Though he was immortal and could not be physically slain, he could be bespelled. If he were fool enough to stray onto Cian’s warded ground, the Highlander could trap him and cocoon him in a mystic stasis, as helpless as a fly in a thick, sticky spider’s web.
Eventually, Lucan might figure out how to break free, but he had very little time left to take chances with. And he’d never been willing to wager on the outcome of a battle of spells between him and the Highlander.
The situation at this second Castle Keltar was far worse than he’d imagined. He could feel the potency of two Keltar Druids in this new castle, about whom he knew nothing but for this—their power was as old as their names. They were strong. Not like Cian. But also not like any other Druid he’d ever encountered.
He’d arrived yesterday afternoon and swiftly gotten the lay of the land: There was no way he was going to be able to get inside that castle without help.
Which was why they’d spent the night warding, why he was standing here now.
His wits would have to serve him again, as they had so well eleven hundred and thirty-three years ago.
“Trevayne.” Cian’s nostrils flared as he spat the word.
“Keltar,” Lucan spat it back, as though the vilest of viles had passed across his tongue—a tongue so heavily tattooed it was blackened with dye.
That tongue had spoken such sordid spells and lies that it should have rotted from the dark sorcerer’s mouth, as his soul had rotted from his body so long ago.
“You don’t look ready to die to me,” Lucan taunted.
Cian laughed softly. “I’ve been ready to die for over a thousand years, Trevayne.”
“Really? I have pictures of your woman. She looks like quite the fuck. I’m going to find out once the tithe is paid.”
“The tithe will never be paid, Trevayne.”
“You’re going to watch us together, Highlander. I’ll push her up against your mirror and—”
Cian turned around and began walking back toward the castle. “You waste my time, Trevayne.”
“Why did you come out, then, Keltar?”
Cian turned around, walked back to the line and toed it. He stood so close that their noses nearly touched. The width of a hair kept them separate and safe from each other, no more.
Lucan saw movement behind the Highlander. The woman had just stepped out onto the top stair of the elaborate stone entryway. Precisely as he’d hoped.
“To look into your eyes, Lucan,” Cian said softly, “and see death there. And I saw it.”
He turned sharply again, heading for the castle. He looked up at the entrance. “Go back inside the castle, Jessica. Now,” he called sharply, seeing her on the stairs.
“What does she think of all this, Keltar?” Lucan called after him, making his voice loud enough to carry clearly to her ears, as well. “Is she as eager for vengeance as you?”
Cian made no reply.
“Tell me, is she as ready for you to die as you are, Highlander?” Lucan called.
Cian broke into a sprint toward the stairs.
“I don’t believe you want to die, Keltar,” Lucan yelled after him. “I know I don’t. In fact, I’d do virtually anything to stay alive. I think I’d agree to anything at all to pass that tithe through the Dark Glass at midnight on Samhain.” His voice rang out, carrying clearly across the lawn, echoing off the stone walls of the castle.
Cian reached the stairs and loped up them. Turning Jessica by her shoulders, he steered her back in the castle and closed the door behind them.
Lucan didn’t care. He’d accomplished what he’d come for. His final words had not been meant for the Keltar at all. They’d been meant for the woman who’d stood on the steps so foolishly betraying her emotions, her hands anxiously fisted, her eyes deep with grief.
It would take time. He had no doubt it would take more days than he would bear well, and others would die, victims of his displeasure, in the interim. Though he could not read her, in fact, had smashed up against that strange smooth barrier once again, he’d read her body. There was no greater fool than a woman in love.
“Think on that, Jessica St. James,” he whispered. “And let it begin to eat away inside you.”
Many hours later, long after Lucan Trevayne had gotten back in his sleek black-windowed, black limousine and gone, Jessi sat staring at the computer screen in the darkened library.
She pressed her palms to the cool surface of the small library table beneath the softly illuminated portrait of an eighteenth-century MacKeltar patriarch and his wife, keeping her hands well away from the keyboard and the mouse.