CHAPTER SIX #3
Aidan cried, “Tell him how much I love him! Tell him I will find and kill Moray to pay fer what he did! Tell him I hunt the deamhan bastard every single day!”
Brie glanced at Aidan and then back at Ian. “Your father loves you,” she said softly. She knelt closer to the little ghost. “Are you here to ask him to release you to the afterlife?”
Ian shook his head.
Brie was shocked.
“What did he say?” Aidan demanded, even paler than his son.
“He said no,” Brie said slowly, still stunned. Why wouldn’t the little boy wish to leave this realm? He’d been dead for almost seventy years. “Ian,” she began, but the little boy began frantically shaking his head. He pointed at her.
“What do you want to say to me? Do you want to tell me something?” she cried.
He nodded. He pointed at Aidan now.
“And you want to speak to your father, too?”
Ian nodded, then burst into tears of frustration. And he started fading.
“Don’t go,” Brie screamed, but it was too late.
And Aidan knew, because he turned away from her, his body convulsing with his grief.
Released, his anguish erupted into the tent, lancing through her.
She staggered under the repeated blows, then fell under the crushing weight.
His pain kept pouring down on her. On her hands and knees, hurting so badly she wanted to die, she somehow looked up.
This was how Aidan felt, she managed to think.
Aidan wept silently by the tent’s closed flap door.
She knew he wouldn’t want her comfort. She didn’t care. She somehow stood and staggered to him, fighting her way through the hot waves of anguish. Brie managed to lay her hand on his back.
He roared incoherently at her and wrenched away from her, shoving through the tent flap. Brie didn’t hesitate. He needed her now, as never before, and she ran after him. It was like slogging upstream through a high, racing river.
He moved faster, leaving her behind, climbing the hill toward the ridge above. His pain was dulling. She panted, lungs bursting, legs hurting. The force of his grief had lessened, and she could run more easily now.
He halted on top of the ridge, silhouetted in anguish and misery against the violet sky. Brie froze, seeing the waves of pain emanating so clearly from him. A few stars began to emerge in the growing darkness.
The waves visibly receded until he stood there alone, as mystical as an old god or a mythical hero. Brie took a deep breath, needing the air, and she started to trek up the ridge slowly. When she reached him, she put her arms around him and gently embraced him from behind.
He stiffened.
“You need comfort,” she whispered unsteadily. She laid her cheek on his trembling back. “Let me comfort you.”
He turned. Suddenly she was in his arms, his hands hurting her shoulders. “Well,” he snarled, “ye can comfort me the way the camp whores do.”
“I will comfort you as a friend.”
“I dinna have friends,” he shouted at her, shaking her.
“You are so wrong. You have me.” Her own tears finally gathered.
His eyes widened. “Dinna weep fer me!”
He still gripped her, but she lifted her hand and laid it on his rough cheek. “There is hope. I began a communication with Ian. It may take some time, but we will find out what he wants, and then we can release him.”
“I canna release him,” Aidan cried.
His tears were falling again, over her hand, and his rising grief filled her, too. She caught his beautiful face in her hands. “Let me help you. We can find a way to release Ian together.”
He seized her wrists so hard that she tensed in alarm. “How can ye help me? Yer a virgin,” he mocked cruelly.
She understood his fury, his need to lash out. “It’s okay.”
“I like courtesans and whores,” he hissed.
“I am not leaving you like this. In fact, I am not leaving you anytime soon.” She stroked his jaw.
He threw her hands aside. “Dinna touch me! Dinna come close. I dinna want yer friendship an I dinna want yer warm little body in my bed. I want power. I want blood,” he shouted at her. “I want my deamhan father’s head!”
Brie cringed, Aidan’s wrath filling the night, filling her. It was so savage. “I know you do. I want revenge, too.”
“Ye ken nothin’! I want my son!”
“I know!” she cried, seizing his hands. His pain-filled, blue gaze met hers. “Aidan, Ian is dead. You have to let him go.”
“He’s my child! How can I let him go?” he cried, and tears streaked down his face.
“You can…and you will,” she whispered.
He jerked away from her hands. “I canna leave my son!”
“Then you are selfish,” she said. “Can’t you see that your poor son wants peace, and until you give up, let go and stop this vengeance, he will never be at peace?”
His eyes were huge. “Damn ye, Brianna!”
Aidan strode toward the forest. She watched him until he vanished into the darkness there.
Hadn’t Grandma always said that the truth hurt the most of all?
She tripped, stumbling down the hill, crying now.
She hadn’t meant to be cruel, but she had spoken the truth.
If Aidan could only see what he had to do, then he could find peace, too.
And maybe he’d recover his soul, at last.