Time Everlastin' Book 5 (5 page)

Gaelic descended and she
grimaced.
Plapping
footfalls mingled with the horse's snorts. Suddenly, she was
too exhausted to fight. Too exhausted to care. Her head was lowered
when the sword was wrenched from the ground. Booted feet positioned
by her left side.

"My...God...you
stink,"
she wheezed. "Kill
me or get the hell downwind!"

Silence.

When several moments passed,
Taryn leaned forward and reached for her pack. The stranger
crouched with the speed of a cheetah. Cold, steely fingers
encircled her extended wrist. She turned her head and stared into
the depths of his unreadable eyes. Between the wet long hair
plastered to his face, and the beard and mustache, his eyes and
straight nose were all that were visible.

There was one advantage to
him not understanding English.

"Not only do you reek, but
I've seen baboon butts that were a damn sight prettier than you."
She forced a small smile. "And we know charm is a foreign concept
to you."

Silence.

"You're the strong, silent
type." Taryn eyed the knapsack then shifted her gaze to the large
hand still wrapped about her wrist. "Too bad you don't speak
English. My publisher would be willing to pay big bucks for what
you know about Broc MacLachlan."

The steely fingers
tightened, causing her to wince.

"Ciarda Mac—"

With a low growl, the
stranger jerked her arm.

"Dammit!" She sucked in a
breath, rain entering her mouth. She spat off to one side and
narrowed her eyes on him. "I came back for my knapsack." She
pointed, but his eyes remained fixed on her face. "Hey!" She
pointed with more force. "I'm not leaving without my bag!
Savvy?"

His tenacious hold tightened
fractionally, while his eyes remained chillingly focused on
hers.

"Yeah, you savvy about as
well as a rock," she grumbled then flashed him the widest smile she
could muster. "I just figured you out. You're the secret. The
Watchdog-MacLachlans have a bonafide black sheep in the fold, and
they're making you live out here, away from the inn."

She wiggled her eyebrows in
hopes of eliciting a reaction.

None came.

"You're probably a
descendent of the original Broc, but having a few bricks shy of a
wall makes you an embarrassment." She lapped at the rivulets of
rain on her lips and wrinkled her nose disdainfully. "Hey, didn't
your mother ever tell you about bathing?"

Taryn blew out a breath of
hopelessness. "Fine, hairy dude. We can stay out here and freeze to
death—unless we drown first."

Her nerves spasmed when he
unexpectedly stood and stepped toward her pack. She was on her feet
when he lifted it into a hand.

"That's mine!"

She made a grab for the
knapsack. Unperturbed, he swung it out of her reach.

"I need that!"

When she attempted to snatch
it again, he dropped the pack, gripped her upper arms and pulled
her against his body. Taryn froze. Eyes straining from their
sockets, she stared into his, searching for a sign that she had
pushed him too far. His expression remained unreadable, his bearing
that of the Wall of China.

"Oh...damn," she breathed,
and released a titter of a laugh. "Don't breathe on me. Don't
breathe on me." She caught a whiff of his breath and grimaced so
hard, her facial muscles hurt. "Aw geez, that's bad!" She angled
her face away from him. "What crawled into your mouth and
died?"

Hesitantly, she turned her
head enough to look at him. There was a glint in his eyes she
couldn't define, but it nonetheless made her uneasy.

"You know what? I just
decided I don't give a damn about you or this place. Keep your
secrets. I'm going home, scrub off the top layer of my skin, and
rinse out my mouth with lemon juice."

Several seconds of intense
silence passed. She hiked up her eyebrows. "I'm leaving, okay? Just
give me my knapsack—
hey!"

Taryn now sat in a puddle,
looking up at his imposing height. When he reached for her pack,
she kicked him soundly in the shin with the heel of her loafer. He
released another growl as he swooped down in a crouch. She lifted
her hands in a placating gesture, her heart somersaulting. There
was a savagery in his features—what she could see of them—that
triggered a primordial alarm in her brain. She felt like a newborn
kitten trapped in the hands of an unprincipled child locked inside
the grotesque form of an adult.

His nostrils
flared.

His lips curled back
exposing clenched teeth. They were surprisingly straight and white
considering the condition of the rest of him.

A horrendous gurgling howl
seeped up through the ground. The stranger bolted upright and
signaled the horse with a terse, shrill whistle. Taryn flung
herself on the knapsack. She spied the canvas bag the brother
Watchdogs had deposited a few yards away. When the stranger reached
toward her, she released a squeal of protest and jabbed a finger
toward it.

"That one is
yours!"

He paused, looked in the
direction she indicated, and took long strides to where the second
pack lay. Although it had taken Flan and Gil to carry it, the
stranger hoisted it onto his back without effort. He swung himself
onto the horse's bare back and settled the duffle bag in front of
him.

"Fàg!"
he bellowed, pointing toward the inn. Leave!

Her heart pounding at the
base of her throat, Taryn watched the galloping horse carry him to
the far end of the chasm. Both man and beast turned in her
direction then descended, the sound of hooves striking stone
echoing with disquieting finality. A moment of stark silence
followed, shattered by guttural tremors when the ground came
together and sealed.

Taryn wasn't sure how long
she waited. Her senses were super-sensitized. Painfully
super-sensitized. She tried to think of something humorous to
wrench her from the stupor keeping her atop the knapsack. It was
futile. The reporter Taryn was determined to answer the questions
reformulating in her mind.

What else are the
Watchdog-MacLachlans hiding below? Treasure? More Neanderthal clan
members?

How did the ground open and
close so quickly?

She hadn't detected the
sound of hydraulics. Certainly an opening that big required massive
equipment.

Her gaze traveled in the
direction of the inn. If she returned, there was no way she could
hide the fact she had left the establishment.

How desperate are the
inhabitants to keep their secret?

Desperate enough to
kill?

Dragging herself to her
feet, she lifted the knapsack and trudged along the border where
the chasm had been moments ago. Perhaps ten feet from where she
believed the man had ridden downward, she encountered a rock with a
flat surface, roughly eighteen inches high. Sitting, she laid the
knapsack across her lap and draped herself over it. She was beyond
exhaustion and yet her mind wouldn't slow its reeling
pace.

A vibration beneath her rib
cage wrenched a startled cry from her, and she sat up, staring at
the pack as if convinced it would come alive and swallow her
up.

"Damn," she gasped, and
unzipped one of the smaller sections. She fished for the pager and
found it. Its harsh vibrations ceased when she depressed a tiny
button. Green luminous numbers were displayed across the narrow
strip at the top.

Her boss. Again.

Idiot! Doesn’t he realize
the time difference?

An urge to cry overwhelmed
her, but she forced it back, refusing to allow any weakness to take
control. She testily cleared the message and set the pager next to
her on the rock. When a fierce shiver coursed through her, she
muttered under her breath and scanned the surrounding desolation.
The rain continued its steady downpour, obstructing the range of
her vision. She didn't need to see far to fully grasp her
predicament. Her options were zilch at the moment. Unless she
returned to the inn and changed into warm, dry clothing, she would
end up in a hospital—or worse yet, under the care of the
Watchdog-MacLachlans.

"Who are you?" she murmured,
squinting off into space.

Her gaze lowered to the
ground stretched out in front of her. With the standing stones
increasing in height toward the central menhir, the area between
them did resemble a runway.

Frowning, she worried her
lower lip. The stranger had vanished below ground. A chasm had
opened and closed. Was the secret the Watchdog-MacLachlans were
protecting, connected to some subterranean society?

Now, wouldn't that be a
kick.

She had gone to a good deal
of trouble to garner information on Broc MacLachlan and Ciarda
Baird—more time than she had spent researching her ancestor Robert
Ingliss-Baird.

She glanced at her knapsack
and made a rueful face.

What would a dirk with runes
and carved gargoyle faces have to do with that man and a
subterranean chamber?

A sacrificial dagger?
Hmmmm.

"I'm not leaving without my
answers," she vowed, a tremor in her tone.

She was about to unzip the
sack and remove the dirk when her pager went off, the vibrations
particularly obnoxious against the rock. Snatching it up, she
unzipped the sack with her free hand, flung the annoyance inside,
and closed the opening. She stood and nearly pitched forward when
ground tremors engaged beneath her feet. They rapidly swept ahead
of her, spanning most of the runway, and came to an abrupt stop
before reaching the cairn.

"Oh...
crap,"
she breathed as the ground in
front of her parted into a ten-foot wide, forty-foot long opening.
It was several seconds before she could bring herself to step
toward the gap. Two feet from the edge, she gaped at stone steps
the width of the opening, and extending a good three feet in depth.
Sweeping her tongue along the moisture on her lips, she knelt in
wet, spongy earth and hesitantly touched the top step. It was
solid, the texture rough as if imbedded with granules of
sand.

Fear told her to close her
eyes and wish the damn portal away. Common sense told her to run.
Her curiosity, though, was far stronger.

Taryn was in the process of
securing her knapsack on her back when the rain ceased, the clouds
moved on at the horizon, and the gloaming returned to breathe its
ethereal luminance across the land.

She scanned the site,
chanting in a whisper, "I love me, I love me not. I love me, I love
me—dammit, just get on with it!"

She sucked in a breath and
determinedly planted her feet on the step. Heat and coldness swept
through her with equal force. She gulped in time to stop her gorge
from rising into her throat. It popped into her mind to say a
prayer. She would if she knew one.

Instead, she sang low and
off key:

"Three six nine, the goose
drank wine

the monkey chewed tobacco in
a street car line.

The line broke, the
monkey—the
idiot
—got choked,

and they all went to heaven
in a little row boat.”

Or is it...they all went to
hell in a little fire float?

Even the sound of her voice
held an unsettling quality. Hollow. Metallic like the loch. She
could almost swear she heard a whispering breeze from far below, a
zephyrous voice urging, "Come meet your destiny. Come."

Taryn realized she had
descended several steps, her chin ground level. Her heart leapt
into a frantic tattoo, her lungs unable to hold much
air.

"Use your head this time!"
she chided in a whisper. "No story is worth—"

"I tell ye, I heard
somethin' up ahead!"

Taryn recognized Gil's
voice, and by his tone, he was in a foul mood. She spied him and
Flan between the north arm of the cross and the end of the stone
wall. They walked briskly in her direction, their heads held low as
if afraid of seeing something they would rather not.

She descended five more
stairs, but stopped when she stepped into the blackest shadow she
had ever encountered. She could see nothing below. Above ground,
rapid footfalls warned the men were approaching the central
menhir.

A tremor took her by
surprise and she collapsed on one of the steps. Two male voices
squawked, conveying their own alarm at the quaking of the ground.
The shaking continued far longer than it had the first two times.
She kept her eyes squeezed shut and clung to the contours of the
upper stair. When the motion at last ceased, she opened her
eyes.

For several seconds, she
thought her eyelids had frozen shut, for she saw nothing but pitch
darkness. Blinking verified they were indeed opened.

"Oh, no," she whimpered,
staring upward into infinite blackness. The ground had sealed above
her. It was that or the sun, moon, and stars had been sucked into a
black hole.