Fighting Fate: Book 2 of the Warrior Chronicles (26 page)

For some reason Taryn didn’t ponder his words, she accepted that he meant them as a compliment. “Thank you. The swelling hasn’t hurt your appeal. If anything, you’re more handsome. More’s the pity that. You don’t need anything to boost your studly swagger. Your ego’s already too big.”

Shay’s eyebrows jammed together and he seemed to mentally question her sincerity. He quickly realized she’d meant it and he seemed to take her at her word when his old Irish charm came back in full force. “I’m going to call you Sugar Ray. You’re full of fight, not to mention more discerning since your trip to the hospital.” Then he got serious. “How are you feeling? Jesse told me what happened.”

“I’m fine.” She was more than fine but before she could spill that bit she asked what she wanted to know. “Who’s the male cover model with you?”

The kid with Shay blushed and flashed a grin so like Shay’s she knew the answer to her question before Shay puffed with pride. “This is my son, Magnus. He just flew in this morning.” He turned to Magnus. “Magnus, this is Jesse’s wife, Taryn Campbell-Mohr.” He winked at Taryn. “Who has been drugged and apparently says whatever truth pops into her head.”

Magnus nodded toward her and said, “Ma’am.”

Taryn rolled her eyes. She may have the blood of a nineteen year old, but she was still a thirty-three year old woman, ma’am material to Magnus. “I think I’ll go sit in the garden, gentlemen and let you scheme about how you’re going to try to keep me under lock and key while you run around playing gallant knights.”

Taryn went to the fridge, pulled out a root beer and went outside. She heard Shay say to Jesse, ‘She’s got you pegged’. She also heard Lauren MacBain politely excusing himself as she headed out the door.

Merlin was waiting for her in the rose garden.

…

“Leave the bracelet.”

“Why?”

Merlin looked at Taryn, willing her to trust him. “How long have I been with you?”

Taryn thought about it. “Two years, give or take. What does that have to do with my bracelet?”

Merlin had been with her much longer than two years and when she paused and thought deeply about it she’d realize that. The drug she’d been hit with didn’t yet send her into her deep unconsciousness, at least it wouldn’t while she was still awake.

“I can get us out of here unseen if that’s what you want.”

“It is.”

“Then leave the bracelet, Taryn. If you don’t, Jesse will assume someone took you and that you didn’t leave of your own volition. Secondly, if you take the bracelet it will be lost to you, and I know you don’t want that.”

“Did I ever tell you how much I hate it when you talk to me like you’re three centuries old?”

Much older dear heart, and growing tired.

“All the time.” Merlin smiled at her, knowing this woman cared about the young man she thought he was much more than anyone had cared for any of his varied incarnations in a very long time. Others may have cared, but almost uniformly they all wanted something from him. Taryn only wanted to give him protection and to share her friendship. Merlin needed her to trust him, and true to form she did.

Taryn gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, tugged a long deep red curl, a true conceit on his part in this form, and moved toward the hearty fuchsia colored shrub rose next to the bench. She slipped her silver and gold charm bracelet from her wrist and held it in her hand, obviously hesitant to part with it.

“Taryn, Jesse will come looking for you soon. The man isn’t comfortable with you out of his sight.” Merlin would have smiled at the thought, finally a mortal worthy of her, but there was too much to be done before Jesse and Taryn made their way to one another.

“We have to go now if you want the answers you seek, or your opportunity will be gone. The choice is up to you.” Merlin kept his need for someone to carry part of his weight from his words and his tone.

The choice was up to her. It always would be.

With both hands, Taryn carefully wove her bracelet through the rose bush where Jesse could find it. Wasting no more time, she turned and took Merlin’s hand.

Her choice was made, whether she fully understood what that meant or not.

CHAPTER FORTY

Remember.

The word echoed in Taryn’s head, bouncing off synapses and registering somewhere in her primal brain. The fog that plagued her after she was first hit with the drugged dart was gone, replaced with a clarity that bordered on certainty. It felt as if what had always been intuition was now fact.

“The cauldron isn’t in the coffee shop.” She said, as she and Merlin made their way back to the healing springs. There were actually two springs that flowed under the magical land of Glastonbury, separate, yet close to one another. One red. One white. For Christians, they symbolized the body and blood of Christ. For Pagans they were equally as sacred, their healing and regenerative powers so deeply entrenched as part of the Pagan mythos that it was utilized every day by locals and pilgrims of all creeds, to enhance their lives.

“Where is your heart leading you, Taryn?”

Merlin’s way with words shifted with his mood, his environment, and the needs of any particular situation. Taryn wasn’t sure her heart was leading her anywhere, but when he said the words, it felt right, so she went with it.

“I remember a standing stone in the field. Not too large, but bigger than a person. I could see the Tor from the stone. The stone was thick and angular with a spiral carved into the side. It had an image of a green man above the spiral. I remember my father taking a particular interest in it.”

“Can you find it?”

Taryn looked around. The sun was still relatively high in the sky. It was hard to believe only hours had passed since she’d been drugged outside the coffee shop. She led Merlin past the cottages and the place where the white spring fed into a spigot the locals used to fill their jugs. Up the hill, past the small group of people waiting patiently for their turn, they went. It was a steep climb, but Taryn made it at a fast clip.

When they came to an old farm access road she stopped. There was a wooden gate, unlocked. It let people in and kept sheep from getting out. It marked the gateway to the path that led to the Tor. Visitors were coming and going on the pedestrian walkway, but their numbers weren’t great, the flow of people being sporadic at best. There were signs to keep on the path, which Taryn did, until she didn’t.

There were wooded strips marking off sections of field and grazing areas. She led Merlin to a large expanse of greenery. It had been more than twenty years since she’d made this journey, but she remembered it. One group of trees in particular, an ancient oak grove surrounded by holly bushes, called to her.

No one saw them slip into the woods, or so Taryn thought.

…

Jesse had two teams of three and one team of two securing the small area around Sacred Springs Cottage, eight men outside, he and Shay inside. Ten trained men, and they couldn’t contain one drugged woman who couldn’t be silent if she tried, and her bumbling-golf-ball-throwing assistant whose flame bright flowing cork-screw curls shone like a torch, especially in the sun. As a pair, they were pretty hard to miss.

Yet, they eluded every precaution Jesse had put in place, save one. He’d managed to place a GPS surveillance chip onto one of the charms on Taryn’s bracelet. He thought he was being incredibly clever when he did it, considering she hadn’t taken the damned thing off since he slipped it over her wrist. Until now.

Jesse unwound the metal from the rose bush, oblivious to the pain as he was scraped and pricked. It took time and effort and blood to get it done.

“Well, that didn’t get there by accident.” Shay said, stating the obvious.

“Say something helpful, Shay, or shut the hell up.”

“She left because she wanted to, Jesse. What did she need to do so badly that she’d leave that-”

Shay nodded toward the bracelet in Jesse’s palm.

“-for you to find? She’s not only risking her own safety but your wrath. Must mean an awful lot to her, whatever it is. She couldn’t come to you for help because she had to know that you wouldn’t put her in jeopardy, no matter how much finding whatever she’s looking for means to her.”

Jesse swore and closed his fist painfully around the bracelet, some of the jagged charms biting into his palm drawing more blood than the thorns had. He pushed her to this with his obsessive need to control her and the environment around her in an effort to keep her from harm. All he’d managed to do with the effort was to catapult her into the heart of it with no backup. Ten days of training, no matter how intense, would not save her from even one determined bad guy.

Jesse opened his hand, slid the chain he always wore off his neck, looped the bracelet onto it and put it back over his head. It lay just above his heart like dead weight; a figurative albatross around his neck until he found Taryn and placed it on her wrist again where it belonged.

Jesse pulled the Glock he carried from his shoulder holster and chambered a round. He pulled three clips from his belt, checking each one before replacing them. He pulled the six inch Ka-bar from its sheath fitted at the small of his back, checking its ease of movement out of the sheath, then secured it again. He retrieved the ballistic knife Henry had given him for Christmas a couple of years before, checking to ensure a smooth slide if he needed it. It too was replaced with cool efficiency. Lifting each pant leg he checked the smaller Ka-bars he kept above each ankle. He had two more weapons secured but he never showed anyone where those were hidden.

Jesse looked at Shay, cold determination steeling his features. “You armed?”

Shay’s grin could only be described as lethal. “Always.”

“Makarov?”

“One Makarov. One Beretta with parabellums.” He shrugged. “Why choose when I’m ambidextrous? Seven clips, fully loaded, I don’t need to check.” Shay grinned. “Only one Ka-bar, but mine’s bigger than yours.”

Jesse didn’t skip a beat. He’d argue about size versus tools in his tool box later. “Let’s go.”

When the silent team members moved to follow, Jesse stopped them. They hadn’t helped Taryn so far and he didn’t want more shooters than he could trust in an unknown environment. “You,” he said motioning toward his three-man alpha team, “stay and secure the cottage and Shay’s son. The rest of you report home. Let Henry know we’re coming.”

Jesse turned his back. “Thirty seconds, Shay. I’ll be in the Rover.”

Shay ignored the wide-eyed look of awe combined with worry on his son’s face. He didn’t have time to reassure Magnus now so he winked at him, clasped him on the shoulder and said, “This is what I do. I’m good at. I’ll be back before dinner.” Magnus just nodded at him and Shay nodded back.

...

Taryn recognized the grove immediately. Something inside it called to her. Pulling Merlin after her, she entered the shade covered sanctuary. Dappled light filtered through the trees easing the dark green and shedding enough light to see clearly now, but warning that darkness would fall more quickly here than in the fields.

The grove was definitely a mystical place amid a mystical countryside. There was palpable power here for anyone awake and open enough to feel it. Taryn had always been open to this kind of power, and the drug coursing through her had supercharged her wakefulness to the point of attunement with the rhythms of the earth. The buzzing of the dragonflies was more than a sound, it was a feeling that reverberated inside her, filling her with peace and a sense of purpose.

She strode toward a vine covered stone wall. Walking along it she felt rather than saw her way. She did as Merlin bade and let her heart lead her. She found the spiral stone simply by turning her head in the right direction. It too was covered in ivy and moss. Taryn stripped some of the ivy from the stone revealing the spiral and the face of the green man above.

Her gaze went down to the grass. There was a shallow cuplike indentation next to the stone. She hadn’t noticed it the last time she visited. Neither had her father, or if he did, he didn’t mention it.

Taryn stepped closer, running one finger over the spiral, once, twice, three times. She repeated the process twice more before stopping in the center. A loud grinding of stone on stone mingled with the buzz of the flying creatures, the songs of the birds and the chirping of the crickets and clicking of the grasshoppers. The face of the green man separated from the oak leaves surrounding it, moving back into the stone, revealing a ring of stone leaves.

Taryn reached through the ring. She felt a lever about an inch wide. She pushed it and the ground under her trembled and gave way, sinking ever deeper. Grass tore and black earth gave way to an underground well. Taryn started sliding into the crevice and Merlin pulled her back from the edge.

The hole that opened was roughly three feet in diameter. A ring of iron at least six inches deep comprised the top of the well. Handmade brick lined the walls of the well, and a metal grate was clearly visible a few feet below the surface. Water from the well caressed the brick. It was unusually clear given the filtered light.

Taryn knelt with Merlin at the edge. She stuck her hand in the water, pulling out the few clumps of grass covered earth that had torn and fallen into the well. The water was cool, and once she tossed the clumps out, clear with the slightest tinge of white. An overwhelming urge to drink from it overcame her and she brought some of it to her lips in her cupped hands.

Merlin stopped her. “If you drink from this well there’s no going back. If you drink it is more than a promise, it is a covenant with the Goddess to keep her secrets safe and her message alive. Do you understand?”

The bullet tore through Merlin’s chest and lodged into her flesh, burning a path of trauma under her left shoulder before she could answer. The force of the impact threw Merlin’s body into hers, knocking her halfway into the well, submerging her face. Whether she intended to or not she swallowed a mouthful of water before she realized what was happening.