CHAPTER TWENTY #2
He hesitated. “I thought ye died fer one terrible moment, after ye went up in the flames, and I leaped into time to find ye. I thought to find ye when we started this, so long ago, at the school where ye were teachin’ the children.”
“So there is a beginning?”
“Sometimes we’re not allowed to remember everythin’, Tabitha. I ken we both fought this way together in the fire here before. But I canna really recall it well. ’Tis shadowy, in my mind. I ken I feared I lost ye, that ye died. But ye dinna die.”
“I didn’t die—I won. Elasaid’s amulet is powerful.”
“Aye, ye triumphed. Ye wouldna have done so if it wasn’t what the gods chose fer us.”
Their gazes locked. Tabby hesitated. He had come to New York because of her spell, but their beginning had been that afternoon when she’d seen him at the Met—because of this battle at An Tùir-Tara.
“Tabitha, I came to ye at the exhibit, but ye came to me when I was a lost boy.”
He’d told her that before. “What does that mean?” she whispered, stroking his face.
“Yer soul was seekin’ mine. Yer soul will always seek mine. My soul will always seek yers…no matter what day it is, what month, what year.” He smiled at her, a single tear falling.
Tabby hugged him, burrowing as close as she could get. His love for her was so powerful she was cocooned in it. And his smile was, impossibly, even sexier than when he was young. She looked up. “You’ve gotten so much better with age.”
His gaze turned to dark purple fire. “Dinna tempt me.”
But her body was filled with a reckless urgency now.
“I need you.” She needed to celebrate their life and their love.
She wanted nothing more. She slid her hand into his hair, which he now wore very short, and somehow caught several strands.
It crossed her mind that this wasn’t really right, although she did not analyze why, and she pulled his face down.
His eyes blazed; he covered her mouth with his.
His kiss was hot and hard, but the deep hunger was tightly controlled as he’d never been able to control it before.
Tabby kissed him as wildly as she could, as if she hadn’t seen him in centuries, until he gasped and gave over to her. She loved him as never before and she didn’t care if he was young or old. She would always love him this way.
Suddenly he tore his mouth from hers.
“I love you and I want you, Macleod.”
He breathed hard, his eyes dark and hot. “God, I want ye, too. I fergot how it was in the beginning fer us, with ye so hot an’ bothered an’ tryin’ to make up fer years o’ abstinence.”
Her eyes widened.
His smile vanished. “I am verra tempted, but three o’ the boys are standin’ behind us…an’ ye’re in Edinburgh with Sam an’ Brianna—in 2011.”
She cried out, amazed, and then she threw her arms around him and held on, hard. “I don’t want to let go,” she whispered. “I’m afraid to let go!”
He held her back tightly, and it was a long moment before he spoke. “We’ve built a good life, Tabitha. I want ye as much as I always do—so badly I canna stand it. But I willna jeopardize what we have. Ye need to go back to Blayde an’ wait fer me.”
Tabby suddenly went still. She’d been swept up in the moment, but Macleod was out there somewhere, looking for her. “I have to go back, immediately! Do you know what’s happening to us in the thirteenth century?”
He shook his head. “I canna recall. ’Tis fer the best.”
The gods had thought of everything, she thought. And she sat up and turned to look at her sons.
Her sons. Tall, dark and powerful, three handsome Highlanders stared at her, their eyes wide.
Wow, Tabby thought, and she smiled.
The Highlands
The summer of 1550
HE SLEPT IN CAVES or dirt trenches by day; at night he traveled on foot, trying to elude the deamhanain who tracked him. Grief and guilt were his constant companions—and the boy was his companion, too.
One hundred and nineteen days had passed since he had last seen Tabitha die in the fires of Melvaig—four times.
One hundred and nineteen days had passed since he had finally crouched on the floor of that stairwell, vomiting helplessly, racked with grief, with MacNeil coldly standing over him, having meted out his punishment as the gods wished for him to do.
One hundred and nineteen days ago he had begun his journey across the Highlands, resolved to do what he had to do to return to Tabitha in the thirteenth century, where she waited for him.
The gods meant to trap him in the sixteenth century, to keep him from Tabitha, his final punishment for a lifetime of defiance.
Let them try. Nothing would stop him from returning to Tabitha.
He would not live without her and he would never accept her future death, even if the gods were telling him he must accept their will.
He had decided to make the long journey to Carrick, where he would do whatever he had to in order to convince Ruari Dubh to send him back to her.
He had spent three days fashioning a raft with a single sail, his tears making it hard to see, and then he had left the coast of Melvaig.
He was a mortal man now and acutely aware of it.
He was out of his time. He had no wealth—he could not purchase anything he needed, and especially not a horse or a ship.
He had no clan, and therefore no soldiers to trek with him, to fight for him.
He did not have any allies—he could not request lodging and food.
He did not know which rivalries now prevailed or who warred with whom.
He did not dare pose as his sixteenth-century self.
He had to proceed with the utmost caution, avoiding everyone, whether mortal, demonic or possessed.
Except evil could sense him, as if he still had white power, but he could not sense evil in return.
Not a day went by that a deamhan or its henchman did not attempt an ambush upon him.
Evil hunted him now with relish, perhaps because he was weak and it knew.
But in the first ninety-two days he had destroyed fifty-eight deamhanain with his sword and dagger, along with twenty-one of the possessed.
A dozen humans, interested in robbery and murder, had also been dispatched.
Since then he had lost count. Every time he vanquished evil, he thought of Tabitha, aware that she would be pleased.
Each time he came to face-to-face with evil, the desire to cause mayhem and murder, to rape and maim, to take pleasure in pain, shocked him and hardened him and made any outcome except triumph impossible.
And because the inner sea that lay between Melvaig and Lochalsh on Skye’s western side was controlled by the MacDougalls of Skye in the thirteenth century, as was the nearby sound of Sleat, he had jettisoned the raft after five days of sailing.
Their ships would be swifter than his and he could not take a chance on being spotted or, worse, captured.
It would take him longer to reach Morvern on foot, but he could easily hide in the forest at the first sign of anyone’s approach.
And there was good hunting—he was always hungry now.
When he paused to rest, floating during the calm at sea, or when he was trudging along a mountain trail almost mindlessly, he became aware of the boy, who refused to let him be.
See! This is what it is like! This is the pain and the guilt that ye denied me!