Unbearable (3 page)

“Because you love Tally and you can’t stand watching her hurt the way she is.”

“Then I’m an old fool,” he said harshly. “An idiot for letting myself love at all. I know better.”

I took him in my arms, my heart hurting just as his was. “
I
love you.” My voice was rough. “You can’t get away from that. Tally loves you, too. You’re going to have to go on being a fool, Nick, because you’re not going to get away from either of us.”

Nick closed his eyes and let his head drop to my shoulder. That made my heart ache even more. He was letting himself be weak and vulnerable. He was letting me see the mortal, human core of him. He was hurting just like Tally so I held him and tried to soothe it away, knowing that nothing but time would do that. But I tried, anyway. For Nick.

We made love that night, once we had tucked Tally and Riley into bed in the tiny room upstairs. It was the first time that year and to say I was pathetically relieved would have been an understatement.

I had won Nick back to me, even though I had fucked up as badly as he had. I hadn’t been there for Tally any more than he had been—I had been frozen in my unexpected grief. The death of humans always takes me by surprise. Every single time. I have never gotten used to it.

Nick’s pain stirred me to more normal life.

The next day, we helped Tally move back into our big house just outside Albany and we got used to the sound of a baby crying. I relearned how to change diapers and Nick and Tally kept training, although Nick was not quite as obsessed about it as he had been.

When she wasn’t training, Tally wrote letters to hunters around the world and letters came flooding back.
No, nothing, sorry. All quiet here. Demons galore, no gargoyles, sorry.

When we did finally get word, it was Nick who took the call from old friends of his in Britain, reporting on odd news from Scotland. The people of New Galloway believed wolves had moved back into Clatteringshaw Forest, right on their doorstep.

Nick and Tally travelled as husband and wife while I trailed behind as Tally’s big brother. It was an arrangement that eliminated a thousand questions and speculation yet let us share hotel rooms and accommodation.

If it had been 1883 instead of 1983, or even 1933, we could have taken a three-day transatlantic ship to Britain and arrived with our sanity and our swords intact. However, modern jets had destroyed the shipping lines and forced us to leave our equipment at home.

Riley travelled with us. Mostly in my arms, where she slept or smiled up at me sunnily while Tally slept between Nick and me. Vampires have a hard time dealing with altitude adjustments because our inner ear fluids aren’t as liquid as humans, but I barely noticed the flight. I was too busy looking ahead, wondering what Scotland held for us.

Nick didn’t say anything, but I knew he was thinking the same thing. Scotland made sense. Scotland was where the gargoyles had originated. Perhaps they had fled back home.

We landed in Edinburgh early in the morning, rented a car and drove to New Galloway, where Nick’s old hunting friend, Alasdair, had agreed to meet us. I remembered Alasdair from when Nick had dealt with the Stonebrood Clan for what everyone had thought would be the last time. That had been when Queen Victoria was still upon the throne and Alasdair had been the wee son of a demon hunter called Angus.

Alasdair was now a frail man of ninety-two, but his wits were still intact and his rheumy eyes still sharp with intelligence as he held his hand up for Nick to shake it. “I can’t get up from me chair,” he said. “Damn me legs t’hell. So yer must take me great-grand-daughter to ride with ye. Mairead, lass. Step over and say hello.”

Mairead had the black eyes and hair and fair skin of the pure Celt, with a charming sprinkle of freckles across her nose. She looked to be in her early twenties but she also carried herself in a way that said ‘hunter’ without showing a single weapon. She sized us all up and her expression softened as she looked into Riley’s basket and stroked her cheek.

Then she straightened up again with a snap, as if she had been caught out.

“Mairead is in the family business,” Alasdair explained, although all three of us had already figured that out.

“We’ve been monitoring all the sightings as we’ve come across them,” Mairead said, pulling a map across the table and pointing to a green space just to the west of New Galloway. There were red dots all around where her finger rested. “The sightings of what they’re calling a ‘creature’ have been in clusters around the Craigencallie peaks.” She smiled. “Some are saying that Nessie has travelled south.” Her smile faded. “The people who have gone missing were all in the same general area. If this is really yer gargoyles coming home to roost, then Craigencallie would make a good nest. It’s remote, especially now before the summer starts up properly. Caves, too. Some of them so old no one knows the way of them, anymore.”

She looked at her great grandfather and spoke quickly and I was pleasantly surprised to find I remembered more Gaelic than I had thought. She asked him about weapons and he agreed we would need them and she should see to that.

Mairead glanced at us once more. “My mother would be more than pleased to care for the bairn while we’re gone and I have gear at the house. We should go now, while the day is broad. We don’t want to be caught upon the crags when the sun sets.”

* * * * *

I had no intention of being left behind while Nick and Tally went off hunting, even though that had been the practice for many years. I had made Tally a promise to help her in any way I could to find Lirgon and Valdeg. I wanted to be there when it ended. I wanted closure on this as much as Nick and Tally did.

No one argued when I pulled out a finely-made broad sword from the cache Mairead displayed for us and balanced it judiciously on my hand. It would do. I didn’t like using a strange weapon any more than they did, but they took longer over the choosing of theirs. Tally settled for a lighter, shorter stabbing sword, while Nick chose the heaviest, biggest sword in the pile.

Mairead’s mother cooed and clucked over Riley, barely looking up as we selected more blades and tucked them away in our coats and clothing. No one took a gun even though there were semi-automatics and pistols in the big pile. Bullets are useless against demons and gargoyles.

Mairead picked up a backpack that clinked and rustled. It sounded heavy even though she slung it over her shoulder as if it weighed nothing.

Then we all piled back into Mairead’s Range Rover and drove out to the remote and lonely Craigencallie peaks.

* * * * *

We got there just before noon and even though it was nearly summer, the day was gray and overcast. The wind was cold and whistled around the raw rock thrusting up into the air above the moor-like land around it. There were tracts of trees where the forest met with farming land. The trees marched north, where they became the Galloway Forest.

The proximity of trees and the game that could be found in among them, the isolation of the area and caves was an ideal combination. Nick looked around and nodded, taking it all in as we climbed up the lower slopes of the crag.

Tally glanced at him. “Yes, I think so, too,” she said in agreement.

Mairead was the only one of us not breathless when we reached the rocky face of the crag, a few hundred feet above the land below. She lowered the backpack she had been carrying to the ground and pulled out a nylon rope, bright orange in color, and unwound it. “We have to scale past the Main Wall and around to the south past the buttresses to reach the cave mouth,” she explained. “I hope yer all good with heights.”

She clipped pitons and carabiners to her belt and they jingled softly. Then she looked up and laughed at us. “Oh, this is just because yer all strangers to the crags here. I won’t be having ye falling to ye fate on my watch.” Then she glanced up at the sky, measuring the time. “Come, now. Hurry, but slow hurry, ye hear?”

The next few hours passed as we edged our way around the buttresses, heading south. We weren’t climbing. However, the rock wall was sheer and the ground below stony and unforgiving, forcing us to inch along. Mairead tied us all together and strung out pitons as we went.

I was very glad to be a vampire right then. Perfect and instant healing meant that the strain to my sinews and muscles never became overwhelming. Lactic acid didn’t build up in my muscles, making them stiff and unresponsive. I didn’t get tired.

I kept a sharp eye on Tally as she moved silently between Nick and me. I noticed that Nick was looking back over his shoulder more frequently as time passed. He was monitoring her as well. Tally was silent, as she often was these days. She also gave no sign of stress or strain. She kept doggedly on.

“The cave mouth is all but inaccessible unless you happen to fly…or glide,” Mairead explained as she crept along a shelf barely a foot wide. “I know the way because I used to play here as a child. There’s nothing to climb around to the south where the cave starts, so the rock climbers don’t go there.”

It was a bleak spot. The cave mouth was a narrow fissure that we passed through one at a time and that made my heart sink. “Lirgon would not fit through here,” I pointed out.

Nick nodded, looking troubled.

“We’re here now. We check it out and eliminate the possibility,” Tally said shortly. She turned on her flashlight and looked around the bigger cavern that had opened up just inside.

Candy wrappers and empty soda cans littered the floor, which farther reduced my hope. “Surely, the teenagers and kids who come here would have noticed if gargoyles had moved in.”

Mairead nodded toward the crevasse at the back of the cavern, barely seen in the light from our flashlights. “This cave system runs for miles through the crags and down deep, too. Craigencallie was a natural fortress in Roman times, that the tribes used to hide from the legions who ventured north of the wall.”

“Hadrian’s Wall,” Nick murmured, frowning. He had his sword out and was studying the fissure ahead of us. If he thought it a good idea to draw, then I would follow his lead. He was sometimes almost prophetic with his hunches.

Mairead moved around us and took the lead, as Tally and I both drew our swords. She led us deeper and deeper into the crag, moving with confidence even when the path clearly split and ran in different directions. The floor of the caves was generally even, worn smooth by thousands of feet over the centuries. Even though there was no one but us in the caves at that moment, the smooth footing spoke of other humans and made me doubt all over again. Gargoyles would not choose such a well-trafficked cave to hide in. The more isolated and difficult to reach caves were their preferred nests.

We moved on, the echoes of our passage reverberating in the cold air around us. Otherwise, it was utterly silent and very dark beyond the beams of our flashlights.

The way grew rockier and less friendly to human feet, telling me that we were reaching the more distant areas. Mairead lifted her flashlight and let the beam play on the smooth granite section of the wall we were passing. Ancient figures had been painted there, showing stylized animals and symbols that once meant something to the Celts who ventured here.

“They figure these are from the second or third century,” Mairead murmured. Her voice ran whispering back into the caves around us, the sibilants hissing eerily. “No one likes to go far beyond this main chamber. It’s not well known at all farther on.”

“I’ll remember the way back,” Nick said firmly.

“Me, too,” I added.

Mairead nodded and kept going. We stayed bunched together and I kept my sword up just as Tally and Nick were doing. My heart was stirring unhappily and because I didn’t know why, I kept my guard up. My own gut instinct usually serves me well.

Mairead came to a halt, playing the beam of light over the area ahead. She was frowning heavily. “I don’t remember this section being like this at all.”

“How well do you remember it?” Nick asked. It was a pertinent question. Humans had notoriously faulty memories and often had to be tricked into recalling facts properly.

“Well enough,” she said. “That section over there is as it should be, but not this slope, here.” She picked out the sharp incline with her flashlight. The slope was thick with rocks and rubble.

“It looks very loose,” Tally said slowly.

“Like a section has collapsed?” I suggested.

“Or been pulled down?” Nick finished. He headed for the slope, where the rock floor turned into a field of pebbles and dirt. He edged around the lose stuff, heading deeper, beyond the fall.

We followed.

“Be careful!” Mairead whispered and the air picked it up and repeated it. “No one has been here before. You don’t know what you might find.”

Nick was standing just ahead of us, moving the beam of his flashlight around. “Oh, I think there have been people here before,” he said as we reached him.

The area we were standing in had a flat, dusty floor and walls that ran vertically.

“Man-made,” Tally breathed, looking around.

“A passage,” Nick confirmed.

“It must have been blocked off, ages and ages ago,” Mairead murmured. “Maybe centuries ago.”

I thought of the ancient symbols on the wall in the main chamber. Likely, her guess was right.

“Why block it off?” Tally asked.

“Let’s find out,” Nick said and moved ahead, down the wide passage.

“Is that…? It looks like daylight ahead,” Mairead said. She was at the end of the file, now.

Nick lowered his light and we looked ahead. It was dim light, certainly, yet it wasn’t the glow of artificial light. Daylight, then. I already knew the sun had not set. Some of the ancient instincts still remain with us. Sensing sunrise and sunset was one of them.

We moved forward more quickly, heading for the light. There was a room built off the end of the tunnel and we stepped into the light, which seemed almost dazzling after the darkness of the caverns behind us.

Nick backed up almost instantly, cannoning into Tally. Both of them pushed up against me. I looked over Tally’s shoulder.