Highlander’s Curse (34 page)

“Oh, my God, Colin! What’s wrong?” She pulled her horse as close to his as possible, grabbing for the hand he held clenched around his reins.

“It’s left me.” His voice sounded so desolate, like a lost child. “I canna feel them. I canna feel any of them.”

“Your friends’ Souls? What do you mean you can’t feel them? I thought you were cursed with it. That the Faerie Queen had cursed you to feel everyone’s pain forever.”

He’d told her the whole story. He’d described the day it had happened in such detail, she’d felt as if she’d seen the entire event through his eyes, experiencing it along with him.

“Only by joining with your own Soulmate will you cease to feel the horror and pain of the great wanting.”

She recognized the words even as he spoke them. They were the ones the Faerie Queen had given him as
a way out of the curse. Just before she’d snatched back all hope by informing him his match didn’t exist in this lifetime.

“Because I’m your Soulmate,” she said slowly, the realization weighing down on her. “Because I existed in the twenty-first century, not here. And we would never have been together had I not. . .”

“Had you not wished for me at your side,” he finished for her, his eyes haunted with the knowledge that his gift was gone forever. “It is gone because of our joining.”

Colin scrubbed his hands over his face, all expression wiped away when he finished, his mask back in place, firmly shutting her out. That lack of emotion frightened her almost as much as the horror she’d seen in his eyes only moments before.

“I don’t understand why you’d lose your gift now. We had sex before. Sort of. What was different this time?” She watched him closely waiting for some sign of how he felt about this.

Only the rhythmic clenching of his jaw muscle gave away the fact that he had any emotions at all.

“Dinna you ken it’s no about the joining of our bodies. It’s about the joining of our Souls.”

The joining of Souls. As in, he was definitely The One.

“There’s naught to be done about it now. We’ll travel southeast until we reach the area where the road to Oban crosses our path. Once there, our best choice will be to follow the road to the west and hope we can find where John of Lorn lies in wait for my king.”

Doing that might guarantee they’d find the enemy all right, but that in itself seemed risky as hell. If she’d
thought his plan to change the future was crazy, this was off the charts.

“And how is that supposed to help your kinsmen? I thought your plan was to warn them, to keep them from walking into that ambush in the first place. Instead, what I’m hearing you say is that you’re planning on jumping into the fray with them. How’s that supposed to do anything but get you killed right along with them?”

When Colin turned to face her, the emotion had returned. His eyes were so haunted and brimming with pain, she almost wished he still wore the mask.

“What would you have me do? From the beginning my choice was to find them first. But I dinna ken the way they will approach, and only the general area of where they will encounter battle. I’ve no way to tell if my kinsmen yet live. It’s gone from me. Can you no understand what I’m telling you? I’ve no way
to
save them. By the Fates, woman, I’ve no even a way to track the danger that follows us.”

“What danger?”

He turned his eyes from her, staring off into the distance, his lower jaw working as if he ground his teeth.

“You were right that night. Flynn is here. Somehow he managed to follow us. I’ve been keeping track of where he is, making sure we stayed far enough ahead to avoid him.”

“Once again, this is probably the sort of thing you should be sharing with me.” She chose her words carefully. “These are the kinds of things I really need to know.”

“Now you do, and what’s to be gained?” The mask had slipped once again, his raw emotion on display.
“Naught but one more worry on yer head along with the knowledge that I have no more ability to track the demon than I do to find my kinsmen.”

And that was her fault. Guilt washed over her in a torrent. She’d brought this hideous pain to the man she loved. She’d stripped his abilities from him now just as she’d stripped him from his world in the first place.

She’d messed this up good and proper, so it was up to her to set things right.

“I can’t do anything about Jonathan, but maybe I can help with your kinsmen. I can find them for you.”

Colin shook his head, turning away from her to stare into the distance. “It’s no use, Abby. You told me yerself that yer gift disna work with finding people. Only things.”

“True, but surely your guys have things, right? Some token or something special they always carry with them? A wallet, a necklace, a special weapon. Something. Think.” He had to remember something. It was their best hope.

“They carry only what we all carry. Swords, knives. Dair carries a bow and a quill of arrows.”

Too general. “What we all carry isn’t good enough. Not unless there’s something special and different about one of those weapons. I need something you can describe for me that I can visualize. Something I can use to find just that one person who—”

“Dair wears a band of braided leather on his wrist, decorated with a small silver cross. His twin sister made it for him and he never takes it from his wrist.”

“Okay. That’s good. Really good. Give me a minute.”

At least a minute. She’d never before attempted to search for something farther away than the other rooms in her house.

Fighting the self-doubt, Abby cleared her mind of everything except an image of the wristband Colin had described. She sent the delicate tendrils of fluorescent green energy out from her mind in every direction, curling and creeping across the countryside faster than she’d ever seen them move before.

There was nothing, not in any direction. She waited, concentrating on the energy as all of the tendrils receded, slithering back into her mind, shrinking, withering, disappearing. She’d failed him. There was nothing.

Wait!

All the slithering green tendrils had returned save one. One lone wisp of energy remained; straining forward like a leashed dog, it beckoned to her, a shining beacon in the dark mist.

“I’ve found the wristband.”

“He lives?”

Abby wanted with all her heart to say yes, to soothe the apprehension she heard in the question. But she could not lie to him.

“I don’t know that for sure. I only know the wristband is somewhere in that direction.” She lifted her hand and pointed out the direction she saw in her mind.

By way of answer, Colin pulled on his reins, urging his mount in the direction she had shown him.

If these Faeries really existed, she could only pray they didn’t pick now to let her down.

D
o you hear that? What is that noise?”

Abby had drawn her horse up alongside Colin’s, her brow wrinkled in concern.

Even if he hadn’t spotted the brightly colored wagons in the distance, the familiar noise of pans rattling against one another assured him there was only one thing it could be.

“Tinklers.”

It was clear as the wagons closed the distance between them that their drivers were pushing the rigs as hard as they could.

“Turn back and save yerselves,” the first man called, pulling hard on his reins to slow his wagon to a stop. “You and yer lady will no want to be caught in what’s to come at the end of this road, lad.”

“What lies ahead of us, Tinkler?” Colin asked, even
though he’d read the stories of the battle that would rage in this area.

“An army passed our camp in the night. Desperate men on the run. They warned that the English followed.”

His king knew he was pursued, but he knew not of the men who waited in ambush. An ambush Colin would be too late to prevent if he didn’t hurry.

“Turn back with yer lady. Yer more than welcome to ride along with us. Unless you’d rather no been seen in our company, that is.”

“I’ve no hesitation to ride at yer side, good sir.” Tinklers, long thought to have mysterious ties to the Fae, had always been welcome at his family’s home. “But I canna turn back, though I do appreciate yer warning.”

“Consider my words well, young sir. Men from all sides of the conflict roam the countryside ahead. It’s too dangerous for you and yer lady to—”

The Tinkler’s insistence was cut short by a woman’s hand to his shoulder as she leaned out from the flap of material covering the opening in the wagon.

“That’s enough from you, William Faas. These people chase their destiny. Can you no feel it?”

She turned to face them, her sweet smile seeming to spread a feeling of joy when it lit on him.

“My home is but a few days’ journey in the direction you travel now. There is safety at Dun Ard and you’ll be welcomed there.” Why he felt compelled to offer these people the protection of his clan eluded him at the moment. He only knew that it was something he should do.

“We are well familiar with Dun Ard. The lady Rosalyn is one of my best customers.” She smiled again and patted her husband’s shoulder. “We must hurry,
William. This is no place for us to be right now. Go forth with our blessings, Master MacAlister.”

William snapped the reins he held, urging his team of horses onward as his wife disappeared back behind the flap of cloth. “Go with caution, lad,” he called over his shoulder as their wagon pulled away. “Go with faith.”

Colin waited, Abby at his side, until both the Tinklers’ wagons had passed them by.

“What did she mean about us chasing our destiny?” Abby’s voice seemed to blend with the musical sound of the Tinklers’ pots.

He shrugged, at a loss for any logical answer. “They are Tinklers.”

When he started off this time, he held his mount to a slower pace. They had need to be watchful from here out to avoid any unpleasant surprises.

Abby followed along at his side, silent after the encounter with the Tinklers. He should say something to reassure her after the dire warnings, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell her such a falsehood. William Faas had spoken the truth. Danger did lie in wait, both ahead and behind them.

The afternoon sun rode midway down the western sky by the time they reached the crossroads.

They were close now. He might have lost his Faerie abilities, but his warrior senses were as keen as ever. The very air seemed to shimmer with the potential for violence only a great battle could bring.

Without a word, he turned his horse to the west, to follow the path his king’s army would have taken.

“That’s the wrong way.” Abby sat her mount in the middle of the crossroads, making no move to follow him.

“Robert’s men travel this direction.” West, to their own peril.

“That may be true, but even if it is, your friend isn’t with them. He’s this way. Or—” She shrugged, her face seeming to pale as she continued. “His wristband is this direction, anyway.”

East. Away from where he knew the ambush awaited.

“Yer sure of this. There can be no mistake?”

“Absolutely positive. If you want to find the wristband, we have to travel in this direction.”

She waited for him, moving not a muscle, trust shining in her eyes even as indecision rumbled in his gut, an unfamiliar, worthless emotion he had no use for.

East to find the wristband Dair always wore, or west to join his king.

One direction might well be an exercise in futility. The wristband could have fallen from Dair’s arm. Or—and this thought set his stomach to a full churn—the band could still be on his kinsman’s body. His lifeless body.

The other direction required risking not only his own life but that of his beloved Soulmate as well, and in the end it was possible he’d neither find his kinsmen nor reach his king in time to warn him of what awaited.

And if he did?

He could hear Pol’s voice floating through his mind as clearly as if the Faerie Prince stood at his side.

You cannot change the outcome of history. You may only alter the circumstances.

Certainly he had the power to ignore the edict, but at what price? If he was successful in his quest, the world, Abby’s world, would be forever changed. Everything
she loved and wanted to return to might very well have never existed.