Dark Knight of the Skye Page 7

  “Think you’re up to sittin’ by the fire?” he asked looking down at her.

  She didn’t say anything, just nodded once and realized she wasn’t being saved the way she had hoped for, but was completely grateful to still have her head. He slowly lowered her into to one of the chairs and kneeled beside her. He took her hands into his, and turned her hands palm up.

  “Seem ma boys treated you wrong.”

  “Who are you?” she timidly asked.

  “Alasdair MacFarlane.”

  “You’re Scottish?” she asked, surprise evident in her voice. “What does all this have to do with me?”

  “I am, and you’ll find out soon enough.” He stood and walked over to the side of the fireplace and pulled down on a rope that was hanging from the ceiling. “I have children to scold.”

  He walked out of her line of sight, and she was glad. She brought her knees up to her chest and became as small as she possibly could. He came back over a few minutes later and sat down in the chair next to her, putting his elbow on the arm of the chair and his finger on his temple with his eyes closed. She glanced over, waiting for him to move or say something but he was a still as a marble statue, and very much resembled one. A small tap sounded at the door.

  “Enter,” Alasdair called out.

  The door opened and in walked the two that she saw come through the back door, only this time they had a slender woman with long stringy brown hair between them. She was dressed in old tattered bits of cloth, bare foot and dirty. They all walked in front of Alasdair but only the two males dropped to their knees and bowed their heads. “Where is Laurence?” Alasdair asked in a stern tone.

  “She took his life my Lord,” one of the men answered.

  Alasdair looked at D`nae.

  “That’s a damn lie. I have never killed anyone or anything in my life.”

  “She threw blessed water in his face, Master… he did not survive,” the same man said in anger.

  “Poetic justice, is it not, Ramous? Did he not first try to kill her that night many years ago, when you all failed me so miserably?” he proclaimed, standing and walking around the chair.

  “Yes, Master.”

  “I come in to find her badly injured and chained like you would have this dog at your back. I have not been gone for more than a year and you four have caused me nothing but grief. Tomas has paid for my rage this night with his life. Now tell me, why have you been making yourselves known while I have been away?”

  “I do not understand, Master,” the man replied. Alasdair became so enraged that he instantly appeared in front of the kneeling man, not even giving D`nae time to blink, yet there he stood as if by magic. Before D`nae could draw a breath at the shock of his speed, he had the man by the throat, dangling two feet off the ground.

  “Are you telling me that you have not gone with your brothers and made unnecessary kills that brought attention to our stay here?”

  The man tried to speak but couldn’t make any sound because of the pressure that Alasdair had on his throat, so he began blinking his eyes over and over, never once raising his hand to touch the flesh of his master. Alasdair tossed his body across the room as if it were made out of feathers, slamming him into the solid wall. Ramous lay in a heap, while the master looked to the next kneeling man for an answer.

  “What say you, quiet one?”

  “I did as we all did, Master. It was foolish, and I deserve your wrath.”

  “You are free to go, Michael. Once you have this dog in her cage, bring back supplies to clean Miss Creel’s wounds. Take Ramous with you.”

  “Yes, Master,” Michael replied, never looking to the one who spoke. He went and lifted Ramous with the woman’s help, one under each arm and left the room.

  “Did they kill my landlady?”

  “It seems they are making more decisions on their own all the time. I suppose I cannot keep them children forever, now can I?” he proclaimed like a proud parent.

  “They are killing innocent people. How can you sound so nonchalant about it?”

  “Should we take the molester, or maybe the drug addicts? Why don’t you make me a list of those that you think we should feed from?” he sarcastically added.

  “Why am I still alive?”

  “Because I want someone, and I think you know where they are,” he said, pulling his chair closer to hers and taking a seat.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied looking down at her badly torn up wrist.

  “D`nae… I can smell his mark on your body,” he said, reaching out to touch her leg then pulling back.

  “I was attacked almost four years ago. I have lots of bite marks.”

  “No, not the ones on your breasts. I’m talking about the one between your legs, right next to…”

  “I know where it is,” she interrupted.

  “Then you know who I’m talking about. You see, D`nae, I am a very old being and if your Danny was to live long enough, which I doubt, he too would have the power to feel the presence of another’s pride in his domain. You, child, have been marked by a lead, a ‘president’ if you will, of his own territory.”

  “I don’t know where he is,” she lied.

  “Where were you when he marked you?”

  “I don’t remember,” she replied, enraging him. He stood so fast that the chair crashed over backwards and before she knew what was happening, she was flat on her back with his hand around her throat. She gripped his arm with both of her hands and couldn’t budge them, as she gasped for air. “You are not in a situation to be playing games,” he said through clinched teeth. She did her best to nod and he eased his grip.

  She took in several deep breaths of air as he leaned over her, his hand moved from the slender part of her throat to rest on her collarbone. “Look at me, D`nae.” She closed her eyes and turned her head as tears slid down the side of her face. “Look at me,” he repeated himself in a low tone. She opened her eyes and no sooner did they meet his, he took her with his mind. She felt as if she were floating at first, warm currents pulsed through her veins and all the pain left her body. She rolled her head to the side and waited for him to take the precious fluid that she now desperately wanted him to have.

  He lifted her up by the base of her neck and sank his fangs into her tender flesh, swallowing with every beat of her heart. Once he had fully and completely marked her, he lifted and carried her to the bed. She was like a woman drunk on ecstasy, every part of her belonging to him at that moment and as long as he controlled her mind, she thought he was all that she needed.

  Her hand slid inside his blue silk shirt as he laid her on the bed. She sat up, taking his mouth with hers, ignoring the taste of her own blood and worked him with her tongue. He ripped her shirt open in one swift pull, and began massaging her breast as they remained lock in their oral embrace. She started pulling his shirt down over his wide masculine arms, pinning them at his waist. She broke their embrace and slid her mouth down the thick muscle of his neck, gently nibbling along his collar bone until he reached up, taking a handful of hair at the back of her head and began kissing her neck before sinking his fangs in once again.

  Her back arched and she moaned out in pure pleasure, as he brought her to a full blown orgasm merely with his bite. He released and she dropped like a brick. She stared into the pale blue eyes of the man she thought she just made passionate love to and wondered why she would have done such a thing. He stood and she closed her shirt, looking more confused than ever. “So, Danny Gilmore is the lead of Scotland,” he replied and threw his head back, laughing like a madman.

  D`nae sat with her back up against the headboard of the bed, watching Alasdair pace the room repeating ‘The lead of Scotland’ and ‘How bloody ironic’, with D`nae not wanting to say a word. She kept putting her hand up to her neck feeling where he had bit her twice, wondering why she couldn’t remember half of what just happened; how she got on the bed and why she just engaged in the best sex that she’d
ever had with a vampire she just met. She was thinking ‘Danny’s going to hate me’ when Alasdair ran up to the bed and slammed his hands down beside her.

  “They sent his body back, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah, but he got out… how’d you know?”

  “It all makes sense now. Your Danny was a very lucky boy that night.”

  “What night?”

  “If the law hadn’t showed, you would have no head and Danny would have paid the price for his great-grandfather’s deeds,” he elaborated.

  D`nae shifted in the bed, just the thought of knowing they meant to kill her all those years ago unnerved her to the bone. Alasdair noticed and started laughing. “If I wanted you dead, don’t you think I would have done it by now?”

  “What did Danny’s family do? I mean, I know it had to be pretty awful to make you go to all this trouble to get Danny,” she asked timidly.

  “Martin Gilmore killed my brother and the woman I loved. She was mortal, like yourself, and the most beautiful woman seen on the Isle. Anogus was my twin and before we were turned, our family owned most of the land near the Isle of Lochalsh in the late seventeen hundreds. My brother and I were taken by an ancient and removed from the Highlands after we became what we did. After many years of serving our captor, we escaped back to our homeland only to find our people dead and our land taken by the greedy Gilmore’s.”

  “How long were you gone?”

  “Round seventy years, best I can remember. I first set out to avenge my people, but I saw her standing by the fire. To this day I can remember the way the firelight glowed in a halo around her curly blond locks, and the way her dress revealed the shape of her perfect body when she stepped in front of the fire. By the time we fell in love, she was ready to spend eternity with me. The small villages were already hot with rumors of white devils, the walking dead, and we knew we had to flee our precious land, the land that had been in our blood from the beginning of Scottish history. I sent my brother to fetch my bride while I made passage to England. I felt his screams in my head, then his pain in my body as I rushed to find him. Dawn was dangerously close when I reached the opening of a field where they held not only my brother but also my love.”

  He would have continued but there was a knock on the door. Before he could say ‘enter’, D`nae called out, “What?” She immediately looked back to see if he was going to be giving her a ‘who died and made you boss’ sort of look, which he was. “Sorry,” she mouthed, moving her hand as if to say ‘after you’.

  “Enter.” And only then did the door open.

  Michael walked in with a tray full of medical supplies and just stood there. “Place it on the bed and leave.” He sat it down and exited as quickly as he had come in. D`nae had all but forgotten about the wounds on her wrist, because she was so engulfed on the story Alasdair was telling. Most of her undivided attention was due to the mark that he had given her, a mark that rendered her helpless to so many of his allures. She didn’t even hold the fear of her own death any longer; he simply told her not to worry about such things and the thoughts vanished from her mind.

  “Would you like me to clean your wounds?” he asked, stepping back up to the bed.

  “That would be nice, thank you. Would you finish telling me the story while you do it?” she asked looking at him, willing him to say yes.

  He picked up the rag and dipped it in the liquid, squeezed it out and laid it across her right wrist, causing her to hiss in pain. He looked up and immediately she relaxed. He continued to wash out the scrapes and deeper wounds that the heavy chains had made on her flesh and started where he had left off.

  “Lucy Gilmore, my bride to be was hanging from a tree that stood in the middle of the field; they had stripped her down to nothing, just to shame her in front of the world. They mistook my brother for me, and had him lying on a wooden cross, driving iron stakes through his hands and feet, just like the Romans did your Christ. I can still hear his screams as they raised him, screams not of pain from the weight of his body tearing the flesh, but screams of revenge to the Gilmore family for all the harm that they had done to our family throughout the centuries. The whole time, the group around him was spitting, yelling “devil!”, throwing stones and stabbing spears into his legs. The sun was coming and I had no choice but to flee. It is something I have never forgiven myself for. The next night, I returned to find the black charred remains of him on that cross, with Lucy swaying, discarded like trash. I took her body to the Isle of Skye and buried her in her mother’s grave. I’ve never returned to my country and you are the first that I have spoken to about that night in over two hundred years.”

  “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “So you see why it is so important for me to find this Gilmore? He must pay for the sins of his fathers,” he said finishing with the last of the bandages.

  “Alasdair please, he wasn’t even around back then. Danny is a good person; he would never have allowed something like that to happen.”

  “Do you honestly think that you could say anything that would change my mind after all these years? I have dreamed of nothing but this for as long as I care to remember and no one will stop me from exacting my revenge,” he proclaimed. “The sun will be up soon, and I think you know what it brings. I won’t ask you to stay in here at all times but I will tell you it is pointless to try and free yourself from the lower levels of my home.”

  “What are you going to do with me, Alasdair?”

  “Whatever I please,” he replied, reaching over and picking up the tray, sitting it down on the floor.

  He crawled up on the bed beside her, laid his head down on the pillow and closed his eyes. She waited until she was sure he was dead to the world before she slid off the side of the bed, not taking her eyes off of him for a second, as if expecting him to reach out and grab her at any moment. She stood looking down at him and just like Danny he was nothing more than a corpse. After a few minutes, she took the blanket from the end of the bed and placed it over her shoulders, then walked over and leaned her ear next to the door.

  The only sound was the creak of the door as she pulled it open. The breeze of stale air blew her hair lightly as she stepped out into the open stairwell. She closed the door as easily as she could, not remembering that Alasdair couldn’t wake no matter how much went on around him. Across the hall was another door similar to the one she had just closed, only this one had a slide latch on the outside. She took a few steps before she heard the soft cries of a female, which made her move a bit faster. She listened at the locked door and when she was as sure as she could get that the woman was alone, she slid the lock back and turned the knob. The sound ceased with the click of the lock and D`nae froze in the unknown knowledge of what lay behind the door.

  She swallowed, closing her eyes, and took a deep breath through her nose as she opened the door just enough to peer in. The room was nothing like what she had just come out of. It was completely empty except for one large cage holding the very woman that stood in front of the fire while Alasdair had been speaking to the men. She was reaching for the only other item in the room: a bowl of dirty water that had been placed deliberately just out of her reach. D`nae’s heart dropped at the sight before her. She went to the cage and kneeled down, sliding the bowl closer. The woman looked up at her before taking the water and said, “Thank you.” D`nae dabbed at a tear that had escaped, as she watched the woman drink the dirty water like she was half-dying with need.

  “I’ll go find you some more,” D`nae said, taking the blanket off her shoulders. “Here, that floor has to be uncomfortable.”

  “You would be kind to me after I helped them find you?” the woman responded.

  “It doesn’t look like you’re in much better shape… my name’s D`nae, what’s yours?”

  “Tabitha and you are correct,” she replied, wrapping the blanket around her body.

  “I’m gonna go see what I can’t find. Alasdair told me it was useless to try to get out
of here, but I have to check it out for myself. I’ll find you something to eat if there’s anything around.”

  “He has the lower levels locked down and there are humans that work for him who watch his day-rest from the upper level. You must do as he says, or he will make you pay for your deeds,” Tabitha explained.

  “You’re the...” D`nae paused. “...the one who broke down the back door when they took me, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  “So you’re... a werewolf?” she asked, knowing that it was true, as preposterous as it sounded even to her.

  “I am less than what I used to be. I am nothing more than a dog to be used at his beck and call.”

  “How long have you been his prisoner?”

  “He bought me from my clan more than thirty years ago. At the time, it was the hardest thing that I had ever dealt with. I was put on a chain and treated like this ever since.”

  “I have friends that have been trying to stop him for some time, Tabitha. I won’t leave you here if you’re willing to get out of this place,” D`nae said, gripping the bars of the cage.

  “I have no other place to go; besides, he would not stop until he found us.”

  “I don’t care what happens, he can hunt till the cows come home, but you’re coming with me. I have a place we can go to, and the person there will help protect us from the likes of him.”

  “Why? Why would you do this for someone that you don’t even know?” Tabitha asked coming closer, placing her hands next to D`nae’s on the bars.