As if guided by an unseen force, he led Roan back to the first floor and into another hall. Again, he booted a door open and stepped into darkness. Roan found a switch. Light from two lamps on each side of the door, flooded the room, forcing them to squint until their eyes adjusted.
Lachlan was first to make out the larger than life figure in the mural across from them. Staggering back to the wall to the left of the doorway, he balled a section of his shirt in a clenched fist, and held it fast against the painful sledge-hammering behind his breast.
He couldn't breathe, only stare in muted horror at the riveting dark eyes of the man in the mural.
Roan took several hesitant steps toward the mural, the hairs on his arms and nape squirming against his flesh. He, too, stared at the eyes, and like Lachlan, believed they were fixed on him.
An illusion, surely. Or was it?
Roan broke the visual lock and forced himself to face Lachlan. "Who is he?"
Lachlan, unusually pale, his nostrils flaring, quaked with uncontrollable fear.
"Lannie!"
Lachlan's gaze cut to Roan's. "I dinna know."
Reluctantly, Roan glanced over his shoulder. "Yer mither was a MacLachlan." Roan approached Lachlan, and stood blocking his view of the painting. "He must be a relative," he said, and squeezed Lachlan's shoulder in a gesture of comfort. "You share the same eyes."
"No!"
"Lannie," Roan said in a guttural whisper, "I've seen tha' verra same look o' rage in yers." Lachlan sagged against the wall, his skin coated in a fine sheen of perspiration. "I know who he is. Aye, I know."
Again, Roan glanced at the mural. "Broc MacLachlan?"
Lachlan nodded then swiped a shaky arm across his sweat-stung eyes. "Aye. Ma mither told me some abou' him."
"Yer great, great-great uncle or somethin'."
Lachlan nodded. "He brought abou' a curse on ma mither's clan." Stepping around Roan, Lachlan willed his weakened legs to carry him within three feet of the mural. His hands clenched at his sides, he stared into the face of his ancestor. "Wha' in God's name was he, Roan? It canna be true I ever kept in ma breast such hatred as I see in his eyes."
Roan positioned himself behind Lachlan. "I thought so once. I thought you evil once as weel, but...no' like him."
A tremor of something Lachlan couldn't define, washed through him. "No' evil, Roan. Embittered. And, aye, the truth o' it is, I have known his kind o' rage. May God grant me the strength to never succumb to it again."
A distinct click spun them around in the direction of the door. A man stood at the threshold, the gun he held in a steady hand, trained on them.
"Mair guests," he sneered. "Uninvited guests, aye, but nonetheless welcome. I take it ye came wi' the wee one."
"Wee one?" Roan asked, poorly feigning ignorance.
"Come, come now," the gun-waver chortled. "Tis a grand night for a sacrifice! As dear Mavis would say, the mair the merrier."
Livid, Lachlan stepped forward, freezing in place when Roan gripped his arm and whispered, "Remember Beth and yer babes, mon! You may no' survive anither daith!"
"Wha' are ye two chatterin' abou'?" the stranger demanded.
Roan airily shrugged and managed a simpering grin. "Tellin' ma friend it is a fine night for a proper sacrifice. Especially one to honor a MacLachlan. Look in his eyes, mon! He's one o' you!"
The stranger glowered at Lachlan then, paling, drew back as if stunned with recognition. His gaze shifted from Lachlan to the eyes in the mural, and blinked in wonder at the former. "Aye. No doubt ye are from his clan. Come wi' me." He shook the gun. "Dinna make me shoot ye. Might disrupt the forces gatherin' to honor the sacrifices."
The plural usage rammed Lachlan and Roan in the gut.
"What's yer name, mon," Roan asked.
"Dougie."
"Lead on, Dougie," Roan said affably, and linked an arm through Lachlan's to keep him from lunging at the man.
* * *
Blue barely managed to squeeze through an ancient keyhole of a door overly armed with outer deadbolts. It was this fact and the burly man who stood guard that convinced her Reith was inside the basement room. She cleared the brass aperture and hovered in the faint stream of light poking through her entry point. Other than that, the room beyond was blacker than the blackest black.
She realized she was shivering violently. It wasn't from the cold dampness in the room, nor the fathomless darkness. Blind and deaf, she would still know Reith's presence, and she sensed it now as if he were within her reach. She ventured deeper into the unknown, the beating of her wings seeming loud, the haunting reverberation clawing at her hammering heart. It was all she could do not to call out to him.
Deciding to chance using magic, she cast out a hand. Fairy dust spilled from her palm, its golden luminance instantly cutting the inky gloom. A slow quarter turn revealed Reith. He lay on a single cot against the wall across from the door, bundled with duct tape and spider webs like some creature for slaughter. She transformed into human size at the same moment she sat alongside him. Her wings remained engaged on the chance she would have to make a hasty exit with him.
She clamped a hand over her mouth to keep a sob from escaping. Reith lay on his front, his head turned in her direction. Duct tape covered his mouth, and his clammy skin had a grayish hue.
"What have they done to you?" she wept in a whisper.
She brushed trembling fingers against his moist brow, and shrank back at the iciness of his skin. His breathing was shallow, his eyes motionless beneath the curtain of his lids.
Blue used magic to dissolve the webs, and her teeth to rip apart the tape binding his wrists and ankles. She eased him onto his back, careful to work his right arm from beneath his body weight, and gingerly peeled the duct tape from his face.
Not once did he flinch.
She cupped his head with her hands. "Reith!" she said in a harsh whisper. "Reith, wake up!"
The rapid staccato of her heartbeat pounded in her ears. Taking his hand between her own, she tremulously kissed the back of his fingers.
No reaction.
Hot tears spilled down her cheeks. Her wings quivered. She stared through a blur at his mouth, remembering a time when she had longed so desperately to know his kisses, the pain had nearly expired her.
Had?
Squeezing her eyes shut, she bent and pressed her mouth against his. She wept from depths she hadn't known existed, the salty release bathing his face with each caress from her own.
No reaction.
If not for the faint pulse at the base of his throat, she would believe him dead.
"Don't you dare die on me!" she cried wretchedly, and roughly clamped her hands to each side of his face. "We're not through!"
A low rumble came from deep inside his throat.
"Reith?"
Swiping aside the wetness on her eyes and cheeks, she kissed him again, this time lingering in hopes it would penetrate the realm in which he was trapped. She straightened when he moaned again.
"Reith?"
His eyelids fluttered up fractionally then closed. Fluttered. Closed. On impulse, she kissed each lid, unknowingly squeezing his hand in hers.
"Blue," he rasped.
She sat up, her breath coming in short bursts. His glazed eyes stared at her in wonderment, the blueness of his irises dull yet radiant.
"Are you drugged?"
He worked his dry mouth. His eyes rolled then locked with hers. "Aye. Feel...numb."
"We're getting you out of here."
He attempted to shake his head and winced. "No. Canna risk...yer life. Go."
"If you think I'll leave you, you don't know me at all!" she bristled, her wings flicking in cadence to her words.
His eyelids drooped. "Canna...fight this. Tell...Lachlan—"
"He and Roan are upstairs."
Reith's eyes widened with fear, and his fingers clasped her hand painfully. "Get them away!"
"Not without you!"
"Blue—"
<
br /> Again his eyes widened, straining in their sockets. It took her a moment to realize that he was staring at something behind her. By the time she snapped her head around, a sharp prick jabbed her shoulder, followed by a rush of nauseating heat beneath the surrounding skin.
She jumped to her feet, stepped toward a looming object an arm's length away, and swayed. Her wings grew suddenly leaden, her brain an alien object floating in outer space.
A thick haze swooped down over her vision, and a roaring cascade dominated her hearing. She didn't hear Reith's vain attempt to launch from the cot. Didn't hear his outcry when he was once again injected.
An even blacker darkness sucked her down into a stranglehold of nothingness, where not even her sheltered love for Reith could offer her escape.
* * *
The idea of a woman threatening their lives didn't sit well with Lachlan and Roan. Katherine, sensing the former posed the most threat, kept the muzzle of the gun pressed between his shoulder blades, and didn't hesitate to prod him with it if his steps slowed or if he shifted his head in the least.
Mavis led the group into the drizzling night. Dougie carried an unconscious Reith. Flan carried Blue. Behind Katherine, Katie, Charles and Gil followed like mourners at a wake. Only these mourners carried altar clothes and other paraphernalia Lachlan didn't deem necessary to question. It didn't take an astute mind to figure out they were the articles to be used in the sacrifice.
It occurred to Lachlan that not a nocturnal sound greeted them as they headed away from the inn and in the direction of the standing stones. No insects, birds, rodents. Nothing but a sepulchral heaviness in the air.
Always the same conclusion snagged him. The slightest move could incite one of the MacLachlan clan. The risk to Reith, Blue and Roan was not worth venting his outrage.
Yet, if he did nothing, all their lives would end this miserable night, and at a scene he wasn't particularly fond of calling his final resting place. Instead of a proper headstone, the megaliths would crown their passing.
Megaliths that for reasons beyond his comprehension, instilled a terrible fear in him.
"Lannie," Roan whispered.
Before Lachlan could respond, Katherine's cold voice rent the night. "There's no need for talk." To emphasize her statement, she poked Lachlan in the back, the hard lip of the gun barrel penetrating his damp linen shirt and making him wince.
"Ye're daft if you believe you can—"
He bit back the remainder of his words when she again prodded him between the shoulder blades. He reeled around, stopping the procession. "Fegs, womon! You jab me one mair time and I'll introduce you to a real Scot temper!"
Katherine was unimpressed with his bluster and towering height, for her eyes remained as unemotional as a rock. "Move. One more stunt, ma-lad, and you'll be buried where ye stand."
"Lannie," Roan said in a hushed voice, the concern in his tone dousing the fires burning in Lachlan's gut.
"Aye," Lachlan growled, and faced forward. His teeth were clenched so tightly, a muscle throbbed along his jawline. Briefly, he met Mavis' pale eyes. They stared through him, their maniacal gleam penetrating the cloud-induced semi-darkness like a demonic beacon. When she tired of the stare-down, she continued on, humming a haunting melody he didn't recognize.
The climb up the hill to the standing stones proved difficult for the Baird House men. With their hands bound behind them, their balance was precarious at best. Now and then, Lachlan cast Roan a furtive glance. The man's face was masked in granite, making his thoughts difficult to determine. Lachlan sensed his friend was overwhelmed with helplessness and a belief their fate was unchangeable. He wanted to shake Roan, shout at him to cling to the hope they would all escape unscathed.
His mind drifted back to 1844, when he lay slowly bleeding to death, walled up in the tower at Baird House. Even with the onset of cold that warned him he was dying, he had clung to life. Had clung to the existence he had taken for granted and all it represented. Perhaps that tenacity had been what enabled him to tap into the energy in the grayness and remain earth-fast for a century and a half.
Death was an unacceptable alternative to life.
By the time the group crested the hill and the standing stones stood magnificently before them, Lachlan's ire beat back any remnants of the fear he'd earlier experienced. The sounds of feet plodding over boggy earth intruded upon the otherwise stillness. His mind absorbed each stone the procession passed and, as they neared the center menhir, a burning, tingling sensation swept beneath his skin and insinuated itself into his brain.
His heart raced and his lungs strained for each breath. It was not fear igniting his adrenaline, but a vibration seeping up through the ground. A vibration he knew was somehow connected to him alone.
"Halt!" Mavis ordered.
Like well-trained soldiers, the family obeyed. Roan and Lachlan exchanged a brief glance, then Lachlan craned his neck to see around the old woman.
Hot bile rose and crashed against the walls of his throat.
"Sweet Jesus," he said sickly, and lifted his face to the cold mist.
Above an empty cairn, two altars had been hastily organized. Mavis positioned herself between them at the far end, facing her audience, and standing over Blue and Reith when they were laid upon the wet stones.
Her old eyes lifted to the heavens, her euphoric expression mocking the solemnity of the ritual to come.
Katherine pressed the gun into Lachlan's nape. Katie held a kitchen knife to Roan's throat. The others gathered around the old woman, dressing her in a long, white robe then placing white cloths across the chests of the unconscious fairies. Lastly, Mavis opened a wooden chest she had carried from the inn, removed two objects, and passed the box to Charles. To Dougie she handed a filigreed silver bowl. The second item she held upside down in front of her face, as if to bestow upon the onlookers a most divine privilege.
Roan gagged. Katie withdrew the blade in time for him to fall to his knees, where his stomach purged its contents. For a moment, Lachlan thought Katie had cut Roan's throat, and quaked with rage and revulsion. When Katie yanked him back onto his feet and repositioned the blade, Lachlan's ability to hold back, snapped.
"I spit on the blood o' ma mither's clan!" he shouted, glaring at the insidious sacrificial dirk in Mavis' hands. Three twisted, serrated blades, arranged to form a circle. Designed to isolate a heart with a single plunge. A few twists and the organ could easily be extracted, intact.
"Mind yer tongue!" Katherine snarled.
"I am the Lachlan Ian Baird, laird o' Baird House in Crossmichael."
"Och, he's the bloody ghost, is he?" Dougie laughed, but quieted when the intensity in Lachlan's eyes penetrated his slow reasoning.
"God, hisself will tell you I'm no' a mon to reckon wi'. Dead or alive, I will kill you all if one ounce o' blood is spilled from ma friends!"
Katherine shoved the muzzle into his left ear. "Ye will no' cheat us o' freein' our leader."
Despite the pain the metal caused him, Lachlan turned his head until he could stare directly into the woman's eyes. "Take lives to free a legend? A myth?"
"He has the riches due our clan for centuries!" Charles said.
Lachlan's eyes moved to each face. "Wha' good are riches to the dead? I should know. You canna take it wi' you."
"Let us be done wi' the ceremony!" Mavis sang out. She turned to Reith, the dirk held high above his chest. "Katherine, I need ye across from me."
"Give me the gun," said Gil, and stepped into her place.
Katherine stood on the opposite side of the alter, her gaze locked on Reith's expressionless face. Without prompting, she slid the cloth over his features, and unbuttoned his shirt, exposing his bare chest.
In a low warble, Mavis initiated a Gaelic chant. The clan joined in, the sinister tones of their unified voices charging the air around them.
"Leave them be!" Roan cried, and gasped when the blade Katie held, nicked the flesh beneath his Adam's apple.
"Tis a terrible way to die, suffocatin' on yer own blood!" Katie hissed into his ear. "Interrupt again, and I'll slit ye from ear to ear!"
The chanting resumed, their voices more powerful. Overhead, thunder rumbled and electrical currents gathered. The chant crescendoed as a white-hot ball of light descended over the site. Countless slivers of lightning burst from the globe and clawed at the top of each menhir. Their luminance suffused the area, creating a protective, impenetrable dome that shielded the clan and its prisoners from the rain and any chance of outside interference.
With sickening clarity, Lachlan saw the dirk lift higher in the old woman's hands, the maniacal rapture in her expression as obscene as her intent.
The chanting rose in volume. Lachlan felt it sing along his nerves, infest his blood. He glanced at Roan. The man's shocky features told Lachlan that his friend was indeed resigned to bear witness to the slaughter of the fairies. And perhaps, resigned to his own impending death.
Not Lachlan.
Pain clutched his chest as an extraneous heartbeat drummed in his ears, out of cadence with his own. As seconds passed, they became one, and the burning in his gut intensified. From an undesignated source, he experienced an infusion of strength, an infusion of hope. Someone or something tapped into his mind, probed, found its answer and withdrew, leaving Lachlan imbued with steeled determination to thwart the ritual.
His mind raced to formulate a plan, but concentration was elusive, the fairies' prone and vulnerable forms, disrupting his focus. Unless he got beyond his fear, beyond even the slightest niggling doubt in his ability to change the course of their destinies, all was lost.
Agony capped his skull as if to further hinder his ability to think his way clear of their predicament. A jarring quake seized the ground. Within seconds, the mystical ball of light vanished, Mavis, Gil, Katie and Roan toppled over, Katherine fell to her knees and struck her chin on the edge of Reith's slab, and Lachlan, somehow retaining his balance, sprinted forward through a deluge of rain.
Mavis rose adroitly for a woman her age. Her eyes demented, the white robe soaked and clinging to her bony frame, she swung up the dirk above Reith. Lachlan sprang atop the altar and kicked the dirk from the old woman's hands. The force of his action caused him to lose his balance. His buttocks hit the hard stone, while his back and shoulders impacted with Reith's chest.
Time Everlastin' Book 5 Page 18
