Redeemed (Heroes of the Highlands) (The MacKays #2) (2 page)

She’d reached the edge of the world. Or at least, the edge of Scotland.
Cape Wrath,
it was named, by the numberless hordes of Norsemen who’d tried to overtake her inhospitable shores. Time and time again they were driven back by the perilous sea and the remarkable clans strong and formidable enough to carve out a life here. They then chose other beaches from which to launch their assaults.

It was wrath which drew her all the way out here. It pulsed from the black rock. From the waves. From—somewhere beneath her. Not only wrath, but a hopeless misery, a cold fury stewed and stormed with rebellious opposition to the lovely sunset.

Kylah stepped off the edge of the cliff and dropped to the ocean below. Enormous sprays of water clashing with stone showered through her as she surveyed the rocks.

There.

To the left of the jagged rock, a shadowed cleft slashed through the cliff face. To the naked eye, it appeared shallow, but if one noted the break in the agitated water as it flowed deep into the gap, it would be recognized as a sheltered ocean cave.

This was what she’d been looking for.

As she floated past the entrance, the black sea that had churned beneath her calmed in contrast to the stirring hatred emanating from the depths of the cavern. Her weak glow acted as an insufficient lantern as the twilit Highland sky disappeared, replaced by smooth rock hollowed out by untold millennia of tides.

The place had an ancient, sacred grief beneath all the darkness. As though evil had overrun a holy place. Beyond the narrow passage, the water smoothed into a clear pool that reflected her light back at her as it became shallower, until the stone rose above the water and created a shelf.

Kylah drifted to the ledge and peered into the shadows. She couldn’t tell how far back the cavern extended, and didn’t care. She liked the illusion of blackness pressing in on all sides, threatening to overwhelm her pitiful glow. Turning, she sank to her knees and let the yawning darkness of the grotto engulf her.

Her face reflected back at her in the still waters, and it captivated her. This was the first time she’d seen herself since she’d died. The features in the water belonged to her, but were unrecognizable. The same heavy-lashed green eyes responded to her blink, but remained dull and vacant.

Kylah brought trembling fingers to her face, almost stunned that her reflection did the same. Despite the unflattering pale green glow, and the sunken pallor she’d adopted in death, she was still beautiful. Stunningly so. She’d once considered herself fortunate to have possessed such prominent cheek bones and a delicate chin.

She reached out a hand and slapped at the pool. Of course, nothing happened. No ripples interrupted her perfect nose. She did it again. Deeper this time, harder, a sound frustration escaping her throat when, again, her hand passed through the water without creating the slightest ripple.

A bleak yet passionate rage oozed from walls she could not see, snaking toward her like an unseen predator.
This
. This was the emotion she needed to conjure. This strange antithesis of unfulfilled pain bordering on hysteric madness. This manic loneliness. It surged through her with a sensation she’d thought lost within the husk of her flesh now turned to ashes.

Her hands curled to fists as she flailed at the water. The face that remained unharmed still crumpled into an accusatory snarl as it hurled raw grunts that echoed about the cavern.

Never in her life had she raised her voice. Not in anger, nor silliness, nor competition. People stopped when she spoke in her silky tones to listen to her. They watched her lips move and hung on every word.

The night of her death, they’d silenced her with their hands, smothering her frightened pleas. She’d tried to scream once the flames had begun to devour her, but peals of smoke had mercifully stopped her breath and filled her throat.

She’d never screamed.

They did. Not. Let. Her. Scream.

In the water, her pupils disappeared, swallowed by a frighteningly powerful illumination. Her glow coalesced into tentacles of light that lashed into the darkened corners of the grotto. Her grunts became cries, and her cries became a wail. Then her scream fractured into many. Until one was a roar and another a screech, and yet another a keen that reached such a pitch that it shook the stones and vibrated through the water. Now ripples distorted her reflection and drowned out the sounds of the ocean. To her it was a lovely symphonic melody, crafted of hatred and vengeance. She drew on whatever sinister emotion she could grasp as it was flung at her from somewhere in the darkness and intensified it. As she endlessly screamed, she also reveled. She grieved. She cursed.

It felt marvelous.

A loud crack reverberated off the stone walls and sliced through her keen. Kylah could
feel
its percussion carve through the vibrations her pitch created, and the sensation stunned her to stillness.

“
Haud yer Wheesht
, woman!” The deep command issued from everywhere and nowhere. It could have come from the Gods, if she hadn’t known better.

But she did. She recognized the voice immediately and knew who lurked in the darkness behind her without turning to look.

The Druid, Daroch McLeod.

Kylah squeezed her eyes shut. What was
he
doing in here? This cave was nigh impossible to get to. She’d thought she was alone.

“Ye shouldna be here.” His growl lashed at her from the walls like a cornered predator, accusing her of trespassing in a succession of echoes. “
Leave
.”

“Why?” she breathed, watching her glow crawl back toward her, the intensity of terrible emotions smothered by a simple, pervasive curiosity.

“Because ye doona belong here.” His voice favored the cavern in which they stood. Cold. Dark. A mysterious, unfathomable chasm hidden among wild peril.

“But I was… called here.” She’d meant to insist, but her chest suddenly felt too small to call forth much volume.

“Nay. Ye werena. Now go away,” he clipped

Kylah scowled. Who was he to tell her where to go? And so rudely! Anguish nigh forgotten, she whirled to face him, but was met with only darkness.

“Why?” she demanded. “Why do you want me to go away?” Not the most brilliant of questions, but valid nonetheless.

The blackness was silent for so long, she wondered if he’d been the one to retreat. “Because I—doona want to look at ye.”

Kylah gasped. She’d expected him to reference her Banshee keen, or her glow disturbing the darkness he so obviously desired. But his answer shocked and incensed her so completely she would have been struck dumb if she’d still been alive. What did her looks have to do with anything?

“Why not?” she asked the darkness.

“Why would I?”

She narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms. “I’ve been told that I’m quite pleasant to look at.” And that was being modest. “In fact, I’m… well, I’m quite beautiful.” Lud, she’d never said it out loud before. “Why would that offend you so?”

His amplified snort grated on nerves she thought long dead. “Beauty is nothing to be proud of. It’s no great feat or accomplishment, only a happenstance of birth. It doesna make ye intelligent, interesting, nor desirable company. Now again, I say
be gone
.” The stones augmented his command and likewise fractured his voice into many, which all told her to leave more than once.

“Nay.” There was a refreshing truth in his words, Kylah begrudgingly admitted to herself. No matter how indecorous the manner in which they were stated. But she wasn’t going to do what he told her to. If there was one advantage to being dead, it was free reign to lurk where you liked.

Through the omnipresent darkness, Kylah knew exactly where the Druid stood, and exactly what she was doing here.

“It was you,” she murmured, advancing into the darkness. “I thought this god forsaken
place
drew me here. But, nay, the anguish and loss doesn’t belong to these stones… It’s yours.”

The Druid was suddenly in front of her. His unsettling face shoved close to hers, his mud-streaked features pulled into the most terrifying snarl she’d ever seen.

“Get.
Out
!”

Chapter Three

If Kylah had still been alive, she would have fled. She would have obeyed. As it was, she still found herself retreating a few paces until she floated over the grotto.

The Druid stalked her to the water’s edge, his hulking body swathed in the shadows beyond the reach of her dim light. In a swift movement, his staff of petrified birch cracked against the earth, causing that percussive vibration to ripple through her again.

It was the closest sensation to being touched Kylah had felt in almost a year.

She closed her eyes and let out a breath. “Do that again,” she murmured.

He didn’t.

Seized by the need to see more of him, she drifted closer. Her glow crawled up tattered, ancient grey robes lashed to an enormous body by weathered, knotted vines. Shells of swansea, whelk and eigg clung to where he’d fastened them into his hair from the temple, where warriors would have donned war braids.

Kylah met a scowl so intense she had to suppress an absurd and surprising smile. Never in her life had she been the cause of such an expression.

Why would it amuse her so?

The angles of his face remained inscrutible, hidden behind a layer of silt from the
Allt Dubh.
The rest of his hair caked to his head and fell down his back, contained by the same dried mud. Kylah searched her memory for what she knew lay beneath the mask. She didn’t have to go far. The image lurked at the surface of her mind’s eye more often than she cared to admit. Compelling, savage features carved by a primordial artist and defaced by some undisclosed blasphemy. Dark blue tattoos of a forgotten, ancient design covered the entire left side of his face, but were concealed beneath the silt.

The only clarity belonged to his eyes, which glittered at her with unmistakable hostility. It rolled off his impossibly wide shoulders with all the force of a physical shove.

“I’m sorry if my scream disturbed you, I thought I was alone,” she explained. “I promise to stay at a more pleasing register.”

He ignored her peace offering. “I know I’m not the soul ye’re after, Banshee, so there’s no reason for ye to linger here unless ye’re just entertained by disturbing my peace.”

Kylah found herself distracted by his white, even teeth bared in a disgusted sneer. She was, in all honesty, vastly entertained. But couldn’t exactly say why.

“How do you know you’re not the one I’m after?”

“I’m not bleeding, am I?” He rolled his eyes before giving her his back and slinking into the darkness. “Yer intended victim’s head would have burst during that wasted keen.”

“The keen wasn’t wasted,” she shrugged. “It helped
me
.”

“I doona care,” the blackness coolly informed her. “Now go away.”

Kylah drifted forward, hoping to find him again with her glow. “You still don’t know you’re not the one I’m after. What if you are
An Dioladh
and therefore immune? Like a Faerie creature or blessed by the Gods? You’re a Druid, aren’t you?”

“Druids are
not
Faeries.” He spat the word as though it tasted foul. “Nor are we cleric or Paladin to any god, contrary to misguided opinion.”

“Oh?” Intrigued, Kylah reached the back of the spare cavern and she started to follow the wall to the left. “You still could be
An Dioladh
.”

“Nay. I couldna,” he said shortly. She couldn’t pinpoint where the Druid’s voice hailed from in the dark. It was like he threw it off the walls and caught it from a different location each time he spoke.

“But how can you be certain?”

An inhuman sound split the darkness and the staff arced through her in a vicious lash one second before the entire bulk of the Druid flew into and all the way through her with astounding speed. He glanced off the stone wall with a heavy leather boot and, in a flurry of robes, used the momentum to twist his leg behind him in what would have been a powerful and devastating kick to her temple.

His boot sailed through her head and he landed with surprising dexterity for such a large and encumbered man.

Kylah’s hand flew to her chest. “You just… you could have…” Her entire body arced and vibrated with an unseen force and, though she’d not felt him at all, the impact of his intrusion was so potent she’d lost all sense of reason.

“Nay.” He said the word slowly, as though speaking to a dim-witted child. “I
couldna
.”

“But…” She couldn’t collect her wits. He’d just attacked her. A woman! A dead and lethal woman, certainly. But, even so.

His eyes narrowed as they traveled the length of her specter in a cold and calculating manner, as though searching for a weakness, any chink in her armor he could use to his advantage. Obviously unimpressed with what he saw, he lifted an eyebrow, creating fissures in the mud there.

“But… You are a
Druid
,” she repeated lamely, as though that should explain everything. The word had always held such mystic allure to the superstitious Highlanders, spoken in whispers of awe and fear alongside ancient words like Shape-shifter, Dragon, and Berserker.

“And
ye
are a fool.” He disappeared again.

Kylah blinked. “I’m not a fool, I’m a Banshee.”

“The two are not mutually exclusive.” His voice now came from—inside the rock? That couldn’t be right.

She ignored his insult and pressed her ear to the wall. “We’re both creatures of magic, you have to admit that.”

“
Wrong
.” The rock told her. “Ye’re a creature of magic. I’m a being of power.”

Kylah drew back and frowned. The rock or the man? This had to be the most confusing conversation she’d ever had.

And the most fascinating.

Along the left wall, she’d reached the water’s edge so she trailed back to the center and started searching along the right.

And found nothing.

Disappointed, she looked back and a gleam in the black rock caught her notice. Embedded in the wall, just wide enough for a body to hide was an overlay of stone virtually invisible from anywhere in the cave except for where she stood now.