Chapter 5 #3
Shedding her socks and placing them with the rest of her clothes behind the partition, she pulled on the amazingly well-fitting slippers of suede.
It was as if they had been made just for her.
Once through the door, the subtle scent of rotten eggs made her wrinkle her nose but didn’t worry her.
Geothermal springs often smelled like sulfur.
In fact, that was often proof of their therapeutic benefits.
Not all hot springs gave off that aroma, but some did.
It surprised her that Seven Cairns had a geothermal spring because of Scotland’s stable geology and lack of any remotely recent volcanic activity.
As she let her robe drop, removed her slippers, and slid into the comfortably warm, albeit slightly smelly water, it surprised her that the place wasn’t crawling with tourists eager to enjoy this rarity.
“More for me,” she said with a happy sigh, reclining into the ledge built in the surrounding rock.
It created a perfect cradle. She had expected the pool to be inside another section of cave, but it turned out to actually be at the mouth of an overhang that opened out into a dense pine forest. A thick layer of pine needles carpeted the ground, and the only thing breaking the dense green of the trees were the silvery gray trunks, standing at attention like watchful sentries.
It was impossible to see the sky through the canopy of gently shifting branches.
Several large pillar candles tucked among the rocks softly lit the peaceful grotto.
Lyla released another satisfied sigh. “I could stay here forever.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance as if to say, You are not welcome here forever.
“I’m sheltered here,” she told it, feeling courageously defiant, “and I’m already wet. Do your worst. I’ll stay as long as I like.”
The sky responded with a louder growl, seemingly angered by her attitude.
The wind picked up, whipping the pines’ heavy branches from side to side, shaking pinecones free, and tossing them to the ground.
Lyla ignored it. The weather had flipped like this when she’d visited Edinburgh.
It was just part of Scotland’s personality.
If they stopped doing everything whenever it rained here, they’d never get anything done.
A deafening crash of thunder made her jump.
“Wow. I felt that one in the rocks.” She eyed the overhang, slightly concerned as dust and larger bits of shale rained down from the rock ceiling sheltering the pool. “Maybe I need to head out after all.”
Scrambling out of the water, she hastily dried off, threw on the robe, and shoved her feet into the slippers.
“I’m sure Shona will give me a rain check.
Literally.” She hurried to the door, tried to pull it open, then stumbled back a few steps when the latch came off in her hand.
“Well, that’s not good.” She stared at it, then stared at the door, which remained stubbornly sealed.
“Come on. Work with me here.” She tried to reattach the latch, but without the proper tools, that was impossible.
Larger pieces of debris fell all around.
Some even pelted her shoulders. “Time to head for the trees.”
Rain blowing, limbs whipping her as she ran in among the trees, a ground-shaking crash made her look back.
The large stone ledge sheltering the pool had collapsed, destroying the grotto, sealing the pool, and completely covering the door.
She shuddered; the intensity of the near miss knocked the air from her lungs.
Dropping to her knees, she hugged herself and rocked back and forth.
“This is definitely not good,” she repeated, her teeth chattering.
That near miss had been entirely too close for comfort.
She lifted an arm and tried to shield her eyes to discover which way to go to get around this part of the mountain and back to the civilization side.
There had to be a path or something around here.
Blinded by the wind and rain, she huddled at the base of the largest tree she’d come across so far and prayed lightning wouldn’t strike it.
It wasn’t the best place to take shelter, but for the moment, it was all she had.
After what felt like forever, the storm eased up enough that she felt safe to try to find her way back to the front of the spa.
Clutching the front of her robe closer about her neck, she forced herself to her feet and squinted upward, trying to see the sky and get her bearings.
She was no survivalist, but if she could see where the sun was, at least that would give her some sense of direction.
Of course, she still wouldn’t know which direction to go, but any knowledge had to be better than nothing.
With the levelness of the ground, she couldn’t even tell which direction might be down the mountain or hillside.
She distinctly remembered Mairwen driving that rickety old truck uphill to get to the spa.
Therefore, downhill would eventually take her to the village.
She hoped. That seemed logical enough. “Anything that makes sense is a good thing,” she said, speaking aloud.
Even though she sounded even croakier than usual, it made her feel better to hear her own voice, as if it proved to her rising hysteria that she was still alive.
Then something roared.
“What the hell was that?” She froze and looked all around.
Whatever that was sounded like it belonged in a dinosaur movie.
She took off running, not caring that she had no idea whether or not she was going in the right direction.
All she knew for certain was that it was away from whatever had made that chilling sound.
As she dashed around the trees, she kept glancing back, terrified that the unhappy beast was closing in on her.
The throaty, guttural roar cut loose again, vibrating up through the soles of her slippers and shaking its way into her bones.
“I hated those dinosaur movies, and now I’m in one.
What the crap do they have living on this mountain? Some kind of Highland Tyrannosaurus?”
She lost her footing in the slipperiness of the wet pine needles and went tumbling, but it gave her hope.
She was tumbling down the hill. That was a plus.
At least she hoped it was a plus. She also hoped she’d find some sort of safe haven before that hungry-sounding animal found her.
Pushing back onto her feet, she took off in that direction again.
Yes. She was definitely running down an incline.
But for the life of her, she hadn’t remembered Mairwen passing a forest of any kind on the way to her spa.
The land around the roadway had been completely open and cleared of trees.
Surely she hadn’t come out on the opposite side of the mountain.
She hadn’t walked that far through the rooms of Mairwen’s place.
Then another sound made its way to her over the increased howling of the wind.
Well, it was more of a feeling than a sound.
A rhythmic thumping that grew steadily stronger, shaking the ground with a deep thudding.
Galloping. Yes! That’s what it was. Galloping.
She’d been to the races at Churchill Downs, and that thumping was definitely a gallop.
“Please be tame enough so I can try to ride you,” she said as she risked halting and turned to face that direction, standing ready to jump in front of whatever was coming at her.
It was the only chance she had to escape the owner of that roar.
As the source of the rhythmic pounding thundered into view, her jaw dropped.
The largest man she had ever seen in her life, a muscular giant clad in the dark, leathery armor of a medieval warrior or some sort of Viking warlord was riding toward her on a monstrous horse so black that the sheen of its coat shimmered an inky blue.
The man’s shoulder-length hair was an eerie silvery-white and pulled back from his forebodingly handsome face.
Her heart pounded so hard, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move a muscle. Was this duo a pair of demons or avenging angels that had traveled from another dimension?
She closed her eyes tightly, smacked her cheeks with her open hands, then opened her eyes to see if she had rid herself of the illusion.
She hadn’t. She must’ve hit her head and not realized it.
He was still there, getting closer by the minute, and for some strange reason, deep in her soul, more instinctively than anything she’d ever felt before, she wanted him to reach her. “I have lost my mind,” she whispered.
Before his beast fully halted, he leapt from the saddle and went down on one knee in front of her with his silvery head bowed.
“Lady Lyla…Lyla,” he said, in the same voice she had heard in her mind and her dreams for the past few days—the voice no one else ever heard.
He looked up at her, his eyes the unnerving color of liquid mercury aglow with an unearthly golden light.
He held out his hand, reaching for her. “Allow me to carry ye to shelter, my lady.”
She still couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, and wasn’t even sure that her heart still pounded against her rib cage. Maybe she was dead. Maybe the ledge had squished her, and she just didn’t know it. Then everything went away, disappearing in blessed darkness and the safety of silence.