Page 50 of Darach

As if confirming her suspicion the flame-shaped hilt began to glow.

“Did your master tell you to kill those people in the granary?” she asked, hoping to stall him as she tried to think of a way out.

“Aye, for ’tis the true sacred work.” He put his other hand in her hair, twining it around his fingers. “Before the master took me in hand I’d only ended the lives of the creatures I hunted. He taught me that mortals, they’re no different from deer or hares or boars. I’ve had such fun this past moon, chasing them and putting them to sleeping and bringing them here. I wish I’d killed that hoor Athdara.”

Charlotte had to save Darach as well as the clan, but how could she? “They’re people, not animals.”

“They’re flesh and blood and bone, like you. The sain, ’tis alight, so you’ve a wish to make now. What shall you choose?” He cackled. “Doubtless you desire my end, but then I’ll cut your throat, and we’ll both die. Or do you wish save your lover? Mayhap that ’tis the wiser choice. I doubt the clan shall soon find the chieftain, and until running water touches his lips he shallnae again wake. Creatures creep in here in the night, you ken––the smell lures them. They shall dine well on him, aye?”

She stared at her lover’s shrouded body. “You’re a monster, Fyn.”

“My name, ’tis Nyf,” he said into her ear, and tightened his grip on her hair. “Give your wish to me, and I shall spare you and the chieftain.”

No, he wouldn’t, she thought, and then calmed. Protecting Darach and his clan required her to do only one thing. It would be a terrible thing, and the pain and suffering she faced terrified her, but it would end this. Knowing she would save his life as well as the MacRoss made strange sense of what her dreams had told her.

I see everything now.

“I’ll wish whatever you want me to, but first I want to say goodbye to him.” When the sword started cutting into her neck she added, “Or you can kill me and get nothing but another corpse.”

Fyn shoved her, knocking over one of the deer he’d cobbled together from bone. For a moment Charlotte thought he would kill her anyway, but then he clamped his sweaty hand on her neck as he marched her toward the altar.

“Say your farewell, then,” he told her, sneering the words.

Gently she drew back the dirty linen covering her lover’s face. In the flickering light the birthmark over his eye looked like a dark red rose. Her heart ached, and her face grew wet as she leaned over to press her lips to his left eyelid, and then his lips. She tasted the salt of her tears on them.

“I love you. I’m sorry I couldn’t stay.” Charlotte didn’t resist as Fyn dragged her back from Darach and shoved her hand into the glowing hilt of the Fire sword.

“Wish me to become laird of the Carack Clan,” he demanded.

Fae magic spread through her hand and into her arm, and Charlotte took one last look at the altar. Darach’s eyes opened, and then she realized that her tears were a form of running water. For a moment there was nothing but the two of them. She smiled at him, wanting that to be his last memory of her.

How lovely her life would have been with him, she thought, remembering every moment they’d shared. “Please take us to my time.”

Chapter Thirteen

“No,” Fyn bellowed as her wish echoed in the cavern, and he tried to wrestle the blade away from Charlotte.

She held onto the hilt with all her strength, just as Camdyn had taught her. As the sword’s magic swirled like a tornado of light around her she caught a glimpse of Darach stumbling away from the altar. He looked so frightened it wrenched at her heart, and then the darkness descended, swallowing her and Fyn.

Good-bye, my love.

A moment later Charlotte stood in the alley where she had been attacked, and looked around until she saw Fyn huddled against one wall, his eyes almost bulging out of his head. Over by the crates where she had dragged Detective Logan some torn strips of crime scene tape fluttered in the breeze, and dark blotches stained the ground, but no body. Then she looked over as someone came out of the nearby hotel stairwell door, and froze.

“I’ve been waiting and watching for you every night since you vanished, my precious.” The hooded man strode directly up to her, a dagger in each hand. His voice echoed oddly in the alley, as if the sound were somehow delayed by a split second. Her hands tightened on the hilt of her weapon, but a dagger was instantly under her chin. “I knew you’d return.” His gaze shifted down to the Fire sword. “And you brought the sain back to me. Such a good lass.”

Sirens screeched somewhere close by, and a smear of red and blue lights hovered in the sky. Behind her the hunter wailed.

“I brought you another present,” she told him. “Fyn Carack, the bone cobbler.”

For a moment the killer went still, and then he began to laugh. His mirth blended with the sounds of the hunter’s terror, and the air in the alley began to ripple as if giant heat waves were rising from the ground.

“Oh, I do like you, Charlotte,” the killer said. “No one but a dreamer like you might have solved the mystery and made such a wish. Well done.” He leaned to one side to look around her. “Get up, you eejit.”

“I shallnae,” the cowering hunter shrieked, and then turned to her and began to beg. “Take me back now. I dinnae wish to be in the future. I must become the Carack laird. No––I––I shall warn the master, and obey him, and kill them all for him.”

“You shall do naught.” The killer chuckled from the dark depths of the hood. “I dinnae recall coming to the future with you, Charlotte, so you’ve no’ yet changed my past. After I finish you, mayhap he shall return on his own, and all shall be made as ’twas. I dinnae need the fearful little numpty getting in my way.”

The hunter stood and brandished her dagger. “I fear naught.”