Then Colin heard a strange noise and felt a piercing, unexplainable pain in his shoulder but he was too intent on his pursuit to pay it any heed.
The man was fit, Colin realised, but Colin was also fit, swift and tall. He covered twice the distance with one stride as the other man could and he was soon gaining on him.
He was nearly upon him when he started to feel a penetrating sluggishness permeate his body. He reached his arm out to grasp the figure’s collar and found he could barely hold it up.
Colin shook his head to clear his rapidly blurring vision and saw the man pull out in front, doubling then trebling the distance as Colin fought the overwhelming, unusual, unexplainable lethargy stealing over him.
He struggled against it, wondering vaguely why he felt it at all but within moments he slowed to a halt, breathing heavily.
Then Colin lost his battle and collapsed to the ground.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Fear
Sibyl sat next to Marian’s hospital bed, leaning forward on the side of it, exhausted and stressed, she rested her forehead on her crossed arms.
The older woman lay sleeping now and, for the first time, Marian Byrne looked every one of her advanced years. She’d regained consciousness at the Centre, muttering strange, dire warnings about “dark souls” and vehemently lamenting “letting Granny Esmeralda down’. Sibyl and Bertie, witnessing her ranting, feared she’d sustained a terrible head injury as Scarlett carefully tended to her.
Marian had calmed by the time the paramedics arrived but Sibyl’s panic had increased when Colin hadn’t returned then escalated to sheer terror when she heard the police found his motionless body. Luckily (they thought), in their hunt for him, they discovered the tranquilliser dart that brought him low, a great deal of the tranquilliser still in the shaft. Sibyl did not consider this lucky at all, she was becoming far too acquainted with the awful effects of tranquilliser darts and couldn’t comprehend for the life of her why someone kept shooting beings she cared about with them.
In all the heartbreak and despair to which Sibyl’s professional life had forced her to bear witness, nothing affected her quite so profoundly as seeing her charismatic, powerful, rugged Colin taken, unconscious, into an ambulance. If Mags hadn’t been holding onto her whispering soothing words, Sibyl knew her body would have collapsed.
And she knew in that instant that she loved Colin.
She was in love with Colin and loved him with all her heart, through her blood, veins and muscles, down through to the marrow of her bones.
She’d finally found him, Colin was him. Her soulmate, the one she’d been waiting for, just plain hers.
There was no reason for it; he didn’t suit her, not in the slightest. He was autocratic, possessive, dictatorial and had far more money than one person with good conscience should. He was nothing like she expected her true love would be and somehow everything she wanted. She didn’t think it even had anything to do with reincarnated souls of dead lovers, they could have been entirely different people altogether and they would have found each other.
He wasn’t Royce but now Colin looked at her the same way as if she was the centre of his universe and nothing else existed or mattered beyond her.
Not to mention, he was a good man, he didn’t like to let on to that sweet, simple fact but he was.
So, there was nothing she could do. She let him into her heart or more to the point clicked him into the place that had been waiting for him since the day she was born.
And she thought he fit perfectly.
Colin had regained consciousness in Accident and Emergency not half an hour before, groggy for approximately five minutes, he shifted quickly to icy fury. Knowing with relief that he was going to be all right, Sibyl escaped to check on Mrs. Byrne and left Colin to talk privately to the police.
Sibyl had already given the police her account of the evening, of the two masked men who came stealthily into her office, demanding to know where Colin was and for her to take them to him. Neither Sibyl nor her attackers saw Mrs. Griffith who was waiting for her taxi while dozing on the couch, hidden by a precarious pile of Talent Show costumes and props. Sibyl had backed away, telling them Colin had already left and it was then they grabbed her. At that action, Mrs. Griffith rose, like the Eternal Wrath of the Pensioners, wielding her cane and making imperious demands. Moments later, Colin had burst into the room.
As she sat by Marian’s hospital bed, Sibyl struggled to sort through her rampaging thoughts of tranquilliser darts, knives, Mrs. Griffith avenging her and, most terrifyingly, Colin’s savage display of violence. He was like a Warrior God and she could easily transpose him on an ancient battlefield, swinging a broadsword with deadly intent rather than an old lady’s cane.
She could still hear the sickening crunch of bone mingled with splitting wood.
She shuddered at the memory.
She felt a light touch on her hair and her thoughts skittered away as she lifted her head to gaze into the faded, opened eyes of her friend.
“Will you call my daughter?” Marian asked weakly.
Sibyl nodded, her heart breaking at the feeble sound of Marian’s usually strong voice.
Then she took the number down on a scrap of paper from her purse.
“They say you’re going to be all right,” she assured Marian after she’d taken her daughter’s telephone number. “You’ll need to stay here a day or two –”