Page 48 of Highlander’s Curse (The Daughters of the Glen #8)

In the distance, a man walked toward them, leading a horse behind him. His progress was slowed by a heavy limp, but as he drew closer, he lifted his arm in greeting.

“He seems friendly enough.”

“They always do. Until they turn on you.”

Suspicion must be an instinctive function of the warrior brain.

“Don’t be such a dinosaur, Colin. Look at the poor man. He can hardly be a threat. He can barely walk, let alone—”

A rain of arrows ended her tirade, and the world around her erupted in a cacophony of battle: men yelling, swords clanging, and most immediately, her own horse screaming in response to the arrow sticking out of his shoulder.

Behind her, Colin shouted for her to ride, but fleeing was her last concern at the moment.

Her only thought was to stay on her horse’s back.

When her mount reared in response to the pain, the reins jerked from her grasp.

She leaned against the big animal’s neck and tangled her fingers in his mane while she clenched her knees in an attempt to keep her seat, all to no avail.

The sensation of this particular flight was both unsettling and short-lived, followed by a bone-rattling crash to the hard-packed earth of the road that left her flattened and gasping for her next breath.

She forced herself to her hands and knees, scrambling backward just in time to avoid the vicious kick of her terrorized mount. She pushed up to her feet and lunged for the side of the road, slamming her shoulder into a tree in her urgency to escape the big animal’s frenzy.

On the far side of the road, Colin fought off at least three men, his sword flashing in the dappled light as he kept his back to the forest, drawing them farther away from the spot where she clung to the tree.

His sword slashed in a blur of movement, and one of his attackers fell with an ear-piercing scream.

Down to two men. He could handle only two.

Three men.

“Behind you!”

She screamed the warning too late as the third man emerged from the forest, swinging a club that struck Colin in the back of the head. He crumpled forward and fell to the ground, motionless, as an eerie silence filled the air.

“Colin!”

Pushing away from the tree, she ran to reach him, as uncaring of the men standing around him as about the pain searing through her body.

She had almost reached him when arms clamped around her like a vise, sweeping her off her feet. She clawed at the hands holding her and kicked the air, connecting with flesh hard enough to make her captor yelp.

Her efforts earned her a head-rattling shake. “Be still, shrew, else I’ll make you wish you had, I swear it!”

The smelly beast who held her slipped his meaty arm around her throat, leaving just enough space for her to dip her chin and sink her teeth into his forearm.

He yelled out in his pain and slammed her to the ground at his feet even as his companions’ laughter echoed in her ears.

She would have continued to fight, useless though it might be, but from here her view of Colin was unobstructed and what she saw shattered her will.

Not Colin. Colin’s body.

Lifeless, unmoving, he lay not six feet away from her, on his back, his face turned away from her, his head pillowed in a pool of his own blood.

A scream curdled up from the depths of her soul, primeval and ancient in its pain. Nothing mattered but reaching his side.

Ignoring the men around her as well as the one who approached on horseback, she clambered to her feet and threw herself toward Colin.

The man he’d felled lay in her path, but he was no obstacle.

Turning her face from the gaping wound in his chest, she climbed over him to get to Colin as if the man’s body were nothing more than a large rock in the road.

She tightened her fingers around a handful of the material of Colin’s tunic, pulling his arm toward her as she reached him.

Even her hand to his face brought no sign of life.

“Colin?”

This couldn’t be happening. She’d only just found him; she couldn’t lose him so soon. It wasn’t right. How could the Faeries who’d worked so hard to bring them together allow this to happen?

“Send us back,” she whispered as she bent over him. If ever she’d needed to believe in the Magic, this was the time. “Please send us home. Get us out of here, now! I wish to go home!”

She waited, holding her breath. Waited for the mysterious Magic to manifest itself and whisk them to safety. Waited for the green glow of lightning or an earthquake or whatever form it wanted to take.

Waited until unfriendly hands fastened around her waist and dragged her from Colin’s side.

“Goddamned freaking worthless Faeries!” she screamed, kicking with everything she had left as the man who held her lifted her up to the newcomer on horseback.

She tightened her hand into a fist and drew back, swinging wildly at her new captor, but he caught her wrist, easily deflecting her blow.

“I’d recommend against any more of your useless hysterics, my good woman. If you continue, I’ll have one of these men slit your throat and dump your body on the road along with his. Do you understand?”

Whoever he was, he spoke with a distinctly British accent.

“We’ll take her with us to rejoin the company and add her to the other prisoners. A woman, a lady by the looks of her in spite of her behavior, will likely bring MacDougall a fair ransom.”

“Or a fair bedding,” one of the men shouted, to the laughter of all.

“What about him?”

“Leave him,” her captor ordered. “If he’s not already dead, he’ll bleed out soon enough. We’ve our hands full with the lot we already hold.”

If he’s not already dead. . .

In spite of these animals, in spite of the betraying Faeries, those few words gave her something to hang on to as the horse picked up speed, carrying her away from the other half of her Soul.

Her heart lay behind her on the road, but those five words gave her hope that her heart might yet live, if only she could figure out some way to escape these men and get back here. Flynn bided his time in the trees, watching the drama play out on the road ahead of him.

When the soldier had lifted Abigail to his mount, he’d considered using the weapon he’d brought with him. Briefly considered.

He reached for the weapon tucked in his waistband, clenching his teeth in irritation as his fingers passed right through it.

The blood he’d taken from Abigail had worn off.

Once again, his body had returned to the insubstantial state that had cursed his people since their banishment to this half-existence on the Mortal Plain.

He could neither commit nor experience violence.

The only ability left to his people in their punishment had been the Compulsion, an ability to control the weaker-minded among the Mortals to do their bidding.

But that was before the discovery of the consequences of taking blood. Through the ingestion of fresh blood, he could do anything.

Too bad the only blood available to him at the moment was wholly Mortal. Though it would restore his ability to act as he needed to, it would not carry the sweet tang of Magic. For that, he needed to find Abby.

Ah, well. For now, Mortal blood would suffice.

“Come to me, blacksmith.”

He waited impatiently while the big man he’d taken in the last village lumbered over to him, eyes blank, waiting to be told what to do.

“Take your knife from its sheath. I’d have you draw its blade across your finger. Do it now.”

Without hesitation, the blacksmith did as he was told.

Large of body, small of mind. It suited his purposes to have one such as this under his Compulsion.

Flynn lifted the man’s finger to his lips, fighting the revulsion he felt in taking the filthy Mortal blood into his mouth. It couldn’t be helped. He needed what the blood would give him. He needed to be solid and whole to take Abigail from the soldiers.

“Mount up, blacksmith. Follow with me.”

Flynn directed his horse forward to where the two bodies lay on the road.

Good. The soldiers had saved him the effort of dealing with MacAlister. It made his task of recovering Abigail much easier.

Once again, he’d follow. He’d wait and watch for the inevitable opportunity to make her his.