Time Everlastin' Book 5

Time Everlastin’

Book 5

by

Mickee Madden

***

Smashwords
Edition

© 2011 by Mickee
Madden

****************************************************

Smashwords Edition, License
Notes

This ebook is licensed for
your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or
given away to other people. If you would like to share this book
with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each
recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or
it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to
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the hard work of this author.

Cover design by Mickee
Madden

***

Dedicated to my husband,
Steve; Gwen, Carlos, Eric and Christopher;

Buddy and Amy; Brehan and
Dameon.

Also to Matt, Grace, Erik,
Kahl and Alby; Steve, Mary, Ashley and

Patrick; Gerri and Anna; and
Aunt Donna.

Last but never least, to
Michelle and Carey of Salt Lake City.

***

Glossary

afore/before —
anither/another — annsachd/darling — aught/anything

bahookie/buttocks —
canna/cannot — corbie/crow — dinna/don't — efter/after

faither/father — fegs/damn —
ken/know — ither/other — mither/mother

shouldna/shouldn't —
thegither/together — uirisg/offspring of faerie &
mortal

verra/very — wasna/wasn't —
weel/well — willna/will not — winna/won't

wouldna/wouldn't

***

For information on Mickee’s
upcoming ebooks

please email her at:
[email protected]

Chapter 1

If human beings were
designed to wait away most of their lives, "patience" wouldn't be a
four-letter word in sheep's clothing. It was this philosophy that
had advocate Taryn Ingliss on edge.

Five weeks. Five frustrating
weeks retracing her leads on the history of the MacLachlan
Dirk.

She'd had the proverbial
light at the end of the tunnel to keep her spirits up after her
flight from Baird House. It dimmed considerably when she returned
to Aberdeen to re-question Collin Baird—Lachlan's great nephew—on
the rumors Lachlan's mother practiced witchcraft, only to discover
he had died in his sleep a week prior. His grieving sister—another
good source of information—Margaret Cunningham, had flown her
eighty-two year old carcass off to Europe immediately after the
funeral.

Taryn was disappointed, but
not once did she embrace the possibility of failing. She was a
woman used to taking back roads to obtain a story, her curiosity a
bloodhound hot on the trail of a fox. The only conclusion was in
the capture of the prize, which in this case was a piece of history
entwining Lachlan Baird and her ancestor, Robert
Ingliss.

Her leads had met a dead end
here, too, at the Astory Inn on the Isle of Lewis.

So dead, in fact, she
questioned her skills to unravel the mystery behind the MacLachlan
dirk and its connections to the two men.

Until yesterday
morning.

From Edinburgh, to Aberdeen,
to the Isle of Lewis, she had interviewed every professor, wiccan,
and nonprofessional self-ordained expert on ancient writings she
could track down. Each one—fourteen in all—translated the runes
alike.

Passage Key Karok
on both sides of the blade.

Family Of Karok
on each side of the handle.

Karok.

The name was a searing thorn
in her determination to unlock the mystery.

All agreed the dirk was some
kind of ceremonial dagger.

Witchcraft?

Maybe, but no one had
encountered the name Karok in any of their research. One professor
suggested the dirk was used in human sacrifices. Passage key
represented the liberation of the sacrifice's spirit during the
offering to one of the gods. Karok was most likely the name of the
high priest.

Taryn didn't buy into this
theory. Actually, she had yet to hear one that held an element of
truth—as in light-bulbing her instinctual take of a given
truth.

Dead ends. Until
yesterday.

"Is your meal no' to yer
likin'?"

Taryn locked her teeth
against a retort and forced a smile through her taut facial muscles
for the benefit of the woman who spoke. Mavis MacLachlan sat across
the dining table, her snow white hair reminding Taryn of a Kewpie
doll, her pale blue eyes lost within the layers of wrinkles
surrounding them. Taryn guesstimated her to be in her nineties. She
was thin and stoop-shouldered, her head and hands in constant
motion.

"My stomach's still queasy,"
Taryn lied. Any concoction stuffed and served in an animal's
intestine would never pass muster with her palate. She also had a
dislike for eating anything she didn't recognize, and the Astory
Inn served up some scary dishes. Meats were sweets and sweets were
bland. Little wonder her parents had left Scotland and moved to the
States. A supreme pizza or a hamburger with the works was what she
craved.

"Tis a sin ta waste food,"
Mavis said, her voice as nerve-assaulting as fingernails raking a
chalkboard.

"Yes, ma'am," Taryn
said.
Mind your own business, you old
biddy,
she thought.
This is the same food you tried to foist on me last
night!
"My stomach's still a bit queasy,"
she repeated, hoping this time the words penetrated the family's
selective hearing.

Seven others sat at the
large oval table, all watching Taryn with hooded
suspicion.

Why run an inn if you
dislike accommodating guests?
she mentally
challenged.
I would have checked out
yesterday afternoon as planned, admitting defeat and finally
letting go of my obsession, until fate at long last stepped
in.

A serendipitous bit of
eavesdropping on you, Katherine, and one of the other guests,
talking in the hall outside my room.

The elderly woman had asked
to stay another day. Her gout was acting up. Katherine was adamant
that all the guests leave by two. At first listen, Taryn attributed
it to Katherine's rudeness. Gout was gout, after all. Had Katherine
said nothing more, Taryn's nose for news wouldn't have snared a
whiff of intrigue.

"We dinna rent ou' our rooms
durin' a full moon," Katherine had said, her whining voice clipped
with finality.

Ten AM.

By two, the other guests
were hastened out of the inn and on their way to parts unknown.
Taryn had used the time to stage a devious plan. When Flan arrived
to carry out her luggage, she was knelt over the toilet, hair and
face dampened to lend the appearance of a fever. She moaned
piteously, and claimed she believed she was suffering from food
poisoning.

One by one the family filed
in, scrutinizing her heightened color—benefit of holding her breath
for excruciating minutes—and proffering various herbal drinks and
other liquids to induce a miraculous recovery. The last of the
pseudo well-wishers was Mavis herself. Conjuring up an image of
cramming raw liver down her throat—she could never abide it cooked,
even!—Taryn was rewarded with a violent upheaval of her stomach.
Mavis squealed with disgust and fled the room, closing the door
behind her. Taryn remained at the toilet for nearly an hour longer,
full-bodied groans intact, then tooth-pasted the foul taste from
her mouth and crawled into bed.

There was no doubt she would
be left alone until the morning, but the deception couldn't end for
at least another thirty-two hours, when a full moon would slink
into the night sky.

While the household slept
during the wee hours of the morning, she poured sugar into the gas
tank of her rented Volvo. She feigned sleeping until late
afternoon, and wasted another hour using the bathroom, her
portrayal of suffering dry heaves deserving of an Oscar. Despite
her "apparent" misery, Katherine insisted she leave by
dusk.

Dougie loaded her luggage
into the Volvo's trunk, opened the driver's door, and gestured to
her to climb in. She barely contained a grin when he steadfastly
remained a few feet away, arms folded across his chest, a sneer
enhancing his homely face.

Voila!

Nothing like a stuttering
engine to zap the sass right out of a man. The Volvo declined
Dougie, Charles, Flan and Gil's efforts to fix the problem. The
only local repair shop was closed. The owner had died two days
prior. For his advantageous timing, Taryn wished him a glorious
existence in the afterlife.

The game was
afoot.

At one hundred pounds a
night, one expected better food and certainly friendlier behavior.
At one hundred pounds a night, it was damn suspicious for the inn
owners to want their guests gone. And what did a full moon have to
do with anything?

Tonight was a full
moon.

Maybe this creepy family
turned into werewolves....

Seven pairs of eyes
continued to stare at her as if she were a fat fly about to pounce
on their dinners. She found it amusing how adeptly they forked food
into their mouths while their gazes never wavered from her. Amusing
and...
eerie.
Mavis'
daughter, Katherine, and Katherine's husband, Gil, reminded Taryn
of weasels harboring a secret joke. Katherine's face was longer and
narrower than her husband's. Like her mother's, her white-streaked
dark hair had a tendency to poof up and outward, whereas her
husband's hair had thinned and headed south toward his
nape.

Katherine's eyes were the
same shade as her mother's. Gil's were murky something. Hazel
perhaps.

Katherine and Gil's son,
Charles, and daughter, Katie, were another study in peculiar. Both
in their early forties, neither had married and were seldom seen
apart. They were quiet, soft spoken, and abnormally shy for people
involved in a very public-oriented business. At first Taryn thought
them homely, a trait passed down from their parents. It wasn't
that, though. They were plain people, not partial to makeup or
complimenting styles of dress, or any improvement on what nature
had given them. Taryn strongly believed their existences meant no
more or no less than what the inn brought them each day.

They existed for the
business. Or rather, what the business enabled them to do, which
was to perform as self-appointed guardians over the Callanish
Standing Stones.

Taryn nearly jumped out of
her skin when the vibrating mode of her pager went off. Although
the sound wasn't unusually loud, only annoying, it clacked rapidly
against her metallic powder case. She dug it out of the purse
dangling from a strap on her left shoulder. Mumbling beneath her
breath, she glanced at the green letters on the face of the
instrument, then cleared it.

Dougie and Flan MacLachlan
eyed her as if she had grown another head. The brothers were three
years apart and in their thirties. They were cousins far removed
from Mavis' side but nonetheless a part of the
"Watchdog-MacLachlans," as Taryn had dubbed them. Flan's bright red
hair was worn close-cropped. Dougie was “tangles-are-in-style”
blond. Both had dark eyes, narrow faces, and weak chins. Tall and
beefy, they resembled bouncers and she suspected that was their
purpose at the inn.

Hadn't they derailed her
from approaching the megaliths two nights ago?

She found it particularly
curious that daylight visits were encouraged.

Why the paranoia come
night?

"My editor," Taryn said
lamely, indicating the pager before dropping it back into her
purse. She lifted her fork and inwardly grimaced at the thought of
putting any part of the intestine thing into her mouth.

"There's no story here for
ye, as I told ye on yer last visit," Mavis chided. She passed her
family a conspiratorial look, her head bobbing on a wrinkled neck.
"The stones are fine ta visit. Ye canna write anymair abou' them
than wha's already been written."