Highland Moon Sifter (a Highland Sorcery novel) Read Free Page B

medical plan Aldreth offered. Either that or the witch left the village unharmed in exchange for services.
    She watched a handful of women leave the castle through the large doors and step onto the pathway past the stables and into the forest that would take them to the small village. She had to get inside that castle and her best chance looked like infiltrating it as one of the village women.
    Bekah pulled up to her knees, ready to creep through the forest and follow the women when one of the large doors pushed open again. Bekah lowered back down to watch who came out next since there hadn’t been much activity except for the women.
    Even without the two guards bowing their heads in deference to the man stalking out from behind the door, she’d have known who he was.
    The physical resemblance to his brother Col was unnerving. They even moved with the same prowling man-on-a-mission stride.
    Shaw Limont. Moon Sifter. The destroyer of magic’s balance. The maker of monsters.
    If she’d been able to carry her pulsar through the time rift, she’d shoot him right where he stood.
    He adjusted a bow that was as long as he was tall across his shoulder and took off across the grass to duck into the trees only a few yards from where she hid.
    Shaw Limont was going into the forest alone.
    This was too easy.
    Kill him, take out any remaining Sifts here, destroy their remains, and the monsters will never be created.
    Unmade.
    Boom. Done.
    Who knew, once Shaw was dead, the Sifts that traveled through time here might simply disappear, never having existed.  
    She might disappear too, never having the need to travel back.
    It was a paradox, but one she and all of the straggling remains of the human race needed her to take.
    Fisting the fire poker she’d pulled out of the oozing temple of the Sift before she burned its body, Bekah followed the Highlander through the trees.
    He moved with quiet economy, hardly making a sound as he brushed past low branches. Stepping into a small glade, he stopped and tilted his face to the open patch of dark sky.
    The moonlight filtering through the canopy struck his long hair like a ripple of black velvet down his back. Silver light brushed the hard edges of his lean face. Of course he’d come out to bathe in the moon’s glow, the source of a Moon Sifter’s magic.
    Bekah’s next breath slowed in her chest. He was beautiful like a sculpted Roman statue of marble. The Limont boys were all attractive, she’d give them that. But wow, the complete stillness of the Moon Sifter’s body struck an almost reverent hush within her heart. She’d scavenged a museum of art once, though there wasn’t much food stores left in the cafeteria. It held the same kind of reverent feel. There’d been plenty of swords and blades for the taking though, which she’d used as an excuse to linger for hours, looking at forgotten art and sculptures, a pang of sadness at what humans left to rot in the face of survival. The same sadness swirled in her chest now at the beauty she was about to destroy.
    Her lips firmed. The human race was nearly gone. Because of this one man. His choice to betray his family and clan and destroy the balance of magic began it all.
    There was a rustle in the trees. Both she and the Moon Sifter snapped their attention eastward.
    Bekah’s hand curled tighter on the poker, dreading the Sifts had found her.
    He eased the bow from his shoulder and removed an arrow from the quiver on his back and had it nocked just as a feral deer stepped into view. The man pulled the string bending the longbow.
    Stretching her neck up to get at the budding green growth on the side of a tree, it was apparent by the swollen belly that the doe was carrying.
    Shaw Limont’s arrow remained centered on the doe’s heart, his expression cold and deadly. Bekah watched, studying her opponent’s skill and what she was up against. His fingers twitched before lifting the arrow aside and taking the tension off the bow.
    Bekah