Darkness Becomes Her (11 page)

“I don’t have an ability anymore, other than the one time I astral-projected by accident and saw the future. I couldn’t do it again.” Those last words came out hard and brittle.

She shook her head, trying to look intimidating. “Both times you fought Russell, I saw a blurry form, like a ghostly imprint all around you.”

Surprise transformed his expression. “You saw it, too?”

Okay, he was admitting it. Sort of. “Wait, I’ll show you.”

She gently set the sword down, dashed back to her room and grabbed her phone out of her bag. A smart phone was a big expense, but it was cheaper and more portable than a computer. She came back, touching the screen to go to her security link as she walked.

She stepped up beside him, holding out the phone so he could see the screen, too. “My security system records whenever someone trips the alarm. So I have us on video.”

“Kinky.”

She shot him a look. “Shush. Here it is.”

It was odd watching this with Lachlan now that she knew him. “Right there.” She pointed to his image. “It’s hard to see on this tiny screen. I watched it on a computer at work.”

He squinted as he watched. “I can’t really see it.” He held out his hand and stared at the back of it. His expression darkened. “It’s only happened since that spontaneous projection. I see hands on my sword handle. Not my hands, but big burly ones. Like you said, a ghostly imprint. Only when I’ve fought, when I feel anger and adrenaline. When I want to kill.”

“Did you want to kill me?”

He met her gaze, heaviness in his eyes. “I didn’t want to kill you, but I would have, to save Magnus. Now I’ll kill to save you.”

Her throat tightened at that. He meant both. “So what is it, Lachlan?”

“Whatever it is, when I feel the energy, it’s something bigger and darker than me. I mean to find out. My anger is his rage.”

“You said ‘his.’ ”

“I did, didn’t I? But what is he?”

She looked around the empty room. “Come out, come out, whoever you are.”

Lachlan looked at his hands. “Maybe I have to be pissed off before he’ll come.”

“Then be pissed off.”

He took his sword from the hooks and got into a fighting stance. “That’s easy. All I have to do is think about that bastard with his hands on you. Trying to use your mother and my safety to get you to go with him. What does he think you are, stupid?”

He slashed with each sentence, his jaw rigid, eyes blazing. He was fierce, his moves efficient and smooth, his muscles flexing, hair flowing. Her chest tightened. There, a shadow moving a millisecond behind him! She picked up the sword she’d set on the floor, fingers tensed on the handle.

“Come on, you bastard! I can see your hands,” Lachlan said through gritted teeth.

The form took shape, a man as big as Magnus, in a kilt, black hair in a ponytail, with a full beard. Like a special effect, he appeared as a transparent overlay on top of Lachlan. Her mouth dropped open and she pointed to him, unable to say a word.

That wasn’t necessary. Lachlan stared at his reflection in the mirror, chest heaving but eyes wide.

“Dinna call me a bastard,” the form said. “ ’Tis disrespectful to your kin.”

The form’s brogue was far heavier than Lachlan’s.

“Who the hell are you?” Lachlan said, his voice a low growl.

“Olaf. I’d shake your hand, but . . .” He lifted his arms, then let them drop.

She held onto her sword as she walked closer. “You’re a ghost?”

“I’m no’ a spook. Don’t know what to call me, exactly. Olaf will do.”

Lachlan tried to step sideways, but the form followed, attached to him. “But you’re dead.”

“Aye, though I don’t like that word either.” He shrugged. “But I am. Dead.”

Lachlan furrowed his eyebrows. “Did you say you’re my kin?”

“Aye. I’m sure that’s why I could attach myself to ye. At first I thought ye were a ghost standing there on the battlefield. I were lyin’ there wi’ my life blood draining out of me body, and you jus’ appeared out of the mist. Ye weren’t an angel, not carrying your half-lang sword.”

He fisted a beefy hand at his chest. “I could feel ye, and knew ye to be kin. Come to pull me to the great beyond, I thought. Not that I deserved that. My soul lifted and went right to ye, drawn like a horse to oats. Not jus’ because of our relation; I felt your fighting nature, your want to kill the British and fight for freedom. I went into ye and been here ever since.”

Lachlan’s body twitched. “You
possessed
me?”

“Nae, nothin’ like that. I—” He looked up, scratching a mangy beard. “—attached myself to ye.”

Lachlan’s eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened. “You were the reason I went mad and slashed at my family.”

Olaf lowered his head. “Bad bit of business, that. Once I joined with ye, we were a frenzy of energy and rage, and ye got lost in it. My soul kept fighting, and it wasna until the big lad knocked you out that I seen we weren’t at Culloden anymore.”

Lachlan jerked his sword toward his neck. “Get out of me.”

“Och, ye would cut off your own head to be rid of me?”

Jessie ran forward, gripping his hands with her free one. “Don’t. Stay in control.”

“Listen to your lassie. Ye held on when ye were fighting the man who became the beast. I don’t mean to take over. The first time our energies collided, it threw us off. That willna happen again. Besides, how else did ye think ye could do that strange kind of traveling when ye saw your brother dying? And the magic that helped ye fight the beast?”

“You did that?” Lachlan was looking at his reflection, his expression taut. He hadn’t lowered the sword yet, and Jessie hadn’t loosened her grip.

“Not so eager to get rid of me now, are ye?”

Jessie moved her hands away, comfortable that Lachlan wasn’t going to slash himself. She could see him processing all this.

“I don’t trust you,” Lachlan said. “You made me kill my own mum.”

“I couldna know what would happen. She knew ye dinna do it on purpose. I saw her soul leave her body.”

Lachlan took a quick breath and turned to Jessie. “You do see him, right? I’ve not gone round the bend?”

“I see him.”

“What do I do with him?” This time he was asking himself, his voice barely audible.

“Use me, lad. Ye got a big problem and a pretty lass to protect. I can help.”

Lachlan still hadn’t let go of the sword, but he’d pointed it downward. “You won’t take over?”

“Nae.”

“I can send you off anytime I want?”

“Aye. Except when you’re fighting. Then ye draw me to ye. We both have the MacLeod blood running through our veins. The need to fight for what’s right. The need to kill what stands in the way.” He looked at Jessie. “And the need to protect what’s ours.”

Even while those words tightened her chest, she said, “Oh, I’m not—”

“Be gone!” Lachlan said, startling the rest of her words right out of her.

The apparition disappeared.

Lachlan patted his body, wincing as he hit his injury on his side. “He’s gone. It worked.”

She shivered. “That was crazy real.”

He ran his fingers through his hair, pacing. “What do I do with him?” he asked again.

“Well, he probably saved your life when you were fighting Russell and those dogs. His magic did, anyway. You’re damned good with a sword, but without the magic, I don’t think you could have destroyed those dogs.”

He came to a stop in front of her. “Then I keep him around. And hope he doesn’t take over.”

Chapter 11

L
achlan stood in front of the MacLeod family tree he’d put together on his bedroom wall. At the top, next to the clan flag, was a plaque with the family crest and motto.

“I was wondering what this was,” she said, standing beside him. “It didn’t look like To Do stickies.”

“I was sitting here one night and just started writing down what I knew on the Post-its. Before I knew it, I’d used the whole pad.” He pointed to one. “My mum came here from Scotland when she was fifteen. She missed her homeland, talked about it all the time. She probably would have gone back if she hadn’t met my father. She would have been alive if she had.”

“You don’t know that. I think when it’s our time to go, it doesn’t matter where we are.” At least she hoped that was the case.

“I think one decision can change your life, or screw up someone else’s. Sometimes it’s just taking one way to work instead of another. In my case, it was to sneak around projecting even after my father told me to cut back. You heard Olaf. The rage, the need for conflict, it’s in me. I went back to witness battles, wanting so badly to participate.”

“Could you?”

“I couldn’t move anything at the target location, but I could be seen. My soul projects, so anyone at the location will see what they think is a ghost. We weren’t supposed to reveal ourselves. Sometimes I did.”

He could feel her, the heat of her body, her energy, and her total focus on what he was saying. “How?”

“I saw ugly things, like men raping women. All’s fair in love and war? That’s what they thought. My father was such a purist when it came to time, to affecting the past. If we saw something like that, he would make us leave. ‘It’s already happened a long time ago. We can’t change it,’ he’d tell me while I was going crazy not being able to help.”

He glanced at her. “But when he wasn’t around, I could do as I pleased. And what man wants to force himself on a woman when he’s seen a ghost? Kind of spoils the mood.”

Her smile, full of pride and warmth, tightened his chest. “So you went back to help people,” she said.

You don’t deserve that warmth.
“Mostly I went back for bloodlust. Don’t make it into something altruistic. I was cocky and rebellious. I disobeyed and I killed my mum.”

She touched his arm. “It was the fusion of you and Olaf. Don’t you see? It was an accident.”

“But that fusion would never have happened if I had shown restraint.”

“You’re exasperating.”

He looked at her, tilting his head. “That’s all you’ve got? Come, you can think of worse things than that.”

She laughed, a full-out beautiful sound that lit her hazel eyes. Even though he didn’t deserve to bask in it, he let it unfurl in his chest and open his heart just a little anyway.

As their gazes met, though, her laughter quieted. “Yeah, I could think of other words, but you wouldn’t want me to say them. They’re not the awful things you want to hear.”

He turned away, facing the notes stuck to the wall. He could fall for her so easily. It surprised him that he hadn’t killed that part of himself after all. Not only had his body awakened, his heart had, too—amazing, because he’d never felt like this with anyone.

To fall would shatter any shred of self-respect he might have left. “After my mum’s death, I wanted to connect to her somehow. She had a folder full of notes on her family, but I made my own. It’s not pretty, but it gave me something to focus on.”

He searched through the notes. “Olaf said he died at Culloden, so he would have been born around here.” He pointed to one of the branches of the clan. “There he is, born 1720. He was twenty-six when he was killed, no wife or children.” His father would have calculated the exact age, down to the day.

She pointed to a group of notes connected by a line that separated them from the tree and then continued down. “Here, the spelling of the name changes from MacLeod to McLeod.”

“It had something to do with them running to Ireland. They came here in the next generation.”

She followed the progression with her finger all the way down to the piece of paper that held his and Magnus’s names. She stood so close in front of him that he could smell her scent, could reach out and touch her with the slightest move. He breathed her in, filling his lungs, fighting not to lean forward and touch his mouth to her hair.

As though she sensed what he felt, she turned to face him, her eyes searching his. “I changed my mind. I want to do more than just want you to kiss me.” She gave her head a quick shake. “I mean . . . kiss me, Lachlan. I know you want it, too.”

Her words shivered through his body. “Aye, sod that I am. But there was a time you wanted to kiss Magnus, remember? You daydreamed about it. I saw those romance novels at your apartment. Were they your research? Tell me, did you use your vibrator while you fantasized about him? What kinds of things did you do in those fantasies?”

Go ahead, slap me. Tell me again how utterly rude I am.
She’d be right, too, but he needed to jam those images into his brain to remind him how wrong wanting her was.

She didn’t slap him or look horrified or even angry. In fact, she looked speculative. “You were right. I was getting a bit hot in the studio. You want to know what I fantasized?” She put her hand on his chest. “Doing this.” She slid it slowly, agonizingly, down his stomach, her fingertips brushing the waistband of his pants. He should move away. Run like hell.

“And this.” She stepped so close, her body pressed against his. He tried bloody hard to make himself step back. That wasn’t happening. Or at least not to react. Too late for that.

She slid her fingers into his hair. “This.” She pressed her mouth against his, moving it back and forth over his. “But I wasn’t thinking about Magnus. I was hot from watching you.”

His lips softened, and in a blink he yanked her fully against him, dipping his tongue into her mouth, tasting her. He let his mouth move instinctively, fitting hers, imprinting every sensation into his cells. It was like what he’d seen in the movies he’d watched over the years, and it was different, too. It was real, the feel of her hot, moist mouth, her tongue dancing with his.

His hands slid up and down her backside, itching to slide inside the waistband of her pants, to cup her arse.

What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing? Proving that you’re crap?

They both stepped back simultaneously, breathing hard.

“I don’t know what got into me,” she said, putting the tips of her fingers against her mouth. “Maybe I have a dead prostitute’s energy clinging to me.” She gave him a wry smile.

He couldn’t help smiling at that, but it quickly fled. “And I am an idiot.”

“You’re only an idiot because you’re fighting a lost cause.”

“The last time I gave in to something I wanted that I shouldn’t have, I killed my mum.”

She grasped his hands in hers. “Kissing me isn’t going to get anyone killed.”

“It would kill me if, when Magnus wakes, I had to say, ‘Glad you’re back, and oh, by the way, I stole the first girl you ever said was special. Sorry ’bout that.’ ” He realized he was stroking her fingers and released her hands. “Until you came along, I had no hope of ever regaining my honor. But protecting you, making this situation right, and not giving in to my feelings for you, I get the sense of it again.”

He pointed to the clan battle cry, on a plaque along with the clan badge: a bull’s head between two flags. “Hold fast. That’s what I have to do. You tempt me, aye, you do.” He brushed aside her bangs. “And not just because you’re beautiful. You’re brave and strong and you’ve got a fire for life. I see why Magnus was drawn to you, and that’s all I can think about: Magnus was drawn to you. I
need
to keep this last scrap of honor, Jess.”

Her chin trembled. “I don’t want to be a source of angst for you. Maybe what I feel for you is because you’re helping me.”

“What do you feel for me? No, don’t answer that.”

“I’m not sure I’ve got it figured out myself. Why I want to kiss you, that’s easy. Why I want to go into your shadows and turn on the light, not so much. Maybe we’re drawn to each other because we’re lost souls. We are drawn to each other; we can’t deny that. But getting involved would cost too much. Your honor, maybe even your relationship with Magnus. And me, I can’t dream of having a boyfriend or husband. I’d be afraid of losing my temper and Becoming Darkness every day of my life. I can’t have children because I’d pass it on to them. There are many pleasures in life besides falling in love and having a family. Those will have to do.”

God but he wanted to pull her against him. To pick up where they’d left off, to hell with honor. He couldn’t bear to think of her living out her life without children, not the way she’d interacted with them at the music store. Not without love. No, she’d find it with Magnus. They’d work it out. And he would have to see her and know the taste of her and how she felt against his body. He would get plenty of torture then.

“I want to find out more about Darkness,” he said. “I’m going to project back to the day your mother was killed. Maybe I’ll see something that will give us a clue. Before I took the antidote, I could travel at will, just pick a date and place or event and go. Past or present, but not future.” He hadn’t been able to travel back to the carnival, though. “How long ago did it happen?”

Her expression darkened. “Fifteen years ago.”

He flopped down on the bed, settled his hands on his stomach and closed his eyes. He waited for the familiar spinning sensation. Nothing. He sat up, rolled his eyes upward. “Olaf!”

The Highlander’s energy buzzed through him, and Lachlan could see the imprint of him on his own body.

“Ye called upon me? I am honored. Or are ye gonna tell me to be gone again, and rudely at that?”

Lachlan felt his mouth quirk in a smile he tried to bank. “Ask the lass here. I can be mighty rude. Not as rude as, say, someone latching onto a person without asking permission, I might add.”

“Is that what ye summoned me for, to take me to task?”

“No, I need your help with the astral travel. Seems I can’t do it without you.”

The ghostly man crossed his arms over his—well, Lachlan’s—chest. “Told ye.”

“I mean to go back and solve a mystery for the lass here.”

“Are ye asking? I haven’t heard ye ask yet.”

Another roll of his eyes. “Please help me astral travel.”

“Be happy to.”

Lachlan dropped back, his body going limp. He felt the weightlessness, the spinning. He was in a dark space and heard soft whimpers and stuttered breathing. A door opened, sending enough light in for him to see a little girl: Jessie, with long brown hair and eyes filled with fear and tears. The sight of her grabbed his chest like a fist.

She nudged the door open and inched out of a closet, pulling herself by her fingers until she could see down the hall into the kitchen.

Blood. Lots of it, slowly spreading across the white tile floor, and a woman lying in it. Jessie whimpered, her body trembling. He wanted to go to the kitchen, but a stronger need kept him there, with her. She was so focused on the scene, she didn’t see his ghostly image there. He wouldn’t leave her alone, though.

He couldn’t see either man, but he heard them. One wanted to heal the woman with Darkness. The other man didn’t want that to happen. They stepped into view, Russell squaring off with the other man. Except the man who looked like Russell was really her father. They talked about Jessie, and Russell wanted her contained, trained. Was that what he was after now?

The men Became wolves, fighting, tearing up the kitchen. Lachlan started to go to the kitchen, but her whimpers kept him there. He was torn. He compromised, moving out a few feet when the black smoke surrounded the gray smoke.

“I banish you to the Void, Henry!” Out of the smoke, the man appeared, the one he knew as Russell. A thin trail of gray smoke drifted upward, following Russell’s pointing hand. “Go and be no more.”

Jessie got to her feet, stumbling.

No!
He wanted to warn her, to stop her, which was ridiculous because she was obviously all right.

Curiously, the man knelt by her mother and sent the Darkness into her body, as Jessie had done with Magnus. But it wouldn’t penetrate, and he shot to his feet and turned around. Jessie was running toward him now, holding the penguin he’d seen in her bedroom.

He knew the instant she realized he wasn’t her daddy. She came to a stop, and he grabbed for her. She yelled, “Fade!” and disappeared. Russell swiped at her, but Lachlan saw a door at the end of the hallway move as someone passed by. Russell kept searching for her, heading toward the room. Lachlan grabbed his sword and followed the man.

He felt hands gripping his wrists, and his eyes snapped open. He stood now, hands on his sword handle, Jessie standing in front of him with her hands on his wrists.

He’d done it again, acted it out. “What the hell are you doing? I could have cut you.”

“I knew what was happening, and I wasn’t going to let you hurt yourself.”

He dropped the sword on the bed, rubbing his forehead. The fatigue he usually felt after projecting weighed heavily on him. He could see Olaf’s ghostly image, could feel his fighting energy. Or was it his own?

“That’s what happened with my mum,” he said. “Remember when I said it was like being in REM sleep, where my body was paralyzed? With Olaf, it’s like the sleep disorder where you’re not paralyzed. People drive, walk, even run through glass windows. I could have hurt you.”

She stood right there in front of him. “I’m not afraid of you and your sword, Lachlan.”

The words stirred him. “Then you’re a fool.”

“Look, if anyone can handle your . . . situation, I can. I’ve dealt with worse.” Her mouth tightened. “As you know.”

He touched her cheek, because he couldn’t stop himself. If he could go back and change what had happened, prevent her father from being killed. Except . . . he wasn’t dead.

She leaned into his hand, probably an involuntary movement. “You look . . . haunted. What did you see?”

Focus on that, not on her.
“Did your father ever mention someplace called the Void?”