The Immortal Highlander
Page 12

Rubbing her eyes, she shook her head. Leave it to me, she brooded, to never do anything by halves. It wasn’t enough to merely betray herself to the Fae, she had to go and do it to the most notorious one of all.
A silver-tongued seducer, it was said to be so devilishly charming that mortals didn’t even realize they were in danger until it was much too late. It went by Puck, Robin Goodfellow, and Wayland Smith, among countless other names.
A rogue even among his own kind . . .
When she’d begun searching, she’d been afraid it might take her days to wade through the rambling tomes and discern the identity of the creature she’d seen, assuming it was even in there. The earliest volumes were written in Gaelic, which—despite Gram’s valiant efforts to teach her the old tongue—Gabby still couldn’t speak, and could scarcely muddle her way through reading.
The Books of the Fae were a nightmare to sort through, written in myriad and often illegible scripts, with notes crammed into the margins of every page, cross-referencing other notes crammed into other margins on equally difficult-to-decipher pages.
More than once Gabby had complained to her grandmother that someone “really needed to set up an index and organize these damn things.” And more than once Gram had smiled, given her a pointed look, and said, “Yes, someone should. What’s stopping you?”
Though Gabby would have done nearly anything her beloved grandmother had asked of her, she’d determinedly avoided that task.
She’d buried herself instead in modern-day law books that were far less disturbing than ancient tomes that brought to life an exotic world, which her continued existence and hope for a normal future depended upon her ability to ignore.
After hours of fruitless searching, Gabby had finally noticed another book, one she couldn’t recall having seen before, a slimmer volume tucked back in a corner, as if it had inadvertently gotten pushed behind the other books and forgotten. Curious, she’d reached for it, brushing thick dust from the cover.
Highly intelligent, lethally seductive . . .
Bound in soft black leather, the tome she’d nearly overlooked contained the information she sought. Her ancestors had taken the subject matter so seriously that they’d devoted a separate volume to it.
Unlike the other volumes, which were written in disjointed, sporadic journal fashion and dealt with whatever fairy had recently been sighted, the slim black book addressed only one, and flowed in chronological order, complemented by numerous sketches. Also, unlike the other volumes that were simply labeled by Roman numerals, this one merited its own title: The Book of the Sin Siriche Du.
Or, loosely translated from Gaelic—she was capable of that much—the book of the darkest/blackest elf/fairy.
She’d found the creature she’d seen tonight: Adam Black.
The earliest accounts of it were sketchy, descriptions of its various glamours, warnings about its deviltry, cautions about its insatiable sexuality and penchant for mortal women (“so sates a lass, that she is oft incapable of speech, her wits muddled for a fortnight or more.” Oh, please, Gabby thought, was that the medieval equivalent of screwing her brains out?), but by the approach of the first millennium, the accounts became more detailed.
In the mid–ninth century—near 850 A.D.—the thing had gone on a rampage, meddling with mortals for the seemingly sole purpose of inciting fury and causing battles to break out all over Scotland.
Thousands had died by the time it was done amusing itself.
Numerous sightings had been made of the thing watching, smiling, as blood ran on countless battlefields. For a time it hadn’t been just O’Callaghan women who’d seen it; it had made no effort whatsoever to hide itself, and her ancestors had gathered the tales of those myriad sightings, recording them in great detail.
By far the most dangerous and unpredictable of his race . . .
No other fairy had ever dared such blatant, cold-blooded interference with humankind.
The clock on the mantel chimed the hour, jarring her. She rubbed her eyes, startled to realize that the night had sped by and it was already morning. The first rays of sunlight were pressing at the edges of the drapes that, late last night, she’d pulled tightly across the windows. She’d been up for well over twenty-four hours straight; it was no wonder her eyes felt so gritty and tired.
His favored glamour is that of an intensely sexual Highland blacksmith. . . .
Her gaze drifted back to the book in her lap, opened to a sketch of the dark fairy.
Uncanny. It was the very image that had occurred to her when she’d first spotted it. Was it possible, she wondered, that there really was such a thing as genetic memory? Knowledge passed from one generation to the next, imprinted in one’s very DNA? It would go a long way toward explaining why the moment she’d laid eyes on it all kinds of alarms had gone off inside her. Why she’d thought instinctively of a blacksmith, as if in the deepest, darkest reaches of her soul she’d instantly recognized her primordial enemy. Enemy to countless O’Callaghan women before her.