Page 119 of Dark Embrace

He and the giant, who was now Moray, had hewn their swords at one another, the blades blazing with their power, the men in halos. Aidan was cloaked in shining silver, while Moray was clouded in a dark gray light. Damn it, it looked as if they were evenly matched—but Aidan was struggling.

Royce, Malcolm and Guy could not help him, for they were battling dozens of possessed knights.

Tabby knelt beside them and began chanting, her expression instantly becoming waxen as she entered a trance.

For one more moment, Brie did not move. Her gaze was glued to Aidan, and he seemed to slowly be getting the better of the giant. She was acutely aware that Tabby was using the spell she had found to trap Moray’s black power so it could not return to his body, wherever it was. She did not want to leave Aidan, but she seized Allie’s hand, finally tearing her gaze away from him. “Do you have a weapon?”

Allie nodded. “Of course.” She pulled a dagger from her designer boots.

It was so sexy and so Allie that, had the circumstances not been dire, she would have laughed. “He’s close by, in repose, in a small chamber,” Brie said. But Urquhart was a medium-size garrison, with many small rooms. He could be in any one of them.

“Let’s go,” Allie said, taking her hand.

They ran, leaving Aidan and the other Masters behind, their swords still shrieking eerily with white and black power. Brie and Allie rushed through the first gatehouse, back into the inner ward. They paused, breathing hard, trying to sense where Moray had left his body. Brie cursed in frustration. “How can we find him? Without his evil, there’s nothing to sense!”

“I guess we’ll do it the good, old-fashioned way,” Allie, said, nodding at the closest tower. “A room-by-room search.”

And, as Allie started aggressively toward that square tower, Brie suddenly felt a push on her shoulder from behind, directing her to a flanking tower on the opposite side of the gatehouse. It wasn’t Allie, who’d left her behind.

Grandma Sarah seemed to give her a hard nod, too.

“Allie!” Brie screamed, rushing toward the tower.

She ran to a narrow door set in the side of the tower as Allie caught up to her. The moment she tried to open it, she realized it was bolted from inside. “Shit,” she cried.

Claire ran through the gatehouse, breathing hard, her clothes splattered with blood, a large sword in hand. “Is he in there?” she asked breathlessly, looking exactly as a mythological, avenging Valkyrie might.

Brie nodded and stepped back.

Claire dropped the sword. She grimaced and ran at the door as if it were a punching bag and she was in a kick-boxing match at a gym. The wood groaned but the door did not open. Claire kicked it again, grunting.

Silver blazed, and the door blew in off its hinges.

Brie turned and saw Aidan striding forward, a bloody sword in hand, his expression ruthless. She cringed, incapable of moving. She had never seen him at his medieval worst, and she was seeing his most savage side now.

Then she felt the huge black power coming after them. Brie glanced up and saw the black cloud swirling like a small cyclone from above the gatehouse, into the ward, toward him from behind. “Aidan!”

He saw it and snarled, “Come an’ fight me, Father.”

Laughter sounded.

Brie glanced into the chamber. Moray lay on the bed, apparently catatonic, exactly as she’d seen him in her vision.

The black energy swirled directly past Aidan into the chamber and to the man lying there.

But it bounced off his body hovering in the air.

A roar of frustration sounded.

“Tabby’s spell is working,” Brie breathed.

Aidan smiled savagely. “What’s amiss, Father? Canna ye enter yer own form?”

“Aidan, watch out!” Brie screamed as the black power descended onto him.

But his silver energy blazed, deflecting it. He stepped toward Moray’s body, sword raised. Brie turned away and heard the thump of his blade.

A howl of outrage sounded.