The Legend Mackinnon (35 page)

Rory dodged her flailing fists and pulled her to him. “Stop!” He tightened his arms around her. “Don’t do this, Cailean, stop.”

She didn’t stop, she kept on, crying as if her heart were being torn into pieces. He’d done this to her. Shame rushed through Rory, as did anger, at himself, for being so cruelly thoughtless. He’d thought she understood.

Rory wrapped his arms more tightly around her and held on for dear life.

Dear life.

He pushed her into the corner, trapping her against him, his own eyes burning as the epiphany washed over him. Her pain was more than palpable—he felt it because he shared it.

“I didn’t know,” he said. “I didn’t know.” He repeated it over and over again as the fight slowly ran out of her. But the sobs and the pain did not. They continued in torrents that tore his own heart to shreds.

“I love you, Rory,” she choked out. “How could you not have known?”

“Cailean,” he said hoarsely. “I’m sorry, so sorry.” Fear lanced through him. He’d known he had feelings for her, he’d known he was forming an attachment the likes of which he’d never allowed himself to feel. He’d known she was forming an attachment as well, but he’d thought she’d understood his plan from the beginning.

It stunned him once again, that this woman he held had given her heart. No trick, no ploy. And it was a gift he cherished.

“I won’t do it.” The words were beyond raw, as if dredged from the depths of hell. A hell he’d forced her to live through.

“You have to do it,” he whispered. “Don’t fight me anymore.” He lifted her into his arms and carried her back to bed. He didn’t give her a chance to escape. He slid down next to her, leaning against the headboard and pulled her into his lap.

He didn’t say anything for a long time. He put all his efforts into soothing her, one gentle stroke at a time. He
waited until her breaths were no longer hitching and her muscles had gone pliant.

Her quiet voice surprised and stilled him. “I know you didn’t plan on this, Rory, plan on me.”

“I don’t want to leave you, Cailean. It will hurt me, too. I thought this was my price to pay. I didn’t take into account the price you were paying.” He tilted her chin. “I’m sorry, Cailean.” He kissed her eyebrows and then her cheek. “I’m sorry.”

“I won’t apologize, Rory.” She sat up and framed his face. “I’ve fallen in love with you, John Roderick MacKinnon. The one Claren on earth who should know better. I didn’t delude myself into believing anything was going to come of it.” She paused. “Okay, so maybe I’d begun to. And I suppose the more time we spent together, the more I’d have let myself do that. I knew it would hurt me, I knew it, but never did I think that you … that you …” Her eyes brimmed again and she couldn’t get the words out.

“I’ve been here for so long,” he began, knowing there was no way to make her truly understand. “I’ve known for so long that if I ever found the cure, that I’d—”

“But how? You can’t just … just …”

“I never planned it all out, if that’s what you mean.” That wasn’t entirely the truth. Early on, in his first century, he’d tried many times to end it, had schemed again and again for a way to trick destiny. “But I never had anything to regret leaving before and then when Duncan came back … well, the way just presented itself to me.”

She sat up straight. “What are you talking about?”

“He only has a little more than a week left. When he returns to purgatory, if we’ve found the key by then, he said he’d take me with him.”

There was no look of horror this time. Her face crumpled and his heart crumpled right along with it. “I didn’t
think about that. Of course you’d want to be with him, with … everyone. You’ll be reunited with your clan. Of course you want to go with him.”

She leaned back into his chest and his arms came around her naturally. “I’m the selfish one, lass. Och, what a great wreck we both are.” He tilted her chin up and kissed her gently on the mouth. He felt his own eyes burn even as he smiled down at her. “Perhaps we were truly meant for each other. Who else would have us?”

A small smile hinted at the corners of her mouth as another tear tracked down her cheek.

“Ye make me feel as if the Lord himself has blessed me when ye smile at me, Cailean Claren.” Her smile wobbled then, but he pressed it back into place with as gentle a kiss as he knew how to give. “Yer right, I do no’ want to leave ye. I never thought of it as somethin’ I had a choice over.”

“Duncan, your father, your other brother, Alexander—Rory, I understand now. Your destiny—”

“I don’t know what my destiny is,” he said, kissing her again. He sighed deeply. “If I’d had yer mouth to kiss for all eternity, perhaps my immortal life wouldna hae been so much burden as pleasure.”

“Rory—”

This time he stopped her with a shake of his head. “No decisions tonight. We’ll begin the search tomorrow. When we find the key we’ll talk of it then.” He didn’t tell her he had what might be considered prescient feelings of his own, feelings that had long told him that he’d die when his curse was reversed, that he’d have no actual choice in the matter. “We’ll know more then.” Dear God, he hoped.

Cailean seemed to accept that and he held her, stroking her hair until he felt the even rhythms of sleep in her breathing.

Staring down at her, curled so trustingly against him, he said in a soft whisper the words he hadn’t thought fair
to burden her with before. “I do love ye, Cailean. As much as a man like me is able.” She sighed against his chest and he thought for an instant, she’d heard him. But she slept on.

“We’ll find a way. Destiny be damned.”

P
ART
T
HREE
A
LEXANDER

“The illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean-tide, on which … all the universe swim … like apparitions which
are,
and then
are not.…”

—
THOMAS CARLYLE
,
SCOTTISH ESSAYIST

D
elaney Claren stepped cautiously into the small stone room. She turned on her flashlight and slowly scanned the walls and floor. Nothing. Again.

“Twelve down, twelve hundred to go,” she muttered.

“You okay down there?” Maggie’s voice echoed down the narrow passageway.

Delaney backed out of the room as Maggie’s flashlight beam flickered toward her. “Fine. Another empty room.”

Maggie stepped around the bend and aimed her beam under her chin. “Am I the only one who keeps expecting a vampire to pop out of one of these tombs, I mean rooms?”

Delaney laughed. Cailean had been right. They definitely liked Maggie Claren. “For me it’s skeletons. I just know there’s a dead body in here somewhere. And frankly, I’ve seen enough of those for one life.”

Maggie smiled. “Don’t let Cailean hear you say that. She made me swear not to touch anything if I happened to stumble across any bones. Like that’s going to be a problem. They’re all hers.”

“She gave me the same lecture.” They shared an exaggerated shudder, then laughed at themselves. “No luck?”

“All empty,” Maggie reported. “Same for you?”

She nodded. “I know Cailean is convinced we’ll find something in here, and I have to say, reading Lachlan’s journals makes me feel like she might be on to something, but this is such a massive undertaking. This place is monstrous, with these endless passages connecting all over the place.”

“I know, it’s hard to take in, but when you imagine it full of people, with torchlight everywhere and well …” Maggie smiled wistfully, then laughed. “I’m sure I’m romanticizing it grossly.”

Gross being the key word, Delaney wanted to say. She’d been in garrisons and fortresses in other parts of the world that equaled Stonelachen easily in terms of age. There was nothing romantic about poverty, disease, and filth. Maggie was most definitely wearing rose colored glasses, with really thick lenses. But Delaney wasn’t going to be the one to yank them off.

“I think about the feasts they had in the great hall.” Delaney recalled when they’d all stepped into the cavernous room and Rory and Duncan had lit the torches. She got goosebumps just thinking about it. Perhaps she had a little pink in her lenses too.

“Well,” Delaney said, “I guess we’d better get back to it. We meet Cailean in the central passageway at three.”

“I synchronized my watch,” Maggie said, saluting with her flashlight. “We’ll recon in two hours, captain.”

Delaney smiled and saluted before turning back to her assigned wing. There was no logical layout to the castle, which made it both the perfect fortress, since no invading army could know where all the passageways led, and the most difficult to defend. She was glad she didn’t have to work out a defensive strategy for this place. Hostage removal would be a real bitch.

Still, it was an awesome feat of nature and ancient engineering
and she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t completely fascinated by the whole thing.

She headed around the next bend, head still half in the past, and stopped short. “There’s not supposed to be anything branching off of this.” She tucked her flashlight under her arm and pulled out the map that Duncan and Rory had painstakingly drawn. Each person had a different map, with Rory and Duncan taking the quadrants with the most damage, trying to find ways around the smaller blockages to get to the rooms behind them.

She unfolded the map and held it against the wall with one hand, aiming her light at it with the other. “You are here,” she intoned. She followed the beam past the room along the passageway she’d taken. “No Y in the road.” According to the map, her passage should have continued curving around, with three more rooms—two on the right, one on the left—before connecting again to the main artery.

She let the map slide down as she aimed the beam down the unmarked passageway. “So what are you doing here?” It was entirely possible that Rory and Duncan had just gotten mixed up or forgotten it. There were so many levels and so many passages that, after all this time, it was pretty incredible how much they’d been able to recall. They may have missed a thing or two.

She walked a few yards and flashed her beam ahead, trying to see if there were any doorways or if it was a dead end. But the walls were smooth and solid and the light didn’t penetrate far enough to determine the full extent of it.

She debated finishing her original search, checking in with Maggie, then coming back to check on this. She checked the glowing numerals on her watch. She really should continue as planned.

She went several more feet, half-hoping the beam of
light would reveal a stone wall dead ahead and put an end to the side trip. No stone wall. No rooms either.

She rounded one more bend. It widened out considerably, but still no rooms. No end to the passageway either. She walked a bit faster, flashing the beam of light back and forth so she didn’t trip on loose rock. The passages weren’t level, so she was moving up and down inside the mountain, with passageways above and beneath her at times, running every which direction as well and at times connecting with each other. Very confusing.

She rounded the next bend and skidded to a halt. “Holy, sh—” She swallowed the rest, along with her heart. Her toes dangled over the edge of what looked like a black abyss. Heart pounding, she flashed the light downward.

“Stairs,” she breathed. This passage obviously connected with another lower passage, which would be included in another search. But wasn’t this quadrant already in one of the lowest sections?

She stood there for another moment, then reluctantly turned to retrace her steps. She took two steps and stopped.
What was that sound?
She sat down on the top step so she could lean forward more without fear of pitching head first off the top riser. It sounded like wind blowing through trees, or, or …

“Water.” Rushing water. An underground spring? Not surprising since the mountain was riddled with them. The MacKinnons had done a miraculous job of sealing off minor springs, or diverting them into other spring beds and harnessing the force of the water for power. From Rory and Duncan’s descriptions, the engineering complexities achieved by such an ancient people boggled the mind.