Lois Greiman (2 page)

K
eelan awoke to a scream, only to realize with jolting clarity that it was his own. Pain seared him like a hot brand. Blood streamed down his chest, hot and sticky. His shirt was gone. He was standing with his back against a timber, but his hands were tied. A man the size of a carnival was holding a red-tipped knife not two feet away. What was his name? Brute? Beast? Maybe, it didn’t matter. They probably wouldn’t be playing crickets together anytime soon.

“So you are awake.” The voice that spoke sounded vaguely familiar.

Keelan yanked his attention toward the speaker, but a stranger stood before him. An ordinary man of sixty years or so. Ordinary, yet there was something about him, something odd, something slightly off-kilter.

“I am Lord Chetfield, peer of the realm and master of Crevan House.” He smiled. “Mr. Roland here tells me your name is MacLeod.” The voice was deep and melodic, yet the lips that spoke it seemed strangely soft, almost feminine.

Keelan blinked, trying to see clearly, but the man’s features remained askew. One hand rested on a thick, craggy staff. Its misshapen metal head flowed seamlessly into the dark twisted wood that poked into the chaff beneath the fine leather of his black slippers.

Where the hell were they? Not outside. Some sort of stable. Lanterns hung from pegs on rough-hewn walls. Fodder covered the floor. A dark steed circled its stall restlessly, and near the door, two half-starved wolfhounds watched with gleaming eyes, tethers stretched tight. Keelan’s wrists were throbbing. And merciful Mary, his chest hurt like hell.

“Is this true?” asked Chetfield.

Not to mention his poor back. It had been scraped raw and screamed in a thousand pinpoints of agony against the harsh timber behind him. Had they dragged him there? Had they—

The giant with the knife shifted impatiently. Sometime earlier, that same fellow had swung a tree limb in Keelan’s direction. He remembered
the startling pain with a jolt. Come to think of it, his head hurt like the very devil too.

“Bear,” said the old lord. “Our young friend’s mind seems to be wandering. Can you help him concentrate on the matter at hand?”

The knife wielder shuffled closer.

“Aye,” Keelan snapped, shifting his gaze rapidly from the weapon to the baron. Lord Chetfield! God save him! He’d expected someone different, someone younger perhaps, like the man in his most distant memories. “Aye, MacLeod I be.” What had he said about his given name? He couldn’t remember. Possibly because he’d been hit in the head by a man the size of a mountain. A furry mountain. Holy fook, the brute had hair everywhere, even on the backs of his hands. If ye sheared him, ye could make a fine coat. Which would be nice, for Keelan was as cold as a winter’s morn. Yet he was hot too. Odd, that.

The lord nodded. He wore a stiff, snowy white cravat beneath the long curls of his mutton-chopped jowls. His eyes looked bored. Maybe he was sleepy. Maybe he wouldn’t ask about Keelan’s given name. Maybe—

Chetfield stepped closer, his movements curiously graceful, silent as a cat upon the chaff beneath him. “And your Christian name, Mr. MacLeod?”

Fook. “Listen,” Keelan said, watching Bear from the corner of his eye. Roland and Frankie were also present, but seemed content to observe from some small distance. He’d have to remember to be thankful for that later. “Methinks there may be a bit of a misunderstanding here.”

“Oh?” Chetfield lifted the staff, swinging it rhythmically as he paced closer. “And what is it you misunderstand?”

For a moment Keelan was mesmerized by the staff’s movement. It was a solid-looking piece, gnarled and knotted, a formidable weapon if need be. He swallowed.

“Mr. MacLeod?”

Keelan jerked his attention back to Chetfield. “Perhaps it seemed to these good gentlemen…” He nodded toward the two near the door and tested his bonds. Roland was smoking a narrow cigar, looking smug and relaxed, with a shoulder resting against a weathered wall. “That I had been poaching. But that was na the case.”

“Are you saying my employees fabricated the truth, Mr. MacLeod?”

Roland shifted away from the wall. Frankie bunched his mammoth fists, making his biceps coil like serpents.

“Nay. Nay indeed,” Keelan argued hurriedly.
What the devil did
fabricated
mean? “I merely meant to say that things are na always as they seem and—”

“The lamb seems to be dead,” said the lord, voice smooth, demeanor the same.

“Well there ye have it,” Keelan countered. “’Tis naught but a bit of confusion. For ye see, the wee beastie was most probably asleep. ’Tis a chill night. Mayhap he had himself a difficult day, wandering aboot alone in the hillocks as it were. Might it not be that—”

Roland bent. Keelan shifted his attention to the right, saw the man reach down to lift the heretofore unseen lamb by a hind leg. It dangled there like a bad apple from a rain-soaked stem.

“Fie me!” he muttered, knees almost giving way. He should have listened to his elders. This was a fool’s errand.

“It seems quite dead, does it not, Mr. MacLeod?”

Fook it all. It really did. Maybe he’d soaked the dart too long in his potent potion. Then again, perhaps the lamb had expired while he was unconscious. Lady Colline had said to wait no more than an hour before waking it with the powder from his sporran. “Aye, aye, now that I see it again, it does indeed look as if it has de
parted,” he agreed, “but…surely ye dunna think that the poor wee blighter was killed by the likes of meself.”

The barn echoed in silence. Light flickered eerily across the lord’s haphazard face, illuminating his almost-yellow eyes in the winking firelight. “In fact, that is just what I think.”

“Nay! Nay,” Keelan said. “As I told yer lads here, I be a shepherd by trade.”

“For Lord Seafirth, I believe you said.”

Dammit, he shouldn’t have been so specific. Lie, aye. But be vague about it. He’d learned that lesson long years past. “Aye. Me master was sore distressed to be missing yon wee lambkin here and—”

“I do not know a Lord Seafirth, Mr. MacLeod.”

Bear lumbered closer. The blood on his knife was turning dark. The sight of it made Keelan’s guts twist up painfully. He’d never been terrible fond of blood. Had rather hoped to see none during this little adventure. Oh aye, he’d planned for them to catch him poaching. Had expected them to take him to their master. But ’twas a new century—a civilized age, or so he’d been told.

“In point of fact, there is no Lord Seafirth, is there?” asked Chetfield.

“Now ye dunna ken that!” Keelan rasped, tearing his gaze from the knife. Sweat trickled down his neck.

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“Nay. Nay.” The knife was drawing closer. “I would na dream—”

“What is your true name, boy?”

“As I told yer—” he began, but the sentence was cut short by a slice of pain. He screamed. Blood sprayed from his right side. His head swam dizzily. Holy God, the bear man was as quick as a fox. Keelan dropped his head back against the rough post behind him.

“I want you to think carefully before next you speak,” said Chetfield. “There is little point in lying.”

“Nay.” Keelan rolled his head across the timber, making a negative motion.

“Fabrications will save you no pain.”

Sweet Mother of Mercy, he had to learn what the hell a fabrication was. Preferably before he was as dead as the lambkin.

“I meant no harm,” he rasped. “Me master said I must find the lamb or I would sure lose me job. I have a wife, me lord. And a daughter. Such a wee sweet face she has. I could na bear to—”

The barn echoed with his shriek. Blood streamed over the ribs beneath his left arm. The
acrid smell of fading life filled his nostrils.

“Holy God,” he said, fighting for consciousness. “Ye must believe me.”

“Must I?” asked Chetfield. “What think you, Mr. Roland?”

The angelic fellow removed his cheroot and shrugged lazily. “He’s lying.”

Keelan gave him a disappointed stare. He felt strangely disembodied, as if he were gazing down on himself. He didn’t look good. Blood was smeared across his face and torso. A dark bruise was blooming on his forehead. His left eye was swollen nearly shut. His hands were tied behind his back. He couldn’t feel them, but he could see them, even though they were hidden behind his body. Strange.

“Then who is he, I wonder,” mused the baron.

Roland smiled. A golden angel gone bad. “I am certain he will tell us.”

“Are you?” Chetfield paced to the left. Keelan watched him, turning his eyes but not his head.

“He’s nothing but a weakling coward,” said Roland.

“Perhaps he was not so weak before you were loosed upon him,” Chetfield suggested, lifting his staff and jabbing Keelan in the side. Pain erupted. Unconsciousness loomed. “I believe you broke his ribs. Did I not tell you to leave our
guests undamaged, Mr. Roland?”

“He tried to escape.”

“Indeed.” Chetfield chuckled. The sound roiled eerily in the dimly lit barn.

“I assure you, my lord, he is nothing but a thief.”

“Must I remind you that things are not always as they seem?”

Roland watched him with hooded eyes. “No, my lord, but this little dung heap is no more than a waste of time.”

“Growing soft, are you, Mr. Roland?”

“You know I’m not.”

“Do I, I wonder. Or do I think you plan to kill this boy quickly in the hopes of returning to your own cozy bed?”

“I have done—”

“Your bed,” he continued, “where you clutch yourself and dream of a charitable maid to do the same in your stead.”

Roland gritted his teeth.

“Your bed,” continued the other, “where the maid refuses to accompany you, little caring what you offer as a bribe for her favors.”

Roland made a strangled noise deep in his throat, but Keelan couldn’t drag his attention from Chetfield, for the power in him was mesmerizing. Who was he? Not the soft heir he had
expected to find.

Something touched Keelan’s neck. He jerked, forgetting for an instant that he was tied. Pain seared him, burning through the haze of agony and uncertainty. Roland was holding his cigar to his throat. The smell of charred flesh filled the stable.

Roland watched him eye to eye, face expressionless as he pulled the cheroot away.

“Tell us about yourself, boy,” he said pleasantly.

“Mary and Joseph!” The pain was insurmountable, all consuming. The cheroot drew closer. “I’ve already said—”

White-hot pain again, burning all thought.

“I’m nothing!” His voice was shattered. “Ye were right.”

Roland gave him a satisfied nod and sucked on his cheroot, watching from inches away.

“I’m naught but a thief,” Keelan gasped. “A thief and a cheat.”

“A cheat?” Roland said, removing his cigar and rolling it between his fingers. Keelan watched the movement, transfixed, horrified. The smell of his own ruined flesh made his stomach churn. He was lucky indeed there was nothing in it.

“’Twas naught but a friendly game of dice be
tween meself and three others.”

“Dice?” Chetfield scowled.

Fook! His mind was muddled, scrambling back to ancient times, happier times. “Hazard!” Keelan corrected.

“I haven’t heard it called dice in some long years.” Chetfield smiled. “Please, continue.”

“We be playing hazard,” Keelan said. “Big large lads they were. And well-to-do.” He shifted his gaze to Roland and back. “It weren’t na terrible deed. I but wanted enough to get a decent meal in me poor shriveled belly.”

“How much did you fleece them for?” Roland asked, still watching the tip of his cheroot flare.

“Three pence. Enough for a pint and a bowl of stew. Na more.”

Roland glanced up, brows raised, so close every speck in his dark-angel’s eyes was clear and bold.

“A few shillings,” he corrected quickly. “Truly. But in the end I felt shamed and freely left the lot of it—”

Pain again, but low now, below his navel, charring the blood that clung to his flesh. Keelan gritted his teeth, struggling for lucidness.

“They learned the truth,” he rasped through the pain. “Knew I was cheating and threatened me life, they did. Ye were right. ’Twas just as ye
suspected.”

“Let me venture a guess. They planned to use your hide to make themselves a fine belt?”

“Hang me.” The cheroot moved. Keelan watched it. There was no need to pretend panic. No way to gracefully deliver the carefully polished lies he had planned to insinuate himself into Chetfield’s presence. If the truth would save him, he would gladly use it, but it would not. That much he knew. Thus he would play the cards dealt him. “They were to hang me, but I got me hands on a nearby chair and swung with all me might.”

“Kill someone, did you?”

“Nay! Nay, I but—”

Roland grinned. Chetfield only stared, face devoid of emotion, slanted eyes bright.

“I dunna think him dead,” Keelan corrected, “but I canna be certain. I dashed out as soon as I could. ’Twas dark. I slipped into the hills.”

“And found yourself on Lord Chetfield’s property.”

“I did na ken what I was doing.” And that was the bloody truth. “I swear to the saints. I did na ken. And I was hungry. ’Twas three days since I had so much as a bite. I saw a meadow filled with sheep and thought sure a man of such astounding wealth would na miss one
small lambkin.”

Roland turned his smug gaze to his master.

There was a momentary pause from Chetfield, then: “There is nothing to salvage here. Let me know when it’s finished,” he said, and turned stiffly away.

C
larity speared through Keelan’s muzzy system. Death rushed at him, dark maw wide.

“Nay! Nay, me lord!” he rasped. “Dunna do this. I can be of service to ye. I swear it.”

“Oh?” Chetfield stopped, turned slowly back, golden eyes blank, face unconcerned. “What is it you can do?”

Keelan wet his lips with a tongue as dry as a severed stump. “I’ve a fair voice,” he said. “I can sing a—”

“Kill him before he shames himself completely,” Chetfield said, and turned toward the door. But in that instant Keelan felt the deep burn of the old man’s pain in his own loins. Felt it and did not deny it, though it was not the pain his informant had told him to expect. Not the goring of an enraged bull, but something else. Something far more sinister.

“Heal ye,” Keelan said. His words were no more than a whisper, yet they echoed in the sudden silence, dragged from the bottom of his questionable soul.

The world stood still.

Chetfield turned back. “What say you?”

“I can heal ye,” Keelan said. ’Twas a lie. Perhaps.

“Of what?”

He caught the other’s gaze. “Of that which ye dare na speak.”

The baron smiled. “I fear you are confused, my boy, for I dare all. Have, in fact, for more years than you can count.”

“Ye lie,” murmured Keelan.

“Shut your mouth, boy,” Roland snarled, but Chetfield raised his hand, holding him at bay, head tilted, eyes almost closed.

“You have powers, Highlander?”

“Aye,” he said.

“Powers!” Roland laughed. Bear grinned, a slice of evil in the midst of his matted beard. But Keelan was only interested in Chetfield, focused on the glowing eyes that watched him like a hunting wolf‘s.

“What sort of powers?”

A cold draft of liquid fear washed through Keelan, but he was too tired, too sober to care. “There be magic in me hands.”

“You’re gifted?”

“Aye.”

Roland scoffed. “Surely you don’t believe—”

“Quiet,” hissed the master, and turning stiffly, stepped close. Fear came with him, an aura of unexpected evil. “Heal me then,” he said.

Keelan tilted his head against the timber, watching, solemn, as terrified of his own words as of the man before him. “Nay.”

He was never certain who struck him. His head rang with the pain of it. Blood pooled in his mouth, dripped from his cracked lips.

His mother’s face floated into view, bonny eyes laughing. She didn’t chide like the others who came in his dreams. Did not blame him. Though she should.

“Who are you?” Chetfield rasped, and Keelan grinned.

“
Ange,” he said and his mother smiled from his memory. He had inherited her Gypsy looks, the dark, untamed hair, the walnut-hued skin. Only his eyes were different, silvery blue where hers were as black as midnight, shifting from anger to laughter with the beat of her heart. He smiled at her.

“He’s gone to the other side,” Frankie rasped.

“Ye were healthy afore,” Keelan intoned. The image was clear now, as clear as river water.
Chetfield in the bull’s enclosure, eyes shining, staff raised as he stood over a cowering servant. “Until Mead’s untimely death.”

Chetfield stepped closer, voice quiet, body still. “You know of Mead?”

“Aye.” Two pence had bought him much information in a nearby hamlet. He had been told of an accident, but he had not been told the truth. Poor Mead must have fought back. Must have gotten in one good blow, for the master was wounded.

“What clan are you?”

Keelan rested his head against the pillar behind him. By the light of a tallow candle, his mother had told him tales. Stories of warriors of stone, of gifted maids, of dark-haired Irishmen with magic in their hands. Perhaps long ago he had believed he descended from such heroes. “Me ancestors come from the far Highlands and stretch back to the Druids.” Exhaustion was settling in like a black cloud, heavy and cool, almost soothing.

The old man struck him this time, but Keelan was beyond pain, beyond caring, in the vague hinterlands at the far side of lucid.

“You lie,” Chetfield hissed.

“Often,” Keelan muttered, and grinned through the blood. The expression hurt far more than
Chetfield’s blow. “But I be a bit too weary to do so just now.”

“What is your surname?”

“I canna say.”

“I could kill you with a word,” hissed Chetfield, but the lies came easy now, borne on the wings of hovering unconsciousness.

“I think ye may have already,” Keelan murmured. “Still, I dunna ken me true name for I had na da.”

The old man’s eyes were narrow, slits with the merest spark of excitement in their depths. “I do not believe you.”

The world seemed hazy, peaceful. He couldn’t feel his limbs. “Verra well.”

“Who raised you?”

“They called her Sorciere.”

“She was a witch?” Chetfield rasped, eyes alight.

“Some said as much.” Keelan laughed. The noise echoed eerily in the dark space. He rather liked the sound of it. “But never to her face.”

“She could heal?”

Keelan smiled. “And kill.”

“Kill!” Roland growled. “This is rubbish, Master—”

“Prove yourself,” Chetfield said.

Keelan shook his head. This was the mo
ment he had planned for, the moment he would prove his worth, make himself indispensable, gain the treasure that was rightfully his. But it was too late now. His plans had been laid waste. “It does na work such, as I think ye ken.”

Chetfield smiled, a soft expression of evil. “Then make your peace,” he said.

Keelan nodded, or tried to, but he did not turn his attention from the other. Could not. “There will be no peace for ye. Only pain.”

Chetfield stood absolutely still, staring, thinking things unspoken. “Cut him free,” he said finally.

“My lord—”

“Do as I say!” he hissed.

Roland moved like a shadow, slipping behind the timber. There was a grating sensation, and then Keelan’s arms spilled to his sides. He pulled them numbly forward. His fingers refused to move.

The baron stood very still, both hands on the head of his craggy staff. “I shall give you one last chance, boy.”

Keelan shook his head. His pate wobbled as he eyed his own torso. The skin was ripped and bloodied, burned and bruised. “I am sore weakened,” he said, and glanced up. Evil stood before
him. “’Twould take me whole strength to touch the likes of ye.”

Chetfield narrowed his golden eyes. “Because you think me powerful or because you think me evil?”

“Both.”

“Bloody bastard!” Roland cursed, but Chetfield lifted a graceful hand and smiled.

“The lamb,” he said, and shifted his gaze with malevolent slowness to the beast’s still form. “Bring breath to the lamb and I shall spare your life, Highlander.”

Keelan laughed. His plans had come to fruition. But too late. Too damned late. His powders were gone. His magic with them. “It canna be done,” he said. “Na without the Lord God himself.”

“Then I suggest you pray.”

The world was a hazy plane, gray with mist and uncertainty. “God and I have na spoke for some years,” Keelan said. “Indeed—”

“You are running short on time, boy,” said Chetfield. Roland grinned and tightened his grip on the knife.

Keelan watched the light play across the lamb’s flaccid form, then stumbled toward it. His legs trembled, scraped raw beneath the tattered remains of his tartan. He dropped to his knees. The movement jarred him like a blow,
threatening his consciousness, bobbing his head. The others followed him, circled round.

He glanced up. Even now he was not beyond fear. He had neither the courage of the Celt, nor the cleverness of the Irishman. As his mother well knew. “My lord,” he said, “I beg ye, let me rest this night so that I might—”

“As you may have guessed, Highlander, I am not a patient man. Give the lamb life or forfeit your own.”

Keelan settled back on his haunches. A prayer came to his mind, long forgotten and ill-used, but it was there nonetheless, chanting through his chilled brain. He let it hum along, then, reaching forward, set his hands on the tiny lamb’s barrel. Its ribs were distinct beneath the wet woolen curls, the droopy black ears lax, one crushed beneath the tiny head, one soft and limp against its mottled face. Its shoulder felt as cold as chilled meat.

Closing his eyes halfway, Keelan rolled them back in his head. Then, lifting his hands a fraction of an inch from the tiny body, Keelan ran his fingers along the coarse wool and began to hum.

The brute squad was close, leaning in, watching. But mayhap he could yet best them. They thought him beaten.

Keelan passed his hands over the lamb’s head.

Roland’s touch was a caress on the hilt of his knife. Changing the rhythm of the chant, Keelan raised the volume high, then let it fall abruptly. The bastard shifted nervously back. So he was not comfortable with the supernatural…or the faux supernatural. Keelan would have laughed if the door wasn’t so damnably far away.

He didn’t glance in that direction, but imagined it in his mind. Twenty strides. It might just as well have been a mile.

Then again, mayhap he could grab Chetfield. He was a powerful adversary, aye, but would that not make him a powerful tool?

“I am becoming bored, Highlander,” said the baron.

Keelan continued his chant, trilling his hands along the woolly neck, over the tiny nostrils.

“Let me alleviate your boredom, my lord,” Roland said.

Keelan didn’t glance up, though he recognized the threat. ’Twas death that entertained this crew. Death and pain, the acrid smell of some hapless stranger’s lifeblood.

“And Mr. Roland is becoming impatient,” Chetfield added.

Keelan shut out the sound of his words. Aye, he’d failed when called to action those many
years ago, but he was yet a Scot. His antecedents had lived with naught but hope for years beyond time. Had fought the odds and won. Liam the Irishman, the Black Celt, Sir Stanton Hallaway. Bold men all. Men who would not die easy. Who would not lie down and—

“Kill him,” Chetfield said, but in that moment Keelan lurched to his feet with a roar.

“Take me then!” he shouted, but the foursome fell back, eyes wide with terror. Frankie hit his knees like a loosed boulder, blubbering for mercy.

Keelan stared in confusion. Then, from behind him, he heard a pitiable bleat. He turned like one in a trance…just in time to see the lambkin wobble to its feet.

“Merciful Mary—” he rasped, and stumbled backward.

Frankie was still muttering. Bear’s eyes were limned with white.

“It’s a trick,” snarled Roland.

“Perhaps,” Chetfield said. “But it’s a very good trick. Make certain our young friend remains with us through the night, won’t you?”

“A pleasure,” said the bastard, but when he stepped forward, Keelan saw that his hands trembled.