Highland Moon Sifter (a Highland Sorcery novel) (11 page)

The crushing magic lifted and he fell to his hands, drawing in a harsh painful breath.

He couldn’t get up, had not the strength, so he crawled. One hand, one knee, scraping across the floor until he wedged himself up onto the bed and pushed himself to Aldreth. His knees squished in the blood-soaked linens. The entire lower half of Aldreth’s gown was drenched in blood, as were her arms and hands. A small fetus lay partially covered beneath the hem of her skirts and Shaw’s frozen heart splintered into pieces.

A dead child. But the other?

He crawled behind Aldreth and pulled her back into his chest. “Soft, lass, let me help you. ‘Tis another babe within yer womb. Be calm and let me help.”

Gulping back a cry, she nodded and threw her head back into the crook of his neck. Her sweat-slickened hair fell along his shoulder, tangling with his own.

And Shaw gave. He funneled every ounce of his silver moonlit current into her womb, strengthening her even as he weakened.

His body shook, unable to tell where the witch’s tremors ended and his began. Perspiration dotted his skin. Hot coppery bile pulled up from his stomach and he clamped down hard on it. By the time their tremors ceased and his magic was once again depleted, they lay on their sides, his larger frame curled around hers, covered in blood, but they had succeeded together in saving the second child. The tiny heartbeat fluttered within.

That had to be worth all this.

He had siphoned away her insanity, kept the witch from fracturing.

Turning in his arms, Aldreth snuggled into his chest. “Thank you. Thank you for sparing our child. Ye’ll see, ye’ll see I’ll make a good mother. We’ll raise him together. And more.” She kissed his sweat-dampened collarbone. “We’ll have more children. We’ll make a new clan. One of magic more powerful than the world has ever known. Our own Guardians of Magic. We’ll restore the name of my grandsire.” She slid up his body to kiss his chin. Her lips tasted salty from sweat and tears.

He pushed her black hair back over her shoulder, not wanting this, never wanting her, but especially not drenched in blood. “Aldreth.”

“Shhh, shh,
mo ghràdh
.” She shushed him with another salty kiss, smiling coyly as though they were simply lovers without any of the torturous history behind them and a stillborn fetus lost and forgotten within the bed linens beside them. Not forgotten. Shaw squeezed his eyes closed.

Aldreth rested her wet forehead upon his shoulder. “Ye’re weary.”

She had no perception of the truth of that. Weary of body, weary of mind. Weary of soul.

Yet lying so near to her, now that he wasn’t surging all his magic to sustain her stolen pregnancy, he felt himself restoring, filtering back his magic through her. Her proximity healed him, at least physically if naught else. Theirs truly was a twisted malignant relationship.

He gave and she took and then she restored what had been taken. Not the same though. The magic that came back to him was tainted. Unclean. A brooding cold illness burrowing into his essence and making him…less. Less than a man. Less than a Moon Sifter. Less.

She drew up, leaning on an arm, and then pulled away, and, gods help him, he wished she would stay, just so he could soak up more of her vitality and get back to himself.

“Sleep, my dearest.” She kissed his brow and then slipped away, dragging her soiled gown across the ruined linens and glided from the chamber, as graceful as a queen, rather than a woman who had endured a great loss.

Slightly strengthened, Shaw sat up and looked toward the small bloody body near his leg.

He couldn’t leave her there to be found by the servants of the village. ‘Twasna right. His chest constricted. ‘Twasna what the child deserved. ‘Twasna what her mother, her true mother, would want, though he did not know what to do.

Would it be a kindness or a cruelty to take the small bundle back to her mother? He honestly did not know.

He grabbed up a loose covering from the head of the bed and knelt to wrap the infant…and stopped, eyes narrowing.

Beneath the white ashy coating of birthing, the frail skin was dark, eyes closed and covered with thin patches of some kind of birthing fluid membrane. The tiny lashes were light beneath the transparent film. The thin arms were overly long, bones in the tiny hand appeared broken, mayhap deformed.

He looked closer, heart hollow, a strange sense of recognition invading his overtired mind. Their magic, his and Aldreth’s, mayhap the black nature of the spell used to transfer the babes from one womb to another, had done something to the child, changed it somehow.

He would not be taking this infant back to the village. He could not let them see what had been wrought upon one of their own. ‘Twould be beyond cruel.

Carefully, Shaw wrapped the child in the covering, a hollow chasm of grief threatening to drop out from beneath his feet. What had they done?

What did Aldreth now carry within her womb?

Chapter Fourteen

Playing bait wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, sitting out in the open while all the warriors settled out of sight within the forest, but she’d volunteered for the spot, arguing that the two remaining Sifts were out to stop her from interfering with their creation. Not to mention they had her scent, especially now that she’d cleaned up and no longer wore Shaw’s clothes.

Toren had put up a bloody good argument, but with Charity’s help, they had convinced him to see reason.

Stupid macho Highlanders. She’d been escaping Sifts since she was ten years old and survived every attack. She understood them better than any of these guys.

This would be their first encounter. She had to admit the warriors were good at camouflaging themselves among the trees, especially with their large sizes. If she hadn’t watched where they secreted themselves, she wouldn’t know they were within yards of her at all.

The Sifts didn’t stand a chance.

Besides, Alexander theorized that Sifts were more bold and reckless than wise, although apparently they had the intelligence to figure out her, Matthew, and Luke’s intention to travel back to the early 2000s and seek out Col Limont. Not that that plan had gone off as expected and here she was in the Thirteenth Century in Col’s place and just as reluctant as his brother to take Shaw’s life.

Her thoughts settled on Alexander, the scientist sorcerer.

Charity and Toren’s son.

Strange day. She wondered how Charity would take it, knowing it was the child she carried that figured out a way to get Col to come back and kill Shaw. Bekah frowned. Charity certainly wasn’t going to hear anything like that from her.

Bekah sighed. That baby had to be protected at all costs.

At least Charity hadn’t expected to be invited along on this little Sift-capturing foray, but instead remained safe within MacTavis Keep.

She wished another person was here though. She missed him. She barely knew him really but she missed him. She hated that he had to return to the witch, hated even more that they were connected in some close irreversible magical way. That really sucked.

Her muscles coiled like a spring ready to snap. She really really hated it. She wanted him here with her.

Her fingers clenched. She imagined Shaw and Aldreth together at this very moment and what the witch might possibly be doing to him. She glimpsed some of the scars when the collar of his shirt rode low, and she couldn’t not see the hollow ache of guilt and remorse in his eyes as well as the vibrant hope of redemption as his eyes slid to his brother when Toren wasn’t looking. It was like staring into heartbreak.

A branch cracked overhead, sounding like a gunshot on the still morning air and Bekah restrained the urge to look up at the Sift she knew was there, welcoming the distraction to her thoughts with the need to take action.

The Sift dropped in front of her, dark leather skin bunching with the impact.

Bekah curled her lips back in a grin as predatory as the beast’s.

Show time.

~~~

Shaw found Aldreth in the great hall, standing before the brightening flames in the large hearth. She stared into the blue fire, seeing images that only she could see.

He found her here many a time, watching movement upon the land, most specifically spying upon his brother, then cackling and making light of Toren’s attempts to gather the chieftains and rid the world of the witch. Of her.

She was not laughing today. Her spine was rigid, straight as an oak even with her swollen abdomen. Her chest lifted and fell in heaving angry breaths. She addressed him without turning. “Toren has returned to the land.” That usually brought her endless joy, watching him through her flames with fascination. Something was different. “His
stripach
of a Healer is with child.” Aldreth seethed and the flames spiked, shooting out of the hearth before receding in a shower of sparks. “Did ye know?”

Shaw remained silent, heart pounding inside his ribs.

Aldreth whirled around, skirts flaring, eyes narrowed on him, lips curled back over gritted teeth. “She’s bearing his child. A sorcerer’s child.” Lips circled into a tiny O and her eyes tracked about the room, forehead scrunching while her mind caught up to what she said. She spread her palm over the expansion of her belly and her voice softened. “A sorcerer’s child.”

“Aldreth, no,” Shaw whispered. “You already have a child.”

She walked toward him to cup his cheek in her fire-warmed hand. “A twin.” Her eyes glistened in a sheen of madness. “This child is meant to be a twin. Do ye not see? The other babe was lost to us so that I might carry the sorcerer’s son. ‘Twas meant to be all along. I will bear Toren’s child. He will be strong, the child of a High Sorcerer, and Toren will love me. He will have to love me then. I am the mother of his child.”

Shaw took Aldreth’s hand over his cheek and brought it down between them. “Aldreth, no. It doesna work as such. Love cannot be forced.” An image of large bright eyes shining through strands of fairy white hair came unbidden to the fore of his mind. “Toren will never love you.”

A bolt of magic pierced his gut as sharp and as brutally as a sword. He looked down at Aldreth’s hand pressed flat upon his lower ribs before sinking to his knees.

Aldreth pulled his head back by a hank of his hair and seethed into his face. “Ye are wrong. He will love me and I will have his child.”

“I willna help you.”

The hold on his hair tightened. “You willna let the child die. Your own nephew? I know ye willna.”

“Yes.” He would. Before he allowed his nephew to be reformed into a misshapen fetus, he would. But he would not let it come to that. The blade he pulled from his boot and plunged into her heart was real.

Shocked, Aldreth stumbled back and stared at the dagger piercing her. Recovering, she smoothed her skirts and staring into his eyes, she grasped the hilt of his dagger and slid the blade free without a touch of blood on it.

“Ye of all people know better than that.” She let his knife drop to clatter on the floor. He did know better, knew his magic was no match for hers and that neither could mortal weapons harm her. Her magic was too ensconced with demonic power over the last three hundred years of her life, and protection for that, though he had certainly tried over the past years.

And was desperate enough to try again.

She hovered closer over him where he remained on his knees, pressing his cheek against the top of her rounding stomach and stroked his hair. “Ye will help me,
mo ghràdh
. Together, yer magic, mine, and Toren’s will keep our child strong. Ye’ll see.”

“Nay.” He pulled his head away. “Nay. Not this time. No. I’ll find a way to stop you.”

She smiled down at him as though he were an unreasonable child.

“Ye’ll help me in this. You always do.”

With those words echoing, pain slammed inside his head with the force of being carried over a waterfall. He hunched over, panting, chest tightening on clamping lungs, unable to stop Aldreth’s glide out of the chamber.

Chapter Fifteen

Long moments passed before Shaw could breathe again. Moments Charity could not afford. Aldreth had hit him with a magic spawned of rage and madness, the dark greasy slickness of it purling through his arteries, a reminder of just how much more formidable she had become.

He staggered up, weak in the knees and head thundering at every step.