Into the Dreaming (16 page)

Gwen inclined her head, something inside her going very still. Pretending nothing was amiss, she helped herself to a selection of ribs and roasted potatoes, all the while her mind was churning.

To become a Druid
, Tristan had said.
Druids. These men are Druids. Now I’m getting somewhere
.

The rest of the dinner passed in uneventful silence, which was fine with her, because she was tired and needed to get back to her room to make some notes.

First plan on the agenda tomorrow: get that boy Tristan alone.

It’s enough that I know that you’re out there somewhere, buying a used copy of Nietzsche’s
Beyond Good and Evil
from a street vendor for a quarter
.

This one’s for you, my most worthy adversary
.

Dear Reader
,

I call this
The Dark Highlander Lite.

My fourth novel
, Kiss of the Highlander
was released on September 4, 2001. Precisely one week later, it hit the
New York Times
extended bestseller list. It stayed on the list for three weeks, a rarity for a romance novel in those times. The day it hit the list was 9/11/01, a day so filled with tragedy that it eclipsed any personal joy I might have felt. Instead, I felt guilt that took me a long time to shake. How could one of my books hit the
New York Times
bestseller list the same day New York, and the whole country, suffered such tragic loss? Rationally the two had nothing to do with each other. My heart remained unconvinced and refused to celebrate
.

Shortly after 9/11, I moved from inner city Cincinnati to a quieter place in rural Indiana. In the months following the attack, I struggled to re-acclimate to the world I’d thought I knew. I had a book due and wasn’t remotely in the mood to start writing, but meeting my deadlines pays my bills, so I sat down to write when the last thing I wanted was danger and adventure. I wanted comfort
.

During November, December, and part of January I wrote two hundred and fifty pages of
The Dark Highlander,
version one. Sometime in February, I took a hard look at it and was stunned at how wrong it had come out. It wasn’t the version I’d intended to write at all. I’d written a clone of Drustan because Drustan was comforting to me. Dageus isn’t comforting. He’s dark, tortured, and intensely sexual. Though twins, the brothers are night and day. Drustan is noble, honorable, and would never
tell a lie. Dageus would break any rule for love. Drustan is comfort. Dageus is excitement. Drustan makes love. Dageus fucks. I wanted my reader to put
The Dark Highlander
down when they were done and think “Wow, there were three main characters in that book: Dageus, Chloe, and Sex.” Version one was so far off track I was astounded, as if I’d been writing in a daze, which I was. A lot of us wandered in various degrees of disconnect for months after 9/11
.

There I sat with nearly two-thirds of a book that was due in a month, and it was the wrong book. I called my editor and told her I was throwing it away and starting over. After she finished completely freaking out, she asked me to send it in anyway, let her take a look at it and decide. I refused because I was afraid if I sent it in she would try to publish it, and there was no way I was going to let that happen. She promised me they wouldn’t unless they thought it was good enough and I told her that was the problem: It
was
good enough
.

It wasn’t the right story
.

It was easier before I became a fairly decent writer to decide what to throw away and what to keep. Once your writing achieves a certain level of competence, it can be tricky to discern if it also has the right stuff. Version one was more than competent; it was fun and entertaining but it didn’t have the darkness or the magic that I could see in my head, yet had failed to translate to the page
.

It was a terrifying moment for me. I’d never missed a deadline. I didn’t have time to miss a deadline because I get paid when I turn the book in and I needed the money. Delaying it six months meant hard financial times and a great deal of uncertainty. Still, the book wasn’t what I wanted for Dageus. It wasn’t true to the vision I’d had when I first decided to tell
the story of my Keltar brothers. I remember feeling poised on a precipice. If I jumped off into the land of “okay, I let the wrong version get published and I’ll live with it,” I might never be able to stand on the edge of that precipice and hold my ground. It was a defining moment. I’ve never regretted the choice I made. You have to draw your lines in the sand and stay them
.

We agreed that I would take a week, start the “right” version, and I would send her fifty pages of each. What she didn’t know was that I burned all but fifty pages of version one so I wouldn’t be tempted
.

After she read them both, she extended my deadline, and I started over. She said if she’d never read the first fifty pages of version two she might have thought I was crazy, but once she read it, she saw exactly what I meant
. The Dark Highlander Lite
was good. But
The Dark Highlander
Dark
rocked
it
.

I thought version one was gone forever but recently my computer guys restored a few dead hard drives and old Zip discs and guess what I’d backed up? Here’s the first part of
The Dark Highlander Lite
that was never published. It’s a rough draft, unedited. That means no line or conceptual editing, so you’ve been warned
.

It’s fun stuff, warm and sexy, with glimpses into the world of the Keltar you won’t find anywhere else. And it was the wrong story. Email me at
[email protected]
after you read it and let me know what you think
.

Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a Shadow …

—Carl Jung

I wish you might have met your brothers and sisters, but your heart was with Gwen, and ’twas where it wisely belonged. I wish the two of you every happiness, but rue to tell you your trials are not yet o’er
.

First, the gentler news. Beloved Nell consented to be my wife. She has made every moment a joy. We left a few things for the two of you in the tower. Count over three
stones on the base of the slab, second stone from the bottom. Life has been rich and full, more than I e’er dreamed. I have no regrets, but one
.

I should have watched Dageus more closely after you went into the tower. I should have seen what was happening. There you slumbered, enchanted, waiting to awaken in the twenty-first century and be reunited with Gwen, while here I sat, cozy with my Nell
.

Yet Dageus grew e’er more solitary. Blinded by my own happiness, I didn’t see what was happening until it was too late. I shall be scant with the details, but suffice it to say as time passed, he became … obsessed with you. He worried that something would happen to prevent you from surviving until you found Gwen again
.

And it did. I have no memory of it, mayhap an odd wrinkle in my mind, but he confessed to me that three years after we placed your enchanted body in the northeast tower, that wing of the castle caught fire and you were burned and died
.

Dageus broke his oath, went back in time through the stones to the day of the fire, and prevented the fire from occurring. He saved you, but in so doing, turned Dark. The old legends were true
.

If you are reading this, he succeeded in his course, for he appointed himself your dark guardian; his sole purpose to see you awaken safely at the proper time in the future. He vowed to watch over you, then disappeared. Dageus is a strong man, and I believe such a vow has kept him sane. I hope it has, for I tasted the evil within him
.

I believe, however, the moment you awaken and are reunited with your wife, there will be nothing to hold his
darkness at bay. His purpose accomplished, the thin thread that binds him to the light will snap
.

Och, my son, ’tis sorry I am to be sayin’ this, but you must find him. You must save him. And if you cannot save him, you must kill him
.