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

by Heather Walker

  Nowhere was safe. Where were the other Urlus? He counted up which ones were still alive. Robbie, Hazel, Ivy, and Angus were gone, and Jamie was dead. Callum and Grace were probably gone. Christie didn’t see Lachlan anywhere.

  This was the worst catastrophe yet. He dreaded finding out what was going on inside the castle. Carmen, Elle, and Sadie were probably in there, if they were still alive at all. He turned one way and then the other in a dither of indecision when he saw it.

  He stumbled back a few steps and craned back his neck. High above the battlements, in the middle of the air above Duart Castle, the sky swirled and churned in a whirlpool of roiling air. He stared in horror as the portal opened to engulf the whole castle.

  Chapter 32

  Alexis scrambled down the rocky shore to the beach. The flames flapping off the forest trees burned her face. She ran all the way to the water’s edge before she turned north.

  She ran around the castle to the kitchen door. She peeked in and found the place deserted the way she expected. She stepped across the threshold when Carmen appeared. “Hello. Where have you been all night?”

  “Hurry, Carmen,” Alexis exclaimed. “There’s another attack starting, and Angus has been hit.”

  Carmen jumped, and her hand flew to the short blade she wore at her belt. “Really? Where?”

  “It’s not that kind of attack,” Alexis told her. “There are no trolls. It’s the flying apart thing, and Jamie is out there dead, too.”

  Carmen cried out in alarm and spun the other way. She raced out of the kitchen with Alexis on her tail. They ran for the entrance hall when they heard screams coming from the Great Hall.

  Both women turned aside to check what was going on when Sadie came down the stairs. “What’s going on?”

  At that moment, the staircase collapsed under her. It crashed into the entrance and blocked the doorway to the Great Hall. Ivy and Alexis stumbled back. Sadie pitched over the edge of the broken stairway and fell. She caught herself by her fingernails just in time to save her life.

  She gritted her teeth and strained every muscle to stop herself crashing to the floor below. “Alexis! Help me!”

  Alexis rushed forward and caught Sadie by the ankles. She tried to lift her up, but the remains of the staircase was too high. “Let go,” she called. “I’ll catch you.”

  Carmen rushed to Alexis’s side. Sadie let go of the staircase and dropped into their arms, but at the same instant, the floor rocked under their feet. It heaved and knocked all three of them into a pile on top of each other.

  Carmen got to her feet first. She grabbed Alexis. “Come on. We have to get out of here. The whole place is coming down.”

  “I have to find Christie,” Alexis gasped. “The two of us together can stop this.”

  “There’s no time!” Carmen cried. “We’ll all be dead long before that.”

  Sadie staggered to her feet. “She’s right, Alexis. We don’t know where Christie is, and if you go down, we’ll never get it stopped. You have to save yourself. We’ll worry about Christie later.”

  They hustled Alexis toward the door. She cast one last look over her shoulder. She didn’t want to go outside. As awful as it was inside, she already knew what it was like outside.

  Christie was somewhere inside. Her instincts called her back to search for him, but Sadie and Carmen wouldn’t hear any protest. They pushed toward the door, but the little group never reached it.

  Carmen put out her hand for the door when a heavy beam came unseated from the ceiling overhead. One end remained fixed in its socket while the other end smashed down in front of the door.

  Carmen leapt back with a screech. The beam rested with one end on the floor. Clouds of dust billowed around it, but no one could get near the door. Carmen and Alexis stared at it. Sadie recovered first. “Come on. Back to the kitchen.”

  She seized Alexis and hauled her away when a shower of stone thundered down on their heads from above. Alexis ducked under her arms for cover. Sadie darted against the wall. A block hit Carmen on the back of the neck. She buckled in half and hit the floor.

  Alexis lunged for her through the cascade of falling rock, but Sadie yanked her back. “Leave her. We have to get out of here.”

  “We can’t leave her!” Alexis screeched. “She’ll die.”

  “You’ll die if she’s not dead already,” Sadie thundered. “Now come on. You and Christie are the most important thing right now.”

  Alexis didn’t want to leave. She didn’t want to be the most important thing right now, and she certainly didn’t want to leave a stricken comrade behind. Sadie wouldn’t leave her alone, though. She dragged Alexis out of the hall toward the kitchen, but door posts collapsed at their every approach.

  Sadie dodged to one side and the pair found themselves in the Great Hall. One side wall lay in ruins. The broad bright day shone in front outside. Mountains of flame plumed into the air, and stinking clouds of smoke rose into the air.

  Alexis took a step toward the sunlight before she realized Sadie wasn’t with her. She turned around to see Sadie standing motionless in the middle of the floor.

  She wasn’t even looking at the world outside. She stared down at a pool of blood darkening the stones. A severed arm lay drenched in the middle of the dark red puddle. A white linen sleeve covered it down to the wrist, and stringy scraps of flesh and sinew hung limp from the shoulder. Sadie murmured under her breath, “Callum!”

  Alexis ran to her and whipped her around. “We can’t think about him right now. He could be all right. He could be outside somewhere. Come on. We have to go before we wind up trapped in here.”

  Sadie staggered after her. Alexis scrambled over broken bricks toward the outside world. She scaled to the top and surveyed the terrain outside. She couldn’t recognize what was burning nearby, but she did recognize a man’s body lying not far away.

  Sadie came to her side, and her eye rested on the same still figure. She raced down the rubble pile toward him and fell on her knees. “Callum! Oh, Callum, no!”

  She struggled to pick him up. Blood stained his kilt and shirt. He had no arms, and his head flopped in Sadie’s arms. She shrieked at the top of her lungs and petted his face in raving grief. At that moment, her hand snapped back at the wrist.

  Sadie screamed louder than ever and stared in horror at her own hand. It twisted around backward and then ripped off her arm. Strings of tendons and torn muscle flapped from the stump, and blood poured out onto Callum.

  Sadie dropped the body and fell back. She sat down hard gripping her severed wrist with her other hand when her whole head slammed back against her back. Alexis roared out, “Sadie!” but it was too late.

  Sadie collapsed backward on the ground. In front of Alexis’s eyes, Sadie’s body twisted in several places. It wrung in circles and bent at grotesque angles. Her skin popped, and blood poured from her wounds all over.

  Alexis couldn’t watch any more. She whirled away. She ran down the rubble pile, back toward the sea where she would be safe. Her feet touched the ground. She turned north to get away from the castle when a dull boom sounded over her head. She glanced back and saw a huge portal open in the sky above the castle.

  She froze in her tracks. Her mind whizzed in a thousand directions. The portal! That must be the answer. If she could get to it, she might be able to stop it. If Christie saw it, he would try to get to it, too. She would find him there.

  She thought fast. She didn’t want to go back inside the castle, but that was the only way she could get close to it so high in the sky. She had to take the risk. Her life was forfeit anyways. She had to go down stopping this.

  She climbed back over the broken wall the way she came. She tripped, and her foot wedged down between two stones. She twisted her ankle and slammed down on one knee. A sharp corner tore her pants and the skin underneath, and she saw blood.

  So this was how it ended. She tried to tug her foot free, but it stuck. The castle rumbled on its foundation. If she didn’t hu
rry, there would be no castle left for her to climb through. She wouldn’t get near enough to the portal to do…whatever it was she was going to do.

  She had no idea what she would do, but she had to do something. She was the only person left alive to do it. She worked her foot around and finally pulled it free. Her leg ached when she put her weight on it, but she couldn’t stop.

  She finally made it over the pile, back into the Great Hall. She couldn’t take the regular staircase. She didn’t know much about this castle, but there must be other staircases to the upper floors.

  She ran back to the kitchen and found her way to the servants’ quarters. There she discovered a rickety back staircase. It led her the upper floor where Christie and Lachlan’s bedrooms were.

  She dashed along the landing. Now she knew where she was. She could only hope and pray she made it to the roof before any more staircases collapsed under her. She ran to the door she used before to get to the roof. She rushed through it before she looked and almost plummeted to her death in an open chasm. The stairway was gone. She pulled the door shut and whirled away.

  She passed the twisted remains of wolves and people in every attitude of dismemberment. Alexis refused to look at them. She concentrated on her own job. She ran and ran until her lungs exploded. She had to find a way up to the roof. She had to, but when she finally discovered another staircase, it swayed and almost collapsed under her foot. She couldn’t go that way.

  She stood still in her tracks. Her mind boiled in turmoil. What could she do? She couldn’t stand here and wait for death. That was out of the question.

  She spotted Christie’s bedroom door and blasted through it. She scanned the room, and her eye fell on the bed. Oh, Christie, where are you right now? How she wished she was lying there in his arms right now. She would give anything to hide from all this in his protective embrace.

  She would never feel those arms again. She would never get a chance to tell him what she learned under the moon last night. She would never have a chance to beg his forgiveness for pushing him away. She could never tell him how much joy and peace her time as a wolf gave her before she died.

  She charged for the window. She threw open the casement and stuck her head out. She never did anything like this in her life. If her mother saw her right now, she could die of a heart attack.

  So much for cautious, prudent Alexis Morgan. Cautious prudent Alexis Morgan was already long dead. Alexis buried her in the dirt with a glad heart. She never wanted to be that again. She wanted to be a wolf, a Faery, a McLean of the Isle of Mull. She never wanted to be anything else, ever again.

  She climbed out the window. She threw her life to the wind. She didn’t look right or left or down. She focused all her might on scaling that wall. Nothing else mattered. Her concentration dwindled to a pinpoint. She stroked her hand across the stone face until she found something she could hold onto. She hauled herself up, one handhold at a time.

  Inch by inch, she climbed. She scrambled over the battlements and looked around. Every fiber of her being ached. The portal yawned huge and threatening over her head.

  As she watched, it grew bigger and blacker by the minute. It would swallow the whole castle. Then it would encompass the whole island. What would it take after that? The world?

  A powerful wind blasted into the gaping hole. It lashed her hair across her face. Across the battlements, the far corner of the roof caved in with a deafening crash. Half the castle crumbled before her eyes.

  She turned one way and then the other. The portal was still too far above her head to reach. She couldn’t do anything. Her heart spasmed. She would die, and she couldn’t do a thing to stop this catastrophe.

  She turned back the other way one last time. Her throat constricted with the tears she never let herself shed until this moment. She gathered all her emotion in her chest and shrieked to the rising wind. “Christie! Christie!”

  With the last tearing cry, she went down on her knees on the stone. It was all over. She might as well die right here. She raised her eyes to the portal and got to her feet. Terrible calm washed over her. She didn’t want to live without Christie anyway. What was life worth without the other half of her heart? What was the point of having his heart when she couldn’t share it with him?

  She took a step toward the portal. She stopped resisting the wind. She raised her arms to let it catch her when an enormous cloud of blue rose above the castle walls. Before her eyes, a massive blue dragon flexed his wings to land on the roof in front of her. Christie slid to the ground and rushed into Alexis’s arms.

  She couldn’t stop kissing him and hugging him. Tears streaked down her cheeks. Wrenching sobs stabbed her heart. She couldn’t let him go. When he pushed her back to gaze into her eyes, she saw tears running down his cheeks. “Lassie,” he breathed.

  “Oh, Christie!” she sobbed.

  He gave her one more kiss and broke away. He took her hand. “Are ye ready?”

  She nodded, but she couldn’t breathe through her sobs. He turned and led her a few steps toward the portal. Then they both raised their arms above their heads and dove into it.

  Chapter 33

  Christie stared at a plain brown wooden door. He knew that door. His mind struggled to place it. He turned around to see where he was, and hundreds of tiny dragons flapped into his face.

  He barely got a chance to see where he was before they all hit him at once. He was on the roof of Duart Castle. Ivy stood not far away. She tried to get her blade unsheathed, but countless dragons attacked her at the same time.

  Christie’s mind raced to figure out what just happened, but he had no time to think. He hacked the dragons away. One thought consumed his brain. He had to get to Ivy, to protect her from these things.

  Before he knew it, they were all over him. They dragged his saber arm down so he couldn’t fight. They bit and scratched and mauled him. Ivy gave a broken cry, and he battled his way toward her.

  They couldn’t be Urlus. They weren’t big enough, and they weren’t colored. They were all uniformly black. Christie chopped as many of them as he could see. He lost sight of Ivy, but he no longer thought of her. He had to save his own life, and the dragons surrounded him on all sides. They threatened to drag him down under their sheer numbers.

  In the fog of battle, he backed up against something. He turned around once to see what it was and came face to face with Ivy. They fought back to back to win themselves a few seconds’ reprieve.

  All of a sudden, Ivy went down with a cry of pain. The dragons mangled her flesh and stained her clothes with blood. Christie flew into a rage, but they already pressed him to his utmost. He couldn’t protect her.

  A bellow of rage startled him. He spun around to see Lachlan charge onto the roof, but no one could win this battle. The dragons covered all three of them in a dense cloud of bodies.

  At that moment, Christie caught sight of something across the roof. At the same instant, the dragons exploded off him and went hurtling away from the roof. He got a clear look at the lone figure perched on the battlements, and his heart cracked in half with love.

  Ivy raised her head and gasped. “Alexis!”

  Before anybody could react, all the dragons came rushing back. They shrieked their terrible cries, and they all converged on Alexis at once. They gaped open their gnashing jaws and let loose their fiery breath at her.

  A perfect ring of blazing flame surrounded her. Her eyes flicked to the right, and she met Christie’s gaze. At the moment of impact when the dragons swooped in to incinerate her, time stopped.

  Christie found himself standing on the roof and staring into her eyes. A massive black hole opened in space behind her, and all the curse dragons streaked past her and vanished into it. A shattering explosion boomed across the roof, and a blinding light flashed into Christie’s eyes.

  The next instant, everything fell silent but the wind moaning across the battlements. Ivy got to her feet and looked around. She took a step forward and took Alexis’s ha
nd in her own. She peered into Alexis’s eyes. “Alexis? Are you okay?”

  Alexis nodded. “I’m okay. Are you?”

  Ivy looked at Christie. Then she looked at Lachlan. “I guess we’re all okay. What happened?”

  Christie came to her side. “Never ye mind. It’s all over now.”

  Ivy rushed to Lachlan and helped him stand up. He stumbled forward. “Who have we here?”

  “This is Alexis Morgan,” Ivy replied. “She’s my old roommate from back home. She’s the one who cast that spell.”

  “Good, then,” Lachlan returned. “If that’s the case, then I suppose ye can help us break this curse once and for all.”

  Alexis smiled a brilliant, beautiful smile at him. Her cheeks flushed. “I think I can.”

  “You’d best come downstairs, and we’ll see what sort of damage we have to deal with,” Lachlan replied. “I regret it’s no’ a very hospitable time for us just now.”

  “Ye take Lachlan downstairs, Ivy,” Christie told her. “I’ll see to Alexis.”

  Ivy and Lachlan turned away. She supported him to the roof door, and they disappeared into the dark. Christie studied Alexis. “Are ye all right, lass?”

  “I’m fine,” she replied. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m just grand. Do ye ken where we are?”

  She nodded. “I guess it wouldn’t really be prudent to tell them what we know—about Ivy being pregnant, I mean.”

  “Aye.”

  He started to turn away, but she stopped him. “Wait, Christie.”

  “What is it, lass?”

  “Do you think…do you think the others are okay? Do you think the Phoenix Throne is okay, and the Urlus are still alive and everything?”

  He looked around. “Well, it would seem we have traveled back in time to the moment before all this started. Ivy’s pregnant, but she and Lachlan havenae married yet. We have no’ experienced all that flying apart business yet, so I’d say they should be perfectly grand, the same as us.”