Braving Fate (The Mythean Arcana Series Book 1)

by Hall, Linsey

“Dreams?” He hoped his dread wasn’t evident in his voice. How much was she remembering?

  “Yes. It all makes a terrible kind of sense. I’ve had these dreams forever, and they’ve always made me a step shy of crazy, especially during my childhood. It’s like I know myself, but something is missing. Like I’m living a second, horrible life when I’m asleep.” She shook her head. “God, it’s hard to explain.” She hesitated before speaking further, as if unsure she wanted to tell him. “I’m dying. It’s cold and dark.” She shuddered. “Damp.”

  His arms ached to wrap around her, to protect her. The way he hadn’t so many centuries ago.

  “I’m in the arms of the man I love, but he’s betrayed me. I don’t know why or how, but I think that’s the key.”

  Betrayed her? His jaw tightened. Her soul was still angry after two thousand years? But the love she’d spoken of hadn’t been past tense. “In the dream, do you still love him?”

  “I don’t know. It was complicated. But if I did, he’s long dead, isn’t he? My dreams take place more than a thousand years ago, at least. If we’re leaving Edinburgh, how am I supposed figure all this out? Are we going to another university, one with a library? Other scholars?”

  They passed through the grand front doors of the building and stepped out into the muted sunlight filtering through heavy gray rainclouds. The cobblestones of the courtyard gleamed dully, a sheen of rainwater darkening them. It was unnaturally silent, with only rustling oak leaves breaking the silence. The smell of wet leaves and grass gave the morning an earthy scent that always reminded him of the calm before a battle.

  “Nay, we’re going to my home. It’s known only by a few. Anyone tracking you won’t be able to find you.” And he could keep her from figuring out what her task was so that he could accomplish it for her. The sight of her this morning had only confirmed that she didn’t have a chance of surviving it.

  He opened the passenger door of his car for her and she slipped gracefully inside. His gaze followed her. He needed a bigger car. She’d be sitting far too close.

  He skirted around the front of the car and slid in under her watchful gaze, then turned the key in the ignition. The engine purred to life. It was far more powerful than the body of the subtle sedan suggested it would be. After centuries of living without modern conveniences, he appreciated them all the more. Particularly cars. Traveling by horseback was too slow. He might have saved Boudica had he been able to move more quickly than his horse allowed. But then they would both be dust by now.

  They passed through the elaborate gates of the Immortal University and headed north.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked. “We can stop at a café on the outskirts of town if you want breakfast.”

  “No. Food is the last thing on my mind right now.”

  “Aye, all right.”

  They rode in silence for a few minutes until she asked, “If we go to your house, how am I going to figure this out? I need to start researching. Do you have the resources that I’ll need?”

  “Like what?”

  “Books, of course.”

  Books, right. Those must be the resources she’d mentioned, but he was having a hard time paying attention to her words when she was so close to him. From the exasperation in her voice, she was noticing.

  “How am I supposed to learn about history without books?”

  “Ah. Such a scholarly lassie.”

  She arched a brow. “Well, I am a professor.”

  “Aren’t you a bit young to be a professor?” He looked sideways at her, skepticism plain on his face.

  “No. I’m not tenure track yet, but I will be soon, if my promotion goes through. It’s possible to attain a professorship before you’re thirty in certain fields. If you work hard enough, that is.

  Impressive. “Well, I’ve a library at my house. You’ll have access to the books you need.” He had a large collection—two thousand years of solitude resulted in an impressive collection of reading material—but he’d be hiding most of the books about Boudica before Diana could look at them. He didn’t know what kind of information she might find about her upcoming task, but he wanted to find it first. “Do you really expect to find the answers in books?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m not just going to sit around and wait for another catalyzing event.”

  “Nay, I suppose that doesn’t sound very appealing.”

  She let out a little laugh. He felt a burst of pride at the sound, then crushed it. Idiot. She wasn’t his, couldn’t be his, and it didn’t matter if he could make her laugh.

  Though the interior of the car wasn’t warm, he turned up the air to cool his overheated skin, but it made her scent drift toward him. Clean and bright. He clenched his fists on the wheel and shifted in his seat. The familiar roads passed in silence until they were well out of sight of the university. He could barely restrain himself from peppering her with questions about her life.

  “Where is your home?” she asked.

  He glanced at her, but she was staring out the window. Look at me.

  Instead, she stared out at the damn mountains. They would be in the Highlands soon, where the hills would turn to mountains and the roads would wind ever higher, twisting and turning amongst the rock-falls and the sheep.

  “On the cliffs of the Isle of Mull, overlooking the sea. It’s in the northwest, but we’ll be taking the more remote northern roads before turning west. We’ll avoid Glasgow, though it’s faster. Sitting in traffic with your pursuers on the loose is no’ a grand idea.”

  “You think?”

  He felt a grin tug at his lips.

  “So, when we get there, you’ll be protecting me from the monsters while I research in your library?” This all sounded like bad business to her.

  “I’ll no’ let you out of my sight.”

  “But you said they can’t find the house, right?”

  “Aye. It will be harder to find than any other, at least.”

  “Unlike mine.”

  His head whipped toward her. “What do you mean, unlike yours?”

  “The same kind of monster that attacked me at Arthur’s Seat broke into my house. I killed it, but I came to Edinburgh because I was afraid there were more looking for me back in Clayton.”

  “You really killed a demon? When did you learn to fight?” He sounded impressed.

  “I haven’t,” she answered. “I’d never been in a fight before.”

  “Then how’d you do it?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t really feel like myself. At first I was afraid, but then it hit me in the face. And I realized it could kill me. I had to protect myself. I started hitting it with a cast iron skillet. They’re very heavy, you know, well suited to fending off an attacker.”

  He chuckled. The sound reached into her and tightened something in the best way possible.

  “I eventually grabbed its knife and stabbed it.” Then collapsed on the floor in a shaking mess. Won’t add that part.

  “Well done, lassie.”

  She flushed at the compliment.

  “That’s one thing we’ll be doing when we reach Mull,” he said. “I’ll be teaching you to defend yourself. You’ve entered a violent world, and you’re going to need to learn how to get along in it.”

  Her stomach turned over at the thought of learning to fight, of being in situations that required it of her. But being able to harness her latent skill to protect herself was necessary. Sure, the massive warrior next to her could probably fight off demons with one arm tied behind his back, but he might not always be around. And there were monsters out there.

  She swiveled to look at him. “Wait, you keep saying demon. Do you mean an actual demon? From hell?”

  She had to get out of this new life. Monsters were scary, but a demon from hell was so much worse. Probably because demons proved the existence of both monsters and hell, two things she’d happily believed didn’t exist until now.

  “Aye, lassie. From hell.”

  “But how ar
e they getting out?”

  “Depends on which hell they’re from.”

  “Which hell? As in, more than one?” She swallowed hard, not sure if she wanted to hear this.

  “Aye. There’s a lot of them. As many as there are religions that created them. Though mortals have warred for centuries over the one true religion, they’ve got it wrong. Most religions are real. Belief is the key, and if enough people believe in something, it becomes truth. The heavens and hells of different religions are separate, but equally true, realities called afterworlds. But they normally doona come into contact.”

  “Come into contact? Like people can go back and forth from earth to hell or from one hell to another?”

  “Nay, mortals can only get into a heaven or hell through death and they canna get back out once they are there. Some Mytheans can go back and forth.”

  “What about the demons that are chasing me? Where are they from?”

  “Doona know. I doona recognize their type. They could be escaping somehow from a dead religion’s afterworld that has long since been closed off.”

  Oh crap. A vision of murderers and thieves attempting to escape hell and overrunning earth made her stomach pitch. “How often does this happen? Shouldn’t somebody be keeping control of this?”

  “That’s what the university tries to do.”

  “Shouldn’t it be the FBI or something? Scotland Yard?” Wasn’t that what they used over here?

  He laughed. “Mortals canna know about this. Anyway, it’s no’ a brute force operation—usually. It’s more of a diplomatic or intellectual one. The university doesn’t teach many classes—it’s more of a research institution that tries to keep a handle on what heavens and hells exist. When necessary, we keep the peace, either through diplomacy with the gods, magic, or the Praesidium.”

  “So, if it’s all about belief, are you an immortal in the Praesidium because of your religion?”

  “Nay, those of us called immortals are simply those whose bodies won’t deteriorate with age. And we’re damned hard to kill. The title Mythean suits us better than immortal, since we’re all immortal, in one way or another.”

  “Everyone at the university?”

  “Everyone on earth. It’s no’ easy to snuff out the energy of a soul. Those people who die on earth lose only their physical bodies. Their soul and their consciousness pass on to the next place they believe they’ll go—Christian Heaven or Hell, Valhalla, Elysium, Hades, reincarnation, take your pick. Mytheans are aware of the existence of the heavens and hells, though we spend most of our time on earth.”

  “Belief is all it takes?”

  “Belief is like a window. It allows people to see the road they need to take to get to the next place. For mortals, earth is just one stop on a very long journey.”

  “Then why would someone ever choose hell?”

  “Ah, lassie, that’s the beauty of the universe. Just because you believe in heaven and think you’ll end up there doesn’t necessarily mean you will. You’re still subject to the general rules of your religion, though the university still doesn’t know all the details of how that works.”

  “That’s a good argument for ascribing to a religion that has no hell, then, isn’t it?”

  He grinned and the sight made her catch her breath. “Truer words were never spoken.”

  “Were you born a Mythean?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I was made one when I was invited to the Praesidium. When the last of my family died, I…”

  “You?” she prodded gently.

  He shifted in his seat, clearly debating whether or not to tell her. She wanted to prod him again, but resisted.

  “My family was killed before I was made immortal. My mother and sisters—gone to our enemy’s blade in an afternoon. A year later, so was the woman I loved. I...failed them.” His jaw clenched. “When I attacked the army responsible, I dinna intend to come back.”

  “You were going to kill yourself?”

  “Nay. I expected one of them to handle that job. But none of them were up to the task. Apparently killing that many soldiers in one go impressed Aerten, the Celtic goddess of fate. She granted me a post as an Mythean Guardian.”

  “But why would you want to live forever?”

  “I dinna. Still doona. But I failed my family. This is a way—” He swallowed hard before continuing. “—to make amends.”

  “You must have loved them very much.”

  “Aye.”

  “It’s been a long time since then, hasn’t it?”

  He hesitated, a frown pulling at his mouth. “Over three hundred years.”

  “Wow, that’s an incredibly long time.”

  He nodded, shifted in his seat. “You have family back in America?”

  “No.”

  “At all?”

  “No. My parents died.” Her hands tightened into fists.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I’m not. She almost clapped a hand to her mouth. What a terrible thought. She was an awful person. “Thanks.”

  “Do you miss them?”

  “My mother died in a car accident when I was an infant, so I never knew her. I’d have like to, though. And my father was—” She racked her brain for a nice way to describe her father. “—very controlling. Very. He cared. I’m sure he did. But he was a difficult man to live with.”

  That was the nicest way she could possibly put it. He’d suffocated her with a million tiny little rules that dictated every aspect of her life, from her clothes to her friends to what she ate for dinner. The yelling and throwing things that resulted from not following his rules had made teenage rebellion not an option. The rules would be followed. But he had cared for her, in his way. She had to think so.

  “He died of a heart attack right before I went to college.” And his death had allowed her to study whatever she’d wanted. The sudden freedom had been exhilarating, the adjustment difficult. Over time, she’d managed.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She could do nothing but nod, caught up in memories of the past.

  They neared their destination for the night an hour later. It would take two days to reach his home on Mull. The ferry only ran occasionally at this time of year, on the edge of the wilderness of Glencoe. Because this part of Glencoe was closer to the coast, the mountains had become more rolling and less peaked. The valleys had supported flocks of sheep for hundreds of years, shepherds tending them as the sun rose and set countless times on the faces of mountains that never changed. Now, the sun shone through the low, wispy gray clouds, spreading dim beams of light across the valley.

  He turned right off the main road. After about ten miles on one of the tiny lanes, he pulled up to the old inn he’d been staying at for centuries. Ownership hadn’t changed, nor had the interior, and he appreciated the familiarity. Watching the world change could be as wearying as it was exciting.

  “Is this where we’re spending the night?” She scanned the stone front that had been carefully built so many years ago. Flowerboxes were fixed to the windowsills, but frost had killed the plants that awaited the first winter snow. What had originally been a four-room mountain inn had been expanded over the years until there were nearly a dozen rooms from various periods fitted together in a hodge-podge beneath the slate roof.

  “Aye. There aren’t many visitors to this part of Scotland so close to winter. There shouldn’t be many other people here, which is good.”

  “In case there’s another attack?”

  “Aye. It’d be better to be away from people so there’s less to explain.”

  “I see.” She adjusted her sweater nervously.

  They checked into their room at the pub bar, which also acted as an informal reception desk, and with her overnight bag slung over his shoulder, they walked through the winding corridor to the back of the inn. He slipped the skeleton key into the lock, jiggled it, and the old door popped open. He ducked under the lintel as they walked inside and slung the bag onto the small dou
ble bed.

  “Are you staying next door?” she asked.

  “Nay.”

  “Down the hall?”

  “Nay again.”

  “You can’t stay here.” She glanced pointedly at the bed, but as she did so, she wondered how much she meant it.

  “Aye, lassie, I am. I’m no’ leaving your side ’til I know that you’re safe.”

  Diana frowned. “How long could that possibly be?”

  “A while. Though when we’re at my home you’ll be more secure, so we won’t have to share a chamber. Doona worry. I’ll take the chair.” He nodded at the big chair near the window.

  “Um, okay. Thanks.” Was she happy about that? Strangely, she didn’t feel the relief she’d expected. In fact, she didn’t know what else to say, and suddenly the room felt very tiny. “I guess I’m going to go shower.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  What the hell have I gotten into? Diana’s mind tumbled over itself as she tried to relax beneath the gentle fall of water, the thin stream leaving a lot to be desired in the pressure department.

  One day she had a nice stable life and the next she had a destiny that involved fleeing from demons while she tried to figure out the mystery of her past.

  It sounded crazy. She shivered despite the heat of the shower. This mess felt like a carrot being dangled in front of her starving rabbit self. Finally, a chance to figure out the nightmares that had stalked her to this day. All she had to do was get past some demons. No big deal.

  Just like the wildly attractive man now pacing in the room beyond the door. What was she supposed to do about him? She didn’t date much because of her workload, and she’d certainly never been around a man quite like him.

  His past was tragic, though how he dealt with it was admirable. She felt strangely comfortable in his presence, despite their short acquaintance—as though he could actually protect her from this nightmare.

  Diana sighed, shut off the water, and grabbed a towel from the rack. She swept the curtain back from the old clawfooted tub that had been converted into a shower. She shivered as she stepped out of the tub onto the tile floor, then immediately slipped in a puddle.