Page 117 of Dark Seduction

Claire choked on bile and fear. She no longer believed in coincidence. She knew, in that heart-stopping moment, that he was the demon responsible for her mother’s murder; that he was the demon she had wanted to hunt down and destroy to avenge her mother.

She began to shake convulsively. He had been hunting her instead.

She turned on all fours and retched.

Was it Malcolm he wanted—or her?

Claire slowly got to her feet. Her dagger and gun were gone. She was defenseless.

But she was defenseless even with those weapons, because nicking him would not save her from whatever he planned.

She began taking deep breaths. Fear wasn’t going to help her now. She looked around. The tower was larger than the tower at Awe, but only a small table, two chairs and a pallet graced it. Engraved on one wall was a symbol she recognized—the universal symbol for evil and the devil. A black pentagram in an odd circle glared at her.

There was a pitcher on the table. Claire assumed it contained water or wine—she wasn’t going near it.

She walked over to one of the tower’s two windows. The tower was clearly centuries old, and the opening was two and a half times the size of an arrow slit. She glanced outside and saw why the windows were large enough to accommodate a small man.

They were a hundred feet above the forest below. No one could scale the tower to get inside. The castle was on the top of sheer cliffs and the forest below was pine, thick and impenetrable. It was a gray, windy day. She smelled salt in the air. They were not far from the ocean.

She stared outside, trying to decide where he had taken her, but it was so gray and foggy out Claire could not decide where the sun might be. She had no idea where she was.

She hesitated, shivering with a fear that wouldn’t quit. Then she turned back to the window. With her nail, she started scraping a cross in the stone. It was faint and white but oddly comforting. She needed God now. She needed the Ancients, too.

She felt him coming.

Claire tensed, the arctic chill coming from outside the tower door, not from the wind or the sea. The black door opened and Moray walked in. He did not bother to close the door and he smiled at her.

“Where am I? What do you want?” Claire said. And she saw that he was wearing her mother’s stone.

“You are at Tor, Claire. My home in the Orkney Islands.”

Claire’s eyes widened. “You killed my mother.”

“How clever of you, Claire. Yes, I did. She was too beautiful to resist.” He touched the charm stone.

“Why?” Claire cried, fists clenched, as furious as she was afraid. “It wasn’t random, was it? You chose her for some damn reason!”

“I was hunting Alexander,” he said softly.

It took Claire a moment. Her father’s name had been Alex. “What?”

“I was hunting your father, Claire, and he was hunting me. We’d been doing so for hundreds of years. He led me to your mother. Their affair was random, but clearly, like Malcolm, he dared to care. How foolish. A Master should know better.”

Claire couldn’t breathe. “Tell me who he is!”

“But you’ve met Alexander of Lachlan. I believe you know him as Ironheart.”

Claire cried out. There was so much shock, so much disbelief. She recalled the way he’d looked at her stone, his choice to help her learn to fight, the surprising invitation to the Black Isle. “Oh, my God.”

“The gods aren’t here, Claire. No god would ever dare enter my home.”

Claire began to tremble again. “Ironheart will join with Malcolm to destroy you,” she cried.

“I gave up hunting him when he came completely into his powers. They are vast. I suspect you have some of those powers, too, but it will be decades before you realize them. Despite his power, he failed to destroy me a hundred times. Like the Masters before him, he has turned his efforts to the Deamhanain he can destroy. Even if he did come after me, he cannot vanquish me. There is no living Master who can.”

She wet her lips, her heart racing frantically. “What do you intend? Somehow I don’t think you’d go to all this trouble for an old grudge against Ironheart. I know this isn’t about Malcolm, either. It’s about me.”

“Oh, of course I would go to such ends to provoke your father! And I do love turning young Masters, Claire. Never mistake that. They make the most powerful Deamhanain when they have matured. But you’re right. I was toying with Malcolm. I did think he’d give in to his lust—and to me—but it doesn’t matter. There are other Masters to hunt. No, it’s you that I want. I knew it when I saw you as a child.”