Haunting Embrace (41 page)

“I will not let it.”

I know. Trust in yourself, Áedán.

Her words echoed through him long after she’d faded from sight.

Chapter Thirty

Á
EDÁN left the others without bothering to stop and explain. Desperate, he raced over the rutted pathway to the house where Meaghan’s grandmother lived. Fighting the storm, Áedán found the junk heap at the side of the Ballaghs’ house. Even if Elan had not guided him, he would have known where it was. It felt as if the pendant had called him there, in fact. An accomplice in the war against evil. From there he knew exactly where he would go.

The cavern beneath the castle ruins.

The place where so many of his life’s crucial moments had played out. He had no illusions about what would happen when he reached it. He knew that his journey into freedom would come to an end in this confrontation. Fate would once again try to condemn him to the Book of Fennore.

The very idea of it filled him with such remorse that he wanted to hurl himself off the cliffs and die as quickly and finally as Jamie and Eamonn had done. But he would not abandon Meaghan. He would not betray her.

And he would not lose faith. Meaghan had reminded him that once he was the most powerful Druid to walk the earth. He’d let that knowledge corrupt him once. Now he would use it to defy any fate that meant to make him a slave.

He would be fighting both Cathán and the Book on their terms, but neither the sentient being inside the Book or Cathán knew that Áedán had powers of his own. Cathán must have worked through someone in Ballyfionúir to have captured Meaghan. The only way to ensure that she escaped was to go in after her. If her captor had impelled Meaghan to touch the Book, if that twisted evil had seeped beneath her skin, Áedán would fight to the last breath to bring her back.

He plucked the velvet pouch from the canister where Meaghan had hidden it. In his hand, the amulet blazed hot and cold. The markings on his arm burned as if in response, the black turning red before his eyes. He forced himself to look away from the terrifying sight. He needed to focus on one thing—Meaghan. It did not matter what happened to him if he could save her.

As he moved away, he heard the low voices of Brion MacGrath and Colleen as they approached from the ruins.

“Did you find her?” Colleen asked.

“I will,” he answered.

“What can I do?” Brion asked. “Where should we look?”

“Stay here in case she returns.” He swallowed, knowing that if he succeeded, Meaghan would be returning alone.

“I’ve sent word to Francis Murray about the bodies at the bottom of the cliff.”

Áedán shook his head angrily. “Keep him away from the ruins. You don’t want him involved in what is about to happen there.”

“What—”

Áedán cut him off. “Don’t ask. Just keep away.”

Brion gave a sharp nod of acknowledgment and Áedán noted that his eyes still sparkled, but not with evil. He paused, studying the other man for a moment. His features appeared suddenly softer and when he glanced at Colleen, his heart was there in the look.. . .

“I’m going to be a father,” Brion said.

Father to Cathán MacGrath. Suddenly Áedán imagined the future stretching out in front of him. He saw how the fabric of it waffled and then distorted. He’d watched the future change before just as he’d witnessed the past warping and reshaping into something new. Brion was not the first MacGrath to tinker with what was and change what might have been. But this . . .

Icy fear coated Áedán’s insides with a new kind of dread.

If Brion raised his son, that son might not become the lonely, desperate man who sought the Book of Fennore. But what did that mean for his children? Would they still be born? Would Meaghan’s mother find Niall Ballagh and marry him? Would Meaghan ever be conceived?

Without a word, Áedán fled the kitchen for the cavern. He would need to do much more than simply dictate the destiny of the Book of Fennore. He would need to refashion fate itself.

Chapter Thirty-one

M
EAGHAN struggled against the ropes that bound her, but they held tight and she couldn’t get free. Kyle sat nearby, watching her with cold flat eyes that glittered darkly. The taint of the Book of Fennore peppered the air and made breathing a frightening and terrifying endeavor.

When he’d lunged from behind the crumbling ruins and captured her, muffling her screams so that they couldn’t be heard over the storm and dragging her away without anyone noticing, she’d fought, using every trick she knew. She’d managed to slam her head back into his nose and almost got his knee with a hard thrust of her heel. But the creature sweet Kyle Mahon had become seemed impervious to pain. He’d only held on tighter as he dragged her away. She’d watched helplessly as the White Fennore had appeared and sent Áedán off in the wrong direction. She’d felt betrayed to her soul. And when the others left, Kyle had tied her up and brought her down, past the still and bloody bodies of Eamonn, Jamie, and the wolf, into the cavern beneath the castle ruins.

Once they’d entered the dark cavern, she’d fought back her fear of the looming shadows and blackened recesses. She’d tried to calm her panic and think of a way to reason with Kyle. She’d reminded him that he’d once been a man of God. A man who’d had a good heart. But that man had been devoured by the Book of Fennore, and her words couldn’t reach him. His eyes had the hard flat glitter she’d seen in Cathán’s, and his voice had warped until it no longer sounded like his own. Calmly he’d told her how he’d murdered Mickey in cold blood. And he’d enjoyed it.

The shell still resembled Kyle Mahon, but the man inside existed no more.

“Áedán won’t come,” Meaghan said again. “I’m telling you, he thinks I’m like the woman who betrayed him before. He thinks I will do the same.”

“He’ll come,” Kyle said.

Meaghan clenched her eyes and prayed it would not be so, but a short time later, they heard movements at the rocky entrance into the cavern. And then he was there.

Áedán, so tall and strong. Áedán, with his green eyes and tender touch. She felt the blast of his emotions, hot and possessive, infuriated to have had her stolen from him. There was rage, but it didn’t slice at her. He directed his fury at Kyle and only Kyle.

He’d brought a torch, and now he lit it and chased back the dark for her. He stepped into the shadowed cavern without a word, but in his quick glance, she saw his concern, his dread that he might have been too late.

“Let us begin,” he said simply, moving forward like a man with a mission. He betrayed none of the fear she felt in his emotions.

“Begin?” Kyle said in a voice that echoed deeply. It wasn’t his own, but a voice of ancient power. “You think to trick me, but I caution you to think again. I know the ritual.”

“How do you know it?” Áedán asked, and though he tried, he could not hide his surprise.

Humor twisted the voice now. “My friend Kyle helped with that. You see, he used to be a Keeper of the Book of Fennore. A scholar who studied all of the old ways.”

Áedán knew that already, but Meaghan sensed his distress at having that strange voice speaking it, talking about Kyle in third person. It unraveled what little façade of calm she’d managed to maintain. If this entity inhabiting Kyle knew the ritual, how, then, would Áedán succeed in tricking it? For she had to believe that was his intention.

“Kyle knows the ritual and now, of course, so do I,” the voice coming from Kyle went on.

Only the tick at the corner of Áedán’s eye gave away his feelings, but Meaghan didn’t need outward signs. She felt them.

“Good,” Áedán said, calmly. “I won’t have to explain things to you, then.”

The response caught Kyle—or what had become of him—off guard. For the first time, his confidence slipped and he looked uneasy. “You intend to cooperate?”

“I do. I tire of humanity. For too long I existed without it. I find that humans sicken me now.”

The disquiet on Kyle’s face vanished, and he smiled coldly. “I do not believe you.”

“I don’t care.”

Áedán strode to where Meaghan lay sprawled on the floor of the cavern and roughly hauled her up. Kyle hadn’t expected this either, but he quickly recovered and moved to stop Áedán.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, grabbing Meaghan’s other arm tightly.

“Start a fire,” Áedán ordered.

And then he pulled from his pocket the pouch with the pendant inside. Meaghan felt its power surge around them. When Kyle hesitated, Áedán repeated the command, and his voice seemed louder, more commanding than the softly spoken words had been. It held that ancient echo she’d heard from the entity, and it frightened her. A trace of doubt crept through her. What if Áedán was telling the truth? What if all of his protestations about becoming human again had been real? What if—

She cut her thoughts off. She would not doubt. Not now. Not ever.

Kyle took a jerky step back and then moved to the wood he’d already stacked. Silently he lit the fire.

“Where is the Book?” Áedán asked, gently settling Meaghan near the crackling warmth. In his emotions, she felt his frustration. His need for vengeance. His fear. But in his face, she saw only calm and calculation.

Again, Kyle hesitated, unsure of what to do.

“Cathán,” Áedán said, addressing the power behind Kyle’s glittering eyes. “Bring the Book.”

With unstable movements, Kyle went to the back of the cavern and shifted a few large stones aside until he unearthed a canvas bundled around something large and bulky. He brought it to where Áedán waited, each step seeming to cost him a great deal. Meaghan had the sense that a battle raged behind those glittering eyes, and it gave her hope that maybe somewhere inside, Kyle still existed. Carefully he laid the massive bundle on the ground and then opened the canvas cover.

The Book of Fennore lay inside. Even if Meaghan had not seen it once before, she would have known exactly what it was. Kyle stumbled back as soon as he’d revealed it.

Primeval, the Book had weathered centuries, and looked it. Shaped irregularly—not square, not rectangle—its corners met at awkward angles, as if they’d been cut by hand without the help of a ruler or straight edge. It was as enormous as the Holy Bible that Father Lawlor kept on the pulpit at their little church, but there was nothing holy about this Book. The cover gleamed like oil. Shiny, black, and somehow sickly. Beveled in the surface were jewels that glittered sharp and bright, and a hundred—maybe a thousand—concentric spirals that had no beginning, no ending. The same spirals covered the ceiling, walls, and floors of this very cavern.

The Book began to drone in a discordant tone that raised all the fine hairs on her body. In the past few days, Meaghan had known fear that defied comprehension. But the sound the Book of Fennore made . . . it filled her with terror that surpassed all else. The malignant emotions inside it made her stomach churn. The high-pitched grinding sound went on, seeping beneath her skin until her bones rattled with the noise. The hollow cave gave it the perfect amphitheater, and the drone grew until even the crashing tide hammering against the cliffs outside and the thunderous storm wailing over Ballyfionúir waned.

Áedán shifted until he stood behind her and laid his gentle palm against her back, sending reassurance and strength through his touch. He was terrified, too, and yet he didn’t give it away. Only Meaghan felt his fear.

“Cut her loose,” he ordered.

When Kyle looked like he might argue, Áedán said it again, more quietly and yet with a power that compelled.

Without waiting to see that Kyle obeyed, Áedán moved to the Book of Fennore, and with utmost care, lifted it, keeping the canvas between his hands and the cover.

Kyle cut the bindings around her wrists but left her ankles tied. Áedán did not argue. She felt steely determination in him, tempered by the weight of his choices and something else that piqued her already rampant fear.

Regret. Mourning. Good-bye.

And in that instant, she knew what he planned to do.

“No,” she whispered.

Áedán set the Book on a large, flat stone and began to speak. His voice flowed from some place deep within him, melodic, mesmerizing. He spoke in a language that sounded as ancient as the Book of Fennore, in words she didn’t understand. But she didn’t need to understand to feel the darkness behind them.

The ritual had begun and Meaghan felt the beginning of the end binding her as tightly as the straps that held her ankles secure.

“No,” she tried to say again, but her throat had constricted, and she couldn’t utter a sound.

Chapter Thirty-two

T
HE ancient words flowed like hot oil, searing Áedán’s throat, burning his lips, incinerating the man he’d hoped—if only for a while—to be. Where she sat propped against the stones, he saw Meaghan’s head fall back and her body go lax. Only her eyes moved as paralysis overtook her.

He closed his own eyes to the terror he saw there. Soon this would be finished for her, and if he didn’t focus on the intricacies of what he did, her life would end before it even began. He had to be sure that the spell he wove around the Book of Fennore was tight. He had to be certain the beast that lived within it would die when Áedán returned to his prison.

The creature that Cathán had made of Kyle watched him with suspicion as he lifted his hands over the Book, and yet somewhere inside the man, he felt a piece of Kyle Mahon screaming for salvation. Slowly Áedán opened the pouch that held the pendant and dumped it into his palm. The twisted silver and gold felt hot to the touch, and it burned him, but he didn’t let go. The symbols on his arms heated like coils of copper until he thought his skin might go up in flames. Still he held tight.

The cover of the Book of Fennore sprang open, eager. Greedy.
Ready.
It enjoyed his pain, relished his anguish. The pages began to fan with gleeful viciousness, and a foul odor rose from those pages, something that spoke of locked vats and decay, of murderous intentions and vile longings.