Chapter 31

 

 

Vic leaped off her horse and blasted into the Guild House, gripping her ax in one hand. She tore from one room to the next. Her breath wheezed in her parched throat, but she couldn’t stop now. She flung open every door she could find.

The cook shrieked when Vic rushed into the kitchen covered in gore and carrying a bloody ax. She charged into the pantry, looked around, and barreled out again. She searched every room on the ground floor before thundering upstairs. She found the room with Nikolai Wainwright’s things in it, peeked into every door on both sides of the landing, and headed back to the stairs as her own bedroom opened from the inside. She collided with Malcolm coming out of it.

“Lassie!” he gasped. “What? Why are you here again? I just sent you back!” His stare fell on the ax. “And what are ye doing with that?”

Piece by piece, he started to take in her general appearance. She saw the image taking shape in his mind but didn’t have time to answer any awkward questions. “Malcolm,” she panted. “I…I came to find you. You have to send me back to San Francisco…right now. There’s no time to waste.”

“That’s what I came here to tell ye,” he replied. “Boyd plans to interrogate ye, and he—”

She sliced her hand through the air to silence him. “There’s no time. Cast the spell—right now!”

His eyes flew open. “Now! But I thought ye’d want to…say goodbye first.”

She didn’t blush. “Do it now!” she yelled. “They’re right behind me. If they catch me here, they’ll—”

A crash interrupted her, and they both whipped around toward the stairs. Shouts and running footsteps echoed up from the ground floor.

“What did ye do, lassie?” he whispered.

“Please, Malcolm,” she rasped. “There’s no time to explain. Cast the spell before it’s too late.”

He backed up to the landing rail and glanced down, peering back and forth between the entrance foyer and her face. Vic’s breath squeaked in her constricted throat. Her eyes darted around the corridor. She had to get out of here. She had to convince him to cast the spell before those horsemen caught up with her.

Where did they come from? They must have been connected with the men she’d killed. They must have been on their way to the Guild House to rendezvous with Boyd. They would find their comrades dead in the garden if they hadn’t already.

Malcolm turned back, and when he saw the panicked desperation in her face, his expression hardened. “All right. Come on.”

He steered her by the shoulder toward the bedroom, but before they got through the door, several men pounded up the stairs and flooded onto the landing.

Vic shrieked in fright and rounded on them with her ax raised. Malcolm pulled his saber from its scabbard, and they faced the assault shoulder to shoulder.

The Gunns charged onto the landing and led the mob down the hall toward Vic and Malcolm.

Malcolm groped behind him for the doorknob. “Get inside, lass. I’ll hold them off as long as I can.”

“I’m not leaving you out here to fight them off!” she shrieked. “Are you insane? They’ll slaughter you.”

“They’re after ye,” he boomed. “Get back. I’ll protect ye.”

Neither of them had time to carry out their plan before the attackers struck. The first to reach the bedroom launched at the pair, brandishing sabers and dirks. Malcolm leaped forward bellowing in rage and met their blades coming down. He clashed steel against steel and succeeded in driving them back for an instant.

The next moment, more men flooded down the corridor. So many men now packed the landing that the crowd slowed itself from getting down the hallway and near the room. Malcolm crossed swords with three men at once, and they drove him back to slam against the door. The next five rushed in to cut him in half. He couldn’t free his weapons from the first fighters in time.

Vic saw the whole scene play out in slow motion, long past the stage where she could stand by and watch. She plunged into the battle, raising her ax on high in both hands as a bristling collection of blades hacked down on the wooden handle. Her enemies roared in her face, but she only bared her teeth right back at them. She knocked their weapons away and swung her ax to kill.

One of the assailants advanced behind the main cluster and aimed a pistol at Malcolm’s head. Malcolm dodged his head aside just in time, and the bullet smashed into the wooden door behind him.

The noise deafened Vic, but she was too enraged to care. She gripped her ax handle and swung it right and left with all her strength. She shattered sabers, and her weapon crunched against bone. Blood splattered her face, and she tasted it on her lips. That metallic elixir turned her into a rabid monster bent on destroying as many of her enemies as would come near her. She shrieked her fury at them and crushed them away, down the landing.

Malcolm grabbed hold of her sleeve and towed her back.

She rounded on him, spitting mad. “What’s wrong with you?” she screamed.

“Get back!” he called. “Fall back into the room.”

“No!” she yelled. “We can do this.”

He overpowered her and yanked her off her feet, into the bedroom. She still blasted her opponents right and left with her weapon until he’d pulled her out of range.

The attackers charged after them. Malcolm fought them off long enough to slam the door in their faces, but not before Vic caught sight of a solid wall of bodies filling the whole corridor.

Malcolm sheathed his dirk and turned the key in the lock in one swift movement as the mob started pounding on the door. He whipped around to face her, grabbing her by the shoulder with his free hand. “No time. Come on. I’ll send ye back right now.”

He panted for air. His saber still dangled from his right hand. He laid his palm against her forehead, but he was breathing too heavily to get the words out. He puffed out his cheeks to steady his nerves.

“Hurry,” she murmured.

“I ken!” he gasped. “Eshmun Hamilcar hanno ashtzaph byblos rae…” he began.

Just then, an extra loud bang rattled the door hinges and something snapped the wood. Splinters jutted into the room, and Malcolm whipped around to face the noise. Another blow followed up the first, and he removed his hand from Vic’s forehead to seize his dirk.

Vic beheld her last chance slipping away. She grabbed Malcolm’s wrist and placed his hand on her head where it belonged. “Don’t stop! Keep going. Don’t stop for anything.”

He started reciting again, but the incessant pounding and splintering distracted him. He stumbled over the words. “Eshmun Hamilcar…hanno.”

A devastating smash broke a hole in the door and a saber blade poked through. It slid out of view, only to slash through the splintered wood one more time.

Malcolm spun around.

Vic didn’t even notice him breaking off the spell as her every nerve and sinew braced to meet the danger.

Blades hacked the door to smithereens until it slammed open. A Highlander hauled his foot back from the latch where he’d kicked it in.

Malcolm lunged at the man before he regained his balance, hacked the blade out of his hand, and plunged his saber into the man’s heart. The stricken attacker toppled backward into his onrushing comrades. His body slowed their progress for a moment, but all too quickly, countless men barreled into the room as fast as the doorway would let them. Again, the sheer number of men trying to fit into the space slowed them and limited their ability to attack to Vic and Malcolm’s advantage.

Vic took her place at Malcolm’s side and they slayed each man as he came through the gap until there were just too many of them getting through. One clawing millimeter at a time, the Highlanders forced them back. Vic flayed her ax in every direction, shattering swords and splitting bone, but it did no good. For every man she killed, another three took his place. She sensed herself losing ground and fought harder, but the overpowering tide of bodies wouldn’t give an inch. Malcolm roared in her ear, but she couldn’t hear him over her own ragged screams of rage and murderous desperation. Every step the Highlanders drove her back cost her a scrap of hope that she would ever get out of there alive.

Once the Gunns had worked her and Malcolm away from the doorway, they poured inside the bedroom and they formed a semicircle to close the pair into the corner. She and Malcolm turned shoulder to shoulder and then back to back to hold the threatening swords at bay.

Vic hit the wall, then glanced to one side and found herself looking out the window. Stromness spread out before her with the wide sea beyond it. The Highlanders’ horses milled around under the window. If only she could win herself a moment’s reprieve, she could ride away on one of those horses. Still, the same problem faced her out there as it did in here. Every inhabitant on this island remained loyal to Clan Gunn and its vendetta against the immortals. This island offered no refuge, no safe harbor, from their vengeance now that she belonged to the Angui. She had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

She and Malcolm had turned against the Guild, and the Falisa would never stop hunting them. She’d blown Malcolm’s cover when he turned against the Guild to help her, and he could never go back.

One of the assailants clashed his blade against her ax. The impact knocked it loose in her grasp and she almost dropped it before snapping out of her dream to whirl around and face the present.

She didn’t have time to raise her weapon before the Highlander saw his chance. He plowed his saber tip straight for her chest. She flailed her ax aside just in time to block the stroke. The man wheeled his arms in a pinwheel motion, and she saw to her horror that he held another saber in his other hand. She tried to bring her ax up but couldn’t disentangle it from his right-hand sword. He made the connection at the same moment she did and gave her ax a vicious twist to yank it out of her grip.

She held tight to the handle, but the force jerked her off her feet. She smashed to her knees, only to face his left-hand blade sweeping down to cleave her head in. She let go of her only weapon to raise her arm in a feeble effort to defend herself.

A wild, thunderous snarl sounded in her ear as Malcolm lunged over the top of her and met the Highlander’s stroke coming down. Malcolm’s saber skidded down his blade as she cringed under his arm, her life flashing before her eyes. Malcolm caught the man’s left-hand sword and held it suspended above Vic’s head. Her ax still tied up his right-hand weapon, and Malcolm drove into the man’s unprotected chest, slamming his dirk between assailant’s ribs. The Highlander flinched in pain, but his body tensed and held firm. His grip on his weapons didn’t fail, even in death.

More Gunns pressed in from all sides. Blades flashed in every direction. One of the men rushed Malcolm before he could disengage with Vic’s attacker.

Malcolm yanked his dirk free of his victim’s body to bat the strike away, but before he could whirl around to make a decent defense, two more attackers plunged toward him.

Malcolm kicked one of them away but couldn’t reach the other in time. The Highlander made a parry. Malcolm twisted to avoid it, but he couldn’t react. The blade hit him in the stomach just below his sternum, and he doubled over in agony.