"But I will forgive ye," she crooned. "I must, because ye sacrificed for yer clan. For the treasure due us...and because I have loved ye these long years."
The old woman began to hum. Her swaying took on a frantic rhythm.
Mesmerized by both the warbled tune and the piercing eyes on the wall, Reith stepped from his hiding place.
The cadence of his heart drummed loudly in his ears, muffling the old woman's song. Momentarily, he realized it was not his heartbeat alone he heard, nor the old woman's. He crossed the room, angling to her left, the eyes in the mural following him, compelling him closer. Without breaking the visual lock, he stopped within arm's reach of the MacLachlan matriarch.
His heart pounded faster. Faster. The other's matched in loudness and rhythm.
Shallow, ragged breaths passed through Reith's nostrils. The muraled eyes glowered directly at him, their accusation a shrill lament in Reith's mind.
Something again compelled Reith, and he lowered his gaze. A breath gushed from his lungs, his mind folded onto itself, and his knees threatened to buckle.
Tucked into the wide leather belt on the mural-man's waist was a dirk, the glow of the lightning canopying the man. casting eerie luminance on the black handle, revealing tiny faces amid gleaming jewels. There was no doubt it was the MacLachlan dirk.
Reith's eyes shot up. Tiny flames appeared in the mural-man's pupils. The eyes bored into Reith's mind, delivering an echoing, rumbling message.
Ye know me.
A scream broke the mounting tension of the spell, and Reith found himself staring into the demented pale eyes of the old woman.
She screamed again and struck out at him with a quaking fist. Missing her mark infuriated her all the more and, hissing through her teeth, she raised the candle holder to strike him.
Without thought, Reith sprouted his wings and shrank. He blindly flew down the hall and staircase. Flew blindly into a wind-driven, rainy night. When his tiny body could no longer endure the elemental battering, he returned to human form and hunkered behind a low stone wall.
His mind burned with the image of the mural-man's face.
It canna be wha' I think. Och! But those eyes!
Drenched and shivering, he peered over the wall. To his left, high on a hill, were the standing stones. In the distance to his right, the inn.
I must return to the hotel and call Lachlan, but I canna fly in this deluge.
His teeth chattered and he hugged himself against the tremors racking his body.
Tha' mural! Yer thoughts be daft, he scolded himself.
The fierce dark eyes materialized on his mindscreen. He shivered again, harder, rattling his bones.
Get yer wind. Dash, but I ache!
He tried to will the image from his mind, escape those eyes, to no avail.
Did Taryn see the mural?
What would she have gleaned from it?
Certainly not the impressions bombarding him!
The rain fell harder, its iciness, painful.
"Och, MoNae! Deliver me from this night!"
He knew the only deliverance would come from himself.
Hours later, the rain lessened to a mist. It was fast approaching dawn before he arrived at the inn, shifting into human form behind a low hedge outside the main entrance. He was wet and cold and more exhausted than he could ever recall, his body so drained of energy, he tottered into the small foyer like an old man racked with arthritis. The middle-aged, thin man behind the reception counter lowered his newspaper and eyed him suspiciously.
"Ou' in the rain, were ye?"
Were Reith in a better frame of mind, a witticism would be to his liking, but all he could muster was a weak nod as he dragged his feet toward the staircase. The suite Lachlan had retained was on the third floor. No elevator, of course. By the second step, Reith wanted to curl into a ball and weep like an abandoned babe.
A burgeoning sense of urgency gave him the willpower to make it to his destined landing. Stepping inside the living room of the suite, trembling, his teeth chattering, he closed the door behind him, turned on the light switch, and lumbered to the telephone on the desk.
He told himself he should take a hot shower and change into warm clothes before making the call. Instinct declared he not waste a moment.
His hands shook so, it took three tries of dialing Winston's cell phone number before the numbers were entered correctly. With the first ring, he eased onto the couch arm and hunched his shoulders against the coldness that had become a second skin.
"Hello?"
The voice confused Reith. "Hello. Who be this?"
"Reith? This is Kahl. Where are you?"
"I need to talk to Lachlan, Kahl."
"You sound funny," the boy said, and yawned. "You eating something?"
"Wha'?"
"Peanuts? It's too early for ‘em, don'tcha think?"
"Kahl, I must talk to Lachlan, Roan or Winston!"
"Which one? You woke me up, y'know."
"Kahl—"
"I didn't take the phone, Reith. I found it in Alby's room and forgot—"
"Kahl, please!"
"—to return it. What you doing, Reith?"
"I need to speak wi' Lachlan, Kahl. Now!"
"Geez. You sound mad about something. Are you?"
Reith managed a ragged breath. "I be tired, lad. Can ye fetch Lachlan to the phone?"
"Wouldn't it be easier if I just took the phone to him?"
Reith blinked in perplexity. "Aye. Aye, twould be, wouldna it."
"Yep. Adults don't think too clear in the morning. Aunt Laura—"
"Kahl, m'lad, this is important."
"Okay. Blue misses you, y'know."
Reith gulped past an obstruction forming in his throat. "Does she?"
"Yep. She's been fretting about you staying away on your own." Kahl snickered loudly into the mouth piece. "Women can't make up their minds, huh?"
"Lachlan, Kahl. Please, lad."
"Come home soon, Reith. I miss ya."
Despite his pain and misery, Reith smiled. "As I do ye."
"About Blue," Kahl whispered into the phone. "She still loves you, y'know."
"Tis a fine dream, lad, but—"
"She wouldn't be so worried if she didn't."
The statement gave Reith pause. "Mayhaps, tis so."
"Hey, I may be a kid, but I have eyeballs, y'know. Damn good eyeballs!"
"Ye’re cussin', lad."
"You gonna tell?"
"No."
"You still want to talk to Lachlan?"
"Desperately."
"Desperately, huh? You still sound funny, Reith."
"I be cold and tired, lad, is all. Can ye hurry to Lachlan wi' the phone?"
"Like run?"
"Aye...like run."
"But I always get yelled at for running!"
Again, Reith felt on the verge of succumbing to tears. "This once, laddie, I urge ye to run like the wind. No' on the stairs, ye hear?"
"Best place to run."
"Promise me, laddie."
"Aw, hell—oops! You didn't hear that, right?"
"Hear wha'?"
Kahl giggled. "Okay. I'm on my way."
Reith sighed in relief and rolled his eyes heavenward.
Kahl gave a detailed report of his progress. Stair one. Stair two. Second landing. Stair one. Oops, cut the cheese. Stair two. Oops, burped. Stair three.
Lachlan's gruff voice was finally heard in the background. Shortly, he said into the cell phone, "Reith?"
"Lachlan!" Reith's heart eased its frantic racing.
"Where are you?"
"At the hotel."
"Tis early." Reith heard a door close through the ear piece. "I dinna want to wake Beth," Lachlan said. "As I said, tis early. Have you uncovered somethin' abou' Taryn?"
"No' sure." Reith found it difficult to breathe.
"Wha's wrong, laddie. You dinna sound weel."
"I just got back from the Isle o' Lewis."
"You
returned there? Why?"
"Lachlan—" A deep-chested cough seized Reith.
"Laddie, what's wrong!"
"Got a chill, be all."
"Chill, you say?"
"Tis rainin' and I flew from the isle."
"Fegs, mon!"
"Lachlan, ye must listen to me!"
"Calm down, laddie. We've been worried abou' you."
"I've been at the Astory Inn, Lachlan."
Lachlan's voice dropped to a harsh whisper. "Wha' for?"
"Do ye remember the place?"
"O' course I do. I was also there as a lad."
"Lachlan...wha' disturbed ye abou' goin' to the standin' stones?"
"Why?"
"I need to know!"
A long pause, then, "I dinna know, lad. Mention o' the place gave me the chillies."
"Lachlan, there be a room at the inn, and a mural—"
Pain exploded in the back of Reith's head and his world leapt into spiraling blackness.
"Lad? Laddie? You there? Reith? Reith!"
A beefy hand lowered the black telephone onto its cradle, disconnecting the call.
"Wha' now?" asked Flan MacLachlan, staring down at the crumpled form on the floor.
His younger brother shrugged, snorted, and swept back his wet hair. "Mavis wants him back at the inn."
Flan's eyes rolled up to glare at Dougie. "No duh, ye moron."
When Dougie grunted, Flan puffed out his chest and pointed at Reith's prone form. "Didna I say this one was the maist peculiar o' the trio? When are ye gonna learn to listen to ma intuition?"
"Tis good luck to catch a fairy," Dougie beamed.
"He's a leprechaun, ye moron!" Flan blustered. "Now find somethin' to truss him up."
"Like wha'?"
"Surprise me wi' yer ingenuity."
"Wha' if he shrinks again and flies off?" Dougie frowned. "I dinna think leprechauns have wings."
From an inside pocket of his raincoat, Flan withdrew a syringe in an unopened clear pack, and a small vial filled with clear liquid. "Mavis thought o' his escapin' us."
"Ye goin' to drug him?"
"No, ye fool, I plan to give him a vitamin!"
Dougie's beefy shoulders lifted amicably. "Ah. Right ye are. We dinna need a sick fairy—leprechaun—on our hands. Mavis thinks o' everythin'."
Chapter 10
Nightmares bedeviled Taryn's sleep. She woke with pain pulsing at her temples, her mind mired in mucilaginous layers of lassitude.
Forcing tidbits to surface tweaked her brain. She remembered the gargoyle had been part of the convoluted dream. And the barbarian. Although she couldn't remember the details, an aftermath of gloom mantled her. She wanted to cry, and that was so unlike her. Cry when she was angry, maybe. It happened occasionally. Rarely. But to cry for the sake of—
What?
So, she was trapped below the Callanish Standing Stones. Fodder for a helluva story when she returned topside. Okay, so her host was a gargoyle. More fodder, if anyone believed he existed outside of her imagination. And there was the barbarian. Annoying, yes, but he did stave off her boredom. And she detested being bored. So much so, she had fantasized about him carrying her off and ravaging her.
Why hasn't he? she wondered petulantly.
She splashed her face with cold water from the stone basin, and patted her skin dry with a frond half her size.
Any barbarian worth his salt would have had his way with me by now. Seduced me between the leaves....
A moan rattled in the confines of her skull.
Desperation doesn't become you, Taryn. You need to escape, not get laid.
Popping into her mouth two of the fruit pods growing by the stone basin, she left the den and headed toward the gargoyle's quarters. When she'd last seen him, he slept peacefully, his color back to its variegated grays. The crisis, it seemed, was over. She had fallen asleep questioning her attachment to the creature. Never having had a pet, and someone who had always thought animal lovers two screws short of supporting a hinge, the grief-stricken panic she'd felt when she encountered him on the floor, was profound.
Which didn't make sense.
According to the barbarian, the creature was responsible for her imprisonment down-under. His, too, but she was loath to believe anything that rolled off his over-worked tongue.
There was something in the creature's eyes that tugged on her heartstrings. Intelligence and a depth of understanding that often plagued her contemplations. He wasn't merely an animal. Except for an occasional grunt and the gurgle-growls and purrs she sometimes heard, he made no attempt to communicate via audio means. He talked with his eyes...and through his drawings.
"I don't feel threatened by him," she said, eyeing the vivid blue glow in a pool to her left. "It doesn't make sense he's the one holding me down here. El Beard-o, on the other hand, doesn't have a trustworthy bone in his body. He could have come down here to hide from the police. He's probably a psycho who happened across the creature. But that fall should have killed me. And I should have drowned in the pool. Dammit, why can't I make sense out of this mess?"
She slowed to a stop several feet beyond the threshold to the gargoyle's chamber. He wasn't on the stone slab where she'd left him, and a quick survey of the spacious room didn't locate him.
"Hello?" she sang out. "It's me, Taryn."
A faint sound captured her attention.
Rock scratching against rock?
She edged toward the area blocked by a twenty-foot standing stone riddled with scenes carved into the otherwise smooth surface.
"Hello? Gargoyle?"
She rounded the megalith and crossed half the distance between the stone and a wall etched with scenes. The golden glow from a small pool near the wall, afforded adequate visibility. Despite this, she nearly walked into the gargoyle before seeing his vibrant eyes looking down at her from what seemed the wall across the way. His flesh tones served as perfect camouflage. When he settled on his haunches, facing the wall, she stepped to his side and watched him lift his right index finger and continue his etching.
Rock scratching against rock. Only it was a talon wearing down the hard surface as he diligently concentrated on his current masterpiece.
Taryn lost track of how long she observed him. Each stroke of the talon gradually formed recognizable shapes. At one point, she realized he was depicting his illness, sprawled out on his back, Taryn kneeling beside him. His accuracy for detail left her in awe. The curls trailing down her back and the one spiral lock that often dangled in her face. Her long tapered fingers, in the scene, placed atop his chest. Even her slightly turned up nose was as clear as a photograph.
"You're amazing," she said giddily. Her hands clasped at the base of her spine, she leaned in for a closer look. "In...credible."
The elation pumping adrenaline into her system soon waned. She frowned as he worked on a figure standing in the background. The gargoyle's strokes took on a ferocity that prompted her to ease back and breathe sparingly. Hostility wafted from his rockscape form, the muscles in his back and shoulders bunched with tension. As he detailed the face of the barbarian, the gargoyle's lips curled back, revealing fangs that left a sickening topsy-turvy feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Taryn wanted to run from the room but couldn't. As if mesmerized by the creature's burgeoning anger, she remained still and silent until the scene was finished. She stared at it and, contrary to her fear of him in his present mood, her Scottish blood flowed hotter on tides of outrage.
The look on the barbarian's face was pure evil, and his fists were clenched at his sides. Taryn clearly remembered the bearded wonder being ticked off and perhaps apathetic to the creature's misery, but not once had she seen him give the ailing creature a look like the one carved into the stone.
"That's wrong." Taryn gulped when furious eyes swung to meet hers. "He...actually helped," she said, wondering why she was defending the barbarian. "He...he had me fetch water to cool—"
The gargoyle released a cr
escendoing roar, its vibrations bleeding into the marrow of her bones. Taryn clapped her hands over her ears, but it did little to quell the piercing pain in her eardrums. Before she could react, he cast off, a wing knocking her to the ground. When she regained her wind, she scrambled to her feet and dashed for the only exit.
The whoosh of massive wings beating air came upon her from behind. On her mindscreen sprang an image of the creature's feral countenance, saliva dripping from exposed, gleaming fangs as the mouth grew larger as if to devour her whole. She screamed and leapt-dove across the threshold. Instead of landing on the rock and dirt floor, she found herself ascending with dizzying speed, the gargoyle's talons wrapped about her middle like a zealously tied corset.
She screamed again, the sound harshly resonating off the cavern walls of the ever-darkening heavens of the creature's world. Momentarily, all sensation deserted her. Her lungs struggled for air. She was aware of her heart pounding, yet couldn't feel it against her inner chest wall.
Why are you doing this? she wept in silence.
The barbarian said they couldn't die. Even if that were true, how long could her mind ward off the encroaching madness?
All sensation returned. Her heart pumped violently, out of control, a rabid animal clawing to escape from behind her breast. Air roared in her ears. A foul, bitter taste coated her tongue—the taste of terror. Her gaze locked onto a blue glow far below. Very far below. A pinpoint awaiting the end of her plummet.
Friction scraped her exposed skin, now moist and cold with perspiration.
She had no sense of the gargoyle. He had dropped her. Dropped her as would a bird of prey tired of carrying off some burdensome food source. Dropped her as though her care of him had not mattered a whit in the vast scheme of what the barbarian called the creature's "vengeance."
The pinpoint widened. Widened. She hit the pool, the water's surface making her feel as if she had broken every bone, torn every muscle and ligament, and been stripped of her skin, leaving nerves exposed to further torture.
She sank through the depths with uncanny slowness. Sank until she lay in a fetal position on the bottom, atop a bed of water grass, weeping and unable to stop.
How many times had Roan and Lachlan lectured her on her callous behavior? Expected her to fit in? Sympathize? Care!
Time Everlastin' Book 5 Page 13
