’Twas her. Niall awoke, fiercely aroused and aching, but grimly triumphant. This time he had seen her face, this damned wench who tormented his sleep, who watched him from hidden places. He sat up in bed and thrust both hands through his hair, pushing it out of his face as he tried to firm his memories of the dream.
He had been sitting on a stool at a high table, writing something, while she stood off to the side. He couldn’t remember what he had said, he just remembered looking at her, and the wench looking back at him, and lust abruptly burning through him. He held out his hand to her and she came to him, into his arms, and he had not even carried her to bed but taken her there, lifting her skirts and hoisting her onto his shaft. She was like liquid fire, flowing over him, lovely blue eyes closed and her face tilted back, exalted, as she pleasured him and he pleasured her.
She felt fragile in his arms, her body tender, her skin silky. She had a great swath of dark hair hanging down her back, thick and sleek, and her eyes were as pure a blue as a Highland lake under a clear summer sky. Her face… a chill ran over him. Her face looked like an angel’s, solemn and slightly distant, as if she had some greater purpose. Her brow was clear and white, her delicate jawline slightly squared, and her mouth… “Ah, weel, perhaps not an angel after all,” he said aloud, relieved. That mouth put him in mind of a number of things, all of them very carnal.
Still and all, there was something about her that made him uneasy, and Niall was a man who trusted his instincts. He snorted to himself. Aye, and so he should be uneasy, for she was likely a witch; how else could she watch him without being seen, and slip into his dreams whenever she wished? Witch or no, should she ever appear in the flesh he would be glad to give her the measure of his shaft in truth as well as dream, but he would not trust her.
She had to have some purpose for watching him; perhaps she had somehow learned of the Treasure.
It would be her ill fortune if that was what she sought, for he was sworn to guard the Treasure against all threat, be that threat from male or female. He had yet to kill a woman for it, but her sex would not save her. If she came for the Treasure, though he ached at the necessity, she would have to die.
Grace slept past the eleven o’clock checkout, awakening only when the maid pounded on the door. She stumbled to her feet, told the maid to come back later, and fell back into bed. She woke for good at three, groggy from so much sleep.
She stood in the shower for a long time, alternating hot and cold water in an effort to dispel the mental fog. She felt physically rested but mentally tired, as if her brain hadn’t shut down all night. She had dreamed endlessly, it seemed, her mind going over the short, violent scene in the McDonald’s parking lot, replaying it like a loop of film. Time after time she saw herself reach for the sheet of paper, saw “Creag Dhu” on it. She would feel the wind coming, know what was going to happen, and over and over she grabbed for the paper but every time it sailed out of her grasp, straight into Parrish’s hands. He had looked at it, smiled, and said, “Why, thank you, Grace.” Then he pointed a pistol at her and fired, and the dream would start all over again.
She had also dreamed of Niall, of making love with him. His black gaze had pierced straight through her, as if he knew she had failed to protect the precious papers given to her. But he had held out his hand to her, demanding she come to him, and she had gone.
“Come to me,” he had said. “Now.”
A violent shudder wracked her, starting at her feet and moving upward until her entire body shook. Her knees gave out and she leaned against the shower wall, her mouth open and little whimpers coming from it. She couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t control the sensation of flying apart. Some external force pulled at her, tore at her, compelled her. Her eyes dilated and the dingy shower walls suddenly looked very bright, as if they were glowing.
Come to me. Travel the years, six hundred and seventy-five of them. I have given you the knowledge. Come to me.
The voice boomed inside her head, and yet it was from without. It was Niall speaking, but the voice that was low and devastatingly sexual in her dreams now sternly demanded, Come to me.
The glow began to fade, and the quaking in her muscles gradually weakened until she was standing upright and steady. Cold water pelted down on her and hastily she shut it off, grabbing a thin towel to wrap around her head. She used another to roughly dry herself. God, she was freezing! How long had she been standing like a dope, hallucinating, under the cold water? She had almost given herself hypothermia.
But she hadn’t been hallucinating. She knew it. It had been real. There really was a Power; she had felt it from the first moment she had seen those old documents. That was why she had been driven to keep translating them, lugging both them and the laptop around when doing so had been a lot of trouble. She had protected them when common sense should have led her to abandon both.
Everything that had happened in the past eight months had led her inexorably to this moment, standing naked and cold in a dingy little shower in a truck-stop motel somewhere in Iowa, facing an unbelievable but suddenly crystal-clear conclusion.
If it were possible, she had to travel through time. Parrish had the sheet; perhaps that was preordained, and there was nothing she could have done about it. But now that he knew, she had to prevent him from getting the Treasure, and the only way to do that was to force Niall to hide it somewhere else. Or perhaps—silly thought, because she wasn’t made of heroic material, but still—just perhaps, she was meant to find the Treasure, and use the Power to destroy the Foundation.
She had to go to Creag Dhu—six hundred and seventy-five years ago.
Chapter 18
SPRING CAME SOFTLY TO THE HIGHLANDS. IT WAS MAY, AND THE mountains were carpeted with green. The cool, misty days could suddenly give way to bright sunshine and air so clear it hurt her eyes to see it. From somewhere would come a fragment of sound, the faint echo of a bagpipe, and the haunting sound made her soul weep.
It had taken her four months to get here. At first she had simply kept on driving, going south, angling toward the east. The seasons changed as she drove, winter loosening its grip more and more the farther south she went, and it was in Tennessee, in mid-February, that she saw the first flower blooming. It seemed like such a miracle, in the form of a cheerful yellow jonquil, that she stopped driving then, and rested, and planned.
An early spring, the locals said, after a mild winter. The jonquils were blooming a couple of weeks earlier than usual. The winter hadn’t been mild in Minnesota, but eight hundred miles farther south put her in a different climate, a different world.
She had quickly realized she couldn’t do this alone, and there was only one person she could think of to call.
Harmony had listened silently to Grace’s request to travel with her to Scotland for an unspecified length of time.
“Scotland,” she finally said. “They don’t still paint their faces blue, do they?”
“Only in movies.”
“I don’t have no passport.”
“That’s easy to get, if you have your birth certificate.”
“You said you need my help doin’ something. Reckon you can bring yourself to tell me exactly what it is I’d be doin’?”
“If you go,” Grace said.
“I’ll think about it. Call me in a couple of days.”
Grace gave her three days, then called again. “Okay,” Harmony said. “If I go, would I be doin’ anything illegal?”
“No. I don’t think.” Given that she had to expect the unexpected, Grace couldn’t swear that she would stay on the side of the law.
“Dangerous?”
“Yes.”
Harmony sighed. “Well, hell,” she drawled. “You do make it hard to resist, don’t you? How long would I be gone? I got my house to look after, you know.”
“I don’t know. A couple of days, a couple of weeks. I’ll pay all your expenses—”
“I’ll pay my own way, if I go. That way, if I get pissed, I won
’t feel beholden to stay.” She was silent for a moment, and Grace could hear her tapping her nails on the phone. “I got one more question.”
“Okay.”
“What’s your real name?”
Grace hesitated. It felt strange to say her own name. The only time she had heard it spoken in months was when Kris had said it. She had gone by so many names that sometimes she felt as if she had no identity. “Grace,” she said softly. “Grace St. John. But I’ll be traveling under the name Louisa Croley; that’s the name on my passport and driver’s license.”
“Grace.” Harmony sighed. “Shit. If you’d lied to me, I coulda said no.”
* * *
Finding where Creag Dhu had stood took some time. Grace and Harmony had been in Edinburgh more than a week before Grace managed to track down the name, and then it was in such a remote section of the western Highlands that it was almost inaccessible. While Grace researched, Harmony did Edinburgh. She toured the castle, she toured Holyrood House, she took day trips to St. Andrews and Perth. It wasn’t until Grace actually found Creag Dhu that she told Harmony what she was going to do. Harmony laughed in her face, but when Grace quietly went about her preparations, Harmony sighed and pitched in. She didn’t laugh when she heard about Ford and Bryant.
When she had everything gathered, Grace rented a car and they drove to a small Highland village five miles from where Creag Dhu had supposedly stood. The only accommodation in the village was a small bed-and-breakfast, which they took, but the local tavern was a hotbed of gossip. Harmony could stand elbow-to-elbow with hard-drinking Scotsmen and hold her own with them, whether it was beer or whisky, and as a reward they answered all her questions. Aye, a fancy American had arrived some two months ago, bent on digging up a great pile of rock. A storm had delayed him a bit, turning the ground to mud and making getting to the site a bit difficult, but the weather had since turned fair and word was he was making a great deal of progress.
“It won’t take him long to find it,” Grace said when Harmony reported back to her. “I can’t wait any longer; I have to go.”
“You talk like this is a guaranteed trip,” Harmony said irritably. “Like as not all you’re gonna do is give your ass a major shock.”
“Maybe,” Grace replied. During her own more reasonable moments, she knew that was exactly what was likely to happen. But then she would think of the documents and the things she had read, and the dreams, the sense of compulsion, and she knew she had to try no matter how crazy it sounded.
She hadn’t had any dreams since arriving in Scotland. Everything felt so strange, as if a veil were hanging between her and everyone else. Nothing quite touched her, not fear or anger or even the more mundane things such as hunger. An essential part of her was already gone, turned away from this time. She knew she was going, and she had prepared as thoroughly as she could.
They set out just after lunch the next day, driving as far as possible, then they got out and walked. Storm clouds hovered to the west, out over the ocean, and the mountain shadows were purple under a gaudy blue and golden sky.
Grace had carefully considered the logistics. The documents had given the formula for time, but not for location. She decided that location didn’t change; where she was when she went back would be where she arrived. Standing in the middle of Creag Dhu’s ruins would have been perfect, but she hadn’t dared go close enough even to see it. She had to settle for getting as close as possible, then walking the rest of the way to the castle when she arrived in that time.
The narrow road they had chosen was little more than a path, and it gave out while they were still some three miles from the ruins. Gathering Grace’s things, the two women left the car and walked higher into the mountains.
The air was sweet and fresh, a bird’s cry high and lonely. Grace could already feel something tugging at her, a quiet anticipation, a need.
“Why don’t we just shoot the son of a bitch?” Harmony suggested suddenly, lifting her lemon-white head into the wind. Her nostrils flared, her pale green eyes narrowed. She looked like some exotic goddess of war, ready to slay her enemies. “It’s easier, neater, and a hell of a lot more likely to get the job done.”
“Because it isn’t just Parrish, it’s the Foundation. Even if we kill him, another will take his place.” She had finally reached that conclusion, and found a measure of peace in it. She would love simply to kill Parrish and be done with it, claim her vengeance, walk away. She couldn’t do it. The Foundation of Evil… she couldn’t let the Foundation get control of the Treasure.
She spotted the place where she wanted to be, and pointed it out to Harmony. The nest of rocks was almost at the peak of the mountain. Carefully they climbed up, their feet alternately sinking into damp sod and slipping on loose rock. When they reached their goal, they stood quietly looking at the empty glen below, at the mist blowing in from the ocean. The Creag Dhu site wasn’t visible; it lay beyond the next mountain. The local folk said it was a bed of black rock, jutting against the ocean. Grace tried to picture it in her mind, but even though she had seen numerous archaeological sites, the image that formed was of the great castle when it was whole, looming dark against an angry gray sea.
“Are you sure you have everything?” Harmony asked, placing her bundle on the ground and quickly arranging the items.
“I’m sure.” She had made a list while still in the States, and had begun making her preparations even then. According to the instructions, she had altered her diet more than a week ago, tailoring it to the specifications. She bent down and attached the electrodes to her ankles, taping them in place.
She sensed that her detachment worried Harmony. “I’m all right,” she said in answer to an unvoiced concern. “If this doesn’t work—well, it just won’t work. I’ll get a shock, but it won’t be enough to kill me.”
“You hope,” Harmony snarled, her irritation growing.
“If it does work—I don’t know if any of this stuff will go with me, or if I’ll suddenly appear there stark naked. If it doesn’t go, carry it back to the village and do what you want with it.”
“Sure. I’ve always wanted a velvet dress that’s three sizes too little and a foot too short.”
“I’m leaving the laptop anyway. I’ve deleted all my notes from the hard disk, but my journal is still on there. I’ve put everything down. If anything happens to me and I don’t make it back…” She shrugged. “At least there will be a record of what happened.”
“How long am I supposed to wait?” Harmony asked furiously.
“I don’t know. I’ll leave that up to you.”
“Damn it, Grace!” Harmony turned on her, face red with fury, but she bit back her angry words and merely shook her head. “I can’t reach you, can I? In your head, you’re already there.”
“I know you don’t understand it. I don’t, either.” The wind plastered her gown to her form and lifted her hair, streaming it behind her. The glen stretched below her but she didn’t see it, her eyes looking beyond. “It’s been a year since Ford and Bryant were murdered. I haven’t been able to cry for them yet. It’s as if I don’t deserve to, because I haven’t done anything to avenge them.”
“You haven’t had time to cry.” Harmony’s voice was rough. “You’ve been busy just stayin’ alive.”
“I haven’t been to their graves. I was back in Minneapolis for six months, and I didn’t look for their graves. I didn’t put flowers on them.”
“Damn good thing. From what you’ve told me, this Parrish bastard would have men watching the cemetery. They’da nailed you for sure.”
“Maybe. But I couldn’t have gone even if I had known it was safe. Not yet. Maybe when I get back.”
After that, there didn’t seem to be anything left to say. Harmony hugged her, green eyes wet, then walked quickly away.
Grace sat down on the rocks and opened the laptop, turning it on. She logged into her journal and tried to gather her thoughts. It was useless; they darted about like swallows. Finall
y she stopped trying and simply began typing.
“May 17th—Revenge takes over your life. I never realized this before, but then I’ve never hated before. One moment my life was ordinary and secure, happy—and the next moment everything was gone. My husband, my brother… I lost them both.
“Odd how things change, how in the blink of an eye one’s life goes from the ordinary—even mundane—to a nightmare landscape of horror, disbelief, and almost crippling grief. No, I haven’t cried. I’ve held the grief locked inside me, a wound that can’t heal, because I don’t dare let it out. I have to concentrate on what must be done, rather than allow myself the luxury of mourning those I’ve lost. If I falter, if I let my guard down even the slightest, then I’ll be dead too.
“My life feels as if it belongs to someone else. Something is wrong, discordant, but what: before—or now? It’s as if the two halves don’t match, that one or the other simply isn’t my life. Sometimes I can’t feel any connection at all with the woman I was, before that night.
“Before, I was a wife.
“Now, I’m a widow.
“I had a family, small but familiar, and achingly dear. Gone.
“I had a career, one of those obscure, intellectually challenging jobs in which I could, and did, lose myself in dusty old parchment and precious, unknown little books, where I mentally wandered in the past for so long that Ford sometimes teased me about having been born in the wrong century.
“That too is gone.
“Now I have to run, to hide, or I too will be killed. I’ve spent the months scurrying from hole to hole like a rat, lugging around some stolen manuscripts and ancient translations. I’ve learned how to change my appearance, how to get a fake ID, how to steal a car if necessary. I eat occasionally, though not well. Ford wouldn’t recognize me. My husband wouldn’t know me! But I can’t let myself think about that.