The Immortal Highlander

Adam surged to his feet, inhaling sharply, audibly. “What? Where? No, wait—don’t point, ka-lyrra. Don’t even look at him again. Or at me. Move away, give me your back, then tell me what he looks like,” he hissed.

Gabby glanced at him. She couldn’t help it—he sounded so alarmed.

“Don’t look at me,” he hissed again softly. “Do as I said.”

Jarred by the urgency in his voice, Gabby obeyed, moving away. Turning, giving him her profile, she rested her hands on a low stone wall that encircled an arrangement of sculptured shrubs and flowers and pretended to be enjoying the view. Dropping her head forward so her hair shielded her face, she said clearly, softly, “He’s tall. Copper hair, gold highlights. Black torque and armbands, wearing—”

“White robes and he has a scar on his face,” Adam finished for her.

“Yes.”

“Gabrielle, walk away from me this instant and don’t look back. As fast and far as you can. Do it. Now.”

But, damn the woman, he should have known she wouldn’t obey a direct order again. The first time must have been a fluke; she obviously didn’t have an obedient, malleable bone in her body.

She looked back at him, searching his face, her brows drawn in confusion.

And was that a touch of concern in her lovely green-gold eyes? Concern for him? Though he was pleased to see the first hint of such weakness, at the moment, it could prove her undoing. She’d just described Darroc and, if Darroc got his hands on him in his current condition, well . . . he wouldn’t be having an audience with Aoibheal—ever again. And if Darroc got his hands on Gabrielle . . . Adam tensed, refusing to complete the thought. Bloody hell, he hadn’t anticipated this! “Go,” he growled.

But even as he said it, he saw her face change. She was no longer looking at him; her gaze had fixed on a point slightly to the right of and behind him. Her mouth had dropped open, her eyes had gone impossibly wide, and her face was bloodlessly white.

“H-h-h—huuuunh—huuunh—” she gurgled.

Adam reacted instantly, able to think of only one thing that might put that look on her face and make her tongue trip all over an H.

Hunters.

“G-g-g—” she tried again.

And if there were Hunters in the same place as Darroc, they hadn’t come for her. At least not first. There were thousands of years of bad blood between him and the High Council Elder, and he could think of little Darroc would enjoy more than watching the Hunters rip him to pieces while he was in mortal form. Then and only then would he turn his attentions to the Sidhe-seer. And his petite ka-lyrra wouldn’t stand a chance. In Darroc’s hands, every dark and twisted fairy tale she’d ever been told would come true.

He launched himself at her.

Christ, they were surrounded by danger that he couldn’t see! How was he supposed to protect her? Whose stupid bloody idea had this been, anyway?

As his hands closed on her shoulders, something whizzed past his arm with a soft whine. Snaking an arm around her waist, he twisted and ducked, pulling her into the shelter of his body, wincing as something burned the back of his shoulder.

Closing his eyes, he held her tightly and sifted place in a general southerly direction, pushing to the farthest limits his diminished power could carry him. The moment he rematerialized, he instantly sifted again, arms locked around her.

Railroad track. Sift. Grocery store. Keep moving. Roof of a house. Sift. Cornfield. Sift. Cornfield. Sift. Cornfield. Sift. Cornfield. Bloody Midwest. Sift. Atop the steeple of a church with no way to balance on the narrow slippery spire.

They began to fall, plummeting past crosses and gargoyles, and he hastily sifted them in midair. He kept moving, faster and dizzyingly faster, without pausing for a breath, trying desperately to put as much distance as possible between his enemy and his wee, much-too-mortal ka-lyrra.

Gabby was sure she was screaming at the top of her lungs, but nothing was coming out.

Adam Black’s arms weren’t just tight around her body; he’d managed to wrap himself around her like a living shield.

But that wasn’t what was making her choke on a scream. It was that she kept materializing and dematerializing. Sort of. One moment she existed, and then she didn’t exist, and then she existed again. She didn’t like it one bit. Each time she was in a different place. Stores. Parking lots. Cornfields. A lot of those. Suddenly on the peak of the slender, pointed spire of—ack!—a church, and falling! As the pavement rushed up to meet them, they were suddenly, blessedly, somewhere else.

After a while, she just closed her eyes and prayed, trying really hard not to think about much of anything, especially not how wrong the Books of the Fae had been about the Hunters.