Haunting Desire (25 page)

“Whot you do that for?” the smaller man demanded of the bigger.

“I didn’t do nothing, did I?” the first snarled back.

Undeterred, the two men pushed the woman forward, and Brandubh tried again, filled with rising anger now. The woman screamed as he came toward her, reaching for the bigger of the two men who held her captive. He hit the solid mass hard enough to knock the breath out of himself, but the big man simply grunted and the other jumped in surprise, staring at the woman with accusing eyes.

“Whot you scream for?” he demanded, giving her a shove into the cell. She was looking at Brandubh over her shoulder, her eyes huge and horrified. But the two men didn’t spare him a glance. Furious, he launched himself at them again. Once more, he went for the bigger of the two, thinking it best to bring that one down while his strength was fresh. He rammed the man in the back, hoping to bowl him over and get the advantage before he knew what hit him, but the other man spun, weapon drawn as he pulled the woman in front of him and put the point of his blade to the soft flesh beneath her chin. Brandubh skidded to a stop. He didn’t care about the woman, but he had no desire to find himself run through by the sword.

The woman still stared at him, her mouth open, her eyes wide. But the man stared past Brandubh and scanned the cell with jerky motions.

“Whot?” asked the smaller man. “Whot’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I thought I heard something.”

He lowered his sword, and the woman touched her chin with a wince. Brandubh saw a smear of blood on her fingers.

“Whot you hear?”

The big man shook his head with a scowl. “Nothing. I never liked it down here. Rats, you know. Can’t abide rats.”

The woman made a noise in her throat and then said, “Who is he?” using her injured chin to point at Brandubh.

Her captors turned their heads, following her fixed stare. They looked right through Brandubh to the corpse that lay on the floor behind him.

“Oh,” said the smaller one. “Forgot about him, didn’t I?”

“Is he dead, then?” the other one said.

“Looks like. Whot you suppose he took off his clothes for?”

“How the bloody hell should I know?”

“Not him!” the woman said angrily. When the two looked at her, she pointed at Brandubh.
“Him.”

They stared at the place where Brandubh stood with furrowed brows and open mouths.

“Did you hit her on the head?” the big one asked the other.

“Nah, just clipped her smart mouth. That’s all. Just a clip.”

“Go over there,” the big one ordered the woman. “Sit down and shut it.”

When she didn’t move right away, he raised a fist at her and the smaller one brandished a short, lethal-looking knife. Her lip was bleeding and her cheek chaffed and bruised, the swelling rising to puff up the skin beneath her eye. Swallowing thickly, she gave a jerky nod. Still, her eyes held defiance, even as she obeyed. She squatted with her back to the wall of the corner, wrapping her arms around her knees as she silently watched them.

Quietly, Brandubh moved around behind the smaller man and threw an elbow into his kidneys while reaching for his knife hand. He clamped his fingers around the man’s wrist, squeezing tight but unable to get him to release his hold. Far from it, the man wrenched free with barely any effort.

“Something had me there!” he said, voice squeaking with panic.

“Had you? Whot’re you talking about?”

The smaller man looked from his wrist to the air to his wrist again.

“Nothing. Don’t like it down here.”

“Rats,” the other agreed. “Suppose we get his sorry arse out and quit the place,” he said, looking uneasily at the dead body on the floor.

“Suppose,” the other agreed.

“Still don’t know why he took off his clothes. Whot you think he done with his pants?”

The bigger man looked around, perplexed. “Dunno. His socks is gone, too, aren’t they?”

Now they both looked like they were attempting to solve the mysteries of the world. Brandubh tried one last time to get hold of a weapon, but if anything he’d grown weaker and now he could barely stand. The girl watched him with a wary expression as she divided her attention between the two men and Brandubh.

“Well, that’s a shame,” the small man said after he looked around for the
pants
and
socks
as he’d called them. “I coulda used a new pair of jeans. Mine fell apart they’s so worn.”

“Eh, they wouldn’ta fit your skinny shanks anyway, would they?”

Seeing his one opportunity to leave vanishing, Brandubh lurched toward the open gate. He couldn’t overwhelm the guards but he could, at least, escape the prison. But when he tried to cross the threshold, an invisible force slammed him back. He skidded across the floor in shock, breath knocked out of him.

The two guards hoisted the corpse, one at either end, and waddled out of the cell. Quickly Brandubh scrambled to his feet and followed. The two men and their cargo walked through without a problem, but again Brandubh hit something hard, unseen, and impenetrable. He sprawled on the ground once more, cursing as he saw them swing the bars shut and lock them as they went. Neither man spared him so much as a glance, but the woman watched his every move. Why could she see him when the others could not?

“Where are you going?” she asked as the men moved down the dark passage. “You’re just leaving me here? With the rats and the . . . and . . . why am I a prisoner? I have rights, you know. I’m Irish for the love of Jesus.”

The two men seemed to find this very funny, and the smaller dropped his end of the corpse as he laughed.

“That’s a good one. Irish. Ha. You’re not Irish anymore, girl. You’re cursed. Get that through your head, the sooner the better.”

They fumbled the body up the stairs and out the door. Stunned, the woman threw herself at the bars, gripping them in white knuckles as she shook them. The clanking sound echoed down the empty passageway.

“What do you mean?” she shouted. “What do you mean I’m
cursed
?”

She let loose a stream of words, some Brandubh knew, others he only recognized by the tone and the way she hurled them at the retreating footsteps. At last she took a deep breath and rested her head against the bars before turning around.

She eyed Brandubh crossly and then demanded, “Who the feck
are you
?”

Her tone of disrespect irked him, but he answered. “I am Brandubh. I am the Black Raven.”

She snorted and rolled her eyes. “Are you, now? And that’s what people call you?”

They called him Druid. They called him Brandubh. They called him fearsome.

“That’s what your mother named you when you were born?” the insolent girl demanded.

No, he’d been named Áedán after his father, a tribal king. His future had been set on the day of his birth—he’d been meant to rule when his father could no longer carry on. But then the Northmen had come and slaughtered everyone in their way. His mother had lived only long enough to escape with her son. Áedán had been raised by the Druids and given the new name Brandubh, which meant Black Raven.

The girl watched him with a look of unease, waiting for a response.

“Áedán,” he said, and the name felt like chalk in his mouth. It rippled through him, filled with memory and loss and the taint of humanity. Long ago, another female had called him Áedán, and he’d loved her right up until the moment she’d condemned him.

The girl repeated his name. Although the guards had looked right through him, she did not.

“You can see me,” he said.

“I’m fecking talking to you, aren’t I?”

Torn between offense at her tone and wonder that she could see him when the other two hadn’t, he asked, “Who are you?”

“Meaghan. Meaghan Ballagh.”

The name meant nothing to him. “Why can you see me?”

“Feck if I know. How did you get here?”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure.”

“Not sure? You just opened your eyes and here you were?” As the words left her mouth in a snide tone, her eyes widened and her face paled. She shook her head. “Don’t answer that. I believe you.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s how I ended up here, too,” she said. “Although who the feck knows where
here
is?”

“Fennore, I would guess.”

“I live on the Isle of Fennore,” she told him coldly. “And this is hell and gone from there.”

“Exactly,” he agreed, ignoring the narrow-eyed look she gave him. “Why do they want you?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I was out there—God knows where—talking to the old man and then they just swarmed the place and grabbed me.”

“What old man?”

“Donnell. I don’t know where they took him. I think to see this Cathán they mentioned.”

“Who was this old man? This Donnell?”

“Don’t know. Just met him.”

She began pacing the cell as he’d been doing just moments before.

“So Áedán . . . what are you, then? A ghost?”

She looked like it embarrassed her to ask such a question, but again he saw that angry defiance in her eyes, as if she dared him to laugh. She needn’t have worried. There was nothing about being a ghost that he found remotely humorous. For thousands of years, he’d been a god. An entity of power. He’d been beyond flesh, beyond cold and fear.

But now he was here, reduced. Diminished by Cathán.

She was eyeing him again. He could feel the heat of her assessing gaze as it moved from his hair to his face, down his bare chest to the
pants
that covered his hips and legs. His body was much as he’d remembered it, hard and lean. He’d been a person of influence in his remembered life. He’d carved the pillars of their temple with his own two hands, hammering from stone the images he saw in his mind, in his heart. He flexed his arms, recalling how it felt to strike stone with a mallet, to hone it down in the hot sun.

And then had come Elan, the White Fennore, the woman who’d stolen his heart and soul and then condemned him to a life interred in the Book he’d created for her. For more than a thousand years he’d raged, punished, and victimized all that came into contact with him. For a thousand more, he’d retreated, hiding away, mimicking death. And then he’d emerged, remembering what she’d said before she condemned him. She’d banished him “
like a vile creature
,” to suffer for the greed of men, to be used and abused. She’d told him that if he survived, she would see him again. It was that promise that lured him from retreat. He would see her again and when he did, he would pull her into his purgatory and trap her as she had trapped him.

He’d begun his pilgrimage again, searching for those who could give him strength. Seeking those he could use. And he’d found Cathán MacGrath, pathetic, needy, but powerful. Powerful in ways he didn’t know.

“Yo, Áedán,” Meaghan said with an exasperated glance.

“You use my name freely,” he said coldly.

“Would you rather I called you Black Raven?” she asked with raised brows.

He glared, to show his dislike of the ridicule in her tone, but ignored her question.

“What do you know of Cathán MacGrath?” he demanded instead.

“He was married to my mother, once upon a time,” she said matter-of-factly, stunning Brandubh into silence. And then, as if it had just occurred to her. “Cathán—that’s who they’ve brought me to see? Bollocks. He can’t be the same person, can he?”

“Cathán is your father?”

“Feck no. He disappeared and my mum remarried.” She paused and said, “You don’t think that’s who they’re talking about? Those men, when they mentioned Cathán?”

“It is,” he said.

“But he disappeared before I was born.”

“Time has no significance in the Book of Fennore.”

“
In
the Book of Fennore?” she repeated incredulously. “And what does that mean?”

“Are you a twin?”

“No. Why? What does that have to do with anything?”

Disappointed, he didn’t answer.

“My sister—half sister and brother, they’re twins.”

“Who?”

“Danni and Ror—”

“Ruairi,” he snarled. “Yes, of course. Who else would it be?”

She glared at him now. “You’re a bit nutters, aren’t you, Áedán?”

He wasn’t certain what
nutters
meant, but he could guess and probably he was more than a bit. Now he looked at Meaghan again, eyeing her from head to toe. If she was related to Ruairi and his sister, then perhaps she wasn’t without use.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked warily.

He stepped closer. The men had barely flinched when he’d thrown all his weight at them. But this woman who could see him . . . He reached out and took her face between his hands.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, trying to slap him away. “Let go of me.”

She shoved at his chest and squirmed as she fought to break free. He held her, not letting her loose. She scratched his face and kicked out with her strange shoes, startling him into releasing her. As soon as he dropped his hands, she slammed her knee into his groin and when he bent over with breathless pain, she brought it up again and whammed it into his nose. He fell, clutching his groin, feeling blood spill over his face and chest.

“Keep your hands to yourself, you fecking . . . fecking
ghost
.”

She went back to her corner and slid down the wall, curling into a tight ball. He thought he heard her crying, but he was in too much pain to care. He didn’t know if she was a powerful witch or just a mean woman. But he would use her, no matter what. He would drain her of her life, her power, her very essence. And then he would move on to Cathán.

Just as soon as he could stand.

T
HE rain had stopped when Tiarnan woke again, his body curled around Shealy’s, her spine pressed to his chest, his arms holding her tight even in sleep. He looked around in the pitch-black that came before dawn. Beside them, Ellie sat on their furs, blinking owlishly and shivering. He stared at her for one confused moment, as his brain woke up. If Ellie was here, Liam must have returned. He raised himself and glanced around the dark tent, but didn’t see his brother.