Highland Moon Sifter (a Highland Sorcery novel) (4 page)

She stirred, her down-soft hair rubbing against his arm. Strange creature. When he’d glimpsed her following him, he’d thought she was one of the ethereal Fae returned to the world with her fairy bright hair shorn strangely short, yet slanting long across large wide brown eyes.

Yet she was too small to be of the tall willowy Fae. Nor could any of the Fae still be here in their world. ‘Twas he himself who locked the gateway into the Shadowrood, the otherworld of the Fae, along with his clan, thereby keeping their magic safe from the witch. At the time, he had thought he’d been doing right by them. He was no longer so certain.

There were no more Fae in the world. No more Clan Limont to hold the powers of magic in balance.

His doing.

All his doing.

The branches overhead rustled, spraying leaves down on them. Shaw stopped, searching the gloom above, feeling the unnatural disturbance in the woods.

They dropped silently from the trees.

Monsters. For that was the only name befitting them.

Three. Wide hunched over creatures of dark leathery hides draped in wrinkles like the great mastiff dogs of kings. Seemingly sightless, with thin disfigured skin instead of eyes. Their faces turned toward him, nostrils expanding, sniffing the air while their long clawed fingertips dug into the decaying leaves on the forest floor.

His dagger was at his hip, his crossbow across his shoulder. He’d have to drop the woman to get to either of them.

Yet he had the source of moonlight…

“Fatherrrrr,” the beast directly in front of him slurred, its grindstone voice rasped across the crisp autumn night air.

Shaw nudged the woman with the front of his shoulder and dropped her legs, still holding her about the waist until she awakened.

The moment her foot touched the ground, she jerked upright and gasped in a painful breath through clenched teeth, curling inward.

Injured? She had hidden it well, his wee
mharfóir
, showing no weakness.

She came awake like a warrior, instantly alert and sizing up the situation even as she had his own dagger removed from its sheaf on his thick belt.

Impressive, despite the fact she might as easily turn the blade on him.

Now that she was steady on her feet, he drew his bow and several quivers off his back. “Friends of yours?”

“That’s funny, you of all people, asking that.”

He flashed a puzzled glance at her.

Her knees bent, blade out and gripped in a warrior’s stance, pointed toward the beasts who seemed content to watch them for now.

The creatures swayed forward, pawing at the ground like feral boars.

The one directly in front of them snuffed, nostrils flaring wide, sampling their scent.

“Fatherrrrr.” Its guttural voice scraped like thistles along his nerves. “Give us the unmakerrrr.”

So the creatures could talk. And apparently reason. Interesting. “Unmaker?”

The monsters heads turned toward the woman as one. So they wanted the lass.

“Say that I do. Then what? I simply walk away?”

The woman’s head jerked.

The beast nodded.

Interesting. Also not something that was going to happen.

Shaw moved sideways into the space the lass had left between them, keeping her close. He wasn’t foolish enough to take her by the arm and drag her back to his side, not without getting stabbed for his trouble, yet he wasn’t going to leave her vulnerable.

She had attacked him, yet the monsters clearly wanted her, were in fact, willing, or so they said, to leave him be. The little minx was proving to be quite the puzzle.

“What do ye want with her?”

Pale lips rolled back over gleaming teeth. “Unmakerrrrr. Naughty naughty girrrl. We hungerrrr.”

Disgust pulled in Shaw’s belly. Well, that was out of the question.

His bow twanged, taking the creature in the veined translucent skin where an eye should be. It shrieked, charging at him for the kill. Shaw momentarily froze in astonishment. It kept coming where a lesser beast would already be dead from that injury.

Claws grazed his forearm. Shaw turned his own body into the woman’s, shielding her even as she lunged to knife the beast. Liking her tenacity, Shaw plucked the blade from her grasp, reaching back to skewer the creature rushing them.

Its companions got to it first, and instead of joining their brother in the attack on him, they tore into the first beast with claws and teeth and fury. Hot breath washed across his arm before the others bore it to the ground, spraying his back with hot gray blood as the beast’s entrails were torn out and flung aside.

Shocked, Shaw rolled to his feet, dragging the lass with him. The two Sifts just killed one of their own to keep him alive. What by all that is holy was going on here?

The lass pulled him back and away as the shrieking, ripping beasts tumbled toward them.

“Give me the knife,” she hissed. “I can kill them now!”

Her scowl suggested fierceness able to do it, though he was loathe to let any slip of a lass get near such a whirlwind of savage shredding. If the creatures needed killing, he’d be the one to do it and the fact was he didn’t want their viciousness in his forest, especially this close to the village.

Yet the two shredding the other one to pieces had done it to spare him and he wanted to know why.

Drawing forth his magic, he thrust strands of moonlight out to bind them…and nothing. The silver threads hit the beasts and melted away. His magic did not work on them.

Déithe!

The woman lunged for his knife again and when he turned it away she grabbed an arrow out of his quiver and ran toward the beasts, plunging the shaft’s tip into a meaty thigh.

The creature twisted, slapping out, knocking the girl across the ground and lunged over her.

Shaw roared, running into the fray, knife grazing across thick muscle—
rood’s dung
, they were as hard as stone—and rolled with the beast to the ground, knocking it off the girl.

The beast leaped over him, bowling Shaw over onto his back, spun, then jumped on to him, claws extended to rip into his chest, saggy face wobbling in rage, nostrils wide, then just as quickly stopped and slammed claws into the ground on either side of his head.

“No, Fatherrrrr,” it hissed, washing putrid breath over his face. “No.” And as quickly as they’d appeared, it leaped backwards and scrambled up into the trees.

Twisting to his elbow and stomach, Shaw saw the second one flee just as quickly, leaving a trail of swaying foliage and leaves and pine needles spiraling to the ground.

Nothing about that encounter made sense. Father?

He wasn’t one to spread his seed around, not as a cursed Moon Sifter, and he knew he’d never bedded a wench that uncomely, but a monster? Never.

The woman wasn’t stirring. The length of her unusual bangs slipped across her face, exposing a lump on her forehead.

He lifted her slim form into his arms.

She was more than he’d at first thought. Much much more. The way she fought, her strange manner of speech, similar to how Charity spoke.

Shaw frowned. The beasts wanted her dead or worse when they clearly meant him no ill.

‘Twas apparent, he had not been asking her the right questions.

Chapter Six

Wood smoke drifted around her with the crackle of a cheery fire. Bekah pressed into her worn blanket, secure that Matthew and Luke would wake her if any Sifts came close to the abandoned parking garage they’d holed up in after the supply run. Sleep was hard won and only taken while she traveled with those she unequivocally trusted, so she slept as long as she could, knowing the guys would wake her for her watch.

Sighing, she curled her fingers around the handle of her pulsar, always out and in easy reach and…it wasn’t there.

Alarmed, she came fully awake, eyes opening to a smoke-hazed room. Thatched ceiling, mud walls, dirt floors. Cottage. Closed wood shutters, the only light came from a blazing fire in the hearth where a man stood, black hair trailing down his broad back as he stared into the flames.

Bekah pulled up to her elbow and winced at the disorienting pain that the slight movement flared in her temple. She wasn’t with the boys, running supplies back to Alexander’s holdout. Matthew was dead. Eaten alive.

Grief welled up in her throat, threatening to overcome her. She slammed down on it. Hard. Put it away to bring out later when it was safe to mourn.

He’d died to get Col Limont here to Thirteenth Century Scotland.

Except Col wasn’t here.

She was.

She pushed the heel of her hand against her head and the blanket fell off her shoulder, revealing—where the hell was her cloak?

At her movement the man, the Moon Sifter, turned, the sole person she left everything behind to come here to kill.

She snatched the blanket back up. “Where are my clothes?”

One shoulder lifted in a shrug. “I needed something to start the fire with.”

“The whole thing?”

The fire blazed behind him, fueled by varied sizes of split logs. He was being spiteful or…she studied his smug expression…he believed by taking her clothes away he’d make her vulnerable, having to hold a blanket up for modesty. Well, he’d underestimated her resolve. She had no qualms about killing him while bare-butt naked and then she’d take his clothes for her own after doing it.
 
Which, no time like the present.

She flung herself at him, leaving blanket behind, intending to knock him off balance into the hearth where he’d either fall in the fire or hopefully knock his head against the stone mantle. Either way, it would give her enough of a distraction to grab up his blade again.

Except her forward momentum came to an extreme stop. One second she was moving, the next she wasn’t, hands flat and arms jolted against an immoveable chest. Holy crap. What was he made of, unbreakable granite?

His arms swept up, long hands clamped around her. Flat gray eyes glared down at her and she swallowed. Fear, or something else, swirled in her belly, rising upward into her breasts.

Had to be fear. Or the sudden chill, though she had to admit there was something uncharacteristically strange happening to her, something sensual and unsettling about being so close to the Highlander while he was fully dressed and she was completely bare.

She shook her bangs over her eyes, hiding the only way that she could.

His hands tightened around her arms, the backs of those strong capable fingers grazing the sides of her boobs and she exploded inside, then every nerve ending across her flesh puckered.

Holy holy crap.

He gave her a little shake, for which she was glad, because she needed her traitorous brain cells seriously scrambled, even though pain streaked through her head and along her side.

He growled down at her. “Ye are that intent upon my death? What have ye been promised?” He paused, his dark brows bunching into a scowl worthy of the demon soul he sported. “My brother. Did my brother send you? He has grown that desperate?”

Bekah pulled out of his grasp and fortunately he let her. She needed the small distance. She couldn’t even think within his proximity. “Why do you assume Col sent me?”

He went utterly, completely still. Predator-watching-through-grass still. Goose pimples raised along her skin for altogether different reasons this time.

She flipped the hair from her eyes and gasped.

How had she ever thought those gray eyes void of emotion? They were drenched in it now, raw worry, fear and pain and so much love for his brother it was like looking into the deepest primal of heartaches, emotions crashing against each other, waves shearing upon rocks. She shied away, instinctively knowing she was not meant to see any of that.

Yet she had and she could never unsee it, even as she intended to plunge his own blade into his heart.

She turned away.

“I spoke of Toren.” Shaw’s voice broke raggedly behind her, a mournful discordant note. “I thought…I thought he must have opened a rift, brought you here. I know ye’re from a different time.” He took her elbow and turned her back to face him, his features studying her, and handed her a pile of clothes.