Haunting Embrace (31 page)

When he’d heard that voice in his head this morning, he’d felt like a wild animal driven to madness. He’d felt his own consciousness slipping. Like a thrall, he’d been compelled to answer.

Meaghan’s touch had broken the trance, but he didn’t like to think just how close he’d been to answering the voice and following it back to the Book of Fennore. Last night, after he’d tapped the power that flowed between the Book and the pendant, he’d thought himself immune to its call. He should have known better. Hadn’t he switched tactics when he’d come across a particularly stubborn prey? Why should he be surprised that Cathán would do the same? But he had to stay strong. If he let that power reach him, he would be lost forever.

The Book of Fennore had taken on a life of its own so long ago that Áedán couldn’t even say when it had happened. Áedán’s goals had aligned with it at one time. But now the power that was in the Book aspired to things that did not agree with Áedán.

Blood. Death. Mayhem.

Things of his past. Things that filled Áedán with sharp remorse and bitter regret.

He exhaled, shaking his head, admitting, if only to himself, that the reason behind his transformation was Meaghan. The woman who’d slipped beneath his skin despite his efforts to bar her. A woman he wanted. A woman he needed.

A woman who could destroy him.

Again.

He scowled. How could he trust her when every internal compass he had pointed to the repeat of history? She had the key. She heard the voices. She saw death.

Feck.
He felt like his mind had been twisted into a knot.

He looked out at the bay in despair. One by one, the other ships left their dock and arrowed to the harbor opening. As they passed, the men eyed Áedán with misgivings. The friendly waves that would have come just yesterday were no more. Once again he’d been accused and condemned without a chance to defend himself.

He turned away, wondering where Meaghan would be now? At Colleen’s, caring for the baby?

Last night she’d been like liquid fire in his arms. She’d been a homecoming and a leave-taking all in one. She’d welcomed his heart and banished his fears, if only for a time. In some ways, she seemed innocent, and in others . . . How could he not suspect that she would bring disaster in her wake?

In the slip across the way, Hoyt O’Shea prepared his lines with studied precision, but Áedán felt the other man’s gaze stray to him when he thought Áedán wouldn’t notice.

Then, as the
High Tide
began to pull away, Hoyt called, “Mornin’, Áedán. Glad to see the sorry business with Mickey didn’t hurt you as well. It’s a nasty thing, murder.”

Surprised, Áedán straightened from the net, hating the grateful churn in his gut at the friendly greeting. He didn’t need
friends.

“It is a sad affair,” Áedán said, the sun shining in his eyes as he looked at Hoyt. He mimicked the musical cadence of Hoyt’s speech effortlessly, hiding his own turmoil beneath it. He’d spent eons studying people, seeking the best way to exploit them. It came as second nature to use those skills now when it felt like the world caved in around him.

“Me wife said Brion MacGrath is charging from one end of the valley to another looking for the culprit. Ask me, it’d be to shake his hand. Mickey Ballagh wasn’t worth the salt in his body.”

The air shifted and Áedán caught the scent of the Book. Like a rabbit emerging from a hole to find a circling hawk above, he fought the instinct to scuttle back into the dark and await its departure. The very idea of cowering infuriated him, though. He moved port side and squinted to see Hoyt more clearly.

“It’s bad luck to speak ill of the dead,” he said in a mild tone.

Hoyt’s face remained in shadow, but that sense of the Book rose like the lapping waves. Then the
High Tide
turned toward the barrier opening at the mouth of the bay and the shadow of the cabin broke the sun’s fierce rays. For one naked moment Áedán saw Hoyt’s flat, dark eyes and the sharp gleam that revealed so much. It took all Áedán’s composure not to stagger back as the full impact hit him. Hoyt had been the presence he’d sensed in the pub last night. Hoyt had come in contact with the Book of Fennore.

The moment was quickly there and gone, but Áedán had no doubt that Hoyt had killed Mickey Ballagh. He would have to keep his guard up around the other man unless he wanted to find himself in similar dire straits.

“Áedán?”

The woman’s voice calling to him spun Áedán as Hoyt motored away. Meaghan, dressed in her borrowed coat and the blue jeans she’d had on yesterday, made her way to him. She stepped onto the deck without asking his leave to come aboard.

“Has Brion MacGrath been here already?” she asked.

“No.”

“I’m sure he will be soon. He seemed determined to blame you for Mickey’s murder.”

“Grand,” he said in response.

They surveyed each other warily, and something inside him ached at the guardedness in her manner, at the stiffness in his own. Her eyes looked like rain and storm, more gray than blue this morning—but not, he noted with relief—a bit of amethyst. She was upset, though. Well, honestly, so was he.

How quickly
emotions
had become as natural as pulling air into his lungs.

She had the pendant with her. He felt it moving in the air particles, dancing on the breeze, and he realized that she must have stashed it somewhere last night because he hadn’t felt it when he’d come to her.

The chug of the
High Tide
’s motor faded in the distance as it reached the harbor break. Relieved that Hoyt had moved too far away to take note of Meaghan, Áedán gathered up the net he’d just spread out and stuffed it in the bin anchored to the deck. Without a word, he went to work on the lines holding
The Angel
in her slip and cast them off.

“Where are we going?” Meaghan asked, gripping the rail.

“Out.”

Away from Ballyfionúir and murder. Away from Brion MacGrath and his witch hunt. But not away from Meaghan. Meaghan he took with him.

The few days he’d spent at sea with Mickey had given Áedán a rudimentary education on how to get
The Angel
from dock to the mouth of the harbor. Hoyt’s ship had become a dot in the distance by the time Áedán steered past the seawall where the waters turned harsh, buffeting the small boat and forcing his thoughts to focus. At last he cleared the breakwaters and motored toward the middle of the endless sea. Only then did he cut the engine and face the woman watching him with all-too-knowing eyes.

“We need to talk, Áedán,” she said.

He gave her a curt nod of agreement. They did need to talk, but he wanted to lead the conversation this time. It was Meaghan’s turn to writhe under a blistering spotlight.

“Where was the pendant last night?” he demanded.

“Why did you freak out when you saw this?” she countered, pulling the silver comb from her pocket. As it had before, the sight of it hit him like a blow to the solar plexus. For a moment, he could barely breathe.

“How big are those pockets? You seem to be forever pulling surprises out of them,” he forced himself to say calmly.

She almost smiled. “Answer me, Áedán. I know seeing this upsets you.”

“Do not presume to know me, Meaghan, just because we shared some kisses.”

“We shared a lot more than that. Deny it if it makes you happy, but it’s the truth.”

It was, and as much as he wanted to hurl a rebuttal at her, he could not. “Happy,” he said instead. “And what is happiness?”

She moved to the bench on the starboard side and sat, watching him with perceptive eyes. He kept his face impassive. At least he hoped he did. With Meaghan, he could be sure of nothing.

“I want to know about the White Fennore.”

“And why would you want to know about her?”

“She meant something to you,” Meaghan said simply. “She means something to me, too. I just haven’t figured out what yet.”

He digested that in silence, torn with indecision. What should he tell her? What should he hide?

“Elan,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Her name. It means bringer of light.”

And it had fit the woman he’d loved. She’d brought light into his life right up to the moment she’d banished him into the black world of Fennore, transforming him from a man with a heart and soul into an apathetic and cruel entity. She’d sealed him in darkness for eons, made him yearn for the brightness of her smile, the warmth of her glow. He’d mourned her loss and then he’d turned bitter. In the end, his rage, his need for vengeance had consumed him.

Meaghan watched him closely, and then said, “In your version of the story, she betrayed you.”

“My version?” he asked sardonically. “You mean, in the true version.”

“That’s what I want to know. Kyle said—”

“Kyle,” he snarled, feeling that alien flare of jealousy and hating himself for it.

“He said that people feared the Whi—Elan—because they were superstitious and she saw dead people. They wanted her sacrificed because what she saw frightened them.”

Meaghan’s voice wobbled over those words, and he knew she was remembering Mickey and the bleeding corpse that had visited her last night, but she kept her chin up and her gaze direct, revealing nothing of what went on behind her eyes. Áedán wished he could present such an implacable front.

“That part is true,” he said. “People did fear her. But it was more than that. Elan was so beautiful that it hurt to behold her. She was perfection in flesh and blood. It seemed she shouldn’t be real. No man was immune to her beauty.”

“Not even you.”

Especially not him.

“Our king—Conlaoch—had a very jealous wife. She hated Elan from the first. It was she who proclaimed Elan to be the White Fennore. We were forbidden to call her by her given name after that. We could only address her as the White Fennore—a thing, not a person. In one calculated stroke, the queen turned her into an object to be worshiped from afar. She isolated Elan and made her a slave.”

“I’m hearing two things there. She was worshiped but she was a slave?”

“You do not befriend a god. You do not speak to a god. You pray—which means you ask it to give you everything you want, and in return, you ask it for more. They took all that made her who she was. They enslaved her with their needs, their demands.”

“And then they wanted her to die when she couldn’t deliver?”

“Yes.”

Even now, he felt something clench inside him. Elan had been so young, so innocent, and so heartbreakingly beautiful, and they had destroyed her. Then she had destroyed him.

“And the Book?”

Wondering where his determination to make Meaghan the victim of this interrogation had fled, he said, “We never intended for it to become what it did. We cast it into existence as a way for her to relieve the pressure she felt. It was a time of sickness among our people, so everywhere she looked, she saw death. Her heart would not let her ignore it, but each time she tried to stop someone from dying, she merely brought misery and fear.”

“And that’s when the king said she had to die?”

“When she had a vision of his wife and child dead, yes. He had coveted Elan, as well, and it vexed him that his wife ruled with such iron control that he dared not take her as his lover. When Elan predicted the deaths, I think he meant to relieve himself of temptation at the same time he appeased his jealous wife.”

“But didn’t they know she was yours?” Meaghan asked softly.

The words washed over him with sudden heat.
His
. But Elan had never really been his, had she? And neither was Meaghan.

“No,” he said, his voice rough. “Our love was forbidden.”

She startled at that and repeated the word, “Forbidden.”

“We met in secret. I planned for us to escape, to run away and start a new life together, but obviously, that never happened.”

“Where was this secret place where you met?” Meaghan whispered.

“I think you know.”

“The cavern beneath the castle ruins.”

He nodded. “Though the ruins didn’t come until centuries later.”

Meaghan searched his face for a long moment, and then she said, “Why didn’t it happen? Your plan for the two of you to escape?”

“What did your precious
Kyle
tell you?” he asked.

“That Elan saw her own spirit and knew that you meant to kill her. Because she was never able to change the deaths she saw—she thought it was inevitable.”

Inevitable.

He scoured the stubble of whiskers on his face with his palms, struggling to find the words to explain just how
un
inevitable it all had been.

“I meant only to conjure her death—to fake it. I had planned it to the last detail and I was certain it would work. But I couldn’t share it with Elan. I had to keep it secret from her.”

“Why?” Meaghan asked, incredulous.

“Elan could not lie. She had no deceitfulness in her. She could not have gone to the sacrifice and played the part without revealing the truth.”

“So you just didn’t
tell
her?”

“No,” he said angrily. “No, I didn’t tell her. I thought she would trust me. I would have died for her. She knew that. She should have believed in me. She should have known that I would keep her safe.”

Meaghan stared at him with frank disbelief, rekindling his anger. Who was she to judge his actions? She hadn’t been there. She couldn’t know how desperate he’d been for a solution.

“It would have worked,” he insisted. “Except I didn’t take into account the Book. By then it had become a monster on its own, and it moved against me.”

“How?”

He exhaled. It had been his own ego, his foolish pride that had turned the Book into the creation of darkness it became. In those days before his world had imploded and Elan had betrayed him, he’d felt his control over the Book vanish. And yet he’d refused to acknowledge the Book had taken a life of its own. Refused to ask for help from those who might have aided him. There’d been other Druids—men who had taken him in as a child and trained him. Men whose wisdom he’d greedily absorbed.

Yet the more powerful Áedán became, the less he’d cared for his mentors. He’d begun to think himself omnipotent. He’d believed that the knowledge he’d acquired had been within him all along—not learned, but innate.
His
by right
.
And he hadn’t wanted to admit to his weakness. Rather than go to them for help, he’d kept the beast he’d created a secret, concealed the danger that he felt growing within it, and battled the unbeatable odds alone.