Time Everlastin' Book 5 (6 page)

She inched up the steps on
her backside, one arm raised above her head. She had no sense of
existence. This world she had propelled herself into had no depth,
no planes, no anything. For all she knew, each side of the stairs
dropped off into nothingness. Perhaps it was a short
fall.

How deep a dugout could this
be?

Taryn's raised hand struck
something solid. She remained motionless for a time, her mind
reeling. When she dragged her fingertips along the surface, the
coarse texture confused her all the more.

Rock? How can it be rock? I
came down through here!

But it was rock. She slapped
both palms to the slab then again and again until the pain in her
hands made her stop.

"Let me out of here!" she
bellowed. "Hey! Can anyone hear me?"

Drawing in a hoarse breath,
she squinted into the darkness and shouted, "Hey, mister! Where are
you? Hey, you can't leave me here!"

Her efforts were futile. She
knew the barbarian wasn't nearby because she couldn't smell
him.

“This is payback, Taryn, for
siccing Mom and Dad on Roan,” she muttered.

Chapter 3

Katie MacLachlan couldn't
bring herself to glance at her watch. A red shawl covered her head
and shoulders, not that she could feel the cold, nor anything else.
Her mother's harsh words reverberated in her head, doing their
usual bit to undermine whatever self-esteem she may have gathered
from one year to the next.

"Tis a full moon, Katie, and
tis your duty to offer yerself!"

Since her twenty-first
birthday, her family believed her the current lover of the
Callanish Rider, and for over twenty years she had lied to them. In
truth, he had refused her then and every month since. Not once had
she looked into his eyes. She didn't know if he was a man or a
ghost. They had never touched each other. The only words he had
spoken to her were Gaelic curses and demands that she never return.
She wasn't sure if her parents' willingness to loan out her body to
the Callanish Rider, or the Rider's lack of interest, hurt
more.

All for the sake of a
treasure Katie didn't believe existed.

Katie was the twenty-second
female in her family chosen to comfort the MacLachlan Rider once
each month. Her great-grandmother had called him a demi-god, but
Katie was inclined to think him the devil, himself. Devil or god,
though, he didn't want her. The lie ate away at her year after
year, but she couldn't bring herself to confess her unworthiness
and see the shame she knew would be in her family's eyes from that
day forth. So, every month during the full moon, she returned to
the site, and stood with her head lowered while he galloped among
the stones and collected his gifts before vanishing once
again.

Next year, her cousin
Margaret would replace her. Margaret. Nineteen and
pretty.

Tears gathered in Katie's
eyes as she passed beyond the stone wall. Half of her resented his
disinterest in her body. Half was relieved. If given a choice, she
preferred to save herself for the man she married, although at her
age, the possibility was bleak.

She was nearly to the
central stone when she spied a figure sitting on a rock at the end
of the cross. A breath lodged in her throat. She stepped around the
menhir and anxiously peered beyond the edge, her heart thumping
wildly in her ears.

Not twenty minutes ago, she
had checked in on the journalist. Obviously, the woman was not the
shape beneath the blankets. The subterfuge rocked Katie more so
than the fact the ground was open between herself and the woman. It
wasn't the first time she had seen the black rectangle. This time,
however, Taryn Ingliss' presence added an element of danger that
left a bitter taste in Katie's mouth.

"Use your head this time!"
Katie heard her say. "No story is worth—"

"I tell, ye, somethin'
doesna feel right, tonight! I heard somethin'."

Gil's voice alarmed Katie.
With a whimper of helplessness, she shrank against the stone,
molding her body to it as if to become a part of its surface. When
she glanced at the journalist again, it was to see her disappearing
into the rectangle. She opened her mouth to call out, but at the
heavy footfalls of her cousins' rapid approach, her throat
closed.

The rain ceased. The clouds
hovering at the horizon melted into the night. A gauzy,
golden-orange light swept across the site, the now surrealistic
landscape drugging Katie's consternation.

Her cousins were at the end
of the stone wall when tremors rippled across the ground. Katie
clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream, and closed her
eyes tightly. The tremors lasted less than a minute. When they
stopped, the rectangle was covered once again with boggy earth, and
her cousins stood like statues a few yards away.

Anger fisted in her stomach
as she walked toward them.

"Tis good Master Broc and I
be done, or Mavis would have your hides!"

She had passed them when
Flan sneered, "Done, ye say?" He laughed cruelly. "The Rider was
done wi' ye when he first laid eyes on ye!"

So Flan and Gil knew. Racked
with misery, Katie jogged in the direction of the inn.

Forgotten was the
journalist.

* * *

Taryn had no sense of
placement. The blackness was so dense she believed she was part of
it. Her throat was raw from shouting. Pain stabbed at her temples
and gripped the back of her neck like a vice. Her stomach was
queasy.

In her timeless,
dimensionless, lightless world, her thoughts warred between
remaining where she was and continuing her descent. The barbarian
had to be below somewhere. He knew how to open the
ground.

She couldn't determine how
many steps she managed on her backside, for her mind as well as her
bottom were numb.

Several times, she
encountered drop offs with her hands or feet. Terror had gripped
her with each encounter. She lost count after the sixty-third
stair. Considering how wide and deep they were, she couldn't help
but wonder how far underground she had gone.

"Mister!" She coughed, and
cleared her throat. Her voice was scratchy, with none of its usual
force. "When I get my hands on you— Nix that. I won't touch
you."
Not even with a ten-foot
pole!

She coughed again and
stopped moving to rub her throat.

Don't panic. You'll get
through this.

She would. Of course she
would. She'd been in tighter fixes.

Nothing that smelled as bad
as Mr. Charmer, though.

These damn stairs have to
come to an end eventually. Unless....

No unless about it. You're
Taryn Ingliss. Queen of your domain.

She shifted her knapsack to
ease a kink in her back.

Think of the story you'll
get out of this.

A thought struck her and a
hoarse laugh burst past her lips. Her cell phone! Let the police
figure out how to free her!

She twisted around, reaching
for the zipper at the top of the knapsack, and unknowingly scooted
back on the rough stone. She tumbled backward. At first, her flight
amused her. Turned to bemusement. Became terror so great a
sensation of fiery liquid invaded her skin.

She screamed as she
somersaulted in the air. Over and over. Head over heels. Down.
Down. Then she couldn't tell if she was falling or soaring, or
remained still while the air swirled around her. She attempted to
scream again. Only a croaking sound came out.

How long had gone by since
she'd fallen off the steps?

Not that it mattered.
Anytime now, she would make one messy splat on some surface. Splats
usually implied death.

Instant death,
she hoped.

Of course, with the way her
luck had been going, she was definitely scheduled for a half splat.
Worst yet, fall on top of Mr. Charmer, the impact merging their
splats.

Gross!

Hello? Anyone care to stop
this motion? I'm going to throw up. Any second now.

A sudden halt of motion
jarred her bones. Seconds passed before she realized that something
gripped her right arm and something else wound about her waist.
Through the staticlike roar filling her ears, she detected a
whooshing that instantly formed in her mind the image of a giant
bird.

A distinct
whoosh-whoosh
replaced the
roaring.
Whoosh-whoosh.
Whoosh....

Her hands groped at her
middle. The texture and shape of the objects reminded her of
talons. Huge talons.

If this is a bird, the wing
span is enormous.

Taryn was distracted by the
sight of luminance below. Something glowed blue, and something
else, golden. They were tiny lights, and before she could
rationalize what they were, they grew a little bigger, and bigger,
and bigger yet.

How far down am
I?

Am I falling through the
center of the earth?

Her head went into a
tailspin. Her eyes misted, blurring her vision. The lights were
hazy blotches, growing ever-larger. Ever-larger.

No splats. No splats. No
broken body parts, please!

The luminance smarted her
eyes and she turned her face away. Everything was blue now. A
beautiful blue but nonetheless too bright.

"Put me down," she
wheezed.

She squinted against the
luminance. At the same time she glimpsed a huge unrecognizable form
above her, she was dropped. A strangled cry escaped her only to
become lost when she plunged into a pool. Shockingly cold water
surrounded her. A current of air bubbles burst past her lips as she
stroked upward with all her might. The oxygen in her lungs was
nearly depleted before she broke surface and she gulped in air
amidst a paroxysm of coughing and sputtering.

Forgotten was her bobbing
position when she detected a lessening sound.
Whoosh. Whoosh-whoosh.
An image of an
enormous vulture dominated her mindscreen. She shuddered and spat
water then side-stroked toward the pool's edge, the knapsack heavy
on her back.

It took several tries before
she was able to drag herself onto the rocky floor. On hands and
knees, she coughed up what little water had gotten into her lungs.
She wheezed with each breath until her heartbeat slowed to normal
and her fear lost its strangulating hold.

The air was cooler than the
water. Sitting, she slipped off the knapsack and hastily unzipped
the main compartment. Because she hadn't secured the zipper all the
way when she'd dumped the pager inside, water partially filled the
sack. Muttering beneath her breath, her temper heating her blood,
she drained most of the water and re-zipped the sack with more
force than necessary.

She screamed. Not from fear
or fright but abject frustration.

The sound reverberated in
harmonious waves throughout the cavern, surprising her because the
echo held none of the rawness or anger her voice had. Instead of
calming her nerves, it had the opposite effect, and she screamed
louder and punctuated the sound by slamming a fist atop the
knapsack.

"Mo chreach!"
My complete ruination!

The words cut through her
ebbing voice. She turned and stood at the same time, her mouth
agape at the sight of the barbarian twenty feet away. Not only did
his odor sour the air, he was the scraggiest, dirtiest, most
disgusting-looking excuse for a human being she'd ever encountered.
He was a hairy wart on the magical ambiance of the cavern. A
festering wound on the face of the chimerical blue glow bathing the
area, its origin unknown.

"You!" she spat, and kicked
the knapsack for good measure. "You got me into this
mess!"

"Och!" he roared. Fists
closed, he stalked toward her. His anger matching—or perhaps
exceeding—her own, he stopped within arm's reach and released a
tirade of Gaelic.

Taryn shifted her head to
one side, his breath more than she could bear. When his words cut
off, she straightened and rammed the heel of her right hand into
his chest. It incited more harsh words. She held her breath until
he was through then jabbed him again and wagged a warning finger in
his face.

"Are you telling me to shut
up?" she shouted, trembling with fury. "You owe me, you bag of
week-old garbage." She jabbed the same finger upward. "Get me the
hell out of here!
Comprende?"

One black eyebrow jerked
upward. Reason reinserted itself. She released a thready laugh and
stepped back.

"Please?" she asked,
throwing all her femininity behind the single word. "Pretty please?
You don't want me here anymore than I want to be in your company.
Let's compromise, shall we? You show me how to get the
hell
out of this tomb, and
I promise I will never set foot near the standing stones again.
Deal?"

The eyebrow remained cocked.
The black eyes stared steadily into hers. She could almost swear
she could see fumes rising off his massive frame. Noxious fumes.
With him, there could be no other.