Son of the Morning Read online

  ’Twas her. Niall awoke, fiercely aroused and aching, but grimly triumphant. This time he had seen her face, this damned wench who tormented his sleep, who watched him from hidden places. He sat up in bed and thrust both hands through his hair, pushing it out of his face as he tried to firm his memories of the dream.

  He had been sitting on a stool at a high table, writing something, while she stood off to the side. He couldn’t remember what he had said, he just remembered looking at her, and the wench looking back at him, and lust abruptly burning through him. He held out his hand to her and she came to him, into his arms, and he had not even carried her to bed but taken her there, lifting her skirts and hoisting her onto his shaft. She was like liquid fire, flowing over him, lovely blue eyes closed and her face tilted back, exalted, as she pleasured him and he pleasured her.

  She felt fragile in his arms, her body tender, her skin silky. She had a great swath of dark hair hanging down her back, thick and sleek, and her eyes were as pure a blue as a Highland lake under a clear summer sky. Her face… a chill ran over him. Her face looked like an angel’s, solemn and slightly distant, as if she had some greater purpose. Her brow was clear and white, her delicate jawline slightly squared, and her mouth… “Ah, weel, perhaps not an angel after all,” he said aloud, relieved. That mouth put him in mind of a number of things, all of them very carnal.

  Still and all, there was something about her that made him uneasy, and Niall was a man who trusted his instincts. He snorted to himself. Aye, and so he should be uneasy, for she was likely a witch; how else could she watch him without being seen, and slip into his dreams whenever she wished? Witch or no, should she ever appear in the flesh he would be glad to give her the measure of his shaft in truth as well as dream, but he would not trust her.

  She had to have some purpose for watching him; perhaps she had somehow learned of the Treasure.

  It would be her ill fortune if that was what she sought, for he was sworn to guard the Treasure against all threat, be that threat from male or female. He had yet to kill a woman for it, but her sex would not save her. If she came for the Treasure, though he ached at the necessity, she would have to die.

  Grace slept past the eleven o’clock checkout, awakening only when the maid pounded on the door. She stumbled to her feet, told the maid to come back later, and fell back into bed. She woke for good at three, groggy from so much sleep.

  She stood in the shower for a long time, alternating hot and cold water in an effort to dispel the mental fog. She felt physically rested but mentally tired, as if her brain hadn’t shut down all night. She had dreamed endlessly, it seemed, her mind going over the short, violent scene in the McDonald’s parking lot, replaying it like a loop of film. Time after time she saw herself reach for the sheet of paper, saw “Creag Dhu” on it. She would feel the wind coming, know what was going to happen, and over and over she grabbed for the paper but every time it sailed out of her grasp, straight into Parrish’s hands. He had looked at it, smiled, and said, “Why, thank you, Grace.” Then he pointed a pistol at her and fired, and the dream would start all over again.

  She had also dreamed of Niall, of making love with him. His black gaze had pierced straight through her, as if he knew she had failed to protect the precious papers given to her. But he had held out his hand to her, demanding she come to him, and she had gone.

  “Come to me,” he had said. “Now.”

  A violent shudder wracked her, starting at her feet and moving upward until her entire body shook. Her knees gave out and she leaned against the shower wall, her mouth open and little whimpers coming from it. She couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t control the sensation of flying apart. Some external force pulled at her, tore at her, compelled her. Her eyes dilated and the dingy shower walls suddenly looked very bright, as if they were glowing.

  Come to me. Travel the years, six hundred and seventy-five of them. I have given you the knowledge. Come to me.

  The voice boomed inside her head, and yet it was from without. It was Niall speaking, but the voice that was low and devastatingly sexual in her dreams now sternly demanded, Come to me.

  The glow began to fade, and the quaking in her muscles gradually weakened until she was standing upright and steady. Cold water pelted down on her and hastily she shut it off, grabbing a thin towel to wrap around her head. She used another to roughly dry herself. God, she was freezing! How long had she been standing like a dope, hallucinating, under the cold water? She had almost given herself hypothermia.

  But she hadn’t been hallucinating. She knew it. It had been real. There really was a Power; she had felt it from the first moment she had seen those old documents. That was why she had been driven to keep translating them, lugging both them and the laptop around when doing so had been a lot of trouble. She had protected them when common sense should have led her to abandon both.

  Everything that had happened in the past eight months had led her inexorably to this moment, standing naked and cold in a dingy little shower in a truck-stop motel somewhere in Iowa, facing an unbelievable but suddenly crystal-clear conclusion.

  If it were possible, she had to travel through time. Parrish had the sheet; perhaps that was preordained, and there was nothing she could have done about it. But now that he knew, she had to prevent him from getting the Treasure, and the only way to do that was to force Niall to hide it somewhere else. Or perhaps—silly thought, because she wasn’t made of heroic material, but still—just perhaps, she was meant to find the Treasure, and use the Power to destroy the Foundation.

  She had to go to Creag Dhu—six hundred and seventy-five years ago.

  Chapter 18

  SPRING CAME SOFTLY TO THE HIGHLANDS. IT WAS MAY, AND THE mountains were carpeted with green. The cool, misty days could suddenly give way to bright sunshine and air so clear it hurt her eyes to see it. From somewhere would come a fragment of sound, the faint echo of a bagpipe, and the haunting sound made her soul weep.

  It had taken her four months to get here. At first she had simply kept on driving, going south, angling toward the east. The seasons changed as she drove, winter loosening its grip more and more the farther south she went, and it was in Tennessee, in mid-February, that she saw the first flower blooming. It seemed like such a miracle, in the form of a cheerful yellow jonquil, that she stopped driving then, and rested, and planned.

  An early spring, the locals said, after a mild winter. The jonquils were blooming a couple of weeks earlier than usual. The winter hadn’t been mild in Minnesota, but eight hundred miles farther south put her in a different climate, a different world.

  She had quickly realized she couldn’t do this alone, and there was only one person she could think of to call.

  Harmony had listened silently to Grace’s request to travel with her to Scotland for an unspecified length of time.

  “Scotland,” she finally said. “They don’t still paint their faces blue, do they?”

  “Only in movies.”

  “I don’t have no passport.”

  “That’s easy to get, if you have your birth certificate.”

  “You said you need my help doin’ something. Reckon you can bring yourself to tell me exactly what it is I’d be doin’?”

  “If you go,” Grace said.

  “I’ll think about it. Call me in a couple of days.”

  Grace gave her three days, then called again. “Okay,” Harmony said. “If I go, would I be doin’ anything illegal?”

  “No. I don’t think.” Given that she had to expect the unexpected, Grace couldn’t swear that she would stay on the side of the law.

  “Dangerous?”

  “Yes.”

  Harmony sighed. “Well, hell,” she drawled. “You do make it hard to resist, don’t you? How long would I be gone? I got my house to look after, you know.”

  “I don’t know. A couple of days, a couple of weeks. I’ll pay all your expenses—”

  “I’ll pay my own way, if I go. That way, if I get pissed, I won