Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Harper eased her way out of Rory’s arms and dressed before she took one last look at him.
He slept so deeply he might have been in a coma, but maybe all men were like that after their first time.
As for her, she imagined she’d need to soak for a bit in a hot tub tomorrow, but other than some tired muscles all over she couldn’t complain.
The hard, cold part of her heart that had been like a rock in her chest since childhood now seemed to be cracking.
Neither she nor Rory had said the big three words—I love you—which had probably been wise for two people who might not have a tomorrow or even a tomorrow morning.
She lifted the bolt bar and left his room, heading in what she hoped was the direction of her own room.
Why she needed to be that far away from him she didn’t know, but something was bugging her so much her skin practically crawled with nerves.
Suddenly a dense white mist poured out of the stone walls and gathered in front of her like a floating barricade.
“Hey, ghost girl.” Harper lifted her hands in surrender. “Please don’t drag me into another dimension, please. I think I’m needed here. Also, I can’t let my guy wake up alone in the morning. Even in the twelfth century, that’s very rude.”
The mist extended a tendril that wrapped around her fingers, at which point the passage darkened and the young blonde woman who had yanked her into the spell trap appeared.
She looked beautiful, and had on an expensive green silk gown, but something dark and not so young stared out of her pretty eyes.
Now that Harper had a chance to really look her over, she seemed inexplicably familiar.
“I know you,” Harper muttered, recoiling. “How is that possible?”
“Your blood remembers me, lass. I’m Torra MacBren.” She waved her hand, and beside them an oval patch of light appeared.
Harper saw images like snapshots, the first of Cheryl giving birth to her in the Fae hollow.
The second image showed another woman giving birth to Cheryl in a cluttered, dirty trailer, and a third depicted a woman giving birth to Cheryl’s mother in the back seat of an old Edsel.
The births went on and on, their surroundings becoming more and more primitive until it stopped with a familiar-looking blonde woman giving birth in a cave under what looked like golden-wrapped tree roots.
Strange spiraling symbols covered the walls, and two older women dressed in embroidered robes came in and helped the blonde with her new infant.
“Okay, that’s you,” Harper finally said. “But you’re a bit older than you are now.”
“Aye. ’Tis proof then that we share the same bloodline, lass,” Torra told her. “Just as Lady Ava and your armorer do.”
“I’m a MacBren?” She wanted to laugh, but it was just too ridiculous. “If you were Turo’s only daughter, and you died when you were this young, then how is that possible? We’re not magic fairy people, are we?”
“We’ve no’ a drop of Fae blood, lass, I promise you.” The blonde woman smiled. “Think on such. How, then, could we share a bloodline?”
“You don’t die. You live and have a daughter, and on and on until Mom has me.” Now she did laugh with relief. “I don’t believe it. I’m the proof that you and I get out of this place. Wait, what about all the others? Can we take them with us?”
“If the timeline doesnae shift again, aye.” Torra’s grin faded as she reached for her hands. “The magic here, ’twill soon shatter, and this world, ’twill be as never ’twas. You must solve the riddle of this place and save the clan and their people.”
“What riddle?” When Torra didn’t reply she almost punched her. “This isn’t a story, it’s real. Everyone who will die are living, breathing people who never deserved this. If you know the answer, tell me.”
She shook her head. “I cannae. I’ve no’ the mind to fathom melia magic; you do. Think, my lass. You’ve ever straddled both worlds. Open the doorway and lead these people to their destiny.”
Shouts from the bailey distracted Harper for a moment, and then Torra vanished and the white mist melted into the passage wall and disappeared.
“Sure, leave me with no real answers, thanks so much,” she grumbled as she changed direction and headed toward the increasingly louder noises coming from outside, until she found the passage that led out to one side of the lists.
Harper opened the door to take a look out first, and saw utter chaos and carnage.
The men of the garrison had a veritable army of men in modern orange prison jumpsuits attacking them with swords, maces and daggers.
Rather than featureless, mindless things like the faceless men the enchantment created, the intruders looked like corpses that had come to life, with missing flesh and ugly dark patches of decay on graying skin.
Some had a missing limb, or pits where their ears and nose had apparently rotted off their heads.
“Is this the siege?” she murmured, horrified.
The zombies fought the McKeran like their undead lives depended on it, which suggested a magical element.
This was confirmed when a patroller sliced off a zombie’s arm, which fell to the ground and then stabbed the patroller in the leg with the dagger it still held.
They collided with a guard who dropped his weapon and turned to run, only to come face to face with one of the captains.
The senior clansmen shoved a sword in his hand and whirled him around.
“Stand your ground,” he yelled above the din, turning to slash one of the corpses with a dagger before shoving it back into another. “With me,” he ordered the men near him, and began carving his way into the pack of former prisoners.
Another clansmen was driven back by three of the dead men, and Harper grabbed a torch and came out beside him, setting fire to two of the zombies while he fought the third.
The burning dead men disintegrated almost at once into heaps of sparkling gray ash.
When the patroller cut off the third zombie’s head, it did the same.
“My thanks, lass,” the clansman said to her before he charged back into the fighting.
Harper ducked back inside to grab another torch before she went out to help the men of the garrison.
More zombies came pouring out of the stronghold into the lists, brought up in the rear by a strange man.
He wore Renard Beaumont’s expensive suit, but he was hunch-shouldered, wrinkled and bald, and his face looked so ugly it resembled nothing human.
There was something terribly wrong with his skin, too, which was a bright pink color and full of oozing sores.
The thick stench of rotten meat he gave off wafted through the smell of decomposition from the dead men and slapped her in the face like a maggoty chop.
Bile surged up in her throat as she realized this was a very different kind of siege, and then something punched into her shoulder and knocked her back against a wall.
The pain made her grab her arm, a movement which snapped in half the arrow protruding from her shoulder.
Faceless men holding bows ran across the inner curtain wall firing other arrows at the garrison.
The MacBren came for Tasgall, and Bodach for Torra. Between them they’ll kill everyone at Dun Talamh.
“There you are, Ms. Ensley.” Beaumont skirted around the fighting clansmen and zombies and stopped a few yards from her, smirking as he saw the broken arrow lodged in her shoulder.
“How do you like the real McKeran’s Castle?
All the men here should suit you nicely as lovers.
Have you spread those huge legs for anyone yet? ”
“Don’t you bathe?” she countered. “Because dude, you stink like a mountain of year-old roadkill. Also, you should look into some cystic acne treatment.”
“That’s not very kind to say.” His snide smile slipped a little. “It’s an unfortunate side effect of using my power. Once I shed my body, however, I will smell as clean and fresh as a meadow of spring flowers, and be as flawlessly handsome as no other male could ever hope to be.”
“Good to have goals.” Harper knew if she messed with him he might order his zombies to rip her into little pieces, and now that the enchantment was busy eating itself instead of fixing and healing things she might not be put back together again.
“Look, Torra isn’t the only MacBren in the spell trap.
Maybe you should try a reasonable substitute. ”
“Her father doesn’t count.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re not talking about Turo. It’s you. That’s why you remind me of her.”
Harper grinned. “Last of the MacBren, right here.” As he raised his hand she added, “Probably shouldn’t do that. I was born inside a very special tree, and lived there until I was seven.”
Beaumont’s expression darkened. “So that’s what it is. A Fae-spawned freak like you should have been killed the moment you stepped foot in the mortal realm.”
“Not spawned, Stinky,” she countered, and reached into her pocket for the shielding stone Rory had given her. “Protected.”
The apricot glow that began radiating from her as she gripped the stone made the goblin’s stench vanish as if burned away. Beaumont shuffled back until he bumped into one of his creatures.
“It’s not too late for you.” Harper lifted her hand to admire the pretty light shining from her skin.
“I won’t hurt you if you march this bunch back out of here.
I can’t help you when the spell trap collapses, but if you stop now maybe the Gods or whatever will take pity and only have you burn in eternal fire for half of forever. ”
“Fuck you, you overgrown red-headed freak.” He turned his back on her and said to the army, “Take the castle. Kill everyone who stands in your way.”