Highland Moon Sifter (a Highland Sorcery novel) (3 page)

He adjusted a bow that was as long as he was tall across his shoulder and took off across the grass to duck into the trees only a few yards from where she hid.

Shaw Limont was going into the forest alone.

This was too easy.

Kill him, take out any remaining Sifts here, destroy their remains, and the monsters will never be created.

Unmade.

Boom. Done.

Who knew, once Shaw was dead, the Sifts that traveled through time here might simply disappear, never having existed.
 

She might disappear too, never having the need to travel back.

It was a paradox, but one she and all of the straggling remains of the human race needed her to take.

Fisting the fire poker she’d pulled out of the oozing temple of the Sift before she burned its body, Bekah followed the Highlander through the trees.

He moved with quiet economy, hardly making a sound as he brushed past low branches. Stepping into a small glade, he stopped and tilted his face to the open patch of dark sky.

The moonlight filtering through the canopy struck his long hair like a ripple of black velvet down his back. Silver light brushed the hard edges of his lean face. Of course he’d come out to bathe in the moon’s glow, the source of a Moon Sifter’s magic.

Bekah’s next breath slowed in her chest. He was beautiful like a sculpted Roman statue of marble. The Limont boys were all attractive, she’d give them that. But wow, the complete stillness of the Moon Sifter’s body struck an almost reverent hush within her heart. She’d scavenged a museum of art once, though there wasn’t much food stores left in the cafeteria. It held the same kind of reverent feel. There’d been plenty of swords and blades for the taking though, which she’d used as an excuse to linger for hours, looking at forgotten art and sculptures, a pang of sadness at what humans left to rot in the face of survival. The same sadness swirled in her chest now at the beauty she was about to destroy.

Her lips firmed. The human race was nearly gone. Because of this one man. His choice to betray his family and clan and destroy the balance of magic began it all.

There was a rustle in the trees. Both she and the Moon Sifter snapped their attention eastward.

Bekah’s hand curled tighter on the poker, dreading the Sifts had found her.

He eased the bow from his shoulder and removed an arrow from the quiver on his back and had it nocked just as a feral deer stepped into view. The man pulled the string bending the longbow.

Stretching her neck up to get at the budding green growth on the side of a tree, it was apparent by the swollen belly that the doe was carrying.

Shaw Limont’s arrow remained centered on the doe’s heart, his expression cold and deadly. Bekah watched, studying her opponent’s skill and what she was up against. His fingers twitched before lifting the arrow aside and taking the tension off the bow.

Bekah frowned, his merciful action unexpected from the destroyer of her world.

He watched the deer eat her fill and move on before he also moved, ducking back into the darkness of the trees.

Brow furrowed, Bekah followed after him, taking extra care to step as quietly as he did. Her hip exploded in pain with her movement, but she clenched her teeth against it. She couldn’t lose him now that her goal was so close. Though she was unfamiliar with wood skill, she had plenty of experience moving quietly around Sifts, sometimes as the hunter, most often as the hunted.

She stepped into a space between two wide trees the Highlander had just passed between and stopped.

Where was he?

He had completely vanished on her.

Her gaze dropped to the ground, searching for his prints.

Nothing. How—?

She was wrenched backwards from behind, a large hand wrapped in the scruff of her cloak, and spun around to face suspicious gray eyes.

But in Bekah’s life, you reacted or died. Acting on the tail end of her spin, she kept going, ramming her shoulder into his gut and going low, even as she grabbed his forearm and yanked.

Long bare legs shot over her head followed by a thud as his back hit the ground, his dark kilt hitching up around muscular thighs.

In the next instant, she was straddling his waist, the sharp point of the fire poker pushed into the black fabric right above his black heart. He stared up at her in astonishment.

She leaned her weight forward to press the poker into his flesh like she’d done to the Sift…and froze.

She’d never taken the life of a human before.

Planning to do it and knowing it must be done were entirely different from actually doing it.

He stared up at her, his arms passive on the ground by her thighs. He wasn’t even trying to push her off as though waiting to see what she would do.

She set her back teeth together. She was here for one purpose and this was it.

He was human. He wasn’t a monster.

But he was the father of monsters.

Resolved, she shoved down.

And he vanished into a cloud of swirling silver smoke. The end of the poker slammed into the soft ground, jarring her shoulders.

A rough hand encircled her upper arm and ripped her off the ground.

“Ye actually attempted to murder me.” His tone reeked of so much incredulity, it bordered on being hilarious if the circumstances weren’t so dire.

Her side screamed in pain. “I still will if you’ll have the decency to not vanish!” Okay, that sounded stupid even as she said it, but he rattled her and she was in so much pain she couldn’t think. Which, how had he done that? If he’d traveled through time, she would have seen and felt the rift. This was different. He’d vanished and then reappeared behind her. The Moon Sifter had more tricks than they were aware of.

His other hand clamped onto her wrist and he drew her up close.

Bekah tried to wrench out of his grip, but his greater strength locked her in tight. She’d have bruises.

“You’re hurting me.”

“I am hurting
you
? That’s rich coming from a wee
mharfóir
.
” He studied her like she was an extra chess piece that didn’t fit on his board. She scrutinized him right back. A line of perspiration ran along her hairline. How had she ever thought he resembled Col? Col’s green eyes reflected every emotion he felt and in the brief time she’d spent with him she knew he felt things deeply. She saw how hard and fast he fell for the Healer Lenore and glimpsed his loyalty for his family. Col would never have been convinced Shaw couldn’t be redeemed.

Shaw, who had no loyalty or feeling. The gray of his eyes were the flat and emotionless hue of a knife blade just before it slices through flesh like his gaze now sliced into her, dissecting her resolve into tiny little strips.

He gave her a shake. “Who sent ye? ‘Twas MacTavis, aye? The olde skunk can decay in his bitterness. His attempts have grown feeble if he sends a slip of a lass as ye to carry out any attempt he has yet to succeed in.”

She could tell him this MacTavis whoever had sent her. It certainly wouldn’t be any worse than telling him that his nephew from a millennium in the future sent her to kill him in order to spare the human race. Yeah, that would go down real smooth.

Of course, either way it didn’t matter. She was here to kill him, but she’d already blown her best chance. Man, she was terrible at this assassination thing. Not to mention their positions were now reversed. It was her life he could take with the ease of snapping her neck with his long hands. No doubt he had the strength to do it, the man’s masculinity oozed off of him like a wintry mist ensnaring her as thickly as his hands encircling her arms.

“Answer me, lass. Which of the chieftains seeks my life this day?”

Bekah blinked. The chieftains all wanted him dead too? Popular guy. Pity none of them succeeded or she wouldn’t have to be here. She tilted her face up, way up, to stare him down. “No one sent me. I have reasons of my own to want your life.”

If anything, that amused him. His lips curled in the semblance of a near smile. “These reasons are…?”

“None of your business.”

That made those lips twitch fully. “I beg to argue as it is my death ye are after.” His gaze raked down the poor state of her clothing, at her mud-coated skin. “’Tis a reward ye’re after, then? I can offer ye far better to tell me who placed a bounty on my head.”

“Seems you have enemies in spades, so what does it matter?”

“It matters.”

She tried to shake out of his grip. “Just let me go.”

“So ye can attempt to skewer me with yer poker again? I think not.”

Asking had been worth a shot. She looked up at him through lowered lashes and smiled prettily. “I’m unarmed now. Surely you’re not afraid of a woman.”

“In my experience, ‘tis always a woman I have most need to fear.” He snorted. “Very well.” He released the hold he had on her arms.

Wary of a trick, Bekah stepped back, eyeing him and also eyeing the discarded poker on the ground, calculating if it’d be quicker to go for it or slide in close and try to get at the blade the Moon Sifter had sheathed at his hip.

She barely shifted on the balls of her feet when his arm lifted and strands of what she could only think of as slivers of moonlight shot down from the sky and twisted around her like pale luminous ribbons, pressing her arms to her sides.

She flexed her fingers, but was otherwise trussed up tight by the cold misty strands. “Hey, what is this? How are you doing this?”

Stepping closer, he leaned over her, his dark hair swinging forward. “’Tis I who will be asking the questions.” Then he plucked her off the ground like she weighed nothing and began walking. At first she struggled, then realized it was pointless being that her arms were pinned by magical fairy string and his thick Neanderthal arms weren’t releasing their hold anytime soon. She could feel the muscles in his arms beneath her knees and against her spine.

She didn’t want to get away anyway, she told herself. She didn’t want him out of her sight until she could figure out how to off him. Keep your enemies close and all that.

Her injured shoulder throbbed, the raw burned over slashes in her side chafed with the movement, not that’d she’d tell him. Her feet hurt from walking without shoes and she was exhausted. If Shaw Limont wanted to carry her and use up all of his energy, that was fine by her.

Closing her eyes, she let the rhythm of his stride and the warmth of his body lull her to sleep. She’d kill him when she woke up.

Chapter Five

The little vixen went to sleep. As he carried her through the forest, Shaw glanced down at her. She wasn’t so temperamental in sleep.

He grinned. It’d been years since anyone dared verbally spar with him and he missed it.

In Aldreth’s castle, all cowed to him as the witch’s sorcerer, although he heard the whispers of “destroyer,” “betrayer of his clan,” “witch’s demon consort”.

All true. And more.

He’d brought ruin to the world, been the means to unbalance magic and allow darkness to overcome and swallow the light. More and more beasts of dark magic sprang into the world while those of light dwindled. ‘Twas an honorable thing that the clan chieftains wanted to run their daggers through his frozen heart. ‘Twas no less than he deserved, and on occasion he was ready to appear in their midst and let the remaining clans have at him.

Yet there were two purposes left to him whereas he could not do so.

And certainly not by the hand of a wee
mharfóir.
Assassin
.

She shivered against him and Shaw immediately allowed the bands of moonlight to dissipate
.
Unconsciously her dirty hand immediately came up and her slim fingers twined in the fabric of his shirt, seeking warmth. It had been a long time since anyone sought comfort from him.

What was he to do with her?

She certainly couldn’t be left to trounce about the forest clothed in naught but a man’s cloak. Especially with the intent to murder him. If it had been one of the guards who had come upon her instead of him…

Shaw frowned, not liking that a bit.