"What is it like?"
Dageus rubbed his jaw, exhaling. " 'Tis as if I have a beast inside me, Drustan. 'Tis pure power and I find myself using it without even thinking. When did you know?" he asked, with a faint, bitter smile.
Cold eyes, Drustan thought. They hadn't always been cold. Once they'd been warm, sunny-gold, and full of easy laughter. "I've known since the first, brother."
A long silence. Then Dageus snorted and shook his head.
"You should have let me die, Dageus," Drustan said softly. "Damn you for not letting me die."
Thank you for not letting me die, he added silently, torn by emotion. It was a terrible mixture of grief and guilt and gratefulness. If not for his brother's sacrifice, he would never have seen his wife again. Gwen would have raised their babies in the twenty-first century, alone. The day he'd read Silvan's letter, and discovered the price his twin had paid to ensure his future, he'd nearly gone crazy, hating him for giving up his own life, loving him for doing it.
"Nay," Dageus said. "I should have watched over you more carefully and kept the fire from happening."
" 'Twas not your fault—"
"Och, aye, it was. Do you know where I was that eve? I was down in the lowlands in the bed of a lass whose name I can't even recall—" He broke off abruptly. "How did you know? Did Da warn you?"
"Aye. He left a letter for us explaining what had happened, advising that you'd disappeared. Our descendant, Christopher, and his wife, Maggie—whom you'll meet anon—gave it to me shortly after I'd awakened. You called not long after that."
"Yet you pretended to accept my lies. Why?" Drustan shrugged. "Christopher went to Manhattan twice and watched you. You were doing naught I felt needed to be stopped."
His reasons for not going to America to retrieve his brother were complicated. Not only had he been loath to leave Gwen's side while she was pregnant, he'd been wary of forcing a confrontation. After talking with him on the phone, he'd known that Dageus was indeed dark, but was holding on somehow. He'd suspected that were Dageus a tenth as powerful as Silvan believed, trying to force Dageus to return would have accomplished naught. Had it come to force, one of them would have died. Now that Dageus was there in the room with him, Drustan knew'twould have been himself who'd died. The power in Dageus was immense, and he wondered how he'd withstood it this long.
Cautiously, when Dageus turned his back to him and busied himself opening a new bottle of whisky, Drustan reached out with his Druid senses, curious to know more about what they were dealing with.
He nearly doubled over. The whisky he'd sipped, curdled in his gut and tried to daw its way back up.
He retracted instantly, frantically, violently. By Amergin, how did Dageus stand it? A monstrous, icy, rapacious beast pulsed beneath his skin, snaking through him, coiled, but barely. It had a fierce, gluttonous appetite. It was huge and twisted and suffocating. How could he breathe?
Dageus turned, one brow arched, his gaze icy. "Never do that again," he warned softly. Without bothering to ask, he poured Drustan a refill.
Drustan snatched it from his hand and tossed it back swiftly. Only after the heat of it had exploded in his chest, did he trust himself to speak. He'd not kept his senses open long enough to explore the thing. His throat constricted by whisky and shock, he said hoarsely, "How did you know I was doing it? I scarce even—"
"I felt you. So did they. You doona want them to. Leave them alone."
"Aye," Drustan rasped. He hadn't needed the warning; he had no intention of opening his senses around his brother again. "Are they different personalities, Dageus?" he forced out.
"Nay. They have no separateness, no voice." As yet, Dageus thought darkly. He suspected the day might well come when they found a voice. The moment Drustan had reached out, they'd stirred, sensing power, and for a moment he'd had the terrible suspicion that what was in him could drain Drustan, suck him dry somehow. "So, it's not as if you can actually hear them?"
" 'Tis—och, how can I explain this?" Dageus fell silent a moment, then said, "I feel them inside me, their knowledge as my own, their hunger as my own. It intensifies my desire for even simple things such as food and drink, to say nothing of women. There's a constant temptation to use magic and the more I use it, the colder I feel. The colder I feel, the more reasonable it seems to use it, and the stronger my desires become. I suspect there's a line that, should I cross, I will no longer be myself. This thing inside me will take over. I doona know what would happen to me then. I think I would be gone."
Drustan inhaled sharply. He could see a man being devoured by such a thing.
"My thought patterns change. They become primitive. Naught matters but what I want."
"But you've controlled it this long." How? Drustan marveled. How did a man survive with such a thing in him? " 'Tis more difficult here. 'Tis why I left in the first place. What did Da tell you to do, Drustan?"
"He told me to save you. And we will." He deliberately omitted the last line of their father's letter. And if you cannot save him, you must kill him. Now he knew why.
Dageus searched his gaze intently, as if not convinced that was the entirety of what Silvan had said. Drustan knew he was about to push, so he launched an offensive of his own.
"What of the lass you brought? How much does she know?" Though he was amazed that Dageus could still feel anything at all with that inside him, he'd not missed the possessiveness in Dageus's gaze, or the reluctance with which he'd left her in Gwen's care.
"Chloe knows me as naught more than a man."
"She doesn't feel it in you?" Lucky lass, Drustan thought.
"She senses something. She watches me strangely at times, as if perplexed."
"And how long do you think you'll be able to maintain the pretense?"
"Christ, Drustan, give a man a moment to catch his breath, will you?"
"Do you plan to tell her?"
"How?" Dageus asked flatly. "Och, lass, I'm a Druid from the sixteenth century and I broke an oath and now I'm possessed by the souls of four-thousand-year-old evil Druids and if I doona find a way to get rid of them I will turn into a scourge upon the earth and the only thing that keeps me sane is tooping?"
"What?" Drustan blinked. "What was that about tooping?"
"It makes the darkness ease. When I begin to feel cold and detached, for some reason bedding a wench makes me feel human again. Naught else seems to work."
"Ah, that's why you brought her."
Dageus gave him a dark look. "She resists."
Drustan choked on a swallow of whisky. Dageus needed tooping to keep that heinous beast at bay, yet he'd brought a woman with him who refused his bed? "Why haven't you seduced her?" he exclaimed.
"I'm working on it," Dageus snarled.
Drustan gaped at him. Dageus could seduce any woman. If not gently, then with a rough, wild wooing that never failed. He'd not missed the way the wee lass had looked at his brother. She needed no more than a firm nudge. So why the bletherin' hell hadn't Dageus nudged? A sudden thought occurred to him. "By Amergin, she's the one, isn't she?" he breathed.
"What one?" Dageus stalked to a tall window, pushed the drapes aside and stared out at the night. He slid the window up and breathed deeply, greedily, of sweet, chilly Highland air.
"The moment I saw Gwen, a part of me simply said 'mine.' And from that moment, though I didn't understand it, I knew that I would do aught ever it took to keep her. 'Tis as if the Druid in us recognizes our mate instantly, the one we could exchange the binding vows with. Is Chloe that one?"
Dageus's head whipped around and the unguarded, startled look on his face was answer enough for Drustan. His brother had heard the same voice. Drustan suddenly felt a surge of hope, despite what he'd felt inside his brother. He knew from personal experience that oft love could accomplish miracles when all else seemed destined to fail. Dageus may be dark, but by some miracle, he wasn't lost to it yet.
And when one was dealing with evil, Drustan suspected love might be the most
potent weapon of all.
When Gwen joined them in the library a short time later, without Chloe, Dageus tensed. He'd yet to speak to Drustan about the attempt on Chloe's life, and about the Draghar—whoever they were.
Is she the one? Drustan had asked.
Och, aye, she was the one for him. Now that Drustan had remarked upon it, Dageus understood it was what he'd sensed from the very first—the kind a man kept, indeed. 'Twas no wonder he'd refused to use a memory spell on her, and send her on her way. He was incapable of letting her go. 'Twas also no wonder he'd not been satisfied with merely trying to bed her.
In this, his darkest hour, fate had gifted him with his mate. The irony of it was rich. How was a man to woo a woman under such conditions? He knew naught of wooing. He knew only of seduction, of conquering. Tenderness of the heart, soft words and pledges, had been burned out of him long ago. The youngest son of no noble consequence, pagan to boot, he'd caught too many of his youthful follies attempting to seduce his own brother.
One too many of them had coyly suggested a three-way bout of love-play—and no' with another woman. Nay, always with his own twin.
Four times he'd watched Drustan try to secure a wife—and fail.
He'd learned young and learned well that he possessed one thing a woman wanted, hence he'd perfected his skills and taken comfort from the knowledge that while women might eschew intimacy with him, they never turned him away from their beds. He was always welcome there. Even when their husband was in the next room, a fact that had only deepened his cynicism involving so-called matters of the heart.
Except Chloe. She was the one woman he'd tried to seduce that had refused him.
Yet remained at his side.
Aye, but how long will she remain there when she discovers what you are?
He had no answer for that, only a relentless determination to have all of her that he could. And if that determination was more akin to the desperation of a drowning man than a courageous one, so be it. The night he'd tempted death and danced on the slippery terrace wall above the snow-covered city of Manhattan—and fallen on the safe side—he'd made a promise to himself: that he would not yield to despair again. He would fight it any way he could, with any weapon he could find, till the bitter end.
"Where is she?" he hissed, surging to his feet.
Gwen blinked. "It's wonderful to see you, too, Dageus," she said sweetly. "Nice of you to drop in. We've only been waiting forever." "Where?"
"Relax. She's upstairs taking a long shower. The poor girl traveled for an entire day and, though she said she slept a bit on the plane, she's clearly exhausted. What on earth have you been doing to her? I adore her, by the way," Gwen added, smiling. "She's a brainy geek like me. Now, can I have a hug?"
His tension ebbed slowly, aided by the knowledge that if Chloe was safe anywhere, it was within these walls. He'd personally chiseled the protection spells into the cornerstones when the castle had been built. So long as she remained within them, no harm would find her.
He skirted the sofa and opened his arms to Gwen, the woman who'd once saved his life. The woman he'd pledged his own to protect. " 'Tis good to see you again, lass, and you're looking lovely as ever." He bent his head to kiss her.
"No lips," Drustan warned. "Unless you wish me to be kissing Chloe."
Dageus averted his face swiftly. "How are the wee bairn, lass?" he asked, with a glance at her rounded belly. Gwen beamed and prattled on about her most recent doctor's visit. When she paused finally for a breath, she peered at him intently. "Has Drustan told you our idea yet?"
Dageus shook his head. He was still having a hard time fathoming that Drustan had known he was dark all this time. A hard time believing he was home, that his brother had welcomed him. Had, in fact, been waiting for him.
"You're my brother," Drustan said quietly, and Dageus knew that he'd read his feelings in that uncanny way his twin had. "I would never turn my back on you. It wounds me that you thought I would."
"I but thought to fix it myself, Drustan."
"You hate to ask for help. You always have. You've ever shouldered more than your share of the burden. You had no right to sacrifice yourself for me—"
"Doona even start with me—"
"I didn't ask you to—"
"Och, you rather be dead!"
"Enough!" Gwen snapped. "Stop it, both of you. We could sit here for hours arguing about who should or should not have done what. And what would that accomplish? Nothing. We have a problem. We'll fix it."
Dageus hooked a ladder-back chair with his foot, turned it about and dropped into it backward, stretching his legs around the frame, resting his forearms on the top of the back. He took a perverse pleasure in seeing his elder brother chastened. Drustan was well met by his wee, brilliant wife. The bond betwixt them was a precious thing.
"We've given this a lot of thought," Gwen said, "and we think we can send someone back to warn you before the tower burns, that it's going to burn. That way you can prevent the fire, which would save Drustan, and keep you from ever turning dark."
Dageus shook his head. "Nay, lass. It wouldn't work."
"What mean you? 'Tis a brilliant solution," Drustan protested.
"Not only doona we have someone we could send, because that person might be forever stuck in the past, but I doona believe it would change me now."
"No, Drustan and I thought of that," Gwen insisted. "If the person was one you met as a result of turning dark, like—oh, say, gee, Chloe—the same thing that happened to me should happen to her. She'd be sent back to her own time the moment she succeeded in changing your future."
"Chloe goes nowhere without me. And she doesn't know. You didn't tell her, did you?" The tension was back again. He'd been so caught up in seeing his brother again, so relieved to be accepted, that he'd forgotten to warn Gwen to say naught to Chloe of his plight.
"I didn't say anything," Gwen hastened to assure him. "It was apparent she knew very little, so I kept the conversation light. We talked about college and jobs mostly. Who else have you met in this century that we might send?"
"No one. It wouldn't work anyway. There are things you doona know."
"Such as?" Drustan probed.
"I'm no' the same man anymore. I suspect that even if someone went back and warned the past me, and the past me didn't break his oath, what I've become would still exist in the here and now."
"That's impossible," Gwen declared, with the firm conviction of a physicist having weighted her proofs both valid and true.
"Nay'tis not. I tried something very similar. Shortly after I broke my oath, I went back to a time before the fire, hoping to cancel myself out. To see if the past me might cause the dark me to cease to exist."
"The way things occurred when I took Gwen back into the past," Drustan said thoughtfully. "The future me ceased to exist because two identical selves couldn't coexist in the same moment in time."
"Aye. I even managed to carry a note to myself through the stones, so the past me would know to move you from the tower. But the canceling hinges on two identical selves."
"What are you saying?" Drustan demanded, hands clenching on the arms of his chair.
"When I went back, not only didn't the future me cease to exist, neither me did. I watched myself through a window for hours before fleeing again. He never disappeared. I might have strolled in and introduced myself."
" 'Tis wise you didn't. We must be ever wary of creating paradoxes," Drustan said uneasily.
Gwen gaped. "That's not possible. According to the laws of physics, one of you would have to cease to exist"
"You'd think after all she experienced with me, she wouldn't be so hasty labeling things possible or impossible," Drustan said dryly.
"How could it be possible?" Gwen demanded.
"Because I am no longer the same man I was. I'm different enough now with these ancient beings inside me, on some elemental level, that my past self did not conflict with who or what I've become."
"Oh, God," Gwen breathed. "So even if we sent someone back, and they changed the past…"
"I doubt it would have any effect on me at all. What I am now, seems to exist beyond the natural order of things. 'Tis possible it may cause some negative effect we can't even imagine. There's too much we doona understand here. I fear creating multiple moments in time for no good purpose. Nay, my only hope is the old lore."
Drustan and Gwen exchanged an uneasy look.
" 'Twas a clever idea," Dageus reassured them. "I can see why you considered it. But I've given this matter endless thought and my only hope is to discover how they were imprisoned in the first place, and reimprison them. 'Tis why I came. I need to use the Keltar library. I need to examine the ancient texts that deal with the Tuatha Dé Danaan."
Drustan sighed gustily and raked a hand through his hair.
"What?" Dageus's eyes narrowed.
"It's just that we were so certain our idea would work," Gwen said miserably.
"And?" Dageus pressed warily.
Drustan rose and began pacing. "Dageus, we no longer have those texts," he said in a low voice.
Dageus lunged to his feet so swiftly that the chair clattered to the floor. Nay—it couldn't be so! "What? What say you? How can we not have them?" he thundered.
"We doona know. But they're not here. After reading Da's letter, I decided to research the Tuatha Dé Danaan to discover aught I could about the mythic race, in hopes of discovering a way to cast them out. That's when Christopher and I found that we're missing a great many tomes."
"But surely some of the volumes I need are here." He began naming the ones he was specifically seeking, but at each tide, Drustan shook his head.
"That's inconceivable, Drustan!"
"Aye, and it nigh seems deliberate. Christopher and I suspect someone intentionally removed them, though we cannot discern how it might have been done."
"I need those texts, damn it!" He slammed his fist against the paneled wall.
There was a moment of silence, then Drustan said slowly, "There is a place—or should I say a time—they can be found. A time both you and I know our clan's library was fully extant."
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