Highland Sorcerer (7 page)

She damn near choked on the rush of it.
And greedily took what he gave. Her grandmother's spell rolled off
her tongue, a chant that matched the thunderous rhythm of her
heartbeat. A short verse, really. She wasn’t even sure if the spell
was necessary. To her knowledge no one had ever attempted this
before. It may not be possible. She repeated the spell over and
over again, clutching at the words as hard as she clutched at the
man's arms. The arms that were fading in and out beneath
hers.

She was losing him.

Nooooooo.

Charity clawed onto his magic like it
was a tangible thing.

Where he goes, I
go
.

And his hands locked around her wrists,
solid and sure.

Air swirled around them. The curtains
above the sink pulled from the wall, rod and all. Appliances flew
off the counters, crashing against walls. Toren yanked her down as
a chair sailed over their heads. Her little iron bistro table fell
to its side and scraped across the linoleum, splattering the soup.
Everything was spinning around them.

Her entire apartment had become the
apex of a hurricane, earthquake, and tornado. With them in its
eye.

Toren's gaze locked hard onto hers. "Do
not."

Too late. She was committed.

The ceiling pulled away into a black
maelstrom of swirling, floating debris. Her kettle, block of
kitchen knives, toaster, everything swept upward. Cupboard doors
ripped off their hinges. The countertops groaned, tearing from
their bases. Her sofa launched from the other room, banging against
the wall, splintering the doorjamb.

Everything flew around them, sucked up
through the ceiling.

Charity was pulled from the floor and
swept up into the roaring air. Toren's hold on her wrists yanked
hard. She squeezed his arms. The flow of magic between them
stretched and thinned. They swirled around and around until she
couldn't distinguish anything. It was all just a tumbling
nauseating blurred mass.

The electrified whirling atmosphere
pulled at her. Scraped across her bones. Fillings seemed to loosen
in her teeth. Volcanoes erupted. Lava buried mountains and rogue
waves ravished shores. Charity's skin peeled away.

She screamed, but the cry was snatched
away in the roaring storm. She clung to Toren even as the vortex
tried to tear them apart. She shot her magic out to remain ahold of
his. And missed. The tenacious hold ripped away.

Toren shouted, his mouth working though
she'd never know what he said for all at once he was wrenched away
and something hard slammed into her.

She dropped with a whoosh, forcing the
breath from her lungs.

The air stilled in abrupt
silence.

Everything was quiet. Except the
ringing in her head. She thrust her magic out, looking for
Toren.

Shaky, Charity lifted her head. She was
sprawled stomach down in the grass, as naked as the day she was
born.

Chapter Eight

Charity sprang up. She faced a tall and
impossibly wide stone-fitted wall. She couldn't even see how far it
went to either side.

She glanced at the green forest behind
her, and then looked up at the bottom underside of a balcony about
thirty feet above her. Or perhaps it was a jutting turret castle
thing that was casting a shadow over her. Had she made it? Was she
in Toren's time then?

Her heart started pounding.

"Toren," she shouted and stepped toward
the wall—

And was zapped by an electrical current
and thrown back onto her butt.

Ouch. Scrambling up to her knees, she
reached forward and felt the pulsation graze her fingertips like a
barrier of crackling energy.

Not electricity. Magic. A
spell.

That was the thing about
witches. They were sort of like lesser sorcerers. They had a lot of
the same abilities and could work a lot the same type of magic,
just not with the same amount of strength or
oomph
to it. Plus a witch’s magic
didn’t just bubble out of her core like a healer’s or sorcerer’s
did. A witch had to pull her magic out with the use of spells and
potions and all sorts of magical objects. Yes, some witches even
used wands as a focal object to call forth their magic and be able
to focus it where they wanted it to go—as clichéd as that
sounded.

A witch could also enhance the strength
of their magic, using spells and incantations to bind it with dark
magic or even make deals with demons to become more powerful and
more in control of being able to pull what is already inside them
out from their core.

Because of this, witches—even good
witches who never considered going dark side—had a bad reputation
within the magical community.

The magical barrier buzzed across her
palm.

No wonder Toren had been so roughly
snatched away. This had to be Aldreth's castle with a spell around
it to keep unwanted magic users out. While he'd been dragged back
inside, the spell had repelled her.

Guess that explained the lack of guards
around the area. Who needs soldiers when you have magical walls?
Unless of course this was the back of the castle. There weren't any
doors she could see. Maybe she could find some guards in the
front.

Charity frowned, the realization of
what she was up against rising to insurmountable odds. The spell
Aldreth created just to make a barrier this size and constantly
maintain had to be tremendous. She knew the witch was powerful.
She’d have to be in order to conjure a spell on those bands strong
enough to hold a sorcerer of Toren’s potency. But an entire shield
around her castle too?

Her heart squeezed and then seemed to
drop to her toes. A cooling breeze shivered across her
skin.

She was in the friggin thirteenth
century, still unable to get to Toren and naked as a
jaybird.

Damn. This wasn't exactly what she'd
had in mind.

Her first priority: Clothes. She
couldn't exactly expect a shopping mall to crop up. However, if
there were guards near the front gates, supposing there were even
gates…for all she knew this was like Rapunzel's magical tower with
only one way in or out. She eyed the balcony above again. Naw,
don't borrow trouble. There had to be gates where she'd find guards
and somehow pinch a uniform or something.

Plan made, she darted across the tall
meadow grass and into the tree line for cover. Glancing back at the
wall, she walked straight into a tree.

A tree that grabbed her and rolled with
her to the ground.

Why did this keep happening to
her?

She was flat on her back squished
beneath a long hard body. A curtain of black hair fell to one side
of both their faces.

Hope blossomed in her chest.
"Toren?"

The long body stiffened. "Do not speak
my brother's name, witch." The guy—obviously not Toren—pushed
upward, balancing on his elbows. Grey eyes, not blue, glared down
at her, but the features, even the scowl, was so similar to
Toren's, this man could be his, well, brother.

"Col?" she guessed.

"Up here, lass." Another voice replied
amicably and Charity's gaze snapped beyond the massive Highlander
currently using her as a recliner and up into half a dozen more
faces looking down at her. She picked Col out easily as the
fresh-faced tousle-haired youngest, who also bore an uncanny
likeness to his eldest brother. Shape-shifter, the histories said
of him, which made the scowling
lug-not-in-any-hurry-to-get-off-her, Shaw.

Moon sifter. Whatever the hell that
was.

"Get off me." She shoved against him,
well aware of how her breasts jiggled against his chest, and
immediately stilled. Perhaps he better stay right where he was for
the moment.

Crap. She was in some deep trouble.
Sure, she'd managed to piggy-back upon Toren's magic and get
herself to his time, but she'd also been separated from him with no
way into the castle dungeon where she'd thought she'd simply be
able to get those spelled wristbands off him and they could escape
the dungeon together. It shouldn’t be too hard for her to figure
out the spell and get them off because they weren’t spelled to
magic like they were to Toren’s. After that it'd be no problem for
him to send her back to her own time and done would be
done.

She'd been an idiot to think Aldreth
wouldn't expect someone to try and get inside through magical
means. The entire Limont clan were the most powerful magic wielders
of all time! Then again, she’d thought if her magic was connected
to Toren’s magic while they rode through time, she’d end up exactly
where he was.

How was she supposed to know? It’s not
like anyone had ever done this before.

"Let her up, Shaw," the young one said.
"Can ye not see ye frightened her to shivering?"

Shaw grunted, still not budging an
inch. His hip bone dug into Charity's thigh. "She's shivering
because we caught her performing a witch's ritual while
skyclad."

"I am not—"

Shaw's large palm clamped over her
mouth. "Quiet you."

Charity continued telling him that she
was not a witch and exactly what he could do with his assumptions,
although it came out as muffled gibberish which all the men
ignored.

"I don't think that's the witch," one
of the others said. He sported a perfectly clichéd Scottish red
beard that could use a little one-on-one with a hedge trimmer, but
he also had kind eyes and was immensely endearing since he at least
seemed to be talking some sense.

Shaw rolled his eyes. "'Course it's not
Aldreth. I do have eyes. But she's a witch nonetheless, working a
spell out here for her mistress."

Charity argued she wasn't a
witch at all,
stupidhead
, against his hand, which of course came out muffled and
useless and completely ignored. If she was a witch, he’d be a toad
already.

"So, what do we do with her?" Col
leaned his palms against the tip of a longbow.

Charity widened her eyes, more than a
little interested in the answer to that question as
well.

"Take her with us for now." Fluidly,
Shaw was on his feet, his hand removed from her mouth and was
hauling her up in all her sheer naked glory on display.

"Wait!"

Before she knew what was what, Col's
long plaid blanket thing was off his shoulder and wrapped around
and around her, pinning her arms against her sides and a long cloth
was shoved insider her mouth and tied behind her head seconds
before Shaw bent and plowed his shoulder none too gently into her
belly, lifting her off her feet.

Folded over his shoulder and without
the use of her arms to brace herself, Charity swung with the rhythm
of the big jerk's gait. Her cheek kept slapping his back. She felt
lightheaded, her scalp tingling from her hair hanging down and all
the blood rushing to her head.

They climbed up into the dense forest
while she called them every name she could think of and some she
made up, not that they could understand her beneath the gag, though
she was certain at one particular savory curse, she felt Shaw's
back ripple with quiet laughter.

She hated him the most. If he would've
only taken ten seconds to hear her out she could have explained
everything.

The Highlanders skirted a circle of
large standing boulders, and then trudged through a stream.
Freezing water splashed up at Charity's face. The forest and dirt
and brush blurred around her. Her stomach hurt, jostled on stupid
Shaw's shoulder and collarbone.

"I'm going to be sick," she shouted
against the wadded material, but of course they couldn’t understand
her and nothing was done to ease her discomfort. Did these men
never need to take a rest? Stop to pee? Anything?

Friggin robotrons.

Clenching her muscles against the
nausea, Charity closed her eyes, hoping to ride it out. Although it
really would serve Shaw right if she upchucked all down the back
side of his exposed knees.

They ran on and on and when she was
dumped on the ground, it took her a moment to realize the world had
stopped rocking.

Blinking, she looked around to get her
bearings. She was alone in some kind of cave. Well, er, not a cave
then, but some kind of small lean-to structure with long branches
lashed together and curved into a type of dome and more piney bows
making up the walls. Sunlight filtered in between the branches. Not
exactly an airtight enclosure. Furs, blankets and packs, even some
axes and longbows were scattered about or leaning up against the
leaf walls.

Ha! They shouldn't have left her alone
near weapons.

Chapter Nine

Rolling to her side, Charity tried to
figure out where the end of the plaid she was mummified within was
so she could get her arms free. She gouged at the dirt with her
heels while she squirmed side-to-side in an attempt to loosen the
overly long cloth.