Haunting Embrace (40 page)

“She was trying to protect you,” Meaghan blurted to Brion. Only after she’d spoken did she realize that Marga had used almost the same reasoning.

“Protect me from what?” Brion demanded, his jaw tight, his eyes hard.

“From yourself.” Áedán spoke softly, but Brion heard him and startled as if the words had been shouted in his ear. For a moment, the two men stared at one another, and Meaghan felt the silent connection, the message that they shared without a word.

Colleen had told her that she’d glimpsed a future in which Brion had murdered his wife. From the guilty expression on Brion’s face, Meaghan surmised that he’d given the idea more than a passing thought—he’d actively contemplated ending Marga’s life.

“I saw you,” Colleen whispered. “I saw what you did—what you were willing to do. I couldn’t let you.”

Brion’s throat worked for a moment before he cleared it, glanced at his wife and then back to Colleen. The anger in his gaze turned to misery as he searched the eyes of the proud woman he loved and realized the sacrifice she’d been prepared to make for him.

Meaghan looked away and caught sight of Jamie, standing beside her.

Once again blood covered him from his split skull to his unsteady legs. Once more he reached out, silently pleading with her, looking so real, though she knew he wasn’t. Behind him stood Hoyt O’Shea and Enid Sullivan, both gruesomely dead yet moving, reaching . . . Someone new moved behind them. Too horrified to speak, to scream, to run, Meaghan focused on the animated corpse of Brion MacGrath who stepped in front of the others. It stood in the shadow of the living man, wavering in and out of focus. One side of his head had been blown away, as if by a gun discharged at his temple. The word
suicide
formed in Meaghan’s head.

She stumbled back only to see another shape appear. This time it was Colleen.

“No,” she whimpered as more people joined the mass of death. Like stars appearing in the midnight sky, they were everywhere, moving closer, crowding her. She tried to inch away, but they pushed and shoved until she was trapped in the middle. Frantically she searched for Áedán, praying she wouldn’t find him among the deathly array.

Alive, Áedán still stood beside the real Brion, the one who lived and breathed as well. He watched her with troubled eyes, and in his emotions, she felt a blast of understanding. He knew what was happening. He didn’t see the death surrounding her, but he knew that she did.

“Make them go away,” she breathed. Áedán’s eyes filled with frustration as he shook his head. He’d tried to make them go away for Elan and failed, that look said.

“Eamonn!”

The shouting voice startled them all. It cut across the tension and turned them in the direction the shout had come from. Jamie—not the ghostly one, but the real man—swayed at the edge of the cliffs, leaning heavily against a boulder before pushing off and stumbling toward them. Even from the short distance, Meaghan could see the blood. Certain her eyes played tricks on her, she turned to the specter and met dead eyes that beseeched. Her heart seized as she realized that Jamie’s death was about to become reality. She didn’t know how or why, but she knew it without doubt.

“Jamie!” Eamonn exclaimed, rushing to where the other man wobbled on unsteady legs, with his wolf in hot pursuit. “What’s happened to you?”

Eamonn’s words snapped her gaze back to the wounded man who looked so weak and battered that he might careen over the edge at any moment. Thunder boomed like an explosion, and finally the rain began to fall.

Chapter Twenty-nine

F
OR a moment, Áedán didn’t know what to make of the drama unfolding in front of him. First Meaghan looking at him like he was the answer to her prayers. Her blue eyes had been the color of a summer sky, clear and warm. She’d taken a step, as if she intended to fling herself into his arms. And he’d wanted nothing more than to open them and welcome her. But then he saw Eamonn with Brion MacGrath’s wife held captive.

Now he looked back at Meaghan to find her eyes had grown wide and fearful. She darted her gaze around her, seeing things the rest of them could not. Her expression mirrored the terror she felt, and Áedán knew she saw the dead. From the look of her, there were many.

She spoke softly, but Áedán heard her plea to make it go away. Then Jamie’s shout spun everything in a different direction once more.

He’d been beaten—stabbed, by the look of him—and he stood perilously close to the sheer drop of Fennore’s cliffs. Was his one of the deaths Meaghan saw?

They were not friends, he and Jamie, and yet the sight of the powerful warrior wounded and staggering across the rocky shale filled Áedán with rage. He knew in that moment that whoever had killed Mickey Ballagh had turned his attention to Jamie—a man who’d been ripped from his proper time, wrenched from his life, and plopped down in one hell after another.

The scent of the Book of Fennore mingled with the smell of rain an instant before the sky opened and cold fat drops pelted them relentlessly. Brion and Meaghan had followed Eamonn and his wolf, and Áedán felt danger clench the air around them. He shouted for Meaghan to wait, but thunder drowned out his words.

Eamonn reached Jamie first, gripping the other man’s shoulders and trying to pull him from the edge. Whatever Jamie said stiffened Eamonn’s back. The wolf circled at their feet, growling and snarling as if something prodded it with a sharp, hot poker.

Áedán heard only a few words as he raced after Meaghan. He caught her arm and held her back as she reached the others.

“Kyle—” Jamie said.

“He’s not here.”

Brion demanded, “Who in Christ’s name did this to you, man?”

Jamie’s eyes rolled and he swayed alarmingly. Eamonn tried to steady him, but the storm worked against them all. Áedán felt the brush of the Book of Fennore like steel wool scouring his skin. He braced for the voice, but it didn’t come.

“Where . . . Kyle?” Jamie asked, his voice weak.

Eamonn suddenly took a step back, his movements unnatural, as if a rod had been shoved down his spine. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. At his feet, the big wolf growled low in its throat and then began to bark and snarl ferociously.

“What’s wrong with it?” Meaghan asked, moving closer to Áedán as the wolf bared its teeth. The growls grew louder, foam gathered at the black gums, and saliva hung in rivulets from its fangs.

It looked like the wolves that had run wild in the world of Fennore. The animal had been so tamed by Eamonn that Áedán had almost forgotten that it had come from the black world of its brethren.

The thought had only begun to form when the wolf attacked, charging Jamie with fury that stunned them all. Already weak, Jamie stood no chance of fighting off the beast. Eamonn cursed and commanded the wolf to heel, but the frenzied animal didn’t obey. Determined, Eamonn tried to get between Jamie and the wolf, but he succeeded only in becoming the focus of the attack. Áedán and Brion both lobbed stones at the rabid canine, but it continued with its assault, ignoring the blows and focusing with singled-minded attention on the two men that had become its prey. All the while, the Book of Fennore rasped its power over the gathering, as electric as the bolts that cracked the sky above.

The wolf herded them to the edge of the cliff, biting and tearing at them, leaving no chance for anyone to help. Jamie and Eamonn teetered for a split second, and then the wolf charged, sending them all over the side to plummet down to the rock and shale below.

It happened so quickly. No one could have stopped it. None of them could comprehend what they’d just seen.

“Oh my God,” Meaghan breathed in horror, stepping away from Áedán as she covered her mouth with her hands.

Brion rushed to the edge and looked down before wincing and shaking his head.

Áedán wanted to see for himself, still unwilling to believe that his old enemies, his new adversaries, had died so quickly and irrevocably. He felt like a part of him had been wrenched out and trampled. Neither Jamie nor Eamonn had ever shown him kindness. He cared nothing for them. And yet inside he mourned. Because of Áedán, both had been torn from their lives and delivered to this place and time where neither had belonged. Because of Áedán, they’d died.

So many had died.

Before moving to the edge and looking down on the carnage, he grabbed Meaghan’s arm with one hand and turned her back to the ruins. “Wait for me there,” he said. With a sorrowful nod, she trudged away.

With a sadness that nearly overwhelmed him, Áedán gazed down at the broken bodies for a long moment. When he moved away to join the others, he felt as if he’d left some part of himself behind. “Feck,” Brion said, stunned, moving quickly to follow. Marga had remained in the ruins, huddled beneath the dangling arm of a parapet walk. She didn’t look up when they joined her under the overhang.

Brion shook his head, looking at his wife with a combination of sympathy and disgust. “Has the whole bleeding island gone insane, then?”

Áedán thought so, and he turned to bring Meaghan close to him, to keep her as safe from the insanity as he could.

“Where is Meaghan?” he demanded, scanning the clustered group for her face.

“She was just here,” Colleen said, alarmed. “Where could she have gotten to?”

Quickly he moved from the deteriorated half walls and overhangs so he could see clearly. The rain came down in droves of cold. He whisked it from his face, looking for her, calling her name.

“Where did she go?” he repeated angrily.

“It has her,” Brion shouted over the storm.

He wanted to round on the other man and shout that it couldn’t be true, but he knew it was. He could still feel the scrape of the Book’s power in the air. Cathán wanted the pendant, the key to his escape, and he’d used one of his victims to snatch Meaghan who’d had it last. But where had he taken her? And did she still have it with her?

Áedán raced across the clearing, searching in every direction. On the hillside beyond the ruins, he saw the huge dolmen. The hulking formation loomed tall and gray in the stormy twilight, looking every bit the portal into the world of the
Others
that the ancients had thought it was. As he watched, a shape emerged.

Dressed in white from head to toe, the woman stood proudly before him. Her hair gleamed as if caught by moonlight and danced in a silvery veil around her shoulders, unaffected by the pouring rain. Her skin had a translucent glow that made her appear to be lit from the inside.

Elan, bringer of light.

Elan, the White Fennore.

She lifted her hand and motioned him forward with an imperial flick of her fingers. And then she began to keen. Inside, Áedán’s emotions churned. Just a few days ago, he would have raced across the distance that separated them and wrapped his fingers around Elan’s throat. Now he didn’t know if he should still do that or if he should crawl on his hands and knees and beg for her forgiveness.

He did neither.

Elan was his past. Meaghan was the only thing he cared about now.

Without looking back at the others, he slipped and slid in the mud as he struggled to reach Elan, praying she’d come to him now, after all these years, to guide him. To help him find and save Meaghan from the fate neither he nor Elan had been able to evade an eternity ago. With each slippery step, he felt his heart growing larger, filling with purpose that crowded out the old rage and bitterness. It felt as if his chest would not be able to contain so much feeling.

When he stood a few feet away, he paused, unsure what to say. She watched him in silence, her pale eyes—blue with a hint of lavender that had always reminded him of twilight skies—remained steady.

“You are here to judge me,” he said, remembering her words when she’d condemned him. “But I beg you to help me first. Please, help me find Meaghan.”

She did not answer, and he feared that perhaps her judgment, her revenge would be in her silence when he needed her to speak. The wind and rain battered him, filling his eyes, making it difficult to breathe. He wanted to shout, to rail, but instead he waited. When she finally answered, he heard her voice in his head as sweet and clear as a memory.

It is you who will judge me, Brandubh.

Her words shocked him. “I have no judgment to pass over you.” And then, realizing only in that moment just how much he meant it, he said, “In your place, I would not have trusted me either.”

She smiled, sadly, regretfully.
For too long I have been a blade pressed to your throat, a weight around your ankle, and you have been the same to me.

He nodded, and didn’t even try to staunch the tears he felt burning his eyes.

You must release me and I must release you.

He wasn’t sure how he’d held her and, therefore, could not grasp what he must do to set her free. Before he could ask, she said,
The woman has placed the key in a hiding place outside of her grandmother’s home. You must find it and you must perform the ceremony.

The ceremony? He grappled with the word, trying to frame it in a new meaning, one that did not equal . . .

“Sacrifice?” he said. “You want me to sacrifice Meaghan? I won’t do it.”

You would not have sacrificed me either. I was too weak to trust you, and for my sins, I have walked without rest in the Otherworld, neither dead nor alive. I cursed myself as much as I cursed you. The woman brings us both hope. Her bloodline is strong. She is more than either of us ever could be. She will break our curse and free us.

“How?” he asked.

She feels the hearts and souls of those around her. She hurts when they hurt, she weeps when they weep. She is humanity.

Áedán still didn’t understand, but his understanding didn’t matter. Meaghan did. What he felt for her was too big to label with words or titles. She was air. She was food. She was life.

Yes,
Elan said, as if he’d spoken aloud.
She is life, and the monster we created fears her. It will try to own her. It will do anything to have her. It will release Cathán, it will release you, if only it can keep her.