Dark Victory (22 page)

It would explain everything. But how could that be possible when they were still worlds apart? When Kristin and the evil from An Tùir-Tara were vanquished, when Coinneach was freed, she would be going home—wouldn’t she?

Suddenly Tabby did not want to think about the future. It was distressing.

“Being with you feels so right,” Tabby said softly. “I know you think so, too.”

“Ye need to bend to me,” he said. “I must do my duty, Tabitha. Ye need to trust that my decision is right.”

He was referring to Coinneach, she thought, but the pang she had wasn’t half as huge as it had once been. There was no question in her mind that his decision was wrong. Now, she thought that there might be hope for him to change his mind and see the light. “I trust you. And I know you are doing what you think is right. But I am not going to approve. And by the way, your ancestors—the gods—won’t ever approve, either.”

He flinched and stood, his hard body rippling.

The gods were such a sore subject with him, she thought.

His face tightened. “Then ye’ll disobey me, even now?” He was disbelieving.

Going against him, behind his back, suddenly seemed unbearable. She knew she had no choice but she didn’t want to think about it. She spoke slowly, carefully. “Doesn’t your feud with Coinneach seem paltry after what happened today with Kristin? Shouldn’t the war on evil—all evil—take precedence over all mortal affairs?”

“The murder of my family wasna paltry. I willna allow ye to weaken me, Tabitha.”

She inhaled. “I’m sorry. That isn’t my intention. And I believe that if you ever took your vows, you’d become stronger than ever.” She slipped from the bed.

She’d remained impossibly modest until that precise moment, and his eyes widened. Tabby moved to stand between his legs, taking both of his hands. His eyes darkened instantly. “Your revenge diminishes you, but let’s not beat a dead horse.”

He tugged his hands from hers and cupped her breasts. “Will ye use yer body now to sway me?”

It crossed her mind that if she could, she would. “I know you can read my mind, so you know I am starting to care for you. I want what is best for you, Macleod, not for me.” He started. “We remain at an impasse.” She touched his face tenderly. “But at least we are discussing it. That is a step in the right direction. It is civil.”

“And bein’ civil pleases ye, aye?” he asked softly, clasping her waist and pulling her forward, his face pillowed against her breasts.

She inhaled. “It pleases me almost as much as you do.”

He lifted his face and smiled at her, his eyes hot.

And that was when she saw the woman standing in the fire.

T
HE WOMAN SEEMED
to be standing inside the hearth, on the other side of the fire. Tabby could see her clearly, even if she could see through her. She was dark-haired, and clad in medieval finery. Her hatred and evil filled the room.

Tabby cried out, jerking upright.

Her protective spell had been breached.

The fire became a wall, roaring between them. She was horrified, outraged, consumed with dread, with fury. The emotions made her reel, all conflicting.
She had to triumph over her.

The woman smiled and suddenly Macleod was standing on the other side of the fire behind the woman, his eyes wide, and it was déjà vu. In that moment, Tabby knew how much she loved him—and she was terrified.

But so was he.

And then she saw herself.

Tabby went still as her heart lurched with absolute dread.

The woman and Macleod stood on one side of the fire wall and she was on the other. And now, the fire raced toward her, encircling her.

And she went up in flames.

“Tabitha!”

It took Tabby a moment to realize that Macleod had seized her, was shaking her. And then she realized she was staring at a simple fire in the hearth, and that the woman was gone.
Macleod held her arm, his eyes wide with concern. Tabby felt the evil receding the way a wave rolled from the beach, vanishing into the ocean.

The fire blazed furiously now, and the open shutters were rocking on the walls.

But she was gone.

“Sit down,” he said, putting his arm around her.

She reached for him. “It was the evil from the other night,” she began. “The bitch from An Tùir-Tara. She’s trying to manifest.” She realized she was shaking wildly in his arms.

“I saw her, too, Tabitha.”

Tabby started.

“’Twas Criosaidh.”

Tabby was surprised—or was she?

“Tabitha?”

She just looked at him, still shocked by what she’d seen, and let him read her mind.

Macleod cried out.

“O
UR LOVELY FRIEND
is not at home,” Nick said.

Sam stood with Nick outside the apartment Kristin Lafarge shared with her roommate, Elizabeth Adler. Neither one had bothered to draw a gun, because they could both sense that evil was not present. A bullet would work well on the bitch—unless she could cast a spell to deflect it. Sam would not be surprised. Kristin’s power was dangerous. She would still love to see what a bullet or another weapon could do to the witch. Sam believed in grudges, revenge and payback.

She wasn’t surprised that Kristin was gone. “GTB,” she said grimly.
Gone to Blayde.
She didn’t bother translating, because she damn well knew Nick could read her mind.

Which was why she was so carefully controlling her thoughts. He was taking that dumb bimbo Jan back in time,
when Tabby was in so much trouble. Her plans were none of his damned business now.

“Let’s see if anyone has read the mayor’s Home Safety Code.” Nick reached for the doorknob, and it turned.

They saw Elizabeth Adler at the same time. She lay on the floor, not far from the front door, her eyes wide and sightless. Sam hurried over to her, already knowing her neck was broken and that there would not be a pulse. Nick beelined for the laptop he saw on the coffee table, sitting down with it. Sam knelt. She was careful not to feel anything for the victim. Feeling only got in the way of war. She had learned how to shut out and shut off her feelings a long time ago. Compassion was always a bad idea.

She now noticed how pristine Adler’s throat was. Sam closed Adler’s eyes, aware that Adler was about her own age and too young to die. They were always too young to die, she thought without emotion. Then she checked her arms, wrists, hands and nails. “Not a scratch, much less a bruise. Doesn’t look like there was a fight.”

But of course there hadn’t been a struggle. Kristin had killed her with her black magic.

She stood and walked over to Nick. “I thought you’d be GTB by now, too.” She guarded her thoughts really tightly, but she let her anger seethe. She’d never forgive Nick for this.

“This is Lafarge’s,” he said cheerfully, seated on the sofa. His blue eyes gleamed as he looked up. “School calendar. Looks like she’s missing a day.”

“What did you find?” Sam asked, instantly interested. As far as she was concerned, Kristin was her quarry, not Nick’s—and certainly not Jan’s.

“Look at her screen saver,” he said.

Sam walked over and saw a landscape with ruins and she knew instantly it was Scotland.

“That’s Melvaig,” Nick said, pleased.

“And you know that how?” But Sam’s nape prickled. She couldn’t help being excited. If Nick was right—which he probably was—Kristin was connected to An Tùir-Tara, too. Which begged the question, just how old was she?

They’d gotten back the DNA comp results and Nick had been right. Kristin’s blood was tainted. She was only ninety-two-point-three percent human.

“It’s in our new Macleod file. He warred with the MacDougall clan for the first century of his life.” He glanced up at her. “I wonder if your sister domesticated him a bit. In 1325, he actually went to war as an ally of the MacDougalls.” He tapped the keys, opening Kristin’s Recent Items folder. His eyes widened. “Well, well.”

Sam leaned over. “She booked a suite at the Carlisle. For last night.”

He closed the laptop and picked it up as he stood.

“Why would she do that? My sister is at Blayde.”

“She must have met someone before she made her trip,” Nick said. His stare was penetrating. “Whatever you’re planning, don’t do it. I’ll check on Tabitha when I go back. Meanwhile, you’re on this. Find out who she met and what she wanted.”

“Okay,” Sam lied smoothly. She was good at lying. She had to do it on the streets all the time, like any undercover cop. Sometimes she played vigilante, and sometimes just mean, almost evil and ready-to-be-turned tough ass. Either way, lying was a good way to get in with the wrong people.

“I mean it. You’re too involved. Jan and I will nail Kristin. And your sister is
fine.
”

“She’s not fine. She’s in over her head. She’ll be fine in a few hundred years, when she’s superpowerful—assuming she makes it through the fires of Melvaig. And you damn well know it.” Sam was furious. “Nick, may I say that you are the most heartless SOB I have ever met?”

“I’ll see you at HCU.” He handed her the laptop and walked out, already on his cell, dialing CDA’s Medivac unit.

Sam breathed hard. As if she would take orders from Nick when she knew what she had to do. She knew how to get back. Or rather, she knew someone who could take her back—if he could be persuaded to help her.

He was a bastard and more heartless than her boss, but she knew exactly how to convince him.

Sam had already booked her flight to Glasgow under an assumed name. And she knew that Ian Maclean was in residence at his fine home on Loch Awe.

T
ABBY SANK ONTO THE BED
. She was still feeling sick from the onslaught of so much hatred and rage. It had been even more intense than what she’d felt at the Met and at school. But mostly she was feeling sick because she was certain she had looked through the window of time again—and she had just seen herself die.

She would die at An Tùir-Tara.

Kristin had said she would be there. But she had already known it, hadn’t she? The déjà vu had been too strong. Somewhere in the back of her mind, in the depths of her soul, she had known that those feelings were hers.

But she’d assumed that the evil woman had died—not her.

Macleod sat beside her and seized her hand, his eyes blazing, his face hard. “Ye think too much! Ye imagined it! ’Twas nay yer death ye saw.”

Her temples pounded now. She was ready to throw up. “It’s okay,” she lied, trembling. “That’s two-hundred-and-fifty years away.”

He exploded. “Ye canna die in the fire! She dies!”

Tabby stared. “Are you sure it was Criosaidh that we just saw? She wasn’t crystal clear—”

He cut her off. “’Twas Criosaidh.”

Tabby looked at their clasped hands. Realizing how tightly he held her hand, he released her and stood. He began pacing like a caged tiger, restlessly, with repressed rage. Tabby wished she could read his mind.

Maybe it was better not to think about her death. It was a long time away. If it was Fate, it couldn’t be changed anyway.

But time travel made an infinite number of scenarios possible. She didn’t want to think it, but she did.
She could be taken to the fires of An Tùir-Tara at any moment. She could die there tomorrow or the day after or the day after that.

She looked at Macleod. He needed her. She couldn’t die anytime soon, not until she’d helped him let go of his past, not until he took his vows and became the kind of man she knew he could be.

“Ye think of me now?” He was incredulous.

Tabby nodded, but even as she did, that fiery vision returned. She would never forget seeing herself become a human inferno. She shut off her thoughts. She told herself she was not going to throw up. She could and would handle what she knew. She was a Rose! And if she was lucky, Macleod was right—she had imagined what she’d seen.

Except, she’d smelled the smoke and she’d heard her own screams.

He whirled to stare at her, his face twisted with revulsion and dread.

He cares about me,
Tabby thought. She pushed herself to sit up straighter, too tense to feel any joy. “Macleod, let’s focus on what we do know. That woman is the evil that came from An Tùir-Tara and followed us here from New York. It attacked me twice so far. How can it be Criosaidh? She’s alive and at Melvaig. Right?”

Macleod said slowly, “Criosaidh is alive an’ well at Melvaig,
Tabitha. But if her ghost has come here from the sixteenth century, I think it verra dangerous fer them both.”

Tabby tried to think about Criosaidh being alive and just to the south, with her future spirit, having time-traveled into the past to stalk them. Macleod had to be onto something. The pendant he’d brought from the twenty-first century had imploded when it came into contact with its thirteenth-century self. What would happen if that ghost met itself before it had died?

Tabby’s tension escalated. “In the Book, there is a Wisdom that every Rose is taught early on. It’s in Gaelic, but translated it says, ‘Seek it in the sands of time and you will find it in the light of eternity.’”

“That can mean anything.”

“The entire passage is long and convoluted and hard to comprehend, but my grandmother said it means that every moment in time is continuously occurring—that it’s eternal. Until my friend Allie went back in time, I never really understood it, but I do now. Or I think I do. Time is a continuum,” Tabby said slowly. “Every moment exists, for everyone, at every possible point in time, like a sliding ruler. Slide into the future and there we are—at Melvaig, in the Burning Tower in 1550. Slide backward, here we are. Slide forward—we’re dead. Slide back—we haven’t been born.”

His stare was sharp. “But only fer those who can leap. If ye can leap, ye can find anyone at any time.”

“I wonder,” Tabby said thoughtfully, “if the spirit is
allowed
to move backward?”

“Satan is probably pleased.” He shrugged and Tabby thought about the bottom line—evil wanted chaos and anarchy. Evil followed no rules.

“You told me that the Masters aren’t allowed to go backward or forward in time and encounter their older or younger selves. I think we both have an idea of why that rule exists.”

He confronted her, fists on his hips, reading her mind. “No.”

“I have barely conceived my plan,” she cried. “But maybe we can lure the ghost to Melvaig and get it into contact with Criosaidh.”

“By usin’ ye as bait? Never!”

Tabby stared. If she went to Melvaig, ostensibly to make peace with Criosaidh, maybe the ghost would follow her there and implode. “It can’t hurt to try.”

He was disgusted. “She’ll kill ye then an’ there. There willna be conversation, just yer death at her hands!”

“Because of her vengeance for her husband and her son?”

His expression hardened. “Ye blame me now fer the ghost? Mayhap ye’re right. Mayhap my war started this.”

Tabby hurried to him. She touched his face. “I don’t blame you. I would never blame you. And placing blame right now is pointless.”

He breathed hard. Tabby had the strongest certainty that he was blaming himself.

“This is not your fault. But freeing Coinneach might be a really good idea—and returning him would be the perfect excuse to go to Melvaig.”

“Ye willna be bait.”

In a way, Tabby was relieved, because she wasn’t all that brave. “And Coinneach? Keeping him prisoner can’t be helping.”

Macleod’s expression became hard enough to crack. “She’ll gloat if we return him. ’Twill be seen as a sign o’ weakness. Her revenge against me will continue.”

He was probably right on all three points, Tabby thought. But she suddenly sensed that fourteen-year-old boy somewhere close by. “It can’t hurt to free him. It might appease her, even if for a moment.”

His tension seemed to escalate. “I will think on it.”

Tabby blinked in surprise.

“Maybe it will appease the ghost, too,” she whispered, stunned that he might see reason, after all.

He spoke harshly. “She has to be the woman who dies in that fire, Tabitha. ’Tis when she becomes a ghost. Ye dinna die there—she dies there.”

He was distressed and not trying to hide it. “She is associated with that fire and that is all I am sure of. If the fire did result from a war of witches, maybe it was me and Kristin.” Tabby didn’t think so. “Maybe she dies afterward.” Meaning that Tabby had died first. Macleod made a hard sound. Tabby tried to sound casual. “Maybe she hates me so much that her ghost takes up the war where we left off.” That was a dismal thought.

He stared at her. Tabby felt his mind racing.

“I hate not being able to read your mind!” she cried.

“This needs to end now. I will go to Melvaig.”

She inhaled. “To kill her?”