Frozen against the very hard, very real body of the specter who’d stalked the shadows of Ravencroft Keep since she’d arrived, an absurd question permeated the cold terror coursing through her.
What would a demon need with a blade?
Now that Mena knew he wanted her to scream, to summon Liam, she pressed her lips together. The hold he had on her arm wasn’t immobilizing, but the dagger point he held beneath her throat certainly was.
She found it a mercy that she didn’t have to look at him, that his horrific features wouldn’t be the last thing she saw in this world.
“He’s not coming for me,” she lied, hating how small and frightened her voice made her sound. “You’re mistaken. He remained at the festival.”
It was the dark chuckle that confirmed to Mena who he was. Rough, caustic, full of rasping masculinity and devoid of any humor. Only three other men on this earth had ever made a sound like that.
Liam Mackenzie, Gavin St. James, and Dorian Blackwell.
Brothers.
“Hamish,” Mena whispered. “You’re alive?”
“And ye’re a clever sort.” His serpentine head lowered so that she could hear the slight whistle of air through the pitiable slits in the center of his face. “Though not so clever as ye think if you consider this a life.”
The blade against her throat radiated the chill of the evening, paradoxically burning against the soft, tender skin of her throat. Mena was terrified, but felt oddly detached. A frigid chill that put the ice baths to shame washed over her, but instead of seizing her mind with those fingers of ice, it somehow liberated her.
She’d survived violence before. She’d been struck, threatened, choked, and terrorized. Somehow, through it all, she’d learned to keep her head in a dangerous situation. To cycle through the fear and pain threatening to cloud her thoughts, and pluck from the nebula of knowledge, instead.
Her newfound strength would be priceless in this situation.
Mena knew she wasn’t his true quarry, that she was a means to an end. Which could prove to be her salvation, unless she proved to be useless to him. First she must ascertain what his motives were, and then she could formulate a plan.
“That night I thought I dreamed of you.” A chill speared her at the memory, and she had to straighten her spine to keep it at bay. “You were in my bedroom?”
“I tried to warn ye then, woman,” he confirmed. “I told ye to run. I had revenge to reap and ye were in my way. I regret it had to come to this.”
“It still doesn’t have to,” Mena ventured. “You said that night that Liam promised you something. That you felt he owed you.”
“He does owe me,” Hamish insisted, his pressure tightening on her neck, the blade biting into the soft skin right beneath her chin.
“What?” The question sounded shrill and desperate, even to her. “What did he promise you? I’m certain he’ll give it, he’s a man of his word.”
A crack sounded in the woods beyond the feeble reach of the moon. The snap of a tree limb, perhaps?
Mena’s heart caught. Could it be Liam? She both desired and dreaded the sight of his sinister features.
Hamish had heard it, as well.
“I know ye’re out there, brother.” That terrible, almost beautiful laugh vibrated the air around them, and seemed to even disturb the mists now rising past their knees and inching up their thighs as though meaning to swallow them.
“How quick yer woman is to defend ye,” he taunted. “I wonder, Miss Lockhart, if ye would still think so highly of him if ye’d ever seen him as I have. Bathed in the blood of his quarry, drunk on his own rage, the indiscriminate killer. The Demon Highlander.”
A shadow moved in the trees, and Hamish brandished her at the night like a shield.
“Come forward and I spill her blood!” he called, tucking the knife tighter against her, this time nicking the skin. “Stay out there and I’ll spill yer secrets. Ye decide, Liam.”
His hand released her arm from behind her, sliding up her spine with sickening lethargy. Mena didn’t dare move; the blade at her throat rendered her an absolute prisoner.
His hand wrenched her neck to the side so she could no longer scan the tree line in front of them, only the inky darkness that led down to the western sea.
“Ye decide!” He laughed again, this time maniacally. “Either way she dies.”
* * *