Haunting Desire (16 page)

He said nothing, but he didn’t lower his gaze either. He leaned forward again, brushed her hair back, exposing the scarred flesh of her cheek and the mangled shape of her ear. Dr. Campbell’s frustrated face came to mind.
Just one more surgery
, he’d said, but the allergy to anesthesia had grown so severe that she’d almost died on the table during the last one. They’d had to quit before they finished, leaving her imperfect. Work of art, interrupted.

It took more will than it should have not to squirm as he slowly ran his gaze over her face, noting every imperfection with the same unflinching expression. She was used to people staring at her, but with Tiarnan, it was different. He made her feel stripped—and not in a good way. She didn’t like being so exposed.

“What time will we be leaving?” she asked to distract him and then felt immediately stupid. This wasn’t the kind of place where clocks marked the minutes.

Tiarnan ran the pad of his thumb over the crescent scar at her throat, and a shiver that had nothing to do with cold went through her. She knew he felt it, that sizzling awareness, and he brushed the silky flesh again before at last he glanced away from her scars and scanned the horizon.

“Soon,” he said. “Soon.”

S
HEALY held Ellie’s hand as they followed Tiarnan to the other side of the islet where a small peninsula blocked the raging current and allowed a tiny pool to form. Trees offered privacy and the birds chirped merrily in the branches, oblivious to the carnage that had taken place here just that morning.

“Do not go out past that point,” he warned, indicating the tail end of the jutting eddy. “The current is deep and fast and will suck y’ in if y’ venture any farther.”

She didn’t need to be told twice. She remembered those who’d fled into the river in the last moments before dawn. They’d been swept away in seconds.

He left her and Ellie with a rough bar of soap that smelled wonderfully like him and made her insides tense into a tight, slick coil with the memory of her face pressed against his skin, breathing that scent in, losing herself in it. . . . Trying to ignore her rampant thoughts, Shealy jabbered nonsense at Ellie as she stripped them both and stepped into the pool. The water was as cold as he’d promised, but it felt blissful to wash the blood and stench from her hair and body. Ellie gave a distressed cry when the chill hit her, but then she, too, seemed to surrender to the numbing tingle. The pool was shallow enough for Shealy to sit and Ellie to stand while they washed. When she waded out, she found Tiarnan had left them skins to dry with and clothes—at least some type of clothing—to wear. The garments were crude, but soft and clean.

The sun had risen, and after blotting the worst of the water from their bodies, Shealy wrapped one skin around her and spread the other out on the ground. She settled down beside Ellie, using fingers to comb through the snarled mess of the child’s hair. Everything that had happened since the attack last night in the parking lot had kept her from dwelling on her father and where he might be, but now her fears crowded in and she worried about him. Where was he? Safe and dry back home? Not captured, not endangered at all?

She clung tight to the hope Tiarnan had given her when he’d said that their mysterious assailant, Cathán, would not have seen the need to send the monsters if he’d held her father prisoner. The fact that he’d launched an assault could only mean that her father was still at large.

God, she hoped that was true. A longing to be with her dad welled up inside her, so hot and strong that it brought tears to her eyes. What would he say when he saw Shealy again? When he met his other daughter for the first time? When he learned that his wife had given birth in this prehistoric hell and lived here all this time without them?

Seeing Shealy’s distress, Ellie crawled into her lap and patted her arm. Laughing and crying at the same time, she held the child close, picturing her father’s face. After the accident, he’d been like the walking dead. In one shattered moment, he’d lost the love of his life and the daughter he’d known. As if she’d been replaced by a changeling, Shealy had become a stranger. While the doctors reconstructed her face and body, guilt began to rebuild the person inside. She’d felt responsible for the accident, for the fight that had begun because of her thoughtless comment about the Book of Fennore.

Her stomach clenched, and it seemed the world tilted in a nasty, jarring roll. Shealy braced herself as Ellie clutched at her and the earth warbled like a blanket floating to the ground on pockets of uneven air, like it had the night the darkness ripped open and Tiarnan charged out. She had the sense of sailing, of falling, and then suddenly, plunging through something thick and warm, hot pudding that sucked at her and tried to wrench Ellie from her arms. She felt a spark—a supercharge of energy that seemed to come from within her and grow as it circled her sister, as if Ellie had somehow amplified it before it rebounded. She’d felt a similar sensation when the three-headed beasts had attacked, but then she’d been certain the rushing wave of energy had come from Ellie alone. Now it seemed to originate deep inside of Shealy. Frightened, she held on tight, fighting against the caging gel that sucked at them. Her eyes were sealed shut. She couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe.

Her wildly thumping heart and Ellie’s harsh breaths exhaled near her ear snuffed out the sound of the rushing river. Then slowly, as if from a great distance, she heard voices. Angry and raised, they were suddenly everywhere. Shealy tried to open her eyes and found them still sealed, and yet images appeared behind the lids and with them, the feeling of moving at warp speed while being strapped to a big, cushy cloud filled with feathers softer than a dream, a cloud that she sank deeper and deeper into until the world beyond jetted by like a blur. Then suddenly her eyes flew open and she stood in her dad’s study—a room from their house in Ireland, where she’d grown up. Ellie clung to her tightly.

Her father paced the floor, talking to another man—someone she thought she should know, but he had his back turned to her and she didn’t really care who he was. She only cared about her dad. Donnell looked different than he had the night before last, younger than she’d ever seen him, though fatigue pulled his face and dark shadows circled his eyes.

“How can you look at the evidence and not see it, Kyle?” he demanded, pointing at a satchel the other man wore over his neck and one shoulder. Shealy saw the corner of her father’s journal poking from it. “Look again. Flip the pages and see what I’ve been telling you—”

He stopped abruptly and suddenly turned his head. His shocked gaze settled on Shealy. For a moment, they stared at each other in absolute silence. From the corner of her eye, she saw the other man turn as well, knew he, too, was staring at her.

“Daddy?” she said.

Donnell’s mouth moved wordlessly and then he seemed to gather himself. “Shealy? God in heaven, is that you? Where are you, child?”

“I . . .” She glanced over her shoulder, saw the river of Inis Brandubh spread out like a ribbon waving behind her.

When she looked back at her father, he’d stepped closer. He was staring at the landscape beyond her, at the rampant river and the dark woods huddled on the other side of its banks. And then his gaze settled on Ellie and his eyes widened. She could feel the warmth of him, smell the Old Spice cologne that he’d never give up. There was stubble on his cheeks, but it had yet to go gray. In fact, there was no gray anywhere in his hair.

“Who’s that in your arms?” he asked softly.

“My sister. Daddy, Mom is dead.”

“Of course she’s dead, honey. I told you that. She died in the accident.”

“No. No she didn’t. The monsters ate her.”

Tears stung her eyes and made hot trails down her cheeks.

Donnell’s face drained of all color. “Monsters?
Monsters?
Where are you, Shealy.
Where. Are. You?
”

“Inis Brandubh. I’m looking for you, Daddy.”

“Looking for me? No, no my Shealy. You mustn’t. Wherever you are, you must try to get home. Don’t worry about me. Do you understand? I’m here at home, safe and sound, just waiting. You see that, don’t you?”

She nodded, but there’d been a note of deceit in his voice. Yes, she could see that he was safe but he wasn’t home—not where they lived now—and he looked so different. She heard someone calling her name and she glanced back impatiently.

“Who is that?” her dad asked.

“Tiarnan,” she answered, and her father’s eyes filled with fear. The other man in the room with him stepped closer, and she saw that he was a priest, recognized him at last. Father Mahon.

The name had never meant anything to her before, but now she realized that the name Mahon went with the three Keepers Tiarnan had told her about. The priest reached out, laid a hand on her shoulder as if to test the theory that she was real.

“Shealy,” her father began urgently. “You have to—”

But whatever else he said, she couldn’t hear because the study vanished as abruptly as it had appeared, taking with it her father and the priest. Instantly she was back in that world of gel and silence, clutching Ellie, feeling that current connecting them. They flew through the absolute quiet, sinking into the viscous cloud that held them. Then suddenly the sound of rushing water roared in her ears and Tiarnan’s voice called her name again. She blinked her eyes, staring at the banks of the river while her stomach rolled.

“Oh my God,” she said to Ellie. Her little sister stared back unflinching. “It was me.
I
opened the darkness.”

“Shealy?” Tiarnan called again, concern heavy in his tone.

“Yeah, just a minute,” she answered, her voice wavering with shock and emotion.
What just happened?
“We’re getting dressed.”

“Was it me all along? In the parking lot?” she breathed. Ellie didn’t answer, of course. “Did you . . . did
you
see what just happened? Did you see my dad?
Our dad?
Could you see them?” Ellie nodded. Her eyes were round and wide, and deep within them lurked a knowing Shealy didn’t understand. But there was too much chaos to sort through in her head.

How?
How had it happened? She hadn’t just returned to her world. She’d gone backward in time, to the past before tragedy had aged her father. How? Why? Was it a dream?

“Shealy, we’re waiting for y’,” Tiarnan said.

Quickly she stood, pulling on the tunic he’d left for her. She’d opened the mystical door Tiarnan had talked about. If she could figure out how she’d done it, she could help them all escape.

Suddenly another realization stole her breath. If they knew what she could do, would they help her find her father? Or would they simply wait for her to do it again? She had no control over when it happened, how it happened. Could she trust them with that knowledge? Any of them?

She heard them speaking nearby and forced her thoughts away. She’d keep this new information to herself for now and decide what and who to tell later.

The shapeless tunic Tiarnan had left for her was as large as a potato sack and hung to her knees. It had no sleeves and no form, but it was a vast improvement over her torn dress and smelled of Tiarnan in a way that seduced her senses and calmed her malaise. There was a leather cord she used to tie it at the waist, keeping it from feeling like a tent she might have to fight for mobility. A miniature version of the oversized tunic had been left for Ellie.

When Shealy emerged, she found the men, too, had washed and changed into fresh clothes and now waited to begin their journey. Liam stood beside his brother, looking drawn and somber. Only then did it occur to her that the girl he’d been with last night had died in the attack. Grief for the girl she’d hardly known swamped her. Tiarnan had been right—in this place, one shouldn’t wait for the right time to embrace life because it might be snatched away in a flash. As if hearing her thoughts, Liam gave her a sad, lopsided smile.

They seemed to be waiting for her to do or say something, but she had no idea what. She still couldn’t believe they’d all agreed to help her, and she feared that something in her expression would give away how shaken she felt.

“Ready?” Jamie asked.

With an uncertain shrug, she mumbled, “Yes. I’m ready.”

Scrubbed squeaky clean, Shealy had to suppress the urge to hide her face from them. She settled with letting her hair fall forward to cover the scars. From the corner of her eye, she caught Tiarnan watching the gesture.

Jamie hung back as they all made their way to several small boats like the ones Tiarnan and Liam had used last night. Tiarnan dumped his pack in one of the round vessels, giving Liam a nod as his brother climbed in with them and pushed off.

“Won’t he be pulled down to the waterfall?” she asked.

“Still don’t trust me to keep y’ safe, lass?” Tiarnan teased. “Do not fret. I know where the river can be crossed.”

Of course he did. He lived here.

A moment later, Shealy found herself in another of the
curraghs
with Ellie clinging to her like a baby monkey
.
Tiarnan pushed the boat off the banks and then stepped in. She settled against him without waiting this time. He reached around to cradle the two of them against his chest, and for a moment, Shealy felt as if she’d come home. As if this was where she belonged—here, in the circle of this man’s arms, no matter what danger they faced.

Tiarnan rowed, his muscles bunching as he fought the tow that wanted to drag them down and over the enormous falls that thundered in the distance. His legs braced against the edges of the saucer-shaped boat, thighs tightening as he used his weight and mass to keep them on track. She held on to the side with one hand and Ellie with the other, glad she had nothing in her stomach because the rocking would surely have brought it up. It took only a few minutes to reach the other side, but it felt longer and by the time he helped her step back onto solid ground, Ellie in her arms, she felt queasy.