Alexis smiled down at him. “Let’s go back to the inn. I’m hungry, and I planned to take a bath there. I want to take a few days to clean up and rest before I go anywhere.”
He lay still under his plaid. It rose and fell with his breathing, but he didn’t move for a minute.
She poked the cocoon. “Christie? Did you hear me?”
He moved one edge of his plaid aside to peek out at her. “I dinnae want to stay at the inn a few days. I want to push on to Mull. I want to go back as quick as I can. If they’re there, they’ll need me.”
“I don’t want to go to Mull,” she told him. “I want to go north. I want to find the Faery again. If I can find James, maybe he can help me figure out how to break this curse.”
“Ye ken how to break the curse, lass,” he replied. “We must work together. That’s clear enough, is it no’?”
She sighed and looked away. “Let’s not start that again. We don’t have to travel together. We can take a two-pronged approach where you work on your end and I work on my end.”
He threw off his plaid and sat up. He put out his hand and squeezed her arm. “Ye have me heart now, lass. We have one heart between us. We’d do better to stick together. We could face whatever comes the stronger for it.”
She had to smile at him. Then she laughed and mussed his hair even more. “You should see yourself right now. You’re hair’s sticking straight out from your head.”
He chuckled to himself. He rummaged inside his plaid until he found his shirt. He wadded it up to pull it over his head, but when he lifted it, he stopped. He looked around him and scowled. “Lassie…where exactly are we?”
Alexis looked around her for the first time. They weren’t in the forest anymore. They were in the middle of a field in the middle of a broad, bright day. Right in front of her, she saw the village.
The village lay in ruins, exactly the way it did in her vision. The only difference was the bodies. Men, women, and children lay scattered all over the place in bloody heaps. Bites of torn flesh oozed onto the ground. Heads crooked at odd angles from broken necks. Severed arms and legs littered the ground.
Right outside the village lay a little girl. Her blonde hair splayed over the damp earth, and her skirts twisted around her legs. She still held a doll clutched in one hand. She lay on her face pointing into the village. A boy dangled from the branches of a tree nearby, and a woman lay draped across her laundry tub.
Alexis gulped. “Oh, my goodness!”
Christie scanned the surroundings with a flashing eye. “Is this place real?”
“I…I don’t know,” she whispered. “I thought it was only a dream, or a vision or something. I…I don’t know if it’s real or not.”
She glanced over at him at the same moment he glanced at her. Their gazes met. He was thinking the same thing she was thinking. They’d both only ever seen this place in their fevered visions. Now they were here.
He put out his hand and grasped hers. His warm fingers gave her the sense of their togetherness from last night. He spoke the words running through her mind. “You’re real enough.”
He let her go long enough to put his shirt and kilt on and make himself decent. He sat at Alexis’s side on the ground while they took in the whole scene. Alexis never saw the village in such disaster. Not one house stood intact. The mud walls crumbled into the ground. Piles of ash and cinders lay where the thatched roofs would have fallen.
Cows festered at their tie-ups in front of the water troughs. Flies buzzed all over the place, and the village stank of rot and death.
Christie got to his feet and helped Alexis up. She didn’t want to go in there, but he guided her forward. He stopped next to the little girl and frowned at the village. “What happened here?”
“It’s the same thing that’s happening everywhere else,” Alexis murmured back. “The place flew to pieces. Now it looks like the trolls attacked and killed everybody.”
“Have ye seen that?” he asked. “Have ye seen that in your visions?”
“I didn’t know it was real,” she wailed. “I thought I was out of my mind. It’s happening all over, everywhere I go. I don’t know what to do.”
He turned to face her. The look in his eye made her want to cry. “It’s real, lassie. I didnae want to believe it, either. When we first went to the forest, I thought ye were crazy, but we cannae deny the truth any longer. It’s real. This place…” He swept the village with his hand. “This place is real.”
“Did you see the place before?” she asked. “Have you ever been here before…on your own, I mean?”
“I only saw this place once before, and that was right here.” He laid his hand on her chest.
Alexis whirled away from him. “Oh, my God! This can’t be happening. This can’t be real.”
He took hold of her shoulders and steered her around to confront him again. “Face me, lassie. Dinnae turn away. This is real, to ye and to me right now.”
“Are you seriously telling me you saw that, too?” she cried. “Are you telling me that really happened, that you put a key into my heart and we both flew here together? Do you even realize how crazy this is?”
“Listen, lassie,” he replied. “I saw it. I saw a lot of strange things in that forest, and this isnae the strangest of them all. Think on it a moment and tell me how crazy it is. We both saw that vision in the forest, and now we’re here. We have one heart between the two of us, so this place was in your heart to begin with, and now I have given ye my heart and we’re both here. However real it was to ye afore, it’s real to both of us now.”
She couldn’t stop shaking her head. “This is impossible. You know that, don’t you?”
“I dinnae say it’s a very logical state of affairs. I’ll give ye that much,” he replied. “I will say this, though. I touched ye, and that touch banished the trolls when naught else would. Ye laid with me, and this whole thing started. I kissed ye, and I healed ye when they ripped your heart out. Now we have lain together again, and here we are, together.”
“What are you saying?” she whispered.
He clasped her hand. “What if this is it? What if this is the fabric we have to repair?”
“What fabric?” she asked. “There’s no fabric here.”
“It’s no’ fabric,” he replied. “It’s a village, but it still needs repair. There’s holes in the fabric, and that’s where the trolls are getting through. Do ye see? We couldnae see them afore. No one could. They were invisible, but they still tore the place apart. They got inside people and made them sick. They did it to me and they did it to ye. It only stopped when we came together, and it keeps getting better the closer we get.”
“You’re nuts,” she fired back. “You’re just as deranged as I am.”
He bit back a smile. “Exactly, lassie. We can only fix this together. We’re mated now, ye and I. We’re one and the same heart. Ye shared your Faery power with me. Ye must have shared the curse with me, too.”
“Oh, dear God, don’t say that!”
“It’s true, lass,” he replied. “Ye ken it yourself, but it’s a good thing. It means we can break this thing by sticking together. It takes both of us, and now we ken the secret to getting here and putting the place right.”
She scanned the village. “So what do we do? Where do we start?”
“Right here.” He let go of her hand, bent down, and picked up the little girl.
Flies swarmed off her when he pried her off the ground. Maggots squirmed all over her face, and one eye socket sank into a putrid hole in her skull. Christie grimaced and turned his face away while he carried her out of the village.
Alexis tagged after him to the edge of the forest. Her stomach turned over everything she saw and heard. Everything Christie said made sense, but her spirit revolted against it. She didn’t want to share a heart with him, but what other explanation could make sense of this situation?
He entered the little glade where Alexis first appeared in this village. He laid the li
ttle girl on the ground. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
He walked back to the village and returned with two shovels. He handed one to Alexis. “I would do it myself, but if I’m right, we both have to do it together. It’ll make the work go quicker, anyway.”
Without a word, he started digging. Alexis stared, first at him, then at the shovel, and finally at the body. Her soul ached, but what else could she do? She took a deep breath and set to work.
They worked for over an hour to dig the grave. Then Christie laid the girl in it. He and Alexis covered her up and patted down the loose dirt.
Christie stood his shovel against a tree, clasped his hands, and bowed his head. “Dear Lord, give this wee lassie rest in Heaven. She was loved by her family and a credit to her people. She was taken from this Earth too soon, and we commend her to your eternal protection. Amen.”
Alexis couldn’t speak. Her throat ached. Christie put his arm around her shoulder, and when he hugged her, she hid her face in his chest.
Chapter 19
Christie kissed Alexis on the pebble beach overlooking Loch Linnhe. Just beyond the misty mountains, the Isle of Mull lay across the sound. “Come with me, lass. Dinnae take me heart away of me again.”
“I have to go to the Faery,” she told him. “I have to tell them what I know, even if there’s nothing I can do about it yet.”
“What will ye tell them?” he asked. “They cannae help ye.”
“James asked me to do some research on it and report back, and I said I would. I owe him that much at least. I’ll tell him these incursions are part of the curse. I’ll ask him about the village. He might know something about it.”
He lowered his eyes to the ground. “So it’s James, is it? I might have kenned.”
“What about James?” She gasped out loud. “You don’t think… Christie, no!”
“I saw ye with him,” he replied. “I saw the way he looked at ye. He put his arms around ye and kissed ye.”
“He kissed me on the forehead,” she reminded him. “He’s the Faery King, and it’s his mission in life to bring lost Faery home and take care of them. That’s all he ever wanted from me.”
“Ye wanted something from him, though,” he countered. “Is that it?”
She lowered her eyes. “It was in the beginning. When he first found me, I thought that’s what he wanted. I was disappointed, so yeah, I guess you’re right about that.”
“I thought so.”
She caught his two hands. “It wasn’t like that, and it hasn’t been like that since. I was disappointed when I realized he didn’t feel the same way about me, but that was a long time ago. A lot has happened between then and now. I’m not going back for that.”
“Are ye sure?” he asked. “Are ye sure that’s no’ the real reason ye refuse to come with me when all the evidence points to ye and me sticking together?”
She took a deep breath. “Look. I’m really grateful for everything you’ve done for me.”
“But what?” he asked.
“But I don’t really see it the way you do. I don’t really see that we share the same heart. I mean, look at you. You’re alive and well. You wouldn’t be standing here right now if you didn’t have a heart.”
“I do have a heart. It’s right here.” He laid his hand on her chest.
Alexis shook her head. “We’ve been over this before.”
“Aye. We have, and I willnae give in on me position. Ye need to be out there.”
He gazed across the water at the distant island. It called him home. Why didn’t she feel it? Maybe she didn’t feel it. Maybe she was right, and she didn’t belong with him at all. In that case, he better take his leave of her now and be done with it.
When he looked into her eyes, though, her spirit told him a different story. In the three days it took them to travel down to this coastline and find his boat, he only became more convinced he was right.
She, on the other hand, became more convinced she was right. No matter how many times they discussed it, she became more entrenched in her conviction her path lay elsewhere.
If he learned one thing in his dealings with her, it was this. As long as she wished to turn her head somewhere else, she was right to do so. As long as she resisted this intractable pull drawing them together, she wasn’t ready. If she wasn’t ready, that meant he wasn’t ready, no matter how much he wanted it.
When he faced her again, he saw a strange pain in her expression. She gazed toward Mull, too, and she didn’t look happy about it. What was she thinking? Did she feel the draw, or did he only imagine it? Why did he spend so much time and energy thinking and wanting a woman who didn’t want him back?
He put his arms around her. “Take care of yourself out there. You’re carrying my heart inside ye.”
“I’ll find you,” she replied. “I’ll do what I need to do, and then I’ll come and find you.”
“What if something happens and ye cannae find me again?” he asked. “What if all that stuff comes back, and we never see each other again?”
“Hush,” she murmured. “Don’t think like that.”
“I have to,” he exclaimed. “I cannae lose ye, and now you’re leaving to God kens where. It’s no good, lassie. It’s no good, I tell ye.”
She shut her eyes. “Please don’t. You know I need to go, and so do you. You go take care of your family. I have to do this, so please don’t make it any harder than it needs to be.”
He nodded. “Aye. You’re right. Let’s no’ fight about it any longer. Wish me well, lassie. I hope I see ye again soon.”
“Safe travels,” she replied. “It looks like you have a nice day to cross the sound, anyway.”
He nodded again. What else could he say? He leaned in and kissed her.
The instant his lips touched hers, a vision flashed across his eyes. He pulled away, and he found himself staring into her angelic face. He kissed her again, and this time he didn’t pull away.
The strange sight burst across his sight one more time, and the world went dark. He found himself in a forest at night, and he was running. He streaked across the ground in his wolf form.
He flowed through the trees without using his eyes. His feet and nose and ears told him everything he needed to know. His instincts guided him, and the power and exhilaration of night running took over his muscles and nerves.
A faint moon glided over the trees. It didn’t give enough light to see, but he didn’t need to see. His blood pulsed with the rich earth. His paws sprang off the spongy soil. His weight barely touched the ground.
He loved night running. He poured his black form through time and space. He became one with the night. While he ran, he became aware of another wolf running nearby. He strained his senses to catch any sound of its feet on the mossy earth.
Just when he detected its location, the wolf swerved. It broke into his space and ran at his side. One whiff of its scent told him it was a female. Her silvery coat gleamed in the dark. She undulated next to him in a perfect ripple of muscle and sinew.
He matched his stride to hers. When she turned aside and ran off into the trees, he ran with her. He kept near her shoulder and they covered countless miles through all kinds of wilderness.
All of a sudden, she lunged for him. She nipped his cheek and startled him out of his reverie. He attacked her back, but she pranced away into the night. Christie gave chase. He ran up behind her. He snapped his jaws at her hind quarters, but she darted away just in time. She yelped in glee.
Excitement and sexual tension filled his heart and soul. He put on a burst of speed and pounced on top of her. He attacked her with all his teeth at once. He grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, and his momentum knocked them rolling and tumbling down a steep bank.
They slammed into the ground, and they both came up spitting and snarling. They attacked each other harder than ever and fell wrestling among the dry dead leaves.
Christie jerked back. His lips broke contact with Alexis’s mouth, and
the vision cleared. He came face to face with her again, and this time, he saw the source of that pain in her expression.
She was a wolf. The wolf got stronger and stronger with time. It would break out at any moment, and it scared her. It scared her a lot worse than the horrible visions she saw of people and things flying to pieces. The wolf rising in her soul hurt worse than getting her heart ripped out by those demons.
That’s why she gazed on Mull with such yearning and trepidation. The wolf would give her no peace until she let it loose, and she hesitated to do that. She held it back. She resisted it with all her great strength. She would do anything to stop it taking over her life.
How long could a werewolf survive without shifting? He didn’t know. The McLeans never bothered to find out. They always shifted from their earliest childhoods. It was a normal part of their lives. They never thought twice about resisting it.
She peered into his eyes. “Are you okay?”
He shook himself out of his thoughts and unwound his arms from her body. “I’m grand. I suppose I’ll be off.”
He walked over to his boat. He put right the last details. She made her choice against all his insistence that she come back with him. He could only hope she came to her senses before it was too late.
He shoved the boat into the lake and hopped inside. He waved once and ran up the sail. He caught the breeze, and the boat headed south toward the sound. He never looked back at her standing on the shore. He didn’t have to.
He would never forget her standing there with that deep pain in her eyes. He understood that pain, the longing for home and people. She needed Mull and its wolves. She belonged to them, heart and soul. She was Christie’s mate, and now here he was, sailing away from her. He might never see her again.
By the time he entered the sound, he started to relax. When he looked around, he was too far away from the beach to see her even if she’d still been standing there watching him out of sight. She was gone, gone back to the Faery King.
Curse Breaker (Phoenix Throne Book 7): A Scottish Highlander Time Travel Romance Page 13
