And he had apparently missed an entry.
Hawk suddenly rode up, leading his brother’s horse. “David!”
David leaped atop his mount.
“Take me!” Edwina cried out to him.
He hesitated. Alistair and Sloan were alongside him now, on horseback also.
He reached down, catching Edwina’s arm, bringing her up upon his horse. They began to race like the night wind for the cliffs.
Shawna awoke with a terrible pain searing her head. She remembered the scent, the feel, of the drug from before. She tried to lie very still, praying for the pain in her head to subside.
She started to shift position, then realized that she was freezing and very uncomfortable.
She was lying on stone.
The Druid Stone?
That couldn’t be. The Druid Stone would be surrounded by people…
She tried to move.
She was tied fast to the stone.
She opened her eyes slowly and barely managed to contain the gasp that came to her lips.
She was in a small cavern in the caves, naked, and tied to a flat stone surface.
That much she realized fairly quickly, yet it all made little sense.
Then she saw more of her surroundings.
Before her, hung upon the cavern wall and looming hugely there, was a terrifying figure. The horns of a goat rested upon a cruelly leering mask of a man. The body of the figure had been made half-man, half-beast, with giant genitalia hanging in the appropriate place on the creature. Candles were lit all about the abomination.
She was not alone with it.
Cloaked figures were gathered around it, swaying back and forth.
She began to hear a low hum, a very strange chanting.
Oh god, oh god, where was she? The cliffs, aye, yes, where in the cliffs? How long had she been here?
She wanted to scream.
Scream and scream…
A shadow loomed over her. She closed her eyes to slits, desperate to see what was going on, terrified to do so.
Lowell.
Her great-uncle Lowell had brought her here.
Brought her here—with these creatures who had their own ceremony on the Night of the Moon Maiden. These were not the witches of Craig Rock because the witches were gentle, kind, honest women practicing an ancient belief and healing of the body and the soul.
This was something…different.
This was what the Church had feared for years, this was what had brought about the deaths of thousands of innocent people. This was some kind of hellish practice of the devil, and her great-uncle, it seemed, was high priest.