Beyond the Highland Myst

by Highlander 01-08

  He shook his head. "I gained everything. Or at least I'll think so," he growled, suddenly impatient, anxious, "when you give me a bloody answer to my bloody question. How many times are you going to make me ask you? Will you marry me, Gabrielle O'Callaghan? Yes or yes? And in case you're still managing to miss the point, the correct answer is 'yes.' And, by the way, anytime you'd like to tell me you love me, I wouldn't mind hearing it."

  She pounced on him delightedly, straddling him, slipped her hands into his hair, and kissed him. He luxuriated in the bliss of her sweet body, closing his arms around her, his tongue gliding deep, tangling with hers.

  "I'm going to take this as a yes," he purred, catching her lower lip, tugging playfully at it.

  "I love you, Adam Black," Gabby breathed. "And, yes. Oh, abso-freaking-lutely yes!"

  EPILOGUE

  Five years later

  Gabby finished unloading the dishwasher and cocked her head, listening. The house was quiet; their two-year-old son Connor was already down for the night. Soon she would go upstairs, kiss their daughter, Tessa, good night, and lead her husband off to bed.

  Professor Black.

  She shook her head, smiling. Adam couldn't look less like a professor, with his chiseled face and those sexy dark eyes and that long black hair, not to mention that rippling, powerful body. He looked more like... well, a Fae prince masquerading as a professor, and doing a rather shoddy job of it at that.

  When he'd first told her that he intended to teach history at the university, she'd laughed

  Too everyday, too plebeian, she'd thought. He'll never do it.

  He'd surprised her. But then, he often did.

  He'd planned everything out so carefully. Before he'd petitioned the queen to make him human, he'd established a detailed human identity for himself as an extremely wealthy man with vast bank accounts and a thousand acres of prime land in the Highlands. A human identity complete with all the necessary paperwork and credentials to permit him to live a normal life in the human realm.

  And when she'd gently scoffed at his announcement of his choice of career, he'd waved those credentials at her— transcripts from the top universities in the nation, no less (of course, he'd made himself brilliant)— and gone off and gotten himself a job.

  He'd developed a reputation as a renegade in the field, with all kinds of controversial theories about things like who had built Newgrange and Stonehenge and the true origin of the Proto-Indo-European tongue.

  Students had to register for his classes a year in advance.

  And she, well, she had her dream job. She and Jay and Elizabeth had opened up their own law firm and just this year had finally begun pulling in the kinds of cases she'd always hoped to represent. Cases that mattered, that made a difference.

  They'd begun a family immediately, neither of them had been willing to wait. Time was far too precious to them both.

  And, oh, he made beautiful babies! There was Tessa, with black hair and green-gold eyes; Connor, with blond hair and dark eyes; and yet another on the way.

  She pressed a palm to her abdomen, smiling. She loved being a mother. Adored being married to him. She doubted any woman had ever been more completely and unconditionally loved.

  She knew her husband would never stray, so highly did he value that which he'd waited nearly six thousand years to know, so precious was it to him: love. She knew he would be there with her until the very end, that he would cherish each wrinkle, every line in her face, because in the final analysis they were not a negation of life but an affirmation of a life well lived. Proof positive of laughter and tears, of joy and grief, of passion, of living. Every facet of being human was amazing to him, each and every change of season a triumph, a taste of unbearable sweetness. Never had a man lived who savored life more.

  Life was rich and full.

  She couldn't have asked for more.

  Well... actually... she amended with a little inner flinch, she could have.

  Though most of the time she looked at Adam and just felt awed and humbled that this big, wonderful man had given up so much to love her, sometimes she hated that he didn't have a soul, and sometimes she wanted to hate God.

  And she had a dream, a silly dream perhaps, but a dream to which she clung.

  They would live to be a hundred, until long after their children and grandchildren were grown, and one day they would go to bed and lie down facing each other, and die like that, at the same moment, in each other's arms.

  And this was her dream: that maybe, just maybe, if she loved him hard enough and true enough and deep enough, and if she held on to him tightly enough as they died, she could take him with her wherever it was that souls went. And there she would do what was in her blood, what she now knew she'd been born for; she would stand before God, a brehon, and she would argue the greatest, the most important case of her life.

  And she would win.

  * * *

  "I don't understand, Daddy." Tessa said. "Why did the rabbit have to lose his fur to be real?"

  Adam closed the book. The Velveteen Rabbit, and glanced down at his daughter.

  She was tucked in bed, blankets to her chin, staring up at him. His precious Tessa, with her oodles of shiny black ringlets tumbling around her chubby angelic face, with her quick mind, and incessant curiosity, and her daddy's heart wrapped oh-so-snugly around her chubby little finger.

  "Because that's part of becoming real."

  "Eew. I don't want to be real. I want to be pretty like the fairy queen. Oops"— she clapped a tiny hand over her- mouth— "wasn't 'posed to say that."

  In the doorway, Gabby gasped softly, and Adam glanced up immediately, arching a brow at her, a silent question in his eyes.

  I've never told her anything about fairies, Gabby mouthed. Have you?

  He shook his head. They'd both assumed Tessa wasn't a Sidhe-seer. Gabrielle hadn't seen a single Tuatha Dé since that day Darroc had ambushed them in Scotland five years ago, and they'd assumed Aoibheal must have stripped the Fae-vision from the O'Callaghan line.

  "What fairy queen, Tessa?" Adam said softly. "It's okay, you can tell me."

  Tessa eyed him doubtfully. "She said you'd get mad if you knew she came."

  "I won't get mad," he assured her, smoothing her tousled ringlets.

  "Promise, Daddy?"

  "Promise. Cross my heart. What fairy queen, sweet?"

  "Ah-veel."

  Adam inhaled sharply, glancing at Gabrielle again.

  "Does Aoibheal come to see you, Tessa?" Gabby said softly, moving into the room, joining Adam on the edge of Tessa's bed.

  Tessa shook her head. "Not me. She comes to see Daddy. She thinks he's pretty."

  Adam bit back a laugh at the look his wife shot him then, her eyes narrowed, dainty nostrils flared. She all but growled. He loved that she got a little jealous sometimes, adored her possessiveness. Suffered from his own fair share of it where his petite ka-lyrra was concerned.

  "Pretty, huh?" Gabby said dryly.

  "Mmm-hmm, " Tessa said, rubbing her eyes sleepily. "But I can't see it no matter how hard I try."

  Okay, now, that miffed him a bit, Adam thought, disgruntled. Before Tessa had been born, he'd pored over piles of parenting books, determined to be a good father. He thought he'd been doing a fine job, but wasn't his daughter supposed to have stars in her eyes whenever she looked at him? At least until she hit her teens? (And then God help the man who tried to date his daughter!) So, he had a few tiny lines around his eyes that hadn't been there before, he was still a handsome man! "You don't think I'm pretty, eh, Tessa?" He tickled his daughter's neck, right behind her ear, where it never failed to make her limp with laughter.

  " 'Course I do, Daddy." She giggled. Then she gave him a thoroughly four-year-old look of exasperation. "But I can't see what she sees. She says only fairies can."

  Adam's heart skipped a beat. It couldn't be.

  Could it?

  "Oh, God," Gabby said weakly, her gaze flying to his. She pres
sed a trembling hand to her mouth. They stared at each other for a long moment.

  Adam nodded, wordlessly encouraging her to ask the question they were both thinking. He'd ask himself, but he couldn't seem to find his tongue.

  He knew of only one thing he'd been able to see around humans when he'd been a fairy that humans couldn't see. He could scarcely breathe with wanting it so badly. With aching to be able to follow his wife from this life, into countless others. Five years ago, when he'd wed Gabrielle in a romantic Highland ceremony, the MacKeltars had offered him the use of their Druid binding vows: those sacred vows that united lovers for all eternity. He'd refused to say them— not because he hadn't longed to with every fiber of his being— but because it would have been to no avail, as he'd had no soul with which to bind himself.

  Breathlessly Gabby said. "See what, Tessa? What can fairies see that you can't see?"

  Tessa yawned. Snuggled deeper into the covers. "That Daddy's all glowy and golden."

  Adam's mouth worked, but nothing came out.

  "Adam glows golden?" Gabby said faintly.

  Tessa nodded. "Mmm-hmm. Ah-veel says now he's just like you and me, Mommy."

  Gabby made a soft choking sound.

  For a long moment Adam couldn't move. He just sat on the edge of Tessa's bed and stared at his wife. She stated back at him, wonderingly, her eyes misting with tears of joy.

  Then the enormity of it electrified him, galvanized him into action— there wasn't a moment to waste! If, by some miracle, he'd been gifted with a soul, he wanted it bound to Gabrielle's now.

  Hastily dropping a kiss on Tessa's brow, Adam turned out the light, scooped Gabrielle up into his arms, and carried her from the room, hastening down the hall to their bedroom.

  "Ka-lyrra," he said urgently, "there's something I want you to do with me. Vows I want to exchange, but you must know that they will bind our souls together for all eternity. Are you willing? Would you have me forever?"

  Laughing and crying at the same time, she nodded.

  Exultantly Adam deposited her on her feet, placed the palm of his right hand above her heart, and rested his left above his own. "Place your hands on top of mine, Gabrielle," he commanded.

  When she did so, he spoke with quiet reverence and conviction:

  "If aught must be lost, it will be my honor for yours. If one must be forsaken, it will be my soul for yours. Should death come anon, it will be my life for yours. I am Given."

  Smiling up at him, her eyes sparkling with joy, she repeated the vows, and, the moment she finished, emotion crashed over him so intensely that it nearly brought him to his knees. He felt the bond quickening inside him, heating his blood with fierce passion, as their souls were united for all time.

  Backing her against the wall, he buried his hands in her hair, slanted his mouth over hers, and kissed her hungrily.

  He had a soul. He knew love. He was pledged to his soul mate forever.

  And Adam Black was finally truly immortal.

  The End

  SPELL OF THE HIGHLANDER

  KAREN MARIE MONING

  * * *

  This one’s for my husband, Neil Sequoyah Dover.

  Were not there you—I’d be not too.

  I love you.

  * * *

  Synchronicity: 1. The simultaneous occurrence of two or more meaningfully but not causally connected events; 2. The coinciding or alignment of forces in the universe to create an event or circumstance; 3. A collision of possibles so incalculably improbable that it would appear to imply divine intervention.

  * * *

  Dear Reader—

  When I am uncertain how to pronounce certain words in a book, it makes my brain stutter each time they occur in the text, jarring me from the immediacy of the moment. Toward that end, I have attached this brief key of significant names:

  Cian: Key-on, with a hard C.

  Dageus: Day-gis, with a hard G.

  Drustan: Drus-tin, U like drum.

  The Draghar: Druh-gar, U like drum, hard G.

  Tuatha Dé Danaan: Tua day dhanna

  Aoibheal: Ah-veel

  * * *

  FIRST PROLOGUE

  Aoibheal, queen of the Fae stood in the catacombs beneath The Belthew Building, concealed by countless layers of illusion, a formless projection of herself, beyond any Sidhe-seer’s vision, beyond even her own race’s perception.

  In the dimly lit labyrinthine tombs, Adam Black was pacing furiously, holding his ears and cursing a wailing Chloe Zanders.

  But it was not Adam’s plight that concerned her now.

  It was her own.

  Tonight she’d wielded the formidable magic of the Queen of the Tuatha Dé Danaan to destroy the Druid sect of the Draghar.

  But it was not for that purpose alone she’d done it. As ever, she had motives within motives. Her use of the full power of the High Queen of the Seelie Court of the Light had caused a blackout of all mortal magic throughout Britain, part of Scotland and a fair portion of Wales.

  It had shattered wards humans believed unbreakable, voided protections spells, and temporarily leeched all sacred mortal relics of any power they possessed.

  Closing her eyes, Aoibheal turned her far-vision outward, analyzing the weft and weck of the fabric of her world. She’d pulled a thread here, tugged a thread there, and the infinitesimal changes she sought had begun.

  Somewhere in Tibet an ancient sorcerer was seeking the unholiest of Dark Hallows.

  Somewhere in London a thief was casing a wealthy residence reputed to contain unimaginable treasures within.

  Somewhere a Keltar was biding his time, waiting for a vengeance long overdue.

  Ah, yes, it had begun. . . .

  SECOND PROLOGUE

  Some men are born under a lucky star.

  Showered with female attention from the moment of his highly anticipated birth into a family of seven lovely wee Keltar lasses, but, alas, no sons—his da dead to a hunting accident a fortnight earlier—Cian MacKeltar came into the world, at ten pounds three ounces, already laird of the castle. Heady stuff for such a wee bairn.

  As he matured into a man, he inherited the typical Keltar looks: wide-shouldered and powerful, all rippling muscle, topped by the dark, savagely beautiful face of an avenging angel. His noble Celt bloodline, true to its aggressive warrior–aristocracy heritage, also bequeathed him a lion’s share of sexuality; a simmering, scarce-contained eroticism that shaped his very walk, underscored his every move.

  At a score and ten, Cian MacKeltar was The Sun, The Moon, and The Stars.

  And he knew it.

  He was a Druid, to boot.

  And unlike the vast majority of his broody, overly serious ancestors (not to mention the veritable plethora of broody ones yet to be born), he liked being a Druid.

  Liked everything about it.

  He liked the power that hummed so potently in his veins. He liked cozying up with a flask of whisky among the collection of ancient lore and artifacts in the underground chamber library of Castle Keltar, studying the arcane knowledge, combining a chancy spell with a risky potion, growing stronger and more powerful.

  He liked walking the heathery hills after a storm, saying the ancient words to heal the land and the wee beasties. He liked performing the rites of the seasons, chanting beneath a fat, orange harvest moon, with a fierce Highland wind tangling his long dark hair, and fanning his sacred fires into pillars of flame, knowing that the all-powerful Tuatha Dé Danaan depended upon him.

  He liked bedding the lasses, taking their sweet lushness beneath his hard body, using his Druid arts to give them such wild, mindless pleasure as—it was whispered—only an exotic Fae lover could bestow.

  He even liked the brush of fear with which much of his world regarded him, as a Keltar Druid and heir to the ancient, terrifying magic of the Old Ones.

  The laird responsible for the continuation of the sacred Keltar legacy in the late ninth century was devilishly charming, darkly seductive, and the most power
ful Keltar Druid ever to live.

  None nay-sayed, none challenged, none ever bested Cian MacKeltar. Verily, the possibility that someone or something one day might, never even occurred to him.

  Until that cursed Samhain of his thirtieth year.

  Some men are born under a lucky star.

  Cian MacKeltar was not one of them.

  Shortly thereafter, the underground chamber library was sealed off, never to be mentioned again, and all record of Cian MacKeltar was stricken from the Keltar written annals.

  It is highly debated among surviving Keltar progeny whether or not this controversial ancestor ever even existed.

  And none know that now—some eleven hundred years later—Cian MacKeltar still lives.

  Sort of . . . in a hellish manner of speaking.

  PART 1

  CHICAGO

  1

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 6TH

  The call that changed the entire course of Jessi St. James’s life came on an utterly unremarkable, dateless Friday night that differed in no particularly significant way from any other unremarkable, dateless Friday night in her all-too-predictable life, which—she was in no hurry to discuss—were a lot of Friday nights.

  She was sitting in the dark on the fire escape outside the kitchen window of her third-floor apartment at 222 Elizabeth Street, enjoying an unseasonably warm autumn evening. She was being a shameless voyeur, peeping around the corner of the brownstone to watch a crowd of people that, unlike her, had time to have a life, and were talking and laughing out on the sidewalk in front of the nightclub across the street.

  For the past few minutes she’d been riveted by a leggy redhead and her boyfriend—a dark-haired, sun-bronzed, muscled hottie in jeans and a white T-shirt. He kept backing his girlfriend up against the wall, stretching her hands above her head, and kissing her like there was no tomorrow, getting into it with his whole gorgeous, rippling body. (And would you just look at that hip action? The way he was grinding against her—they might as well be doing it right there in the street!)