The Queen of Swords: A Paranormal Tale of Undying Love (14 page)

Chapter
11: Everything Happens for a Reason
 

She
laid awake in the dark, hyperconscious of the ticking time bandit on the nightstand. Each motion of the second hand marked another moment gone. It was just after four in the morning, giving her a mere twenty hours more to sway him—not that she could do much on that score while he slept beside her like the dead. Unlike him, she would not allow slumber to steal a single precious second. She could close her eyes after he was gone.

He
r gaze roamed over his body, curled atop the covers with nothing on. His skin was creamy white; his shoulders broad; his buttocks taut; his legs lean and muscular; his feet as finely sculpted as his hands. Longing twitched, but she wasn’t about to wake him. She needed to think, to plan. Aside from sleep-learning, there wasn’t much she could do to influence him at the moment, so she’d best channel her energy toward the Fitzgerald side of the equation. She needed to research spells. Was there a computer in the room? She scouted around, finding a closed laptop on the desk between the windows.

She got up, careful not to jostle the bed, and crept over.
Sliding out the chair, she sat and stealthily lifted the lid. There was a file open on the screen. A word document. Without intending to, she started reading.

The village we’ve moved to this time is called Wickenham, but looks just like all the others: huddled shops, whitewashed cottages, an auld stone church, a village green. The bookshop, tho’, is well-stocked with tarot cards & other occult items, so perhaps Wickenham isn’t as provincial as the other bergs we’ve hung our hats in over the years.

Swallowing, she lifted her gaze to the name of the file. Book.doc. Book? Was he writing a memoir? If so, he was using the same epistolary style in which Bram Stoker had written
Dracula
, an interesting-albeit-outmoded choice.

A wee while ago, I popped down to the library, thinking the movers might have put my diaries with the other books. The room was dark as I entered, so I flipped the switch as I entered, nearly choking when I saw Branwen sitting there, eyes as hungry as a panther’s. She was in one of the wingback chairs flanking the fireplace, wearing only a flimsy robe
, an obvious entrapment.

“I thought
you’d gone to bed.” She endeavored to meet his evasive gaze.

“I couldn’t sleep
.”

“Well, I know a great cure for insomnia
.”

As she stood, her robe opened, exposing more than I cared to see.
I clenched my jaw and looked away. “I’d prefer a book.”

I moved to the bookcases, praying she
wouldn’t follow. Pulling a random title off the shelf, I pretended to read as I stole wary glances at her, relieved to see she remained in the chair. But—
bloody hell
—she now had a book. I strained to see the cover, afraid it might be one of my diaries, but relaxed when I saw it was only my copy of
The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight
, the 15th-century Arabic sex manual, tho’ perhaps the realization should have alarmed me more than it did.

“Listen to this
.” She proceeded to read me a few passages as I rolled my eyes, annoyed at her & my own damndable libido.

“Do
you have a point?”

Her mouth curled into a cruel grin. “Do
you go to those lengths with your East End whores?”

My ire rocketed, but I made no retort. Why could she not see? Prostitutes fulfilled my needs without strings, while she had more strings than a bloody kite factory. Turning my back on her, I started hunting through the boxes
lining the rear wall. Just as I leaned over one, I felt something brush across my backside. Before I could react, she was on me, bending me over the box, jerking back my arms.

She
swallowed to cool her own rocketing ire. The scene played as clearly in her mind as a movie. Branwen in a barely-there wrap running her hands over his ass. He seemed upset by the assault, as he should be, though perhaps not as upset as he ought to have been. Why in the name of the goddess did he still live with that horrible creature?

I tried to break free, but could not. Branwen is at least a millennium old & incredibly strong. I heard a click; felt the cold burn of silver encircling my wrists. I yanked hard, trying to break the cuffs apart, but the chain held. I shut my eyes & attempted to dissipate, but nothing happened.

She began to fondle me. I did my best to resist, pressing my lips together & commanding my body to ignore her ministrations, but to no avail.

“Damn
you, Branwen. Can you not see I don’t want you?”

She gave my prick a pointed squeeze. “Your lips might say no, but your cock is crowing a different tune.”

“That means nothing,” I protested.

“
You got hard looking at that human tonight, didn’t you? And don’t you dare try to tell me it meant nothing, either. Because I have eyes....”

Her mouth tasted sour. She didn’t like what she was doing, didn’t want to read any more.
So why did she find it impossible to tear her eyes away from the words on the screen?

“
You’ve been a bad boy & need to be punished.”

“Fuck
you,” I snarled. “I’ve got a perfect right to look at anyone I please...& do a good deal more than look if it pleases me.”

Granted, it probably wasn’t the wisest thing to say under the circumstances, but I was not about to take her bullshit lying down.

“Let me go, Branwen,” I hotly demanded. “I’m not your bloody plaything.”

She laughed & the next instant I was on my back, arms pinned beneath me, wrists smoldering from the silver, chest smoldering with fury & indignation. I gritted my teeth. The comingled smells of faery blood & pussy were beckoning like a siren’s song. I focused on
the pain to mitigate my desire.

“For the love of Christ. Take off these bloody cuffs. They’re burning like hellfire.”

“If I take them off, will you shag me properly?”

“No.”

“Well then.” She began to unbutton my fly. “You leave me no choice.”

I roared & jerked my hips away before bellowing
, “Get yourself—& these fucking shackles—off me now.”

“Not until
you tell me who she is.”

“I don’t know,” I returned, shaking with rage.

“Then why do you have a portrait of her?”

My heart blazed at the thought of her having my missing portrait. “That’s not of her,
you daft cow. It was painted two hundred years ago. Now uncuff me before I—”

I had half a mind to stove in her head with the fireplace poker the minute she freed me—if she ever got round to it, that was.

“Did you kill her?”

“Of course not.”

“Did you love her?”

“Uncuff me,” I barked, ready to explode. “This minute. Or, I swear to God
—”

“Why didn’t
you turn her and keep her with you always?”

“Because I loved her.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

I scoffed. “Aye, well.
You wouldn’t, would you? Seeing how you don’t know the first fucking thing about love.”

I knew I’d finally struck a blow when she climbed off me. A glance over my shoulder told me she was retreating toward the fireplace. With a sigh of relief, I struggled to sit up.

I heard her sigh. “How can you say that? I do love you. You know I do.”

“
You call this love?” I shook my arms to rattle the cuffs.

There was a long silence
before she spoke again. “Why don’t you ever look at me the way you looked at her?”

I snorted with disdain
. “Do you seriously have to ask me that?”

“I wouldn’t treat
you so badly, you know, if you showed me a bit of affection now & then.”

My whole body tensed when I heard her coming up behind me, but eased some when I felt her unlocking the cuffs. The moment I was free, I got to my knees & closed my fly. My wrists were raw & welted & my arms ached like a son of a bitch—but the discomfort would pass—far sooner than my anger.

“Please don’t hate me.” She batted her eyes like an ingénue, fueling my rage. “I can’t help the way I am.”

She was right about that. It was a gancanagh’s nature to seduce & destroy, just as it is a duz’s—tho
’ I, at least, made some effort to battle my darkest tendencies…

Cat looked up from the
monitor, jaw clenched, chest tight, mind churning.
Holy crap
. Branwen was a
gancanagh
? For whatever reason, she’d just assumed the O’Lyrs were like Graham. From Celtic mythology, she knew
gancanaghs
, old Irish for “love talkers,” excreted some kind of narcotic substance which made the object of their seductions physically addicted. The sex was supposed to be so out of this world, a human partner could never again satisfy the person. Afterward, they jilted their lovers, who rarely survived the withdrawal.

Should she warn Avery? Part of her said she should, but another part—a dark, spiteful part—called it poetic justice. And what
about Graham and Branwen? Their relationship was peculiar and dysfunctional, but what could she do about it? Nothing, it seemed. Besides, when he left her on Monday, he’d be leaving Branwen too—the only good she could find in this whole heartbreaking scenario. Shaking her head, she went back to reading, a blatant yet irresistible invasion of privacy on a par with reality TV.

She went back to reading, soon discovering
he’d drawn the
Queen of Swords
the day they met, just as with Catharine—meaning he’d already known she’d turn up when he saw her in the library. Fearing she was running out of time, she took a deep breath and skipped to the next passage—dated today. Had he written it while she worked on her dissertation?

Maybe things will work out this time. I drew
The Fool
—the impulsive risk-taker—but as recommendation or warning? Meanwhile, she drew the
Ten of Cups
, not
Death
, which surely offers some cause for hope…

What she’d read gave her pause.
He’d drawn The Fool? Why had he not said? He might not understand what the card meant, but to her it was obvious. Why couldn’t he get it through his thick Scottish skull they were meant to be together? She didn’t come back to punish him, she came back to save him. To help him open his heart. To bring him out of the darkness into the light. Of course he had a soul, dammit. He had to. Because they were soul mates.

Suddenly
, clarity flashed. Everything she’d done since the moment of her birth—every action, every decision, and every book she’d chosen to read—had led her to him. The vampires, the Scots, the witchcraft, the tarot, her schooling, the job. Even the estrangement from her parents.

Everything happens for a reason.

There’s no such thing as coincidence.

Sucking in a breath, she checked the bed. He still slept, but for how much longer? Her heart burned with the desire to read every single word
he’d written. He’d told her some things, but only a fraction of what he’d lived through. What had he been like as a man? What had he done in the years post-curse? How had he lived? How much history had he seen? What did he think? What did he feel?

She checked the bed again, smiling at his prostate form.
A mixture of fondness and fear inflated her chest. Losing him would tear her in two. Biting her lip, she returned her gaze to the screen and squinted against the glow as she scrolled back through the years, stopping for no particular reason when she reached the year 1815. He would have been “cursed” at that point, but only just. Quivering with anticipation, she began to read:

17
th
September. Living in Edinburgh (if you can call it living), in the slums of Cowgate, sleeping in the streets, feeding on the dregs of humanity. I seem to have developed a peculiarity enabling me to sniff out the worst of them. Even so, guilt and self-loathing plague me unceasingly.

Feeling pressed for time, she skipped ahead, scanning at random.

14
th
March. Pass the days roaming empty rooms. Tho’ the castle is boarded up now, it does not stop the trespassers who come almost daily to strip the woodwork & fixtures. Yesterday, overheard two of them say the wraith of the young laird now haunts the halls. No one, therefore, will come near the place—except thieves, apparently. My only amusements are seeing their faces when I suddenly appear & watching them run away empty-handed after I have taken my fill from their veins . . .

Stirrings behind her froze her heart and raised her eyes from the screen. Was he awake? Breath held, she closed the
computer and waited, paralyzed with guilt, for him to say something. He made no further sound. A glance over her shoulder told her he’d rolled over and gone back to sleep.

She chewed her lower lip. Reading more would be risky. Did she dare? Was there time?
Oh, what the hell.
As she opened the lid again, she shot a nervous glance over her shoulder, relieved to find him dead to the world. Her hands trembled as she ran her fingers over the keyboard. She was suddenly afraid—afraid to learn what terrible secrets it might contain, but also burning with curiosity. Sighing, she moved her eyes to the dogs who lay at the foot of the bed with their back legs outstretched—a pose that made her think of the old cartoon superhero Underdog.