Ensnared by Blood

by Claire Ashgrove

  Fintan’s heart drummed to a slow stop. He swallowed thickly, her portrayal too accurate for comfort. The very same glade, the same stones blood had bathed, stood beyond the castle. They were guarded by the Sacred Tree’s stump, an old oak that splintered the night Drandar took Nyamah’s life.

  Beth was seeing the past, though Fintan would wager everything he was she’d never believe it.

  There was only one way to confirm both his suspicions and prove she wasn’t imagining pictures in her head.

  He rose to his feet and set his wineglass on the table. Taking hers from her grasp, he asked, “Where’s your coat?”

  “What?” She tipped her head, confusion blending with the faintest hint of an amused smile.

  “Your coat. Where’d you leave it? There’s something I want to show you.” He tugged her to her feet and started for the door.

  “Show me? Show me what? It’s in the front hall on the tree.”

  Question was—did he answer, or did he leave her to be surprised? He considered for a moment as he led her toward the front foyer and the coat tree. No, he wouldn’t.

  “It’s a surprise.”

  This wasn’t the kind of thing that could come with preparation. If she knew what to anticipate, he couldn’t gauge her reaction accordingly, wouldn’t know if what she saw in the glade beyond the castle was anything more than a product of her vivid imaginings. Fintan didn’t think so, but he needed to be certain.

  If he was right, he didn’t know what he would do. Explaining to Beth that her ancestors came from what many considered barbaric tribes was one thing. Detailing how she went back to the rise of an incubus was something entirely different. Telling her she shared flesh and blood with the woman who had possibly murdered children to save her people…Fintan was pretty certain Beth wouldn’t take that too well.

  He was equally convinced he didn’t want to read the ancient ritual she brought to him either. No doubt his mother called for a duty Beth must uphold.

  His very bones felt weary as he helped her slide into her heavy down coat. But the curious light in her eyes gave him strength. He glanced at the sweeping stairwell, checking to insure his sister wasn’t watching, then murmured a silent prayer to his mother’s spirit that she might keep Brigid from visiting the standing stones tonight.

  “Where are you taking me?” Beth asked as Fintan ushered her down the long hall that spanned the castle’s rear wall.

  “Outside.”

  She came to an abrupt stop, laughter still crinkling the corners of her eyes. “Fintan, good grief, what does this have to do with my heritage or the scroll? I have three days here. We’re not making any progress, and last time it took a week to dig as far as we did.”

  Firmly, he pulled on her hand, bringing her feet into motion again. “You are Celt, Beth. You know this. I’m taking you to a place where you can connect with your ancestors.”

  “But we don’t know my origin.”

  At that, Fintan came to a halt. He turned, his expression serious as he gazed into her sparkling jade eyes. “You already know it.”

  Confusion clouded her expression. Her eyes searched his face for explanations. Answers he didn’t know how to give without throwing her into a world she wasn’t ready to accept.

  He stepped in closer and cupped her cheek in one hand. “Sweet Beth.” His thumb brushed skin as soft as silk. Her mouth beckoned, daring him to become lost in her sweet flavor once more. “Have patience,” he whispered. “You’ll understand soon enough.”

  Without giving her opportunity to object, he hurried her to the original iron-studded door and out into the wintry air. When she shivered, he released her hand to wrap one arm around her lean shoulders, tucking her against his side to shelter her from the breeze.

  As they walked down the path Brigid kept clear of snow, the rising power of the approaching Sabot prickled his skin. With it though, came another presence. A darker, more sinister strength. He glanced up at the high treetops as a splinter of apprehension needled down his spine. Drandar’s presence lurked. Summoned by Brigid? Or a product of the power contained within the scroll Beth possessed?

  Whatever the cause, his sire loomed nearby. A certainty that could only endanger Beth more. Fintan stopped abruptly. “This isn’t a good idea. The wind’s worse than I thought. We can come back in the morning.”

  But he had brought her too close. She stood transfixed, staring in awe at a ten-foot tall monolith peeking beyond a fat fir trunk. “No. I want to see this.” Beth ducked from beneath his arm and stepped closer to the edge of the ancient stone ring.

  Muttering an oath beneath his breath, Fintan followed as she breached the sacred circle and entered the heart of the henge. He should have known better than to bring her out here, to expose her to the very likely presence of his vile sire. Now, he could only hope to convince her they shouldn’t linger. “We should make this quick…”

  The rapt expression on Beth’s face drew Fintan’s protest into silence. She turned a slow circle, taking in the imposing blocks that rose amidst the trees. Her breath curled in the air, adding an ethereal quality to the way the silver moon illuminated her pale skin and delicate face.

  “I’ve seen this,” she breathed in a near-whisper. With a shake of her head, she tore her attention away from the standing stones and drew slender fingers across a slanted stone altar at her left hip. “This is impossible. But this…”

  Fintan choked down a groan. He hadn’t been wrong. Through some connection he couldn’t explain, Beth had seen this very grove. Gauging by her description, she’d witnessed the very night Nyamah lost her life.

  She wasn’t merely Celt. She was Selgovae. A descendant of the same blood that ran in Fintan’s veins. A product of the people he had once laughed and loved with. People whose whispers lingered in his heart no matter how many centuries passed.

  And that certainty turned all the brimming warmth in his system into a fire that burned as swift and fierce as if she had set a match to a bed of dry kindling. His heart drummed hard. His hands began to shake. He stuffed them into his pockets and sucked in a sharp breath, fighting back the overwhelming need to feel the press of her skin, the tingle of her breath, the hunger in her kiss.

  “Beth.” His voice rang low, husky to his own ears.

  “Hm?” She flashed him only a brief glance before wandering closer to the northernmost monolith.

  “We need to go inside.” Before he forgot why they were there, that his sire watched. Before he could no longer remember the curse he bore and allowed the swelling behind his ribs to overtake good sense.

  “What is this place, Fintan? How can I know it? How can I feel like I’ve stood here before when I know I’ve never seen it?”

  The touch of fear that crept into her voice only tightened the knots around his lungs. He shook his head, unable to form an appropriate response.

  Chapter Six

  Beth stared at the ginormous stone facing her, unable to believe what she was seeing. These monoliths, the altar she had run her hand down—she could see the fire glowing, though the center of the sacred ring only held a pile of ash. When she closed her eyes, she could hear chanting voices, a low monotonous beat of a hollow drum. Her skin tingled with excitement, apprehension, and no small bit of fear.

  She rubbed her hands down her arms to ward off the chill, despite the heavy layer of her coat. It couldn’t be possible. And yet…

  “Fintan, I don’t understand.”

  “What don’t you understand, Beth?”

  His low, quiet question only made her shiver more. Unwilling to voice the question—or perhaps to hear the answer—she ducked around the northern stone and trudged through snow to the towering boulder on the eastern point. Her fingers automatically sought the smoothed edge, tracing an engraved column of runes. She didn’t need to look, but her gaze followed, concreting the design she’d witnessed countless times in dreams. Only in her sleep, it wasn’t her hand, and she didn’t touch the runes. Another feminine hand, one stai
ned with blood, carved them with a narrow iron pick. The woman’s terror pulled Beth from sleep time and again.

  “What does this say?” Beth demanded sharply.

  He moved across the clearing to her side and ran his index finger down the column. A frown touched his brow. “Odd. I’ve been here a thousand times and never saw these before.”

  “What does it say?” she asked more forcefully.

  Confusion deepened his frown as he lifted his gaze. “It’s unfinished. Or it seems that way.” He hunkered down, tipped his head, and inspected the runic design more closely. “No…” Scraping a short nail over a faint impression, he shook his head. “The beginning has worn off.”

  “Fintan. What does it say?”

  “Something…shall be ensnared by blood.”

  The shiver that rolled down Beth’s spine threatened to drop her to her knees. She wound her arms around her waist and huddled into her coat, grimacing against a flash of her recurring dream. The blood on the woman’s hands that weren’t her own, yet somehow were, stood in sharp relief against the shadow cast by the eastern monolith. The infant’s blood? Had that woman drawn the knife across the babe’s throat?

  “Come on. Let’s get you inside.” Fintan’s hand clamped around her wrist.

  Beth was too shell-shocked to protest. She nodded absently, her thoughts a jumble of twisting horrors, all too vile to consider in any length. His arm wound about her shoulders once more, and this time, she leaned into his side, grateful not only for the warmth he provided but the strength his simple nearness offered.

  “Why do I know this, Fintan?”

  He exhaled audibly. “Sometimes, Beth, a person’s past chooses to communicate with them.”

  Her past? Absurd. She didn’t believe in reincarnation. Didn’t believe in ghosts for that matter. Even if she did, she couldn’t bring herself to buy into the idea that she could have contributed to the death of a child. “That’s ludicrous.”

  “No, not ludicrous.” Steering her gently by the shoulders, he guided her through the trees, out of the shadows and into the inviting halo of light cast from mounted fixtures on the castle’s exterior. “Sometimes we are given knowledge we don’t necessarily want. For reasons we don’t necessarily understand. You’ve been searching for your past. I believe it’s decided to reveal itself.”

  Of all the ridiculous, illogical ideas…

  Beth frowned. Much as she didn’t want to admit it, a certain sense came with the silly utterance. She had been searching for her roots. For two years they’d dug and dug only to hit dead-end after dead-end. Emily happened on a scroll that bore the name Durst—as much as Beth didn’t believe in supernatural communications, she believed in coincidence even less.

  As Fintan reached for the thick iron handle on the heavy wooden door, his other hand tightened on her shoulders. “Maybe you should think about staying a bit longer to find the rest of the answers.”

  Right. Not going to happen. Not with a court date lurking around the corner. “I can’t.”

  “Won’t.”

  Beth skidded to a stop, anger sparking. Who was he to contradict her schedule? “I can’t. I have a court date.”

  “And if a massive snow storm hits, and your plane gets snowed in, what would the judge say?”

  She ground her teeth together, refusing to entertain the discussion. Circumstances beyond her control were a good deal different than moving a court date on a whim. She could get away with rescheduling; no one would know if weather held her up or not. But she wouldn’t. The prospect of spending a few more days in Fintan’s company made her belly tumble too erratically to give the idea thought. A few more days around Fintan would wreck havoc on her senses and destroy her ability to look beyond the here and now.

  Still, she couldn’t deny the fantasy held appeal. Much as she hated to admit it.

  “I have to leave in two days, Fintan. Why don’t you tell me about the scroll I brought you?”

  His fingers tensed against her shoulder. “Let’s go warm up by the fire. We’ll get to the scroll. I want to hear what you saw back there. What you recognized.”

  “Why’s it so important?” she asked as he guided her into his office once more.

  Fintan helped her out of her coat and tossed it over the back of an armchair. He flashed her a grin before dropping into the sofa and beckoning her to join him. “You first, then I’ll explain.”

  Frustrated beyond all reason, Beth took the seat beside him. In all the times she’d conversed with him, he’d never been so vague as he was over this damned scroll. They didn’t have time to be analyzing her odd dream or hashing out the possibilities of an intelligent past that could choose when it wanted to be revealed. Yet, it didn’t look like she’d get anywhere about the scroll without entertaining this nonsense. “Okay, fine. I’ve seen those runes in a dream. A lot. And there’s a woman carving them, whose hand is covered in blood.”

  A smile upturned one corner of his mouth lazily. “Carving them?”

  “Yes, carving them. With a pick. One of those old-fashioned ancient iron picks. It’s asymmetrical, bumpy, and squared off at the top.”

  “To use for punching holes with a stone.”

  “Huh?” She blinked.

  “The flat top.” Twisting, he faced her more fully and his smile broadened. “They’d pound it with a heavy stone and punch holes into hides.”

  “Oh.”

  “You descend from the Selgovae, Beth.”

  He said it so quietly, she had to strain to hear him. When his declaration registered, Beth squinted. “What makes you think that?”

  “Not think. I know. Your ancestor is speaking to you through your dreams.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “I suppose you’re going to tell me something else equally absurd, like this ancestor is that Nyamah person?”

  Fintan chuckled. “Not Nyamah.”

  Thank, God.

  Beth caught herself and pursed her lips. She wasn’t really buying into this was she? On one hand, the possibility she was legitimately experiencing a tie with the metaphysical realm thrilled something deep within her soul. On the other hand, that same possibility contradicted every belief she possessed.

  “The name we stalled on—Durst. It isn’t a name as I originally thought.” Fintan stared at the crackling fire, his voice low and contemplative. “It can also mean tumult. Which fits the era and the struggle the Selgovae faced during the period where our research hit a dead end. The records we found weren’t documenting a man, but an event, and the rest of your early history was lost to that event.”

  “You’re saying that my roots are Selgovae and my ancestors survived the tyranny of the last leaders?”

  He dipped his head in a slow, thoughtful nod. “In a nutshell.”

  She could be Selgovae, the same as Fintan. The thrill bubbling at the base of her spine rocketed to her shoulders. They could very well have more in common than she’d ever hoped. And if they did…

  Squeezing her eyes shut tight, Beth fought to tamp down unacceptable excitement. He was pushing her buttons. Maybe not deliberately, but pushing them all the same. The whole thing was too much for her brain to dissect. Her dreams, stumbling onto the same circle of standing stones that she’d touched in sleep too many times to count—she couldn’t pick out which pieces to analyze first. Even with the dark parts she’d rather not consider, the whole thing sounded like a fairy tale, and she couldn’t help but want to embrace the fiction. She’d been searching for so long.

  But that never-ending hunt was exactly why she couldn’t buy into Fintan’s claims. She wanted answers too badly to be able to differentiate between possible truth and the simple desire to have concrete knowledge of her ancestry. This was too damned impossible to be true anyway. Her past talking to her? Uh huh. Sure.

  It was far easier to comprehend the way Fintan’s wind-blown hair called to her fingers, beckoning them to push it aside so it couldn’t hide the sensual upturn of his incredibly warm mouth. Far easier to understan
d the simplicity of desire and the fact she very much wanted to experience that delicious mouth once more.

  Changing the subject, she flattened her palm against his muscular thigh. “If you aren’t going to look at the scroll with me, instead of speculating about my past why don’t you go with the tangible?”

  Head cocked, he peered at her quizzically.

  “There was a lot of tangible earlier.” She ran her hand down the length of his thigh, savoring the feel of firm hard muscles beneath denim. “Kiss me, Fintan.”

  ****

  Ancestors above, this was a bad idea. A terribly bad idea that appealed to Fintan’s demonic nature beyond reason. If he touched her, if she touched him any more than she already was, all the heat stirring in his veins would reach intolerable limits. He was already aroused, his cock painfully aware of how close that delicate palm rested, his mind filled with the breathtaking vision of Beth standing in the center of the ring of stones.

  And yet, he couldn’t overrule the darker half of his soul with logic. He craved the delectable warmth of her mouth and the honeyed flavor of her kiss. More than he had ever thought possible.

  Leaning forward, he closed the narrow distance between them, obeying her quiet demand. He caught her lips gently, laid his hand over hers to stop its slow path up his tense thigh. The tip of her tongue brushed against his for a heart-stopping moment that eradicated all sense of time and place. His breath caught, his lungs cinched together, and he closed his eyes against the gnawing hunger that hollowed out his gut.

  Then, giving in to a low groan, he slipped one hand into her hair and slanted his mouth across hers, deepening their kiss. Her response was as feral as the untamed flames in the hearth and every bit as hot. The wild tangle of her tongue, the hard fall of her breath against his cheek, the way she clenched her fingers into his thigh all sucked Fintan into a tidal pool of yearning he couldn’t fight. He’d dreamt of this moment one too many times. Held desire in check each time he encountered Beth.