She started in a silent whisper. “In this day and in this hour—”
“What? What are you saying?”
“I ask the Ancients for this power.” Though she spoke louder, she didn
’t think Philip picked up every word.
The hair on Helen
’s head started to swirl with the force of wind picking up in the room. Flames started to spark around her.
Philip twisted around, then pinned her with a glare. “What the fuck?”
“Take me now across the sea,” she said louder over the noise of the room.
Philip stepped forward and Helen lifted a hand up in an effort to stop him from coming closer. A zap of electricity flickered from the vortex starting to engulf her body and slammed her enemy against the far wall.
“Back to Simon’s family.”
As the world fell away, Philip
’s face lost all expression.
Helen lifted her middle finger in a silent wave goodbye.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Simon found her car only blocks away from Mrs. Dawson’s home. He shifted from falcon to wolf in an effort to pick up Helen’s scent. It didn’t work. Wherever she’d gone, it wasn’t on foot. Pavement didn’t lend itself for leaving marks in the road to follow. A big drawback of this century as far as Simon was concerned.
He took to wings again and searched the road for any sign at all. As the sun dipped over the horizon and the heat left the surface of the earth, part of his soul drifted with it.
He hadn’t protected her. His new family. Searching for love never entered his mind since becoming a man, yet he’d found it with Helen. Found it only to lose her. Maybe if he’d told her that she might be carrying his child she’d have acted with more caution.
What ifs and maybes would plague him until he found her. But where was she?
As he made his way to Mrs. Dawson’s home, he plotted the demise of Philip. The man Simon knew in his gut was behind Helen’s disappearance. The warrior in him wanted to call the man out, finish him with a clean swipe of his sword. After he found Helen of course, but finish him in the end.
They
’d call Simon a murderer.
He
’d call it justice.
Then he
’d be forced to return to the sixteenth century or live in the twenty first as a wanted man. No, he couldn’t risk that.
Helen might not want to return to his time.
The question was, could he return without her?
* * * *
Philip’s cell phone was at his ear as he made his way out of the vacant house. The shaking of his knees pissed him the fuck off. The lying bitch vanished into nothing. Nothing!
He made it to his car and squealed out of suburbia. In minutes, he
’d managed to get the night guard at the prison to put Mal on the phone.
“Well?”
“She disappeared, again.”
Mal pushed out a breath. “How?”
Philip picked his words carefully. Knowing the guards would listen to every word.
“I
’m not sure. She held
it
…” Philip didn’t speak of the rock, assuming Malcolm would know what
it
was. “Then spoke to the air. Asked for power.” He sounded crazy, he knew.
“Back up, she said what?”
“Something about asking for power.”
“You
’re not making a whole hell of a lot of sense, Phil, how about from the top.”
Philip slammed his fist against the steering wheel as he sped through a red light. “She said,
I ask for this power. Send me across the sea, back to Simon’s family
.”
There was a long pause. He thought maybe the phone went dead.
“Mal?”
“I
’m here.”
“Did you get that?”
“Yeah. I got it. What happened then?”
That
’s where he was fuzzy. “I don’t know. A fucking hurricane inside the house shot out of nothing and poof. She was gone.”
“Like magic on a stage?”
“Without the mirrors.” Philip pulled into the back lot of his warehouse and shoved the car in park. Anyone checking for Helen would go there first. Philip needed to grab a few things and disappear for a while. He didn’t even know why. It wasn’t like Helen had a ton of family searching for her the first time she disappeared. Chances were Mrs. Dawson wouldn’t ask about her so soon. Still, the way his skin itched he knew he needed to skip town for a couple of days. Then it dawned on him…if Helen could vanish as quickly as she had, she could return just as quickly. Lead the police to the house he’d kept her. His DNA was probably littering the place.
Sonofabitch! What had he done? And why?
“If you figure it out,” Philip said to his brother. “You need to come back for me.”
Mal chuckled. “If I ever make parole, I
’ll come to you. Where else would I go?”
The line clicked and went dead.
* * * *
Helen slumped to the ground the minute the wind stopped blowing and sat on the tips of her toes. She wasn
’t sure where she’d land, but wasn’t going to be unprepared for an attack.
The familiar stone walls of the Keep, and the moist, dark interior met her senses.
Behind her, someone took in a sharp breath.
Helen peered into the dark for the source of the sound.
“Helen?”
Tara.
Thank God.
Helen lowered her hands, not even realizing she
’d placed them in front of her face defensively.
Tara and Lora sat up in bed, poised for flight.
When everyone in the room recognized a lack of threat, Helen moaned. All the adrenaline and fear of the last few hours threatened to manifest into a scream.
“Oh no. What happened?” Lora
’s voice penetrated her thoughts and a warm arm covered her trembling shoulders. The two women helped Helen to her feet and to a chair by the fire.
Tara pushed a glass of water into her hand. Helen took it and greedily quenched her thirst. Lora
’s fingers brushed over what Helen was certain were bruised and bloody features on her face.
“I
’m okay.”
The worry in the ladies eyes, however, didn
’t fade.
“Everyone else is fine.”
Tara’s shoulders slumped with relief. “Then what happened?”
Helen thought of Philip, his hands on her body, the stench of his breath against her face.
A small knock sounded on the door of the tower room.
Lora hurried to it, opened the door quickly, and let Ian in.
Ian stared, his fists clenched at his side. “Are you sure you’re okay, lass?”
Helen nodded, not quite used to the fact that Lora and Ian could talk to each other without voicing the words aloud. Lora had obviously called him to the room with their special bond. “Bruised, but not broken.”
“Who did this to you?”
“I should have listened to Simon. He was right.” After a deep breath, Helen detailed Philip
’s abduction, his crazed behavior.
Ian listened from a distance. Lora held her hand and Tara stroked her shoulders.
“All of this in only a few hours?” Ian asked.
“What do you mean? We
’ve been in my time for four days.”
“You
’ve only been gone half a day for us.”
Helen shook her head. “We wanted to arrive back in my time close to when I left. That didn
’t happen. I thought the stones moved you at your will.”
“The Ancients have the ultimate power over the stones. There must be a reason for the delay on your end and the quick return on ours,” Lora said.
“Has the fighting started here?”
“No,” Tara told her.
“A few of our enemy’s men were captured, but nothing else has happened.”
Helen shivered. “With Philip acting like his homicidal brother Malcolm, and all the crap going down here, I don
’t know where to go.”
Tara squeezed her shoulder.
Ian snapped his head up. “What name did you say?”
“Philip, my boss.”
“Not that one.”
“Ah, Malcolm? That
’s Philip’s brother. The one in jail for murder.”
Helen could see the wheels of thought twisting in Ian
’s head. “Malcolm?”
“Right. Why? Does it mean something to you?”
“Mayhap. Tell me again, from the beginning, everything this Philip said to you.”
This time when Helen relayed the traumatic event, Ian sat on the edge of a table and appeared to hold his breath with the anticipation of her words.
“Philip knew about the necklace, but not its true power.”
“That
’s what I got out of it. He kept talking about himself in the plural sense.
We
need this and
us
that. He’s crazy.”
“Mayhap. Or, he
’s Druid as is his brother.”
“You think? I never noticed anything special about him. He
’s charismatic, seems to get what he wants in life, but other than that…nothing.” Outside of the past few hours, Helen would bet money Philip wasn’t capable of hurting anyone.
She
’d have been wrong.
“I didn
’t know I had a gift until I came here,” Tara offered. “This guy could be just as clueless.”
“He didn
’t act clueless.”
“And he was after the necklace.”
“No, see, I didn’t feel that. He didn’t try and get it off my neck. He had plenty of opportunity when I was out to hack it off had he wanted to.”
Lora lifted her gaze to her husband. “He might have gotten a hold of one of the other stones in the future.”
Every nerve ending in Helen’s body sparked. The hair stood on her arms. “Yes. Of course, that has to be it. His brother is in jail and not going anywhere according to Jake. Malcolm could use the stone and escape.”
Ian rubbed his jaw. “The man leading the warriors against us…his name is Malcolm.”
“Oh, God. I led him right to you.”
Ian waved her concerns away. “He was here long before you, lass. Even if it is the same man, his actions are not your fault.”
Helen stood on unsteady feet. “I’ve got to go back, stop Philip from telling his brother anything.”
Lora grasped her hand. “You need to rest. You appear about to fall over.”
“Lora’s right, Helen. Besides, there’s no way to undo what’s happened. The Ancients warned us about traveling in time to change the past,” said Tara.
“But Simon and the others. They don
’t know what happened to me. They’ll be—”
“Worried sick, I know. Relax. They can always return here using Cian
’s knife.”
With a frantic shake of her head, Helen debunked that plan. “No, they can
’t. Cian’s knife wasn’t in his pocket when we landed.”
“What about Amber
’s stone?”
“It
’s still there.”
“Then they have a way.”
Tara draped a blanket over Helen’s shoulders. The weight of the fabric felt safe and her body started to melt into the thought of sleep. Damn she was tired. More than she’d ever been in her life.
“One night. We
’ll have a clearer vision of what to do in daylight.”
“My wife is right, lass. Besides, if Simon were to see you now, he might find himself in the jail you speak of.”
“I look that bad?”
Tara offered a bleak expression. “You don
’t look good.”
Helen let out a small chuckle, which quickly moved to tears.
Tara wrapped her arms around her. “It’s okay. We’re here.”
“I thought he was going to kill me.”
Rape me.
“He didn
’t.”
Helen grabbed hold of the other woman and let the emotion of the day roll over her.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The first time his cell phone rang, Philip ignored it. In the pre-dawn hours, he removed his car off the highway and onto a desert gravel road. The location looked as if it was used by weekend dirt bike riding families who camped unplugged from the rest of the world. Suited him. He didn’t want to see anyone, didn’t want to talk to a soul. He stepped outside his car long enough to piss before crawling into the passenger seat. He glanced at the blinking green light on his phone and gave in.
The message was from the night guard at the prison.
Malcolm was missing and they knew Philip had spoken to him earlier that night.