The Dark Highlander Read Free

only slowed his descent into darkness, not stopped it. Day by day he continued to change . . . felt colder, less connected, less fettered by human emotion. More detached god, less man.
    Except when he tooped—och, then he was alive.
Then
he felt. Then he was not adrift in a bottomless, dark, and violent sea with naught but a puny bit of driftwood to cling to. Making love to a woman staved off the darkness, replenished his essential humanity. Ever a man of immense appetites, he was now insatiable.
    I’m no’ entirely dark yet,
he growled defiantly to the demons coiled within him. The ones who bided their time in silent certainty, their dark tide eroding him as steadily and surely as the ocean reshaped a rocky shore. He understood their tactics: True evil didn’t aggressively assault, it lay coyly hushed and still . . . and seduced.
    And it was there each day, clear evidence of their gains, in the little things he did without realizing he was doing them till after they were done. Seemingly harmless things like lighting the fire in his hearth with a wave of his hand and a whispered
teine
, or the opening of a door or blind with a soft murmur. The impatient summoning of one of their conveyances—a taxi—with a glance.
    Wee things, mayhap, but he knew such things were far from harmless. Knew that each time he used magic, he turned a shade darker, lost another piece of himself.
    Each day was a battle to accomplish three things: use only what magic was absolutely necessary, despite the ever-growing temptation, toop hard and fast and frequently, and continue collecting and searching the tomes wherein might lie the answer to his all-consuming question.
    Was there a way to get rid of the dark ones?
    If not . . . well, if not . . .
    He raked a hand through his hair and blew out a deep breath. Eyes narrowed, he watched the lights flickering beyond the park, while behind him, on the couch, the lass slept the dreamless sleep of the utterly exhausted. On the morrow, dark circles would mar the delicate hollows beneath her eyes, etching her features with beguiling fragility. His bed play took a toll on a woman.
    Two nights past, Katie had wet her lips and oh-so-casually remarked that he seemed to be waiting for something.
    He’d smiled and rolled her onto her stomach. Kissed her sweet, warm, and willing body from head to toe. Dragged his tongue over every inch, then taken her, ridden her, and when he’d finished with her she’d been crying with pleasure.
    She’d either forgotten her question or had thought better of it. Katie O’Malley was not a fool. She knew there was more to him than she really wanted to know. She wanted him for sex, nothing more. Which was well and fine, because he was incapable of more.
    I wait for my brother, lass,
he hadn’t said.
I wait for the day Drustan wearies of my refusal to return to Scotland. For the day his wife is not so pregnant that he fears to leave her side. For the day he finally acknowledges what he already knows in his heart, though he so desperately clings to my lies: that I am dark as the night sky, with but a few starlike flickers of light left within me.
    Och, aye, he was waiting for the day his twin brother would cross the ocean and come for him.
    See him for the animal he was.
    If he permitted that day to arrive, he knew one of them would die.

A FEW WEEKS LATER . . .
    2
    Across the ocean in not Scotland but England, a land where Drustan MacKeltar had once erroneously claimed the Druids scarce possessed enough knowledge to weave a simple sleep spell, a hushed and urgent conversation was taking place.
    “Have you made contact?”
    “I dare not, Simon. The transformation is not yet complete.”
    “But it has been many months since the Draghar took him!”
    “He is a Keltar. Though he cannot win, still he resists. It is the power that will corrupt him, and he refuses to use it.”
    A long silence. Then Simon said, “We have waited thousands of years for their return, as was promised