Without comment, the three MacKeages suddenly disappeared as silently as they had arrived.
“And what are my orders, Laird Greylen MacKeage?” Grace asked once they were alone, staring at his still angry posture, his wet freezing clothes, and the sword that looked so at home in his hand.
“You can lay yourself over my knee while I whale the living daylights out of you,” he said, sitting on a rock and spreading his arms, his free hand pointing at his lap. “You scared ten years off my life, woman.”
He didn’t sound as if he was kidding. “I—I still have the stick,” she said, holding it up for him to see.
He held up his sword. “I’ve cut it in half once already. Shall we see if I can do it again?”
She hugged it to her chest. “No. But if you set down that sword and stop threatening me, I’ll let you touch it.”
“Why would I want to touch that accursed thing?” he asked, looking incredulous and horrified.
“It’s warm,” she told him. “See? I’m not even shivering, and I’m half dry already. If you touch it, those icicles will melt off your hair.”
He set his sword on the rock beside him and slowly held out his hand to her. Reluctantly, hoping she was doing the right thing, Grace carefully gave him the stick. The cold immediately assaulted her again.
Grey closed his fist around the burled cherrywood stick and stared, his eyes widening as he felt the hum of energy move through him. Grace smiled at his expression.
He suddenly swung it in an arc, slashing at the air as he would with his sword. He hefted it several times as if feeling its balance.
“It’s not a toy,” she scolded. “Remember Daar’s warning. You’re going to set these woods on fire or something. Give it back.”
He stilled his hand and gave her an incredulous look. And then he slowly moved his arm back and put all of his strength behind his swing, arcing the stick down and then back up before releasing it to sail through the air and land in the center of the mountain pond.
“What did you do that for?” she said with a gasp, staring at the angry fizzle of steam that erupted on impact. Blue light shot from the center of the pond in a blinding thunderbolt of pure energy back toward the summit of TarStone Mountain, shaking the air with booming vibrations that echoed over the ridge.
“Why?” she asked in a whisper, gaping at Grey.
He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her down against his chest, holding her so that her eyes were level with his. “Because I don’t intend for that priest ever to get his hands on it again,” he said, just before covering her mouth with his own.
Grace wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. She’d lecture him on his lack of respect for other people’s property later. And on his lack of timing when it came to rescuing her.
And on bringing his sword instead of a gun.
Grace quickly forgot all about being cold. There was enough heat coming from their kiss to melt the snow off TarStone.
Who needed a silly old stick, anyway?
Chapter Twenty-one
The ride down the mountain in the snowcat was made in silence, none of them willing to speak about what had happened at the pond. Ian was especially silent, concentrating instead on steering his machine through the sad-looking forest straining under a siege of ice that was now a good two inches thick. If it didn’t look so devastating, it would be absolutely stunning.
Grace was softly crying. Not that she let the two men in front know that. She was curled up on the backseat, wrapped in a blanket, her face buried in her arms.
It was too much for her to comprehend: Daar’s mysterious appearance, Jonathan’s disappearance, the fireworks, the impossible aspect of it all.
The most distressing part was Michael’s whispered speculation that those four men had been somehow transported backward through time.
Somehow the old man—drùidh, Michael had called him—and his long, crooked, glowing stick had conducted enough energy to breech the fourth dimension.
Just as Michael had seen four years ago.
Just as Grey also admitted seeing before, and the reason he had attacked the priest at the pond.
But all of that, no matter how unexplainable, was nothing compared with the realization that if Michael MacBain was crazy, then so were Grey and Callum and Morgan and Ian and Father Daar.
And so was she.
Grace heard Grey tell Ian to drive directly to the hotel, and she scrubbed her face clean of tears and sat up.
They were back. She was safely off the mountain for the second time in four days, only this time Grace knew that the journey to keep her promise to Mary was over.
She saw the snowmobile Michael had used to come down the mountain parked in front of the lobby entrance. Before the snowcat was shut off, and before she had to face Grey again and he realized her intent, Grace jumped out of the snowcat and ran toward the lobby doors.
Ellen and John and Michael were there, just stepping outside under the carport that protected the entryway from the weather. Baby was in Ellen’s arms. Grace walked up and plucked the child from Ellen and hugged him to her chest, kissing every inch of his sweet-smelling face.
“Oh, you feel so good,” she whispered to Baby. “Give me a smile.”
He did better than that. He giggled out loud, shivering from the kisses she’d given him. Grace hugged him tighter for several heart-pounding seconds, then lifted her gaze to Michael MacBain, who was watching her silently.
Grey and Ian walked under the carport to get out of the relentless drizzle. Ian turned his back on Michael to look out over the resort. Morgan and Callum came out of the hotel and silently joined Ian.
“He’s been such a good boy,” Ellen said, tucking Baby’s blanket up onto his shoulders as Grace held him. “Any time you need a sitter, Grace, you call me. It’s been a pleasure.”
“I will. Thank you.”
A low, rumbling moan suddenly trembled the ground beneath their feet, traveling toward them from the direction of TarStone Mountain. The moan slowly rose in pitch and volume until it sounded like the hum of a tuning fork moving closer.
“Dammit. The ski lift!” Grey shouted, grabbing Grace and pushing her and Baby to one of the carport pillars, wrapping himself around them in a protective embrace. Grace only had time to see Michael hug Ellen and John together and use his body to shield them from the direction of the lift before Grey pushed her face onto his chest, over Baby, and covered their heads with his arms.
A sudden detonation, like a sonic boom, shook the ground and rattled the windows of the hotel. Grace lifted her head just enough to see past Grey’s shoulder. She watched, horrified, as the cable of the ski lift finally snapped and whipped angrily through the air, backlashing against the lift shed. The shed collapsed under the force of the blow.
The tower arms broke then, each one sounding like a succession of gunshots that trailed off in beating echoes up the mountain. Gondolas smashed to the ground in a hail of shattering ice and glass. Trees near the lift trail bowed and broke from the indiscriminate whip of the cable.
Grey moved to his right, protecting them from the spectacle. Grace squeezed Baby’s ears between her chest and Grey’s to protect him from the percussion of the unbelievably loud cannonade that rumbled on and on, slowly decreasing in volume as the destruction traveled up the mountain.
The sudden silence was almost as shocking as the noise had been. It was broken only by occasional thumps and cracks high up on TarStone. Grey stepped back and turned, looking into the mist toward the remains of his ski lift, his expression awed.
It came then, the sound Grace had been waiting for and dreading. High up, far out of sight, the thunder of the summit house collapsing slowly rumbled back down the mountain toward them. The top tower had snapped under the strain of two miles of cable breaking free, and everything in the cable’s path was destroyed. All that was left were naked towers, still vibrating with an energy that had finally stripped them clean of the ice entombing them.