Highland Protector (MacCoinnich Time Travels Book Five) (22 page)

A crossroad will follow where the
path of good or evil will be chosen. Power, in this time, will mean everything,
and the path of right will have been nearly forgotten.

From this day forward, the path will
not be recorded to protect and preserve the future.

The passage was an omen. That was
obvious.

“This could be anyone.”

“It could be the two of you.”

“I’m not a descendent of Grainna.”

“Are you sure?”

No.
“Of course.”

“Your shield makes you nearly
immortal.”

“I assure you, I can bleed.” Yet when
was the last time he had?

“Explain why when I do this…” Giles
placed his pen to the book and wrote Amber’s name in the margin. As he wrote,
the words swiftly disappeared before their eyes. “It won’t keep.”

“I don’t know.”

“
From this day forward, the path
will not be recorded to protect and preserve the future.
I have written
other passages, that of Helen and Simon, those have all preserved. But not one
word of you and Amber. Not one, Kincaid.”

“There must be some protection her
family put upon her.”

Giles shook his head. “Or this
passage is speaking of the two of you.”

Kincaid slammed the book closed and
the fireplace behind him sprang to life. “It isn’t me. I am not the son of
Grainna!”

Behind him, he heard a gasp and felt
the presence of his wife before he turned around.

She’d gone sheet-white as she
stumbled backward toward the door. “God’s teeth.”

“Amber?” He moved toward her and she
flinched and backed farther away.

You’re her family?

“No.”

The words in his head dried up as she
successfully shut him out.

He took another step in her direction,
and she pushed the shield up between them. “Don’t.”

Before he could say one word, she
fled the room.

“Wait,” Giles called him.

Kincaid twisted toward his friend.
“Quickly, Giles.”

“I-if you’re her descendent—”

The sound of Amber fleeing couldn’t
be ignored.

Giles backed away, clearly
uncomfortable. “Never mind.”

“I’m
not
a son of Grainna!”

“I hope you’re right.”

He pursued his wife up the stairs and
found her door closed and locked. “Amber?” How had she shut him out so
completely? He barely felt her. He lowered his voice in an attempt to coax her
out. “Giles doesn’t know anything for certain. We can figure this out.”

He waited.

Nothing.

“Amber?”

Amber?

He swallowed a wave of nausea and
pushed his shoulder into the door, forcing it open. The room was empty. In the
middle of the room stood a circle of candles still flickering.

Amber was gone.

Chapter Twenty-Three

One moment Selma was drinking coffee
on the back porch of her temporary home and the next the cup fell from her
hand, hitting the wood and spilling the dark brew everywhere. The charm around
her neck grew cold and spread over her body. The image of the twins swam in her
head, their tiny voices screamed with fright. “Kelsey, Sophie,” she murmured.
“Oh, God.”

She jumped from her chair and ran in
the back door. “Simon? Helen?”
Where are my keys? My purse?
Something
was wrong. She tore up the stairs, colliding with Kincaid as he moved franticly
in the opposite direction.

“Where’s Amber?”

The question got stuck in a loop in
Selma’s brain. “What? I don’t… something’s wrong with the girls. We have to get
to them.”

Kincaid offered the same confused
looks she most likely gave him.

From opposite directions Helen and
Simon appeared both above and below them in the stairwell.

“Amber’s gone!” Kincaid told them.

“Gone?” Selma froze.

“Gone. Moved in time, I think.”

“She wouldn’t. Not without
you…without one of us,” Simon told them.

“Go look for yourself.”

Simon passed Selma on the stairs
while the charm on her neck felt as if a brick of ice surrounded it and burned
her skin. “I’ve got to check on the girls. Something awful is happening.”

Helen swung in Selma’s direction. “What
are you talking about?”

“I gave the girls charms. I linked
them to this.” She moved up a few steps and extended the necklace to Helen’s
hands. As soon as Helen touched it, her face grew white and her eyes closed. “Oh,
no.”

“You see something?”

Helen nodded, her eyes pinched
together. “They’re scared…in a closet. There’s blood.”

“Where? Where are they?”

“The closet is painted green… lots of
toys and clothes.”

“Their mom’s house.”

Helen dropped the necklace. “You need
to call Jake.”

“Helen?” Simon called from above.

Both of them ran toward his voice.

The room was empty.

Candles that sat in a circle
flickered.

Giles ran in behind them and stopped
short at the door. “Damn.”

Kincaid glared at his friend, pointed
a finger in his direction. “Keep searching for other answers, Giles. I need to
find my wife.”

“What happened to make her run?”
Simon asked.

For an uncomfortable moment, Kincaid
stared at the floor. He then stared at Giles. “I’ll let him explain.” Kincaid
swiveled his head toward Simon. “Trust what you’ve seen and not what you hear.”

He took a giant step back and the
blue aura of his shield swam around him. Though he mumbled under his breath,
Selma knew he was about to move time. Unwilling to get caught up in the vortex,
she moved away and watched as Amber’s husband disappeared into thin air.

They stood there, stunned, and all
eyes turned to Giles.

Before anyone could question the man,
Selma felt her stomach cramp, and she doubled over with a pain so intense she
felt her coffee erupt.

“Selma?” Helen knelt beside her.
“You’re cold.”

All she could see were the twins.
Their anguish and pain. “I have to get to them.”

“What is it, lass?” Simon asked.

“The twins…they’re in trouble. I have
to go.”

Helen helped her upright. “Should we
follow Amber?”

Simon frowned. “Amber will go home.
She has protection there.”

“The twins are children,” Selma
reminded them all. “Innocent.”

“Then we go there first.”

Selma turned from the room and darted
around Giles.

“Stay here with Mrs. Dawson,” she
heard Simon order Giles “We’ll discuss Amber and Kincaid when we return. Call
Jake. Tell him we’re en route.”

****

A vortex of color surrounded Kincaid
as his mind reached for the energy of his other half. Find her, he chanted.
Amber.
Find my Amber.

His stomach pitched, his head felt
heavy enough to explode. All the while he grew closer, knew she was near. His
hands stood at his side, his weapons at the ready. When the world shuddered to
a grinding halt the gasps of women drew his attention first.

Stone walls. Large hearth with a fire
blazing. MacCoinnich Keep.

Farther in the past than he’d ever
seen.

Four witnesses. Two men, formidable
foes…allies? Two women, one younger than the other, dressed as mistresses, not
common servants. His assessment clicked off in rapid fire.

The older man tensed first as he
dropped the object in his hand and unsheathed his sword.

Amber was there…somewhere. He felt
her.

Kincaid removed his weapon by
instinct, pointed at the man with the weapon.

From the other younger warrior, a
knife flew. With a flick of his hand, his shield stopped the weapon a foot away
and it fell to the floor.

“Where is she?” he yelled.

“Who?” the older man questioned, his
eyes never wavering. The dim light in the room left the man in shadow.

Kincaid met the other man’s stare.
“Where is Amber? Where is my wife?”

The only emotion on the older man’s
face was the flare of his nostrils. Inside the man steamed.

The women were harder at guarding
their reaction to his words.

The younger man shielded the women as
he came to rest in front of them, shoulder to shoulder with the older man.

Before Kincaid could ask who these
men were, he felt her.

Who they were could wait. He needed
to find Amber before she ran again.

Kincaid bolted from the room, the
beat of his own heart moving faster as he rounded the halls and ran up the
familiar steps of the Scottish fortress. The room was cooler, the tapestries
different, but it was the same space. He knew the others followed, but he had
one goal. Find her. Keep her in one place long enough to talk to her. Explain.

He twisted a corridor, rounded
another, found stairs, and moved up and up. Away from the warmth of the main
floors. Away from the nagging emotions of everyone in the Keep.

The door he sensed her presence
behind was massive, its hinges made of thick iron and not easily breached.

Inside Kincaid’s head, he felt
Amber’s confusion, her worry. But he didn’t sense she knew he was near. Instead
of giving her warning, he aimed his weapon at the door and quickly dissolved
the iron with two blasts before kicking her door in.

She stood in the center of the room
with a gown in her arms.

He drew in a relieved breath and
lowered his weapon.

“You found me.”

He heard the others behind him,
ignored their presence.

“We’re bonded, Amber. You can’t
escape me.”

“God’s Blood,” someone said behind
him.

Amber looked past him and the harsh
expression on her face softened. She opened her arms. “Mother.”

Kincaid grew cold.

The older woman moved past him and
into his wife’s arms.

Of course.

Where else would a scared newly
married woman flee but home?

Which meant he, Gavin Kincaid, had
actually drawn his weapon on his father-in-law. More than that, he drew his
weapon on the man he’d sworn to protect through time.

Could it get any worse?

Then Kincaid remembered the
information Giles delivered before he’d left the twenty-first century.

Yes. It can get worse.

****

They piled into two cars. Helen and
Simon followed in the R8 while Selma sped through traffic in her beater en
route to the address on the portable navigation. “I’m coming, girls. Hang
tight.”

The phone on the seat beside her
rang. Unlike any other time, she didn’t think twice about answering it.
“Hello?”

“This had better be good, Matilda.”

“Jake?” God it was good to hear his
voice. “The girls. God…get there.”

He was silent for a moment. “What’s
going on?”

“I feel them Jake. Something’s wrong.
Really wrong.”

“This witchy shit doesn’t—”

She slammed on the brakes to avoid
oncoming traffic. Horns around her blared.

“Dammit, Jake. Your daughters need
you. Put the fucking phone down.” With that, she tossed the phone to the floor
and blew through a stop sign, swerved around a pedestrian in a crosswalk, and
gunned her gutless engine down the street within a block of the girls’ home.

She saw a wave of blue over the house
and pulled her car to the curb. Behind her, the sports car pulled in and from it,
Helen jumped out, a wolf at her side.

Simon.

“Wait here,” Selma told her friend.
Helen didn’t need to get any closer until they knew it was safe.

Simon shook his head and bolted
toward the house. The fact he didn’t need to be told which one it was bothered
Selma on so many levels.

Simon ran in front of her, cutting
her off with a growl.

Selma hesitated outside the splintered
and cracked front door.

Simon pushed through and Selma waited
for several seconds before she heard his bark.

Without hesitation, she shoved her way
inside and nearly stumbled over the sight.

Blood splattered a path through the
house, throughout the living room, the kitchen. Her head spun and she swallowed
back nausea.
Not the girls. Please, not the girls.

At the end of the blood bath lay two
adults.

The man Selma didn’t recognize, but
the woman was Lindsey. The wide deathly stare of their eyes and the carnage of
their bodies were evidence of the vicious, lethal attack. Animal, if she had to
guess.

From the stairs, she heard Simon
bark.

She ran up and found Simon at the
top. Seeing him naked wasn’t something she wanted to get used to but by now,
she didn’t even flinch.

He stopped her from running into a
closed door.

“They’re in there.”

For one awful moment, she thought he
was shielding her from the unthinkable.

“Alive.”

Her body collapsed against him. From
the distance, she heard sirens.

“An animal killed them. I need to
leave here in a different form.”

Selma nodded.

“I’ll scout, but I think whatever did
this is gone.”

“Whatever?”

“It wasn’t human.”

The charm on her neck started to thaw,
as the noise of sirens grew closer.

“Go,” Simon told her. “They need
you.”

Selma nodded and Simon shifted form
and spread his wings. Without a thought, she opened a window and watched
briefly as Simon flew away.

She opened the door to what had to be
Kelsey’s room.

The color green penetrated every
surface. “Girls?” she said once, then again a little louder. She headed toward
the closet and felt the charm warm. “It’s Selma. You’re okay… I’m here.”

Without waiting for them to open the
closet door, she inched it open to see the two of them huddled together,
shaking. They rushed her, their large eyes opened wide as tears ran down their
cheeks.

“I’m here, baby.” She kissed the top
of each of their heads. “I’m here.”