I don’
t understand.”

  “We are airing confessions, aren’t we?”

  “Your supposed sin doesn’t compare with mine,” he said, frowning.

  “This isn’t a competition.” The shrill wind slowed outside the cave and the clouds scudded off, leaving a bit of moonlight. Anna faced outward, her lips moving above the blanket’s edge as she spoke. “People are dirty incubators of disease who spread their germs and their opinions without regard for others. And yet, I am a doctor and am drawn to helping them, relieving their suffering.”

  “Interesting,” he said, simply because he had no idea what else to say. She didn’t seem to need his comments and continued.

  “I am a living oxymoron,” she said. “I live with the secret guilt that I do not wish to know most people, yet my sentimental nature urges me to seek and eradicate disease in them. I encourage my patients to prattle on to me so I can check their cognitive abilities, not because I want to know about their children or husbands or their favorite flavor of crème tart.”

  “You are not as cold as you portray,” he said, watching a clump of snow fall from a tree branch outside.

  “Oh, I do have genuine feelings for some, like Patricia, my mother. Adorably dressed infants with clean noses.”

  Drustan noticed she didn’t mention her father. He had expected derision, shock, maybe a bit of fear. But none of those emotions came across in her tone. “Where are you going with this?” he asked, watching her smooth features.

  “Shhh, confessions,” she reprimanded him. “And yet I am well-liked by my patients for my considerate nature.” She shrugged. “I lie on a daily basis. I’m very good at it, but every once in a while the truth slips out.”

  He gave up trying to understand how this related and just enjoyed the sound of her voice, the spark he could sense in her words. “I would like to see that,” he said. “You losing control.”

  “It is not a pretty scene,” she said, her voice lowering with the taint of shame. “Right before I left London, Dr. Bradley made a remark about my bosom getting in the way if I was allowed to perform surgery with him.”