Dark Victory (28 page)

“Fire arise!”
Tabby cried louder.

And the fire became an inferno, cutting Kristin off from the doorway. Where Tabby stood, there was not a single spark, and the air was pleasantly cool.

Kristin began to choke. Then her skirts caught on fire and she screamed, beating at them with her hands. She screamed again, the guards rushing into the room, but before they could reach her, her skirts blazed.

Tabby knew she couldn’t go through with this kind of violence and cruelty. She wasn’t a Slayer. Her magic was meant to be used to help others, not hurt or destroy them.
“Fire obey me, fire go out.”

The fire died.

Kristin staggered back, her skirts falling apart, looking at
Tabby, her eyes glazed with pain, fear and hatred. Then she rushed from the room.

The two soldiers backed out, slamming the door.

As it closed, she felt Criosaidh’s evil welling up from the lower floors.

Tabby’s spine hit the wall. She grasped the pendant, and repeated her protection spell. The chamber shifted. The air glimmered. And Criosaidh began to materialize.

“Y
OU HAVE CERTAINLY
improved your ability to leap. You do know, don’t you, that by now MacGregor has put out a Code Red, since we’ve overstayed our historic welcome by an entire seventy-one minutes and five seconds.”

As they paused in the central courtyard of a much more lavish and modern Melvaig Castle, Nick seized Jan’s arm. “How could I not follow Tabby here?”

Jan went still. They both watched Kristin run into the courtyard, coughing, her skirts badly singed and burned. She fell to her hands and knees, gasping for air. “I wish you weren’t right ninety percent of the time.”

“Actually, I’m right ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time.” Nick grinned. But the words weren’t even out of his mouth when fire exploded in the sky above them.

“Must be June nineteenth,” Nick muttered, but he was striding toward Kristin.

“Tabitha’s up there. What should I do?” Jan cried.

Kristin froze on all fours, and her gaze locked with Nick’s. Slowly, with malice, she smiled. “It’s not June nineteenth, Forrester. We will change your history today.”

“Like hell you will.” He smiled coldly back, comprehending her. He would never let the demon witch change history. A huge gust of shockingly cold air hit him, but he refused to budge or be pushed back. “Are you kidding me?”

“Noose, find him,”
she hissed.

He instantly blasted her, thinking about Elizabeth Adler, but as he did, he felt the rope around his neck. He knew it was her magic, and he didn’t try to seize the cord, as nothing would be there. He breathed harder, choking, but he blasted her. She cried out, his energy hurling her into the tower wall.

“Noose, tighten!”

Fuck, he thought, blasting her again, but he was on his knees. Against his own will, he grabbed at the virtual cord.

“Nick!” Jan screamed. Drawing her Beretta, she began firing point-blank and repeatedly into Lafarge.

But the bullets bounced off her, deflecting everywhere.

However, the cord loosened and he stood, energy blazing. Kristin screamed, collapsing onto her back, as chunks of burning stone began falling from the tower above them.

Nick reached her, flipped her, straddled her. “Don’t you fuckin’ die,” he said, yanking her wrists as hard as he could behind her back. He heard her bones break. “Payback for my little Sammie,” he said.

Jan stood over him. “We need info, Nick,” she warned. “Besides, I want the honor of dispatching her.”

Nick leaned his entire body on top of her, the position dominant and sexual. She hissed in fury and he said against her ear, “Who’s giving you orders, bitch? Why did you go to the Carlisle Hotel? A big, motherfucking demon there?”

She turned her face to his and spit.

They both felt the falling boulder at the same time. Nick looked up. For one moment, he thought it a small meteor. He jumped up, seizing Jan, and they dived away as it crashed to the ground, Nick making sure to land on top of Jan to protect her with his body.

And he knew.

He turned his head. The stone had buried Kristin. No one,
not even a witch with an ounce or two of demonic blood, could survive that.

He cursed.

Blayde, Scotland
June 1, 1550

A
LARM CAUSED
him to awaken.

Guy Macleod sat bolt upright in his bed.

Tabitha.

In that instant he knew that she was in danger. But she was in Edinburgh with her sister, Sam, a warrior whom he trusted. And he was confused, for he thought he felt her there, in a quiet and happy moment.

Instead, his senses veered south and he felt her determination, her anger—and her fear. He also felt doubt.

His confusion escalated. Something was terribly wrong! Tabitha had great magic and she never doubted her powers. And then he felt Criosaidh.

He instantly understood that she was at Melvaig. It was oddly familiar—as if he had already been in this moment.

But of course he had. Every moment in time existed infinitely in parallel dimensions—he was old enough and wise enough to understand that now. A part of him would always recognize the most fateful events of their lives.

As he rose from the bed, his gaze veered to a south-facing chamber window. The night sky was still and blue-black, glittering with a billion stars. His senses sharpened. For one moment, he thought the night sky there on fire. But that was impossible.

Or was it?

Guy Macleod leaped. He landed a scant instant later in Melvaig’s central courtyard.
And the sky above was on fire….

Incredulous, he saw huge balls of fire falling into the bailey,
where men, women and children were running for the castle’s front gates, screaming in terror and trying to escape the inferno. But the sky wasn’t on fire—the tower above him was on fire—and it was an inferno.

Even though stone could not burn, chunks of the gray slabs were falling from the tower, the rock ablaze, sizzling as it slammed down, only to burn holes into the bailey ground.

Above him, Tabitha screamed, the sound bloodcurdling.

Criosaidh roared in answering rage.

They were at war.

He had never known so much fear. Worse, it was déjà vu—somehow, he had already been through this, but his memory escaped him. The only thing he was certain of was that she needed him as never before. For he somehow knew that only one witch would survive this night.

“Tabitha!” he roared, and he bounded to the tower door, leaping to the uppermost floor. As he reached the landing, the heat from the fire inside the tower chamber blasted him, burning his face, chest and hands. He saw the fire scorching a solid wall across half of the tower room, and his wife, trapped against the far wall by it, the flames dangerously close to her velvet skirts.

His horror briefly paralyzed him.

Criosaidh stood on the fire wall’s other side, where the rest of the chamber was untouched by the flames. She turned arrogantly to him. “You are too late, Macleod. Tonight she dies…and your life as you know it is over.” She laughed.

The heat had caused him to crouch. He straightened, shocked. In that moment, as Tabitha’s gaze met his, he knew he was looking not at his wife but at the woman he had fallen in love with two-and-a-half centuries ago. Tabitha had crossed time!

The woman in so much jeopardy was achingly innocent and
so terribly young. She’d come from their past, from their first days together. She was inexperienced, no match for Criosaidh now.

“Macleod!” she cried desperately.

He choked. She hadn’t called him by his clan name in centuries.

And she knew he was from her future, because her eyes were wide and shocked.

He hardened. If she died in that fire, the life they had spent together, the life they had built across two-and-a-half centuries, the children and grandchildren they had begotten and raised, would all be destroyed.

And it was what Criosaidh wanted.

Yet in the back of his mind, he had an acute awareness of having tried to save her this way once—and of having failed.

Too much was at stake. Worse, he needed to remember, but the gods always made certain to erase life-altering memories. He had resolved his differences with them over time, but sometimes their ways still angered him.

He blasted Criosaidh with his power, at once furious and determined, but she had wrapped herself in a protective spell and his power fell harmlessly away from her. Now, as it hit the floor and was diverted to the walls behind her, as rock and stone cracked apart, it remained so damned familiar.

He looked at Tabitha, refusing to panic. He’d forgotten how young she’d once been, but she was as beautiful and brave as ever. He was aware that she was using her powers, even before the fire wall shifted and moved back toward Criosaidh. He tried to join his mind with hers as he always did when they battled evil, and he felt her surprise as his power touched and enabled hers. Their eyes met again. It was her first time—it felt like the first time for him, too.

Can ye hear me? Let me aid ye now.

I can hear you…I will not die today, Macleod. I won’t!

And he fell in love with her all over again. He felt a hundred and eleven years old, the age he’d been when he’d first seen her in the flesh in New York.

“Fire be hungry, fire be quick. Get the Macleod bitch,”
Criosaidh said, breaking the moment of union.

Even as she spoke, he knew and he roared “No!” while blasting the black witch again. This time, taken unaware, she gasped in pain and was driven back into the untouched wall, but it didn’t matter.

Tabitha went still as the flames circled her dangerously.

He ran to Criosaidh and seized her with his bare hands. “Stop the fire or die!”

She sneered at him and vanished.

Tabitha screamed.

In horror, he turned and saw her blue velvet gown on fire. And then she was engulfed in the flames.

Tabitha’s frightened amber gaze met his and it was all he could see of her now. But he heard her.

I love you…

He knew these were her last, dying words.

She could not die, not when she was only twenty-nine! It would change their lives, their history, and it would destroy their greatest creation—their children and grandchildren!

And he could not, would not, live without her!

He had lost her this way, before…

“No!” he roared.

The fire erupted, reaching the tower roof, consuming her completely.

“Tabitha!” he screamed.

Then the fire was gone, and there was only the charred ruin of the tower room.

And across the room, upon the floor, he saw the gold
necklace she had worn for two-and-a-half centuries, the amulet he had given her.

It had survived the fire, untouched and unscarred; his wife, who had powerful magic, had not.

It struck him then, in the most shattering moment of his life—she was gone.

“No!” He leaped into time to find her.

An Tùir-Tara
June 1, 1550

S
HE WAS ABOUT TO BE
burned alive.

Tabby was terrified. She did not want to die, not now, not yet! Her life flashed before her eyes—and it was her life with Macleod. She hadn’t even seen him take his vows! But she knew he would, because the man who’d just been with her in the central tower had been strong and old and wise…a Master of Time.

She could not die that day.

She became impossibly still, crouching. She forced the fear aside. And as she did, she started to realize that the fire blazed
around
her, but it wasn’t
touching
her. She was incredulous. Several feet separated her from the flames. And there wasn’t even any heat inside the small protective space where she crouched.

Tabby slowly straightened, amazed. Her spell was so strong now it was protecting her from the fire, or someone else was. She thought she felt her grandmother, hovering watchfully close by.

But Criosaidh was still out there.

Tabby knew she had to finish this.

Only one of them was going to make it out alive.

She put every thought and feeling aside now except for her sheer determination to win.
“Come to me, witch, come to me now. Enter my fire, witch. Come to me now.”

The fire roared, as high as tall fir trees, but Tabby wasn’t afraid. She was entirely focused on her enemy. The fire was her ally, her friend and her weapon. Suddenly she felt the evil and hatred approaching.

She felt herself smile and she murmured, “It’s so cold, isn’t it, Criosaidh? You need to warm yourself in my fire.”

And through the wall of flames, she saw a wind kick up, slamming all the shutters closed in the tower room.

Tabby tensed, shocked. The shutters kept slamming, cracking the stone walls, as the energy gusted through the wall of fire, blasting her face and bare chest with frigid air. There was no mistaking Criosaidh’s ghost.

And the circle of fire seemed to hesitate. But fire did not like the cold.

“Not so smart, ghost,” Tabby murmured.
“Fire arise!”

It blazed.

The shutters flew from the windows, breaking apart and shattering, wood flying everywhere, the evil viciously furious now.

“Come to me, witch, come to me now. Bring me your living form,”
Tabby cried. She had to lure Criosaidh close now and get rid of that demonic spirit!

Through the flames, she saw the dark-haired woman on the landing. Her eyes were glittering with hatred—and shining oddly with the transfixed stare of the enchanted.

“Come to me, witch, escape the cold. Come to me, witch, warm in my fire,”
Tabby chanted softly.

Criosaidh started to walk toward the flames.

The wind whirled violently, turning into a spiraling cyclone, and the ceiling exploded from the roof.

Tabby cringed, covering her head with her arms, ordering the fire to protect her. And as the timbers rained down around her, Criosaidh walked into her fire.

Kneeling, Tabby looked up.

The moment she did, Criosaidh was engulfed in the blaze. As her clothes and hair went on fire, she screamed in pain and terror, her gaze meeting Tabby’s.

Bitch…

Tabby came out of her trance. “Roast in hell,” she screamed back.

Criosaidh staggered away, the flames burning her arms and legs, her clothes, her body. Her screams were bloodcurdling.

She fell, and there was only the blazing fire.

For another moment, Tabby stared at the inferno outside the circle of fire where she stood, almost disbelieving. She had won. Criosaidh was dead, burned alive at An Tùir-Tara, and her ghost seemed to have been vanquished, too.

But it was June 1, 1550, not June 19.

As she had that thought, her entire body gave out. Tabby collapsed.

She cried out, barely able to brace herself as she fell to the hard stone floor. Suddenly she was aware of her exhaustion. She simply could not move. She was drained, depleted, sickened and shaking uncontrollably. She couldn’t think clearly. She wasn’t even certain she had any magic left. She only knew that it was over—and she hated what she’d had to do.

The stone floor was cool against her cheek. Her eyes drifted closed. She was so seriously drained, she wondered if she might die from using the power that she had.

She had to go home.

It was truly over now.

Macleod.

She wanted him desperately. She would find relief in his
arms. But how was she going to get back to Blayde in the thirteenth century? Tabby clawed the stone, trying to get up, but her body refused to heed her now.

She fell back onto her belly, her face. She needed to rest, but only for a moment. And the fire roared around her.

Could she even get out of the circle of fire?

Tabby somehow looked at the circle of fire, shoving to her hands and knees, too weak to even sit up. If only she could lie there for a few moments, trying to find some of her strength. But the urge to go home to Macleod was consuming. It was urgent. He needed her—she somehow knew it. She was confused, because the man who’d been in the tower with her had been so powerful, and he only needed her love. Her head hurt. Macleod needed her.
He was lost, suffering….

She would have to dispel the fire. Tabby forced herself to sit up, panting from the exertion. Instinctively she touched her chest and she jerked. Utter dismay claimed her. The amulet was gone!

She didn’t know what to do. The necklace meant everything to her. It had belonged to Elasaid and Macleod had given it to her so she wouldn’t ever get lost. She was certain it had helped her in her battle with Criosaidh. She breathed hard, tears forming, suddenly dizzy and terribly confused. Of course the talisman was gone—it had been lost at An Tùir-Tara and it would wind up on exhibit at the Met. Except today was June 1, 1550, not June 19. What could that mean?

Tabby shook off her confusion. She was never going to figure it out or, at least, not now. She had miraculously triumphed over both Criosaidh and her spirit. Now she had to get out of the fire and go home to Macleod, because he was in trouble. She had no idea what would happen to history and maybe she shouldn’t care.

She slowly stood and instantly reeled, almost falling over. Instead she caught herself and the fire seemed to back away from her.

Tabby closed her eyes again, fighting for strength and focus.
“Fire go from me,”
she said hoarsely.

The fire simply danced about her, but the flames were waist-high now.

“Fire go from me,”
she cried, trying to put power into her words. The effort was simply too much and she collapsed as she spoke, but the fires vanished.

She was so dizzy and sick that she clung to the floor. For a long moment she could not move or think. She could only lie there, too exhausted to do anything else. The battle had come close to destroying her. She fought the need to pass out, to retch. She needed help, she needed Macleod.

Determined, Tabby started to crawl from the room, across the landing to the stairs. She did not know how she would make it out of Melvaig’s tower if she couldn’t even walk. She looked down the stairwell and despair welled. The journey down it might as well have been a thousand miles.

Where are you, Macleod? What has happened to you?

She had almost expected an answer. There was none.

She half crawled and half slid down the stairs. On the landing below she paused, panting and out of breath. Maybe she would close her eyes and rest….

Tabitha?

About to pass out, her eyes flew open. She was certain she’d just heard Macleod close by. But she was alone on the dark landing. She crawled to the doorway and used a door to claw herself to her feet. Then she simply stood there, clinging to it.

“Tabitha!”

Tabby jerked at the sound of Macleod’s voice—and it was real. She turned and saw him striding toward her, several strapping young Highlanders with him. Their eyes met; his gaze blazed. Tabby exulted. But even as she did, she saw his blisters and burns.

He was the same man who had just tried to fight Criosaidh
with her. It was Macleod, but he was the Master who lived in the sixteenth century—the Master who had tried to reach across time to her at the Met.

He was the man she loved, just older. She loved him desperately and she needed him just then terribly. And he needed her—she saw it on his face and felt it coming from him in huge, hard waves.

But before she could cry out, she felt the world tilt and begin to spin. He ran forward and caught her as she fell.

And looking into his eyes, she inhaled.
He was even more powerful now. But he was blessed. He walked in their light….

“Ye’ll be fine now,” he said, kneeling with her in his arms, his eyes fierce and searching. “I’ll always find ye an’ I’ll never lose ye, even without the pendant.”

His burns had been treated, she saw, and they were already healing. There was a scar on his jaw that she’d never seen before. He looked as if he was in his late thirties—not as if he was twenty-five. But mostly, his eyes had changed. They were the eyes of someone centuries old, someone who had seen and fought everything, someone terribly wise and empowered by the gods. “You took your vows,” she whispered, clasping his jaw.

His smile came and went. Moisture shone in his eyes. “Ah, Tabitha, I took those vows centuries ago.”

“Are you all right?” She stroked his hard jaw. It was the same.

“A few burns canna hurt me, Tabitha, not as long as ye live.”

She touched her throat, which was bare.

“Ye lost it in the fire,” he said softly.

“I’m in the sixteenth century—you’re from the sixteenth century,” she whispered. “But I belong at Blayde in 1298.”

“Aye.” His mouth shifted. “I ken…ye’re so sweet an’ so young!”

Tabby reached for his shoulders and he held her tightly, against his broad, powerful chest. His embrace was the same—
powerful, consuming, impossibly safe and right. “After the fire, you found me at the Met.”

He hesitated. “I thought ye died fer one terrible moment, after ye went up in the flames, and I leaped into time to find ye. I thought to find ye when we started this, so long ago, at the school where ye were teachin’ the children.”

“So there is a beginning?”

“Sometimes we’re not allowed to remember everythin’, Tabitha. I ken we both fought this way together in the fire here before. But I canna really recall it well. ’Tis shadowy, in my mind. I ken I feared I lost ye, that ye died. But ye dinna die.”

“I didn’t die—I won. Elasaid’s amulet is powerful.”

“Aye, ye triumphed. Ye wouldna have done so if it wasn’t what the gods chose fer us.”

Their gazes locked. Tabby hesitated. He had come to New York because of her spell, but their beginning had been that afternoon when she’d seen him at the Met—because of this battle at An Tùir-Tara.

“Tabitha, I came to ye at the exhibit, but ye came to me when I was a lost boy.”

He’d told her that before. “What does that mean?” she whispered, stroking his face.

“Yer soul was seekin’ mine. Yer soul will always seek mine. My soul will always seek yers…no matter what day it is, what month, what year.” He smiled at her, a single tear falling.

Tabby hugged him, burrowing as close as she could get. His love for her was so powerful she was cocooned in it. And his smile was, impossibly, even sexier than when he was young. She looked up. “You’ve gotten so much better with age.”

His gaze turned to dark purple fire. “Dinna tempt me.”

But her body was filled with a reckless urgency now. “I need you.” She needed to celebrate their life and their love. She wanted nothing more. She slid her hand into his hair, which he
now wore very short, and somehow caught several strands. It crossed her mind that this wasn’t really right, although she did not analyze why, and she pulled his face down. His eyes blazed; he covered her mouth with his. His kiss was hot and hard, but the deep hunger was tightly controlled as he’d never been able to control it before.

Tabby kissed him as wildly as she could, as if she hadn’t seen him in centuries, until he gasped and gave over to her. She loved him as never before and she didn’t care if he was young or old. She would always love him this way.

Suddenly he tore his mouth from hers.

“I love you and I want you, Macleod.”

He breathed hard, his eyes dark and hot. “God, I want ye, too. I fergot how it was in the beginning fer us, with ye so hot an’ bothered an’ tryin’ to make up fer years o’ abstinence.”

Her eyes widened.

His smile vanished. “I am verra tempted, but three o’ the boys are standin’ behind us…an’ ye’re in Edinburgh with Sam an’ Brianna—in 2011.”

She cried out, amazed, and then she threw her arms around him and held on, hard. “I don’t want to let go,” she whispered. “I’m afraid to let go!”

He held her back tightly, and it was a long moment before he spoke. “We’ve built a good life, Tabitha. I want ye as much as I always do—so badly I canna stand it. But I willna jeopardize what we have. Ye need to go back to Blayde an’ wait fer me.”

Tabby suddenly went still. She’d been swept up in the moment, but Macleod was out there somewhere, looking for her. “I have to go back, immediately! Do you know what’s happening to us in the thirteenth century?”

He shook his head. “I canna recall. ’Tis fer the best.”

The gods had thought of everything, she thought. And she sat up and turned to look at her sons.

Her sons.
Tall, dark and powerful, three handsome Highlanders stared at her, their eyes wide.

Wow, Tabby thought, and she smiled.

The Highlands
The summer of 1550

H
E SLEPT IN CAVES
or dirt trenches by day; at night he traveled on foot, trying to elude the deamhanain who tracked him. Grief and guilt were his constant companions—and the boy was his companion, too.

One hundred and nineteen days had passed since he had last seen Tabitha die in the fires of Melvaig—four times. One hundred and nineteen days had passed since he had finally crouched on the floor of that stairwell, vomiting helplessly, racked with grief, with MacNeil coldly standing over him, having meted out his punishment as the gods wished for him to do. One hundred and nineteen days ago he had begun his journey across the Highlands, resolved to do what he had to do to return to Tabitha in the thirteenth century, where she waited for him. The gods meant to trap him in the sixteenth century, to keep him from Tabitha, his final punishment for a lifetime of defiance. Let them try. Nothing would stop him from returning to Tabitha. He would not live without her and he would never accept her future death, even if the gods were telling him he must accept their will.