Chapter 25
“Where is she?” David demanded, returning to the spot not ten feet behind him where Shawna had stood just seconds before.
His brother and Sloan were quickly at his side.
“She’s gone!” Sabrina cried.
“She can’t be,” Skylar protested.
“My God! She couldn’t have gone far,” Hawk said.
Alistair came rushing up. “David! I lost her. I was trying to get her to come back by Skylar and Sabrina. I’ve searched—”
“There!” Skylar shrieked suddenly. “By the altar!”
David looked. His heart grew heavy. Felt as if it was pierced by a thousand knives.
Something lay upon the altar.
David rushed through the crowd.
A body, covered in a dark cloak, dripping blood, lay upon the stone.
“No, God, no!”
David’s voice was a fierce, sharp cry that rang to Heaven. He reached the altar, ripping away the cloak, then staring down with both amazement and relief.
It was not Shawna.
Mary Jane, her maid, lay upon the altar, the blood from the gash at her throat spilling upon the stone.
“It’s not Shawna,” he said. “Oh god, it’s not Shawna! We’ve got to find her!” he cried. “We’ve got to find her quickly.”
“It’s the witches!” Old Ioin called out.
“Nay, it’s not!” Edwina shouted furiously. “Yet it is someone who would have us take the blame for what is evil!” She spun to David. “Indeed, we must find her, quickly.”
But the crowd had grown ugly. Bizarrely costumed men and women, masked and plumed, began to toss her between them.
“Witches! Witches! Witches!” began a chant.
David leaped upon the foot of the altar stone, firing his gun.
The chant was silenced.
Edwina was released.
“My wife has been taken. I will find her. And if I discover that any one of you knows what has happened here and does not aid me now, I will kill you with my bare hands. I promise.”
“There!” Alistair shouted suddenly. “There, David, look! See! There are a number of them, hooded, cloaked figures, all but hidden in the darkness. Heading for the cliffs.”
Indeed, there were a number of cloaked figures, huddled together, nothing more than a mass of shadow in the night, hurrying toward the cliffs by the loch.
And suddenly disappearing.
For a moment, he stared in disbelief. He had lived in the damned cliffs. He had made a lair in a cavern. He had explored the mines and the tunnels…
And he had apparently missed an entry.
Hawk suddenly rode up, leading his brother’s horse. “David!”
David leaped atop his mount.
“Take me!” Edwina cried out to him.
He hesitated. Alistair and Sloan were alongside him now, on horseback also.
He reached down, catching Edwina’s arm, bringing her up upon his horse. They began to race like the night wind for the cliffs.
Shawna awoke with a terrible pain searing her head. She remembered the scent, the feel, of the drug from before. She tried to lie very still, praying for the pain in her head to subside.
She started to shift position, then realized that she was freezing and very uncomfortable.
She was lying on stone.
The Druid Stone?
That couldn’t be. The Druid Stone would be surrounded by people…
She tried to move.
She was tied fast to the stone.
She opened her eyes slowly and barely managed to contain the gasp that came to her lips.
She was in a small cavern in the caves, naked, and tied to a flat stone surface.
That much she realized fairly quickly, yet it all made little sense.
Then she saw more of her surroundings.
Before her, hung upon the cavern wall and looming hugely there, was a terrifying figure.
The horns of a goat rested upon a cruelly leering mask of a man.
The body of the figure had been made half-man, half-beast, with giant genitalia hanging in the appropriate place on the creature.
Candles were lit all about the abomination.
She was not alone with it.
Cloaked figures were gathered around it, swaying back and forth.
She began to hear a low hum, a very strange chanting.
Oh god, oh god, where was she? The cliffs, aye, yes, where in the cliffs? How long had she been here?
She wanted to scream.
Scream and scream…
A shadow loomed over her. She closed her eyes to slits, desperate to see what was going on, terrified to do so.
Lowell.
Her great-uncle Lowell had brought her here.
Brought her here—with these creatures who had their own ceremony on the Night of the Moon Maiden. These were not the witches of Craig Rock because the witches were gentle, kind, honest women practicing an ancient belief and healing of the body and the soul.
This was something…different.
This was what the Church had feared for years, this was what had brought about the deaths of thousands of innocent people. This was some kind of hellish practice of the devil, and her great-uncle, it seemed, was high priest.
And now he was watching her.
He wanted her dead. Nay, worse. He apparently intended to kill her himself. Why? Oh god, why? It seemed that this was to be a very special ceremony. The blood of the MacGinnis female who had laid claim as head of the family was about to be shed in some hellish attempt at…
What?
To honor a prince of darkness?
Something was…touching her.
Damp, hot…slowing moving against her body.
Her eyes flew open. She could no longer keep them closed, for something was indeed brushing against her. She screamed, writhing, as she realized that a cloaked and cowled figure was painting her naked body with something red…
“Shush, shush!” She heard her great-uncle say, moving his fingers with a gentle touch upon her temple.
“You didn’t drug her properly!” someone said. Did she recognize the voice? Aye, it was that of Fergus Anderson!
“Aye, she should be awake at the moment of the knife,” someone else said.
“This isn’t proper!”
Then she heard Lowell’s voice, again.
Lowell. Her own great-uncle. Her own flesh and blood.
“I say what is and isn’t here!” Lowell suddenly thundered, spinning around to accost anyone who would question his authority.
He turned back to Shawna. He smiled at her.
“Be still, child. You have to die.”
“Why?” she demanded.
“It wasna right, lass, you being head of the family.”
So that was it. His hatred had been brewing since her father’s death.
Was it possible to reason with him?
“I’m not really head of the family now. I’ve married David Douglas.”
“Aye, the ruddy bastard should have been dead. And instead, you’ve bred among them now, and the lad’s been stolen away.”
“You tried to kill David all those years ago.”
“Aye, that I did. He was meant to die in the fire. Gawain was all consumed with worry about his lad Alistair, and it gave me great opportunity. You should have died in the fire as well.”
“Why do I need to die?”
“You’ve no right to live, lass. But then…” He shrugged. “When one does murder in my way, lass, with my followers about it, it must be done the right way.” He bent to whisper to her. “Ritual sacrifice, you know! A man can lose his followers if he is not careful.”
“Don’t talk to her, man!” Fergus cried.
“What does it matter?” Lowell asked.
“You promised a true celebration of the rites tonight, debauchery, and the like. If you’d take your time killing her, give her over to me and me boys—”
“Ach, shut up, Anderson!”
“’Tis not as if the lass is pure in any way—”
“Ye’ll not touch her!” Lowell said. “She’s here to die tonight.”
“What will it matter if she dies a wee bit more tarnished?” Daryl Anderson cried out.
Shawna found herself closing her eyes, wincing, trying to close out other sounds in the room.
There were men and women there. Those who were not in on the argument where she lay were over by the creature.
Kissing it grotesquely, then turning to one another.
She could hear grunts, laughter, and shrieks as the men and women groped one another in wild abandon.
How many? she wondered.
Perhaps ten or so…
Her great-uncle Lowell. Who else? Oh god, who else of her own kin would do this to her?
“We’ve little time, MacGinnis!” Fergus Anderson said angrily.
“We’ve all the time we need. They’ve not found this cavern in five years. They’ll not find it now.”
“I still say we get her fine ladyship then, before the knife plunges into her throat!” Fergus grumbled.
“Get away from her!” Lowell demanded. With a sweep of his cloak, he turned back to Shawna, blocking the others from her sight.
Lowell smiled, his face an obscure mask, and absurdly caricaturing her own. His eyes were so familiar. “Ah, Shawna! As to David Douglas. The ruddy bastard didn’t die. No matter. He will.”
“He will die…how many do you need to kill? Uncle Lowell, what are you doing, why are you doing this? I know that you’re not practicing Wicca—”
He laughed. “The creatures of health and goodness and all the fine sciences of the earth? Nay, lass, I am not one of them.”
“Then—”
He brought his lips close to her ear to whisper. “I’ve laughed so hard! For folks do not see the difference between those gentle practitioners of the earth and those of us who have seen and recognized the true power.”
“True power?”
“Satan!” he thundered to her, looking around.
Then he whispered once again. “Lucifer, the great laird of Darkness. Ah, but I find myself so well amused that we may play, rob, debauch, kill…and what strange things happen are laid at the doorstep of the Wiccans! Yet, of course, my means are twofold. I am high priest—and one by one, lass, I will manage to do away with all those who stand in my way.”
“Uncle Lowell, you can’t want to kill me.”
“Ah, Shawna, there, lass, you are sorely mistaken. I always intended you for this night, but I wanted the other girl as well, for her innocence. Still, the laird of Darkness seeks a sacrifice such as yourself, a lusty young maid, as proved, and alas, the world is fully aware of your sins of the flesh—but you are beautiful and young. Your death will bring about power you cannot begin to imagine!”
“Uncle Lowell, you don’t believe that for a moment.”
“You are going to die.”
“You’re mad.”