Beyond the Highland Myst

by Highlander 01-08

  She’d never been wanted for so many things in her life.

  And not a single one of them any good.

  Dageus grimaced as he tugged the Dark Glass from the back of the SUV.

  Though he had no desire to make contact with it (mostly because he had every desire to make contact with it), he wanted it in the castle proper, the most heavily warded portion of the estate. ’Twould be safest there, and he hoped mayhap those wards would diminish the pull it was exerting on him.

  There were no protection spells laid around the vast, detached garage behind the castle, where he’d parked the purloined SUV. ’Twas too new of a building, and one of which he’d not overseen the construction. He intended to properly ward it soon, for he hoped to make much use of it. He was developing quite a liking for modern modes of transportation. They were far easier on a man’s privates than a horse betwixt the thighs.

  He was already sorry he’d left his Hummer down in Inverness. The muscle-packed H1 Alpha was the first vehicle he’d purchased since he’d been living in the twenty-first century, and ’twas a truly magnificent machine. A man could go virtually anywhere in the rugged Highlands in it. He’d gotten attached to it in the manner a lad did his first fine stallion. He hoped his barbaric ancestor was a responsible driver.

  “Arrogant Neanderthal,” Dageus muttered, standing the mirror up on end, at arm’s length, and taking a good look at it.

  He inhaled a sharp, fascinated breath.

  The legendary Dark Glass. In his hands.

  Astonishing. He traced his fingers lightly over the cool silvery surface, then across the runes chiseled deep into the golden frame.

  Not even the thirteen within him, who’d lived side by side with the Tuatha Dé many millennia ago, knew the language with which the frame was adorned.

  It was said that the Seelie and Unseelie Hallows had been spoken into existence by the sheer magic of the Tuatha Dé tongue. The sacred relics had been spelled into being by words and song—and not in the tongue of Adam Black and his contemporaries—but in a far more ancient language that had been spoken eons past, long before the Tuatha Dé had come to this world. A language allegedly forgotten by all but the most ancient among them.

  A chill was inching up his arms.

  ’Twas not an entirely unpleasant sensation.

  In fact, ’twas strangely invigorating. Made him feel positively powerful. Not good. Not good at all.

  Scowling, he turned, hurrying with it from the garage. The moment he stepped from the cool, windowless interior into the brilliant sunshine, he felt better, stronger.

  Still, he wasn’t about to dally with the infernal thing in his hands.

  Tucking the glass beneath his arm with the silvery side facing him so as not to blind anyone who might be looking his way, he walked around the castle and began heading across the front lawn.

  “YOU BLOODY FUCKING IDIOT!” the mirror roared. “HAVE YOU ANY IDEA WHAT YOU’VE GONE AND DONE?”

  Dageus was so startled by the bizarreness of the Dark Glass roaring at him that he did what most men would have done.

  He dropped it.

  Drustan lay flat on his back, his arm around his wife, breathing hard. ’Twas high noon and he was still in bed. Which wasn’t to say he was a lazy man and hadn’t yet been up that morn. He’d been up. And up. With his lovely wee Gwendolyn in his arms, he was nigh always up.

  “God, that was amazing,” his wife said fervently just then, curling closer into his side, one of her small, dainty hands caressing his lightly stubbled jaw.

  He had a sudden urge to leap from the bed and proudly pound his chest with his fists. He settled instead for turning his head, kissing her palm, and saying with studied casualness, “Mean you the third or the fourth time, lass?”

  She laughed. “All times. As it has been since our first time, Drustan. You’re always amazing.”

  “I love you, woman,” he said fiercely, recalling their first time. ’Twas a night he’d never forget, not a detail of it: not the crimson kitten thong he’d believed a fancy hair ribbon when he’d glimpsed it in her pack—until she’d slipped her shorts down that night, showing him what it was really meant for. Not the intense way they’d made love right there in God’s great wide-open, beneath a star-drenched sky, in the center of the standing stones of Ban Drochaid. Nor the way she’d later stood, so true of heart and trusting, as he’d cast her back in time.

  Gwen Cassidy was his soul mate, they were bound in the ancient Druid way, forever and beyond, and every moment of life with her was priceless. She’d enriched his world in so many ways, not the least of which had been the recent gift of two beautiful dark-haired twin daughters who, at scarce five months of age, were already showing rather startling signs of intelligence. And why shouldn’t they, he thought proudly, betwixt his Druid gifts and his wee Gwendolyn’s brilliant physicist’s mind?

  On the topic of their babes . . .

  “Think you we should—”

  “Yes,” she agreed instantly. “I’m missing them too.”

  He smiled. Though they’d been wed for little over a year, they knew each other’s mind and heart as well as their own. And although they had the best of care for their daughters with two live-in nannies, they were reluctant to be parted from their bairn for long. Unless they were tooping, of course. Then they tended to forget the whole world.

  When she peeled herself from his side and moved toward the shower, he rose to join her.

  But as he passed the tall windows of their bedchamber, a flicker of motion beyond them caught his eye. He paused, glancing out.

  His brother was standing out on the lawn, gazing down at the grass.

  Drustan’s smile deepened.

  They’d been through a time of it when Dageus had turned dark. It had been hellish there for a while, but his brother was once again free and, by Amergin, life was rich and sweet and full! His da Silvan and their next-mother Nell would be delighted to know how well their sons fared in the modern day.

  He had all he’d ever wanted: a cherished wife, a burgeoning clan, his brother wed and blissfully happy, and the prospect of a long, simple, good life in his beloved Highlands.

  Och, there’d been a bit of a ruckus last month when one of the Tuatha Dé, Adam Black, had appeared, but things had swiftly settled back into an easy cadence, and he was looking forward to a long time of—

  He blinked.

  Dageus was conversing with a mirror.

  Standing in the middle of the front lawn, holding it gingerly by the sides, and speaking heatedly to it.

  Drustan rubbed his jaw, perplexed.

  Why was his brother talking to a mirror? Was it some strange twenty-first-century way of mulling things over, of—literally—consulting with oneself?

  Come to think of it, he mused, where had the mirror come from?

  It hadn’t been there moments ago. It was taller than his brother. Wider too. ’Twas hardly as if Dageus might have been concealing it in a pocket or beneath a fold in his kilt, not that he was wearing a kilt. They’d both adopted modern modes of dress and were slowly adapting to new ways.

  Drustan leaned against the windowpane. Nay, not only was the looking glass quite awkwardly large, it flashed brilliant gold and silver in the sun. How could he have overlooked it earlier?

  Mayhap, he decided, it had been lying on the ground, and Dageus had picked it up. And mayhap he was merely saying something along the lines of “Oh, my, how peculiar, where did you come from?”

  Drustan’s silvery eyes narrowed. But why would a mirror be lying about on the front lawn? They had gardeners. Surely one of them would have noticed such a thing and relegated it elsewhere. How had it gotten there? Perchance dropped from the sky?

  He was getting a bad feeling about this.

  “Are you coming, love?” Gwendolyn called.

  He heard the sound of the shower spray change as she stepped beneath it. In his mind’s eye, he could see her; water sluicing down her beautiful body, glistening wetly on her
smooth, pale skin. He adored modern plumbing, couldn’t get enough of his wife when she was soapy and slippery and feeling frisky.

  Below him, Dageus was now shaking a fist and shouting at the mirror.

  Drustan closed his eyes.

  After a long moment, he opened them again and cast a longing glance in the direction of the running shower and his gloriously naked, wet wife.

  Then a glare out the window.

  He exhaled gustily. “I doona think so, love. I’m sorry,” he called, “but ’twould seem Dageus is, for some unfathomable reason, having a heated discourse with a looking glass out on our front lawn.”

  “Dageus is doing what with a heated horse and a looking glass?” Gwen exclaimed from the shower.

  “Discourse, sweet, discourse,” he called back.

  “Huh?”

  He sighed again. Then, “He’s talking to a mirror,” he called much more loudly. “I must go discover why.”

  “Talking to a—oh! On the front lawn? Dageus? Really? Wait for me, Drustan! I’ll just be a minute,” she yelled back. “This sounds positively fascinating!”

  Drustan shook his head. Fascinating, his woman said. She had the oddest perspective on things sometimes.

  He smiled faintly then, suddenly far less chafed by the prospect of yet another ruckus in his life. After all, wasn’t that what life was about?

  Ruckuses.

  And if a man was truly blessed, he got a woman like his Gwendolyn with whom to share them.

  “Pick me up, you ham-fisted oaf. The bloody frigging sun is bloody frigging blinding me,” the mirror snarled.

  Dageus blinked down at the glass. ’Twas lying faceup on the lawn and stuffed nigh to bursting with an enraged Cian MacKeltar.

  One of his ancestor’s hands was braced at the side of the mirror on the inside of the glass, the blade of his other hand to his forehead as if shielding his narrowed eyes from a glare.

  For a long moment, Dageus simply couldn’t find any words with which to form a sentence. Then, “What the hell are you doing in there, kinsman?” he managed blankly.

  There was a man inside a mirror. His relative. His ancient relative. He thought he’d seen it all, but he’d ne’er seen aught like this. Dozens of questions collided in his mind.

  “Sun. Blinding. Pick me up,” his ancestor snapped.

  Dageus glanced up. The sun was directly above him.

  He glanced back down. Mystified, he bent and stood the glass up on end, facing him. He handled it gingerly, trying not to touch much of it. Because his grip was not firm, it slipped from his fingers and nearly went right back down again. He scarce managed to catch it in time.

  “For Christ’s sake, be careful with the damn thing!” his ancestor hissed. “ ’Tis made of glass. Sort of. In an odd sense of the word. Are you always so clumsy?”

  Dageus stiffened. “Are you always such a foul-tempered arse? You’ve the manners of a blethering Lowlander. ’Tis no wonder you’ve such a bad reputation.”

  “I’ve a bad—” His ancestor broke off, raising his hands as if to ward off further talk on that topic. “Forget it. I doona wish to ken what they say about me.” He glanced around the lawn. “Where the hell have you taken me?”

  “Castle Keltar.” Dageus thought a moment, then added, “A second Castle Keltar, not the one you likely knew.”

  A muscle worked in his kinsman’s jaw. “And how far would this second Castle Keltar be from Inverness?”

  Dageus shrugged. “Half an hour or so.”

  “Let me guess, you interfering barbarian. For some reason, you took my vehicle?” the mirror snapped.

  “I’m a barbarian? Look who’s talking,” Dageus said indignantly.

  “You bloody fool, you will go back down there and get my woman. Now.”

  “Your woman? The lass ’twas with you in the store?”

  “Aye.”

  Dageus shook his head slowly. This was leverage. “Nay. Not until you tell me what’s going on, and explain yourself to my brother. What are you doing in the mirror? I ken full well what it is. ’Tis the Dark Glass, an Unseelie Hallow, and the Keltar have no business with Unseelie relics. How are you using it? Are you practicing black magycks? My brother will not permit such doings in his keep. Drustan suffers no—”

  His kinsman pounded his fists on the inside of the mirror, actually rattling it in the ornate frame. “Go get my woman! You left her unprotected, you son of a bitch!”

  “Nay. Answers first,” Dageus said flatly.

  “Not a word until she’s here,” Cian said just as flatly.

  They glared at each other, at an impasse.

  A sudden thought occurred to Dageus. Why wasn’t his temperamental, formidably gifted ancestor bursting forth from the glass and going after his woman himself? What could stop a Druid as mighty as Cian MacKeltar. “You’re stuck in there, aren’t you?” he exclaimed.

  “What the bloody hell do you think? You think I’d be sitting in here twiddling my thumbs if I could do something? Go. Get. My. Woman.”

  “But you were out earlier. How? Why—”

  “You said you had a woman of your own,” his ancestor cut him off roughly. “How would you feel if she’d been left by herself in the middle of a city she’d never been in before, and there were trained assassins hunting her? My woman is in danger, damn you! You must go after her, man! Then I’ll tell you aught you wish to ken!”

  A fist closed around Dageus’s heart at the thought of Chloe in such a situation. He’d seen her in danger before and it had damn near killed him. A man’s woman took priority over everything else. Questions could wait. The care and well-being of loved ones could never be deferred.

  Never.

  “Och, blethering hell, I didn’t know. I’ll go get your woman,” he said instantly. Tucking the mirror beneath his arm again, he hastened with it toward the castle.

  “We’re going the wrong way!” the mirror shouted for the third time, as Dageus walked up the front steps and entered the castle.

  “Nay, we’re not. I told you, I’m not taking you with me,” Dageus said flatly. “I will find your woman far more quickly if I doona have to be worrying about breaking you. I know what she looks like. I’ll find her, I vow it.”

  ’Twas truth that he didn’t wish to have to be concerned about damaging the mirror, but even more truth that he didn’t want to be in such close proximity to the Dark Hallow any longer. He suspected its strange pull had been working subtly on him the entire time he’d been driving home, peaking when he’d opened up the back of the SUV. He had no desire to spend what could be hours driving around, with the Hallow no more than a few feet away from him, in an enclosed space.

  Tossing his head back, he bellowed, “Drustan!” with enough volume to rattle the eaves.

  “Christ, Dageus, I’m right above you,” his brother replied, wincing. “There’s no need to go shouting the walls down.”

  Dageus glanced up. His twin was standing at the balustrade that overlooked the great hall entrance, gazing down. “How was I to know that? Why are you standing there, Drustan?”

  “Why are you talking to a mirror, Dageus?” Drustan said very, very quietly.

  “I said ‘wait for me!’ “ Gwen cried at that moment, from somewhere down the corridor behind his brother.

  Dageus shook his head. He had no time for explanations. The woman’s name, Cian had told him as they’d crossed the lawn, interspersed with his increasingly pissed-off demands to accompany him back down to Inverness, was Jessica St. James. She was an innocent in this—whatever “this” was—and she was in mortal danger.

  He had to go. Now.

  Propping the mirror against the wall near the door, he waved a hand at it and clipped, “Drustan: Cian MacKeltar. Cian: Drustan MacKeltar.”

  “Dageus,” Drustan’s voice was soft as velvet, never a good sign, “why are you introducing me to a mirror?”

  “Look in the mirror, Drustan,” Dageus said impatiently, angling it a bit so he could see into it
from above.

  His brother’s jaw dropped.

  Dageus smiled faintly. ’Twas nice to know he wasn’t the only one utterly discombobulated by the sight of a man inside a mirror. “I doona believe he can get out, Drustan, so he shouldn’t present a danger. However, you may wish to store him away from women and children until we know more.”

  Drustan was still gaping, speechless.

  The mirror growled, “Away from women and children? I’ve never been a threat to women and children, you lummox!”

  “Verily, kinsman, we know naught about you,” Dageus retorted. “So why doona you try explaining things to my brother while I’m gone? Then mayhap somebody can explain them to me when I return.”

  “Doona leave me here,” Cian hissed. “Take me with you.”

  “I said I’ll find your woman, and I will.”

  Above him, Drustan finally found his tongue. “Cian MacKeltar!” he exploded. “Mean you our ancestor Cian? The one from the ninth century?”

  “Aye. And ’tis the Dark Glass, Drustan, one of the Unseelie Hallows,” he imparted tersely. His brother didn’t contain the vast knowledge of the Draghar within him, and Dageus doubted his ability to recognize it for what it was. “You may wish to keep your contact with it to a minimum. It works on the magic in our blood, enticing us.” He added a final aside: “I inadvertently left his woman unprotected. I must go get her. I’ll return as soon as I can.”

  Without further ado, Dageus turned and raced from the castle.

  * * *

  20

  Jessi polished off her third hamburger, balled up the paper wrapping, and tucked it back in the bag.

  “Better, lass?” Dageus asked.

  “Oh, yes,” she said with a contented sigh. She’d never tasted such scrumptious, decadently juicy, perfect hamburgers in her entire life, though she suspected not having eaten in over twenty-four hours might be biasing her the teeniest bit. She gulped thirstily at her super-sized water; all the walking and worrying she’d done today had left her feeling dehydrated.