Beyond the Highland Myst

by Highlander 01-08

  Jessi sucked in a sharp breath.

  God, had she ever been kissed like that? Like the man couldn’t wait to get inside her? Like he wanted to devour her, maybe crawl right inside her skin?

  The redhead’s hands slipped free, down to the hottie’s ass, fingers curving into his muscled butt, and Jessi’s hands curled into fists.

  When the hottie’s hands skimmed up the redhead’s breasts, his thumbs grazing her nipples, Jessi’s own went hard as little pearls. She could almost imagine she was the one he was kissing, that she was the one he was about to have hot, animalistic—

  Why can’t I have a life like that? she thought.

  You can, an inner voice reminded—after your PhD.

  The reminder wasn’t nearly as effective as it had been years ago as an undergrad. She was sick of being in school, sick of being broke, sick of constantly racing from her classes to her full-time job as Professor Keene’s assistant, then home to study, or if she was really lucky, snatching a whopping four or five hours of sleep before getting up to do it all over again.

  Her demanding, tightly organized schedule left no time for a social life. And lately she’d been feeling downright sulky about it. Everywhere she turned lately there were couples, and they were busy coupling and having a wonderfully couplelicious time of it.

  But not her. There was no time for coupling in her life. She wasn’t one of the lucky ones that had a free ride through school. She had to scrimp and save and make every moment and penny count. In addition to working full-time and taking a full load of classes, she taught classes too. It barely left her time to eat, shower, and sleep.

  On the infrequent occasions she’d tried to date, the guys had gotten so fed up with how seldom she could see them and how low on her list of priorities they seemed to be and how unwilling she was to fall right in bed with them (most college guys seemed to think if they didn’t score by the third date there was something wrong with the woman—puh-leeze), that they’d soon sought greener pastures.

  Still, it would all be worth it soon. Although some people didn’t seem to think being an archaeologist and playing with old, dusty, or, frequently, dead things for the rest of one’s life was a particularly exciting thing to do (like her mom, who hated Jessi’s choice of major and couldn’t understand why she wasn’t married and blissfully popping out babies like her sisters), Jessi couldn’t imagine a more thrilling career. It might not top other people’s lists of dreams, but it was hers.

  Dr. Jessica St. James. She was so close she could taste it. Another year and a half and she’d be done with her course work for her PhD.

  Then she might date like the Energizer Bunny, making up for lost time. But right now, she’d not worked so hard and gone into so much debt to go screwing everything up just because she seemed to be stuck in some kind of hormonal overdrive.

  In a few years, she consoled herself, staring down at the busy street, the people hanging out at that club would probably still be hanging out at that club, their lives completely unchanged, while she would be traveling to far-off places, digging up remnants of the past, and having grand adventures.

  And who knew, maybe Mr. Right would be waiting for her out there at some future dig site. Maybe her life just wasn’t scheduled to take off as fast as everyone else’s. Maybe she was just a late bloomer.

  Holy cow—the hottie was slipping his hand inside the redhead’s jeans. And her hand was on his—oh! Right there in front of God and everybody!

  Behind her, somewhere in the cramped and crowded apartment that desperately needed to be cleaned and have the trash taken out, the phone began to ring.

  Jessi rolled her eyes. The mundaneness of her existence always chose the most inconvenient moments to intrude.

  Ring! Ring!

  She gulped another fascinated look at the unabashed display of sex-on-the-sidewalk, then reluctantly boosted herself inside the kitchen window. She shook her head in a vain attempt to clear it, then pulled down the shade. What she couldn’t see, couldn’t torture her. At least not much, anyway.

  Riiiiing!

  Where was that blasted phone?

  She finally spied it on the sofa, nearly buried beneath pillows, candy wrappers, and a pizza box that contained—eew—something fuzzy and phosphorescent green. As she gingerly pushed aside the box, she hesitated, hand suspended in midair above the phone.

  For a moment—the briefest, most peculiar of interludes—she suffered the inexplicable, intense feeling that she shouldn’t pick it up.

  That she should just let it ring and ring.

  Maybe let it ring all weekend.

  Later, Jessi would recall that feeling.

  Time itself seemed to stand still for that odd, pregnant slice of time, and she had the weirdest sensation that the universe itself had stopped breathing and was waiting to see what she would do next.

  She wrinkled her nose at the ridiculous, egocentric thought.

  As if the universe ever even noticed Jessi St. James.

  She picked up the phone.

  Lucan Myrddin Trevayne paced before the fire.

  When employing a sorcerer’s spell to conceal his true appearance—which he did whenever he wasn’t completely alone—he was tall, in his early forties, handsome, powerfully built, his thick black hair dashed at the temples with silver. He was a man who turned women’s heads, and made men take an instinctive step back when he walked by. His mien said one thing: Power—I have it, you don’t. And if you think you do—try me. His features were Old World, his eyes cold gray as a loch beneath a stormy sky. His true appearance was far less appealing.

  He’d amassed tremendous wealth and power in his lifetime, which had been considerably longer than most. He held controlling interest in many and varied enterprises, from banks to media to oil. He kept residences in a dozen cities. He retained a select group of uniquely trained men and the occasional woman to handle his most private affairs.

  To his left, seated in a deep armchair, one of those men waited tensely.

  “This is absurd, Roman,” Lucan growled. “What the hell’s taking so long?”

  Roman shifted defensively in his chair. He was aptly named, his features as classically handsome as those on an ancient coin, his hair long and blond. “I’ve got men on it, Mr. Trevayne,” he said with the trace of a Russian accent. “The best men we’ve got. The problem is, they went in a dozen different directions. They were sold on the black market. No one has names. It’s going to take time—”

  “Time is the one thing I don’t have,” Lucan cut him off sharply. “Every hour, every moment that passes, makes it less likely they’ll be recovered. Those damned things must be found.”

  “Those damned things” were the Dark or “Unseelie” Hallows of the Tuatha Dé Danaan—artifacts of immense power created by an ancient civilization that had passed, centuries ago and quite erroneously, into Man’s history books as a mythical race: the Daoine Sidhe or the Fae.

  Lucan had believed there was no better place to safekeep his prized treasures than in his well-warded private residence in London.

  He’d been wrong.

  Critically wrong.

  He wasn’t certain what had happened a few months ago while he’d been out of the country pursuing a lead on the Dark Book, the final and most powerful of the four Unseelie Hallows, but something had transpired somewhere in London—its epicenter in the east side, he could feel the lingering traces of power—that had reverberated through all of England. An immense and ancient power had risen for a brief time, so strong that it had neutralized all other magic in Britain.

  Which he wouldn’t have cared about since whatever it was had departed as swiftly as it had come, except for the fact that its rising had shattered formidable, allegedly unbreakable wards that protected his most prized possessions. Protected them so well that he’d found the notion of a modern-day security system laughable.

  Not so laughable now.

  He’d had a state-of-the-art system installed, with cameras in ever
y room, sweeping every angle, because while he’d been away, a thief had broken into his museum of a home and stolen artifacts that had belonged to him for centuries—including his irreplaceable Hallows: the box, amulet, and mirror.

  Fortunately the thief had been spotted by neighbors while hauling away his loot. Unfortunately, by the time Lucan’s select staff had managed to identify and track the bastard, he’d already sold the artifacts to the first in a series of elusive middlemen.

  Artifacts such as his, fabulous and utterly lacking provenance, inevitably ended up in one of two places: with the legal authorities of one country or another after being intercepted in transit, or sold for a fraction of their worth on the black market before disappearing, sometimes for hundreds of years before so much as a whispered rumor was heard of them again. They’d gotten few names—and those, obvious aliases—from the thief before he’d died. For months now, Lucan’s men had been chasing a deliberately and cunningly muddied trail. And time was growing critical.

  “. . . though we’ve recovered three of the manuscripts and one of the swords, we’ve learned nothing about the box or amulet. But it looks like we might have a solid lead on the mirror,” Roman was saying.

  Lucan stiffened. The mirror. The Dark Glass was the one Hallow he needed urgently. Of all the years it might have been stolen, it’d had to be this one, when the tithe was due! The other Dark Hallows could wait a bit longer, though not long; they were far too dangerous to have loose in the world. Each of the Hallows conferred a gift upon its possessor for a price, if the possessor had the knowledge and the power to use it. The mirror’s Dark Gift was immortality, so long as he met its conditions. He’d been meeting its conditions for over a thousand years now. He intended to continue.

  “A shipment rumored to fit the bill left England for the States via Ireland a few days ago. We believe it’s headed for some university in Chicago, to a—”

  “Then why the fuck are you still sitting here?” Lucan said coldly. “If you have a lead, any lead at all on the glass, I want you on it personally. Now.” It was imperative he recover the mirror before Samhain. Or else.

  That “or else” was a thing he refused to contemplate. The mirror would be found, the tithe paid; a small quantity of pure gold passed through the glass every one hundred years—in the Old Ones way of marking time, which was more than a century by modern standards—at precisely midnight on Samhain, or Halloween as the current century called it. Twenty-six days from today the century’s tithe was due. Twenty-six days from today the mirror must be in his possession—or The Compact binding his captive to it would be broken.

  As the blond man gathered his coat and gloves, Lucan reiterated his position where the Dark Hallows were concerned. “No witnesses, Roman. Anyone who’s caught so much as even a glimpse of one of the Hallows . . .”

  Roman inclined his head in silent concurrence.

  Lucan said no more. There was no need. Roman knew how he liked things handled, as did all who worked for him and continued to live.

  Some time later, shortly after midnight, Jessi was back on campus for the third time that day, in the south wing of the Archaeology Department, unlocking Professor Keene’s office.

  She wondered wryly why she even bothered leaving. Given the hours she kept, she’d be better off tucking a cot into that stuffy, forgotten janitor’s closet down the hall, amid mops and brooms and pails that hadn’t been used in years. She’d not only get more sleep, she’d save on gas money too.

  When the professor had called her from the hospital to tell her that he’d been in a “bit of a fender bender” on his way back to campus—“a few inconvenient fractures and contusions, not to worry,” he’d assured her swiftly—she’d been expecting him to ask her to pick up his classes for the next few days (meaning her sleep window would dwindle from four or five hours to a great, big, fat nil), but he’d informed her he’d already called Mark Troudeau and arranged for him to take his classes until he returned.

  I’ve a wee favor to ask of you, though, Jessica. I’ve a package coming. I was to accept a delivery at my office this evening, he’d told her in his deep voice that, even after twenty-five years away from County Louth, Ireland, had never lost its lilt.

  She loved that lilt. Couldn’t wait to one day hear a whole pub speaking it while she washed down a hearty serving of soda bread and Irish stew with a perfectly poured Guinness. After, of course, having spent an entire day in the National Museum of Ireland delightedly poring over such fabulous treasures as the Tara Brooch, the Ardagh Chalice, and the Broighter Gold Collection.

  Hugging the phone between ear and shoulder, she’d glanced at her watch, the luminous dial indicating ten minutes past ten. What kind of package gets delivered so late at night? she’d wondered aloud.

  You needn’t concern yourself with that. Just sign for it, lock it up, and go home. That’s all I need.

  Of course, Professor, but what—

  Just sign, lock it up, and forget about it, Jessica. A pause, a weighty silence, then: I see no reason to mention this to anyone. It’s personal. Not university business.

  She’d blinked, startled; she’d never heard such a tone in the professor’s voice before. Words sharply clipped, he’d sounded defensive, almost . . . well, paranoid.

  I understand. I’ll take care of it. You just rest, Professor. Don’t you worry about a thing, she’d soothed hastily, deciding that whatever pain meds he was getting were making him funny, the poor dear. She’d once had Tylenol with codeine that had made her feel itchy all over, short-tempered and irritable. With multiple fractures, it was a sure bet he’d been given something stronger than Tylenol 3.

  Now, standing beneath the faintly buzzing fluorescent lights in the university hallway, she rubbed her eyes and yawned hugely. She was exhausted. She’d gotten up at six-fifteen for a seven-twenty class and by the time she got home tonight—er, this morning—and managed to fall back into bed, she would have put in another twenty-hour day. Again.

  Turning the key in the lock, she pushed open the office door, fumbled for the light switch, and flipped it on. She inhaled as she stepped into the professor’s office, savoring the scholarly blend of books and leather, fine wood polish, and the pungent aroma of his favorite pipe tobacco. She planned to one day have an office of her own very much like it.

  The spacious room had built-in floor-to-ceiling bookcases and tall windows that, during the day, spilled sun across an intricately woven antique rug of wine, russet, and amber. The teak-and-mahogany furniture was formally masculine: a stately claw-foot desk; a sumptuous leather Chesterfield sofa in a deep, burnished coffee-bean hue; companion wing chairs. There were numerous glass-paned curio cabinets and occasional tables displaying his most prized replica pieces. A reproduction Tiffany lamp graced his desk. Only his computer, with its twenty-one-inch flat screen, belied the century. Remove it, and she might have been standing in the library of a nineteenth-century English manor house.

  “In here,” she called over her shoulder to the deliverymen.

  The package hadn’t turned out to be quite what she’d expected. From the way the professor had spoken of it, she’d imagined a bulky envelope, perhaps a small parcel.

  But the “package” was actually a crate, and a huge one at that. It was tall, wide, about the size of a . . . well, a sarcophagus or something, and proving no easy matter to navigate through the university corridors.

  “Careful, man. Tilt it! Tilt it! Ow! You’re smashing my finger. Back it up and angle it!”

  A muttered “Sorry.” More grunting. “Damn thing’s awkward. Hall’s too frigging narrow.”

  “You’re almost here,” Jessi offered helpfully. “Just a bit farther.”

  Indeed, moments later, they were carefully lowering the oblong box from their shoulders, depositing it on the rug.

  “The professor said I needed to sign something.” She encouraged them to hurry. She had a full day of working and studying tomorrow . . . er, today.

  “Lady, we need m
ore than that. This here package don’t get left ’til it’s verified.”

  “ ‘Verified’?” she echoed. “What does that mean?”

  “Means it’s worth boo-koo bucks, and the shipper’s insurer’s got to have visual verification and release. See? Says so right here.” The beefier of the two thrust a clipboard at her. “Don’t care who does it, lady, so long as somebody’s John Hancock’s on my paperwork.”

  Sure enough, Visual Verification and Release Required was stamped in red across the bill of lading, followed by two pages of terms and definitions detailing shipper’s and buyer’s rights in pedantic, inflated legal jargon.

  She pushed a hand through her short dark curls, sighing. The professor wasn’t going to like this. He’d said it was personal.

  “And if I don’t let you open it up and inspect it?”

  “Goes back, lady. And let me tell you, the shipper’s gonna be plenty pissed.”

  “Yeah,” said the other man. “Thing cost an arm and a leg to insure. Goes back, your professor’s gonna have to pay the second time around. I bet he’s gonna be plenty pissed too.”

  They stared at her with flat, challenging gazes, clearly disinclined to wrestle the awkward crate back up on their shoulders, squeeze it back down the hall, reload it and return it, only to end up delivering it again. They weren’t even talking to her breasts, a thing men often did, especially the first time they met her, which told her how deadly earnest they were about dumping their load and getting on with their lives.

  She glanced at the phone.

  She glanced at her watch.

  She hadn’t gotten the professor’s room number and suspected that if she called the main desk, they’d never put her through at this hour. Though he’d insisted he wasn’t badly hurt, she knew the doctors wouldn’t have kept him if he hadn’t been seriously injured. Hospitals these days spit people out as fast as they took them in.