CHAPTER1
Kentucky
Twenty-first Century
And there he was–so heart-stoppingly close her headlights lit up his face. The bare-chested man lifted a muscular arm against the glare, then crouched low and unsheathed the biggest sword Trulie Sinclair had ever seen.
“Holy crap!” She jerked the steering wheel hard to the left.
He bared his teeth in a defensive snarl, then sprang sideways. With the daunting grace of an attacking mountain lion, he swung the massive broadsword in a lethal arc.
Trulie braced for impact. Instinct and adrenaline locked her knees as she stomped the brake to the floor. She sawed the steering wheel back and forth, slinging mud and gravel. The old truck fishtailed, bounced through twin ruts in the narrow road, then sloshed to a stop in a shallow, water-filled ditch.
She clutched the steering wheel until her knuckles ached. Where in blue blazes had that guy come from? And that sword? The high-pitched yowl of an irritated cat and a hissed “Dammit!” drowned out the jackhammer pounding of her heart.
Granny and Kismet.
“Are you all right?” Trulie flipped on the interior light, clawed the seatbelt out of the way, and scooted toward the tiny, gray-haired woman clutching the spitting black cat against her chest.
“You know...” Granny blinked a few times, then peered over the rims of her cockeyed spectacles. One sparse silver brow ratcheted a notch higher as she resettled back into the dip of the worn seat and straightened her glasses. “You know, Trulie,” she started again, pausing to smooth a blue-veined hand down the insulted feline’s puffed-up hackles. “If ye wouldna drive like a bat out of hell, ye might dodge things a bit easier.”
Trulie blew out a relieved breath. Thank goodness.If her grandmother could still deliver a smart-ass remark, then she was okay. Of course, slipping into her seldom-heard Scottish brogue was a telltale sign that the wild ride hadn’t been enjoyed. Granny only reverted to the lilting roll of herr’s under duress.
Trulie squirmed around in the confines of the truck and squinted out the back window. Her frazzled reflection stared back at her. “Where did he go?” She flipped off the interior light, then looked out the window again.
Nothing moved but the silhouettes of the treetops swaying beneath a star-spattered sky. The sparsely graveled road reflected silvery gray in the moonlight. No sword-brandishing warrior of muscle was anywhere to be seen. “That guy came out of nowhere. Did you see that freaking sword?” And the package of testosterone swinging it? She kept that part to herself. No sense giving her grandmother any fodder for another lecture.
Using the sleeve of her denim jacket, Trulie wiped away the moisture fogging the window. Damn it all.She couldn’t see a thing from inside the truck. “Could you tell if I hit him?” she asked while still staring out the window. “The truck bounced so hard, I don’t know if I missed him or not.”
Granny didn’t answer, just tucked her head closer to the now purring cat and murmured something unintelligible, as though the two sat back home in front of the fire instead of in a ditch out in the middle of the Kentucky woods.
Trulie ground her teeth to keep from cursing as she fumbled around in the floorboard for the flashlight shoved under the edge of the seat. She was in no mood for this crap, and now was not the time for Granny to go silent. She would bet her best batch of homemade soaps that her grandmother knew more about that half-naked mystery than she was letting on.
Granny snuggled closer to the cat and chuckled softly into its shining black fur.
Trulie snorted. That cinched it. The conniving old soul was at it again. Trulie whacked the flashlight against the back of the seat, shook it hard, then shot the beam out the back window.
Of all things to come across in the middle of the night.She knelt in the seat and squinted harder. “I don’t see him anywhere. Surely I didn’t knock him clear across the road into the other ditch.”
She clicked off the flashlight and sat back on her heels. There was no getting around it. Sword or no sword, she was going to have to go look for him. She couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t find out whether or not the man was okay. She shot a sideways glance at the silver-haired elder still muttering to the cat. “And I wasn’t driving that fast and you know it.”
Her grandmother didn’t look up, just rested back against her travel pillow and grinned.
“What do you think, Kismet?” Granny wrinkled her nose at the cat as she scratched under its chin. The purring feline sat with eyes closed to golden slits and the tip of its tail softly flipping. “Reckon we would be in this ditch with all our inventory busted in the back if our gal had been going a bit slower?”
The old woman lifted her gaze from the cat. Her smile curled to one side as she continued in a more soothing voice directed at Trulie. “And no. You didn’t hit him. You just got his attention real good.”
Trulie yanked the rusty door handle upward and bounced the door open. Somehow, that backhanded reassurance didn’t make her feel any better. An eerie feeling skittered up her spine. What if the man was one of them? She rolled away the uneasiness with a tensed twitch of her shoulders. No. He couldn’t be.Rule number one of the time runner’s rede: time runners were always female. She silently ticked off the other tenets of the ancient folklore inherited by the Sinclairs:
Bloodline holds the gift to dance across the ages.
From mother to daughter the gift shall pass.
The eldest daughter of each generation shall control the most power.
A loyal familiar, a guardian, shall join the eldest daughter at birth and never leave her side.
Males shall only travel the web when chosen or sent forth by a runner.
