Beyond the Highland Myst

by Highlander 01-08

  It would have to go to unclaimed baggage. She couldn’t imagine it going anywhere else. Without a name or a return shipping address, they certainly couldn’t send it back. She’d learned that lesson herself, trying to get rid of the crate. She also knew that airports were required to hold items, even unmarked ones, for a certain number of days. She’d lost her luggage once, between home in Maine and school in Chicago, and by the time it had resurfaced, there’d not been a single identifying tag on it.

  If you go to this “unclaimed baggage” place and can identify it, will they give it to you? Cian had pressed.

  I don’t know, she’d replied.

  We’ll have to take the chance. I’ll not leave any records of our travel. If you can but get into the same room with my crate, and say the spell, I can break free and use Voice to get us out of there. Jessica, lass, I’m sorry ’tis not a foolproof plan. You’ll have to improvise.

  Improvisation hadn’t seemed such a daunting task back in Indianapolis. But then she’d been feeling weirdly invincible walking along beside him, and they’d both mistakenly thought the crate would be somewhere that she could see it, if not actually collect it.

  She groaned, wishing she had a single ounce of Cian’s incredible powers of Voice to use on Ms. Erase-My-Face at the Special Items Claim Desk.

  Then again, she mused, she wasn’t entirely certain she would want that kind of power, if given the opportunity. It would certainly be a test of just how good a person really was deep down.

  Shaking her head, she pushed to her feet. She would kill a bit of time grabbing a cup off coffee and a croissant, then she would trudge back down the long silent corridor and try again.

  Maybe by then the woman would be on break and somebody else would be working.

  The woman was not only not on break by the time Jessi got back to the Special Items pickup window; she got an expression when she saw Jessi walking toward the desk again.

  It was hard to pick up on it, unnoticeable as it was from more than a few feet away, but if Jessi peered really hard, she could see the faintest pucker of a muscle trying to contract between the woman’s brows.

  Not good.

  “Could you just bring it out here and let me see it?” Jessi asked the woman. “Just let me make sure it’s okay and it’s really here, then I swear I’ll go away and leave you alone. I’ll fill out your forms and go through the red tape. Just let me make sure it actually got here. I’m worried about it. Please? Could I please just see it?”

  “There are no exceptions,” the woman said with a sniff.

  “But I—”

  “Which word didn’t you understand? It must have been the ‘no.’ You are so typical. People like you always think they should be exceptions.”

  Jessi blinked. “People like me?” she echoed, stymied as to just what kind of “people” this woman thought she was.

  “Yes. People like you.” The woman’s gaze dropped to her breasts. “I’m sure you’ve gotten used to manipulating men to get them to do whatever you want, but you can’t manipulate me. And no men work this desk, young lady, so don’t even think about trying to come back at another time. I’ve already warned my coworkers about you. No one is going to fall for your shenanigans. You’re going to have to follow the rules for a change, little missy, just like everyone else.”

  Jessi blinked, rendered speechless by the unfair attack. She’d never used her looks to get anywhere in life, and if they’d ever helped her, she’d certainly not been aware of it.

  Without another word, Stone-face inclined her pinched nose, moved away from the window, and made a big show of dismissing her. After a moment, she began typing busily away at a computer terminal with lethal-looking orange nails.

  Jessi swallowed a little growl. Focus, she told herself, and not on Stone-face’s unwarranted nastiness. She is not your problem. Getting the mirror back is.

  Backing up a few steps, she scanned the counter.

  The mirror had to be nearby. It just had to. If one came to this window to claim special items, logic dictated the items would be stored close at hand for the purpose of expediency. One would present their ticket and the item would be brought to the counter. Which seemed to imply that the items had to be somewhere behind the counter.

  She pushed up on tiptoes and glanced over the desk. Stone-face was still making a big show of ignoring her, which was just fine with Jessi. There were no crates stacked back there that she could see, and the little room, which was about twenty feet wide and maybe ten feet deep, didn’t look as if it was large enough for more than three or four employees to stand lined up at the desk.

  On the left wall hung a gaudily framed, turbulent seascape, adjacent to a phone marked SECURITY. The rear wall was dotted by small paintings of ships at sea, interspersed with various official-looking certificates in utilitarian black frames.

  Aha—there! On the right wall, a half-opened door revealed a long, brightly lit corridor stretching off into the distance.

  “My crate is down that hallway, isn’t it?” Jessi exclaimed. She didn’t expect an answer from the woman. She knew she’d have to get it from her face.

  The woman glanced up, the hint of a muscle contracting between her brows.

  Yes—Cian was close! Improvisably close.

  I can do this, I can do this, I know I can, she told herself. She stared down at the floor for a few seconds, steeling her nerve. Then she turned and began walking away from the counter.

  Behind her, the woman muttered snidely, “About time. And good riddance to you, you spoiled little—”

  The rest of it was muttered too low for Jessi to hear, but she didn’t need to, she’d already picked up on the general gist of it. Oh, you are going to be sooo surprised, she thought just as snidely. She didn’t mind people getting upset with her when she’d done something to deserve it, but she’d not done a thing to earn this woman’s animosity, other than being young and curvy. And she couldn’t help being either of those things. It wasn’t as if either of those things had ever gotten her anywhere in her life. Hard work had. Boobs certainly hadn’t. In fact, were she pushed to divvy up percentages, she’d attribute 90 percent to aggravation and 10 percent to pleasure.

  Wiggling her shoulders to make sure her backpack was snug enough, she glanced behind her, assessed the distance to and height of the counter, and took a deep, fortifying breath.

  Then she whirled around, took a running leap, and catapulted herself into the air.

  She managed to pump up more speed with her short dash than she actually needed, and upon clearing the exterior wall of the counter, she couldn’t check her forward momentum. Skidding pell-mell over the veneered surface on her hands and knees, she crashed to the floor, taking down two mainframes and a stack of manuals with her. She hit the floor so hard it made her teeth clack together.

  “Oh!” the woman shrieked. “Out! Out! Out! You are not allowed back here! Only airport employees are permitted behind the desk!”

  Jessi didn’t waste breath replying. Scrambling to her feet, she clambered over monitors and manuals, and pushed through the half-opened door. Her heart was pounding and adrenaline was rushing through her veins, making her feel shaky, yet intensely, aggressively focused. It was no wonder some people got addicted to adrenaline rushes.

  “I’m calling security!” the woman screeched after her, snatching the phone from the wall.

  “You just do that . . .” Jessi dropped her voice, but despite her best efforts, “bitch” didn’t come out quite as sotto voce as she’d intended. Oops. Darn it, now she was going to have to outrun security too!

  But the woman’s nastiness worked to her advantage this time. Apparently, Stone-face had been secretly itching to take matters into her own hands and Jessi’s expletive was just enough to push her over the edge.

  Slapping the phone back on the wall, Stone-face shot through the door after her. “I don’t need security, I can deal with you myself, you brazen little hussy!” Sharp orange talons closed on the fab
ric of Jessi’s backpack, yanking her to a halt. “You are not going back there!”

  Jessi dug in her heels, scanning the corridor. It was roughly a hundred yards long, with a maze of hallways branching off it, and doors dotting both the left and right sides.

  At the far end of the corridor, two tall steel doors gleamed, the kind that looked like they might open onto a warehouse. Near those doors, several carts and a small front-loader waited.

  That would be where the mirror was, then, through those double doors.

  She needed it. It was nonnegotiable.

  And this red-tape-wielding, small-mean-souled twit clutching a fistful of her backpack was all that was standing between her and the small matter of her continued survival.

  Her life depended on that crate.

  And there was no other way she could get to it.

  She twisted her shoulders, yanking her backpack from the woman’s grasp. When it tumbled down her arm, she caught the straps of it in her hand.

  Bracing herself, she gulped yet another fortifying breath. She was going to need this one.

  Muttering a silent prayer that it would work and not actually injure the woman beyond a temporary black eye, she swung around and coshed the woman in the side of the head with her thirty-eight-pound-Krispy-Kremes-earning backpack.

  Much to her relief—she wasn’t entirely certain about doing it twice, no matter how nasty the witch was—Stone-face’s eyes glazed, she swayed woozily, and sank limply to the floor.

  Glancing hastily around, Jessi spied a door labeled “Supplies” down the hall. Grabbing the woman’s feet, she hooked her ankles beneath her armpits and hurriedly slid her down the polished tile floor.

  It took her a few moments to wedge her in with all the brooms and mops and cleaning supplies, but she managed it. Closing the door, she examined the handle. There was no way to lock it. That sucked.

  And meant she had to hurry. She couldn’t imagine the woman would stay out for very long.

  Heart pounding, Jessi dashed off for the double doors and Cian.

  Lucan slammed his fist through the silk-papered plaster wall of his study.

  Again.

  And a third time.

  Blood beaded swiftly across his shredded knuckles and just as swiftly disappeared. The skin healed, not shiny and pink, but it healed.

  He turned back toward his desk, glanced up at the offending darker rectangular spot on the wall, and snarled at the speakerphone, “Tell me again exactly what they said. In detail.”

  “None of them recalled many details, Mr. Trevayne, sir,” Hans replied from the receiver. “Just that they saw a tall, tattooed man with dark braids carrying a large, gold-framed mirror, accompanied by a young, attractive woman, walking through the Sheraton’s lobby on Friday morning. If the two of them stayed at the hotel, all records have been erased. One of the guest rooms was found with fresh human blood on the carpet, drapes, and furniture, but the hotel has no record of having assigned that room to anyone for several nights, and no body has been found.”

  Son of a bitch, the worst was true. Eve was most certainly dead and the Highlander was being aided and abetted by the St. James woman. They’d united efforts against him.

  And he had less than seventeen days to find them.

  “Were you able to learn where they went from there?”

  “No, Mr. Trevayne, sir, we’ve not been able to ascertain that. We’re working on it. Do you have any ideas, sir?”

  Lucan rubbed his jaw. Where would Cian MacKeltar go, now that he had someone beyond the glass who was willing to help him get there? That was the determining factor, after all. The rules of their little game had changed dramatically. Not once in a thousand years had Lucan ever imagined that such an improbable sequence of events might ever come to pass—that something might shatter his unbreakable wards; that he might be out of the country at the time; that a thief might break into his home and steal the glass; that the glass might end up in the hands of someone willing to help the Keltar.

  It reeked of preposterous synchronicity.

  Nevertheless, it had happened.

  Where would the Keltar go? There was no doubt in Lucan’s mind: home to his Highlands, of course. The mountain-man would move heaven and earth to walk on Scots soil again, especially now.

  It had been a long time since Lucan had visited the hills above Inverness. For countless generations, after he’d imprisoned Cian in the Dark Glass, he’d kept close tabs on the Keltar bloodline.

  He’d wanted to be certain Cian’s mother had done as she’d sworn in exchange for the continued health and well-being of her seven precious daughters: sealed away all Keltar lore from future generations and stricken her son’s name from all Keltar annals—thereby preventing any future Keltar from nursing a blood-grudge and trying to free their ancestor.

  But by the early fourteen hundreds, when his sources had confirmed that the MacKeltar—to the last man, woman, and child—believed the legendary Cian nothing more than a myth, Lucan had quit watching and quit caring.

  He’d turned his attentions elsewhere, immersed himself in the building of his empire and his search for the remaining Dark Hallows.

  Time and success had made him careless. He’d not been challenged in so long that complacency had dulled his edge.

  Christ, seventeen days! It was unthinkable! He was so near to achieving his goals. He couldn’t afford these idiotic distractions!

  “Scotland, Hans,” Lucan clipped at the phone. “Search Inverness. I suspect he’ll bypass civilization and head for the hills. Find out if any MacKeltar still live in the area and let it be known I’m offering five million to whoever gets me that mirror, ten for the mirror and the woman. However, I must be informed the instant the mirror is located, and kept constantly apprised of its whereabouts. There’s another ten million in it for you, Hans, if you bring this to successful completion within a week.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Trevayne, sir! I’ll let the others know, sir. I’ll get every man on it. I’ll take care of this for you. You have my personal guarantee, sir!”

  Lucan stared into space for a long time after he terminated the call. What was twenty-five million to him? Nothing. He’d wearied of wealth centuries ago. He wanted what he’d always wanted: more power.

  He was so close to the culmination of all his dreams, a hairsbreadth away from finally possessing the Unseelie Dark Book. From finally being the greatest sorcerer the world had ever known, both mortal and Fae.

  He should have seen these complications coming. He knew that when a man poised on the brink of achieving true greatness, the world tested him. It had happened to him before. It would happen again. He should have been better prepared this time. He would be in the future.

  He, Lucan Myrddin Trevayne, fathered by an unknown Druid on a whore of a mother who’d lain with dozens of Druids from all over Great Britain during the course of a three-day council held in the tiny Welsh village of Cochlease, eleven hundred and seventy-eight years ago, had risen high above the ignominy of his birth and was this close to becoming powerful beyond his wildest dreams, able to command even the legendary Tuatha Dé Danaan themselves.

  His earliest years had not been easy. He’d struggled, he’d worked, he’d studied, he’d traveled the world seeking knowledge and power. He’d transformed himself from the bastard son of a whore other Druids had refused to recognize, to a man respected and deeply feared by the mightiest among Druids and sorcerers alike.

  It had been during those early years of travel that he’d learned of the Dark Hallows. He’d managed to secure rubbings from three sacred pages of the incredible Dark Book at the tender age of twenty-eight. He’d devoted the next eight years of his life to deciphering the encrypted rubbings.

  Upon succeeding, he’d learned much from those rubbings, including the location of the Dark Glass of the Unseelie Fae, as well as the necessary tithing and the binding spells to use it. In exchange for the triple boon of the sacrifice of innocent blood, the ensorcellment of a ca
ptive, and a recurring tithe of pure gold, it bestowed eternal life.

  It was rumored that Merlin himself had once possessed the Dark Glass, until it had been seized from him by an army a thousand strong and a mysterious group of Irish holy men.

  Unfortunately, knowing where it was and how to use it hadn’t been enough.

  Lucan had tried four times to get to the Dark Glass. And four times he’d failed. The final time, he’d barely escaped with his life, and he’d been forced to concede that he simply didn’t possess the power necessary to get past the guardians.

  He’d spent the next seven years of his life looking for someone who did. He’d found him in Cian MacKeltar.

  He’d hated the Highlander on first sight.

  * * *

  15

  Jessica lay facedown in a pool of blood, her glossy black curls wetly matted to her head.

  She was bled white, stiff and icy in death. Her spine was drawn in a painful bow, her right leg splayed at an impossible angle. Her left arm was bent awkwardly over her head, the underside of the wrist down, the palm twisted gruesomely up. Her other hand was clenched in a bloody fist.

  It was obvious she’d suffered as she’d died. Not just pain. Horrific pain.

  She’d cried out for him.

  She’d never stopped believing he would save her.

  He’d told her that he would; that he would be her shield—he’d vowed to stand between her and all others.

  He’d failed.

  Pounding the wall with his fists, Cian tossed back his head and howled like an animal. The sound echoed from walls of stone, ricocheted off a stone ceiling, bounced back at him from a stone floor.

  One thousand one hundred and thirty-three years had not driven him insane.

  But the past two days had managed to accomplish what eleven centuries had not.

  She was out there, his Jessica, with only her wits and will to rely upon. And he was trapped in the mirror, unable to protect her.