Highland Shifter (MacCoinnich Time Travels #4)(62)
Author: Catherine Bybee

“It might not work.”

“Show me.” His jaw tightened.

“Fine.” She glanced up and down his frame. “You’re too close, but it’s your funeral if you get caught in the current. It doesn’t hurt me, but it burns what’s around me.”

He gave her two more steps of freedom.

It would have to do.

She started in a silent whisper. “In this day and in this hour—”

“What? What are you saying?”

“I ask the Ancients for this power.” Though she spoke louder, she didn’t think Philip picked up every word.

The hair on Helen’s head started to swirl with the force of wind picking up in the room. Flames started to spark around her.

Philip twisted around, then pinned her with a glare. “What the f**k?”

“Take me now across the sea,” she said louder over the noise of the room.

Philip stepped forward and Helen lifted a hand up in an effort to stop him from coming closer. A zap of electricity flickered from the vortex starting to engulf her body and slammed her enemy against the far wall.

“Back to Simon’s family.”

As the world fell away, Philip’s face lost all expression.

Helen lifted her middle finger in a silent wave goodbye.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Simon found her car only blocks away from Mrs. Dawson’s home. He shifted from falcon to wolf in an effort to pick up Helen’s scent. It didn’t work. Wherever she’d gone, it wasn’t on foot. Pavement didn’t lend itself for leaving marks in the road to follow. A big drawback of this century as far as Simon was concerned.

He took to wings again and searched the road for any sign at all. As the sun dipped over the horizon and the heat left the surface of the earth, part of his soul drifted with it.

He hadn’t protected her. His new family. Searching for love never entered his mind since becoming a man, yet he’d found it with Helen. Found it only to lose her. Maybe if he’d told her that she might be carrying his child she’d have acted with more caution.

What ifs and maybes would plague him until he found her. But where was she?

As he made his way to Mrs. Dawson’s home, he plotted the demise of Philip. The man Simon knew in his gut was behind Helen’s disappearance. The warrior in him wanted to call the man out, finish him with a clean swipe of his sword. After he found Helen of course, but finish him in the end.

They’d call Simon a murderer.

He’d call it justice.

Then he’d be forced to return to the sixteenth century or live in the twenty first as a wanted man. No, he couldn’t risk that.

Helen might not want to return to his time.

The question was, could he return without her?

* * * *

Philip’s cell phone was at his ear as he made his way out of the vacant house. The shaking of his knees pissed him the f**k off. The lying bitch vanished into nothing. Nothing!

He made it to his car and squealed out of suburbia. In minutes, he’d managed to get the night guard at the prison to put Mal on the phone.

“Well?”

“She disappeared, again.”

Mal pushed out a breath. “How?”

Philip picked his words carefully. Knowing the guards would listen to every word.

“I’m not sure. She held it…” Philip didn’t speak of the rock, assuming Malcolm would know what it was. “Then spoke to the air. Asked for power.” He sounded crazy, he knew.

“Back up, she said what?”

“Something about asking for power.”

“You’re not making a whole hell of a lot of sense, Phil, how about from the top.”

Philip slammed his fist against the steering wheel as he sped through a red light. “She said, I ask for this power. Send me across the sea, back to Simon’s family.”

There was a long pause. He thought maybe the phone went dead.

“Mal?”

“I’m here.”

“Did you get that?”

“Yeah. I got it. What happened then?”

That’s where he was fuzzy. “I don’t know. A f**king hurricane inside the house shot out of nothing and poof. She was gone.”

“Like magic on a stage?”

“Without the mirrors.” Philip pulled into the back lot of his warehouse and shoved the car in park. Anyone checking for Helen would go there first. Philip needed to grab a few things and disappear for a while. He didn’t even know why. It wasn’t like Helen had a ton of family searching for her the first time she disappeared. Chances were Mrs. Dawson wouldn’t ask about her so soon. Still, the way his skin itched he knew he needed to skip town for a couple of days. Then it dawned on him…if Helen could vanish as quickly as she had, she could return just as quickly. Lead the police to the house he’d kept her. His DNA was probably littering the place.

Sonofabitch! What had he done? And why?

“If you figure it out,” Philip said to his brother. “You need to come back for me.”

Mal chuckled. “If I ever make parole, I’ll come to you. Where else would I go?”

The line clicked and went dead.

* * * *

Helen slumped to the ground the minute the wind stopped blowing and sat on the tips of her toes. She wasn’t sure where she’d land, but wasn’t going to be unprepared for an attack.

The familiar stone walls of the Keep, and the moist, dark interior met her senses.

Behind her, someone took in a sharp breath.

Helen peered into the dark for the source of the sound.

“Helen?”

Tara. Thank God.

Helen lowered her hands, not even realizing she’d placed them in front of her face defensively.

Tara and Lora sat up in bed, poised for flight.

When everyone in the room recognized a lack of threat, Helen moaned. All the adrenaline and fear of the last few hours threatened to manifest into a scream.

“Oh no. What happened?” Lora’s voice penetrated her thoughts and a warm arm covered her trembling shoulders. The two women helped Helen to her feet and to a chair by the fire.

Tara pushed a glass of water into her hand. Helen took it and greedily quenched her thirst. Lora’s fingers brushed over what Helen was certain were bruised and bloody features on her face.

“I’m okay.”

The worry in the ladies eyes, however, didn’t fade.

“Everyone else is fine.”

Tara’s shoulders slumped with relief. “Then what happened?”

Helen thought of Philip, his hands on her body, the stench of his breath against her face.