He grabbed her hands and she pulled against him. “Broch—”
“He’s safe.” Sean coughed and again tried to gather her in his arms. His wife had rolled on her back since he’d left her. He saw her stomach was scarlet with blood. She’d been run through. The size of the wound...he didn’t know how she’d survived a second after the blade left her flesh.
But I do know.
She’d needed to save Broch from the fire. She couldn’t die until he was safe.
Isobel’s lids fluttered open as he gripped her shoulders, preparing to drag her out.
She grabbed his arm.
“Ryft?”
He paused, stunned she had recognized him, calling him by a name he hadn’t heard in so long. To hear it spoken in her voice, broke his heart.
She squeezed his hand and smiled before her features fell slack. Her grip on his fingers released.
“Isobel.”
Taking a deep breath, he grabbed her arms and stood, his head engulfed by smoke. He jerked her towards the door as a beam from the roof slipped, dumping the flaming thatch on him. He raised his arms, shielding Isobel with his body. The burning embers melted through his shirt, stinging his flesh like a swarm of angry wasps. Seized by a racking cough, he found it impossible to see through his watering eyes. He struggled to find his wife’s arms again. Just as his fingertips located her flesh, something bumped into his back, blocking his path to the door.
“Leave her,” said a low voice.
Sean ignored the man and gripped his wife’s arms tighter. The heat intensified. A timber fell from the ceiling and landed where his boy had lain a moment before.
He was out of time.
The man slipped his hands under Sean’s armpits and jerked him towards the door, forcing him to lose his grip on Isobel.
“No!”
Sean fought to break free but the man held him in a head lock, pulling him off his feet and dragging him towards the door. He thrashed, heels sliding across the floor, growing ever farther from the body of his wife.
“Stop!” he barked the words between coughs. His head swam, his breath coming in short insufficient gasps.
They crossed the threshold of the cottage and Sean felt his heels sink into the ground. The man dragged him another ten feet before dropping him to the dirt.
Sean rolled on his stomach and rose to his hands and knees, coughing, his nose clogged with ash.
He tried to speak, but found it impossible.
“Stop trying to talk. Just breathe, man.”
Sean twisted, trying to crawl back towards the house, eyes blinded by smoke and pain. The man pushed him with what felt like his foot, toppling him to his side.
“Catch your breath, you dumb bastard. She’s dead. Stop already.”
Sean shook his head, his chest heaving as he tried to breathe.
He heard the roof of the cottage give way behind him.
Too late.
He’d traveled nearly three hundred years for a second chance and he’d been too late.
Still blinded by tears and convulsions, he tried to scream at the man but the words caught in his throat.
Throwing out a hand, he squeezed a clump of peat in his fingers and tried to claw his way towards the cottage.
“Sean. Stop.”
Another racking cough made Sean curl as he fought for air.
He managed a gulp of breath and used it as a base for calming himself, pulling and pushing small sips of oxygen until his coughing subsided. Rocking to a sitting position, he watched his cottage engulfed by flames through squinted, watery eyes.
“Isobel,” he whispered, not daring yet to speak at full voice. His lungs felt as if they were filled with attic insulation.
The man who’ pulled him from the fire crouched in front of him, wiping the soot from his eyes with enormous thumbs, even as Sean fought to stop him.
“Leave me alone,” he croaked.
He pulled away, squinting, until the man’s head blocked the glow of the hazy sun and his features melted into view.
Sean could only wheeze the name.
“Luther?”
Chapter Sixteen
Broch walked outside and paused to scan the surrounding area. Heat radiated from the parked cars in wavy lines, softening the edges of everything baking beneath the relentless desert sun.
He made a clicking noise with the corner of his mouth.
Whit a hell-scape this place is.
Devoid of life, the world around him throbbed like a wound.
He felt the tip of a rifle poke his back.
Lifeless, bit fer the eejit poking the gun intae mah ribs.
A trill ran through the muscles in his back, taut like the strings of a harp.
Ah’m goan tae enjoy this.
He took another step before the gunman poked the back of his arm. “Turn around.”
Broch did as he was prompted. The man leaned his face closer.
“What are you smiling at, moron?”
Broch thrust his hands into his pockets and shrugged. “Ah’m juist a happy laddie.”
The man spat. “If I were you I wouldn’t be smiling.”
Broch grinned a little more broadly and nodded to the building “She admitted she loues me. At the end there. Did ye hear it? Ah tellt her afore and now she’s tellt me.”
The man scoffed. “Lot of good that bitch’s love is going to do you now. Take a look at your new home.” He motioned behind Broch with the gun.
Broch turned to the van behind him and tilted his head to peer inside. The bodies of the two workers lay there, partially stacked on each other. Plastic lined the floor of the van beneath them, as if the killers had always known the van would be used for transporting bodies.
Broch shook his head and mumbled. “Ye didnae hae tae kill them.”
“What?”
Still turned towards the van, Broch took a step back towards the gunman, mumbling a poem he recalled
