Curse Breaker (Phoenix Throne Book 7): A Scottish Highlander Time Travel Romance

by Heather Walker

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Thanks For Reading

  CURSE BREAKER

  PHOENIX THRONE BOOK SEVEN

  HEATHER WALKER

  Copyright © 2018 Heather Walker

  Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  Chapter 1

  Alexis Morgan stood at the window in Duart Castle on the Isle of Mull. The sea broke against a rocky shore outside and showered the castle in spray. Alexis turned around and gazed down at the sleeping form in the bed.

  Ivy Tennant tossed in her sleep, but she didn’t wake up. Alexis took a step toward the bed. She put out her hand and touched the delicate white arm lying on the counterpane. The bedspread rounded over Ivy’s swollen belly.

  A few bottles of medicine stood on the table near Ivy’s head. Her hair stuck to her sweaty brow, and she whimpered in her sleep. Alexis bent over and laid her hand on Ivy’s damp forehead. “It’s gonna be okay, Ivy. You’re going to be okay.”

  Ivy screamed and recoiled from the touch, but she still didn’t open her eyes. The bedroom door flew open in response to the noise. A tall man with curly, shoulder-length blonde hair burst into the room. Lachlan McLean, Ivy’s husband fixed his blazing eyes on Alexis. “You!”

  He rushed into the room to intercept Alexis, but at that instant, a brick dislodged from the wall and sailed across the room. It smashed into the opposite wall. Lachlan spun around to face the threat when another brick jumped out of the other wall. It crashed into Ivy’s pillow inches away from her head.

  Lachlan and Alexis both whirled one way and then the other on alert for the next surprise. While they stood there stunned, the window glass exploded out of its frame. Glass shards sprayed into the room.

  Ivy screamed again. She thrashed in bed, and her enormous belly swayed under the covers. Lachlan locked his eyes on Alexis. He launched himself at her with his hands out to grab her. “You! You did this!”

  He lunged at Alexis, but when his hands closed on her, she vanished before his eyes.

  She rematerialized in a grove of trees somewhere far away. Birds and insects chirped in the woods all around her. Beyond the curtain of foliage, she spied a beautiful little village alive with human activity.

  She peered through the undergrowth to watch. Women and children moved back and forth across her view. The women chatted around the village well. Others fired jokes back and forth over their laundry tubs. Children played with each other and with dogs and chickens in the dirt.

  Men stood in conference in the doorways of their simple huts. They attended to their weapons, and while Alexis watched, parties of them wandered off in different directions.

  Alexis’s heart went out to this village. She’d never beheld anything so peaceful and inviting. She longed to make this place her own and to share the simple joys and challenges of everyday life.

  She stepped into the open, walking out of the forest and heading for the village. A few women smiled at her approach. Children darted around her legs. Alexis came to the first house.

  She put out her right hand in affectionate greeting and touched the rough mud wall. At that moment, the whole roof ripped off and flew into the air. Beams and thatch soared across the village and landed with a splintering crash on top of another house.

  Screams echoed through the village. Children bolted for their lives. Women overturned their tubs in their haste to herd their children away from the disaster. Before Alexis could move, the house on her left blew apart in a thousand clods of hard-packed clay. The wall exploded in Alexis’s face and left the house itself gaping open to view.

  With the wall gone, the roof caved in and crushed a mother nursing her baby inside. Pandemonium reigned all over the village. People screamed and ran in all directions as one house after another flew apart in pieces.

  Alexis wheeled away, only to confront the destruction blocking her path. When she tried to flee another way, rubble rained down on her head and formed piles of debris in front of her.

  For a brief instant, she floundered in confusion. She couldn’t move and she couldn’t think. All of a sudden, she vanished. She lost sight of the village and everything in it. She found herself sitting on a sunny hilltop overlooking a wide moor of rolling grass.

  Now, at last, she could relax. What just happened? Why did Ivy’s room start flying to pieces when Alexis showed up? Then the same thing happened to the village. None of it made sense.

  She didn’t have to make sense of it. She was here now, and she was safe. Nothing would fly apart here. She leaned back and listened to the wind moaning through the grass. Swallows teetered and swooped on the wind high overhead. The sun baked on her skin and made her sleepy.

  She sat on a plaid blanket spread over the hilltop. A basket of food rested at her side, and when she opened it, she helped herself to the good cheese, bread, and fruit inside. Contentment filled her heart. She hadn’t enjoyed herself so much in years.

  She propped her arm behind her and swam in the bliss of having nowhere to be and nothing to do. She could just enjoy this moment while it lasted. She didn’t have to make it anything other than what it was.

  A flash of movement caught her eye. She glanced over her shoulder and spotted a young man climbing the hill behind her. She pretended not to see him, but he walked up and sat down on her blanket next to her. He smiled like he’d known her all his life.

  “Cracker of a day, I call it.” He spoke with a heavy Scottish burr.

  Alexis tried to ignore him, but she only wound up blushing and smiling at him in the end. “Where did you come from?”

  “Right over there.” He pointed down the hill behind him. “Where did ye come from?”

  Alexis cocked her head. “Well, if you really want to know, I came from Seattle.”

  He laughed out loud. He really was handsome. He kept his chestnut brown hair tied behind his neck. He wore a kilt of green, lined with white, yellow, and blue, just like all the Highlanders she saw around this country.

  A length of plaid draped across his simple white shirt, with a plain leather sporran in front. Other than that, he wore no decoration at all. He stuck out his hand to her. “My name’s Jame
s, James Stewart. What’s yours?”

  “Alexis,” she replied. “Alexis Morgan.”

  He wouldn’t stop smiling. His eyes sparkled. “What’re ye doing out here all alone? A lady like ye should have some company.”

  “I do have company now that you showed up. I’m not alone now.”

  “I mean real company,” he replied. “Where are ye staying in this country? Dinnae tell me you’re on your own with nowhere to stay. Have ye been wandering alone all this time?”

  “I guess I have been. I never really thought about it. I’ve seen a few people, but never stayed anywhere—not for long, anyway. I never really needed to.”

  He shook his head. “That’ll never do. Ye must come to my house and stay. It’s the only way. Come. I’ll take ye there now.”

  He took her hand and tried to raise her to her feet, but Alexis resisted. “Hold on a second. I’m not ready to leave, and even if I was and I wanted a place to stay, I don’t even know you. You just showed up here out of nowhere. I’m not going to your house just like that—certainly not to stay. You could be planning to murder me in my sleep.”

  He didn’t laugh. He cocked his head and regarded her with his penetrating blue eyes. “Ye cannae stay out here alone, especially no’ with the world breaking down around your ears the way it is.”

  Alexis froze. “How do you know about that?”

  “Ye come along with me, and you’ll be safe,” he told her. “You’ll no’ be safe anywhere else.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “You better tell me how you know about that, or I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “I ken all about ye,” he replied. “I ken how ye cast that spell to get yourself and Ivy sent here in the first place. I ken how ye helped Kincaid to secure his promise to help the McLeans, since ye didnae trust yourself to go and help them yourself. Now he’s dead, and ye have no choice but to go and help them, but every time ye try, something more terrible happens.”

  Alexis started shaking. She couldn’t stop staring at the man. “Who are you? Who are you really?”

  He got to his feet and pointed down the hill behind him. “Do ye see those trees over there? Do ye see the standing stones among them? If ye want to come down to my house, ye go to those stones. You’ll find the door, and we’ll work this out, one way or the other. There’s no one else on this Earth that can help ye like I can.”

  Before she could answer, he walked away. She watched him stroll down the field to the trees. His tiny figure in the distance passed behind one of the stones, and she lost sight of him.

  Chapter 2

  Christie McLean shifted the tiller of his little boat. The wind canted the craft to his left, and he steered toward the shore. One more puff of air, and the wooden hull grated on the gravel beach.

  Christie released the sheet. The sail crumpled into the bilge, and he jumped out. He hauled the boat well up the beach and busied himself securing the sail. He tied it to the boom and made the craft ready to launch when he came back.

  He lifted out a pack of supplies and slung it over his back before he looked up the hill in front of him. Trees grew thick on the brow up there, and he started climbing. He puffed and panted, but he kept at it until he gained the top.

  At the brow of the hill, he paused to rest. The whole rugged country lay spread out around him. To the south, the open sea stretched into the distance. Loch Linnhe cut between two fingers of land. It led all the way down to the Isle of Mull where his family and kin lived.

  His heart ached to return there, but he had a job to do. No one else would do it or could do it. All their lives depended on him completing his mission. He had to go get help—the only kind of help that mattered—and he had to do it fast.

  That thought spurred him to turn away and start walking. Ever since this curse came to plague his family, Christie woke to new strengths in himself. He could rise to any challenge. When his brother Lachlan disappeared, he took over ruling the Clan in his brother’s place. Being the youngest meant nothing now. He was his own man.

  Now he was on his own in a strange country. He’d never been off Mull before in his life. Now the whole Clan depended on him doing what he set out to do.

  He walked all day over hill and heath. He never stopped to rest. He paused to drink from streams, but he went without food on his endless quest north. He had to find that mysterious country where the Urlu dragon shifters reigned. He had to convince them to come back to Mull to help his family lift this curse. No one else could do it.

  That was the problem. He didn’t know where to find Urlu, and no one else in this country could help him, either. Urlu existed in a shadow realm between one layer of existence and another. People came and went through some distortion of time and space. No one understood it, not even the people who lived there.

  He planned to sleep rough out in the open, but when the sun started to go down, a thick drizzle of rain began to fall. It soaked his clothes, and he started to shiver.

  He wondered what to do about it when he spotted a house in the distance. A golden light shone from its windows. When he got closer, he saw a sign hanging over the door. Robert the Bruce Inn.

  Christie pushed the door open and stepped into the warm glow of a hearty fire. He shook the wet off and set his pack down by the door. Two long tables stretched from one end of the room to the other. People sat on benches at both tables, and friendly conversation filled the room.

  Mugs of ale thumped on the table when the serving maid put them down. Knives and forks clinked against the dishes. Christie sighed with relief. So much for sleeping rough.

  He migrated to the fire and started to unwind his plaid to dry it off. He kicked off his shoes and peeled off his socks, and he draped them on a chair. A serving maid approached him. “Evening to ye, Sir. You’ll be having supper with us, no doubt?”

  “Aye,” he replied, “and a room for the night.”

  “I’ll inform the landlady,” she replied. “Take your seat, and I’ll bring ye a mug of stout.”

  “Thank ye.”

  Christie ran his fingers through his hair. He felt at home already, and the fire drove the chill away in no time. He turned around to find himself a place at the table when he saw her.

  A young woman with straight dark hair sat at the end of the bench. She chatted with the people around her, and a mug of ale sat in front of her. The man on her right made a joke and she smiled, but her eyes rested on Christie.

  She wore a white shirt buttoned down the front with wide lapels. He couldn’t see her close-fitting black pants under the table. He didn’t need to. He would have recognized her anywhere. She saved his life after an epic battle against giants at Kinlochleven. She healed him with a single touch and vanished in the blink of an eye.

  Now she was here, of all places. He regarded her from the fire, but he didn’t make a move toward her. He had to measure his movements carefully, or she might vanish again.

  This was the woman he really needed to find. She created the curse on his family, and only she had the power to lift it. His mind whirled for a way to convince her to come back with him, to save his Clan from certain annihilation.

  He scanned the room. As it happened, the only available seat was right across from her. She kept smiling up at him. She recognized him, too, but he still didn’t make a move.

  The serving maid returned just then and set his mug down on the table right across from the woman. “Come and sit ye down,” the maid told him. “Your supper’ll be along in a moment.”

  Christie took a tentative step toward the stranger sitting at the table. What was her name? He struggled to remember what Grace said about her. Alexis. Her name was Alexis. She lowered her eyelashes in a charming way. Her blushing invited him to sit down and talk to her.

  In Kinlochleven, she moved in a daze between one world and another. She never responded to anyone around her, and she vanished on the breeze. He didn’t trust her not to vanish again now.

  He moved toward the bench and sat
down. His eyes riveted to her face. “Evening to ye.”

  “Hello,” she replied.

  “I’m Christie McLean. We met afore.”

  “I remember,” she replied. “What are you doing here?”

  “Just traveling through. And ye? What are ye doing here?”

  “I’m just traveling through, too,” she replied.

  His mind whirled to think of something to say. How could he broach the subject of getting her to go back with him? He sipped his ale and eyed her over the top of his mug.

  She exchanged a few snippets of conversation with the man at her side, but her eyes kept migrating back to Christie’s face. “How’s Ivy doing?” she asked.

  Christie jumped. “Ivy?”

  “She’s married to your brother, isn’t she? Did she have her baby yet?”

  Christie stared at her. “She’s only just fallen with child. She’s no’ due to give birth for another eight months.”

  The charming smile drained off Alexis’s face. “That’s impossible! She was as big as a house the last time I…” She broke off.

  Christie studied her. “The last time ye what?”

  “Nothing. Forget it.”

  “How did ye ken they got married?” he asked. “Ye havenae seen them since that last time ye…” He swallowed the rest of the words. How could he talk about that here?

  The last time anybody saw Alexis, she appeared on the roof of Duart Castle, sent the curse dragons back to Hell where they belonged, and vanished like she was never there. She was forever blinking in and blinking out. She always vanished before anybody could pin her down.

  Yet here she sat, as real as anything. She hadn’t vanished yet, but something about her didn’t make sense. She thought Ivy was as big as a house, and she knew Ivy and Lachlan got married when she hadn’t been back to Mull since before the wedding.

  The more he talked to her, the more agitated she got. He read that in her face. He had to change the subject. “Are ye stopping here tonight?”

  “I was planning on it,” she replied. “It’s pretty dismal outside right now. I don’t really want to go out there.”