Beyond the Highland Myst

by Highlander 01-08

  "Unless you want to hold my hand while you're trying things on, ka-lyrra. I'm deactivating the security cameras so you don't show up on than. I may not have to worry about it, but you do."

  Heavens, he thought of everything, taking measures to protect her future, as if he had no doubt that she would survive their current nightmare and have a future. Assuming she did, the last thing she wanted was to be caught on Macy's security cameras. Surviving the Fae, only to end up prosecuted for shoplifting, would be too ironic. Not to mention the havoc a criminal record would wreak with her career plans.

  A few minutes later, apparently satisfied with his work, he transferred them into the main part of the store. She was relieved to discover that their unique mode of travel was no longer making her feel quite so nauseated.

  "Stay here," he said, then vanished. He was back in a moment, holding two large leather satchels in his hands. From Gucci, no less. "I'll be nearby. We leave for Scotland tomorrow. Gather what you require. And, Gabrielle, the weather is different there; the nights get cool in the Highlands this time of year."

  "Sc-Sc-Sc— " she sputtered, but he was gone again. Scotland? The Highlands? What on earth for? Damn it, what was he planning? And why hadn't he told her? How dare he just drag her all over the world without letting her in on their plans. Key phrase there being "their plans." It was her life too.

  She stood for a moment, befuddled and pissed off, then with a brisk shake of her head decided to focus on the task at hand. Later she would confront him and insist on full disclosure. Right now she just wanted more clothing on. Fast. Those few moments of being in his arms while they'd both been so nearly nude had been a test of self-discipline she'd very nearly failed. Every ounce of her body had ached to melt into those strong arms. To run her tongue down that hard, muscled chest and over those sexy rippled abs. To maybe even slip her hand beneath his towel and find out if he really was as huge— oooh— she had to stop thinking like that!

  She glanced around, trying to absorb the fact that she was in Macy's after hours, undetectable, with apparent carte blanche. Distantly, embarrassingly distantly, her conscience squawked. She silenced it by reasoning that if later she felt guilty, she could always send an anonymous donation, and headed off to explore all the fashions she'd never been able to afford.

  In the end, however, she eschewed high-price couture and settled for things that made sense. The slinky designer dress with the sexy spiked heels that made her sigh so wistfully would only be perceived by him as an invitation, and, really, who knew how many more lakes she might be dunked in?

  So into her satchel went instead a dozen panties; three bras; jeans; sweats to sleep in; shirts, socks, sweaters; cosmetics and assorted toiletries; two belts; and— her only concession to temptation— a gorgeous fleece-lined suede jacket that seemed very Highland-ish to her.

  But apart from that single expensive item, she stayed away from the high-dollar racks. Luxury was all well and good for a Fae prince, but what would she do with a pair of six-hundred-dollar Gucci boots? She'd be afraid to walk in them. Probably trip and break an ankle or something, and wasn't there some old fairy tale about stolen shoes that punished the thief? She knew better than most people that fairy tales had a twisted way of coming true.

  She slipped into jeans and laced up tennis shoes. A sturdy pair of hiking boots went into the satchel.

  She was done before he was. Figured. And when he returned, he was wearing dark, tattooed Armani jeans, with a sheer white silk tee and six-hundred-dollar Gucci boots.

  Which also figured.

  14

  A week ago dinner would have been leftover pizza of indeterminate age fished from her barren fridge at home, by herself, while brooding about her nonexistent love life.

  Tonight it was dinner from Bacchanalia in a sumptuous suite via invisible carryout, with a dinner companion who was the stuff of fairy tales. Literally.

  Sitting across the elegant dining table from a tall, dark, Armani-clad fairy prince. Gabby stuffed herself on buttery lobster, pasta, and salad, followed by chocolate cheesecake and strawberries with champagne. Heavenly. Normally she'd have counted calories (she probably would have still eaten it all, but at least she'd have counted), but since she had no way of knowing how short her life might be at this particular juncture, she wasn't about to deprive herself in whatever remained of it.

  She was just about to open her mouth to demand to know, in detail, what his plans were when he said softly:

  "Why are you still a virgin, ka-lyrra?''

  She blinked, an instinctive "it's none of your business" springing to the tip of her tongue, but just as swiftly bit it back. Perhaps if she answered some of his questions he'd be more responsive to hers. Besides, he was part of the reason her love life sucked, and it would feel good to get it off her chest. It wasn't as if she could complain to her girlfriends about the misery of being a Sidhe-seer. "In case you haven't noticed. I have a big fat handicap."

  His dark brows drew together in a frown and his gaze swept her. "I see none. What kind of handicap?"

  She pushed her chair back, tucking her feet up beneath her. "Duh. I see fairies."

  "Ah. How is that a handicap?"

  "I want a normal life. I want an average, everyday, full life. That's all I've ever wanted. A husband, a job I'm passionate about, and children I want the dream. Happily-Ever-After and all."

  "So, how does your seeing those of my race hinder that?"

  She gave a gusty little sigh. "I've had two serious relationships in my life. Each time it got to the point that I was ready to get intimate, all I could think was that if I got pregnant, my child would most likely see fairies too. Which I'm okay with, I can live with that. The problem is, could the man in my life? Do I tell him I see a world he can't see? And that I'll have to protect our children from it? And that he's powerless to help? Or do I withhold that information and deal with it, if and when it becomes an issue, and hope it never does?" She smiled faintly, bitterly. "I told my last boyfriend the truth. I decided it was the only honorable thing to do, and that if he really loved me, he'd be able to handle it. Do you know what happened?"

  Adam shook his head, his dark gaze unnervingly intent.

  "First he thought I was joking. Then when I kept trying to make him understand— I even showed him the Books of the Fae— he completely freaked out. When I wouldn't drop it, when I wouldn't say that I was kidding, when my 'delusion persisted to manifest itself,' as he so charmingly put it, he told me I'd been working too hard and needed professional help. Shortly after that he dumped me. By E-mail, no less, the breakup choice of spineless, sniveling cowards. I tried calling but he wouldn't answer. I left messages, he wouldn't return them; he blocked my E-mail address; he wouldn't even answer his door. We'd known each other for three years and had been dating for half of that. He's a law student in my program. One of my girlfriends told me last week he was telling our mutual friends that I had a nervous breakdown."

  "You didn't love him," Adam said flatly.

  "What?" She was startled, wondering how he'd determined that so swiftly and matter-of-factly.

  "You didn't love him. I've been— seen mortals in love, grieving someone they lost. You're not one."

  With a faint, wry smile. Gabby conceded the point. "You're right. I wasn't crazy, head-over-heels in love with him. But I cared about him. A lot. And it still hurts."

  "I'm sorry, Gabrielle."

  She shrugged. "I can't say I didn't know what to expect going in. O'Callaghan women never have successful relationships. My dad left my mom when I was four. I hardly even remember him. Just a vague memory of a man with a scratchy beard and a loud, angry voice. The only reason my mom's second marriage works is because she can't see fairies and she never had any more children. Her husband has no clue that she's anything other than perfectly normal. And as long as I stay out of the picture, he never will. Gram never married. She settled for the children part of her dream. Got pregnant and didn't tell the father. It's not like an
cient times when Sidhe-seers were revered and men fought for their hands. In my time, people don't believe in things they can't see. And me? I saw my first fairy, so Grain told me, when I was three years old. I pointed and smiled at it. Fortunately, it was Grain who'd taken me out in the stroller that day, because if Mom had, she wouldn't have even known what I was looking at and I probably would have been captured then. That was when they knew for sure that, though the vision skipped my mom, it hadn't skipped me. I didn't get to leave the house again until I was ten years old. It was that long before Gram was convinced I could go out without betraying myself."

  Adam leaned back in his chair, watching her across the table. He'd begun this conversation with his question about why she was still a virgin, intending to turn her mind to sex and smoothly segue into seduction. But she'd ended up turning his mind away from it, toward different thoughts of her. He'd not considered what being a Sidhe-seer might mean for a twenty-first-century woman.

  It was not so different from the old crone's life in the isolated forest, as he'd thought. It still meant hiding, and not just from the Fae but from her own kind too. It meant a life of never quite fitting anywhere. She was right, what man would believe her? And, assuming any did, what man would tolerate such an affront to his masculinity— being unable to protect his own?

  She'd actually been making quite a valiant stab at things: building a career, dating, and keeping the Tuatha Dé oblivious to her existence.

  Until he'd come along and exploded through her back door, betraying her to the worst denizens of Faery.

  "When I'm immortal again. I'll fix everything for you, ka-lyrra. You'll never have to fear again."

  She wrinkled her nose as if to say ‘Yeah, right’. "Speaking of which, what is your plan? If you're going to be dragging me all over the world, I think I have a right to know what we're doing."

  He shook his head. "The less you know for now, the safer you are. If by some chance you're taken from me, my plan may be the only way I have of getting you back."

  She shivered, paling. "You mean if the Hunters get me, don't you?"

  Adam nodded. "Yes. Knowledge you don't possess can't be lifted from your mind by another of my race. Wait until we're in Scotland. I'll tell you there."

  She shivered again. "Okay. But can you at least tell me where in Scotland we're going?"

  "To sacred ground, where those of my race are forbidden to go. MacKeltar land. We'll be safe there."

  "So I take it we're not going to try to find this Circenn Brodie person any longer?"

  Adam watched her intently as he replied, "I can no longer wait for my son to resurface."

  "Y-your w-what?" she sputtered, looking at him with an astonished expression.

  "My son. Circenn is my son."

  She sat up straight in her chair, frowning. "You mean, by a human woman? That's why he's only half-Fae? You had a child with a human woman?''

  He nodded, concealing his smile behind a swallow of wine. She sounded both offended and... reluctantly fascinated. Fascinated was good, very good. Precisely what he wanted to hear.

  "When? Recently?"

  "Long ago, ka-lyrra."

  "How long ago? And stop making me pull teeth, Adam. I answered your questions. If you expect me to answer any more of them, you'd better start talking to me."

  She looked as if she were about to leap up from her chair, grab him by the shoulders, and shake him. He might have antagonized her further, to goad her into doing it for the excuse to pull her into his arms, but he was too charmed by the fact that she'd just called him "Adam." Though she'd said his name on other occasions, this was the first time she'd used it so casually in conversation. He'd been waiting for it to happen. It was a milestone, revealing a deepening acceptance of him. He was no fool; he knew he'd been an "it" to her at first. Then the sin siriche du, or the blackest fairy, then his full name. Adam Black.

  But now he was just Adam. He wondered if she had any idea what she'd just betrayed.

  "Circenn was born in 811 AD," he told her. "He lived in his time until the early 1500s, when he met a woman from your century. They now live in your time."

  Her eyes widened. "I don't think I even want to know how that happened. It would just give me a headache."

  She was silent a moment and Adam fancied he could almost see questions whizzing behind her green-gold eyes as she pondered which one to ask next. He was pleased by what she chose.

  "So does that mean any children you have are also immortal, even if they're only half-fairy? Not that I personally care," she added hastily. "I was just thinking it might be interesting to add to our books."

  The only person who would be adding anything to those idiotic books was him; it was time the O'Callaghans got a few things right. "No, Gabrielle, only a full-blooded Tuatha Dé is born immortal. I gave my son an elixir that my race created so we could grant select humans immortality." She didn't need to know that he'd done it without his son's knowledge or consent. Or that Circenn had hated him when he'd found out what he'd done. Had, in fact, spent most of the next six centuries or so refusing to speak to him, refusing to acknowledge him as his father. His son could hold a grudge with the best of immortals.

  "You can make people immortal?'' she said faintly. "As in, they live forever?"

  "Yes. I made his wife immortal too." How long ago had that been? He'd been tripping around in time so much of late that many centuries had passed for him, but for her— three mortal years or so? A distant shadow clouded his mind at the thought. The elixir of life had a particularly unsavory side effect; one he'd told neither Circenn nor Lisa about. Half-Fae children were born with souls (apparently half a dose of humanity was enough to merit the divine), and Circenn, with his more tenacious constitution, had a few more centuries before it would happen. It took roughly a millennium to affect a half-Fae. Pure humans, on the other hand, like Lisa, lasted but a few years. Lisa had little time left at all. The golden glow illuming her would soon sputter out, leaving her as void of a soul as any Fae.

  "Did you make Circenn's mother immortal too?"

  Abruptly Adam wanted out of the conversation. Pushing himself up from the table, he began bagging up leftovers. What food remained they would eat in the morning before catching a plane. He wanted an early start. "No."

  "So she's dead?"

  "Yes."

  "Why didn't you offer her— "

  "I did," he ground out, cutting her off.

  "And?"

  "And Morganna wouldn't take it."

  "Oh." Her eyes narrowed, then widened, as if something had just occurred to her. "When did Morganna die?"

  "What the bloody hell does that have to do with anything?" he snarled.

  She eyed him warily but persisted, "When?"

  Adam shoved the last tray of pasta back in a bag. It burst through the other end. Irritably, he folded the paper over it and shoved it under an arm. "In 847."

  She was silent a long, reflective moment, then, "Why wouldn't she— "

  He shot her a savage glare, eyes narrowed, teeth bared. "Enough. My life is not an open O'Callaghan Book, Sidhe-seer, to flip through as you wish and make all manner of bloody idiotic interpretations. The Tuatha Dé do not speak of Tuatha Dé matters to"— he gave her an icy sneer— "mere mortals."

  "Well, mister-mere-mortal-yourself," she bristled right back at him, "maybe you'd better get used to it, because whether or not you like it, you need at least one of us 'mere mortals' to help you become a pompous-asshole-fairy-thing again."

  He tried to maintain his icy stare, but his lips curved despite his efforts and he shook with silent laughter. A pompous-asshole-fairy-thing. The indignity of it. Had any of his race ever been called such a thing? Nothing cowed the woman. Nothing. "Point made, ka-lyrra." he said dryly. As he gathered the bags and turned to head for the kitchen, he added over his shoulder. "For the record, I've just told you more than I've told any other human in a very long time."

  "How long?" The moment she said it, Gabby wanted to
kick herself. But she wanted to know. Wanted to know who the last woman... er, human, was who had truly known Adam Black.

  He stopped and turned back to look at her.

  When his obsidian gaze met hers, Gabby suddenly felt a little chill in her blood. Sometimes he looked so human, while at others there was a frightening incongruity to his face, as if something terrifyingly old and completely inhuman were looking out at her from behind a Halloween mask of a youthful human face. And for a brief, strange moment she had the feeling that, were she to somehow lift that mask, she might find something very much like a... like a Hunter beneath it.

  He made a small sound then, a tired sound. Not a sleepy sound, but an immortally weary one. Then he tinned and resumed walking away.

  She heard the refrigerator door open and close. Then silence. Then his deep, rich bun-floated softly through the suite. "Since 847, Gabrielle."

  * * *

  It was one in the morning by the time Gabby pulled out the sofa bed, still mulling over what Adam had revealed. She'd not missed the significance of the dates. Morganna had died mid-ninth century, had refused his offer of immortality and, right around that time, Adam Black had been seen by not just O'Callaghans but oodles of others, on a violent rampage through the Highlands.

  Over Morganna?

  Had Adam Black gone into a rage when he'd lost her? And if so, why had he permitted her to die? He'd been all-powerful; he could have forced her to stay alive, forced her to take his "elixir of life" (which was a mind-boggling concept in and of itself!).

  Who was Morganna? What had she been like? Why had she refused it? How long had Adam spent with her? Had she lived her whole life with him? Woken up each morning with a Fae prince beside her in bed? Been spoiled every day by his crazy excesses, gone to sleep sated each night in his arms?

  What had been so special about her that he'd tried to make her immortal?

  "I could really hate that woman," she muttered beneath her breath.