Chapter 30
I f it had been up to Bethany, she would have rushed off on foot. Every moment that she waited felt like a moment wasted. But Finola insisted that haste was not their ally. She pointed out that Bethany would tire herself out before she even reached Dunadd. So they harnessed up the donkey and set off in the cart.
Their progress along the road was achingly slow. Noon came and went. Bethany’s panic only grew with every one of the donkey’s slow, painful steps. Was it only this morning that Comgall had ridden to the cottage and asked her to marry him? It felt like weeks ago.
The closer they got to Dunadd, the more Bethany became convinced that her first, instinctive reaction was correct. Dubnus must have taken Matthew. Who else? He had always been so interested in the boy. And, if Dubnus had some way of travelling in time, and he was taking Matthew to the footprint, what was to say he hadn’t already whisked Matthew away? By now, they could be at any point in time. Bethany might never see her son again. With her own time machine left in the twenty-first century, Bethany did not have a hope of following him. She pressed her fist against her mouth and tried to stifle her sob. Faith, Finola had said. She must have faith.
When they reached the gates of Dunadd, they found a variety of carts and horses queueing to get in. There was quite a crowd of people blocking the gates.
“Must be market day,” Finola said, frowning. “All these people are from the village. We might be stuck here for a while. Why don’t you rush on ahead, dear? I’ll wait with the cart and find you later.”
Bethany did not hesitate for another second. She jumped down to the ground, the impact shaking her whole body. No time to recover - she set off at a run towards the summit of the hill. Towards the inauguration site and its powerful footprint. She almost knocked into Ciaran, off-duty in his ordinary clothes.
“Sorry,” she said breathlessly, and ran on.
The tent had been re-erected over the inauguration site, no doubt to cleanse the place again. This time, though, there were no guards. What had happened to them? Bethany had no time to find out. She burst in through the fabric flaps of the entrance.
She felt the power of the footprint like she had before, a force so strong that the earth throbbed with it. And then she saw the occupants of the tent, and she could think of nothing else.
Dubnus stood beside the footprint, his hands on Matthew’s shoulders. All kinds of strange-looking equipment lay in rings around him, as if Bethany had disturbed him in the middle of a black magic ritual. And on the other side of the footprint, a smirk on his handsome face, stood Lucan .
Bethany stopped dead and gasped. Black spots swam at the edge of her vision. Not him. Not here.
“Hello, Bethany dear,”Lucan said, his smile widening. “How nice to see you here.”
“Daddy’s being mean,” Matthew sobbed, wriggling in an attempt to free himself from Dubnus. “I was excited to see him at the house, but then he started being nasty. And he said I can’t stay with you, Mummy.”
Bethany smiled at him reassuringly. She had to stay calm. That was the only way she could get through this. She took a deep breath and shifted her stance slightly. She was ready.
“What is going on here, Lucan?” she asked.
“Lucan!” Dubnus crowed. “I’m afraid you have his name a little wrong. This man is not really Lucan, twenty-first century scientist. He is Lucanus, the druid. And he just so happens to be my brother.”
Bethany could not stop the gasp that slipped from her lips.
“Lucan is from Dal Riada?” she asked.
Both men laughed.
“Oh, no,” Lucan - Lucanus - said. “We are much, much older than that. We were powerful druids in the time before the Romans invaded Scotland. This was our land, once.”
He moved so fast that Bethany barely had time to blink. Suddenly, he was behind her, gripping her wrists. He pushed her towards the footprint. With his cruel grip tilting her off balance, she had no choice but to stagger forward one step and then another.
“Did you really think you had escaped me?” he asked. “With my own equipment? It brought you exactly where I wanted you. The police will never solve your disappearance.”
Bethany staggered a little farther forward, fighting to find her balance.
“What are you doing, Lucan?” she asked. She could hear the panic in her own voice now, high and tight.
“Over the centuries, I’ve made a number of interesting discoveries,” Lucanus said, his voice conversational. “One of them is that certain bloodlines carry the ability to travel through time. It is very, very rare. Dubnus and I have the power, of course, but we’ve almost exhausted ours. It’s very difficult to convince people that time travel is scientific rather than magical. So, what a pleasant surprise it was to recognise the same power in one of my undergraduate students.”
“Me,” Bethany whispered. “That’s why you married me.”
“Our son will grow to be twice as strong as either of us,” Lucan said triumphantly. “He may yet achieve what I could not. But first, you will open the portal for us, and I will take Matthew back home.”
He didn’t have the power to open the portal himself, Bethany realised. Not without all his fancy equipment. She began to fight, tasting hope for the first time since she’d entered the tent.
“I will not do a thing to help you take Matthew,” she gasped, stamping down on Lucan’s foot and trying to wrench her hands from his grasp. “You will never take him away from me!”
Suddenly, a vicious knife appeared at her throat. She froze, afraid to so much as breathe. The edge pressed against her skin. She could feel the lethal sharpness of the edge.
“You do not need to be willing,” Lucan murmured in her ear. “Your blood will open the portal for us. And your death will give us months worth of power. You’ve outlived your usefulness, Bethany.”