“God!” the man exclaimed and started to laugh again. He stared at Shawna in a way that chilled her to the bone. “I don’t seek God. Hell-bent, indeed! Life and death are close, eh? The living do lie among the dead, do they not, Lady Shawna?” he breathed. Once again, he choked.
“Where is Sabrina?” she cried.
But he didn’t reply. He stared at her with sightless eyes.
“Where—” Shawna tried again.
“He’s dead,” David said flatly.
Then he stood, reaching down for the dead man, hiking him over his shoulder, and heading back into a vault.
“David, what are you doing now?” Shawna demanded.
David returned to the hallway. “A rather instant burial. I don’t want him found dead as yet.”
“But David, we should call the constable?—”
“The constable isn’t going to help us. We’ve got to solve this ourselves.” He reached out a hand to her. “We’ve got to get out of here. I don’t know how many are involved in this conspiracy, nor have I fathomed who is at its core. You’re truly a fool if you haven’t realized the danger you’re in by now. You shouldn’t have been down here tonight. If you would just learn to behave?—”
She had wanted his hand so badly. Just to be touched by him. She had been absolutely terrified that he might have been killed.
Now, he was yelling at her again, as if everything that happened here was her fault.
Shawna shook free of his touch and hurried along the corridor, climbing the stairs to the cemetery outside the castle at a swift pace. Yet when she reached the gateway to the night beyond, he drew her back. She thought he meant to apologize, to speak some words that might be gentle or tender.
He had no such intention.
“Hold, damn it, my lady. Let’s assure ourselves no one waits beyond to fire a shot made clear by the moonlight!”
He left her where she stood, opening the gateway himself, slipping out for several seconds before returning for her. “It appears safe.”
She ignored him, shaking off his touch. She went out into the moonlight, amazed to see that it remained the middle of thenight. Very little time had actually elapsed since she had first entered the crypts.
It had seemed like a lifetime.
Perhaps because she’d been surrounded by the dead and her own life had so nearly ended in the time that had elapsed therein.
She glanced down at her arms, at her clothing. Cobwebs shrouded her in a coating of white nearly as opaque as the shrouds on the dead. Dust…
Bone dust, perhaps?
Death.
Caked over her.
“Oh god! Oh god!” she breathed.
She started to run.
“Shawna?”
He followed behind her, but she did not stop. Her flight was born of a wild panic that went far beyond any rational fear. She was covered in death, suffocating in it, and she could bear it no more.
She ran from the cemetery at an amazing, reckless, haphazard speed, David shouting her name at her heels. She reached the Druid Stones, and she did not pause. He caught hold of her arm, stopping at last, drawing her back to him.
“Shawna!”
“No, no, let me go!”