Page 125 of Dark Rival

THIS TIME, as she lay on cold stone, the pain of the leap finally subsiding, she was nauseous. She clawed the floor as the torment dulled to an intense soreness in her entire body. Leaping again, so soon, had hurt more than ever and she felt certain she would not be able to do so in the near future. But she’d worry about that later. Where was Moffat?

He no longer held her. Afraid to move, she lay impossibly still, straining to sense him. As she focused, she became aware of how dank it was around her, the stale odor of refuse assailing her now. Thick smoke hung in the room, making it almost impossible to breathe. Where was she?

Moffat was not present. Evil was everywhere, encircling the place where she had landed, and Allie guessed she was within a perimeter guarded by Moffat’s human soldiers. And she was not alone.

A woman was present, just a short distance away. Allie reeled, not from the pain in her battered body, but from her fear and despair.

Cautiously, alarmed, Allie opened her eyes.

The room was dark and filled with shadows. The floor she lay on wasn’t stone—it was rough, splintered wood. A small fire burned in a very rustic stone hearth. Allie sat up, her gaze moving to the form wrapped in the blanket there.

The woman stared back at her, unmoving. Her eyes were huge in her pale face.

Allie took in her long tangled hair, and the dark bruise on her cheek. Gaunt hollows were beneath her eyes. But nothing compared to the woman’s emotional torment. Her heart swelled with compassion for her.

But she didn’t go to her yet. Allie glanced quickly around the rectangular room, noting a table, a bench and that the floor was covered with straw, most of it dirty. Her gaze moved to the closed wooden plank door, and then to the shuttered windows on each side of it.

“Where am I?” she said roughly, hoping that the woman spoke English.

She did. “Eoradh.”

“Where is that?”

“The far north.”

Allie tested her body and stood. Her limbs trembled, weak from the leap through time. She hoped her healing powers were unaffected by the strain of time travel. “Have you seen Moffat?”

“I dinna ken Moffat.”

The woman was clearly Scot, although her accent was different from Royce’s and everyone else she’d met so far in the Highlands. While her impulse was to rush to her and heal her, Allie walked quickly to the door. As she reached for it, the woman said, “T’is bolted from without. And there are guards everywhere.”

Allie tested it anyway. The woman was right; it was securely locked. She tried both shutters, but they were locked, as well. Where the hell was Moffat? And why had he taken her to this primitive hut in the far north?

She turned and walked closer to the fire. “Are you a prisoner, too?”

The woman laughed bitterly and pushed the blanket aside. She was naked beneath, her hands and legs bound, and she had been beaten.

Allie tensed in sheer dismay at the sight of the cruelty she’d suffered. But the firelight now played over the woman, and Allie was close enough to note that her hair was a mass of dirty titian curls. And the name formed swiftly in her mind—Brigdhe.

Brigdhe had been captured and tortured.

No, it was impossible, she thought with some panic. Moffat couldn’t be so clever and so cruel to do this to Royce again.

“I can heal your pain,” Allie said softly. “May I?”

The woman’s eyes were wary. “Why would you do so?”

“Because I am a Healer.”

The woman stared, considering her words, and finally she nodded.

Allie knelt beside her, showering her with a strong, healing white light. The woman did not have major injuries, but she’d been beaten and raped. As Allie felt her physical pain recede, she focused on the terrible anguish in her heart. She dared and sent a white light there, as well.

The woman pulled the blanket up, her eyes wide, brighter now. “You have a great magic,” she gasped. “My body no longer hurts.”

“Are you Brigdhe?” she whispered, meeting her blue gaze.

She started. “Aye. How do ye ken?”