They galloped for a few minutes before Luther reined in his mount. He lifted the gray, woolen cloak wrapped around his massive frame and glanced at his watch. “It’s time.”
He turned the Clydesdale to face the direction they’d come. Sean saw the cottage, the smoke barely visible now. From their position, tiny Broch was nothing more than a dot on the ground.
Sean felt bile rise in his throat.
I can’t do this.
He was about to demand Luther return when a man and a woman appeared, running over the hill and into view. The man ran to the cottage and disappeared inside the sticks that remained. The woman covered her mouth as she watched. A moment later her head turned, as if someone had called her name. She scurried to Broch and picked him up. The boy must have cried, but Sean couldn’t hear.
“My neighbors,” said Sean, recognizing them. “They found him.”
“I told you.”
“So they’re the ones who took Broch to the Broken Women?”
Luther nodded.
“They were poor. Another mouth to feed would have been too much.” Sean tried to take a deeper breath and winced at the pain. He rested his forehead on Luther’s shoulder.
“How did you know all this? What are you doing here?” he whispered, trying to avoid another coughing fit.
Luther reached down and patted the side of Sean’s calf as he turned his mount. “We’ve got a lot to talk about, buddy.”
~~~
Half an hour later, Sean sat across from Luther in a small dark tavern he remembered visiting thirty years previous, or three hundred years, depending on how he looked at it.
Across the room he saw the booth where he and Isobel had supped for special meals out. It felt like only days ago, the way she’d picked at her lamb stew, pointing out the shameful lack of meat. They’d laughed about how much better her stew was, how maybe she should share her recipe with Luke, the tavern owner.
Feeling his emotion rising, Sean looked away and stared at the friend he’d only ever known in modern Los Angeles. He found it difficult reconciling the image of Luther so misplaced in his old tavern. He still wore a gold earring in his left ear. He was still enormous, though the muscles usually visible peeking from the sleeves of his work polo shirts were now hidden by his large woolen cloak.
Sean took a deep breath, the sting of smoke still aching his lungs. He felt sadness on so many different levels he didn’t know where to start or if he could muster the strength to begin.
“You made me leave my baby outside a burning building.”
Luther grunted. “I let you watch the woman find him. I shouldn’t have even done that. They could have seen us.”
Sean put a hand on his forehead. “I must have knocked my brain in the car accident. This is some kind of fever dream.”
Luther shook his head. “Not a dream.”
Luke arrived tableside to place a tankard of ale in front of each of them. He eyed Sean’s modern dress, frowning with suspicion. They made eye contact and Sean thought he saw a flash of recognition in the man’s face. Just as quickly, Luke appeared to shake away the idea he could be looking at a man he knew, thirty years older. He returned to his seat behind the bar with a grunt of disapproval.
Luther pushed the beer in front of Sean. Sean took a sip. It tasted real enough.
Luther raised his own tankard and Sean spotted the collar of Luther’s work polo beneath his cloak.
“You must have been in a hurry, too,” he said.
Luther’s brow furrowed and Sean pulled at his own polo collar.
Luther’s fingers scrambled inside the neck of his cloak to touch his own modern dress. He chuckled.
“Yeah. Lucky, I knew where they were filming that dragon movie. Thought I’d grab a cloak to make life easier.”
Sean looked down at his own clothes. “I didn’t have that luxury. So that white-eyed ghoul didn’t get you too?”
Luther shook his head. “He didn’t send me here. Not here by his hand, anyway.”
“So you planned this? How are you here? How did you find me? How did you never tell me—”
Luther held up a palm. “Easy. One at a time. I’ve got questions for you, too. We can take turns.”
Sean scoffed. “Oh, by all means. Let’s play a game. It’s that kind of day.”
Luther sniffed. “Tell me how you ended up here first. What happened to you?”
“Catriona’s daddy happened to me.”
“Rune.”
Sean paused, his ale nearly to his lips, and put down the tankard.
“How did you know his name? Did Catriona tell you?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
“Same as I know your real name is Ryft.”
Sean scowled, hearing that name twice in one day.
“I probably told you my name was Ryft when I first showed up.”
“Yeah, well. I already knew it.”
“So you knew this guy, Rune, back when I found Catriona? When I nearly cut him in half?”
Luther shrugged one shoulder. “Not exactly. I knew of him. Things were a little fuzzy that particular day.”
“You got shot.”
“Yeah, there was that.” Luther took a sip and continued. “Rune came after you?”
Sean nodded. “Seemed like it. He followed me from the lot. When I pulled over to confront him, he jumped from his car, gun blazing.”
“He shot you?”
“Not just then. I dove back into the Jag and took off. In the rearview I watched a truck mow him down in the street. I was wondering how Catriona would take the news of her father being flattened, when the bastard appeared
