Haunting Embrace (22 page)

With a heavy heart, she rejoined Kyle in the kitchen. They heard Colleen’s soft footsteps overhead and exchanged a glance, but neither of them spoke. He seemed different this evening than he had earlier, although she couldn’t say just why. He still wore the same clothes, his hair was combed the same way, but there was something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.. . .

He’d said he’d come to talk, and Meaghan was anxious to hear what he had to say. As she cleared the dishes from the table, he rose to help, grabbing a towel to dry when she filled the sink with soapy dishwater.

“What did you want to talk about Kyle?”

“You, Meaghan. I wanted to talk about you.”

Surprised, she looked at him. “Why?”

“You seemed . . . unwell when you left earlier.”

“I was overwhelmed. It’s a lot to take in, traveling through time. Finding you three here.”

“Talking about the Book of Fennore,” he added gently.

“Yes, that, too.”

He said, “It’s a terrifying thing, the Book. I was only in its presence a short time, but it was long enough that I never want to be near it again.”

She knew exactly what he meant. “Is it the Book itself, do you think, that makes it so horrifying or is it the . . . entity inside it?”

“They are one and the same, Meaghan.”

“Are they? Are you certain about that?”

His eyes narrowed. “No. I’m not certain about anything. Not anymore.”

“It’s just that . . . you said earlier, when Áedán and I came to the lighthouse, that you’d sealed Cathán inside the Book, but not the Druid.”

His eyes hardened for a moment. “No, not the Druid. He escaped.”

“Well, if the Book and the Druid are linked . . . I mean, if they’re one and the same, then how could that be?”

He inhaled, nodding as understanding filled him. “I see your point. Unfortunately, I think the answer is the worst scenario. The Druid did not separate from the Book when he left it. He simply brought all that is wrong with the Book of Fennore out into our world.”

“All the evil? Is that what you mean?”

“How could it be less? We can’t even comprehend the duration of his life.
Thousands of years
he was trapped in there, bound by body and soul in the corruption and curse. A devil in every definition of the word.”

She swallowed hard. The same thoughts had filled her mind before. But now she had a hard time thinking of Áedán in such a light. Not since he’d touched her. Not since she’d felt the turmoil of his emotions battering him down into a darkness he tried so hard to escape.

“You’re saying there is no way the Druid could ever walk away from that? No way he could change, overcome it?”

“You don’t need me to answer that, Meaghan. You know the truth.”

Yes, she supposed she did. And yet, she’d seen Áedán fight to protect her. She’d felt his fear, his passion. Even now she wanted him here, beside her.

“Temptation is any devil’s most powerful weapon,” Kyle said softly, as if he’d heard her thoughts. “Destruction of innocence. Rejection of anything that is good or holy. From our earliest stories, those of Adam and Eve, there has been temptation.”

And consequences to giving in to it. Yeah, she got it.

She took a deep breath and exhaled. “The first time I saw you, you had on a clergy collar. Like a priest . . .”

His glance held disquiet and a scowl. She hadn’t brought it up with much finesse, but his talk of the devil had spurred the question.

“There was a time in my life when I thought I’d been called to serve God.”

“But you changed your mind?” Meaghan asked.

“Let’s say I had it changed for me. I learned that I was a member of a different order. Keepers of the Book of Fennore.”

“Keepers?”

“We were intended to keep it safe from humanity. Obviously we failed.”

Meaghan nodded. “I see.”

But she didn’t. Not really.

Kyle went on. “I couldn’t pledge myself to God and still believe in something as sacrilegious as an evil entity and cursed Book that should not exist in the natural world.”

“Ah,” she said. “Bit of a conflict of interest.”

He smiled sadly. “Exactly. If truth be told, though, I don’t think I’m cut from the right cloth to have taken my vows. Even before I learned of the Keepers, I had doubts.”

“People change,” Meaghan said.

“Yes.”

“What if—what if he has changed, too,” she asked without meaning to, still dwelling on the idea of Áedán with a forked tail and horns. “What if he wants a second chance?”

“Who, Meaghan?” Kyle asked. “The evil that has plagued us for longer than we can remember?”

Put that way, she heard how naïve the question sounded. How pointless the hope she seemed to be harboring was.

“What about Cathán?” she asked. “What if he took all the evil when he took the power?”

“We were able to imprison Cathán. He is the least of our concerns now.”

Meaghan didn’t agree, but Kyle studied her face with an intensity that told her he found her questions disturbing. She didn’t want to give him reasons to dig deeper and find out why she asked them. Carefully, she chose her words.

“Cathán has found a way to use others.”

Kyle frowned. “What do you mean? What
others
?”

She told him about Mickey, omitting any reference to the pendant and its strange reactions or Áedán and his surge of power, which had ultimately saved her life. She glossed over as many details as she could, laying out only the bare facts. Mickey had spoken with Cathán’s voice, had looked out of eyes flat and dark, and he’d attacked.

“Áedán managed to knock him out, but he meant to kill me.”

“My God,” Kyle murmured. “Why?”

“I don’t know. But there’s a reason why I’m here. Why all of us ended up here.”

Silent, Kyle mulled this over as she handed him the plates and bowls she washed from their meal.

“Do you know how the Druid escaped when Cathán didn’t?” she asked.

“How the Druid broke free of the Book?” He shook his head. “There was a prophecy that he would escape.”

“What prophecy?”

“It had to do with the woman who saved us. She had a gift that allowed her into the world of Fennore and allowed her to get the rest of us out.”

“And this prophecy said she’d set the Druid free?”

“Yes. I’d hoped it wouldn’t come true. I’d hoped we’d be able to stop it. But I know now we failed. He is out. Isn’t he, Meaghan?”

“How would I know?”

He considered her question as he methodically dried the dishes, and Meaghan felt her stomach plunging. If he asked if the Druid was Áedán, would she tell him yes? Or would she lie to protect a man she’d just met but felt like she’d known forever?

“Do
you
know where the Druid is?” she said before he could ask that question.

Kyle shook his head, lowering his lashes so she couldn’t see his eyes. “I don’t. But I would assume he’s nearby.”

“Why?”

“Because he’ll be looking for the Book of Fennore. The Book is the heart of his power. Without the Book, he’d be just a man like any other.”

I’m less than a man,
Áedán had said. But that was before . . . now they both knew it wasn’t true.

“What if he wants that? To be human again.”

“He doesn’t,” Kyle said with gentle but firm certainty. “There can be no good left in him, Meaghan. Surely you can see that?”

She could, and yet that fecking hope wouldn’t let her accept it.

“I can’t see anything,” she answered. “I don’t know a fecking thing about Druids and Books of power. But I think you’re wrong about Cathán. I know something about him, and he’s never been good. Not even before he found the Book. We should be thinking about what he’ll do next. What he might want.”

“Perhaps.”

Surprised, she glanced up at Kyle.

“The Druid is evil to the core, Meaghan. Cathán was victimized by the Druid. There might yet be something left of his humanity.”

“You think he can be saved? If you’d seen what I did tonight, you wouldn’t.”

Kyle shrugged, hands out, palms up. “You might be right. I don’t know what I think anymore. But my educated guess would be that there’s a chance. Of the two—Cathán and the Druid—I’d put my money on Cathán.”

Meaghan swallowed, seeing the reasoning behind his thoughts, knowing Kyle made sense, but what she’d seen in Mickey’s eyes told a different story.

“Tell me about this Áedán,” Kyle said softly.

The question sent a shaft of cold through her. It was one thing to know what Áedán was but another to speak of it—especially to Kyle, who had already judged and sentenced him. Áedán had just placed himself between a butcher knife and Meaghan without thought to his own well-being. He might disparage being human again, but Meaghan saw something deeper than his words. He had issues, but at the heart of him, the man still existed. And at the heart of
her
, she knew Áedán was a good man.

“What do you want to know about Áedán?” she asked, plunging her hands back into the hot soapy water and washing the last of the utensils they’d used.

“You said he was imprisoned with you before,” Kyle answered in that calm and coaxing voice. When he leaned closer to take the spoons and knives from her fingers, she smelled soap on his skin and felt the comforting heat of his presence.

Logic urged her to trust Kyle. He’d once been a man of the church, for the love of Jesus. Who better to trust as an advisor against evil? And he’d come here to help her. For all the times she’d wanted to block out the emotions of others, she wished she could reach Kyle’s feelings. Maybe then she’d feel right about voicing her suspicions.

“Yes, I met Áedán in the realm of the Book.” And now she remembered that while they were there, Áedán had told her about a prophecy as well. Cathán had thought Meaghan someone of power and Áedán cautioned her to disabuse him of that theory. Even then, he’d steered her from danger. Why would he do that if he were evil?

Kyle took the washcloth from her hands and wiped down the table and counters as he spoke. “Áedán told us today he was there during the battle at the end.”

She nodded as she drained her dishwater. “It’s the truth. He was there.”

“None of us saw him, Meaghan. Not me, not Jamie, and not Eamonn.”

“There was a lot going on,” she hedged.

“Yes, I do remember that,” he said wryly. “But Áedán is the kind of man it would be hard not to notice.”

Understatement of the century,
she thought.

That protective instinct that wanted to keep secrets fought against her common sense. Kyle was not her enemy. Perhaps he could be trusted with the truth. “Only I could see him when we were inside the Book, Kyle.”

Kyle froze, watching her with narrowed eyes. She stared back, thinking that it looked as if something had clicked into place in his mind.

“Only you? And you could see him just fine?”

“Yes. From the start.”

“Why?”

“Not a clue. To others he was like a ghost. But to me, he appeared as real as you are.”

“Interesting.”

The word was benign enough, but Meaghan heard something beneath it that had claws and teeth. Frowning, she reached out with her senses, trying again to read what Kyle felt, but she found only calm blankness where, at the very least, confusion and curiosity should have been.

“What are you thinking, Kyle?” she asked.

“It’s just that when you came to the lighthouse today, we all felt the Book. We all felt as if it hovered over us for a moment.”

“I felt it, too. I thought . . .”

He waited, brows raised. “Yes? What did you think?”

“I think you felt the pendant. It’s connected to the Book. It makes us feel its closeness.”

“That very well might be but . . . I don’t feel it now and you still have the pendant, I assume?”

“Yes,” she lied, heeding a whisper of caution she didn’t understand. The fewer who knew about the amulet and what Áedán had done with its power, the better.

Kyle waited a moment, as if giving her a chance to reconsider and tell him everything. She wondered if he’d learned that skill in the church. Be silent and the confessor will tell all.. . .

Finally, he said, “What do we know about this Áedán? Nothing but the fact that he was in the world of Fennore and now he is not.”

“That’s all we know about any of us.”

“Perhaps. But . . . what if he’s linked to it, Meaghan?”

What if he’s the Druid?
Kyle didn’t ask it. He didn’t have to. They both knew they’d been skirting the issue since he’d appeared out front, cloaked in the ominous veil of night.

Meaghan said nothing. Silently she waited for him to continue.

“Do you know the entire story of how the Druid came to be in the Book of Fennore? How the Book came to existence?”

“Bits and pieces, but nothing more.”

Kyle searched her face, as if suspecting she lied. Curious, she tilted her head to the side and stared back.

“Let’s have some tea and I’ll tell you what I know of it. Perhaps between the two of us we can come up with some answers.”

With that as motivation, Meaghan moved quickly to put the kettle on while she cleared away the dry dishes and the leftover stew. When she had everything clean and in its place, she and Kyle sat down to a hot cup of tea.

“You’ve heard of the White Fennore?” he began, his voice soft and deep.

“I’m from the Isle of Fennore, Kyle. Of course I’ve heard of her. I think I saw her once when I was little.”

This made him lean forward. “What did you see?”

Meaghan shrugged, embarrassed. “Pretty much what you hear. I saw this . . .
ghost
come out of the dolmen—the one by the castle. She wore a white gown and it billowed in the wind. I remember her hair . . . it looked like tinsel in the moonlight. Scared the piss out of me.”

“Did she carry anything?”

“I don’t remember. I was only seven or eight.”

But she did remember the stories about the White Fennore. Some said she came from the underworld by way of the dolmen to wreak vengeance on all mortals for an injustice done to her before she died. Others thought her one of the fairies that lived beneath the hills. A few thought her an angel. Some saw her with a book clutched in her hands and others with a silver comb. All accounts of sightings remarked on the mournful wail of her keening.