The Dark Highlander

Page 112

Couldn’t bear being in Scotland without him even one more second.
It had been two weeks since the horrible night that she’d been awakened by the sound of a car door slamming. Two weeks since she’d run outside after him, only to be taken hostage by sect members who’d been waiting for just such an opportunity.
Two weeks since she’d fled, sobbing, from the heart of the catacombs, and stumbled out of The Belthew Building to call Gwen and Drustan from a pay phone.
Two weeks since they’d joined her in London and searched every inch of the damned building.
At first, when Gwen and Drustan had taken her back to Castle Keltar, she’d been in shock, incapable of talking. She’d huddled in a darkened bedchamber, dimly aware that they were hovering nearby. Eventually, she’d managed to tell them what had happened—the part of it she’d seen—then she’d curled in bed, replaying it over and over in her mind, trying to fathom what had really transpired.
Realizing that they would never know for sure.
All they knew for certain was that Dageus was gone.
For two weeks, Chloe lived in a kind of excruciating suspension, a bundle of tension and grief … and treacherous hope. It wasn’t as if she’d actually seen his dead body. So, maybe …
So, nothing.
Two weeks of waiting, praying, hoping against hope.
And each day of watching Gwen and Drustan together had been the purest kind of hell. Drustan touched Gwen with Dageus’s hands. He lowered Dageus’s face to kiss her. He spoke with Dageus’s deep, sexy voice.
And he wasn’t Dageus. He wasn’t hers to hold, though he looked like he should be. He was Gwen’s, and Gwen was pregnant, and Chloe wasn’t. She knew, because Gwen had persuaded her to take an EPT a few days ago, arguing that if she tested positive it would give her something to hold onto. Unfortunately, she hadn’t gotten the cheery news Gwen had gotten seven months ago.
Her test result had been negative.
Like her life. A great big fat negative.
“I don’t think you should be alone,” Gwen protested.
She tried to smile reassuringly, but from the look on Gwen’s face, she suspected she’d managed only a frightening baring of teeth. “I’ll be okay, Gwen. I can’t stay here any longer. I can’t stand seeing . . .” She trailed off, not wanting to hurt Gwen’s feelings.
“I understand,” Gwen said, wincing. She’d felt much the same when she’d thought Drustan was forever lost to her, and had met his descendants. She could only imagine what Chloe must feel each time she looked at Dageus’s twin. And Chloe didn’t have the promise of his babies to cling to as she’d had.
The worst of it was, there were no answers. Dageus was simply gone. Gwen had clung to hope too, in those first few days, until Drustan had confided that since the night his brother had disappeared he’d not been able to feel the unique twin-bond he and Dageus had always shared.
They’d decided not to tell Chloe that just yet. Gwen still wasn’t sure they’d made the right decision. She knew a part of Chloe was still hoping.
“We’ll be coming to Manhattan in a few weeks, Chloe,” Gwen told her, hugging her tightly. They clung to each other for a time, then Chloe tore herself away and practically ran to the security gate, as if she couldn’t get out of Scotland fast enough.
Gwen wept for her as she watched her go.
The Maybe Game, Chloe swiftly came to realize, was the cruelest game of all, far worse than the What-Might-Have-Been Game.
The Maybe Game was parents who left for dinner and a movie and never came home again. The Maybe Game was a closed-casket funeral and a four-year old’s imagination when confronted with sleek, glossy boxes and the attendant, bewildering rituals of death.
The Maybe Game was an empty freaking room full of blood and no answers.
Maybe Dageus had used the power of the Draghar to free her, to kill the sect members, and magically transport their bodies elsewhere so she wouldn’t be confronted with the horror, where he’d then killed himself to make certain the Prophecy would never be fulfilled.
That was what Drustan believed. And deep down inside her heart, that was what Chloe believed as well. In her heart, she knew Dageus would never risk freeing the ancient evil to walk the earth again. Not even for her. It had nothing to do with love. It had everything to do with the fate and future of the entire world.
She’d endlessly replayed in her mind that moment when the knife had whipped away from her neck and gone hurtling through the air.
It had gone in his direction.
But maybe, another insidious little voice kept insisting, he and the sect of the Draghar had vanished one another … er, inadvertently, and … they would all come back. Eventually. Stranger things could happen. Stranger things happened on Buffy all the time. Maybe they were locked somewhere in mortal combat or something.