Chapter 19 #2
“My god!” she breathed, incredulous. “To our left!” she cried to Hawk.
“Will both of you get in there!” he cried back. She realized that he was reloading his gun. “Now!” he said, and she saw him rise, now firing with rapid precision in the direction she had pointed him.
“Shawna, go, get in the vault,” Alistair hissed.
“Alistair, did you see—”
“I saw.”
“Who—”
“Up, cousin, now, quick!” Alistair urged her. He drew her to her feet. A bullet crashed into stone right by her head as she dashed into the McCloud burial vault, Alistair right at her back, pressing her forward all the way.
“Down here!” Skylar whispered, slipping her arms around Shawna and bringing her down to hunch low just behind the heavy wooden door.
Hawk fired rapidly then, rising as he did so, backing his way toward the vault. He slipped through the doorway which they’d kept ajar for his entry. He leaned against the cold stone of the vault then, inhaling deeply. “There are at least three of them.”
“Them—who?” Shawna gasped.
“Your cloaked figures.” Hawk looked down at them in the shadowy darkness. “There’s no other way in here—and no way out—other than this door?”
Shawna shook her head. “There’s another room to our left, but no other way in, no other way out.”
On the ground, she crept closer to where he stood just inside the doorway, carefully trying to look out. She covered her ears and leaned flat against the stone as the firing started up from outside once again, bullet after bullet grazing off or plowing into the mausoleum.
“They’re trying to make me return fire, run out of ammunition,” Hawk said.
“Will you—run out soon?” Shawna asked.
“I have a couple more rounds on me, but…well, we could use some help down here…” he murmured. Bullets crashed into the stone again. Hawk angled out the door, taking careful aim. He fired, then leaned back against the stone as more bullets came flying their way.
“I’ve got my dirk, if they come close,” Alistair said.
“Eventually, they’ll have to come—here,” Hawk said.
“I don’t think they know that we’re all in here yet,” Shawna said. “The fog is so thick…they were surely as blinded as we were.”
“As we are!” Alistair said.
Once again, Hawk inched nearer the door. To their left were another three family vaults. A number of hemlocks grew in the area, and stone sarcophagi littered the earth along with angels, archangels, and more.
Then, for a moment, framed in the moonlight, was one of the cowled figures. The hood was low over its face.
A cloaked figure, its features hidden by the fall of its cowl. A figure, just like those figures she had seen in her dream.
Calling her name.
Coming for her…
“There!” she cried to Hawk.
He took aim. A cloud inched over the moon. Hawk fired and fired again.
His bullets, like the others, ricocheted in the night.
Yet, against that sound, Shawna was certain that she heard another. Pounding. A pounding against the earth.
She stood carefully, gripping Hawk’s arm. “Someone is coming.”
Someone was coming…
Friend or foe?
Three horses thundered into the graveyard.
Guns blazed.
One horse reared directly in front of the vault as its rider—easily recognizable to Shawna—fired off a gun from its back toward the mysterious cowled figures who had been firing at the group in the tomb.
Shawna gasped, falling back where Skylar was crouched down by her husband’s feet.
“It’s Brother Damian!”
“My god, is he going to help us or kill us?” Skylar demanded.
“Help us—I think,” Shawna said.
“He’s not alone,” Alistair warned quickly.
“Aye, there are two more riders with him. I don’t know either,” Shawna said.
Gunfire sounded, then ceased entirely. The riders went galloping over stones and angels alike in pursuit of the cloaked figures.
Skylar called out to Hawk, “What’s happening?”
“Rescue,” he said flatly.
“I’d say quite in the nick of time,” Alistair murmured.
“But what is going on, Hawk?” Shawna asked.
“Our rescuers have gone in search of our attackers. I think we’re safe to stand now.”
The riders returned. Evidently, the cloaked figures had managed to disappear into the darkness afforded as the moon once again made a fickle disappearance behind a cloud.
“None of them!” a voice muttered with furious disgust. “Every last one of them managed to disappear right into thin air!”
The horses with their three riders came to a halt in front of the McCloud vault.
Brother Damian was off his horse, hurrying up the steps toward them, moving furiously and swiftly for such an old man.
He was quickly followed by a slim little man with a face so ugly it was endearing.
Behind him came a very tall, straight, lithe but well-muscled man, wearing a railway frock coat over blue denim breeches and white cotton shirt, a plumed slouch hat sitting at a rakish angle atop his head.
Shawna tensed, wondering what designs this trio might have upon them. She gritted down on her teeth and studied the curious Brother Damian, yet she was startled from her observations when Hawk murmured a pleased, “Sloan! I will be damned. Sloan!”
Hawk strode from the vault, laughing as he embraced the tall, lithe newcomer with ebony dark hair, sharp handsome features, and mahogany eyes.
Shawna stared in stunned amazement at the two. Her nightmares had entered into the realm of life tonight. She’d dreamed of savages arriving en masse to do her in for her part in the “death” of David Douglas.
All this fellow needed was a bow and arrow.
“My god. Another…Indian!” Shawna murmured.
“Another half-breed,” Skylar said quickly. “He’s a friend, a dear, good friend!” she explained happily, and followed her husband out to embrace the stranger, kissing his cheeks as he enveloped her in a hug.
Apparently, Shawna reflected dryly, staring at her cousin who returned her wry assessment, the newcomers did not seek to kill them.
“Shall we find out what’s happening?” Alistair suggested.
“Definitely,” Shawna agreed.
She ventured out, Alistair directly behind her. The small, slim man—with features so wrinkled that he had a troll’s look about him—smiled. It was a nice smile. Shawna smiled back.
“When did you arrive?” Hawk was asking the half-breed Indian newcomer.
“Not thirty minutes ago.” He appeared quite tense and worried.
“We arrived to discover that there was, indeed, trouble here. This good fellow here is Mr. James McGregor, bearer of the ring sent to you previously and very anxious, when he made my acquaintance back in Gold Town, to find out about you. I had assured him you had left for Craig Rock, and his story was so intriguing, I determined that I must accompany him here.”
“Sloan, what a very good friend you are!” Skylar said. “It’s so good to see you.”
“And your timing was impeccable,” Hawk assured him. He then turned to Brother Damian.
“How did you know to come here?”
“I didn’t know. We heard the commotion,” Brother Damian said. Except that there was no longer a pleasant Irish lilt to his voice.
It was a different voice.
David’s voice—deep and husky and all Scottish.
Shawna gasped, realizing that he had deceived her all along.
He had gone about by day, spying on them all.
Not just in the passageways of the castle, but wherever he chose to be, walking among them all.
His deception had been complete. She’d not recognized him in any way, shape, or form.
He had been at the tavern, drawing her out.
She was furious that he had deceived her so easily.
Apparently, he had deceived others, too.
“My god! David!” Skylar gasped. “Why didn’t you just tell me who—”
“The disguise was important, Skylar. I didn’t know who in the household I dared trust. It’s been the only way I can move around by light of day. Skylar, where is the boy?”
“Danny?” Skylar gasped. “He is with Anne-Marie. I pray God that—”
“I pray God as well, but I do believe that Anne-Marie is innocent of any wrongdoing.”
“I gave him over to her,” Hawk said. “We couldn’t bring him here.”
Skylar continued to stare at David. “I thought I was insane, wondering what it was about you that was so familiar. Now I know. Douglas eyes! I feel like a fool for not having recognized your eyes immediately.”
His eyes! Shawna thought. Aye, she should have recognized the eyes herself.
But she had not.
“The disguise was necessary,” David said.
Indeed, Shawna thought.
Necessary.
Against all of them.
He had donned his disguise not just to watch her kin, she thought, but to watch her as well. Her anger grew.
She longed to fly at him and tear his fake whiskers off one by one. She struggled for control.
David had yet to glance her way.
“I left the castle to discover that James and Sloan had arrived. We heard gunshots and decided a show of force on horseback might serve us all well. It seemed that there was some fair firepower coming against you.”
“Aye, that there was,” Alistair said, surveying the three who had just arrived. “You all—know one another?” he said politely.
David grinned ruefully. “Aye, that we do, Alistair. Good Mr. McGregor here has been with me on my— journeys—I shall say. And I have known Sloan a very long time. He grew up in the same camp as my brother. Sloan, James—Alistair MacGinnis. And, of course…”
At last, he turned to Shawna. He’d been very aware of her presence, she was certain.
“And of course…Lady Shawna MacGinnis.”
His voice seemed a combination of ice and fire as he said her name. His eyes fell on her in such a way that she felt as if she had been physically attacked.
Aye, it was true that he was so well costumed he had fooled even those who knew him best.
But something else had changed. Completely. He did not just seem angry. He seemed to loathe her. With an anger red-hot enough to kill one second, and cold enough to freeze the very air around them the next.
She was the one who had the right to be angry! She had been deceived.
But she smiled graciously at James McGregor, aware that he was the Dr. James McGregor who had helped David survive his captivity.
She smiled equally graciously to Sloan Trelawny.
“Indeed, it’s a pleasure to meet you both.
As Hawk has said, your timing is quite impeccable.
I assure you, we’re most grateful to have you among us. ”
“The pleasure is mine, Lady MacGinnis,” Sloan Trelawny said, bowing his head to her, nodding in acknowledgment to Alistair.
He was a very handsome man, white and Indian features combining to create an exceptionally arresting face, his collar-length hair dead straight and almost blue-black, his features especially well shaped and defined.
Though it was obvious that he was quite tense and concerned about the situation, his quick smile was charming.
His eyes, however, had a sharpness about them, and Shawna was certain that as an enemy, he would be quick and deadly.
“Aye, it’s a pleasure to be here, except that we didna catch a one of them black-clad creatures. By God alive, what does go on here?” McGregor demanded, staring at David, then at Shawna.
David’s eyes burned into her then as well.
Everyone, she realized, stared at her.
“What does go on? The mystery grows greater by the day,” David said. “We’ve more than one enemy. There seem to be a number of people in those strange black cloaks seeking to commit murder. It’s a very strange place, wouldn’t you say—Lady MacGinnis?”
“It has become strange lately,” she agreed. “In fact…” she began, then broke off, frowning, staring from Alistair to David.
“Alistair, you’re not at all surprised to see that David Douglas is alive behind the deceptive brown wool of a friar’s garb.”
“We met in the mines,” Alistair said.
“Oh? Recently?” Shawna inquired, staring at David.
He had chosen not to tell her much at all. Although he’d demanded her complete silence, he’d given nothing in return.
“Aye, recently,” David said coldly.
Alistair stepped closer to Shawna and said in a reproachful whisper, “You kept a secret from the closest of your kin.”
She ignored him. David was still staring at her coldly.
“Apparently, someone did not want you coming here,” David said.
“You came to look for Sabrina. Have you found any trace of her?” Sloan asked, his dark eyes on Shawna.
Shawna gasped. In the midst of the gunfire and her shock regarding David’s deception, she had forgotten all about Sabrina.
She spun around swiftly and hurried back into the McCloud vault. Sabrina.
Time could mean so much.
In many ways, the vault was a smaller version of the crypts within the castle, filled with shrouded bones and more modern coffins, and even drawers that were closed over with marble and mortar.
Small openings lined the very top of the vault for ventilation for the living who visited the dead.
Those openings allowed for just a trickle of fresh air and moonlight.
As she tore into the second room, barely lit by the moonlight, Shawna paused at first, aware only of the death that filled the room. Fear cast a clammy hand upon her. Dust lay heavy on the floor. Spiderwebs met and melded to keep the gray shadows of the vault as eerie as they might be.
Shawna swallowed hard and hurried through a maze of coffins upon the floor. She finally reached the far end of the vault’s second room.
She stood dead still and let out a cry.
She had found Sabrina.