CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #2
And in that moment, she somehow knew he hadn’t been dead, not at all. He had been in repose, awaiting the return of his black power.
“Sleeping evil,” the ripest time to reap protection, or some such thing.
Now Brie understood that phrase of the Wisdom.
He would be at Aidan’s hanging, masquerading as someone else, perhaps Frasier.
And Tabby had a spell to prevent his evil from returning to his body.
She had to go back now so they could find and finish him.
“Are you okay?” Sam asked.
“I had a vision. If I can get back, I think I’ll be able to find Moray, and Tabby has a spell that might end his demonic reign once and for all.”
“I’m going back with you,” Sam said quietly.
A moment later they were in the elevator and going up to Brie’s loft. Tabby had the door open and was waiting for them, both anxious and smiling. Behind her, the loft was filled with the scent of her fantastic cooking.
Sam said in a low voice, “I take it I’m not supposed to mention her Fate is a big, dark medieval brute who looks about as kind and sensitive as a really angry attack dog?”
“I don’t think we’re allowed to reveal what we know—not unless it’s dire,” Brie said tersely.
“Are you okay?” Tabby cried, embracing her and dragging her inside so they could safely shut the door and lock it.
“I’m not okay,” Brie returned. “I’m so upset my head is going to explode.”
Tabby seized her hands. “Sam told me what happened while you were being debriefed. Brie, I’m so sorry.”
“Tabby, please find a spell to send me back to him, exactly where I left off.”
Tabby’s eyes widened.
“I need it immediately.” Although she also needed a shower and her own clothes—she’d been given contacts and sweats at the agency—she ran to her computer and powered on.
Tabby and Sam followed her. “You know I never find a spell immediately,” Tabby replied. “It could take me days or even weeks.”
Brie went to her research files and the last text she’d been reading. She glanced up at Tabby. “Please.” Then she opened the page she’d bookmarked.
She desperately wanted the text to have changed. If her love had healed Aidan at all, he would not allow anyone to hang him.
“Brie, when Allie vanished last year, Sam asked me for a time-traveling spell. I couldn’t find one,” Tabby said worriedly.
“Every day is different,” Brie reminded her. “If you can’t find a spell, I’ll find another way.” She hit Enter and text filled her screen.
In December 1436, Aidan the Wolf of Awe, a Highlander with no clan, sacked the stronghold of the Earl of Moray at Elgin, leaving no man, woman or child alive.
She breathed hard and read the rest of the page.
However, Moray escaped the Wolf’s wrath intact, to take up his position at court as Defender of the Realm for King James, the same position he had enjoyed ten years earlier.
But when James was murdered at Perth the following February, Moray, who was known to be at court, vanished, never to be heard from again.
Quite possibly Moray was slain with his king.
The Wolf of Awe proceeded to spend the next nineteen years ruthlessly destroying the families and holdings of Moray’s three powerful sons, the earls of Feith, Balkirk and Dunveld.
Retribution came from Argyll, and in 1458 Castle Awe was burned to the ground.
Although the Wolf spent twenty years rebuilding his stronghold, he forfeited his other holdings, his title and earldom (Lismore) to King James II.
He remained universally distrusted and feared until his demise.
In 1502, after his mercenary role in the MacDonald uprising, he was accused of treason by the Royal Lieutenant of the North, the powerful Frasier chief.
Badly wounded from an escape attempt, he was publicly hanged at Urquhart.
Brie couldn’t see the page now, for her vision was blurred with tears. She wiped them and read on:
His tomb has been carefully restored at the ruins of Castle Awe on Loch Awe.
Nothing had changed, not one damn thing! Brie laid her head on her arms and let grief and fear wash over her. With it, there was frustration and rage. Tabby laid a hand on her back. “I’ll try to find a spell to send you back. Do you want to talk about it…about him?”
“I’m exhausted,” Brie muttered, “and thanks to Nick, all talked out.” She stood abruptly. “I need to shower and get out of these clothes.
Tabby had never looked more concerned. “I’ll fix a tray. You can eat in bed. I am not leaving you!”
Brie smiled slightly. “Thanks.”
But as she walked to the bathroom, she thought about her vision of Aidan in effigy and the tomb on Loch Awe. She stopped and went back into the loft’s living area. “Sam, has anyone ever been to Aidan’s tomb?”
Sam hesitated. “I don’t know. I think it’s simply a well-known fact that the tomb exists.”
“Has anyone seen it? Are there photos?” Brie demanded.
“If there were photos, they’d be in his case file. What are you thinking?”
Just because she had a vision of Aidan in effigy, and it was common knowledge that Aidan of Awe had a tomb, that didn’t mean it was his tomb. Historians made mistakes all the time. “I want to see it for myself. I’m going to Scotland.”
TWO DAYS LATER, brIE SAT BESIDE Sam in the front passenger seat of the rental car they’d picked up at Edinburgh International.
Loch Awe was a glimmering body of water ahead of them.
They’d managed to take a flight over the previous night, had landed in Edinburgh that morning and had spent seven hours driving across the Highlands through spectacular scenery, although it wasn’t half as splendid as it had been during medieval times.
The signs of modern times had become more dispersed as they left Edinburgh’s suburbs behind, urban sprawl giving way to smaller and smaller villages.
The towering mountains were stark and bare now.
Hundreds of years ago, the forests had been so thick they were impenetrable except by game trails.
The landscape was so familiar and so different.
But it didn’t matter. Only the truth about Aidan’s Fate mattered.
Brie gripped the dashboard as they bounced along the rutted dirt road leading to Castle Awe.
The sapphire-blue lake with the red stone rising out of its midst was painfully familiar and Brie’s heart pounded with hurtful force.
She almost expected to see Awe as it had been in 1502, with riders on the bridge and Highlanders in the ward, coming and going.
She almost expected to see Aidan, the most magnificent sight of all, striding out of the ward, clad in his leine and plaid and swords.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
Sam braked on a roadside lookout, not speaking.
The red stone rising from the sparkling water was only that—red stone. Castle Awe was in ruins.
All that was left of the spectacular castle, with its many towers, wards and chambers, was two crumbling curtain walls and two collapsing towers.
The bridge leading to the ruins was impassable, reduced to three disconnected stone sections.
A new suspension bridge had been erected to the north of it.
Three cars were parked by it. Tourists were leaving the ruins, making their way across the suspension bridge to their vehicles.
A pair of swans drifted past the ruins of the bridge where Aidan’s mighty army had gathered for the march on Inverness. Brie began crying.
“I’m sorry,” Sam whispered. “It’s awful…such beauty and majesty, coming to this end.”
Brie fought her tears and her grief. As if sensing her thoughts, Sam put the little Renault in gear and drove over to the suspension bridge, where she parked. Brie got out of the car, so sick now she thought she might die. With Sam beside her, she started walking slowly toward the ruins.
She didn’t know if she could stand the heartbreak.
She missed him so much.
They had only just begun. His tomb could not be ahead.
A husky American man wearing a camera around his neck, dressed in Bermuda shorts and Adidas, was leaving the ruins. He frowned at her. “A waste of time,” he said. “The only thing worth seeing is the tomb. The rest is just a pile of rocks.”
Sam cupped her elbow. Brie didn’t speak as she passed the man, because she couldn’t. His ignorance infuriated her.
The gatehouse leading to the inner ward, the great hall and the interior of the castle should have been directly ahead, with its pair of majestic flanking towers.
Sentries should have been on those towers and on all the curtain walls.
Brie paused, still almost expecting the castle to magically reform itself and for Aidan to step out of the gatehouse passageway, his eyes blazing with interest as he saw her.
“The guidebook said the mausoleum is beneath where the original chapel was,” Sam murmured.
Brie wiped her eyes and marched ahead. She was feeling faint—she’d eaten about two bites on the plane and nothing all day.
Sam followed as she went into what should have been the inner ward.
The great hall should have been to her left; above it, Aidan’s bedchamber, where they had so recently made love.
She would give just about anything to be in his arms one more time, she thought. She simply couldn’t accept that she would never be with him again. All she had to do was figure out how to get back into the past.
She saw a wood door ahead—a part of the castle wall.
Brie hesitated, uncertain if she could really go forward now.
But she had to know. Grim, she strode across the rest of the bare ward, the ground rutted with dirt and mud.
She began to hear voices of both men and women, all speaking Gaelic, the sounds becoming louder and more vivid.
She heard horses whinnying, bridles jangling.
Suddenly she smelled game roasting, and she felt the warmth that was always blazing from those massive hearths.