Chapter 22
Kendrick
He thought he would surprise Aileana and see if she was up for a road trip. They would take the Harley over to the small coastal village of Tongue, which was only an hour east of Durness. Kendrick planned for them to have dinner at the Ben Loyal Hotel. They had a wonderful restaurant called The Ben Their website stated they had “Magnificent views of the Kyle of Tongue, Ben Loyal, Ben Hope and the ruin of Castle Varrich,” all from the restaurant.
He also wanted them to enjoy one of the rooms at the Ben Loyal Hotel. He thought it would be a pleasant change for them to sightsee a tad the next day before heading back to Durness.
He pulled up to Skye’s cottage on the Harley, just as Skye pulled up to the cottage in her car. “Hello, and how are ye doing this wonderful afternoon?” he said.
“I’m doing fine this day, but by the sound of ye, not as well as ye are.” She laughed.
“I’d hope to surprise Aileana with an overnight trip to Tongue for dinner and a bit of sightseeing.”
“That is a bonnie idea, bhalaich. Let’s go inside and ye can surprise her,” Skye said.
They walked to the door, and Skye explained the plans she and the other ladies on the committee for the Samhainn festival had made today. They neared the door, and Kendrick became aware of the odor of dark Fae. The door was ajar; he reached out to block Skye from entering her cottage.
“Something is wrong here, there’s a stench of dark Fae! Stay here! Let me check the cottage for Aileana.” Skye’s frightened eyes met his, and she nodded in agreement. He moved around the front room, and he could smell the stink of Finfolk in the room. It got stronger as he headed toward the small bedroom he knew Aileana stayed in.
Her bed covers were torn from the bed, yet the rest of the room was untouched. Kendrick could identify there had been a Finman in the room; he also perceived Aileana’s fear. He raced to the front door to let her grandmother know what he concluded had happened in the room and to Aileana. He assured Skye that he would find her granddaughter and bring her home. As he assured Skye, he also tried to assure himself he would find her. Kendrick needed help if there was going to be any chance of getting her back. He had to get a hold of Duncan and Torin as soon as possible. He placed a call to Duncan. His brother said they would be at the beach within half an hour and ready to go.
Between the three of them, they came up with a plan. It would be extremely risky for everyone, but he was not going to even think of losing Aileana. Now that their life essences had fused, he would be able to track her specific scent. He was sure the Finman had taken her to their fog-shrouded island. They came to the same conclusion that they needed to use a boat to retrieve Aileana.
If it were only them, they would have just gone in their Selkie form, but Aileana would never make it back without a wetsuit. She would suffer from hypothermia. The water temperature off the coast of Scotland was eleven degrees Celsius this time of year. She would only have to be one hour in the water before her body would shut down.
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The route the Finman had taken was a wild zigzag path across the water. Kendrick’s senses kept them on the correct trajectory. The Finman had worked to throw off anyone that might try to follow. Perhaps he didn’t realize that Aileana had bonded with a Selkie. He most likely thought it was only sex between a human and Selkie.
They’d been out in the skiff for about three hours. It felt like an eternity to Kendrick thinking about what must be happening to Aileana. It seemed they went in circles, going one way and then the next. Finally, they came upon the blanket of paranormal fog. Duncan was to stay with the skiff as Torin went with Kendrick. They swam to the island as Selkies and transformed on the shore to naked men. No help for being naked; they did what they had to. They left their skins hidden in the crevices of the rocks, which were further up on the shore. The Selkies enchanted their seal skins so no Finfolk would be able to locate or steal them.
There was no light on the island from either the stars or the moon, and no firelight from inside the stone shelters the Finfolk lived in. The Finfolk must have felt secure in the fact that the magical mist would conceal their island home. Kendrick could see a large stone shelter, which reeked of the same stench of the Finman that had been in Skye’s cottage. Kendrick could barely distinguish Aileana’s honeyed spice scent over the creature’s fetid musky stench.
They crept up to the shelter. There were no actual doors on the structure only a large opening. The windows were arrow slits, same as were found in the curtained walls of medieval battlements beneath the crenellations. Kendrick silently made his way into the structure with Torin close behind. There they heard grunting sounds coming from the room to the left of the cold fireplace. They hugged the wall as they eased into the room. There on the bed, tied naked, was an unconscious Aileana. On the other side of the bed was the Finman who’d just kicked a blonde woman who cried out as her body hit the floor.
Kendrick picked up the pitcher that sat on the table next to where he stood and brought it crashing down on the back of the creature’s head. He groaned as his body swayed. The creature was only momentarily stunned before he swung around to face Kendrick. His rapid movement from the bed was a surprise as he roared with rage and lunged toward Kendrick. He knocked him to the floor with his momentum. Kendrick punched the Finman in the face and fought to get a few well-placed blows in. They rolled across the stone floor trading blows when Kendrick landed a solid wallop to the creature’s jaw. He was able to maneuver behind him to reach around and get him in a chokehold. The Finman struggled as the lack of oxygen rendered him unconscious. Kendrick dropped his body to the floor.
Torin went to the other side of the bed to help the sobbing young woman. He covered the woman with a nearby shawl that lay on the table. While Torin comforted the traumatized blonde woman, Kendrick untied the cords that bound Aileana to the wall and bottom of the bed.
“Torin, can ye manage to calm the woman? If not, use yer magic to render her into a soothing sleep. We will take her also. She is the young woman that was kidnapped from the beach a few weeks ago.”
Before Torin could use his magic on the woman she reached the dish with a knife sitting on its edge. She whirled back around to the creature and plunged the knife into the creature’s throat to the hilt. The only sound now was the gurgle of the life flowing from the Finman.
“He cannae hurt nay one else now. He was a pure evil creature. He enjoyed inflicting pain, suffering, and humiliation on others. He needed to die,” the young woman said with an eerie calmness.
Torin eased the traumatized woman into a healing slumber, lifted her into his arms and carried her from the stone structure. Kendrick couldn’t bring himself to cover Aileana with any item from this place of pain and evil. She was battered and bruised. She had a huge swelling on the side of the face where he had thrashed her. The Finman had also bitten her on the inside of her upper thigh. He could only imagine what had happened to his sweet lass. If the creature wasn’t already dead, he would have eviscerated the Finman and left him to die a slow agonizing death for violating his mate in any way. The only thing that mattered now was that Kendrick had her and hoped she would come back to him. He loved her and nothing could ever change his thoughts or feelings about her. He would hope her mind would heal as her body healed. He gently scooped her into his arms and made his way out of the cottage. He followed the downward path to the water’s edge to the rocks where Torin and he hid their pelts.
After retrieving his pelt from the rocks, Kendrick lowered Aileana into the near icy water and washed away the last traces of the foul Finman. He wished he could do the same for her mind. He wanted to take away this horrific experience from her memories.
Just off the shore, he met up with Torin who swam with one arm holding the blonde woman’s head above the water. Torin had wrapped the blonde woman’s body in his pelt to keep her as warm as possible until they reached Duncan and the skiff. Kendrick had done the same with Aileana and his pelt.
His mind signaled to Duncan once the fog had shrouded them. They used their own form of sonar when visual cues were not available. Seals could use echolocation; the Selkies were lucky, in that they are able to use their sonar while in human form. They swam toward the skiff as Duncan moved the boat closer to them in that damn magic-induced fog. At last, they found his brother with the skiff. He helped lift the women into the boat, and they rubbed their limbs with the towels they brought, trying to warm up the women. They laid the women in the bottom of the skiff on a bed of quilts and covered each with blankets.
Kendrick told Torin that when the blonde female woke he needed to scrub her memories for the sake of all Seelies. If the world discovered evidence of Unseelies, the Seelies would become known as well.
It would also be better for the woman to have no memory of what had happened to her. No recall of the island of Hildaland, or that she had killed someone, creature or not. It would be better to have amnesia than to remember her treatment at the hands of the Finman.
Their plan was to get her clothed and drive her to the hospital in the nearby village. To tell the hospital, they found her wandering around and recognized her from the poster the police had put up in Durness. At the hospital, they would be able to treat her injuries from her beatings and whatever else the Finman had inflicted upon her.
The boat came to rest upon the sandy shore of a secluded beach. Duncan and Torin had left the car on the cliff above the beach. They carried the unconscious women up to the car. Kendrick had Duncan drop Aileana and himself off at his cottage. Then he asked Duncan to contact their Selkie healer and have her meet them at his cottage. Kendrick also contacted Skye to let her know they had located Aileana, and she was alive but badly beaten. He told her they were at his cottage and the Selkie healer was on her way to help.
Skye and the healer arrived at the same time. They hurried into the room where Kendrick had placed Aileana.
The healer went to work assessing Aileana’s injuries while Skye grabbed a bowl of warm water and a few cloths to wash the blood from her. Her grandmother went to work removing the crusted blood from Aileana’s face to see what injuries she suffered. During that time, their healer told Skye and Kendrick that Aileana had been lucky considering how bad it appeared. She had no broken bones, just bruised ribs, along with a couple of somewhat loose molars that would tighten back up in the next week or two. The teeth would be a little tender in the meantime, but she wouldn’t lose them. The swelling in her eye would go down in the next week. Skye washed and applied an antibiotic ointment to the bite on her granddaughter’s inner thigh and covered it with a bandage.
Kendrick wanted to know the full extent of her injuries. When Skye left the room to get fresh water, he asked the healer if the Finman had raped Aileana.
The healer turned and stared into his eyes. “Prince Kendrick, will it make a difference in how ye feel about the young lass if ye know she has been violated by the Finman?”
He peered into her wise eyes and could answer in full honesty. “Nay, I love her so deeply, I am truly glad she is alive and I was able to bring her home. The whole time I searched for her, I kept thinking I couldn’t bear mah life without her in it. I only hope for her sake, she can move past what has happened to her.”
“To answer yer question, Prince Kendrick, I am unsure if the Finman violated her or not. There are no vaginal lacerations or tears, and there doesn’t appear to be any trauma to the vaginal area. I would say no, he didn’t.”
“I will do all in mah power to help her move past whatever the Finman has done,” he said.
Aileana’s grandmother came back with the fresh water and cloths. As she approached the bed where Kendrick sat, Aileana opened her eyes and said through her split lip, “I’m still alive?”
Kendrick gazed down at her bruised and swollen face and said, “You’re still with us, mo luaioh, my darling.”
She gave him a small twisted grin. “That was worse than getting worked at the wedge and getting a sand facial at the same time.”
Skye glanced at her and said, “I am thinking that is something that is not too pleasant to experience, aye.”
“Fer sure, Seanmhair! But I made it out alive, which is unreal, for that I am grateful. Kendrick, how did I get here?”
“Because of the bond we share, I was able to track ye across the water to the Finman’s island home of Hildaland. Otherwise, I would not have found ye.”
“There was also a young woman by the name of Rhona Fagan. He kidnapped Rhona from the beach a few weeks ago. We need to find her.”
“Dinna fash, Aileana, we brought her back with us. She’s safe now and receiving treatment at a hospital in Scourie,” he told her.
“What happened to my captor?”
“After mah fist connected with his jaw, he went down for the count; he was out cold on the floor. The blonde woman grabbed a knife that was on the table and stabbed him through the throat, severing what would be the equivalent of your human carotid artery. He’s dead.”
“Is Rhona all right? She was so frightened of him and too afraid to escape. I tried to talk her into releasing me and making a run for it.”
“There would have been no escape from the island of Hildaland. The island was at least two hours off the coast of Scotland by boat. The magic of the mist that surrounds the island would have kept ye from finding yer way out of the fog.”
“Kendrick, the creature was so malicious. He enjoyed seeing the pain he inflicted, and it was as if it was a drug for him. Once I saw that he needed to inflict pain to make himself aroused I shut down my emotions and showed no fear. And I laughed at him as he exposed himself and started jerking himself off to frighten me. I was scared to death! He said he planned to make me his. But I understood if I laughed like a person that belonged in an insane asylum, he would beat me until he killed me. I didn’t expect to live.”
“Och! You’re very brave, little one. Why don’t ye rest and regain some strength? I will just be in the other room if ye need me.”
“I want to stay here, next to her side. I will just get comfortable in that overstuffed chair ye have in yer bedroom,” said Skye.
He nodded to Skye. He understood the terror she had faced today with the real fear of losing her granddaughter.
The Selkie healer said, “I’ve done what I kin do, she just needs rest and time to heal. Ye know where I will be if ye need me, mah Prince.”
He thanked her and walked her to her car. Kendrick went back to the cottage and looked in on Aileana. She was fast asleep, and so was her grandmother. He walked to the overstuffed chair and placed a blanket in Skye’s lap. Kendrick moved back to his front room and got comfortable on his old worn couch before the low burning peat fire.
He had to wonder why the Finman had come into a home to snatch a female. It was not their way. Finfolk were generally opportunity kidnappers. For him to lie in wait and go into a home up above the beach was not in character for Finfolk.