Book Two: Hellwind Trilogy

By

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

Dedication:

To Madris, Andrea, and Megan

With thanks and gratitude for all you do.

I appreciate your hard work on my behalf.

Prologue

Alinor Tabor watched her lord and master, her husband of ten years as he strutted across the courtyard of their keep and wished a bolt of lightning would stairstep down from the roiling heavens to fry him where he walked. She longed to look down on his smoldering ashes, so she could hawk a goodly wad of phlegm on the mess and curse him as he deserved to be cursed. If ever a man had earned a place in hell it was Reynolds Tabor and with any luck at all, he’d find his way there sooner or later.

“Sooner if I had my druthers,” she mumbled, rubbing the bruises that ran up and down her left arm—bruises that went with the other purple and blue shadows that littered her body.

Every woman at the keep had reason to hate and fear the laird. Not a one from the age of twelve on up had been spared his rutting or his brutal hand. Seven were pregnant with his seed and another two had just delivered bairns. It was neither a safe nor easy place for the females of County Wicklow to live.

“Janey died this morn, Lady Alinor.”

Turning to confront the servant who brought the news, Alinor sighed. It was not unexpected. The child had been little more than a wisp of a thing when Reynolds had forced himself on her a week past, breaking a thin little leg in the process. As undernourished and anemic as the poor thing had been, the lady of the keep was surprised Janey Reid had lasted this long. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise for the fourteen year-old waif. She would join Betta Shaw in the servant’s cemetery.

“Well, see to her burial,” she told the servant and at the man’s respectful nod, Alinor turned toward the kitchen door. She took stock of the staff as she made her way through the hot room.

A broken nose for Jenny Regis.

A black eye for Lila Deal.

A split lip for Maire Dunlop.

A concussion for Lizzie MacLeod.

An arm in a sling for Jessie McFadden.

Three rounded bellies for Nanceen McKenna and Wilma Gilmore.

All compliments of the vicious bastard whose bed Alinor had not shared in over three years but who had placed the marks of his drunken abuse upon her two days before. It was not wise—as well she knew—to argue with her husband. He was not of a mind to be challenged, debated, or told he was ever wrong—especially by a woman. Nor did he forgive or forget and because she had dared question his mistreatment of young Kitty Kirkpatrick, his lady-wife had borne heavy fists and vicious feet for her trouble.

“My lady, will you be breaking your fast this morn?” Ethel McGregor, the chief cook, inquired.

“Nay,” Alinor said listlessly. “I’ve no stomach for it.” At Ethel’s concerned sigh, the lady of the keep stopped long enough to bestow a brittle smile—the only kind of which she seemed capable of late. “I’ll take soup and a thick slice of your sautéed beef between sourdough bread, though, for the noon meal. Have a glass of milk sent with it and an apple, mayhap a bunch of grapes to tied me over until the evening meal.”

“Aye, my lady,” Ethel agreed in a relieved voice.

“And send a basket to Janey’s grandfather. She went on to her reward this day,” Alinor ordered.

Ethel’s shoulders slumped. “The goddess be good to her,” she said then slapped both flour-caked hands over her mouth, her eyes wide.

Every hand stilled in the kitchen. Every eye flew to the lady of the keep. Breaths were held. Hearts skipped a beat.

“I did not hear you say that, Ethel Mae,” Alinor said. “And you had best be grateful he didn’t.”

Ethel nodded silently, trembling violently, for the mistake she’d just made could have cost her life had it been overheard by one of the keep’s menfolk then reported—as surely would have been—to the laird.

“Be more careful,” Alinor cautioned. She looked at each woman and girl there. “Each of you. Be very careful.”

She left the kitchen and slowly, painfully took the servants stairs to the third floor where her personal chambers were located. Reynolds rarely intruded there so she spent as many hours as possible where she neither saw his ugly face nor heard his sarcastic voice. His chambers were on the floor above her so thankfully the thick stone walls and wooden beams kept all but the occasional piercing scream from interfering with her solitude.

Closing her door—but daring not shoot the bolt for fear Reynolds would take it in his mind to come calling—she went to the fireplace, pushed aside the tapestry hanging beside it and dug her short nails into the borders of a loose stone. Removing the stone, she reached inside the hidey-hole and took out the diary she had been keeping since being brought to Tabor Hill Keep the day after her seventeenth birthday. Replacing the stone, she went to the desk, picked up the inkwell and quill then took the diary with her to the window seat. Setting the inkwell on the window ledge, she slid onto the seat’s thick cushion, drawing her knees up to brace the diary as she wrote.

“Well, today the poor little sweeting left this ugly world behind. I pray she has found a much better garden in which to work than the one she toiled in here at Tabor Hill. Only She knows all the travails Jenny suffered in this life but at last the wee lass is beyond his reach,” she wrote in her secret language no one save she could decipher. Dipping the quill repeatedly into the black ink of the well, she finished the page relating the poor girl’s demise then lifted the book to her lips to blow the ink dry.

The first fat drops of water hit the mullioned panes beside her and Alinor turned her face toward the bleak gray light. Closing the diary, she laid her head on the mound of pillows behind her and stared at the water that began to cascade down the glass. She put a finger to one drop and traced its way down the pane until it disappeared.

“How I wish I were a drop of rain,” she mused aloud. “I could go where I pleased, when I pleased.”

Being allowed beyond the walls of Tabor Hill was something about which Alinor could only dream. She had not stepped one foot beyond the plank bridge that ended at the portcullis since her wretched Joining to Reynolds Tabor. She had not traveled to the first fair, enjoyed the first outing, nor returned to her family home since that terrible day. She was a virtual prisoner in her husband’s domain and could only be thankful he had yet to see the need to apply the shackles that would make her captivity complete.

A commotion in the courtyard drew her attention and she leaned forward, placing her forehead on the cold glass so she could see what was happening below. Her forehead creased for there was a massive coach and four sitting in the turnaround before the massive front steps of the keep. Four beautiful black horses were harnessed to a most impressive black coach with two liveried men in black sitting in the driver’s seat. The sight of the unrelieved color sent a shiver down Alinor’s back.

“Who could it be coming to call upon Lord Tabor?” she asked quietly.

Visitors were rare at the keep. Personages of importance—and whomever it was inside the coach surely possessed vast wealth from the look of the conveyance and horseflesh—never darkened the door. The laird’s lack of manners and reluctance to offer hospitality played a great part in the isolation of Tabor Hill.

Scurrying to her knees for a better look, Alinor dragged her skirts out of the way, laid the diary on the seat and cracked the casement window, pushing it out just enough so she could hear. The cool wash of the cool wind misting her face with droplets of water did not dissuade her from pushing the window open a bit more.

“Oh, my!” she said as she spied her husband standing beside the coach. The monster was getting soaking wet in the downpour but even so, he had his hat in his hand, bobbing his head of sparse gray hair up and down as he conversed with whoever was inside the coach. Peering closely through the rain, Alinor could see the window of the coach was cracked open.

“I will see to it, Your Grace! Ye have my word on it!” she heard her husband agree then the coach’s window was closed and the driver snapped the reins to set the perfectly matched animals into motion.

As the elegant coach arced around the oyster shell drive, the laird of the keep remained where he was until the vehicle had cleared the plank bridge. Slamming his hat atop his head, he strode toward the stables with a heavy tread and drooping shoulders. Whatever task he had been set to accomplish must be important, indeed, if Reynolds intended to ride out in the deluge.

“May your horse pitch you into a fast-moving stream and the devil drags you under,” Alinor said, sticking her tongue out at her husband’s retreating back as though she was still a teenage miss. When he stopped and spun around—no doubt feeling the hatred she flung his way—she scrambled back lest he see her spying on him.

Trembling as she stood just beyond the window seat, for the window was still ajar and she knew he could not help but have seen it so, she twisted her hands together, whimpering at the surety of another beating at the hands of her enraged spouse. The last time he’d caught her spying on him, he had taken a quirt to her bare ass and legs and lashed her ‘til the blood ran down her quivering legs.

“Please, Lady!” she whispered to the only deity she knew might be listening. “Please don’t let him beat me again!”

A bolt of lightning sizzled through the bleak gray heavens and the crack was loud enough to make Alinor shriek. She covered her ears and ran to her bed, flinging herself upon the satin coverlet as the rumble of thunder that followed shook the windows in their frames. She drew her slender body into a fetal position, burying her face into the softness of the pillow. Shuddering, terrified that at any moment her husband would throw open the door and snatch her up by her long red hair, she laid there barely breathing lest she miss the sound of his plodding steps on the stairs. The moment she heard the loud thumps, she began to whimper.

The door was thrown open—banging against the wall as the laird of the keep strode into the room.

“Spying, were ye, ye worthless cunt?” he snarled. “What did I tell ye about that?”

Alinor heard the tink of metal and knew he was unbuckling his belt. She prayed that meant he would use it on her and not that it signaled he was releasing the monster he kept penned in his britches. The moment his hand closed cruelly on her ankle, and he jerked her half-off the bed—flinging her skirt over her back—she went as cold as stone.

“I’ll teach ye to disrespect me, ye ugly hag!”

As she always did, Alinor went somewhere else in her mind as his fingers snagged in her bloomers to rip them from her hips. She grunted as he wedged his loathsome body between her thighs but barely batted an eye as he rammed his filthy, disgusting flesh into her dry sheath. She had learned long ago to distance herself from his rutting. With her hands buried in the coverlet, she endured the painful process and when he was through with her, removed his heavy, rain-soaked body from hers, she stayed where she was until he was at the door.

“I’ll be gone from the keep for nigh on a week,” he snapped as he readjusted his clothing. “On the prince’s business. My brother, Nigel, will be here in my stead.”

Alinor cringed at the news for if there was any man she hated more than her husband, it was his younger brother Nigel who used her, as though she was his own.

“Be good to him, ye useless bitch,” Reynolds said and laughed, knowing full well what would happen when Nigel arrived.

Waiting until she heard his boot heels thumping on the stairs, she rolled over, dragged herself into the bed and lay there with his slick seed running between her legs.

“Merciful goddess, help me,” she whispered. “Please, help me. I cannot do this on my own.”

Another brilliant flash of lightning pulsed at the window, lightning skirled, thunder punctuated the violent burst then the room turned dark as night around Alinor—the light leaching away as though being sucked from her chamber.

Sitting up, her heart thudding painfully in her chest, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye and snapped her head around. There was nothing but darkness in the room. No light came from the door Reynolds had left standing open. It was as though all luminescence had fled the world.

“Mo Regina?” she asked quietly for there was but one deity who had the power to turn day into night in an instant.

A soft, sweet-smelling breeze drifted through the room. The scent of lavender hung in the air.

“Mo Regina?” Alinor whispered again, her green eyes wide.

A tiny spark of light blossomed in the heart of the dark hearth then flittered across the room like a firefly. Prism-like colors flashed across the ceiling in small diamond shapes, spun lazily along the crown molding then coalesced into a good-sized ball of slowly spinning light. The revolutions came to a halt. The ball began to elongate until it was a shaft of soft light over six feet in height.

Mesmerized by the display, Alinor could not tear her gaze from the multi-colored light shaft that hovered just above the carpet. As it began to expand outwards, she drew in a breath and held it for it was fashioning a being with broad shoulders and narrow hips, long legs and powerful arms that lifted away from its body to extend toward her.

“Alinor…”

Her name came from the center of what was now a head forming on the torso of the beam of light. It was softly spoken with a deep timbre that made the hair on her arms stir.

Slowly, the luminosity began to fade until she could see color in the column of light—long black hair woven into a thick braid that hung down a brawny chest; amber eyes that glowed with an inner fire that held her captive in its gaze; a black silk shirt and black leather pants.

“Alinor,” he whispered again, one hand held out to her. “Come to me, dearling.”

She did not question the command or the otherworldly nature of her unknown visitor. His face was the most handsome of any man she had ever seen and the gentle smile hovering on his lips put her at ease.

“Aye, milord,” she said as she moved from the bed.

Her eyes fused with his, she took the hand he offered—felt the warmth of his flesh—and was pulled into the safety of his strong arms. She closed her eyes as he cupped the back of her head to hold her to his chest.

“I heard you, my lady,” he said and placed a gentle kiss on the top of her head.

“Protect me?” she pleaded.

“With all that I am,” he answered. “You and yours for eternity. You were chosen for me.”

She looked up into his chiseled features, the gleaming golden eyes.

“Who are you?”

“Who would you have me to be?” he asked.

Alinor put a hand to his chest and felt giddy from the feel of hard, solid muscle beneath her palm. She thought of all the wistful dreams she’d had of a gallant rescuer coming to take her from Reynolds Tabor.

“My savior,” she said without hesitation. “My friend. My lover.”

“Your lover I will be,” he said. He crooked his index finger beneath her chin then lowered his head to touch his lips to hers. The kiss was soft, sweet, and fleeting before he raised his head. “There is but one small matter.”

“Anything,” she swore.

He brought her wrist to his mouth and nipped at the flesh, drawing blood. Alinor winced, looking down at the crimson stain on her flesh.

“You must swear yourself and yours to me for all time,” he said. “I must have your seal in blood and when it is done, you will never again know the troubles of your past. I will right your wrongs. I will attend to your enemies. I will set your world to rights but you must join the Sisterhood, as all your serving women must. You must learn the ways of the Sisterhood and you must never deny me what is mine.”

Alinor would have done anything to be free of her husband and those of his kin. She nodded eagerly, swearing to do whatever it took although she had no notion what the Sisterhood was.

“I am yours,” she said, then shook her head. “We are yours. Tell me what we must do to remain so.”

From the depths of the room a thick leather bound book appeared, floating toward them as though carried by unseen hands.

“Sign your names in your own blood,” he instructed and when she did, he bit his own wrist, dipped a finger in the blood then scrawled his name in the Book. She looked down. His name was emblazoned in his own blood—Chrystian Brell—for just a moment before the Book dissolved.

“What are you?” she asked. “Did the Triune goddess send you?”

He smiled and the gleam of his white teeth looked predatory.

“Nay, my lady, She did not. Another did. I have been indentured to the womenfolk of your family for as long as there is time in the megaverse. I was created just for you and yours and you will have the first use of me.”

He backed her toward the bed—the evidence of a thick, hard erection pressing against her belly. Scooping her up in his arms, he laid her down and in the blink of an eye her clothes disappeared and his, as well, simply vanished. As he stretched out his muscled body atop her, nudged her thighs apart with his knees, Alinor wrapped her arms around him.

“Love me, Chrysty,” she whispered against his ear.

“Always,” he replied, sliding his cock deep inside her aching channel. “The Nightwind will always be here for you and yours. I ask but one thing of you.”

“Name it,” she said breathlessly.

“Give me power to do as I see fit in your behalf. Make sure your women never deny me and mine.”

Alinor hesitated only a moment then agreed.

The Nightwind smiled for she had unknowingly unleashed him on her world.

Chapter One

The Armistinky Territory

June 3470 ABW

The buckboard wheels surely hit every pothole between Dovertown and the river. Riding beside the elderly driver, Lorna Brent’s backside was sore, and she had a brutal headache from clenching her teeth as the wheels dipped into the ruts. Perspiring from the intense heat of the sun beating down on her parasol, she was fanning herself with a soggy handkerchief, wiping at the sweat that dripped down her neck.

“How much further is it, Mr. O’Day?” she asked the driver as she blotted her forehead.

“Well, we have to cross the river a’fore we get to the other trail what leads up to the Hill, little lady,” O'Day said as he turned his head and spat a stream of tobacco juice into the thick kudzu that grew along the trail. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his already-stained and tattered shirt. He nudged his chin at the river toward which they were plodding. “You see the river there, don’t you? Gotta figure it’ll take us half an hour on the ferry over then another hour up the trail a’fore we get to the place where we’ll meet up with the menfolk who’ll take you on up to the Hill.” He lightly snapped the reins leading to the two sway-back mules pulling the buckboard. “Reckon on another two hours to your final destination.”

Lorna groaned and stepped up the speed of her makeshift fan. She didn’t think she could last much longer. The heat was bad enough but the gnats were a particular unpleasantness she hadn’t counted on. Between those pests and the bees, wasps, and mosquitoes buzzing around her, she was as miserable as she could ever remember being. She felt as though she had opened an oven door and placed her face close to the flame.

And her breakfast of fried ham steak, eggs, grits, and toast was no longer sitting well on her stomach. The chicory coffee had given her a bad case of heartburn as well as a bitter taste in her mouth in addition to everything else.

The driver glanced at her. “Sorta makes you wish you hadn’t come out to join your brother, don’t it?” O’Day asked with a chuckle.

“He needs me to take care of his home,” she replied, but secretly she really was wishing she’d turned down Daniel’s offer. Had she known how horrid the traveling would turn out to be she would have done so without a qualm.

“What the reverend needs is a wife but I guess that ain’t likely to happen,” O’Day said with a sniff. “Not with one of his kind.”

She could not let that comment go unchallenged. “My brother is a priest, Mr. O’Day, and priests of his order take vows of chastity. He is not allowed to marry.”

“Yeah, well now that just ain’t natural,” O’Day pronounced. “A man needs a helpmate. The good book tells us so.”

“Not every man feels the need to marry, sir,” she declared.

“The gods made us humans in twos, little lady—male and female,” O’Day reminded her. “He made a man then he made a woman from his side to be at his side. Ain’t natural for a man to go through life alone.” He hawked another stream of tobacco juice over the side of the buckboard. “Ain’t natural and ain’t healthy if you ask me.”

She wasn’t going to enter a theological discussion with him. With his dirty hands—black grease packed beneath the jagged nails—and unkempt appearance Thaddeus O'Day's opinions were a bit suspect in her estimation.

“What you gonna do other than keep house for the good rev?” O’Day questioned. “You gonna try to teach the Hill’s children?”

“Don’t they have a teacher?”

The old man shook his head. “Did have one but she up and left like they all seem to do.” He sniffed. “So would you take on the position if’n it was offered to you?”

“I would certainly consider it,” she replied.

O’Day chuckled. “You’d have your hands full there, I’m reckoning. Hill folk don’t take to outsiders trying to teach them nothing. Guess your brother done found out they don’t take to religion, either.” He sniffed. “Leastways not his kind of religion.”

Lorna thought of all the letters she’d received from Daniel in which he’d detailed the roadblocks he’d run up against in Tabor Hill. Resistance to religion had been minor compared to some of the other problems he had discovered in that backwoods place. Modern medicine was frowned upon, the old time remedies holding sway more often than not. Reluctance to embrace anything that hadn’t been a part of the Hill for hundreds of years was looked upon with suspicion or outright ignored. It was one of the reasons she decided to join Daniel. More and more his letters were becoming melancholy bordering on the chronically depressed. She was worried about not only his health—which had never been robust—but his state of mind. When she’d broached the subject of coming out to join him, he had written back that he’d rather she not. His last letter had rambled on and on—saying nothing—and had disturbed her. She wrote to tell him she was coming whether he invited her or not then his letters had stopped arriving—causing her to worry even more.

“How many people live in Tabor Hill?” she asked O’Day.

“Don’t rightly know,” the man replied, reaching up to scratch his thatch of unruly red hair under the brim of his misshapen hat. “Last count there was fifteen families but how many there are in each of them families, I can’t say. People of the Hill tend to stay up there on the mountain and don't come to town much. I remember hearing something like a hundred give or take a funeral or birth.” He turned his head to give her a jaundiced look. “Didn’t your brother give you all them particulars?”

“I never asked about the actual number of folks there,” she replied. It hadn’t seemed important at the time.

“Appears to me a person would want to know everything they could ‘bout the place where they was going to live,” O’Day remarked. “Leastways, I know I would.”

"Why don't you tell me, then?" she asked.

"Me?" he asked then snorted. "Little lady, what I know about the Hill wouldn't fill a thimble. ‘Course what I suspect is another matter.” He sniffed. "I’ll tell you this much, though. The place is evil. Everybody knows so."

She stopped fanning and gave him a surprised look. "Evil, how, Mr. O'Day?" she asked.

"Evil the likes of which you'll soon learn, I'm thinking," he replied. "Ain't no amount of missionarying going to change them folks up to the Hill. They be set in their ways and your brother be wasting his time. The Hill be cursed, but I reckon you'll find that out soon enough, too, just like he did."

The driver’s words sent a shiver down Lorna’s spine. She had a dozen questions she wanted to ask him, but she had the feeling he wouldn’t be forthcoming with the answers—leastwise any answers that would make sense to her.

Letting the conversation die, she kept her eyes on the river. When the wagon rounded a lazy bend in the potholed road she saw the ferry that sat docked on their side of the wide waterway.

“Glad he’s already a’waitin’ on us,” O’Day said, snapping the reins lightly and clucking to the horses. “Get on up there, girls!”

On the ferry, Lorna could see a man lying on what appeared to be a stack of furs. He was on his back with his arms folded over his chest, his dark brown hat pulled down to shade his face from the harsh sun. Though the ferry was partially shielded by a low-hanging oak tree, there was precious little breeze to cool the day, and she wondered how anyone could sleep under such conditions.

“That there’s Cailean,” O’Day said. “Cailean McGregor. He and his brother Euan take turns pulling the ferry ‘cross the river.” He raised a grimy hand. “See the line from the other side to this ‘un?”

She did and nodded.

“The McGregors live up to the Hill,” O’Day informed her. “They been around here since old man Tabor settled up there on that mountain. One of their kin was married to him if memory serves. Speaking of which…,” He turned once again to stare at her. “I heard tell Cailean’s looking for a new wife. His’n left him last spring. Cailean would make you a fine husband.”

Lorna sighed. Daniel had warned her about the valley people’s propensity for matchmaking. It seemed some of the folks from Dovertown had the same tendency.

“I’m not searching for a husband, Mr. O’Day,” she said.

“That’s what I reckon all you fillies say at one time or another,” O’Day grumbled.

She glanced at him. "Are you married, Mr. O'Day?"

"Lord, no!" he gasped, eyes bulging. "Don't need no woman telling me what to do!"

Lorna thought it was most likely that no woman would have him. His personal habits left a lot to be desired and his body odor was strong enough to fell an ox. Thankfully, she was sitting up wind of him but now and again she got a good whiff of his offensive stench.

The buckboard rattled precariously across a deep groove in the roadway and Lorna had to grab the seat rail beside her to keep from tumbling out. She ground her teeth, trying not to groan as pain shot up her spine.

"Hey there, Cail!" O'Day called out.

The man on the ferry sat up. He swung his long legs from the stack of furs and stood, taking off his hat to arm away the sweat on his forehead. "You're early, Thad," he said.

"Interrupted your beauty nap, did I?" O'Day guffawed.

"Need every second I can get," was the reply as the man tugged his hat back on.

Lorna stared at the man as he jumped off the ferry and onto the hard-packed ground. He was tall—a good three inches over six feet—with a wide chest full of curly hair exposed in the opening of the shirt he wore unbuttoned halfway down. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to reveal bronzed arms bulging with muscles. With his lean hips, long legs, and russet hair that framed an extraordinarily striking face she didn't think the man needed any help in the male beauty department. He had it in spades.

O'Day reined in the mules as Cailean McGregor walked up to the buckboard on Lorna's side. "This here is the rev's sister. Name’s Miss Lorna."

McGregor swept his hat off in greeting. "Nice to meet you, Miss Lorna,” he said.

"I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. McGregor,” she said.

McGregor smiled to reveal white and even teeth. "The pleasure is all mine and it's just Cail," he said. "Mr. McGregor was my pa, and he's long since departed this world." He rocked his hat back on then held out his hands. "Here, let me help you down."

His light gray eyes had sun crinkles at the corner to go along with the deep dimples that bracketed his expressive mouth with its full lips. Long dark lashes swept over those penetrating orbs to send a shiver of desire through Lorna's tingling body. He was not only devilishly handsome, he had magnetism, too, that drew her to him like iron filings to a magnet. She would need to be careful around a man like that.

"May I call you Lorna?" McGregor asked as he curled his hands around her waist to help her down.

"Yes, please, do," she said, barely able to breathe for both his hands were clamped to her waist and he was swinging her with ease from the buckboard. Where her hands braced his shoulders for support, she could feel power and rippling muscles that made her womb do a funny little squeeze.

He cocked his head to one side. “Is Daniel expecting you?” he queried. “He didn’t mention you were coming.”

“I wrote him to tell him I was but didn’t receive an answer back,” she said. “I was worried.”

“No doubt you were,” Cail replied.

"Got something going back with me?" O'Day interrupted. “It’s getting on late in the day, boy.”

"Aye," Cail asked. "Some of May's jams and jellies. Sam is on his way out with a wagon load."

"Guess I'll have to ride across with you, then," O'Day said, his mouth twisted to one side in annoyance.

Cail set her down on the ground then captured her right hand in his. Feeling her hand in his rough, calloused one made Lorna feel very feminine and very protected. Not only was his hand strong, it was cool against her flesh and that seemed to underscore the impression he was having on her libido.

"Welcome to my world," he said in a soft voice then brought her hand to his chiseled lips.

Lorna's cheeks stung from the heat that rushed to them and her knees felt weak as she gazed up into his silvery eyes.

"Uh huh," O'Day said as he got down from the wagon. "Knew that was gonna happen." He grunted as his feet hit the ground, and he hitched up his baggy trousers. "Told her you he was looking for a missus."

McGregor flinched. "Thad, you are the very soul of discretion." He gave Lorna a look that almost melted her where she stood then winked to let her know he was teasing.

"Sometimes a man ain't got all that long to be waiting to get things done, Cail," O'Day said. "Me, I'm wanting to get on that there ferry of yours and get across the river sometime between now and the time my Maker calls. Think that'll be any time soon, do ya?"

Cail's lips twitched. "I suppose I can accommodate you, Thaddeus." Cail tucked Lorna's hand into the crook of his arm to lead her toward the ferry. "Watch your step, Miss Lorna. The ground's a bit uneven."

"Why don't you just pick her up and carry her to the ferry then, Cail," O'Day complained.

Lorna's eyes widened for that was exactly what McGregor did. He bent over, slid his arms under her knees and behind her back and scooped her up in his arms, high against his very solid chest. With her arm around his brawny neck, he carried her to the ferry and hopped up. He had a clean, masculine scent about him that was like perfume compared to O'Day's ripeness. Taking her to the pile of furs, he set her down.

"You should be comfortable here," he said. "I'll fetch your bags."

She looked down at his arm, surprised to see he had a penny taped to the underside of his arm. He noticed where she was looking and grinned.

“Bee sting,” he said, holding his arm up for her to get a better look. “Wet copper draws the sting out.”

“Really?” she asked.

“Everybody knows that,” O’Day said. He pulled his corpulent bulk onto the ferry and left the lifting to McGregor. He took off his hat and fanned his greasy face. "It’s hotter than a brick oven out here today."

Not having brought that many bags with her, Lorna was thankful McGregor wouldn't have to lug her heavy trunks but a few feet. When she saw him hoist both to his shoulders, she drew in a quick breath.

"Right strong man, he is," O'Day commented. "Wins nearly every wrestling contest there is at the Dovertown fair when he takes it in his mind to venture down there. What he don't win, his twin brother does."

Lorna looked up as Cail came onboard. "You have a twin?"

"Euan," Cail said. He squatted down to lower his burdens to the ferry's deck then shrugged. "I’m the youngest and…" He grinned. "I'm the black sheep of the family."

"Don't let him kid you," O'Day said. "He's an upstanding gent, he is. In another year, he’ll be eligible to be an Elder."

"Are you identical twins?" she queried. She’d always been fascinated with the subject of twins.

"Like two peas in a pod, they are," O'Day answered for him. "Can't tell 'em apart much of the time."

"Euan isn't as good looking as I am," McGregor quipped with a laugh.

"Ain't no conceit in that family, neither," O'Day chuckled. "Cail done went and got it all."

"Mr. O'Day couldn't tell me how many people live in Tabor Hill," she said. "Can you?"

"Well, let's see," Cail said as he took off his hat to arm the sweat from his brow once more. "I suppose there's probably less than a hundred of us now. Most families have three or four children though a couple have more than that. There are eleven families in all." He put up his hand and began ticking off the clan names beginning by holding up his thumb. "Regis, Dunlop, McFadden." He started with the other thumb. "Deal, McKenna, Gilmore, Kirkpatrick, Reid." He went back to the first hand. "MacLeod, Shaw, and…" His forehead furrowed. "There's one more family."

"McGregor," O'Day reminded him in a dry voice.

"Oh, yeah," McGregor said, nodding. He grinned. "I keep forgetting about those pesky McGregor boys. They're a blight on the community, they are."

"The McGregor brothers don't have no children," O'Day announced. "Not from lack of trying on their parts, though. Euan' wife miscarried four times a’fore she passed on to her reward last spring and Cail's wife, Libby, never conceived before she up and left him."

McGregor's smile disappeared. "You talk too much Thaddeus."

Lorna could sense taut anger in Cail McGregor. His eyes were stormy as he walked over to the first mooring line and cast it off.

"Didn't mean nothing by it, Cail," O'Day said. He sat down cross-legged on the deck. "I'll shut up now."

"Might be best that you do," Cail agreed as he headed for the second mooring line. He took a pair of leather gloves from his back pocket and drew them on.

A thick rope that was at least as large around as her wrist was winced around a massive wheeled pulley that was attached to a large pole stuck into the ground making it appear there were two ropes when there was just one. Guy lines that would pull the ferry along snaked down to the bow and aft sections. As McGregor grabbed hold of the bottom rope, he pulled hard—grunting as he strained to get the ferry in motion—and the craft began moving away from the shore. The pulley squeaked as the rope ran over the indention in the wheel and the reverse line played out toward the distant shore. The mechanism reminded Lorna of the clotheslines on pulleys from when she was a child.

Lorna could see now why Cail McGregor was so muscular. As he worked, his arms bulged and his chest strained. He was standing with his legs braced apart, and she could not help but notice just how nice a rear end he had to fill out his denim jeans. She could not take her eyes from his muscular body for he was poetry in motion as he pulled on the lines. When he glanced over his shoulder to give her a knowing smile, she blushed and tore her attention from his superb body.

The river over which the ferry was being pulled was rust-colored but still enough, the surface reflecting the brightness of the sun. A strong musky smell permeated the air but now and again, a hint of jasmine and honeysuckle wafted under Lorna's nose.

"You'll like it up to the Hill," Cail told her as he worked. "To me, it's the most beautiful place on earth."

Lorna fluffed her skirt over her legs. "Have you traveled much, Mr. McGregor?"

"Cail," he corrected.

"Cail," she repeated, feeling heat enveloping her cheeks at the familiarity.

He shrugged carelessly. "I've done my share, I reckon. I've been as far north as Marshalltown in the Miswin Territory and as far south as Milton in the Flagala Territory. Once rode the rails west all the way out to Kellogg in the Moilia Territory. Never been further east than Dovertown, though."

"Why is that?" she asked since most people made it a point to venture to the capitol at Boreas to get a look at the Citadel, the fortress from which the country was ruled.

"Just haven't had the opportunity to do so," he replied. “One day, I’d like to travel over to see the Citadel.” He glanced at her. “Ever been there?”

“Once,” she said. “I went to a wedding.”

“One of the Reapers?” Cail asked.

"Actually, it was one of the Shadowlords. Do the Reapers come up to Tabor Hill?" she asked, referring to the bounty hunters who were the law in the Territories.

Cail twisted his head to give her a steady look. "There's no call for them to for we have our own law up there," he said. "I've seen the Reaper assigned to this Territory once but that was in passing. He’s the Prime’s second-in-command, I believe. Bevyn Coure, isn’t it?"

"I met him and his lady on the train. They were on their way out to Clewiston," Lorna said. "He is a very imposing man."

"Reckon they all are," Cail agreed.

"Dangerous, too," O'Day interjected.

"So I've heard," Lorna responded.

A hawk flew overhead—catching the thermals to soar in the bright blue sky. She watched it until it landed in a tall cottonwood tree and folded its dark brown wings against its plump body before lowering its head to peck at its breast.

It seemed as though mention of the Reapers made them each introspective for there was no more conversation as Cail worked the lines, pulling the ferry across the glassy surface of the river. With the sun so intense, Lorna was glad she had on a bonnet. The brim managed to block some of the intense light spearing into her face though perspiration trickled down the sides of her face.

"We haven't had a good rain in several weeks," O'Day spoke up as he pulled a red bandana from his back pocket and blew his nose. "Sure could use some, don't you think, Cail?"

"It would sure help this ungodly heat," Cail asserted. His pale blue shirt was plastered to his back, turning the material darker where it touched his flesh.

As they drew closer to the shore, Lorna noticed a buckboard and brace of horses coming out of the verdant growth of trees. Behind the buckboard was tethered a sorrel stallion.

"That would be Samuel," Cail said. "He's Mary Reid's oldest boy. She makes a fair living selling her condiments."

"Makes the best goldarn preserves I've ever tasted, that's for sure," O'Day stated. “Her fig preserves can’t be beat.”

The strapping young man driving the buckboard looped the reins around the brake and hopped down to stand with his hands on his hips as the ferry neared the shore. "Want I should tie ye off, Cail?" he called out.

"I'd be much obliged Sam," Cail replied.

Lorna watched the young man—no older than seventeen or eighteen by her reckoning—as he caught the line Cail tossed out to him and made quick work of securing the ferry to its landing. He was as muscular as Cail but not quite as tall.

"Grow 'em big up here on that mountain," O'Day told her with a wink.

"It's all that good mountain air that nourishes us, isn't it, Sam?" Cail asked.

"That and Ma's cooking," Sam replied.

"Mary Reid sort of looks after the McGregor boys now that there ain't no woman to cook for 'em," O'Day said. "What with her being a widow woman and.…"

"And you talk entirely too much, Thaddeus," Cail warned. A muscle worked in his lean jaw as he ground his teeth together.

"Reckon I've been accused of that often enough," O'Day said in a good-natured tone. He jumped down from the ferry with a grunt. As soon as he saw how many boxes were in the bed of the buckboard his shoulders slumped.

"Sam Reid," Cail said, "this is the priest's sister, Miss Lorna Brent."

Sam ran his hand along the thigh of his pants before extending it to Lorna. "Right proud to meet ye, my lady," he said, giving her hand a hearty pump. “Didn’t know you was a’comin’.”

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Sam, and I’m beginning to think Daniel never got my letter telling him I was on my way," Lorna said. The young man was as handsome as Cail and his gray eyes were sparkling as he swept them covertly down her.

"Let's get her baggage onto the buckboard before we off-load your ma's stuff," Cail said. "And thanks for bringing my horse."

"Figured ye'd rather have him than be sitting on the tailgate of the wagon," Sam replied.

"What's your horse's name?" Lorna asked. She loved animals, and though she'd never ridden a horse, she had always wanted to.

"Saoirse," Cail answered. "It means freedom in the old language."

Lorna frowned. "Is that spoken much here?"

"Just by old folks like Cail," Sam said with a twinkle and laughed when Cail caught him around the neck with the crook of his arm and gave the boy's dark blond hair a brisk rub with his knuckles. "Aw!" the young man cried out.

"I'll old folk you, boy," Cail warned as the teenager grabbed him around the waist and they started scuffling playfully.

"Boys will be boys," O'Day said with a chuckle. "Gotta work that nervous energy off somehow."

Lorna laughed as she watched the men grabbling. It was obvious there was great affection between them and when they finally stopped with Cail swooping a hand over Sam's ducked head as he tried to take him in another head hold, something at the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she turned to see a man standing amidst the lush greenery of the trees. Shielding her eyes to the bright sun in order to get a better look, she realized he was staring right at her.

Half hidden beneath the canopy of a spreading white oak, he stood perfectly still with his arms at his side. He was wearing faded denim jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. From that distance, she couldn't tell much about his features other than she was keenly aware that his eyes were blazing at her. She could see the sunlight glinting in the steady orbs.

"Mr. O'Day, is that one of the gentlemen from the Hill?" she asked.

The other three men looked around at her then toward the forest. As she watched, the man in the forest seemed to step back into the foliage, blending in with the branches and leaves until she could no longer see him.

“I don’t see nobody,” O’Day said.

"He's gone now but he was standing over there," Lorna said, pointing at the stand of oaks.

"Must have been one of the Shaws," Cail said. "They have trap lines over that way." He stared at the spot she’d indicated, his brows drawn together.

"Ya'll go on and get them boxes of Mary's off that buckboard," O'Day said, nervously glancing around. "I don't like being here any more than I have to!" He strode back to the ferry and pulled himself up.

Lorna could sense the edginess of the men and turned to look once more in the direction she'd seen the watcher. Nothing moved and if he was still there observing them, the sentinel was well hidden. She felt the hair stir at the nape of her neck and gave a slight shiver.

"There's no need for you to worry," Cail said as though he'd made note of her shudder. "You're perfectly safe with me and Sam."

"Aye, ye are," Sam said. "Wouldn't nobody mess with ye with us’ns looking after you, my lady, and especially not in the daytime. Nothin’ ever happens in the daytime."

"That’s good to know," Lorna said, but she noticed all three men kept glancing toward the oaks, as though they expected something—or someone—to jump out at them.

It was then she noticed the rocks that had been laid all along the ground in a border separating the forest from the shoreline. The rocks stretched away as far as the eye could see.

"Someone has certainly been industrious," she said as Cail helped her from the ferry onto the dock.

"Beg pardon?" Cail asked as he finished securing her luggage and began helping Sam tote the boxes of jams and jellies over to the ferry.

"The rocks," she said. "Are they whitewashed?"

"They call 'em wyndstones. Women ain't supposed to cross over 'em," O'Day said from the ferry then ducked his head when Cail gave him a hard look.

"One of these days somebody is going to snip out your tongue, Thaddeus," Cail warned. "Why don't you just sit down and hush up for a change?"

O'Day mumbled something then went to sit beside the stack of furs. Once more, he glanced at the stand of oaks, his eyes apprehensive.

“Here comes Euan,” Sam said as the sound of horse hooves striking the hard-packed dirt broke the stillness.

“’Bout damned time,” O’Day grumbled.

Lorna turned as the rider came into view. He was sitting high in the saddle, a black hat pulled low over his features. The blue and white checked shirt he wore stretched across the yoke as he lifted his hand in greeting.

“I was beginning to wonder where you were,” Cail called out as his twin slowed his mount to walk it up to the buckboard.

“If I’d known there was a lovely lady gonna be with you, I’d have stayed hidden until you had to take Thaddeus back across the river,” Euan said as he swung a leg over his horse’s head and slid to the ground. He swept off his hat and came over to Lorna—his boot heels ringing on the dock’s wooden planks—and held out his free hand. “Pleased to meet you, my lady,” he said. “I’m Euan.”

“This is the priest’s sister,” Cail said.

Euan’ left eyebrow crooked up. “Well, I’ll be,” he said. “Don’t that beat all?”

“Lorna,” she said as she placed her hand in his and felt the same electric jolt that had gone through her arm when his brother had touched her. She wasn’t surprised when he kissed her hand in the same old-fashioned way.

“Ferry’s ready to make the trip back across,” Cail said and when Lorna glanced at him, she could see a muscle tightening in his cheek. “It won’t pull itself across the river.”

“Don’t get your long johns in a bunch, Ronnie,” Euan quipped. “It isn’t every day we have a woman this beautiful in our midst. Give me time to look my fill.” He released Lorna’s hand. “It’s a sight that will sustain me until I get home.”

A heated blush stole over Lorna’s face, and she ducked her head. She was not accustomed to men complimenting her on her looks.

“Get a move on, Euan,” Cail snapped at his twin. “Thad doesn’t have all day.”

“Ain’t that the truth?” O’Day agreed.

Euan put his hat on then winked at Lorna. “Duty calls, Miss Lorna.”

She smiled at him. “Lorna,” she corrected as she stared into his handsome face. It was like looking at a mirror image of Cail, although she knew she would be able to tell them apart for Euan had a faint white scar running along the edge of his left jawbone.

“We’ve a long trip ahead of us, Lorna,” Cail said. “Let’s get you settled on the buckboard.” Not giving her a chance to say anything else to his twin, he took her hand and led her off the dock and to the buckboard.

“I’ll see you up at the Hill, Lorna,” Euan told her.

“Take care, Euan,” she said and was a bit surprised to hear Cail hiss under his breath. She looked up at him, started to ask him what was wrong, but once again he swept her up in his brawn arms to deposit her on the buckboard seat.

Sam climbed aboard and bent over to retrieve the reins, snapping them lightly.

Lorna turned in the seat. “Goodbye, Mr. O’Day! Thank you for bringing me out.”

O’Day had been pointing to the spot where Lorna had seen the sentinel, but he lifted a hand in acknowledgement of her thanks. She saw Euan glance back at her with a deep frown on his rugged face.

“Stay inside the wyndstones!” he yelled to her.

“I’ll see to it!” Cail told his brother as he swung onto the horse Sam had brought for him.

Lorna waited until the ferry was out of sight, Cail riding his sorrel beside them as the team of grays pulled the wagon along a winding dirt road that led through the thick forest before she asked after the wyndstones.

Cail sighed deeply. "They're just an old folk legend," he told her.

"Will you tell me about them?" she inquired. She was looking up at him and at the easy way he sat his mount—one hand to the reins and the other braced on his thigh.

After exchanging a quick look with Sam, Cail said, "Isn't much to tell. Way back before the Burning War, it was said the old folks up at the Hill believed the stones had certain magical properties. They'd been put there generations before by the first settlers and had been placed around the perimeter of the village to keep out things that ought not to be seen by decent, gods-fearing folk."

"What kind of things?" she asked.

"Mealladhs," Sam said beneath his breath, but she heard him.

"What is a Mealladh?"

"Another old wive’s tale," Cail said between clenched teeth. "I don't know anything about them beyond the name."

Sam glanced over at Cail. "I know enough not to let my woman near one of 'em," he stated.

Lorna's eyebrow arched upward. "Do you have a girlfriend, Sam?"

"Missy Gilmore," Sam said with a grin. "We gonna be Joined as soon as she turns eighteen next month."

"Well, congratulations," Lorna said. "I hope all your troubles will be little ones."

Sam blushed and lowered his head. "Thank ye, my lady."

"His will be the first Joining your brother has performed at the Hill," Cail informed her. "I think he's as excited about it as Sam and Missy."

"It may well be his very first Joining," Lorna said. "I don't believe he's officiated at any other."

"He's a good man, your brother," Cail said, "if a bit naive."

Lorna wanted to ask what he meant by that but the buckboard was headed up a rather steep incline, and she was holding on tightly to the edge of her seat. She heard Cail clucking his tongue at his horse and the stallion dug its hooves into the roadway and trotted past them on up the steeply winding road. The path wasn't wide enough for the buckboard and Cail.

"We don't get visitors up this here way," Sam told her, lightly snapping his reins to set his horses moving a bit faster. "Last one was Father Danny." He glanced at her with a crooked smile. "Guess he's gonna make the Hill his home now."

"Until the diocese sends him to his next assignment anyway," Lorna commented.

Sam shot her a strange look. “Reckon that won’t be no time soon, though.”

“Ten years is the average length of an assignment,” she told him.

“What about you?” she asked. “Will the Hill always be your home?”

“I ain’t going nowheres,” the young man said. “Can’t and don’t wanna.”

“Why can’t you?” she asked.

Sam shrugged. “I ain’t like Cail and Mose what went and got them a education at that college thing in Ruckston.” He lifted a hand to tap his head. “Me? I got natural smarts. Don’t need no book learning other than what Ma taught me.”

Lorna looked over at Cail. “You and Euan went to college?”

“Didn’t graduate,” Cail replied. “We just wanted to learn a few things that would be of help to the Hill.”

“Elders sent them,” Sam said. “That’s why they get to leave the Hill when they want. They got Elder approval.”

“You need approval from the Elders before you can leave the Hill?” Lorna inquired.

Before Sam could answer, Cail interrupted. “You like hog plums, Lorna?”

She realized he was pointing to a tree sitting beside the road. “I don’t know,” she said.

Cail turned the horse toward the tree, took off his hat and started pulling bright red fruit that looked a bit like cherries from a heavily laden branch. “They make good jelly but most folks just eat them like candy.”

“Them and bullisses,” Sam agreed, drawing the grays to a halt.

“Bullisses?” Lorna asked, unfamiliar with the term.

“That’s mountain talk for scuppernongs,” Cail stated and when she gave him a look that said she didn’t know what that meant, either, he explained they were a type of muscadine grape native to the region. “They’re big and green and make a wine that will give you one helluva hangover.”

“Good jelly, though,” Sam put in. “They’re my favorites next to mayhaws.”

“Now, that I have had,” Lorna said. “I love mayhaw jelly.”

“Don’t we all?” Cail said and pulled on the reins to direct his mount to the buckboard. He held out his hat. “Try a few.”

Lorna dipped her hand into the hat and took a couple of the bright red plums. She popped one in her mouth, bit down then grinned.

“Good, huh?” Cail asked, returning her smile.

“I could get seriously addicted to those,” she said and though she protested, he gave his hat into her keeping. “Don’t you want some more?”

He nodded. “I’ll just lean over and take what I want,” he said, his eyes traveling over her.

Lorna felt her face warm at his suggestive look. His handsome countenance and powerful body kept drawing her eyes to him like a magnet. Long before they reached the settlement, she was having not-so-ladylike thoughts of the burly mountain man.

Chapter Two

For over an hour the wagon moved steadily upward along a serpentine path only wide enough for the wagon. Cail rode ahead of them about fifty feet away. Lorna was too afraid to turn around and look behind her and there were enough trees and bushes close to the roadway that she couldn't see the drop off she knew was there. The farther they went, the cooler the air became and that certainly was a relief from the broiling heat but the higher they went, the more difficult it was to draw an easy breath. Her ears were popping so she had to yawn often to stabilize the pressure. On both sides of the track, the wyndstones edged the roadway, sitting flush against one another, their white-washed brightness beautiful against the lush green foliage.

"You have to wonder how long it took to gather and paint each of the stones," she observed.

"From what my granny once told us the menfolk of the Hill done it all in a week," Sam said, "and that was working ‘round the clock in teams, even by lantern light."

"Why the hurry?" she asked.

Sam snapped the reins again. "They wanted to keep the Mealladh out," he said.

"I know Cail said he doesn't know what a Mealladh is but do you?" she asked.

"I don't know no more than he does. The word means lure in the old language. Best to ask Father Danny about it. He learned the way of it not long after he came to the Hill," Sam replied. "He made the trek all the way up to Dyer's Knoll to speak to the Old One."

"The Old One?" she repeated.

"There's a lady what lives up there they say is over a hundred and ten years old," Sam told her. "She knows the history of the Hill like the back of her hand."

"What's her name?"

"Lady Belle McGregor," Sam replied. "That was one of the founding families around these parts."

"Have you ever been up there to see her?"

"Not by myself, I aint!" Sam said with a gasp. "I ain't that brave, ma'am!" He gave her a sideways glance. "She's a witch, or so they say. I went there with Cail a couple of times."

"Ah," Lorna said, her eyes sparkling.

It was another hour before the buckboard rolled onto level ground. Ten minutes after that, they were entering a wide clearing around which sat several one story buildings made from unpainted and weathered wood that had taken on a pale gray patina with age. The roofs were made of rusted tin and a porch ran around all four sides of the buildings.

"Folks around here don't paint their places," Sam explained when she asked. "Costs too much and it would just have to be done again. Weather up here can be harsh and paint just peels right of’n the wood."

“But apparently not off the wyndstones,” she observed.

“No. We keep them painted,” he said. “Us menfolk, that is. Our women ain’t even allowed to touch one of them things once it’s painted.”

Beyond the buildings Sam explained were a mercantile, the Healer's office and residence, the livery at the far end, the constable's office and a two-cell jail, and on the opposite end of the clearing, the church with its unmistakable steeple.

"Where do the other residents live?" she asked.

"Out beyond Deal's Acres," Sam said, pointing to the livery which also had a good-sized corral. "They're scattered around Lake Bristow and its falls, threaded throughout the woods."

The mountain lake around which Tabor Hill had been planned shone in the early afternoon sun, its water sparkling like polished glass. It was a placid setting but the waters farther out from the shore were dark blue in color and Sam confirmed the lake was very deep in places as he drove the buckboard toward the church.

“And the falls are something to behold,” he informed her.

Cail was already at the church, his horse hitched out front and as the wagon came to a stop, Lorna's brother, Daniel, came out of the building.

"Lorna!" Daniel gasped, his face draining of color. He rushed forward. “What on earth are you doing here?”

Lorna hugged her brother and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "I guess you didn’t get my letter," she said. “Lord, I’ve missed you!”

When he released her, she gave him a quick once over. It had been five years since she'd seen her brother and he looked far too thin and pale for her liking. And there was something in his hazel eyes that had not been there when he left for the seminary.

"I was about to sit down to supper," Daniel said, draping an arm around her shoulders. He held her tightly as though he feared someone might snatch her away from him. He looked at the men. "Cail, you and Sam come on in and join us."

"Much obliged, Father Danny, but I've got chores to see to," Sam said as he helped Cail with Lorna's bags. "Ma would have my hide if I don't get 'em done a’fore sunset."

"I understand," Daniel said with a nod. "Cail? What about you? Will you break bread with us?"

"Thank you, Father," Cail said. "I'd like that."

Lorna slipped her arm around her brother's waist and was alarmed to feel the bones protruding along his ribs. She looked up at him. "Have you been sick, Danny?"

He waved a dismissive hand. "I got bit by a rattler," he said as he led them around the side of the church to the rectory out back.

"A rattlesnake?" Lorna gasped, her eyes wide.

"Happens around here," Cail said. He was balancing two of her bags under each arm while Sam struggled with her steamer trunk.

"I'm fine now," Daniel said. "It just got me down there for awhile."

"I told Father Danny the next time he decides to go hiking in the woods, not to," Cail said with a laugh and Daniel joined in, his face red.

Daniel opened the door for them, ushered his sister inside then held the portal open for Cail and Sam to carry in her luggage.

The interior of the rectory was cool but messy. Knowing her brother as she did, it would not have occurred to him to keep things neat. From the looks of the parlor, she'd have her work cut out for her with a thorough spring cleaning.

"If you need help, just ask any of the women," Cail said as though reading her mind. "They'll be glad to help out."

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask why the women hadn't taken it upon themselves to see to the rectory already but then she realized Daniel might not have wanted strangers looking after his things. He was a very private man and—truth be told—was more than a little afraid of women. That was one of the reasons it had not surprised his family when he'd announced his desire to join the priesthood.

"The spare bedroom is through here," Daniel was saying, leading her down a short hallway. "Mine is at the other end of the house."

The room to which he showed her was spacious but utilitarian. Placed on a threadbare carpet that had seen better days, were a double bed with a white hobnail cotton spread, a nightstand with a lamp, a chest of drawers, dresser, a desk and chair flanked by two bare bookcases, and what looked to be a very comfortable overstuffed chair sitting beside a small table with a kerosene lamp. Though cramped, the room was more than what she had expected.

"I brought only a couple of books with me but at least I’ll have a place to store them,” she said.

“You read a lot?” Cail asked.

“She reads all the time,” Daniel said with affection then smiled slightly. “When she’s not writing in her diary.”

"I make a trip to Dovertown at least once a month so if you want more books, just give me the titles and I'll have the lady down at the library there order them," Cail told her.

"Thank you. I appreciate the offer," Lorna said, going to one of the two windows to look out. The window was open with a breeze laden with the scent of wisteria drifting through the room. A partial view of the lake could be seen through the stand of trees closer in.

"Come on then," Daniel said. "Let's eat! Sam's mother sent over a veritable feast!" He gave Lorna a strange look. “I wondered why at the time.”

Before Lorna could question that strange remark, Cail leaned down to tell her it was a good thing Sam’s mother had sent over food because her brother had trouble boiling water.

Lorna laughed, nodding. "How well I know!" After bidding Sam farewell and thanking him, she followed the men back into the house.

The dining room of the rectory was just off the parlor with the kitchen beyond. Daniel explained there was a bathing chamber with the only indoor plumbing to be found in the Hill between his bedroom and hers, flanked on either side by two walk-in closets for storage.

"My office adjoins the parlor," Daniel told her.

Cail pulled her chair out for Lorna to sit down and she could feel his knuckles grazing her back as he pushed it toward the table. It seemed to her that the touch lasted longer than it should have but when he took his seat across from her, he was looking at Daniel and not her.

The aromas coming from the platters and bowls on the table made her mouth water. There was crisply fried chicken, sliced ripe tomatoes on a plate alongside sliced cucumbers and onions, a steaming bowl of creamed corn, and another of fried okra, a bowl of lima beans swimming amid chunks of ham, a plate of piping hot buttered cornbread, and a tall, frosty pitcher of sweetened tea.

"We've got bread pudding with raisins for dessert," Daniel told her as he stuck a napkin into the collar of his white shirt. "I haven't had this much to eat since leaving home!"

"The women don't bring food over from time to time?" she asked.

Daniel's smile slipped. "Now and again," he said, and then looked down at his plate.

One glance at Cail's face and Lorna knew that now and again was rare, indeed.

Lorna could not help but be a bit put out that her brother was not being taken care of by his parishioners. It had always been her experience that priests were treated well—spoiled much of the time—by the people they shepherded. She wondered why the women of Tabor Hill were not providing him with home-cooked meals. She made a mental note to have a long talk with Daniel on the subject after Cail was gone.

They made small talk for a few minutes then lapsed into silence, simply enjoying the wonderful food. By the time the dessert was finished, though, the atmosphere was a bit uncomfortable.

"That was delicious," Lorna said. "Sam's mother is a marvel."

"She is, indeed," Daniel agreed.

Lorna scooted her chair back. "I'm just going to clear the dishes."

"Can I give you a hand?" Cail asked, getting to his feet.

"No," she said, waving his offer aside. "I've been sitting most of the day and I need to work the kinks out of my legs."

"Would you care to beat me at a game of chess, Cail?" Daniel inquired as he rose.

"As much as I would, I've got to be up early tomorrow. Euan and I promised Flight Mitchell we'd help re-roof his barn," Cail said.

"Then we won't keep you," Daniel said. "We're glad you could have supper with us."

"Thank you for inviting me. I enjoyed the meal and the company and I'll look forward to seeing you again, Lorna," Cail called out to her as she went into the kitchen

Lorna stopped and looked back at him. "It was a pleasure meeting you, Cail," she replied. "You're welcome to visit any time."

Daniel walked him to the door with a hand to his back, thanking him for bringing Lorna to the Hill. She heard Cail telling Daniel to be careful of her.

"I will," Daniel agreed.

"He's out there waiting."

"I know."

“Make sure she understands she’s not to cross the stones.”

“I will.”

Wiping her hands on a towel, she came into the dining room as her brother shut the door. "What was that about?" she queried.

Daniel turned to face her. "What do you mean?"

"Who did he mean? Who is out there waiting?" she asked him.

A shadow fell over her brother's face. "Let's not discuss this tonight, Lorna." He walked past her and went into the kitchen. "How about I dry?"

Lorna sighed deeply. She knew her stubborn brother all too well. “All right.” She gave him a long look. “Why aren’t the women here looking after you, Danny?”

He ducked his head. “They do but you have to understand, Lorna. The Hill’s women are clannish and it takes awhile for them to get to know you.”

“You’ve been here long enough to.…”

“They’re afraid of me,” he stated bluntly. “Of all priests. Of any man other than their kinsmen and husbands.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “It’s complicated.” His gaze went to the window. “It has a lot to do with what went on here at the Hill hundreds of years ago. There was an incident in which a local man was burned to death by Tabor and his sons.”

“What did he do to warrant such a gruesome death?” she asked.

Daniel sighed. “Lorna, I really don’t want to get into this night,” he said. “Can we please not talk about it until tomorrow?” He gave her a stern look. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know about the Hill as well as discuss why you came up here when I expressly asked you not to.”

Sensing her brother’s growing annoyance with her, Lorna agreed her questions could wait but she knew she would be pondering his words all night.

When the dishes had been washed, dried and put away, the kitchen cleaned, Lorna and her brother went into the parlor and sat down, chatting about friends Daniel had not seen in many years, catching up on things that had happened in the town where they had been born. As the clock ticked steadily on the mantle and the hour grew late, Lorna yawned and got to her feet.

“I think I’ll take a walk outside to.…”

“No!” Daniel said and his eyes flared with fear. “Never, never go out after the sun has set, Lorna! It is forbidden for women to do so!”

Lorna’s brows drew together at her brother’s surprising response. “Forbidden? By whom?”

“The Hill’s Elders,” Daniel replied. “It is against the law and you could wind up in the jail if you do not adhere to their restrictions.” He plied a trembling hand through his hair. “Promise me you will never venture out after sunset nor ever step over the wyndstones circling the village. Don’t even touch one of those heathen things.”

“Daniel.…”

“Promise me!” he shouted at her.

Taken aback by his vehemence and the fear in his eyes, she slowly nodded. “I promise.”

“You have no conception of the danger in the woods beyond the protection generated by the wyndstones.” He shook his head. “No conception at all.”

“I said I won’t cross over them, Danny, and I won’t,” she said defensively, “but we will discuss this tomorrow.”

“Yes,” he mumbled. “We will.” He glanced down the hallway. “You want to bathe before you go to bed?”

“I’d love a bath,” she said. “I feel as though I have a pound of road dirt clinging to me.”

“Then get your things and I’ll run a tub of water for you and set out some towels.”

She knew he was all but dismissing her. Going to her room, she gathered her gown and robe, slippers and a fresh pair of underwear and went back to the bathroom, smiling to see her brother on his knees beside the old porcelain tub, checking the water. He didn’t look around as she came into the room.

“The doors are bolted and the shades are pulled down as soon as the sun sets. You don’t go open the doors or windows and you sure as heck don’t go outside.” He glanced around. “Make sure you pull your curtains together and even if it gets stifling in there tonight, don’t open the window.”

“Why ever not?” she asked, frowning.

“Critters,” he said, having a hard time meeting her gaze. He looked back at the water. “Coons, possums, that kind of thing. They’ll come through the screen. Tomorrow I’ll have the smithy put some iron bars on your window so you can open it for fresh air.”

“Iron bars?” she questioned.

“Don’t argue with me, Lorna!” her brother snapped, getting to his feet. Without looking at her again, he went past her and into the hall. “Sleep well.”

Bidding him a goodnight, shocked by his behavior, Lorna went into the bathroom and closed the door. She took off her clothes—mumbling to herself at Daniel’s odd behavior—and climbed into the tub, sighing as the warm water lapped at her aching flesh. Sliding her arms over the rolled edge of the old claw-foot tub, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes. The water felt too good to be quick with the bath.

“Don’t get all pruny in there, now!” she heard Daniel mutter as he walked past the door.

Rolling her eyes, she took the washcloth from the edge of the tub where he had draped it, plucked the soap from the dish on the wall and lathered it. With vigor, she began scrubbing at her flesh.

Half an hour later, she walked out of the bathroom and into the room that was now hers. Pursing her lips, she strode to the window and drew aside the curtain her brother had pulled closed. She stared out at the gathering dark, wishing she could have taken a stroll outside, wishing she could open the window to let in the soft night air. The forest beyond was a black velvet blanket thrown across the landscape without a single light burning within. It was an oppressive darkness that sent a shiver down her spine and she turned away, letting the curtain close. Perhaps it was best she hadn’t gone outside after all.

Alone in her room, she unpacked her trunks, found her diary and sat down to enter the day’s events. When she was finished, she closed the book, blew out the lamp and crawled beneath her cover with a heartfelt sigh. Within minutes she was sleeping soundly.

* * * *

“Lorna ….”

Lorna sat up, the ghostly sound of her name having pulled her from sleep. She listened—thinking Daniel had called out to her—but there was only the sound of the old grandfather clock laboriously ticking in the parlor. As its chime struck, she flinched, putting a hand to her throat as she counted the strikes.

One.

Two.

Three.

“The demon’s hour,” she said softly.

She was well-read on many subjects since reading was her one true pleasure in life so she knew the old folktales about three o’clock in the morning. It was that time between three and five of the clock when most deaths occurred, when the human body was at its weakest.

“When the spirit is at its lowest ebb,” she thought aloud.

A story she had read of young women being seduced each night by a handsome incubus came to mind and for some reason that made her shiver. She turned her face toward the window where a beam of moonlight showed through the space where the two curtains failed to meet.

“Lorna….”

She heard her name clearly and knew it had not come from Daniel. It was a man’s voice but it was not her brother’s deeper tone. There was a hint of a brogue in the two syllables—drawn out in a sensuous whisper. It was a low voice filled with longing and infinite sadness.

Wind pushed against the eaves and the window creaked, the roof timbers popped, and Lorna’s heart thudded painfully in her chest. She reached for the cover she’d kicked off during the night—drawing them up to her neck as though they were armor to protect her. Eyes wide, she stared at that slender crack of light at the window. Beyond the pane, something—someone—lurked. She knew it as plainly as she felt the shivers rippling through her body. A darker shadow passed beyond that sliver of light and she stopped breathing.

“Lorna….”

“Go away,” she murmured. “Go away and leave me alone!”

“Come to the window ….”

It was more a command than a request and the words made Lorna want to throw aside the covers and do as she was bid.

“Go away.”

“Lorna….”

“No!” she said forcefully.

“Please….”

She slammed her palms over her ears to shut out the relentless, beseeching voice. The sound of it touched her, saddened her, but she refused to give in to the pleading. She was afraid if she did, there would be no turning back. She knew whoever—whatever—lurked outside her window wasn’t human. It was part of the demon’s hour.

Elbows pressed together, hands clamped over her ears she kept her eyes on the splinter of light hemming the curtains. At long last she slowly lowered her hands, listened, but there was no repetition of the ghostly voice. There were no more squeaks of the aged wood, no further popping of the timbers or plinking of the window panes. After awhile her eyelids grew heavy and began to lower. She strove to stay awake but the lateness of the hour, the tiredness that had yet to be appeased, the warmth of the room closed her eyes and once more she sank into sleep—restless now and plagued by strange dreams of a handsome amber-eyed demon.

Chapter Three

She had overslept and the guilt was a sandspur beneath her saddle as she hurried into the kitchen only to find it empty. It was well after eight of the clock and she knew Daniel would be celebrating morning mass at the little church next door. Rather than rushing over, intruding at that juncture, she decided to start breakfast and have it ready when her brother returned. Taking out the bread, eggs, sausage patties, jam and tin of grits, she set about preparing the meal. By the time Daniel came through the back, she had the sausage crisply fried and the grits boiling.

“Danny, I am so sorry. I .…” she began but her brother waved away her apology.

“I looked in on you but you were sound asleep,” he said. “I didn’t have the heart to wake you. I know what a journey it is to get up here.”

“I will be up in time for mass tomorrow,” she said.

Daniel smiled tiredly. “I will enjoy having someone other than myself to say the mass for.”

His words surprised her. “No one comes to morning mass?”

He shook his head as he washed his hands at the sink then dried them on a towel hanging on one of the lower cabinet drawer pulls. “Not once in all the time I’ve been here.” He went to the table and pulled out his chair.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. She and her brother had been raised to attend daily mass.

“The food smells delicious,” he said. “I usually have a boiled egg and toast every morning.”

“No wonder you’ve lost weight,” she said.

“You should be proud of me, Sis. I have learned to boil water,” he told her.

Lorna laughed as she brought him his plate. Two over-easy eggs, four slices of buttered toast, a mound of fluffy grits with a big pat of butter in the middle, and two large sausage patties were placed before him along with a piping cup of coffee—real coffee she had brought with her from the Miconoh Territory. She smiled when he took a sip and sighed with contentment.

“Good?” she inquired.

“Heavenly,” he agreed. He picked up his fork to pierce one of the eggs then took a piece of toast to dip the point into the egg yolk.

After fixing her own plate, she returned to the table and began eating, watching her brother as he relished the meal. She was already planning in her head what she would fix for the noon and evening meals.

“You shouldn’t have come,” Daniel said in between cutting the sausage into chunks.

“I wrote you that I would,” she defended, “but I didn’t hear back from you.”

“Snake bite laid me low for awhile,” he said as he mixed the grits, yolk-less eggs and sausage in a pile. It was the southern way of eating the meal for their mother had been from Flagala and had taught them the joys of her special way of cooking.

“Why don’t you want me here?” she asked, her voice revealing the hurt.

Daniel looked up with a forkful of food almost to his lips. He frowned. “Lorna, you know I love you but you don’t know what you’ve walked into here.”

“Then tell me,” she said. She poked listlessly at her food, no longer hungry.

He shoved the forkful of food into his mouth, talking around it, his voice a bit gruff. “Let me finish the excellent meal you prepared first then we’ll go out on the porch and I’ll tell you the whole of it over a second cup of coffee.”

“All right,” she agreed.

“Eat your food before it gets cold.”

Though the meal tasted like ashes in her mouth she cleaned her plate and would have cleared the table but Daniel motioned her to remain seated. He picked up the plates and took them to the sink.

“Nothing left for the hogs this morning,” he said. He nudged his elbow toward a sealed ten-gallon container by the stove. “You found the slop bucket?”

“Aye,” she said.

“There’s a chicken coop out back so if you would I’d appreciate you seeing to that.”

“Sure.” She watched him rinse the plates, run water into the basin and make quick work of what had to be washed. When he was finished, she stood and brought their cups to the stove to pour that second cup.

They went out on the porch where the morning air was already warm and dry. It was going to be another hot day with not a cloud in sight.

“We desperately need rain,” Daniel said as though he knew what she had been thinking. “Haven’t seen a drop in over two months.” He took a drink of his coffee then sat in one of the two rockers on the porch.

“Is that normal?”

“Not at all,” he told her. “Usually this is the wet time of the year for the Hill.”

He was silent for a moment then began speaking in a low voice, his gaze locked on the forest beyond.

“Kirkland Tabor and his people lived in what used to be called Scotland back in the early seventeen hundreds. If you recall your history, that part of the country was renamed Chale by the goddess after the Burning War,” he clarified.

“The Triune Goddess Morrigunia,” Lorna said and watched her brother’s lips tighten. “Is that who they worship here?”

“They have no organized religion that I have been able to discover,” he stated, “although they believe in God.”

“Then why did the Bishop send you here, Danny? I thought the church was no longer proselytizing.”

“It isn’t,” he replied. “I wasn’t told why I was being sent. All I know is the people had asked for a priest—me, in particular. It wasn’t until I arrived that I found out I had been sent to help them quash the evil dwelling here.”

“What evil do you…?” she started to ask but her brother didn’t seem to hear her.

“Tabor and his followers fled Scotland and landed in what was then New York but the big city overwhelmed them. They came west and—being highlanders—sought the mountains in which to settle. Their reasoning was the farther from civilization they could get, the better. There would be no one to deny them the right to worship as they saw fit.”

He drained the cup and shook his head at her offer to refill it. He pointed to the forest.

“This was mostly wilderness back then,” he said. “Nothing much except natives and their camps were few and far between up this way. Dovertown was just a trading post but the man who ran it owned a barge upon which one of his two sons took goods down river to Baxley. When Tabor and his people got here, they saw all the green land on the other side of the river and paid the bargeman to take them across. They hiked up here, liked what they saw and so they homesteaded it, filed papers with the territory to seal the ownership.”

Daniel was quiet for a moment, stretching his long legs in front of him and threading his hand together to lay them on his flat belly. He laid his head on the rocker’s back.

“Tabor and his boys helped the trader’s sons build a ferry and string the rope across the water so they could travel back and forth between the Hill and Dovertown for things they couldn’t grow or make up here. The boys became good friends but the only time they saw one another was when they were working on the barge or when the McGregors came down to the trading post.”

“The trader’s sons weren’t welcome up here?” she asked.

Daniel shook his head. “No one was. Old man Tabor made it clear that this was private land and he wanted no visitors. From all accounts he was a real piece of work. He ruled the settlement with an iron hand and a ready fist for those who dared oppose him. He had seven sons and one daughter—who was the youngest of the lot at seventeen. His wife had died giving birth to the girl so she was the one who took care of those eight men. When they settled here she was seventeen years old and Tabor was very strict with her, treated her brutally by all accounts. Before they’d left Scotland, he’d betrothed her to Craig McGregor’s oldest son, Diarmuid. The wedding was to be at the winter solstice after the girl had turned eighteen.”

Lorna’s brother closed his eyes but continued with the tale.

“Her name was Sara and supposedly the most beautiful woman in these parts. She had hair the color of a polished penny and deep green eyes. They say her voice could charm the birds down from the trees and the creatures from the forest. It was her lovely singing voice that started all the trouble.”

Afraid her brother was falling asleep for his voice had gotten lower and the cadence slower, she cleared her throat. “She sang herself into trouble?” she asked in a voice that was louder than normal.

Daniel flinched and his eyes snapped open. He reached up to scrub at his face. “Aye, that she did,” he said. “When her brothers were helping to build the barge the Tabor family camped by the river’s edge in three tents. Old man Tabor refused to allow Sara to stay behind at the Hill because he didn’t trust any of the men where she was concerned. She would fix their lunch and would always make enough for the two sons of the trader, Duncan and Jeremiah. One of the boys—usually her youngest brother Seth—would row across to get the food at midday but on that fateful day, it was Duncan, the younger boy who came to fetch the vittles.”

He shifted in the chair, drawing his knees up, leaning forward to brace his elbows on his thighs as he stared intently into the forest.

“When Duncan came ashore, old man Tabor apparently was nowhere in sight. Conjecture is he was taking a nature call around about that time. Sara was sitting by the campfire frying bread, singing an old folk tune. Duncan was mesmerized by her voice and stood there listening until she became aware of him. She turned around and—as it has happened time and again and most likely always will—two gazes collided and two hearts were captured at first sight.”

“Not good,” she said.

“Not good on several accounts,” Daniel acknowledged. “Not only was Duncan an outsider, Sara was engaged. Her future had already been decided by a father who would not take kindly to it being altered. The men of the Hill rule their women with a heavy hand and those two falling in love that day was a tragedy in the making.”

“Did old man Tabor have a fit when he found Duncan there?”

“Duncan was already gone before Tabor returned but the damage had already been done. That very night the young man snuck up to the Hill to meet with Sara and she crawled out her window to join him.” He shrugged. “The inevitable happened, of course, and before the summer was out she was beginning to show. They made plans for her to leave the Hill, to run away with Duncan for they knew that was the only way they could be together.”

“But they were caught,” she said softly.

“Tabor had been suspecting something wasn’t quite right for a few weeks and had taken to watching his daughter very carefully. He told his best friend Lucas McKenna he thought his daughter might be sneaking out the cabin’s kitchen door to meet Diarmuid McGregor. I don’t guess it ever occurred to him that she would be disloyal and dare climb out her window to meet with any man other than her betrothed.”

“The heart doesn’t always do what the mind thinks it should,” Lorna observed.

“I’m sure that’s true,” Daniel agreed. “At any rate, old man Tabor and three of his sons caught them in the forest as they were making their way to the river. Duncan had loaded a canoe with what they would need and was going to take it down to Baxley then backtrack northward to the Provinces to throw off anyone who might follow.”

“The farther from her father the better,” Lorna said.

Daniel nodded. “As you can imagine, Tabor was enraged. Two of his sons grabbed and held him while the old man beat Duncan unmercifully. The fourth brother was holding Sara as she struggled to get to her lover. No doubt afraid of what her father would do to Sara, Duncan found the inhuman strength to break free. He knocked out one of her brothers, kicked the second in the groin and shoved Tabor to the ground. He went after Sara to get her away from her brother but that brother drew a knife, came at Duncan and would have gutted him if Sara hadn’t pushed between them, impaling herself on the blade. Duncan caught her as she fell and she died in his arms. Stunned, grief stricken, he didn’t fight them when they dragged him to his feet and tied him to a tree. They piled dried branches at his feet, laid Sara atop them then set the branches ablaze.”

“How horrible,” Lorna said, tears filling her eyes.

“If they had expected Duncan to scream they were disappointed. He looked each one in the eye through the flames and smoke and told them he would come back from hell, itself, and take from them what they had taken from him. No woman, he said, would be safe from him for as long as there were inhabitants living in the Hill. He died looking down at the charred body of the woman he loved.”

“Oh, Danny, that’s awful!” Lorna said. She wiped at the tears flowing down her cheeks. “How could anyone be that cruel and her with a baby alive inside her?”

Her brother fell silent again then got out of the chair to stand at the edge of the porch. His attention was riveted on the dark shadows lurking in the forest.

“And did he?” she asked quietly. “Did he come back?”

Daniel said nothing for a moment then released a long breath. “Something came back. Just as it had once before,” he said. “In Scotland.”

Lorna’s forehead creased. “I’m not following. What do you mean?”

“Long before Kirkland Tabor was born his great-great-grandfather Reynolds Tabor and his people had burned another man alive for a crime he hadn’t committed. An ancestor of Sara’s had accused a man named Allyn McCorley of having seduced her, of having taken her virginity. Tabor believed her even though no one bothered to examine her to make sure she was telling the truth. They tortured McCorley in an attempt to get him to confess but he denied ever having laid a hand to the girl who had just turned fourteen.” He reached up to hook his hands around the porch rafter. “As the flames leapt around him, he, too, cursed Tabor and the people of the entire village and told them he would come back, that he would come after the women. A month after his ashes were scattered in the forests, the first woman came up missing. Then another disappeared a year later and still another the year after that.” He looked around. “That went on for three years before the Elders of the village decided to leave Scotland, hoping to leave the evil of McCorley behind.”

“But they brought it with them,” Lorna said.

“Aye, it followed them here. There are those who believe Allyn McCorley and Duncan Daughtry became something else the night they died, that their souls were taken from them and merged into a third entity, melding with it.”

“Something else?” Lorna questioned.

“Something vile and deadly. A creature they call a Nightwind, an incubus demon now thrice as powerful and more determined than ever to go after the women of the Hill.”

Lorna got up and went to her brother. “If they believed in that superstitious nonsense, what was it they thought you could do?” she questioned, putting a hand to her brother’s back. She rubbed her palm over his shirt, frowning as she realized he had lost weight for she could feel his ribs.

“They wanted me to perform an exorcism,” he said.

Her hand stilled. She knew there was a high price to be paid by a priest engaged in such a powerful ritual. “Did you?”

“I did but it only made matters worse. Where there had only been a woman a year missing, suddenly there was three, the last being Johanna Reid, Sean Reid’s oldest girl, just two months ago.”

“What do you think happens to them, Danny?”

Her brother hung his head. “I think the Nightwind comes to the Hill, seduces them then lures them to their death in the forest. They think the stones protect them,” he said. “I know better. He crosses them at will. They think he only comes out after sundown but I think he can go and come whenever the mood strikes.” He pointed to the forest. “I’ve felt him many a time standing right there though I’ve never actually seen him.”

Lorna turned to look where he was pointing and felt a shiver run down her spine. She vividly remembered the man she’d seen along the river bank in the light of day who had vanished so suddenly. She tucked her bottom lip between her teeth.

He looked down at her. “Now do you understand why I didn’t want you to come here? You and I weren’t a part of what happened to him, Lorna, so I can only pray he won’t come after you as he has the other women. I pray he won’t try to contact you.”

Lorna shuddered, not daring to tell her brother that he already had.

* * * *

Daniel had warned Lorna that the people of the Hill would be standoffish to her when she was first introduced to them but that was not the case. At noon that day, several women came to call with welcoming gifts. A jar of strawberry of preservers, bar of homemade lavender soap, hand-tatted doily, fat beeswax candle, sachet of sweet-smelling dried flowers, and a small patchwork lap quilt had been arranged in an artfully woven cane basket tied with a pretty calico bow.

“We are glad to meet ye,” the spokeswoman of the three women told Lorna. “My name is Maggie Regis, wife to Jubal.” She pointed to the woman beside her. “This is my sister Sadie, who is wife to Gerry McFadden.” She introduced the other woman as Ellen McKenna. They were all wives of Elders.

“The gifts are from our hands to yours,” Ellen said with a smile.

“Thank you so much. These are lovely,” Lorna said, fingering the tatted edge of the handkerchief. “Won’t you come in?” She stepped back so the ladies could enter.

“Don’t have the time today,” Maggie stated. “Just wanted to bid you a quick hello.”

Already the women were stepping off the front porch. Maggie reached out to squeeze Lorna’s hand for a moment. “You come by my place any time you want, dearling. I’m always to home.” She turned to leave.

“I really appreciate you ladies stopping by,” Lorna said and returned the friendly waves bestowed on her. “Thank you again for the gifts!”

It wasn’t until she went back inside and was taking the gifts from the basket that she found the little carved figurine that had been tucked inside the lap quilt. The rough carving was that of a naked woman with bulging eyes whose hands were between her legs, fingers pulling apart the lips of her exaggerated vagina.

“Oh, dear lord!” Lorna said, tossing the carving back into the basket with hiss of disgust. She knew what it was, what it was meant to represent, but the carving offended her. It was what the old ones called a Sheela na Gig. It was meant to ward off the evil that lurked in Tabor Hill and had been given to her out of concern for her safety. Nevertheless, she had no desire to keep it. Having such a sacrilegious thing in his house would disturb Daniel should he come across it.

Taking the basket outside, she walked to the far edge of the clearing around the rectory and—careful not to cross the whitewashed rocks, tossed the carving into the forest, satisfied Daniel would never know of its existence.

“It’s a useless thing anyway.”

Lorna froze for the lilting brogue came from the darker shadows among the thick stand of oaks. She backed away, her eyes sweeping from bush to bush, tree to tree, yet she saw nothing. Not a leaf moved, not a branch swayed.

“It wouldn’t have kept me out.”

The voice came from behind her now. She was afraid to turn around, afraid to look into the eyes of the man whose soft words made the hair stand up on her arms. He was so close to her she could feel the warm breath on the nape of her neck.

“Nothing can keep me out,” he whispered in her ear, his lips moving over the sensitive flesh to send chills down her side. “Nothing and no one. I go where I will.”

Breathing heavily, sweat trickling down her temple, she shuddered as he placed a soft kiss on the side of her neck.

“Don’t,” she pleaded.

“Good day to you, Miss Lorna!”

Lorna spun around—expecting to see the man with the gentle brogue. Instead she found a burly man with a bald head and arms the size of small boulders walking bowlegged toward her. His rolling gait was almost painful to watch.

“Name’s Royce Gilmore,” he said, his smile showing a missing front tooth. “I’m the smithy. Father Danny sent me to put up them bars on your window.”

Lorna looked about the clearing but the man who had pressed his lips to her neck was nowhere to be found. He had moved so fast, so quietly she had not even felt the air move. Surely the smithy had seen him.

Or had he?

“Are you alone, Mr. Gilmore?” she asked.

“Name’s Royce,” he corrected. “We don’t hold on such things as titles and all. And aye, my lady, I’m alone.” He narrowed his ice blue eyes. “Why’d you ask?”

Lorna forced a smile to her dry mouth, letting the lie out as easily as breathing. “It’s getting near time for lunch. I wondered how many I’d need to fix sandwiches for. You will join us, won’t you?”

“Not necessary. I brought some sammiches.”

“Well, you are certainly welcome to take lunch with us,” Lorna said.

“Much obliged but I kinda got my mouth all set for them sardine sammiches. I can eat whilst I work. Getting you fixed up is the most important thing I’ll be doing today.” He took a tape measure out of his pocket, going to her window to measure the opening.

“Does everyone have bars on their windows, Royce?” she asked.

“Better believe they do!” he replied. “Leastways them houses what have females in ‘em.” He nudged his chin at the rectory. “Weren’t no need to have bars on the priest’s digs until you came.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and a pencil no longer than his thumb.

“I’m sorry to be a nuisance,” she said.

“No need to feel that way,” Royce told her, putting the pencil lead to his tongue to wet it before jotting down the measurements. “The men of the Hill do all we can to protect our womenfolk.” He shrugged. “’Course it don’t always work. Sometimes no matter how vigilant you are one will slip through.”

“Where do they go, Royce?” she asked and when he looked around at her. “The women who leave here. Where do they go?”

He stared hard at her and for a moment she thought he wouldn’t answer. When he did, his words and the vehemence with which he spoke them surprised her.

“To hell, Miss Lorna,” he said, a muscle grinding in his cheek. “As sure as there are little brown acorns on that there oak, they go to hell when they follow him.”

“Why do you think they follow him?” she asked, expecting him to give her the hard look again but he simply shrugged.

“Women are weak creatures, Miss Lorna. They are easily led by a smooth tongue and a pretty boy face.” He shoved the paper and pencil back into the pocket of his coveralls. “Reckon the Daughtry boy had both of them things.”

“Do you really think Duncan Daughtry came back from the grave, Royce?”

“Know he did,” the smithy said.

“You’ve seen him?”

Royce shook his head. “Don’t no one but womenfolk see him, Miss Lorna, but we know he’s here. Women been disappearing from the McGregor and Tabor families for hundreds of years. Any woman kin to them by marriage comes up missing, too. That would be the Kirkpatricks, the Reids and MacLeods. Them be the only womenfolk who goes missing. Nope. Don’t show himself to the menfolk. A’feared of ‘em, I reckon,” was Royce’s response. He plucked a red bandana from his pocket and mopped at his head. “It’ll take me today to cut and fashion the bars. I’ll have ‘em ready to be put in place first thing in the morning.” He looked up at the sky. “Sure wish it would rain tonight so’s you won’t be too hot but that’s just wishful hopin’ I’m thinkin’.”

After thanking him, Lorna stayed behind the cabin for a long time—hoping her mysterious visitor would return—but when he didn’t, she went inside to fix a light lunch. She could hear Daniel speaking to someone in his office so she tried to go quietly about her work. Even when she heard hammering coming from that end of the house, she did not go to investigate.

It was while she was slicing cucumbers for a salad that she felt the presence of another person in the room with her. She looked up from the counter to stare at the cabinet above her and felt her heart thumping wildly in her chest. Putting aside the knife, she turned slowly to face her visitor and when she saw who it was, her shoulders slumped and she released a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that, Cail!” she castigated him. Her hands were shaking as she wiped them on the apron she’d tied around her waist.

Cail’s grin was boyish. He was leaning with one shoulder against the door jamb, arms crossed over his brawny chest. “I was enjoying watching you work,” he said.

“How long have you been standing there?” she asked, a bit put out with him.

“Not long.” He pushed away from the jamb. “Danny asked me to take the noon meal with you so while he’s still talking with Jubal I thought I’d see if you needed any help setting the table.”

Lorna felt small beside him as he came to stand by her. He was looking down at her with that grin still in place and when he reached up to tuck a stray strand of her hair behind her ear, she once again felt a jolt go through her body. She moved away from his touch and his grin wavered.

He immediately stepped back and put his hand down. “If I’m out of line, you tell me,” he said.

She shook her head. “No, it’s not that. It’s just .…” She didn’t want to tell him about the phantom voice she had heard the night before or the presence she’d felt behind her today that made her jumpy.

“I’m moving too fast,” he said.

Understanding hit her and she stared up at him, realizing he believed himself to be in the early stages of courting her. She had no idea what to say to that.

As though he sensed her indecision, he shoved his hands into his pockets and tilted his head to one side. “I do have Danny’s permission to ask you to go walking with me,” he said, confirming her suspicion.

“But do you have mine?” she heard herself ask and winced at the confrontational tone in which she’d put forth the question.

Cail’s brows drew together. “I didn’t know I needed your permission.”

“It would have been nice if you’d asked me first,” she said, lifting her chin.

“That’s not the way of the Hill, sweeting,” he said. “We go to a woman’s guardian to make our intentions known so he will know we’re serious about the matter and honorable in our approach to her.”

“Well, Daniel isn’t my guardian,” she said. “I’m a grown woman and I make my own decisions.”

“In the eyes of the Hill, Danny is your guardian,” Cail told her. “If me asking him before I asked you offended you, I can’t help it. What’s done, is done.”

“Cail, I’m not offended,” she was quick to say although it wasn’t the truth, “but neither am I looking for an attachment right now. I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours and I want to get to know the people.” She smiled at him even though he was now frowning at her. “Get to know you and Euan and Sam—everybody.” She gave him a steady look. “And besides, aren’t you still married?”

“I’m free of any attachments, as you call them,” he stated, his voice a bit harder. “Libby’s been gone over a year so the Elders declared our Joining invalid on the anniversary of her leaving. Word was sent to the Citadel to inform them, and word came back a few days ago so I have the full sanction of the Shadowlords to marry again.”

It was on the tip of Lorna’s tongue to tell him she had no intention of ever marrying but she didn't think he wanted to hear it. His light gray eyes were drilling into her, waiting for her to comment.

“I’m sure it’s a relief to know you have the Shadowlord’s permission,” she said stiffly and turned back to the cucumbers. “I need to get the meal finished.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment then he sighed loudly. “You want me to set the table for you?”

“That would be a big help,” she acknowledged. “Do you know where the plates are?”

“Aye,” he said as he went to the sink to wash his hands.

Out of the corner of her eye, Lorna saw a shadow move across the kitchen wall and looked that way. There was no one there but she could feel another presence in the room with them and knew Duncan Daughtry had returned. As Cail took three plates from the cupboard and opened a drawer to take out the silverware, her attention kept wandering to a certain spot near the pantry. When Cail carried the plates into the other room, she stared hard at that spot.

“I know you’re there,” she said quietly.

The pantry door opened slowly then closed silently.

“I know you do,” came the whispery reply in her head.

“They’re gonna be a few minutes longer,” Cail said, coming back into the kitchen to retrieve the glasses. He looked where Lorna was staring then back at her, one eyebrow crooked.

“There’s a pitcher of lemonade in the ice box,” she said, tearing her attention from the pantry. “Milk, too, if you’d prefer it.”

“Lemonade,” Cail stated. He took the glasses to the table and returned for the lemonade. “Lemonade is one of my weaknesses.”

“One of his many weaknesses,” her ghostly visitor reported in her ear.

Lorna stiffened for she felt the movement of his lips against her earlobe and knew he was standing right beside her. She moved away from the counter, putting distance—she hoped—between them.

“Cail?” she asked as her other visitor started out of the kitchen with the pitcher of lemonade.

“Aye?”

“May I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Do you think Duncan Daughtry haunts the Hill?”

Lorna wasn’t prepared for the brush of wind against her cheek. She put a hand there as the wispy hairs that had escaped her long auburn braid fluttered.

Cail’s lips thinned. “Why do you want to know about him?”

“Royce and I were dis .…”

“Royce Gilmore is almost as big a gossip as Thaddeus O'Day is,” he said. “They talk when they ought to keep their mouths shut.”

“It’s not a secret,” she said, wondering at his reluctance. “I mean Daniel told me the story this morning.”

“They say it’s bad luck to talk about the demon,” he told her. “You talk about him and he appears.”

Lorna felt the hairs on her arm stand up. “Is that what you think he is? A demon?”

“They say he sold his soul to the devil in order to come back to get his revenge on the Hill. Wouldn’t you call someone who did that a demon?”

“I don’t believe in the devil or demons,” she said.

“They say those who don’t are fooling themselves,” he stated.

“Have you noticed they say a lot of things?” The words tickled Lorna’s ear and she swept a hand over it.

“You’ve told me what they—whoever they are—say. Now tell me what you think,” she said.

He turned away, carrying the lemonade into the dining room. “I think you ought not to be dwelling on such things as the demon,” he said, filling the three glasses. “Best to think of good things.”

“Like his courting you?” her unseen visitor asked. “Ask him why Libby left him. Ask him why the women of the Hill are so easily led.”

“Go away!” Lorna hissed then realized Cail had heard her. She felt the heat rising in her cheeks when he straightened up from pouring the last glass of lemonade and gave her a wounded look. She extended a hand toward him. “Not you, Cail. I was…” She batted the air. “Talking to a pest.”

Cail smiled. “You’ll get plenty of those with all this dry weather,” he said.

In her mind Lorna heard a low, amused chuckle then could feel her phantom visitor pulling back. For just a split second, she had the sensation of fingers trailing along her back. The moment his spirit…or whatever it was…left, she felt the emptiness close around her.

“Lorna, I’d like you to meet Elder Jubal Tabor.”

Daniel entered the room with a tall, imposing man dressed entirely in black. His neatly-clipped beard was as black as the waistcoat and trousers he wore and blended into the black silk shirt buttoned to his chin beneath the waistcoat. In his work-reddened hands he held a broad brimmed hat with a black silk band.

“Miss Lorna,” Jubal said with a slight inclination of his head. He made no move to offer his hand.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Tabor. I met your lady-wife this morning,” Lorna said, feeling a chill envelope her for the man’s hard black eyes seemed to stab right through her.

“It is Elder Tabor,” Cail corrected in a soft voice.

“My lady said as much,” the Elder replied. “I hope you liked the little trinkets she and her women friends gifted to you.”

Lorna’s gaze dipped to Jubal’s strong hands and instinctively she knew it had been his talent that had fashioned the hideous Sheela na Gig. When she looked back up into his bottomless stygian stare, she knew how a moth felt as it was drawn to a flame. She had to tear her eyes from his.

“I did,” she said, smoothing the plain of her apron. “That was very thoughtful of them.”

“We mean to see you take to life at the Hill with ease,” Jubal said. His gaze shifted to Cail. “Is that not right, McGregor?”

“It is,” Cail was quick to say. “I know I’ll do everything I can to see she is happy here.”

Lorna felt something pass between the two men. She glanced at Daniel but he was looking out the window, his back to everyone. She cleared her throat to gain his attention and when he turned, she dared a look at Jubal.

“Won’t you join us for the noon meal, Elder Tabor?”

“I’m afraid not, Miss Lorna,” he responded. “Maggie is waiting table for me.” He extended his hand toward Daniel. “As always, it was enlightening speaking with you, Father Daniel. I hope our endeavors will prove worthwhile.”

Daniel took the hand offered to him but Lorna thought he winced as he did. He did not seem any more inclined to look into the Elder’s face as she did.

“I pray things turn out just as they should,” Danny said.

“They will,” Jubal declared, a glint appearing in his black eyes. “We mean to see they do.”

* * * *

Lorna could not sleep. The air in her room was superheated and she was sweating. It was so hot, she had developed a wicked headache as she lay outside the covers, tossing and turning, punching her pillow, turning it over to the cool side again and again. Finally unable to stand the cloying heat any longer, she got up, went to the window, threw back the curtains and tried to open the window. She had no fear of Duncan Daughtry for she had no intention of succumbing to his seduction if that was what he had in mind.

The window would not budge.

Struggling with all her strength, she pulled and pulled but she couldn’t raise it. Hissing, she went to her night table, struck a match to the lamp. Going back to the window, she held the light aloft to see what might be preventing her. The moment she saw the nails in the bottom frame she knew Daniel had hammered it shut. She knew that was what he’d been doing when she heard the hammering.

“Damn it, Danny!” she snarled. “You’re going too far with this!”

She had a good mind to go to his room and roust him, berate him for not trusting her. But then realizing she had been about to go back on her word to him not to open the window, she guessed he’d had reason not to trust her.

Unable to stand being in the suffocating room any longer, she blew out the lamp and put it back on the night table. She opened her door and padded barefoot into the hall, careful not to make any noise for the last thing she really wanted was to wake her brother despite her momentary desire to do so.

The parlor was marginally cooler than her room but it was still overly warm. She desperately wanted to fling open the front door and sit on the porch to let what night wind there might be wash over her sticky body. Sitting on the settee, she drew her knees up and stared into the darkness.

It wasn’t just the heat that was keeping her from sleeping. Thoughts of Cail wanting to court her made her uneasy. She didn’t want any man in her life. Not ever again.

Not after Kurt.

“Stop thinking about him! Get that bastard out of your mind once and for all!” she snapped and hopped off the settee. Going to the door, she took a deep breath, twisted the lock and pulled open the portal. The sweet mist of fog washed over her and she closed her eyes, drawing in the night scents and the soft wind playing about her face.

It was cool on the porch as she settled in a rocker and drew her legs up into the perimeter of her arms. No, she had no fear of Duncan Daughtry for she had no intention of allowing any man—ghostly or not—to ever seduce her again. Once had been enough and she would bear the scars of that night for as long as she lived. It had taken her months to get over the trauma of it and—at times—she wasn’t sure she truly had.

Just as she had yet to get over Kurt.

Lord, how she had loved that man, she remembered although the flash of his handsome face across her mind’s eye made her sick to her stomach now. She had fought the attraction for as long as she could but in the end he had been too skillful, too persistent and she had given in to his slow hands and whispered words, his honed body and practiced moves. A naïve virgin such as she’d been had never stood a chance against such blatant sexuality and relentless pursuit.

Lowering her head to her knees, she felt tears burning behind her eyes. It wasn’t just that he had fooled her so expertly or used her so brutally there at the end. What hurt her the most was that she had enjoyed those first few moments between them until his true nature had shown itself.

Shuddering at the memory of her begging him to stop, of him laughing at her protests, of him pinning her down, forcing his way savagely into her unwilling and unprepared body, of her screams, of his laughter.

“Lorna, what the hell are you doing out here?”

Jerking her head up, Lorna felt her heart skip a beat as the figure of a tall man came at her out of the fog. His words were distorted, muffled and it took her a moment to realize it was Cail coming toward her.

“You shouldn’t be out here!” he said as he stepped up on the porch.

“What are you doing roaming around the rectory at this time of night?” she countered, feeling guilty for having been caught outside.

“I wanted to make sure your doors and windows were locked,” he said without an ounce of apology in his voice. “And here I find you sitting on the porch where anything could jump out at you.” There was anger in his voice.

“Or anyone?” she asked. She didn’t want to put her feet on the porch floor for she was sitting there in her nightgown—her only protection being her arms wrapped around her legs to keep him from seeing too much of her.

“He comes out at night,” Cail said. “What if he were to call to you?”

“I’d ignore him,” she said.

“Aye, that worked real well for the women he’s already taken!” Cail snapped. He shot out a hand to grab her by the arm, pulling her none-too gently to her feet.

“What the hell do you .…” she began, trying to pry his strong fingers from her flesh.

“What’s going on out here?”

Groaning for Daniel was now standing in the door, belting his robe around him.

“I found her out here on the porch,” Cail said. He ushered Lorna to the door.

“Lorna!” Daniel hissed. “You promised me!”

“It was hot,” she defended as she managed to snatch her arm from Cail’s grip.

“You need to be more careful of my woman,” Cail told Daniel.

“Your woman? How dare you!” Lorna snapped. She barely felt her brother taking her by the arm to pull her back inside the rectory. “I am not .…”

“Go to your room,” Daniel ordered. When she would have argued with him, he shook her, his teeth gritted. “Do what I tell you, Lorna! Now!”

It was dark there on the porch but Lorna could see the furious gleam in her brother’s eye. She didn’t want to create any more of a scene than there had already been. Pulling out of Danny’s grip she did as he told her, cursing under her breath with every step she took. She went into her room and slammed the door as hard as she could, angrier than she could ever remember being in her entire life.

The moment strong arms went around her she gasped and would have screamed but a cold hand covered her mouth as she was taken backwards to the bed.

Chapter Four

When on the night wind he had slipped past her into the house, he’d had no intention other than to await her in her room, to watch her sleep when she returned to her bed. He wanted to listen to her quiet breathing and to study the gentle contours of her face. He wanted to keep her safe from those he knew would use her, abuse her, take from her all that she cherished and replace it with ashes and dust.

Her anger as she came into the room pushed those gentle thoughts from his mind and had reawakened within him his own fury.

“Shush,” he whispered in her ear as he sat down on her bed, drawing her squirming body into his lap. “I’ll not hurt you. I am here to protect you.”

Lorna stilled. She was staring down at her arms being crushed together by an unseen force, restricted by a ghostly band of strength she could not overcome. The coldness over her mouth pressed against her lips and cheeks but she could not discern a shape keeping her silent.

“If I release you, will you swear to me you’ll not cry out?”

Why she trusted her phantom visitor she couldn’t say but his words were soft and he had made no attempt to manhandle her. He simply held her still on his lap. As best she could, she nodded beneath the constriction of his hand. The moment the pressure was gone from her face and body, she leapt away, spinning around to confront him.

There was no one there.

Leastwise nothing she could see.

“Show yourself!” she demanded, backing well away from the bed, putting distance between her and it. Her lips were quivering but she was determined to face her tormentor.

The curtains she had thrown back on the window let in only marginal light but there was enough residual nightglow for her to make out the room’s furnishings. She squinted, trying to discern movement, shape near the bed.

Very slowly he began to materialize before her. First his body was a vague, shimmering outline that began to fill in with undulations of somber color. A pair of long legs encased in dark brown pants was following by a blue checked shirt open at the throat. Curly black hair formed in a queue held back with a rawhide thong. Dark features—those of a sun-bronzed man in his late thirties—filled in amid the oval of his face. Strong hands rested on the knees of his pants and a pair of pale green eyes gazed back at her with sadness.

“Duncan?” she asked, though she would have sworn the ghost was a much younger man.

“Nay, my lady. I am Chrysty,” he answered. His voice changed now that she could see him from a soft whisper to a strong deep tone laced with a highland brogue. “Although I was there when Allyn was burned at the stake—Duncan, too.”

Lorna drew in a quick breath. This was the demon that had entered Allyn McCorley’s body when Kirkland Tabor had executed the young man thousands of years before. This was the entity who had followed them to Serenia.

“I thought .…”

“I died just as the lads did—burned to death by a distant ancestor of Reynolds Tabor’s for daring to touch one of their women. I am always here. I will always be here. Allyn comes out now and again to claim a Hill woman, Duncan even less often,” he said. “I’d just as soon he stays in the Abyss. His grief makes him hard to control and he is not as gentle with the women as Allyn.”

She moved cautiously to the desk and pulled the chair out, perched on it as she stared at his devilishly handsome face.

“His grief over Sara you mean?” she asked and watched his full lips twist.

“Aye. The fool loved her. She doesn’t deserve anyone’s pity and I’ll tell you now, the child she was carrying may not have been Duncan’s.”

“You might as well call her a whore as say that,” she said.

“That was what she was,” he said. “She had her first man long before she lay with Duncan.”

“So now you take your anger out on all the women of the Hill to have your vengeance?”

He moved so quickly she never saw him do it. One moment he was sitting on her bed and the next he was hunkered down before her, his pale eyes glittering as he stared up at her.

“That is what the Elders would have you believe, lassie,” he said, his gaze wandering her face. “But that is not the way of it. The women come willingly with me to be rid of their menfolk.”

Moonlight suddenly speared through the window and she realized he was so close she could see the faint growth of beard that shadowed his face. She wondered if this was the way he’d looked the day he’d been murdered.

“It is save for the welts and bruises and cuts that faded after death.”
“My brother said Allyn and Duncan were wrongly accused and tortured.”

“They did. I died cursing my accuser and all the inhabitants of the settlement for believing her lies,” he told her. “I swore to return to take my revenge on those who killed me but it was a careless pledge. I never thought it would come to pass.” He shook his head. “Always be sure you know what it is you say for your words may well come back to haunt you.”

“Words spoken in anger always do,” she said quietly.

“Aye, that they do,” he agreed.

“You didn’t sell your soul to the devil to return?”

He laughed—throwing his head back so she got a good look at the strong column of his neck. “Nay, I did not but there are those who have and still do. It was one of the Dark Ones who was there that day that heard the curse and saw a way to get Her own revenge on the people of Tabor’s clan.” He sighed deeply. “It was Her, the goddess. She was the one who brought me back and bound me to do Her bidding.”

“Morrigunia?” she whispered.

He shook his head “Nay, another. One you would not know and One whose name I may not speak.”

“She brought you back to seduce the women of Tabor’s lineage?” she asked.

“No. She brought me back to right the wrongs done the women who suffered at his hands, to punish the men by taking their women from them. The men of the encampment where I was killed were a breed unto themselves back then and they still are to this day. They are not what you think. Don’t let their good manners fool you, Lorna. They are the true evil on this mountain. Evil the goddess would stamp out once and for all.”

“They say you’re the evil,” she told him. “It was to rid themselves of you that they sent for my brother.”

Chrysty’s smile was playful. “Your brother’s ritual didn’t work because it was aimed at the wrong men.”

Lorna frowned. “Danny said the troubles here increased after the exorcism.”

“They did. The men of the Hill stepped up their abuse of the women and I stepped up my campaign to protect those women.”

Cailean’s face passed over her mind’s eye and she thought of his highhanded attitude, the anger she’d seen festering in his gaze. Could Chrysty be telling the truth? Was the evil the men who had accused him and not the other way around?

“Let me tell you the true story of the Tabor clan and then you can decide,” he said. “It began with Reynolds Tabor, the first laird of Tremayne .…”

* * * *

On the day he came to the settlement where I lived, it was storming as though the end of the world might be at hand. The sky was black with clouds and hail the size of hen’s eggs fell from the heavens. He was there—I heard him say—on the prince’s business and he was looking for a man named Chrystian Brell.

I stepped forward for I had no notion why the prince’s agent would be seeking me. Had I known, I would have fled before the guards that had accompanied Reynolds Tabor could lay hands to me.

“Ye have been accused of the rape of Gemma McNease, daughter to Craig, the prince’s huntsman!” Tabor stated.

“Nay!” I denied, struggling with the hard hands holding me. Fear rippled through me like lightning. “I did not!”

“Ye will confess your sins!” Tabor shouted as his men dragged me toward the jail.

“I am innocent!” I kept protesting but my words fell on deaf ears. I was taken to the jail and shackled to the wall. I knew what the outcome would be as I hung there sobbing with fear.

I suffered for well over a month now but the end was at last in sight. There would be no more hot irons applied to my flesh. No more sharp implements to rend or pierce or pinch. No water poured down my throat or ice-cold dunks in the artesian well. No longer would I wake in the middle of the night as my torturer came strutting into the cellar, impatient to cause more pain, eager to hear at last the whimpers and pleadings I refused to give him.

From my jail cell, I stared out from between the bars to the place where I was to meet my gruesome death that morning. My hands tightened on the rusted bars, my knuckles bleeding white as I pull futilely at the iron uprights. Leaning my head against the cool, pitted metal, I close my eyes, striving to drown out the laughter. There would be no escape for me.

Gathered in the clearing that day was the entire village and they were making it a festive atmosphere. Steamed pudding sellers were hawking their wares alongside vendors of lavender scones, breads fresh from the oven and slathered with sweet clotted cream, sticky toffee, and hot, roasted nuts. Peddlers hoisted pitchers of lemonade and cold cider upon their brawny shoulders. Children ran around the adults, laughing and calling to one another as they played.

The year was 1591. It was a Saturday, the eighteenth of April.

It was a day of merriment.

It was a day of my death.

They came for me at ten of the clock when all had been made ready. With my hands bound before me in heavy iron shackles, they dragged me out to the place set aside for the execution and lifted my hands above my head to hook them to the fastener. A heavy chain was then wrapped around my chest and legs to fetter me tightly to the post. The chain would heat and sear my flesh—another torment added to those that had come before. Around my feet they piled the shorn branches from the black walnut.

There is little a victim can do except struggle against the heavy chain that holds him tight to the tall upright. The thick post to which his body will be lashed had been honed just that morning from a felled black walnut tree and so the wood was green. It would burn slowly—to extend his agony. It would burn hot—to intensify his pain. It would smoke copiously—with any grace at all he will suffocate long before the flames reaches his upper body.

Looking out over those who had come to see me die was the very reason I was in this sorry predicament. I stared into her periwinkle blue eyes—eyes far too old, far too experienced for her years—and saw revenge sparkling there. She could not have me and thus no one would. I had spurned her heated advances and now I would pay dearly for daring to do so.

A faint wind blew over those gathered and ruffled my hair. I am sure my eyes revealed the hopelessness of the situation when the torch was lit and the crisp white smoke spiraled into the air.

“Have ye any final words, Chrysty Brell?” the magistrate queried. It was a formality but it was one that must be allowed under the law.

“Aye,” I said, my gaze never leaving Gemma McNease. “I am innocent of these charges and each of ye knows I am but heed me well. I curse ye and yourn for all generations and I warn ye now I will return to make ye regret this day.”

The magistrate hastily motioned for the executioner to apply the burning torch to the faggots at my feet.

I had to shout over the roar of the flames.

“I will come back and it will be yourn womenfolk I’ll take from ye for what ye do to me this day! This I swear to ye! I will sell my soul to make ye pay!”

Already the brush had caught fire and smoke was streaming upward. The sound of the crackling flames was loud in the morning air for every throat had been silenced, every eye widened, every breath held as my curse rang out clear and strong.

“And ye, Reynolds Tabor, will know the full brunt of my revenge!” I shouted as my clothing caught fire. “Ye and yourn I curse for all time. I will see ye in hell!”

I did not struggle as the flames engulfed me. I did not cry out. I met my death bravely and well. I stood staring into the eyes of the woman-child whose stung pride and selfishness had brought about this horrible death. Until the flames obscured her face, I continued to hold her gaze, and I believe my eyes were burning brighter than the fire consuming me.

It was at the moment I took my last breath that I felt the soul being sucked from my body. The pain of the fire—as horrible as that was—was nothing compared to the agony I experienced as that soul was taken from me. I had an impression of green eyes staring at me from the boiling blackness of the heavens above the acrid smoke and then a chilling cold that cut through me like a knife.

I had no notion where it was She took me. The skin had sloughed off from my body and where Her arms pressed against me as She held me seared every nerve ending still there. I remember the stench of sulfur, slickness beneath my destroyed flesh, that mind-numbing cold.

“You are in the Abyss, My dearling lad,” She whispered to me then left me there to writhe in agony.

How long I lay there wallowing in that rancid primordial soup I will never know. A day? A week? Longer? I have no way of knowing. The pain was unending, every passing moment a torment and the stench made my eyes burn. I prayed for it to end. If this was hell—and I was sure it was—I could not imagine what I had done to wind up there. When at last She returned, She hovered over me with a smile on her beautiful face and pronounced me healed.

I did not know if I was or not for I could no longer move or speak. All that was left to me was to stare with wide, unblinking eyes at that exquisite face as it loomed over me.

“Your soul is mine, pretty boy,” She said. “You are mine. To do with as I will. From this day forward, the Abyss is your home, your lair, until one of the Tabor clan women calls for your help.”

“I’ll not give it!” I thought though the words would not come.

“Aye, but you will, and give it gladly,” She said, “else you will spend eternity in this oozing muck!”

The only sound I could make was a whimper and when She heard that, Her smile was radiant.

“Good boy,” She said, “now pay careful attention for it will be the cries, the screams, the pleadings of the Tabor clan women for whom you must listen. Be they of Tabor blood or claimed by it or bonded to its kin, you will go when you are called and you will do what must be done.”

Her smiled became something so evil, so depraved it made me cringe away from Her lovely face but there was nowhere for me to go. I was trapped in that sickening ooze—coated with it—as She put Her lips to my ear.

“You will bring them to Me,” she said. “Bond them to you in blood and when it is done, bring them to the Sisterhood.”

I knew, then, who She was. Her name spread over my brain like a contagion. I wanted to deny Her. I wanted to throw Her demands back in Her face but I knew I could not. She owned my soul—I could feel it missing within my breast—and without it I was but an empty vessel waiting to be used.

And use me She did. It was not long afterwards that I heard the first cry, the first summons and I had no choice but to go. The only consolation was that I was leaving that noxious slime in which I had been laying. Once free of that rotten muck, I knew I would do whatever it took to never return.

Her name was Alinor and she became the first of a long line of Tabor-abused women that I set free. As for Reynolds Tabor, I bore that bastard to his fiery fate and left him there to howl at the demons that picked at his bones.

* * * *

Lorna stared into the amber eyes of the Nightwind and saw the fires of hell leaping there. The face of a man screaming in agony dwelt in that golden gaze and she knew it was Tabor she saw and not Chrysty Brell.

“Her name is Lilith,” she said. “The queen of the witches. That is who took your soul.”

He said nothing—only looked back at her—but there was no need to say the name.

“Do you seduce them away from their husbands, then?” she asked.

Chrysty smiled. “There is no need to lure them away, Lorna. They call to me first else I can not come. When they call, when they plead to be taken from this hellish life into which they have been cast, I come. If they want my body, I give it. Most do.”

She could see why. She had thought Cailean McGregor a handsome man but he could not hold a candle to the Nightwind. The man kneeling before her had the face of a dark angel. His voice was deep and with the brogue sent warm spikes of longing through her.

“What about Allyn and Duncan?” she asked.

He smiled. “The net has been cast wider than just the Tabor women. Now it extends to the Shaw and Dunlop clans as well.” He shrugged carelessly. “Those were the last of the Hill women who were not directly related to the Tabor clan by marriage. Now, all the women will one day belong to the Nightwinds.”

“Is that why the exorcism didn’t work?”

“Your brother didn’t know why he was brought here,” he said, drawing her attention to his full lips then back to the hypnotic eyes. “He does now.”

“What do you mean?” she questioned. “They wanted him to do the exorcism.”

“They knew it would do no good. You can not dispel a Nightwind with such a ritual. They wanted Daniel Brent here because they knew his sister would follow.”

Deep lines formed between Lorna’s brows. “I don’t under .…”

“They wanted you here, Lorna,” he said. “They wanted the last female descendant of Reynolds Tabor to Join with the man who will be elected the new laird of the clan.”

She gasped. “Me?” She shook her head. “No, you’re wrong. There have been no Tabors in the Brent line.”

“Aye, but there were. On your mother’s side of the family.”

“No,” she said again, shaking her head more firmly. “My mother’s people were Dysons. Mama is .…”

“Adopted,” he said gently and when her eyes widened, he sighed heavily. “You didn’t know.”

“You’re wrong,” she said.

“It’s true, Lorna. Her mother was Agnes Shore, daughter of Lacey Tabor. Lacey had only the one daughter, Agnes, and no son to carry on his name. He blamed his wife and child for his not having an heir. He killed his wife in a drunken rage and abused Agnes so badly the Shadowlords were asked to intervene. They sent the Prime Reaper after him and Lacey made the mistake of drawing down on the lawman. Agnes was taken to the orphanage at Summit Hill where she was later adopted by the Dysons.”

“Isn’t Jubal Regis head of the clan?” she asked, trying to gain time to consider what he was saying.

“Jubal is being eaten away with cancer and he is dying without issue,” Chrysty told her. “He has but a few weeks at most so he will see his appointed as laird before that time passes. Already the man is being considered for Eldership and once that is achieved, he can assume the mantle of laird.”

“Cailean?” she asked breathlessly.

“The one and the same,” the Nightwind answered. “A man with many acknowledged faults, the worst of which is a nasty temper when he doesn’t get his way.”

Lorna tore her gaze from his and searched the floor at her feet as though she might find answers to the myriad questions tumbling around inside her head. She put a hand to her temple where a dull ache had begun.

“The Elders knew about you and your brother, of course,” he went on. “There were a lot of angry men on Tabor Hill when Daniel took his vows. They looked for a way to get him here, to get you here with him. They want him to mate with one of their daughters to carry on the Tabor line.”

Horror flitted over Lorna’s face. “Danny will never forsake his vows!” she said.

“I hope you are right for the line needs to end. The legacy of evil the clan has sustained needs to die out.”

The ache in Lorna’s head was growing steadily worse. It had been years since she’d had the debilitating headaches that had begun when she was in her early teens. She feared the pain returning and it felt as though it had.

“It is tension,” he said, lifting both hands to place his fingertips on her temples. “Nothing more.” He started to rub in slow, tight little circles and the pain immediately decreased.

She closed her eyes as he worked his magic. She could hear his soft breath, feel the warmth of his fingers.

“You are a very beautiful woman.”

Lorna’s green eyes fluttered open. He had moved closer so that his chest pressed against her knees. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to open her legs and let him move closer still. She fused her gaze with his as he threaded his fingers through her hair, put his thumbs on her temple to continue the gentle massage.

“So beautiful.”

His voice was husky, filled with a sensuous cadence that made her womb tighten. She became lost in his heated amber eyes. Passion swept over her and she wanted nothing more than to throw herself into his arms, to have him lay her down, cover her with his hard body.

“I want you,” he whispered and molded his lips to hers.

The kiss made her head spin and her toes curl. It was the softest touch but carried with it the punch of a lightning bolt. She clutched at his waist, burying her fingers in the soft black silk. He wedged himself between her legs and she had the wild desire to lift her legs, lock them around him, and adhere to him like a feather to molasses. The moment his tongue swept slowly, seductively across her lips she could feel her body melting, her willpower giving way. She groaned deep in her throat—heard his low, throbbing echo—then he moved one hand from her face, between them to cup her breast.

“No!” she said, jerking back from his touch. She batted his hands away. “Stop that! You’re trying to lure me and I won’t have it!”

“I am not Kurt Sprague, Lorna,” he said, dropping his hands to his thighs.

“You’re a man and you’re all alike!” she hissed. She scrambled out of the chair—scraping her calf on the seat as she dragged it over—and stumbled across to the other side of the room, putting the overstuffed chair between her and him.

“If you had but called I would have heard you that night and come to your aid,” he said. He remained kneeling on the floor with his back to her. His head was bent, shoulders slumped. “I would have snapped his neck like a dry twig for what he did to you.”

She knew he meant what he said. If she had given in to the despair that had sought so desperately to escape her, cried out, cursed Kurt’s treachery, Chrysty would have appeared on that lonely roadway. He would have championed her as he had generations of her ancestors. He would have gone after the man who had hurt her so carelessly and righted the wrong that had been done.

“You would have killed him,” she said and when he nodded silently, her forehead creased with confusion. “Why?”

Still he did not turn, did not look around at her. “Because he hurt what is mine, granted to me by Her grace.”

“I am not yours!” she snapped. “I belong to no man nor will I!”

“You are mine,” he said firmly and got to his feet. He turned slowly, his eyes glowing. “You belong to me just as I belong to you. You can not change what is, Lorna. Long before you were a speck in the mist of time the first Tabor woman agreed to it. All direct-line Tabor women belong to me but you, you are different. You are the one for whom I have been waiting all my life.”

“No!” she said. “I won’t accept that!”

“Accept it or not,” he said. “It is the truth.”

She tensed for he was coming toward her, his hands loose at his sides but she could feel the coiled energy, the danger emanating from his body. She backed into the corner, pressing tight to the angle of the walls, her palms flat against the plaster.

“Make no mistake about it, Lorna,” he said. “If you Join with Cailean McGregor you will regret it. He will regret it. This entire settlement will regret it.”

“Don’t make threats,” she said, hating the quiver that had entered her voice.

“It is not a threat, sweeting. It is a promise. McGregor is a despicable cur who made his wife’s life a living hell before she begged Duncan to take her from him. He will do the same for you if you listen to his lies.”

“I have no intention of Joining with him or any other man!” she told him.

“They intend to see you give birth to his heir,” he said, stopping short for she put out a hand to deny him coming any closer.

“Just go away,” she said, tears prickling at the back of her eyes. “Please. Leave.”

He hesitated for a moment then simply vanished as though he’d never been there. The room began a measured return to the brightness that had been there from the moon’s light. Trembling, her heart pounding so cruelly in her chest she thought it might well break free of her ribcage, Lorna slid down the wall, cowering behind the chair. She circled her knees with her arms and stayed that way until she heard heavy footsteps coming toward her room.

The door was flung open just as she took a seat on the side of her bed. It would not do for Daniel to know she had not been alone, that the evil of Tabor Hill had been visiting her.

“You will not leave this house at night again!” Daniel shouted. “Tomorrow, I will have all the windows measured for bars and I will have a lock installed on both doors and only I will have the keys to them!”

“You mean to keep me a prisoner?” she asked, aghast at the towering fury she sensed flowing from her normally easygoing brother.

“I mean to see you kept safe from the Nightwind!” he yelled. “You have no notion what it is you are flirting with, Lorna!”

Lorna was stifling in the room. Sweat was beading her brow and she ran a hand over her face. “This is ridiculous,” she said, getting to her feet. “I am not going to spend another minute in this inferno!”

Daniel reached out to restrain her but she bulldozed past him, shoving him aside as she marched into the parlor.

“You are not going out that door!” he thundered, running after her.

“I’ll sleep on the settee but I will not sleep in that suffocating room, Daniel!” she yelled back at him.

“Let her sleep here.”

Lorna jumped for the words had come from behind her. She spun around to find Cailean sitting in a chair beside the fireplace, his elbows on the chair arm and his fingertips pressed together. She turned to send her brother an accusing glower.

“Why is he here?” she demanded but instead of Daniel answering her, McGregor did.

“I am here to keep you safe from the evil that permeates the Hill, Lorna,” he told her.

Lorna narrowed her eyes. It didn’t matter if she was parading in front of the man in her nightgown. It was dark in the room but she was a bit unnerved to realize Cail’s eyes were glowing softly in the low light, but she was so enraged by his presence in the parlor, she threw all caution to the wind.

“And which evil would that be, Mr. McGregor? The demon you men fear so greatly or the evil that is within the males who live here?”

She heard Daniel gasp then felt his fingers wrapping around her upper arm. He shook her hard enough to make her teeth snap together.

“Keep a civil tongue in your mouth, woman!” he snarled.

Lorna’s mouth dropped open. “Woman?” she echoed, staring at her brother’s angry face in what little light there was in the room.

“Leave us, Daniel,” Cailean ordered and to Lorna’s shock, her brother did just that, letting go of her arm and turning away without a word.

“How dare you come into this house and order my brother around as though you .…”

“I am to be the laird of the clan,” he interrupted. “Every building, every animal, every blade of grass on the Hill belongs to me. I have dominion over it all.”

Fury lashed through Lorna. She took a step toward him—hands on her hips—and all but growled her answer to that statement.

“You do not have dominion over me, Cailean McGregor, and you never will!”

He moved so fast she had no time to leap back. One moment he was sitting calmly in the chair and the next he had her upper arms imprisoned with his hard hands.

“You are very special to the clan, Lorna,” he said from between clenched teeth. “More special than you could possibly know. The Elders have your guardian’s permission for the two of us to be Joined and Joined we will be this coming Friday eve.”

“The hell we will!” she spat at him, struggling to break free of his punishing grip. When he would not release her she kicked out at him with her bare feet but only managed to hurt her toes and make him laugh.

“Woman, you are going to be a handful I am looking forward to taming,” he said then swooped down to slam his mouth over hers.

Lorna was so stunned by his actions and by the ripples of heat flowing from his hands down her arms, it took her a moment to react to the kiss. When she did, she twisted violently in his grip, pulled her head back so he could not reach her mouth then tried to bring her knee up into his groin. He surprised her by pivoting to the side and dragging her against his hip, half-lifting her from the floor. Without a word he took her to the settee and flung her down, covering her body with his before she could get away.

“Get off me!” she shouted. “Daniel!”

“He’ll not come,” McGregor told her. “He knows his place within the clan.” His hand went to her leg, grabbing the hem of her nightgown to drag it up her thigh. “And it is time you learned yours.”

“Daniel!” she yelled, struggling like a wild woman now for the fear of being raped again was like a hot needle being driven into her brain. “Daniel!”

But just as Cailean said, her brother did not come to her aid. His fingers were at the edge of her panties and the moment his flesh touched her most intimate part, she stiffened, threw back her head and screamed.

At first the name the woman beneath him screamed did not register with McGregor. When she screamed the name again, he lifted his head, hissing at her like a cornered rattler before he put his free hand over her mouth.

“Do not dare say that evil name!” he ordered.

Though she could no longer call aloud to the Nightwind, she was shrieking his name in her head.

“Do you hear me, Lorna? You are mine. You’ll never be his!” She felt his fumbling with the closure of his trousers. “I’ll never let him take another of my women!”

What followed was a horror she had endured once before. Through it all she stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, unmoving, making no sound, trying to block out the grinding thrusts, the grunting, the feel of his body intruding into hers. After the last groan, the final jerk of McGregor’s hips, her eyelids fluttered as he left the settee.

“You should not have pushed me, Lorna,” he told her. “I would not have dishonored you if you had been reasonable but now you are mine in fact and deed.”

Saying nothing to his words, Lorna kept her eyes on the dark ceiling. She lay sprawled on the settee like a broken doll as he got up and stuffed himself back into his pants. She didn’t move when he eased her gown down to cover her nakedness. He surprised her by calmly taking a seat in the chair across from her. From the corner of her eye, she could see he was shaking.

“I did not want our first time to be like that,” he said. “I would have courted you gently, taken you as you deserved to be taken but you gave me no choice. If I hurt you, I am sorry, but you belong to me. I but claimed what is mine. You see now that this is the way it is to be. There can be no other. He’ll not take you from me.”

For a long while she lay there as he left her. She felt numb, abandoned. At last, she rolled over to her side facing the back of the settee—not to sleep but to blot out the sight of the beast that remained in the periphery of her vision.

“Why?” she asked silently. “Why didn’t you come, Chrysty?”

Chapter Five

She heard him when he got up from the chair and walked to the door, unlocked it and went out into the first rosy rays of dawn. For the last fifteen minutes she had been listening to the early-rising songbirds as they began the new day. In the distance she could hear the lowing of cattle ready to be milked, chickens squawking, a dog barking, and a trio of sheep bleating. In counter rhythm, McGregor’s light snores grated on her nerves like sandpaper. After he closed the door behind him, she turned over, swung her legs from the settee and stood, wincing at the pain that flooded her lower body.

With mincing steps she made her way into the bathroom and shut the door. There was a dry coating of his seed clinging to her thighs and as she pumped water into the basin she stared into the mirror at the hollow-eyed woman gazing back at her.

“I’ve seen that look before,” she said quietly to the image in the glass. The basin full, she released the pump handle then dropped a washcloth into the cold water. Staring at the cloth floating on the water, she stripped out of her gown then stuffed it into the wastebasket beside the commode. Never again would she wear it. Taking up the harsh lye soap Daniel used to wash his hands after gardening, she lathered the washcloth thoroughly.

Over and over again she scrubbed at the flesh between her legs, her thighs, her breasts where his lips had suckled until the skin was red and chafed. She heard the door handle rattle and stopped what she was doing, turning her head to stare at her brother as he opened the door.

Daniel froze, snapping his head to the side as he closed the door again. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Aye, that you are,” Lorna said beneath her breath. She waited until she heard him moving away from the door before she scoured between her thighs one last time. As clean as she knew she was going to feel, she took a towel from the shelf, wrapped it around her and tucked the ends between her sore breasts. She poured the water down the drain, draped the washcloth neatly on the rim of the empty basin then walked out of the bathroom and into her bedroom.

The morning sun was bright coming in the window, heating the room even more than it had been the night before. She made quick work of dressing and when she had her hair combed and plaited into one long braid, she slipped her feet into the serviceable shoes she wore every day then left her room.

Daniel had no doubt gone over to the church for he was nowhere in sight nor was there any sound coming from his room. She made grits, coffee, fried bacon and broke eggs for scrambling, leaving three extra in a bowl she put to one side. She slathered butter on slices of bread and left it in the skillet. Her own bread she slipped beneath the broiler for fried toast was not one of her favorites. Her brother returned from his solitary celebration of Mass as she was washing her breakfast dishes.

“You’ve already eaten,” he commented.

Lorna did not reply. She was sure he saw the fixings for his breakfast laid out but she had no intention of preparing food for a man who would allow his sister to be savagely raped. Pouring a second cup of coffee, she went to the door and out onto the porch where it was cooler.

“You’re not going to make my food?” he queried and when she did not answer, he mumbled something she couldn’t make out then began fixing his own meal.

“Good morning, Miss Lorna.”

Lorna turned her head as the smithy Royce Gilmore and a young man who bore a striking resemblance to him came around the corner of the house. She nodded but did not greet the duo, sipping her coffee as they walked past her.

“Gonna be another blasted day of heat looks like,” Royce said. “Oh, this is my son, Thad.”

“A pleasure my lady,” the young man said, tipping his black hat.

Once again Lorna nodded. She had no desire to carry on a conversation with any man from the Hill—jovial or not. When her brother came out on the porch, she ignored him.

“I need you to put bars on all the windows, Royce,” Daniel said, cutting a quick look to Lorna. “And put keyed locks on the inside of the doors.”

Royce looked past Daniel to Lorna, a frown on his beefy face. She stared back at him with hard, brittle eyes and tightly pursed lips. “Whatever you say, Rev,” Royce said, exchanging a quick look with his son.

Daniel watched the smithy and his son as they began putting the bars over Lorna’s window then moved to sit in the rocker beside his sister. His hands were cupped over the rolled edge of the chair arm so tightly the knuckles were white.

“You brought it on yourself,” he said in a low voice.

“Mr. Gilmore?” Lorna called out.

“Aye, my lady?” Royce replied.

“What are your feelings on rape, Mr. Gilmore?”

“Lorna!” Daniel hissed, his head snapping to the side.

“Ah, I don’t…” the smithy began. His face turned red as he cleared his throat. “It’s …. That’s to say .…”

“Is it wrong or is it something permitted here on the Hill, Mr. Gilmore?” she asked.

Daniel shot out a hand to grip her wrist. “That’s enough,” he said under his breath. “You’ll not air our dirty laundry in public.”

“I’d like an answer, Mr. Gilmore,” she said, snatching her arm from her brother’s grip. “Is rape condoned or not?”

“Well, no, my lady, it ain’t condoned,” Royce said. He looked pleadingly at Daniel.

“Is there a law against it?”

“That’s enough!” Daniel said. He shot to his feet and reached for Lorna’s arm but she was already out of her chair and off the porch, her hand clutched around a kitchen knife she’d drawn from the pocket of her apron.

Royce and his son were gawking at the brother and sister with stunned expressions on their faces.

“Is there a law against it?” Lorna snapped.

“Aye, my lady, there is,” Royce replied. “Why are you asking?”

“Because…” Lorna started to say but her brother stepped off the porch, coming at her with a fierce grimace stretching his fine features. He put out his hand and she made a vicious swipe with the knife and he leapt back to keep from being sliced.

“Have you lost your mind?” Daniel bellowed. “Give me that damned knife!”

“You come any closer to me Daniel Ray Brent and I swear to God I will gut you, you cowardly bastard!” She backed up, edging her way closer to the border of wyndstones.

“My lady, be careful where you step!” Royce’s son warned her.

Lorna glanced down and behind her, saw the stones, and stopped. She stared into Daniel’s angry eyes. “What do you think Papa will say when he learns you cringed in your room while I was being brutalized last night, Daniel?”

“Shut your mouth!” Daniel shouted.

“Do you think he’ll be proud of you once he learned you let a man rape his only child and never lifted a hand to stop it from happening?”

Royce swung his startled attention from Lorna to her brother. “What’s she saying, Rev? What happened here last night?”

“Cailean McGregor raped me, that’s what!” Lorna shouted. “And my useless brother allowed it to happen!”

“Cailean?” Royce asked with a gasp. “Nay, he’d not do such a thing!”

Daniel turned to the smithy. “She belongs to Cailean by sanction of the Tribunal. It is he who has been designated çhiarn ny çheerey by Elder Jubal.”

The smithy drew in a quick breath. “Cailean will be the new laird?”

“They could not have picked a better man,” Royce’s son said.

“Aye,” Daniel said, “and now you know why there was no crime committed here last eve.”

“No crime?” Lorna shouted. “You don’t call rape a crime, Daniel?”

“Ayns Cairys ny Laird,” Daniel stated. “The rights of the laird. His word is law here. Nothing is denied him.” He took another step toward her and she back up until her bare heel was almost touching the closest wyndstones.

“My lady, please watch where you step!” Royce called out.

Lorna was aware of the white-washed stones behind her. She knew what she had to do. She would not become the forced mate of any man on the Hill. The thought of being at Cailean McGregor’s mercy sent a chill down her back. Her fingers tightened on the knife handle and she lifted her foot with every intention of crossing the wyndstones. So intent was she on fending off Daniel she did not see anyone sneaking up beside her until the hard edge of a hand was slammed down on her wrist and the knife dropped to the ground. Whipping her head around, she saw Euan McGregor’s angry face beside her and she tried to leap over the wyndstones but he snaked out an arm to circle her waist, jerking her off her feet and away from freedom.

“No!” she shrieked, clawing at his arms but his hold was like iron around her. She twisted in his grip until Daniel grabbed her flailing arms to pin them behind her. Her furious shouts and screams were ignored as Euan dropped his grip down her body until he had her legs trapped.

“We’ll take her to the jail,” she heard Euan say. “Cail is up at Dyer’s Knoll consulting with Lady Belle and won’t be back until evening.”

“Let go of me!” Lorna yelled, bucking in Daniel and Euan’s hold but they carried her easily between them.

The people of the Hill stopped what they were doing to stare. Lorna begged for their help but soon realized no help would be offered. The men were looking at her with flint-hard eyes as though she had committed a heinous crime although the women would not meet her wild gaze.

“Please help me!” she pleaded until she was hoarse.

Several men in black were standing in front of the small building Sam had told her was the jail. The door was open and when her captors took her inside, the cloying heat struck her like a hammer blow.

“Daniel, please!” she cried. “Don’t do this!”

“You brought it on yourself,” he said again.

The cell was windowless and the heavy iron-studded door had only a small covered peephole. As she was carried into the six feet by eight feet room, she realized the walls were covered with iron plate. It would be an inferno.

Shrieking as she was dropped unceremoniously to a thin pallet, she struggled to her feet quickly but Daniel and Euan hurried out, closing the door in her face as she reached it. She pounded the panel with her fists, yelled, but she knew it was fruitless. There was no light in the room and the smothering heat soon had her drenched in sweat.

“Are you sure he can’t get in?” Daniel asked, cringing as the door shook beneath his sister’s vicious pummeling.

“Nay, Daniel. He can’t get to her there,” Euan said. “Not with the iron sheathing to block his powers.”

The men left the building, closed the entry door and stood watching as one of the Elders slipped a heavy padlock in the hasp.

“All this could have been avoided,” the Elder remarked.

“Aye,” Euan agreed, “and Cail isn’t going to like what we were forced to do. He believes he can bring her around.”

“I’ve my doubts regarding that,” Daniel said. He plowed a shaky hand through his hair. “She is a stubborn wench.”

“Give her an hour to come to her senses and then have one of the men go in to give her water,” Elder Jubal said. He looked pale and weak as he stood beside his best friend and fellow Elder Jamie MacLeod. “She must not die.”

Inside the sweltering cell, Lorna dropped to the floor—her hands clawing at the door. She could barely breath it was so hot.

“Chrysty,” she moaned. “Where are you?”

There was no answer and she doubted there would be. From all the reading she’d done on the occult she knew the iron plating would keep him at bay.

* * * *

Chrysty paced the confines of the room to which he’d been summoned and cursed. He had felt Lorna’s fear and anger but there was nothing he could do about it. Lilith had called him to Her and would not allow him to go to Lorna’s aid.

“She must be taught,” the Witch Goddess told him still again. “She must see the men of the Hill for what they are. When she does, she will come willingly to you.”

“I want McGregor’s head on a pike for what he did to her!” he snarled.

“And I have told you that you will have whatever piece of him you want once he’s served his purpose,” the goddess said calmly. She was lying on a chaise covered in sleek black silk, Her long black tresses curling around her like vines. Her red eyes bored into him as She lifted a milk-white hand to curl Her index finger toward Her to beckon him.

The Nightwind wanted to ignore that flexing digit with its inch-long scarlet nails but he could not. She owned him and when She bid him come, he had no choice but to do as She demanded. He went to the chaise and hunkered down beside it.

“She is my Chosen, Mo Regina,” he said. “When she hurts, I hurt.”

Lilith put Her palm to his cheek. “That is as it should be, pretty boy,” She replied. She caressed his face. “She will be uncomfortable for a few hours then the McGregor will fetch her home to his cabin.” Her ebony eyes glistened with malice. “He will believe her cowed and willing, grateful for his intervention. It will not occur to him until it is too late that there now lurks in her soul a vengeance the likes of which he could never imagine.”

“At least allow me to go back to the Hill, to be close to her. The moment she is out of that place…” he began but She shifted her fingertips to his lips to still them.

“Dearling, listen to Me,” she said firmly. “You must not go to her until she calls again. She believes you have abandoned her but once she is deep in the forest with the McGregor, away from prying eyes and suspicious ears, she will try one last time. It is then you will appear and—only then—to offer her the way to take her revenge on the menfolk of her clan.”

He hung his head. Arguing with the goddess would do no good. She would have Her way and it was up to him to obey.

“Pray don’t pout, Chrystian. You boys can be so petulant,” she said.

A great sigh issued from his parted lips. He had met a few other Nightwinds over the centuries and, of course, Duncan and Allyn were now part of the goddess’ cadre of demons though She seemed not to give them much notice. Those he had met who actively brought women into the Sisterhood had all died horrendous deaths because of the fickle fancy of a faithless woman. Only one other demon had found his true love, his Chosen, and even that woman had ultimately betrayed him, casting him back to Abyss.

“Do not pity Syntian Cree, sweet one,” the goddess said, reading his mind. “He will soon be leaving his lair.”

Chrysty looked up. “You are going to allow him to join his lady?”

Lilith shook her head. “That one is far from this world and thus beyond his reach. I will find him another upon whom to vent his passions. He has atoned for his sins these last two thousand years.”

Cringing at the thought of being confined to the muck of the Abyss for so long a time, Chrysty could not imagine the torment his fellow Nightwind had suffered. He didn’t want to imagine it, grateful he had not incurred the wrath of a woman bent on punishing him as Lauren Fowler had punished Syn.

“He will not be in a good frame of mind when he returns,” the goddess said.

“I would think not,” the Nightwind agreed.

* * * *

Neither was Cailean in a good frame of mind when he was told the woman who was to bear his name had been incarcerated in the hellish hole that was the jail. Fury pinched his handsome face as he strode purposefully to the jail and when he saw the lock barring his way, cursed a blue streak. He spun around and marched to the blacksmith shop two buildings over.

“Who the hell locked the jail door?” he yelled at Royce.

“The Elders,” the smithy replied.

McGregor growled, picked up a sledge hammer from Gilmore’s workbench and strode back to the jail with the handle gripped tightly in his hand. It took one powerful one-handed swing of his muscled arm to shatter the lock. He didn’t bother with the handle, just lifted his foot and kicked the door in, cracking the lintel. Growling like a wounded animal, he jerked back the bolt securing the cell door and pulled it open.

Lorna was lying unconscious on the floor, no doubt having tried to gain even a modicum of air coming in through the crack around the door. She had kicked off her shoes, unbuttoned the bodice halfway down her chest trying to get cooler. Bending down, he scooped her up, wincing at the feel of her overheated body in his arms. Her long hair swept against his calf as he carried her out of the jail and toward the healer’s cabin. He barely broke stride as the healer opened his door and stepped aside.

“In here, milord,” the healer said, hurrying to sweep back the curtain to his exam room.

Cailean carried her into the room and laid her gently on the padded table. Her face was flushed a dull red from the heat and damp hair stuck to her cheeks and forehead.

“I’ll have my helper fill the tub,” the healer said. “She needs to be cooled.”

“Then be quick about it,” Cailean snapped. He unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and began rolling up the sleeves. “Give me a basin and cloth for now.”

“Aye, milord!”

By the time the Healer filled a white porcelain basin and brought it to the table, Cailean had stripped the day gown from Lorna and was removing her chemise.

“Shall I fetch her brother?” the healer inquired. He held the basin as Cailean thrust his hands into the water to get the washcloth.

“She’s my responsibility now, not his,” Cailean said as he gently applied the cloth to Lorna’s face. “What you can do is get her a glass of iced water.”

Guilt rode Cailean McGregor as it never had before. He had cared for his wife Libby but he had never loved her. She had been betrothed to him at birth to tie the McGregor and Shaw families together as they had not been for several generations. Though she had been a pretty woman, she had been a silly one and one given to bouts of crying and wringing of hands each time he demanded his husbandly rights. Twice she had run home to her mother and twice he had been forced to punish her for if a man could not control his woman, he did not have the respect of the clan. His punishments—five passes of his belt on her bare backside—had been light compared to most of the men of the Hill. There were those who said he was too lenient with her. When she came up missing, he was relieved for it was not his intention to wed again.

Until the laird had chosen him as leader of the clan and then the matter had been taken out of his hands.

“There is one remaining Tabor woman and we have set into motion a plan to bring her to the Hill,” Elder Jubal told him. “I would see you Joined with her before I breathe my last.”

Shocked by the order, Cailean had no choice but to agree. “I will do as you ask, milord,” he said. Although humbled by the command, he nevertheless resented it. He had no desire to pit his will against another headstrong woman. Life was too short to endure such misery and the constant fight to claim his conjugal rights.

“And with her as your bride, you will assume the mantle of laird of the Tabor clan and produce for us a male child.”

Shock turned to stunned surprise as he stared at the Elder. “Me?” he questioned, feeling the blood drain from his face.

“You have always been like a son to me, Cailean,” Elder Jubal said. “I am passing the care of our clan into your hands where I know it will be safe.”

“Milord, I am unworthy of such an honor!” he had protested.

“I will have none other than you replace me.”

The die had been cast. Cailean had bowed to the wishes of Elder Jubal and would soon be given entrance into the Tribunal of Elders. That honor must be achieved before he could Join with Lorna and the ceremony to induct him was to be later that night.

Plunging the cloth into the cold water again, he wrung it out then began working his way down his intended’s neck and across her bare shoulders. She groaned but did not awaken. Her lips were white and cracked.

“Did no one take her water?” he demanded of the healer when the man brought a tall goblet to the table.

“I am sure they did, milord,” the healer answered although his tone suggested he wasn’t entirely positive that had been the case.

“They’ll regret it if they didn’t,” Cailean muttered. “Is that tub ready?” He tossed the cloth into the basin.

“It is almost filled, milord.”

Carefully, gently, Cailean eased his arms under her back and legs and lifted her from the table. The healer stepped forward to draw aside the curtain, extending an arm to indicate Cailean was to precede him from the examining room.

The healer’s help was pouring the last bucket of cold spring water into the copper tub when Cailean carried Lorna into the bathing chamber. He knelt and laid her tenderly into the icy-cold water. Almost immediately her eyelashes fluttered open but there was no true recognition in her eyes. They stared helplessly, alarmed into his.

“We need to get your body temperature down,” he said softly as he drew his arms from beneath her. He frowned for she just lay there without trying to cover herself, to keep him from looking at her nakedness. That did not bode well for her frame of mind. He glanced up at the healer. “I want a buckboard readied with a soft mattress and clean sheets, a pillow. I’ll be taking her to my place as soon as she can travel.”

“Aye, milord,” the healer agreed. “I’ll see to it straightaway.” When he would have turned away, Cailean called out to him.

“And send a runner to Maggie Tabor and tell her I will need women to watch over my lady while I am at the induction tonight and make sure my brother knows what’s happening.”

“Aye, milord!”

The healer’s assistant had already departed the room but had scooted a small stool over for Cailean to sit on beside the tub. He hooked his toe in a rung and drew the seat closer, perching on it as he reached for Lorna’s hand. That she made no move to draw it back but continued to stare unseeingly at him worried him all the more. He reached down to push a tress of her hair from her cheek.

“You’ll be all right,” he said. “I’ll take good care of you.”

Lorna said nothing. She didn’t even blink. Her gaze was locked on him without expression in her dull eyes. Her finely-shaped lips were parted, her face lax.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here to keep them from putting you in that hellish place,” he explained, “but I had gone to see my grandmother.” He caressed her face. “I brought your wedding gown back with me. I’ve decided to move the Joining up to tomorrow night.”

There was a slight flicker of her eyes but nothing more to indicate she had heard and understood his words.

“I would have it tonight but there is another matter that needs seeing to,” he told her. He ran his free hand up and down her arm, scooping water up to cool her flesh. He tried not to stare at her breasts or the dark triangle beneath the water but his attention was drawn to both and the sight made him hard and aching.

For half an hour she lay in the tub until he was satisfied she was no longer overheated. He called for the healer to bring a thick towel as he lifted her from the water. As gently as though she were an infant he placed her feet on the floor—hoping she would not slump to the wooden planks—then began to towel her dry as the healer gave him instructions on making sure she had plenty of fluid intake. The man left but returned directly.

“I brought one of my lady-wife’s gowns and some undergarments for her to wear, milord,” the healer said. “I didn’t think you’d want to her to dress in the soiled one.”

“No, I didn’t and thank you, Healer Stuart, I am in your debt,” Cailean said. He took a pair of panties and a chemise from the healer who had the gown draped over his arm.

“I sent Timmy over to the jail to fetch her shoes.” The healer turned to pick up the footwear from a shelf then bent to place them beside Lorna’s feet. “And the buckboard is ready whenever you are.”

Cailean nodded. With infinite gentleness he knelt before her with the panties in hand. “Lift your foot, dearling,” he said and when she didn’t—or wouldn’t—he circled her ankle with his fingers and lifted her foot to place it in one of the leg holes. He repeated the gesture then drew the garment up her legs, striving not to gawk at the dark patch between her legs. He got to his feet and drew the gathered chemise over her head. With the healer’s help, they got her arms in the soft cotton garment and Cailean smoothed it down her hips before he took the gown from the healer.

“There is one last thing you can do for me,” Cailean said.

“Anything you need, milord,” the healer replied.

“I’d like a bottle of laudanum in case she has trouble sleeping.”

The healer didn’t question the request but hurried to fetch the drug.

“I’m taking you to your new home,” Cailean said and swept Lorna into his arms. He carried her out of the bathing room and into the waiting area. The healer opened the door then stepped back as the young man carried his intended out of the cabin and to the waiting buckboard. His horse, Saoirse, was tied to the back of the conveyance.

“Lady Maggie said she’d be waiting at your place, Cail,” Sam Reid said. He looked at Lorna with a hurt expression. “Is she all right?”

“She’ll be just fine,” Cailean replied. “Get in the back and I’ll hand her to you.”

Sam swung his legs over the buckboard seat and cautiously made his way to the rear of the conveyance so as not to disturb the bedding. He leaned over, took Lorna from Cailean’s arms then turned to lay her down.

“Be gentle with her,” Cailean instructed.

The sun was lowering on the horizon as Cailean hopped up into the back of the buckboard and settled down beside Lorna with his back against the side rail. Sam returned to the seat and bent forward to pick up the reins, clucking his tongue to set the two mares pulling the vehicle into motion.

“Make sure she gets lots to drink now,” the healer called out as the buckboard started up the winding road.

From across the way, Daniel Brent watched McGregor and Sam until the buckboard was lost in the darkening shadows of twilight. He stood with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his black gabardine trousers, shoulders hunched. A part of him wanted to run after the buckboard, to save his sister from her fate, but he knew he would only be prolonging the inevitable. From the moment he had arrived on Tabor Hill, he had known he had found his destiny and that destiny was larger than the priesthood he had believed was his calling.

“You are of noble blood, Daniel,” Elder Jubal had told him. “You are a Tabor clansman.”

The truth had shocked Daniel and he had denied it for as long as he could. One trip to Lady Belle McGregor’s cabin deep in the forest had shown him the truth of the matter. He’d seen small tin types of Tabors from long gone, little paintings from lockets and even a large canvas of Alinor Tabor, the wife of the first laird of the clan. The moment he had laid eyes on that ancient painting, every question he’d entertained had been answered.

“This is our true heritage, Lorna,” he said softly. “We can no more fight it than stop breathing.”

Not that he wanted to fight it, he thought as he turned away. All his life he had felt as though he didn’t belong. Now he knew why. He belonged here—on the Hill—with the men of his mother’s real family. He didn’t belong in the priesthood. Not here. Not on the Hill. No one came to Mass so what was the use? As he walked back to the rectory, he made the decision to close the church. He could say his prayers just as easily on his knees by his bed as he could from the altar. With one last look at the empty road down which the buckboard carrying his sister had passed, he turned his back on his past and with a spring to his step, took a different route to his future.

* * * *

Maggie Tabor and her sister Sadie McFadden were standing on the porch of Cailean’s house when the buckboard pulled to a halt. Sadie was holding a lantern so she stepped off the porch, holding the lantern aloft so the men could see.

“How is she?” Sadie asked.

“Hasn’t said a word,” Cailean replied.

“We’ve got your clothes laid out for you,” Maggie told him. “You’d best make haste to get yourself cleaned up. I packed a couple of sandwiches for you to eat on your way back to the settlement.”

“I appreciate it, Maggie,” Cailean said as he hopped down from the buckboard. “I’ll wash off real quick then be on my way.”

Sam was in the back of the buckboard, bending down to pick up Lorna. He carried her to the tailgate Cailean lowered and handed her into McGregor’s care. He told Cailean he’d untie Saoirse for him then take the buckboard back to the settlement.

“Thanks,” Cailean said absently.

“We changed the sheets on your bed, Cail,” Sadie stated. “Everything’s all ready for her.”

“Jubal sent a couple of men to watch over us while you’re gone,” Maggie added as she hastened to open the screen door for him. “They’re patrolling the yard.”

“I’m much obliged,” Cailean replied. He carried Lorna onto the porch and into his cabin. “She hasn’t eaten anything.”

“She’s one of us, Cail,” Maggie said, following him into the good-sized bedroom—the only one in the four-room cabin. “We’ll take care of her. There’s no need for you to worry.”

The chenille spread had been laid back so he placed Lorna in the same bed in which he and his twin and five other generations of McGregor men had been born. He pulled the sheet and spread over her, adjusted the covers, then leaned down to kiss her forehead.

“I won’t be back until sunset tomorrow,” he told her. “But you won’t be alone. Maggie and Sadie will be with you and there are menfolk around to keep the demon away.”

Lorna stared up at him without blinking, without even the tiniest flicker of recognition in her green eyes. She lay as still as death—barely breathing—with her arms limp upon the covers.

Reluctantly, he turned away. He would have little time to wash off and dress in the black clothing the sisters had readied for him. He thanked them again, took the clothes with him into the bathroom and shut the door.

“We’re right here with you, Lorna,” Maggie said. She fussed with the spread covering the younger woman. “Are you hungry?”

“Let’s allow her to rest, sister,” Sadie said. “I’m thinking she probably isn’t ready for food right now.”

“You’re most likely right, sister,” Maggie agreed. She patted Lorna’s hand then left the room, easing the door almost closed behind their departure.

Lorna lay perfectly still for a few moments more then her head slowly shifted toward the sounds coming from behind the bathroom door and held. Her anger and resentment was a sentient life form seething in the heated glare of her hard green eyes.

Chapter Six

Maggie was on the front porch in a rocker, crocheting an afghan, and Sadie was inside cooking the evening meal when Cailean returned to his cabin late in the afternoon the next day. He was tired from having been up all night and his body was sore from the intense ceremony that had made him one of the Elders. He nodded to Maggie then took his horse to the barn to unsaddle the beast and rub him down, feed him a bucket of oats. By the time he was finished, he was limping as he came up the porch steps.

“I asked Sadie to heat water for your bath,” Maggie told him, giving him a commiserating look. “Would you like to bathe first before you eat?”

“I want to look in on Lorna first,” he said, reaching for the handle of the screen door. “How is she?”

The older woman lay the crocheting in her lap and frowned. “Hasn’t said a word to either of us and refuses to eat. She just lays there staring at the ceiling.” She tucked her lower lip between her teeth. “I worry for her state of mind, Cailean.”

“She’s stronger than she looks,” he said. “’Tis nothing more than sulking on her part I believe. She’ll get over it. We’ll just give her time to grow accustomed to the situation.”

“You know best,” Maggie said although the tone of her voice said she had her doubts on the matter.

He went into the cabin and to the bedroom where Lorna lay so still on the bed. Her eyes were closed, her breathing slow and easy. He thought at first she was asleep so leaned over to brush his lips to hers. She didn’t move but he felt the tightening of her flesh under his.

“I know you’re awake,” he said. He laid his palm on her cheek but she didn’t react to his touch. He caressed her flesh—smoothing his thumb over her full lower lip—then sighed deeply when she did not react. He removed his hand and straightened, turning his back to begin stripping off his sweaty clothing. He looked toward the bathroom when he heard the sound of water splashing into the tub.

Lorna watched him surreptitiously as he undressed. He had a powerful body with wide shoulders and long, tapered legs. There was no denying he was handsome and virile but the sight of him sickened her. The thought of him having taken her against her will brought such raging hatred to her breast it was all she could do not to scream her fury at him. She wanted to rake her nails down his broad back, claw at his face, drive her knee into the manhood with which he had defiled her.

He turned to look at her. “The Joining will be tonight at midnight,” he told her as he walked toward the bathroom. “That is the traditional time.”

Still she said nothing. Did not move by as much as a blink. Not until he closed the door and she heard him climb into the tub did she turn her head toward the iron-barred window.

“Where are you Chrysty?” she silently asked once again, despondent that the demon had yet to appear to her. “Why aren’t you here?”

Of course, she knew why he had not come. She had yet to ask his help. As soon as she begged his assistance, she knew he would appear and when he did, he would expect her to sign her soul into his keeping.

Fear of eternal damnation wasn’t the only thing keeping her from pleading for his aid. She feared the power he would wield over her once she gave herself to him. She feared the power the witch goddess would grant her once she had joined the Sisterhood.

“Power to crush your enemies and set right the wrongs done to you,” a soft feminine voice whispered in her mind. “Ask and I will allow him to come to you.”

“You’re keeping him away?” she asked in her mind.

“Ask and I will allow him to come to you,” the voice repeated.

Lorna looked away from the door—turning her face so she stared at the ceiling once again. The sounds of Cailean bathing as though he’d not a care in the world, as though he had not degraded her made her grind her teeth together. She dug her fingernails into the chenille spread, her entire body as rigid as an iron nail.

“Ask and I will allow him to come to you,” the voice said once more.

She had no delusions about being able to stave off the Joining tonight. As surely as she lay on McGregor’s bed Daniel would be there to make sure the wedding was done not only as was custom among the Tabor clan on the Hill but would no doubt say the binding words of their religion over her—tying her to Cailean for all time.

Once more she cut her eyes to the bathroom door. The splashing had stopped so Cailean had no doubt finished his bath. The moment she heard him whistling, she surprised herself by growling—her teeth drawn back over her lips—like an enraged werebeast. Her fingers arched on the covers, plucking at the knobby material, wishing she could scratch out his eyes.

“The choice is yours, Lorna. Be a slave or be the master of your own fate.”

Those words were spoken forcefully in a harsh feminine voice and were filled with a finality she did not miss. She had to choose. Either she would accept the servitude expected of her or she would not. She lifted her chin.

“All right, my lady,” she said quietly. She took a deep breath. “Chrysty, I need you. Come.…”

The door to the bathroom opened and Cailean came out. He had a towel wrapped around his lean hips and his hair was wet, hanging in thick curls around his face. He glanced at her, halted in mid-stride when he found her watching him.

“Are you at yourself now, sweeting?” he asked.

“Tell him aye then smile,” the feminine voice instructed.

“Aye,” she said with a hard rigor of displeasure on her face.

He breathed an audible sigh of relief but made no move toward the bed. She thought, perhaps, there was still a vestige of hatred glimmering in her unblinking eyes.

“I am relieved,” he said, his own wavering smile passing quickly to a hard swallow. “I’ll have the women come in to help you dress.” He went to the closet and took out a black shirt and pair of pants. It was the clothing of an Elder, a man of respect on the Hill, clothing given to him on his thirtieth birthday in preparation for his election into the Council.

“How long will you be gone?” she made herself ask.

“Until sunset tomorrow,” he said. “The induction is a long affair.” He looked around as he dropped the towel, no doubt gauging her reaction to seeing him naked.

She stared openly at the juncture between his legs until she saw a dull flush creep over his face and down his neck. He turned hastily away, stepping into the pants. A brittle smile touched her lips for she knew she had shamed him with her bold look.

“Tomorrow night, we will be Joined,” he told her as he slipped on the black shirt. He turned back to her while he buttoned it. “We will be man and wife.” He tucked the shirt into his pants.

“Lower your eyes. Do not allow him to see the hatred blazing from them,” the mysterious feminine voice advised and Lorna did as she was ordered.

“I will make you a good husband,” he said, buttoning his cuffs. He cleared his throat. “As long as you are a good wife.”

Lorna raised her eyes to look at him. She said nothing—hating him with all her being—and as the moment dragged out, she watched him fidget beneath her unwavering stare.

“Ah, I’ll be going now.” He took a step toward the bed then apparently thought better of it. He simply nodded then took two long strides to the door, opening then closing it behind his departure.

She heard him talking to Maggie then heard the front door open and close. Within a few moments she heard hoof beats and knew finally he had gone.

“What about the women?” she whispered.

“They will be seen to,” the phantom voice replied. “Call him now and he will come to you.”

Lorna took a deep breath. “Chrysty, I am ready.”

A soft flicker of light formed in the corner of the room then—like a firefly—began to flit along the ceiling. Where it traveled, it pulsed just like the little lightning bugs weaving through the tall corn on a hot July night.

The bedroom door opened and Lorna looked away from the ceiling to see Sadie framed in the opening.

“Are you hungry yet, dear?” Sadie asked. She didn’t seem to notice the firefly as it flitted around the room, finally landing on the bedside table.

Lorna shook her head.

“Well, Maggie and I are going to sit on the porch until we’re ready for bed,” Sadie said. She smiled. “Would you like to join us?”

Again Lorna shook her head then turned over, showing her back to the other woman. She could feel Sadie standing there, hesitating, and then the door closed softly with a gentle click.

She felt his hand on her shoulder then the bed dipped as he sat beside her.

“I am here, sweeting,” he said quietly. “They’ll not bother us again.”

She craned her neck around to find his handsome face looking down on her. His grip on her shoulder was firm and for one wild moment she wanted to shrug it off. She had always wanted to be her own woman, to never belong to any man. Kurt Sprague had spoiled any girlish dreams of marriage and a home shared with a loving husband.

“Trust me, Lorna,” Chrysty said. “I will get you through this.”

He was her only hope of salivation, she thought as she turned to her back. His hand slid away from her shoulder to cup her cheek.

The Book was suddenly there in her lap. It was a heavy leather tome at least three inches thick and when the pages were ruffled open by an unseen hand, the smell that wafted from them was musty and perfumed with a dark, dangerous note that made her skin crawl. The page upon which she looked was yellow with age and blank.

“I want it spelled out,” she said, lifting her eyes to Chrysty. “What is expected of me and what is expected of you.” She put a trembling finger to the bare page. “Right here. I want everything in writing.”

“As you wish,” he said and took his hand from her cheek to fan it over the page. Writing—old-fashioned script with flourishes fashioning the letters—appeared. The ink was a dark rust color.

“I want to read it before I sign,” she said, lifting the weighty volume.

“Of course.” He folded his hands in his lap and looked away from her as she read.

It was all cut and dried, she supposed. In exchange for her soul, she would gain knowledge and power of the dark arts of the Sisterhood. She was guaranteed the ability to wield enormous magic at command, to influence her enemies, to use Chrysty as her vessel for vengeance. She could call upon otherworldly entities such as Nightwinds and have them do her bidding if she could get them to sign their allegiance to her family. She would have power over Chrysty and—should he fail her or cause her irritation—send him back to the Abyss. She looked up at him.

“Have others of your kind been sent back to the Abyss because they annoyed their mistress?”

He nodded without looking at her. “I know of only one and soon he will be free again.” He turned his head. “I pray I never do anything to cause your ire, Lorna. The Abyss is an odorous place to spend eternity.”

She stared into his amber eyes—feeling herself falling into a bottomless pit of despair—and shook her head to clear it. “I imagine it would be a truly horrid existence,” she said. “As long as you do as I bid, I doubt I will have reason to punish you, Chrysty.”

“Once the Book of Shadows is signed, I am yours to command and will do all I can to see your wishes fulfilled. I would but ask one thing of you.”

Lorna frowned. “And what would that be?”

“I would caution you to temperance,” he said. “Go slowly in this matter of seeking your revenge on the men of the Taber clan. Let them believe they have won then—when the time is right—yank the rug out from underneath them.”

“Go slowly,” she repeated. “Why?”

“Vengeance is best served cold,” he answered. “That is an old, old saying but it still bears remembering. There is far more heat in a flash fire than in a smoldering one but a smoldering one does more damage.”

“Ah,” she said, seeing the wisdom behind his words. She looked down at the Book.

“Bide your time,” he cautioned. “Swallow a little pride. Tolerate a little discomfort. Endure a little humiliation. In the end—when you take your revenge—the retribution will be all the sweeter for having waited until just the right moment.”

“In other words, suffer Cailean McGregor’s filthy hands on me until I can lop those hands off at the root,” she said in a low voice filled with reprisal.

“Aye,” he agreed. “Exactly.”

She stared at the writing for a long time, then shrugged away any misgivings she might have. No matter whether she signed or not, she was stuck with McGregor. If there was a way to even the score with him and the menfolk of the Hill, so be it.

“Where do I sign?” she asked.

A quill materialized in his hand. He extended it toward her, raised his wrist to his mouth and sank long, deadly fangs into his flesh.

Lorna winced, her eyes wide as she stared at the crimson that flowed from the puncture wounds. Her heart pounding, her hand trembling, she dipped the point of the quill into the blood welling on his wrist then hastily scribbled her name to the page.

He took the quill from her, loaded the point with his own blood then—with bold strokes—added his name below hers. The quill disappeared along with the blood coating his upturned wrist.

“It is sealed,” he said softly and the Book vanished, as well.

They were quiet for a long while then Chrysty sighed loudly. He looked down at her.

“There is one more thing.”

She knew. She had read the wording carefully—several times over—that said she was required to secure the bargain by giving her body to the demon. He needed to claim her as his own. Her damnation would then be complete.

“He hurt me,” she said. “Kurt. Cailean.”

“I won’t.”

“I .…”

One moment he was fully clothed as he sat there beside her and the next he was naked.

As was she.

Lorna clutched the covers to her chin, wide-eyed and trembling. Beneath the covers, her body was shaking so badly her teeth began to chatter.

“No, love,” he whispered and suddenly the covers went to whatever mysterious realm had taken the quill and Book. His powerful body gleamed in the light from the oil lamp; his eyes held a spark that drew her down into them as though she’d stepped into quicksand.

Shivering, heart thundering in her chest, she stared at him. He was so handsome, so muscular. There wasn’t a spare ounce of flesh on his body and his hair shone like a raven’s wing. The hair nestled between his pectorals beckoned to be touched and as he straddled her—sitting back on his haunches upon her lower thighs—she reached up a hesitant hand to run her finger through.

“Aye, my lady,” he whispered. “Touch me.” He covered her hand with his, pressing it to his chest. “Touch me wherever it pleases you.”

His chest hairs tickled the palm of her hand and beneath them she could feel his heart beating. That puzzled her—causing frown lines to appear on her worried face.

“I am as alive as you are, Lorna-love,” he told her. “I breathe. I bleed. My heart beats.” His voice went low, sultry. “I can climax.”

She felt the heat rising in her cheeks and tried to jerk her hand from under his but he would not allow it. Instead, he ran it down his belly and onto the plane of wiry hair at the juncture of his thickly-corded thighs.

“Oh!” Lorna gasped as he curled her fingers around a steely erection that caused her eyes to nearly pop from her head.

“He’s all yours,” he said in that low, whispery, seductive voice.

“You’ll tear me apart!” she protested, her trembling worse.

He shook his head. “No, love. I won’t.” He held her eyes with his. “I will stretch you, aye, but I will not hurt you.” He put his free hand over his heart. “I swear on my honor as your Nightwind. It is not within me to ever hurt you.”

Lorna’s tongue felt thick in her suddenly dry mouth. She broke out in a cold sweat, dragging in great gulps of air so quickly she felt lightheaded.

“Easy, my lady,” he said and before she could protest, he stretched his tall body over hers, sliding down her like a soft, suede blanket—covering her completely.

“No, Chrysty. No, please,” she pleaded, trying to pull her hand from between their bodies. It was trapped around his thick shack. She could feel the pulse of his blood running through that enormous organ and it terrified her.

“Shush,” he whispered. “I’m just going to lie here until you are familiar with the feel of me weighing you down.”

It was his weight that scared her so deeply. First Kurt and then Cailean had held her down, ravaged her and the sensation of Chrysty’s masculine heaviness pressing her into the mattress sent spirals of panic rushing through her body. She imagined the ripping of his large shaft tearing her, hurting her, stabbing deep to give her even more pain.

“No,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “No, that isn’t going to happen.” He put his other hand to her forehead to smooth back her hair. “I will give you great pleasure, Lorna-love. Pleasure such as you can not imagine.”

His cock had not decreased in size, she though wildly. If anything, it seemed to be growing beneath her touch. It felt hot to her palm and there was a drop of his fluids that had fallen to the crease of her hand between her thumb and index finger.

“Relax,” he whispered.

She froze as he lowered his mouth toward hers. Her breath caught in her throat. Perhaps that was a good thing—she thought—for the silken feel of his lips claiming hers would have taken her breath away anyway.

Hard yet soft. Unyielding yet pliant. His lips devoured hers. His tongue flicked deep into her mouth. He held her head steady for his tender assault—not allowing her to turn away from his kiss. That kiss deepened until all thought fled her fevered brain. All she could feel was the warmth of his breath on her cheek and the wet heat of his invading tongue. She groaned as he swept the tip of his tongue between her upper lip and teeth. Instinctively, her hand tightened on his rod.

She heard him growl—low and deep in his throat—then he was kissing his way from her mouth to her cheek to her chin to her neck, sliding down her as he worked his hot mouth to the hollow of her throat.

“Chrysty,” she sighed.

He lifted his head and looked up at her through the long dark sweep of his lashes.

“Aye, my lady?”

“I…” Once more she became lost in his heated gaze. She could feel her body drifting slowly down into those amber orbs—being trapped there.

His hand moved from around hers to the folds of her sex.

Lorna thought she would faint. The tip of his finger was parting her, pressing into the wetness that had blossomed between her thighs.

“Trust me, Lorna-love,” he said.

It had to be, she thought. To fight it would be useless. She knew he sensed the moment she gave in and stopped resisting for a slow, knowing smile stretched his beautiful lips. He eased his lower body from hers so she could draw her hand from between them. His, he kept at the entrance to her sheath. She clutched at the sheet beneath her hips.

“Relax,” he said, drawing the word out.

Very gently he slipped his finger inside her and Lorna bucked. Her eyes flew wide. A shuddering breath wracked her body but when he began to slowly withdraw that thrusting digit then ease it in again, she stopped breathing altogether.

“You like that?” he asked. When she didn’t answer, he shifted his body so he could press the pad of his thumb to her clit. The moment he touched her there, she made a strangled, whimpering sound and squeezed her eyes tightly closed, pulling so hard at the sheet it ripped in her hand.

It wasn’t pain he was giving her, she thought wildly, but something so intense, so unbelievably powerful she could hear the blood rushing through her arteries. It wasn’t irritating but it was concentrated and it made her writhe against him. The combination of his slowly driving finger and the abrading of her clitoris was sending potent sensations rocketing through her lower body. Her womb clenched and her vaginal walls clutched at his finger.

He stopped with that strong tightening—his finger deep inside her.

“Lorna, open your eyes and look at me,” he commanded.

She had no will of her own. Her eyelids fluttered open and she stared up into his beautiful male face, her eyes fused with his.

“I am going to make you come,” he said.

She knew what he meant though she had never had an orgasm. She had always been very careful in not touching her body in what she thought of as inappropriate ways for she had been brought up to believe that was wrong. There were fleeting memories of strange feelings overtaking her during sleep but she had no reference point from which to analyze those phantom sensations. She knew what it felt like to become aroused and had tamped down such feelings whenever they had arisen. Now, she was free to experience it all but that did nothing to alleviate the fears that had been with her since late childhood.

“Let your body relax,” he said. “Concentrate on my finger inside you.”

She whimpered again, his words bringing heat to her face but she couldn’t look away. His gaze held her riveted as he continued to ease his finger in and out, in and out. The moment one finger became two, then three, she tensed like a coiled spring.

“Relax,” he whispered. “Let me pleasure you, sweeting.” His thumb began to stroke downward across her clit with each inward pass of his fingers.

Something was building inside her and Lorna’s breathing became labored. It was all she could do not to grab handfuls of the sheet. Instead, she plastered her palms to them, pressing down, becoming aware that she was arching her hips with each and every stroke of his hand. She stilled but he shook his head.

“No, that’s what you should do,” he told her and she allowed her body to regain the upward motion.

Heat curled in her lower body, concentrated in the area between her legs. Sweat dripped down her temple and into her ear. His free hand moved from her forehead down her face and over her shoulder, onto the mound of her breast.

A low groan escaped her as he molded his fingers around her, squeezing gently in rhythm to the movement of his other hand. He scraped his thumb over her taut nipple and the world blossomed into hot, bright fragments as release shot through her.

“Chrysty!” she screamed then clamped a hand over her mouth, afraid Maggie and Sadie would come running. Vibrations were ripping through her sheath. A glorious sensation of heat and pressure and unbelievable pleasure pulsed within her.

“That’s it, my lady,” he said, his fingers moving faster, milking every last ripple of pleasure from her surprised body. “That’s what you needed.”

Lorna thrashed her head back and forth on the pillow—pressing her hand tighter to her mouth to keep the keening from erupting. She was on fire where he touched yet it was a burning glory that was so exquisite, so unexpected yet so intensely satisfying she felt her spirit rising above her body only to plummet to earth again as the last little pulse ceased.

“Aye, sweeting,” he said, withdrawing his fingers from her wet channel.

She watched in utter fascination as he brought his hand to his mouth and licked away her juices. What should have horrified her, shamed her, only made her sigh with contentment as he removed all vestiges of her fluids from his fingers.

The door opened and Chrysty snapped his head around.

“Out!” he ordered and Lorna looked past his shoulder to see Maggie’s pale face, the silent ‘O’ of her mouth disappear behind the quickly closed panel. When her demon lover looked down at her again, she saw anger leaping in tiny little red flames in his golden eyes.

She trembled, her hand falling away from her lips. “She saw you,” she accused. “She knows!”

“She’ll say nothing,” he said, his handsome face tight.

“Chrysty…” she began but his hand moved to her sensitive flesh again, his palm sliding over her damp sex.

“Lay still, Lorna-love,” he ordered. “And let your man pleasure you again.”

He gave her no chance to deny him. Over and over again through the night hours he took her to the threshold of sheer ecstasy, held her there until she thought she would explode like the stars dancing around her, then sent her crashing down again with climax after climax he wrought with the strong thrusts of his knowing fingers. When at last she could take no more of the sweet pleasure-pain, when she was stretched and wet and ready for him, he slid down in the bed, between her legs, gripped her hips in his hands and impaled her on his rigid shaft.

She opened her mouth to cry out but he slammed his over hers, taking the cry into his mouth. Pumping like a fiend he took her to even more dizzying heights. His weight. His hard as iron rod. His fingers digging into her rump as he pounded into her brought her hands to his back, her nails clawing into his flesh.

“Wrap your legs around my waist!” he demanded against her swollen lips.

She obeyed and the pleasure increased so greatly she thought she might well die from it. When he spilled into her—his seed cold and searing deep inside her body—she felt the ragged edge of unconsciousness reach up to grip her.

Down she tumbled through layer after layer of black curling mist until she lay limp beneath him, whimpering as he eased to his side then drew her against him, into his arms, her head resting on his shoulder. Feebly she pawed at his chest as she slowly regained what senses he had left her.

“Sleep now, my lady,” he told her and placed a gentle kiss on her brow.

“You didn’t hurt me,” she said.

“I will never hurt you,” he replied.

“Will it always be like that?”

“Always,” he swore. “Now, sleep. When day breaks, I must teach you the craft you will need to take your vengeance.”

Lorna smiled and snuggled against him. Beneath her palm his heart beat steadily, slowly. For the first time in her life, she felt she was where she belonged.

Chapter Seven

The three women sat spellbound as they listened to the tall, dark, and devilishly handsome man speak. His voice was deep, low and carried with it a cadence of authority that made it impossible for their minds to wander. In his hands he held a thick book from which he read now and again and the words he spoke wound their way into three highly susceptible minds and burrowed deep.

“When you have the way of it, you will each gather three women, go to a place where you will not be discovered and teach them what I have taught you,” he said softly. “There will be a Book for each of you and when those three are ready, a Book for each of them, as well.”

In the end he had conjured Allyn McCorley and Duncan Daughtry and Maggie had signed her name in blood above Allyn’s and Sadie had scrawled hers over Duncan’s. Each woman had her own Nightwind.

“Each of those you recruit will have her own lover,” he told them. “Let her call him as she will and he will come.”

As Allyn and Duncan began to fade away, Maggie called out to her demon, holding her hand out to him.

“He will return to you tonight,” Chrysty said. “And every night you want him.”

“What of our husbands?” Sadie asked, fear lining her face.

“Use the Book, my lady,” Chrysty said. “Put your human male into a deep sleep then take your pleasure with your rightful mate.”

“Pleasure,” Maggie breathed. “Is there truly such a thing when you lay with a man?”

“There is,” Lorna stated, her gaze locking with her lover’s. “Believe me there is such pleasure as you could not begin to imagine.”

Chrysty smiled. “Now, leave us, for there are things I must teach Lorna before the male returns.”

It was late in the afternoon and soon the sun would be almost to the horizon. Cailean would return and at the midnight hour, would force Lorna to become his bride.

“Can’t I stop him?” she asked. “Isn’t there something in the Book that will .…”

“Join with him, Lorna-love,” Chrysty ordered. “It will make the revenge all the sweeter when it is time.”

She didn’t want McGregor’s hands on her again but her demon had insisted there had to be one final mating between her and Cailean after the Joining in order to bind the McGregor to her.

“Then, you can use the Book to do to him what the other Sisters will do to their menfolk. You can make him believe he has spent a wild night of love in your arms when he has done no more than laid there like a rock while you and I take our ease with one another.”

“Beside him?” she questioned, speculation entering her eyes.

“If you wish,” he said, his white smile predatory and not-quite sane.

She lifted her chin. “I think I would like that.”

“What if we become pregnant with our lover’s child?” Sadie asked. She and her sister were at the door.

“You won’t unless you wish to,” Chrysty said. “Incubi are sterile but there is a way for you to conceive if that is what you want.” He looked to his lady. “And one day, you will want a daughter to replace you.”

“Not by Cailean McGregor!” she said, eyes flaring. “He says he can’t give me children.”

Chrysty shook his head. “The McGregor men blame themselves for not producing when all the while it was not their defect but their wives’. The men are potent.”

“Our menfolk are as potent as they come. I don’t want no more bairns!” Maggie said.

“Use the Book,” they were told. “There will be no vital seed from either of your males if that is what you want.” He waved his hand, signaling the women to go and without another word, they obeyed.

“I need to know where the women who vanished are, Chrysty,” Lorna said when the door closed behind the sisters.

“They are safe and happy with Nightwinds of their own,” he replied. “Far from this hellish place. Either Allyn, Duncan, or I took them over the wyndstones and to a much better life. We were waiting for you to come so things will be put to rights.”

He walked to where she sat and placed the Book of Shadows in her hands. It was heavy as she rested it on her thighs. He squatted in front of her, wrapping his fingers over hers where they held the edge and spine of the Book.

“The men of the Tabor clan have subjugated and abused their women for centuries,” he said, looking deeply into her eyes. “They have imprisoned and tortured and murdered innocent men for just as long. Thousands upon thousands of such men have perished at the hands of men like the Tabors. Now it is time to bring those men—those Nightwinds—out of the Abyss and allow them to mate with the women they will protect. It is past time the guilty be punished for their crimes and this is where it will begin again.”

“Again?” she asked.

He nodded. “Long ago, before the Burning War, there were women who called forth the Nightwinds. The last of them has left this world—not in death but left it all the same. You will begin the culling again and those who have been hurt by men like the Tabors will be your allies. Those whom Allyn, Duncan and I carried away will return to the Hill for this is their home but not until the last of the males have been punished and it is safe for them to come back.”

The sound of hoof beats and jingle of harness brought the demon’s head up. His fierce frown told her Cailean had returned.

“Remember what I have taught you,” Chrysty said, getting to his feet. “But do not use the teaching until you are legally bound to McGregor and he has sealed the distasteful deed with his semen. Then use the Book to begin to control him.”

With that, the Nightwind vanished.

Lorna heard the scuff of feet on the porch then McGregor’s voice.

“Buckboard is on its way to pick you up,” he said. “Is she up?”

“Aye, milord,” Sadie replied. There was a pause. “Are you sure you don’t want us to stay to help her get ready for tonight?”

“I brought Lady Belle’s Joining gown for her to wear. She can get into it herself.”

Digging her short nails into the palms of her hand, Lorna would have been annoyed simply at Cail’s presumption that a woman could dress without help on her Joining day. She could, of course, but it was nice to have her female friends or relatives there to bolster her. It was supposed to be a time for rejoicing, for sharing but considering it was a time she dreaded, not having Maggie and Sadie to help her was a moot point. What angered her most was that she was expected to wear another woman’s bridal gown. A borrowed gown, she thought, tears forming in her eyes.

She was sitting in the rocking chair beside the fireplace when Cailean entered the cabin. The Book of Shadows had disappeared with Chrysty. With her hands curled over the arms of the rocker, her bare feet planted firmly on the floor, she regarded her husband-to-be with a hard stare.

“You feeling better now?” he asked. He closed the door, took off his black felt hat to hang it on a peg beside the door. When she didn’t answer, he frowned. “Don’t give me the silent treatment, Lorna. The Joining will take place.”

“Whether I like it or not,” she said in a grating tone.

“Aye,” he agreed then walked into the kitchen area of the main room, unbuttoning his cuffs to roll up his sleeves. He glanced at the stove. “You need to start fixing our supper.”

“I have no intention of cooking for you, Cailean,” she said. “You want supper, you fix it.”

“Be careful, Lorna.” Chrysty’s words drifted through her head on a warning note.

Pausing as he was about to pump water into the sink to wash his hands, Cailean straightened up. He didn’t turn around but stood facing the window over the sink that looked out over the gathering dusk.

“Get up and start supper or .…” he began through clenched teeth.

“You’ll what?” she asked, setting the rocking chair into motion. The creak of its rockers on the wooden floor was loud in the room. “Take a strop to my backside?”

Cailean sighed. His shoulders slumped. “I don’t want to start our life together like that, Lorna, but you need to learn a man runs his house, not the woman.” He twisted his head around to pin her with a steady look. “Get up and start supper. I won’t tell you again.”

Lorna smiled nastily. “Good. Beat me if you want to,” she dared him. “But I’ll not lift a hand to make your supper, Cailean McGregor.”

He said nothing to her provocative statement, only sighed and pumped water into the sink, took the bar of lye soap and began to lather his hands. When finished, he shut off the water, dried his hands on a towel hanging beside the sink then turned to face her.

“If you think to bait me into beating you, Lorna, it can be done but I’ll warn you now that I won’t spare the rod as the case may be. I’ll also warn you that I will hit you where it won’t show but where it will make it very difficult for you to sit your ass down comfortably for a good long time.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Do it, then,” she said. “I couldn’t possibly hate you more then than I do at this moment.” She pushed up on her toes, setting the rocker to moving faster. “And let me toss you a warning, McGregor. I will fight you every step of the way.” Her upper lip skinned back from her gritted teeth. “And I’ll do my gods-be-damned best to hurt you every chance I get. So if you force me to cook for you, you might want somebody you dislike to taste it for you first. Of course I doubt they’d notice spit or snot mixed in with the gravy.”

Cailean went as still as death as he stared at her. He was not accustomed to women speaking to a man as this one dared to speak to him. It wasn’t only that he was a man and she a woman. He was an elder, the Chosen leader of her clan, and she was showing him disrespect. It was within his rights to punish her however he saw fit but that was something he truly did not want to do. He didn’t want to hurt her and was mortally ashamed of having raped her. By threatening her with the strop, he had thought to frighten her into toeing the line but was beginning to see that tactic would not work with Lorna. She would make him chastise her severely before she’d give in to him but he was determined that she would.

For a long moment he stared at her then a muscle worked in his jaw as he turned away. There was bread in the breadbox and meat in the cooler in the cellar. He could make do with a sandwich or two for today. Tomorrow—when she was legally his—would be time enough to set down rules by which she would be forced to live. If her belly rumbled tonight, she had no one to blame for it but herself.

Walking to the trap door beside the stove, he bent down, opened it and descended the stairs. He went to the cooler, took the knife from the sheath at his thigh, and cut off several slices of cured ham he could fry for his supper. Grabbing a jug of buttermilk and a jar of canned peaches he climbed the steps and closed the trap door behind him.

Lorna watched as he went about cooking the ham in a cast iron frying pan. The smell of the meat cooking made her mouth water but she tried to ignore the hunger pangs clutching at her stomach. She would not give him the satisfaction of forbidding her from making her own meal.

“Bide your time,” Chrysty purred in her ear. “I’ll feed you a feast when the Joining is done.”

“And I will make him rue the day he ever sat down to eat while I remained hungry,” she thought as she watched Cailean take a seat at the table.

It had been over a day since she’d had any nourishment and her head was beginning to ache miserably. The sight of McGregor methodically chewing his food, ladling peaches onto his plate made her mouth water even more but she resolutely turned her eyes away, laying her head on the tall back of the rocker and closing her eyes as though she’d not a care in the world. Although she could feel her husband-to-be surreptitiously watching her, it didn’t matter. He would pay dearly for the torment he was making her endure.

“I am not taking pleasure from hurting you, Lorna,” Cail said softly. “This is not how I wanted it to be.”

She ignored him. For a moment she opened her eyes when his chair legs scraped across the floor but then she closed them again as he took his plate to the sink. He stood there for quite some time staring out the window then sighed. He walked out of the kitchen and into the bedroom where she heard him rustling around in the closet.

“He is laying your Joining gown on the bed,” Chrysty told her, appearing across the room as a wavering shaft of light.

“I should rip it to shreds,” she grumbled, setting the chair to rocking once again.

“It is an old gown, an honored gown. It is an honor to wear it. Many a Tabor woman has worn it to her Joining and you will want our daughter to do the same.”

She gave him a surprised look. “Our daughter?” she asked, remembering he said he was sterile.

“Where there is a will, there is a way,” he said.

She nodded though she wasn’t sure she wanted a child.

Cail came to stand in the doorway between the main room and the bedroom. “Would you like me to draw you a tub of water?” he inquired.

“I don’t want you to do anything for me,” she snapped, not bothering to look his way.

“Suit yourself,” he said.

“You must not antagonize him, sweeting,” Chrysty told her. “You do not as yet have the power to protect yourself and I can not until the Joining is sealed.”

“You couldn’t stop him?” she asked, incredulous.

“Not until he does something to hurt you. That is the law of the Book. That is Her law and even then I can not kill him. Others who hurt you are outside Her law and they are expendable.”

She thought about that for a moment. “Does that include Daniel?”

“What did you say?” Cail called out.

“I asked if Daniel will be there tonight,” she snapped.

Her husband-to-be appeared in the doorway again. He was shirtless, a wet rag in his hand. He used it to wipe under his arm. “Aye, he will say the words of your religion over you to bind you legally to me according to Citadel law.”

She looked away from his brawny chest as though it disgusted her and she sensed his flash of aggravation before he ducked back into the bedroom.

“If you want me to rid you of your brother, I will, but it is not something I want to do,” Chrysty said. “As yet, he has not entirely succumbed to the influence of the Tabor clan. There may be hope for him to yet avoid the vengeance reserved for the other males.”

Lorna considered the brother she had loved so dearly as he hid in his bedroom while she was being raped. Any charitable thoughts she might have entertained had been trampled by his disregard of her honor and his lack of compassion.

“I don’t want him dead,” she said, “but I do want him to suffer.”

“Then suffer he will,” Chrysty said.

“I want him to know shame,” she stated.

“I didn’t hear you.”

Lorna looked at her husband-to-be as he came into the room. If her stare had been a bolt of lightning, he would have been seared on the spot. “Mayhap it was because I was not talking to you,” she snapped.

He scanned the room, his face showing a touch of suspicion. “Then who were you talking to?”

“Careful,” Chrysty warned.

“Myself,” she said then ground her teeth when Cail made a dismissive sound before going over to turn up the lamp. The sun had vanished and the room was slowly leaching of light.

“’Tis the longest day of the year,” he said as he glanced at the clock. “The sun set at thirty-nine minutes past nine. We’ve awhile before midnight.” He took a seat across from her on the settee, stretching out his long legs that were clad in black pants and wiggled his bare toes. “What would you like to do?”

“Take a knife and cut off your piece,” she said with a steady, hateful glint in her eyes.

Cail’s lips tightened. He met her glower for a moment or two then sighed loudly. “I am not made of stone, Lorna. Your insults hurt.”

“Your rape hurt,” she flung at him. “And it did more damage to my pride than anything I could possibly say to you!”

He fidgeted on the seat. “Aye, I am aware of that and I have asked you to forgive me for what I did. It .…”

“Not as long as you draw breath and not even when they are laying you in the ground will I forgive what you and Daniel did,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Then I’ll not ask you again to forgive what I did,” he said, shooting up from the sofa. “But whether you forgive me or not, the Joining will be.” He pointed a rigid finger at her. “You will be my wife and you will show me the respect I am due as laird of the clan and your husband. I have no desire to beat you, Lorna, but if that is what is needed to make you fulfill your obligation as the laird’s wife, so be it!”

Lorna tilted her chin up, looked him square in the eye and smiled so hatefully, so brutally he took a step back. She said nothing but slowly pushed up from the rocker, dragged the thin shawl covering her shoulders tighter then left him standing in the middle of the sitting room.

“You can not run away from your duties, Lorna!” he yelled at her.

“And you can not run away from the retribution I intend to see you get,” she said under her breath.

“What?” he demanded, coming after her. “What did you say?”

She looked around, that wicked smile still in place. “I said you may have bitten off more than you can chew this time, Cailean McGregor, and it may well choke you!”

Flinging her long hair behind her like a living cape, she went into the bedroom, slamming the door shut behind her. She half expected him to come storming after her but she heard the screen door bang shut—signaling he had gone outside.

The Joining gown was laid out on Cail’s bed—she would never consider it her own though she might be forced to share it with him. It was a lovely creation of aged white satin with a deep band of exquisitely-tatted lace forming the high collar and adorning the scalloped hem. The long sleeves were made of lace and ended in a soft point at the cuff. Tiny seed pearls were sewn along the empire waistline and at intervals along the lace-edged hem. On the floor by the bed were white satin slippers with flat heels. Beside the gown was a square black velvet box with a ribbon around it, a white lace kerchief for the sleeve with the initials MDT, and a blue garter placed atop a pair of silk stockings.

“Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue,” she mumbled as she fingered the delicate lace on the gown’s sleeve.

For a long time she stared at the velvet box then snatched it up. She flipped it open and drew in a gasp.

Lying on a bed of black satin was a beautiful medallion on an intricately knotted chain. She knew the medallion was the crest of the Tabor clan. She traced the engraved images with the tip of her finger.

“Your heritage,” Chrysty said from behind her. “Wear it with pride.”

“It might as well be a shackle,” she said, snapping the lid shut then tossing the box to the bed. “It will feel like one.”

“Every laird’s wife from Alinor on down has worn the crest of the clan but only those who are true Tabors will feel it’s power when it is around her neck.”

She looked around at him. “There is power in it?”

“Great power, my lady,” he said. “I put it there myself.”

“And he won’t know.”

Chrysty shook his head. “He sees it as that shackle to which you referred, as something to chain you to him as laird of the clan. If he knew he was giving you the key to his downfall, I doubt he would look upon it with favor.”

She started to reach for the box but he put out a hand to stop her, wrapping his fingers around her upper arm.

“He must put it around your neck at the Joining.” He caressed her arm. “The moment he does, you will feel the influence radiating from the medallion and you will then begin to absorb all the powers within the Book. They will be at your command.”

Lorna turned into his arms, laid her head on his chest. “Help me to make it through this ordeal, Chrysty,” she pleaded.

“I will be with you every step of the way,” he vowed.

* * * *

Long before the stroke of midnight, they began arriving. The stamp of hooves, the clink of harness and rattle of wood springs, the creak of leather signaled the appearance of the men of the Hill.

“No women may attend the Joining of the Laird,” Chrysty had told her.

“Why not?”

“That is custom,” he replied. “No females attend matters relating to clan business and this is strictly a male affair. They wield the power.” His smile was deadly. “Or so they believe.”

“For now,” she said.

He had helped her on with the Joining gown, had knelt at her feet to draw on her stockings—drawing the garter up her thigh with a heated touch that made her womb clench. She had clasped his shoulder to maintain her balance as he slipped the satin shoes onto her feet.

“Who will shoe your pretty little feet? Who will glove your hand?” he sang in a soft, low voice. He looked up at her—holding her gaze—as he got to his feet. “And who will kiss your red, ruby lips?”

Lorna trembled as he wrapped his hands around both sides of her neck and drew her mouth to his. The touch of his lips to hers was electric and she shivered again.

“Soon,” he whispered against her mouth. “Soon there will be just the two of us.”

She nodded, caught like a dragonfly in the hot amber of his gaze. A soft knock on the door made her groan.

“It is your brother,” Chrysty said then faded away, the touch of his hands still firm on her neck.

“Lorna?” Daniel called. “Are you dressed?”

“Go away!” she shouted but her brother opened the door and stepped in, coming up short when he saw her dressed in the Joining gown.

“Oh, Lorna,” he said. “If mama could see you.”

“What do you want?” she demanded and had the pleasure of seeing her brother’s face turn red.

“You look so beautiful,” he said, reaching up to tug at the collar of his clerical robe. “I just wanted to make sure you were ready for the .…”

She stepped up to him, jabbed a hard finger into his chest, punctuating each word. “No. I. Am. Not. Ready, Daniel!” She pulled her hand back and wiped it down the front of her gown as though touching her brother had soiled her flesh. She narrowed her eyes. “Nor will I ever be ready! I am being forced into a marriage I do not want with a man I can not stand and the Joining is being performed against my will by a man who I am—at this moment—declaring dead to me!”

“You don’t mean that!” Daniel gasped, his eyes wide.

“You are nothing to me, Daniel Brent. You are less than nothing!”

Daniel’s face crumpled and tears formed in his eyes. “Please don’t be this way,” he beseeched her, putting out a hand that she knocked away. “Lorna, I beg you. Don’t .…”

“Get out of my sight,” she hissed. “I want nothing more to do with you!” She turned her back on him.

When she heard the door close, she sank to the floor, covering her face with her hands. This was not her, she thought as her own tears pricked behind her eyes. She was not a vindictive, hateful woman and yet every word out of her mouth had been the truth. The love she had always had for her brother was gone. It had been replaced with something dark and miserable and filled with disgust.

Gentle hands lifted her. Sobbing wildly, eyes squeezed shut, she pressed her face against a hard chest. “I can’t do this,” she cried.

A hand smoothed down her hair. “Aye, you can.”

Lorna pushed away from the comfort and staggered back. It wasn’t Chrysty’s arms around her but Cail’s. She put out a staying hand when he would have reached for her again. She shook her head.

“No,” she said. “No.” Tears streaking down her face, lips trembling, she looked at him with pleading. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“You are the last of the Tabor line,” he said gently. “You have a duty to the clan.”

“No!” she denied. “I don’t know anything about them.”

“You’ll learn,” he said in a kind voice. “I’ll teach you. Maggie and Sadie will teach you. It’ll be all right, Lorna. You’ll see.”

She felt a phantom arm go around her shoulder and knew her demon lover was bolstering her. He, too, meant to see her wed to McGregor but the thought of it terrified her. She did not want to be at the mercy of a man—any man—and especially not one who had the intention of ruling her with an iron hand. She shrugged off Chrysty’s ghostly hold.

“This is wrong. Wrong!” she sobbed. “I’ll write to the Citadel, tell the Shadowlords what you’ve done!”

Cail sighed. “And who would take the letter for you, Lorna?” he asked. “Certainly no one from the Hill who is allowed to leave it. You will not be allowed to leave. No woman has ever crossed the river since the clan settled here. No woman ever will.”

The hopelessness of her situation slammed into her with the force of a brick wall. She was trapped here on the mountain, a prisoner. She thought about the wyndstones, the forest beyond. Surely there had to be a way to escape the madness into which she was plunging. They could not watch her day and night. She had to get away. She had to!

“I have vowed to be a good husband to you, Lorna,” she heard Cail saying. “If you will only meet me halfway, give me a chance, I can make you happy. I know I can.”

She stared at him. He was an imposing man in the black suit, shirt and tie of his new station—there was no denying that—and she supposed most women would consider him a true catch with his broad shoulders and tall, dark male beauty. He was looking at her with gentleness, but she’d seen the rough side of him, the side that brooked no argument from her and it was that side she feared. A man who would rape a woman was not to be trusted.

“Bide your time, Lorna-love,” Chrysty whispered in her ear. “Lull him into a false sense of security. Your vengeance will be all the stronger if you make him love you then pull the rug out from under him.”

She thought of Kurt and how he had laughed at her tears after he had ruined her. He had walked away as though she had been nothing more than a moment’s distraction—and she supposed she was to his way of thinking. She had loved him and he had betrayed her. That betrayal had nearly killed her.

“We can have a good life together, Lorna,” Cail said. “Just give me a chance.” He held out his hand.

“You can attract more flies with honey than vinegar,” Chrysty said slyly.

Lorna glanced at the clock ticking away on the dresser. It was nearly midnight—the traditional time for Joining, the starting of a new life at the beginning of a new day.

“Think of the power contained in the medallion,” Chrysty reminded her. “Think of all you can do for yourself and the women of the clan.”

Her eyes shifted to the bed and the velvet box and she saw Cail look that way, too.

“Did you open it?” he asked, lowering his hand as he walked to the bed to retrieve the box. He opened it and removed the chain from its satin bed. “It’s one of a kind, each medallion made by hand after the original. Wiley Shaw does fine work, doesn’t he?” He turned it over. “Did you see our initials entwined on the back?”

She had not and didn’t care to do so. The thought of the combined initials lying against her skin made her stomach turn. It would be like having him lying atop her all the time. She was relieved when he dropped the medallion into the pocket of his suit coat.

Cail squared his shoulders. “It’s nearly midnight, sweeting. They are waiting for us.” Once more he extended a hand to her. “Will you come of your own accord or will I need to carry you?”

That he would she had no doubt. If he had to take her kicking and screaming and pounding her fists on his back, he would. Her face burned at the thought of such humiliation. Knowing nothing she did would stop what was about to happen, she wanted to throw her head back and scream and scream until she blacked out. But even then—when she awoke—the deed would be done. No matter what.

“Lorna?” he questioned and this time his voice had a hard edge of command to it. His eyes had lost their gentleness to be replaced with steely determination.

Her own shoulders slumped and she hung her head, digging her fingernails into the palm of her hand. “What choice do I have?” she asked in a listless voice and took the first step toward him.

* * * *

Her body felt numb as she walked out of Cail’s house and into the torch-lit front yard where all the men of the clan who had reached their majority stood. Each of them dressed in unrelieved black from broad brim hat to boot, they were gathered there with stony faces and hard eyes, glaring at her as McGregor led her down the front steps. Daniel—dressed in the robes of his Order—stood off to one side along with an elderly man whose long beard was snow-white against the black of his robe.

“The Arch-Elder, Gerard McFadden,” Cail said softly. “He will bless the Joining, too.”

From that moment until the medallion was settled around her neck, everything would forever remain a blur to her. There had been chanting, praying, then she had been forced to kneel before Daniel as the words of their religion were spoken over her and McGregor. She did not feel the weight of the medallion he placed around her neck when Daniel pronounced them man and wife but the moment the Arch-Elder stepped forward to lift his hands in blessing over them, a shaft of pure energy spiked from the medallion and spread to every inch of her body. It was all she could do not to gasp, to keep her eyes from widening, or to cry out as that energy rippled along her nerve endings.

“By the power of Clan Tabor, I pronounce you Laird and Lady of Tremayne!” the Arch-Elder intoned in a deep, sonorous voice.

A resounding huzzah sounded from the men and then words spoken in a language she did not understand.

“Unrepentant,” she repeated. The word echoed through her mind with its many meanings—unremorseful, unapologetic, shameless. She looked about her at the menfolk of the Hill standing there staring at her with gloating in their eyes and hated every last one of them to the depths of her being.

“Revenge,” Chrysty breathed into her ear. “For every woman who has stood where you stand now.”

“Aye,” she said. “It will be exactly that.”

She reached for Cail’s hand, entwining her fingers with his. He jerked and looked down at her with surprise. Forcing a smile she did not feel to her lips, she lowered her eyes demurely. The moment she heard his ragged sigh of relief, her smile became genuine but in the depths of her green eyes there was an evil light that sparked with the red flames of the Abyss.

Chapter Eight

If the medallion had not shared its immense power with her at the Joining, the power that shot through her at the moment Cailean McGregor spilled his seed into her unwilling body might well have pitched her into insanity. As it was, that power—combining, swirling, lacing together with that of the medallion—shone like a dazzling beacon in the darkness. The room lit up as bright as day and flashes of times past, of women long-dead played in front of her in moving pictures. She saw them all—Alinor, Ilene, Meghan, Mable, a hundred others. Each one was beautiful, most with bright red hair and green eyes like hers. Each looked sad, downtrodden, and miserable. Some bore scars; all bore bruises from the heavy hands of their husbands. A few lay in their caskets or on cooling boards, rigid in death, hands clasped in fervent hope there was a better world awaiting them. One or two had unsmiling little girls at their side, clinging to their skirts and one stared at Lorna with hollow sockets where once eyes had been.

“I saw him and told that I did,” the pitiful woman said. “Do not make the same mistake.”

Sitting up in the bed as Cail lay snoring beside her, Lorna watched the women moving across the stage of her mind until the last hem disappeared beyond the periphery of her vision and the bright light began to fade. She reached up a trembling hand to swipe at the tears of sorrow that were flowing down her cheek.

“Avenge us,” the women said in unison, the voices sad and forlorn. “Avenge us one and all.”

“Now do you see?”

Chrysty appeared at the foot of the bed. His voice was low, not in her head, and she snapped her face toward her sleeping husband.

“He is dead to the world, awareness drained from him with his seed,” Chrysty said. “Come with me, now. There is much to do, much more for you to learn, and I can feel your hunger, Lorna-love. The feast I promised you awaits.”

Easing from the bed for she feared to wake Cail despite Chrysty’s assurance he was sound asleep, she thrust her feet into her slippers and reached for the robe flung over the desk chair, belting it around her nakedness.

In the main room, the table had been set with all her favorite foods and her belly growled, mouth watered, as she approached the place setting. Chrysty pulled the chair away from the table for her then trailed his fingers along her upper back when she was seated.

“What shall I serve you first?” he asked.

The food made her roll her eyes as each new helping was placed before her. The baked ham was juicy, the vegetables cooked to perfection, the salad greens crisp and tomatoes succulent, the cornbread dripping with melted butter. Even the iced tea he poured from a cut glass pitcher had been brewed to absolute perfection, just the right amount of sugar and lemon to enhance the bold flavor.

He sat with his chin propped in his hand, watching her eat, smiling as she groaned with pleasure. His eyes glowed with a light that she knew was affection.

“If only I could learn to cook this well,” she said, sighing as she tasted the egg custard pie he slid over to replace her empty plate.

“You can,” he said. “Think it, wish it and it will appear.” He shrugged. “Why spend your day slaving over a hot stove when all you need do is wave your hand and the meal will be there? Why wear your knuckles to the bone washing clothes when you can do the same and have them laundered, pressed and hung in the closet in a matter of moments? Why scrub and scour, sweep and mop when you don’t have to?”

Her eyebrows shot up. “I can do all that?”

He nodded. “By the time this night is o’er, sweeting, you will discover there are a million such tricks waiting in your arsenal. If you can conceive it, it can be. All you need do is share you abilities with your Sisters so they, too, can be eased of the heavy yokes and crushing burdens that weigh them down.” He leaned back in the chair and folded his arms over his chest. “But you must never let the males know what you can do.” He gave her a steady look. “Such things are why the witches of long ago were burned at the stake.”

She took up her napkin to wipe her lips. She was full, her hunger for food sated but there was another hunger beating at her. She was shocked to find she was aroused as she looked at him. There was a heavy feeling between her legs.

“Learning first, passion later,” he said with a glint in his amber eyes.

Lorna had a wild notion to stand, sweep the dishes from the table and demand he take her then and there. The thought reached out to him and he grinned.

“If that’s what you want but it would be uncomfortable for you unless I bent you over the edge and take you from behind,” he said with a twitch of his full lips. “I wouldn’t mind.”

Her face flamed but his words made her weak in the knees. She swallowed hard. “L…learning,” she said, wanting to get it over with so she put her hands on him.

Chrysty threw his head back and laughed. He unfolded his arms, scraped his chair back and got to his feet. He helped her up, threaded his fingers through hers then led her to the door. Lorna looked back at the open bedroom door, her footsteps faltering.

“He’ll not waken ‘til morning,” Chrysty told her.

“That’s only a few hours away,” she said. The grandfather clock told her it was already three a.m.

“A lot can be taught in two hours time,” he said in a husky voice then crooked his finger under her chin to tilt her face up so their eyes locked. “A lot can be given in two hours time.”

He rubbed against her and she sucked in a breath as the hard erection prodded her through the heavy fabric of his pants.

The front door was opened by unseen hands and the screen door moved back without its usual squeak. Outside, the night air was still—not a creature stirred, not a firefly flitted among the stand of corn bordering the left side of the cabin, not a waft of wind moved. With her hand in his, he led her to the edging of wyndstones that glowed milky white in the moonlight.

“Chrysty,” she said, nervousness making her heart race.

“Trust me, sweeting,” he said, stepping over the wyndstones.

Lorna stopped—hearing the blood pounding in her ears. She was breathing quickly, shallowly, a fine sheen of perspiration suddenly forming on her forehead.

“I don’t know,” she said, staring down at the whitewashed stones.

“Trust me,” he said again, tugging gently on her hand.

She looked back at McGregor’s cabin. Did it really matter what lay on the other side of the wyndstones? Could life be any worse for her there than here? She tucked her lower lip between her teeth, indecision drying all the moisture from her mouth.

“I could be damned for all time,” she mumbled.

“Or you could be saved,” he said.

She lifted her eyes from the wyndstones. “I’m afraid.”

He reached out to cup her cheek. “Aye, I know you are, but the fear is behind you in that cabin, Lorna. Not in here with me.”

She searched his eyes for a long moment then took a deep breath, lifted the hem of her robe and crossed over the wyndstones.

* * * *

Lorna sat with her legs tucked under her and to one side in the swing on the front porch of her new home and watched the sun’s rosy fingers scratching at the heavens. Birds flew from branch to branch. A pair of squirrels chased one another up a chinaberry tree trunk—spiraling around and around, chittering, bushy tails waving. One lone rabbit hopped out of the corn, saw Lorna then scampered away. On the porch rail, a small green lizard ran in fits and starts then sped up a column to the rafter where it perched, staring down at her with red eyes. A soft breeze brought with it the first faint scent of impending rain.

She leaned her head against the swing’s chain, plucking at a bit of rust where the chain splayed like an upside down Y on the swing’s wooden arm. She was wistful, calm, at peace. Now and again she would raise her head and listen for Cail to be stirring in the bedroom but as yet, there had been no sound. She knew she had time yet for when she’d first returned to the cabin from her sojourn with Chrysty, she had tiptoed into the bedroom and stood at her husband’s bedside, staring down at him for the longest time.

“Sleep long and hard, McGregor,” she said, sending that thought deep into Cail’s brain. “Sleep until the sun is above the horizon.”

Going out to the porch, she had sat in the swing with her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms around them, her chin propped atop one knee and stared at the spot where Chrysty had taken her from this world to his realm. It was darker there in the forest, the doorway into her demon lover’s abode hidden from prying eyes.

The pathway had surprised her for it was a long, gently winding serpentine trail covered with crushed oyster shells that crinkled under foot. Under the light of the full moon, without any other illumination, the path shone brightly.

It was to a small little hut he led her. A simple place, there were two comfortable chairs to either side of a table holding the Book of Shadows, and a full-size brass bed with a night table atop which sat an oil lamp. A soft fur cover stretched across the bed. There were no windows in the hut and only two doors—the entry and a door into a small but serviceable bathroom with only a sink and stool—but the room was as cool as an underground cave.

“You live here?” she asked. The floor and wood paneled walls were bare so her voice sounded hollow.

“I reside here,” he said.

She looked about her. “But there’s no kitchen area.”

Chrysty smiled. “I don’t eat cooked food, sweeting. What nourishment I need I find in the forest.”

Raw meat, her mind told her and her stomach roiled at the notion. But what else would a demon eat? She felt bile flood her mouth and had to look away.

“Sit,” he said, sweeping a hand to the chairs. “The Book awaits you.”

It seemed as though she sat for hours on end listening to his instructions. He showed her illustrations in the Book, went over spells and pronunciations. She didn’t think she could possibly remember a tenth of what he said but her mind was absorbing the directions and directives, the advice and guidelines as though it were a sponge. Information in perfect sequence and order began to fill her head. She could see the diagrams in her mind’s eye and knew which spell went with which drawing. She assimilated which candle, which incense and oils, which day and time and phase of the moon went with which incantation. Though it seemed hours, it was only a matter of moments for time had stood still in that barren little hut with Chrysty’s mesmerizing voice holding her rapt attention. When he voiced the last word and sat back, closing the Book, she knew there was nothing she did not know about the craft she was expected to utilize.

“Tomorrow, pick three young women to teach,” he said. “Do it quietly and stress to them the importance of secrecy. When they are ready, when the time comes they are to be initiated into the Sisterhood, call me and I will bring to them their own Nightwinds.”

It was that easy, he’d said, and that complicated. The need for concealment from the males of what was planned was of vital importance. Lives depended upon it. Success rode on a woman’s ability to keep secret the powers she would one day wield in her bid for freedom.

“In three days, there will be a funeral,” he told her. “Maggie Regis will be a widow and the mantle of Laird will fall entirely upon the McGregor’s shoulders. With such power will come change and you will need to temper your anger for the time being.”

“In other words, Cail will become even more overbearing,” she said grimly.

“You must learn—as have most women from the dawning of time—how to control him, sweeting. Remember a fly can drown in honey but will shy away from vinegar.”

Lorna got up from the chair to pace. “I can’t stand the feel of his hands on me!” she said. “Of him pressing me down!” She turned tearful eyes to her demon. “It makes me sick to feel him inside me!”

Chrysty rose from his chair and went to her, wrapping his hands around her upper arms. He shook her gently, his eyes fused with hers. “What makes you think he will ever touch you again? Do you think I would allow it?”

Her forehead creased. “But….”

“He will go to bed each night and rise each morning believing he lay rutting between your sweet thighs when in reality it was the sheet he humped,” the Nightwind stated. “While he fucks his hand you will be in my bed, my cock deep inside your cunt!”

Heat rose in Lorna’s cheeks at the unseemly words.

“You belong to me and no other man will have your body save this man!”

He let go of her and swooped her up in his arms, took her to the bed—their clothes dissolving as he walked—and laid her down, falling on her, wedging her legs apart, his steely erection probing at her opening.

“You are mine, Lorna Tabor,” he said, giving her the clan name through clenched teeth.

He thrust hard into her sheath. She cried out—not from pain but sheer ecstasy. His cock went deep and it filled her, stretched her, and pressed right up against her womb as he drove hard into her wet channel. He hooked a hand under her knee, jerked her leg up to slap it across his back, pushing her legs far apart with his knees as he penetrated her as deep as he could go.

Lorna clung to his muscular arms. The sound of his body slapping against hers drove her wild with lust. She clawed at his flesh, digging little half-moon indentations into his shoulders when he slid a hand beneath her ass to lift her.

His mouth was ruthless upon hers, his tongue an invading force. He swept it across her teeth, probed at the sensitive corners of her mouth, drove deep until she though he might well touch her tonsils. His hips were like pistons as he drove into her with such single-minded fervor he began to grunt with each forward thrust. Beneath them the brass bed shook, the headboard banging against the wall.

“Mine!” he hissed against her lips and Lorna had to reach up to grab hold of the headboard as he slammed brutally into her.

There was no pain, only intense gratification as his hard shaft slid in and out of her sheath. His crazed rutting was nothing but carnal pleasure taken to a dizzying height and he was taking her there, scaling the peaks of sensuous delights and wicked satisfaction.

He had promised her pleasure and he delivered. Her body burst around a white-hot prod of intense bliss as her lower body flooded with juices milked from rippling vaginal walls filled to their limit. She screamed his name as the orgasm rocked through her, jerking on the headboard as wave after wave of release took her. The pulses had barely begun to fade away when he came—hard and copiously, spurting hot fluid deep into her core—and her cunt started to spasm all over again with rapid quivers that brought the stars down from the heavens to race across her vision.

Outside, heat lightning lit the sky and strobed against the spaces where the hut’s door did not fit snug in its frame.

Tumbling down from that supreme height to which she’d been taken, Lorna lay limp with her thighs spread wide, her arms outstretched on the pillows as though she were a willing victim awaiting sacrifice. Her breath was ragged, her heart pumping wildly in her chest, the blood racing through her ears but she lay there like the dead—unable to move a single muscle as he rose up over her, his gaze steady on her sweat-pebbled face.

“Every night, my lady,” he said. “I will come for you every night and every night we will come to this bed and I will give you pleasure that will only increase as time goes on.”

Lorna moaned. If there was more pleasure available for him to bestow, she wasn’t sure she would survive it. She felt completely drained. Her entire body was a heavy stone. She could not have gotten up from the bed had her very life depended upon it.

“Every night,” he said then slid his hands under her ass to lift her again.

Her eyes widened for she felt the press of his iron-hard shaft at the folds of her sex. She whimpered but before she could dredge up the energy to deny him, he had impaled her and the itch that she was beginning to associate with this handsome devil began again deep in her womb.

“Every. Night.” He stressed each word with a long, slow thrust. “All. Night. Long.”

His hips rotated against her, driving his cock deeper, then he picked up the speed. Her limp arms came up to circle his neck.

“Every night,” she whispered. “If I don’t die from the pleasure.”

He grinned—that wicked white-toothed grin that sent shivers of delight racing through her—and thrust his hip forward savagely.

A sound from inside the house brought Lorna back to the present. She turned her head toward the screen door as it opened. Cail came out—bare-chested and barefoot—with his black pants unbuttoned at the waist.

“Good morning,” he said, eyes holding a touch of uncertainty in them, lips not quite pulling back in a welcoming smile.

Lorna knew what had to be done and she knew it would take awhile to accomplish. Until every woman on the Hill belonged heart and body and soul to the Sisterhood and could wield her craft with assurance, she would need to bide her time with the man who was her husband.

“Do you want breakfast?” she asked, lowering her feet to the porch floor.

Cail blinked. “Have you decided you will cook for me after all?” he inquired, suspicion turned his gray eyes a darker shade.

She shrugged then got to her feet, the swing lazily bumping against the back of her legs as she stood there looking at him.

“My mother always said it was best to make the best of a bad situation until you can do better,” she said, then winced at her wording but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Does that mean you won’t spit in my food?” he asked.

“You’ll never know, will you?” she countered and moved to go past him. She stopped when he caught her arm, holding it gently.

“I’ll help you,” he said.

He was running his thumb up and down her arm and Lorna was thankful she had the fabric of her robe between her and his flesh. It sickened her to have him touch her but she managed to plaster a tight smile on her face.

“Fine by me,” she said, shrugging out of his grip.

He opened the screen door for her, following close on her heels as she went to the kitchen area.

“Bacon and eggs, toast and coffee would be good,” he said. “I make good coffee.”

“So do I,” she said, moving to the stove to light a burner. She filled the coffee pot with water, added the coffee then placed it on the burner.

“I’ll get the bacon and eggs from the cooler,” he told her and went to open the trapdoor.

For a moment after he descended the steps, she had a wild desire to slam the portal shut and lock it but the urge passed. She pulled the cast iron skillet he had used the evening before to make his meal onto the hot burner. There was enough grease left in the bottom to fry his eggs. After the sumptuous meal she’d had earlier that morning, she was not hungry.

“I can make the toast,” he said when he brought up the meat and eggs and butter. “I don’t mind sharing the work with you for a few days.”

“To make sure I don’t blow snot in your scrambled eggs,” she mumbled as she sliced four thick sections of bacon from the slab then laid them in the hot frying pan.

He actually laughed. “That, too.”

Lorna clenched her teeth. There was nothing amusing about the situation but she knew she had to relax, to play along until the time was right. Gradually, Chrysty had urged her.

“To change all at once would make him suspicious. Act as though he is wearing you down, winning you over.”

It was sage advice she had decided to implement. Slowly she would pretend to warm to her husband. A little here; a little there. Nothing to make him distrustful or skeptical of her sudden change of heart.

“How do you want your eggs, anyway?” she asked, beginning the little give and take that would seem natural.

“Over easy,” he replied. He came over to fetch the bread from the box on the counter. In the process he bumped his hips against hers playfully. “Makes it easier to see the snot.”

A snort was Lorna’s comment to that. She moved away, hoping he wouldn’t touch her again.

“I need to trek down to the ferry today,” he said as he laid six slices of bread on a cast iron griddle then began slathering butter atop each piece. “Euan will be back from Dovertown.”

She hadn’t paid any attention to the men who had come to the Joining the evening before and could not have cared less whether her husband’s twin had been there or not.

“He should be over his anger by now,” he said, turning the bread over to butter the bottom side before placing the griddle under the broiler. “He doesn’t hold a grudge long although its been a long time since I gave him a black eye.”

She glanced at Cail. “You hit him?”

“He had no business taking you to the jail,” he said. “I let him know I didn’t appreciate it. He overstepped his boundaries.”

Lorna stared at him for a moment then looked away. It didn’t matter to her if they beat one another to the ground. She knew they were close and that Euan’s cabin was only half a mile from his twin’s which meant the man would most likely visit often. The thought of the way he had manhandled her, treated her made her throat clog with fury. She knew treating him civilly would be a true test of her mettle. What she wanted to do was gouge his eyes out with the fork she used to extract the crisp bacon from the pan.

“You can ride into the settlement with me if you want else I’ll take you by Maggie’s,” he said. “I know she’d appreciate the company. Jubal is getting worse. You probably noticed he wasn’t here last night.” He used a pot holder to take the griddle from the broiler so he could flip over the pieces of toast.

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him she didn’t give a damn whether Regis had been there or not and that Maggie’s husband would be dead in a few days but she kept quiet. She broke two eggs into the hot grease.

“Why can’t I just stay here?” she asked, knowing full well he wouldn’t trust her to be alone.

Apparently Cail saw no need to respond. She saw his mouth tighten as he thrust the griddle under the flame once more.

“I’ll bring back what was left of yours at your brother’s house,” he told her. “Anything you need from the store house?”

“Whatever you want in the way of foodstuffs,” she said begrudgingly. “As long as I have my books, I don’t need anything else.”

“Do you sew?” he asked then bent over to retrieve the toast. “I mean, we don’t really know that much about one another and it just occurred to me to ask.”

“No, I don’t so if you’re thinking I’ll be making your clothes, that won’t happen,” she snapped.

“That’s okay but you do know how to mend and hem, don’t you?” he asked, deep lines forming between his brows.

“I can do that and I do crochet and knit. My mother taught me embroidery and needlepoint, as well.”

He leaned a hip against the counter as she scooped his eggs from the pan to add them to the plate beside the bacon.

“Eat your food while it’s hot,” she said.

“Aren’t you hungry?” he asked, frowning.

“I don’t have any appetite,” she said truthfully and thought he could take that however he wished.

“You need to eat, Lorna,” he said. “I don’t want you to get sick.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” she said in a grating tone.

“You’re my wife,” he reminded her as he took a seat at the table. “It is my job and my right to worry about you.”

She wrapped the potholder around the fry pan’s handle and poured the drippings into a can kept on the counter for that purpose. “How old is this grease?” she asked, sniffing the beige colored congealed mass.

“It’s still good. A day or two old, I think. It doesn’t stay around long because I use it up making cornbread or hominy, greens and the like,” he explained. “I’ve been cooking for myself since last spring so I’ve become fairly good at it. It’ll be nice not to have to do that from now on.” He dipped a piece of toast in the egg to break the yolk then shoveled it into his mouth then nodded. “This is very good, dearling. Cooked just the way I like it.”

Lorna made no reply to that but wiped out the fry pan with a stained towel that looked as though it was used for that purpose.

“If you want to rearrange things to your liking, I’ll help you tomorrow,” he said around a nibble of bacon. “I don’t work the ferry on the weekends and there’s nothing around the farm I need to see to. We can spend the day doing whatever you like.”

She shrugged, not considering the cabin hers so it didn’t matter what it looked like. She could not have cared less nor did she have any desire to pretty it up or change anything about it.

He cleared his throat. “Will you want to attend your brother’s services on Sunday?”

“No,” she was quick to respond.

“Then, will you come with me to mine.”

She gave him a surprised look. “You have church services?” Daniel had not made mention of it to her.

He ducked his head. “Aye, of course. We are a religious people, Lorna.”

“Huh,” she said, thinking his religious views were no doubt purely male. “Will I be able to sit beside you at the service?”

“Ah, no,” he said. “The women sit on .…”

“That’s what I thought,” she said, “so the answer is .…”

“Tell him you will,” Chrysty interrupted in her ear.

“Aye,” she said, annoyed at the demon but seeing the women in her mind’s eye where Chrysty had placed them.

“I am so pleased,” Cail said. He used one piece of toast to sop up what was left of the egg yolks on the plate then scooped up one yolk-less egg to slide it onto another slice of toast. “I will have lunch with the clan Elders afterward. The womenfolk always supply food for us then take their own food down to the lake.” He chewed for a moment. “What is your best dish? Something you would like to show off to the clan?”

Her back was to him so he did not see the irritation that flicked across her face. She could tell him anything and it wouldn’t really matter but she happened to be very good a baking pies.

“If you will gather me some berries,” she said, “strawberry, raspberry, dewberry—whatever kind you can find—I will make a cobbler or two. I saw a rhubarb patch out back.”

“I know just the place to gather the raspberries and dewberries and Maggie has a strawberry patch at her place, a cherry tree, too.”

“Then I’ll make cobblers,” she said, her eyes lifting to the canister of dried prunes sitting on the shelf above the counter. A wicked smile pulled at her lips. “I’m sure the Elders will like that.”

When he finished his breakfast, he brought his plate to her then bent his head to kiss her on the nape of her neck. She stiffened but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Get dressed, dearling,” he said. “We need to be on our way.”

She nodded, unable to speak for the place where he had pressed his lips to her flesh felt as though a nest of maggots were crawling over it. She had to resist the impulse to reach up with the dishrag to scrub at the back of her neck.

* * * *

The ride to Maggie Regis’ house took about thirty minutes. Cail had hitched up the buggy, tied his horse to the tailgate, telling Lorna he would leave the buggy with her.

“Why don’t you buy me a horse?” she asked.

Cail frowned. “Women aren’t allowed to have mounts of their own,” he said. “It’s against clan law.”

She knew why, of course. It would give the women freedom to run and that was something the men of the Hill would not allow.

“It was just a thought,” she mumbled and wasn’t surprised that he took her answer at face value. She had tempered the tone of voice in which she was speaking to him and keeping her eyes demurely down whenever he was not addressing her directly. That seemed to please him.

Maggie was hanging sheets on a line that stretched from a huge pine tree to the side of the cabin. She turned, waved, then put her hands to the small of her back to stretch.

“She’s having a hard time of this,” Cail said. “She worships the ground Jubal walks on.”

“That’s how they all think their women are.” Chrysty’s laughter was low and filled with scorn.

“Come to spend the day with me?” Maggie asked as they pulled up to the cabin.

“Gotta go pick up Euan,” Cail said. He tied the reins to the brake then hopped down, going around to Lorna’s side to help her down. “How’s Elder Jubal?”

“It was a bad night for him,” Maggie replied. Her gaze was locked on Lorna as Cail put his hands to his wife’s waist and swung her to the ground. “He can’t keep nothing down no more.”

“I’ll just pop in and give him my regards,” Cail said, leaving the women alone.

“You are well, Sister?” Maggie asked softly.

“As well as I can be given the circumstances,” Lorna replied. “Here, let me help you with the linens.”

“Sadie will be over later this morning. We were going to be shelling peas. She will appreciate the help,” Maggie told her. She glanced past Lorna and lowered her voice even more. “He sleeps much of the time now. I found something in the book to help ease his pain.”

“And his passing?” Lorna whispered back.

“That, too,” Maggie said with a girlish giggle.

Lorna shook out a pillowcase then draped the top of it over the line. “Have you picked your three students?”

“I have and so has Sadie. What about you?”

“Not completely. I’m considering Sam’s mother. What is her name again?”

“Mary Reid.” Maggie nodded. “A good choice. The menfolk are starting to pressure her into taking another husband and she ain’t wanting to. Aye, Mary would be a good one for you.”

“And I think Royce Gilmore’s wife.”

“Oh, you’ll like Tandy!” Maggie said. “She’s got a way about her that you can’t help but take to her right off.”

“I hear there’s to be a meal prepared for the Elders.”

Maggie grunted. “Every Sunday. They eat in the dining hall of the Meeting House and us womenfolk take our bairns down to the lake pavilion and have our meal.” She bent over to retrieve another sheet from the wicker basket at her feet. “Of course it’s a way for the lot of us to have some time to ourselves but be careful what you say around the boys. They report everything back to their papas.”

“Figured as much,” Lorna said. “Little pitchers have big ears.”

“Aye, that’s the way of it,” Maggie agreed. “But once most of the others learn the powers from the Book, we can talk amongst ourselves and the little men won’t be none the wiser.”

Maggie smiled broadly then shook her head slightly for the screen door opened and Cail came out of the cabin.

Cail went to the back of the buggy, untied Saoirse then led the stallion over to where the women were standing. There was a deep frown on his handsome face.

“He’s fading, Maggie,” he said. “He was so weak he could barely keep his eyes open.”

Maggie drew in a hitching breath. “I don’t think he’ll be with us much longer, Cailean,” she said and Lorna noticed the woman was gripped a wooden clothespin so tightly the color had bled from her knuckles.

Cail put a comforting hand on Maggie’s shoulder. “We’ll be here for you, my lady.” He patted her then turned to his wife. “I’ll be back by sundown. Got a few things to see to whilst I’m at the settlement.”

“I’ll be right here,” she said and when he made a move toward her, she bent down to take up the remaining sheet in the basket.

“Well, I guess I’ll be going then,” Cail said, disappointment showing on his face. He put a foot in the stirrup.

“Ride careful,” Maggie told him with a warm smile.

“Look after my lady,” he replied then wheeled the horse around and gave it a light tap of his heels against the beast’s flanks.

“I’ll take good care of her!” Maggie called out to him as the horse picked up speed.

The two women said nothing for a moment. Between them, they adjusted the last sheet on the line then stuck the clothespins at intervals along the white crease.

“I’ve spoken to Mary Reid and my sister-in-law Alana Shaw,” Maggie said as though their conversation hadn’t been interrupted. “Tippy Kirkpatrick, Lola Dunlop, and Ellen McKenna need to be gotten to.”

“We need twelve in all to form the core of the Coven,” Lorna said. “Since there isn’t a McGregor woman handy…”

“Well, there’s Lady Belle, but she’s too old and won’t leave that shack of hers,” Maggie said.

“Then we’ll have to use two women from the same clan to make up for her loss,” Lorna said. “What of Sam’s intended? Her name escapes me.”

“Missy Gilmore,” Maggie supplied. “Aye, ‘tis best to start bringing in the young ones along with the older.”

Lorna swept a hand over her sweaty face then looked up at the sky. “I thought sure we were going to get some rain today.”

Maggie blushed. “Well, we most likely would have but I had all these sheets I needed to do and no more clean ones—what with Jubal shitting like a race horse and all—and so I .…” She shrugged. “Maybe we can make it rain on Sunday while we’re at the pavilion. That way the menfolk will be there at the settlement and we’ll be sitting out by the lake with us women in one pavilion and the children in another.”

A look of deep respect passed over Lorna’s face. “Margaret Regis you are picking up on what needs doing, aren’t you?” she asked with a grin. “Rain on Sunday would be perfect.”

Maggie reached out to grip Lorna’s hands. “We’ve needed a woman like you to unite us, Lorna. I don’t believe a one of us is going to let the hope of freedom slip through our fingers.”

“Do you think all the women will join the Sisterhood?” Lorna asked, her eyes narrowed with worry.

“I know they will,” Maggie said. “Oh, sure, there are those who have a bit of affection for their husbands but you can’t live with a man for nigh on ten years or more and not have a teeny, tiny flicker of—well—care, if not affection, for him. Most hate their menfolk—even their older sons—something fierce.”

“My concern is the young boys,” Lorna said. She’d never had a close woman friend and was beginning to think Maggie would fill that spot. “They need to be taught what’s right. The older ones, I fear, are lost to us.”

Maggie nodded, letting go of Lorna’s hands. “There are nine of them between the ages of twelve and eighteen. It’s them what’s reached the age of reasoning we have to be careful of. They’re already set in their ways. Now, the young ones? We might be able to influence them.”

“And if we can’t?”

The older woman looked out across the forest. “I’m told they can be sent where they’ll be happy enough and never darken our doorsteps again. That’s what Alistair told me.”

“Alistair?”

“My Nightwind,” Maggie whispered. “Now, I need to go in and check on Jubal. Just take a seat on the porch and I’ll bring us out some iced tea.”

“And the pan of peas,” Lorna said. “I might as well get started on them.”

As Lorna waited on the porch for Maggie to return, she knew Chrysty was hovering nearby. For some reason he had chosen not to show himself but his spirit was there—touching her from time to time.

“Is there such a place?” she asked. “For the boys?”

“She will ask the Triune Goddess to take them,” Chrysty replied. “Morrigunia will make use of them.”

“As Reapers?”

“Most likely.”

“But they won’t be hurt.”

“No, they won’t be hurt.”

The neigh of a horse brought Lorna’s head around and she turned toward the lane where a buggy appeared. An unsmiling young man sat beside Sadie and when he pulled the horse to a stop in front of the cabin, Lorna recognized him as Royce Gilmore’s son, Thad. His blue eyes bored into her like a hot drill. He didn’t greet her nor did he offer to help Sadie down from the buggy.

“Do you need help, Sadie?” Lorna asked, giving the young man a pointed look.

“I can make do,” Sadie said. She scampered down, not bothering to thank Thad who was already snapping the reins upon the mare’s rump.

“Boorish little bastard,” Lorna said under her breath. He’d been polite enough when she’d first met him but now it seemed he had developed a dislike of her.

“Don’t pay no mind to Thad,” Sadie said. “He’s just out of sorts ‘cause his old man’s laid up sick with the quicksteps and he’s got to do all the smithing.”

“Something Royce ate?” Lorna inquired as Sadie joined her on the porch.

“Or something that was given to him?” Maggie asked as she came out of the cabin.

Sadie grinned without answering. She motioned for one of the enamel pans in Maggie’s hand then scooped butterbeans from a hopper beside her chair. “How’s Jubal today?”

“A bit worse than yesterday,” Maggie replied.

“But not as bad as he’ll be tomorrow,” Sadie whispered and all three women laughed.

Chapter Nine

Lightning forked across the night sky on Saturday. There was ominous rumbling across the mountain but not a drop of rain had fallen by the time Lorna blew out the lamp in the sitting area and went in to the bedroom where Cail was sitting on the bed, pulling off his boots.

“It’s gotta rain sometime,” her husband commented. He looked toward the iron-barred windows where the curtains lay limp—not a speck of breeze touching them. “Crops are suffering as much as we are.”

Lorna wasn’t the least bit hot. She knew the room was stifling for she had made it that way but her body was cool without a single drop of perspiration on her dry flesh. Cail—on the other hand—was sweating profusely. She smiled as she continued on into the bathroom to change into her nightgown.

“Even the sheets are hot,” Cail complained. He had taken to sleeping in the nude in an effort to find some relief from the heat and was stripping off his suspenders. “Bring me a wet rag when you come to bed, dearling.”

“Won’t help you any,” Lorna said under her breath. “I promise it’ll only make you the hotter.”

He was stretching out on the bed with one leg crooked at the knee and one hand cupping the back of his head when she brought him the rag. He reached out to take the rag, dropped it on his chest, and then caught her wrist before she could move away.

“The cobblers smell good,” he said. “I bet they’ll be a big hit tomorrow.”

“They’ll do the trick,” Lorna said, tugging on her hand but he pulled her to him, giving her no choice but to sit on the mattress beside him.

“It’s late, Cail,” she said.

“Not too late to show my woman how much I love her,” he said.

He drew her down for a kiss—the only thing Chrysty was going to allow she thought—so she endured it. As much as she hated the touch of Cail’s lips on hers, she grudgingly admitted the spark that had flared in her body the first time he touched her was still there. It confused her, puzzled her, but did nothing to alleviate the hatred she bore him.

The moment he reached for her breast, he shuddered then released her, taking up the rag to run it over his face.

“The gods-be-damn it, it is sweltering in here!” he said.

Along the edge of her vision she saw Chrysty moving and knew it was only a matter of a few minutes before McGregor would be sound asleep, locked until dawn in an unbreakable web woven by the demon. The only thing she regretted about it was Cail would spend an entire night dreaming he was having sex with her and she was enjoying it.

“It’s necessary to maintain the illusion,” Chrysty had told her but it rankled knowing Cail thought she would gladly accept his flesh to hers.

As she did every night, she used the excuse that would give her demon the chance to take Cail out of the equation.

“I think I left the door open,” she said. “We don’t need a coon coming through the screen.”

And just as he did every night, her husband accepted the excuse without question—his demon-fogged brain unable to question the flimsy pretext.

“It would be so easy to pick up the pillow and smother,” she said as she stood at the front door where a sweet, gentle breeze—meant only for her—pressed through the screen.

Chrysty’s strong hands cupped her shoulders and he drew her back against his hard, masculine body.

“But then he wouldn’t suffer,” he responded.

She laid her head to one side so his lips could roam down the column of her neck. “Is that what you want?” she asked. “For them to suffer?”

“As I suffered,” he said, nibbling his way from the crest of her jawline to the tender hollow of her shoulder. “As Duncan did. As Allyn did.”

“But the men of the clan alive today had nothing to do with what happened to the three of you,” she reminded him.

“The sins of the father are visited upon the child,” he countered. He wedged his hands under her arms to mold his fingers over her breasts. He fanned the pad of his thumbs over the straining peaks beneath the thin cotton of her gown while he sank his teeth lightly upon her earlobe, his warm breath spiraling through her ear to make her shiver.

“I don’t really care what happens to them,” she said.

“Aye, you do,” he disagreed. “But you are a practical woman, Lorna Tabor. You know what needs to be done and you will see it to its completion.”

She could feel the hard bulge of his erection pressing against her rump and shamelessly wiggled against it. His throaty growl thrilled her. With one sure move, he twisted her around, pushed her against the doorjamb and reached for the hem of her gown, dragging it up. Insinuating one black denim-clad thigh between her legs, he lifted her clear of the floor, his mouth locked on the indentation at the base of her throat.

Lorna threaded her fingers through his thick dark hair as he lapped at her flesh with a tongue as hot as a strike of lightning. Heat curled in her belly. Her juices flowed. She wanted to be lying in the tall wet grass with his heavy body weighing her down.

No sooner had the image formed in her mind than she was transported deep into the forest where lush, sweet grass grew tall around them and a faint mist covered their naked flesh. He was lodged between her wide-spread legs with his mouth latched to her breast, his shaft weeping against her thigh.

“I love you, Chrysty Brell,” she told him and he lifted his head.

“What?’ he asked, his amber eyes glowing.

“I love you,” she repeated, putting a hand to his cheek to caress his face.

The demon quivered as though he’d been pierced with a hot iron. He stared down into her face with an intense expression that was almost frightening.

“No woman has ever said that to me before,” he said. “Not and meant it and I believe you meant it.”

“I did mean it,” she said. Her fingers soothed his flesh. “With all my heart I mean it.”

Another strange expression flickered over Chrysty’s face then his eyes glowed a deep, scarlet red.

Lorna recoiled from the wild, feral look in those alien eyes but as soon as it sparked, it was gone and his molten gold eyes filled with moisture.

“Nothing between heaven and hell, Jeeoil and the Abyss will ever take you from me,” he said, lips skinned back from his teeth. “Nothing!”

She wasn’t sure exactly what she had set into motion by telling him she loved him. She wasn’t even sure it was the truth for she had no real conception of what love truly was. But it had sounded right. Had seemed right at the moment she’d said it but now as she stared into the fierce possessiveness that had settled in the demon’s eyes, she wasn’t sure it had been a safe thing to say.

“Let me love you as I have wanted to since first I saw you,” he said, his voice ragged, his breathing rough.

“Chrysty, I don’t…” she began, suddenly very afraid of him. His entire body seemed to have expanded so he was looming over her like a gigantic bird of prey. The heat of his erection was searing her between the legs as he thrust it against her.

“Trust me, sweeting,” he said. “I will never hurt you.”

How she knew that to be true she couldn’t really say. Demons weren’t to be trusted—or so she’d been taught during catechism—but she doubted she could refuse him without there being dire consequences. That, too, she knew on some primordial level that scared her even more.

“Let me love you,” he said, his voice thick with lust.

She stared into his golden eyes for a moment longer then slowly nodded, tensing as he reached down between them to guide his flesh into hers.

He didn’t so much thrust into her as he impaled her. In one smooth glide of his thick rod, he stretched her more than he had before and filled her so tightly, so completely, so fully she felt staked to the forest floor. When he began to move in and out of her with sure, deep, and commanding probes of his iron-hard shaft, she swore she felt the earth moving beneath her bare ass.

Lightning sizzled overhead—stitching through the high canopy of the leaves—and thunder rolled, echoed down into the valley. A thousand fireflies appeared to swirl in dozens of concentric rings above where she lay. The faint scent of ozone filled the air then a low humming sound that slowly grew in volume until it was all she could hear. It blotted out her whisper of breath and Chrysty’s heavy intakes of air. It overpowered the thundering beat of the demon’s heart as he increased the speed of his thrusts until he was ramming into her so ferociously she began to pant.

Passion gave way to intense desire within her. Desire gave way to craving. The craving writhed into a lust so strong, so brutally forceful she raised her head to sink her teeth into her lover’s shoulder.

He roared and began to slam his body against hers. The pounding of their flesh, where it met was so powerful she could feel the bruises forming between her legs. Possessed, obsessed, crazed, he was like a runaway engine smashing against her. Where his juices seeped inside her, she could feel the strange, otherworldly heat of his sperm.

She clawed at his back, drew blood with her teeth on his shoulder and nails raking down his flesh. He bucked against her—mindless in his rutting, completely lost to the hunger that screamed to be sated.

“Lorna!” he bellowed and his seed shot thickly into her on wave after wave of searing heat.

She threw her legs around him, arched her hips and allowed the jerks of his cock to set her own climax into motion. She came so hard she passed out and when she finally regained consciousness, she was lying atop his still body with his arms crushing her to his sweaty chest.

“No man will ever take you from me,” she heard him say.

“I’ve no desire to have any man other than you,” she told him and felt his arms tighten even more around her.

* * * *

As Cail hitched the horses to the two-seat buggy, he kept glancing up at the sky. There was a light breeze and the low-flying clouds scraped across the tops of the mountains as they passed overhead. The air was filled with moisture.

“It’s gonna rain before the day is out,” he commented as Lorna came out of the cabin carrying two of the four cobblers she’d made from the berries he’d brought home to her the day before.

“We need it,” she muttered.

He took the dishes from her and placed them alongside the other two that were nestled securely in a cardboard box wedged beneath the rear spring seat, commenting on how good they smelled.

Lorna was dressed sedately in a somber gray gown and a light straw bonnet with dark gray ribbon trim. Cail had surprised her by polishing her boots and as she put a foot on the buggy step, the toe of the boot gleamed. He placed a hand to her back as she climbed up, helped her onto the seat.

“Mayhap I’d best get the umbrella,” he told her as he pulled the buggy’s folding top forward to secure it in place.

She nodded her agreement for she knew well there would be a downpour right about the time lunch was finished.

When Cail returned, he pushed the umbrella along the floorboard at the front of the buggy then went around to climb aboard. The vehicle dipped to that side beneath his weight.

“I told Euan we would drop by his place and pick him up. His back has been bothering him and he didn’t think he’d feel like riding into town on his horse.”

Lorna’s mouth tightened at the mention of her husband’s twin brother. If she never saw him again it would be too soon for her. “What’s wrong with his back?” she asked, not caring but it seemed the polite thing to ask.

“Nothing serious,” Cail answered as he flicked the reins to set the horses into motion. “He strained it a few months back when he was working the ferry. Twisted the wrong way I suppose. That’s why I’ve been working there more than him.”

“Must be painful,” she said.

“It can be, I guess. He spent a day or two in bed right after it happened.” He laughed. “He’s a piss-poor patient, lemme tell you!”

Turning to stare at the passing scenery as the horses picked up speed Lorna filed that information in her mind for later. It occurred to her that most—if not all—the menfolk of the Hill would have some kind of Achilles' heel, failing or limitation. After all, they were only men susceptible to the vagaries of nature and time. It would be best if the Sisters shared their mates’ weaknesses with one another and together worked on intensifying and strengthening those flaws.

“Weaken the struts, you weaken the structure,” she remembered her father once saying of a support that had given way on a bridge that had collapsed.

“A chain is only as strong as its weakest link,” she mumbled another of her father’s sayings.

“Beg pardon?” Cail asked.

“I was just thinking out loud,” she said and reached up to touch the medallion that hung around her neck. “The chain is so finely wrought yet strong.”

“It’s called a sniemmagh dy lajer,” he told her. “It means knotted strong in the old language.” He clucked his tongue at the horses, snapped the reins. “It’s said it can’t be broken.”

“That’s good to know,” she replied.

They were nearing Euan’s place and she could see her husband’s brother leaning against the porch rail. It was uncanny how much they resembled one another and considering Euan was dressed in the same unrelieved black in which Cail was clad, the fact they were identical twins was even more pronounced.

“Gonna rain,” Euan said as Cail drove the buggy in a semi-circle in front of the cabin.

“Need it,” Cail acknowledged.

Without a word of greeting to his new sister-in-law, Euan strolled over to the buggy and climbed in the back, scooting over to sit directly behind his twin then swiveling his body in such a way he was facing Lorna.

“Reckon Jubal will be well enough to lead the meeting today?” Euan asked as Cail set the buggy rolling.

“He was pretty bad off yesterday. It wouldn’t surprise me if he stayed home.”

“Does it seem like the end is near for him to you?” Euan questioned. He was staring intently at Lorna’s stony profile.

“Aye, I’m afraid it does.”

“Do you think Maggie will be there today?” Lorna asked. She kept her eyes straight ahead—feeling Euan’s keen perusal but choosing to ignore it.

“A woman’s place is at the side of her husband,” Euan answered though she hadn’t asked the question of him.

“No, I doubt she’ll be there today,” Cail said, turning his head to give her a warm look. “Sadie will, though, so you don’t have to worry about being alone. You’ll soon be friends with all the Hill folk.”

A snort from the back of the buggy let Lorna know what Euan thought of that statement. Her fingers were threaded together in her lap and she flexed them like claws, hiding the action in the folds of her skirt. As the two men discussed the health and impending demise of Jubal Regis, she conjured the Book to mind and began to mentally turn the pages until she found a page with a spell for causing back pain.

* * * *

By the time Cail pulled the buggy into an open area where a dozen or so others sat, the sky was a dark pearl color and Euan was shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

“Back bothering you?” Cail asked as he stepped down and saw the pained look on his twin’s face.

“Aye and I don’t understand it. It was doing okay when I got up this morning,” Euan said, wincing as he, too, left the buggy with a hand to the small of his back. “Now, it’s hurting something fierce.” He rubbed his back, face scrunched against the discomfort.

“Well, just take it easy. If you need me to go home, I’ll have Sam take you,” Cail told him. He walked around to help his wife to the ground. He smiled at her but she did not return the gesture as he lifted her from the buggy. His smile wavered.

“Where do I need to take the cobblers?” she asked, moving away from him as quickly as she could.

“They need to go into the Meeting House,” he said. “I’ll help you carry them.”

“Why should you?” Euan asked. “That’s woman’s work, Cail. Let her see to it.” He headed for the long building Lorna knew was the Meeting House without a backward glance.

“Cail?” Lorna questioned.

Cail’s face turned red and he looked away from Lorna’s arched eyebrow. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he shrugged then fell in behind his brother.

“Son of a bitch,” Lorna hissed under her breath. She narrowed her eyes and Euan stumbled, nearly falling. Her smile was nasty when Cail had to snake out an arm to keep his twin from pitching to the ground.

“Temper, temper,” came the low, amused whisper in her ear.

Lorna could feel Chrysty’s hand smoothing over her rump. She stood still as that phantom hand moved along her waist then gently touched her breast. She smiled then sighed as the touch vanished. She turned to pull the box containing the cobblers from under the back seat but found it was empty. The cobblers were no doubt already in the Meeting House where her demon had sent them.

“And with just a little something extra added to each dish,” Chrysty cooed in her other ear.

“Something I hope that causes as much trouble and pain to the menfolk as possible,” she mumbled softly.

“You may count on it, dearling.”

Spying Sadie with a trio of other women, Lorna headed toward them. In the distance, thunder boomed and the four women looked up with wide grins.

“Definitely looks like rain,” Sadie commented as Lorna joined them.

“We sure need it,” Ellen McKenna stated. “I’ve been a’praying for it.” She winked and the women laughed.

“You haven’t met Alana,” Sadie said, introducing one of the two women Lorna didn’t know. “She’s our brother Wiley’s wife.”

Lorna shook hands with Alana then smiled at the third woman Sadie informed her was Sam’s mother, Mary Reid. She took Mary’s hand and would have spoken to her but an older lady came hurrying up to them.

“I think we’d best be getting in, ladies,” the woman said. “Don’t want the men to have to send for us. They’re all inside.”

“Lorna, this is Tippy Kirkpatrick,” Sadie said.

“Lorna,” Tippy said with a nod. “We are pleased as punch to have you with us.” Her dark brown eyes danced in a face filled with wrinkles. “I just know you’re gonna be a true asset to the women of the Hill.”

“I’m gonna try, Tippy,” Lorna said as they all started toward the Meeting House door.

Thunder boomed again and the women broke into laughter that was quickly cut off as they entered the building, for the men, seated on the left side of the two sections of seats facing the podium, were turned and glaring at them.

“Remember your decorum, ladies,” the man standing at the podium snapped. “Be ye seen and not heard in the house of the Lord.”

The younger boys along with their female siblings sat with their mothers on the right side of the Meeting House. The older boys—thirteen and up—were interspersed among the menfolk on the left. Once seated, the women sat demurely with their hands in their laps, standing and sitting as the worship service continued.

Since she was sitting in the last row of her section, Lorna surreptitiously cast her gaze about the room. Cail and Euan were in the front row and she was surprised to see her brother seated with them. She stared hard at the nape of his neck until he put a hand there to rub at the discomfort she aimed his way. Bored with annoying him, she studied many of the men she had met and aimed her petty vengeances toward them—a buzzing fly to tickle the nose of Royce Gilmore, a mosquito to pester his son Thad, an incessant itch to plague young Sam. She had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing as each man fidgeted and shifted in his seat, swatted at a pest or scratched vigorously. It wasn’t until Sadie slid a hand over to nudge that she realized the other women in her pew knew what she was about. Glancing their way, she saw their lips twitching as they tried to hold back the smiles.

For over an hour, Arch-Elder Gerard McFadden rambled on and on about something or other but Lorna wasn’t paying attention. The women were fanning themselves vigorously with paper fans and the children were beginning to squirm. Even the men looked bored and a few were actually nodding off with one snoring loudly across the aisle from where Lorna sat.

“Amen.”

The word was said so loudly and forcefully Lorna jumped. All around her people were getting to their feet. The men were talking as they moved down the aisle and to the door but the women and children stood where they were—silent and respectful—until the men had cleared the meeting room.

“Well, that’s over for another week!” Sadie said. “After the men have filled their plates and gone on into the dining hall, we’ll get our food and go out to the pavilion.”

“The men eat first,” Lorna said with a twist of her lips. “How did I know that would be the way of it.”

“For the time being it is,” Ellen McKenna said.

Lorna lowered her voice. “Don’t let any of the children or other women have any of my cobblers. They’re just for the men.”

Tippy Kirkpatrick frowned. “Believe me, dear, if there was dessert on the tables before we get there, there won’t be any when we do. The men make gods-be-damned sure of that. We never get any dessert so that’s why we rarely make it.”

“Keeps our weight down,” Mary Reid quipped. “Or so the men say.”

“Well, they’ll sure lose a pound or two of runny shite when they have my cobblers,” Lorna told the women amidst laughter.

After sending one of her sons to see if the men had finished taking what they wanted of the food, Tippy informed the women they could now get theirs. As quiet as church mice, the women and younger children filed across the front of the dining hall, got their food and left just as quietly. Lorna was pleased to see not one spoonful of her cobblers had been left in the dishes.

“My only regret is you ladies will most likely have to clean up behind your men tonight,” Lorna warned them.

“Will be well worth it,” Ellen declared.

No sooner were the women and children seated under the five pavilions that rimmed the lake than the rains began. Most of the children were in the far pavilion. Only the very young ones were with their mothers in the other four—giving the women freedom to talk. Not by chance, sitting under the shelter with Lorna, Sadie, Ellen, and Tippy were Marcy MacLeod, Mary Reid, Tandy Gilmore and her daughter Missy.

“We hear there are to be instructions,” Tandy said softly though the heavy rain all but drowned out her words.

“Aye,” Lorna agreed. “We can begin today but I’ll need you and your daughter to come by McGregor’s place so the real instructions can be given. Mary will be there, too.”

“Can’t think of it as your place, eh?” Ellen asked and when Lorna shook her head, Ellen shrugged. “Me, neither. It’s always been Duggie’s place, not mine. I can’t hang a curtain without his permission.”

“That will stop,” Lorna said between clenched teeth.

“Aye, it will,” Sadie agreed.

“Can you come by tomorrow?” Lorna asked.

“After we get the washing and ironing done, I reckon,” Tandy said. She looked to Mary. “What about you?”

“I ain’t got no man to tell me squat save for Sam but most of the time a glare from me will shut him up.” She nibbled on a hangnail. “Trouble is, he’s starting to smell his pee. You know what I mean?”

Lorna shook her head, not understanding.

“It’s a mountain saying,” Sadie said. “Means a boy is turning into a man.”

“A man who don’t listen to nothing but save what’s a’tween his legs,” Tandy put in then a hand on her daughter’s knee. “With any luck a’tall before he gets any worse, it’ll be us in charge of the situation.”

Missy’s face had turned scarlet red at her mother’s unseemly words. She ducked her head, nodding shyly.

“Trouble is, the chit loves your boy,” Tandy told Mary. “She don’t think he can do no wrong.”

“She ain’t married to him yet,” Ellen commented. “Men change when they have you where they want you.” She looked at Lorna. “Ain’t that right?”

“So right,” Lorna said. She could feel Chrysty sitting closer to her, toying with the hair hanging down her back. “So let’s get started, ladies. We can cover quite a bit before the rain decides to stop.”

* * * *

It took two men to help Euan McGregor to the buggy. He was in so much pain he could barely walk so they hooked arms under his legs to carry him, sloshing through the mud that had accumulated beneath the wheels. Cail had pulled the vehicle as close to the Meeting House as he could get it, getting soaked in the process.

“Gods-be-damned rain couldn’t hold out just a few minutes more,” he complained to Lorna who was perfectly dry sitting in the front seat. He put a hand to his rumbling stomach. “I think I ate too much.”

“Not how much he ate but what he ate,” Chrysty whispered in her ear. “How many times do you think he’ll stop the buggy between here and the cabin, Lorna-love?”

Hiding a smile behind her hand, she watched the other men scrambling to get their buggies out of the mud and onto the roadway. Balky horses didn’t help any more than the heavy deluge that started as soon as the last woman and child were safely ensconced in their buggies. Overhead, lightning forked and thunder rolled but not a single man there took it in his mind to stay at the settlement. Each felt a pressing desire to return home—an undeniable desire Chrysty had sowed among them.

With Euan groaning not only with his back but with a belly that was beginning to cramp and Cail starting to feel a mite poorly—as he called it—Lorna’s husband managed to get his horses out of the muck and trotting down the road.

“Mother of the Lord!” Euan complained. “Can’t those nags move a bit easier, Cail?”

Lorna twisted around in her seat to look at her brother-in-law. “Is it bad, then, Euan?” she asked with a commiserating look on her face.

“I’m in agony,” Euan admitted then clamped his lips together.

Lorna clucked her tongue. She turned back around. “Mayhap you should take him to our place, husband,” she said, “so I can care for him.”

Cail blinked, then swung his head toward her. “You’d do that?”

Lorna smiled and forced herself to put a gentle hand on her husband’s arm. “What is family for if not to help out in times of trouble?” She glanced behind her at Euan. “And there’s no one at his place to look after him, is there? To see to his needs?”

“Aye, well, no, not in this weather,” Cail admitted. “Mary would normally come by to check on him and she might send Sam to look in but no one to be there if he needs something tonight.”

“Then it’s settled,” she said. “He’ll come home with us.”

“Where will I sleep?” Euan asked.

Lorna answered before her husband could. “In our bed, of course. You can share it with Cail and I’ll take the settee.”

Cail didn’t look too thrilled at that prospect but he couldn’t very well put his ailing brother on the cramped settee when Euan had a painful back with which to contend.

That settled, Lorna turned to look out at the passing forest. Everything was suddenly very green and lush with the pouring rain beating down on the verdant green leaves. The air smelled fresh and clean and was cool for a merciful change. She intended to make sure all but the bedroom of her new home would be pleasantly cool. The bedroom—where the twin brothers would pass the night—would be as hot as she could make it.

Grin tugging at her lips, she settled back in the seat with Euan’s grunts of pain and Cail’s occasional belch like music to her ears.

Chapter Ten

As the false dawn broke, the rain returned to drum against the tin roof, drowning out the dual snores coming from the bedroom. The earlier part of the night passed with Cail had spent sitting on the commode with his head in an old bucket. The smells coming from both ends of his pain-wracked body were so foul Lorna had to cast a smell to clear the air. When the same malady finally attacked Euan at one of the clock, she spent the next half hour emptying the bucket and wiping the fever-drenched faces of her patients. When she’d had her fill of tormenting the men, she waved a hand to send them into sleep.

Chrysty ran his hand up and down Lorna’s back as she lay snuggled against him on the settee. “You are an evil woman, Lorna Tabor,” he told her.

“Who made me that way, Chrysty Brell?” she asked.

“You are making more work for yourself,” he warned. “Best to let them heal now.”

“When I’m ready. They can sleep on until I’m ready to deal with them. It will not be a pleasant day for either of them.

The demon chuckled then placed a light kiss on her hair. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

“They brought it on themselves,” she stated, “and well you know it.”

“Aye, I agree, but you’ve women coming to be taught today, to join the Sisterhood. With the men underfoot .…”

“I intend to keep them both abed today and in as much distress as possible. Euan only thinks his back was hurting before now. He has yet to experience the worst of it.” She slid her hand between Chrysty’s legs. “And as for my so-called husband, he’ll be too weak to raise his unmercifully throbbing head from the pillow. They’ll be hurting so badly they won’t want me near them.”

“Giving you time to see to Mary and the Gilmore wenches,” he commented.

“Aye,” she said. Her fingers caressed him into a thick rod of heat. His naked flesh grew hard in her palm and she moved over him, impaling her body upon his.

Chrysty placed his hands on her hips, staring up at her as she shook her mane of long hair. His hungry gaze fell to her lush breasts as she rotated her lower body. His fingers dug into her soft flesh.

“I have had many a woman sheathing my cock but never one whose body does to mine what yours does,” he said in a husky voice. “I find I crave you, Lorna Tabor, like a starving man does a feast set before him.”

Lorna’s hair fell over her shoulders to curl temptingly against his chest. She ran the tip of her tongue along her lips, grinding her sex hard upon his. “I am all yours,” she said. “Do whatever you will with me.”

Pure malicious spite sparked in the demon’s eyes and as Lorna gasped, he levitated their bodies from the settees until her head was almost touching the ceiling. She locked her legs around him, her hands gripping his forearms.

“What are you doing?” she asked as they began moving slowly through the air toward the bedroom doorway. She twisted her head around—afraid they would hit the closed door—but it opened soundlessly and before she worry about her head striking the jamb, he lowered them just enough for their bodies to pass through the opening.

“Behold,” Chrysty said and the men on the bed opened their eyes at the same time, staring straight up at the ceiling.

Assuring her the men would think it a dream, the demon flipped over so he was now on top, his shaft thrusting hard into her willing body as they hung suspended above the bed.

She could feel the weight of the brothers’ eyes watching her. For a moment she was acutely embarrassed but as her body reacted to the pleasure being given to it by the demon, she forgot all about her husband and his brother to lose herself in Chrysty’s expertise. The heat between her legs was so fierce, so aching, and the powerful drives slapping against her were making her pant with sheer lust. She gripped his forearms tighter to ride out the supreme enjoyment that was flooding every part of her body. When she came, she came with a scream that shook her body hard.

With one last fierce thrust, he poured into her, bellowing his own release.

Lorna turned her head to stare down into Cail’s unblinking eyes. Whatever nightmare her demon had put inside his head and the head of his twin, she hoped it would be potent enough to make them acutely uncomfortable.

“Want her as you never have any other woman,” she heard Chrysty saying and knew he was sending those words directly into the men’s minds. “Lust after her as though she were a lioness in heat and you the master of the pride. Ache for her. Desire her in ways that will make your bodies burn. Be hard as stone whenever you are near her.”

Lorna stared up in awe at the demon. His amber eyes were scarlet red, his lips drawn back from his fangs. He was terrifying in his sheer male beauty as his gaze fused with hers.

“Want her. Lust for her. Ache for her. Desire her. Grow hard at the mere sight of her,” he said, the words falling like heavy rocks into a deep ravine. “But you will never lay a hand to her—either of you. You will only think you have. Touch one hair on her head and you will know agony such as you can never imagine.”

Lorna tilted her head to one side. “Euan?” she inquired.

“Will believe he caught you unawares out behind the barn and took from you what he wanted. He will believe he raped you just as he raped his brother’s first wife.”

“He did that?” she asked, eyes mirroring her anger.

“Many times,” he answered. “Libby never told a living soul for she feared what Euan might do, but I believe her mother suspected.”

“Then his punishment should be at Tippy’s hands, not mine.”

“That is a decision you women should make,” Chrysty said.

“Are there other rapists on the Hill?” she asked. “Or men for whom we need to reserve special consideration?”

Chrysty nodded. “There are a few who deserve to be singled out. Maxwell Dunlop beats his wife nearly as often as he does his children. Dallas Deal had relations with Johanna on many a dark night as his wife Constance lay sleeping.”

“Johanna?” she questioned. “His daughter?”

“His oldest,” Chrysty said. “With her gone, he has turned his lust upon the youngest, Delane.”

“Bastard,” she hissed. “We will see to him first, then, before he does any more damage! Constance is to be at Sadie’s for her training in four days time but I think we should move that up.”

Chrysty slid out of her wet channel then blinked, returning them to the soft comfort of the settee with Lorna lying atop him, his arms wrapped securely around her nude body.

“I knew you would set things to rights,” he said. “It was but a matter of time.”

“Will you call Duncan and have him speak to Sadie?” she asked. “Tell him she needs to hurry with Constance’s training.”

“Consider it done,” her demon said. He lifted his head to plant a soft kiss to the hollow of her throat. “Now, lie down and rest. Tomorrow will be a long and tiring day for you.”

Lorna laid her head on his shoulder, nestling her chin into the thick hair between his pectorals. She closed her eyes as she listened to the steady, strong beat of his heart.

“I do love you, Chrysty,” she said. “I truly do. I didn’t think I’d ever say that to a man.”

“I know,” he agreed, stroking her back. “Now sleep.”

With one long sigh, she drifted down into the soft blanket of slumber he tucked around her. Dead to the world around her, she did not see the slow, deadly smile that pulled at his lips.

* * * *

Cail could barely lift his head from the pillow just as Lorna had promised. Pain lanced through his temples and nausea lurked to send hot bile up his throat. He moaned as he flung a limp arm over his aching eyes.

“I haven’t felt this bad since we had dysentery when we were seven,” he heard his twin whisper. “What the hell did we eat?”

“Obviously something tainted,” Cail mumbled.

“Might have been the spare ribs,” Euan said then belched. He tried to shift to a more comfortable position but a ragged splinter of sharp pain went through his lower back and he yelped.

“Just lie still,” Cail said, wincing at the loud sound.

“I can’t,” Euan complained. “I wish I could. I need to piss.” He struggled to sit up, panting as he forced his protesting body to an upright position.

“You want me to call Lorna?”

It was on the tip of Euan’s tongue to agree but he changed his mind, shaking his head at the offer. He managed to swing his legs from the bed without whimpering and with slow, measured steps he made his way into the bathroom.

“Euan is up,” Mary said, having spied Lorna’s brother-in-law through the screen.

“How do you tell them apart?” Missy Gilmore asked. “I never have been able to.”

“I usually can’t,” Mary replied, “but from the way he was walking, I knew it was Euan.” She cast Lorna an admiring look. “His back is killing him.”

“Too bad he can’t die from it,” Missy’s mother Tandy muttered.

“His time will come,” Lorna declared. “Tippy, Ellen and Lola will be at Maggie’s later today. Seeing to Euan will be Tippy’s first act with the Sisterhood. I’ll forego my own vengeance for hers.”

“You’re sure they can’t hear us?” Missy asked. Her face mirrored her fear. She kept turning her head to the door, listening intently.

“Not a word,” Lorna assured her. “Chrysty will see to it.” She felt his hand glide down her unbound hair and smiled. “Now, back to the Book, ladies.”

Copies of the Book of Shadows sat on the laps of each of the woman as Lorna went over the tenets of the Craft with her new Sisters. When the initial instructions had been seen to, Chrysty would send two Nightwinds to escort the women home. One would go with Mary Reid and one with the Gilmore women, blood-signed to their families for as long as time spun out.

Now and again, Lorna would excuse herself to check on her patients otherwise it would look suspicious. As day turned into late afternoon and the final page of the Book had been discussed, Lorna led the other women to the border of Wyndstones. It was there where two extraordinarily handsome young men stood waiting.

“I am Reardon Dunne,” the taller of the two said. He reached for Mary’s hand. “And I am yours to command, milady.” He brought her hand to his lips and before Mary knew what he was about had escorted her over the wyndstones.

“Mary!” Tandy gasped. She put out a hand to her friend but Mary vanished from sight.

“The wyndstones pose no threat for you, dearling,” the other Nightwind told her. He draped a comforting arm around her stooped shoulders. She tried to pull away but he put a hand to her chin, lifted her face so she was forced to look into his eyes. “Let me show you the pleasures awaiting you, Tandy Gilmore.”

Tandy’s mouth opened and closed for a second or two until she was completely ensnared in his dark gaze. She nodded slowly and lifted her foot to cross the stones.

“Mama, no!” Missy shouted. She backed away—her eyes wide in her suddenly pale face. She slapped a hand to her mouth as her mother crossed over the white-washed stones and disappeared into the forest.

“There’s nothing to fear,” Lorna said, reaching out for Missy but the young girl shrieked, dragged her skirts up and ran.

“Let her go. Dirk will catch her before she goes far,” Chrysty told Lorna.

Lorna looked up at him. “Dirk?”

“Dirk MacPhee,” he said. “The Nightwind I chose for the Gilmore women. He’ll take Tandy to their place then go after Missy”

“She’s afraid,” Lorna said, concern showing in her gaze.

“He will be gentle with her,” he said. “There is no need for you to worry.” He put his arm around her waist to draw her to him. “This is a road they must travel on their own with their personal demons.”

She shuddered. If Maggie had fulfilled her instructions to Tippy Kirkpatrick, Ellen Shaw, and Lola Dunlop, that meant there were now eight demons loose and roaming the Hill. In a few days, there would be three more. When all was said and done there would be sixteen Nightwinds in all: one for each of the fifteen families and one for her as the Tabor heir.

“Nightwinds easily controlled by the women to whom they will be blood-bound,” Chrysty said. “We can do no more than you will allow us to do.”

Lorna’s forehead was creased with deep worry. “You can do nothing on your own?” she asked.

“Not without your consent,” he lied smoothly.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Lorna slid her arms around him to press her cheek to his muscular chest.

Chrysty held her securely within the safety of his arms as he gazed into the forest. With his keen vision he could see Mary Reid as she lay writhing beneath her demon. Tandy sat on a fallen trunk as her demon raced to bring her daughter into the fold before Missy could alert one of the males from the Hill. He could feel the shifting of the Veil as Allyn and Duncan brought three more of their kind into the human world for Tippy Kirkpatrick, Ellen Shaw, and Lola Dunlop. One of the demons he knew; the other two were strangers to him but as the Primemale, he would have their allegiance soon enough else they would be returned to the Abyss—never to set foot from it again.

Aye, he thought as his cock stirred against Lorna’s belly. He had learned a lesson the first Nightwind had not. That first demon had been trapped for centuries within the slime of the Abyss—as had many others. Soon Syntian Cree would be free but that was of no matter to Chrysty. Where once Cree had been the Primemale, he was nothing now. The bastard demon might fight for the position that was once his in the pecking order of the Nightwind society but that did not mean he would regain it.

A fierce desire born of many centuries of being forced to wallow in the muck of the Abyss rose up within Chrysty Brell. His amber eyes turned a deep, swirling red for a moment as the need for supremacy shot through him. There was but one way to insure he would be the winner in a contest of power between him and Cree when the time came. The more women whose bodies had known his seed and how much of that seed had been sown within them, the sharper the advantage a Nightwind had.

“I want you,” he told Lorna. “Now.”

“I should check on Cail and .…”

“Now, Lorna!” Chrysty snapped and swept her up into his brawny arms. He stared down at her with such brutal lust, she shivered. “Think of no man save me!”

It was hard to think of anything as his mouth slanted over hers and he thrust his tongue deep between her lips. She felt air brushing over her and knew her clothing was gone. Her head spun as he took her with him deep into the forest where it was cool and lushly green and the sound of a waterfall drowned out all other noise.

One moment they were flying through the air and in the next she was beneath him, his cock thrust as far as it would go inside her sheath. She stared up at him with rapt attention as he strained, his powerful strokes filling her. His shaft was so thick, so huge within her the sensation was almost painful but the pleasure it gave her—combined with the weight of his muscular body—pushed everything else from her mind.

“One must die this night,” he said through clenched teeth as he locked his eyes with hers. “It is your choice which one it is to be but one must die.”

“Die?” she repeated, not understanding.

“Your choice,” he said again. “Bring him to me. I need his blood.”

Horror flooded Lorna’s mind but he rammed into her so hard, so powerfully, giving her such intense pleasure, the repulsion vanished on a long wave of exquisite gratification.

“Chose,” he said. His thick rod was slamming into her.

A face drifted over her mind’s eye and before she could banish it, she saw her demon smile.

“A fitting sacrifice,” he said then lowered his head to swallow her protest as he took her mouth with fierce possessiveness.

His kiss was so potent, so filled with red hot lust, Lorna could think of nothing else. She gave herself up to the mind-altering climax that felt as though it would tear her body apart. Her scream of release echoed through the forest to mingle with those of two other women who—for the first time in their lives—discovered the nature of hot desire.

* * * *

Pain lanced through Euan McGregor so savagely his knees gave way beside the bed. He sucked in an agonized breath as he scrambled to gain purchase on the covers but he hit the wooden floor with a jolt. His bellow of anguish woke his brother from deep sleep.

“Euan?” Cail asked, sitting up as though he were a marionette whose strings had been jerked. He twisted his head toward his brother who was clawing at the side of the bed. “Euan!”

Despite the cramping distress of his own ailment, Cail scrambled across the bed, slid off the mattress to hunker beside his twin. “What happened?” he asked, putting a hand to Euan’s shoulder. “How did you fall?”

“Oh, god, it hurts!” Euan sobbed as tears rolled unchecked down his pale cheeks. “It’s killing me, Cail!”

Before Cail could help his twin up, Euan jackknifed, flopping back with a scream that made the hair stand up on Cail’s arms. Back arching, mouth open wide, heels slamming against the floor, Euan whipped his head from side to side.

“Lorna!” Cail yelled. He reached for his twin but Euan struck out, batting his hands away.

“Don’t touch me! Oh, god, please don’t touch me!”

Writhing like a fish tossed from the water to the bank, Euan McGregor flipped to his side, his body going through horrible spasms and contortions.

“Lorna!” Cail called again. He had no idea what to do. Each time he tried to touch his twin, Euan bellowed in pain.

It wasn’t Lorna who appeared in the doorway but Sam who had come to fetch his mother, his betrothed and future mother-in-law home after their day spent with Lorna. He came rushing into the room. He came up short—his eyes wide—as he saw Euan striking the back of his head against the floor.

“What’s going on?” Sam asked. His face was chalk-white.

“Help me get him on the bed before he caves in his skull!” Cail said.

Even though Euan screamed in agony and tried desperately to keep them from laying hands to him, the two men were able to maneuver him onto the bed where he squirmed like a man lying atop hot coals.

“It hurts! It hurts!” Euan shouted over and over again. He clutched at the covers beneath him, drummed his heels into the mattress and arched his back into such a sharp elevation it seemed impossible that his spine didn’t snap.

“We need the healer,” Sam said as he struggled with Cail to keep Euan on the bed.

“Where the hell is that bitch?” Cail demanded. His teeth were skinned back from his teeth.

“I am right here,” a calm voice said from the doorway.

Cail swung his head toward her. “Sam needs to go fetch the doc. Come help me hold Euan down.” He looked past her to the three women standing behind Lorna. “All of you. We need to keep him from doing more damage to his back.”

Lorna moved into the room as slowly as she dared. She had no desire to touch her husband’s twin but she slid in beside Sam then bent over to press her weight on Euan’s shoulder and right arm.

“Don’t touch me!” Euan shrieked. His eyes were wild, rolling in his head, and sweat was slick on his face.

“Hurry, Sam!” Cail ordered. He barely glanced at Missy and Tandy Gilmore as they leaned over the bed to imprison Euan’s legs. The moment the women touched him, Euan screamed.

Sam ran from the room, the sound of his boot heels striking heavily on the plank floor. The screen door banged shut behind him.

“You got any tenerse?” Mary Reid asked. “I’ve been giving him that when the pain got too much for him to bear.”

“In the cupboard to the left of the sink,” Lorna said. She gave the other woman a steady look before Mary turned away to leave the room.

A piercing scream was torn from Euan’s throat and then he went limp. His eyes and mouth were wide open.

“Euan?” Cail asked. He shook his brother but Euan had stopped moving.

“He’s not breathing, Elder McGregor,” Missy said softly.

Cail looked at her as she stood beside his wife but the young woman’s words did not register. His brow creased.

“I think he’s passed on,” Tandy said with the same quietness with which her daughter had spoken.

“What?” Cail said, turning his head to look at the woman standing to his left.

“His heart must have gave out on him,” Tandy said.

“He’s dead, Cail,” Lorna stated.

“No,” Cail said, stubbornly shaking his head. He snapped his eyes from Tandy to look down at Euan. “No, he just passed out from the pain.”

Both Lorna and Missy straightened up, removing their hands from the still body of Euan McGregor. Lorna glanced at Mary who stood framed in the doorway, a cup of tenerse-laced water in her hand. “He’s gone,” she told the older woman.

“No,” Cail replied in a reasonable voice. He gently shook his brother. “Euan, you snap out of it, now, you hear me?” He shook Euan again. “Come on, stop playacting”

Tandy had also released her hold on the dead man. She stepped back then moved to join Mary at the door, motioning her daughter to come with her. Missy nodded and slipped quietly to her mother’s side. The three women continued on into the parlor.

“Euan, you’re starting to piss me off, now,” Cail said, shaking his brother harder. He leaned over, glaring into his twin’s stony face. “Snap out of it!”

“Cail,” Lorna said quietly. “Your brother’s gone.”

“No!” Cail shouted, his head coming up. He shot his wife such a furious, deadly look she took a step back from the bed. “He’s passed out!”

“Look at him,” Lorna said, feeling Chrysty close beside her so therefore unafraid. “His chest isn’t moving, Cail. He’s dead.”

“Stop saying that!” Cail hissed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Come away before he takes it in his mind to hurt you,” the demon whispered in her ear.

Slipping away as her husband continued in his futile effort to bring his brother around, Lorna put a finger to her lips as Mary started to question her. She motioned the women onto the porch, closing the wooden door behind them.

“That rapist is as good as worm food,” Tandy said, folding her ample arms over her bosom.

“Aye, I’ve a feeling Tippy’s first spell was one of vengeance,” Mary said.

“Sit, ladies,” Lorna said then jumped—as they all did—when the inhuman cry of anguish echoed from inside the cabin.

“Who’s that coming up the road?” Mary asked, putting up a hand to shield her eyes. The sun had lowered to an angle that made it hard to look in that direction.

“Could be the healer,” Missy suggested.

“Ain’t riding fast enough for that,” Tandy said then stepped off the porch. “It’s one of Sadie’s boys. Her youngest, I believe.”

“He’s dead, too,” Lorna said. “Jubal Regis, I mean.”

“Aye,” Tandy said. “The boy is down in the mouth so that must be the way of it.” She strolled farther away from the porch. “What’s the news, Carlton?”

The young man who rode up to the cabin didn’t reply. He gave the women a quick flick of his eyes then his gaze settled on Lorna. “Where’s the Elder?” he asked in a voice that was at the age of breaking when he spoke.

“Mourning his brother,” Lorna said. “I reckon there’s been a death in your family, as well.”

Shock flitted over the boy’s face. He started to get down from his mount but obviously thought better of the notion. He put up a finger to his hat as he’d no doubt seen his father do on occasion. “Guess I’ve got another death to be notifying about then.” He ran the sleeve of his shirt under his nose. “What did Euan die from?”

“We all die from our sins, Carlton,” Tandy said. “We don’t escape this life without it.”

Carlton MacLeod’s smooth brow furrowed and the corners of his mouth turned down. “I meant what killed him?” His blue eyes narrowed. “Was it the same thing what made all us menfolk sick last eve?”

“What in tarnation did ya’ll eat that made everybody so sick?” Missy asked from her rocking chair.

The boy’s gaze wandered to Lorna. “Word is the cobblers was what did it?”

“Nonsense!” Mary pronounced. “What on earth could be in a cobbler to make it go bad?” She flicked a piece of lint from the skirt of her gown. “If’n you ask me, it was those barbequed ribs Dallas Deal brought with him.” She looked at Lorna. “Dallas loves pork and does all his own spit-cooking. Won’t let Connie touch that pit of his. Always brings some kind of pork dish with him to the weekly dinner.” She aimed a steady stare at the young man. “Doesn’t he, Carlton?”

“Aye,” the boy admitted in a grudging voice. “Reckon the barbeque could’ve been spoilt.”

“Most likely was or it was undercooked,” Tandy agreed. “We women know to cook pork ‘til it’s well done else you’ll get the quick steps in record time.”

“That’s true,” Mary acknowledged.

“Well, I’d best be going,” Carlton said. “Got other notifying to do a’fore night comes.”

“You don’t want to be on the road at night, young man,” Lorna said softly. “Not when death is lurking in the wind.”

There was a commotion coming from behind the young man and he whipped his head around. Dust was flying and the thunder of horse hoofs and buggy wheels filled the air. “Looks like Sam’s buggy,” he said. “Got the healer with him.”

“Just a bit too late,” Lorna mumbled.

Carlton waited until the buggy reached him so he could give his news to the two men. He must have told them Euan had passed away, as well, for Lorna clearly saw the healer’s shoulders slump. After helping down the older man, Sam followed the healer into the cabin and Sadie’s young son rode off to continue making the rounds with his death notifications.

“What needs doing when there’s a death up here?” she asked the other women.

“Well, since he’s your brother-in-law .…” Mary began.

“Was,” Tandy corrected her.

“Was,” Mary conceded. “You’ll be expected to bathe him and wrap him in a sheet. The Arch-Elder will come out to anoint him then Cail will dress him in his burial suit and they’ll nail him into his coffin. It’ll sit in your parlor tonight then be carried to the settlement in the morning.”

“Burial is always the day after the death,” Tandy put in.

“There’s no embalming?” Lorna asked.

“The clan don’t hold with that,” Tandy answered. “There will be a service then he’ll be carried to the cemetery at sundown tomorrow.”

“Burial is by candlelight,” Missy said then looked to her mother. “Does that mean there will be two ceremonies tomorrow, mama?”

Tandy nodded. “The Elder will be buried first ‘cause of his station in the clan.”

Mary reached over to place a hand on Lorna’s arm. “You’ll be expected to make the rounds of all the homes with Cail the day after Jubal’s burial. He’ll take a loaf of bread to each so you need to start your batter tonight.”

Lorna’s eyes widened. “Fifteen loaves?”

“No need to make one for you and Cail but you’ll still need to make fifteen ‘cause he’ll take one up to Lady Belle. It’s nigh time you met Cail’s auntie, anyways,” Tandy answered.

“There should be sixteen loaves,” Mary said. “You forgot about Lorna’s brother.”

Lorna winced then clenched her hands into the skirt of her gown. “There’ll be no need.”

“You can’t leave him out,” Mary said. “Tradition is .…”

“He won’t be here the day after tomorrow,” Lorna said quietly.

“Why not?” Mary asked. “Where’s he going?”

“He ain’t going nowhere,” Tandy stated. “The menfolk wouldn’t let him.”

“Then why’d you say that, Lorna?” Mary wanted to know.

Lorna looked out across the deepening shadows of the gathering dusk but did not answer. As the last rays of the sun dipped behind the mountain, she closed her eyes and lowered her head.

“There will be another burial tomorrow, won’t there?” Missy questioned, looking at Lorna’s still profile and the way the older woman gripped the fabric between her fingers.

“I don’t think there will be anything for them to find to bury,” Lorna replied after a moment or two. “Chrysty wanted a sacrifice and I gave him Daniel.”

The women were quiet as that news settled on them like a cold, clammy sheet. For the longest time no one spoke. Missy had placed a shaking hand to her lips. Mary rocked gently, her hands curled over the arms of the rocker.

“Aye, well, he’s a Tabor,” Tandy said at last. “Stands to reason his death would not be an easy one. Chrysty has reason to hate the Tabors.”

“The sins of the fathers,” Mary reminded them and even Missy nodded in agreement.

* * * *

Heat lightning flashed across the midnight sky as Daniel Brent tossed and turned in his bed. It was stifling hot in the rectory and the sheets beneath him felt scratchy against his arms and legs. He rolled from one side of the bed to the other in an effort to find a bit of coolness but there was none to be had. At last—with a heartfelt sigh—he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the mattress. Plowing a hand through his sweat-dampened hair, he left the bed.

Every window in the small house was open to the night air. Unfortunately not a whisper of a breeze was stirring. The curtains at the windows that had been bedecked with sturdy iron bars lay limp against the sill.

After padding to the kitchen for a drink of water, Daniel carried the glass with him through the parlor and to the door, opening it to take a seat on the front porch. But he found no relief outside. The air was so still he thought he could hear the ripples of the waves on the lake across the way. Damp heat weighed him down as he sat in the swing and put the glass to his forehead. What little moisture was on the glass did little to help. The muggy oppressiveness that surrounded him was a misery unto itself.

He thought about the twin funerals that would take place the next day although he would have no part in either. Had he been the spiritual leader of the clan he would preside at the services but the Arch-Elder had made it clear to him that he would not be needed—nor wanted—as an officiate.

“A fifth wheel is what I am,” Daniel said. He took a drink of the tepid water and grimaced. It tasted of sulfur. Turning his head, he spat it out, his face twisted with disgust. He tossed the remaining water over the porch rail.

Lightning forked across the top of the mountain, catching his eye.

“All they wanted was Lorna,” he said as he watched another bolt stitch along the jagged peaks. “Not me. Never me.”

“I want you, Daniel.”

Daniel jumped at the soft feminine voice. He looked around to find the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen standing not six feet away. His heart did a funny little squeeze in his chest.

“Who are you?” he asked. He knew every female on the Hill and this one did not belong there.

“Who do you want me to be?” this vision asked.

Willow thin with golden hair that was almost white in the occasional flash of lightning, her eyes were luminous as she stared at him. The pale blue gown that touched her from high neckline to her slender ankles enhanced the delicate features that peered back at him with the unmistakable aura of shyness.

He shot up from the swing, wincing as the edge of it slammed against the back of his knees. “Where did you come from?”

She shrugged daintily and took a step forward on bare feet. “I’ve always been here, Daniel,” she answered. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Daniel could feel the blood pounding in his ears, his heart beating against his ribcage. Sweat had gathered in his palms, along his upper lip and upon his brow. He felt a trickle of it running from his armpit down his side but his mouth was bone dry, making it difficult for him to swallow. When the lovely apparition glided toward him, he put up a staying hand.

“No! Stay where you are!” he ordered. His voice took on a pleading quality. “Who are you?”

“Don’t you know?” she asked. Her words were soft, seductive yet filled with just a trace of girlish quality. “You’ve often dreamed about me.”

Panic shifted through Daniel for he had, indeed, seen this beautiful woman in many a lingering dream. Her hair had been that same shade of pale gold. Her eyes—though he could not see their color in the ambient light—would be a deep sapphire shade. He knew if he but tried, he could span her small waist with his hands—as he had on more dream-laced nights than he cared to admit. Her small breasts would fit completely into his palms.

“Give me a name, Daniel,” she said, her red lips lush against the stark white of her straight little teeth.

He shook his head violently, repeatedly pushing his palm outward in demand that she come no closer. “No, no, no, no, no!” he said. “You aren’t real. You’re not!”

“I am as real as you want me to be, Daniel,” she said and took another step closer.

There was no where for Daniel to go. He was pressed up against the swing and the swing was arched against the porch railing and could go no farther. He began to tremble for she was so close to him now he could smell the musk perfume that wafted from her slender body in sultry waves.

She held out a slender arm. “Let me touch you, Daniel.”

“Alel, help me!” he pleaded but his god seemed to be elsewhere at that moment.

“You know you want me,” she said, so close now he could feel the heat of her trim body.

“No!” he exploded, eyes wild. “I took a vow! I swore a vow of chastity!”

Her little tongue came out to sweep across a full upper lip. The moisture left behind glistened as lightning flared above the cabin. Daniel’s knees threatened to buckle beneath him and his cock leapt—stiffening so quickly and so fully he groaned from the pressure pushing against his pajamas. He was trembling violently, his eyes tracking back and forth—looking for an escape route. The moment she pressed against him, he was lost.

With a fierce groan, he snaked his arms around her and jerked her as close as their clothing would allow. His mouth covered hers. He thrust his tongue past her lush lips and rubbed against her—desperate to ease the burning pain in his shaft. Possessed by her beauty, her allure, he dragged her to the floor, sliding his body over hers, oblivious to the fact their clothes melted like spun sugar under a stream of warm water.

Her arms draped around his neck and she crooked one leg over his hips to press a dainty heel just above the slit of his rump cheeks. She tilted her own hips up in invitation as he continued to grind his lower body on hers until his cock found the wet crease of her opening.

It was as though a cavern opened up and swallowed his shaft. He could feel the pulling sensation as he was tugged inside her slick heat. Had he been able to describe the impression he would have sworn on a stack of bibles it was as though a hundred little lips were nibbling on his flesh, drawing him in, drawing him down, consuming him. Pumping wildly, he slammed his hands under her shapely ass and hefted her higher. When she lifted her other leg to corral him between her smooth thighs, he tore his mouth from hers and buried his head in her shoulder.

“Aye, Daniel,” he vaguely heard her say. “Release your seed into me for I have need of it.”

A torrent seemed to be unleashed within him and his rutting became brutal, abandoned, totally without restraint. He was like a mad man as he pummeled her with his body. Ruthlessly, relentlessly he thrust as the pressure built within his cock. He burned. He yearned. He ached for the pleasure he knew was inching its way up to him. Her cunt was sweet, hot, and incredibly tight. She was milking him—those little nether lips pulsing around him.

The moment he came, it was with feral, unbridled lust and he shot deep and long into her velvety sheath.

“Alel!” he screamed out the name of the One who had abandoned him.

“Nay, preacher man. Raphian,” she whispered in his ear and her little tongue swept out to flick across the sensitive whorls of his flesh.

Pumping furiously into her still, the words were like ice water thrown on his cock. He could feel it automatically shrinking, withdrawing, pulling in on itself but the damage was already done. He had spilled his cum into her waiting body and—with horror widening his eyes—he pulled back, staring down at what had once been a beautiful woman. Instead, he saw a demon grinning maniacally back at him.

“No!” he shrieked, scrambling backward like a crab. His naked body was paler than moonlight beside the black warty flesh of the creature that rose up to gaze down at him with gloating glee.

It smiled at him to reveal row after row of needle-sharp teeth. Yellow eyes glowed feverishly beneath thick rimmed horny brows that sported twin curved horns. Flat nostrils in a pig-like snout flexed wetly in that pebbled face that was so hideous Daniel knew the sight of it would stay with him until the day he died.

Whimpering, moving back as far as the porch rail would allow, he stared in horror as the creature unfurled thickly-webbed wings. It sat perched on massive haunches supporting thick legs with long feet that ended in curved talons.

“Welcome to hell, preacher man,” the beast said in a low, guttural growl then sprang from the porch, flexing its wings once before it took to the night sky.

Babbling to himself, shaking so hard his teeth clattered together, Daniel huddled on the porch—wide-eyed and damned—and thought of the pistol he kept locked in his nightstand drawer.

He was contemplating that pistol, putting it to his temple when he heard the flapping of giant wings. He looked out past the porch railing and saw the creature winging its way toward the rectory. Its eyes were no longer yellow but a deep, dark scarlet red and its pebbly lips were drawn back over those sharply pointed teeth.

Daniel opened his mouth and screamed.

Chapter Eleven

Cail was so weak he had to leave the driving of the buggy to Sam Reid who volunteered to take the new Elder and his wife around to meet with the people of the Hill. Sitting in the back of the buggy with Lorna, Cail was lost in thought as the horse’s clopped slowly over the red clay.

Sam had just asked, “Where could he have gotten off to? There weren’t a trace of him, Elder Cail.”

“I’m sure he’ll turn up,” Lorna said. She turned to look at her husband. “After all, where could he go?”

Cail could feel her eyes on him but he did not glance her way. He was cold though the day was sweltering. He was numb though his body ached in a dozen places. A brutal headache stabbed between his temples and now and again he reached up to rub his forehead.

“How many more families, Sam?” Lorna inquired.

“Well, there’s Dallas Deal and then Fergus MacLeod,” Sam said. He twisted around to give Cail a puzzled look. “We going on up to see Lady Belle, Elder?”

Cail nodded. His throat hurt something fierce and he was afraid he was coming down with something else. All he wanted was to stretch out on his bed atop a cool sheet with a cold washrag covering his eyes but he had to fulfill the obligations that were expected of him. Tomorrow would be another hard day and he prayed he would feel better by then.

“It’s beautiful country up here,” Lorna said, taking in the tall oaks and stately pines as the little track ran deeper into the forest and higher up the mountain. “So peaceful.” Her gaze fell on the wyndstones that ran along the left side of the track and she smiled.

“It sure is the best place to live,” Sam pronounced.

It was late afternoon by the time Sam drew the buggy to a stop before the small cabin of the matriarch of the clan, Lady Belle McGregor. The silvery-gray wood of the building had never seen whitewash and the tin roof was so thick with orange rust not a hint of the tin’s original color remained. A large fieldstone chimney dominated one side of the little two-room structure and a waist-high round well house stood just beyond the low porch railing.

“How long has she been a widow?” Lorna asked. She was fascinated with the broom marks that crisscrossed the sand in front of the cabin. They seemed too perfect for an old lady to have made—or a young one for that matter.

“Lady Belle ain’t never been married,” Sam said. “She was the youngest sister of Elder Cail’s great-granddaddy, weren’t she, milord?”

“Aye,” Cail said softly. “She was.”

“Why’d she never marry?” Lorna queried.

Cail shrugged. “You’ll have to ask her.”

“You’ve been awful quiet, husband,” Lorna said. “Are you still feeling poorly?” She reached out to touch him and he flinched, moving away. He swiveled his head toward her and in his eyes there was a slight flicker of unease.

Lorna arched a brow but said nothing, lowering her hand to her lap as Sam climbed down from the buggy and went to the front of it to tie the horses to the hitching post. He swept off his hat, armed away the sweat then tossed the stained Stetson onto the driver’s seat. He held out a hand to Lorna to help her down.

“Thank you, kind sir,” Lorna said. She graced the young man with a smile before retrieving the basket with the last loaf of bread from the floorboard.

“You need help, Elder Cail?” Sam asked.

Cail shook his head and swung down from the buggy. He, too, removed the black hat he had been wearing and laid it precisely on the seat he’d vacated. Threading a hand through his dark curls, he straightened his tie, brushed the dust from the front of his black frock coat then moved toward the porch.

“She’ll have the best lemonade you’ll ever taste ready for us,” Sam whispered to Lorna. “And it’ll be so cold it’ll make your teeth ache.”

“Is that a fact?” Lorna asked.

“Back when there used to be cookin’ competitions, I heard she won all the blue ribbons.” He held his hand out to her as she neared the porch.

Lorna frowned. “How long ago was that?”

“I don’t rightly recollect,” Sam said. “It was long ‘fore my time. Yours, too, weren’t it, Elder?”

Cail didn’t reply. He was standing at the door, hand raised to knock but stepped back as a shadowy figure was framed behind the rusted screen.

“You know I don’t hold with knocking, Cail McGregor. Come on in and bring my company. I ain’t a’getting’ no younger a’waitin’ on y’all.”

The voice that spoke was ancient but firm and it brooked no resistance. There was quiet command in the tone.

Sam helped Lorna onto the porch then hung back as Cail opened the door and ushered his wife ahead of him into the murky confines of the little cabin.

“Come on in and sit yourself down, Lorna McGregor. You be welcome in this house.”

The old woman who stood in the center of the room was short with hair the color of freshly-fallen snow. She wore it unbound and it hung to her hips in a wispy cloud. Dressed in a long black gown that covered her from chin to toe to wrist, her skin was parchment smooth with only a bare tint more color than her hair. A face that had seen over one hundred summers bore that many wrinkles but the lively green eyes that looked back at Lorna were filled with youth. There was lavender permeating the air and Lorna imagined the scent hovered about Lady Belle like a finely woven silk cape.

“It is the essence of the Daughters of the Multitude,” Lady Belle said though her lips did not move and the words simply floated gently through Lorna’s mind.

“Lorna, this is my kinswoman, Lady Belle McGregor,” Cail said needlessly. He stood off to one side like a shy little boy and not the important man the Hill considered him now.

Lorna stepped forward and would normally have extended her hand to her hostess but she felt a deep kinship to the lady and instead wrapped her arms around her.

“It is an honor to meet you, Lady,” she said, bending so she could put her cheek to the older woman’s.

“I’ve waited long and long for you,” Lady Belle replied. She put a wrinkled, liver-spotted hand to Lorna’s cheek. “And you are all I could have hoped for.”

Looking into the clear green eyes of the older woman, Lorna saw a flash of fire and for just a moment, everything in the room disappeared, and she felt as though she was standing in the blackness of space among the twinkling stars. That sensation was gone as quickly as it struck. She took a deep breath as Lady Belle moved back, lowering her hand from Lorna’s face.

“You done right well for yourself, Cail,” the old woman said. “She is as pretty as a speckled puppy.”

“She’s a good woman,” Cail replied, shifting from one foot to the other.

“And she’s just what the Hill has been needing,” Lady Belle said with a grin that revealed teeth that were surprisingly good for a woman of her advanced years. “Now, sit whilst I pour us up a glass of lemonade.”

“May I help?” Lorna asked.

“Land a’goshen, no, girl!” Lady Belle said, waving away the offer. “You be my guests. Sit, now, and take a load off. Samuel, put that lanky frame of yourn down on the chair and rest it a spell.”

“Aye, Lady Belle,” Sam said with a wink.

“Cail, you come help with the tray.”

It hit Lorna when Cail snapped to the order quickly that he was nervous around the old woman, perhaps somewhat afraid of her. His unease showed in the stiffness of his posture, the way he refused to meet Lady Belle’s eyes when she looked at him. He kept his head down as helped her put glasses on a tray and sliced a fresh lemon to hook on the side of each glass.

“Where do you get lemons up here, Lady?” Lorna asked. “Surely they don’t grow this far north.”

“Cail brings ‘em to me when he goes to Dovertown,” the old woman answered. “They come all the way up from Flagala Territory, don’t they, Cail?”

“Aye, Lady Belle, they do,” Cail said quietly.

“He brings me oranges and grapefruits, too, and I make marmalades for my toast. I’m partial to tangerines but they ain’t been as good lately as I’ve had before.”

Cail brought the tray into the sitting area of the room where Lorna was seated on the settee and Sam beside her in a straight back chair. He leaned forward so she could take a glass from the tarnished brass tray. His gaze met hers then skipped away.

Lady Belle took a seat on the settee with Lorna, leaving Cail to put the tray on a table that set off to one side. He shook his head to the offer of sitting in the rocking chair which was the only other chair in the room and went to stand by the fireplace, putting his elbow on the hearth.

For the next half-hour the three visitors gave Lady Belle the news of the Hill. Since she had not journeyed down to the settlement for the two funerals, she asked to be told everything that took place and who spoke for the dead men at their eulogies. She acknowledged the offering of bread then turned to Cail.

“Cail, son, would you and Sam do an old woman a great kindness and cut me some wood for that there fireplace? I’m running low and the nights are chilly up here on my old bones.”

“Aye, Lady Belle,” Cail agreed and it seemed he couldn’t wait to get out of the cabin, Sam following slowly behind him.

“That boy giving you any trouble?” Lady Belle asked as soon as the two males were out of earshot.

“Sam?” Lorna asked.

“No, girl,” Lady Belle replied. “I know that child ain’t been tetched yet by the evil that the other men of the Hill have in spades. If’n you hadn’t come when you did, though, he’d have had it seeping into him right quick enough.” She settled more comfortably on the settee. “I meant Cail.”

Lorna looked down into her glass. “He raped me.”

“Aye,” Lady Belle said with a hard gleam in her eyes. “I knowed he did and I boxed his ears fer it, too!” She snorted. “Came out here all apologizing to me for having done it and I told him he weren’t nothing but a rutting stag. Shamed him as much as it was possible to shame a McGregor male. He knows how I feel ‘bout such things.”

“I might have fallen in love with him had he courted me gently, Lady,” Lorna admitted. “I find him a handsome and virile man.”

“Aye, and he went and spoilt it,” Lady Belle said, nodding. “Figured as much.” She put her hand on Lorna’s thigh. “Just don’t do to him what you done to his brother. That one was always a mean little bastard but Cail can be a good boy when he’s made to be.”

“Even now that he’s the Elder?” Lorna questioned.

“The power ain’t with the menfolk, now, Lorna-girl,” Lady Belle said. “The power is with the womenfolk as it should be. Men ain’t worth the skin the Maker slipped over ‘em.”

“Is that why you never married?” Lorna asked. “You weren’t all that fond of men?”

“Land o’goshen, no! It was the other way ‘round. I was too fond of ‘em!” Lady Belle said with a cackle of a laugh. “I had my fill of any of ‘em I wanted. I was the Belle of the Ball.” A wicked snicker made the old woman’s face beam.

“I’ll just bet you were,” Lorna said. “Things must have been different back then.”

The laughter faded from Lady Belle’s face and she shook her head. “No, dearling. Things were just as bad as they are now with the menfolk.”

Lorna’s forehead creased. “I don’t understand.”

“I was a fallen woman, dear,” the old woman said. “I lost my maidenhead when I was but thirteen.” Her slender jaw flexed. “By rape, it was. An outsider what crossed the river in a canoe and thought to settle up here. He was sent on his way but a’fore he went, I ran afoul of him.” Her eyes narrowed. “They say he never made it back ‘cross the river but it don’t matter. I was spoilt goods, you see. No decent man would have me to wife so my ma set in to have this here cabin built and she put me up here to live on my own. Out of sight, out of mind was the way of it.”

“That’s cruel,” Lorna said. “How could she expect a mere child to .…”

“She knew I wouldn’t be alone up here for long,” Lady Belle interrupted. “She knew—just as every woman of the Hill knew—that there would be a crossing of them wyndstones by the Mealladh.”

“Chrysty,” Lorna said.

“Him or one of his kind,” Lady Belle said. “You must first call to him then sign your name in his book a’fore he’ll help you.”

“Was it Chrysty who came to you?”

“No. It was another. I called to the McGregor Mealladh. Won’t tell you his name but he’s a handsome dog, he is,” Lady Belle said slyly. “He visited me when I called, did what I asked of him. I took my revenge on the menfolk of the Hill through him.”

“In what way?”

“Well, now, you see that rape weren’t all that bad in my estimation,” the old woman said, crossing her legs. “I liked it after the initial hurt went away.” She nudged Lorna with a bony elbow. “Felt gods-be-damned good, you know?”

Lorna felt her face flame and all she could do was nod.

“Them men of the Hill got all uppity and religious-like over my downfall but they ain’t no angels. Far from it if you ask me! I told my Mealladh to send them up to me once or twict a week—one by one, you see?—but make it so they wouldn’t remember none of it. I’d have ‘em eatin’ out of the palm of my hand then send them back to their wives when I was finished with ‘em.” She shrugged and pursed her lips. “Wives didn’t care. Ain’t hardly a woman what ever lived in the Hill who been in love with her husband. Just don’t happen and you know why.”

“I do,” Lorna agreed.

“I didn’t want no commitment and such. All I wanted was that feeling ‘tween my legs that I had a likin’ for. ‘Course, now, my Mealladh, he is right good ‘tween the sheets, too. He ain’t no slouch in that department but just having them righteous bastards trekking up here with lust on their feeble minds was sweet vengeance!”

“You’re an evil woman, Lady,” Lorna said with a grin.

“Not nearly as evil as I suspect you be, dearling.”

“It’s a wonder you didn’t get pregnant.”

“Didn’t want no younguns a’hanging on me so my Mealladh took care of that. I got all I want here and no man comes messin’ with me now that I don’t want.” She grinned. “But on a winter’s night when these old bones get cold, my Mealladh comes to lay that pretty body of his’n next to me, wraps me in his powerful arms and I sleep like a babe.”

Lorna took a sip of her lemonade, revelation easing into her mind like mist. When she lowered the glass, she thought she had the way of it.

“The women of the Hill don’t fear the Mealladhs,” she said. “They know they’re there, know all they have to do is call and one of them will come.”

Lady Belle nodded, her old eyes locked on Lorna.

“When it gets too bad for them to handle, they call and then they’re spirited away across the wyndstones.”

“That be the way of it, aye,” the old woman confirmed.

“So where are they now?” she asked. “Those who disappeared?”

“Don’t rightly know but I believe they’re still here on the mountain.” Lady Belle shrugged. “It’s their home and they don’t know none other.”

Lorna was quiet for a moment then took a deep breath. “What is it you want, Lady?”

“The comeuppance of all them men down to the settlement what ever laid a hand to his womenfolk. The revenge they be due.” She reached out to lay her bony hand over Lorna’s. “We been waitin’ for you to come,” she said. “Knowed you would one day. Then all would be set to rights.”

The two women stopped speaking, listening to the sound of an ax biting into wood. Both turned their heads at the exact same moment as Chrysty Brell appeared across the room.

“That is one helluva goodlooking man,” Lady Belle said with a sigh. “And looking right pleased with himself, he is.”

“Milady,” he said, bowing his head to the old woman. “You are looking well.”

“I’m lookin’ old, you sweet little demon,” Lady Belle said with a chortle. “Reckon it’ll be my time soon.”

Chrysty smiled softly. “Doesn’t have to be. You can live as long as you want.”

The old woman cocked a shoulder. “What’s the use of living if’n you’re ready to go?” She pointed a finger at the corner of the room. “That’s where I want my coolin’ board set. Got on the dress I want to be buried in. Everything’s as I want it. Just ain’t decided on the day and hour as yet.”

“You’re waiting to see justice done,” Chrysty observed.

“That I am.”

The Nightwind turned his attention to Lorna. “And what is your desire, milady?”

She thought about her answer before making it. “There are good things about some of the men at the Hill, bad things in others. In talking with the women, it’s the male children that concern them.”

Chrysty folded his arms over his broad chest. “Male children above a certain age.”

“Aye. Some can be redeemed but others .…” She let her voice trail off and looked down at her lap. “There is concern about what to do with those.”

The demon tilted his head to one side. “You don’t want to harm the male children but you don’t want the sins of the fathers to continue on with them.”

Lorna nodded, lowering her head. “That is the problem.”

Chrysty turned his head toward the door, unfolded his arms and swept an arm in front of him. “Stay,” he commanded and Lorna realized the wood chopping had stopped. Her demon looked back at her. “They’ll not interrupt until we are finished with our talk.”

“You wield that much power?” Lorna asked.

“I do,” the Nightwind stated.

“To make them do as you wish?” she questioned.

Chrysty frowned. “To a certain point. I can not change how they treat their women or the natural inclination of their souls but I can influence their minds for a short while, befuddle their thoughts. The hold won’t stay there forever but it will until our talking is done. For the time being, they have a keen interest in remaining outside.”

“I see,” Lorna said.

“I will remove the young males who can not be redeemed,” Chrysty said. “I’ll hand them into the goddess’ keeping and She can turn them over to the Triune Goddess for Her use.”

“What about the older men?” Lorna queried. “The husbands and fathers, brothers and uncles?”

A slow smile tugged at the corners of the demon’s full lips. “Pick those you want to keep and we’ll deal with the others as you see fit.”

Lorna got up from the settee and began to pace. There were things about Cail she liked but there were others she knew she could not live with. Though he had savaged her, humiliated her, hurt her, she wasn’t sure she wanted him to die as had his brother and hers. As for Sam? She wanted nothing bad to happen to the boy and had no desire to see him leave the Hill. She thought he could be taught to be a better man.

“I’ve a notion,” Lady Belle said and the demon and his mistress looked to her. “Replace them with a Mealladh. They’d look the same on the outside so it wouldn’t confuse the younguns but that there man would be the way his woman wants him to be.” She arched a thin brow at Chrysty. “Can you do that, goodlookin’?”

“I can,” Chrysty said and looked down so the women would not see the unholy gleam that had entered his dark eyes.

“I want the Hill opened up so the women can go and come as they want,” Lorna said. “If they would like to see something past the river, they can.”

“Easily done,” Chrysty said. “All they need do is command their Nightwind and he will see to it.”

“They will do as we command,” Lorna stressed.

Chrysty came to her, knelt at her feet, and took her hand in his. “It will be as you say, milady. Command us and we obey but you must give us the power to act as we see fit in your behalf.”

Lorna hesitated as Alinor Tabor had so long ago. She stared down into the gloriously handsome and chiseled features of the demon, believed she saw earnestness in his dark gaze and slowly nodded. Unease tickled down her spine but she pushed it aside.

Chrysty brought her hand to his lips and sealed their unnatural bargain with a kiss to her flesh. His smile was radiant as he began to fade from her view. All that was left behind was the icy cold feel on her flesh where his mouth had been.

* * * *

Because the sun was lowering on the horizon and dusk would soon fall, it was decided Lady Belle’s guests would remain with her that night rather than risk the dangerous trek back down the twisting and turning mountain trail.

Cail and Sam would sleep on a pallet unrolled for them beside the unlit hearth and Lorna would share the lone bed with Lady Belle.

“Once they’re asleep, you can go to him,” Lady Belle said in a low voice as she and Lorna prepared supper. “He’ll be waiting out there by the wyndstones for you.”

Lorna glanced at Cail but he had not heard. He would not look directly at her or the old woman and when she spoke to him he was curt, mumbling his reply. Likewise when she moved close to him or accidentally touched him, he jumped away as though he’d been scorched. His gaze when he did deign to flick a glance her way was accusatory and fearful.

“I’m going out to have a smoke,” Cail announced to no one in particular. The sound of his boot heels on the wooden floor seemed overly loud as he pushed open the screen door and went out to join Sam who was sitting on the top step, whittling.

“He knows,” Lady Belle said when Lorna broached her husband’s odd behavior with the elderly woman. “He knows you were responsible for his brother’s death and the priest’s as well.”

“How could he?” Lorna asked, unnerved by the thought of Cail suspecting her. Who knew what he might do? She thought.

Lady Belle tapped her head. “He knows here but he’s too a’scared to think long on it. Tomorrow there will be that there Elder meeting and he thinks to bring it up a’fore them then. Best things be settled in the matter a’fore you step into that buggy ‘cause once he gets you down to the settlement, things could heat up a mite.”

“He would betray me to the Elders,” Lorna said.

“He would.”

Lorna swung her eyes to Cail and kept them there. She saw him stiffen, glance her way then duck his head, turning his face aside.

“He would,” she said and in that moment of realization, Cail McGregor’s fate was sealed. “He would turn me over to them to be burned as a witch.”

Lady Belle nodded. “Would have done that to me long ago if’n my Mealladh were not there to protect me.” She put a hand on Lorna’s shoulder. “You got Chrysty and he is the boss Mealladh, dearling. He won’t let nothin’ happen to you.” She squeezed. “Go to him this night. Let him love you. Take your mind off’n all this shite.”

“But he’s the last of his clan,” Lorna said quietly, staring at Cail. “It would be a sin to see that part of it end.”

“Don’t have to,” Lady Belle said. “Ask Chrysty. It ain’t something he will want to do but he will do it for you.”

“Do what?” Lorna asked.

The old woman grinned. “Gather seed to plant in fertile ground.”

Lorna’s eyes widened. “A child?”

“He can get you with one that will be the McGregor’s,” Lady Belle replied. “If’n that’s what you want.”

“But how? I have no intention of ever letting Cail McGregor touch me again!” Lorna’s face was filled with determination.

“You don’t have to. Ask and it will be,” Lady Belle said then moved away.

Lorna was given the task of setting the table as Lady Belle ladled vegetables into large serving bowls. A platter of fried chicken sat cooling on the table alongside a basket of cornbread.

“Tell ‘em it’s ready,” the old woman ordered Lorna. “I’ll pour up the ice tea.”

Lorna removed the apron around her waist and hung it on a peg beside the dry sink. She went to the door but didn’t open it as she told the men supper was on the table.

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all week!” Sam said as he tossed aside the stick he’s been running his jackknife down. He folded the sharp implement and shoved it into his pants pocket. “The smell of that chicken has been taunting me something fierce!”

“Wash up at the well a’fore you come to my table, Samuel Reid!” Lady Belle called out. “You, too, Cail!”

Lorna watched Cail walk directly in front of her without so much as glancing her way. She ground her teeth for being ignored rankled her sense of pride. She turned away.

“You don’t love that man so what do you care how he feels?” her hostess asked.

“It just pisses me off that he thinks he can shun me without consequence!” Lorna snapped. She waited until the old woman was seated then followed suit.

“It’ll all come out in the wash, dearling,” Lady Belle reminded her. “Just bide your time. Let your Mealladh handle it.”

Supper was quiet with Sam digging in like any growing young man with a bottomless appetite would do. Cail was restrained and given to staring at his plate as he ate slowly and with little relish for the fine food that had been set before him. Neither Lorna nor Lady Belle engaged in conversation so the meal went quickly and soon the men were up and on the porch again as the women cleared away the dishes.

“That pisses me off even more,” Lorna said through gritted teeth. “A woman works her fingers to the bone to prepare a good meal and the men wolf it down, don’t say one bloody word of thanks then hie themselves off to relax in the cool night air while the women work even more!” She poured hot water from the stove into the enameled dish basin. “It isn’t right.”

“Men been doing that since Adam, I reckon,” Lady Belle said. “Who you think picked the fruit in the Garden, dearling? Weren’t that lazy man, I can promise you!” She snorted. “Men think just ‘cause they can fight and kill, they ought not to do no more than that unless it’s to get a bairn or two on their woman.” She bumped Lorna with her bony hip. “And you ask why I never married. Hell’s bells! Why you want to buy the whole hog to have to take care of when all you really want is the sausage?”

Lorna laughed at the vulgar metaphor. It made washing the dishes as the old lady dried them more bearable. When they were finished, she and Lady Belle went out on the porch—not to join the men but to partake of the light breeze that had sprang up.

“You take that there rocking chair, Lorna,” Lady Belle said. “I’ll sit with my kinsman.”

“That’s all right, Lady,” Cail said, springing up as though a fox were nipping at his backside. “I was going to stretch my legs.” He cut his eyes to his wife. “I still feel a mite weak from whatever made me sick.”

“Well, whatever it was didn’t kill you,” Lady Belle said as she plopped down in the swing and set it into motion. “You oughta be thankful for that, McGregor.”

“Aye,” Cail mumbled as he stepped off the porch.

Sam was back to whittling another stick, whistling softly as he worked. In the distance a wolf howled to the bright moon sailing overhead and another answered. The cicadas and crickets were revving up and in the distance the lonely sound of a loon hung on the night air. It was peaceful and the night breeze bore the delicate scent of honeysuckle.

“That’s a right nice buggy you got there, Cail,” Lady Belle said.

The moonlight was bright enough that the women could see Cail nod in agreement. He and Sam had unhitched the horses and fed them a bag of oats, watered them before supper and now he was standing by the larger of the two, stroking its thick mane.

“MacLeod and his sons do good work,” Cail said. He patted the horse then moved away.

“Never cared for the MacLeod men,” the old woman said. “They tend to be mean as cornered raccoons. Always were like that way back as far as I can remember.” She turned her sparkling gaze to Lorna. “Somebody ought to make them mend their ways.”

“Like who, Lady?” Cail challenged. He came back to the porch, lifted his foot to brace it on the top step and leaned forward to rest his crossed wrists on his knee. “The men of the Hill have a different opinion of the MacCleod clan.”

“Aye, well, us women have an opinion, too, boy, and it ain’t the same, I’m reckoning,” Lady Belle snapped.

“And are you thinking things are going to be changing around here, now?” Cail asked. He swung his eyes to his wife, stared hard at her.

“You never know,” Lorna said quietly.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Cail snapped.

Lorna arched a brow, not commenting on his rude statement. She returned his stare with a hard one of her own.

“You just never know as your wife says,” Lady Belle said. “Things have a way of happening.”

“Aye but I can promise you those things of which you speak are going to come to a screeching halt real soon,” Cail said, a muscle grinding in his cheek. “Losing the priest didn’t matter but losing my brother—my twin brother—is something I have no intention of forgiving.”

“Losing the priest didn’t matter?” Lorna queried, anger clouding her expression. “I wasn’t aware my brother was lost. Is there something you need to tell me, Cail?”

A snort of disgust came from her husband. He was glaring at her with such cold disdain she felt it rippling down her spine.

“We all pay for our sins, Lorna,” he said. “In one way or another.”

“Aye, Cail,” she retorted. “That we do.”

A flicker of surprise passed over Cail’s face at her harsh tone and Lorna thought she saw just a hint of fear settling in his gray eyes.

“Well, I don’t know about you younguns but it’s nigh past my bedtime,” Lady Belle announced as she pushed to her feet with a grunt. “Down with the worms and up with the chickens is my motto.”

“Have a good night, Lady,” Lorna said. “I’ll try to be quiet when I come to bed.”

The old woman snapped her arthritic fingers. “Land o’goshen, I almost forgot. I was gonna get that painting of Alinor for you to see.” She looked at Cail. “Come fetch it down from the shelf for me, lad. Lorna, dearling, come on in, too.”

Cail sighed but accompanied his kinswoman into the cabin. He opened the door for Lady Belle but didn’t keep it open for Lorna. His deliberately allowing the screen to shut in her face spoke louder of his irritation with her than words could have.

“Unmannerly bore,” Lorna said under her breath and smiled as Sam rushed forward to open the door for her. She reached out to pat the young man’s cheek. “Thank you, kind sir.”

“My pleasure, ma’am,” Sam said with a crooked grin.

Lorna hadn’t paid much attention to the floor to ceiling shelves that sat at the far side of the little parlor other than to note they were there. The two-foot deep shelves were lined with books and various jars, bottles, and boxes—every inch of the pine boards crammed to overflowing. Watching Cail pull a small step stool over to stand on so he could reach the top shelf, she had to grudgingly admit the man had a killer body. It was too bad his mind wasn’t as well-built.

“The paintin’ came over from Scotland,” Lady Belle said as Cail took down a canvas-wrapped bundle. “It was passed down from clan matriarch to matriarch for safekeeping and when I pass on, it will become yours to watch over, dearling.”

“Don’t count on it,” Cail mumbled.

Lorna heard him and exchanged a knowing look with the old woman. Neither commented on Cail’s prophetic remark as he put the bundle down and began untying the thick jute cord that held the canvas in place.

“I always thought it ought to be hanging somewhere special,” Lady Belle said while Cail unwrapped the covering. “Alinor deserves a place of honor.”

“And she’ll get it,” Lorna said and when Cail cast her a sour look, she tilted her chin. “I promise you, she will.”

“You ought not to make promises you can’t keep,” Cail said. “You know you might not be around to keep ‘em.”

Lorna narrowed her eyes. “That road runs both ways, Cail McGregor,” she told him.

Cail’s jaw clenched. He leaned the painting against the shelves and stomped to the screen door, shoving it open with a furious shove. The sound of his boot heels rapping on the porch boards sounded like gun shots.

Sam stood where he was and it was obvious to Lorna he was more curious to see the painting than he was in finding out what was ailing Cail.

Lorna walked over to the painting and hunkered down in front of it, reaching out to draw the two sides of the musty canvas aside. The moment the face of Alinor Tabor was revealed, she sucked in a quick breath—as did Sam.

“It’s like you’re lookin’ into a mirror, Lorna,” the young man said with awe.

It was true. The woman in the painting could have been Lorna’s twin. They had the same hair, eye color, the same tilt to the nose and curve of the lips. It was, indeed, as though Lorna were looking in a mirror.

“Hello, Lady Alinor,” Lorna said quietly. She gently placed her fingertips on the shoulder of the woman in the painting and as soon as she did, she felt a light shock race up her arm. In that moment, something very powerful passed between the long-dead woman and the living.

“She’s handing the power over to you,” Chrysty whispered in her mind. “How you wield it from now on will determine the course of history.”

Lorna closed her eyes and sent her inner thoughts to the Nightwind. “I want a child to carry on after me. A girl child.”

There was a slight pause and then the demon growled. “It will be.”

She felt him withdrawing. She also felt his anger like a sentient life form pushing at her subconscious.

“Sam,” she heard Lady Belle say, “you’re sleepy. Why don’t you take to that pallet, now?”

Lorna twisted her head around. The old woman’s hand was on Sam’s shoulder and she was staring intently into Sam’s face. As Lorna watched, the young man’s eyes glazed and he nodded.

Lady Belle removed her hand and Sam walked—as if in a trance—to the pallet that had been laid for him and Cail and dropped to it like a rock, stretching out on his side.

“He’ll sleep ‘til morning,” Lady Belle said.

“That’s a neat trick,” Lorna said.

“You can do it, too, now that you’ve touched her,” the old woman stated. “But be careful how you use it. It can addle a man’s mind something fierce.”

Lorna got to her feet, turning back to stare down at the painting. “It is uncanny how much we look alike.”

The old woman moved to stand beside her. “Do you believe in reincarnation, dearling?” she asked.

“Not really.”

“I do. I believe I am the direct descendant of a woman named Ethel McGregor who was the cook at the first Tabor Hill, the castle where Alinor was mistress. I believe all the women of our clans have been reborn down through the ages and that we have been waiting for you to come to unite us once again.”

Lorna was made uneasy by that thought yet she realized that was exactly what had been happening. She had brought the women together, helped organize them and was—in essence—their acknowledged leader.

“Alinor took her vengeance on Reynolds Tabor,” Lady Belle said. “All the women of Tabor Hill were avenged by the mealladhs who came to do their bidding.”

“Sixteen clans,” Lorna mumbled. “Sixteen Nightwinds?”

“Each clan has its own, aye,” Lady Belle acknowledged.

“He’s brought them here from the Abyss,” Lorna said, her heart thudding painfully in her chest. That was a lot of demons roaming freely upon the Hill.

“You need not worry, dearling. We control them,” the old woman said. “I control my Mealladh. The goddess only knows what would happen if he had free reign. They can be crueler than any Tabor clansmen ever thought of being.”

* * * *

Cail had walked farther up the mountain path than he had intended. He was so deep in the forest there was no sound—not even the rustle of the wind across the lacy fronds of the ferns. Although the moon was full and as bright as he could ever remember seeing it, it was shadowed beneath the canopy of the laurels and ash that spread above him. His anger carried him to the trunk of a felled tree and he straddled it, bracing his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward.

“Why couldn’t you have been what I wanted, Lorna?” he asked. “What I needed?”

He lowered his face to his hands, disappointed that he would have to report what he suspected to the other Elders. He had already lost one wife and now he would lose this one. He had loved Libby Kirkpatrick to distraction, never thought he’d love again after she disappeared, but from the moment he’d seen Lorna, he had had the stirrings of love for her until she stamped those feelings into the dirt.

Dragging his face up his palms, he looked up, his fingers spread over the lower portion of his face and stared into the night. He was heartsick at what he knew he had to do the next day. Renouncing his new wife to the Council would insure her being put in the jail, examined as a witch, and then burned at the stake.

He shuddered and bent forward again, wrapping his arms around his waist. Nausea bubbled at the back of his throat and a sour taste had invaded his mouth.

“Cail?”

Elder McGregor’s head snapped up and he was stunned to see Libby standing a few feet away. His mouth dropped open. “Libb?”

“I escaped his clutches, Cail,” she said, her soft voice as low and unsure as he remembered it. “He tried to keep me from you but I escaped.”

Cail got slowly to his feet, unable to believe the sight of his lost love coming toward him. He swallowed for the soft muslin gown she wore—that she had been wearing the night she vanished from his life—was nearly transparent in the moonlight. The outline of her slender body with its gently curving hips and lush breasts was visible. He could see the dusky coral of her areolas behind the thin fabric.

“He didn’t touch me, Cail,” she said. Her long hair was unbound and fanned gently around her pert little heart-shaped face. “I denied him at every turn and he lost interest in me. He knew I was a good woman. I could not be swayed by his seductions.” She lifted her hand. “I wanted to get back to you. It has always been you.”

“Libby?” he questioned again, feeling the hard erection forming in his pants.

“It has always been you, Cail,” she said again, coming toward him with her hand outstretched, her full lips gleaming wetly beneath the moon’s radiant beams, her eyes filled with love for him.

He swung his leg over the trunk and took a step toward her, inhaling the heady scent of the light fragrance she always wore. It sent a shiver of anticipation through his body and made the blood race in his veins.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” he said. His gaze moved hungrily over her pretty face.

“I’m here now, my love,” she said. She was but a foot away, her smile an invitation to take what was rightfully his.

Cail didn’t stop to think, to reason. He crossed the distance between then and threw his arms around her, yanking her to him in a fierce hug. He lowered his mouth to hers, covered it, and thrust his tongue deep, feeling the pulse of his cock against her stomach.

Her fingers laced through his hair and she returned his kiss with more fervor than he could ever remember her having bestowed upon him in the years they were together. She ground her delicate body wantonly against him.

“Ah, Libby, I need you so badly,” he groaned, tearing his mouth from hers to press kisses down her throat. He brought his large hands from around her to cup her breasts, lowering his head to capture one peak through the thin fabric of her nightgown.

“Take what you want. It belongs to you,” she offered, sliding one hand to his shoulder and arm to reach between them. The moment her small hand closed around the bulge in his pants, a hard shudder rippled through his tall frame.

Fierce lust drove straight through Cail McGregor’s body at her touch and he dropped to his knees, dragging her with him to the forest floor. Mindless of the wet ferns, the cloying scent of decaying vegetation and musty smell of damp soil, he stretched out atop her, forcing her legs apart with his knees. Grunting, he clawed at her gown, dragging it up her thighs before fumbling with the fly of his pants to free his throbbing shaft.

She let her legs fall far apart and arched her hips in surrender, imprisoning his neck between her soft hands as he rested his head on her shoulder.

“Fuck me, McGregor,” he heard her hiss but didn’t question the words even though Libby Kirkpatrick McGregor had never used profanity in her life. “Fuck me hard!”

She brought one leg up to position it over his hips. The slick heat of her sheath against the broad head of his freed cock was like a live ember sizzling against his flesh. With one mighty thrust, he was in her cunt as far as his prick could go.

“Aye,” she whispered against his ear. “That’s the way of it. Now ride me.”

Lost completely to the desires raging through his body, he began to pump wildly into her wetness. The scent of their combined juices filled his nostrils and his lips skinned back from his teeth as though he were a feral beast plummeting into a bitch in heat. His body slapped loudly against hers and when she brought her other leg up to clamp around his waist, he surged forward like a runaway piston, slamming his hands beneath her cool rump to drag her up to meet his plunges.

“Libby,” he breathed then captured her mouth with his once more. Her nails were digging at his shoulders, raking down his back and he thought he heard his shirt rip. He shrugged against the stinging pain rippling down his back but nothing could have stopped him. With every thrust, he grunted into her mouth, drove deep with his tongue, arched his fingers into the cheeks of her soft ass. He dug his booted toes into the rich loam of the earth and rocked wildly against her.

“That’s it, my handsome lover,” she said in a throaty voice. “Now come for me, McGregor. Come hard and come long. Fill me with your seed.”

Her words drove him harder, made him harder. His cock felt as though he was pushing it through an inferno. The heat of her sheath was burning him but he didn’t care. The smell of her body, her slickness was driving him mad with need. His hips twisted atop her, ground against her. He was a rutting animal struggling for release.

“Come, McGregor,” she hissed. “Discharge your seed.”

Cail pulled his mouth from hers, staring down into her beautiful face as he pumped savagely. Lit by a stray moonbeam, her eyes were glittering with an odd light, her lips becoming wetter with each pass of her tongue across their upper length.

“I…I .…” He couldn’t finish what he wanted to say for her cunt rippled around him as though fingers were squeezing hard up and down his shaft. The strength of the grip clutched and let go in a pulsing rhythm that had him panting. Drool slipped from the corner of his mouth to land on her breast.

“Fuck me!” she ordered, eyes flaring. “Fuck me, McGregor!”

He came brutally, squeezing his eyes tightly shut, throwing his head back with a roar that echoed through the forest. Spurt after spurt of his semen shot deep into her waiting body and her legs tightened viciously around his waist. He strained to get every last ounce of cum from his aching cock, grunting with each hard thrust.

When he lowered his head, opening his eyes, he had difficulty drawing breath. His blood was pounding in his head so loudly he couldn’t hear whatever Libby said to him. He saw her lips moving, saw the victorious smile that stretched her mouth, but the words she spoke eluded him. Collapsing atop her, he felt her stiffen but didn’t care. He was spent, drained, milked of energy and vital juices. Like dry husks, his voice rattled as he pressed his head to her shoulder, his arms still wrapped tightly around her.

“I love you,” he said. “I never stopped loving you.”

With his ear pressed to her body, he heard the low rumble of amusement that rippled through her body and lifted his head to look at her. The moment his eyes met hers, Cail McGregor scrambled off her body, scuttling away from her just as Daniel had the demon who had seduced him.

Hands propelling him, the stench of sulfur rising around him, his boot heels digging into the decaying leaves, his eyes wide with terror, he scrambled backward to put distance between them.

“What’s wrong, McGregor?” she asked, sitting up.

Her hair was matted with the detritus from the forest floor—slick, wet leaves that bore the odor of methane, small twigs, and an earthworm torn from its wanderings. The gown was plastered to her lush figure, pushed up her thighs to reveal the nest of curls between her legs, glistening with his cum.

“No,” Cail said, violently shaking his head from side to side. He came up against the fallen tree upon which he had sat and could go no farther. He froze for she was leaning forward, going to her knees to crawl toward him in the moonlight. He put up a staying hand caked with mud and decay. “Don’t.”

But still she came toward him. Her mouth was a scarlet slash gleaming in the light of the moon. Her breasts swayed in the wet confines of her nightgown with every forward movement.

“Please, no!” he begged, unable to move now. He felt a trickle of piss stain his pants and whimpered.

She crawled to him, wedged herself between his legs and loomed over him. The ghastly smile that pulled her face filled him with panic. He began to tremble so violently, his teeth clicked together.

It wasn’t her face that terrified him for it was just as lovely as it had always been. It wasn’t her body for it was as desirable as he remembered it to be. It was the grimace that passed for a smile and the unholy light that had turned her eyes a deep, scarlet red that sent McGregor into spasms of shock and dread.

“You will stay here,” she said, her stare boring into his. “Stay until I come back for you. Do you understand?”

He nodded eagerly, wanting nothing more than to have her gone.

“Move one muscle and I will tear you apart piece by bloody piece. Is that clear in your feeble mind?”

He could not stop bobbing his head in agreement.

She cocked her head to one side. “You are a spineless worm, McGregor,” she whispered.

Pushing to her feet, she stood over him with that awful smile plastered on her face. Cail couldn’t tear his eyes from her. His gaze was locked on that beautiful countenance and when it began to change before his very eyes, madness snaked out its claw to drag the Elder down into a swirling maelstrom.

His scream was long and loud, echoing off the mountain.

Chapter Twelve

Lorna stood on the porch with her hands wrapped around an upright. Her gaze was directed into the shadows of the forest beyond. In the moonlight, the wyndstones were brightly lit, as white as chalk, gleaming in the darkness.

He came striding from the greensward, his face set and hard yet the moment he saw her, a tired smile lit his countenance. Lifting a hand, he plowed it through his dark curls.

“Where is he?” she asked. “I heard his screams.”

Chrysty came to stand before her. “He is alive and well in body if not in mind, sweeting,” he said.

She searched his amber gaze for the truth and knew he was not lying to her. Whatever he had done to Cail, the man still lived. She put out a hand to cup his cheek. “If he ceased to exist as his brother did, there might be suspicion from those in Dovertown.”

The Nightwind nodded. “I will take his place although his body is smaller than mine.” He shrugged then turned his face so his lips caressed her palm. “I will make do.”

“Did you…? Could you…?” She didn’t really know how to ask.

He smiled. “I have what you want.” He reached out to hook an arm around her waist, lifting her clear of the porch and holding her against him as easily as if she were no more than an infant.

Laying her head on his shoulder, bringing her legs up to lock around his hips, Lorna draped her arms around his neck as he turned and started walking toward the forest.

“I will do anything for you, sweeting,” he told her. “But I never want to do that again.”

She lifted her head, trying to see his expression in the night. “What did you have to do?”

He was silent for a moment then she heard a long sigh push from somewhere deep inside him.

“A Nightwind can take the shape of a female when he has need of a human male’s seed,” he said, his voice filled with bleakness. “He will hold it inside him until he can deposit it.”

She felt him tremble and knew what had transpired between him and Cail had deeply shamed Chrysty. “I’m sorry you had to go through with that.”

“It will have been worth it to give you the bairn you desire,” he said though his words held no small amount of sadness in them.

“And will you give her a Mealladh when she is old enough?” she asked.

“She will have the one holding you.”

Lorna stiffened in his arms. “Chrysty, that isn’t .…”

“One clan, one man,” he said, cutting her off. “That is the way She decreed it.” He stopped then looked down at her. “I will take another form for her, Lorna-love, but she is a Tabor and I am blood-sworn to the Tabor clan.”

“She’s a McGregor,” she corrected.

He shook his head. “The lineage comes through the mother, not the seed bearer.”

With that, he dropped to his knees, leaning forward to lay her gently on a soft mat of sweet-smelling ground cover.

“We have but a short time, sweeting, else the seed with die within me,” he said and she realized he wanted no more talk. He seemed anxious to rid himself of what she knew he must consider vile.

One moment she was clothed and the next they were both naked with the night air playing gently over their bodies. He ran a hand along her thigh, stroking her flesh gently then dipped his hands between them to caress her.

She opened her legs wide to him as his thumb pressed against her clit. His very touch sent waves of burning desire racing through her loins. Her womb clenched in anticipation. Her blood raced. His fingers sliding slowly in and out to ready her for his shaft made her grind her hips against the ground. She wanted him so badly she could taste it and swept her tongue over her upper lip.

“You are my Chosen,” he said, looking down into her eyes. “The one for whom I was created. I will never hurt you.”

“And I will never betray you,” she said.

“I love you, Lorna.”

The words were spoken with deep feeling—a catch in his voice—and the evidence of that love gleaming in his golden eyes.

“I know,” she acknowledged and arched her hips. “Now show me how much.”

He needed no further encouragement. Nudging her thighs apart as far as they could, he positioned his cock at the entrance of her shaft. With one slow, sure move he slid into her until she felt the broad head of his rod pressed tight against her womb.

“Tell me you love me,” he asked, beginning the slow, twisting glide in and out of her body. “Lie to me if you must but tell me you love me.”

It was no lie, she realized. She did love him in her way. This man—though a demon and not truly alive—had been hurt once as badly as any man ever had. He had suffered. He had died. He had been brought back to serve the women of her line. She knew he would never bring harm to her or hers. She—as well as all the Tabor women before her—owed him a debt of gratitude they might never be able to repay.

“I do love you, Chrysty Brell,” she whispered. “You belong to me.”

A slow smile played over his handsome features. True happiness shown in his amber eyes and he lowered his mouth to hers, to admit his servitude to her, to seal their bargain.

Lorna lifted her legs to circle his waist, clamping them tightly around him. Their mouths were joined—tongues mating—just as their bodies were joined. His cock was a thick sword sliding in an out of her sheath, stretching her, filling her, giving her exquisite pleasure. The feel of his manly weight pressing her to the ground, his strong arms around and under her as he hiked her hips upward for a deeper penetration, combined to make her shiver with need.

She ran her nails down his back and onto the rise of his hard, tight rump and dug into his flesh. It was a goad he understood and accepted and increased the speed of his strokes until he was slamming into her with so much force and power it bordered on pain.

At the moment he spilled Cail McGregor’s seed into her waiting body, he wrenched his mouth from hers and growled, with his lips skinned back from his teeth as his head fell back. The growl became a mighty roar as his cock pulsed and leapt until there was nothing left within it. A long, hard shudder went through him and when he lowered his head, his eyes were glowing blood-red.

“Done,” he snarled yet it wasn’t a sound of anger but of relief that what had been inside him was now gone.

And it was now seated deeply inside Lorna.

He rolled to his back, taking her with him. With her body atop his, he tightened his grip on her, flinging one leg over hers as though to trap her against him for all time.

Lorna put her head in the hollow of his shoulder, the fingers of one hand splayed against his thickly-matted chest. She ran the tip of one finger over the pucker of his nipple and felt him shiver.

“Whatever it is you have planned,” she said softly, “don’t let it affect the people of the Hill.”

He was silent for a long moment then he nodded. “It won’t.”

“You swear it?”

“I do,” he said and turned his face toward her so he could place a gentle kiss on her brow.

“We don’t need the Reapers coming up here to snoop.”

“They won’t. I’ll see to it.”

“I want people to journey to the Hill but I don’t want any to desire to make it their home,” she said, circling his nipple with her fingernail.

“It will be as you wish.”

“Those young men the women decide on cannot stay, I want them gone before the week is out.”

“Agreed,” he said.

“And I want the women of the Hill to be able to go and come across the river as they want.”

“They will have the freedom for which you ask.”

“And the men .…” She pushed up so she could look down into his face, lock her eyes with his.

“The men will be replaced with my kind,” he said, “though they will have the body of the one taken over.” He smiled teasingly. “Although the women might prefer the faces and bodies of their Mealladhs to those of the puny human males.”

She answered his smile. “What they do in the privacy of their bedrooms is their business,” she told him.

He nodded. “Agreed.”

Her smile wavered. “What of children, Chrysty? If you take over their bodies .…”

“There is always a trade-off, Lorna-love,” he said. “If the women want children, those seeds must come from beyond the Hill.” He smoothed a hand down her bare back. “Leave the choosing of the seed bearer to mine. They will find the best of the best to give their women.”

She relaxed in his arms again and they were silent for a long time. The night sounds of nocturnal animals foraging along the forest floor and the play of the wind against the low-lying bushes and leafy spread of the trees was peaceful, soothing.

“What haven’t you told me, Chrysty?” she asked at last. “You are keeping something from me. I can feel it.”

She heard him sigh. His hand continued to run up and down her back.

“For two thousand years he’s been imprisoned in the Abyss,” he said. “He was the first Nightwind and as such he is the most powerful. Love for a feckless woman cast him into a place you could never imagine, Lorna. It is as cold as the deepest arctic steppe and as black as pitch. The stench? The stench is so horrible no human could endure it without going mad. The feel of the slime against your body, the way it seeps into your flesh…” He shuddered. “It is a punishment unlike any other.”

“You are going to bring him out of his imprisonment.”

“He is the Nightwind Prime,” the demon said. “He should never have been thrust back into the Abyss.”

“What will he do once he is released?”

“Whatever he wants,” Chrysty said with a brittle smile. “Whatever the hell he wants.”

Epilogue

They gathered deep in the forest in a clearing that circled a low stone altar stained red with the blood of many sacrifices. There were twelve Mealladhs and one Nightwind Prime who stood ranged around the altar. Each was tall, dark, and virile, each a handsome specimen of his kind. Behind them—stretched out in all directions—were a thousand more just like them.

And behind them, a thousand others.

Clad in midnight blue robes, all but one—wrapped in a robe of scarlet that stood out sharply in the moonlight—stood with his hands tucked into the billowing sleeves of his garment. Heads lowered, the pointed cowl of the robe’s hood tilted earthward, they were as still as statues.

One stepped out of the circle and the others lifted their heads, their eyes tracking his every movement. He lifted his hands to throw back the covering from his midnight black hair. Like his brethren, he threaded his hands into the long sleeves of his robe and began to speak in a low, mesmerizing voice upon which each ear was attuned.

“They will call to you,” he said. “Thousands of them every night. They are the legion of hopeless, burdened women whose souls are blighted, withering on the vines of life. Their names are unimportant. It is their pitiful sobbing, their breaking hearts, and their utter loneliness that will catch your attention. You must listen closely, your mind reaching out across time and space and millennia to find them. Their entreaties will fill you like cool, sweet water does a thirsty man. They will tempt your thirst for further knowledge of the human race and fill your mind with a multitude of possibilities.”
The dark ember in his eyes flared.
“The ache in their hearts will be a sentient life form thrusting up through the heavens, speeding toward your lair. It will cry out in mournful whimpers of surrender, granting you entry, promising all. The sound will strike a chord deep in your being.”

He turned his face toward civilization.

“Search amongst all the womanly cries for help, the sobs of need, the whimpers of female defeat and frustration and failure and find her. Send your vision traveling swiftly from land to land, from coast to coast, mountain to mountain, river to dale. Strain to catch that one tiny, fluttering essence of grief.”

He swept his piercing gaze over those assembled.

“You will find her among the strident discord of humanity. The moment you go to her, her sobbing will cease; her desolation, the emptiness that called out to you, begged you, beckoned you, needed you, will be no more.”

The dark evil in his soul blazed to life.

“And she will be yours to do with as you will.”

The Nightwind Prime, Syntian Cree, who had spent two thousand years in the filthy belly of the Abyss smiled savagely, the moonlight glinting on his sharp fangs.

“Use the Book to keep your real purpose from her. Cloud her mind so she will not discern your true purpose. Give her your love if she is your Chosen but do not let her sway you from what needs to be done. Eliminate her enemies and those who have abused her but do not allow her to learn of the deed. Protect her from what you do. Keep it from her.”

He slid his hands from the sleeves of his robe and raised them high above his head, his fists clenched tightly, arms rigidly extended.

“Destruction to the disloyal!” he shouted and those around him echoed his battle cry.

“Destruction to the disloyal,” they shouted

His eyes turned crimson in the moonlight.

“And death to the selfish betrayers of men!”

The End