Time Everlastin' Book 5 (3 page)

"Are ye sleepin'?" Katherine
asked, her tone loud enough to be heard in the next room. Her voice
lowered when she added, "Tis no' yer concern wha' goes on
here."

Momentarily, the door
closed. Taryn waited an indefinite time before sitting up and
staring in its direction.

What is going on?
Oh, Katherine, you won't feel quite so cocky when
you learn I beat you at your own game.

Climbing out of bed, Taryn
pulled the T-shirt over her head and stashed it beneath the
mattress and box spring. She arranged the pillows beneath the
covers to give the impression a body occupied the bed. She placed
her flats into the knapsack, deciding to wait until she was outside
before putting them on. She removed an empty wallet that resembled
the used one in her purse, and emptied the purse into the knapsack.
With the fake wallet zipped inside, she set it on the nightstand.
If someone came into the room again to check on her, the sight of
her purse would reinforce her presence.

Finally, she closed all the
compartments on the knapsack, slipped her arms through the straps
and settled it at her back.

The thrill of adventure
pulsed through her veins as she left her room, but the silence in
the house was quick to cast a pall over her excitement.

It was weighty,
watchful,
omniscient.

Taryn reached the first
floor landing and heard a soft rustling of fabric coming from the
direction of the parlor. She eyed the short distance to the front
door, decided against making a run for it, and dashed down a dark
hall in the opposite direction. Stopping, regulating her breathing,
she searched the darkness. She thought it odd no hall lights were
on, but then Scots were known to pinch pennies—at least, according
to her mother.

"A penny saved is a penny
collecting interest," Eilionoir would say.

A whisper-soft hum
accompanied the rustling. Taryn groped for a doorknob. The family
bedrooms were on the far side of the inn. Finding a knob, she eased
it clockwise, opened the door, and slipped inside. She closed the
door and kept an ear pressed to the wood. The nightwalker came
closer. Closer. The humming drowned out the sound of the material
now.

Closer still.

Taryn's heart beat wildly
behind her breast. She wasn't panicking. Women like her didn't
panic, just anticipated the enemy's next move. But her heart
slammed into her throat when the knob turned and the door moved
toward her. She flattened against the adjacent wall. The air in her
lungs expanded, straining against the painfully extended tissue.
The soft glow of a hand-held candle preceded Mavis MacLachlan's
entrance. Her free hand clutched the side of a flannel nightgown,
lifting the ruffled hemline off the floor. Tiny slippered feet
padded across the room. The woman had a surprisingly sprite
step.

She continued to hum while
she used her candle to light others across the room, eleven in all,
Taryn counted.

Perhaps there were more.
Something else distracted her.

She was in the
shrine.

The Broc MacLachlan
Shrine.

One of the ancient writing
"experts" she had interviewed in Stornaway, had talked about the
shrine when Taryn mentioned she was on her way to the Astory Inn.
When she asked Katherine about visiting it, the woman had said the
room was now closed to tourists, due to damage to the
mural.

More lies.

An inexplicable coldness
permeated her bones and turned her blood to ice. The candle-glow
bathed the nine-foot, full-bodied portrait in an ethereal
luminance, lending the illusion the figure depicted was alive and
about to leap from the mural.

The artist had taken
painstaking care in every detail. Long, riotous dark hair.
Chest-length beard. Black eyes that seemed to stare directly at
Taryn, reprimanding her for trespassing into his space. She
believed she saw a pulse throb at his blue-veined temples. And
could it be her imagination that what she could see of his mouth,
formed a grimmer line as she watched?

The artist had made him
larger than life. A Highland demigod amongst the decedents of his
immediate clan. His broad shoulders, his imperious bearing, the
defiant angle he cocked his head, bespoke of a power unto
himself.

What had he done to warrant
this family's undying loyalty?

Taryn was sure it went
beyond hero-worship. Heroes were cheap these days. Turn on any
television to any channel.

Thump-thump.
Thump-thump.

Taryn gulped against the
psychological wedge of fear in her throat. Distinctly, she heard a
heartbeat. Not her own. Her's raced.

Thump-thump.
Ever louder. Surrounding her.
Thump-thump.

Taryn edged to slip into the
hallway when the old woman spoke, her words taking Taryn
aback.

"Tis a fine full moon, ma
lad." Gazing up at the portrait's austere features, she sighed
emotively. "I'll no' be around for many mair. If only I could see
ye again wi' ma old eyes."

What a basket case,
Taryn thought.

"I made ye a fine blanket to
keep ye warm in body and spirit. Tis ma birthday gift to ye. Would
ma old bones take it, I would be ou' there this eve to see ye ride
amongst the stones."

A ghost? His ghost appears
during a full moon?

Thummp-thump.
Thummp-thump.

The unworldly heartbeat
slowed.

A sound resembling a sob
escaped the trembling old woman.

"I alone have no' feared
seein' ye. I alone. Will ye miss me when I die? Have ye even known
I watched ye all these years?"

Mavis shook her lowered head
then gazed up at the face in the portrait.

"If ye can hear me, ken I
will carry ye in ma heart ever-efter. I ask only ye deliver the
promised treasure to our kin. We have waited long, we
have."

Taryn shivered as she locked
eyes with the mural-man. His image wavered. For a horrifying moment
she expected him to step from the wall and charge at
her.

"Broc," the old woman said
in a raspy, chilling tone, "ye do this for us, and we will await ye
at heaven's gate."

It surprised Taryn to
realize she was fleeing down the hall. Her heart jack-hammering,
she disabled the alarm system by the door—having watched Katherine
use the pad the first night of her return from months ago—and
hastened outside. The door closed with nary a sound.

A watchful eye on the house
and grounds, Taryn loped barefoot to the edge of the front yard,
halted and put on her flats, then lit into a run down the
dirt.

Broc MacLachlan's
ghost!
her mind sang jubilantly.

So, maybe the "mystery" here
had nothing to do with Karok. Maybe she would never know the full
story behind the Baird-Ingliss history. Without a doubt, though, a
sighting of the revered
Broc
MacLachlan
would certainly compensate her
for all her lost time.

As she distanced herself
from the inn, her rampant imagination deafened her to the heartbeat
following in her wake, shifting and beckoning her from the ancient
site that was her destination.

Chapter 2

The Callanish Standing
Stones situated about a mile south from the inn, made Taryn's years
of working out in gyms and jogging pay off. She focused on reaching
the site, although she didn't know what to expect once she
arrived.

The mural was of the
original Broc MacLachlan. A plaque at the base read:

Broc MacLachlan, 1771 -
1799.

The Broc who Mavis yearned
to see again had to be his ghost...or perhaps a
descendant?

But what does the full moon
have to do with anything?

Maybe he's a
werewolf
. She laughed at herself.
Maybe he's the restless spirit of a werewolf, and
your soul is about to become his dinner.

Dan would go for an original
werewolf piece. Our last release was popular—bogus as hell, but
sold off the stands. Yeah. Personalize it, Taryn. A reporter's
terror-filled night at an ancient, haunted site.

Her lungs began to feel the
strain of her flight when she spied the stones ahead. They loomed
in the night, the darkness more a twilight, benefit of the
gloaming. In the summer, the sun didn't set but hovered along the
horizon as the world spun on its axis. It was an eerie kind of
nighttime, lending a surrealistic ambiance to the land.

A drizzle fell, cold
considering the warm air of minutes ago. The closer she came to her
destination, the more the temperature dropped.

She had studied the layout
of the stones and knew them by rote. The site sat atop a plateau
overlooking Loch Roag, absent of trees and bushes, and relatively
flat. The Lewisian gneiss stones resembled petrified sentinels
reaching to the sky, the ground surrounding them peat bogs. The
great configuration of this site lay in the fact the forty-plus
standing stones formed a Celtic Cross.

Taryn had read the tallest
stone, a fifteen-and-a half-foot menhir, was considered a key or
focus. The word "key" had jumped out at her.

Key as in the MacLachlan
dirk?

She couldn't help but
fantasize that the dirk would somehow fit into a crevice in the
menhir and reveal something invaluable, something that would
ultimately change her life.

Her gaze scanning the area
for one of the MacLachlan two-legged watchdogs, she stooped and
hurried along a three-foot high, dry stone wall. She was heading
west, toward the south end of the site. The drizzle grew colder,
dampness seeping through her clothing and into her
bones.

A tight feeling weighted her
lungs.

Closing in on the site, she
realized the silence held an element of warning. But for the sound
of her flats mashing moist earth, there was nothing. Not a breeze
stirred amongst the stones. Not an insect called. Not a dog howled
at the full moon, spookily resplendent in the gloaming.

The wall ended a short
distance from the west arm of the cross. She dashed between the
rows of gradually taller stones, running until she reached the
center menhir. The silence in the heart of the cross caused her own
to race painfully. Silence and absolute stillness. The combination
stabbed her with apprehension. She considered returning to the inn,
to her bed, comforted by the sounds most houses emit at night:
rustling, creaks and groans, and the whisperings of tenants long
dead.

Taryn paused long enough to
accommodate a shudder. When it waned a lethargy remained in her
muscles she didn't care to analyze. At least not now. She had the
distinct impression that countless eyes watched her. Inhuman eyes,
dissecting her motives for intruding upon a site believed to have
been constructed around 1800 BC. Taryn's research on the area had
also revealed that Leodhas, the Gaelic name for Lewis, means
marshy. Most of the island is covered by a layer of peat, the
deposits started some 5000 years ago. The Lewisian gneiss rock is
believed to be twenty-nine hundred million years old—nearly half as
old as the Earth.

Knowing the facts didn't
ease her jitters.

Not even seeing the dirk
protruding from Lachlan's chest three months ago had affected her
like this. It was as if she had unwittingly given a piece of her
soul to the stones, offered it up to some ancient god guarding
them.

She backed away ten paces,
her gaze creeping up the flat facing of the reigning stone, the
heart of the site. It stood inside a ten-yard-wide circle of
twelve, twelve-foot-high menhirs. An austere beauty radiated from
it. Its base was broad. About a third of the way up was a bulge
that resembled an elbow. Instead of straight lines, the stone
appeared to stoop slightly toward the top, the crown of which was
flat and sharply angled.

A faint hum emanated from
the smooth surface.

Taryn refused to believe it
was real. To do so would tip the scales of her
imagination.

A not unpleasant vibration
swept across her skin from the tips of her toes, to the top of her
head. The drizzle turned to icy beads of rain, and she squinted at
the haze of sunlight at the horizon, where across the loch, the
distant Sleeping Woman of the Moor mountain range was but a
silhouette.

A sudden breeze, no more
than a breath across one cheek, caused her to shut her eyes tightly
and mentally chant:

Heebie-jeebies go away,
don't come back again this day.

Heebie-jeebies go away,
don't come back again this day.

It was nighttime actually,
but she couldn't think of a fitting rhyme.

Her eyes shot open when she
detected footfalls. Not forty yards away, Gil and Flan carried
something between them. At first, Taryn thought it was a body. It
paralyzed her momentarily, the spell breaking when she realized the
men were headed in her direction. She stood behind one of the
twelve-foot menhirs, a breath trapped in her lungs, her muscles
cramped.