The boy pointed out at the water. “She was swept away.” He burst into fresh tears. “She’s coming back, right?”
Rachel scowled up at Morag. “These are people,” she snapped. “Just like you.”
Morag muttered something under breath. “Very well,” she said out loud, kneeling beside the boy. “Your mother will return to you.” She put her hand on the boy’s head and as she did so, someone shouted behind her.
Cam turned to see what the commotion was. A group of people were dragging someone from the water. For a moment he thought it was the barefoot man. Then he saw it was a spluttering and gasping woman who fell exhausted onto the shore.
“Mom!” the boy cried, getting to his feet and sprinting to the shore, throwing himself into her arms.
“Come,” Morag said, tapping Cam on the shoulder. “We must be moving. We haven’t much time.”
“Where are we going?” Rachel asked, getting to her feet once more.
“If we’re going to defeat him, there’s only one way to do it.”
“And what’s that?”
“I need my spellbook.”
Chapter Sixteen
The barefoot man had gone by many names in his time. As he sat in the ruins of the abbey, he decided the one he liked most was Michael. It was what the monks had called him when he first arrived on Kirrin Island. Abbot Michael. It had a nice ring to it.
If he wasn’t so furious he might have smiled. Abbot Michael. That had been a pleasant couple of months, running the abbey into the ground, tempting as many of the monks into sin as he could possibly manage while lining his own pockets.
There was only one who failed him. Remigius. He had died when that wall mysteriously collapsed while he was supervising the repairs. Crushed to death under the stone on the day he finally realized who Abbot Michael really was. Such a shame but then, as the monks all said, it was clearly God’s will that he was to die that day.
Things were simpler back then. They had become so much more complex since. He had come so close to her and yet things were not going the way he had planned. Something or someone had thrown a spanner in his works and he could guess who was interfering beyond his remit.
He looked up at the sky, a curse ready to emerge from his lips. That was when he saw the crow. It circled high in the sky, on the lookout for food. With a wave of his hand and a few muttered words, he brought the crow slowly toward him.
It circled lower and he waited patiently. He was a patient man. He had to be in his line of work.
Patience could only take him so far though. With all his neatly drawn out plans changing on an almost daily basis since she’d appeared, he was going to have to rethink.
It had been a simple enough scheme. Find the woman who came back in time, leapfrog on her to get into her era and then use his special set of skills to take over, finally get things done the way he wanted, use the technology he’d heard so much about, bring chaos to an entire world, not just a tiny little corner of it.
Everything had been planned in the correct manner. Yet somehow they were all still alive and he was trapped on the island. How had he not been able to foresee that?
He kept reliving the moment when he leaped into the water after them. So close to the rowing boat he could almost touch them. Then sinking down into the water as if something was pulling at him, dragging him under. He barely made it back to the shore with breath in his lungs.
He’d walked to the abbey, dripping all the way, knowing that the answer would come to him there as it had when he first heard about Morag’s key. He just needed to stop the anger clouding his judgment.
The previous trip to the island had been under very different circumstances. He’d had the old woman brought here. It taught him a lesson. He wanted her to slowly starve to death, a pleasant torture for her trying to scupper his plans yet again.
Rachel was key to everything. He had tried to get hold of her when she was little and he’d been flummoxed that time by the key. He thought his chance was gone but his patience had worked in his favor. All these years later she was back and he had one more chance.
Then his shot had been snatched away because of Morag interfering once more. He wouldn’t make any mistakes like that when he got his hands on her again. No slow starving to death on an island. No quips, no giving her the chance to escape. Straight in, get hold of her, murder her, then get hold of Rachel.
As for Cam? Well, he would either join the army of darkness or be trampled to death under it. The same went for his clan.
He managed a smile, thinking of how he might torture Morag and Cam in front of Rachel, then tell her the truth about everything, watch her little face crumble when she found out.
The crow came low enough for him to reach out an arm. It landed on the tip of his middle finger, looking at him blankly with eyes as cold as his own. A single caw then it was silent, waiting.
Leaning forward, he whispered into the crow’s ear for a moment before sending it flying upward once again. The message would reach the villagers soon enough and then they’d row out to get him.
They knew what would happen if he was left there much longer. He wouldn’t leave any of them alive. The protection he’d given them was already on the precipice. They had one job. How hard was that? Lock up the woman and anyone with her. Simple enough yet they hadn’t even managed to do that properly.
