Christina Skye - Bound by Dreams

“What exactly are we doing? I’m simply here visiting you as a friend, catching up on business trends and family gossip. No harm in that.” Calan’s face was guileless.

“I’ll stick to that story, too. But better to avoid the discussion entirely. I’ve only three weeks left anyway.”

“Now you’ve lost me, Nicky. Three weeks for what?”

Nicolas watched the big man in the dark uniform circle the front of the house, take a small camera from his pocket and photograph the ground-level doors and windows.

“To set up enhanced security here at the abbey. In three weeks a meeting will take place here and everything around it may become a war zone,” the viscount said grimly. “I can’t say more now, but I can use all your help, Calan. Look around. Dig in all the abbey’s dark corners. See that nothing has been left here without my knowledge and no one has put any surveillance devices in place. You might want to start at our main power source, down at the stables. While you do that, I’ll go deal with the pain-in-the-ass brigadier.”

HE DIDN’T LIKE any part of it. There had been no time to discuss the night’s attack. His friend could be in much deeper trouble than he realized.

Calan stood in the shadows near the kitchen while the brigadier’s cool, clipped voice rapped out curt questions. Officious and manipulative came to mind, along with arrogant and intrusive. Calan wished he knew more about the meeting that required the security deadline of three weeks. It had to be important if the Prime Minister’s security team was involved, something that pitted duty against family in a very unpleasant way. How did you stand seeing the people you loved put at risk, even for the goal of a higher good?

He shook his head, glad that he would never feel that particular pain. He was never going to have a family to worry about.

Standing near the open window, he let the morning scents of roses and cool earth play through his senses. His muscles tightened with an urge to step through the window and drop into the green shadows.

To leave human tears and regrets behind.

To hunt.

The hunger to change made his blood surge. He felt the hair stir, prickling along his neck and shoulders.

The wild thing inside him called, open to the thousand smells that a human nose could never perceive and subtle movements far beyond the range of human sight. But Calan fought the dark call. He could not risk being seen, especially with the brigadier nearby. For the Other, the wild creature he became, daylight was no friend. Exposure was a constant risk in a world where he would always be an outsider.

Suddenly a new sensation nudged his awareness. Calan felt a faint pressure at his back, as if he was being touched. But gently. So gently.

Yet the corridor was empty. Nicholas and his unwelcome visitor had moved to the far side of the front steps, caught in an argument that seemed as if it would go on for quite a while.

Slowly he relaxed his control, slipping to the very edge of the Change. With fierce force of will, he drew both parts of his mind into balance. Each part fought the other, each one claiming the right to emerge, and the struggle made Calan’s muscles strain with effort.

As the itchy sensation moved up to his shoulder blades, he was certain that another presence was very close.

Offering a silent warning.

At the very edge of the Change, he opened his animal senses, yet he could see nothing more.

“Where are you?” he whispered.

A faint noise touched his ears, like the distant chime of very small bells shaken in a rough wind. The sound made his muscles tighten. The sense of a presence grew.

Low, even dreamlike, the bells seemed part of the abbey’s mysterious past, which Nicholas spoke of only rarely. Calan had heard stories about an arrogant eighteenth-century ancestor with a tragic history. He recalled a legend about thirteen bells that tolled by moonlight and a great gray cat who walked the abbey’s roof.

Nicholas always clammed up when the subject was raised, but the Draycott butler had savored the details, only too happy to fuel a young boy’s imagination.

But Calan was no longer a boy. Ghostly legends had no value for the man he’d become. Yet the sense of a presence persisted. Grew dense and strongly physical.

What do you want? Calan thought angrily. Make yourself clear.

The curtains stirred.

A bee landed on the windowsill, turning in a slow circle. Something glimmered, moving against the warm sunlight.

Calan looked up sharply, unsure of what he expected to see. A ghostly figure? Hideous, half-formed heads?

The shadows drew together, then faded. The corridor was empty.

Calan’s blood hammered. The wild places called to him, very close now.

Mark your choices well, Scotsman. Beware your Changes.

The words seemed to float on the sunlight.

Darkness waits at both hands, waits with hungry breath to claim its own. Do you go or do you stay?

Do you hope or do you die?

Calan felt the fur move, felt the Other stretch, trying to claw free and leap into the vast wildness that called to him.

Who are you? He shuddered, fighting to hold his human form when the Other summoned so deeply.

There was no answer.

Wind brushed his face, bringing a sudden memory of summer and sunlight in the days before his mother and father had died. Before his innocence had been lost.

The memories slowly gathered form and force. Despite the sunlight warm across his shoulders, the past returned in an icy storm.

THEY HAD COME FOR HIM AT DAWN.

He had expected it, feared it, but never thought it would happen so soon. All through the summer he had hidden the growing changes and the restless sleep. For weeks he had awakened at dawn to find himself muddy and bare, shivering on sand or rugged cliffs, his hands and feet bruised and bleeding. At first he had no memories of what had brought him there.

He had denied the new things he could do, hidden them even from himself. He was only nine years old, so he’d had no reference for the strangeness and strength.

Especially not the…hunger.

As a boy he had seen odd things on his rugged, isolated island in the Hebrides. At night he heard the cry of animals, saw icy footprints caught in winter mud near the beach. He sensed their meaning, yet he did not allow himself to truly know. A child was permitted his innocence, after all.

But not this child of Clan MacKay.

Then one moonless night Calan woke in the throes of Change, his muscles screaming, his skin on fire, and denial was no longer possible. He saw exactly what he was becoming. That night his innocence was lost forever.

He could still remember that first race of energy, the snap of tendons, the inexplicable feel of fur against his shoulders. And over that, a seduction of scents beyond the skill of any human to know.

He had made a crossing that night, bound by a dark world with new rules and new enemies.

Now they were coming for him.

Boots hammered on cold rock. Sharp voices cut through the silence. Though the boy in him wanted to flee, the braver heart bade him stay and face what lay before him. So he stood tall and proud when the door opened and a light fell on his bruised body.

His uncle first, always scowling, missing nothing as he raised his light higher. The others muttered as the beam touched Calan’s shoulders, gashed and bloody.

“I’ve come for you, Calan Duthac MacKay of Na h-Eileanan Flannach, son of the Grey Isle. Get yourself dressed and be fast about it. You sail with us tonight.”

Calan dug in his heels and did not move. “Sail where, Uncle?”

Mutters raced through the men behind Calan’s uncle. The boy dared to speak? What ill-born creature stood before them?