The Dark Highlander

But Chloe’s small hand had been given without taking.

Adam Black watched the automobile wind up the roads into the Keltar mountains. Though his queen had long ago passed an edict forbidding any Tuatha Dé Danaan to go within a thousand leagues of a Keltar, Adam had decided that since The Compact had been violated on the Keltar side, old edicts didn’t apply.

He knew why she’d passed the edict. The Keltar, having pledged their lives and all their future generations to upholding The Compact, were to be free of any Tuatha Dé Danaan interference, because his queen had known, even then, that there were those among their race that didn’t like The Compact. Who’d not wanted to leave the mortal realm. Who’d argued to conquer the human race. Who might have tried to goad a Keltar into breaking it.

So since the day The Compact had been sealed, not one Keltar had so much as glimpsed one of their ancient benefactors.

Adam suspected that might have been a mistake. For, although the Keltar had faithfully performed their duties, over four thousand years they’d forgotten their purpose. They no longer even believed in the Tuatha Dé Danaan, nor did they recall the details of the fateful battle that had set them on their course. Their ancient history had become nothing more than vague myths to them.

While on Yule, Beltane, Samhain, and Lughnassadh, the Keltar still enacted the rites that kept the walls solid between their worlds, they no longer recalled that such was the purpose of those rites. Perhaps one generation had neglected to pass down the oral tradition in full to the next. Perhaps the elder had died before he’d been able to impart all the secrets. Perhaps old texts had not been faithfully recopied before time had disintegrated them, who knew? One thing Adam did know was that mortals ever seemed to forget their history. Those days that were so sacred to The Compact were now seen as feast days, little more.

He snorted, watching the car crest the hill. Humans couldn’t even get their own religious history sorted out, from a mere two millennia past. It was no wonder that their history with his race had become so obscured by time’s passage.

So, he thought, watching from his perch upon a high tor, the darkest Druid has come home, bringing with him all the resurrected evil of the Draghar. Fascinating. He wondered what his queen would make of it.

He had no plans to tell her.

After all, in Adam’s opinion, it was her fault they’d been there to be resurrected in the first place.

Even now, she was ensconced with her council, where they were busy determining the mortal’s fate.

Four thousand and some odd years ago, his people had withdrawn to their hidden places so that mortal and Fae would not destroy each other. Shortly thereafter, the Draghar, with their black arts, had nearly destroyed both their worlds.

His queen would never permit such a thing to happen.

He sighed. The mortal’s time was finite.

• 12 •

Gwen MacKeltar, former pre-eminent theoretical physicist, now wife and expectant mother, sighed dreamily, leaning back in the bathtub against her husband’s hard chest. She was between his muscular thighs, with his strong arms around her, soaking in warm bubbly water and deliriously content.

Poor man, she thought, smiling. In her second trimester, she’d nearly punched him if he’d tried to touch her. Now, in her third, she was inclined to punch him if he didn’t touch her. Frequently and exactly how she wanted. Her hormones were all over the place and the darned things just wouldn’t function according to any equation she’d been able to compute.

But Drustan appeared to have forgiven her for the last few months, after the marathon sessions they’d been having. And not only didn’t he seem to care that she was hopelessly fat, he’d happily devoted himself to finding new and unusual ways to make love that compensated for her physical changes. The tub was one of Gwen’s favorites.

Hence, there she was at seven o’clock in the evening, with dozens of candles scattered about the bathroom, and her husband’s strong arms around her, when the doorbell chimed downstairs.

Drustan dropped a kiss on the nape of her neck. “Are we expecting someone?” he asked, the small kiss turning into delicious nibbles.

“Mmm. Not that I know of.”

Farley would get the door. Farley, properly christened Ian Llewelyn McFarley, was their butler and every time Gwen thought of him her heart went all soft. The man had to be eighty if a day, with bristly white hair and a tall, bowed frame. He lied about his age, and everything else, and she adored him.

What made her heart go really soft was that Drustan also had a tender spot for the old geezer. He had endless patience and invited his tall tales in the evening before a fire, as butler and laird shared a wee dram.