She shrieked again, yet before she could fight the steely hold upon her, she found herself cast aside and falling down to the damp softness of the earth.
She tried instinctively to turn as she fell, to watch what was happening, to discover if she was being rescued—or damned.
She had to catch herself, had to fight for herself, if she was going to survive.
But she could not stop her fall.
Her body struck the ground against a cushion of grass. Her head struck a jagged piece of rock.
Sharp pain exploded in her head.
As her vision blurred, she saw the naked figure of the man who had seemed to appear like a selkie or demon from the water quickly raise the sword he carried. His steel sliced the air just split seconds after he had cast her aside.
The hooded figure was upon him already, his sword slashing as well.
Slashing air…
Where she had stood just a breath of time before.
The two came clashing together now in a roar of steel.
She saw that much.
But saw them in mist, everything spinning.
Then dizziness seized her completely.
And she saw nothing but ebony mist engulfing her, blacker than the night.
CHAPTER 3
Oh god, would this wretched nightmare never end? Her head was spinning.
She lay somewhere between sleep and awareness, yet she could not fully awaken.
She was dreaming again, and the dreams were becoming horribly real. She was dreaming that there would be a reckoning. The surviving Douglas was coming from America, bringing his savage kin. He was not so civilized. She lay upon her bed in the ancient master’s chamber of Castle Rock, and he and his kind surrounded her. Redmen in vibrant war paint. Feathers protruding from their heads. Their faces garishly colored in crimson, blue, black, their half-naked bodies painted as well. Each carried a weapon, a bow with arrows, a knife, a pistol. Each aimed his weapon at her. One lurked by the wardrobe, two flanked the window steps. One hunched down by the trunk at the foot of her bed. One…
One somehow different from the rest stood framed by the moonglow upon the old stone steps that led to the balcony window.
He was the most chilling of them all.
Somehow so familiar…
They had come to kill her.
A scream rose within her again with a terror so great that she awoke fully. Gasping, she sat up in bed. The savage at her side faded away. No war-painted brave perched by her wardrobe.
Her heart seemed to stop. Her head pounded. Her shawl lay on the floor, muddied and damp. Her cotton gown was damp as well, clinging to her flesh.
She hadn’t dreamed all of this! She had risen. She had walked to the water. She had run from the cowled man and crashed into the demon from the loch.
And somehow come back here.
A sound, a whisper on the wind, alerted her. She looked up. To the window.
And froze.
The savages were gone, oh, aye. Faded back to the realm of her imagination, from where they had sprung.