A Highland Sorcery Christmas

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  “What happened? What’s going on?” Lenore stared at the jagged line of scarring that appeared across the right side of Alexander’s chest. One second there was smooth unblemished skin and the next, ugly scar tissue from the side of his ribs slanted up to his collar bone. This was not a new wound, but remnants of an old wound, faded from years.

  On the other side of Alexander, Edeen had gone milk-pale. “I don’t know.”

  Next to Edeen, Bekah leaned closer over the young man, inspecting the scar tissue. “Something in his past has changed. Could the Sift have done this? It doesn’t look like a bite. Claw marks? I’ve never seen wounds left from their claws that old.”

  Lenore swallowed around her rising panic, grateful for Bekah’s ability to remain calm, a soldier, a survivor of this time, down to her marrow.

  “But—“ Lenore hated the tremor coating her voice. “He shouldn’t have any scars. His mom is a healer. Charity would never leave Alexander with a scar like that.”

  Unless she couldn’t heal it. Why couldn’t she heal it? Lenore’s legs wobbled. “Did something happen to my sister?”

  Bekah and Edeen were both looking at her in varying degrees of worry. Bekah ran around the bed and was suddenly at Lenore’s side, easing her onto a chair. Where the hell had the chair come from? Was it always there?

  Bekah crouched so her face was close, and holding tight onto Lenore’s arms, her lips moved, saying something she couldn’t quite grasp.

  Lenore shook herself, straightening her spine. She was not a complete weakling, but first Alexander…and then Col…and now something had happened to Charity…

  And she couldn’t do a damned thing to help any of them.

  The tail of Bekah’s words crashed into her consciousness. “…don’t borrow trouble. We’ll fix this…have to believe that…Lenore, are…listening?” Bekah’s face turned to Edeen who was also now next to her. “…exhausted herself…needs to rest…”

  No. Not while Col and Charity were in danger. “No.” She pushed to her feet only weaving a little. “I’m fine. I’m okay.”

  Both women eyed her skeptically.

  Edeen smiled, weariness darkening the skin beneath her eyes. “If something has changed in his past to give our nephew a new scar…” She shook her head. “Or rather an old scar, then he should have formed a new memory as well. I’m going to find it.”

  “What can I do?”

  Edeen’s brave façade wavered before she tightened her lips. This from a woman who was once lost in slumber for seven hundred years after pushing her essence into the madness of a deranged witch.

  “Please…” Fear flashed across the green depths. “Do not let me get lost.”

  Lenore grasped Edeen’s hand and noticed Bekah doing the same. “Never. We won’t. I’ll come drag you out if it comes to it.”

  “Are you sure about this?” Bekah asked. “Maybe you should rest. Maybe Alexander will awake on his own and remember.”

  “We need this information for when Roque brings Shaw. I can do this.”

  Lenore and Bekah glanced at each other uncertainly.

  “What if he doesn’t awaken? Or it takes days? You have to let me do this.” Edeen’s tone became forceful.

  Bekah grinned, flipping her long bangs out of her eyes with a jerk of her head. “As though anyone could stop you.”

  Edeen grinned back at them and turned to the unconscious young man on the mattress.

  Lenore shifted close against her side, shoulders touching. “We’ll be right here.”

  “I know,” Edeen whispered, and touched her palm flat over the jagged slant of scaring, closing her eyes and tucking her chin down, concentrating.

  The pluck of magic rippled in the air.

  They waited in tense silence. Lenore listened to Alexander’s rough breathing, watched Edeen’s hand move up and down with the slight inhales and exhales.

  Tension hummed across Lenore’s senses. Edeen had to find the memory. It was the only way to know where Col and the Sift had gone to. If only Alexander would wake up and be able to tell them himself, if he could even recapture the right memory. It’s possible it would come across his psyche as a dream superimposed upon the previous memories it had replaced. All the more dangerous for Edeen as well.

  And she understood what Edeen was saying about Alexander not waking up. As she healed him, Lenore felt the young man’s essence slip further and further beneath the safety of unconsciousness. It really could be days before he awoke.

  She could try to jolt him awake, but after such an abundant healing, that wouldn’t be good on his distressed heart.

  “Lenore. Look.” Bekah spoke barely above a whisper, but her tone revealed that something was happening.

  Lenore tilted her face to look at Bekah on the other side of Edeen, but Bekah was looking toward the doorway. Following her gaze, Lenore saw a faint shimmer ripple upon the air. Like waves of heat you see out in the desert.

  She squinted, peering at the air harder.

  A low hum trailed across her skin, similar to the sensation of a rift in time opening. Those she had experienced in full magnified force. Yet this felt vastly different.

  Ever the soldier, Bekah raced around the bed, her pulsar in hand, placing herself between the bed and whatever threat was coming.

  What if it was a Sift? Or many of them hurtling through their own ill-manufactured rifts? What if they somehow found them?

  Grabbing the pulsar that had been discarded on the side table along with the other items they’d taken off Alexander, the anti-rift syringe included, Lenore followed Bekah around the mattress to stand as a buffer between any threat to Alexander and Edeen. Her heart pounded a frantic beat.

  The shimmer brightened, almost blinding them. She turned her head, watching sideways through slitted lids to minimize the glare and see what was coming through.

  Her palms were dry as bone on the handgun. Her finger moved to the trigger at the first blur of a body coming out of the glowing rip hovering in the air.

  “Och!” A rasped voice called, shadowy hands lifted in surrender, trailing bits of what looked like stardust. Lenore lowered her weapon. It was no Sift that came through the rift in space, but a moon sifter.

  “Shaw,” Bekah yelped and rushed forward, her form dissolving into the light and blending with the taller form of the Highlander.

  They’d made it back. Lenore squinted against the brightness as more figures spilled out of the light, one after the other, until finally they must have all passed through for the rift abruptly closed on itself and she could see clearly again.

  Children. At least a dozen clinging tightly together in a huddle, wide eyes in dirt-smudged faces taking in their surroundings. A couple of women and the soldiers who’d gone out with Shaw on the rescue mission began herding them out of the room.

  One of the soldiers grabbed up a pile of blankets that were stacked in a cabinet near the doorway, probably to offer to the women and children to cover their nakedness. Lenore latched onto his arm before he exited. “Where’s Roque?”

  “He…” He glanced up at Shaw. “He remained behind.”

  Lenore whirled on Shaw. “What happened? Is he okay?” She threw a hasty look toward Edeen still concentrating solely on Alexander. Dark lashes fanned over her cheekbones, eyes closed, so absorbed in her task she either hadn’t noticed the shift in the air from the space rift or trusted her and Bekah to deal with it.

  A fissure of warmth speared into her heart at the trust.

  Hand entwined with Bekah’s, Shaw stalked to the bed. “’Tis a long tale,” he told them in his usual brusque manner while taking in Edeen first, before his gaze dropped to the scar on their nephew’s chest. “What by the rood is that? Has he always had that?”

  “No,” Bekah ground out. “It’s new.”

  The rounded muscles in his shoulders bulged with how his arms tightened. “What do we know—?”

  Edeen gasped, head jerking upright and staggered backwar
ds. Shaw was around the bed before Lenore saw him move, steadying his sister’s back against his chest.

  She startled and looked up, just now realizing Shaw was in the room. Turning within his embrace, she clutched at his arms. “Oh, Shaw, praise the deithe, ye’re here. Ye have to go. Go now.” Her eyes swam with fear.

  “What have ye seen? Does the lad survive?”

  Edeen shook her head. “Nay. Aye. I don’t know. I’ve not seen enough. Memories are forming in the past as we speak, but I fear…Col…ye must go now or he may be lost to us.”

  A chill trickled along Lenore’s nape, worried for Col. The thought of never seeing him again tore at her gut. Her knees nearly gave way.

  Edeen pushed back on Shaw to get him moving.

  His large hands encircled her wrists. “Tell me then. Where do I go?”

  “I…” Edeen shook her head again, clearly distraught. “’Twill be quicker to show you.”

  Nodding, Shaw inclined his head towards his sister. Long dark hair swung forward. Again Lenore was moved by the absolute trust they had in each other. Yet didn’t she trust Charity with the same depth?

  Foreheads touching, Edeen placed her palms around Shaw’s face and the push of magic drifted through the room like tiny pulsations.

  Pale from exhaustion, Edeen let her hands drop. If anything, Shaw’s expression turned more grim. He eased Edeen into the chair and came back around the bed where there was more room to open a rift into the past.

  “You have the location?” Bekah asked.

  Shaw nodded, the line of his mouth tightening.

  “I’m going with you.” Lenore and Bekah both exclaimed at the same time.

  “No.” Shaw looked at Lenore and then at Bekah. “And no.”

  “But Col—“

  “No.” Shaw was adamant. “Ye’re the only healer Alexander has in this time. He may need you further.”

  “I may be the only healer Col has,” she countered, even as her stomach cinched up. That couldn’t be true. Charity couldn’t be gone.

  Gray eyes softened. “Trust me.” He was asking for a lot, especially with Col involved, but she knew he was right. Deflating, she nodded.

  The air shimmered, spiked with energy. A wind whipped through the room, ruffling the bed sheets covering Alexander, coming from nowhere as a hole swirled open in the fabric of time. Lenore would never get used to seeing a rift.

  Hand outstretched, Shaw guided it into the size he desired and moved toward it.

  Bekah snagged his arm. Her long bangs whipped back as she scowled up at Shaw in challenge. “Going to try telling me no again?” She was already stripping out of her clothes, not willing to lose them to the disincarnating effects within the rift.

  Shaw opened his mouth to argue, then apparently thought better of it and pulled Bekah, unclothed, tight against his own naked length.

  He looked over his shoulder to Lenore. “I’ll bring my brother back to you. Ye have my oath.”

  She was holding him to that. She inclined her head, and together, Shaw and Bekah leapt into the maelstrom, disappearing into the brightness and swirled away, pulling the wind and the noise with it until the rift blinked out as though it had never existed.

  Rubbing at her head, Edeen took in the near-empty room and if possible her face lost even more color. “Where’s Roque? He came back with Shaw, did he not?”

  “He…no. I’m sorry, he didn’t.”

  Edeen lunged out of the chair. “But—“

  Alexander twisted on the bed, features screwed up in pain and another scar flowered upon his shoulder, the size of a quarter, from a deep puncture.

  Lenore’s hand flew to her mouth. Another scar that Charity did not heal.

  Edeen’s voice wavered. “Deithe no…Shaw, please get there in time.”

  Chapter Five