The Serpent in the Stone - By Nicki Greenwood Page 0,56
leave her cheeks. “Ian’s tent.”
Faith’s gaze went sharp and alert. “Out the back.”
Worried now, Sara launched herself at the back wall of the tent and pulled up the stakes that pinned the canvas to the tent floor. With a last look at Faith, she slipped out.
She shapeshifted into the wolf and ran full-tilt up the slope of the island. As she came within sight of his camp, she slowed to a trot and then a cautious walk, approaching it from the back.
Ian’s scent drifted toward her on the cool air. She pricked her ears forward and sniffed again, but no hint of other company reached her. She rounded the corner of the tent. Lantern light glowed from within.
When she reached the door, she released her hold on the shapeshift. The shape of the tent blurred, then took on the more indistinct lines of human night vision, and the change completed. “Ian?”
“Come in.”
She did so, and found him sitting on his cot cleaning a rifle. Sara pulled up a chair and sank into it with her heart thumping. “You should leave.”
He lowered the rifle to his lap. “Are you kidding?”
“Take the boat tonight and go to Unst. Call a ferry, I don’t care. You don’t have to stay here. This isn’t your problem.”
“Let me tell you why it is my problem. I’ve had recurring nightmares since I got here about something happening to you, about how I’m supposed to protect you from God knows what or who, and they’re only getting worse. You know who I see in these damned nightmares, who tells me this stuff? Your father.”
She blanched. Her mouth fell open, and she struggled for something to say. Nothing came.
Ian went back to cleaning his rifle. “He died in an office, right? There was a wooden desk, and a brass lamp, and a big silver picture frame on the bookshelf with your family in it? Leather books? Stuff in display cases? An old map of Shetland on the wall?”
His words hit her like a spray of bullets. She cringed in the chair. “Stop, stop! How are you seeing all this?”
“Tell me again how it isn’t my problem.”
She hugged herself and whispered, “He never comes to me or Faith.”
“I guess I’m just lucky.”
Wounded, she stared at him.
Regret flashed across his features. “Sara, you don’t want to see him. Not like this.” He looked back down, wiping the small parts of the rifle and piecing them back together. “Anyway, I’m not leaving. Not unless you do. Don’t ask me why he picked me, because I don’t know.”
“We can’t leave. Faith and I found something out about this amulet. It’s connected somehow with a druid ceremony that manipulated the ley lines. The order that used it... We think they were like us.”
Ian looked up. “Like you? With the floating objects and shapeshifting?”
“Yes. Except this druid order, if they really were a druid order, was able to control the ley lines and use their power. Faith said it would be like having possession of an atomic bomb.”
“And you want me to leave without you?”
“We found a skull at the dig, from a Viking who killed one of the druids.” Her body screamed for motion. She lunged upright to pace back and forth. “Faith read the skull, and she found his ghost, and he wants us to stay here. Something about the next full moon and a sword, and he’s guarding her, and I came up here to see you because I’m worried that something is going to happen to you—”
Ian set his rifle aside and stood up. He caught her in his arms. “Now you know how I feel. Don’t you think I’d go out of my mind with worry if I left?”
She shook her head violently. “I don’t want you staying here because of some dream—”
“It’s not just about that! Are you blind? I—”
She gaped. Had he just meant to say...?
Ian looked away, but not before she saw the torment in his eyes. He circled like an angry wolf, twice around the tent, then he gripped her shoulders and gave her an angry shake. “I’ve wanted you almost from the minute you got here, and I can’t even explain why. Then I find out what you are, and I have no idea what I’m doing, feeling the way I am, because my father was killed by one of you—” He broke off and lunged away, raking both hands through his hair.
Old pain tore through her, suddenly fresh again. “Freaks? Is that what