Shoulder the Skye (Skye Druids #2)(72)
Author: Donna Grant

 

George’s face filled his vision as she knocked his hand away. “Your days of killing are done, asshole.”

 

One minute, George was there. The next, she was gone. Elias didn’t look for her. He rolled onto his hands and knees, pulling in air. He crawled as fast as his broken body allowed over painful gravel and between his friends still in the throes of battle.

 

All to get to Bronwyn.

 

Elias kept one eye on the mist and the other on his woman as he crept ever closer. When he finally reached her, he gathered her in his arms and settled himself against the manor. Then he looked at the mist. It sat there as if it were a sentient being studying him. And he couldn’t say for sure that it wasn’t.

 

“She saved me.”

 

Elias glanced where Sydney sat frozen to the side, his wild eyes locked on the mist.

 

“She saved me,” Sydney said again, disbelief coloring his words.

 

Elias looked down at Bronwyn and smoothed the hair from her face. One side was dotted with blood from hitting the ground. He’d promised that the night would end in their victory. Defeat wasn’t something he was accustomed to, and he didn’t like it. Mostly because Bronwyn had been hurt. But if he had to die, doing it holding the woman he loved was a good way to go.

 

Elias glared at the mist. “What are you waiting for?”

 

The mist shifted, readying to strike. Elias held Bronwyn tighter, and there, in that moment leading up to their deaths, he found the will to say the words he hadn’t been able to earlier.

 

“I love you,” he whispered as the mist dove for them.

 

Instead of pain or the emptiness of death, there was a loud boom as all the windows of the manor shattered outward.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

 

 

 

 

 

Rhona covered her head with her arms and ducked into a tight ball, waiting to feel the rain of glass. But there was nothing. She chanced a glance up and gasped when she saw the shards circling the mist and refusing to allow it to get away.

 

“What the bloody hell is happening?” asked a man with an Irish accent.

 

Rhona slowly straightened. She couldn’t believe what she was witnessing. Her gaze darted around to determine who was responsible for the glass, but everyone seemed to be as shocked as she. Elias was near the front door, slumped to the side with a motionless Bronwyn in his arms. Near them was a man on his side, curled in the fetal position. George had risen onto her elbow near the SUV, her eyes wide. The remaining four men and two women had paused in their fighting to stare at the glass and mist that seemed to be having a battle of their own.

 

If none of them manipulated the glass, then someone else out there was. And quite possibly the person who commanded the mist, as well.

 

Rhona turned in a slow circle, her eyes searching the darkness and shadows for a figure or anything that could give her a clue. No matter how hard she looked, she didn’t see anything.

 

“Incoming,” warned a woman with an American accent.

 

Rhona whipped around in time to see the mist fight to expand, but the glass held it tightly, refusing to let it budge. The unmistakable soft clink of a lighter opening filled the silence before the rasping sound of a spark wheel igniting, and then the hiss of a flame as the light broke through the night.

 

She turned to see a man with auburn hair glance her way before whispering to the tiny flame. In an instant, a spark shot up and out, directly for the glass and mist, growing larger by the second.

 

Rhona was about to extinguish it when the American lifted her hand and said, “We’re trying to get rid of the mist. Wait.”

 

Rhona hesitated, hoping she had made the right choice. The flame reached the glass and mist, and as she watched, the glass separated just enough for the fire to slip between it and the mist. Within moments, the mist began burning off. Rhona’s lips parted in astonishment as it struggled much as a person would to stay alive.

 

Then it was over. One moment, the night was lit by flame, and then it was a tiny spark. With the mist gone, the glass fell to the ground in a pile, and the fire returned to the lighter.

 

The scrape of gravel broke the silence. Rhona looked over to George and stalked to the seer. “I’d stay right there if I were you.”

 

“Finn,” the American called.

 

The dark-haired man nodded before moving away from the unconscious guy at his feet to stand guard next to a woman while the American limped toward Elias and Bronwyn.

 

“You picked the wrong side, Rhona,” George said.

 

Rhona cut her gaze back to the woman. “Your mistake was coming to Skye, thinking you had the run of the isle.”

 

“He’s breathing,” the American woman shouted. “So is Bronwyn. But they’re injured badly.”

 

Rhona held up a hand when the fire walker started to move.

 

He flashed her a smile after putting away the lighter. Then he bowed his head in a gentlemanly manner. “I was hoping I’d get the pleasure. Carlyle Oliver, at your service,” he said in a refined British accent. He nodded at the dark-haired man. “That’s Finn O’Connor, and Sabryn Beaumont is with our friends.”

 

So these were Elias’s colleagues. The Knights. The others, then, were Sydney and his acquaintances.

 

“You can’t hold us,” George said with a smirk. “It isn’t like we can go to jail.”

 

Rhona quirked a brow. “Who says you can’t be detained?”

 

A small frown formed on George’s forehead. “No police, not even the Druids here, would hold any of us.”

 

“In case you’ve forgotten, you’re on the Isle of Skye,” Rhona said.

 

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” George demanded.

 

Rhona smiled. “It means we have our own kind of punishment for Druids.”

 

 

 

 

 

Kerry seethed. She fumed.

 

She almost walked from her hiding place and showed everyone there just what happened to those who fought against her and the Ancients, but she managed to hold herself back. Much more needed to be done before she could put everyone in their place. She wouldn’t be the one to disrupt the Ancients’ plans.

 

Even if she wanted to show the others what she was capable of.

 

Especially Rhona. She would pay for disgracing Kerry. Then there was Bronwyn. Of all people, Kerry had been so sure of where Bronwyn stood. She had seen the darkness take the drough that night. There was no way Bronwyn should’ve come back from that.