Deryn looked up at the sound of her voice and their eyes met across the distance. She saw hope and relief flare in his gaze. Rory had his face buried in Deryn’s shoulder, clinging on like his life depended on it.
She tried to make her way over to them, dancing between the knots of fighting and weaving her way across the muddy ground.
She had almost reached them when a voice suddenly spoke in her ear. “Oh no, ye dinna. Ye think ye can thwart me that easily?”
A hand grabbed her arm and yanked her around. She found herself facing Rodric MacKay. His expression was crazed, his eyes wild.
“This isnae over! Do ye hear? It isnae over!”
He began dragging her towards the stone structure in the middle of the garden.
She kicked and punched at him. “Let me go!”
But his grip was like iron, his strength frightening. “I’m of the Unseelie Fae!” he hissed. “And ye canna stop me!”
He placed his bloodied palm against the stone and once again the shimmering curtain flared into life, dimmer than ithad been, but through it she could see a street busy with cars and people.
“Ye are coming with me!”
Then, before she could stop him, he pulled her through the arch.
Maddy felt the same disorientation she had felt once before, like the ground was collapsing under her feet. As the world disappeared around her, she retained enough self-awareness to try to yank her wrist out of Rodric’s grip but he wouldn’t let go.
The next instant her feet hit plush carpet so hard that she staggered onto her hands and knees. Nausea roiled in her stomach, making everything spin. She blinked, staring down at the carpet before her.
Wait. Carpet?
She flipped herself over, looking around in startlement. A lavish room met her gaze, complete with flame-effect fire, leather sofa, and fancy crystal chandeliers dangling from the ceiling.
She scrambled up and steadied herself on the back of the sofa as she fought the nausea. Several feet away, Rodric MacKay was picking himself up from the floor by the lintel of a wide doorway beneath which the air shimmered like heat-haze. Through the roiling mass she could still see the little garden in Torryn Keep and the fighting men that filled it.
She threw herself at it but before she’d even taken a step, the shimmering dissipated until all she could see through the door was a very large and very twenty-first century bedroom.
“Take me back!” she screamed. “Take me back right now!”
She flew at Rodric, beating her fists against his chest, lashing out with her feet and elbows, unleashing the fury and terror that pounded through her.
“Open it! Open it, damn you!”
She had spent so long wanting to return here to the twenty-first century, but now all she wanted to do was go back to the fifteenth. Rory and Deryn were there! She had to get back to them!
Rodric caught her hands, spun her around, and pulled her against him, getting an arm across her neck and tightening until she nearly choked.
“Be still, woman! Shut yer screeching or I will gag ye! Understand?” He tightened his arm, cutting off her air until all she could do was nod.
He released her and she staggered, gulping in air. Rodric gripped her arm and marched her unceremoniously through the living room and into the bedroom. This room too was large and opulent and had high, narrow windows that looked out on the city below. She was high up in some kind of apartment block or perhaps a hotel suite. It was night time but not dark due to the swathe of city lights winking below. After the quiet dark of the medieval Highlands, it was almost blinding.
She didn’t recognize the cityscape and she didn’t have time to look at it closely as Rodric dragged her across the room and threw her down on the bed. She scrabbled away from him, tried to crawl over the other side of the bed but he caught her across the face with a stinging blow that sent her sprawling.
He caught a fistful of her hair and dragged her towards the metal headboard. She fought him, struggling and trying to hit him, but she couldn’t reach him without ripping off half her scalp. He took something silver out of the bedside drawer.
A pair of handcuffs.
She went cold. “Help!” she screamed at the top of her voice. “Help! He’s— “
Another blow cannoned into her cheek, snapping her head to the side and making her groggy. All the strength went out of herlimbs as he snapped one end of the handcuffs around her wrist, the other around the ornate metal headboard.
“Last chance. Scream again and I really will gag ye,” he growled. “Are ye going to play nice?”
