hadn’t missed the sparkle in his eyes. She couldn’t imagine staying confined to one place for days, much less centuries.
She liked watching the brothers interact. Even Quinn had softened, his rage almost forgotten. Cara smiled as Quinn punched Lucan in the shoulder over some comment, their laughter blowing on the breeze as they walked to the village.
Lucan looked over his shoulder at her, his smile gone. She frowned, wondering if he was upset because she had lagged behind. All she had wanted to do was give the brothers some time alone.
Then she saw the smoke.
The three men stopped and waited for her. Lucan threaded his fingers with her. “Are you sure?”
“There isn’t much to see,” Quinn said.
Cara didn’t pull away when Lucan tugged her beside him. At the sight of the first dead body she knew she was going to need his strength.
Fallon glanced at her. “Why do you need to see this death?”
“I want to make sure they didn’t leave someone alive, or someone that needs help.”
“They didn’t.” Fallon stalked away.
Cara looked at Lucan. “How does he know?”
“Quinn came last night to check.”
Words eluded Cara as her gaze fell on person after person lying dead. It was like a bad dream she waited to wake from. People she had talked with, laughed with, were forever gone.
She couldn’t stop the tears when they came to the nunnery and she saw the nuns lying dead atop the children. The poor Sisters had done their best to shield the children, but not even the nuns’ prayers helped them.
Cara’s gaze caught sight of bright red hair. She hurried toward it, ignoring Lucan’s call. The sight of little Mary’s pale face brought another rush of tears. Cara didn’t glance up when Lucan knelt beside her.
“I was collecting the mushrooms for Mary. She had a fever and Sister Abigail was mixing some herbs for her.”
Lucan didn’t say anything. He stayed beside her, giving her the time she needed to say farewell. When she started to rise, he was there to help her.
“Do we bury them?” she asked.
“Nay,” Quinn said from the doorway, his emotions guarded. “There’s too many.”
Fallon walked into the nunnery and shook his head. “If this hasn’t already gotten back to the MacClure laird, it will soon. We need to leave everything as it is.”
“I agree,” Lucan said. “The fewer people that know of us the better.”
Cara didn’t want to leave her people lying out to rot, but the brothers were right. They couldn’t be found out. If anyone learned what the brothers were, they would be hunted mercilessly.
“Let’s gather what we can,” Fallon said. “Any food or weapons you find bring to the castle.”
Lucan stopped her when she would have followed Quinn and Fallon. “Is there another gown you would like to get?”
She glanced down at herself. She was sure Quinn wanted her out of his wife’s gown. “I doona have another.”
“We’ll find you one.”
Cara nodded and walked behind him, numb and grieving, as he piled weapons and gowns in her outstretched arms. She blinked through more tears. The trek back through the village was worse than when she first saw it. The rain had washed most of the blood away, but her stomach turned when she saw a puddle filled with red.
“Don’t look,” Lucan warned.
“First my parents. Now the village,” she said through her tears. Anger and guilt consumed her and settled like a stone in her stomach. She had done this to the village. Had the wyrran found her, the village might have been left unharmed. “How many more people have to die for me? You? Your brothers?”
Lucan turned to her, his eyes warm and steady. “We’re immortal, Cara.”
“But you can be hurt,” she argued. “You might not die, but you feel pain, aye?”
“Aye,” he answered with a small nod. “But our wounds heal quickly.”
“So much death. Maybe it would be better if I went to Deirdre.” She didn’t want the burden of more deaths on her shoulders. Already her parents’ murders were too much to bear. Now Cara had the entire village on her conscience.
Lucan grabbed her shoulders and gave her a little shake. “Don’t say that. Don’t
“You don’t know what plans Deirdre has for me.” Fallon snorted as he walked past them. “Nay, Cara, but they cannot be good, whatever they are. Deirdre is pure evil. And if she’s hunting something, she wants it dead in the end.”
Lucan glanced at his brother. “Fallon is right. If Deirdre gets ahold of you, it’s over, Cara. Our best course is to find out what your mother’s blood means to her, and why she would want it so desperately.”
“More important, why wait until now to find Cara?” Fallon called over his shoulder as he walked out of the village.
Cara’s head spun as she thought of the times she had felt someone watching her but could never see anyone. How the Demon’s Kiss would warm and vibrate on certain occasions. All of which had begun at the equinox. Was it a coincidence?
She looked away from Lucan’s penetrating gaze and gasped when she spotted Angus. She rushed to him. He sat on the ground, leaning against his cottage with his head lolling to the side as if he were asleep.
“He warned me about getting near the castle,” she said to Lucan as he moved to stand behind her. “He knew about you, didn’t he?”
“He did.”
Emotion welled in her throat. Angus blurred in her vision as the tears filled her eyes. He had cautioned her to stay away, not because he feared the brothers but because he had wanted to keep them safe, keep them from discovery.
“He was a good man,” Quinn said from beside her.
Cara jerked her head to him, startled. Quinn had been at the castle not a moment ago, but then she remembered Lucan had told her one of their powers was speed.
She glanced at Lucan behind her. “Angus was a good man. He was always ready with a smile, always willing to help. He was one of the few who weren’t afraid to talk to me when I was brought to the nunnery.”
Quinn nodded, his brown hair blowing in the wind. “The first time I saw Angus he was a small lad of five or six. It was night and I was prowling as I’m wont to do. He never screamed or ran away in fear, not even when he saw what I really was. Instead, he started leaving food at the gate house. It dinna take him long after that to approach me. He helped get us anything we needed, and he guarded our secret well.”
Cara stared at Angus, his white fluff of hair lying over his eyes. Lucan laid his hand on her shoulder, his strength and comfort pouring into her with such a simple gesture.
With one last look at the people she had come to call her own, she turned toward the castle. It was time to face the future.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Deirdre ran her hands along the cool rocks of her home deep inside Cairn Toul mountain. Most Druids could hear the call of the plants and trees, but for her, she heard the stones. It was the beautiful, wild call of Cairn Toul that had brought her to the mountain.
The cave had been hidden, but the stones had told her how to gain entry. And once she had, she had seen
