Lacybourne Manor (66 page)

She shook her head, “I can’t… I
don’t know how to bring her back.” Then she stated urgently,
“Royce, please, you must listen to me, did you just make love to
Beatrice?”

“You are a witch,” he declared
and started to pull away, to bring them up. He couldn’t have this
conversation lying naked atop her. But she wrapped her soft limbs
around him and something in her eyes, her familiar, beloved eyes,
halted him.

“Listen to me,” she begged, her
words both urgent and panicked. “Did you just make love to
Beatrice?”

“Yes,” he snarled.

And to his surprise, her
face cleared immediately and she sang, “Hallelujah!” just as tears
sprung in her eyes. She tilted her head back and she shouted it
again. “
Hallelujah!”

He stared at her, everything
about her was so familiar, even her sweet touch of lunacy.

“Are you mad?” he asked softly,
finding his angry confusion had melted away and he was suddenly
concerned.

She pulled her arms from his
body, put both her hands to his cheeks and gave him a quick kiss.
When she pulled away, he noted she was crying freely but she still
went on. “No, I’m not mad.”

She looked at him with love
shining in her eyes. Somehow, even though he didn’t know her, she
loved him and he felt that knowledge sear straight through his
soul.

His hand loosened from her hair
and almost against his will, he found himself wrapping a tendril
around his finger.

“You have my hair,” he
murmured, staring at it.

“
And you, in my time,
have Beatrice’s hair,” she whispered and his eyes moved to hers at
this bizarre pronouncement. “I’m from another time, years from now.
Royce, your and Beatrice’s love is so great, you and she come back
and become Colin and me. We fall in love all over again.” Her voice
lowered in pitch but heightened in intensity. “And you are
so
like
him. And today, he asked me to marry him.” She said this last while
a funny, adorable smile played on her lips.

He felt something inside him
shift as he listened to her words.

She was
so
like
Beatrice.

She blinked and he knew
something was happening. Her face changed, disappointment filled it
and then urgency replaced that. “Before I go, you must listen. In
the copse of trees…”

He saw her hair darken slowly
and he couldn’t help himself, he watched in fascination.

“Royce! Listen!” She was beyond
urgent. Now frantic, her hands tightened on his face and his eyes
went from her changing hair to her. “They’re waiting for you, in
the copse of trees, outside Lacybourne. They’re going to slit your
throat, Beatrice’s too. You must stop them.”

His body tensed at her
words and she felt it. Her arms wrapped around him again,
protectively, lovingly, in a way the warrior had never felt before,
not even with Beatrice (although, Beatrice had no way of knowing
her life, or his, was in imminent danger or she would have done the
same,
exact
thing).

She held him tightly
against her. “I tried to tell you this morning… or… some morning.
That morning when I was there… here. I know you think I’m mad but
you must believe me and you
must
stop them.”

Her hair was almost, but not
quite, nearly to black.

“I do not think you are mad,”
he told her but she wasn’t listening.

“Promise me!” she cried.

He nodded. He would not die
this night nor would his Beatrice. And he wanted this woman to know
that. He wanted her to trust him, to believe and he wanted that
fear out of her eyes.

He nor his bride were going to
die this night, he would be sure of it.

At his nod her entire body
relaxed.

She trusted him.

Completely.

“I’m Sibyl, by the way,” she
told him. “And don’t worry; I don’t think I’m coming back.”

And then she smiled
magnificently, one finger tenderly touching his cheek. Royce had
seen a great number of heart-stopping smiles from his wife but this
smile was all Sibyl’s own.

She kept speaking. “And
if you’ve been granted the gift of a longer life, try not to boss
Beatrice around too much. She’ll find it
immensely
irritating.”

He knew in that instant,
she
was
Beatrice even though she was not.

And therefore he grinned down
at her.

Then she lifted her head,
pressed her lips against his and she was gone.

* * * * *

And time started again.

* * * * *

“You’re crying.”

Colin stared at her face,
something was right yet something was wrong, something profound had
changed even though not a second had passed. He knew it, he felt
it.

They’d just shared the most
extraordinarily passionate, intense, intimate moment together in a
long line of such extraordinary moments, making it hard to believe
it had even happened.

But Sibyl was crying.

He could hear the rain hitting
the windows.

Then he heard thunder rend the
air and seconds later, lightning flashed through the room.

He turned his head, for some
reason, to look at the storm.

And saw the warning light next
to the panic button blinking.

* * * * *

As the women chanted around the
pot, Marian felt the darkness enter the house and a shiver went up
her spine.

She’d done what she could
do, for now. It was all (or mostly, as she did have
a few
more
tricks up her sleeve) now up to true love.

She looked into the history
book, the book that told the tragic story of Beatrice and Royce
Morgan.

She saw some of the words after
the date change, shift then settle – just a sentence then two then
a paragraph. Then it stopped.

And she stared in disbelief at
what she read.

* * * * *

Esmeralda Crane, being a witch,
was attuned to things other people would not sense. Now, she was
attuned to time, history, shifting and reforming itself.

She was becoming confused,
muddled, she saw shapes moving before her in the copse of trees but
she was supposed to be doing something else at this moment,
something she was not doing and this feeling made her restless,
guarded.

She quickly hid herself,
conjuring a glamour to make herself invisible. All the while she
could see, as if it was a memory, the dead, entwined bodies of
Royce and Beatrice Morgan under the trees. But they were not there.
There was nothing there except the impatiently shifting forms that
lay in wait for ambush.

Someone was playing with time,
Esmeralda knew.

And that was a very dangerous
game.

* * * * *

Colin leaped out of bed, leaned
forward and grabbed Sibyl’s wrist, dragging her up behind him.

“Get dressed,” he hissed then
he let her go, bent to his jeans on the floor and shoved his feet
into the legs.

“Colin, what is it?”

“Dress!” he clipped and she
stared at him, not liking what she saw and in less than a second,
she ran to the bathroom.

He pulled his sweater over his
head and pressed the panic button that would alert both the alarm
company and the police.

She ran out of the bathroom
still struggling into her clothes.

“Is something wrong?” she
whispered, rushing toward him as she continued to dress.

“Someone’s in the house.”

Her body jerked and her eyes
flew to the door.

“The kids are down there.” Her
voice was rising and panicked.

“Sibyl, get into the sanctuary,
lock the door and do not come out, no matter what you hear,” he
ordered as she buttoned her jeans.

Mallory started barking just
outside the room, his barks angry and loud with warning. Then the
barking turned to fierce, consistent growls.

Sibyl was still staring at the
door and started toward it.

“Sibyl!” Colin flew toward her,
hooking her around the waist with his arm as she started to bolt
toward the sound of her beloved dog.

Then they both froze when they
heard the blood-chilling, obscene noise of a high-pitched, canine
cry of agony.

* * * * *

Robert Fitzwilliam stopped at
the gatehouse, one of his men was supposed to be inside but did not
come out at the approaching car.

Robert stopped and got out,
looking around him. The rain was beating down and yet not twenty
minutes before it had been sunny and clear. Now the sky was dark,
thunder and lightning were rolling over each other in waves and the
wind was whipping at his body.

He walked into the gatehouse
not liking what he felt. Something was wrong.

He saw his man lying on the
floor, unconscious.

Robert swore under his breath
and rushed straight to the prone body.

* * * * *

Royce told Beatrice everything
as they rode to Lacybourne, Royce driving Mallory quickly through
the pouring rain as he held Beatrice firmly to his body, the ten
minute ride cut down to five.

She believed him, to his
astonishment. But then again, Beatrice was not like other
women.

He stopped well outside the
copse of trees which was meant to be the place of their demise, if
the woman named Sibyl (a witch’s name if he ever heard one) could
be believed.

But he felt… nay,
he
knew
he could believe her.

He alighted from Mallory’s back
and again pulled Beatrice down.

“Run, just as I told you,
straight to the witch’s cottage. Explain and she’ll keep you
safe.”

He had no way of knowing this
but he felt it to be true.

She nodded, got up on tiptoe to
press her lips against his and without hesitation, she ran.

He watched her go, watched her
out of sight then mounted his trusted steed.

He made a clicking sound with
his teeth and the horse moved forward.

Unbeknownst to Royce, once out
of sight, Beatrice changed directions.

Something sinister was afoot
and Royce might need her, after all, and she was Beatrice Godwin,
now Morgan, and Beatrice Morgan was certainly not the kind of woman
who would desert her beloved new husband when there was a
possibility her strong warrior might need her.

Not a chance.

* * * * *

The locked door to Sibyl and
Colin’s bedroom flew open with such violence, it crashed against
the wall.

With a strong jerk, Sibyl was
yanked straight off her feet by Colin’s arm at her waist and nearly
thrown behind his back as the figures drifted through the door.

The dark, faceless, shifting
figures from their dream.

She felt a scream surge up her
throat.

“
Run to the
sanctuary.
Now!
” Colin thundered.

She couldn’t move; she
couldn’t leave Colin alone to face those
things
.

“
Now!
” Colin roared.

And then the figures
attacked.

* * * * *

Marian watched the words in the
next paragraph forming, read them quickly and gasped.

“What is it?” Phoebe broke the
chant.

Marian slapped the book shut
again and threw it on the counter.

Without answering Phoebe, she
rushed from the room.

* * * * *

There were four of them, five
with the figure standing outside the trees watching.

The rain was driving down and
the wind was whipping through the trees. Royce had more than enough
experience to battle four opponents; he had done it in the past.
But these seemed to be filled with otherworldly strength and he
didn’t have his sword. It was his wedding day; he didn’t think he’d
need his sword. If he’d had his sword, he’d have mowed them down
like just as much wheat in a field.

He only had the dagger he
carried at his belt.

And his strength.

It served him well but it was
the battle of his life.

With a fierce roar, he surged
up from the crouch they’d forced him into and he threw two off his
back, exposing his belly. A third came in for the kill.

At that moment, Mallory drove
forward, head bent low, scattering the others, knocking Royce aside
and taking the dagger that was meant for Royce through his own
throatlatch.

The warhorse went down with a
mighty crash.

* * * * *

There were four of them and
three of them were on Colin while one of them dragged Sibyl
away.

She struggled, hissed, spit and
kicked.

She saw through her battle that
Colin had managed to get a hold of one and, with a fierce roar, he
threw it flying through the air.

He shrugged off the other two
as if they were merely annoying gnats and surged toward Sibyl.

But the wraiths quickly
recovered and pounced yet again, stalling his progress and beating
him down.

It was then that Sibyl felt the
blade at her throat.

* * * * *

Even with Mallory’s sacrifice,
Royce was losing.

He felt it.

He knew it.

The strength was leaving him,
draining out of him. His attackers seemed without limits,
relentless. It was almost as if they were sucking his own power
from him and using it against him.

And still the figure watched
from the trees.

He knew with a certainty that
he was going to die.

But he would do it like a
warrior and go down fighting. This he vowed.

And it was then the strangest
thing happened.

* * * * *

Colin vaguely noted the figure
standing in the door watching the scene. He could not take the time
to process it; he was too busy fighting his way to Sibyl. And the
beings, whatever the hell they were, were unnaturally strong.