“S o, you’re positive this is what you want to do? You are sure?”
Jessa snorted as they climbed through the split in the skirting wall—a disturbing reminder of Morrigan’s visit. Emily knew her far too well. “When have I ever been positive about anything? You know I am always the one foot in, one foot out sort. Your mom always blamed it on childhood trauma, but I think it’s because it never fails, once I commit to one thing, something better comes along.”
Emily wrapped an arm around her and gave her an affectionate shake. “But there’s a difference about you now, Jess. I can’t remember ever seeing you this…this…”
“This…what?” All sorts of varying adjectives sprang to mind, but Jessa couldn’t wait to hear which ones Emily chose.
Emily shrugged. “It’s hard to explain. For lack of a better word, you’re not as twitchy as usual. And I mean that in a good way.”
And Jessa took it in a good way because she understood exactly what her friend meant. “I’m connected to Grant. A connection I never dreamed could exist.” The warm contentment that had taken up residence within her, always simmering just below the surface, rippled with her acknowledgment of it and sent a stronger surge through her. “I love him, Em. It’s as if I’ve known him forever. I love him so much it’s scary. The only thing I’m still twitchy about is taking up residence in this time.” She held onto the front of her stays and fished deep into her cleavage for the square of linen that would have a hard time holding up to the onslaught of tears the upcoming separation from her friend was sure to trigger, no matter how stoic and dry-eyed she was determined to be. “Well, that’s not the only thing I’m twitchy about. I’m twitchy about losing my best friend, my real sister, and the only genuine family I’ve ever had.”
“Mairwen thinks the goddesses will allow us to visit at Seven Cairns,” Emily said. “From what I understand about all this mystical stuff so far, it’s sort of a way station for all the eras of time and what we used to consider the mythical planes that the Highland Veil keeps in place.” Emily hugged her again. “But when I asked her if Mama, Papa, and the fearsome five could visit…”
The heaviness of the silence between them as they walked through the tangled grass spoke volumes.
“I take it she said no?” Jessa wondered if Emily realized that meant she would eventually lose her family, too. After all, Mairwen had said Emily had a fated mate waiting somewhere or sometime for her.”
“And yeah, I know what that means,” Emily whispered. “I can’t even begin to wrap my head around never seeing them again.” She attempted a cocky wink, but her voice faltered. “But you know me. I always find a way around the rules I don’t like. We’ll see them again. Just you wait and see.”
Now it was Jessa’s turn to hold tightly to Emily. For all her friend’s fussing about how her parents and brothers meddled in her life, Jessa knew Emily would be lost without her close-knit family. Maybe it was better to change the subject. “I wonder why everyone doesn’t get a fated mate? Or is it that Mairwen and her army of matchmakers just don’t have the manpower to snap that many souls back together?”
“I asked her about that,” Emily said as they meandered over to the cliff’s edge and seated themselves on the bench overlooking the sea. “It took her a while to come to the point and admit that it is exactly that.”
“Exactly what?”
“The auld ways are dying. When people stop believing, that which they no longer believe in ceases to exist. Scotland and the Highland Veil are one of the last strongholds because superstition is alive and well in this part of the world. Mairwen says there used to be several veils located all over the earth—but not any longer, and when those veils fell, the dark forces destroyed the Defenders and Weavers of those veils. Why do you think there’s already so much chaos and suffering in the world?” Emily bumped shoulders with her. “That is why you have to believe with all your heart and soul that you belong here, belong with Grant. Any doubt about any of it gives the dark ones a dangerous toehold.”
A pair of terns, white as fluttering ribbons, floated on the updrafts above the churning, frothy waters below. Their shrill keening as they circled in their gracefully spinning flight joined the symphony of the waves crashing against the base of the cliff, the shush of the wind rustling the tall clusters of grasses, and the faint noises of cleanup from the keep behind them. Jessa smiled at the peacefulness of the eighteenth century’s natural music.
Sitting in companionable silence, she mulled over what Emily had said. “I know I belong with Grant,” she said almost more to herself than to Emily. “It’s the when of it I’m none too sure about. This isn’t exactly the safest place for a digital creator and wannabe engineer. Everything I say makes them look at me as if they’re sizing me up for the stake and bonfire it would take to roast me.” And she was only partially joking. Grant’s clan had been more than kind and welcoming, but ever since she had healed him and with Griselda crowning her as one of the divine, everyone treated her differently. They were afraid of her. She could see it in their eyes, hear it in their voices, and sense it by the way they immediately went quiet whenever she walked into a room.
“You have to commit,” Emily said.”One way or the other. All in or all out. If you don’t…”
“I know.” A chill raced across Jessa, making her rub her arms and look up for any sign of the sun. “It’s clouding up again. I guess we need to get back inside the safety of the walls. Clouds make me nervous now.”
“Not a good thing, considering how often it rains in Scotland.”
“No kidding.”
A sudden rise in the wind gusted against them, strong and hard, shoving with amazing force, as if trying to push them over the edge of the cliff. Jessa stumbled, her feet tangled in her skirts and the long grass matted into knobby piles of treacherous hillocks.
Emily grabbed her by the arm, half dragging her to regain her footing. “I don’t like this,” Emily shouted, bowing against the gale as they fought to return to the keep.
“Go ahead!” Jessa told her. An eerie tingling at the base of her skull warned this was no natural storm kicking up without warning. “You are a tall target for the wind. Stay low and scuttle fast. I’ll be right behind you.” She dropped to all fours, waving Emily onward, knowing if she told her what was really going on, Emily would stay. This felt the same as before. Apparently, the Morrigan, whatever it was, did not give up easily.
Bent double by the wind, Emily squinted at her, eyeing her for a long moment that told Jessa her friend knew exactly what was happening. But Emily needed to go. Jessa couldn’t bear it if anything happened to her. She pointed at the keep. “Go! Warn the others! I’ll be fine. I can hold on until you return with Mairwen.”
Squinting against the gale, Emily’s dark eyes flashed as she bared her teeth. “Don’t you dare die on me!” she shouted. “I’ll be back with reinforcements!”
Jessa nodded and waved her onward. “Go!”
And then the ground beneath her fell away, and everything went dark.
* * *
Jessa opened her eyes. Or, at least, they felt like they were open. Nothing but blackness filled her vision. Panic surged through her hard and fast, making her blink rapidly. Maybe she had somehow been blinded by a blow to the head or something, or the collapse of the cliff had stolen her eyesight. Stop it, she silently ordered. Spiraling out of control helped nothing. She needed to calm down and think, not give in to hysteria. It was just dark wherever this was. Dark as the inside of a freaking cow. Or like she was buried alive. Great . Because that possibility was so much better than being blinded—right? But it could be true. After all, the ground had fallen away when the cliff had separated and slid into the sea. She sucked in a deep breath to convince herself she had enough air. Damp, cool, and maybe a little earthy, wherever this was smelled like the potting soil she had helped Mrs. Garducci add to her windowsill garden. Maybe this was some kind of air pocket created by the landslide. That made her swallow hard and press a hand to her pounding heart.
Must. Not. Panic. She needed to see if she was hurt, then figure a way out of here. She tried to inventory all her parts without moving too much in case she was injured or maybe even perched on a narrow ledge in this strange pit of despair. That gave her pause. Pit of despair? Where had that come from? She didn’t usually talk like that—not even to herself. Mairwen must be rubbing off on her.
The silence of the darkness deafened her. She couldn’t even hear her own breathing or the beating of her heart. She could feel it hammering in her chest, but couldn’t hear it. At least, she thought she felt it. She tried to find a pulse at her wrist and, failing that, tried to confirm life by feeling for her jugular. She clamped her hand to her chest again. The pounding was gone. Had she died? Was this death?
“Ye are not dead. Yet,” a powerful voice, a woman’s voice, told her.
“Where is this, and who are you?” Jessa flinched at the quiver in her voice. Something deep inside, an old childhood instinct she had never left behind, told her now was not the time to reveal any weakness. No answer came from the disembodied voice. Just more suffocating silence. “Are you Morrigan?” she hazarded to ask.
“I am.”
Jessa pushed herself up to a sitting position and squinted all around, trying to make out anything in the darkness. It was impossible. Never had she been in a place so lacking in any light whatsoever. She reached down and felt the surrounding ground. Where she sat was stone. Damp, hard, and kind of crumbly. Like shale, maybe? She reached to the left and discovered a wall that was more of the same but less crumbly. To the right was a nothingness that could be anything. Unknown nothingness lurked behind her and in front of her as well. But there was that wall to the left, a solid wall. Safety. Maybe this was the back of a cave of some sort.
Pit of despair whispered its way through her thoughts again. Stop it, she told herself again.
“I really do love Grant,” she announced, proud that her voice was loud and strong this time, the words echoing over and over like a war chant across the pit. “We are connected, he and I. Our souls reunited. You are too late.”
“Am I?”
Jessa gritted her teeth, biting back a frustrated and borderline hysterical growl. Apparently, this Morrigan demon enjoyed mind games. “This is extremely boring,” Jessa taunted. Maybe she could goad the thing into saying more. “At least before, there was some excitement in your attack. What do you want? What are you trying to prove here?”
Thunder rumbled through the darkness, and the distinct sound of shifting earth, maybe rocks tumbling down the wall, followed in its wake. “I am war, sovereignty, and prophecy. I have to prove nothing. Death and Fate do as I bid them.” In the distance, so very far away that Jessa barely heard it, came a cacophony of guttural croaking, the chatty cawing of ravens or crows, definitely large birds. They sounded like a choir, giving the Morrigan a hearty amen.
What a drama queen. Anger leveled out Jessa’s adrenaline fueled panic, and she welcomed the shift in power within her, the settling, the strength. She shoved herself to her feet while keeping her hand on the wall to her left. Who knew what awaited her in the darkness? Caves had bottomless cracks and fissures, didn’t they?
“What do you want?” she asked again, determined to sound as powerful as possible. A personal trainer had once told her that fifty percent of success was bravado. The other fifty was believing in yourself. Time to lock into that mindset for real. “What do you want, Morrigan?” she repeated.
“Many things. As do you.”
“What I want right now is some light, so I can see what I am dealing with here.”
“Are you certain about that?”
Squaring her shoulders, Jessa braced herself while fighting off the ancient childhood memory of being locked inside the dark, stuffy bathroom cabinet for hours on end while her mother entertained. “I am positive.”
The surrounding darkness softened to a dismal gray that sifted down like a strange waterfall of colorless dreariness. But at least she could see now. The wall to her left was black slate or maybe coal. It was scarred with chisel marks and scratches, as if some ancient being had either mined for whatever mineral it was or tried to claw its way to freedom. The narrow ledge on which she stood was the same material. It was about four feet wide, seemed to run on forever in front of her and behind her, but disappeared into an eerie black nothingness to the right.
“I recommend keeping to the left,” said the tall figure cloaked in black that stood in the center of the path several yards ahead of her. “At least, for now.”
Jessa blinked and opened her mouth to speak, but the being shapeshifted into a swelling column of large black birds that swirled upward like a building storm, then exploded outward. With her hand still on the wall, she crouched, cowering from the ominous fowl with their snapping beaks and eyes that flashed with an unholy light. They circled overhead, occasionally dipping low to snatch at her hair with their gleaming black talons.
If she got out of this alive, she would never own a birdfeeder or birdbath again. Birds could fend for themselves.
“I thought you liked animals,” one of them cackled and screeched as it came at her.
She ducked and tried to knock it away. “You’re not an animal. You’re a nightmare of unexplainable weirdness.”
The relentless army of birds evaporated into ribbons of black smoke rising through the grayness in narrow, curling tendrils.
Jessa exhaled and slumped back against the wall. She could hear her heart pounding now. But then, a subtle clicking drew her attention back to the path.
A silver wolf of unbelievably large proportions ambled toward her, baring its dripping fangs and growling, “I am not unexplainable.”
Backed against the wall, Jessa locked her legs to keep from slumping to the ground. She had to fight. Make a show of bravado. She refused to leave this world without a fight. She had survived too much to turn soft now. “If you’re not unexplainable, explain yourself. As you’ve probably figured out by now, I’m not exactly an expert when it comes to this business of the Highland Veil, the Defenders, or fated mates.” She resettled her footing, wishing some of the loose rocks around her were big enough to be worth throwing. “And when you’re finished educating me, tell me what the hell you want.”
The horrendous beast tipped its head to one side and flicked an ear. Its long red tongue lolled out of its mouth as it cracked a hideous grin. It lifted its muzzle, its gleaming black nostrils twitching. “The air reeks with yer fear.”
“I never said I wasn’t afraid. I asked, ‘What the hell do you want?’” Jessa wished she had her pepper spray. Dark being or not, she doubted that Morrigan the wolf would like a snoot full of cayenne and jalapeno.
“Retribution,” said the animal in a rumbling growl.
“What did I ever do to you?” Maybe if she could keep the thing talking, Grant, Mairwen, and Emily would rescue her. “Grant is my fated mate. He will come for me, and you know it.” Jessa knew it, too. She felt it in her heart, and that feeling strengthened her.
The wolf snapped, baring its long, lethal fangs. “Ye will be my weapon to destroy the Veil.”
“I will not.”
“Ye care not for it. Dinna even believe in it. All ye care about is the time ye came from and that friend ye left behind.”
Jessa swallowed hard. Sweat peppered across her forehead, burning as it trickled into her eyes. “If I didn’t believe in it, I wouldn’t still be here. Mairwen gave me the chance to go back and forget about everything. I stayed with Grant.”
“Aye, but ye’re still not certain, are ye?” The wolf reared up on its hind legs and took the form of a haggard old woman wearing a ragged cloak of black feathers. She pointed at Jessa with a crooked finger, knobby and bent with age. “Ye didna go back because of yer lust for him. That does not mean ye believe. Ye dinna feel the truth of the ways in yer heart.”
“Just because I have never been the decisive sort does not mean I don’t believe.” Jessa angled her chin higher. “It just means I like to keep my options open. Can you honestly say you’ve never done that?” Her fosters had always hated how she would argue with them and try to turn the tables. Maybe that technique would buy her some time. At the very least, it should irritate whatever this thing was that couldn’t decide what form it wanted to take. She pointed at the crone. “Just look at you. When you first appeared, you were some kind of shadow figure, like the Grim Reaper or something. Then you changed into a flock of buzzards, a wolf, and now an old hag. You can’t even settle on what you want to be, and yet you criticize me, saying that just because I can’t make up my mind, I don’t believe.”
“They were ravens, ye insolent wee chit! Not buzzards. And I am the Morrigan. The Phantom Queen. Goddess of War and Fate, and when I bring down the Highland Veil, all will bow to me. Even Mairwen, with whom I shall finally have my full revenge.” The old one threw back her grizzled head and laughed. “She has no idea how I intend to use him.”
“How you intend to use who? Grant?” Jessa strode forward. The only fear she possessed now was fear for Grant’s safety. “You stay away from him.”
The old one laughed. “Or what?”
“Or I will become a royal pain in your nonexistent ass.”
The hag shooed away the threat as if it were an annoying fly. “Ye have no idea of what ye speak. One as weak as yerself would stand no chance against me.”
“When people stop believing in something, that which they once believed in ceases to exist. Is that not true?”
Iron bars shot up from the path in a circle around her just as a large black slab fell from above and landed atop them with a deafening clang. Balled up on the floor, her eyes shut and ears covered, Jessa braced to be crushed. After a long, terrifying moment of expecting to die, nothing happened. She opened her eyes, and once again, all she could see was impenetrable darkness. Gingerly patting the floor, she felt around to find the wall but couldn’t reach it. The iron cage, her tiny prison, had her corralled in the center of the path.
Holding tight to the bars, she tried to shift them, even tried to squeeze through them, then gave up. If she somehow escaped, where would she go? “Anywhere but here,” she told the darkness. She slid to the ground and hugged herself against the ever-increasing chill creeping into her bones. Maybe the eighteenth century wasn’t so frightening after all. It had to be safer than being trapped in the darkness, in a cage, in some evil goddess’s playroom.
“If you’re still here, you just proved I’m right,” she taunted. “You know it’s really easy to get people to believe in something new and chalk their old beliefs up to myths and legends—fairytales to tell their children. Nothing more than pretend stories that are totally and completely powerless.”
A wave of icy water slammed into her, choking her with its force and knocking her hard against the iron bars. The briny deluge burned her eyes and her lungs. She coughed and wheezed to get air. Hanging on to the bars, she dragged herself back to her feet and braced herself, waiting for another soaking, but it never came. She almost laughed as she coughed and spat more water. Damn, she’d hit a nerve that time. She had also discovered the Morrigan’s greatest fear: to be forgotten and cease to exist.
* * *
Grant shoved another pistol into his belt, then added two more daggers to each of his boots. He would strap on every weapon in the keep, if need be, to get his precious Jessa back.
“Those will do ye no good against the dark one,” Mairwen said from behind him.
“Aye, well, having them makes me feel a damn sight better prepared.” He should never have allowed Jessa to go beyond the wall. Why the hell hadn’t he told her to stay within the safety of the keep? Why the hell hadn’t he kept her at his side?
“The Morrigan would have stolen her no matter where she roamed,” Mairwen told him, as if he had spoken his misgivings aloud. “She seems to fear yer match more than she has feared the others. Yer binding oath should have sent her on her way. I dinna understand it.”
“Stay the feckin’ hell out of my mind, witch!” He advanced on the old woman, pointing at her with his blade. “I canna live without my Jessa. If anything happens to her, know that I will come for ye first. Ye will be the last life I take afore I take my own, so I can join my precious love.”
Mairwen backed up a step, seeming more fragile than usual. Almost human. Her regret and worry were impossible to miss. “We will get her back. The Defenders and Weavers await yer orders.” She went to the door but stopped, looked back, and locked eyes with him. “But ye should know, ye may be the only one able to save her.”
“As it should be.” He trusted no one else with his precious lady love. “Keep them the hell out of my way.” He lashed short swords under each arm rather than the usual wearing of the one sheathed under his left. As he turned, Lachie and Henry stepped into the room. “Report?”
Henry nodded. “The cleugh echoed with the cries of birds for a while. Sounded like a battlefield when ravens come to feast upon the dead. The blackness of the cracked earth lightened for a bit, but the mist never fully cleared to enable us to see more than a wee bit. Then it went dark again and growled like thunder.”
“Take heart with this news,” Lachie said. “It means she has not given up. She is fighting the evil.”
“I take heart in nothing. None of this should have ever happened to her.” Grant passed between them and exited the weaponry hold, unquenchable rage coursing through him. The closer he drew to the part of the cliff that had turned into an unholy, gaping maw to the earth’s bowels, the hotter his fury boiled.
The oldest of his MacAlester kin still walking this earth sometimes whispered that Grant possessed berserker blood, reminding anyone who would listen about the elite warriors from his father’s ancient line. For the first time in a long while, he hoped the whisperings of his ancestry were true. He could use a touch of invulnerable savagery today.
As he trod toward the strange ravine that was more like a crack between this reality and the next, a call went up from the watchtowers, announcing the approach of more Defenders on horseback. Word had spread fast. He had Henry and Lachie to thank for that. But he would just as soon do this himself. The Morrigan needed to learn once and for all that he was not the one she should toy with.
Emily stood at the edge of the abyss, peering down into it, her cheeks wet with tears.
“Move back, lass. Take safety within the walls of the keep. My Jessa would never forgive me if the dark one hurt ye.”
“I never should have convinced her to come to Scotland. We should’ve ignored that fucking app!”
He understood the woman’s pain. Her regret. But she couldn’t blame herself for anything that had happened. “The Weavers would have still found a way to coax ye into coming here. Trust me. I know their relentlessness firsthand.” When she didn’t answer, he sidled closer and leaned in to force her to look him in the eyes. “This is not yer fault, Emily, and Jessa would be the first to tell ye that.”
She made a hard nod at the swirling darkness below. “What are you going to do? How are you going to save her when you don’t even know what’s down in there? Where she might be? Or, God forbid, if she is even?—”
He caught her by the arm and jerked her around to fully face him. “Ye will not say it! My Jessa is alive, and I will find her.” He gently shook her, baring his teeth. “Ye must believe. Has Mairwen taught ye nothing? Belief is often the strongest weaponry we mere mortals possess. When we believe, we see it in our minds, and it becomes so. Hold her in yer mind. See her healthy. Laughing. Happy. See her back among us. Do ye ken what I am saying?”
She flinched as though losing the battle with her own demons. “I’ll try,” she said in a hitching whisper. “I’m just…afraid.”
He couldn’t allay her fears, nor did he have the time or the inclination to try. His spirit burned to save Jessa. “Go back to the keep or join Mairwen and those from Seven Cairns. I canna bear to delay any longer.”
“Save her.” After a hard squeeze of his arm, she caught up her skirts and ran back to the keep.
Lachie joined him at the edge of the eerie pit. “Orders?”
Grant tossed a hard look back at the keep. “If I dinna survive, take care of them, aye?”
The brawny Highlander agreed with a single nod. “How long afore we join ye in the abyss? I assume ye wish to go alone at first.”
“Dinna follow at all. That could be her plot. Destroy the Defenders and Weavers both to clear a path to the Veil. And if I canna save my Jessa—no one can. I feel it to the marrow of my bones. Even the old witch hinted at such.”
Lachie stared at him long and hard, then thumped his fist to his chest in their age-old salute. “God be with ye, brother.”
“If I dinna see ye again in this life, I shall look for ye in the next.”
With another curt nod, Lachie turned and strode away, but Grant felt better for the conversation. Brothers-in-arms didn’t need words when the time to battle came.
Grant moved to the edge of the dark, gaping seam and squinted down into it while flexing his fingers. The swirling blackness revealed nothing, not even any sounds. He lowered himself to the edge and dangled his legs off into it, thumping with his heels to test the earthen wall behind his calves. But it wasn’t earthen—it was solid stone. He reached down and felt it. It was slick and cold, like the finest marble. To use a rope to lower himself into the unknown didn’t sit right with his gut. There was just something wrong about that. He envisioned the Morrigan swatting at him like a cat toying with a mouse on a string. The sly shapeshifter loved her wicked games. To jump could mean certain death, but somehow, he found that choice more appealing. But the longer he ran his fingers along the refined smoothness of the wall behind his calves, the more he was certain. This was a riddle, and the vile harpy had purposely done it that way. This was a test.
He tore off a chunk of earth from the uppermost portion of the edge and stared at it there in his palm. A rocky mix held together by roots, and yet the wall behind his heels was nothing like that. If anything, it felt made by man rather than nature. Holding the dirt in one hand, he felt the edge with the other, digging his fingers into the softness of the loamy soil the seaside grasses loved. That soft, pebbly earth wasn’t even as deep as his longest finger. The gods had slathered but a thin layer of the natural covering atop their walled pit of marble. On a whim, he let the handful of dirt and pebbles dribble through his fingers into the darkness just past the edge. The clear clicking of the wee rocks as they bounced not too far below surprised him. The dark mist hid a level closer to the surface.
Unsheathing his sword, he rolled to his stomach and reached down into the unseen with the overly long blade that had been forged to fit his height. The tip struck something solid, not too far down, about the distance from his heel to his hip. Concentrating on the sound, he tapped the blade as far out as he could stretch his arm, discovering the length of whatever it was to be about as wide as he was from shoulder to shoulder. He brought his arm back and tapped his blade parallel to the marble wall.
“It’s a feckin’ step.” Either that or a ledge. Whatever the devil it was, it got him that much closer to Jessa. He sheathed his sword, drew two daggers, then rolled to his belly again and stabbed them into the ground. They wouldn’t be much of a handhold in the shallow soil as he lowered himself over the edge, but they would be something in case he needed to dig his way back up.
As soon as his toes hit the ledge, he eased down into the darkness and sat, feeling for what he prayed was another step below that one. Could he be so fortunate as to have found a stairway into the depths of this inky hell? His boots thunked solidly on the next step down. Hope flared strong and sure. He was another step closer.
It might not be manly to hug the wall to his right and feel his way downward with his feet while he slid on his arse across the steps, but it was safe, and if he was safe, he was whole and could fight for his precious Jessa.
The deeper he descended, the colder it became. Morrigan’s hell lacked warmth, and that nay surprised him. A low, hollow sound filled the void, the wind moaning as it rushed through the unholy space. The steady crash of waves came to him, gnawing at him with a new, worrisome fear. What if the briny deep had swallowed his sweet Jessa?
He bowed his head and shook away the terrible thought. “No,” he told the darkness. “She lives. I know it.”
“Are ye certain of that, warrior?” a voice of pure evil quietly asked.