“I don’t understand why you’d lose your gift now. We had sex before. Sort of. What was different this time?” She watched him closely waiting for some sign of how he felt about this.
Only the rhythmic clenching of his jaw muscle gave away the fact that he had any emotions at all.
“Dinna you ken it’s no about the joining of our bodies. It’s about the joining of our Souls.”
The joining of Souls. As in, he was definitely The One.
“There’s naught to be done about it now. We’ll travel southeast until we reach the area where the road to Oban crosses our path. Once there, our best choice will be to follow the road to the west and hope we can find where John of Lorn lies in wait for my king.”
Doing that might guarantee they’d find the enemy all right, but that in itself seemed risky as hell. If she’dthought his plan to change the future was crazy, this was off the charts.
“And how is that supposed to help your kinsmen? I thought your plan was to warn them, to keep them from walking into that ambush in the first place. Instead, what I’m hearing you say is that you’re planning on jumping into the fray with them. How’s that supposed to do anything but get you killed right along with them?”
When Colin turned to face her, the emotion had returned. His eyes were so haunted and brimming with pain, she almost wished he still wore the mask.
“What would you have me do? From the beginning my choice was to find them first. But I dinna ken the way they will approach, and only the general area of where they will encounter battle. I’ve no way to tell if my kinsmen yet live. It’s gone from me. Can you no understand what I’m telling you? I’ve no waytosave them. By the Fates, woman, I’ve no even a way to track the danger that follows us.”
“What danger?”
He turned his eyes from her, staring off into the distance, his lower jaw working as if he ground his teeth.
“You were right that night. Flynn is here. Somehow he managed to follow us. I’ve been keeping track of where he is, making sure we stayed far enough ahead to avoid him.”
“Once again, this is probably the sort of thing you should be sharing with me.” She chose her words carefully. “These are the kinds of things I really need to know.”
“Now you do, and what’s to be gained?” The mask had slipped once again, his raw emotion on display.“Naught but one more worry on yer head along with the knowledge that I have no more ability to track the demon than I do to find my kinsmen.”
And that was her fault. Guilt washed over her in a torrent. She’d brought this hideous pain to the man she loved. She’d stripped his abilities from him now just as she’d stripped him from his world in the first place.
She’d messed this up good and proper, so it was up to her to set things right.
“I can’t do anything about Jonathan, but maybe I can help with your kinsmen. I can find them for you.”
Colin shook his head, turning away from her to stare into the distance. “It’s no use, Abby. You told me yerself that yer gift disna work with finding people. Only things.”
“True, but surely your guys have things, right? Some token or something special they always carry with them? A wallet, a necklace, a special weapon. Something. Think.” He had to remember something. It was their best hope.
“They carry only what we all carry. Swords, knives. Dair carries a bow and a quill of arrows.”
Too general. “What we all carry isn’t good enough. Not unless there’s something special and different about one of those weapons. I need something you can describe for me that I can visualize. Something I can use to find just that one person who—”
“Dair wears a band of braided leather on his wrist, decorated with a small silver cross. His twin sister made it for him and he never takes it from his wrist.”
“Okay. That’s good. Really good. Give me a minute.”
At least a minute. She’d never before attempted to search for something farther away than the other rooms in her house.
Fighting the self-doubt, Abby cleared her mind of everything except an image of the wristband Colin had described. She sent the delicate tendrils of fluorescent green energy out from her mind in every direction, curling and creeping across the countryside faster than she’d ever seen them move before.
There was nothing, not in any direction. She waited, concentrating on the energy as all of the tendrils receded, slithering back into her mind, shrinking, withering, disappearing. She’d failed him. There was nothing.
Wait!
All the slithering green tendrils had returned save one. One lone wisp of energy remained; straining forward like a leashed dog, it beckoned to her, a shining beacon in the dark mist.
“I’ve found the wristband.”
“He lives?”
