An Original Sin (31 page)

Suddenly she heard the soft click of the door and knew someone had come in.

She knew him, as she would over an infinity of years, untold lifetimes. His presence reached out to her across the width of this room, this eternity that trembled on the brink of discovery.

“Why are you here, Leith?” She didn’t open her eyes.

“Ye know, lass. Ye must always have known.”

She listened to his quiet footsteps draw near, pause on the other side of the bed.

What would it take, Leith, to make you go back with me?

I would have to love ye beyond all reason, lass.

She opened her eyes to stare at the blurred image of the window through her tears. Then slowly she turned her head to look at him. “Yes, I know.”

Houston, we’ve got a problem.

I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming. Look, I’m always prepared. That’s how I reached the top rung—the baddest of the bad, the meanest of the mean.

Sure, I wanted them to fall in love, but not this in love. Not I’ll-die-for-you in love. Know what I mean?

Why’d I ever think breakin’ their hearts would be fun? I musta been nuts. I shoulda stuck to exploding galaxies, creating black holes. Lots of bang for your buck without much effort.

This emotional stuff is killin’ me.

Fine. Go ahead. Laugh. I’ll be straight with you. I like Leith and Fortune.
Really
like them. I’ve never liked anyone or anything.
Tolerate
is about the closest I ever got.

Talk about tolerating, the ice-cream jerk’s back. Parked across the street. Guess he figures he’ll rush in and save their butts at the last minute. Fat chance.

I finally remembered where I’ve seen him before. He’s one of those cosmic do-gooders always runnin’ around trying to save people from the evil clutches of troublemakers like me. We’ve never locked horns before because I always deal in mass destruction, not individuals.

He’ll need a new pair of Rollerblades if he expects to keep up with me.

Damn, he distracted me from my problem. How do I keep Leith and Fortune apart long enough to send them back to their own times? How do I make sure Leith doesn’t go back with Fortune?

Hey, I’m doin’ this for Leith. He’d hate Fortune’s world. All those sex-starved women. Hmm.

Anyway, I waited too long. I shoulda zapped Fortune back before Leith got to the room. But I didn’t think he’d come. I didn’t think he loved her that much.

OK, I can handle this. When I’m ready, I’ll just make sure they can’t get to each other. I’d better do it before they touch. I don’t know if I can do it when they’re touching.

Kick me in the butt if I ever suggest doin’ anything like this again. I think I’m gettin’ a migraine, and the ice-cream jerk is playin’…“Blue Christmas”? Give me a break. It’s Halloween, for cryin’ out loud.

“I love ye, Fortune, and I willna let ye go back to yer time alone.” When had he decided? Had he known as they danced in the moonlight, her red dress flaring around her long legs, or when she fearlessly attacked Bones to protect him? Perhaps it had been a gradual realization, growing and spreading like the ageless branches of the live oak they’d danced beneath. But he’d known for sure when he’d turned from filling out the form to find her gone. A part of him had died in that moment, a part he could ill afford to lose: his heart.

“Please don’t force this decision on me, Leith. How can I take you back with me? How can I do that to you? I’d hate myself for every moment you spent in a life you hated. And you
would
hate it.” She stared across the width of the bed at him, and it was as though the breadth of the universe stretched between them. “But I have a duty to humanity. How can I sacrifice the entire human race for you, for me?” Her anguished whisper was an echo of her inner torment.

His soft chuckle chided her. “Ye havena listened to me, lass. Ye dinna need to make a decision. I’ve made it for ye. I will come wi’ ye whether ye want me or not.”

“Not want you? Not want you?” She attempted a weak
smile. “You haven’t been paying attention, Campbell. Don’t you
know
how I feel about you?”

“I dinna give a bloody damn about duty or the wishes of the Fates.” He couldn’t control the harsh desperation in his voice. “I will defy them to be wi’ ye.”

She looked at him then, really looked, her eyes glowing with wonder and something so beautiful it made him gasp. “You’d do that for me?”

He felt like tearing the room apart, howling his frustration to whatever gods were responsible for this. “Aye, Fortune. Ye willna leave me behind. I dinna care if they chain my body and use it for their own needs. They canna touch my heart. ’Twill always belong to ye, lass.”

He knew she was mustering her final argument. It would do no good.

“What about…Hugh? If you don’t return to your time, you can never make peace with him.”

He could see in her eyes the hope that he’d accept her reasoning. The fear that he would.

He knew his hand shook as he raked it through his hair. His heart felt torn asunder by the decision he must make, one that was no decision at all. “I love Hugh wi’ all my heart, but ye have my soul, Fortune. I will go wi’ ye.” He took one step, then another toward her side of the bed, toward her time.

Then he stopped. What real proof did he have that she loved him? She’d never said the words. He strengthened his resolve. That mattered not. He’d make her love him.

And what if going to her side meant nothing? What if the Fates were simply amusing themselves, and now that the game was ended they decided to send them each back to their own time in a puff of smoke?

No matter how determined he was, he had no weapons to fight such power. He must give her something just in case. Carefully, he pulled out her chain and Celtic cross,
then held it out to her. “I dinna fool myself, Fortune. No matter what I wish, mayhap we will be swept apart. I would have ye take this wi’ ye. To remember.”

With shaking fingers, she reached for the cross. Her fingers touched his and seared every doubt from his heart. She was his woman, and he’d fight for her.

“Look on the back, lass.”

Puzzled, she turned the cross over. “I never paid much attention to the back. I know there’s a date and some faint words, but I never bothered…” She brought the cross close to her eyes and squinted at the faint inscription.

He knew the exact moment she realized the import of the words. She turned pale, then raised shocked eyes to meet his gaze. “It…it says Ian MacDonald, Glencoe, 1692. But it can’t be. That means…”

His voice was soft. “Aye. It means ye wouldna be if I hadna saved Ian MacDonald’s life. Our destinies were forged in the blood of Glencoe, lass.”

She stared at him with eyes that pleaded, that made him eager to slay dragons for her. But a man couldn’t slay what he couldn’t see, didn’t understand.

“Who planned this, Leith?” She held up the cross, and the silver gleamed softly in the dim glow of the overhead light. “What did they want to prove?”

“I dinna know.” He clenched his fists. “But it doesna matter.” He took a step toward her, a step that would allow him to gather her into his arms, hold her safe forever.

Suddenly two doors appeared on opposite sides of the room. In a part of his mind that seemed disconnected to the unfolding drama, Leith noted that the Fates had made the doors look very ordinary, like all the others in the hotel. Somehow he thought they should look like the gates to heaven—or hell.

Even as Leith prepared to fling himself across the short space separating him from Fortune, there was a whoosh,
and a wall of flame erupted between them. The sudden blast of heat flung him back to his side of the room, and the strident ringing of an alarm sounded a death knell to his dreams.

Slowly the doors swung open.

For a moment Leith couldn’t think, couldn’t feel. He turned to stare at his open door, a door he had only to step through to return to his beloved land…and Hugh.

He saw his home, and beyond he saw Hugh walking slowly down the path that would lead to his door. Even though he was distant, he could still see Hugh’s expression—pensive, sad.

Leith’s heart contracted. If he stepped through the door now, he could meet Hugh. They could talk. And with the look on Hugh’s face, Leith might at long last have a chance to convince Hugh that brothers shouldn’t hate.

Leith took a step toward the door. He’d yearned for this chance for eight bitter years. Now he need take only a few more steps. He’d be home, and the door would close behind him.

He’d never see Fortune again.

Leith swung from the open door. Through the flames he saw her. She watched him with blue eyes widened in shock. She still held the cross clutched in both hands. Shaking her head as though waking from a dream, she turned to look at her door.

No!
Leith’s cry echoed in his mind, his heart. No man should have to make such a choice, but his heart had made the choice for him. He took two staggering steps away from his door, away from Hugh. His breath came in deep gulps. “Forgive me, Hugh.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Forgive me.”

Turning, he faced the wall of flame. “Fortune, I love ye! Dinna leave me,” he shouted above the fire’s deadly crackle and the alarm’s shrill warning.

Fortune stared in unblinking wonder at her open door. She could see her workroom, but where were her unfinished creations? All she saw were sculptures of animals and abstract objects.

It didn’t matter, though, because there’d never again be a sense of coming home in the room.

She stepped toward the door, away from everything she’d ever love, away from Leith. Frantically, she dredged up all the reasons she had for leaving him. It was for the best. He couldn’t make good on his promise to go with her now, so if she walked through her door he’d give up and return to his time, to his brother. He’d be safe. As for her, there was nothing she could do to change her fate, and if her fate didn’t include Leith, she didn’t care what happened to her.

She took another step toward the door. Funny, even though her life was disintegrating around her, her mind still registered other things, ordinary things. Outside the rest-over’s window, she could see fire trucks with men rushing to do battle with the blaze, a blaze that seemed to exist only in this room.

There was something else. Something important. A black cat raced frenziedly back and forth among the fire-fighting equipment.

A smile touched Fortune’s lips. At least Ganymede was safe. Even though she suspected he’d had his sneaky paw in this whole thing, she couldn’t hate him.

She hesitated at the door’s threshold. All she had to do was step through, and the door would close behind her. Forever.

Then she heard his shout.

She spun to face him, unable even now to walk away without one last glimpse.

Through the wall of flame, his gaze challenged her, flung his love across the deadly barrier like a gauntlet. “I willna leave ye!”

As though sleepwalking, she slowly returned to the bed. She looked at the man who would die for her. For die he would if he stayed in this room or tried to cross to her.

She turned her head for one last look at the door. All her reasons for walking away from Leith rang hollow in the face of his love,
her
love.

If Leith refused to return to his time, and she couldn’t take him to her time, then what reason did she have for leaving? None. Fortune smiled, suddenly feeling as though an unbearable weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She felt as if she could fly.

With the Celtic cross still clutched in her hand, and somehow protecting her from the flames, she reached through the fire to Leith. “I love you, Leith Campbell, and I’ll never leave you.”

He grasped her hand, and they clung together with the cross between them. Fortune could only think that at last, after six hundred years, Campbell and MacDonald had closed the circle of hate, joined by the cross passed down from Ian MacDonald.

Flames crackled and hissed their threats while searing heat beat against her in waves of agony. She gasped for breath in the haze of deadly smoke. Still, the cross felt strangely cool in her grasp. But she knew it was only a matter of minutes before fire engulfed the room. She wondered why it hadn’t happened already.

Gazing across the inches between them that might as well have been a million light-years, she watched a single tear slide down Leith’s cheek, then another. She felt she’d explode with love for this man—strong yet tender, willing literally to brave the fires of hell for her. Humbled, she wondered what she’d ever done to deserve such love, but she fiercely vowed to return it—if they survived. She had to believe their love could conquer time. Belief and their love were now their only weapons.

No! I don’t believe this. After all my planning. All they had to do was walk through the damn doors. Where’d I go wrong?

This never happened to me before. I mean, when I whip up a tornado, the wind blows. Period. So what the hell happened here?

Humans. You can control all the externals, but it doesn’t mean diddly-squat once their emotions are involved.

I can’t hold back the flames much longer. Once I set a disaster in motion, I can’t turn it off. It’s taking all my power to keep that fire from turning them into a pile of cinders.

They’ll die. Once the fire escapes my control they’ll die.

I don’t want them to die.

“Why don’t you want them to die, Ganymede?”

How did the ice-cream jerk know what I was thinking? Come to think of it, why doesn’t
he
save them? That’s his job. I don’t have any pride left. Someone has to save them, and I don’t care who.

“No, it’s your job, Ganymede. You started it; you end it.”

Fat lotta help he’ll be. Think! There hasta be a way. Damn, the fire’s startin’ to get away from me.

“You still haven’t answered my question, Ganymede. Why do you care if they die?”

Just what I need right now, a philosophical discussion about life and death. I have to save them because…because I
love
them.

Love. Why didn’t I recognize it? Because I never felt it before, that’s why. An eternity of existence and I never felt love before.

I’m doomed. It’s the big Crockpot Down Under for me. The Big Guy doesn’t tolerate weak emotions in his ranks. But this isn’t weak. It
hurts.

Fortune and Leith love me. No one in the universe ever loved me before. OK, so I’m not a lovable guy. Sue me.

I could let them fry, and the Big Guy would probably forgive me. I mean, I’ve given him a lot of good times.

But you know something, he can go to hell. Oops, forgot. He’s already there.

Nothing matters now. I’m toast. But I’m gonna go out in a blaze of glory. No pun intended.

I’ve never tried to manage two natural forces at once. Don’t have much strength left, but I didn’t get to be the best without guts. Time to pull out all the stops. Nothin’ left to lose now.

Hey, if Leith and Fortune live, it’ll be worth gettin’ zapped.

“I’d help if I could, Ganymede, but Fortune and Leith aren’t my assignment.”

Right. Doesn’t this guy ever give up? He’s like a pain-in-the-butt mosquito buzzin’ in your ear.

“Don’t you want to know what my assignment is?”

No. Now get lost and let me concentrate.

“
You
, Ganymede. My assignment is you. This good deed will, uh, terminate your present employment, but I’ve been authorized to offer you a Gold Card with unlimited credit to do good.”

Too much stress. I’m hallucinatin’. How does a cosmic troublemaker do good?

“Well, you’ve done a great job of helping Fortune and Leith fall in love.”

Yeah. A cosmic Cupid. I can get a little shop, hang out a sign, charge a nominal fee…One question, though. This whole operation fell together like a giant jigsaw puzzle, and I was just one of the pieces. Who…?

“Top-level decision.”

OK, I get the picture.

“Do we have a deal?”

You’re on.
If
I survive the next few minutes.

Hold on, guys. Your old pal won’t let you down.

Remember me.

Fortune didn’t know at what point external noise interrupted the sounds of her soul. She’d heard that your life flashed before you at the point of death.
Wrong.
She was so focused on Leith that nothing, not her past or her doubtful future, could interfere with her last few moments with him.

But gradually outside noises battered at her. Thunder shattered the thick silence now broken only by the crackling flames, and lightening flashed, competing with the eerie glow of the fire. The sound of the wind rose to a wail of torment.

Suddenly the gale’s force shattered the room’s large window, and the storm entered in a shower of broken glass. A wall of wind-driven rain hit her, and she staggered beneath its strength.

Leith tightened his grip on her hand. “Dinna worry, lass. I willna let ye go.”

And while the wind, rain, and fire battled for supremacy, Fortune clung to Leith—her warrior. Had it been only a few weeks ago that she’d arrogantly thought she didn’t need him? How could she have been so wrong? He’d always be her anchor in whatever life chose to fling at them.

Suddenly it was over. The fire died with an angry hiss of defeat, and the wind became a soft whisper of encouragement.

Now that she was safe, reaction set in. Shaking, Fortune turned to look at her time portal. The door started to swing shut, too quickly for them to reach it.

Gazing one last time at the world she’d never see again,
Fortune felt only a sad regret for the women who’d never experience the kind of love she shared with Leith.

Fortune had started to turn away when Leith’s startled oath swung her attention back to her workroom.

A man carry ing a small sculpture moved into view. A woman followed closely by another man carried material to a counter, where they began to discuss something.

Men.
There were men in her time.
What…?

Then she remembered.

Is there a man you really love, Stephanie?

Yes, but I can’t marry him. He’s sterile. The family name would die with me.

Fortune
had
saved humanity, but not in the way she’d expected. Jan Kredski and her catastrophic cloning method never existed because Stephanie had followed her heart.

The door shut with a quiet click.

“ ’Tis ended, Fortune.”

Without speaking, she pulled Leith over to his time portal, which had started to slowly close. “I want to take a peek at your Scotland, Leith.”

She felt his reluctance, his sadness right up to the moment she shoved him with all her strength, and he stumbled through the door. “You’re wrong, Campbell. It’s just the beginning.” She held on to him, tumbling, pitching forward until they landed in a tangled heap on the heather-covered hillside.

Turning her head, she watched the time portal close. Forever. For a millisecond, panic intruded. No buttons to push. She’d go into button-pushing withdrawal, maybe have to make some artificial buttons to ease the craving.

Looking back at Leith, she watched the wonder, the joy transform his face.
To hell with buttons.
She smiled at him through tears of happiness, then wrapped her arms tightly around him and felt his fi ngers stroking her hair.

“Why, Fortune?”

His warm breath teased the side of her neck, and she shivered in growing excitement. A new world, a new time, but she could handle anything so long as she could reach out and touch him. Forever.

“You had to come back because you’d always feel a sense of incompleteness without Hugh, without the Highlands. You belong here.”

“ ’Tis not what I’m asking, and ye know it well.” His lips touched the sensitive skin behind her ear.

She turned her head to stare into his jade eyes, and it felt like the first time, when she’d emerged from beneath the rest-over cover to meet his startled gaze. Only now there was a sense of coming home. “I love you, Leith Campbell, and I want to be where you are. Always.”

His face blurred, and she took a shaky breath, filling her heart with the scents of her new home. Earth, rain, and…“Hey, we’re in Scotland. We’re sitting on heather! At least I guess that’s what this purple stuff is. You promised me we’d make love here, right in the middle of it. Pay up, Campbell.”

His slow smile washed over her—warm, sexy,
real
. “Do ye love me beyond all reason, lass?”

Reaching up, she pulled his head down to her. “Beyond all reason. Beyond all time.”

“Ye willna miss yer other life?”

Even though his soft murmur was teasing, Fortune sensed the importance of his question.

“I have no other life. Only you.”

And just before his mouth covered hers, she grinned at him. “Besides, man-maker conventions were hell.”