The Immortal Highlander

by Karen Marie Moning

  “It does?” Gabby was horrified. Where? How had she missed it? Why had they ever been written down? Oh, why hadn’t someone burned those pages long ago?

  He nodded. “In the first tome, scribed in the ancient tongue. Pages of names. So you see, I don’t need you. I know human ways far better than my enemies. I could easily conceal myself long enough to track another one down.”

  “Then, why don’t you?” she asked faintly. And how would she survive if he did?

  “I endangered your life. I will fix it.”

  Gabby blinked up at him. His voice was tight, his accent more clipped than usual and, were he a normal man, she would have thought he was furious with himself for having placed her in jeopardy.

  Oh, for crying out loud, her inner fourteen-year-old snapped, even for a Fae prince he sounds furious with himself for having placed you in jeopardy. Cut him some slack, would you?

  She stood, mouth open, a dozen different questions vying for her tongue, but he shook his head.

  “Not now. We must go. There will be a place to talk soon enough. This is not it. Come.”

  Gabby stood, tucking her purse securely over her shoulder. As she moved to join him, she suddenly noticed that the water trickling down his wet shirt held a reddish tinge.

  “Are you hurt?” she exclaimed, reaching for his arm.

  He twisted away with a shrug. “It’s nothing—”

  “Let me—”

  “Leave it. I’m fine. I rinsed it out in the lake. It’s not deep. Come, Irish. Hand. In mine. Now.”

  When she just stood there, frowning worriedly up at him, he said, “I have no intention of expiring before I’m made immortal again. Rest assured, if I say it’s of no consequence, it isn’t.” He paused a moment, then added softly, “And you needn’t fear, Gabrielle. I destroyed them.”

  “The Hunters?” she said blankly. “No you didn’t.”

  “The pages that name the Sidhe-seers. You shouldn’t make things so easy for my race. They can be without mercy, dangerous.”

  “Unlike you, that oh-so-nice-guy-Adam-Black?” The caustic comment slipped from her tongue before she could stop it.

  He shot her a look of impatient rebuke. “Try to see past your preconceptions, Irish, would you? Try seeing me.”

  Okay, now that messed with her head. Made her feel like she was being judgmental and petty. She wasn’t judgmental, she was merely going by the facts, and the facts were—

  Well, the facts were . . . er, that she wasn’t entirely certain what the facts were at the moment.

  Damn it! Why couldn’t things just be black and white? Human good, fairy bad. Simple! That was what she’d been raised to believe.

  Had he really destroyed those pages betraying all the Sidhe-seers? Why? Why would he even expend the effort?

  For that matter, why had he so gently retrieved the flopping tadpole from the ground and returned it? There was no doubt that he had; he’d been freshly drenched again. He could have just lied (after all, lying was supposed to be his second nature) and told her there was no time. She would have believed him; she had no idea what Hunters were capable of.

  And he had told her to walk away the minute she’d spotted the lone fairy. Had he truly meant to send her away for her own protection, at his own risk?

  What kind of fairy did such things?

  A legendary seducer and deceiver?

  Or . . . halfway decent fairy? Was there such a thing?

  At a complete loss, she slipped her hand into his.

  His big hand swallowed hers, making her feel dainty and feminine. She tipped her head back, looking up at his chiseled face. His eyes were dark, his jaw set. And he looked so very . . . human.

  As they began to sift, she was ambushed by the realization that, though she knew she wasn’t safe from him, she felt strangely safe with him.

  They didn’t stop again until well after nightfall. Actually, she mused muzzily, it felt nearer to dawn. She’d lost track of the passage of time during their discombobulating passage through place.

  He sifted them onto a passenger train just outside of Louisville, Kentucky, explaining that they now needed to travel by human means for a while, to ensure the Fae couldn’t track them. Assuring her that the Hunters would be tangled up for quite some time in the net of magic-residue he’d left behind.

  She was once again so tired she could barely function. When he guided her through the cars until they found a nearly empty one, then took a seat by the window and pulled her in next to him, she sank limply down. Since Adam Black’s advent into her life, her sleep schedule had become the biggest joke. Judging by the faint streaks of orange and pink on the horizon beyond the glass, it appeared she’d again been up nearly twenty-four hours straight—and again they’d been some of the most traumatic hours she’d ever endured.

  Unable to find a single solid point of reference to latch on to in the recent epidemic of otherworldly events, she decided to deal with it all later and yielded to exhaustion, slumping down in the seat, chin nodding toward her chest.

  And when he pulled her across the seats, stretched out his long muscular legs and drew her into his arms, she only gave a weary little sigh and curled up against him. Her jeans were still damp, she had no blanket, and could use the body heat.

  Still, that was no excuse to press her cheek to his chest and inhale deeply of his spicy masculine scent. She did it anyway.

  “You aren’t falling for me, are you, Irish?” he purred, sounding amused.

  “Hardly,” she muttered.

  “Good. I’d hate to think you were falling for me.”

  So would she. Oh, God, so would she.

  12

  Adam shifted position carefully, trying to take the pressure off his shoulder without disturbing Gabrielle.

  She was sleeping in his arms. Had been for hours, easy as could be. Her face, in repose, was sweet, youthful, innocent, and utterly beautiful to him. He traced a finger down her cheek, studying the subtle, soft planes, wondering at what made beauty. In thousands of years he’d still not figured it out. Whatever it was, she had it in spades. She was warm and earthy and vibrant, unlike the coolly flawless females of his race. She was fiery autumn and spring thunder, while Tuatha Dé women were a silvery winter that went on and on. She was just the kind of lass a Highlander might take to wife; laugh with and argue with and make love to for the rest of his life.

  She sighed in her sleep and curled closer, nestling her cheek against his chest. He understood what was responsible for the sudden change in her demeanor, what had caused the lamb to slump down in exhaustion against the wolf. Not trust, no, not from his fiery Sidhe-seer (though he was beginning to see some signs of thawing); circumstances alone had driven her into his arms. Until late this afternoon she’d perceived him as her greatest threat. Now there was a greater threat, and he was suddenly her only ally against it.

  No matter the reason, he liked feeling her soft and yielding to his strength. Unconscious, vulnerable, entrusted to his care while her mind was steeped in dreams. He liked it a great deal. Enough, in fact, that he—who had no patience with physical discomfort—would put up with pain rather than wake her. Fortunately, the bullet had only grazed him, presenting no significant threat to his mortal form.

  Hunters carrying guns. He rubbed his jaw and shook his head. When she’d told him what she’d seen, during the few pauses he’d permitted them while sifting place, he’d been incensed.

  At himself.

  What a fool he’d been. A week ago, he’d thought his most pressing problem a severe case of frustration and boredom. Then he’d found Gabrielle, and his most pressing problem had been how best to seduce her.

  Now his most pressing problem was how the bloody hell to keep them both alive.

  It didn’t take Tuatha Dé genius to understand the significance of Hunters carrying human weapons. Not in the presence of Darroc.

  How swiftly he’d forgotten all he’d left behind in Faery upon being banished from that realm—the c
omplications, the tensions, the incessant court intrigues—but he’d been thoroughly wallowing in his aggravation at being human. What a fool he’d been to forget Darroc for even a moment. The bad blood between him and the High Council Elder stretched back four and a half millennia, to a time before The Compact between Fae and Man. To a time before the deadly spear and lethal sword his race had brought with them from Danu—two of the four Hallows, and the only weapons capable of doing injury to or even killing an immortal—had been removed from Faery and secreted away. All the way back to that day Adam had taken up the sword and laid open Darroc’s face, giving him the scar he still sported.

  He’d like to pretend he’d tried to kill Darroc for a noble reason, but the simple truth was they’d been fighting over a mortal woman. Adam had seen her first. But the queen had summoned him back to court for some nonsense or another, and Darroc had gotten to her first. Knowing full well Adam had wanted her.

  Darroc had killed her. There were those among his race who believed that beauty and innocence could truly be savored only via their destruction. There were those among his race who, in that lawless time before The Compact, when they’d first arrived on this world and were scouting it, not yet having settled it, had fed like scavengers on the passion they could elicit from a human during sex, not caring that it killed the mortal in the process. He’d seen what Darroc had done to her when he’d returned. Gone was the laughing, teasing young maiden who’d been so vibrantly alive. Sadistically broken and forever silenced. Her death hadn’t come easy. And for no bloody frigging good reason. Her murder had been an act of bitter, senseless violence. Adam had done his fair share of killing in that lawless time, but for reasons. Always for reasons. Never just for the pleasure of it.

  The loathing spawned between him and Darroc that day had never waned. Leashed by the queen, under threat of dire recompense (a soulless death at the queen’s hand, no less), they’d taken their vicious battle into the arena of court politics. An arena in which Adam had perfected his powers of subtlety and seduction, tools he’d used to defeat Darroc on many occasions. The Elder, too, had changed with time, perfecting a cunning that equaled his brutality. While Darroc secured a seat on the queen’s council, Adam managed to secure her ear in other ways. He and the Elder were by far the most powerfully persuasive figures at court, staunchly on opposing sides, and with Adam gone . . . well, he had no doubt that already the complacent courtiers were being turned to the Elder’s aims. How long, he brooded darkly, before Darroc managed to turn some of them against Aoibheal herself? Was she aware of the danger she’d created by casting Adam out?

  So Darroc had tried to kill him, he mused. And with guns at that. Had he been trying to make it look as if Adam had gotten caught in stray fire from some human dispute? Knowing Darroc, he would play the odds that once Adam was gone, the queen would be able to prove nothing if Adam’s body sported only man-made wounds.

  Though Adam mocked human law, Tuatha Dé code was equally convoluted. Without solid proof, the queen would never punish one of their own. Their numbers were no longer increasing as they’d once been. Though he’d once told Circenn he was virile in Tuatha Dé form, it had been but one of many, many lies he’d told his son. Few of them could still sire offspring, and although the Tuatha Dé didn’t exactly die, sometimes they . . . went away.

  Gabrielle stirred in his arms, jarring him from his thoughts. She shifted, tucking her knees up, snuggling closer to his body. She was curled on her side between his legs, cradled against his chest, and he sucked in a sharp breath, shuddering, as the generous, sweet curve of her hip nestled against his cock. Which was, as ever, ready and willing. That part of his body was simply uncontrollable, apparently functioning in accordance to a single law of nature: She existed—he got a hard-on.

  Christ, he wanted her. Force had never seemed such a tempting option, yet force would make him no better than Darroc.

  He would accept nothing less than her willing surrender.

  But, bloody hell, it had better be soon. He was currently only human. With a Tuatha Dé’s conscience. Or lack thereof.

  Gabby stretched gingerly, taking careful note of every muscle in her body that ached.

  That would be all of them.

  She was crinked from head to toe and dream-befuddled, with absolutely no idea where she was.

  She opened her eyes warily.

  Adam Black was staring down at her, his dark gaze unfathomable.

  “Good morning, ka-lyrra,” he purred with a slow, heart-stoppingly sexy smile.

  “Highly debatable,” she muttered. Any morning that had him in it was bound to be many things, but good was hardly the first adjective she’d choose. Dangerous? Yes. Endlessly tempting? Yes. Eventful. Perhaps even fascinating. But not good.

  “I’d have procured coffee for you but you’re on top of me, and I was loath to disturb your slumber.”

  He looked as if he were about to say more, but she didn’t give him the chance. She was too appalled by her discovery that he was reclining back against the window and she was sprawled uninhibitedly on top of his big, warm body, astride one of his powerful thighs (with something hard against her belly that she was trying really, really hard not to think about), her breasts crushed against his chest, and oh—her hand was curled in his hair! As if she’d been petting him or something in her sleep! “Sorry,” she said hastily, disentangling herself, snapping upright, and scooting away.

  He came with her, his hand closing around her wrist like a steel band. “Not so fast, Irish.”

  “Let me g—” Gabby froze. She’d managed to get off him and was sitting up all right. But something was wrong. It took her a moment to figure out what it was. Someone else was sitting in her.

  Sitting in her.

  She opened her mouth to scream but he clamped a hand over it. He rose, pulling her up with him, and half-carried, half-dragged her from their seats. Holding her tightly, he walked her down the aisle through car after car until they came to an empty one.

  Only then did he let her go.

  Wide-eyed, she backed up against a seat and stared at him. Her mouth opened and closed repeatedly.

  “Easy, ka-lyrra. It’s just the effect of the féth fiada.”

  Her tongue unstuck. “What are you saying?” she wailed. “Am I cursed now too? Did you let somebody curse me while I was sleeping? Is it contagious or something?” She thumped him in the chest with a fist. “How could you do this to me? I trusted you!”

  He arched a dark, slanted brow. “You did? Imagine that, and me the sin siriche du and all, only your mortal enemy.”

  “Oooh! I don’t mean that I trust you, like with important things, but I thought at least I could count on you to—”

  “You’re not cursed, Gabrielle,” he soothed. “It’s merely that when I touch you the curse affecting me encompasses you as well. I wasn’t sure exactly how it was working until the lady sat in you, and then it was too late.”

  “I thought I was immune to it,” she cried.

  “You are. The féth fiada doesn’t work on you. But it works on you.”

  “Not getting this,” she hissed, running her hands up and down her body, making sure she was really real.

  “As with any other object in the human realm, when I touch you you get drawn into the enchantment that surrounds me. You become invisible and noncorporeal to other humans. Until I stop touching you. Hence, you were sat in. I tried to warn you but you pulled away too quickly. I didn’t dare release you while you were being occupied, because I’m not certain what would happen if I did.”

  Gabby blanched. “You mean, you think if I became corporeal again while someone was in me . . .” She couldn’t finish the thought.

  He nodded. “That someone might be . . . er, incorporated. But then again, they might not. It might work like sifting, where things come out on top of each other. Wouldn’t that be a laugh? Can you imagine the look on that woman’s face if you’d suddenly appeared on top of her? Unless . . .” he mused thought
fully, “with a Sidhe-seer it’s so difficult to predict; Fae power doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to around you, which is what we find so unacceptable about your kind. Perhaps some part of the confusion element would—”

  “I don’t think it would be a laugh at all,” Gabby snapped. “It felt really bad to be sat in. Like I was a ghost or something.”

  He nodded. “I know.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “So help me understand this. When you’re touching me, I can’t be seen or felt by any other humans?”

  “Right.”

  “But the Fae can still see us?”

  “Right.”

  “But when you’re touching me, and I’m not solid to other people, I can still feel everything else. And I could feel you. So am I actually there, or not?”

  “It’s difficult to explain, ka-lyrra; I have no human terms. Your race does not yet possess ones sufficient to discuss in any useful detail”—he broke off, frowning, searching for words—“well, this is a near approximation, though not really at all: complex, element-specific, event-contingent, multidimensional shifting in, er . . . you’d say ‘spacetime,’ but give it thirteen dimensions instead of four. Humans have simultaneity issues and don’t deal well with breakdown. Your concept of the universe is not yet advanced enough, although your scientists have been making progress. Yes, you’re real. No, humans can’t feel you.” He shrugged. “The féth fiada doesn’t affect animals either. Cats and dogs can see and feel us just fine, which is why they often seem to be staring fixedly at nothing, hissing or barking for no apparent reason.”

  “Uh-huh. I see. Adam?”

  “Yes?”

  “If you ever let somebody sit in me again, in any freaking dimension, you won’t have to worry about the Hunters, I’ll kill you myself.”

  His dark eyes glittered with amusement. A full foot shorter than he, lesser by at least a hundred pounds, she was bristling up at him, undaunted. Only one other mortal woman had similarly stood her ground before him. Over a thousand years ago, in another time, another world, in ninth-century Scotland. Circenn’s mother, Morganna: the only woman to whom he’d ever offered immortality.