Читать книгу The Immortal's Unrequited Bride - Kelli Ireland - Страница 9

Chapter 1

Ethan Kemp forced himself to keep his pace slow as he made his way down the castle’s long, forever-chilled hallway. He’d been called a lot of things over his thirty-four years—warlock, physician’s assistant, American expat, friend, lover and, on occasion, fighter—but he’d never been called a coward. That was a moniker he refused to sport. So he would not allow himself to walk faster, speed up or, gods forbid, run. He would not curse. He would not look over his shoulder. Again, anyway. Why bother? He knew what would be there. What had been there for the last several months. Always following him. Always just out of reach, that shapeless smudge on the air. Nothing tangible. A mirage.

Hand at his side, he held the dirk with apparent disregard. Looks could be deceiving. He was under no illusion the blade would help him fight something he couldn’t see, but the weight of the weapon was better than nothing.

Besides, if the Assassin’s Arcanum—the biological outcome if 007 met Highlander and had unprotected sex with Practical Magic—found out he was running from shadows and tricks of light? Gods save him. He’d rather have his balls waxed than take the endless ribbing he’d receive from those five men.

While the heart of Druidism centered on a high regard for life and peaceful existence, the Assassin’s Arcanum, protectors of the Druidic race, were an entirely different breed. The Arcanum was composed of men who did whatever was deemed necessary to ensure that their brethren could live within their chosen—peaceful—parameters. But the assassins? From manipulation to murder, they were the things that went bump in the night. No mark would ever take notice of an assassin’s approach any more than he would the assassin’s departure. Dead men don’t hear a thing.

And while Ethan had developed a deep appreciation for the assassins’ mad skills with both weapons and elemental magicks, he wasn’t part of their inner circle. Not really. They’d gone so far as to jokingly label him their mascot—or resident pain in the ass. The moniker depended on whom he’d either helped or irritated at the time of conversation.

There were places Ethan had found he fit better than others. When the Assassin, Dylan O’Shea, had made the decision that compelled Ethan to participate in both weapons and hand-to-hand combat training, no one had been more surprised at the outcome than Ethan himself. He’d done well. No, not well. He’d excelled in a way that defied logic. That was when Dylan had begun involving Ethan in some of the Arcanum’s less risky ops, inviting him along as an extra set of hands to manage the element of earth, since none of the other men possessed that skill. But it didn’t change Ethan’s status among them. He was an outsider, a man without legitimate purpose, and it bothered him far more than it should.

A weighted stare settled between Ethan’s shoulders, and he clenched the dagger handle tighter. Last time he’d experienced something like this, assassins—junior assassins—had bagged and tagged him, hauling him from Atlanta, Georgia, to the Irish countryside in County Clare. That still irritated him. The purpose for his warlock-napping had been legit, though. His closest friend, Kennedy, had asked for the chance to say goodbye before the assassins or, more specifically, the Assassin, killed her. Ethan had arrived in time to see her beat the odds, and the gods, and then marry the man she’d fallen in love with.

That her new husband, Dylan the Ass, had been her appointed and questionably willing executioner?

“‘Love is blind’ and all that crap,” he muttered as he rolled his shoulders. “More like it encourages perfectly sane individuals to perform in certifiably insane ways.”

After the dust finally settled from that little magickal brouhaha, Ethan hadn’t wanted to leave her.

At least, that was the public version of events.

Privately? There was another chapter in his play-by-play living memoir. One he hadn’t discussed with anyone.

Ethan hadn’t been able to leave.

He’d tried.

Sure, he could pack his bags and buy his airline ticket and make noises about going back to the States. But when it came time to go? He would stand at the largest window in his small suite and stare out over the cliffs as the clock ticked past his boarding call, past his departure and well past his scheduled arrival.

He would stand there listening. Looking. Waiting. For what, he didn’t know.

Then he’d unpack and start the cycle over, trying to live until he could manage to leave.

No one said a word to him about the number of times this had happened. The Arcanum simply carried on as if he’d be there. The Druids’ healer and surgeon, Angus, never moved Ethan’s supplies or the medical files he kept on each patient he’d treated. His place setting was always laid out on the dining table. And the tyros, or assassins-in-training, never questioned him as he moved throughout the castle or across the grounds. He wasn’t one of them, but he had become part of the familiar landscape. They’d accepted his presence if not him.

None of that was what kept him ensconced in the Arcanum’s inner circle, though.

Truth? All he knew was that his heart was here. Not in Kennedy, although he’d suffered a moment of sheer panic right after she’d married, wondering if he’d unwittingly fallen in love with her. The revolting idea was too close to incest, though, and he’d been relieved. Yet that relief hadn’t translated to anything near understanding.

He’d had to accept that knowing his heart was here and understanding what that meant were two unrelated things. He had no idea what it meant that he couldn’t make himself go back to his former life. Didn’t understand how this drafty old castle, known among Druids as The Nest, had somehow become the GPS location labeled “Home” on his phone. Couldn’t explain how, after only days here in this foreign land, it wasn’t foreign at all. There was no logical explanation.

Despite his gifts in magick and his intimate ties to the element of earth, Ethan didn’t appreciate things that defied logic. Not like this. And definitely not when the heart—his heart—was involved. He loved this country, this keep and the very land beneath his feet. Loved it with absolutely no reserve. It was as if Ireland was his, and he was hers, logic be damned.

A touch, colder than a thousand-year-old grave, skated across the nape of his neck. Despite his conviction to stay focused and reach his rooms, he spun and staggered as he ripped at the shimmering form with his short blade.

“Show yourself,” he demanded, chest heaving.

The visual disturbance winked out, leaving behind record of neither its presence nor its passing. Innocuous dust motes danced on the air where the thing had been.

Like every other time he’d demanded a confrontation with whatever it was that followed him, he experienced a moment of awareness, a sense of soul-wrenching despair, before abject solitude wound its way around and through him, strangling limbs and organs and emotions without differentiation. Every bit of him was put through the wringer and left feeling crushed.

As he rubbed his sternum, Ethan’s wild gaze skipped around the hallway, floor to ceiling. “If I trip and fall and get murdered, I’m filing a grievance with management.” Irritation saturated his mutterings as he whirled away from the emptiness and resumed the trek to his rooms.

That he’d been reduced to what felt like the sacrificial starlet doomed to be the first one taken out really pissed him off. Sure, he loved a good slasher flick as much as the next guy, but he strongly preferred fiction to fact when personal threat was involved. This real-life emotional-torture-cum-horror-fest was messing him up. All he needed to round out his physical retreat was a tension-building score filled with haunting piano music accompanied by ominous strings. Maybe pipe organs...

“Organs.” He snorted. “Bad word choice.”

A huge shadow rose in his peripheral vision.

Ethan’s lungs seized as if a massive, invisible hand had gripped the pair and squeezed them like they were the leather bags on a bagpipe. A choked wheeze of alarm was the most he could manage. Whatever was stalking him had never rematerialized so fast and with such density. Intent on rending that shadow in two, Ethan swung out.

His short blade met the heavy metal of a proper sword, the shock singing up his arm until his nerves vibrated like a tuning fork. His hand spasmed and his dagger fell to the stone floor, striking with a metallic clatter.

“Shit!” He cradled his numb arm to his chest and glared into the shadowy alcove. “You scared the ever-living hell out of me.”

“The gods of light and life will be glad to hear it.” A dark looked passed over Rowan’s face. “If you intend to strike out at a larger man carrying a much bigger sword, you need to either arm yourself better or get faster. Preferably both.”

Ignoring the chastisement, Ethan let a slow, wicked grin spread over his face even as he fought to bank the fury he knew filled his eyes. “Frankly? I’m more interested in what you’re doing tucked away in a lovers’ alcove with nothing but your sword than I am in hearing you criticize my mad fighting skills.”

“It’s not a lovers’ alcove, witchling. It’s an archer’s lookout.” Rowan stared down the hall in the direction Ethan’s mysterious stalker had disappeared. “As for the other, I was doing exactly as you asked—trying to see if whatever it is that you claim is following you might be visible to me in the spirit realm.”

“Tell me you finally saw it.” Coarse and strained, Ethan’s demand sounded like it had been squeezed through a vise.

Rowan’s nostrils flared. Then he gave a single, sharp dip of the chin.

Hope warred with terror. Ethan wanted—needed—to know what was going on. With the banished and damned gods rallying as the Shadow Realm’s power shifted, the appearance of this otherworldly stalker had him unnerved. He waited on Rowan to speak.

Nada. Nothing. Niet.

The assassin just continued to stare down the hall, his eyebrows drawn together.

Ethan scooped up his dagger and, to hide his trembling hand, gestured with the blade as he spoke. “Tell me, or the next time you end up in the infirmary, I’ll set up an account and profile for you on www.hotmenofDublin.com and tie the account to your phone so it posts your location...no matter where you are.”

He fought to keep from flinching when the man’s arctic-blue gaze refocused and landed solidly on him. The vacancy in those eyes made it seem like Rowan was no more than a husk of a man. A shell. Soulless. His response did little to dispel the impression. “I’d refrain from referring to the being as an ‘it.’”

Ethan tried not to grin and failed. “You’re telling me I’ve picked up a...what? A ghost? As in, an incorporeal stalker?”

“Of a sort.”

Grin fading, Ethan couldn’t stop the sudden buzzing in his ears. “What ‘sort,’ exactly? And how do I get rid of it?”

“‘It’ is a woman,” Rowan answered softly. “And I’m not sure you want to be rid of her.”

“Why?” The buzzing grew louder as something heavy pressed against the corners of Ethan’s mind.

“Because it would seem she’s your wife.”

* * *

Isibéal Cannavan quite literally hovered around the corner and out of sight of the assassin with the terrifying eyes. The man had seen her. Could see her. But that wasn’t what had scattered her so and left her suffering with uncontrollable palsy. She’d touched the man now known as Ethan. The man she knew as Lachlan. And the terrifying man who could see her had either heard her or read her lips when she uttered that cherished yet damning word. “Husband.”

Nor was her admission what had sent her careening down the hall. All she had wanted was to touch Lachlan. Nothing more. So, after summoning every ounce of will she possessed, she had concentrated on Lachlan’s bare neck. And she’d done it, had felt him. But the very second the sensation registered, an excruciating pain had ripped through her and torn an involuntary, albeit soundless, scream from her throat. Nothing, not even the sword strike that had taken her life, had ever hurt so badly. She had been catapulted away from him as if she’d taken a far more violent blow to the midsection. Even now her hands hovered over the sight of the original deathblow. She looked down, half expecting to find blood staining her gown.

There was nothing there.

Isibéal rubbed one thumb and forefinger together, still convinced it should be blood-slicked. Her other hand she held clamped against her side. Despite the fact that she didn’t need to breathe, her chest heaved. Pain still ricocheted through her, pinging about like a maddened hornet trapped in a jar. It was of no consequence, seeing as she refused to regret her actions. She wished with fierce intensity that she’d been able to retain the sensation of Lachlan’s warmth. A fitting reward that would have been worth the lingering pain. Such was not to be. Touching her husband had taken every ounce of available concentration and more than that in bravery to master her form and create the brief connection. To retain it would have taken the very thing she did not possess.

A mortal body.

That she would never again realize the intimate feel of Lachlan’s form sliding beneath her hands, stroke the stubble along his jaw, experience his lips against hers or his arms cradling her... The realization, both compounded and comprehensive, had been enough to do what the pain had not done, driving her from the keep.

She raced to the cliffs, teetering to a stop inches from the edge.

Wind whipped through her.

Her simple gown did not so much as move.

If her sacrifice had not saved her husband’s life, it had, at the very least, saved his soul. She must remember that. Never would she regret her choice. How often had she sworn from her cursed grave that she would suffer a hundred eternal damnations to simply be able to see and hear Lachlan...now Ethan...after all these centuries? Someone had heard her fervent prayers and granted her this boon. If that single touch meant she was forever removed from Lachlan, so be it. It was a price she would pay a thousand times over to know he lived once more.

She pressed her fingertips to her lips before whispering his name in reverent invocation. “Lachlan.”

Recognizing her husband on sight had been a matter of no regard. Even now her heart called to his, just as it had the first time they’d met. Lachlan Cannavan looked much the same as he had before her death. He who had once led the Assassin’s Arcanum had been an attractive man with dark blond hair, a strong jaw and merry blue eyes more inclined to shared laughter than somber weight. Broad-shouldered with muscle layered over muscle, he had commanded any room. She had watched him long enough in this life to know that he still did. His modern clothes struck her as odd, but he looked so similar to those around him that she had to assume what he wore was fashionable. None of this was truly relevant, however.

What mattered most was that, after an innumerable number of centuries, she had touched him, touched the man she’d thought lost to her for eternity. Her hand dropped from her lips to hover over the quiet at her breast. She might not possess a heartbeat, but she still possessed a heart. Of that she was certain. Otherwise, her chest wouldn’t ache with such vacancy.

A soft but persistent tug behind her breastbone drew a small gasp from her.

“I will not,” she snapped. “You do not command me.”

Though she spoke to the air, she had hope that he heard her—the God of Vengeance and Reincarnation, once known for far greater things than cold-blooded murder.

Lugh.

He summoned her yet again, this pull on her being stronger as his will forced her back a step.

Pressure in her chest eased.

She so was not ready for this.

After she’d risen from her grave, nearly a moon’s cycle passed before she understood what the pull meant. The more insistent it became, the more certain she was that the curse Lugh had laid on her at death had been consequent.

The wordless command intensified.

She resisted giving in and doing as bade, instead stepping forward. The summons caused her limbs to ache as it evolved into a silent demand. No matter. She was not his to order about. Not now. Not ever. Still, the sensation grew.

She set her jaw and leaned forward.

When the pull finally stopped, the release nearly drove her over the cliff. Not that it would hurt her, but it still unnerved her when she ended up hovering in midair.

There was no way to predict how long Lugh would leave her be this time. Every day she remained free of the grave, the god grew stronger and more insistent she answer his summons. He fed from her freedom, siphoning it like a leech. She resented his presence, despised the fact that she had no control over what he took from her. That resentment was nothing compared to the vitriolic hatred she harbored for him, though. His death curse had stolen more than her life. To say she had suffered through the centuries would be like saying a blacksmith’s forge burned hot.

“Understatement.” She huffed out a sharp breath, at the same time absently tucking a loose curl back into the hair piled on her head.

Not once had she ceased her pleading with the gods of light and life, beseeching them to find mercy and release her from the hell to which she’d bound herself. She’d had no idea what that spell would mean long-term. Darkness had blinded her. Her corporeal and incorporeal bodies had been trapped in her grave. But by some small grace—damnation?—she’d been able to hear everything that happened in the castle. It had nearly destroyed her mind even as it shredded her heart, hearing that Lachlan had died despite the bargain she’d struck and the subsequent sacrifice she’d made that summer night.

Her life for his.

She swiped at the tears that tracked down her cheeks at the memory of hearing that Lachlan had perished, the heartache as fresh as ever. “Fickle gods have no care for those whose lives are destroyed by their impetuous choices.”

And now both her sacrifice and Lachlan’s death would amount to naught. With the disturbance of Isibéal’s grave, the very grave to which Lugh had linked his binding to the Shadow Realm, Lugh’s confinement to the underworld would begin to deteriorate. While she had been bound to her grave, so had he been to his. But now that she was free? That freedom would empower the god to begin his own resurrection process. Once he manifested, she had no doubt he would rain vengeance on those he deemed enemies, past and present.

And Lachlan, nay, Ethan, would be at the very top of his list.