Haunting Embrace (25 page)

He didn’t understand what game Cathán played here, but he saw that it might go on all night. He should go, find Meaghan, and relieve her of the pendant. He could guard against Mickey’s return from the back porch of the house as well as he could here.

Reluctance—not prudence—kept him in his seat. He didn’t want the confrontation that would come if he simply tried to take the pendant away from Meaghan, and he knew that she would not allow him to beguile it from her. She’d leave him no choice but to overpower her—physically, mentally—perhaps both. And then she would hate him, as Elan had come to hate him.

The thought of it felt like a stone on his chest. He didn’t want to hurt her.

Fool.

She’d been in his thoughts all night. In those moments when he’d pulled the power of the pendant to him, something of Meaghan had been in the mix. Something rich and sweet as wine, something intimate and yielding. It burned in his blood even now.

Earlier, on the cliffs above the lighthouse, she’d felt like a fantasy in his arms, her flesh hot against his own. He’d wanted to strip every barrier that kept him from the softness of her skin even as a part of him feared her, feared the way she made him feel. He’d wanted to bury himself inside her right then and there, against the looming rocks, and be damned the consequences. And she’d wanted it, too. Whatever lies her lips spoke, her body had told the truth.

But there lay the road to insanity.

When she’d stood strong against Mickey, brandishing the pendant and all its power, his last doubts about the fleeting glimpses of lavender in her eyes and what they might mean had vanished. In that moment, she’d looked so much like Elan, the White Fennore, that he’d nearly wrapped his hands about her throat and squeezed. But Meaghan seemed to have no awareness of Elan moving within her. Yet he knew Meaghan wouldn’t have considered using the pendant like a weapon if Elan had not led her to do it.

Again he dwelled on Elan’s promise to one day return and
judge
him. He wondered if she’d chosen Meaghan as a means to that end because Elan had known—in that way she’d always known things without being told—that he would not be able to resist Meaghan? Or had Meaghan’s imprisonment in the Book of Fennore simply provided Elan with a convenient receptacle?

He couldn’t guess. Elan had been a mystery to him from the start.

Either way, the die had been cast. The fact remained, however, that no matter what Elan planned, Áedán refused to return to the Book of Fennore. And he would never be safe in a world where both the Book and the pendant coexisted. If Elan had returned in the guise of Meaghan Ballagh, she’d made a fatal error. Now, with all the pieces reunited—the Book, the pendant, and the White Fennore—the sacrificial ceremony that had begun his own imprisonment could be repeated.

Only this time it would be Elan who was cursed for all of eternity.

He fought the scrabble of his conscience reminding him of the moment when he’d stood above the churning sea with Meaghan and confessed that he was Brandubh, the Druid. Her voice had been soft as she’d calmly answered.

I know something about people, too,
she’d said.
And I don’t think you’re evil.

He hadn’t wanted to feel anything at those words, and yet it seemed that he was helpless when it came to Meaghan. His heart had clenched, and for a dark moment, he’d wanted to weep at the pure simplicity of her statement. She touched something deep within him that he’d thought long dead and eradicated.

She’d made him feel . . .
human
.

And in that painful moment, he’d hated and loved her for it. It had taken more than he’d thought possible to pull his armor tight and shield what he felt. She’d manipulated his corroded emotions with the skill of a
seanchai
, weaving words into invisible strings as she lured him down a twisted road.

What did she want of him? What was he willing to give?

And what, Áedán wondered, would he be willing to take? If the moment came, would he,
could
he condemn Elan when it would also condemn the woman who felt like salvation in his arms? Would he trust in fate, or would he finally, irrefutably carve his own destiny?

He would get no answers here and he might wait forever for Mickey to leave. Better to take himself to the Ballagh house and talk to Meaghan, learn what he could. If Mickey came home, Áedán would be there waiting.

He slipped from the bar, following the twisted path inland. No lights burned in the windows he passed along the way, and the Ballaghs’ home crouched equally still and dark. He crept to the back door and quietly stepped inside the kitchen.

At first he didn’t notice Meaghan standing against the wall with her hands clapped over her mouth. But then he looked again at the pale smear in the darkness and saw her. Her eyes looked huge and stared fixedly at a point between them. Her chest heaved as she sucked in air and she made a wheezing noise as it passed her lips. She trembled, quaking from head to toe. He could see it even in the dark.

“Meaghan?” he said softly.

Her fixed gaze did not waver, and she gave no indication she’d heard him. The expression of terror on her face had him glancing around, looking for signs that Mickey had been here. Had he left the bar after Áedán and managed to slip past him somehow? Was he upstairs? Had he gone for Colleen?

“Meaghan,” he said again, keeping his voice low but adding urgency to it. He moved closer when she didn’t respond, but it wasn’t until he touched her arm that she saw him.

Her hands flew out to ward him off just as a strangled shriek tried to emerge. He clamped his own hand over her lips, trapping the sound before she woke the whole nosy village.

“It’s me,” he said, thinking that should hardly reassure her but hoping it did. The irony of his being there to ensure her safety had plagued him the whole way over.

“Meaghan, it’s Áedán. Look at me.”

She did, finally focusing on his face with those shock-widened eyes. Her pupils were so large that they swallowed the blue. Then she made a sound of such relief that it tickled a warning in him. She launched herself into his arms with a muffled cry.

Her body felt soft and yielding, her scent a drug to his senses. He couldn’t help but hold her close, breathe her in.

“What happened?” he asked. “Did Mickey come back? Is Colleen all right?”

“Yes. I mean, no—yes.”

He tried to pull away to see her face, but she held him too tightly. “Which is it? Yes or no?”

“No, he didn’t come back. But I saw him.”

“Where? Outside?”

She shook her head. “He was fecking dead,” she said, and her voice defied him to doubt her even as it quavered. Tears streamed down her face and burned where they pooled against his throat. At last she eased back, her expression so filled with horror that it made every hair on his body stand on end.

Memory crashed down on him with a force that stole his breath.

She’d said dead.

She’d seen Mickey dead, and from her reaction, he had to assume seeing the dead had never happened before. She didn’t understand the implication of it, but Áedán did. Doubts that he’d tried to fortify as he’d made his way here disintegrated in thick and muddied puddles like dust in a rainstorm.

Forcefully he pushed her back, holding her at arm’s length, squeezing her shoulders until she looked into his eyes.

“You saw his spirit?” he asked.

She stared at him blankly, as if he’d spoken a foreign language she couldn’t translate.

“Mickey,” he repeated patiently. “You saw his specter?”

She nodded, shook her head, nodded again.

“I don’t know what I saw. He looked so real. His throat had been cut and Colleen’s knife was plunged in his heart. There was blood everywhere.” Her voice rose in panic and fear. “There was blood on my hands.”

He gave her a gentle shake, trying to keep her focus from spiraling back to what she’d seen.

“Did he speak to you?”

She made a high, squeaking sound, like air forced from a constricted opening. Her lips worked for a moment without managing to form words. She looked horrified, terrified, ready to split at the seams.

Something inside him twisted at her agony, fought to deflect her pain and carry it for her. He didn’t understand the feeling but couldn’t deny its strength or determination.

“No, he didn’t speak,” she breathed at last. “He just came after me.”

“Like he meant to hurt you?”

Anger flared in the molten pool of distress—not directed at Meaghan, but at Cathán.

How dare he threaten Meaghan?

“I don’t know if he meant me harm. I don’t know.”

She spoke of Mickey, but Áedán knew that Cathán pulled Mickey’s strings, and by doing so, whether he meant it or not, Cathán succeeded in harming Meaghan. Áedán would see him punished for it. The violence beneath the fierce promise he silently made shook him, but he refused to stop and analyze it. He refused to hear that possessive voice inside him that claimed this woman as his own and vowed to protect her, to avenge her.

Refused the voice that reminded Áedán that his plans for Meaghan were equally cruel.

She stared at him with tear-drenched eyes, her expression so young and vulnerable that it tugged at the heart he swore he no longer had. He shouldn’t offer her comfort. It was her way to entice him, to make him think she was defenseless when he knew better. But his arms seemed to be taking orders from another part of his brain.

Áedán pulled her close, letting her tears dampen his shirt as she cried. He’d forgotten. How, he didn’t know, but he had forgotten. Elan’s ability to see death had destroyed all hope for their future together.

Elan couldn’t see the dead without wanting to save them. Would Meaghan be the same?

Was this part of her game? Make him watch her destroy everything again? Was Meaghan connected to Elan on a spiritual level, or was Elan simply pulling her strings, using
her
as Cathán had used Mickey?

He’d decided that Elan had come back in the form of this feisty Irish woman to judge him. Now he feared it would be much worse than that. She’d come to torment him, to make him the helpless spectator as once again the tragedy of their lives played out.

“Did you kill him?” Meaghan asked, her voice muffled by his chest.

It took a moment for him to understand what she asked. “No. Mickey was alive and well when I left him at the Pier House.”

And Áedán knew with utter certainty that Mickey was still alive and well. Not dead. Not yet.

As if his thought had called the other man, he heard a voice singing discordantly and knew Mickey had come home at last. Áedán toyed with the idea of killing him here and now, but he couldn’t, not in front of Meaghan. Not when she was so upset.

Besides, he’d have to be careful when he chose to do it. Times had changed;
Áedán
had changed. If he killed Mickey this night, he would find himself imprisoned once more—this time in a cage of another making. His freedom had been too short, too sweet to risk it.

He saw the door to a small storage room with a cot inside and assumed Meaghan had been sleeping there before the spirit had come to her. Pressing his hand over her mouth, he pulled her back into the room. She fought him, and when he closed the door, he remembered something else about her.

Elan had been afraid of the dark. Meaghan, it appeared, shared that deep-seated fear.

He knew why, of course.

Using his body to hold her still, Áedán pressed her tight against him, hand still clamped over her lips. “Calm yourself,” he whispered. “It’s Mickey coming home. He’s not dead, Meaghan. He’s alive.”

“But I saw him,” she said, her words muted by the barrier of his palm.

“Quiet,” Áedán breathed. “You do not want him to find us here.”

She stilled but it was too dark to see her face, to see if she understood. He could feel her heart pounding against his, feel the hot burst of breath against his chest as she exhaled in quick, jerky gusts. She was terrified and he could do little to comfort her, surprised himself with the realization that he wanted nothing more than to do just that. A deep need inside him yearned to assuage her fears and soothe her. He eased his hand away from her mouth and she took a breath. The soft curves of her body molded more completely to his, stirring that not-quite banked fire that had burned within him since he’d seen her in the cavern.

“Close your eyes. Think about light,” he whispered against her ear, feeling the softness of her hair, inhaling the sweetness of her scent.

She made a small sound in her throat. Too proud to be a whimper, too wretched to be less. If possible, he pulled her closer, no longer trying to hide the fact that he was hard with need. She was too much a spitfire not to react in one way or another to his blatant arousal. Perhaps her anger would hold back her fear.

He knew he fooled himself into thinking that might be his goal, and his lips gently brushing the silk of her cheek only confirmed it. “I’ll keep you safe,” he murmured, damning himself further. “I won’t leave you alone. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

The words flowed softly from a place inside him that had harbored such sentiments for an eternity. They were words he’d used before, words he’d spoken to Elan millennia ago. He remembered when he’d found Elan locked in the dark by the king’s wife, whose jealousy and fear had driven her to cruelty and hatred. Elan had screamed until her voice no longer worked, sobbed until her tears no longer flowed. She’d been trembling, like this woman now. And when he’d touched her, she’d made a sound so broken he’d wanted to kill the one responsible for hurting her. He’d vowed to avenge her, wanted to charge off and do it that very moment. But all she’d wanted was to be held. To be comforted. And in the end, he’d avenged no one, not even himself.

Lost in the memory, he stroked Meaghan’s back and arms, buried his face in the softness of her hair that spilled over her shoulder. Her fragrance was seduction itself, so soft, so feminine. Light as a summer breeze, sweet as honeysuckle. She pressed her face to his chest, and he felt her taking in his scent as well. She’d told him once he smelled of the forest—bright and fresh like juniper, rich and mysterious as the bark of blackthorn. He’d been enchanted with her words, entranced by the idea they were meant for him and only him.