Haunting Embrace (39 page)

“It said you were the one I should fear.”

“And yet it sent you to spill my blood. If it had the power to give you what you ask for, would it not be able to slay its own enemy?”

Brion considered this with narrowed eyes. “Is it true, though? Were you once a part of the Book?”

Áedán thought about it before he answered. It was risky, telling this man so much. He was in contact with the Book of Fennore. Might even be an open channel to Cathán, twined with the sentience of the Book. But Áedán needed to speak of the horrors. Something deep within urged him to confide in Brion, to help this man navigate the dangerous waters he treaded.

“I was a prisoner. And now I am free. But it was not I who controlled what happened. I am as much a puppet as you are.”

“What do you want, then? What do you hope to gain now that you are free?”

The question, asked in a soft and earnest voice, lashed out at him like a whip. What
did
he want?

“I want to be a man again,” he said, and his voice grew husky with the words. “Just a man. Nothing more.”

Disconcerted, Brion said, “You are a man.”

“But it can easily be taken from me. Perhaps you will choose to put that knife through my heart, and then my chance is gone.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Brion said.

And perhaps he wouldn’t. But the truth of what Áedán had said resonated through his entire being, making his mouth dry, his veins shrivel, his skin shrink. He didn’t want it to be so, but his existence felt precarious. And what of Meaghan? He’d begun to think of her as a future he’d dared not dream. Was he as big a fool as any of the victims he’d preyed upon in the past?

“What does the Book want from you?” Brion asked.

Ah, what did it want? Vengeance? Power? Everything?

Somberly, Áedán said, “To be trapped in the world of Fennore is to be part of a void. Empty, but for your rage and appetite. Hungry, but you cannot eat unless your call is answered. The only way to fill the emptiness is to beckon others to come and then take from them all that makes them worthy. But it’s never enough, because no matter how powerful you become, you are still trapped. Still the treacherous genie, caged in a bottle. There is no escape, and you are enslaved to those you seek to master.”

“And yet you escaped,” Brion said, and his voice held something that sounded suspiciously like compassion.

It stunned Áedán, threw him off balance. In millennia, no one had ever felt compassionate about Áedán.

No,
a voice corrected. That wasn’t true. Meaghan had. And she’d opened a floodgate of emotions with her act of caring, emotions he wished he could deny.

“It remains to be seen whether or not I have escaped. Perhaps it’s just an illusion. Perhaps the power that is the Book of Fennore merely taunts me with what I will never truly have. Perhaps it will be you who recaptures me. Perhaps I will be foolish and take a wrong turn once more. How many chances does a man deserve? I do not know how or why I’ve come to be free so how can I contemplate the permanence of it?”

He knew Meaghan Ballagh had freed him—and if she’d opened the door of his cage, did it not make sense that she could also close it up again? If she found the Book of Fennore, if she used it to return to her time, she would be forced to give something up, and Áedán knew that Cathán, manning the helm, would want her to sacrifice not herself, but Áedán.

How could he trust her not to betray him?

“I believe a man is measured by his actions,” Brion said softly, as if reading Áedán’s mind. “I have been unwise in my choices. I married a woman I knew I didn’t love—married her because of her bloodline. Because of her wealth. I’ve taken every shilling she brought with her and turned it into twenty. I am a rich man, but I’d gladly give it all to undo my vows.”

“Does she know this?”

“Yes.”

“And what of the child?”

“I tell you, Áedán, the child is not mine. I’ve lain with my wife only once since the year began and then . . .” He looked uncomfortably away. “It’s awkward, between us. It always has been. Like we are a lion and a gazelle trying to mate. We do not fit.”

Áedán frowned. “But you are the same species, and you do fit.”

“Not in the way we should. I don’t know how I can make you understand, but know this. My seed has not been in her body. Not for over a year.”

“But the child will be yours, Brion. I have seen him. I know him. He could be your reflection.”

“It makes no sense,” Brion muttered.

Áedán agreed. No sense at all. The child that would grow to be Cathán could be none other than Brion’s son.

Brion shook his head, and then, suddenly, he paled. “Bleeding Jesus, what am I thinking?”

Áedán had no clue what thoughts filled Brion’s head, but whatever they were, they made his eyes widen and his mouth thin to a hard line. Áedán was bewildered, a state he’d become far too accustomed to.

Brion’s chin came up and he looked around, as if he’d heard his name called.

“What is it?” Áedán asked.

“The voice . . .”

“The Book is speaking to you?”

Brion’s nod looked unnatural, as if control of his mind had been taken over.

“Resist it,” Áedán urged, but Brion had already turned and walked quickly away.

Áedán jumped from the deck of
The Angel
and followed. “Brion, where are you going?”

“The ruins,” he shot over his shoulder and broke into a run.

Áedán quickened his pace until he raced toward the ruined castle just behind the other man. If that was where Cathán wanted Brion, then Áedán would be there, too.

Chapter Twenty-eight

M
EAGHAN heard the scream at the same moment as a wave of terror slammed into her. Looking at Colleen with shock, she turned to the sound.

“Did you hear that?”

“Aye,” Colleen said.

As the sky overhead roared with thunder and flashed with lightning, Meaghan spun and warily made her way through the ruins, Colleen with Niall in her arms following behind her at a slower pace. As soon as she rounded the jagged remains of what had been a turret in its day, she saw a man dragging a woman across the path that led from the MacGraths’ house to the cliffs. He had a hand clamped over her mouth and now the screams came muffled.

She recognized Marga instantly, but the man’s face was turned away. The shadows and gloom worked against her until a huge furry shape moved from behind the cover of a toppled stone and bared its teeth in a silent growl.

Eamonn’s wolf
.

Eamonn
held Marga captive. For a moment, she could only watch him pull the resistant woman into concealment behind the crumbling walls and scattered stones. Once far enough in that they couldn’t be seen by anyone approaching from the house, he pinned Marga against his massive chest with one arm and used the other to press something against her throat. He’d had to remove the hand at her mouth, but he gave her a sharp warning.

“Scream again and I’ll be done with you now.”

Marga nodded her understanding. “Don’t hurt me. Please. Please don’t hurt me.”

The other woman’s fear smelled sour and sharp, her panic whipped in the wind and singed Meaghan’s raw senses. Meaghan hadn’t moved since she’d seen them. In truth, she didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t just stand by while Eamonn murdered the other woman, but she couldn’t believe that was his intention, despite the knife and his aggression. Granted she didn’t know this man, not really. But she’d never have thought him capable of killing an innocent woman.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Eamonn said, and Meaghan felt the blast of his distress. He seemed conflicted by his determination to do what he’d come for and the horror he felt at being there, at the steps he planned to take.

Why would he want to hurt Marga?

And then she heard her own voice in her head,
You’ll have a long wait, Eamonn. Cathán hasn’t even been born yet.
Eamonn thought Marga carried Cathán MacGrath in her womb, and he planned to kill her for it. He’d said Cathán had destroyed everything he loved, and now he intended to right the wrong before it happened.

Behind her, she heard Colleen’s footsteps. Quickly Meaghan stepped out of the shadows, drawing Eamonn’s attention. She held out her hands in the universal
take it easy
sign as she stepped closer.

“Eamonn, no,” she said. “You’re wrong. What I told you was wrong.”

Eamonn looked at her in shock. He pressed the blade of his long, wicked knife to Marga’s throat.

Meaghan licked her lips. She wanted to tell him Marga wasn’t even pregnant, but she feared Marga would blurt that Colleen carried the child. Meaghan couldn’t—
wouldn’t
—endanger her grandmother that way.

“Eamonn, look at her. She’s innocent. Even the baby is innocent. You cannot mean to do this.”

There were tears in Eamonn’s eyes as he stared at Meaghan and so much pain that it cut and tore at her. “I had a family once,” he said in a broken voice. “A family who loved me. Cathán destroyed them. Cathán destroyed
me.
He made me a traitor. An exile. I am a man without a home. Without a life.”

“Eamonn, if you hurt her, you will hate yourself.”

“I already hate myself.”

His voice cracked and his shoulders slumped. With relief, she saw in his face that the moment when he might have plunged his blade into Marga had come and gone, and now he was simply trapped by actions he couldn’t undo. Disgust and shame filled the dusky air between them.

“I cannot kill a woman. The one thing that might change it all, and I am too much the coward even for that. I know she carries the spawn of all evil, but I cannot destroy it.”

Self-loathing rolled off him in waves. Meaghan felt sickened by the power of it, saddened by the intensity. Eamonn carried so much remorse and guilt that it had turned the man inside into a shadowy being that knew only disgrace.

Marga sobbed in his arms, but his words seemed to penetrate her terror. “Spawn of—no, I’m not carrying anything. I’m not even pregnant. There’s no baby,” she babbled.

From the corner of her eye, Meaghan saw two men running toward them, but the ruined castle stood between them and Eamonn, and he went on unaware of their approach.

“What do you mean there’s no baby?” he demanded.

“I’m faking it!” Marga exclaimed wildly. “Let me show you.”

Brion MacGrath had drawn closer but he paused to catch his breath, still shielded from Eamonn and Marga by the decimated turret. But from the point where Brion stopped, Meaghan suspected he could see his wife as she stumbled headfirst into the throes of hysterics.

Áedán came to a halt at Brion’s shoulder, watching the unfolding scene with those enigmatic eyes. Meaghan felt his name on her lips, released it in a silent breath, and his gaze swung to where she hovered in shadow as if he’d heard her. Those eyes heated at the same time they grew more distant. She wanted to run to him, to throw her arms around him and tell him that she was sorry to have doubted him even for an instant. But there wasn’t time.

“I’m not pregnant,” Marga shrieked again. “I just pretended so my husband would give up his whore.”

Too surprised to keep ahold of her, Eamonn dropped his arms and stepped away. Marga grabbed the hem of her shirt and lifted it to show him her faked pregnancy just as Brion stepped from behind the ruins. For a moment, a look of alarm crossed Brion’s face as he saw the strange man with his wife. But then he caught sight of the stuffing she wore beneath her top, and like Eamonn, he stared in disbelief. Realizing that Brion had joined them, Eamonn shifted his shocked gaze to the other man, then took a hasty step back, his hands held out at his sides. The knife clattered to the stones at his feet.

Meaghan wanted to ask Brion how he’d known to come. She had the disturbing sense that somehow they’d all been gathered there . . . herded without them being aware.. . .

Marga continued her crazed admission, unaware of her audience.

“My blasted whoring husband would have left me if I hadn’t . . .”

At last some inner sense of self-preservation seemed to alert Marga, and she hesitated, head cocked as if scenting danger. Then slowly she turned and faced Brion’s thunderous expression. She still held the hem of her blouse in her fingers, and Brion glared at her with revulsion.

“Brion,” she gasped. Tears streaked her blotchy face, her swollen eyes. Despite what Meaghan knew of this woman and her treachery, she felt sorry for her as she watched her scramble to do damage control. It was a pointless endeavor, but Marga didn’t seem to realize that.

“She got pregnant to trap you, love, but I knew she’d only hurt you. I had to do something to stop her.” Marga paused, her hands held out beseechingly. “She was willing to
sell
your child, Brion.
Sell it.
I couldn’t let her raise our baby, not when I know how much—”

“Shut up,” he said so softly that Meaghan thought she’d imagined it. He might have shouted it for the effect it had on his sobbing wife. She hiccupped, shook her head, and then tried again. “I love you,” she cried. “I did it because I love you.”

Just then Colleen finally made it to the spot where they’d all gathered. She rounded the bend from the far side of the ruins with her chin up but fear and anguish in her dark eyes. It was obvious she’d heard every word that had been spoken. Brion’s eyes widened as he spotted her. Shaking his head in confusion, he cut his gaze back and forth between his wife and the woman he claimed to love.

“She was willing to
sell
it,” Marga wailed, pointing an accusing finger at Colleen. “What kind of mother would do such a thing? Can’t you see her for what she is?”

The silence that followed raged thick and harsh. A nerve ticked in Brion’s jaw as he turned his icy blue eyes back to Colleen. “Is this true?” he asked, the hurt in his voice as poignant as the emotions rolling off him.

“No,” she said. “Not all of it. She forgot the part where she threatened to have me arrested for crimes I didn’t commit. She forgot the part where she blackmailed me.” Colleen held her head high, but her shame thickened the air, her despair turning it into a fog that obscured all else.