Dageus watched in disbelief as his ancestor, Cian MacKeltar—he was assuming it had to be the ninth-century Cian MacKeltar standing before him, for he’d ne’er heard of any other Keltar with that name—prepared to stalk off into the Highland morn without so much as a “fare-thee-well.” Without even having offered a “good-morrow, kinsman,” for that matter.
Without so much as a blethering word of clanly tidings.
Without a single explanation for this incomprehensible happenstance!
Furthermore, the man was indiscriminately using Voice, left and right, as if no rules applied to him whatsoever.
“I assume you’ll be paying for those goods,” Dageus said pointedly.
“You assume wrong.”
With that, the massive, wild-looking, tattooed Highlander guided the woman out the door, the salesman close on their heels.
Dageus glowered at the closing door. Christ, his ancestor was a savage! No wonder he’d gotten such a bad name. He looked uncontrollable, and he behaved like a barbarian. And by Danu, the power he sensed in him! Raw, rich, potent magic flowed through the man’s veins, not blood. If the Draghar had gotten their claws into Cian rather than him . . .
He blew out a long, deep breath. ’Twas a damn good thing they hadn’t. Though he couldn’t fathom for a moment what might have prevented such a primitive, egotistical beast from breaking any rule he damn well pleased, including using the standing stones of Ban Drochaid for his own purposes.
What was he doing here? How had he gotten here? Where had he been for the past eleven centuries? Who was the woman with him?
He’d tried probing her while she’d stood at Cian’s side, but had encountered some kind of sleek, smooth barrier. Was she a practitioner of magycks, too? His deep-listening talents had been growing by leaps and bounds over the past few months and he should have been able to pick up something. But he’d not gotten a flicker of a thought or emotion from her.
“Drustan’s not going to like this,” he muttered darkly. “Nay, he’s not going to like it at all.”
If a willingness to sacrifice everything for those he loved characterized Dageus, an abiding, unrelenting honor and a desire for a simple life uncomplicated by matters of Druidry and the Fae characterized his elder twin Drustan.
When he heard tell of this latest news, Drustan would undoubtedly say, “Why the blethering hell can’t people stay where they belong, in their own century and out of mine?”
At which point his wife, Gwen, would remind him that it wasn’t his century. That, in fact, it was he who’d begun it all by refusing to stay in the sixteenth century where he belonged. That if Drustan hadn’t opted to slumber for five hundred years in a Rom enchantment so he could be reunited with Gwen in the twenty-first century, he never would have died in the fire that night so long ago. And if he’d not died in the fire, Dageus wouldn’t have had to breach Keltar oaths and use the standing stones of the Ban Drochaid in violation of the sacred Compact between Man and the Tuatha Dé Danaan for personal gain, to go back in time and save Drustan’s life. And if Dageus hadn’t breached those oaths, he never would have been possessed by the souls of the thirteen evil Draghar, and forced to come forward himself to the twenty-first century, seeking a way to escape them.
And by the time his brainy physicist sister-in-law was done, Dageus had no doubt she’d have found some way to postulate an obscure yet peculiarly synchronistic link between Dageus and Cian himself, and Drustan would heap the blame for this new visitor soundly at Dageus’s feet.
Which was beyond far-fetched. There was no way he was taking the blame for the sudden appearance of their controversial ninth-century ancestor. He’d only been reading up on him, not trying to summon him.
He rubbed his jaw, frowning, wishing he could be entirely certain of that last fact.
The problem was, months ago in London, when Aoibheal, Queen of the Tuatha Dé Danaan, had personally appeared and wielded her immense power to strip away the souls of the thirteen evil Druids possessing him, freeing him from their dark control, she’d left their memories inside him, and he wasn’t always certain of precisely what he was capable or not.
Initially, when the Queen had removed the thirteen souls of the Draghar from him, he’d believed himself entirely free. After suffering the din of thirteen rapacious, twisted, demanding entities inside him, the silence inside his skull had made him think them completely eradicated.
It had been some time before he’d realized that, although their consciousnesses were gone, every last memory of thirteen entire lives had been left in him, buried deep in his subconscious. He’d not wanted to believe that he still contained the terrible and forbidden lore the Draghar had so long ago amassed and, at first, when inexplicable knowledge had begun popping into his head, he’d denied it.
But he no longer could. Each day he discovered something new about himself. And on occasion, of late, he’d caught himself muttering bits of a spell beneath his breath that he’d never read or practiced, and he knew he’d somehow plucked it from the endless vaults of the Draghar within him, as if his subconscious was sorting through the banks of memories, filing them away according to some mysterious design.
Had he inadvertently used a spell?
He sighed.
If he had, this was his fault and he had to fix it.
If he hadn’t, he still had to do something. He couldn’t just let the oversized heathen stalk and stomp about their Highlands, using Voice on all and sundry, stealing goods from simple merchants honestly endeavoring to support their clansmen.
As if you’ve ne’er stolen anything, his conscience jabbed.
“Aye, but I always gave it back, eventually.” And he had. He didn’t think Cian MacKeltar had any intention of making eventual amends. He didn’t look like an eventual-amends kind of man.
Sighing, he tucked the box containing Chloe’s hiking boots beneath his arm and walked out the door after his ninth-century ancestor.
As he stepped into the sunny Highland morn, he looked left, then right. He spied neither hide nor hair of Cian MacKeltar.
Back at the castle, his four-and-a-half-months-pregnant wife awaited him. Pregnancy suited his lovely Chloe like a Highlander’s wet dream; she was even more amorous of late, and she was quite the sensual vixen under the usual circumstances. He was of no mind to be separated from her for long. They’d planned a hike in the hills today and a leisurely picnic. It was warm enough to toop outside on a plaid beneath an endless blue sky, and he’d been greatly anticipating hours and hours of hedonistic love play. Her breasts were getting fuller, her hips widening, and her skin glowed with the inner radiance of impending motherhood. He was impatient to taste and touch and explore every last changing inch of her. He was of no mind to alter his plans to accommodate this recent unexpected development. Highly unexpected development, at that.
Drustan, remember our ancestor, Cian, who I was talking about recently? Well, uh, he’s here.
He shook his head, muttering a string of curses.
He thought for a moment, absently watching the still-fully-compelled salesman—that was a serious wallop his ancestor’s Voice packed—load the stolen goods into Cian’s SUV, wondering how he might spend the most time with Chloe yet still manage this new wrinkle.
His eyes narrowed. Camping gear. His kinsman was purloining camping gear. Was he squatting somewhere on Keltar land? The gall! How long had he been there?
He angled around the store employee and peered deeper into the SUV.
He blinked. Then he blinked again, very slowly, keeping his eyes closed for a moment before opening them.
It was still there.
It couldn’t be! By Amergin—’twasn’t possible!
Was it?
“Move,” he growled at the salesman, employing Voice without even thinking about it.
The salesman stepped obediently aside.
Dageus reached into the SUV, pushed aside the blanket half-concealing the object, and another string of curses spilled fro
m his lips.
“Impossible.” But the proof of it was right there before his very eyes.
He’d never seen it before—verily, he never thought to see it—but the Draghar had.
The Dark Glass.
One of four unholy Unseelie Hallows.
At one point, the glass had actually been in their possession. They’d never been able to translate the spells necessary to use it, though not for lack of trying. Nor had they ever discerned its purpose.
It was a mystery to him as well, but he knew all he needed to know: His legendary ancestor of allegedly epic moral turpitude had one of the forbidden Unseelie Hallows in his possession.
And he was alive. And here in present day.
What the blethering hell was a Keltar Druid doing with the blackest of black magycks? They were Seelie guardians, not Unseelie!
The situation was far grimmer than he’d thought.
Rubbing his jaw, he pondered his options. They were few. He’d felt the power in his ancestor. He didn’t delude himself for a moment that he’d be able to subdue him with magyck, unless he called on some of the Draghar’s tricks, a thing he was highly reluctant to do.
Nor could he hope to use brute force without the possibility of innocent bystanders getting caught in the fray. Especially not if the formidable Druid simply lashed out with a spell to stop him.
Yet he needed to get the man to Castle Keltar.
Once there, mayhap together he and Drustan could bind him, question him, discover what was going on, and what to do about it.
His gaze slid back to the Dark Glass.
It exerted an unpleasant pull on him. Made him hunger to touch it. He’d heard tell that the Dark Hallows tended to have such a dangerous effect on men with power in their veins. He’d never experienced it before and hoped not to again. He felt both a constant, irresistible urge to reach for it, and also a bone-deep chill warning him away.
Eyeing it warily, the simplest solution occurred to him. One that would keep his need to touch it to a minimum.
His ancestor wasn’t the only one who could use Voice. Dageus excelled at it too. Though he doubted he could outright contradict anything his ancestor had commanded, he was fair certain he could work around it.
Placing a hand on the salesman’s shoulder, he instructed him quietly but forcefully, “You will give me the keys to that SUV. And when he returns for his vehicle you will tell him he will find it here.” Plucking a pen and one of the young salesman’s business cards from the pocket of the glassy-eyed man’s crisp white shirt, he scribbled the address of Castle Keltar. “You will give him these keys, and direct him to that vehicle.” Handing the salesman his own set of keys, he pointed down the street to the vehicle he’d recently purchased, a Hummer it was called, though in his estimation it leaned more toward a roar than a hum.
The salesman nodded blankly.
Dageus had no doubt his ancestor would come, sword swinging, to reclaim the Dark Glass. The man was fiercely aggressive by nature and, given that he was freely dabbling with black arts, he would be even more so.
Like as not, he’d be dangerously violent. He and Drustan would be wise to sequester Chloe, Gwen, and the young twins away.
Carefully, without making contact with the glass, he rearranged the blanket over the mirror.
Then, circling round to the driver’s side of the SUV, Dageus tossed Chloe’s boots onto the passenger’s seat, climbed in, fired up the engine, and headed for home.
“But he’s your descendant, for heaven’s sake!” Jessi exclaimed. “How can you just walk away from him?”
The moment she’d seen the man “Dageus” scowling at Cian, she’d been struck by their sameness. The more she’d stared back and forth between them, the more convinced she’d become that they had to be related somehow.
Though Cian’s descendant had been dressed in expensive, tailored black trousers, a black turtleneck, and a buttery-soft leather jacket, though he’d been well groomed and polished, his civilized appearance had failed to conceal an innate primitiveness that was just like Cian’s.
She’d tried to point it out, but they were kindred even in their edgy tempers and excess testosterone. She’d not been able to spit the whole sentence out because they’d kept talking over her.
She’d continued her assessment, periodically attempting to interject her thoughts, to no avail.
Both had long dark hair, both had strong, chiseled Celtic features, both had arrogance shaping the very curve of their spine, conquest in the cant of their heads upon their shoulders, and an extra something running in their veins besides very blue, very pure blood.
Both had a base, seething sexuality. Both had powerful, highly developed physiques. And there was no denying it, Dageus was incredible looking.
But Cian was more man than his descendant. Rawer, more elemental. Dageus was leaner and prettier. Cian was larger, rough, tough, down-and-dirty—and hands-down sexier.
“Hey, wait for me!” she called, sprinting to catch up with him. While she’d been mulling over her thoughts, he’d stalked off again. He was disappearing from her view down the Sugar/Spice/Dry Goods aisle.
For a man from the ninth century, he was a quick study. Upon entering the grocery store, he’d eyed a cart consideringly, glanced around at other customers, snatched it, and begun pushing up and down aisles, examining items, selecting various cans and tins, tossing them in.
Instant Suisse Mocha—woohooo! Jessi took two tins of it from the shelf as she sped by, caught up with him, and dumped them in the cart. She’d not missed the gas stove and pots he’d heisted, and was greatly looking forward to a cup of chocolaty coffee once they got back to their “camp.”
“Aren’t you the least little bit curious about him?” she pressed.
He grunted. “Now is not the time for new beginnings, lass.” He cast the words over his shoulder at her with a scowl. “I’ll make none.”
Though she tried to hide it, a flicker of hurt flashed across her face. No new beginnings. She knew that.
And it shouldn’t bother her. It wasn’t as if they were making a new beginning or anything like that.
They were just stuck with each other for a while.
He wanted sex from her, nothing more. And this morning, he’d not even wanted sex. She was merely his means of remaining free from Lucan until he could have his vengeance. And he was merely her means of staying alive.
He couldn’t have made his feelings any plainer, really. Since the airport, all she’d gotten in the way of a kiss had been a stupid peck on the forehead that a chicken could have done better.
But like an idiot, she’d begun reading more into things than was actually there. They were forced to share close quarters, there was danger, and it was just making everything feel more intense than it was. On top of it, the man was devastatingly sexy, powerful, smart, and magic, to boot. Who could blame a girl?
No new beginnings.
Damn it, it shouldn’t bother her!
But it did. She tried to turn away, but his hand flashed out and caught her by the chin.
“Let me go,” she snapped.
“Nay.” His grip was implacable on her jaw.
There was little point in fighting for control of her face; he could have hoisted her into the air with that one big hand on her jaw, if he’d wished.
He searched her gaze a long silent moment. “You truly doona ken it, do you? Excepting with you, Jessica. You, lass, are the exception to everything,” he said softly.
As if he’d not just knocked the breath out of her with those words and left her feeling weak-kneed, he released her chin, turned away, and began pushing the cart again.
Jessi stood in the aisle, gaping after him. Then she broke into a sprint and caught him again. Closing a hand on his forearm, she tugged him to a stop. “You mean, you’re not just stuck with me? You like me?” She wanted to kick herself the moment she blurted the stupid question. Puh-thetic, Jessi, she winced inwardly. That was worse than the “I carried
a watermelon” line from Dirty Dancing.
His gaze was dark with some unfathomable emotion as he stared down at her. She stared, trying to determine what it was. It was an emotion she’d seen several times before, and at the oddest moments.
It was regret, she realized abruptly.
A subtle yet bottomless sorrow in those beautiful, darkly lashed eyes.
But what was he regretting, and why at this moment, as opposed to any other? It made no sense to her!
Suddenly he smiled, and the sadness was vanquished by whisky heat. “Aye, Jessica, I like you. And I’m not just stuck with you. You fit me here, woman.” He thumped his chest with his fist.
Then he shook her hand from his forearm and pushed off with the cart again. Jessi watched him move down the aisle, all sleek animal muscle and dark grace.
Wow. He wasn’t a man of many words, but when he used them, he certainly used the right ones. You fit me here. You are the exception to everything.
Crimeny.
It was how she’d always thought a relationship should be. People should fit each other: some days like sexy, strappy high-heeled shoes, other days like comfortable loafers—but always a good fit. And if you cared about someone, they should be the exception to everything; the number-one priority, the one who came before all others.
He was halfway down the aisle from her now, plucking a can from the shelf—her primal hunter/gatherer procuring food by modern means, she thought, with a soft snort of amusement. As she watched, he examined the can intently, read the ingredients, then returned it to the shelf and chose another, repeating his thorough study of it.
The contrast between his rough, tough-guy appearance and the domestic act he was performing did funny things to her head.
She had a sudden, breathtaking vision of a dark-haired little boy sitting in the seat of the cart, laughing up at Cian, grabbing at his swinging braids with chubby little fists, while his daddy inspected the ingredients on a jar of baby food. Her mind’s-eye picture of sexy, strong man with beautiful, helpless child made something soft and warm blossom behind her chest.