Kiss of the Highlander

  He smiled at her, and at precisely the same moment noticed the carriage of the moon in the sky. His smile faded abruptly and his body tensed beneath hers. The passion receded from his eyes, replaced by panic.

  “Christ,” he swore, “ ‘tis nearly too late!” Rolling her off him, he leaped to his feet, grabbed his plaid, and raced to the stone slab. “Come,” he commanded.

  Befuddled by her rapid dismount, still feeling sexy and sleepy and soft, she stared blankly at him.

  “ ‘Tis nearly midnight,” he said urgently. “Come.”

  She reached for her clothing, and he snapped, “No time to dress. But you must bring your pack, Gwen.”

  Puzzled by his comment, and not completely comfortable with her nudity, she grabbed her backpack and hurried to join him at the slab nevertheless, the scientist within her intensely curious to discover how he planned to prove his claims true. Besides, she told herself, there would be time for more lovemaking afterward.

  He worked swiftly, stealing intermittent glances at the sky as he dipped his fingers in the paint and sketched the final symbols on the slab.

  “Take my hand.”

  She slipped her hand into his. He studied the designs a moment, then shook his head and exhaled loudly.

  “Pray Amergin, let them be right. Stand close to me, Gwen. Here.”

  Gwen positioned herself where he indicated and tried to peer around him to see the last symbols, but he angled his body between them, blocking her view.

  “What do you think is going to happen, Drustan?” she asked, glancing at her watch, surprised that anything had remained on her body in the frenzy of their lovemaking. She nearly laughed when she realized that it, and the strap of the pack over her shoulder, were all she now wore. The second hand moved with an audible tick-tick-tick.

  “Gwen, I—” He broke off, and looked at her.

  Her gaze flew to his. Had he felt it too when they’d made love? Being inexperienced in lovemaking, she was uncertain if the emotion she felt when she looked at him was a temporary side effect of physical intimacy. She suspected it was of more significant duration but wasn’t in any hurry to make a fool of herself. But if he was feeling it too, she might believe that what existed between them was every bit as real and valid as any mathematical equation. His gaze swept over her body, in such a way that he made her feel beautiful, not short and…all right, a little plump. She’d always felt inadequate in a world that plastered leggy, slim cover models on every magazine and in every movie.

  But not with him. In his eyes, she saw a reflection of herself that was perfection.

  “Would that we had an eternity,” he said sadly.

  Her fingers tightened around his hand, silently encouraging him to continue. When her watch chimed the hour of midnight with tiny metallic tings, she flinched. One. Two. Three…

  “You are magnificent, lass,” he said, tracing his finger down the curve of her cheek. “Such a fearless heart.”

  Five. Six. Seven.

  “Have you come to care for me, if only a bit, Gwen?”

  Gwen nodded, her throat suddenly thick, not trusting herself to speak. He looked so sad that she was afraid she might blurt out silly sentimental things and make a fool of herself. She’d already said one thing during their lovemaking she’d never thought would slip past her lips, and now if she wasn’t careful she’d get disgustingly mushy on him.

  Nine.

  “That, and my faith in you, must be enough. Would you aid me, were I in danger?”

  “Of course,” she said instantly. Then, more hesitantly, “What about me?”

  “My life for you,” he said simply. “Lass, doona fear me. No matter what happens, promise me you will not fear me. I am a good man, I vow I am.”

  Stricken by the pain in his voice, she brushed his jaw with her fingers. “I know you are, Drustan MacKeltar,” she said firmly. “I don’t fear you—”

  “But things might change.”

  “Nothing can change that. Nothing could make me fear you.”

  “Would that it could be true,” he said, his eyes dark.

  Twelve.

  Thirteen?

  He cried out then, dragged her roughly into his arms, and kissed her, a deep soul kiss—and the world as Gwen Cassidy knew it began to unravel at the seams.

  She began gyrating in his arms, bobbing and spinning like a cork in a whirlpool, up and down, side to side, back and forward…then a new direction that wasn’t a direction at all.

  Space-time shifted, her very existence within it changed, and somehow she melted from Drustan’s arms.

  Her backpack slipped from her shoulder and went sailing off into a vortex of light.

  As if from a great distance, she saw her hands reaching for it, but there was something wrong with them. They had an added dimension her mind couldn’t comprehend. She wiggled her fingers, struggling to grasp their new quality. Her palms, her wrists, her arms were so…different.

  She thought she saw Drustan spinning past and then she thought she heard a distant sonic boom, but a sonic boom would have meant that she was moving faster than the speed of sound, and she wasn’t moving at all, unless one counted the fact that she felt as ineffectual as a butterfly batting fragile wings against the gale-force winds of a tornado. She fancied she could feel the tips of those delicate appendages tearing off. Besides, she thought dimly, struggling for some core of sanity, the person moving faster than the speed of sound didn’t hear the sonic boom. Only those standing still did.

  Then a flash of white encompassed her, so blinding that she lost all sense of time and space and self. Whiteness filled her: She choked on it, breathed it, felt it beneath her skin, soaking into her cells and rearranging them according to some alien design. Terminal velocity for the average skydiver, the scientist within her recited in a chilly voice, averages ninety-three to one hundred twenty-five miles per hour. Sound travels seven hundred sixty miles per hour, on a humid day. Escape velocity is the speed required to exit the earth’s atmosphere and achieve interplanetary travel, or twenty-five thousand miles per hour. Light travels one hundred eighty-six thousand miles per second. Then the peculiar thought: A cat always lands on its feet. Maintain an angular momentum of zero.

  There was no sense of motion, yet there was a horrible vertigo. There was no sound, yet the silence was deafening. There was no fullness of body, yet there was no emptiness. Escape velocity achieved and exceeded, white and whiter, she was—in? on? off?—a long bridge or tunnel. She had no body to instruct to run.

  The white was gone so abruptly that the darkness hit her like a brick wall. Then there was blessed sight and sound, and feeling in her hands and feet.

  Maybe not so blessed, she decided. Taste was a bitter metallic bile in the back of her throat; weight was a sickening pressure after the terrible vacuum.

  Stifling the urge to vomit, she lifted a head that weighed two tons and felt as swollen as an overripe tomato.

  Around her, the night exploded. Driving hail pelted the ground, gouging tendrils of mist from the soil. The wind wailed and keened, flung leaves and snapped branches. Large chunks of ice stung her bare skin.

  “Drustan!” she cried.

  “Here, lass.” He stumbled to her side, then slipped on the hail-covered terrain and fell to his knees.

  “Drustan, what’s happening?” As he drew himself erect, she saw that his face was pale and drawn; lines she’d never noticed before etched sharp grooves around his mouth. He was looking down at his hands with horror. Her gaze flew to them, wondering what was wrong with them. Whatever he saw, she couldn’t see. They seemed to disappear into the mist.

  “I erred when I sketched the final symbols,” he yelled hoarsely. A large ball of ice struck his cheekbone, raising an immediate welt. “I went back too far. I thought I could come with you, but I cannot. Forgive me, lass, it wasn’t supposed to be this way!”

  “What?” Gwen could scarcely hear him, so deafening was the wind. Strands of her hair stung the skin of her neck a
s the wind whipped it wildly about her face. The gale was so lashing, it felt it was raking the skin from her cheekbones. The hail was bruising her scalp; her head ached in dozens of spots. She inched toward him and clutched at his arm. It felt curiously insubstantial beneath her fingers, although she could see the muscles in his arms bulging. He tried to close his misty hand around hers, but it sort of slid through hers.

  “What’s happening to you?” she wailed.

  “Save me. Save my clan, lass,” he yelled. “Keep the lore safe.” Christ, he could feel himself being torn in two. Talking to her, simultaneously trying to reason with his past self. It wasn’t working. It took immense effort merely to move his lips and form words. He was coming apart…two places in one time, and all the while reeling because he finally understood the next dimension…and he had to tell her what to say and do! He must tell her how to use the spell he’d taught her!

  “What are you talking about?” she cried. “Ouch!” she cried, as a chunk of hail struck her forehead.

  But he didn’t answer, just flickered in a way that terrified her, as if he was fading but fighting to stay. Nearly hysterical, Gwen tried to cling to him, but he slid through her hands.

  His silver eyes flashed, he looked wild, forbidding, a dark sorcerer from eons past. He thrust his plaid at her, wordlessly demanding she take it.

  She closed trembling fingers over the fabric.

  “Listen,” he cried. His gaze swept over her and passion blazed in his eyes. Then he cocked his head as if hearing something she couldn’t hear and glanced beyond her as if seeing something she couldn’t see. His lips moved one last time.

  The moment you see him you must tell him…show him—

  “What?” she cried. “Tell who what?” Flying leaves and limbs rained down upon them. When he ducked and shielded his face to avert a blow from a particularly large branch, she missed most of what he was saying. Tell and show who what?

  Abruptly, he was gone. Vanished as completely as the symbols had vanished from his chest in the cave days ago.

  With his disappearance, the maelstrom died and the hail ceased abruptly. The night fell silent, the mist dissipated on a last, bitter gust of wind.

  Gwen remained frozen, in shock, bruised and wind-burned and aching.

  She didn’t trust herself to take even one step on a leg that moments ago had not been her leg at all but her leg and something else, something the bristling scientist was still pacing back and forth in a white lab coat protesting stridently. She wasn’t certain any part of her would obey simple orders, so knotted up was her mind.

  “Drustan,” she called weakly. Then louder: “Drustan!”

  A terrible silence greeted her. She shivered uncontrollably, belatedly remembering she was nude. Woodenly, she pulled his plaid around her and scrambled across the slippery ground toward the fire.

  But there was no fire. The storm must have put it out.

  She dropped to her knees on the hail-covered ground, clutching his plaid, huddling within it for warmth. Dazedly, she glanced about and was astonished to see the hail was so thick on the ground that it looked as if the heavens had opened up and simply iced the top of the mountain. It could take hours for it to melt in the warm autumn night. And then she fell still and thought no more about the strange storm, as she replayed their entire encounter through her mind, finally seeing the pattern.

  He had said he would prove to her that he was telling the truth, but he could only do it at the stones. He’d said that if she didn’t believe him, she would be free of him. She now realized he’d always chosen his words cautiously, couching double meanings.

  Now she understood exactly what he’d meant. “You left me,” she whispered. “You really showed me, huh?” She snorted and started crying at the same time. “Incontrovertible proof. Uh-huh. Ever the doubter here, that’s me.”

  He’d bullied her into guiding him through her time to the stones, made incredible love to her, proved his story true, then returned himself to his own time—leaving her in the twenty-first century, alone.

  He hadn’t been deranged after all. She’d had a genuine time-traveling sixteenth-century warrior in her arms, and she mocked him at every turn. Treated him with disbelief, even patronized him on occasion.

  Oh, she’d screwed this one up royally. She’d fallen for him at terminal velocity. In the space of three days, she’d grown attached to him as she’d never thought possible. She’d been building a life with him in her mind, rationalizing away his delusions, weaving him into her world.

  And he’d left her. He’d not even offered to take her with him!

  Would you have gone? Would you have said yes? the scientist asked dryly. Plunged into a century you knew nothing about? Left this one behind for good?

  Hell, yes, I would have said yes! What do I have here? I was falling in love, and I’d go anywhere, do anything for that!

  For a novel change, the scientist within her had no caustic comeback.

  Gwen cried, feeling suddenly old, regretting the loss of a thing she’d not truly appreciated and understood while she’d held it in her hand.

  She had no idea how long she lay in the clearing, replaying things through her mind, lingering over their lovemaking, seeing everything in a different light.

  When she finally sat up, she was trembling. Her knees were frozen from huddling on the ice, and her toes were stinging. I feel, MacKeltar. You taught me that. I hope you’re happy with yourself—showing me I had a heart by hurting me.

  She pushed herself up and slipped around the circle, searching for her clothes in the dark. Shaking off a fresh desire to weep, she blew out a breath. Where the hell were her boots? For that matter, where were her backpack and her flashlight? She was starting to suffer a severe nicotine craving; emotional distress always made her crave a cigarette.

  How was she ever going to get over him? How would she cope with the knowledge that the man she’d lost her heart to had been dead for hundreds of years?

  Panic gripped her as she circled the stone slab, searching for her belongings. They were gone. Could the freakish and violent windstorm have carried it all off?

  Stunned, she glanced about, then up at the sky, and caught a glimpse—for the first time since Drustan had disappeared—of what lay beyond the stones.

  Where previously there had been nothing, tons upon tons of stone rose up from the earth.

  She gaped in astonishment, her gaze drifting from tower to turret, to bigger stone tower, past walls capped by those toothy stone things one saw on castles everywhere in Scotland, and to yet another turret and a square tower again. Blinking, she looked left to right and back again.

  An alarm went off in her brain, but she couldn’t respond to it. She couldn’t respond to anything. She started hyperventilating; tiny breaths slammed into each other and piled up in her throat.

  A monstrous castle lay beyond the circle of stones.

  Huge, forbidding, yet beautiful, it was fashioned of massive gray stone walls that vaulted smoothly skyward. A center rectangular tower stood tallest and had two smaller round towers flanking it. Wings spread east to west consuming the horizon, with large square towers at the farthest east and west ends. A milky fog dusted the ridges and capped the turrets.

  Her jaw dropped.

  Still as the cold stones that encircled her, she stared.

  Could it be that she had not lost him after all?

  With a painful surge of adrenaline that made her heart beat much too fast, she bolted from the circle of stones and burst into a terraced courtyard. Pathways forked in various directions, one leading straight to the front steps of the castle itself.

  She spun in a slow circle, heedless of her icy toes. Dimly, her mind registered the fact that the hail had fallen only within the circle of stones. The ground beyond it was warm and dry.

  He’d told her that in his century, the stones of Ban Drochaid had been enclosed within the perimeter walls of his estate, but the Ban Drochaid she’d entered an hour ago had r
esided in the midst of a wasteland of crumbled stone and grass.

  Yet now she was completely encircled by high walls, within a veritable fortress.

  She glanced at the night sky. It was dense black with no distant glow on the horizon in any direction, which was impossible, because Alborath lay in the valley beyond, and only last night, while sitting on the hood of the rental car, she’d rued that the lights of the village spoiled her view of the stars.

  Turning back to the castle that hadn’t been there five minutes ago, she fingered the folds of his plaid. Suddenly, the words he’d shouted—words she’d ignored because they hadn’t made any sense at the time—now made perfect sense.

  I went back too far. I thought I could come with you, but I cannot.

  Save my clan.

  Oh, God, Drustan, she thought, you didn’t go back in time. You sent me back to save you!

  “When I consider the small span of my life absorbed in the eternity of all time, or the small part of space which I can touch or see engulfed by the infinite immensity of spaces that I know not and that know me not, I am frightened and astonished to see myself here instead of there…now instead of then.”

  —BLAISE PASCAL

  “For those of us who believe in physics, this separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however tenacious.”

  —ALBERT EINSTEIN

  JULY 18

  1518

  11

  The nightmare was beyond anything Drustan MacKeltar’s slumbering mind had ever managed to conjure, replete with a taste so vile, he knew it for what it was: the taste of death.

  Shadowy images taunted him at the periphery of his vision, and he felt a monstrous leech suckle onto him, and they grappled, then suddenly there were two discrete yet similar beings inside his body.

  I am possessed of a demon, the sleeping Drustan thought, struggling to spew the atrocity forth. I will not permit this. Enraged, he resisted the new presence violently, lashing out to destroy it without even trying to identify it. It was foreign and as strong as he was, and that was all he needed to know.