Chapter Twelve
Douglas eyed the gate from the edge of the forest. People came and went—farmers, merchants and peasants.
Warriors decked out in enough steel to armor plate the president’s motorcade.
The spell had worked. Douglas was no longer in twenty-first century San Francisco.
But Isobella was gone, and if he didn’t find her, he was royally fucked.
His sigh didn’t go nearly far enough to release his frustration.
That bitch had been nothing but trouble from the beginning.
Three years of waiting for the old witch’s premonition to come true.
Dealing with Isobella’s softness, her neediness.
It had been all he could do to look at her some days.
It’d been the longest, most agonizing three years of his life.
He would’ve still been stuck keeping up the charade when that mutt Gabriel had arrived had he not slipped up.
Had Isobella not caught him en flagrante with Irena.
The old witch, Cordelia, had reamed him a new one for that.
He checked his phone. Fifteen percent battery and, of course, no signal. Two texts. Both from Cordelia. The first one received as he was en route to Muir Woods, following behind Isobella and the Langeais wolves.
Don’t come back without her.
It was why he’d grabbed hold of Isobella, a last-ditch effort to save his own ass as the fury of her spell swirled around her.
He flicked his tongue into the gaping hole where his front tooth used to be.
Being squeezed through a rent in the fabric of time had been agony.
His landing brutal. Another reason his bitch ex-fiancée would pay. If he could find her.
He clicked on the second text. Sent before the spell had ripped him from his comfortable, modern life and zapped him into this primitive hellhole.
It had to have been. Although he wouldn’t put it past Cordelia to somehow reach through time.
The old witch had power. He only had to be in her presence to feel the hum pushing at him, prickling his skin and raising the hair on the back of his neck.
Langeais. Turn left at the tanner’s hut. The second street on the right. Across the intersection. Turn left at the White Horse Inn. Two streets on your right. Four doors down on the left. One broken hinge.
She’d known he would end up here. Another premonition? Cordelia’s second sight was freakier than her two different colored eyes, but she had more than that at her disposal. Douglas turned his phone off, conserving the battery. In case Cordelia could reach through time and sent him another message.
He eyed the gate and the village beyond, and the slow slide of the river snaking past it.
Langeais. The tower on the hill, Langeais Keep.
Despite the mud huts, the lack of the fourteenth century chateau in the foreground, and a keep that wouldn’t fall into ruins for another few centuries, it was unmistakable.
Who or what would he find behind the door with the broken hinge? And where the hell was Isobella? She’d not landed where he had. Not in the middle of a fucking endless forest, all battered and bruised and spitting up blood.
A week and a half, wandering around, probably in fucking circles because without GPS, without cell service, without tenth-century fucking maps downloaded on his phone, he was walking blind.
In loafers and chinos and no jacket. He’d near froze to death.
Drinking from a creek. Surviving on wild marigolds and fucking nasturtiums. He’d never imagined suffering through Isobella’s flower salads would have proved useful, but he was never eating another flower ever again.
He was starving by the time he’d stumbled across the road.
He stuck his phone in the waistband of his rough peasant’s pants, stolen from a lone traveler—along with the peasant’s boots, his coat, the sack that now held Douglas’ belongings and a coarse loaf of bread he’d devoured as though it were manna from heaven—and stepped out from the tree line, tagging on to the end of a larger group.
The guards at the gate didn’t spare him a glance, and with a nonchalance he wasn’t feeling, he strolled on through.
Hides drying over rails and a glimpse of large open vats clued him in to the tanner’s hut just inside the gate.
His eyes watering from the stench, he hurried past, turning left and weaving his way down streets that were narrower with each turn, squelching through mud.
Maybe it wasn’t only mud he was walking in.
Though his stolen boots pinched his toes, he was glad he’d tucked his thousand-dollar loafers in his liberated sack.
Douglas found the White Horse Inn, the sign swinging from one hook, creaking.
A shutter broken and hanging open gave him a glimpse inside.
He grimaced and turned left. He could have done with a shot or two of alcohol.
The burn of whiskey would wipe the lingering stench of the tannery from the back of his throat and nose.
He kept going. Not in a million years would he risk drinking anything from there.
The houses in this area were smaller and crammed together—crude huts of mud and sticks. He passed a stray dog, and enough rats to wish he’d researched when the Black Death hit Europe. His foot skidded in a deeper patch of…ugh! He caught himself before he fell on his ass.
Christ, Isobella.
This was all her fault. If she’d come home from work at the same time she always had, things wouldn’t have come to this.
But no, she’d wanted to surprise him for their anniversary.
And here he was. In the tenth fucking century.
The minute he found her he would drag her needy ass back to the twenty-first century.
By her hair, kicking and screaming if he had to.
He was not spending a minute more than necessary in this cesspit.
He stopped, getting his bearings. This was the street.
He counted the doors until he found the one he was looking for.
Douglas didn’t think it possible for a house to look any more miserable, but this one managed to pull it off.
One broken hinge on the door was the least of its worries.
Whether by neglect or poor workmanship Douglas couldn’t ascertain, but it didn’t bode well.
Why the hell had Cordelia directed him here?
He hesitated. Looked down the street, left, then right.
A peasant in a rough smock sauntered past, whistling.
He disappeared into a doorway, not once giving Douglas a second glance.
A few kids in tattered rags eyed him off.
Douglas knew the drill. He’d skimmed through Oliver Twist in high school.
The little pickpockets weren’t getting his loafers and chinos.
He glared at them and ran a finger across his throat in a slow, deliberate motion. They got the message and picked a different mark—a man in a deep green tunic with a fancy belt—and they followed him down the street.
The subtle hum of a ward tingled across his skin as he stepped up to the door. Faint and poorly executed. A warlock? Interesting. Not a very good one, if the ward was anything to go by. He raised his fist to the door and knocked.
Silence.
He pounded on the door, louder this time. A shuffle of feet, something kicked across the floor, and a curse in thickly accented Old French. Three months of studying Old French didn’t seem like such a waste of his time now.
The door opened on a man in his late forties, early fifties, scowling at him through lank strands of dark, greasy, gray-streaked hair. “What do you want?” He picked at his yellowed teeth with filthy fingernails, sizing Douglas up.
“The name’s Douglas. Cordelia sent me.”
The man’s expression sharpened, his scowl deepening, but he stepped aside to let him in. “I’m Didier.”
Douglas ignored the tingle of the ward, fingering the handle of his athame, a simple protective spell on the tip of his tongue as Didier shut the door behind them and his eyes adjusted to the gloom.
He couldn’t have imagined this place could be any worse on the inside, but it was.
Dingy and unkempt, it had a pervading stench of sweat and stale piss.
There was a rough table with mugs and plates, all dirty, with a lump of what might have, at one time, been bread and a stain, wine or blood, Douglas couldn’t tell.
A few stools, two cots, the bed covers stained with God knew what.
During those days in the forest, Douglas would’ve given his left testicle for a roof over his head, a blanket and a place to sleep. If this was it—hard pass.
Didier sank onto a stool and poured two mugs of watery red liquid. “She will be here soon, I imagine. Unfortunately.”
Douglas sat on the edge of a stool, not willing to touch anything, least of all the wine. She who?
Didier didn’t elaborate, chugging down his wine like it were water and he a man fresh from the desert and dying of thirst. Douglas would drown himself in drink, too, if he had to live in this shithole.
Didier poured another and drank it down as fast as the first one, assessing Douglas over the rim of his mug.
Douglas slid his athame from the waistband of his pants. It was a ceremonial blade, used for spells, but he kept it sharp. It would do in a pinch, should Didier decide to try something. From the gleam in Didier’s eye, it was definitely on the table.
He was about to leave, take his chances on the streets of Langeais, when the door swung open. A woman, elegant and dressed in tenth-century finery, entered the hut. Not beautiful, but handsome, striking and with an aura of command about her. Dressed like that, she’d have to be nobility.
Christ. She’s more out of place here than I am.
She unwrapped her head veil, staring down her nose at him. “Who is this, Didier?”
There was something about her voice that niggled at his brain. Something familiar. And an accent. American? What the actual fuck?
Didier’s hand tightened around his mug, and he glared into his wine. “You tell me, Mother. You are the one who sent him here.”
Mother? The woman couldn’t be older than mid-forties. And Didier was…a cretin, and not young enough to be her son. How could she possibly be his mother?
Then Douglas sensed it. The power emanating from her. A witch. A powerful one. As powerful as… He met her gaze. One green eye, one blue, and recognition slammed into him. It couldn’t be. But the more he studied her face, the more certain he was.
Here, in the flesh, and forty years younger, was Cordelia King.
* * * *
Lance leaned against the wall, keeping to the shadows, the hood of his cloak covering his face and his attention fixed on the door with the broken hinge.
Didier’s hut. The wound in his back had yet to fully heal, and pain radiated down his spine with each step, but he could no longer hide away.
Gaharet would be coming for him, and he needed to be prepared.
He needed to strike first. As luck would have it, he had arrived at the right moment.
She was here. The witch. Dressed in finery far above her station, she had swept across the threshold of the squalid building like a queen. She was powerful, and she was useful to him, but she was no queen. She was nothing but a peasant. Kicked off the d’Louncrais estate by Gaharet’s grand-père.
Anger coiled in his gut, and his wolf pushed forward.
Had her spell landed him inside the d’Louncrais keep as he had intended, he would not have alerted the villagers to his presence.
Had his body not experienced the agony of being forcefully thrust through space and time twice, the she-wolves would have been no match for him.
Pain pulsed through his spine. And Old Tumas had landed a lucky strike with his pitchfork. His lip curled up in a snarl. Felled by an old farmer and a bunch of she-wolves. Him. A man strong enough to be an alpha wolf.
Tumas had paid for it with his life. In time, when he took what was his, the she-wolves would pay, too.
They would kneel before him. Do their penance on their backs.
Especially the redhead who looked so like her.
Like Elise. The woman who should have been his mate.
She was long gone, by his own hand, leaving him with only vengeance to warm his soul. And he would have it.
And the witch… She would feel his wrath for her failures. Then she would aid him again.
He pushed off the wall and stepped toward Didier’s cottage.
A figure shrouded in a hooded cloak, and flanked by two armed men, skulked into the street.
He pulled back into the shadows. A woman.
No amount of darkness, no cloak, could hide that from him.
Nor the surcoats of the armored men. House Allard.
She paused at Didier’s door, checked the street, peering into the darkness. A glimpse of her face confirmed his suspicions.
Comtesse Marguerite.
Well, well, well. Maybe he did not need Didier and his witch mother after all.