Highlander’s Curse (18 page)

“No.” Her voice wavered as if she was reluctant to answer. “But you’re welcome to hop in here with us and ride back to town.”

Not likely. He’d come for Abby and he intended to see her. “Where is Abby?”

The woman tapped a clipboard she held against the window frame, her brow furrowed as she came to some sort of a decision. “Look, from what I saw in the pub last night, I don’t get the impression Abby’s all that anxious to see you again, sport.”

“She’s back at the site,” someone yelled from inside the van. “About half a mile. Let it go, Mac. Abby’s personal life is none of your business.”

“You left her alone out there?” He made no attempt to hide the accusation in his voice. These people were supposed to be Abby’s friends.

“She’s not alone,” Mac snapped back. “Jonathan’s with her.”

Whatever else the woman might have had to say, he hadn’t the time nor the inclination to listen. Nor did he bother with the slow pace of his earlier travels, instead breaking into a steady run to cover the remaining ground as quickly as possible. With each footstep, one thought reverberated through his mind: Those people had done far worse than strand Abby alone in the forest. They’d left her in the company of the Nuadian.

Finding her now was no problem. He could feel her not far ahead, her soul shining like a beacon in the dark. As he expected, she wasn’t alone. The soul with hers was dark and fouled whereas hers shone a pure, bright gold.

They did not belong together.

The relief brought on by that realization was shortlived, shattered into painful shards by a scream piercing the forest.

Abby’s scream.

F
ighting him was an exercise in futility. Abby had never once imagined anyone could have such physical strength.

Even as that knowledge sparked through her consciousness, ratcheting up her fear, she struggled to free her wrists from Jonathan’s grip, clawing at his face with the hand he held close while he continued to suck on her index finger.

“Let me go!” she screamed at him, resorting to kicking his shins when all else failed.

“I feel it,” he laughed, lowering her hand from his mouth but pulling her body closer, crushing her to him. His eyes glittered with a terrifying mania. “I feel it all and I want more!”

He dropped his head to the crook of her neck, roughly scraping his teeth across her tender skin. The
trail of his tongue over the spot stung and she kicked again, connecting so hard that she feared for an instant she might have broken her toe.

“Again,” he demanded, laughing as he backed her up against a large tree trunk. “Do your worst, my love. I want to feel more!”

Through the haze of her desperation, her mind only faintly registered the bark digging into her back, the wet silk she wore no protection at all.

Helpless. She was absolutely helpless against him. Nothing she did made the slightest difference. She should have taken those self-defense classes last year. Should have stayed in bed this morning. Should have given up archaeology and learned to serve a wicked cup of coffee. Should have done anything that would have kept her from this terrifying moment.

Though there was no one to hear, she screamed again, this time as much in anger and frustration as in fear. He had no right to do this. She had no way to stop him.

He crushed his lips over hers, jamming his tongue in her mouth, muffling her cry.

There was no one to come to her rescue. No one to hear her. No one to help. If she had any chance of getting out of this, she had only her own wits as weapons.

Now if she could only gather those wits. Or even find them to gather.

“Move away from the woman, Nuadian!”

Colin?

He stepped from behind a tree, perhaps ten feet away from where they stood. Though the gap between them felt like a gulf, he was here!

“Nuadian, is it?” Jonathan angled his body toward Colin’s, shoving her to the ground as he faced off against the newcomer. “Is it a Guardian I face, then? Am I to believe this to be mere coincidence?”

Abby scrambled back, digging her heels into the mud as she pushed herself onto her knees.

“I don’t give a damn what you believe, Nuadian. I only want you gone from this place.”

Abby froze, the steely menace in Colin’s voice sending a shiver up her spine.

“Ah, but you see, Guardian, what you want is of no importance to me. Only what I want matters.” From inside his jacket, Jonathan produced a gun, aiming the weapon directly at Colin. “And what I want is the woman.”

This wouldn’t do. Not at all. She had to do something. Colin might be crazy, spouting all that crap about being from the past, but he hadn’t hesitated to jump to her defense in an attempt to rescue her. She could do no less for him.

Desperately scanning the ground for a rock or a stick or anything at all she could use for defense, Abby’s eyes lit on the little gold knife Jonathan had dropped.

Slowly, Abby snaked her hand forward until her fingers touched the handle of the small knife. She kept her eyes glued on the two men who glared at each other across the open ground.

Got it!
As her hand closed around the handle, she realized she had no idea what to do next. The knife wasn’t large enough to do any real damage. It was really only good enough for one thing. Distraction.

Pushing up onto her haunches, she lifted her arm in preparation.

“Getting out of here with Abigail is no problem.” Jonathan babbled on as if thinking aloud. “But what am I to do with you, Guardian? I can’t very well leave you behind to alert everyone to what I’ve done, and I’ve certainly no desire to take you along with us. Seems to me that leaves only one—”

Whatever dark ending he envisioned for Colin was lost in a blood-curdling scream as Abby slammed the blade of the knife deep into the back of his thigh, driving the little weapon in and down with all her strength.

He dropped the gun, clawing at the back of his leg, and she threw her weight against him. Off balance, he fell to the ground while she scrambled away, racing to Colin and past.

“Come on.” She tugged at his arm, ignoring the look on his face. “Come
on!
” Whether he was amazed or horrified by what she’d just done, she didn’t have time to discuss it now.

She ran for all she was worth, the sound of Jonathan’s screams fading as the distance between them grew.

After several minutes, Colin latched on to her arm, pulling her to a stop.

“Where are you leading us?”

“According to the locals,” she managed between gasps, “there are caves up ahead.”

Surely one of them would be large enough that she could force herself to go inside. They could hide there until she could think of what they’d need to do next. Maybe even until someone came looking for them. She only hoped that the
someone
would be a rescuer and not the homicidal maniac they’d left behind them.

“Good enough,” Colin grunted, sounding not the
least bit winded. “Though I dinna understand how you were able to injure the Nuadian unless. . .”

They didn’t have time for this nonsense. Stabbing Jonathan didn’t mean she was a bad person. It had been an absolute necessity. In doing it, she’d probably saved Colin’s life, for God’s sake. She’d certainly saved him from getting shot.

“I had to. I had no choice.” The excuse sounded hollow, especially in light of her having rejected Jonathan’s use of the same words.

“Has he taken yer blood, Abby?”

“
What?
” Their conversation had slipped totally into the surreal right along with everything else that was happening. Not just surreal. Bizarre. Nightmarish. Enough so that she half-expected to awaken from this horrible dream at any moment.

Colin grabbed her shoulders, giving her a little shake. “Did he ingest any of yer blood? Answer me!”

The thought of Jonathan sucking on her finger after slicing it open floated through her mind. “I guess he did.”

In response, Colin merely nodded, whatever emotion her answer elicited hidden behind the expressionless mask he wore. He slid his hand from her shoulder and entangled his fingers with hers to pull her along after him in the direction she’d indicated, moving them much more quickly than the pace she’d initially set.

The locals who’d spoken of the caves had said they were small, some no more than a large indentation. Those wouldn’t work. They’d require one of the larger ones to hide in. Right now what she wanted was the largest, deepest, darkest cave in the entire mountain range.

Pulling against Colin’s hold, she slowed her steps once again.

“What’s wrong?”

“Just give me a second.” She bent over, hand at her waist, buying time. Concentrating, she watched the tendrils in her mind’s eye fanning out over the mountainside until one began to glow.

“The largest of the caves is this way.”

She straightened and pointed in the direction she’d seen in her mind, and they were off. Halfway up the rocky slope, she slowed again, checking to make sure they were still headed toward the largest cave. She didn’t have to feign needing a breather this time, not with the pace Colin had set for them.

“We have to keep moving to stay ahead of Flynn,” Colin cautioned, his eyes scanning the area behind them.

“I know.” Except that the farther removed she got from what had happened, the more she wanted to believe it was over, like some horrible aberration of reality. Maybe Jonathan had given up. That knife in his leg had to be powerfully painful. Maybe the pain had brought him back to his senses.

“I bet he’s gone back to town. I don’t think he’d stay out here with that wound. I can’t imagine that he’s still following us.”

The sound of her last words hadn’t yet died on her lips when a sharp metallic
pop
rang out, followed by a
crack
that sent chips flying off the rocks less than a foot from where she stood.

“Move!” Colin ordered, dragging her after him. “Stay low to the brush until we’re in the trees again.”

“Was that . . .” She couldn’t finish the thought aloud, not and continue to gasp for air as they ran. It had sounded like a firecracker.

“Bullet,” Colin hissed over his shoulder. “Yer imagination must be rusty.”

Back in the trees, she tugged at his hand, pointing in the direction they needed to go until, at last, they reached the little opening.

“This is somebody’s idea of a cave?” It looked like little more than an opening between some rocks.

“Animal den. Get in and move to the back,” Colin ordered, shoving her to the ground as another
pop
sounded somewhere behind them.

She closed her eyes and forced herself to scramble into the dark opening, shoving back against the cold rocks to make room for Colin.

Only Colin wasn’t crawling in behind her.

“What are you doing?” she hissed, afraid to raise her voice but equally frightened of being left alone as his legs disappeared down the trail past her hiding spot.

Moments later his body reappeared in the opening, the light from outside almost completely blocked as he crawled in backward, tucking a bushy limb in the opening behind him.

“Misdirection,” he explained, scooting in next to her and looping his arm around her shoulders. “It will slow him down, but it willna do more than buy us a bit of time at best. We must leave this place, Abby. It’s the only way.”

The eerily familiar words rattled her. As if she didn’t know already that they needed to get out of here.

“You have any bright ideas on how we’re to do that with him out there shooting at us? Because I’m fresh out.”

Which was probably just as well since her whole hide-in-a-cave thing had pretty much bombed. Instead she was holed up in some bear cave with the man of her dreams, but instead of having a romantic tryst, they were waiting to be shot or eaten.

Though, in truth, as small as this place was, it would have to be a pretty small bear, so maybe
eaten
was a slight exaggeration. If they even had bears in Scotland.

And to think Colin had doubted the might of her imagination.

As if a crazed gunman and bear or lack of them weren’t enough for her imagination to practice on, there was also the fact that they were crammed into a hole in the ground. The weight of the mountain could simply collapse the whole thing on them at any moment, burying them alive.