Insolent: The Moray Druids #1 (Highland Historical) (4 page)

The three Wyrd Sisters huddled around their cauldron in a dank Highland cave of black stone. The cauldron’s fire illuminated a still grotto, but the sound of roiling ocean echoed off the narrow, high walls.

“Thrice the raven hath devoured his mate.” The first witch, Badb, tossed in a disembodied raven’s wing.

“Thrice the dead tree bloom’d ‘neath a blood moon.” The second witch, Macha, stirred the brew with an unnaturally gnarled branch.

“Because there are four, Death must rise soon.” The third witch, Nemain, passed a hand over the cauldron and the unmentionable putridity coalesced.

They chanted together:

“Awaken the demon of lust and blood.

And the world will end in fire and flood.”

Badb pulled a claw from her decrepit robes, her crone’s voice rasping off the smooth stone walls.

“Edward the Confessor died, and his throne is cold.

A foot of crow to ensure King Harold won’t grow old.”

All chanted:

“Awaken the demon of lust and blood.

And the world will end in fire and flood.”

Macha produced what looked like a small piece of raw meat from the pouch hanging from her generous hips.

“The Norman Bastard William sails in two weeks time.

The liver of this fen rat to ensure his troops do fine.”

All chanted:

“Awaken the demon of lust and blood.

And the world will end in fire and flood.”

Nemain lifted a bundle above her head, and pulled a knife from beneath her flowing blue gown. Her young, angelic face twisted with triumph and malice.

“We gave the Pict throne to Macbeth, but thereon he was slain.

The blood of this stillborn druid babe will make it ours again.”

Morgana let the pool of water—through which she watched her enemies—stream through her fingers with a cry of distress. She couldn’t bear to see. Her empty stomach churned and she gagged.

Blood magick
. The Wyrd sisters were using whatever Druid blood they could find to regain their power. They
had
to be stopped. She met the gaze of the Berserker, who crouched beside where she knelt next to the stream. The whites if his eyes gleamed in the bright moonlight, though she couldn’t make out the color of the irises. She could, however, feel his disgust mirroring hers, and from that she took hope.

“You see what manner of evil I’m up against, warrior? None of us can stop them on our own. I need to return to my brother, and find my cousin, Kenna, or all is lost.” She felt his hesitation underscored with curiosity. “This is why I need you.”

“I was told Druids do not have magick as powerful as this.” He gestured to her hands which she had cupped to create a seeing pool. “I thought they were alchemists and astronomers with simple magicks drawn from the earth and elements.”

“That is true of most Druids,” she explained. “But in every generation, there are three born to the Druids of Moray who are granted great powers by the creator, the Goddess. They are guardians of the earth and elements, protectors of the people, and keepers of the sacred Doomsday Grimoire.”

“And you are one of the three?”

“Aye.” Morgana scooted closer to him, not missing the way he tensed. “Like I said before, I’m the Autumn Druid. My element is water. Then there’s my brother, Malcolm, he’s the Spring Druid, his element is earth. And my cousin, Kenna, she’s the Summer Druid, her element is fire.”

The Berserker was silent a moment before asking, “What about winter? What about air?”

A familiar pang of fear sliced through her as she thought of the three Wyrd sisters who’d once been ancestors, but had become their enemies. “It is said that the Gods believed that all four Druids with magick such as ours would be too much power for us mortals to wield all at once. And so there have only ever been three, with a season rotated out of commission from each generation. You see, the Doomsday Grimoire prophesies that when all four seasons and elements are represented on the earth at once, then the end must surely follow.”

“The end of what?”

Morgana swallowed around a lump in her throat. “Of
everything
. The end of days.”

The direness was apparently lost on him, as he just lifted the shadows of his wide shoulders in a careless shrug. “And now there are four?”

“
Yes
.” She held up her hands, as though the pool was still there. “These women, they call themselves the Wyrd sisters. Malcolm and Kenna found a record of them in the Moray archives. They were supposed to have
died
two hundred years ago. They are of a generation long past. And Badb, the crone,
she
is a winter witch. Her element is air. So like they said, now there are four. According to the prophecy, this will bring about the end. All they need is the Grimoire.”

“Why not just keep the Grimoire from them?”

“We’ve been trying, but the Wyrd sisters are powerful adversaries.”

The Berserker scoffed, “They did not seem so frightening.”

“Do not underestimate them,” Morgana warned. “They are the reason this isle is in turmoil. They brought about the deaths of Edward the Confessor. It is because of them King Harold and his brother, Jarl Tostig are fighting on opposite sides. In my Kingdom in the North, they prompted Macbeth to kill my father, King Duncan, and while the usurper Macbeth sat on the throne, he banished us all and tried to assassinate my brother. I was sent to the Saxon King Harold and Kenna escaped with the book. No one knows where she’s gone.”

“Can’t you see her in the water?” The Berserker motioned to the stream.

Morgana shook her head. “Nay, I’ve tried. She’s hidden herself, somehow. And while that protects her from the Wyrd Sisters, it also conceals her from me.”

He was silent a long time as he stared at the brook which bubbled happily over stones, the sound incongruous with the ominous moment. The moon cast his brutal profile in shadow, and Morgana was again impressed by the sheer size and strength of him. He really was a magnificently rendered warrior, if a bit suicidal. If only she could convince him to help her.

“What else can you see in the water?” he asked finally, remaining utterly motionless. “Can you predict the future? Could you—foresee my death?”

“You’re rather preoccupied with dying, aren’t you?” she snapped, irritated that he still didn’t seem to grasp the gravity of the circumstances. Just her luck that she would be stuck trying to avoid the Apocalypse with one of the only people alive who couldn’t care less.

He didn’t answer her question, and so Morgana answered his on a beleaguered sigh. “I can see the past in a mirror pool. I can see what has transpired and what is transpiring at this very moment. Kenna, only
she
can see what is to come in the flames. Though, that power is less definite.”

He grunted and stood, securing his axe to the leather strap on his back.

“Where are you going?” Morgana demanded pushing herself up and following him toward the trees.

Again he didn’t answer, but she could read a conflict inside him. Anger, need and loneliness amalgamated with arousal, awe, and something she couldn’t quite define.

“I’m your
mate
,” she called to his retreating back, fighting an incredible surge of desperation. “Aren’t you supposed to, I don’t know, protect me, or love me—or something?”

He froze, but didn’t turn around.

Oh, drat. The anger she’d read spiked within him, underscored by a cavernous pain so intense it took her breath away. Morgana knew she’d said the absolute worst thing possible. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Don’t leave. You’re my only hope.”

His head turned to the side, and she could again make out the profile of his brutal features in the moonlight. “It is I who am sorry,
Princess
,” he sneered. “For if that is the case, then all hope is lost.”

Morgana opened her mouth to beg, to berate, to
seduce
him into action if she had to. But all that escaped her was a gasp of shock and pain as an arrow whistled through the darkness and lodged itself in her shoulder.

The force of the impact drove Morgana to her knees and she fought to regain the breath that had been knocked out of her with desperate but fruitless gulps of air. The fear that another arrow would find more dangerous purchase seized her, and she fought harder to regain control of her lungs and her body.

She looked down at the weapon protruding from her shoulder. Three swan feathers bedecked a willow shaft. This was a Saxon arrow.

How had the Saxons found them so soon?

Another whistle screamed through the silence of the night, and Morgana looked up just in time to see the warrior reach out and pluck the arrow from the air, snap it with his fingers, and fling it to the ground.

Then he was gone. Without a single word or a glance back at her.

Had the warrior saved her life only to leave her here, wounded and alone, with naught but shadows and blood to keep her company?

The thought frightened and galvanized Morgana at the same time. She may be alone, but she was
not
defenseless. As long as there was water, there was a weapon. And, though she couldn’t take a life, she could certainly incapacitate an assailant or two long enough to get away.

She hoped.

Fighting a rush of dizziness as she stood, Morgana stumbled back toward the river, cradling her wounded shoulder with her good arm. The pain pierced and burned at the same time, and she knew that in order to heal the wound, she must first remove the arrow.

The kiss of a breeze preceded the tickle of another feather against her cheek as it whizzed past. Morgana dropped to the ground again, hissing as the movement burned through her shoulder like a cruel brand. She didn’t allow herself to contemplate the inches she’d just come from the end.

She was about to crawl through the moss to get to the brook, when the unmistakable sound of a death cry followed by a very final sounding
crunch
echoed through her little grove. The succession of rustles, growls, screams, and wet, sickening sounds made Morgana want to cover her ears, but she didn’t.

Because she knew who stalked the darkness.

She should have guessed that
he
wouldn’t have left her, even if his counterpart wanted to.

When the struggles in the foliage abated, the warrior stepped from the trees looking like a shadowed wraith of fury and muscle.

Morgana didn’t have to see the obsidian eyes and bestial snarl to know that the Berserker beast had returned, and he brought the wrath of the Viking war gods with him. When he sighted her, he made a sound that vibrated through her bones, something between a purr and a snarl.

Before she could call out to him, she was gathered into his arms, again cradled against a chest as smooth and hard as tempered steel.

“It’s
you
,” Morgana murmured to the beast. It surprised her how glad she was to see him, this blood-thirsty creature. To her, he was a rather tender monster, and much more preferable than the grim, suicidal Viking.

Gingerly, he tucked her injured arm against her chest and held it there, making more a sound of distress than she did. His concern for her and the pleasure he felt at torturously killing those who dared to wound her radiated from his feral emotions.

Finding herself oddly touched, Morgana rested her head against his shoulder. “I can heal it,” she reassured him through teeth clenched against the pain. “But first we must go, in case there are more.”

He grunted in denial, the instinct to kill still surging within him and reaching out to her.

“Please… take me home,” she whispered softly, lifting her good hand to his cheek and ignoring the slickness she knew to be blood. “There will be much more blood to shed before this is over, I fear. But for now, I think it’s best that we run.”

And so he ran.

Morgana had a sense of trees bending past them, of black and blue hills giving way to flat swathes of dark pastures. The Berserker’s legs devoured distances with a speed that exhilarated and terrified her. It felt like they were flying. Morgana could sense the care he took not to jostle her, and as dawn turned the sky behind them a brilliant pink, her lids drooped despite herself. She knew she should ask him to stop. That she should see to her wound, but the bleeding wasn’t much. She could just rest for a few moments while she and her warrior flew away from their enemies. And those few moments became oblivion.

Frigid water startled Morgana from slumber, and she awoke submerged to the neck in a still pond. Her dark Berserker still cradled her against him as a sky flushed with fire by the setting sun backlit his ebony hair and obsidian eyes. Hadn’t it been dawn when they’d left Yorkshire? Had she slept all this time?

Morgana gasped as her shoulder throbbed with intense pain, and the beast made a harsh noise as he gestured toward it.

“I need you to snap off the shaft here,” she pointed with her good hand to the wood between her shoulder and the feathers. “Then I’ll need you to pull it through as swiftly as you can.”

The Berserker nodded, though his features conveyed reluctance.

“I’ll be alright,” she assured him.

He released her, allowing her to stand in the chest-high water, and held her gaze as he reached for the weapon, a dark wrath swirling in his fathomless eyes.

And then the arrow was gone. She’d barely seen him move, barely even registered the sharp burn as he broke the protruding arrow and yanked it from her body.

Unable to withstand the excruciating pain, Morgana sank to her neck in the pond and closed her eyes, whispering the self-same spell she’d used to knit his wounds the evening before. The sensation of her flesh, connective tissue, and veins knitting together wasn’t pleasant in the least, but it was a relief, and after a few gasping moments, her shoulder was as good as new.

Gaining her bearings, she tried to ascertain their whereabouts. The Yorkshire hills no longer rose against the sky in dark green and black ribbons of sloping movement. Flat, wide squares of land dotted with tree-lined brooks and stone walls or wooden fences partitioned fields recently harvested. To the west, a dark forest bracketed the small loch in which they now stood. He’d had to have taken her fifty or so miles by her estimation. And that should afford them a luxuriant head start should King Harold send anyone after them.

“Thank you, warrior,” she sighed and stood, slicking her water-soaked hair away from her face.

He regarded her with a bestial astonishment, cocking his head to the side like an enormous Cerberus. Without warning, he seized upon her blood-soiled dress and ripped the bodice open to the navel causing her breasts to spill out.

“Do you mind?” she huffed, swatting at him ineffectually as he used those soulless eyes and strong hands to examine her newly mended shoulder with the thoroughness of an alchemist. “I told you it was healed, now unhand me if you please!”

He looked like he was about to, when the gentle bob of her breasts above the water arrested his unnatural attention.

Morgana fought a blush as his grip on her shoulders intensified and his features tightened with naked hunger. Those lush lips parted on a hushed, yearning moan. His eyes lifted hers, ensnaring her within the voids of black she’d thought were empty, but instead held a bottomless well of unfulfilled desire as his head lowered and his lips inched toward her in infinitesimal degrees.

If she’d read dominance, expectation, or superiority in his emotional signature, she would have frozen him in a block of ice and left him to melt. But the dichotomy of the soft emotions emanating from such a hard man reached past her defenses and touched her gentle soul.

His heart, wounded and broken and atrophied from disuse, ached with wanting. Her nearness caused him pain—no—fear. She could feel his need to touch, to connect. Could sense the desolate isolation lurking within such a primal creature. It was as unnatural for a Berserker to be alone as it was for any human. Every man lived in fear of rejection. Somehow Morgana could feel that for a Berserker, it was a sentence worse than death, something to be terrified of.

And this beast, this lethal, predatory killer, who’d slaughtered more than a hundred men in the last twenty four hours was afraid of her. And not her magic.

In that moment, surrounded by still, calm water and the vibrant colors of a fading day, Morgana surrendered to her impetuous nature. Tilting her head back, she opened her lips with invitation.

And it was all the beast needed to stake his claim.