Chapter Fourteen

Moonlight streamed in through Beth’s window, casting the room with faint light. She lay awake, listening to the sound of Fintan’s easy breathing, unable to find the peace he knew in dreams. The combined events of the last two days pounded at her skull.

She’d let Fintan in, deeper than he belonged.

Restless and plagued by confusion, she gave up on finding sleep and slid off the mattress. Her robe caught under Fintan’s bent knee, forbidding her complete escape. To avoid waking him, she shrugged completely out of the terry.

His earlier words accompanied her to the window. Running won’t change anything, Beth. We can’t solve this with an ocean between us. I need this, Beth.”

She flattened a palm against the cool glass and stared out at the moon-kissed mountaintops. No, they couldn’t solve this with an ocean between them, and she needed his presence as much as he needed her touch. But Scotland? She couldn’t practice law in Scotland. She couldn’t paint either, and she’d be damned if she subjected herself to the level of control Dan had over her life by becoming dependant on Fintan.

Yet…

She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to the pane, biting back heartache she couldn’t deny. Nothing made sense anymore. She didn’t want to leave, couldn’t stay.

I am over two thousand years old, my sire is a demon.

How was she supposed to believe that? And still…how could she not when Fintan recited glimpses of her dreams as if he’d stood there and dreamt at her side. How could she ignore the very real truth that she knew exactly where to find the column of runes on the monolith?

Lightning that did not come with clouds.

It hadn’t ever accompanied a single cloud in the sky. Stars burned bright. Beacons of light that offered…hope…she shouldn’t feel in a dream. Hope. She experienced hope when that light flashed across the midnight sky.

Oh, this was insane.

Opening her eyes, she curled her fingers into her palm and stared at the landscape stretching beyond the window. The circle of standing stones peeked through the sparse trees, bringing to life once more her plaguing nightmare. As she looked at the hidden glade, the pounding of drums pulsed in her blood. A strange tingling prickled her skin, lifting the fine hairs along her arms.

Sometimes we are given knowledge we don’t necessarily want. For reasons we don’t necessarily understand.

My sire is a demon…

Tears blurred her vision. He wanted her to believe the impossible. One moment he offered her a glimpse of heaven in his arms, the next he fed her whimsy by encouraging her to paint, and in the next he spoke like a madman.

And no matter how she tried, she couldn’t quite convince herself Fintan wasn’t sane. He knew things few scholars understood. People all over the world sought out that knowledge. A crazy man couldn’t claim that level of esteem without someone picking up on his instability.

But how could he possibly be telling the truth?

Even better, how did she fit into this equation? She was American. Her home in Manhattan, her life in the States. She was Baptist. She didn’t believe in reincarnation, and she certainly didn’t buy into the claim of his immortality.

Did she?

No one on this earth would believe him.

Everyone would say she’d lost her mind as well.

Her mother would disown her if she moved to Scotland.

Hot salty droplets trickled down her cheeks, though she ordered them not to spill. Each wet trail made the next fall faster. She no longer knew who, or what, she was. No longer understood her place in this world. Two days ago she’d been so convinced…

Or had she? Two days ago she’d fled a caseload just for a few impromptu days with Fintan.

She couldn’t leave, she couldn’t stay, and the only person who could offer comfort wanted her to believe in a crazy story about immortality.

****

The sound of crying tugged Fintan from dreamless slumber. Not moving, he opened his eyes and waited for them to adjust to darkness. When they had, and he identified the source of the quiet sniffles, the choked back sobs, he grimaced. Beth leaned against the window, her bare skin washed in silver, her slight shoulders trembling as she wept. Around him, her energy swirled in chaotic waves that lacked direction. He had caused this. Brought her to tears and torn her to pieces.

He’d hurt the one woman he would rather die than wound. And her pain tripled the ongoing ache behind his ribs.

Slowly, he sat up. “Beth? What’s wrong?”

She turned around surprised, giving him an agonizing view of the tears that glistened on her face. With a furious swipe of the back of her hand, she wiped them away. “It’s nothing.”

“No, it’s something.” He patted the mattress beside him. “Talk to me.” She couldn’t leave him twisting in the wind. He’d done something—and he suspected he knew a portion of her upset—but he was genuinely clueless what caused her such distress.

“Why do you want me here, Fintan? What use am I to you? What do you gain?”

What use was—he blinked. What did he gain? His stomach did a long slow roll as it wound into a knot. Didn’t she understand he wasn’t like her ex, that all he wanted was her? Beth when he woke up each morning, smiling that beguiling smile. Beth covered in paint as she tuned out the world and became lost in the one thing she would love more than any man.

Beth touching him in the mesmerizing way that somehow stitched the two halves of his divided soul into one contented entity.

“What am I supposed to do with this, Fintan?” Her voice trembled. “I don’t know what to do with any of it. What it means, what you mean, what you want. I don’t know how to…accept the things you say.” She worried a shaky hand through her long, tangled hair. “And I don’t know how to walk away, either.”

Fintan sat as still as stone. Wanting to go to her. Unable to move. For as she tucked her face into her hands and yielded to a heartrending sound of pain, his heart failed to beat. A feeling swept over him unlike anything he had ever before experienced. Tying him together, tying him into her.

The last conscious thought he’d had before sleep dragged him under clanged in his head. I love you, Beth.

And that love stormed through him as he watched her grieve, witnessed her physical fight between her heart and her head. With the intolerable knotting of his lungs came a sinister pleasure. The sick delight that she would feel pain, that he had subjected her to the torment tugged at the back of his mind. Even deeper lurked the taunting call that her death would satisfy him even more.

His eyes widened in horror. No. He’d let her in too far. Damn his vile sire!

Curling the quilt into his fists, he fought down the rising darkness, called on every last vestige of his lighter soul. He hadn’t spent two thousand years practicing his mother’s teachings to end like this. Hadn’t reached the vast power he possessed only to succumb to the dark blood that lurked in his veins.

He would not harm Beth.

Deliberately he stood, picked up his pants, and back-stepped from the bed. “I’m sorry, Beth.”

“Sorry?” Her head snapped up, shock parting her lips. “Where are you going?”

“I can’t…stay.” Not until he managed to curb these intolerable thoughts, to stop the twisted visions of her blood spilling on the Imbolc altar. “We can talk about this tomorrow.”

His back hit the heavy wood door, and he reached behind him to lift the deadbolt. He possessed sense enough to murmur words of warding at her threshold to keep Brigid, Drandar, even himself away, and then he backed into the hall, closing the door on her ashen expression.

She didn’t understand. Couldn’t possibly comprehend why he couldn’t stay when she most needed his reassurance. But tomorrow, when he’d dug through his mother’s ancient spells and found a means of temperance, he’d tell her the last tidbit of Selgovae heritage she needed to know.

With luck, she wouldn’t bolt as she had tonight. Fintan didn’t know how long he could fight off the curse. But in time, it would claim him. Nothing but mortality could lift damnation.

****

Beth stared at her unmoving bedroom door, unable to logic what had just happened. She’d turned to him in tears—her first mistake. Men didn’t like weepy women. Dan taught her that. Taught her emotions only left her open for more hurt. She should have known better than to trust the contented feeling Fintan stirred and trust her instincts instead.

Worse, his abandonment shouldn’t hurt the way it did. Like claws ripped through her, she gasped against the fire in her chest. Her stomach rolled violently, churning with each painful beat of her heart.

He’d turned away.

Clearly, she’d let him creep past her barriers further than he belonged. She’d become caught up in passion, desire that spurred meaningless words and allowed Fintan to go to her head. Worse, if he’d said one word that enforced his earlier confession about needing her, if he’d hinted he cared about her, she’d have come running into his arms. Thrown away her career, the life she understood, for him.

Her gaze skipped to her suitcase, now toppled on the floor. She had to get out of here. Somewhere between flying across an ocean and making love to Fintan tonight, she’d lost herself. Stay in Scotland? A bitter laugh gathered in her throat. Scotland could sing to her heart timelessly, but she would never belong in these majestic mountains.

She was an attorney. An American. A woman who had veered away from following her heart and slid down the same damnable path of letting a man influence her decisions.

When dawn broke, she’d catch the first flight out of Edinburgh. She was too exhausted, too at the end of her limits, to finish packing right now. Then, when she’d landed once again in Manhattan, she’d sort her thoughts, consult Emily, and decide which way to go, how to resolve these feelings for Fintan McClaine, or whether she resolved them at all.

Maybe the best thing she could do was never look back. Move forward as she’d initially planned, take the knowledge Fintan gave her, and bury the past.

Flopping onto the bed, Beth waited for the burning in her eyes to yield tears. But they didn’t come. She’d already cried all the ones she had to shed.