Starry Knight (14 page)

Blinking the memory away, Vanessa looked with confusion from the card to the shimmering visage of the white lady. “Why did you give this to me? What does it mean?”

“I think you know.”

“Look,” she said, indignant. “I like Callum, quite a lot for somebody I’ve only just met, but that’s as far as it’s going to go. I’m not the sort who needs some fairytale knight riding to her rescue. Those fantasies are for women who can’t take care of themselves, which isn’t me. I’m a strong, independent woman. I don’t need some bloody-minded man crushing my dreams with his neanderthalic expectations—be he lover, husband, or father. I’m my own person, damn it, and plan to keep it that way.”

“That being the case,” the ghost said, fading slightly, “I suggest you find your own way out of the dungeon.”

Though the white lady disappeared, the card remained in Vanessa’s hand. Flustered, but also relieved to be out of immediate danger, she sat down, back against the cold stone wall, contemplating the card and what the ghost had told her. What she was looking for was right in front of her—just like the vampire, who was of the Fae and walked in daylight.

She harkened back to her Celtic Creatures lectures for help with the answer. In it, she’d learned the faeries of Scotland and Ireland were nothing like the tiny, winged beings portrayed in storybooks and Disney movies. Rather, they were human-sized demi-gods who relocated to another realm centuries ago to escape Christian persecution. These immortal beings, known as the children of Danu, the mother of all things, were magicians, tricksters, and shape-shifters who delighted in seducing and sexually enslaving humans.

Holy shit. How could she have been so blind? Probably because she’d expected the Vampire of Barrogill to be more like Dracula than Oberon. Now that she examined the evidence, however, it was as plain as the nose on her face. It also explained the tongue biting, the mesmeric gaze, and the muddy footprints on the carpet, assuming he was the shape-shifting sort of faery. Oh, holy shit. Lyon. Double Leo. The lion she’d seen had been Callum assuming one of his guises!

“Come back,” she shouted into the echoing darkness. “Come back and tell me the rest!”

Hinges groaned, something boomed, and light flooded the end of the corridor. Clambering to her feet, she raced down the passage toward the light, still clutching the torch and the card. Stepping under the round opening, she looked up, shielding her eyes from the sudden brightness. Blue-gray sky with a dusting of clouds greeted her gaze. After slipping the card in her back pocket and the flashlight in her waistband, she grabbed hold of the upward-reaching ladder’s wooden handrails and, on trembling legs, started to climb out. By the time her boots hit the grass, she’d made up her mind to confront him the instant he returned from town.

* * * *

Vanessa sat on the edge of Callum’s bed, waiting to strike like a snake the second he entered the room. It shouldn’t be long now. She’d heard the car pull up, the engine shut off, and the doors slam. Now, there were footfalls on the floorboards in the hall, heading this way. Just outside the closed door, they stopped. It was Callum. It had to be.

Meanwhile, her head was spinning, her mouth was dry, and heart was pounding hard enough to explode. What to say? How to start? Despite going over her script for the past two hours—the longest of her life—she still had no idea what to say.

The handle turned. She stiffened, held her breath, and swallowed hard. The door swung open, but he didn’t come in the room. Instead, he just stood on the threshold, looking at her. She forced a small smile, saying nothing. Did his faery senses tell him the guillotine was about to drop? She licked her lips, weighing her next move. The wise way to proceed would be to pretend all was well, wait for him to let his guard down, and then squeeze him like a tube of toothpaste. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the patience to winkle and cajole. She wanted answers and she wanted them now.

“I met your ghost again,” she said, still smiling.

“Oh, aye?” He came a few steps into the room, but still looked as if might turn back out at the slightest provocation. “And what did she have to say?”

“Before I tell you, I need to make a confession. I came to Barrogill under false pretenses. I heard rumors of a vampire living in your castle and wanted to check them out.”

When he opened his mouth to say something, she held up a silencing hand. “Please wait until I’m finished, because this is really hard. While you were out, I went into the dungeon hoping to find evidence. What I found instead was your ghost, who told me what I was looking for was under my nose. I’ve been so blind, but now, well, I think I’ve seen the light. Please, Callum. Tell me the truth. I won’t breathe a word to anybody, ever. Not even my new boss. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

He came into the room then and sat on the sofa with his back to her. He said nothing until the silence grew ominous. Just as she opened her mouth to fill the breach, he spoke. “If I tell you, know that I’ll have to take the knowledge from you before we part ways.”

“Take the knowledge?” she asked, startled. “You mean, erase my memory?”

“Aye. Exactly. But only the bits about me.”

“What if I give you my solemn vow not to repeat what I know to another living soul?”

“I’ve read your mind, my lady. I know why you’ve come to Caithness and I’ve already been unbelievably reckless by spending time with you. To trust you to keep my secret after we part ways would be borderline lunacy.”

As much as she didn’t want her memory tampered with, or to forget him, she also saw certain advantages in forgetting. For one, thoughts of him would distract her when she started her new job—her top priority. If she didn’t remember him, she wouldn’t be plagued by thoughts of what might have been if she’d stuck around. Not that he’d given her the option, but still. For another, she wouldn’t have to deceive Beau Armstrong, her new boss. She was a deplorable liar and, even if she swore on her life the Vampire of Barrogill didn’t exist, Beau would see the lie in her eyes and expression.

“I want to know,” she said firmly.

“Even if I take it from you later?”

“Yes.”

“Very well,” he said, keeping his back to her. “Are you at all familiar with the legends of Avalon?”

She was, having studied the Arthurian legends and their history while at boarding school. Avalon, or the Isle of Apples, was first mentioned in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s pseudohistorical account of
The History of The Kings of Britain
. Ruled by Morgan Le Fay, a powerful and, by some accounts, ruthless sorceress, Avalon was the otherworld island where Excalibur was forged and King Arthur was taken to recover from his wounds after killing Mordred, his son by Morgan, the king’s half-sister, at the Battle of Camlann.

“Yes,” she said. “It was said to be a paradise where no one aged or died, the sun never set, and flowers bloomed once and never faded.”

“All true,” he said sullenly. “Though even a paradise can be a prison.”

“You’ve been there?”

“Aye. In life, I was the court astrologer to King James the Fourth, who, as you probably know, was killed at the Battle of Flodden Field.”

“Holy crap,” she exclaimed through her shock, “the Battle of Flodden Field was fought in fifteen hundred and thirty, which would make you…”

“Five hundred and thirty-six, give or take,” he said, helpfully sparing her the need to do the math. “Though time moves at a different pace in Avalon, so I’ve really only lived two centuries or so.”

“Still,” she said, mind swimming with all she’d learned so far, “that’s a fairly long time.”

“Aye,” he agreed. “And now that I’m able to tell you all, you should know that the ghost you’ve been communing with was my first wife. When I escaped my enslavement by the faeries, I found centuries had passed in what seemed to be a few months. Everyone and everything I cared about was dead and gone or in the hands of the Sinclairs. Sorcha, the ghost’s name, had been forced to marry Fergus Sinclair and threw herself from the tower. God knows what became of our son, but knowing the Sinclairs, I can well imagine his fate wasn’t a pleasant one.”

“I see,” she said, doing her damndest to take it all in. “But how did you come to be in Avalon in the first place?”

“I was taken from the battlefield,” he said. “I’d warned King James not to invade England, told him the stars and planets didn’t favor the campaign, but he wouldn’t listen to reason. Don’t get me wrong, he was a good king, but also stubbornly convinced his superior army would prevail. I was his astrologer, but also an able-bodied knight, so I had no choice but to join the fight, even knowing the casualties would be heavy and that I would most likely be among them.” He heaved a sigh. “The stars weren’t wrong. When the smoke cleared, half our army laid dead upon the field. Not only foot soldiers, but hundreds of earls, lords, and knights as well—a whole generation of nobles cut down like haystalks in a battle that, had the king only heeded the heavens, would never have taken place.”

He got quiet, as if collecting himself, before going on. “I was among the wounded and, as I lay dying, a faery on a pure-white pony came and took me away to Avalon where I was knighted by the queen—made one of her drones, in other words.”

Vanessa stared down at the fidgeting hands in her lap. She believed in the paranormal, so the fact that he was of the Fae wasn’t as shocking as it might have been, though some of the details still threw her for a loop. “You were made a drone? Like in a beehive?”

“Aye,” he confirmed. “Avalon is a matriarchy—a colony of females run by a cruel and paranoid queen. Men serve no purpose beyond sex—whether for propagation or pleasure. Knights, who are fertile, serve the queen. Squires and Pages, who are chemically sterilized, service the rest.”

“So…you mated with the queen to sire more faeries?”

“Aye,” he said. “But she only wanted lasses. If she bore a son, she’d summon his sire and butcher the bairn while the poor bugger watched.” His voice grew strained as he added, “As if the poor man could control the gender of the babes he was forced to conceive!”

“Why?” she demanded, wringing her hands. “Why did she kill the boys and punish their fathers?”

“Because of a prophecy warning she’d be overthrown one day by a natural-born drone who would rule in her stead.”

Vanessa, trembling with outrage, couldn’t imagine surviving anything so traumatic with her sanity intact. “Did you…beget sons?”

“I did. And while I was staked to the forest with insects preying upon my privates, the faery who’d taken me from the battlefield—Belphoebe was her name—took pity on me and helped me escape.”

* * * *

In the silence that followed his confession, he turned to the damsel on his bed. She looked pale and stricken, but not frightened. Good. He didn’t want her to be afraid of him.

“Do you want me to take you back to John o’Groats?”

“No,” she said, sounding sure. “Nor do I want you to erase my memory.”

“Then prove to me I can trust you,” he said, “because as things stand now, I don’t see where I have another choice.”

She met his gaze with a wounded expression that put a chink in his resolve. “The lion in the garden—was it you?”

“Aye. I went hunting, so I wouldn’t be tempted to drink your blood.”

“Did it work?”

“Nay, lass there’s something about your blood that sends me over the moon.”

Even now the smell of it was calling to him. He’d never craved a woman the way he did this one, not even before he became a drone. Nor had he shared with anyone the tortures he suffered in Avalon, not even Duncan. It felt freeing to finally confide in someone. Too bad he’d have to take it from her. But what other choice did he have? The lady was untrustworthy. She’d seduced him under false pretenses, snuck around behind his back, and lied to his face. In another few days, she’d fly off to another flower, leaving him where he started.

“Have you ever read
The Knight of Cups
?” she asked, recalling him from his musings.

The question surprised him, but then, so did everything about her—mostly in good ways. “I have, as it happens. Why?”

“Did you write it?”

“No. Another knight did.”

“A knight named Deirdre Ruthven?” she asked, her tone etched with incredulity.

“It’s a pen name,” he explained. “To protect his identity.”

“Do you know him?”

“I do, though we’re not what I’d call friends by any stretch of the imagination.”

The reason being that Sir Leith MacQuill, the book’s author, killed Belphoebe on Morgan’s orders after the queen discovered their forbidden affair.

“Just how many other knights are running around the—what did you call it?—passing themselves off as humans?”

“The Hitherworld,” he replied. “And only me and MacQuill, so far as I know. Unless you count Axel Lochlann, who guards the portal down in Faery Glen. Technically, though, Sir Axel is still enslaved.”

“Portal? What portal is this?”

“The passage between Hitherworld and Thitherworld,” he said.

She went quiet, giving him a chance to ask a question for a change. “What else did Sorcha tell you while you were hunting vampires down in the dungeon?”

Her gaze met his with searing intensity. “Only that what you were looking for was right in front of you, too.”

He didn’t doubt it. He had an overriding yen to conquer the lady, to bring her to heel, to pin her to a board like one of the butterflies he collected in his youth. But he wouldn’t, because that would spoil her beauty and crush her spirit, destroying the very things he found so appealing.

The next few days passed quickly and blissfully. Duncan departed with Callum still undecided about the election—and what to do about Vanessa. At the moment, they were back in Wick. Vanessa had been pleasantly surprised by Callum’s offer to take her shopping, though a bit apprehensive about his offer to pay—until he marched her straight to a purveyor of naughty lingerie.

Named
Indecent,
the shop
had a
diva-chic aesthetic with pale pink walls and a checkerboard marble floor. In the center, a beaded chandelier hung over a circular table stacked with lacey knickers. In the back, near the draperied dressing rooms, a French-looking settee and matching pair of chairs flanked a magazine-strewn table.