Darkest Highlander (26 page)

“I knew you would find it,” Deirdre said. Her arms were crossed over her chest, her white hair a startling contrast to her black gown.

Broc counted twenty wyrran. He could kill them easily enough. But then again, he’d never battled them with Deirdre near. It could prove interesting.

Above all, he could never take his attention off her.

Deirdre’s white brow lifted high on her forehead. “Nothing to say, my dark Warrior?”

“There are many burial mounds in this valley.”

Deirdre’s smile was malicious and cruel. “Oh, dear Broc, I know you too well. This is the tomb.”

“Maybe. Good luck getting inside. The spells are ancient, the magic extremely powerful. You willna be able to get near the tomb.”

“That’s why I have you,” she said as she dropped her arms to her side. “We can do this the easy way.”

“Or the difficult way?” he asked with a laugh. “You’ve already taken everything from me. There’s nothing left you can threaten me with.”

Her smile hardened. “There’s Ramsey.”

Broc’s lips lifted in a true smile as he thought of his friend. “You can try. You can threaten every Warrior at MacLeod Castle, but each of us has escaped your clutches. You cannot hurt us.”

“I can hurt the Druids within.”

“Maybe. You’ve attacked the castle several times already. You’ve lost each time.”

Deirdre’s white eyes narrowed as she stepped closer to Broc. Her hair began to twitch at the ends, indicating her anger. “I will no longer be sending my wyrran or any Warriors alone. I will be with them.”

“You?” Broc repeated. He wasn’t sure what Deirdre was planning, but whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

“Aye, me. The next time MacLeod Castle is attacked, I will be leading my wyrran. You think because you defeated some wyrran, mortals, and a few Warriors that you can defeat me?”

“We did. In your mountain.”

Deirdre’s face lost any semblance of a smile. “I haven’t forgotten all who played a part in that. I wasn’t jesting when I said there would be retribution, Broc. You all will suffer mightily at my hands.”

“We shall see.”

Broc’s gut tightened when Deirdre’s gaze lowered to the ground. When she lifted her gaze, there was a knowing smile upon her lips, a smile that told Broc she knew he wasn’t alone.

“Who is your companion?”

Broc flexed his fingers, his claws eager to sink into wyrran skin. “I am alone.”

“Now. What did you do with the woman? I can tell by the tracks left beside yours that it was a female. Tell me where she is.”

“I’m alone. Do you want to stand around all day or fight?”

She motioned to the wyrran on her right and they attacked.

Broc knew he chanced being incapacitated again with
drough
blood each time the wyrran cut him, but it was a chance he couldn’t avoid. The wyrran were quick and their claws sharp.

He gripped a wyrran by its head and gave a jerk. The sound of a neck breaking was drowned out by the shrieks of the others. Broc snarled as a wyrran jumped on his back and sank its claws in his neck.

Broc reached behind him and took the creature’s skinny arms in his hands and pulled out the claws. He continued to pull on the wyrran’s arms until they were yanked out of their sockets, then from its body and they dangled from Broc’s hands.

The wyrran fell from his back, only to be replaced by another. It became a blur of blood and yellow skin as Broc killed wyrran after wyrran.

Their screeches echoed in his head as his own blood ran down his body to blend with the ground at his feet. He never stopped, never gave up. Poraxus’ fury was too great. And Broc had made a vow.

Suddenly something long and white snaked out and wrapped around his throat. Broc hastily cut the strands with is claws. He hated that Deirdre always went for the throat.

Broc ducked more of her hair and spun away. He used his wings to knock three wyrran away from him, and just as he was about to launch himself in the air, something snagged his wrist.

He glanced down to find Deirdre’s hair. More of her lethal hair wrapped around his other wrist and his throat.

“Enough!” Deirdre yelled. Her white eyes blazed with anger as she glanced around at the dead wyrran.

Broc began to laugh. “Did you really think the wyrran stood a chance against a Warrior? They never do.”

“They took you down before.”

“Only because of the
drough
blood.”

“Stop killing my wyrran,” she said between clenched teeth.

Broc bared his fangs at her. “Stop sending them to attack me and I’ll consider it. Then again, I may kill them just because of how ugly they are.”

Deirdre screamed and the hair around his neck tightened so he could barely breathe. He tried to get his hands up to cut away her hair again, but the strands were as magical as she was.

“You can cease your fighting. You will not get away from me now,” Deirdre said.

Broc’s mind raced with possibilities of getting away. He could try to fly. Deirdre wasn’t controlling his wings, but she could snap his neck.

“I told you, you would be mine. There is nothing you can do now to escape. By the time I’m done exacting my vengeance, you will do anything I want. You will be mine to control.”

Broc didn’t bother to argue with her. He’d said it all while chained in her mountain. However, he wasn’t about to be taken without a fight. Somehow, someway he would keep himself—and most especially Sonya—from Deirdre.

Sonya has only a few hours in the tomb before she runs out of air.

It would be weeks or months before Deirdre was done with him. Sonya would be long dead by then.

“I can get the artifact,” he said.

Deirdre tilted her head to the side and grinned. “What do you plan, Broc?”

“I’ll retrieve the artifact from the tomb. For you.”

“And why would you do that so willingly?”

Broc knew he had to say something believable. As much as he wanted to keep Sonya away from Deirdre, she might be the only way he could get free long enough to retrieve Fallon and the others.

“Well?” Deirdre said, growing impatient. “I’m curious to hear why you would offer to get the artifact. What could be so important that you would do something like this? For me?”

Broc swallowed. He tried several times to get the words out, but they were stuck in his throat. Telling Deirdre about Sonya went against everything he had done over the past years.

Deirdre’s hair squeezed his neck and wrists. “Let me guess. The woman with you?”

“I kidnapped her,” Broc lied. He couldn’t tell Deirdre the truth. He would find another way to help Sonya.

That piqued Deirdre’s interest. “Why would you do that?”

When he didn’t answer fast enough she squeezed his neck tighter.

“The tomb,” he forced out of lips which could barely move.

As soon as the words left his mouth, the strands eased upon his neck. Broc drew in great gulps of air as he glared at Deirdre.

“Where is this woman?” Deirdre demanded.

“In the tomb.”

Deirdre’s gaze slid to the burial mound. “In the tomb?”

“I was going in with her when I heard the wyrran. I came out here to fight you.”

“This woman is a Druid, then.” Deirdre chuckled. “How did you find a Druid, Broc?”

“She’s no’ a Druid. She’s from Glencoe. She led me to the tomb.”

Deirdre motioned the remaining wyrran to back away from Broc. “Why don’t you take me to this … female?”

Broc gave a jerk of his head and her hair released him. He wanted to reach up and rub his neck, but he didn’t. She would enjoy it too much.

“Keep your wyrran back,” Broc said as he turned to enter the tomb.

“They go where I go.”

Broc glanced at her over his shoulder. “I doona thi…”

His words trailed off as wyrran began to shriek and fight what looked like six or seven Warriors. Broc halted. All he could do was stare. He had no idea where the Warriors had come from. Or who they were.

Deirdre screamed and rushed out to fight alongside her wyrran. She used her hair along with her magic as she jumped into the fray.

As curious as Broc was to know who these Warriors were, he couldn’t waste another moment. He hurried from the tomb and leapt into the air.

He looked down at the first beat of his wings and saw a golden-skinned Warrior standing atop the mountain. And in a blink, the Warrior was gone.

Broc forgot the Warrior and rose into the sky so the clouds would conceal him. He had to fly fast, had to hurry to MacLeod Castle before it was too late for Sonya.

TWENTY-NINE

Sonya stared at the door, her arms wrapped around herself. Thankfully the torches hadn’t gone out when Broc shut her inside the burial mound.

A shiver raced over her skin, a reminder of just where she was. She turned and looked at the occupant. Sonya wondered who he was. Had it been his idea to hide the clue about the Tablet of Orn in his tomb? Or had it been decided after his death?

Sonya jumped when she heard the wyrran again. There were many of them by the sounds. They would be attacking Broc again. If he didn’t get away from Deirdre, Sonya would die in here. She supposed it was better than dying by Deirdre’s hand. At least this way Deirdre would never get her magic.

But she couldn’t help but worry how Broc would feel about it. He would blame it on his supposed curse, when in fact the blame lay solely with Deirdre.

With nothing else to do, Sonya began to look for a weapon she could use in case Deirdre was somehow able to open the door. Sonya inspected the spears and swords which hung on the walls.

But it was the sword thay lay in the dead man’s hands that grabbed her attention.

Both his hands were wrapped around the pommel and the sword rested on top of him. Along the blade was beautiful knot work that had been etched into the metal. Mixed with the interlacing plait of knots was more Gaelic writing.

Sonya wished she could read the markings. She held her hand over the sword and felt magic. It was faint, and not nearly as strong as the magic guarding the burial mound, but it was definitely magic.

She longed to grasp the sword, to examine both sides of the blade. Sonya had never cared much for weapons before, but this sword called to her in the same way trees did.

“Amazing,” Sonya murmured. She leaned over the corpse when she saw the large garnet stone atop the hilt of the sword.

Garnets were highly prized. The sheer size of the stone, which was as large as a child’s fist, must have cost a fortune.

Her gaze then spotted the markings running in a spiral around the pommel. Not only could she not read them, but the bones from the man’s fingers and hands blocked her from seeing the rest of the markings.

She itched to move the corpse’s fingers and inspect the sword more closely, but Sonya would never desecrate the dead in such a way.

Sonya blew out a breath and began to straighten when something else caught her eye.

It was the barest wink of light off gold, but Sonya saw it nonetheless. She gently, tenderly peeled back the ragged neckline of the man’s tunic to better see what was around his neck.

Her lungs locked when she saw the amulet and the double spiral in the gold. The double spiral represented the equinoxes, when day and night were of equal length.

Sonya traced her finger from the middle of one spiral until it curved out and then the other way to the middle of the second spiral.

Somehow she knew the amulet was important to the artifacts, important in the war to defeat Deirdre.

Sonya knew she had to take the amulet and even though she didn’t want to disturb the dead, lives were at stake. She lifted the leather strap that held the amulet and cut it with a dagger she had found among the many weapons. She held up the amulet to the light and couldn’t stop staring at the oblong shape of the metal and the spirals within.

“If I’m not meant to take this, then I will return it,” she told the corpse. “If it is supposed to be used along with one of the artifacts, then I pledge that I will keep it safe until such time. Just as you have.”

The torches flickered, and if Sonya didn’t know better, she would have thought the spirit of the dead leader had given his consent.

*   *   *

Isla stood in the village near MacLeod Castle and stared into the forest before her. It had been Ramsey who first drew her attention when she found him looking toward the woods. He had stood at the trees and gazed at them for hours until she had to know what he saw.

It wasn’t until she neared Ramsey that she noticed the trees were bending the opposite way from the breeze off the sea.

“What is it?” asked a deep voice that always melted her heart.

She waited until Hayden was next to her before she intertwined her fingers with his and nodded to the forest. “Watch.”

“They’re trees, Isla. They do move with the wind.”

She loved her Warrior, but sometimes he didn’t always see the things magic could do. “
Look
at them, Hayden. Look at the way they bend, at how they move.”

“God’s teeth,” he murmured after a moment. “Is that what holds Ramsey’s attention?”

“I believe so.”

“Are they trying to talk to Sonya?”

Isla licked her lips and shrugged. “I think they are trying to tell us something. The only one who can hear the trees, however, is Sonya.”

Of a sudden the trees stopped moving.

Hayden cursed and released her hand. “I need to get the others.”

Isla didn’t take her eyes off the forest. She would bet all the magic inside her that the trees knew where Sonya was, that they were trying to tell those at the castle where to find her.

It took no time at all for the other Warriors to race toward the village.

“What did you discover?” Quinn, the youngest MacLeod, demanded as he skidded to a stop beside her, the first to reach them.

Ramsey turned his head of black hair and locked gazes with Isla. He walked to her, his jaw clenched and lines of worry bracketing his eyes and lips.

“Can you hear them?” Ramsey asked Isla.