Call of the Highland Moon

Gideon sat back, intrigued. It was true. He’d never thought to question the history he’d been taught as a boy, had never, he had to admit, been interested in questioning it. He’d just accepted. Fortunately, it seemed, not everyone had been the same. “Such as?”



“Well,” Malcolm began, obviously relishing slipping back into his role as teacher, “for one thing, we were supposedly brought out of the wilds of Scotland, before this was even Scotland. But then, why is there not a whisper of the man-wolf in the oral history of the Picts, from whom we would have come? You’d think we might have caused a stir, being as we are.”



“If not from there, then where, though?” Gideon asked, frowning.



“Where, indeed?” Malcolm tented his fingers beneath his chin and leaned forward. “I asked myself this many times, and then I began to wonder … our history begins, for all intents and purposes, at the Stone of Destiny. Were we brought forth from the wilderness to guard it? Or did Saint Columba and the rest not realize what they had … until we sprang forth from it?”



“Madness,” Gabriel snapped, throwing himself back onto the couch. “Utter rot. You and Dad drank a lot when you were discussing this, didn’t you? Werewolves from a stone. Genius.” He crossed his arms and glowered at Malcolm, who was now pointedly ignoring him.



“It does sound a bit … far-fetched,” Gideon allowed, not wanting to hurt Malcolm’s feelings. Fortunately, Malcolm simply raised a sharply arched brow at him.



“As far-fetched as a tribe of moon-sensitive shapeshifters guarding a hunk of rock in the Scottish Highlands?”



“Ah. Well.” Gideon looked to Gabriel for help, but even he could only shrug.



“So,” Malcolm continued placidly, though his chin was raised a bit in defiance. “We have an ornate piece of stone, brought forth, if the story is true, from Egypt, and a culture that is still shrouded in magic and mystery. A stone with a history of inducing visions, if you will, of heretofore unimagined places. It supposedly served as a pedestal of power, for the ark of the covenant, then for the kings of Scotland. But I believe, and your father and Ian agree with me, that the Lia Fαil, whether all or none of the things I have just stated is true, is a power unto itself. A power with a nature that ancient man would not have understood and that Saint Columba had the sense and foresight to keep, essentially, secret.”



“You think it wasn’t meant as a throne,” Gideon murmured, only beginning to understand.



“Not so much a throne,” Malcolm nodded, “as a door.”



“A door to where?” Gabriel snorted, still looking incredulous. “Toontown? Bimini?”



“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,” Malcolm shot back at him. “And better uses for historical documents than making paper hats.”



“So you think that this is all linked,” Gideon said, a bit overwhelmed by what Malcolm was implying but still, through the surface impossibility of it, seeing the sense behind it. “That Malachi is trying to get at the Stone because he knows what it is, knows how to use it.”



“Thinks he knows how to use it,” Malcolm said, now looking troubled. “I have very serious doubts that Malachi has any inkling of what he’s really doing. I also doubt that he is, at the core, behind this. Whether or not he knows it, I’m quite certain our cousin could only be facilitating something, someone, a great deal more powerful than himself.”



“One of these…these Drakkyn? Whatever that, or it, is?”



“It’s only a guess,” Malcolm replied, spreading his hands before him. Then he shot a look at Gabriel. “A well-educated guess. But it isn’t such a stretch, if you begin to think about it, that these Drakkyn comprise the missing part of our history. That they are, in fact, what we come from.”



“What we escaped from.” The memory of the hellish creature that had bitten Carly surfaced in Gideon’s mind, just for a moment. Gideon blew out a long breath and looked at his brother, who no longer seemed quite so disbelieving. “Fall not back on the ways of the Drakkyn. Well. I suppose it does make a twisted sort of sense, considering.”



“No, not twisted. It makes perfect sense,” Malcolm insisted. “Perhaps we were exiled here. Perhaps we fled. But in allowing us to guard the Stone of Destiny, a thing which humans regard as a symbol of power without even knowing how much it actually has, Saint Columba left it in the hands of the only beings who, at the time, understood it. Who, if I’m correct, could even wield it, and who could protect it …”



“… from one another.” It was Gabriel who spoke now, softly but in a voice devoid of mockery. “Christ, Mal. This is a lot to digest.”



“Digest it later,” Malcolm replied flatly. “Our cousin appears to have captured the interest of someone with an eye for conquest.”



“And the keys to the kingdom.” Gideon thought of his father, of the way he was being used as nothing but a tool by those he had spent his life protecting, and welcomed the blaze of righteous anger that kindled to life inside of him. Perhaps he couldn’t save Carly, but he could ensure that the pain she’d been caused counted for something greater than the megalomaniacal dreams of his cousin … a Wolf who had sealed his fate, Gideon thought with little satisfaction, no matter which way the tide might turn.



“How do we stop this?” Gabriel asked Malcolm. “If what we came from was so bad that our people erased it from our history, then how can we even begin to stop it?”



“I’m afraid,” Malcolm replied, shaking his head, “that we’ll have to go on all our predecessors saw fit to leave us with.”



“Blind faith,” Gideon growled, raking his hand through his hair. “I’m sure God will forgive me for wishing I had a bit more.”



“Saint Columba believed in us,” Malcolm said, rising and giving Gideon a fatherly pat on the cheek. “Let’s hope we can remember why.”



“Does Ian know all of this?” Gideon frowned, just now realizing how conspicuous the other old lieutenant’s absence was.



Malcolm frowned. “That’s the other thing I wanted to tell you, though it pains me. Ian’s been acting a bit … odd, since your father’s abduction. Twitchy, jumping at shadows. I don’t know for certain, but I worry that he’s gotten himself involved. That he’s been convinced, somehow, that he was on the wrong side.” He looked pointedly at both of them. “And so I would ask that we keep what we’ve said between just the three of us, for the time being.”



Gideon looked at Gabriel, who grimly nodded his agreement. “All right. Though it sounds as though he knows most of it already.”



“So now we wait, I suppose,” Gabriel intoned, his voice impatient. “Twiddle our thumbs until they turn to paws and then run off to save the world.”



“I’m afraid so.” And Gabriel’s morose humor finally had Malcolm’s thin lips twisting into a reluctant smile. “Until then, I suggest rest. We’ll all need it.” He looked at Gideon, who realized with a jolt that for the time being, he was the Pack’s Alpha, Guardian of the Stone … and Malcolm was treating him as such.



“I’ll return shortly before moonrise. As I’ve told you, the Stone is only active at the full moon. Whatever is afoot, that’s when it will happen.”



“Moonrise.” Gideon nodded, but a voice in his mind whispered to him, keeping him from letting Malcolm go.



I don’t want to be alone.



“Wait,” he said in a voice that had Malcolm turning back to him, a question in his eyes. “I promised Carly I wouldn’t leave her. She’ll likely not survive the Change. And if I go, she’ll be alone.”



“I’m sorry for the loss of your mate,” Malcolm replied solemnly, again surprising Gideon with his quick acknowledgment of what he saw as fact. “But this is bigger than us all. I’ll see you tonight.”



Gideon could only watch, his gut churning at what he knew to be the truth, as Malcolm turned on his heel and strode quickly, purposefully out into the day. Though he knew Carly would urge him to do what needed to be done, the thought of leaving her at the mercy of the beast that had been let loose in her blood made him ill. Especially since when he left her, he likely was saying goodbye for the last time.



The clink of glass in the kitchen had him turning, distracted for a blessed moment at the sight of Gabriel rummaging in the cupboards to emerge, at last, with a glass bottle half-full of amber liquid.



At the question so plainly written across his brother’s face, Gabriel only raised his glass in toast. “I may have agreed to go to hell in a handbasket with you,” he informed him, “but no one said I had to do it sober.”



At that, he drained his glass.



And after a moment, Gideon joined him.



Chapter Fifteen



CARLY, LOVE … STAY WITH ME …



“Gideon? Gideon …”



Carly opened her eyes to the dimly lit bedroom, seeing everything in unnervingly sharp relief. Every object seemed illuminated from within, things as minuscule as a speck of dust all but leaping out at her. Horrified, she slammed them shut again.



She was delirious, and she knew it.



The heat slithering beneath her skin had returned with a vengeance, snakelike in its movement and reach. Try as she might, Carly could no longer escape it. The pain was now too great to allow her any more reprieve in the darkness of her dreams. Gideon had been there. She’d felt him, had clung to his presence like a drowning woman thrown a lifeline. He’d just been there, was there still … wasn’t he? She’d heard him …



“Gideon?” she croaked again, daring to crack one eye slightly open to look for him. But he was nowhere to be seen, the wooden chair beside her empty. Carly swallowed, hard, trying to remember. He had promised he’d stay with her. He’d promised. But there was something …



A cool kiss on her burning forehead, on her parched lips. “I’ll return as soon as I can. Hang on for me, love. Remember I love you … I love you …”