Highland Moon Sifter (a Highland Sorcery novel) (13 page)

“Ye’re begging?” Her gaze dropped back to Bekah’s fluttering eyes. “The proud Moon Sifter Shaw Limont begs. For what? A slip of a girl with not a scratch of talent rushing through her veins? Pathetic. So very pathetic, Shaw. So very
mortal
,” she spat the word. Yet…” She lifted Bekah higher. “She’s strong in body. Do you want her? Will ye get her with child and give back to me what ye’ve taken? Or better yet, I will give her to your brother now that he is mine again.” She glanced to where Toren wavered on his knees, white spots of pain bracketing his mouth.

Where had the Sift gotten to?

She started dragging Bekah away by the hair. Uncoordinated, the lass grabbed onto Aldreth’s wrists, trying to wrench herself away. “Or mayhap I’ll throw her to my mercenaries for sport. One of them is bound to get her with child.”

No. No! Rage filled Shaw down to his bones, whether sifted from Aldreth’s madness or his own, it no longer mattered.

This could not go on.

She could not go on.

Insanity had taken hold and even he could not draw it out of her. It slicked across the air like a filthy festering growth.

This ends.

He drew everything he had within himself to the surface and shouted, “Down!”

The lass was intelligent, so bluidy intelligent. Bekah let herself go limp, dragging her dead weight to the ground while Shaw unleashed every last ounce of magic he had left into Aldreth.

She coveted his magic.

So be it.

She could have it all.

No holding back any longer.

Enraged, she shot back at him, hissing crackles of current that flooded into his own streams of power. The ground groaned beneath them, rolling in waves like a sliding rug. Energy sizzled across the charged air, singing their sparking clothes. Spikes of flame drilled inside Shaw’s head. Aldreth’s eyes glowed as fiercely as the magic barbs shooting off her frame.

The sky darkened, the power pulled gathering storm clouds from the sky and just like three years ago, rifts in time, rifts in space, tore open around them, dark and unnatural aberrations of black and blacker magic colliding.

Times rifts bubbled dangerously all around them. Bekah had been right. A Moon Sifter’s magic could open the slices through time. He felt the purring twists of magic coiling inside him creating more and more of the holes as they opened in the air. So many, so powerful…he had it inside of him all this time…

Beneath the rumbling, Shaw heard Toren shouting his name, but ‘twas too late. Too late for him.

He understood now.

He should have done this years ago, surrendered, completely surrendered all his magic to her, his entire essence, because even though she was a three hundred year old insane witch, Aldreth was still human.

And a human could not contain this abundance of twisted, darkened magic meant for two powerful magic wielders alone. These three years, they had barely been able to contain it between the two of them. His magic was not meant to be shared.

By surrendering all that he had, it would destroy her.

Even though the cost meant destroying himself.

Chapter Seventeen

Charity dropped out of Toren’s time rift into her old apartment, shoulder colliding with the chair that toppled over, her stomach cramping in tight spasms and water rushed down the insides of her naked legs.

The baby was coming. Traveling through the rift had somehow brought on labor.

Another contraction rolled through her and she curled around her belly. She was weeks away from giving birth. This couldn’t be happening.

“Walter!”

Charity craned her face up to a petite older woman in flower patterned pajamas and furry slippers, staring at her from the adjoining living area.

“Walter, quick. There’s a naked lady in the kitchen.”

“What are you talk—oh.” A wiry old guy rushed out of the bedroom, shoving his glasses up onto his nose. “Uh, you stay there. I’m calling the cops and I have mace. How’d she get in here?”

Charity shuddered around another labor pain. Too close. They were coming too close and hard. “Please,” she cried. “My-my sister. Lenore. Call my sister.”

“Walter, stop, hang up.” The woman edged closer, then slowly shifted to her creaking knees. “Oh dear. She’s having a baby. Hang up on the cops. They can’t do nothing. Call 911.”

“Lenore,” Charity whimpered. “Lenore.” And then another pain exploded in her abdomen, tearing her apart and her plea turned into a scream.

~~~

Staying low, Bekah crawled away from the witch and the fluctuating arc of magic that streamed between Aldreth and Shaw. The world had gone mad, the ground rolling and cracking beneath her knees, the walls of the keep tottered like an old man, stones breaking off and falling around the courtyard. Women and children fled the great hall, running out through the swaying gates into the meadow. The sky broke open, thundering and lightning in cacophonous bursts that rumbled through Bekah’s teeth. Clouds rolled overhead like a gathering storm. And the ocean heaved out of its boundaries, spewing high upon the keep’s ocean-facing wall like a fountain, spraying gusts of water over them.

Through it all, Shaw and Aldreth kept at it, focused entirely on each other. Aldreth’s hair lifted in a current, a halo of vibrant black outlining her frame and flapping, smoldering gown. Her features were set in a horrible snarl of rage, the glow of insanity, shards of blue crystal in her eyes.

Shaw looked so much worse, holding himself upright by will, his gray eyes shone silver and bruised within a milk white face. Yet he was the most beautiful thing Bekah had ever seen. A stunning warrior of light and magic, holding evil away from his family.

He couldn’t keep this up indefinitely. Nor could Aldreth, though the crazy witch would last much longer and kill Shaw in the process.

Bekah couldn’t let that happen. Not Shaw. Funny, when she’d traveled back through time to do just that.

Which…she scanned the yard for the Sift. Toren was down, dazed, one hand and one knee on the ground and levering himself back up. The warriors were scattered around the yard, more than half unmoving, the rest fighting to regain their feet.

But the beast?—Bekah looked frantically around the yard, between the fleeing clan…and there. Her pulse revved into gear.

For once a Sift would be an advantage. It slunk along the ground on all fours, stalking toward Shaw, its loose skin flapping in the roaring wind.

“She’s killing him!” she shouted at the monster. “Your creator. He dies, you never live.” Her breath froze in her chest, a hard painful sliver of ice.

Shaw staggered back a step. Aldreth advanced.

Tiny pebbles of blood dotted his forehead like drops of perspiration. A line of crimson ran from his ear and along his neck to the vee of his throat.

Another abnormal time rift opened silver and violet beside him, like a swirling crackling mirror floating in the air, so close, too close, close enough to rip Shaw away.

Better than dead
.

Which is what was happening now. The toll of whatever he was doing to Aldreth with his magic was killing him.

Bekah slunk forward, resisting the urge to rush to Shaw. Gods, she wanted to shove him out of the way of whatever the witch was unleashing on him. She kept an eye on the Sift creeping toward them.

Behind Aldreth, the Sift straightened to its full height, folds of skin wobbling, and for a moment Bekah thought she could see black orbs beneath the transparent film across its eyes, reflecting the shiny silver of the rift. Flares of magic rolled over it like blasts of wind, folding back loose skin like a jet wash, yet it stood firm against it.

Part of Moon Sifter magic, sired from Shaw, the current rolling into the Sift had no effect on it.

Bekah’s mouth went dry, watching it play out, willing the Sift to act before Shaw’s magic was spent and it was too late.

Do it! Stop it now! Save Shaw.

But the word that spewed from its crackled throat was one she’d never dreamed of hearing from a monster.

“Motherrrr,” it cried, the word ground glass cutting its throat, and scraping painfully across Bekah’s eardrums.

Aldreth spun, streamers of quicksilver arcing in a wide swath across the yard.

Bekah dropped to the ground as pinpricks of charged current gusted across her back, rolling her across the ground.

“Motherrrr!” the Sift cried again, long arms sweeping around Aldreth as it plunged, pulling her off her feet. Together, monster and witch, bodies tangled, fell into the unnatural silver pool of a time rift that swallowed them whole.

The magic abruptly blinked out. The ground stopped shaking and the remaining time rifts, more than twenty of them, vanished out of existence, leaving the atmosphere sizzling with energy similar to the aftermath from a detonation.

Shaw’s eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped.

Chapter Eighteen

Bekah raced to Shaw, rolling him over onto his back, her hand immediately flying to his neck to find a pulse. Finding blood, she splayed her other hand over his chest, feeling for him to breathe.

“Come on come on come on, you don’t get to do this. Not after all this.”

His skin was ashen gray, lips cracked and white. His only color were smudges of blood on his face and a larger trail coating the side of his jaw and neck. His neck where there should be a pulse. “No, you don’t get to die. Just, no,” she shouted in his face, even while she started chest compressions. What she lacked in magic, in healing, she made up for in knowledge and determination. She wasn’t letting him go. No way. This entire mission had been screwed up from the get-go. Shaw wasn’t going to die. She wasn’t going to let him.

Shifting, she cleared his mouth and plugged his nose to start rescue breathing.

His lips were dry and salty, wet with blood. Cold. Too cold and unmoving. His chest expanded slightly with her breaths.

Then went still.

Shaw wasn’t anything like they’d thought. Screw what history claimed about him. He wasn’t a monster. He wasn’t the betrayer. He didn’t destroy the world.

He was a good man. The best. And damn it, he wasn’t going to die. Not like this. Not while she had anything to do about it.

She felt someone move up behind her and spared a quick second to glance over her shoulder.

The devastation on Toren’s face nearly shattered her. His strained “Shaw” shoved her head beneath the waves.

No. Suck it up
. She couldn’t fall apart now.

A tear slipped down her cheek and into her mouth. Her face was wet with them.

Grabbing Toren’s hand, she placed his palm where hers had been just below Shaw’s sternum. “Press down when I tell you, exactly how I did, not too hard to break his bone. Thirty compressions. Understand?”

She watched out of the corner of her eyes for his long hair to dip with his nod. She couldn’t risk seeing his expression again.

“When I tell you.”

Again, the ends of his hair dipped, black feathery tips grazing Shaw’s pale arm.

Bekah went back to breathing for Shaw, willing her life into him. He was welcome to everything she had. All her essence if he’d only wake up and take it.

She breathed again, a little too hard, willing his lips beneath hers to warm. To wake up, to give her that arrogant indulgent grin. She breathed and breathed and breathed, feeling his chest expand with her air.

She was not losing him. She would not lose him.

“Now,” she ordered Toren, watching as his arms locked and he pushed on his brother’s heart while she counted and felt for a pulse, yearned for Shaw to take a breath on his own.

They were losing him.

She was losing him when she’d only just found him.

“Shaw, quit being stubborn and start breathing!”

She looked up at the heavy clouds and pled to whomever—whatever—might be listening. “Please, this isn’t right. Just let him live. Let him live.”

She felt movement around her, the other warriors now awoken, and the women who had fled with their children. They stood around them, watching.