Song of a Highlander (Arch Through Time, #11) Read online

  Recognition hit him and his eyes widened. His hand went to his sword hilt, but of course he didn’t carry a sword anymore.

  Noticing the gesture, an expression of amusement crossed the old woman’s features. “It seems ye havenae forgotten all that ye once were, Ramsay MacAuley.”

  “Irene MacAskill,” he growled. “What are ye doing here? I thought I was done with yer meddling when ye brought me to this accursed place!”

  She raised an eyebrow. “When I brought ye here? I did naught, Ramsay MacAuley. It was yer own choice as I recall.”

  Aye, she spoke the truth. Three years ago this woman had offered him a bargain, and he’d accepted. It had been his choice. The half-life he lived now was of his own making. Why then, did he feel a sudden, seething anger at the sight of her?

  “What do ye want?” he demanded. “I want no part of yer schemes. Leave me be.”

  She didn’t reply. Her dark eyes, like chips of obsidian, were full of sadness. “Ah, my boy. Ye have walked alone for so long, bereft of kith and kin. Bereft of love. Do ye regret the choice ye made?”

  Ramsay drew in a breath and found to his surprise that he did not regret it. Despite everything, despite the soul-crushing loneliness, despite the nagging sensation that he didn’t belong, he would make the same choice again.

  Because, after all, he wanted to live.

  “My father taught me never to have regrets,” he said at last. “I knew what I was getting into when I made my choice. I know what path lies beneath my feet. I can walk no other.”

  “Spoken like a true MacAuley,” Irene said with a smile. “Yet not entirely true. Every path has forks in it. Every road has switchbacks. Every road leads back to where it started—if ye have the courage to retrace yer steps.”

  “What do ye mean by that?”

  “I know what it is ye seek,” Irene said, her gaze sharp and piercing. “And I know why ye seek it. Ye think it will bring ye peace.”

  “It isnae peace I seek,” Ramsay countered. “I seek only to make amends.”

  “Aye,” she nodded. “Because ye hope it will bring ye the solace ye yearn for.” She gazed up at him, and her fingers suddenly closed around his hand. “But it willnae.”

  “Ye dinna know of what ye speak!” he snapped. “Ye dinna know what I’ve done!” He glared at her. “What do ye want, Irene?”

  She watched him, head cocked to one side. “The quest ye are on willnae lead ye where ye hope it will. It willnae lead ye forward, but only back, back to where it all started. Are ye prepared to walk that path? Are ye prepared to go full circle? Only by doing so will ye find the redemption ye so desperately seek.”

  Ramsay scowled at her. “Ye speak in riddles, woman.”

  “Do I? Or do I only tell ye what ye already know? Ye canna walk this path alone.”

  The wind whipped strands of gray hair around her face and her eyes were as dark as the depths of the loch. She seemed part of the landscape, a force of nature as vital as the wind, as solid as the ground beneath Ramsay’s feet.

  “I know no other way,” he whispered.

  Irene patted his hand. “Then ye must learn.”

  With that she turned and walked away, disappearing around a bend in the path.

  Ramsay stared after her. Ye canna trust her, a voice said in his head. Ye know what she is. Fae.

  He glanced down and realized that she’d deposited something in his hand. Holding it close to his face in the gloomy light, he scanned the writing and realized it was a flyer advertising a public talk at an archaeology dig.

  I should forget she was ever here and go on my way, he thought.

  Curse it all, why had Irene turned up now? What scheme was he being pulled into this time? With a growl of frustration, he tucked the flyer into his pocket and set off.

  Chapter 2

  JESS WOKE WITH A START. Her head jerked up and she looked around, bleary-eyed. Everything was dark except for a bright square of light flickering by her face. What the—?

  Slowly, as her sleep-addled brain caught up, the humps and shadows resolved themselves into shelves and benches. The bright square became a computer screen. Great. She’d fallen asleep at her desk. Again. The clock on the screen read 2.05am.

  She groaned and rubbed the back of her stiff neck. She had to stop doing this. How many times had she fallen asleep at her desk this month? It was doing her health—and her social life—no good at all.

  I ought to have gone out for a drink with Adrian and the others, she thought. What was it? A hundred different whiskies? That could have been fun. But no, here I am alone in this blasted lab!

  And all because she insisted on running the analysis again. This was the third time and Jess knew it smacked of desperation. But she couldn’t let it go. She had found something in that keystone, she knew it deep in her bones. And she had to prove it to everyone else before her funding went up in smoke.

  The scrape of a footstep sounded nearby. Jess froze. It came again—footsteps on the steps outside. A second later the door handle turned as somebody tried to open the door.

  Jess’s heart leapt into her mouth. Who would be visiting her lab at this time of night?

  Heart hammering, she slipped out of her seat and dived behind a table. Carefully, she peeked out from her hiding place. The door handle jiggled and she thought she heard a muttered curse. Then she heard a ‘snick’ and the door swung slowly open. Two figures stole into the lab, moving silently. Jess fought the urge to scream and forced herself to stay still. Here, in this dark corner, they couldn’t see her as long as she didn’t move.

  Two flashlights flicked on as the intruders began moving around, examining the shelves and cupboards.

  “Hurry!” one of them hissed in a low, urgent voice. It was a woman. “The moon will be setting soon. We dinna have much time.”

  The second intruder grunted a response but didn’t pause in its searching. Then it straightened suddenly.

  “Here,” said a man’s voice.

  The woman hurried over and stood staring at a box next to Jess’s computer. She put down her flashlight and lifted something out. Jess had to stifle a gasp as she recognized it.

  The keystone.

  The woman nodded, satisfied. “Come on.”

  She returned the keystone to the box, tucked it under her arm, and then they stole out of the lab as quickly and as quietly as they’d come. Jess sat frozen for an instant. Her heart thumped. Somebody had broken into her lab! And stolen the keystone!

  She climbed to her feet, hurried to the door and peered out. In the distance she spotted flashlights moving towards the northeast part of the site.

  The rational part of her screamed that she ought to call the police. Or Adrian. Or run to the security cabin at the site entrance. But the rational part of her was drowned by the sudden desperate, urgent need to get the keystone back. She couldn’t lose it. Her career depended on it!

  She hurried down the steps and padded after the thieves, following the flashlights. Archaeological trenches appeared out of the darkness, roped off for the night, but nevertheless a danger to the unwary. The moon was up, hanging high in a cloudless sky, giving Jess enough light to find her way.

  The flashlights stopped moving. Jess ducked behind a wall and peered out. Maybe fifty paces away, the intruders had climbed down into one of the trenches and were standing before a tall structure that appeared like a darker shadow against the night.

  It was the arch.

  The moon which bathed everything in a silver glow, didn’t seem to touch those stones and the arch remained a dark blot of shadow. The man reached up to the arch and began scraping away the moss that covered the stones.

  Jess frowned. What was he doing?

  As the moss came away, it revealed a circular slot right at the apex of the arch. The depression was exactly the right size and shape to house—

  Jess gasped as the man lifted the keystone and slotted it into the hole.

  The woman stepped forward to stand directly befo
re the curving arch. Suddenly the moonlight caught the stones, and it turned from darkness into an arc of silver that lit the night, brighter than any flashlight. In the moonlight Jess saw that the woman was tall, with raven-black hair that tumbled down her back in luscious waves.

  She held up her arms and began to chant. Her sleeves fell down, revealing a line of black tattoos swirling up to her elbows. Something about those dark, sinuous shapes sent a shiver of unease through Jess.

  But hot on the heels of this unease came a spike of anger. She’d had just about enough for one day. First her analysis had turned up nothing, then her funding had been rejected, then she’d been accosted by Irene MacAskill who’d babbled a load of nonsense. Now, to top off a really, really bad day, these two had broken into her lab and stolen the keystone. The key to her research.

  It was too much. Her lips pressed into a tight, flat line. She’d be damned if she was going to let this happen on her watch!

  RAMSAY PADDED THROUGH the darkness, senses alert. He heard and saw nothing. The site was deserted. What had he expected? Did he really believe he’d find his quarry waiting for him? Lit up like a Yuletide gift for all to see?

  But something prickled along his spine, something that set his skin tingling, even though everything around him lay in silent gloom. Something was here. He could feel it.

  A soft sound made him pause. The tread of footsteps. They were faint, made by somebody used to moving quietly. He pressed his back against a storage shed and cocked his head to listen. The footsteps were coming from the far side of the site.

  A couple of hundred meters away he saw flashlights bobbing, moving away from him. Keeping low, he darted after them, moving as silently as a cat. The lights stopped and he heard whispered conversation, too low for him to make out words.

  A large, roped off excavation lay ahead. It seemed to be the remains of a cellar with a few walls and pillars still standing. An arch indicated where a door must once have been and two figures stood facing it.

  Then suddenly the clouds broke and the full moon shone down, bathing the site in an eerie glow. The light fell on the two figure’s faces and Ramsay hissed under his breath. He would recognize the arrogant expressions of Artair and Adaira Campbell anywhere. They were the people he’d been searching for.

  Artair was fiddling with something by the doorway. He reached up and slotted a circular stone into a notch in the lintel. The moonlight made the arch gleam like silver, stark against the blackness of the night.

  As her brother moved away, Adaira lifted her arms. Black tattoos snaked around her wrists and hands, marking her as a high priestess. She stared at the space beneath the archway and began to speak words in an ancient dialect of Gaelic.

  “Keeper’s of time, I command ye! Open this portal! By the rules that bind ye, ye must obey me! I hold the keystone. I speak the ritual words! Open the way!”

  The hairs rose on the back of Ramsay’s neck. He squinted, staring at the arch. Realization dawned and he suddenly knew what it was. His breathing quickened. So they’d finally found one. After all this time. He had to stop them.

  But before he could move, a third figure stepped out into the light. It was a woman wearing a white coat and with a dark braid hanging down her back.

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing,” she said, facing the Campbells. “But you can stop right now!”

  WHAT ARE YOU DOING? A voice screamed in the back of Jess’s head as she stepped out to confront the thieves. Have you lost your mind? Her legs were shaking but it was too late to go back now. She lifted her chin and glared at them defiantly.

  They were so taken aback by her sudden appearance that for a second the two thieves stared at her in stunned silence. Jess took advantage of their momentary confusion. She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and brandished it like a weapon.

  “I’ll give you one chance. Get out of here right now! Otherwise, I’ll call the police!”

  The man and woman shared a look and then burst into laughter. The sound was a little eerie in the darkness, filled with malice rather than humor.

  “I’m not kidding here!” Jess cried, puzzled by their reaction. “Leave or I’ll have you arrested!”

  Their laughter cut off abruptly and they watched her with calculating gazes. Jess licked her lips and shifted her weight, nervous under those stares.

  “Who are ye?” the woman demanded.

  “My name is Jessica Maxwell and you’ve just broken into my lab. Now return my damned keystone!”

  “Yer keystone?” the woman replied, raising an elegantly shaped eyebrow. “Such arrogance. What on earth makes ye think it belongs to ye?”

  The man stepped up beside the woman. He too had night-black hair and was good-looking in an arrogant sort of way. He wore dark clothes and a variety of rings adorned his fingers. His eyes narrowed.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “I recognize her. She’s the one who realized what it was. The one who wrote the paper.”

  Jess blinked. He’d read her paper?

  The woman pursed her lips in thought. “Yes. I think ye are right.”

  “Who are you?” Jess demanded. “What the hell is going on here?”

  The man gave a flourishing bow. “My name is Artair Campbell and this is my dear sister, Adaira. We are both very pleased to make yer acquaintance. We do, after all, owe ye a debt of thanks for showing us the way.”

  “The way?” Jess asked, puzzled. “The way to what?”

  Artair gestured to the keystone where it sat in its slot in the arch. “To this of course. We’ve been searching for one of these for a very long time. We’d almost given up hope.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Why dinna ye come over here so we can discuss it?” Adaira said. Her voice was warm and pleasant but her expression was cold. She didn’t fool Jess.

  “No thank you,” she said. “I’ll stay right here. I’ll ask you one last time. Return the keystone and leave.”

  Adaira cocked her head. Neither she nor her brother seemed the least bit intimidated by Jess’s threat to call the police.

  “Do ye have any idea what it is that ye found?” the woman asked.

  “If you’ve read my paper you know exactly what I found. A molecular structure I couldn’t identify. What is it to you? You don’t look like scientists to me.”

  Adaira laughed, a high clear sound that sliced through the night like a knife. The black tattoos on her arms seemed to devour the moonlight.

  “Oh, that’s priceless!” Adaira cried. “Is that the best ye can do? ‘An unidentifiable molecular structure.’ It is far, far more than that! It’s no element ye discovered. No chemical compound.” Her dark eyes flashed. “What ye stumbled upon, Jessica Maxwell, is the magic of the Fae.”

  Jess’s eyebrows shot up. Okay, this had gone far enough. She flicked on her cell phone and the display flared to life, startlingly bright in the darkness.

  “Magic?” she said. “Is that the best you can do? That’s your excuse for breaking into my lab? That’s what you’re going to tell the police? And I suppose you’re going to claim a genie will come out of the stone and grant you three wishes?”

  If Adaira was annoyed by Jess’s sarcasm, she didn’t show it. “Nay, I willnae say that. I will say that we stole the keystone because it will allow us to open an arch through time.”

  Yes. This woman was definitely crazy. Jess began pressing the buttons to dial the police but Artair lunged faster than she would have thought possible and yanked the phone from her hand. He grabbed her and pinned her arms painfully behind her back.

  “Easy, lass,” his voice hissed by her ear. “We dinna want to make a scene do we?”

  Jess struggled, trying to break his grip, but he was too strong. Artair dragged her to stand in front of his sister. The old doorway rose directly behind her, an archway into darkness.

  Adaira regarded her coolly. “Tell us what ye know. Scream, or do aught stupid, and it will go badly for ye.
”

  Jess heard a click and something hard and cold pressed into the back of her head. A gun! Terror welled, turning her legs to water. If Artair hadn’t been holding her up, she would have collapsed to her knees.

  “I...I’ve told you everything I know,” she stammered. “That’s it. I’m just a scientist.”

  “Just a scientist,” Adaira echoed. She narrowed her eyes. “Maybe. Maybe not. But either way, ye know too much about us now.” She nodded to her brother. “Take her out of the way and deal with her. And hurry.”

  Jess’s heart thudded. Her pulse was racing so hard it made her dizzy. What had she walked into? Who were these people?

  The ability to see the inner world is rare and powerful. Dark powers will want it for themselves.

  Oh God. Was this the danger Irene had been referring to?

  “Let her go,” a strong voice suddenly said out of the darkness. “Now.”

  A man stepped out of the shadows. At the sight of him, Adaira hissed.

  “Ramsay MacAuley,” she growled. “Damn ye, ye are worse than a bloodhound on a scent. How did ye find us?”

  The man didn’t look at her. His eyes were fixed on Artair and Jess. The man was tall with reddish hair falling onto his shoulders. He wore traditional Scottish dress of a long plaid and knee-high boots.

  “I said let her go,” he growled.

  Artair glared at the newcomer, momentarily distracted. Jess seized her chance. She rammed her elbow into his stomach with as much force as she could muster. He grunted, doubled over, and the gun tumbled from his grasp.

  Jess wrenched free of his grip and stumbled away. With a curse, Artair dived for the gun but the newcomer was faster. He kicked the gun away, kicked the back of Artair’s knee and sent him staggering.

  “Bastard,” Artair growled. “Ye will pay for that.”

  He threw himself at the newcomer, swinging a punch that the redhead deftly ducked under. The two men were of a height although the other was broader across the chest and shoulders. Artair aimed another punch into the man’s midriff but he side-stepped and slugged him in the jaw with a loud crack. Blood spurted from Artair’s mouth but the pain only seemed to enrage him. With a howl, he began raining blows down on his opponent who blocked and ducked but was slowly driven backwards.