The Wellspring (Kaitlyn and the Highlander #12) - Diana Knightley Page 0,61

like the van was going to shake apart, violently, and—

I was groggy, lost, confused.

Where?

Isla’s wail reached my ears. I patted the space to find her and slid her up to have her face close to mine. “Shhhhhhh, mama here, yes I have you, I have you.”

I raised my head. Archie was down near my feet. “Archie?”

He moaned, but that was good.

“Magnus?”

He made no noise — still, and his stillness really freaked me out. I scrambled up, pushed him onto his back, and listened to his chest. I felt his pulse. It was hard to hear anything because my own pulse was raging, adrenaline and fear fighting for supremacy over fucking-calm-down and listen. “Magnus, I need you to wake up, you’re freaking me out, my love, we need you to wake up.”

I banged on the side of the van and yelled, “We need a doctor! We need a doctor right now! Right now! Doctor!”

No sounds from outside. I knew the door was locked and this was exactly why the hell we didn’t jump while inside of something, because I couldn’t tell if anyone was out there. I pressed my ear to the side, listening and banged again, “Help! Help! We need a doctor!”

I put Isla down beside Archie. “Please sit, just sit, mammy is going to do something.” I kneeled beside Magnus and began performing CPR, just in case. “Stay with me, please stay with me.”

The door opened with a crash, blinding us with daylight. “We need a doctor, please! A doctor, right now!”

The man who had been talking to us in the field looked at me skeptically. I was fucking performing CPR and he wasn’t sure I was telling the truth. This guy was about to get his face clawed.

He yelled, “King Magnus?” He waited for an answer, then rolled his eyes. “Bring a stretcher, we have to move him.” To me he said, “Gather the kids, go stand over there until we’re ready to talk.”

I climbed from the van with calm assurances, “This man is going to get a doctor for your Da. We’re just going to stand over here.” I helped Archie up and pulled Isla into my arms. “Follow close, please, stand right here.” I didn't have to tell him, Archie was clinging to my hips.

Thirty-seven - Kaitlyn

Men climbed into the back of the van and slid Magnus out, dropping him onto a stretcher and wheeling him away, leaving me alone surrounded by glaring light — a bright day.

I was on the landing pad of Magnus’s castle, I hadn’t seen it in years and this was very different. Barbed wire was coiled around the perimeter, large barricades had been built, spray-painted messages, ‘occupied territory’ written across a wall. In the air above us three helicopters hovered, noisy as hell. In the forest, bombs were exploding, the ground shaking. Drones whipped around us. Down below us, past the gardens, tanks rumbled down the roads, all around us, hovering, oppressive, the machines of war. These looked different from the machines that had fought against Roderick. Everything seemed foreign, like an invading army but worse, like three invading armies, and all of them future armies. And Fraoch had been right, everything with the word ‘future’ in front of it was formidable.

I scanned the castle. There were broken windows, busted walls, and then my eyes settled on Magnus’s flag, tattered in the breeze. My stomach turned when I realized that at the front of the castle stood three very tall pikes with gory, severed heads on them.

I turned the kids away.

I was grabbed by the shirt and shoved toward the door to the building, down the halls, and then shoved down long circling stone steps. “Don’t push! We’re trying to—”

I was shoved again, almost losing my footing. I was carrying Isla while holding Archie up by the arm, his feet barely touching the steps. The soldier above me shoved me again. “Go! Go! Go!”

I blinked back my tears. We passed the door to the main level of the castle, descended past the floor with the prison rooms, and were forced on, down to the lowest level — the original dungeon. Like most creepy old dungeons it was not used by civilized rulers anymore. We had progressed beyond torture and privation: prisoners deserved bathrooms and beds. These chambers were merely historical, relics of the past.

I wanted to scream, grab the walls, and refuse to go down into the darkness, to fight, to struggle against it. But I was outnumbered and my kids