The Dark Highlander

Alone.

He would never permit any of the people he loved to take this risk with him. ’Twas he who’d created the mess and ’twould be he who fixed it. He was at his best solitary, unencumbered—the Gaulish Ghost again, a sleek, dark wraith, scarce visible to the human eye—with no need to watch over his shoulder to protect someone else.

He hadn’t saved Drustan for Gwen once, only to lose one or both of them now. And he would never lose Chloe.

He knew they would be furious, but with luck, it would be over before they even awakened, or at worst, shortly thereafter. He needed it this way, needed to know they were safe in the castle, so he could keep his mind focused on his goal with no distractions.

He would penetrate the Draghar sect’s headquarters, search their records, locate Simon Barton-Drew’s address, hunt him down, and peel from his mind the information he needed. The thought that he might, in a short time, be free of the exhausting battle he’d been waging for so long was hard for him to comprehend. The idea that, by morning, he might be able to return to Chloe, naught more than a Druid and a man, seemed a dream too good to be true.

But it wasn’t. According to Trevor—and a mind so ruthlessly violated was incapable of lying—Simon Barton-Drew knew how to return the ancient ones to that prison from whence they’d come.

The flight to London was short, though it took him several frustrating hours to locate The Belthew Building. He’d not been in London before, with the exception of the airport, and it was confusing to him. He stood outside the unlit building for some time, studying it from back, front, and all sides. It was a large warehouse constructed of stone and steel, with four floors, but from what Trevor had confessed, that which he sought would be found belowground.

He took slow, even breaths of the chill, foggy night air. Moving briskly, silently, he approached the building and worked the lock with a softly murmured phrase. That made twice today that he’d used magic, and he dare use it only sparingly henceforth.

Even now the beings within him were stirring. He could sense them reaching out, as if trying to fathom their surroundings.

He opened the door and slipped partly in, punching the code into the keypad. He was prepared; he had lifted all the knowledge he needed from Trevor’s mind and committed it to memory. He knew every sequence of numbers, every alarm to circumvent, every passkey.

Stepping across the threshold, he felt a sudden pinching pain in his chest, deep in a ridge of muscle. He shrugged his shoulder, trying to work the kink out, but it didn’t go away and, bemused, he glanced down.

For a moment the sight of the silver dart quivering in his chest simply baffled him. Then his vision swam alarmingly and narrowed to a dim tunnel. Blinking, he stared into the dark room.

“A tranquilizer,” a cultured voice informed him politely.

A few moments later, cursing viciously, Dageus crashed to the floor.

He roused—he had no idea how long later—to the sensation of cool stone against his back. As his drug-induced stupor receded slowly, he became aware that he was securely restrained.

He felt strange, but was unable to pinpoint exactly what it was. Something was different inside him. Mayhap the lingering effects of the tranquilizer, he decided.

Without opening his eyes, he flexed minutely, testing his bonds. He was chained to a stone column several feet in diameter. Thick-linked chains bound his arms behind him, around the column’s circumference. His ankles were chained together as well, bound again to the base of the column. Without calling upon magic, he could move naught but his head.

Keeping his eyes closed, he listened, noting the different voices that spoke over the next few moments, tallying the numbers of his enemy. Half a dozen, no more. Had they not drugged him, they would never have taken him, and if he could get free, he would have no problem escaping. He reached out with his Druid senses, testing the strength of the chains.

Bletherin’ hell, he thought darkly. There was a binding spell on them. He poked at it lightly, testing its strength with magic, not wishing to use more than was necessary. But instead of a subtle, directed probing, a sudden, uncontrolled rush of power ripped through him, far more than he’d meant to use, more than he’d ever used at a single time before. He felt the instant response of the thirteen; they began murmuring in their incomprehensible language, their voices buzzing like insects inside his skull. He was bombarded with sensations. . . .

Icy darkness. Endless stretches of bickering amongst themselves. Enforced eternal togetherness with no escape. Periods of lucidity, longer periods of madness, until finally there was nothing left but rage and hatred and an all-consuming thirst for vengeance.