Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
GRAHAM
The scream ripped me from sleep.
It was a sound I’d heard before, and one that always managed to turn my blood to ice. It had me on my feet before my eyes were fully open, my heart slamming against my ribs, my breath coming in sharp gasps.
My hand shot out and found the bed empty.
The sheets were cold next to me, which meant Agnes had been gone for a while.
“Agnes?”
The scream came from the loch again. It was a sound like horses dying and storms breaking and every nightmare I’d ever had rolled into one unholy chorus.
“Agnes!”
I tore through the room, checked the bathroom, and then reached for my clothes, stubbing my toe as I dressed fast. I hit the hallway at a dead run, concerned voices and shouts meeting me.
How long? How long had I been sleeping while she slipped away?
Lachlan raced around a corner, his hair sticking up in tufts, a jumper thrown on over tartan pajama pants.
“What the bloody hell is—”
“Have you seen Agnes?”
“What?” Lachlan’s eyes rounded.
“She’s not here.” I was already pushing past him into the corridor. “She’s not in the room.”
“Maybe she couldn’t sleep?”
“Her boots are gone, Lachlan.” I couldn’t keep the panic out of my voice. Didn’t even try. “Something’s wrong.”
The Kelpies screamed again, and this time the sound seemed to shake the very stones of the castle. Doors were flying open all down the hallway. Willow stumbled out in a silky nightgown, her eyes wide and unfocused, Ramsay behind her.
“She’s having a vision,” Ramsay said, looping an arm around her waist.
“Water,” she gasped, grabbing the doorframe for support. “So much water.”
Ramsay caught her as her knees buckled. “Willow, what do you see?”
“She thinks she has to do it alone.” Willow’s voice had gone strange, distant.
I didn’t wait to hear more.
I ran.
The castle corridors were a maze in the darkness, and panic made me take a wrong turn. I doubled back, nearly collided with Orla and Finlay emerging from their room.
“Graham?” Orla’s eyes were unfocused too, but differently than Willow’s. She had one hand pressed to the wall, her face pale. “The spirits are screaming. All of them. I can’t … there are too many voices. Something’s happening.”
“We can’t find Agnes.” My heart hammered.
What the hell had she been thinking? Not waking me up?
If she had actually left this castle on her own, well, I was going to throttle her.
If I had pulled a move like that, she’d have my head.
The hypocrisy was enough to make rage blaze through the panic that threatened to stop me in my tracks.
“Do you think? The Kelpies?” Finlay’s eyes rounded.
I kept running. I couldn’t bring myself to answer that.
I just had one place left to check, just so I didn’t blindly run outside and get sucked into the loch while Agnes was off researching in the archives.
Another sound caught my attention as I worked my way toward the archives. It was almost like a tiny shrieking that echoed up from somewhere below us.
Clyde burst through the wall beside me.
I nearly tumbled down the remaining stairs, catching myself on the banister at the last second.
The ghost coo was bellowing at full volume, his translucent form flickering wildly, more agitated than I’d ever seen him.
He ran in circles at the bottom of the stairs, then took off down the corridor toward the back of the castle, then circled back, clearly trying to lead us somewhere.
“Clyde!” Lachlan had caught up. “Clyde, what is it? What’s wrong?”
Clyde bellowed again and charged toward the archives.
We followed.
I could only hope that my hunch was correct and that this was where Agnes had gone.
I wasn’t a praying man, but with the way the Kelpies were shrieking outside, I now prayed that my hunch was right. Skidding to a stop in front of the archives, I flipped the latch on the door and flung it open, only to find a hysterical Quilliam battering against the door with his wee head.
“What’s happened?” Faelan joined us and automatically reached out her hands to catch Quilliam and bring him close. She was clearly alarmed as she bent her head to listen to whatever he was saying in her mind.
“Agnes has gone to break the curse.” Faelan sucked in a breath and my mind went blank.
Bloody hell.
I ran.
I didn’t think. Didn’t plan. Didn’t wait for the others to form a strategy or grab weapons or do any of the sensible things that sensible people did in situations like this. I just ran.
The castle was waking up around me now, the pandemonium spreading like fire. I heard shouts behind me, doors slamming, footsteps pounding on stone.
“Graham! Wait!”
I couldn’t turn to see who was calling my name.
My entire focus narrowed to one singular need—reaching Agnes in time before something bad happened.
I’d murder her myself if she got herself hurt.
The front doors of the castle were massive, ancient oak bound with iron, and I hit them at full speed. They crashed open, the cold night air hitting me like a wall of ice.
The loch spread before me, black and still under the moonlight. The Kelpies had gone quiet, which was somehow worse than the screaming. The silence felt like held breath. Energy crackled in the air. It was palpable—like the moment before lightning strikes.
“Bloody hell, mate, just wait.” Lachlan panted, coming to my side. “We need Sophie. She can help hold them off.”
“I’m sorry.” I glanced over my shoulder and dodged out of his reach. Munroe had come to his side, and the two flanked me.
“Mate.”
“No,” I said and ducked again as they both reached for me. I realized they were going to try and stop me from rescuing Agnes, under some misguided notion that I was the one who needed protecting here.
Sod it.
There was nothing that would stop me from going to her now.
Without a second thought, I sprinted across the gardens and toward the drive which ran down the side of the hill from the castle and toward Loren Brae. As I turned the corner, and the loch spread before me in deeper clarity, I saw a lone figure standing in a pool of light from a lamppost.
A shriek split the night.
“That’s it. I’m going to kill her myself,” I said.
I ran faster, my bare feet tearing against wet grass and sharp stones, my lungs already burning.
Movement joined me, people and familiars flanking me and keeping pace.
I suspected they realized that trying to hold me back was futile at this point.
Clyde bellowed, appearing next to me, running so fast his shaggy mane blew backward.
Gnorman and Gnora, the two garden gnomes, somehow, impossibly, held on to his horns with all their might.
“Formation delta!” Gnorman screamed, holding on to one horn with one hand and a battle-ax with the other. “Eugene! Edith! Rally the troops!”
Out of nowhere, hundreds of hedgehogs streamed across the grass.
I nearly tripped over one but kept running.
Brice zipped ahead, keeping the hedgies in formation, and his wide eyes glinted in the moonlight.
The dogs followed, and a fox streaked ahead of me, while a squirrel kept pace next to me.
Overhead, a crow cawed, and several answered.
The familiars were going to battle.
I’d always found them to be a bit wild, and though I’d learned about the familiars and their magickal powers, each of them supporting the Order of Caledonia in their own way, seeing them come out en masse was mind-blowing.
Even Calvin the cat raced through the hedgies, clearly ready to claw someone’s eyes out if needed.
I supposed, if I had to roll deep to fight off a Kelpie and save my woman, I’d do so with a menagerie of magickal animals, a ghost coo, and a few magickal creatures that defied explanation.
“Graham, wait!” Lachlan shouted, somewhere behind me. “We need a plan—”
“The plan is to get to Agnes before she gets herself killed!”
Agnes had reached the bottom of the slope now. She was standing at the very edge of the water, perpendicular to me, her boots inches from the lapping waves, her hand outstretched toward the dark surface of the loch.
She was talking to something.
Calling it.
Movement near the island made my heart stutter, and I sucked in a breath, trying to push down the bands of panic that tightened around me.
I was close now. Fifty feet.
“Graham!” I turned to see Orla, her eyes blazing. “I see Isobel. She’s begging you not to go. You have to stop!”
“Sorry, doll, I cannae do that!” I kept my eyes on Agnes as I surged forward.
From here I could see the resolution in her eyes, the bone-deep certainty that she was doing the right thing, that stubborn lift of her stupid stubborn chin.
The water began to move in front of her.
The surface rippled, and not with natural waves. Oh fuck. The water seemed to bulge, swelling, as if something massive was rising from the depths.
“Agnes, get away from the water. Now,” I shouted.
“I can’t.” She didn’t turn around. Didn’t see what I was seeing. “If I don’t do this—”
“I don’t care about the curse! I care about you!”
“And I care about you.” Her voice broke, and even from thirty feet away I could see the tears streaming down her face. “That’s why I have to do this. Don’t you understand? The curse will keep coming. It will never stop.”
Twenty feet. The water was rising higher now, taking shape. Something enormous uncoiled from the depths.
“There has to be another way—”
I just needed to keep her talking.
“There isn’t. I found the truth. Isobel’s truth. And I have to fix this.” Agnes finally turned to look at me, and her expression shattered something inside of me. It was love and fear and desperate determination, all tangled together.
Ten feet.
I reached for her.
My fingers brushed her sleeve—just the fabric, just the barest touch—and for one single heartbeat I thought I had her. If I could just reach her, I could pull her back, drag her away from the water’s edge, and carry her back to the castle and lock her in a room until she came to her bloody senses.
And then the loch erupted.
The water rose in a wall behind Agnes, furious.
The surface of the loch seemed to tear itself open, and a shape emerged from it.
It was massive and serpentine, longer than The Tipsy Thistle and Bonnie Books put together, its body armored in overlapping plates that gleamed like wet slate in the moonlight.
The Beithir.
I had a moment to see it clearly. A crown of horns rose from its skull, and a mane of kelp and water streamed behind it. The eyes—bloody hell, those eyes—burned with rage.
It was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen.
And it was looking directly at Agnes.
I lunged for her, my hand closing on empty air as the creature moved faster than something that size should be able to move. Its tail whipped out, wrapping around Agnes’s waist like a massive coil of scaled rope, and she was lifted off her feet as easily as I might lift a kitten.
“Graham!” Agnes shrieked, her hands flying up.
Her scream cut through the early dawn, through the bellowing of Clyde and the shrieking of the Kelpies and the shouts of our friends charging down the slope behind me. She was reaching for me.
And I couldn’t get to her.
“Agnes!”
Fuck.
The Beithir turned, carrying her out across the dark water toward the island.
A small rocky outcrop, perfectly cylindrical, set at the far side of Loch Mirren, barely large enough for a few trees and a tumble of ancient stones.
It deposited her there, dropping her onto the rocks like an offering, imprisoning her.
And then it turned back toward the shore.
Toward me.
Its eyes met mine across the dark water.
I didn’t run.
Every instinct screamed at me to turn and flee, to get as far from the water as possible, to let the others handle this while I cowered in the castle like a sensible human being.
But Agnes was on that island. Agnes was alone with that thing. And I would rather drown a thousand times than abandon her.
“Let her go,” I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected. “Whatever your quarrel is with the Wright family, it’s not with her. She’s trying to help, has always been trying to help. Don’t you see? Agnes is the glue that holds everything together.”
The Beithir’s eyes flickered. Or perhaps I was just imagining it.
Then it opened its mouth and roared, and the sound was like thunder and the end of the world. Footsteps pounded behind me.
“Graham! Watch—”
The wall of water hit me before I could draw another breath.
It was pure violence. Centuries of rage crashed over my head with the full force of Loch Mirren behind it.
I was lifted off my feet and tumbled into the water, spinning every which way. I couldn’t tell which way was up, couldn’t find the surface, couldn’t do anything but flail against the current that gripped me like a fist. It was like being tossed into some sort of maniacal washing machine.
The cold was absolute. Crushing. It drove the air from my lungs and the thoughts from my head, leaving nothing but animal panic and the desperate need to breathe.
Something gripped me, pulling me deeper, and I struggled against the force of it.
This is how it ends. This is how the curse finally wins.
The last thing I heard before the darkness took me was Agnes screaming my name.
The last thing I saw was her face—pale and terrified on that distant island—her hands reaching toward me across the black water before I was once more tossed beneath the surface.
The last thing I felt was the cold wrapping around my heart like a lover’s embrace.
And then there was nothing.
Nothing but darkness.
Nothing but silence.
Nothing but the deep.