Now what was she going to do? Was she going downstairs to meet up with him? Was she really going to travel to Europe and spend the rest of her natural life with a man she couldn’t trust to be honest with her?
She certainly couldn’t stay in this room. She’d better go downstairs and face him, one way or the other. She couldn’t exactly turn herself invisible and slip off without saying anything to him. Okay, so she could, but she wouldn’t. She wasn’t that type.
She gathered her shawl and gave the room one last passing glance before she left it behind forever. She found Louis standing in the inn door, looking across the yard, and he turned to face her when she came downstairs. His clear eyes studied her in that inscrutable way that left nothing hidden.
Did she give him that same sense of seeing everything he’d rather keep buried? Did he feel that heady vertigo looking into her eyes?
He inclined his head toward the road, and they both ventured out into the clear morning. The sun melted her apprehension away. She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath of fresh air. Everything was going to be all right. She could do this and face this.
She opened her eyes to find Louis smiling down at her. His features registered the same relieved pleasure. He took her hand. They would confront this future together, whatever it might bring them.
At that moment, something smashed against her head. Terrible, sickening heaviness plummeted through her guts. Blackness draped over her, and she couldn’t keep her eyes open.
She tried to turn around to see what it was, but her body wouldn’t obey. Her legs turned to water under her and drained out through her feet, crumpling her to the ground.
Chapter 30
As Ellen folded at the knees and dropped before Louis’s eyes, he came face-to-face with a black-haired man standing behind her. A thick black beard covered his face, and his black eyes flashed as the man hauled back a stout cudgel over his shoulder to strike. Louis caught one glimpse of the deep blue pattern with thin red lines on the man’s tartan. He was Gunn.
Louis ducked to avoid the blow. The club zinged over his head. He reacted on fiery adrenaline scorching through his veins and slammed his fist into the man’s crotch. When the man doubled over, Louis beheld dozens of kilted men rushing to surround the inn from all sides.
The attacker who hit Ellen exploded in rage, leaped up, and charged Louis. Louis veered out of the way to send the man tumbling into his approaching companions. Louis made a desperate dive at Ellen’s inert form, but he never got there before seven men pounced on him from behind. They drove him facedown on top of her. He covered her to protect her from them, but they grappled his arms away and flung him onto his back.
Noise and confusion reigned all around the inn. Louis heard men’s shouting voices inside the house. Stable boys ran for cover, and the scullery maid bolted screaming out of the back door to escape.
The Gunns swarmed everywhere, but Louis never saw what they were doing. The big man he punched stalked toward him with a drawn saber aimed at Louis’s chest.
Louis pawed at his hip for his own weapon, but someone delivered a well-placed kick to his hand. His arm whipped back, and someone else slammed their foot onto his wrist.
Through it all, that big bearded man kept coming closer, a twisted grin cracking his mouth wide. He bared his teeth, but his eyes displayed no mirth or merriment. Pure murderous hatred glinted in those dark depths.
Louis quaked to behold it as he lay flat on his back, helpless before the Falisa’s wrath. He kicked up a struggle but couldn’t accomplish more than maintaining his own hopeless dignity. He launched himself to get up, but one of the others planted a foot against his throat, pinning him to the ground.
The bearded menace straddled Louis’s prostrate form, placed his feet on either side of Louis’s chest, and raised his saber to strike.
Louis stiffened for the blow and watched the Highlander’s muscles strain to slash. The blade reflected the sun for a terrible, lingering moment.
The man clenched his bared teeth and flexed his legs to bring the sword down. The blade whistled through the air and, within an inch of Louis’s cranium, vanished right out of his grasp. His hand swept down, empty.
The Falisa jumped back and stared down at his open palm. Then he and all his comrades exchanged confused glances.
Louis gaped up at them in blank incomprehension as his heart stood frozen in horror at what didn’t just happen.
All at once, one of the men let out a broken cry and pointed behind the bearded attacker. They all turned to look, and Louis looked too. There lay Ellen on the ground, propped up on one elbow, her black hair obscuring half her face. Dust marred her dress and her cheeks and stuck to the moisture around her lips. She extended one finger toward the big Highlander who almost killed Louis. Her hand trembled and her lips quivered.
Louis didn’t understand.
The Gunns glanced at each other one more time before the big bruiser broke out of his trance, strode over to Ellen, and seized her by the arm. Her eyes stared blankly at Louis on the ground. She took a fraction of a second to realize what the guy was doing. He manhandled her to her feet, and when she didn’t cooperate, he gave her a violent shake that whipped her hair across her face. The man snarled something to her. She didn’t respond.
Louis gawked at the scene from flat on his back with another Falisa heel wedged into his throat. His soul ordered him to get up, to help Ellen, to stop these bastards touching her, but every time he tried, his enemies jabbed their blades in his face. He couldn’t understand what had happened to the big man’s sword, but the others still carried theirs firmly in hand. The black-bearded heathen wrenched Ellen toward Louis. He could only be planning to harm her in front of Louis’s eyes. Louis couldn’t let that happen, but before he could get himself free from his captors, Ellen wriggled around in the man’s grasp and smashed her hand against his face.
What happened next didn’t fit with Louis’s concept of reality. The whole Falisa mob saw at the same time when Ellen’s attacker’s whole head caved in on itself. The flesh drooped off the bones, and his skull bent inward and dissolved.
Ellen roared at him in holy wrath as she crammed her hand into the sinking pit of his gelatinous head and forced him to the ground where he flopped in a heap.
No one moved. No one breathed. Men scurried all over the inn yard around the incident, but an orb of silence surrounded the people watching Ellen destroy this man. Louis blinked up at her contorted features. This didn’t surprise her at all. He saw that plain as day. In fact, her expression somehow conveyed that she’d done it on purpose.
The Highlander pinning Louis down erupted out of his shock and took a flying leap at Ellen. Louis took a fraction of an instant longer to realize they would all be on top of her in a minute, and then what would she do?
Sure enough, when the first man launched himself to cleave her in half with his saber, the others barreled after him. They all converged on the spot where her skirts brushed her fallen victim.
Louis saw her lips moving, and the next instant, she vanished before his eyes.
The Gunns closed their arms and snatched at empty air.
They exchanged more confused glances, but Louis began to fathom what was going on. She’d disappeared but was still here. He hauled himself to his feet, and the scraping sound of his saber attracted his enemies’ attention.
They rushed him in a body, and he met them steel against steel. The clang of arms echoed far and wide, and more Highlanders charged to join the battle. Where was Ellen?
Louis never got a chance to figure it out before the first big assailant flicked a sword in his face. He rounded on the man to defend himself when, out of nowhere, the Falisa’s wrist cracked back. The bone supporting his sword hand buckled and flopped, and the saber hit the dirt.
The man whipped around screaming in pain. His stump of an arm dripped blood and melted flesh from the protruding bone. The others reacted in a twinkling, all attacking the empty space at the man’s
side, but no one could see anything there.
Louis readied himself for another battle, but when the Gunns spun around to parry with him, they all froze in confusion and looked around as if they couldn’t see him standing right in front of him.
A delicate, soft hand slipped into his, and he understood. She was here. Ellen was at his side. She’d turned him invisible like herself. All they had to do was slip away, and they’d be safe. These men would never know where they went until it was too late.
Ellen eased Louis away from the little circle, his spirits soaring. They were free! They had the rest of their lives to enjoy together—or the rest of Ellen’s life, at least.
He slipped around the Gunns, swallowing down the urge to laugh in their faces. He took one more step back with the open road in sight while a man with strawberry-blond hair dropped his saber and fumbled in his sporran. He tore his hand out of the pouch and flung something powdery all over Ellen and Louis. Stinging sand rained down Louis’s face. He coughed and blinked it out of his eyes, but when he looked up, he beheld to his horror Ellen standing tall and very visible next to him.
The Gunns rocketed at the pair.
Louis barely got his saber up in time to deflect the cruel blows assailing him from all sides. Ellen grabbed one of the enemy by the throat, and the fellow buckled at her feet, choking and gasping. She whipped the other way and speared her hand straight into another man’s chest. He groaned once. She yanked her hand free, and gore saturated her sleeve up to the wrist. The man teetered for a moment before he tilted back and flopped lifeless to the ground.
Louis crossed swords with another dark-haired Gunn on his other side. Even as he fought for his life, he didn’t let go of Ellen’s hand. He couldn’t allow himself to get separated from her in this.
Ellen muttered under her breath.
The sound encouraged him, and ferocious energy blasted out of him at his assailant. He raised his arm to chop the man’s head off. His opponent whipped up his own blade to block when the saber evaporated out of his hand and left him defenseless. Louis’s sword embedded in the enemy’s crown, splintering the bone with a deep cracking crunch.
Louis caught a fleeting glimpse of all the other Falisa rushing to the site from every corner of the inn yard. Not all Ellen’s powers could combat so many. His mind whirled for some way out of this.
She couldn’t turn them invisible again. That much was clear, or she would have done it already. That Falisa powder must have robbed them both of their invisibility, so they couldn’t rely on that anymore.
At that moment, the red-haired Highlander who threw the dust charged up behind Ellen and seized her around the shoulders. He jerked her out of Louis’s grasp and dragged her off her feet, toward the inn.
Louis whipped around in manic fury, but before he could get anywhere near them, four more Gunns darted into his path to cut off his retreat. In seconds, they drove him off while that cursed Falisa dragged her away.
“Ellen!” he thundered.
“Louis!” she screamed.
She flung out an arm at him, but what could she do from so far away? Speaking the magic words to make these men’s swords disappear took time. She couldn’t disappear them all.
“Ellen!” he roared.
She flailed in the man’s arms. He growled something at her. Louis couldn’t understand the words, but he recognized that strange language from her spells. It sounded something like high Viking Norse, but he didn’t recognize that particular spell.
Ellen tried one last heroic time to twist around in his arms. She grabbed hold of his elbow and dug in her fingers, but nothing happened. He must have charmed her somehow to stop that magic touch of hers from harming him.
When it wouldn’t work, she flew into a spitting frenzy. She kicked and clawed and screeched, but he overpowered her. The man bared his teeth with the effort of restraining her, but one awful step after another, he lugged her to the inn door and into the dark.
Louis fell on his assailants with everything he had, his heart exploding out of his chest. Ellen, no! He couldn’t let them take her. Heaven only knew what spells that man could cast. He could whisk Ellen to another time, or another continent where Louis would never find her. He couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t lose her after coming so close to fulfilling his dream. He vented all his brutal frustration on his attackers until he succeeded in bashing a hole in their united front.
He gave the man on his left a mighty chop that sent the Falisa staggering a step back. In that moment of reprieve, Louis lunged and stabbed another man in the guts. He kicked his victim aside and darted through the opening. The next instant, he spun around and faced the same group of fighters, only this time pointing the other way. He kept his back to the inn door, and as they advanced on him, he retreated to the place where he last laid eyes on Ellen.
Chapter 31
Ellen clawed at the walls to stop the monster from pulling her up the stairs. Her thoughts crashed from one possibility to another in search of any way to stop him. She didn’t want to think about what he planned to do with her up there.
He obviously had more power than she could ever dream of. He’d neutralized her invisibility spell, and now he stopped her from melting him too. What did she have left? The tracking spell wouldn’t work right now, and she dared not try the time portal spell in this confusion. That left the disappearing spell. Maybe she could make him disappear.
Her fear-addled brain rifled through the dozens of foreign words Nikolai had taught her. She struggled to parse one spell from another, but she couldn’t get her mind to function.
A devastating crash smashed her awake again. She sprawled across a wooden floor where the Highlander threw her. She twisted over on her side and recognized the room where she and Louis had spent last night. The big light-haired Scotsman drew himself up monstrous and terrible before her eyes, blocking the door so she couldn’t escape.
She panted out, “Nustr Örtr Sádr Sarostr; Fulla Burnym Vegni Laurfelmæ; Þromnundýrtr Hrogþírrár Ornjönði.”
Nothing happened.
The guy glared down at her, then propped his hands on both hips, threw back his head, and burst into a great, rolling belly laugh. His beard shook when he laughed, and his shoulders jumped up and down.
Ellen blinked up at him. Did she make a mistake? Did she say the wrong thing? She must have because he didn’t disappear. Then again, maybe his own magic protected him.
His laughter died away to chuckles, and the chuckles ended in a spine-chilling grimace of dominating hate. He fixed his pale blue eyes on her, and she gazed up into the face of death itself. His outer appearance belied the vicious intent hidden underneath. On the outside, he looked like any strong, stout Highland man. His kilt ended at his knees, and long woolen socks covered his calves. A thick leather belt strapped around his waist held a scabbard without a sword in it. He probably carried a dirk at his belt, but she couldn’t see any other weapon. Maybe she had a chance here after all.
He took a menacing step into the room and snarled under his breath. The words spat from his lips in a dangerous rumble. “Mýðr Seyðr Gjeyð Uðrafn Mölfra; Dráðgrytt Grutlyvli Gjunnloðein Domúddau…”
In the midst of listening to this, Ellen detected a rising torrent of power seething under her skin. He was casting some kind of spell, and she didn’t like the sound of it at all. She couldn’t let him finish this, or he would do something, something not pretty.
What was he doing to her? Was he taking her to Orkney? The Falisa could use their magic to interrogate her. They might find out all about Malcolm and Primary Industries and…well, everything.
Her soul revolted, not only against the probable scenarios but against the tempest of magic rising out of her core. He was doing something to her. He was using her own power against her. She was certain of that. Without thinking, she propelled herself off the floor at him. She attacked with primordial passion and scratched his eyes out before he could stop her. She shrieked her crazed indignation, an
d her arms twirled all around him in a frenzy to flay his skin off his bones. His rage erupted, and he grappled her away by the wrists. Her hair went wild, and furious volcanic power poured out of her being to destroy this man and everything he represented.
She hadn’t counted on his strength, though. He wrestled her back and flipped her around. Before she could break away, he crushed her against his chest and strapped his arms around her shoulders one more time. He yanked her against her own insane movements to force her into the room.
He kicked the door shut behind him and tackled her facedown on the bed. He had to use all his weight to hold her down, but she sensed nothing sexual in his intentions. He harbored some other, more insidious plan, and she couldn’t let him carry it out. At all costs, she had to get away from him.
She heard Louis bellowing down below and tried to scream his name, but the Highlander crammed her face into the quilt to silence her. He wedged his hand against her neck and muttered the same words.
She flew into a mania of kicking and struggling, reared off the bed, and smashed her skull into his face. He jumped off her growling in pain, and he hauled back his fist and delivered a horrendous punch to her temple.
Ellen reeled from the shock as stars exploded before her eyes and nausea washed over her. She touched down into unconsciousness for a brief instant, only to launch into dizzying awareness of the horror converging to shatter her world. In slow motion, she felt the man collapsing on top of her. If he got her pinned again, she wouldn’t get up. Some forgotten instinct understood that. In the fleeting seconds before he buried her into the mattress, she put all her mounting alarm into breaking his hold.
Spellbound by the Angui (Cipher's Kiss Book 2): A Scottish Highlander Time Travel Romance Page 21
