Warriors Of Legend (3 page)

He nodded casually at the information as his students milled around and behind them, all trudging down to the car park.

“So you’re staying in Dublin?” he asked.

She nodded. “We’re staying at the O’Callaghan Davenport,” she told him.” It’s by the National Gallery.”

He bobbed his head quickly. “I know exactly where it is,” he said. “You’re not far from the college.”

“I didn’t know that.”

He wriggled his eyebrows. “That’s a fairly nice hotel. It’s famous for its Honeymoon Suite, you know. It’s supposed to be very romantic.”

Destry was staring at the ground as she spoke. “It is,” she said softly, then turned to look at him with a forced smile. “It was very nice to meet you, Dr. Daderga. Good luck with your class.”

Conor watched her very quickly make her way down the footpath toward the darkening car park. Aisling was still walking a few feet away from him, her brown eyes focused sorrowfully on her friend. She cast an apologetic glance at Conor.

“Thanks again,” she said politely. “It was very nice to meet you.”

Before she could scoot after Destry, he reached out and stopped her.

“I’m sorry if I said something offensive,” he said, his eyes lingering on Destry at the base of the mound. “I think I upset your friend. I didn’t mean to.”

Aisling gazed down the hill, watching Destry squeeze through the fence and head towards the car. It wasn’t like they were ever going to see Daderga again so she just told him the truth.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You didn’t know. The O’Callaghan really does have a hell of a honeymoon suite and I was supposed to be her husband.”

“Come again?”

“She supposed to be on her honeymoon right now. But I came instead of her groom.”

Conor got it, sort of. He watched Aisling skip down the trail after Destry, watching the woman slide through the fence in pursuit of her friend. She was supposed to be on her honeymoon, he rolled the words over in his head. It was a sad tale but he couldn’t honestly believe what idiot would refuse to marry that woman; she was absolutely perfect and then some.

While he felt a great deal of sympathy for her, the larger part of him was very glad that she didn’t get married. He had her name and the place she was staying at. Right or wrong, like it or not, he intended to do something about it.

CHAPTER THREE

Conor got the shock of his life the next morning.

It was around six–thirty a.m., a full hour and a half before his eight o’clock class on Early Irish Gaelic. He had some papers to grade and some other work to attend to, so he had come in early. The building his office was housed in was the West Theater, an old building on the campus of Trinity College that was well over one hundred years old. It was built of brick and solid masonry, able to withstand the test of time, and always smelled like moldy old stone.

Conor had his arms full of his briefcase, laptop and lunch bag as he entered his office suite. The door was unlocked and his secretary’s desk empty; she didn’t arrive for another hour. Even so, there was someone sitting in her office.

Destry stood up from the chair she had been patiently planted in as Conor entered the office. His gaze fell on her and he came to a halt, startled. The lunch bag fell to the ground and Destry bent down to retrieve it.

“Hi,” she smiled weakly at him, propping the lunch bag back on top of his briefcase.

He stared at her a moment as if hardly believing what he was seeing. “Hi yourself,” he replied, a baffled but delighted expression coming to his handsome features. “Uh… what are you doing here?”

Destry’s weak smile became genuine. “That’s a very good question,” she said, suddenly putting her hands up. “Don’t worry; I’m not stalking you.”

His gaze lingered on her as he moved for his office door. “I’m disappointed,” he teased. “Are you sure?”

She giggled. “Pretty sure.”

“Can I talk you into it?”

Her laughter grew. “Probably not.”

He opened his door. “Truly unfortunate,” he said, bobbing is head in the direction of his now–open office. “Care to come in so we can discuss it further?”

Smirking, Destry preceded him into his office, standing near his cluttered desk as he dumped the contents in his arms onto the desktop. She watched him unload, noting he looked distinctly different than he had yesterday; the baseball cap had concealed flaming red hair which he had spiked this morning so that it was standing straight up in the air. It was the tallest flat–top she had ever seen, increasing his already substantial height. Given his red goatee and mustache, he looked like a pirate. But his skin was beautiful and milky, and his eyes a clear blue. He was a unique–looking man but absolutely and powerfully handsome.

As he pulled off his jacket, he was wearing a worn collared shirt beneath and when the jacket came off completely, Destry’s eyebrows lifted at the size of the man’s arms and chest; she had noticed yesterday that he was a big boy but she had no idea just how big. The most obvious physical attribute was that he was exceptionally tall; he had to be at least six and a half feet in height. But he was also enormous in breadth, powerfully built like a weight lifter with a massive upper body and a chiseled torso. He also had very big legs – she could see them through the jeans he wore. The shirt he wore was rather form fitting in displaying his powerful physique. In fact, it made her a little hot to gaze at those beautifully massive biceps so she tried not to stare as she spoke.

“I’m really sorry to intrude on you so early,” she said as he hung up his coat. “I was wondering if you could give me a couple of minutes of your time. I won’t take long, I promise.”

He turned around from the coat rack and faced her. “I can give you all the time you need until my eight o’clock class,” he said. “How’d you find me, by the way?”

She shrugged. “You said you worked at Trinity College. I looked you up in the directory and followed the map.”

He nodded faintly, eyeing the woman who only seemed to grow more beautiful with each passing second. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail, revealing the beautiful shape of her face, and she was dressed in a sweater and jeans that accentuated a figure he had only seen on the pages of men’s magazines. The sweater she was wearing gave a tantalizing peek of spectacular cleavage but he tried not to let his eyes wander down there. He could have stared at that for the rest of his life. But as he looked at her face, he noticed that she looked exhausted. Her bright blue eyes were somewhat dim. Curious, he indicated the seat in front of his desk.

“Then I’m honored,” he said as he took a seat; his old chair creaked and groaned under his considerable weight. “Are you here to take me up on my offer of telling you more glorious Celtic legends?”

Her weak smile returned and she glanced around his office; artwork of Celtic crosses lined the walls, as did replicas and images of swords and other battle instruments. There was also a great big cape that had some kind of Celtic knot sewn into it, matted to the biggest shadowbox she had ever seen. All in all, it was an office full of rich Celtic relics, something he displayed proudly as a man dedicated to the history of his people.

“Sort of,” she replied to his question, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “I didn’t know who else to ask about this.”

He sat forward, folding his hands on his desk. His blue eyes were intense. “Ask what?”

Destry took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to start this conversation. She’d been trying to figure out how to start it for the past two hours, ever since she decided to seek out Dr. Daderga. She’d been up all night with the dilemma and now, she hardly knew where to begin. But she had to start somewhere. She could only hope she didn’t come across like a madwoman.

“Okay, here goes,” she puffed out her cheeks and fixed him in the eye. “Dr. Daderga, I know you don’t know me but I want to assure you that I’m not an idiot or a drama queen. I’m actually quite normal; I have a master’s degree in Nursing and I’m a shift supervisor in the coronary care unit at the University Of San Diego Medical Center. I come from a nice, normal family with a mom and a dad and a younger sister. I don’t drink and I don’t do drugs. I was a cheerleader for the San Diego Chargers for a couple of years and I also do charity work, if that makes any difference. Anyway, I’m a normal girl. But I really need to ask you a question.”

His dark blue gaze was glittering at her over the top of his desk. “Ask away. I’m all yours.”

She stared at him a moment before finally shaking her head. “Please don’t think I’m nuts, but I’ve been up all night with terrible nightmares. I haven’t been able to sleep at all. Ever since I left that mound yesterday, I’ve been having all sorts of… well, crazy thoughts. Really crazy things.”

He sat back in his chair. “Like what?”

She threw up her hands and he could see how exasperated she was, almost bordering on tears. “All night, every time I fell asleep, I’d have these dreams that I was back at the mound and people inside of it were talking to me.”

His brow furrowed. “People
inside
of it?”

She nodded vigorously. “Yes,” she insisted. “It was like they were ghosts or something, and I could hear them, like whispers. They kept trying to talk to me and reach out to me. But I couldn’t understand what they were saying.”

He was trying not to grin at her, thinking that her problem was more than likely just an overactive imagination. Ancient tales and an ancient site could do that to people who were not accustomed to such things. Personally, he didn’t really care why she was here, crazy stories notwithstanding, because it gave him an excuse to see her again. He remained casual in his reply.

“So you’ve come to me to interpret your nightmares?” he said. “That’s really not in my scope of work, but I’ll give it a try. What did they say?”

Destry thought a moment, terrified that if she closed her eyes again to remember the words, then she would start having those visions again. They swamped her all night, faceless wraiths that invaded her dreams and whispered mysterious words to her. Even thinking about them again made her heart pound. She had been so scared that she had sat up most of the night in the bathroom with the light on. She just couldn’t face the dark again. She gazed at Conor with some pain in her expression.

“I hope you can figure it out,” she murmured sincerely, “because I’ve never had anything like this happen to me, ever, and you were the only person I could think of that might know.”

“Like I said, I’ll give it a go. What were the words?”

“I don’t even know what language they were. They sounded like gibberish to me.”

“More than likely, since it was a dream. Do you remember them?

She took a deep breath before haltingly spitting them out. “Fanacht, morrigan, gnáthlá agus oiche og ceanna; tar ar cúl do sinne.”

Conor’s smile vanished with unnatural rapidity. He stared at her, sitting forward in his chair as a queer expression crossed his features.

“What?” he said, as if he couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Where did you hear that?”

She looked sick and scared. “I told you,” she said wearily. “That’s what those… those ghosts said to me in my dreams. Do you know what language it is? Is it even a language?”

The longer he looked at her, the more confused he became. He suddenly stood up, moving his big body around the side of the desk, all the while seemingly greatly torn. His expression was full of confusion. Destry watched him anxiously.

“Do those words mean anything to you?” she asked again.

He looked at her. Then, he plopped his buttocks on the edge of his desk and reached out, taking her hands. Flesh against flesh met, the heat from his enormous hands searing her skin. He ended pulling her off the chair, holding her hands against his broad chest as he looked at her with the most confused expression Destry had ever seen.

“You’d better start from the beginning, sweetheart,” he said with a mixture of confusion and patience. “Where did you hear those words?”

She was starting to become frightened. “I told you,” she repeated. “Those ghosts said them to me. But… but I didn’t tell you all of it.”

“Then tell me all of it.”

She hung her head miserably. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

He squeezed her hands, still clutched against his enormous chest. “No, I’m not. Tell me.”

“But I even think I’m crazy,” she insisted, her eyes coming up to meet his. “Yesterday when you were talking to your students, I walked around the mound.”

“I know. I saw you.”

She cocked her head thoughtfully. “I went down to where the passages were,” she told him. “I was looking in one of the passages when this wind blew up around me and then I heard someone whisper ‘Etain’.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Etain?” he repeated. “Is that why you asked me if I’d ever heard the name?”

She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “And… and right at sunset, right when the sun’s rays hit the stone slabs of the passage where I was standing, something really weird happened.”

“What?”

“I’m not lying about this.”

“I know. Tell me what happened.”

She took a breath for courage, trying to ignore the fact that he was caressing the fingers he was holding so tightly against his muscular chest. “The passage way got really bright,” she said, her voice lowering seriously. “And as it brightened, this wind kicked up, like it was blowing out of the tunnel. And I could hear these whispers, like they were coming from inside the mound, like hundreds of people whispering at me. They said ‘fanacht, morrigan, gnáthlá agus oiche og ceanna; tar ar cúl do sinne’.”

He gazed steadily at her. “The same thing they said to you in your dream.”

“Exactly,” she looked imploringly at him. “But what does it mean?”

He sighed and continued rubbing her hands, clutched against his chest. He thought a moment. “Well,” he said. “The literal translation is
Be still, fair queen, as day and night become the same. Come back to us.”

She stared at him, digesting his words, and her eyes suddenly widened. “You… you understood that?”

“I did,” he replied. “It’s an old dialect of Celtic.”