Bound by Dreams Read online

  “How can you do that?” Kiera stared from one man to another. “You’re not making any sense.”

  “With this.” Nicholas Draycott held up a small black chip. “It happens to be a new piece of technology that Calan is developing for his company. We have been testing it over the last few days at the abbey, and I saw to it that Calan had one of these taped to his chest under his bandages.” He smiled wryly. “As a precaution all of us have been wearing them. You, too, Ms.—Kiera.”

  “Well, I’m glad that one of you has done something sensible.” She frowned down at the flannel robe pulled over her hospital gown. “I’d better go change. I’ll look into flights to Scotland while you begin tracking that chip.”

  Nicholas Draycott blocked her way, his face impassive. “I want to see Calan safe just as much as you do, but I won’t let you endanger your own health in the process.”

  “What I do or don’t do is none of your business,” Kiera said flatly. “Now, if you’ll just move aside—”

  “I won’t. I’m certain that your sister will agree with me about this. And whether you like it or not, I am a blood relative. As your uncle, estranged or not, I have a duty to help you in any way I can. So I’ll provide a car for you. I’ll hire a small plane for the trip to Scotland. But not until your physician has given you clearance to travel.”

  Kiera started to snarl a protest and then stopped. He was being generous in his offer of help, and she would be no help to Calan if she slowed down their pursuit. “You’re certain that chip will work?”

  “So far it’s performed impeccably.”

  “Has anybody told you that you’re unbelievably stubborn?”

  Nicholas smiled faintly. “Every day.”

  Kiera stared at him. “And you’re telling the truth about renting a private plane?”

  The Englishman nodded. “But there is something that we need to do first.”

  GOLDEN SUNLIGHT CUT THROUGH banked clouds. Two hours later Nicholas Draycott passed a broad hedgerow and raced up the long driveway that led to Agatha MacKay’s house. He was a good driver and they had made excellent time from the hospital near Hastings. Kiera’s doctor had reluctantly cleared her for travel, and Nicholas had put no further obstacles in their way.

  His planning had been impeccable, and so far Calan’s experimental tracking equipment had worked perfectly. When Nicholas explained its design, Kiera had a new respect for Calan’s intricate work. He had built his company from scratch according to Nicholas, linking his satellite mapping technology to carefully designed products in high demand around the world.

  Nicholas Draycott’s pride in his friend’s achievements was obvious. The two had been friends since a miserable summer in camp together. When Calan’s relationship with his family had ended abruptly, Nicholas had been Calan’s confidant. When he had finally left Scotland, still a teenager, Nicholas and his parents had helped Calan make a new life in England.

  As far as Nicholas knew, there had been no further contact between Calan and his family.

  Except for Agatha and her husband. And then Magnus MacKay had shown up at the hospital the night before.

  As the Englishman spoke, Kiera saw the core of honesty and duty that framed his actions. It was impossible to hate Nicholas Draycott. It was growing harder even to distrust him. But Agatha MacKay was a different story. Kiera was furious that Calan’s great-aunt had been involved in his removal from the hospital.

  Yet it was hard to stay angry when she faced the tired, worried old woman who opened the door to them.

  “I wasn’t sure that you would come, Nicholas. Not after what happened at the hospital. You’re going after them, I hope?”

  “We’ll be in Scotland tomorrow,” Nicholas said.

  Kiera hid her surprise, well aware that Nicholas planned to reach Scotland that same afternoon. She noticed that Nicholas did not tell Agatha about the chip or any details of his plan to track Calan. He was taking no chances on Agatha’s loyalties, it seemed.

  “I have everything packed for you. I’ve drawn you a map—at least as far as my memory permits. It’s been forty years since I was in that part of Scotland, so you’ll forgive me if there are gaps. Use this book as your best resource.” The old woman ran her fingers gently across the weathered leather cover of a slim volume. “Read every word. It will tell you all the things I can’t. If Magnus knew that I had it…” She made an angry sound. “But he doesn’t and he never will, because my husband never told him. Guard it well. In those pages lies the key to Calan’s life. Now go. You have very little time before—”

  “Before what?” Kiera interrupted.

  “Magnus will do whatever he can to hold Calan. Things are different there. Time can be misleading. You will have to win him back, and the struggle will be a cold, hard thing. But you can read that on the way. It’s all in the book. Go to Portree on Skye. From there follow the map I’ve made. Hurry.”

  Kiera cradled the book, frowning. “Why did you help Magnus?”

  “I had no choice. He would have taken Calan, one way or the other. At least this way I knew his plan. As soon as they left, I knew I could contact you.” The old woman looked uncertainly at Kiera. “I hope you will forgive me. I did what I thought best. How could I not, when I love Calan like the grandson I never had?” The old woman pressed the book into Kiera’s hands. “Now, go. The rest is written in this. Be careful of Magnus’s wrath, for he will strike from behind and when you least expect it. I can still remember—” Agatha MacKay closed her eyes and shook her head. “It seems like a dream now. That they should still exist at all is a marvel.”

  Nicholas’s eyes narrowed. “They?”

  Agatha MacKay shook her head. “You’ll find all the answers in the book of the clan. Make haste lest you are too late. And…give Calan all my love.” She swept open the door and waved them outside, looking agitated.

  A cold wind whipped at Kiera’s face. As she walked, the cover of the book lifted against her fingers. The old pages seemed to move, ruffled in the wind.

  They spoke.

  Their low whisper was like a warning in an ancient language she could not understand.

  “DO YOU BELIEVE HER?” Kiera asked quietly.

  “Twenty-four hours ago I would have said yes. Completely and absolutely.” Nicholas Draycott frowned as he watched a small private plane being prepped for takeoff. Dark clouds piled up on the horizon. Another unseasonable storm with low visibility was expected by afternoon, adding further urgency to their departure.

  Nicholas cleared his throat. “I should tell you that I’ve finally managed to locate our old estate manager. We lost track of him, but I’ve learned that he died two years ago in a mental home. I was told that he was paranoid and delusional. At the end he was certain people were coming after him. I’m deeply sorry about this, Kiera. I wish I had known what my sister was enduring while I was in Asia. It’s intolerable that all my affairs were left in the hands of such a man. Before this, my family had never had a reason to distrust him.”

  Kiera let out a breath. “I believe you. I may never know everything about what happened. I’m glad that you told me.”

  “I will help you in any way that I can.” Nicholas studied her face. “Do you love him, Kiera?”

  She stiffened at the abrupt question. Then she slowly nodded. “With all my heart. Such a short time I’ve know him, but somehow he has changed me and everything I thought I wanted.”

  “Love will do that.” Nicholas looked down at the book unopened in Kiera’s lap. There had been no time for more than a quick glance as they raced to the small airport. “And will you love him just as much once you know everything about him? There are secrets in that book, details about his clan past and his difficult future. Will you feel the same then?”

  “Just as I do now, with all my heart.”

  “For Calan’s sake, I hope so.” He stood up as the man on the runway turned, waving to them briskly.

  Ten minutes later they were banking over Dover’s white
cliffs, headed toward Scotland.

  Kiera opened the book and began to read.

  We come from the same blood.

  We come as one from a place of stone and mists. Our name was different then. We wore the past in the cloth our women worked, each color framed of the old knowledge. Every cloud had a meaning, every pebble a lesson. We were as one. No outsiders were given to know the way to our guarded places.

  All that changed in the great rebellion. Our secrets stood in danger of being revealed.

  Now as a man of clan MacKay, you hold the book and read the secrets. By blood you are bound by them. You will be claimed by this truth forever.

  Fear and believe.

  And then understand….

  Kiera shuddered, feeling a cold slap of warning. The book seemed to move in her fingers. She was not a man, not of Calan’s clan.

  Yet she had to know the truth.

  She gripped the book. Grimly, she continued to read the yellowing pages.

  The gifts are three and set clearly below:

  The Naming.

  The Calling.

  The Binding.

  Without a true clan name, one can neither be called nor bound. Mark this well. Call one by a true name and he must come. Bind one by a true name and he must yield.

  Love one by a true clan word and he must be caught forever.

  Kiera felt something brush the skin at her neck, in warning or in promise she did not know.

  The curse and the gift come from the Calling.

  The Change and Hunt are for the clan. Not for personal gain or glory. Not for revenge. Not for love.

  You hunt for the need of the blood.

  You hunt for the need of your kind.

  The animal that you meet in your first dream will be your constant shadow…and your truest future.

  The words went on, framed almost in poetry. But the pictures between the words were harsher, with fierce animals and grotesque shapes, formed of man and wolf. Kiera closed her eyes to other shapes as the knowledge roared in her ears. They could change.

  They could Change.

  It was impossible.

  She remembered the great wolf outside the abbey’s stone fence. The same great animal had seemed to hold unnatural strength and intelligence as it guarded her flight from the ruined church.

  Calan.

  She sank back, the book shaking in her hands. Even as her mind rebelled, the cold, infinite truth slid home.

  She looked at Nicholas and saw the weight of knowledge in his eyes. “You knew this?”

  “Not all. Calan has never said much. But enough.”

  Kiera still struggled to understand what she had read, how legend and magic wrapped around a bloodline, protected by storm and fog on a small island with a cove found on no maps. As a MacKay of the Grey Isle, Calan was a creature who should not have existed, a human capable of transformation that no science could explain.

  The black wolf.

  She closed her eyes as the memory of their bond leaped into her mind. She followed the bond, fighting at first and then slowly accepting what she felt.

  The burning, restless blue-gray eyes. The intelligence beyond that of any animal.

  “I don’t believe it,” she whispered. “I can’t. It’s…ridiculous. Highland fantasies with strange creatures torn from fog-shrouded legends?” Her voice broke. “Anyone can write a book and fill it full of tall tales and gloomy legends. No man could do what those pages describe.”

  Will you love him just as much once you know everything about him? Nicholas’s question haunted her.

  Was she brave enough to accept all that Calan was?

  Kiera felt the strange silver mark at her wrist burn suddenly and she wondered if it carried its own kind of magic. Then deep in her heart, even as she fought against the words she had just read, Kiera felt the cold weight of truth. Calan was the thing that the book described. He had come from a line of such shape changers.

  She took a deep breath. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “So far as I know what truth is. I’ve seen him change three times now.” Nicholas rubbed his neck. “It is a thing to make you question all your established thoughts of physics or humanity. Don’t ask me to explain it, because I can’t. I know only what my eyes have seen.” Nicholas Draycott sat forward suddenly, pointing out the small window. A broad rocky cove curved against whitecapped water. “There’s Jura below us. We should be in Portree within the hour.”

  Kiera nodded. But she was thinking about a man with too much pain in his eyes, a man whose hands had taught her trust and pleasure beyond imagining. Those same hands and limbs could change to fearsome form, from all she had just read. As a relentless hunter, he would always be fighting to control his own strength and dark instincts. How could she ever feel safe around such a man?

  Man.

  The understanding came to her slowly as she watched the sea run in high swells beneath the airplane. She had felt Calan’s humanity. It had wrapped around her, comforted her, touched her on too many levels to count.

  Calan the man was real. His laughter and touch were real. Whatever else he was, he would never lose the part of him that Kiera could trust. Even as her mind flinched against images drawn from myth and superstition, Kiera felt the certainty of trust bloom.

  She would bring him home. To her home. To her family, not the cold gray island.

  And Kiera accepted that Nicholas had to be part of that future.

  As if he sensed her turmoil, Nicholas hesitated and then rested one hand on hers. “Give it time. You don’t have to accept or understand everything at once. But he’s a man worth fighting for, and I’ve never seen him in love before. He told me that it could only happen to him once—if at all. He seemed to think it very unlikely. I’m glad that he was wrong.” He gestured at the book, half-open on her lap. “And if you’re done reading about the history of the clan MacKay, I’d like to have a look myself before we land.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  IT WAS JUST ANOTHER BLEAK, windswept cove wrapped in gray water. They had passed dozens already.

  But somehow Kiera knew this one was different.

  She stared at the finger of land jutting up into angry waters. The pilot shook his head, sweeping a glance over the brooding horizon. “Naught down there but water and stones. You’re certain this is the place, Lord Draycott?”

  Kiera scanned Agatha MacKay’s hand-drawn map one more time. They had left the Isle of Skye with bad weather close on their flank. The light was going fast. If they made a mistake, they would lose another day before they could orientate against the map.

  “We went in the wrong direction,” Kiera said slowly. “After that last mountain, we crossed three little islands. According to Agatha’s map, there should only have been two. We need to go back.”

  Nicholas Draycott looked undecided. “Kiera, the light is going. We don’t have much time…”

  The certainty.

  The bond so strong she felt it hammer at her chest.

  “No. He’s back there. Take us back to the mountain. Then head west.” The roar of the plane engine was a constant thunder against the microphone that all three of them wore.

  Nicholas Draycott started to ask a question. But he looked at her eyes and nodded. “Just like she said. Back to the mountain.”

  And now a thread of contact, gossamer fine, seemed to tug her, showing the way. Kiera closed her mind to uncertainty and followed.

  “THERE.”

  Her hand pressed against the plane’s cold window. Two islands rose beneath them, half-swallowed by racing clouds. The pilot banked and headed west. Now the landmarks were just as Agatha had drawn them.

  A high peak to the north. Then a stretch of deserted sea. Calan was down there. He needed her.

  The island was tiny, a speck against restless water. Without Agatha’s map, they never would have found it. Staring at the jagged rocks, Kiera felt the hairs tighten on the back of her neck.

  A warning—too clear to mi
ss.

  Her eyes hardened. Let them try to keep her away from Calan. She had negotiated with bandits in Outer Mongolia and traded chickens for safe passage among headhunters in Borneo. Calan’s family didn’t know what they were up against.

  Kiera smiled coldly. She was glad to have Draycott blood if it made her stubborn and imperious. She welcomed all those strengths now.

  The crooked cove lay half-hidden against a sullen headland. She was going to take Calan home.

  THE PILOT FOUND what little protection he could, putting them down right on the beach in the lee of a jagged cliff. There was no sign of any cottage or even a road.

  For a moment Kiera’s certainty faltered.

  Then the thread of contact reemerged, stronger than ever.

  He was here. Somewhere close.

  The sun faded, caught behind racing clouds. Somehow here in the strange light distances were distorted, just as Agatha had warned.

  “I can only give you thirty minutes, Lord Draycott. There’s a high-pressure ridge moving in from the west, and we need to be in the air before it reaches us.”

  Nicholas nodded, turning to survey the grim cove. “I didn’t get to finish Agatha’s notes. What are we supposed to do next?”

  Kiera took a deep breath. “We’re supposed to call him.”

  The Englishman’s brow rose. “Not with a cell phone, I presume.”

  “‘By voice and by will.’ At least that’s what the book said. ‘By truest name.’”

  She thought of the strange words that might have been Gaelic.

  She put her hands on her hips, squinting into the wind. Clouds swirled around her. The wind seemed to rise, howling in sullen fury almost as if the island itself fought her.

  “Calan!” She sent a message of love in her thoughts at the same time she called to him. “Calan Duthac MacKay of Na h-Eileanan Flannach—I make my calling to you.” Calling out in the wind, she felt almost foolish. She welcomed Nicholas’s voice when he joined her.