Highland Protector (MacCoinnich Time Travels Book Five) (3 page)

Colleen’s gaze narrowed. “But someone
saw you.”

It wasn’t a question.

“A child,” Rory reported. “A girl,
not more than eight or ten. She saw us entering the tower.”

“And?” Colleen asked.

“Druid. No doubt. Rory pulled a
fireball in his palm and she attempted to do the same, smiled, and kept silent,”
Kincaid reported.

Colleen once again moved her eyes to
him. “You’ve spoken with Giles about the girls?”

Kincaid nodded. “I have.”

Rory nudged his arm. “What about
them?”

Without waiting for Colleen to
elaborate, Kincaid did. “Giles recently discovered first hand accounts of
several children—all girls—who’ve reported time traveling warriors who helped
in battles from the past.”

“We’re just learning about this now?”
Allen asked.

Colleen leaned forward. “I’ve known
about them for some time. But until now, we didn’t know if the girls actually
interacted with any of us. Guess now we know.”

“I thought we have always been
invisible,” Owen said.

“If we were completely invisible we
would never know exactly when we were needed,” Colleen told them.

“I thought your visions told us where
to go, where to fight.” Rory’s normal smile fell as he spoke.

“They do. But I have often had Giles
consult his books to double check the time period. Make sure.”

This was news to Kincaid. If their
trips in time were recorded somewhere they could be traced and attacked by the
Others. Any of their trips in time could be virtual traps. The thought left him
cold. He glanced at Colin, who didn’t seem fazed by the news. “You knew about
this?”

He shrugged. “We’re twins. Little
happens I don’t know about.”

“So we’ve been watched?”

Colleen shook her head. “Not watched.
Seen. There are vague references of traveling warriors, who understood the
family
,
who arrived long enough to help, and then left.” She lifted her fingers and
quoted the word family in the air. “The references in the books came from
mother to daughter and no one else.”

“You mean these girls never told
their fathers…brothers?”

“Not that we can determine at this
point. Giles is cross-referencing his books.” Colleen once again pinned her
gaze on her brother. “I didn’t know Giles told anyone else about his discovery.
I told him to keep the information between the two of us.”

“Give the man a break, Colleen. I walked
into the library and found him franticly turning pages,” Kincaid told her.
Others in the room laughed. All of them knew Giles’ perplexity when he worked
on a puzzle in his books and how very narrow minded he became when he wanted to
determine the end point. “He started rambling about the children knowing we
were there, and how he swore he’d never read or heard of this before. I asked
what he was talking about and Giles, being Giles, rambled on long enough for me
to understand the situation. I suppose it’s impossible for us to have gone back
in time as many times as we have without ever being discovered.”

Owen leaned back, ran a hand over his
bald head. “I’m surprised there aren’t tapestries with all our mugs stitched on
them.”

“Who says there aren’t?” Colin
teased.

The conversation went around the
table like that for several minutes, the men laughing and decompressing from
their battle. When it became apparent there wasn’t more to report, Colleen
dismissed the lot of them.

They moved to the dining room where
they filled their stomachs and shared battle stories. The men in Kincaid’s
century weren’t terribly different than those in the time from which they’d all
just returned.

Except he and his men were much
better armed.

Chapter Three

Mrs. Dawson hunched over several
books in her library, carefully searching for something that would help Amber
with her plight. “Oh, Frank,” she said to her long-dead husband in a whisper.
“We should have made some order of these old books while you were alive.”

She could practically hear her late
husband’s gruff voice saying they had plenty of time for such menial tasks.
He’d been a collector, not a reader. Oh, he’d enjoyed many of the books in the
room, but there was no possible way he could have read them all even if he had
lived four hundred years. As it turned out, he lived a lively seventy-six years
before leaving her alone in the big house filled with books.

After pushing the fourth book away,
and reaching for the fifth, Mrs. Dawson decided warm tea might aide in her
search. Ever since Helen, Simon, and Amber came to be a part of her family…her
home, she limited the time her hired help stayed in the house. The result was
moving her old bones more than she’d have liked.

She was walking back into the library
with her tea, trying her best to keep the contents in her cup from spilling
when Helen intercepted in the hall. “Let me take that for you.”

“Thanks, dear. I’m not as steady as I
used to be I’m afraid.”

Helen was the closest thing to a
daughter she’d ever had. They’d met years before when she stumbled upon the
auction house where Helen worked. Helen, having no family of her own, developed
a kinship to Mrs. Dawson and from there the two of them became fast friends.

“Where are we headed?” Helen asked as
she moved aside to let Mrs. Dawson lead the way.

“The library.”

Helen placed the tea on the table
where a stack of books took up most of the room.

“Looking for anything in particular?”

Mrs. Dawson settled into her chair
with a heavy sigh. “I was hoping to find something to ease Amber’s suffering.”

Helen eyes drifted toward the
ceiling. “She really is hurting, isn’t she?”

“Yes. And it’s getting worse.”

Helen sat in an opposite chair. “She
hasn’t left her room since she told us about the baby.” That had been days ago.

Mrs. Dawson reached over and patted
Helen’s hand. “Don’t blame yourself. We have to believe she’ll find something
to ease her pain. Her mother was adamant she stay in this time to find a cure.”
Lora MacCoinnich’s gift of premonition spoke of Amber’s demise if she stayed in
the sixteenth century, which was why Lora and Ian had entrusted their daughter
to Simon’s care in the twenty-first century.

“How can a Druid gift have a cure?
And why would any of our gifts cripple us like hers is doing?”

“I wish I knew. All the years I’ve
sat among these books and never really understood the messages within the
pages. Mr. Dawson and I collected them, but didn’t read nearly enough of them.”

Helen glanced up at the bookshelves
and stood. “Maybe I can find the answer…if it’s here.” The greatest Druid gift
Helen possessed was her ability to find missing objects and even people.

“I should have thought about that
before searching myself,” Mrs. Dawson said as she sat back and sipped her tea.

Helen stood before one of the
shelves, closed her eyes, and lifted her hands. Mrs. Dawson had witnessed her searching
for answers with her Druid gift before. Helen moved slowly about the room in
complete silence for several minutes. She paused in front of the wall of
windows and lifted both of her hands before clutching both hands into fists.
“This is the only space I feel any energy.”

In front of the window were two high
back chairs and a single lamp.

Helen lifted the cushion of the chair
as if perhaps there were a hidden book under the fabric. “Nothing,” she
whispered.

“You felt something.”

“Yes, but obviously not the right
thing. Unless you have a hidden floor vault.”

Mrs. Dawson smiled. “Not in this
room.” There was one in the room Helen now shared with Simon, and another in
the basement safe room.

Helen twisted back to the window,
opened the pane, and reached beyond the opening. She moved her hands back
inside and shook her head. “No. It’s inside.”

Mrs. Dawson pushed from her chair and
made her way to Helen’s side. “Shall we try and ask for help. Like Simon taught
us?”

Actively using their Druid gifts was
new for both of them. Simon had shown them how to work together and ask the Ancients
for help with life’s more difficult problems.

“Do you think we can do that without
Simon? He’ll be home in a couple of hours.”

“I don’t see why we should wait. If
it doesn’t work, we can try again when he’s here.” According to Simon, the more
Druid power used the better chances of achieving success.

Helen shrugged and moved about the
room to arrange several candles in a circle surrounding the reading chairs by
the window. After closing the blinds, Helen placed a finger to each of the
candles and sparked the wicks to life.

“You’ve gotten better at that,” Mrs.
Dawson said.

“Simon is a good teacher. I still
can’t do it from across the room like he does.”

“Give it time.”

With the candles lit, Helen clasped
hands with Mrs. Dawson and shrugged. “Here goes nothing.”

Mrs. Dawson closed her eyes and
thought of Amber while Helen chose her words carefully.

“In this day and in this hour, we ask
the Ancients for their power. Bring to me what I can’t see, to help ease
Amber’s misery.”

A familiar breeze lifted the hair on
Mrs. Dawson’s neck and the hair on her arms stood on end. She opened her eyes
to find Helen looking around the room. Energy bounced around the space,
shifting the curtains and the flames from the candles. Yet nothing else
happened.

“Please.”

“Are you sure we’re in the right
spot?” Mrs. Dawson asked.

“Yes.”

The room kept up a constant buzz, not
letting go of their power. It was as if the Ancients were waiting for the right
request to give them what they needed.

Mrs. Dawson tried her own appeal. “In
this day and in this hour, we beg the Ancients for their power. Whether from
the future, present, or past, bring us the knowledge that this spot possesses.”

A blinding light filled the room with
a crack of lightning.

Mrs. Dawson’s heart leapt and Helen
let go of her hands to circle protective arms around her.

As quickly as the room exploded with
noise, it stopped and silence filled every corner.

Mrs. Dawson hadn’t realized she’d
closed her eyes until she opened them. Her gaze fell on a lone man calmly
sitting in one of the reading chairs with glasses perched on his nose and a
large book tipping from his fingertips.

“Well, that was a whole lot of noise
for nothing,” Helen said.

“Um, dear?” Mrs. Dawson nodded behind
Helen toward the man. When Helen turned around, she gasped.

****

Kincaid found Giles where he’d left
him. He sat with a book in his lap, his head buried in the pages.

“Find anything?” Kincaid asked as he
walked in the room and closed the door behind him. The others had gone to bed
and only a small watch kept their eyes on the compound.

“Nothing about a painting of a single
woman as you described. I’ve dug further back to see if there is any reference
to it.”

Disappointment filled Kincaid’s
heart. If anyone could find out who the woman was, it would be Giles.

Giles turned the pages in his book
and delivered a brief history lesson. “You see, back in the times you just
visited, tapestries were often used to record the people, the history. Only the
very rich and nobility could afford portraits. And we know our ancestors were
private people.”

“Because they risked persecution.”

“Some things don’t change. The
difference between then and now is that back when Druids were accused of
witchcraft, they faced being murdered, burned, or beheaded. The last few
hundred years we’ve been used as lab rats, held hostage and studied.” Giles
didn’t need to remind him of these facts. Kincaid understood why they lived
outside the normal population.

“Are you suggesting the portrait I
saw was of a non-Druid woman?”

“I suppose it’s possible, but I doubt
it.”

Kincaid leaned against the center
table, crossed his arms over his chest. “There are very few unwed descendants
of the MacCoinnich’s through the generations leading up to the seventeen
hundreds. Maybe the woman died before she could marry?”

“I thought of that.” Giles turned
another page, barely glancing over the book to capture Kincaid’s gaze. “Which
is why I’m searching for the life spans of the family. The problem is, we can’t
be sure the family members died young, or if they traveled to a different time.
We know the first time travelers were direct descendants of Ian and Lora. It’s
said that all their children traveled in time at one point. Duncan and Finlay
were the oldest, the first to move forward in time and back again.”

Kincaid knew the story well. Duncan
and Finlay MacCoinnich had been instructed by the Ancient Ones to protect their
world by finding Grainna, the most powerful, greedy, evil Druid ever known and
stopping her from destroying every Druid and thousands of innocent lives. Most
of the missions Kincaid and his men undertook also protected the lineage of
this family. But none of them took them back to the time of Grainna, ever. It
was hypothesized their interference might change the outcome of that final
battle. They couldn’t risk that Grainna would become the victor, and not the MacCoinnich’s.
Travel to the late fifteen hundreds was off limits. Always.

“I remember the stories, Giles. If
I’m not mistaken, the middle sister married a knight.”

“Right. And there is some speculation
the youngest sister died in the final battle, though some reports state she
survived the battle, only to die later after a long illness.” Giles lifted the
book in his lap. “This book has references from the first families’
grandchildren. I’m searching to see if they document anything about their
direct aunts and uncles.”

“What happened to the youngest
brother?”

“It’s vague. But it could be because
the family clouded themselves in secrecy, or perhaps it could be he traveled
beyond their time. I’m hoping to find the answer here. If not, I’ll call the
Keep in the morning and request a link into their database.”

Kincaid ran a hand over his face,
smoothed down the hair on his chin. “I can’t shake the feeling I saw that
painting for a reason.” And he couldn’t. During their dinner, he kept picturing
the woman, her eyes.

The hair on his arms stood on end.

“I’ll find out who she is, Kincaid.”

He turned to leave Giles to his work.
“Oh, Giles…what were the names of the MacCoinnich daughters again?”

“Myra was the oldest.” Kincaid
glanced over his shoulder to find Giles turning pages of the book. “Amber was
the youngest. The one we think died young.”

Amber?

The air in the room changed with the
mention of Amber’s name. Kincaid’s palms started to itch.

He looked over at Giles whose
attention shifted from the book to the fireplace as it burst into white-hot flames.
Before Kincaid could ask if Giles summoned the fire, the room rumbled and
Giles—along with his book—disappeared.