CHAPTER EIGHTEEN #2
“He’s dead. I have spent my entire life living in the shadow of the legend—and truth—of the Wolf’s hangin’. Ye can’t change Fate.” He jerked free. “I willna try.”
“Do you hate your father? Is that why you won’t take me back to save him?” she cried furiously.
“What father fails his son?” Ian’s eyes flashed.
Brie felt raw despair. “He loves you so much.”
Ian made a harsh sound. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Brie!” Sam shouted from across the street, waving madly at her.
Brie was glad for the interruption. She had never dreamed, not in a million years, that she’d find Ian this way—a bitter, dark and modern man.
Brie saw Sam in her high heels and a slinky jersey dress, hurrying across the street.
Every single male pedestrian turned to look at her, and a sedan passing on the street in front of Brie rear-ended a hatchback as its driver rubber-necked her.
Ian turned to see what the commotion was about. He stared, his gaze narrowing.
Brie watched Sam weave through the cars. She had stopped all the traffic on the busy thoroughfare.
“Tabby called,” Sam said, her smile faltering as she glanced at Ian. “Okay. He’s not Aidan, is he? What did I interrupt?”
Brie breathed hard. “Sam, this is Ian—Aidan’s son.”
Sam was as sharp as they came and she didn’t blink. Her gaze had locked with Ian’s. “If you can’t convince him to take you back, you can give me a shot.” But she wasn’t smiling, not at all. “Tabby has not found the spell, Brie.”
Ian’s mouth curved, just barely, and it was a moment before his gaze moved to Brie. “No one can change the past.”
Before Brie could respond, Sam said, “Not true. Sometimes mistakes are made. Sometimes Fate is denied, defied—interrupted. And then it can be restored. We happen to know firsthand, because our friend Allie went back in time to change the future, and succeeded.”
“Please, Ian,” Brie said. “Your father needs you. Take me to Urquhart—take me to the day they hang him in 1502!”
Ian looked back and forth between them. “Fine,” he said, looking damned unhappy about it.
“Wait—I’m coming, too!” Sam cried.
But Ian swept Brie close, ignoring Sam, and as they were flung across the slowly moving traffic and whirled upward, she screamed.
brIE GASPED FROM THE IMPACT of landing, her face against Ian’s chest, still in his powerful arms. She was dizzy from the leap and the landing, but she knew she must get up.
Ian said tersely, in horror. “My God.”
Brie pulled away from him, onto her knees, and she saw Aidan.
He was twirling in the breeze. He was dead. The castle walls were behind him, the ground was snow-covered and a crowd had gathered. It was exactly as he had been hanged in her vision.
She staggered frantically to her feet, vaguely aware of Ian’s help.
“Aidan!” she screamed in horror. She saw that his neck was broken, for his head fell at a grotesque angle.
They had arrived too late? Disbelief came.
“Aidan, come back to me!” She ran forward and Ian let her go.
She loved him too much. This could not, would not, happen.
To hell with destiny and the gods! She resolved then and there never to let him go. They could go back in time again!
“This is not written,” she screamed up at his body, standing below him, the top of her head inches from his bare feet. “We will rewrite this!”
His body seemed to shudder.
She seized his feet to stop him from swinging. “Come back to me, don’t leave me. Come back to our future,” she begged.
And a visible tremor went through his body. His chest rose—and fell. Brie stared up at his downturned face and saw his lashes flickering. “Allie!” she screamed.
Brianna.
Brie knew it wasn’t telepathy, for she saw his mouth moving. He was coming back from the dead because he was choosing to live.
And she saw Allie’s white light raining down on him.
As it did, Malcolm, Guy and Royce leapt onto the scaffold, one of them cutting the rope, the other men taking Aidan’s body into their arms. A moment later he was laid out on the ground, and Allie was kneeling over him, healing him intently.
His lashes moved and lifted, and Brie met his direct blue gaze.
His eyes began to shimmer with relief and love. “Brianna.”
She clasped his face, bent over him and kissed him. “You’ve come back to me,” she whispered. Their gazes met and locked.
He sat up, pulling Brie close against his side. Not looking away from her, he said, “Tell Frasier my men will war for the king.”
“I’ll tell him,” Royce said, striding away.
“Do ye ever listen to anyone?” he asked softly.
“I will never forgive Nick for taking me away from you when you needed me the most,” she said, seizing his hand. “Why did you choose to die?”
“To protect ye from my father,” he said softly. He lifted her chin and feathered her mouth with his. “But Brianna, I felt yer love. And even dead, even with the gods comin’, I realized I dinna wish to die. I want to live—I want to live with ye, Brianna.”
Tears welled. She stroked his beautiful jaw. “That’s a damn good thing, because on top of everything else, there’s someone you must meet,” she said, and she glanced up.
Ian Maclean was staring at them, his face hard and tight.
Aidan followed her gaze. His eyes widened and he paled. Slowly he stood, in disbelief. “Ian?”
Ian didn’t move a muscle, his face filled with tension. “If ye dinna hang—if we rewrite Fate this day—ye need to rescue me. I’m at Elgin,” he said, and he vanished in time.
“Ian!” Brie screamed.
Aidan looked at her, incredulous. “Ye found him in the future?”
Brie nodded. She was about to explain everything when she felt Moray’s black power. She cried out in warning, but Aidan had whirled.
He was coming fast and furiously. There was no time to scream again. A huge, armor-clad giant rushed them, blazing energy at them, roaring in rage. “Aye, Ian lives! But ye’ won’t ever see him again!” the knight shouted furiously.
Brie gasped as the force struck her and Aidan, sending her tumbling away from the gallows across the clearing, and into one of Urquhart’s walls.
She grunted from the terrible impact of being hurled against stone, but it wasn’t as bad as that day on the battlefield, because he had flung his energy at Aidan, catching her only peripherally.
Men roared and swords clashed and rang, louder than she had ever heard them.
Terrified for Aidan, certain that this was the final moment of truth, Brie felt hands on her. Allie’s powerful white healing light seeped through her body as she tried to sit. When she could finally do so, she saw Aidan.
He and the giant, who was now Moray, had hewn their swords at one another, the blades blazing with their power, the men in halos. Aidan was cloaked in shining silver, while Moray was clouded in a dark gray light. Damn it, it looked as if they were evenly matched—but Aidan was struggling.
Royce, Malcolm and Guy could not help him, for they were battling dozens of possessed knights.
Tabby knelt beside them and began chanting, her expression instantly becoming waxen as she entered a trance.
For one more moment, Brie did not move. Her gaze was glued to Aidan, and he seemed to slowly be getting the better of the giant.
She was acutely aware that Tabby was using the spell she had found to trap Moray’s black power so it could not return to his body, wherever it was.
She did not want to leave Aidan, but she seized Allie’s hand, finally tearing her gaze away from him. “Do you have a weapon?”
Allie nodded. “Of course.” She pulled a dagger from her designer boots.
It was so sexy and so Allie that, had the circumstances not been dire, she would have laughed. “He’s close by, in repose, in a small chamber,” Brie said. But Urquhart was a medium-size garrison, with many small rooms. He could be in any one of them.
“Let’s go,” Allie said, taking her hand.
They ran, leaving Aidan and the other Masters behind, their swords still shrieking eerily with white and black power.
Brie and Allie rushed through the first gatehouse, back into the inner ward.
They paused, breathing hard, trying to sense where Moray had left his body.
Brie cursed in frustration. “How can we find him? Without his evil, there’s nothing to sense! ”
“I guess we’ll do it the good, old-fashioned way,” Allie, said, nodding at the closest tower. “A room-by-room search.”
And, as Allie started aggressively toward that square tower, Brie suddenly felt a push on her shoulder from behind, directing her to a flanking tower on the opposite side of the gatehouse. It wasn’t Allie, who’d left her behind.
Grandma Sarah seemed to give her a hard nod, too.
“Allie!” Brie screamed, rushing toward the tower.
She ran to a narrow door set in the side of the tower as Allie caught up to her. The moment she tried to open it, she realized it was bolted from inside. “Shit,” she cried.
Claire ran through the gatehouse, breathing hard, her clothes splattered with blood, a large sword in hand. “Is he in there?” she asked breathlessly, looking exactly as a mythological, avenging Valkyrie might.
Brie nodded and stepped back.
Claire dropped the sword. She grimaced and ran at the door as if it were a punching bag and she was in a kick-boxing match at a gym. The wood groaned but the door did not open. Claire kicked it again, grunting.
Silver blazed, and the door blew in off its hinges.
Brie turned and saw Aidan striding forward, a bloody sword in hand, his expression ruthless. She cringed, incapable of moving. She had never seen him at his medieval worst, and she was seeing his most savage side now.
Then she felt the huge black power coming after them. Brie glanced up and saw the black cloud swirling like a small cyclone from above the gatehouse, into the ward, toward him from behind. “Aidan!”
He saw it and snarled, “Come an’ fight me, Father.”
Laughter sounded.
Brie glanced into the chamber. Moray lay on the bed, apparently catatonic, exactly as she’d seen him in her vision.