The Dark Highlander
Page 111

Then suddenly he made a sound of raw agony, and his dark head slammed back into the stone column with such force that Chloe nearly stopped breathing, screaming silently inside. His neck arched, and his body strained as if he were being pulled on a rack.
The man called Simon cried out and collapsed to the floor, clutching his head.
Dageus laughed, and the sound chilled Chloe’s blood. Dageus had never—would never—make such a twisted dark sound. Shaking violently, she watched as his head tipped slowly down. When she saw his eyes, she choked on the gag.
They were almost full black.
A tiny sliver of white rimmed them, hardly there at all. She ceased struggling, frozen by horror.
An icy gale rushed into the chamber, scattering books from the shelves, toppling tables and chairs, whipping sheets of paper and parchment through the air.
Suddenly the two men holding her were gone. The knife at her neck shot away through the air, and she lost sight of it amid the flying debris. The ropes at her wrists and ankles snapped, and the gag was abruptly torn from her mouth.
As if from a far distance, she heard Dageus’s voice—but not quite his voice, it was more like dozens of voices layered upon each other—telling her to close her eyes, telling her that she would see and hear nothing till he commanded otherwise. And she knew that he’d done something to her, used some magic on her, because suddenly she was blind and deaf. Panicked by the loss of her senses, she dropped to the floor and held very still.
That time of sightless silence seemed to go on for an eternity. The only sensation left to her was feeling the chilling caress of that bitter, dark wind.
She huddled on the floor, refusing to contemplate what might be going on. Refusing to believe what she thought she’d seen before all hell had broken loose. She knew Dageus; he would never do such a thing. Not even for her. He was too honorable at the core. He would never choose her life over the fate of the world.
Then why had it looked like he was becoming the Draghar?
• 26 •
Silence was all Chloe heard when she could hear again, though it wasn’t exactly silence, for, in contrast to the utter vacuum of deafness, silence was a mishmash of white noise: the faint hum of fluorescent lighting, the soft push of air from dehumidifiers installed to protect the ancient texts. She’d never been so grateful for such simple, comforting sounds in her life. It had been terrifying to be stripped of the ability to both see and hear.
But she still couldn’t see, and she suffered another moment of absolute panic before realizing that her eyes were closed. Opening them, she pushed herself shakily up from the floor into a sitting position. Her gaze flew to the stone column, but Dageus was no longer chained to it. Frantically, she skimmed the room.
Once, twice, three times she looked through the wreckage.
And jerked her head in abject denial.
There was blood all over the place. Puddles of it. Still more sprayed across the tables and chairs, and the chaos of books and papers on the floor.
Yet more blood on the stone column.
And there wasn’t a single other person—not even a body—in the room with her.
Time is a companion that goes with us
on a journey.
It reminds us to cherish each moment,
because it will never come again.
What we leave behind is not as important
ashow we have lived.
—JEAN LUC PICARD, captain of the Enterprise
• 27 •
“I don’t want you to go,” Gwen said for what Chloe was certain must be the hundredth time. “Please, stay with us, Chloe.”
Chloe shook her head wearily. Over the past two weeks, she and Gwen had grown close, which both soothed and chafed, for it made Chloe think about how incredible her life could have been if things had worked out differently. She had no doubt that she and Dageus would have gotten married, remained in Scotland, and bought a house near Gwen and Drustan. She and Gwen were similar in many ways, and in time Gwen would have become the sister she’d never had.
What a perfect, blissful dream that would have been! Living in the Highlands, surrounded by family, married to the man she loved.
But everything had gone so damn wrong and those things would never be, and her growing affection for the brilliant, nurturing woman who’d stayed tirelessly at her side since that terrible night, had begun to hurt more than it helped.
“I’ve stayed as long as I can, Gwen,” Chloe said, continuing her grimly determined march toward the security gate. They were in the airport, and she was desperate to be in the air, to escape so many painful reminders. If she didn’t get out of there soon, she was afraid she might start screaming and just never stop. She couldn’t look at Drustan one more time. Couldn’t bear being in the castle Dageus had built.