chapter Seven
“We did it!” The Banshee cheered as Daroch kicked the Faerie’s lifeless body over the cliff. His blood still flowed with untempered fury and he didn’t trust himself to speak. “Well, you did it.” She joined him where he stood and they silently watched Ly Erg’s long fall into the ocean far below. “You slaughtered him.”
“He’s not dead, the head will grow back.” Daroch spat over the cliff and turned away, inspecting the damage done by Ly Erg’s curved blade. Less than he’d expected. Only his thigh still bled.
“Oh.” Her deflated voice drew his notice. He found the worried wrinkle between her delicately shaped brows oddly adorable. Still simmering with heat and aggression, the blood pounding through his veins naturally looked for a different outlet, and raced south. Averting his gaze, he set to collecting his belongings.
“How long does it take for a Faerie to grow his head back?” She still squinted over the edge, looking for a sign of the Executioner.
Daroch strapped his satchel of fish onto his shoulder and considered her question. “Maybe a day or so. Once he can, he’ll return to the Isle of the Fae to finish recovering.” Stooping to pick up his sword, he strapped it to his hips with the vine belt and grabbed his staff.
“Then he’ll be after you again?”
“Likely.” He set off down the hill toward Lake Shamrock. There he would find what he needed and some bog myrtle for the wound on his thigh.
“Why?”
Gritting his teeth, Daroch turned on the Banshee who followed close behind him. “You know why. Because I’m going to find a way to kill the Fae.” He stepped closer and narrowed his eyes so she’d catch his meaning. “All of them.”
Her eyes fixed on the string of shells at his temple and followed the long strand down to his chest. “Why?”
If she asked that question one more f*cking time… “Knowing my intent, do I still have the use of yer father’s forge?”
Her gaze flicked to his sword and her face became very serious. “What did he mean by what he said before you beheaded him?” she whispered. “About you being on your hands and knees?”
Something snapped inside him. “Answer my question for once!” he roared, his hands aching to grasp her wee shoulders and shake her senseless. “Are ye going to help me or not, knowing one of my weapons might one day kill ye?”
She retreated a step. Regarding him for a long, silent moment, she finally said, “I… I think I will. Yes.”
It occurred to Daroch in that moment that he neither needed her help nor her permission to use her father’s forge. If it was truly abandoned, he could walk in and use it whenever he liked. He opened his mouth to inform her thus.
“What is yer name, Banshee?” His question stunned them both.
“Kylah MacKay.”
Kylah. Lovely, feminine. Like her.
“Ye made a dangerous enemy today, Kylah MacKay.”
“I know.” Her iridescent face shone with earnest regret. “I’m sorry to cause you all that trouble. I’ll do what I can to make amends.”
That foreign, soft emotion bloomed in his chest, soothing the cold fury pulsing there. “I didna mean me, lass. I meant Ly Erg.”
A dark shadow crossed her illuminated features. “He doesn’t frighten me.” She drifted around him and took a slow pace down the bluff.
Daroch followed her, for once, catching her easily. “He should. Ye doona ken what he’s capable of.”
“Yes, I do.” Her eyes remained fixed on the fragrant fields of blooming spring buds. “I really feel so terrible that he found you because of me. That’s how he did it isn’t it, because you had to use your magic?”
“Aye, well, no permanent harm befell me.” If Daroch were completely honest with himself, it wasn’t her presence that had surprised him into gasping water into his lungs. It had been her beatific smile. She’d taken his breath with her loveliness, and it happened to be in a place where air was in short supply. His brows drew together. “Let’s forget it ever happened.”
She nodded, seeming eager to do just that. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“Lake Shamrock.”
Her mouth formed a relentlessly familiar shape.
“Because,” he cut her off. “I need a shamrock and some bog myrtle.”
“Bog myrtle for your wound,” she seemed pleased with herself. “I should have thought of that… but a shamrock? wh—”
“Because when one is holding a shamrock, one can see a Faerie, whether they want ye to or not,” he answered quickly trying to stay a step ahead of the dreaded word. “Who knows what they’ll send after me next? Or when.”
She was thoughtful for a blessedly silent moment. “May I ask you something?”
A harsh laugh escaped Daroch’s throat. “Did ye just ask a question about asking a question?”
It was her turn to look exasperated. “Well?”
“When has it stopped ye before?” Daroch motioned for her to proceed, shocked to discover that he wasn’t as aggravated at the lass’s questions as he’d previously been. He wouldna say he was enjoying himself. Nay. He wouldna say that.
“How old are you?”
Daroch frowned. “That’s actually a good question. One to which I doona know the answer.”
“Well, it’s not that complicated, in what year were you born?”
He furrowed his brow, trying to remember. “About… sixty four.”
“Thirteen hundred and sixty four?” she asked, aghast.
“Nay lass,” he smirked. “Sixty and four, about twenty years before Agricola and Caledonia.”
“The Romans?” she nearly shrieked.
He winced.
“That makes no sense at all. You say you’re not a man of magic, yet you are. You say you aren’t blessed by gods or a Faerie creature, and yet you’re centuries over a thousand years! I can’t believe all this, and I’m a bloody Banshee.” She swung a slap at his shoulder, but of course it only resulted in chilly goose bumps.
“Did yer father ever tell ye Faerie stories when ye were a wee lass?”
She sobered a little, her eyes becoming wistful. “All the time.”
“Did he ever mention what happened when an unsuspecting human ventured into a Faerie ring and spent a night in the land of the Fae?”
“He said that a man would spend one night in Faerie and come back in time to meet his grandchildren all grown. That time doesn’t pass there like it does—ohhhhhh.” Comprehension dawned and her eyes went round as an owl’s.
“Imagine what a month or so would do to ye.”
“Dear me!” she exclaimed. “In what time did you return to Scotland?”
Daroch focused on the pain in his leg so as to deny the hollow ache lancing through his chest. What time had he returned? In a time where the Druids had mysteriously disappeared leaving not a trace to prove their advanced existence. To a time where the united people of the holy emerald isles had divided into warring clans living in hovels while their English overlords oppressed and objectified them. To a time when everyone he knew and loved was long dead and forgotten and he’d taken on the clan McLeod because they’d been the first to shelter him and show him kindness. “In time to ride with Robert the Bruce against the English,” he answered darkly. “I was the mood for warfare right about then.”
“A hundred years at least!” she put a hand to her forehead in disbelief. “And you’ve been so young and…” she gestured at him with a helpless hand and Daroch found himself mighty interested as to what descriptive word she would pull out of that inquisitive brain of hers. “And… vigorous this whole time?” Her pale translucent cheeks tinged a becoming shade of pink.
She thought him vigorous, did she? Heat crept up his collar from beneath his robes and he cleared his throat. “My theory is the food I ate and drank in Faerie had properties that slowed the aging process down, though I seem to have aged about fifteen years in the last twenty, so I also theorize that the process is accelerating again.”
“Oh? So that would place you at about five and thirty, I’d wager, though your physique is far better than that of any man I know of that age.” Her blush intensified.
A niggling warmth swelled inside him and Daroch squelched it the best way he knew how. Intellectual distraction. “I find it fascinating that ye blush.” He squinted at her creamy complexion, the tinge still prominent through her ever-present green hue. “Blushing is usually a body’s reaction to emotional stimuli through the thermo dilation of blood veins. But yer heart doesna beat. Yer blood doesna flow. So how does blushing occur?” The temptation to reach out and touch her skin became so overwhelming, he passed a finger through her cheek.
Startled, she jumped back from him and batted at his hand like a wee kitten. Both of their attempts at contact were predictably unsuccessful. More was the pity, in his case. Which caused him pause. He hadn’t wanted to touch a woman in over one hundred years. Why had that suddenly changed?
“Now who is asking silly questions?” she huffed, clearly disconcerted. “It’s magic, who knows how it works, only that it does? Everything seems to work as it did before except that I don’t eat or drink anymore, of course. But when I cry, tears flow. When I spit… well it’s strange but it… happens. Mostly.”
The erotic possibilities of her admission slammed into him.
Gods be damned.
“And only lately, I’ve started to feel my heart beating. Very fast, in most cases, like it’s going to jump out of my chest.” She pressed a dainty hand to her breast and speared him with eyes the color of Irish moss.
“Do ye,” his brows lifted. “And when does this occur?”
“Only when I’m around you.”
Daroch’s own heart threw itself against his ribcage. Something had to be done about this.
She was no longer harmless.
He truly was a man out of time. Kylah studied Daroch as he foraged through the unused piles of peat bricks and coal in the ruins of her family home and washhouse. He’d been strangely quiet after her admission and his withdrawal depressed her. As he’d reapplied his layer of silt at the Allt Dubh, it had been like he donned an extra layer of armor against her. When she’d asked him why he wore the mud, he’d simply barked, “Protection.” As if she was supposed to know what that meant. She’d tried to pry it out of him as he stored his satchel of fish in the frigid river, but he paid her no heed.
When he’d gathered shamrocks from the loch and dressed his wound with herbs, he’d been strangely modest, hiding most of his action beneath his robes.
He’d been so bloody adamant about wanting the truth, hadn’t he? Well she’d been honest with him. What did she have to lose by the admission? More to the point, why would he be disturbed by it? She didn’t particularly like the idea that the only thing to break the bleak apathy surrounding her this past year was a miserly old Druid with an infuriating air of superiority. But there it was. He awakened sensation inside of her. Evoked her natural curiosities. Fascinated and distressed her.
Made her forget…
Most men would have welcomed her questions, taking any occasion to impress her with ceaseless conversation on their favorite topics. Namely themselves. But nay, not he, not Daroch mud-face McLeod. What did he do when he’d garnered her interest? Ordered her to leave! Thrown things at her—well—through her, but even so. Treated her as though her company was undesirable.
And yet the question remained: Why!?
“Yes, brighten yer glow until I can get these bricks started.” He stacked them in his arms.
Kylah made a sound of irritation which he either didn’t recognize or ignored.
“This is all new and fine material. If ye lost everything in the fire, where did ye get it?” he asked.
“Laird MacKay had it delivered to my mother as we resided here until recently.”
He turned to her then, the surprise on his face evident, even through the mask. “She remained… here?” He looked around as though seeing the place for the first time.
The large circular room had accommodated the smithy’s waiting customers and, later, the washhouse. Blackened stones, earth, charred beams and ash covered the ground. The once vaulted ceilings were non-existent but for one corner which had been where her mother had stacked the cot upon which she’d slept. A wall of stone lay where the arch to the small room that housed her father’s forge had been. That room remained mostly intact, though the bricks were now black instead of earth and all that remained of the ceiling was a fine layer of ash over everything.
Kylah never ventured into that room.
“How did she survive?”
The corner closest to the burned-out entry had become Kylah’s by edict of the amount of time she spent there. Kylah lurked there now, feeling on edge as she considered the Druid’s question.
“The Laird sent food, bread, cheese, potatoes, jerky, things that didn’t need to be cooked. Animal furs, and that.” She gestured to the makings for a long-lasting fire.
“There’s a year’s worth of fire here, she never lit one? Even in the winter?” His skeptical voice grated on her already raw nerves.
“Never.” She cast a pointed look at the state of the building. “She had somewhat of an aversion to fire.”
His brows lifted, but he wisely remained silent as he maneuvered through the rubble with his arms full of coal and disappeared into the back. “The bellows are not too damaged,” he called to her. “I’ll need to go into town for the textiles to repair it. ‘Tis a fine forge yer father built.”
“Aye,” she agreed, still unable to look at it.
He appeared in the entry, returning for another load for the fire. “If I’m lucky, yer father will have a safe place in the fireclay where a few of his tools would be kept untouched by rust and such.”
Kylah searched her memory. “Behind the row of anvils, beneath the slack tub.” At least he was speaking to her now.
He disappeared into the room again with another armful of coal. “Show me,” he ordered.
“Nay.” Her refusal was instantaneous.
His head reappeared in the entry. “Nay? What do ye mean, ‘Nay?’”
“Have you never heard the word before?” she asked, stunning them both with the ire in her voice.
His hazel eyes turned stormy and he stood atop the rubble, glowering down at her from across the wide ashen floor. “What’s gotten into ye, woman?”
“Me? What’s gotten into me, you ask?” Kylah watched her green glow crawl across the ashes, though she didn’t move from where she stood. “You’ve been naught but churlish and ill-tempered with me this entire afternoon. If you’ve acknowledged me at all.”
“Ye did almost get me killed. Twice in the space of an hour, which is a feat, even for a Banshee,” he replied archly.
“That’s not why you’ve been insufferable, and we both know it,” she sneered.
“I’ve lived in solitude for a hundred years.” He crossed large, defensive arms over his broad chest and Kylah had to force herself not to remember what that chest looked like without the robes. “Ye canna invade every moment of my life, demand every detail of my history, and uncover all my secrets expecting me to like it.”
Anger covered the flash of hurt and truth in his words. “Well, Daroch McLeod, if you want your solitude so badly you may have it. I will not venture into that room. You’re safe from my odious presence there, so do what you will.”
Were she not in such a temper, she’d have found his expression of absolute befuddlement endearing. He looked behind him into the forge room, then back at her. “Why doona ye go in there? Because it’s where yer father—”
“It has nothing to do with my father!” she exploded, her glow pulsing further into the waning twilight.
“Then, why—”
“You don’t get to ask why! That’s my question.” At this point, Kylah realized she was being childish and ridiculous. But she’d never in her life lost her temper. She’d never felt this kind of organic, indignant anger before. Never had a deserving outlet for it. And since the horrible day she died, she’d only ever lurked in her corner, staring at that damnable forge, reliving the horrors that befell her there.
Every memory created by a loving man and father in that room had been defiled, replaced by the image of another man’s hatred. His domination. His sweat. Her pain. Her blood. Screams. Flames.
“Keep your secrets, Daroch McLeod.” A tear snaked from Kylah’s eye and burned its way down her cheek. “And I’ll keep mine.”
She’d vanished again. The evening seemed darker without her, and not just for the absence of her ever-present glow. Daroch inspected the ruins of the quaint washhouse with renewed intent. What would keep her from entering the forge? What harm could befall her there?
The living structure just off the business had been made of wood rather than stone, so only the blackened outlines of two bedrooms and the cook hearth of a kitchen remained. They told Daroch nothing, except that if anyone had been trapped there, they’d have perished.
Beneath a mulberry bush, a stone cross and two small wooden ones were lined neatly by the pond. Perhaps his wee Banshee was buried there. His nose pricked to the smell of the heather blooms mixing with the mulberry as he made his way to the tiny, well-kept graveyard.
He ran a finger across the stone engraving of Diarmudh MacKay. His cross was done in the olde way. Not to symbolize the Christian sacrifice, but in the way of the Druids, symbolizing the great balance of science and magic. Of earth and the sky. The body and the soul. Man and woman. Life and death. Twined together with sacred, eternal knots.
Sinking onto his haunches, he found the next two graves to be small, shallow, and relatively fresh, only recently overtaken by moss and grass. The markers were rough hewn and wooden. They read Katriona MacKay and Kamdyn MacKay in shaky, hand-carved script. The graves were small enough for young children.
Only their bones rested here. Daroch shook his head. That must have been all that was left after the fire. He stood and scanned the outlying area, capturing each detail in its entirety.
What about Kylah’s bones? Where did they rest?
His gaze landed back on the ruins and a cold spear pierced his chest.
He knew exactly where they were.
Returning to the entry, Daroch studied what used to be the washhouse. The patterns in the char along the walls and floor implied fire accelerant of some kind. Not pitch, so likely alcohol based. He could mark where the large wooden tubs had stood and noted the metal remains of various tools and instruments of their trade strewn every which way among the ashes.
As though they’d been upended and tossed in violent chaos.
Violent enough to spawn the creation of three Banshees.
Heart accelerating, Daroch’s eyes flew to the ruined archway and the forge beyond. His boots sounded very loud as they disturbed the ashes, creating the echoes of a ghastly, unspeakable horror. By the time he reached the forge, his breath sawed out of his lungs in great bursts. His nostrils flared, and his mind retreated from what he was certain to find there.
The room fared better than the rest. Daroch’s eyes skimmed past burnt tools, a great forge covered in the fine layer of ash, anvils specialized to make everything from nails to horseshoes to armor.
The back window cut into the stone wall behind the forge was broken. The sunset illuminated the heather-strewn hill that offered some protection from the harsh Highland weather, and sparkled off jagged edges of glass.
Something strange drew Daroch to it and he crossed the room with swift strides. Reaching out, he pried one of the glass fragments from the casing and inspected the dark, dried stain on the sharp point.
Blood.
Someone had escaped through the window. Upon further inspection he surmised that the window had not been broken by the heat of the fire, but by the force of a blunt object. But what? He looked at the floor to the corner on his right and then turned to the left to search the dark nook created by the back wall and the forge.
All the breath in his lungs released in a great whoosh as Daroch’s knees fell to the ashes.
Bones. Her bones.
“Gods,” he rasped through a throat closing with alarming pressure.
Huddled there, as though playing a children’s hiding game, the legs were curled into the chest. The arms circled the drawn up knees, but the wrists…
Daroch turned from the sight, sucking in a bracing breath before he could face it again.
The wrists were secured with small iron chains. Likely forged in this very room. The tiny bones of the fingers clasped together in supplication.
He closed his eyes again, but gruesome, hideous images flashed behind his lids. The worst of which was her soft green eyes, round with terror, begging for mercy. His own eyes burned, and a suspicious sheen clouded his vision when he opened them again.
Daroch blinked it away. A band of wrath encircled his lungs. His heart fell like a heavy brick to the pit of his stomach. He wanted to scream. He wanted to vomit.
He wanted to run.
Instead, he forced himself to look at her. To bear witness to her unjust death. Her skull sat on slim, delicate shoulders, regarding him from small, empty sockets. Her teeth smiled at him in the most macabre way and a shudder overtook him.
“Och lass,” he whispered. “What did they do to ye?” Reaching to her, Daroch’s finger trembled as he gingerly wiped at the green patina of ash that covered her bones and rubbed it between his finger and thumb. Peat moss, oil, and pitch, identical to the bricks he’d been loading into the forge.
Huddled in the tiny nook, she would have been spared the fire. Likely, the smoke would have filled her lungs, but she’d have died before feeling the burn of the flames. Daroch had a sick suspicion the blaze hadn’t been lit in one room of the house. Nay, the f*cking villains had used live women as tinder.
I never venture in there.
His stomach protested again and he snarled. What other secrets of hers did this room contain that had been erased by the fire? Why hadn’t her bones been laid into the earth? Why was she stuffed back here like so much forgotten slag?
Who had done this?
Daroch picked up a peat brick and crushed it in his fist. The first time he’d laid eyes on Kylah MacKay was in the great hall of Laird MacKay’s Castle. Rory MacKay had been plagued with Banshees and summoned Daroch for help. The self-same Laird who sent these peat bricks. He hurled another one through the window.
Banshees were creatures of vengeance. Daroch looked down at her bones, every part of him aching for her. He’d know, of course, that Kylah must have died horribly. He’d just forced himself not to think of it. Not to care. She wasn’t his problem, after all. She wasn’t his fault.
She wasn’t his to lose. To avenge. But the fact that she remained a Banshee this long after her death meant she was unable to claim her vengeance.
And that was something they had in common.