Spell of the Highlander (15 page)

Bracing herself, she gulped yet another fortifying breath. She was going to need this one.

Muttering a silent prayer that it would work and not actually injure the woman beyond a temporary black eye, she swung around and coshed the woman in the side of the head with her thirty-eight-pound-Krispy-Kremes-earning backpack.

Much to her relief—she wasn’t entirely certain about doing it twice, no matter how nasty the witch was—Stone-face’s eyes glazed, she swayed woozily, and sank limply to the floor.

Glancing hastily around, Jessi spied a door labeled “Supplies” down the hall. Grabbing the woman’s feet, she hooked her ankles beneath her armpits and hurriedly slid her down the polished tile floor.

It took her a few moments to wedge her in with all the brooms and mops and cleaning supplies, but she managed it. Closing the door, she examined the handle. There was no way to lock it. That sucked.

And meant she had to hurry. She couldn’t imagine the woman would stay out for very long.

Heart pounding, Jessi dashed off for the double doors and Cian.

Lucan slammed his fist through the silk-papered plaster wall of his study.

Again.

And a third time.

Blood beaded swiftly across his shredded knuckles and just as swiftly disappeared. The skin healed, not shiny and pink, but it healed.

He turned back toward his desk, glanced up at the offending darker rectangular spot on the wall, and snarled at the speakerphone, “Tell me again exactly what they said. In detail.”

“None of them recalled many details, Mr. Trevayne, sir,” Hans replied from the receiver. “Just that they saw a tall, tattooed man with dark braids carrying a large, gold-framed mirror, accompanied by a young, attractive woman, walking through the Sheraton’s lobby on Friday morning. If the two of them stayed at the hotel, all records have been erased. One of the guest rooms was found with fresh human blood on the carpet, drapes, and furniture, but the hotel has no record of having assigned that room to anyone for several nights, and no body has been found.”

Son of a bitch, the worst was true. Eve was most certainly dead and the Highlander was being aided and abetted by the St. James woman. They’d united efforts against him.

And he had less than seventeen days to find them.

“Were you able to learn where they went from there?”

“No, Mr. Trevayne, sir, we’ve not been able to ascertain that. We’re working on it. Do you have any ideas, sir?”

Lucan rubbed his jaw. Where would Cian MacKeltar go, now that he had someone beyond the glass who was willing to help him get there? That was the determining factor, after all. The rules of their little game had changed dramatically. Not once in a thousand years had Lucan ever imagined that such an improbable sequence of events might ever come to pass—that something might shatter his unbreakable wards; that he might be out of the country at the time; that a thief might break into his home and steal the glass; that the glass might end up in the hands of someone willing to help the Keltar.

It reeked of preposterous synchronicity.

Nevertheless, it had happened.

Where would the Keltar go? There was no doubt in Lucan’s mind: home to his Highlands, of course. The mountain-man would move heaven and earth to walk on Scots soil again, especially now.

It had been a long time since Lucan had visited the hills above Inverness. For countless generations, after he’d imprisoned Cian in the Dark Glass, he’d kept close tabs on the Keltar bloodline.

He’d wanted to be certain Cian’s mother had done as she’d sworn in exchange for the continued health and well-being of her seven precious daughters: sealed away all Keltar lore from future generations and stricken her son’s name from all Keltar annals—thereby preventing any future Keltar from nursing a blood-grudge and trying to free their ancestor.

But by the early fourteen hundreds, when his sources had confirmed that the MacKeltar—to the last man, woman, and child—believed the legendary Cian nothing more than a myth, Lucan had quit watching and quit caring.

He’d turned his attentions elsewhere, immersed himself in the building of his empire and his search for the remaining Dark Hallows.

Time and success had made him careless. He’d not been challenged in so long that complacency had dulled his edge.

Christ, seventeen days! It was unthinkable! He was so near to achieving his goals. He couldn’t afford these idiotic distractions!

“Scotland, Hans,” Lucan clipped at the phone. “Search Inverness. I suspect he’ll bypass civilization and head for the hills. Find out if any MacKeltar still live in the area and let it be known I’m offering five million to whoever gets me that mirror, ten for the mirror
and
the woman. However, I must be informed the instant the mirror is located, and kept constantly apprised of its whereabouts. There’s another ten million in it for you, Hans, if you bring this to successful completion within a week.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Trevayne, sir! I’ll let the others know, sir. I’ll get every man on it. I’ll take care of this for you. You have my personal guarantee, sir!”

Lucan stared into space for a long time after he terminated the call. What was twenty-five million to him? Nothing. He’d wearied of wealth centuries ago. He wanted what he’d always wanted: more power.

He was so close to the culmination of all his dreams, a hairsbreadth away from finally possessing the Unseelie Dark Book. From finally being the greatest sorcerer the world had ever known, both mortal and Fae.

He should have seen these complications coming. He knew that when a man poised on the brink of achieving true greatness, the world tested him. It had happened to him before. It would happen again. He should have been better prepared this time. He would be in the future.

He, Lucan Myrddin Trevayne, fathered by an unknown Druid on a whore of a mother who’d lain with dozens of Druids from all over Great Britain during the course of a three-day council held in the tiny Welsh village of Cochlease, eleven hundred and seventy-eight years ago, had risen high above the ignominy of his birth and was
this close
to becoming powerful beyond his wildest dreams, able to command even the legendary Tuatha Dé Danaan themselves.

His earliest years had not been easy. He’d struggled, he’d worked, he’d studied, he’d traveled the world seeking knowledge and power. He’d transformed himself from the bastard son of a whore other Druids had refused to recognize, to a man respected and deeply feared by the mightiest among Druids and sorcerers alike.

It had been during those early years of travel that he’d learned of the Dark Hallows. He’d managed to secure rubbings from three sacred pages of the incredible Dark Book at the tender age of twenty-eight. He’d devoted the next eight years of his life to deciphering the encrypted rubbings.

Upon succeeding, he’d learned much from those rubbings, including the location of the Dark Glass of the Unseelie Fae, as well as the necessary tithing and the binding spells to use it. In exchange for the triple boon of the sacrifice of innocent blood, the ensorcellment of a captive, and a recurring tithe of pure gold, it bestowed eternal life.

It was rumored that Merlin himself had once possessed the Dark Glass, until it had been seized from him by an army a thousand strong and a mysterious group of Irish holy men.

Unfortunately, knowing where it was and how to use it hadn’t been enough.

Lucan had tried four times to get to the Dark Glass. And four times he’d failed. The final time, he’d barely escaped with his life, and he’d been forced to concede that he simply didn’t possess the power necessary to get past the guardians.

He’d spent the next seven years of his life looking for someone who did. He’d found him in Cian MacKeltar.

He’d hated the Highlander on first sight.

15

Jessica lay facedown in a pool of blood, her glossy black curls wetly matted to her head.

She was bled white, stiff and icy in death. Her spine was drawn in a painful bow, her right leg splayed at an impossible angle. Her left arm was bent awkwardly over her head, the underside of the wrist down, the palm twisted gruesomely up. Her other hand was clenched in a bloody fist.

It was obvious she’d suffered as she’d died. Not just pain. Horrific pain.

She’d cried out for him.

She’d never stopped believing he would save her.

He’d
told
her that he would; that he would be her shield—he’d vowed to stand between her and all others.

He’d failed.

Pounding the wall with his fists, Cian tossed back his head and howled like an animal. The sound echoed from walls of stone, ricocheted off a stone ceiling, bounced back at him from a stone floor.

One thousand one hundred and thirty-three years had not driven him insane.

But the past two days had managed to accomplish what eleven centuries had not.

She was out there, his Jessica, with only her wits and will to rely upon. And he was trapped in the mirror, unable to protect her.

From the moment the Dark Glass had reclaimed him, the terrible possibilities had begun playing themselves, with chilling detail, in never-ending repetition through his mind.

An assassin had slipped onto the plane and into the seat behind them, then taken her captive the moment she’d disembarked. She was, even now, drugged and on her way to London.

Nay—the bloody frigging plane had simply plummeted from the air, crashing thousands of miles to the ocean below, sinking like a stone. He didn’t understand how the hell it stayed up there, anyway. It might have wings, but they didn’t flap. (This was the kindest of his hells; she suffered no indignities and death came more swiftly in this than any others.)

Nay—when his mirror was next uncovered, it would be to discover himself once again hung upon Lucan’s study wall, staring down at his beautiful Jessica, tied and gagged, being raped and tortured by his ancient enemy.

Nay—when his mirror was next uncovered, he would see only Lucan’s hated face and the bastard would do the same thing he’d done to him with word of Cian’s mother and sisters—never utter a word about Jessica again, no matter how Cian pleaded, leaving him to imagine the worst of all possibles
every single day
for the rest of his eternal existence.

Each hellish possibility was worse than the last, slicing like a sword into his gut.

Cian slumped down against the wall, hands fisted, jaw clenched.

Waiting. Waiting.

“Aha—
there
you are!” Jessi exclaimed brightly, as she rounded the corner. “Finally!” A dozen yards away, at the end of the very last row (did it ever work any other way?) with the words
UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY
emblazoned in red across it, between a few dozen smaller stampings of the word
FRAGILE, the tall plywood crate perched on end.

She glanced anxiously at her watch. It had taken her forever to find him. She was afraid that any minute now Stone-face was going to come crashing through the doors behind her, with half of Edinburgh’s Airport Security in tow.

When she’d first pushed through those double doors, she’d expected to find a small storehouse, not an industrial warehouse that stretched the length of a football field, with tiers that climbed all the way to a forty-foot ceiling, and row after row of numbered boxes, crates, and assorted packages.

She’d wasted precious time searching aisles of numbered items, before deducing that the unnumbered items lacking tickets were probably stored at the far end of the humongous building because the staff knew no one would be collecting them anytime soon.

The crate must have been the most recent arrival, as it was all the way down in the final spot at the end of the row. Sprinting toward it, she called out the summoning spell.
“Lialth bree che bree, Cian MacKeltar, drachme se-sidh!”

Nothing happened.

She repeated the chant, expecting light to blaze from the cracks, and the crate to begin rocking or something.

Again nothing.

Drawing to a breathless halt in front of it, she pressed her ear to the wood panel. “Cian?” she called. She glanced warily over her shoulder. Despite the vastness of the warehouse and her apparent solitude within it, she was nonetheless reluctant to make a commotion. Squaring her shoulders, she opted for something more than an exclamation but less than a shout:
“Cian!”

She pressed her ear to the plywood again. Was that a muffled roar? She listened a moment. Sure sounded like it. Yup, there was another.

She drew back and pounded on the crate with her fists. “Cian, I’m here! Can you hear me? Come on! Get your butt out here
now
! We have to hurry. I don’t know how long we have before they find us.
Lialth bree che bree, Cian MacKeltar, drachme se-sidh!”

Total silence.

Just when she’d begun to think something must have gone seriously wrong en route, or she had the wrong crate or something, brilliant light blazed from the cracks, the warehouse felt even larger than it was, and she heard the rustle of inner packing.

A powerful fist splintered through the wood half an inch from her left ear.

Blinking, Jessi scrambled back.

He heard her, calling him.

At first Cian thought her voice was but another figment of his tortured imaginings, then it snapped impatiently, “Get your butt out here
now
!” and he laughed aloud. She was his prickly Jessica; they’d made it to Scotland, and she was freeing him again.

Pushing against masses of packing and cushion-wrap, he shoved from the mirror and turned his body into a battering ram.

He crashed a fist through the wood, then another, kicked and pounded at the crating with all the caged fury and impotent rage that had been riding him for two endless days.

He demolished the front of the crate, ripping it to shreds with his bare hands.

When he glanced up from the splinters, it was to find Jessica backed up flush to a shelving unit, staring at him, her face pale.

“Och, Christ, woman,” he hissed. Devouring the space between them in two strides, he cupped her jaw with one big hand, tipped her face up, and claimed her mouth in a kiss. Once, twice, three times. Then he drew back and glared down at her. “I thought you were dead. I couldn’t
fucking
get out of there and I thought of a thousand things I’d done wrong and imagined a million deaths for you. Kiss me, Jessica. Show me you’re alive.”

Jessi blinked up at Cian, stunned.

Kiss me, Jessica,
his words hung in the air.
Show me you’re alive.

When he’d come crashing out of the crate, for a moment she’d genuinely thought he’d gone crazy, so stark and inhuman was the expression in his eyes. Then he’d turned a look on her that had scorched right through her clothing, her skin, seared all the way to her bones, and before he’d even spoken, she’d known it had been fear for
her
that had put that wildness in him.

She’d been stunned. She’d been secretly thrilled. Because, although she’d been refusing to admit it even to herself, the whole time she’d been sitting in the airport, trying to figure out a way to get to him, she’d been suppressing an ever-growing panic, and not just because he was her best chance of staying alive. Somehow, it had gotten personal. A thousand worries had been plaguing her. Worries about
him:
Where was he? Was he okay? What if the mirror had inadvertently gotten broken? Would he die? Would he be stuck in there forever?

What if Lucan had somehow gotten his hands on him? How would she find him? Would she have to hunt down this scary Lucan guy and steal Cian back?

What if she never saw the towering, dark, infuriatingly barbaric, sexy Highlander again?

It’s just hormones. Combustive chemistry compounded by danger, nothing more.

Whatever it was, his reaction was playing right into a fantasy she’d not even known she’d been having: that when she found him he would not merely stalk out of that mirror to save her, he would stalk out of it to
claim
her. Crush her against the steely, hard strength of his body, and take slick velvety possession of her with his tongue. Give her the most base, elemental affirmation that he was alive, and she was alive, and they lived to fight another day.

It was, she realized, how women throughout all of history must have felt each time their men returned from battle on their own two feet, not bound over the back of a horse, or piled, dozens deep, atop a wagon.

Desperate for every morsel of passion life had to offer.

Or, at least, for a few steamy kisses, anyway. Surely there was no harm in a few kisses . . .

Famous final words,
she would think later.

She tipped her head back and wet her lips. He needed no further encouragement. Whisky eyes glittering with lust, he cupped the back of her head with a big palm and slanted his mouth over hers.

The moment their lips met this time, heat lightning crackled between them and they both went wild.

She’d seen crazy passion in movies, but had never experienced it herself. She did now.

Wriggling her backpack off her shoulders, she molded herself against him, trying to get closer. He thrust back in kind, pressing his thick, hard erection against her stomach. She tried to scramble up his body, but her impromptu climbing attempt threw him off balance. He overcorrected and they banged against the metal shelving, then bounced off it.

Careening across the aisle, they stumbled and staggered over crate debris and crashed to the concrete floor.

Yet never broke the kiss.

Clamping her face between his big hands, he claimed her with hot, deep glides of his tongue. Closing his teeth over her lower lip, he gave it a gentle tug followed by a not-so-gentle suck, before resuming his sleek, erotic slides into the slick interior of her mouth.

He teased her with slow rhythmic thrusts, plunging in and out, and she sucked frantically at his tongue, as if it were some other part of him she was trying to capture and take deep inside her. He let her suckle him for a moment, growling soft and low in his throat, then he dragged his mouth away, lightly chafing his shadow-beard across her jaw, nipping the edge of it. He trailed scorching kisses down her throat, then bit her in the hollow where her shoulder met her neck, catching the tendon with his teeth.

She sucked in a hissing breath, her back arching, straining up against him. She tipped back her head, yielding greater access.

Pushing impatiently at the collar of her jean jacket, he bared her skin and scattered tiny love-bites over her shoulder, riding the fine edge between not-enough and almost-too-much.

She had a sneaking suspicion Cian MacKeltar rode that edge a lot.

God, what was happening to her? she wondered dimly. She was going to tell him they needed to hurry and get out of there. That Stone-face was coming. That Security was no doubt on its way. Just a few more kisses and she was going to tell him all of that. Any minute now . . .

She tugged at his shirt, worked her hands beneath it, gliding them up his sexy, sculpted abdomen, slipping them around to his magnificently muscled back.

He shoved his hands beneath her sweater, subtly shifting so the hot, hard ridge of his erection was cradled snugly between her thighs.

We have to go now, she was going to tell him. “I can’t breathe,” she told him. “You’re too big. I want to be on top.”

He made a half-choking, half-laughing sound and rolled her over on top of him. She slipped into a straddling position and glanced down, eyes widening. His bulge was straining the fabric of his faded jeans and he was worrisomely large.

“Take off that damn jacket.”

But we need to go,
she opened her mouth to say. Except just as she was about to form the words, he pressed the pad of his finger to her parted lips, and she ended up nipping the tip of his finger then sucking it into her mouth.

He groaned, eyes narrowing, gaze fixed heatedly on her mouth.

She shrugged the jacket from her shoulders. When he tugged at her sweater, she raised her arms above her head and yielded that too. Her breasts sprang free, jiggling, her nipples hardening into tight puckers.

Beneath her, Cian stared up, lust stringing his gut tighter than a corded bow about to shoot wildly into anything that moved.

Bloody hell, she was magnificent!

She sat astride him, her lush, heavy breasts bobbing and swaying, and she was so ripely curved that a man could come just looking at her. Her skin was silk and cream, and he knew she was going to feel that way all over, inside and out. More creamy in some places than others, and he couldn’t wait to taste all of them. Her breasts were full, high, and sexy as hell. Her nipples were hard pink peaks swaying above his face. Abs contracting, he reared up from the concrete floor, caught those pretty boobs with his hands, and drew a nipple deep into his hot, wet mouth. He tugged lightly, gave it a delicate scrape with his teeth, savoring the pearly hardness of it with a lingering swirl of his tongue.

Back arching, Jessi buried her hands in Cian’s braids, moaning as he used his unshaven jaw to gently abrade the sensitive skin of her damp, kiss-puckered peaks. Then he started licking with slow, lazily erotic strokes of his tongue until she was squirming and wiggling impatiently on top of him. Turning his head from side to side between her breasts, he teased her nipples mercilessly with light flicks, intermittently taking tiny nips beneath the hard pink points.

Her breasts ached from his slow, teasing strokes. She needed more friction. She wanted his mouth closed firmly on them, his fingers pinching and rolling, the rake of his teeth. She wanted hot and hard and demanding. She wanted claiming.

She was so turned-on that she was achy, needy with it. His tongue flicked across one nipple, then the next as he doled out more of those torturously light caresses. “Please, Cian,
more,
” she whimpered.