Dark Embrace (35 page)

He was twirling in the breeze.
He was dead.
The castle walls were behind him, the ground was snow-covered and a crowd had gathered. It was exactly as he had been hanged in her vision.

She staggered frantically to her feet, vaguely aware of Ian's help. “Aidan!” she screamed in horror. She saw that his neck was broken, for his head fell at a grotesque angle. They had arrived too late? Disbelief came. “Aidan, come back to me!” She ran forward and Ian let her go. She loved him too much. This could not, would not, happen. To hell with destiny and the gods! She resolved then and there
never
to let him go. They could go back in time again!

“This is not written,” she screamed up at his body, standing below him, the top of her head inches from his bare feet. “We will rewrite this!”

His body seemed to shudder.

She seized his feet to stop him from swinging. “Come back to me, don't leave me. Come back to our future,” she begged.

And a visible tremor went through his body. His chest rose—and fell. Brie stared up at his downturned face and saw his lashes flickering. “Allie!” she screamed.

Brianna.

Brie knew it wasn't telepathy, for she saw his mouth moving. He was coming back from the dead because he was choosing to live.

And she saw Allie's white light raining down on him. As it did, Malcolm, Guy and Royce leapt onto the scaffold, one of them cutting the rope, the other men taking Aidan's body into their arms. A moment later he was laid out on the ground, and Allie was kneeling over him, healing him intently. His lashes moved and lifted, and Brie met his direct blue gaze.

His eyes began to shimmer with relief and love. “Brianna.”

She clasped his face, bent over him and kissed him. “You've come back to me,” she whispered. Their gazes met and locked.

He sat up, pulling Brie close against his side. Not looking away from her, he said, “Tell Frasier my men will war for the king.”

“I'll tell him,” Royce said, striding away.

“Do ye ever listen to anyone?” he asked softly.

“I will never forgive Nick for taking me away from you when you needed me the most,” she said, seizing his hand. “Why did you choose to die?”

“To protect ye from my father,” he said softly. He lifted her chin and feathered her mouth with his. “But Brianna, I felt yer love. And even dead, even with the gods comin', I realized I dinna wish to die. I want to live—I want to live with ye, Brianna.”

Tears welled. She stroked his beautiful jaw. “That's a damn good thing, because on top of everything else, there's someone you must meet,” she said, and she glanced up.

Ian Maclean was staring at them, his face hard and tight.

Aidan followed her gaze. His eyes widened and he paled. Slowly he stood, in disbelief. “Ian?”

Ian didn't move a muscle, his face filled with tension. “If ye dinna hang—if we rewrite Fate this day—ye need to rescue me. I'm at Elgin,” he said, and he vanished in time.

“Ian!” Brie screamed.

Aidan looked at her, incredulous. “Ye found him in the future?”

Brie nodded. She was about to explain everything when she felt Moray's black power. She cried out in warning, but Aidan had whirled.

He was coming fast and furiously. There was no time to scream again. A huge, armor-clad giant rushed them, blazing energy at them, roaring in rage. “Aye, Ian lives! But ye' won't ever see him again!” the knight shouted furiously.

Brie gasped as the force struck her and Aidan, sending her tumbling away from the gallows across the clearing, and into one of Urquhart's walls.

She grunted from the terrible impact of being hurled against stone, but it wasn't as bad as that day on the battlefield, because he had flung his energy at Aidan, catching her only peripherally.

Men roared and swords clashed and rang, louder than she had ever heard them.

Terrified for Aidan, certain that this was the final moment of truth, Brie felt hands on her. Allie's powerful white healing light seeped through her body as she tried to sit. When she could finally do so, she saw Aidan.

He and the giant, who was now Moray, had hewn their swords at one another, the blades blazing with their power, the men in halos. Aidan was cloaked in shining silver, while Moray was clouded in a dark gray light. Damn it, it looked as if they were evenly matched—but Aidan was struggling.

Royce, Malcolm and Guy could not help him, for they were battling dozens of possessed knights.

Tabby knelt beside them and began chanting, her expression instantly becoming waxen as she entered a trance.

For one more moment, Brie did not move. Her gaze was glued to Aidan, and he seemed to slowly be getting the better of the giant. She was acutely aware that Tabby was using the spell she had found to trap Moray's black power so it could not return to his body, wherever it was. She did not want to leave Aidan, but she seized Allie's hand, finally tearing her gaze away from him. “Do you have a weapon?”

Allie nodded. “Of course.” She pulled a dagger from her designer boots.

It was so sexy and so
Allie
that, had the circumstances not been dire, she would have laughed. “He's close by, in repose, in a small chamber,” Brie said. But Urquhart was a medium-size garrison, with many small rooms. He could be in any one of them.

“Let's go,” Allie said, taking her hand.

They ran, leaving Aidan and the other Masters behind, their swords still shrieking eerily with white and black power. Brie and Allie rushed through the first gatehouse, back into the inner ward. They paused, breathing hard, trying to sense where Moray had left his body. Brie cursed in frustration. “How can we find him? Without his evil, there's nothing to sense!”

“I guess we'll do it the good, old-fashioned way,” Allie, said, nodding at the closest tower. “A room-by-room search.”

And, as Allie started aggressively toward that square tower, Brie suddenly felt a push on her shoulder from behind, directing her to a flanking tower on the opposite side of the gatehouse. It wasn't Allie, who'd left her behind.

Grandma Sarah seemed to give her a hard nod, too.

“Allie!” Brie screamed, rushing toward the tower.

She ran to a narrow door set in the side of the tower as Allie caught up to her. The moment she tried to open it, she realized it was bolted from inside. “Shit,” she cried.

Claire ran through the gatehouse, breathing hard, her clothes splattered with blood, a large sword in hand. “Is he in there?” she asked breathlessly, looking exactly as a mythological, avenging Valkyrie might.

Brie nodded and stepped back.

Claire dropped the sword. She grimaced and ran at the door as if it were a punching bag and she was in a kick-boxing match at a gym. The wood groaned but the door did not open. Claire kicked it again, grunting.

Silver blazed, and the door blew in off its hinges.

Brie turned and saw Aidan striding forward, a bloody sword in hand, his expression ruthless. She cringed, incapable of moving. She had never seen him at his medieval worst, and she was seeing his most savage side now.

Then she felt the huge black power coming after them. Brie glanced up and saw the black cloud swirling like a small cyclone from above the gatehouse, into the ward, toward him from behind. “Aidan!”

He saw it and snarled, “Come an' fight me,
Father.
”

Laughter sounded.

Brie glanced into the chamber. Moray lay on the bed, apparently catatonic, exactly as she'd seen him in her vision.

The black energy swirled directly past Aidan into the chamber and to the man lying there.

But it bounced off his body hovering in the air.

A roar of frustration sounded.

“Tabby's spell is working,” Brie breathed.

Aidan smiled savagely. “What's amiss,
Father?
Canna ye enter yer own form?”

“Aidan, watch out!” Brie screamed as the black power descended onto him.

But his silver energy blazed, deflecting it. He stepped toward Moray's body, sword raised. Brie turned away and heard the thump of his blade.

A howl of outrage sounded.

Brie tensed as the blade thumped again.

And then the cry suddenly ceased. The chamber was utterly silent except for Aidan's harsh, heavy breathing. Brie didn't dare look inside but she felt the darkness weakening. She looked up. Black, it spun upward into the gray sky, twisting and dwindling, becoming smaller and smaller, vanishing near the pale sun.

She heard the chamber door close. A bloody sword landed on the ground. She turned, trembling, her knees buckling, and Aidan pulled her close.

She went still, her cheek against his chest, his heart thundering there. He held her, hard and tight. It was over.

 

H
E LANDED INSIDE
E
LGIN'S INNER
ward, so determined to find his son that he did not even fall, for he refused to succumb to any pain or weakness now. The black walls of the ward swirled in his vision, and it was a moment before he steadied. He glanced around. Elgin had been in the hands of the chief of the Dunbar clan for several years, although it remained an impressive seat in the earldom of Moray. The current earl bore no relation to Aidan's vanquished, demonic father.

He seized a passing lad of twelve years old, who was leading a cow and her calf to the outer bailey. “I am looking for a boy with dark hair and blue eyes, a bit younger than you. He is prisoner here. He might be in a tower, or even in the dungeons.”

The freckled lad blinked and looked away. “I dinna ken.”

Aidan lurked. The lad lied. No one was allowed to admit that a boy was being held prisoner in the west tower on its highest floor—if he was really there. Apparently no one had seen him, not really. He had arrived unnoticed, as if on wings.

Aidan released the lad and ran across the ward to the tower. He flung the door open and rushed up its spiral staircase. As he ran up the twisting stairs, he felt the black power above—and he felt his son's thoughts.

I'm on the top floor, Father.

It was Ian. His boy was truly alive!

He reached the landing, blasting the armed guard there, who crumbled to the floor. “Ian!” he cried, throwing the bolts aside. He flung open the door.

Ian stood there looking exactly as he had that long-ago day when Moray had murdered him, except for the fact that he was wearing modern clothes—a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers. “Father!”

Relief flooded Aidan. Tears streamed, and he rushed to his son. He knelt and wrapped Ian in his arms, barely believing that he held his son, at last. “Are ye hurt?” He didn't dare release him—he was afraid to. Even as he held his small, thin body, he thought of the grown man he had just encountered.

Suddenly Ian pushed away. “I am fine,” he said firmly.

Aidan started, having the oddest feeling that he was looking into a boy's eyes and a man's soul. “Let's go home, son.”

Ian nodded, his gaze dark and somber now, when a huge presence began to fill the room.

Aidan went still.

The chamber was flooded with white-gold, shimmering light, which rose up around them, flooding the entire room.

The majesty and splendor of absolute justice and power, the nearness of eternity, overcame Aidan. All was right, he somehow thought, dropping to his knees. He bowed his head. He had never felt more humble.

There was no form. Aidan wasn't even sure there was a voice.

“Do you still wish to fight me?”

“Nay,” Aidan gasped, stunned. The father of all gods, the greatest god of all, had come to him.

“Your test was designed by the lesser gods, who can be so foolish. But I designed your Fate.”

Aidan didn't move, eyes closed, tears falling.

“You recovered your son. Others are not so fortunate, and evil preys on the children in every time, in every place. You will protect them.”

Of course he would.

“I leave this memory with you because it will serve you well now. Never forget this day and the days before it.”

Aidan slowly looked up.

The god had a form now.

Aidan trembled.

“You are my chosen people,” the greatest of gods said softly. “And I have chosen you.”

 

B
RIE WALKED INTO
A
IDAN'S
bedchamber at Awe. She'd leapt back with Royce and Allie shortly after Moray's destruction. Aidan had gone to find Ian. Royce had spoken with Frasier, who agreed to take Aidan's offer to King James and recommend that the king accept it. Royce said Frasier was a devout, honest and fair man. He thought a bargain could be arranged; Aidan had a great army to offer the king. This was the least of Brie's worries.