Haunting Embrace (32 page)

“Even now I cannot tell you how it transformed from what we’d meant it to be into what it became. A thing of power can never be trusted to act as it was intended. It is a fact of life.”

She looked unsettled by this simple truth. For a moment, she sat quietly, absorbing all he’d said. He wanted to know what she thought, but he didn’t ask. Instead he braced himself for her next question. Knowing her as he’d come to in the time they’d spent together, he assumed he wouldn’t have to wait long for it.

“So you didn’t trust Elan with the plan and then you blamed her for not knowing how it should play?” Meaghan said finally. “And then the Book of Fennore made an even bigger mess of things. Do I have that right?”

Yes, damn her. He scowled. “I didn’t know it then, but the Book began to speak to her. It gave her a vision of me carrying her bloody corpse to the cliffs and hurling it over. Then it showed her another woman with me, together, in the cavern. It convinced Elan that I had created an elaborate ruse to murder her so I could be with someone new. I still cannot fathom how she believed it. No other woman existed in my eyes. If she’d come to me, I could have stopped it all, but she didn’t.”

“If she’d come to you . . . if you’d gone to her . . . It doesn’t sound like either one of you had your heads on straight.”

He wanted to growl at that. He wanted to call Meaghan’s words ridiculous. But she spoke nothing less than the truth, and he could not pretend otherwise.

“I was arrogant. I believed that my word should have been indisputable.”

“So what happened next?”

“The Book of Fennore had metamorphosed into something unrecognizable, and neither of us had guessed at the extent of its power. But I thought I’d found a way to destroy the monster we’d created. Of course, she never gave me the chance.”

The old anger within him flared. He swallowed it and went on.

“I worked out a blood ritual that would seal the Book forever and essentially smother the power within it like a flame deprived of oxygen. It required three things: her blood and mine. And a sacrifice.”

“A real one, you mean,” Meaghan said. “A human one?”

“Yes. I planned to wait for Elan’s next visit from the dead and then use that person for my purpose.”

“Sacrifice someone you knew was going to die anyway,” she murmured. Her eyes narrowed and she studied him. “I can see where you might have thought it a perfect plan, but didn’t it feel like playing God? How did you get Elan to go along with it?”

He stared at her, struck speechless for a moment.
Playing God?
Leave it to Meaghan to call it exactly what it was.

“I didn’t tell Elan about that, either,” he said, looking away. “She never would have agreed. After failing time and again, she would not accept that the fates of the dead she saw were inescapable. She would have tried to save whoever it was, no matter the cost.”

“Áedán,” Meaghan said, standing and moving to his side. “How did you ever imagine your plan would work? Couldn’t you see the disaster just waiting to happen?”

Frustrated, he glanced into her face and then away again. He couldn’t explain how desperate he’d been. He couldn’t make her see he’d done the only thing he could.

“If I did nothing, she would die. No matter how crazy, how demented and wrong my plan was, it gave her a chance.”

“But—”

“Conlaoch did not simply demand that Elan be sacrificed, Meaghan. He demanded that
I
be the one to perform it. He wanted her blood on
my
hands.”

“Wh—”

“I don’t know why,” he cut her off angrily. “Perhaps he knew of our love. Perhaps he meant to punish me. My choices were to kill her myself or do everything I could to save her.”

His voice cracked and his eyes burned. Shamed by the depth of his feelings he turned his back and took a step away. Behind him, he heard Meaghan draw in a deep breath.

“Okay. Okay, I get it. I see how you felt like you were up against a wall. And maybe it wasn’t such a stupid plan, trying to fake her death. But when you realized what she thought—that you meant to murder her . . . Why didn’t you level with her?”

“I didn’t realize it, Meaghan. Not until after she’d betrayed me did I learn what happened. Not until she’d cursed me and I became a part of the Book we’d created did I see the truth.” When Meaghan frowned with confusion, he said, “The Book knew, you see. It knew what I planned. It knew that I’d found a way to destroy it.”

“And it told Elan?”

“No.” His smile felt bitter. “It made a deal with her. It promised her the things she wanted most in the world. It sweetened the pot and she grasped it with both hands and never looked back.”

“What did it promise?” Meaghan asked, bewildered.

He refused to let Meaghan see how deep it cut, even now, to speak the words. “It promised to free her of her curse. Never again would she see the dead. It promised to save the ones whose names she’d already written in its pages. It promised her great power so that she would never be dependent on a man again. Even Conlaoch would bow to her. And it promised to punish me for the treachery it told her I intended.”

Silent, Meaghan waited for him to go on.

“
I
had promised to love and cherish her until the day I died.
I
had sworn to protect her to my last, gasping breath. Perhaps, in time, I could have found a way to stop the dead from coming to her. I had powers of my own. But she had no faith in my word. She cared more for her dead than she did for me, who lived to please her. She saw only what the Book offered, not the man who would have cut out his own fecking heart to keep her safe. She gave me up like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Once she’d imprisoned me, the Book took great pleasure in showing me the full extent of her betrayal.”

Meaghan shook her head, moving so she could see his face. “I’m sorry.”

He wanted to look away but found he could not. Meaghan had strung his emotions out to dry, and now she watched them flap in the wind.

“Do you think she realized?” Meaghan asked. “Do you think she saw her mistake in the end?”

“No. Her voice followed me into the darkness. She said one day she would return to judge me. If she found me worthy, she might release me from my prison.”

“Has that day come, Áedán?”

He pinned her with a hostile look. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, her appearing in my dream and then leaving me this comb. Last night, with the pendant and that . . . surge of power. These are signs, aren’t they?”

Heart pounding, he watched as she took the comb from her pocket once more. Her fingers played over the teeth and he felt them strumming the heart he’d long thought dead.

“What is the significance of this comb, Áedán?” she asked. “Why would she leave it?”

He didn’t want to answer her. He didn’t want to talk about the gift he’d given with his love.

“In my time,” he began thickly, and his throat clogged with the depth of his feelings. Appalled, he cleared it and tried again. “When I was a young man, we did not exchange rings to signify a marriage. We gave gifts of the heart. Something that came at a cost.”

He took the comb from her, dismayed by the way his hand shook. Slowly he turned it, remembering how he’d toiled, how he’d worried over every carved groove and placed gem. Without a word, he moved behind Meaghan and pulled the rubber band from the tail of her braid.

“What are you—”

“Shhhh,” he said and began running the teeth through the silk of her hair as he spoke. “Elan had hair that was like silvered moonlight.”

“I know,” Meaghan whispered, her voice making a funny hitch that seemed to hook his pulse and send it pounding. “I saw it in the dream.”

Elan’s hair had been baby soft and as fine as gossamer. Meaghan’s was a heavy fall of satin, alive with hues and warmth.

“Your hair is a weave of the rainbow, so many colors all in one. Silken. Beautiful.”

For a moment, he lost the train of his thoughts and indulged his senses in the heated weight of Meaghan’s hair. He remembered burying his face in its softness, breathing in the scent.

He cleared his throat. “I made this comb for Elan. I smelted the silver, etched the runes. The teeth are whalebone, and it was not easy to come by, not easy to fashion. I can still see myself struggling to make this gift represent everything I felt. When I gave it to her, it was with my heart.”

For a moment, Meaghan’s silence filled the air. And then in a voice as soft as the locks he held, she said, “And she kept it. Even after she thought you’d betrayed her with another woman and plotted to
kill
her, she kept it. She must have loved you, Áedán.”

Love
. Did he even believe such a thing existed?

He lowered the comb, reluctantly letting the glossy strands slide through his fingers, wishing the convictions he’d armed himself with for an eternity would slither away with it. But he could not forgive what Elan had done to him.

He handed the comb back to Meaghan as she turned to face him. Her eyes had darkened to midnight pools and her color was high. Glints of pewter mixed in the storm of Meaghan’s eyes and said things that were too deep for words. They tore at him, dicing his tattered composure into small, bloody chunks.

“What if she figured out that she was wrong? What if she’s sorry, Áedán? Why else would she have given me this comb that symbolized your love?”

“You speak as if she lives.”

“No,
you
speak as if she does. You speak to
me
as if I am connected to her. Why, Áedán?”

“You said it yourself. We have history between us.”

“That’s right. Between us. But
I
am not Elan.”

“I know that.”

“Do you? Do you, Áedán? Because that’s not what I’m getting from you. You said you wouldn’t allow me to betray you.”

“And I meant it.”

“Why would you even think I would? What are you basing that on, Áedán?”

Should he tell her what he’d seen in her eyes? If he trusted her with that information, what might she do with it? He’d be worse than a fool to give her the power to betray him again. But he couldn’t explain to himself what he felt when he looked at her. How could he hope to explain it to her? The past, the future, the knotted weave where they twisted together. There was something in it, something he couldn’t unravel. If only he could see the truth concealed in the frayed fibers.

Meaghan wanted to find the Book, and he would help her to that end. But Meaghan wanted the Book to go back to her own time. Seeing the comb in her bed this morning had convinced Áedán beyond a doubt that Elan had returned. That meant he had a chance at securing his freedom and exacting the revenge he’d spent millennia imagining.

A blood ritual, which would seal Elan inside the Book and then destroy its power.

It had to be done. As long as the Book still existed, as long as it could toy with the people of Ballyfionúir—or any where—Áedán would never be safe. As Cathán became more firmly entrenched in the Book, his power would grow. He would search, would manipulate, would control anyone and everyone until at last he got Áedán in his clutches. Then he would use Meaghan and the key to free himself and enslave Áedán once again. Cathán would find a way to do what every fool who searched for the Book longed for.

He would use it. He would become
all-powerful
. He would control the heavens and earth.

Áedán could not let that happen. He would not go back to that nightmare, even for Meaghan.

The only way to end the reign of Cathán was to end the Book of Fennore. To do that, they would need to recreate the ritual that had sealed Áedán between those hellish covers and then finish it with the final step—the sacrifice.

In every dream of revenge, Áedán had held Elan under his blade and taken not just her blood, but her life.

He’d have to trick Meaghan in order to force Elan to show herself. When Meaghan had held the pendant against Mickey, Elan had emerged. Could bringing the pendant and the Book together do the same thing? And if so, could he really bring himself to take those final steps? Could he spill Meaghan’s blood in his quest for vengeance?

He hated the question. He hated the answer.

“What are you thinking, Áedán?” Meaghan asked, moving closer to him, touching his arm with her fingertips.

“I’m thinking of you, Meaghan,” he said without meaning to.

Chapter Twenty-one

M
EAGHAN stayed still and quiet as Áedán glanced away and then back. His eyes looked very green now, as green as the pastures that stretched out across the island hunkering in the distance. He was, without a doubt, the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. Even now she wanted to touch him. As if hearing her words, he caught her gaze with his and held it.

Meaghan took a deep breath. He said he thought of her, but what, exactly, filled those thoughts? The same mystifying blend of turmoil that constantly simmered within him spiced the air, offering no easy answers.

Taking a deep breath, she decided to change her line of questions and see what else she could learn. “Brion MacGrath, he is—or soon will be—Cathán’s father.”

Áedán nodded.

“When Brion came to Colleen’s today and we heard the voice of the Book of Fennore, I wondered if Brion had come into contact with it. Do you think he has?”

Áedán looked away and a flush crept up his face. “I cannot say. I don’t remember much of those moments. I was not myself.”

“No. You weren’t. I was afraid for you.”

This obviously startled him, and for a moment he simply stared at her.

She went on, “If the Book has searched out Brion MacGrath, there has to be a reason.”

“You think to apply the rules of logic to something that does not live within its borders. It wants. It takes. It matters not why.”

“And yet, it has intelligence. We’ve seen it. So what does it want with Brion?”

He didn’t answer and Meaghan waited, frustrated, caught between fear of pushing too hard and not pushing hard enough. She tried again.

“And you, Áedán? What does it want from you?”