Love Everlastin' Book 3 (33 page)

Root o' magic, ma heart does
hold,

Ta help me undo anither's
deed.

Root o' love and honor, ma
heart does hold,

take from me ma healing
seed.

Root o' compassion, ma heart
does hold,

From earth to palm to one in
need."

Beth returned to Winston's
side. With half an eye on the blue glow pulsing between Deliah's
hands, she dabbed away the blood on his chest, now and then
offering him an encouraging smile. He was tense and intermittently
staring at Deliah's hands in something akin to horror and disgust.
His hands remained balled at his sides and his breathing was
labored. Perspiration beaded his ashen face although the room was
chilly.

Deliah's eyes appeared
glassy as they locked with his. He could see the sickly tension in
his face reflected in her enigmatic orbs, and a shuddering breath
spilled past his lips before he could suppress it. His gaze lowered
to her hands. A blue glow was visible, seeming to emanate from her
skin rather than the root. She rotated her hands, so the right one
was now on the bottom. Her left hand moved to her lap, while the
other, the cupped palm of which now supported a blue claylike mass,
moved toward his chest. Hot liquid shot up into his throat and he
swallowed reflexively as his eyes widened on the bizarre poultice.
It thrummed with the rhythm of a heart. He could hear its beat in
his ears, its cadence matching the erratic drumming of his own
heart.

As she dipped her hand over
the wound—a motion he felt he was witnessing in slow motion—he
tried not to let his burgeoning panic surface. Even as a child,
he'd never believed in anything remotely fanciful. Santa Claus. The
Easter Bunny. Monsters hiding in closets or shadows. For as far
back as he could remember, reality was nightmare enough, the stuff
that kept him awake at night as a young boy, trembling beneath his
bed covers. The reality laid open in his mind since his birth was
usually more fantastic than anything anyone's imagination could
produce. He'd experienced abstract insanity from external psychic
emissions. He'd experienced labor and birth. Death. Every level of
physical and mental existence known to the human condition. At
least he thought he had.

Her gaze eerily unwavering
in its intense focus on his eyes, she lowered the mashed root to
his wound. At first he felt only its coldness and its fibrous
texture against his fevered flesh. He grimaced then cast the fay a
pleading glance. A hint of a smile played across her lips. Her
right hand remained canopying the root. The glow remained, although
it appeared to be gradually dimming.

She repeated the chant, her
zephyrous voice mesmerizing, seeping into the darkest reaches of
his mind and creating a dawn of tranquility to fill him. He felt
himself relaxing. The mattress beneath him seemed like a cradling
cloud.

Hot tingling seized his
wound. He gasped and would have yanked away her hand and the mass,
but his limbs were both weighted and buoyant, unwilling to move no
matter how great his frantic need. Burning liquid seemed to pass
through his opened flesh.

He heard Beth cry, "It's
hurting him! Deliah, stop!" But Deliah only stared at him in her
trancelike state. He was want to ask her to stop as well, but he
couldn't bring himself to speak.

Moments later, the searing
sensations waned to pleasant tingling. His wound itched and he
squirmed and wished he could scratch the area to relieve the
annoyance. He noticed the blue glow was barely visible. As it
waned, the tingling waned, until no glow was seen, or sensation
remained. With a deep breath he believed was her way of purging
herself of the spell's grip, Deliah lifted her right
hand.

Gasps rang out from the
others in the room. The air stirred with an unseen force. Winston
gawked down at the smooth, unmarred flesh covering his chest. The
root mash was gone, nothing at all remaining to verify it had
existed. He was conscious of the mattress' solidity beneath him. Of
the wholeness of his body. Of feeling physically energized and
mentally nurtured.

"My God," Laura whispered, a
hand lifting to her throat.

The fingertips of Deliah's
right hand moved down Winston's chest. Delightful chills passed
beneath her sensuous trail and he found himself breathless and
sexually aroused. To hide the latter, he rolled onto his side and
eased into a sitting position. Surprisingly, he wasn't lightheaded.
He had no after-effects of the stabbing ordeal or the spell she'd
woven over him.

"Are ye well again,
Winston?" Deliah asked softly.

To his chagrin, even her
voice triggered his libido. If not for the others, he knew without
a doubt he would have Deliah, burying himself so deeply in her,
they would be one inseparable entity.

A fierce shudder passed
through him. Clenching his teeth, he rose to his feet and sucked in
a breath. By the time he faced the others, he managed a semblance
of a smile and, to camouflage his discomfort with his straining
erection, quipped, "All I need now is a nip o' Scotch, and I'll be
as good as new."

"Scotch," Deliah said
dispassionately, then rolled her eyes. To the others, she said over
her shoulder, "He be a Scotsmon, true enough."

* * *

Lachlan moaned low and
opened his eyelids to mere slits. Not only was his mouth painfully
dry, but he was positive something had crawled onto his tongue and
died. A persistent ache hammered at his temples and between his
eyes. To say he was fraught with aches would be an understatement.
Dying hadn't made him feel this miserable.

Despite his body's scream to
the contrary, he cranked himself into a sitting position and swung
his booted feet to the floor. The room was softly lit in a reddish
glow, and was so cold, the air nipped at his covered
skin.

Getting up from the sofa
like a man racked with arthritis, he crossed his arms and rubbed
them in a futile attempt to elicit warmth through friction.
Countless insects buzzed through the layers of gauze inside his
skull, and his bloodshot eyes stung as he tried to focus on the
doorway across from him. He was quite sure the portal was tilting
this way then that, unwilling to admit he had drunk more than a
safe measure of his beloved Scotch.

He released a long belch and
grimaced when his taste buds were again assaulted by
foulness.

He grumbled in Gaelic, then
wheezed, "Beth'll mair'n whack me if she sees me like this. Och!
Lannie, you fool, wha' have you done?"

Intermittently experiencing
spasms of shivers, he ambled into the hall and headed in the
direction of the kitchen. Strong black coffee and something solid
in his stomach was his only hope of redeeming his misuse of his
corporeal existence. He was cross that it had taken Scotch to get
him to face the internal wars he'd been battling since his return.
How bloody ridiculous it was not to praise the miracle, rather than
wallow in shallow fears of his own making. He was a father! And
proud as Braussaw he should be, but, alas, rebirth—he'd reasoned
while steeping his insides with Scotch—had forsaken his
brain.

He passed the staircase and
was intending to go down the secondary hall to the kitchen when a
slight clinking gave him pause. The door to the parlor was slightly
ajar. A thin strip of orange light was visible through the opening.
Ordinarily, Lachlan would have ignored the moving about, thinking
it was someone else in the household looking to satisfy a hunger
pang or thirst. But goose bumps broke out on his skin, and a vivid
red warning light was flashing in front of his mind's eye. Intruder
echoed in his head.

Inexplicably acute of mind
and sight, he eased open the door and peered into the room. He saw
nothing unusual then noticed the dining room door was also ajar.
Soundlessly crossing the room, he pushed opened this door and poked
his head into the dining room. Another sound drew his attention to
the sideboard against the wall to his left. Some twenty feet away,
he saw a dark-clothed figure searching through the silverware
drawers, a flashlight in the left hand.

Fierce outrage awakened in
Lachlan's gut and swiftly spread throughout him. The gaslights in
the room had been turned down, but he saw enough to verify someone
was robbing him of his precious belongings.

Unhampered by the hangover
which moments ago had been nearly debilitating, he charged into the
room. For an instant he was blinded by the glare of the flashlight
which had swung around and was trained on his face. He surged
forward, anger supplanting logic. The intruder released a grunt
when Lachlan rammed him and they both toppled to the floor. The
edge of the flashlight rim came home against the side of Lachlan's
skull, prompting bursts of light to explode behind his eyelids.
Undaunted, Lachlan's fists pummeled the struggling stranger. Grunts
and cries rang out from both men.

The stranger managed to buck
Lachlan off him and scrambled to his feet. He lit into a run for
the door. Before he reached half the distance, Lachlan lifted and
tossed something from the sideboard, striking the intruder so
forcefully in the back, he pitched forward and struck the floor
with the length of him. A shattering sound followed, then Lachlan's
growled Gaelic curses.

Dimly, Lachlan was conscious
of pounding somewhere in the house. Its echoes harshly reverberated
through the walls, like a great deafening bell ringing out to
forewarn him of impending danger. But his rage had but one
focus.

As the intruder groggily
attempted to get to his knees, Lachlan again tackled him. They
rolled across the floor, fists sailing and curses
abounding.

The mysterious pounding grew
more frantic.

"Lachlan!"

The infamous ghost reborn
ignored the feminine cry and took advantage of the stranger's
momentary distraction when the lights in the room turned up. He
drove his fist into the knit-covered face, connecting with the
man's jawline. The covered head snapped back, the back of the man's
skull cracking against the polished wood floor. Panting, Lachlan
lowered his head and squeezed his eyes against the light smarting
them. He ached worse than before, and his heart was pounding so
hard, pain radiated through his chest.

Faraway voices fell on his
ears. From his position astride the unconscious man, he stared at
the masked features.

"Lachlan, be ye
harmed?"

Releasing a pented breath,
he turned and rolled to one side and sat on the floor, facing the
general direction of the voice.

"Lachlan?"

"Haud yer wheesht!" he
barked, clamping his hands over his ears. "A mon canna think around
here!"

He'd squinted up to deal the
woman a scolding look when the sight of her shocked him insensible.
For a moment he could only stare at her, his dark eyes wide, his
face ashen and taut. Then, "Fegs!" he squealed.

He saw her flinch back, her
wings fluttering in a manner indicating distress.

"Deliah!" Winston shouted,
running into the room. He paused but a moment to assess the others
in the room then dealt the woman a harried look that chilled
Lachlan.

"We've company," he informed
tightly. "Police at the front door. I suggest you—"

A scream rent the
air.

C
hapter 13

"Retract your wings!"
Winston ordered Deliah and hopped forward before Lachlan could
react and hauled the stranger to his feet. The man was gearing up
to release another shrill scream, his horrified pale gaze riveted
on Deliah as if she sported horns and glowing red eyes.

Raised voices approached
with the sounds of multiple footfalls. Enraged himself, Winston
clutched the stranger's collar, his fingers aching to curl around
the man's throat and crush his windpipe. He didn't look behind him
to see if Deliah had obeyed him. He couldn't look at Lachlan as the
man shakily rose to his feet. He could do nothing more than stare
into the pale gray eyes of the stranger he believed to be the
Phantom.

"Sonofabitch," Winston
growled, giving the man a sound shake.

His fevered brain noted
drool escaping the man's thick, parted lips. He grimaced
contemptuously and gave him another harsh jerk.

"Release him!" ordered a
deep voice.

Winston clench his teeth
painfully as he fought against the vileness of his own need to end
the man's life. Memories of the forty-seven victims stampeded his
mind, calling up every gorey detail of their suffering, and the
victims' tortured last thoughts before dying. His hands encircled
the man's thick neck and he pressed his thumbs against his
windpipe. Still, the Phantom remained limp, his insane gaze locked
on Deliah. Winston didn't realize he was quaking with rage, or that
his arms were being seized by two uniformed men. Breathing
laboriously through his flared nostrils, he applied more
pressure.

Then a voice penetrated his
murderous haze. "Winston, release him! He be done wi' his
thieving!"

Thieving...thieving...thieving?

The word echoed discordantly
inside his head, disorienting him. He found himself jerked back and
his left arm twisted behind him.