Lucifer's Crown Read Free Page A

wrong.
    "You'll take the high road,” Calum crooned. “I'll take the low road past Ercildoune and into the gates of hell. They're coming. They're outside the door. Mick, I...” His voice stretched thinner and thinner and then broke.
    "Dad? Dad!"
    The echoing emptiness of the open line made Mick's head feel hollow. He stared at the receiver. His hand was numb. Pins and needles danced along his arm. Cold sweat ran down his back. Oh God .
    The office smelled as it had always done, of wool, paper, and old sausage sandwiches. Beyond the window the rain fell. Puddles on the pavement reflected the orange glow of the street lights. Above the sign reading “Dewar's Fine Woolens” rose the distant, gnarled outline of Edinburgh Castle, half-erased by the mist and the gloom.
    "I dinna believe this,” Mick said. “It's not happening."
    It was happening. And he was sitting there like a gowk. He batted at the phone cradle. When he heard the ordinary electronic pips of British Telecom he punched “999."
    "Emergency services."
    "Mick Dewar here. My father rang from a petrol station outside Carlisle. He's ill, off his head ... Aye, I'll wait."
    He threw his rucksack on the floor. It hit with a solid thunk, spilling books and folders and the long case of his practice chanter. If he didn't get himself to his lecture and hand in his essay he'd be docked points. Right now he didn't give a damn for either the lecture or the essay.
    He dropped onto the chair. On the desk stood the snap taken last spring, of him with his father in front of Dunnottar Castle. The stark ruins on their cliff above the sea looked like a studio backdrop behind the two smiling faces. Faces that were strikingly similar: square chins, keen gray eyes accented by supple eyebrows, high foreheads fringed by dark hair, Calum's silver at the temples, Mick's caught in a ponytail.
    That day Calum went on about a braw lassie smuggling the crown of Scotland away from besieged Dunnottar. The crown was a relic, right enough, but it was safe in Edinburgh Castle.
    That had been their only outing this year. Mick no longer had time for playing tourist. Now his dad was on his own, ill, hurt, far from home ... Mick slammed his fist onto the top of the desk. The picture fell over.
    He crammed the books back into his rucksack. On top lay Idylls of the King and other Poems by Tennyson. One passage leapt suddenly to his mind: “The curse has come upon me, cried the Lady of Shalott."
    "Hello?” said the dispatcher in his ear. “Mr. Dewar?"
    "He sounded as though his curse had come upon him,” said Mick.
    "Sorry?"
    "His fate, his doom. His weird.” Mick pulled a face. He was havering, daft as Calum. “My father rang me from a petrol station. He's off his head, he needs help. Carlisle. The car's a Ford Mondeo..."
    His hand clenched round the phone. He was going to bloody well find out what had happened to his father. And then he'd sort it out.
* * * *
    Maggie added a spoonful of sugar and a dollop of milk to the mug, and pressed it into Rose's hands. The British regarded tea as a specific against anything from toothache to war. When in Britain do as the Brits do. There wasn't much else she could do.
    It had been an hour since Rose ran into the youth hostel as though the hounds of hell were at her heels. Her hands were at last starting to warm up. Her color was better, too, if her features were still pinched. Although even in shock she was beautiful. With her fresh complexion and waves of golden hair Rose fulfilled the promise of her name, all the more lovely because she seemed artlessly unaware of her beauty.
    Turning forty , Maggie informed herself, isn't so bad you have to envy a twenty-year-old girl who looks her age.
    Sean buffed the far end of the dining table, adding the smell of polish to those of disinfectant and bacon, his face carefully neutral. He was a handsome young man, yes. His manner ranged just far enough between cocky and callow to be charming. But Maggie sensed