As she tore into the second room, barely lit by the moonlight, Shawna paused at first, aware only of the death that filled the room. Fear cast a clammy hand upon her. Dust lay heavy on the floor. Spiderwebs met and melded to keep the gray shadows of the vault as eerie as they might be.
Shawna swallowed hard and hurried through a maze of coffins upon the floor. She finally reached the far end of the vault’s second room.
She stood dead still and let out a cry.
She had found Sabrina.
CHAPTER 20
Bound hand and foot and gagged, Sabrina had been left lying on one of the burial shelves. Shawna’s cry alerted the others. David was the first to reach her, slipping the gag, and carrying Sabrina quickly out of the mausoleum and into the moonlight. With his burden in bis arms, he knelt down just before the steps, the others gathering around him.
“Is she alive?” Sloan demanded hoarsely.
“My poor sister!” Skylar cried, cheeks damp with tears of hope. “Does she live? Is she injured?”
“Does she breathe?” Shawna whispered.
“Aye, she breathes, she lives, I can feel her heartbeat,” David said. Sloan slipped a knife from a sheath at his calf to slice through the ropes that bound her hands and feet. Though she breathed, Sabrina’s eyes remained closed.
“Sabrina? Sabrina, it’s Skylar!” her sister said softly. “You’re going to be all right now. We have you. No one is going to hurt you.”
Sabrina’s lashes fluttered. Her eyes, which looked unfocused, finally settled upon Shawna and opened wide with incredulity. “Shawna, you all have found me. Oh, thank God! I’ve been tied up in that wretched vault forever. I tried kicking the walls,shifting along the floor, screaming through that horrible gag…no one heard me! I’m so mad, I could scratch the eyes out of those terrible people. Oh, Shawna, now you will be in so much danger! They will come for you. They will come for you.”
“Sabrina, who will come for me?” Shawna demanded.
Sabrina saw David then in his Brother Damian attire. She started to recoil from him, alarmed at the sight of the man who held her. “My god?—”
“Sabrina, it’s me, David.”
“David!” she repeated, dazed. She seemed to lose her train of thought then. “They will come…”
“Sabrina, how did you get here? Who did this to you?” David demanded.
“I could really use some water!” she said. And her lashes fluttered and fell.
“Oh my god!” Skylar breathed, but Sloan was holding Sabrina’s wrist, feeling her pulse. His eyes were focused very intently upon Sabrina, but he spoke reassuringly to Skylar, whom he seemed to regard with affection.
“She’s all right, Skylar,” he said. “As she said, she just needs some water and some food. You know your sister. She’s going to be tearing mad and ready to fight as soon as she’s moved her muscles a bit. She’s going to be fine.”
Shawna’s gaze fell from Sloan as she became acutely aware of David staring at her again, for as she knelt by his side as he held Sabrina, she was but inches from his face. She met his eyes again and nearly recoiled at the searing emotion within them. She rose quickly to her feet, shaking both from Sabrina’s strange graveyard warning and the look David had cast upon her.
David was rising. “We need to get her back to the castle. Hawk, I think it will be best if one of you bring her on a horse, as I intend to remain Brother Damian a while longer.”
“Alistair,” Shawna asked, “can you go to the village and bring Edwina?”
“We don’t need Edwina,” David said. “James?—”
“Please! I want Edwina to see her,” Shawna insisted. In his present mood, she was afraid he would refuse her.
“Fine, Alistair, if you will go for Edwina. Edwina,” he explained for the benefit of the newcomers, hesitating only a minute, “is a healer. She’ll have something to make Sabrina feel better right away.”
“Aye, I can go for her right away,” Alistair said.
Hawk was already mounted and reaching down to David. “I’ll take Sabrina.”
David gently handed Sabrina to him. “Skylar, come up behind me. She’ll need you.” Skylar did as directed.
James McGregor mounted his horse to follow behind Hawk. They rode quickly out of the cemetery toward the front entrance of the castle.