Love Everlastin' Book 3 (7 page)

Laura's look of surprise
brought a smile to Winston's lips, and he said, "The air crackles
wi' it."

Roan, a bewildered look on
his face, gave himself a shake. "But Lannie and Beth—"

"Utilized it, but they were
no' the source," Winston informed. "It's here and I hope to learn
more abou' it during ma stay."

"I'll be damned," Laura
breathed.

Damned!

The word detonated inside
Winston's head. He felt himself swiftly passing through time and
space, through a dark tunnel of indecipherable voices. When his
momentum came to an abrupt halt, dank, bone-invading coldness
greeted him. The stench of decay and the unmistakable coppery odor
of blood filled his nostrils and coated his tongue. Gagging, he
tried to will himself away, but he discovered that he was frozen in
this limbo. Straining to see more clearly into the foreboding
grayness stretched out before him, he saw a cavernous room of
stone. At the far end, a stone altar began to glow in hues of
green. Red symbols covered the wall behind it.

Blood.

The information sickened
Winston, and painfully quickened his heartbeat.

A figure swept into the room
from an arch to the left of the altar. Waves of unbridled rage
emanated from the man and crashed against Winston's awareness,
nearly drowning him in the depths of its vileness.

Guttural chanting echoed
within the room.

Warlock!
Winston's mind cried.

"Master," the man's voice
boomed, "grant me the power this night to fell ma enemies! Eth duc
chi'nith! I offer ye the soul's o' nature's children in return for
ma revenge!

"Damn those unworthy o’ yer
true and loyal fold, Master! Damn and condemn the keepers o' the
land, and grant this servant the power to bring forth the true
magic o' this world!"

Winston quaked in sheer
horror and helplessness. He could sense something dark and sinister
attempting to breech the boundaries of his inexplicable placement.
The voice of the man behind the altar droned on, but Winston could
no longer make out his words. Terror consumed him. Seized every
nuance of his being. His heart repeatedly slammed against the wall
of his chest. The pulses at his temples threatened to burst free.
His mind reached out to grab onto anything which could take him
from this place.

The terror in him built
until he was on the verge of surrendering to insanity. Then
suddenly he was again traveling, soaring through time and space,
the tunnel brightening with each passing second. His lungs
threatened to explode. Panic, fear and terror all vied to dominate
him, consume the human fibers of his existence.

The length of him crashed
into unmerciful solidity. The air that had been trapped in his
lungs gushed out. Pain pulsated through every square inch of
him.

"Go afore ye further weaken
ma sanctuary!" cried a feminine voice.

"Baird," he grunted, weakly
propping himself up on his elbows. He discovered he was on his
front, a few feet from the fountain in the garden of his mysterious
woman.

"Tis all I have," she wept
low. "Leave!"

His gaze searching for a
sign of her, he stated, "You brought me here."

"No. No! From whence place
ye came, I care no' to know! Leave. Leave afore ye destroy this
place!"

"Destroy?" Wincing with
pain, Winston stiffly drew himself into a sitting position. "Wha'
do you know o’ the history o’ the Baird land?"

"Go, I tell ye!" she
cried.

Refusing to empathize with
the waves of panic emanating from her, he bit out, "When I'm ready!
Now answer me."

A sharp intake of breath
echoed around him.

"Baird, I want to
know!"

"He came from the Infernal
Empire to be among humans," she said, her tone laced with pain and
fear. "But he couldna tolerate the light. He begot a son wi' a
human female. This son claimed this land, and for centuries, worked
his dark powers wi’in the walls o' his castle. I know no
mair.

"Now leave and never return.
Yer powers be drainin’ me, and I have existed too long to wish to
die now. But leave wi' this warnin’, Winston Ian
Connery."

Her voice grew weaker,
shaky. "Ye selfishly seek me, and in doin’ such have lost yer true
purpose. He waits, while ye wallow in self-pity. Take heart, ma
foolish Scotsmon. Danger closes in on Baird House. Heed the
warnin’s or...."

Her voice drifted off.
Winston was seized with the knowledge that she was indeed dying,
and instantly withdrew into himself. Again he traveled the tunnel
of channelers, but this time he awakened at the dining room table,
two pairs of eyes staring at him as though the couple were in a
state of shock.

Breathing unsteadily,
Winston pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. "Forgive me. I
need to go to ma room."

Without another word, he ran
into the hall and up the stairs, and didn't stop until he closed
his bedroom door behind him. Labored breaths pumped in and out of
his lungs. His head swam with alarming speed.

He?

Danger?

Had she meant his presence
in the house?

No. The "he" is someone
else. But who?

Staggering across the room,
he sat on the edge of the bed and lowered his face into his
hands.

Ma purpose here? Right. Why
are warnings always so damn cryptic?

Falling back, his arms
winged out across the bed, he blinkingly stared up at the
ceiling.

You're no' shy abou'
telling me ma failings, are you, Baird?

He grimaced. Sighed
deeply.

Oh, we shall meet again,
you and I. And I give you fair warning, ma mysterious waif: I'll
expose you for the womon I know you to be.

* * *

Back in the dining room,
Roan slapped his palm to his brow and rose from his chair.
"Darlin’, this mon is too weird for ma blood." He pushed the chair
into place and collected some of the dishes on the table. "Wha' say
we take the lads ou' and build us a snowmon?"

"Did he go into a trance?"
Laura asked tremulously, her gaze riveted on the chair Winston had
occupied.

"Don't know, don't care. Ma
skin’s crawlin’ and I need a diversion."

"The room turned so cold
when he—"

"Darlin’," Roan groaned,
"let it be."

"He was like a statue. .
.just sitting there. . .his eyes so vacant."

Roan grunted in
dismissal.

Laura stood and uneasily
looked about the room. "I keep thinking about that Phantom guy
hanging around here." She shivered and hugged herself. "I know it
sounds awful, but I'm glad he's dead."

Leaning over, Roan planted a
quick kiss on her cool, pale cheek. "A snowmon will cheer you up,
love."

Nodding absently, she began
to help Roan clear the table.

They managed to put away the
leftovers and do the dishes without bringing up the unnerving
incident again. Laura, drying her hands with a dish towel, told
Roan she'd go ahead and get the boys dressed for the outdoors. Roan
remained behind, drying the last of the silverware. When he was
done he hung the towel on a hook to the right of the deep sink,
then braced his hands against its edge and dipped his head below
his shoulders.

Despite his every attempt to
will away the unease gnawing at him, he couldn't get past it. He
straightened away from the sink. Holding out his hands, he observed
the way they trembled. A day outside with the boys was exactly what
he needed.

Who was he
fooling?

Since Lachlan and Beth's
departure, he'd been haunted by something he couldn't begin to
define. He'd tried to tell himself he was simply going through a
period of mourning, but he knew that wasn't exactly true. Oh, he
missed them. He had resigned himself to the fact that there would
always be a void in him, one akin to that of the loss of his son.
Sometimes when he abruptly awakened in the middle of a night, he
almost believed he knew what was troubling him. But then it would
melt away, leaving him empty and puzzled and angry.

It was as though he were
standing at the very edge of a high cliff, waiting for something to
give him that slight nudge that would send him reeling into the
unknown. No, it wasn't about death. He had no fears in that
respect. Laura had been so supportive and understanding of his
moods, but the unfairness of placing her in that position also
bothered him. He loved her more than he ever thought possible. And
yet he kept distancing himself.

Why?

Wha' the hell is wrong wi'
me!

He looked to the swinging
door Laura had gone through. He felt as though he wanted to
explode. Not even Aggie seemed to understand what was eating at
him. In fact, she was more inclined to avoid him whenever possible.
He knew she desperately missed her son, Borgie, and his heart went
out to her. She remained because of the boys, but he knew she
secretly yearned to pass on and rejoin with her only child. More
times than he cared to remember, he'd thought of telling her to go
on, but the thought of losing her, too, had been too painful, and
he'd selfishly kept silent.

If only he could purge
himself of the gloom residing inside his heart.

C
hapter 3

For the remainder of the
day, Winston stayed in his bedroom. In between Laura and Agnes
bringing him pots of tea, sandwiches, and snacks, and Roan lending
him a shirt and two woolen sweaters, he was content to embrace his
solitude with the hope of soothing the perpetual tingling invading
his body. The condition had manifested shortly after he'd retired
to his room. And although he had endured it often enough in his
life, usually when on a case it continued to make him
edgy.

Now and then he stared out
one of the windows, watching Laura, Roan and the boys build a tall
snowman near the snow-covered fountain. When they had finished it
later that afternoon—potatoes used for eyes, a carrot poking out
for the nose and stones forming a smiling mouth—Winston had laughed
outright to see the redheaded boy, aided by Roan hoisting him up,
place what appeared to be a frozen peacock on top of the snowman in
lieu of a hat. The bright purples, blues, and greens of the bird's
feathers stood out in sharp contrast to the white, compacted snow,
a perfect complement to the delightful creation.

Now that daylight was
waning, his solitude only served to feed his restlessness. Answers
eluded him but for the locale of the surrealistic garden. The
fourth dimension. His mind had often enough traipsed into that
relatively unknown realm. The cross-over dimension. A channelers'
only means of bringing individual times and space into the reality
of the third dimension. But never had Winston physically visited
the realm. The countless times his mind had channeled through it,
it was but a world of layers of grayness. Psychic energy, replete
with impressions and memories of all who had lived throughout the
ages in the third dimension were libraried within the infinite
region. Most psychics had only minimal channeling abilities to tap
into the information. He, Winston Ian Connery, was one of a few who
possessed the ability to utilize every nuance of the dimension. But
if he had one hundred lifetimes, he couldn't even begin to dent the
available knowledge.

As much as he thought about
transferring himself to the “lady's” garden, he stopped himself.
The prospect of causing her undue pain, yanked on his heartstrings.
Briefly, on more than one occasion that day, he wished he could
just once feel her solidity, but he'd been forced to abandon such
thoughts when he surprisingly found himself aroused. Not exactly a
pleasant condition for a man who only had sex with a woman twice in
his life. And that had been with the same woman—one of his
teachers—the night before and the day of his twentieth birthday.
Although the physical experience had been enlightening and pleasant
enough, the mental assault of her too-vivid fantasies during the
exchange had shocked him.

Sex with apes?
She'd imagined him to be three of the massive
beasts, all lusty and ravishing her repeatedly.

The memory not only elicited
a soft grimace, but caused his mouth to go dry.

He longingly eyed the empty
teapot on the mantelpiece.

Something stronger was
definitely in order.

He glanced at the
gold-rimmed face of his black, leather-band wristwatch. Four
forty-seven.

Late enough for a
nightcap.

Leaving his room, he
casually ambled down the hall. The gas wall lamps were already lit,
the orange glow softening the contours of the passageway. He made a
left toward the staircase then found himself opening a door. The
change in placement left him disoriented. Seemingly of its own
volition, his hand pushed the door inward. Before really looking
beyond the threshold, he glanced behind him at the steep, narrow,
descending stairwell. Heaving a breath, he narrowed his gaze at
what was before him.

His brief fear that he'd
been displaced back in the past was dispelled when he viewed an
attic. Soft flickering light graced the room.