The Immortal Highlander

by Karen Marie Moning

  “I am not going to be stuck with you until then,” she was saying.

  He smiled. By Danu, she was sexy when she was angry: eyes sparkling, nostrils flaring, breasts rising and falling with her tight, angry breaths.

  When he made no reply, she flung an exasperated hand in the direction of a bench some distance away, in the middle of the square. “Oh, just go sit over there, okay? They tend to hang out on the square sometimes. I think they like to people-watch, or I suppose fairies would say human-watch.”

  When he opened his mouth to disagree, of no mind to sit so far away from her, she placed her palm flush to his chest and gave him a little push toward the bench. It was the first time she’d touched him of her own accord. And he’d not missed the tiny hesitation after she’d placed her hand on his body before pushing. As if she had savored the feel of his chest beneath her hand. Her barriers were dropping. Fascinating.

  “You can’t sit here with me or every fairy that sees us together will know I can see you. I get to choose who to reveal myself to,” she gritted. “When I see the ones I want, I’ll wave you over.”

  “As you wish, Gabrielle.”

  11

  It was late in the day before Gabby spotted a pair of Fae she was willing to approach. The ball-game-goers had long since swept back through downtown, retrieving their cars (the Reds won; she’d heard the fireworks), and the sun had ducked low behind the skyscrapers that hemmed Fountain Square, gilding the silvery-windowed walls fiery rose and slanting tall early-evening shadows across the square.

  During the interminable wait she’d realized the Fae were, indeed, watching him. Many appeared throughout the course of the day. But since he was just sitting there doing nothing, most of them went away after only a short time. She supposed he wasn’t being very entertaining.

  Finally, she spotted her two. She chose them because they weren’t as blindingly beautiful as the rest, and she hoped, rather like people, the less attractive ones weren’t quite so . . . well, were more approachable.

  A male and a female, both blond and shimmery-eyed, were standing near the bench Adam was sitting on, deep in conversation. Rather than waving him over, she decided to join him and get it over with.

  “What? Haven’t you seen any?” Adam asked, as she approached.

  Did that husky, Celtic-accented voice sound almost . . . cheery? She shook her head at the idiotic notion, deciding the sun must have baked her brains during the long, tedious afternoon.

  “They’re right there,” she told him, pointing.

  “Where?” He looked where she was pointing and muttered a string of curses. “Christ, I can’t believe I can’t even see them. Are they looking at me?”

  “Not at the moment. And they’re there,” she said, trying to correct his gaze, “standing about ten feet to your left, less than a foot from the trash can.” She drew a deep breath, bracing herself to approach them, when suddenly the male fairy turned and looked at her.

  “Hello,” she said politely. “I’d like to speak with you a moment. I need to—”

  “I do believe it sees us, Aine,” the male fairy spoke over her, with a haughty lift of a brow.

  It? Gabby thought, nostrils flaring. It was calling her an it? The nerve. The unmitigated gall. She was human. She had a soul. It wasn’t and didn’t. If anyone was an it, it was it not her.

  “Oh, get over yourselves already. I’m just here to pass on a message. Adam Black wants me to tell you . . .” Gabby blinked and trailed off. They’d turned their backs to her and were paying her no attention whatsoever, carrying on a hushed conversation that she couldn’t overhear.

  Then the male fairy nodded, and suddenly both fairies vanished. There one moment, then gone.

  Exhaling gustily, Gabby clenched her hands into little fists and turned to Adam. “Are all of you so damned arrogant?”

  “What do you mean? What are they saying?”

  “They’re not saying anything. They’re gone. They called me an ‘it,’ said something to each other, and vanished.”

  His eyes narrowed. “If this is some kind of trick . . .”

  “It’s not,” she said impatiently. “I swear, they were here. I was trying to talk to them, and they just vanished.”

  “What did they look like?” he demanded.

  She described them, adding that the male had called the female “Aine.”

  Rolling his eyes, he groaned. “I know her.”

  “And?”

  “She’s a princess from Aoibheal’s line, the First House of the D’Anu, and the only thing royal about her is how much of a pain in the ass she is. But she’ll help me. She’ll be back.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He nodded. “Yes, Aine has always had a bit of a thing for me. Perhaps more than a bit. Actually,” he said with a long-suffering sigh, “she’s obsessed with me.”

  Figured, Gabby thought irritably. Even other fairies weren’t immune to his seduction. What did that say about a human woman’s chances? There should be a vaccine against Adam Black. And all women should be given it at birth.

  “Sit,” he said, gesturing to the bench beside him. “It won’t be long. She’ll be back. Aine will refuse me nothing.”

  Gabby began to sit, then stopped. Another fairy had suddenly appeared over by the fountain, alone. A solitary one. Just what she’d been hoping for all afternoon. Just what Adam had said she’d never find. “Well, you were wrong,” she grumbled, feeling inexplicably irked about Aine-who-would-refuse-him-nothing, “because there’s a fairy over there, all by himself.”

  Adam surged to his feet, inhaling sharply, audibly. “What? Where? No, wait—don’t point, ka-lyrra. Don’t even look at him again. Or at me. Move away, give me your back, then tell me what he looks like,” he hissed.

  Gabby glanced at him. She couldn’t help it—he sounded so alarmed.

  “Don’t look at me,” he hissed again softly. “Do as I said.”

  Jarred by the urgency in his voice, Gabby obeyed, moving away. Turning, giving him her profile, she rested her hands on a low stone wall that encircled an arrangement of sculptured shrubs and flowers and pretended to be enjoying the view. Dropping her head forward so her hair shielded her face, she said clearly, softly, “He’s tall. Copper hair, gold highlights. Black torque and armbands, wearing—”

  “White robes and he has a scar on his face,” Adam finished for her.

  “Yes.”

  “Gabrielle, walk away from me this instant and don’t look back. As fast and far as you can. Do it. Now.”

  But, damn the woman, he should have known she wouldn’t obey a direct order again. The first time must have been a fluke; she obviously didn’t have an obedient, malleable bone in her body.

  She looked back at him, searching his face, her brows drawn in confusion.

  And was that a touch of concern in her lovely green-gold eyes? Concern for him? Though he was pleased to see the first hint of such weakness, at the moment, it could prove her undoing. She’d just described Darroc and, if Darroc got his hands on him in his current condition, well . . . he wouldn’t be having an audience with Aoibheal—ever again. And if Darroc got his hands on Gabrielle . . . Adam tensed, refusing to complete the thought. Bloody hell, he hadn’t anticipated this! “Go,” he growled.

  But even as he said it, he saw her face change. She was no longer looking at him; her gaze had fixed on a point slightly to the right of and behind him. Her mouth had dropped open, her eyes had gone impossibly wide, and her face was bloodlessly white.

  “H-h-h—huuuunh—huuunh—” she gurgled.

  Adam reacted instantly, able to think of only one thing that might put that look on her face and make her tongue trip all over an H.

  Hunters.

  “G-g-g—” she tried again.

  And if there were Hunters in the same place as Darroc, they hadn’t come for her. At least not first. There were thousands of years of bad blood between him and the High Council Elder, and he could think of little Darroc would enj
oy more than watching the Hunters rip him to pieces while he was in mortal form. Then and only then would he turn his attentions to the Sidhe-seer. And his petite ka-lyrra wouldn’t stand a chance. In Darroc’s hands, every dark and twisted fairy tale she’d ever been told would come true.

  He launched himself at her.

  Christ, they were surrounded by danger that he couldn’t see! How was he supposed to protect her? Whose stupid bloody idea had this been, anyway?

  As his hands closed on her shoulders, something whizzed past his arm with a soft whine. Snaking an arm around her waist, he twisted and ducked, pulling her into the shelter of his body, wincing as something burned the back of his shoulder.

  Closing his eyes, he held her tightly and sifted place in a general southerly direction, pushing to the farthest limits his diminished power could carry him. The moment he rematerialized, he instantly sifted again, arms locked around her.

  Railroad track. Sift. Grocery store. Keep moving. Roof of a house. Sift. Cornfield. Sift. Cornfield. Sift. Cornfield. Sift. Cornfield. Bloody Midwest. Sift. Atop the steeple of a church with no way to balance on the narrow slippery spire.

  They began to fall, plummeting past crosses and gargoyles, and he hastily sifted them in midair. He kept moving, faster and dizzyingly faster, without pausing for a breath, trying desperately to put as much distance as possible between his enemy and his wee, much-too-mortal ka-lyrra.

  Gabby was sure she was screaming at the top of her lungs, but nothing was coming out.

  Adam Black’s arms weren’t just tight around her body; he’d managed to wrap himself around her like a living shield.

  But that wasn’t what was making her choke on a scream. It was that she kept materializing and dematerializing. Sort of. One moment she existed, and then she didn’t exist, and then she existed again. She didn’t like it one bit. Each time she was in a different place. Stores. Parking lots. Cornfields. A lot of those. Suddenly on the peak of the slender, pointed spire of—ack!—a church, and falling! As the pavement rushed up to meet them, they were suddenly, blessedly, somewhere else.

  After a while, she just closed her eyes and prayed, trying really hard not to think about much of anything, especially not how wrong the Books of the Fae had been about the Hunters.

  They’d been even more horrifying in the flesh, if that was what they were made of, than the O’Callaghan Books had said. Naturally, there were no pictures of them, because any O’Callaghan who’d seen them had been taken. What little description was given, likened them to a classic version of the Devil, hoofed, winged, and horned. And they were, sort of, but even worse. Tall, leathery-skinned, with glowing orange eyes like windows into hell, they had wings, sharp teeth, and long, lethal claws. And she wasn’t certain, but she thought she’d seen a tail. The only thing she didn’t understand was why, when they were so obviously capable of ripping their prey to shreds with their bare . . . er, handlike appendages, they’d been shooting at them with human guns.

  When finally they stopped in a grassy clearing, Gabby couldn’t speak for several long moments. She was, she realized, soaked from head to toe. Water was gushing from her hair, plastering it to her face. She stood shaking in his arms, leaning back into the strength of his hard body, gulping one deep breath after another.

  “Are you all right, ka-lyrra?” he said close to her ear.

  “All right? All right?” Exploding from his grasp, she spun around to face him. Scraping the sodden hair from her face, she shouted, “Do I look all right? Of course I’m not all right. My life is falling apart around my ears and you ask me if I’m all right?”

  Mascara was dripping down her cheeks, splattering on her shirt. She backed away from him, eyes narrowing. Her shoes squished with the movement and, as she peered uncomprehendingly down at them, a tadpole emerged from the leg of her jeans and flopped about on the ground.

  “Eew!” She pointed a shaking finger at it. “A tadpole. I had a tadpole in my pants!”

  “Lucky tadpole,” he murmured. Then, “When one sifts place, ka-lyrra, one comes out on top of whatever currently occupies that space. Which isn’t much of a problem if one also has all one’s other powers. But I don’t. We hit a lake somewhere around the ninety-seventh hop. And, contrary to popular belief, I don’t walk on water.”

  Frantically running her hands up and down her drenched jeans, feeling about for any more creepy-crawlies, she hissed, “Oh, I hate you. I hate you.” So maybe she sounded like a child having a temper tantrum, but really, she seethed, ever since she’d met him she’d just been having one unsettling, disturbing, bizarre experience after another. She’d nearly had a heart attack on top of that church. Just when she’d begun to think she was getting the hang of it, that it wasn’t quite so awful being deconstructed then reconstructed again and again and again, she’d been gagging on foul-tasting, smelly, fishy, mossy water.

  “No you don’t,” he said softly.

  “I drank some of that lake! I might have choked on a fish or a frog or a . . . a . . . a turtle!”

  “It is wisest to keep one’s mouth shut while sifting.”

  She skewered him with a frosty stare. “Now you tell me.” Damn the fairy, anyway. There she stood, feeling ragtag and bedraggled, and he only looked more beautiful wet, all drippy and shimmery gold-velvet, his hair a wet tangle to his waist.

  “Come, Gabrielle,” he said, extending his hand, “we must keep moving. They can track me by what little magic I’m using to sift, but only to a general vicinity. We need to keep sifting, to spread out their search.”

  “Is there anything else it’s wisest to do that I should know about before we just pop off again?” She tucked her hands behind her back so he couldn’t grab her and just sift rather than answering her. Besides, she needed a minute to brace herself for the next bout of traveling in a manner that defied all the known laws of physics.

  “You might try kissing me. Better my tongue than a frog, no?” Dark eyes sparking gold, he reached for her.

  “Close contest,” she growled the lie, backing away, hands still tucked behind her back. She glanced pointedly at the flopping tadpole.

  “What?”

  “Take it back.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” he said disbelievingly.

  “Do we have time?”

  He considered that. “Yes, but—”

  “Then, no I’m not.”

  “That lake was three hops ago,” he said impatiently.

  “If you don’t take it back it’s going to die, and while you may think it’s just a pathetic little thing with an abbreviated little life that hardly even signifies in the fairy scheme of things, I’ll bet in the tadpole scheme of things it’s really looking forward to becoming a frog. Now take it back. A life is a life. I don’t care how tiny an almighty fairy thinks it is.”

  One dark brow arched and he inclined his head. “Yes, Gabrielle.” Scooping up the tadpole in one big hand, gently enough that it gave her pause, he popped out.

  While he was gone Gabby scraped the slimy moss from her purse (which she was rather stunned to find still looped over her shoulder), unzipped it, and inspected the contents. For a novel change, she was glad she could afford only cheap purses—the fake leather had proved waterproof. Fishing out her compact, she scrubbed away the remnants of her makeup and plucked algae from her hair, ruefully acknowledging that things were now pretty much as bad as they could get.

  She was not only still stuck with Adam Black, but other fairies now knew that she could see them, and some rogue fairy—according to Adam, one of those not to be trusted—had also found her out and in the thick of it all somebody had summoned the Hunters.

  She shuddered at the memory. One moment she’d been staring at Adam, trying to figure out why he sounded so tense and urgent, the next, horrific creatures from her worst nightmares had materialized out of thin air behind him.

  And they’d had guns, which she found bizarre enough, but even more strangely, they’d been shooting—not at her—but him.
What on earth was going on?

  Dabbing away a last smudge of mascara, she went still. He’d not been able to see them. All he’d been able to see was her face, and she knew how horrified she must have looked. She’d been incapable of forming a single word; the blood in her veins had turned to ice, freezing her solidly in place. Had it not been for Adam, she’d have stood there squawking silently, helplessly, until the Hunters had done whatever it was Hunters did to Sidhe-seers. She’d tried desperately to say “Hunters” and “guns” but hadn’t been able to spit out a syllable.

  And what had he done? The last thing she’d have imagined. He’d lunged forward without hesitation to shield her. Wrapped his powerful body around hers. Knowing that something awful was behind him, he’d not instantly sifted himself to safety. He’d used his mortal, no-longer-invincible body to protect her. He could have simply translated himself elsewhere and abandoned her, which was exactly what she expected from a cold-blooded fairy.

  He only did it because now he needs you even more. He has to protect you. You’re his eyes for the enemies he can’t see.

  “The tadpole has been returned to its watery home, ka-lyrra.” Adam materialized before her, shaking like a great wet beast, water droplets flying everywhere. He cocked his dark head, absorbing her serious expression. “All will be well, Gabrielle. I won’t let anyone harm you. Not today. Not ever.”

  “Because now you need me more than ever,” she said bitterly. “You have to keep me alive.”

  He cocked his head and regarded her for a long, measuring moment. “In case you’ve forgotten, I tried to make you leave the moment you told me about the lone Tuatha Dé. I said, to be precise, ‘Walk away from me this instant and don’t look back. As fast and far as you can.’ You chose not to heed me. And I could always find another Sidhe-seer, Gabrielle. I read your books. One of them lists the names of the bloodlines in Ireland that carry the vision. All the bloodlines.”