“Escape,” the demon said. “You have to help.”
He would have pointed out that there was no escape from the underworld even if his legs had been working properly, but the fiend from hell wasn’t listening. He thought he might have wept as his tormenter pounded on his legs, perhaps to bring feeling back to them. Odd that his disembodied spirit was so, er, corporeal. Was that how things were going to be, then?
He supposed he should have discussed a bit more theology with his uncle when he’d had the chance.
“Come on, Nathaniel,stand up.”
Well, at least they knew him in hell. He supposed he should have been flattered. He saw the ladder come down and rest in the muck, which he supposed was a promising development. Perhaps they wanted him to climb to a different spot in the afterlife.
He accepted help to his feet, then fell onto the ladder because it was right there in front of him. He clung to it until he thought he had stopped shaking enough to even attempt to lift his foot to the bottom rung.
“Hurry, damn it, before we’re caught.”
Ah, his rescuer didn’t want to live out eternity in a pit, either. He agreed that it was time to go and steeled himself for a last attempt to save himself.
He climbed up the ladder even though the price was more than he thought was possible to pay.
He fell onto the floor above, but there was apparently no rest for the weary. It had never occurred to him that in hell a man might be forced to continually stumble forward in something of a run. It had seemed more like a place where one sat down whilst being tortured. The endless need to keep moving was absolute torment.
He realized one demon had turned into two. They wouldn’t let him stop, those two demons who kept harping at him with their soft voices and endless demands. He refrained from cursing them, because even in hell he was a gentleman, but he damned well thought many, many vile things.
He wasn’t sure how long it was before they let him stop. He was fairly sure he wasn’t in the Fergussons’ keep any longer, because when he fell to his hands and knees, he landed on hard earth, not slime or stone.
A flask was put to his mouth and he was commanded to drink. The whisky burned all the way down his throat to set up a bonfire in his gut, but he didn’t complain. It was truly the best thing he had ever tasted. He filed the incongruity of that away for contemplation later, then simply sat there for several minutes with his insides on fire, trying to keep that whisky down in his belly where it might do him some good.
He realized eventually that his head was beginning to clear. He wasn’t sure if that was an improvement or not, but it was at least something different. He lifted his head and looked at his rescuers.
It was Emma.
And his mother.
Nay, not his mother. The girl there looked like his sister as a teenager, but if that were the case, what the hell was she doing in medieval Scotland? He rubbed his eyes with thebacks of his hands, but that accomplished nothing but getting slime in them. Someone did him the favor of wiping his face so he could again see his two rescuers. He would have fallen over from shock, but his abused body was apparently just too damned robust to put up with that sort of weak display.
“This is Ceana,” Emma said carefully. “She’s been a servant in the Fergussons’ hall for ten years now.”
Nathaniel looked from Emma to his—well, that had to be his mother. He gaped at her, then looked at Emma, trying to wrap what was left of his mind around the improbability of what he was facing.
“I thought she should be rescued,” Emma said, looking at him pointedly. “You know. So she can get on with her life.”
He would have nodded wisely, but he suspected that would lead him to planting his face on the ground in front of him, so he forbore.
“Where was she?” he rasped as he slowly stood.
“With the blacksmith,” Emma said. “The blacksmith has an apprentice whose name is Thomas. I think you would recognize him as one who has a long-standing fondness of blades.”
He landed on his arse. He wasn’t quite sure how he’d managed to do it so gracefully—something to determine and admire later—then looked up at his two saviors. Emma was, well, Emma. His mother was, still, a teenager.
“We should go,” Emma said in Gaelic. “Ceana, ready?”
Ceana nodded, then looked at Emma. “I’m a MacLeod, you know,” she said quietly. She lifted her chin. “Not that I could admit as much before.” She paused. “I’m not sure I should admit it in the future either.”
“Bastard of Malcolm?” Nathaniel asked hoarsely.
Ceana nodded carefully. “And you?”
Nathaniel nodded, because it was the best he could do at the moment. Ceana smiled and he thought he might want to weep. He had no idea how his mother had come to be in the past, much less how she had ever gotten to the future, but he was beginning to think there were quite a few things about life that he just didn’t understand.
“Can you run?” Emma asked.
