Return of the Highlander (Immortal Warriors) (17 page)

Bella drove slowly, the car rattling over the
potholes. The rain had made the ground slippery, too, and she had to be careful on the turns, despite the fact that her mind wasn’t really on her driving. She had been to see Gregor at his farm, to ask about extending the lease on Drumaird Cottage. Now that Maclean was here, she wanted to stay longer, to be with him in the place they both loved. But instead of giving her the permission she had hoped for, Gregor told Bella some news that shocked her.

Gregor was building a road around the side of Loch Fasail, to make it more accessible to tourists, but that wasn’t the worst of it. He was also constructing a dozen holiday cottages along the loch shore. The project was not in the public domain as yet, and Gregor’s cousin expected there to be objections when it was—conservationists and nature-lovers would protest vigorously—but he hoped to overcome them. The road would mean easier fishing for those less in
clined to carry their gear over miles of rough terrain, and it would mean easier access to some of the hills and rock climbs to the north. The cottages would mean strangers invading the peace and quiet, treating it like another disposable holiday destination. The isolated beauty of Loch Fasail would be gone.

But Gregor needed the money.

“In the circumstances I dinna think I should re-lease Drumaird Cottage.” Gregor had given her a sympathetic look.

“But I’m extending my lease; surely that’s different?” Bella had insisted.

“Well, I’m no’ sure when the work will begin. I tell you what, Ms. Ryan, I’ll find out exactly next time I talk with the bulldozer driver. That’s the best I can do, I’m sorry.”

A bulldozer! Bella could hardly bear to think about it. A road around the loch, and cars traveling where now there was only silence or the lonely call of a bird. Loch Fasail would be ruined completely.

“Ye haven’t seen those sheep?” Gregor called out, as she went to leave. “They still haven’t turned up, and now there’s a couple more I canna find.”

“No, I’m sorry.” She paused, her hand on the car door. “I did hear something splashing in the loch the other night, though. Do you think they might have fallen in?”

He gave her a strange look. “Something splashing?”

“Yes. Something in the loch.” Bella was remembering the night she looked from her window and saw the shadow on the water. The sheep had been afraid, and if they were missing, then maybe it was with good reason.

“Have you seen the wild pony again?” He gave her a
sly look. “I can give you a hint, Ms. Ryan. If you check the pony’s mane and find a strand of water weed, then you know that what you are facing is no ordinary animal. It is certain to be an
each-uisge
.”

Bella had forced a wry smile in return. “Thanks for the advice, Gregor, I’ll remember it.”

She now drove slowly back toward Drumaird Cottage, and wondered how she was going to tell Maclean that Loch Fasail would soon be ruined forever. He would be very upset. It was the nearest thing he had to a home, and she suspected he had visions of living here, alone with his memories. What would he do when he heard about the road? What would happen to him, an eighteenth century Highlander trapped in the twenty-first century?

The car reached a crest and there before her was Loch Fasail and, on the far side, the smoke from the cottage and above it the stark ruins of Castle Drumaird. The early mist had risen and the day was clear and the water of the loch sparkling. Beautiful. For a second she imagined it all torn, with the soil scraped bare and giant machines roaring and shuddering as they went about their work.

She was sunk in gloom when something caught her eye.

Near the
Cailleach
Stones, a movement, a flicker of color.

For a second her heart raced, her hands clenching on the wheel as she remembered the hag who had spoken to her in her dreams, and her pet loch monster. But the next moment the shadows shifted and she saw that it was in fact a red deer, half hidden by one of the upright
stones and the gorse bushes, and no doubt feeding on some tender shoots. Bella laughed in relief.

No wonder Gregor had told her to take care! He probably took one look at her and thought she shouldn’t be out on her own.

There was a splash in the loch, a fish jumping, and the deer bounded off over the moorland grasses. Bella watched it go, sitting in the stationary car and letting her thoughts drift.

Of course, they returned to Maclean. He was a flesh-and-blood man now, or soon would be. He had told her that the
Fiosaiche
was causing this to happen, that with every step he made in the right direction she was rewarding him. But it was Bella who was showing him the way, Bella who must discover what really happened that terrible day here at Loch Fasail.

She felt the fire of the true historian burning inside her. She’d hunt down the truth and find it. Two hundred and fifty years of subterfuge and lies had built up a thick and thorny barricade, and she needed to cut her way through, to expose what really happened.

Even if she had to use Maclean’s broadsword to do it.

Maclean slept on. He had never been so tired. Each time he tried to wake and pull himself out of this warm and pleasant fugue, he was sucked down into it again. It was as if his body were making up for all the days and nights he had wandered this cottage unable to rest. It was the same with his sudden feelings of hunger and his desperate need to eat, and his insatiable urge to “bonk” Bella, as she called it. Now all he wanted to do was sleep.

And dream.

He was underground. Not in the awful labyrinths of the between-worlds, but in a great cave with an ocean of ink stretching as far as the eye could see. The shore was empty, deserted. Maclean stood, puzzled, wondering what the point of such a place was and what he was doing here. Deep in his thoughts it was a moment before he felt the slight vibration under his feet and saw the shape approaching him from farther down the beach.

It was a small horse, its coat golden brown and shaggy, the long length of its tail and mane flaring out as it ran, and its hooves striking the sand with musical precision.

Maclean stood and watched, spellbound by the strange sight. He knew there was something not quite real about the creature, the proportions were wrong. It resembled a mystical beast from a fairy tale or a Gaelic legend rather than a flesh-and-blood horse.

Maclean…Maclean…

The horse began to change, its shape altering, the mane into hair, the forelegs into arms, the long equine face foreshortening into the smaller face of a woman. For a brief moment the two were both visible, one image upon the other, and then the horse was gone and the woman remained. He knew then that she was an
each-uisge
. The most fearsome mystic monster in the Highlands, and the most deadly. It fed on man-flesh and knew no pity, using its powers to tempt its victims close enough to carry them away into the lochs or the deep pools, and there to feast on them in peace.

And it was Ishbel.

She sauntered toward him in her red and green trews, a darker green jacket nipped to her slender waist and her golden hair loose about her shoulders.

“Maclean, at last I have ye.”

As she came he sensed movement to his side, in the inky ocean, and a great creature began to rise out of it, dripping water from its scaly hide. With a bulbous body and long, snakelike neck, it floundered toward him as if it were not used to being in the shallows.

Ishbel began to croon to it, and the monster lifted its head, listening to her. It swayed and its large eyes half closed, dreamy, enchanted by Ishbel’s voice. She laughed at the expression on Maclean’s face.

“The witch thinks I am afraid of these creatures, but ’tis not so. I have tamed this one, and I am his mistress.”

“You are in good company, then,” he said evenly, as if he were humoring a child.

“The witch is not so clever as she thinks. I have fooled her. I have fooled the hag who guards the door to the between-worlds, too.
Please help me, please, please
.” She laughed at her own cunning. “She let me out and now she canna stop me from passing through her door whenever I wish it. I am too strong for them all.”

“You were ever boastful, wee Ishbel.”

She cast him a look of hatred. “The witch says she has freed you, given you a chance to become a mortal man again, but I knew that already. I have been beyond the door and I have seen you. I canna let you go free, Maclean. You dinna deserve to be in the sunshine while I spend my years down here in the darkness.”

“Ishbel—”

“You lied to me, Maclean.
I willna hurt you, I promise, I promise
.” She mocked his words to her from long ago. “But ye did hurt me, ye slew Iain before my verra eyes and took all my happiness away.”

“Ishbel, I am sorry for—”

But she would not listen to him. She cried out, raising her hands, and the monster howled. It heaved itself toward the beach, the ground shuddering beneath its great weight.

Maclean tried to back away, but his feet wouldn’t move, and when he looked down he realized they were stuck fast into the sand. He tugged at them furiously, while Ishbel laughed and the monster drew closer. Now he smelled the fishy stink of it, felt the violent excitement in its clumsy movements.

“He is hungry,” Ishbel whispered.

I am asleep
, Maclean thought.
This canna be.

“He likes to strip the flesh from your bones and suck each one clean.”

Wake up!

“But I have told him to leave your heart for me, Maclean. I want that for my own.”

The monster’s breath puffed hot into his face as it lunged.

And Maclean’s eyes opened with a jolt.

In that instant of waking he wondered where he was, but then his grasping hands found Bella’s bed and he realized his face was pressed into her soft pillows. He was lying on his belly, sprawled across the mattress and some of him off it.

“A dream,” he murmured to himself, and gave a re
lieved laugh, tempered by scorn for his own quaking flesh. But the uneasiness the dream had caused in him was slow in disappearing. The bedchamber felt unfamiliar, unsafe. And that was when he knew.

Something had lured his vulnerable sleeping self to the between-worlds and then attached itself to him.

Something had followed him back.

Maclean…Maclean…

Ishbel. Her voice was the same as it had been a moment before, only now it was calling him from the bottom of the bed. Maclean shook himself and rolled over, trying to chase away the numbing effects of his long sleep. But he was bound by that strange heaviness, as if his feet were still stuck in the sand.

Maclean…I have come for you….

The bedchamber was full of mist. He could hardly see a hand’s breadth in front of him. He knew this couldn’t be so, but the more he tried to deny it, the thicker the mist grew. Whatever stood at the bottom of the bed calling to him was well hidden.

Something touched his leg. A nudge. And then again, only this time he felt sharp teeth nipping at his skin. He cried out, using his great strength to drag himself back out of harm’s way, and reaching down for his
claidheamh mor
on the floor by the mattress. His fingers searched, scrabbling upon the wooden boards, but he couldn’t find it.

Movement stirred the mist. He could hear
it
breathing with hard little spurts of air.

His heart began to beat in a thick heavy rhythm.

The long pale equine snout poked through the mist,
and he saw a green eye, wicked and watchful, before the
each-uisge
vanished once more.

“Ishbel.”

The thing laughed with Ishbel’s laugh. “Maclean,” it whispered, “dinna expect the
Fiosaiche
to save you this time. I am verra powerful now. I made the hag show me how to creep into your dreams and I have followed you back through the door, into the mortal world. Into
your
world, Maclean.”

Maclean’s head swum dizzily, but then his fingers touched the scabbard of his broadsword and he swung it up, drawing the blade with a savage ring of metal.

“Ye canna kill me with that, Maclean,” it hissed. “But I can kill you.”

“I’m no’ afraid of you, Ishbel.”

“Mabbe not, but you’re afraid for
her
, aren’t ye? For your woman, Arabella Ryan.”

“No!” the word burst from him before he could stop it.

He jumped up, wild with horror, lifting his sword to strike…and found himself face to face with Bella. With a gasping scream, she stumbled back, floundered as her feet tangled in the sheet that trailed on the floor, and began to fall. Instinctively Maclean reached out with his free arm and caught her as she fell, rolling over on the bed with her, pinning her beneath him.

They stared at each other, she clearly not knowing what to expect and he still reeling from his experience with the
each-uisge
.

“I was dreaming,” he said, knowing that was only half the truth. “I thought you were someone else. I’m sorry, Arabella, I’m so sorry.”

With trembling fingers he smoothed a dark lock of
hair away from her cheek. He had almost hurt Bella. Ishbel had entered his dreams, just as she said, and was playing games with his mind, using Maclean as her weapon. He had believed her to be real; she had wanted him to believe it. Maclean shuddered to think what might have happened if he had struck Ishbel the death blow and killed Bella instead.

“You slept so long I was worried.”

She had forgiven him already, he could see it in her dark eyes. He wanted to shake her and warn her against himself, but he couldn’t bear to do it. If the door to the between-worlds had been opened and Ishbel was on the loose, if even dreams were not safe from her interference, then Maclean was the only protection Bella had.