The Vampire Laird (A Ravynne Sisters Paranormal Mystery/Romance) (24 page)

Seth laughed mockingly. “I’d be more than happy to settle for ‘delusional crazy’ instead of who I am. Shoot me, Quinn, and then we’ll see who’s crazy.”

Zack studied the situation in front of him, looking for his best shot. With Charlie shielding the bulk of his opponent, his best chance was a head shot, but there was always the possibility something could go wrong.

Seth interrupted his thoughts. “Okay. I’ll make it easy for you” and with that, he pushed Charlie from him, offering a clean shot, though he kept the point of his dirk pressed into her ribs. “Now…shoot me and we’ll settle the matter once and for all.”

So he did. The impact of the bullet rocked the man before him, but he stayed on his feet and then he smiled. “It passed right through my heart, but as you can see, I’m still alive.”

Trying not to show how shocked she was by what had just happened, Charlie asked flippantly, “If your kind can’t be killed, why isn’t this place crawling with tainted MacMorleys?”

Seth was quiet for a long moment and when he replied there was a wealth of sadness in his voice. “There are ways to kill us…hideous ways. A bullet would be a blessing by comparison. My daughter suffered such a death in this very manor. She was dancing in the ballroom, when the villagers stormed the manor and hacked her to pieces. She lies in the mausoleum below covered in the white roses I bring her every Sunday. Now listen to me, Quinn……..”

“Since we’ve become such a tight little group here, the name is Mallory. Zack Mallory,” he told him, as he tried to figure out what to do next.

“So more than one of us wears two faces. I shouldn’t be surprised, but somehow I am. Just who are you, Zack Mallory, and what are you doing here?”

“I’m just a guy with more than a passing interest in what you are doing here.”

“Listen to me very carefully, Zack Mallory, for I find myself growing weary and I do not want to repeat myself. I will kill this woman and not waste a single breath regretting it unless you toss that gun on the floor, walk over to that wall, and snap those shackles on your wrists. Understood?”

Zack groaned inwardly. He would have to do what he demanded or Charlie would die…something he must prevent at all costs even if it meant his own death. “I’ll do what you say if you let her go. Let her walk out this room unharmed. If there is any honor left in you…and I stress the ‘if’ part…you will let this be just between the two of us…man to man.”

Seth was no longer smiling. His eyes had narrowed to mere slits…his mouth was grim. “I’m beginning to lose any patience that I’ve ever been blessed with, which is less than zero. Nobody…least of all you…dictates to me how this will all go down. I hold the trump card. Her life. Now drop the gun and snap on the cuffs before I shove this blade straight between her ribs.”

Seth’s grip tightened, painfully, and she could feel the sharp point of the dirk pierce her skin, but she had to try and save Zack. “Don’t listen to him. Please don’t throw your life away for me.”

Seth shook her roughly. “One more word from you and you are a dead woman,” he told her between clenched teeth, as he pressed the dirk deeper still until she gave an involuntary yelp of pain. “Now do as you’re told, Zack, or the next time I’ll push it all the way to her heart.”

Zack slid the gun across the floor and crossed the room, pausing in front of Charlie. His dark eyes were deeply shadowed, as he said, “Do what you have to do to survive. We’ve both been through rougher patches than this and come out the other end okay,” though he honestly couldn’t remember when.

With a savage oath, Seth shoved him towards the wall and waited till he heard the cuffs snap shut, then leaned close to her ear. “He doesn’t look so ‘beguiling’ hanging there, does he?”

Meeting his eyes unflinchingly, she smiled up at him. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I still find him very appealing.”

He grabbed her breast painfully and she lashed out with her heel, kicking him hard in the shin. He swore, savagely, and jerked her off her feet, then pushed her on the bed. “It seems you are recovering your ‘feistiness’, isn’t that what you called it? I will need to purge you of that. Shall I get started, while your friend watches?”

Her gray eyes narrowed and her smile was cold. “Try it and see what happens.”

He laughed as he toyed with the tie on her robe with the point of his dirk. “All fire and sharp claws. Shall we see what I find under this? See to your wound perhaps? I can lick it and make it all better…sort of an hor d’oeuvre shall we say?”

“Touch her and I will see that you die one on those
hideous
deaths you mentioned, ” Zack ground out, struggling fiercely at his bonds.

No one noticed when the tall Highlander stepped into the room. “Dinna fash yerself Zack. I will see him in hell before he harms the lass. There are men storming the place and herding his people together. I would say your evil days are over here, Marley.”

The two men studied each other across the length of the small room. “As impossible as it sounds, you have to be Grey MacMorley…my great uncle of centuries past,” Seth said in disbelieve. “But you were killed in such a way you could not be an undead.”

Grey circled the other man. “So it would seem. I had hoped my line had ended, when the last laird of my direct descent fled these parts and was never seen again….till now.”

“Then you know who I am,” Seth said mockingly. “Since my only child, Meaghan, is dead…the line does end with me, which will be
never,
since I am eternal.”

Grey grinned hugely. “Meaghan may be dead, but she remains a verra lively ghostie. She just now told me who you are…told me what she had been keeping a secret from everyone until she satisfied her sense of justice.”

Seth eyes were filled with a mix of hope and disbelieve, as he cried hoarsely, “You know my daughter? She is here? Why hasn’t she come to me? Surely she must have heard me cry her name over and over, as I walked these halls night after night?”

“She has been angry with you, mon…verra angry. You called the other one…daughter…gave her Meaghan’s rightful place. She would not come to you as long as the other lived.”

“If that was all that was stopping her, I could have remedied that at any time and with pleasure.”

Grey laughed. “That will no longer be necessary. Justice has been served in Meaghan’s mind. Your evil life must end now and I am the one to do it.”

“I would almost welcome it. How do you plan on accomplishing this impossible feat?” Seth asked wryly.

Grey drew the claymore from the sling on his back and held it over his head. “This weapon was forged in the Holy Land and its hilt contains the relics of three saints. My father had it made for me so that I could end my days if the pain of living became more than I could bear. I never needed to use it, though I carry it with me always as a talisman. My life was taken from me when my head was severed from my body, a nail driven through my temple and I was buried with my face to the ground so that I would never find my way back. But I did, though much of who I was changed with my death….especially the blood lust. I would end your life now…free you. It will be an act of mercy.”

“On second thought, I don’t think I’m quite ready for your
act of mercy
,” Seth said dryly, pulling a struggling Charlie in front of him. “You would not harm her. Leave me, Grey MacMorley. Go back to Blood Castle and leave me to my own private hell.”

Grey smiled darkly, as he closed the space between them in three long strides and thrust the wide, double edged blade through both Charlie and Seth in one powerful stroke.

***

Shock and rage swept over Zack as he shouted Charlie’s name, while Grey looked up from the two figures sprawled at his feet and smiled crookedly at him. “Your lass will be fine. The claymore can only take the life of a tainted MacMorley,” he said, crossing the room and severing, with one stroke, the silk covered cables that bound Zack to the wall. “You are a lucky mon to have her.” But Zack wasn’t listening. Shaken to the core…his chest tight with fear..he pushed past Grey and lifted her into his arms. Cradling her against his wildly racing heart, he carried her to the bed, murmuring, savagely, close to her ear, “Dammit, woman! You had better be all right! We have unfinished business, remember?”

“And I’m holding you to it” came the whispered response.

He looked at her with his heart in his eyes and her own gray eyes widened in response. Lifting her arms, she circled his neck and sighed. “I think I just did the unthinkable for Charlie Ravynne.”

“Which was?” he asked, as he snugged her a little closer.

“I fainted.”

And then he kissed her…searchingly, deeply and with infinite tenderness.

Grey watched them, wistfully, for a long moment before he disappeared as suddenly as he’d come. Neither noticed. For them, their world was each other…at least until reality reared its head…which it did shortly thereafter, when a spire of blue light spun out of the shadows and Meaghan began to materialize.

Gliding to her father’s body, she stood looking down at him for a long moment, then said in a voice choked with tears, “Come, Faither. Tis time for our rejoining. I have missed ye much for so verra long.”

It was a strange thing to witness, as Seth, like a snake shedding its skin, rose from his lifeless body and scooped his daughter into his arms. His hand stroked the curve of her cheek, as he whispered, “Can it really be you? I have wanted to hold you again like this for centuries…lonely…lonely years filled with lonely hours. After your death, I could not bear to be here, so I wandered the world till I had to come home. I restored the manor in hopes it would bring you back to me…if only in memory. Grey MacMorley told me why you’ve stayed away since I came back. She means nothing to me except for her likeness to you in body only. That was why I married her. She could never be my Meaghan…my heart…you must believe that.”

She smiled up into his eyes. “Ach! She was your wife then? I should have known, but ye were never together in that way. She will not come between us again. I have seen to that.”

Love warmed his eyes, as he looked at his daughter. “‘Justice served’ was how Grey MacMorley put it. Where is she now?”

“At the bottom of the auld well with her great beast for company.”

He laughed. “A fitting end if she stays there for all of eternity. But I am indestructible. I cannot be killed.”

She shook her head and pointed to the body on the floor. “Yet there ye be.” Then she looked at Charlie and Zack, who had been watching their reunion in utter fascination. “There are men stormin’ the manor…men I have never seen here before. I am afeert. It brings the other time to me mind. Meg is safe and with Allyn by now. He dinna love me as I had wished, but I have my faither back now and I will not be lonely again.”

Zack turned to Charlie. “Sounds like Jeff and his men have landed and are rounding everyone up.”

Seth smiled sardonically at them both. “It seems the jig is up, as you Americans might say. This place is honeycombed with secret passages, where some might hide. There’s a map in the desk in my bedroom. And make sure you check the hidden room off the minstrel’s gallery. There’s a lot of information there I will no longer need and you might find quite useful. It could have been fun, Charlie. Perhaps another time.” With that, he threw a salute in Zack’s direction and, holding Meaghan’s hand, disappeared through the wall.

Charlie and Zack looked at each other, while he tugged gently at a strand of her silver blonde hair. “Now that we’re
finally
alone….just what were you and Seth giggling about when I kicked down the door to rescue you?”

“We weren’t giggling exactly. Are you jealous?”

“Not a bone in my body!” he lied solemnly, as his finger traced the whorl of her left ear.

She ‘humphed’ then said, “If you must know, we were discussing my faults.”

“And how is that so amusing? You do have rather a lot, by the way.”

“Oh?”

“You are impossibly stubborn.”

“I think that was mentioned, though I prefer persistent.”

“You take too many chances….”

“I think of it as just ‘doing the job’….”

“And you talk way too much at all the wrong times.” And then he kissed her again…a long lingering kiss that had her bones melting along with her resolve. It took every ounce of will power she possessed to call it to a halt. “If you don’t stop now,” she murmured against his lips, “I’ll be in no condition to find my family. I know Meaghan said they were
okay,
but Meaghan has rather a funny slant on things.”

He sighed and settled his hot mouth in the hollow of her throat from where she could hear him murmur, “Sorry. Irresistible is another one of your faults and I’m only a susceptible male.”

“How could
irresistible
be a fault? And even if it is, who are you to complain. You are the most beguiling man it has ever been my misfortune to know.”

“I have yet to prove what a very fortunate woman you are,” he told her in a husky whisper, as he let his finger tease her nipple through the thin fabric of her robe.

Oh, no, she thought as a delicious pulsing heat claimed her body. If he touched her one moment more, she would be lost. “Beguiling you and irresistible me! What a pair! Shall we get going?” she gasped in a choked voice. “Happily, Daryna forgot to take my sneakers when she took everything else, but I wish I didn’t have to flit around in this robe.”