Chapter Eleven

Fintan left Beth to situate herself on the couch while he went to the windows and pulled the draperies shut. He took his time moving to the other side of the study for a bottle of Cabernet, all the while calling on the powers of his lighter half, the energies of his mother that dominated his soul to protect the room from Drandar’s observation. As he poured two glasses, he murmured timeless phrases in the language of his ancestors. Soft enough Beth couldn’t possibly hear—a talent he’d developed over too many years of living with Brigid. The fastest way to send his sister over the edge was to alert her to his wards of protection.

When he was convinced that his demonic sire couldn’t possibly intrude upon this room or sense the powers contained in the scroll, he took the leather-bound writings from his desk drawer, tucked them under his arm, and took it as well as the wine to Beth.

She accepted her glass with an unsteady smile. “Thank you.”

“Certainly.” She’d be thanking him soon enough when the seventy-five year old brew offered escape from all the things she didn’t want to hear.

Now where to begin.

He sank into the cushion beside her and set the scroll between them. “This isn’t what you think it is, Beth. The things you want to know aren’t written here.”

Her expectant expression fell. Disappointment dimmed her bright eyes, and Fintan’s heart twinged uncomfortably. She had her hopes set on finding written documentation. This wouldn’t be easy. Not in the least.

“What is it then?”

“An ancient ritual.”

“Oh.” She toyed with her wineglass, swirling the deep red liquid around the smooth crystal basin.

“What you want to know, you don’t want to hear. I can’t give you proof for it. But you are Selgovae. I should have realized it much earlier. As with many things, it was too obvious to consider.”

Her frown returned in an instant. “How can you say that? What do you mean I don’t want to hear?”

Fintan ignored the latter question, focusing instead on her inability to believe in her roots. The rest would come. “Let me tell you what you’ve seen in your dream. Tell me if I get it wrong.”

Beth shrugged. “Okay.”

Reclining, he sipped from his glass then set it on the end table. Nothing would make this conversation easier for him, not even wine that had aged two hundred years or more. “It’s Samhain. Identified by the tall corn sheaves, the offerings of grains, wheat, and apples sitting outside doorways.” He slid his gaze to her face, watching for recognition. Her frown remained, her expression impassive. “Children are playing with corn dolls. Gourds have been carved out and set with tiny fires to illuminate their thin shells.”

Her brow puckered, and she squinted at the glass she had yet to drink from.

“Down a dirt path—well used, I might add—the standing stones rise around an imposing bonfire.” He took a deep breath with closed eyes and tumbled through memory to that long ago night of sacrifice. He’d been seven the night his mother died, the last of his siblings that could remember the end of the Selgovae. But the memory was as vivid as if he had stood in the shadows of the trees, watching his brother Belen try to chase after their mother and the sister she carried, hiding from his sire as he’d been instructed to do. Looking at Beth once more, he exhaled long and hard, determined to ignore the rise of sorrow.

“There’s a man with long ebony hair. He stands taller than the rest of the people by a good head. He’s handsome, very powerful in physique. At his side, standing over a child who’s naked on the stone altar, is an equally beautiful blonde woman. They make an eye-catching pair.”

A flicker of recognition dashed behind Beth’s clouded eyes. Her fingers tightened on the glass, the hint of white showing on her knuckles. Indeed, she knew exactly what he spoke of. Her silence only confirmed that fact.

Now, all he had to do was get her to admit what she couldn’t bring herself to accept.

****

Beth listened to Fintan’s rich voice, shocked into silence by the details he pulled from her nightmare. He described the chaos as if he stood by her side on the path. Detailed the fear that weighed her down and forbade her to move. Uncanny accuracy that she couldn’t explain, no matter how she tried.

“As the woman lunges at the altar, there’s a blinding flash. Like lightning struck a nearby tree. Only…it didn’t. There was lightning on the horizon, an approaching storm. But even it didn’t come with clouds.”

Holy crap, how had he learned that? She might have been able to excuse a great lot of what he was saying to the fact he’d seen her colored pencil still life. But she’d left the lightning out. Hadn’t told a soul about the unexplainable flash of white, and she’d told Emily every other detail.

“A woman’s scream echoes over the fighting, a death cry that carries on endlessly. But the redhead is running. Gathering a mere handful of people with her and racing through the forest. Carrying children.”

“Stop.” Beth shook her head and lifted a shaky hand to drink deeply from her glass. “That doesn’t happen.”

“No?”

“The dream stops at the flash of light.”

“So you have no idea what Ealasaid did near that altar?”

“How do you know it’s this Ealasaid person?” She rolled her eyes, unable to truly accept the names and people from her nightmare were the legends the remaining tribe members evidently documented.

He ignored her question. “You told me a blood-covered feminine hand carved the runes into the monolith. Right?”

Beth nodded hesitantly.

“Ealasaid used the blood rite to ensnare Drandar. Her magic, combined with Nyamah’s trap—for lack of a better explanation—kept him from rising to undefeatable power. If she had not, the entire tribe would have died that night. There would be no survivors. You would not be here.”

“Nor you,” she countered with a touch of flippancy.

“No…I would be here still.”

What in the world? She frowned at Fintan, frustration increasing with his circular tale. “You just said there would be no survivors.”

His gaze dipped to where he plucked at an errant fiber on the couch’s arm. “Remember Nyamah saved eight children.”

“Ah. Yes. So you would be here. You descend from her line.”

He sucked in a short breath. “Not her line. I am her son, Beth.”

Blinking, Beth rapidly shook her head in disbelief. She hadn’t heard him correctly. Couldn’t have. Fintan had always been a little eclectic, but she’d have sworn he was sane. She hurriedly set her wineglass on the table behind her and scooted to the edge of the couch. “I think we should call it a night.”

Fintan’s hand settled on her shoulder. Firm pressure pushed her back into the cushions. “Running won’t change anything, Beth, and it won’t make this go away. It can’t change the truth.”

“I, ah, think we’re veering a little far from the truth now, frankly.”

His gaze flickered, dark light replacing his somberness. “Tell me how I could know exactly how Drandar looks, where Nyamah stands in your dream, and what Ealasaid does then.”

She stared, but no matter how she tried to dig for an explanation, she couldn’t find one. How did he know? Not one single reason came anywhere close to logical. Everything took her down the path of the metaphysical in some fashion or another.

“You can’t. And I couldn’t have known it unless I saw it too.”

“So we had the same dream?” Please, please, say yes.

“No.”

Beth closed her eyes, unwilling, unable to listen to any more. This wasn’t happening. She hadn’t gotten involved with someone who was half-sane.

“I was born one hundred and ninety-four years before the year Christians started counting time with Christ’s birth. I’m over two thousand years old, my sire is a demon, and my mother a priestess of light.”

That’s it—she was out of here. Bolting to her feet, she darted across the room, far away from the unstable man who occupied the couch. “I don’t know what you think I am, Fintan, but I’m not stupid. No one is immortal.” She set a shaking hand on the heavy deadbolt and pushed it aside. “And I’m leaving. This room. This house.”

“Beth!” He shot to his feet. Five long, determined strides closed the distance between them.

But as Fintan’s fingers grazed her elbow, Beth yanked open the door and dashed into the hall. He was crazy. As off his rocker as his sister. And to think…she’d nearly gotten caught up in the fantasy of Fintan, Scotland, and painting once again.

How stupid could she be?

Racing down the hall as fast as her feet would carry her, she fled for the safety and solitude of her room. In the morning she’d catch a cab to the airport, her ancestry be damned. Fintan could keep the scroll. It might hold a key to her past, but she couldn’t tolerate the thought of confronting him long enough to ask for it back.

Her life was waiting on her. Dreary, mundane, normal as it was.