Haunting Desire (6 page)

Her mouth moved, but no words came out.

“I brought Liam with me, though I do not know how I did it. He’d been wounded and I feared I’d lose him, too. Perhaps that is why, or perhaps it is because of something greater than my puny thoughts.”

“And Cathán? You brought him as well?”

“Evidently. We have all been trapped here since then. And I never thought I would escape. Until today.”

“Until you saw me and my dad.”

He nodded. “And Cathán.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Where do you think Cathán is now?”

“I do not know. I search for him. I scour this island from shore to shore, hunting my enemy. But all I ever find are his monsters.”

Angrily he pushed to his feet and paced a few steps away.

“In all of the legends, it was the Druid Brandubh who ruled the Book of Fennore. It was the Druid whose evil turned the purest heart black. The Druid destroyed anyone who touched the Book. But now Cathán controls all that power. He hones it, turns it into wolves that attack humans when there is game enough to feed a thousand wolves. He creates monsters that are so vile they cannot be described.”

“Why?”

“Because he can? Because he wants me dead and is too much the coward to fight me like a man, to kill me himself. I believe he has put an end to the Druid and he is king of all that is wrong in this cursed land.”

“That’s why you attacked when you saw him tonight in the parking lot.”

“He has evaded me at every turn, retreated to a place I cannot find. To see him, to have him so close and not end his life . . .”

“You protected me,” she said.

“Aye.”

He braced himself for another of her
whys?
But she was silent, eyeing him with a too-perceptive stare. “You think he was after my dad.”

At his silence, her eyes widened as she heard what he did not say.

“You think my dad summoned Cathán? You think he arranged what happened? That he planned it?”

“Yer father opened the door.”

“Yes, you keep saying that. But I’m telling you it isn’t true. My dad looked for the Book of Fennore for years.
Years
, Tiarnan. He lost everything because of his obsession, just like his father. And I swear he wasn’t hunting for it to use it, to tap into this power you say it has. He had these deluded ideas that he needed to hide it away, keep it safe from ‘all of mankind.’ Jesus, I can remember the fights he and Mom had over it. She thought he was crazy, fanatical. And he was. If he’d known how to
open doors
and find it, he would have done it a long time ago.”

She believed what she said. He could see that, but he wasn’t convinced she knew the truth. Power had corrupted many men. It had corrupted him, lured him to make decisions that had destroyed the things he valued most. The people he loved above all others.

The only certainty Tiarnan knew was that her father had opened the door and both Tiarnan and Cathán had done the impossible—escaped the world of Fennore if only for a few moments. Now Cathán had vanished once more, and he could only assume Shealy’s father had gone with him. His gut told him Donnell O’Leary had not gone willingly. He’d fought Cathán, just as Tiarnan had. The circumstances of how he’d come to call Cathán were still undetermined, but if Donnell had been an unknown to Cathán before he’d opened the doors, he was no longer.

One thing seemed clear, though. Shealy’s father had tried to protect his daughter. Wherever he might be now, he’d be trying to find her, and when he did, Tiarnan, his brother, and the others at his encampment would be by her side.

“It is time that we move,” he said. “We don’t want to be caught out here in the dark.”

She frowned at him, trying to see beyond the mask he refused to let slip.

“I will take y’ back to our encampment and then we will figure out how to find yer father, aye?”

“Aye,” she agreed, but her eyes told him that he’d planted a seed of distrust within her. He tried to tell himself he was glad. He needed to keep his distance from her and everything he wanted when she was near.

With a deep breath, he settled reality around him once more. Longing for the touch of this woman was pointless. As long as they lived in the violent world of Fennore, longing for anything but escape would be a mistake.

S
HEALY walked at Tiarnan’s side as they circled the rocky shore to a point where they could climb up and out of the cove. Her thoughts were as jumbled as the landslide of boulders tumbling into the sea. Watching for wolves or anything else that might jump out at them, Shealy kept quiet, but Tiarnan’s words echoed in her head. Could it possibly be true, what he’d said? Was her father able to open a way into this world? Had he brought them here? Had he summoned the pale man, Cathán? If so, why?

Over the years since the accident, her father had rarely mentioned the Book of Fennore. She had assumed the tragedy that killed her pregnant mother and put Shealy in critical condition had been the catalyst to ending his obsession. Now she wondered . . . had he merely hid it from her? Had he still been searching for the Book of Fennore? Had he found a way to
open the door
as Tiarnan called it?

She couldn’t believe it, and yet, what about anything that had happened since they’d left the restaurant and crossed that dark parking lot could she believe? Her father had been consumed with finding the Book of Fennore to the point that her mother had begun to hate him for it. She’d planned on leaving Donnell, even though she’d been pregnant, but death had robbed her of the chance.

Shealy took a deep breath and pulled herself from that depressing slope. This wasn’t the time or the place to dwell on the heartbreak she couldn’t change. She had enough to worry about here and now. Like how fast the sun seemed to be racing to the horizon.

“This encampment of yours, is it far?” she asked in a low voice.

“Yes. We will be lucky to reach it before dark.”

“Great,” she said, eyeing every shadow with trepidation.

“We will be safe there.”

“
Safe
? Is that really possible here?”

He shrugged. “The place I call
home
is set on an islet in the center of a rapid river. Y’ can only reach it by crossing the water, and to do so is risky.”

“Splendid.”

“I know how to get there without dying, lass. But others would not be so lucky. That is what makes it secure.”

“Sounds better by the minute.”

He gave her a narrowed glance, gauging the sarcasm in her voice.

“How did you find this sanctuary?” she asked.

“Liam and I came upon it by chance when we were attacked by wolves—like what happened today. They chased us into the river. We thought we were either going to drown or be eaten, but there was a waterfall and the wolves wouldn’t go over.”

“But you did?”

“Not much of a choice,” he said. “It was swim or die.”

“I’m sensing a theme to life here.”

His mouth quirked at that. “As luck would have it, we survived the falls and found an islet that is situated between the first and a second waterfall. The small one we went over and a larger one, farther down. We wouldn’t have survived if we’d gone over that one.”

Shealy eyed him, hearing the solemn note in his voice. He talked about life and death in the same way other men talked about fast cars and sporting events.

“So you live alone? Just you and Liam?” she asked, nodding at Liam’s back. The boy walked ahead of them, easily scaling the rough terrain. Tiarnan lagged behind with her, mindful of her battered feet wrapped in the shirt off his back.

Which left his torso very bare. His skin looked like dark polished oak in the muted sunlight, displaying each rippling muscle of his back and chest, ribs and abdomen. She couldn’t tell what genetic pool he pulled from—his skin color was burnished, but his eyes were light, tilted ever so slightly at the corners. He had silky black hair and high, sculpted cheekbones, a square chin. He seemed to be a seductive blend of many races.
The best of them all
, she thought with a flutter of agitation inside her. How many times had she caught herself staring at all that muscled flesh on the long walk across the treacherous island?

“There are others,” he said, finally answering the question she’d nearly forgotten she’d asked. “Ye’ll meet them soon enough.”

“Did you bring them here, too? Like you did Cathán and Liam?”

He turned those whiskey eyes on her and in them she saw frustration, anger . . . shame. “Yes.”

With that he grew quiet until they reached the enormous, raging river he called
Abhainn Mac Tíre—
Wolf River, he told her. The color of clouded jade, it roared like a great beast as it hurtled through a narrow canyon before exploding in a widened chute that snaked as far as she could see. She’d read somewhere that water of that color came from glaciers. As the sun dropped so did the temperatures, and she had no trouble imagining glacial cold in the higher elevations.

As she came to a stop beside Tiarnan, Shealy eyed the white rapids with foreboding. Did he mean for them to cross that? Surely not. But as she stood shivering on the bank, Liam caught something that dangled from a massive tree and pulled it down.

“What is that?” she asked.

“A
curragh.
A boat,” he said without glancing her way.

Shealy’s eyes widened. It didn’t look like a boat. It looked like a saucer and about as sturdy as a toy. No way would that little thing hold up to the surging current of the racing river.

“Do not worry, lass,” Tiarnan said in her ear, making her jump. “It’ll keep y’ dry enough.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He shrugged and took the
curragh
from Liam, who promptly removed another from the branches of the tree where it hung suspended like some giant, deformed Christmas ornament. Liam removed a paddle from braces inside the boat, set it in the water, and climbed aboard. Moments later he zipped down the river.

“Come,” Tiarnan urged, holding the other boat still so she could get in.

“I’m not a good swimmer,” she said. “In case you didn’t get that when I almost drowned earlier.”

“’Tis a good thing we have the boat, then,” he said with a serious expression.

“That is
not
a boat.”

“It is all there is, lass. Worrying about it will not change it.”

He was right and she knew it, but she still couldn’t bring herself to get in the little round thing and let it carry her to what would certainly be a cold and wet death.

“You said there’s a waterfall,” she reminded him.

“Two,” he said calmly. “One behind us and one ahead. We will be on land again before we reach the second.”

“I—”

Evidently he’d had enough of her stalling because he tugged her hand, pulling her off balance and sending her stumbling into him. Before she could right herself, he swept her up into his arms and stepped into the boat he’d held anchored with one foot.

“I don’t think—”

“Don’t think,” he said for the second time that day.

And in the next instant he’d settled her on the bottom of the saucer and lowered his large frame behind her, shifting until she sat between his long legs as he maneuvered the paddle in the current.

His chest felt warm and solid on her back, and though she tried to keep her balance and not lean into him, the choppy ride made it a futile effort. At last she gave up and relaxed against him. The tight breath he released fanned the hair at her temples and made her think he’d been waiting for her to yield.

“I’ll keep y’ from harm,” he murmured softly, and with the hard muscles of his chest and arms flexing around her, she almost believed him.

Night crept up and overtook them with an unnatural suddenness. One moment she was squinting as the sun glinted on the rapids and the next a veil of black had covered the world. Shadows on shadows shuddered and moaned as they swept by on the roaring river. With the night came freezing cold, and she welcomed the heat of the big man behind her. He maneuvered the boat with steady skill, keeping it level and afloat, but he couldn’t prevent the spray from hitting them, and by the time she felt his thighs tightening as he used his weight to spin the
curragh
out of the fast current and into shallows that gave way to sandy beach, she was drenched.

Liam was already lifting his boat from the water and leaning it against a tree when Tiarnan stepped out of theirs and held it still so Shealy could follow. Through the gloom she saw the midnight shapes of what looked like huts perched on the small stretch of land. Torches burned at intervals and there seemed to be people moving about. As she took it all in, a young girl hurried up to where they stood. She had red hair and wore a pair of faded and torn blue jeans and a top that looked to be made of hide. The strange combination unsettled Shealy for reasons she couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

The girl smiled at Liam. “Sure and wasn’t I wondering when you would be back tonight,” she said in a lilting Irish accent, moving closer to the adolescent boy. She looked to be nineteen or twenty to his fifteen or sixteen, but neither one of them seemed to care. Liam gave her a devil-may-care grin and whispered something in her ear. She laughed and the sound was filled with sexual promise.

Good grief, Shealy could almost smell the hormones cooking between the two of them.

“I’ve got a stew waiting if you want to come for a bite,” she said. The invitation in her voice couldn’t have been clearer if she’d been shedding clothing as she spoke.

“Is that so, sweet Sally?” he said, shooting Tiarnan a look of such masculine smugness that Shealy almost choked. She’d think twice before she thought of him as a boy again.

“Aye,” Tiarnan said to that look. “I’ll see y’ in the morning.”

Stunned, Shealy watched the two of them walk off together. The girl’s laughter trailed behind them.