The Dark Highlander

“Ow, you bloody bitch!” When he convulsed reflexively, Chloe pounded at him with her fists, scrabbling desperately to get out from beneath him.

His hand locked on her ankle. She grabbed a piece of glass, heedless of her numerous cuts and turned on him, hissing and spitting like a cat.

And when she slashed at his hand on her ankle, a fierce triumph filled her. She may be on the floor, bloody and crying, but she was not going to die without one hell of a fight.

Dageus stepped into the anteroom, wondering if Chloe might still be in the shower. He entertained a brief vision of her, gloriously nude and wet with all that lovely hair trailing down her back. Hand on the doorknob, he smiled, then flinched when he heard a crash, followed by cursing.

Pushing the door open, he gaped, incredulity and shock paralyzing him for a precious moment.

Chloe—dripping red liquid that his mind refused to accept might be blood—was standing in the living room, turned toward the kitchen, her back to him, clutching the claymore from above the fireplace with both hands, crying and hiccuping violently.

A man stepped out of the kitchen, his murderous gaze fixed on Chloe, a knife in his hand.

Neither of them registered his presence.

“Chloe-lass, back away,” Dageus hissed. Instinctively, he used the Voice of Power, lacing the order with a spell of Druid compulsion, lest she be too frightened to move on her own.

The man startled and saw him then, his face registering shock and … something more, a thing Dageus couldn’t quite define. An expression that made no sense to him. Recognition? Awe? The intruder’s gaze darted to the door behind Dageus, then to the open doors leading to the rain-slicked terrace.

Snarling, Dageus began stalking. No need to rush, the man had no place to go. Chloe had responded to his command and backed away toward the fireplace, where she stood clutching the claymore tightly, white as a ghost. She was still standing. That was a good sign. Surely the red stains couldn’t all be blood.

“Are you all right, lass?” Dageus kept his gaze fixed on the intruder. Power was roiling inside him. Ancient power, power that was not his, power that was untrustworthy and bloodthirsty, goading him to destroy the man using archaic, forbidden curses. To make him die a slow and horrific death for daring to touch his woman.

Fisting his hands, Dageus struggled to close his mind to it. He was a man, not an ancient evil. More than man enough to handle this himself. He knew—though he knew not how he knew—that should he use the dark power within him to kill, it would seal his doom.

Hiccup. “Uh-huh, I think so.” More sobs.

“You son of a bitch. You hurt my woman,” Dageus growled, moving inexorably forward, backing the man out onto the terrace. Forty-three floors above the street.

The intruder glanced over his shoulder at the low stone wall encircling the terrace, as if gauging the distance, then back at Dageus again.

What he did next was so strange and unexpected that Dageus failed to react in time to stop him.

His eyes blazing with fanatic zeal, the man bowed his head. “May I serve the Draghar with my death, as I failed with my life.”

Dageus was still trying to process the fact that he’d said “the Draghar” when the man spun about, leaped up onto the wall, and took a swan dive into forty-three floors of nothingness.

• 9 •

“What is that stuff?” Chloe asked, wincing.

“Easy, lass. ’Tis but a salve that will speed the healing.” Dageus smoothed it on her myriad cuts, murmuring healing spells in an ancient tongue she’d not know. A language so long dead that the scholars of her century had no name for it. The sticky red on her clothing had been wine not blood. She’d come away remarkably unscathed, all considered, with cuts on her hands and feet, a few scratches on her arms, but no debilitating injury.

“That does feel better,” she exclaimed.

He glanced at her, forcing himself to look in her eyes, not at the lush, delectable curves scarce concealed by her delicate, lacy bra and panties. After the man had jumped, Dageus had stripped Chloe more roughly than he’d intended, frantic to know the extent of her wounds. Now she sat beside him on the sofa, facing him, her wee feet in his lap as he tended them.

“Here, lass.” He snatched the cashmere throw from the back of the sofa and draped it around her shoulders, pulling it snugly about her so it covered her from neck to ankles. She blinked slowly, as if only now realizing her state of undress, and he knew her mind was still numb from her ordeal.

He forced his attention back to her feet. The healing spells were pushing him ever nearer the limits of his control. He’d used too much magic in the past few days. He needed a long space of time with no spells to recover.