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Chapter Two

A lec McKeran heard nothing as he walked the passages of Dun Talamh. No one who crossed his path bothered to speak to him, either. He told himself he preferred that, and it was partly true, for he had never bothered to cultivate a sociable character. If he could live out his life alone in this facking spell trap he would, for only in complete solitude could he be at ease. Instead, he was imprisoned with his clan, the other half-mortal sons of the Fae hunter-warrior Keran and his female human lovers. They were many, thanks to their sire sowing his seed across the length and breadth of Scotland for centuries before being killed in a battle with a storm demon.

What most embittered Alec was knowing his Fae sire had never returned to Ebrel of Stranraer, Alec’s mortal màthair , or ever once bothered to meet his son by her. Keran probably hadn’t cared what had happened to either of them.

A maid hauling a steaming water bucket stopped and bobbed, giving him a long, wistful look before she scurried away. Thanks to his face, a great many wenches in the stronghold dreamed of someday finding their way into Alec’s bed. It disgusted him to be the object of admiration and desire. For years and years shepherds and village lads had punished him often for attracting their females. His grandsire, who had many other reasons to despise him, had always assumed his blatant prettiness meant he also possessed a woman’s desires.

You wee flaming bawsack. I’d geld you with a dull blade before I’d let you touch another lad.

Since Alec refused to share his bed with anyone, and rarely slept well, he spent most of his nights pacing the passages of his clan’s castle. Looking for any sign of weakness in the enchantment that held them imprisoned had turned up nothing, but that wasn’t really his purpose. Walking tired him enough to permit him a few hours of sleep before dawn. Escaping the ugly memories of his youth had always proved impossible, but giving his restless brain something more to do than brood also helped better leash his short temper. Darro, the laird’s second and the clan’s peacemaker, had often reminded him that he could not exist on anger and suspicion alone.

Someday, Brother, you shall settle all your scores, the chieftain had once predicted. Then what ’twill be left to occupy your time?

Alec had shrugged, unconcerned. Unless you’ve the means to bring back the dead, never shall I settle any of them.

At the end of his rounds, he always checked the entry to the spell trap, as it was the one and only connection Dun Talamh had to the outside world, where the castle also existed. Nothing could escape once on this side, but now and then birds, animals and even people wandered into the trap. Those of the modern world, known by the clan as outsiders, did their best to adjust to their new life at the stronghold. Nearly all of them remained convinced that there had to be a way to return to their world. Most didn’t accept that they had been made immortal by the spell trapping them with the clan and would likely spend all eternity at the stronghold. They regularly held meetings among themselves to offer ideas on how to end the curse, although every one of their notions had ended in failure.

Their forlorn hopes also spurred Alec’s nightly searches, for he knew the outsiders didn’t deserve this fate any more than the clan did .

Last month a law woman named Ava Travars had come through while pursuing a killer hiding among their vassals. Upon discovering and cornering her target, the FBI agent had been drugged and nearly dropped into a smelting furnace to burn alive. At the last moment Tasgall McKeran had intervened, saving Ava and sending the killer instead to that grim demise. As no outsider had ever died inside the spell trap, Alec had almost expected to find the murderess resurrected the next morning. Yet she had never returned to life. Before he could warn the laird about concealing the killer’s fate, however, word spread throughout the stronghold. Now all knew one could die by casting themselves into a furnace.

Although such an end should have frightened anyone too much to attempt it, Alec worried that they would begin losing those too despondent to go on.

Stopping at the end of the passage that led to the spell trap’s entry point, he saw nothing to indicate anyone or anything had come through. That, too, was another worry, as shortly after Ava’s arrival, giant caterpillars had appeared, hunting, stunning and cocooning the clan and their vassals. Since ordinary insects could not survive in the spell trap it seemed obvious that someone on the outside had enchanted the creatures, but for what reason? If it had been the same one who had cursed the clan, why attack those incapable of escaping their prison? Was it not enough to force them to relive the events of a terrible year forever?

The air in front of the entry rippled, and Alec frowned as he moved closer. He could smell an odor of sickening decay now. The stone in front of his boots seemed to shift, and a large, black hole appeared in the floor. A pebble-sized hailstone shot out and tumbled across the passage floor. A moment later a small mortal body came hurtling up out of the darkness. Alec caught the child before leaping back from the edge.

The tiny female lifted one bloody hand to cover her eyes and said something, her limbs trembling wildly. A huge bruise on her jaw quickly paled and disappeared.

Alec could not hear her words or any sound until sunrise, thanks to the night deafness his mortal blood had plagued him with since birth. Telling her he would not be able to understand her until dawn would only frighten her more. She clutched him about the neck so tightly he couldn’t take a breath, not that it would harm him. Very little could inflict injury on him, thanks to his sire’s Fae blood, and she weighed only as much as a sack of goose feathers. Holding the delicate wee thing made his heart clench.

A bairn now, come to this cursed place where she should never grow another inch, nor age a single day. Gods, but he wished he could send her back to her world.

The child’s body seemed to be stretching, as if she were trying to free herself from his hold. Gently Alec placed the girl on her feet and knelt down before her, but then she clutched him again. He disliked being touched by females, and had never once been embraced like this, but he suffered no disgust. Perhaps it was due to the way she shook, her arms and legs jerking, that tugged at his heart.

I shall protect her.

Her long red-brown hair spilled over her face and shoulders like maypole ribbons, and she smelled of white lilies in full bloom. The longer he held her, the more she seemed to weigh against him. That yielding softness of her and her lovely scent made him wish she might hold onto him for the rest of the night. At once he grew appalled over his own yearning. The girl had not yet come into her womanhood, and now that she had been imprisoned in the spell trap, she never would. He could never have any sort of closeness with her .

“Calm yourself, lass.” Awkwardly he patted her narrow back with his hands.

Pulling her arms down, the girl took a step back, her eyes wide as she looked around them. Torchlight now revealed her mature features and the sweet, unmistakable curves of her body. She also looked much taller, her arms and legs long and graceful.

Alec could not quite believe what he was seeing. She had arrived as a child only to grow in a few moments into a woman?

It did not seem possible, for the small form he’d seen fall into the trap should have barely reached his elbow. Now she appeared at least ten handspans taller, and her body shape made it clear that she was no bairn. She also seemed to be dressed in garments far too small for her, and splits had appeared all over the odd slippers she wore. Then it dawned on him what had happened. Thanks to the enchantment in the spell trap, those who came in from the outside were healed of all injuries. Her diminutive size must have been due to an illness she’d suffered.

Yet how could he explain such to her? She didn’t know the simple hand signs the clan used with him during the nights. If she asked him anything, he would be unable to hear her words.

Seemingly unaware of how stunned he was or the changes to her body, the lass moved her hands expressively as she spoke. Already the blood was drying on her fingers, which appeared long and slender. She stopped and stared at them, and then noticed the hole in the floor. Skittering back, she turned and hurled herself into Alec’s arms again.

“’Twill be well now, lass,” he said as vibrations against his neck told him she was sobbing. “I have you.”

Alec knew he should carry her to the great hall and summon the laird, but her violent trembling and the tears soaking the shoulder of his tunic persuaded him to take a different direction. As he climbed up the stairs, a broad-shouldered silhouette appeared on the steps above him. Farlan McKeran, the clan’s seneschal, grinned as he saw him, but then sobered as he saw the woman Alec carried. His concern showed in his gaze as it shifted over them both.

“She’s just come through, and she’s terrified out of her wits, so dinnae come near.” He jerked his chin in the direction he meant to take. “I’ll keep her with me in my stronghold chamber. Bid Ben come straight away, and Lady Ava.”

Farlan nodded and ran off toward the infirmary.

Since the lass only reacted by tightening her grip, Alec carried her up to the next landing. After making his way through two more passages he entered the small chamber he used when he was not occupying his larger quarters in the garrison hall. As a lad he’d never slept on a proper bed, and as a man had never grown accustomed to one, so he kept only a thin, straw-filled ticking on the floor in one corner. What garments he had he kept in a trunk under the small table where he worked. In a basket by the large chair by the hearth he kept some scrolls he’d taken from the clan’s library in order to study when he couldn’t sleep.

He tossed some wood on the fire with one hand and then tried to put the lass on the chair, but she wouldn’t let go of him. Rather than force her to release him he turned and sat down with her. Her shivering made him pull his tartan from his shoulders and wrap it around her.

“I shallnae permit anyone to harm you again, lass,” Alec told her, and vowed to himself that would be the truth.

The woman lay against him for a long time, her shaking gradually slowing and then stopping. The warmth of her form and her calmness soothed him in return. A cluster of lilies sometimes bloomed near one of the windows in his grandsire’s barn during spring, he recalled, and she smelled just like them. He should not want her anywhere near him, no matter what she smelled of. Perhaps his guard had been lowered because he’d thought her a child at first. Now he finally understood why men and women sought to share their beds rather than sleep alone, if they experienced the same kind of comfort from each other.

She but clings to me out of fear. I’m a stranger to her.

Being so close also gave him a chance to better admire her burnished copper hair and gentle features. She seemed flawlessly proportioned now that she had been healed, with a wide forehead, smooth brows and bow-shaped lips. Her long, willowy limbs made her seem otherworldly, as did her fair, smooth skin, through which he could see the blue of some of her veins. Her hair could only be called glorious, a rich golden brown with thousands of glints of amber, bronze, and deep red. Thin gold rings in her lobes twinkled with tiny crystals, and a single pearl nestled in the upper curve of one small ear. Like him she had a cleft in her chin, but not as deep as his own. His fingers itched to touch that, as well as a faint, thumbprint-size birthmark on her left temple.

By the gods, she’s perfect.

What troubled him was seeing how her garments appeared so short on her limbs. The cuffs of her jacket now reached only just past her elbows, and gaped over the shirt she wore under it. Her breasts now strained at the flat beads holding the front together, as did her feet in the slippers with the burst seams. Everything she wore looked to him as if it had been made for a child, or a child-sized woman.

I didnae mistake what I saw at first. She came through much smaller, with an odd shape to her lower legs. But why should the spell trap change her thus? Was she sent to tempt someone?

The moment Alec indulged in his usual suspicions about outsiders, he knew in her case that they were wrong. In his old life he’d encountered many deceptive females; here in the spell trap he’d fended off one particularly vile wench who had murdered every man she’d seduced for money. That one had also tried to burn Ava Travars to death. This girl was nothing like them; her confusion and terror struck him like frantic fists. That and in his gut he seemed to recognize her, in ways and depths that he had never experienced with any other female. He wondered if she had suffered deeply at the hands of others.

Mayhap ’tis why her touch doesnae disgust me.

For a time, he wondered if she’d fallen asleep, and then she lifted her head to look at him.

In that moment he saw that her eyes were a soft, pale gray that reminded him of the fur of a mountain hare just before it turned winter white. Tears still glittered on her dark brown eyelashes, which fluttered for a moment as she took in his face. Some color had returned to her pale cheeks, and he saw a small dent on her lower lip, likely a scar from biting it over and again. She had the most ordinary of features, and yet everything about her stirred him deep inside, warming and absorbing him as if she were some great beauty.

Why do I find her so lovely? She’s naught to me.

The woman hardly breathed as she returned his regard, her astonishment plain now. Two tears trembling on her lashes spilled down her face, seemingly unnoticed by her. This must have been the first time she had taken a good look at him, Alec thought, faintly amused. To her he must have appeared otherworldly, for only one other man among the clan could match the outrageous handsomeness Ebrel and Keran had passed along to him. His black hair, violet eyes and pallid hide had come from his màthair’s Dumnonii blood and would have proved trouble enough. Only his sire’s Fae blood had magnified the rare beauty Alec had inherited, refining it to magnificence beyond anything a mortal might possess.

For once in his life Alec didn’t mind, perhaps because no female had ever wept simply from looking upon him.

Inspecting her hands, he saw that some streaks of dried blood were now all that remained of her wounds. One of the few benefits of entering the trap was that it healed whatever wounds or sickness the outsiders suffered at that moment. She had been tiny when these wounds had been inflicted in her world. He only wished he could spend five minutes alone with the bastart that had attacked and hurt a female the size of a child.

The woman withdrew one hand and pointed to a spot just below the hollow of her throat and said something that made her lips bow.

“I cannae hear you, lass,” Alec told her. “I’m night-deaf.”

She held his gaze with hers as she repeated something several times and tapped the same spot, her lips moving even slower, until he finally worked out what she was saying.

Oh. Live. Ee. Ah.

“Your name, ’tis Olivia?” he said, and she nodded and watched his face with an expectant expression. It took him another moment to fathom that she wished him to do the same. “I’m Alec McKeran.” As uncertainty flickered across her face, he added, “Another shall soon arrive and speak with you on what’s happened.”

Olivia wiped the tears from her cheeks, her movements swift, as if they embarrassed her. At the same time, she looked around the room, and the surprise returned to her face. Her gaze lingered on the ticking for so long Alec tried to explain it .

“I spent my boyhood sleeping in a barn.” As she regarded him he nodded at his odd bed. “I piled hay in one of the stalls and covered it with an old blanket. I still cannae abide a more comfortable bed.”

Understanding and sadness showed in her eyes, as if she’d known what he’d endured. Of course, she couldn’t, but her silent sympathy seemed more like a gift than an insult. Her head turned toward the door, and then she regarded him as she pointed at it and made a knocking gesture.

“Enter,” Alec called.

Benedict Miller, the clan’s healer, stepped inside. Lanky and red-haired, he carried his bag of medical supplies that he hardly ever used. The healer’s vivid green eyes shifted as he noticed Olivia’s bloody hands, and his expression became appalled.

“She was beaten badly before crossing over into the trap,” he told the healer, annoyed that Ben would assume him responsible for her wounds. “I caught her in my arms when she was flung up out of a hole that appeared in the floor. Aye, and the enchantment, ’tis changed her.”

Ben’s brow furrowed as he gazed at the lass, who was speaking again.

A moment later Ava Travars, the law woman who had become the laird’s lady, came into the room. At the sight of the tall, dark-haired beauty, Olivia stiffened, her eyes going wide, and then she slumped against him.

“ T his is Renard Beaumont,” Bodach said to the answering service for Riley Corp. “I’ve been waiting over an hour for Ms. Gibson, but she hasn’t shown up for our appointment. I’ll be contacting another firm to do the restoration work I need. Good day.”

One couldn’t slam down cell phones, but he hoped the abrupt end of the call would seem convincingly angry. He then blocked Riley’s number and pocketed the phone, whistling as he watched the tow truck haul off Olivia Gibson’s car. He’d arranged with the towing service’s nefarious owner to deliver the car to a local chop shop, where it would be emptied, scrubbed clean of any identifiers, and painted a different color before being driven to and resold in Mexico. As this was the second car he’d had to get rid of, it pleased him to have a more secure method of disposing of vehicles left in proximity to McKeran’s Castle.

He still had a little time before he had to go to Salinas to deal with his only remaining problem, so he decided to peek at what was happening inside the spell trap.

From the property Bodach drove to the cliffside trail that led down to the disguised sea cave he used as his lair. Smugglers had once used the spot during Prohibition to temporarily store cases of rum, whiskey and wine brought down from Canada before distributing them to bootleggers, speakeasies and private citizens wealthy enough to ignore the Volstead Act. After disposing of the smugglers and their illicit spirits, Bodach had embedded in the walls of the cave the Fae red crystal he had collected while roaming the mortal realm for centuries. Well known for draining the life of anything that came near them, the parasitic gem had always been considered too dangerous by the Fae for any use...except Bodach.

Although he’d never understood why, red crystal had become both his savior and the foundation of his power.

The discovery he’d made came about during his brief time in Elphyne. The result of a forbidden coupling between two vicious goblins, Bodach had been born with powers even his parents regarded as unnerving. Ultimately his mother had chained and left him to die in a cave filled with red crystals used for executing undesirables. Instead of ending his life, however, the feared gems had empowered him enough to break free. That brought him to the attention of the Queen of the Dark Fae Court, who had exiled him to the mortal realm for eternity.

Since that time Bodach had learned how to use the dangerous crystal to do nearly anything he desired...except find the treasure that would allow him to take his vengeance.

Thanks to the warding spell Bodach had left in place by his lair, no mortal could see the entry. As he walked through the illusion of rocks and undergrowth and into the cave, he was obliged to step over two mounds of crumbling bones. The remains of the last two young mortals he’d fed to his ever-hungry crystals; they’d been left so desiccated that in a few more days they would dissolve into powder. Now newly empowered, the encrusted walls seemed to glow with scarlet satisfaction.

“You look beautiful today, my lovelies,” Bodach crooned, and trailed his fingertips over the eight-sided ends protruding from the stone. The direct contact sent a surge of new power through his core, adding to his magic and invigorating him as nothing else could.

He went to retrieve his window scroll, an enchanted roll of Fae parchment that could look back through time to show him whatever he desired to see. He’d watched quite a lot of Olivia Gibson’s short life through it before meeting her, memories of which still made him smirk. A lesser being might have experienced some pity for her, but among the dark Fae those methods were used to ensure only the strongest survived. She’d barely done so, and for that reason he’d never expected her to fight to stay out of the portal he’d created. Still, it had given him one last chance to terrify and torment her, something he always enjoyed.

“Show me where my chilly little creation landed,” he told the scroll.

An image of a narrow window slit in one of Dun Talamh’s tower rooms appeared on the parchment. It contained crates of torchwood, the oak branches that had been whittled smooth and wrapped on one end with oiled linen. On the short, snowy sill sat a nugget of white ice shaped like a scarab beetle, which sprouted legs, turned around, and stared back at Bodach with its tiny crimson eyes.

Even inside the trap, his enchantments could always sense him, he thought, pleased.

“I don’t blame you for what happened with Olivia, my frigid little friend,” Bodach assured his creation. “Now that you’re there, however, you should get busy soon.”

The beetle dipped down as if bowing to him and withdrew its legs to mimic a piece of ice again. Bodach saw why when one of the McKeran guards came into the tower room to retrieve some torchwood. His haste made him miss the white insect on the sill, and how it had begun swelling, as if growing a large bubble of ice on its back. That bubble sprouted legs and slowly crept off the matriarch, who appeared to have grown a little larger. The lack of attention the McKeran paid their surroundings had served Bodach well, but never as much as now. In a few short days he would be able to enter the spell trap and search unhindered for the treasure he had unwittingly imprisoned along with the clan.

“When I find you, my darling,” he murmured as he left the cave, “we will have so much fun together.”

Last night when he’d gotten the call from the idiot mortal he had employed—and who had failed him—Bodach had considered discarding his latest scheme to infiltrate the spell trap. He might have done so, had Olivia Gibson not sensed what lay beneath his glamour this morning. Years of being locked away from the world had doubtless given her the ability to detect more than an ordinary mortal; she would have had to gauge the mood of that harridan who had raised her every time she had walked through the door. Bodach imagined what young Olivia would have to endure inside the spell trap, and chuckled. One tussle with the MacBren’s men would make Mae Gibson seem a saint by comparison.

“You were made to suffer, my dear,” he said, glancing back in the direction of McKeran’s Castle. “But soon you and all the others will have nothing to do but sleep for all eternity.”

An hour later Bodach parked his Mercedes a few blocks from the shabby townhouse where his prey had been trying to hide for the last week. He glanced in the rearview mirror as he altered his glamour, becoming the twin of an imperious-looking matron dressed in a set of pearls, her helmet of silver-blonde hair gleaming in the sunlight.

The door to the townhouse opened before Bodach could knock, and a bleary-eyed Charles Kingston stared out at him, his expression almost comical with utter disbelief.

“Mom, what are you doing here?” he demanded.

“All you had to do was put the beetle in Olivia’s purse. Instead, it flew back to me this morning.” As Charles blustered Bodach punched him in the face, knocking him back into the townhouse. “After all the money I paid you, you couldn’t even get that right.”

Charles scrambled backward, his eyes bulging. “How…how did you know about that, Mother?”

“You really are the stupidest mortal I’ve ever employed.” He dropped his glamour, making the mortal reel backward in horror. He wrapped his true form in his Renard Beaumont guise as he walked into the townhouse and kicked shut the door.

“I’m sorry.” Charles fell to his knees, instantly penitent. “I tried to do what you wanted, but she caught me. She thought I was stealing from her.”

“Chucky?” A large-bosomed brunette dressed in a short pink satin robe came out of a back room. “What’s going on?” She halted to take in the sight of her lover on his knees and then Bodach. “Hey, you never said you were aycee-deecee.”

Bodach considered his options. He’d come to bespell Olivia’s ex-boyfriend so that he would hang himself, but the brunette offered a more diverting alternative.

“Give me the belt to your robe, my dear,” he said as he approached her, and used a simple spell to make her acquiescent and completely infatuated with him.

“Sure.” Looking dazed now, the woman tugged off the strip of pink satin and handed it to him. Her robe parted, showing her surgically augmented breasts, shaved sex and flawless tan. “I’m Roxy. Do you like my body?”

“It is quite nice.” Bodach fondled her for a moment, and then wrinkled his nose as the scent of Charles’s sweat and semen came from her. “Do go and freshen up, my dear, and then change the bed linens if you would.”

The woman squealed with delight and hurried off. A moment later the sound of a shower running came out of the back room.

“Lovely thing. The breast implants are especially convincing.” Once she had gone he dropped the robe belt in Charles’ lap. “Is she any good?”

“She has a mouth like a sump pump,” the mortal said, his expression dreamy. “Since Olivia wouldn’t let me fuck her I’ve been using Roxy for sex. She doesn’t have any money, though. I’m going to talk her into a threesome. Buddy of mine promised me five large if I do.”

Some immortals considered Bodach reprehensible, even among the dark Fae, but often humans made him seem noble by comparison.

“You’ve always been an excellent opportunist, Chucky,” he said, patting Charles’s cheek, “but that won’t be necessary.”

“Why don’t you do her with me?” the mortal whined. “She’ll let you put it anywhere, and you've got plenty of cash. I’d give you a discount—four large.”

“I’ve wasted enough time and money on you,” he assured him, and heard the shower turn off. “Now go in that closet over there and hang yourself.”