And then the captain strode out of the shadowed door, another purple poofter outfit but with gold slashes on the sleeves and a sword at his belt. Brian felt the tension easing from his shoulders. Duncan. One of his field commanders.
Duncan stopped, looking as startled as the guards had been. "Brian Albion, by all that's holy! When did you join the Circle?" He turned to the guards and waved them back. They snapped to attention, presenting the SMGs as a salute, boot-heels ringing on the stone. Bloody Coldstream Guards.
Then the captain scowled, staring first at Brian and then the guards. "Forgot the password again? This isn't the SAS, laddie. Every man in the unit doesn't know you and wave you through on the strength of your pretty face. But I'm glad to see you made the grade. I'll walk you through the next Circle." And he turned and stepped toward the archway with the disk.
Brian felt the tension return. "Circle," again. He grunted non-committal agreement. Following Duncan sounded like a bad idea. The guards would let him move now, and he'd lost Fiona for the moment . . . he set his thoughts on the pasture oak and stepped forward. Circle? What have I walked into? And can I walk out again?
Instead of sunshine and green fields and the fieldstone border fence, he stepped into another dark heavy space lit by oil lamps. That "gatehouse" must be shielded, with a one-way ticket out. And then pieces of the scene fit together in his head -- the room made a twin to the one in Maureen's cellar, complete with central menhir. He glanced down. Yes, it had the same stone flooring, the same labyrinth pattern leading to the twin of her quartz star. But this space was clean and lit and occupied, and the brooding atmosphere of old injury and hate was gone. Whatever the labyrinths were designed to do, this one would work.
Another purple body stood dead ahead, next to Duncan, arms akimbo, staring. The stance and angular body cancelled any faint hint of femininity. Oh, shit. Dierdre.
He could have gotten on just fine without adding her to his day. She taught the order's survival classes, the meanest drill-sergeant he had ever met. As far as he could tell, she didn't want her students to live through the course. Some of them didn't.
And she did interrogations when the Pendragons really wanted to learn whatever a prisoner happened to know.
"What the fuck's he doing here?"
She stalked over to glare in Brian's face. No, she hadn't mellowed any since he'd last seen her.
Duncan smiled. But then, he outranked her. "Brian's come into the Circle. Nobody ever tells me anything."
"Congratulations!" She reached out to shake his hand, her grip stronger than you'd believe from a woman of her build, and suddenly jerked him forward. She spun, pulling his hand and arm up until she tucked in under his armpit while slamming her left elbow into his gut. He sagged around the pain, and she carried him over her hip into a throw. Brian tucked and started to roll out of it, but came up against her knee in his throat. Two fingers hung an inch in front of his eyes.
He fought for breath, his head ringing. He heard dim noises. Duncan? Questioning?
"The hell he is," Dierdre growled in answer. "I'm on the Board. I'd know. And he's been AWOL since he offed Liam. I'm taking him through to Corbin. Summon the Captain-General."
Chapter Eight
He left me.
The rain poured down, matching her mood. Maureen sat under a tree, a European copper beech to be fucking specific, and let the cold water soak her jeans and blouse and run dripping down her forehead and into her eyes. Raindrops, not tears. She saved her magic for protecting the bottle. No way was she adding water to the precious uisce beatha.
Maureen raised her bottle in a toast to the lightning that danced around her tower, wishing it health and happiness. Somebody fucking deserved a little happiness.
White fire burned a jagged line across her eyes, leaving a purple glow in its wake. The snap of thunder followed so close that she didn't have time to blink. It came back as rumbling booms that echoed across emptiness.
He left me.
Well, you tried to claw his eyes out. The critic had come back to fight another round. Getting to be kind of a habit, isn't it? Only with Dougal, you succeeded.
The keep was empty. Sure, there were maybe twenty or thirty humans in there, former slaves huddling away from her wrath. But Brian had left. The heart of it had left. She'd felt him leave, as she'd walked toward the Sunrise County Courthouse to post his bail. One moment there in Naskeag Falls, the next moment gone. And he hadn't come back. He hadn't bothered to leave a goddamn note or even yell at her.
Left with some brunette with big tits, the duty sergeant had made it plain. One of so many ways in which Maureen couldn't compete to hold a man.
And what would he come back for? A kick in the balls, next time? Or would you just carve his heart out of his chest with your fingernails and eat it for a morning snack?
She'd tried to follow his path down into the cellars, see if he'd left some clues down there. Down into the dungeons, to be more exact, and the damp sour musty reek and darkness had closed in around her and sucked her back to Dougal and Padric and weeks of beatings, weeks without sleep, weeks of hunger and cold and the slow dive into madness as she stared at the stone walls of her cell. Part of her soul was still locked behind cold iron.
Her hand shook with the memories, and she drained another
