Scarlet Vamporium: Vamporium #2 (21 page)

Staring down at the hazy view, our legs touch while he holds my hand in a death squeeze.

“I cannae believe yer uncle would be so awful.” Emotional eyes engage mine in fate's hopeless gaze, “Ellie, I was so lookin' forward tae sharin' Samhain and Hogmanay with ye.”

Looking away with strands of his hair caught in his eyelashes, he clenches his jaw, compressing my hand more with the struggle he's waging within. “It's magical, all ye can see is covered in white, the forest is a different place, Devil's staircase is perilous but so beautiful, and … och, it's just... I wanted tae share it with ye.”

My heart is breaking and I stare at our knees with tears spilling over, undulating the drizzly day with a skein of misery.

“I hav'nae had a chance tae take ye tae see Morag either.” His tone is drenched with grief, of all his plans scrunched up and destroyed by Venix ripping me from our beginning too soon. The end has come too quickly and I want to run. With all my heart I want to hide away and stay here forever.

He makes me want to be a fugitive on the run from the angels and demons ruining my life.

Exhaling a quivering sigh through trembling lips, I engage his stare again, “Doug, I don't understand what Sowen or Hogmanay are, and I've met Morag and she's horrible.”

He gives me a watery smile, “Hogmanay is new years. Samhain is Halloween. Morag is the monster that lives in Loch Moray.” Sandwiching my hand between his palms, he stares across to the opposite mountain, “Ye see, there's tae much tae share still. Ye cannae gae, I dinnae think I can let ye.”

Twisting, tangling our legs, he leans close to touch our noses, “Please dinnae gae, I cannae bear the thought of losin' ye. I thought... we'd have... ages.”

Dissolving, I wrap my arms around his neck, burying my head in the crook, sobs chaffing out of me in serrated anguish.

I don't want to go! It's killing me!

The hunter's trap I'm in cuts so deep it hits bone.

We sit staring miserably together at the sleeting rain, sodden to our core, but still unable to leave, unwilling to be separated.

Suddenly he slaps my leg so hard it stings, “I ha'e tae gae. I'll meet ye back at yer house.”

“No! Please don't leave me! We only have a few hours left...”

But his face is set, his mind is made up, and yet the dimple next to his mouth quivers.

I'm so stupid. He needs to be alone. He needs time to come to terms with this.

Nodding, I agree. “Let me take you home. It's a long walk on foot.”

Exhaling a weighted sigh over me, he holds my hands, waiting for the inevitable transition. But I can't let go.

“Let's walk for a little bit first,” I plead.

Clenching his jaw he pounces to his feet, pulling me up and helping me up the incline with a firm arm around me.

Arms around waist and shoulder, we stroll into the heady undergrowth, the colorful mushrooms relishing the leaking roof of the forest canopy.

The midges hide when it rains this hard, and it's a relief not to have them crawling up my sleeves and trying to inspect my nostrils.

The deeper we tread the softer the atmosphere becomes, and he halts me, staring dead ahead.

Looking into the russet gloom, I spy the scurry. The American mink sits up on her hind legs, checking her path is clear, carrying a fluffy bairn in her mouth. Her home must be flooding or washing away and she's desperate to relocate her late litter to safety.

She's an auburn beauty, as cute as the stoat who spied on us, and I know heart and soul a piece of me is lost in this forest. It belongs to the roe deer, the red squirrel, and the red breasted robin who gave me the man of my dreams.

The wet scent of wood and loam hides the smells of the forest's inhabitants, but that mother protecting her baby, rushing uphill into green shadows, that's what I respect in nature. I so desperately wish I had a mother to protect me.

I don't. I'm alone. All I have is Doug, and this forest, and that mink mother, she has Doug too. He's here to protect them, he cares about them like they're his family and his young. He watches over them. He'd make such an amazing father.

Turning away from the mink, I look up at his gentle eyes guarding her movement.

How can I leave you when you are everything a man should be? How can I leave them behind when I've only just met your furry family?

I don't yet know all their names, I haven't sat through a season and watched the babies grow up, to witness the beavers teach their young to swim or to see the salmon swim upstream.

I haven't had a chance to walk hand in hand with Doug through the blossoming heather in spring's gloaming, I haven't seen the house martins fly or the pine martens cause havoc.

I haven't had a chance to go with Doug to smash poachers traps, to walk through the virgin snows of winter to count deer tracks, to leave out nests of nuts for hungry squirrels, or to leave feed out for the hungry creatures who weren't prepared for winter.

And I haven't had a chance to sit inside with him huddled under a blanket while he tells me about his people, his history, to find out the truth of the fairy child. Who was he? Who did he grow up to be? Why didn't they save Caledonia from invasion?

The maybe's and never's wash over me like a waterfall of acid, stripping me of my strength and my will to live.

If I don't take him home now, I never will. I'll abscond with him and force him to flee this land he cherishes for the sake of love, to keep him safe from the demons.

I love him too much to do that to him. Curling my hands around his middle, I squeeze, hiding my sob when I transport him to his home, inhaling deeply the scent of musty carpet, furniture polish, and the echoing wheeze of old father time ticking hollowly beyond the passage.

Time. My arch enemy.

*

Ellindt:

When I exit the front door the sight waiting for me on the lawn shocks me still.

He's glorious.

Sliding my gaze from the sturdy black leather of his combat boots to the black socks scrunched above them, I scratch my hungry focus up his magnificent legs to the forest green and loch blue of his kilt. A worn sporran hangs on a thin black belt around his narrow hips, and a black t-shirt stretches across his chest underneath the signature black leather of his jacket.

Long honey hair is loose and blowing in fierce ferocity across soot eyes, and his face is cast in a haunting expression of resignation.

Looking down at the grass, he licks his lips, inhales, and clenches his jaw, taking the first stride toward me.

My feet refuse to move. My heart is pounding at his attitude, it's unexpected and unpredictable.

Stopping directly below me on the steps, he pulls something from behind his back, offering it to me. It's a blood red, vamporium red, Glencoe massacre red, kilt.

Tentatively running my hand over the tight weave of the wool, I examine the pattern. It's exactly the same as his kilt except in red and black. The crossroads between the blocks of red and black are yellow and green. I know they mean something but I'm too choked up to ask.

“It's mine. It's ma dress tartan, used fer special occasions. I want ye tae ha'e it.”

Holding my hand over my heart, the gesture nails me dead. Grief rips through my muscles, slicing my heart into slithers, garroting my airways from my body and suffocating me.

My heart is so heavy I need a wheelbarrow to cart it.

He doesn't wait, he simply wraps the vibrant red kilt around my hips, securing it with the twin buckles at the top, kneeling in front of me as if he's proposing, stabbing the opening at the bottom with a pewter pin.

Standing, he catches my hand, staring down into me with eyes so stormy Thor would be proud, saying, “I need ye tae know yer in ma heart, where ye belong. This is a promise tae ye, that one day ye'll be a MacLeod, and when that day comes I'll wear the kilt I just put on ye. It's pinned with the family crest, sealed with my word, my honor, with the weight of my ancestors as ma witnesses.”

Closing his arms around me, pressing his head tight against mine and veiling me in the scented cedar of his hair, his voice is scalded in pain, “It's a promise, Ellie. Ye ha'e ma word.”

In carnage, I expect to see stigmata flowing out my hands to smear his skin with the exorcism of the agony inside me.

Stroking his hair, clutching him tightly, I hug with all my might, squeezing him in a desperate attempt to join us into one organism.

I never want to let you go. How can my heart beat without your breath keeping it alive?

“We have to go,” says Arelstin behind me, and I hate him more than I've ever hated anyone - ever.

Douglas has the strength I lack, because he forces us apart, breaking my hold and giving me a broken smile of courage. “I'll gae with ye, until I can gae no more.”

“Wait!” I shout, when both of them turn to face the lawn and the demons lurking in the underbrush to make sure I really leave.

Arelstin and Doug both turn to face me, mirroring each other, and in this instance I can see it. Arelstin is 6'6 and an Almighty. Doug isn't far off his height, and I know men grow taller until they're twenty-five. I can see the angel in Doug's blood. The sidhe of his ancestors is standing in this crater of carnage with me today, and it's that eternal light that is shining with such determination from his eyes. His promise, no man, angel, or demon, can break or change, because he's one of us.

Putting my bag down on the polished marble of the terrace, I dig out the wind chime, carefully extracting it and holding it up, willing it to be half the length, splitting it into two.

My thistle rolls out of my bag in its glass bauble which I sealed it in to keep it safe forever, and the wind snatches it, shunting it two steps down to smash the glass.

My knees crumple and I collapse onto the cold ground, a wail wrenched out of me at the one thing I needed to keep from being ruined.

Sobbing, hardly able to see through my tears, I beckon Douglas to me, immediately protected from the biting wind when he kneels in front of me again, shielding me with his broad shoulders.

Shuddering in anguished gulps, I open his sporran, safely tucking a fish wind chime into it. “It's.. from.. the bottles... Our first – date...” Sagging, leaning my head into his shoulder, I manage to croak, “Our first fishing trip...”

“Ye kept the thistle,” murmurs gruffly into my ear, and I fuse into his squeeze, my soul fracturing into a gazillion shards of grief.

Nodding, I can't believe my thistle globe is broken, shattered like the fragile bubble of joy I found in his smile.

Stroking my hair, kissing me again, he pulls me up, making me stand, “Be strong, Ellie. We've lived through massacres, we've had everythin' taken away, but we're still here tae fight them another day. Never let them break yer will, never let them crush yer spirit. Yer ma warrior lass, the bonniest sidhe tae walk these forests. Yer ma soulmate and I know ye willnae let them take yer dignity. Keep the fight alive in yer heart, and I promise I'll dae the same. We'll meet again on our Stone of Destiny, our rock overlooking the snows and swans of Loch Achtriochtan.”

Sniffing, swallowing against the nugget lodged in my throat, I whisper, “I'll carry a thistle in the barrel of my gun, I'll never forget we're at war against the love thieves.”

Squeezing my hands he kisses my forehead, and steps away from me, sacrificing me up to the warden waiting to take me away.

Arelstin offers me a wan smile, holding out the magically mended thistle bauble.

A half hysterical laugh bubbles out with a sob, “Thank you.”

Quickly hiding it safely back in my bag, I turn and hug Selene, hoist my treasures by the strap onto my shoulder and then walk without looking back.

Down the steps with my hand in Doug's, all the way to the end of the garden where Zarak grips Doug and Arelstin grabs me, transporting us to the Devil's staircase overlooking the glen of Coe.

Chapter 24

Ellindt:

Zarak and Arelstin have gone on to wait just over the mound, out of sight. I can feel them there and am grateful for the tiny casket of privacy they've left me in.

I can hardly breathe my chest hurts so bad. My eyes feel raw and there's a burning forge where my heart should be.

The rain has finally stopped but the pallor of mourning still swaths the sky. Twenty feet along the rocky shelf I turn back to look at him because I can no longer ignore the compelling call of his soul.

It's as thick and weighted as a ship's chain, and I can stretch it no further without dragging one of us to our death. This is as far as I can go with our love splitting apart my astral ribs to yank my heart out of my chest, anchoring it home, in his capable hands.

Staring without blinking for an age, my eyes dry, the tears tightening my cheeks as they evaporate... and still I stare.

I never want to forget him exactly as he is this second. There stands Douglas MacLeod, braced with sturdy grace on the very granite which birthed the Stone of Destiny. The wind blusters his long hair away from his face, exposing the chiseled chin and strong cheekbones, which between them frame a nobel nose and a mouth which smiles even in rest. It's the face of an exiled king who although he is destitute cannot hide the broad shoulders built for responsibility, or hide the muscles in his legs to carry the weak and the wounded.

His clan kilt waves a flag of surrender across his knees, his boots scuffed and dusty but still willing to tread through the tunnel of tribulation to recapture his kin.

I'm supposed to be his kin.

I walked through the scarlet caille with him and now I feel all that I'll be left with are the scars in scarlet left on my heart where his lips once kissed when he held my face for the first time and branded his ownership on my infinity.

This is wrong, I'm not supposed to leave.

My soul is screaming so loud how can heaven not hear it?

How can the angels ignore this travesty?

The tightness crushing my chest increases when his leather jacket blows open and for just a moment I am looking through him, watching his heart beat so hard it betrays how tough this is for him to stand stock still and watch me abandon him.