Dark Lover (41 page)

The skin on her nape crawled.

“Moray, show yerself,” Macleod called softly.

The pressure in the house increased. The atmosphere began to hurt her skin. Moray did not appear.

“I have to find Ian,” Sam said. She knew he was being tortured. She felt it in the churning of her gut, in every fiber of her being. She'd been sure she'd find him at his Loch Awe home. Now, she was dismayed, because she did not feel him.

“We find Moray, we find Ian,” Macleod said flatly.

“He's right,” Tabby said, speaking in a whisper.

The pressure bearing down on them intensified. Sam heard soft laughter, like a distant echo. So did her sister and brother-in-law.

“Fuck the bastard,” Sam hissed. She'd do a room-to-room. She'd been so certain Ian was at Loch Awe.

As she started past the salon, she saw him, lying prone on the floor.

He was as still as a corpse.

Sam cried out, rushing to him, terrified that he was dead. She knelt. The moment she saw his lashes flutter, she also felt the faintest sensation of his power. Relief flooded her. “He's unconscious,” she said tersely, as Tabby knelt beside her. “Ian.” She stroked his brow, shaking, afraid of what had been done to him.

“I don't think he's unconscious,” Tabby said, her tone grim.

Sam looked warily at her. “He's passed out cold, Tabby. If he's hurt, it's internal, because he's not bleeding.” She'd made an instant inventory.

“He's under Moray's power,” Tabby said. “I can feel the power of the page, Sam. I can feel its magic, and I can feel his evil perverting it, using it. Ian is in another world.”

Sam's tension became unbearable. “Ian, wake up,” she said, taking his hands in hers.

His lashes fluttered, but otherwise, he was unmoving, as if paralyzed.

“I wonder if he can hear you. Guy, can you read his mind?” Tabby asked.

When he didn't answer immediately, Sam looked up. Macleod was grim. “He's a boy. Ye dinna need to know what they're doing to him.”

Sam choked. She lifted his head onto her lap and bent over him, tears falling. “Come back to me, Ian, please. Get out of that world! It's not real. This is real—
I'm
real!”

His lashes kept moving but his body remained still.

Macleod squatted behind Tabby. “Can ye release him from the spell, Tabitha?”

“I'll try.” Tabby chanted softly. “Cloak of control, rip asunder. A different reality, cease! Cloak of control, tear apart. Ian Maclean, return to reality.”

Sam pressed her cheek to his, wishing he'd wake up. “Come back now, Ian. Can you hear me? Come back!”

His lashes fluttered, but more slowly. Then his lids slowly lifted. He looked up at her. His gaze was unfocused and glazed with pain.

“Ian?” Her heart broke.

The light there changed. Their eyes met and held. “Ye still have my back?” He almost sounded incredulous.

Sam inhaled and she hugged him, hard. “Always means always, Maclean.”

I
AN SAT UP SLOWLY
. “He's here.”

As Sam instinctively looked toward the doorway, the room darkened. A chill settled over them. The pressure in the atmosphere intensified, as if a cyclone were about to touch down.

As she stared at the doorway, the wood door and moldings changed, becoming the barred steel door of a cell. The upholstered walls became concrete. There were no windows. The room was so dark, it was difficult to see.

Ian breathed hard. “He's using the power.”

Sam took his hand as they got up warily. “Are you still with me?”

“If yer asking if I'm a frightened boy, no. But we're in a cell.”

“Yeah, I see it, too. Tabby?” Sam turned. She reached in front of her where a love seat should have been, but felt nothing but air. The virtual reality felt
real
.

But Nick had said a powerful mind might be able to thwart it.

Her sister murmured, “Cloak of control, rip asunder. A different reality, cease. Cloak of control, tear apart. Return us all to reality!”

Macleod strode to the steel door, his face hard and set. Amazingly, the furniture that should have been in his path simply wasn't there. As he reached for the steel door, the handsome teakwood doors suddenly, magically, reap
peared. Sam breathed in relief as the room returned to normalcy.

And Kristin LaFarge was facing her sister, smiling murderously at her.

It was the witch who'd hunted her sister across time. It was the same bitch who'd used her powerful black magic to turn Sam's own knife on her, almost causing her to kill herself.

But LaFarge had died in battle with Tabby at An Tùir-Tara in 1550. That meant that Kristin was hunting her sister…

Ian seized her, preventing her from going forward. “She's not real.”

“Do we really know that?” Nick had been uncertain as to what could actually happen in a virtual world. If someone died, what state would that person be in when the control was lifted? Sam did not want to find out.

Tabby backed up warily as Macleod rushed Kristin, his short sword raised, his expression vicious. He meant to destroy her. Behind him, another woman formed, sultry and dark, in long red robes, her face a mask of malicious fury. It was Criosaidh—the witch Tabby had warred with for centuries, but who had also died that day at An Tùir-Tara.

“Guy!” Tabby screamed in warning.

He turned, raising his hand, as Criosaidh set a fire blazing between them. It started racing toward Macleod like a laser missile.

“Cloak of control, rip asunder. A different reality, cease! Cloak of control, tear apart. Return us to reality.” Tabby chanted desperately.

Sam seized Kristin to prevent her from assaulting Macleod from behind. As she grasped her, the witch grinned at her and vanished. Macleod remained braced for the onslaught from Criosaidh, but it never came—she
vanished, as well. The fire vanished. And the room returned to normalcy.

Sam blinked. The salon's bronze silk draperies shifted. Morning sunlight filtered through the windows, revealing Ian's beautiful furniture and artwork, the moss green walls, the expensive Oriental rugs.

But the pressure weighing down on them was worse than ever. She looked at Ian. She had a feeling of imminent doom. This was it, she thought, the last and final encounter.

Ian met her gaze and nodded at her, starting for the door. Sam followed, relieved to see that he did not look afraid. The victim was gone, and she was fiercely pleased.

But if Moray would not show himself, they'd have to find him.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she said softly.

“He'll come,” Ian said as quietly, but flatly. “He's biding his time.”

Sam thought he was right. As they stepped into the hallway, she started in surprise, for Aidan and Brie were rushing toward them. Aidan reached out and clasped Ian's shoulder. “Are ye hurt?” he demanded.

Ian did not pull back. “No.”

Aidan's gaze was searching. He dropped his hand. “I heard ye callin' fer me, like ye did when ye were a boy.”

Ian stared at his father. “An' this time ye came.”

“Of course I came.”

Ian breathed hard. A brief moment passed. “Moray is here.”

Aidan glanced at Brie. “It's me he's after, no one else. I'm sending ye home. All the women should go.”

Sam choked. “Are you kidding?”

“I'm not leaving you, Aidan,” Brie said softly, her face stubbornly set.

And his laughter echoed around them. “A family reunion, at last…”

They all turned to face Rupert Hemmer, who was grinning at them in delight. Black power cloaked him, as if he stood in a huge, dangerous cloud. “I have waited twenty-five years for this day.” He looked at Aidan. “And I will use Ian to get what I want.”

Aidan began to shake with rage. “We ken ye want my pain.”

“Lots and lots of it…unless you surrender to me…to Satan.”

“If I have a choice to make, I choose pain,” Aidan snarled.

Brie gripped his arm. Sam was amazed that she only saw Moray, even though the being standing before them was Hemmer. But what shook her to the core was the absolute hatred coming from Moray's soul.

Moray's smile turned ugly and mean. “Did you really think you and your paltry woman could vanquish me, the great Moray? Did you think I'd simply disappear? I have waited all these years, waited and watched, knowing that one day, I would find my way back to you…
son
.” He turned to Ian. “You truly know what I am capable of. Will you let your father choose pain?”

Ian's chest heaved. He was pale, his face set, but his eyes blazed. As if silently communicating, Ian and Aidan both roared and struck. So much white power filled the room, it was as if lightning had struck. But Moray simply vanished and their power ricocheted around the hall, cracking its walls, shattering glass.

“Coward!” Ian snarled.

Tabby sat down abruptly and started murmuring softly to herself.

Aidan was staring intensely at Ian, who slowly turned to look at him. “I'll never let him hurt ye again,” Aidan said. “I swear before the gods, Ian.”

Ian hesitated. His gaze flickered. “I know.” He glanced at Sam, who was startled. “Sam, let's go.”

She stepped forward. “He's still here. How do you want to lure him out?”

“We'll stay together,” Aidan said firmly. “And we'll wait until he shows himself again.”

“Tabitha,” Macleod said, his tone oddly reassuring. “Do ye have the right spell?”

Tabby looked at her husband. “I think so.” Then her gaze met Sam's.

What if I can't do this?
Tabby communicated silently.
What if I'm wrong?

You can do this
, Sam returned as silently.

Macleod was clearly listening, because he put his arm protectively around her. “The spell will work. Make certain to block his power to leap.”

She nodded. “I already have.”

But the words weren't even out of her mouth when the hallway darkened, becoming frigidly cold. Suddenly Sam faced another steel door set in a concrete wall, and everyone was gone except for Ian. She took his hand. He held it, hard, and there was sudden perspiration on his palm.

“It's not real,” he said tersely.

No, it wasn't, but it sure as hell felt real. Sam touched the cold steel of the door. “He's isolated us.”

“Don't open it!” Ian cried in alarm.

Sam withdrew her hand, as if burned. “You know where we are?” Now, she saw that there were identical doors lining each side of the hall.

“We're in a maze,” he said roughly. “And evil is behind every single door.”

Sam stepped away from the door. She should have bumped into Ian, but to her shock, she didn't. She turned. He was gone—she was alone!

She reminded herself that this was a virtual reality. But Moray had separated them from the others, and now, he'd
separated her from Ian. She looked down the hall. It seemed endless. “Ian?”

She strained to hear.

Where are ye?

“I'm in the maze.”

Dinna open the door!

“Open the door,” Moray murmured.

She whirled. He stood behind her, grinning. “Where's Ian, you bastard? What have you done with him?”

“He's playing a game,” he murmured. He reached out and slid a manicured nail down her cheek. She jerked away. “We want you, Sam. In more ways than one.”

“I'll bet you do.”

“We always get what we want.”

“Not always—not this time.”

“Do you know how much power we now have? No one can defeat us. No one ever has. But you know that, don't you? There are hundreds of pages written about the great Moray in your files at HCU.”

“Yeah, you're almost famous,” Sam said. “Whoops, I meant infamous.” How could she go up against him alone? She had to get out of this reality! She thought about the salon with its lavish furnishings, imagined everyone standing there, trying to figure out their next move. She strained for that reality.

For one moment, the hall shifted and she thought she glimpsed everyone but Ian, standing before that console table and Art Deco mirror.

His next words brought her back. “You really should open the door, Sam. It's the only way out of this world.”

She needed help.
Tabby, damn it, what happened to your spell?

But she couldn't even sense her sister, much less hear her.

Now, she heard soft sounds, coming from the door closest to her. Sam tensed.

“No one is going to help you.” Moray reached out and slid his finger over her shoulder. “Only you can help yourself. Open the door.”

She met his gaze. It was a mistake. His powers of persuasion were extraordinary.

Now she could identify the sounds coming from the room behind the door. A woman was gasping in pleasure.

“Open the door, Sam. You won't be sorry. You'll be very pleased.”

She didn't want to open the door but she couldn't help herself, because suddenly she had to know what was on the other side. She turned and pulled the heavy door open.

A couple was on the floor. Sam saw the man's extraordinary beauty and knew he was a demon. She was witnessing a pleasure crime. Her instinct was to stop it, to save the Innocent. But she saw the woman's champagne-colored hair and she froze in disbelief. For an instant, she was paralyzed.

The demon vanished. Her mother sat up. “Sam?”

Sam backed into the wall. “Mom?”

Laura got up. “It's me, Sam. You saved me!”

Sam choked. She hadn't saved her mother that day and she knew it wasn't real, but she blinked, because they were on the suburban street in upstate New York where she'd grown up. It was a fall day, just like that day. Red and gold leaves were everywhere.

The white clapboard house where she'd grown up was behind Laura. Tabby's blue bicycle was in the driveway, its kickstand down. Sam's bike was red and it lay on its side where she'd dropped it.

Just like that day
…

“Sam,” Laura cried, rushing to her. She pulled her into her arms, trembling.

And her mother was warm and alive, her chest rising and falling against Sam's, her cheek soft, silken. She
smelled like citrus and flowers, the Halston fragrance she always wore. Had she time-traveled? Was this real?

Sam realized she was crying. She loved her mother impossibly; she always had. Now, she realized she missed her in a bone-deep way.

What if she'd interrupted the pleasure crime sooner, preventing Mom's murder?

Laura released her. “Thank the gods you came along when you did,” she whispered, tears in her own blue eyes.

Alarm began. Her mother had become transparent. “Mom! Don't go!” Sam cried. But she knew Laura was about to vanish forever, because this wasn't real. This wasn't happening.

Her mother disappeared.

Sam couldn't understand where all of her grief was coming from. She held her face in her hands, really close to weeping.

“Satan can give her back to you, Sam.”

Moray's soft voice vibrated within her. Sam forced herself to straighten. She wiped her eyes, and turned warily.

“I can give you whatever you want,” he said. “I can return your mother to you.”

“Oh, so now you can turn back the clock?” She scoffed. But she was becoming angry. This was as dirty as the game could get.

“I can't turn back the clock. No one, not even one of your gods, can.” Moray smiled. “But you know that when Fate goes awry, it can be corrected.”