“What ken you of spells?” Cian asked softly.
“More than you, I’d wager.”
“Not a chance. Stay out of my affairs.”
Jessica tried to interject, “Do either of you see the slightest re—”
“This village and all in it is my affair. This is my world, stranger,” Dageus retorted flatly.
” ’Twas my world long before it was yours, Highlander.” Cian’s smile showed teeth, but no amusement.
Dageus went motionless but for that intense golden gaze, scrutinizing Cian thoroughly. Again Cian felt a push at his mind, more subtle than the last, yet much more forceful.
He shoved back, much more forcefully, as well, and this time the man’s unusual eyes flickered the tiniest bit.
“You doona mean what I think you mean by that,” said Dageus.
“Thinking implies sentience. I see little of that in you.”
“Look in a mirror, you’ll see even less. I’ll have your clan name, Highlander. What is it?”
Jessica piped up, “Speaking of looking in a mirror—”
“You’ll have my clan name and a battle. ’Tis Keltar,” Cian spat. “And yours?”
“Keltar,” Dageus spat back.
Cian stared at him, stunned.
Beside him, Jessica exclaimed, “I knew it, I knew it! That’s what I was trying to tell you, Cian. That the two of you look alike!”
* * *
18
“Get back here. You can’t be finding out that you’re my kinsman and then just go stomping off,” Dageus snapped at Cian’s broad retreating back.
“Watch me,” the towering barbarian flung over his shoulder. To the dazed salesman, he ordered, “Pack it all up and load in the black SUV outside the door. Here are the keys. Lock it when you’ve finished. I’ll return for it anon. You will not speak of me or my woman to anyone.” Banding an arm around the curvaceous, raven-haired woman’s shoulder, he steered her toward the door. “We have much yet to do. Come, lass.”
Dageus watched in disbelief as his ancestor, Cian MacKeltar—he was assuming it had to be the ninth-century Cian MacKeltar standing before him, for he’d ne’er heard of any other Keltar with that name—prepared to stalk off into the Highland morn without so much as a “fare-thee-well.” Without even having offered a “good-morrow, kinsman,” for that matter.
Without so much as a blethering word of clanly tidings.
Without a single explanation for this incomprehensible happenstance!
Furthermore, the man was indiscriminately using Voice, left and right, as if no rules applied to him whatsoever.
“I assume you’ll be paying for those goods,” Dageus said pointedly.
“You assume wrong.”
With that, the massive, wild-looking, tattooed Highlander guided the woman out the door, the salesman close on their heels.
Dageus glowered at the closing door. Christ, his ancestor was a savage! No wonder he’d gotten such a bad name. He looked uncontrollable, and he behaved like a barbarian. And by Danu, the power he sensed in him! Raw, rich, potent magic flowed through the man’s veins, not blood. If the Draghar had gotten their claws into Cian rather than him . . .
He blew out a long, deep breath. ’Twas a damn good thing they hadn’t. Though he couldn’t fathom for a moment what might have prevented such a primitive, egotistical beast from breaking any rule he damn well pleased, including using the standing stones of Ban Drochaid for his own purposes.
What was he doing here? How had he gotten here? Where had he been for the past eleven centuries? Who was the woman with him?
He’d tried probing her while she’d stood at Cian’s side, but had encountered some kind of sleek, smooth barrier. Was she a practitioner of magycks, too? His deep-listening talents had been growing by leaps and bounds over the past few months and he should have been able to pick up something. But he’d not gotten a flicker of a thought or emotion from her.
“Drustan’s not going to like this,” he muttered darkly. “Nay, he’s not going to like it at all.”
If a willingness to sacrifice everything for those he loved characterized Dageus, an abiding, unrelenting honor and a desire for a simple life uncomplicated by matters of Druidry and the Fae characterized his elder twin Drustan.
When he heard tell of this latest news, Drustan would undoubtedly say, “Why the blethering hell can’t people stay where they belong, in their own century and out of mine?”
At which point his wife, Gwen, would remind him that it wasn’t his century. That, in fact, it was he who’d begun it all by refusing to stay in the sixteenth century where he belonged. That if Drustan hadn’t opted to slumber for five hundred years in a Rom enchantment so he could be reunited with Gwen in the twenty-first century, he never would have died in the fire that night so long ago. And if he’d not died in the fire, Dageus wouldn’t have had to breach Keltar oaths and use the standing stones of the Ban Drochaid in violation of the sacred Compact between Man and the Tuatha Dé Danaan for personal gain, to go back in time and save Drustan’s life. And if Dageus hadn’t breached those oaths, he never would have been possessed by the souls of the thirteen evil Draghar, and forced to come forward himself to the twenty-first century, seeking a way to escape them.